John Horace Round

“ Earl Robert was slain before Maestricht in 1632, leaving an only son, Aubrey (1626–1703) , 20th and last earl. His marriage with a Bayning heiress restored the fortunes of his house, and his Royalist intrigues under the Commonwealth were rewarded at the Restoration by sundry favours, among them the command of a regiment of horse, known from him as "the Oxford Blues" and still familiar as "the Blues" (Royal Horse Guards) . James II. deprived him of his regiment and his lieutenancy of Essex for opposing his policy, but the prince of Orange, whom he joined, restored them. ”

“ Lionel, the next surviving brother of the Black Prince, left an only child Philippa, who married the earl of March, in whose heirs was the right to the succession. But John of Gaunt, the next brother, who had married the heiress of Lancaster and had been created duke of Lancaster in consequence, refounded the Lancastrian line, which obtained the throne in the person of his only son by her, Henry IV., on the deposition of Richard II., to the exclusion of the infant earl of March. ”

“ Serjeants (servientes) are already entered as a distinct class in Domesday Book (1086) , though not in all cases differentiated from the barons, who held by knight-service. Sometimes, as in the case of three Hampshire serjeanties—those of acting as king's marshal, of finding an archer for his service, and of keeping the gaol in Winchester Castle—the tenure can be definitely traced as far back as Domesday. It is probable, however, that many supposed tenures by serjeanty were not really such, although so described in returns, in inquests after death, and other records. ”

“ If a peerage which passes to heirs-general, like the ancient baronies by writ, is held by a man whose heir-at-law is neither a male, nor a woman who is an only child, it goes into abeyance on his death between two or more sisters or their heirs, and is held by no one till the abeyance is terminated; if eventually only one person represents the claims of all the sisters, he or she can claim the termination of the abeyance as a matter of right. ”

“ The remote position of Desmond in the south-west of Ireland tended to make the succession irregular on native lines, and a younger son succeeded as 6th or 7th earl about 1422. His son Thomas, the next earl (1462–1467) , governed Ireland as deputy from 1463 to 1467, and upheld the endangered English rule by stubborn conflict with the Irish. Yet Tiptoft, who superseded him, procured his attainder with that of the earl of Kildare, on the charge of alliance with the Irish, and he was beheaded on the 14th of February 1468, his followers in Munster avenging his death by invading the Pale. ”

“ It is evident that William desired to know the financial resources of his kingdom, and probable that he wished to compare them with the existing assessment, which was one of considerable antiquity, though there are traces that it had been occasionally modified. The great bulk of Domesday Book is devoted to the somewhat arid details of the assessment and valuation of rural estates, which were as yet the only important source of national wealth. ”

“ The history of the baronetage was uneventful till 1783, when in consequence of the wrongful assumption of baronetcies, an old and then increasing evil, a royal warrant was issued (6th of December) directing that no one should be recognized as a baronet in official documents till he had proved his right to the dignity, and also that those created in future must register their arms and pedigree at the Heralds’ College. ”

“ The native king of Connaught was also attacked by him, in favour of that branch of the O'Conors whom his own family supported. He led his forces from Ireland to support Edward I. in his Scottish campaigns, and on Edward Bruce’s invasion of Ulster in 1315 Richard marched against him, but he had given his daughter Elizabeth in marriage to Robert Bruce, afterwards king of Scotland, about 1304. Occasionally summoned to English parliaments, he spent most of his forty years of activity in Ireland, where he was the greatest noble of his day, usually fighting the natives or his Anglo-Norman rivals. ”

“ In Ireland, parish registers were confined to the now disestablished church, which was that of a small minority, and were, as in Scotland, badly kept. Although great inconvenience was caused by this system, civil registration of marriages, when introduced in 1844, was only extended to Protestants, nor was it till 1864 that universal civil registration was introduced, great difficulty under the Old Age Pensions Act being now the result. No provision was made, as in Scotland, for central custody of the registers, which, both Anglican and Nonconformist, remain in their former repositories. ”

