The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
ADDITIONAL NAMES GIVEN BY DUCHESNE.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Bowlers : or De Boilers. "The barony of Boulers or Boularia was one of the principal fiefs of Flanders, and belonged to a powerful race of nobles. Stephen de Boularia, 1096, witnessed a charter of Manasses, Bishop of Cambrai, and joined in the first Crusade (Alb. Miraei, Opera Diplom. i. 166). Baldwin de Boilers, his son, received from Henry I. the barony of Montgomery, with the hand of Sybil de Falaise, his niece."[1]—The Norman People. It was this Baldwin, the first castellan of Montgomery, who gave the town its Welsh name of Tre Faldwin, the town of Baldwin. "In the year 1121, as Baldwin de Boilers, he affixed his signature and attestation to Henry I.'s great Charter to Shrewsbury Abbey." He was a second time married, and left children by each of his wives; but the succession is shrouded in mystery. Dugdale introduces another Baldwin, who was a Northamptonshire feudatory in 1165, but Eyton discards him as an intruder, named in reality Buelot, and states that Baldwin I. was followed by his son and heir Stephen, "seigneurial Lord of Stallington in Staffordshire before the year 1160"; then by Almaric, or Amalric, Lord of Montgomery in 1162, "but how related to his predecessor I cannot tell"; and lastly by Robert, "how related to Almaric I cannot determine." This is all the more perplexing, as Stephen is known to have had a son, named Robert, who would naturally have succeeded to the Honour. Eyton believes that "his line expired in the reign of King John;" but other accounts, as we shall presently see, make him ancestor of the existing family.
The other Robert, who was, beyond all doubt, Lord of Montgomery, and attended Coeur de Lion to Normandy in 1194, married Hillaria, one of the three great Trusbut heiresses, and died childless in 1203. Hillaria, having paid the customary fine of three hundred marks, with the gift of a palfrey, to the King, "that she might not be distrayn'd to marry again," lived a widow for thirty-eight years, and must have been at least ninety at her death in 1142. She had devoted, or vowed, her body to be buried at Lilleshall Abbey, of which she was a most munificent benefactress. Among other gifts, she gave the whole of one of her Yorkshire estates for "the maintenance of the convent kitchen, and the augmentation of victuals in the Refectory; and it is stipulated that there shall be no withdrawal of the food previously and customarily set before the brethren!"
Robert was succeeded by his brother Baldwin II., who likewise left no posterity, and died in 1207. With him expired the elder male line of De Boilers, and his inheritance passed to William de Courtenay.
Hope-Bowdler and Ashford Bowdler, both originally held of the Honour of Montgomery, retain the name in Shropshire; and the latter was the seat of a probable "off-shoot from the ancient Lords of Montgomery." The first mentioned there is Roger de Bouler, living in 1203: the last, John Budler, held in 1308.
Stephen de Bouler's son Robert, who, as Eyton conceives, left no posterity, is represented in The Norman People as the patriarch of a flourishing race. "He appears to have had possessions in Somerset, and in 1194 had a suit with the Abbot of Ford (Rotul. Curiae Regis). His son or grandson was seated at Wood, Somerset, temp. Ed. III., and was ancestor of the Bullers of Wood (Visitation of Somerset, 1623). From this family descended the Bullers of Devon and Cornwall, and the Lords Churston." There must, however, be some confusion in the chronology that gives to a man born in the twelfth century a son or grandson living at least 127 years afterwards.
Of these West-country families, Ralph Buller, who acquired Woode through a Beauchamp heiress in the fourteenth century, is the first ancestor on record. His posterity afterwards removed to Lillesdon, in the same county. The first who settled in. Cornwall was the son of Alexander Buller of Lillesdon, Richard, of Tregarrick, who married Margaret, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Trethurffe of Trethurffe, and cousin and co-heir of Edward Courtenay Earl of Devon, and died in 1555. Two families of his descendants, the Bullers of Morval and Lanreath, still remain in Cornwall; but the elder line returned to Devonshire during the last century, and is seated at Downes, which came through a co-heiress of the Goulds. Another younger branch, representing the distinguished Judge, Francis Buller, obtained a baronetcy in 1790, and the title of Baron Churston in 1858.