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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
-------*--------
Return to Index

Orinal : for Orival or De Aurea Valle; from Orval, a fief in the Vicomte of Coutances. Regnault d'Orval, about the time of the Conquest, witnessed the foundation charter of L'Essay, and gave to the Abbey his church of Orval. "The Honour of Lithaire was held for two generations by a family who derived their local surname from this fief: thus Rainaldus de Orivallo, contemporary with Robert Courteheuse and King Henry I., established in 1115 a cell at Orval, for the residence of a certain number of monks from the abbey of L'Essay, maxime pro ipsius anima atque uxoris sue Matildis. He left issue three sons, William, Hugh, and Robert, and a daughter married to Roger filius Episcopi; of these the eldest son was tenant of the Honour in 1172. On the roll of 1180 Robert L'Angevin, the fermor of the Vicomte of the Cotentin, rendered accompt of the issue of the land of William de Aureavalle from the feast of St. Michael to the Circumcision of our Lord, 29 Hen. II., in which same regnal year Adam de Port gave 1000 marks to the King for livery of his wife's inheritance in Normandy, as also that he might be restored to the King's favour and do his homage. This baron, who derived his local name from Port-en-Bessin of the fee of the Bishop of Bayeux, appears to have been thrice married; his first wife was the Countess Sibilla, widow of Milo, Earl of the county of Hereford, and daughter and heiress of Bernard de Novo-Mercato, a powerful baron of that county, whose fief Adam de Port reported to the Exchequer, 14 Hen. II., with the nomenclature of the knight's fees held of the old and new feoffment; at which date his father, John de Port, Lord of Basing in Hampshire, was still living. Not long after, a.d. 1172, an accusation of treason was brought against him, and not appearing to the summons to abide his trial, he was banished the realm, when his barony in the county of Hereford escheated to the crown, and ever after continued to be described in the records of this and the following reigns, as feodum Adae de Port fugati or fugitivi. By the Countess Sibilla he had no issue. His second wife was Mabilia de Aureavalle, whose inheritance in Normandy he has been shown to have obtained in 1180, and by whom he had a son named William de Portu, who had possession of the Honour of Lithaire in the second year of the reign of King John, and who eventually inheriting the land of the family of S'to Johanne through descent from Muriel, sister of William and Robert St. John, who had intermarried with his maternal ancestor de Aureavalle, thereupon assumed that local surname. The third wife of Adam de Port was sister of William de Braose."—T. Stapleton. How it was that Mabel became the heiress of Orval is left unexplained. The fief was confiscated by. Philip Augustus.

Robert de Aurea Valle—perhaps the above-mentioned Robert—was of Devon in 1130 (Rot. Pip.) and Peter de Orival, who occurs there about 1272 in the Rotuli Hundredorum, was no doubt his descendant. Walter Dorival, at the same date, is found in Kent.