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by Steve Lassey
page 236
---Footnotes---
1. This name is spelt with all the laxity of ancient orthography, Laci,
Lacy, and Lascy. The earlier part of Dugdale's account of this family,
Baronage, vol. i, p. 98, et seqq. is singularly inaccurate. He seems to
have been principally misled by a MS. in Bibl. Bod. (G. 9, Cant.) f. 77b.
which is little better than a collection of traditionary tales. Where I
shall have occasion to differ fro him, I shall do it on the authority of
original charters and assign my reasons. [The name is probably derived
from a place now called Lassi, n the department of Calvados in Normandy.
"Among the families who became seated in England at the time of the
Conquest, none obtained more extensive possessions or attained to higher
dignities than the Lacis. The first settler was an Ilbert de Laci. The
account of his lands in Yorkshire fills seven pages of Domesday Book, and
he had other lands in other counties. His Yorkshire lands form what in
later times has been called the Honor of Pontefract. . . . . . I am
unwilling to dwell upon what has already been often and well told; and I
would refer those who wish for further information upon this subject to the
Lacies Nobilitie of Sir John Ferne, to the Baronage of Sir William Dugdale,
to the Antiquities of Cheshire by Sir Peter Leycester, who has corrected
many errors committed by the author of the Baronage, and, last of all, to
the beautiful history of this house incorporated by Dr. Whitaker in his
History of Whalley." Joseph Hunter, South Yorkshire, vol. ii, pp. 200,
201.]
2. [In the "Account of Clithero Burgage," printed in Gregson's Fragments,
p. 288, from Kenion's MSS. is an assertion that the Conqueror gave the
whole Wapentake, with all its franchises, to Ilbert Lascy.]
3. Dugdale, ubi supra.
That he was possessed, however, of this fee, by whatever means he acquired
it, there can be no doubt, as he confirmed the original charter of Merlay,
granted by Ilbert his son to Jordan le Rous. [1]
Leading the foremost squadron on
Dying at his house near London, which had previously been the town
residence of the bishops of Chichester, but which ever since his time has
retained the name of Lincoln's Inn, Henry Earl of Lincoln was buried in St.
Paul's cathedral, and an engraving of his monument may be seen in Dugdale's
History of that church. "Anno 1310 obiit dominus Henricus Lacy Comes
Lincolniae et Constabularius Cestriae in die Sanctae Agathae virginis anno
etatis suae 60, et sepultus fuit in ecclesia Sancti Pauli Londini ad
australem partem altaris Sanctae Mariae virginis. Cujus animae pro sue
magna misericordia propitietur Deus. Amen." (MS. Cotton. Titus F. III. f.
258.)
Robert, however, did not long enjoy his inheritance in peace, for, an. 1mo.
Henry I. having espoused the better cause of Robert Curthose, he was
dispossessed of all his lands by that monarch, and is stated by Dugdale to
have gone twice into banishment, from which he did not return a second
time.
After the second banishment of Robert we are told by the same writer that
the fee of Pontefract (including that of Clitheroe) was granted first to
[William] Travers, [2] and secondly to Hugh de la Val. The latter fact is
certain; but it appears equally certain that Robert actually returned, and
was restored, for we find him confirming several grants of churches made by
Delaval during his temporary possession to the priory of Nostel, which was
of his or perhaps his father's foundation. [3]
With equal certainty and on similar authority it may be proved against
Dugdale that this Robert the First [4] founded the castle of Clitheroe, for
it did not exist at the time of
---Footnotes---
1 Vide Merlay.
2. [Dr. Whitaker (following Dugdale in this error) gave this name as Henry
Travers; but the words of Dugdale's authority are "Ea tempestate (A.D.
1135) Willielmus cognomento Transversus, qui honorem Fracti pontis (sic
enim quoddam oppidum nominatur) ex dono Henrici regis habuerat, a quodam
milite homine suo Pagano nomine apud ipsum oppidum letali vulnere
percussus, post triduum in habitu monachali mortuus est. Et quem patri suo
Roberto de Lesci rex Henricus abstulerat, Ilbertus de Lesceio filius ejus
mox eundem honorem recuperavit." Richard of Hexham (edit. Twysden) 310;
not Simeon of Durham, as Hunter, ii. 201. And see also John of Hexham,
ibid. col. 272.]
3. The following are instances extracted from Burton's Mon. Ebor. of
several alternate grants and confirmations between these parties: --
4. I now find that I had overlooked another hypothesis with respect to the
foundation of this castle, which will assign to it a still higher
antiquity, namely, that it was the work of Roger of Poictou himself. For
it appears from Domesday, under Bernulfswic, that Berenger de Todeni had
held XII car. of land in that place, sed modo est in Castellatu Rog.
Pictaviensis. We know that it was a disputable point much later whether
Bernoldswic was or was not in Blackburnshire; and what can be meant by
Castellatus if there was now no castle at Clitheroe? It may be answered
that the word refers to Roger's great fee of Lancaster; but this is
impossible, for, at the time of the Domesday Survey, Longcaster and
Chercalongcastre were surveyed inter terras regis in Amunderness not yet
granted out, and were so far from having a castle or being yet at the head
of an Honor, much less a County, that they are taken as vills or berewicks
appertaining to the manor of Halton. All is darkness and confusion with
respect to the foundation of the Castle and Honor of Lancaster, and
particularly with respect to Roger of Poictou, of which name there must
have been two persons, for how could it be supposed that a follower of the
Conqueror should forfeit under Stephen?
page 238
..the Domesday Survey; and in the interval of Delaval's possession, during
the banishment of Lacy, we find the former expressly granting, under the
dependencies of the church of Whalley, capellam Sci. Michaelis in Castro de
Clyderhow.
It was indeed antecedently to be expected that the 28 manors within the
hundred, now united into one Honor, should not have remained two
generations longer without a common centre: a temporary residence at least
was erquired for th lord, a court-house for the transaction of his
business, and a fortress for the defence of his lands. In a country not
abounding with strong positions an insulated conical rock of limestone
rising out of the fertile plain between Penhull and Ribble would naturally
attract his attention, and here, therefore, the first Lacy of
Blackburnshire and second of Pontefract fixed the castle of Clitheroe, the
seat of his barony, to which a numerous train of dependents during a period
of seven succeeding centuries have owed homage and service. Robert de Lacy
also founded the Cluniac priory of St. John in Pontefract, to which,
however, he refused a confirmation of the church of Whalley, granted by his
disturber Delaval, and, dying, left two sons, Ilbert and Henry. [1]
---Footnotes---
1. Rob. de Lacy confirms to the abbey of Selby the manor of Hamelden,
given by his father for the soul of Hugh his brother. Lands quitcl. here
by John son of Hugh de Lacy, of Gateford. burton's Mon. Ebor. p. 395.
