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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Delaplanch : again "a baronial family. Richard and Henry de Planca and their fief, Normandy 1180-95 (Magn. Rotul. Scaccarii Normanniae). Ralph de la Planch circa 1119 witnessed a charter of Leeds Abbey, Kent. Planche was near Alencon."—The Norman People. In the time of Edward I., Sir James de la Planch married a Buckinghamshire heiress, Maud, only daughter of Nicholas de Haversham, and received licence to castellate her manor house of Haversham, He served in the Scottish wars, and is mentioned at the siege of Stirling in 1303 as "Mons. Jakes de la Planch, de la compaignie le Comte de Hereford." He had two sons; John, who died in early life: and Sir William, his successor. The latter died in 1335, leaving an only child, William, then nine years old. William married Elizabeth Hilary, and died in 1340—that is, at the age of 14—the father of two daughters, and of a third born after his death. These astounding dates, which I find in Lipscomb's History of Buckinghamshire, are quoted from official documents; nor can I convict them of an error of more than two years, since the posthumous daughter, Elizabeth, who died in 1422 at the age of eighty, cannot have been born later than 1342.^[1] She became Lady of Haversham and sole heiress: for of her two elder sisters, one was childless and the other unmarried; and had no less than four husbands. The first was Robert, Lord Grey of Rotherfield; the second Sir John Clinton; the third Sir John de Birmingham; and the fourth Sir John Russell; but it does not appear that she ever had children. She directed to be buried before the image of Our Lady in Haversham Church, "having provided during her life-time a tomb under the N. window of the chancel." It is a beautiful monument. She lies under a canopy of the richest Gothic tracery, an aged woman, with guardian angels kneeling in prayer around her head; but no hand has been found to add either a date or an inscription.

The De la Planchs bore Argent a lion rampant within an orle of billets Sable.

1. ↑ It might obviously be suggested, that there was a mistake of ten years, and that William de la Planch was in reality nineteen when he lost his father, and twenty-four when he died. But it is expressly stated that this precocious youth died under age (obt infra aetatum).