The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Ros : "It needeth not be doubted," says Dugdale, "that Peter, the ancestor of the great Family of Lords Ros of Hamlake, originally assumed that Sirname in King Henry the First's time from the Lordship of Ros in Holderness,[1] where he then had his residence." He deliberately shuts his eyes to the fact that five De Ros'—neither more nor less—are entered in Domesday; that is, William, to whom the Conqueror had given the Abbey of Fecamp in 1079, with a small Sussex barony added to its revenues; and Anchitel, Ansgot, Goisfrid, and Serlo, who all held as under-tenants. "They derived their name from the parish of Ros, now Rots, two miles from Caen, where they held a fief, but not the entire domain, which pertained to the De Patrys and others. The family must have been numerous at the time of the Conquest, and the formation of Domesday Book, as five of the name are there inscribed. They had evidently all followed Duke William to England, but did not stand high in his favour, for, with the exception of William, to whom he gave the Abbey of Fecamp, they do not figure among the tenants in chief either in 1086 or during the reign of William Rufus. All our researches have failed to determine the exact relationship of these five contemporaries, or indeed of a sixth, inscribed in 1090 on the roll of the Abbey of St. Stephen-of-Caen as William Gonnor de Ros. Nor have we been more fortunate in discovering which among them or their descendants was the father of Richard de Ros, who witnessed the foundation charter of Aunay Abbey in 1131; or of the trouvere Adam de Ros, author of the Descente de S. Paul aux Enfers. The history of this family is all the more obscure, as it appears to have become extinct towards the latter end of the fourteenth century.
"The origin of the Anglo-Norman family of De Ros is enveloped in the same obscurity, as the English genealogists have no real ground for deriving it from Anchitel, rather than from any of the other three companions-in-arms of Duke William, who bore the same name, and are, like him, inscribed in Domesday Book."—Recherches sur le Domesday.
There can be no question that the real history of the family in this country commences with Peter de Ros, who married Adeline, the youngest but most favoured of the sisters of Walter Espec, the famous Baron of Helmsley. She brought a considerable inheritance, even though a preponderant share of Espec's great barony was given to the Church. He had an only son, on whom he doated; a promising and "comely" lad who "took great delight in swift Horses;" and one unhappy day, in 1121, when he was spurring and pressing his horse to its utmost speed, it stumbled and fell with him, breaking his neck. The bereaved father, thus left childless, vowed to make Christ his heir, and founded three great monasteries; one at Kirkham, near the scene of the accident, where he converted his own "pleasant Seat into a religious House:" another at Rievaulx, also in Yorkshire; and a third at Wardon, in Bedfordshire. In his latter years he joined the community at Rievaulx: and this formidable champion died a Cistercian monk. His portrait, though drawn by Abbot Ailred, one of the grateful brethren whom he had endowed, is somewhat grim: "Black hair, long beard, his stature taller by a Head than other men; great eyes, big face, high forehead, and a voice like a trumpet."[2] It had rung over the field of Northallerton, when, on the morning of the great battle, he harangued his men, and then, taking the Earl of Albemarle by the hand, cried, "I faithfully promise you, that I will conquer the Scots this day, or lose my life by them."
This match with Adeline Espec founded the fortunes of the house; but Peter's grandson, Everard de Ros, made a still more fortunate marriage. His wife, Rose Trusbut, was the eldest daughter of Robert Trusbut, Baron of Wartre in Holderness, and through the successive deaths of her three brothers and two sisters—all issueless—was left his sole heiress and representative. In honour of the great barony she had brought to them, her descendants adopted her punning coat of arms, Trots bouts d'eau (three water-bougets) in lieu of the golden Catherine wheel they had hitherto borne.[3]
Rose's two sisters, however, reached such extreme old age—Hillaria lived to be ninety, and died six years before Agatha—that the whole inheritance only came to her grandson. Everard himself died early—before 1185—leaving her a young widow, and his son and heir Robert—one of the future potentates of the realm—a lad of thirteen.
