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

Baskeruile :

(in Wace, Basquevile). Martels de Basquevile was at the battle of Hastings. This was the descendant of Nicholas de Basquevile, one of the six sons of Baudry-le Teuton, who derived his name from Basceville or Basqueville, in the Fays de Caux, which continued to be the fief of Martel for two centuries. "The continuator of William de Jumieges, enumerating the nieces of Gunnora, Countess of Richard I. of Normandy, mentions one who married Nicholas de Bascheritivilla (vulgo Basqueville), and was the mother of William Martel and Walter de St. Martin."—Eyton's Shropshire.

Bacquevile or Baskerville is not written in Domesday; but Mr. A. S. Ellis suggests that the surname of Ralph, a sub-tenant of Roger de Laci, at Icombe, in Salemanesberie hundred, and Winrush, Gloucestershire, was probably De Baskerville. In 1109, Robert de Baskerville, on his return from the Holy Land, granted lands to Gloucester Abbey (Mon. I. 115). Either he, or another of the same name, held five knight's fees in 1165 of Hugh de Laci in Herefordshire; and Radulph de Baskerville one fee under Adam de Port in the same county. Combe (Icombe) continued theirs for at least 200 years; and they were frequent benefactors to St. Peter's Abbey, where one of them, Bernard de Baskerville, assumed the habit of a monk. Sibilla de Baskerville—presumably the last heiress—was living in 1280.—v. Rudder's Gloucestershire. Long before this, however, the family had attained abnormal proportions, and extended into many other parts of the country. "At the beginning of the thirteenth century there were Baskervilles in Herefordshire, Northamptonshire and Shropshire, in Warwickshire, Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire, and possibly in other counties. No reasonable ground has yet occurred to my notice for further associating any two of the branches, except that the Shropshire and Northamptonshire branch was identical, and also had lands in Herefordshire. Yet these are not to be confounded with the Baskervilles of Eardisley in Herefordshire, however difficult it may be to preserve the distinction."—Eyton's Shropshire.

This opens a wide and perplexing field of research, on which I must not attempt to enter. The principal house was that of Eardisley: "the habitation, for a long time, of the famous and ancient family of the Baskervilles, which bred in all times so many noted knights, and flourished long since in this county and its neighbour Shropshire, and held (to note so much by-the-bye) the hamlet of Lanton in Capite, as of the Honour of Montgomery, by the service of giving the King one barbed arrow as often as he came to hunt in Cormedon Chase."—Camden.

Their tenure of Eardisley Castle "commenced at least as early as the thirteenth century. In 1251 Humphrey de Bohun and Aleanore his wife, by a fine granted the manor of 'Irdesle' to Walter de Baskerville (Close Rolls, 36 Hen. III. m. 16), but there is good reason to believe that his ancestors had been settled in that place—certainly in the county—at a much earlier date. They claim, indeed, to have acquired possession of the manor of Eardisley by the marriage of Sir Ralph Baskerville with Sibyl, heiress of Adam de Port and of his wife, who was a daughter of De Braose, and a grand-daughter of Milo, Earl of Hereford. With greater certainty we may state that Ralph de Baskerville held lands under Adam de Port de veteri feoffamento, i.e. by inheritance from the reign of Henry I. (Lib. Scut), and that on the murder of Ralph Baskerville in Northamptonshire about the year 1194, his son Thomas succeeded him at Pickthorn, the Shropshire estate (Eyton's Shropshire), and another son, Roger, at Eardisley in Herefordshire.—(Her. Visit.)

"Walter de Baskerville, grandson of this Roger, had licence from the Bishop of Hereford in 1272 'to hold divine service in an oratory built within the walls of the castle' (Reg. Breton), and we may assume from this that Eardisley had then become the chief residence of the family, as it continued to be for the four succeeding centuries.

