The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Freuil : I find four different branches of this family in Normandy; the "Sires de Tannieres, Election de Lions;" the "Sires de la Haye, &c, Election de Pont Audemer;" another, also in Pont Audemer; and the "Sires de la Haye, Election d'Argentan." One of these was represented in the great assembly of Norman nobles in 1789. In England, "though but one of them had ever summons to parliament," the Frevilles were "of eminent note, some ages before that time, and afterwards."[1]—Dugdale. They were seated in Cambridgeshire, where, as Lysons tells us, Little Shelford belonged to them and their representatives for over three hundred years. One of their monuments is still to be found in the church chancel. It represents Sir John de Freville, who died 6 Ed. II.: a cross-legged knight carved in stone, with a couchant lion at his feet; and bears on a tablet this inscription in Lombardic characters:
"Ici gist sire Johan de Friville,
Ke fust seigniour de ceste vile;
Vous ke par ici passet
Par charite pur lalme priet.
This crusader is left out of Dugdale's pedigree, which commences with Baldwin de Freville, living in the reign of Henry III. He bought of the King, for the sum of two hundred marks, the wardship of Lucia de Escalers, and shortly afterwards made her his wife, thus acquiring her father's barony of fifteen knights' fees, of which the chief seat was at Caxton in Cambridgeshire. Their grandson, Sir Alexander, went four times to Scotland with Edward I., and followed his successor to the disastrous field of Bannockburn, where his son Baldwin—then a young knight of twenty-one—was taken prisoner. He married' Joan, daughter of Ralph de Cromwell, and Mazera, one of the co-heiresses of Sir Philip Marmion, and died in 1328, the year after he had been summoned to Edward III.'s first parliament. His barony, though asserted by Dugdale, is not included in the latter's List of Summons, and must be considered questionable; Sir Harris Nicolas maintains that he only received a writ of military summons; and it was at all events never repeated to any of the five Baldwins that succeeded him. Of these, the second was appointed Seneschal of Xaintonge, for life, by the Black Prince, under whose victorious banner he served in Gascony. The next contested the Championship of England with the Dymokes at the coronation of Richard II, He claimed by right of tenure, as Lord of Tamworth Castle, which had descended to him from his ancestress, Mazera de Marmion; but the Constable and Marshal of England, before whom the question was argued, decided that Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire was the manor held by this service, and adjudged it to Sir John Dymoke, the descendant of Joan de Marmion. (See Marmion.) The fifth and last Baldwin, who succeeded when but two years of age, died during his minority, and "a fair inheritance thus came to the Families" of his three sisters. Sir Thomas Ferrers, who had married the eldest, Elizabeth, had Tamworth Castle, with other estates in Hereford, Stafford, and Warwickshire: Sir Richard Bingham, the husband of Margaret, the second, had Newdigate in Surrey, and estates in Wilts and Warwickshire; while Roger Aston, whose wife Joice was the youngest sister, had Middleton and Whitnash in the latter county, and various manors in Notts and Herefordshire. Of him came the Scottish Lords Aston.