Robert Furfan, as he was surnamed, proved a man of fitful and capricious temper, in his early years imprisoned for some offence or other against Coeur de Lion, and again, in 1205, suffering sequestration under King John, who, only five years before, had endowed him with the whole of the barony of his great-grandmother's father, Walter Espec. In both cases the cloud of displeasure passed over quickly: and it was in the zenith of his power and the flower of his age—he can scarcely have been more than thirty—that he renounced the world in 1209, and became a monk. But it was not for long. The very next year he cast off his cowl and emerged from his monastery—a strange instance of the latitude accorded even by the inflexible monastic rule to a great feudal lord—resumed his barony, which had been committed to the custody of Philip de Ulcote, and plunged with fresh vigour into the strife of parties and the clash of arms. At first he was on the King's side, and duly rewarded with a grant of some Cumberland manors; "but this favour," says Dugdale, "did not oblige him, as it seemed;" for we next find him holding Carlisle Castle in open defiance of the King's authority, and soon after ranged amongst the most resolute of his opponents. He was entrusted by the Barons with the government of Northumberland; was present at the sealing of the Great Charter at Runnymede, and one of its twenty-five appointed Conservators. In the ensuing reign "he approved himself firm and faithful to King Henry III.": and some time before his death in 1226 assumed the habit of a Knight Templar, in which he was buried in the Temple Church, London, where his tomb and effigy yet remain. He had married Isabel, the daughter (though of more than doubtful legitimacy) of William the Lion, King of Scots, and widow of Robert de Brus, and left two sons, between whom he divided his possessions. To William, as the firstborn, he gave his great Yorkshire barony; to Robert his smaller fief in Northumberland, adding to it a Scottish barony, to be held of the elder by military service. For each he built a great castle as the head of their Honour: Hamlake for William, and Werke for Robert.
William had, like himself, taken up arms with the confederate barons, and been mulcted in a heavy fine. "Nevertheless, as soon as he discerned an opportunity, he flew out again," joined the revolt against Henry III., and was taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln; but his father procured his release on bail. The next heir, Robert, was, again, deeply engaged in the baronial war, held a command under Simon de Montfort at Lewes, and was summoned to parliament by the barons in 1264 as Lord Ros of Hamlake.[4] Some twenty years before, he had gained the third great matrimonial prize awarded to the family, in receiving from Henry III. the hand of the heiress of Belvoir. "But not," adds Dugdale, "without a round compensation; for it appears that both he and his wife in 32 Hen. III. were debtors to the King in no less than the sum of 3285l, xiijs, ivd, and a Palfrey; of which sum, the King was then pleased to accept by two hundred marks a year, until it should all be paid." In those days, this represented, at the very least,£55,000 of our money; but the inheritance thus acquired was proportionately splendid. Isabel de Albini brought him, as the appanage of her honour and castle of Belvoir, a domain that a prince might well afford to envy—the whole wide stretch of territory granted by the Conqueror to Robert de Todeni.
The first Lord Ros was followed by ten others, all men of action busied in the affairs of the realm, and constant on the battle-field, whose fortunes I cannot attempt to follow in any degree of detail. Isabel's son, who put in a claim to the crown of Scotland in right of his pseudo-royal great-grandmother, received from Edward I. the castle of Werke upon Tweed, forfeited by the treason of his kinsman. But this stronghold, one of the keys of the Border, was judged too important for the custody of a subject, and his successor transferred it by exchange to the Crown. The uncle of this third Lord, Sir John de Ros, was very eminent in the days of Edward II. and Edward III. He had taken part energetically with Queen Isabel against the Despencers; and on her son's accession was summoned to parliament as a baron, appointed Steward of the Royal Household, and chosen as "one of those twelve Lords by whom it was resolved the King (being young) should be governed." In 1336 he was named "Admiral of the Seas from the Thames mouth northwards," and died the year following, leaving no heir to his barony. The fourth Lord Ros was a renowned soldier. He led one of the brigades at Cressy, and died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as did his nephew John, sixth Lord. The next in succession was the "William, Lord Roos," who had a dispute concerning some right of pasturage in Lincolnshire with Robert