The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Estuteuille : This name, which is included in Wace's account of the Conqueror's companions, appears a second time on the Roll as Front-de-Boeuf. "The Sire d'Estoteville of the Roman de Rou was in all probability Robert, surnamed Frontdeboeuf, Granteboef, or, according to the French antiquaries, Grand-bois; but whether he was of Estouteville-sur-Cailly or Estouteville-sur-Mer may be an open question. There was a knightly family deriving its name from the former, one of whom, Nicholas, great-great-grandson of Robert, married Gunnor de Gant, the daughter of Hugh IV. de Gournay, in the twelfth century, and received with her in dower the manors of Beddingfield and Kimberley in Norfolk, which remained for many generations in the family. This Estouteville was formerly a mouvance or dependency on the fief of La Ferte-en-Brai, of which the Gournays were the lords, and it is therefore likely that Robert d'Estouteville followed Hugh II. de Gournay to England in the invading army. "Some ten or eleven years previous to the Conquest, he was governor of the Castle of Ambrieres, and stoutly defended it against Geoffrey Martel until relieved by the approach of Duke William. He could therefore not have been very young even at that time—say between twenty and thirty—and in 1066 he would have been between thirty and forty. Of his exploits at Senlac we hear nothing, and his name does not appear in Domesday, so we are ignorant of the reward, if any, which he received for his services. The latest mention of him is by Orderic, who records him as a witness to a confirmation charter of the Dean of Evreux to the Abbey of Ouche before the year 1089."—J. R. Planche.
Dugdale asserts that he was taken prisoner at the battle of Tinchebrai in 1106, when he would have been nearly eighty years of age; but evidently confuses him with his son of the same name. Of this second Robert, Orderic speaks "as a brave and powerful baron, who was a strong partizan of the Duke" (Robert Court-heuse), "and superintended his troops and fortresses in the Pays de Caux." He also says (817) that d'Estouteville was slain fighting against Henry I. at Tinchebrai, and not, as other authorities aver, sent over to England to suffer the doom of life-long captivity. In either case, the whole of his possessions—which apparently included Roger de Moubray's former barony—were forfeited, and granted to the King's favourite, Nigel de Albini. His wife Erneburga, a Yorkshire heiress, whose father, Hugh, the son of Baldric, had been a great Saxon thane, brought him three sons; Robert III.; Osmund, who died at Joppa in Palestine; and Patrick (omitted by Dugdale), to whom he gave the lordship of Skipwith in the East Riding.
Robert III. had been taken prisoner some little time before his father at the storming of Dives; but, unlike him, was set at liberty, and returned home to enjoy at least some portion of his mother's inheritance, for in 1169, when Henry II. appointed him Sheriff of Yorkshire, he held between seven and eight knight's fees. He had fought valiantly at the great Northern victory, famous as the Bellum Standardi, and in 1173 was with Ranulph de Glanville and Bernard Baliol at the battle before Alnwick, where the King of Scots was taken prisoner. Some three years afterwards, feeling that his past services and actual position warranted him in making the attempt, he claimed from Nigel de Albini's son, Roger de Mowbray, the barony that had belonged to the first Roger de Mowbray, and of which Henry I. had deprived his father. It is said that the country generally favoured his claim; and after a protracted suit, it was compromised by Mowbray's surrendering to him the Lordship of Kirkby Moorside, held by the service of nine knight's fees.
Robert de Stuteville—the name had been thus abbreviated by English habit of speech—was a considerable benefactor to the Church, for he founded two monasteries in Yorkshire, one at Rossedale and the other at Keldholme, and bestowed lands on two more. He was twice married; first to Helewise..., who was the mother of William, his heir, and of two daughters; and secondly to Sybil, the heiress of Philip de Valoines, who brought him Thorpenhow in Cumberland, and had one son named Eustace.
His successor, William, was a man of great power and account in the reign of Coeur de Lion, actively employed in all its troubles and dissensions; and having always taken part with Prince John in his various contests with the Regent Longchamp, was munificently rewarded on his accession to the throne. Not only was "the whole rule of the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, with all the castles therein, committed to his trust," but he likewise received a grant of the Honours of Knaresborough and Boroughbridge, with license to hold a fair and build a castle at each of his manors of Cottingham and Buttercramb in Yorkshire. Yet he was very far from being content Seeing that he stood so high in the King's favour, he seized this propitious moment for reviving the ancient claim to Nigel de Albini's barony, that had been set to rest in his father's time; and after "great disputes," compelled Mowbray to buy him off at the price of nine more knight's fees, and a life rent of £,12 a year. Then the two litigants were finally "made friends;" and shook hands before the King in the Bishop of Lincoln's house at Louth. Stuteville died in 1203, leaving two sons; of whom Robert, the elder, only survived him two years, and was a minor at the time of his death. Nicholas,[1] the second, who succeeded, was "one of the seven great Northern barons that wrested Magna Charta from King John," and were, as a necessary consequence, excommunicated by the Pope. He was again on the baronial side at the battle of Lincoln, where he was taken prisoner by the famous William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke, and had to pay 1000 marks for his ransom, besides forfeiting both Knaresborough and Boroughbridge to the King, which were granted to the Justiciary Hubert de Burgh. His wife Gunnor, the widow of Robert de Gant, had given him only two daughters, of whom Margaret, the youngest, who was the wife of William Mastoc, died three years after him, leaving no children; and the whole splendid inheritance passed undivided to her sister Joan. Joan married Hugh de Wake; but "in regard she was so great an Inheritrix" called herself Johanna de Stutevile in her widowhood, instead of bearing her husband's name. She it was (and not, as usually avouched, Anne of Bohemia) who first rode on a side saddle in England; for the seal on her grant of Hessel to the Canons of Wharton, bears the impression "of a Woman riding sideway (as now is usual) holding the Bridle in her right Hand, and an Escoucheon with the Arms of Stutevile thereon, in her left Hand."
