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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Mauclerke : illiterate. It is hard to conceive what amount of ignorance could have warranted this designation, at a time when, as a rule, no layman was able either to read or write. But in those warlike times, when men used their sword instead of their pen, and churchmen only were scholars, it was deemed almost ignominious for a knight to condescend to book-learning. He had to give his time and thoughts to far other matters, if he meant to hold his own and fight his way in the rough and turbulent world he lived in. This characteristic contempt of letters is well pourtrayed by Shakespeare in Henry VIII., where the Duke of Buckingham, speaking of the "butcher's cur," Wolsey, scornfully exclaims

"A beggar's Book
Outworths a noble's blood."

Buckingham was, as Johnson styles him, one of the "ancient unlettered martial nobility,"

A Walter Mauclerc occurs in Normandy 1180-95, and Hubert Malcler is entered in the Rotuli Hundredorum of 1198. But the name is not common: though Bardsley (English Surnames, p. 506), tells us that, "corrupted into Manclerk, it still exists." "Mantelake's or Manclerks" manor had its name from some of its former Lords, tho' I meet with none of them of that name."—Blomfield's Norfolk. Walter Mauclerk, Bishop of Carlisle, was Treasurer of the Exchequer to Henry III., and bought Horncastle, Lincolnshire, of Ralph de Rhodes. He was Sheriff of Cumberland for the first seven years of that reign: afterwards resigned his see, and in 1246 entered the convent of Friars-Preachers at Oxford.—Matthew Paris. Godfrey Mauclerk was Mayor of Leicester in 1286, and another Walter occurs in the same county.—Nichol's Leicester. Perhaps the same who held at Shapwick-Champayne, Dorsetshire, 32 Ed. I.—Hutchins' Dorset. Thomas Mauclerk, of Northumberland, was summoned to attend the great Council held at Westminster in 1324.—Palgrave's Parl. Writs. The most distinguished bearer of this sobriquet was Peter de Dreux, of the blood royal of France, who in right of his wife Alice was Duke of Brittany and Earl of Richmond, but forfeited his English honours in 1235, by his adherence to French interests.