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

Bounilaine :

evidently the Buttevillain of Levi's list: in Abbot Brompton's it appears as Boutevilain: and is Botevilain in the Roman de Rou. "Botevilain and Trossebot feared neither blow nor thrust, but heartily gave and took many on that day." Though thus signalised at the Battle of Hastings, the name does not occur in Domesday; and is only found in the following century in Norfolk and Northamptonshire. "Flordon (in the former county) came to the Buttevillains very early. Robert held it in 1139."—Blomfield. According to the Liber Niger, he held two knight's fees of Walter de Wahull, and three of Roger Bigot, Earl of Norfolk. His son William founded Pipewell Abbey in Northamptonshire, where "he held lands, at Pipewell and elsewhere. He was in great favour with Henry II., who, upon going into Normandy, gave him a writ, directed to the Bishops of London and Norwich, and to all his liege people, English and Norman, of Northamptonshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, granting him all the lands and other liberties that his father had enjoyed."—Banks. He married Joan, daughter of Sir Ralph Camois; and had a son, Robert, "one of the barons that levied war against King John, and received a pardon from Henry III. in 1216, yet was afterwards in arms against him both at Lewes and Evesham."—Blomfield. In this latter case the rebel must have been his son of the same name, called Roger by Matthew Paris, who tells us he was taken prisoner in 1264, but was subsequently pardoned. The next heir, William, is included by Banks among the Barones Pretermissi, as "one of those considerable men who, 24 Edward I. had summons to attend the great council, then appointed to convene at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, upon the subject of an expedition against the Scots. But after this period the name of Boutevelayn is no more noticed upon any similar occasion, although the posterity of this William long continued to possess considerable estates in Norfolk Northamptonshire, and elsewhere." Their possessions included Hastings and Gissing in Norfolk, Cottesbrook in Northants, and Fenwick and Thornditch in Bedfordshire. Sir William's son, Sir Robert, one of the tilters at the tournament at Stebenhithe (Stepney) and Dunstable in 1308, was slain on Midsummer Day, 1314, with the Earl of Gloucester in Scotland, and was followed by another Robert, "who 5 Hen. V. going into foreign parts, conveyed Cottesbrook to the Duke of Clarence and other feoffees for the time of his absence from the kingdom."—Bridge's Northants. With his son William the line terminated, and terminated miserably, for the last unhappy heir was an idiot. On his death in 1465, the estates passed to his two sisters, Elizabeth Chatterton and Julian Duke.

The Boutevillians bore Argent, three crescents Gules. One of these Lords of Cottesbrook is roundly abused in the chronicle of Pipewell Abbey "It is there recorded that he denied the existence of the foundation charter; and worse than this, that, having claimed the maintenance of a horse and a pack of hounds at the Abbey, and suffered discomfiture by the ejection of his steed by a subtle device from the Abbot's stable, he threatened excision generally to their horse's tails, and dire demeanour to the brethren; for the which he was likened by them to Achitophel and to Herod."