2. [Addit. MS. 26,741, f. 262.]
3. [His wife is omitted by Dugdale; but elsewhere she is thus mentioned:
"Iste Henricus duxit in uxorem sororem Willielmi Vesci rectoris de Berwic,
et genuit ex ea Robertum. Nescitur ubi sepultus fuit; creditur quod ipse
in Terra Sancta obiit vij kalends Octobris." Historia Laceiorum, in the
Monasticon, under Kirkstall. Further, he name was Albreda, as appears by a
charter of her son Robert de Lacy to the Abbey of Kirkstall quoted in
Brooke's Discovery of Errours, 1594, p. 63, also in Addit. MS. 26,7
41, f. 262b.]
4. MS. in Bibl. Bodl. G. 9, Cant. f. 98b.
page 239
already been proved. He married Isabella, daughter of . . . . . ., and,
dying without issue, [August 21,] 1193, [1] was interred in the abbey of
Kirkstall. With him ended the male line of ths great family, [2] and in
fact the blood of the Lacies itself, so that he had no other resource than
to devise his vast estates, consisting of sixty knight's fees, to his
uterine sister [3] AWBREY, daughter of Robert de Lizours, who married
---Footnotes---
1 ["Inventum est in chronicis abbatim de Kyrkestall pro anno regis Henrici
quarto et Anno Domini Mcxciiii, mensis Augusti die xxj,., viz. xij. kal.
Februarii (sic) obiit bonae memoriae dominus Robertus de Lascy, secundus
fundator monasterii de Kyrkestall, et ibi sepelitur." Monasticon
Anglicanum, 1682, p. 857. "Iste Robertus obiit anno Regis Ricardi primi et
anno quarto Anno Domini 1193, et duodecimo kalendas Septembris." Duchy of
Lancaster, Class xxv. Bundle AA. No. 8 (7). Dr. Whitaker had here adopted
the erroneous date "12 kal. Feb." following the Monasticon and the Cotton
MS Tib. A. xix. f. 60b.]
2. With him too terminates my unpleasing task of detecting the perpetual
errors of Dugdale and his authorities. Sir Peter Leycester will
henceforward be my guide, in whose account of the Constables of Chester I
have not been able to detect a single mistake; but Sir Peter Leycester
wrote, as every historian if possible ought to do, from original evidences.
[Whatever the merits of Leycester, I cannot allow the expression "the
perpetual errors of Dugdale" to pass without a protest. Dugdale, no doubt,
fell into some errors, like every mortal genealogist; but they are not
those of a blunderer, and his great merit is that, like Sir Peter
Leycester, he always cites his authorities. J.G.N.]
3 ["Et iste Ricardus duxit sororem Roberti de Lascy quae vocabatur Awbray
Lisours, de qua genuit duos filios, scilicet Johannem constabularium,
fundatorem domus de Stanlowe, et fratrem Robertum hospitolarem, et duas
filias, scilicet Saram et Abreiam. Sara fuit data Robert de Aldeforde.
Altera vero scilicet Abreia data fuit Henrico Beset. Et notandum quod
Abreia isa fuit soror Roberti de Lascy ex parte matris et non ex parte
patris, quia pater Aubreiae fuit Robertus de Lysours. Successit tamen
dicto Roberto de Lascy in heredem quia nullum heredem habuit de se genitum
nec alium tam propinquum." Harl. MS. 1830, f. 4, 4b. But these statements
of the monastic historian are now shown to be unfounded, as will appear in
the following notes.]
4 [The family of Albreda de Lizours had been seated at Sprotborough in
Yorkshire from the time of the Conqueror, when Roger de Busli included that
manor in his great fee. The following account of the family is abstracted
from that given by the historian of South Yorkshire: "Among the principal
of the persons who attached themselves to Roger de Busli was Fulk de
Lizours. He is supposed to have been a relation of Roger. His name, and
that of Albreda his wife, are joined with those of Roger de Busli and
Muriel his wife in the foundation deed of the priory of Blythe. In the
time of the sons of the Conqueror appear two brothers, Fulk and Torard,
both known by the addition de Lusoriis or de Lizours. Whether they were
sons of the former Fulk, or that this Fulk is the same person, does not
appear on the face of any record. Torard was the ancestor of the Lizours
of Nottinghamshire, where they continued for some centuries; while Fulk had
the lands of Sprotborough, with a portion of the Nottinghamshire lands.
The charters in the coucher of Blythe relating to lands at Billingley show
that Fulk had a son named Robert de Lizours. He made an illustrious
marriage with the widow [l. cousin] of Henry de Lacy."
Subsequently to his writing the foregoing, Mr. Hunter arrived at a
different conclusion in regard to the manner in which the family of Lizours
was substituted for the first race of Lacy. It was founded on the
following passage of the Pipe Roll of 1131:
"Robertus de Lusoriis reddit compotum de viij li. vj s. viij d. ut ducat in
uxorem sororem Ilberti de Laci. In thesauro iiij li. Et debet iiij li. vj
s. viij d." (Magnus Rotulus Pipae 31 Hen. I. edit. 1833, p. 8.) Upon
which, as editor, he made the following remarks in his Preface: "A new view
is opened of a very important fact in the history of one of the great
feudal tenancies of England, which became at length, as it still continues,
a fief of the Crown, the Honor of Pontefract. The original grantee was an
Ilbert de Lacy, whose great possessions are described in Domesday Book.
From him descended other Lacies, who held this fee till the reign of
Richard I. when Robert, the last of them, deceased without issue. On his
death the fee descended to Albreda de Lizours, of whom there exists a fine
of the fifth year of King Richard, showing her in possession, and to whom
she disposed of it. The question is how Albreda stood related to the last
Laci last seized; and Dugdale, together with the whole body of later
genealogists, has followed the Historia Laceiorum, an historical fragment
written not earlier than the time of Henry VI. printed in the Monasticon
from a chartulary. The writer of this little piece of history declares
Albreda to have been half-sister ex parte materna, to the last of the
Lacies. But as it would show a rule of descent of which it is presumed no
similar instance can be produced from those times, and might, if admitted,
lead to general conclusions that were erroneous in respect of the
inheritance of feudal tenures under the early monarchy, it is of importance
to observe that in this Roll there is an entry in the accounts for
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire that Robert de Lizours paid 8l. 6s. 8d. that
he might take to wife the sister and heir of Ilbert de Lasci, a second of
that name, and there can scarcely be a doubt that Albreda, the issue of
that marriage, was cousin and heir, and not half-sister, of the last Lasci,
and therefore a partaker of the blood of the Ilbert de Lasci who was the
original grantee from the Conqueror.
