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

ADDITIONAL NAMES GIVEN BY DUCHESNE.

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

Vmframuile : or Umfraville; "a Norman baronial name. The original seat was at Amfreville, in the Viscountcy of Evreux, which was held by the service of two knight's fees (Feod. Norm. Duchesne). This family came to England at the Conquest; but a branch remained at Normandy, descended from Walter de Umfreville, who was at the battle of Gisors 1097 (Orderic Vitalis, 767)."—The Norman People. The first Umfreville who came to this country—Robert with the Beard—was Lord of Tour and Vian in Normandy, and had a grant from the Conqueror of the barony of Prudhoe, and the valley, forest, and lordship of Redesdale, to be held by the service of defending his territory against thieves and wolves with the same sword with which William entered Northumberland. It was a tenure of fearful omen, for the King had gone down to the North as the harbinger of wrath, swearing that he would sweep the rebellious Northumbrians from the face of the earth, and had mercilessly kept his word. "The vast tract between the Humber and the Tyne was left without a single habitation, the refuge only of wild beasts and robbers; and William of Malmesbury states that it remained barren and desolate to his time, nearly a century afterwards. More than 100,000 persons perished by sword and famine."—Mackenzie. This terrible sword was seldom in its sheath, for "the warlike Umfrevilles" thoroughly earned their designation. No Border barons were more constantly in the saddle, or more eager at the call of the slogan; none so busied in the unceasing turmoil of the Marcher feuds, or so fierce and dauntless in their life-long warfare against the Scots. They had full jurisdiction within their spacious domain, and needed to be powerful as well as brave, for they had to hold the castles of Harbottle and Otterburn in addition to their great stronghold of Prudhoe, so gallantly defended against William the Lion in 1170. After many fruitless assaults, the Scottish King had to raise the siege and retreat homewards, and was taken prisoner on his march to Alnwick by Odonel de Umfreville and Bernard Baliol. Odonel's grandson, Richard, had the right of "preventing all persons from grazing, hunting, or cutting down timbers in the Forest of Redesdale" granted to him by King John in 1203. Nine years later, the times being threatening and his temper suspected, he had to deliver up his four sons in hostage, and pledge his castle of Prudhoe as security for his loyalty, on the condition that it should be forfeited if he transgressed, and himself dealt with as a traitor. Yet no sooner had the barons taken up arms than Umfreville appeared in their midst. His lands and castles were forthwith granted to Baliol, and though they were restored to him by Henry III., it is clear that he was little trusted, for the King soon after issued a precept to the Sheriff of Northumberland, directing him to empannel a jury of twelve knights to inspect some new buildings at Harbottle, and to demolish all that bore the semblance of fortifications. The next heir, Gilbert II. (there had been an ancestor of the same name), Warden of the Marches, whom Matthew Paris styles "the famous Baron, the Flower and Keeper of the Northern parts of England," married in 1243 Maud, in her own right Countess of Angus, and died two years afterwards, leaving a little son, Gilbert III., who in his "tender years" was inward to Simon de Montfort, the famous Earl of Leicester. He joined in his guardian's rebellion, but made his peace before the battle of Evesham, and chose this auspicious moment for obtaining certain immunities from the Crown. Edward I. constituted him Constable of Forfar, and Governor of the whole territory of Angus, and summoned him to parliament in 1295 as Baron Umfreville, and then, in right of his mother, as "Comitr de Anggos" in 1297. "The sages of the common law at that time," as Banks terms them, demurred at the title, "inasmuch as Angus was not within the realm of England," and refused to acknowledge him as an Earl until the King's writ had been produced in open court. Robert, second Earl, a soldier of great note in the Scottish wars, was one of the three powerful nobles chosen as joint Regents of Scotland, and subsequently employed to treat for peace with Robert Bruce. He was twice married first, to Lucy de Kyme, the daughter of Philip, Lord Kyme, and in the end sole heiress to her brother William, by whom he had one son, Gilbert IV., third Earl; and one daughter, Elizabeth, married to Sir Gilbert Borrowden (or Burdon) whose only child, Alianor Talbois, became the heir general of the family. The Earl's second wife, Eleanor * * * * (her surname is lost) brought him two other sons: 1, Sir Robert, who was married, but died s. p. during his brother Gilbert's lifetime; and 2, Sir Thomas, of whom presently.

Earl Gilbert IV. succeeded his father when he was but fifteen years old. He, too, was often in the wars of Scotland, and one of the leaders at the battle of Durham, where, for the second time, a Scottish king was made prisoner on the soil that he had invaded. He married the heiress of the Lucies, Maud, sister of Anthony, the last of those great Northern barons, and died in 1381, having survived his only son. This son, Sir Robert de Umfreville, "had been married to Margaret, daughter of Henry, the second Lord Percy of Alnwick, but without issue. It seems to have been in consequence of the settlement made on this marriage, that the Castle and Barony of Prudhoe descended to the Percies, and that, after the death of Earl Gilbert, his widow the Countess Maude enjoyed it for her life. She married to her second husband Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland, who after her death entered into full possession of the Castle and Barony with all its appendages, and the same continued in his posterity without any other interruption except what was occasioned by the attainders in different periods."—Hodgson's Northumberland. They are now held by his representative, the Duke of Northumberland. In 1816, Lord Algernon Percy was created Baron Prudhoe, of Prudhoe Castle, and bore the title till he succeeded to the Dukedom. It expired at his death in 1865.

