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THE ANCESTOR
A Quar v and
OSWALD
NUMBER X JULT 1904
NiDON ARCHIB
THE ANCESTOR
A Quarterly Review of County and
Family History, Heraldry
and Antiquities
EDITED BY
OSWALD BARRON F.S.A
NUMBER X JULT 1904
LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
M).IO
THE pages of the ANCESTOR will be open to correspondence dealing with matters within the scope of the review.
Questions will be answered, and advice will be given, as far as may be possible, upon all points relating to the subjects with which the ANCESTOR is concerned.
While the greatest care will be taken of any MSS. which may be submitted for publication, the Editor cannot make him- self responsible for their accidental loss.
All literary communications should be addressed to
THE EDITOR OF THE ANCESTOR, 1 6 JAMES STREET,
HAYMARKET,
LONDON, S.W.
CONTENTS
PACI
THE CARTWRIGHTS i
FOUR ANCIENT WILLS G. H. 13
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS CHARLES E. LART 22
THE CLINTON FAMILY E»UL 32
HERALDS' COLLEGE AND PRESCRIPTION.
W. PALEV BAILDON, F.S.A. 52
AN ANCIENT SCOTTISH SETTLEMENT IN HESSE.
S. H. SCOTT 70
THE TRAFFORD LEGEND J. HORACE ROUND 73
SEALS AND ARMS W. H. B. BIRD 83
FRIAR BRACKLEY'S BOOK OF ARMS 87
THE WANDESFORDES OF KIRKLINGTON 98
THE ORIGIN OF THE COMYNS . . . . J. HORACE ROUND 104
FIFTEENTH CENTURY COSTUME .... THE EDITOR 120
OUR OLDEST FAMILIES: XII. THE GRESLEYS. THE EDITOR 133
WHAT IS BELIEVED 138
OLD CHELSEA 145
THE BUILDERS OF THE NAVY. A GENEALOGY OF THE FAMILY OF PETT. H. FARNHAVI BURKE, C.V.O., Somerset
Herald, and the EDITOR 147
THE FREKE PEDIGREE 179
DEEDS RELATING TO THE FAMILY OF WYDMERPOL
OF WYDMERPOL IN NOTTINGHAMSHIRE . . . . 213
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 221
EDITORIAL NOTES. 228
The Copyright of all the Articles and lUuitratims in thii Review it strictly reserved
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DR. EDMUND CARTWRICHT AND HIS CHILDREN Frontispiece
HUGH CARTWRIGHT OF MALLING Facing page z
THE WIFE OF HUGH CARTWRIGHT OF MALLING ... „ „ 4
SIR HUGH CARTWRIGHT „ „ 6
JOHN BROWNLOW, VISCOUNT TYRCONNEL „ „ 8
WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT OF MARNHAM „ „ 10
SIR BROWNLOW AND LADY SHERARD „ „ 12
CAPTAIN GEORGE CARTWRIGHT ........ „ „ 14.
JOHN WoMBWELL AND HIS FRIENDS IN INDIA .... „ „ 1 6
OLD CHEST OF DRAWERS WITH ARMS OF DABRIDGECOURT
AND CARTWRICHT „ „ 18
ILLUSTRATIONS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY COSTUME ... 7 plates, 120-132
THE CARTWRIGHTS
THE history of the Cartwrights cannot be taken back to the days of the pointed shoe. Square toes and the Tudors were reigning when we hear first of a Hugh Cart- wright who, by his wife Maude Coo, was father of some three or four sons, two of whom at least prospered in the world. William the heir was of Malbeck and Norwell in Nottinghamshire, and as neither his marriage nor his acti- vity was noteworthy, some inheritance must have come to him from his father. Rowland Cartwright, a younger son, is hailed as the founder of the Cheshire Cartwrights, from whom come the Cartwrights of Aynho, opulent squires and great parliament men with manors in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire ; but this descent is wrongly stated, and it seems probable that careless pedigree-makers have tagged the first known ancestor of the Aynho line to the nearest unappro- priated cadet of a county family with a genealogy in the heralds' books.
Of the sons of this Hugh Cartwright, one Edmund Cart- wright, wrought best for the family and its advancement. His wife Agnes is claimed as a daughter of Thomas Cranmer, the squire of Aslacton, whose son Thomas rose to be Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. She is not named in her father's will, but the near kinship of Edmund Cartwright to the Cranmers is made apparent in many ways. When the Arch- bishop had leases from the Crown of certain manors in Kent, West and East Mailing, Ewell and Parrock, and the site of Mailing nunnery, Edmund Cartwright had these long and rich leases from his patron. In Nottinghamshire Edmund bought Ossington, which was to be the chief seat of his branch, a manor near Newark, which had been late of the lands of Newark Priory. With his hands thus full of church lands the squire of Ossington should have earned the church's curse for himself and his line, but the ill-gotten Ossington lands were long handed down by prosperous descendants. He died in the first year of Queen Mary, before my lord
2 THE ANCESTOR
archbishop came to the fire and faggot. His son and heir, Hugh Cartwright of Mailing, married a daughter of Sir John Newton, a lady whose hand he might have demanded with less than the traditional diffidence of the suitor, for she is said to have left no less than sixteen sisters in her father's house. He lived in his Mailing home, and when the Kentish rebels, under Sir Harry Isley and the two Knevetts, were marching to join Wyatt at Rochester, Hugh Cartwright was one of those from Mailing who met them in Wrotham and routed them in the little Kentish battle of Blackesol field.
His nephew, William Cartwright, followed Hugh of Mailing as his heir. This William, who died in 1602, as appears by his tomb at Ossington, married Grace Dabridge- court, a descendant of the knightly house of Aubricicourt, or Dabridgecourt, the Hainaulters whose ancestor Nicholas received Queen Isabel of England and her son Edward when they fled from Paris in 1326. Young Edward the king remembered the kindness to the prince, and the Dabridge- courts prospered under him. The stall plate of Sir Sanchet Dabridgecourt, a founder of the Order of the Garter, still remains in St. George's Chapel, enamelled in its colours. Sir John, another Dabridgecourt came to be honoured in the same order, and Froissart has much to tell of the deeds of Sir Eustace Dabridgecourt, who was struck to the ground at Poitiers, and taken by five German men-at-arms to be tied ignominiously to a cart until his own men rescued and re- mounted him. From this house descended a family of mid- land gentry, and Grace, the wife of William Cartwright, was daughter of Thomas Dabridgecourt, of Longdon Hall in Warwickshire. The shields of husband and wife may be seen painted on the doors of the curious chest of drawers still in the possession of their descendant, Mr. George Cartwright.
These Cartwrights of Ossington threw themselves in the civil war and spent themselves for the king. Ossington Hall went to ruin in these troubles, and William Cartwright of Ossington, the head of the branch, was amongst those who must needs compound for their estates with the committee of the parliament in 1646. He is described as of Ossington in Nottinghamshire, and of Stoke Lacy and Mintridge in Herefordshire, and pleaded that he had been in arms in 1643, but not afterwards. In that year also came Sir Hugh Cart- wright of Southwell, and Hugh his son, to compound. These
HUGH CARTWRIOHT OF MALLING.
THE CARTWRIGHTS 3
two cadets of the house had been at the taking of Newark. Before Pontefract fell, Sir Hugh and his son were excepted as dangerous malignants from the mercy offered the garrison, and Sir Hugh's life was saved by his suffering himself to be bricked up by his friends in a hiding hole with a month's meat and drink. John Cartwright of Wheatley, who was probably a younger brother of William, was another com- pounder, confessing ' delinquency in arms.' He made his peace, taking the Covenant and the Negative Oath in this same year. Another kinsman, Lieutenant-Colonel George Cartwright, who had a pass to go beyond sea in 1645, may have been the Colonel Cartwright of whose ill-treatment Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson makes her complaint.
Side by side with the Ossington branch the elder line of Cartwright survived, descendants of William, the eldest son of the founder of the house. That the two branches held together is shown by more than one marriage of kinsfolk. William Cartwright of Norwell married a daughter of Rey- nold Peckham of Wrotham, by a daughter of the first Ossing- ton Cartwright, and his grandson, another William, who built a new house of brick and stone at Normanton, married his cousin Christian, daughter of Sir Hugh Cartwright the cavalier. This William is said to have been himself a cava- lier in arms, but he begot a son, again a William, who left the Stuart cause and served as a captain in Ireland in the regiment which the Earl of Kingston led for King William of Orange. He died in this campaign, not by the sword, but by small-pox, and was buried at Belfast. John Evelyn, in his diary, names him as a Nottinghamshire man, who persuaded the council of state to send a letter of amnesty to the New England colonists, who were even then in a ' peevish and touchy humour.' His son's marriage with Rebecca, daughter and heir of Edmund Nicholson, squire of Marnham, made Marnham the chief seat of his family. Elizabeth, youngest daughter of William and Rebecca, married Sir John Brownlow, K.B., Viscount Tyrconnel. William Cartwright of Marnham, high sheriff of Notting- hamshire in 1742, brought both lines of the family together by marrying his distant cousin, Anne Cartwright, daughter and heir of George Cartwright of Ossington.
The marriage of cousins is held to beget weaklings, but the children of these cousins defied the rule by growing up
4 THE ANCESTOR
as a nest of celebrities. It is not demanded of a squire's son and heir that he should be famous, and William the son and heir is only a name in the pedigree, with more than a sus- picion of extravagance and loose living clinging about his memory. Charles Cartwright, the youngest of the five sons, entered the navy, and with a lieutenant's command took a West African Dutch fort. But he left the navy too soon to take part in the great sea epic of his later days, and died at home with nothing more than lieutenant for his tombstone.
The second brother advanced but to a captain's rank in the army, but fame came to him with a surname. He is Labra- dor Cartwright. Born at Marnham in 1739, ' a Pair °^ colours,' as the saying of his day went, was procured him, and he sailed to the East Indies, coming back in 1757 as ensign of the 39th. He went to the German wars in 1758 and 1759 as aide-de-camp to that popular hero, Marquess of Granby. As a captain of a company of the 37th he was sent back to England from Minorca in failing health, and from this time he gave himself to sport and travel. The young officer, whose health would not allow him to stay with his regiment, hardened into a mighty hunter, who spent sixteen years trapping and exploring amongst the snows of Labrador, to which coast he made five voyages, and lived to hearty old age, dying at Mansfield in 1819.
From one of his voyages he brought home five Innuits of Labrador, whose arrival in eighteenth century London was more than a nine days' wonder. The life of the Innuits inspired half Grub Street to tales of the frozen lands, and doubtless even good Mr. Barlow's anecdotes of Esqui- maux life and the social moral to be drawn from it came to Master Sandford and Master Merton at secondhand from Captain Cartwright.
Like a good son of the house, Captain Cartwright first delighted the home at Marnham with his Innuits. In a little diary book in faded red morocco with silver clasps his sister Catherine tells the story of the Innuit invasion. Under the date of 1 6 April 1770 ' my brother George left Marnham after breakfast to go upon his Labrador scheme.' On 13 De- cember 1772 brother George landed at Gravesend from Cape Charles in Labrador, bringing with him five fur-clad visitors. These were Ittuiack, aged forty, and Econgoke his wife, aged twenty-four, with Ikkyana their daughter, whose years were
THE WIFE OF HUGH CARTWRIGHT OF MALLINU.
"593-
THE CARTWRIGHTS 5
two, Tooklavvinia, aged nineteen, brother of Ittuiack, and Cauboic his wife, aged seventeen. On a never-to-be-forgotten 1 8 March ' my brother George came to Marnham with his five Indians in their proper habits, which are very curious and ingeniously form'd and ornamented with bead. All the Indians have bright black eyes and dark complexions. Cau- boic is very handsome, has a regular face with an uncommon degree of sense, sweetness, sprightliness and sensibility in her countenance, and of ease and gentility in all her actions and notions.'
The party stayed at Marnham until 9 April, when they departed ' with mutual regret.' The kindly spinster sister at home took the whole party to her heart, and although she came at the last to admit that the natures of Ittuiack and Tooklavvinia were rude, and that Econgoke was something wanting in the esteemed quality of ' gentility,' her affection for the beautiful Cauboic never failed, and it is evident that only the constraints of genteel language keep her from describing brown baby Ikkyana as a duck. ' For Cauboic,' says Miss Catherine Cartwright, ' I conceived such a love and friendship as I am convinced neither time or ab- sence can ever efface.'
Two post-chaises carried Captain Cartwright and his friends to London, where the town seized upon them. King George received them at his Court of St. James's, and the sights of the town were at their feet. Five wondering Innuits walked with Captain Cartwright amongst the fiddlers and coloured lamps of Ranelagh, the crowd in its floured wigs and hooped petticoats pressing with giggling amazement upon these beings so strangely clad in deerskin coats and moccassins. They must have supped in one of the arbours on the famous Ranelagh punch and the transparent slices of ham, for they stayed until half past eleven at night, by which hour we may hope that Ikkyana was asleep in somebody's arms.
On 4 May they embarked in the Thames on a ship named, after Captain George's aunt, the Lady Tyrconnell, and began coasting towards the west, whence bad news comes to Marn- ham to be recorded in the red leather diary with the silver clasps. The London crowd of the eighteenth century might not be mingled with without risk, and off Lymington or Weymouth the beautiful Cauboic sickened of a fever. Small-
6 THE ANCESTOR
pox declared itself, and Econgoke was the next to take the disease. With putrid fever and small-pox aboard, the Lady Tyrconnell became foul as a plague pit, and her crew were fain to run for Plymouth, where ' Ikkyana, that sweetest of babes, resigned her innocent soul.' The baby was buried in the sand of ' thafrneckof land which helps to form the harbour of Catwater. She was in her sealskin dress, wrapped up in a deerskin, and had all her cloaths, beads and ornaments, sewing implements and a knife and spoon inter'd with her.' After her death her father and mother lost hold on life. Econgoke died. Miss Cartwright, when the news came, ' wished her well, but could not love her.' Ittuiack died, and within half an hour of him, Tooklawinia.
Captain George had been summoned to London by urgent affairs, and hurried back fearful of news of Cauboic, but the news was good. As he came before the house Cau- boic's window was open and the curtain drawn. In our grandfather's time the physician boxed the sick man in his room to struggle with the pestilence behind closed doors and sealed windows. The open window told the captain that all was over for good or ill, and in another minute he was wished joy of the recovery of his daughter, ' for so he calls that amiable Innuit.'
The deaths of all her folk had next to be broken to Cau- boic, and George, who was setting about it with an anxious mind, found that Cauboic bore the news with calmness. ' That amiable Innuit ' confessed to him that ' she hated them all excepting the child,' and begged to be allowed to live with him. Once again in the open air of Plymouth she mended fast, and Miss Cartwright, far away at Marnham, records thankfully how she had eaten in the morning a whole chicken roasted with pease, and was to eat another in broth before night.
Captain George stayed at her side, and brought amuse- ments to divert her. A fiddler played by her bed, and on one memorable day her guardian ' obtain'd the Old Buffs' band of music, consisting of nine hands, with which she was so delighted that she kept the band for twelve hours, and never shed another tear for her relations.'
The Lady Tyrconnell was cleansed and re-manned, the voyage was taken up again, and before the end of August the captain and his adopted daughter were landed at Cape
SIR MUCH CAR i AVRICHT, THK CAVAI.IKR, D. 1668.
THE CARTWRIGHTS 7
Charles, where they were well received by Cauboic's people, who, listening to her tale, forbore to lay the deaths of their kinsfolk at the captain's door. It was probably not long before the wildest beliefs concerning Ranelagh and its coloured lamps had passed into the tribal lore of the Innuits.
Southey's fat Commonplace Book gives us a picture of Captain George Cartwright eighteen years later. He was then a guest at the house of his brother-in-law Hodges, and the amazing appetite of the man kept the eyes of the young Southey upon him. With this mighty hunter the phrase of a hunter's hunger was indeed justified. The footman, who knew his manner of life, carved for him at the sideboard a plate of beef piled so high that Southey believed it a lackey's insult to a stranger, but the plate returned empty to the joint not once or twice. Satisfied at last, the captain ad- mitted that he was an earnest trencherman, and boasted that a leg of mutton was with him an affair of but two slices, the first slice taking one side away, and the other clearing the bone. Before he left in the morning he ate a breakfast with three cucumbers and much bread and cheese in it, and Southey thought he had never before met so extraordinary a man. Few of us to-day have read George Cartwright's Journal of Transactions and Events during a Residence of nearly Sixteen Tears on the Coast of Labrador (three volumes quarto, 1793), but Southey read them with delight : —
The annals of his campaigns amongst the foxes and beavers interested me more than ever did the exploits of Marlboro' and Frederic ; besides, I saw plain truth and the heart in Cartwright's book, and in what history could I look for them ?
The third son of the Marnham family was John Cart- wright of Wyberton, born in 1740. This was the ' Major Cartwright ' the reformer, very famous in his day and accursed of his brother squires. He began life in the navy, and saw servrce under Lord Howe, was first lieutenant of the Guernsey in 1766, and explored part of Newfoundland. The restless spirit of his brothers was upon him in good measure, and his popularity in the navy may have suffered through his being one of the first Englishmen to take up the cry of ' efficiency.' Towards efficiency he himself contri- buted improvements in the gun exercise, but by 1775 he was ashore and addressing a letter to Edmund Burke, Esquire,
8 THE ANCESTOR
' controverting the principles of American Government laid down in his lately published tract.' If his ancestor were in- deed that Cartwright who, in 1671, was asking justice and consideration for the claims of the American colonists, we must recall this when we learn that John Cartwright left the navy and all hope of advancement in 1777 rather than join Lord Howe's new command on the American station. As a naval officer ashore he had busied himself in the Notts militia, and by his militia majority he was henceforward to be known, even after his commission had been taken from him by reason of a public meeting in which he had cheered for the fall of the Bastille.
The busy life was before this sailor ashore, this major from the sea. At once he thrust both hands into politics, and the descendant on both sides of a line of squires declared boldly for the people. He was the father of reform, and more than two generations before the coming of the Chartists he was fighting in and out of season for annual parliaments, universal suffrage and the ballot, demands which, to the ears of most of his astonished class, must have sounded as the blasphemings of the restless pit.
In those anxious times when a troubled government was wont to see Armageddon and red revolution awaiting it round the very next corner, it is at least remarkable that the major came so safely away from his political adventures, but the hemp was never heckled for him, and the loss of his militia commission and a hundred pound fine for sedition were the worst that he came by.
Politics were not enough to fill his life with. He made experiments in husbandry on his Lincolnshire lands, he fought against slavery with Clarkson and Granville Sharp, and when his old calling of the navy was to be honoured with a public monument by a people in high delight over Nelson's doings at sea, this handy sailor man was ready with marvellous designs for a Hieronauticon or Naval Temple, which came to a quarto volume, but never rose in stone and bronze.
In this red radical our little Englanders can have no pleasure, for he was full of schemes for the better defence of England and her coasts. He had good counsel for the Spanish patriots, and Greeks were helped with his money and with tracts on the proper use of the pike when bayonets may not be obtained.
JOHN UROWNLOW, VISCOUNT TYKOINNKI., D. 1754.
HUSBAND OK ELIZAUETH CAKTWKIGHT.
THE CARTWRIGHTS 9
He wrote eighty political tracts, and saved four lives from drowning. He was a generous soul, a dull and troublesome writer and orator. Mr. Francis Place did not love the major, but others found him a cheerful man and good companion. He died in Burton Crescent, where now his grimy monument looks upon the windows of that encampment of paying guests.
The major's next brother was Edmund Cartwright, born in 1743. Something in the Treasury had been found for the eldest son during his father's lifetime. Two of the squire's sons had been given to the navy and one to the army ; the career, therefore, of Edmund Cartwright was clear before him. It is superfluous to add that it led to a rectory. But the soldier had taken to radical politics, the surviving sailor to fur-trapping, the Treasury clerk to the Bad, and it was written that Edmund Cartwright should not find his way to the Biographical Dictionary by his divinity. To the mind of the young Edmund it was literature which should lead him towards posthumous fame, and his Armine and Elvira, a Legendary Poem, was long admired in his family, and was well received by that eighteenth century so easily pleased, so artless in its literary pleasures. The twentieth century writer, in the moments when ' the ink and the anguish start,' may look back with an unfeigned regret to the day in which a Hermit, a Pilgrim, and their encounter by a Mossy Cell would furnish all that the public at its Chippendale reading- desk would look for in a polite author. A hermit was not lacking in Armine and Elvira. Rage, Despair, Pity, Distrac- tion, Friendship and Grief, and other abstractions with capital letters, were pleasantly met in the underwoods of the quatrains, and the whole poem, as an admiring daughter most justly observes, is of the ' refined and classic school.'
The rectory was not too long delayed, the living of Goadby Marwood coming to Mr. Edmund in 1779, a rectory with a glebe upon which the rector fell at once to work with experiments in agriculture. The author of Armine and Elvira could never degenerate to the life of Parson Trulliber, but he became a keen and successful farmer, who brought his active Cartwright brains to the toil with an originality which is politely lacking in his gentle verses. A farmer he might have stayed, if aught might be safely predicted of one of these restless brothers, had it not been for a holiday visit to Mat- lock in Derbyshire. From Matlock he went with a party,
io THE ANCESTOR
Manchester spinners amongst them, to see Arkwright's cotton mills at Cromford. The talk amongst the Manchester men was of the weaving trade going abroad to German cheap labour, and the poet, eager as a Pepys after a new fact, flashed out with the fancy that machines must come to the help of England, and maintained the possibility of such machinery to the contempt of practical Manchester, with a tale of the wonderful movements of the Automatic Chess Player which had been shown in London.
Home again at the rectory, he walked his study hour by hour before his delighted children imitating with his hand the cast of the shuttle. Before he had even seen a handloom this wonderful man had framed a clumsy power loom, and his earlier patents were taken out in 1785, 1786, and 1787. The poet, the rector, and the farmer turned weaver, and set up a factory in Doncaster with the first power looms by which wide cloth was ever woven for practical purposes. His wool-combing machine of 1789, in its crudest form, did the work of twenty men, with the result that fifty thousand wool- combers cried aloud to Parliament for the restraint of the rector of Goadby Marwood. ' My father,' says his daughter in her diary, about this time was so absorbed by his machinery that he instituted processions in honour of Bishop Blaise, the patron of woolcombing, which we young people dis- liked as being a -popish ceremony unbecoming bis clerical pro- fession? By 1793 he had come by the fate of the inventor who invents for the generations after him. Thirty thousand pounds of the Cartwright money was sunk in machinery and patents which yielded no return. Giving up the works to his creditors, and his patents to his brothers, he left invention and imagination and fell back upon his poetry, consoling himself with a sonnet on his ill fortune. He came to try his fortune in London, where, the itch of invention taking him anew, he built a house with his own patent geometrical bricks, patented an alcohol engine, and experimented with the application of steam to navigation. In intervals of leisure he invented a reaping machine, wrote a prize essay on husbandry, and became manager of the Duke of Bedford's experimental farm at Woburn.