The true lines of descent will be made apparent at one view by the
following table:
[shown elsewhere as a graphic]
I cannot close this note without mentioning with regret that,
notwithstanding that the passage of Mr. Hunter's preface above recited was
extracted at full in the Appendix to the First Edition of Baines's History
of Lancashire, vol. iv. p. 765, in order to point out this very important
amendment in the Lacy genealogy, yet it has been overlooked in the new
edition of that work, 1870, where at vol. ii. p. 14, the old statement is
repeated, that on the death of Robert de Lacy, "his possessions were
inherited by his maternal sister Aubrey." Nor has the discovery been duly
introduced into Courthope's Historic Peerage, 1857, or Burke's Dormant and
Extinct Peerages, 1866, for in both these works Albreda Lisours is still
designated as "his half-sister." Mr. Hulton again, in the Whalley Coucher
Book, 1847, pp. 2, 76, scarely ventured to deviate from Dugdale's account,
although he had an intimation of the passage in the pipe-roll of 31 Hen.
I., derived from Dodsworth, -- still unaware of Hunter. So venerable and
pertinacious is error, and so difficult is it to substitute truth in its
place. J.G.N.]
page 241
succeeded him, [1] Eustace surnamed of Chester, Richard a leper, Peter,
whom I conjecture tohave been Peter de Cestria the long-lived Rector of
Whalley, [2] and Alice. This
He was now lately returned from the Holy Land, whither he accompanied
Richard I. in the third crusade, having assisted at the memorable siege of
Acre [5], where so many of his countrymen and equals perished.
There is something evidently allusive to the temper and achievements of
Roger de Lacy in his great seal, of which some drawings have been
preserved. On the obverse side, instead of the equestrian figure usual in
that situation, is the spirited figure of a griffon rending the body of
some other animal; [6] and on the indorsement, an armed man
---Footnotes---
1 So Sir Peter Leycester, and this is confirmed by a fine levied at
Clyderhow, 7 Ric. I. before Roger de Lacy in person, where we meet with
some other persons of the Halton family, of whom I do not know that they
are mentioned anywhere else. Coram Rog. de Lacy, Const. Cest., et fratre
Roberto, filio Ricardi avunculi Rogeri, Eustatio fratre suo, &c.
[Elsewhere the wife of John de Lacy is thus described: "habuit in uxorem
Aliciam Vere uxorem (sic) Willielmi Mandeville Comit. Essex. Vid. 5 Ric. I.
habuit exitum Rogerum, Eustachium, Richardum cui pater dedit willam de
Moore, Galfridus testis cum Rogero fratre suo in anno 5to Joh'is, Alicia.
Addit. MS. Brit. Mus. 26-741, f. 262b.]
2 See in the Coucher Book, (Chetham Soc.) p. 94, a charter in which he
styles himself "Petrus de Lascy rector ecclesie de Whalleye. As before
noticed in p. 80, he is stated to have been a bastard son. (Ibid. p. 280.)
3 ["This Roger was living at the time of the death of his relative Robert
de Laci, and there was a fine levied in the King's court at Winchester on
April 21, 5 of Richard I. that is, about a year after the death of Robert
de Laci, by which Albreda passed to her grandson all the Laci lands, he
quit-claiming at the same time to her the lands which had been Robert de
Lizours her father's. (This most important document was first made public
by Sir Peter Lecester. It is printed also in Ormerod's History of
Cheshire, i. 510.) This Roger was the founder of a second family of Laci,
for he assumed that surname, and seated himself at Pontefract, abandoning
his hereditary house of Halton. His usual style was Roger de Laci,
constable of Chester, by which description I have seen his name in an
original charter of Albrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, which, if, as I
believe, of the first Earl, shows that the name of Laci was used by him
immediately on his entering on the Laci fee." Hunter, South Yorkshire, ii.
202.]
4. ["Rogerum de Hell, a Vallensibus ita cognominatum eo quod eosdem
Wallicos, Regi Angliae rebelles, tanquam inferni (sic), undique
devastavit." Historia Laceiorum. Such is the authority for this
oft-repeated soubriquet; which, notwithstanding, seems an exceedingly
unlikely one. Among the witnesses to a charter of John de Scotia, Earl of
Chester, which is printed by Ormerod, iii. 308, occurs the name of Rog'
Hell senescallo Cestr', the original, it may be suspected, of this
imaginary nickname of the Constable.]
5. It is curious and edifying to contrast the scenes which took place
respectively before this obscure and remote place (St. John de Acre) at the
close of the 12th and 18th centuries. In the former, the armies of France
and England are seen fighting together against the Moslem infidels, under
the common banner of the Cross; in the latter, appears a Christian knight
leading a Mohammedan army against a host of apostate Frenchmen, crusading
in the cause of atheism.
6. [In perfect impressions of this device it will be seen that it is the
serpent which is really stinging the neck of the griffin; the latter being,
no doubt, intended to typify Wales, in allusion to the name of Griffith
(Griffinus) borne by the Welsh princes. As for the reverse, it appears to
be one of those antique cameos which were continually adopted into the
English seals of the period: but, unfortunately, this is only preserved
(so far as has hitherto been found) in the rude tricking by Randle Holmes
(Harl. MS. 2064, f. 307.) from which the engraving in the Plate is derived.
In another seal attributed to Roger de Lacy, being a signet of small
dimensions there is an antique gem of a human head, which is circumscribed
VIRGO EST ELECTVS A DOMINO. But qu. did not this really appertain to the
Prior of Pontefract? It is engraved in Vetusta Monumenta, vol. i. pl. liv.
The Constables of Chester, who were engaged in constant warfare with the
Welsh, appear to have adopted the device of the serpent stinging the
griffin as early as the reign of Henry I, when it first appears in the seal
of William FitzNigel, four generations before Roger de Lacy. The engraving
here given is from the Tabley MSS. Lib. C. 133b, where it is attached to
the charter printed in Ormerod's History of Cheshire, i. 507, note. It
will also be found (less perfectly drawn) in Sir P. Leycester's Antiquities
of Cheshire, edit. 1673, p. 264. William his son had a similar seal.
(Ormerod, i. 508.)
The seal of Roger de Lacy and its reverse here introduced are extracted
from Ormerod's Cheshire, i. 511, and were engraved from an impression in
white wax, appendant to a charter in the possession (1816) of Mr. Thomas
Sharp of Coventry.