Tirwhitt, one of the Justices of the King's Bench, which was decided by the King in his favour. Tirwhitt was ordered to make a humble apology, "delivered before all the Knights, Esquires, and Yeomen of his" (Lord Ros') "party then present;" which he prefaced by a singular acknowledgment—all the more singular as coming from one of the law officers of the Crown. "My Lord Roos," said he, "I know well that you being of such Birth, Estate, and Might that if you liked, you might have comen to the foresaid Lawday in such a way, that I had been of no might to make any party." He then proffered a fine of five hundred marks, with two tuns of good Gascon wine, two oxen, and twelve sheep; but Lord Ros would only accept the latter "for the dinner of those here present." His son and heir John spent the whole of his brief life under arms. In 1416—being then not yet eighteen—he went with Henry V. to France, and distinguished himself so greatly before Rouen, that he received a grant of the Norman castle of Basqueville; but was slain in a disastrous encounter near the castle of Beaufort, while still under age. With him fell his young brother William, the Duke of Exeter, and "many more of the English Chivalry." Thomas, his nephew, who succeeded his father, when only four years old, as tenth Lord Ros, was a staunch Lancastrian, and after that memorable Palm Sunday on Towton Field,
"Where the river ran all gory,
And in hillocks lay the dead,
And seven and thirty thousand
Fell for the White and Red—"
he fled with the King to Berwick. He was attainted on the accession of Edward IV., and died the same year, leaving, by Philippa, sister and co-heir of John Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, two sons, Edmund and John; and three daughters; Eleanor, married to Sir Robert Manners of Etal Castle in Northumberland; Isabel, the wife of Thomas Grey (or, as others say, of Sir Robert Lovell): and Margaret, who is supposed to have died unmarried. "His lands," says Leland, "stood confiscate: and Bellevoir Castell was given in keeping to the Lorde Hastings; the which coming thither upon a tyme to peruse the ground, and to lye in the castell, was suddenly repelled by Master Harington, a Man of Power thereabout, and Friend of the Lorde Ros: whereupon the Lorde Hastings cam thither another tyme with a strong power, and upon a raging wylle spoiled the castelle, defacing the roofes, and taking the leades off them, wherewyth they were all coverid. Then fell alle the Castell to ruine; and the tymber of the roofs uncovered rotted away; and the soyle between the waulles at the last grew full of Elders; and no habitation was ther till that of late Dayes the Erie of Rutland hath made it fairer than ever it was."
The attainder was reversed when Henry VII. came to the throne, and Edmund, as eleventh Lord Ros, enjoyed his own again. But he was never married; and his brother must have died in early life, as there is no further mention of him. The old line had at last come to an end; and the sisters became co-heiresses: only Eleanor had children; and her son, Sir George Manners, succeeded as twelfth Lord Ros, and was the father of the first Earl of Rutland, who undertook the restoration of her ancestral castle, completed by his successor in the time of Elizabeth. Since then, Belvoir has been burnt to the ground and entirely rebuilt by another of the family; for Eleanor de Ros' splendid dowry has never passed away from her lineage, though her ancient barony is no longer theirs. It went to the only child of the third Earl of Rutland, Lady Elizabeth Manners, married to William Cecil, Lord Burghley; and though, on the death of her son, it reverted to the sixth Earl, Francis, it was again lost through want of a male heir, and fell to his daughter, Lady Catherine. She was the wife of George Villiers, the famous Duke of Buckingham, and the mother of several children, but they all died s.p., and the barony lapsed into abeyance for a century and a quarter. At last, in 1806, it was granted to Lady Henry Fitz Gerald, who adopted the name of De Ros, and transmitted it to her posterity.
At least two other baronies by writ were held by the house of De Ros. Robert Furfan's second son Robert, to whom he gave the barony of Werke in Northumberland, was, according to Dugdale, summoned to parliament 22 Ed. I., or sixty-seven years afterwards; but from the date it appears most probable that it was his son of the same name. The first Robert, as the son of William the Lion's daughter, was named Regent of Scotland and guardian of the young King and Queen with John Baliol in 1255. Both were vehemently accused by their charges; the Queen protesting that she was kept like a prisoner in a solitary place near the sea, without wholesome air or proper attendance; and Robert de Ros was sentenced to pay the enormous sum of 100,000 marks—a fine afterwards remitted—for "greatly misdemeaning himself in his trust."