Now and again he was reminded of his orders. Lincoln made the maker of the power loom a prebendary, and Oxford in 1806 gave the degree of Doctor of Divinity to the patentee
\VII.I.IA.M CARTWRIGHT OK MAKMIA.M, u. i/.(
THE CARTWRIGHTS n
of the geometrical brick. He lived to see the power loom making wealth for others, and to define a patent as ' a feeble protection against the rapacity, piracy and theft of too many of the manufacturing class.' Parliament in 1809 gave £10,000 to the man who had shown the way to the northern million- aires, and the Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright took the sum like a philosopher and bought a farm in Kent with it. His active and, one must believe, his happy life was lived out busily to the end. Little there was in nature that he did not finger. In his parish he practised medicine, and ' exhibited ' yeast in a case of putrid fever with a recorded success. In his eighty- third year he offered the Royal Society a theory of the move- ment of planets round the sun. The year before his death, in 1823, he was at Dover for warm bathing in sea-water, and though old and ill he must needs teach his bathing man a method of filling his cistern by an application of power.
He was the only one of the brothers to carry on the family.1 The next generation was a less strenuous one, but it pro- duced the Reverend Edmund Cartwright, F.S.A., a topo- grapher and county historian who in 1830, with the aid of his friend the Duke of Norfolk, made a respectable continu- ation to Dallaway's History of Sussex. He married twice, his first wife being one who, had she borne children, would have brought a curious strain of blood to the family. She was the daughter of John Wombwell, apparently a cousin german of the first baronet of that name, by a lady who is styled in the family records a Persian princess. The child of this union was married to Mr. Cartwright in 1795 at St. George's, Hanover Square, and died in February of the next year, being then but a child of sixteen years.
Of the daughters of the inventor one lived with her uncle, the reforming major, and wrote his life. Another wrote a memoir of her father. A third daughter was Elizabeth, who married in 1814 the Reverend John Penrose, a Bampton lecturer, and dying in 1837 was buried in Lincoln Cathedral. Few will recognize from this description one of the most
1 Our family picture of Cartwright and his children is thus described in his daughter's notes for 1786 — 'In this year my brother and sisters and myself all met together at Doncaster and had our picture taken by Mr. Hawes. We are represented sitting under the great mulberry tree at Mirfield Hall, my father standing behind and looking at us with a pensive expression of countenance well suited to his widowed situation.'
12 THE ANCESTOR
famous of our countrywomen, one whose work three gener- ations of English children have thumbed. For Elizabeth Cartwright, Mrs. John Penrose, was no other than the MRS. MARKHAM of our childhood, MRS. MARKHAM of the history- book.
Let us laugh indulgently as we remember the conversation of Richard and George, of their sister and their mamma. Before the day of Mrs. Markham the history of our country was administered to the young from the ponderous inaccura- cies of Rapin, the dulness of Goldsmith's unwelcome task. From Mrs. Markham in her later form, made glorious with charging knights and battling archers ' from an old MS.,' many a child has persuaded himself to grow up a man to whom the history of the English and the mystery of old and far-off days are not things which may be lightly cast into that calm limbo where rest for the most of us the irregularities of the Greek verb.
There are school room histories nowadays which even in the matter of the pictures in the margin drive poor Mrs. Markham from her pride of place, and much of her chronicle was the Berlin woolwork of history, now sadly faded. But from 1823 to 1880, at the least, all young England learned history at Mrs. Markham's knee. Little Arthur was her wash-pot, over Mrs. Mangnall she cast forth her shoe, and, be it said to her credit, her steady popularity saved a gener- ation of us from the rant of that Child's History of England, in which a great man went so deplorably beyond his last.
The year 1904 has seen an attempt to give his due measure of fame to one of this family of Cartwright. Bradford and Lord Masham have raised the Cartwright memorial hall in honour of the name of Edmund Cartwright, upon whose labours the town's prosperity rests. Lord Masham, in reproaching his countrymen with having so easily forgotten Edmund Cartwright, did not hesitate to call him the greatest of English inventors, beside whose achieve- ments those of Stephenson and Watt suffer in comparison. This article will have served its purpose in showing that so famous a man was English in blood and nurture.
O. B.
LAUY SHERARU.
SIR BROWNLOW SHERARD.
FOUR ANCIENT ENGLISH WILLS
IN the Ancestor (v. 159) will be found transcripts of the first ten wills written in English in the registers of the Arch- deaconry of London. The four wills which follow are taken, two from the Commissary Court of London and two from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. When the wills published by the Early English Text Society are reckoned with it will probably be found that all English wills made before 1410 and now in London are in print.
I. THE WILL OF ROBERT BARAN '
In the name of god Almythty in Trinite Amen I Robert Baran in good mynd and memorie I make myn testament in this maner In the ferst begynnyng I be quethe myn soule to almyghty god in Trinite and to hys blyssyd moder holy made Marie and to alle the holy compayne of hevene Also I be quethe myn body to be beryed in the church of Bethlem befor the cros in the body of the church Also I be quethe to the heye auter xld Also to the church pavyng xld Also I be quethe to the prest that shall berye me xld Also I be quethe to the ordre of the qwhyte frers of london Xs Also I bequeth to the ordre of the Augustin x* to preye for me Also I bequethe to Syr Thomas Grene prest x1 Also to Sire Thomas Riedle xld to preyn for me Also I be quethe to Annes Nok myn servaunt a coffre wyth a lok and a keye Also I be queth to the fornseyd Anneys a bed of suych as Hawys my wyf wyll ordeyne for here. Also I bequethe to John Baran sadyller the best goune and the hood that I have. Also I bequeth to Robert cordwayner dwellyng wyth inne bysschopsgate a goune and a hood to preye for me Also I bequeth to Hawys myn wyff the place that is ours wyth inne Bethelemthewhyche place wewonynin wt. all portenance and the termes of Wynter and other covenantz as oure dedes makyn mencioun and sche to yeven and to sellen and to do what sche wolle al the fornsayde terme Also I wyll that the fornsayde Hawys have the place wyth all the portenans that sire Hugh dwellit in the persone be hire live and the termes as myn dedes
1 Commissary Court of London. 463 Courtney.
13 D
14 THE ANCESTOR
specifien Also evermore I be queth to Hawys myn wyf and assigne to have myn new place wt the aportenans that I have do made in Bethelem be twyxen the kychan and the gardyn the forsed Hawes to have and to holden al be hyr live tyme and oure termes as oure dedes maken mencioun and in cas that the forsede Hawys deye bynne the terme I wyll that the forsede place torne sir Nicholl myn cosyn and evermore yef it so be that Sir Nicholl deye bynne the terme I wil that the fornseyd place wyth alle the portenans torne to Anneys Nook myn servant and yef it so be that Anneys deye bynn the terme I wyll that it torne to John Baran myn cosyn tailor of London Also I be queth to Hawys myn wyff all myn neces- saries that arn in myn place be hyr live as of masiers pecys spounes naperis bakclothis bedclothis and all other divers necessaries that arn in houshold and after her disses sche to sellen hem and to do for oure soules Also overmore I for- seyde Robert Baran I have ordeyned and made and i wreten here in myn testament myn executour Hawys myn wyff and sir Nichol Byschop myn cosyn and nalych Hawys myn wyf to be myn principalle executor sche to do for me Als she wold that I dede for hyr and overmore myn wyl is that sir Thomas Grene be an overseer by myn goodes so that myn godes be yovyn and dispendid as I have ordeyned an wrytyn in this fornseyd testament in wytnes of wych thing I Robert Baran have set myn seel wretyn and yoven atte Londene as the xvij dey of Juin the yer of the incarnacion of our Lord Jeshu Crist mlcccc wytnesyng sir Thomas Redele and sir Thomas Grene prest Richard Spencer and William Lylbech and Nicholas of Norfolk
Proved 3 November, 1400.
II. THE WILL OF JOHN RYNGFELD.*
In the name of god amen the vjte day of the monthe of August In the yere of oure lord a ml cccc xxxix I John Ryng- feld citezin and drapor of London beyng in good and hool mynde make ordeyne and dispose this present testament aftir my last wille in this maner of wise First I betake my soule to almyghty god my worth! creature and maker to his blessed modir mary vurgyn and to all the holy company of hevyn And my body to be beryed in the church by the north est
1 Comm Court of London. 28 Prctcef.
CAPTAIN GEORGE CARIAVRIOHI.
" I ABHADOK CARTWR1GHT."
FOUR ANCIENT ENGLISH WILLS 15
piler of the stepil in seint Michell of Cornhull in london And on the same piler over me I wol have a table peynted with an image w' a similitude of a risyng of the dome l havynge iij rolles in the right and writen ther yn Mercyful lord over al tbynge For mercy and grace to the I calle for thejoye that ever is lastynge lord fro dampnacion save us all And in the lift hand Godefrendes of me taketh bede prent in youre hertes in speciall In the ertbe here am I leyde wormy s to ete thus shall ye all And over the heed For Jb's love that died for yow and me belpetb the soule of John Ryngfeld with a pater noster and an ave and a ston upon me w' my mark and theron writte declina a malo etfac bonum I bequethe to the high auter iijs iiijd Item I bequethe for the table and for the stoon xxvjs viijd Item for lying in the church vjs viijd Item I beqwethe to the church vj newe torchis everych of xvij" Item ij tapres I bequethe everych of xiiijlb And ij° of the torchis I bequethe to Markyatte nonnery beside seynt Albons in the worship of the Trinite and an other torch to the praye that is a nonry beside and irs iiijd of money to the laumpe of the same church and vj* viijd for selynge of her parlour And that the seid nonnes sette me in here marcilage to pray for me perpetuall Also I woll that the pore men of the parissh atte the service tyme hold my torchis Item bequeth every of hem iiijd and her mete for her labour Also and I have seynt Michell candelstykkes and tapres to stonde beside the cors and I be fette to church with here torches they shul have vj5 viijd Also I beqwethe for the torchis of oure lady and of seynt Anne to brynge me to church xld and to pray for me Item I bequeth to the fyndyng of a laumpe brennyng atte Markayate to fore the Trinite xlvj' viijd and that laumpe to be found still as longe as the seid money lastith undir this condicion that the seid covent have a laumpe in here dortor al the wynter nyghtes of the seid cost and that my name be sette in here martilage and I for to have the a dirige and a masse on the inorow and so to be prayed for per- petuall to the which light a barell of oill of iiij galons wol serve it a yere And I beqweth to the prestes there xxd and to my sistur xxd and every nonne of the same hous xijd aftir my decesse that I am past hens and that I have there a dirige and a masse Also whanne that ye se that I shal nedely passe lete be done for me a Tretall of massis by my life dayes and lete me
1 A picture of the resurrection of the dead is here described. The rolls are the scrolls bearing the legend.
1 6 THE ANCESTOR
have a pryve dirige by my life that I may her hit and yeve x* of money to pore folk of the parissh to pray for me and let hem be atte the dirige and eerie of hem sey oure lady sawter And I bequethe every preste ijd and every clerk ijd that is atte this servys thus doon and affir that they have bredde and drynke whanne dirige is doon And aftir that my soule and my body be departed I charge yow myn executours that it be kept w' v pore folk men and women and eche of hem to have ijd and here mete and they sey oure lady sawter Item that I have vij tapres eche of half a Ib and iiijor of hem lete brenne abowte me til that I be bore to church And thenne take the iij hole tapres and bere hem unto the iij upper Auters in my parissh churche And the other iiij tapres that are brent be sette upon the iiijor lower Auters And thanne forthw' a dirige by note and xiij massis on the morow and xiij pore men and women with here children to here the service ther of And they to sey oure lady sawter Item I bequethe to the person for sey ing and syngynge atte my dirige viijd Also to every prest doynge the holy service for me with massis and all iiijd And every pore man and woman a jd and here mete in the parissh Also whenne the cors is leid in the erthe that all the prestes assoille the body undir here seele Also I wol have every day this monyth folowyng iij massis of the Trinite of our lady and of the holy gost and iij pore men and women to here tho massis seying oure lady sawter And every prest shal have jd And every pore man jd Also I wol that every day in thik month the vij tapres brenne atte messe tyme in the worshipe of the sacrament And that the prey for me by name And that the tapres be renewed til the month be endet And atte ye month is ende I wol have xiij masses and xiij pore men and women seying oure lady sawter And I woll that every prest have jd And every pore man and woman of hem a jd and a lowe dirige And every prest therat ijd And so every monthes ende duryng xij month sewynge xiij masses and xiij pore men and women seying oure lady sawter and every prest a jd And every pore man and woman a jd Also more over it is my ful will and I wol have yerely every xij monthis ende a messe of requiem and a lowe dirige withoutenote and xiij pore men and women heryng the servys of the parissh seyng oure lady sawter havynge bredde and ale as the maner is til the summe of xli be spent for my soule and the soules of
FOUR ANCIENT ENGLISH WILLS 17
my fadir and modir and of trew cristen peple and al my gode doers that I have ferd the better fore And that this be contynued til this seid x" be fully spent and more over if god sent it yow Item I bequethe to the almes of pore peple vij1' of money this viju to be fully spent in this maner use that ye hire an hors and ley ther in xiij quartres of coles and a m1 of bilet and dispose 'it thus to pore folk yef ther of litel and litel to pore folk. They that have wife and children delyvre hem ij busshels and xx" billetes And they that have no children a busshell and x billettes And al one man or al one woman half a busshell and v billettes and let hem be refresshed often sithes to the somme yerely of xvijs vjd and more over if god send it til the somme of vij1' be fully spent and more and god sent it yow Item I bequethe iiij ridelles to the iiij lowe auters with wepyng eyen with this poysy writen ther upon Declina a malo et fac bonum Also I bequethe to Anneys my wife in money xu and the bedde that I lye in and al that perteyneth to the seid bedde Also a coverlit and a testre of tapicers werk that sumtyme was Danyells and half a doz of peuter vessell that is to wete yj platers and vj saucers and al burdcloth and a towell of diaprewerk and ij paire shetes Item a basyn and a laver countrefait Item a grene gown furred with libbards and a medley gowne furred w' bevir and othir and a ridyng of medley Item I bequeth unto my sister a maser with a beryng bonde with a p'nt a mydds of silver and overgilt Item and iij silver sponys marked with ermyn tailles and a basyn and a laver and every yere an noble whil she lyveth to pray for me and al cristen Also I bequethe to the same to the sams hous of nonnes of Mergate other iij silver sponys to the use of the covent perpetuall to prye for me and all cristen Item I bequethe to Jonet Fuller my servant xiiis viijd Item I bequeth to Robert Tharcot my servant that was xiijs iiijd To Gillion on London brigge yj9 viijd Item to Thomas Brambill vjs viijd Item I bequethe unto Symkyn Gold and his wife a coverlite of tapiceys werk w' a lyon and lebard and I bequethe to the same Symkyn an harnysshed gurdill with a blakke cors y harnesshed rounde a bowte Also I forgife William Smyth my prentys of his termes an yere and an half so that he truly labor to gete in my dettes to the executours and that he be undir governance of Clement Liffyn duryng the said termys. And I bequethe to the same William Smyth whan his termes be come up xls Also I
1 8 THE ANCESTOR
relesse of certeyn sommes of money that is owed of sondry persons of detters Furst I relesce unto John Walron of the somme of xxvj1' vjs viijd I forgife hym vi" vis viijd so that he pay xxn every weke xijd and atte the quarter ende xs wikely and quarterly til xx1' be ml paied Item I forgif John Mark of xx1' v1' the seid John to paye xv1' to myn executours withynne the quarter folowynge aftir my decesse Item I forgive the same mark of an obligacion that Adrian Grove and he is bounde to me in of xij1' of sterling xls to be paied in the forme aforesaid Item I forgife John Everard al that he oweth me Item to John Lord I forgife xs of Caunterbury Item Middilton gentilman of Feversham I forgife him al his dette to me ward unto xxs Item William Covinton of Feversham I forgife him xxxv1' every peny Item Gors of the Kynges benche I forgife hym of xiij1' vjs viijd in to vij1' vjs viijd Item John Everton undirporter of the Tour I forgife hym xis Item John Hill of Maideston 1 foryife him all his dette Item John Costantyn sherman I forgife xliiij5 Thomas Scotte draper of xij1' that he oweth me I foryeve hym unto iiij1' Richard Shudd draper I forgife him al his dette Thomas Hamond of Caleys of ix1' xiij5 iiijd that he oweth me I forgeve him unto v1' Item William Dormyk of Caleys oweth me vjs viiid I foryeve hit him Item Hwe servant of the Staple I foryeve hym all his dette Item Downe draper I forgife hym al his dette Item Nicholas Mondy I foryeve hym that he oweth me unto xx1' And therof I yeve hym this ij° yere day of payment aftir my decesse to paye myn Executours and that he be delyvered out of prisoun Also I gife Wynter of Caun- terbury my best harnesshed girdell with a blew cors Of this present testament I make overseer William Parker draper And myn executours I make Clement Lyfyn draper and William Reresby draper And I gef either of hem for her labour iiij nobles every of hem iij to their part Also I gyf my fadir an hanger harnesshed with silver Item I gife my modir the best pece of lynnyn cloth that I have over that that beleveth over my wyndyng cloth The residue of my godes noght bequoth aftir that the will of my testament be fulfilled and my dettes paid I wol that hit be disposed for my soule and al cristen aftir the will of myn exec In witnes herof I putte to my seel And the gode that be sette to my wife I wol that hir fadir have it in governaunce Also I wol that Richard Shudd draper have al his gere ayeyn that he toke me in
X
E <
2 ;
II si
CJ
FOUR ANCIENT ENGLISH WILLS 19
plegge and that he pray for me I writen and made the yere and the day afore rehersed
Proved [no date given]. This will was afterwards declared void, and its registration was cancelled.
III. THE WILL OF SIR THOMAS LATYMER, KNIGHT *
In the name of God amen The xiij day of Septembre in the yeer of our Lord m°cccc and on I Thomas Latymere of Braybrok a fals knyt to God 8 thankyng God of hys mercy havynghe siche mynde as he vouchit saff desyryngge that Goddes wyl be fulfillyd in me and in alle godys that he hath taken me to kepe ant to thaat make I my testament in this maner Furst I knowlyche on worthy to bequethyn to hym any thhyngge of my power and therfore i preye to hym mekely of hys grace that he wole take so pore a present as my wrecchud soule ys in to hys mercy thorw the besechyngeof his blyssyd modyr and hys holy seyntys and my wruchud body to be buryid were that evere i dye in the nexte chirche yerd God vouchesaff and naut in the churche but in the uttereste corner as he that ys unworthi to lyn therinne save the mercy of God and that ther be non maner of cost don aboute my biryngge neyther in mete nether in dryngg non in no other thynge but yt be to any swych on that nedyth it after the lawe of God save twey taperc of wex and anon as i be ded thud me in the erthe Also my wull ys pryncipaliche that my dedtes be payed that ys to seye thre maner of dettes the furste dette ys that i have borwyd of anyman or bout of any man or taken of any man and not payed therfore thys dette my wille ys to be payed furst the secunde dette ys to paye my servauntes here hyr that serven me or han servyd me and over that they be rewardyd by good discrecion be the oversite of Anne Latymer my wyve and Sire Lowes Clyffbrd and after the con- dicions that they standyn inne that ys to se afater the lengthe in ther servyce and after the bysynesse and the sor travayle and after that they han ben rewardyd more or lesse and also as they ben straunge or han fewe frendys or havyngge syknesse or elde or other poverte and most special as they ben of condicion and nedy and also havyng reward to the quantyte of the goodes that leve behynde me the thrydde ys to my
1 P.C.C. 2 Marche.
8 The pious clauses of this will have their own interest, seeing that Sir Thomas was suspect of Lollardy.
20 THE ANCESTOR
tenauntes of thys condition that yyff any tenaunt of myn that hatt payed me ony sylver be it freyngge of her bodies or of here children or dowtris leve to wedde or sones to ben prestys or any man that hath made fyn for hous or lond or any other swych yyff they be lettyd thorw Edward my brother or oni other that ys myn eyr after me i wul thanne that the reversion of Caldensland and the reversion that was Jons of Trafford be solde be Anne mi wyfe and restitucion be mad to the seyd men or wymmen Also my wille is thys that yyff ther be ani tenaunt man or woman longynge to lorschipe the qwhech i schuld have be servant to that been poor and feble por and blynde por and crokyd thanne after her nede and after the quantite of godis and after here condicion than be discrecion of the forsayde Anne and Lowes that they be reward and ferthermore it is mi wille that alle the londes that holde in fe symple ether be heritage or be purchas in fee or in reversion that is in feffies handis after mi decces that they feffe Anne mi wyf in that forseyd londes the terme of hir life And yiff it so be that Edward Latimer mi brother wul holde the covenauntes that he hat behight to me that is to seye that enpeche not Anne Latimer mi wyff of the Castell of Braybrok ne of the maner wyth londes rentis avuouesons of chirche and chapel and the Westhalle fee with alle other purchases and alle the portynaunce w hem but lete hir holde it paysabeliche as as (sic) I have holden it ant conferme covenauntes that i have maad the wiche ben rehersid bi foore thanne the forsayde feffees to feffe Edward Latimer and eyris of his bodi Also this is my wull that yf Anne Latimer mi wiffe dye in myn absens or elles whan ever likith to hir to make a testament algates that the dettes aforesayd beyn payd that hire wulle be fullyd as fere forth as myn owene And if Edward Latimer my brother holde naut these covenauntes thanne reversion of the forsayde londes after the deces of the forsayd Anne to be sold and don for alle cristen soules be the disposicion of the forsayde Anne and Lowes And to thys testament treweliche executen ordeyne and do principaliche I desir and preye Anne Latimer mi wiff and Sire Lowes Clifford the on or bothe to been of overseers of alle these thyngges be fulfullid after the lawe of God myn executors of this testament I preie Thomas Wakeleyn Herry Sleyer Richard Marmion John Pulton and Janyn Baker and this be don in the name and in the worschip of God Amen
Proved 20 April 1402.