The interlaced device which Ormerod (ibid.) calls "the fret," occurring on
the reverse of the seal of Roger, is certainly meant to echo the surname of
Lacy. Heralds have given it the name of the Lacy fret.]
page 242
trampling on the body of an enemy, whose head he holds up triumphantly with
the right hand, while the left sustains an antique heater shield.
In this crusade he was accompanied by William de Bellomonte, ancestor of
the Beaumonts of Whitley Beaumont, in Yorkshire, who received from his
patron the grant of ten oxgangs of land in Huddersfield, an who, from the
frequency with which he attests the charters of Roger, appears to have been
almost his inseparable companion for the remainder of their lives. It was
the practice of those days for dependants to adopt, with some distinction,
the armorial bearings of their patrons; it has always been usual to add to
them some charge in memory of signal achievements, and thus a lion rampant
in the shielf of the Beaumonts attests their ancient connexion with the
house of Lacy,
page 243
and an orle of crescents alludes (not obscurely) to some triumph over the
standard of Mohammed. [1]
In his connexion with the Honor of Clitheroe, Roger de Lacy gave to the
abbey of Stanlaw the lordship of Merland, the advowson of the church of
Rochdale, with four oxgangs of land in Castleton (the valuable glebe of the
present vicarage), and Brandwood, an uncultivated tract, then considered as
part of Rossendale. The Coucher Book of Whalley proves with what
enthusiastic ardour this example was followed by the inferior proprietors
of lands in that district, who seem for a time to have been even ambitious
of stripping themselves and their families to enrich this popular
foundation. Roger de Lacy also granted the villa de Tunlay, and manor of
Coldcoats, with Snodworth, to Geoffry son of Robert dean of Whalley. He
served the office of sheriff for the county of Lancaster in the 7th, 8th,
and 9th of Richard I., and is found occasionally presiding in his own
courts at Clitheroe. He died Oct. 1, 1211, and was interred in the abbey
of Stanlaw, [2] leaving, by Maud de Clare his wife, a daughter married to
Geoffry dean of Whalley; and
---Footnotes---
1. The above affords a similar instance in the family of Neville, and
probably of the same date. [I do not know to what coat of Neville our
author here alludes: but in regard to the coat of Beaumont his heraldry
must certainly be dismissed as imaginary. The lion of Beaumont is of gold,
borne on an azure field, which is gerated or semee either with fleurs de
lis, with billets, or crescents, in the several branches. The family was
French, claiming descent from the royal house of France; and a branch which
remained in that country, seated at Brienne-sur-Aube in Champagne, retained
the same coat, but geraty with billets. As for crescents, they are a
common kind of gerating, and the fancy that they, in any family, allude to
the Crusades is entirely unproved. J.G.N.]
2. ["Anno Domini 1211 obiit Rogerus de Lacy, secundus fundator et novicius
loci Benedicti de Stanlow, in festo Sancti Remigii. Cuit successit
Johannes filius ejus." (Cotton MS. Titus F. III. f. 258.) The designation
"novicius" implies that he had been invested with the monastic habit in his
fatal illness, as was then a frequent custom.. "Habuit exitum Johannem,
Rogerum, Robertum qui assumit cognomen de Constable." (Add. MSS. 26,741,
f. 263.) From Robert the family of Constable, of Flamborough in Yorkshire,
is said to be descended. Peacham, Compleat Gentleman, 1622, p. 171.]
page 244
---Footnotes---
1 ["Alice, daughter to Peter de Aquila: she was buried at Norton abbey."
Sir Peter Leycester.]
2. [Shortly before his death, which occurred at the castle of Wallingford
in Berkshire, on the 28th of Oct. 1232. The charter by which he
transferred the Earldom of Lincoln is still extant in the British Museum,
and is printed in the Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i. p. 313. See
"The Descent of the Earldom of Lincoln," a paper by John Gough Nichols, in
the Lincoln volume of the Archaeological Institute, 1848, p. 271.
Immediately after the Earl of Chester's death the Countess Hawise
transferred the Earldom of Lincoln to her son-in-law John de Lacy, an
arrangement no doubt contemplated by his uncle the late Earl, and completed
and confirmed by royal charter on the 23rd of November 1232. Ibid. p.
272.]
3 [The date of this patent was within one month of the death of the Earl
of Chester. "In terms equally simple with those employed in the last
transfer of the Earldom, the King declared that, at the request of Hawise
de Quency, he had granted to John de Lascy, Constable of Chester, those
twenty pounds which Ranulph late Earl of Chester and Lincoln had received
as the third penny of the county of Lincoln, by the name of Earl of
Lincoln, and which the said Earl had in his life given to the said Hawise
his sister; and which twenty pounds John de Lascy was to have and hold by
the name of Earl of Lincoln, to him and his heirs issuing of Margaret his
wife, the daughter of the said Hawise, for ever." (Memoir on the Earldom
of Lincoln, p. 272.) Four years later, at the marriage and coronation of
Queen Alianor in 1236, John de Lascy is mentioned by Matthew Paris simply
as "Constable of Chester," and the passage is very interesting, as showing
the feudal relationship of the Constable to the Earl. "The Earl of Chester
[the John le Scot,] carried the Sword of Saint Edward which was called
curtana, before the King, as a sign that he was Earl of the Palace, and had
by right the power of restraining the King if he should commit an error.
The Earl was attended by the Constable of Chester, who kept the people away
with his staff when they pressed forward in a disorderly manner." John de
Lacy in his seal as Earl of Lincoln (of which the engravings given on p.
243 are lent by the Archaeological Institute,) adheres to the old coat of
his family, but possibly the cinquefoil under his feet may have some
allusion to LIncoln, though it is generally considered to be the special
badge of the county of Leicester. The second engraving of the great seal
is from Ormerod, i. 513, and apparently, judging by the remaining letters,
from a different matrix, though the same design.]
4 [The Countess Margaret was remarried to Walter Marshal, the fourth of
five brothers who successively inherited the Earldom of Pembroke, and who
also died without issue 24 Nov. 1246. There is in the British Museum a
chater (Harl. 52 H. 44) in which she styles herself Countess of Lincoln and
Pembroke: and in a charter of Maurice abbot of Kirkstall cited hereafter
she is so designated. The annexed seal of Margaret de Lacy offers a very
remarkable assemblage of early heraldic devices. In the centre is the old
coat of Lacy surmounted by a flaming star or sun, with or without any
special meaning. The margin, in place of a legend, is occupied alternately
with the mascle of Quincy, and a double-tailed lion, possibly to typify
that she was twice a Countess, for the lion was borne by both her husbands.
