The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Someruile : from Somerville, now Sommervieux, near Caen. In 1165 Walter de Summerville held a fief from the Earl of Derby, two from the barony of Stafford, and one in York, from De Lacy. (Liber Niger.) His seat was at Whichnor in Staffordshire, held as a member of the Honour of Tutbury, and from him descended Roger de Somerville, who was summoned to parliament as a baron, and died in 1327. Roger's son was the Sir Philip to whom John of Gaunt granted Tatenall, &c. "for certain services," and in his charter enjoined to keep a flitch of bacon hanging in his hall at Whichnor at all times of the year except in Lent; to be given to any man who had been married a year and a day, and could take his oath that he had never repented of the deed. He was required to bring with him two neighbours to confirm his words. "Then shall the baconne be brought down and laid at the hall door; and shall there be laid upon it half a quarter of wheat and half a quarter of rye; and he that demandeth the baconne shall kneel upon his knee, and shall holde his right hand upon a booke, which booke shall be laid above the baconne and the corne, and shall make othe in this manner: Hear ye, Syr Phylippe de Somerville, Lord of Wichenour, mayntayner and giver of this baconne, that I, sythe I wedded my wyfe, and sythe I had her in my keeping and at my wylle, by a year and a daye after our marriage, I wold not have changed her for none other, fairer ne fouler, richer ne poorer, ne for none other descended of gretter lynage, sleeping or waking, at no time; And if she were sole, and I sole, I wolde take her to be my wyfe before all the wymen of the worlde, of what condytions soever they be, good or evyle; so help me God and His saints, and this flesh and all fleshes." Then the two witnesses he had brought with him were called to give evidence as to his condition; and he received, with his bacon, the measure of wheat and a cheese if he was a freeman, and the measure of rye if he was a villein. The sub-tenant of Sir Philip at Rudlowe (for a long time of the name of Knightley) was bound, under a heavy penalty, to furnish "a horse, a sadyle, a sakke, and a pryke," (spur) to convey these trophies one day's journey out of the county; with the exception of the cheese, which the winner of the bacon was to carry before him on his own horse. The happy pair—it should be noted that the poor wife's opinion had never been asked at all—were finally escorted to the boundary of the manor by all the free tenants on horseback, with "trumpets, tabors, and all manner of minstrelsy." Wichnor passed away from the Somervilles in the very next generation, and the old moated Hall itself has long since vanished, but the custom lingered on well into the last century, and is fully detailed in the "Spectator." "It is thirty years," writes Horace Walpole to Lady Ailesbury in 1760, "since the flitch was claimed, and Mr. Offley was never so near losing one, as when you and Mr. Conway were at Ragley. He so little expects the demand, that the flitch is only hung in effigy over the hall chimney carved in wood." This wooden flitch is now kept in the modern Lodge that has replaced the old house; and the county history furnishes us with the last jokes current on this well-known jesting tenure, that has so amply carried out its founder's intention, in providing food for mirth to generation after generation. "Of the few that have ventured to claim the prize, three couple only have obtained it; one of which, having quarrelled about the mode of preserving it, were adjudged to return it. The other two couples were a sea-officer and his wife, who had not seen each other from the day of their marriage till they met in Wichnor Hall: and a simple couple in the neighbourhood; the husband, a good tempered man, and the wife, dumb."
Sir Philip left, as I have said, no male heir; and Wichnor went, as the marriage portion of his daughter Joan, to her Welsh husband Rees-ap-Griffith. But a branch of the house remained in Gloucestershire, where Somerville Aston, first held by John de Somerville in 1250, was passed down in uninterrupted succession for five hundred years (see Atkyns' Gloucestershire). The Somervilles lived in a moated house, now ruinous, on the south side of the church that was their burial place. Dugdale recounts the tragic end of one of them. "John, who in 25 Eliz. being a hot-spirited Gentleman and about twenty-three years of age, but a Roman Catholique by profession, is said to have been so far transported with zeale for the restoration of that religion, by the instigation of one Hall a Priest, that he resolved to kill the Queen, and to that purpose made a journey to London, and that upon his apprehension he confesst his intent; but being arraigne'd, condemn'd, and committed to Newgate, within three days after he was found strangled in his lodging. How far forth he was guilty of this, God knows; for with what a high hand things were then borne through the power of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester is not unknown to most men; which Earl had a particular spleen against Mr. Arden of Park Hall, father in law to this Gentleman, as by sundery aged persons, of credit, I have often heard." The last heir was a poet—William Somerville, author of "The Chase:" a kindly and hospitable man, who spent more money than he had, and (according to Shenstone) was driven to drink himself into pains of body in order to get rid of pains of mind. He died in 1742, having settled his estate or what remained of it, (it had been accounted worth,£1,500 a year) on his Scottish kinsman, James, thirteenth Lord Somerville.