FOUR ANCIENT ENGLISH WILLS 21
IV. THE WILL OF DAME ANNE LATYMER *
In the name of god Amen the xiij day of July in the yeor of our lord mmo cccc"10 and ij I Anne Latymer thankyng god of his mercy havyng siche mynde as he voucheth saff desiring that godes wil be fulfild in me and in alle goodes that hath take me to kepe and to that entent make my testament in this maner. First I be take my soule in to the hondes of god preynge to hym mekely of his grace that he wole take so pore a present as my wrechud soule is to his mercy And I wole my body to be beried at Braybroke beside my lord myn hosebonde Thomas Latymer yiff god wole. Also I be quethe to reparacioun of the caunsel and of the parsonage of the chirche of Braybroke xls Also to make the brigge that my lord bygan xls Also I bequethe xxu to be deled to nedy pore men and knowen by the discrecioun of the overseers and executores of my testament Also to Roger my brother xls Also to Alysoun Bretoun v marks Also to Kalyn Okham xx* Also to Anneys xx5 Also to Magote Deye xxs Also to Thomas Fetplas xxvjs viijd Also to John Pissoford xs Also to Robert Koke vjs viijd Also to Wyllyam my brother man iijs iiijd Also to Wyllam Leycestrechyre xs Also I bequethe xls to be departide among the remenant of my servauntes by the dis- crecioun of the executres and overseers of this testament The residue off my goodes I wole to be solde and deled to nedy pore men after the lawe of good by avisse and dis- crecioun of the overseers and executores of this testament And to this testament trewly executen ordeyne and do princypaly I desire and prey maystre Philipp Abbot of Leycestre and syre Lowes Clifford and Robert parson of Braybroke to be overseers that alle these thynges ben fulfild after the lawe of god. Myn executores of this testament I praye Sr Robert Lethelade parson of Kynmerton Thomas Wakeleyn Sr Henry Slayer parson of Warden and John Pulton. And thes be don in the name and in the worschepe of god Amen In wytnesse of this this («V) testament I seele wyth my scale thes wytnesse Sr Robert prest of Bray- broke Thomas Fetplas and Alysoun Bretoun. Wrete the yeer and day befor seyde
Proved 27 Oct. 1402.
G. H.
1 P.C.C. 3 Marche.
THE ANCESTOR
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS
THE letters of Giovanni Moro, Venetian Ambassador to the Court of France in 1583, and of Carlo Birago, a secret agent of Catherine de Medici, throw a very different light on the intrigues of Marguerite of Valois — more particu- larly on that between her and Harlay de Chanvallon — to that which the flattery of Brantome or of Sainte-Beuve give us.
It must be confessed that a large part of the history of Queen Marguerite deals largely with her amours with various personages, from the Marquis de Canillac to her cook. And the following letters, found some years ago in an old chateau among the papers in the possession of a family which bore a prominent part in the events of that time, reveal a no more creditable part of her history. They deal however with a period of her life which has long been dark and obscured : to wit, the events which took place between her flight from Agen in 1585 to her captivity of eighteen years in the Castle of Usson.
The worthy Brant6me and Sainte-Beuve have followed Marguerite into the shadows, ignorant of the secret springs of action, the evidences of which stand revealed to us to-day. A bundle of old faded letters often throws more light on past events than all the lucubrations of the schoolmen and pro- fessors. There are parts in the history of nations which have never been written, and perhaps never will be, for to the his- torian of the day only a minute portion of the evidence was available, and of the mass of evidence existent, little perhaps now remains. The contents of a secret drawer may upset all the theories and ideas which have been stereotyped for the last three hundred years.
If the archives of the Vatican ever gave up their dead, what a revolution in history may take place. What secrets repose there, and how much unwritten history lies in the secret cor- respondence of Catherine de Medici in the Venetian archives, or is mouldering away in the garrets of many an old French and Spanish chateau.
Among the crowd of shades whose voiceless phantoms flit
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS 23
across a ghostly stage, two figures stand forward in the dim twilight — Mary Stuart and Marguerite of Valois — third of the group of Marguerites ; daughter of Henry II. of France and Catherine de Medici : sister of Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III., wife of Henry IV. of France and Navarre — ' The daughter, sister, and wife, of Kings.'
To understand the character of Marguerite aright, one must remember the state of religious and social life in France at the time. It is not generally realized that the term ' Hugue- not ' itself bears a very different meaning in the sixteenth to that which it does in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. In the time of Marguerite of Valois and her husband Henry of Navarre, the term embraced two parties, religious and political ; those who embraced the doctrines of the Refor- mation, or rather of Protestantism, and were prepared to sacrifice everything for liberty of conscience ; and those who joined the party of Navarre, either from dissatisfaction with the existing state of things, or from feudal attachment to the kingdom of Navarre : the latter section carrying with them the majority of the noblesse of Gascony. And this fact ex- plains many of the apparent inconsistencies we find at this period. There were also three parties in France. The Ultramontane or Spanish, prepared to sacrifice all to ortho- doxy— the party of the House of Guise — and the Huguenots — the latter not strictly synonymous with Protestantism, for it included many of Henry's feudal nobility, personal friends, and ministers, who while remaining Catholics sup- ported the cause of Navarre.
The rank and file of the Huguenots were of course Pro- testants : largely the inhabitants of the towns — the energetic, sober, well-to-do middle classes : the French puritans. It was in fact the leaning of the French puritans towards repub- licanism and secularisation of the estates of the church, which alienated many of the Gallican party in the church, who in the first conflicts, during the reign of Francis I., were disposed to toleration, and a measure of reform, while leaving to them- selves freedom from Italian temporal interference, and the enjoyment of their dignity and estates.
Henry could scarcely be classed with the puritans — his wife was a catholic — and the Court at Pau and Nerac took its character from the king and queen : changed from the austere piety of Jeanne d'Albret and Beza.
24 THE ANCESTOR
' Our Court,' savs Marguerite in her Memoirs, ' was so fair and agreeable, that we did not envy that of France. I had around me many ladies and maids-in-waiting, and my husband was attended by a gallant following of lords and gentlemen, in whom there was no fault to find, except that they were Huguenots.' Even d'Aubigne, historian of the Reformation, says of the Court of Nerac, ' we were all lovers there together.'
The time passed, as we learn from his history, in love- making, intrigues, and gaiety, varied by occasional phases of religion. It was perhaps in one of the latter, that Marguerite found time to write a letter, dated from Nerac 13 January 1583, to Jean de Galard, Sieur de Brassac, entreating him to set at liberty two soldiers of the Religion, whom he held under arrest at Brassac, contrary to the Edict of Pacification. She signs herself ' Votre bien bonne amie, Marguerite.' His reply was that they had committed theft and violence.
This Jean de Galard was certainly a Protestant at his death, as appears by his ' acte de Deces,' and he died excommunicate from the Church of Rome. His wife, Jeanne de la Roche- Andry, was a Protestant — and both he and his son Rene appear among the Protestant nobility and gentry of Angoumois, in a commission which laid their grievances before the king. Rene, his son, married Marie de la Roche-Beaucourt, and was ensign and afterwards lieutenant in the company of Coligny, and gentleman of the bed-chamber to Henry IV. In the following century, many of this family distinguished them- selves in the armies of the Prince of Orange, and the States- general.
It would take too long to enter into the reasons for Mar- guerite's sudden removal from Nerac in 1585. She appears to have tired of her husband's court, especially as she had lost a great ally in the death of her brother the Due d'Alen9on, in June 1584. Her own excuse was the wish to keep Easter at Agen, a Catholic town, and her own personal appanage. The inhabitants received her with open arms, attributing her coming to her zeal for the Catholic religion. According to the chronicler she went with the laudable object of repairing the disorders of her past life by making war on the heretics : the said heretics being the subjects of her husband. She was joined by Lygnerac, with troops which he had raised in Quercy and Auvergne. While preparing however to make war on a
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS 25
small scale, she had word that the Marshal de Matignon had orders from her brother the King of France to arrest her. Finding herself between two fires, and not altogether trusting in the attachment of the townspeople, she began to fortify herself, and threw up some improvised works within the town. To do this, she had to demolish some houses which stood be- tween the Porte Neuve and the Convent of the Jacobins.
This high-handed proceeding so exasperated the wavering town, that it rose in revolt ' a son de tocsain,' and massacred a great number of her troops. After a short conflict in the narrow streets, the queen's troops were overwhelmed, the town being aided, probably by a preconcerted plan, by the forces of Henry from Nerac, some twenty miles distant. She herself was compelled to mount in haste, en croupe, behind Lygnerac, attended by Jean de Lart d'Aubiac, one of her esquires, his sister Marguerite, the queen's maid 'of honour, and thirty or forty horsemen. After being pursued for two days by Matignon, the party escaped to the Chateau of Carlat in the mountains of Auvergne. Thus began the wanderings of the queen, which ended in the imprisonment at Usson, for a period of eighteen years !
The following letter from Joseph de Lart de Birac, bro- ther to d'Aubiac, to his brother-in-law, Henri de Noailles, gives an account of the rising in Agen, and the Queen's flight.
DE BIRAC, 29 Sept. 1585.
Monsieur mon frere, comme je pensois, de jour a 1'autre envoyer en Limosin, pour entendre de vos nouvelles, j'ay tousjours est£ prevenu tant de la memoire du dcsastre qui nous est advenu ' en la perte du feu monsr. nostre frere, que de 1'angoisse que j'en portois et porte, et que je prevoyois que vous et tous ses appartenans en portids ; si, que je ne sfavois quel chemin y prendre. Mais a la fin, un tres grand desir que j'ay de S9avoir de vostre estre, m'a releve' et mis en chemin d'y envoyer, non pas pour en ressusciter quelque chose qui vous puisse ou doive fascher, bien plus tost pour en mediter le sujet au del, oil il est si heureux et contant, que tous les grands biens qu'il promettoit le luy, fa bas, ne sont rien au prix de celuy qu'il jouit, mesme en ce temps calamiteux, qui rend la mort plus desirable que la vye. Attendant done une mesme felicit6, je vous requiers me departir de vos nouvelles et portement, et de vouloir faire tousjours estat A mon humble service, auquel vous me trouver6s dispose pour toute ma vye.
Je vous advise que les habitans d'Agen se sont esleves contre la reyne de Navarre, a son de tocqsain, et, apres grande occision de ses gens et sur le conflit, elle, avertie que la victoire inclinoit pour les citoyens qui avoient forc6 un de ses citadelles, et maistrise la ville, reserve la citadelle des Jacobins, oil elle s'estoit
1 Referring to the assassination of Charles de Noailles, the result of domestic feuds.
26 THE ANCESTOR
retiree (quelque jours auparavant, mercredy dernier, que'cela fut execute) et la porte de Saint Antoine, n'eut remede que se sauver en trousse avec quarante ou cinquante chevaux, mon frcre estant du nombre.
Et le lendemain, suivie par monsr. le marechal de Matignon, avec trois ou quatre cornettes de cavalerie ; mais il fust court, car elle avail gagne Cahors ou Quercy d'une traite. Mme. de Noailles, avec vos nieces, se retira"dans le couvent de la Nonciade, ou elle se porte tres bien, graces a Dieu ; le'quel je supplie, apres vous avoir bien humblement baise les mains, vous donner^Mon- sieur mon frere, en bonne sante heureuse et longue vie.
Vostre humble et obeissant frere, 'BIRAC.'
Joseph de Lart, seigneur de Birac, and his brother Jean, were the sons of Antoine de Lart, sr de Birac, de Galard d'Aubiac, and de Beaulens. The two latter baronies had come into the possession of the seigneurs of Birac, by the marriage of Gabriel, father of Antoine, with Anne de Galard, Dame de Beaulens and Aubiac.
The chateau of Birac, or Virac, was built in 1152 by Ray- mond, first seigneur, on lands granted to him. This Raymond was fourth in descent from Pedro Raymond de Lar, seigneur de Lara, a cadet of the house of Castile and Arragon. Through him the present representatives of the family claim lineal male descent from Constantin, founder of the royal house of Arragon : born 525, and massacred 27 November 602. The fief of Birac remained in the possession of the elder branch until the year 1596, when it passed by the marriage of Henriette, heiress of Joseph de Lart, to Agesilas de Narbonne. It is probable that this letter was not written from Birac, which is thirty miles from Nerac, but from the ' Hostel ' or town house in Nerac, called the ' Maison de Birac,' which still exists ; now the many-gabled, red-tiled Convent, in the Rue du Pont de Lart. It stands in an enclosure of some four or five acres, surrounded by a high defensive wall, flanked by four tourelles.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the family had rami- fied into several branches, all of which espoused the cause of Navarre, though remaining Catholic. Bertrand, chief of the branch of Rigoulieres, still existing, was Chancellor of Henry IV. and Master of the Horse in 1624. A letter still exists from the king to his ' bon amy et fidele serviteur,' concerning a secret mission undertaken by him. In the persecutions of the next century, several members migrated to Holland and England. It is probable that Antoine de Lart, though claimed as a Catholic, was a Protestant. His wife was Renee
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS 27
de Costin de Bourzolles, whom he married in 1534, of a family which took an active part on the Protestant side. He paid homage to Henry of Navarre in 1538. His eldest daughter, Gabrielle, Baronne de Beaulens, married 2 August 1559, Charles de Bazon, Governor of Nerac, in the Chateau of Nerac, and in presence of Antoine de Bourbon and Jeanne d'Albret — and therefore, it may be presumed, according to the rites of the reformed Church. His second daughter, before-mentioned, was maid of honour to Queen Marguerite, and was commonly known as ' Mademoiselle d'Aubiac.'
The eldest son Joseph, Sr de Birac, married, 25 February 1572, Marie de Noailles, daughter of Antoine de Noailles, Ambassador to England in 1554, and of his wife Jeanne de Gontaut-Cabreres.
The second son, Jean, commonly known as ' d'Aubiac,' gained an unenviable notoriety by his intrigue with the queen.
According to one account he was ' un homme le plus laid de son temps.' However this may have been, he had every opportunity of falling under the sinister charms of the queen ; which, according to d'Aubigny, ' were so dangerous, that it was difficult to defend oneself when she chose to exert them.'
The chateau and village of Aubiac is only a few miles from Nerac and Agen. His sister was a maid of honour, and as he himself became one of her equerries, he was in constant attend- ance at court. He is said to have exclaimed, on first setting eyes on the queen': ' Mon Dieu, 1'amiable personne ! Si j'etois jamais assez heureux pour lui plaire, je n'aurois qas regret a la vie : duss6 je la perdre une heure apres.' Words of evil omen, as events proved.
According to La Ferriere, ' he never could have hoped, with his red hair, freckled skin, and rubicund nose, to become the lover of a daughter of France.' Cavriana, the Tuscan Ambassador, gives a more favourable description of him, viz., that he was ' noble, jeune, brave, mais audacieux et indiscret.'
*****
Marguerite succeeded in outriding her pursuers, and came at last to Carlat, a secluded chateau in the mountains of Auvergne. It belonged to a gentleman at the queen's court, named Lygnerac, another of her many admirers. Bazin, in his Etudes de VHistoire et de Biographie, says of this place of refuge, that it ' smelt more like a den of thieves than a resi-
2g THE ANCESTOR
dence of a princess, a king's daughter, sister and wife.'1 Lygnerac, as will appear, seems to have been more of a robber chief than a French courtier.
This sojourn at Carlat lasted for some months. It was during this time that the queen had a second child, which according to Bazin, ' resta sourd et muet.'
At length the noise of this fresh scandal reached the ears of her brother Henry III. ; her husband, Henry of Navarre, apparently took no interest in his queen's doings. Henry was roused to even greater wrath than before, and ordered the arrest of Marguerite, and the execution of Aubiac : and orders were given to the Marquis de Beaufort-Canillac * to effect this.
Word of this however came to Carlat, and the queen, attended by d' Aubiac, his sister and a few others, left Carlat hurriedly for Iboy, a place belonging to Catherine de Medici, as Comtesse d'Auvergne. Lygnerac, seeing that things had come to a crisis, and probably being jealous of Aubiac, threw off all disguise, and treated the queen with contempt and harshness, as appears by a letter quoted by Guessard in Memoires de Marguerite de Falois.
La verit£ est telle, que le sieur de Lignerac, pour quelque mescontantement et jalousie qu'il a eu de la royne de Navarre, qu'elle ne se saisit du Chasteau, 1'a chassee : et si vous cognoissies 1'humour de 1'home, vous penseries que c'est une quinte aussy tost prise aussy tost executee. II a retenu quelque bagues en paie- ment, come il dist, de dix mil livres qu'il a despendus pour elle, qui, apres avoir bien conteste en son esprit, se resolut de s'en aller a Millefleur, et se mit en chemin a pied avec Aubiac et une femme ; 3 puys sur le chemin fut mise sur un cheval de bast ; et apres dans une charette a beufs, et come elle fut dans ung village nome Colombe, un gentilhome nome Langlas, qui estoit lieutenant dans Usson luy offrit le chasteau, et 1'y mena. Aussi tost qu'elle y fust arrive, luy mesme s'en va trouver le marquis de Canillac 4 a Saint-Hicques, qui monte a cheval, et s'estant faict ouvrir la porte, il demande ledict Aubiac cache entre les murailles. II le prend, et le met entre les mains d'ung prevost. Le marquis despescha incontinent le jeune Monmaurin au Roy et a la Royne mere. ***** *
A full account of the flight and capture is given in the following letter of Henri de Noailles to his mother (nee Jeanne de Gontaut), dated 29 October 1586.
1 Sentant plus sa tanniere de larrons, que la demeure d'une princesse, fille, soeur et femme des rois.
3 Jean Timoleon De Beaufort-Montboissier. 3 Marguerite de Lart de Birac. * Canillac was Governor of Usson.
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS 29
Nous somes encore en ses carders attendant le retour de monsieur le marquis de Canillac, qui n'est encores venu de k Lymaigne, ou il alia apres la royne de Navarre, ayant sceu du chemin, come nous venions de dessa, qu'elle estoit panic soubdainement de Carlat, pour prendre ceste routte avecq peu de gens. Je ne vous mandois rien par ma precedents despeche, faicte a Margoulles, du comance- ment de ceste tragedie, parce que je pensois que La Font, que j'attendois plus- tost qu'il ne vint, deut estre a vous un jour ou deux apres, et me remettant encores a ce que vous en pourres apprandre de luy, je vous diray seulement cependant en sommaire que la farsse est telle que celuy qui 1'avoit conduite a Carlat, ayant heu oppinion qu'on le voulloit chasser, de la prenant ce pretexte, il se randit metre de la place et dit a Marion » qu'il failhoit que Foncle cFTsabeau » sautat le rochier, nouvelle qui luy fut si rude qu'elle se tresva bien en peine, et apres avoir garanty par prieres et aultrement ce personnaige, elle ayma mieux vuyder et changer de place que demeurer la sans luy. Et ayant prins son chemin en crouppe derriere luy, et accompaignee encore de Cambon, de Lignerac et de quelques aultres de sa maison, de ses filhes et Mademoyselle d'Aubiac, elle se retira a un chasteau pres Lancher, qui est a la royne mere du roy, appele Yvoy, ou, pour estre suyvie de fort pres par ledit sieur marquis, avec quarante on cinquante gentilshommes, qui avoit commandement du roy de s'ensaisir, elle se trouve tant surprinse qu'elle fut contrainte d'ousvrir la porte apres avoir faict un peu semblant de se deffandre, et Aubiac, qui s'estoit desguyse pour se sauver, fut recognu et mene1 a une maison du diet sieur marquis, appelde Saint Cirque, et la dite Marion a une petite ville aupres en attendant k volonte du roi, vers qui le diet sieur marquis avoit despeche, et croys que cek le retient, mais on n'attend 1'heure qu'il arrive. On dit que cette paouvre princesse est si eplorie qu'elle s'arrache tous les cheveux. Lynerac 1'a traictee fort cruellement et contraincte de payer juscques au dernier denier de tout ce qu'il lui a mis en avant qu'elle luy debvoit et contraincte de luy kisser des gaiges. Jugez le bien qu'elle en doibt dire. A la verite, cek est estrange. Je croy qu'on la gardera bien asteure de courre.
Henry de Noailles adds the following postscript to this letter : —
D'ORLAC, il Novembre 1586.
P-S. — J'ay depuis veu Monsr. de Bournazel, qui m'a dit que Mile, de Birac s'estoit retiree a Saint Vitour avec cent escus qu'on luy donna. II m'a confirm^ comme Marion est fort ^plor^edese voir prinse : Aubiac est entre les mains du prevost, ne sachant encores ce qu'il doit devenir. On attendoit des nouvelles du roy : cependant la dite Marion est a une petite ville appelee Saint-Amand, avec cent harquebuziers de garde. On m'a fait voir une belle lettre qu'elle avoit escrite durant son siege, dont je n'ay heu le loisir de tirer encore copie. ******
In these trying circumstances, Marguerite wrote several let- ters to her brother the King of France, her mother, Catherine
1 Marguerite of Navarre.
> L'onde d'Ysabeau, i.e. d'Aubiac. Ysabeau was one of the four daughters of his brother Joseph de Lart and Marie de Noailles : commonly known as Ysabeau de Lart de Galard.
3o THE ANCESTOR
de Medici, and to M. de Sarlan, makre d'hotel of the latter. One is worth quoting as showing the curious mixture in her character. Reading it by itself, with no knowledge of the real state of affairs, one would imagine the queen to have been the most virtuous, persecuted and unfortunate of mortals.
A Monsieur de Sarlan.
Monsieur de Sarlan, puisque la cruaute de mes malheurs et ce ceux a qui je ne rendis jamais que services est si grande que, non contens des indignites que depuis tant d'annees ils me font pastir, (ils) veulent poursuivre ma vie jusques a la fin, je desire au moms, avant ma mort, avoir ce contentement que la Royne ma mere sache que j'ay eu assez de courage pour ne tomber vive entre les mains de mes ennemys, vous protestant que je n'en manquerai jamais. Assurez 1'en, et la premiere nouvelle qu'elle aura de moy sera ma mort. Soubs son asseurement et commandement je m'estois sauvee chez elle, et au lieu de bon traicte- ment que je m'y promettois, je n'y ay trouve que honteuse ruine.
Patience ! elle m'a mise au monde, elle m'en veut oster. Si sais-je bien je suis entre les mains de Dieu ; rien ne m'adviendra centre sa vollonte ; j'ay ma fiance en luy et recevrai tout de sa main. Vostre plus fidele et meilleure amye,
MARGUERITE.
d'Aubiac had not long to wait before he knew his fate : the Marquis de Canillac carried out the king's commands, and took the opportunity of removing two other aspirants to the queen's favour at the same time.
d'Aubiac was hung a few weeks later at Aigueperce, and with him also Bussey d'Amboise and Lamolle. He died with a piece of blue velvet sleeve in his hand, which he never ceased to kiss to the last — all that remained to him of the queen's favour.