The original is in the treasury of St. Joh's college, Cambridge.]
page 245
Little Merlay to William de Nowell; and, dying July 22, 1240, was interred
with his ancestors at Stanlow. He obtained from Henry III. a grant of
diverse privileges within the Honor of Clitheroe, and particularly the
Furca or Gallows at Clitheroe and in Tottington. [1] His son and successor
was
---Footnotes---
1 Towneley MSS.
2 ["Anno Domini Mccxxx natus est Eadmundus de Lascy filius Johannis com.
Lincoln. et constabularii Cestriae." (Cotton MS. Cleopatra C. III. f.
328.) As he did not survive his mother, the heiress of the Earldom, he
never actually succeeded to that dignity, though there are some documents
in which he is styled Earl of Lincoln by courtesy, as mentioned in the
memoir on the Earldom before quoted, p. 273. "Post mortem autem dicti
Johannis de Lacy, filius ejus Edmundus de Lacy constabularius et non comes
vixit xiij annos et moriebatur Anno Domini Mcclviij nonas Junii et sepultus
jacet apud Locum Benedictum juxta patrem suum." (Harl. MS. 1830, f. 6.)
"Anno D'ni Mcciviij obijt Eadmundus Lascy ix kal. Junii." (Cotton MS.
Clep. C. III. f. 328 b.) "Anno 1258 obiit Eadmundus de Lacy filius
Johannis, quartus fundator, non. Junii, cui successit Henricus filius ejus.
Horum ossa sunt modo apud Whalley." (Cotton MS. Titus, F. III. f. 258.)]
3. [The great seal of Edmund de Lacy is roughly represented in the Plate,
fig. 6. It has been lately better engraved, but from a fractured
impression, in The Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, vol.
i. p. 169, as here repeated. The legend appears tohave been SIGILL'
EADMVNDI DE LASCY CONSTABVLARII CESTRIE.
His signet is also engraved in the Plate, fig. 7; but the original is
really smaller, as in the woodcut. It has a shielf of the three garbs of
Chester, and the legend: SECRETV. EADMVNDI DE LASCI.
The engravings here inserted are contributed by the Yorkshire
Archaeological and Topographical Association, from their Journal, vol. i.
p. 169; having been copied from a charter now in the possession of Charles
Jackson, Esq. of Doncaster. The same seal was used by Edmund de Lacy at
Easter 1258 (shortly before his death) to a confirmation charter to Roche
Abbey. (ibid. p. 173).
page 246
of King Henry III. and probably by his procurement married, to the great
indignation of the good people of England, Alice de Saluces, a foreign
lady, related to the Queen, and daughter of a nobleman of Provence. [1] He
died June 5, 1258, [2] and was buried at Stanlaw; leaving
---Footnotes---
1 [This statement is derived from the historian Matthew Paris. There are
two curious passages in his chronicle relating to this marriage; the first
stating that Peter of Savoy, Earl of Richmond, (the Queen's maternal uncle
and brother to Boniface archbishop of Canterbury,) "brought from his
distant province some unknown ladies, in order to marry them to the nobles
of England whom the King was educating as his wards;" and the second
relating that the King stayed at Woodstock from the feast of St. Vitalis
(April 28) until the morrow (May 2) of the apostles Philip and James, in
1247, in order to be present at the marriage of Edward (titular) Earl of
Lincoln and Richard de Burgh, upon whom the young Provencal ladies were
then bestowed. Richard de Burgh died before the end of the same year (as
mentioned by Matthew Paris), and of his bride no other notice occurs; but
the wife of Edmund de Lacy is identified as Alice daughter of Manfred
marquis of Saluzzo, by Beatrix of Savoy, which Beatrix, after the death of
her husband in 1244, was remarried to Manfred, a natural son of the Emperor
Frederick, and afterwards Kng of Naples and Sicily. The Marquis of Saluzzo
was fourth in descent from the marriage of Boniface marquis of Saluzzo with
a former Alice of Savoy, in the twelfth century. And it is a fact hitherto
unnoticed by our own peerage-writers that Alice Countess of Arundel (ob.
1292), the wife of Richard Earl of Arundel (1272-1302), was niece to the
wife of Edmund de Lacy, being a daughter of her brother Thomas Marquis of
Saluzzo, who lived until 1299. See Guichenon, Histoire Genealogique de la
Royale Maison de Savoie, 1778, vol. i. p. 273, vol. iii. pp. 290, 318.]
2 [This favour he had granted to the monks seven years before, when he
gave them the advowson of one moiety of the church of Blackburn," cum
corpore meo apud Stanlowe sepeliendo, si contingat me in Anglia in fata
decedere." Coucher Book of Whalley, (Chetham Soc.) p. 77.]
3 ["1251. Natus est Henricus de Lacy 3 idus Januarii." MSS. Cott. Vesp.
D. xviii f. 17b and Cleop. C. iii. f. 328.]
4 [For a full biography of the Earl of Lincoln the reader may be referred
to "The Siege of Carlaverock, by Sir Harris Nicolas," 4to 1828, introduced
by the remark that his name occupies a prominent place in the records of
almost every public event of his time. In the expedition to Scotland 1300,
which the old peom of Le Siege de Karlaverok commemorates, the Earl of
Lincoln led the van of the invading army.
Henry li bons Quens de Nicole
Ki proveste enbrasce e acole,
E en son cuer le a soveraine,
Menans le eschele promeraine
Baner out de un cendal safrin
O un lioun rampant purprin.
Comes Henry the good Earl of Lincoln,
Who prowess hugs with close embrace,
In his brave heart its sovereign place;
On his silk banner saffron-died
A purple lion ramps in pride.
There is a good impression of the first great seal of Henry Earl of Lincoln
attached to the Addit. Charter 1438 in the British Museum (and a cast may
be obtained from Mr. Robert Ready of that establishment). It is of the
usual round form, but only 2 1/2 inch in diameter, and bears his equestrian
figure in chain mail and surcoat, a large sword brandished in his right
hand, and a crest in the form of an inverted crescent above his
round-topped helmet, the visor of which is formed of crossed bars. On his
shield, and on the housings of his horse, repeated in front and rear, are
the arms of Lacy, Quarterly, a bend and file. Legend,
At a subsequent date, the Earl relinquished his family coat for the rampant
lion then generally affected by Earle, and which in his case was of the
unusual tincture purpure, on a golden field. The great seal and
accompanying counterseal, shown in these engravings, are from a charter
dated 1303. A variation of the counterseal (of the same size) has occurred
in the Duchy of Lancaster office: having the same shielf flanked not by
dragons, but by lions, their backs towards the shield, and their heads
hidden behind it. With the same inscription, SIGILLVM SECRETI.
page 247
[On attaining his majority he was admitted to the degree of knighthood
together with the King's nephew Edmund of Almaine, [1] and fifty-four other
gallant bachelors, upon the feast of St. Edward held at Westminster in the
year 1272; and on the same occasion prince Edmund and he were respectively
girt by the aged King Henry III. (in the last year of his reign) with the
swords of the Earldoms of Cornwall and Lincoln. It was, however, five
years after before he obtained livery of the fee which his ancestors had
usually received nomine Comitis Lincolnie, with all the arrears from the
time of his investiture.]
