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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Aspermound : from the Castle and county of Aspramont. "The Spearmans of Preston, in the parish of Tynemouth, claim to be a branch from those of Dunnington, near Newport, in Shropshire, who themselves assert their descent—not from the Peers of Charlemagne, who 'jousted in Aspramont or Montalban'—but from the ancient Lords or Counts of Aspramont, a certain Castle and County betwixt the Maes and the Moselle, on the confines of Lorrain and Bar. The reader may, perhaps, be reminded of Don Raphael's principality, 'des certaines Vallees qui sont entre les Suisses, le Milanois, et la Savoye.' Aspramont, however, is no imaginary Castle: it was sacked by the French, and the Count wounded, in 1551 (De Thou.). In 1740 the Castle was besieged and taken by the Marquis de Minas. A Count of Aspramont, in the service of the Imperialists, was made prisoner, and died of his wounds in Italy, in 1743; and the name appears in the last Army List of Royal France. But, whatever may become of this descent from Aspramont, which as it is not easy to prove, it is also impossible to refute: the Spearmans, whencesoever they sprang, came into Northumberland, as gentlemen, in the time of Henry VII.; and have ever since maintained their rank as such, together with considerable landed property in various branches of the family in both Countries. "Au reste, il y a longtemps que nous sommes nes bons gentilshommes—ainsi tenons-nous en la."—Surtees' Durham.

"Dominus de Asperomonte," is among the Barons of Champagne entered in Duchesne's Nomina militum ferentium bannerias: and it is quite possible that "Le Sire d'Asperemont, son of the Count d'Asperemont" may, as the family tradition avers, have come over to England with the Conqueror. "The corruption of the name," says Hutchinson, "has been attributed by some of the family to an atchievement in the holy wars under Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward I.:" but the transition is no greater than from Espec to Speke, which is an unquestioned derivation. The Spearmans do not, however, bear the silver cross of the House of Aspramont (Argent on a field Gules), but a chevron between three broken spears, of course alluding to the adventure or feat of arms in the Crusade. Nor is the name to be found in any of the public records that I have searched; such as the Hundred Rolls, the Pipe Rolls, the Parliamentary Writs, the Monasticon Anglicanum, &c.; and though Eyton, in his History of Shropshire, mentions a Stephen de Spearman and his wife Emma in 1267, he furnishes us with no clue to their descent. I opine, with Surtees, that it can neither be proved nor disproved.

A cadet of the Shropshire family came into the North with the army that suppressed the Pilgrimage of Grace, and was at the battle of Solway Moss in 1542. He settled at Preston, near Tynemouth, and his descendants are also to be found at Hetton-le-Hole, Thornley, and Bishop-Middleton in the co. of Durham. One of them acquired Eachwick in Northumberland by marriage in 1748; but his line ended in the following generation.

This last Spearman of Eachwick was a somewhat celebrated local antiquary, said to be the original of "Monkbarns" in Scott's Antiquary. He died in 1823, leaving his estate to an old unmarried sister for her life, and then to his steward, John Hunter, an old and faithful servant, determining, as he had no children of his own, "to follow the example of Abraham, and to consider his Eleazar heir to all his house."