Thus, by a cruel and wanton act of injustice, the great Barony of Prudhoe passed to a stranger in blood, and the rightful heirs were utterly ignored. These were the last Earl's nephews, the two sons of his half-brother, Sir Thomas (see ante). This Thomas married Joan, variously called Joan de Roddam and Joan de Willoughby, and had by her, 1, Annora, married to Stephen Waleys; 2, Sir Robert (by some authorities called the younger son, as seems most probable); and 3, Sir Thomas, Lord of Harbottle and Otterburn in Northumberland, and Holmside and Whitby in the county of Durham, who served as a knight of the shire for Northumberland in 1388 and 1389, and died in 1390, leaving four daughters, and a son then but twenty-eight weeks old. Sir Gilbert, the son (sometimes styled the Earl of Kyme), married Lady Anne Nevill, daughter of Ralph, first Earl of Westmorland, and was slain in 1421 in the wars of Anjou, leaving no posterity. But he had, as I have already said, four sisters, Elizabeth, Agnes, Joan, and Margaret, all of whom were married (three of them more than once); and there was consequently no lack of co-heiresses. According to Surtees, Sir Robert, their father's brother (who himself succeeded to Harbottle and the Lordship of Redesdale), selected from amongst them the eldest, Elizabeth (or Isabel), then the wife of Rowland Tempest, her second husband, as the heiress of the Durham estates; "by whose goodes, landes, and gyftes," says her grateful descendant, "wee, the Tempests of Holmsett, were first advanced to honest and substantial living in these partes of Duresme."

The above-named Sir Robert, who thus remained the last heir-male, was a Knight of the Garter, and Vice Admiral of England in 1410. Stowe tells us "he brought such plenty of clothes and corn, and other valuable commodities from Scotland, that he was called Robin Mendmarket; other writers say, that he sold the Scots round pennyworths of their own goods, taken in plunder." He married the widow of his uncle and namesake, Earl Gilbert's half-brother, with whom he is often confounded by the genealogists; and like him, is generally reported to have died childless. But a curious and circumstantial pedigree given in Mackenzie's History of Northumberland (vol. ii. p. 367), which I have here followed, asserts that he had a son of the name of William; adding, "It is recorded that, coming with this son to Missenden, in the county of Berks, he became a monk in the monastery there." Unless another grievous wrong was here perpetrated, it is difficult to believe that the son was born in wedlock; for, at his father's death in 1436, the castles and manors of Harbottle and Otterburn passed, by virtue of an entail, to Sir Walter Talboys; and he himself "was left with the Abbot of Missenden." Some property in and near Missenden was, it is further said, for many years held by the family. From this apparently unacknowledged and despoiled William the descent is clearly and minutely made out, though his posterity never emerged from the ranks of the smaller gentry, and gradually sunk lower and lower in the world. One was knighted by Charles II.; another was a captain of dragoons in the Earl of Essex's regiment in the time of Queen Anne; till, towards the latter part of the last century, we find another William Umfreville, the younger and only survivor of three brothers, a chandler in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Neither of the two elder ones left any children; but he had several daughters and one son, born in 1784, who, after his death, were supported by the industry of their widowed mother. The then Duke of Northumberland, hearing that a lineal male descendant of the baronial Umfrevilles was still in existence, sent to Newcastle for the boy, who was then about fourteen, and provided for him in the navy. He served under Lord Exmouth in the East Indies; eventually rose to the rank of a captain; and when placed on half pay, returned to end his days in his native county, and was buried in the tomb of the Umfrevilles in Hexham Church. He was "much regretted by all who knew his open, frank, and generous disposition;" but it must, alas! be added that this last heir to a name of such old renown, who should have taken his place in the House of Lords as Baron Umfreville,^[154] died of hard drinking. He still possessed a sword given by Henry V. to his ancestor the Vice Admiral, which, after Mrs. Umfreville's death, was sent to Alnwick Castle.

There were also Umfrevilles in the West of England, but they bore different arms from the Northumberland family. Gilbert de Humfravilla was one of the twelve knights who helped Robert FitzHamon to conquer Glamorgan; and Robert de Umfraville, in the time of Henry I., witnessed the foundation charter of Neath Abbey (Mon. i. 719). They gave their name to Doun-Umfraville in Devonshire, and were seated at Lepford, a parcel of the Honour of Torrington in that county, which had come to them through one of the co-heiresses of the last Lord of Torrington. I cannot find when they became extinct; but Lysons tells us that their heiresses married Furneaux and St. John.

In Wales the descendants of Gilbert de Umfreville continued at Penmark, the original grant made to him by Robert FitzHamon, till the reign of Edward III.