He was the confidential servant and friend of Edward the Frist, whom he
seems not a little to have resembled in courage, activity, prudence, and
every other quality which can adorn a soldier [2] or a statesman. In 1290
he was appointed first commissioner for rectify-
---Footnotes---
1 [Son of Richard Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans, who had died in
1271.]
2 Though he were not a long-lived man, his services began with the reign
of Edward, and continued beyond it, for in the 1st year of Edward he
besieged and took the cstle of Chartley in Staffordshire, which Robert de
Ferrars had entered and detained by force from Hamo l'Estrange, to whom it
had been granted by Henry III. upon the attainder of Ferrars.
page 248
... the abuses which had crept into the administration of justice,
especially in the Court of Common Pleas -- an office in which he behaved
with exemplary fidelity and strictness. In 1203 he was sent ambassador to
the French king to demand satisfaction for the plunders committed by the
subjects of France upon the goods of the English merchants. After the
death of Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, he was appointed commander-in-chief of
the army in Gascony, and viceroy of Aquitaine. In 1298 he raised the siege
of the castle of St. Katharine near Toulouse, and expelled the French from
the confines of that country. In 1299 he led the vanguard at the memorable
battle of Falkirk. In the parliament of Carlisle, in the last year of
Edward I. he had precedence of all the peers of England after the Prince of
Wales; and, by a rare fortune, after the death of his old master, he seems
to have retained the confidence of his son. This Earl died at his house of
Lincoln's Inn, Feb. 5th, 1310, aged 60 years, and was interred in St.
Paul's cathedral, where were erected, over his remains, a magnificent tomb
and cross-legged statue in linked mail, which perished with many others in
the great fire of London, but happily not until they had been perpetuated
by the hand of Hollar.
Henry de Lacy received from his sovereign, in recompense of his services,
the Honor of Denbigh in Wales, and additionally to his other titles styled
himself, in consequence, Dominus de Roos and Rowennock. Over the gate of
Denbigh castle his statue in robes is still preserved, and there, or at
Pontefract, for traditions vary, his eldest son, the last heir male of the
family, perished by a fall.
As lord of the Honor of Clitheroe, the many remaining evidences of this
Earl's transactions prove him to have been active and munificent. For,
besides many grants of inferior consequence, he rewarded his seneschal
Oliver de Stansfeud with the manor of Worsthorn, and the Lelaleghs and
Middlemores with the manor of the grange of Clivacher; he confirmed and
extended the privileges of his borough of Clitheroe; and, above all, he
gave to the monks of Stanlaw the advowson of Whalley with its dependencies,
procured the removal of their abbey to that fertile and beautiful site,
attended, as it appears, the translation in person, and laid the first
stone of their conventual church. [1]
He married Margaret daughter of Sir William Longespee, [2] by whom he
enjoyed all the lands, though not the title, of Earl of Salisbury; they had
two sons, Edmund and John, and two daughters, Alice and Margaret. Of the
two sons, both of whom died young, various accounts are given. One
tradition is, that Edmund the eldest [born in 1271] was drowned in the
draw-well of Denbigh castle; [3] but it appears from another account,
1 [See before, p. 90.]
2 [This marriage had been arranged in his boyhood, when his father fined
in ten marks to the King for leave to contract it, Feb. 9, 41 Hen. III.
(1257). MS. Dodsworth, lvi.]
3 [Leland says of the gate-house of Denbigh castle, "On the front is set
the image of Henry de Lacy Erle of Lincoln in his stately long robes. . . .
Sum say that the Erle of Lincoln's sunne felle into the castelle well, and
there dyed: wherupon he never passid to finische the castelle."
Itinerary, vol. vi. fol. 61.]
page 249
that in 1282, the year in which Edward I. granted to Henry de Lacy the two
cantreds of Roos and Rowennock, he gave to Edmund de Lacy his son Maud de
Chaworth, then only five years old, in marriage, [1] but that Edmund died
young, and that John his brother, running upon a turret of Pontefract
castle, fell down and was killed. It is not probable that both these
children perished by violent deaths, but rather that one tradition has been
propagated out of the other. Of the two daughters, Margaret also died
before her father, [2] who left of consequence his sole heir
Of his transactions in the Honor of Clitheroe I recollect no memorial,
excepting that, by charter dated at Whalley on the feast of St. James, A.D.
1316, he gave to the abbot and convent of that place Toxteth and Smethedon,
as a more convenient site for their abbey. The monks, as we have seen,
complained of the present situation: they wanted fuel, building timber,
and even an extent of domain at Whalley; but when the charter of Toxteth
was obtained these inconveniences were instantly removed, and they thought
it prudent to retain their new grant and their old situation. [4]
---Footnotes---
1 ["Cui rex Edwardus isto anno [1282] dedit maritagium Matilde puelle
quinqennys filiae et heredis Patricii de Chauworth, quam genuit de filia
Will'mi de Bellocampo Comitis de Warwyke, quam postea duxit uxorem Hugo
Despenser. Iste itaque Edmundus dominus et filius Henrici de Lacy statim
juvenis est defunctus, nullo post se relicto herede de corpore suo
procreato." (Cotton. MS. Cleop. C. III. f. 335 b.) At the marriage, when
the bride was five years old, the bridegroom was eleven, having been born
in 1271: "Anno Domini Mcclxxi natus est Eadmundus filius Henrici de Lascy
x. kl. Sept." (Ibid. f. 328 b, and Vesp. D. XVII. f. 17 b.)
2 ["Dictus igitur Henricus Com Lincoln. de prefata Margareta uxore sua
genuit aliam filium nomine Johannem et filiam unam nomine Alesyam. Sed
Johannes iste priusquam annos nubiles attigisset super turrem quoddam in
Castro de Pontefracto incaute discurrens lapsus est ultra muros et in
terram collisus et constructus protinus expiravit, nullum post se sui
corporis relinquens heredem." (Ibid.)
