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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Loterell : Robert Lotrel and Hugh his son were benefactors to the Abbey of Barbarie, Normandy, at its foundation (Gall. Christ, xi. 85 Instr.). In England the Luttrells were first seated in Nottinghamshire. Geoffrey Loterel, who held Gamston, &c, in that county, and some other manors in Derbyshire, obtained a great Lincolnshire barony, with Hoton-Paganel in Yorkshire, through his wife Trethesenta, daughter of William Paganel, and in the end his sole heir. "All these lands, 6 Rich. I., were seized into the King's hands for his adherence to the Earl of Morton, afterwards King John; but upon that Earl's coming to the Crown he had a ratification under the Great Seal of his title to those manors, and all other lands which he had purchased of Gerbod de Scaud, and Gerard de Rodes. 5 Joh. he had a grant of,£10 per annum out of the King's treasury for his life. 16 Joh. he was sent into Ireland, and a direction given to the Bishops and great men of that country to treat him as one much trusted by the King. The year following he was, with some others, appointed to represent to the Pope the state of that kingdom, and the difference between the King and his barons, and had also a particular commission of adjusting the disputes between King John and Berengaria, the Queen Dowager, at that time referred to the Pope's arbitration."—Collinson's Somerset. He was seated at Irnham in Lincolnshire, which he held by barony, and died 2 Hen. III., leaving Andrew his son and heir; who in 1230 accounted for fifteen knight's fees and a half (being the whole barony of Paganel), attended the King "with horse and arms in France" in 1242, and served as Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1251. This Andrew had two sons; Geoffrey, the father of the first Baron Luterel, and Alexander, who received as his portion the manor of East Quantock's Head in Somersetshire, where his descendants continued till the reign of Henry IV. Geoffrey was insane, and in the custody of his brother, till the latter followed Prince Edward on his crusade to Palestine, from whence he never returned home. The next in succession, Robert, was a baron by writ in 1295; but none other of the family ever appear to have been summoned to parliament. One of his grandsons, Sir Geoffrey, is mentioned in 1355 among the chief knights serving in Edward III.'s army in Scotland. The line ended with another Geoffrey, the eighth Baron of Irnham, on whose death in 1417 the inheritance devolved on his sister Hawise.

The Somersetshire Luttrells still remained. They, again, had divided into two branches, of whom the elder, seated at East Quantock's Head, had died out a few years previously, but the younger was established in the beautiful domain of Dunster Castle, and then represented by Sir Hugh Luttrell. He was the grandson of John Luttrell, of Chilton in Devonshire (the second son of Sir Alexander who first settled at East Quantock's Head); and his mother, Lady Elizabeth Courtenay, a daughter of the Earl of Devonshire, was of the blood royal of England. Her mother was the daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, by a daughter of Edward I.: and as the kinswoman of the King, she had a grant of £200 a year in 1360. "Besides this pension from the Crown, which in those days was very considerable, it appears that she had a great dower in several manors lying in the counties of Bucks, Oxford, and Bedford, being the possessions of Sir John Vere, her first husband. This enabled her to execute the great things she did for her family, the honour and prosperity of which she greatly advanced. Her husband being dead, 48 Ed. III., she purchased the manors of Stonehall and Woodhall, with lands in Debenham, in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk: and soon after the barony, honour and manor of Dunster, reversional after the life of Lady Mohun."—Collinson's Somerset. Her son, who succeeded to this fair patrimony, rebuilt a great part of Dunster Castle, where he "kept great hospitality": and had a further grant of lands in Buckinghamshire from Richard II. as kinsman to the King. He attended Henry V. to the French wars, was present at the taking of Honfleur, etc.; and at different times held the offices of Lieutenant of Calais, Constable of Bristol, Warden of Kingswood Forest, and Steward of the Household to two successive Queens. The barony was forfeited by his grandson, who fell at the second battle of St. Albans, fighting manfully for the Red Rose; and Edward IV. granted Dunster to William Herbert, who, when he was soon after created Earl of Pembroke, took his second title from it. But the accession of Henry VII. changed the scene, and at once restored it to its rightful owner. In the next reign, Sir John Luttrell served at the siege of Boulogne, and afterwards had a command at Musselburgh: he is praised as a "complete captain," and "complete and worthy courtier," but he was a spendthrift as well, who sold a great part of his demesne, and mortgaged the plate and furniture belonging to Dunster Castle. His wife was a Welsh woman named Mary Griffiths, and the county history affords us a glimpse of some romance connected with this marriage. "There is an ancient picture in the castle, done by a tolerable hand, of a man swimming in the sea, and looking up to a certain figure in the clouds; to which is added, by a later and very indifferent painter, the figure of a lady floating by his side. This is traditionally said to have been the picture of Sir John Luttrell, and refers to his having saved a certain lady from drowning, whom he was then in love with, and afterwards married."

The last Luttrell died in the middle of the last century, and his daughter Margaret was the heiress of Dunster, which still belongs to her descendants. She married Henry Fownes of Nethaway, co. Devon, who took her name.

Another branch of the family, that had settled in Ireland, survived till 1829. They bore the same punning arms, three otters or loutres for Loutrel; but their connection with the parent stock is not satisfactorily made out. Sir Bernard Burke derives them from Robert, second son of the Sir Hugh Luttrell that first possessed Dunster: but Collinson distinctly states that Sir Hugh had no second son. It probably dated considerably further back, as there is mention made of a grant from King John of some Irish lands to Sir Geoffrey Loterel, the patriarch of the house. Be this as it may, they certainly had, from very early times, a property in the co. Dublin, where they gave their name to Luttrellstown. They first became of note as zealous loyalists in the Civil War: and Simon Luttrell was Governor of the town and castle of Dublin for James II., as well as colonel of a regiment of dragoons in his service. He faithfully followed his master into exile, and was killed at the battle of Landen in 1693, while commanding an Irish regiment in foreign service. His brother and heir, Henry, was also an officer of rank in King James's army, but deserted his colours in 1691. "He had served long in France, and had brought back to his native Ireland a sharpened intellect and polished manners, a flattering tongue, some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue."—Macaulay. Being, according to the same authority, "the least scrupulous of men, always fond of dark and crooked ways," he had opened a secret negotiation with the English some time before, and when, after the capitulation of Limerick, the Irish troops were called upon to make their election between their old allegiance and the new Sovereign, "Henry Luttrell was one of those who turned off. He was rewarded for his desertion, and perhaps for other services, with a grant of the large estate of his elder brother Simon, who firmly adhered to the cause of James, with a pension of £500 a year from the Crown, and with the abhorrence of the Roman Catholic population. After living in wealth, luxury, and infamy, during a quarter of a century, Henry Luttrell was murdered while going through Dublin in his sedan-chair; and the Irish House of Commons declared that there was reason to suspect that he had fallen by the revenge of the Papists. Eighty years after his death his grave near Luttrellstown was violated by the descendants of those whom he had betrayed, and his skull was broken to pieces with a pickaxe. The deadly hatred of which he was the object descended to his son and to his grandson; and, unhappily, nothing in the character either of his son or of his grandson tended to mitigate the feeling which the name of Luttrell excited."—Ibid.

About forty years after his assassination in 1717, the son received an Irish peerage as Baron Irnham (a reminiscence of his Lincolnshire ancestry), and in 1785 was created Earl of Carhampton. The third Earl took the name of Olmius, having married Elizabeth Olmius, sister and heir of the last Lord Waltham, and left only two daughters as his representatives.