The queen apparently was for the time so overcome with grief that she omitted to carry out the alarming threats of her letter. She however composed a sonnet to d'Aubiac.
The captivity of Usson, which lasted for eighteen years, during which time her husband, Henry of Navarre, had ' pur- chased Paris for a Mass,' had been divorced from his wife, and remarried to Marie de Medici, has been variously described. Some historians, who ascribe all the virtues to the queen, describe the Castle of Usson as ' Mount Tabor pour sa devo- tion, un Libanon pour sa solitude, un Olympe pour ses ex- ercises, un Parnasse pour ses Muses, et un Caucasus pour ses afflictions.' One other however, Matthieu, not content with enumerating the above, gives himself away by adding 'un Citheren pour ses amours.'
Certain it is that Canillac fell a victim to the fascinations
MARGUERITE OF VALOIS 31
of Marguerite. Pere Hilarion de Coste tells us that 'he imagined he was going to conquer her, and one sight of her ivory arm conquered him.'
Others with fulsome adulation, liken Usson to Noah's Ark : a sacred temple of purity and peace ! Alas for history ! what are we to believe ? There are others who tell us that Usson was not all that the panegyrists painted it.
The characters who acted their little parts in these events have long been dust : but the strange figure of the Queen of Navarre still lives. The sun of Gascony shines warm on the red roofs and grey walls of Nerac, and of Aubiac away on the hills above the Auvignon. But no archers tread the crum- bling battlements, or mailed knights clatter up the narrow streets. The little town sleeps in quiet after centuries of storm and stress, undisturbed by sound of shot or clash of steel. The pigeons which bask on the warm tiles of the con- vent are almost the only sign of life about the place, which breathes an atmosphere as of immemorial chant and psalm.
The blank casements of Carlat and Iboy stare across the sunny vineyards like the dead eyes of those who have no part or lot henceforth in anything that is done under the sun. But the cicada unceasingly shrills in the grass, the lizards flicker among the stones, and a cool Pyrenaean breeze sings in the ilex, and speaks of life.
In spite of all this queen was beloved. To this day in the Auvergne her memory is cherished by the peasantry. ' Entrez dans la plus pauvre chaumiere, isolee, perdue dans les mon- tagnes, on vous parlera d'elle. Marguerite est passee a P6tat de legende : elle le doit au souvenir de ses bienfaits.'
CHARLES E. LART.
THE ANCESTOR
THE CLINTON FAMILY II
TO deduce correctly the descent of notable families, and to discover their alliances during the first couple of centuries after the Conquest, is not only to render a genuine service to history, but to accomplish the most difficult of tasks. Over a later period the importance of genealogy goes on steadily diminishing, as the materials for it increase. The great Calendars of the Patent and Close Rolls, for mediaeval England, are on the verge of completion, and the revision of his Complete Peerage will soon be possible for the last new and appreciative citizen of the empire, under his own distant
falm tree. He will find, for instance in one of his green atent Roll volumes, a ' Notification,' dated 20 February 1314-5, 'that Ida, late the wife of John de Clynton, widow, is the first born daughter, and one of the four daughters of Wil- liam de Oddyngesele, deceased,' and from the volumes, which we are promised, of Calendars of ' Inquisitions post mortem and analogous documents,' he will doubtless be able to satisfy his curiosity as to her ancestry and her inheritance. All that I have to do, in other words, is to summarize, as briefly as possible, what is already or what will shortly be in print.
I had promised myself, at this point, an excursus upon the doctrine of ' ennobling blood,' tending to show that, if Ida de Clinton's posterity have, without interruption, received summons to parliament, the reason is to be sought not only in their landed estate, to which she signally contributed, but in her illustrious parentage on both sides. There was also something to be said in explanation of the Irish affinities of her immediate kinsfolk ; but inasmuch as the Clintons them- selves remained English, and the earlier pedigree is in no way essential to establishing the match between John de Clinton (V.) and Ida his wife, I have decided to let these attractive side inquiries go.
After a distinguished career elsewhere, including service in Scotland, William de Oddingeseles was appointed justiciary of Ireland, 19 October 1294. On 28 October in the same
THE CLINTON FAMILY 33
year the custody of the castle of Donymegan was committed to him, and on 25 November following he had a grant, for his service, ' of the land and castle of Donymegan in Connaught, Ireland, in fee, by the service of two knights' fees.' He died, 19 April 1295, at least that is the date, according to the Chancellor's Roll (Irish Cal.), on which his salary ceased and his successor's began. His lands in England were thereupon seised into the king's hands, and on 12 May 1295 two writs issued, the one of diem clausit, while the other recites, that it has been shown on the part of Ela, late the wife of William de Oddingeseles, tenant in chief, deceased, that, whereas she was enfeoffed with the said William in the manor of Olton, and of certain land, etc., in Solihull, co. Warwick, nevertheless it has been taken into the king's hands, as though William had died seised thereof in fee.
Two inquisitions were taken in response to the writ of diem clausit, in the counties of Herts and Warwick respectively. By the former taken Monday the morrow of the Holy Trinity, 23 Edward I. (23 May 1295), it was found that William died seised in fee, in the town of Pyritone, of a mes- suage, 2OOa. arable, loa. mowing meadow, loa. pasture, services of bondmen, loa. wood, rent of assize, profits of courts and half a water-mill, held of Robert de Pynkeny by homage ; and that Edmund de Oddingeseles, his son and heir, is twenty- two years old.
By the Warwickshire inquisition taken at Makstok, Tuesday after the Holy Trinity, 23 Edward I. (24 May 1295), it was found that he held the manors and advowsons of Solyhull and Makstok, namely moieties thereof of Sir Hugh de Oddynge- seles, by service of half a knight's fee, and the other moieties of Sir Robert de Pynkeny, by service of a pair of gilt spurs and by service of a quarter of a knight's fee respectively. He had fourteen free tenants at Merston and Cotes, held of the earl of Oxford, by one twelfth of a knight's fee. He was patron of the church of Arley, held of Sir Hugh de Oddyngeseles. Theobald de Nevyle and John Hastang held a knight's fee of him in Buddebrok, which he held of Hugh de Oddynge- seles. On the day of his death his son Edmund was his heir, and of full age, who had since died. The said Edmund had four sisters, Ida, Ela, Alice and Margaret. Margaret is under age ; she was eighteen years old at Whitsun last (15 May 1295).
34 THE ANCESTOR
With regard to the claim advanced by Ela, his widow, it was found by another inquisition taken also at Makstok, and on the same day, that she was so seised for four and a half years before William's death, to hold to them and William's heirs, of the fee of Hugh de Oddingeseles, belonging to half a knight's fee held of the said Hugh in Solyhull and Makstok. She was also jointly enfeoffed with William of \2d. yearly rent in Makstok, of the fee of Sir Robert de Pynkeneye, as above. William and Ela bought the said tenements of the tenants of the same William, which tenements were charged with z8s. to the said William and his heirs yearly before the said William and Ela bought them.
The above findings are eloquent of the origins of the endowment of this branch of the Oddingeseles' family, a matter, however, upon which we are agreed not to enlarge. For the rest, it is evident from the returns, that William de Oddingeseles was a mesne tenant, and that the king had no title to wardship or marriage in respect of any of his lands — of any of his lands, that is to say, in England. But how about the castle and land of Donymegan in Ireland, of which we have already heard ? We are still so much at the beginnings of history, that it was, to all appearance, a test case, which we find stated accordingly, as follows —
Edward par la grace de dieu roi Dengleterre seigneur Dirland et dues Daqui- tayne au Tresorer et as Barons del Escheker salutz. Nous auons entendu que Guillame Doddingeseles qui est a dieu comande ne tynt de nous en chief terres ne tenementez en Engleterre ne ailleurs le iour quil moreust fors qe tantseulement celes qui nous li donames en Irland ne gueres auant le Noel precheinement passez a tenir de nous en chief. Et pur ce que nous en voloms estre certefiez plus pleinement par aucunes reesons vous mandoms que sur ce faciez serchier et re- garder nos roules et les remembrances del Escheker Et puis ce qui vous enaurez troue ensemblement vos descrecions si par reeson du dit doun deuons selonc la ley et lusage de notre roiaume auer la garde del heir et des terres quil tenoit par tot en notre roiaume en Engleterre et ailleurs ou noun, nous faciez sauoir destincte- ment souz le seal de notre Escheker auantdit. Don' desouz notre priue seal a Keleseyn le. viij. iour de Juyn Ian de notre regne . xxiij. (8 June 1295).
The above document is, at present, filed up with the three inquisitions which we have already abstracted (Chancery Inquisitions post mortem, ist Series, 23 Edward I. first numbers No. 130). The reply, whatever its nature, returned by the Exchequer officials, was not held to be decisive, and, pending a final decision, a modus vivendi was arrived at within the following month, as appears by two writs preserved in the
THE CLINTON FAMILY 35
series known as ' Escheators ' Inquisitions. Citra Trentam. 23 Edward I Nos. 8 and 9 : —
Edwardus, etc. Quia de gratia nostra speciali concessimus Ide, Ele, Alicie, et Margarete, filiabus et heredibus Willelmi de Oddingeseles, nuper defuncti, per manucaptionem Philippi de Verney et Johannis de la Wade, duas panes omnium terrarum et tenementorum cum pertinenciis de quibus idem Willelmus fuit seisitus in dominico suo ut de feodo in balliva vestra die quo obiit et que post mortem ejusdem Willelmi in manum nostram cepistis, tenendum usque ad proximum parliamentum nostrum, ita quod de exitibus inde provenientibus nobis totaliter respondeant, si ad nos pertinere debeant ; vobis mandamus quatinus prefatis heredibus predictas duas partes omnium terrarum et tene- mentorum predictorum cum pertinenciis liberari faciatis in forma predicta, tenendum per manucaptionem predictam. Teste W. Bathoniensi et Wellensi episcopo, thesauarario nostro, apud Westmonasterium, secundo die Julii, anno regni nostri xxiij0 (2 July 1295). Endorsed ij die Julii apud London' mittitur subescaetori in comitatibus Hertf, Warr', Staff, et Rotel'.
And again —
Edwardus, etc., Quia Johannes de Clinton junior et Philippus de Verney, qui sequuntur pro Ida, Ela, Alicia et Margareta, filiabus et heredibus Willelmi de Oddingeseles defuncti coram Thesaurario et baronibus nostris de scaccario concesserunt quod tercia pars omnium terrarum et tenementorum cum per- tinenciis, de quibus idem Willelmus fuit seisitus in dominico suo ut de feodo in balliva vestra, die quo obiit, et que per mortem ejusdem Willelmi in manum nostram jam cepistis per nos assignetur Ele, que fuit uxor prefati Willelmi in dotem ; vobis mandamus, etc. Date and endorsement as above, with ' ita quod . . . capiat sacramentum ' added.
We may venture, I think, without injustice to the condi- tions then, or at any other time prevalent in Ireland, to suppose that something in the nature of a dispute had, in all probability, led to the extinction of the male line of Oddingeseles ; that the father, a fighting man, was killed outright, and that the son succumbed to his wounds. Two lives at any rate of William de Oddingeseles' coheirs were, it seems, exterminated in the same country in like fashion within the next fifty years.
Of the four coheirs of William de Oddingeseles, Ida the eldest married, as we already know, John de Clinton, styled ' the younger,' ' of Amington,' presumably after his mother's decease (see vol. viii. p. 190), and ' of Maxstoke ' — not yet a castle — licence to ' crenellate ' was only granted in 1345, as we shall see, after his marriage. At what date they were married does not appear. The mention of him, just above, as suing at the Exchequer on behalf of the sisters, suggests that he was married to Ida before the deaths of her father and brother. If the dates are correct and the identity established
3 6 THE ANCESTOR
in the manner suggested in the previous volume, he was a man of close upon forty in 1295, his birth dating back to 1258. Ida's brother, on the other hand, was aged twenty- two at his death, was born that is to say about 1273, while her third and youngest sister was apparently born on 15 May 1277. We may accordingly assume that Ida herself was born about 1270, and that she was married about 1290 to a man twelve years her senior. I do not however believe, with the dates of the subsequent pedigree before me, that her son and heir was born before 1300. It is accordingly possible that she was still unmarried at the age of twenty-five, that the deaths of the males of her house and her accession to fortune brought suitors, and that when she was thirty and her husband forty- two the heir was born. The lords Clinton, in any case, descended from her, and inherited her portion, which con- sisted of the manor and advowson of Maxstoke, and the alternate presentation to the church of Arley.
Ela, the second daughter, is stated to have married ' Peter Fitz James Mac Phioris ' de Bermingham, and to have been the mother of the earl of Louth, lord justice of Ireland in 1321, who was ' with his brothers Robert and Peter, and many of his race, treacherously slain,' in 1329, 'by the rebellious Irish.' In addition to Solihull, where as we shall see some part of her inheritance lay, she was presumably allotted a share of the Oddingeseles' estate in Ireland, and the above was the natural result.
The third daughter, Alice de Oddingeseles, had her portion in England, but she married in Ireland, — and you shall hear the consequences. I do not know if the little history has been set out before, but with the great green calendars to hand, it is only necessary to turn up a few references to recover it. The Irish Calendar abounds in references to the name of Caunton, variously spelt. Her husband, Sir Maurice, was one of this family. In November 1301 and April 1302 she was resident with him in Ireland, and ' Maurice de Cauntetone and Alice, his wife,' are licensed to appoint attorneys for all pleas in the English courts. In due time however we arrive at the inevitable entry ; it is on the Patent Roll, 9 September 1319 : — Grant to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, of all lands and tenements in England, late of Maurice de Caunton, and William de Caunton, his son, adherents to the king's enemies in Ireland, where the said Maurice was killed, and
THE CLINTON FAMILY 37
the said William taken prisoner . . . ; on 26 October, in the same year, the king is found stating that, although he could have presented to the church of Solihull, lately void, by reason of the lands of Maurice de Caunton, who lately was killed in Ireland fighting against the king, nevertheless he is content to confirm the presentation made thereto by the bishop of Ely, saving the rights of Aymer de Valence.
The church of Solihull was, as we know, part of theOddinge- seles' inheritance, and could not by any manner of means have been affected by any treason, or subsequent attaint, of either Maurice, or of his son, in the lifetime of Alice to whom the alternate presentation had presumably de- scended. I judge therefore, from the following entry, that she survived, but did not long survive, her husband. It is the presentation by the king, entered on the Patent Roll, 26 August, 1320, of Nicholas de Moreby to the church of Solihull, in the king's gift — note how much better informed he has become — by reason of his custody of the lands and tenements late of Alice de Caunton, tenant in chief. This again is revoked on 16 October following, and the presentation made, as above, by the bishop of Ely is again allowed. In the following year the heir came of age, and in the year after that two inquisitions were taken upon a writ of Mandamus dated 8 May, 15 Edward II. (1322). By the first of these taken at Solihull, co. Warwick, 21 May, 15 Edward II. (1322), it is found that Alice de Caunton held a quarter of a messuage and the moiety of a carucate in Solihull of John de Odyggeseles by fealty only, worth IQJ., and that David her son is her next heir, and is of the age of twenty-two years. The second inquisition was taken at Hertford on Monday after the Octave of the Holy Trinity, 15 Edward II. It is found that Alicia de Caunton held in chief, in the town of Pirton, a moiety of the manor of Pirton ; to this moiety there belong a messuage and two carucates of land, worth 2ol. ; it is held of the king in socage, by fealty and a pair of gilt spurs, price 6d., and to the view of frankpledge of Altonishevyd, by the hands of the sheriff of Herts, to be received yearly, 2J. Sd. for all service. David de Caunton is her son and next heir, of the age of twenty-two years. The moiety used to be held of Henry de Pyngkeney, after whose death the lordship came to the hand of king Edward the now king's father, in what way is unknown.
38 THE ANCESTOR
All this is peaceful enough, and English, but there is still the Irish background, dark and threatening. We have heard that when Sir Maurice was slain, his son William was made prisoner. Possibly they hanged him, but he had left issue, very young as yet, but with friends, who forward the following petition, filed with the above inquisitions (Chancery Inquisi* tions -post mortem, ist series, 15 Edward II. No. 4) :—
Voilletz Sir Chaunceler si vous plest comander qe preiudice ne soit fait au verre heir Sir William Caunteton qui morust nageres en Irlaund par lenqueste qest prise par le Eschetour de la Trente a la seute Dauid frere le dit Sir William qui est en Engleterre et ad taunt procure qe la dite enqueste est passe par simple gentz qui mil conisaunce nauerent du fet qui ount dit quil le dit Dauid est prochein heir le dit Sir William en deseritaunce du dit heir qui est en Ir- laund et del age de cink auntz et ausi en deseritaunce des seignurages du fee. par quoi sir vous plese comander qe autre enqueste soit prise par chiualers et bones gentz qui ount conisaunce du droit le dit heir.
David de Caunton, who thus poses as the wicked uncle, defrauding his nephew, the lawful heir, established his claim, possibly as heir to his mother, upon the outlawry in her life- time of his elder brother, possibly upon some plea of the illegitimacy of his brother's issue, a constant source of trouble when Irish heirship came to be tried by English tests ; but that his claims or rights were resisted is evident from an entry on the Close Roll. Not till 10 February 1326-7, nearly five years later, does an order issue to the escheator to intermeddle no further with a quarter messuage and a half carucate in Solihull, the king learning that Alice de Caunton held at her death of the king a moiety of the manor of Periton, etc., and that David de Caunton is her son and heir.
Meanwhile the Valence family waited patiently, and as soon as it was decided whom they had to sue, laid claim to the whole Caunton inheritance, unless, as is quite possible, they had been in more or less quiet possession of Purton manor ever since the grant made to them on 9 September 1319. In any case the following entry occurs on the Close Roll, under date 10 July 1327: —
To John de Bousser, Gilbert de Toutheby, and John de Cantebrigge, order to proceed to take the assize of novel disseisin arramed before them by David son of Alice de Caunton against Mary, late the wife of Aymer de Valence, late Earl of Pembroke, and others named in the original writ, concerning tenements in Periton and Kemyton, and to proceed to render judgment therein with all speed, notwithstanding the king's late order not to proceed to render judgment
THE CLINTON FAMILY 39
without consulting him, which order he made because Mary alleged before them that the late King by his charter, which she produced, gave the tenements, to wit the manor of Peryton, to the said Aymer, and that they were assigned to her in dower.
The decision was undoubtedly in David's favour — it is difficult to see how it could possibly have been adverse to him, and he was free to attend to his Irish interests. Notices recur of his passage to Ireland. I select one, on the Patent Roll, 4 May 1336 : — David de Caunton, going to Ireland, has letters nominating Roger de Luda (scilt. Louth, a great name in Hertfordshire) and Lawrence de Ayet (another neighbour of whom we shall hear again) his attorneys in England for one year. He also married. Then on I October 1340 he died. His widow Joan re-married with Lawrence de Ayete, whose coheirs (he died 3 December 1353) by some previous wife are famous as the ' intruded heirs ' in one of the most complicated and prolonged law suits ever known, as may be seen under * Dodford ' in Baker's History of the County of Northampton. I mention this inasmuch as our Caunton investigations correct Baker's pedigree, who apparently considers our ' Joan ' to have been the mother of the Ayete coheirs, which from the Caunton side is impossible. Baker's work needs no apology ; but it is worth mentioning, as illustrative of the pitfalls pre- pared by the ancients for later day enquirers, that whereas, within a year, inquisitions were taken after the deaths both of Lawrence de Ayet, and, as we shall shortly see, of Joan, his widow, there is not a word in the former, or in the writ at- tached to it, to show that she had been previously married to David de Caunton, or in the latter, or in the accompanying writ, to show that she had ever been the wife of Lawrence de Ayet ; though when we have, from other sources, dis- covered that such was indeed the case, our conclusion is confirmed by the date of the lady's death, which is assigned in both documents to the same day.
On 10 June 1343, as appears by an entry on the Patent Roll (cf. Inquisitions Ad quod damnum, file 265, No. Il), Lawrence de Ayete and Joan his wife, in consideration of 401. fine paid by Lawrence, are licensed to hold a moiety of the manor of Pirton, co. Herts, with remainder to her heirs by David de Caunton, knight, her late husband, with remainder to William de Clynton, earl of Huntingdon, and his heirs, in accordance with a settlement made, without licence, by the
4o THE ANCESTOR
said David and Joan — a settlement made possibly for money, possibly to secure the earl's support, or possibly to bar the other descendants of his father, his nephew in particular.
Lawrence de Ayete died, as I have said, 3 December 1353. His widow did not long survive, and from an inquisition taken at Pyriton, co. Herts, upon a writ of diem clausit, Thursday after Easter, 28 Edward III. (17 April 1354), and from the documents filed with it, we learn the rest of the remarkable history. It was found that she held a moiety of the manor of Pyriton in fee tail of the king in chief, by the grant of Adam Doverton, parson of Ibestok (co. Leicester) and Henry de Sodyngton, parson of Esshetesford (co. Kent), to hold to the said David, now long deceased, and Joan, and the heirs of their bodies, with remainder in default to William de Clynton, earl of Huntyngdon and his heirs, with the king's charter of licence. The said David and Joan had issue a daughter, born in Ireland, and whether she be alive or not the jurors do not know. The said moiety is held of the king, by service of one knight's fee ; it is worth I3/. 6s. 8d. The said Joan died on Tuesday after St. Gregory the Pope last (Tuesday, 18 March 1353-4). The said daughter, if alive, is her heir, and is aged sixteen years and more.
Next follows a writ, dated 6 June, 28 Edward III. (1354), addressed by the king to J., Archbishop of Dublin, Chancellor of Ireland. Supplication is made to us, it states, on behalf of John son of Nicholas de Kery, that whereas by our letters patent, under our seal in Ireland, we gave him, for his good service, the custody of all the lands in Ireland which were of David de Caunton, knight, in our hands by reason of David's death and the minority of his heir, till the full age of the said heir, and whereas upon the untrue suggestion of William son of Edmund de Caunton, by writ under the great seal of England directed to you, the said lands have been taken again into our hands, we wish to be certified of the tenor of such writ, of the process of taking again the said lands from the said John, and of the inquisition taken upon David's death.
