The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
ADDITIONAL NAMES GIVEN BY LELAND.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Lungvilers : Roger de Lonviller (Nonvillari) and Ralph de Lonvilers are found in Normandy in the Exchequer Rolls of 1189-92; and Robert de Lonvilers was of Yorkshire in the time of Henry I.—Rotulus Magnus Pipae. Heodo of Leguilliers, in 1166, held one knight's fee of the Honour of Pontefract. This family "came from a place so called in the canton of Villers-Bocage, which is situated in the wooded district called Le Bocage Calvados, in the arrondissement of Caen. Villers must not be confounded with ville, nor Longueville with Longvillers; and the Rev. Isaac Taylor (Words and Places, p. 166) is convinced that, as occurring only in Normandy, it must be the Teutonic weiler, an abode or single house, which is so common in the Rheingau, and in many parts of Germany."—A. S. Ellis ('Notes and Queries,' sixth s. vi.).
According to Hunter's South Yorkshire, Eudo de Longvilers—probably the above-mentioned Heodo—and his brother William married sisters, the two coheiresses of "a great local magnate of English descent," Swein de Reineville, or Swein Ailricson. William's wife Agnes left only a daughter, Hugolina de Quartremains, but Eva, who had married the elder brother, brought him a son of the same name. This second Eudo obtained the castle and honour of Hornby, near the entrance of the Vale of Lonsdale, in Lancashire, with Briarley in Yorkshire, through his marriage with Clementia, daughter and heir of John Malerbe. They were inherited by his son John, but transferred through John's daughter (or granddaughter) Margaret to Geoffrey de Nevill in the time of Edward I. In the North Riding, "the fee of Hutton-Longvillers took its name from this family, whose principal seat was Hornby Castle in Lancashire."—Gale's Richmondshire.
Margaret had, it appears, two uncles: Eudo, who left no posterity; and William, Lord of Gargrave, who married Bertha de Marcham, or Markham, one of the three daughters that divided between them Robert de Markham's[1] great Nottinghamshire manor of Tuxford. It had been the barony of her father's uncle, Robert Lexington, and had come to him on the partition of the Lexington lands in 1258. This heiress was the mother of two sons: John, who died childless, and was succeeded in 1296 by his brother Thomas, then nineteen, who in after years, as Sir Thomas de Longvilers, constantly figures in the Parliamentary Writs. He was an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster's, pardoned in 1318, and subsequently often employed in the King's service. In 1322 he is "commanded to assemble as many men-at-arms as he can, over and above his usual train, and to be ready to proceed against the Scots in case of invasion," then "to march to York at the head of his train": and in the following year "empowered to raise fifteen hundred foot-soldiers in Notts and Derby." He was summoned to the great Council held at Westminster in 1324; and later in life we find him included (though under protest) in Banks' Baronia Anglica. "Thomas de Longvilers had summons to attend a great council at Westminster, the sixteenth Ed. III.; but never after, though he lived very many years: this solitary summons cannot be considered a call to parliament." His wife was his first cousin Joan, the eldest of the three co-heiresses of his mother's youngest sister, Agnes de Santa Croce, by whom he had Sir John, his successor, and Elizabeth, married to Stephen Maulovel. With Sir John's son, another Sir Thomas, the line was extinguished, for neither he nor his sister, Agnes de Everingham, left children; and at her death in 1398, the inheritance passed to Sir Richard Stanhope of Rampton. He was the great-grandson of the Elizabeth de Longvilers who had been the wife of Stephen Maulovel; and on receiving this great accession to his estate, exchanged his own coat-of-arms for that of Longvilers, Sable, a bend between six cross-crosslets Argent. This was borne by five successive generations of Stanhopes, till, towards the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, Saunchia, the heiress of another Richard Stanhope, carried away the whole of the Maulovel and Longvilers estates to the Babingtons. They then resumed their original bearing, ever since that time used by the family, Quarterly, Ermine and Gules.