Michael Linton's Bayeux Tapestry: 1066 - A Medieval Mosaic and Puzzles

Arundell :

"Rogerius Arundel" holds a Somersetshire barony of twenty-eight manors in Domesday. No one precisely knows who he was; but the generally received opinion is that he was a kinsman of Roger de Montgomeri: Collinson, in his 'Somerset,' even asserts that he was the Earl's son, and according to another authority, "probably Castellan of Arundel," from whence he is credited with having derived his name. Like the town, he bore allusive arms; arondelles (swallows or martlets), which are also the bearing of the county of Sussex. Arondelle is the older form of the modern French hirondelle. Thus Remy Belleau writes in 1585:

"Ces arondelles qui vont
Et qui sont
Du printemps les messageres."

But it seems certain that Roger de Arundel did not take his name from any place in England, for in the 'Recherches sur le Domesday,' we find that the Arundels were a family of very ancient standing in Normandy, and flourished there for nearly two centuries after the Conquest. Eight or nine of the name are found in the Chartulary of Mont St. Michel, and the church of St. Nicolas d'Arundel, in the departement of the Arne, is also mentioned. William d'Arundel was Treasurer of the diocese of Lisieux about 1202; and Emma, his daughter, in a deed of gift dated 1259, speaks of the mill of Arundel, near the mouth of the river Guines. Robert de Fontaine (probably her husband) ceded to Henry, Bishop of Bayeux, his fisheries at Arundel. Their castle is believed to have stood near the mill, on the banks of the Guines; but all trace of its site is completely lost, and it is only remembered in the ritournelle of an old ballad still chanted by the young girls of the neighbouring villages as a dance measure. It is the complainte of a peasant, whose ass has been devoured by a wolf, and who thus laments the useful back that bore his flour-sacks:

"Echine, povre echine,
Plus ne portras farine
Au chateau d'Arundel."

The tradition of this descent was preserved till Leland's time by the Cornish Arundells, for he received from one of them the following account (giving the name of another of their Norman castles): "Humfre Arundale told me that he thought that he cam of the Arundales in Base Normandy that were Lordes of Culy Castelle, that now is descendid to one Mounseir de la Fontaine, a French man by Heire General.

"This Arundale gyvith no part of the Armes of great Arundale of Lanheran by S. Columbes.... and is caullid Arundale of Trerise by a difference from
Arundale of Lanheran."

But in later times it seems to have utterly disappeared. "Sir John Arundell, the last possessor of Lanherne, told me he could never understand there was any such local place in France as Arundell, though he lived long in that country, and made strict enquiry after it."—Gilbert's Cornwall.

Roger Arundel's son Wido, or Guy, held under him Pourton, Dorset (Domesday). His grandson was another Roger, and the barony passed through a female heir to Gerbert de Percy in 1165.—Hutching's Dorset. John Arundel is mentioned, temp. Henry I., and Ralph Arundel, 15 Stephen. It must have been the latter, who, according to Sir John Gilbert, about the middle of the twelfth century, made the match with the heiress of Trembleth that first transplanted the family into Cornwall. Their principal seat was at Lanherne, acquired, in the reign of Henry III., through an heiress of the Pincernas or Butlers: Trerice, the home of a younger branch, came to them, temp. Edward III. There were also Arundels of Tolverne and of Trevithic, as well as in Devonshire, where the name is kept by Morchard-Arundel, Hempston-Arundel, and Yewton-Arundel, "the land that hath had longest continuance in that name within this county." There is also a Somersetshire manor—Samford-Arundel, named from them. But their home was in Cornwall, where, says Carew, "the country people entitle them 'the Great Arundells,' and greatest for love, living, and respect in the country heretofore they were." The last of the old Lanherne stock, Sir John, died in 1701, having settled his estates on his daughter's son, Richard Billinge, with the condition that he should take the name and arms of Arundell. Richard had an only daughter and heir, who married Henry, seventh Lord Arundell of Wardour, and brought him the whole property, most of which was sold by their son, "thus severing the very ancient connexion of his family with the county of Cornwall."