The Earl of Lincoln married for his second wife Joan, younger daughter and
coheir of William Martin lord of Kemoys in Pembrokeshire, a baron of
Parliament. He had no issue by her: and on her surviving him, her
marriage was granted to Ralph de Monthermer; but she chose to marry,
without his or the King's license, Nicholas Lord Audley, and from that
marriage all the subsequent Lords Audley have descended. See Dugdale,
Baronage, i. 106; Courthope, Historic Peerage, pp. 35, 317.]
3 [An impartial biography of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, by Sir Harris
Nicolas, will be found in The Siege of Carlaverock, 1828. 4to. pp.
265-269.]
4 [See the particulars before stated in p. 92.]
page 250
Of Alice de Lacy there is a very disgraceful story [1] told by Walsingham;
and, were it..
---Footnotes---
1 I will only mention, on the authority of a memorandum in Dodsworth's
MSS. which I have mislaid, that the fact which gave rise to the tragedy of
Sir John Elland, of Elland, was a fray between the retainers of Earl Warren
and the husband of this lady, on her account. This nearly fixes the era of
that transaction, but not of the old song upon the same subject; concerning
which Mr. Watson, History, p. 176, critically observes, "that it was penned
some time after the facts," that is, a ballad, precisely in the style of
Sternhold and Hopkins, was penned sometime after the earlier days of
Langland and Chaucer. Doubtless. [Dr. Whitaker seems to cite Walsingham
either from memory, or at second hand: but that historian assigns a
precise date to the abduction of the Countess of Lancaster, namely, the
Monday before Ascension day in 1317: "Anno gratie Millesimo trecentesimo
decimo septimo, qui est annus regni regis Edwardi a Conquestu secundi
decimus, tenuit rex Natalem, &c. . . . . Eodem anno, die Lunae Ascensionem
Dominicam precedente, rapta est Comitissa Lancastriae nobilis viri domini
Thomae comitis Lancastriae uxor legitima, apud Canforde in Dorsetia, per
quendam militem de domo et familia Johannis comitis Warreniae, convocatis
ad illud factum detestabile fautoribus (ut dicebatur) assensu regio
plurimis Anglicorum; ducta est antem pompose nimis in despectum comitis
dicti Lancastriae ad dictum Warennae comitem, ad castellum suum de Rigate.
Dumque sic foemina duceretur, ecce in itinerando, inter sepes et nemora
inter Haulton [Alton, in Hampshire] et Farnaham existentia, ductores vident
eminus vela et vexilla. Aderant enim sacerdote cum populo facientes
processionem more solito circa campos. Ductores igitur dictae comitissae
timore subito et horrore percussi, putentes comitem Lancastriae vel aliquos
per ipsum missos ad auferendum dictam dominam et tantam injuriam in ipsos
cum minis et pompa. Cum quibus, quidam miserae staturae, claudus et
gibbosus, suisque perpetuo intendens maliciis (Richardus dictus de Sancto
Martino) dominam (proh dolor !) supradictam delusam miserabiliter (magno
suffultus adjutorio) in suam exegit usorem, firmiter protestatus quod ipsam
fide media cognovit carnaliter antequam fuerat desponsata comiti
supradicto, quod etiam plane praedicta domina palam ubique recognovit, ac
etiam verum esse fatebatur, nullo ducta timore. Ac sic quae toto tempore
vitae suae nobilissima fuerat reputata domina, subito vergente rota
fortunae, quod dictu turpe est, per totum orbem spurcissima meretrix
acclamatur. Igitur dictus Richardus se supra se extollens, nomine uxoris
suae praesumit in curia regia vindicare comtatus Lincolniae et Sarum, sed
incassum, prout rei gestae sequentia plenius explanabunt. Fama facti hujus
ad Summi Pontificis aures allata, misit idem Pontifex duos Cardinales, ut
pacem facerent inter regem et barones et praecipue Thomam comitem, ut
patebit inferius loco suo." Watson, in his Memoirs of the Earls of Warren
and Surrey, vol. ii. p. 19, adds that "This affair occasioned a divorce
between the Earl of Lancaster and his Countess, and the Earl, in a spirit
of revenge, demolished the castle of Sandal near Wakefield, belonging to
the Earl of Warren, wasting his manors on the north side of Trent."
After his death the Earldom of Lincoln was restored to her 20 Dec. 1322 (as
shown by various documents cited in the memoir on the earldom before
quoted, p. 276); she shortly afterwards married Ebulo le Strange, (younger
son of the Lord Strange of Knockyn,) who having no issue by her was
summoned to parliament as a Baron only until his death in 1335. Before the
5th of July in the following year the Countess had taken as a third husband
Hugh de Freyne, a knight of Artois, who also was in consequence summoned to
parliament, but not by the title of Earl. He died before the end of the
same year (1336); and the Countess, dying on the 2d Oct. 1348, was buried
by the side of her second husband Ebulo le Strange, in the conventual
church of Barlings in Lincolnshire.
There are several seals of Alice Lacy, varying in design and remarkable for
their heraldry, which is not entirely obvious to interpretation.
In one, the round seal engraved in this work, Fig. 10 of the Plate, the
coats of the Earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury are impaled together,
representing her claim as heiress to both these dignities -- an early and
very remarkable example of impalement.
Dr Whitaker has mentioned (Third Edit. p. 181 note) that the impression
from which this was engraved was found "wrapped up in a note written by
Bishop Tanner." It has also been engraved in the History of Lacock Abbey
by Bowles and Nichols, p. 148.
In an oval seal used by her 55 Hen. III. the only device is a shield of
Chester (three garbs) suspended to a three-headed three. Legend, SIGILLVM
A . . . DE LASCI. (Harleian Charter, 52 H. 43.)
page 251
either pleasant or edifying to rake into the dust of libraries for ancient
scandal, I could related more to the same purpose than has ever yet
appeared; suffice it, however, to say that after having married two other
husbands, Eubulo l'Estrange and Hugh de Frenes, she died A.D. 1348, [at her
castle of Bolingbroke, co. Lincoln,] and was interred in the [neighboring]
abbey of Barlings, next her second husband. With her expired the name of
Lacy, which, even if she had left issue, would scarcely have been continued
at the expense of Plantagenet.