“ But on the death of the 10th earl (1736) this barony, with the lordship of Man and other great estates, passed to the 2nd duke of Atholl, whose heir, the present duke, holds the title. The earldom with large estates in Lancashire, passed to the heir male (see above) .
Although the present wealth of the Stanleys is largely derived from the great industrial development of Lancashire, they were already a power to be reckoned with in that county and in Cheshire at the time of the Wars of the Roses, and have held a leading position ever since among English nobles. ”

“ But the heir-male, Miles de Beauchamp, nephew of Simon, held Bedford Castle against the king in 1137–1138. From his brother Payn descended the barons of Bedford, of whom William held Bedford Castle against the royal forces in the struggle for the Great Charter, and was afterwards made prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, while John, who sided with the barons under Simon de Montfort, fell at Evesham. With him the line ended, but a younger branch was seated at Eaton Socon, Beds., where the earthworks of their castle remain, and held their barony there into the 14th century. ”

“ From a very early date they were feudal lords of Kerry, and their dignity was recognized as a peerage by Henry VII. in 1489. The isolated position of their territory (“Clanmaurice”) threw them even more among the Irish than the earls of Desmond, and they often adopted the native form of their name, “MacMorrish.” Under Elizabeth the lords of Kerry narrowly escaped sharing the ruin of the earls. The conduct of Thomas in the rebellion of James “Fitz Maurice” was suspicious, and his sons joined in that of the earl of Desmond, while he himself was a rebel in 1582. ”

“ John, a son of the 1st duke of Buckingham, received the garter and an earldom of Wiltshire (1470) , which became extinct with his son in 1499, but was revived in 1510 for Henry Stafford, K.G., a son of the 2nd duke, who, however, died childless in 1523.
The Staffords made illustrious marriages from the day of the 1st earl; a son of the 1st duke married the mother of Henry VII. The badge of the family was “the Stafford knot,” at one time as famous as “the ragged staff” of the earls of Warwick. ”

“ Another innovation was the grant of the first earldom for life only in 1377. The girding with the sword was the only observance at a creation till the first year of Edward VI., when the imposition of the cap of dignity and a circlet of gold was added. Under James I. the patent of creation was declared to be sufficient without any ceremony. An earl’s robe of estate has three bars of ermine, but possibly it had originally four.
Something should be said of anomalous earldoms with Norman or Scottish styles. ”

“ By its provisions, the king covenanted to exact an “aid” from his barons on these three occasions alone—and then only a “reasonable” one—except by “the common counsel” of his realm. Enormous importance has been attached to this provision, as establishing the principle of taxation by consent, but its scope was limited to the barons (and the city of London) , and the word “aids” was omitted from subsequent issues of the charter. ”

“ Meanwhile, questions had arisen as to the exact precedence of the baronets, and James by royal decree (28th of May 1612) had announced that it was his intention to rank them below the younger sons of barons. As this had the effect of stopping applications for the honour, James issued a fresh commission (18th of November 1614) to encourage them, and finally, as “the Kinges wants might be much relieved out of the vanities and ambition of the gentrie” (in Chamberlain’s words) , he granted, in 1616, the further privilege that the heirs apparent of baronets should be knighted on coming of age. ”

“ Mortain was, in the middle ages, the head of an important comté, reserved for the reigning house of Normandy. In or about 1049 Duke William took it from his cousin William, “the warling,” and bestowed it on his half-brother, Robert, thenceforth known as “count of Mortain,” whose vast possessions in England after the Conquest (1066) gave name to “the small fees of Mortain,” which owed less (knight) service than others. Robert was succeeded as count by his son William, who rebelled against Henry I., was captured at the battle of Tinchebrai (1106) and forfeited his possessions. ”

“ The halo surrounding the name of Vere is seen as early as 1626 in the stately panegyric of Chief Justice Crewe. "I suppose there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry, or nobleness, but his affection stands to the continuance of so noble a name and house." ”