Lord Arundell represented a younger branch that had been seated in Wiltshire since 1527. "The first of the Arundells who established himself in Wilts," says Sir Richard Hoare, "was Sir Thomas, second son of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, by the Lady Elizabeth Grey, daughter of Thomas, second Marquess of Dorset, to whom his father, t8 Henry VIII., granted lands in Somerset and Dorset (amongst them Osmond, one of the manors granted by the Conqueror to Roger Arundel)." In 1547 he purchased of Sir Fulke Greville the Castle of Wardour, where the family have remained seated to the present day. His wife, Margaret Howard, was the sister of Henry VIII.'s fifth Queen; and, as the co-heir of her father, Lord Edmund, third son of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, "brought an ample estate to the family." But, like most of those that owned any connection with Royal blood, on whom a curious fatality seemed to rest, he died on the scaffold, executed in 1552 with Sir Michael Stanhope, Sir Ralph Vane, and Sir Miles Partridge, for complicity in the Duke of Somerset's real or supposed plot against John Dudley Duke of Northumberland. They had been staunch adherents of the Protector, and two of them were connected with him by family ties (Sir Michael was the brother, and Sir Thomas the half-brother of his Duchess): but all died protesting their innocence with their last breath, and Vane added that "his blood would make Northumberland's pillow uneasy."

Thomas, the grandson and namesake of this "famous knight," as he is styled on the monument in Tisbury Church, was the first Lord Arundell of Wardour.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, this Thomas, then quite a young man, went over to Germany, entered the Imperial army as a volunteer, and served a campaign in Hungary against the Turks, "bearing himself manfully in the field." At the assault of the Water Tower at Gran, he took one of the enemy's standards with his own hand, and for this and other services was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire by Rodolph II. in 1595. The Emperor, with whom he was high in favour, further made him several offers of employment, but young Arundell would not be detained abroad, and returned home the following year. He found his countrymen little disposed to acknowledge his new honours, and a warm dispute arose among the peers as to whether he should be allowed place and precedence, or any other privilege of rank. Queen Elizabeth on being appealed to, at once decided against him. She maintained there was a close tie of affection between the prince and subject, and that as chaste wives should have no glances but for their own spouses, so should faithful servants keep their eves at home, and not gaze upon foreign crowns: and that she, tor her part, did no care her sheep should wear a stranger's mark, nor dance after the whistle o every foreigner. She consequently wrote herself to the Emperor, announcing that she had forbidden her subjects to give either place or precedence to the new-made Count. King James, however, created him Baron of Wardour two years after his accession. The second lord was the husband of Lady Blanche Somerset daughter of the Earl of Worcester, the gallant lady who with a mere handful of followers, held Wardour Castle for the King during nine days against the rebel army under Hungerford and Ludlow.^[19] She only consented to yield it at last on the promise of honourable terms, but they were not observed, and when Lord Arundell returned to find his house occupied by the enemy, he ordered a mine to be sprung under it—thus dislodging them by the destruction of his own castle, a fine building which had been decorated by his father at a great expense. But this was far from being the only sacrifice he made to the Royal cause, which indeed cost him the better part of his fortune. He commanded a regiment of horse raised at his sole charge, in the King's army: and died of a wound he received in the battle of Lansdown, where his thigh was broken by a brace of pistol bullets. Wardour Castle was never rebuilt till the middle of the last Century.

One of the Arundells of Trerice^[20] commanded the Royal garrison of Pendennis Castle and though then nearly fourscore years old, and besieged both by sea and land held out bravely till 1646. Four of his sons were in the Royal army two of whom lost their lives in the service: and the elder, Richard, was created Baron Arundell of Trerice after the Restoration. This barony expired with the fourth lord in 1773.