The second Robert, summoned as "Robertus Ros de Werke" in 1293, forfeited his barony by his foul treason. "About a year after" (his summons) "being far in love with a Scotch woman, whom he had a mind to make his Wife, he endeavoured to inveigh William de Ros of Hamlake (his kinsman) to the Scots party, acknowledging that he himself was of their confederacy; who refusing to be thus wrought upon, rebuked him for that attempt, and represented to him how scandalous such an act would be to their whole Family. Howbeit all this prevailed not, for that night he got privately away to the Scots; which being discerned by William, he forthwith hasted to the King (then at Newcastle-upon-Tine) and signifying to him the perfidiousness of this his Kinsman, desired some help to defend the Castle of Werke, lest it should be surprised by the Scots, through the means of that treachery; who accordingly sent a thousand of his men which were quartered the night following at Prestfen; whereof this Robert being aware, he took a power of Scots out of the Garrison of Rokesburgh; and privily surrounding the Village, gave them a Signal; viz, Tabart and Surcoat, commanding that whosoever naming the one word, if the party to whom he expressed it, did not answer the other, they should kill him. And thereupon entering Prestfen, he set fire to the Houses; which so astonished the English, that divers of them slew those of their own party, and many were taken prisoners, and most barbarously used. But this vile and unworthy act was not long unrevenged; for shortly after King Edward made slaughter of no less than ten thousand and fifty-three of the Scots, in the Battel of Dunbar." Dugdale adds, that Robert de Ros, "then marching in the Scots army with Banners displayed," was with them at the burning of his own town of Werke.
The fair lady for whose sake he forswore his allegiance is not named, and if he married her she must have been his second wife. The first—I should rather say the only—wife of his ever mentioned, was Margaret, sister and co-heir of the great Yorkshire baron, Peter de Brus of Skelton. She inherited from her mother, Helewise of Lancaster, the castle and honour of Kendall, which she gave to her son William. From him it descended to his grandson, who dying s.p. 32 Ed. III., left an infant daughter, afterwards married to Sir William Parr, and the ancestress of the Parrs of Kendall. But according to another account given by Dugdale, Robert had no son at all; only two daughters, Margaret Salvain and Isabel de Knock; "which Isabel lived not long, I guess"; for in 1312 Margaret, as sole heir of Robert de Ros, petitioned the King for pardon of her father's forfeiture, and had letters patent granted to her in terms of her request. The confusion may arise from his having fused two Roberts into one.
The second Robert was the elder brother of William of Igmanthorpe, one of the three De Ros' summoned to parliament in 1293, who left descendants in the male line till the seventeenth century. Leland mentions them: "Ros, that dwellith at Ingmanthorpe in Yorkeshir a 2. Miles a this side Wetherby, cummith of a Younger Brother in Descentes tyme past of the House of the Lord Ros. Wetherby longgid in tymes past also to the House of this Ros, and divers other theraboute." The line had only "of late" expired when Dugdale wrote.
Some of the family that had crossed the Border early in the thirteenth century are now represented by a numerous and flourishing Scottish clan. Hugh de Ros of Geddes, temp. Alexander II. (1214-1249), was the father of a second Hugh, who acquired Kilravock in Nairn through the heiress of the Bissets, and had a crown charter of the barony from John Baliol. This must have been the same Hugh who, with Thomas de Ros, is found among the barons who appended their seals to the famous proclamation issued by Robert Bruce after the battle of Bannockburn. Kilravock is still held by his lineal descendants. The name became Rose and often Ross (in either case the lineage may be recognized by the water-bougets on the coat of arms); and was widely spread. From a branch settled in Hampshire descended F. M. Lord Strathnairn, whose peerage was conferred in 1866 for his eminent services as Commander-in-chief during the Indian Mutiny. No such feats of arms have been recorded in India since the great days of Clive. In that terrible summer campaign, during which "not a man in the force enjoyed his natural health or strength, months of marching under an Indian sun having told on the strongest," he vanquished armies that twentyfold out-numbered his own, and carried by assault the rock-citadel of Gwalior—reputed the strongest fort in India—with a mere handful of men. Yet of the victorious troops under his command not more than one-third were English. He received the baton of a Field Marshal in 1877, and died unmarried at a good old age in 1885.