Thereupon follows the reply of the Chancellor. Nothing is found. It was said here, in council, that Sir Maurice Caunton, father of David, whose heir David was, as is asserted, forfeited, or was outlawed for rebellion (vel forisfecit erga Dominum Regem, equitando de guerra cum vexillo explicate, contra vexillum Regis in Hibernia, vel ea occasione utlagatus
THE CLINTON FAMILY 41
Juii) ; it is not found by what process David came to the said lands, but it is believed that David did his homage in Eng- land, and had restitution there ; this can be verified by the rolls of the English Chancery. Nevertheless the (said) lands and tenements, of late, by the death and by reason of the forfeiture of David, son of William de Caunton, nephew of the said David de Caunton, who slew the said David, and after his death intruded himself thereon, were taken into, and are in, the king's hands.
Finally there is a writ, dated 8 August, 28 Edward III. (I354)» ordering a transcript to be made and forwarded of the inquisition, taken in Ireland on the death of David de Caunton, knight. The transcript follows. The writ bears date 13 Sep- tember, 15 Edward III. (1341). The inquisition was taken the Sunday after St. Luke the Evangelist, 15 Edward III. (Sunday, 21 October 1341). David de Caunton held at his death the castle of Balyderawyn, etc. David died the Mon- day after Michaelmas, 14 Edward III. (Monday, I October 1340). Elizabeth, daughter of David, is his daughter and heir, aged three years, on the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist last (24 June 1340).
So, after all, the wicked uncle was slain, presumably in his own castle, by his disinherited nephew ; his wife, we may suppose, was safe at home, or was spared or escaped ; but her little daughter was taken from her, and when she died thirteen years later none in England knew if the child was living or dead.
The death was at any rate assumed on this side. By letters patent dated 15 May, 28 Edward III. (1354), the king, reciting the inquisition upon Joan de Caunton, commits a moiety of the manor of Pirton to the earl of Huntingdon, who thus secured for the Clinton family another fraction of the Oddinge- seles inheritance.
; THE ANCESTOR
The pedigree seems to be as follows : —
Sir Maurice de Caunton = AIice de Oddingcseles dead or outlawed before I dead before August September 1319 I 1320
|
r |
1 |
1 |
||||||
|
Sir William de Caunton |
Sir David |
de Caunton=Joan . . . = |
Lawrence de |
Edmund de |
||||
|
dead |
before May 1322 |
n. circa 1 300, died |
died |
Ayete, mar. |
Caunton |
|||
|
— |
(killed by his nephew) |
1 8 March |
before 1343, |
— |
||||
|
I October |
'340 |
'353-4 |
died 1353 |
|||||
|
1 |
||||||||
|
Da |
nd de Caunton |
J° |
n de Caunton |
Will |
amde |
|||
|
killed his uncle |
set. 3, June |
Caunton, |
||||||
|
1 340, dead and |
1 340 ; xt. 1 6 |
claimant, |
||||||
|
forfeited before |
and more 1354, |
'354 |
||||||
|
'354 |
•if alive.* |
Dugdale states that Alice de Oddingeseles remarried with Ralph de Perham, after the death of Sir Maurice de Caunton. He also gives references to the following fines, from which it would appear that the principal estate in Soli- hull was allotted to Ela de Birmingham, upon the division of the Oddingeseles inheritance, and was sold by her repre- sentative to the bishop of Ely, mentioned above : —
Hec est finalis concordia facta in curia domini regis apud Westmonasterium a die Pasche in quinque septimanas, anno regni regis Edwardi filii regis Edwardi septimo (May 1314) . . . inter Radulfum de Perham querentem et Elam que fuit uxor Petri de Byrmyngham deforcientem de duabus partibus manerii de Sulyhull cum pertinenciis . . . Habendum et tenendum eidem Radulfo de predicta Ela et heredibus suis tota vita ipsius Radulfi reddendo inde per annum viginti libras sterlingorum . . . pro omni servicio ... ad predictam Elam et heredes suos pertinente . . . Et post decessum ipsius Radulphi predicte due partes cum pertinenciis integre revertentur ad pre- dictam Elam et heredes suos . . . — Feet of Fines, Warwick, file 42, no. 18.
Ela was apparently possessed of two parts of the manor, into three parts divided ; the remaining third may have been still in dower to her mother. Her son, lord Louth, at any rate sells the whole : —
Hec est finalis concordia facta in curia domini regis ... in octabis sancti Johannis Baptiste anno regni regis Edwardi filii regis Edwardi duode- cimo (June 1319) . . . inter Johannem de Hothum Eliensem episcopum querentem et Johannem de Bermyngeham comitem de Loueth' deforcientem de manerio de Solihull cum pertinenciis et advocacionem ecclesie ejusdem ville . . . Habendum et tenendum eidem episcopo et heredibus suis . . .
THE CLINTON FAMILY 43
imperpetuum. Et preterea idem comes concessit pro sc et heredibus suis quod warantizabunt . . . Et pro hac recognicione reddicione warantizatione fine et concordia idem episcopus dedit predicto coraiti centum marcas argenti. — Feet of Fines, Warwick, file 44, no. 42.
There is, however, an endorsement to the above fine from which it may be inferred that the case, even then, was not wholly free from obscurity : —
Ida que fuit uxor Johannis de Clinton de Maxstok apponit clamium
suum. Robertus de Moiby (sic) et Margareta uxor ejus apponunt clamium
suum.
That is to say, a caveat is lodged by the two surviving sisters of Ela de Birmingham, the earl's aunts ; for there can be little doubt that in Margaret de Morby we have Margaret, formerly the wife of John de Grey of Rotherfield, the youngest of William de Odingeseles' coheirs, and we get an explanation of a difficulty that Dugdale left unsolved.
Whether by any conveiance from the Bishop of Ely, before spoke of, it was that Rob. de Moreby, of Moreby in Yorkshire, had an interest here, I know not, nor what he so had : But in 7 E. 3. I find that the K. granted him a Charter of ttee»wattcn in all his Demesn Lands here at Solihull, as also at Bonneteick and Moreby in Yorkshire.
Nothing in the dates conflicts. Margaret, fourth daughter and coheir of William de Oddingeseles, youngest sister of Ida de Clinton, was born in 1 277 (see above) ; she married John de Grey of Rotherfield, who died 17 October 1311, leaving John de Grey, his son and heir, aged ten on 28 October in that year; in 1319 she occurs as the wife of Robert de Morby, who, as we have just learned, had a grant of free warren in Solihull as late as 1333 ; her share of the Oddinge- seles inheritance appears to have been the manor of Olton in Solihull, and the alternate presentation to the church of Arley, both of which passed to her descendants ; it is stated however in the inquisition on the death of her first husband, taken at Coleshull, 13 December 1311, that he held 22 marks of rent in Solihull and the said advowson, of her inheritance ; and it is possible that the manor of Olton may have accrued to her later, on her mother's decease, or represent a purchase from the other coheirs.
The history of the manor of Solihull, as Dugdale left it, is confessedly obscure ; and if it has subsequently been
44 THE ANCESTOR
made out, I have failed to find the reference. All we know for certain is that William de Oddingeseles died possessed of it, and that John de Hotham, bishop of Ely from 1316 and chancellor of England, who died 25 January 1315-6, in some way acquired it from the Oddingeseles' coheirs. Incidentally we have brought out the fact that one of these coheirs, the youngest, remarried with Robert de Morby, which explains the grant of free warren to this Robert in Solihull, in 1333. Robert had previously obtained a like grant in lands of which his wife was tenant for life ; and in the same year his stepson Sir John de Grey, being then just of age, had a similar grant, not only in lands already in his possession, but apparently in some of the lands stated in the previous grant to belong to his mother for her life, and also in Moreby, where his step- father's estate lay. This in itself is difficult ; and it appears, further, by the text of the charter of 1333 — cited by Dugdale —that the estate of Moreby was parcelled between three men, Henry, William and Robert de Moreby, to all of whom the like favour is extended, viz., of free warren in Morby, with, in the case of Robert, in Solihull as well. The text of these three grants is as follows : —
Pro Roberto Rex eisdem. Salutem. Sciatis quod cum dilectus et fidelis d' Moreby et noster Robertus de Morby et Margareta uxor ems teneant maneria
Margareta . _. . . _. J . . °_ . J _ ,
more eju» et de Coges m comitatu Oxome et de Opton et de Scolcotes m comi- Johanne de tatu Eboraci et Weford in comitatu Staffordie cum pertinenciis Grey. a(j vitam ipsius Margarete que quidem maneria post mortem pre- dicte Margarete dilecto et fideli nostro Johanni de Grey et heredibus suis remanere debent ut dicitur. Nos eisdem Roberto et Margarete, et Johanni gratiam specialem facere volentes in hac parte concessimus et hac carta nostra confirmavimus pro nobis et heredibus nostris prefatis Roberto et Margarete, quod ipsi ad totam vitam ipsius Margarete et predicto Johanni quod ipse et heredes sui post mortem predicte Margarete imperpetuum habeant liberam warennam in omnibus dominicis terris suis maneriorum predictorum, dum tamen terre ille non sint infra metas foreste nostre, Ita quod nullus intret terras illas ad fugandum in eis vel ad aliquid capiendum, quod ad warennam pertineat sine licencia et voluntate ipsorum Roberti et Margarete dum eadem Margareta vixerit seu predict! Johannis vel heredum suorum post mortem ejusdem Mar- garete super forisfacturam nostram decem librarum. Quare volumus et firmiter precipimus pro nobis et heredibus nostris quod predicti Robertus et Margareta ad totam vitam ipsius Margarete et predictus Johannes et heredes sui post mortem predicte Margarete imperpetuum habeant liberam warennam in omnibus dominicis terris suis predictis. Dum tamen etc. Hiis testibus ven- erabilibus patribus H. Lincolnensi episcopo, cancellario nostro, S. Londonensi episcopo, Johanne de Eltham comite Cornubie fratre nostro carissimo, Rogero de Mortuo Mari comite Marchie, Olivero de Ingham, Gilberto Talebot,
THE CLINTON FAMILY 45
Johanne Mantravers senescallo hospicii nostri et aliis. Data etc. apud Wodestok rxi. die Aprilis (1330). per breve de private sigillo.
j Chaffer Roll, 4 Edward HI. (i 17) No. 94.]
Rex eisdem. Salutem. Sciatis nos de gratia nostra special!
Pro Johanne concessiSSe et hac carta nostra confirmasse dilecto et fideli nostro
Rotherfeld*! Johanni de Grey de Rotherfeld quod ipse et heredes sui imper-
petuum habeant liberara warennam in omnibus dominicis terris
suis de Shobynton, Estcleydon et Botilcleydon in comitatu Buldnghamie, Cogges,
Herdewyk, Stanlak, Feringford et Somerton, in comitatu Qronie, Wyntreburn
in comitatu Berk', Duston in comitatu Norhamptonie et Upton, Stilingflete,
Moreby, Drynghous, Sculcotes et Ketelwell in comitatu Eboraci . . . Data
per manum nostram apud Clipston primo die Septembris (1330).
per breve de privato sigillo. [Ibid. No. 44.]
Pro Henrico Rex eisdem. Salutem. Sciatis nos de gratia nostra special! dc Moreby. concessisse et hac carta nostra confirmasse dilecto nobis Henrico de Moreby quod ipse et heredes sui imperpetuum habeant liberam warennam in omnibus dominicis terris suis de Moreby et Elvyngton in comitatu Eboraci . . . Data per manum nostram apud Berewicum super Twedam vicesimo tercio die Julii (1333). per breve de privato sigillo.
Consimiles cartas de libera warenna habent subscripti videlicet.
Pro Willelmo Willelmus de Moreby 'in omnibus dominicis terris suis de de Moreby. Bonnewyk et Moreby in comitatu Eboraci etc. ut supra. Data ut tupra, per idem breve.
Pro Roberto Robertus de Moreby in omnibus dominicis terris suis de Bonne- de Moreby. wyfc et Moreby in comitatu Eboraci et de Solihull in comitatu Warwici, etc., ut supra. Data ut supra per idem breve.
[Charter Roll, 7 Edward III. (120) Nos. 12, 1 1 and 10.]
There remains yet another difficulty with regard to Solihull Lord Louth sold to Bishop Hotham in 1319. In 1320 there is a sale, or release, to Hotham, of the same property, namely of the manor and advowson, by Philip Purcel and Ela his wife. Dugdale ventures the supposition that this Ela was the earl's daughter. Apart from the fact that the earl does not appear to have had a daughter of this name at all, the conjecture is not a happy one, seeing that Lord Louth himself survived till 1329. It seems therefore more reasonable to suppose that in Ela wife of Philip Purcel we again meet with the earl's mother. The presentations to the church of Solihull, given by Dugdale are as follows : —
(1) Eustace le Poer and Ela de Oddingeseles his wife. Sans date.
(2) Sir John de Grey, 1303.
46 THE ANCESTOR
(3) The four daughters and co-heirs of John (sic) de Oddingeseles, 1310.
(4) William de Bromwich, procurator of Sir Eustace le Poer, 1310.
(5) Dame Alice de Caunton, lady of Pyriton, IV. Cal. Nov. 1311 ; and thereafter the bishop of Ely.
It would thus appear that before 1303 Piers de Berming- ham, the earl's father, was dead, and that Ela, his mother, had remarried with Eustace le Poer, who was living in 1310 : that Eustace was, however, dead before May 1314, when by the description of ' Ela late the wife of Piers de Bermingham,' she granted two parts of the manor of Solihull to Ralph de Per- ham for life; that in the interval between 1314 and 1319, Ralph de Perham died, and that she, being again in possession, granted whatever she had in Solihull to the earl her son, who sold it in 1319 to the bishop ; and lastly, that in 1320, having by that time remarried with Philip Purcel, as her third hus- band, she joins with her husband in releasing her right to the bishop. Even the release is not in ordinary course, but is preceded by the following mandate, which may, however, have been occasioned merely by the residence of Philip and Ela in Ireland : —
6 May, To the Justices of the Bench. Order to cause a fine to be levied
1 320. between John, bishop of Ely, demandant, and Philip Purcel and Ela his wife, deforciants, of the manor of Solihull and the advowson of the church of that town according to the acknowledgment made by the deforciants before the king, whereby they acknowledged the said manor and advowson to be the right of the said John, and released the same to him and his heirs quit of the said Philip and Ela, and her heirs, for ever, and warranted the same to him ; for the purpose of making which fine Philip and Ela have attorned in their place Alex- ander Aptot and John de Hales, whom they are to admit in the plea and to receive part of the chirograph in place of Philip and Ela.
The Chancellor of Ireland received the acknowledgment and attornment by the king's writ of precept.
[Close Roll Calendar.]
The fine was levied accordingly : —
Hec est finalis concordia facta in curia domini regis apud Westmonasterium in crastino Ascensionis Domini anno regni regis Edwardi filii regis Edwardi terciodecimo . . . inter Johannem Eliensem episcopum querentem, per Johannem de Ponte Fracto positum loco suo per breve domini regis ad lucrandum vel perdendum et Philippum Purcel, et Elam uxorem ejus deforcientes, de manerio de Solihull cum pertinenciis et advocacione ecclesie ejusdem ville . . . scilicet quod predict! Philippus et Ela recognoverunt predictum manerium cum pertinenciis et advocacionem predictam esse jus ipsius episcopi, et ilia remiserunt et quietum clamaverunt de ipsis Philippe et Ela et heredibus ipsius Ele predicto episcopo et heredibus suis imperpetuum. Et pretera . . . con-
THE CLINTON FAMILY 47
cesserunt pro se et heredibus ipsius Ele quod ipsi warantizabunt predicto episcopo et heredibus suis predictum mancrium cum pertinenciis et advoca- cionem predictam contra omnes homines imperpetuum. Et pro hac recog- nicione . . . idem episcopus dedit predictis Philippe et Ele centum libras sterlingorum.
[Feet of Fines, Warwick, file 45, No. 19.]
I am not at all sure that the explanation offered is correct ; and it is to be noted that Ela the wife of William de Oddinge- seles, mother of Ida de Clinton and the other sisters, survived her husband, and that she is not accounted for.
We have thus ascertained the parentage, and the nature of the inheritance of Ida de Oddingeseles, wife of John de Clinton (V.). The manor of Maxstoke, which she brought to him, was not held in chief, nor was he himself a tenant in chief, in respect of his own manors of Amington or Lydiard or of any other lands. Thus it happens that no ' office ' or iniquisition post mortem was taken upon the death of himself, his widow, for Ida survived him, or of his son and successor ; and we are all the more dependent on such notices as we can find relating to them in the calendars issued under the super- intendence of the deputy keeper of the records. I do not propose to inquire into the summons to parliament received by successive members of this family. The distinction, upon principle, between parliaments and councils appears to me to break down. It is for the wisdom of parliament, which still hap- pily exists, in individual cases to decide and for the student of such matters to admire the expediency of its decisions. We are told nowadays that nothing — I allude to disease — is inherited ; but for the life of me I cannot see a very important distinction between the tendency in certain families to be summoned to parliament and a birthright inherent in them to such summons. The barony of Clinton, upon ' Garter's Roll,' must, as we learn from a note in the Complete Peerage, be considered by its ' ranking ' to originate in a summons to John de Clinton (VI.) son of John de Clinton (V.) and Ida his wife, and this in spite of the fact that John de Clinton (V.) was himself summoned to parliament 6 February 1298-9, which gives us however a date in his career. Other such dates are as follows. On I September 1300 'John de Clynton ' had a grant of freewarren in his demesne lands of Amington, co. Warwick (Charter Roll, 28 Edward I. No. 4). On 6 June 1 306 there is a protection for John de Clinton of Maxstoke,
48 THE ANCESTOR
going beyond seas with Robert de Burghersh, constable of Dover Castle (Pat. Roll Cal). On 5 August 1309 there is an order to deliver to John de Clynton the castle and honour of Walyngford, the honour of St. Valery and the town of Chichester (Close Roll Cal). That he was dead before 7 January 1310-1 appears by a remission of payment to the heirs and executors of John de Clynton of 3i/. IQJ. 4^., in which he was indebted to the king for the time in which he was seneschal of Ponthieu ; also of 6il. is. 2d. as steward of Walyngford (Pat. Roll Cal).
During the following ten years there are constant references to Ida, his widow. In September 1311, 'Ida, late the wife of John de Clynton,' is bound jointly with John de Bracebrigge, knight, for the proper debt of the said Ida, to Sir Edmund Deyncourt, in 450 marks, to be levied in default upon her land, etc., in Warwick and Wilts, by which it would appear, incidentally, that Lydiard was settled upon her (Close Roll Cal.). On 3 May 1313 and 20 February 1313-4 there are protections for ' Ida late the wife of John de Clynton ' going beyond seas with Queen Isabel (Pat. Roll Cal.). On 9 September 1313 there is a pardon, at ' Ida de Clynton's ' request, touching a disseisin at Solihull (Close Roll Cal.). In 1315 there is the ' Notification ' printed above that she was the eldest of William de Oddingeseles' daughters, upon what occasion issued I cannot tell. And lastly, on I March 1321-2 there is an order to John de Walewayn, escheator this side Trent, to permit ' Ida, late the wife of John de Clynton,' to have the easement of houses in the manor of La Grove, till further order, as the king wishes to show her special favour.
By Ida de Oddingeseles John de Clinton (V.) had issue, John de Clinton (VI.) and William de Clinton, summoned to parliament from 6 September 1330, and created earl of Huntingdon, 13 March 1336-7. There were presumably also daughters, to one of whom I suppose the following entry in the Calendar of Papal Letters to refer—
6 June 1336. Mandate to the bishop of Coventry to grant a dispensation to John de Steanuge, knight, and Ida de Clinton to remain in the marriage they have contracted, notwithstanding that the knight had for a concubine, before the said marriage, one who was related to Ida in the third degree of kindred ; declaring their offspring legitimate.
John de Clinton (VI.), summoned to parliament as men- tioned above, from 27 January 1331-2 to I April 1335 — I
THE CLINTON FAMILY 49
derive this information from the Complete Peerage — was under age at his father's death. The further statement in the Complete Peerage that he was aged twelve in 1315, we have shown in the previous volume to be due to a confusion between him and John de Clinton of Coleshill, his second cousin ; but from the inquisition in which this cousin is found heir to his grandfather, also of Coleshill, we gathered that John de Clinton (VI.) was in 1316 in ward to the executors of the late earl of Warwick, and that he had been previously in the custody of that earl himself, who died 10 August 1315. We have also seen above that his parents were certainly married before 1 300, to which year we are inclined to assign his birth. As correctly stated in the Complete Peerage he married Margery, daughter of Sir William Corbet, of Chaddesley Corbet, co. Worcester, for we find in the Close Roll Calendar, under date 24 February 1328-9, an enrolment of grant by William Corbet, knight, lord of Chaddesleye, to Sir John de Clynton, of ' Mastok ' and to Margery his wife and to the heirs of their bodies of 2OO/. yearly rent from his manor of Chaddesleye. That this Margery was the mother of his heir moreover appears probable, for in the absence of any inquisition taken upon his own death, we have a series of inquisitions taken after the death of his brother, the earl of Huntingdon, in 1354, by which his son John de Clinton (VII.) is found heir to the said earl, his uncle, and is variously stated to be aged twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-six, and thirty years of age. Of these returns that for Warwickshire is presumably the most reliable, and in this, taken 24 September, 28 Edward III., the nephew is stated to have been aged twenty-six at Easter last, that is to say on 13 April 1354 ; fr°m which we gather that he was born in April 1328, just a year before Margery de Clinton's post- nuptial settlement.
We find (Pat. Roll Cal.) the name of ' John de Clynton of Makstok ' in commissions of the peace for Warwick- shire, 1 8 May 1329, 23 March 1331-2, and 20 November 1332. His summons to parliament in 1335 is not absolute proof that he was then living, but we have satisfactory evi- dence, at any rate, that he was dead in 1343. On 14 May in this year a commission of oyer and terminer was ordered, on the complaint of Margery, late the wife of John de Clynton of Maxstoke, that Sir Richard de Herthull and others of his name had broken her close at Amynton, co. Warwick, felled
5o THE ANCESTOR
her trees and burned and plundered her goods (Pat. Roll Col.).