No more remote kinsman ever enjoyed an inheritance. The connection between them dated as nearly as possible six hundred years back. Lord Somerville derived from a William de Somerville, who, about the year 1150, witnessed a charter of Malcolm King of Scotland for Sawtrey Abbey in Huntingdonshire (Mon. i. 851), and in 1158 was indebted to the Crown twenty marks of silver, but was in Scotland (Rot. Pip.). He had attached himself to the fortunes of King David I., from whom he received a grant of the lands of Carnwath. His grandson further obtained in 1174 the barony of Linton in Roxburghshire. According to an old MS. in the Advocate's Library, quoted by Sir Walter Scott, "he was made by King William (the lion) his principal falconer, and got from that king the lands and baronie of Linton, in Teviotdale, for an extraordinaire and valiant action, which, according to the manuscript of the family of Drum, was thus: In the parochen of Lintoun there happened to breede a monster, in forme of a serpent or worme: in length, three Scots yards, and somewhat bigger than an ordinarie man's leg, with a head more proportionable to its length than greatnesse. It had its den in a hollow piece of ground, a mile S.E. from Lintoun church: it destroyed both men and beasts that came in its way. Several attempts were made to destroy it, by shooting of arrows, and throwing of darts, none daring to approach so near as to make use of a sword or lance. John Somerville[1] undertakes to kill it, and being well mounted, and attended with a stoute servant, he cam, before the sun-rising, before the dragon's den, having prepared some long, small, and hard peats" (bog-turf dried for fuel) "bedabbled with pitch, rosett, and brimstone, fixed with a small wire upon a wheel, at the point of his lance; these, being touched with fire, would instantly break out into flames; and, there being a breath of air, that served to his purpose, about the sun-rising the worme appeared with her head and some part of her body without the den: whereupon his servant set fire to the peats upon the wheel at the top of the lance, and John Somerville, advancing with a full gallop, thrust the same with the wheel, and a great part of the lance, directly into the serpent's mouth, which wente down its throat into the belly, and was left there, the lance breaking by the re-bounding of the horse, and giving a deadly wound to the dragon; for which action he was knighted by King William; and his effigies was cut in ston in the posture he performed this actione, and placed above the principal church door of Lintoun, where it is yet to be seen, with his name and sirname; and the place where this monster was killed is at this day called the Wormes Glen. And further to perpetuate this actione, the barons of Lintoun, Cowthally, and Drum, did always carry for crest a wheel, and thereon a dragon." The rude piece of sculpture that commemorates the exploit is still in its place; and a falcon on the knight's arm probably denotes his office of falconer. His son, Sir William Somerville of Linton and Carnwath, distinguished himself at a great tournament held at Roxburgh in honour of the marriage of Alexander II.: and the descendants were worthy representatives of the gallant knight, "brave even to madness," who first dared to meet the poisonous breath of the Linton Worm. We find them deeply engaged in the wars and politics of their day, wounded in battle, carried off prisoners, delivered up as hostages, and now and again receiving remissions and "pardons under the great seal." Thomas Somervile "held the office of justiciary of Scotland south of the Forth in November 1430, and appears to have been created a peer the same year, Thomas, Dominus Somervile, being one of the conservators of a truce with the English, 13th December, 1430." The eighth Baron, Gilbert, "splendidly entertained King James VI. at his castle of Cowthaly (called by the King in a jocular way, Cow-daily, because he observed a cow and ten sheep killed daily), and by his extravagance run through his estate." Probably for this reason, his brother, Hugh Somerville of Dram, who inherited the title in 1618, never assumed it: nor was it borne by any of his successors for upwards of a century, till James Somerville petitioned for its restoration, and it was adjudged to him by the House of Lords in 1723. A fortune followed it in due time: for in 1742 he came into the old family estate in Gloucestershire, bequeathed to him by the poet Somerville (see p. 104), and was enabled to "build an elegant house, and lay out plantations" at his own Scottish home, Drum. The last bearer of the title was Aubrey John Somerville, nineteenth Lord, at whose death in 1870 it is presumed to have become extinct.
Siward. This name appears in Brompton's "Liste des Conquerants d'Angleterre" as Sewrard. In the Roll of Carlaverock it is Suwart:—
"Richard Suwart, ke o eus converse,
Noire banniere ot aprestee
O crois blance o bouz flouretee."
This Siward was a Scottish knight, married to a sister of Simon Fresel, who, having more than once shifted his allegiance, was at that time serving in the English army. Edward II. appointed him Constable of Dumfries in 1309, and he is supposed to have died in the following year.
It cannot be this Scotsman who is here designated, but one of two Siwards who were of considerable note at the Conquest, the one in Shropshire, the other in Cheshire.