The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Facunberge : Anglicized Falconbridge; "a great Yorkshire family, probably," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "of later date, at least as to the name." This was taken from Fauquemberg, near St. Omer (the family, in spelling the name, long preserved the m), and was imported into Holderness by Franco homo Drogonis de Beurere, an under-tenant in Domesday. "By the name of Franco de Falconberg de Rise, he is mentioned in the chronicle of Meaux Abbey, as one of the contemporaries and neighbours of Gamel de Melsa, on whose land the abbey was built. His family was one of the few received into favour by the Earls of Albemarle."—A. S. Ellis. They held their manor of Rise for four hundred years. Franco's son or grandson, Walter, married (according to the above authority) Agnes de Arches, but Poulson, in his History of Holderness, states that his wife was the sister and heiress of Anselmus de Stuteville. Here, however, we are met by a chronological difficulty, as this lady's son by her first husband, Sir Alexander St. Quintin of Harpham, lived in the thirteenth century. Peter de Fauconberg, temp. Stephen, was a benefactor to the monks of Pontefract. They "covenanted to celebrate his Obit and Anniversary, and likewise that of Beatrice his Wife, as solemnly as for any Monk of their own Convent."—Dugdale. He had five sons, Sir Walter, Sir Philip, Eustace, William, and Stephen. Sir Philip, who married the co-heiress of Scotney, is styled of Appleton, and mention is made of his two sons and two grandsons. Eustace, a man of some note in his generation, was one of the King's Justices Itinerant in 1200. "He was," says Fuller, "born in this county of York, where his name appeareth among the ancient Sheriffs thereof. He was chosen Bishop of London 1222, carrying it clearly from a company of able competitors, occasioning the following distich:
'Omnes hic Dignis, tu Dignior omnibus: omnes
Hic plene sapiunt, plenius ipse sapis.'
Others played on his name, Eustatius (one that stood well), both in respect of spiritual estate (yet 'let him that standeth take heed lest he fall') and temporal condition; well fixed in the favour of prince and people; being Chief Justice, then Chancellor of the chequer, and afterwards Treasurer of England, and twice ambassador to the King of France. He deserved right well of his own cathedral, and dying October 31st, 1228, was buried under a marble tomb on the South side of the presbytery."
The eldest son, Sir Walter, and his brother Stephen, married two sisters, Agnes and Petronel, the daughters and co-heirs of Simon Fitz Simon of Brikesworth in Northamptonshire, by Isabel his wife, daughter and heir of Thomas de Cukeney, founder of Welbeck Abbey, Notts. Sir Walter's son, Peter II., who rose in arms against King John, but returned to his allegiance on the accession of Henry III., was the father of another Walter, summoned to parliament (though, according to Nicholas, by a doubtful writ) in 1295. His wife was Agnes, one of the co-heiresses of Peter de Brus III. of Skelton, who brought him, with her father's castle, extensive lands in Yorkshire, and no less than seven sons, of whom two were friars preachers. He was followed by five successive bearers of the title, almost all of whom were, in common with most of their contemporaries, active soldiers under the three first Edwards. The third Lord, knighted on the same day as Edward I., went four times to the wars of Scotland; the fourth Lord, Constable of York in 1341, and Governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1342, fought both there and in Flanders; the fifth Lord, a Banneret, also served constantly "beyond sea," and was appointed, with Lord Mowbray and others, to guard the Yorkshire coast against an expected French invasion. Thomas, the last Lord Fauconberg, who had estates in Northamptonshire in right of his mother, Maud de Pateshull, and was, again, in the French wars, left as his sole heiress a daughter named Joan, who had apparently survived both a brother and an elder sister. Poulson asserts that Joan was an idiot from her birth; nor does Dugdale's quotation of one of her affidavits militate against his statement. "She made proof of her age 10 Hen. V., viz.: That being born at Skelton, and Baptized in the Church there, she was 15 years of age upon the Feast Day of St. Luke the Evangelist the same year; also that she had a Sister called Isabel, married to John de Wilton upon the day she was Baptized." Had Joan been altogether in her right mind, she could scarcely have been asked to bear testimony as to what occurred at her baptism.[1]
But, idiot or no idiot, Joan found a husband, and a husband of illustrious birth and renowned valour, William Nevill, afterwards Earl of Kent, one of the younger sons of Ralph, first Earl of Westmoreland, by his second wife, Joan Beaufort. He was summoned to parliament jure uxoris as Lord Fauconberg in 1429, and the barony fell into abeyance between his three co-heiresses in 1463. Joan, the eldest, married Sir Edward Bethune; Elizabeth married Sir Richard Strangeways; and Alice was the wife of Sir John Conyers, and the mother of the first Lord Conyers. The fifth Lord Fauconberg left, by his second marriage with Isabella Bigot, a younger son named Roger, whose posterity carried on the male line for two additional descents. This Sir Roger, who was of Holme, on Spalding Moor, took to wife the Lady of Flixburgh, Margaret Darcy, and in the following generation we find Sir Walter de Fauconberg transplanted into Lincolnshire, and seated at Whitton. His childless son Roger was the last heir; and once again three sisters shared the estate. Margaret carried Holme to John Constable, and re-married William de Monceaux; Izabel was the wife of Edmund Percehay of Park, Lincolnshire, and Constance remained unmarried.
There was likewise, a Nottinghamshire branch, derived from Stephen (a younger son of the first Peter) and Petronel Fitz Simon, who had inherited Cukeney from his mother. According to an old Inquisition, it was held by the service of shoeing the King's horses whenever he came to Mansfield, to hunt in Sherwood Forest. Stephen's great-grandson William was, as Dugdale tells us (though it is denied by Banks), summoned to parliament as Lord of Cukeney in 1299; but the summons, if any, was never repeated. John, the eldest of his two sons, was an idiot. Sir Henry, the other, was living in 1329, and married Ellen de Henford. Poulson gives him no posterity.
I can discover no historical authority for Shakespeare's jovial Bastard of Falconbridge, with his ready wit and sharp tongue; nor for his spindle-shanked brother, the
"eldest son,
As I suppose, of Robert Falconbridge,
A soldier, by the honour-giving hand
Of Coeur de Lion knighted in the field."
True, he is called a Northamptonshire gentleman. But then Sir Peter II., at that time the representative of the family in the county, was, as we have seen, in arms against King John.
About two hundred and fifty years later, however, we meet with a genuine Bastard of Fauconberg, known as the instigator of "the grievous insults made to the City of London," as Camden phrases it, in 1471, who was the natural son of William Nevill, Earl of Kent, Lord Fauconberg in right of his wife. Though his father had been a strong Yorkist, he himself was devoted to the House of Lancaster. "After the battle of Tewkesbury, Thomas Fauconberg, known as the Bastard of Fauconberg, who had been practising piracy, collected a number of mercenary supporters in Calais, and landed in Kent. He sailed up the Thames with seventeen thousand men, adherents of the House of Lancaster, (including some Kentish men) intending to surprise London, and release King Henry, who was then confined in the Tower, but was repulsed; and finding that Edward IV. was marching towards London, he retired in good order to Sandwich, where he fortified himself... having forty-seven ships under his control: but hearing of the death of Henry VI., he submitted to King Edward, who had marched to Canterbury. Fauconberg was soon afterwards beheaded."—Furley's History of the Weald of Kent.