John de Clinton (VI.) had issue by Margery Corbet a son John de Clinton (VII.), born as suggested above in 1328. I suppose that during a long minority he may have been in ward to his uncle, the earl of Huntingdon. The benefits that he received from this uncle, who died without issue, were immense. High in favour, married to the greatest heiress in England, but childless, William de Clinton, earl of Hunting- don, built up a lordly estate. He held at his death in August 1354 land at Wythyhamme and Hertefeld, co. Sussex, land in Folkston of Nicholas de Sandwich, as of the manor of Folkston, besides a third of the manor of Goldestanton in Esshe, with lands in Esshe and Wyngeham, and the manor of Huntynton, co. Kent, and a moiety of the manor of Pirton, co. Herts, of which we have already heard. In addition to this, he was seised in fee of land in Nether Whitacre and Amynton, held land jointly with his nephew in Kynnesbury, and had the manors of Maxstoke and Shustoke by his nephew's demise, all in co. Warwick. The history of this manor of Shu- stoke is set out in full in the pages of the Patent Roll Calen- dar. It is concerned with the founding by the earl of a priory in Maxstoke. On 1 8 May 1 343 a series of licences is granted, by virtue of which the earl makes an exchange with John de Moubray of the manor of Hynton, co. Cambridge, for the manor of Shustoke ; he then grants Shustoke in free alms to the prior and convent of Maxstoke, who grant it to ' John son of John de Clynton, and his heirs, in exchange for 2O/. of land in the manor of Maxstoke, which 2O/., it appears by a further licence, 21 October 1344, consisted of ' the capital messuage of the manor of Maxstok, in the park there,' etc. Finally there is a licence, 17 June 1346, for 'John son and heir of John de Clynton of Maxstok ' to grant the manor of Shustok to the earl, his uncle, for life. The piety is delightful. The earl is enabled to dedicate to religion the very house in which we must presume he first saw the light. He supplied a stately substitute for the use of his heirs. On 12 February 1344-5 there is a licence for William de Clynton, earl of Huntyng- don, to ' crenellate ' a dwelling place to be built in Maxstok for the use of John de Clynton, his nephew, and for his nephew to hold the same, thus ' crenellated,' to him and his heirs.
Thanks to Ida de Oddingeseles and to William de Clinton,
THE CLINTON FAMILY 51
her son, the house of Clinton is now fairly launched on its superb career. The endowments are incessantly commuted. Never a family so variously at various times endowed; but whether reigning in the midlands, in Kent, on the east coast, or in the northern parts the heirs male have not lacked means, while the heir of line has somehow always contrived to re-gild the ancient barony.
With the matrimonial alliances of John de Clinton (VII.), Lord Clinton, we return to pure genealogy, not without relief.
EXSUL.
(To be continued.)
52
THE ANCESTOR
HERALDS' COLLEGE AND PRESCRIPTION
V
I NOW come to the final and most difficult point of this inquiry, the question so deftly evaded by ' X ' and Mr. Phillimore, namely, when did the heralds cease to recognize prescriptive rights in armorial bearings ?
I have attempted to show that the principle was admitted by practically all the Kings of Arms down to Dugdale's time, thus confirming the statements of his letter of I668.1
I must now call attention to another change in heraldic practice which took place shortly after that time and has an important bearing on the question. In the earlier grants and confirmations we find no suggestion that any warrant of the Earl Marshal was necessary to set the heraldic machinery in motion. The grants, whether by Garter or by one of the Kings of Arms either alone or in conjunction with Garter, are expressed to be made by the authority of the letters patent conferring the office. Thus in 1541 we find Hawley, Claren- ceux, granting arms
by the aucthorite and power annexed, attribued, given and graunted by the Kyng our Soverayne Lord's Highnes to me and to my office of Clarencieubc King of Armes, ... by expresse wordes under his most noble grete seale.3
This form, with slight variations, is almost universal. One of the later ones may be quoted also, a grant in 1663 by Sir Edward Bysshe, Clarenceux, to Silvanus Boycott ; ' by the power of my office granted unto me under the great scale of England ' ; no mention being made of the Earl Marshal or his warrant.3
Very rarely indeed down to Dugdale's time is any mention of the Earl Marshal made in a patent of arms, and then always, so far as I can ascertain, in a new grant, as opposed to a con- firmation. The earliest instance I have found may be given ; it is from a new grant made by Gilbert Dethick, Garter, in 1564.
1 Ancestor, ii. 45. * Misc. Gen. et Her., i. 304. 3 Misc. Gen. et Her. (new ser.), ii. 162.
HERALDS' COLLEGE 53
I ... by the authoritie and power off my offyce, anexed and graunted unto me under the greate scale of England, and also by the consent of ... Thomas, Duke of Norfolke, Erie Marshall . . . have ordayned, assigned, and set furthe, given, graunted, . . . these armes, etc.1
The distinction made in this respect between a new grant and a confirmation seems to have arisen out of the notorious quarrels and disputes that convulsed the college in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Among other things, some of the Heralds, especially William Dethick, afterwards Garter, had taken to visiting and giving grants of arms of their own initiative, which they had no right to do except as deputies to one of the Kings of Arms.3
It was in consequence of these quarrels, which had become a positive scandal, that the Earl Marshal framed some new orders regulating the respective rights of the disputants. They are very lengthy, but only one is material here.
Orders to be observed and kept by the Officers of Arms, made by the high and mighty Prince, Thos. Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England, 1568, 18 July, 10 year reg. Q. Eliz.
Item, it is allso ordered and decreed by the said Earl Marshall that from henceforth there shall be no new arms granted to any person or persons without consent thereunto of the Earl Marshal had. Provided always that it shall be lawful! for Garter, Clarenceux and Norroy and every of them jointly together to give new crests and confirmances, as heretofore they have done . . . and that no patents of arms be granted unless the hands of the three Kings of Arms be thereto subscribed.'
The most important fact in this rule is the Earl Marshal's recognition of the distinction between a grant of new arms on the one hand, and a grant of a crest or a confirmation on the other. The ' confirmances,' as he calls them, can only refer to arms not already recorded at the College, and con- sequently depending on outside proof of user, that is, on pre- scription. Nothing could be clearer or more in point : the new grant to the new man required the Earl Marshal's sanction ; the allowance or confirmation of arms to one who could prove a right to them, did not.
The latter part of the rule was to a large extent disregarded,
1 Misc. Gen. et Her. (ser. 3), ii. 193.
a Noble, p. 198.
» Additional MS. 6297, fo. 19. The italics are mine. ' X ' states that these rules were made by the command of Queen Elizabeth ; The Right to Star Arms, p. 99.
54 THE ANCESTOR
for new grants of arms continued to be issued on the authority of Garter or one of the Kings of Arms alone. In the majority of these the Earl Marshal's warrant is not mentioned, and presumably was not obtained.
The earlier Garters do not seem to have interfered with the functions of the Kings of Arms, nor does it appear to have been the intention of the Crown that Garter should do more than superintend the work of the College generally.1 William Dethick was responsible for the alteration. He ' induced ' (in plain English, I suppose, bribed) one of the Clerks of the Signet to insert words in the Signet Bill, giving him powers of making visitations and of granting arms.2 This was a clear usurpation of the rights of the Kings of Arms, and they re- sented it very keenly. Many details are given by Noble.
Dethick seems to have been as unscrupulous as he was violent, and was constantly in trouble. In 1595 or 1596, he was hauled before the Star Chamber on a complaint made by the Earl of Kent, Clarenceux King of Arms (Lee) and York Herald (Brookes mouth). It seems that Garter had made ' a testimonial^ under the sealle of the Office,' that one Rother- ham was entitled to quarter the arms of Grey of Ruthyn, ' falsely, corruptely, contrarye to his owne bookes and to his owne knowledge.' * The result does not appear. James I. was advised to get rid of him, and after a great deal of trouble this was done in 1606.
William Segar, his successor, was a weak man and careless. In 1616 he was the cause of a very serious affair. Deceived
1 That is of course apart from his public duties and those in connection with the Order of the Garter.
2 Noble, p. 198 ; Diet. Nat. Biog. I append quotations from the patents of Gilbert and William Dethick, the added words in the latter's patent being in italics.
Letters Patent appointing Gilbert Dethyck, Norroy, to the office of Garter ; da ted April 29, 1550. Habendum . . . officium illud . . . cum omnibus juribus . . . eidem officio qualitercumque debitis ... in tarn amplis modo et forma prout Christoferus Barker, miles, nuper Gartier, aut aliquis alius . . . habuit usus vel gavisus fuit ... in eodem officio. [Patent Roll, 4 Edw. VI., part 2, m. 22.]
Letters Patent appointing William Detheck [sic] to the office of Garter ; dated April 21, 1586. Habendum officium illud . . . cum omnibus juribus . . . quibuscumque, necnon visitandi et insignia armorum claris viris concedendi, etc. [Patent Roll, 28 Eliz., part I, m. I.] Memorandum of surrender, De- cember 10, 4 Jac. I.
> Hawarde, Let ReporUs del Cases in Camera Stellata, p. 66 j Noble, p. 199,
HERALDS' COLLEGE 55
by the malicious Brookesmouth, York Herald, Segar granted the royal arms of Arragon, with a canton of Brabant, to George Brandon, the public executioner,* for which he was promptly imprisoned.
It was probably in consequence of this outrageous proceed- ing that James I. appointed a fresh commission to execute the office of Earl Marshal. The patent is most instructive, and demands a lengthy quotation.
1618. Commission to Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, Edward, Earl of Worcester, Ludovic, Duke of Lenox, George, Marquess of Buckingham, Charles, Earl of Nottingham, William, Earl of Pembroke, and Thomas, Earl of Arundel. Dated 7 February, 1618.
Whereas the office of Earle Marshall of this our Realme of England re- raayneth at this presente voyde untill wee shall dispose of the same to some person of honor meete for it ; and there are and wilbe manye accidents of armes and chivalrie belonging to the same office undetermined ; and that amongeste other inconveniences of late yeares growne for wante of due regarde had to the actions of our officers att armes, the heraldes & kinges of armes and purse- rauntes of armes, wee are informed that divers errors are committed by certaine heraldes now deceased and by some such as doe live, to the dishonor of our nobilitie and chivalrie and to the disgrace of sondrie families of aunciente blood bearing the armes of their auncestors, in assigneing and appointing the aunciente armes, badges and crestes of some of our nobilitie and chivalrie and of other gentlemen of auncient blood, to men that weere and that bee strangers in blood to them and nott heritable thereto ; and likewise, that for gaine or other affec- cion the said heraldes have appointed armes, crestes and badges for some other persons of base birthe or of meane vocacion and qualitie of living, that were meete for persons of good birthe and ligneage to receive honor, either for service in politique governmente or in marciall actions : Which errors and disorders wee, of our Princelie and Royall dignitye (from whence all inferiour honors and dignities ought to be derived and protected), myndeing to refourme, uppon the certaine knowledge of your fidelities, knowledges and zeale that you and everie of you beare to the mayntenaunce of all states of our nobilitie and chivalrie and of all gentlemen of true blood, in their rightes, titles and degrees, aswell for their armes, crests and badges as for all other prehemynences of right by lawe of armes belonginge unto them and everie of them or to their children, doe by theis presentes authorize you or anye three or more of you, to exercise all accions belonginge to the offyce of the Earle Marshall to all purposes and intentes, untill wee shall committe the same office to some other : And by vertue hereof and by authoritie of theis presentes doe give and graunte to you, or anye three or more of you, as before is expressed, full power from tyme to tyme to call before you all our officers of armes, bothe kynges of armes, heraldes and pursevantes, and to cause due inquisicion to be made of all manner of armes by them of late yeares given to any person withoute good warraunte by the lawe of armes, or usurped and taken by anye person unlawfullie withoute good warraunte ; and uppon due examinacion and triall thereof, to revoke and disanull all such as
1 Noble, p. 231.
56 THE ANCESTOR
shalbe soe tried, and fownde unlawfullie or unworthilye assigned and given, or usurped by anye person unlawfullie : And further, to consider of such good ordynaunces as have bene made by former Earles Marshalles or Constables of England for the direction of the said heraldes in their severall offices, and for the limittacion of their authoritie, and their orderlie visitacion, and to restore the same to their aunciente usage . . . And generallie ... to doe and execute all other thinges and actes that of right mighte be donne and executed by the Earle Marshall of England according to the lawe and custome of this Realme, and according to the Lawes Marshall, for which this shalbe your sufficiente warraunte and discharge.1
The phrase * giving arms to such who had no pretensions to them by inheritance,' distinctly recognizes a prescriptive right ; no doubt the Rotherham case was the one aimed at.
About 1619 York and Somerset Heralds complained to the Commissioners of ' the subtle practices of Garter, Norrey, and his sonne.' They alleged
' that notwithstanding all your Lordships' especiall commaundement and his Ma- jestie's pleasure signified, yet do the Kings of Armes . . . continue the giving of armes and creasts without warrant, to men unfitting to receave the same ; and to secure their actions the more, they neither record or make knowen any of their doings in the generall office, as they ought to doe. . . . Also when heere- tofore any visitacions have been made, . . . those who made suche visitacions were bound to bring into the generall office (presentlie after their returnes) their whole collections formerlie taken ; but these (to obscure their proceedings and abuses) doe not performe any those auncient orders and rules, so that divers gent., from whom they have receaved large rewardes and fees to doe the same, comming after of purpose to see whether record hath beene made thereof accordinglie, and finding nothing to appeare as they expected (as of all their doings there is not so much as one leafe of paper brought into the office for these 30 yeeres), they have with great exclamacions and bitter speeches taxed the said officers with little better than cousenage. . . . Latelie 2Otie of the best bookes of armes, creasts, visitacions and pedigrees have beene purloyned and stolne out of the office ... by which meanes the office is become so barren, as those nowe remayning in the office are not able to give satisfaction to gent, as is requisite and as ought to be done . . . And further . . . newe armes given to base men are entred by some of the office in olde bookes, dating them 3 or 4 hundred yeeres past.' 2
Brooke, I admit, is not a good witness, but in a complaint of this nature to the Commissioners he would not be likely to make any statements that he was not prepared to prove.
I have mentioned these old scandals in no unfriendly spirit to the College ; the present staff are no more responsible for the misdoings of their predecessors than King Edward VII. is
1 Patent Roll, 15 James I., part 1 1, m. I2d.
1 State Papers, Domestic, James I., vol. iii., No. 137.
HERALDS' COLLEGE 57
for those of the second of that name. But I wish to show that these successive restrictions on the powers of the heralds, and the gradual tightening up of the heraldic machinery, was as much for the protection of the public against the heralds as vice versa.
In 1617 there is a document which at first sight seems to be an example of the Earl Marshal's warrant for a confirmation.
Wheras wee are enformed that James Willan, sorme and heireof Leonard Willan, late of Kingston upon Hull in the county of Yorke, Esq., is of sufficiencie to beare armes, and hath such armes as are acknowledged by one of the Heralds of Scotland to be his ancestors', sent him thence, as it is informed, the w"h soe appearinge to you, Wee doe hereby require yow to ratifie and confirme the same unto him, as in like cases is usuall. And for soe doeinge this shalbe yor warrant. Suffolke house, this 25th of Aprill, 1617.
Yo' loving freindes,
T. SUFFOLKE, E. WORCESTER.
To our lovinge freinde Sr Richard St. George, knight, alias Norroy Kinge at Armes.1
On I May 1617, St. George assigns, ratifies and confirms to James Willan, ' these armes and creast followinge.' The form is that of a new grant, and there is no mention of the Scotch coat.3
This grant is not easy to place. The office of Earl Marshal was in commission, and the Earls of Suffolk and Worcester were two of the Commissioners. Possibly the fact that the applicant was a Scotchman may have made some difference, and caused the English heralds to look upon the transaction as an English grant rather than as a confirmation.
St. George, however, fully understood the distinction made in the orders of 1568. Thus in 1617 he recites : —
I ... having power from his Matle under the great scale, with the consent of the Earle Marshall of England, to give, grant, ratifie and confirme coates of armes unto men of quallitie meriting the same.1
The patent from which the extract is taken is a new grant.
The same distinction is found in the letters patent of Charles I. appointing William Le Neve to the office of Claren- ceux in 1635.
1 Harleian MS. 1470, fos. I, lob. > Misc. Gen. et Her. (3 ser.), i. 60. » Harl. MS. 1470, fo. 3.
58 THE ANCESTOR
The operative words are as follows : —
Habendum, . . . et exercendum officium illud . . . cum omnibus juribus . . . quibuscumque . . . pertinentibus ; dantes ulterius . . . eidem Claren- cieux authoritatem, potestatem et licenciam literas patentes armorum claris viris donandi secundum ordinacionem perComitem Marescallum nuper pre- scriptam et cum eorum consensu, ac cetera omnia et singula que dicto incumbent officio regis armorum sive in esse dignoscuntur in jure vel ex consuetudine temporibus retroactis faciendi, exercendi et exequendi.1
The power of giving ' patents of arms to worthy persons ' clearly refers to new grants, and the Earl Marshal's ordinances mentioned are probably those of 1568.
With this we may compare the statement of Francis Thynne, Lancaster Herald and a careful antiquary. Writing in 1605 on the duty and office of a king of arms, he says : —
He shall make diligent search, if any bear arms without authority or good right ; and finding such, although they be true blazon, he shall prohibit them. The said king of arms in his province hath full power and authority, by the king's grant, to give confirmation to all noblemen and gentlemen, ignorant of their arms ... he hath authority to give arms and crests to persons of ability, deserving well of the prince and commonwealth.2
Note the antithesis, authority or good right, and the dis- tinction between the confirmations and the new grants to deserving persons, the claris viris of the letters patent just quoted.
Edward Bysshe, the Parliamentary Garter, naturally does not refer to the Earl Marshal in his grants during that period ; but even after the Restoration, when he had been reduced to his former office of Clarenceux, he made grants which contain no reference to the Earl Marshal.3
Sir Edward Walker had been deprived of the office of Garter in 1646, when Bysshe was appointed by Parliament ; he was restored in 1 660. All through his second tenure of the office, 1660 to 1677, the Earl Marshal's warrant was not required, so far as we may judge from the absence of any mention of it in grants of arms. A large number of his grants exist, and many have been printed ; I have not found one reciting that the warrant had been obtained.
Sir Edward Walker died on 19 February 1677, and Sir
1 Additional MS. 6297, fo. I57b.
2 Noble, p. 196.
* e.g. Harleian MSS. 1172, fo. 46 ; 1470, fo. 81.
HERALDS' COLLEGE 59
William Dugdale was appointed to the office of Garter on 26 May following. Despite Mr. Phillimore's sneers, he was the most distinguished antiquary who has ever filled that post. His career in the College runs thus : Blanch Lyon Pour- suivant Extraordinary, 1638 ; Rouge Croix Poursuivant, 1639 > Chester Herald, 1644 ; Norroy King of Arms, 1660 ; Garter, 1667. Thus when he became head of the College he had already nearly forty years' experience of matters heraldic.
His opinion on the question of prescription appears from his letter in 1668, when Norroy King of Arms. Shortly after this we find him reciting the fact of the Earl Marshal's warrant in a new grant.
1676. Whereas . . . Henry, Earle of Peterborough, Deputy ... by warrant or order under his hand and the scale of the Earle Marshall's office . . . hath signifyed unto me his consent for my devising and assigning unto John North . . . such armes and crest as he ... may lawfully beare . . . Know ye therefore that in pursuance of the said warrant or order and according to the grant of my office under the great Scale of England, whereby I am authorised to devise and grant armes according to the Earle Marshall's orders, and with his consent, etc.1
In 1682, five years after his appointment as Garter, Dug- dale published his treatise on The Antient Usage in Bearing of Arms. The work itself does not throw any further light on the present subject, but the epistle dedicatory to Robert, Earl of Aylesbury, Deputy Earl Marshal, contains the following passage : —
Such have been the extravagant Actings of Paynters and other Mechanicks in this licencious Age, that, to satisfie those who are open handed to them, they have not stuck to depict arms not only for divers younger branches of Families with undue distinctions, if any at all, but to allow them to such as do bear the same appellation, though of no alliance to that stock ; the permission whereof hath given such encouragement to those who are guilty of this boldness, that there are not a few who do already begin to prescribe as of right thereto.1
The quarrel between the heralds and the ' painter fellows ' was of long standing, and indeed has descended to our own day. Dugdale resented as keenly as any of his predecessors the intrusion of the heraldic stationer upon the prerogatives of the College. Is it going too far to suggest that on his initiative the Earl Marshal or his deputy made a more drastic regulation to the effect that a warrant should be obtained for
1 Misc. Gen. et Her. (new ser.), i. 301. " Edition by T. C. Banks, 1811.
60 THE ANCESTOR
' confirmances ' as well as for new grants F I have not been able to ascertain that such an order was in fact made, the archives of the College would doubtless show, but this is clear, from this date onwards the Earl Marshal's warrant is recited in all patents, and not confined as before to new grants.
It will be noticed that Dugdale, even when expressing his well-founded indignation against the painters, still admits that it is possible ' to prescribe us of right ' to armorial bearings; His wrath is directed solely to this being done by ' such as do bear the same appellation, though of no alliance to that stock.' The phrase is not very happily worded, but the mean- ing is unmistakeable. There is nothing against prescription per se ; but no prescription can give a right to the arms of another family. That is his grievance, and the distinction is both sound and sensible. No length of user can sanction what is in the beginning a fraudulent, if unintentional, usurpation of another's property. Here for once The Book of St. Albans and The Right to Bear Arms are in accord. Dame Julian says ' for that thyng the wich is myne . . . may not be take fro me, ner the prynce may not do hit rightwysly ' ; ' X ' puts it ' the Kings of Arms in England have no power in themselves to grant the lawful arms of one family to another family.' ' It is much to be regretted that this very proper principle has sometimes been lost sight of by those by whom it should have been held most sacred.
It is difficult to see how the insistence on the Earl Marshal's warrant upon all occasions improved the position of the heralds, unless it may have done so in the matter of fees. The people who were content to deal with the herald painters were not affected by it, and no doubt continued to ' send name and county,' as they are still invited to do to-day. Moreover, it did not at first alter the old practice as to prescription, though it may have made the rules as to the amount of evidence required somewhat more stringent.
The case of John Evershed seems to point in that direction. In 1696 he obtained a confirmation of his arms from Thomas St. George, Garter, and Henry St. George, Clarenceux, which contains the following recital : —
Whereas . . . Henry, Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal, . . . hath by warrant or order . . . signified unto us that he hath received testimonials that Mr.
