The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Mountbother : or Mountbocher; Duchesne preserves the correct version; though in Normandy (where the name remained up to the present century), it is spelt Montbourcher. Henriette de Montbourcher, born 1672, was the heiress of the Marquisates of De la Moussaye and Du Bordage, and married Francois, first Due de Coigny, Marshal of France. They bore D'or a, trois marmites de gueules in Normandy; and these same red pitchers are shown on the shield of Sir Bertram de Montboucher, who led the assault at the siege of Carlaverock in 1300.
"La vi-je tout primer venir
Le bon Bertram de Montbouchier,
De goules furent trois pichier
En son escu de argent luisant,
En le ourle noire li besant."
He is computed to have been then about thirty-six years of age, and was the second of six Bertrams de Montboucher that followed each other in direct lineal succession. It is stated that he belonged to Sussex; but on receiving from Edward II. the Northumbrian manor of Syhal, there took up his abode, and about 1309 married a great North-country heiress, Joan, the daughter of Guiscard de Charron. She endowed him with Beamish (Beaumeys) Tanfield, &c, in the county of Durham, and Sutton-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire. This latter estate, brought to her grandfather by one of the five coheirs of Sir Richard de Sutton, had by him been settled on Guiscard, his son by a second wife; and thus Joan, although representing the blood of the Charrons, found no place in the lineage of the Suttons. She and her husband rendered £20 a year for the manor, with a red rose at Midsummer.[1]—v. Thoroton's Notts. Their son, Bertram III., was a leading man in Northumberland, serving three times as knight of the shire, and four times as Sheriff in 1374, 1377, 1379 and 1380; and built one of the towers—still known as Mont Boucher Tower—of the town wall of the New Castle on Tyne, that was to become the great emporium of the North. He married Isabel de Willoughby, and died in 1388, leaving, besides a son, Bertram IV., a daughter, named after her mother, and twice married, first to Sir Henry Heton, and secondly to Robert Harbottle, who survived to be the last representative of the family. For, though Bertram IV. was duly succeeded by Bertram V., and Bertram V. by Bertram VI., the line failed with the latter, who died s. p. in 1425. His great aunt Isabel then inherited the estate; and dying herself in the following year, transmitted it to her great-grandson, Robert Harbottle.
Leland speaks of this family in his Itinerary: "Mounbowcher was a Man of fair Landes in Northumbrelande; and Doctor Davelle told me that the Hospitale yn Newcastle hath yet Landes of his gifte." Other incidental notices of it are to be met with. Collins mentions a Sir Bartholomew de Mont Boucher, of very early date, whose daughter Philippa was the wife of Sir Robert de Maners, from whom he derives the Dukes of Rutland. Sir Edmund Pierrepont, in the time of Edward III., married Joan, sole daughter and heir of Sir George de Montboucher. John Monboucher, in 1408, died seized of the manor of Skipwith-cum-Menthorpe, which he held in right of Elizabeth his wife.—Burton's Mon. Ebor.