The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Verdoune : an illustrious name still represented in Normandy. La Roque and La Chesnaye-du-Bois both maintain that it had its origin in the county of Mortaine, where one of its branches was of long continuance; yet it is incontestable that in the twelfth century there was a fief of Verdun in the arrondissement of Avranches; and, according to M. de Gerville, the cradle of the family was Barenton, in that neighbourhood.
Bertram de Verdon, the founder of the great English house, in 1086 held Farnham Royal, in Buckinghamshire, by the grand serjeantry of providing a glove for the King's right hand on the day of his coronation, and supporting his right arm during the said service, so long as he bore the royal sceptre. In 1095, he attests a charter of William Rufus to St. Mary's Abbey, York, and served as Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1100. His son Norman followed him about 1130, and married Lescelina, the daughter of the famous Justiciar, Geoffrey de Clinton, who had great possessions in Leicestershire, and brought him Brandon in Warwickshire, where he built a castle. Alton, in North Staffordshire, was, however, his principal seat and the head of his barony. The next in succession, Bertram II., played a considerable part in the history of his time. "His political career I date," says Eyton, "from the year 1166, when he appears in King Henry's court at Caen. On 3rd February, 1170, the King being over sea, the Constable of Normandy, Richard de Humez, and Bertram de Verdon were at Stamford (Lincolnshire). Bertram, be it known, held estates in Lincolnshire, both under the Crown and under the aforesaid Constable. What is more remarkable is that at this very juncture De Humez was Sheriff of Rutland, while at the ensuing Easter (April 5, 1170) the King, in Council at Windsor, instituted that enquiry into the conduct of the English Sheriffs which resulted in the ejectment of William Basset from the Shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, and the substitution of Bertram de Verdon.
"Meanwhile in the rebellion of 1173, Bertram de Verdon was one of those Barons whom Benedictus signalizes as having stood by the elder King. For twelve succeeding years he variously occurs as a Sheriff, as an assessor in the Curiae Regis, as a witness of royal charters in England and Normandy; and on one occasion as King Henry's ambassador to Spain. His relinquishment of the Shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, in 1185, was not for any cause of disgrace. At this very juncture he was attending Prince John in his notable mission to Ireland; and while Hugh de Lacy figures as Constable (of Ireland) during John's vice-royalty, so has Bertram de Verdon the title of Seneschal when attesting one of the Prince's charters.
"On June 14, 1188, William de Humez, then Constable of Normandy, and Bertram de Verdon, were assessors of the King in a Curiae sitting at Geddington. Bertram de Verdon, accompanying King Richard in the crusade of 1190, died at Jaffa in 1192, and was buried at Acre." This city had been, after its capture, committed to his charge by Coeur de Lion.
His two sons were the last heirs-male of his house. The elder, Thomas, married to Eustachia Basset, had no children; and the second, Nicholas, left only one daughter, Roese, who in 1223, at the urgent recommendation of J Henry III., married Theobald Le Botiller of Ireland. "Being so great an Heir, tho' she matched with a Husband of a very Honourable Family, she did not bear his sirname, but retained her own, and so did her Posterity."—Dugdale. She was early left a widow, for in 1231 she paid the customary heavy fine not to be compelled to marry again, and later in life founded the Cistercian Abbey of Grace-Dieu on one of her Leicestershire manors.
John, the eldest of her four sons, in whom the name of Verdon was resuscitated with added splendour, married another great heiress, Margery de Lacy, the last-born of the two sisters that shared the princely possessions of their grandfather, Walter, Lord Palatine of Meath. She brought him the castle and honour of Weobley in Herefordshire, as well as a moiety of Ewyas-Lacy; and with them, the harassing duties and responsibilities of a Lord-Marcher. Accordingly, in 1249, he was ordered by the King to take up his residence on the borders, and check the inroads of the Welsh. He was slain in Ireland in 1278, and was succeeded by Theobald, the first Baron Verdon, who was summoned to parliament in 1295. He had been Constable of Ireland in 1274, and in 1290 was arraigned for high treason, and sentenced to be imprisoned, and to forfeit all his royalties at Ewyas-Lacy; but the King, taking into consideration the good service done by his ancestors, "freed him of his imprisonment for five hundred marks fine." After this, he was again in favour at Court, received several writs of summons to the Northern wars, and sat in the Parliament at Lincoln that asserted Edward's supremacy as "Lord of the whole Realm of Scotland."