1 P- 49-
HERALDS' COLLEGE 61
John Evershed . . . is of an antient family : and whereas he hath also produced to his Grace an escutcheon of arms, attested under the hand of Sir Edward Bysshe, knt., sometime Clarenceux King of Arms, declaring his arms therein expressed to be the arms of their family, his Grace did thereupon order and ap- point us to allow and confirm the same unto the said John Evershed and his posterity in due form.1
This carries us a step further. A formal allowance of arms by the proper authority would, one would have thought, have been sufficient to satisfy the most exigent Garter or Earl Marshal. But something was clearly lacking, or why this confirmation ? Can it have been that Bysshe's allowance had not been registered at the College ? It is not so stated, but it is difficult to find any other explanation. Bysshe we know to have been a careless person ; witness the following : —
Sir Edw. Bysshe, Clarenceaux King of Armes, was at the Crowne Inn near Carfax in Oxon, in order to visit part of the County of Oxon. . . . Few gentle- men appeared, because at that time there was a horse-race at Bracldey. Such that came to him, he entred if they pleased. If they did not enter, he was in- different, so the visitation was a trite thing. Many look'd on this matter as a trick to get money.'
The infallibility of the College records was clearly in the air, and we can trace the growth of the theory almost from start to finish. The Evershed confirmation of 1696, just quoted, seems merely to imply it ; the following grant by Henry St. George, Garter, in the first year of his office, 1703, goes a little further, and hints at it in set terms.
Whereas Henry Gatchell . . . hath by petition humbly represented unto . . . Charles, Earl of Carlisle, Earl Marshal of England, . . . that he and his ancestors have been possessors and owners of lands of inheritance in the county of Somerset . . . ever since the reign of King Richard III., but for want of due entries in the College of Armes, not being able to make out so just a right to a coat of arms as he ought to do, has made application to his lordship for a grant . . . the said Earl Marshall did by warrant . . . order and appoint us to devysc and assign such armes, etc.3
Here then we get the first hint of the idea that the College records are the sole authority for the right to arms. But mark how tentatively the draftsman puts it forward ! Here is no
1 Misc. Gen. et Her. ii. 191.
*" Dallaway, 316; Noble, 272 ; quoting Anthony Wood. The visitation was in 1669. The note is a withering comment on X's statement that the visitations effected a ' clean sweep.'
3 Misc. Gen. et Her. (ser. 3), ii. 101
E
62 THE ANCESTOR
rude and blustering assertion that ' arms are good or they are bad as they are recorded or unrecorded.' ' The writer is more in sorrow than in anger ; there is a delicate suggestion that if the College records are incomplete, it is the dead and gone Gatchells who are to blame. They had been horse-racing, or cock-fighting, or something, when they should have been recording their pedigree and arms.
In 1707 there was further trouble with the ' painter fellows,' and a royal proclamation was issued in the Queen's name, signed by the Earl of Bindon, which contains the fol- lowing recital : —
Whereas the ordering, judging, and determining all matters, concerning arms, crests, supporters, cognizances, pedigrees, devices, and ensigns armorial, the making and prescribing rules, ordinances, and decrees, for the granting, controlling, and regulating thereof, and the putting in execution the laws and ordinances relating thereunto, are, among other powers and authorities, with her Majesty's approbation, invested in me, Henry, Earl of Bindon, Deputy to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal.'
By 1711 St. George had strengthened his formula. In that year he granted a patent of arms to Dame Sarah Pritchard, nee Cook,
which family of Cook the said Lady Pritchard . . . affirms to have borne and used for their armes, Party per pale gules and blew, three golden eagles dis- played, and a like eagle for their crest ; but for want of due entries of the said family and arms in the Books of the Heralds' College, the right of the Cooks of Kingsthorp to the forementioned arms is become disputable.'
This a distinct advance. In 1703, Henry Gatchell was ' not able to make out so just a right to a coat of arms as he ought to do ' ; in 1711, the right of the Cook family had ' become disputable ' for want of due entries at the College. We can see the theory feeling its way, if I may be allowed the expression, though as yet it still falls far short of X's vigorous pronouncements.
Henry St. George does not appear to have pushed the infallibility theory any further. He was an old man of seventy- eight when appointed Garter in 1703, and at that age his reforming fires must have been burning low. Noble says of him : ' He does not appear to have been much skilled in the
> The Right to Bear Arms, p. 1 39.
3 Noble, p. 329.
3 Misc. Gen. et Her. (new ser.), i. 349.
HERALDS' COLLEGE 63
profession of arms, or to have personally done much in the science.' * His successor, John Anstis, describes him in more caustic terms, as ' a timorous animal, governed by every creature, minding only his iron chest and the contents of it.' *
St. George died in 1715, in his ninety-first year.
Sir John Vanbrugh was nominated to succeed him. In the following year, 1716, before his patent was made out, he exemplified arms to Sir Matthew Decker on the strength of a prescriptive title.
Whereas Sir Matthew Decker, hath represented unto . . . Henry, Earl of Suffolk and Bindon, . . . Deputy . . . Earl Marshal, . . . that his father . . . and other his ancestors, who were natives of Flanders . . . having borne and used the arms and crest depicted in the margin of this letter ... as the arms belonging to their name and family ; which arms the same Sir Mathew Decker alledgeth that he some yeares since bro' over with him into England, and hath used the same without any interruption ; yet in regard that himself and family are now setled in this kingdom ... he was desirous that the aforesaid arms and crest, as borne by his ancestors, might (with his lordship's permission) be assigned and confirmed unto him and his descendants in the usual form practiced in England. . . . And whereas the said Earl . . . did by warrant . . . order and appoint us to assign and confirm unto the said Sir Mathew Decker and his descendants the aforesaid arms and crest, unless tee should see cause to make any alteration or difference in the same, etc.5
Vanbrugh did not ' see cause to make any alteration,' and the arms were ' assigned and confirmed ' as claimed, on the strength of user alone.
Vanbrugh never got his patent as Garter. He was ousted by John Anstis the elder, who may perhaps be best described by the modern slang expression, ' hustler.' A learned man he undoubtedly was, and his industry is unquestionable.
In 1714, more than a year before St. George's death, Anstis obtained a patent of the reversion of the office of Garter,4 but he was unfortunately in prison on a suspicion of Jacobitism when the office actually fell vacant, and in the meantime Vanbrugh had been nominated.5 Anstis, however, succeeded in getting his claim allowed in 1718, and he subsequently obtained a grant of the reversion in favour of his son.
1 History of the College of Arms, p. 353. 2 Ibid. p. 354.
3 Misc. Gen. et Her. (ser. 2), iv. 289 ; Vanbrugh describes himself as ' nominated Garter.' The italics are mine.
4 He had apparently been angling for it as early as March 1712.
s Vanbrugh, it maybe remarked, obtained a confirmation of arms in 1714 on the strength of user by his grandfather (Noble, 355).
64 THE ANCESTOR
Anstis soon began to improve upon St. George's forms, and of course always in the direction of infallibility. Thus, in 1723, we get the following : —
William Heysham . . . hath represented unto . . . Henry, Earl of Berk- shire, Deputy . . . Earl Marshal . . . that his ancestors having for many generations lived in the credit and reputation of gentlemen, did bear a coat of arms as of right belonging to their name and family ; but being unable, for want of due entrys of their several descents in the College of Arms, strictly to justify their right to the same, and desiring an indisputable authority for using thereof, hath therefore pray'd his Lordship's warrant, etc.1
Again mark the subtle advance. In 1711, the right of the Cook family had ' become disputable ' for want of due entries at the College ; in 1723, Mr. Heysham for the same reason is ' unable strictly to justify ' his right to arms.
In 1732, Anstis made a vigorous but futile attempt to revive the Court of Chivalry, when three persons were pro- ceeded against for the alleged improper use of arms. The results do not appear, but Noble says that ' this whole business was imprudently begun, and unskilfully conducted. The lawyers who were consulted laughed at it.'
Dr. Andrews a spoke mighty well on this occasion, saying that Mr. Lad- brook's executors could not be to blame, for they only gave the same arms at the funeral as they found in Mr. Ladbrook's custody, and which he always bore in his life time unmolested ; and that as visitations had been discontinued so long, there was no certainty in arms ; and that several persons who had a right, might in length of time have lost their grants,3 or not regarded them, but yet if they were so lost, that loss might be repaired for money, etc. ; and took notice that arms were granted not long since to a coffee-man on his paying for them. Mr. Ladbrook's son produced a ' brass plate from his grandfather's grave-stone,upon which was the arms that the son had borne.' 4
In 1733 we find another variation : —
Whereas Robert Bostock of Orford in the County of Kent . . . hath re- presented . . . that his grandfather came out of Cheshire about the year 1630 . . . that for want of due entries in the office of arms [he] is unable to prove his descent from the antient family of Bostock of Bostock in Cheshire . . . hath prayed his Lordship's warrant for our granting, allowing, ratifying and con-
1 Misc. Gen. ft Her. (new ser.), iv. 375.
1 He appeared for one of the accused persons.
8 This is the only reference to a lost grant that I have found in the course of a somewhat lengthy search. I am afraid it does not strengthen Mr. Philli- more's argument very materially.
« Noble, p. 373. '
HERALDS' COLLEGE 65
firming the same arms and crest borne by the said family, with such alteration as may be necessary to distinguish him and his posterity from all others of the same name and lineage.1
This case seems to sail perilously near Dugdale's phrase ' such as do bear the same appellation, though of no alliance to that stock,' but we may take it that Mr. Bostock produced sufficient evidence to prove a prima facie descent from the Bostocks of Bostock, though unable ' for want of due entries in the Office of Arms ' to show the exact links.
By 1738 there was an emphatic alteration, and we get the following : —
Whereas William Leeves . . . hath represented . . . that his ancestors were formerly seated at Wimbourn in the county of Dorset, and that he hath in his custody several of their ancient deeds, and among others a settlement bearing date in the year 1417, whereto four persons of his surname have severally set their seals, which are impressed with a fess dancette between three garbs, but the colours are not there to be discovered, however, his ancestors have borne them thus blazoned, viz. : gules a fess dancette between three garbs or, and that the same arms are engraven upon several tomb stones now remaining in the Church of Wimbourn aforesaid. . . . That as no entries can be found in the College of Arms, of their descent or of the arms thus used by his ancestors, the said William Leeves hath therefore prayed his Lordship's warrant for our granting and con- firming unto him and his descendants . . . the same arms as borne by his ances- tors, with some small addition, and a suitable crest thereto.*
The ' small addition ' granted was the substitution of ' erminois ' for gold in the fess, a substitution which daubed a coat, presumably ancient, with a brush dipped in the coach-painter's pot.
Here at last we have it, at a date so near our own that two long lives will bridge the gap. In all its effrontery we have the new doctrine : ' as no entry can be found in the College,' therefore a new grant is necessary. Anstis has put the crown- ing touch upon St. George's usurpation of power, and thus created a precedent for the subsequent practice of the College.
Apart from everything else, I have no hesitation in de- scribing this recital as a gross impertinence. Compare the facts in this case with several of the quotations I gave in a late number of the Ancestor.3 Can there be the slightest doubt that Dugdale or any of the earlier heralds would have exemplified these arms without any hesitation ?
1 Misc. Gen. et Her. (new ser.), iv. 92.
» Ibid. (ser. 2)^.53.
' Ancestor, viii. 139, 140, 141
66 THE ANCESTOR
The deed cited, and doubtless put in evidence, is only two years short of Agincourt, and we may reasonably assume that Mr. Leeves was one of the ' precious few ' (to use ' X 's elegant term) who could prove a user from that date. But to gratify the avarice or lust of authority of an Anstis, he is dragged down to the level of Dr. Andrewe's coffee-man. I repeat, it was a gross impertinence.
In 1737 the College petitioned for a new charter. I have not been able to find a copy of the petition, and Noble merely mentions the fact, without giving any details. It is difficult to conceive what necessity there could be for a new charter, unless it was to confer greater powers on the heralds. It is curious that the petition should follow so closely after the failure to resuscitate the Earl Marshal's Court. The petition was not granted.
One more quotation will show how the formula crystal- lized. Thus, in 1739, the elder Anstis recites that
John Mason . . . hath represented . . . that his ancestors having borne for their arms, upon plates and seals, a lyon rampant with two heads . . . but find- ing no memorial of his descent is unable to justify such a right to the same as the strict laws of arms require.1
In 1746, John Anstis the younger, who had succeeded his father as Garter in 1745, gave a patent of exemplification on the strength of user.
Whereas Samuel Dicker ... on behalf of his father Phillip Dicker . . . hath represented unto . . . Thomas, Earl of Effingham, Deputy . . . Earl Marshal . . . that his ancestors being descended from a family of the same name in Saxony, who have for many ages borne and used the coat of arms following . . . ; but by reason of the great distance of time, is unable to make the due proofs required ; and upon search made in the records of the College of Arms, does not find them borne by any other family ; hath therefore prayed his Lordship's warrant for our granting and confirming the same arms and crest . . . And forasmuch as his Lordship . . . did by warrant . . . order and direct us to grant and confirm unto the said Philip Dicker such arms and crest as he and his descendants may lawfully bear, etc. The arms and crest are granted without alteration.1
This is the latest case I have found in which prescription was recognized ; sixty years after ' X ' tells us that it was ' utterly useless to put forward any prescriptive right to arms whatsoever.' 3
1 Misc. Gen. et Her. (ser. 2), i. 295.
2 Ibid. (ser. 2), iv. 290. The italics are mine.
3 The Right to Bear Arms, p. 139.
HERALDS' COLLEGE 67
VI
We are now in a position to apply the result of this evidence to the statements of ' X ' and Mr. Phillimore, and thus to test the soundness of their conclusions.
Let us first see what they say.
Since the Visitations it has been absolutely impossible in England to obtain, and utterly useless to put forward, any prescriptive right to arms whatsoever. Arms are good or they are bad as they are recorded or unrecorded.1
If a man did not embrace the opportunity [i.e. the visitation], the arms he used remained as they were before — that is, bogus, not merely unrecorded. The arms were illegal ; the opportunity of making them legal was ignored, therefore the fault lay with the individual himself, not with the Heralds. The descendants of such people must blame their ancestors for being so foolish as to let the opportunity pass.1
Mr. Phillimore, like the Second Spirit in the Ancient Mariner, hath ever ' a softer voice.' He tells us that
mere voluntary assumptions, whether by the applicant or his ancestors, are entirely disregarded, and the ultimate and only test is whether the arms rest on a grant or ancient allowance by the heralds at some visitation.3
The fundamental error in both authors seems to me to be this : each assumes that the heralds could record pedigrees and allow arms only at a visitation. In each case the language is clear and unmistakeable : ' since the visitation ' says ' X,' an ' allowance ... at some visitation ' says Mr. Phillimore. It is amazing to find two champions of the College thus limiting the powers of the heralds. And the point is vital to their argument. If arms could be exemplified and pedigrees recorded other than at visitations, there is no reason why the discontinuance of visitations should affect the heraldic prac- tice ; there is no reason why ' since the visitations ' it should be ' useless,' etc. ; there is no reason why the allowance should be ' at some visitation.'
It is so notorious that all these things were done out of visitation time, that it cannot be necessary to cite authorities to that effect. A large number of the documents already quoted in this article were not made at visitations, and I have shown that exemplifications continued after the visitations had ceased. The powers of the Kings of Arms are granted by their patents
» The Right to Bear Arms, p. 139.
1 Ibid. p. 131.
3 Heralds' College and Coats of Arms, p. 6.
68 THE ANCESTOR
of creation, the patent authorizing the visitation merely enlarged them for certain specified purposes. Thus the visit- ing King of Arms or his deputy had authority to summon individuals before him, to demand proofs, to enter castles and houses, to regulate costume under the various sumptuary laws, to use force if necessary, and to summon offenders before the Earl Marshal ; all of which, except perhaps the last, were in addition to his ordinary powers as contained in his patent of creation. While conducting his visitation he granted or exemplified arms by virtue of his authority as a King of Arms, not of his visitation commission ; and, once the visitation was concluded, the extraordinary and ancillary powers given to him ad hoc, ceased and determined.
No doubt a large number of exemplifications were made at the visitations, but this was a matter partly of compulsion, partly of convenience. The Herald in Eyre brought heraldic justice to the door of the country gentleman, who, willingly or unwillingly, gratefully or otherwise, accepted his sovereign's consideration that ' the nobilitye and gentry of this our realme may be preserved in every degree as apperteyneth as well in honour as in worshippe,' * and saved himself the trouble and expense of a journey to London.
The discontinuance of the visitations, though it may be ' the saddest thing one can find to chronicle in the history of British armory,' 2 has nothing whatever to do with the pre- scriptive right to arms. That right was fully recognized by the heralds long before the visitations began and long after they ceased.
The question next arises what authority if any had St. George and Anstis for altering ' the long practice of centuries ' ? That the ' very ancient and long usage ' beloved of Mr. Phillimore was capable of alteration we may admit, but how or by whom ? An Act of Parliament could doubtless have done it ; and so probably could a new charter, if Anstis had succeeded in getting one in 1737. The Earl Marshal's powers may perhaps extend so far, though I am inclined to think they do not. It is not necessary, however, to go into this, because it seems clear that the Earl Marshal did not make any orders on the subject. If he had done so, we should expect to find some
1 Commission to Richard St. George, Clarenceux, to visit the east, west, and south parts (Patent Roll, 9 Charles I.). * The Right to Sear 4rms, p. 108.
HERALDS' COLLEGE 69
reference to them in Noble's work, and they would have been quoted by ' X ' as authority for his assertions. Moreover, the very gradual growth of the infallibility theory, which I have pointed out, the insidious steps by which it finally reached its ultimate form, preclude the idea of its being the act of the Earl Marshal. There would have been no necessity in that case for the cautious language used in the grants I have quoted. The Earl Marshal would have issued his fiat in set terms, both for the instruction of the public and the direction of the heralds.
But if there were no Act of Parliament, no charter, no orders of the Earl Marshal, the change must have been made by St. George and Anstis themselves, and of their own autho- rity ; and this was most emphatically ultra vires. Garter's patent gives him no power to make any alteration in the law of arms, and to this we may attribute the care and caution so markedly displayed by the draftsman.
A precedent had been set, however, and successive Garters have felt bound to follow it. The position was and is, I admit, a difficult one. It is almost as hard a task to upset an established precedent as it is to overtake a lie with a good start. And the demonstration that the lie is a lie and the precedent ultra vires does not necessarily diminish the difficulty.
W. PALEY BAILDON.
7o THE ANCESTOR
AN ANCIENT SCOTTISH SETTLEMENT IN HESSE
THERE is a little town in a corner of one of the Rhine duchies which has a special interest for the wanderer from the British Isles. The place bears the suggestive name of Schotten (Schotte is the German for a Scotsman) and it lies in an out-of-the-way district of the pleasant land of Hesse. A branch line of railway, which has its starting point at Nidda, one of the stations on the line from Frankfort to the University town of Giessen, connects Schotten with the outer world. But the tourist heeds it not, and passes by along the well-worn way.
As the traveller steams away from Frankfort he leaves behind him the Germany of to-day — Germany, the ' world- power,' strenuous and progressive — and is borne away to an older Germany, the Germany of legend and romance, where the spirit of feudalism yet lingers ; to the land of quaint old towns and villages, of enchanted forests and pinnacled castles perched upon the hill tops, relics of the days when the robber-knight preyed on the treasure that flowed from the East into the rich cities of Almayne.
From Nidda a single line winds slowly up to the foot of the Vogelsberg hills. The railway is laid through the very midst of a succession of picturesque villages, a bell clanging incessantly to warn the inhabitants of the leisurely approach of the train, which passes so close to their homes that one might think it possible to stretch out a hand, as the train crawls by, and touch the timbered walls of the houses. At last Schotten is reached — a little town of a few hundred inhabi- tants, encircled by the wooded hills.
There can be no certainty about its early history. ' Zu den Schotten ' (at the Scots') is the earliest form of the name, and there is no doubt that it points to the settlement here of a colony of Scoti, who crossed the sea and made a laborious pilgrimage to this spot, far inland, where they built a village and church.
SCOTTISH SETTLEMENT IN HESSE 71
In the absence of any proof to the contrary, there is no reason why the traditional story should not be accepted, which tells that in the year 1015 two Scottish princesses began to build a church and village, coming hither, no doubt, with pious intent to found a religious house among a people who at that time had not yet found the light.
The church of Schotten is a large and handsome fourteenth century structure. Above the west door there is some curi- ous mediaeval sculpture representing a knight on horseback. Within the church are shown the gilded busts of the two ladies whose piety raised the earlier building. Both have long, flowing locks ; one has her hair encircled by a wreath, the other wears a crown. Archaeologists are agreed that these effigies are probably of eleventh century workmanship.1 More- over, not many years ago an ancient document was discovered in the ball of the church tower. Since it speaks of Schotten as already a ' civitas,' it is held that it was not written earlier than the fourteenth century, so that it merely represents what was the traditional belief at that time with regard to the foundation of the church. It is interesting, however, because it repeats what has already been the legendary account of the people of Schotten.
It runs as follows : ' Anno milesimo decimo quinto post nativitatem Dom. nostri J. Christi sup. imperio regis dicti claudi civitatem hanc et templum nostrum Schottense primum aedificare coeperunt duae sorores ex Scotia oriundae, una Rosamunda, altera Dicmudis vocata ' — that is to say : ' In the year 1015 in the reign of the king nicknamed the lame (Henry II, Emperor 1002-1024) two sisters from Scotland, one named Rosamunde, the other Dicmudis, began to build this town and our first church at Schotten.'
In the annals of the nunnery of Wetter, not very far away, the names of two Scottish ladies appear at the same date. At Wetter they are called Dicmudis and Almudis. Whether Almudis was a third sister, or there was some confusion about the names, can only be conjectured.
This part of Germany had, for many years before this date, a connexion with the British Isles, for there were already nine ' Schottenkirchen ' in Mayence and in Upper Hesse, all
1 We venture to dissociate ourselves from the archaeologists who assign these figures to so early a date. — ED.
72 THE ANCESTOR
dependent on Strassburg, where Florens, a Scoto-Irish hermit, had been elected bishop in 679 A.D. It seems quite natural that the Scottish sisters should settle at a place where their countrymen were already known.
We have spoken of the settlers at Schotten as ' Scottish,' but it is impossible to decide whether these Scoti came from the country which is now called Scotland, or whether they came from Ireland, whence the Scots originally migrated to Caledonia.
So generally it was recognized that the inhabitants of Ireland and the West Highlands of Scotland were of the same race that it was not until the twelfth century that the word ' Scotus ' was used to denote exclusively a Scotchman in the modern sense. For instance, the celebrated ' Schotten- kloster ' at Ratisbon, which was in the hands of Scotsmen till the eighteenth century, was founded in the eleventh century by Marianus Scotus, who was in reality an Irishman.
It has been suggested that the princesses ' ex Scotia ' who built the church at Schotten may have been two daughters of Brian Boru, the King of Munster, who was defeated and de- posed at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. Beyond the fact that the date fits in with that of the arrival of the princesses in Hesse, there seems little ground for this supposition.
