The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Lacy : from Lasci (now called Lassy) on the road from Vire to Auvray. "The branches of this house were so numerous that Robson furnishes above forty coats of arms of different houses. Walter de Lacy is mentioned by Wace at the battle of Hastings, and witnessed a charter of Walter Fitz Osborne; and from him descended the barons of Evias, Earls of Ulster and Lincoln, Barons of Pontefract, and Palatines of Meath."—The Norman People. Four of the name are on the Dives Roll—Ibert, Roger, Gautier, and Hugues; but the two former only are to be found in Domesday. The Walter de Lacy who, with some others brave as himself, "forming one troop, fell on the English offhand, fearing neither fence nor fosse" (Roman de Ron), had died in the previous year. His lands had been assigned to him in the West, where he held territory—to what exact extent is not known—under William Fitz Osbern, the first Norman Earl of Hereford; and upon the rebellion of William's son, Earl Roger de Britolio, the whole vast fief was conferred upon him by the Conqueror. He waged war successfully with the Welsh, defeating three of their princes with great slaughter in Brecon; and was killed in 1085 by a fall from a ladder while inspecting a new church he had founded at Hereford. Roger his son, the Domesday Baron, held, besides his Norman fief of Lasci, one hundred different manors in Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Berkshire; but forfeited them by his rebellion against William Rufus, and was exiled in 1095. His brother Hugh, on whom the King then conferred the barony, and "whose loyalty and rectitude Ordericus contrasts with his own conduct," had already conquered for himself the territory of Ewias in Wales, which became one of the Baronies-Marcher, instituted to guard the frontier, and defend "these lands thus acquired with the sword." It was a perilous honour, but it conferred a kind of Palatine jurisdiction. With him ended the male line, for his only brother was a churchman who became Abbot of Gloucester, and he himself died s. p., leaving two sisters, who neither of them inherited, as his lands escheated to the crown. One only had children, and her son Gilbert assumed the name of De Lacy. He was "an approved soldier, a prudent man, and one of great foresight and activity in any military undertaking," and living, as he did, "in a time when all law and kingly authority were in abeyance, he could readily turn his sword to good account." For some time he was at the Court of the Empress Maud, and fought stoutly on her behalf; then, opportunely shifting his allegiance, he went over to Stephen, and received his uncle's great barony as his reward. He assumed the habit of a Templar some time before his death in 1163. His son, Hugh II., accompanied Henry II. to Ireland in 1171, received the whole province of Meath, to be held by the service of one hundred knights, and on the King's departure, was left in charge of the country as Justiciar, and custos of the city of Dublin. But when Prince Henry's rebellion broke out in 1173, he was summoned in all haste to the King's aid in Normandy; and did signal and gallant service in the war. He then returned to Ireland—though no longer as Viceroy; and married a daughter of the King of Connaught without license, thus incurring the dire displeasure of the King, who, in spite of his tried and devoted loyalty, suspected him of designing to rule Ireland independently, and when he was murdered by one of his Irish vassals in 1185, heard of the event "with vast delight." He left four sons, Walter, Hugh, Gilbert, and William. Of the two last I can find no further account, but both the elder brothers were pre-eminent among the nobles that subdued and governed Ireland. Hugh, styled by Matthew Paris "this famous soldier," who had been the conqueror of a great part of the country, was appointed Constable of Ireland by King John, and obtained the Earldom of Ulster by a foul act of treachery. John de Courcy, the Norman lord of Ulster, was then in open revolt; and De Lacy, pretending to be his friend, invited him to his castle with a promise of protection and safe-conduct.[1] But when he had got the unfortunate Earl into his power, he broke his plighted word, and delivered him up to the King, receiving in return his lands and honours. He left no son to succeed to them, and the Earldom passed through his only daughter Maud to her husband Walter de Burgh, Lord of Connaught.
Walter de Lacy, as the eldest brother, inherited the three great fiefs in England, Ireland, and Normandy, but lost the latter when the Duchy was ceded to France. He was confederated with his father-in-law De Braose in his rebellion; and he and Hugh together arrayed Meath, Ulster, and Munster against King John. But in 1210 the King came over in person to Ireland, and carried on a successful campaign against the rebels, which ended in the banishment and outlawry of De Braose and both the De Lacys. The two brothers, in humble disguise, found shelter in the Abbey of St. Taurin at Evreux, where they lived for some time as servants before the Abbot discovered who they were. He then interceded for them with the King; and in token of their gratitude, they founded in after years Foure Abbey in Ireland as a cell to St. Taurin. Walter obtained the restoration of his estates only by payment of an exorbitant fine; and seems to have remained ever after on fair terms with the King. When Hugh and the men of Meath rose in rebellion against Henry III., he was sent over to subdue his own brother and his own vassals. He died, blind and infirm from old age, in 1241; having survived his only son and an infant grandson; and his granddaughters Maud and Margery were his heirs. Maud was first married to Peter de Geneva, a low-born Provencal favourite of Henry III., and then to Geoffrey de Genevill or Joinville. Margery was the wife of John de Verdon.