“ Robert’s grandson, another Robert, (d. 1282) held high position in Northumbria, and sided with Henry III. in the Barons’ War, as did his younger brother Geoffrey (d. 1285) , ancestor of the Nevills of Hornby. This Robert’s son Robert (d. 1271) extended the great possessions of the family into Yorkshire by his marriage with the heiress of Middleham, of which the powerful Norman castle still stands. The summons of their son Ranulf (d. 1331) to parliament as a baron (1294) did but recognize the position of the Nevills as mighty in the north country. ”

“ The serjeanty of holding the king's head when he made a rough passage across the Channel, of pulling a rope when his vessel landed, of counting his chessmen on Christmas day, of bringing fuel to his castle, of doing his carpentry, of finding his potherbs, of forging his irons for his ploughs, of tending his garden, of nursing the hounds gored and injured in the hunt, of serving as veterinary to his sick falcons, such and many others might be the ceremonial or menial services due from a given serjeanty. ”

“ But Gerald himself, after some trimming, rose in rebellion (July 1574) , though he soon submitted to the queen’s forces. On the continent James Fitz Maurice offered the crown of Ireland in succession to France and to Spain, and finally to the nephew of Pope Gregory XIII. With the papal nuncio and a few troops he landed at Dingle in Kerry (June 1579) and called on the earls of Kildare and Desmond to join him, but the latter assured the English government of his loyalty, and James was killed in a skirmish. ”

“ No further question arose till 1779, when his heirs were two sisters. In 1781 the House of Lords decided that it belonged to them jointly, and that they could appoint a deputy, which they did. Under a family arrangement the heirs of the two sisters respectively appointed deputies in alternate reigns till the death of Queen Victoria, when Lord Ancaster, the heir of the elder, who was then in possession, claimed that he, as such, had sole right to the office. ”

“ Under Edward I. the new system was so completely developed that the six levies of the reign, each as high as two pounds on the fee, applied only in practice to the under-tenants, their lords compounding with the crown by the payment of large sums, though their nominal assessment, somewhat mysteriously became much lower (see Knight Service) . Scutage was rapidly becoming obsolescent as a source of revenue, Edward II. and Edward III. only imposing one levy each and relying on other modes of taxation, more uniform and direct. ”

“ The barons, on their part, covenanted to claim from their feudal tenants only the above three customary aids. The last levy by the crown was that of James I. on the knighting of his eldest son (1609) and the marriage of his daughter (1613) .
From at least the days of Henry I. the term “aid” was also applied (1) to the special contributions of boroughs to the king’s revenue, (2) to a payment in lieu of the military service due from the crown’s knights. ”

“ Neuville is a common French name, and it is not clear whether all the Nevills who occur in the 12th and 13th centuries were of the same stock as the lords of Raby. The baronial line of Nevill of “Essex” was founded by the marriage, temp. Richard I., of a Hugh de Nevill to the heiress of Henry de Cornhill, a wealthy Londoner. ”

“ His son (or grandson) and namesake was a trusted officer of Henry I., from whom he received the hereditary office of great chamberlain in 1133. It was probably he who erected the noble tower which gave name to Castle Hedingham, Essex, the bead of his fief, and which stands as the finest example of a private Norman keep. Slain in 1141, he was succeeded by his son Aubrey, who had already become count of Guines, in right of his wife, on her grandfather's death. ”

“ His son James (1520–1529) was proclaimed a rebel and traitor for conspiring with the French king and with the emperor. At his death the succession reverted to his uncle Thomas (1529–1534) , then an old man, at whose death there was a contest between his younger brother Sir John “of Desmond” and his grandson James, a court page of Henry VIII. Old Sir John secured possession till his death (1536) , when his son James succeeded de facto, and de jure on the rightful earl being murdered by the usurper’s younger brother in 1540. ”

“ As one of the “lords ordainers” he was a recognized leader of the opposition to Edward II. By the heiress of the Tonis he left at his death in 1315 a son Earl Thomas, who distinguished himself at Crécy and Poitiers, was marshal of the English host, and, with his brother John, one of the founders of the order of the Garter. ”