There is at least one German family which claims descent from the followers of these Scottish ladies. In the family MSS. of the Schotts of Braunfels (begun in 1587) this claim is set forth, and although it will not bear historical investigation it is not inherently improbable. The tradition need not summarily be rejected that the first recorded member of the family migrated from Schotten to the Nassau country in the twelfth century, and granting this, it is quite probable that most of the inhabitants of the Scottish village at that date were descended from the original settlers of the previous century.
S. H. SCOTT.
THE TRAFFORD LEGEND
I HAVE read with considerable surprise, indeed with blank amazement, Mr. Bird's article on this subject. In order that I may run no risk of misrepresenting in any way his reply to my criticism of the Trafford legend, I will quote his own words. After setting forth the pedigree from ' King Kanutus his tyme,' he proceeds : —
It is a more serious matter when Mr. Round comes forward to denounce our pedigree as a ' grotesquely impossible tale," and declare that ' it is shattered by Domesday Book.' l
Mr. Bird then prints abstracts of seven charters, and observes : —
In the light of this evidence I do not think the most impatient critic will any longer deny the existence of the impossible Randolph, or refuse assent to the following pedigree.'
This pedigree makes the Henry de Trafford who fined for his relief in 1 205 the great grandson of a ' Randolph,' of whom Mr. Bird submits
that we shall not be far wrong if we set down the impossible Randolph as a real person, probably a contemporary of the Conqueror, born »omewhere in the latter half of the eleventh century.3
The article closes with a plea that we should ' try and be fair even to an old-fashioned maker of pedigrees on vellum.'
Now it is an old and a very familiar device in all contro- versy to abstain from citing your opponent's case and then to claim to prove what he has never denied. In the present instance I need only cite what I have actually written (in the passages referred to by Mr. Bird) to show that what I de- nounced was not Mr. Bird's pedigree, but, to quote his own
» Ancestor, ix. 68. > Ibid. 71.
s Ibid. p. 74. Genealogists should be careful to avoid this loose and misleading use of the word ' contemporary.' I was, in this sense, contem- porary with Queen Victoria, but I was not even born till she had been many years on the throne.
n
74 THE ANCESTOR
phrase, ' the Trafford legend,' the pedigree from ' King Kanu- tus his tyme.'
The two passages are these : —
The World (17 Oct. 1900), in an article on ' Sir Humphrey de Trafford at Home,' asserts that ' Randolph, Lord of Trafford, was the patriarch of the family, which for nearly nine centuries after him has produced an uninterrupted line of heirs male. The first recorded Trafford lived in the reigns of King Canute and Edward the Confessor, being succeeded by his son Ralph," etc. This grotesquely impossible tale is duly found in Burke's Peerage, although it is shattered by Domesday Book.1
Wilder, however, than the claims to descent from Norman invaders are those of the families who would ' go one better ' by asserting an earlier origin ... As for ' Randolphus de Trafford,' who lived ante conquestum, ' as the family pedigree sets forth,' we may leave him to the company of an impossible, etc., etc. . . . An equally impossible ' Hugh Fitz Baldric, a Saxon thane,' was a Norman tenant-in-chief. 2
It will be obvious to all who read these words that what I denounce as ' grotesquely impossible ' is the existence of a * Randolf, lord of Trafford,' who ' lived in the reigns of King Canute and Edward the Confessor* and was succeeded by his son ' Ralph.' In the very same number of the Ancestor as that which contains Mr. Bird's article several paragraphs of ' What is believed ' 3 are, devoted, as it happens, to other families which similarly claim ' fore-conquest ancestors.' Of these ancestors one is ' William Stanley of Stanley,' living ' fifty years before the battle of Hastings,' who is justly de- scribed as ' a pretended Englishman with the very French name of William ' (p. 158). No less worthy of ' What is believed,' is that pretended Englishman with the very French name of Renouf (Ranulphus), who is said to have been lord of Trafford ' in the reign of King Canute,' ' nearly nine cen- turies ' ago, and to have given his son the no less distinctively foreign name of Ralph.4
Domesday Book shows us ' Ranulfus ' as a name that was common after the Conquest, and was (as we should expect) unknown before it. Mr. Bird pleads, quite justly, in favour of Randle Holme, that ' for him were no public libraries, no books of reference ; the public records were hardly accessible.'
1 Peerage Studies, p. i. 3 Ibid. pp. 64-6.
3 These, I need hardly add, are not from my own pen.
4 Compare Ancestor, v. 144, 146-7.
THE TRAFFORD LEGEND 75
And he urges that we should ' keep strong language in reserve for offenders of a different class.' But it will have been observed that I do not even mention Randle Holme in the passages above. My complaint is against those responsible for the issue of Burkis Peerage, precisely as was Mr. Free- man's.1 The excuses that could be made for Randle Holme cannot be made for them ; nor can they even plead that they do but repeat legends as such. As Mr. Freeman complained before me, its information is put forward as " authoritative " on the ground of its ' testing of all facts by research and in- vestigation.' a Yet even now, in this year of grace 1904, the Trafford legend is thus set forth in that impenitent publica- tion : —
RANDOLPHUS DE TRAFFORD. who flourished ante conqnestum, as the family pedigree sets forth, was father of
RANDOLPHUS, of whom mention is made in two deeds to ' Radulphus (sic) filius Radulphi (sic) ' by which it appears that Radulphus (sic) the father, * was then dead, and had flourished in King Canute the Dane his time, about the year 1030 and perhaps died after, in St. Edward the Confessor his time, about the year 1050 ; hee had noe surname, as then few of our Saxon nobilitie or gentry had.' From this Radulphus sprang the great house of Trafford, which has since uninterruptedly held a most distinguished place among the first families of Lancashire. His son
ROBERT FILIUS RADULPHI was of full age at the time of the Conquest, and about A.D. 1080 he, with his father, received the king's peace and protection from Hugh de Massy, Baron of Dunham Massy ; his son
HINRICUS FILIUS ROBERTI, temp. Henry I., d. about 1130, leaving a son HENRT DE TRAFFORD, etc., etc.
This is ' the Trafford legend ' as preserved by Randle Holme,3 but here given, it will be observed, without mention of his name, and not as legend but as fact.
It is because we have here three generations of pretended English thanes, successively receiving before the Conquest distinctively foreign names, that I must denounce this legend as ' grotesquely impossible,' and everyone familiar with the period will know that I am right. Does even Mr. Bird ven- ture to deny it, though he vaguely hankers after a pre-Conquest pedigree for the family ? He does not and dares not do so.
1 See his ' Pedigrees and Pedigree-makers ' in Covtemforary Review, rxi. 11-41.
2 See Ancestor, i. 190, and compare Peerage Studies, pp. 52-3.
3 See Ancestor, Lx- 67.
76 THE ANCESTOR
As to using ' strong language,' it is evident that, as Mr. Freeman found, not merely ' strong,' but ferocious language is needed to produce any impression on a work such, as Burke 's Peerage. I cited Trafford in my Peerage Studies, as an in- stance of how newspapers were induced to repeat these fables by ' the sanction they appeared to receive from their quasi official and persistent repetition in the pages of Burke' s Peer- age and of other ' Burke ' publications.1 Even the excuse of ignorance, therefore, will not here avail. When the reader is assured, as this very year, in the usual preface, that
The narrative pedigrees in Burke1 s Peerage are subjected annually to search- ing revision, and . . . made to keep pace with the onward march of events and the latest results of genealogical research and discovery [!]
it would not be pleasant, or even possible, to say what one thinks of that assurance in the light of the Trafford legend. I will only ask my readers — Is it true ?
When one turns from the distinctive glory claimed for the house of Trafford, a proved pedigree from the days of Canute, to Mr. Bird's claim that they descend from a ' Ranulphus ' (as he spells it) ' born somewhere in the latter half of the eleventh century,' the incredibility disappears — but the dis- tinctive glory also. There is obviously nothing ' impossible,' still less ' grotesquely impossible ' in the existence of such a man at a time when, as Domesday shows, his name was common enough. Only — and this is the essential point so strangely ignored by Mr. Bird — he cannot have been an English- man born before the Conquest.
The pedigree propounded by Mr. Bird deserves to be examined on its merits, and for my part I have no wish to question it. The date at which his ' Ranulphus ' lived cannot, of course, be exactly given ; but as he was the great-grand- father of Henry, who succeeded to Tra fiord in 1205, he must almost certainly have been born after the coming of the Conqueror (1066). Mr. Bird, I gather, admits this and suggests that he was born about 1095 if we allow twenty-five years to a generation, or 1075 if we allow thirty. But he thinks it impossible to say whether there were not two Henrys in succession (as in the above pedigree derived by ' Burke ' from Randle Holme), in which case these dates would be
1 pp. ix.-x.
THE TRAFFORD LEGEND 77
thrown back to 1070 and 1045 respectively (p. 74). Now any date earlier than 1066 would, as I have shown above, settle the point decisively as against Mr. Bird by establishing the foreign birth of ' Ranulphus.' But what ground is there for supposing that there were two Henrys ? Mr. Bird can only produce evidence for one, and his sole ground for suggest- ing two is that ' Randle Holme supposed there were ' (p. 74). It is evident that he cannot emancipate himself from that ' legend ' which his own evidence proves to be false. For the Randle Holme-Burke pedigree makes even the second Henry succeed as early as 1130, while Mr. Bird's Henry does not succeed to Trafford till 1205 !
We have here, in fact, but another example of that process which I have described as trying to put the new wine of scien- tific genealogy into the old bottles. However carefully the process is conducted, the bottles are bound to burst. In this case the pedigree begins with ' Ranulphus ' both in the old and in the new version ; but while, according to Mr. Bird's dates, ' Ranulphus ' must have spent under Henry I. his manhood, if not his boyhood, Randle Holme transports him to the days of ' King Canute.' The natural result of this absurdity was that, as Mr. Bird admits, ' subsequent generations, no doubt, had to be spread out rather in order to make all shipshape ' (p. 72). This spreading out was partly accomplished by making one Henry into two, but even then the gap yawned.
Perhaps Mr. Bird's reverence for ' tradition ' may lead him to think that, after all, an authority so venerable as Weever did not lightly repeat the legend that ' Jernihingho now Jennings ' was among those ' of the moste esteeme with Canute,' who ' at a parliament held at Oxford ' gave him ' certain manners lying upon the seaside near Harwich in return for services done to his father Swenus.' A recent paragraph in an evening paper on the name of an ancient family being ' a noted one in England long prior to the Nor- man Conquest,' is directly traceable to this source. The tale may strike us as hard to swallow ; ' but,' as Mr. Bird would say, ' no matter ' (p. 72). |r
It is the same reluctance to shake himself free from that ' grotesquely impossible ' ancestor who — as ' equall to our Lord Barons nowe ' — may have even been one of Canute's advisers on his attitude towards the tide, that lies at the root,
78 THE ANCESTOR
as it seems to me, of Mr. Bird's wish to instal the Traffords at Trafford before the Conquest. For apart from Randle's nonsense, what proof can he produce ? Tradition !
There had formerly been within the Hundred [Salford] twenty-one bere- wicks held by as many thanes. ... At the next survey, in King John's time, we read of a number of manors still held in thanage (in thenagio), a fact which suggests that many or all of them had been left undisturbed. At any rate when one of these tenants in thanage is put forward by tradition (sic) as, not merely successor in title, but the lineal descendant of one of King Edward's thanes, I cannot myself see anything in Domesday to shatter his claim. Indeed I should go further, and say that Domesday, so far as it goes, tells in his favour (p. 74).
Now how far back can Mr. Bird carry his ' tradition ' ? To ' the Elizabethan age ' (p. 66) at furthest ; definitely only, as it seems to me, to the days of Charles I. ! And yet it is he himself who says of Randle Holme on the Traffords . . . ' " as is proved by Ancient Tradition," be weakly adds ' (p. 67) ! It is also he himself who questions the tradition which makes the Pilkingtons, in the same Hundred, of ' Saxon ' origin, and holds that ' instead of being Saxon irreconcilables they were more probably on the side of the invader ' (p. 77).* He cannot, therefore, complain if I similarly decline to accept a tradition which traces the Traffords to ' one of Edward's thanes ' who bore, like his father before him, a wholly impos- sible name.
There is nothing exceptional in the vague claim to ' tra- ditional ' Saxon origin ; and I am disposed to make the suggestion that it may have had its origin often in the pos- session by a family of the manor from which its name was taken. Even since this article was written a paragraph has appeared in the press on the present Earl of Chichester stating that his family, as Pelham of Pelham (Herts), had a 4 clear ' pedigree to days before the Conquest ; it is claimed for the Crofts of Croft Castle (as, for instance, even in Fos- ter's Baronetage) that they are of ' Saxon origin ' ; and the same claim is made for Trelawney of Trelawney, Stourton of Stourton, and, as we have seen, for ' Stanley of Stanley,' Pilkington of Pilkington, and Trafford of Old Trafford. Mr. Bird, it is true, urges that the Lancashire belief in the ex-
1 This tradition, which is duly ridiculed in the same number of the Ancestor ( p. 155), is at least as old as the days of Fuller, who speaks, in his Worthies, of the Pilkingtons as ' a right ancient family of repute before the Conquest.'
THE TRAFFORD LEGEND 79
ceptional antiquity of the Traffords must be old because ' a quaint local poet of the Elizabethan age, in A Golden Mirror* supports it in his ' acrostic verses of a complimentary character upon the names of knights and gentlemen of that country,' adding —
Now there were many old families then in Lancashire — Ashtons, Pilking- tons, and Worsleys, Standish, Molyneux, and even Stanley. But it is only when Sir Edmund Trafford's name is the subject of his vision that our poet chooses Time for his interlocutor.1
One verifies the reference and discovers, first, that the ' acrostic verses ' relate, not to Lancashire, but almost ex- clusively to Cheshire, and then (not without some surprise) that of the six houses named by Mr. Bird Stanley alone is dealt with by the author, and that as Strange,* not as Stanley. I venture to submit, therefore, that it is somewhat misleading to put the case as Mr. Bird puts it.
But, it may be urged, there is the ' thanage ' argument ; is there not something in that ? Absolutely nothing whatever. Mr. Bird appears to have confused the holding of land ' in thanage ' with descent in blood from a ' thane.' The fact that holdings by thanage are found in the survey, temp. John, of Salford Hundred, does not, I assert, ' suggest that many or all " of the English thanes " had been left undisturbed.' At Pendlebury, for instance, a carucate was held ' in thanage ' because it had been so granted by John when Count of Mor- tain ; 3 and Little Bolton in Pendleton (opposite Trafford Park) was held by the Boltons ' in thanage ' because it had been so granted to William son of Adam by John when Count of Mortain ; * therefore the holding of land ' in thanage ' is no proof that it had not been acquired by a recent grant, though the absence of enrolment in the twelfth century makes it impossible, as a rule, to prove the fact of that grant.
If then ' tradition ' and tenure in thanage are alike of no avail to prove that the Traffords held at Trafford before the Conquest, what remains ? There remains nothing.
1 Ancestor, ix. 66.
a Ferdinando, Lord Strange, who was summoned to Parliament as such 1589-1593. He matriculated as ' Ferdinando Strange,' and was himself a poet.
3 ' to hold of us and our heirs ... in free thanage by the free service of ten shillings yearly " (Farrer's Lancashire Inquests, p. 69).
• Ibid. p. 71.
8o THE ANCESTOR
The only clue for our guidance is that of the Christian names borne by their earliest ancestors ; and these, we have seen, are distinctively foreign. This appears to me to afford a very strong presumption that they were not of English origin. Take the case of their neighbour, Roger son of Wil- liam, who held ' in thanage ' Reddish in Manchester ; l his ancestor was Orm the son of Ailward ' living in the time of Henry I.,' * founder of the Kirkbys of Kirkby Irleth. Or again, take the Singletons of Singleton, descended from Huck of Singleton, whose sons Uchtred and Siward were living under Henry II., and apparently under Richard I.3 Lastly, take the Traffords' neighbour, Gospatric, lord of Chorlton, living in the days of John. One could easily adduce other instances of the retention of native names by men of native origin for some time after the Conquest. Had the Traffords been of English origin, it is most improbable that they would have adopted so early as the eleventh century so foreign a name as Ranulf, in view of the slowness with which such names were adopted in the north of England. The clue, it may be said, is slight ; but it is all the evidence that we have. For, be it observed, there is no proof that the family held Trafford before the time of ' Robertus filius Radulfi de Traf- ford,' whose son Henry succeeded in 1205. Even if it be claimed that Ralf, Robert's father, held it, this would not carry the tenure further back than the middle of the twelfth century. To this I attach some importance, for it is perfectly possible that, even as the carucate of Pendlebury was granted (we have seen) by Count John to be held ' in free thanage ' at ten shillings a year, the half carucate at Old Trafford was granted rather earlier to be similarly held ' in thanage ' at five shillings a year, the terms on which we find it held by the Traffords. It is, indeed, perhaps significant that the return of these holdings in 1226 4 records Trafford as the land of Robert son of Ralf, although, on Mr. Bird's showing, it was then held by his grandson. I do not wish to press the point unduly, but on comparing this with the other holdings one is tempted to suggest that Robert son of Ralf is thus entered because he had been the original grantee. ;
1 P- 69-
2 Farrer's Lancashire Pipe Rolls, pp. 404-6.
3 See Mr. Farrer's books.
4 Farrer's Lancashire Inquests, p. 1 38.
THE TR AFFORD LEGEND 81
With regard to the Trafford crest of the thresher, to which Mr. Bird devotes the latter part of his article, I cannot think that any serious student of such matters will pay much atten- tion to the story that accompanies it or will ask whether ' in this crude legend ' we have ' a genuine tradition of the con- quest ' (p. 75). They will remember Bulstrode riding on his bull to meet the Conqueror and his host, or will bethink them of Botolph, the Stourtons' gigantic ancestor, holding that host at bay. Like Botolph, a nameless ' Traford ' held the line of a river and ' kepte the passages against them ' till ' the Normans having passed the ryver, came sodenlye upon him.' At this point, as it seems to me, Mr. Bird wholly misses the point of the story ; its hero, we read (p. 75), ' dis- guising bimselfe, went into his barne, and was threshing when they entered, yet, being knowen by some of them and de- manded why he so abased himself, answered " Now thus ! " Surely this Trafford is here alleged to have caught up a thresher's flail — as the royal Charles might have done when fleeing from Worcester fight — for the purpose of ' disguise,' not of defence. And when Mr. Bird further urges, of the Trafford in real life, that, being surrounded by Norman neighbours, ' never was sturdy thane in more precarious position ; good cause had he to keep his back to the wall, his wits about him, and a stout flail handy ' (p. 77) — he not only treats the flail as a weapon (against Norman warriors !), but assumes exactly what he has to prove, namely, that Trafford was an English ' thane.'
The Trafford claim, I must repeat, is by no means peculiar to their house. Stourton was of Stourton, as Trafford of Trafford, from early times no doubt ; but, not content with this antiquity, Stourton claims to have been ' traditionally a powerful and warrior family in the Saxon period,' and to have had as its ' traditional ' ancestor, in the time of King Alfred, ' Botolph de Stourton.' * Given the possession of a manor from twelfth century times, there is almost bound to arise a ' traditional ' descent either from its Norman grantee at the Conquest, or, as in the case of the Trelawnys, from its * fore-conquest ' possessor.8 Mr. Bird, it is true, carries back
' Peerage Studies, pp. 55-7.
* Ibid. p. 65. And compare Mr. Barren's remarks on the Ogle's patriarch an the same number of the Ancestor as Mr. Bird's article (p. 181).
8a THE ANCESTOR
the story connected with the Trafford crest to the days of Agard (1540-1615) ; but I have carried back to those of Par- sons (1546-1610) the story connected with the Stourton crest of ' a monk girt with a girdle, and armed with a scourge,' that it commemorates the fact of ' Sturtonus ' being ' among the first converts ' at the coming of St. Augustine (597).'
Let me now endeavour to sum up the conclusions at which we have arrived.
(1) The pedigree of the Traffords from ' Randolphus de Trafford,' who lived in the days of Canute, which is still pub- lished in Burke 's Peerage, remains ' grotesquely impossible.'
(2) A vague belief that the name of Trafford ' hath been tyme out of mynde, before the conquest was,' is found in a local poem ' of the Elizabethan age.'
(3) The above pedigree from the time of Canute was defi- nitely set forth by Randle Holme in 1638.
(4) It is now admitted that the above Randolphus (or Ranulphus) was not even born till the ' latter half of the eleventh century,' and the claim to a pre-conquest pedigree is abandoned.
(5) The distinctively foreign name of Randolphus (or Ran- ulphus) creates the strongest presumption that he was not of English birth (and a certainty that he was not, if he was born before the Conquest).
(6) Trafford cannot be proved to have belonged to the family till the time of his grandson, or (at earliest) of his son.
(7) Trafford was probably granted to a man of foreign blood, to be held as before ' in thanage,' not earlier than the middle of the twelfth century.
A tenure of lands in the male line since that date is so ex- ceptional that it places the Traffords of Trafford among the oldest of our landed houses.
J. HORACE ROUND.
' Ibid. p. 58.
SEALS AND ARMS
THE very interesting roll of arms of the fifteenth century, which was brought to a conclusion in the last volume of The Ancestor, presents a large number of points that seem to invite discussion. May I select one as a beginning, in the hope that my example will be followed by other readers, who must, I feel sure, have examined its quaint tricks and blazons with the same pleasure as myself.
Among the last set of shields is depicted one to which no name is attributed : azure a leaping fox of silver carrying off a goose.1 This coat arrests the eye as something singular, and not altogether heraldic in character. It stands apart from the familiar lion and leopard, as from the boars' heads, the corbies, and even the belled goats to be seen upon the same page ; for there is a certain element of realism in it, a natural vigour of action, foreign to the conventions of heraldic art.
At every period of English history we find new families rising out of obscurity to wealth and position, as some are rising to- day. When the novus homo has to be fitted with coat armour, what shall be devised for him ? One will set up a claim, well or ill founded, to an ancient coat. Another would accept arms of affection from the chief of some established house, with whom he was connected by marriage or other ties. A third might prefer something more personal ; charges symbolical, perhaps, of his profession and career, or a canting coat suggested by his name. The shield in question may be an example of this last class ; but the treatment, I repeat, is not exactly that of the herald or herald painter.
The origin of a certain number of armorial designs has been traced to antique gems. Hence come such cognisances as the Sagittarius, the Pegasus, the salvage man, the