The other Domesday baron, Ilbert de Lacy, was an even greater land-owner than his brother or kinsman Roger. His fief comprised the whole district of Blackburnshire in the county of Lancaster, with nearly one hundred and fifty manors in Yorkshire, ten in Nottingham, and four in Lincolnshire. He was seated in the West Riding; and there, near the town then called Kirkby, he built the famous Castle of Pontefract (so named from a broken bridge over the Aire) which was the great stronghold of South Yorkshire, commanding the passes of the river as effectually as a former Roman station had done. Within this new fortress he founded a collegiate chapel dedicated to St. Clement; and he likewise laid the foundation of Nostell Abbey, which was completed and endowed by his successor. He left two sons; Robert, and Hugh. Robert, also called de Pontefract, took part with Robert Curthose against Henry I., and "was forced to buy his peace at a dear rate." Yet after this he obtained from the King a grant of Bowland,[2] that had been Roger de Poitou's, with other lands in Yorkshire; and next, by a sudden transition of fortune left unexplained by Dugdale, he and his son Ilbert were expelled the realm. He was never allowed to return, and must have died in exile; but Ilbert obtained from Stephen the restoration of his barony, and "calling to mind the misery of his banishment by King Henry I., approved himself the more cordial to King Stephen." He was one of the chief commanders at the Battle of the Standard, and a powerful magnate in the Northern counties. Henry his brother succeeded him; and Henry's son Robert proved the last of his race.[3] He did not live to complete the great castle he began to build at Clitheroe, but d. s. p. in 1193, and was buried in Kirkstall Abbey.
The great Lacy inheritance then definitively passed away from the Lacy blood. It was arbitrarily appropriated by the half sister of the last heir, Albreda de Lisours, who was his mother's daughter by her second husband, Eudo de Lisours. This was an outrageous assumption, for she had not even the shadow of a claim, and could only make some pretence of a grant or deed of gift obtained from Henry de Lacy by her mother before he died. But she was the wife of a powerful and ambitious noble, Richard Fitz Eustace, Baron of Halton and Constable of Chester, whose will might not be gainsaid; and her son John took the name and place of De Lacy, and transmitted the united baronies of Pontefract and Halton to four generations of his descendants. His grandson and namesake, John, Constable of Chester, was one of the twenty-five great barons appointed to enforce the observance of Magna Charta, with the custody of the counties of York and Nottingham; and married Margaret de Quincy, through whom he obtained the Earldom of Lincoln, that had belonged to her uncle, Ralph de Meschines, Earl of Chester. Henry, the last Earl, was a man of great ability, eminent both as a soldier and statesman. He attended Edward I. in his wars, and stood high in his esteem, was sent by him to treat with the French King, and appointed his Chief Commissioner for reforming the administration of justice in the realm. There had been great complaints made in parliament of the venality of the judges; and the Earl swept away four—the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas among them—that were convicted of receiving bribes. After the conquest of Wales, the King, who "much studied the fortifying of that country, especially North Wales and the Marches, for that respect gave him the land of Denbigh; whereupon he began the town of Denbigh, walling it, and making a Castle there, in Front whereof was his Statue in long Robes: And every Sunday (antiently) Prayers were made in Saint Hillaries Chapel there for Lacy and Percy." This castle, however, was never finished: for his only son was drowned in a deep well belonging to the so-called Red Tower, and the Earl lost all heart in the work. His wife was the sole heiress of William de Longespee, who brought him her grandfather's Earldom of Salisbury. They were long married without children; but at length she brought forth this long expected and early lost heir, and one other child, Alice, who succeeded as Countess of Lincoln and Salisbury.
When the great King lay on his death-bed at Burgh-upon-Sands, this Earl was one of the chosen friends and comrades to whom he made his last appeal, desiring them "to be good to his son, and not to permit Piers de Gaveston to return to England." Edward II. left him in charge of the realm during his absence in Scotland in 1307. But he was unable to stem the rising tide of abuses and misgovernment that his dead master had foreseen; and as he felt his own death drawing near in 1312, he called his son-in-law, the Earl of Lancaster, to his bed-side, and reminding him "how highly God had honoured him, and inriched him above others, told him, 'That he was obliged to love and honour God above all things. Seest thou (quoth he) the Church of England heretofore honourable and free, enslaved by Romish oppressions, and the King's unjust exactions! Seest thou the Common People impoverished by Tributes and Taxes, and from the condition of Freemen reduced to a servitude! Seest thou the Nobility, formerly venerable through Christendom, vilified by Aliens in their own Native Country! I therefore charge thee by the name of Christ, to stand up like a Man: for the Honour of God, and his Church, and Redemption of thy Countrey; associating thyself to that valiant and prudent Person, Guy, Earl of Warwick, when it shall be most proper to discourse of the Publick Affairs of the Kingdom; who is so judicious in Counsel, and mature in Judgment. Fear not thy Opposers, who shall contest against thee in thy truth. And if thou pursuest this my Advice, thou shalt gain eternal honour.'"[4]—Dugdale.
He could not have committed this great charge to abler hands. Alice de Lacy's husband, Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, the elder son of Edmund Crouchback, a younger brother of Edward I., was the most powerful baron of the time; and held the several Earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, Derby, Lincoln and Salisbury:—the two latter brought to him by his wife. He accepted and loyally fulfilled the duty imposed upon him, and placed himself at the head of the barons who revolted against the rule of Edward II.'s worthless favourites. The tragic sequel is well known. He was utterly defeated at Boroughbridge, and not choosing to yield to mortal man, knelt in the chapel, and turning to the crucifix, said, "Good Lord, I render myself to thee, and put myself at thy mercy." He was sentenced to death without even the form of a trial, asking, "'Shall I die without answer?' A certain Gascoyne took him away, and put a pill'd broken Hood on his Head, and set him on a lean white Jade, without a Bridle, and he was led away to die, crying, 'King of Heaven have mercy on me, for the King of Earth nous ad guerthi.'"
His widow was twice again married, but never had children.[5]
The Lacys took as their badge the lacet, or Lacy knot; a rebus on their name. "No less than one hundred parishes in the Welsh marches bear the suffix Lacy" (Taylor); as, Stanton-Lacy in Shropshire; Holme-Lacy and Mansel-Lacy in Worcestershire, &c.