Eustace, the second son of Robert III., was, as I have said, through his mother the heir of Philip de Valoines; and held some property in Cumberland. I think that Dugdale, in the account he gives of him, must have skipped a generation: for it is clearly impossible that a man whose father was dead before 1172 should be "within age and under tuition" in 1205. It was probably a second Eustace who, the year after Nicholas de Stutevile's death, gave the King £1000 to have Cottingham and its appurtenances, but only succeeded in obtaining possession of it for fourteen weeks. He died in 1242; and his son Robert, though "born and bred up beyond Sea," was yet, by the King's favour, permitted to inherit, but appears to have had no descendants.
Two younger sons of Robert II. remain to be accounted for. Osmund, who died on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, married Isabel, daughter and heir of William Fitz Roger of Gressing Hall, and had two sons: 1. Robert, seated at Burton Agnes in Yorkshire, whose three daughters were his co-heirs: 2. William, who became the third husband of the great heiress, Margery de Say, and by "courtesy of England" held her two baronies of Burford and Richard's Castle till his death in 1259. She herself had died long before, leaving him two sons, the youngest of which, Robert, succeeded to Gressing Hall, and married Joan Talbot, a Lincolnshire heiress. Their son John, who was in arms against Henry III., was the father of Robert de Stutevile, whose wife, Eleanor de Genevere or de Genoure, was the widow of Alexander Baliol, and received from Queen Eleanor (the mother of Edward I.) a grant of "Mitford Castle and divers lands in Northumberland." He died in 1305, and the line ended with his son John in 1332. So, at least, says Dugdale; but Thoroton, in his History of Notts, derives these three last Stutevilles from a different ancestor, Henry de Stuteville—probably another son of Osmund's—who, "about 33 Henry II., gave account of £15 of the Fee of Kirkby, which was parted between him and Hubert Fitz Ralph." His son Robert married Leonia de Rennes, who brought him Diham, &c, in Nottinghamshire, and was the great-grandfather of the other Robert, already mentioned as the husband of Eleanor Baliol. It seems that John de Stutevile, who fought at Evesham, held one moiety of Hubert Fitz Ralph's barony, which goes far to prove this descent; but the pedigree is perplexed and perplexing, and evidently incomplete.
On the other hand, the numerous progeny of Patrick, Lord of Skipwith, has been minutely traced down to the present time. They took the name of their manor, but migrated from Yorkshire in the time of Henry III., when Sir William de Skipwith married Alice Thorpe, who brought him a great estate in Lincolnshire. They then settled in the latter county, and were subdivided into various branches, for I find mention of the Skipwiths of Utterby, the Skipwiths of Heburgh, the Skipwiths of Calthorpe, and the Skipwiths of Grantham and of Metheringham (who received a baronetcy that expired in 1756), besides the Skipwiths of Snore in Norfolk, &c. The parent stock from whence they sprung continued for many generations at Ormesby, and thence removed to Newbold Hall. They gave several sheriffs to Lincolnshire, and two judges—father and son—to the King's Bench; one under Edward III., the other under his successor. "The collar of Esses," says an old writer, speaking of the latter, "now worn by judges, first introduced from the initial letters of Sanctus Simon Simplicius, an uncorrupted justicier in the primitive times, well suited this Sir William Skipwith, who died full of honour." In 1670 Fulwar Skipwith of Newbold Hall was created a baronet by Charles II., and the direct line ended with Sir Thomas in 1790. But a representative remains, descended from the youngest son of Sir William, Sheriff of the county of 18 Henry VIII., whose grandson Henry was seated at Prestwould Hall in Leicestershire, and received a baronetcy in 1622. Sir Guy, the third baronet, emigrated to America during Cromwell's usurpation; and the family remained for five generations in Virginia, where the grandfather of the present Sir Peyton was born.
The house of Estouteville was one of the greatest in Normandy, and flourished in the Pays de Caux up to the end of the last century. "Le Sieur Louis d'Estouteville" was the captain of the one hundred and nineteen gallant gentlemen that defended Mont St. Michel against the English in 1423.