But to return: in the year 1294, Henry de Lacy, despairing of male issue,
surrendered all his lands to the King, who regranted them to the said Earl
for the term of his life, and after his decease, to Thomas Earl of
Lancaster, and Alice his wife, and the heirs of their bodies; failing of
which they were to remain over to Edmund the King's brother (a remarkable
proof of the Earl's attachment to the royal family,) and to his heirs for
ever. [1] By this act the Honor of Clitheroe became united to the Earldom
of Lancaster. Thus much is generally known: but the following
particulars, which ascertain some important steps about this time in the
descent of the Honor of Clitheroe, have been retrieved from an original
decree of Edward III. relating to the advowd son of St. Michael in the
Castle. [2] On the attainder of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, the Honor of
Clitheroe and hundred of Blackburn were instantly seized into the King's
hands, and remained in the Crown till the beginning of Edward III.'s reign,
when, with the exception of Ightenhill Park, they were granted for a term
of life to
---Footnotes---
1 [Dr. Whitaker here wrote evidently under a little mental confusion.
Edmund the King's brother was not a different party, but the actual Earl of
Lancaster; whilst his son Thomas the espoused husband of the heiress was
not as yet Earl, but merely heir apparent to that dignity. The provision
of remainder to the father would be in order that the heiress might be
transferred to another son, had Thomas died before the consummation of the
marriage. Thomas Earl of Lancaster is said to have been of full age at the
death of his father in 1296, but he could scarcely have then been quite
twenty, as his father's marriage was in 1276. Alice de Lacy was not
unsuited to him in respect of years, for it appears that she was born on
Christmas Day 1281. The inquisitions on her father's death vary, as such
documents usually do, in regard to her age, but that for the county of
Denbigh -- in which she was very probably born, is more precise and
reliable: -- "fuit etatis xxix annorum die Natali Domini ultimo preterito."
(Inq. dated at Dynebagh, on Sunday before the feast of St. Peter in
Cathedra, 21 Feb. 4 Edw. II. 1311.) At her espousals she was in her 9th
year. (Cotton MSS. Cleop. C. III. f. 336.) This would thus be in 1290.]
2 Pen. auct.
3 No. 2 in the Plate is the seal of this Queen, appended to her charters
as lady of the Honor of Clitheroe. [It is copied from the drawing in Harl.
MS. 2064, f. 322, and was attached to a charter dated at Stratford le Bow,
26 June, 6 Edw. III. On the counter-seal is a shield quarterly of 1.
England; 2. France; 3. Navarre; 4. Champagne.]
page 252
Previously however to her death the attainder of Thomas Earl of Lancaster
had been reversed, on the plea that he had not been tried by his peers; so
that immediately upon that event Henry Duke of Lancaster succeeded to this
Honor and Hundred, by virtue of the above-mentioned entail upon Edmund the
King's brother and his heirs.
Of
"The wapontake of Clyderhow, with the demesne lands there, the royal
bailiwick of Blackburnshire, the manors of Tottington and Rachdale, the
lordship of Bowland, the vaccary of Bouland and Blackburnshire, the forest
of Blackburnshire, and park of Ightenhill, with the appurtenances in
Blackburnshire." A few inquisitions and other acts of little importance
are all the evidences which remain of his having exercised these extensive
rights. [3] He died February 3, 1398, leaving a son,
---Footnotes---
1 {See before, in p. 97.]
2 No. 1 in the Plate is the great seal of this Duke, appended to the grant
of the manor of Downham, of which the original in green wax is in the
possession of William Assheton, esq.
3 I have an impression of the seal of John of Ghent, but in too mutilated
a state to be engraved. It has, as usual, an equestrian figure on one
side, and on the other quarterly France and England, with the label of
three points. [Such a seal of John of Ghent is described in Sandford's
Genealogical History, second edit. p. 249, but I am not aware that it has
been engraved. It is his privy seal as King of Castile and Leon which is
engraved in Sandford (both editions) and copied in Nichol's History of
Leicestershire. J.G.N.]
4 Fleetwood's Antiquity and History of the Duchy of Lancaster, MS. p. 36.
page 253
and in this charter it is declared that the Duchy of Lancaster "remaneat,
deducetur, gubernetur, &c., sicut remanere, deduci, gubernari deberet, si
ad culmen dignitatis regiae assumpti minime fuissemus." Notwithstanding
this, all grants of lands, &c. passed under the great seal of England
alone, through the remainder of this reign, and till the third of Henry V.
when it was ordered that no transactions relating to the Duchy should be
deemed valid "sub aliquo alio sigillo praeterquam sub sigillo nostro pro
Ducatu praedicto." [1] And thus the matter rested till the deposition of
Henry the Sixth, when Edward the Fourth, whose respective titles to the
Crown and to the Duchy were precisely those of the House of Lancaster
inverted, reasoning on the same principles with Henry IV. passed an act
entitled "actus incorporationis necnon confirmationis inter alia ad Coronam
Angliae in perpetuum de Ducat. Lanc." providing, however, that the said
dukedom should be and remain a corporate inheritance, and should be guided
and governed by such officers as in the times of Henry IV. V. VI.
After all, Henry the Seventh, -- who, independently of these acts of mere
power, had the only legal title to this great inheritance, as heir in tail
after the death of Edward son of Henry VI. under the deed of settlement
upon the heirs male of John Duke of Lancaster and Blanch his wife, -- in
the first year of his reign repealed the former Act of Edward IV. and
entailed, along with the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster, with its
appurtenances, upon himself and the heirs of his body lawfully begotten.
These were the fortunes of the Honor of Clitheroe while it continued a
member of the Duchy of Lancaster; that is, to the Restoration of Charles
II. when that prince, in consideration of the eminent services of General
Monck, bestowed upon him and his heirs, from which time to the present it
has passed in the following channel:
---Footnotes---
1 Fleetwood's Antiquity and History of the Duchy of Lancaster, MS. p. 36.
Qu whether by Act of Parliament? but so Fleetwood.
page 254
Christopher Duke of Albemarle, leaving no issue by his wife, who was
daughter and coheiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, gave her his
estates; of which she died possessed 28 Aug. 1734, aet. 95, having,
secondly, married Ralph Duke of Montagu, whose two daughters: Isabella,
married first to the Duke of Manchester, and secondly to Edward Earl
Beaulieu; and Mary, married to George Brudenell Earl of Cardigan,
afterwards Duke of Montagu. Ralph Duke of Montagu died March 9th, 1708-9.
Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of George Duke of Montagu, married, in
1767, Henry Duke of Buccleuch, and had issue a second son, Henry James
Baron Montagu of Boughton, on whom the Honor of Clitheroe was settled,
after the decease of the Duchess, his mother. [On his death in 1845,
without male issue, it became the property of his cousin the present Duke
of Buccleuch and Queensberry.]
made a charter entitled "carta regis Henrici 4ti de separatione Ducat.
Lanc. a Corona;"
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