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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
-------*--------
Return to Index

Gracy : or Grancey; repeated further on as Grensey. Grancey is on the confines of Champagne and Burgundy, and gave its name to a great Burgundian family, several times Constables of the province, that ended in the fourteenth century with Eudo de Grancey. He married Beatrix de Bourbon, the widow of the heroic King of Bohemia who fell at Cressy; and being almost blind, had "caused his men to fasten the reines of the bridels of their horses ech to other, and so being himself amongst them in the foremost ranke, they ran at their enemies."—Holinshed. The feudal castle of Grancey, dating from his time, was only pulled down at the beginning of the last century.

The first trace I could find of the family in England was at Warford in Cheshire; the seat of the Grascys, Grasties, or Greestys, for many successive generations. Randle Greesty occurs among the "Knights, Gentlemen, and Freeholders of Cheshire" in 1445 (Macclesfield Hundred): and William Grascy in 1548. They "entered a pedigree of five descents in the last Visitation of Cheshire, taken in 1664, when they claimed the following arms:—Argent on a fess engrailed Sable, three martlets of the first; and for crest a martlet Argent, round the neck an engrailed collar Sable. Randle Grastie, of Warford, had by a daughter of Robert Sidebotham of Alderley, a son and heir-apparent, Henry Grastie, who died s. p.; and a second son, Thomas, who succeeded him. This Thomas Grastie, who was living when the pedigree was taken in 1664, was then eighty years of age. By his wife Alice Ellis he had eight sons and eight daughters, of whom Thomas, his son and heir-apparent, had died in his life-time, leaving one son, Thomas Grastie, described as of Warford and Withington, who was heir to his grandfather. The Grasties subsequently went to live at Warrington in Lancashire, where they appear to have engaged in trade. Thomas Grastie, the above-named grandson, was buried at Alderley in 1698-9, his wife having been buried there in 1676. The name is now almost unknown in the district."—Earwaker's East Cheshire.

Again, there are traces of the family both in Scotland and Ireland. Lancelot Gracy was "among the Presbyterian landowners of Ulster proposed to be transplanted into Leinster and Munster in 1653, on account of their attachment to monarchical and Presbyterian principles;" and we are told that "the Graceys still exist in the barony of Lecale."—Ulster Archaeologia, vol. i. Robson has preserved the arms of Gracie (of Scotland), Ermine, three lions' heads erased. He also gives the coat of Grasay; Azure a lion rampant Argent; and that of Grance or Grancey, Gules a lion rampant Argent crowned Or, within a bordure engrailed of the third:—both of them entirely unlike the bearing of the Cheshire family.