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

Bardolfe :

"Hue Bardoue" is mentioned by Wace at the siege of Arques; "a great name," adds Taylor, "both in Norman and English history." "The exact nature and measure of Hugh's greatness does not appear; but his capture is spoken of as one of the most important events of the fight at St. Aubin. I know of no record of his earlier exploits or his later fate; but the name of Bardulf occurs repeatedly in the later records both of the Norman and English Exchequer, and one at least of his descendants seems to have been as little amenable to lawful authority as his ancestor."^[37]—Freeman. He was at that time "one of the Norman traitors who were in arms with the King of France against their lawful Duke."—Ibid.

Yet, in the sole account I have been able to find of "Hugues surnomme Bardoul" (contained in Anselme's History of the French Nobility) he is described as the vassal of the King of France, and no allusion is made either to a Norman fief, or to descendants resident in England. He was the grandson of Renart, Seigneur of Broyes, near Sesanne, in the Pays de Brie, of Beaufort in the county of Ronay in Champagne, and of Periviers in the diocese of Orleans, who lived in the reign of Hugh Capet, and, dying at Rome, was buried at the gates of St. Peter's. Hugh's name first appears as a witness to one of King Robert's charters in 1028. He fortified his castle of Periviers against Henry I. of France; but, after a two years' leaguer, was compelled by famine to surrender, deprived of all his honours, and banished the realm. His disgrace was, however, short lived; for not long after he was reinstated, and accompanied the King in an expedition against the Duke of Normandy, in which he was taken prisoner. He founded a priory at his castle of Beaufort as a cell to the Abbey of Moustier-en-Der: and was succeeded by his son Bartholomew "chevalier tres fameux," and the father of another Hugh Bardoul, who went with Stephen Count of Blois to the Holy Land in 1102. Trie-le-Bardoul took his name; but it appears never to have been borne by his descendants. They were simply styled Sires de Broyes, and bore three broies (hemp-brakes) as their coat of arms.

There existed none the less a Bardol fee in the Norman Pays de Caux, identified by Mr. Stapleton with the church of Bernonville near Gisors, which Thomas Bardol, with Rose Alselyn his wife, bestowed on the Abbey of Bec-Herlouin. He was the son of William Bardol, Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk for five consecutive years under Henry II., with whom Dugdale's pedigree begins. No doubt William must have been a landowner in either or both of these counties; but it is upon Thomas's brilliant marriage that the first foundation of their future importance rests. Rose had brought him twenty-five knight's fees, which had descended to her from Goisfrid d'Alselin, one of the Barons of Domesday, whose name became in English speech Hauselyn; having been "disfigured by English genealogists, who converted its first syllable, Al, into Hau."—Recherches sur le Domesday. In like manner, Bardol or Bardul, grew into Bardolf or Bardolph.

Thomas and Rose had two sons: 1. Dodo, or Doon; 2. Thomas, castellan of Verneuil in 1179 and 1180; "and perhaps two others, for Dodo witnesses Richard de la Haie's grant to Blanchelande Abbey with Hugh Bardolf and Hamelinus Bardolf. In 1168 Hugh held two knight's fees, and Doon I. of Richard de la Haie's fief in Lincoln."—A. S. Ellis. Dugdale, however, who gives a long account of this Sir Hugh, believes him to have been Thomas's younger brother rather than his son.

He was, in either case, of far greater account than his elder brother. No man in the country was better trusted or oftener employed. He was one of the Lieutenants left in charge of the Kingdom in 1186 during Henry II.'s absence in Normandy; three years later appointed a Justiciar of the realm when Coeur de Lion departed for the Holy Land: and among the sureties of the treaty made at Messina in 1190 between the King and Tancred of Sicily. So great was Richard's esteem for him "that in the third year of his Reign, when he was in the Holy Land, and suspected his Chancellor here, to whom he had chiefly committed the Charge of Governing in his absence, he wrote his letter to this Hugh Bardolf and three others, requiring them, in case the Chancellor did not do as he ought, that they should take upon them the rule of all things."—Dugdale. During the contest between the Chancellor and the Earl of Mortaine, when the Earl's castle of Windsor "was besieged by all the Nobility of England, this Hugh, being then the King's Justice and Sheriff of Yorkshire, joyn'd with the Archbishop of York and William de Stuteville, who having raised a great Power, fortified Doncaster, but would not take part in the siege of Tickhill Castle, belonging to the Earl of Moreton, in regard of his special Obligations to him."—Ibid. It is this Sir Hugh who is traditionally named as the champion that slew the great Dragon of Walmsley; but, setting aside this more dubious feat, his services as Sheriff are sufficiently note-worthy. The list of his shrievalties is a curiosity. He was Viscount of Cornwall in 1185 and 1186, of Wilts for half the latter year, and the whole of 1187; of Dorset and Somerset in 1189; of Warwick and Leicester in 1190 and 1191; of York in 1192 and 1193; of Northumberland, Westmoreland, and York in 1194; of no less than six counties, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Lancaster, York, Warwick and Leicester in 1195; of Westmoreland in 1196, 1198, and 1199; part of 1199 also of Derby, Notts, Devon, and Cornwall; and again of Notts and Derby in 1203—the year of his death. He had received from Henry II. Fulk Paynell's forfeited Honour of Baenton, which he exchanged for the manor and hundred of Hoo in Kent about 1196, but left no children to inherit it. It passed to his brother Robert; but Robert, too, died s. p.: and the inheritance was divided among his nieces, one of whom, Isold, was the ancestress of the Lords Grey of Codnor. Dugdale does not give their father's name.

