The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. I.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Anuay : either for Aunou or Alnet (De Alneto). The "Sire de Alnei" was one of the five knights who, at the battle of Hastings, "challenged Harold the King to come forth, and said to the English, 'Stay! stay! where is your King? he that perjured himself to William? He is a dead man, if we find him.'" This was, according to Wace's commentator, "Fulk d'Aunou, one of the numerous family of Baudry-le-Teuton, by a daughter of Richard de Bienfaite; and the place in question is probably Aunou-le-Faucon, arrondissement of Argentan. There was also in earlier times a Fulk de Aneio, or Aneto; who was of the Vernon family (the son of Osmond de Centumvillis, and one of Gunnor's sisters), and derived his name from Anet, a little south of Ivry. The two Fulks and their families seem to have been sometimes confounded." The confusion became all the greater because, though in France the two houses remained distinct as D'Aunou and D'Anet, in England the two names (as in the case of Cheney) were merged into one as Daunay. To add to the complication, a third family named Alno was settled in Somersetshire, derived from William d'Alno, who in 1086 held of Robert Gernon in Suffolk. He belonged to the house of Bricqueville, who possessed the castle of Aune or Alno in the Cotentin, and probably took its Latinized name for his own. Singularly enough, it is the only one of the three that is found in Domesday, though we are told that Fulk d'Aunon had furnished a contingent of forty vessels to William's fleet for the invasion of England. His posterity flourished in Normandy up to 1586; but there is little trace of it to be found in England.

The other Fulk had a son named Paganus who founded a great English house. "In 1115 Berenger de Annay (son of Paganus) witnessed a charter of Stephen, Count of Albemarle (Mon. II. 999:) and Gonthier his brother had custody of Bayeux in 1106 (Ord. Vitalis.) William de Alneto, son or grandson of Berenger, held fiefs in Devon 1165 (Lib. Niger)."—The Norman People. Norton-Dauney and Slancomb Dauney still recall their name in that county, where they had very considerable possessions, but their seat was at Sheviock, or Shunock, in Cornwall. Leland speaks of it as "some time the ancient Daunye's inheritance, by whose daughter and heir the same (together with other fair possessions) descended to the Earls of Devon. In the church there lie two knights of this name, and one of their ladies by her husband's side, having their pictures embossed on their tombs on the side walls, and their arms once painted round about, but now by the malice, not of men, but of time, defaced. They are held to be father and son; and that the son was slain in our wars with France, and was thence brought home to be here interr'd.

"There runneth also a tale amongst the parishioners, how one of the Daunye's ancestors undertook to build the church, and his wife the barn adjoining; and that, casting up their accounts upon finishing of their works, the barn was found to have cost three half-pence more than the church; and so it might well fall out, for it is a great barn and a little church."

Nicholas Dawney, "a person of great note and considerable estate" in the Western counties, in 1327 "was one of those great men who had summons to be at Newcastle-on-Tyne with horse and arms, to march against Robert de Brus; but this summons does not purport to have been a call to parliament ad tractandum. After this period he is represented to have peregrinated to the Holy Land, where he greatly distinguished himself against the infidels, and on his return brought with him a very rich and curious medal, which for a long time was, if it is not at this day, in the possession of the family."—Banks. This token (a ring, not a medal), is said to be of much earlier date, and the gift of Coeur de Lion to one of the Dawneys that had distinguished himself in the Crusade. "It is a somewhat massive silver ring, containing a talismanic gem, denominated a toad-stone, which is still used as a charm in the East."—Gills Easingwold. On the same occasion they received a grant of their crest, a demi-Saracen in armour, with a ring in the dexter hand, and a lion's paw in the left.

"Were we to rely on village authority, the lion's paw is nothing but a miller's-pick;" for, according to Yorkshire tradition, it records one of those "wonderful exploits which," says Camden, "are very proper entertainment for tattling gossips in a winter night." Once upon a time, Sessay Wood was the haunt of a cannibal giant, who fed upon babies and ravaged all the district round. No one was ever found bold enough to tackle him, till one fortunate morning Dawney espied him lying asleep in the precincts of the Old Mill, and seizing a miller's pick that lay at hand, drove it into his skull. "For this the King then reigning decreed that the giant-slayer should always keep hold of the Miller's Pick, by which token all men might know that to him and his heirs had been given the royalty of Sessay, to have, and to hold, thenceforward and forever."—Ibid. It is hardly necessary to point out that the Dawneys only acquired Sessay by marriage in the reign of Henry VII., when the age of giants and giant-slayers had long passed away. The tradition may refer to their predecessors the Darells.

Sir Nicholas Dawney died about 1331, leaving several sons. John, the eldest, inherited his lands, and passed them to an only daughter Emmeline, who was the wife of Sir Edmund Courtenay, and the mother of Edward, third Earl of Devon. Her uncle Thomas was, it is believed, the ancestor of the Viscounts Downe.

This Sir Thomas had married a Yorkshire heiress, and was seated at Estrick, in that county, in 1387. From him descended Sir Guy Dawnay of Cowick, who first obtained Sessay by his wife Joan, sister of the last Sir Thomas Darell, who died in 1505. Five of his descendants have served as High Sheriffs of Yorkshire; and in 1642, Sir Christopher Dawnay, a zealous loyalist, received a baronetcy from Charles I. He died without an heir; and was succeeded by his brother Sir John, created in 1680 Viscount Downe of Ireland, who sat in King James's Irish parliament of 1689. The fifth Viscount, in 1796, obtained an English peerage as Lord Dawnay of Cowick.