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

Gamages :

"The castle and vill of Gamaches ^[57] were situated in the Norman Vexin, and gave name to a Deanery in the Archdiocese of Rouen. Godfrey de Gamaches, who doubtless derived his name from this vill, inherited two knight's fees of old feoffment in the Honour of Lacy. The English interests of his family were therefore established before the reign of Henry I."—Eyton's Salop. This Godfrey received from Henry II. a grant of Stottesden in Shropshire, where his posterity remained seated till about 1254, when the line terminated in co-heiresses. He also obtained Marshall, in the same county, by grant of Richard I., and died before 1176. His second son, William, inherited Mansel-Gamage, Herefordshire, Gamage Hall in Dimock, and other lands in Gloucestershire, and was Constable of Ludlow. From him descended Sir Pain de Gamages, Lord of Rogiad in Monmouthshire, and Sir Robert, of the same place, whose eldest son, Sir William, Sheriff of Gloucester in 1325, married Assar, daughter of Sir Pain de Turberville (fourth of the name) of Coyty Castle, Glamorgan. When the heir of the last Turberville was murdered by his wife in 1412, this Sir William's grandson and namesake succeeded to Coyty, and his posterity held it for about one hundred and seventy years. The line ended with John Gamage, whose only daughter Barbara was a beauty as well as an heiress. She had no lack of suitors; but the Earl of Pembroke, at that time "the most influential man in North Wales," succeeded in obtaining her hand for his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Sidney, afterwards Earl of Leicester. They were married in 1584, at her guardian Sir Edward Stradley's house in Wales. Two hours after the ceremony, there arrived an imperious mandate from Sir Walter Raleigh to Sir Edward, desiring, in the Queen's name, "that you suffer not my kinswoman to be bought and sold in Wales without Her Majesty's privilege to the consent, and advice of my Lord Chamberlain and myselfe, her father's cozen-Germayne, considering she hath not any nearer kyn nor better." But the knot was already tied; and though Lord Burghley threatened legal action, the young couple remained unmolested. She was the grandmother of Algernon Sidney; and "Gamage's Bower" is still shown in Penshurst Park.

"One of the daughters of this house of Gamages married Sir Richard de la Bere, of Weobley and Molton in Gower, who received for services at Cressy 'five ostriches feathers issuing from a ducal coronet' as his crest. Another married Lord Howard of Effingham, and was the mother of Queen Elizabeth's famous Lord Admiral. Some of the family migrated to America with their kinsman Lord Effingham, when he was Governor of Virginia, and are still represented there. The house in which they lived at Cambridge is yet called Gamage's House."—Nichols' Counties and County Families of Wales.