But to revert to the elder line. Doon Bardolfe, the son and heir of Thomas Bardolfe and his wealthy wife, himself married an even greater heiress, Beatrice de Warrenne, dowered with the Barony of Wermegay, which, "with other great manors, made up twenty-nine knight's fees belonging to his court at Shelford." This was the head of his Honour, and some of his descendants lie buried in Shelford Priory; but they had also Folkingham Castle in Lincolnshire;^[38] and a seat at Pudel-Bardolf, Piddle Bardolf, Piddle Barlyfeston, or Bardolf's Weston—all different names for the same manor—in Dorsetshire. Doon had died before 1205, and his widow, after paying the great sum of three thousand one hundred marks for livery of his lands and license to remain unmarried, in 1209 "became the wife of the King's favourite, Hubert de Burgh; but, before 1214 she had, after the birth of male issue that did not survive, sunk into the grave. Upon this pretext, as tenant by the courtesy of England, Hubert de Burgh obtained from King John a grant for life of the Honour of Wermegay."—T. Stapleton. It was therefore only after the great Earl's death in 1243 that it came to her son William.

William, who remained the staunch liegeman of Henry III. during the Baronial War, and was taken prisoner with him at Lewes, was the grandfather of the first Lord Bardolf, Hugh, summoned to parliament in 1299. He had served Edward I. gallantly for three years in Gascony, and then for as many more in Scotland, dying after his last campaign in 1303, when he had followed the King's own banner across the Tweed. He was among the leaders of the first squadron at Carlaverock.

"Hue Bardoul, de grant maniere,
Riches horns e preus e cortois,
En asur quint-fullez trois
Portoit de fin or esmere."

He had married Isabel, the heiress of Robert Aguillon, and left a son and heir of twenty-two, through whom the title was transmitted to three more generations of stalwart soldiers. The third Lord, a Knight Banneret, who served Edward III. in the field all his life, was, with Robert Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, and John Lord Morley, selected for the defence of the Norfolk coast when a French invasion was expected in 1352. His wife Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Roger d'Amorie, by "that great Woman" (as Dugdale terms her) Elizabeth de Burgh, the foundress of Clare Hall, Cambridge, brought him a fair inheritance in Dorsetshire. Their son, again, fought in France; and in 1373 was in the train of John of Gaunt "with XL Men-at-Armes and XL Archers, all on Horsebacke." The last of the line, William, is the wary "Lord Bardolf" of Shakespeare's Henry IV. that depreciates the rash and headstrong tactics of Hotspur—

Who liv'd himself with hope,
Eating the air on promise of supply,
Flattering himself with project of a power
Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts:
And so, with great imagination,
Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,
And, winking, leap'd into destruction.

He was then, as Hotspur had been, in arms against the Crown: for he had joined the Yorkist rising of 1405 under the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl Marshal Nottingham, and Archbishop Scrope; but, driven from the field by the King's superior force, retreated across the Border with Northumberland, while Scrope and Nottingham, betrayed by the Earl of Westmoreland, were left to perish on the scaffold at York. Three years later, having meanwhile collected aid in Scotland, Wales, France, and Flanders, Northumberland and Bardolf "in a dismal hour," re-appeared in the North with a great following, recovered the Earl's forfeited castles and seignories, and, marching into Yorkshire, raised the standard of revolt at Thirsk. Many Yorkshiremen flocked in to join it, ready to give their blood for the old cause of the White Rose, that had struck such deep roots in the North. But the loyal Sheriff, Sir Ralph Rokeby, gathered together all the men-at-arms he could muster in the county, and encountered them at Bramham Moor, near Hazelwood, "where," says Holinshed, "they chose their ground meet to fight upon. The Sheriff was as ready to give battle as the Earl to receive it, and so with a standard of St. George spread, set fiercely upon the Earl, who, under a standard of his own arms, encountered his adversaries with great manhood. There was a sore encounter and cruel conflict betwixt the parties, but in the end the victory fell to the Sheriff. The Earl of Northumberland was slain in the field, and the Lord Bardolf was taken, but sore wounded, so that he shortly after died of the hurts." The dread sentence of a traitor was executed upon him even after death; for his lifeless body was quartered, and the quarters set up on the gates of London, York, Lenne, and Shrewsbury, his head being exposed on one of the gates of Lincoln, till his widow Avicia could obtain the King's leave to take down the ghastly trophies, and bury them. By this Avicia (the daughter of Lord Cromwell) he left two young daughters, Anne and Joan, the one then nineteen, the other eighteen years of age, who under other circumstances would have been his heirs. But by his attainder all that he possessed had escheated to the Crown and been disposed of by the King; and the husbands of the despoiled sisters, Sir William Clifford and Sir William Phelip, could only succeed in securing the reversion of a small part of his great estate. Sir William, an excellent soldier, who was Treasurer of the Household to Henry V. and created Lord Bardolf by Henry VI., left an only daughter married to John Viscount Beaumont.

The name, as far as I know, only survives in the town of Stow-Bardolph, in Norfolk, and Stoke-Bardolph, in Nottinghamshire.