Theobald II., his only surviving son—John, the eldest, had died in Ireland during his lifetime—was the second and last Lord Verdon, and Justiciar of Ireland in 1312. He was twice married; first, to Maud, daughter of Edmund Lord Mortimer of Wigmore, by whom he had two sons that died young, and three daughters; and secondly, to one of the co-heirs of the great Honour of Clare, Elizabeth, third daughter of Gilbert Earl of Gloucester by Joan of Acres, daughter of Edward I., and widow of John de Burgh, Earl of Ulster. This last marriage took place in 1315, and he died the year following at Alton Castle, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, leaving his wife, in Scriptural language, "great with child." The child proved a fourth daughter, and thus, for the second time, the name perished in the elder line, and the great fief of Verdon was split up among co-heiresses. Joan, who, as the eldest of these richly-dowered sisters, had the ancestral seat, Alton Castle, and the Staffordshire honour, married Lord Furnival, and died in childbed in 1334. Elizabeth, the second, had the castle and fief of Ewyas-Lacy in Herefordshire, with Stoke-upon-Terne in Shropshire, and married Bartholomew de Burghersh. Margery, the third, had another great Herefordshire estate, the honour and castle of Weobley, with Heath in Oxfordshire, and was three times married: first to William le Blund; secondly to Marcus Husee; and thirdly to John Crophull. The posthumous Isabel—to all appearance the most slenderly portioned of the four—had certain manors in Shropshire and Staffordshire, and was the wife of Lord Ferrers of Groby.
Besides this principal line, and several minor ones alluded to by Burke—the Verdons of Draycot, Warwickshire, and Ibstock, Leicestershire; the Verdons of Darlaston and Biddulph, in Staffordshire; and the Verdons of Denston, in the same county—one, if not two more baronial houses sprung from the original stock. The first of these—wholly unnoticed by Dugdale—was seated at Brisingham in Norfolk, where William de Verdon, about the year 1100, was enfeoffed of six knight's fees by Roger, the father of Hugh Bigod. His descendant John, in 1285, claimed view of frank-pledge, assize of bread, and ale, infangthef gallows, and free-warren in all his lands and manors in Norfolk, which had been granted to his father by Henry III.: and another Sir John was a baron of the realm in 1332. "He seems to have been a person of great hospitality, from the inventory of the establishment he left at Brisingham, to treat his tenants &c. whenever he should go there to reside."—Banks. This Sir John, with his brother Sir Thomas, figured as tilters at the great tournament held in 1308 at Stepney, and again five years later at Dunstable. Instead of the Verdon fret, they bore Sable ove un Lyon Rampant Argent, the younger brother adding a chess-rook for a difference. Each of Sir John's two sons had a son who left no issue: and the inheritance fell between two granddaughters, one of whom was Lady of Shelfanger in right of her mother, Isabel Vis di Leu.
The other house always hitherto assigned to the stock of Verdon is one of the most famous of our baronage—that of Audley. "That the first," says Dugdale, "who assumed this surname was a branch of that ancient and noble family of Verdon, whose chief seat was at Alton Castle, in the northern part of Staffordshire, I am very inclined to believe; partly by reason that Henry had the inheritance of Aldithley given him by Nicholas de Verdon, who died in the sixteenth of Henry III., or near that time; and partly for that he bore for his arms the same ordinary that Verdon did, viz. frette; but distinguished with a large canton in the dexter part of the shield, and thereon a cross pate." This origin is now denied,[92] notwithstanding the similarity of the coats of arms, thus left unexplained; and it is at least clear, that Aldithley was not the grant of Nicholas de Verdon. "Aldidelege (Audley) Baltredelez (half Balterby) and Talc (Talke in Audley) all held in 1086 by the Thane, Gamel, seem to have come, early in the reign of Henry I., into the hands of the first Adam de Audley, who divided them between his sons, Lydulph and Adam. In 1130, 'Liulf de Audley' lay under a heavy penalty for the murder of Gamel."—Eyton. Adam II. was apparently the father of Henry de Audley, "the great territorial acquisitionist of the district," who built the castle of Heighley, and is represented by Dugdale as the first who assumed the name.
I do not therefore feel justified in including the Audleys in this notice, and must reluctantly forbear to give an account of one of my favourite heroes, the Sir James Audley who fought "as long as his breath served him, in the chief of the battle" at Poictiers. He had vowed that whenever the King or one of his sons should be present on the field, he "would be one of the first setters-on, or else die in the pain," and so well did he keep his word, that he was praised and rewarded by the Black Prince, as the "best doer in arms" that day. The names of his four squires, to whom he instantly transferred the Prince's bounty, declaring "That honour I have, is by their valiantness," though not given by Froissart, have been preserved in Cheshire tradition. They were Sir Robert Fouleshurst, Sir Thomas Dutton (Sheriff of the county), Sir John Delves, and Sir John Hawkestone. All of them bore the Audley fret on some part of their coat of arms.