"During that long period the house of Baskerville produced a series of knights, whom to mention by name would exceed our limits. They won their spurs not by wealth or by waiting upon the Court, but by active service at home and abroad, and on the grave of each might be inscribed the quaint old epitaph:—

'Eques Auratus well may he he said
Whose coyne, not warlike courage, such hath made;
To Baskerville, we Miles do afford
As knighted on the field by his flesht sword.'

"The most eminent members of the Eardisley line were Sir John Baskerville, who, while yet a boy, followed King Henry to the battlefield of Agincourt, and his son, Sir James, one of the three Herefordshire heroes who were made Knights Banneret by Henry VII. after the battle of Stoke in 1487. The latter married Sibyl, sister of Walter Devereux, first Lord Ferrers, who fell at Bosworth fighting against the cause which his brother-in-law supported. A descendant was Sir Thomas Baskerville, who died in 1597 commanding Queen Elizabeth's troops in Picardy. There was a tablet to his memory in old St. Paul's setting forth the glories 'of the right worthie and valiant gentlemen,' and his services in the Netherlands, Indies, Spain, and France, and attributing to him

' A pure regard to the immortall parte,
A spotless minde and an unvanquisht heart.'

In the Civil War, Sir Humphrey Baskerville of Eardisley took the side of the King, but was not actively engaged in the struggle. Indeed, the importance of the family had then begun to decline, and Symonds states that the income of the knight (whom he calls a traveller) had dwindled down from ,3000 per annum to 300. Misfortunes continued to attend die family. The castle was burnt to the ground in the Civil War, only one of the gatehouses escaping, and in this the representative of the family was living in 1670 in comparative poverty.—(Blount's MS.). The parish register contains die burial entry of Benhail Baskerville in 1684, to whose name are added the words, 'Dominus Manerii de Erdisley.' At his death the family became extinct in the direct male line, and the remainder of the property (most of which had been sold by Sir Humphrey Baskerville in the reign of James I.) was purchased by William Barnesley, Bencher of the Inner Temple."—Castles of Herefordshire and their Lords, by C. J. Robinson.

Ralph de Baskerville, who in 1165 held a knight's fee of Adam de Port in Herefordshire—probably at Bradwardine—is considered by Eyton to have been the progenitor of the Shropshire Baskervilles. About 1180, he was Lord of Pickthorn in that county, where his descendants continued for nine generations, and also held Lawton and other manors. He died in 1190, by the hand of one of his own vassals, leaving his son Thomas a minor. But no sooner was the young heir of age, than he challenged Roger Fitz William in the King's Court at Westminster, "for that wickedly, and in the King's peace, and in felony, and in murder, he slew Ralph de Baskerville his (Thomas') father in his house; and this the said Thomas saw, as he said, being a boy under age, and this he offers to prove against Roger with his body." This was in Easter Term, 1200; but it was only in the following year that the Court decided to allow the duel. "No record remains of this duel. The Appellant, however, survived it."—Eyton's Salop.

The last of the line, John de Baskerville, died in infancy in 1383, and Pickthorn passed to his aunt, Margaret Foulhurst. Another John, descended from a younger brother, was living in the ensuing century; but his posterity likewise became extinct, and the Baskervilles of Newton had ended with an heiress in 1325. Those seated at Northwood were in fact Botterells, who, for some reason or other, bore their mother's, instead of their father's name; they, too, disappear after 1325.

One single branch is all that is now left of this once far-spreading family,^[53] and this only survives under a changed name. Its connection with the parent stock is not traced, and would have to be sought for in remote antiquity, as it has been seated in Cheshire for upwards of 600 years. "The early history of the Baskerville family is very obscure. No Inquisitiones post mortem were taken, as they held no lands directly under the Earl of Chester, and very few deeds relating to them have been met with."—Earwaker's East Cheshire. It is at all events certain that Sir John de Baskerville, about the year 1226, received from Robert de Camville a grant of Old Withington, and that this estate has been handed down to the present day by twenty generations of his successors. John Baskerville, who inherited it in 1718, having married Mary, daughter and heir of Robert Glegg, of Gayton-in-Wirrall in the same county, took the name and arms of Glegg, ever since retained by the family.