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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Sent Barbe : or St. Barbara. In Normandy a town and two villages bear the name of this saint; but from which of them the existing family is derived it would be hard to say. The town—Ste. Barbe-en-Auge—contained a Priory of Canons Regular, founded by King Stephen, and endowed by him with lands in England.

William de St. Barbara, Dean of York, was elected Bishop of Durham in 1143, during the usurpation of the See by Cumin. He was chosen, almost by stealth, by some monks that had made good their escape to York, and "was with difficulty prevailed upon to accept the arduous office." His misgivings were amply justified by the event. For sixteen months he was virtually excluded from his diocese, and driven from one place of refuge to another. He was first the guest of Roger Conyers, the Hereditary Constable of Durham, one of his few loyal subjects, at Bishopston; then had to seek sanctuary in the church of Yarrow; whence, for his greater security, he was transferred to Lindisfarne; and finally retired, "helpless and disspirited," to Newcastle. Meanwhile, the soldiers of Cumin, "sallying from the impregnable fortress of Durham, spread everywhere terror and devastation. On such of their opponents as fell into their power the most savage cruelties were exercised.... Cumin seems to have possessed an inventive genius that might have done credit to an Inquisitor General. Some of his prisoners were suspended across ropes, with heavyweights attached to their neck and feet; others were repeatedly plunged in the frozen bed of the river: of others the naked feet, protruded through an aperture in the wall, were exposed to all the severity of the night."—Surtees' Durham. At length, however, when the cause of the Empress Maud, which he had always championed, became desperate, Cumin judged it wisest to submit, and the Bishop, on entering Durham, found his sanguinary rival, attired in the humble garb of a penitent, prostrated at his feet.

St. Barbara was enthroned as Prince Palatine in October 1144, and ruled for nine years in peace and honour, spending his revenue "in restoring the ruined churches and public buildings of his diocese. He lived in harmony with the Monasteries; and though it was not in his power from the pressure of the times to bestow on their Church either possessions or ornaments, he merited their affection and esteem by the generous and unaffected kindness of his disposition. His person was venerable, his manners simple and dignified, and his eloquence impressive."—Ibid. Nothing whatever is known of his lineage.

I now come to the old Somersetshire family of St. Barbe, still represented in the neighbouring county of Southampton. They were tenants of the Abbot of Glastonbury, of whom they held South Brent, and are often mentioned in the monastic Chronicle. It is there pointed out, as a remarkable coincidence, that the coif and veil of the holy Barbara were among the relics preserved in the Abbey with which they were so early and so long connected. Their first ancestor, Robert de Sainte Barbe, is said—according to the too familiar phrase—to have come over with the Conqueror; but their tenure can scarcely have been of so ancient a date, as their name is not found in the earliest lists. About one hundred and fifty years later occurs a second Robert, whose grandson, Richard Seintbarbe, received in 1295 from the Abbey as a life-pittance or corrody, "a yearly pension of ten pounds, to be paid out of the exchequer of Glastonbury at the feast of Easter and St. Michael, by equal portions; and also a winter robe yearly to him and Richard his son and heir, during their lives, of the same suit that the Lord Abbot's esquires were wont to wear, with convenient fur thereunto belonging." For this, according to the received custom, he must have surrendered either the whole or the greater part of his estate: content to dwell as a comfortable pensioner, under the wing of the great Abbey, fed, clothed, and sheltered from harm or aggression. Those that came after him might take care of themselves; "for this fashion of corrody," writes Kingsley, "was one which brought much land to monks, and grudging to heirs at law." In this case, however, the son at least is included in the provision.

Richard's grandson, John, married Margaret Langland, whose mother had been a Furneaux: and when the great Furneaux inheritance came to be subdivided in 1420, Ashington (also in Somersetshire) fell to the share of the St. Barbes, and became their principal residence. Some seventy years later, on the decease of another Richard St. Barbe, the family formed three distinct branches, seated respectively at Ashington, Salisbury, and Whiteparish. Edward St. Barbe of Ashington, representing the elder line, acquired through a Fleming heiress the estate of Broadlands in Hampshire, which was sold to Viscount Palmerston in 1723, on the death of his great-grandson John, who left no posterity. This John had received a baronetcy from Charles II. in 1663: and is described on his monument at Ashington as "possessed of those amiable qualities that birth, education, travel, greatness of spirit, and goodness of heart produce." The second, or Salisbury branch, had ended earlier, with an heiress, Mrs. Usher, whose daughter Mary married Henry Colley, and was the great-grandmother of the Duke of Wellington and Marquess Wellesley. The third, which was seated at Whiteparish, still survives. Its founder, William St. Barbe, (the youngest son of the above mentioned Richard) obtained an introduction to the household of Henry VIII. through Cardinal Wolsey, who had originally been rector of Limington, a parish adjoining Ashington, and did not forget, in his new elevation, the family from whom he had probably received kindness when he was only a poor unknown village priest. William was named gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and so far gained his master's favour, that at the dissolution of the monasteries, the King granted him the College of St. Edmund at New Sarum, of which Whiteparish formed part. His son Edward built a house there, but it was alienated in 1576; and his descendants are now seated at Lymington in Hampshire.

Several others of the name that are incidentally mentioned, do not appear in this pedigree. William Barbe witnessed a deed relating to the Abbey Church of Bath and a grant of the manor of Bermondsey, both in the reign of Henry I.: and in that of Henry II., Roger Barbe occurs in the chartulary of Repton Priory. Henry St. Barbe was one of the Commissioners appointed to perambulate Gillingham Forest, Dorset, in 1300: and Jordan de St. Barbe, 1322-5, was an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster, and received a writ of military summons.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs.