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 C. K. OGDEN
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND.
 
 THE 
 
 SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 LONDON: 
 TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 
 
 1887. 
 
 [All rights reserved. ,]
 
 "Ballantgne JjJwfflB 
 
 J1ALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON
 
 
 PBEEACE. 
 
 If the purpose of this work had been merely genealogical, it 
 would have followed the usual course of publication by sub- 
 scription at high price, for the delight of collectors of county 
 histories, family records, and curiosities of antiquarian litera- 
 ture. It is hoped that the contents will be of decided interest 
 to lovers of English antiquities, but the direct appeal is to the 
 large public who accept with appreciation any real contribu- 
 tion to the history of their country. To get at the spirit of 
 past periods through tracing the action of particular families, 
 is a new historical method ; and the immense mass of personal 
 materials which is now open to research in England, makes the 
 field one of the most promising. A view of facts from the 
 side of the ruled rather than from the usual monarchical 
 standpoint of historians, must have its practical use ; and it 
 ought to be especially grateful to a time when democracy has 
 learnt rights, and is dimly seeing duties. The pedigree mania, 
 with which even America is smitten, has little to do with the 
 inquiry ; substantial showing of the lives of a line in the press 
 of national growth, being the intention. With the Romans a 
 Fabian or Julian stock was an inspiration to the simplest 
 member of the populus ; and because the width of a remark- 
 able family's connections causes an inevitable democratic feel- 
 ing, there is no danger of that exclusiveness which is at once 
 the nemesis and cause of ridicule to higher position, however 
 nobly gained. No country has been more generous than this 
 in receiving worth into its best grades. To contemporary re- 
 publicanism there is somewhat of wonder when it realises how 
 free to persistent ability all offices and honours in England 
 have been and still are. It was thought that the days of 
 science would bring men to a dead level socially ; and the 
 evolutionary hypothesis which reduced, or threatened to re- 
 duce, mankind to brotherhood with the ape in the first place, 
 
 -4 c< r* i? cr •*~ % f
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 and with the whole animal world ultimately, was considered 
 to be the most effective destroyer of all pride of race and posi- 
 tion. But human nature returns ; and the doctrine of survival 
 of the fittest would create, if left to itself, an a ristocracy which 
 for iron exclusiveness and the worst vices of selection; might 
 surpass all domination that the world has yet seen. The poor 
 and the miserable, below a certain point, would be extermi- 
 nated ; and the fittest must lord it over the earth, as prime 
 monkeys, to an extent beyond conception. An easier way of 
 social existence which left chances to such broken lives as 
 those of Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, and many others 
 lame of body, is to be preferred to that of the so-called reign 
 of law (for law is as unrealisable as everything else in the 
 eternally limited province of human science) ; and nothing in 
 our history is more comforting than the knowledge that some 
 field was allowed at all times for the rise of every talent to 
 its rights. There was nepotism enough, but in this there has 
 been at least political safety, for the presumption is usually 
 in favour of experienced stocks having the most natural apti- 
 tude for ruling position, though it has never been forgotten 
 that to this law there are brilliant exceptions, who must have 
 their places. No democracy can ever get free from some form 
 of aristocracy, but the wisdom is to keep the best men and 
 women as healthy as possible by continual mixture with the 
 elect of the people. It is an ethnological fact that marriage 
 of those too near of kin is as dangerous as of those too distant 
 in blood, cousins to cousins, northerns to southerns, Swiss vil- 
 lagers to Swiss villagers, Desdemonas to Othelloes ; and social 
 unions in a country have similar dangers. But it is the in- 
 sight that is to be got as to the formation of the nation, from 
 the Norman Conquest downwards, individually rather than 
 collectively, that was the attraction of the toil expended on 
 this subject ; and if others also realise something of the inner 
 life of the past through these gatherings, the object will be 
 attained. 
 
 A word of detail is that the varied spelling of certain places 
 and names is followed because of peculiar light thus thrown on 
 changes of historical value. 
 
 London, 1887.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION .... 
 I. AT THE NORMAN CONQUEST 
 II. BEFORE THE CONQUEST 
 
 III. FRENCH ANTECEDENTS 
 
 IV. THE NORMAN CIVILISATION 
 V. WALDERNE'S SONS AND DAUGHTER 
 
 VI. TENURES OF LAND 
 VII. EUDO, FILIUS HUBERTI 
 VIII. EUDO DAPIFER'S CONQUEST 
 IX. THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OF COLCHESTER 
 X. EUDO THE FOUNDER OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES 
 XI. THE DAPIFER'S LATTER YEARS 
 XII. KUDO'S LINEAGE 
 
 XIII. THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR 
 
 XIV. JOHN, COMES ESSEXLE 
 XV. MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OF ESSEX 
 
 XVI. THE YOUNGER HUBERT'S LINE . 
 XVII. THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM 
 XVIII. WHO WAS SIMON OF SENLIS ? . 
 XIX. SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER 
 XX. SIMON SINCLAIR, THIRD AND LAST EARL 
 XXI. RELATIONS .... 
 
 XXII. THE COUNTESS OF GLOUCESTER 
 
 XXIII. WILLIAM DE SANCTO CLARO 
 
 XXIV. THE KNIGHT OF RYE . 
 XXV. HAMO DAPIFER .... 
 
 XXVI. THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 16 
 
 22 
 30 
 
 34 
 
 41 
 45 
 54 
 61 
 
 67 
 
 77 
 88 
 
 93 
 105 
 "3 
 123 
 
 131 
 140 
 
 144 
 
 153 
 160 
 
 165 
 179 
 
 185
 
 Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. iai.i: 
 
 XXVII. THE EARLS OF CORBEIL 1 9° 
 
 XXVIII. THE VISCOUNT AND FEE-FARMER OF COLCHESTER . 204 
 
 XXIX. THE HERO OF BRIDGENORTH 2IO 
 
 XXX. THE TWO WILLIAMS OF LONGVALE . . . .217 
 
 XXXI. COMMISSIONER OF 'DOMESDAY BOOK' . . .223 
 
 XXXII. HUGO DE ST. CLARE 231 
 
 XXXIII. DESCENT OF THE BARON OF AESLINGHAM . . 240 
 
 XXXIV. TWO WALTERS OF MEDWAY 245 
 
 XXXV. KING'S CHAMBERLAIN 256 
 
 XXXVI. RICHARD OF EAST ANGLIA 262 
 
 XXXVII. GEREBERD, VISCOUNT OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK . 266 
 
 XXXVIII. TWO JOHNS * 273 
 
 XXXIX. VICECOMES AND ESCHEATOR 281 
 
 XL. COUSINS 286 
 
 XLI. THE ALDAM SINCLAIRS 290 
 
 XLII. THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION 295 
 
 XLIII. SIR PHILIP, THOMAS, AND PHILIP .... 306 
 XLIV. SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SONS . . -312 
 
 XLV. MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS 322 
 
 XLVL WILLIAM, SON OF HUGO PINCERNA .... 329 
 
 XLVII. GOVERNORS OF ROCHESTER CASTLE .... 334 
 
 XLVIII. ROBERT, NICOLAS, AND JOHN 343 
 
 XLIX. CORONER OF KENT 349 
 
 L. THE ESSEX MEN 360 
 
 LI. WOLSEY'S APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS . 365 
 
 LII. THE SOUTH-WEST 377 
 
 Lin. THE SOMERSET FAMILY 384 
 
 LIV. THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE 39 1 
 
 LV. THE SINCLAIRS OF CORNWALL 399 
 
 CONCLUSION 407
 
 f 
 
 THE SINCLAIES OF ENGLAND. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Novelty and originality are great aids to all narration. There 
 has been for the last two hundred years so little written or 
 known of the English branch of the Sinclair family, that what 
 were simply taken from the various records, authentic and 
 available, ought to have much of those desirable qualities. 
 The Scottish house has had for many centuries the full light 
 of fame over it. The Danish Sinclairs, of whom Sir Andrew, 
 ambassador to James First of England from the king of 
 Denmark, is a prominent figure ; the Swedish, known most by 
 Count Malcolm's tragic death returning from his embassy to 
 the Porte during the Czarina Catherine's reign, in the violent 
 time of the 'hats and caps,' — Major Sinclair of Carlyle's 
 Frederick the Great; the Norwegian, Eussian, and German, 
 remarkable by their literary, civil, and military positions of 
 substance and honour : these are all better to the front than 
 the forgotten Englishmen. With the Romans it was piety 
 not to neglect the ashes of the fathers. In real generosity of 
 feeling dwellers in these happy islands of the west cannot but 
 be their successful rivals. The dark clouds of antiquity are 
 over many of our brave actions as a race ; but we have not 
 been disrespectful of the past, and the world of writings in 
 our national keeping are unique for their quantity and qua- 
 lity. There is a notable Irish family of the last two centuries 
 upwards, of whom the Rev. John, girt, with sword and pistols at 
 the siege of Derry, is the hero ; and the History of Belfast 
 and Froude's English in Ireland give knowledge of a family of 
 civic and political importance in Ulster's chief town. Recent 
 
 A
 
 2 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 American, African, and Australian offshoots show the old ability 
 and courage. Of this, in some respects, too cosmopolitan, though 
 never numerous name, the English representatives can well bear 
 now all the publicity which can be given to them.^ For the 
 general mind, Sir Walter Scott has done much with regard 
 to those lords of Eoslin, who were the princes of Orkney and 
 Shetland, earls of Caithness, dukes of Oldenburgh, and chief 
 nobles of Norway. His verses in The Lay of the Last Min- 
 strel, and his notes to them, about what he well called ' the 
 lordly line of high St. Clair,' are of almost over-frequent refer- 
 ence, however much backed by chivalrous and splendid deeds. 
 Even of chains of diamonds the fitful souls would get tired, 
 if too much used With a direction to Sir Bernard Burke's 
 no doubt well-grounded enthusiasm about the Scottish family's 
 noble and royal claims and traditions, especially under ' Lord 
 Sinclair,' they may be left out of notice. His books alone, if 
 there were not the libraries which are, could keep their me- 
 mories green. The Vicissitudes of Families may be mentioned 
 in particular as of easy reading and reference. John Fordun, 
 the old monk of Aberdeen, never felt easy in his mind 
 with a genealogy till he got it to Noah ; George Buchanan, the 
 historian, went back through endless paths of Gaelic darkness 
 with his Scot kings ; the ingenious and useful, if too supersti- 
 tious, Matthew Paris, had to get his Henries of England traced 
 somewhere near the flood : our standard authority on peerage, 
 baronetage, and all other rank, has almost laid himself open to 
 the quiz of similar monastic scholasticism in his generous and 
 perhaps scientific reckoning of Sinclair relationship through 
 Scottish, Irish, Norman, Norwegian, and other blood, noble 
 and royal, to the mythological Odin, god, king, and father to 
 all the Dacians. Of the English Sinclairs he has only a word 
 or two, though they are closely knit with that great Burgh 
 lineage to which he attaches, with evident interest, the nor- 
 thern family on slenderer grounds. Some related families, 
 lil.' tli>' viscounts Gage of Firle Place, Sussex, know that there 
 existed people here of the name; and the antiquaries have a 
 vague suspicion of certain dark figures so yclept moving in 
 die li.uk-chambers of their wonderfully-made memories: but, 
 •tieallv, this is breaking entirely new ground; and with 
 ill" special interest of such work, there cannot but be the 
 accompanying imperfections. The strongest arm in art, historic
 
 AT THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 3 
 
 or other, is limited by thousands of chances. Human effort is 
 at its best when sincerity is a sleepless watchman over what 
 ability may come into exercise. To give the proper limits to 
 the imagination where facts are broken and sparse, and also 
 to preserve artistic unity, are a difficult enterprise. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AT THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 Of those lithe athletic figures in armour on horseback around 
 William, duke of Normandy, on that famous October day of 1066 
 near Hastings, nine at least were Sinclairs. With the Greek- 
 like ease familiar from fine expression in tapestry, they moved 
 in the inmost circles of his gallant surrounding. Hubert Sin- 
 clair, earl of Rye, was still in the strength of manhood, though 
 he had near him his four sons in the flower of warriorhood. 
 Radulph was the eldest, Hubert second, Adam third, and Eudo 
 the youngest. The earl of St. Clare, Walderne, the brother of 
 the earl of Rye, was also there, with his three sons, Richard, 
 Britel, and AVilliam. It is not improbable that the earl of 
 Senlis, though then a French and not a Norman subject, also 
 added with his sons to the roll of De Sancto Claro in the 
 decisive contest for England's sovereignty. Of him, however, 
 there is no record existing with this established. The others 
 are discernible in wonderful distinctness through those more 
 than eight hundred succeeding years. Many of them, no doubt, 
 did doughty feats at Senlac. One is immortalised ; and, con- 
 sidering how events suffer under the tooth of time, several 
 more have been very kindly rescued from oblivion by the fates 
 of the chances. In Wace's Roman de Rou, written within 
 hearsay memory of living witnesses of the Norman Conquest, 
 there is this passage in an admittedly very faithful description 
 of the battle of Hastings, the chief event in his history of Rollo's 
 line : 
 
 'Dune puinst Hue de Mortimer, 
 Od li Sire d'Anvilier ; 
 Cil d Onebac e de Saint Cler 
 Engleiz tirent mult enverser.'
 
 4 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 It was at a critical point of the fight that this Sinclair, Richard, 
 the son of Walderne, ' overthrew many of the Angles.' 
 
 Angles they were, and not for a moment 'English,' as we now 
 understand the word. To dub the Normans with the name of 
 Frenchmen, and so to gain sympathy for the supposed patriotic 
 side, was hardly ingenuous procedure on the part of some 
 late fanatical historians. We have as much honour now from 
 the deeds of the brilliant conquerors as of the brave con- 
 quered of that memorable field. It may not be granted to 
 some writers that the majority of present names is Norman, 
 but we have all the fame of every gallant deed on both sides. 
 It is not an enviable distinction, to have given an evil twist to 
 the facts of this finest chapter in the growth of a great people, 
 when Normannic united with Celtic and Saxon blood to form 
 what Americans and others, with conscious meaning, call the 
 Britisher. If there was patriotism it went on a false scent, 
 and judicious treatment of history was left in the background. 
 Our Freemans and our Froudes are passionate pleaders to con- 
 temporisms when they might be aspirants to immortality in 
 their line of art. It has been said of William of Malmesbury 
 that his account of the grossness of the Angles or Saxons and 
 of the refinement of the Normans, was probably true, because 
 he had the blood of both in his veins ; one could almost think 
 that the historian special of the Conquest had discovered in 
 his honest enough researches, that he was a descendant of some 
 Saxon bondman, and felt therefore bound to see nothing good 
 in what like the chronic Irishman he assails as the oppressor. 
 There is a subtle truth in the saying that Hereward was the 
 last of the English. He was the wake of the brave but brutal 
 Angles ; and it is reason for thankfulness that too much of the 
 Teutonic, partially Tartaric, grating grit, is not conspicuous in 
 our national composition. 
 
 At the warriors' table on the night of the battle, spread 
 among the dead, where forsworn presumptuous Harold's 
 standard all day had stood, these Sinclairs were; and there 
 they also slept the sleep in mankind's estimation perhaps the 
 most dignified possible on earth, that of conquerors after 
 victory. On that very spot, Battle Abbey was to rise, as if to 
 guard their memories for ever with its shelter; and it has not 
 been altogether unsuccessful. Its roll of heroes, broken, and 
 perhaps fuller also than it should be, still keeps the ' lord of
 
 AT THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 5 
 
 St. Cler ' as one. The head of the then great family, Walderne, 
 earl of St. Clare, had his name on the memorable list, the 
 representative of all. It is true that ' Richard de Saint 
 Clair ' is expressly mentioned in the roll in the church of 
 Dives, Normandy, of the companions of the Conqueror in 
 1066 ; but this does not conflict, seeing that the warriors had 
 then only first names, and wei^e designated after some one or 
 other of their estates. Huberts and Walters of various locali- 
 ties occur in the list. Through the advance to coronation and 
 complete possession of the country, the family followed wor- 
 thily their great chief ; and their services are well seen by the 
 offices they filled. Dark gaps come in the history of kings 
 themselves so far away in time ; it is not wonder that there 
 are clouds often over their noblest supporters. The sons 
 of Hubert Sinclair, earl of Rye, can, however, be followed. 
 Radulph was sent with ti*oops northward to secure the heart 
 of England, and he was made castellan and earl of Notting- 
 ham. To him the castle of Nottingham was given to keep, 
 and keep it well he did. Another Radulph, of another strain, 
 a semi-Saxon, had got the tower of Norwich to guard ; but he 
 was the worst traitor of the marriage-feast which cost Waltheof 
 his head in 1075. After this Radulph of Waer took to flight, 
 the young Hubert Sinclair was sent to take and hold it. His 
 cousin Richard, the hero of Hastings, went with him ; and 
 Domesday has its account of the pain and blood it cost to 
 restore all the disorder. The lands of the rebellious burghers 
 knew the necessary fire and sword. Hubert became the 
 governor with the hand of iron, and Richard had gifts of land 
 and house in the district where the soldiers had done soldiers' 
 duty. Richard also was to the front among the high war and 
 court officers of the time. Adam got lands in Kent. He is 
 known as of Campes there. His possessions were large ; but all 
 men were warriors who followed the duke of Normandy, and 
 only the oblivion of time and the frequency of the military 
 heroes, hide him in this character also. When troubles began 
 in 1066 in Normandy, King William had sent him and his 
 two brothers, afterwards the castellan of Nottingham and the 
 governor of Norwich Tower, with their father Hubert, to 
 quell the Cenomannic region, the most refractory part of the 
 dukedom. In the battle of Hastings itself, the rebellious 
 spirit appeared, in the person of one of the Cenomannic nobles ;
 
 6 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and it needed good counsel and prompt hands to deal with 
 them, their duke away in England. The work had been 
 thoroughly clone, and the sons returned to this side of the 
 Channel. Adam was one of the able commissioners who 
 compiled that wonder of the world, as to state record, The 
 Domesday Bool: It was the civil capacity of such born 
 rulers that put the right finish to their valour and skill in 
 war. The first opportunities which peace gave, were always 
 eagerly taken advantage of, to shape things into beautiful civil 
 polity. When the father and three brothers went thus back 
 to Normandy on that weighty enterprise, Eudo the youngest 
 remained with the king, and of them all he was destined to 
 become the greatest. He was in the king's immediate service, 
 and his history is as remarkable as it is full. Britel Sinclair was 
 sent to Devonshire. In the fighting around Exeter he bore his 
 share ; and, when quiet came, he settled in Somersetshire and 
 Cornwall. What became of William, the youngest son of Wal- 
 derne, is perhaps the most interesting, as it is at all events the 
 most celebrated, of all the narratives of the Sando de Claro 
 family, whose representatives thus surrounded and followed 
 their duke and their relation, when he conquered, with most 
 masculine vigour, the malcontents of his plighted kingdom of 
 England. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 
 
 Far. distant as 1066 is, there are previous and pleasing records 
 of their doings too romantic and readable to be missed. In 
 the early struggles of Duke William against the rebellious 
 earls of Normandy, supercilious exceedingly as to his love- 
 birth by Arlottn, the daughter of the tanner of Falaise, Hubert 
 Sinclair, earl of Rye, figures, with these same sons of his, after- 
 wards so famous, as the most loyal of vassals, according to his 
 " :i111 f " Duke Robert, saint and devil, father of the brave boy. 
 in 1047 it was only by the watchfulness of his fool that Wil- 
 liam's life was saved from conspirators who at opportunity 
 vrould not do things by halves. Both Freeman and Cohen 
 have (1. ! that terrible midnight gallop and pursuit.
 
 BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 7 
 
 Though taken from Wace's Roman de Rou, they give full 
 credence to the narrative ; such rhyme being then the trust- 
 worthy and almost only medium of history. Cohen, better 
 known as Sir Francis Palgrave, refers to the Voie dn Due as 
 present geographical corroboration of the truth of the duke's 
 ride. He also shows that the tale, in its best parts, could only 
 have been told by William himself. The escape from Valognes, 
 in the Cotentin, after the sudden alarum by the court-fool, has 
 been digested by Freeman. ' The duke arose, half dressed 
 in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for 
 his life all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he 
 pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by the rivers 
 Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which 
 was afterwards known as the Duke's Way. William crossed 
 in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church 
 of Saint Clement. He entered the building and prayed for 
 God's help on his way. His natural course would now have 
 been to strike for Bayeux, but the city was in the hands of his 
 enemies ; he determined therefore to keep the line between 
 Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching 
 the loyal districts. As the sun rose he drew near to the 
 church and castle of Rye, the dwelling-place of a faithful 
 vassal named Hubert. The lord of Rye was standing at his 
 own gate between the church and the mound on which his 
 castle was raised. William was still urging on his foaming 
 horse past the gate, but Hubert knew and stopped his sove- 
 reign, and asked the cause of this headlong ride. He heard 
 that the duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He 
 welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, 
 he bade his three sons ride by his side and never leave him 
 till he was safely lodged in his own castle of Falaise. The 
 command of their father was faithfully executed by his loyal 
 sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye 
 rose high in William's favour.' In the ancient rhymes the 
 tale is told with poetic fulness of question, answer, and narra- 
 tive. Dramatic as well as historic interest, makes the several 
 pages which the story occupies, to nearly a couple of hundred 
 lines, full of colour, and well worth special reading, the old 
 French in which they are written being easy enough to under- 
 stand. A modest recent biography of William the Conqueror 
 by Lamb, not ' Elia,' gives much pictorial detail of this dan-
 
 8 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 gerous personal conspiracy in favour of Guy for duke, his 
 aunt's son. Hubert himself, after the birds have flown, gets 
 on horseback to guide the pursuers, leads them all roads but 
 the right one, and saves his prince. The duke triumphed over 
 these deadly enemies of his then, and Hubert had such favour 
 with him that before the invasion of England he had promised 
 to make him dapifer or seneschal of that kingdom, when it 
 should come into his possession. 
 
 But this adventure was not the only cause of Hubert's popu- 
 larity. In the difficulties of choosing his successor, Edward 
 the Confessor thought often of William, his cousin of Nor- 
 mandy. Secretly he sent him a message by Goscelin of Win- 
 chester, an English merchant accustomed to travelling on the 
 Continent. William must appoint his most trustworthy and 
 capable subject to come to England to receive the king's 
 mandates and the symbols of bequeathing the kingdom. A 
 council of the earls was held, and no one could be induced to 
 risk his life in such an embassy to what they all considered a 
 barbarous nation. The cruelties perpetrated at Guildford 
 shortly before, in the seizure and murder by Earl Godwin and his 
 sons of Prince Alfred and the Norman nobles who accompanied 
 him, were unanswerable arguments to all invitations to the 
 high office. It was not fifty years yet since its guests the 
 Danes were massacred on St. Brice's dreadful day. Hubert 
 Sinclair offered his services ; and, with prophecies of tragedy, 
 there was universal applause for his gallantry. He was 
 appointed ambassador and executor between the princes. To 
 impress the barbaric nation, he had a specially magnificent 
 following. There is a highly picturesque description in monkish 
 Latin, of the great equipage, grand pomp, horses housed bril- 
 liantly, 'terrible with foaming,' and men in parti-coloured 
 and attractive garments. The result followed that the embassy 
 was received in special honour by the people and the king. The 
 mission, further, was wholly successful, and Hubert brought 
 back to Normandy all the mandates as well as the peculiar 
 symbols which made his master heir to the crown of England. 
 Some relics of the saints, a golden hunting-horn, and a stag's 
 bead, wore the peculiar signs of possession to come. It is said 
 tbat it was on his return from his successful visit that he had 
 the appropriate promise of the dapifership of England. 
 
 Such transaction explains the sympathy of the pope and
 
 BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 9 
 
 the religious world with "William's expedition in 1066, to 
 secure his rights from the usurping private nobleman, Harold, 
 who had rebel blood in him enough to lead a stronger mind 
 than his astray. The blessing of the Norman banner, a kind 
 of earliest oriflamme, could have been no inconsiderate act, as 
 giddy pleaders seem to hint. The world was always as far as 
 possible ruled by fact, and no time was more honestly sincere 
 in polity or religion than those centuries. The duke himself 
 was as religiously inclined always as he was a cultivator of 
 refined morality. Whether the story of Harold's oath is true 
 or fable, he was out of account except as a king by violence, 
 and, even for England then, law and order had some existence. 
 Of the reality of this mission of Hubert's there is the illus- 
 trative fact that Edward the Confessor, a well-known favourer 
 of Normans, gave him a perpetual grant of the estate called 
 Esce in DomesiJay Book, now Ashe in Hampshire, says Free- 
 man. In the time of King Edward the Confessor it is noted 
 as having been held under Earl Harold. If not the very first 
 land possessed by a Sinclair in England of which there is 
 record, it is perhaps the most generally interesting by its his- 
 toric association. As shall appear, there are indications of 
 even earlier connection, but Ashe has very particular interest 
 in respect to this kind of antiquity. Hubert was not wanting 
 either, in generosity on his part. He left at least one sub- 
 stantial mark of his visit. If he did not altogether establish 
 the church of St. Mary, "West-Cheap, London, he gave it great 
 gifts. He had the advowson of it, and his family after him. 
 That it was ordinarily in the Conqueror's time called New 
 Church, is corroborative proof that he was the founder of it. 
 Religious munificence was the highest type of honour then 
 next to bravery and counsel. It may have been that his lands 
 in England brought him often there ; and such strong sym- 
 pathy with London's religious condition as is implied by this 
 ecclesiastical connection, would seem to point to some continued 
 presence. Few have been so fortunate as to have even so 
 much of their good deeds chronicled for posterity as Hubert 
 of Rye has had, but there is not further mention of him after 
 his return to Normandy to quell the Cenomannic rising. He 
 did not hold the dapifership he had been promised, but it is 
 more than probable that he lived to see his youngest son Eudo 
 enjoying the fruits of their loyal deeds towards the king, in
 
 io THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 this the position nest to royalty itself. The Rye family was 
 a branch of the Sinclairs, lords of the castle of St. Lo, which 
 Palgrave says gradually gathered around it the well-known 
 town of that name in the Cotentin. They again had come to 
 reside there from St. Clare, whence the local name, upon that 
 historic river Epte which flows into the Seine not far from 
 Rouen. There Rollo got his dukedom acknowledged by the 
 king of France. The earls of Senlis to the east, in the 
 direction of Paris, had gained great possessions; other members 
 traceable from this castle of St. Clare, which the Germans 
 would call the <Bd)io^ ( Bta\mn of the kin. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRENCH ANTECEDENTS. 
 
 It never was, nor shall it ever be, easy to fish substantial facts 
 from that muddy pool of French history when it was difficult 
 to know which was the king and which was the noble. What 
 records there were the English took in battle and destroyed. 
 To risk already the saying that the Sinclairs were equivalent 
 connetables in those times when lords did what was right in 
 their own eyes, with little or no reference to the sham royalty 
 always claiming allegiance so helplessly, would not be judi- 
 cious. But it is right to say, at all events at this stage of 
 search, that dim lines of evidence seem to point to their 
 Frankish rather than Norse origin in the male line. That 
 they speedily recognised the advantage of marriage with the 
 Neustrian dynasty founded by Rollo is pretty well established. 
 There may be more French blood in them than was usual among 
 the Normans of the eleventh century, and their intellectual 
 characteristics do not much combat the idea. That they were 
 strangers from Kent in England some time before the ninth 
 century may also allow some Celtic blood. The prevailing 
 theory of the extermination of the Celts by the Saxons has 
 nowhere more absolute living contradiction than in the bodily 
 frames and mental peculiarities of the genuine Kentishmen. 
 II is to be gathered from Holinshed's Chronicles that the 
 mother of William Longsword, the second duke of Nor-
 
 FRENCH ANTECEDENTS. u 
 
 mandy, was probably a Sinclair. His wife, Sprota, daughter 
 of the famous, and specially generous if we may trust Pal- 
 grave, Hubert, earl of Senlis, there can be even less doubt 
 about. To none more than to this Hubert were both Hollo 
 and his son indebted for high acceptance among the French 
 nobility, the most exclusive and turbulent men then alive. 
 Palgrave says that Popee, Polio's ISTeustrian wife, was the half- 
 sister of a Bernard, and that Bernard took heartily to Rollo and 
 his family. He gives Dudon de Saint Quentin as his autho- 
 rity. Rollo's line, he thinks, would have failed but for this 
 Frenchman, Bernard of Senlis, who, ' trusted and worthy of 
 trust,' fought well for the strangers he so much loved. He 
 had his reward too, becoming lord of Coucy, and always a 
 prime counsellor in times of danger. 
 
 So many have claimed false relationship to the dynasty 
 of William the Conqueror, that it is neither safe nor at all 
 assuring to those who know the state of things, to make 
 much of such historical notices. The insuperable difficulty, 
 that the use of first names was then and long after all but 
 universal, is at once trap for the unwary and open door 
 for the impostors. The luck of assuming a surname early 
 belongs more perhaps to the Sinclairs themselves than to 
 most European families. They also have suffered ex- 
 tremely, and particularly in England, as will soon appear, 
 by that peculiar pride in first name which was effective 
 contemporaneously but disastrous for posterity. Who, for 
 example, in his senses could contend about the rights of a 
 Welsh genealogy ? And there were features in those Gil- 
 berts and Fitz-Gilberts, Odoes and sons of Odo, that make 
 problems of early Norman descent even more inscrutable. 
 The threads sometimes can be scientifically unravelled, and 
 one bit of success in this way is worth thousands of attempts, 
 not to say falsifications. 
 
 Glimpses from fixed facts can be had back into the com- 
 parative darkness of Duke Richard's reign, the grandson of 
 Rollo. He was married to Gunnoi'a, a princess of the Danish 
 line, and her female relations are by marriage closely related 
 to this and other English notable names. Indeed, the com- 
 parative equality then between princes and their nobility goes 
 far to excuse, if not explain, the ties so often found to exist 
 by the heralds, of undoubtedly obscure persons with the line
 
 12 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of the Conqueror. Accumulation of record and history puts 
 the Sinclair family within the ducal circle, and for centuries. 
 The rest, as the Gauls say, goes without saying. It is not 
 overshooting the mark to hint that, in the tenth century, the 
 Norse dukes had the better side of the bargain in the alliances 
 by marriage. It was England that widened the distinction 
 of royalty and nobility to what has since prevailed. Father 
 Hay, the Augustine friar, who was son to the widow of the 
 last Sinclair baron of Roslin, and who had full access to the 
 charters in the castle, says that the wife of Walderne, earl of 
 St. Clare, was daughter to Duke Richard of Normandy. The 
 friar wi-ote about the end of the seventeenth century. Alex- 
 ander Nisbet, an Edinburgh antiquarian, writing in 1722, 
 quotes Jacob van Bassan's MS., a foreigner who lived long at 
 Roslin Castle, to the effect that ' Wolderne, Compte de St. Clare,' 
 was married to Helena, daughter to the duke of Normandy. 
 William, his second son, who went to Scotland and became 
 steward to Queen Margaret Atheling there, marrying Agnes 
 Dunbar, daughter of Patrick, first earl of March, he shows to 
 have been cousin-gerrnan to William the Conqueror. Holin- 
 shed says that Duke Richard had no issue ; but he means 
 merely that he had no sons, the writer's purpose being dynas- 
 tic. Even if he did state this with the full meaning, his 
 authority is both weaker and later than that of the Roslin 
 investigators, having access as they had to the carefully pre- 
 served documents of, as one writer- has it, ' the magnates of 
 Scotland during the reigns up to the fourth James.' Nisbet 
 says of Henry of this line, that he ' married to Florentia, 
 daughter of the king of Denmark, with whom he got a great 
 estate in Norway ; ' of his son William, that he ' married 
 the fair Egidia' Douglas, granddaughter of Robert the Second, 
 king of Scotland ; and that their son William was ' the 
 greatest subject by far of all others of his time.' He shows 
 how they got the principality of Zetland and Orkney under 
 the king of Norway, and the dukedom of Oldenburgh in 
 Denmark. This nobleman's offices and titles, some one has 
 said, would have 'even pleased a Spaniard.' Writing of the 
 earl of Douglas and James II. of Scotland, when Edward IV. 
 reigned over England, Rapin says of James, 'At the same 
 time he gave the administration of affairs to the earl of 
 Orcades, mortal enemy of Douglas.' Tindal gives the note to
 
 FRENCH ANTECEDENTS. 
 
 13 
 
 this, ' William Sinclare.' But northern history is full of their 
 deeds. The records of such a public family are as trustworthy 
 documents as history can have ; and what is true of the rela- 
 tionship of the first William, son of Walderne, to the Con- 
 queror, is applicable also to Richard and Britel, his brothers, 
 who remained in England. 
 
 There is no necessity to plead the case, because affinity will 
 appear, sufficient for the gravest purpose, incidentally, as the 
 English fortunes are described. In a chapter of antecedents, 
 likelihoods are nearly as appropriate as what can thus be proved 
 by recognised evidence. To give breathing-room, it may be 
 said that the element of uncertainty is continually present in 
 all genealogical and historic details. After this, the closeness 
 of grasp upon facts is the test of right science. Do we not 
 need our theatrical fool to tell us with hidden wisdom, like 
 the court one in the palaces of ancient kings, that it is a wise 
 bird which knows its own father 1 The scientific mind is in- 
 clined to be wise over and beyond what is written or really 
 knowable, and the humanest spirits have to save souls alive 
 from the valuable but mechanic machineries of partial truth. 
 The wings of imagination must not be clipped too closely. 
 The creature will die for want of the food to be picked only on 
 the Aving. To the present quest also this is pertinent. Why 
 should not the Clare of Rochester in the county of Kent, who 
 became the famous St. Clare of the ninth century in his her- 
 mitage on the banks of the Epte in France, be the progenitor, 
 or, at all events, the earliest relation on record, of all the 
 Sinclairs ? One writer says that it was considered immoral 
 for priests to be unmarried in those centuries, but even if that 
 cannot be admitted, what is more likely than that this saint 
 either had set up his hermitage, the remains of which still 
 exist, and whose well yet gives, it is said, clearer sight to the 
 eyes, on the estate and under the protection of a relation from 
 England, or was himself the first French Sinclair, a monk on 
 his owu land 1 Bice of Oxford University is the recent autho- 
 rity as to the birthplace of this martyred saint of France, but 
 in the books of the saints he is by the Boman Catholics also 
 accounted an Englishman. His martyrdom by two tools of 
 a lady whose conduct needed and got his thorough criticism, 
 is one of the events consecrated in religion. It is not at all 
 unlikely that the neighbouring castle, then in 894 just taking
 
 1 4 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the name of St. Cler, was the scene of this woman's evil doings. 
 The experience of history shows that virulence and violence of 
 the fiercest kinds have happened among blood relations, love 
 and hate being equally capable of supreme excellence by reason 
 of the narrowness of the sphere. 
 
 It cannot be asserted on such slight ground, that the lord of 
 the castle and the monk of the neighbouring lowly hermitage 
 were absolutely of one strain in blood. It is true there are 
 additional probabilities pointing in this direction. The history 
 of the great Clares of England, the first of whom came here in 
 1066 and the last of whom died on the battlefield of Bannock- 
 burn, the earl of Gloucester, is suggestive to the effect that 
 they were somehow a branch of the French house of St. Clare. 
 They gained their best importance on this side of the Channel ; 
 but before the death of the martyr the whole family were 
 Clares, and in all probability political exiles from Kent, who 
 found a home in France. The history of Richard Clare, son 
 of Gilbert, the greatest warrior of William's army, will have 
 proved and near relation to the Sinclairs, of a kind other than 
 this legendary. It is noteworthy that he seemed to have a 
 special and, as it would appear, traditional love for England. 
 He exchanged his estate of Brionne, of which he was earl, acre 
 by acre, for land around Tunbridge in Kent ; and here he built 
 his famous castle and home, and seemed as if to the manner 
 born of the county. It is true he had many estates elsewhere, 
 but he seems to have further satisfied his likings for England, 
 by getting his property in Suffolk called Clare, from which 
 to become the earl of Clare. It is not improbable that the 
 castle of St. Cler on the Epte was first that of Clare, and that 
 only after the saint became a saint did it and some members 
 of the lineage become St. Clair. 
 
 All this is professedly imaginative. The return to some- 
 what steadier ground is agreeable. Moulins, the Norman his- 
 torian, says that the Bretons had possession of the ashes of 
 Saint Clare during Rollo's earlier visits to France. He had been 
 the bishop of Nantes, and this explains why the Bretons were 
 so privileged. On one of these terrible comings of the Norse 
 pirates they carried his remains inland for safety to Bourges. 
 There is mention also of similar dealings with the relics of a 
 Saint Maur. These things might show that the two families, 
 the Sinclairs and the Seymours, were of the country, and not
 
 FRENCH ANTECEDENTS. 15 
 
 new importations from Scandinavia under the banners of 
 Rollo. The Clares and the Maurs were not likely to have 
 been confined to these two priests. Bernard of Senlis has 
 been already noted, as the shrewd welcomer of the Norse Rollo 
 to his native land ; and that he was a St. Clare is also a pro- 
 blem amid the general obscurity. 
 
 In 912 Charles, king of France, met the Norse prince on the 
 banks of the Epte, near St. Clare Castle, who then got installed 
 in his dukedom of Normandy or Neustria by that remarkable 
 proxy homage which sent Charles on his back in a double 
 sense. Ne si, hi Got, cried Rollo to the demand of his 
 personal submission. The French kings were long accustomed 
 to ducal home insolence, and this king kept his temper as only 
 sad experience can teach. That at that meeting Sinclairs were 
 fully represented, and perhaps on both sides, could hardly but 
 be. It was not for nothing that the place had so thoroughly 
 fixed and then historic a name. If it is admissible to draw 
 geographical conclusions at all into history and genealogy, this 
 place may be used to the extent of suggesting that it took its 
 name, as is usual, from its proprietors ; and that, if so, they 
 were not novi homines, but old patricians of the Gallic land. 
 
 Between this period and the conquest of England many 
 changes must have been with the family. Walderne, the 
 earl of St. Clare, resided, not at the castle whence his name 
 and title came, but at the castle of St. Lo in the Cotentin, 
 when Duke William got his and his sons' services in 1066 ; 
 and for generations that must have been the chief home. The 
 commune of St. Clair there is proof modern of this. Border 
 troubles were continually prevalent near Rouen ; but it is very 
 probable that as Caen, Bayeux, and St. Lo became the more 
 recognised centres of Norman policy and civilisation, the reason 
 of the new home was to have the benefit of the presence of 
 what was best in the dukedom. It is very plain, but quite 
 substantial, politics, that absence from court is not good for 
 the most legitimate of ambitions. Duke William was of Lower 
 Normandy by birth, breeding, and heart. The castle of St. Lo, 
 Palgrave says, was built in the time of Charlemagne against 
 the Danes. It became municipal, the town growing around 
 it gradually, and taking its name. There is no evidence to 
 show how early the Sinclairs had it in possession. Sir Andrew 
 Malet, one of our ambassadors to European countries of this
 
 1 6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 century, and an authority on Norman questions, said that the 
 site of the castle was observable in his time, and that the 
 English Sinclairs were of that stock. The aid to their prince 
 was collected at St. Lo, and it is to this quarter of the 
 Cotentin that it must be looked, for the right information as to 
 the kind of men its culture made them, before the settlements 
 were made in their new, or, it may be, former or first land. 
 The earl of Rye and his family were offshoots from St. Lo ; 
 and there are indications of yet other branches, which played 
 considerable part in the Norman period of English history. 
 The earls of Senlis, for example, with their previous strong 
 ducal ties, by marriage and political valuable mutual aid, 
 seem somewhat apart from the Conqueror's doings till the 
 latter period of his reign ; and their interests being within 
 purely French territory at Senlis, it may be guessed that they 
 had lost sight of Normandy for, as they no doubt judged, the 
 wider field of the politics which had Paris for centre. When 
 the western expedition drew the eyes of all Europe upon this 
 island, the Sinclairs of Senlis freshened their memories, and 
 came to their great relation fortune-hunting, and with much 
 success. But these Sinclair earls of Senlis may have been the 
 successors merely of the Bernard of Neustrian early history. 
 The mythological period, with families as with nations, being 
 indication rather than any realised fact, cannot bear too much 
 handling. Mythology, all the same, has its own particular 
 charm ; and it undoubtedly carries its very valuable offering 
 of truth to the eyes and hearts which know its right worthy 
 
 message. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE NORMAN CIVILISATION. 
 
 Tiiat strip of intricate needlework, nineteen inches broad and 
 two hundred and ten feet eleven inches in length, called the 
 Bayeux tapestry, which hung long in the cathedral there, is 
 one of the world's greatest historical monuments. Its art is 
 only second to the high burden of history it carries. Those 
 graceful Norman warriors in armour have no sufficient coun-
 
 THE NORMAN CIVILISATION. 17 
 
 terparts except among the sculptures of the ancient Greeks. 
 There is the same fine masterful spirit in the whole composition. 
 Straining after passing effect is completely absent, which is one 
 of the best tests of the immortality of any art. The whole tale of 
 the union of England with Normandy goes on, picture after pic- 
 ture, with a clear unconsciousness as of the free processions on 
 the frieze of a Greek temple. Harold's visit, his aid in war, the 
 oath, the embarkation, the landing, the battle : what history in 
 words has ever excelled this work of fair ladies' hands in sugges- 
 tiveness as to what is beautiful in woman or noble in man ? Were 
 there absolutely nothing further extant as to the kind of people 
 the Normans were, the proof should stand complete in this, of 
 the existence of one of the world's polished nations. And such 
 confidence in woman as is implied by committing the celebra- 
 tion of their fame to female wit, shows that those warriors could 
 bear what is considered the last test of manly culture, the 
 wise devotion to woman which brings her up to choicest 
 womanhood, as it does the man to his best manhood. 
 
 No raid of Gothic savages was it of which William, was the 
 successful leader. Rather had England the unspeakable good 
 fortune of being taken into hand, for high training, by a 
 nation of cultivated masters of the best life then existent. This 
 country would, but for the Normans, probably now be little in 
 advance of Russia or Sweden. It is only when one goes fairly 
 within the records of our law and politics that he can dream 
 of what we owe to the high civilisation planted so fortunately 
 here by the accident of a disputed succession. And this island 
 was not the only part of the world benefited by these same 
 true ladies and gentlemen. Even the seemingly indifferent 
 fact, that the conquerors of Hastings were shaven like priests, 
 has its suggestive analogy with the habit at Rome in the height 
 of its civilisation. But there are clearer or less subtle indica- 
 tions of the artistic condition of this people. Whence did the 
 admired Gothic architecture come except from their genius. The 
 arch, which is allowed to them, was the origin of all that is 
 distinctive in the Christian form of building. Their manly 
 curve rose . into the pointed, rather effeminate arch ; their 
 powerfully barred window developed into the floral ; their 
 dignified column sprang into -the spiritual but spasmodic 
 buttress. If the Doric holds its own among the Greek modes, 
 the Norman is equally stubborn in its claim on rational admi- 
 
 B
 
 1 8 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ration. Corinthian luxuriance and Christian superfluity of 
 form and decoration, if splendid arrivals, were sure indications 
 that decay had begun. Let there be, however, no depreciation 
 of the several stages of any art ; for, like all other growths, 
 they must rise, blossom, and fall. It is of importance to remem- 
 ber that, as with discoveries generally, most honour belongs to 
 the planting of such trees of life for man. Had there been 
 marble rather than freestone quarries near Caen, as Athens 
 had, there certainly should have been new births in sculpture 
 as well as architecture. 
 
 The Norman needed only scope to excel in whatever he 
 tried. History is full of what action was open to him in those 
 centuries. He had far more than his share of all that was 
 being done greatest in the world then. To sing new chansons, 
 to form chivalries and literatures, to shape kingdoms out of 
 Anglo-Saxon or Pelasgian mobs, to lay new foundations in 
 art, to make manhood and womanhood glories of leadership 
 and reverent devotional following, who has been than he a 
 better master ? The art of life is the finish of all other arts, 
 which are but its handmaidens ; and he would be a presump- 
 tuous modern who might risk thinking that of this, the divine 
 art, he knows more than did the elect of Normandy in the 
 eleventh century. 
 
 Religion was there in its best strength before it began the 
 downward path of sensual monasticism and clerical wealth and 
 sloth. The historians are afflicted with spiritual blindness who 
 are not affected by the frightful contrast, on that decisive 
 battlefield, of men preparing for death or victory under the 
 sublime influence and regulated awe of a cultivated worship, 
 to men howling like beasts over what intoxicating liquors they 
 could secure to hide their own barbarity from themselves, and 
 to give them some false hope and courage against the bright 
 army of intellect arrayed in front of them, under all the sanc- 
 tions of religion and the rights of men and states. It would 
 have been England's loss beyond words that her Saxons had 
 gained that day. The sleep of intellect would have continued 
 for centuries, and the ghouls of barbarism and all the gluttonies 
 should have had their new lease of prolonged wassail. 
 
 Like all other human things, the Norman civilisation only 
 went too swiftly and far when some of its paths to excellence 
 opened, and its best aid, religion, became its greatest snare.
 
 THE NORMAN CIVILISATION. 19 
 
 Where did the Christian world look for its perfect crusaders 
 when the madness seized entire Europe that the Moham- 
 medans ought to be exterminated 1 Over-wrought by the high 
 honour they paid to culture and worship in their own country, 
 the Normans were only too ready for the wild cry of Peter 
 the Hermit. Their natural bravery and love of adventure, 
 added to their great devotion to refinement of which the 
 church was then chief or next to chief embodiment, made 
 Normandy for centuries the arsenal of men, money, and wea- 
 pons in the gallant but false and fatal expeditions which a 
 fanatical state of church culture began, and a scheming condi- 
 tion of ecclesiastical rule found it policy to continue. 
 
 Enough is gained for present purpose if the homeland where 
 these Sinclairs who settled in England had their training, is 
 recognised as being in the eleventh century the noblest heart- 
 centre of the world. The dullest men thence could not but 
 aid by their mere presence most nations, if only they brought 
 with them the outward ordinary manners of that land. To 
 get souls from it as bright as ever stepped on its soil, was the 
 luck that statesmen covet for the countries they hold dear. 
 Not riothi wei'e these chief strangers, like many of the Con- 
 queror's followers who have since achieved distinction here, 
 but souls who knew, as long lines of ancestors did before 
 them, the best secrets of the civilisation of their times. What 
 Thucydides said of Greece before the Peloponnesian war could 
 not be said of Norrnandy then : Ob (Lsydka voij.iZ > (j) yiviodai, ours 
 •/.wru revg ffoXs/toug, cvn tig ru aXXa — ' Greatness was not in it, 
 neither as to wars nor other things/ If the determined mis- 
 sionaries it sent to our island were of another temper than the 
 modern ones of persuasive ineffective smile in a political world 
 of moral suasion, this has been all the better for England. 
 It will take a long and difficult process to make the ordinary 
 mind understand that nothing best is got except through struggle 
 of bitter but, to noble natures, ennobling kind. It is irri- 
 tating to read some of the old chroniclers, of Saxon blood, 
 maundering about the tyranny of these genuine rulers, as if 
 the fault of unreasoning violence had not to be continually 
 met by skill and energy, even to the correspondent severity 
 of punishment proper to command. That historians living in 
 these days of science and maturer judgment can be found who 
 join in those wails of ignorant slothful monks, and of the men
 
 20 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 whose eternal type of character is synibolled by praise of good 
 old times which never existed, and abuse of the present which 
 always calls for them to be up and doing, is one of the inex- 
 plicable phenomena which appear amid very general mental 
 advance. What better good can man do than drill, at what- 
 ever cost, his disorganised and therefore savage or helpless 
 fellows into such shape as will save them from being continu- 
 ally devoured, in respect of their substance and lives, by any 
 accidental hordes that have gained first elements of unity 1 
 As a calculation of spilt blood, it is probable that a visit to 
 these unprotected shores, in the Celtic and Saxon periods, of 
 the war- vessels laden with the sea-kings and their pirate sol- 
 diers, was more destructive than several of the pitched battles 
 which the sullen unreasonableness of the Angles made neces- 
 sary. This great difference must also never be lost sight of, 
 that Norman battle was against men in arms, while by inva- 
 sions of a shapeless country the defenceless and the weak 
 suffer. If they suffered at Norman hands, as in the York- 
 shire destruction by fire and sword, historians (as chroniclers 
 and the unthinking multitude cannot be expected to see things 
 from the right point of view) should recognise, for themselves 
 in the first place, and then show those whom they address, 
 how rulers, to be rulers at all, could not escape the heavy bur- 
 dens of ordering such punishment and preparation to be made 
 in the face of the actual problem. Danes and Scots to the 
 north in their many thousands, rebels behind without any 
 right ground of rebellion, Normandy seething with aristocratic 
 ambitions; what with these and hundreds of other elements 
 only fully experienced or realisable by and to those who are at 
 the centres of such combinations, the terrible but necessary 
 wasting of Yorkshire had in it more of the nature of calami- 
 ties which occur in the material world than those of man's 
 doing. It should never be overlooked that even kings must 
 do the best they can, and that the game of all life is one of 
 success or failure. The charge of inhumanity so foolishly cast 
 about without appreciation of the stern necessity and logic of 
 facts, is not the best sign of thorough intellectual culture 
 and ability. It is venial that those low on the steps of train- 
 ing should clamour about tyrannies and injustices ; for thus, 
 in their shortness of vision and hand-to-mouth living, wise 
 rule and essential justice often, indeed almost always, appear
 
 THE NORMAN CIVILISATION. 21 
 
 to them. The philosophic historians, like the statesmen, should 
 address themselves to the inmost facts of their problems when 
 they mean to influence the strong minds. 
 
 It was at Caen, and around it, that the most characteristic 
 culture of the dukedom existed. Rouen, the other lung as it 
 were of the country, had political life more active than the 
 artistic and religious. Not far from the borders, it had acquired 
 a French spirit to considerable extent. It was in Basse-Nor- 
 mandie that the richest state of feeling and action had its 
 cradle and home. The district of the Cotentin supplied almost 
 all the names of which our aristocracy are proud. The largest 
 sharers in the partition of England were the neighbours of the 
 duke at his castle of Falaise. Geoffrey, bishop of Coustance, who 
 celebrated mass on the field of Hastings before the battle, was 
 one of the luckiest of his followers in securing lands. The 
 castle of St. Lo was in his diocese, and it is easy to understand 
 that there was frequent communication all round among those 
 leaders who were in the royal compass of Caen. In 890 history 
 shows this castle besieged by Rollo, and the then bishop of 
 Coustance was slain, the Norsemen gaining the place by 
 cutting off the water. It would be valuable to know if it 
 w as in the possession of the family who held it in the eleventh 
 century, and that all this time they had the benefit of the very 
 best surroundings of the country's excellence in government, 
 art, and religion ; or if they were of the conquerors, and there- 
 fore later. A visit to Caen and its companion towns gives 
 sufficient indication of the superiority the humanities reached 
 at the early periods. The conquest of England was misfortune 
 in the end for Normandy. Its annexation to France killed 
 the originality and vigour of its artistic as well as political 
 life ; and it is one of the many things which ask mourning, 
 why so promising a sphere of possible new and perfected pro- 
 duction should have been blotted out, so to speak, by crass 
 political necessities and troubles. Take Normandy away from 
 France, and where, even as things went, are you to look in it 
 for excellences that can be called European, not to say world- 
 wide ? But enough. Let the way now be considered clearer 
 to follow some of the Sinclairs after they have added England 
 to the land of their birth as another sphere for energy.
 
 22 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 WALDERNE'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 
 
 Richard, Britel, and Agnes spent their lives after 1066 
 mostly if not altogether on English soil. William for some 
 unexplained reason espoused the cause of the Athelings, and 
 was one of the emigrants who took refuge with Malcolm of 
 Scotland. Motives of love, hope, or justice may have separated 
 him from the interests of his Norman chief. He was not 
 singular, for he was only one of a considerable company who 
 set sail for the purpose of reaching Hungary with Margaret 
 Atheling in their charge. Their ship was driven on the coast 
 of Scotland by stress of weather, and it was the destiny of 
 royal Margaret to become King Malcolm's loved wife, as it 
 was that of William Sinclair to remain there as her steward 
 or dapifer. He had all kinds of honours, and his personal 
 popularity is well enough indicated by the phrase which his 
 fine proportions, features, and yellow hair gained him, ' The 
 seemly St. Clair.' The William ' le blond ' in the roll in 
 the church of Dives, Normandy, of the companions of William 
 I. in the conquest of England, appears to be Sir Walter Scott's 
 favourite in his notes to The Lay of the Last Minstrel. He 
 is in these called the ' second son of Walderne, count de St. 
 Clair, and Margaret, daughter to Richard, duke of Normandy;' 
 but his mother was Duke Richard's daughter Helen. There 
 is a theory mooted of his lineage and consequent motives that 
 deeper historic study might establish, though present evidence 
 only points in the direction. It would seem that the intro- 
 duction of Norman styles at the Scottish court began with 
 the advent of Queen Margaret Atheling, and that her dapifer 
 or steward became dapifer of Scotland, the same office from 
 which the royal Stuarts took their name. Now this highest 
 position, next to the monarch, was always hereditary; and 
 was not this 'seemly St. Clair' therefore the direct fore- 
 father of the Stuarts who by marriage with the Bruces became 
 kings of Scotland and afterwards of the United Kingdom 1 
 Robert Crawfurd in his History of the Eoyal and Illustrious 
 Family of the Stuarts gives an origin to them that might 
 be made to agree with this curious likelihood. He says the
 
 IVALDERNE'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 23 
 
 Banquo of whom Shakespeare writes in Macbeth was the son 
 of Ferquhard of Lochaber, a scion of the royal house of Scot- 
 land. Banquo was killed in 1050 by the usurper Macbeth, but 
 his son Fleance escaped to Wales and married Nesta, the 
 daughter of Griffith, the son of Llewellyn. Their son was 
 Walter or Walderne. In charters he is Walter, senescallus 
 domus, or dapifer, to Malcolm III. of Scotland. It is supposed 
 that he is the same with Walter, earl of St. Clair in Normandy, 
 and that his marriage there with the duke of Normandy's 
 daughter gave him the lands of St. Clair. It is recorded in 
 history that he sent his second son William to the Scottish 
 court before the Norman conquest of England, as if to be his 
 substitute. The tale has it briefly that he sent him to see how 
 affairs were going in Scotland. William's second arrival with 
 Queen Margaret may have been simply returning to his heredi- 
 tary rights as dapifer. There is a common similarity in the 
 first names that aids these inquiries, Allan and Walter being 
 the prevalent ones. The stewards of Scotland had Paisley 
 with its abbey and the neighbouring district of Kyle for their 
 chief patrimony, and the chartulary throws considerable light 
 on the family after the first three or four. From 1160 the 
 lineage is clear, but the previous hundred years is almost a 
 blank. The earliest notice of a Sinclair after William, the 
 dapifer, is of an Allan in some land charters of Haddington- 
 shire, given before the ' stewards ' got the Renfrewshire and 
 West of Scotland properties. What the real blood of the 
 royal Stuarts is, has not yet been settled, though they have 
 been also as Alans referred to Normandy. But these questions 
 may have thorough treatment in a discussion of the descendants 
 of this ' seemly St. Clair,' the ancestor of all the Scottish kin of 
 the name. The theory of a longer residence in Normandy of 
 the family previous to the Conquest is the more accepted. But 
 William's espousal of the cause of the Athelings is a consider- 
 able difficulty. Wodrow in his useful reminiscences says that 
 the chief secretary of Scotland, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, son 
 of Archbishop Spottiswoode, got the MSS. of the famous Black 
 Book of Paisley, the headquarters of the Stewarts, from Sir 
 William Sinclair of Roslin, who was married to his only sister. 
 The charter-room of Roslin Castle had many secrets to tell 
 before an unfortunate lire reduced its records. That Sir 
 William should about 1638 have the Paisley writings in his
 
 24 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 possession is at least suggestive, however unlikely that it may 
 throw desirable light on the early Stuart history. If these 
 references should lead to inquiry, what is too much of digression 
 on mere probability may not be fruitless. It is quite possible 
 that the cup-bearer of Queen Margaret has his hereditary 
 representative in the Henry Sinclair, panitarius, or steward of 
 the household, who is mentioned in the famous letter to the 
 pope in the time of Edward the First, where another Henry 
 is mentioned as pennander or bannerman of Scotland, the equi- 
 valent to the office of the custodian of the French .oriflamme. 
 For the present the subject must be left entirely open, and the 
 more that it is somewhat out of the straight course of progress. 
 It is a puzzle why William De Sancto Claro should have left 
 him he fought for at Hastings. Great bitterness arose between 
 the Conqueror and some of his best nobles. The division of 
 offices and lands would of all things be of the character to raise 
 heart-burnings, and it is proverbial that the amour-propre of 
 his followers was particularly keen. King William had no more 
 determined enemy at the Scottish court than this namesake 
 and relation of his. They met more than once in the many 
 fights of William's reign on the borders of the kingdom, and 
 in one battle at least the former subject was successful against 
 his king. Married to the daughter of Cospatric, the Saxon 
 earl, to whom the Conqueror had acted capriciously because of 
 the capricious character of this his most northern count, and 
 because of the difficulties of the period, this was additional 
 cause of vexation between the two Williams. Sinclair, as 
 warden of the marches, lost his life fighting bravely against 
 King William and his lieutenant, Robert Fitz-Hamo, the 
 earl of Gloucester. It is doubtful whether the course he took, 
 brilliant career though his descendants have had, was as hopeful 
 as if he had stayed with his brothers and sister. The indications 
 are that his line of action had some limiting effect on their 
 fortunes. How could their monarch be sure that the others 
 also would not go away and leave him ? Pilchard, the hero of 
 Hastings, had the highest claims on his generosity in the share 
 of lands and offices. In the absence of sufficiently distinct 
 documents, it would hardly be right to state that he was com- 
 paratively forgotten. As the sons of Walderne, earl of St. 
 Cler, and the nephews of Hubert, earl of Rye, both he and 
 Britel were well entitled to large notice, even if they had no
 
 WALDERNE'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 25 
 
 personal relationship to the king. It is established that 
 nothing irritated the Conqueror to anything like the same 
 degree, as did the presence of the emigrants at the Scottish 
 court. Their continual appeals to the Danish king, to come 
 and help them to drive ' the bastard ' out of the island, were 
 as annoying as they were dangerous to his very existence. 
 That the relations of perhaps the most active and formidable 
 of all these malcontents, the steward of Queen Margaret 
 Atheling, sister of the Edgar whose claim to the crown which 
 the Conqueror then wore was formally perhaps better than his 
 who bore it, suffered from the state of things, at least in the 
 negative way of neglect, seems somewhat apparent. Were it 
 not that jealousies against each other are very exceptional in 
 the history of Sinclairs wherever they have been, it might be 
 possible that the influence of Eudo Sinclair at court was not 
 exercised much or at all in favour of his cousins. His character, 
 certainly, from his youth upwards was of gallant type, and 
 something must have been barrier to larger favour of Richard 
 and Britel with a master so profuse of gift to himself. Had 
 we writings earlier than Domesday Bool; which was drawn 
 up during the six years from 1080 to 1086, we might however 
 find both of them in high office, and in possession of wider 
 lands than this record shows. They may have been involved 
 with the rebellions which occurred so frequently during the 
 reign, and have suffered the usual stripping from them of all or 
 most they had. There can be no doubt about the difficulty there 
 was of ruling such men. It was William's dying words to his 
 son to hold the hardest possible hand upon the lords of Nor- 
 mandy, and it is not likely their tempers suddenly sweetened 
 in this island's climate under the invidious difficulties con- 
 nected with the sharing of great offices and wide possessions. 
 It is more than possible that there should be thankfulness for the 
 lands Domesday Book does show as being in their possession. 
 If they, like many of the best of his followers, were among 
 those who fain would have cast off his rule, especially after 
 his nature seems to have grown embittered, against Saxon and 
 Norman almost equally, they may not at all have had reason 
 to wonder at limited prosperity under William the First. It 
 would be a great mistake, and possibly a sheer injustice to the 
 king, who was of most manly, and to his relations most 
 forgiving, nature, not to remember that the entries in the
 
 26 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 renowned two volumes of his survey take little account of 
 surnames. 
 
 The name Richard occurs with lands in every county, and 
 it is quite probable that this son of Walderne, earl of St. 
 Clare, is hidden under the frequency of its appearances. The 
 fact that his full name is twice entered, while it has very 
 special interest, is also cause of embarrassment. It seems to 
 limit his property to where his surname has been written, though 
 this cannot be fixed either for a moment, the habits of naming 
 being different in the special counties, and the survey itself 
 the labour of several independent commissioners, whose styles 
 of work are quite distinguishable from each other. The 
 wisest course is not to fix any quarrel at all between the great 
 captain of his age, either personal or family, and his heroic 
 warrior of Senlac battlefield. He could not possibly be the 
 only Richard who got lands, even if Richard of Tunbridge, 
 Fitz- Gilbert as he was called, is kept apart. On the whole, 
 he must have had part of the lands mentioned simply under 
 ' Richard,' and this is all that the state of the facts will allow 
 or demand. "Whether luckily or not is very doubtful, but 
 there can be absolute security of his possession of lands in two 
 counties. If it could be shown that these were all he ever had, 
 then, in comparing his rewards with those of others, infe- 
 riors in rank and distinction, he would have deep reason to 
 grumble. It was common among these four hundred chief 
 Norman followers to have pluralities in the way of estates by 
 dozens, nay, by hundreds, and it is almost absolute that Richard 
 fared likewise ; but this kind of facts cannot be supported 
 except on documentary evidence, and it is scanty in all such 
 antiquities as are being discussed. There would hardly be 
 excuse for wishing that so unique a boon to descendants as 
 Domesday Boole had been fuller or more consistent through- 
 out with regard to its Richards, were it not itself the cause 
 of thus whetting the curiosity. From its Suffolk part this 
 comes : ' Herlesmara. H. Wortha tenfy Ricliavll de sender de R.' 
 It may be translated, ' Hartsmere hundred : Richard de St. 
 Clair holds Wortham from the king.' In Norfolk county he 
 appears with Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, and with William 
 of Noies, as to lands &c. confiscated from the burghers of Nor- 
 wich because of their rebellion. His entry in Norwich is ' i 
 house Ric'ard de sender;' and underlordship as his, he takes one
 
 lVALDERXE'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 27 
 
 of the runaway burgesses, who nearly all fled out of Norwich, 
 where Richard probably resided in his own house there often. 
 Blornfield's History of Norfolk has several valuable references 
 to Richard, and he finds also that Hubert Sinclair of Rye, 
 castellan of Norwich, was married to the daughter and heiress 
 of a Domesday Book magnate, Radulph de Bello Sago. But 
 besides his careful search of this record, he finds from the 
 register of the monastery of Castleacre that Richard de Sancto 
 Claro or St. Cleer gave the monks of Castleacre his rights over 
 their monastery as founder, in free alms for ever, for the 
 health of his own and his wife's souls, with those of his ances- 
 tors and heirs. Such a survival goes far to prove that Richard 
 was one of the leading men of his time, and evidence may 
 arise further of what he was. Mention has been made of 
 his cousin Hubert's governorship of Norwich Castle. This is 
 the Norwich house with lands Richard got after aiding him 
 in a most trying time, and his Suffolk estates being near the 
 borders of Norfolk gave him opportunity to be further useful 
 should it be necessary. No greater hotbed of disaffection was 
 there than in the district around Norwich, and it might not 
 be assuming too much to hazard the statement that Richard 
 was both put there as a faithful vassal of special ability in 
 war, and that could we see through the millstone that so many 
 Richards make for the eyes, he would be found as great a 
 favourite as most of the select courtiers of the king. 
 
 Much the same difficulties arise about Britel. In this, the 
 Exchequer Domesday Book, there are many Britels, parti- 
 cularly in the districts which we know from other sources to 
 have been the spheres of his action. In the south-western 
 counties a Britel holds numerous lands under the earl of 
 Moreton, brother of the Conqueror, and the greatest sharer of 
 his bounty. It is, from relationship and position and name, 
 a likely theory that this was Britel, the third son of Walderne, 
 earl of St. Clair. In the charter of the foundation of the 
 priorate of Montacute, near the castle of the earl of Moreton, 
 and of his successors, the Montacutes, who became earls of 
 Salisbury and princes of the Isle of Man, three signatures 
 among several other Somersetshire ones are remarkable, 
 namely, Britel de Sancto Claro, Jordanis de Barnavilla, and 
 Robert de Bruis. 
 
 But before showing the reason why, it is best to substan-
 
 28 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 tiate Britel in what locality it is still possible to discover. 
 With his surname, he is not to be found in the great Exche- 
 quer Domesday Book, like his brother; but in the Exon 
 Domesday Bool; which was brought to light at Exeter from 
 among ancient gatherings in the famous city, and which is, 
 from the number of Anglo-Saxon names in it supposed to 
 be earlier than the other, the name and surname, the latter in 
 its best known documentary form, authenticate him as steadily 
 as record can. In the hundred of Bolestane, Somersetshire, 
 he held land : 1 7 de dim hida q tenfy britel de sco claro ii lit Rex. G.' 
 The translation is, ' And from the half hide which Britel de 
 St. Clare holds the king has no tax.' Those who work in old 
 records know the pleasure of finding seemingly so small and 
 unimportant an entry as this, but there is often wonderful f ruit- 
 fuluess in the shortest, where darkness may be said to be the 
 rule and not the exception. If we take Hallam's guess as 
 fairly accurate, here are only sixty acres of land as a posses- 
 sion, but they are arable, and these only were counted at that 
 time. They are truly ' representative ' acres. The same 
 writer has valuable remarks as to the extraordinarily small 
 portions in culture on the manors then the largest in the 
 country. As for Britel, it is not even possible that this could, 
 have been all the land he possessed.' The Britel of the great 
 Domesday Book is only not to be fixed by reason of the 
 same misfortune of naming whose trouble meets us at every 
 turn. That he shares there largely, both as holding in capite, 
 or directly from the king, and by under-tenantship to some of 
 the great earls, is as certain as anything can well be that is 
 not absolutely registered. This will appear the more when 
 his descendants, especially those among the Cornishmen, come 
 to have their stories told. 
 
 But it is suitable to take up again the question of the three 
 signatures which awaited discussion. That of Britel de Sancto 
 Claro substantiates, by the proximity of one of his homes to 
 Montacute in Somerset, the Exon Domesday Book; though 
 this is, perhaps, painting the lily and gilding refined gold. It 
 is notable that the Jordans were a Devonshire family, and 
 afterwards, it will be seen, they entered into affinities with 
 Devonshire Sinclairs, who are of the Britel descent. Bobert 
 do Bruis is one of the great Norman family who became of 
 high account in England and Wales, before they reached the
 
 WALDERNE'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 29 
 
 royalty of Scotland. Bramber in Sussex and Brecknock with 
 its castle in Wales were their earliest homes in this island, 
 and it is to them it must be looked for this Robert Bruce. To 
 him Agnes Sinclair the sister of Richard and Britel mar- 
 ried some writers say ; and this has its hints with regard to 
 signature thus in common at Montacute. It does not go far, 
 for there is nothing more noticeable than the width between 
 the various estates then of the same man, and the consequent 
 visits which must have been constantly kept up from one of 
 them to another. The inference of knowledge of each other 
 is certainly implied, and such a tie by marriage explains a 
 good deal. This account of Agnes, however, is not the only 
 one. All agree that she was married to the head of the 
 Brace's then in England. Collins in his Peerage says that 
 ' Agnes, the daughter of Waldron, earl of St. Clare, was mar- 
 ried to Philip Bruce, the grandson and heir of William, lord 
 of Breos, Normandy, and of Bramber, Sussex.' If so, it was 
 not her husband who signed the charter ; and this would show 
 at that early period additional intimacy of Braces and Sin- 
 clairs. They were friends, it is more than likely, in their 
 native land before they reached their Canaan. This William 
 was also husband to one of these Sinclair ladies, the daughter 
 and rich heiress of Johel Sinclair of Totness and Barnstaple, 
 for which Jones in his History of Brecknock is authority, 
 Johel being, as shall be seen later, brother of Walter of Med- 
 way. Any account of the Braces which forgets their Welsh 
 and western history cannot but be deficient. In England they 
 were best known by their quarrel with King John. The wife 
 of a William do Brace refused to give her sons as hostages to, 
 as she said, the murderer of his own nephew, and the troubles 
 of the English Braces began. They were not wiped out ; 
 they had too much skill and determination for that ; and they 
 gradually struggled back into importance, chiefly through 
 marriage ties with the great Clares, those earls of Pembroke, 
 Hertford, and Gloucester, to whose fame and lineage, by the 
 mother, William Marshall the greatest earl of Pembroke 
 succeeded. But this in closing what has to be said of Agnes, 
 whom we may leave as the lady of Bramber, Sussex, or, if it 
 should so be proved, that of Brecknock Castle, Wales, or of 
 both. Philip Bruce of Sussex has the name of being the most 
 subtle man of his time. To be the chosen companion of one
 
 30 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of those Bruces was distinction, even to her, who was their 
 superior in rank, traditions, and blood. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TENURES OF LAND. 
 
 England and Normandy to this day are remarkable for nothing 
 as much as their inveterate love of law business. It may be 
 a tribute to their intellectual capacity that they have the 
 most innate relish for the intricacies which to uninitiated 
 minds seem the tortures of the region of nightmare. The 
 stability from this conservative love of the past, and of its 
 dicta as sacred, it is to be feared ready writers are not thank- 
 ful enough for. Precedent is the cue-word to get at the secret 
 of the whole time-enlaced system. Our courts of exchequer, 
 king's bench, and so on with variety of titles, though to the 
 weaker consideration they seem each as self-creative and self- 
 existent at least as the sun, can be traced back, step by step, 
 till we are in the presence of William the Conqueror and his 
 dapifer in one room, who have swallowed up in their own 
 powerful persons wigs, gowns, general paraphernalia, and the 
 very judges themselves that are so awful to the popular eye. 
 Justice, civil or criminal, was administered more simply and 
 readily by the king or his vicar from his own bench or in his 
 own counting-room, but on the very same principles as still 
 hold. Lord chancellor downwards to barrister and attorney, 
 are fair copies of what division of duties a sovereign had to 
 do in simpler times, when a king's court did not mean merely 
 a thing of exuberant feathers, low dresses, tight uniform, and 
 futile ceremonial business, but the place where action was 
 strongest, wisest, and of the kind we still associate with the 
 word, where now no royal foot enters except on idle curiosity. 
 This simple watching of the actual development of regal sur- 
 roundings into universal legal rule through the country by 
 substitutes, is fruitful of clear seeing also in respect to the 
 chief interest about which law is engaged. Let land now be 
 bound by ten times as many green or old withes as Samson 
 was, there is a way of cutting through the knots, at least for
 
 TENURES OF LAND. 31 
 
 the understanding. It is more than probable that violent 
 actual dealing with tenures might be as dangerous to the body 
 politic as unscientific surgery would be among the veins of the 
 .strongest human being. To see the inmost anatomy of the 
 land system, in most countries, is the study of long lives ; and 
 in this country the extended, varied, and on the whole extra- 
 ordinarily prosperous history of the nation makes the quest 
 almost a hopeless one. In the earlier reigns there is perhaps 
 most light to be found, the further process being mostly evo- 
 lutionary. 
 
 Here it will be sufficient to draw such general lines of indi- 
 cation as may keep minds awake to the drift of what is meant 
 by possessions in land. The feudal system, which essentially 
 is that which exists, because legal action works still in its 
 grooves, had three chief forms of tenure, not including the 
 absolute possession of the sovereign or rather of the crown. 
 The highest way of holding for a subject was called in capite, 
 because none stood between the head of the state and him ; 
 all duties connected with the land being finally settled between 
 them, with no interference except by free choice. That for 
 long these duties were chiefly military, as the supplying and 
 supporting so many soldiers for certain periods correspondent 
 to the size of the feod or property, does not, as has been 
 supposed, give special military colour to the principle of land 
 tenures. In every sense the system is equally applicable to 
 the civil duties of peace. As matter of fact, surely the dullest 
 will see that the greater portion of the eight centuries since 
 1066 were devoted, not to the necessities of wars, but to the 
 common course of national existence. Sweeping reforms are 
 ignorant ones, as a rule ; for the very things they are apt to 
 abolish have to be setup again, and nearly always in a maimed 
 and less healthy state. At first the earls, who were not 
 merely ornamental lord-lieutenants of counties, actually did 
 justiciary business, now relegated to paid sheriffs; and it was 
 to them the tenure in capite was given. The inevitable growth 
 of claimants for office and title gradually usurped upon the 
 privileged earls. Barons, who grew from various accidents 
 of state, and particularly of royal service, became suitors. 
 At one period, their importance in comparison with earls was 
 calculated, somewhat arbitrarily of necessity, at the numbers 
 13-J- to 20. If this were right, it could have only been by
 
 32 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 miracle, and for but a moment. The growth of society in 
 any of its ranks will not wait for the pedants. Barons be- 
 came holders in capite ; they secured rulerships of counties ; 
 if the ability were there, they could take the cakes from the 
 very teeth of the fiercest earl that ever concussed a county 
 into his own brave image. So afterwards with the knights, who 
 were a still more difficult because more numerous section to 
 keep out of the privileged fields. Sheriffships and coroner- 
 ships opened ultimately even to the untitled, the new check 
 discovered being merely the now well-worn one of money 
 qualification. Land in capite grew as common as the com- 
 moners themselves, and the word ' esquire ' was invented to 
 keep off the last degree of bareness. 
 
 The second form of tenure belongs almost by necessity to 
 all periods of national growth. Under-tenantship, though its 
 honourableness varies considerably, on the whole keeps a 
 middle position of steady dignity. It swings between all but 
 absolute proprietorship and the tenure of a farmer by lease. 
 For the necessities of war or peace it was responsible to the 
 earls as they in like manner were to the sovereign. There is 
 nothing particular to be said of a state of life which cannot 
 but be with much the same conditions while man's nature is 
 as it is. 
 
 The varieties of freemen, socmen, villains, belong rather to 
 folk-lore than state arrangements by law. It may be other- 
 wise with the system of bondsmen, which was long so promi- 
 nent a feature of English society. The troubles which it 
 caused of wild rebellions and wide destruction of life, even 
 in the select ranks, may have been necessary lessons to sloth- 
 ful statesmen. But the question has become for us merely 
 an antiquarianism, having nothing to do Avith our actual 
 conduct of life. The seething masses of slaves, however, 
 which were always at the bottom of early English political 
 difficulties, must never be forgotten as an actual element at 
 work. To be food for the swoixl under leadership of ambitious 
 nobles was their commonest experience ; but their use thus, 
 as a terrible instrument when organised, was only one of many 
 Ways in which they affected the life and morality of their 
 fellows of other degrees. 
 
 The most distinctive of all the forms of tenure was that by 
 serjeanty. Particular bravery in the field, favour at court,
 
 TENURES OF LAND. 33 
 
 royal visit, and generally royal will and pleasure, gave in 
 capite holding, and other serjeanty special privileges besides, 
 to men of title or of none, to old men or to young ; and for 
 mere system- mongers this made a chaos of what they foolishly 
 dub the feudal system, thinking they have got something real 
 by calling names thus very loudly at the facts, which, being 
 living things, are always metamorphosing for new necessities 
 and requirements. No wise politician nails his colours to 
 such a mast. Changes ? Yes, and welcome, if hi the actual 
 spirit of the facts ; not otherwise. The royal ladies would 
 seem also to have had privilege of conferring serjeanty. In 
 law there came to be a whole department of business from this 
 institution, though survival of the all but extinct legal title 
 ' Serjeant ' is the most that is current of the much-desired 
 system of tenure. There was something too poetic and free 
 about it, and perhaps this is the right reason of its decline. 
 To have an estate for the service of holding a towel before 
 even the most dignified lady on state or religious occasion, 
 savoured too much of Spanish chivalry and donism for our 
 rational, and really more sentimental, because more sincere, 
 natures. Anything that tends to being maudlin, cannot boast 
 always, with impunity, in the slow but surely demolishing 
 English presence. It needs precedents for everything ; but 
 it has faith in the honesty of the fathers, that they have some- 
 where met and dealt with just such unreal phenomena. 
 Serjeanty, or romantic service, grand and petit, need not be 
 depreciated ; it was the natural appendage to the spirit of 
 chivalry, which also did its valuable work, and then metamor- 
 phosed as speedily as it could into other form of fact. Only 
 the imbeciles hunt after the ghosts, which cannot but walk, 
 after the life has found a new body. For a time the cannon's 
 report niust reverberate, but the work has been done long 
 before the echoes are over. Appropriations, alienations, mort- 
 gagings, conveyancings, processes of kinds as numerous as 
 men's wits are quick to make varieties when acuteness and 
 suppleness are at market and high price, fill the limbo of legal 
 history to overflowing. For present use, the main lines on which 
 land has been and still is possessed, are quite enough. To show 
 that the most intricate transactions are soluble by this historical 
 method would be possible. If fair guidance be given to make 
 the labyrinth not wholly a maze the object is attained. 
 
 C
 
 34 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EUDO, FILIUS HUBERTI. 
 
 In 1047 when Eudo's father at the castle gate of Rye gave the 
 command, 
 
 'Fait sei Hubert : "Dreit a Faleise," ' 
 
 to his three brave eldest sons, to whom he had entrusted the 
 safety of their prince in extreme personal danger, it may be 
 guessed how Eudo mourned his youthfulness, like another 
 David. He could not have been more than ten or twelve, 
 and he does not count in the passage from the Chronigue des 
 Dues de Normandie, 
 
 ' Le vavassors aveit treis fils, 
 Chevaliers bons, proz, e hardiz.' 
 
 Radulph, Hubert, and Adam were the vigorous youths who 
 swore that their equally vigorous and youthful duke should 
 reach his castle of Falaise if it cost them their lives a thousand 
 times, or, more rational possibility, if it cost the lives of as 
 many of his deadly pursuers. Perhaps Eudo got his farewell 
 kiss from Duke William before mounting the fresh horse 
 which his faithful tavasseur had provided for him. The 
 memory is keen with regard to the incidents of a dangerous 
 time ; and the ruddy cheek, no doubt wet with a tear of sorrow 
 that he was too young to help, of the boy destined for a noble 
 future, may have long and effectually haunted the mind of his 
 gallant sovereign. Sure it is that the tale of the midnight 
 ride was hallowed by a breathless repetition in the presence 
 of, and it may be by, the youngest of these four sons. There 
 are numbers fresh enough of heart to picture the yellow-haired 
 lad near his anxious but shrewd father, watching the swift de- 
 parture of those four chevaliers bons, proz, e hardiz, with his 
 heart almost bursting because he also is not stretched at their 
 soldierly gallop. His admiration of his father's skill in, not 
 long after, putting the foam-covered cavalier conspirators on 
 the wrong road for their purpose, may also be imagined. The 
 intellect of the man he became, we may be certain was already 
 well open ; and if he had keener troubles than a duller boy
 
 EUDO, FILIUS HUBERTI. 35 
 
 might Lave, the joys were exquisite proportionately. It is 
 easy to go too far, however, with probabilities ; and it may be 
 quite enough to imagine that Duke William then first saw 
 and liked the future greatest subject of Normandy and 
 England. 
 
 The usual knightly training was his, within among the 
 ladies, and without among the soldiers and nobles, of the 
 castle of Rye. Of this period of his life nothing perhaps 
 has survived. It is at the court of William in Normandy 
 that we get note of him. No personal danger to the duke 
 then gave chances of distinction; he had wholly triumphed 
 over his own and perhaps still more his mother's foes. Eudo 
 got the usual knightly place of sons of favoured vassals, and it 
 is possible had relish of life and enjoyment too strong in him to 
 be gi'eedy yet for office and fame. His first great stroke of 
 fortune, which it may well be called, seems to have sought 
 him rather than he it. William Fitz-Osborn was then dapifer 
 of Normandy, an office which included the duties and honours 
 of seneschal and constable. The Chronique has defined it once 
 for all by saying that the dapifer was in all things next the 
 king. The civilisation of that period also, like ours, seems 
 to have held dining to be one of cultivated man's most dis- 
 tinguished actions. So far was this carried then that none 
 but gentlemen of nobility could serve as much as a spoon to 
 a sovereign. The duke of Normandy was a stickler for per- 
 fection in this kind. William Fitz-Osborn, as highest autho- 
 rity, was responsible that all should be right for prince and for 
 guests, from whatever lands. He was neglectful, and no doubt 
 repeatedly. The crisis came. A special festal day had to be 
 enjoyed. The dapifer, who had his greatest of offices, like 
 royalty itself in this, from hereditary succession, of his Bre- 
 tulensian forefathers, failed in his supervision. The flesh of 
 an uncooked bird, gruis semicrudae, in such a state ut sanguis 
 exprimereiur, was placed before the very king, and easily 
 guessing how the others were being served he utterly lost his 
 temper. Fitz-Osborn had position of honour near him, and 
 Eudo Sinclair, by favour, or less possibly only by chance, was 
 also beside him. The king struck at the dapifer, but Eudo 
 had more than his father Hubert's wit to be equal to occasions, 
 and he saved his master, and as it will appear his personal 
 friend Fitz-Osborn, from a chance that could not but have with
 
 36 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 such men fatal consequences, if years should have to pass first. 
 He received the blow, and if the tear put on his cheek in 
 childhood has no historical foundation, the chronicler of his 
 manhood in this trying scene makes tears fall freely, though 
 the record also takes care to state unwillingly. If during the 
 height of Greek periods of gallantry it was considered no 
 virtue, as with moderns and the Red Indians, to bridle too 
 much nature's impulses, so it may have been with the chival- 
 rous Normans. It is more probable, however, that both the 
 physical pain from the angry hand of him whose bow no one 
 but himself could bend, and the rush of charged feeling at the 
 sight of his friends engaging in what was tragical beyond 
 measure, both as to that moment and the future, were the 
 causes of Eudo's generous weakness. His stern history is 
 none the worse of this bit of early tenderness. Lachrymosity 
 has not been put to the account of the Normans by the most 
 depreciatory of their virulent critics. Matters could not with 
 men of such proud stomach be arranged. The king was 
 thankful exceedingly for Eudo's presence of mind, but William 
 Fitz-Osboi-n could never stand again his right-hand man. His 
 hereditary claims availed nothing with the iron will of him 
 who was every inch a king ; he was stripped of his office 
 without appeal. But the best of the tale appears in the 
 special and pressing message of the fallen Fitz-Osborn, that 
 the young Eudo, and none else, if it please the duke, be ap- 
 pointed in his room. The loyalty of Hubert, the father of 
 Eudo, and the promises to him, may have made it easy for 
 the prince to make his selection ; but it can safely be inferred, 
 from the favours of other kind which came afterwards to the 
 erring but leal major domus regiae, that his recommendation 
 had decisive influence. 
 
 Henceforth Eudo was mayor of the palace, quern nos vul- 
 gariter senescallum vel dapiferum vocamus, as explains the 
 monkish Latin. For him also the dapifership of Normandy 
 was made hereditary, which his family history will afterwards 
 exhibit. No faux pas of uncooked goose or swan, it may be 
 easily asserted, occurred under his able rule of the roast, or 
 it should certainly have been chronicled ; and from manage- 
 ment of the national exchequer to executing justice to all men, 
 even the meanest, his action in Normandy was of similar 
 soundness. The conquest of England, its greatest good for-
 
 EUDO, FILIUS HUBERT I. 37 
 
 tune, was probably accomplished by Eudo Dapifer and the 
 duke's lieutenants like the brave Fitz-Osborn, before the 
 Conqueror did it, who has and well deserves the fame of it. 
 The preparation of those sixty thousand warriors, gathered 
 from wide Europe, and their embarkation in perfect equip- 
 ment, were the victory. It is possible that the supplanting of 
 Fitz-Osborn may have taken place after the conquest, at one 
 of the several periods in which King William had returned to 
 Normandy, and the credit of the collection of such a splendid 
 army in that case belongs to his fame. In favour of this it 
 may be urged that not only was he a chief leader at Hastings, 
 but that he was the first earl the king made in England. As 
 earl of Hereford, on William's early return to Normandy, he 
 got with Odo, earl of Kent, the king's half-brother, the entire 
 ride of England to hold for their generous sovereign. He does 
 not seem to have been born to succeed, and his son Roger went 
 still farther wide of the mark, rebel and exile being his invited 
 fate. That it was Eudo Sinclair who was at the helm of affairs, 
 practically second only to his soldierly prince, agrees best with 
 the character of the two dapifers. But rivalry not being at 
 all between them in the full friendship that preferred one 
 before another, their claims to this success of all time need 
 not be discussed. It is undoubted that either of them mijrht 
 be, and one of them was by the fact, equal to the glorious 
 necessity of 1066. This, too, was no single, though the 
 greatest, piece of energy required in that masterful period. 
 If Eudo's power came after', he had infinite opportunity of 
 using it ; and the pacification of two kingdoms into one, both 
 fiercely troublesome, is abundant proof of his great civil ability. 
 His wisdom and life -long success would suggest that the army 
 led by the pope's consecrated banner of religion was the result 
 of his steadier head rather than the work of the far less politic 
 and skilful William Fitz-Osborn, known in English history as 
 the violent and, certainly with the Anglo-Saxons, unpopular 
 earl of Hereford. 
 
 There is a theory quite possible to be held from the scanti- 
 ness of historic facts, that Eudo was only dapifer of Normandy 
 under the Conqueror, and thus obliquely the duke's promise to 
 Hubert of Rye had its fulfilment, that himself was to be 
 dapifer of England when in possession. The possibility of the 
 Normandy hereditary officer getting supplanted by any chance
 
 38 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 whatever, could not have been imagined then, and the earl of 
 Rye must have been more than satisfied by the position his 
 son had gained so honourably. Indeed, it is to be said, that 
 the refinement and fame of the French dukedom, if not the 
 wealth and influence also, altogether outshone the comparative 
 barbarism of the turbulent kiugdom of the Angles. Madox 
 in his History of the Exchequer, which is in substance the 
 history of the division of the duties of king and dapifer, has 
 his mind greatly exercised by the fact that there seemed to be 
 two contemporary dapifers, namely, this Eudo and a Hamo. 
 He risked the guess of another writer : Eudo was dapifer of 
 Normandy as Hamo was that of England. He is right. But 
 even as late as Domesday Book three dapifers, all of un- 
 mistakable highest rank, appear ; and the word being also 
 applied to county, hundred, and even abbey officers, more than 
 a dozen dapifers altogether appear there as landholders. 
 There can be no mistake as to the comparative insignificance 
 of all except the three, and their positions are quite fixable. 
 Goderic Dapifer was a Saxon whom the Conqueror so far 
 recognised that he gave him the sheriffship of several of the 
 eastern counties as a compensating sphere of rule for what he 
 lost. Of all the Anglo-Saxons, he retained most steadily and 
 safely the wide lands of which the ' good King Edward,' as 
 they invidiously were apt to call him, left them possessed. 
 Who Hamo Dapifer was is a much more difficult inquiry. 
 That he held the rule of England under William the First, 
 and for considerable period, is quite certain, but by what con- 
 dition is not fixed. It may be rash, but there are grounds 
 for supposing that he was dapifer-substitute, so to put it, 
 for Eudo, whose presence was required alternately in both 
 divisions of the kingdom. An accumulation of facts, not alto- 
 gether decisive yet, but extremely assuring, goes to show that 
 Hamo was also a Sinclair ; and as the chief dapifer's relation, 
 nepotism being then no terror, even if Eudo and not the king 
 made the appointment, he was the right person for the in- 
 timate duties of such a position. Contiguity of their pro- 
 perties in Domesday Book is evidence not quite to be cast 
 aside. The recurrence of the name Hamo, at a near period, 
 in a family of Sinclairs related to Eudo, about which later 
 national records give absolute statement, is at least suggestive. 
 The circumstances of what Pal grave calls ' the bourgade of
 
 EUDO, FILIUS HUDERTI. 39 
 
 Rye,' in Sussex, almost make the pleading good, that Hamo 
 Sinclair, the reputed dapifer of England, was in reality the 
 near relation and under-dapifer of Eudo of Normandy and 
 England, William's vicar in the full sense, as he by stricter 
 record was so under the two succeeding kings. Hamo, a scion 
 of Hubert's house of Rye on the Norman shore of the Channel, 
 would be the natural founder of a Rye on this English side. 
 He could quite well have been the cousin of Eudo. Again and 
 again it will be noticed that Sinclairs, like most chief Normans, 
 were as careful to erect religious houses as they were to have 
 defensive castles. In Rye the ancient chapel of St. Clare 
 testifies more to the existence of such a family once there, 
 than to memorial devotion to the well enough known religieuse, 
 St. Clare, who was foil to the ecstatic St. Francis. She was 
 revered first at Assisi and then throughout the Christian 
 world more or less to this day. The frequent naming of 
 churches and chapels from the neighbouring lords is a thing 
 stamped on the very soil of the island. Sussex had in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and later, Sinclairs very 
 difficult to recognise now through the few relics left by the 
 storms of civil and other Avar, and by the usual wasting of 
 time. Arms of the dimmest kind belonsfinsr to the name in 
 such churches as Eckingham of this county, do not give but 
 the slightest clue. In records, which are a far more fruitful 
 field however sparse, Sinclairs appear ; but it is as difficult to 
 know whence they have come as whither like ghosts they have 
 gone. Hamo of Rye, dapifer, had no children, else that might 
 explain several of such mysterious wanderers on this southern 
 shore who once were its gallant lords. Little has been dis- 
 covered about him, says Palgrave, except that he was a kins- 
 man of the Conqueror, and followed him here. It is quite a 
 probable way of things that he owes some obscurity to the 
 greatness of his relative Eudo. To take account of a great 
 man's friends is often unwisely considered to be quite as 
 needless as lighting candles in sunshine. Perhaps this de- 
 lusion accounts for the over-prevalent saying that geniuses 
 never have geniuses for sons or relations. 
 
 We know of Hamo's brother. He was the Robert, ' knight 
 of Rye,' who got much favour from William Rufus. Eudo in 
 this reign was in full power, and with him chief at court it 
 could be understood how the ' knight of Rye ' became lord of
 
 40 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Glamorgan and Montgomery, and also had the earldom of 
 Gloucester, so much coveted and so famous afterwards. Most 
 of this was granted by the Conqueror to Matilda his queen. 
 Henry, his youngest son, to whom he had only given ^5000, 
 contended bitterly for his mother's lands and their titles with 
 his brother Rufus and Robert Fitz-Hamo, ' knight of Rye,' but 
 the strife ended very happily. There is a pedigree of Robert 
 Fitz-Hamo among the Cottonian MSS. which gives him 
 daughters, one being the heiress Maud, Sinclair inferentially. 
 She marries Robert Consul, a natural son of Henry the First ; 
 the earl of Gloucester who built Bristol Castle and fought 
 gallantly for his sister the Empress Matilda against Stephen. 
 Their son is William Consul. This William's eldest daughter, 
 whose mother was daughter of the earl of Leicester, became 
 queen of England, but was divorced on the plea of consan- 
 guinity by King John. She afterwards married a Mande- 
 ville earl of Essex, who will appear again in these researches, 
 and lastly Hubert de Burgh, earl of Kent. His second 
 married Gilbert, earl of Clare, who, through her, there being 
 no brother, ultimately became the first earl of Gloucester of 
 the descendants of the Conqueror's greatest warrior, Richard 
 of Tunbridge and Clare. This Gilbert was followed by Gilbert ; 
 Richard ; the Gilbert who added Hereford to the other earl- 
 doms; Gilbert, the husband of Joan Plantagenet, sister of 
 Edward I. ; Gilbert ; and, last of his race, the gallant young 
 Gilbert (heir to such traditions as the conquest of Ireland 
 and many another civil and military success) who, fighting 
 against the son of one of the ladies Clare, King Robert Bruce, 
 his own near relation, on the battlefield of Strivelinge, as the 
 MS. calls Bannockburn, put the period by his death there in 
 1 3 14 to perhaps the noblest race of men England's soil has 
 yet borne. 
 
 But returning to Hamo of Rye, all that can be sard yet is 
 that his prosperity may have attracted collateral relations to 
 Sussex, which might account for the isolated later appearances 
 of the name. The records of Seaford, near Rye, have entries of 
 struggles between the burghers and Sinclair lords of the soil 
 as to rights. Fishings were at all periods, on both coasts, a 
 valuable interest, and about property of this and other kinds 
 disputing is not to be avoided always by any skill. Nothing 
 can be much made out of such references to a long-extinct
 
 EUDO DAPIFER'S CONQUEST. 41 
 
 name in Sussex helpful to the proof that Hamo Dapifer was 
 Hamo Sinclair. With these probabilities the question may be 
 left for further, and not too hopeful, investigation, considering 
 the darkness eight hundred years can draw over the most 
 distinguished persons and facts. The two contemporaneous 
 dapifers of William the Conqueror's reign, if not later also, is 
 an acknowledged difficulty with the antiquarians and his- 
 torians. Contributions to the discussion, if not successful 
 wholly in themselves, ought to have frank welcome when in- 
 genuity gives chance of resolving what has been always in- 
 teresting to those who have toiled in these first pages of our 
 real history. 
 
 CHAPTER YIIL 
 
 EUDO DAPIFER'S COXQUEST. 
 
 Writers great and small have excelled themselves in describ- 
 ing and moralising over the death and burial, or want of 
 burial, of William the Conqueror. His corpulence ; the fatal 
 stumble of his horse, in a city's ashes ; the king's hurt ; the 
 deathbed, with its repentance of crimes, as the weak souls call 
 his inherent religious manliness of confession according to the 
 best ritual of his period ; the division of his kingdom and 
 treasures ; his advices, sage as his own practice had been, as 
 to ruling the two peoples ; the supposed shameful neglect by 
 his courtiers, and his own very sons, of his corpse : all these are 
 the commonplace themes of varied and mostly silly comment. 
 It is plebeian rather than aristocratic virtue, to cry, and keep 
 crying, over spilt milk, even if that noblest of all lost liquids, 
 or gases, or higher essences, a truly regal soul. No mistake, 
 on the part of historian or parochial superstitious moralist, 
 is greater than reckoning the ways of rulers by common tables, 
 fitted only for the multitude. The subject has been worn 
 threadbare. There is only the necessity now, to protest inex- 
 orably against the miserable carping and maudlin superstition 
 that are the stock of the great majority of those who have, 
 with the daring of fools, not with the awe of angels certainly,
 
 42 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 attempted to expound the final chapter of the great king's 
 life, and the opening one of his son's reign in England. If 
 any scandal, as this is understood in. court circles, occurred 
 before or after that scene of scenes, where the dying monarch 
 did his dying duties as royally as he had lived, in the presence of 
 his three sons and his greatest officers, Eudo Sinclair as being 
 his first deserves all the blame. Had any wrong been really 
 done, was it possible that he could have prospered afterwards 
 as he did 1 Let the dead bury their dead, is an aphorism 
 always clearly known by the greatest men. The state is before 
 the highest man, its king when alive. Departed, Vive le roi, 
 is the true sentiment of the deepest statesman. Normans 
 cling to fact too well, to be lost, and to lose others, especially 
 the tender and young, in Eastern ghoulish howls of lamenta- 
 tion or in modern exuberance of undertakers' feathers. Shows 
 for the mobs, and welcome, as they teach something to those 
 who are essentially unshapely; but the art of rule needs 
 masterly strokes, and the sternest design. Possibly no more 
 difficult problem was ever given to a man, to solve by skill of 
 head and heart, than Eudo got from his sovereign ; and the 
 Conqueror, if he could have risen from the grave to give his 
 approval, would, in the spirit of all his own splendid actions 
 as a king, give that dapifer according to his own heart his 
 best tribute for loyalty of pursuing his will. William Rufus, 
 his second and most faithful soldierly son, must be king of 
 England at any expense of exertion, not to say of lifeless cere- 
 monial. His mind was fixed on this. Let the less dutiful 
 Robert, the eldest, have Normandy, let Henry get large 
 treasure, but William Rufus for England. ' Eudo Fitz- 
 Hubert,' says Palgrave, ' more usually called Eudo Dapifer, 
 from the office which he held placing him in immediate rela- 
 tion to the royal pei-son, earnestly moved Rufus to the enter- 
 prise. It was the tradition in Eudo's family that he thus 
 exerted himself in pursuance of the Conqueror's instructions. 
 Nor would this be otherwise than consistent with William's 
 experience and feelings. In one sense he owed the crown to 
 Hubert's promptness and adroitness, and these qualities had 
 descended to Hubert's son.' The historian takes the ' Herbert' 
 form of spelling the name, it is correct but hardly very ma- 
 terial to add. 
 
 Scarcely had the life left the body of the monarch, as the
 
 EUDO DAPIFER'S COX QUE ST. 43 
 
 croakers grumble and disparage, when the fierce necessity of 
 the case compelled the leading personages into action. Bishop 
 Odo, the too renowned earl of Kent, and brother of the Con- 
 queror, took also the side of Rufus ; a fact quite sufficient of 
 itself to answer the cavillings at funereal neglect. ' These 
 two supporting Rufus,' continues Palgrave, ' formed the 
 nucleus of his party. Eudo Dapifer was first in action, wisely 
 not before the castle or in the open field, but assailing the 
 heart of the empire. All the treasure amassed by the Con- 
 queror was deposited in the vaults of "Winchester. Whither 
 Eudo proceeded, and treating with "William de Ponte-Arche 
 (equally accommodating in the next reign) induced him to sur- 
 render the keys. Hence the high steward proceeded rapidly 
 along the coast. Dover, Pevensey, Hastings, and the other 
 principal castles on the seaboard were visited by him. His 
 known station constituted his letter of credence. He boldly 
 quoted Rufus as " the king," and the garrisons promised obe- 
 dience and allegiance to the soldier's friend, the Conqueror's 
 favoured son. ' This account by Palgrave, if a little deduction 
 be made for the absence of the English idiom, and also for the 
 want of literary sanity in the Jewish nature, as is shown 
 by his over-graphical splay enthusiasm, is as explanatory as 
 true. 
 
 That it was thus Rufus got possession of England is the 
 received narrative of historians, and Freeman also raises no 
 real obstacle to the fame of Eudo. Indeed, the highest tri- 
 bute of all comes to him from this quarter, because of the 
 extremely little love lost in every other Norman's case with 
 the barrister for the Anglo-Saxons. Speaking of ' the house 
 of Rye,' he says, ' We can hardly grudge them their share 
 in the lands of England, when we find that Eudes, the son of 
 Hubert, the king's dapifer, and sheriff of Essex, was not only 
 the founder of the great house of Saint John at Colchester, 
 but won a purer fame as one of the very few Normans in high 
 authority who knew how to win the love and confidence of the 
 conquered English.' In other more characteristic passages 
 the same personal esteem for Eudo is to be seen. ' Among 
 those to whose grasp the lands and homes of Englishmen were 
 thus handed over, we come across many names familiar to us 
 in our Xorman history, to some of whom we should not "nidge 
 any amount of wealth and honour in their own land. The
 
 44 THE SIN 'CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 men whose exploits we could follow with delight below the 
 steep of Arques, or among the burning streets of Mortemer, 
 now meet us again in a less pleasing form, as intruders in the 
 shire which gave birth to Alfred, William of Eu, Ralph of 
 Toesny, etc' . . . ' Here we see the lands which Eudo of 
 Rye, Eudo of Colchester, the worthy son of the faithful Hu- 
 bert, received as the reward of his own and his father's 
 loyalty.' Carte, in his able History of England, has this pas- 
 sage, ' In the meantime his friend Eudo, son of Hubert of 
 Rie, and steward to the Conqueror, had visited William de 
 Pontedelarche and all the governors of castles and fortresses 
 in Kent and Sussex, and having engaged these in favour of 
 Rufus, came to Winchester.' Rapin says, ' Eudo, high- 
 treasurer, and Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, were very 
 serviceable to young William on this occasion. The first had 
 secured Dover, Winchester, Pevensey, Hastings, and other 
 places on the south coast. Moreover, he delivered to him the 
 late king's treasures, which amounted to sixty thousand pounds 
 in money, besides plate and jewels of a much greater value.' 
 For this The Bromton Chronicle is given as authority. Tindal 
 makes the doubtful correction that Eudo was not the high- 
 treasurer, but steward. Dapifer included both offices. 
 
 It is in the Monasticon by Sir William Dugdale, the valued 
 and famous collection of papers and charters connected with 
 the monasteries and churches of the Anglican province of 
 Roman Catholicism before the Reformation, that the fullest 
 account of this peculiar but effective conquest of England by 
 Eudo's political skill is to be found in print. The Latin MS. 
 whence he copied is in good preservation in the old monkish 
 print-like hand at the British Museum among the collection 
 Cotton iana, and it boasts of not only a pictorial headpiece, but 
 of side illuminations, with the names of the abbots of Colchester 
 Abbey included within them. The gist of the story has been 
 given from Palgrave, but here are some additions to the nar- 
 rative. With the king dying apud Cadomum, in Normandy, the 
 Latin goes on to say, Eudo, getting authority from his sovereign, 
 embraced the opportunity of pressing William Rufus, junio- 
 rem, to master the situation. Then Eudo, having crossed into 
 England, and having reached Winchester, gained over William 
 of Ponte-Arce so far that he gave him possession of the keys 
 of the treasury of Winchester, of which William was keeper.
 
 THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OE COLCHESTER. 45 
 
 Next, Eudo speedily made for the castle of Dover, and bound 
 the garrison by their honour and oath to deliver the keys of 
 their fortified position to no one except at his direction. The 
 very same thing he did at Pevensey Castle, at Hastings Castle, 
 and at all the other maritime castles, allowing it to be under- 
 stood that the king, requiring to make some delay for state 
 reasons in Normandy, wished to have special security as to 
 all the fortifications of England, and that being seneschal he 
 was the right person in absence of royalty to receive such 
 assurance. Entirely successful in this swift revolution of 
 affairs, he returned to Winchester, and openly proclaimed 
 William Rufus, who had arrived there, the new king of Eng- 
 land. The Latin account finishes with this pregnant sen- 
 tence : ' So, while the rest of the nobles are disputing in Nor- 
 mandy, about the succession to the kingdom, meanwhile, by the 
 zeal and actions of Eudo, William the younger is elected, 
 consecrated, and confirmed as king, in England.' Thus blood- 
 less a coup d'etat in so military if not violent a period, is one 
 of the greatest triumphs the world has known of statecraft, in 
 the noblest sense of the word, as the system of finest art by 
 which a people is ruled to its greatest possible happiness ac- 
 cording to its circumstances and political growth. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OF COLCHESTER. 
 
 Next to London, Colchester was the most important town in 
 England. The royal residence at Winchester, as well as its 
 history as being capital of a Saxon kingdom, gave it prominence; 
 and Exeter, which was fully described by its soubriquet of Little 
 London, claimed the attention of the cultivated, the military, 
 and also the mercantile minds ; but the city in ' the eastern 
 part of Bi'itain,' as the Cottonian MS. localises it, from its very 
 ancient foundation, its well fortified yet pleasant situation, 
 its connection with the most distinguished persons and events 
 of British experience, and its comparative nearness to West- 
 minster, already at this period the place of highest state
 
 46 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 sanctions, took a position before the distinguished south- 
 western cities. Under the Roman sway London itself was 
 second to it ; if not perhaps in population, certainly in state 
 importance. Camalodunum was to the emperors what Calcutta 
 is to us. Nor did its fame begin with its fortification into a 
 permanent inhabited castra, and arrangement into an imperial 
 civitas by the conquerors of the earth. Virgil's line occurs, 
 
 'Romanos, rerum dominos, gentemque togatam,' 
 
 though it is probable that the early Briton, the ' Kelt,' had more 
 acquaintance with them in the kilt and the practised perfect 
 use of the sliean dim or short sword than in their state drag. 
 In Colchester's antiquities there are abundant proofs of the 
 full arrival of all the refinements of that great civilisation, in 
 the civil and legal aspects as well as the military ; and if 
 any soil in this island has a monopoly of distinction from 
 the Latin humanities of the first centuries, it is the site 
 of Camalodunum. Streams everywhere, a sufficient river and 
 harbour, healthy air, made its pleasantness equal to its fame. 
 Here the British king, Coel, from whom it takes its present 
 name, lived an actual historical personage, though some ribald 
 rhymes give an unreal tone to his existence. His palace was 
 the centre to such a Celtic town as Caesar describes that of 
 Cassibelaunus his antagonist to have been ; and with the very 
 strong walls of Ptoman style built around, it still remained an 
 object of veneration, and not improbably of somewhat imposing 
 architecture. The three years' siege which Colchester endured, 
 when King Coel rebelled against the lords of the world, is not, 
 but perhaps ought to be, as famous as that of Troy for ten. 
 The Helen of the English is quite as reputable a heroine as 
 she of the Asiatic fortress, unless, as is thought, Ilium was 
 really, for all the prying persevering Schliemanns and Glad- 
 stones, situated in nubibus. Comparison would then vanish. 
 Like the favourite novel, the historical three years' siege ends, 
 a.d. 264, with a marriage, though comedy was the less general 
 ending of the tragic panoply of war led by such imperatoies as 
 Constantius. It was probably a most desirable solution of the 
 political difficulty for him personally, that by marrying Helen, 
 the king's daughter, all would not only be well but as he 
 pleased. Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, 
 was the son of this romantic match ; and Anglican clericalism
 
 THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OF COLCHESTER. 47 
 
 claims with pride for Britain, the Celtic mother of him who gave 
 the coup de grdee to what they call the pagan cults. King Coel 
 is said to have been educated himself long and carefully at Home; 
 and Helen undoubtedly would, in addition to that of her own 
 race, have also all the culture of the aliens. The gloom of 
 oblivion is considerably around, in Colchester's Celtic and 
 Roman periods. When the Saxon chiefs and Norse pirates 
 secure their dreadful days of mastery, the darkness can be 
 felt. As a chief if not the richest city, siege after siege, 
 plundering, sacking, piracies, depopulation, what of human 
 misfortunes did it not suffer ? Some records and monuments 
 of its long sufferings exist, but time and savage hands have 
 left too little of the history of a place which would have been 
 largely England's history if the fire of trial through which 
 it had to pass were less severe. Not till the middle of the 
 seventeenth century, in the time of Cromwell, 1648, did it see 
 the last of the bitter experiences of war. So late as days of 
 the royalist cavaliers its fair maids, not to mention the ruin 
 of memories of the past always inevitable under the rough-shod 
 foot of war, had cause to rue the attraction their city was for 
 men of the sword, officers hardly less brutal than their dogs of 
 violence and wrong. 
 
 But Colchester got also its good times. When William 
 Rufus was thoroughly established on his throne, its citizens 
 put in their ardent petitions to him that he would be pleased 
 to allow his great seneschal, Eudo Sinclair, to become their 
 protecting feudal lord. They had already some experience of 
 him of most pleasant kind. It was not because of his recent 
 fame they came to do him and themselves honour. He held 
 property among them, and at intervals they previously enjoyed 
 his personal presence, busy as he was on both sides of the 
 Channel. In a time of popular distress, when hands to help 
 were rare, had he not kept many of them alive when they 
 should have died of hunger ? He was rich, but was he not 
 generous 1 He brought untaxed corn from over the sea, by 
 shiploads, to relieve them : what luck better in such times 
 of trouble with the Angles, when property declined suddenly to 
 half its value, under the effects of transition to undoubtedly 
 better rule, than to have the care of such a lord, who not only 
 possessed most power in the kingdom, but whose heart they 
 experienced was as powerful for action as his head 1 The king
 
 48 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 was nothing loth to promote any interests of his first and able 
 servant and subject. His gratitude for services, made him 
 grant their petition ; and Eudo, considering the advantage of 
 vicinity to where royalty and its affairs did most frequent, 
 and bound further in various ways of property and kindness, 
 took the position of lord of Colchestei*. It was not in him to 
 make a sinecure of any office. At intervals (and one seems to 
 have been of some lengthened period, either through family 
 sorrows, personal exhaustion, or temporary delegation of the 
 duties of dapifer to Hamo) he resided at Colchester, and paid 
 considerable attention to its monied and other interests. He 
 heard cases, relieved the oppressed, put down the oppressing; 
 and, what had a specially endearing effect, he was not unwilling 
 to re-instate, as far as he could, all in their original possessions 
 who had lost them by the storms and injustices of a transition 
 time. While without sympathy for the weak and turbulent 
 Anglian cry for the laws and times of the 'good King Edward,' 
 he was far more attentive to the actual wrongs of Saxons than 
 most of his fellow-ruling Normans ; and he has by this alone 
 gained with them a kind of canonisation for his name. For 
 Colechestrians to this day he is a state idol. To say, a municipal 
 idol, would not savour enough of the proper antique. But one 
 of his reforms deserves particular note. The people had to 
 pay, by any method of collection they pleased, the taxes, not 
 only of their own holdings, but also of all those who had been 
 condemned as criminals, outlawed, or evicted at fault ; and this, 
 without being allowed to put or keep in cultivation the land 
 which the trespassers occupied. Such frank - pledge grew 
 intolerable, and all the more by reason of the difficulties of the 
 time creating unusual quantity of crime. No one could suggest 
 a remedy for a grievance which was fast binding each of them 
 as with chains for their worldly ruin. Eudo came to the rescue 
 with a plan as original as effective. By hook and crook he got 
 all those wasting lands into his own sole possession, no doubt 
 giving double their value for them ; and, paying the whole of 
 the taxes himself always, universal Colchester was freed from 
 the irritating burden. Such things dwell in the popular 
 memory, and deservedly, though there may be no reason to 
 think that he lost even pecuniarily in the end by the 
 transaction. Thomas Cromwell in his History of Colchester 
 makes ' the powerful and wealthy Norman,' Eudo Dapifer,
 
 THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OE COLCHESTER. 
 
 49 
 
 the builder of the Moot Hall, where such questions of law 
 were settled in the most orderly way, and has some account of 
 various other ruins of houses associated with his traditions ; 
 but to him that hath, is given, in the antiquarian as in other 
 worlds, and Colchester has no hero equal or second to Eudo. 
 
 Thus In- dealt as judge and protector of his and their own 
 special, choosing and chosen, city ; but a dozen years before, he 
 had appeared in this very scene under quite a different char- 
 acter. To the Anglo-Saxon populace he must, in 1076, have 
 seemed the worst possible, because the most powerful, incarna- 
 tion of jSTorman tyranny, when he came to build, exactly on 
 the site of King Coel's palace, the most powerful of the strong- 
 holds by which William the Conqueror put all Anglo-Saxondom 
 into manacles and fetters. Colchester Castle, whose ruins are 
 among the most venerable and imposing within our borders, 
 was built by Eudo Dapifer in that year ; and there is no better 
 tribute to the genial power of his strong character, than the 
 fact that he both gained, and kept, the respect, and even the 
 love, of the Colchestrians, while employed at such a piece of 
 work. Every stone laid was another knell of remembrance to 
 them, that the wild liberty of semi-savagery, which Saxons 
 clung to so rancorously, was inexorably passing away, and that 
 only by law, and according to the refined manners of the civi- 
 lised man, was it henceforth possible to live without punish- 
 ment. Most human creatures, it is to be feared, have a natural 
 dread of being washed ; cold water which is, on the whole, the 
 best for them and for the neighbours, in a thousand ways of 
 health and good humour, is a sore trespass on such freemen as 
 these. Other populaces everywhere too generally, are of the 
 same mind. The Conqueror and his companions were rulers, 
 and acted according to their nature ; but few of them tempered 
 severity with kindness so well as Eudo. In a dozen years 
 after thus putting the iron hand in the silk glove over them, 
 their warmest cry was, ' Come you, and none else, to rule 
 over us; for in you we, though blind and stiff-necked enough, 
 have found more happiness than is, as we can now see, the 
 prevailing lot not only of Saxons but of men.' 
 
 There may be some shading or illuminating by imagination 
 in these picturings of the past ; but to those who wish corro- 
 boration, Morant's History of the Antiquities of Essex and 
 especially his History of Colchester are ample and the best 
 
 D
 
 50 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 authority. Indeed, he had access to some ancient Latin docu- 
 ments, of which his quotations are now in all probability the 
 only remnants. In the present connection, while giving the 
 biography, marriage, and relationships of Eudo, this stands 
 four-square, Qui construxit castrum Colecestriae. There are 
 dozens of references to him as the builder of the great pile, 
 which bad at the beginning and subsequently so large a place 
 in English story. As a Norman building, it is still its own 
 evidence, and even if we had not a vestige left, there are 
 prints enough of it in the British Museum to enable it to tell 
 its tale, with a fullness only limited by the spectator's know- 
 ledge of events and of military architecture. It is built on 
 arches, and there is said to be no example of the use of the 
 arch in this country before 1066, when it came from Nor- 
 mandy. The square tall ranges of walls, averaging twelve 
 feet of thickness, the substantial pilasters at widish intervals, 
 the small and somewhat irregular windows, placed for inside 
 convenience rather than external show, the loopholes, the mag- 
 nificent general massiveness which speaks such volumes for 
 the powerful and grave characters and conceptions of the 
 rulers, appear exceptionally marked in these drawings ; and 
 the earlier ones as taking the castle in less decay are particu- 
 larly instructive. No wonder one of the writing natives speaks 
 of it as the glory of his birthplace, set on its moderate height 
 in the centre of the town's rather dissonant modern structures. 
 Some of the prints, indeed, suggest the pathos of ruin with 
 almost a comic pungency. What kind of human brain must 
 it have been which found satisfaction, at some not very ancient 
 period, in building a contemporary toy of a house, with quite 
 the usual shape of roof and walls, on the high ridge of this 
 giant structure of a stronger day? It was its proprietor, 
 Gray, who put what he called a dome somewhere about the 
 middle of it, of the proportion of a small pot on a large church 
 without a steeple. But time has swept away these insults, 
 and nothing less appropriate than whistling grasses and twigs, 
 to that manner born, decorate the later elevations of this vene- 
 rable pile, which teaches the grandest lesson man can and, in 
 some degree, must learn, namely, the necessity of ruling and 
 being ruled. 
 
 Whether Eudo held the governorship of it in the military 
 character, either personally or by substitute, those twelve years
 
 THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OF COLCHESTER. 51 
 
 upwards between the erection of it and his creation as lord of 
 Colchester, is difficult to substantiate. He was so much with 
 the Conqueror in Normandy that in any case his presence 
 here could have only been at intervals. The story of his 
 sympathy with the people is proof of his responsibility to some 
 extent as well as of his natural generosity. His marriage 
 took place the year after the accession of Rufus, 10SS; so that 
 it cannot be said that his celebrated wife from the Clare family, 
 needed an English home during those years. One supposed 
 first wife would have felt the home in France more suitable 
 for many reasons than this fortress among the incensed Angles. 
 Light may fall back on this as advance is made. The proba- 
 bility is that not long after Colchester Castle was built, he 
 became a regretted stranger for most part during the latter 
 years of the Conqueror's reign. That though often absent he 
 did not forget, nor did they, is one of the precious and authenti- 
 cated passages of history which show that humane natures can 
 rise, at their best, above Norman and Saxon and other pheno- 
 menal faction. 
 
 But when, by his doing, England was separated from Nor- 
 mandy, he needed a home, and with his lady of ladies he took 
 possession of and resided in this princely home of Colchester, 
 where they were blessed with a family, and with all other 
 things which make life desirable. Again he had assumed the 
 full weight of his office as dapifer of England ; but henceforth 
 Colchester was the centre whence all his action came and 
 where his heart always was, whithersoever his duties and in- 
 terests might summon him. 
 
 King-maker as he was, with the aid and countenance of 
 Lanfranc from the monastery of Bee till he died in 1089, 
 Eudo had at the beginning of Rufus' s reign the healthiest 
 influence over the king. Odo, the bishop of Bayeaux and 
 earl of Kent, who soon proved faithless to the nephew, as he 
 had done to the nephew's father, had been thoroughly crushed, 
 with his followers discontented to rebellion, by the siege and 
 taking of Rochester Castle ; and Eudo's retirement, from 
 whatever cause, to the comparative quiet of the duties of his 
 recent lordship of Colchester must have occurred shortly after. 
 The early signs of a coming storm between clerical and secular, 
 especially monarchical, rule, were already beginning to appear 
 in various parts of Europe ; and the sensual but energetic and
 
 52 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 brave Rufus was not a likely king to escape the quarrel. 
 Anselm had come from Bee to fill the place of the dead Lan- 
 franc ; but there was a new light in William's court, probably 
 not an agreeable one naturally, but distasteful to the clergy 
 as if a brand from the hottest place. We hear nothing of 
 Hamo Dapifer, who does not seem to have been of the mould 
 his probable relation was. A Ralph Flambard was the bete 
 noir on which the Jupiter and satellites of the holy catholic 
 church would fain, if they dared, have rained their thunder- 
 bolts to his speedy extermination. The Norman king felt 
 that his side was Ralph's; and without venturing to oppose 
 the church then, a herculean impossibility even to kings, he 
 secretly approved of Flambard's plan of delaying actual induc- 
 tions, from archbishop downwards, and turning the proceeds 
 of the benefices meanwhile into the royal coffers. It should 
 be remembered that this was less mercenary than politic ; the 
 question of money being always the vulnerable part of clerisy, 
 if otherwise armed cap-a-pie. Anselm, a mild man by nature, 
 but bitter as only clerical office can make one, had his wrong, 
 that he was defrauded of the fruits of his archbishopric of 
 Canterbury for several years, while waiting the abandonment 
 of the king's proposed final appointment by giving of the 
 crozier, as in similar way with the sword he made his political 
 officers. Symbolism meant a great deal then, and the pope 
 could not and would not vail his prerogative for a moment in 
 favour of royalty. The terror, and perhaps superstitious dread, 
 of having defied the clergy, which his extraordinary illness 
 caused him, gave the game back into the church's hands, and 
 promises and appointments were made freely, as vows for 
 possible recovery. He did save life ; and it is probable that 
 Eudo, before this, had come back to be helpful in such storms 
 at his old place. Palgrave, on what authority is not clear, 
 makes both Eudo and Hamo staunch supporters of kingly 
 prerogative in this bodeful first trial of strength; but, with 
 the deepest of all loyalty, it is more likely, from his subse- 
 quent history, that Eudo calmed a quarrel for which even 
 William's energy was not yet fit. The same writer pictures 
 the two dapifers as amicably, at once and together, moving 
 about the duties of high steward, especially in festal scenes, 
 without questioning as to whether two such were possible, 
 when there was only the king of the one kingdom. He thus
 
 THE SENESCHAL AS LORD OF COLCHESTER. 53 
 
 escapes the puzzle which seems to have much troubled the 
 learned and very patient author of The History of the Exche- 
 quer. Eudo the sewar of Normandy and Hamo of Eng- 
 land, is Madox's last guess; but Palgrave, with a brilliancy 
 as charming as original, attacks the subject freely, and as 
 sprightlily leaves it for imaginative consideration. Madox, on 
 the means of investigation then open, is worthy of more trust, 
 though dull compared with the knight who, as a Jew, was 
 deputy-keeper of the English records. The Jews are apt to 
 see us too much as Israel ; but this Cohen is bright and good 
 of his kind, had he only been in the right place. As it is, he 
 deserves the Englishman's best wishes, seeing the field is so 
 wild and untilled yet. He is juster to the highest humanity 
 of the time than ' Anglish ' Freeman. But who with the right 
 birth, training, and ability is to sift from the earth the gold 
 that certainly exists in the codexes and books of such collec- 
 tions as the Bodleian and British Museum libraries, not to 
 hint at the Paris, Rouen, or Vatican bibliothecas, with regard 
 to these valuable facts of English, and indeed European and 
 world history ? What will occur now of research comes from 
 our national collections both in the state paper offices, Fetter 
 Lane, and the Museum at Bloomsbury, London ; but even 
 these would take a lifetime of fine leisure and practised ability 
 to do them fullest justice. "Whatever the means, whether by 
 Eudo's grave influence or not, the fierce struggle between 
 church and king was passed on for the solution of future but 
 not very distant years. The dapifer saw no more of it, but 
 spent the remainder of his life in as successful union with the 
 religious cult of his time as he had done with the interests of 
 the two able Williams of England, the First and the Second. 
 Henry the First was for periods by no means his friend so 
 absolutely, but Eudo died in peace with him. The civitas, 
 with its pertinents, of Colchester, given him by Bufus, had 
 as good reason in sacred as in justiciary and political matters 
 to be proud of its lord.
 
 54 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 EUDO THE FOUNDER OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES. 
 
 The first crusade began in 1096, and the church had a new 
 lease of ascendency. That year, Eudo Dapifer, on the fourth 
 of the kalends of September, had the site fixed and the work 
 measured out, in the presence of Maurice, bishop of London, 
 of his weightiest religious enterprise, namely, the building 
 from his own resources of the famous abbey of St. John 
 the Baptist. 'Without the walls of Colchester,' says Weever, 
 in his Funeral Monuments, ' stood a large and stately 
 monastery, which Eudo, sewar to King Harry the First, 
 founded and consecrated to the honour of Christ and St. John 
 Baptist, wherein he placed black monks.' Tanner in his 
 Monasteries gives the information that the abbey was of 
 the order of St. Benedict. But it is in Dugdale's Monaslicon, 
 as might be expected, that fullest details are to be found. Be- 
 sides the account of the foundation, it has the Latin charter 
 by which the founder endowed, with lands and other pro- 
 perties, this abbey which he built to preserve his memory, and, 
 in the words of undoubtedly the monastic writer, suae animae 
 suffragia aeterna preparare. There is the usual miraculous 
 ' business,' without which a monk would no more think of 
 narrating than Livy could forego his prodigies. On a little 
 hill to the south-east, where Siricus the presbyter dwelt, there 
 was a wooden church, consecrated to St. John the Evangelist. 
 Here in the darkness of the nights, and they were apt to be 
 very dark then without the gates of walled cities, lights were 
 seen to shine mysteriously, and voices praised God inside of 
 the wooden structure, seemingly without human or monastic 
 agency. It was distinction to places to have direct communi- 
 cation from above, and St. John's became one of the lions to 
 frighten all the unbelievers. But this was not its best honour 
 in thaumaturgy. Peter, Paul, and many others, in favoured 
 times and localities, had supernatural interference in their 
 favour, in the way of sudden freedom from chains and prisons. 
 A man here, whom the record does not credit with any particu- 
 lar saintliness, experienced what was sufficiently similar, in a 
 desirous scene, to be reckoned miraculous. ' Quidam vir, qui
 
 EUDO THE FOUNDER OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES. 5; 
 
 jussu regis era/ compeditus et vicissim alebatur a civibus, dum 
 quodam die festo Saudi Juliannis adesset ibidem cum multis, 
 subito dum missa celebraretur pessulus boiarum ultra quartum 
 vel quintum assistentum exilivit, et boiae cum sonitu fractae 
 sunt, et homo solutus astitit.' The whole civitas, it seems, 
 exulted in this miracle. But more than enough of such intro- 
 ductory flourish. Eudo might not as a politic mind object to 
 fame of that kind, but it was his delight in the amenity of the 
 situation which made him build his abbey on the site of this 
 highly-favoured shrine. It was 1097 before the foundation 
 stones were ready to be laid in grand state. Through the 
 multitudes usual to great occasions, a procession of nobles and 
 their ladies made their way to the place where the symbolic, 
 and some actual, work was to be done. Eudo himself placed 
 the first stone of the edifice ; Rohesia his wife the next ; 
 < 'mint Gilbert of Tunbridge and Clare, the brother of Rohesia, 
 the third. These proper ceremonies completed, the work be- 
 gan to show its proportions, but it was not till 1104 that the 
 pile was finished. 
 
 During the years of building this sister abbey to "West- 
 minster, he had grave political troubles ; but something must 
 now be said of the peculiarly irritating ones he met with in 
 arranging proper clerical service for the foundation on which 
 he was expending so much of his mind and means. His par- 
 ticular friend, Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, first came to 
 iiis aid by sending him two monks. These Eudo treated too 
 kindly, admitting them to the luxuries and delight of his daily 
 routine and personal presence. ' Jeshurun hath grown fat 
 and kicketh.' The monks soon began to grumble, even at the 
 Norman's cooks, and weariness and departure inevitably ended 
 the absurdity. Several others were sent to fill their place, 
 with an energetic and religious leader, by name Radulph. He 
 after some time began to press Eudo, who had been very 
 friendly with him, as to the inconvenience of the monks being 
 supported by the laics. Though then, so to speak, in political 
 chains, Eudo did what he could to take away this reproach. 
 He gave the fruits of ten churches on different parts of his 
 estates ; but, by reason of the distance from the various 
 counties in which they lay, and more likely by the extrava- 
 gance and improvidence of the collectors, very little reached 
 the abbey. The result of this and other things was that
 
 56 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Radulph and his party also left. The actual building was 
 lagging through these private as much as Eudo's public diffi- 
 culties. He began to consider that at least he could get rid 
 of this voluntary tax on his spirits. But the abbot of York 
 came to the rescue. He sent Stephen, a monk, with twelve 
 others, and the services were kept up. Eudo also, at this 
 time, induced a relation, of his own temper, William Sinclair, 
 a priest, to oversee the workmen ; and he spared no means or 
 pains till the last touch was put to the splendid edifice. Its 
 first abbot, Hugo, was consecrated by Maurice, bishop of Lon- 
 don, in 1 104; and the founder's joy and special munificence, 
 on the occasion of the first full services, are especially re- 
 marked upon by the chronicler. He gave various lands and 
 tenths, and had the further satisfaction of seeing his example 
 liberally followed. There was a grievance of the townspeople 
 that some of their land was seized by the authorities of the 
 abbey ; he sent money directly from his own treasury, and 
 satisfied them all. The final dedication was made on the 
 fourth of the Ides of January, ' with the great glorying and 
 the deep devotion and praise of the populace.' The religieux, 
 from York soon after joined Abbot Hugo, Walter senior 
 and Osmund senior, who in the happy circumstances would be 
 able only too speedily to form a staff. But not yet were the 
 < la ] lifer's annoyances over. His approved abbot, Hugo, got 
 timid about the hot questions between Eudo and King Henry, 
 and retired to York again, leaving the Parthian arrow of a 
 formal deed of cure of this cenobium, the heart-work so long 
 of the founder, to the king. No doubt in the circumstances it 
 was the safe thing for himself to do, and it is probable Eudo 
 knew humanity too well to blame the weakness. 
 
 He did not lose faith in religion for all his disappointments. 
 The secular storms passed away from his noble life, and his 
 devotion and liberality to sacred causes still increased from 
 year to year, as he went towards the end of his earthly course. 
 The substance of his chief charter may be given. ' Charter of 
 Eudo Dapifer concerning the foundation of the church of Saint 
 John of Colchester,' is its heading in the Monasticon. It 
 begins, ' Eudo, the dapifer of my lord the king of the whole 
 Anglican kingdom, to all the faithful of God, now and for ever, 
 salvation. Since by the overflowing clemency of the divine 
 mercy, He has gifted me in this life with many benefits, though
 
 EUDO THE FOUNDER OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES. 57 
 
 undeserving ; and, created out of nothing, He has enriched me 
 with the amplest lion ours, with lands, and with abundance of 
 riches ; mindful from such great beneficence why I should 
 very specially offer to the Lord, the King of kings, for all 
 the tilings which He has granted to me, I considered frequently 
 in the most watchful mind. Opportunely the helpmeet of 
 my pious devotion, with zeal from above, insinuated that piety 
 in this matter would be acceptable for her, and of saving in- 
 ll 1 H 'nee for me, if showing to the Lord, the King of kings, for 
 His goodnesses and gifts, zeal for religion, I should offer a 
 monument of piety,' etc. It is possible this is enough of what 
 may have been rather the usual legal form of such institution 
 rather than an expression of the peculiar character and sanc- 
 tity of the present donor. There is a temptation to give him 
 the benefit of the judicious gravity and serene thoughtfulness 
 of such introduction, but it might not be honest to do so, hovv- 
 ever consonant the sentiments are with his known character. 
 This passage has at least as much of him in it : 'I have built a 
 church near Colchester in my fee, by God's help, and I have placed 
 in it men, religious after monasterial ritual, and with my most 
 pious lord, Henry, king of the English ' [Anglorum inclusive 
 of Normans then], ' permitting it, I will grant lands and other 
 returns for the salvation of my same lord, King Henry, and 
 of Matilda his queen, and for the peace and stability of this 
 kingdom, nor not also for the redemption of the souls of his 
 antecedent rulers, of his father and his mother, the great 
 King William, and Matilda, queen of the same, besides for 
 the saving of the soul of King William, his brother and pre- 
 decessor, for me myself in addition, for my wife Rohesia, and 
 for all our ancestors and descendants. In all devoutness I 
 have offered these.' Next follows the list of his gifts. Tho 
 four manors of Willege, Brichling, Mundover, and Picheford 
 he gave whole, except the fee of a Radulph in Picheford, and 
 the portion of Ailwin, a socman. He gave the marsh of Lille- 
 cherche which afterwards went with Picheford and Hallingbery, 
 with all its pertinents. In his Colchester fee he gave two caru- 
 cates of land, one dwelling-house, two vivaria, one mill, one 
 wood, and money to feast the people four days at the birthday 
 of Saint John. The rest are the whole fee of Turstin Wiscard ; 
 the land of P»anulph de Broc ; in Turncrust the church of that 
 town; one hide of the land of Esse (probably the Ashe of
 
 58 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Hampshire, which his father Hubert of Eye, the first Sinclair 
 proprietor on English record, got) and also the tenth of its 
 cheese, wool, and wood ; of Lillecherche the tenths of the 
 mills and cheese and wool ; two parts of the tenths of Berton 
 and Sandford ; of Etonia the half tenths and the whole tenths 
 of the mills ; the tenth of the swine food of all his groves 
 and parks on the Essex side of the Thames ; of Standeie two 
 parts of the tenths ; and of Hamerton and Estune, ditto ; of 
 Nieveseles the church ; of Walden the tenths of the mill 
 and of wool ; two parts of the tenths of Hallingbery ; the 
 third part of the tenths of Sabricheworth ; of Takelee two 
 parts of the tenths ; Royages all the tenths ; Waltham three 
 parts of the tenths ; Witham two of tenths ; Cresswell, Estan- 
 weya, Lereden, the same ; Grinstede all the tenths ; in any 
 one of those manors a croft of two acres free from all secular 
 or feudal services, except in the three manors around Col- 
 chester, and Witham, "VValtham, Sabricheforth, Waledene ; the 
 whole tenth of Eudo's swine-feeding and brood-mares and 
 mills ; the church of St. Helen and the fourteen acres belong- 
 ing to it ; the church of St. Mary, Westcheap, London, which 
 was then called New Church, with the concurrence of Ailward 
 Gros, the priest, who had the presentation of the living from 
 Hubert Sinclair of Rye, Basse Normandie, the father of the 
 dapifer ; the church of St. Stephen above Walebroch ; Eudo's 
 stone-built house, probably his town mansion near New 
 Church, with its appendages, and six acres of land which was 
 that of the woman Alveva, a widow ; all the fruits of all the 
 chapels in his manors on the Colchester side of the Thames, 
 and particularly the offerings on principal feast days of those 
 serving God, the monks there to transmit the same.' This is 
 the tale of his gifts at that time, and he closes the charter 
 with perhaps a usual form also. ' These portions and returns 
 of my fee and barony, I have granted freely to God and His 
 most blessed forerunner John. If anyone add to them, may 
 God add good days to his, and eternal life : if anyone take 
 from them, or rob, or damage, etc., let his life be shortened, 
 and let him have his portion with Judas, Dathan, and Abiram, 
 unless he make amends to God and Saint John.' 
 
 But perhaps enough of what is rather heavy legal reading. 
 Of his other foundations, little of the documentary kind can 
 have survived ; and it may be as well, for he might become too
 
 EUDO THE FOUNDER OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES. 59 
 
 much a quarry for inane, professional, or antiquarian strug- 
 gling, as to the exact meaning of Latin terms to things which 
 are as changeful in their substance as almost the words them- 
 selves. Fortunate abbey of which the above is only one speci- 
 men of many grants. But for it also time has been too 
 strong. Like the gorgeous palaces which leave not a wrack 
 behind, all of it was out of being in 1724, except its beautiful 
 gate, of which there is a print extant, of that period. Much 
 either way cannot be taken as to its earlier wealth from the 
 valuation in 26 Henry VIII., 1535, of its annual income at 
 ^523, 17s. Always in one of the hottest political and 
 clerical districts, its fortunes would be as varying as those of 
 the great families, for most part, who lived and died within 
 its range. Morant, the best Essex authority, has noted the 
 important fact that both a William and a Hubert de Sancto 
 Claro were also markworthy benefactors of this monastexy, cer- 
 tainly members of the name subsequent to the founder. He 
 had a list of all the benefactors of the abbey given him, after 
 
 his book was written, by Lord , which he inserts as an 
 
 appendix of great value. Greenstead manor is there granted by 
 Hubert de Sancto Claro, and also Lexden mill, while Stokes 
 manor is the gift of Hamo de Sancto Claro. Morant's own 
 research discovered William Sinclair as one of the donors of 
 the monastery. Other houses, churches, and chapels there are 
 still some fragmentary evidences to prove that Eudo either 
 built, or aided to build, but his religious fame now is eternally 
 associated with the abbey of St. John Baptist at Colchester. 
 He is among those who gave charters to Glastonbury Abbey, 
 and Ordericus Vitalis makes him one of the founders of Lessay 
 Abbey, but this has been challenged as confusion of Eudo 
 Dapifer with Eudo au Chapeau, though the challenger does 
 not seem competent enough to condemn so established autho- 
 rity. Tanner in his Notitia Monastica, for fair example of 
 really unsatisfactory scraps, queries whether the priory of 
 Cluniac monks of Ileydon St. Peter's, Wangford, Suffolk, said 
 by Leland the antiquary to have been founded by Doudo 
 Afini, steward to the king's household, was not one of Eudo 
 Dapifer's foundations. Bishop Herbert gave a charter to Nor- 
 wich in the reign of Henry the First, where Eudo's signature 
 stands immediately after that of Roger Bigod, earl of Nor- 
 folk, the founder of Thetford ; and out of respect to him,
 
 60 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Tanner theorises that the dapifer might have given that 
 priory to this monastery. Perhaps such probabilities are 
 worse than worthless ; at all events, in illustrating the cha- 
 racter of a man whose actions can be measured on authenticated 
 facts. Matthew of Westminster, in his Flores Historiae, re- 
 counting the monasteries built in Normandy before the Con- 
 quest, has, l At ecdesiam Sanctae Trinitatis Exaquei Eudo cum 
 capello fecit ' — ' But Eudo built the church of the Holy 
 Trinity, with the chapel, at Exaqueurn.' His work was not 
 confined to England in this kind. 
 
 Nor did he limit himself to religious foundations. The hos- 
 pital for the sick has in France sometimes, if not always, the 
 beautifully appropriate name of ' Hotel de Dieu,' or ' house of 
 God.' Such a house Eudo established during the reign of Henry 
 the First, and with his special sanction, for people infected 
 with the contagious disease of leprosy, which, from whatever 
 cause, not improbably from Saxon filth or excess with its 
 alternating poverty, must have been common then here. To 
 save Saxonic feeling, it is quite possible to suppose that 
 Easterns, even in the army of Hastings, said to have been 
 widely gathered in one at least of its wings, or Westerns them- 
 selves who had been crusading in the East, were the bringers 
 of this frightful disease of humanity. Froude has suggested 
 want of vegetables. Institutions imply something indige- 
 nous rather than passing or exotic, as to this English leprosy; 
 but in any case the question is one of peculiar social interest 
 to those who are devotees of ethnologic and related science. 
 The building was dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene. It was 
 without the town, and ruled by a master, probably leprous 
 like his unhappy companions. In 28 Hen. VIII. its endow- 
 ments gave an income of only ^11 a-year; but though this 
 is a far larger sum for the practical buying of food and 
 clothes and medicine than all but experts can now imagine, 
 there is little doubt that the place was kept up, as some of our 
 similar houses are, by voluntary contributions. A satisfactory 
 way of explaining the possible dwindling down of its income 
 to such a sum would be by discovering that the better blood 
 and habits of the true Englishman, of as well-mixed a race as 
 his thorough-bred nonpareil horse, had banished the loath- 
 some disease to its native or chronic regions, and that the 
 building was dying of having nothing more to do. There is a
 
 THE DAPIFER'S LATTER YEARS. 61 
 
 statement that Eudo had to build it as a punishment for the 
 political quarrels between himself and the commanding, un- 
 forgiving, sullen, but able Henry. If so, a better method of 
 making peace could not be invented; for it was work not 
 penible, but we well know wholly according to the man's heart. 
 Independently or by regal command the foundation is equally 
 a tribute to him as a great soul. The hospital of St. Mary 
 Magdalene at Colchester, for leprous persons, stands as an 
 early beacon in England of the medical sanitary science and 
 humanity which have made the poorest of lives worth living, 
 if the present and the past could only be well compared. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE DAPIFER'S LATTER YEARS. 
 
 Prixce William, the only son of Henry the First, and the 
 whole company of the White Ship with its noble passengers, 
 sank in the English Channel, Berold the Rouen butcher alone 
 surviving to tell the dreadest tale of 1 120. From Normandy in 
 great gaiety they were coming, and when the crashing rock split 
 their vessel into pieces, the gallant prince in vain efforts to save 
 the life of his natural sister, the Countess of Perche, was drowned, 
 to the consternation of England and the inconsolable grief of 
 a sonless king. In that same year, during the spring, and 
 before the disaster of 25 th November, which ended the male 
 succession of that Norman dynasty that he had served so long 
 and loyally, the dapifer also died. It was a saddest of times 
 to the whole people ; for Henry had courted and gained the 
 affection of the Angles, more than he had perhaps kept that of 
 his own race, by his charters, his return to the laws of Edward 
 the Confessor, his administration of justice by circuits and all 
 good means, and by his marriage to Matilda, the grandchild of 
 Edgar Atheling, the fated prince's high-born mother. To Eudo 
 the tragedy would have been, were he alive, a greater grief 
 than to all other men, the king alone excepted. Had he 
 not been first servant and subject to three of these great 
 descendants of Rollo, the kings who were his own relations ? 
 and had he not looked forward to the reign of a fourth, with
 
 62 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 whose person and education lie had been so long conversant ? 
 This young brave William would have well kept up and 
 advanced the traditions of the Williams to whom Eudo owed 
 so much, and for whom he had toiled so watchfully. 
 
 The twenty years from the accession of Henry, though suc- 
 cessful for Eudo, had been troubled and dangerous. When on 
 the death of his own King Rufus in noo, doubts began to 
 spread as to whether England and Normandy had not better 
 be united under the elder Robert, the dapifer's state became 
 fluctuating. His adherence to Henry was less ardent than the 
 revengeful Beauclerc thought loyal to him. Some of the best 
 of the Normans longed to have one ruler over their various 
 estates in the two countries, for all reasons of policy and 
 comfort. Robert de Belesme was the leader, and his failure 
 was as bitter as the slighted Henry was unrelenting, to the 
 utter ruin of his brother's party. Fortune smiled everywhere 
 on the Conqueror's youngest son, and in 1106 he himself had 
 secured the very union many wished, by Curthose's defeat at 
 Tenchbrai and subsequent imprisonment for life. Eudo's full 
 cup was never nearer spilling than in the trying crisis, and 
 that he weathered such storms, shows sagacity of an extra- 
 ordinary kind. It came, however, to this point with the 
 suspicious Henry, that Eudo's wife, Rohaise Clare ; her uncle, 
 Walter Giff ard, bishop of Winchester ; and Peter of Valoniis, 
 or Peter de Valence, ancestor of the royal earls of Pembroke — 
 a son of one of Eudo's sisters and of the Petrus de Valoniis 
 who as sheriff of Hertford appears, with Geffrey de Mandeville, 
 sheriff of Essex, and Ralph Barnard of Middlesex, in William 
 the Conqueror's charter separating the temporal and spiritual 
 courts (see Ancient Laws and Institutes)', had to use their powers 
 of intervention to bring matters into peace. Count Gilbert of 
 Tunbridge, and earl of Clare, her brother, had gained great 
 position by his support of Henry, and Rohaise dreaded his 
 ambition, or that of some other of the successful party, for the 
 supplanting of her husband from his hereditary office. Stripped 
 of this, he might be stripped of more. But she being of that very 
 noble chief of Normans, to wit, Richard who was the son of 
 Count Gilbert, Eudo was not dispossessed, says the chronicler, 
 ' for his wife's sake. ' This Richard Fitz-Gilbert was the 
 Conqueror's greatest captain, and justice of England. He had 
 married Rose Giffard, daughter of Walter Giffard, of whom
 
 THE DAPIFER'S LATTER YEARS. 63 
 
 afterwards in discussions of lineage. It is to be presumed that 
 Eudo's politic hand was in the balancing of the sister's interest 
 against the brother's probable ambition, founded on high ser- 
 vices to Henry; and these two Clares at this crisis preserved 
 their traditional nobility of action. Count Gilbert and more of 
 her brothers and relations were all gained over; and the placing 
 of tht 1 foundation of a new prosperity for the dapifer was made. 
 The Harleian MS., 312, has saved extracts from the monas- 
 terial register of his abbey of Colchester, and one of them is 
 the remission of all grudges by Henry the First against 
 his minister, the confirmation to him of the feudal lordship 
 of Colchester, and the possession of its castle and tower. Both 
 words are mentioned, and this might explain the discussion 
 about the date '1090' in part of a modern building, on the site 
 of which tradition says was Eudo's private Colchester residence. 
 It is not improbable that the remnant of ancient wall thus 
 preserved was part of the turris mentioned in the manuscript. 
 There does not seem any other notice of two fortified places, 
 and it is hardly likely that legal tautology is the explanation. 
 That he lived in a private residence, separate from the castle, 
 is against all the ways of his rank and time ; and his occupa- 
 tion of the tower part of the whole lordship may be the popular 
 authentic tradition of 'Eudo's house.' The signatures to this 
 remission and couiirmation are extremely useful. His power 
 rose higher than it had ever been. Under the Conqueror he 
 may have been dapifer of England and Normandy ; under 
 Rufus his own policy gave him only the stewardship of England ; 
 in Henry's reign he was full minister for the then united king- 
 dom. The shortest and clearest proofs of this last fact are con- 
 tained in the charter to his own abbey at Colchester, ' Eudo, 
 dapifer of my lord the king of all the Anglican kingdom,' and 
 in the record of one of his relations getting the dapifership of 
 Normandy at a subsequent period by the claim of its hereditary 
 tenure in Eudo Sinclair's family. Unfortunately there does 
 not seem to be a date to the charter, and as the abbey was 
 finished and consecrated in 1 104, it may have been given before 
 Henry the First had possession of Normandy. The proof 
 would have been doubly complete, had its date been subsequent 
 to 1 1 06; no long time for the monastery to wait for its 
 founder's endowment. On the evidence given, it is proved 
 that in Henry's time he held both dapiferships. Nothing is
 
 64 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 more an axiom in court and political experience than that 
 nil desperandum is the sagacious motto of the born statesman. 
 Wolsey's is pulpit sentiment that when a man falls he must 
 fail 'like Lucifer, never to hope again.' Eudo was not the 
 man likely to 
 
 ' Fall into the compass of a i)r<zmunire ' 
 
 eitherof hierarchical or political nature ; or, if hedid,hewould not 
 sit down and lick his chains but use his power and break them. 
 Only monastic tempers get weary of the real world, and his 
 vigour continues in those twenty years of Henry's reign as full 
 as though he had not the weight of dignified and venerable age 
 upon him. He came into, and kept, the strong grace and 
 favour of the king, who was as stubborn in his likings as he 
 was fell in his hate. 
 
 The details of Eudo's political and social doings, by their 
 very success, have not left much record ; but it is noticeable 
 that religious devotion grew on him as he neared the end of the 
 continued sovereignty, rather than pilgrimage, of his rich life. 
 It was not in England, but in his native Normandy, that he 
 breathed his last. He died a biilliant example of a good man 
 who lived according to the Christian ritual of his time. 
 Around his deathbed in his castle of Preaux, France, stood, 
 with the reverence or interest that could alone bring such 
 personages there, Henry, king of England and Normandy, 
 Geoffrey, bishop of Rouen, and Turstan, archbishop of York. 
 In their presence he did the duties of a dying man. To all 
 whom he owed anything, either for their service or whatever 
 else, he directed payment to be made. His last days were 
 passed in continual penitence and sorrow for sin, in confession 
 again and again, in absolution, and in penance severe even then, 
 according to the directions of these high dignitaries of the 
 Gallican and Anglican churches. With the king's sanction, 
 and their witness, he divided all his fortune as his practised 
 wisdom and clear mind dictated. When this was done, he 
 made his surrounding relations, and his personal following, 
 give their solemn word, that by all they owed to him they 
 would take his body to his own abbey which he had built 
 at Colchester. ' lta Eudo, says the chronicle, ttti bonus 
 Ghristianus, poenitens, pectus tundens, et Dei invocans miseri- 
 cordiam, ultimum ejJJavit spiritum.' His noble wife was still
 
 THE DAPIFER'S LATTER YEARS. 65 
 
 beside him in this, the dark shadow, as she had been his 
 faithful companion in all the life difficulties of the thirty-two 
 years of their devoted partnership. Bonquet quotes, in a note, 
 a writer in Latin, that Eudo was ' senex et oculis orbatus,' ' an 
 old man and blind.' 
 
 Rose Clare, one of England's earliest and greatest ladies, could 
 not be too much honoured by volumes written in her praise. 
 When it grew certain that he was not to rise again in health, 
 her conl inual prayer to God was that with His will she might 
 not survive a whole year 'so dear and so noble a man,' l viro tarn 
 caro, tarn nobili ' (Cott. MS.). It was a great grief to her that 
 the pride of her brothers, the Clares, and of her relations, who 
 were then securing her claim to be a queen, prevented the 
 wish of her heart to accompany her husband Eudo's remains 
 herself to the loved abbey of Colchester. She would have 
 been made queen, too, had she not been the prophetess of her 
 own desired fate. Within the year she died, to the keen dis- 
 appointment of her ambitious friends ; and not an aged woman, 
 for though so long the wife of Eudo, she had married him when 
 under age. Her last directions also, were to be laid in the 
 abbey of Colchester, beside him whom she loved so deeply ; 
 but by her brothers, who had lost their secular game, and did 
 not care for spiritual things, she was buried instead at the 
 famous monastery of Bee. It is perhaps gratuitous of the 
 chronicler to add that they did this to save expense. 
 
 While she was alive such a compromise could not happen to 
 her husband's remains. She took care that it reached England. 
 When it arrived, and, as it appears, having gone by way of 
 London, it was met coming from the west by all the monks a 
 mile from the coenobium, or monastery, with a large accom- 
 panying crowd, not only of the townspeople but from distant 
 places. When they reached the abbey, a miracle of a kind the 
 whole world" apart from the frequent, too frequent, monastic 
 ones, astounded the multitude. Another solemn procession 
 had just come, like this great one from the west, from the 
 north, and, grief added to grief, it was found that Walter 
 Sinclair, the nephew of Eudo, was being brought to the same 
 family resting-place, by accidental if not miraculous concur- 
 rence. Under one monument the uncle and nephew were 
 laid, with the highest honours of sepulture, die pridie Kalend. 
 Martiaram, anno JJumi/ti, 11 20. His tenderness for his loved 
 
 E
 
 66 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Colchestrians appeared even then ; for, that they should not be 
 burdened with the expense of this celebration, he had willed 
 for the purpose the manor of Bryht Lyngeseia, and a hundred 
 librae denariorum, besides his gold ring with a signet of precious 
 topaz. His cup ornamented with plates of gold, within and 
 without, of fine workmanship, was given to the abbey. The 
 abbot, however, Gilbert, a monk from the Bee monastery, who 
 took the place of Hugo, gave it to King Henry, asking in 
 return the royal approval of Eudo's grant of the manor and 
 gifts which were kept. It is possible that the Dapifer's cup 
 may be still somewhere among the royal precious vessels of the 
 kingdom, most probably, however, in other shape. 
 
 Nor did his wife Rose Clare forget to send similar last gifts 
 to their own abbey. She sent four phylacteries, two serica 
 pallica, one silver calix, and one silver censer. She gave, like 
 her husband, a final gift of land, Tholi in Halyngeberia. It 
 was not her fault that some of the yet unborn King Richards 
 took violent possession of it from the abbey. As much as 
 woman could be such a man, she was Eudo. Besides build- 
 ing with him, she built and ornamented other religious houses. 
 Near Rouen she built a xenoduchium at her own expense. 
 She was truly a woman known in all the churches ; for not 
 only were her presents of gold, of silver, and of that needle- 
 work in which Norman- English ladies excelled so much, to be 
 seen among the ornaments of home churches, but of those be- 
 yond sea. The finest, because most womanly part of all her 
 delightful character, can close a chapter that may well linger 
 if clearness of subject is excuse for delay. It was shortly after 
 Eudo had been the means of establishing William Rufus on 
 the throne of England, himself then a great, the greatest, 
 statesman and officer in the land, that he was so human as to 
 be caught by especially the beauty of the eyes of this dear 
 Rose, then a girl of fourteen, in her father's halls at Tunbridge 
 Castle, Kent. His admiration she returned with an enthu- 
 siasm told by the fact they were married before she was fif- 
 teen. If ever two became one they did. Who could wonder 
 at Rufus's pleasure in giving Colchester Castle to the young 
 wife with her husband, as a fully compensating home for her 
 father Earl Richard's fort and palace united, as was the mode 
 of the chief Norman homes, the greatest warrior of Hastings 
 field. She loved her husband as he well deserved. The
 
 EUDO'S LINEAGE. 67 
 
 Latin word is, she ' worshipped ' him, and ' with wonderful 
 zeal, with wonderful affection,' t miro studio coluit miro affectu.' 
 Hose Clare and Eudo St. Clare were the living poem of their 
 period. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EUDO'S LINEAGE. 
 
 In his Introduction to Domesday Bool; with regard to which 
 he is one of the authorities, Sir Henry Ellis has an easy 
 task in showing that Eudo the son of Hubert is Eudo the 
 dapifer. It lies patent on the surface of the great record. His 
 statement, however, is so clear and short, that it may serve 
 for finish to this first step towards the recognition of the man. 
 'Terra Eudonis filius Huberti' stands as a title to Eudo's 
 lands in Berks., Herts., Cambridgeshire, Hunts., and Beds., 
 but the entire entries themselves uniformly begin Eudo Da- 
 pifer tenet de Rege.' That this Hubert was Hubert of Rye, 
 Freeman, Palgrave, and all the writers assert on the support 
 of worlds of evidence. 
 
 To give proof that Hubert was Hubert Sinclair is the only 
 thing after this necessary for the complete identification of 
 Eudo's line. The succession of others of the name in posi- 
 tions and places of close relation to him and his history, might 
 be quite legitimately used in the way of cumulative evidence. 
 Indeed, in the case of reigning royal stocks, what with the 
 ravages of time and the varied accidents of lives, such side- 
 light is often the only thing available. The extraordinarily 
 chequered course of the history of the Sancto de Claw kin in 
 England, the heights to which they reached at intervals, the 
 mad pride of new local surnaming, and the seemingly sudden 
 extinction of important branches, with various special ex- 
 periences, which will gradually appear, make it something of 
 a miracle that they should have had the fortune to be known 
 thus at all. Continuity and permanence of blood, with steady 
 and considerable wealth, are the best conditions of the pre- 
 servation of family record through such periods as eight or 
 nine hundred years. Where gaps of centuries occur, when if
 
 68 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 any representatives at all exist, they are what is well called 
 out of the world, it is only a chapter of accidents which rescues 
 the facts of even their greatest men and women. The ashes 
 of the fathers are blown away with the common ruin. When 
 the sons are dead, or as good as dead, how can there be the 
 piety of the natural and noblest affections ? The daughters 
 are frail reeds in the storm of decay; for is it not their 
 mission to find new names and interests to decorate with their 
 beauty and effort 1 It may be the cure of a dangerous exclu- 
 siveness that they are ever unconsciously busy in merging a 
 high race among their fellow- mortals in plainer ranks, through 
 the subtractions by dowries, and, above all, by the accidents 
 of being heiresses. 
 
 However it has happened, considerable and authentic details 
 have survived of the Sinclairs. Many are still to be discovered 
 of the Norman period. Among the state MSS., among the 
 codices of the Oxford Bodleian and other English libraries, it 
 cannot be doubted that much additional knowledge will yet be 
 found. It is not so likely that France has such documents, 
 the early periods of that country, by loss in battle of their 
 records, having far less illustration than ours ; but the Nor- 
 mans before 1066 were learned and literary beyond all peoples, 
 and there are indirect and perhaps undiscovered direct glean- 
 ings from French archives, for the future. Bonquet's twenty- 
 four immense volumes, Historiens de la France, are themselves 
 a rich store, though made up considerably of other than 
 French writers. 
 
 The present purpose is abundantly served by what has been 
 selected from such a rich garnering as the Cottonian and 
 Harleian MSS. in the British Museum. One manuscript in 
 particular, should by the lovers of England's royalties and best 
 nobilities, of the older periods, be brought, if possible, to the 
 full light of fame which it so well deserves. Praising it is 
 one thing, but the sincere form of admiration would be to 
 print it, for publicity and for the safer preservation. Filling 
 about a hundred leaves of thick antique, but porous and there- 
 fore ink- blurring, yellow paper, No. 154 of the Harleian col- 
 lection has more, and, by all the checks of cross comparison 
 for authenticity, more accurate, information on early pedigrees 
 than perhaps is to be found anywhere else in the same extent 
 of writing. Its date is easily fixable from the distance it
 
 EUDO'S LINEAGE. 69 
 
 brings down the accounts, circa 1640 certainly. The hand- 
 writing is slightly difficult, like the usual survivals from that 
 period. The well-known signature of Shakespeare may give 
 an idea of it. The scribe, however, was of the artistic nature, 
 and his MS. is as beautiful to look at as the writing of his 
 time admits, with its Germanic sweeps and knots of the 
 letters. These externals are of importance, but the contents 
 are such as to be grateful for, whether on genealogical or his 
 torical grounds. The value of the MS. is of national as well 
 as wide family interest, all parts of the kingdom, in royal and 
 noble descents, having some connection with its details, which 
 are full where the more modern works are, by ignoi\ance and 
 sometimes by design, weakest, namely, during the rule of the 
 Norman dynasty and the early Plantaganets. 
 
 What gives the greater weight to its account of the family 
 of Eudo, the dapifer, is the consideration that there were no 
 high titled and rich Sinclair's here, except those hidden under 
 local and other new names, when the account was drawn up 
 so carefully. Cases have been known of admiration of great 
 living personages affecting their contemporary genealogists to 
 untrustworthiness. Beyond mere record from materials, then 
 much more plentiful than now, genealogy being the chief 
 literary subject of all writers previously, it is not likely that 
 a fraction of sentiment would go to aid of this pedigree. To 
 forget to say so would be injustice to its so much the higher 
 value and accuracy. The contrary possibility, that the family 
 were so far out of sight and mind that there may be careless- 
 ness in the record, gets a double negative. Their ancient dis- 
 tinction was at all times akin to a national boast, and no 
 greater insult could be thrown at a genealogist of the times 
 when books and manuscripts were few and careful exceedingly, 
 than to say he undervalued or overlooked anything he could 
 possibly know of his subject. Genealogy was long the only 
 field for the exercise of that spirit of exact science which has 
 been lately engaged so heroically in conquering the world, 
 and with considerable effect as to England. 
 
 Both the Cottonian and Harleian collections are wealthy 
 in pedigrees, some by Glover, of the time of Queen Elizabeth, 
 being remarkably beautiful and scientific. He was the Somer- 
 set herald at that time, when heraldry was the subject of sub- 
 jects. Ralph Brooke, the York herald, turns up also, of these
 
 70 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 professionals. Ordinary enthusiasts are frequent. Of them 
 all, however, amateur or otherwise, the unknown author of 
 this somewhat late volume deserves attention for fine work. 
 He makes reference to previous workers of the professional 
 order, with the tone which gives the feeling that not only 
 did he feel himself their equal, by such experience and train- 
 ing, but their superior, from stronger knowledge gained by 
 later writing, with such a rich spoil of previous lore at his 
 disposal. More than enough may have been said of a MS. 
 that has been extremely useful, yet it would not have been 
 just to it, nor fair to the general exposition, to pass lightly 
 over its peculiarities. Confidence has to be gained for facts 
 from the general obscurity of the past, though it may be said 
 that there are few who are fully aware of the seas and lands 
 of such literature of historical matter which exist in shapely or 
 rugged state. To explorers of experience the nearer cen- 
 turies seem barer, if the newspaper one be excepted, of the 
 serviceable materials of history, than those stretching their 
 steps out of England back into Normandy. The want of sur- 
 names is the sole cause why we cannot know of the men of 
 the time then as well as of those now. 
 
 On the page where Eudo Dapifer's lineage appears the 
 arms of the Sinclairs are given, the shield with a thick upright 
 cross of gold dividing the quarters, three of which are gules or 
 red. There are other antiquated heraldic distinctions describ- 
 ing the border. Under this ' Hubert de Sancto Claro ' begins 
 the pedigree. His son is ' Eudo Dapifer, Norman, lord of 
 Colchester, who came in with the Conqueror.' Hubert, who 
 is Hubert of Rye, has a daughter Muriel, Eudo's sister, who 
 married Geffrey Mandeville, as his second wife. She had a 
 son Osberne, who had a descendant Walyein. Osberne was 
 the ancestor of the De Caillis of Normandy, and of the Cay- 
 leys of Norfolk and Yorkshire, now represented by Sir Digby 
 Cayley, bart. An immediate descent from Hollo is claimed 
 for them by Burke, on the probability that they are descended 
 from William Fitz-Osborn, the first Norman earl of Hert- 
 ford, cousin to the Conqueror. The claim is made only as he 
 says on supposition. The truth is shown by inference drawn 
 from part of his account of the Caillis in Normandy, coupled 
 with facts that are well known by record and otherwise. 
 ' Osberne de Cailli appears to have been in possession of that
 
 EUDO'S LINEAGE. 71 
 
 barony either immediately before or immediately subsequent 
 to the Conquest, probably father of Humphrey and of William 
 Fitz-Osberne. Osberne, son of Osberne de Gailly, obtained 
 the honour [barony] of Preaux (Pratella). He calls himself, 
 in a deed of gift to " L'Abbaye de la Trinite" Queen Matilda's 
 foundation at Caen, " Ego Osbernusde Pratellis, filius Osbemi de 
 Cailleio." From him descended the noble and distinguished 
 family Des Preaux in France. John des Preaux was a favour- 
 ite minister of llichard I. and John. His brother, Sir William 
 des Preaux, saved the life of Richard in Palestine. Osberne de 
 Cailly married Maud de Baudemont, and his son Roger married 
 Petronilla de Vere.' The castle of Preaux and its barony 
 belonged to Eudo Dapifer. It was there he died, and it is 
 clear that his sister's son, Osberne of Cailli, really a younger 
 son of Geffrey Mandeville of 1066, received it, the Mande- 
 villes getting Eudo's Norman estates. This Sinclair lady's 
 descendants are thus of high distinction. But Sinclairs have 
 more to do with the descendants by his first wife of Geffrey, 
 who, the pedigree says, 'came into England with the Con- 
 queror, who gave him all the land which Aesgarus Stallere, 
 earl in Essex, had.' He was made sheriff or viscount of 
 Middlesex, Essex, and Hertford. He had a son by his first 
 wife (Ethelarda, buried at Westminster, the lands of which, to 
 the fourth part, was her husband's), William de Mandeville 
 (.Magna Villa), who got the title of earl of Essex the first of 
 this family. How, will appear hereafter. He simplified the 
 paternal arms by making the coat plain and leaving out the 
 carbuncle whicli Geffrey wore. This hint as to his character 
 need not be lost, though it is possible his wife or others may 
 have had something to do with so curious a change, recorded 
 here. 
 
 Eudo is given as married to Hoesia, fil i a. She is therefore 
 the daughter of Rose Giffard, the wife of Richard Fitz-Gilbert 
 of Tunbridge and Clare. The Monasticon in one place mis- 
 takes the mother for the daughter, both being Roses, probably 
 in all senses, and makes Eudo marry Rose Giffard as a widow, 
 and not his real wife, the Rose Clare of fourteen. It corrects 
 itself in its Genealogia ct Historia Eudonis Majoris Domus regiae 
 in Angliae Regno, which Dugdale and Bonquet have printed in 
 their collections Ex MS. codice in bibliotheca Cottoniana, sub 
 ejjigie Neronis D. 8, ad calcem. It was to be expected that
 
 72 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 this more elaborate account should be the right one, but it 
 is none the less pleasant to have it corroborated by the Har- 
 leian authority. Morant quoted the wrong passage in the 
 Monasticon with regard to the relationship of Eudo St. Clare 
 with the Clares, though both accounts keep them as near as 
 marriage can bring families. If the dapifer was the first man 
 next to the king, his wife's father, Richard Clare, was the 
 acknowledged greatest fighting captain, possessor of, if not the 
 widest, the best lands, of all the Normans, and justice of Eng- 
 land besides. The love match was as wise as it was fortu- 
 nate. She had too many brothers to bring chance of heirship 
 to her husband and his family. Gilbert succeeded his father ; 
 Roger got the estates in Normandy of Brionne and others ; 
 Walter had Welsh and western lands ; there was a Robert ; and, 
 besides herself, a daughter married to Roger of Tillieres. The 
 mercenary thought then could not have been present, but 
 only the high honourable, in gazing so effectively at } T outhful 
 Rose's famous eyes. Monks are monks, or their colour also 
 had been celebrated. William Gemeticensis, a monk, how- 
 ever, tells us that the brother Gilbert, earl of Clare, had 
 a daughter Rose, and we ought to be grateful for his giving a 
 third Rose to this fine family of the castle of Tunbridge. 
 Each of the generations had its Rose, and Eudo plucked the 
 fairest flower in all the gardens of his period. 
 
 His descendants will illustrate his lineage further, but it is 
 by the record of his father, Hubert of Rye, as ' Hubert de 
 Sancto Claro ' at that time, 1640, when there was no motive 
 whatever to create a lineage, as has sometimes, though perhaps 
 seldom, in the older periods at all events, been done, that suc- 
 cess of tracing the family is assured. The chances were all 
 that Eudo Dapifer should have been lost in the crowd of first 
 men with first names only, as a very powerful Norman, had 
 not the Harleian MS. saved thus what is a brilliant addition 
 to the roll of England's great names in the very highest rank 
 of political activity. It is, however, quite possible that 
 other, but it cannot be better, evidence may be gathered of 
 this same fact, now that the darkness, even of Domesday Book, 
 has been thoroughly cleared away as to who Eudo filius Hulerti 
 or Eudo Dapiferus really was in blood. 
 
 Some of the findings of Robert Glover, the Somerset herald, 
 may be referred to in this inquiry of lineage. Smith, the
 
 EUDO'S LINEAGE. 73 
 
 Rouge-dragon in 1600, transcribed in red and black ink, very 
 beautifully, a volume of his pedigrees, which forms 31 S. 245 
 of the Harleian collection. The connection of Hamo Dapifer 
 and Eudo Dapifer has had general treatment already in the 
 chapter ' Eudo Huberti Filius,' but Glover's tree of Hamo 
 is too suggestive not to notice. He begins with Richard, 
 duke of Normandy after William Longsword, and hus- 
 band to the famous Princess Gunnora. Their third son, 
 Mauger, was archbishop of Rouen and earl of Corbeil, 
 and Glover makes him the ancestor of the Robert Fitz-Hamo 
 and Hamo Dapifer family. The son of the archbishop was 
 Hamo. called Dentatus, the Earl of Corbeil. His son was 
 Hamo, the lord of Torigion or Thorigny, in Normandy. This 
 EEamo's two sons were Robert Fitz-Hamo and Hamo the dapi- 
 fer and viscount. One Cottonian MS., which must be much 
 older than Glover's time, Sir Robert Cotton, the heir of the 
 last of the English Braces, living in the sixteenth century, is 
 much more limited, beginning with Hamo, father of Robert, 
 calling him a kinsman of the Conqueror. The connections 
 with the Consuls, descended from Henry First and a princess 
 of Wales, Tudor, are fully given, and agree with the usual 
 accounts. Sir Henry Ellis says no one has made a guess at 
 the Hamoes' lineage except one writer, who thought they 
 might be Crevecoeurs. There are relationships, at all events 
 affinities, between later Sinclairs and these Crevecoeurs; and 
 as their name is only a Norman soubriquet, it is within the 
 bounds of possibility that this thought may be corroborative 
 of the Hamo lineage, for which the proofs are being sought. 
 Palgrave is incautious in his sweeping statement that nothing 
 is hardly known of even this dapifer's father. The view that 
 the family was of male line of the dukes of Normandy, and 
 also Sinclairs, conflicts with the theory given previously. Mar- 
 riages early and frequent did connect them. Glover, an expert, 
 can hardly but be correct, the connections of the family being 
 soon semi-royal. Robert Fitz-Hamo was the famous ' knight 
 of Rye,' in Sussex, who fought so well for Rufus at Rochester 
 against his uncle Odo, and in Normandy against his two 
 brothers, Duke Robert and Henry. In pity for his land- 
 lessness, but also for cash down, ^"3000 to moneyless Curthose, 
 Henry had the province of Coustance to govern. Rufus got 
 everything his own way. Henry at one period was so weak
 
 74 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and stripped that he had only five attendants, and these of the 
 peaceful clerical and serving orders, going from place to place 
 as he could find hosts. His fierce struggling with his nobles 
 all through his reign, but most at first, is explained by the 
 early bitterness of "life he had. The character of the man 
 must have been bad, though he was so undoubtedly able a 
 king. The monks have carefully chronicled his thirteen 
 illegitimate children. Describing the beginning of his reign 
 Brady, in his History of England published 1685, shows how if 
 it were not for Archbishop Anselm, the German, he would 
 probably not have reigned. William of Breteuil, son of 
 William Fitz-Osborn, the fallen dapifer, who got the earldom 
 of Hereford, the Isle of Wight, and the half -governorship of 
 England from the Conqueror, when the death of Rufus in the 
 New Forest was known, proposed at once to Henry to fulfil 
 his vow of allegiance and theirs by going directly to Robert 
 his brother and acknowledging him as king of England and 
 Normandy. William of Breteuil bravely kept up the contro- 
 versy which Henry's refusal to submit himself caused. Wil- 
 liam of Malmesbury says that only four nobles clung to Henry : 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, his former bitter enemy, in whose favour 
 Rufus had dispossessed him of the lands of his mother ; Roger 
 Bigod ; Robert, the earl of Mellent ; and Richard de Redvors. 
 Robert de Belesme, who was a Montgomery, Walter Giffard, 
 Eudo Dapifer's wife's uncle, and William de Warenne, the 
 earl of Surrey, began in 1101 the fighting in England and 
 Normandy that made Henry's reign so dangerous a time, espe- 
 cially for leading men. It has been seen how difficult Eudo 
 1 imself found it to keep his position in so fierce and uncertain 
 light as played then around the throne. The ruin of great 
 men is the notorious feature of the reign. Surrey's appeal as 
 exiled loser of his lands, worth ^"1000 annually, is suggestively 
 described by Brady. 
 
 But it is of Robert Fitz-Hamo and his brother the inquiry 
 now is. Robert married first a daughter of Tudor ap Rhees, 
 prince of South Wales, and afterwards the daughter of Roger 
 Montgomery, count of Arundel. His daughter Matilda be- 
 came Henry the First's daughter-in-law, by marrying his son 
 Robert Consul, earl of Gloucester, the greatest noble of his 
 time. When he died in 1146, after his brave struggling for 
 his sistex*, Matilda, the empress, and for her son Henry
 
 EUDO'S LINEAGE. 75 
 
 Second, his wife married another husband, Nigel of Mowbray, 
 son of Roger of Albeni. Robert Fitz-Hamo had three other 
 daughters. Amicia was married to the earl of Brittany. Two 
 were abbesses, Hawisa, of Shaftesbury, and Cecilia, of Wilton. 
 Hamo the dapifer's personal history, Robert Fitz-Hamo's 
 brother, is extremely short in point of lineage. He had no 
 children, Glover says. Sir Henry Ellis shows that he is the 
 same as the Hamo Vicecomes of Domesday Booh. It is a pos- 
 sible theory to maintain, that as he was viscount of Kent, 
 and as viscounts, whose chief duties were to settle cases like 
 sheriffs, walk with twelve men any disputed marches, and so 
 forth, were often called dapifers, he may have only got called 
 dapifer of England as being that of the leading county in 
 England. The viscountship Kanciae, was easily situated to 
 Rye, in Sussex, and the younger brother had claim and oppor- 
 tunity there. But the relationship by blood to Eudo Dapifer 
 is the best explanation of his services, both as dapifer of Eng- 
 land and viscount of Kent. The substitute- dapifership was 
 high appointment for the vicecomes, and the necessary absences 
 of Eudo in Normandy, for the great duties there of his sene- 
 schalship, gave Hamo practically the dapifership of England. 
 His want of heirs would also satisfy the hereditary nature of 
 the appointment. That it was an arrangement of consan- 
 guinity is implied by the fact that in the roll in the church of 
 Dives, Normandy, of the companions of William in the con- 
 quest of England, the names of both appear, as .Eude le Sene- 
 chal and Hamon le Senechal. Perhaps one of the strongest 
 arguments that Hamo and Robert Fitz-Hamo, with his four 
 brilliant and religious daughters, were Sinclairs, and nearly 
 related to Eudo Sinclair, the dapifer, is to be found in the 
 tenacity with which hereditary right to this office was always 
 maintained. When Hamo and Eudo were registered in 
 Domesday Booh as dapifers, Eudo was in high favour with the 
 Conqueror, and no encroachment could have occurred upon 
 his rights. Eudo's brother, Adam of Campes, in Kent, was 
 one of the commissioners in 1080-86 ; his wife's uncle, Walter 
 Giffard, earl of Buckingham, was another; Ferrers, earl of 
 Derby, was the third ; and Remigius, bishop of Lincoln, the 
 fourth : his rights would probably be well upheld by them ; and 
 if they have not entered his name as dapifer of England and 
 Normandy in words, it is because Eudo Dapifer meant dapifer
 
 76 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 as wide as the king's rule was. Dapifer, in the small sense, it 
 has been shown, occurs often. There is nothing to be gained in 
 the way of male lineage subsequent to Robert Fitz-Hamo and 
 Hamo Dapifer, both of them, unless Robert Fitz-Hamo be 
 found to have had sons by his first wife, dying without suc- 
 cessors to whatever name they had, Sinclair or other. Such 
 accumulation of coincidences does all but fix them as of the 
 line of Hubert of Ryes, of whom Eudo was son, Eudo de Sancto 
 Claro. Dr. Brady says, ' He was son to Hubert de Rie, 
 privado to both Edward the Confessor and William the Con- 
 queror, and envoy in the greatest and most private matters 
 that passed between them ; ' and in another place he has, 
 ' Eudo being his fourth son.' The date of the great embassy 
 is given as 1065. Besides the sister married to Geffrey Man- 
 deville, first of the name in England, he had another sister 
 married to the lord of Valoniis, whose son Petrus was one of 
 the intercessors for this uncle Eudo with King Henry the 
 First. It is not yet satisfactory wholly, the discussion of rela- 
 tionship of Robert Fitz-Hamo and Hamo Dapifer to Sinclairs, 
 but the likelihoods recur in so many ways that the question 
 could hardly be escaped. Eudo's family, the Clares, the Con- 
 suls, the Giffards, the Hamoes, are inextricably woven together ; 
 and perhaps this is the wise way now of leaving the question 
 of fixing the past for the house of Rye, to which Eudo was so 
 great an ornament, of whose surname there is, by the Harleian 
 MS., absolute surety. The relationships of his own children 
 to the Mandeville earls of Essex, the Bigod earls of Nor- 
 folk, the Vere earls of Oxford, the Beauchamp earls of 
 Warwick, the Bohun earls of Oxford, Hereford, Essex, and 
 Northampton, and to the lords Saye, Buckland, and Ludger- 
 shall, are accurately and artistically displayed on its pedigree 
 page, the evidences taking the other side of the leaf.
 
 THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 77 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE LAXDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 
 
 It does not seem possible to discover what the possessions of 
 Eudo were in Normandy, except indirectly and generally. The 
 Doudo whom Bishop Tanner makes complimentary to Roger 
 Bigod, founder of Thetford, the date of whose death in the 
 same year, 1107, with Robert Fitz-Hamo, has been preserved 
 in his remarkable Latin epitaph, may have had a Norman 
 property called Afini, that steward of the household being so 
 designated ; but nothing has been found to establish this. 
 Matthew of "Westminster's notice of him as founder of the 
 church of Holy Trinity at Exaqueum may imply that as part 
 of his land Ordericus Vitalis, who, with Matthew Paris, is 
 the great ecclesiastical and historical authority of the earliest 
 periods, has most satisfactory reference to his position as land- 
 holder in Normandy. He describes Eudo thus : ' Normannici 
 ducts dapift rum qui in pago Constantino divitiis et potestate 
 inter Normanniae proceres eminebat' — 'The dapifer of the 
 Norman duke, who, in the province of Coustance, excelled 
 among the nobles of Normandy by his riches and authority.' 
 Those who are acquainted with the brevity and nonchalance 
 with which the greatest persons and events are treated in such 
 writers, will understand the importance of Orderic's words. 
 It is known that the castle of Preaux, Praels, or Pratelli was 
 his chief residence in Normandy, and had he no more than 
 the wide demesnes which followed it, he would have been of 
 first rank. ' Preaux,' says Duncan, author of The Dukes of 
 Normandy, 'is in the arrondissement of Rouen. In 1070 
 its castle belonged to Odo, called dapifer, son of Hubert of 
 Rye ; not Rye in Sussex but Rye in Normandy, three leagues 
 to the north-east of Bayeux.' It was in his castle of Preaux 
 that he died in 1120. A younger branch of the English lords 
 De Cailly, and related to the royal families of England and 
 France, took its name from Preaux, but it is difficult to 
 discover how they succeeded Eudo, whether by consanguinity, 
 affinity, or ducal favour. If something is added as to his 
 offices, sufficient insight will be gained as to the seneschal's
 
 73 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 lands across the Channel. Madox, in his History of the 
 Exchequer, has great difficulty in separating the offices of 
 dapifer, seneschal, lord chief justice, and others, to different 
 persons in England after the Conquest. As matter of fact 
 they only separated in the reign of Henry the First, our modern 
 forms of courts of law and parliament then taking shape, to 
 the disgust, as it may easily be believed, of the conservatives 
 and beneficiaries of the Grand Customs of Normandy. It was 
 the Saxon necessities, and the reintroduction of the laws of 
 Edward the Confessor, which divided the great office of sene- 
 schal or dapifer into so many smaller offices, responsible no 
 longer to the dapifer but to the king, and in due time to the 
 parliaments. Under Duke William in Normandy there was 
 not yet an inkling of subtraction from the power of his mayor 
 of the palace. The history of Mayor Pepin, the father of 
 Charlemagne and of the Capets, illustrates the position. The 
 dapifers were often more powerful than their kings, and sup- 
 planted them in more countries than France. First, second, 
 third, and every lord of the treasury seem incarnated in this 
 prime minister and prime subject. Brady and Hallam explain 
 his powers with something like enthusiasm. The former says 
 that ' he might do in all things as he thought most expedient.' 
 The Grande Customier of Normandy is the best source of 
 information, and it says that ' a certain superior justice, 
 called the prince's seneschal, travelled and passed through 
 Normandy, corrected inferior justices, looked after the prince's 
 lands and rights, and, after the laws of Normandy, rectified 
 what was done wrong in the bailliwicks and in the forests.' 
 Once every three years he visited all the bailliwicks or pro- 
 vinces, redressed criminal wrongs, considered questions of 
 treasure- trove and wrecks, saw to it that the highways were 
 in right condition, and in a thousand other modes kept the 
 kingdom in its best order. There were seven bailliwicks in 
 all Normandy, the bailiffs occupying a position like the comites 
 or county ruling earls of subsequent England, and the triennial 
 visit of the dapifer would be to them the event of events. 
 Brady says that this seneschal or dapifer could remove all 
 the inferior justiciaries from office without any appeal. He 
 adds to his exposition, and he has paid great attention to his 
 subject by consultation of very numerous and the best autho- 
 rities, that ' This great officer was also general viceroy and
 
 THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 79 
 
 guardian of the kingdom in the king's absence, and some- 
 times made peace and war by the advice of the chief nobility.' 
 
 To such a man the extent of his fief could be practically as 
 wide as he might care to make it. His was a despotism only 
 limited by the king's will ; but that this was a great and 
 effective limitation so far as the Rollo dynasty was concerned, 
 has appeared already by the fall of William Fitz-Osborn as 
 suddenly as that of the chief ruler of a Persian monarch, or 
 the vizier of a Turkish sultan. It is true, the immense differ- 
 ence, even in the case of such a determined will as was that of 
 JJuke William, is to be seen in the fact that he could not 
 afford to degrade his officer to real ruin, the European kings 
 being always but a best among equals. The honours and lands 
 of Fitz-Osborn afterwards in England, were the politic heal- 
 ing of perhaps the Conqueror's most daring step. He knew 
 his Norman peers well ; they would have no such irresponsible 
 powers in any hands. The dapifer was their safeguard from 
 kingly despotism, and their vigour never feared that if the 
 viceroy should wish to be tyrannical they could not meet him. 
 Such a mode of checks was as original to this curious system 
 as it was effective for good government, so long as the king 
 was not a faineant ; and even then, as Charlemagne's case, 
 and more pointedly as his father Pepin's shows, who had 
 transformed himself from dapifership to kingship, a tyrant 
 was not the inevitable, if probable result. Responsibility of 
 the ministry in modern phrase, is the exact equivalent to dapi- 
 fership in this aspect. 
 
 But the object is gained of showing that Eudo was actually, 
 as well as proportionally, a greater landholder in Normandy 
 than we know by record that he was afterwards in England. 
 When he so faithfully toiled for the fulfilment of his master's 
 last will and testament, in securing the English crown for 
 Pufus, the Conqueror's second son, it would be injustice to his 
 great-hearted character, not to remember that he jeopardised 
 the confiscation of all his Norman lands and wealth, as well as 
 his hereditary office of dapifer of Normandy. Had Robert the 
 will of his father, it is probable that Eudo might have been 
 wholly stripped of all he had in his kingdom ; but the indica- 
 tions are, pi^obably from the duke's awe of Eudo's fellow- 
 nobles, and the great respect among his whole people for the 
 sacredness of law, that he neither lost his lands nor the office,
 
 So THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 even though not occupying either. Probably the needy 
 Robert received the fruits for years, but when Rufus so 
 thoroughly brought him and their brother Henry to terms, and 
 got earldoms of Ou and others for himself in Normandy, it 
 may be safely assumed that his English dapifer's rights in 
 Normandy would be restored, if indeed they had ever been 
 seized. It is probable that Robert had a steward of the 
 household during the reign of Rufus in England, but the 
 curious appeal of William of Breteuil, the great Fitz-Osborn's 
 son, to Henry in noo, that he should complete his vow of 
 loyalty to Robert, gives the idea that the latter clung with 
 Norman pertinacity to the la,ws and customs of his country, 
 and while Rufus reigned it must have been with his brother 
 protesting usurpation. In this light he would always keep 
 both the lands and hereditary office of Eudo open to the time 
 of his restoration to his full kingdom. The imagination must 
 not go too far in these directions ; but we know that an Eng- 
 lish Mandeville, long after this, got the Norman dapifership 
 solely through his relationship to Eudo, and respect for law 
 being characteristic of the country, surely its chief officer's 
 rights may have weathered through even the dreadful frater- 
 nal storms of that angry season. When he passed the greatest 
 danger of his life, the temptation, and perhaps one encouraged 
 by Norman respect for his rights in most difficult circum- 
 stances, to go with all the nobles of England, except four, to 
 put its crown at the feet of Robert; and when Henry the 
 First received him fully into the royal favour that, rightly 
 speaking, he never had foregone, being advocate only for the 
 just, like the son of his first great friend, the dapifer Fitz- 
 Osborn, his union of the two offices of dapifer of England and 
 Normandy again occurred, if they had been separated in fact 
 or in form or in both. His beginning to build the great 
 abbey of Colchester at his own expense, in September of 
 1 1 06, the very year in which the battle of Tenchbrai put both 
 countries wholly into his master's hands, Henry the First, is 
 no slight indication that his fortune got great and free enlarge- 
 ment then ; and the tradition of Henry putting tasks upon 
 liim, in his favourite amusement and devotion of great archi- 
 tectural building, further suggests ideas as to his princely 
 wealth. Nor must it be forgotten, that this astute and, like 
 all his dynasty, money-loving king, was at Eudo's deathbed,
 
 THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 8r 
 
 with purposes no doubt quite other than those of holy counsel. 
 Waltheof's possessions, it has been said, were in the reign of 
 the Conqueror his greatest enemies, and the inference is that 
 they lost him his head. The saying is probably a Saxon pre- 
 judice; for compare William's conquest and rule of England 
 for twenty-two years of stern struggle during cardinal politi- 
 cal transition, and only this one decapitation for state reasons, 
 with a dozen years out of Henry the Eighth's reign. Battle is 
 civilisation beside the use of the block and its two-handed 
 engine. But it may not be scrupled saying that Henry was 
 with the noblest man by birth perhaps, as certainly by his life, 
 of his kingdom, for reasons of property, which may appear by- 
 and-bye. It is probable that if this king needed it, the blind 
 old man, his faculties not impaired for all his busy powerful 
 life, as wisely arranged for that as his Genealogia shows him 
 to have done with the other things which occupy last hours. 
 The church had prospered well at his hands, and his monarch 
 represented himself now with the valuable result. Henry 
 indulged strong likings, but his memory was long and un- 
 forgiving; the ablest, the bitterest, and the most selfish, 
 even in his loves, of the three king brothers of the dynasty. 
 
 It is to England and to its Domesday Book that atten- 
 tion must be turned for accuracy as to any of Eudo's lands. 
 What he had in Normandy must always remain a subject of 
 inference, and however absolute that may be, general know- 
 ledge cannot compare with such as Adam Sinclair of 
 Campes in Kent, his next elder brother, and the three fellow- 
 commissioners gave in this monumental record, not only to 
 England but to the world, and for all ages. An immortality 
 such as Adam's in connection with this large but not ponder- 
 ous book of two volumes, one very much thinner than the 
 other, is more to be envied than most of the immortalities, 
 royal, noble, military, and literary that could be named. To 
 copy out all the entries of Eudo's lands, not to say translate 
 and explain them, would be work not in keeping with narra- 
 tive. The technicality would weary. There is abundant 
 material for a volume of this special character. One example, 
 and a description of the others, must be enough. It is taken 
 because of its being very short, and because of its historic 
 interest. When Hubert of Rye, his father, as privador be- 
 tween William, duke of Normandy, and Edward the Confessor, 
 
 F
 
 82 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 successfully accomplished his embassy in 1065, he had a 
 grant from the king of England of Ashe in Hampshire. It 
 is situated near the source of the Tees, which falls into South- 
 ampton harbour, and is at nearly equal distances from Bas- 
 ingstoke, Kingsclere, and Andover. In No. XXX. of the 
 Domesday survey of this county, this son is found possessor 
 of it. 
 
 ' Terra Eudon Filii Hubti. In Ovretvne Hit. 
 Eudo filf Hubti. ten Esse de rege. iEluuacre 
 
 comite 
 tenuit de Heraldo. Tc se defd p. Viu. hict. modo p. in. hid. 
 Tra e. Viu. car. In dfiio sunt 11. /~ nil. uitti y x. bord 
 cu. III. car. In aeccta ~y x. serui. y III. ac pti. 
 T.R.E. ualb. vii. lib. /" post ~y modo. vi. lb 7 X. solid. 
 7 hoc p dimid hida quae iniii e p Hugone uicecomite.' 
 
 Translated from the abbreviated Latin of records, this would 
 run more simply : ' Terra Eudonis filii Huberti. In Over- 
 tune Hundredo. Eudo filius Huberti tenet Esse de rege. 
 Alwacre tenuit de comite Heraldo. Tunc, se defendebat pro 8 
 hidis ; modo, pro 3 hidis. Terra est 8 carucatce. In dominio 
 sunt 2, et 4 villain et 10 bordarii cum 3 carucis. In aecclesia 
 et 10 servi et 3 acrae prati. Tempore Regis Edicardi valebat 
 7 libras ; et post, et modo, 6 libras, et 10 solidos ; et hoc pro 
 dimidia hida quae minus est per Hugonem vicecomitem.' Its 
 English is clear as to language. ' The land of Eudo, the son 
 of Hubert. In Overton hundred. Eudo, the son of Hubert, 
 holds Ashe from the king. Alwacre held it from Earl 
 Harold. It was then assessed at 8 hides ; now at 3 hides. 
 The arable is 8 ploughlands. In demesne are 2 ploughlands 
 and 4 villagers, and 10 borderers employ 3 ploughs. To the 
 church also belong 10 slaves and 3 acres of meadow. It was 
 worth in the time of King Edward 7 pounds, and afterwards 
 and now 6 pounds and 10 shillings. This diminution is 
 because of the half hide which is in the possession of Hugo, 
 the viscount.' 
 
 It might give a wrong impression to direct much attention 
 to this, one of the smallest parts of Eudo's English property, 
 but it is of use to remember that a hide was 120 acres. The 
 Black Book of Westminster, last chapter, liber i., says, ' Hyda 
 a primitiva institutione ex centum acris constat.' It was 
 written under Norman auspices, and therefore its 100 are
 
 THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 83 
 
 equal to 120 English acres. A ploughland varied in size 
 according to the kind of agriculture and district vigour of 
 the men and cattle, 60, 70, 80, and even 100 acres, as well 
 as much smaller portions, getting the name in the survey. 
 The demesne was the part of an estate cultivated for the 
 proprietor or for the manor-house. The villagers were his 
 feudal tenants, giving their personal services on the demesne, 
 or wherever their lord directed. Borderers were cottars whose 
 chief subsistence was in labouring for the villagers. They 
 were under the feudal protection of the lord, but had only the 
 Lowest duties to perform from him. It is probable that the 
 slaves on and in the manor were their superiors practically, 
 for if executioners were required the borderers got the employ- 
 ment. They had opportunity, however, of making money, 
 and becoming villagers or villani. The send were slaves, and 
 nothing more or less, though some interpreters try to give the 
 idea of service and not slavery. They were bought and sold ; 
 their children were born slaves ; differences in their position 
 were solely at the will of their individual masters. The church, 
 too, accepted, as even here appears, the state of things without 
 question. The scale of money value may be understood from 
 two somewhat contemporary statements : first, that William 
 Warenne, earl of Surrey, when he lost all his very wide 
 English estates, and got Robert, duke of Normandy, to inter- 
 cede for his pardon with his brother, stated that they were 
 worth nearly ^"iooo annually; and, second, that the famous 
 Hubert de Burgh took from Henry the Third ^50 a year, as 
 equivalent to his third part of the returns from perhaps the 
 richest county, Kent, of which he was then ruling earl. It is 
 interesting to know that Harold, the Conqueror's antagonist, 
 once held Ashe. Hugo, the sheriff or viscount, was a Norman 
 frequent in the survey : the sheriff's office, one of great dignity, 
 being to attend to all the king's concerns in a county; his 
 lands, castles, their rents, and whatever royalty business re- 
 quired to be done. The viscount was the natural check upon 
 the count or earl, when the latter was not ornamental but 
 useful, and remunerated for his services like the sheriff. 
 
 Of the lands Eudo held in capitc or directly from the king, 
 there is only one other entry as short as this. His property 
 in 'the shire which gave birth to Alfred,' the Saxon king, Berk- 
 shire, Kipplesmere hundred, takes but four lines, though those
 
 84 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 commissioners certainly knew how to put a great deal into 
 little bulk of writing. The Hertfordshire estates fill fifty- 
 three lines ; those in Huntingdon, nine ; those in Northampton, 
 fourteen ; those in Cambridgeshire, forty- two ; those in Bed- 
 fordshire a hundred lines ; while those of Essex fill three great 
 pages of Domesday Book. Nor do these at all exhaust the 
 list. He holds very much land by under-tenantship in Berk- 
 shire, Beds. , Suffolk, and especially in Essex. It would almost 
 appear that he had liking or policy for this mode of tenure, 
 and probably his popularity with the Saxons may have been 
 owing not a little to his moderation in that, as in most other 
 respects where his action is seen. To be anxious to exhaust 
 this subject were needless, because the original record, with 
 its clearest of showings, remains for the benefit of an illimit- 
 able future of those interested and inquiring. No substitute 
 is sufficient for its unique pages. If the dapifer's lands were 
 to be all extracted from it, and dealt with in a way corresponding 
 to the gravity of Domesday Book, the work would have to be 
 both independent and wholly scientific. 
 
 Here one other thing from it may be added, which is more 
 in the stream of purpose, that both in Norfolk and Suffolk 
 this Sinclair family held land before the Conquest, in the time 
 of Edward the Confessor. Already, notice was drawn to the 
 gifts of Hubert to New Church, West Cheap, London, if he 
 did not also found it ; and it is a commonplace how favourably 
 the Confessor looked upon the Normans. In the Chronicon 
 Joliannis Bromton the second reason which the chronicler 
 gives for William the Conqueror's enmity to Harold was, 
 ' Quia Robertum areltii'piscopum genere Normannum et Odonem 
 Consulem et omnes Francos ingeniose ah Anglia fugaverat ' — 
 1 Because he had ingeniously driven from England the 
 archbishop, Robert, a Norman by race, and Odo, his consul, 
 and all the French.' If this is Eudo Sinclair, Odo and 
 Eudo being often the same name with the chroniclers, though 
 ultimately distinct, it is capital addition to his biography, 
 that he was a consul or ruler of several counties or bailliwicks 
 before he was dapifer. Consul was also applied in the sense 
 of lieutenant, and he may have been at the court of Edward 
 in this capacity for Duke William. This would explain his 
 holding land then in Suffolk and Norfolk. The first and 
 probably most instigating reason of hatred to Harold is given,
 
 THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 85 
 
 because Earl Godwin his father, with himself and his brothers, 
 killed William's relation Alfred so barbarously, and his retinue 
 of Norman nobles, at Guildford; and this is the event which 
 made Hubert of Rye's bravery so conspicuous to his fellows 
 when all but he refused to take the embassy to receive the Con- 
 fessor's last will and testament in favour of the duke. It was 
 no carpet errand, with Godwin's unscrupulous and murderous 
 sons striving for their own hands. One cannot but think that 
 Hubert, with his gallant and polished sons no doubt at his 
 side, knew England well, and had skilfully calculated the 
 chances. His extraordinary preparations made to gain the 
 Saxou populace, an equipage somewhat foreshadowing a lord 
 major's show, were grounded on knowledge of their character. 
 Probably he and his four boys and their sisters formed ' great 
 part ' of that continual grumble which Earl Godwin found it 
 convenient, for his evil usurping purposes, to keep up through 
 Edward's reign against the Frenchmen, as he took care they 
 should be without qualification considered. If Eudo,the consul, 
 were driven away from England previously, he must have lost 
 his lands here ; and Hubert's determination to take the 
 embassy may have been aided by chance of recovering these 
 to Eudo, and probably other lands which he and his sons, 
 Ralph, Hubert, and Adam, may have had. It was shown, how 
 he got the entirely new grant of Ashe ; and what his family 
 had would perhaps also be as much given back as the difficult 
 period allowed. The duke's historical silent rage for most of 
 a day, when he heard of Harold's making himself king, can 
 be better understood that Hubert's successful mission in 1065, 
 added to Harold's own sacred oath, made it all but a certainty 
 that the English kingdom awaited him without a stroke. It 
 is easy also to imagine with what indignation, and with what 
 hope and courage also, Hubert and his sons prepared for, and 
 energised in, the conquest of, or more truly the suppression 
 of, soi-disant King Harold and his rebels. If they had pos- 
 sessions once in England, it agrees with the whole previous 
 ami subsequent history of Norman nobles, that they would 
 never rest till they had their rights. Determined persistency 
 is the note of their characters, though gracefulness and honour 
 were always awake. 
 
 But a word or two must be said of Eudo's position in Essex. 
 Here his largest landed and other interests lay. Of this county
 
 86 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 he has always been a chief hero till the present time ; and while 
 Colchester has existence, it is probable that its great lord, 
 Eudo, who ruled it so well, built so much of its famous stones, 
 left so full a share of his wealth to its best purposes, cannot 
 be forgotten. Besides Domesday Booh, his charter to his 
 abbey gives good idea of the lands he held there. Colchester 
 was feudatory to the castle till Elizabeth's reign, and Eudo 
 had the income of quit-rents and the 170 arable acres of land 
 which followed it, perhaps more for the conveniences a manor- 
 house usually had, of home produce, than at all as a measure 
 or even aid of his feudal office. He had also the great fee of 
 the district. By his position as governor he was both the 
 steward and bailiff of Tendring hundred, and that he had 
 sufficient municipal sympathies is shown by the register of 
 him having five houses within the walls. He had 40 acres 
 of land which belonged to the burgesses in King Edward's 
 time, and which probably lay very near the city. It is of 
 genealogical interest also that Hamo Dapifer, who has been 
 claimed as near relation to Eudo, held one house, one court 
 or hall, one hide of land, and 15 slave- burgesses in Col- 
 chester. A nice question, it would be, to fix his usual home 
 at this justice-giving hall, so near Eudo Sinclair of the castle 
 and tower of Colchester. Eudo and Hamo, the dapifers, cross 
 each other so agreeably, and so often, that relationship seems 
 the enforced explanation. 
 
 For quick reference as to Eudo's standing, Sir Henry Ellis, 
 in his Introduction, is good guide. He says Eudo's lands 
 in capite were in Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, 
 Hants., Berks., Cambridgeshire, Hunts., Beds., and Essex ; and 
 he is, if Domesday Booh itself be not available, sufficient 
 authority also for the statement that he held lands both in 
 Norfolk and Suffolk, in the time of King Edward before the 
 Conquest. Morant, the historian of Essex, and of Colchester 
 particularly, in the middle of the eighteenth century, took 
 the trouble to count Eudo's lands in some counties, and 
 found that he had 25 lordships in Essex, 7 in Hertford- 
 shire, 1 in Berks., 12 in Bedfordshire, 9 in Norfolk, and 
 10 in Suffolk. Essex's historian, Wright, of our century, may 
 be further referred to in this and in other lines of Eudo's 
 biography; and with the advantage that he tells of many 
 things which have not been able to find any place here. His
 
 THE LANDS OF EUDO SINCLAIR. 87 
 
 description of the castle is very full and interesting. The 
 interminable vaults of it aid the view that there was under- 
 ground tunnelling to a large extent, and that there was a tower 
 as well as a castle. He mentions another church, and other 
 foundations, ascribed to the dapifer. Of the castle, his book 
 has a suggestive illustration, the absurd dome, it may be 
 said, not looking its very worst. Altogether, his picturing 
 in words of Colchester, and of Essex generally, is of a kind 
 most helpful to a reader, though not so useful to a writer. 
 The town he notes to be 120 feet above the Colne. It 
 certainly commands wide prospects, and for this as well as 
 other reasons has long had distinction, antiquarian, civil, and 
 military, among the chief cities of the land. 
 
 It would not be safe to say that Eudo's English income far 
 surpassed that of the earl of Surrey with his ^1000 a-year, 
 though his office making him first subject of England it might 
 lie supposed that he could be the richest also; but when, as 
 addition, we take into account his Norman office and property, 
 to which Orderic has given considerable clue, it would be 
 probably difficult to find a man altogether so wealthy at that 
 period, not only in England but in Europe. There are appa- 
 rently larger landholders than he in Domesday Bool', although 
 he is one of first magnitude, even in appearance of entries ; but 
 his sagacity and favour with the crown probably were the causes 
 in the metaphorical sense of the goodness of the soil where 
 he pitched his various camps, and of their proximity to great 
 English centres, and especially to the ultimate centre of London. 
 When calculating results in value from the survey, such con- 
 siderations must never be forgotten. Hughs of Chester 
 may get provinces, if they please, where the wild men run; 
 Mortimers may have large portions of Welsh hills, and even 
 strips of English border; Saxon Goderics and treasonable or 
 coward Anglian Ralph Waers may keep eastern sheriffships 
 and consulships of Anglia, the prey of pirates ; Danish Wal- 
 theofs may be left, if they will only be sleeping bears, in their 
 northern earldoms; but we must have our faithful Eudoes, 
 Huberts, Adams, Richards, Fitz -Gilberts, Geffrey Mande- 
 villes, and Walter Giffards, near our hearts as sure bucklers. 
 They shall not want, where the royal conquering face shines, 
 and shines not proudly, but as that of comes among his 
 comites. Charles the Great and his paladins are a type that
 
 88 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 never dies, but which is always working to repeat itself. The 
 Conqueror only of his rebels, and rightful king of all that were 
 best in England, had, and deserved, worthy peers and cousins. 
 The lands of Eudo Sinclair were wide, and richer than they 
 were wide; but his offices, and how nobly he filled them, 
 whether those of the individual who gets love and reverence 
 and needs to give them back also, or those of the man of state 
 who is as wide as his sphere, and that practically the widest, 
 are the true subjects of exultation to any one who, having a 
 soul, recognises a rightly great and, as it were, universal man. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 john, i comes essexi^:: 
 
 The first Norman earl of Essex was John Sinclair, son of 
 Eudo Dapifer, the lord of Colchester. His father dying in 
 1 1 20, if no interruptions occurred, he would have had fifteen 
 years of the hereditary dapiferships of England and Normandy 
 under Henry I. The Harleian MS., 154, is the authority for 
 the creation of John as comes or count of Essex. Dugdale, 
 who gets most of his facts from the Bodleian, Harleian, and 
 Cottonian codices, missed this, and runs to the conclusion that 
 Eudo's daughter Margaret was his sole child and heir. So 
 far from that being the case, we know of a third, a William 
 who, Madox, a most trustworthy and learned writer, says was 
 crucified, or more likely cruciatus, tortured, before being killed. 
 This occurred in the reign of William Rufus, 1087-1100; 
 and it has been thought that it was the cause to Eudo his 
 father of withdrawing, as much as his offices would allow, 
 from the court of the king whom he had so successfully helped 
 to the throne. If it was his son, as there does not seem reason 
 to doubt, Eudo's position must have been somewhat parallel 
 to Brutus with his sons. William was in conspiracy against 
 Rufus. In Collections for llamjjshire, by D. Y., and edited 
 by Richard Warner, there is further knowledge. William, 
 earl of Ou, was accused by Geoffrey Baynard, of that Bay- 
 nard's Castle near where the office of the Times, on the banks
 
 JOHN, 'COMES ESSEXLE.' 89 
 
 of the Thames, London, now is, that he was conspiring against 
 the king, and offered his wager of battle on the point. William 
 of Ou was worsted, and Ruf us condemned him to be mutilated 
 and have his eyes put out. His relation, William Dapifer, 
 engaging in the same conspiracy, was hanged. D. Y. gives the 
 reference for this, Annates Waver, apud Gate, vol. ii., p. 140. 
 Why death overtook the younger and not the other relation it 
 is hard to see now. It was the conspiracy of 1095 by Mow- 
 bray, carl of Northumberland. Brady says that Rufus had 
 afterwards for his bitterest enemies Robert of Ou, as natural 
 aifection might well prompt ; Stephen of Albemarle ; Gerard of 
 Gournay on the Epte, it is thought, also a relation of William 
 Da] lifer; Ralph of Conchis; Richard deCurcey ; Walter Giffard ; 
 and Philip de Braiosa or Bruce, Agnes Sinclair's husband, the 
 <laughter of Walderne, earl of St. Clare. In this quarrel the 
 name and its closest relations seem divided much, but Eudo 
 kept loyal to his own king. The death of his son, already 
 a man of position, if dapifer meant anything further than 
 attachment to his father's title to him as heir presumptive, 
 must have been the severest of blows to his father. He was 
 the eldest son, and it is perhaps the best explanation of matters 
 that, before 1095, the real cause of his father being so much 
 at leisure, in his great fee of Colchester, was that William 
 had assumed fully the hereditary duties of dapifer in his 
 room. This would explain the special severity of his punish- 
 ment, as being able to do most mischief, having most power. 
 Eudo at the time of the revolt must have been nearly sixty ; 
 and some years before, he might well have thought it time to 
 retire for the religious life he loved so much. Madox says 
 that this William, the son of Eudo, was the king's aunt's son. 
 If this is true Eudo must have married, before he married his 
 faithful Rose Clare, a daughter of Baldwin, earl of Flanders, 
 sister to William the Conqueror's wife Matilda. Such con- 
 nections are apt to make men conspirators, as subsequent 
 English history illustrates only too well ; but the evidence is 
 not yet sufficient to reach conclusions as to this unfortunate 
 William. If he was Eudo's son, as Madox says, he was 
 certainly not a son of Rose Clare, for she had married at four- 
 teen, only seven years previously. That his mother may have 
 been one of the sisters or half-sisters of William the Con- 
 queror is a possibility which could clear matters.
 
 9 o THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Euclo's son John, this first earl of Essex, must have been 
 very much younger than William. He was a child of a few 
 years in 1095, and there is no reason why it could not be sup- 
 posed that he was not born then. We know from the MS. that 
 he lived within the reign of Henry the Second, which began 
 1 154. The signs are very apparent that he led a chequered 
 life, though the materials to judge by are scanty. He must 
 have lost the hereditary dapifership, in new legal and state 
 arrangements of Henry the First ; and it is not unlikely that 
 the division of offices which the increasing population and 
 wealth of the country may have required, disgusted him alto- 
 gether with dapifership. It is quite possible that his abilities 
 may not have been equal to the position, no family having a 
 continuous monopoly of talent. Certain it is that William 
 Bigod, who was drowned in the White Ship, and Hugh Bigod 
 were dapifers towards the end of the reign, as well as Fitz- 
 Eustace and Bobert Clare, ' Fitz-Bichard of Tunbridge ; ' and 
 probably this was part of King Henry's business at dying 
 Eudo Sinclaii-'s bedside. That John took the estates and 
 dapifership in Normandy may have been the case for some 
 years after his father's death ; but we know that his sister 
 Margaret's rights gave them to her son Geffrey Mandeville, 
 the third Norman earl of Essex, long before the date of John 
 Sinclair the first earl's death. The theory that would best fit 
 John's life is that, like Bobert, duke of Normandy, and many 
 another of the chief men of that time, he was carried away 
 with the crusading enthusiasm. A John de St. Clare, knight- 
 bachelor of France, appears in historic lists of crusaders, but 
 the time is too indefinite to say that this was he. It would be 
 quite against all that is known of the respect for relationship 
 and hereditary law of Normans to suppose that his king did 
 violence to his rights ; and so inspired were many in warring 
 against the infidel for the cross of Christ, that worldly duties 
 and titles weighed nothing in the balance. The son of a 
 father so devoted to the church's highest interests might well 
 be expected to take the cross, and devote his whole life to 
 that; though he never had the able and equally religious 
 mother that it was fortune to have in Bose Clare. In any 
 case he seems out of the political throng around the royalties, 
 feminine or usurping, after Henry the First ; and if ever he 
 returned to Colchester from the East, it must have been to
 
 JOHN, < COMES ESSEXLE.' 91 
 
 die, and not to assert any rights, at the beginning of the reign 
 of Henry the Second. It was not at all an uncommon thing 
 among the Norman nobles then to retire in manhood, or even, 
 early life, to a monastery, and oftenest the one they them- 
 selves founded. Sir Richard Luci, chief justice of England, 
 and the repeller of the invasion of the earl of Boulogne in 
 Henry the Second's reign, is an example, with his abbey of 
 Lesnes. All these things, however, being problematical must 
 be left so. In such times of religious madness and political, 
 not to say personal, ambitions, a thousand explanations could 
 be suggested as to the short record that seems to have survived 
 of John Sinclair, the first Norman earl of Essex. 
 
 Of him and his elder brother, as the last of Eudo's male line, 
 it would be interesting to know much ; but their stories are 
 equally broken. Madox speaks of William, films Eudonis, as 
 paying 20/ to the king's treasury for recovery of some 
 land from the earl of Brittany, and his account of him 
 may have been taken from Stow's Annals, published in 
 1 63 1. 'In a councell holden at Salisbury, William de Owe 
 was accused to the king of treason, who whiles bee provoked 
 his accuser to fight with him in combate, by the king's com- 
 mandment his eyes were plucked out. . . . Many innocent 
 men were also accused, of which number was William de 
 Aluerie a man of goodly personage, godfather to the king, 
 his auntes sonne, and his sewar, yet the king commanded him 
 to bee hanged : which William making his confession to Os- 
 mond, bishoppe of Salisbury, was first whipped throughout by 
 all the churches of the cittie, who dealing his garments to the 
 poore, went naked to hanging, bloodying his flesh with often 
 kneeling upon the stones : and at the place of execution, hee 
 satisfied the bishop and people, saying, So GOD helpe my 
 soule and deliver it from evil, as I am guiltlesse of the thing 
 that I am accused of : and after the bishop had commended 
 him to God, he was hanged.' Stow calls it ' Cruelty of 
 AYm. Rufus' at the side of his text, and gives 1095 for 
 date. Some of this cannot possibly apply to a son William 
 of Eudo Dapifer, though the main facts may. He could not 
 have been godfather to William Rufus, as both were of similar 
 age; but even the 'industrious' Stow may have nodded in 
 his desire to give too many circumstances to this tale of all 
 the chroniclers and historians. William Sinclair he probably
 
 92 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 was, and a man in his prime. It is possible that Madox may 
 be right after all, though there might be sufficient satisfaction 
 and to spare in accepting Eudo Dapifer as the husband of one 
 wife, and that one such a treasure. There is an explanation 
 of Stow's account which would resolve all the difficulties, and 
 give this turn also to Eudo's married life as with Rose only. 
 The king's sister's son was Stephen, the usurper of the crown, 
 and William Sinclair could quite well be his godfather, and 
 the ' man of goodly personage ' also, who was sewar or high 
 steward to Rufus. What Madox extracts of him in connec- 
 tion with the king is Jilius amitae illius, which is a phrase 
 that occurs in ancient Latin more than once about Stephen. 
 It is possible that extracts have been mixed when quoted, but 
 nothing substantial can depend on such a chance. The pas- 
 sage in the Annals, however, can bear without straining 
 yet another interpretation, which will establish all that is re- 
 quired, making the facts consistent throughout. ' Godfather 
 to the king his aunte's sonne ' is the archaic way of saying 
 that William Dapifer was godfather to the son of the king's 
 aunt. Rufus had such female relations, so that it is quite 
 fair to accept this as the final version. One of the two sisters 
 of the Conqueror was married to Walter de St. Valery, the 
 other to an earl. Radulph de Diceto's chronicle seems one 
 of the origins of these details, and after describing the punish- 
 ment of William de Auco, or more usually, William of Ou, his 
 words continue, ' Et dapiferum illius Willielmum de Alder i 
 filium amitae illius rex jussit suspendi,' — ' And his dapifer, 
 William of Alderi, son of his aunt, the king ordered to be 
 hung.' The language in itself is as ambiguous as one of the 
 Delphic oracles, since he also, so far as the words go, might 
 be both dapifer and aunt's son to William, earl of Ou. Alured 
 of Beverley, after describing William, earl of Ou's punish- 
 ment, continues, ' Et dapiferum illius Willielmum filium amitae 
 illius tradicionis conscium jussit rex suspendi.' This has the 
 addition that the dapifer ' knew of the treason,' and it goes 
 also to show that he was the dapifer of the earl of Ou if it 
 shows anything at all. Some of the chroniclers copy prede- 
 cessors wholesale. It is hardly likely that William of Ou's 
 dapifer could be godfather to a king. Blomfield in his His- 
 tory of Norfolk, in describing Grimston manor there, which 
 belonged for many generations to the Sancto Claro family,
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OE ESSEX. 93 
 
 Gereberd, John, and Guy being men of national importance in 
 later centuries, speaks of Warin and Drogo, sons of William, 
 the sewar, as holding it about 11 00. The Montacutes, which 
 is a local name only, had Drogoes, and the Warrens of Surrey 
 were related consanguineously to Eudo's line ; but it is diffi- 
 cult to tell where Blomfield got this knowledge, and neither is 
 it also remarkable for its definiteness, however suggestive and 
 confirmatory. Both William Dapifer, who had what seems a 
 martyrdom even if he had been undoubtedly guilty, and his 
 brother John, earl of Essex, are shadowy, like so many past 
 figures who may have been unusually substantial in their day. 
 What is heroism itself without its poet or historian? Where 
 good men are numerous, the chances of immortality are not 
 always the clearest, even for the able. With their only sister, 
 and the ultimate heir of their father Eudo, and of themselves, 
 there is firm footing. Record is plentiful as to what things 
 and persons affected her life and state. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 
 
 It would be easy to write pictorially about the early years of 
 Margaret, Eudo Dapifer and Rose Clare's only daughter. In 
 the grand military surroundings of Colchester Castle, half 
 palace, half garrison of control over hostile, repressed, but 
 brave Saxons, the elements were at work which go to form 
 one of the high types of men and women. Courage, drill, 
 beauty of order among soldiers, from governor to plainest 
 warder; high spirit, decorative ability, and the inspiration 
 which comes only from love and danger and great wealth 
 united, among the ladies, from the thoroughbred infant to the 
 chivalric grandmother of many heroic tales : such a home was 
 the right scene for the upbringing of the mother of the ' great 
 Geffrey Mandeville.' The clank of armour was continual 
 music in her ears, and special occasions of assembling of the 
 panoply of successful war were numerous, in this castle fifty 
 miles from London, where danger had its usually quite regular
 
 94 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 threatenings of revolt, or of invasion from France or from 
 Saxony to its Norwegian limits. Her grandfather from Tun- 
 bridge Castle, Richard Fitz-Gibert, earl of Clare, the Con- 
 queror's greatest captain and the justice of England, would 
 be a frequent figure in Eudo's genial home, and her four brave 
 uncles would probably be as often with their sister Rose's 
 family as their military and civil duties permitted. All that 
 was high and inspiriting in civil or military life had a 
 popular centre where the dapifer held his private and popular 
 court ; and nowhere else in the country could, and did, royalty 
 more freely take its ease from state care. Dim those far days 
 are, but not dark. There is sufficient fact to guide a careful 
 imagination to full realisation of the splendid vigorous time 
 which, more than all other periods, has gone to the making 
 of this nation of the nations. It is perhaps a matter most 
 for private musing. Progress calls now for the hand to 
 plainer but quite as satisfactory work. 
 
 Margaret must, after no doubt one of the best educations 
 that human chance has, first appear historically as the wife of 
 William Mandeville, the second earl of Essex. The husband 
 was worthy of her, though it was by the right of her and her 
 family he became earl. His father was Geffrey Mandeville, 
 or, as they said then, Geffrey of Magna Villa, his land near 
 Valognes or Valence, in Normandy. He came to England 
 with the Conqueror, and was one of his brave warriors of 
 Hastings. He got more than a hundred lordships or estates 
 here in different counties. His king's largest gift was the 
 land which Aesgar Stallere, the Saxon earl of Essex, had, 
 though he did not add the title. Instead of this he was made 
 sheriff or viscount of Middlesex, Essex, and Hertfordshire, 
 which was probably as good in the way of wealth as the third 
 part of the taxes which was the following of the title of earl 
 then. Geffrey was twice married. His first wife was Athe- 
 laise, buried at Westminster, of which land her husband had 
 the fourth. She was mother of William Mandeville. Geffrey's 
 second wife, Dugdale says, was Leceline, though some have 
 her name as Muriel. All are agreed that she was the sister 
 of Eudo Dapifer ; and that she had some of his spirit, is evi- 
 dent by the fact that she was the foundress of Hurley monas- 
 tery in Berkshire. She bad a son Osberne, as has been already 
 noted, who had descendants, probably altogether lost in the
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 95 
 
 rich stream of English ordinary life. One of them was Wal- 
 yaine, but for the present their history is not wanted. This 
 Norman, Geffrey, was the first constable of the tower of 
 London, and was one of the earliest to wear armorial distinc- 
 tions, :i carbuncle for remarkable part of them. Freeman lias 
 interesting notices of him, founded on study of Domesday 
 Book. This, for example. ' One grant of lands recorded in 
 Domesday (ii. 59) would seem to belong to the very first days 
 of William's reign. Lands in Essex which had belonged to a 
 certain Leofsuna, appear as the property of Geffrey of Mande- 
 ville, with the comment, Hoc manerium dedit Rex G. quando 
 remansit Londoniae.' But it must be said that the grasping 
 character, as he thinks, of the Mandevilles does not find favour 
 in his prejudiced sight. He is right enough that they took as 
 much as they could get, but that was the order of the day ; 
 and it testifies to their courage and ability that they succeeded 
 well in the stormiest of times. 
 
 Margaret Sinclair's husband, William, would please this 
 historian better, both from the mildness of his own character 
 and his relationship to Eudo Dapifer, Freeman's only favourite 
 among the haughty persevering Normans. One thing is par- 
 ticularly remarkable of him. Though titular earl of Essex, 
 as well as substantial earl, he does not seem of so ostentatious 
 a temper as his father. The coat of arms he changed to plain, 
 and the prominent carbuncle was put aside altogether. It is 
 not likely that the countess had most to say to this, for her 
 son Geffrey, and sons are in such matters often of one mind 
 with their mothers, restored the carbuncle, and probably im- 
 proved on his grandfather's general displaying. She had a 
 da ug b( or, Beatrice, and her history is as remarkable in a 
 womanly way as her only brother Geffrey's was as the first 
 man of his times. 
 
 The son Geffrey's doings are a notable part of English his- 
 tory. The chronicles are full of him and his deeds. He lived 
 in the time when Matilda, the empress, daughter of Henry the 
 First, and Stephen were so bitterly striving for the crown. 
 Hugh Bigod, dapifer at the death of Henry, came over from 
 Normandy with his tale that the dying king had there disin- 
 herited his daughter, and he imitated, somewhat successfully 
 as imitations go, the political feat of Eudo as king -maker, by 
 getting Stephen crowned by the archbishop of Canterbury on
 
 96 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the strength of his report. He had his reward by being made 
 the ear] of Norfolk, first of his family, getting the third 
 penny and other usual returns of that county. He gained 
 Geffrey Mandeville, then earl of Essex, constable of the 
 tower, and who was the superior of London, much against 
 the municipal will, then even beginning to wake. It was 
 owing to this accession of strength more than to any other 
 circumstance, that Stephen's standing was not like that of 
 Harold, merely a few fighting days. Geffrey got all kinds of 
 honours and promises heaped upon him, and what seemed to 
 please him most of all, he, as lord of the tower, got the citi- 
 zens of London wholly put into his hands. He and they were 
 the bitterest of enemies, though it is difficult to discover the 
 cause. He calls them, in some of the records, his enemies, with 
 peculiar determination of temper. The most probable expla- 
 nation is that the quarrel between Norman supremacy by the 
 rule of strength, and the Anglo-Saxon aspiration to not only 
 self-rule but some kind of revengeful assertion, was hottest 
 where the two powers were at their greatest central strength. 
 Geffrey Mandeville, Margaret Sinclair's son, chief in the 
 tower, which he strengthened and made much more formid- 
 able than even it previously was, and the boiling strength of 
 Saxon manliness surging outside, storm of the strongest force 
 kept running. Were it not that the dynastic struggle gave 
 other objects to divert attention, London- at-the- Tower would 
 then have been the scene of feudal and municipal bloodshed 
 till the strongest hand pre vailed. He had a new charter of 
 the earldom of Essex from Stephen, of which the witnesses 
 were William of Iypres ; Henry of Essex, the standard bearer 
 of England ; John, the son of Robert Fitz- Walter, a Clare ; 
 Robert Newburgh ; William de St. Clare, of whom by-and- 
 bye; William de Dammartin ; Richard Fitz-TJrse; and Wil- 
 liam of Ou. 
 
 Whatever were the reasons, Geffrey did not hold by Stephen. 
 He may have been jealous of Bigod, as dapifer and new earl 
 of Norfolk. Through his mother, the daughter of Eudo Dapifer, 
 he must have had a better claim to the office than the Bigods, 
 who had it immediately on the death of Eudo in 1 1 20. Geffrey 
 might not then have been of age to claim his rights, and the 
 Bigods were related certainly through marriage to Eudo. 
 Stephen could not possibly dispossess him to whom he owed
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OE ESSEX. 97 
 
 his crown, even if Geffrey might show his superior rights. In 
 any case, Bigod's good fortune boded ill for Mandeville, and 
 should there bo no other politic reasons of self-preservation, 
 not to say aggrandisement, the espousal of Matilda's cause was 
 wise on his part. The earl of Gloucester, Robert Consul, her 
 brother and champion, being married to a Sinclair, as will 
 appear yet more fully, the interest of the countess of Essex's 
 family would be on the side of Henry the First's daughter ; 
 and this might also say most for their civilisation and sense of 
 justice. Matilda gave Geffrey her charter to his earldom of 
 Essex when he came over to her. He grew thoroughly awake 
 to the trick that had been put upon England by Bigod, the 
 da] lifer, for Stephen's election. The charter is of antiquarian 
 interest, as well as historic and biographic, because it is one of 
 the very earliest writings by which nobility was created, tenure 
 being the rule previously, and most in practice afterwards. 
 Matilda calls herself domina Anglorum in it, after the style of 
 her father's ordinary charters of foundation and grant, and the 
 creation reads in its chief part, l Do et concedo Gavfredo de Mag- 
 navilla pro servitio sua et haeredibus suis 2wst eum liaereditabiliter, 
 id, sit emir* de Essexia, et habeat tertium denarium vicecomita- 
 tus d>' placitis, sicut comes habere debet in comitatu suo' — 'I 
 give and grant to Geffrey Mandeville for his own vise and for 
 his luirs after him hereditarily, that he may be the earl of 
 Essex, and may have the third penny of the taxes of the 
 county as the carl is accustomed to have in his county.' It 
 would hardly be evidence of the two previous earls' occupancy 
 of this title and office, to put forward the use and wont char- 
 acter of the end of this extract, but it may be allowed as 
 favouring such a state of things. General legal reference it 
 may lie, though the Norinans were not wasters of words in 
 the kind of work. But this was only part of Geffrey's favours 
 from Matilda. He seems to have got whatever he wished, 
 and the nature of the man was to wish a gi'eat deal. Con- 
 sciousness of strength is certainly as good an explanation of 
 such search as ambition. She gave him the constableship of 
 the tower of London, with the authority over the citizens which 
 he had contended long for ; and if he used his power, he does 
 not appear to have abused it, though there never was any love 
 lost between him and those in his lordship, unlike in this to 
 his grandfather Eudo with the Colchestrians. Perhaps the 
 
 G
 
 98 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 great awakening of London to its future importance accounts 
 best for the warfare. It would have then two or three hun- 
 dred thousand inhabitants, and the public spirit of such a 
 number would be galled by the Norman ability to rule, if no 
 other way were possible, by the strong head and the strong 
 hand. He was also made hereditary sheriff or viscount, of 
 London in particular, as also of Middlesex and Hertfordshire 
 like his grandfather Geffrey, the Conqueror's captain. He 
 paid ^300 for the Middlesex and ^60 for the Hertfordshire 
 sheriffship, which were large sums as money then went ; so 
 that the empress could drive bargain well enough with her 
 best favourites, the necessities of war being always clamant. 
 His father, William, the second earl of Essex, does not seem 
 to have been of the active, but of the amiable temper, and 
 may not have had these offices. 
 
 Perhaps Geffrey owed his energy most to his mother. Her 
 hand may be expected to have been at work in the next 
 advance her son had. "Whoever had them till now, Matilda 
 granted him all the lands in Normandy of his mother's father, 
 Eudo Dapifer, with Eudo Sinclair's office also of dapifer or 
 steward of Normandy ; and these are mentioned as being 
 'his rightful inheritance.' The information comes from the 
 best state sources, ' Ex mar/no registro in officio ducat. Lane.' 
 — ' From the great register in the office of the duchy of 
 Lancaster.' This was not all. Not only did he get these 
 grants, but one of Matilda's charters adds that, if she and the 
 earl of Anjou her husband should think fit, Geffrey must get 
 all the lands in England whereof the same Eudo died pos- 
 sessed ; and no doubt this would also gain for him the dapi- 
 fership of England. She mentions at the same time ;£ioo 
 lands, and also twenty knights' fees of land which she had 
 recently given him. His eldest son Ernulph received ^100 
 lands and ten knights' fees of land, ^100 land in addition to 
 be taken from escheated manors. If she got Castle Stortford 
 in the fighting, it was to be his and his heirs for ever. 
 Through all her long struggle she kept favouring Geffrey for 
 the very good reason that he was so powerful to help her 
 cause. His family castle was Walden, but he was allowed to 
 build Plessy Castle, Wye Castle, and at the peace of London 
 she gave him special permission to build another, pledging her 
 brother, Robert, earl of Gloucester, Henry Curcy, her steward,
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 99 
 
 and Henry of Essex, the standard-bearer of England, of whom 
 Carlyle makes perhaps too much fun in Past and Present 
 as a Saxon runaway whom Norman bravery prevented doing 
 the worst of .ill military harm. She seems also to have com- 
 pleted her grant to him of Eudo's lands in England, without 
 proviso, the completion being made at Westminster. 
 
 That lie well deserved all this from his rightful queen, Henry 
 of Huntingdon's chronicle is ample proof. In the same year, 
 saj s I Iciny, in which Stephen assaulted Lincoln unsuccessfully, 
 the ninth of his usurpation, ' Consul Gaufridus de Magna Villa 
 regefn validissime vexavit, et in omnibus valde gloriosus 
 effulsit '■ — 'the earl or consul, Geffrey Mandeville, powerfully 
 harassed the king, and, eminent over all, shone strongly." 
 His seizure by Stephen in open meeting of king and barons at 
 St. Albans, is one of the great events of English history around 
 which much discussion of personal rights has always been held. 
 The king never attempted to justify the proceeding, except by 
 necessity. If he did not seize Geffrey, his power and favour 
 with Matilda would lose Stephen his crown ; and he had 
 stretched so many points already for this, that a new injustice 
 could not seem to have quite its proper nature to him. Geffrey 
 was stripped of the tower of London, and of his castles of Wal- 
 den, Plessy. and the rest. He was kept in prison for some 
 time, and when it was safe to liberate him, Stephen, Henry of 
 Huntingdon says, 'restored to him the tower of London and 
 the castle of Walden and that of Plaisseiz.' His lands were, 
 however, not to be got again ; and this made the ablest man 
 in England the most desperate. He seems to have cast away 
 these remnants of his power altogether, and Radulph Niger, 
 the chronicler of the Cottonian MSS., says that, in 1143, 
 ' Gal/rid ili' Mandavilla per violentiam intravit in Rameseia et 
 monachos fugavit' — 'Geffrey Mandeville by violence entered 
 into llamsey [abbey] and drove out the monks.' No subject 
 of the time has had half the fulness of treatment that this 
 one received from the historians of the period, mostly monks 
 themselves. Miracles innumerable occurred to punish the 
 dreadful invasion of the sacred monastery of Huntingdonshire. 
 The walls were seen to drip with blood, is one of the mildest 
 of them. Geffrey's sorrows and those of his posterity, to their 
 smallest ache, were all caused by this. William of Newburgh 
 has two pages of the opposite of encomium of this earl who
 
 ioo THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 made the monastery a den of robbers. Even in Stephen's 
 wild time the terrors from the landless man were wholly of their 
 own kind. His lieutenant, by another miracle, was pulled off 
 his horse, and his brain 'effused,' apparently in accident of 
 playfulness. Much of useless tale there is, but the bitterest 
 writer puts this down as his final conclusion with regard to 
 Geffrey, and it does not read very dreadfully to us who appre- 
 ciate Roman Catholic clerisy at that period. ' Erat autem 
 summce probitatis, sed summoe in Deum obstinationis ; mag- 
 iicb in mundanis diligentice, magnce in Deum negligentiae ' — 
 ' He was of the highest probity, but of the greatest obstinacy 
 against God ; of much diligence in worldly things, of great 
 carelessness towards God.' The only thing that has to be 
 added to this is, that master minds do not worship the same 
 God at all as monastic ones. The certificate, properly read, is 
 one of high if not the highest quality. But the monks were 
 ungrateful the moment he trod the slightest on their extremely 
 tender toes. Was it carelessness of God that made him build, 
 in 1 136 Weever says, the magnificent abbey of Walden 1 
 That he also endowed it liberally goes without saying. Such 
 souls cannot go tamely into the monastic habit when misfor- 
 tune has overtaken them, like Henry of Essex, the Saxon, of 
 Reading notoriety. The last three or four years of his life 
 were indeed very miserable, but the man was noble-souled to 
 his last breath, and those who knew him best, kept their faith 
 in him wholly unchanged. His son Ernulph in particular 
 held by him, and gets his share of monastic blessing. Geffrey 
 was excommunicated, with all the severities and ceremonies 
 possible, by the church ; but even this, the weightiest curse 
 that then could fall on man, did not crush him. His valorous 
 heart and hand were wanted when brave work had to be done, 
 and it was while engaged in one of the many inexplicable ex- 
 peditions of private warfare in England's dreadest reign, or, 
 rather, no reign, that he got his fitful but vigorous personal 
 drama closed. He was besieging the castle of Burwell in 
 Cambridgeshire, when an arrow out of a loophole struck him 
 in the arm. He made light of it, but from the carelessness of 
 a brave heart the wound was neglected, and he died in a few 
 days, still under excommunication. How could a scratch not 
 be fatal to a soldier in that state, was the universal monastic 
 moral. Did not the grass wither for ever on the spots where
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 101 
 
 the excommunicated lord lay to rest him a little ? The 14th of 
 September 1144, was his last day. Roger of Hoveden, the 
 famous chronicler, gives the details of his death, and many of 
 his deeds. But this is suggestive as to how he could be loved. 
 'The Knights Templar,' says Camden out of the Register 
 Book of Waldem, 'came and put red cross on him, and put 
 him in a coffin of lead, and hung him in the orchard of the 
 Temple, London, 1144.' They durst not bury him, being 
 excommunicated, but it is said that the pope ultimately re- 
 scinded excommunication, and that they buried him in the 
 New Temple. His 'enemies,' as he had often called the 
 stubborn Saxon Londoners, probably thought they had 
 their revenge in having their tyrant thus hung in dishonour ; 
 and yet it was in the greatest of all honour, the esteem of 
 those who knew his personality best. The impression, be- 
 sides, need not be left, that there continued special enmity 
 between him and the citizens, the quarrel being rather that of 
 development of public liberty under needed limitation than of 
 the individual kind. 'A violent invader he was,' says 
 another writer of the small-souled character, ' of other men's 
 lands and possessions, and therefore justly incurred the world's 
 censure and church's doom.' Different criticism from this will 
 be his or hers who reads well the gallant and able Geffrey's 
 life, and the materials are not scanty, in the main stream of 
 England's growth. Henry of Huntingdon's account of his 
 death is of antiquarian interest because of Leland's abbrevia- 
 tion of it in his Collectaneum of about 1550: ' similiter Gau- 
 fridus Consul inter acies suorum confertas a quodam wlissimo 
 pedite solus sagitta perculsus est; et ipse vulnas ridens j"»f 
 dies tamen ex ipso vulnere excommunicato occuhitit' — 'Simi- 
 larly Geffrey, the consul or earl, in the thickest of the line of 
 his men, was alone pierced with an arrow from a certain com- 
 monest foot-soldier; and himself laughing at the wound, after 
 some days, however, being excommunicated, died of that very 
 wound.' Leland runs, ' Gaufredus de magna villa consul 
 Estsexe a quodam pedite viliss. vulneratus est sagitta unde 
 non post longe ohiit ' — ' Geffrey Mandeville, earl of Essex, by 
 a certain commonest foot-soldier was wounded with an arrow, 
 from which not long after he died.' 
 
 One abbreviation he has which is too suggestive to pass 
 over: 'JErnidphusJUius Gaufridi magna? villa; exulat ' — 'Ernulph,
 
 102 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the son of Geffrey, bewails him at Magna Villa.' Ernulph 
 had fled from England before his father's death for this best 
 of reasons, namely, to keep together the Norman possessions 
 to which he was heir. He remained always at the original 
 home of Magna Villa, and does not appear further in English 
 record. It is also said that it was he who was killed while 
 being one of the so-called robbers, in the time when the king 
 himself was an arch-robber, at Ramsey monastery, and that he 
 lies buried there, though Leland's quotation has the ring of 
 most likelihood in it. In either case he is out of English 
 history before his father. And he is so also, if the account 
 that he was taken and banished be true. 
 
 The second son, a Geffrey when Henry the Second came to 
 the throne, for whom the Mandevilles had suffered so much, got 
 back the earldom, and most if not all of the lands. A man of 
 great talents, it is enough to say that he became justiciar of 
 England, and died without issue in 1165. The third brother, 
 William, succeeded him, and by marrying Hawise its heiress 
 added the earldom of Albemarle to Essex ; but he was also 
 without family, and died in 1189. This was the last of the 
 Mandevilles in fact, but not in name. The Fitz-Piers de 
 Lutgershall, earls of Essex, subsequently took the name of 
 Mandeville, from marriage of the heiress. 
 
 Eudo Sinclair, the dapifer, had another sister than she who 
 was married to the first Mandeville. Her name was Albreda, 
 and she married Petrus of Valognes, the father of the Petrus 
 who helped with William Giffard, chancellor, the bishop of 
 Winchester, and others, to make peace between Eudo and 
 Henry the First, Eudo's nephew. Their homes were Hertford 
 Castle, Herts., and Orford Castle, Suffolk. Albreda Sinclair's 
 husband, ancestor of the Valence earls of Pembroke, so famous 
 in English history and royal relationship, had got more than 
 fifty lordships at the beginning of the Conqueror's reign. It 
 was from the Valences' part of Normandy, that the duke before 
 he was the Conqueror was fleeing when Hubert of Rye suc- 
 coured him. How Albreda Sinclair, Hubert's daughter, met 
 Peter of Valoignes is not difficult to understand, if the ride of a 
 cavalier for some hours covered the distance between the castles 
 of Valoignes or Valence and of Rye. 
 
 It must be returned to the relationships of Geffrey and his 
 mother, Margaret Sinclair, countess of Essex, Albreda's niece.
 
 MARGARET SINCLAIR, COUNTESS OF ESSEX. 103 
 
 Geffrey was twice married, but there is difference about the 
 marriages among genealogists. Most of them make the mother 
 of his three sons to have been Hose de Vere, daughter of 
 Aubrey de Vere, earl of Oxford, and chief justice of England. 
 Weever in his Funeral Monuments gives this, and Sir 
 William Dugdalc also in his Baronage. They add further that 
 she had a second marriage to Pain Beauchamp of the earl of 
 Warwick family. Dugdale gives him another wife, but he 
 cannot tell who she was. Their daughter Alicia was, he says, 
 the mother of John de Laci, constable of Chester Castle. The 
 connection of Margaret Sinclair's only son Geffrey with the De 
 Veres and Beauchamps, is also given in another way ; and it 
 is not less likely to be true because of one connection which 
 might be thought to have something of stain. Geffrey's only 
 wile was Rose, the daughter of the unfortunate standard- 
 bearer of England, Henry of Essex, grandson of Swain, the 
 Saxon lord by tenure in Essex of the time of the Conquest. 
 Her mother was a daughter of Roger Bigod, the earliest of 
 that great name in England. Her sister Adeliza, or, as is 
 said now, Alice, was the wife of Albery de Vere, earl of Ox- 
 ford, and mother of the two subsequent earls, Albery and 
 Robert. It was Rose of Essex, wife of Geffrey, the great 
 carl of Essex, who afterwards married Pain Beauchamp and 
 was mother of Roger. It is probable that the wholesale con- 
 fiscation from their father of his estate for the unfortunate 
 accident, or false impression, as Stow shows it to have been, 
 and not cowardice, of letting fall the standard in the Welsh 
 war, to the danger of King Henry the Second's life, and of the 
 lives of his army, came back to the daughters and their hus- 
 bands. He was one of the richest and in every way greatest 
 men of many years of his time, and to secure alliance with 
 him was object to any family then existing. But the mistake 
 of a moment spoilt the brilliancy of his own life for ever, and 
 still dims the lives connected with him. Carlyle's mockery, 
 however, is ridiculous, as against himself, to those who really 
 know the men and circumstances of that period. There was 
 no such puppetry as he makes of the matter, and Henry of 
 Essex would not be the man to miss meeting him or another 
 in any personal trial of courage. It is too much of the ephe- 
 meral order of criticism of a man, to suppose that once he 
 judges wrongly he is for ever out of court. It may be true
 
 io+ THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 that Henry was not of the fiercest build of nature or he would 
 not join, even if condemned to it, the Reading monks ; but 
 the facts do not at all go to prove that he was deficient in 
 personal valour, however limited in judgment at critical 
 moments. His daughters must have had keen personal 
 sorrow through the misfortune which came to their father ; 
 but it was thirteen years after her Geffrey Mandeville was 
 dead, and Rose, if it were she who was his wife, and not Rose 
 de Vere, would then have Pain Beauchamp to help her to 
 make the most of affairs. Probably Geffrey's great power in 
 the wars of Matilda and Robert, earl of Gloucester, with 
 Stephen, was owing partly to this then all but highest 
 connection in England. His wife Rose, whoever she was, 
 founded the monastery of Royston, and was buried at Euge in 
 Normandy; the latter fact rather going to prove Dugdale's 
 finding, that she was Rose de Vere. 
 
 But something has to be said of the only daughter of 
 Margaret Sinclair, Beatrice Mandeville. Through Geffrey's 
 instigation she got a divorce from her first husband, William 
 Talbot, a nobleman of Normandy, who had displeased him; 
 and she then married William Saye of the baronial Kent and 
 Sussex family long celebrated. They had a son who married 
 a sister of a William Mandeville. Sir Francis Nicolas, in his 
 Synopsis of the Peerage, says that Beatrice Mandeville had 
 a son, William Saye, whose daughter Beatrice Saye married 
 the Geffrey Fitz-Piers who changed his name to Mandeville 
 and was made earl of Essex, after many difficulties, by King 
 John on his own coronation day, 26 June 1199. If so, Bea- 
 trice Mandeville lived to see it, for she died in 1200 at a very 
 venerable age. Dugdale says 1207 is the date, and that she 
 died at her house at Rikelings, and was buried with great 
 honour in the abbey of Walden, founded by her noble-hearted, 
 powerful, but unfortunate brother about seventy years pre- 
 viously. It was well the part of the monks there to do all 
 honour to ' old Beatrix de Saye,' sister to Geffrey de Mande- 
 ville, earl of Essex ; for she had been always their special 
 friend, which chiefly means land-grants, but gifts of all kinds 
 as well. If Margaret Sinclair, countess of Essex, was the 
 last of Eudo Dapifer's line, she had a son and a daughter to be 
 proud of exceedingly. She had her last resting-place also in 
 Walden Abbey, with them both ; for Geffrey's corpse was ulti-
 
 THE YOUNGER HUBERTS LIKE. l0 i, 
 
 matcly taken from the tree in the garden of his loving fellow 
 Knights Templar on the hanks of the Thames, .and laid in 
 the abbey of Walden, of his own foundation, near the family 
 
 home of Walden Castle, Essex 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE YOUNGER HUBERT'S LINE. 
 
 Eudo Dapifer's brothers were by no means lost in the 
 glow of fame and honour which surrounded the youngest of 
 them at the courts of the kings. The Cenomannic tumults 
 shortly after the battle of Hastings quelled, the treis fils, cheva- 
 liers bons, of t he ambassador, Hubert of Rye, came back to 
 England ; and all of them distinguished themselves. When 
 Roger Fitz-Osborn, earl of Hereford, and son of William Fitz- 
 Osborn, once dapifer of Normandy, and governor of England 
 with Odo, earl of Kent, married his daughter to Ralph Waer, 
 earl of Norfolk, against King William's expressed will, the 
 marriage-feast of conspiracy so celebrated in history took 
 place. The oath to dethrone the Conqueror, sworn over their 
 cups in Norwich Castle, px^oved as useless as all other traitorous 
 proceedings against the able monarch. Waltheof, the Saxon 
 earl of Nottingham, who received many favours from him, 
 and had even his niece Judith in marriage, to bind more to 
 his interests, proved faithless with the rest. lie had been 
 once pardoned before for something veiy like treason, but this 
 time his repentance could not be accepted, and he was beheaded 
 at Winchester in 1075, the only nobleman of that terribly 
 tried reign who suffered death by law. To those who falsely 
 confuse the Anglo-Saxons with the English as they now are, 
 he is one of the martyrs of Norman tyranny. Not to 
 answer such prejudice, but to calm its outcry, reference may 
 be given in this respect to subsequent reigns, in times of sup- 
 posed higher national development, such as those of Henry 
 the Eighth, Mary, or even Elizabeth. The necessities of death 
 in war are beyond the power of a monarch, but legal sentences 
 are valuable indications of his temper and character. Hubert
 
 io6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Sinclair was, under the governor of the kingdom, Bishop Odo, 
 the means of scattering this detestable conspiracy finally ; and 
 he took the place of the semi-Saxon, semi-Celtic earl of Nor- 
 folk, who fled from England in 1074, and died in the Holy 
 Land, his companion, the earl of Hereford, being taken, and 
 deservedly imprisoned for life. Eudo Dapifer's brother was 
 made governor of Norwich Castle ; and though record is scanty, 
 he enjoyed the full rights and benefits of the earldom of Nor- 
 folk, which the traitor had forfeited. It is he who, before 
 these honours were got, was Dugdale's ' Hubert de Rye (a great 
 man in Lincolnshire),' who married Agnes Todenei, the daughter 
 of Robert Todenei of Belvoir Castle, the father of the William 
 who is so well known to record by the surnames Albini and Brito, 
 the hero of Tenchbrai. The earls of Arundel, also Albinis, were 
 of the same stock, descended from the uncle of Rollo. The latter 
 were butlers of coronation-day, and had surname from this of 
 Pincerna. It was one of them who was married to Adeliza, 
 Henry the First's widow. He and she received Matilda, the 
 empress, and her brother, Robert of Gloucester, in Sussex, for 
 their first contest with Stephen. Such relationship as this of 
 Hubert's explains the names appearing in court-given charters 
 so frequently. Eudo Dapifer and Albini were related thus 
 and otherwise. A daughter of the Raoul de Bello Sago of 
 Domesday Book was married either to Hubert or one of his 
 sons, and she brought West Lexham as dowry. In Rymer's 
 Foedera Alured de Todenei is one of the witnesses to Henry 
 the First's charter to the city of London, and must have 
 been the brother of Agnes. Alured at a later period is a 
 noted first name for Sinclairs of the Midlands. But the 
 same document has as witness Hubert, regis camerarius, or 
 king's chamberlain, and if he is either son or father, as is 
 certain, this branch of the house of Rye was in as high favour 
 as any. Hubert, the father, castellan of Norwich, son of 
 Hubert Sinclair, the ambassador, is established to have been, 
 with his other duties, dapifer of the Conqueror's half-brother, 
 the earl of Mortaine, and time would favour his son for being 
 king's chamberlain to Henry Beauclerc. In 1147 Pope 
 Kugenius gave a letter of protection to the church 'within 
 the walls ' near Aldgate, London, beside the convent of St. 
 < lire. It is preserved in Rymer's Foedi'ra. Ten years 
 before, Pope Innocent II. had given a similar letter to the
 
 THE YOUNGER HUBERT'S LINE. 107 
 
 same monks. The popes specify the lands and gifts, such as 
 two parts of the returns of Exeter, the land of Lcxton, church 
 returns of Bix and Tottenham, tenths of Heham, church of 
 Soresdich [the modern Shorediteh], land of Scelgham, lands in 
 Brachingis, from Stephen and Ins queen. What is of present 
 purpose is I hal part of this last property was ' De dono Huherti 
 camerarii in eadem villa.' Several of these names are asso- 
 ciated with his lineage, but the suggestive fact is that there 
 was given also ' Terra de Teia ex liberalitate ejusdem' — 'Land 
 from Teia by the liberality of the same.' The lords of Teia, 
 of whom Jones writes in his History of Brecknock as chief 
 Englishmen, are remarkable as late as the reign of Edward 
 Third; for that king confirmed a grant by his heroic queen, 
 Philippa, to her maid of honour, Mary Sinclair, of lands which 
 were those of "William of Teye, in Havering-at-Bower, Essex. 
 This will occur again with other purpose more fully, but it 
 aids here towards proof that ' Hubertus Camerarius'' — ' Hubert, 
 king's chamberlain,' was of the same blood with Mary, and 
 one of the Norwich branch. His family were mostly on the 
 side of Matilda, against King Stephen, at the latter's accession 
 to or seizure of the crown; and in 1135 Hugh Bigod, the 
 dapifer, was created earl of Norfolk. After this period for- 
 tunes and titles went into the inextricable disorder which civil 
 wars and changing dynasties alone account for. During sixty 
 \ ears, however, it will be found that this family were the rulers 
 not only indisputably of Norwich and its famous castle, but 
 also, as the ( 'ottonian MSS. state, of the county of Norfolk, re- 
 ceiving the thirds, and doing the relative duties of its earldom. 
 Dugdale gives good account of these Norwich Sinclair's. 
 1 1 illicit, the brother of the dapifer, he makes the governor; 
 but Nicolas is mistaken when he says that this same man was 
 governor of the castle of Norwich, 1 Step., 1135, and was alive 
 mi late as 1 146. This must have been a second Hubert, and 
 probably the last earl of Norfolk of his family. There was a 
 third Hubert, the son and heir of him whose position Hugo 
 Bigod, the dapifer, seems to have secured by Stephen's help. 
 He was known in Henry the Second's reign as the baron of 
 Hengham, in Norfolkshire, and died in 1172 without male 
 issue. That there were enough of male heirs is suggested by 
 Dugdale's notice of a Heniy who, 11 Steph., 1146, gave a 
 manor to monks of Kent. The early Huberts must have had
 
 roS THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 large property, for this third one, after the twenty years' 
 struggle of Stephen's reign, in which they do not seem to have 
 been fortunate, on assessment for marrying Henry the Second's 
 daughters, 1162 and n 64, had thirty-five knights' fees, an 
 amount of land which at once suggests more than the gover- 
 norship, great as this office was, of Norwich Castle. In 18 
 Hen. II., he paid ^35 as his share of the scutage raised at 
 that time for Ireland, which was being then finally conquered 
 by England. He died in this year. His fees were in Suffolk 
 as well as Norfolk. 
 
 In the reign of King John a Hubert held the very same 
 number of fees, so that it may be supposed that he was the 
 heir of the baron of Hengham by all the property as well as 
 title. In the state records of King John, 11 99, Robert Fitz- 
 Roger gives three hundred marks to the treasury, for sanction 
 to marry to his nephew the younger daughter of this Hubert, 
 who had no sons. Dugdale says Fitz-Roger was ' a great baron 
 in Northumberland.' This nephew of his is Roger de Cressi, 
 who married Isabella Sinclair. He was one of the barons 
 who, Matthew Paris says, came in 1 2 1 5 to London to compel 
 the laws of Edward the Confessor and other privileges from 
 King John, for which John took his revenge in 12 16 by ravag- 
 ing his Norfolk and Suffolk estates ; and that he was thoroughly 
 in earnest against the reigning family is further shown by the 
 fact that he was one of the barons who invited and supported 
 Louis, the dauphin of France, in his extraordinary attempt to 
 become king of England. He was taken prisoner in 1 2 1 7, at 
 the frightful massacre of the French in ' Lincoln Fair ' battle ; 
 but he has possession of his lands some years after, so that he 
 cannot have been far wrong. Dugdale savs his wife Isabella 
 was first married to Hugh de Lacy, constable of Chester, of 
 the family known well as earls of Ulster and Lincoln. The 
 other daughter and co-heir of this last Hubert of the Norwich 
 line was Aliva, and she married John Marescal, who, with his 
 four brothers, had their name from being holders of the mar- 
 shalships of England and Ireland hereditarily. He was broili<T 
 of William Marshall, the earl of Pembroke who had, by his 
 mother, the rights and titles of ' Strongbow,' or Richard 
 Striguil, the conqueror of Ireland. He and this brother were 
 barons on the king's side at the signing of Magna Cliarta. 
 They appear in Matthew Paris's list. In the original copy of
 
 The younger Huberts line. 109 
 
 the Great Charter, preserved in the Cottonian library, William 
 Marescall, earl of Pembroke, and John Marescall are of the 
 sixteen noUlium virorum whose names begin the document as 
 the king's advisers. They were also both at the coronation 
 of King Eenry the Third at Gloucester in 1216, their efforts 
 saving England from the misery of a foreign conquest of an 
 almost ridiculous character. Earl William as regent is one 
 of the historic personages of his country, and John Marescal, 
 his brother, ably seconds him in his strenuous deeds for the 
 boy king Henry 1 1 1., though in John's reign the earl marshal 
 had favoured the French attempt, like Roger de Cressi. The 
 last earl of these Marshalls died in 1245, when the branch 
 became extinct. Five brothers being earls marshal, and only 
 three generations of them altogether, John must have been 
 also a short liver. The extraordinary doings of the Marshalls 
 all through Henry the Third's reign are a large subject. Roger 
 de Cressi and John, earl marshal, were notable men of the 
 time, and these Sinclair ladies had reason to be proud of their 
 position. In the Temple Church, London, the monuments of 
 these lords marshal, as crusaders with crossed legs, as well as 
 of the lords Ros, descendants of Richard de St. Clair, of battle 
 of Hastings fame, are still to be seen. At the Crystal Palace 
 there are copies in clay, as of the noblest men England has 
 had, side by side with those of her kings and queens. They 
 had each with their wives seventeen and a half knights' fees 
 of lands. Hubert died before 12 13, because in paying the 
 scutage of wars with Scotland in 13 John it was these two 
 husbands who appeared in accounts. In 6 Hen. III. they again 
 stand with exactly the thirty-five fees at which the family are 
 so often assessed. Marshall scions survive in Devon. 
 
 It seems the rule with Norman families of the early periods to 
 come quickly to their male conclusion ; and Hubert, the gallant 
 governor of Norwich, had not many direct descendants to keep 
 up his name and fame. Daughters had privileges stronger 
 than masculine representatives, or the line, like many others, 
 might still be represented. In 48 Henry III. a John fought 
 well on the side of the barons struggling for liberties, and he 
 was one of the prisoners at Northampton, but in 53 Hen. III. 
 pardon came. In 5 & 6 Edward I. a Nicholas of these Sin- 
 clairs was sheriff or viscount of the county of Lincoln, and 
 in 9 of Edward's reign Ranulph figures in the same dis-
 
 no THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 trict. Blomfield's History of Norfolk under ' Hingham ' as head- 
 ing, gives suggestive knowledge. Hingham contained 43 
 parishes, and King Stephen farmed it to Henry Sinclair, a 
 son of Hubert, the castellan. In 1195 Cardo de Freschaville 
 had the barony by the same form of tenure from Richard I. 
 This town, Blomfield asserts, was always reputed the head of 
 the barony of Rye ever since its first grant to Henry of Rye 
 aforesaid, and uniformly acknowledged as such by those who 
 farmed it. After the death of Henry of Rye, Hubert of Bye 
 had the barony, he adds ; but the manor then belonged to 
 Hugh de Gournay, captain of Castle Galliard, in Normandy. 
 John Marshall got the barony in 1207 and the manor in 12 10, 
 as being the husband of Alice, daughter of Hubert de Rye, 
 baron de Rye in Norfolk. He also had the hundred of 
 Forehoe. His second and final confirmation was expressly 
 given him by the king to cut off all claims that the heirs of 
 Cai'do Freshville could make. The Freshvilles stood nearest 
 male heirs to Hubert, and were undoubtedly of the same blood 
 male, descended from Ralph Sinclair, governor of Nottingham 
 Castle, as Sir Henry Ellis and others have shown, and only 
 the pai'tibility of fees and the heirship by daughters prevented 
 them keeping up there Hubert's line and surname. Dugdale 
 also testifies that John Marshall, married to Hubert of Rye's 
 daughter Alice, got from King John, 12 14, the manor of 
 Hengham, ' part of the possessions of Cardo de Freshanvill.' 
 Sir Francis Nicolas, in his Extinct Peerage, makes Ralph 
 de Frescheviile receive a writ to parliament as a baron, 25 
 Edw. I., 1297, and on this Baron Fresh ville of Stavely, co. 
 Derby, had the creation renewed in his favour in 1664. Lord 
 Freshville of Derbyshire died in 1682, and the proper male 
 line became then extinct. That Hugh of Gournay appears as 
 lord of Hengham, is of great interest, because the Gournays 
 and Sinclairs are frequently in close relationship, both in Nor- 
 mandy and England. An earlier Hugh, as having the district 
 of the French and Norman Yexin, in which the historic St. 
 Clair village on the Epte river was whence the name came, 
 appears prominently in treaties between the English and 
 French kings, and he almost holds princely position in the 
 negotiations. The three fees which these great Norman- 
 French Gournays held in England, according to Domesday 
 Book, 1080-86, were in Eudo Dapifer's district at Colchester.
 
 THE YOUNGER HUBERT'S LINE. m 
 
 They were Fordham, Listen, and Ardley, quite close to that 
 city, Listen being the Lexden afterwards the property of the 
 governor of Colchester Castle, Hubert de Sancto Claro. What 
 is suggestive also is that Geffrey Talbot, related to Eudo Dapi- 
 fer, and leaving many knights' fees to Walter Sinclair of Med- 
 way, held Lexden as under-tenant from the Gournays, whose 
 small port ions then (for by marriage with Warennes and others 
 of first lank, they afterwards increased lands largely in Eng- 
 land) are explained by the fact that they were powerful 
 marchers on both sides of the Epte, under the French and 
 English kings, both jealous of their power. It is too obscure 
 to try to discover how they got the lands thei-e which once 
 was part of territories of the St. Clares, whether by marriage 
 or otherwise. Much general light, and finely true Norman 
 appreciation as against the Saxon grumbling of some prejudiced 
 chroniclers and one or more as prejudiced recent historians, 
 appear in a book by James Hannay, Three Hundred Years 
 of a Norman House. It is founded on a MS. history of the 
 Gournays from the Rouen public library, but the whole spirit 
 of the too graphic work is sufficiently true and illustrative of 
 those earlier centuries to make it a valuable aid to knowledge 
 of them and their chief figures. 
 
 It is probable that a great deal is yet to be discovered about 
 the doings of Hubert Sinclair, son of the duke of Normandy's 
 ambassador to Edward the Confessor, and of his descendants. 
 Enough has appeared to show that he was a brother worthy of 
 Eudo Dapifer. Whether, like him, he had lands also over the 
 Channel, and was a great builder of castles and monasteries, 
 are questions hardly needing discussion. 
 
 In the work of building, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe says 
 Sinclairs were adepts ; and the high philosophies of freemasonry 
 were no doubt considerably of their manufacture. In Sunny 
 Memories, page 87, after indulging in quotation from The 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, and celebration of the William St. 
 Clair in 1446, 'prince of Orkney, duke of Oldenburgh, lord 
 of lloslin, earl of Caithness and Strathearn, and so on ad 
 infinitum,' as 'the seemly St. Clair' of tradition, who he was 
 not, though of whatsoever ' noble deportment and elegant man- 
 ners,' she adds two paragraphs on good enough authority. 
 ' It appears by certain documents that this high and mighty 
 house of St. Clair were in a particular manner patrons of the
 
 U2 THE SLXCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 masonic craft. It is known that the trade of masonry was 
 then in the hands of a secret and mysterious order from whom 
 pi'obably our modern masons have descended.' She continues, 
 ' The St. Clair family, it appears, were at the head of this 
 order, with power to appoint officers and places of meeting, 
 to punish transgressors, and otherwise to have the superin- 
 tendence of all their affairs. This fact may account for such 
 a perfect geyser of architectural ingenuity as has been poured 
 out upon their family chapel ' [Roslin] ' which was designed 
 for a chef d'ceuwe, a concentration of the best that could be 
 done to the honour of their patron's family. The documents 
 which authenticate this statement are described in Billing's 
 Baronial Antiquities. So much for " the lordly line of 
 high St. Clair." ' And so much for the democratic mushroom 
 that spreads its fragrance. But it is good tribute from the 
 American mind, so barren of the glow and glory of anti- 
 quity, that in spite of all its training to flat ephemeral useful- 
 ness, the dignity of true because able and artistic nobility, 
 compels its mede of justice and admiration. The appreciation, 
 however, may have been aided by the secret memory of her 
 own characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin ; the planter of the 
 southern states, and his darling daughter, Eva St. Clair, whom 
 the gods loved. 
 
 To hold that Hubert, if he did not altogether found Norwich 
 Castle, enlarged its warlike dimensions equal to the pressing 
 necessities then, not only of defence, but of mastery over the 
 entire north, would not be quixotic. No position required 
 more military and engineering ability than this ; and the ulti- 
 mate success along the whole line of the Conqueror's efforts, 
 had its efficient aid from Hubert Sinclair's lieutenancy in an 
 historically troublesome but withal brave part of the kingdom. 
 It would be pleasant to accumulate incident of his lordship of 
 the city and governorship of the castle, and industry could find 
 its reward in the work. Other things and other men now, 
 however, call for fair share of attention. ' The house of Rye 
 rose high in William's favour,' says Freeman, who does not 
 grudge them their honours and lands ; and were not such men 
 as this Hubert worthy of all honour, so loyal, brave, and 
 capable 1 Their skill of pacification by giving justice and 
 showing courtesy to the exasperated Saxons, was the finest 
 feature in their rule, though it has the effect of keeping them
 
 THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM. 113 
 
 less on historic page (which generally loves tyrannies and 
 sensations for its best attraction) than if of the harsh temper 
 and nothing besides. That other conspiracies in the north-east 
 never came to much or anything, must be attributed to the 
 ability and geniality of Hubert and his descendants. 
 
 In Domesday Book's pages Hubertus, films Huberti, holds 
 much in capite and as under-tenant. What has been said of 
 his brother Eudo in this respect will apply to him, their lands 
 being of similar extent. Hubert held in Sussex, Berkshire, 
 Dorsetshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Essex, Staffordshire, Nor- 
 folk, and Sullblk, filling leaves of the Conqueror's record. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM. 
 
 Radulph Sinclair was the eldest son of Hubert, the ambas- 
 sador, and the eldest brother of Hubert of Norwich, Adam of 
 Kent, and Kudo Dapifer. To him was committed the custody 
 of the splendid castle of Nottingham, the home and fort of 
 Waltheof, the traitorous Saxon earl of Nottingham. Ralph 
 also got the earldom of the county, when William I. had in 
 1074 secured this nobleman, to whom he had married his own 
 niece Judith. There is general abuse of the lady among the 
 chroniclers, who are chiefly Saxons, for her pretended eager- 
 ness to get Waltheof beheaded. Love of another was an easy 
 tale to invent. A lady with two or three daughters at or near 
 womanhood was not of such temper. The more likely theory is 
 that she was a true Norman at heart, and detested with her 
 whole soul the dishonourable scheming that was certainly going 
 on. Her life could well become a burden to her, living it in 
 the midst of such deceit as was around, and if she gave her 
 uncle the king the benefit of her advice, which is not proved, 
 justification might be found for her. The political game then 
 playing was no matter of three-volume sentiment, and ladies 
 with the fine training of Normandy were more than clin^in^ 
 chattels. They had to be treated on grounds of equality. 
 They founded religious houses, heired wide fortunes, judged 
 effects of dynasties and alliances with the wisdom and decision 
 
 II
 
 ii4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 born only of actual experience ; and if Waltheof or his ad- 
 mirers of his own race forgot that to a Norman lady right and 
 honour were first, and protection of evil-doing husbands of 
 very secondary consideration, they deserved justly all the con- 
 sequences of the crude mistake. Her uncle afterwards offered 
 her marriage to one of his choice, but she did not seem to have 
 eagerness for another married life ; and if this caused her mis- 
 fortunes, and ultimately, as her enemies say, poverty and 
 vagabondage, for all her high titles and wealth, their gratuitous 
 story of her love of a lover does not appear to have much or any 
 ground. In the freedom of poverty, if it ever did arrive at 
 all, there would have been no political or other bar. But it is 
 a Saxon libel on Judith, countess of Nottingham, to which 
 the unavoidable difficulty with her uncle, the king, gave only 
 too much ease of colour for the complacent fabulists who love 
 a moral more than facts. It is not easy to realise how dan- 
 gerous a man this Waltheof was, not only for William, but for 
 the whole Norman nobility and soldiers. He was the son of 
 Siward, the second, certainly not the only son, if Shakes- 
 peare in Macbeth had the right version when he makes young 
 Siward fall by Macbeth's sword before the Scottish castle of 
 Dunsinane. In the time of Edward the Confessor, 
 
 ' Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men, ' 
 
 was a power needing politic treatment ; and Waltheof his son 
 not only heired the earldom of Northumberland, which itself 
 could raise such an army, but with his wife had got also the earl- 
 doms of Huntingdon, Northampton, and Nottingham. They 
 were descended from Ursus, the Dane ; and, hereditarily brave, 
 W.-iltheof had given example of his courage, if not ferocity, by 
 his famous stand at one of the gates of York, where he chopped 
 off the heads of Norman soldiers, then his enemies, as they 
 came, to a number sufficient to make him the most notorious 
 sword-wielder in England. The Conqueror's prizes given to 
 him were politic as much as generous, but when such a man 
 had shown his mind, and by the ability of such leaders as 
 Bishop Odo, Bichard Fitz- Gilbert, Hubert, and Balph, had 
 fallen into William's hands, there was little course open to the 
 king. It was simply a balancing of blood for blood, life for 
 life. Those who know human nature act accordingly, and 
 William's only death for state reasons is capable of defence,
 
 THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM. 115 
 
 if any such doings are at all to be treated as other than the 
 work of fate's necessity. Outside of Winchester at early 
 morning "Waltheof was executed, and his body was taken some 
 time afterwards for burial to Croyland Abbey, Lincolnshire. 
 The bishop of Northumberland, Walcher, got the rule of 
 Northumbria ; the earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon 
 remained in Judith's hands, who had three daughters, the 
 children of Waltheof; and Ralph Sinclair had the earldom of 
 Nottingham given to him, together with the governorship of 
 Nottingham Castle, one of the finest structures of the kind in 
 the kingdom. 
 
 It has been said that Waltheof 's possessions were his greatest 
 enemies, implying that the Norman nobles were hungering 
 after them. The right sense in which to take the saying is, 
 that the immense width of his lands, and his power of raising 
 thousands of soldiers, gave William no choice of risking again 
 and again the traitorous changes of disposition of the powerful 
 and tickle Dane. His mother, or, as some say, his step-rnother, 
 was Blfrida, daughter of Aldred, count of Northumbria, by 
 whom Siward got his northern wide district. Of these counts 
 there had been Utred, Waldesus, and Aldred previously known 
 to record. Her uncle was Cospatric, the lord of Raby, the 
 ancestor of all the Nevilles, and father-in-law of William 
 Sinclair. Queen Margaret Atheling of Scotland's dapifer. 
 There was no preternatural hurry to share the spoil. In 
 DtHiirstfii;/ Hunk the Countess Judith holds the lands, and 
 thai was five years at the least after the death of her husband. 
 If Ralph Sinclair had early possession of Nottingham, it 
 was absolutely necessary for the security of his sovereign's 
 rule. King William knew where the foot must be planted, 
 prepared for attack or defence; but there is no evidence that 
 hungry seizure was at work. Of all Eudo Dapifer's brothers, 
 Ralph needed least to be enterprising in this way, as being 
 the eldest son, and heir to large property in Normandy. 
 With Hubert of Rye deceased, he would be expected to keep 
 up the French home in its old and added splendour. The 
 military and loyal aspect of the affairs of the chief central 
 and northern counties was the matter of first importance to 
 him. It was only accidental, that he and Hubert secured the 
 best things out of the terrible but deserved fall of Ralph, earl 
 of Norfolk, or, as has been said, consul of East Anglia, mean-
 
 n6 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ing Cambridge, Norfolk, and Suffolk ; of Roger Fitz-Osborn, 
 earl of Hereford ; and of Waltheof, a son greater tban his 
 father Siward, who could 'wake Northumberland,' and lead 
 ten thousand men to the aid of a Scottish prince, or more if 
 need required. 
 
 A passage from Duncan's List of the Norman Barons who 
 fought at Hastings, the information of which is chiefly de- 
 rived from the local and other antiquarian careful research of 
 Auguste le Provost, has valuable reference not only to Ralph 
 or Raoul, as the French write the name, but to other members 
 of his lineage. ' Haie-du-Puits is in the arrondissement of 
 Coutances. The lord of this barony, at the date of the Con- 
 quest, was Raoul, seneschal of the earl of Mortain, and 
 brother of Robert de la Haie, a contemporary of Henry the 
 First. Raoul seems to have been the son of Hubert of Rye, 
 to whom was entrusted the castle of Nottingham, and the 
 governorship of that county ; he is frequently mentioned in 
 Domesday Booh. It is certain that Robert de la Haie was 
 nephew to Odo Dapifer, another son of Hubert of Rye. This 
 Odo Dapifer has been frequently confounded with Odo au 
 Chapeau, son of Turstin Halduc, or Haldup, one of the 
 founders of the abbey of Lessay. This error may be traced 
 back even to Ordericus Vitalis, who wrote in the twelfth 
 century. In addition to other grants, Robert de la Haie re- 
 ceived the lordship of Halnac, in Sussex, in the reign of 
 Henry the First, and founded the priory of Boxgrave, a de- 
 pendency on the abbey of Lessay. The name of his wife was 
 Muriel. They had two sons, Richard and Raoul ; the former 
 had an only daughter, who carried the estates into the family 
 of Saint-John. In the war between Stephen and Geoffrey 
 Plantagenet, Richard de la Haie, who commanded at Cher- 
 bourg, for the king of England, was seized by pirates, and 
 his brother, Raoul, was compelled to surrender the castles in 
 the Cotentin to the earl of Anjou. These events belong to 
 the years 1141 and 1142. Richard de la Haie, son of Raoul, 
 founded the abbey of Blanchelande in Normandy.' There is 
 a correction to this, namely, that the same Robert de la Haie 
 could not be the brother of Ralph and the nephew of Eudo 
 Dapifer. If there was only a single individual of the name, 
 he was certainly the nephew of both. The earl of Mortain 
 was the half-brother of the Conqueror, and like his other
 
 THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM. T17 
 
 half-brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeux, he shared largely in 
 the division of lands at the Conquest. They got more 
 than any else of William's following, the earl of Mortain 
 being first in the number of his lordships, nearly 800 in 
 18 counties, and Odo first in the value of the possessions 
 secured. It speaks of relationship of some close kind, for this 
 is the chief clue to transactions of the period, that, as Ralph 
 Sinclair was seneschal to the earl of Mortain, so Adam Sin- 
 clair was seneschal to the bishop, Odo, earl of Kent. Such con- 
 nection of double brothers could not be accidental. The fortunes 
 and misfortunes of Arlotta's two sons, had the strongest rela- 
 tion to those of Ralph and Adam. The whole state of matters 
 throws peculiar colour over the conquering duke of Nor- 
 mandy's domestic affairs, and these played large part in the 
 drama of his English years. More direct knowledge of Adam's 
 stewardship to Odo is attainable, from Domesday Booh and 
 other sources, than of Ralph's to Robert, earl of Mortain 
 and of Cornwall, chiefly because the bishop was a livelier actor 
 in history than his brother. Robert's son William fell into as 
 final misfortune as his uncle, the unfortunate and troubling 
 Odo ; though the great Hubert de Burgh and William Fitz- 
 Alilclni, king's dapifer and viceroy of Ireland, restored or 
 regained fortune for this line from Arlotta, the mother of the 
 Conqueror. Such favour as Ralph must have had in these 
 cii'cumstances, substantiates the statement that he had the 
 governorship or earldom of Nottinghamshire, though the fact 
 is settled otherwise by records. It is curious to note that 
 Eudo, the third brother, was high steward to the third and 
 greatest brother of Arlotta's sons, the king of England and 
 duke of Normandy. The house of Rye was the most suc- 
 cessful of the time, and Freeman does not grudge them their 
 successes, wonderful to be said. On the relationship of Robert 
 de La I hue to it, information is to be got in Burke's Peerage, 
 under 'Viscount Bolingbroke and St. John.' Roger de St. 
 John, of Stanton St. John, co. Oxon., married Ciceley Sin- 
 clair, daughter and heiress of Robert of Haya, lord of the 
 manor of Halnac, co. Suffolk, as Burke finds; and their 
 daughter Muriel, ancestress of the celebrated Viscount Boling- 
 broke of Battersea and Wandsworth, Pope's friend, seems to 
 have been named after her mother or grandmother. What is 
 of great importance, amounting to positive proof, if Burke's
 
 nS THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 information be correct, is, that he states that Robert Sinclair 
 of Haya was ' a kinsman of Henry I.' Robert's son-in-law, 
 Roger St. John, further, was the son of the John de St. John 
 who was ' one of the twelve knights that accompanied Robert 
 Fitz-Hamon, earl of Gloucester, in a warlike expedition 
 against the Welsh,' and who got the castle of Faumont, 
 Glamorgan, ' for his great services.' The connection of Eudo, 
 Fitz-Hamo, and the lords of Haya, can be discerned here, for 
 various inferential reasons. That Ciceley Sinclair's sister- 
 in-law married Sir Bernard de St. Valery, a relation of the 
 Conqueror by the mother's side, is also indication of the ' set.' 
 The able Tregozes appear in family charters of these families, 
 for they were St. Johns of the Adam de Port line male, to 
 whom Lydiard Tregoze, in Wiltshire, came by a marriage with 
 a Beauchamp. Burke shows that the Scottish Hays, repre- 
 sented by the marquis of Tweeddale, the earl of Errol, and 
 by four baronets, are of Norman origin, the first remarkable 
 one being William de Haya,, royal butler to Malcolm IV. and 
 William the Lion. It is suggestive that the ancient seat of 
 one branch was called Huntingdon, in East Lothian. Was it 
 an English memory ? The earls of Errol were high constables, 
 and such offices were only given to royal blood. But perhaps 
 the most instructive information in connection with the sub- 
 ject is that given by the famous Giraldus Cambrensis, a 
 churchman of the Barry lineage so remarkable in Irish his- 
 tory, and a contemporary of Henry II. He says that Nesta, 
 the Welsh princess, concubine of Henry I., had seven sons 
 to different Normans, which was gay even for Welsh morality. 
 They were the progenitors of nearly all the leading chiefs in 
 the conquest of Ireland, 1172. One of the seven was William 
 Hay, and Girald Cambrensis says that in the division of 
 Nesta's Welsh properties he got Sanctum Clarum. His 
 father was certainly a Sinclair of Hay. The half-brothers of 
 this William were the Fitz-Gerald, Fitz-Stephen, the Maurice, 
 &c, who figured in the Irish Conquest. One of her daughters 
 was married to the lord of Ros. Girald mentions a Robert and 
 a Richard Hay as constables of Lincoln before the Lacis; and 
 11 icy were probably descendants of Ralph Sinclair, castellan of 
 Nottingham. The Lincoln Hays are well known by charters 
 as well as in the records of the interesting northern ancient 
 city. The true home of this branch of Sinclair blood is to be
 
 THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM. 
 
 119 
 
 found on the beautiful banks of the Wye, Herefordshire- 
 
 JIaia Castle was built by Maud, married to one of the Breck 
 nock Bruces. the female Samson or Guy of Warwick of the 
 Welsh border. It is there that the Sinclair, Hay, and Bruce 
 families get so interknit after the Norman Conquest, that 
 they seem of the same blood, as must have been, if goinij 
 to Normandy were profitable. Wales has played a most pro- 
 ductive part in giving historical Norman figures to the two 
 islands. Jones in his History of Brecknock has varied incidents 1 
 information as to these families' close union by marriage and 
 otherwise. To one of the Devonshire Sinclairs the William 
 I hike of Bramber in Domesday Book was married, and again 
 and again the lines are meeting, the Bruces not being then 
 the greater. 
 
 It can be more easily understood how Eudo Dapifer, as 
 Dugdale says in speaking of William Rufus, could 'well be 
 accounted the chief instrument in raising him to the royal 
 throne,' when it is remembered that he had only the gover- 
 nors of the southern castles to gain over; his two brothers, 
 Ralph, earl of Nottingham, and Hubert, earl of Norfolk, or 
 possibly consul of East Anglia, having such castles as Nott- 
 ingham and Norwich in their powerful hands. A knowledge 
 of this would aid decision on the part of William de Ponte- 
 Arce to give up the keys of the treasury at Winchester, and 
 on the part of the governors of Dover Castle, Pevensey, 
 Hastings, and other sea-board castles, to swear, in Eudo the 
 seneschal's favour, for llufus as king. 
 
 There is a statement by Nicolas as to the claimed possession 
 of the earldom of Nottingham by the Peverells at some period. 
 He says that no earl was created till 1377, when Baron Mow- 
 bray got the title, but he is discussing the times after that reign 
 of Stephen so destructive of previous doings, and difficult of 
 itself to master. There is record that Ralph had the custody 
 of the castle and county of Nottingham, ' Radulphus cui com- 
 missa est custodia castelli et comitatus Notingehamiae,' afterwhich 
 there can be no room for difficulties of formal creation, which 
 also is probably implied in this account. The Ferrers, later, 
 put in a female claim, but without success. 
 
 Earl Ralph had a son Ralph who figured in the empress's 
 wars with Stephen. He may or may not have been actually 
 earl, though it is probable he was so at intervals, having
 
 120 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 followed the fortunes of Stephen. Matthew Paris, William 
 of Malmesbury, and others, have much to say of him. He was 
 a 'fierce man and a great plunderer.' It is likely these 
 were the virtues of that time. Evidently he had the 
 king's trust as one of his best warriors. He surprised the 
 castle of Devises in Wiltshire by a skilful stratagem, and the 
 chroniclers say he then boasted that with this stronghold for 
 base he would conquer for Stephen all the country between 
 Winchester and London. That he had great wealth is shown 
 by the fact that he sent on his own account for soldiers out of 
 Flanders to put his schemes to their full execution. But 
 unfortunately this biter was himself bit. John, the subtle 
 captain of Marlborough Castle, put his own science into use, 
 and in some way got him taken prisoner. Kidnapping was in 
 accordance with the chivalry of that civil war. He was taken 
 to the empress, Matilda, flighty, sometimes capable, always 
 persistent, sometimes timid (as when she got into a coffin to 
 escape after one of her battles), and often cruel. Earl Ralph 
 she asked to deliver up the castle of Devises on peril of his 
 life. That it was still held by his men shows that the subtle 
 governor John had taken unfair advantage of his gallant 
 enemy, the captain of Devises Castle. It was not Devises he 
 had taken, but its lord, who was probably enjoying an outside 
 walk or gallop unattended. He would not betray the castle 
 to Matilda. He must die then, was the alternative. There 
 was no shrinking, even though the indignity was further 
 threatened that she would have him hung. This was the mode 
 of the execution of thieves, and nothing more bitter could 
 be invented against the chivalrous soul of a Norman ; but his 
 honour kept him firm as a rock, and he died the shameful death. 
 His family could not recover in England from the state of 
 matters into which this and other things put them in the reign 
 of Matilda's son. They lived and succeeded most in Normandy. 
 As early as Henry the First's reign Ralph is noticeable as 
 giving gifts to the Knights Templar. His son Hubert, 
 called Hubert Fitz- Ralph, though liberal to the monks of 
 Derley in particular, declined largely from the former estate. 
 He is taxed for only 20 fees; and, what is suggestive of 
 the want of royal sunshine and other advantages contempora- 
 neous, they are all of old enfeoffment. He had a sister, how- 
 ever, who brought 10 knights' fees of dowry to a Norman
 
 THE EARL OF NOTTINGHAM. 121 
 
 lord, Henry de Cotentin. The main line seems to have 
 become soon extinct, in England, for in 6 Henry III., 1222, a 
 Juliana, the daughter of a Hubert, his heiress, appears for 
 her son, then in wardship. A collateral line through Mary, 
 co-heiress of Ralph Fitz-Ralph of Middleham, Yorkshire, gave 
 this seat to the Nevilles, of which semi -royal line the earl of 
 Salisbury, heir of the Montacutes, and Warwick, king-maker, 
 were chiefs. When the dauntless Cosur de Lion, after great 
 successes and in sight of Jerusalem as crusader, was deserted 
 by his European allies, ' Philip of France,' Tindal says, 
 'immediately after his return to his dominions loaded King 
 Richard with calumnies, and had a conference, January 22, 
 1 192, between Gisors and Trie, wherein he demanded of 
 William Fitz-Ralph, seneschal of Normandy, his royal sister 
 Alice ; but the seneschal refused to send her, though Philip 
 showed him the convention made between King Richard and 
 him at Messina. After that the king of France gathered a 
 large army, and would have invaded Normandy ; but the great 
 men of his kingdom would not let him.' This useful light 
 on the family is taken from Hoveden's Chronicle and the 
 Bromton Chronicle ; and it suggests that the Norwich 
 branch claimed, and got, the hereditary rights of Eudo, the 
 seneschal. It is the more likely because in Rymer's 
 Foedera, William Fitz-Ralph, seneschal of Normandy, is wit- 
 ness with Robert of Tregoz and with Peter of Pratellis, 
 Euclo's chief estate and castle in Normandy, to a charter of 
 Richard the First for their favoured Rochester. The same 
 authority implies that his father Ralph was also seneschal. 
 In 1226 a Ralph, the son of Nicolas, was 'our seneschal,' 
 but the reference may be too far afield. There is no doubt of 
 the Gerold, son of Ralph, who was one of the commissioners 
 sent in 11 70 by Henry II. to the counties to reform the 
 administration of justice, and through him the true descent 
 of the Irish Fitz-Geralds is probably to be found. That this 
 William Sinclair founded a Norman branch is open for inquiry; 
 but enough is said to show that he was of the stock in blood 
 and spirit, and it is to England attention is chiefly necessary. 
 In 1 1 70, after Henry the Second's four years' stay in France, 
 he found the administration of justice shamefully neglected, 
 and Gervas, the chronicler, names Gerold Fitz-Ralph as one of 
 the commissioners sent into the counties with full powers of
 
 122 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 inquiry and punishment as to the doings of the magistrates. 
 But Earl Ralph's most remarkable descendants were the lords 
 Freshville of Derbyshire, whose claims to heir the last Hubert 
 of Norfolk have been noticed. They played their part in the 
 best English life till the reign of Charles the Second, when 
 they became extinct, the last males distinctly traceable from 
 this first Norman earl of Nottingham. 
 
 Cooper's discovery of a member of the Rye family is interest- 
 ing, as showing that they did not limit their efforts to military 
 and feudal courses, but were capable as well at sea and in 
 commerce. ' On 21st July, 121 2, the ship of Geffrey, son of 
 Michael de Ria, was at Winchelsea with 120 tuns of wine 
 belonging to the merchants of Iypres and Ghent.' Probably 
 Geffrey was one of the sons expected to provide for himself, and 
 the question arises, was this Michael the son of one of the Sin- 
 clairs earls of Nottingham, and also, it is to be expected, lords 
 of Rye in Normandy 1 Meantime, it must also be said that 
 Michael of Rye may have been of the next port to Winchelsea 
 in England. If so, it will add further to the large accumula- 
 tion of facts pointing to Rye in Sussex as companion home of 
 Sinclairs with the famous Rye of Normandy. Another dis- 
 cussion will still further treat this subject. That Michael of 
 Rye was grandson or great-grandson of Ralph Sinclair, 
 governor of magnificent Nottingham Castle, and earl of the 
 county of which it was the powerful centre, there are not 
 known facts to show. Amid the embroglio which the pride of 
 first names and of lands creates, it is difficult to follow 
 accurately enough some trains of facts. ' The authors of 
 Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique trace,' says Hallam, ' the 
 use of surnames in a few instances even to the beginning of 
 the tenth century ; but they did not become general, according 
 to them, till the thirteenth.' Surnames from the place where 
 the mansion or castle was built, were at first the only dis- 
 tinction ; and these were of some use certainly, but not of so 
 much to present search as might be thought. The Sinclairs 
 seem to have early found the value of having a surname in 
 addition to that of their places. Like the Romans they knew 
 their gens. This, however, was cherished at some cost to 
 feudal pride. The same English writer says somewhere that 
 the use of such a general family surname made a man be con- 
 sidered a simple gentleman instead of a lord by tenure. It is
 
 WHO WAS SIMON OF SENLIS? 123 
 
 great reason for thankfulness, in toiling now, that so many 
 of the name clung to the clear though less demonstrative name. 
 When it occurs, as it does in a remarkable number of earliest 
 records, almost single to itself, there is no shadow of doubt as 
 to what ' tribe,' as one antiquarian says, its bearer belongs. 
 The house of Rye has been thus absolutely fixed by record, 
 and the modesty or skill may work perhaps equally well for 
 other brandies of it than have yet been followed. If it can 
 also help in the next enquiry, which is undoubtedly both 
 difficult and admitting of debate, there need be no reason to 
 regret the frequent signature of the general surname. 
 
 Ralph Sinclair in Domesday Book holds, as Radulphus 
 filitis lluhrrti, wide lands in Leicester, Stafford, Derby, Not- 
 tingham, Lincoln shires, in capite ; and there is one entry in 
 Derbyshire as undertenant. He has 10 manors in Notting- 
 hamshire, and 1 1 houses in Nottingham itself. In Derby 
 he had 37 lordships, of which Criche was one; in Lincoln- 
 shire he had Gunnebi ; and in Leicester, Dalby. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 WHO WAS SIMON OF SENLIS ? 
 
 On the Paris side of Rouen, the town of Senlis was of import- 
 ance at the time of the Conquest. Randulph or Ralph le 
 Riche, a Norse soubriquet, was its feudal chief. He had two 
 sons, who came to England in the Conquei-or's reign, Simon 
 and the Warner le Riche who was the ancestor of English- 
 men of the surname Rich. It is, however, of Simon inquiry 
 is being made. If his lineage were discovered, his brother's will 
 easily be followed, even if with a different surname. He does 
 not seem to have been at the battle of Hastings, as far as can 
 be discovered ; but he had, when he first appeared in English 
 history, a renowned name as a soldier of the first rank. Im- 
 mediately after the Norwich marriage and conspiracy, he begins 
 to be a figure of weight and influence. He was a veteran 
 then, and war had lamed him in one leg; but he was still 
 young, and very vigorous of mind and body. He was with
 
 124 THE S1NCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Ralph and Hubert Sinclair in putting down the conspiracy 
 headed in open civil war by Roger Fitz-Osborn, the earl of 
 Hereford ; and it is likely he was one of the chief commanders 
 of the proceedings which ended as has been seen. 
 
 Considerable time after this, King William proposed that 
 his own niece Judith, the widow of Waltheof , should marry the 
 brave soldier. It was 1075 when the Saxon was beheaded, and 
 the proposal, from what appears in Domesday Book, could not 
 have at all events been urged as strongly as it eventually 
 was, before 1080. Simon had not only built Northampton 
 Castle, as Ingulphus shows, before this, but lived and ruled 
 there as its governor. It may be that Huntingdon Castle, 
 so much struggled for in English and Scottish history, had 
 him, if not as founder, as governor then ; and this would go to 
 explain his wish, from much personal neighbouring knowledge 
 of her, to join their fortunes. Huntingdon Castle was the 
 home of the widowed countess, Judith ; and Northampton 
 Castle, which Simon himself built from its foundations, was in 
 feudal proximity. The lady had no heart for marriage, and 
 could not look at matters in the convenient or political way. 
 Her uncle's will was strong ; but rather than marry Simon, 
 she and her three daughters fled from their castle for shelter 
 among the fens and fen-people of Ely. Her enemies give her 
 another lover, as the cause of tbis escape and personal misery ; 
 but the fact that her maiden daughters fled with her is of 
 itself enough to silence all such evil and essentially rebellious 
 libel. She had had enough of marriages and conspiracies, and 
 would rather be a beggar than to live where life and death 
 were continually meeting under dreadest aspect. Simon pur- 
 sued his purpose with a steadiness explainable to his advan- 
 tage on the supposition that he really loved the lady, the 
 greatest then in England next to the royal family, of which 
 indeed she herself was a member. That she had immense 
 estate may or may not be read to his credit. Nothing appears 
 to prove that he stretched a point in the matter. It rather 
 became a feud of honour between her and her uncle, the 
 Conqueror. He had chosen Waltheof before for her, and 
 woman's nature might well be capable of saying, ' If I meant 
 to marry again at all, at years when I have three daughters 
 women by my side, I would choose this time for myself.' 
 William had got somewhat morose then, and no doubt looked
 
 WHO WAS SIMON OF SEN LIS? 125 
 
 on all things, love also, as but instruments of political useful- 
 ness. 
 
 Simon, it may be guessed, was with all his scars and his 
 halting on one foot more presentable than a blackamoor 
 Othello ; and did not he win Desdemona, the fair European 
 in her teens, by the glamour of his soldier's training and his- 
 tory? The Frenchman from Senlis found means to gain 
 the affection of Matilda, the eldest daughter of Judith and 
 Waltheof; and probably Judith was nothing loth to have the 
 difficulty thus solved. On their flight William had at once 
 seized the castle and honour of Huntingdon. The town of 
 Northampton and the - whole hundred of Falkely he granted 
 before this seizure to Simon 'for shoes for his horses,' a 
 phrase that may have a personal innuendo in the contest. 
 Simon's marriage to Matilda, 'the lady of Daventry,' coheiress 
 and eldest daughter of Waltheof and Judith, gave him the 
 earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon, as well as claim 
 to that of Northumbria, if events should favour its change 
 from Walcher the bishop's stewardship. 
 
 But the clue to his real lineage must be given. Langebek's 
 Scriptores Rerum Danicorum is authority as to some things : in 
 this passage, for example, describing the marriage of one of 
 the daughters of Judith, Waltheof's countess, ' cuidam militi 
 FrancigencB nomine Si mane Sylvanectensi scilicet Seint Liz; 
 nomen autem patris Ranvlphiis le Riche' — 'to a certain 
 French-born knight by name Simon Sylvanectensis or Seint- 
 Liz; the name of his father, however, Ralph the Rich.' St. 
 Liz is plainly another way of writing the name of his native 
 town in France. As there were Hubert of Rye, William of 
 Ipres, Eustace of Bouillon, and so forth, there was Simon 
 de Senliz or St. Liz. The change of spelling might be made 
 equally, in the cases of the town, or of those who thus hailed 
 from it, by the usual local surnaming then. What has nearly 
 lost Simon to the genealogy of a family, is the similarity be- 
 tween the sound of St. Liz and of St. Cleere, the midland 
 mode of spelling and sounding Sinclair. Simon was Simon of 
 Senlis by local surnaming, and he was Simon Sinclair by the 
 more modern and far more valuable fashion of family lineage. 
 But if this was all that could be said on the subject, there 
 might well be endless controversy, for nothing is so subtle 
 as such questions of writing and pronouncing words. There
 
 126 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 cannot be too much care in giving them their exact weight in 
 discussion, and neither more nor less. No judicious inquirer 
 would debar them on the mere diffusiveness or elasticity of all 
 etymologising; but they are, of themselves, decidedly insuffi- 
 cient evidence. They come in usefully as support to weightier 
 things. It is to Leland, the antiquary of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, that there is indebtedness for the right clue ; and it is 
 none the less valuable that it leaves the question an open one 
 for some debate. His notes are as short often as they are 
 always quaint and almost innocently honest. He began his 
 famous Itinerary on 5th May 1542, and he presented it a 
 finished book to Henry the Eighth for a birthday present. 
 When he came to Northampton, he wrote his findings, and 
 one of them is especially interesting. ' St. John's Hospitalle 
 was originally founded by one William Sancte Clere, arch- 
 diacon of Northampton and brother to one of the Simon 
 Sainctcleres, as sum of St. John's name them ; but as I have 
 redde alway they were caulid Saincteliz and not S. Clere.' 
 This might be safely left to have its own effect, but the full 
 value of these few words would be lessened, if attention were 
 not drawn to some circumstances of persons, place, and time. 
 It were sacrilege to say a depreciatory word of a good sincere 
 antiquary like Leland, to whom so many owe much real grati- 
 tude for the glimpses he gives of the past. His character, 
 however, is not at all of the judicial order, although he is 
 faithful in observing and noting his observations. As be- 
 tween him, an itinerant stranger at Northampton in 1542, 
 and those who not only had the traditions then of the place, 
 but actually lived by bounty of the archdeacon, William Sin- 
 clair, there can be little doubt as to whose story is the true 
 one. Indeed, the similarity of St. Liz and St. Cleere or St. 
 Cleeres in sound, of itself explains Leland 's doubt. No 
 weigher of evidence would hesitate to take the actual local 
 tradition, thus and then delivered by monks or monkish men- 
 dicants of literate peculiarities, in preference to the passing 
 impression of any antiquary, not to say one of Leland's guile- 
 less, exceedingly pleasant, but rather easy nature. His 
 register of the tradition of Northampton is so valuable, that 
 there would fain be escape from criticism of this most useful 
 of all the itinerants, even to the extent of saying that reason- 
 ing is not his strongest point. The tradition is of the honest
 
 WHO WAS SI VOX OF SEN LIS? 127 
 
 wholesale kind that testifies most in favour of itself. Not only 
 was William a Sinclair, but he was the brother of the Simon 
 Sinclairs who were the earls of the ground they stood on and 
 of much beside. Such magnates as they had been were not 
 likely to be lost in this point of lineage, in a town where men 
 could point to their religious, hospital, and other foundations 
 as numerous, and at that period still in existence. Who were 
 better keepers of genealogical details than monks ? and the 
 monks indebted for their subsistence to these Simons for cen- 
 turies, had been all hut as thick in Northampton as the leaves 
 of Valloinbrosa. Either nothing at all might be expected to 
 survive of so great benefactors, through the destruction of 
 documents by time and other enemies of record, or what 
 would remain would for very gratitude be truth. The other 
 side is open to those who may take it, but considering the 
 comparative darkness of most historic facts of so far a past, 
 this note of Leland's gives surely what may be called daylight. 
 Other things still will corroborate the fact that William the 
 Conqueror's lame favourite warrior was Simon Sinclair; but 
 in the further narrative he will be wholly accepted as such, 
 the case being already far clearer than is usually possible for 
 such inquiries to be with the greatest perseverance. It is not 
 asserted that here, without additional incidents, the proof of 
 lineage is absolute ; though not only tradition but remnants of 
 actual monastic records in the foundations of the Simon Sainct- 
 cleres must have existed in 1542, had the plan of Leland's 
 journey, with its notes wholly trustworthy as far as his infor- 
 mation went, allowed him more than the few hours he spent 
 investigating the antiquities of Northampton. To a man who 
 had to do as much of England as possible, the specialties of 
 this town would not have close enough appeal for the thorough 
 search necessary to a decision. In the circumstances the local 
 and learned tradition is supremely valuable, and it will find 
 indirect suggestive corroboration by every step in the history 
 of this family and of their relations. 
 
 The characteristic Norman addition to the high military 
 spirit, of religious devotion, showed itself early in Simon. He 
 built the castle of Northampton, Dugdale says, in 10S4, and 
 at the same time the priory of St. Andrew's near his castle. 
 It had hierarchical subordination to the abbey of our Lady of 
 Charity in France, which was on his father's, and ultimately
 
 128 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 his own, French properties. To this also Leland has a valu- 
 able note. ' St. Andrews the late Monastery of Black Monks 
 stood yn the North Parte of the Toune hard by the North 
 Gate. Simon Saincteliz 1 the first beyng Erie of Northampton 
 and Huntendene made this House : but he is not buried there ; 
 for he died in Fraunce and there buried.' He was earlier 
 than his relation Eudo Dapifer in this field of religious Eng- 
 lish foundation. It is noticeable that among the descendants 
 of William Sinclair, the son of Walderne, earl of St. Clare, 
 to the smallest and latest proprietors of them, the necessity 
 to their spiritual imagination of communication in things 
 above the material world, with all its pomps and vanities, kept 
 asserting itself in the form of sacred building and provision 
 for the intellect and emotions. It was not so specially re- 
 markable in times when it was the fashion to make such offer- 
 ings under Roman Catholic rule, though it is true that no 
 name has been more liberal in this way so long as real religious 
 imagination showed itself at actual work. Neglect of the reli- 
 gious necessities for the limited and purely secular political 
 ones, is no attribute of mastery, but the reverse ; and a people 
 wisely, or, indeed, instinctively shuns the leaders or higher 
 classes who trust to the raw logic of facts, which are really not 
 true facts till lit by the glow of disciplined imagination. 
 Simon was one of those Knights Templar who so romantically 
 united the secular and religious. Kennet in his Parochial 
 Antiquities shows that he gave them the manor of Merton, 
 in Oxfordshire ; and that he took personal part in their doings 
 is shown by the fact that he went to the Holy Land, where 
 he had probably been often before, in the last year of his life. 
 It was on his returning for England that he died at his French 
 home in 1115, and was buried there in his dearly loved abbey, 
 Be Carltute. But his gifts were not limited to these institu- 
 tions. There is record of him giving the fruits of the church 
 of Pidington to the prioiw of St. Fridiswidde in Oxford ; and, 
 to the priory of Daventry, the produce of several of his churches. 
 These are only accidental survivals of record, and but indicate 
 much other similar grant. His endowment of his own monastery 
 of St. Andrews, built wholly to his mind, was of the same 
 extensive kind as that of St. John's Abbey at Colchester. 
 One item is sufficiently suggestive of the whole. He gave by 
 
 1 Ueyug the first iu Burton.
 
 WHO WAS SIMON OF SENLIS? 129 
 
 his first charter the third part of the annual produce of his 
 land, jure zixoris, of Daventria, and various tithes besides of 
 that extensive district. The full charter is in existence, and 
 the giving of it had national importance, as can be seen from 
 the signatures. It was in 8 Henry I., 1108, two years after 
 Eudo Dapifer had begun to build at Colchester, that a second 
 carta Simonis comitis was granted for St. Andrews, North- 
 ampton. The names attached are, Henry, king of the Eng- 
 lish; Matilda, the queen; Anselm, archbishop; Robert, bishop 
 of Lincoln ; Robert, bishop of Chester ; John, bishop of Lys ; 
 Samson, bishop; John, bishop of Bayeux, in Normandy; Gun- 
 dulph, the architectural bishop of Rochester; Maurice, bishop 
 of London ; Ranulp, the chancellor ; Henry, count of War- 
 wick ; William, count of Warenne ; Nigell of Oily, the mag- 
 nate of Oxfordshire ; Robert of Ferrers, that of Derby ; Eudo 
 Dapifer; William of Aubeney, the bravest warrior of Tench - 
 brai battle, and son-in-law of Simon Sinclair; William of 
 Curcy ; Robert, count de Mellent ; and David of Scotland, 
 brother of the queen. The whole of Stoberiam was part of 
 this second charter. It would only be about generous and 
 very important work that such a list of England's best could 
 be engaged, and there is no need to illustrate his religious 
 doings further. 
 
 lit' was one of Henry the First's chief nobles, and was a 
 witness to the monarch's charter of public liberties, given at 
 the beginning of his reign. Henry addressed it to Hugh de 
 Boclande, then vicecomes or sheriff of Hereford, whom he loved 
 and promoted greatly afterwards. There is a copy of it in 
 Matthew Paris's history. In Baker's History of Northamp- 
 tonshire there are many facts collected about Simon, and one 
 of his writings, without a date, has equally political and 
 religious interest. It was testified by it that Robert de Pin- 
 keney, in Simon's presence at Northampton, granted to the 
 church and monks of St. Andrews, all the fee which God- 
 frey and Gero held of him in Sulgrave by service of one 
 knight; and the earl addresses it, 'To all my faithful men 
 of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire.' High feudal 
 spirit shows well through these words. The civil condi- 
 tion of things was founded on the obedience and loyalty 
 which make an army the perfect instrument for its work. 
 Fortunately or unfortunately, the existence of women and 
 
 I
 
 130 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 children is chronically antagonistic to such a system of civil 
 drill, and only at intervals can there be approach to the esprit 
 du corps of men of war among a population. It is not without 
 its beauty when seen, and speaks considerably in favour of the 
 ruling and ruled of the period. Weak idealists alone keep 
 dreaming of armies of factory men and factory girls under 
 captains of industry conquering the ills of life successfully. 
 The direction of effort by order is of greatest value, but mere 
 martinetcy is never more out of place than in such a field. 
 Necessities of soul and body are better guides than any cap- 
 tains of industry, though all personal high action, if it is any- 
 thing other than pretence and imposture, deserves honour, 
 but not suicidal worship. The system of things and humanity 
 was made according to no high-pressure theories of hysterical 
 and, in practice, fitful and inefficient labour, but in accordance 
 with the suffering and doing as they can, which are, and have 
 been, and always shall be, the chequered lot of men. No one 
 will choose to die young of famine, for the tragic beauty of the 
 business ; and even to die so is nothing so unknown to human 
 experiences that we are to madden ourselves into frantic der- 
 vishes about the matter. 
 
 This great feudal lord, Simon Sylvanectensis, as Leland 
 in his Collectanea himself calls him, thus answering his own 
 statement that his name was Saincteliz, lived one of the splen- 
 did, active, and religious lives of his time ; and his faithful 
 men of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire have descen- 
 dants who are still proud of him and of his many deeds. In 
 the Collectanea Lelandi, edited by Thomas Hearne, the anti- 
 quary, one hundred years ago from the MS. in the Bodleian 
 library at Oxford, there are even explanations that St. Liz was 
 only the name of the town from which Simon came to Eng- 
 land, and not a true surname. Leland makes the abbrevia- 
 tion from a history of Normandy which he had met, ' Urbs 
 Sylvanectensis in Norman.' — 'The St. Liz or Senlian city is in 
 Normandy.' The word originally may have meant the wood- 
 encircled place, though the saintly fashion of crusading times 
 had taken it past Senlis to Saincteliz and to the best-known 
 form in English genealogies, St. Liz. Leland himself, if he 
 had thought of it long enough, would probably find himself 
 agreeing with the Northamptonians of the sixteenth century, 
 that this was the local surname of the feudal Normandy, and
 
 SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. I3 i 
 
 that the family surname was, as they had told him on the best 
 authority for such matters, Sinclair, Sancto Claro, St. Cleere, 
 St. Clare, or other of the many forms of the racial surname. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER, 
 
 Simox, Waltheof, Henry, William, and Matilda were the 
 family of him of whom the Magna Britannia (a kind of supple- 
 ment to Camden's Britannia, edited by Cox and others) says 
 that he was one of the Conqueror's captains who came with 
 him out of Normandy, the first Earl Simon. His devotion to 
 the chui'ch brought its fruits. Waltheof, named after his 
 brave but unfortunate maternal grandfather of Saxo- Danish 
 lineage, became a priest, and ended as the head of that monas- 
 tary which, to be seen, must be visited by moonlight, with Sir 
 Walter Scott as guide. The 
 
 ' Slender shafts of shapely stone, 
 By foliage tracery combined,' 
 
 which has made Melrose Abbey one of the jewels of, particu- 
 larly the literary imagination, may not have then been in 
 existence. It is supposed that the Culdees, or ' worshippers of 
 God,' had their divine house near there; and with the passion, 
 and probably freemason privilege, of Sinclairs for architec- 
 tural beauties, this Waltheof, abbot of Melrose, in the 
 twelfth century, is responsible for some if not all of the Gothic 
 features of the most lovely remnant of the great and greatly 
 genuine church. If so, he can easily be forgiven for forsaking 
 the warlike traditions of his race on both sides, and clino-ino- 
 to the houses of God. They are, or were, the homes of peace, 
 civilisation, and art, where the hardest of all battle ought 
 continually to be waged against the hordes of what is essen- 
 tially ugly and unholy. He is known in the Roman Catholic 
 calendar as St. Waltheof, and takes a high place among the 
 saints as the second abbot of Melrose. The Acta Sanctorum 
 of the Bolandists, under his day, the third of August, gives 
 much biographical detail, as also do the annals of the Cister-
 
 1 32 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 cian order of monks, he being the most ascetic of this devoted 
 part of the clergy. Butler's Lives of the Saints may have 
 attention. In old Fordun's Scotichronicon there are many 
 references to this high clerical Sinclair, whose lineage had in 
 it the double Saxon royal alliance which caused Stephen to 
 oppose his election to the archbishopric of York. Billings 
 says that the reason of the opposition (and it was successful) 
 came from the danger that his promotion would give influence 
 to the rival house. It was in 1148 that Waltheof was trans- 
 ferred from Rievalle to Melrose ; and the abbey, being founded 
 in 1 136 by King David, 'the sore saint for the crown,' it 
 must have been still in the process of building under the rule 
 of Abbot Waltheof. The Norman features which puzzle 
 architects owe their origin to him. He wrought many mira- 
 cles, if the religious chapbooks may be believed. He ordered 
 a priest who shuddered to drink the wine with a spider in the 
 cup to gulp all, and some days after, the father being ill of 
 the experiment, he took the spider out at his thumb, to mon- 
 astic and popular general admiration, if not worship. In a 
 time of famine he fed all the inhabitants of Tweeddale miracu- 
 lously. It is possible that his English relations, and powerful 
 Scottish ones also, ' semi- royal,' as Billings calls them, 
 thought otherwise. Last of all, in hagiographic art, ' Incor- 
 rwptio sacri corporis et multis aegris sanitas restituta ad sepid- 
 chrum sancti ' — ' Incorruption of the holy body and health 
 restored to many sick people at the sepulchre of the saint.' 
 Several times his remains were raised for the spiritual refresh- 
 ment got from the sweet odours which exhaled, but a jealous 
 successor, as is said, shut up the mortuary chapel. It was 
 the age of Thomas Becket. Vide his list of miracles, and 
 judge softly of human intellect. 
 
 The Chronica de Mailros, which ought to be the best author- 
 ity, has, '■Anno MCXLVIII. : Waltherus f rater Henrici comitis 
 Northimbromm et Simonis comitis Northumtunae /actus est 
 abbas de Malros' — 'In the year 1 148 Waltheof, the brother 
 of Henry, earl of the Northumbrians, and of Simon, earl of 
 Northampton, was made abbot of Melrose.' Another pas- 
 sage is 'Anno mclix. : Obiit piae memoriae Waldevus abbas 11. 
 de Malros tertio non. Augusti, quifuit avuncidus regis Malcolmi' 
 — ' In the year 1 1 5 9 died Waltheof of pious memory, the 
 second abbot of Melrose, on the third of the nones of August,
 
 SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 133 
 
 who was the uncle of the king, Malcolm.' Of the brother Henry 
 much could be found, but this of itself gives him something of 
 a history. How he held the earldom of Northumberland must 
 have been through his mother's rights, as heiress of Siward 
 and of the great Waltheof beheaded in the Conqueror's reign. 
 Whether Henry founded a family is in some respects doubt- 
 ful because of the succession of the Mowbrays and Percies or 
 Louvaines to the northern dignity. 
 
 William, whose sonship to the first Simon is not so directly 
 authenticated, was the archdeacon of Northampton whom 
 Leland calls ' the brother to one of the Simon Sainctecleres,' 
 and who, he says, was the original founder of St. John's 
 Hospital there, still existing in 1542. What fixes or seems 
 to fix him as the brother of the second Simon, is that it was 
 to William, archdeacon of Northampton, Stephen once ordered 
 Geffrey Mandeville to deliver up the tower of London on the 
 penalties. The clergy were entrapped into crowning Stephen 
 king, by Hugh Bigod Dapifer's tale from Henry the First's 
 deathbed, and the religious bonds of this family would compel 
 them to hold by the performed public act of the archbishop 
 of Canterbury. Their ties of lineage enlisted them on the 
 side of Matilda, if the church interest had not been so power- 
 ful. That the archdeacon was of the right metal, too, may 
 be understood from his ability, and no doubt desire, to take 
 the command of London for Stephen's side. Archbishops, as 
 for example the Conqueror's brother Odo, earl of Kent, and 
 others of high clerical dignity, were then versed not only in 
 secretarial state business but in actual military commands, 
 and Archdeacon Sinclair had evidently the strong hand equal 
 to the able head. Dugdale says that it was William, arch- 
 deacon of Huntingdon, in the reign of King John, who was 
 ordered to receive the tower of London, and from one of the 
 later Mandevilles. If so, then William, archdeacon of Nor- 
 thampton, must rest on the laurels of being the founder of St. 
 John's Hospital, and of being the Sinclair of Leland's refer- 
 ence, nothing further being found of him as yet. The brother 
 or nephew of men so high in state and church, himself also 
 high in the latter, must have had considerable public connec- 
 tions could they be discovered. The late John Sinclair, arch- 
 deacon of Middlesex, was kinsman to this ancient churchman, 
 but by the princely Scottish line.
 
 134 THE SI NC LA IRS OE ENGLAND. 
 
 History is at best so tantalising that it only gives 
 glimpses of those we should Avish to see fully, and what 
 ' George Eliot ' has supposed one of her characters as think- 
 ing of this science, is often not very wide of the mark : ' It is 
 an ingenious process of guessing.' Let any one read our 
 recognised and really able historians like Macaulay, Froude, 
 Freeman, Buckle, or Bishop Stubbs, and then go and bury him- 
 self for some year or two, or ten, among the original records, 
 and he will come back with a shining and somewhat contented 
 face, and probably with an exclamation something after the 
 form of Solomon's celebrated one, ' Poetry of poetries, all is 
 poetry ! ' This is said, not to discredit history and historians, 
 for they are good, and sometimes great, but to give confidence 
 to timid worshippers in the shrine of fact and imagination, 
 which are inextricably mixed, that they also may enjoy savingly 
 the freedoms of all truly spiritual lands. Let pedants shake 
 their heads off. There need be no anathematising of the most 
 laborious plodders, who are often of infinite even when acci- 
 dental service ; but, referring all things to human head and 
 heart which God has given, let us trust what such oracle tells 
 finally in historical and all other subjects of hell, earth, or 
 heaven. Those who do not like the style have wide field else- 
 where, and waste enough for ears short or long. As the 
 Melrose Abbey inscription put it : 
 
 ' The earth builds on the earth castles and towers ; 
 The earth says to the earth, "All shall be ours.' " 
 
 But while we inhabit our tabernacle of earth or clay, castles 
 and towers and their inhabitants will always have their in- 
 terest to us, however small and insufficient the glimpses got 
 through crevice or loophole of stone or flesh ; and let no man 
 browbeat us with his specially skilful microscopic or telescopic 
 success of inspection, when the matter is all of degree, and 
 small degree. The finest scholastic weapons are useless, if 
 there is really no seeing eye behind them, and a deep heart 
 into which to convey its ever partial but inspiring messages. 
 
 Simon, the eldest, was the heir to his father's titles, and to 
 much of his estate ; and of Stephen he was one of the most 
 faithful and consistent supporters. There were reasons for his 
 adherence, besides the sympathy for the church's engagements
 
 SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 135 
 
 through its chief officers. He had been most roughly used by 
 Henry the First, or, to be more accurate, by his queen, Ma- 
 tilda, and her Scottish brother David, afterwards king of 
 Scotland. As a boy, Simon had been sent to France to finish 
 his education, according to the beautiful ceremonies of 
 chivalry. His mother Matilda, the widow of the first Earl 
 Simon, had married this brother of Henry's queen, and had 
 possession of the earldoms while the youth was in nonage. 
 When the time came that the young Simon was about to 
 claim his rights, an excuse was needed to keep him out of 
 them. One of England's best nobles had been banished by 
 Henry, and happened to have a son going through the chival- 
 rous curriculum of page aspirant for knighthood in the same 
 home with Simon. Warnings are said to have been given to 
 the heir of Northampton and Huntingdon, not to take his 
 knighthood in usual public form with the offending noble's 
 son. Whether they reached him, or never were sent, he 
 kept friendly with his young comrade ; and not only did they 
 take the feudal degree together, but immediately afterwards 
 went off jousting and performing deeds of derring-do, to the 
 indignation, real or feigned, of the Scottish faction who had 
 Henry in their interest. Young Simon's troubles began, and 
 he may well have cursed that bane of England even so early as 
 then, the mixture of royalty with nobility. Indeed, if the 
 family nature of English politics, from the arrival of William 
 the Conqueror, is not closely recognised, true ideas cannot be 
 got of the kingdom's history. Nobles were sometimes com- 
 pelled to be ambitious, if they wished to exist at all. The 
 successor of Malcolm, the husband of Margaret Atheling, was 
 King Alexander of Scotland, their son. This David was his 
 brother, Simon's scheming saintly Tartuffe stepfather. When 
 Alexander died, David became king of Scotland, but matters 
 grew little better for the stepson. The Scotsmen did not lose 
 their liking for the southern pastures. David's son, Henry, 
 was tlic next competitor against whom Simon had to contend 
 in such troublous times as those of Stephen. This Henry 
 paid homage to Stephen for Huntingdon ; which probably 
 Queen Matilda, the mother of Henry and Simon, thought she, 
 through her father and mother, Waltheof and Judith, had the 
 right to do her will with ; and in Stephen the adventurer's 
 time of need, Henry had Doncaster, Carlisle, and other grants
 
 136 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 made very freely. That it is easy to be generous with what 
 is not one's own, is a proverb ; and it was of first importance 
 to secure the aid of the Scottish faction in England, by being 
 liberal to the northern sovereign's relations. Stephen set 
 Henry on his right hand at one of the early meetings with 
 his lords and the clergy, but this was too much even for them, 
 and Henry had to bear the scorn of at least two, who rose and 
 left the court, viz., William, the archbishop of Canterbury and 
 the earl of Chester. This was the William of Corbeil who was 
 elected amid some difficulties at Gloucester in 1123, and the 
 relation of Sir Robert Fitz-Hamo, the ' knight of Rye,' whose 
 father was earl of Corbeil in Normandy. The archbishop 
 had not only general and hierarchical reasons for his contempt 
 of Stephen's flattery, but those of consanguinity, since he 
 knew of the injustice systematically being done to Simon. 
 This Henry of Huntingdon was married to Ada, daughter to 
 William, earl of Warenne, and they had three daughters, Ada 
 married to the earl of Holland, Margaret to Conan, earl of 
 Britanny, and Maud who died young. He had therefore Eng- 
 lish and French connection as well as Scottish to aid him. 
 His sons were Malcolm and William, successively Scottish 
 kings, and the David, earl of Huntingdon and of Carrick, 
 well known to history as the ancestor of the ladies through 
 whom the claims for the Scottish crown were made by Bruce, 
 Baliol, and others in the time of Edward the First. On the 
 death of David's father Henry, Simon the disinherited half- 
 brother got at last his rights in great part, 1152. 
 
 He had taken his side in the wars long before. He fought 
 hard for Stephen, at Lincoln in 1141 unsuccessfully, and 
 elsewhere otherwise. One of Leland's abbreviations is, 
 ' Simon comes Hamptoniensis in eodem bello adhcesit Stejihano.' 
 Robert, earl of Gloucester, champion of Matilda, his sister, 
 and married to Matilda Sinclair, daughter of the ' knight of 
 Rye,' said then at Lincoln of Simon, his opponent, that he was 
 forward in promises and slow in performing them. His state 
 of life a continual doubt and difficulty among royalties and 
 their needs and ambitions, may have made this quite true. 
 He never does seem to have acted with sufficient promptitude, 
 or perhaps they might have been more careful of meddling 
 with his proper rights. That he was in culture like the best 
 of his time, however, is shown by his founding the nunnery
 
 SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 137 
 
 De La Pree near Northampton, the abbey of Saltrez, Hun- 
 tingdon, and by giving the church returns of Southwick to 
 the Knights Templar, of whom, like his father, he was one. 
 The hereditary love of castle- building is shown by Bridges's 
 statement that he built Fotheringay, the scene of the last 
 moments of Mary, queen of Scots. 
 
 A contemporary chronicle, extant among the Cottonian 
 MSS., says that David, the queen's brother, was made earl of 
 Huntingdon and Northampton by Henry his brother-in-law, 
 on the death of the first Simon ; but Nicolas thinks he was 
 only given Huntingdon, and Baker also follows this version. 
 Hudoubtedly most of the quarrelling took place about Hun- 
 tingdon, and during the life of the second Simon's successor 
 too ; but the fact was that David had actual possession of the 
 one earldom by sovereign's gift, and tenure of the other till the 
 sovereign should relent in favour of Simon. That Simon had 
 possession of Northampton early in Stephen's reign, could 
 alone explain his support of the usurper. The death of his 
 stepfather in 1152, restored his inheritance to him, and he 
 took forcible possession of Huntingdon. 
 
 He did not long enjoy the double earldom, for he died the 
 next year. When Stephen made the peace with Matilda and 
 her son Henry, by which the latter was to become king after 
 his decease, Dugdale says no man stood more opposite to the 
 treaty than Simon. It is supposed that his anger was so 
 roused at the turn affairs took that he died then and there, 
 of his passion for consistency and battle to the last. He was 
 the first of its founder's family who was buried in St. An- 
 drews, unless the Lady Margaret, whose ' Tumbe ' Leland 
 says was the wonder of the monastery, had been his aunt, and 
 died before him. She was certainly one of the family, the 
 antiquary shows, and he adds, ' But Erie Simon the secunde 
 and Erie Simon the 3, sunne to the secunde were booth buried 
 in S. Andreas.' Simon the second earl's wife was Isabel 
 Bellamont, daughter of the earl of Leicester. To one of the 
 ladies of this family ' Strongbow,' the conqueror of Ireland, was 
 married. Simon had such and other strong support, but it is 
 not fair struggle between a subject and sovereigns, even with 
 right on the side of the former. His widow married Gervase 
 Paganell, Baron Someri de Dudley, co. Stafford. In her widow- 
 hood she had put herself under the protection of her nephew,
 
 138 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Robert, earl of Leicester, with i*egard to the lands of Brad- 
 field, Botinden, Norfield, and Waltham. It would be inter- 
 esting to know that this was the Waltham of the Mandevilles, 
 and, if so, how she had got it. 
 
 Matilda, this Simon's sister, has to have her story told. 
 She was first married in 1112 to Robert Fitz- Richard Clare, 
 one of the ' Tunbridge family, of whom Eudo Dapifer's 
 wife was so illustrious a lady. He was the lord of Baynard's 
 Castle, London, on Thames bank at Blackfriars, and baron of 
 Dunmow, Essex, the fifth son of Richard Clare, the justice of 
 England. After Eudo's death in 1120, he got the dapifer- 
 ship from Henry the First, probably because he was brother- 
 in-law to this previous dapifer. The Monasticon shows how 
 greatly favoured Dunmow was by Matilda Sinclair and her 
 husband, Robert Clare Dapifer. He is the ancestor of the 
 celebrated English family of Fitz-Walters, who were really 
 Clares, though also hidden by the unfortunate methods of 
 surnaming. There is a charter where Robertus filius Ricli- 
 ardi occurs, 1 Stephen, among the codices of Corpus Christi 
 College, Cambridge, as dajriferus. In 11 Stephen, Matilda's 
 second husband, Saher de Quincy, was made lord of Daventry, 
 jure uxoris, and from this marriage came the earls of 
 Winchester. When King John was quarrelling with his 
 barons in 12 15, Saher, earl of Winchester, son or grandson 
 of this De Quincy, with the aid of foreigners besieged Col- 
 chester Castle, but ultimately had to withdraw and go towards 
 St. Edmonsbury. The castle was defended successfully by 
 William Longueville, the husband of a Sinclair lady, whose 
 tale will be told hereafter. Dugdale says that the William de 
 Albini (called Brito to distinguish him from William de Al- 
 bini Pincerna, official butler or cup-bearer of coronation day, 
 and the earl of Arundel) was married to Maude de St. Liz, 
 the widow of Robert Dapifer, and daughter of the first Earl 
 Simon. If so, it was befoi^e 1 1 Stephen, when Saher de 
 Quincy heirs some of her rights as his wife. Like Isabella, 
 countess of Gloucester, afterwards the wife of King John, 
 of Geffrey Mandeville, and, The Baronage says, of the great 
 Hubert de Burgh, Matilda also had three distinguished hus- 
 bands. It was Albini's personal valour which broke the lines 
 of Duke Robert, and gained the battle of Tenchbrai for his 
 brother Henry, in 1 106. The charters of this reign are signed
 
 SIMON'S SONS AND DAUGHTER. 139 
 
 as frequently by him as by Eudo Dapifer, and he probably 
 had an official position at court. This Albini Brito's son was 
 William Meschines, and from him came the earls of Cam- 
 bridge. Of his lands Aelard Sinclair held two knights' fees. 
 After the drowning of the royal heir, William, in the White 
 Ship, 1 1 19, Henry the First, 11 27, got his lords to promise 
 their feudal support to his daughter Matilda. In the Black 
 Book of the royal exchequer, Liber Niger scaccarii, the name 
 Adelard de Saincler appears on the carta of promise of Wil- 
 lelmi de Albenni, baron. He is of Leicestershire, and promises 
 to furnish in the usual way the two milites of his two knights' 
 fees of land in case of war. It is the same Aelard Sinclair 
 who holds under the father and the son, and he was a scion 
 of the house of which Matilda Sinclair, this wife of William 
 de Albini of Belvoir Castle, was so remarkable a daughter. 
 Macaulay has the stirring line in his Armada fragment, 
 
 ' Till Bclvoir's lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent ; ' 
 
 which sufficiently localises and characterises her home, to the 
 north of Melton Mowbray on the furthest boundary of Leices- 
 tershire, now the seat of the duke of Rutland. The great 
 Northumbrian, Nigel Mowbray, was son of Roger de Albini, 
 and took the new name when he got the dispossessed earl's 
 lands. It was lie who manned the countess dowager of 
 Gloucester, Matilda Sinclair, widow of Robert Consul, son of 
 Henry I. The Priory, Fawsley hundred, had much of the 
 other Matilda's patronage. Her steward or seneschal was 
 Hugh, vicecome8 of Leicester. This monastery was founded 
 first at Preston Capes, a place that has connection with Sin- 
 clairs at much later periods, but Hugh got the consent of the 
 first Marl Simon, the lord of the district, to change it to a site 
 near the parish church. The advowsons of it he gave ulti- 
 mately to Matilda, and she, patrona et clomina, was not spar- 
 ing in her own gifts of land, ceremonial vessels, priestly 
 dresses, and other similar necessities and ornament. Among 
 the women of her time, she is eminent as a donor of spiritu- 
 alities. Daventry priory also got from the family, and from 
 such adherents or relations as Hugh, much property for mor- 
 tuary benefits, as well as from the general and earlier liber- 
 ality of founders and their friends. Hugh had many such
 
 i 4 o THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 gifts from the first earl, Matilda's father, as that of Thorp 
 Mandeville, part of which belonged to Farthingo, another 
 more recent Sinclair property, and much of lands so got seems 
 to have been heired by Matilda, or given by them in conjunc- 
 tion, or by arrangement, to the monasteries which they 
 Favoured. Washington manor, one of the gifts of Matilda 
 or her father to St. Andrews priory, it might be risked sup- 
 posing, was the original home of the greatest American presi- 
 dent The present earls of Dartmouth claim to have the 
 right English Washington family arms somewhere on their 
 shields, and the Washingtons of the midlands are meant. 
 The church of Duston of the Peverel fee belonged to the 
 Simon of Henry the Second's time, and to him the next step 
 is taken. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SIMON SINCLAIR, THIRD AND LAST EARL. 
 
 To the earldom of Northampton there was immediate succes- 
 sion on death of his father for the third Simon ; but Hunting- 
 don, so lately possessed, was again wrenched from the grasp 
 of the true heirs. The politics of the two kingdoms required 
 that Simon should go to the wall ; but he was a determined 
 and able man. and fought well this and many another battle, 
 civil and military. Malcolm, now king of Scotland, son of 
 Henry who held the earldom of Huntingdon till his death in 
 i 152, re\ ived the old subject, and in exchange. for part of the 
 north of England, which he had overrun, got it, to the exclu- 
 sion of ii protesting right lord. King Malcolm's brother, 
 King William, 'The Lion,' also held it; but in the reign of 
 Henry the Second, when his undutiful son rose in rebellion 
 while his lather was in Normandy, matters cleared up, after 
 this and the other family storms raised by Eleanor of Aqui- 
 taine and their sons against the gallant Harry. The earls of 
 Leice ter, Chester, and Derby were against him in England, 
 while I Richard had his defeat in pitched battle in 
 
 King William of Scotland, like enough to Shake-
 
 SIMON SINCLAIR, THIRD AND LAST EARL. 141 
 
 peare's 'weasel,' did not fail to try the chance of the 
 scramble. Simon was one of Harry's trusted and tried cap- 
 tains of war. The rebel earls had seized and strengthened 
 Huntingdon Castle with King William's connivance, his brother 
 David playing indefinable and waiting game. The castle was 
 captured from the rebels. It was their chief stay, and the 
 loss demoralised them. Simon had his king's warrant to take 
 possession of it, as the rightful heir. Benedict, the abbot of 
 Peterborough, who wrote his chronicle of the reigns of Henry 
 II. and Richard I. contemporarily, says that Richard de Luci, 
 justiciar of the kingdom, delivered it to Count Simon by the 
 mandate of the king : ' Quia ille calumpniatus fuit in curia 
 regis; comitatum de Huntendonia suum esse debere jure here- 
 ditaria; et rex ilium ei concessit, si ilium adipisci 2 J osset' — 
 ' Because he had been calumniated in the king's court ; the 
 county of Huntingdon ought to be his by hereditary right ; 
 and the king granted it to him, if he could obtain it.' Wil- 
 liam of Scotland was compelled to give up all claims to it, on 
 his own part and on that of his brother David. The striving, 
 however, still went on bitterly between these two grandsons 
 of Matilda, the daughter of Waltheof ; and towards the end of 
 his reign, Henry the Second settled the struggle by razing 
 the noble structure to the ground, for the express purpose of 
 healing one of the poisoned sores of the body politic of his 
 kingdom. To enter fully into the multitudes of intrigues, 
 royal, noble, and common, which centred around the castle 
 of Huntingdon might make a huge book. The lesson, 
 though a long drawn-out one, is that if right is bravely con- 
 tended for, it will in the end beat mere might. Till his death 
 without heirs in 11 84, Simon enjoyed this dearly gained earl- 
 dom with his others. William of Scotland was made prisoner 
 at Alnwick by Ranulph de Glanville, and had to pay for his 
 intermeddling with purely English affairs by imprisonment, 
 and a ransom, Stow says, of ^4000, then a large sum. The 
 excuse for the interference certainly lies in the alliance of the 
 crowns, by the marriage of Henry the First with Matilda of 
 Scotland, the daughter of Margaret Atheling of the Saxon 
 royal line of England. The embroglio of the rights, personal, 
 political, and dynastic, was inextricable to human wit ; and 
 tragedies alone could clear such an atmosphere. There were 
 quite new elements also at work in this stirring reign. Ma-
 
 142 
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLASIK 
 
 tilda's struggles had brought numbers of foreign adventui 
 rank and file, into the country, lower types of men than 
 the Normans. Her son Harry, with all his ability, perhaps 
 was not the equal in genuine manhood to his predecessors of 
 rightful claim. The Fulc blood was in him, and the Plan- 
 tagenets may be well enough reckoned England's kingly dia- 
 monds of something less than the first water. Very shortly 
 before the accession of Henry, a charter was given to the 
 church of Holy Trinity, Tottenham, London, by ' Simon, earl 
 of Northampton ; ' and, though undated, its signatures fix its 
 time, and also give hint as to the kind of people then getting 
 into the court circles. The carta is preserved among the 
 Cottonian MSS. It is written very beautifully, on a piece of 
 parchment seven or eight inches by live, to the extent of seven 
 lines and a half; and some of the witnesses' names are sug- 
 gestive of the beginning of the new time : Matilda, queen of 
 the English; Oustac, her daughter, a name and person perhaps 
 not known out of this charter to record or history, English, 
 French, or German; William of Ipres, the Flemish earl of 
 Kent; Reinio of Dieppe; Richard de Bot; and other such bar- 
 barous names. Pet. de Hoo was a name that came to fame 
 afterwards in Sussex, but there is a distinct lack of the finer 
 Norman sounds of gallant historic names even then in Ma- 
 tilda's surroundings. England has had some reason to regret 
 the unfortunate close of the kingly house of Hollo, though she 
 boasts of great rulers since. 
 
 Simon had made a marriage which helped him the better to 
 fight his case to the successful end. His wife was Alice 
 Gaunt, sole heiress to her father, Gilbert Gaunt, earl of 
 Lincoln. Earl of Northampton and of Huntingdon, Simon 
 had long been earl of Lincoln also, by the right of his wife. 
 Her property was of splendid proportions. The first Gaunt 
 was a nephew of William the Conqueror, and he had secured 
 from his uncle one hundred and thirteen manors in Lincoln- 
 shire, with forty-one in other counties. In 12 Henry II., 
 1 166, when Thomas a Becket was figuring, there was an assess- 
 ment made for the marriage of the king's daughter, and 
 Simon, (hen only earl of Northampton, had sixty - eight 
 knights' fees of old enfeoffment and twelve of new. If to 
 I hese two earldoms be added the fees of the castle and honour 
 -I' Huntingdon, the warlike, brilliant, and able captain of
 
 SIMON SINCLAIR, THIRD AND LAST EARL. 143 
 
 Henry the Second must be said to have succeeded ; and per- 
 haps he even surpassed in wealth and influence his grand- 
 father, the Conqueror's favoured lame warrior. But this was 
 not all his good fortune. He had two sisters, Amicia and 
 Hawise, and though record does not seem to have preserved to 
 whom they were married, they must have had bright and rich 
 lives, because it is known that they were both under the king 
 for feudal marriage. Kings took care to have justice out of 
 their wards, and Henry is well known for his generosity to 
 those who were thus in his custody. The irony of human 
 fortune, however, is powerfully illustrated by the facts that 
 Simon died childless, and that once again the boneof contention, 
 Huntingdon, fell to Scottish royalty. His wife's property, 
 with the earldom of Lincoln, went on her death to her uncle 
 Robert, and Northampton became crown land. The last Earl 
 Simon died in 11 84, and was buried in the priory of St. 
 Andrews, Northampton ; the foundation of his grandfather, 
 and the favoured monastery of his ancestors. 
 
 William, king of Scotland, had in 1 1 74 gone back ransomed 
 to Scotland, and Stow in his Annals has the curious tale that 
 hearing that his nobles would not come to meet him farther 
 than Peebles, twenty miles from the capital, ' he took with 
 him many of the younger sons of noblemen in England 
 that bare him good will, and gave them lands in Scotland, 
 which he took from such as were rebels to him there.' Stow 
 continues, 'The names of those gentlemen were Bayelliol, 
 Brewse, Soully, Moubray, Saintclere, Hay, Giffard, Ramsay, 
 Grame, etc' It is to be feared that the 'industrious ' annalist 
 is venturing too far from London, but most of his sayings are 
 accurate. Under 'Lord Sinclair,' Burke's Peerage, has sugges- 
 tive discussion of different lines of Scottish Sinclairs, as the 
 Roslin and the Herdmanston, whose common origin cannot be 
 traced to one ancestor on this side of the English Channel. 
 If the Scottish Sinclairs first saw Edinburgh and Roslin then, 
 history and records have been making the greatest mistakes ; 
 but it is quite possible that some of the English Sinclairs joined 
 the descendants of Queen Margaret Atheling's dapifer at this 
 period. King William ten years after this got Huntingdon, 
 and immediately gave it to his youngest brother David, whose 
 daughters and their descendants were heirs of the Scottish 
 crown, and the occasion of the Wallace and Bruce wars of
 
 i 4 4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 independence, or of solution as to what Englishman should 1, 
 the northern province of the island for which the Norman 
 kings exacted the usual tributary homage. Northampton and 
 afterwards Huntingdon fell into the sovereign's hands. For 
 more than a hundred years the earldom of Northampton was 
 in abeyance, till the Bohuns in 1337, earls of Hereford and 
 Essex, constables of England, justices, and all thai was well 
 securable, got possession. They, too, became extinct, after 
 some successions, in the person of a youth whose shoulders 
 bore an unheard-of weight of hereditary and patrimonial 
 honours and wealth. Nothing is more pathetic than some of 
 the sudden disappearances of English nobility, though it 
 seemed to have all that could aid vitality. Simon's wife, Alice 
 Gaunt, was buried at Bridlington monastery, the foundation 
 of her grandfather Walter, earl of Lincoln. If mention is 
 made that Braybrook manor, Rothwell hundred, was always 
 part of the estates of the Simons, who are such singularly 
 dramatic figures at the very heart of English and even of 
 Scottish history, they may be left with their often chequered 
 but always honourable glory. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 RELATIONS. 
 
 A good reference to an ancient and authentic account of these 
 Saincteliz and Sainctecleres is Langebek's Scriptores Rerum 
 Danicarum. A collection of about a score of huge volumes, 
 chiefly monastic Latin, it has one little tract in that language, 
 rescued from antiquity, which gives a short but clear and 
 consistent history of this branch of the Sinclair gens. It is 
 particularly valuable for its attention to the more distant and 
 perhaps external Danish and Saxon relationships. Judith and 
 Maltheof, some say, had two daughters, while others mention 
 three. Leland in his Collectaneum of abbreviations has, ' Primo 
 genitam earum accepit Simon Sylvanectensis ; aliam Radulphus 
 de Thoeneio, scilicet Judith; tertiam Rohertus Jilius Richard:
 
 RELATIONS. I45 
 
 He adds that other writers number two daughters to Judith, 
 Matilda and Alicia, the former married to the first Eavl Simon 
 from Senlis, and the latter to Eadulph de Toneio. This is his 
 own opinion, for he has, ' Matilda autem Matildae ex Simone 
 filia nupsit Roberto jllio Richardi.' The fifth son of Richard 
 Fitz- Gilbert of Tunbridge Castle has been noticed as the dapifer 
 of England, baron of Dunmow, and married to Matilda Sin- 
 clair, sister of the second Simon and of Waltheof, abbot of 
 Melrose, and daughter of the queen of David of Scotland. A 
 valuable Harleian MS., which has a very full scheme of the 
 relationships back to Aldred the Northumbrian and Ursus the 
 Dane, follows the same version of two daughters. Alicia 
 marries Radulph or Ralph Toneio, and they have a son 
 Ralph. It also gives the Norman lineage of Judith herself, 
 as being the daughter of Lambert, count of Lentz, in Artois. 
 Among all the chroniclers it is agreed that she was the Con- 
 queror's niece, being the daughter of his half-sister Maud, 
 countess of Albemarle. Brady says that Roger, the father 
 of Alice's husband, was standard-bearer of Normandy, an office 
 hereditary. It was he who went a gallant young knight to 
 the Spanish wars, and when returned to Normandy, finding 
 Duke William, the son of Arlotta, the tanner's daughter, 
 reigning, cost the young ruler all that sorrow of battle to 
 thoroughly establish himself. Probably Ralph his son had 
 his fortune somewhat limited by this, though there does not 
 appear much sign of it. He is Ralph of Conchis, in Norman 
 history, and lord of Flamstead, Hampshire, in English ; and 
 he figured much in both. Brady says that Hampshire, and 
 I higdale that Hertfordshire, is the county for Flamstead. To 
 Rufus he was, with Philip Bruce, Richard Couixrv, Walter 
 Giffard, Robert of Ou, Stephen of Albemarle, and Gerard of 
 Gournay, bitterest enemy; so that his paternal traditions 
 seem active enough. 
 
 But there are other relationships which have more direct 
 bearings. If it had not been for the power of royal claimants, 
 the third Simon might have found a successor of his own 
 lineage. The second earl had a brother of the same name, 
 Simon, who was a man of some importance. He gave land 
 to the nunnery of De la Pree, Northampton, and had descen- 
 dants. Vincent quotes the Latin charter, and other details 
 of value, in his violent corrections of Yorke, the genealogist. 
 
 K
 
 I4 6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Simon may not have been legitimate, or the peculiarity of 
 similar name might have occurred from being the bod ol the 
 
 first earl by a second wife ; but to his own property succeeded 
 also Simon, who appears in the records of King John 8 n Lgn. 
 He had a quarrel with David, earl of Euntingdon, about a 
 knight's fee, and he appealed to the king's favour by present- 
 ing him with a beautiful palfrey. If this can be taken 
 part of a struggle for undoubted and legitimate rights of the 
 line, it speaks volumes as to the disorder and injustice rampant 
 about the end of the twelfth century in England. As noble a 
 stock as was within its borders seems to have been sacrificed to 
 political necessity and royal cupidity. The facts M bich survive 
 are not sufficient to establish this, but it is known that these 
 relations of the great Simon resided in the county 1 tut land, 
 who probably from disgust, or from weariness and weakness 
 of means to fight the prolonged battle, gave up clain -. The 
 earls of Denbigh trace themselves to this family of Jutland, 
 which they say changed its name to Seton. Their ancestor 
 Sir William Fielding married the last of that branch, an 
 heiress, and the claim of being heir-general to the three 
 Simon earls and their honours has been made for this modern 
 house. The following is taken from state records : ' Calen- 
 darium Rotulorum Ghartarum, A" 19 Hen. III., Simon de 
 Seyntclere et Anna uxor ejus ; Seyton boscus quiet ' de vasto et 
 rt gard' forestae etc. ; RoteV. It would be difficult to say whether 
 this is more valuable as a step for substantiating the Denbigh 
 claim, or for completely proving the lineage of all the Simons 
 to be Sinclair. Simon de Seton is the new local surname from 
 the Rutland woody waste and forest district of which the above 
 is part. The charter is proof of these Sinclairs of Huntingdon, 
 Northampton, Lincoln, and Rutland till 1235. If there were 
 no evidence than that connected with Simon Sinclair of Sey- 
 ton, Rutlandshire, it is amply sufficient of itself absolutely to 
 establish the three Simon earls as Sinclairs. It would be an 
 easy brief for a barrister, with which to succeed. The genealo- 
 gists of the eaids of Denbigh give valuable assistance to the 
 present inquiry, and probably were successful about the rela- 
 tion of the Fieldings to these Sinclairs. The family in the 
 beginning of the seventeenth centuiy got their own earldom; 
 and they are also barons St. Liz; in reality, if they did so 
 prove relationship, barons Sinclair. Since 1622 there have
 
 RELA TIOXS. 
 
 1 47 
 
 been eight or nine of them, and they have figured as lords of 
 the German empire as well as of England. Little can be 
 drawn from the fact that several Senlis of plain rank appear 
 at nearly every period in records, for they had no object in 
 tracing lineage further than the Simons, what business they 
 engage in necessitating the use of this name. The Fieldings, 
 says an old Peerage of 1710, were originally Germans of the 
 house of Hapsburg, founded by Rodolph, and now represented 
 by the emperor of Austria. The first Fielding here was 
 Geoffrey ; the second, Sir John ; the third, William, to whom 
 Agnes Seton, by local name, Sinclair by lineage, married. 
 She brought him the lordship of Martinesthorpe in the county 
 of Rutland, her descent in blood being ' from those great 
 families of Vaux, Longville, and Sellers, a younger branch of 
 Mowbray.' But a world of speculation opens in discussing 
 these Setons, if they are really Sinclairs. Under ' Seton, earl 
 of Winton,' Burke writes, 'The first of the great house of 
 Seton established in North Britain was Secher de Say, who 
 had a grant from King David I. of lands in East Lothian, 
 which being called 'Saytun' (the dwelling of Say), gave rise to 
 a name and family which became pre-eminently distinguished 
 in the annals of Scotland.' This is a somewhat lame account 
 of the facts. ' Secher de Say ' was Sinclair of Seyton, one of 
 the many Englishmen who went then to Edinburgh for for- 
 tune, and he brought the Rutland name with him to give it a 
 new existence in Haddington, after the prevailing Norman 
 habit. It is quite possible that Burke's explanation, 'the 
 town of Say,' may apply to the place in Rutland, and that the 
 Sinclairs may have come into possession of it through affinity 
 with, the Says, with whom they were frequently connected. 
 The present earl of Eglinton is the male representative of 
 Secher de Sayton or Sinclair of Seton. John, brother of the 
 third Lord Seton, ' married Sinclair, heiress of Northrig, with 
 whom he got these lands.' But this is not the most curious 
 effect of local names hiding true lineage in the present in- 
 quiry. The dukes of Gordon, marquises of Huntly, earls of 
 Sutherland, so celebrated in Scottish history as Gordons, are 
 not Gordons at all, but Setons, and Setons are Sinclairs. The 
 Gordons of Gight, of whom Byron's mother was one, are of 
 the same blood. The hon. Robert Gordon of Gordonstown, 
 bart. of Nova Scotia, gentleman of the privy chamber to
 
 i 4 8 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 James I., the historian of his house, the earls of Sutherland, 
 in the violent rivalry he shows existing between the earls of 
 
 Caithness and Sutherland, and which he aided with all his 
 power, seems a little ludicrous in his family enthusiasm in the 
 light of the truth, to which he was unconscious, that the so- 
 called Gordons and their enemies of the Etoslin, Orkney, and 
 
 Caithness line, were of exactly the same male stock. The 
 Gran ville-Leveson- Gowers who are the heirs of the ' < Jordons ' 
 as dukes of Sutherland, have themselves Sinclair blood, by 
 affinity, in them from a famous Devon family of Binclairs. 
 The 'baronet' Gordons of Earlston began their line by marry- 
 ing Margaret Sinclair, heiress of John Sinclair of Earlston, in 
 1582, just as the progenitor of the dukes of Argyle, the first 
 MacCallum More of 1270 had a Sinclair lady, the ant 
 of the Argyles and of the marquises of Breadalbane. To a 
 Sinclair earl an Argyle Campbell married, and created the 
 latest Scottish feud, which ended in a pitched battle, 1680, 
 on the plains of Caithness. The real ( lordons, of whom the 
 slayer of Richard Coeur de Lion is supposed to have been one, 
 were extinct about fourteen hundred, and did not take very 
 special position. The earl of Aberdeen is descended from a 
 younger line, and represents that lineage. The Dunbar 
 earls of March, the Comyns, the lords Ogilvy (earls of Ah lie. 
 and earls of Findlater, heirs of Sinclairs of Deskford and 
 Findlater), the Hamiltons, and Douglases, were interknit with 
 the various branches of these Setons in ways that give steady 
 assurance of the great part family blood, names changed, and 
 not, took in all position and power when feudalism was at its 
 game. Christopher Seton, the brother-in-law, by his mar- 
 riage to Christian Bruce, and the brave companion of Robert 
 Bruce when defeated at the battle of Methven (in which 
 Bruce dismounted Aymer de Valence, and was himself un- 
 horsed by Philip Mowbray), was soon after, Barbour says. 
 betrayed to the English, and executed, as well as his brother 
 John de Seton. 
 
 'Where's Nigel Bruce? and De La Haye, 
 And valiant Seton — where are they ? ' 
 
 ' There was some peculiarity respecting his punishment,' savs Sir 
 Walter Scott in his notes to The Lord of the Lies, 'because,
 
 RELATIONS. 149 
 
 according to Matthew of "Westminster, he was considered not 
 as a Scottish subject, but an Englishman.' Hugh de la Haye, 
 of the same male lineage as Seton, the Hayes likewise seeking 
 and getting fortune in the northern district, was made prisoner, 
 but did not share the fate of the more distinguished Christopher. 
 Matthew of Westminster's notice is of much importance, in 
 itself, and as referring to an early period of the history of the 
 Setons, who afterwards figured prominently as Scottish earls 
 of highest offices and account in the kingdom. 
 
 In a history of the castle of Oakham and its manor and 
 pertinents, which appears bound up in the state record called 
 The Hundred Bolls of Edward the First's time, though the 
 piece under notice was written in that of Edward the Third, 
 there appears to have been an heiress Sinclair proprietrix in 
 capite of Oakham Castle. The King had the marriage of her, 
 and she is called in the Latin Domina Sencha when he marries 
 her to his brother, the lord Richard, king of the Romans, earl 
 of Cornwall, circa 1250. If this was one of them, the descen- 
 dants of the Simons cannot have lost skill of keeping in high 
 rank. But Burke probably gives in the ' Royal Lineage ' the 
 right account, that she was the tlmd daughter of Raymond 
 Berenger, the second being married to the brother, Henry III. 
 The personages are too prominent for any mistake to have 
 been made. 
 
 It has been with many peoples besides the English a con- 
 tinual popular enterprise to turn the '1' out of languages, and 
 this strange spelling, even if deciphered correctly from the 
 MSS. for the printers, must have suffered in that way. 
 Leland, the antiquary, says her heart was buried in the abbey 
 church of Cirencester, Gloucestershire. It would be risking 
 too much, and quite unnecessarily, to say that such a name as 
 Simon de Segre, who held a fee from William de Clifford, as 
 recorded in the Testa de Nevill, had any genealogical reference 
 at present, being as probably Saker, which is a frequent Eng- 
 lish name. In Scotland as late as the convention of Stirling, 
 1544, the signature ' Willm Lorde Sanchar,' is written for 
 Lord Sinclair. Etymologies must not, however, be encouraged 
 much in this line of inquiry. 
 
 There is no doubt about one Simon of the reisrn of Kins: 
 John. He is Simon de Sender of Buckinc-hamshire in state 
 records. This is the same spelling as the hero of Hastings,
 
 i:o THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 l 3 
 
 Richard, has in Domesday, and which his brother Britel, son 
 of Walderne, earl of St. Clare, has in tin- Exon Domesday. Re 
 was not the Simon of Huntingdon who contended with Earl 
 David, the Scot. That he would have been able to contend 
 with some purpose can be gathered from the offices in whirh 
 the records find him employed. One of the thief duties, as 
 well as the most troublesome, of sheriffs or viscounts was to 
 settle disputes of boundaries between properties. The I 
 used to summon three or four milites <>r gentlemen of a county 
 where any dispute needed settling, and they were called upon 
 to elect twelve milites, or holders of at least some part of a 
 military fee, to be a jury of arbiters. This scrap of survival 
 does not fix Simon as sheriff or viscount, but it indicates clearly 
 his value and weight as versed in the class of work, and having 
 special authority of some kind. It is of interest to find one 
 of the Northampton house so busy in civil affairs, and it is 
 likely that at such a period he was equally energetic in 
 military. 
 
 Aelard de Saincler has been referred to under the second 
 Simon as holding two knights' fees under William of Aubeni 
 Brito in Leicestershire during Henry the Second's reign. 
 William of Aubeni, descended from the Toenis, was married 
 to Maud Sinclair of the Earl Simon family ; and Aelard got 
 thus his property in that county ; but he is still better known 
 as of Harpolle, in the Newbottle hundred, Northamptonshire, 
 where several generations of his descendants continued. He 
 also had the manor of Lobenham there, as well as other pro- 
 perties. His father was James de St. Clair, and he had a 
 sister Maud, who was countess of Clare and Hertford, being 
 married to Roger de Clare, earl of Clare and Hertford, the 
 heir of the Tunbridge Castle traditions. Sir Henry Chauncey 
 in his history of Hertfordshire, and Blomfield in that of Nor- 
 folk, are authorities for this. Maud was married 12 Hen. II., 
 1 166, and in the same year Roger gave 149 as the number of 
 his knights' fees, on the taxing for the marriage of the king's 
 daughter. He died in 11 73, and was succeeded by their son 
 Richard, who added the earldom of Gloucester to the two 
 earldoms his father held. 'In 1182,' says Blomfield, 'Maud, 
 •laughter of James de St. Hillary, countess of Clare, and widow 
 of Roger, earl of Clare, the founder, gave this preceptory 
 (( 1 1 oat-Carbrook, Norfolk), which was not finished or fully
 
 RELATIONS. 151 
 
 endowed by her husband, to the Knights Hospitallers of St. 
 John of Jerusalem, with the churches of Great and Little 
 Carbrook, and the moiety of the town, on condition they paid 
 13/4/ 1 yearly to the nuns of Buckland, all which was con- 
 firmed by Richard de Clare, earl of Hertford, her son, and 
 King John, in 1199, from which time she was declared foun- 
 dress of this house.' Bridges, an able and fruitful antiquary, 
 in his history of Northamptonshire, gives the valuable infor- 
 mation that the Sinclairs and the St. Hillaries were the same 
 people. This connection of theirs with the Clares, therefore, 
 was but the reviving of many previous similar ties. In the 
 reign of Henry the Third another Alard was in possession of 
 Harpole, Lobenham, and the Leicestershire properties ; and it 
 is of him Bridges writes. ' This Alard de Seynteler was the 
 ancestor of the family in late records named St. Hilary.' On 
 the carta of William of Albenni, the first Alard has his name 
 spelt ' Aelardus de Saincler ; ' but the ' c ' gets faint through 
 interchange with Seynt Liz, the alternate name, and is lost 
 gradually. Seynteler grew to be Seynt Eler or Seynt Elerio, 
 and by aspiration ended in 'the St. Hilary of later records.' 
 It is wise to shun changes of names by local pronunciation as 
 of value, except on the one condition of proof being got other- 
 wise in the first place. They are corroboration, however, in 
 addition to facts, or at least may be allowed to be illustrative. 
 There is no question of discussion at all, the unity of the names 
 being acknowledged. Alard de Seynteler in the reign of Henry 
 III. gave to the convent of St. Albans two parts of both the 
 great and small tithes of his manors of Horpol and Lobenham, 
 and one half acre of arable land in Horpol. His successors, Peter, 
 William, and Thomas Sinclair are donors to St. Albans. One 
 of the quaintest survivals of monasterial life is the abbot of 
 St. Alban's astute recovery of the lands and gifts of these 
 Sinclairs as late as 1427, which had been taken possession of 
 by Dovxinus William Cheselden, the rector of the district, to 
 the loss of the abbey. There are several pages in the Chronicle 
 of St. Albans describing minutely the whole business in mon- 
 astic Latin. How the abbot got the dean of arches to dine 
 at St. Albans ; and how he skilfully broached the subject of his 
 wrong ; and how the dean did not resent the mixture of busi- 
 ness with pleasure, but directed the abbot to go and consult 
 with the bishop of Durham, in whose diocese Northampton
 
 1 5 2 THE SINCLAIRS OE ENGLAND. 
 
 then was; and how month after month for a couple of years, a 
 legal process went on under the favouring and foi tenng care 
 of the dean; and how finally the monastery oi St Albans and 
 its skilful abbot got their full rights, and perhaps more; are 
 told with an infantile inimitability that is quite out of the 
 power of the modern brain. These Seyntelers or St. Ihlaries, 
 or Sinclairs in the right spelling, were in themselves (it they 
 had no connection with the Simon earls of Euntingdon, 
 Lincoln, and Northampton, as also of < lumberland, Westmore- 
 land, and Northumberland, had the earls prosecuted their rights 
 from the jura uxorum they had; or if they had no affinity 1<» 
 the earls of Clare, Hertford, and Gloucester] of remarkable 
 territorial and general distinction. With the Albennis of 
 Belvoir Castle they are knit many ways. In 24 Ed. 1. Richard 
 de St. Hilary or Sinclair holds among his other lands :i half 
 knight's fee from Comyn, Baliol, and Brine's rival for a 
 throne in 1291 at Norham, namely, Robert de Kos of his own 
 lineage, who married Isabel, the daughter of William of Al- 
 benni, and so became possessed of the honour of Belvoir. 
 Thomas and his wife Maud were in 1 Ed. III. to get Upton, 
 but it went instead to Piers Gaveston, the favourite. In 9 Ed. 
 II. one of the Sinclairs is noted as holding lands from this 
 honour or barony, and in 6 Ed. III. Thomas Sinclair suc- 
 ceeds Edmund de Pinkeney, who had temporary possession of 
 some of his lands. In 20 Ed. III. he holds lands from the 
 honour of Belvoir, which in 37 Ed. III. John de ScoClaroheld. 
 Sir William Vaux and Ralph Hastings succeeded him. The 
 Vauxes will appear hereafter, in the story of the earls of 
 Bath. This inexhaustible field of inquiry must be ended 
 with drawing attention to the continual recurrence of names 
 connected with the kings of Scotland, through the ties between 
 them and the Earls Simon of the earldom of Huntingdon in 
 particular, about which the Scots strove long, and too successfully 
 for the justice of things. Pinkeney, Hastings, Ros, are names 
 competing for the Scottish crown in Edward the First's 
 reign. 
 
 The indications are clear enough that families of standing 
 
 survived the three Simons so well known to history, and 
 
 reflection of their true lineage comes back in these by no 
 
 means obscure instances. Without even such suggestive aid 
 
 I. eland's, they are absolute proof. Let the above be final
 
 THE COUNTESS OF GLOUCESTER. 
 
 words with regard to the Sinclairs who with other claims, 
 were the earls of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Lincoln 
 shires, and who probably had Norman and French titles 
 and lands besides, if investigation were made beyond the 
 Channel. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE COUNTESS OF GLOUCESTER. 
 
 It may be a more difficult and less successful undertaking to 
 show that Matilda, the wife of Robert, earl of Gloucester, the 
 able son of Henry the First, was Sinclair in lineage ; but it is 
 impossible to escape the task, if respect ought to be paid to 
 most suggestive and, it may be, wholly settling evidence. 
 The king's son was born out of wedlock, by Xesta, daughter 
 of Rhees ap Tudor, prince of South Wales, the same blood as 
 Queen Elizabeth afterwards. He is one of the familiar figures 
 of history, as the champion of his sister Matilda, the empress, 
 against Stephen, and there was no better man of his period. 
 Fosbrooke, in his History of Gloucester speaks enthusiastically 
 of him as a great and most excellent nobleman. Patron of 
 the useful chronicler, William of Malmesbury, was one of his 
 many distinguishing impersonations. His eulogist writes of 
 him as having ' a character of delicious contemplation.' The 
 Tewkesbury Chronicle says he was born in Xormandy, before 
 the death of his grandfather, the Conqueror. When he got 
 earldom or consulatum from his father, he was usually called 
 Robert Consul, but he is also named Robert Melhent. It is 
 of his countess, however, that description is required. She 
 was the daughter of Robert Fitz-Hamo, the famous ' knight 
 of Rye,' by his second wife, Sibil de Montgomery, daughter 
 of Rosrer de Montsfomerv, earl of Shrewsburv. A Cottonian 
 manuscript sa3's she was their only daughter and heir, but 
 Matilda had three sisters. She and her husband, the king's 
 son, by her right, heired also some of the confiscated property 
 of the fiercest man of the reign, and perhaps one of the worst 
 treated, Robert de Belesme, whose lineage name was Mont-
 
 i 5 4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 gomery, she being his niece. This was after the famous 
 forty-five charges drove him to Normandy for his life. The 
 Montgomeries were at the Conquest about the most powerful 
 of the Norman families, having got very large possessi 
 from the Conqueror in all parts of England. The bitterness 
 which ordinary historians ascribe to Henry the First with 
 regard to this nobleman, finds its rational, if hardly a de- 
 lightful explanation, in the relationship thus shown. William 
 of Jumieges is monastically particular in telling of the thirteen 
 love children whom Beauclerc, the pet monarch of the priests, 
 had to provide about and great necessities excuse many things, 
 possibly covetousness with the other venial sins of royalties. 
 One thing has to be said, that better sons and daughters than 
 they were, fall rarely to the lot of kings, no matter what the 
 hierarchical precautions and training may be. It is something 
 to be thankful about, as saving noble fellow-souls from being 
 broken-spirited outcasts for life, to remember that some of 
 the world's altogether best creatures have first seen light out 
 of the usual fold. Virtue of the deepest kind acknowledges 
 this, while with earnest warning voice at the same time it 
 accepts the facts as the exceptional, to prove at once the rule 
 of restraint and the danger of spiritual pride. A son like 
 Robert, earl of Gloucester, was a joy to a father which only 
 made the grief the keener that he could not hand his sceptre 
 after him to such capable hands. As it was, through paternal 
 favour and his marriage with Matilda Sinclair, he became the 
 richest and most powerful next to the sovereign. The shortest 
 proof of what he gathered is that their son, William, earl of 
 Gloucester, in the aid for marriage of the king's daughter, 
 12 Hen. II., was assessed for 22^ knights' fees of land in 
 Kent, and 260^ old with 13.^- new enfeoffment elsewhere. 
 And there are indications that William's generosity was 
 decreasing rather than increasing his parents' wonderfully 
 numerous estates. 
 
 But this was not all. With Matilda Robert also got a great 
 inheritance in Normandy. William Gemeticensis gives a full 
 account of it. He says that Matilda's name was Sibil, and 
 nol the name of her mother, who was Mabel Mont^omerv ; 
 but he is wrong. His account, however, seems to have quite 
 confused a host of writers who cannot settle whether Robert 
 Consul's countess was Maud, Sibil, or Mabel, or two, or all of
 
 THE COUNTESS OF GLOUCESTER. 155 
 
 tlie names. It will be seen that Matilda was her name, and 
 no doubt about it. Describing Beauclerc's love family, he says, 
 ' Illorum autem primogenito Roberto pater suns quandam 
 ndbilissimam puellam nomine Sibillam filiam Roherti filii 
 Haimonis, neptem scilicet ex filia Mabilia Rogerii de Monte 
 Gomerici patris vidilicet Roherti de Bellismo matrimonio copu- 
 larit ' — < His father, however, married to Robert, the eldest 
 of them, a certain very noble girl, by name Sibil, the daughter 
 of Robert, the son of Hamo, niece by Mabel, the daughter of 
 Roger de Montgomery, father of Robert of Belesme.' It has 
 been said that she heired much if not all the English lands 
 of her fierce uncle, Robert of Belesme. The king, he states, 
 conceded to her husband, ' Maximam haeredUatem tarn in 
 Normannia quam in Anglia, quae praefatae virgini haerecli- 
 tario jure competebat ' — ' Very large inheritance in Nor- 
 mandy as well as in England, which belonged by hereditary 
 right to this maiden.' He describes the head town on her 
 Norman lands as Torrinneium, on the borders of the consulatus 
 or bailliwicks or counties of Bayeux and the Cotentin, two 
 miles distant from the river Vire. It was extremely populous, 
 he says, though the agricultural produce was not remarkably 
 rich, merchandise being largely the interest of a busy and, to 
 its proprietors, profitable town and country. The chronicler 
 adds also that because it was not right to have so much pro- 
 perty without public dignity, the king gave him ' Comitatum 
 Glocestriae' — 'The earldom of Gloucester.' Again and again 
 he gets new additions to his lands through this most extra- 
 ordinary of heiresses, as her relations die. It is also said that 
 Henry the First at his death in 1135, S ave h* m ,£60,000 
 directly out of the treasury at Falaise. 
 
 Robert, earl of Gloucester, had fought beside his father in 
 the battle of Brenneville, 11 19, which, by the defeat of his 
 cousin William, son of Robert Curthose, finally established 
 Henry as king of Normandy and England. He was at the siege 
 of Brionne Castle in 1123. But he gained his high reputa- 
 tion as a warrior in aiding his sister to rescue her father's 
 crown from the usurper Stephen. When he first came to Eng- 
 land in 1 135 after his father's death, he actually paid homage 
 to Stephen. Nothing else could then be done. But he went 
 to his earldom, and having carefully built Bristol Castle, of 
 stone taken from Caen, he negotiated with Milo, earl of Here-
 
 156 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ford, the constable of England, and they brought his sister 
 from Anjou in 1138, to be received at Arundel Castle, Sussex, 
 by her stepmother Alice, the countess, formerly the queen of 
 Henry. This was the beginning of chequered struggle till he 
 took Stephen prisoner at Lincoln in 1141. His famous speech 
 in Joreval is of genealogical as well as historic interest. 
 It has been noticed that he criticised the character of Simon 
 Sinclair, the second earl of the name, then his enemy. The 
 actual speech puts the proper light on the subject. It was 
 not likely he would speak very severely, if he could help it, of 
 his own and his wife's kinsman, nor has he. He addresses 
 the soldiers first about Stephen as a forsworn man, having 
 promised to his father Henry to support Matilda his daugh- 
 ter in her accession to his crown ; he then attacks the earl of 
 Mellent, as being deceitful above measure, and equally lazy ; 
 next, the earl of Albemarle is pictured as a drunkard, and 
 knowing nothing of soldiering ; and lastly, because he was too 
 important not to be named, he describes, in comparatively 
 mild terms, Simon, earl of Northampton, as a man of words 
 only, who never makes performance of his promise. To sol- 
 diers in the face of approaching battle something strong had 
 to be said, but it does not appear that Earl Robert lost his 
 good sense on the occasion in the least degree, and the his- 
 torians are rash who draw too much conclusion as to men 
 from this speech, even if delivered as reported. Stephen he 
 took prisoner to Bristol Castle with him, but the tables were 
 turned again, and Rochester Castle kept Robert in durance. 
 But all that is well known history. His death in 1146 takes 
 him out of the troubled time. 
 
 In the transcript of Glover by the Rouge-dragon Smith, MS. 
 245, Harleian collection, Matilda or Sibilla, as he alternates, 
 marries again, and to Nigel of Mowbray, son of Roger of 
 Albini. Albinis were from Thoeni, uncle to Rollo. Nigel, 
 (he famous Neel, was brother to William de Albini Pincerna, 
 the founder of Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk, whose son Wil- 
 liam, the lion slayer, was that earl of Arundel to whom Queen 
 Alice, of Lorraine or Boulogne, was married, when she received 
 Robert, earl of Gloucester, and his sister, the empress, at 
 Arundel ( !astle in 1 138. The countess of Gloucester's second 
 husband, Nigel, became earl of Northumberland in all except 
 the title, having received the lands of Mowbray, the rebel
 
 THE COUNTESS OF GLOUCESTER. 157 
 
 earl of 1095, from Rnfus. He changed his name to Mowbray, 
 such conversions being a kind of passion with the Albinis, the 
 Thoenis of 1066 and previously. At her new home, the splen- 
 did warlike castle of Northumbrian Bamborough, historic as 
 any in England, Matilda Sinclair spent the evening of her 
 rich life. 
 
 Sir Alexander Malet, Bart,, B.A., an ambassador of the 
 present century to European states, and something after the 
 twentieth in direct male line from Malet of the Conqueror's 
 special friendship, says that a "William de St. Clair endowed 
 the abbey of Savigny, Normandy, in the reign of Henry the 
 First, and he adds, ' The English Sinclairs are reported to be 
 of this stock.' The passage occurs incidentally in a note to his 
 rhymed translation of Wace, the French chronicler of, among 
 much related history and biography, the battle of Hastings. 
 Malet is an authority on Norman subjects. His words are of 
 value. He also states in the same book that the priory of 
 Villers-Frossard was founded by William Sinclair. In the 
 division of France into departments at the revolution of last 
 century, it is noticeable that St. Clair beside St. Lo was made a 
 commune, and Villers-Frossard being in it, the home district of 
 his family was where William founded the priory. Malet notes 
 further that ladies St. Clare founded religious houses in England. 
 The abbey of nuns in the Minories, at the tower, London, 
 would seem to have been one of these. The church of the 
 nunnery was founded by Matilda, queen of Henry I., in 1108, 
 the burial-place of the earls of Dartmouth and others of much 
 note. In 1797 the ruins of the convent of St. Clare were 
 large and imposing. It has been said that it took its name 
 from its nuns being of the order of St. Clare, the Italian saint 
 who was counterpart and the female friend of St. Francis ; but 
 she died as late as 1253, and the nunnery had its title long 
 before her birth from a foundress of the lineage. A striking 
 aid to the proof of this is to be found in the Rejiort of the 
 Historical 2ISS. Commission. In the St. Bartholomew hos- 
 pital MSS. John Sinclair of Hardaness, in Kent, is a donor to, 
 and has also much business with others about, a chapel of St. 
 Clare on Hardaness. The usual relations of a lord to his 
 chapel are too well established not to be indicative of the 
 lineage connection ; as, for example, the priory of Montacute 
 belonged to the Montacutes in name as in reality.
 
 158 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 But this step of proof of Matilda's lineage is not dependent on 
 even Malet's accuracy, as man of position and a Norman of 
 high blood, and therefore of special carefulness as to facts in 
 such field. He may well be trusted as to the dates, wherever 
 he may have found them. There is a beautiful transcript in 
 the public record office, Fetter Lane, London, from Ba i 
 Norniandie and Gascony rolls, of the charter given to Sa\ igny 
 abbey. ' CJtarte de Mathilde <J' J Glocester et <!<' Guilt de St. 
 Clair. No. 18. Mathilde comtesse de Glocester et < hull' de St. 
 Clair donnent a Tallage de Savigny toute leur terre de Villers et 
 de Thau title quHls la tenoient du f> ms de Henri l r roi d f Angle- 
 terre. Cette charte etait scellie en cire jaune et en double queue, 
 mais il ne reste iJlus que le sceait de Guill 1 de St. Clair. 1 Here 
 Matilda, countess of Gloucester, and "William de St. Clair give 
 their lands of Vilers and of Than to the abbey of Savigny. 
 It does not at first sight agree altogether with Malet's note. 
 He says that William Sinclair endowed the abbey in the reign 
 of Henry. The clause that they held the land from the time 
 of Henry the First would go to prove that this conjunct endow- 
 ment was made after that king's death. Malet may be quite 
 right if this, as was usual, is another endowment added to the 
 original one, which his information, however acquired, implies 
 to have been that of William alone. Duncan in his work, 
 The Dukes of Normandy, has general reference to the founda- 
 tion of religious houses in Normandy by ladies of the Sinclair 
 lineage. He is aware that the Sinclairs founded houses or 
 ' establishments ' in England ; and this is something in con- 
 nection with a subject hitherto virgin among writers of the 
 historian class. In his List of the Norman Barons who fought 
 at Hastings a good paragraph occurs. ' Saint-Clair is an arron- 
 dissement of Saint- Lo. The remains of the old baronial castle 
 are still visible near to the church. The name of Saint-Clair 
 figures distinctly in the Bromton Chronicle, and though 
 greatly defaced, may be traced in the Battle-Abbey list. 
 William Saint-Clair endowed the abbey of Savigny, in the 
 reign of Henry the First. In 1139, the priory of Villers- 
 Frossard was founded by a person of the same name. The 
 < lairs formed establishments in England, but they are 
 now changed to Sinclair. ' These statements are the more trust- 
 worthy because taken from the faithful local researches of 
 Auguste le Prevost, a Frenchman who made Norman anti-
 
 THE COUNTESS OF GLOUCESTER. 159 
 
 quities a life study. But to return to the prize of the public 
 record office. The note in French added to the charter is 
 of much later origin than itself, but it is of considerable 
 use : ' This charter was sealed with yellow wax, and with 
 double hangers, but there remains only the seal of William 
 Sinclair.' To parchment charters the seals, sometimes as many 
 as seven or eight, according to the persons interested, were 
 attached by narrow slips, also of parchment, called queues or 
 tails. The seal which survives is as large as a penny. Round 
 the edge, in quaint somewhat irregular capitals, runs ' Sigillvm 
 Wlelmi De Sco Claro,' the beginning and end of the inscrip- 
 tion separated by a cross for full stop. The centre is occupied 
 by a crusader on an armoured horse, the warrior armed cap-a- 
 2~>ic, with spear from which hangs a pennon ' en treble queue,' 
 as the describer of the charter Avould put it, with sword to his 
 side, and an oval shield, having a central device, on his left 
 shoulder. The peculiar saddling, the size of the stirrups and 
 spurs, and the long thin loose look of the knight's boots towards 
 toes and heels, are as characteristic of the time as they are 
 noteworthy for antiquarian purposes. Over the horse's head 
 and neck there are ribbed plates of, no doubt, in the actual 
 field, shining steel. It is easy to draw inference from this 
 remarkable seal that he was in the highest sphere and spirit 
 of his period. 
 
 But who are these two granters of the charter ? That they 
 are brother and sister is the probable explanation of all the 
 circumstances. This Matilda is undoubtedly the daughter of 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, because she was the first countess of 
 Gloucester, through her husband, Robert Consul, Henry the 
 First's son. No countess of Gloucester occurs with the same 
 name till Matilda, wife of Richard Clare, in 1230, daughter 
 of the earl of Lincoln. The proof is absolute that it was the 
 wife of Robert Consul and the daughter of Robert Fitz-Hamo 
 who gave this charter conjointly with William Sinclair ; and 
 the document answers, besides, the confused difficulties of some 
 chroniclers and genealogists as to whether she was Maud, Sibil, 
 or Mabel. If the history of "William will show that he was 
 her brother or near relation complete satisfaction must be the 
 result.
 
 160 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 WILLIAM DE SANCTO CLARO. 
 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo was married first to a princess, Theodora 
 ap Tudor, daughter of Rhees ap Tudor, prince of South Wales, 
 and sister to Henry the First's concubine, the princess Nesta, 
 mother of Robert Consul, earl of Gloucester, and mother by 
 Gerald of Windsor and by Sinclair, father of William of I lav, of 
 the chief heroes of the Irish Conquest. Marriages to the Welsh, 
 even if princesses, were considered low alliances, though I bese 
 Tudors are said to be the same stock as Henry the Eighth. 
 But the connections explain Fitz-Hamo's close sympathies 
 with the Conqueror's dynasty; and the high and deserved 
 favour he had, is considerably to be attributed to the fact that 
 his first wife was Robert Consul's aunt. Burke says, however, 
 that he was the Conqueror's nephew. The genealogists, from 
 whatever reason, seem to have neglected this marriage. It is 
 not impossible that new evidence of descendants may be dis- 
 covered. They who refer to the subject at all state the marriage 
 and no more. Their interest follows quickly to the famous 
 second marriage of the Montgomery heiress of Robert de 
 Belesme's wide English lands ; and this is natural, because it 
 has to do with the main stream of history more. It was 
 in Normandy that Henry, the third son of the Conqueror, 
 met Nesta ap Tudor ; and there, at the same period, before the 
 reign of Rufus began in 1087, Robert Fitz-Hamo also met 
 her sister Theodora. We know of a son Henry, as well as 
 Etol >ert Consul, whom Nesta bore to Henry, both out of wedlock ; 
 and evidence tends to show that the multiplying power of her 
 1 ribe had in Theodora a sufficient representative. The theory 
 is, and it must end in realised facts before its value is genuine, 
 Hi.it, William de Sancto Claro was her eldest son. That she 
 had two other sons at least, will be put forward in additional 
 but corroborative connections. It might be thought from the 
 French charter that Matilda, countess of Gloucester, possibly 
 married a William de St. Clair, but the dates at once preclude 
 the possibility. Her husband, the king's son, did not die
 
 WILLIAM DE SANCTO CLARO. 161 
 
 till 1 146, and the French religious houses were conjointly 
 founded by them during his life, 1 139 at the latest. Who could 
 stand in such a relation to this married lady but a brother ? 
 Her marriage to Nigel Mowbray, with the evidence of their 
 age, goes to say, that she could not possibly have been married 
 to a Sinclair between the two marriages which all the gene- 
 alogists and chroniclers tell of, and of none else. Her father, 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo's brother Hamo, the viscount of Kent 
 and dapifer, record shows to have been childless. 
 
 We know of the influential position of William from other 
 things than great religious foundation. That he was among 
 the few best men of England is shown by the list of witnesses 
 to Stephen's charter of the earldom of Essex to the second 
 Geffrey Mandeville, the son of Margaret Sinclair, Eudo 
 Dapifer's daughter. The signatures and pledges which the 
 Empress Matilda gave to Geffrey to win him to her cause, 
 and to outweigh this charter and its guaranteers, are wonders 
 of English record. She almost pawned the kingdom, the 
 clergy included, to get the brave Geffrey to her side; and 
 the Sinclair interest was undoubtedly always in her favour 
 when it could get its natural and indeed, as shall be shown, 
 related scope. Stephen's charter to him shortly after 1135, 
 when he usurped the throne, is signed by William of Iypres, 
 afterwards earl of Kent ; Henry of Essex, the famous or in- 
 famous standard-bearer of England ; John Clare, the son of 
 Robert Fitz- Walter of the Tunbridge great family ; Robert 
 Newburgh, earl of Warwick; William de St. Clere; William 
 de Damartin, of a famous earldom; Richard Fitz-Urse; and 
 William, earl of Ou, than whom, being ducal with bar sinister, 
 no person was more distinguished in England or Normandy. 
 It cannot be thought curious that William Sinclair is on 
 Stephen's side against the interests of Matilda and Robert 
 Consul, and through them of himself and his own sister. So 
 successful had Bigod Dapifer made the first move of crowning 
 Stephen by the archbishop and the church's full authority, 
 that even the very son of the late king, this Robert Consul 
 himself, had to swear homage to his aunt's usurping son. 
 William was there then simply because of his public import- 
 ance, and till 1 138, when]Matilda landed in Sussex, Stephen was 
 indisputable king. Like Geffrey he took his natural place as 
 events righted themselves, and like him he may have suffered 
 
 L
 
 1 62 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 The indications are, however, that he died at a reasonable 
 age about the middle of the reign, a few years after his foun- 
 dation of the priory of Villers Frossard in 1 139. lie was one 
 of the benefactors, according to Morant's histories of El 
 and Colchester, published in the eighteenth century, of the 
 abbey of St. John Baptist, Colchester, founded by his kinsman, 
 Eudo Sinclair, dapifer. No more useful or graceful way was 
 there among friends of such rank than thus acknowledging 
 each others' pious deeds of building and endowment, and 
 this of itself is a valuable item to the proof of their identical 
 lineage. The William who was a cleric, and who helped Eudo 
 so thoroughly and successfully in finishing the abbey, despite 
 all state difficulties, 'sparing no expense,' was probably the 
 William afterwards archdeacon of Northampton, whose build- 
 ing powers on his own account with St. John's Hospital there 
 are well known, the brother of Simon Sinclair, one of the greal 
 earls, themselves founders, as Leland has noted. Lay William 
 was too old to have entered much into the iiffhtin" of the 
 time, being born about 1080. The date shows that nothing 
 of his English properties can be directly discovered from 
 Domesday Bool,; being a child at its production. In the 
 Magnum Rotulum Scaccarii of 31 Hen. I., 1 131, or, as some 
 date it, 5 Stephen, 1140, under ' Nova Pldcentia et Novce Oon- 
 ventiones, Dorseta,' this occurs : ' In pdon br Willo de Sco Claro,' 
 twice, as paying taxes in this county. His home was in Dorset, 
 and he founded a family there. Next to London, Winchester 
 and its surroundings were the best scene in the kingdom 
 during centuries after the Conquest. The Chronica of John of 
 Oxenford mentions a descendant, William, who figured in 
 Edward the First's Welsh, Scottish, and French wars; and he 
 was as capable in money business as in military. It is in coin 
 connection John writes of him. The bishop of Winchester, the 
 clergy being then the nation's accountants for most part, found 
 his match in William on his own favourite exchequer ground. A 
 < Jeffrey de Sancto Claro in the neighbouring county of Hamp- 
 shire held lands near- Southampton from the ' counts of the 
 island,' in 7 Hen. III., 1222; but the descendant more probably 
 then in the main line was the Dominns W ill iam us de Sancto 
 Claro who appears as witness to a charter given to the abbey 
 "I Tichfield, Southampton, in Edward the Second's reign, 
 1307-27- He was a baron by tenure so late as this, and may
 
 WILLIAM DE SANCTO CLARO. 163 
 
 safely be held as representative of William Sinclair, the brother 
 or near relation, as is being argued, of Matilda Sinclair, first 
 countess of Gloucester. In the same state record referred 
 to, he appears twice paying large taxes in Huntingdonshire. 
 The records of the period being yet fragmentary in printed or 
 other really available form, these appearances indicate much 
 wider possessions. 
 
 How a supposed son of Robert Fitz-Hamo got large proper- 
 ties in Dorsetshire and Huntingdonshire, however, is a ques- 
 tion which, without knowing of other lands he must certainly 
 have had, would have something of answer as to lineage. 
 Ellis in his Introduction to Domesday Book gives no help 
 as to the lands possessed by Robert Fitz-Hamo in particular. 
 He has an immense collection of lands under the name of 
 Robert, and most of them, if not all, were the property of this 
 the greatest of the nobles of three reigns. Robert Consul was 
 only a minor in Domesday time, else it might be doubtful as 
 to the extent of this Fitz-Hamo's lands occurring under the 
 name Robert. Study of Domesday itself is extremely helpful 
 and suggestive, though the indication of lineage through the 
 properties cannot be otherwise than indirect. Indexes to and 
 discussions about the clear and able record are worse often than 
 useless, deterring from the actual reading, for the word 'study' 
 hardly requires to be used, of the two volumes. William de 
 Sancto Claro heired pi-operty in England and Normandy be- 
 longing to Fitz-Hamo, lord of Thorigny. The lands he gave 
 to the religious houses in the latter country, he held in com- 
 mon with his sister or relation ; the heiress, by right of her 
 mother, of the Montgomery properties, and of some lands of 
 the proper Hamo line there, through her father. 
 
 The relations of the king's son Robert Consul, her husband, 
 to this Sinclair family, are altogether of the most intricate 
 and interesting kind. Through her relationship, as niece, to 
 Robert de Belesme, the arch-rebel of Henry the First's reign, 
 he secured the bulk if not all of the immense estates of that in- 
 tractable Montgomery; and William Gemeticensis, the chro- 
 nicler, has this, 'Dedit etiam illi (Roberto) rex terrain Haimonis 
 Dapiferi patrui videlicet uxoris suai ' — ' The king also gave to 
 him (Robert, his son) the land of Hamo Dapifer, the paternal 
 uncle of his wife.' That this statement can be but very 
 partially true, will be shown on the most unimpeachable autho-
 
 ifi 4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 rity. She only had her share of her uncle's lands for her able 
 husband. William de Sancto Claro got his share, Hugo de 
 Sancto Claro, whose fame in Kent will appear by and bye, got 
 his share, and Hamo of Colchester and its castle, who is so 
 extraordinarily frequent a name in the papers of his time, got 
 his share, if not the lion's share ultimately, of both Hamo 
 their paternal uncle the Dapifer's lands, and the division of 
 
 ir father's with their half-sister, by different mothers, 
 Matilda Sinclair, countess of Gloucester, and her full sister, 
 Amicia, the countess of Brittany. The two sisters besides, 
 the one Cicely Sinclair, abbess of St. Edward's convent, 
 Shaftesbury, the other Hawise, abbess of Wilton, had also 
 great gifts for the religious houses which they loved so well. 
 There are trite remarks that King Henry made them reli- 
 
 ises because he wished to preserve all the properties from 
 the family of Robert Fitz-Hamo's second wife, by Matilda her 
 daughter's marriage to his son Robert Consul. The fact that 
 the fourth, Amicia, married the earl of Britanny, and had her 
 rights, is answer to such weak inferences. Who had better 
 claim than Robert Consul to have benefits from Robert Fitz- 
 llaino, the favoured of his royal friends, and the husband of 
 his mother's sister, Theodora ap Tudor? If he encouraged 
 what was the natural inclination of the Sinclair women, as 
 history again and again has noted, for the high religious life, 
 in favour thus of Robert Consul, this is all that can be 
 said. 
 
 It is time, however, to treat these Hamoes on their right 
 
 ing as of the Sinclair lineage, and in particular Robert 
 
 I'itz- 1 laino and his In-other Fit z- Hamo Dapifer. Their sister, 
 
 . will be rescued from the obscurity of antiquity's sea as if 
 
 by the drowning locks. She is a personage quite unknown 
 
 to the chroniclers and county historians, and her history is as 
 
 interesting as it is thoroughly fixed bythebestof all authority. 
 
 When return is afterwards made to the brothers, or perhaps 
 
 . of this William de Sancto Claro, the accumulation of 
 
 iity inferences and available evidence will have further 
 
 effective additions from their thoroughly established and 
 
 ill) recognised doings. If this brother, at all events, near 
 
 I relative of Matilda, countess of Robert Consul, is left 
 
 ii is because previous and collateral histories will make 
 
 . re valuable what has to be said of him when the stories
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 16; 
 
 of Hugo de Sancto Claro and Hamo de Sancto Claro of the 
 reigns of Stephen and of Harry the Second are handled. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 
 
 So much has already been said of Robert Sinclair, commonly 
 called Fitz-Hamo, in the incidental relations he held with 
 others of the lineage, that many additions cannot be made of 
 entirely new effect. Some there are, however, and of most 
 interesting charactei\ Among English Sinclairs of the sub- 
 sequent centuries no name appears more frequently in record 
 than ' Robert,' and it is not any stretch of point to look for 
 the origin of its popularity to this gallant predecessor. Of 
 all the Normans none unless it be 'Strongbow,' the conqueror of 
 Ireland, has as high fame as the 'knight of Rye.' Born in 
 Normandy, at the battle of Hastings he must have been in the 
 flower of his youth. Indeed the Tewkesbury Oh ronicle expressly 
 mentions that he was a young man, but already the lord of 
 Astremeville beyond the Channel ; and lie must have done at 
 the Conquest as much as his age could. His father Ham<>, 
 earl of Cox^beil, did great services, Brady says, for the Con- 
 queror, and seems to have then overshadowed the son's doing, 
 though the latter reaped the benefit of the efforts of both. It 
 looks often as if the charters of such kind as those of Roch- 
 ester, with Dr. Thorpe's editorship, could prove that this 
 Hamo was dapifer as well as his son, who undoubtedly was 
 Hamo the dapifer and viscount of Kent. Bishop Carileph's 
 charter to Durham, given at London in 1082, is signed by 
 Hamo Dapifer; and it could be either, as far as ages are con- 
 cerned, but is more likely to have been the younger Hamo, vis- 
 count Kanciae. It may be granted that the younger man is 
 the dapifer whose position has puzzled the antiquaries so 
 much, and the sole one of the name. Robert, the elder son, 
 founded the castle of Rye, or more probably enlarged and for- 
 tified it, after his father had chosen his English home there. 
 William Iypres, earl of Kent, added the remarkable tower,
 
 1 66 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 which made the place very powerful. The fact that the 
 name Hamo is even still sacred to Eye in Sussex, one of the 
 Cinque Ports, goes to show that to Robert's father the origin 
 of the home there was owing, and that he did the work of 
 making it famous. Many of the surname of Eamon or Ham- 
 mond in late centuries have claimed to be descended from a 
 Norman ancestor of Rye. The monks of Fechan ip had returns 
 from the district in the eleventh century, but this does not 
 conflict the least with the presence of such an ancestor. Pro- 
 perty held in the usual feudal way paid its tithes. In the 
 muniments of Battle Abbey, at no great distance, the name 
 Hamon often occurs. The Henry of Rye who gave the manor 
 of Diepham to the cathedral church of Canterbury, and who 
 was thereupon admitted a monastic brother in i 146, is one of 
 the English Ryes, as distinguished from their relations who 
 kept up in England the name from the Norman home, 
 Eudo, Hubert, Ralph, and the rest, who possessed chiefly in 
 the east and north of the kingdom. There is a Robert Hamon 
 at Rye in 13 14. Of other local indications from the names of 
 persons, the history of Thomas Hamon, six times mayor of 
 Rye, and thrice its representative in parliament, is very sug- 
 gestive. His tomb still exists. He died in 1607, and had all 
 the honours which civic ingenuities could heap upon him. To 
 make strange things meet, by an extreme circle, the signature 
 ' Alexander Sinclair ' is found to the last effort of this once lively 
 nearest ferrying port to France to assert its rights as an inde- 
 pendent, and jealous, municipality, having Cinque rights and 
 privileges of the then (1828) musty impossible kind. Could the 
 man be a survival of the old race of Norman Hamoes ? In 
 this century a Sinclair anywhere in England, much more on 
 its southern shore, was rarer than a white elephant. It is 
 almost pathetic, not to say poetic or even tragic, to think of 
 him as the last of such a line. But this is digression, because 
 he may have been an importation or a waif from other shores. 
 The fact, is striking, but has nothing further in it. Cooper, 
 the Sussex archaeologist, says the Rye family originated with 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo; and as an accurate and learned district 
 antiquary, ho must have had grounds for the statement 
 1 there was such a family. This of itself is presumptive 
 proof that, Robert's marriage with the Princess Theodora ap 
 Tudor of Wales might have given him sons who were the
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 167 
 
 heirs of his Sussex home with other of his own lineage pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 Beyond this marriage, and the general knowledge of his 
 great services as a soldier, which historians like Brady and 
 others describe, there is not much to be said of his doings in the 
 reign of William the First. It is in the reign of Rufus that 
 he comes fully to the front. When Eudo Sinclair, the dapifer, 
 came over in 1087 from Normandy, with the Conqueror's 
 dying commission, to help to make his son Rufus king of Eng- 
 land, Robert Sinclair, Fitz-Hamo, warmly espoused the cause 
 for which his young relative risked his entire fortunes. Had 
 Eudo's head not been so able, ' the knight of Rye ' would 
 then have been seen gaining reputation at sword's point. As 
 it was, he was one of the favoured friends at the court of 
 Rufus. Opportunities were not long in arising to test his 
 loyalty for his elect king. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, brother 
 of the Conqueror, formerly earl of Kent and governor of 
 England, had espoused his nephew William's cause, but he 
 soon grew discontented, and with his supporters, ' the gallant 
 squii-es of Kent,' fortified Rochester Castle and Pevensey 
 Castle, and schemed and waited for the coming of Robert, 
 duke of Normandy, to take the crown as eldest son. It is 
 probable that good reasons were not wanting for this rebellion. 
 But at the siege of Rochester, Robert Sinclair was chief mili- 
 tary figure, and it was to him the success there was owing. 
 It is said that the Saxon element of the population enjoyed 
 greatly the sight of the Norman nobles led out as prisoners of 
 war, and added sufficient curses in the vernacular to their 
 departure, some of them for ever, from the island. This 
 may be an example of historic imagination. Bishop Odo, 
 the leading proprietor of the county, and a very able man, 
 whether of uncertain temper or not, had perhaps considerable 
 popular sympathy, if only from religious motives. But the 
 last act of the high play he made in this country seems thus 
 to have had its close. It is somewhat of a pity that he did 
 not get his grand scheme carried out of being pope. His im- 
 perial-souled brother found the thought hard to brook that he 
 should have to square sentiments with his ruling spiritual 
 father in the person of his own earl of Kent. Undoubtedly 
 Odo was a disappointed man who might have been one of the 
 world's most brilliant stars had the fates been a little more
 
 168 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 favourable to him. His change against William is a subject 
 that hardly deserves severe if any criticism, for Odo's day was 
 over as to valuable undertakings. 
 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo was with King Rufus in his Norman 
 wars against both his brothers, Robert, the duke, and Henry. 
 Henry'had bought or some say seized the province of Con- 
 stance. Fitz-Hamo gained the highest possible favour from 
 the successful monarch, who in 1091 made what terms he chose 
 at Caen with his brothers. To recount the adventures of that 
 strueale of brothers would take volumes. Rufns had showed 
 his gratitude for Robert Sinclair's services by disseizing his 
 own brother Henry of his mother's lands in England, and 
 giving them to the ' knight of Rye,' who was thereupon lord 
 of the honour of Gloucester. For years Henry was almosi a 
 beggar ; but the after events show that he grudged less, though 
 he had the grumbling faculty highly developed, the fortune 
 of Robert, lord of Gloucester, than he would have done that 
 of any other nobleman in England. Probably William Rufus 
 knew this. The love of Henry and Fitz-Hamo for two sisters 
 gave something of a common interest to them ; and, as will 
 appeal-, real affection existed between the inheritor and the 
 disinherited. The story of these lands is more than romantic. 
 Brictric, a Saxon ambassador from the court of Edward the Con- 
 fessor, had business at the court of Baldwin, earl of Flanders. 
 The earl's daughter fell in love with him, and had the courage 
 to propose to him. She was disappointed, and nursed her spite. 
 This was the lady who, no doubt soured, said, on William her 
 future husband proposing to her by messengers, that she 
 would not marry a bastard. The stern duke never rested 
 till lie horse- whipped her in her father's palace; and so much 
 the better of it was she, that she became soon after suppliant for 
 his grace, and got it. Matilda, queen of England and duchess 
 of Normandy, has a good name, but she could not forgive being 
 slighted. When the Conquest had given her power, she found 
 means of easing her spitefulness. Brictric was seized, with, 
 it is said, the Conqueror's permission, at Hanley, and brought 
 to Winchester. He died there in prison. The Teivkesbury 
 < Chronicle says he was childless. At all events, Queen Matilda 
 had her revenge, and the further solace of his very wide lands. 
 W hen she died in 1083, the Conqueror kept them in his own 
 hand. It may be true that Henry Beauclerc had them only
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 169 
 
 for a short time in Eufus's reign. They came to the ' knight 
 of Rye ' with perfectly clean hands, and he enjoyed them till 
 his death in Henry's own reign. The Chronicle distinctly 
 says that Rufus gave them to him on account of many 
 labours with his father. Brady gives an additional item, 
 wherever he got it. The gift, he says, was made because of his 
 own and his father's services. If this is anything but a loose 
 incorrect reading of the Latin, Hamo, earl of Corbeil, and 
 the lord of Torigion or Thorigny, must have been a prin- 
 cipal instrument in the subjugation and long and troublesome 
 pacification of the island to its most northerly point. That 
 Robert attached Hamo's to his own has the same lesson. 
 Such a splendid prize as the honour of Gloucester can only be 
 explained on the supposition of special deeds for the crown. 
 
 But this was not the highest point of Robert Sinclair's 
 fortune and fame. Nicolas in his Annals of Wales says 
 that Fitz- Hamo's conquest of Glamorgan is allowed on all 
 hands. The tale reads like the adventures of knights of a 
 Round Table in Fairyland rather than the sober history which 
 it actually is. In Powell's translation of the History of Wales 
 there is a full account of 'how Glamorgan was won,' from 
 which Dugdale has taken his. But there is much literature 
 besides on this spirited subject, and short delay will be enough. 
 He was ' knight of the privy chamber ' to Rufus, and his 
 lordship over Gloucester as well as his general renown kept him 
 the prominent person on the Welsh border. In 1091 a quarrel 
 had arisen between Lord Jestin, a Welsh noble, and his prince, 
 Rhees ap Tudor. Lord Jestin, the lord of Glamorgan, as 
 the weaker, sent a secret messenger, Enyon, to the English 
 court to solicit the powerful man of the time, Robert Sinclair, 
 Fitz-Hamo, for help. It is probable that an opportunity of 
 intervention was not unwelcome. Fitz-Hamo got a full com- 
 mission from the king to enter upon the adventure. He 
 selected twelve knights to accompany him, and they crossed 
 the border. The wild Welsh were not long in meeting the 
 Normans, but they were beaten like foam. Prince Rhees ap 
 Tudor was slain in the battle of Black Hill, and Conan his 
 son shared the same fate. When he fully performed his 
 promises to Lord Jestin, Robert judged that he should have 
 equivalent. Jestin grew haughty, and fate found him soon in 
 pitched battle against his former friends. Most of South
 
 i7o THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 "Wales fell like a ripe apple into Fitz-Hamo's hands, and 
 though ' he displayed some generosity, a thing quite unusual 
 with his race,' as Nicolas, evidently a bitter Celt on this 
 Welsh question, acknowledges, he was not the man to let go 
 his grip of what he had fairly won. He immediately built 
 ( lardiff Castle, on the site of the ancient palace of the Welsh 
 prince, Morganiog ; and dividing the territories between him- 
 self and his twelve knights, he thoroughly established Norman 
 rule. By this position he became lord marcher, a prince in 
 everything but the name, needing no charters of possession, 
 exercising jura regalia, having the power of life and death, 
 and doing all he pleased, but with nominal homage to his 
 king. He had the lordship of Glamorgan and Morgannocke, 
 which, Stow says, was twenty-seven miles by twenty-two; 
 acting like the Saxons, he adds, as to choice of goodness of 
 soil and ' best of country and champaign.' The list of the 
 knights, who also each of them built his own castle for the 
 protection of his farms, is given in many places. ' There is a 
 book,' Tindal notes, ' written on this subject by Sir Edward 
 Stradling, or Sir Edward Mansel, (for it is ascribed to both), 
 wherein you have the names of the twelve knights. Their 
 names and the lordships each of them had are as follows : i. 
 William de Londres had for his share the manor of Os:mor. 
 2. Sir Bichard Granville, that of Neth. 3. Sir Pain Tubervill 
 bad Coyty. 4. Sir Robert St. Quintin, Lhan-blethyan. 5. 
 Sir Richard Syvvard, Talavan. 6. Sir Gilbert Humfrevile, 
 JVnniark. 7. Sir Reginald de Sully, Sully. 8. Sir Roger 
 Berkrolles, East Orchard. 9. Sir Peter le Soor, Peterton. 
 10. Sir John Fleming, St. George. 11. Sir John St. John, 
 Fonmon. 12. Sir William Stradeling, St. Donats.' The 
 antiquary Camden gives the list, Stow has it, and also the 
 later Nicolas in his two-volumed book about Welsh persons and 
 events. The Welsh Chronicle is the authority for these knights. 
 Powel translated and published it in 1580, and it was written 
 in 'the British' at least two hundred years previously. Fitz- 
 ll'iiio and liis knights take up several valuable pages of 
 ' nlm'a, as it is named. In his judicious Life of Henry the 
 "/, Lord Lyttleton gives remarkable prominence to the 
 deeds of these brilliant warriors in the west. 'Robert Fitz- 
 haimon, .-i gentleman of the king's privy chamber and great 
 baron of the realm, undertook the adventure. Twelve knights
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 171 
 
 of considerable note and distinction were retained to his ser- 
 vice, or rather agreed to serve under him, with a large body 
 of forces.' Nicolas takes care to tell, in an animated way, 
 that, except the Stradlings, the Norman blood has vanished ; 
 and he has morals about tyranny that are mere superstition. 
 Caxton in his IntroducMon to Cato's Disticlips (of which book 
 Francis de St. Clair, ne Davenport, was also an editor) says 
 that in his time, the fifteenth century, no one could point out 
 three succeeding generations among the merchants of London. 
 The vitality of Normans, though as with most of the noblest 
 animals production is not superabundant, bas been always a 
 subject of astonishment to careful consideration. The frantic 
 nationalists cannot see truth that is still under their eyes 
 every day. Fitz-Hamo had twelve years' possession as lord 
 marcher before his death. He held his monthly court at 
 Cardiff Castle, and of all Normans he was the most popular 
 with the fickle, angry, immoral Welsh, because of his strong 
 hand and generous heart. Enyon, the Welshman who first 
 by his message opened the way to this side of his fortune, he 
 enriched and granted lands to, with characteristic generosity. 
 He built Kensigg Castle, and Cowbridge and other towns. 
 
 What is more valuable still in the present inquiry, is that 
 the castle and town of St. Clare are in the district over which 
 he ruled. Again and again the naming of their places by 
 their surname, which, as Hallam has already been quoted to 
 show, was considered beneath dignity to use socially, is to be 
 found with the Sinclair family ; and there can be little doubt 
 that the well-known St. Clare of Wales owes its name to 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, its founder and ruler. In the Brut Y 
 Tywysogion, the chronicle of the Welsh princes, the date of 
 the death of Prince Rhys ap Tudor is given as 109 1. He was 
 ' killed by the French (Ffreinc) who inhabited Brecknock, 
 and then fell the kingdom of the Britons.' It tells how the 
 French, who are the Normans really, came into Cardigan and 
 other districts, which they conquered and occupied, fortifying 
 everywhere with castles, of which Pembroke was one of the 
 most remarkable in position of advance. It is 11 89 which has 
 first mention of St. Clare. ' That year the Lord Rhys took 
 possession of the castle of St. Clare.' In King John's reign, 
 1 2 15, 'Llewellyn son of Jorwath and the Welsh princes in 
 general collected a vast army to Caermarthen ; and before the
 
 i 7 2 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 end of five days lie obtained the castle and demolished it to 
 the ground. And then they demolished the castles of Llan- 
 stephan and Talachur and Seint Cler. And from thence to 
 Cardigan.' It was a few years later that William Rufus, after 
 Fitz-Hamo's success in South Wales, partitioned beforehand 
 North Wales, to be conquered and possessed by Hugh Mont- 
 gomery, earl of Chester, and others. Montgomery has left 
 his name on part of his conquest, as Fitz-Hamo did his in the 
 St. Clare of Caermarthen, the castle, town, and county of 
 Montgomery being immortal record of this brother of Robert 
 de Belesme, of Mabel Montgomery, the 'knight of Rye's' lady, 
 and of Matilda, the wife of Robert, earl of Mortaine, half- 
 brother of William the First. The great border lordship of 
 Nithsdale reaching the Solway south of and including Dum- 
 fries, and held by the Sinclair earls of Orkney, had in similar 
 manner its St. ( Lire for capital or head. In the map of 1732 
 inserted by Tindal in Rapin's History of England, the ancient 
 divisions of Scotland before counties are given ; and Nithsdale 
 has its caput baroniae spelt as 'Sanchar,' the exact spelling of 
 a Lord William Sinclair's surname to a Stirling document in 
 1 1 if reformation struggles. Thomas Nicholas in his Annals 
 <>//</ Antiquities of Wales, published in 1875, knew a little of 
 the Welsh castle, but there is more than his two inter- 
 filing paragraphs to be found about it. 'At St. Clear's [St. 
 < la re] there was also a Norman castle, about whose fortunes 
 not very much is known, its life having probably been of brief 
 duration as a lord marcher's residence, and distinguished by 
 no extraordinary events. We can measure for it a duration 
 of only about thirty years as a warlike stronghold. It was in 
 existence in the year 1188 when Ceraldus de Barri passed 
 ili.it way with Archbishop Baldwin preaching the crusades, 
 for he mentions it as the adjacent castle of St. Clare, giving 
 ai the .same time rather an amusing account of a method of 
 making evil-doers good servants of the church: — "On our 
 journey from Caermardyn to the Cistercian monastery called 
 Alba Domus (Whitland), the archbishop was informed of the 
 murder of a young Welshman who was devoutly hastening to 
 ' him, when tinning out of a road he ordered the corpse 
 to be covered with the cloak of his almoner, and with a pious 
 supplication commended the soul of the murdered youth to 
 beavi n. Twelve archers of the adjacent castle of St. Clare,
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. i 73 
 
 who had assassinated the young man, were on the following 
 day signed with the cross at Alba Domus as punishment for 
 their crime." So they marched off to fight the infidel.' What 
 follows is useful for comparison purpose. 'The next year 
 alter tin's summary conversion of twelve archers of the castle 
 into Christian soldiers, the Lord Rhys visited and took pos- 
 session of the place. After this Howel Sais became its occu- 
 pant, who was compelled in the year 1 195 to yield it up to the 
 Norman De Breos. In 12 14 it was captured and hardly used 
 by Llewellyn ap Jorwarth of North Wales. Not a vestige of 
 the walls is now to be seen; the mound on which it stood and 
 which lias partly grown out of its ruins alone remains to mark 
 (lie spot.' But Gerald de Barri, better known as Giraldus 
 Cambrensis, has already been referred to as giving still earlier 
 knowledge of Saint Clare. Nesta, the Welsh princess, concu- 
 bine of Henry I., had a son William Hay to whom he says 
 she left Sanctum Glarum as property, and it is certain she got 
 it by one of the Fitz-Hamo connection, from whom the name 
 came. William , Hay's father was a Norman of Sinclair 
 lineage. Nesta was the aunt of the then Lord Rhys, so 
 that there is, what with Gerald de Barri being contemporary 
 of I Ferny II., and other near views, considerably solid ground 
 here in the obscure past. Her husband, Gerald of Windsor, 
 afterwards constable of Pembroke Castle, father of the Irish 
 Fitzgeralds, would seem to be also of the same lineage, from 
 Hugo of Windsor being in Henry the Second's time the same 
 with the Hugo Pincerna and the Hugo de St. Clare of the 
 historians of the Thomas a Becket controversy. The royal 
 relationships gave the lead to the west, and ultimately to 
 Ireland, as was to have been expected from the feudality of 
 the period. In records the Welsh town and its pertinents 
 occur as the 'barony of St. Clare.' The Bruces of Brecknock 
 and Brember had it in the reign of Henry the Third. William 
 Bruce married Eva, sister of Richard Marshall, earl of Pem- 
 broke, and she had eight properties marked out as her dowry, 
 this barony one of them. She had four daughters, Eva married 
 to Cantilupe, the king's steward or dapifer; Isabella to David, 
 prince of Wales; Eleanor to Humphrey de Bohun, earl of three 
 counties; and Maud to Roger Mortimer, the lord of Wigmore. 
 Maud had eight estates as dowry, and among them the barony 
 of St. Clare. But there is later history of it than this. On
 
 i 74 THB SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the death of Roger Mortimer, his son Edmund heired a third 
 part of it. In u Ed. L, 1283, there is a division to three 
 heirs of the town of Sancto Claro, Wall'. In Ayloffe's Ancient 
 Charters there is one carta without date: 'BotuU Walliae: Mem- 
 brana dorso : De terra Sancto Claro Angey et Pennuliok data Reso 
 filio M( reduci in maritagio cum Auda sorore Johannis Hasting.' 
 William Montacute, earl of Salisbury, has St. Clare in his feoda 
 in 20 Ric, II., 1397. The monks of St. Denis, France, writing 
 of the forty-two years ending in 1422, when the great French 
 war was going on, tell of what they call ' the strong castle of 
 St. Clare, near Caermarthen,' which a body of Welsh and 
 French auxiliaries had tried to storm in the curious invasion 
 of that period. This was of Fitz-Hamo's building, and bore 
 his own surname. In 6 Henry VIII., 15 15, June 4, there were 
 a confirmation and quit-claim for the Sir Rhesus ap Thomas 
 \\ hose monument is a Welsh ' lion.' Next to the Tudors then, 
 his was the best family of those originating across the border. 
 
 I [e could raise 5000 horse; and his great tournament, and his 
 friendship with Henry, are historic. The confirmation gives 
 
 I I i 111 and his heirs the castle and lordship of Trayne March, 
 and the third part of the town of St. Clare, Carmarthen. 
 Fifty years before, St. Clare was mortgaged to John, bishop of 
 St. Davids, and to the Thomases, by Richard, duke of York. 
 There is one thing to be added to these more modern notes. 
 The name mighl be traced to Agnes Sinclair, the daughter of 
 Walderne, earl of St. Clare, wife of the first of the English 
 Unices ; but the stern ways of English history plead in favour 
 of a founder and a fighter's title to a strong castle, and to the 
 town which grew under its protection. The best names 
 England ever had, revolve round this remarkable Welsh 
 town ; and local tradition, and perhaps record, might be able 
 to |'iit real shape into such subject as the present, with time 
 and perseverance. It is perhaps already made too much of 
 here; but the inferences to be drawn even from the dim 
 
 pledge secured, are decidedly useful. Further support to 
 
 Fitz Hamo's lineage may come from the history of a contiguous 
 
 omersel family, in which 'Robert' is the favourite name. It 
 
 v turn out 1 hat they are a branch of the family of the Lord 
 
 of Gloucester and Wales. But this requires separate 
 
 ment; For additional related families besides, may still 
 
 furthei ; hen the position.
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 175 
 
 Though so powerful and full of building and ruling energy 
 in the west, he does not forget that he is a courtier. With 
 Rufus he is more influential than any of the time. It was to 
 him, as the chief person, that the monk came, telling the 
 warning dream which Matthew Paris in his Historia Major 
 writes so alarmedly about, as well as others of the chroniclers. 
 On no account was Rufus to hunt in the New Forest that 
 day. Livy is science itself compared with Matthew and the 
 monks generally as to superstition. Fitz-Hamo told the 
 frightful portents to Rufus, and they laughed together over 
 clerical humanity, the king sending a piece of money as the 
 surest way to make the monastic mind easy. The death of 
 Rufus did take place this day, and the death of many another 
 besides ; but Walter Tyrell's arrow was the efficient cause of 
 the miracle, as over-eating was that of the monk's dream. 
 
 This was a critical period in the life of Fitz-Hamo, and he 
 did not hesitate. His clear sight enabled him to discern the 
 path to still higher place than he had. Relationship by blood, 
 and also by sentiment of love and marriage, probably aided 
 his decision; but he took Henry's side as king for England, 
 against Robert, with a decision and effect which secured the 
 crown for the unpopular but able Beauclerc. Henry is said 
 to have been the sworn feudal man of his brother ; and it was 
 on the ground of breaking his oath, more than his being the 
 younger, that Fitz-Osborn, keeper of the treasury at Win- 
 chester, so bravely contended there for Robert's rights. Wil- 
 liam of Malmesbury, who has the credit of being about the 
 best of the chroniclers, says that only four nobles in all Eng- 
 land clung to Henry. They were Robert Fitz-Hamo ; Roger 
 Bigod ; Robert, earl of Mellent, and Richard de Redvers, 
 ancestor of the Rivers earls of Devonshire. Anselm, arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, also, was all the friend he could 
 possibly be to Beauclerc. Robert Montgomery, better known 
 as ' of Belesme,' a castle in Perch hi France, earl of Arundel, 
 Chester, and Salop or Shrewsbury, who had three brothers, 
 Hugh, Ranulph, and Roger, was the greatest opponent. Fitz- 
 Hamo's wife, mentioned as such in 109 1, was their sister. 
 1 1 ugh's death in battle in Wales, 1097, gave Robert de Belesme 
 great increase of lands, with these titles of Arundel and 
 Shrewsbury. When the Montgomeries were banished after 
 the fierce struggle with Henry, in right of his wife the nearest
 
 i 7 6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 heir to these titles and properties was the 'knight of Rye.' 
 Robert de Belesme had publicly protested that Rcauclerc was 
 a usurper, and had fortified his English castles of Shrewsbury, 
 Bridgenorth, Tikhill in Yorkshire, and Arundel in Su 
 for a struggle. Henry got up forty- five charges of treason 
 against him, besieged and took his castles; and, before the 
 end of the second year of his reign, had ruined wholly the 
 English prospects of Belesme, that is, Montgomery, and his 
 brothers. Their estates were confiscated, and they had to 
 content themselves with their large possessions in France. 
 Roger had Poitou there. The violent career of this family in 
 Normandy is notorious. The wife of Fitz-Hamo was their 
 only representative in England, and to her a considerable part 
 of the estates came. Orderic Yitalis gives account of how 
 Robert de Belesme avenged himself in Normandy, by attack- 
 ing all those who were holders of estates there and at the same 
 time subjects of Henry in England. The disorder of the 
 dukedom came to be beyond human endurance ultimately ; 
 and Duke Robert, being slothful and inefficient, Henry was 
 compelled to accept the invitation to create order there, even if 
 against the rights of his brother. Robert Montgomery of 
 Belesme, who had this title or local surname from the posses- 
 sions he had as a lord under the French sovereign, and who 
 like many other nobles, was so dangerous because of them, 
 would have become duke of Normandy, having thirty-two 
 castles of his own in France, if Henry had not stood in, so 
 great was the supineness of the reigning Robert. The battle of 
 Tenchbrai in 1106 put a period to a frightful time, and Duke 
 Robert his brother, taken prisoner, made Henry ruler of Nor- 
 mandy as well as of England. Fitz-Hamo was at his right 
 I Kind in all that struggle, and to him as being the most faith- 
 ful, and perhaps one of the most interested, the captive sove- 
 reign was given to be kept in his castle of Cardiff. There the 
 generous crusader, who had refused to be elected king of 
 Jerusalem, the cause to superstition of all his misfortunes, re- 
 mained in confinement for twenty-six years. He was tenderly 
 treated by Robert Sinclair, Fitz-Hamo, who, dying next year, 
 bad the trust only so long. It was under the custody of his 
 son-in-law, Robert Consul, that, after the pitiful attempt to 
 pi 1 on a horse which during the pursuit landed him in a 
 bog, the duke suffered by his brother's orders more severely.
 
 THE KNIGHT OF RYE. 177 
 
 The story of having his eyesight destroyed by the application 
 of a hot brass basin was the invention of the enemies of both 
 Henry the First and his able generous son, Robert Consul, 
 earl of Gloucester. Fitz-Harno in 1107, having some of his 
 Normandy estates attacked, had to go there, and at the siege 
 of Falaise, which was the last effort against Henry by the 
 duke and the Belesme enemies, he was struck on the head 
 by a spear. He died some weeks after, in a kind of physical 
 frenzy, the result of the blow. In 11 13 the king got Robert 
 Montgomery, of Belissimo Castle, 'the fairest,' into his hands, 
 who spent the rest of his life a prisoner in England. His 
 other enemy, the earl of Mortagne, his cousin, was also safe 
 in the tower. It was so terrible a time of every one for his 
 own hand, that blames ought carefully to be weighed before 
 throwing them about. 
 
 The great lands of Robert Fitz-Hamo and of his wife Sybil 
 Montgomery, in Normandy, England, and Wales, fell into the 
 keeping of the king, as was then the law, and he did not for- 
 get his own interests. It is said that of the four daughters 
 he made two become abbesses, so that Matilda should be sole 
 heir. This absurdity, as has been said, is answered by the 
 fact that there was a fourth who married the earl of Brittany. 
 Brady, the historian of 1685, says she got her father's estates 
 in Normandy, but it is at least too wide a statement to risk. 
 The positions of abbesses of Shaftesbury and Wilton were the 
 highest possible for women in England next to being queen. 
 They were baronesses by right of office, as the 28 ruitred 
 abbots were lords, and members of the house of peers. Shaf- 
 tesbury had for abbess about 900 Ethelgiva, the daughter of 
 Alfred the Great ; and a century before, Wilton had been 
 founded by Albhura, the sister of Egbert, the first king of 
 England. Ciceley Sinclair, abbess of Shaftesbury, and Ha- 
 wise, her sister, abbess of Wilton, could have no thought of 
 injustice on the part of the king by the great provision he 
 found for them, their high natures no doubt making them the 
 seekers of their own vocation. That Matilda heired her 
 mother's properties as well as many of her father's, could 
 quite well be a pleasant arrangement for all concerned. In 
 1 109 the king married this ward of his to his own son, Robert 
 Consul, and gave him with the lands in Normandy and Eng- 
 land he got by her, the title of earl of Gloucester. ' He was,' 
 
 M
 
 1 7 3 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 says Tindal, « son of Nesta, daughter of Rhees, prince of South- 
 Wales. King Henry I. his father procured him in marriage 
 Mabel or Maud, rich heir of Robert Fitz-IIamon, lord of 
 Corboil in Normandy, Cardiff in South- Wales, and Tewkesbury 
 in England. By her he had William, earl of Gloucester, after 
 him ; Roger, bishop of Worcester; Richard, bishop of Noyon; 
 Hainon; Mabel, wife of Aubrey de Vere ; and Matilda of Ran- 
 ulph, earl of Chester.' Speaking of the year 1 1 10, he further 
 notes, ' This same year King Henry married Robert his natu- 
 ral son to Maud, daughter and heir of Robert Fitz-Haymon, 
 late earl of Gloucester, and then invested him with that earl- 
 dom.' Tindal may not be entirely accurate, however disinter- 
 ested. It is a question whether the king's son was not the 
 first earl of the county, though evidence goes most to support 
 Tindal's view. 
 
 A great deal could be accumulated from Domesday Book and 
 other sources about the ' knight of Rye ' and his properties, but 
 there is the less need for this from the fact that his position, 
 wealth, and biography generally, are plentifully described, and 
 fully valued, by historians. His intimate relations with the 
 kings of the Norman dynasty will always keep his memory 
 green. Account of him may be ended by reference to his 
 foundation of the abbey of St. Mary, Tewkesbury. His wife, 
 Sybil Montgomery, and Gerald, prior of Cranbourne, in 
 1 1 02 got him engaged to found this great house; and not only 
 did he build it, but, with the right liberality, endowed it so 
 as to become one of the greatest of secular saints, in the eyes 
 of the monastic world. His body was brought from Normandy, 
 and buried in his own abbey of Tewkesbury, March 1107; 
 and after some two centuries, 1 24 1 , it was, through the gratitude 
 and veneration of the monks, raised by the third abbot, from 
 its original position in the capitulary usual to lords, and 
 placed in the most sacred part of the building, to the right of 
 tlie priest's reading-desk. Till the Reformation destroyed the 
 ancient, beautiful, if too loving, and therefore dangerous, ritual, 
 tlie walls of tbat English temple heard as regularly as if it 
 were an arrangement of astronomy, a special hymn of mourn- 
 Lngand celebration. The great warrior, who was their great reli- 
 gious founder also, was never forgotten. Miserere quesumus 
 Domine, rose in song from the thankful hearts of generation 
 1 generation of devout men. ' Iste venerabilis Robertus filius
 
 HAMO DAPIFER. i 79 
 
 Haymows, 1 says the Tewkesbury Chronicle, 'post founded ione hujus 
 famosi monasterii et alia strenue gesta diebus Marcii anno gratiae 
 1 107, Hen. I. 7th, obiit' — 'That venerable Robert, the son of 
 Hamo, after the foundation of this famous monastery, and 
 after other deeds strenuously done, died in the days of March 
 of the year of grace 1 107, the seventh of Henry the First.' If 
 fame is at bottom the desire for men and women's love, it would 
 be difficult to choose between the militarv and the religious 
 deeds of Robert Sinclair as the more effective towards realisa- 
 tion. The monks of Gloucester Abbey got fine lands from him. 
 And he did not confine his gifts for the aid of what is noblest 
 in man to the western parts of the island. There is record of 
 his grants in Kent, as probably in other counties. To the 
 monks of Rochester he gave the manor of Merlaw. He had 
 various lands in the county of Kent, and his sympathies on 
 the paternal and fraternal sides were strongly bound up with 
 it, as will be seen from the history of Hamo Dapifer, vis- 
 count of Kent, his younger brother. 
 
 CHAPTER XX V. 
 
 HAMO DAPIFER. 
 
 An examination of the witnesses to chai'ters in the Monasiicon 
 or in the Rochester register, will discover no more frequent 
 name than Hamo, unless it be that of Eudo Dapifer. As viscount 
 of Kent sometimes, as dapifer in other places, he appears in all 
 the reigns of the three Norman kings. In their charters he 
 is mens dapiferus, and his signatures occur in Normandy as 
 well as England to royal charters and others. Henry the First 
 gives a charter of Aylesford to St. Andrews, Rochester, wit- 
 nessed there by Eudo Dapifer and Haymo Dapifer alone, and 
 another by William Giffard, Eudo Dapifer, Haymo Dapifer, 
 and William Albini, all relatives by blood or marriage. Gil- 
 bert, of Tunbridge Castle, earl of Clare, granted Rethra- 
 velda, Sussex, to the monks in the time of Rufus, the witnesses 
 of which were Roger Bigod and Hamo Viscount, at Winchester. 
 Henry often begins his charters, ' To Hamo Dapifer and my
 
 i So THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 faithful barons of Kent,' as if Homo's duties or residence had 
 specially to do with that county. One of the earliest of his 
 appearances is in the charter given 1082 by Bishop William 
 Karileph to Durham monastery. It was signed at London by 
 Robert, earl of Moreton ; Roger, count of Shrewsbury; Robert, 
 count of Northumbria; Roger Bigod; Hamo Dapifer; and others. 
 In the charter of Simon Sinclair, earl of Northampton and 
 Huntingdon, to St. Andrews, Northampton, 11 08, his name 
 do< s not appear, but Eudo Dapifer's does. He is dead before 
 the end of Henry the First's reign, because in 1131 there is 
 an account in state record of him being dead, and of his heirs 
 paying for entry to his possessions. 
 
 If Hamo Dapiferus and Hamo Vicecomes are one, as Sir 
 Eenry Ellis and many genealogists state, a great deal can be 
 found about his wide lands in various counties, from Domesday 
 Boole as well as other sources. He was proprietor in capite of 
 lands in Essex, Kent, and Surrey, and as under-tenant in 
 Kent, Surrey, Dorset, Wilts, Cheshire, Devon. Not one of 
 the largesl sharers of the Conqueror's gifts, he still held much, 
 and it is known that his land in Normandy was extensive. 
 William Gemeticensis, after describing the ' very great heir- 
 ship ' Roberl ( lonsul, the king's son, got with Matilda Sinclair, 
 the daughter of Robert Fitz-Harno, adds, ' Dedit etiam Mi 
 [Roberto) rex terrain Haimonis Dapiferi patrui videlicet uxoris 
 — ' The king gave also to him (Robert) the land of Hamo 
 
 I >apifer, the uncle, by her father's side, of his wife.' He must 
 have meant in Normandy; for, by the state roll of 31 Henry I., 
 Roberl de Crepacor or Crevecour or Crepito Corde heirs at 
 Li 1 a portion of Hamo's lands. He pays a fine or relief of 
 / [56, iyS. 4d. for what he gets of Hamo's lands in Kent 
 alone, which represents, as money then was, large property, 
 h is expressly stated that he only gets part of the dapifer's 
 land. Matilda got her portion and no more. Her brother or 
 
 1 i. lation William de Sancto Claro likewise shared, it is to 
 be expected. Hasted, the historian of Kent, is wrong in sup- 
 
 ng that Eamo was a Crevecour; and it is from the fact 
 thai Roberl < Irevecour is part heir to Hamo that he is led to the 
 
 II ' take. In a charter by Robert de Crepito Corde to the 
 canons of Leeds monastery, in the district of Chatham, he 
 
 rib I tamo I >apifer as mens avunculus. What this shows 
 1 thai hi mother was a sister of Hamo and of Robert Fitz-
 
 II A MO DAPIFER. 181 
 
 Ilamo of Gloucester, avunculus meaning uncle by the female 
 side. As has been said before, this does not altogether pre- 
 clude the Crevecours from being themselves Sinclairs ; but it 
 proves that Ilamo was not a Crevecour, unless the Crevecours 
 recently took their name, being originally Sinclairs. One of 
 them is given by Wace as at the battle of Hastings, and 
 Prevost Localises them as from Crevecour-en-Auge, near Lisieux; 
 so that only in Normandy could the lines be traced to any 
 ci minion ancestor, if at all. Philpott the great Kent antiquary 
 is Hasted's authority, and in the third volume of the transac- 
 tions of the Society of Antiquaries, Hamo Viscount is assumed 
 also by a writer there to be Hamo Crevequer 'the lord of 
 Kent' on the same foundation, in connection with a charter 
 discovered freshly, given in the Conqueror's time, where Hamo 
 Vicecomes appears prominently. The fact of the marriage of 
 the sister of the dapifer to Robert Crevecours father is, in 
 the first degree at least, thoroughly contradictory to Hasted's 
 supposition. The history of the Crevecours, however, is illus- 
 trative of at all events this marriage relationship. Dugdale's 
 Baronage, by the names, Hamo being frequent, and by the 
 1 daces it describes as connected with them, throws sufficient 
 light on a connection that needs no further light for proof than 
 the record. It would have been pleasant to have found some- 
 thing definite as to Robert Crepacor's Sinclair mother. That 
 she was high-souled and religious like many ladies of her 
 family might be inferred from her son's liberality to the church. 
 He founded the priory of Leeds in Kent for canons regular of 
 the order of St. Augustine. His brother Adam (a name sug- 
 gestive of a great Kent Sinclair, Adam, the commissioner of 
 Domesday Book), assisted with this foundation. Robert's wife 
 Rose signs a charter for Leeds. He has a brother and a son 
 Elyas. The Giffards so liberal to Gloucester Abbey, the lords 
 of Brimsfield, have the same strange first names among them. 
 Rose was the favourite name among the Giffard earls of 
 Buckingham, Walter Giffard of whom was also a commissioner 
 of Domesday Book. Robert Crepacour was heired by Daniel, 
 a name often among the western Giffards. To draw fixed lines 
 among probabilities, however, is of the nature of making ropes 
 of the salt sea sand. Antiquity will have itself respected by 
 keeping the most eager inquirers sometimes at a distance. 
 There are, however, indications of where and how inquiry
 
 1 82 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 might find facts and satisfaction. Hamo's lineage must, 
 beyond this authenticated marriage of his sister to Robert 
 Crevecour's father, be kept apart now from these Crepacours, 
 who by heiring a Kentish baron, Maminot, a name in Domes- 
 day, became, Dugdale shows, themselves barons of England. 
 The ' barony of Chatham ' was their lordship. They cannot 
 on present evidence be claimed as of Hamo's male lineage. 
 
 There is a state message from Henry First, preserved in the 
 Reg. Roff. of Dr. Thorpe, to Hamo Dapifer and to Hugh of 
 Bocklande, to preserve most carefully the fishing on the 
 Thames for the monks of Rochester. Who is this Hugh that 
 seems lieutenant or colleague to Hamo's sheriffship of Kent? 
 Surnames did not begin, Tindal says, till the reign of William 
 the Conqueror, and grew slowly. Bocklande, or Buckland as 
 now written, meant a property for which Hugh or some pre- 
 decessor had written or book warrant. There is a Bocklande 
 in Kent and one near Farringdon, Berkshire. These Buck- 
 lands are, in the genealogical reckonings, relations of Eudo 
 Dapifer by affinity and perhaps by blood. This, however, may 
 have light reflected back upon it from the history of a Hugo 
 de St. Clare, about whom there is nothing problematic. Madox 
 in his History of tin- Exchequer has one interesting reference 
 which may he given. ' Concessio Willelmi Regis Magni : Willd- 
 mus Dei gratia rex Anglorum Haimoni Dapifero et omnibus 
 suis teignis in Episcopatu Rqfthisi salutem' — 'Concession of 
 King William the Great : William, by the grace of God king 
 of the English, to Hamo Dapifer and all his supporters in the 
 bishopric of Rochester, greeting.' This put with the fact that 
 I l.iino was one of the busy persons in the great trial of Arch- 
 bishop Lanfranc against Odo, bishop of Bayeux and earl of 
 KLent, aboul ( 'anterbury lands, and is there vicecomes, towards 
 tin' very last years of the Conqueror's reign, makes his offices 
 almost impossible to separate and distinguish. It has been 
 before suggested that he was substitute dapifer for his rela- 
 tion Eudo, though Spellman's guess may after all be the correct 
 one, thai he was thai of England alone and Eudo of Normandy 
 alone. But Eudo in Eenry's reign was certainly that of 
 I ngland also, and, it may he, after Hamo's death. The puzzle 
 
 nol made the less because, as probably as not, Hamo was alive 
 after " "'• the date of Eudo's death. One point is certain, 
 111:11 hows the two dapifers to have been the most
 
 HAMO DAPIFER. 183 
 
 delightful and agreeable of men. Their relations towards each 
 other seem to be entirely -without rivalry or jealousy, whatever 
 the explanation. Hamo, without children, and his estates 
 being apparently well divided among his relations, it is hardly 
 necessary to draw out account of them from Domesday Book, 
 where they are fully exhibited, under the large capital head- 
 ings of an in capita holder, and the smaller titles of under- 
 bolder. In appearance and quantity the estates would be 
 much of a parallel with Eudo Dapifer's, who, except that he 
 had a family, seems another self to Hamo Dapifer. They are 
 as like as brothers in success and abilities on the secular side, 
 but Hamo Dapifer's love of the monks does not much appear, 
 and by this he may be the inferior of the lord of Colchester. 
 An able business man Hamo must have been, without more of 
 the religious faculty in development than ' divine manners ' 
 and savoir /aire. His character, even to the division of his 
 wealth, leaves an impression of sagacity and refinement that 
 cannot be resisted, though antiquity has taken considerable 
 care to make it dim. That he was not neglectful of his soul's 
 welfare, as then considered, a confirmation by the Conqueror 
 of the returns of the church of Tarentford given by him is 
 proof. ' William by the grace of God king of the Angles, to 
 the very faithful French-born and Angles greeting : Know 
 that I have conceded that donation which Hamo, my dapifer, 
 made to the church of St. Andrew in the town of Rochester, 
 of the church which is in my manor of Tarentford ; and the 
 sons of Hamo himself, Robert and Hamo, with me present, 
 have granted the same donation of their father. "Witnesses : 
 Robert, count Mellent ; Robert, count of Meritolio ; and many 
 others. ' 
 
 This translation of a charter from the Meg. Roff. would 
 further seem to set at rest the whole difficulty of the dapifers, 
 by making the great earl of Corbeuil who came from Nor- 
 mandy with William the king's dapifer, and his younger son 
 the viscount of Kent. Fitz-Hamo's father seems a more 
 important person for the highest office of the kingdom than 
 his younger brother. If the dapifership were hereditary, 
 surely the ' knight of Rye ' as the elder were the proper 
 holder of it, after Hamo of Normandy was done with it. But 
 there is another charter in the same collection by Henry, king 
 of the Angles, to Archbishop Anselm, to Hamo Dapifer,
 
 1 84 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and to all the barons and others of Kent, which is witnessed 
 by two names only, at Rochester, Eudo Dapifer and Hamo 
 Dapifer. The ingenious are welcome to the pleasant feat of 
 unravelling these seeming contradictions. Again, Henry 
 writes about Little Wrotham to Archbishop Anselm and to 
 Hamo Viscount. It may not be impossible to solve this question 
 of identity or difference from the Monasticon and Reg. Ruff. 
 alone. With the chief drift now it is not a question of mo- 
 ment, mainly because the younger Hamo, whether never dapifer 
 or dapifer as well as his father, but certainly the viscount of 
 Kent, had no children to perpetuate his name, and give him 
 a place among future Englishmen. He is even as viscount or 
 sheriff an able and interesting figure, but the interest in him 
 dies with the division of his property. Sir Henry Ellis is 
 probably too hasty in assuming that the two great Hamoes 
 of Domesday Book are one. He is a good but by no means 
 immaculate authority. Adam Sinclair, the commissioner, 
 would have been willing, even if the recorders were different 
 in the various counties, to keep these relations of his clear 
 personalities. The difficulty may be nice rather than par- 
 ticularly useful, though it is a bold or ignorant thing to 
 protest as to what little or great may be useful in investiga- 
 gations of this nature. 
 
 Hamo Dapifer in Domesday Booh holds in capite in Essex, 
 and as undertenant in Kent, Cheshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, 
 and Devon. The entries under the heading ' Hamo Vicecomes ' 
 are, in capite, Kent and Surrey, and also various lands in 
 the same counties as undertenant. The account by Thomas 
 Cromwell in his History of Colchester of the entry relating to 
 that city may be added, more for his conjecture and for gene- 
 alogical aid than perhaps for any biographical weight. ' Hamo, 
 da] lifer, or steward of the king's household, had one house 
 and a court or hall (from which it may be conjectured that to 
 hi in the government of the town had been confided), one hide 
 ' i land, and fifteen burgesses, holden by his predecessor 
 Thurfern in King Edward's time, all which then paid rent, 
 except the hall : the burgesses still paid so much per head, 
 but nothing for their arable land or the hide they held of 
 1 1 mho. In the hide there was one carucate or plough-land in 
 King Edward's time, but at the time of this survey none. 
 II mi') had also six acres of meadow. All which in the time
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 185 
 
 of King Edward were worth £4, which was also paid after- 
 wards, but when the survey was made only forty shillings.' 
 Money values have no present comparison. The burgesses 
 paid sixpence a head by the year for all taxes, rent, and every- 
 thing; and the exorbitant weight of such taxation caused 
 famines which Euclo Dapifer had to allay with corn from 
 beyond sea. This Thomas Cromwell calls Euclo _ the dapifer 
 for Normandy, but he is not clear as to the relation between 
 llamo and Eudo, both being possessors and rulers in Col- 
 chester at the same time. The hall or court seems to 
 have been under the castle jurisdiction and lordship of the 
 wealthier Eudo, though it is possible that independent civil 
 cases had their decisions under Hamo. It is of considerable 
 importance for understanding something of a subsequent 
 Hamo, to find this one in official as well as some proprie- 
 tary position in Colchester. J. H. Round in the Antiquary 
 of September 1882, discusses Hamo's position, and repudiates 
 Freeman's translation and explanation of the passage in Domes- 
 day Book referring to Colchester. He has in a note the genea- 
 logical fact that Hamo was the son of Hamo Dentatus, and 
 with reference to Eudo Dapifer as also there he adds, 'Strange 
 to find him by his fellow dapifer, the son of the Conqueror's 
 preserver.' Family affairs in the highest circles are often 
 very peculiar ; the friend at one period can be the foe of a 
 subsequent, and vice versa, let it be remembered. 
 
 CHAPTER XXYI. 
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 
 
 Robert and Hamo were the sons of Hamo, earl of Corboil, 
 Normandy, by the testimony of Brady the faithful historian, 
 Glover the expert herald, and all the authorities. William 
 of Corboil was created archbishop of Canterbury in 11 23. 
 Madox says there were difficulties about his creation. He is 
 said to have been the first churchman as apart from statesman 
 appointed to the office. That he was of the Hamo family,
 
 1 86 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and consequently had the royal influence on his side, may be 
 explanatory of the trouble, if it was tbat he was too young or 
 private a man for the dignity. He figures fully in the clerical 
 records of the prelacy. Enough if what notice he has in 
 some secular histories be discussed now. Rapin rightly calls 
 him Corbet, and this is the same word which was also spelt 
 Corbie. It was an earldom of Picardy, situated further 
 north than Normandy, and under the king of France, if really 
 at all subject. This externality probably gained William his 
 archbishopric, with other aids which may be noticed. Rapin 
 does not go quite wrong, hi his sound and able History of 
 England, when describing the successor of Ralph, the previous 
 archbishop: 'Corbet, abbot of St. Bennet's, was elected by a 
 synod held at Winchester for that purpose.' On this Tindal 
 makes notes, giving his authorities, i°, 'All the historians call 
 him William de Cm-boil or Curbuil. See Sax. Ann. Huntingd. 
 ]>. 382. S. Dunelm. p. 247. And then he was prior of 
 Chich or St. Osith in Essex, not of St. Bennet's. Hoveden, 
 p. 477. R. de Diceto, p. 504. Brompt., p. 10 14.' With 
 regard to the place, 2 , 'At Gloucester. See Sax. Ann.' 
 Homer nods, and Rapin undoubtedly is slightly napping 
 here; for at Gloucester the election certainly took place, as 
 .Madox and the moderns, as well as the chroniclers on which 
 they lightly found, state. The connection with St. Osith in 
 Essex, is also of importance for a subsequent inquiry. But 
 English Tindal is wrong when he corrects the Frenchman as 
 to the French local name. ' Corbet ' it was, and an important 
 town then, near Amiens. The chroniclers are right also, in 
 the use of the word Corbeuil, Corbeile, or Corboil, because it 
 is only the usual adding of ' ville ' to the name. Corbet ville, 
 Corbie 'villa,,' or Corbet 'town,' as easily became Corboil as 
 Magna Villa became Mandeville, and Longue Ville Langvale. 
 I la pin's foot was on his native soil in the matter, and he has 
 the best of the argument with his interesting and valuable 
 commentator. There were many Corbets in England's history 
 who might have reminded Tindal. Lord Peter Corbett in 
 6 figured in Edward's claims for Scottish homage. Kay, 
 cot Tindal himself note that Reginald, earl of Cornwall, 
 was the son of Henry Beauclerc, the king, by Sibil, the 
 daughter of Sir Robert Corbet of Alcester, in Warwickshire ? 
 She was his own kin, as they both well knew. Burke says of
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 1S7 
 
 the present baronets of the name that the ' family was founded 
 in England by Corbeau, a noble Norman who accompanied the 
 Conqueror;' and, in Domesday Book, Roger holds twenty-four 
 lordships, in Shropshire alone, while his brother Robert has 
 fourteen in that county, and was the lord of Alcester. One 
 of Lord Olive the conqueror of India's ancestors, Richard 
 Give of Huxley and of Styche, married Margaret, daughter of 
 Sir Richard Corbet of Moreton Corbet and Elizabeth Deve- 
 reux of the lord Ferrers family. 
 
 William Sinclair held the archbishopric till his death in 
 1 136. In church matters he is found in 11 27 summoning 
 a council on the burning question then of celibacy, after the 
 faux pas of the notorious Cardinal de Crena, sent by Pope 
 Honorius II. to England in 11 25 to advocate the cause. 
 William's cure was to put the marrying priests into the king's 
 hand to be dealt with. The plan was good till the king learnt 
 the comfortable addition to his income from dispensations. 
 Rapin says this caused many of the inferior clergy here to be 
 the last in Europe to submit to the pope's decree. One of the 
 great clerical and state troubles of this period, was the power 
 the pope took of sending legates with authority above all the 
 bishops and archbishops of the country. William was the 
 tirst English archbishop who held at the same time the pope's 
 legateship; and probably this great step gained from the 
 popish thraldom, was somewhat owing to the scandal which 
 the previous legate, the Italian cardinal, created. The synod 
 met at Westminster where William of Corboil, archbishop and 
 pope's legate, presided. Some of the resolutions carried are 
 suggestive of the period. The third was against money being 
 the way to become monks and nuns. It would seem that there 
 was competition for the idle luxurious religious life. One for- 
 bade plurality of archdeaconries, and one that monks should 
 become farmers. The payment of tithes was made sacred by 
 their being considered 'the demesnes of the Most High.' 
 
 But it is on the political side that William Sinclair has 
 most general interest. Henry the First had given great 
 favour to his nephews, Stephen, afterwards king, and Henry 
 whom he made abbot of Glastonbury Abbey. They were the 
 third and fourth sons of Adela, Henry Beauclerc's sister, 
 and of the earl of Blois. The eldest was imbecile, and the 
 second took his father's position. Stephen and Henry put
 
 iSS THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 heads together to get the rule of England, after Prince Wil- 
 liam was drowned and Matilda was made heir to the crown. 
 Henry had been made bishop of Winchester, and just before 
 Henry the king's death in 1135, had gained William Sinclair, 
 archbishop of Canterbury, and the wealthy Roger, bishop of 
 Salisbury, to favour his brother Stephen's aspirations to the 
 crown, in preference to Matilda. Rapin's sentences give the 
 clue to the state of matters which made Stephen king of Eng- 
 land so unexpectedly. The three prelates secured the whole 
 church ; and the lay lords, for all their oaths in favour of Ma- 
 tilda to Henry, were powerless. 'The archbishop of Canter- 
 bury affirmed that the oath taken to Matilda was null and 
 \.>i<i, as being directly contrary to the customs of the English, 
 who had never suffered a woman to reign over them. The 
 bishop of Salisbury maintained that the oath was not bind- 
 ing, because Matilda was married out of the realm, without 
 the consent of the barons, whose intention was when they 
 swore, not to give themselves a king but of the race of Wil- 
 liam the Conqueror. In fine, to remove all scruples Hugh 
 Bigod, the late king's steward, swore on the holy evangelists 
 that Henry before he died disinherited Matilda and nomi- 
 nated his nephew Stephen for his successor.' Twenty-two 
 • lays after the king's death Stephen was crowned at West- 
 minster by William Sinclair, the archbishop. It is said that 
 his conscience made him let fall the host at the ceremony, but 
 age and weakness are better explanation. He did not live 
 long to support the king of his making ; and so much the 
 worse, it is likely, for the king. William's French birth and 
 training made Salique law to him matter of conscience, and he 
 would have used every effort to maintain the position he had 
 taken. Stephen made the immense mistake, on the death of 
 the archbishop in 1136, the year after his accession, when 
 everything was quiet, of seizing not only the revenues of the 
 ee of ( Santerbury, but, as the archbishop died without a will 
 being made, all his effects as the prerogative of the crown. 
 This was against his own express charter of liberties, and the 
 church never forgave him. The mischief of this reign began, 
 and nothing but exhaustion, and Stephen's own giving up of 
 the struggle of fifteen years and more, could end the misery. 
 1 1 is a possible theory that this is the Willlamus de Sanrto 
 •0 who endows the abbey of Savigny, and gives the lands
 
 THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 189 
 
 of Vilers to it with Matilda, countess of Gloucester; and even 
 so, there would be no contradiction of their common lineage, 
 both being descendants of the earls of Corbeuil. He certainly, 
 as far as time is concerned, could be the William de St. Clare 
 who signs the charter of the earldom of Essex by Stephen to 
 Geffrey de Mandeville, the son of Eudo Sinclair's daughter 
 Margaret. But in all charters of the period the clergy were 
 most particular to put their titles with their names. There is 
 nothing of this in the charter. Malet's date of the foundation 
 of the abbey of Savigny, 1139, would have to be changed 
 before this William could be its founder and endcwer. What 
 is most in favour of him being the man is that if he were not 
 Matilda's brother he could as an archbishop appear without 
 indecorum in a conjoint charter of lands gifted. As being a 
 relative also, and having lands in juxtaposition to hers in 
 Normandy, it could quite well be that he was so yoked in a 
 good work. It is right to say thus much, but the vast pre- 
 ponderance of likelihood is the other way. The seal with the 
 warlike crusader is not clerical at all, though it must not be 
 forgotten that civil earldoms and hierarchical office were then 
 quite compatible in one person. On the whole, however, Ma- 
 tilda, countess of Gloucester, had another companion than 
 this able and honoured high priest of her lineage, and for him 
 and his a Hairs further search must be made. 
 
 William of Malmesbury in his work, Tlie Pontiffs of Eng- 
 land, tells of the peculiarly clerical antecedents of this the 
 first wholly-trained monk of the see. His quarrel for supre- 
 macy with the stubborn Thurston, archbishop of York, was 
 founded mainly on the want of the invariable political influ- 
 ence ; and the monks had great terror lest he should sweep 
 their houses clean, to their personal disadvantage, but the prior 
 of ' Cic ' was wisely equal to his promotion. The chronicler 
 gives his character pithily, l Erat enim multae religioni*, affa- 
 bilitatis nonnullae, ceterum nor, iners nee imprudens' — 'He was 
 indeed very religious, somewhat affable, but neither tory nor 
 radical. 1 The family passion for architecture had in him a 
 good representative. The Magna Britannia says that the 
 cathedral church of Canterbury was rebuilt by him, and that 
 there was a great public consecration of the building in the 
 presence of the king, the queen, David, king of Scots, and the 
 nobles. His work is to be seen to this day at the cathedral
 
 i go THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 which is the centre of England's religious hierarchy ; and it 
 might almost be a question whether he was moiv fortunate in 
 being the primate than in being builder of the revered 
 historic temple. One other excursion beyond this 'island in 
 the sea,' this England, with its 'happy race of men/ and 
 return is made to it for good. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 
 
 Solvitur eundo. The legendary theory of the lineage already 
 risked must be given up, however reluctantly, for the plainer 
 but more satisfactory findings of science. So many names 
 have falsely sought for alliance with the descendants of Duke 
 Hollo, preferring to be sprung from it, through bastards rather 
 than not at all, that it would have been a pleasure and sur- 
 prise, if the Sinclair name could have been traced to the saint 
 of Rochester, Kent, who went to the cell at the river Epte, in 
 France, and there got, after years of the cup of water and the 
 wooden bowl of holy life and penance, for his honest accusa- 
 tion of an evil woman of rank, the martyrdom which has made 
 him immortal. He is not, nor is any relation of his, the an- 
 cestor of the family. He got or took the name St. Cler, and 
 gave it to the place of his dwelling, or others gave it, as 
 populaces do. It was the fixed name of the locality where 
 Hollo came, after the archbishop of Rouen had been sent to 
 him by the French king, with the offer, if he should become 
 Christian, to give him, as Mathew of Westminster has it, 
 ' Terram maritimam ah Epte flumine usque ad Britanniae limites 
 cum Giliafilia sua' — 'The sea-board territories from the river 
 Epte as far as the boundaries of Brittany, with his daughter 
 Cilia.' The archbishop undertook the embassy to the 'pagano 
 duci ' — ' heathen duke,' and was received pleasantly. Then this 
 comes, ' Die statuto ad Sanctum Clevum conveniunt rex scilicet 
 Francorum cum duce Roberto trans Eptem fluvium' — 'On 
 the appointed day at St. Cler the kins* of the French and
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. i 9 r 
 
 Robert, the duke, assemble beyond the Epte river.' Rollo 
 and his people kept the maritime side till the meeting that is 
 so famous occuiTed, which made him, 912, duke of Neustria or 
 Normandy. Neither do the old French eaids of Senlis who 
 were friendly to the foreign-blooded Rollo and his descendants, 
 turn out to be the Sinclair lineage, and of the same strain as the 
 Simons of Senlis, the English earls, proved to have been of this 
 blood. Every step that has been gone, the scientific findings, 
 or rather the absolute and recognised records, of Glover, the 
 Somerset herald of that sixteenth century so faithful to this 
 department of human knowledge and interest, become from 
 other histories and records more and more impossible to 
 escape. Brady and many such weighty authorities agree with 
 the herald about these earls of Corbeil. The prejudice was all 
 along against his account of the Hamo family, but it is fairly 
 and fully overcome. One can sympathise with the strange 
 ejaculation, in 1704, of the learned Bishop Tanner, 'Oh ! the 
 worthy Robert Glover.' Saint Clare's ashes may have been 
 carried about from the Norsemen, even previous to Rollo, as 
 it pleased superstition to do : they were not ' the ashes of the 
 fathers ' of this English family. The author of the Notitia 
 Monastica and of the Bibliotheca Britannica-Hibernica gives 
 more than such deserved but peculiar exclamatory assurance. 
 In the latter work, published in 174S, he has a notice of the 
 saint which would seem to settle the subject, and the more that 
 he gives for authority Dempster, III., 251. ' S. Clarus, sir/> 
 Guillermus, patria Scotus, in Gallia eremiticam egit vitam, et ibi 
 tandem martyrio coronatur. Scripsit Divini Officii Formulas, 
 lib. i. Claruit anno circiter DC. Colitur 1 7 Julii. Memoria 
 ejus consercatur in villa Neustria ejus nominis, in publico ad 
 Rotomagiun itinere.' So plain a statement cannot be too clear. 
 ' Saint Clair or Guillermus, Scottish by country, passed the 
 life of a hermit in France, and there at last is crowned with 
 martvrdom. He wrote The Ritual of Divine Duty, one volume. 
 He flourished about 600. He is worshipped on the 17th of 
 July. His memory is preserved in the town of Normandy of 
 that name, on the public road at Rouen.' But the legendary 
 wandering of an early chapter cannot be without its use and 
 its pleasure, mixed as it is with undoubted facts which may 
 lead to firmer fields. With this acknowledgment, it can fairly 
 hold its place, as at least an imaginative attempt so show an
 
 1 9 2 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 origin ; and half of the greatest classics cannot plead more for 
 themselves and their continued existence than this. On the 
 firm solid ground of historic record the steps must now be 
 taken, and if the conclusions may be strange, the facts, and 
 not fancies, are to blame. 
 
 The Sinclairs are of the same male blood as William the Con- 
 queror, and their line over and above is free from his bastardy ; 
 though in the annals of royalty and nobility the bar sinister 
 is almost as much the rule as the exception. Indeed, the 
 Norse cult, like the German, put not at all the value on legiti- 
 macy which Christianity, under papal direction, found right. 
 If there is greater worth in being legally pure and wholly 
 submissive in this respect to the Christian cult, the Sinclair 
 lineage has it. Their connection with the Conqueror is earlier 
 than himself, as will appear now. The quarrel which separated 
 the sons of Rogenwald, surnamed ' The Rich,' the favourite of 
 Harold Fairhair, king of Scandinavia, is well-known Danish 
 early history. Rollo ' the Ganger,' a younger son, went to the 
 Orkneys in first search after a kingdom, when he had to leave 
 his country, which was Norway. Burke's Peerage gives under 
 ' Lord Sinclair ' detailed account of these early ancestors of 
 the best of the nation. In essential points his historic refer- 
 ences are right. The father of Rollo he calls Rogenwald, earl 
 of Maere and Raumdahl, in Norway ; and he describes him as 
 getting in 888 a grant of the Orkneys, which meant also as 
 many of the Hebrides as his valour could add to them, from 
 King Harold Harfagr, the student erst at Rome who had to 
 kill a lion set on him as punishment for one of his youthful 
 relapses into barbarism. Rogenwald's son Eynar, Burke 
 makes rightly the permanent prince of the Orkneys, Rollo's 
 hopes stretching to the south very soon. For five centuries 
 his brother's descendants ruled there, while his were conquer- 
 ing Neustrias, Apulias, Sicilies, and Englands. That he spent 
 good part of his youth among those dreamy heroic islands, 
 where in winter it is all tragic bare sea-storm, and in summer 
 always afternoon, is assumed by his better biographers. Tor- 
 faeus in lu's Oroides, seu rerum Orcadiensium Historiae. gives 
 worlds of the earlier genealogy and deeds of this greatest 
 family of the north. Why Rollo was not made permanent 
 ■ of < Mi. my was that his father thought he was too brave, 
 that the principality needed civil administration most,
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 193 
 
 which he knew his second son was not yet ready for. Some 
 historians vary from this account a little. 
 
 It is said that Rollo himself was prince of those northern 
 islands of Britain as well as of the parts of Britain next to 
 them, and strangely do extremes meet in history as elsewhere 
 if this could be thoroughly established. To the expeditions and 
 conquests there by Prince Rollo with his dragon vessels of the 
 ninth centmy, there is almost exact parallel in those by Prince 
 Henry Sinclair, his own genuine full-blooded descendant of the 
 fourteenth century. Says Pinkerton, the Scottish historian, 
 'In 1380 happened the strange voyage of Nicolo Zeno to 
 Shetland.' Published as the curious tale was, at Venice in 
 1558, with quaint rough maps of those northern seas and 
 islands, no little book has so much puzzled the learned. The 
 ' Frisland ' of it is the Ferroe islands, and the Prince Zichmni 
 who is so splendid a hero is Prince Sinclair, well known to 
 Scottish history as Henry, lord of Roslin, Nithsdale (the 
 capital of which district was Sanquhar, after the name so 
 capable of peculiar but quite realisable metamorphoses), Caith- 
 ness, and Stratherne. The London Hakluyt Society, named 
 after a clerical compiler of all voyages, have their eager eyes 
 on the little work, The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers, Nicolas 
 aii'/ Antonio Zeno, Navigators ; and they have had influential 
 correspondence and literature between themselves and the 
 Americans, on the necessity of deposing the heroic Columbus 
 of 1492 as the first discoverer of America, in favour of Prince 
 Zichmni of 1380. They are enthusiastic as to the genuineness 
 of the record by the two Zenoes of Venice. These were rich 
 men who equipped two strong ships to navigate for discovery ; 
 the descendants, as the book shows, of one of the doges of the 
 mistress of the seas. They were wrecked on Frieslanda, and 
 saved out of the fierce hands of the islanders, getting infinite 
 kindness from Sinclair, who spoke to them in Latin. Being 
 first-class navigators, he got them to command a fleet of thir- 
 teen ships of war, besides many supporting vessels, on his expe- 
 dition to conquer those Ferroe islands, and, it would seem, 
 Iceland. They stayed with him thus many years, and in their 
 account never tire of extolling the generosity, the patience, the 
 courage, the ability of 'the great prince,' who loved them so 
 much that he could not let them ever get a glimpse of their 
 dear Italy again. The strangest portion of the narrative to 
 
 N
 
 i 9 4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 moderns is the brave voyages of the heroic JEneadic Zichmni. 
 He went along the east coast of America, called ' Kerry ' there 
 from an Irish colony; the inhabitants rushing along the 
 coast, naked and bearing spears, exactly like South-sea islanders, 
 but fiercer, opposing his landing with everything in their 
 power, barbaric howling included. He doc-, land and fight 
 them at intervals as his voyaging requires. But the most 
 delightful passages to the literary colonels and admirals of the 
 Hakluyt and American Societies, are those in which the ad- 
 ventures in Greenland and Vinland are related The men 
 were cannibals, the Zenoes say. Their houses were built round, 
 with a hole at the top. They were naked, and suffered cruelly 
 from the cold, but, the narrative adds, they had not enough 
 of brain to cover themselves even with the skins of animals. 
 Several 'cities' or gatherings of people were visited, and 
 Zichmni wished his people to stay with him to found colonies 
 there to add to the Orkneyan and Norwegian princedom. But 
 there was as pitiful complaining of the unheroic, except under 
 such leadership, common men, as was with the Spaniards of 
 Columbus, that they never should see their mothers, sisters, 
 children, or friends any more if they did not get back speedily. 
 There were attempts to build cities, and if the climate and 
 district of America had been more favourable, Prince Zichmni, 
 for all his kindness of heart, would have given full rein to 
 his ambition and intelligence. The narrative is made up of 
 storms, fightings, deaths, sorrows, and braveries that have 
 their counterparts only in such poetry as that of Homer and 
 Virgil. Perhaps the Sagas may be added, as that was the 
 very scene of their strange romance, founded on the genuine 
 action of the brave northern ancestors of Englishmen. In the 
 discussions about the little book (which is preserved at the 
 British Museum, and in Hakluyt's compilation), these Sin- 
 clairs who figured thus in Scotland and Scandinavia, are said to 
 have got the principality of the Orkneys and Shetlands before 
 this, by fighting a cousin, their rival, till he got the worst of 
 it in death. There is knowledge of Spere building a fort at 
 Bressay before Lerwick had existence. The usual account is 
 that they got the principality by marriage to the lady of his 
 surname whose wonderful lineage and claims Burke stands in 
 such admiration at, Odin being the first of the pedigree. 
 Prince Henry Sinclair was in blood as other respects probably
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 195 
 
 as good a match as then lived, the descendant of the Rollo 
 prince of the Orkneys, afterwards the better celebrated duke 
 of Normandy of every one's knowledge. The Prince Zichmni 
 is one of the world's men. It would be too narrow even to 
 call him an American Sinclair, if the Venetian tale of him and 
 his doings is to be substantiated by literary navigators and 
 lovers of discovery. The truth of the story of the Italian Zenoes 
 is strongly supported by the findings of the Royal Society of 
 Antiquaries of the North, Copenhagen. In their printed 
 memoirs of the years 1836-1839, Professor Rafn has an able 
 paper on the discoveries of America before Columbus, begin- 
 ning as early as the tenth century. He found and edited 1 8 
 ancient parchment codices, which form quite a literature on 
 the subject. Biarne Heriulfson in 9S6 reached Greenland, 
 Leif Ericson in 994 got south as far as Vinland (New Eng- 
 land of the United States), Thorwald Ericson in 1004 came 
 to Kialarnes or Cape Cod, Thorfinn followed further, and 
 Florida is thought to have been reached. Bishop Eric of 
 Greenland went south to Vineland in 1 1 2 1 . There seems to 
 have been an Irish colony even then somewhere on the eastern 
 American coast, but it would be difficult to conjecture what 
 became of them. Whether they amalgamated with the Esqui- 
 maux, to become the heroic Red Indian, is a question. But 
 ' the last document upon America which exists in the ancient 
 manuscripts, has reference to a voyage from Greenland into 
 Markland (Nova Scotia), undertaken in 1347 by 17 men on 
 the same ship.' It was in 1380 Prince Henry Sinclair made 
 his far more important voyage, evidently with valuable politi- 
 cal purpose ; and if any man is to have fame out of the ante- 
 Columbian discoveries, he may well be remembered as the first 
 for purpose and enterprise. The colonisation of North America 
 was, in the end, a history of miseries and sacrifices and whole- 
 sale withdrawals from the country, which fact prosperity now 
 all but entirely hides ; and Henry broke ground gallantly on 
 the forlorn hope it was, despite its fine climate and the berries 
 which gained the name Vineland for its best part. Burke's 
 Peerage under ' Caithness ' gives relevant account of this Roslin 
 Sinclair; and under 'Sinclair,' baronet of Ulbster, the first 
 paragraph is a condensed history of some of the Roslin family, 
 ' the most powerful and illustrious,' he says, ' of the Scottish 
 magnates during the reigns of Robert II., Robert III., and the
 
 i 9 6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 three first Jameses.' Henry's principality he calls the 'princely 
 fief of Orkney, held by homage to the Norwegian king. It 
 was given him, says Torfaeus, the great Latin historian of the 
 Orkneys (which included the Zetlands), of the Faroe isles, and 
 of Greenland and Vinland, the year before the Zenoes met 
 him. In the chief work of Torfaeus, Orcadi 8, 8t u Rt rum Orca- 
 diensium Historia, published Eaunice 1697, there are copious 
 high-historical Latin pages of the treaties made bet wen him 
 and the king of Norway. The tale of the Italians referring 
 to war and conquest in 1380, the conditions of homage being 
 settled in 1379, would give the inference that Henry thought 
 these too severe, and thus got his principality made freer and 
 wider. As it reads in Torfaeus, did we not know how particu- 
 lar feudalism was about details afterwards little attended to, 
 the homage was extremely regulated. The scribes of the time 
 dearly loved composition on such occasions, and there is no 
 ground for believing that the prince of the northern isles was 
 the least more bound to the king of Norway than any duke 
 of Normandy was to the French king. The Chronica Begum 
 Manniae et Insularum (especially that published at Perth in 
 1784 with the additions of the Norwegian account of Olave 
 the Black, the king of Man, and of Haco's expedition to Scot- 
 land to resist the invasion of his islands by Alexander III. of 
 Scotland) throws the most valuable light on the preponderat- 
 ing importance of the Norwegian kingdom, in the thirteenth 
 century particularly, over all the north. Torfaeus tells of a 
 John Sinclair, lord of Hialtland, and of a Thomas ' Sender, ' 
 who both had full ruling powers in those periods over Orkney 
 and Zetland. But all this belongs more to Norse than English 
 history, though the principality has got divided between the 
 countries as matter of fact, and England has her part yet only 
 as a redeemable pledge. A skilful claimant of the right strain 
 might recover the princedom and its crown. Scotland itself 
 was in exactly similar homage to the English king with that 
 which the Orkneys, Faroes, and the rest gave to the Scandi- 
 navian monarch. It was this equality which bred jealousy at 
 Edinburgh against the lords of Boslin, says Burke; and there 
 are only too clear evidences of its base results. There are 
 materials to clear up this chapter of history, and Prince Henry 
 Sinclair and his sailors may yet stand out strongly as some of 
 the world's soundest heroes.
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 197 
 
 It would, however, be delaying the right progress to say 
 more of him, and Prince Rollo, his ancestor, must now be 
 followed to some extent. It was from this northern princi- 
 pality he fitted his ships and made his voyages of conquest, to 
 England, and ultimately to Normandy, his final home. He 
 died there, 917, leaving behind him his son, William Long- 
 sword, who succeeded him as duke of Normandy ; a daughter, 
 Gerlotte, who married William, earl of Poitiers ; and a son, 
 Robert, earl of Corbueil. This Robert had no issue. Duke 
 William Longsword, who died 94S, left Richard, duke of 
 Normandy, who died 960. It is his family to whom it must 
 be looked for the immediate ancestor of all the Sinclairs. 
 His eldest son Richard was duke till his death in 1026, and 
 Robert, earl of Eureux, was the second son, of whom came 
 Raoul, the constable, who fought so gallantly against the 
 king of France for the young son of Arlotta. Malger, earl of 
 Corbueil, was the third son, and the direct founder of the 
 house of Sinclair, the only traceable stock perhaps extant of the 
 legitimate lineage of Rollo. They had two sisters, Hedwiga, 
 married to Geffrey, earl of Brittany, and Emma, queen of 
 England by Ethelred the Second, and of England and northern 
 Europe by Canute the Great, her second husband. As far as 
 the Rollo male kinsmanship is concerned, this is enough. It 
 may be useful for general purpose to follow the lineage, how- 
 ever, down to the Conqueror. Duke Richard, Malger Sin- 
 clair's brother, had two of his sons dukes after him, Richard 
 who died without issue in 1027, and Robert, the devil and 
 saint, the father of William the Conqueror by Arlotta the 
 tanner's daughter at Falaise, the great illegitimate who has 
 made dishonour into honour. The Conqueror had an uncle 
 Malger, Duke Robert's brother, the archbishop of Rouen, who 
 with William of Arques fought so bitterly against Arlotta's son, 
 William, as not proper heir of the line. He had two aunts, 
 Alix, countess of Burgundy, and Eleanor, married to Baldwin, 
 earl of Flanders, whose daughter Matilda he married, to make 
 her queen of Normandy and England. It was his grand- 
 uncle, Mauger, earl of Corbeuil, that was the first of the Sin- 
 clairs, when the royal direct line is left. According to 
 modern, and even Norman ideas, they have better claim in 
 France or England, apart from conquest, than William had ; 
 and when his male dynasty ended in Prince William, son of
 
 i 9 8 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Henry the First, it was the descendants of the earl of 
 Gorbeuil, the Haruoes, the Eyes, and the sons of Wal 
 derne, who had the rights of the house of Rollo. Had it 
 been a property entailed, and not a matter of intrigue for 
 female relationships, the throne of England (and with the 
 family vigour quite of another character than that of the 
 miserable Fulc, robber, murdering, inefficient Flantagenets, 
 the cruel, displaying, really effeminate, Celtic Tudors, and 
 the degenerate Stewards, probably that of France also) 
 would now be held by one of the genuine and entirely legiti- 
 mate lineage. Were the monarchy really hereditary, and not 
 the prize of mere adventurers, the heir of William the Con- 
 queror, as of Rollo, would have been the present earl of Caith- 
 ness, or one of his near kinsmen. There lie also the clearest 
 claims to be inheritors of the fame of the Hamo and Eudo 
 Ryes, he being of one blood with them. It was this that 
 Principal Miller of Madras meant long ago when he wrote 
 that the queen of England's blood from which she holds 
 her kingdom, has its best living representatives in her farthest 
 mainland county. 
 
 The Ryes and the Hamoes, from the accident of saving 
 William's life, became his staunch and highly-favoured sup- 
 porters. Signs, however, are not wanting that they once were 
 among the grumblers against the illegitimacy of their ruler. 
 The earls of St. Clere, as of the archbishop's district, never 
 seem to have acknowledged fully or heartily his right ; 
 and this is the explanation of the departure of William Sin- 
 clair, cupbearer of Queen Margaret Atheling of Scotland, from 
 England, in 1072 as Scot states in his history, with various 
 others of ' the emigrants,' as they were called. Tindal sup- 
 ports i this as the date, and six years after the Conquest 
 questions had got their fiercest fullest discussion. The com- 
 paratively small estates secured by his brothers Richard and 
 Brito in England are accounted for by the well-known his- 
 torical fact that the Conqueror systematically slighted his 
 father's family, and feared their claims also. They undoubtedly 
 had made it the hardest possible of struggles for him to get 
 and keep his dukedom. He gave all the honours and property 
 he could to the relations of his despised mother. Odo, bishop 
 of Bayeux and earl of Kent, with Robert, earl of Moreton, the 
 two greatest sharers in England's division, are examples, being
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 199 
 
 his brothers by his mother. The Eyes, Hubert the ambassador 
 and his sons Ealph, Hubert, Eudo, and Adam, with their 
 sister, wife of Peter de Yalence, had done so much for him, 
 and had been so loyal, that he could not escape acknowledging 
 their public deeds; but even of them he was jealous. The 
 Hamoes, the Eyes of the English place, in the second instance, 
 had uphill work, with all their gallantry and devotion in his 
 cause. Without study of such family claims and circum- 
 stances of legitimacy and its opposite it is not possible to 
 understand that period. If Eichard Sinclair, the son of 
 Walter or Walderne, earl of St. Clare, did greatly distinguish 
 himself in the battle of Hastings, probably it was the more 
 reason why his politic relation should neglect him as much as 
 he could safely do. The third son, William, certainly preferred 
 the Athelings as the true successors of the English crown to his 
 own blood relation. It might have been different if the tanner 
 lineage had not mixed with that of the Norse Eollo. Walter, 
 earl of St. Clare, was married to the Conqueror's aunt by the 
 father's side ; so that the young sons were his first cousins, 
 and too dangerously near, by male lineage also, to be over- 
 much benefited. The favoured Clares of Tunbridge, earls of 
 Clare, Hertford, and Gloucester were of the same Eollo 
 lineage, but they had the bar sinister like himself over then- 
 shield, and it was both safe and sympathetic to give them 
 high place and, what was perhaps more testimony of the 
 monarch's real feelings, wide lands. The Clares and the St. 
 Clares are united in another way than the legendary, and 
 the honour of the connection by blood as also by many mar- 
 riages, is probably with the first, at least on principles of the 
 Christian cult. 
 
 TheCottonian MS., which is a transcript in 1600 by Smith, 
 the Eouge-dragon, of the then dead Glover's MS., Somerset 
 herald, has the clearest possible account of the descent of the 
 Hamo St. Clairs from Malger, earl of Corbeuil. Duke Eichard 
 was married to Gunnora, a princess of Norway, and Malger 
 was their third-born son. He is described as not only the 
 earl of Corbeuil but as the first archbishop of Eouen, to 
 distinguish him from his nephew, the second Malger, also 
 archbishop of Eouen, the uncle and bitter enemy of the 
 Conqueror when the young duke of Normandy. The elder 
 Malger's son was Hamo called Dentatus, and no more powerful
 
 200 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 baron was there than he in Normandy. Hamo's son was earl 
 of Corbeuil and also lord of Torigion. He was the great Hamo 
 who came to England to aid William the Conqueror. His 
 sons were Robert Fitz-Hamo, the ' knight of Rye,' and Hamo, 
 viscount of Kent, and, as Glover says, also the dapifer. The 
 roll 3 1 Henry I. shows that they had a sister, the mother of 
 Robert Crevecour. This finishes to full satisfaction the lineage 
 of the Hamoes, but the question next arises, what were the 
 actual degrees between them, the Rye Sinclairs (as they 
 themselves also were), and the earl of St. Clare's branch of 
 the family ? It could not be expected that full mastery were 
 possible in such inquiry, even with the pedigrees of reign- 
 ing royalties of much later periods, but sufficient may be 
 gathered to make strong assurance of the unity of the Rye 
 Sinclairs and Walderne's people in very near degrees. More 
 is not wanted for use or ornament. 
 
 But before taking this up there is another additional 
 security of the unity of Sinclairs with Rollo's family. No 
 arrival of any of the great lords from the continent in England 
 has been more mysterious, by his seemingly unsupported suc- 
 cess, than that of Simon of Senlis. A brave lame soldier, the 
 historians cannot understand how it was that the Conqueror 
 gave him the best he had to give in England as late as about 
 1076; and he was not, by anything which has been found, 
 even one of the companions at Hastings, to aid his fortune. 
 Waltheof's standing titles and lands were the most important 
 in England, next to the king's own; and it is matter of 
 notoriety how William tried to compel his niece Judith, 
 Waltheof's widow, to marry the unprepossessing, at all events 
 in body through his wounds, warrior, and nothing else, had 
 we no insight beyond the usual accounts of him. He was a 
 son of Warner, surnamed ' The Rich,' and held under the king 
 of France as well as in Normandy. The Rollo family had the 
 annexation fever in them, and Senlis as well as Corbeil in 
 Picardy were earldoms independent of the dukes of Nor- 
 mandy, though both branches of Rollo's descendants had lands 
 there also, as will be shown. ' The Rich ' is the oldest substi- 
 tute for a surname, the Scandinavian method of distinction, 
 of the male blood of William the Conqueror. Rollo's father 
 was Rogenwald ' The Rich.' When, as Tindal has it, surnames 
 really began in the eleventh century, this gave place to the
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 201 
 
 more fashionable local surnaming from properties, but Le Riche 
 survived well, and it is the key and clue to Simon St. Clair 
 of Senlis as the successful relation of William the First, and 
 the happy husband of Matilda, Judith's daughter. The 
 various land possessions, externally to the duchy, of Hollo's 
 descendants, in French dominions, are a virgin subject, 
 which will yet become fruitful in the hands of the able and 
 subtle historian. It is manifest where this set of facts points. 
 Since the Simon earls of Huntingdon, Northampton , and Lincoln , 
 have been proved Sinclairs, and since they are the Riches, of an 
 earlier method of Danish as opposed to the later French sys- 
 tem of surnaming, and since the Rollo family, down to Prince 
 William who was drowned in 1120 from the White Ship, 
 were also Riches, the unity of the lineages becomes a cer- 
 tainty. With all those whom history and record note as 
 Sinclairs there can be no further question as to what their 
 blood is. The steps of relationship, however, are as intricate, 
 and often impossible to trace, as they are interesting and sug- 
 gestive as to what might have been or yet may be. The Senlis 
 Sinclairs were from a distant branch of the Rollo stock, and 
 therefore quite safe to encourage, in comparison with the 
 nearer Walderne, earl of St. Cler, and his sons. Family 
 affection when safe was strong in the Conqueror. Hence the 
 fortune in England of Simon, and also of a brother, Warner le 
 Rich, was princely as compared with that of the relations 
 nearer to the sovereign. 
 
 Being of the sons of the archbishop of Rouen, first of the 
 ducal family who held this clerical office there, Walderne at 
 the Conquest was in possession of the neighbouring earldom 
 of which .the famous town of St. Cler was the centre; but Sir 
 Andrew Malet says that his habitual residence was the castle 
 of St. Lo at that period, the site of which he asserts is still 
 observable. Sir Francis Palgrave gives Charlemagne as the 
 original builder of it; and of so imposing and numerously- 
 served a character was it, that he adds it created the large 
 town around it. Rollo himself besieged and took it by cutting 
 off the water in his earlier wars. Walderne and the Rye 
 Sinclairs were therefore, in their locality and training, central 
 Normans, Caen being the star of their religious and, as Duke 
 William was near at Falaise, political worship. Rouen 
 at that time was hardly the metropolis it had been under
 
 202 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 previous dukes. The duchy could not breathe at its fullest, 
 so to speak, except near the heart of the territory, and thus 
 is explained the personal, but not proprietary, absence of the 
 Sinclairs of St. Cler, from the district which was destined to 
 give the whole race its name. The first earl of St. Cler 
 seems to have been a brother or son of Hamo Dentatus, the 
 son of Malger, earl of Corbeil and archbishop of Ilouen. The 
 position of Dentatus's son, Hamo, as earl of Corbeuil, but 
 also and especially as the lord of Torignian, is explanatory of 
 the strong connections with the province of the Cotentin which 
 they had. He was lord of Astremerville also, but it is not 
 easy to say whether this was in Normandy, or elsewhere 
 under the French king, as was so common and so much liked 
 by the independent lords who figure on both sides of the 
 Channel about 1066. Fortunately there is a fine Latin de- 
 scription of this town of Torignian by the chronicler William 
 Gemeticensis, which leaves no doubt as to what it was and 
 where it was and whose it was. He is describing the great 
 heritage which Henry the First got for his son Robert Con- 
 sul, earl of Gloucester, by marrying him to Matilda Sinclair, 
 the daughter of Mabel Montgomery, sister of the Robert of 
 Belesme who was earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury, and lord of 
 many places beside in England and Normandy. She brought 
 him, from her father Robert Fitz-Hamo, this Torrinneium, as 
 the Latin has it. It was the head town, the chronicler says, 
 of the lands ; and he describes in detail how populous it was, 
 and how thronged with merchandise, though the soil was not 
 so fertile of itself as in many other parts of the duchy. Its 
 site was on the borders of the bailliwicks or counties of Bayeux 
 and Coustance. The feudal castle was near or within it, and 
 stood on a height two miles on what Gemeticensis calls ' the 
 hither side ' of the river Vire, which is the boundary between 
 the consulatum Bayeux and its neighbour. Where this 
 Vire joins the Ouve was the scene of the historical and 
 romantic story of the assistance of Hubert of Rye to the 
 young duke, William, galloping for his life from Valence, 
 whence his enemies were pursuing him at full speed. The 
 Duke's Way, still preserved there by tradition as the name 
 of the ford, was over the river on which higher up the 
 castle of Torignian stood, as that of Rye was on the Fal- 
 aise side of the ford. Such juxtaposition of lands can-
 
 THE EARLS OF CORBEIL. 203 
 
 not be allowed to go for nothing. The French historian of 
 England, Rapin, has a special claim to be heard on William's 
 enemies. ' Guy of Burgundy,' says he, ' son of a daughter to 
 Duke Richard II., was the next that appeared on the stage. 
 He had concerted his measures so well, that he was like to 
 have surprised the duke's person who was then at Valognes 
 without any guard, ignorant of what was practising against 
 him. But a certain fool whom the conspirators did not mis- 
 trust, hearing their design, travelled all night to give the 
 duke notice, who had but just time to put on his clothes and 
 ride full speed to Falaise. What haste soever he might make, 
 he was so closely pursued that he must have been taken, his 
 horse not being able to carry him thither, had he not been 
 assisted by a gentleman whom he accidentally met on the 
 road.' This 'gentleman,' according to the sober hue of his- 
 tory, was the lord of Rye Castle, whose tale is told with 
 brighter fire in the rhymed chronicle of the dukes of Nor- 
 mandy, as already noted. Freeman has written of the inci- 
 dent more picturesquely, though, in the balance, he is light 
 against the honest sobriety of Rapin's account of Hubert Sin- 
 clair's needed aid to his distressed relation. Eudo got to be 
 seneschal for this by and bye; and, in passing, it may be 
 noted that he had his name from the husband's family of 
 another sister than this one married to Guy of Burgundy, she 
 who married Geffrey, earl of Brittany. Being the sister of 
 Malger, the direct founder of these Ryes, these Torignians, 
 and the St. Lo Sinclairs, it can be understood how Eudoes 
 and Geffreys were noticeable as names in the families. So 
 much was this the case that it took considerable pains to find 
 that, as to male lineage, the earls of Brittany, of Celtic origin, 
 had nothing to do with the purely Norse Sinclairs. The 
 names are, however, at least another indication of the identity 
 of these families with the ducal house. An attempt will not 
 be made, on the evidence at present secured, to draw the lines 
 between the lords of St. Cler and St. Lo, of Torignian, and of 
 Corbeil, of Rye on the Norman and on the English sides. 
 Torignian, St. Lo, and Rye could well have been families 
 founded by three sons of Hamo Dentatus. Malger, the first 
 archbishop, is still more probable, as being the provider for 
 other two sons, as well as this Hamo Dentatus, about whom 
 Glover's Cottonian codex makes us certain. In those times of
 
 204 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the church archbishops as princes were universally family men. 
 Malger being of royal blood had more freedom, if that were at 
 all possible, than even the less high-born prelates. 
 
 That the lineage is at last settled, and that all these are 
 worthy and unsullied branches of the family tree of Hollo of 
 Scandinavia, prince of the Orkneys, and the first Norse duke 
 of Normandy, are findings sufficient to satisfy the greatest 
 aspirations after high descent. The much humbler, for could 
 anything be lowlier than a crust and a bowl beside the well 
 still good for the eyes near the Epte 1 origin from the good 
 Saint Clair, who went to that place to which his probably 
 assumed Latin name ever afterwards clung, was something 
 much to be desired. But it could not be. The men who had 
 heraldry as the substitute for all our modern science, cannot 
 be put down on questions which they investigated with what 
 might be called the sorrow and sweat of the brain. His mar- 
 tyrdom was in 894, and this date will in no way assort with 
 facts which cannot be denied, such as French Moulin gives in 
 his History of Normandy. Out of this wood of royalties, and 
 Dantean thrills of joy assail. War of words is tame stuff. 
 Elsewhere than here is that game to be got. Investigation, 
 not pleading cases, is the inspiration that gives sufficient en- 
 thusiasm to arrive through journeyings by night and day of 
 obscurity and sunshine at conclusion. The road is now on 
 English soil, and the guide-books are wonderfully full, and 
 more wonderfully authentic. The world-thinking Jew that Sir 
 Francis Palgrave was, like the best men of his race, called 
 the state papers of England the admiration of all nations. 
 They are mainstay for what has yet to be said of the English 
 Sinclairs. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE VISCOUNT AND FEE-FARMER OF COLCHESTER. 
 
 Tin: name and locality of this man, who is frequently men- 
 tioned in slate rolls of the reigns of Henry the First, Stephen, 
 and as late as Henry the Second, bind the Ryes of England 
 and France still more closely. Hamo de Sancto Claro at Col- 
 I or, is a combination which could not be accidental. He 
 appears to have been of the Fitz-Hamo and Hamo Dapifer
 
 THE VISCOUNT FEE-FARMER OF COLCHESTER. 205 
 
 family, and related at greater distance to Ralph, Hubert, 
 Eudo Dapifer, and to Adam of the Two Camps, Kent. He 
 was probably the brother of William de Sancto Claro, the 
 sons, it may be, though more light is necessary, of Fitz-Hamo 
 by the Welsh princess, Theodora ap Tudor. If so, he was the 
 elder, his properties being much more extensive than those of 
 him of Dorset, he who endowed the abbey of Savigny in con- 
 junction with his sister or near relation Matilda, countess of 
 Gloucester, in 1 139. The Great Roll of the Pipe of 31 Hen. I. 
 makes Hamo the payer of heavy taxes in Essex, Hertfordshire, 
 Kent, Sussex, Boseham, Norfolk, Suffolk, Durham, Northamp- 
 tonshire, and Bedfordshire. He ranks among the chief men 
 of the time in this respect, his largest properties being, as to 
 their order of size, in Bedfordshire, Norfolk, and Hertford- 
 shire. These localities point unmistakably to heirship of 
 Fitz-Hamo's lands in part, and also some of Hamo Dapifer's. 
 Whether it is possible to establish this thoroughly from 
 Domesday without other aid, must be left for specialists in 
 legal business. The records of him and his doings are unim- 
 peachable in their integrity ; and it becomes a most interest- 
 ing inquiry, whether successful or not, how he got all these 
 lands, in the most favoured spots of the kingdom. From the 
 other families no likely person could be chosen to fill the place 
 this Hamo of Colchester does. That he was Fitz-Hamo's 
 eldest and William the second son would satisfy many related 
 events. It will be seen afterwards that there was a third 
 brother, and his family distinguish themselves in history. It 
 might be that Hamo Sinclair of Colchester, as far as time and 
 birth are concerned, could have been a scion of the Hubert of 
 Norwich, or Ralph of Nottingham, families ; but the extensive 
 properties, and their situations, shut off the real possibility of 
 such connection, even should there be nothing directive in the 
 name. 
 
 If he is the son of Fitz-Hamo, he is seven steps from Rollo 
 his ancestor, William the Conqueror being five, as the century 
 nearly between their different dates of births might make 
 right. That Hamo was in close relation to ! the crown, is 
 indicated by the fact that Henry the First gave Colchester 
 and its castle to him, after Eudo Sinclair the dapifer's death, 
 the relation of both. It has been noted that Henry was at 
 the deathbed in Normandy of Eudo ; and though Eudo had his
 
 2o5 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 son, the first earl of Essex, then alive, and also his daughter, 
 Margaret, the wife of Geffrey Mandeville, earl of Essex in 
 her right, he seems to have given a large part of his lands 
 and property to King Henry. Colchester Castle was in the 
 hands of the king, and much besides of the dapifer's emolu- 
 ments. It is not improbable that the fee-farm which the 
 crown gave of it and of Colchester, on feudal principle, to 
 Hamo de St. Clair, was of the nature of a compromise as to 
 rights of heirships. His running accounts with the treasury 
 were of this nature, ' Hamo de Sco Claro redd Compot de Jirma 
 Civitatis Colecestf : In tfiauro xxxviij . ti . i xvi . s . ij d : Et 
 deb xxiij i x d ' — ' Hamo Sinclair renders an account of the 
 fee-farm of the town of Colchester : In the treasury ^38, 
 1 6s. 7d. : and he owes £23, os. iod.' At that time, as every 
 one knows, sums of this kind were more than perhaps twenty 
 times present value. These being current sums, it is difficult 
 to be sure of how much Henry let the returns of Colchester 
 to him at. The burgesses a considerable time afterwards, 
 32 Hen. II., got free from feudal customs to the extent of 
 paying their own rent, which was then ^42 per annum. This, 
 however, may have been a much smaller sum than Hamo paid. 
 But as late as 1327 the citizens of London paid only ^300 
 for the fee-farm of London. Morant, the historian of Col- 
 chester, says fee-farm is equivalent to rent and perpetuity, so 
 that Hamo's possession had all the nature of property, estates 
 often having perpetual tenure by either some personal service 
 or small sum as acknowledgment of superiority. Tindal gives 
 the same explanation of the term. The fee-farm of Colchester, 
 nevertheless, was then up to its value, though if the times grew 
 better there would be no rise of rent. It was through him as 
 sheriff or viscount that the taxes came to the crown, of aids, 
 scutages, and tallages. There are frequent entries of such 
 kind as this, ' Et idem Hamo de Sco Claro r.c. de xx. I. de 
 auxilio Civitatis Colecestriae : In thesauro xiij Hj s § iiij. d ' — 
 ' And the same Hamo Sinclair, king's sheriff, concerning the 
 aid from the town of Colchester : In the treasury ,£13, 2s., 
 and 4d.' So it went on continually, as is usual with public 
 affairs, and Hamo was, in some respects, the equal and right 
 successor of Eudo Sinclair, the more absolute lord of Col- 
 ter. The Ruber Liber Scaccarii has Hamo de Sco Claro 
 as one of its familiar names. Morant says there is recoid
 
 THE VISCOUNT FEE-FARMER OF COLCHESTER. 207 
 
 that Colchester was in fee-farm in Stephen's reign, and also 
 9 and 1 7 Hen II. ; the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, 
 this Hamo de St. Clair, heing the holder at these periods, as 
 no doubt throughout, if all the state accounts were available 
 for examination. The position of viscount or sheriff was then 
 of high importance, he being the king's manager of coun- 
 ties, checking the doings of the count or earl, who had the 
 charge of, and drew the third penny for, the actual rule of his 
 county. Hamo Dapifer did not think it beneath him, though 
 dapifer or high steward, next in dignity to the sovereign, to 
 be ' vicecomes Kanciae ' — ' sheriff of Kent.' This Hamo had a 
 double charge with his two counties ; and, without reference 
 to his properties at all, this makes him a man of mark, his 
 district of rule being particularly influential and prominent in 
 his period. His entries in the little book by Hunter extracted 
 from the Roll of the Pipe, 1 1 3 1 , are nearly a dozen ; and from 
 this it can be imagined how busy a man he was in civil affairs. 
 The fee -farm of Eudo Dapifer's lands also would take much 
 care of management, ' r.c. de firma terrae Eudonis Dapiferi 1 — 
 1 he renders account with regard to the fee-farm of the land 
 of Eudo Dapifer.' Vice-count grew to be the later descrip- 
 tive title recognisable under viscount, shire-reeve or sheriff 
 being the Saxon equivalent to the Franco-Latin word. A 
 recorded tax on his properties ranged in the different counties 
 from 6s up to 38s. It is difficult to take conclusion as to 
 their value from one taxation, there were so many taxes under 
 different names ; but it is of use by indicating their localities, 
 which is a hard enquiry when Domesday Book loses it relevance 
 to the estates of new generations. That he was a buyer and 
 seller of lands, and in this respect perhaps before his times, 
 one of his transactions in Suffolk may example, ' Muriel filia 
 Rad de Sanineio redd compoi de xviij t 7 vi s 7 viii d ut 
 hat rectu de Ira qa clamat de Ham de sco Claro : In tfiauro 
 x m. arg. Et deb xj I 7 xiii s 7 iv. d ' — ' Muriel, the daughter 
 of Ralph of Sanineio, renders an account of ^"18, 6s., 8d. that 
 she has to pay for land free from all claim from Hamo Sinclair : 
 In the treasury ten marks silver ; and she owes ^11, 13s. 4d.' 
 Enough, however, of what easily may become duller than 
 useful. Connected with the king's treasury he may have 
 been, besides holding his sheriffships ; as others of his relations 
 were, it will be discovered.
 
 208 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Hamo Dapifer had a hall which had the full privileges of 
 holding court, and he had houses besides in Colchester. This 
 Hamo had one mansion near Chelmsford, and it was called 
 St. Clere Manor. It would be built on one of the properties 
 the rolls refer to in Essex, and would have the nature of a 
 castle, as was usual. Colchester Castle did not make defence 
 of less importance at St. Clere Manor. With Henry the 
 Second he was in great favour, very likely because then well- 
 stricken in years, after a very active and successful life. Col- 
 chester has stories about some of its sheriffs being so rapacious 
 that they tried all they could to get the fee-farm given to the 
 burgesses so as to escape exactions. But giving municipal 
 freedom to cities, formerly under their feudal lords, became 
 the habit of those times, and nothing of slight can specially 
 reach Hamo as one of the oppressors. It is probable that 
 villein-grumbling, town or country, had quick cure from the 
 ruling and necessary vigour of all Norman lords, and Hamo 
 would no doubt be equal to the traditions. Possibly Eudo Sin- 
 clair with his kindness spoiled the Colchestrians a little, and 
 made them feel small burdens as if they were great. But 
 there need be no injustice to them for what is to all appear- 
 ance only the prattle and easy prejudice of some chronicler or 
 writer while amusing himself with passing the time. Of this 
 sheriff and his family the Colechestrians are nearly as proud as 
 they are of their loved Eudo. To his only daughter, Henry 
 the Second gave charters of the splendid estates of Stanway 
 manor and of Lexden, in Essex. His only son was instru- 
 mental to this liberality by his doings. The father Hamo 
 added to his other works interest in religious things like his 
 predecessor Eudo. Accounts are extant of his benefits to the 
 abbey of St. John the Baptist, Colchester, the foundation of 
 the dapifer. His name occurs in its Register, part of which 
 is preserved among the Cottonian MSS. in a work of ancient 
 extracts; and the usual habits of men of wealth and birth, 
 in. ike it safe to assume that his gifts, and perhaps his own 
 foundations, were in accordance with what we know of his 
 noted civil energy. It is certainly of more than genealogi- 
 <:il interest to find Eudo and this Hamo of the next genera- 
 tion, of one mind as to Colchester's spiritual welfare. Vet. 
 chron. in Cod. MS. in Bibl. Coll. S. Trin. Cantab has this 
 French account of the former. ' E meme eel tens [viz. a.d.
 
 THE VISCOUNT FEE-FARMER OF COLCHESTER. 209 
 
 mlxxxv.] fust funde le Abbeye de Seint Johan de Colecesire de 
 Eudo Senescal del Hostel le Reg. Will. [i.e. II.] ' — ' At the same 
 time was founded the abbey of St. John, Colchester, by Eudo, 
 mayor of the palace to King William ' ; and Hamo as gover- 
 nor of Colchester Castle, fee- farmer of the town, proprietor in 
 a dozen counties, sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, and en- 
 dower of his relation's abbey, as probably of other religious 
 houses, was worthy in good degree to follow him. It would 
 be valuable to know how Hamo's prosperity affected Eudo's 
 son, John Sinclair, earl of Essex, and more especially Mar- 
 garet, his daughter, after the death in 1 1 44 of Geffrey, earl of 
 Essex, her husband ; but it will not perhaps be further cleared 
 up, and there is at least this to depend on, that the lineage 
 had good substance and success, though the times were so un- 
 steady when not unjust and oppressive. Stephen's reign 
 ruined noble families for ever, but this line reached better 
 times in some of its members, and has effective English 
 representatives. 
 
 If Hamo is not the son of Fitz-Hamo, the nephew of Hamo 
 Dapifer, vicecomes of Kent (the brother of Matilda wife of 
 Robert Consul, Henry the First's son, and also brother of 
 William de Sancto Claro of Dorset and other counties), who 
 is he ? There are contemporaries of the name, but account of 
 them hereafter will show the impossibility of his biography 
 agreeing with theirs. The lineage connection with royalty is 
 the best explanation of Henry the First, about 11 20, giving 
 Hamo de St. Clair the fee-farm of Eudo's lands, and also of 
 his castle and town of Colchester, the royal and Hamo fami- 
 lies being further connected by Matilda's marriage ten years 
 previously. If Henry had gained anything at the dapifer's 
 deathbed, it is not likelv he would have taken the trouble he 
 evidently has, to let the main fruits pass out of his own family 
 again. His daughter-in-law's half-brother was a fit and proper 
 person to hold in hand this part of that king's immense pos- 
 sessions. They are still more imposing when reckoning is 
 made of how he provided for his many near relations, his 
 thirteen illegitimate children included. It is granted that 
 there has not yet been found absolute record to make Hamo 
 de St. Clair of Colchester Castle the son of Fitz-Hamo, or the 
 nephew of Hamo Dapifer, but the tendency of what evidence 
 there is points in this direction. Imagination must be kept out 
 

 
 210 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of the question, and the relationship accepted above may be 
 open to correction. 
 
 Petroburgensis Benedidus abbas, in his chronicle, makes 
 Hamo de Sancto Claro one of the witnesses to King Stephen's 
 second charter to the people of England, and Stubbs in his 
 Select Charters accepts this. But Richard Prior of Hagulstadt, 
 in his chronicle, gives the signature as Hugo de Sancto Claro, 
 whose history as royal cup-bearer will occur subsequently. 
 That Eudo Martel and William de Albini in subscribing 
 the same document are both called pincerna or cup-bearer, 
 would favour Hamo of Colchester's subscription, but further 
 knowledge may arise under Hugo de St. Clare pincerna. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE HERO OF BRIDGENORTH. 
 
 Under the date 1165, Stow in his Annals of England tells this 
 tale. ' In a certain assiege at Bridgenorth against Hugh de 
 Mortimere, when the king was shotte at by one of the enimies, 
 a valiant man, Hubert de Saint Clere, constable of Colchester, 
 did thrust himselfe betwixt the king and the danger of the 
 stroke, and so received death for him, whose onlie daughter 
 the king taking into his custodie, hee gave her in marriage to 
 William de Languale with her father's inheritance, who begote 
 on her a sonne bearing the name and surname of his grand- 
 father.' Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. has also an 
 ;i]i|»ieciative account of this the only son of Hamo Sinclair of 
 Colchester. Henry the Second was not of the temper to 
 forget such a deed. He had had great contest with his nobles, 
 especially the western ones, who in their powerful castles 
 thought to defy his sovereignty, as the French nobility did 
 so long with their kings. They must reduce their military 
 e tablishments, was the last word to them of the gallant 
 Earry, and bitter refusals, and sieges of 'the most arrogant 
 men alive,' as Speed has said of this very Mortimer, ended in 
 the sovereign compelling them to the obedience and duty of 
 subjects. Hubert St. Clere, knighthood being the high ton of
 
 THE HERO OF BRIDGENORTH. 211 
 
 the time, had got his ; and as Sir Hubert, as well as lord of 
 Colchester and governor of the castle, he had followed his 
 king and relative to the western wars. His career ended in 
 glory that is unique in the history of families ; and, a young 
 man, no one of his countrymen can regret so fine an example 
 of English heroism, at the expense of even so distinguished 
 and valiant a life as his was, with no doubt many possible 
 pages to fill by similar action of honour and loyalty. 
 
 I !ut accounts vary in different -writers. Camden, the anti- 
 quary, when describing Shropshire, speaks of Bridgenorth 
 Castle on the Severn, and tells the incident. ' At the siege 
 of this castle (as our chronicles tell us), King Henry the 
 Second had like to have lost his life by an arrow, which being 
 shot at him was intercepted by a truly gallant man and lover 
 of his prince, Hubert de Saint-Clere, who saved the king's life 
 by the loss of his own.' The Rev. Richard Polwhele in 1797, 
 antiquary and historian of Devonshire, or perhaps better de- 
 scribed as commentator upon Sir William Pole's valuable 
 history of the county before 1623, and often not the improver 
 of his predecessor's facts, has the Bridgenorth hero as belong- 
 ing to the Devonshire and Cornwall family of Sinclairs. He 
 is wrong in this as in others of his reckonings. In the wide 
 sense only Hubert belongs to this branch of the Norman or 
 Norse house. Polwhele's shaping of the tale has its interest, if 
 for nothing else at least as a clerical example of how to im- 
 prove incident. 'When Harry the 2d was besieging the 
 castle of Bridgenorth in the possession of Hugh de Mortimer, 
 Hubert de S. Clere, we are told, a descendant of this family,' 
 [the Sinclairs of Tidwell, Devonshire], 'perceiving the king 
 aimed at from the castle-walls, stepped in before his sovereign, 
 and received the arrow into his own body and expired, "an 
 act worthy to be recorded in tables of gold with letters of 
 diamond." In thankful commemoration of this meritorious 
 service, the king not only interred the deceased with all 
 the pomp of funeral honours, but took the young and only 
 daughter of Hubert under his own protection, and when she 
 was marriageable gave her to William de Longville, a man of 
 noble birth and in high favour with the king. With her 
 the inheritance descended from her father, with large addi- 
 tions, but on these terms, " that to perpetuate the memory of 
 the faithful Hubert, Longville should bear both the name and
 
 212 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 surname of her father, and be called Hubert de St. Clere." 
 This would seem to be a paraphrase of Camden, and it is cer- 
 tainly wrong if it tends to proving the Sinclair's of Tidwell or 
 Toodvil, Devon, to have been Longvilles in lineage. Nothing 
 but the name must have caused the Rev. Richard to give cur- 
 rency to so haphazard a relationship. Sir Hubert is of Essex 
 by record after record, and he had not an inch of land in the 
 beautiful county. The Cornwall and Devon branch needs no 
 adventitious or supposititious aids to distinction ; they have a 
 sufficient history of their own. Another author rightly dog- 
 matises that he was of Essex, but, to mix matters, he keeps 
 wrongly repeating that he was a Sir Robert and not Hubert. 
 Powel, one of the oldest authorities, in the Welsh Chronicle 
 gives an additional fact, that it was a Welshman and not one 
 of the English who drew bow on the king and killed Hubert. 
 The recent History of England by Knight pictures a very 
 dramatic scene. The king's ' faithful vassal Hubert,' after 
 the arrow has struck him and saved the king, ' threw him- 
 self into Henry's arms, imploring him to remember his 
 daughter.' Lord Lyttleton's account in his Life of Henry 
 Secoiid has aided most of the more modern recitals. ' Mor- 
 timer, though abandoned by his friends, would not lay down 
 his arms. Henry, incensed at his obstinacy, led a great 
 army against him, with which, having divided it into three 
 bodies, he at once assaulted the three castles of Clebury, Wig- 
 more, and Bridgenorth ; and though it was expected that each 
 of them would stand a long siege, they were all surrendered to 
 him in a short time. Before that of Bridgenorth, which was 
 defended by Mortimer, he commanded in person, and exposed 
 himself to so much danger, that he would there have been 
 slain, if a faithful vassal had not preferred his life to his own. 
 Eor while he was busied in giving orders too near the wall, 
 Hubert de St. Clare, constable, or governor, of Colchester 
 Castle, who stood by his side, seeing an arrow aimed at him 
 by one of Mortimer's archers, stepped before him, and received 
 it in his own breast. The wound was mortal : he expired in 
 the arms of his master, recommending his daughter, an only 
 child, and an infant, to the care of that prince. It is hard to 
 say which most deserves admiration, a subject who died to 
 save his king, or a king whose personal virtues could render 
 his safety so dear to a subject, whom he had not obliged by
 
 THE HERO OF BRIDGENORTH. 2 I 3 
 
 any extraordinary favours ! The daughter of Hubert was 
 educated by Henry, with all the affection that he owed to the 
 memory of her father, and when she had attained to maturity, 
 was honourably married to William de Longueville, a nobleman 
 of great distinction, on condition of his taking the name of 
 St. Clare, which the gratitude of Henry desired to per- 
 petuate.' The oddest, and in some respects by no means the 
 worst description, is that of John Speed in his huge History 
 of Great Britain, published in. London, 1611. His ambitious 
 historic wings would willingly raise him to classical heights. 
 Clio has not many such incidents, even among our brave 
 English gesta, where valour is no rare quality. ' But Hugh de 
 Mortimer, wanton with greatness, and the most arrogant man 
 alive, stuffed his castles of Gloucester, Wigmor, and Bridge- 
 north with rebellious garrisons, which Henry notwithstanding 
 reduced to subjection ; though in the siege of the last named ' 
 [he would have been slain] ' had not Hubert de St. Clere cast 
 himself between death and the king, taking the arrow into 
 his own bosom to preserve his sovereign's life. It bound 
 Tiberius most of all to Sejanus, when a part of the banquet- 
 ing cave in which they were, suddenly falling, Sejanus was 
 found to have borne the ruins from the emperor, with the 
 peril of his life ; but Sejanus survived that adventure, which 
 our Senclere did not, save only in the better renown thereof, 
 which deserves to be immortal, being an act of piety worthy 
 of a statue with Codrus, Curtius, Manlius, or whosoever else 
 have willingly sacrificed themselves.' The flavour of the 
 heroic literary time of Elizabeth is to be felt through the 
 long sentences of Speed, and it might be pity that his contem- 
 porary Shakespeare was not by his English dramas led to the 
 embodiment of ' our Senclere. ' He could put the true fire 
 into such an incident, and he would not miss the fine effect of 
 the Welsh background to the picture. ' The most arrogant 
 man alive ' could be as artistic a character as his Manlius 
 Coriolanus, and even with fiercer and dramatically finer points 
 in him. But on the earth there are 'greaters than Shakes- 
 peare here.' Life and its admirations are never exhausted 
 till the Deucalion of the future stands without his Pyrrha, 
 and the great world-play is in the last scene of its last act. 
 The two ways of printing the surname in Elizabeth's time are 
 remarkable, and, better than that, remarkably useful. The
 
 214 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 knightly way of France has its counterpart in substantial 
 English 'Senclere'; and it is curious that taking away the 
 final letter it is the spelling of the names of Richard and 
 Britel, the former in Domesday Bool,; 'the big and the little 
 Domesday,' and the latter in the Exon Domesday. So steadily 
 has this surname subsisted under the foam of various and in- 
 teresting fashions. John Speed deserves a share of his hero's 
 fame, not only for the sympathy with him that on opportunity 
 would make himself go and do likewise, but because of this 
 antiquarian variation of the name, which has its valuable 
 suggestions for inquiries into the strange and often self-made 
 suicidal names and surnames of Norm an- English and even 
 English periods. What with the Banish soubriquet system ; 
 the pride of first name, and depreciation of the less noble sur- 
 name innovation ; patronymics by first names, those endless 
 troublesome Fitzes; local surnaming, the chief element in 
 present English names ; and what with the usual obscurity of 
 antiquity, it takes the wariest of stepping to find sure footing. 
 By the strangest and certainly unforeseen accidents (his name 
 has curiously clear indications by which the lineage to which 
 it is attached can be grappled with and held. Nothing liker 
 to the doings in this matter of the eleventh and subsequent 
 centuries is there than the mechanical, foolish, and destruc- 
 tive attempts of modern quacks (who cannot understand that 
 difficulty is the very benefit of education), to destroy all know- 
 ledge of the early English literature by manufacturing a hide- 
 bound union of sounds and letters, because, forsooth, of ease of 
 spelling and reading. Men outwit themselves by all dishonesties, 
 be they those of laziness, pride, or whatever is not growing 
 soundness in life and effort. 
 
 ' There is more yet about Sir Hubert Senclere, governor of 
 Colchester. None of those accounts can possibly be of equal 
 pleasure and value with that by Ralph Niger, the chronicler, 
 who was contemporary with the event. The reference to those 
 who like originals is, RadulpM Nigri Chronicon MS. Bibl : 
 Cotton., under the division Vespas. D.x. 1/33, the year 1165. 
 Raphe the Black was a monk, with the most skilful handicraft 
 in black-letter writing, and his MS. is bound and gilt, with 
 all the care it so well deserves, in the Cottonian collection of 
 MSS. at the British Museum. The contents of the little but 
 most careful work, are history from the beginning of the world
 
 THE HERO OF BRIDGENORTH. 215 
 
 to 1 1 78 ; and the room he gives Hubert, considering his limited 
 space, is out of proportion, short as it may appear, with the 
 plan of his concise abstract of the leading events. Possibly 
 a genuinely unselfish or supremely loyal act is worth a great 
 deal of vulgar battles and intrigues. It is given faithfully as 
 it exists. ' In qua obsidione apud brige s com 11 Hug d morte 
 mari, c idem rex a quoda sagitta appeteret qda ex peeribus suis 
 scilicet Hubi de Sco clero constabulari ' Colcestre statu se tante 
 discrimine opposuit mortemque pro domino suo excepit. Cui 
 postmodum unnicam filiam in sua custodia suscipiens pre ibidem 
 moriente 7 ea regem interpellante tradidit earn Witto de lang- 
 valee in matrimoniii cum hereditate paterna. Qui genuit ex 
 ea filium nom suu e agnomine et imponens ' — ' In this siege at 
 Bridgenorth in the earldom of Hugo Mortimer, when the same 
 king was sought by a certain arrow, a particular one of his peers, 
 namely, Hubert Sinclair, constable of Colchester, put himself in 
 his place with great judgment, and received death for his lord. 
 Taking his only daughter into his own ward for him after- 
 wards, her father dying in that place, and herself asking the 
 king, he gave her in marriage to William Longville with her 
 paternal heirship. He had by her a son, calling him also by 
 his own name and surname.' 
 
 The contemporary chronicle is probably the source whence 
 some of these historians have drawn ; and, if so, they cannot be 
 complimented all round as to their knowledge of Latin. The 
 romantic fever seems to have caught them, when they make 
 William Longville be bound to Hubert's daughter, on the 
 Jewish condition of raising an heir to him of the Sinclair and 
 even Hubert name. There is no ground for this in the monk's 
 MS. It says, what will be supported by charters existing 
 still in the Harleian collection, that the young lady Sinclair 
 bore William Longville a son, whom he called by his own 
 name and surname, William Longville. Polwhele's tale is 
 moonshine. The Normans were not of the mawkish order of 
 human beings, and would neither wish others nor themselves 
 to give up their individualities on sing-song principles. The 
 value of the individual is perhaps the best moral of their 
 vigorous and successful history. Says Tindal, ' The Normans 
 made themselves masters of Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, Nor- 
 mandy, and England in less than two hundred years ; ' and 
 when Rollo left his principality of the Orkneys, to prove
 
 2i6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 strength of the individual head and hand, it is not likely his 
 surroundings were very formidable except to seeing eyes. 
 Charlemagne's tears at the sight of the long, low, dragonlike 
 Norse boats show that he recognised the secret. Henry tbe 
 Second, only half a Norman, had formulated the aphorism 
 that the world has room for one great man at once, and there 
 is deep meaning in his finding. No race aided the panoply of 
 crusading chivalry more ; but they never lost their heads, as 
 the Celt, time out of mind, so easily does on romantic provoca- 
 tion. Neither Hubert Sinclair nor his king could put such a 
 condition on any Longville, and the lady's wishes, it may be 
 guessed easily, were those of her sex in this respect, who have 
 at least one subject on which they are the opposite of conser- 
 vative. Her son was not named and surnamed after her 
 heroic father, and the shortest proof lies in two charters of 
 the Harleian collection in Bloomsbury. The one is ' Carta 
 Huberti de Sco Claro ecclesiae 8. Trinitatis de Norwieae de 
 ecclesiae de Chancra et in eodem manerio terr et ami redd' — 
 ' Charter of Hubert Sinclair to the church of Holy Trinity of 
 Norwich, about the church of Chalke, and land and an annual 
 return in the same manor.' The other is, ' Carta Willielmi de 
 Lanvaley confirmans donationem Huberti de Sco Claro avi sui ut 
 supra: praecipue varie inter priorem de Burmandseye et priorem 
 ecclesiae S. Trinitatis Norw. de advocatione ecclesiae de Chalke ' 
 — ' Charter of William Longville confirming the donation 
 of Hubert Sinclair his grandfather as above ; particularly 
 various matters between the prior of Bermondsey and the 
 prior of the church of Holy Trinity, Norwich, concerning the 
 advowson of the church of Chalke.' This is the Williain whom 
 William Longvale, the husband of Hubert's daughter, called 
 by his own name and surname ; and the relationship of grand- 
 father in the charter leaves nothing further to be desired as 
 to the truth of the subject. 
 
 Here it is also seen that Hubert was not soldier et praeterea 
 nihil. Besides his duties of constable or governor of Col- 
 chester Castle, and the management of the large patrimony 
 left him by his father, Hamo de St. Clair, the sheriff of Essex 
 and Hertford, he did not forget what was necessary to religious 
 advance. It is rare that so much as the above has survived 
 to memory of many a great man's numerous gifts ; but there 
 is another remnant of special interest, because referring to his
 
 THE TWO WILLIAM DE LAN GV ALES. 217 
 
 own home county of Essex. In the reign of Henry the Second 
 he gave a charter to one of England's most famed religious 
 houses. Mythology has embalmed the strangest tales of Osyth 
 Priory, Chiche, Essex. Its abbess, who had her head cut off 
 by the Danes, and walked with it in her hands for miles to 
 the site of the future nunnery, is a jewel of the early popular 
 reverent imagination. ' Ex dono Huberti de Sancto Glaro decern 
 solidatas terra in Brumleja ' — ' From the gift of Hubert Sinclair 
 the tenpenny lands in Bromley,' is the gist of his grant ; and it 
 has, besides the religious interest, a genealogical one of a 
 double character. Before his time somewhat, his relation 
 William Sinclair of Corbeil was prior of the monastery of St. 
 Osyth at Chiche, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and 
 the first Englishman who was pope's legate, he who aided 
 Stephen so effectually to the throne. He died in 1136, twenty 
 years nearly before Hubert, but as a youth he was perhaps well 
 known to the archbishop. Such a tie caused Hubert's gifts 
 to flow in that direction. St. Osyth's is of interest afterwards 
 by being the property of subsequent Sinclairs whose doings 
 await notice. It would leave a wrong impression of the hero 
 of Bridgenorth to forget his position as a peer or baron of the 
 land fulfilling well the civil and religious duties belonging to 
 him as such, in the glory of doing one of the world's deeds 
 which will not be let die while human nature has admiration 
 for honour, loyalty, and devotion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE TWO WILLIAM DE LANGVALES. 
 
 The first William was the husband of Hubert Sinclair's only 
 daughter and heiress ; the second, their son. It has been said 
 by Polwhele that the husband of the heiress was a man of 
 noble birth and in high favour with the king, which might go 
 very well without saying, as the phrase sans dire puts likely 
 things. The spelling of the name is rather variable in the 
 records, but there can be very little doubt that he is one 
 of the Giffarcl family which gave the two first Norman earls 
 to Buckingham. The Walter Giffards were De Longuevilles
 
 2i8 THE SINCE A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 in Normandy, the title there being earl or count of Longue- 
 ville. It was Walter Giffard who commanded a division of 
 the Norman army in the battle of Hastings, and he figures in 
 the rhymed chronicle perhaps most in the scene where the 
 Conqueror had taken his position for refreshment of food after 
 the fight. Giffard was not there when it was decided to place 
 ' the tables ' where Harold's last stand and death occurred, 
 and on coming up he is amazed, and counsels care lest the 
 Saxons be only half defeated yet. It is quite a dramatic 
 interlude, but William would not move, and Giffard takes his 
 place with the rest of the blood-spattered determined victors. 
 He fared well in the distribution of lands, getting no lord- 
 ships ; and he was one of the few in the council which aided 
 William Fitz-Osborn and Odo to govern England. He was 
 afterwards one of the commissioners who drew up Domesday 
 Bool: In Rufus's reign he is remarkable for loyalty to that 
 monarch at first, having fortified for his cause his castle in 
 Normandy ; but afterwards he sided more with Robert Curthose. 
 He was a witness of the laws of Henry the First, and died in 
 1 103. He was buried in the abbey church of Longavilla, 
 Normandy, of his own foundation. His brother, he who in 
 1 128 first brought in the Cistertian monks, placing them in 
 Waverley Abbey, Surrey, was William Giffard, bishop of 
 Winchester and chancellor of England, whose aid to Eudo 
 Sinclair, dapifer, at a critical time has been seen. The 
 Monasticon in one place makes his sister, Rose Giffard, who 
 was widow of Richard Fitz-Gilbert of Tunbridge, earl of Clare, 
 Eudo's wife, but in another passage the right relationship 
 is shown. She was the mother of his wife Rose Clare. Bishop 
 Giffard and Peter de Valence, Eudo's sister Albreda's son, 
 helped to make the peace between Henry First and his dapifer. 
 The Valences are the family who were constables of Hertford 
 Castle, and who had for seat Orford Castle, Suffolk. As earls 
 of Pembroke they took their best figure in history. William 
 was the uncle of Edward I. The conqueror of Robert Bruce 
 at Methven and elsewhere is a well-known figure, the Aylmer 
 de Valence of the time of that Edward. Their relationships 
 with Sinclairs are frequent. One of the marriages has 
 monumental proof at Braybrook, Northamptonshire, as late 
 as 157 1. Besides the bishop only another of these Giffards 
 had the highest rank. To the first earl, a second, who was
 
 THE TWO WILLIAM DE LANGVALES. 219 
 
 also Walter, succeeded, and he, who was a faithful supporter 
 of Henry the First in his many struggles, died without issue. 
 He signed the charter of liberties by this king, as may be seen 
 in Matthew Paris. The lands of his earldom of Buckingham 
 came, through his aunt Rose Giffard's rights, to Richard, earl 
 of Clare, and those of his earldom of Longueville in Normandy 
 fell to William, the marshal of England and the ' great earl 
 of Pembroke ' of the reigns of John and Henry the Third. 
 
 When the claims to the Scottish crown were being investi- 
 gated by Edward the First in 1291 at Norham, John Hastings, 
 as descendant of the youngest of the three daughters whose 
 rights were being founded on as best, demanded the partition 
 of Scotland, on the ground that it was a fee of the English 
 crown. In this case he would have a third, as if it had been 
 an earldom or a knight's fee. 'Fees are all partible,' was 
 his cry, and he was technically right. There is more insight 
 got into the condition of England from this historic phrase 
 than from volumes of investigation. The seemingly sudden 
 extinction of families, the immense changefulness of posses- 
 sions, the difficulties of tracing genealogies, the mixing of high 
 Norman names in the most ordinary spheres, which are marked 
 features of the centuries after the Conquest, have ample ex- 
 planation in the words of John Hastings. The danger of 
 exclusiveness, so open to poor human nature, its very strength 
 throwing into weakness, had thus a powerful corrective. It 
 was much later that primogeniture came with its rather frosty 
 fingers to preserve, but also to keep out energy from, select 
 families. The division of possessions, by heiresses in par- 
 ticular, is the cause of lost lines to an immense extent. The 
 barbaric equal division, on the elementary theory of fair play, 
 had and has its evil consequences, however just, as the foun- 
 dation of the primogeniture and male-succession system also 
 has. In its rigour, the latter could only have been the work 
 of pedants and mad genealogists. To have nobody worth 
 chronicling about is the disconcerting result of this fossilising 
 of best life. Via media, golden mean, common sense, or 
 whatever phrase helps to keep us human, that is, not too 
 divine, and never brutal, is the goal of all best culture, from 
 peasant to king ; and none of us can escape when we break the 
 universal law. The courses of lineage are subject to a thousand 
 chances, suggestive enough of all the melancholies, in the midst
 
 220 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of whatever honours and gallantry. For example, Hubert 
 Sinclair of Norwich had descendants by the male line in 
 Yorkshire and Lancashire who took some local or other acci- 
 dental name, and grew into one of the greatest families of the 
 district, Sir Henry Ellis says, as the Frechvilles. In the time 
 of Charles the Second the last of them disappeared. Under the 
 earlier system of succession to name and property, these sur- 
 prises are endless. Disguised by new names England has now 
 much blood in it of the old families, Sinclairs included. 
 
 Giffards there were to some number when the earl's lands 
 were divided. In Gloucestershire there were the lords of 
 Brimsfield, the liberal enclowers of Gloucester Abbey. At the 
 battle of Evesham in 1265, John Giffard was 'the second man 
 to the earl of Gloucester.' Walter Giffard was archbishop 
 of York in Edward the First's reign. As early as 1071 one 
 of the earl's family went to Scotland with William Sinclair 
 among ' the emigrants,' and founded the Giffards there. Such 
 Sinclair or Giffard might not try to heir anything here after 
 favour for the Athelings. There was no want of male 
 Giffard blood to succeed the earls of Buckingham, but the 
 nearer female rights as then legal, kept them from succession, 
 even to the titles. That William de Longueville, the hus- 
 band of Hubert Sinclair's daughter, was of this family, all the 
 indications point ; and that he took the Norman estate as his 
 surname, is quite in accordance with facts. Polwhele is there- 
 fore right that he was of as noble blood as there was ; and the 
 close relationship of the Giffards or Longvales with Eudo 
 Sinclair is good evidence that the king put the property of the 
 last Sinclair lord of Colchester, by no means out of the family, 
 in using his right of marriage over his favourite ward. In 
 Domesday Book there is a manor Longueville or Lanvalee in 
 Kent, which was the right position for William's home to be, 
 the chief scene of the family traditions. He may have been 
 of a Norman family of this same lineage. 
 
 At Hubert Sinclair's death in 1165 at Bridgenorth, William 
 Langvale was in his manhood ; for he got after his marriage, 
 not only his father-in-law's lands, but he was made constable 
 of Colchester Castle. He held it under Henry Second, Bichard 
 the First, and John. He is in record as paying 200 marks of 
 the usual fine at change of monai-ch, to the latter. That he was 
 also warden of the forest of Essex must not be forgotten.
 
 THE TWO WILLIAM DE LANGVALES. 221 
 
 King John when he granted Magna Cliarta gave, or was forced 
 to give, at the same time a charter of the liberties of the 
 forests, which shows the importance of such office. The 
 people's food, clothes, and fire depended on the wise provisions 
 of the warden. In the chronicle of the abbey of St. Albans 
 a few words which survive give a double inference, namely, 
 as to the spread of his lands over England, and as to his re- 
 ligious liberality. William of Lanvale gave to it the villa or 
 farm of Dissington in Northumberland, called ' Ducentuna, in 
 Northurnbria,' by the monks. The first of the two William 
 Langvales died in 12 10 at a good old age. 
 
 He was succeeded by his son ' of the same name and sur- 
 name ' by the lady Sinclair. The position of the family is at 
 once fixed by this that he is one of the barons (named by 
 Matthew Paris) who wrested from John at Runnirnede beside 
 the Thames the charters which are the bulwarks of English 
 liberty. ' W. de Lanvalei ' is the name as given there. He 
 comes before Geffrey Mandeville, earl of Essex, in the list ; 
 and this reminds of the previous Geffrey, of Stephen's reign, 
 who like this William Langvale was also a Sinclair by the 
 mother. It is his charter of confirmation of the charter of 
 Hubert de Sancto Claro, his grandfather, that is preserved in 
 the British Museum among the Harleian charters, referring 
 to the church of Holy Trinity, Norwich, and the monastery 
 of Bermondsey, Southwark, already noticed. He married 
 a daughter of Alan Basset, a great surname. He is the 
 twelfth of the sixteen nobles who appear at the head of Magna 
 Charta as it is still to be seen. Thomas Basset is another of 
 those, as the Latin has it, nobilium virorum. Bassets are the 
 only family with this double honour. Gilbert and Philip 
 were chief men in the Richard, John, and Henry III. 
 reigns. . One of the Bassets was governor of Dover and 
 warden of the Cinque Ports. The lady's grandfather appears 
 in this, ' Ricardus Basset et Albericus de Ver r.c. de firmo de 
 Sudreia et de Greutebrugescira et de Huntedonscira : Li thesauro 
 cccc and xiiii I and xn d. ad pensum : M. Rot. 5 Stepk. Rot. 4' 
 — ' Richard Basset and Aubrey de Vere account for the fee- 
 farm of Surrey, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire : In 
 the treasury ^414, is. by weight: Great Rolls, 5 Stephen, 
 4th roll.' This was in 1141. The Veres fell heirs to Eudo 
 Sinclair's lordship of Colchester Castle, and the Bassets, as
 
 222 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 lords of Drayton, are long conspicuous in history. In Henry 
 the Fifth's reign one of them, a Sir William Basset, was made 
 governor of St. Cler Castle in Fiance ; the same fortress which 
 was burnt by William Mandeville, earl of Essex, in Henry the 
 Second's reign, of which king it was a favourite residence, 
 who planted some trees there with his own hands. An only 
 daughter, Hawise, was the fruit of the marriage, and thus 
 these Langvales came to their period. 
 
 Her fortunes were also distinguished. In 1 7 John she was put 
 under the wardship of Hubert de Burgh, who is one of England's 
 greatest men. He married her to his son, John de Burgh, 
 whose mother was the Princess Margaret of Scotland, sister 
 of the king. Hawise had heired her grand-aunt, the daughter 
 of Hamo Sinclair of Colchester and sister of Hubert Sinclair, 
 in her properties of Stan way manor and Lexenden, Essex, given 
 to her by Henry the Second ; and her father had the bulk of 
 the Sinclair properties already through his mother; so that 
 she was an heiress to be desired, even in the large scheming 
 of such a giant of distinction and honours as Hubert de Burgh. 
 The earl of Kent, the seneschal of Poitou, governor of 
 Dover Castle, ambassador repeatedly, chamberlain of the 
 household, justice of England, and, on the death in 1220 of 
 William, the marshal, the great earl of Pembroke, who was 
 the only man to be compared with him of his time, governor 
 in his room of the kingdom, Hubert de Burgh was a father- 
 in-law such as few ladies secure. The lists of his lands and 
 offices read like fable. His king, Henry the Third, not only 
 when a boy but in his manhood was untiring in adding to this 
 man's immense fortunes. Among the sixteen ' noble men ' of 
 Magna Charta he stood eighth as, senescallus Pictaviae. The 
 successful defence he made in 12 16-17 °f Dover Castle against 
 Lewis, the dauphin of France, is famous. Condemnation by 
 him as chief justiciary, of Constantine, a London street-hero 
 who had raised a dangerous insurrection in 1222, on his own 
 fall froin his position of first man next the king in 1232 to 
 misery and persecution beyond all imagination, made 20,000 
 citizens swear to go and take him (a kind of monarchical 
 Strafford, as they thought), from the altar of the church at 
 Merton, Surrey, to revenge their republican's death by his. 
 Only by policy were they prevented. There is no tale in 
 English or hardly any other history so pathetically descriptive
 
 COMMISSIONER OF 'DOMESDAY BOOK: 223 
 
 of human nature, both individual and collective, as his ; and 
 volumes could be filled to high and entertaining purpose in 
 exhibiting his great but greatly chequered life. A brave 
 man, he kept his courage up to the last. Not like Wolsey did 
 he go down never to rise, but regained before his death probably 
 as much of the world's goods and honours as he then thought 
 sufficient. His son, Sir John de Burgh, Hawise's husband, 
 was knighted by Henry the Third in 11 29, three years before 
 his father was disgraced. He signalised himself, Matthew 
 Paris says, in 1242 at the battle of Xantoignes in France. 
 Matthew of Westminster and he, take note of the death of 
 Eichard de Burgh, 'a baron of note,' in this same year. 
 Dugdale follows the history of these De Burghs, and from 
 him it is worth noting that Lanvally was held for one knight 
 and a half's service, the original but probably much cut up 
 manor of the Langvales. Hawise de Lanvally had among 
 other lands Kingstown, Hallingberrie, AVaokre, and Lexenden. 
 Henceforward there do not seem ties of Sinclairs to Colchester, 
 its castle, abbey, and lands, though they figure for centuries 
 in other parts of Essex. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 COMMISSIONER OF 'DOMESDAY BOOK: 
 
 To the modern reader a full account of the life of Adam 
 Sinclair, the son of Hubert of Rye, would probably be more 
 interesting and important than the biographies of dozens of 
 feudal fighting warriors; and there remains most authentic 
 knowledge of him and his doings. Even of his personal 
 character considerable things can be gathered. Getting the 
 clue to find him was nearly as difficult as making the eggs to 
 stand proved to the Spanish dons deriding Columbus as dis- 
 coverer, though the thing was fairly before the eyes. Sir 
 Henry Ellis in his Introduction to Domesday Book mentions 
 Adam in the lists he gives of landholders, but the indexer of 
 the Domesday Booh printed by the government record com- 
 mission never refers to him. The holders in rapite are alone 
 indexed, though it is notorious that many of the undertenants
 
 224 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 were far wealthier and more important. Examination of the 
 wonderful volumes directly shows Adam at every turn, not 
 only in the masterly arrangement of his subject with his three 
 fellow « king's justiciaries,' as the book itself calls its makers, 
 but as a very large landholder. Hasted in his History of Kent, 
 has frequent notices, though from Domesday only, of this per- 
 haps the greatest of all ' the men of Kent.' He was undertenant 
 of an immense portion of the bishop of Bayeux, Odo's estates, 
 the brother of the Conqueror, by far the richest landholder in 
 England. Adamus films Huberti has not one inch of soil by 
 the in capite holding, and it may be safely said that this, with 
 such a man, was by intention. That it was as practically 
 useful to hold from the one brother as the other, no matter 
 for the sovereignty, he must have decided. Alured, the chronicler 
 of Beverley, wrote of Odo, 'Qui fere secundus fuit rex Angliae 1 — 
 ' Who was almost a second king of England.' Jealousy between 
 the brothers kept Adam from all favours of grants from the 
 king, is a possibility not at all likely. There may have been a 
 pride with Odo which would not permit him to allow Adam to 
 hold but from himself. Adam was ti'easurer, chancellor, in 
 short, full dapifer to this richest sharer in the spoils of 
 England ; and he had the best of fields in which to glean 
 effectually. In ' Kent ' his name occurs continually. Pearson 
 in his Middle Ages calculates that Odo's yearly income in 
 England was about ^3380, and that the king's other uterine 
 brother, the duller Bobert de Moretayne, the next wealthiest, 
 had about ^£1900 a year. These are immense sums of money, 
 as the value of it then was. Odo accumulated in the sixteen 
 years after the Conquest enough to buy the papacy, and he had 
 already purchased a stately palace at Borne when in 1082 
 William seized him personally as earl of Kent, on his way to 
 Italy to use all his power to become pope. His effects were 
 soon after confiscated to the king's use, and as this was the 
 very time of the compilation of Domesday Booh, it is not likely 
 that Adam Sinclair suffered severely by the change. Had his 
 lord become the king of all the world that the pope then was, 
 his history would certainly have had great additional chapters in 
 it. Odo's nephew, Bufus, re-established him in his estates, 
 which had not lost anything by his absence for six years ; but 
 again he fell into trouble, and only got out of prison in Henry 
 the First's reign, when he went with Curthose to Jerusalem,
 
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 and died at the siege of Antioch. The crown would be his 
 nearest heir, but after the death of Henry, difficulties might 
 occur to Adam's rule of the bishop and earl's estates. William 
 of Iypres got the earldom of Kent in Stephen's time, he who 
 built the tower of the castle of Rye in Sussex, and it is probable 
 he was of the Sinclair connection, by marriage if not otherwise. 
 That he was by birth a Fleming nor aids nor hinders any 
 question of lineage. Adam kept his ' great possessions ' in 
 Kent and Northampton. The results of these changes could 
 hardly but improve the fortune of so able a man. Hasted 
 keeps repeating that Odo's property was confiscated to the 
 crown by Iiufus, but the change had no effect on an under- 
 tenant, and there is documentary proof that Adam's lands 
 remained to his lineage after his death. 
 
 Adam is one of the three chevaliers of Rye Castle in France 
 who escorted William, then only duke of Normandy, when 
 riding for his life from his enemies in Valence ; and he followed 
 his fortunes afterwards to Hastings with his three brothers in 
 the usual way. Some time then he must have formed the 
 friendship of Odo. The scholarship of both would draw them 
 together. Most of the histories are quite silent as to the 
 great and most practical love of learning of the bishop 
 of Bayeux. Some of his worst troubles came from the fact 
 that he was before and above his time, with all the cultivation 
 there undoubtedly was among the Normans. It is as Odo's 
 first man that Adam acted long after the Conquest, and this 
 brought him continually into the presence of the sovereign, 
 where his brother Eudo had first place. 
 
 In the MS. codex in bibliotheca Cottoniana, Nero, D.8., 
 from which Dugdale quotes the history of Hubert of Rye's 
 sons into the Monasticon, there are additions of which he did 
 not make use. Adam, like the abbot of the same name there, 
 was ' of Campes,' and this opens a vista of information. The 
 ' two camps ' are described by Hasted fully. They were near 
 Kemsing, on the London side of Maidstone ; and of all places 
 in England this is one of the most interesting to those who 
 have any interest in the lineage. Sinclairs for centuries have 
 clung tenaciously to this particular Kent district. Adam's 
 chief mansion was there, in front of the Hurst forest ; and a 
 more beautiful and fertile spot it would be impossible to 
 find anywhere. This MS. says he was given 'large pos- 
 
 P
 
 226 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 sessions in Kent,' and Campes was their centre. The name 
 arose from three British and Roman encampments in the 
 place. He was known as Adam of Campes as well as Adam 
 the son of Hubert. 
 
 That he was of the first capacity the whole of Domesday 
 Book goes to prove, but there are also everywhere marks of 
 self-possession and retiring sense of ability which have a most 
 refreshing effect in seeing him among those, in their noisy 
 clamant character at least, rather crude, brave mere warriors 
 with the earth-hunger on them. He also had a hearty apprecia- 
 tion of the value of land, as is to be inferred from the great law- 
 suit which Lanfranc, on his appointment to the archbishopric, 
 instituted against Odo, for taking possession of properties 
 belonging, he contended, to the see. Pinindean, where the 
 court was held, on the west side of the Medway not far from 
 where it reaches the Thames, became afterwards the possession 
 of Adam and his lineage. Geoffrey, bishop of Coustance, sat as 
 chief justiciary and viceroy on that great day, which had all 
 that was best in Kent there. Richard Fitz-Gilbert, Hamo 
 Vicecomes, the clerisy in its strength, were there ; and no doubt 
 Adam, as perhaps most interested, had a very anxious, and, 
 as the case ended, a somewhat unsuccessful time. Lanfranc 
 recovered pieces of lands attached to other properties ; but it 
 may safely be affirmed that the bishop of Bayeux, brother of 
 the king, and Adam his relation and manager, took their own 
 fully out of the whole affair. Not many more remarkable 
 events have there been in our civil history than this land 
 reckoning at Pinindean. Adam had a most difficult task 
 throughout, to keep Odo's business straight. His own fortunes 
 probably rose and fell to some extent with Odo's very chequered 
 life ; but he did secure large lands despite all those storms of 
 William the Conqueror seizing his own brother so that he 
 should not become pope and be then his lord, of William Rufus 
 conquering the bishop out of Pevensey and Rochester castles, 
 and of many other such troubles into which fell often the able 
 but perhaps fickle bishop of Bayeux, earl of Kent, and first 
 governor or viceroy, with the earl of Hereford, of Norman 
 England. It is easy to guess what opportunities and difficulties 
 Adam had under such a lord. 
 
 That he was worthy of all trust, his appointment by William 
 the Conqueror himself in 10S0, as commissioner to reckon up
 
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 227 
 
 his kingdom accurately for state purposes, is ample proof. It 
 is probable that he was an expert in money business of the 
 state. With the two Giffards (the earl of Buckingham and his 
 brother the chancellor of England and bishop of Winchester), 
 he kept continually conversant ; and it is all but certain that 
 he was, quietly as such men like to work, foot and hand in 
 some of their most difficult duties. Walter was one of his 
 fellow commissioners for Domesday Boole, the 'legati regis' — 
 ' lieutenants of the king,' as they are called sometimes there, 
 as well as 'king's justiciars.' 
 
 It is almost romantic how the names of these high bene- 
 factors of the nation have not been lost to memory and to 
 fame. There is nothing in the record itself, to discover who 
 its authors were. Healing's Chartulary, as it is called, pre- 
 served in the Cottonian library of MSS., Tib. A. xiil, is the 
 register of St. Mary's, Worcester ; and an extract from a claim 
 of its monks for a cartula to certain lands in the Oswaldeslaves 
 hundred, revealed this secret, to the infinite delight of the 
 admirers of able deeds and able men. In proving their claims 
 to the property, they go back to the time of William the 
 Conqueror, and insert an extremely important passage of the 
 very best kind of history. ' Hoc testimonium tot' wicecomitat' 
 wuirceastre dato Sacramento jusjurandi firmavit, exhortante et 
 ad laborante piissimo et prudentissimo patre dono Wulstand 
 epo tempore Wittmi senioris cora principibus ei'de regis Eemigio 
 scilicet Lincolniensi episcopi et comite WalTro Giffardo et 
 Henrico de Ferreris et Adam fre Eudoni dapiferi regis, qui 
 ad inquirendas et describendas possessiones et consuetudines 
 tarn regis qua principu suor, in hac provincia et in aliis pluri- 
 bus, ab ipso rege distincti sunt, eo tempore quo tota Anglia idem 
 describi fee ' — ' This testimony the whole county of Worcester 
 confirmed by oath, at the instance and effort of the very pious 
 and sagacious father the lord bishop Wulstand, in the time of 
 William the Conqueror, before these same princes of the king, 
 namely, Remigio, bishop of Lincoln; Earl Walter Giffard; 
 Henry of Ferrers; and Adam, the brother of Eudo, king's 
 dapifer, who to inquire about and describe the possessions and 
 customs of the king, as well as of his chiefs, in this province, 
 and in many others, were appointed by the king himself at that 
 time in which he made the whole of England to be described.' 
 The monks got their cartida, and if any proof were wanted,
 
 228 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 this would by its own antiquity and acceptance go far of itself 
 to prove the authenticity of the account of the compilers of 
 Domesday. There is not any question as to the value of the 
 information among the most critical authorities. 
 
 The best, and surely an immortal, monument to Adam's 
 fame, is the magnificent orderly record itself ; and a reference to 
 its pages, especially under ' Terra Episcopi Baiocensis,' in the 
 various counties, might be amply sufficient to bring him fully 
 before an inquirer's attention. His appearances solely in the 
 smaller type of those not holding directly from the king have 
 been explained. Practically, he was an in capite holder, though 
 there was hardly any real social distinction between the 
 highest and next highest forms of tenure. He is distinguished 
 from nearly all the holders in Domesday Book by the rather 
 unique position of being properly of neither tenure, and for 
 this variety from the monotony, the reader has to thank him, 
 as for much other benefit. What he held in Kent may be 
 given as example for the other counties, and good example, 
 because this was the chief scene of both his lord's and his own 
 interests. In the lest of Sudtone, Achestane hundred, Adam 
 the son of Hubert held from the bishop, Redlege ; in Helmstrie 
 hundred, South Cray and also Wickham ; in Laroschefel hun- 
 dred, Lelebourne ; in Aihorde hundred, Sudtone, Certh, another 
 Sudtone, Bogelei, Langvelei (the manor of which Hubert 
 Sinclair's daughter's husband was afterwards lord), Otringdene, 
 Esselve ; in Rochester hundred, Pinpa ; in Twiferde hundred 
 he held some land without a name; in Medston hundred, Celca, 
 Heham, Colinge, Bicklei ; in Rovinden hundred some lands un- 
 named ; in Faversham hundred, Ore, Stanefelle, and another Ore ; 
 in Ferleberge hundred, Fanne; and in Estrei hundred, Hamolde. 
 To reckon up all the entries in the various counties over which 
 Odo's lands, as was the method of land grants, spread, where 
 Adam, the commissioner and his steward, had holdings, would 
 be a miniature new Domesday. The object is gained that this 
 son of the house of Rye is known to have succeeded, at least 
 as well as his able brothers better known to general fame. 
 
 His brother Eudo Dapifer was his heir. It is not likely that 
 he was married, or if so he must have had no children or all had 
 died before himself. Like Hamo Dapifer he lived the indi- 
 vidual life, and left his properties to his nearest relatives. 
 There are several charters in the Textus Roffensis which amply
 
 COMMISSIONER OF 'DOMESDAY BOOK: 2:9 
 
 prove this. Eudo died in 11 19; and Adam (Eudo being 
 younger, and living to a great age) it is probable died early in 
 Henry Beauclei'c's reign. Their gifts to one of the favourite 
 churches with the lineage, St. Andrews, Rochester, aid, by 
 the interposition of possession by a third between the brothers, 
 the thought that Adam did not live long after the completion 
 of Domesday Book's pages. ' Eudo dapifer regis dedit Sancto 
 Andreae omnes Mas decimas quas Adam frater situs quondam 
 dederat Anschetillo archdiacono Cantuarberiae et quas idem 
 Anschetillus posted concessit Sancto Andreae'' — 'Eudo, dapifer 
 of the king, gave to St. Andrews all those tenths which 
 Adam his brother had formerly given to Anschetillus, arch- 
 deacon of Canterbury, and which the same Anschetillus 
 afterwards granted to St. Andrews.' If anything were 
 needed to add weight to the Cottonian account of the Eve 
 family this would satisfy all criticism. But there is still 
 another charter in the famous Rochester set of rolls which 
 shows the relations between Eudo and Adam well. Eudo 
 gives tenths of various kinds of produce to St. Andrews from 
 his lands of Buggeleia, Langley, Suthune, Leiburne, Readlega, 
 Culinga and Merelea. These are some of the same places to 
 which Adam's name is attached in Domesday. Certainly the 
 Fitz-Hamo or Corbeil Sinclairs had possession of some of his 
 lands, and they may either have got them at his death or after- 
 wards. From these charters there are incidental biographical 
 lights on both Eudo and Adam. One charter refers more 
 perhaps to the former's ways of life. ' Rodulphus pincerna 
 Eudonis dedit Saudi Andreae monachis quondam decimam 
 mam de Culingis valentem v solidos per annum pro anima 
 patris et matris ' — ' Rodulph, the butler of Eudo, gave to the 
 monks of St. Andrews a certain tenth of his, from Cooling, 
 worth five shillings in the year, for the soul of his father and 
 mother. ' Eudo gave him this property of which he grants the 
 tenths, Cowling being part of Eudo's heirship from his brother. 
 The western and eastern sides of the Med way down to the 
 Thames were the situation of these properties, which are easily 
 distinguishable in their modern names as, for examples, Boxley, 
 Ridley, Langley, Sutton, Leyburn. Cowling. The Celca which 
 Adam had, is the Chalk which Hubert, the son of Hamo of 
 Colchester, gave to the monks of the monastery of Bermondsey, 
 and which his grandson, William of Langvale, confirmed to them.
 
 230 THE SIX CLAWS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 In Edward the First's time the monks, in answer to a Quo 
 warranto, proved their right to it then, by the aid of I Jul mil 
 Sinclair, miles. How it came to llamo de St. Clair of Col- 
 chester Castle, would be most interesting to discover. This 
 will come up in discussing others of the name, who likewise 
 possessed some of Adam's lands. 
 
 The Cobhams and the Brocs got parts of Sinclair lands. 
 Whether they were of the lineage, it is more difficult to see 
 than that William of Eynesford, the sirs and lords Leyburne, 
 and the several Sir Peters of lluntingfield were. One 
 Eynesford created, inadvertently enough, the quarrel between 
 Becket and King Henry the Second ; the Cobhams, and the 
 Brocs especially, seem to have had blood reasons for the part 
 they took in it ; Sir Peter of lluntingfield was one of Edward 
 the First's warriors in his early success at Carlaverock in 
 Scotland : but they were all extinct in the male line before the 
 fifteenth century. The Fitz-Bernards also cross the paths too 
 frequently to have no closer than general ties. The Aubenis 
 were related through the daughter of Earl Simon Sinclair, and 
 William Aubeny's name is the almost invariable accompani- 
 ment of Eudo's frequent signature to charters, and especially 
 royal ones. William was the king's pincerna or butler, one 
 of the very highest offices of the time. 
 
 With Adam, the commissioner of Domesday Book, bachelor, 
 learned, and extremely wealthy, the Sinclairs most under the 
 rule of the Norman dynasty, of which they were part, must 
 now be left for those of the days of the Plantagenets. Naturally 
 they grew more of strangers, though gradually, to the royal 
 court, when ties of kin got dim, and the reckoning only could 
 be made by female connections. All that was highest in 
 marriage, lands, or office they had in England for nearly a 
 century after the Conquest, and the glow of their fame and 
 their physical and intellectual powers kept them high for 
 centuries afterwards, in a way rare to any one particular 
 lineage. The weight of the life of the next to be considered 
 goes into the era of the new dynasty of the Celtic Fulcs, 
 though biographic facts shun too fixed lines,
 
 HUGO DE ST. CLARE. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 HUGO DE ST. CLARE. 
 
 History which deals with the most notorious of the arch- 
 bishops of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, never overlooks Hugh 
 Sinclair's position in the quarrel between the prelate and his 
 king, Henry the Second. The family were as high at court, in 
 his person, as when the dynasty of their own lineage was on 
 the throne. They may have owed this chiefly to Matilda, the 
 empress, though there is every sign that her son of the Anjou 
 descent loved them dearly. How Hubert Sinclair saved his 
 life has been told ; and how Hugo stood by him in the worst 
 struggle of his difficult and troubled reign, is equally worthy of 
 remembrance. The first preferment Thomas a Becket got in 
 the church, after he left the bar, was from the abbey of St. 
 Albans, to Bradlield, the property of the descendants of Richard 
 Sinclair, the hero of Hastings ; and Hugo de St. Clare knew 
 of him through his relations more than others of Henry's 
 court. Matthew of Westminster is authority for this. But 
 Becket' s prominence began on appointment to be archdeacon 
 of Canterbury. After being made high chancellor his love 
 of pomp appeared to the full. On becoming archbishop of 
 Canterbury, his asceticism, even to want of clean linen and the 
 consequences, grew equally notorious. From 11 63 till his 
 so-called martyrdom in 1 171, he tortured King Henry with an 
 ingenuity which was ostensibly in the ' cause of God,' or, to 
 use that phrase which was to the king as bitter as gall, ' saving 
 the honour of God,' but which seems little if at all short of 
 fiendish. Fifty years after his death, so productive of monastic 
 miracle and popular pilgrimage, the clever heads of the uni- 
 versity of Paris publicly debated whether then the soul of 
 Becket was in heaven or hell. He was about the most malig- 
 nant official that ever stepped on English soil, and undoubt- 
 edly meant to bully spiritually from the sovereign downwards, 
 if he had his way. The clergy committed murders, and not 
 only were left unpunished, but against every right of humanity 
 kept in their positions by the church, which claimed the full 
 jurisdiction. A glaring case of seduction and murder at last 
 brought matters to a crisis, and Henry grew determined to have
 
 212 
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 at least the punishment of felons completed, whether lay or 
 clerical. The constitutions of Clarendon were an Lcles of state 
 and law to arrive at this point; and Becket, tin' archbishop, 
 after severe struggle, made some movement of concession, but 
 immediately afterwards retracted,; as one who had been a Judas 
 in the act to the 'honour of God.' He got absolution from 
 the pope, and henceforth he nailed his colours to the mast. 
 Disobedience and insolence to his king, devotion to the Eoman 
 hierarchy, were the rules of the rest of his disagreeable and 
 miserable life. The best and bulk of his own clergy despised 
 the conceited stubbornness of the incorrigible ascetic, as being 
 of like character at bottom with the buffoonery and license to 
 correspondent excess of his lay days, and with the absurd dis- 
 play of his lord chancellor and ambassador period. The man 
 was a parvenu and impudent mountebank, who, late in life, 
 found a cause and a hot iron conscience. Such a canker be- 
 comes of necessity a grief to himself and every one with whom 
 he has to do. 
 
 When he had to flee to France in the first year of the quarrel, 
 1 163, the system of letters of excommunication by Pope Alex- 
 ander's aid, who was only a schismaticised pope, began. Hugo 
 de St. Clare was about the first to suffer from this kind of 
 weapon. He was one of the lords of council. His special offence 
 was that he took possession by the king's authority of lands and 
 goods of the see of Canterbury. What could deserve more the 
 clerical bitterest of all cursing and swearing than meddling, 
 justly or not, with lucre? Thomas 'the saint,' in his letter 
 from Sens in France, ad suffrananeous suos, excommunicated 
 John of Oxford, Richard of llchester, Jocelin of Baliol, Ranulph 
 of Broc (Ranulph for cutting off his horse's tail during the 
 quarrel in England), Thomas Fitz-Bernard, and Hugo de Sancto 
 Claro. He gives particulars as to the crimes of the last two, 
 ' Excommunicavimus etiam Hugonem de Sancto Claro et Thomam 
 filium Bemardi, qui ejusdem ecclesiae Cantuariae bona et posses- 
 siones absque conniventia nostra occupaverunt' — ' AVe have excom- 
 municated also Hugh Sinclair and Thomas Fitz-Bernard, who 
 have taken possession of the goods and properties of the same 
 church of Canterbury without our permission.' 
 
 Lord Lyttleton,in his Life of Henri/ Second, givesthe strangest 
 details of the preparatio this designing or mad, or both, pre- 
 late gave himself before he felt fitted for this special effort.
 
 HUGO DE ST. CLARE. 233 
 
 He had a whole night's watch before the sepulchre of some 
 doubtful St. Dransius, whom popular opinion credited as 
 favourer of victors in personal combats. Geoffrey Baynard 
 did the same thing the night before the day on which he over- 
 threw unfortunate Henry of Essex, the craven or mistaken 
 standard-bearer of England. It is curious bow well Becket 
 gauged and engaged the people's affections on his side. Lest 
 this might savour too much of the secular order of things, he 
 took care to spend another night's politic devotion at the 
 shrine of St. Gregory, whom he held to be the founder of the 
 Anglican chui'ch. Thus supported, he went to Vizelay to do 
 his self-imposed duty ; and it was only by a pressing message 
 from King Louis of France, saying that Henry the Second 
 was extremely ill, that he was then prevented from including 
 his king among the ministers he did excommunicate. It was 
 hardly to be wondered at that Henry once so bitterly cried out 
 that his archbishop wished to ruin him both soul and body ; 
 and it is said that Becket knew him to be of so religious a 
 tendency, despite all his gallantries, that he meant to drive 
 him into a monastery as place of refuge from the world, of 
 which he was often heard declaring his utter weariness. The 
 penances he underwent after Becket was no longer his oppo- 
 nent are proof of the power the prelate thought thus to exer- 
 cise over him. Illness and King Louis saved him from the 
 first stroke of St. Peter's or St. Thomas of Canterbury's 
 vindictive sword ; but Becket ' pronounced,' says Lyttleton, 
 ' several sentences of excommunication against his servants 
 and ministers, particularly against John of Oxford, for the 
 causes before mentioned ; against Richard de Ivelchester, the 
 archdeacon of Poictiers, for holding communion with the arch- 
 bishop of Cologne, a favourer of the antipope ; against Hugh 
 de St. Clare and Thomas Fitz-Bernard, for having usurped the 
 goods of the church of Canterbury (that is, for having obtained 
 the sequestration of those he had forfeited by his flight) ; and, 
 lastl} T , against the chief justiciary, Richard de Luci, and Joce- 
 line de Baliol, as the favourers of the king's tyranny, and the 
 contrivers of those heretical pravities, the constitutions of 
 Clarendon.' 
 
 Again, in 1168, from Pontigny, he excommunicated Gilbert 
 Folliot, bishop of London, who had gone wholly over to the 
 side of his king ; and, in a letter to the chapter of St. Paul's,
 
 234 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Becket warns them to shun all the excommunicated. On tin- 
 coming Ascension, he informs them, he is to have further 
 heyday of new excommunications. Meantime, to keep their 
 
 minds fresh on the subject, he sums his previous work, in 
 addition to their bishop, thus: — ' Hcec sunt nomina excom- 
 municatorum : Jocelinus Saresbiriensis episcopus, comes JI/i<j<>, 
 Randulphusde Broc, Thomas filiits Bernardi, Robertus de J: 
 clericus, Hugo de Saw-to Glaro, Letardus, clericus de Norflita, 
 Nigellus Saccavilla, Ricardus f rater de Hastinges, qui ecclesiam 
 nostrum de Monocotone occupavit : Valete' — 'These are the 
 names of the excommunicated: — Jocelin, bishop of Salis- 
 bury, Earl Hugo, Ralph of Broc, Thomas Fitz - Bernard, 
 Robert of Broc, cleryman, Hugh Sinclair, Letard the cler- 
 gyman of Northfieet, Nigel Sackville, Richard the brother of 
 Hastings, who took possession of our church of Monocotone: 
 Farewell.' Sackville he accused of holding a manor belonging 
 to the archbishopric ; but his views of law and right may be 
 understood from the fact that the very beginning of his cleri- 
 cal arrogance was claiming Tunbridge Castle and its lands, the 
 home and patrimony of the great family of < 'lares, as under- 
 holding to the see of which Becket was holder. Who were 
 in carpite holders if the Clares were not ? He excommunicated 
 William of Eynesford, an in cajnte baron, against an express 
 law ; a thing never before done under any king, to whom the 
 first lords were alone responsible. What made the matter 
 worse was that it was on his own unjust presentation of a 
 cleric to a church in prejudice of this baron's rights. To have 
 claimed Tunbridge as a fief of his, seemed the top of insolence ; 
 but especially in a threatening letter to him, without the court 
 etiquette of introduction, Henry himself soon felt the kind of 
 man the saint that once was a devil could be with his crozier 
 and sackcloth. The ' great ' Augustines, and others such, take 
 all the fun they can out of both periods of life. Other names, 
 the best he could find, are in the lists of excommunicated, such 
 as Alan de Neville and Richard de Poictiers. As early as 
 1 1 65, Rapin says, he 'excommunicated all that adhered to 
 the constitutions of Clarendon, and particularly some lords of 
 the council, who however despised his censures.' This is 
 too general ; but he mentions nine names, of which Hugh de 
 St. Clare's is one. In the chroniclers there are plentiful details, 
 and lists of the lords in council in particular who suffered.
 
 HUGO DE ST. CLARE. 235 
 
 Matthew of Westminster, Fitz-Stephen, and Hoveden are 
 useful references. Diceto and Matthew Paris are good, espe- 
 cially as to the names. In his letter to Pope Alexander, 
 Becket, announcing what he had been doing, names Hugo 
 and the rest ; and with the consciously impudent intolerance 
 which is only bred of clericalism in contest for the ' honour 
 of God,' self included, adds that he had not excommunicated 
 the king yet, but would not defer it long. All the historians 
 deal with this subject largely, and with these men. Gold- 
 smith calls Hugo and his batch ' the king's chief ministers.' 
 But he is not much of an authority on the subject. Another 
 history says that they were Baliol, Lucy, and 'four others 
 of Henry's courtiers and prime favourites.' Hugo is men- 
 tioned as one of these; and it is certain they were the six 
 best men in England, next to its king. One of the latest 
 compilers names Hugo de St. Clair and other three as the 
 Norman favourites of Henry. In numbers such as four or 
 six there is no great danger of that favouritism which has been 
 so deadly in all annals. 
 
 The Thomas filius Bernardi. who is specially mentioned as 
 seizing, with Hugo de St. Clair, the goods and possessions of 
 the see of Canterbury, must have had blood or affinity rela- 
 tionship to him. In the valuable gatherings of Benedict, 
 abbot of Peterborough, the ' burgh ' from which Hubert 
 took his local surname, there is a brother of this Thomas who 
 plays a large part in the conquest of Ireland. He was sent 
 beforehand by the king, with William Fitz-Adelm, his dapifer, 
 to prepare for the arrival there of the sovereign, and he got 
 Wexford and Waterford as his reward. Afterwards this Fitz- 
 Adelm, then viceroy, has Wexford, and it appears Robert had 
 left Ireland, for in 11 76, when England was divided into six 
 provinces for the better dispensing of justice, Robert Fitz- 
 Bernard with Richard Giffard and another were the rulers of 
 Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and several other counties. Hugh of 
 Cressi, William Fitz-Raphe, and William Basset are names of 
 others appointed which have genealogical pertinence. In the 
 Great Rolls Robert Fitz- Bernard was farmer of the county of 
 Kent, It is supposable that in the seizure by Hugo Sinclair 
 and Thomas Fitz-Bernard there may have been a revival of 
 old claims, through their relation, Adam, the commissioner, as 
 Odo's under-tenant, of large parts of whose lands they had
 
 23 6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 already possession by heirship. The king's purpose, however, 
 may wholly explain their doings. Hugo from the Gh'eat h 
 of Henry Second was vicecomes of Kent as his uncle Eamo 
 Dapifer was, and therefore by this office saw after the king's 
 
 rights. 
 
 Not only did he get this title in heirship or by prescription 
 from his uncle, but he was also king's butler or cup-bearer, 
 the place that then retained most of the privileges of the ori- 
 ginal dapifer, seneschal, or mayor of the palace. In Henry 
 the Third's reign, 1263, the appointment of Simon dc Mont- 
 fort, earl of Leicester, as high steward of England, and at the 
 same time Sir Roger of Leybourne, of Hugo's lineage, as 
 steward of the household, illustrates the history of the divi- 
 sion of the original office. M. West., Wikes, and Tindal are 
 authorities for these appointments, and Tindal says Sir Roger 
 got made pincerna by the king, though accounted his greatest 
 enemy, which is proof of hereditary claim. The Albinis, earls 
 of Arundel, Salop, and Chester had been king's butlers. 
 It was William Albini, pincernaor butler, who married Adeliza, 
 the beautiful dowager queen of Henry the First. The office 
 seems to have left the Albinis, though they still claimed the 
 privilege of being the pincerna of coronation daj-s ; and Hugo 
 de St. Clare, by relationship to them, and as of near consan- 
 guinity to Eudo and Hamo, the dapifers, was the proper per- 
 son to get the high office. The chronicler, Benedict us abba* 
 Petroburgensis, says that one of the St. Liz was pincerna in 
 Richard the First's reign, who have been proved of the same 
 lineage. Hugo Pincerna is to be found on the Carta Eudonis 
 Dapiferi holding land of the extent of seven knights' fees. 
 Eudo's lands were then in the hands of the king, but this con- 
 siderable portion of the estate shows that, despite the intricate 
 female rights which affected properties wholly partible, Hugo's 
 lineage to Eudo secured some possessions to him out of the 
 great ' feoda.' Henry Fitz-Gerald, the king's chambeidain, 
 managed it; and his brother, Dominus Gwarenne, a chief 
 officer at court, well known to history, as the Fitz-Geralds 
 became generally in this reign, holds portions, and also some 
 other brothers, as from the king. Eudo's lands escheated to 
 the crown, but not without considerable and prolonged hon- 
 ourable struggle. In the first four years of the reign Hugo 
 Pincerna as vicecomes Kanciae appears again and again re-
 
 HUGO DE ST. CLARE. 237 
 
 ceiving monies for the treasury ; and there can be no doubt 
 that he is the Hugo de St. Clare of the Becket struggle, and 
 the lord of Aeslingharu. From the Textus Hoffensis there could 
 come accumulation of evidence about his connection as a 
 dweller in the locality and as a relative to others of his sur- 
 name. For example, to a confirmation of a charter, extracted 
 from the Cottonian MSS., granted by Geffrey de Say to St. 
 Andrews, Rochester, who could be more suitable and ready 
 witnesses than ' William, son of Henry of Cobham, Hugo Pin- 
 cerna,' and others? The title pincerna was at this period 
 quite distinct from dapifer, having the conservative traditions 
 as its pride, the dapifers becoming numerous and only divi- 
 sional officers of state and law. The Bigods were never pin- 
 cernas, and therefore do not confound with this Hugo de St. 
 Clare, Hugo being a name frequent to that family, related only 
 by affinity to the Sinclairs, through whose rights they got into 
 their dapiferships. To these Fitz-Geralds, descended from 
 Gerald, the steward of Arnulph Montgomery of the castle and 
 honour of Pembroke, Geffrey Mandeville, grandson of Eudo 
 Dapifer, had given a one-fee holding of Eudo's lands ; but 
 their property increased by geometric progression through 
 their Irish doings of fame. What is of closer interest to dis- 
 cussion of Hugo Sinclair's life, Philip of Leybourne in Kent 
 also held, like him, seven fees of Eudo's lands. The lords of 
 Leybourne, who are frequently mentioned among the greater 
 barons by Rapin, Tindal, and all the historians, were un- 
 doubtedly of Hugo's stock, and subsequent facts will help to 
 make this clear. 
 
 Perhaps one of the most interesting entries among the gifts 
 to St. Andrews, Rochester, is one which shows that Hugh Sin- 
 clair was not the kind of man to deserve excommunication 
 from church or state or whatever else when human interests 
 are to be dealt with wisely and well. 'Hugo Pincerna dedit 40-5. 
 ad elemosinariam Roffensem, qui provenit de tenemento in Soutli- 
 flete et alibi in die anniversarii ejus dot elemosin. pietanciam 
 inventus cy habet minorem missam in conventu Sf distribu- 
 tionem pauper ib us ' — ' Hugo, the royal butler, gave forty shil- 
 lings to the Rochester alms, which he provided for from 
 holdings in Southfleet and elsewhere, on the days of his birth, 
 and he gives the charitable offering for the convent, and he has 
 a smaller portion sent into the convent, and a distribution to
 
 2 3 8 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the poor.' With the value of money then, and these gifts as 
 yearly, the lord of Aeslingham might well have favours of 
 chapel and house chaplains from the see at his further own 
 charges. If the antiquity and brevity of such Latin records 
 obscure the exact force of the words, there is no doubt about 
 the general meaning of such an entry as the above. It is of 
 such a man that Thomas Becket writes in 1 169 to the pope or 
 half-pope, Alexander, as one of the ' malefactors ' deserving no 
 mercy. In his epistle, the twentieth of the collections in the 
 Bodleian and Cottonian libraries, so he designates them. 
 But let Lord Lyttleton's views of Becket be read in this re- 
 spect. ' He also intreated him not to absolve the malefactor* 
 he (Becket) had excommunicated. These malefactors were 
 several of the most eminent prelates and barons of England. 
 Having Avaited the term prescribed to him by the pope, 
 and being therefore reinstated in his former authority, he had 
 at once excommunicated the bishops of London and Salisbury, 
 the archdeacon of Canterbury, (whom in a letter to the pope 
 he calls the arch-devil of Canterbury), Nigel de Sacville, and 
 Thomas Fitz- Bernard, officers of the king's household, Hugh de 
 St. Clare, Hugh, earl of Chester, Richard de Lucy, great-justi- 
 ciary, and other chief men of the kingdom. All this was done 
 between Palm-sunday and Whitsunday without any notice of 
 it having been given to Alexander.' This was hardly clerical 
 obedience either. 
 
 But enough of the famous historical quarrel. It will help to 
 throw light on its nature if this ' despoiler of churches' (could 
 Thomas Becket's excommunicating letters be believed) is shown 
 further in his genuine character as a reverent as well as cap- 
 able man. The bishop of Rochester had another opinion of 
 him and his family than had the archbishop. In the Textus 
 Roffensis, edited by Dr. Thorpe, there is a double entry of a 
 charter to the lord of Aeslingham, as it calls Hugo. Aesling- 
 ham manor is the Frindsbury district of to-day, and it is fruit- 
 ful of information with regard to the Sinclairs generally. 
 When they got possession of Aeslingham, it was not the fifth 
 of the parish, but this name soon covered it all. The bishop 
 grants a free chapel to Hugo within his manor of Aeslingham, 
 as recompense for the many benefits of him and members of 
 his family to St. Andrews, Rochester. This is the second 
 John of its bishops. The servants of the manor were to be
 
 HUGO DE ST. CLARE. 239 
 
 buried in the chapel, but though at a loss to the church, as the 
 charter puts it, the family were to have burial in St. Andrew?. 
 For the monks' services of burial at the chapel, ten shillings 
 annually were to be paid, with thirty sheaves of wheat, thirty 
 of barley, and thirty of oats, from the harvest fields. Bishop 
 John II. further gives him the license to have his house chap- 
 lain at his own charges, as the previous bishops, whom he 
 names, had granted. There is no doubt about the territorial 
 position of the lord of Aeslingham if no further knowledge of 
 him had been rescued from oblivion. Of this valuable charter 
 the signatures are perhaps the very best part : Hugo de 
 Sancto Claro himself, Philip Gruer de Sancto Claro, Robert de 
 Clovilla, William Richard de Clovilla, another Hugo de Sancto 
 Claro, Robert de Sancto Claro, Roger de Sancto Claro, and 
 some others. Roger is mentioned as his brother. The kindli- 
 ness and respect to which this Latin charter testifies, are all the 
 more genuine from the fact that Aeslingham manor was before 
 this the best endowment the bishopric had. Offa, king of the 
 Mercians, gave it to the bishop of Rochester in the eighth cen- 
 tury, and Sigered, king of Kent, confirmed the grant, as also 
 did Egbert. The charters with their exact dates are preserved 
 in this Textus Roffensis. In Domesday Book it is part of the 
 lands of the bishopric, and if the exceptional threefold increase 
 of revenue from it then, as compared with that in the time of 
 Edward the Confessor, is indication, it could not but have been 
 a most desirable possession. How it left the church will appear 
 in discussing Hugo's lineage. The point of importance now is 
 that the favourite minister of Henry the Second, if he had no 
 superstitious regard for the church and its officials, was every- 
 thing but an irreligious personage. In the Report of the His- 
 torical MSS. Commission he appears in Normandy as witness, 
 ' Hugo de Sancto Claro,' together with the chief men of Henry 
 the Second's court, to the endowment of a religious house there 
 by a Norman noble ; and this is indication of full similar interest 
 in such doings. He had too much traditional fame from his 
 ancestors, as founders of abbeys and churches, to neglect his 
 relisrious for state duties, however honourable. If he signed 
 Stephen's charter in 1136 he must have lived to a good old 
 age. In the list given by Richard Prior of Hagulstadt, one of 
 the X. Scriptores, or earliest authorities of English history, 
 'Hugo de Sancto Claro' is the signature, and not ' Haino de
 
 24 o THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Sancto Claro,' as Lord Lyttleton's Cottonian MS. authority 
 states. Perhaps the valuable fact is that one or other did sign 
 then. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 THE DESCENT OF THE BARON OF AESLINGHAM. 
 
 Sir William Dugdale, England's facile princeps of laborious 
 genealogists and antiquaries, found it the hardest part of his 
 toil to fix the exact relationships of persons whom he met with 
 in his endless but always useful researches. This has been felt 
 strongly in these fields, even when there is no possible doubt 
 about'the lineage in itself. Records, having objects of their 
 own, rarely show themselves as of direct use to historical pur- 
 pose. By study and inference they give out their secrets. 
 One crosses light back over another, and something unmis- 
 takably true is secured. To expect absolute accuracies of 
 uncles, aunts, daughters, sons, grandsons, granddaughters, 
 and further, without fail, is absurd with respect to contem- 
 porary families. If there is safe toiling within any particular 
 stock at distant periods, it is all the most exacting ought to 
 claim. A great delight comes when any of the established and 
 authentic sources of national knowledge stand up as rocks to 
 support weaker evidences, which could be rather grasped at 
 than secured but for such help. Hugh Sinclair's lineage is 
 cleared up by an entry in the Molls of 31 Hen. I., under the 
 headings ' Kent, Sussex, and Boseham.' Boseham was the south- 
 western part of Sussex. Hunter's edition of the passage from 
 this state record runs, ' Hamo Dapifer debat quando mortuus 
 fuit C m arg. pro. terra 1 filia Rob de Clovilla ad oji Hug nep 
 sui' — ' Hamo Dapifer owed when he died one hundred marks 
 silver ' [as tax to the royal treasury] ' in regard to land and the 
 marriage of the daughter of Robert of Cloville to his nephew 
 Hugo.' This is the usual payment to the king when land 
 changed hands and one's heir got married. That Hugo paid it 
 himself, as heir to part of his uncle's property, goes without 
 saying ; and the entry in 1 1 3 1 gives a safe inference as to the 
 date of Hamo Dapifer's death. His other nephew, Robert de 
 Crevequer, his sister's son, pays ^156, 13s. 4d. of legacy duty
 
 DESCENT OF THE BARON OF AESLINGHAM. 241 
 
 on getting also a portion of Haino's lands the same year, which 
 confirms the probability of 11 30 or 1131 being his last year. 
 The Magna Britannia excels itself in praise of the ' potent 
 ancient and illustrious family of the Crevequers ' who were 
 ' the lords of Kent ' by pre-eminence. It was this Robert with 
 Hamo's lands who was its greatest English builder, making 
 Chatham the caput baronice, and founding the famous Leeds 
 ( lastle and Leeds Priory of Kent. They were of affinity to 
 Hamo by marriage of his sister, and not by blood, as Hasted 
 risked guessing, this same rotulus proving the fact. His nephew 
 Hugo St. Claire was of his own strain, and the Clovilles by 
 their frequent appearance together with the Sinclairs, as for 
 example in the charter of the bishop of Rochester, seem to 
 have been nearer kin than marriage would of itself account for. 
 Cloville is certainly only a local name. The lineage gets numer • 
 ous in Kent, the only place in England where this is very 
 remarkable of it. Local naming grew to be useful, for distinc- 
 tion's sake. Patience would probably discover the baron 
 Leybournes of Leybourne Castle, who ended in the heiress 
 called from her riches the 'Infanta of Kent,' to be Sinclairs. 
 Lords Gray of Codnor have been supposed the heirs of Adam 
 the commissioner's lands of Cray. Their origin from the father 
 of Arlotta, mother of the Conqueror, was discovered perhaps 
 after their distinction in English history made them mar- 
 quesses of Dorset and half the titles of the peerage. Boxley, 
 once held by Eudo Dapifer, has its tenths confirmed to Roches- 
 ter by the Leybournes, the gift of Eudo ' their antecessor.' 
 The Brocs or Brookes and the Cobhams were locally named, 
 and possessed much of Adam, Eudo, and Hamo's lands. But 
 let these stand for general specimens of inquiries which might 
 profitably be made, and without limit. The Clovilles and the 
 Sinclairs actually named in records are sufficient present quest. 
 Besides the special juxtaposition of the Clovilles with Hugo 
 as evidenced by his marriage and the signatures of the charter 
 of the bishop, there is the suggestive fact that a William of 
 Cloville and a Robert were proprietors of Okely, of which they, 
 William by reason of his ' devotion,' gave the tenths besides 
 other gifts to St. Andrews, Rochester, as the Textus shows. 
 The tenths of Henherst in the parish of Cobham, a manor some 
 time in the possession of one of the two Williams of Longvale, 
 and of Goscelin, an ancestor of theirs, are given to St. Andrews, 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Rochester, by a William of Cloville,as well as by them, Gosce- 
 lin's charter dating 1091. It is worth remembering that 
 Edward the Confessor's intemuntius to William, duke of Nor- 
 mandy, was the rich merchant Goscel in. whose marriage aided 
 so much to the rise of the house of Rye, Eubert being the 
 interna nt ins and sequester who volunteered the dangerous duty 
 of getting the symbols of English sovereignty conveyed back 
 to his lord. In 2 Ed. I., 1274, William d<- Sancto < ilaro pos- 
 sesses the Okely property. It may have come to him through 
 the marriage connection of Hugo to Robert de Cloville's daugh- 
 ter. The period between is about a hundred years ; and, with 
 the valley of the Med way nearly in entire possession of Sin- 
 clairs, there would not be want of male heirs if the Clovilles 
 were originally of the lineage, as seems possible. 
 
 TheCloville connection proves Hugo to be of the Fitz-IIamo 
 branch, by being the nephew of Hamo Dapifer. That he signed 
 the national charter given by Stephen in 11 36, is aid to the 
 knowledge of him by the rotulus 31 Hen. I., through his mar- 
 riage then, 1 13 1, to the daughter of Robei't Clovil la. At the 
 time of the Becket quarrel, beginning 11 63, he would be a 
 man of age and experience upon whom the king could reckon 
 securely. Hugo Sinclair's lineage as of the Corboil and ducal 
 family of Normandy is certain. It was more difficult to dis- 
 cover his father than his uncle, Hamo Dapifer; but, solvitur 
 inquirendo. There was a Peerage published in 17 10, by Roper 
 and Collins, London, which throws great light on the subject. 
 The writer was fully acquainted with Dugdale's works, and 
 with other records to which that Hercules had not access, adding 
 valuable facts to the histories of various houses. Under ' Gran- 
 ville, earl of Bath,' has been found the clue to several of the 
 knots which have been the most difficult to untie in the Sin- 
 clair lineage. These earls will have attention in their due place. 
 Here enough of their story to show Hugo's descent must suffice. 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, the 'knight of Rye,' when he went in 
 1090 to conquer Glamorgan and other parts of South Wales, 
 had as the first two on the well-known list of his twelve famous 
 knights, William of London and Richard de Granville. They 
 were his own brothers. Richard's descendants proved this in 
 the reign of Charles II., and got an earldom and the promise 
 of higher rank, on the validity of the proof. There is no ques- 
 tion among the genealogists about his descent. Richard had
 
 DESCENT OF THE BARON OF AESLINGHAM. 243 
 
 his local name from Granville in Normandy, near St. Lo, 
 Thorigny (of which Fitz-Hamo was lord), Eye Castle, and the 
 other neighbouring estates of his relations. He was at the 
 battle of Hastings with his brothers, and got for ' his signal 
 services,' says the Peerage, ' the castle and lordship of Biddi- 
 ford with other lordships, lands, and possessions in Devon, 
 Cornw-all, Somerset, and Bucks., many whereof remain to his 
 posterity to this day.' The History of Cambria was translated 
 from the much earlier Welsh in 15 84. Miss Blanch Parry, a 
 gentlewoman of the queen, had the copy of the original, and 
 gave it to the translator. Stow and all the other antiquaries 
 have cot their best facts about Wales from this source, and it 
 has a specially full description of Robert Fitz-Hamo s con- 
 quest, not forgetting to celebrate frequently the worthiness of 
 the Norman, wonderful to say ; even toward the Welsh also. 
 It tells the measurement of his first acquisition of territory, 
 with very particular reference to the places whence the twenty- 
 two and twenty-seven miles are taken of length and breadth. 
 Robert himself took eleven knights' fees of the thirty- six and 
 a half which he ultimately secured, building Cardiff Castle as 
 the chief of the eighteen castles with regal right within his rule. 
 He ' had his chancer} 7 , exchequer, and fair court-house ' there. 
 His Monday monthly court is described most interestingly. 
 For his under-lords there was lodging provided by fixed statute 
 in the outer ward of the castle. They came on Monday, the 
 court was held on Tuesday, and on Wednesday they went away 
 to hold the sub-courts of their own castles and lordships, after 
 this monthly general enlightenment. There is the homely 
 glimpse that Fitz-Hamo held, for the provision of his own 
 house, a large grange in Boviarton. 
 
 But it is of his first knight, William de Londres, that 
 inquiry is being made. Richard of Granville had the lordship 
 and castle of Neth as his share of the new Welsh addition to 
 his fortunes. It was made up of three knights' fees. But 
 William had the castle and manor of Ogmor, which formed 
 four knights' fees. Of the two brothers, it is certain he was 
 the elder. If it is accepted universally that Richard was the 
 brother of Fitz-Hamo, the relationship of William as another 
 brother, is as firmly secured by the conditions of these Welsh 
 possessions. This William de Londres, of Ogmor, and other 
 lordships, was the father of Hamo of Colchester, and of Hugo,
 
 244 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the lord of Aeslingham. Thomas Nicholas in his work, 1875, 
 on the antiquities of Wales, says that he had a son Maurice, 
 the builder with his father of Welsh abbeys, who became the 
 lord of Castle Ogmor and the other Welsh properties, and 
 that Maurice had a son William. He always takes care to note 
 that the chief interests of the original William de Londres were 
 in England and Normandy; but in describing the conquesl of 
 South Wales by the three brothers and the other knights, he 
 puts this William farthest to the west, who from Ogmor 
 pushed forward into Carmarthenshire. It is more than pro- 
 bable that he was the actual builder of that castle of St. Clare 
 which still gives the name to the town near its ruins, and that 
 his brother Robert Sinclair or Fitz-IIamo got the general credit 
 of it as head of the expedition. The history of the Welsh 
 branch of William's family might clear up the proper origin 
 of Fitzmaurices, Fitzgeralds, and other Latinised ' aps ' who 
 when they reached Pembroke pushed with Norman enterprise 
 across the Irish Channel for fresh fields and pastures new. 
 Such account sounds far more like the tenor of history than 
 heraldic tales or sennachy heroics of Italian if not Trojan origin 
 to the greatest ruling families of Ireland, who were Normans, 
 and nothing more, and quite enough too for all rational pur- 
 poses of distinction or heroism. Though it might be frightful 
 heresy to Celtic minds, the flying shot may be risked, that 
 even their Williamses may in their best branch have Norman 
 ancestry, Oliver Cromwell, who was a Williams, taking origin 
 from or near some of the South Wales castles always held by 
 these gallant conquerors, William St. Clare, his brothers, and 
 the rest. It was William de Londres (William Sinclair of 
 London) who founded with his niece, and not sister, Matilda 
 Sinclair, countess of Gloucester, and wife of Henry the First's 
 son Robert, the abbey of Savigny in France, 1140. Their 
 common charter, to which the seal of William de St. Clair is 
 still attached, loses entirely its enigmatical, and gains the most 
 sterlingly useful character. The theory that he was her brother, 
 as the son of Fitz-Hamo by the Princess Nesta, his first wife, 
 has to be given up ; though it is yet useful from the help it 
 gave to discovering the full truth of the matter. The 
 scientific genealogists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 were right, in showing issue only from his second marriage, 
 with Sybil Montgomery, the sister of Robert de Belesme.
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MEDWAY. 245 
 
 It was scantiness of evidence that compelled towards such 
 explanation, which was not, after all, very wide of the mark. 
 Comparison of these findings with the accounts of Matilda 
 and William Sinclair, already given, will easily correct and 
 finish this part of the general inquiry. Hamo, who was sheriff 
 and fee-farmer of Colchester, and holder of extensive lands 
 in Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Huntingdon, and 
 other counties, was the chief heir of this William of London, 
 who is the signer of the charter by Stephen to Geffrey, 
 earl of Essex ; and Hamo's famous son Hubert, the hero of 
 Bridgenorth, was his grandson. Hugo, the lord of Aesling- 
 ham, was a younger son of this William, brother to ' the great 
 Fitz-Hamo,' as the Peerage says he was called from his dis- 
 tinction. It is easily understood why Hugo was high at 
 court in Henry the Second's reign, with such near relation- 
 ships to Robert, earl of Gloucester, the Empress Matilda's 
 brother, and champion for her and this son of hers, Henry. 
 How Hugo was nephew to Hamo, vicecomes of Kent and 
 dapifer of England, the brother of this Fitz-Hamo, is quite 
 cleared up. Conversely, as the Sinclair of English history in 
 the Becket quarrel, he proves the Corboil or Hamo and Fitz- 
 Hamo lineage to be that of Sinclair, which branched from the 
 ducal house of Normandy, founded by Rollo, the greatest of 
 the vikings or sea-kings. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MEDWAY. 
 
 Ix the reign of Henry the First, Geffrey Talbot held great 
 part of the valley of the Medway. In the reign of Henry the 
 Second, beginning 11 54, Walter de Meduana, the second of 
 the name, was in possession of twenty fees of what was Tal- 
 bot's land ; and Hugo de St. Clare, the king's minister, had the 
 portion of his properties nearer the Thames, of which Aesling- 
 ham was the head. Walter was Hugo's blood relation, and 
 he heired Geffrey through connection with Eudo Dapifer.
 
 246 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 It is through the same ties, but more distant ones, that Hugo 
 got his share. Aeslingham or Frindsbury, Hasted says, was 
 given by Gundulph, the architect bishop of Rochester, to 
 Geffrey Talbot, except tithes, 'after which this manor came 
 into possession of the family of St. Clare.' It would be inter- 
 esting to know why this favourite and richest portion of the 
 church's revenues went to Talbot. In the Textics Roffenm 
 there are to be seen the charters of it given by Off a, king 
 of the Mercians, in 789, and confirmations and additions by 
 Sigered, king of Kent, and by Egbert, the first Saxon king 
 of all England. In Domesday Bool- the increase of its value 
 from the time of Edward the Confessor is more than three- 
 fold, most property having decreased largely in value then. 
 It is curious that the bishop of St. Andrews, Rochester, could 
 part with it, even reserving the tithes. Hugo's estates were 
 made up of this, and of what he heired of the lands of his 
 uncle Hamo, the viscount of Kent and dapifer of England. 
 With his wife, the daughter of Robert of Cloville, he got pro- 
 perty also, in the same district. 
 
 To Aeslingham, and to its neighourhood on both sides 
 of the Thames, where Hugo's descendants enjoyed their 
 lives, it will be returned. Meantime, the question is who 
 Walter of Medway was. We know of his grandfather, also 
 a Walter of Medway, who came in with William the Con- 
 queror. Already some notice has been taken of Walderne or 
 Walter Sinclair, earl of St. Cler, and of his three sons, 
 Richard, William, and Britel, with their sister Agnes. It 
 seemed considerably mysterious that so prominent a noble of 
 Normandy, and so nearly related to the Conqueror and his 
 energetic family, fared slightly at his hands ; but this dis- 
 covery that the earl of St. Cler took the name of Walter de 
 Meduana in England entirely qualifies matters, even though 
 they are yet not the most favoured of their name. William's 
 espousal of the cause of the Athelings does not seem to have 
 damaged much any but himself, and he had the skill to find 
 better things across the borders than probably might have 
 been his in England. If so remarkable and, in Richard's case, 
 so specially heroic a branch, had been entirely forgotten in 
 the division of spoil among the comites, the gaiTidous chro- 
 niclers would have certainly all told more or less about it. 
 William the Conqueror's kingly generosity and manly justice
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MEDWAY. 247 
 
 are conspicuous in Walter's case as in many another's ; but 
 the Norman possessions of the earl may have hindered his 
 presence here, enough to limit his advance to possessions of 
 the first class. That he got land on the Medway shortly after 
 the Conquest, is attested by a signature of his to a charter in 
 1075 as Walter de Meduana. It is preserved in the library 
 of Magdalen College, Oxford, and the circumstances under 
 which it was "ranted are full of susfsjestion. The granter was 
 William Bruce of Brember, and William the Conqueror con- 
 firms the grant. St. Peter's Church, Sela, Sussex, was the 
 object of his bounty, and the locality has some relation to 
 matters. Odo Consul, Hugh [Montgomery], consul of Chester, 
 Humphrey de Bohun, Heunes vicecomes, and Walter de Meduana, 
 are the names most useful of those who witnessed the charter. 
 It was to William Bruce of Bramber, Sussex, or William de 
 Braiosa, the founder of the great British family, that Agnes 
 Sinclair, the daughter of Walter, earl of St. Cler, was married, 
 many genealogists say. Some give his able son Philip Bruce 
 as her husband. It is certain that one or other was, and here 
 it is only of importance that the affinity tie existed between 
 the Sinclairs and the Bruces in 1075. It is a commonplace 
 that then, when witnessing charters was one of the great public 
 duties conducted with special gravity, the nearest and weightiest 
 members of families alone had the privilege of adhibiting signa- 
 tures to such important writings. Walter, the elder, of Medway, 
 was equally in place if his daughter was married to the granter 
 or to the subtle and ultimately cross-taking religious son and 
 heir Philip. In 1095, before going to the Holy Land, Philip 
 confirmed the same charter ; and, that Comes Simon and Thomas 
 Talbot are witnesses, tells the tale of relationships. Again 
 it is confirmed by his son William in Bichard's reign, with 
 Simon Sinclair, written Simon Comes, as a witness, having the 
 interesting addition, ' Qui tunc erat dapifer ' — ' Who then was 
 dapifer.' Agnes Sinclair, daughter of Walter, was the bond 
 between the Bruces and the various branches of Sinclairs. 
 
 But we have knowledge of this Walter and of his lineage 
 from further unimpeachable record. In Domesday Bool- he is 
 an in cajiite holder under the title ' Walter, the brother of the 
 sewar.' The sewar was the dapifer, and can only mean the 
 great Hamo, father of Hamo, vicecomes of Kent, and of 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, ' knight of Bye,' the lord of Gloucester and
 
 248 THE SIN XL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Glamorgan. Walter of Medway, carl of St. Cler, could not 
 have been the brother of Eudo, the dapifer or sewar. lie must 
 have been his uncle, and also the uncle of Hamo, vicecomes 
 and dapifer. This would make Walter, the elder, a brother 
 of the great Norman Hamo. the dapifer, and of I [uberl of Rye, 
 ambassador of Duke William to Edward the Confessor to get 
 the legacy of the English crown. Nothing is left unreconciled 
 of what evidences appear in the whole subject, by this relation- 
 ship of the Corboil Sinclairs; for they are all branched from 
 the first earl of Corboil, son of the duke of Normandy. The 
 fact that the Hamo who came from Normandy to fight with 
 William at Hastings was fh-st dapifer of the name, and his 
 son Hamo, vicecomes, the second Hamo Dapifer, is proved by 
 the showing, already made, that the latter died in 1130, and 
 that the former's name occurs as witness to many charters in 
 William the First's reign. Even so late a charter as the great 
 one by Bishop William de Karileph to Durham monastery, 
 given at London 1082, could hardly have been signed by the 
 younger Hamo, on any ordinary calculation of the length of 
 lives. The first Walter's lands in Bedfordshire, of the survey, 
 are particularly noticeable, in that a Hugo is an underholder. 
 Probably he was a younger son or nephew so provided for, and 
 it certainly gives a hint that the name was not strange to the 
 family. ' Hugh ' and ' Roger ' are frequently in the Aeslingham 
 branch, and that these names came from the Montgorneries, 
 earls of Arundel, Shrewsbury, and Chester, seems likely result 
 of the marriage of Robert Fitz-Hamo to Sybil Montgomery, 
 the daughter of Roger, and sister of Hugh, consul of Chester. 
 Hugo Pincerna, an in capite holder of Domesday Book, and 
 occurring next in order to ' Walter, the brother of the sewar,' 
 in Bedfordshire, is of the same stock ; but this will have discus- 
 sion when Hugo de St. Clare's descendants are treated. 
 
 Of Walter of Medway, the grandson of the earl of St. Cler, 
 there are several glimpses. That from the Liber Niger Scaccarii 
 of Henry the Second aids considerably our knowledge of him, 
 and of his past and contemporary relations. His return or 
 carta to the treasury of his properties has a Latin introduction 
 to the king. ' Carta Walteri de Meduana,' is the heading of his 
 return. Then comes the preamble. ' Henrico Dei gratia regi 
 Anglorum carissimo domino suo Waltevus de Meduana salutem 
 et fidele servitium : Notum ait vobis quod anno et die in quo Rex
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MED WAY. 
 
 249 
 
 Henricus avus vester virus et mortuus fuit tenuit Galfridus Talbot 
 in capite de illo XX. quos gratia vestri mode de robin teneo scilicet.' 
 — 'To Henrjr, by the grace of God king of the English, his 
 very dear lord, Walter of Med way health and faithful service : 
 It has been known to you that in the year and day in which 
 King Henry, your grandfather, was alive and died, Geffrey 
 Talbot held twenty knights' fees in capite from him, which by 
 your favour I now hold from you, namely '. . . Here follows the 
 list of his underholders, of whom the most noticeable are 
 named WUlelmus de Clovilla, holding three knights' fees ; three 
 milites, as they are entered in the Black Book, viz., Robertus de 
 Sancto Claro, two, John Sinclair the same number, Ralph of 
 Cloville half-a-fee ; Hamo of Scottot, one fee ; and so on till the 
 twenty are accounted for. The carta ends with ' Valete ' — ' Fare- 
 well' 
 
 The history of this Talbot feod or fief is instructive. 
 Richard Talbot, Geffrey's father, a gentleman of Normandy, 
 got 9 fees from Giffard, earl of Buckingham, who had no 
 from the Conqueror. In 31 Hen. I. Geffrey acknowledges a 
 debt to the treasury of 140 merks silver out of 200 due for 
 being put in possession of his father's lands. In the Textus 
 Roffcnsis he appears as the donor of Little Wrotham, Kent, in 
 the time of Rufus, to St. Andrews, Rochester, the witnesses 
 being, among others, Archbishop Anselm and Robert Fitz- 
 Hamo. He took the side of Matilda against Stephen. His 
 son was the William Talbot of Normandy who, Dugdale says, 
 married Beatrice Mandeville, the sister of the areat Geffrev 
 Mandeville of chief fame in the struggle of Stephen and 
 Matilda. This William Talbot was according to Tindal one of 
 the ringleaders under Robert, earl of Gloucester, in champion- 
 ing Matilda, 1138, and it was he that seized Hereford Castle 
 on her side. Beatrice was the daughter of Margaret Sinclair, 
 daughter of Eudo Dapifer; and her brother Geffrey, earl of 
 Essex, got her divorced from William Talbot, whom he dis- 
 liked for some reason, and had her married for second husband 
 to William de Say. The Talbot feoda in Kent got its enlarge- 
 ment from her, as heiress of Eudo Dapifer's lands after the 
 death of her brother Geffrey, 1 144 ; and it was through kinship 
 to her mother that Walter Sinclair of Medway came to be the 
 heir of part of it. Beatrice, who lived to extreme age, and 
 whose funeral at Walden Abbey was one of the grand events
 
 250 THE S1NCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of the kind, heired, 2 Rich. I , her nephew, William Mande- 
 ville, earl of Essex, the last of his race; but though her son 
 Geffrey de Say became lord of Berling, Kent, the caput baro- 
 niae of the Says, through her rights, this Say was not rich 
 enough to contend against his sister's husband, Geffrey Fitz- 
 Piers of Ludgershall Castle, Wiltshire, and William of Boc- 
 land. Beatrice Saywasmade countess of Essex, Fitz-Piei 
 suming the famous surname of Mandeville; and by his wealth 
 and mfluence he secured much more than his just share of 
 the lands in the right of the granddaughter of Eudo Dapi- 
 fer. Banks, in his Dormant and Extinct Baronage, says that 
 when her nephew died, she, being aged, sent h«-r son (Jef- 
 frey de Say to have livery of her heirship, and that for 7000 
 marks he got the whole barony, but could not pay. After long 
 contest, Fitz-Piers, and Bocland by right of his wife .Maud, got 
 the lion's portions by influence and money. Geffrey de Say, 
 whom one genealogist makes earl of Essex by marriage to 
 the sister of William Mandeville, died in 12 14, and probably 
 he thought he was wronged by his sisters and their husbands. 
 The Says became the renowned barons of English history 
 not long after. But it is after the Talbots (of which lineage 
 was the English hero of Normandy battles, and the existing 
 family represented by the earls of Shrewsbury) that inquiry 
 searches. Burke says that one of the early representatives 
 became a monk, and that at some interval the family got pos- 
 sessions in the northern parts of England. At all events, the 
 name lost the Kentish twenty knights' fees, and Walter of 
 Medway possessed them in Henry the Second's reign. Bea- 
 trice Mandeville's first husband, William, seems to have lost 
 them or given them to the lineage of his wife, whence they 
 came, and in that most troublous of reigns, Stephen's. Ma- 
 tilda, besides giving all Eudo Dapifer's lands to her favourite, 
 Geffrey Mandeville, earl of Essex, son of Margaret Sinclair, 
 promised that afterwards he should have all Eudo's English lands 
 also, and it is probable that Beatrice instead of him experienced 
 the benefit of the promise when the empress and her son be- 
 came triumphant. In a charter referred to by Sir William 
 Dugdale, Geffrey actually got 20 knights' fees from her of 
 Eudo's, and they must have been these. If the first AValter of 
 Medway was Eudo Dapifer's uncle, the second Walter of Med- 
 way would be second cousin to Eudo. The extinction soon in
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MED WAY. 2 $i 
 
 the chief lines of the Hubert of Rye family, gave these Wal- 
 ters and the Hugoes and Hanioes of the two brothers of Hu- 
 bert of Rye next rights of heirship by blood. Out of the 
 obscurity, though not impenetrable altogether, of antiquity, 
 much more than this can hardly be expected. 
 
 From the chronicle of Abingdon monastery, Berks, much 
 light is thrown on the related Bucklands ; and Eudo Dapifer, 
 Hamo Dapifer, Robert Fitz-Hamo, and others of the connec- 
 tion appear in it frequently and suggestively. Cornbury Park 
 was a favourite place of the court in early reigns for signing 
 charters and doing royal business, and Burke's interest in 
 some arms of Sinclairs being found there in one of the herald 
 visitations, might find its satisfaction from such source as this 
 Chronica with its revelations. The difficulty of contemporaneous 
 dapifers has already been completely solved by one of the 
 charters ; and a Walter, the son of Richard, as a witness to 
 the same, may be a clue to the holder of the Medway fees 
 between the Walters. Richard, son of Walter, earl of St. Cler, 
 would be the father of this Walter, who is companion witness 
 to Walter Giffard ' the chancellor,' which distinguishes the 
 Giffards and Medways, related by marriage. There was a 
 Walter of Bocland of Stephen's reign ; in the Textus Itoffensis 
 Geffrey Bocland is witness to a charter, and William gives a 
 confirmation of lands from the Talbot feorta of which Walter of 
 Medway was chief heir ; but the Bucklands, who are at all 
 events of close affinity to the lords of Colchester, of Eudo's 
 lineage, may be left with the account of Hugo, who quieted, 
 for Abbot Faritius of Abingdon, the violence of the men of 
 Culham. Peace was made between them, ' in presented llugonis 
 vicecomitis probi et sapientis viri qui non solum Berchescirae sed 
 etiam aliis vii sciris praeerat vicecomes adeo erat nominatus vir 
 et cams regi et in praesentia multorum hominum trium scirarum 
 ibi assistentium ' — ' in the presence of Hugo the viscount (an 
 approved and wise man, who not only over Berkshire but also 
 seven other shires was made viscount, so chosen and dear was 
 the man to the king) and in the presence of many men present 
 there from three shires.' To be so beloved of so able a monarch 
 as Henry the First, is an immortality of the permanent kind. 
 Carte, 'the Englishman,' in his admirable English history, 
 says that Hugo got part of Robert Montgomery's lands, the 
 notorious Robert de Belesme of ISorman-English annals. A
 
 252 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Hamo of Falaise also benefited by the ruin of that earl of 
 Arundel, Salop, and Chester. The historian explains that 
 they had not originally much property of their own. The 
 close connection of Henry the First, both by male lineage and 
 contemporary marriage of his son Robert, to the Hamo, Fitz- 
 Hamo, Eudo, and other Sinclairs, makes it more than probable 
 that Hugh of Bocland was a young member of the same 
 lineage. The threads are very close of their stories on both 
 banks of the Thames, especially below London. But it must 
 not be forgotten that Ordericus Vitalis says that on the ruin 
 of many of the nobles, men of the merchant class, < reoffrey of 
 Clinton, Hugh of Bocland, Ralph Basset, and the foreign 
 Hamo got promotion, though this need not conflict irrecon- 
 cilably, in Hugh's case, with what ha- seemed to be sugge 
 by many circumstances. The Bucklands were heired by the 
 Brooke or Broc lords Cobham. 
 
 In the various ties of blood and marriage of these earliest 
 families of England, is to be found the secret of its greatness, 
 as the kingdom with what Shakespeare calls 'This happy race 
 of men.' That in the chief lines they often soon became extinct, 
 does no more than tell the tale of departure of property from 
 certain members ; the lineages not being always extinct, but 
 mixing, under change of names, which is the feature of centuries 
 of English history, with new rising families for fresh courses 
 of effort and distinction. 
 
 The Medways were not a lasting line, unless it be that the 
 Joel de Meduana who pays large taxes from Devon and Corn- 
 wall, 31 Hen. I., and who was probably a son of Bichard de 
 Meduana, son of the first Walter of Medway, earl of St. Cler, 
 Normandy, founded a family. But from what Jones in his 
 History of Brecknock says, he perhaps did not ; for he makes the 
 ' rich heiress ' of Joel of Barnstaple and Totness, marry the 
 William Bruce of Brember who appears so largely in Domesday 
 Book. This would well explain Walter of Medway's signing of 
 the charter of the church of Seal, Sussex, the lady of Brember 
 being his niece. In this light new relationships, besides Agnes 
 Sinclair's, to the Bruces appear ; and they give Joel of Meduana, 
 who had estates in Cornwall and Devon as well as Kent, a 
 recognisable and very substantial existence, though without 
 male heirs, the Bruces getting his lands by the heiress. In 
 the liotuli of 3 John, 1202, Cecil, countess of Hereford, pays
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MED WAY. 2 S3 
 
 50s. of scutage from the honour of Walter of Med way, and for 
 a third scutage, or military tax, William Montchesney pays 
 ,£14, 1 os. That these were of Walter's lineage is probable. The 
 Montchesneys are a remarkable family after this time, and it 
 is noticeable that in the records many Sinclairs hold of them, 
 especially on both sides of the Thames, where Hugo St. Clare's 
 descendants had their homes, in Kent and Essex. The head 
 of the barony of Montchesney was at Swanscombe or Swain's 
 Camp, where the Kentishmen surpi'ised William the Conqueror 
 and gained favours and freedom, bordering to Aeslingham and 
 the other manors of Hugo ; and if William Montchesney thus 
 heired Walter of Med way, as the state record settles, it is easy 
 to understand the general and even particular relationships of 
 these Kentish lords. Chesney is one of the distinguished 
 names of the county, and certainly was of local origin, 
 though it may have had a double in Normand} T , as was 
 frequent. But even thus, these Medway heirs ended in the 
 reign of Edward First, the daughter and sole heir of the 
 last male Montchesney marrying Hugh de Vere, earl of 
 Oxford, in the twenty - fifth year of that monarch. The 
 William Montchesney who heired Walter de Meduana, married 
 Joan, daughter of William Marshall, the great earl of Pem- 
 broke, whose mother was a Clare, and there foi'e the couple were 
 of affinity. His son married one of the famous Valences, 
 into which family Eudo Dapifer's sister, Albreda Sinclair, had 
 been married. William increased the patrimony largely in Nor- 
 folk, Kent, Gloucester, and Northampton ; and in Essex he got 
 Ralph de Haie's lands of 14^ fees, the Haies being descended 
 from a nephew of Eudo Dapifer, on the authority of Le Prevost 
 and Duncan. In 40 Hen. III. Montchesney was one of the 
 principal barons with Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, 
 probably his aunt Cecil's father-in-law if not husband, at the 
 battle of Lewes. After the battle of Evesham his land was 
 given to his brother-in-law, William Valence ; but he got par- 
 doned for rebellion, and under the government of the kingdom 
 by Richard, duke of Cornwall, was restored to his possessions. 
 For the short period of the Montchesneys, no English house 
 did more brilliantly and successfully, getting the best honom^s, 
 wealth, and marriages of their period. Stephen de ' Munchensi' 
 was governor of Acre after its conquest by Richard Gceur de 
 Lion. Dugdale's Baronage has good account of them, but he
 
 25+ THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 gives no help to the discovery of their lineage, beyond that 
 the earliest of them were two Huberts, and that the first is in 
 record as granter of lands. It might be more subtle than 
 certain that they were Hubert of Rye and his son Hubert of 
 Norwich Castle." One of them is a large in capite holder, in 
 Essex, of Domesday survey, as 'Hubert de Monte Canisio.' 
 There is at least recorded fact for this, that they were closely 
 related with the barony of Hengham, Norfolk, which has 
 already been shown to have been the home of the family of 
 Hubert of Norwich for some generations. That Montchesneys 
 heired Ralph de Haie's lands, is a fact which all but settles thai 
 they were a branch of the Rye family. The eldest brother of 
 Eudo Dapifer, Ralph, castellan of Nottingham, and earl, did 
 not found a family of long standing in the direct line, and 
 this Ralph de Haie was one of that line, which suffered so 
 extremely in Stephen's reign, as has appeared. It is known 
 that Hubert's eldest son Ralph had the chief part of his 
 father's lands in Normandy, and in the ' Liber Ruber Scaccarii ' 
 — ' The Red Book of the Treasury,' of Harry the Second's 
 reign, Ralph of Hay held then 2^ knights' fees, as from the 
 honour of Plessy, the Sinclair-Mandevilles' baronry, and 1 fee 
 and in another place 6J fees in the very region of most of the 
 original stock, the Cotentin of Lower Normandy, especially 
 the peninsular ending with the sea at Cherbourg opposite 
 Portsmouth. There were Rye, Granville, St. Lo, Thorigny, 
 Mandeville, Valence, and the rest of the names so familiar. 
 In the same Red Book under the heading, ' Hi sunt qui nee 
 venerunt nee miserunt nee aliquid dixerunt' — 'These are they 
 who neither came nor sent nor said anything,' we have, with 
 the best names in England, these two, Walter of Medway and 
 Hugo de Sancto Claro, the latter specially mentioned as hold- 
 ing in Algia or Auge or Ou. Moulin speaks of this as ' a sub- 
 mission list ' to Philip Augustus, after his conquest of Nor- 
 mandy ; but it is more probably one of the usual reckonings of 
 some of Henry the Second's lieutenants or seneschals in France, 
 like William Fitz- Raphe. Doctor Ducarel's Anglo-Norman 
 Antiquities, has these and other interesting state records; though 
 the doctor does not appear to know so much about them as he 
 protests, to the depreciation of M. Moulin and others. The 
 Chesneys or Monchesnis of Swanscombe, Kent, their caput 
 baroniae, seem to have picked up the pieces, in several counties,
 
 TWO WALTERS OF MEDWAY. 
 
 03 
 
 of that 'house of Rye,' about whom Freeman has wonder- 
 fully good words, for him to say ; and it is not likely that a 
 mistake would be made in claiming such brilliant but long 
 since extinct Englishmen for the lineage. It is they who 
 would have the honour in being proved of the line of Rollo, 
 while at the same time they were worthy members of the 
 Scandinavian, Franco-English, royal descent. 
 
 The story of the two Walters of Medvvay may be ended by 
 noting that the Walter de Meduana contemporary with Hugo 
 de St. Clare, was, like him, one of the great barons present, 
 Lord Lyttleton being witness of this, at the framing of the 
 necessary but as it proved extremely troublesome constitutions 
 of Clarendon. There is no record extant that he also suffered 
 by being ' named,' by the obstinate Thomas of Canterbury, to 
 future reprobation, as the archbishop thought unwisely, of 
 mankind ; and to that eternal perdition which was the rod of 
 correction, and, alas for the unselfishness of even clerical men, 
 the rod of oppression in the puerile and senile epochs. It goes 
 without saying that Walter was of the king's party, as all the 
 intelligent and substantial Englishmen were, both clerical and 
 lay. Was it not to take the excommunication off the bishops, 
 the barons caring far less about the matter, that the final con- 
 test between Becket and the four nobles of the king's household 
 was entered upon ? Any one reading Lyttleton's able and 
 graphic account of the last days of the so-called martyr, must 
 come to quite other than the usual conclusion about Reginald 
 Fitz-Urse, William de Tracy, Richard Brito, and Hugh de 
 Moreville as being, in any sense, murderers. Hours and days 
 of expostulation and entreaty of every kind, and not for their 
 own but his order, brought nothing but insult. Had King Henry 
 not been of a superstitious and loving nature, he would himself 
 long before have ended the struggle in some such way as they 
 did, if no other road opened out of the difficulty. Henry 
 the Eighth knew short methods with far better and gentler 
 clerics than this one. Did he not actually try and condemn, 
 in a fictional court, this very so-called St. Thomas ? The vul- 
 garity of the man came out in his clinging to a pillar, when, 
 at last, they grew utterly hopeless of gaining anything from 
 him, and the only poor chance of peace to his country seemed 
 to take him personally away to the king's presence in Nor- 
 mandv, to see what could be done in that case. It is the
 
 .256 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 unspeakable misfortune of those first men of the land that 
 deserves most commiseration, whom oppression of a priest to 
 themselves, their friends, their king, and their spiritual directors 
 
 for years, would not have driven to violence bui that this 
 unknightly ill-bred man of the mob, began the rough play 
 
 which could not but end as it did, with any linn who at all 
 respected their own manhood. It was in full keeping with tin; 
 lowness of the man to call Fitz-Urse 'pimp;' and that the 
 immediate effect of such a vile insult, after days of honourable 
 and reverent beseeching, was a sword across the head, could 
 not but be. The unanimity with which the four completed 
 the work is the apology for it. He had outrage.] every instinct 
 of royalty, nobility, and manhood ; and it may safely be said 
 if all that was noble, and most that was clerical, in the king- 
 dom, had been there at that moment, having suffored as these 
 men did, they would have had equally been in the great mis- 
 fortune of killing, or helping to kill, a man who was stifling 
 the souls of a whole people's select spirits. The consecrated 
 place and person were the pities of the affair, but it was the 
 archbishop who positively created the scene of blood. His 
 previous sermons showed that he was courting martyrdom; in 
 other words, searching after a full conclusion to his spleen of 
 bitterly stubborn years. Lyttleton gives him credit for all 
 that was good in him ; but it would be quite a consistent view, 
 to apply to him the nickname he himself invented for his 
 archdeacon, and to call him, for the sake of brevity and truth- 
 ful condensation, the archdevil of Canterbury. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 KING'S CHAMBERLAIN. 
 
 In a century or more after the Conquest, the sj-stem of one 
 man having manors in manv counties, began to change, with 
 the increase of families, with heirships by females, and for the 
 general greater convenience of united property. There remain, 
 however, to this day survivals of the Conqueror's peculiar but 
 politic division of lands. It has already been noticed that 
 Richard ' Sender,' the son of Walter, earl of St. Cler, and the
 
 KING'S CHAMBERLAIN. 257 
 
 first of Medway, appears in Domesday Book as the holder 
 in caplte of Wortham, in the hundred of Hartismere, and 
 of house and lands at Norwich. 'Of the burgesses,' says the 
 record, 'who dwelt in Norwich, twenty-two are gone away 
 and dwell in Beccles, a town of the abbot of St. Edmundsbury, 
 and six in Humilgar hundred, and have forsaken the burgh, 
 and King's Thorpe one, and on the land of Roger Bigot one, 
 and on the land of William of Noies one, and on that of 
 Richard de Sentcler one. Those who fled and those remaining, 
 are altogether wasted or impoverished, partly through Earl 
 Ralph's forfeitures, partly through fire, partly by the king's 
 tribute, and partly by Waleran.' Blomfield notes with a 
 parenthesis a passage in Domesday Book having reference to 
 Norwich, l Et Richard de Se?itebor (jwtius Sent-cler) I dom.' — 
 'And Richard de Sentebor (rather Sent-cler) has one house.' 
 In the quelling of 'the rising of Norwich,' Richard, the king's 
 chamberlain, was actively engaged, and received reward thus 
 there of his loyalty. To fix his other lordships in England is 
 not so easy as in these cases, where his name and surname 
 occur in full. He was so well known, however, that the many 
 entries under the name of Richard alone, now difficult to 
 authenticate, are on all grounds of probability largely his. 
 To found on this, nevertheless, would be for many reasons 
 useless. It may be sufficient to assume that he took his 
 father's place on the Medway, as well as occupied the Suffolk 
 and Norfolk lands to which that record positively fixes him. 
 The Textus Roffends would make him to be Richard, the king's 
 chamberlain, who had the property of Ros, from which he 
 gave returns to the monks of Rochester. In Ingulph's Ch ronicle, 
 who was a contemporary and favourite of the Conqueror, he 
 is called ' Richard of Rulos, the king's chamberlain,' Rolph's 
 being the Saxon name of Ros, which with ' Chester ' or castra 
 added means Rolph's Castle. Ingulph praises the chamberlain 
 highly, particularly about the kind way in which he got the 
 historian's friend promoted to be abbot of the famous monastery 
 of Glastonbury. This of itself shows Richard's influence with 
 the king. The barons of Ros were great men in the times of 
 John and Henry the Third and subsequent reigns, and they 
 were Richard's people. One of them married his blood rela- 
 tion, the heiress of the Todeneis, better known as the Albeneys, 
 Aubenis, D'Aubignys, or D'Albinis of Belvoir Castle, Lincoln, 
 
 R
 
 258 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 and the same lineage with those of Arundel Castle, Sussex, 
 descended from Hollo's uncle. The last of these barons Ros of 
 Hamlake, Trierbut, and Bel voir died in 1508, and his sister 
 herring him, married Sir Robert Manners, the ancestor of the 
 dukes of Rutland. Their son held also the barony of Vaux. 
 A complete reformation must be made as to the place in Kent 
 called Ros. Dr. Thorpe, the editor of what he called the Tex- 
 tus Roffensis, is responsible most for the straying of the anti- 
 quaries on the subject. He mistook the old double ' s ' for the 
 ancient 'f.' It is the Textus Rossensis his collection of charters 
 and ancient papers ought to have been called. Bishop Tanner 
 in his Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica of writers to the six- 
 teenth century, quotes Dempster as to Ilenricus Sinclarus deca- 
 nus Glascuensis et episcopus Rossensis, the ambassador for peace 
 between England and Scotland in 1555. Rossensis here means 
 Ross in Scotland, but the word is one and the same with that 
 applied to the Rochester records. Rochester, after a prevalent 
 manner in England, means simply ' the castle of Ros,' the 
 head of the lands given by the Conqueror to his relation, Wal- 
 ter, earl of St. Cler. The remarkable importance of Rochester 
 and its castle in English history is hereby explained to satis- 
 faction, being always in near relationships to the earlier sove- 
 reigns after the Conquest. Ros, or Rochester, as it afterwards 
 came to be called from its castle gathering the town about 
 it, was the first English chief home ; and William when he be- 
 came an emigrant and the cup-bearer or pincerna of Margaret 
 Atheling, queen of Scotland, carried its name to his castle, on 
 the linn of the Esk near Edinburgh, as was the Norman port- 
 able fashion. There is opening for insight as to the county 
 of the name, in this view. Walter of Medway, the earl of St. 
 Cler in Normandy, and his sons and daughter, can be studied 
 from no better central position than the English caput haroniae 
 of l'os. with its monastery, its bridge of twenty-one arches, 
 and its feudal castle; and the love of the lineage for centuries 
 to the district and its institutions, civil and religious, has thus 
 its echtiirisscmmt. The outcome of the whole of this part of 
 the inquiry might end in finding Walter himself to have been 
 Wace's hero of the battle of Hastings, the 'St. Cler who over- 
 threw many of the Anglos,' and that he and his family, except 
 William, who became pincerna to Margaret Atheling, got 
 ly and choicely from their king, Rochester or Ros, as then
 
 KING'S CHAMBERLAIN. 259 
 
 called, being the English 2cMo[;;2tamm of this great and pre- 
 sent branch. The Roll of Battle Abbey would aid such view, 
 and also others of the lists of the Conqueror's companions of 
 1066, 'the lord of St. Cler ' being more applicable to Walter 
 the father than to Richard his eldest son. But the latter has 
 the credit with writers of being the gallant knight in conspicu- 
 ous action on the famous October day. Between them, how- 
 ever, there need be no rivalry, the furthest descendants having 
 equally in either ease the honour of the deeds of their ancestor. 
 It is a popular delusion that families become extinct, even if 
 whole lineage is taken into account. Many of the present most 
 flourishing Englishmen misdit find their earliest home at Ros, 
 could they wend their way back through the changes of sur- 
 names and the accidents of time. In Scotland, the earl of 
 Caithness represents many there, who have preserved, like 
 himself, the surname intact, the older system aiding against 
 the English local naming method; and they are the genuine 
 stock of Walderne, Richard, and the rest of these Saint-Lo, in 
 Normandy, and Rochester, in Kent, heroes of Rollo's blood. 
 The Romans had a different title altogether for Rochester, and 
 Bede, centuries before the Conquest, says it got its name from 
 a Saxon lord called Rouph. The Normans would call it 
 Rouph's; and this would satisfy the prevalent name amonir 
 antiquaries, and that suggested as the at least equally true 
 one drawn from the history of those barons of Ros who appear 
 in the historic scenes and charters of the kingdom more than 
 any others. What aids the theory of Richard being chamber- 
 lain is that he had a son Joel who also owed returns to the 
 monks for this Ros or Rosa. There is a Richard, the son of 
 Walter, witness to one of the earliest charters from the Tun- 
 bridge Richard Fitz-Oilbert, and he must have been Joel's 
 father, the son of Walter of Medway. Joel is authenticated 
 by being mentioned in the Rotulus 31 Hen. I. under Devon 
 and Cornwall, as Joel of Medway, who pays the large tax of 
 jQn, 17s. Cd, and still owes the treasury ^25, 10s. 5d. 
 Richard's brother Britel had his lands chiefly in the south- 
 western counties, and this nephew of his was the founder of 
 the Devon and Cornwall brunch. Vincent in criticising too 
 bitterly the account given by Yorke, the heraldist of the Veres, 
 carls of Oxford, quotes .Matilda the empress's charter of pro- 
 mise to Aubrey de Vere,the chancellor; and ' Juhel de Meduana '
 
 2 6o THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 is mentioned as one of the witnesses and pledges she gives for 
 the fulfilment. This is of itself sufficient to mark him as one of 
 the ruling chief Normans, and of a family of first wealth and 
 rank. The castle and tower of Colchester was part of the 
 gifts in this charter ; and Joel Sinclair, as one of the relations 
 male of Eudo Dapifer, by his adhesion to Matilda's proposals 
 would be of special service. The castle subsequently returned 
 to the Sinclairs, and then again the Veres got it ; so that affi- 
 nity is the likelier explanation than many political changes of 
 the violent kind. 
 
 There is a Geffrey of Ros who gives the tenths of Ealdeam 
 or Yaldham to Rochester monks. He is a descendant of 
 Richard, and the founder of the Aldhams or Audhams, Robert 
 de Aldham being his successor by the charter. Walter, the 
 second of Medway, was the eldest son of the chamberlain, and 
 this Geffrey was a younger brother whose son assumed the 
 local name Aldham, from the remarkable manor which still 
 keeps the name in the Yaldham-St. Clere of Kent, near 
 Maidstone. Sir Thomas de Aldham was one of Richard Coeur 
 de Lion's famous knights at the siege of Acre in 1189, and 
 there is also a Sir Thomas de St. Clair among his warriors at 
 the same success. They are probably one and the same. The 
 proof of the lineage of the Aldhams is in this Rotulus in Curia 
 Seneca ri i : ' R. cepit homagium Johis fit Johis de Sennicler con- 
 sanguinei & hdis Francisci de Aldham de omnibus terris et 
 tefi que idem Franciscus tenuit ' — ' The king takes homage from 
 John, the son of John Sinclair, blood-relation and heir of 
 Francis of Aldham, for all his lands and tenements which the 
 same Francis held.' But this younger branch from Richard, 
 the king's chamberlain, will demand much attention for them- 
 selves. 
 
 Richard must be followed to the north, where at the end of 
 his life he lived most, in the centre of Norfolk especially. The 
 Wrotham of Suffolk which he had from the Conquest, was by 
 some of his descendants doubled in Wrotham of Kent, just as 
 Norman names were brought across the Channel, causing 
 doubles. William of Wrotham, who was appointed by Henry 
 Second the justiciary to decide proper weights, measures, and 
 other necessities of honest dealing, was one of Richard's de- 
 scendants in Kent. The family of Wrotham were of high 
 rank and influence in the county, and they had lands also in
 
 KING'S CHAMBERLAIN. 261 
 
 Somersetshire. But the Kent relations are numerous, and, 
 except two chief families cannot be reckoned clearly, with 
 any amount of care, on the knowledge that has survived. < >l' 
 all his properties those near Norwich required, and had. nm-i 
 of Richard's presence. He secured part of the lands confiscated 
 from the burghers for the rebellion of 1075, begun at the 
 ' marriage of Norwich.' it is not likely, however, that his offi- 
 cial and military duties left him much opportunity of living in 
 any one district, till old age came. Then there is record of his 
 gifting lands and tithes to the church at Grassenhale, Norfolk, 
 for the good of his own and his wife's soul. The Norfolk lands 
 were made to suffer fire and sword, but they had no doubt 
 more than recovered their usual fruitfulness before the monks 
 could accept of them as gifts, being nice in their appreciation 
 of the world's goods even so early as that time. Whether the 
 eldest or a younger branch of his family, the Norfolk and Suf- 
 folk line seemingly grew independent in a generation or two 
 from their Kent brethren. They become noticeable most near 
 St. Edmondsbury, but they held lands also at the same time in 
 Kent and other counties. Their presence was certainly most 
 given to the north, and they may be dealt with as specially 
 belonging to Norfolk and Suffolk, their other lands gradually 
 becoming more and more subsidiary to where the chief hall 
 was, the caput baroniae, or usual place of holding their courts 
 as lords of manors. It was this that first corrected a little 
 the extraordinary spreading of one man's lands through some- 
 times all the counties. The earl of Moretaine, the Conqueror's 
 uterine brother, had the enormous number of 793 lordships 
 through the island, but gradually such lords built one or more 
 head castles to dominate the best parts of their estates, and 
 exchanges began to become frequent for the purpose of uniting 
 properties, and saving toil of travel and expense of manage' 
 ment. Sir Richard Pole says that the richest men took to 
 buying properties near London and selling the distant ones. 
 Richard Sinclair, the chamberlain, could not have seen much 
 of this change, but his descendants in these counties grew to 
 be permanent residents. Of this heroic son of Walter, earl 
 of St. Cler, who 'overtirrned many of the English,' as the 
 Romance of Rollo says, on the field of Hastings, nothing much 
 further need he said. Position, wealth, and, in age, the usual 
 thoughtfulness of Norman chief men were his ; and through
 
 262 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 his double line of Kent and East Anglian descendants, it will 
 be seen that no branch of his name had more of the high 
 qualities of the race. That he lived long has already appeared. 
 It is probable that he died about the latter years of the reign 
 of Henry the First, later than his cousin - german, Eudo 
 Dapif er, who died in 1 1 1 9. 
 
 In his History of Norfolk Blomfield has various notices of 
 him. From the Register of the monks of Castleacre, he has 
 saved the knowledge that 'Richard de Sancto or St. Cleer gave 
 the said monks his right in the church in free alms for ever, 
 for the health of his own and his wife's soul, his heirs' and 
 ancestors' souls, with all the liberties thereto belonging.' He 
 adds the list of witnesses to the document of gift. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 RICHARD OF EAST ANGLIA. 
 
 The state records of Stephen's reign are scanty, and therefore 
 it is lucky to find indirect evidence of men's existence and 
 deeds from chronicles or other less authentic materials than the 
 national archives. 
 
 Whether Anglian Richard was son or grandson of Richard, 
 the son of Walter, earl of St. Cler and Medway, cannot be dis- 
 covered absolutely, th-e guide of time allowing either possibility. 
 He was the grandson, if the Robert, son of Richard, who was 
 one of Stephen's dapifers in the first year of his reign, and 
 who is a witness to a charter given then to the bishop of Bath, 
 was the son of the chamberlain. The charter is among the 
 codices of the college of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and though 
 insufficient for proof of itself it might be a powerful link towards 
 reaching certainty here. The Sinclairs at first were certainly in 
 the highest favour with this king ; whether by policy, or will on 
 his and their part, are questions of subtle kind. ' The charter 
 of Stephen, the king, concerning the liberties granted to the 
 church and the kingdom,' is a peculiar, suggestive, and, 
 luckily, an extant document. From the archives of Exeter it 
 was copied, and the copy is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 
 It begins, ' I, elected by consent of the clerisy and the people
 
 RICHARD OF EAST ANGLIA. 263 
 
 of England, and by the Lord William of Canterbury. . . .' 
 This William was a Sancto Claro, and two others of the sur- 
 name are among the extraordinarily select witnesses of this 
 carta of 1136, namely, the son of Count Simon Sinclair, earl 
 of Huntingdon and Northampton, and Hamo de Sto. Claro, 
 by this express and full name. William of Aubeni is there, a 
 relation by blood and marriage; Robert, earl of Gloucester, 
 Matilda Sinclair's husband, the son of Henry Beauclerc, is 
 there ; and, indeed, nearly all who were noblest in England. 
 Gilbert de Laci is the last on the list. In the general con- 
 firmation by Henry II. of all the previous charters of the 
 Tewkesbury monastery of St. Mary, founded by Robert Fit" 
 Hamo Sinclair, the signatures to one of those Henry I. gave, 
 would make ' Brience, the son of the count,' who is one of the 
 witnesses of Stephen's national charter, also a Sinclair. But 
 this is a mistake on the part of both Sir Robert Atkins and 
 Rudder, the careful historian-antiquaries of Gloucestershire. 
 They print the signature, ' Brience, son of Earl Hamo, steward 
 of the household.' Hamo Sinclair had no children, all the 
 authorities agree, and ' Brience, son of the count ' is of another 
 relationship than this to him. Both were related closely to the 
 Montgomeries. The difficulty is at once solved by putting a 
 comma after ' Earl,' thus making it the signature of two persons. 
 In this same charter Hamo and Robert Fitz-Hamo appear, 
 mentioned as brothers. The question who Brience was, is at 
 once settled, however, by the list which Richard Prior of 
 Ingulstad, one of the X Srnptore.«, has given, where he appears 
 as the son of the earl-constable, which office Hamo had 
 not. But return must be made to Richard, whom it is safe 
 enough to assume as grandson of the first Richard of his 
 branch, the son of Walderne, earl of St. Cler and of Medway. 
 Something about his character and general position is attain- 
 able from a history by Matthew Paris of a quarrel between one of 
 the abbots of St. Albans and William de Albini, pincema, the 
 earl of Arundel, whose fierceness was notorious and almost 
 fabulous because of the story of slaying a lion by his own 
 personal vigour. It was Abbot Robert who claimed the right 
 of lodging in the cella or priorate of Wymundham, Norfolk, 
 as being subordinate to the monastery of St. Albans. The 
 prior and the earl of Arundel joined issue, in ways strangely 
 characteristic of the period. That Abbot Robert bearded the
 
 264 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 terrible earl in this matter, was always afterwards his highest 
 tribute so far as courage is concerned. But there was more 
 at work than the arrogance of an earl in Stephen's time of 
 fortified castles. The prior of Wymundham had run scant of 
 money, and had taken the liberty of making away with some 
 of the valuables of the priorate. He was of the supple order 
 of cleric, and contrived when the abbot of St. Albans, his 
 superior, heard of the larceny, to make it appear that the 
 proceedings were by order of the lord of the manor, the earl 
 of Arundel. This he cunningly thought would of itself pre- 
 vent all attempt at inquiry. Abbot Robert recognised how 
 matters really stood, having had much experience of monkery, 
 and duty was clear to him. He set out with a company of 
 clerics from Hertfordshire to see for himself. Before reaching 
 Wymundham he was met by some of the [trior's agents, 
 who said that the cella was in possession of the carl's men, and 
 that by the earl's command the abbot should have no lodging 
 there. Abbot Robert could not sleep outside. He and his 
 thirty or forty of a company must have something done for 
 them. Hospitality was the monastic privilege and duty, and 
 how much more to their own head, the abbot. Meantime, 
 something alarming had occurred, probably by the instigation of 
 the prior, at his wits' end. The abbot's cook, who had gone 
 on in front to prepare food, was attacked and driven back on 
 the main body, with the loss of his baggage of pots and 
 kettles ; and it was only by the highest flutter of monkish 
 garments that the earl's minions, or the prior's, could be 
 frightened from their savoury prey. At this point the prior 
 in person appears on the scene. With him came Henry of 
 Gorham and Richard de Sancto Claro. The abbot must be 
 resisted if he should attempt entrance. It became serious, 
 even to fears of martyrdom ; and though Robert did not 
 shrink an inch, he was willing to make some compromise. 
 His company might go to Norwich to find shelter, but he 
 himself would sleep at all hazards in that cella of his own. 
 The prior, Henry of Gorham, and Richard Sinclair had better 
 go and tell the earl what was done, and that he was prepared 
 to meet him next clay at Norwich for any explanation on either 
 side. Immediately on this treaty Abbot Robert went for- 
 ward, pressed through angry soldiers, without active opposition, 
 and did sleep in his own cella. The ambassadors arranged the
 
 RICHARD OF EAST AXGLIA. 265 
 
 meeting rightly, and the abbot and the earl had their tug of 
 war. ' What business have you on my lands with your com- 
 pany ? Your right is to lodge yourself there for a night and 
 pass on; the priorate is my affair.' So the earl, but he was 
 not match in lo<nc for the abbot. 'As head of St. Alban's 
 monastery, I and my company, large or small, can visit or 
 stay when and as long as I choose, without any reference to 
 the lord of the manor.' But if he gained his point he did not 
 go much farther. His sagacity told him that with an earl so 
 violent, and a prior so shifty, too close inquisition were not 
 desirable. He departed, and found the credit of bearding 
 Arundel worth his considerable journey. 
 
 Richard Sinclair as peacemaker, implies that he was well 
 known to the earl, as well as one of the magnates of the 
 district himself. He had a castle or manor there, though 
 Wortham, which his antecessor Richard, the chamberlain, pos- 
 sessed in 1080, was the chief demesne. His successors showed 
 still more inclination to reside in Suffolk, and the story of 
 those of the great centre of St. Edmundsbury will exhibit this. 
 He appears in the Great Roll of the Pipe, 11 89-1 190, at the 
 beginning of the reign of Coeur de Lion : ' Norfolch' 7 Sudfolch' 
 De Plac Cvrie : 1 Ric. I. Gerard de Waehesha redt comp de 
 xx. s. p recogh res 9 Ric. deS Claro de tra de M'lingef : In thro 
 x. s : Et deb x. s.' This is one of the usual transactions in the 
 king's court about the receiving of taxes from lands. Richard 
 Sinclair pays a tax from another estate of his, Marlingford in 
 East Anglia. Gerard of Wachesharn is the sheriff, and if 
 Wachesharn is the same as Wercham, it will be seen that 
 Richard later had his chief land, which implies affinity for such 
 heirship. But nothing can be added to the subject, and 
 Wachesharn and Wercham may not after all be the same places. 
 This Richard, residing near Wymundham, in Norfolk, at the 
 time of the monastic adventure, is the same also with the 
 Richard de Sancto Claro who appears in one of the charters of 
 the Bolls of 7 John, 1206. It is a confirmation to the abbess 
 of St. Edward of Shaftesbury. ' Et decimas de dhio Ric de Sco 
 Claro de Wercha qa ipe dedit cii filia sua : Et in eadem villa 
 xxx acr de suo dnio ' — ' And the tenths from the demesne of 
 Richard Sinclair of Wercham, which he himself gave with^his 
 daughter: And in the same ''town" 30 acres from his demesne.' 
 There is little doubt that this, though the spelling is somewhat
 
 266 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 different, means them capite domain of Wrotham, and also the 
 Wachesham of 1189-1190. Between this district and 
 Edmondsbury there was a Werham, and it is likely that the 
 names had one origin, and the places one proprietor, if modern 
 Werham had any particular estate existence then at all. 
 
 It may be thought curious that Richard did not send this 
 daughter for whom he thus provided, as a nun to some convent 
 nearer his home demesnes. It may, however, be remembered 
 that the Sinclairs had great traditions in connection with the 
 nunnery of Shaftesbury. Hawisa Sinclair, one of the daughters 
 of Robert Fitz-Hamo, had been its abbess from the reign of 
 Henry the First, as her sister Cecilia, on Dugdale's authority 
 and Glover's, was abbess of Wilton in Wiltshire. Some say 
 Cecilia was that of Winchester. It was woman's highest ambi- 
 tion of those periods to be abbess. Lilli church nunnery, 
 Kent, had King Stephen's daughter for abbess, and hardly 
 any such position in England was not filled by relations of 
 royalty. The career Richard opened for his young daughter 
 was one of the most privileged, and only wealth and birth 
 could get on this path to feminine eminence. Henry the First 
 when he provided that Matilda Sinclair should inherit the 
 greatest part of her father's lands, to grace and enrich her 
 husband, the king's son, whom he created earl of Gloucester, 
 made ample amends to Hawise and Cecilia by giving them 
 these high and coveted positions, of which the wealth was as 
 great as the other advantages. Whether this young daughter 
 followed the steps and reached the eminence of her relations, 
 has yet to be discovered. That this is a charter of confirmation, 
 may throw back the original gift by Richard considerably 
 beyond 7 John, 1206, and so go to the proof that the Richard 
 of Wymundham was the donor. 
 
 [CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 GEREBERD, VISCOUNT OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 
 
 The brother of the young lady sent to Shaftesbury convent 
 for her education (and profession, it may be) was a man of 
 much business in political and particularly in financial affairs.
 
 GEREDERD OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 267 
 
 Gilbert, Gerebald, Gerebert, or Gereberd Sinclair is one of 
 the most frequent names in the state papers of his time. The 
 variations in his first name do not cause any doubt, for the 
 title follows them, 'viscount of Norfolk and Suffolk.' This, 
 with the dates, which cannot be more authenticated than by 
 state entries, makes assurance doubly sure. It was he who 
 founded the fine English home of Bradfield St. Clare ; a name 
 which his property near St. Edmondsbury still retains, to 
 keep him and his lineage in remembrance. The park around 
 his manor was one of the most remarkable of those greatest 
 lovers of the forest and its sport, the Norman rulers of England. 
 It was a few miles from the monastery of St. Edmondsbury, 
 part of it being an underholding from the abbot. The dis- 
 trict is remarkable among other greater things as being the 
 ancestral home of the notorious Francis, Lord Bacon, the 
 shrewdest and most overrated philosopher of Christendom. 
 The natural and political advantages of Bradfield St. Clare, as 
 in the neighbourhood of the best city, socially and clerically, of 
 East Anglia, induced Gereberd to make it the caput baroniae 
 of all his estates wherever else held ; and his good judgment 
 is supported by indications down to this day. English history 
 has largely ti'ansacted itself near Bradfield. St. Edmondsbury 
 and its abbey were very celebrated in the reigns of Richard 
 Coeur de Lion, John, and Henry III., under all of whom 
 Gereberd was in state service. In 1182 Abbot Samson got 
 his election, he whom Past and Present has so vividly preserved 
 as a specimen of that olden time ; and it is of interest to 
 know that Gereberd held parts of Bradfield as from him. It 
 might not, however, be too much to say that better specimens 
 of heroism than Abbot Samson, disentombed from Jocelin 
 of Brakelond's chronicle, could have been got from the period. 
 Lachrymose and spiteful, his stubbornness for good, as he saw 
 it, was of the puritanic, essentially vulgar, rather than the 
 manly and chivalrous sort. Monk's cowl and frock of the 
 twelfth, or clothes of the nineteenth century, cover very 
 similar pieces of human nature. St. Edmondsbury Abbey was 
 especially honoured in King Richard's time. To it he offered 
 in religious duty after his return from Palestine, by way of the 
 Austrian prison from which he was ransomed by English gold, 
 the rich standard of Cyprus, taken from its tyrant king, Isaac, 
 whose beautiful daughter had so much of the Lion-Heart's favour.
 
 268 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Sir Francis Palgrave in his Ancient Calendars and Inven 
 tories, has given various extracts referring to Gereberd from 
 the sixth year of Richard, 1 195, to the accession of John in 
 1 199. The earliest is about the advowson of the church of 
 Bradfield on the home manor, Thomas a Becket's first living. 
 Robert, the son of Simon, makes a claim, and succeeds, about 
 part of the returns of the church, Gereberd not appearing to 
 contend against it. The passage is from the Botvli Curiae 
 Regis or 'Bolls of the Justiciar's Court,' under 'Suffolk.'—' IT Rob 
 fit Sim. op, se. iiij die \ 9 sus Girebt de Sco Claro cle pT: advoc 
 eccte de Bradefeld, * Girebt esson se ad die placit. * posfiat 
 lo. suo Walt de Hope vt Gileb f Viuiani. ad lu. vt pel. * ad diem 
 ilium n comparuit. Watt posit 9 lo. t suo \. ipi 9 Girebti. vt esson. 
 ¥ Rob petiit sup hoc. Jud cur desic Walt * apparuit vt esson 
 desic Gerebt posuit eum lo. suo psecufm loqlam si intcc n posuit. 
 IT considatum est qd Rob hat im saisinam. (J3 Walt po. lo. ipi° 
 Girebti vt Gileb n comparuit vt esson.' Besides the light it 
 throws on the law business of the time, this extract is of the 
 special use that it notes the indifference of spelling his name 
 Gilbert or Gereberd. Another is : ' Suff ' eras Ada || Hilleg. i. rec 
 magh ass hit Gereb d Sen [c] ler t Rob d Cokef. p Petr fil Elie. 
 Id Gereb d pt magfi ass v's R d Cokef p Ric' fit Ric'. i octob 7' 
 nit aff.' It is difficult to discover who all these are, except 
 Gerebert himself. The family of Cokefield, however, are in 
 frequent relationships with these St. Edmondsbury Sinclairs, 
 the descendants of Richard, son of Walter, earl of St. Cler, 
 and also with his descendants who took the name of their 
 place of Aldham. There is a charter in the Monasticon of a 
 Nesta de Cokefield, the wife of Matthew of Leyham, to the 
 church of St. Mary and St. Anthony, Kerseya, which has 
 witnesses of undoubted kin, as William de Huntingfield, who 
 represented as much land in Suffolk as in Kent, Roger of 
 Aldham, Hugo de Aldham, and William de Aldham. Pal- 
 grave's suggestion of a ' c ' in Senler is more kind than useful, 
 the original spelling aiding other searches, especially in the 
 midland counties. 
 
 Richard, the son of Richard, might have been Gereberd's 
 father. Certainly at this period Gereberd was very young, 
 and not in the full thronsr of business in which he is enwasred 
 afterwards. From a later record he was attorney to this Adam 
 of Hilleg, who here appears to be sheriff. It might be an undue
 
 GEREBERD OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 269 
 
 supposition that he was thus fitting himself for the same office 
 which he held subsequently both in Suffolk and Norfolk. 
 The Jews were extremely busy in those reigns, and Gerebert 
 has many dealings with them. Evidence cannot settle whether 
 he succeeded in his younger period as he did later. Rather 
 does it point to the opposite. In 1 1 96 whether for enterprise or 
 necessity he sold the lands of Marlingford, Norfolk ; the same 
 place which is referred to in the Great Moll of the Pipe of 1 189- 
 90 as being in possession of Richard de Sancto Claro. There is 
 account of him selling other lands of the same county in 1208. 
 But there is warning not to run to the conclusion that he 
 was in ' the hands of the Jews,' as the phrase is now, by the 
 fact that in John's reign he is also a buyer of properties. He 
 bought Berwicks-and-Scotenays, in Essex, from Alberic de 
 Wic ; and, with additions, this became one of the remarkable 
 places held by him and his descendants. There is a description 
 of it by Morant in his county history. It is known in charters 
 as Topesfield and Topefeud, and Morant gives the suggestive 
 further information, that Camoys Hall, which was one of seve- 
 ral manors included in it, had been a residence and property of 
 Hamo Sinclair, the dapifer. It is in the Hingford hundred, and 
 was held as from the honour of Bolonia or Boulogne, Eustace, 
 the earl, bridging the Channel at an earlier period with his 
 possessions, France and England being curiously united then, 
 and in other also than the Normandy relationship. Alberic 
 was probably one of the Veres, and the connection with the 
 Sinclairs through Eudo Dapifer's family would also aid such 
 a bargain. Richard's ruinous reign as to money, both by his 
 own crusading madness and that of his most gallant subjects, 
 explains great revolutions in family matters, and his successors 
 John and Henry were not the men to heal the wounds of the 
 body social. Gerebert, however, seems to have prospered, and 
 many things indicate that he well knew how. The value of 
 being a wide underholder, especially to the church, which 
 then had half the income of England from the soil in its pos- 
 session, is shown by a notice of holding lands, not only from 
 such as Samson, the abbot of St. Edmondsbury, but from the 
 prioresses. With several others of social standing he pays 
 rent to the prioress of Algarsthorp for possessions, no doubt 
 the most profitable of all in this kind, men being then much 
 better arithmeticians than women.
 
 2JO THE SINCLAIRS OF ESGLAND. 
 
 In the Roiuli Litterarum Clausarum in tumi Londoniemi 'in. 
 2 Hen. III., 1 21 7, in a summons by a Say to a Ferrers about 
 the manor of Bercot, ' Lincoln ' being the heading, the i 
 having about one hundred and fifty witnesses, » Gitebt de Sco 
 Claro Vic de Norf % Suff,' appears. This settles his position 
 at the beginning of Henry the Third's troubled reign, as 
 viscount of Norfolk and Suffolk, or king's substitute for the 
 rule of these counties. In the same year there is one of these 
 secret letters from Henry to the sheriff of Essex to put Alan 
 de Creping in possession of lands which Alan had lost by rebel- 
 lion against John, in which appears James de Seincler — ' Eod 
 m° scribitur Vic Essex p Jam de Seincler.' At this period 
 Gereberd is old enough to have a son at manhood, .lames; 
 and, in the year after, he gives lands in Stone and Bishop- 
 stone, Buckinghamshire, to a Hugo de Seincler, who is 
 another son. On the carta of St. Edmondsbury in the Nigt r 
 Liber Scaccarii of Henry II. Gibert de Sancto Claro holds one 
 miles or knight's fee, as from the abbey. Henry died in 1188, 
 thirty years before, and the return of the charters of the hold- 
 ings of the church and barons might have been considerably 
 earlier. That Bichard Sinclair was dead in 1 1 89-90, and that 
 his heirs paid the taxes on Marhngeford, is proved by this 
 reference to Gilbert as holding from St. Edmondsbury in Henry 
 the Second's time. Another name in 2 Hen. III. is of close 
 lineage to Gerebert : ' Eodem m° scribitur Vic Suff p Bob de 
 Seinclow.' 
 
 The public affairs of Gerebert have much light thrown on 
 them by Cole's Documents. This is a volume of extracts from 
 the tax accounts of Henry III. during the third and fourth 
 years of his reign. ' Esson capta a die Sci Hillar in xv dies. 
 Norf ' GereBd e Sco Claro v 1 Vivone 1 Damettam de pi debit p 
 Humfridu de Dulha. Dies a die Pasch in xv dies.' Here 
 Gerebert is sheriff of Norfolk. But the next entry with regard 
 to Suffolk (in which the famous Jew, Isaac of Norwich, appears) 
 shows him in another character, as the attorney of Adam of 
 Hillega, who seems to have then been viscount or sheriff of 
 that county. Three years previously Gerebert has been shown 
 as viscount of both Norfolk and Suffolk. ' Ess capta a die Sco 
 Midi in xv dies. Suff'. Gerebtus de Sco Claro atorii Ade de 
 Hillegv Isaac de Norwic de ptjdebit p Hug fil Bic. Dies a die Sci 
 Hillar in t t- s sept.' Gereberd for Adam, the sheriff, claims the
 
 GEREBERD OF NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK. 271 
 
 taxes from Isaac of Norwich, due by Hugh, the son of Richard, 
 the Jew being his agent and money-lender. Another entry 
 puts Gereberd himself in exactly the same position as Isaac. 
 ' Ess capta apucl Westfh a die Pascfr in xv dies Norf Rob de 
 Becles atornat 9 Witti de Hengham v'Gereb de ScoClaro p Walter 
 fit Odofi. de pi deb Dies in C n stifi Ascension.' Here the taxes 
 are taken at Westminster from a Norfolk man, Gereberd 
 being his agent, and it is of value to notice that William of 
 Hengham was the king's agent. He was one of the descen- 
 dants of Hubert Sinclair, the governor of Norwich Castle and 
 earl of Norfolk, of the Rye family. They became best known 
 as the barons of Hengham, Stephen's reign putting them out 
 of the very highest rank, which they held in previous reigns. 
 
 In Warwickshire Gereberd next has transactions for himself 
 and for the king with a world of Jews, and it is probable that 
 he was then sheriff of the county, that office alone explanatory 
 of this entry. ' Gerebertus de Sco Claro fill fecit cu Josceo 
 P 9 ebito ^Manassero Clico ^Leoii_yEpo Bndco Crespiii 7 Jacob 
 Crespiii f re suo de xxii ti q a s dns Rex libavit eisd Judis p xli. li 
 redd inf a iiij annos ^sett ad Pasch anno regni Reg H fil Reg Joh 
 q a rto xi li 7 ad f sci Mich p x seqns c. sol 7 ita in t'bus annis 
 seqntib3 ad quemlibet jidcoz t mino3 c. sot Et scind est qd qd ita 
 convenit in't 1 eos qd si id Gerebertus monstrare porit qd aliquid 
 cle pMcis xxii li solverit-vdebet allocari eid Gerebt a pVlco jiebito 
 7 dfis Rex debet respondare pMcis Judis Petit 7 dcus Gerebt 
 qd si aliquid debit inveniaf sub noia suo qd possit in finire cu 
 diio Regi. 7 hoc concessu e ei.' The ghost of the learned 
 Gereberd would have to be invoked for perfect explanation of 
 all this legal money business. Joseph, Manasseh, Leon or 
 Levi, Bendico or Benjamin, Jacob and his brother, lent ^41 
 to the king. Rudder in 1766 said that the Norman silver 
 pound, which meant weight, was equal to ^3, 2s., and it 
 could buy what perhaps ^10 then could not. Compared with 
 the present value of money, this ^41 lent by the Jews would 
 be equal at least to half-a-thousand, and, if limitation of circu- 
 lation is considered, to far more. It was, therefore, quite 
 worthy of the ' lord king ' and his sheriff's best attention, the 
 teeth of the Jews having got to their usual length again after 
 Richard and John's dentistry. It is possible, however, that 
 England owes a good deal of its greatness to the freedom of 
 circulation which usury encouraged. If these were gold pounds
 
 272 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 (and one such was worth ^"48 in'171 1, according to Sir Robert 
 Atkins), the ^42 then would be worth several thousands now. 
 The subject is too subtle for .satisfaction. The gist of Gere- 
 berd's settlement with Joseph and Co., is that the king pays 
 them back ^22 of the loan of ^41 which he had for four 
 years, and the rest is to come with interest by instalments 
 during the three remaining years, and further that if Gereberd 
 pay some of it Joseph will give him reckoning for it, and, 
 chiefly, Gereberd wishes that if he have any of the payments 
 to make he may make them to the king, the Jews and Henry 
 to deal with each other. He gets the grant, but the transac- 
 tion is too distant in the far time to be at all sure of its 
 special meaning. The general effect of it is easily discernible, 
 namely, that kings and king's viscounts had difficulties then 
 of keeping the wolf quiet as much as private and public men 
 have now, if not more. ' Norf Vivo ill Benjamin Jucls exeg a 
 GereBto de Sco Claro lxii m 1 dim j> cyrog' 1 phii sub noie Vives 
 de Oxon 7 Damet iil Moreth ^>dcus Gerebertus veil 7 die cera 
 antiqor est cy rographo ~J 7 q qii cyrog a phum illud confectum 
 fuit, etc. etc' There are paragraphs and paragraphs of this 
 and other such Jewish and business transactions in shaky 
 Latin, but already more than enough has been written of what 
 is nearly obsolete to much useful general purpose. Here 
 Gereberd denies his liability to pay 62 merks to some Jews of 
 Oxford and elsewhere, on the very good ground that they 
 have forged the bill against him. The cyrograph was a parch- 
 ment to which the wax seal was attached as to charters, and 
 these Jews seem to have known the theory and practice of 
 palimpsest, and also of detaching queues or wax hangers from 
 the original parchment to put them to new ones. Cheque 
 forging is a much more difficult process for sharpers now. To 
 take off the previous writing, as the monks for economy often 
 did, and write anew, was as good for the swindlers as for them. 
 Tindal's elaborate essay rather than note on The Exchequer of 
 the Jews in England, is as valuable as it is exceedinsrlv interest- 
 ing on the subject of cyrographs, money business, and indeed of 
 the whole Jewish economy in this country, the civil, religious, 
 and political bonds and privileges included. It is to be found 
 in vol. I., book viii., p. 346, at the end of Henry the Third's 
 reign, in Rapin's History of England, which Tindal annotated 
 most usefully, and continued from the beginning of the reign
 
 TWO JOHNS. 2 73 
 
 of William and Mary in 1689, when the able Frenchman left 
 it. 
 
 But a work on the subject could be written, from the infor- 
 mation in such records as these about Gereberd Sinclair in 
 Cole's Documents, that would give great pleasure to a limited 
 class of students of history and life. That Gereberd succeeded 
 through all his transactions is to be inferred from his gener- 
 osity to others, as well strangers as relations. In the hundred 
 of Piriton, Oxfordshire, he gives a portion of his lands there to 
 a widow, to the termination of her life, free from all rent and 
 from all services whatever; and in 1227 Hugh Sinclair, to 
 whom he gave the properties in Buckinghamshire in 12 18, gets 
 large additions from him in the same district, though he did 
 not live much longer to enjoy them. In Palgrave's Ancient 
 Calendars and Inventories, from 6 Ric. I. to John, this Hugo is 
 one of a court in an Essex settling about the heirship, pro- 
 bably his own, to a Sibilla of that county, before he got his 
 lands in Buckinghamshire. John de Sancto Claro succeeded 
 Hugh as heir in 1237. 
 
 In a record of 36 Hen. III., 1252, is an entr} r , De servitiis 
 regi debitis : Gereberdus alias Gerebaldus de Seint Cler et Jo- 
 hannes de Seint Cler defunct i ; by which it appears that 
 Gereberd and his successor John were both dead at this date, 
 and their properties awaiting possession by the new heir. 
 They must have died within a year of each other ; for in the 
 Calendar of InquisitioJis after Death of 36 Hen. III., number 
 22 deals with Gerebert as quondam proprietor of Topesfield, 
 of the honour of Bolonia, in Essex; and number 48 of 36 Hen. 
 III. John de Sancto ' Clauro ' for the same place. In 37 Hen. 
 III. John is again mentioned as formerly of ' Bradfeud maner, 
 Suffolc,' which was the Suffolk pronunciation of Bradfield St. 
 Clare. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 TWO JOHNS. 
 
 There is further information about John who succeeded Gere- 
 bert and died so soon after. In the Patent Rolls of the Tower 
 of London, year 40 Hen. III., there is mention of him as ' nuper 
 
 s
 
 274 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 defunctuSf 'lately dead,' in connection with 80 acres of land 
 and one messuagium which he held for the third part of a 
 knight's fee, the arable land being always a small portion of 
 estates then. This also occurs, ' idem tenuit duo feod' mil' in 
 Bradfield et Watlesfield de Abbate Sancti K<t<ti in qua Alesia 
 quondam Comitissa Warrenn' soror Reg' ' — ' The same held two 
 knights' fees in Bradfield and Wethersfield from the abbot of 
 Saint Edmondsbury, in which Alesia was formerly, the coun- 
 tess Warenne, sister of the king' Henry III. had three 
 sisters, and one brother Richard, the duke of Cornwall and king 
 of the Romans. Rapin and Tindal give no account of the 
 third of these ladies, who was Alesia the countess Warenne 
 here noticed; but Rapin mentions Joanna and Eleanor, the 
 former being queen of Alexander II. of Scotland, the latter 
 wife, first of William Marshall, earl of Pembroke, and then of 
 the Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, who cost all that 
 trouble of battles of Lewes and Evesham to Henry and his son 
 Edward, the greatest of the Plantagenets. It would be inter- 
 esting to know how John Sinclair succeeded this sister Alesia, 
 in holding Bradfield and Wethersfield from the abbey, to the 
 extent of two knights' fees. Gereberd certainly had the for- 
 mer, to one knight fee's extent, from the abbot, besides his 
 own held in capite. The explanation is that Bradfield was of 
 several fees in extent. There was a Monks- Bi-adfield besides 
 that which had the name St. Clare. Of Wethersfield, how- 
 ever, this is the first mention, and John got it directly after 
 the countess. The honour of Bolonia was then in the crown, 
 and he was one of the underholders ; though this could only be 
 an occasion rather than the reason why he should be next after 
 the king's sister. But he may have got these two fees through 
 ties to the count, Warenne. In the Testa de Nevill, the book 
 of the fees in the court of the treasury, he appears under 
 ' Norfolk ' as holding half-a-fee of Elvedon from the feoda of 
 the count. 
 
 John had possession of the Bucks, and Oxford properties 
 for twenty-five years before his father Gerebert's death, and 
 for a short time of less than a year he had possession of most 
 of his lands, except what Robert Sinclair had got of Gereberd's 
 to the north. John was the principal heir to the various lands 
 of Gereberd, and died in 1252 ; the family branching into two, 
 in the persons of John, his successor, and of Robert. This
 
 TWO JOHNS. 
 
 ■I 3 
 
 second John, had Bradfield St. Clare as the head of his barony, 
 and of him considerable account has survived. He 'kept 
 court' at Bradfield from 41 Hen. III., which means that he 
 held the baronial court which settled local cases. Mr. Gomme 
 says that the baron court was much the same as the hundred 
 court. Between them they did most of the civil and criminal 
 business of the counties, and John had the best of traditions 
 to be equal to his position. On his father's death a mandate 
 was sent with regard to the Essex lands. De terris capiendis, 
 is the heading of the record. ' Mand est AbBti de psore 
 Esccatori B: qd sine ditone capiat in manum B: maSium de 
 Toppefeud quod fuit Joh'is de Sco Claro qui de B: tenuit in 
 capite de honore Bolon' ^ * illud salvo c'todiat don c B: aliud inde 
 p'cepit. T. B: apud Wodestok xvj die Aug ' — ' The king com- 
 manded the abbot of Pershore ' [Gloucester] ' that without delay 
 he must take into the hand of the king the manor of Topefield, 
 which was that of John Sinclair, who held in capite from the 
 king of the honour of Boulogne, and that he keep that safely 
 till the king has given further order : With the king witness, 
 at Woodstock, 16th Aug.' It was in 1252. The inquisition 
 after death being held shortly thereafter, this is the result 
 in Essex, where Topefield was the head property : ' Johannes 
 filius Johannis de Sancto Claro propinquior haeres ejus est et 
 est de aetate novemdecem annorum ' — ' John, the son of John 
 Sinclair, is his nearest heir, and is of the age of nineteen.' It 
 was in the following year that by an exactly similar legal 
 process he was declared heir of the Suffolk lands. There are 
 no records for other estates that may have fallen to him, and 
 if twenty- one was majority, then his lands, so far as these 
 two counties were concerned, remained some time longer in 
 the king's hands. What he held as undertenant is not of 
 course to be discovered in state papers, the superior answering 
 to the treasury for the whole feoda or fief. His father and 
 his father's predecessor, Gereberd, are known by various inci- 
 dental notices to have been wide underholders to the earl of 
 Warren, Peter of Kennet, the abbot of Edmondsbury, and 
 others. In the Open Rolls of the Tower there are transactions 
 about the Essex and Suffolk lands in 40 Hen. III., 1256, and 
 it would appear that John did not get actual possession till 
 that year. This is supported by the fact that he did not begin 
 to keep his manorial court, at his beautiful seat of Bradfield
 
 276 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 St. Clare, till the year 1257. In 1250 Henry the Third had 
 taken the cross, to go against the Saracens as soon as he could 
 get ready. In 1252, Rapin says, the voyage to the Holy 
 Land was still being contemplated, and * as money was the 
 most necessary preparation, he took occasion from this voyage 
 to extort great sums from the Jews, nor were his Christian 
 subjects less spared.' Henry's needs in this way being chronic, 
 it is likely John Sinclair had to wait in nonage for the regal 
 profit longer than was necessary. Kings hud learned to apply 
 to the nobles the system, so fruitful with the clergy, of defer- 
 ring occupancy. 
 
 That John had some bitter grievance to put right, is implied 
 by his taking sides, as one of the barons, with Simon Montfort, 
 the earl of Leicester, against the king. His patriotism, how- 
 ever, may be sufficient explanation of this. The appointment of 
 the twenty-four barons, and afterwards the founding of Eng- 
 land's greatest institution, the house of commons, in 1264, 
 had his active co-operation. It was the year after he began 
 to hold his manorial court at Bradfield St. Clare that, in 
 1258, when he was twenty-five, the provisions of Oxford were 
 drawn up, and twelve commissioners chosen by the king and 
 twelve by the barons, to regulate the disorder of the troubled 
 reign. He was at Oxford on that day with a goodly following, 
 as most of the military feudal tenants of the kingdom were, 
 to compel progress. Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was 
 made president of the council. They had the appointment 
 of the sheriffs through all the kingdom, with general powers 
 almost unlimited. But Henry and his son, Prince Edward, 
 afterwards Edward I., could not endure the thraldom, as they 
 thought it ; and, in 1263, the civil war began. Prince Edward's 
 violence in coming with his army from Wales suddenly, and 
 forcibly taking possession of ^£10,000 from the treasury of 
 the Templars, London, began the system of reprisals in simi- 
 lar way through the kingdom ; and perhaps Stephen's reign 
 was not worse socially than Henry's at this period. The 
 Londoners naturally took the side of the barons after the 
 prince's doings ; and they even threw dust at the queen as 
 she tried to pass up the river from the tower palace, as well 
 as words of insult, to express their feelings. It was Edward's 
 special hatred to the Londoners for this, that lost Henry the 
 battle of Lewes in 1264; he pursued them too far, and the
 
 TWO JOHNS. 2?7 
 
 royalists were meanwhile defeated by the earl of Leicester. 
 Percy, Bohun, Basset, Baliol, Bruce, and Comyn were made 
 prisoners by the barons. John Sinclair was on the victorious 
 side that 14th day of May in Sussex. The first house of 
 commons parliament was summoned some months after, the 
 greatest step in English civil freedom. But the escape of 
 Prince Edward from surveillance renewed the war, and the 
 battle of Evesham on the 4th August 1265, in which Simon 
 Montfort, the earl of Leicester, was killed, put the political 
 game entirely into the royal hands. The estates of the con- 
 federated barons were confiscated, and London lost her gates, 
 magistrates, and 20,000 merks, as punishment of her love of 
 liberty. Simon, the earl's eldest son, left Kenilworth Castle, 
 his home, in despair of pardon, and fortified himself in the isle 
 of Axholme, Lincolnshire, where many of the confederates 
 joined him. Prince Edward compelled them to surrender, in 
 December, their lives and limbs to be spared, and their estates 
 to be given back or not as himself and his uncle, the king of 
 the Romans, might decide. Montfort got a pension of 500 
 merks, but he soon after turned pirate in the English Channel, 
 the Cinque Ports conniving at his doings. Meantime the 
 malcontents had possession of Kenilworth Castle, and besides 
 a new batch of barons in Axholme Isle, there were risings in 
 the north and in Hampshire. But the chief centre of the 
 barons "was where Hereward made his last stand, in the isle of 
 Ely among the fens. While blockading Kenilworth, Henry 
 called a parliament, and articles of terms were drawn up and 
 offered for the acceptance of the rebels. Their pardon was to 
 be general, but before having possession of their estates some 
 were to pay five years' value, others three, others one. John 
 Sinclair was among these barons of Ely, with several of his 
 lineage. The terms were rejected, and soon after they, and 
 he as one of them, made an expedition to Norwich, returning 
 to the isle with ^20,000 sterling and all the necessaries they 
 could take with them. Tindal says they did as much for 
 Cambridge, ' in their return to Ely, carrying away not only 
 several Jews, but also the richest of the townsmen, whom they 
 kept prisoners till they would ransom themselves at exorbi- 
 tant rates.' The Annals of Waverley Abbey, Wikes, and Ris- 
 hanger support him in this. After more than a six months' 
 siege Kenilworth was lost, and about the 25th of July the
 
 278 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 founders of the house of commons surrendered their last 
 refuge, the semel et iterum famous isle of Ely. 'The only 
 conditions granted them,' says Rapin, ' was the saving their 
 life and limbs.' 
 
 By the suffering of its benefactors humanity seems alone to 
 be well served. There are signs, however, that these patriotic 
 rebels did not submit tamely to be kept out of their properties, 
 and some of them undoubtedly contrived to secure portions if 
 not all from the greedy hands of weak Henry. John Sinclair 
 of Bradfield St. Clare was of this number. In the state rolls 
 of 51 Henry III., 1257, there is a graphic account of his 
 particular sins. A commission, or king's sham parliament, 
 was sitting at Ipswich, in Suffolk; and a presentation was 
 made there by Richard de Bosco, or ' Richard of the wood,' 
 against John Sinclair and various others. They may have 
 been claiming their own estates, and this accusation could be 
 used as potent argument against recovery ; or, the king and 
 the prince, now at their leisure, may have been revenging 
 their troubles of five chequered years of alternate imprison- 
 ments and successes. Those named might be greater adven- 
 turers than the others, being, as local men, best acquainted 
 with the resources of the district around Ely ; and so had to 
 suffer more than the loss of their estates. The whole roll, 
 however, in which these troubles are being settled, does not 
 show special vindictiveness. A William Sinclair of the Thames 
 district lost and recovered again his estates there, though 
 with difficulty, because of espousing the side of the barons. 
 But of him again. There is record that John was fortunate. 
 The presentation before the court by Richard de Bosco was, 
 that John de Sender, Robert de Mundeville, rnilites, Edmund 
 de Seincler, Peter de Sender, parson of Wethersfield, summetar 
 John de Sender, and others, sent by Robert Euel or Howel 
 (the head of the malcontents in the isle of Ely), had come 
 with horses and arms to his house in Walberwickam, and had 
 taken all they could lay their hands on. There is a particular 
 account of the cups, dresses, gold-rings, weapons of war, and 
 other valuables which they found, and the value of each article 
 is given in the presentation, throwing quaintest light on the 
 social as well as political condition of that troubled time. But 
 John de Sender and his equestrian armed company did not 
 stop at this point, in their enthusiasm for popular liberty as
 
 TWO JOHNS. 2?9 
 
 against royal prerogative. This royalistic Richard de Bo.sco 
 must have incurred the special hatred of the earl of Leicester 
 and his barons. Probably, however, his personal stubbornness 
 or disinclination to be quietly fleeced, is sufficient explanation 
 of the treatment he got. No doubt the love of ransom money, 
 which was one of the belles passions of these and much later 
 times, Agincourt included, aided the general necessity of 
 frightening Richard de Bosco thoroughly. He says they took 
 and stripped him, carried him into the wood of Bukenhelle, 
 possibly his own wood, so hoisting him as it were with his 
 own petard, and there kept him bound a day and a night. 
 The length of detention was evidently his own doing, the time 
 being required for him to make up his mind as to what he 
 woidd do. Only after the aid of striking him on the neck 
 with a kind of sword (and he was lucky that it was only a 
 kind of such speedy weapon) and sundry additional whippings, 
 did he make a finem or settlement by paying a ransom of 65 
 merks. This sum would be value for perhaps ^500 now, and 
 though such doings were the fashion, Richard de Bosco had 
 some reason to grumble. Whether these Sinclairs, of grave 
 social and official standing, and more than the half of England 
 and whole of London, which they thus represented in the 
 struggle for rights, are to be blamed or praised, may be left 
 to ingenuity. Might and right coalesce as laws weaken and 
 tyrannies strengthen. 
 
 It is of importance to note that the surname is spelt in this 
 roll exactly as Richard, the son of Walter, earl of St. Cler, 
 has his spelt in Domesday Book, with the exception of Edmund 
 de 'Seincler.' To other things, this is corroborative of their 
 descent from him. Edmund is a side branch of the same 
 family, who, for distinction, made the difference of spelling ; 
 and to them the attention is next to be directed. Then only 
 thirty- four years of age, none of his name- fellows were John's 
 sons, though the parson of Wethersfield church, which being 
 on one of his estates was an advowson of his, was his brother, 
 who went into the clerisy, and ought perhaps to have kept 
 his natural war instincts within the pale of that body. John, 
 ' the summetar,' was of an older generation, or a cousin ; but 
 these are not alternatives of surety or importance. As to 
 John Sinclair, the lord of Bradfield St. Clare manor, he did 
 not make the phrase permanently applicable to himself by his
 
 2 So THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 patriotism which the followers of Simon de Montfort, earl of 
 Leicester, were known by after the royal victories, ' the disin- 
 herited.' He recovered his position though he did give rough 
 handling to Richard de Bois, once bailiff of Norwich, and who 
 had a name of considerable standing, in his own person and in 
 those of landholding descendants. Morant says John occurs in 
 52 Hen. III., 1268, nest year after this presentation, as a 
 lord, the width of his possessions compelling him to the full 
 duties of a baron of the kingdom. The Rotuli Hundredorum 
 was drawn up by a commission siibscribed under the great 
 seal, 1 1 Oct. of the 2nd year of Edward the First, and was 
 the result of forty-seven articles of inquiry as to the state 
 of the demesne lands of the crown, the manors in the crown's 
 hands or their alienations, the tenants in capite and their skill 
 of evading tax by subinfeudation and other schemes, aliena- 
 tions to the church under pretences of frankalmoigne or free 
 gift, wardships, marriages, escheats, fee-farm, services, tolls, 
 murage, customs, unlawful exportation of wool, and other of 
 the curious social institutions of the thirteenth century. There 
 were ten local men appointed for the St. Edmundsbury district 
 to find the true state of matters there, and John de Sco Claro 
 appears as one of the four of best rank, milites, among the 
 ten. They made inquisition concerning the liberties of St. 
 Edmundsbury on oath. This shows that he had not suffered 
 much, if at all, by the previous period of rebellion. It is 
 acknowledged that Edward appreciated the motives of the 
 barons by himself summoning parliaments and paying them 
 the highest respect. If there were nothing further than this 
 of explanation of John's continued prosperity it might be 
 enough. In Laing's Scottish Seals there is notice of a Sir 
 William at the date of 1292, and the fact that his seal was 
 in the chapter house, Westminster, might suggest that he 
 was one of these Englishmen. His shield is a cross engrailed 
 in a centre of rounded tracery, and in each of three compart- 
 ments a boar's head couped. The inscription is ' S' Willelmi 
 de Sco Claro militis ' — ' Sir William Sinclair.' Edward the 
 Third's connection with Scotland at the period may be explana- 
 tion of a Scottish knight's seal getting placed among state 
 relics, though it is open to discuss the locality implied by the 
 boars' heads. But this William only in passing. It may be 
 added, however, that he may have been the ' Sir William de
 
 VICECOMES AND ESCIIEATOR. 
 
 Santcler' in Robert Grawfurd's History of the Royal Stuarts, 
 who was one of the representatives of King Edward Baliol's 
 claims in 1294 before Edward I. atNorham against the earlier 
 Robert Bruce. A John de St. Cleer pays his feudal respect 
 to the abbot of St. Edmundsbury as late as 30 Edward I., 
 1302, for some possessions connected with the manor of IJrad- 
 field St. < Hare ; and it is as probable that it was the hero of the 
 island of Ely who was thus living so long and happily ever 
 after, as that it was a successor of the same name. It is true 
 that the homage to the abbot suggests a new reign at the 
 manor or the abbey. Either way serves the genealogical 
 narration, for history there is not, of these years, as far as 
 is discovered. Most men of the period had substani ial dealings 
 with the church in preparation for the close of life, and John 
 Sinclair of Bradfield, baron, was no exception to the rule, lie 
 was too old to join Edward I. in the wars against Wallace 
 and Edward's own relation and English vassal Bruce, who 
 headed the Scottish or, better word, Norman independence 
 which was secured in 13 14 by the battle of Bannockburn. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 VICECOMES AND ESCIIEATOR. 
 
 GuiDO or Guy de St. Cleer was the son or grandson of the 
 baron of Bradfield of the raiding adventures. His mother 
 was a Neville of the famous earl of Warwick 'king-maker' 
 family, and to the maternal side lie owed his first name. The 
 earliest notice of him is in 1335 as, with his wife Marjory, 
 holding Wyrun Hall, Norfolk, which would be connected with 
 her marriage dowry, this being a new name in the properties 
 of the lords of Bradfield. In 22 Edward III., 1349,11c was 
 made king's viscount or sheriff of the united counties of Cam- 
 bridge and Huntingdon, in both of which he had properties. 
 At this time sheriffs had their appointments only for a year, 
 with rare exceptions, as can be seen by the extant and easily 
 accessible lists; but Guv's ability or influence, or both, gained 
 him this coveted position again and again. He held it in the 
 23d year also, and had it renewed in the 24th and 25th of
 
 2 S2 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Edward the Third's reign. It was the period of the glorious 
 but expensive battles of Cressy and Poictiers in France when 
 Guido had so much management of the king's affairs in the 
 counties where his lands lay, and it is safe inference to draw 
 that he was personally popular with both his lord and the 
 people, when the official connection was so often kept up. His 
 wealth also would have its good effect in such times of pressure. 
 At the interval of a year he had the consulship of the two 
 counties for the fifth time, 1354. The year after he was out 
 of this particular harness, but in 29 Ed. III., 1356, he was 
 made escheator for the king in the counties of Norfolk and 
 Suffolk. 
 
 Escheats were one of the principal sources of the king's 
 revenue, and they included not only the lands properly so 
 called, but also those which after the Conquest became vested 
 in the crown by devolution, seizure, forfeiture, or other con- 
 tingency. The i-ecords are full of references to such honours, 
 baronies, or fiefs as that of Bolonia, ' quae est in maun regis ' — 
 ' which is in the hand of the king ; and this family itself, is 
 remarkable as holding from such escheats some of its fees. 
 Those baronies were often farmed to the favoured nobles at a 
 yearly payment. But besides the great fiefs, the lands of the 
 lesser barons and gentry, as well as the produce of hereditary 
 offices and serjeanties, fell frequently to the crown. Usually 
 the escheats merged into the royal demesnes, claims getting 
 gradually quite dead. In Henry the Second's reign was 
 instituted a public office of escheatry, managed by custodes or 
 keepers. These afterwards got the name of escheators, and 
 one of these Guido was. Small escheats the sheriffs took care 
 of, the justices itinerant putting them in their charge. But 
 perhaps the most lucrative part of the escheator's duties was 
 taking possession for the king of the temporalities or estates 
 of the church on occurrence of vacancy from office by death or 
 otherwise. Of these the bishops could not get possession, and 
 cannot yet, without writs. Rufus and Anselm, king and 
 archbishop, figured in the game of profit and loss early, and 
 the crown never lost this useful and necessary hold on the 
 rich demesnes of the church, at one period worth more than 
 the half of England. 
 
 Next year, 1357, Guy was sheriff of the united counties of 
 Norfolk and Suffolk. Among the charters still preserved in
 
 VICECOMES AND ESCHEATOR. 283 
 
 the British Museum, there is an order by him as vicecomes of 
 Norfolk of that year. It is a parchment carta of ten lines' 
 length, in Latin, seven inches or so by four, and in good pre- 
 servation, except that the queue and seal are gone. With 
 four other similarly ancient Sinclair charters, its interest is of 
 considerable public and very particular genealogical impor- 
 tance. The live are in absolutely safe keeping henceforward. 
 One is from John de Seintcler of Penshurst, the poet Sydney's 
 place afterwards; and, written in old French, his seal with 
 the shield of blazing sun is attached to it. But this will pro- 
 bably recur, and Guido's course requires further following. 
 Of Norfolk and Suffolk, as previously of Cambridge and 
 Huntingdon, he was exceptionally made viscount again and 
 again. In 1358 he had reappointment. The last of his 
 sheriffships traced is that of 1359. 
 
 But he was often escheator at other periods. In the 
 Rotulorum Originalium in Curia Scaccarii Abbreviatio temporibus 
 Hen. III. Ed. I. and II. there are to be found no fewer than 
 seven king's mandates to him in this office. One of them 
 under the heading Ganc' or Kent is addressed to Guido de 
 Seintcler, escheator of the king in the county of Cambridge ; 
 another under Cant' or Cambridge is addressed to him as 
 escheator of the county; the third is to Guido de Seyntcler, 
 escheator of the king in the county of Suffolk, under 
 the heading Sufi' ; in a fourth belonging to Suffolk he is 
 esc. r., in the county of Huntingdon; under Huntingdon he 
 appears as its king's escheator ; Cane' or Kent has him as 
 escheator in the counties of Cambridge and Huntingdon ; and 
 lastly there is a mandate to him under Cantab' as escheator 
 of the king in the county of Cambridge. The names and 
 business which are in these mandates are of special value. In 
 Suffolk he was to put Robert Corbet, chevalier, son and heir 
 of Sir John Corbet, in possession of the manor of Asyngton, 
 held by Sir John in capite as from the honour of Hatfield- 
 Peverell, then in the king's hands. On doing certain service 
 in the court of the honour or barony, and paying a reasonable 
 relief, Sir Robert was to get full possession. It would be 
 valuable to know if Guido was aware of the unity of lineage 
 of these Corbets or Corbeils with himself. In Cambridge he 
 was to take possession for the king of Barnton and Iske- 
 lyngton, and also of the ' house of St. Michael ' in the town, of
 
 284 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 which house the master was dead. The manor of Bramton with 
 its pertinents had to be seized in Suffolk. In Huntingdon, 
 Richard, the brother of John,: the son of John Farndon of New- 
 bury, after a reasonable tax, was to get a house and 86 acres of 
 land, with 15 of meadow, and various returns. In Kent, Guy 
 was to give Thomas de Wanton his mother's lands, and also 
 those of another lady relation. Walter Hamelyn, then dead, 
 who had been himself escheator of the king in the county of 
 Cambridge, had a son John, to whom Guido Sinclair, the ruling 
 escheator, must give lands, houses, mill, meadow at Badburg- 
 ham, as the heir to his father, who was holder from the crown 
 by services. One of these mandates may serve as specimen 
 for the others. ' Cane' : Mand' est Guidoni de Seintcler esc' 
 E. in com' Cantebr' qct accepta sec. a Thoma Oky q' duxit in 
 uxem Matitt q' fuit soror Andree Stenene def de renabili 
 relevio suo et eisdem Thome & Matitt de uno messuagio sexa- 
 ginta acr Pre dual:>3 acr prati & duodecim denaritis de redditu 
 assisio cum ptin' q' de B: tenent' in capite p s'vicium sexti ptis 
 unius feodi milites plen seis' fire f ac' ' — 'Kent: It was com- 
 manded to Guido Sinclair, escheator of the king, that having 
 accepted security from Thomas Oky, who married Matilda who 
 was the sister of Andrew Stenene, dead, concerning his reason- 
 able tax, he make full possession as heirs to the same Thomas 
 and Matilda of one homestead, sixty acres of arable land, two 
 of meadow, and twelve pence of returns from the assize with 
 the pertinents, which was held from the king in cajrite by the 
 service of the sixth part of one knight's fee.' 
 
 In Blomfield's History of Norfolk there are useful notes of 
 Guy, especially in connection with Grimston, which he pos- 
 sessed, a manor that afterwards was called Morley's, because 
 of its coming into the possession of the lords Morley. It was 
 part of the old barony of Hengham, which the Hubert Sinclair 
 family held from the reign of William First. Kimberley of 
 the present peer, of Wodehouse lineage, is another of its parts, 
 once held by the Gournays of the Yexin. Grimston or Morley's 
 manor, near Hengham, the caput baroniae, is a few miles south 
 of Kimberley Castle. ' The family of the St Cleers or de 
 Sancto Claro were also,' says Blomfield, ' ancient lords of this 
 manor.' He thinks that ' good part of this manor was alien- 
 ated by some of the family, who had a noble seat and park 
 at Bradfield abovementioned.' Whether Guy was the seller
 
 VICECOMES AND ESCHEATOR. 285 
 
 cannot be fixed. It is more probable tbat it was John, or 
 perhaps Gereberd, as in his younger days he seemed dealing 
 with the Jews overmuch. At the time in which Guido lived it 
 was not possible to recover matters by raiding in the Jewish 
 quarters, the kings themselves being precluded from the ex- 
 traction of Israelitish teeth in default of the required liberality. 
 It is certain that he had great opportunities of enriching him- 
 self, whether he took sufficient advantage or not of his position 
 and influence. 
 
 His son Pain, or Paganus, de St. Clair, must have died with- 
 out male issue. In 49 Ed. III., 1376, he preleases to Edward 
 de St. John and Joan his wife and her heirs all his right in 
 the manor of Grimston. She may have been his sister or 
 daughter, as she was certainly his heiress. The St. Johns 
 are said to have been a Kent family descended from the rich 
 Hugh de Port of Domesday Book. The lands of this branch 
 of Sinclairs could therefore fall into hands far less worthy ; 
 but it is melancholy, nevertheless, to see the end of so much 
 vigour as exhibited itself in these northern and eastern home 
 counties. Of Pain Sinclair little is known, and he must be 
 left with the remark that his mother was of the Beauchamp 
 family, from whom he got a first name unusual to his paternal 
 lineage. A Joan was the heiress of the Bradfields. The 
 chief estates, indeed, ultimately reverted to Sir Philip St. 
 Cleere, known most as Sir Philip of Bristow, in Surrey. 
 Blomfield says he was lord of Bradfield and Wethersfield in 
 the reign of Henry the Fourth ; but in the inquisition after 
 death 9 Hen. IV., 140S, he is returned as having Wethersfield 
 manor in the county of Suffolk, without mention of Bradfield. 
 Wethersfield must have grown into the head manor by which 
 the others, if any, took their designation. He also is one of 
 the descendants of Richard Sinclair, the king's chamberlain 
 and son of Walter, earl of St. Clair and of Medway ; but his 
 relationship to Pain was very distant, and it is difficult to 
 believe that he inherited as heir-general, though this would 
 seem to be the fact. Sir Philip's history, however, will occur 
 again in following his own powerful branch of the lineage ; 
 and it is enough here to know that the Suffolk lands were not 
 yet lost to the name, Sir Philip having descendants to possess 
 these and many other estates. The following refers to one of 
 them : ' De B. W. onerando de custodia manerii de Whethers-
 
 286 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 field in comitatu Suffolciae, in manibus regis existensis post 
 mortem Johannis Seynclere, militis, tenentis in capite. — 
 Hilarii Recorda, 8 Hen. V., Roluta 9. Henry V., from whom 
 Sir John Sinclair had Wethersfield by direct holding, gets the 
 custody of the manor after his death. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 COUSINS. 
 
 1 Cousins ' must be used in its general sense. It is impossible 
 to reckon exact degrees, though there is ample security of 
 nearness between various others mentioned and the Brad fields. 
 Contemporary with Gilbert or Gereberd, Robert Sinclair ap- 
 pears as signing a mandate for the viscount of Lincoln from 
 the king, 2 Hen. III. Gereberd was viscount of Norfolk and 
 Suffolk at that very time. Fulc Baynard, one of the Baynards 
 of Baynard's Castle, beside the Thames, London, was to be 
 possessed of land in Lincolnshire, and in the Rotuli of secret 
 letters in the tower of London this is, ' Eod m° scribitur Vic 
 Suff p Rob de Seinclow ' — ' In the same manner it is written to 
 the viscount of Suffolk for Robert Sinclair.' It would be 
 only a guess to say that Robert was own brother to the 
 viscount Gei^eberd, and it is enough perhaps that they were 
 thus friends in all senses. As the pious gravestone puts it, 
 ' In their death they were not divided.' One of the open rolls 
 of the tower, 36 Hen. III., the year of Gereberd's death also, 
 gives account of Robert and his son Robert. ' D'homag' capto : 
 1£ cepit homagiu Rob'ti de Sayncler filii et her Rob'ti de Sayn- 
 cler defuncti de omnibus tris et ten quae pfatus Robtus pater 
 suus tenuit de I£ in capite die quo obiit, * ei reddit tras illas ^ 
 ten. Et mand est Magro Wittmo de Clifford Esc cit a Trent qd 
 acceptasecuritate a fifato Robtode ronabli relievo suo B: reddendo 
 ad secum R^ : eidem Robto de omib3 tris * ten pdcis^* de quibus 
 prefatus Robs pat 5 suus fuit seisitus in dnico suo ut de feodo die 
 quo obiit _^ * que occone mortis ipsuis Robti capta sunt in manu 
 I£ plena seis sine ditone hre faciat T. I£ apud S/em Edmund 
 xiij die Febr ' — ' Concerning homage taken : The king took 
 homage of Robert Sinclair, the son and heir of the late Robert
 
 COUSINS. 2 3 7 
 
 Sinclair, for all the lands and tenements which the aforesaid 
 Robert, his father, held from the king in capite in the day on 
 which he died, and he restores to him those lands and tene- 
 ments. And it was ordered to Master "William Clifford, 
 escheator for this side of the Trent, that having accepted 
 security from the aforesaid Robert about his reasonable tax 
 to be rendered to the king at the treasury of the king, he 
 make him heir, without delay, with full possession, to the same 
 Robert with regard to all his lands and aforesaid tenements, 
 and in respect to which the aforesaid Robert, his father, was 
 possessed in his own demesne as of a fief in the day on which 
 he died, and what by reason of the death of that Robert was 
 taken into the king's hand : with the king witness, at Saint 
 Edmundsbury, 14th Feb, 1252.' The two records taken 
 together, show that these Roberts held much of their lands in 
 Lincolnshire, the ' escheator for this side of the Trent ' being 
 the rather general title of the officer north of the home coun- 
 ties ; and the king's business being done at St. Edmundsbury, 
 gives the inference, otherwise substantiated, that they held 
 in Suffolk also. 
 
 That Robert junior had Edmund for successor, and that he 
 was the Edmund de Seincler who was one of John Sinclair the 
 baron's followers when from the isle of Ely they raided 
 against those who hated parliaments, is rendered likely by a 
 charter among the ' additional charters ' in the British Mu- 
 seum. The carrying away of Robert de Bois for ransom was 
 in 1266, and in 1294 Edm. de Sco Claro and others are wit- 
 nesses to a gift of lands to a gentleman and his wife in Code- 
 ham of Croffield, in the county of Suffolk, by Hamo Wygge 
 of Croffield, whose green seal is still attached. William Lene- 
 day of Codeham also gives a chai'ter of lands similarly, to 
 which an Edmund de Sco Claro is witness with others, in 13 
 Ed. III., 1339. To one by Robert Sacc of Codingham he also 
 at the same time subscribed. John Leneday of Croffield gives 
 lands in Croffield to three several holders ; and to this charter, 
 with a broken seal of black wax yet preserved, Edm. Seyn- 
 clowe and others are witnesses, 25 Ed. III., 135 1. Edmund 
 was seemingly the continuous name for the heads of this 
 family. John de Hocham, parson of the church of Eston 
 Gosebek, granted a charter of lands to Gilbert Debenham and 
 others to which Edm. Synclowe is one of the witnesses, 34 Ed.
 
 283 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 III., 1360. But not much more can be got out of such de- 
 tails than substantial proof of the existence of these cousins to 
 the Bradueld Sinclairs. 
 
 Those in Buckinghamshire are somewhat better known. 
 Stone or Stanes in the hundred of Stanes in this county was 
 their seat. It has been noticed that Gereberd gave it to a 
 Hugo who had also Essex properties. Hugo dying in 1227 the 
 seat reverted to Gereberd's heir presumptive, John, who died 
 in 1252. A younger son again got it at a later period. He 
 appears as Robert de Seyncler of Stone at an inquiry in which 
 he took part about the rights of the clean and chapter of Be. 
 Marie, Lincoln, to certain houses and tenements in the town 
 of Aylesbury, Bucks. In the Hundred Roll of 2 Ed. I., 1274, 
 William de Sco Olaro, a proprietor of large substance, ap- 
 pears as of Stanes, Bucks., having teneutes and homines and 
 the other grades of clients common to a feudal lord. He held 
 Suthcote by serjeanty, which most honourable tenure implied 
 personal service at court to his king. He had lands also for 
 which he paid certain sums directly to the king's treasury, 
 the usual method of doing when one possessed part of a barony 
 escheated to the crown and farmed. 
 
 At this same time there were Stephen Sinclair in the hun- 
 dred of Balberg, Suffolk; Gerard Sinclair of the hundred of 
 Piriton, in Oxfordshire ; and a Geffrey in Upthorp, Hunting- 
 don. Thirty years later a John held Calendon in Bedfordshire. 
 In Leicestershire, 41 Ed. III., John ' Seincoler,' as the record 
 spells it, had Lobenham, and his son John in 46 Ed. III., 
 1373. is put in possession of this same manor. Another John 
 still, with his wife Alicia, held it in 3 Ric. II. Adam St. Clere, 
 who was born out of wedlock, had, 1 1 Henry IV., Warton, 
 Stippershall, and divers messuages and lands as from the 
 castle of Tamworth. These properties were in Warwick- 
 shire, but there is no certainty that he was of the Bradfield 
 Sinclairs, because at this period the more southern members 
 had got possessions by purchase or heirship in the central 
 counties. A Peter held Chaddesden, 11 Ed. III., and in 36 
 Ed. III. a Margaret Sinclair died possessed of Boyleston 
 manor as of the honour of Tuttebury Castle in Derbyshire ; 
 but they are more probably of the Ralph of Rye family, whose 
 chief possessions lay there. Maria, the wife of Sir Roger Sel- 
 lers, frills nupta Joki Seynt Clere ' — ' formerly the bride of John
 
 COUSINS. 289 
 
 Sinclair,' possessed, by the Inquisitions after Death, 10 Ric. 
 II., 1387, Fromlond hundred, Grymston, Estwell, Goutby, 
 some dues from the Leicester burghers, Scalford, and Thirs- 
 ington, all in Leicestershire, and also Cryche in Derbyshire. 
 Part of this she got with her first husband. Cryche, in par- 
 ticular, was always a Sinclair possession from the time of 
 Ralph Fitz-Hubert, the brother of Eudo Dapifer, the Fresche- 
 ville Sinclairs succeeding the Fitz-Ralph ones. The unity of 
 the whole Rye lineage with Sinclairs is proved by this Maria, 
 the widow of John Sinclair, holding Cryche, Derbyshire, in 
 13S7. Grymston seems a reminiscence of the Norfolk manor, 
 Grimston, where the baron, John Sinclair, of the Simon de 
 Montfort, earl of Leicester, parliamentary party, is noted as 
 having kept his first court in the 41st of Henry III., 1257. 
 Who the latest John is, has not been discovered, though it is 
 likely he was of the more southern families also. In 19 Ric. 
 II. Rowland Sentclire had land from the fief of William de la 
 Zouch, miles, of Haryngworth, in Northamptonshire. 
 
 Industry might add many more such names, rescued from 
 periods often dark exceedingly, but it may be enough to notice 
 one other remarkable family whose story is of similar broken, 
 but fuller, kind. In the Boll of the Hundreds, 2 Ed. I., 1274, 
 Philip de Sco Claro appears frequently as a prominent pro- 
 prietor in Cambridgeshire. In the eighth year of this king, 
 he is one of a jury sworn upon the articles of commission of 
 the king's justiciary, Lord William Muschet, miles, and his 
 colleagues at Cambridge. William de la Haye, miles, Warenne 
 of Barenton, Ralph le Heyr, and four others are Philip's 
 fellows. This Haye was of his own male lineage, as Duncan 
 shows. Roger of Thornton and Philip de Sco Claro appear 
 again and again together in near relationship. Robert of the 
 Island holds land of them in Westwyk and Hogytone, which 
 they had from their wives, who were sisters. The ladies held 
 as from the castle of Richmond, and certain dues had to be 
 paid into the court of the earl of Brittany as the superior. 
 Malketone, Cambridgeshire, was the place in which these 
 properties were situate. There is account also of the villeins 
 of Philip connected with some of his manors. Haslingfield 
 manor had freeholders under him, and Cotes had his iHUenagii. 
 In Cotes, Lord William Vesci held the third part of one military 
 fee from Philip and Roger, as of the barony of Ledeth. In 
 
 T
 
 250 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Wynepol also Philip Sinclair had various tenants. There is 
 a Robert de Sco Claro in this roll record who was of the 
 family. He appears in the hundred of Bosemere, Suffolk, as 
 doing certain things at the town of Cretyng which require 
 challenge from the commission. The following up of the 
 inquiry called the Hundred Roll was a long process, and the 
 records are called Quo Warranto, because many had to prove their 
 rights, or tell by what warrant they held lands, or did certain 
 things the commissioners were not satisfied with. It was not 
 till 27 Edward I., that the king had business in this connec- 
 tion with the Cambridge Sinclairs. Nicolas de Sco Claro 
 had succeeded Philip, and the affinity relationship to the 
 Thorntons seems closer than before. Roger had been followed 
 by Barthus Thornton, and he too had gone over to the majorit y, 
 his daughter Alianor still under age being his heiress. She 
 was in the wardship of Nicolas Sinclair. Her estates claimed 
 exemptions and rights which the king challenged, and she was 
 summoned to show warrant before the justiciaries. She came 
 to the court, by her attorney, and also Nicolas. Nicolas seemed 
 to be reaping benefits from the state of things, and was in no 
 hurry to settle matters. Alianor through her attorney pleaded 
 that she was under age. Nicolas followed up by main- 
 taining that he could not answer without her, and for that 
 time decision was deferred. Like the Thorntons, this family 
 also must have ended in an heiress, and their lands may have 
 gone to the building up of some newer English name. But 
 they are further traceable in the Bodleian library, Oxford, 
 where among the Rawlinson MSS. are notices of their gene- 
 alogy. They are called in them the ' family of Malton.' 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 THE ALDHAM SINCLAIRS. 
 
 Near Kemsing on the railway line from London to Maidstone, 
 the county town of Kent, the ancient seat of the Aldham 
 family still preserves the name of St. Clere, and with the 
 addition of Upper and Lower Sinclair, as the Kentishmen now 
 distinguish. Yaldham is also a synonym. A more beautiful
 
 THE ALDHAM SINCLAIRS. 291 
 
 situation for a home is not in England. A large modern man- 
 sion is there now, which by its condition, and some of its 
 surroundings, raises thoughts of better days. The magnificent 
 beeches, whose height seems endless, can hardly be reminiscence 
 of the ancient owners ; but they are certainly reminders of the 
 splendid traditions of the place. High on a gently sloping 
 hill, it has a view over an English Eden of several miles, the 
 most fertile, soft, and luxurious basin that can be imagined. 
 Where Adam, the commissioner of Domesday Booh; had his 
 home, is a short distance to the east ; and every way the gaze 
 turns memories are roused of Sinclair lineage. Igtham, 
 Seal, Knockholt, the archiepiscopal palace of Otford, a fa- 
 vourite home of Hemw the Eighth, are in sight. Of events 
 the most classical in the kingdom's history, this has been 
 the scene. Near where the mansion was built, the caput 
 baroniae of estates in many counties, there still exists some 
 very ancient remnants of building. Low square doors, pent 
 roofs, walls built alternately with lime and heavy oaken beams, 
 make the thought come that these portions must have known 
 the presence of some of the family. The soil and sky are, at 
 all events, as pure and sweet as when they looked with the 
 varied emotions of their periods, and of their particular natures, 
 over these fields, so full of growth and beauty. ' 'Tis the place 
 and all around it.' In the neighbourhood of London there 
 was no more favourite spot for royal and noble leisure than 
 that mid district of the historical county. Instead of the 
 peaceful English mansion which now rests on the hill slope, 
 the Aldham-St. Cleres had the strong feudal castle usual to 
 the chiefs of wide lands, and the clang of arms was the hourly 
 familiar sound for centuries above the rich vale beneath. 
 
 It has been already shown that Aldham was the local name 
 taken from this home, and that the lineage was Sinclair. The 
 way the double name of Aldham-St. Clere came was that a St. 
 Clere of the same family married the ultimate heiress of those 
 who had taken the name of Aldham, and thus their local 
 surname got preserved. The Aldhams were Richard the son 
 of Earl Walderne's male descendants, and the John St. Clair 
 who married Joan de Aldenham, Aldham, or Audham, about 
 1300, was of the stock of the same Richard, and the proprietor 
 then of the neighbouring Igtham. He did not, however, pos- 
 sess the caput baroniae of Aldham-St. Clere. Through the right
 
 292 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of the mother, this Joan, it was his son John St. Clere of Igtham 
 who heired Francis de Aldham. his cousin, and founded the 
 new family of the old strain. One of the rolls of the treasury 
 has been referred to, showing that he was not only his cousin 
 by affinity but that they were consanguineous besides, this 
 being the word used to show unity of blood male. John was 
 aged twenty-six when he came into possession of the properties 
 of the Aldhams. 
 
 In 1 31 2 the earl of Warwick, the leader of the barons, had 
 beheaded Piers Gaveston, the favourite of Edward II. ; two 
 years after, the English army was destroyed near Stirling ; and 
 from 13 1 5 a dreadful famine of three years had paralysed the 
 country. The king was in continual trouble with his barons, 
 of whom the earl of Lancaster was then head. The barons, 
 jealous of Edward taking up with favourites, had got the oifice 
 of king's chamberlain for Hugh Despenser or Spencer, the 
 young son of one of themselves, of whom they thought they 
 were sure. But he and his father, Hugh the elder, became 
 worse scourges of their own friends than Piers Gaveston him- 
 self ; and in 1320 a new baronial war violently ended this rule 
 of unexpected favourites by clearing the kingdom of them 
 both. The tide, however, completely turned in favour of the 
 king next year, and recalling the Spencers, he overpowered 
 the barons, and ' never,' says Rapin, ' since the Norman Con- 
 quest, had the scaffolds been drenched with so much blood 
 as upon this occasion.' The nobility blamed the Spencers 
 inexorably for the severity. The earl of Lancaster was 
 beheaded, John Giffard was put to death at Gloucester, and 
 among many others, Francis de Aldenham, whom Tindal puts 
 among the lords, also lost his life thus, at "Windsor, the last 
 of the earlier Aldham Sinclairs. The Hugh favourites had 
 their surname from an office at court of the nature of public 
 almoner ; and the elder being a Norman himself, and by mar- 
 riage to Eleanor Clare, a sister of the last earl of Gloucester 
 of the Clare line, who was killed at Bannockburn, securing the 
 earldom, the disappointment of the barons with him and his son 
 Hugh was of the keenest. Francis de Audham, the neighbour 
 of Tunbridge Castle, and the relation by many affinities of its 
 lords, had hard lines measured to him. Many knights were 
 hung in chains, but Francis had the higher privilege of getting 
 beheaded in the court of Windsor Palace. He may have been
 
 THE ALDHAM SINCLAIRS. 293 
 
 in royal office, and had to suffer, for example and terror, on 
 the spot. He was a young man, and died without issue, John 
 de St. Clair of Igtham succeeding him as above. 
 
 Before following John's course, and that of his descendants, 
 the ancestors of this Francis Sinclair or Audenham have 
 to be considered. Their connection with Northamptonshire, 
 helps towards the purpose more than that with their own 
 peculiar county of Kent. His father was Baldwin of Aldham, 
 in Kent, and of Wodepreston, in Northampton. His sister was 
 John Sinclair's mother. The father of Baldwin and Joan was 
 Thomas de Audham of Kent, and not of Northampton till by 
 his marriage with the widow of his kinsman, Robert de la 
 Haye of Sussex, Isabel Montacute or Montagu, he got, uxoris 
 jure, Wodepreston, and some properties in the west. She was 
 daughter of Sir William Montacute, or, as Nicholas says, of the 
 4th Baron Montacute, who died 1249, both being of the great 
 western family who were earls of Salisbury, princes of Man, 
 and played first parts in political events generally. Thomas 
 de Audham died in 1276, his son Baldwin being then only 
 fifteen. Margery Montague, Isabel's sister, was married to 
 William, one of the lords of Echinham, ' the knightly family ' 
 of Sussex ; and it is worthy of note that in the ancient church 
 of Echinham, the Sinclair arms of the later Aldham family is 
 quartered with theirs, than which there could not be any 
 better proof of, at least affinity. Sir Thomas Aldham, knight, 
 followed Richard I. to Palestine, and was at the siege of Acre 
 in 1 1 9 1 . The Robert of Aldham previous to Sir Thomas, is 
 in one of the charters of Rochester ; and the family go back, 
 through the lords of Ros, in Kent, to Richard, the king's cham- 
 berlain, son of Walter, earl of St. Cler and of Medway. But 
 there is a gap between the two Thomases, which Peter de Aldham 
 fills up perhaps, who appears as a witness at Winchester, then 
 a great scene of national business, in a charter of land to their 
 favourite St. Andrews of Rochester, dated 1245. 
 
 The connection of the Aldhams with Geffrey of Ros is 
 shown thus from the Textus Koffensis. ' Gaufridus de Ros dedit 
 decimam de Ealdeham posted Robertus Aldeham vidilicet de 
 Stounfelde continente xxii acras Brodefield continente xlii acras 
 Piryefeld continente xx acras Donnfield, continente xl acras et 
 Frytlie xviii acras : Summa cxl acrarum ' — ' Geffrey of Ros, and 
 afterwards Robert Aldham, gave the tenth part of Aldham,
 
 2Q4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 namely, Stonefield, containing 22 acres, Broadfield contain- 
 ing 42 acres, Littlefield containing 20 acres, Downheld con- 
 taining 40 acres, and Freythe containing 18 acres: total 180 
 acres. This has various interest. These acres show what 
 was actually in cultivation around Aldham, and compared 
 with the usual patches laboured then gives the impres- 
 sion of wealth and energy. 'Peerie' is the Norse word 
 for 'little,' and has philological value. Robert of Burnaville 
 held Ros, and is one of the "Aldham line, though it is impo 
 sible to find an exact date for him. William of Ros held it in 
 1 163 ; for Carte in his History of England says that Thomas a 
 Becket claimed two of his manors as belonging to the see of 
 Canterbury, at the very beginning of the great quarrel. Wil- 
 liam held six and a half knight's fees as of the king, in captie , 
 but Becket claimed the manors of Ilethe and Saltwoode as his. 
 Hugo de St. Clair and his kin were very closely interested. 
 William of Eynesford, who is often referred to by ordinary 
 historians as chief occasion of the dispute, was one of them, 
 as well as William of llos. Ralph of this family was in 11 99 
 prior of Rochester, and showed the usual love of, and capacity 
 for, architectural work, being a prominent builder of the 
 churches of his time. Hamon de Ilethe, bishop of Rochester, 
 would also seem to be of the same house. 
 
 The Aldhams appear very often in Northampton, and less 
 frequently in Somerset. The Monasticon has three of them, 
 Roger, Hugo, and William, signing a charter by Nesta of 
 Cokefield, Northampton, to the church of St. Mary and St. 
 Anthony, Kerseya; and, in 30 Ed. I., Osbert Aldham is a 
 juror in a great cause at St. Edmundsbury, Suffolk, as to the 
 seneschalship of the abbey. Cokefield has suggestive relations 
 to Gereberd Sinclair and his family, which might reward search ; 
 but that Robert of Cokefield in 1222 gave his right over it to 
 John de Montacute, grandfather of the lady who married 
 Thomas Audham, accounts for the Aldham prevalence there. 
 That they held part of the property of the Montacutes in 
 Somersetshire, the manor of Chiselberg in particular, explains 
 their appearances in histories and records of that county, 
 the original home of the Montagus, their name being local to 
 that district, the ' sharp hill,' from the situation of their home 
 castle. The connection with this county will appear through 
 the history of their heirs, the Sinclairs of Aldham, who added
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 2 g$ 
 
 to their Somerset properties, having relations there continuously 
 from the Norman Conquest. They kept the Sancto Claro 
 name religiously untouched by the prevalent pride of locality 
 appellation. Much can still be collected of the earlier Aldham 
 Sinclairs; but as it would be of the same substantial rather 
 than remarkable character, enough is stated. That they were 
 of the baronial order expresses a great deal in those periods, 
 when all that was being done which was notable, was the work 
 of the barons, to whom kings were but the foils. Franciseus 
 Aldeham, the last of the branch, he who was executed as one 
 of the rebel barons, is mentioned in one of the Harleian MSS. 
 as the antecessor of John and Philip St. Clere, and as holding 
 fifteen military fees from the honour of Morteine alone, which 
 is ample evidence of his baronial position. Mortayne or 
 Morteine was escheat and practically demesne of the crown 
 since its early forfeiture by William the Conqueror's nephew, 
 and to hold from it was equal to in capite tenure. He held 
 much besides of other baronies, Aquila for one, Aldham being 
 probably of ancient in capite possession, and not as of any 
 barony, itself the caput baroniae of the family. The Aldham 
 coat of arms was, Azure, a pile, or. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 
 
 The first was John de St. Clere of Igtham, Kent. Igtham, or, as 
 it has been explained, the ' eight villages,' is not far from Seven- 
 oaks, and is in the immediate neighbourhood of St. Clere, which 
 had the name of Aldham in his time. The properties of Igtham 
 and Aldham bordered each other, and the evidence goes to show 
 that the Igthams were a younger branch of the Aldhams, and 
 both families the descendants of Richard, the king's chamber- 
 lain, son of Walter, earl of St. Cler, and in Kent known as 
 Walter of Medway. Nothing grows more certain, as the facts 
 are further discovered, than that the Sinclairs got numerous 
 in this favourite county of theirs ; and, despite the difficulty 
 of assuming local names, the lineage in the more influential 
 cases cannot be hidden. It is better to err on the side of 
 restraint, for the likelihoods lead to their identification with 
 many territorial families of Kent; but this, to be thoroughly
 
 296 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 satisfactory, would require time and accuracy of research be 
 yond all ordinary or perhaps useful purpose. There are state 
 records enough of those periods to make such a special inquiry 
 distinctly satisfactory to the scientific sense. It would, how- 
 ever, have to be a labour of love and leisure. History, espe- 
 cially English history, is only to be known thoroughly by 
 investigation of the progress, rise, and fall of families; and 
 in this way reward might be reaped from a devotion of years 
 to even one such county as this, where the Sinclairs, if not as 
 thick as the leaves of Vallombrosa, undoubtedly composed a 
 large part of the ruling men, under their lineage or local 
 names, from the Norman Conquest downwards. Madox and 
 Tindal say that the Great Rolls of most of the years of Henry 
 Second, Richard First, and John are in being ; but, if so, a 
 good many of them are not yet printed. With such valuable 
 burdens of history and antiquity as they carry, it is a national 
 scandal if one line of them will be left in the obscurity of MS. 
 Twenty thousand common contemporary bills of parliament are 
 of less urgency than a bill which could save for posterity such 
 knowledge of national history as any one year of these rolls, 
 ' great ' in many senses, contains. For what is already avail- 
 able, the historian and antiquary, as teachers of the piety of 
 loving country, and as illustrators of notable action by examples, 
 are grateful beyond all expression ; but if there is more to be 
 done, it is a disgrace which cannot be too soon wiped off our body 
 politic, so proud of its modern cleanliness of civilisation. No 
 madness of antiquarianism prompts the warning; it is the 
 knowledge that a nation's most precious thing is its past 
 history, this being the chief factor, if well considered, of its best 
 condition. 
 
 John Sinclair of Igtham married Joan Audham, his neigh- 
 bour and kinswoman, in the desirable, but not romantic, way 
 which is still familiar to England. It does not appear that he 
 got any dowry or heirship with her ; but, through her right, 
 their son largely increased the patrimony. The first John, 
 who was survived by his wife Joan Audham, died in 1327, the 
 year which began the reign of Edward the Third. He was in 
 manhood in Edward the First's reign, and it is probable he 
 may have had his share in the French, Welsh, and Scottish 
 wars of that time. 
 
 Of the battles in the last, none might have so much personal
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 297 
 
 interest to him as the three-in-one contest of 24 February, 1302, 
 fought near his kinsman's ' castle of Eos or Ross,' as Ilapin 
 has it, the Roslin Castle of Scottish history, ' lin ' being de- 
 scriptive only of its situation over a linn or fall of the Esk. Sir 
 William Sinclair, or, as English records would have written, 
 Sir William de Ros, was one of the leaders who beat thrice on 
 that day the three English armies of Edward's guardian of the 
 kingdom of Scotland, John de Segrave. These considerations 
 of naming would almost give the colour of fact to Stow's state- 
 ment, that the Sinclair who founded the Scottish families went 
 with William the Lion from England, on his return thence by 
 ransom. What is more likely, and it agrees in most respects 
 with authentic ancient documents and histories of date near 
 the Conquest, is that William Sinclair who went to Scotland 
 with Malcolm's English wife, Queen Margaret Atheling, in 1069, 
 had possession for two or three years of Ros, in Kent, and 
 carried the love of it with him. William de Ros he would be 
 known as, according to Norman fashion, and he would have 
 no choice here but to use his local name. When he became 
 an 'emigrant,' his brother Richard would get the lands he 
 left; and from him descended the Ros and Aldham names 
 now being followed, with clearer evidence than there is for the 
 earlier time. John may have witnessed Wallace's execution at 
 London on an August day of 1305. If the same race fighting 
 on each side as leaders could make a civil war, that struggle 
 throughout was so. The populaces of both countries were only 
 assisting at the bitter settling of a Norman family quarrel ; 
 the Plantagenets, the Bruces, Cleres and St. Clairs, Comyns, 
 Baliols, et hoc genus omne, being in the scientific sense of this 
 abused phrase of the 'closest blood,' and of innumerable affini- 
 ties to each other. It has always been easy for ambitious intel- 
 lect to dupe popular instinct, as to national and other fallacious 
 independences. The moral training of wars has hidden foun- 
 tains, as the Nile once had. 
 
 What side John de St. Clair took in the struggles for and 
 against the favourites, in the first place, Piers Gaveston, and 
 in the second, the two more formidable Spencers, during Edward 
 the Second's reign, can only be guessed at, through the execu- 
 tion of his wife's nephew, the baron, Francis Audham. Double 
 kinsmanship, so to put it, and being his nearest heir, would 
 keep John's sympathies warm with him and the other barons,
 
 298 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 against the tyrannical men of their own order, the two Hugh 
 Despensers. These had then the earldom of Glouc 
 
 long associated directly and indirectly with his lineage since 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo's time, the elder gel tin- it I trough marriage 
 with a Clare; but it is difficult to decide how this would, ■ c \i 
 it would, affect inclinations. That strong personal interest in 
 the chief problems of the period held him, is enough to have 
 shown for further purpose. The triumph of Queen Isabella 
 and her favourite, Roger Mortimer, earl of Mkrch, by the 
 execution of the two Spencers and the deposition of Edward 
 the Second, her husband, took place in John de St. < ilair'fl I 
 year; and he may have lived in 1327 long enough to know of 
 the crowning of the boy of fifteen who proved so great a king, 
 Edward the Third, and of the tragic death of the deposed 
 monarch in Berkeley Castle. It is of more genealogical interest 
 to find from the archives of the ' city ' of London that he had a 
 contemporary there, Thomas ' Sender,' as the name is spelt ; 
 but more than the general connection of blood cannot be 
 asserted. In Riley's Memorials of London and London Life 
 in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Centuries there i- 
 ' Petition of the Hostelers and Haymongers ' to the mayor, 
 sheriffs, and aldermen against the freedom of trade taken by 
 foreigners who paid no taxes, municipal or national, and yet 
 landed hay, to undersell and ruin Englishmen. This was in 
 1 Ed. III., 1327. It was agreed that the foreigners should be 
 allowed to sell only in shiploads, not in bottles, and a com- 
 mission was appointed, two to act on water and four on land, 
 to see that this protection should be afforded. Thomas Sinclair 
 was one of those who watched the land proceedings, which 
 would require most attention. One of the sheriffs of that year 
 was Roger Chantecler, which is probably another form of 
 spelling the name. In 1 3 1 5 Sir John de Pulteney or Pounteney 
 was mayor, and it will be seen that he had close connections 
 with Sinclairs, who were as busy in London's commerce as in 
 England's rulinsr and landed interests. John Sinclair of Igtham 
 died in the year when Thomas Sinclair appeal's thus in the 
 records of the ' city.' 
 
 This John of Igtham was succeeded by his son, also John 
 of Igtham, till by his heirship to his cousin, the baron, Francis 
 de Aldham, he became John of Aldham, or, as it then began 
 to be called, Aldham-St. Clere. It was the same year, according
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 299 
 
 to Baker, in which he heired both his father and this cousin 
 of his, 1327, and he is certainly registered as twenty-six years 
 of age when heir to Francis. His birth took place in 1 301, when 
 Edward the First was in the midst of his great wars, if this 
 is correct. But Tindal and his authorities give T322 as the 
 date of Francis de Aldhani's execution, and though not at all 
 a very unusual thing, John Sinclair, his cousin, could hardly 
 have had to wait five years for possession, unless he too may 
 have been rebellious, and did not get his rights till the barons 
 were triumphant over the deposed king. One record, however, 
 mentions him as in actual possession in 1326, which was before 
 his father's death, of Brambletye, in Sussex, as heir of Francis 
 de Audham, who had been holding it of the crown by knight's 
 service as of the honour of Aquila, one of the great baronies 
 then in the hands of the king. The Norman family from 
 Aquila had been dispossessed ; and Francis of Audham's posi- 
 tion as baron, is further illustrated by the fact that he held of 
 this honour, as well as the fifteen knights' fees of the honour 
 of Mortayne, besides his own demesnes. John of Igtham had 
 land in Sussex, but the bulk of his son's property in that 
 county came from his cousin Audham, and he got possession 
 of the whole Audham barony soon after 1322, in his father's 
 lifetime. He was born earlier, therefore, than 1301, and about 
 1296 is the date. Their original local name of Igtham stays 
 with several subsequent to these two Johns, and at the same 
 time they get mentioned as of Aldham and Aldham-St. Clere, 
 the lineage names luckily appearing in all the instances. 
 Henceforth Sussex has much to do with them. In the subsidy 
 of 7 Edward III., 1333-4, this John, heir of Francis Audham, 
 pays double of any other in that county. He and his wife 
 Alicia were in 1339 challenged by Quo Warranto in North- 
 amptonshire for the privilege of free warren they took in 
 connection with their estate there of Wodepreston, and by 
 proving that John Sinclair, his father, rightly possessed the 
 same, it was confirmed also to them. As this was an Audham 
 property, and was in the actual possession of his father, John 
 Sinclair of Igtham, here is further proof that Tindal and his 
 authorities are right as to the earlier date of the death of 
 Francis Audham. His aunt's husband had immediate pos- 
 session, and this may explain fully the few years between, 
 before the cousin, his aunt's son, came into these lands. But
 
 3 oo THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the question is one of piquancy more than of importance ; the 
 facts become the same so far as the change of large property 
 from the one branch to the other of the lineage is concerned 
 
 The Calendars of Inquisition after Death begin to be of the 
 greatest use about this time, throwing much light on the men 
 and women having properties in land. This John Sinclair died 
 in 1335, on either of the above reckonings a comparatively 
 young man ; and the list of his properties will help to illustrate 
 his own, his father, and his cousin Francis of Audham'e posi- 
 tions to useful extent. The record, translated from the Latin 
 in which it is, reads : ' John, the son of John Sinclair (de Sco 
 Claro), Chiselberg manor with the fief pertaining to it, West 
 Chinnock manor, Penne, the fief Chilteme, Dumere, and Michell 
 Weston, Norton manor, near Taunton, all in Somersetshire; 
 Wodepreston in Northamptonshire; Beustede manor with 
 additions, Hampshire; Aldham manor, Lullingstone, Kemsing 
 manor, in Kent ; Jevington manor with its members, namely, 
 Brambeltye manor with additions, Heighten manor, and Lamp- 
 ham manor, and as from the castle of Pevensey, Willingdon 
 hundred, part of Rype, two-thirds of Torring manor, two-thirds 
 of Excete manor, Lavertye, and in the manor of East Grinstead 
 the lands and tenements of Newborne, all in Sussex ; Preston- 
 Parva manor in the county of Northampton. 
 
 In the Rolls of the Court of the Treasury there is an entry 
 of a John de Seintcler, senior, making a money settlement 
 with John de Chigehull about the manor of Wolveston, Derby ; 
 but he and the junior John are presumably descendants of 
 Ralph of Nottingham and Derby, the eldest son of Hubert, the 
 ambassador to Edward the Confessor. It must not be forgotten 
 that one writer says that ' Wolveston manor with its perti- 
 nents ' was in Hampshire, at Southampton ; and he mentions 
 John of Kent as being in possession of it by heirship 2 Ed. III., 
 1329, which seems the true account. He probably gave it away 
 before his death to his Hampshire relations, since it does not 
 appear in his list of properties then. Of John of the Calen- 
 dars of Inquisition there are two entries from these rolls of 
 the treasury which are their own evidence. Under ' Wall,' 
 which included some of the western counties now within Ens- 
 land's borders, this notice of the heirship of the Audham part 
 of the above lands comes : ' R. cepit homagium Joh'is fil' 
 Joh'is de Sennicler consanguinei & hedis Francisci de Aldham
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 301 
 
 de omnibus terris & ten' que idem Franciscus tenuit ' — ' The 
 king took homage of John, the son of John Sinclair, blood- 
 relation and heir of Francis of Aldham, for all the lands and 
 tenements which the same Francis held.' This is of as much 
 enlightenment about lineage as property, but it has to be remem- 
 bered that it refers only to all the lands inherited in the parts 
 then called "Wales. Some of the lands in England proper 
 went to other heirs, as well as to John Sinclair. The follow- 
 ing from the same rolls would go to show so : ' Et ind' qd 
 p*dcus Joh'is recognovit qd jidcus Franciscus tenuit mamum 
 de Wodepreston de R etc p. fvicium medietatis feodi unius 
 militis mafiium de Chiselbergh' cum ptin 9 p. svicium unius 
 feodi militis Moreton & maflium de Brembebye ut de 
 honore de Aquila p sviciurn medietatis feodi unius militis ' — 
 ' And it was declared that the said John Sinclair recognised 
 that the said Francis of Aldham held the manor of Wode- 
 preston from the king by the service of middle fee of one 
 knight, the manor of Chiselberg with its pertinents by the 
 service of one military fee as from the honour of Moretayne, 
 and the manor of Brambeltye as from the honour of Aquila 
 by the service of middle fee of one soldier.' John Sinclair 
 may have heired more than these manors from Francis, for 
 they are but a portion of his many fees. He must have 
 divided his baronial possessions to others besides John, and 
 there is the further probability that the crown on his execu- 
 tion for treason seized and kept a large share. It is thus that 
 orifts to John's son are noticeable, as will appear hereafter. 
 Lavertye manor is known to have been in the hands of the 
 Montacutes in the thirteenth century, who became earls of 
 Salisbury for aid to the valorous seizing by Edward III. in 
 1330 of Roger Mortimer, earl of March. Roger was the 
 favourite of his mother Isabella, queen of Edward II. Her 
 son with his party got entrance into Nottingham Castle by 
 a subterraneous passage still called Mortimer's Hole. Isabel 
 Montacute married Francis Aldham's grandfather and brought 
 Lavertye to the Aldhams. John Sinclair was in possession of it 
 at death, and yet it is not mentioned in this roll; so that 
 the account is only incidental to three of the many manors he 
 held from all sources. 
 
 The last John was not the least important of the trio. A 
 quotation from the twenty volumes upwards of Sussex Antiquitus
 
 302 THE SIN XL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 may introduce him. ' St Clere. — Proof of the age of John, 
 son and heir of John de Seintcler, deceased, taken at Chichester 
 on Monday after the Annunciation, 25 Ed. III., (1351). The 
 deponents say that he was born at West Whittering, and bap- 
 tized in the church of St. Peter there on Palm Sunday, 27 
 March, 2 Ed. III., (1328). John de Polyngfold, Alice, widow 
 of Sir Nicolas Gentyl, knt., and William de St. George were 
 his sponsors. Robert de Bromer recollects the day, because a 
 dispute which had for a long time existed between him and 
 John de Seintcler, the father, was on that day settled in the 
 church and enrolled in the missal.' Born thus at the beginning 
 of Edward the Third's reign, he lived through its eventful fifty 
 years, and died 12 Richard II., 1389, aged 61. The following 
 notes, chiefly from theArrlia< h < ■ricaCantiawi ', throw some further 
 lisdit on the Aldhams and Sinclairs : — Margery de Peckham 
 [nee Aldham] had a sister and coheir named Isolda in 1347. 
 This sister was the wife of John St. Clere, and paid aid for 
 land in Igtham when the Black Prince was knighted. The 
 land is described as a moiety of a knight's fee, which Christina 
 de Kirkeby and the heirs of Nicolas de Cryel held in Igtham 
 from the archbishop. It is recognised by Ciriac Petit as being 
 the manor of Igtham or The Mote. The inquisition after death 
 of William Inge states that he and his wife, Isolda Inge, acquired 
 from Nicolas de Cryel the moiety of Igtham manor. These 
 facts suggest very strongly that Isolda Aldham, Isolda Inge, 
 and Isolda St. Clere meant the same person, who may have 
 married John St. Clere after the death of William Inge, who was 
 chief justice of the king's bench in 13 16, and had been married 
 first to Margaret Gi-asenel, and second to Isolda Aldham. The 
 Cryels or Kyryels were settled in Hadlow, near Yaldham of 
 Wrotham, and about 1680 Thomas Cryel married Mary, one 
 of the distinguished Kent and Lincolnshire family of Dalison, 
 whose seat in the southern county has been Hamptons, Tun- 
 bridge, three miles from The Mote, Igtham. 
 
 The assizes of Sussex county were held at Horsham, now 
 known as Shelley's birthplace, sometimes at Chichester, and 
 oftenest at East Grinstead, where Sir John resided most. On 
 the manor of Lavertye, East Grinstead, Cooper says he had 
 his park ; and his public connections with Sussex would make 
 it appear that it was as much his home as Aldham- St. Clere, 
 in Kent. In 50 Ed. III., 1377, he became sheriff of Sussex 
 and Surrey.
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 303 
 
 He and his family were in very particular relations to the 
 spirited and generous queen of Edward III., Philippa, she 
 who took David, king of Scots, prisoner at the victory of 
 Neville's Cross, near Durham, and who in the same year, 1347, 
 obtained the pardon of the six doomed burghers at Calais from 
 her husband. Under Sussex, Ft I. III. , of the Rolls of the Treasury, 
 this comes : ' R. confirmavit concessionem quarn Pha regina 
 Angl consors R. carisshna fecit Ioni Seintcler chivaler de 
 maftio suo Maresfield quod est de honore de Aquila cum parco 
 R. ibidem villa de Grenestede & custodia chacee sue de Ashes- 
 doune & aliis ptin suis in com Sussex tenend ad rminum vite 
 sue reddo inde annuatim triginta libras salvis dne Regine feodis 
 militum ' — ' The king confirmed the grant which Philippa, the 
 queen of England, the very dear consort of the king, made 
 to John Sinclair, chevalier, of her manor of Maresfield, 
 which is from the honour of Aquila, together with the king's 
 park in the same place, the town of Grinstead, and the keeper- 
 ship of her forest of Ashesdoune, and her other properties in 
 the county of Sussex, to be held to the end of her life, returning 
 thence annually thirty pounds to his lady, the queen, for the 
 military fees.' These properties, extending widely between 
 East Grinstead and Lewes, remained for his descendants, being 
 expressly mentioned as belonging to his grandson in 1408 ; 
 and the probabilities are all but certainties, that the queen 
 pledged them for money received in that very expensive reign. 
 
 Nor is this the only transaction which indicates the mutual 
 helpfulness of ruler and ruled in this connection. After forty- 
 two years of happy marriage Queen Philippa died in 1369, and 
 in the Issue Rolls of the following year, the lord high treasurer 
 of England, the bishop of Exeter, whose crook had perhaps as 
 well been guiding the sheep as raking money tables, pays to 
 Richard, earl of Arundel, in Sussex, ^1377, 14s. 6d. by order of 
 the king for relief of Philippa's soul. Of this, at that period, 
 large sum a^ioo was due to the earl himself, and to Mary St. 
 Gere ' 20 marks altogether.' Mary was the daughter of Sir 
 John Sinclair of Grinstead, and this is not all that is known of 
 her. Like her father, she had been a favoured friend of Philippa, 
 and the scene of gift is Essex : ' R, confirmavit concessionem 
 quam Pfra Regina Angl consors R. carissima fecit domicelle 
 sue Marie de Seint Cleir de omibus Pris & ten ' q ' fuer ' Wirli 
 de Teye in villa de Hayvyng Atte Bowre in com Essex q ' ad
 
 3 o4 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 manus E tanquam escaeta R. nup devenerunt & vocata Mark- 
 diche q' tend ad Peminum vite sue'— 'The kin;.' confirmed the 
 grant which Philippa, the queen of England, the very dear 
 consort of the king, made to her maid-of-honour, Mary Sinclair, 
 of all the lands and tenements which were those of William de 
 Teye, in the town of Havering-at-Bowre, in the county of Essex, 
 which fell lately into the hands of the king as escheat, and 
 called Markdiche, which are to be held to the termination of 
 her life.' The prevalent French has a noticeable effect on the 
 Latin, and it is further noteworthy, that the words of the 
 grants to the lady and her father are suggestively similar. In 
 Rymer's Foedera a letter from Pope Eugenius in 1147 shows 
 that Teia was part of the lands of Hubert Sinclair, the king's 
 chamberlain, one of the Norwich family ; for he gave land from 
 it to the church of Algate intra //'///"•-•, London. Mary there- 
 fore had lineage claims to succeed William of Teye, though it is 
 impossible to trace them now. Royal free gifts were very rare 
 indeed in English history, apart from relationships, and above 
 all in the times of the expensive French wars. 
 
 But Sir John's affairs were not only in the home counties. 
 From Somerset an example has survived : ' R. conhsit JohT 
 Seintcler custodiam unius messuagii unius gardini sexaginta 
 acras Pre & septem jiti cum ptin ' in Estham in com Souls' q' 
 fuer ' Leticie q ' fuit uxor WiHi Seintcler de Kyngeswoode def ' 
 q ' de herede Nicni de Seymour def ' q ' inf l aetatem ten'ct 
 usque ad legitimam aetatem heredis reddo inde R p ann quad- 
 raginta solidos & faciendo ' — ' The king has committed to John 
 Sinclair the custody of one messuage, one garden, sixty acres 
 of land, and seven acres of meadow, with the pertinents, in 
 Estham, in the county of Somerset, which belonged to Letitia, 
 who was the wife of William Sinclair of Kingswood, dead, 
 for the heir of Nicolas Seymour, dead, who is within age, to 
 hold them up to his legitimate age, rendering from them to the 
 king forty shillings per year and doing service.' The nearest 
 relation had the right to this kind of custody, all other things 
 equal ; and these Sinclairs of Kingswood, Somersetshire, are a 
 younger branch of Sir John's line. Before William it was 
 Thomas Sinclair of Kingswood, and in the right of his wife, 
 Juliana Pipard, he had lands also in Gloucestershire, as appears 
 from the following charter in Latin of the ' additional charters ' 
 preserved in the British Museum : ' Thomas Sinclair of Kings-
 
 THREE JOHNS IN SUCCESSION. 305 
 
 wood and Juliana his wife get possession from Walter, the son 
 of Thomas Pipard of Salisbury, of their lands in the town 
 ' [district] ' of Durham, in the county of Gloucester, the dowry 
 of the said Juliana, who was formerly the wife of the said 
 Thomas Pipard.' The date of this writing is 39 Edward III., 
 1365, and a portion of red seal remains. There is another 
 connected survival, namely, the letters to his attorneys by this 
 Walter to see to the settling of the claim. 
 
 Having wealth of money and lands, Sir John seems also an 
 adept in the state and county business of his time ; and he 
 made valuable additions to what patrimony he received. 
 Another of his daughters, Margaret, married Sir William 
 Walleys of Glynd, long since an extinct Sussex family, and 
 heired by the lords Morley. Mrs. Gladstone of Hawarden 
 Castle is a Glynd, and may be a financial offshoot from the 
 landed Walleyses of Glynd. It would be a more curious thing, 
 if the Scot of Scots should, on close investigation, turn out to 
 be a most energetic but unfortunate Norman of this Sussex 
 ilk, the heroes beyond the Tweed being almost invariably 
 Anglo-Norman. The suggestion, however, is dangerous enough 
 to raise a new war of independences. Why Mary Sinclair 
 heired the Teyes might be a question of interest, if her heirship 
 were anything else than the gift of crown property. Henry 
 Teye was executed at London in 132 1, at the same time and 
 for the same reason as Francis Aldham, when Edward II. and 
 the Despensers got the advantage of the barons; but the 
 estates did not then come into the king's hands, for William 
 de Teye was the antecessor of Mary. There is a Sir Robert 
 Tey or Teyes in English history later than Mary as one of 
 the commissioners for the commons in the parliament of 
 Shrewsbury, 1398, a king's favourite; but the property of 
 Havering Bower which she got from Queen Philippa, is again 
 in the crown during and after the time of Richard the Second. 
 It was in 1397a seat of this king. Here he came, on a pretended 
 hunting excursion, to entrap his uncle the duke of Gloucester 
 in the basest possible way. Froissart tells the tale of how he 
 left his seat of Havering Bower, near Rumford, in Essex, and 
 came on a quasi visit at five o'clock of a summer's afternoon 
 to the castle of Plessy, his uncle's dwelling, as it once had 
 been Margaret Sinclair's (the countess of Essex, William 
 Mandeville's lady), as it was her son's (Geffrey Mandeville), and 
 
 u
 
 306 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 that of several constables of England. After supper the duke 
 was to go with him to London for a supposed council, but on 
 coming towards the end of Epping Forest, King Richard 
 galloped in front, leaving him to be seized by an ambush 
 under the earl-marshal, Thomas Mowbray. But this is public 
 history. Mary's care put Havering Bower into good enough 
 shape for a royal seat. She was the immediate previo 
 possessor. Her court experience may have kept royal acquaint- 
 ance fresh as to her Essex home, so that unlike her father she 
 did not transmit to her own friends. In 1437 -loan of Navarre, 
 Henry the Fourth's queen, died there. Sir John Sinclair was 
 married to Mary, the widow of Sir Koger Bellers. There i 
 notice of Sir John and his wife Mary holding jointly in 1386 
 inter alia Brambletye and Lavertye, her death taking place in 
 1390, the year after her husband's. Their son was Philip, 
 who may be called Sir Philip St. Clere, the elder, of Igtham, to 
 distinguish him from his own second son, Sir Philip of Burstow, 
 in Surrey, and from the son of his eldest son Thomas, Philip, 
 the second of Igtham. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 SIR PHILIP, THOMAS, AND PHILIP. 
 
 There are three eldest sons, father, son, and grandson, in 
 direct succession to Sir John Sinclair. His heir Sir Philip, 
 whom Burke's Peerage describes as ' Sir Philip St. Clere, lent., 
 M.P. for Sussex in 1377,' married Joan de Audley ; and it was 
 by her right that Farthingo and Stean in Northamptonshire 
 came to one of his successors. Her father was Sir James de 
 Audley of Wold, son of Hugh de Audley, earl of Gloucester, 
 one of the six earls created by Edward III. in 1337, on the 
 occasion of making his son Richard duke of Cornwall, the first 
 use in England of the ordinary ducal title. James had perhaps 
 still higher rank than his father, by being one of the twenty- 
 six knights in the list headed by Edward III. and his son 
 Edward, prince of "Wales, who are known as the founders of 
 the order of the garter. One of these Audleys, covered with 
 wounds, was publicly acknowledged by the Black Prince after
 
 SIR PHILIP, THOMAS, AND PHILIP. 307 
 
 the battle of Cressy, as being the most valiant that day, of all 
 his heroic Englishmen. The Stanleys, of whom the earls of 
 Derby are the chief representatives, changed their original 
 name of Audley to what it is. The historical fame of the 
 Audleys and Stanleys belongs to the same male stock. The 
 king's cousin, the beautiful countess of Salisbury, was the 
 occasion of the famous institution of which the motto is Hunt 
 soit qui mal y pense, and which has always preserved twenty- 
 six as the number of its select knights. William Montacute, 
 the earl of Salisbury, was one of the founders, whose family 
 contributed estates to these Sinclairs, as has been seen. Sir 
 James, the knight of the garter, had connection to Farthingo 
 and Steen through his mother, who was Margaret Bereford, 
 daughter of Sir William Bereford of these properties, and of 
 Langley, Warwickshire. The Berefords played their part in 
 the reigns of Edward III. and Eichard II. On the young 
 king Edward seizing the government from his mother Isabella, 
 and from her favourite, Roger Mortimer, earl of March, Sir 
 Simon Bereford as one of her party was executed in 1330, and 
 in 1388 Sir Baldwin was banished as a favourite of the latter 
 monarch. The fortunes of all the set hang around that dramatic 
 entrance by underground passage of Edward III., with Monta- 
 cute, three Bohuns, and others, into his mother's apartment 
 in Nottingham Castle, and seizure of Mortimer, despite the 
 queen's ' Bel Fitz, Bel Fitz, ayez pitie du gentile Mortimer.' The 
 amazing thing is that the ' gentle ' gallant had then four sons 
 and seven daughters. Their father's position seemed only 
 to have made the daughters the more popular, their marriages 
 being the best possible in the kingdom, such as those with 
 Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, Hastings, earl of Pembroke, 
 and others similar. But it is his daughter Joan, or as some 
 say Margaret, Mortimer, that has present interest, having 
 married James, lord Audley. It was their daughter, named 
 also Joan, who was wife of Sir Philip St. Clere of Igtham and 
 Grinstead ; and in her person she centred some of the courtliest 
 traditions and most royal relationships of the period. The 
 earldom of Gloucester seems never far from St. Clairs, from 
 Robert, the ' knight of Rye,' downwards through Mandevilles, 
 Clares, Audleys, and, it might be found, the Despensers besides ; 
 so strongly tenacious have Norman natures been of the rights 
 and delights of consanguinity. The three heiresses of the
 
 3 o8 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Clares married, the eldest, Eleanor, to Eugh De pen er, the 
 son ; Margaret, first to the notorious favourite Piers < raveston, 
 and second to Lord Audley, the father of James ; and Elizabei b 
 to William de Burgh, earl of dlster, and other two succeeding 
 husbands, as the History of Cambria tells fully. But this 
 sea of best genealogies of the time is to be shunned now 
 with care. 
 
 Sir Philip and his lady, Joan de Audley, had Thomas Sinclair 
 as eldest son. He was one of the heroes of Agincourt, who 
 'fought with us upon St. Crispin's day,' to take the words of 
 King Harry the Fifth, as dramatised. In the roll of the 
 Sussex men who were there, ' Thomas Sender' appears as one 
 of the five armigeri who, with the earl of Arundel and Surrey, 
 and lords Cobham and Camoys, were the officers of this con- 
 tingent, consisting mostly of archers. The earl led them to 
 Dover, but he fell ill, and lords Cobham and Camoys were 
 their leaders on the battle-field. Poth of these appear to 
 have been of the same lineage as the heir of [gtham. But 
 this will find its evidence in connection with the descendants 
 of Hugo St. Clare of Aeslingham. Alter the sieire and taking 
 of Harfleur, King Henry was returning with his sick troops 
 to England, by way of Calais. Met by many times their 
 number of French, who barred the passage northwards, he 
 secured against all hope and likelihood perhaps the greatest, 
 at all events, the most joyful, victory in English record. The 
 strangest tales are told of the consequences of the flux which 
 afflicted his army even before it left England. At Agincourt 
 it made them exhibit the berserker fury to an unparalleled 
 deerree of heroism. Thomas was one of those who outlived 
 that day, and came home to Kent and Sussex. It would seem, 
 however, that he succumbed soon after, whether from illness 
 or wounds. His death certainly took place in 141 6, and the 
 battle being on 25th October 141 5, the likelihood is that his 
 decease was the effect of that trying campaign and victory. 
 
 His wife was Margaret Philpott, daughter of Sir John 
 Philpott, lord mayor of London. As an alderman, he got 
 knighted at the same time as Sir William Walworth, who was 
 then lord mayor, because of his aid in arresting and slaying 
 the rebel Wat Tyler at Smithfield. Sir William had ^100 a 
 year of pension given for his courageous deed, and Sir John 
 Philpott and two other aldermen ^40 a year each for ever,
 
 SIR PHILIP, THOMAS, AND PHILIP. 309 
 
 for their services to the young king, Eichard, at the crisis of 
 England's most dangerous rebellion. Tindal speaks of Phil- 
 pott as the ' famous,' and Walsingham gives support to this 
 enthusiasm of his. When Edward III. died, his grandson 
 and successor Richard II. was only eleven, and a regency was 
 appointed of his three uncles and others. His eldest uncle 
 was the duke of Lancaster, called king of Castile, and he was 
 quite as proud as a Spaniard. The parliament would not 
 trust the regents with money. Says Eapin, after showing 
 that the parliament granted a subsidy for war, ' but it was 
 clogged with this condition, that the money should be lodged 
 in the hands of Philpott and Walworth, two eminent aldermen 
 of London, who were ordered to take care it should be expended 
 only in repulsing the French and Castilians in league against 
 England.' Cotton's Abridgement gives details : two fifteenths 
 and two tenths out of cities and burghs, the fifteenths of all 
 lands, and tenths of all goods, to be levied before Candlemas, 
 and deposited in the hands of William Walworth and John 
 Philpott, merchants of London. Lancaster stopped defence 
 of the sea-coasts till he got the money. Meanwhile piracies 
 were going on, and John Philpott gained high honour from occa- 
 sion. Mercer, a Scotch pirate, had taken merchantmen out of 
 the harbour at Scarborough, and was proceeding to further 
 brilliancies, when Philpott fitted out some ships at his own 
 expense, and putting a thousand soldiers on board, went in 
 quest of the pirate, found him, defeated him, and brought him 
 prisoner to London in 1378, to the admiration of the people 
 generally, and to the dangerous jealousy of the regency. 
 Several of Rapin's paragraphs are devoted to the fame of 
 Thomas Sinclair's energetic father-in-law. ' The king of Kent' 
 was not the first of his kind whom honest Philpott looked out 
 of countenance, and out of rebellious life. A lady of the dis- 
 tinguished Sandford family was his own wife, and he himself 
 appears as a miles. The Tyler rising was in 1381, and three 
 years after, Sir John Philpott died. This daughter then could 
 not but be young, her marriage to Thomas Sinclair, the heir 
 of Sir Philip, taking place necessarily however before 1395. 
 She married a second time. One of the monumental tablets 
 of the church of Greyfriars, which was situated where Christ's 
 Hospital now is, Newgate Street, had the following inscription, 
 preserved from the barbarous destruction which overtook that
 
 310 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 place of sepulture for the great : ' Margareta filia dm Johis 
 Philpott Lord Mayor, et miles, pdcti et ux r Tho e Sender 
 arniig et ffrnodum ux r Johis Nelond armig. ob 18 Sept. 
 1438 ' — ' Margaret, daughter of the baron John Philpott, 
 lord mayor, and knight beforesaid, and wife of Thomas Sin- 
 clair, armsbearing, and afterwards of John Nelond, arms- 
 bearing : she died 18th Sept. 1438.' On the same tablet 
 when perfect, there was account of her father, as this survival 
 shows. Bridges in his History of Northamptonshire gives 
 further knowledge. Describing Wold, Orlingbury hundred, in 
 that county, he says Thomas Seynteler died 4 Hen. V., which 
 is the year after Agincourt, possessing jointly with Margaret 
 his wife a manor in Wold, which he left to Philip his son 
 and heir. Thomas heired it from his mother's family, the 
 Audleys ; but it is possible that Sir John Philpott may have 
 had land there also, and that some of the Wold properties were 
 Margaret's dowry. In 20 Ed. III. the Audleys had them. 
 Thomas de Audley had heired his brother William, and him- 
 self dying left an only daughter Elizabeth under age. A 
 suggestive record of 10 Bic. II. says that her guardians were, 
 Win. Montague, earl of Salisbury, and John de Eos. The 
 result of Sinclair's city connection is sufficiently indicated by 
 a charter in the British Museum, which shows him to have 
 had a grant of South wark in 141 5 ; and this at once helps to 
 explain the wealth of Sir John Philpott and the parallel pros- 
 perity of Thomas Sinclair of Igtham's brother, Sir Philip of 
 Burstow. As this was thirty-five years after the lord mayor's 
 death, it must have come to Margaret Sinclair or Philpott by 
 lapse of heirships, the Philpotts having much London house 
 property. 
 
 Of Philip Sinclair, the eldest son of Thomas and of Margaret 
 Philpott, less is known than of any of the line. He was 
 twenty-one when his father's properties came to him, 4 Hen. V. ; 
 and he, with paternal traditions of victorious war so recent, 
 must have followed King Henry in his triumphal conquest of 
 the kingdom of France. Much may yet be discovered of his 
 doings, if so; but, for the present, it is certain that he died 
 without issue, the too general fate of the soldier of that bril- 
 liant period. His mother, Margaret Philpott, with her second 
 husband, got Wold manor in 5 Hen. VI., 1427, which was in 
 Philip's possession. She gets it, however, not from her son,
 
 SIR nil LIP, THOMAS, AND PHILIP. 311 
 
 or on her son's death, but from his cousin-german. The La1 
 beired it by lineage, and it would seem on his cousin Philip's 
 death, giving ii over to Margaret Philpott and her husband 
 John Nelond, armiger. 
 
 The duke of Bedford, regent of Franco after the death 
 his brother Eenry Fifth, was a personal friend of the Sinclair- 
 of AMham ; so much so that he bought part of their property 
 mar Aldliam St. ( Here, where he resided usually when in Eng 
 land. It might point inquiry, to say that Philip Sinclair spent 
 his life chiefly with him in Paris; which would account for 
 how little appeals of him, wealthy and splendidly connect e.l 
 as he was, in the survivals of this country. If he died in 
 1427, as has been supposed, the dream of English continental 
 supremacy had not been to him dashed for ever by the hysteri- 
 cal furies of the Maid, so appalling to his brave fellow-country- 
 men. Of the French wars of those two able brothers, Henry 
 the Fifth and the duke of Bedford, much has yet to be 
 tied. 
 
 It is of genealogical interest that the 'lord of St. Cler' was 
 one of the Norman-French earls who fell at Agincourt, but the 
 doings of another Sinclair in France are too characteristic to be 
 passed. The contemporary chronicle of the reWjieux of St. 
 Denis, 1380-1422, tells in vigorous monkish Latin of the 
 personal strength ami high gallantry of ' Messire Bruneau de 
 Saint Clair,' and of how he figured in the struggle for the 
 regency between the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, the 
 brother and uncle of the sun-struck Charles the Sixth. In 
 1414 this king warred against the duke of Burgundy; and so 
 serious was the war expected to be that he went first to St. 
 Denis monastery, to take with all ceremonies the oriflamme, 
 the standard raised when France was in danger, to lead his 
 army. To ' Messire de Bruneau de Saint Clair' and to the ' Sire 
 d'Aumont ' it was given for last defence, as the bravest men of 
 all the French. It was made of silk of a gold and tlame colour. 
 with three flying points, and eighteen divisions. The flag was 
 of no great size, if pictures may be trusted ; but it thrilled the 
 patriotism of the country to its highest when displayed. After 
 Joan of Arc drove the English from their conquest, the white 
 coronet has been the banner of the country. The earls of 
 Vexin had hereditary claim to carry the oriflamme; and. as 
 St. Cler is in the Normandy Vexin, Bruneau must have had
 
 3 i2 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 this to aid him to his office. By the ' Sire de Bacqueville ' on 
 similar occasion he was again selected for his known gallantry 
 and physical strength. One of his military duties was at 
 command of the king to go, with a marshal, Bouciault, and the 
 count de St. Pol, against bands of brigands ' qui infestaient le 
 pays chartrain.' They were, in those troublous times, of all 
 ages from fifteen upwards, but short work did these three 
 make of them. When the Armagnac party were devastating 
 as they pleased, he drilled the inhabitants so thoroughly that 
 they swept them back entirely out of that part of the country. 
 In that time of faction, when coups-de-etat were as common as 
 in clays of civilisation, Parisian modern, Bruneau Sinclair was 
 made provost of Paris, as of the Burgundian party. When a 
 change came he was re-established in his functions of grand 
 maitre de V hotel du roi, the office so well known in French 
 history as mayor of the palace. But though France and 
 England were one country in the clays of Henry the Fifth and 
 of his brother, enough has been here said of Bruneau. That 
 he should be dapifer or seneschal then, points to the hereditary 
 faculty of high rule in his lineage. It might be a pity, how- 
 ever, to pass one rather isolated fact of the wars of Henry the 
 Fifth, which has double genealogical interest, namely, that in 
 141 7 the castle of St. Cler on the Epte, whence the name 
 came, was put under the governorship of Sir William Basset. 
 The Bassets had been of close affinity to the Sinclairs in Eng- 
 land, and King Henry and Sir William knew this, and acted 
 and benefited accordingly. 
 
 Whether Philip St. Clair of Igtham figured under the Eng- 
 lish rulers of France, is more probable than provable, till 
 further evidence is found. He is the last of these three eldest 
 sons in succession. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SONS. 
 
 There were three Philips altogether, and he of Burstow was 
 the second son of Sir Philip of Igtham, and the uncle of the 
 Philip who died without issue. He was the brother therefore
 
 SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SONS. 313 
 
 of Thomas Sinclair of Igtham, the warrior of Agincourt. 
 Baker, in his History of Northamptonshire, is authority for 
 Sir Philip of Burstow being the younger of the two brothers ; 
 but how then is it that Sir Philip dies in 1408 possessed of 
 nearly all the paternal estates (seethe Calendar of Inquisition.-; 
 after Death), and his brother Thomas dies in 141 6, having 
 Igtham and Little Preston chiefly 1 Could there be gavelkind 
 or parage of such sort as to make the younger brother's por- 
 tion the larger of the two ? or did the elder elect the soldier's 
 life of adventure for new possessions, and leave the other the 
 provision of money and the mastery of the bulk of the lands ? 
 Fees were partible ; and the first Philip of all, their father, 
 may have favoured his namesake. Certainly the weight of 
 influence and property follows with the younger ; for it is 
 better to accept the recognised account, since it does not affect 
 anything which was the first-born, Thomas's line dying out 
 in his son Philip, and much if not all of their properties 
 going to Sir Philip of Burstow's sons. However he came to 
 possess so much of his father's lands, he had faculty, and did 
 not rest content with what he had. In 44 Ed. III., 1371, he 
 made a great marriage, which increased his already large 
 estate. But the right version perhaps is that he made this 
 marriage first as a younger son, and that then his power 
 brought him the paternal and fraternal kindnesses, on his 
 proved capability of clever deeds. What aids this is that he 
 took his usual title from Burstow and Godstone, in Surrey, 
 which he had by his Avife. 
 
 She was Margaret de Louvaine or Lorraine, and the widow 
 of Sir Richard Chamberlain of Sherburne, Oxfordshire, and of 
 Cotes. The only sister of an only brother, Sir Nicolas de 
 Louvaine, she heired him, and brought his properties to her 
 husbands, with the latter of whom they remained, for his 
 family. The father of Sir Nicolas and Margaret, was also 
 Sir Nicolas, and he had married the widow of Sir John de 
 Pulteney of Offspring, Kent, held by 'a yearly rose,' getting 
 Offspring and other estates with her. Sir John de Pulteney 
 was lord mayor of London, and gained also high political 
 fame. Penshurst, in Kent, he got the privilege of embattling 
 for his residence as a baron of the kingdom. It was he who 
 by wit, or by being the cause of it in others, made roses, red 
 and white, peaceful and bloody, current in English mouths.
 
 3 i4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Quite a galaxy of London plain but warm-hearted humour 
 gathers around his name and surroundings. The Poultry of 
 Cheapside is a change of Pulteney's name jusl as Buckingham 
 or the Duke's Foot Lane there became Ducksfoot Lane, ami 
 Green Lattice Lane, Green Lettuce. Shakespeare, in King 
 Henry VIII. has the authenticating lines, 
 
 ' The duke, bein^ .it the Rose, within the parish of 
 St. Laurence, l'oulteney . . . 
 
 The lord mayor gave his name to the whole district thu 
 and 'The Itose ' had as often the title of 'Pulteney's Inn.' 
 'Cold Harbour,' in Thames Street, however, was oftener 
 'Pulteney's Inn,' another of the mansions of this great draper. 
 He gave Cold Harbour to Humfrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford 
 and Essex, for a rose at midsummer to him and his heirs. In 
 1533 it became 'Shrewsbury House' for Francis Talbot, the 
 fifth earl, but reached ultimately the very reverse side of high 
 fortune. Sir John had property in many parts of London, 
 even as far east as Stepney ; but it was from where the 
 Mansion House stands, and towards the river, he held most 
 largely. 'The Rose,' says Thornbury, in his Old and Neio 
 London, ' was a spacious mansion, originally built by Sir John 
 Pulteney, knight, five times lord mayor of London in the 
 reign of Edward III.' He adds that the Hollands, De la 
 Poles, StafTords, Courtenays, and Ratcliffes all enjoyed it sub- 
 sequently. These Louvaines were a branch of the dukes of 
 Lorraine, of whom Tasso's Godfrey of Boulogne (for on Stow's 
 authority it is the same family) is the most renowned amonir 
 many such; and they had large baronies in England such as 
 Eye in Suffolk, and the honour of Bononia, so long in the 
 king's hands. The beautiful Adeliza, or Alice Louvaine, 
 second queen of Harry the First, and afterwards countess 
 of an Albeni earl of Arundel, was of this family. But the 
 remarkable Percy earls of Northumberland, were really 
 Louvaines, Joscelin, Queen Adeliza' s brother, having married 
 the heiress of the Normandy Percies on condition of changing 
 his name. The descendant of Charlemagne, he is another proof 
 of the monopoly of great deeds in world history by great 
 breeds. The renowned 'Hotspur' of Chevy Chase, or the battle 
 of Otterburne, in which James, earl of Douglas, was slain, 
 dying in the arms of Sir John Sinclair, was one of them.
 
 SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SONS. 315 
 
 Though he and his brother, Sir Ralph Percy (Louvaine), were 
 taken prisoners, they had good right to be brave. He fell 
 performing prodigies of valour at the battle of Shrewsbury in 
 1403. Shakespeare has immortalised him, had he never been 
 one of the heroes of Chevy Chase. In the Genealogia Europce 
 of Henninges, published 1598, both the sons of a Sinclarus, 
 are with James Douglas at Otterburne in 1388, Johannes and 
 Gualtherus. John Sinclair is made father of William, comes 
 Orcadensis. This earl of Orkney appears as father of John, 
 bishop of Brechin. Though this is short, and difficult to fit 
 with some pedigrees, it is of considerable value in the reference 
 to Otterburne, where the Louvaines and St. Clares so strangely 
 cross. Sir John, father of the earl of Orkney, was next in 
 command to Douglas, and had the honour of the Louvaines as 
 his prisoners. The present duke of Hamilton owes much of 
 his position to heiring these Sinclairs and Douglases, who 
 were intermarried frequently. Sanquhar or St. Clair, the 
 caput haroniai of Nithsdale, was held by the Hamiltons at one 
 time. Shakespeare, in Henry Fifth, says that the Louvaines 
 were ' sole heirs male of the true line and stock of Charles 
 the Great.' The foreigners discovered the greatness of lord 
 mayors of London long ago, and brave ones lived even before 
 Sir Richard Whittington of the fifteenth century. 
 
 That Sir Philip of Burstow had city sympathies as well as 
 affinities and real heirship, the following charter of 20 Ric. II. 
 shows : ' Philippus Seynt Clere ch'r et alii pro Eccl'ia Om 
 Sco^ ad Fenn' in Roperia, London, duo mess' in parochia 
 Omnium Sancto3 vocat' Le Coldeherbergh ad ecc'liam enlar- 
 gand' et cimiter' faciend.' — 'Philip Sinclair, chevalier, and 
 others, for the church of All Saints at Fenn in Roperia, 
 London, two messuages in the parish of All Saints called 
 "The Coldeherburgh," for enlarging the church, and making 
 a cemetery.' Here is the history of 'Fenchurch' Street in 
 short compass ; and the Cold Harbour of Sir John Pulteney 
 had, before 1397, come by the right of his wife to Sir Philip 
 Sinclair. He must have had high public spirit, or interest in 
 other London properties, to have gifted these messuages of 
 fame and value. Making an intramural cemetery then, was 
 the most advanced sanitary city improvement. Over these 
 favoured citizens' dust, so provided with a shapely resting- 
 place, the office, the street, and the cab have long since taken
 
 316 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 permanent position, Bunliill Fields being modern compared 
 with the graveyard of the Fen Church in the rope-making 
 waste of ancient London. It is noteworthy irvival that 
 
 there is a Cold Harbour near St. < Here, Kemsing, Kent. 
 
 Blomfield, in his History of Norfolk, says thai this Sir 
 Philip was lord of Wethersfield and Bradfield, in Suffolk, in 
 Henry the Fourth's time, but on his death he posse ed only 
 the former. How he got either of fchem, by what degree of 
 consanguinity to the Sinclairs of Bradfield, or if l>y purchai e, 
 or if from the crown on the death of Pain St. I Hair as escheat, 
 is open for inquiry. It is difficult to believe that lineage l>y 
 exact steps could be reckoned, though both houses were de- 
 scendants of Richard of 1066; three hundred years upwards 
 being very estranging except with the most fortunate of 
 families. In 1405 Sir Philip was sheriff of Sussex. Among 
 the Harleian charters this is to be found about his wife and 
 himself, dated 7 Hen. IV., 1406: ' Acquitancia Elizabethce 
 Morteyn Philippo Seyncler et Margarita wxori suae pro 10 
 marc de annua ppnsione 20 mare ex manerio Tyllesworfh ' — 
 'Acquittance of Elizabeth Mortayne to Philip Sinclair and 
 his wife Margaret, for 10 marks of annual pension, and 20 
 marks from the manor of Tyllesworth.' 
 
 But what will throw most light on their histories are the 
 lists of their possessions, from the Calendar of Inquisitions 
 after Death. Sir Philip's was taken 9 Hen. IV., 1408, and 
 his wife Margaret de Louvaine died the next year, for hers is 
 taken 10 Hen. IV Philip Saintclere : Cheseberg manor, 
 Somerset ; Swaffham Prior manor, Cambridgeshire ; Wethers- 
 field manor, Suffolk; Barton St. John manor, Staunton St. 
 John manor, a certain manor in Chalgrave, as from the honour 
 of Wallingford, Oxfordshire; Lagham manor, as from the 
 manor of Tand ridge, Merden manor, Heggecourt manor, 
 Burstow manor, Leweland manor, tenement in the manor of 
 Lagham beforesaid called Stroudland, Hegecote manor, parcel 
 called Shavenore as from the manor of Shifneld, and other 
 parcels of the aforesaid manor of Hegecote called Lyllye, 
 Wimbledon manor and service, Surrey ; Laverty or Lanerty 
 manor, Torringe manor, Brembletye manor, Hegton manor, 
 Jevington manor, tenement in Meresfield called Newnham, as 
 from the honour of Leicester, Nuttborne manor, Chudham 
 manor, Excete manor, Ashdoune forest, service of the honour
 
 SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SONS. 317 
 
 of Aquila, Sussex ; Ashby Magna manor, as from the honour 
 of Peverell, Leicestershire; West Aldham manor, as from 
 the castle of Eynesford, Remising, half of 180 acres of land 
 from the manor of Wodeland, Wodeland, 80 acres of land as 
 from the manor of Otford in gavelkind, the returns of Lul- 
 lington Castle, Yemesfield manor, as from the castle of Tun- 
 bridge, Penshurst manor and Otford manor, tenement then 
 called South Park, Falkham manor, Eshore Park, tenement 
 in Penshurst called Lathehames, Sutton-at-Hone manor, Chid- 
 dington tenement called Mercheshopes, Remesleghes manor, 
 Penshurst tenement called Hameden, Chidingston manor, 
 Bytberwe tenement called Hereland, Leghe manor, Leghe 
 tenement called Bernestesgrof, and the park called North 
 Park, Faukham manor, Kent. Margaret, the wife of Philip 
 Seinclere : Zeneford manor as from Tunbridge Castle, Pens- 
 hurst manor as from the manor of Otford, South Park, 80 
 acres of land named as from the manor of Faukham, Eshore 
 Park, tenement called Netherhatn as from the manor of 
 Sutton-at-Hone, Chidingston tenement called Marcheshope 
 as from the manor of Romesley, Chydington manor land, 
 Hoveland in Betterberwe, land as from the manor of Leghe, 
 Leghe land, called Blackheath, Bernetsgrove, North Park, and 
 100 acres of adjacent land, Kent. These formed her portion 
 after the death of her husband, the bulk of the property being 
 put under guardianship for their sons, John and Thomas, the 
 elder of whom was only twelve at the decease of his father. 
 In the charters of the Museum there is one by Sir Philip 
 providing for Margaret de Louvaine, if she should become his 
 widow. With many other things of note in these lists, it is 
 remarkable that he held the Staunton St. John, in Oxfordshire, 
 which was the home of Lord Bolingbroke of Queen Anne's 
 time, the famous author and politician, Pope's friend. 
 
 On the whole, the marriage of Margaret de Louvaine to Sir 
 Philip was more a stroke of fortune for her than for him, :is 
 comparison of the list of even his great-grandfatlier\s properties 
 shows. His able grandfather, Sir John Sinclair, sheriff of 
 Sussex and Surrey, the manager of Queen Philippa's property 
 and its ultimate possessor, seems to have had his hand over 
 the affairs of the De Louvaines. That thus Sir Philip, his grand- 
 son, had introduction substantial to his consort, whether also 
 romantic, may or may not be. Among the Harleian charters
 
 3 i8 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 one of historic as well as private interest remains, written in 
 the language still used at that period for legal transactions, 
 the French introduced by the Normans. Its date is 44 Ed. 
 III., i37i,and given under Sir John's seal at Penshurst — 
 ' mon seal a Penshurst,' This was nineteen years after the death 
 of the lord mayor Sir John Pulteney, baron of Penshurst and 
 Ospring, whose widow married Sir Nicolas de Louvaine, father 
 of Sir Nicolas and Margaret, the wife of Sir Philip of Burstow. 
 The writing runs : ' Johan de Seyntcler susrendu <> M. Niclwl 
 Louvayne chev. tout Vestat que j avoi de son lees en l<>us lee 
 memoirs fies et advowsons : ' — ' John Sinclair : surrendered to Sir 
 Nicholas de Louvayne all the estates which I had of his lease 
 in all the manors, fees, and advowsons.' They are both called 
 armigeri in the document; which is a parchment 2I inches by 
 11, folded double and three, of 6^- lines of well-written but 
 dim old French, the seal being yet attached, and hardly im- 
 perfect, since ' EINTCLER ' remains, and nearly the whole 
 of the shield, with 'the sun in its glory' blazoning its entire 
 field. Sir Philip married Margaret de Louvaine that same 
 year, says Philpott in Villare Cantianum, and this surrender 
 of leases on the part of his grandfather to his bride's brother, 
 may have been to put them in possession of some or all of the 
 estates, by way of her dowry. The Surrey properties of Bur- 
 stow and the rest, were the chief aggrandisement to the family 
 in the transaction ; and if Sir John Sinclair had no claims 
 against the Louvaine properties, the lands she brought her 
 husband were princely enough. It is suggestive of Sir John 
 Sinclair's ability and wealth, that he was in possession so early 
 as 137 1 of Penshurst, though it may have been only by lease. 
 Sir Philip had it fully on the death of his brother-in-law Sir 
 Nicholas, to whom his wife was heiress. 
 
 In considering Sir Philip of Burstow's properties, it need 
 not be forgotten that his elder brother, Thomas of Igtham 
 and Parva Preston, who lived eight years after him, must be 
 supposed to have got the lion's share of their father and 
 grandfather's properties ; the grandfather living, as the above 
 shows, long after the marriage of Margaret de Louvaine, and 
 having then power over his affairs. Rev. Thomas Cox in 
 Magna Britannia says that Ospring came to Sir Philip St. 
 Clere of Aldham through his wife, Margaret Louvaine, and 
 continued with his posterity till the reign of Edward the
 
 SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SOWS. 319 
 
 Fourth ; but it does not appear in the inquisitions. It cer- 
 tainly was in possession of some of the family, and the sugges- 
 tion occurs that it may have been exchanged by Sir Philip of 
 Burstow, for some of the large proportion of the pati'imony 
 he holds, with his elder brother, Thomas of Igtham, whose 
 estates lay in more convenient proximity to the somewhat 
 eastern Ospring, long a royal demesne. Cox's finding could 
 be true that it remained in the family till Edward the Fourth, 
 if Thomas of Igtham's son Philip, who died without issue 
 about that time, heired it. Sir Philip of Burstow's sons were 
 dead twenty-seven years before Edward the Fourth held the 
 throne. There are not evidences enough to discuss further. 
 
 The two sons of Sir Philip of Burstow have to be treated, 
 John the elder, and Thomas the younger. In 1409 they were 
 orphans, the elder thirteen ; and Sir John Pelham, the earl 
 of Chichester, got the wardship of the boys from King Henry 
 the Fourth. The Inquisitiones ad Quod Damnum of 7 Henry 
 V. are proof of this : ' Juratores dicunt quod Henr' nuper Rex 
 Angl' pater dni Regis nunc per litras patentes coihisit Johi 
 Pelham militi custodiam omnium manerior' dnior trarum etc 
 que fuerunt Phi Seyntclere chr defuncti qui de predco Henr' 
 tenuit in capite ' — ' The jurors say that Henry, lately king of 
 England, father of our lord the king now, by his open letters, 
 committed to John Pelham, miles, the custody of all the 
 manors, demesnes, lands, etc., which were those of Sir Philip 
 Sinclair, dead, who held in capite from the said Henry' It 
 is under ' Sussex ; ' and as if to make assurance doubly sure, the 
 record commission has entered it twice. The occasion of this 
 inquisition is the death of John Sinclair the heir, at the age 
 of twenty-three, in 14 19. The earl had got the marriage of 
 John arranged to his satisfaction. In Collin's Peerage his 
 daughter Joan Pelham is married to Sir John Seynclere, and 
 Collins gives his evidence, namely, a letter in his time extant 
 from the earl in the reign of Henry the Fifth to this young 
 Sir John. He himself died 12 Feb., 1428, leaving tins and 
 another daughter and a son to succeed him. Sir John Pelham 
 was one of the ambassadors for the marriage of Henry the 
 Fifth to the Princess Katherine of France, of whom Shakes- 
 peare makes so much, and he had various similar political 
 experience. His daughter fell heir to some of her husbainl 
 Sir John's lands, but "the chief portion went to the younger
 
 3:0 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 brother, Thomas Sinclair. They had a sister Margaret Sin. lair, 
 who married one of the lord mayor connection, Thomae de 
 Pulteney, armiger, but much more is not known of her yet. 
 A charter is preserved in the British Museum of thirteen Lines 
 of writing, given by a Thomas Saintcler, who musl have been 
 their uncle of Agincourt fame, and in it there IB mention of a 
 John, this last Sir John, and a Juliana Sinclair, probably 
 another sister whose history has also to be discovered. 
 
 In 1422, the first year of the reign of Henry the Sixth, 
 Thomas Sinclair is the sole male survivor of his Line. That 
 his cousin-german, Philip of Igtham, died a young man, seems 
 proved by Thomas being, in the escheats of the year 1422, 
 written as of Igtham and Parva Preston, which could not be 
 with his cousin alive. The year before, by prior settlement of 
 Sir Baldwin Bereford, one of the favourites of Richard II., 
 through the marriage of the grandfather of Thomas, Sir Philip, 
 to Joan Audley, daughter of one of the ladies Bereford, 
 Farthingo and Stean in Northamptonshire first came into 
 actual possession of the family. Hi- brother Sir John Sinclair 
 died in 1419, so that he had his lands earlier than either the 
 Igtham or the Northamptonshire estates. He was born in 
 1401, and in 1422 he was possessed of most if not all of the 
 lands of his family, the single represent at h eof their antiquity, 
 ability, and wealth. Among 'he Probat' a<tati.-< records of 
 Sussex he appears in 2 Hen. VI. as, ' Thomas Seintcler f rater 
 et haeres Johannis filii Phil //>/>< Si intclt r cht valu r ' — 'Thomas 
 Sinclair, brother and heir of John, the son of Philip Sinclair, 
 chevalier; ' so that his relationship is quite clear. 
 
 When he got his properties, it is said that some of them 
 were not in sufficient order to please him, and that he sold 
 distant ones that he might put those nearer London in good 
 shape ; but of this the list of his possessions at death does not 
 show much sign. That he was energetic, perhaps to too great 
 degree, there is indication. ' The fishery of Cuckmere Haven,' 
 says a Sussex antiquary, ' was vested in the St. Cleres, lords 
 of Firle and owners of Excete (Inq. p.m.) 1 Hen. VI., No. 30).' 
 Later the mayor of Eye had his battles over this fishery, but 
 Thomas Sinclair had fierce legal business about rights there 
 interfered with, and to his heirs the legacy of strife went 
 down. That he had the contemporary love of battle the fol- 
 lowing, if it refers to him, would go to show. It is taken
 
 SIR PHILIP OF BURSTOW AND HIS SONS. 321 
 
 from the Issue Rolls of 15 July, 4 Hen. VI., 1426. 'To John 
 Vincent. In money paid to him for so much money expended, 
 hy command of the treasury of England, for expenses of twelve 
 jurors of the county of Middlesex dining at Westminster, and 
 there attending and waiting to give a verdict upon a certain 
 inquisition taken, the lord the king and Thomas Seyncler, 
 esquire, upon a certain security of the peace broken by said 
 Thomas Seyncler; which verdict, so delivered by said jury 
 before the treasurer and barons of the exchequer, the same 
 Thomas was convicted for the lord the king in 100 marks. 
 By direction of the treasury, &c. — 13s. 4c!.' It may be a 
 libel to refer this to Thomas of Aldham St.-Clere, but the date, 
 circumstances, the esquire, which had then its meaning, and 
 the large fine, for some quarrel such as could arise about the 
 Cuckmere fishing, point in his direction. Besides, the time 
 near Agincourt, and when Talbot was making his name so 
 terrible in France, gave honour to men for vigour of this 
 kind, while not forgetting to make them pay into king's 
 treasuries for the amusement. It is probable also that, like 
 his uncle Thomas, he was a soldier in the French wars ; and if 
 so, he knew the change of fortune the maid of Orleans, Joan 
 of Arc, began in his twenty-eighth year. With his family's 
 knowledge of the duke of Bedford, the regent, he could hardly 
 have not been in those gallant struggles which followed so 
 indecisively from her capture till the last years of the duke. 
 Meanwhile he is not known as distinguishing himself there, 
 though it is extremely probable that he died in France the 
 early death of most soldiers. As lord of the manor of Stene 
 he presented Simon Smyth to the incumbency iSth Feb. 1427. 
 He died on the 6th of May, 13 Hen. VI., 1435, at the age of 
 thirty-four. 
 
 He had married Margaret Hoo, the daughter of Lord Hoo 
 and Hastings, and left issue, three young daughters, he and 
 they the last of this wealthy and distinguished branch of 
 English Sinclair's. The history of these coheiresses and of 
 their mother, will throw much light on the short life of 
 Thomas ; so that there is no fear of him being left, without 
 justice done to his position as one of the landed magnates of 
 his time. J
 
 322 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CIIAlThi: Xi.V. 
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHT1 
 
 One of the writers of the x Archaeological CoUectio 
 
 taken great trouble in tracing the lineage o\ Margarel II 
 the wife of Thomas Sinclair; and he is justly proud i 
 success, as compared with the effoi ber geneaJ in 
 
 this particular inquiry. He has drawn up a table o\ pedign 
 besides writing his careful paper j and to them for lull know- 
 ledge it would be instructive to go. Sir William Hoo <•! 
 Hastings had served three sovereigna in ambassadorial, diplo- 
 matic, and other distinguished ways during forty years'. He 
 died Lord Hoo and Hastings, 22d November 1410, aged ; 
 His first wife was Alice de St. Omer, dau od cohein 
 
 of Thomas de St. Omer, her mother being Petronella, coheir* 
 of Nicolas, Lord de Mahnaynes, of the baronial Kent family 
 who came with the Conqueror, and who were beired chiefly 
 by the Crevequeres, baron I oatham and Leeds Castle. 
 
 Sir William Hoo and Alice de - Omer had Thomas, uho 
 succeeded his father, and in more ways than one. Wl 
 after fifteen years of war from the appearance of Joan of Arc 
 both French and English grew exhausted, and a peace was 
 desired in 1444, Sir Thomas Hoo, Robert, lord Etas, and 
 others, went as ambassadors of England with De la Pole, earl 
 of Suffolk, to Tours, according to Rymer'e Foedera, and got a 
 two years' truce, at the same time getting a queen, Margaret 
 of Anjou, for Henry the Sixth. In the roll of the knights 
 of the garter, Sir Thomas Hoo, lord Hoo and Hastings, is 
 entered as elected in 1445, and these services are the explana- 
 tion of his K.G. In 1460 William, lord Hasting.-, had K.G. 
 Sir Thomas had two brothers, John and William, and one 
 sister, ' Margaret, who married the wealthy Thomas St. Clere, 
 from which marriage the family of Gage is descended.' The 
 antiquary adds, 'The descendants of the daughter Margaret 
 were ultimately the heirs of Thomas Hoo who died in i486.' 
 This was the last of the line. Margaret's brother William 
 was also a distinguished man, holding a command as Sir 
 William Hoo in the Sussex contingent at the battle of Agin-
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS. 323 
 
 court. He was knight to Lord Camoys, having both respec- 
 tively, as money then went, 2s. and 4s. a day. Brady's 
 Appendix has a table of pay from the prince at 20s. a day to 
 the Welshman at 2d. But this was earlier, 20 Ed. III., 
 though little or no change occurred. The French war, for a 
 year and one hundred and thirty-one days, had cost altogether 
 only ^ 127,101, 2S. 9d. Sir William and Thomas Sinclair of 
 Grinstead, the uncle of Margaret's husband, were fellow- 
 officers under Henry the Fifth on the memorable day. It was 
 the inquisition in Bedfordshire, where the Hoo from which 
 the name came was, at the death of the last male, Thomas 
 Hoo, in i486, that gave the clue to the antiquary as to Mar- 
 garet, the wife of Thomas Sinclair, the last of his branch. Sir 
 William Boleyn, aged 36, entered on his cousin Thomas Hoo's 
 manors of Offley, Cokern-Hoo, and Hoo in Luton, under the 
 feoffment of 10 Dec. 1473; and the Bedfordshire jury found 
 that he had for coheirs, first, his cousin, aged 50 upwards, 
 Elizabeth Lewknor, born Sinclair, the daughter of Margaret 
 Sinclair, born Hoo, sister of Sir Thomas Hoo, knt., the father 
 of this Thomas Hoo that died without issue. The second 
 coheir to Sir William Boleyn was William Gage, aged 40, the 
 son of Alianor Sinclair, the next daughter of Margaret, wife 
 of Thomas Sinclair. The third coheir was Miles Harcourt, 
 aged 18, the grandson of Edith Sinclair, youngest daughter 
 of Margaret Hoo and the same Thomas Sinclair. This Sir 
 William Boleyn, first cousin to these three Sinclair ladies, 
 their mothers being two sisters, was grandfather of Ann 
 Boleyn, queen of England, Henry the Eighth's fortunate and 
 unfortunate consort. His mother was Ann Hoo as theirs 
 was Margaret Hoo. Tindal says ' Ann was the eldest daughter 
 and coheir of Thomas, lord Hoo and Hastings,' and that she 
 married Sir Geoffrey Boleyn who was ' lord mayor of London 
 in 1458.' A Kent guide-book takes care to state that he was 
 a tradesman. He is yet another connection for these Sinclairs 
 with the city of London's mayoralty, but it is also the courtly 
 connection, which unions became more and more common as 
 feudalism grew milder by decay. The English nobility is now 
 made up much more of commercial than feudal blood, and the 
 road to this was paved considerably by the Kent and Sussex 
 nobles in particular. Sir William Boleyn himself was married 
 to Margaret, daughter and coheir of Thomas Butler, earl of
 
 3 2 4 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Wiltshire and Ormond; and it was through her that her Bon 
 Sir Thomas Boleyn, the great ambassador of Henry the 
 Eighth's reign, after being Viscount Rochford, got the title of 
 earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, the fattier of the marchioness 
 of Pembroke who became the queen, Ann Boleyn. Her mother 
 was Elizabeth Howard, sister of the duke of Norfolk, and 
 Camden says her daughter Ann was born in 1507. Rapin 
 declares that « Ann Boleyn was of a good though not a noble 
 family,' by which he must mean that Geoffrey the lord mayor 
 was one of the people. After him, all that was noblest in 
 England seems to have connected with the Boleyns. Ann 
 Boleyn's daughter, Queen Elizabeth, the Glorianaof England's 
 poetic age, could easily trace kin with these ladies, the daugh- 
 ters of Thomas Sinclair by Margaret IIoo ; and the favour at 
 court of their descendants is explainable thus, in good degree. 
 But this is enough of anticipation, before returning to the 
 history of the coheiresses after 1435, when their father died. 
 
 Elizabeth the eldest was then twelve, Edith the second 
 eleven, and Alianor the youngest nine ; their mother, Margaret 
 Hoo, about thirty, able to give them every motherly care and 
 devotion. Whether educated at home or by the religieuses of 
 the famous four nunneries of England, whose abbesses were 
 baronesses, might be discovered ; but the public records find 
 them quite equipped with all the charms of womanhood, natural 
 and acquired, the chief figures at what must have been a triple 
 marriage in 1446, their ages twenty-three, twenty-two, and 
 twenty. The division of their lands to the respective hus- 
 bands took place on the eighth of July of the same year. To 
 their father had come all the estates which gave names to the 
 family, Igtham,Parvapreston, Farthingo, Stean, Aston-Clinton, 
 Burstow, Aldham-St. Clere, East Grinstead, and the rest; 
 and out of them provision had to be made for the young 
 widow, and also for his sister Margaret, married to Thomas 
 Pulteney, armiger, of the Ospring and Penshurst baronial 
 family founded by Sir John de Pulteney, lord mayor of 
 London. But enough remained after these and perhaps other 
 similar claims were satisfied, to make the coheiresses the best 
 prizes for loving husbands of the period. Elizabeth married 
 William Lovel, a scion of the Lord Lovel and Lord Zouche 
 families, and he got with her the manors of Brambletye, 
 Lavertye, Excete, Nobbout - Seynt - Clere, all in Sussex ; the
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS. 
 
 3^5 
 
 manor of West Aldham in Kent ; Wethersfield in Suffolk ; 
 the manor and advowson of Clopton in Cambridgeshire ; the 
 manors of Wodepreston and Hey ford, Northamptonshire; the 
 rents, during the life of William Sydney, from Merden manor 
 and Lageham manor, in Surrey, with similar rents coming 
 from Devenish and part of Nobbout-Seynt-Clare in Sussex. 
 Edith married Sir Richard Harcourt, of the earl of Oxford 
 family of this name, and he had as her dowry the manor and 
 advowson of Jevington, the manor of Lampham, the manor of 
 Brighthelmstone, now the watering-place of Brighton, the 
 manor of Portesdale and that of N ewnham, all in Sussex ; 
 Lageham manor in Surrey ; xlshby Magna and Willoughby 
 manors, Leicestershire ; acid Chaldegrave, Oxfordshire. Alianor 
 became the wife of Sir John Gage, to whom fell the manor of 
 Heyghton, the manor of Hothye, and the advowson and manor 
 of Torryng, in Sussex ; the manors of Burstow, Heggecourt, and 
 Merden, in Surrey ; Wodeland in Kent ; Aston-Clinton manor 
 and Chenery, in Buckingham ; and Wolde in Northamptonshire. 
 If comparison be made with the inquisition lists of the 
 family properties in 1335, and again in 1408, both already 
 "iven, it will be seen that the coheiresses did not by any 
 means divide all among their husbands, princely though their 
 dowers were. The Somersetshire estates must have remained 
 with their mother, or gone to their aunt Margaret, as well as 
 Igtham and various other manors which Thomas Sinclair is 
 known to have possessed besides those mentioned. Lyghe 
 manor in Kent he sold, or had to sell perhaps, from friendly 
 or other cause, to the brother of Henry the Fifth, John, duke 
 of Bedford, regent of England till the warlike Henry died, 
 and afterwards" that of France till his death at Rouen in 1435, 
 the year in which Thomas Sinclair died. Bickmersh in War- 
 wickshire had come to him from Sir Baldwin de Bereford ; 
 Covelinsdey, Caterham, Home, Wolksted, Tanrugge, and God- 
 stone, where Diana's fountain gives back youth to London 
 maidens, were his, in Surrey; in Kent he had Eythorne Court, 
 and Hasted in his history gives the tale of a South Court 
 which John de St. Clare held, 20 Ed. III., as one knight's 
 fee from the castle of Eynesford (whose ruins were then large 
 and remarkable), and which came to Thomas. This is indica- 
 tion to be added to what has been said before of the relation 
 between the lords of Eynesford and these Sinclairs of Aldham.
 
 3=6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Aldham St. Clere itself was a1 one period held from the ca ttle >>f 
 Eynesford, probably as being by a younger branch of the family 
 wbicli Thomas Becket's interference made the occasion of all 
 that trouble to himself, and to his king, the greater martyr <>f 
 the two. Hasted also gives account of W oodland, which came 
 from 'the lords of Kent,' as by pre-eminence h<- calls them, 
 the Crevequeres, to John, son to John St < llere, in 9 I -<l. 111. 
 Sione, too, in Buckinghamshire, called 'Sentler'e Stone' or 
 'Sender's Stone,' which was shown to have been for many 
 generations in possession of a branch of the Bradneld St. 
 Clare lords in Suffolk, seems to have fallen by heir-general 
 to this family. But there were ditliculties about it, 
 and opposition to some of their claims. Sir Philip of Bur- 
 stow urged his right of presentation to St. Mary's Church 
 there in 1407, but it was not admitted. Probably Wei hersfield, 
 Suffolk, came to him by the same connection. They had in 
 Hartwell of this county, West Orchardson or Seyntclan 
 Four miles from Newmarket they held in 1408 a St. Glares in 
 I lambridgeshire, and in Norfolk, BCuntingfield. But antiquity, 
 though singularly favourable to them, docs not give ap every 
 point; and perhaps enough has been said for all purpoc 
 their tale being quite safe in many records, books, and manu- 
 scripts of their country. That they had large share of Kent 
 and Sussex in particular, is easily remarked. 
 
 Elizabeth Sinclair, the eldest daughter, married a second 
 lime. Richard Lewknor was her choice, and they built the 
 Brambletye House which is so well celebrated by Horace 
 Smith's novel of society, and whose ruins are now one of the 
 favourite studies of artists. There are older and later portion- 
 of buildings about which there is antiquarian dispute, but 
 there is no doubt that Lewknor and his lady were the founders 
 of the mansion. The Lewknors were one of the best Sussex 
 families, bearing knightly title and holding sheriffships and com- 
 missionerships to parliament frequently. Under various kings 
 history shows that they held legal, court, and state offices. Sir 
 John Lewknor was killed at the battle of Tewkesbury, 1471. Such 
 heirships as Elizabeth's to Lord Hoo and Hastings must have 
 aided considerably to their aggrandizement. On her death she 
 was succeeded herself by a daughter of Lord Say, who was Sir 
 Thomas Grey's widow, and one of the ladies of the queens of 
 Edward IV. and Henry VII. The historical associations
 
 MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS. 3 2 7 
 
 connected not only with this but with many others of their 
 manor-houses are endless. Within sight of Aldham-St. Clare 
 the road of the pilgrims to St. Thomas' shrine at Canterbury 
 went, and these coheiresses may well have had Chaucer's gay 
 ambassadorial company at the beautiful home there, when he 
 was gathering ideas as to the twenty-nine types of society 
 then and ever. They could have seen the Jack Cade gather- 
 ings to revenge the loss of Normandy by putting the house of 
 York, in other words the Mortimers, on the throne, from their 
 castle-tower; and many a tear for slaughtered friends must the 
 wars of the roses have cost them. 
 
 Edith Sinclair was not a long liver. Her husband Sir 
 Richard Harcourt married a second and a third time, dying 
 himself in 1487. His heir, however, was Edith's son, Sir 
 Christopher. She had a daughter Anne who married Henry 
 Fiennes, lord Say and Seal, a Kent neighbour, son of the 
 learned high treasurer, James Fynes, lord Say and Seal, 
 barbarously beheaded by Jack Cade in his rebellion of 1450. 
 Lord Clinton and Say is the later title. There is a well near 
 Kemsing which is called St. Edith's Well, and it is probable 
 that the character of this one of the coheiresses is immortalized 
 in the name. The history of the Harcourts, afterwards earls of 
 Oxford, and in the heart of the good things, needs no illustration. 
 
 The youngest lady, Alianor or Eleanor Sinclair, was married 
 to Sir John Gage, and went with him to found a home in 
 England one of the most ancient and honoured by distinguished 
 dwellers, Firle Place in Sussex. Sir John was a Yorkist, and 
 figured like most of his descendants as a warrior. General Gage 
 of the American independence war a century ago, is a more 
 recent historical example. Their son William Gage died 1496, 
 and was buried in the Greyfriars Church, London, having 
 married Agneta, daughter of Thomas Bolney, armiger, M.P. 
 for Sussex in 1459. Sir John Gage, the son of William, was 
 knight of the garter, and elected in 1541 lord chamberlain to 
 Queen Mary, the general who quashed the rebellion of Sir 
 Thomas Wyatt ; his wife, Philippa, daughter of Sir Richard 
 Guildford, an equally distinguished man of the time. Collins 
 says that the first Sir John bought lands in Cirencester, 
 Mursater, Sidington, and Brimsfield, Gloucestershire, 'and 
 made a further addition to his estate by his marriage with 
 Eleanor, daughter and heir of Thomas St. Clere, esquire, lord
 
 328 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of the manor of Aston-Clinton in county Bucks, and Offspring 
 in Kent.' In Henry the Eighth's reign Leland the antiquary 
 .speaks of Master Gage, 'controller of the kinges bowse,' a 
 descendant of the Gages, and says, ' One told me that much of 
 the lande that Mr. Gage hath are landes of the S. (laics in 
 Kente.' Leland gives further information about other coun- 
 ties where he inherited thus, and use of it will be made in due 
 place. 'One told me that Mastar Gage hath miche of S. 
 Clares lands in Kent,' is another version Hearne gives of his 
 deciphered MSS. called the Collectanea, parts of which are 
 lost and other parts difficult to master. This Sir John Gage, 
 K.G,, was constable of the tower, and in the dissolution of the 
 monasteries reported on Battle Abbey. The Sussex Archaeo- 
 logical Collections sings his praises greatly as not only knight 
 of the garter and constable of the tower, but chancellor of 
 the duchy of Lancaster, dominicus camcrariii* hospicii reginae 
 Mariae, privy councillor to Mary, soldier and statesman pre- 
 viously to Henry VIII., his death taking place 1557, at the 
 age of 77. The ancient MS. by his 3d son llobert, quoted in 
 Burke's Peerage, is still more remarkable by its list of offices 
 and honours. The Segraves or Sulgraves of Northamptonshire, 
 prominent as governor of Scotland in Edward the First's reign, 
 and as chief justiciaries and other such officers of other reigns, 
 seem to have been consanguineous with these Gages, originally 
 of Gloucestershire. A Harleian MS., however, makes the first 
 Sir John have a father John and a grandfather of the same 
 name lords of Cirencester. But these Gages, well known lately 
 in all the English wars with France and America, have rela- 
 tions to other branches of the Sinclair lineage in the reigns of 
 Henry the Eighth and his successors. The Peerages of Burke 
 and Foster give plentiful details of their honours, lineage, and 
 marriages. Two quarters of the shield of Viscount Gage have 
 the arms of the St. Clere family, ' Azure, the sun in splendour, 
 or ' ; and the marriage which gained them has good genealogical 
 treatment by the professionals. The historical MSS. com- 
 mission of 1863 reported on the charters then in Lord Gage's 
 possession ; and of one in ' box 5,' it is said : ' 24 Hen VI. — To 
 a deed of this date is the seal of "William Lovell, esq., of 
 Roth erf eldgrey ; the arms are barry, nebuly, quartering St. 
 Clair (a sun in splendour).' This is evidence of the connection 
 of the Lord Lovell with the Lord Gage family through these
 
 WILLIAM, SON OF HUGO PINCERNA. 3:9 
 
 Sinclair ladies. The court rolls of Heighten St. Clair in the 
 times of Ed. III., Hen. IV, Ed. IV, Hen. VII., Hen. VIII 
 Elizabeth are still among the Gage documents, as well as bailiffs' 
 accounts for Shovelstrode in East Grinstead in the time of 
 Elizabeth, and for Heighton St. Clair in the reigns of Hen. 1 V. 
 and Edward III. As early as the eleventh century Earl Simon 
 Sinclair is a witness to some of the family charters. 
 
 By the death of Thomas, the father of the coheiresses, those 
 wide and numerous lands were lost to the Sinclair name 
 irremediably, and the chief satisfaction is that so much wealth 
 went to building up names for other English houses worthy 
 of all the fortune which energy and gallantry deserve. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 WILLIAM, SON OF HUGO PINCERNA. 
 
 It is now returned to the other branch of the same lineage, 
 whose chief estates at first were in Kent, and particularly in 
 the lower part of the valley of the Medway, till it enters the 
 Thames at Sheerness. In the person of Hugo de St. Clair the 
 stock was left, the lord of Aeslingham in the reign of Henry 
 Second whom Thomas Becket singled out as one of his chief 
 enemies, and whom, as one of the king's ministers, he had 
 excommunicated. Hugo was shown to have been nephew to 
 Hamo St. Clare, the dapifer; and Ralph of Ingulstadt in the 
 X Scriptores, or X Chroniclers, gives his name in full as one of 
 those who signed Stephen's charter to the kingdom in 1136. 
 How he was related to Walter of Medway, father of Richard, 
 king's chamberlain, of whom Thomas of Grinstead who died 
 in 1435 was l as t kinded descendant in Kent and Sussex, lias 
 also been indicated. Hugo was of the Hamoes, earls of ( !or- 
 boil, lords of Thorigny, lords of Granville, lords of Gloucester 
 and Glamorgan, in direct succession. Walter of Medway, 
 earl of St. Clere, was brother to Hamo, the father of Hamo 
 Dapifer, viscount of Kent, and of Robert Fitz-IIamo, ' knight 
 of Rye,' lord of Thorigny, Gloucester, and Glamorgan. It is 
 thus that Hugo de St. Clare or Hugo Pincerna stood con- 
 nected with those whose doings have just been described.
 
 Jj"- 
 
 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 How Hugo Pincerna got, with many other estates, seven 
 knights' fees of Eudo Sinclair the dapifer's lands, is explain- 
 able by similar relationship, which has already had treatment. 
 The purpose was to follow from that twelfth century the suc- 
 cessors of his branch, as far as knowledge could be got of them 
 by considerable but by no means exhaustive search, the wealth 
 of English record being not yet available enough. For example, 
 this is an accidental entry rescued from the Great Roll of 1182 
 which will at once show how well such inquiries as the present 
 might be completed if the whole series of the Great Rolls were 
 under full literary command : ' Odo de Dammartin reddit com- 
 potum de D marcis pro Tiabenda custodia filii et terrae Rugonis 
 Pineernae ; In thesauro cc marcas et debet ccc mareas ; Mag. 
 Rot., 28 Hen. II.' — ' Odo de Dammartin accounts for 500 marks 
 for having the custody of the son and land of Hugo, king's 
 butler or cupbearer; In the treasury 200 minks and he 
 owes 300 marks; Great Roll, 28th Henry the Second.' To 
 have the care of the son and land of Hugo Sinclair, Odo must 
 have been, by marriage, of near affinity. William de Dam- 
 martin signed the charter of the earldom of Essex with William 
 de St. Clere, given by Stephen to the"second Geffrey de Mande- 
 ville ; but a much more suggestive fact is that Manasseur de 
 Dammartin held three knights' fees from Walter Sinclair of 
 Medway's twenty, heired from Geffrey Talbot. This appears 
 on the carta of Walter sent to Henry the Second, of whom 
 Hugo was a favourite minister. Manasseur's son Odo was as 
 neighbour not less than by affinity a fit and proper person to 
 have the wardship of Hugo Sinclair's son, and the manage- 
 ment of the lands till he came of age. His, for that period, 
 heavy payment, is sufficient index of the wealth of Hugo 
 Pincerna, the lord of Aeslingham. The scantiness of such 
 happy accident of information leaves much untold. What 
 this son's name was who is thus taken care of would be interest- 
 ing and valuable. 
 
 In the notification upon the dedication of the chapel of 
 Aeslingham in the Textus Rqfensis there are Hugo, Philip, 
 and Robert Sinclair, besides Hugo himself and his brother 
 Roger of the name ; and if any of these were his son it 
 would be Robert, because Hugh and Philip were monks of 
 Rochester. Probably a minor, which he must have been, 
 could not sign documents, and in that case information is still
 
 WILLIAM, SON OF HUGO PINCERNA. 33 r 
 
 lacking as to the name of his son and successor. We know 
 that a Robert de Sancto Claro held then two knights' fees 
 from Walter of Medway, and he is in all likelihood the 
 
 signer, the Clovilles also, similar holders, adding their names. 
 There is a Roger Pincerna in the Texlus Roffensis who might 
 be the brother mentioned, but nothing definite can be made 
 of this, though his gift to Rochester of property in Plumstead 
 has some aid of locality. 
 
 It is possible that this Roger was of an earlier period alto- 
 gether, for Morant's History of Essex seems to give the right 
 clue as to Hugo St. Clare's sons under his account of Danbury. 
 The manors of St. Cleres and Heyrons there, were, he says, 
 originally one, and a William Pincerna and Ralph de Heyron, 
 who were brothers, possessed them towards the end of the 
 twelfth century. In Essex Hugo and his successors gained 
 considerable footing, especially opposite their Kent estates on 
 the south side of the Thames. Palgrave's Rotnli Curiae Regis 
 has account of a William at Greenwich engaged on cases of 
 disputed lands. Four milites were usually summoned to elect 
 twelve arbiters for decision. William de Broc is one of the 
 disputants in a case, and William de St. Clare, William of 
 Cloville, and Henry of Coddeham, since known better as 
 Cobham, are some of those who act. William and Simon of 
 Plesingehow require similar decision, and William de St. Clair 
 and Roger of Cheny or Chesney are members of the deciding 
 court, held at Greenwich also. There is a third case in which 
 William de St. Clare does the same duties at Greenwich. He 
 pays his Essex taxes at Stratford, these rolls having reference 
 to the years 1 194 till 1 199 in Richard the First's reign. From 
 Essex and Hartfordshire he pays in the Rotulus Gancellarii 
 his share for those counties of the ransom for this monarch, 
 1 1 96, ' Dc scdo scut Ric : Witts de $ Claro xxx s de scut '• 
 'Of the second shield-money for Richard: William Sinclair 
 pays 30s.' In 3 John, 1202, he pays a third scutage of the many 
 taxes of the period: ' Dc tcio scut, William de Sancto Claro 
 xxx s de scut: De finibus 7 scut milit : William de Sancto 
 Claro debet III m de eodem ' — 'Of third scutage William 
 Sinclair pays 30s. scutage : of his lands and military taxes 
 William Sinclair owes 3 marks from the same.' These scraps 
 are indication of similar doings at other times and in other 
 counties which detailed inquiry could amplify for special pur-
 
 332 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 pose. His position is pretty well known by his immediate 
 
 succession to his father -Hugo, though his brothers may have 
 curtailed the patrimony. 
 
 A Thomas St. Clare went to the East with Kin- Richard, 
 and died there. He has, however, been claimed for the 
 Aldham St. Clere family on good grounds. Ralph lias been 
 referred to as dividing with him the property at Danbury, 
 Essex, where there are monuments still of crusaders of their 
 branch. Morant's general account of the name there has 
 rather more reference to the Kent and Sussex than to the 
 Kent and Essex branch, though it applies to both as to 
 lineage.' 'The family of St. Clere was,' says he, 'of great 
 antiquity in this kingdom : the lord of St. Cler being one of 
 those officers that attended William the Conqueror into Eng- 
 land.' He then gives such authorities as the Chronicle of 
 Bromton, and the various other well-known sources of proof 
 of this. It is Hugo de St. Clare he thinks signed the charter 
 of Stephen, though his Essex leanings might be supposed to 
 make him agree with Lord Lyttleton and his authority of the 
 Cottonian MSS., that it was Hamo de St. Clair, the well- 
 known castellan of Colchester Castle, and fee-farmer of that 
 city. But he may only have met with Richard Prior of 
 Hagulstad's Chronicle. 
 
 About this William the difficulty is that in King John's 
 time he seems to have lost all his honours, according to the 
 Liber Ruber. He had a park at Danbury, but it is certain 
 that Aeslingham was his usual home. Besides Ralph who 
 got Hesdon, part of St. Clere manor in Danbury, there were 
 two other brothers at least. John, as Palgr-ave's Rolls from the 
 King's Court show, held a fee from William Munchensi in 
 Kent, as he from the see of Canterbury, and there was con- 
 siderable dispute about its tenure in this court in Richard's 
 reign. But Dunleia in the county was also his, as the Rotuli 
 Chartarum, 9 and 10 John, 1208-9, proves. There is among 
 these rolls a charter of confirmation to Henry of Cobham ' ex 
 dono et concessione Joins Sco Claro totum tenementum ipi 
 Johis ap Dunleiam ' — ' from the gift and grant of John Sin- 
 clair, the whole tenement of John to him at Dunleia.' About the 
 time of Magna Charta, 12 15, John would seem to have come 
 into the position and honours of his elder brother William. It 
 is he who follows John Marescall, the husband of Eleanor
 
 WILLIAM, SON OF HUGO PINCERNA. 333 
 
 Sinclair, as 'John, the son of Hugo,' one of the sixteen nobles 
 who ' advised King John to give the great charter of England's 
 liberties, and whose names are on immortal record at the head 
 of the venerable document. There was no Hugo in England 
 of first magnitude except Hugo de St. Clare to whom John 
 could be son then, the Hugh Bigods always being mentioned 
 as such. Around him the fifteen names are of the sounds 
 most familiar to his lineage, male and female, the Albineys, 
 the Marshalls, the Bassets, Warrene, Fitzgerald, Hugh of 
 Newton or Neville, and Hubert de Burgh. It were almost 
 impossible that some one of the lineage could be out of such 
 a closely-related gathering, for whatever purpose, and the 
 advice J ohannis filii Hugonis was altogether in place and keep- 
 ing with the position of his kin. But to return to his gift of 
 Dunleia to a Cobham. The Coddehams or Cobhams of the early 
 period are of close relationships with the Sinclairs, whether of 
 like lineage or not ; and this would seem further evidence to 
 much already indicated. Sylvester Sinclair appears as the 
 brother of John in signing a document of the Textus Roffensis, 
 but of his lands or doings nothing more has been found. 
 Large dividing must have occurred at this period, the name 
 Sancto Claro being numerous in the records of the district 
 near the Thames, especially on the south side. A Kobert signs 
 one of Henry of Cobham's charters to Rochester Church, but 
 the date is not to be fixed, nor can he be said to be another 
 brother of William Pincerna the son of Hugo de St. Clair of 
 Aeslingham. In Dugdale's Monastlcon William Pincerna gives 
 Elham to the monks of Rochester, and with regard to the 
 same property King Henry the First gave a charter eaidier 
 through ' Hamo Dapifer and his faithful barons of Chent.' 
 
 The early history of Danbury and East Tilbury is obscure, 
 but some streaks of light cross over them. This William 
 Pincerna held the former and possibly the latter. Morant in 
 his History of Essex says that the Kameseck or Kewseck 
 family held East Tilbury, and that they also held Camseys 
 and Great Sandford, in Essex. But in describing the manor 
 of St. Cleres, East Tilbury, he says that it was 'so named 
 from its ancientest owners on record.' Camseys or Kamseys 
 from which the Kamesks had their name, clearly a local one, 
 was the Camoys Hall which Hamo Dapifer had for one of his 
 residences ; and as Hugo de St. Clare was his nephew, he must
 
 334 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 have heired this also. It was part of the Topefeld which the 
 Bradfield St. Clare family held later. One of Hugo's younger 
 sons is probably the first Edmund of the several who appear 
 in this Camoys line, from whom Lord Camoys who held a com- 
 mand over the Sussex draft at Agincourt must have descended. 
 East Tilbury went certainly for nearly a century out of the 
 possession of William Pincerna and his direct successors, and 
 it was not till Henry the Third's reign it came back to them, 
 from their friends the Camoys or Kemescks, who appear in a 
 Quo Warranto of Edward I. on this very matter. Danbury 
 and East Tilbury are extremely interesting localities. Dan- 
 bury is the highest hill in Essex, and was used as the watch- 
 tower for London against the Danes, Spanish, and other enemies 
 from the sea. The Danes, from holding it at one of their suc- 
 cessful invasions, gave it its name of the 'fort of the Danes.' 
 The ruins of this fort are still discernible, and in its centre 
 was afterwards built the church with its three figures of 
 crusading St. Clares so dear to the antiquaries. The mansion 
 of the family was a quarter of mile from this church. Tilbury 
 is remarkable for Queen Elizabeth's haranguing of her soldiers 
 in expectation of the descent from the Spanish Armada. This 
 scene on the north side of the Thames gradually and finally 
 became the remarkable home of William's descendants, holding, 
 as they did, in Essex greater possessions than in Kent, after 
 some generations. But this will develop gradually as the suc- 
 cessors appear. 
 
 CHAPTER XLYIL 
 
 GOVERNORS OF ROCHESTER CASTLE. 
 
 The successor of William Pincei-na, the royal cupbearer, or 
 of John, the baron of Magna Charta, was William ; and he is 
 known by the part he took in the wars of the barons, led by 
 Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, against Henry the Third 
 and his son Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward the First. 
 That he was a baron himself is proved by his signature to a 
 charter of lands given to a Cobham in 30 Hen. III., 1246. 
 written Dominus William de Sender. Of this his history is
 
 GOVERNORS OF ROCHESTER CASTLE. 
 
 further confirmation, if any more were necessary. Immedia 
 before the battle of Lewes, the royal army had come from tin- 
 north (and from Oxford, the scholars of which suffered at 
 hands for sympathy with the barons, upholders of 'the provi- 
 sions ') to the castle of Rochester to relieve it. It was b 
 by Simon de Montfort, and defended by William de St. ( !lare, 
 the governor, till the approach of Henry and his son the 
 prince compelled the insurgent lords to raise the siege. 
 William Sinclair died the same year, in possession of this office 
 of castellan; and it is not improbable that lie was either 
 killed in the battle of Lewes, fought on the fourteenth 
 May 1264, or in defence of the important stronghold of 
 Rochester, which had already seen so much fight since the 
 Norman Conquest. Not the least interesting part of its story 
 is told in connection with the architectural bishop of Kocln 
 in the time of Henry the First. The king would not confirm 
 Hedenham manor, Bucks, to the church of Rochester except 
 by gift of a sum from the bishop of i^ioo. The bishop would 
 not agree, and Robert Fitz - Hamo Sinclair, then the first 
 Englishman next to the sovereign at his court, compromised 
 with the disputants by getting the bishop to build the addi- 
 tional part called from his name ' Gundulph's tower,' winch 
 he did for about jQyo, and got therefore confirmation of the 
 manor, with other favours. William de St. Clare had much 
 tradition to make him be valorous captain of so renowned a 
 castle, and so near his family's home, as Rochester. For 
 situation on a mastering site in the varied and comparatively 
 deep valley of the Medway, there like a regular basin around 
 it, and for its impressive Norman architecture in white Caen 
 stone, it is one of the finest and most picturesque relics in the 
 country. It is now in the hands of the corporation of Rochester, 
 which bought it recently for ^8000 from the earl of Jer 
 who stipulated that it should be kept as a ruin, and that the 
 corporation would preserve its surrounding gardens in the 
 same condition as when it was on lease to them at a yearly 
 rental of ^240. It has had a long eventful history, and as much 
 as the tower of London the English people oughf to watch 
 so precious a monument of their Norman period. If its gover- 
 nor of the middle of the thirteenth century, William Sinclair, 
 had been its builder it would have noted antiquarian and 
 national value, but it was grey and grand with age as now
 
 336 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 when lie was its lord. The rebels coveted its strength in vain 
 in 1264. In the official guide the following is to be found: 
 'Henry the Third entrusted William St. Clare with the cus- 
 tody of this castle, whose ancient seat was ;it Woodlands, in 
 Kingsdown parish, in this county.' That in 1228 it was held 
 by Hubert de Burgh might have come from the marriage of 
 his son to the daughter of William Langvalce, her mother 
 being the daughter of Sir Hubert Sinclair, constable of Col- 
 chester Castle, who saved Henry the Second's life by expending 
 his own during the siege of Bridgenorth. But there may have 
 been political rather than property reasons for the justiciary 
 of England to be constable of Kochester Castle. Of Simon de 
 Montfort's attack upon it just before the battle of Lewes in 
 1264, it has been told that the earl of Leicester made a furious 
 assault upon the castle, but the brave governor and his associ- 
 ates defended every inch of ground with so much ardour and 
 resolution that, although Leicester made himself master of 
 some outworks by burning the bridge and its wooden tower, 
 he was unable to succeed after a siege of seven days with his 
 whole army. The tenure of its lands in this and other counties 
 was perfect castle guard, and every tenant who did not pay his 
 rent on old St. Andrew's Day was liable to have it doubled for the 
 return of every tide of the Medway. It was probably on these 
 terms William Sinclair dealt with his castle vassals. His 
 death at the critical period had its effect, but success went to 
 his side of the struggle by the battle of Evesham in 1265. 
 
 The strange thing is that his son, also William, is as vigorous 
 on the parliament's side, and suffers accordingly on the turn 
 of the wheel. Of him there is a good deal known. It was he 
 and not his father who was the William de Sancto Claro in- 
 dicted at Chelmsford in 1255 for having knight's fees and not 
 being knighted. The Liber Ruber speaks of him as having no 
 honours, and it was the advantage in those periods of English 
 history to keep out of such prominence as long as one could, 
 taxes being less, and the demands upon a man being generally 
 the milder. That he was a person of strong individuality several 
 things besides this indicate. His indictment may have helped 
 to estrange him from the cause of Henry the Third, of whom 
 his father was so strenuous a supporter. As a knight he 
 followed Simon Montfort to the battles of Lewes and Evesham ; 
 and having possession of his patrimony at the latter fight, he lost
 
 GOVERNORS OF ROCHESTER CASTLE. 337 
 
 all, as is shown by this transaction from the Curia Sccacarii 
 of 51 Hen. III., 1267, two years after the battle of Evesham : 
 ' Wilielmus de Sancto Qlaro : Extenta terrarum suarum guaa 
 occasione transgressionum sibi impositarum rex dederat Balde- 
 tv i ?io de Aken y' — 'William Sinclair: The extent of his lands 
 which by reason of transgressions charged against him the 
 king had given to Baldwin of Hackney' But the Great Rolls 
 of Hen. III. gives further information about William's peculiar 
 fortunes at that critical period. The sheriffs took possession 
 of his lands in East Tilbury soon after ' bellum de Evesham 
 ad op* com Glouc & ide Witt de Sco Claro fee fine suu cu 
 f?dco com & retinuit Pram suam ' — ' soon after the battle of 
 Evesham, at the instance of the earl of Gloucester, and the 
 said William Sinclair made a settlement with the said count, 
 and kept his land.' Roger Clare made possession easy for 
 him, and reasons are not difficult to find beyond the natural 
 ties of blood between them. They were both on the side of 
 the barons at Lewes, and the king or his son must have showed 
 suspicion of the favour experienced, for afterwards the roll 
 says, ' My lord the king gave that land to Baudwin D'akeney.' 
 To this reference has been made already. But the roll ends 
 by showing that the same William de St. Clare redeemed that 
 land from Baldwin of Hackney and retained it. If all is well 
 that ends well it was not without great energy that he escaped 
 being finally one of ' the disinherited,' as the barons who lost 
 their properties at that time were called. Between the time 
 he was possessed by the earl of Gloucester and dispossessed 
 again by the king, he had drawn returns, but this did not 
 prevent the successful invasion of royalist Baldwin from the 
 neighbouring quarter of Hackney coming east upon him at 
 Tilbury. The difficulties of his relation, baron John Sinclair 
 of Bradfield, at the same time, 51 Hen. L, one of theisle of 
 Ely marauders, well got over, must have aided William in 
 Essex and Kent. In the Patent Rolls in the Tower of London 
 of 1267 this is found : 'Rex restituit Witto de Sancto Claro 
 omnia sua haereditamenta ' — ' The king has restored to William 
 de St. Clare all his inheritance;' which is a kind of quod erat 
 demonstrandum to this passage of biography. Morant says 
 that in Essex he held, 5 1 Hen. III., St. Cleres, East Tilbury, 
 and Coringham, and also that he had a park at Danbury. It 
 was this year he died, and the Calendar of Inquisitions after
 
 338 THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Death gives the list of his inheritance under the heads of 
 Estilberry, Danigbury, and the lands and liberties of the 
 castle of Rochester. It is, however, doubtful whether he was 
 able to be at that time, in the circumstances in which he had 
 been placed, de facto governor, as he was it de jure. His early 
 death so soon after his possessions were regained, must have 
 made in any case his governorship and residence there of the 
 shortest. The actual holding of the lands of the castle at his 
 death, answers all doubts as to his position ; like his father, 
 governor of the most historic stronghold in the most charac- 
 teristic spot in England. 
 
 Further, the William who succeeded these two Williams 
 would get his father's inheritance ; though there was nothing 
 in history to bring him forward in the military character. It 
 is in civil capacity he wrought most, as now discernible. In 
 1279, twelve years after he succeeded to his patrimony, he 
 was sheriff of the counties of Essex and Hertford ; and before 
 this his name is noticed in connection with disputed lands, 
 and especially as to a half-fee about which he was arbiter on 
 the part of his relation William Mountchesney or Monte 
 Canisio, the same people probably as the lords Chesney so 
 familiar to early Kent. In the Quo Warranto of 2 Ed. L, 
 1274, he himself holds two half knight's fees from this William 
 Mountchesney in the hundred of Shamele, Kent. ' It Witt de 
 Sco Claro tenet dimid feocl in M'ston de Witto de Montecanis' 
 j? med & idm Witt de dno B< in capite & valet p ann' x lib : 
 Et quod Witt de Sco Claro tenet dimid feod in Hegh^m de 
 Witto Montecanis' p med & idm tenet de dno R< in capite & 
 valet p ann' C s ' — ' Also William Sinclair holds half a fee in 
 Merston from William Montchesney by underholding, and the 
 same William of the king, in chief, and it is worth ten pounds 
 a year : And that William Sinclair holds half a fee in Higham 
 from William Montchesney by underholding, and the same 
 holds from the king in capite, and it is worth per annum 100 s.' 
 His transactions about lands are of curiously incomprehensible 
 character. Through Cicely Sinclair, the wife of Ralph of 
 Osyth, a sister or some near relation, he got in 1266 Chich- 
 ridell and other manors near St. Osyth, Essex, and also some 
 property of hers at East Tilbury. The East Tilbury portion, 
 Morant found in some ancient record, consisted of 140 acres 
 of arable land, 8 of meadow, a marsh for feeding 200 sheep,
 
 GOVERNORS OF ROCHESTER CASTLE. 339 
 
 50s. 2d. rent assize, and a windmill. This portion of 1 
 Tilbury was held from Humphrey de Bohun, earl of lb reford 
 and Essex. But East Tilbury contained several knights' E< 
 and all is explainable if these Sinclairs from Hugo or Eamo 
 Dapifer's time had one portion, and added subsequently to 
 this as opportunities came. 
 
 In 1285 an Edmund of Kemesck or Camoys certainly held 
 the greater part of East Tilbury, and Kemescks of Camoys Hall 
 also fell heirs by relationship to Hugo's uncle, Hamo Dapifer. 
 They may have been Crevequers by the sister of Hamo already 
 noticed. In the records of a Quo Warranto court at Colchester, 
 13 Ed. I., particulars are given. ' Edmundus de Kemesck 
 sum' fuit ad respond' diio Regi quo war' clam' here visum 
 f'nei pleg' & emend assie panis & cvis ' fracte in Estillbebyr 
 sine assensu & voluntate dni B: : Et Edms venit : Et dicit qd 
 quidam Witt's de Sco Claro tenuit ,p' dem mafiiu ad tin vii 
 dimissione ipms Edm ' : Dicit eciam qd ipse Edms *.\: omnes 
 antec' sui a tempe quo no extat memoria habueriit predcas 
 libert ' in mafJio pdeo : Et qui nullus speciale war ' ostend de 
 dno Rege de libert ' fidcis : Et W. de Geselham qui sequitur 
 per Rege die' qd hj 9 libtas sp e tat ad Coronam dni B: qui 
 nemini licet fire sine spali war' ipius dni B> ' — ' Edmund of 
 Kemesck or Camoys was summoned to answer to his lord t hi- 
 king, by what warrant it seemed good to him to claim as heir 
 the frank-pledge and returns of corn milled in Estillberry, 
 without the assent and wish of his lord the king: And 
 Edmund appeared : And says that a certain William Sinclair 
 held the said manor to the end of his life, by the grant of 
 Edmund himself: He says also that Edmund himself and all 
 his predecessors, from a time of which no memory remains, 
 held the said liberties in the said manor : And he showed no 
 special warrant from his lord the king: And William of 
 Chiselham, who summed up for the king, said that the liber- 
 ties of it depended on the crown, and they were allowed to 
 no heir without the special warrant of the king.' The justice, 
 William of Chiselham, sent him to the king's court for final 
 decision ; but of this there appears nothing. No doubt when 
 John Warren, earl of Surrey, opened Edward the First's < y. b 
 as to the tyranny of these proceedings, by openly drawing his 
 sword in court and declaring that by that he held like bis 
 ancestors his lands, and when the judicious king stopped the
 
 34© THE SIN CL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 inquisitions, Edward de Camoys got all his liberties without 
 challenge. John Warren gave the further valuable warning, 
 that the Conqueror himself had his lands as only a comes 
 among their ancestors as comites, and Quo Warranto business 
 was put out of court for that reign. 
 
 It would seem that William Sinclair had neither this nor 
 the other parts of East Tilbury returned, by the post-mortem 
 calendar of his lands. He died n Ed. I., 1283, possessed of 
 Danehoberry Park alone in Essex. Chichridell and its related 
 manors at St. Osyth had gone out of his hands also, and the 
 presumption is that his Kent lands and Rochester Castle 
 privileges went over to others, probably his relations. Besides 
 Higham, Merston, and Green manor, he had Great Okeley 
 manor and Little Okeley, as no doubt much more in the western 
 angle the Medway makes with the Thames, the stem-land of 
 a little world of his lineage. Misfortune, extravagance, or, 
 being without children, generosity to his relations, suggest 
 themselves as to his strange doings. In Norfolk particularly 
 all kinds of discoveries are on the verge of his actions, yet 
 without satisfaction quite solid as to him and his people. 
 Between this county and Kent there is a continual state of 
 business for the Pincernas or Butlers, as they began to be 
 called, of which lineage he was ; and he may have made the 
 fortune of the famous earls of Ch-mond and Ossory, while 
 giving away his own. These Butlers are said to be descended 
 from a butler of one of the earls of Leicester by some of the 
 modern Peerages, and Theobald, king's butler at the coronation 
 of Henry the Second, is mentioned as one of them. It is not 
 likely. Never was it so difficult as then to get good place 
 without birth of the highest kind ; and, besides that the 
 Pincernas or Botelers were mostly a Kent race, it is all but 
 certain that this line of Hugo St. Clair, king's butler or 
 pincerna, the descendants of the Hamoes and Fitz-Hamo of 
 the ducal house of Normandy, is one with the Butlers of West 
 Wickham, Kent, earls of Wiltshire, and with those distinguished 
 men of Ireland. Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, was 
 possibly one of them, first names being much weightier than 
 now that surnames are general. 
 
 In 1270 this William Sinclair of Danbury Park married 
 one of the two coheiresses of Nicolas Pincerna or Nicolas the 
 Butler or Nicolas le Boteler, and got the half with her of
 
 GOVERNORS OF ROCHESTER CASTLE. 341 
 
 Walcote Hall, North Burlingharn, Wilton, Swalfield, Burgh 
 Hall, Butlers or Herewards, and Upton. North Walsham, 
 Blonifield says in his History of Norfolk, he got, as himself 
 heir to the half of Sir Richard Butler's land there. 1 1 i 
 marriage, as was so much the Norman way in their desire 
 to hold and increase their lands, was therefore a lineage one 
 In Burgh Hall there was Nicolas Pincerna or Le Botiler, be 
 says, before the last Nicolas who died in 1250 lord of this and 
 other manors. In 1242 "William Sinclair, governor of Rochester 
 Castle, the father of this William, had possession of half of 
 Burgh Hall, and sold it to William of Heveningham, Suffolk. 
 The rights of it were afterwards gained by Gny de Botetourt, 
 whose descendant was made a baron, 9 Ed. III., on the aggran- 
 disement it gave. The husband of the other coheiress, Adam 
 of Brancaster, followed the sheriff in all his transactions 
 about these properties, Guy getting much from him also. 
 The older Nicolas Boteleror Pincerna had a part of Swafield, 
 which the sheriff's father sold to William of Heveningham as 
 early as 1232, having heired it from Nicolas. But a clean 
 sweep of the coheiresses' lands was made in 51 Hen. III., 
 three years after they were married. The son William of the 
 William of Heveningham who had already bought much at an 
 earlier period, purchased and got every inch both husbands 
 acquired by their wives, why or how it is impossible to 
 North Walsham, of which the half fell to William de St. I Here 
 from Sir Richard Butler, William conveyed by line to William 
 the younger of Heveningham in 1273, 'to be held of him and 
 his heirs by the service of a sparrow-hawk.' They also had 
 Suffolk lands by the coheiresses, which went similarly. William 
 Sinclair and Felicia Butler his wife had no heirs as Far as can 
 be traced, and this may account for favours to William ol 
 Heveningham, who was a magnate of the eastern counties. 
 The puzzle is made still more perplexing by Felicia Butler his 
 widow advancing a claim in 1285 over the Suffolk and Norfolk 
 estates of her father thus disposed of. The claim was for 
 something she called her 'dower,' which she contended had 
 not gone with the rest at transfer. That the hud, and and 
 wife had reduced themselves to poverty is an impossible sup 
 position, and yet this claim of something shadowy by the 
 widow two years after his death in 1283, points to that. 
 Danbury Park went to his male heir, a brother or nephew, as
 
 342 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 well as the Kent and other chief manors. In the Inquisitic 
 as to What Loss of n Ed. I. Willidmus de Sancto Claro appears ; 
 and as late as 18 Ed. I., 1290, seven years after his death, in 
 these same records, I?iq. ad q. </,. there is suggestive notice of him 
 Before dealing with this, however, something may he said 
 of the William of Giselham who was the king's justice over 
 the Tilbury affair. Edward I. had been three yeare beyond 
 sea before returning to England in 1289, and h<- found, or 
 pretended to find, great evils in the dispensation of justice, 
 from the chief justiciary Weyland downwards. What mal 
 his punishment of so many able men suspicious, is the im- 
 mense fines he put upon them all. A clerk of the court, 
 Stretton, was fined no less than 32,000 marks besides jewels 
 and silver plate. Such a vein of cash as this the royal heart 
 and need could hardly be expected to spare, the Jews no longer 
 being oppressible. Indeed they were banished nexi year for 
 the very reason of impecuniosity, or possibly to secure by 
 confiscation, as the king did, their immovable goods in England. 
 Sir Ralph of Hengham, chief justice of the higher bench, 
 a descendant of Hubert Sinclair, castellan of Norwich, was 
 fined 7000 marks, on simdar accusation to that for which 
 Lord Bacon suffered. The Chronicle of Dunstable MSS. and 
 AVikes give eleven others who lost their offices of the very 
 first rank. Such a swoop has never fallen before or since on 
 the highest personages of the administration of law, and it is 
 far more likely that political chicanery or violence was at the 
 bottom of it than corruption among so many knightly and 
 distinguished men. Sir William of Giselham, who had made 
 his fortune with Edward by being an enthusiastic Quo War- 
 ranto inquisitor, got, four years after the Tilbury decision, a 
 seat as judge on the king's bench. He was of a Kent family, 
 and it is of genealogical interest to find his father, John of 
 Chiselham, in a Cottonian MS. as a witness to the confirma- 
 tion of a charter to Rochester see by Geffrey de Say, son of 
 Geffrey de Say and Alicia de Chemuney, side by side with 
 such signatures as William, son of Henry of Cobham, and 
 Hugo Pincerna. Henry Bray, judge and escheator for the 
 Jews' treasury department of the nation, suffered a fine of 
 1000 marks at a time when the imposition of tallages and all 
 other manners of collection shows the crown at its wit's end 
 for money. Edward had the skill to use parliaments for his
 
 ROBERT, NICOLAS, AND JOHN. 343 
 
 purposes. He was just opening the drama of political schem- 
 ing which the state of the Scottish monarchical succession 
 offered him. 
 
 But to return to the lord of Danehoberry Park. He is 
 twice mentioned in the Inq. ad q. d. of 18 Ed. I., 1290, 
 ' Johannes films Simonis executor testamenti Willielmide Sando 
 Claro pro capella de Danigbury ' — ' John, the son of Simon, 
 executor of the will of William Sinclair in favour of the chapel 
 of Danbury ' ; and again, ' Willielmus de Sando Claro pro can- 
 taria facienda Danigsberry terr', Essex ' — ' William Sinclair 
 gave land for making a chantry.' Such glimpses are at 
 Danbury helpful to give outline of the kind of man he was ; 
 and in his generosity to the cause of the religion of his time, 
 he seems to have had the hereditary spirit of his people well 
 developed. The chapel of Danbury is one of the most histori- 
 cally interesting ruins in the kingdom, and it enhances its 
 claims on consideration that this sheriff of Essex and Hert- 
 ford, so incomprehensible, and still so comprehensible, in his 
 doings and character, had a hand in part of its foundation 
 and in its permanent support. It was his family chapel, and 
 he fully realised his duties in regard to it. But there are no 
 grounds for believing that his patrimony in largest part, and 
 his acquirement of estate with his wife, coheiress of Nicolas 
 Pincerna, left him, by fanatical enthusiasm for dying to endow 
 college, cat, or chapel. The shapeliness of the Norman nature, 
 which never forgot either secular or religious duty, had in 
 him also a sufficient representative. The crusading ecstasies 
 were over before his time, else this might be explanatory of 
 his transactions. It was his forefathers who took the cross, 
 three of whom already had their monuments in Danbury 
 Chapel, to inspire him with the pietas which is next to the 
 divinest thing in man. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 ROBERT, NICOLAS, AND JOHN. 
 
 Morant says that in 1301 Robert de S. Claro or St. Clere 
 possessed the manor of St. Cleres in East Tilberry, which was
 
 344 THE SIN XL AIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 <>f the extent of one knight's fee, held under Bohun, earl of 
 Hereford. To him also came the manor of St. Cities, .Dan- 
 bury ; but it is impossible to fix what relation he w:is to 
 William its former possessor, called the lord of I 'anbury Park, 
 the sheriff, whether son, nephew, or further. There was no 
 want of heirs to any of the name at that time and place, and 
 this implies nearness. His executor, Simon, the son of John, 
 was probably of his lineage in the Northampton connection. 
 His son's wife leaves money to Robert de Sancto Claro, 
 Hasted in his History of Kent mentions that Robert held 
 Merston in that county in the reign of Edward I., and that 
 it was one knight's fee held from Warin de Montchenzie. It is 
 he who is a witness with Hugo de "Windsor, vicecomes Kanciae, 
 Henricus de Gren, and others to a charter by Henry of Cob- 
 ham to Rochester see. But there is earlier, and entirely 
 trustworthy, knowledge of Robert Sinclair in the Placita de 
 Quo Warranto of 21 Ed. I., com' Kane'. This is eight years 
 before the notice of him as at East Tilbury. Near Rochester 
 on the north side of the Medway, Hoo is, and of it the abbot 
 of Reading monastery had part or whole, which the king's 
 justice de quo warranto, challenged as belonging to the king. 
 Robert of Higham and Robert de Sancto Claro, milites, and 
 neighbouring proprietors, were of the jury to settle the ques- 
 tion. But this is only one of a series of such transactions for 
 Robert. These two are part of a jury about Peeche being the 
 property of Lesnes Abbey. The prior of Canterbury had to 
 answer as to his rights over Estrie, which is one of the furthest 
 to the north-east of the holdings in Kent of Adamus, jilius 
 Huberti, in the record of Domesday Book, near Sandwich and 
 Deal. The abbot of St. Catherine's, Canterbury, was chal- 
 lenged to show his right to the advowson of the church of 
 Selling. If this is Cellinge or Cowling, the church of which 
 had Adam Pincerna for its first patron, Robert ought to know 
 its history well, being in his own special angle of Kent, and 
 at one time, if not then, on his or his family's lands. He is 
 one of the jury sworn, and supports the abbot's right to it ; 
 and he must have, from his influence and knowledge, largely 
 aided the abbot to prove his right, which he did, and was 
 established in it. Something closer to his family history "still, 
 appears when he is one of a jury who support the light of 
 Henry de Grey to the manor of Eylesford with its pertinents.
 
 ROBERT, NICOLAS, AND JOHN. 345 
 
 Unlike many of that period, Henry has a charter to meet such 
 challenging, which was given to his grandfather Richard ; but 
 he is none the worse of the aid he gets from Robert 
 Clair, who knows both sides of the Medway as only traditii 
 memories of the noblest kind can inspire. As ' Sir Robt I 
 Seynt Cler' he is once again engaged in these Qv<> Warranto 
 troubles in connection with the manor of East Chalk, K 
 which had and has many associations with the name he bore. 
 This is the Celca which Adam Sinclair, commissioner of 
 Domesday Booli, holds in tbat record, as he holds likewise the 
 above Colinge, Bicklei, and the Hegharn still in Sinclair pos- 
 session, all of Maidstone hundred. Hubert Sinclair, the hero 
 of Bridgenorth Castle, gave part of it to the monks of the 
 famous monastery of Bermondsey, Southwark, London, as an 
 extant Harleian charter shows. His daughter's son, William 
 of Langvale or Longueville, confirmed his gift. The husband 
 of his daughter Hawyse, Sir John de Burgh, son of Hubert 
 de Burgh (Shakespeare's ' gentle Hubert/ who could not kill 
 Prince Arthur at the tower, and whose honours and glories 
 would burden a Spaniard to bear) and of Margaret the king 
 of Scotland's daughter, gave the rest of the manor of Chalk to 
 the monks of Bermondseye. Here Edward the First by his 
 judges is challenging the prior of St. Saviour's, Bermond.-iy 
 (a church since noted by being the marriage-scene of James 
 the First of Scotland and his love of the King's ) to 
 
 show right to the manor and its pertinents. With Sir Robert 'a 
 aid on such a question only one conclusion could be arrived 
 at, namely, that the prior's right was inviolable; but it serves 
 to show the eagerness with which this hated search after Haws 
 of title to lands was pursued, that so remarkable a pro] • 
 as this did not escape querying. Sir Robert had three ilites 
 as his companions in getting to their conclusion by jury in the 
 prior's favour. 
 
 After two hundred and seven years, this Sinclair still | 
 sesses some of the commissioner's property as described in 
 Domesday Booh; and his brother Nicolas took his local i 
 from Oare in the Faversham hundred, of which Adam entered 
 himself as possessed, holding it from Odo, the bishop of 1 layenx. 
 There is hardly a place in the whole sweep of Kent, except 
 perhaps the extreme north-east, which at some time has not 
 had associations with the name as holding land ; but the Med-
 
 346 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLA ND. 
 
 way to wide extent on both sides was always the favourite 
 district. Both Sir Robert and Nicolas appear together in 
 another of the transactions in the Placita de Quo Warranto. 
 Ralph, the son of Bernard, one of the Fitz- Bernards so dis- 
 tinguished in the Irish Conquest and by state offices, gave a 
 charter to Radulph Pincerna, and Ralph is challenged to 
 show his title to Kingsdene, Otterdene, another of Adam 
 Sinclair's holdings in Domesday Book. The charter was of 
 Henry the Second's time, when the Fitz-Bernards were at 
 their height; and this possessor surely is fully entitled to 
 what he has. The result was that Ralph had more right than 
 the king to Kingsdene, Otterdene. Both Robert de Seincler 
 and Nicolas Sinclair of Ore appeared in favour of their rela- 
 tion, Ralph Pincerna. He is of the eldest line, and heirs 
 Hugo Pincerna's office, though less is known of him than of 
 them. Offices grew obsolete, and he became founder of some 
 of the Kentish Butlers in all probability, and in this name- 
 dress they are no more to be followed with certainty. They 
 might be the Butlers of West Wickham, once held by Adam, 
 the commissioner, which property rich Sir Samuel Lennard 
 held after, progenitor of an earl of Sussex, and related to the 
 lords Dacre. They seem the Butler earls of Wiltshire. The 
 latest notice there is of Robert Sinclair has to do with Essex. 
 The abbot of St. Ann's, Colchester, has to get ' the concur- 
 rence of the whole convent,' before some transaction about 
 land can be completed. This was 3 Ed. II., 13 10; and like 
 his time, he would then be making provision for his soul in 
 the prospect of death. There was a St. Cleres manor near 
 Colchester which was in his possession. Of Nicolas some 
 further reliable items have survived. His name Nicolas was 
 frequent among the Pincernas or Botelers, which is some aid 
 to reflection ; and the remarkable Fitz-Nicholases of several 
 reigns, dapifers and other similar state officers, look in the 
 same direction for origin. Hasted says that Great Okely and 
 Little Okely were held by William Sinclair in 1279 from 
 Montchesney and the bishop of Rochester, and that soon after 
 these estates were possessed by different branches of this 
 family. Great Okely he says descended to Nicolas Sinclair, 
 and after some time Little Okely also became his. 
 
 In 20 Ed. III., 1347, Little Okely was possessed by John 
 Sinclair, who paid aid for making the Black Prince a knight
 
 ROBERT, NICOLAS, AND JOHN. 347 
 
 in that year. Rev. Thomas Cox, the antiquary, in Ma 
 Britannia, says that this John held them united, and that he 
 also held Merston manor, and a quarter of knight's fee in the 
 same district as from Swanscombe Castle of the Montchesnies. 
 They had other properties, like Oare, in Kent; but .John came 
 also into possession of the Essex properties, being holder of 
 them in 1334. Great Okely was some time in the possession 
 of Walter Neale of London, a relation of the wife of Nicholas. 
 It finally left the Sinclair name with John's life, but on what 
 ground is obscure. In Berry's MS. Genealogies of Kent he 
 was married to Elizabeth Colepepper, daughter of Sir Anthony 
 Colepepper of Bedgeberry. Her mother was Constantia Cham 
 berlain, daughter of Sir Robert Chamberlain, Sussex. It was 
 to Sir Richard Chamberlain that Margaret Louvaine, the wife 
 of Sir Philip Sinclair of Burstow, was previously married ; but 
 that was not the first tie of affinity between the families. 
 Were it not too easy an inference, the stronger tie of consan- 
 guinity might be suggested, in connection with Richard Sin- 
 clair, of Hastings fame, the king's chamberlain. 
 
 It will throw light back over much that has been hinted of 
 this kind, if a passage be given from the General History of tin 
 Kings and Queens of England by Francis Stanford, Lancaster 
 herald, with additions by Samuel Stebbing, Somerset herald, 
 and published in 1707, when such subjects were closely searched 
 after. The authority of two specialists besides, cannot but In- 
 weighty. ' In Domesday Book in the exchequer, surnames 
 (so termed by the French because they were superadded to the 
 Christian name) are first found, and were brought from France 
 to England by the Normans who not long before took them : 
 many of which were noted with de sucli a place of their habi- 
 tation, as, Alberic de Vere, Walter de Vernon, Gislebert do 
 Venables; or with filius, as Guliehmis filitt* Osberni, Richard 
 Fitz-Gilbert, and Robert Fitz-Hamo (the father of this Mabel 
 who being Frenchified looked upon it as a high disgrace to 
 take a husband without his two names) ; several also taking 
 surnames from their offices, as Eudo Dapifer, GuHelmus Came- 
 rarius, Herveus Legatus, Radulphus Venator.' There may 
 not be much more than impression in this, and it certainly 
 cannot be pressed in respect to those sirs Chamberlain of 
 Oxford and Sussex. Sandford's reference in parenthesis to 
 the daughter of Fitz-Hamo, Mabel or Matilda Sinclair, is in
 
 348 THE SINCLAIRS OE ENGLAND. 
 
 relation to his quotation of the rhymes of the chronicling 
 Robert of Gloucester, who puts I hem into the mouth of I he lady 
 when sought in marriage by Robert, the son of King Henry 
 Beauclerc, his suiug being ultimately successful : 
 
 'Sir, sheo said, well ich wote your hert upon me Lb, 
 .Mure for myne heritage, than for my Belf, I wis; 
 Ami such heritage as ich have, hit wi re to me tune, 
 
 To take a Lord but he badde any surname : 
 Sir Robert le Fitz-Hayme my Fadera name was . . . : ' 
 
 and so on goes the lively monk for pages, making all happy at 
 the end like a good-natured modern novelist. There cannot 
 be a doubt that many of our noblest surnames took their 
 origin from offices, though perhaps Sandford could have missed 
 Dapifer as a good illustrative example. 
 
 The Colepeppers were a remarkable family of Kent and 
 Essex. In 1321 Thomas Colepepper was governor of the 
 castle of Leeds, in Kent, when Edward the Second deceitfully 
 attacked it in his quarrel with the barons. Having taken it 
 he hanged the governor and his officers. This misfortune 
 made the fortunes of a family who appear frequently in 
 subsequent history. Berry says John St Cleere, married to 
 Elizabeth Colepepper, died without issue. The families are 
 again knit in friendly bonds, as will show by degrees. There 
 is a John Sinclair of Hardaness, Kent, who had close relations 
 to Hethe and various localities near ; but it would be difficult 
 to identify him. He is mentioned frequently in the Report of 
 the Historical MSS. Commission, especially in connection with 
 the endowment of a chapel of St. Clare on Hardness property. 
 This is the Upper and Lower Hardres of the present, quite 
 close to Canterbury. 
 
 There was a William Sinclair also holding property in Essex, 
 but nothing genealogical can be made of him, only one scanty 
 note surviving of his life. It is extant in the Bodleian Library, 
 Oxford, among the codices manuscripti of Eoger Dodsworth, 
 vol. xxx. : ' Carta inter Will de Sancta Clara § Jo Sutton, 
 in ilitem dejure advocEcclesiae de Tendring facta apud Colcestr' — 
 ' Charter between William Sinclair and John Sutton, knight, 
 concerning the advowson of the church of Tendring, made at 
 Colchester.' Its date is 2 Ed. III., 1329, and if William was 
 a clergyman he need not further be referred to, the lineage
 
 CORONER OF KENT. 349 
 
 then being able to supply a number of such, though now so 
 few. The above description of the charter, however, would 
 imply proprietorship, and the district is recorded as some time 
 afterwards in the hands of the Tilbury people. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 CORONER OF KENT. 
 
 In his Political Vocabulary Maunders says that the coroner 
 and sheriff took the place of the older ruling earl of counties, 
 and that the coroner had to be a knight. Green, in his History 
 of the English People, gives Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, 
 the credit of creating the office in the reign of Richard First. 
 The bishop, as premier, took the pleas of the crown from the 
 sheriff, and gave them to the coroner, ' a new officer. ' The 
 title itself implies attention to the king's interests as chief 
 object, and it was later that duties of inquest came to be con- 
 sidered principal. There was a law, Maunders adds, that the 
 coroner must be possessed of high influence and large lands in 
 the county for which he acted. John de St. Clair fulfilled 
 these conditions, and more ; for he is a baron or dominus in 
 the Hundred Rolls. His antecessor, and some successors, may 
 be grouped around him as central figure. He held office under 
 Henry the Third, who died in 1272, and also under his son, 
 Edward the First. 
 
 Thomas Sinclair of Aeslingham manor was his antecessor, 
 the Frindsbury of later times. That it was a ruling centre of 
 Kent there can be no better proof than that Pinindene was 
 in it, where the great law-suit de terris was held, Lanfranc, the 
 archbishop of Canterbury, against Odo, William the Con- 
 queror's brother, bishop of Bayeux. Whether as being eldest 
 or younger son, gavelkind not unknown in his time, Thomas got 
 possession of the chief seat of Hugo St. Clare, his ancestor, 
 cannot be decided. In the Textus Roffensis there is a charter 
 of the prior and convent of Rochester, to which Thomas 
 de St. Clair is a witness. Nicolas of Ore, the brother of Sir 
 Robert Sinclair of Estilberry and Merston, the latter estate 
 bordering on Aeslingham, also signed this document; and the
 
 35o THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 facts must have been that they were three brothers, and had 
 received their portions, 'fees being all partible,' as they are 
 found locally named. To the chapel for which Hugo got 
 the notification and grants of privilege from the bishop of 
 Rochester, Hugo left a charter, which is confirmed by Thomas 
 in 1289. The church of Frindsbury or Aeslingham must have 
 been this same chapel, and it gave returns to the see of 100 
 marks yearly, which is considerable evidence of the importance 
 of it and its surroundings. He granted Nelefield, Kent, to it. 
 Hasted says that John, the second bishop of Rochester, dedi- 
 cated St. Peter's Church, Aeslingham, as part'of other favours, 
 to Hugo St. Clare, who paid liberally in return. 
 
 Of John, the coroner, his successor at Aeslingham, more is 
 known. Next to putting down nationalities, the greatest of 
 the Plantagenets was remarkable for his desire to put down 
 the lawyers. From the Hundred Roll and Quo Warranto 
 inquisitions, instituted at the beginning of his able reign, to 
 the commission of trail-bdton, or 'draw the staff on them,' 
 in 1305, cudgelling all those who held legal offices on slight 
 or no occasion, was his favourite relaxation from the bloodier, 
 equally unjust, cudgellings of war of this ' malleus Scotorum ' — 
 'hammer of Scots,' and of Cambrians besides. His extreme 
 respect for the purity of law could be interpreted on commer- 
 cial principles, perhaps; but there always was, and will be, 
 jackal's provision for such lions of scrupulosity as this King 
 Edward. John Sinclair the coroner's busy public life could 
 not possibly escape the envy of some detractors, and in the 
 Quo Warranto rolls he is found arraigned on the most trivial 
 injustices, or supposed acceptances of too much for the per- 
 formance of his duties as coroner. In the half hundred of 
 Bernefield, county of Kent, the jury, jurati, say that John de 
 Saint Cler took from the half-hundred of Bernefield eighteen 
 pence for making an inquisition de infortunio, and retained 
 the money. In the hundred of Brenchesle, county of Kent, 
 the jurati say that when Richard Horsman was slain, John de 
 Saint Claro took four shillings from the hundred for burying 
 him and for the inquest ; and also that the same John took 
 from the hundred half a mark for John of Mettlefield for the 
 same duties. In the hundred of Chatham, then in the list of 
 Aylesford, county Kent, the jurati say that John de Seint 
 Cler, who was coronator in the time of King Hemy, took four
 
 CORONER OF KENT. 351 
 
 shillings from the men of Gren more than they wished, for 
 purifying the church of Gren from two criminals, who had fled 
 to the altar there, for the murder of Adam of Stretton, and 
 John of Aldinge, clergyman. In the hundred of Eyhorne, 
 county Kent, the jurati or sworn men also say that Lord John 
 Sinclair, coroner (' dns Jofr de Seint Cler, coronator,' in the 
 record), took from the burgh of Stokebir, in the exercise of his 
 office, three shillings for burying William, the son of John of 
 Bykenore, slain ; and for a certain dead man slain in Frethene- 
 stede, five shillings ; and for the death of Roger of Edelonde in 
 Holingeburn, four shillings ; in the same manner also for John 
 Kemblelof, his chaplain, for the same duties, two shillings ; and 
 for the death of Stephen, filius Pollard, in Selve, &c. In the 
 hundred of Ho or Hoo, in the list then of Aylesford, county 
 Kent, the jurati say that John de Sancto Claro, coroner in the 
 list of Aylesford, took from the burgh for performing his duty 
 for Henry Prude four shillings ; and the same John took from 
 the burgh four shillings in respect to Robert le Hok for the 
 same ; and from the town of Stoke, for the same, two shillings 
 for the same duty ; and again from the town of Stoke, for the 
 same, two shillings. In the hundred of Twyford, county Kent, 
 the jurors also say that ' Joh" de Sco Claro coronator noluit 
 exsequi offic' surr plusq 3 m permittetur certa pecunia un' huit 
 the suo de hundr' pMico ad q a ntit 'xx. s.' Of which rather 
 hieroglyphical Latin the meaning seems to be, that the coroner, 
 Lord John Sinclair, would not perform his duties till he was 
 first paid, and that in his time he had drawn for them, from 
 this hundred of Twyford, the exorbitant sum of twenty 
 shillings. 
 
 Without remembering that land was at 3d. an acre then in 
 Kent, and that 6d. a head was a tax in full of all demands of 
 the king's treasury for a year, enough to raise a rebellion like 
 Wat Tyler's, the consideration of these charges of the coroner 
 cannot be well understood. But with that in mind, these 
 complaints of the populace are on their very face absurd, and 
 the coroner was triumphant over this small attack upon his 
 public integrity. In Brady's Appendix he appears as Magister 
 Johannes de Sancto Claro in 25 Ed. I., 1297 ; and Edward was 
 not the man to have him promoted into his intimate court 
 business if he were not of the very best metal. He signs 
 Letters of Protection of the Clergy, with the king, at Langley.
 
 J>v 
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLASI). 
 
 That he underwent a challenge of Quo Warranto in the young 
 enthusiasm of the new king was a fate common to him with 
 John Warren, earl of Surrey, and many another of the most 
 dignified and historic men in the kingdom; and, for all 
 Edward's energy, they had the impudent radicalism of the 
 thing sent to its own place long before the end of the reign. 
 The criticism to which Edward subjected his best legal officers 
 and in capite holders would have turned any less able and less 
 popular monarch infallibly off the throne, and, as it was, he 
 left a legacy of discontent that took centuries to quiet. It 
 was under number ten of the articles of inquiry put into the 
 hands of his commissioners of the great seal, n Oct., 2 
 Ed. I., that the king challenged the coroner of Kent, Dominus 
 Johannes de Sancto Claro, viz., ' Exactions and oppressions of 
 sheriffs, escheators, coroners, and other ministerial officers 
 under pretence of law. 5 Let a commission be armed now, or 
 any time, with such a weapon, and summon popular juries, 
 and what is to be expected 1 Sheriff Aristides or Coroner 
 Camillus would be hunted into exile. 
 
 The illustration of thirteenth century life given by the 
 coroner's appearance in these Hundred Rolls is mi generis, and 
 does him not a particle of discredit, but, to judicious interpre- 
 tation, honour as an earnest and exact man, having no love 
 of oppression, but of order, and of the means required to keep 
 it at its due tension. He married the fourth daughter of 
 Baron Camville of Clifton, Nicolaia Camville or Campvill. 
 The Harleian MS. 807 by Robert Glover, Somerset herald, 
 of the sixteenth century, calls her father Dominus William de 
 Campvill, and he had properties in Kent as well as in the 
 west. Gerard de Camville was viscount or sheriff of Lincoln- 
 shire in 1 194, of which office as well as the castle of Lincoln 
 he was dispossessed that year ; and Richard de Cam villa was 
 one of the barons who signed the constitutions of Clarendon, 
 as may be seen readily in Stubbs' Select Charters. William 
 was the last baron, the male issue having failed ; and the 
 barony being in abeyance among the co-heiresses, Nicolaia had 
 ultimately heired the title for her husband, if he had not 
 already had baronial rank. Hamon de Crevequer, ' lord of 
 Kent,' got the wardship in Henry III. of the heir of Thomas 
 de Kanvill of the same family. The Crevequers, by their 
 mother, the sister of Hamo Dapifer, heired their uncle, so
 
 CORONER OF KENT. ,-, 
 
 that this was connection by John on some of the old lini 
 relationship. Dominus Johannes de Sancto Claro is one of tin- 
 signatures to the returns from the bishop of Rochester's feu 
 at Dartford. 
 
 His nearest successor is difficult to discover, but the next 
 to that was Thomas Sinclair, who is noticed as holding the 
 Essex properties in 1384. But there is earlier account of him. 
 Chiche and other manors about twelve miles from Colchester, 
 which had been in possession of the name and had fallen into 
 other hands, again returned to it in the person of Thomas. 
 Among the Harleian Charters there is one bearing description, 
 ' Carta Johannis Cavendisch et Leonis de Bradeham Thomas de 
 Sancto Claro de manerio de Frothewick cum pertin ' in Chiche- 
 ridel, Sco Osithe, Crustwich, Chiche, Comitis, et Chiches- 
 rethwik : Cum 2 sig : 37 Ed. III.' — 'Charter of John Caven- 
 dish and Leo de Bradham to Thomas Sinclair of the manor of 
 Frothewick with pertinents in Chicheridel, St. Osyth, Crust- 
 wich, Chiche, Comitis, and Chichesrethwick : with two seals : 
 37 Ed. III.' This is 1364, and for a time these eastern proper- 
 ties had been out of the lineage, and not improbably so going 
 by William's arrangements, the sheriff of Hereford and 
 Essex, if not earlier. How this Cavendish held it may be 
 illustrated by the fact that the Cavendishes were a Suffolk 
 family near Bradfield St. Clare, and heired it by marriage. 
 They became afterwards the brilliant duke of Devonshire 
 Cavendishes of naval and other state fame. This is not their 
 only connection, that has survived, with the lineage. In 
 Henry the Eighth's reign one of the successors of this Thomas 
 of Frothewick, Tilbury and Aeslingham, married Margaret 
 Cavendish, and affinities were the explanation of property 
 thus changing. In the full history of the Cavendishes, if 
 such at all exist, this ought to be found. 
 
 About 1384 the Kent properties must have finally parted 
 from the Essex Sinclairs in favour of a younger branch of the 
 family. Of the latter only glimpses at intervals appear, 
 but the Tilbury and Danbury men long increased in position 
 and distinction. Some account of the younger descendants of 
 Lord John Sinclair, the coroner, may be given before returning 
 to his direct line. The Easter Issue Bulls of 30th June, 28 
 Hen. VI., 1450, have this historic entry: 'To Alexander 
 Eden, sheriff of Kent, and to divers others of the same 
 
 z
 
 354 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 county: In money paid to them, viz., by the hands of Gerva 
 Clifton, £ i oo, and by the hands of John Seyncler,^i66, 13& 
 
 4d., in part payment of 1000 marks which the lord the king 
 commanded to be paid to the same Alexander and others, as 
 well for taking John Cade, an Irishman, calling himself John 
 Mortimer, a great rebel, enemy, and traitor to the king, as 
 also for conducting the person of the said John Cade to the 
 council of the said lord the king, after proclamation thereof 
 made in the city of London, to be had of his gift for their 
 pains in the matter aforesaid : By writ of privy seal among 
 the mandates of this term, ^266, 13s. 4d.' Shakespeare, 
 and the historians more than he, could correct themselv 
 from this best of authority. The drama Second Part of King 
 Henry VI. is more dramatic than historical, and Jack Cade's 
 slaughter by a giant Alexander Eden at Hothfield or elsewhere 
 in Kent or Sussex, is popular legend seemingly for the miser- 
 able facts, as they were, of the cold hand of law condemning, 
 hanging, and quartering him whose father was a Mortimer, 
 mother a Plantagenet, and wife descended of the Lacies. Lord 
 Say, because he could speak French and Latin, ' and corrupted 
 the youth of the realm by erecting a grammar school', lost his 
 head by command of this John Mend- All, the kind of sovereign 
 who deserves to die high. Such pleading as Say. according 
 to the drama, made, was pearls before the very king of the 
 swine. It was by his mother that this Say was of the chival- 
 rous family so closely knit with the early Sinclairs, he being 
 the first of the Fynes. 
 
 ' Kent, in the Commentaries Caesar writ, 
 Is termed the civilest place of all this isle : 
 Sweet is the country, because full of riches ; 
 The people liberal, valiant, active, wealthy : 
 Which makes me hope you are not void of pity.' 
 
 But this is not the only appearance of John Sinclair in the 
 records of that alarming rebellion and its sequels. In the 
 acts of the privy council there is a letter from King Henry 
 the Sixth himself, dated 8th June, 1456, to 'John Saintcler, 
 squier ' and other knights and esquires of Kent, calling upon 
 them to meet at Maidstone, and see that the king's justice be 
 done in reckonings with rebels. This is twenty-one years 
 after the Kent and Sussex Aldham-St. Clairs had failed in 
 the male line in the person of the wealthy Thomas Sinclair,
 
 CORONER OF KENT. 
 
 father of the three coheiresses, who must have seen much of 
 the Cade rising, recruited from their own wide estates to large 
 extent. With this John in official activity and himself a 
 squire, if there were no more of their lineage in the county 
 of landed rank, the name was not friendless in the consan- 
 guinity sense. In the report, or rather the digest, of the 
 recently created historical MSS. commission, whose wise pur- 
 pose is to save as much out of private records as possible, 
 there is quite another aspect than that of loyalty in res] 
 to another John Sender, lord of Faversham, Kent. He is an 
 armiger in the pardon he gets from Henry the Sixth at the 
 special instance, or rather by the absolute power, of the queen, 
 for taking part with this same ' John Mortimer ' in the re- 
 bellion. The list of pardoned begins with this lord of Favers- 
 ham, then one called 'gentleman,' then a dozen to a score of 
 Faversham glovers, brewers, fellmongers, butchers, wool 
 staplers, suggestive of the combination of trades attributed 
 to Shakespeare's father and himself a century later at Stral 
 ford-on-Avon. The leadership of John of itself implies his 
 influential position, and it is not without valuable suggestion, 
 as to the reality of good grounds for the popular discontent, 
 when such a name is found in the ranks of the Kentish rising. 
 Jack Cade was perhaps more and less than a Captain Mend- 
 All of the Wat Tyler order. England had been disgraced by 
 the loss of Normandy, and our French-blooded queen, Mar- 
 garet, with an imbecile husband, Henry VI., and favourites of 
 detestable and treasonable characters, had outraged not only 
 the popular but the baronial feeling. Only thus can the 
 Kentish enthusiasm for an Irish gallowglass, expressed by 
 thousands of followers, be explained. He was the sham Mor- 
 timer to the real one in the background. The duke of York 
 had rights, by a female Plantagenet, towards the crown ; and 
 it is not extraordinary that, as his ancestor Hugh Mortimer 
 gallantly fought side by side with St. Cler in the battle of 
 Hastings, Wace witness, this John Sinclair was of his party. 
 The duke's sons, Edward and Richard Mortimer, the Edward 
 Fourth and Richard Third of England, had for first stepping- 
 stone towards their elevation, Cade's movement. Five years 
 after, all the kingdom was white or red rose, in fiercest civil 
 warfare. 'Though Cade's enterprise,' says Rapin, 'had mis- 
 carried, the duke of York had reaped the benefit he proposed.
 
 356 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 The great number of people that embarked in it, discovered 
 how much the nation was displeased with the queen and the 
 ministry, and that the memory of the rights of the house of 
 March was not entirely abolished. ' The house of March, so 
 called because of its Welsh border standing, being Mortimers, 
 and only noblemen, had no lineage claim whatever, but affini- 
 ties unfortunately played great part in English regal politics. 
 Adventurer and cruelty are perforce connected, and the Mor- 
 timers of historic pages prove so, though there have been 
 far vaguer pretensions than theirs to highest place. The 
 Nevilles, heirs of the Montacutes and Beauchamps, and of 
 royalty affinities also, the earl of Salisbury and the earl of 
 Warwick, king-maker, their great representatives, had their 
 influence most in Kent, and they were favourers of the Morti- 
 mers with effect, at the beginning of the struggle. That Jack 
 Cade was inspired by chief men of the county is very certain, 
 and the division of lineages to parties then is no single ex- 
 perience of the van-district of England's vigour. The date of 
 John Sinclair's pardon is four days before the capture of Jack 
 Cade, about which another John Sinclair was much engaged, 
 as already shown. The report itself by the royal commission 
 is well worthy of examination for the light it throws on the 
 history of the period. Such an inscription as the following 
 would imply that Kentishmen of the name, in lower ranks, 
 then prevailed : ' Hie jacet Rogerus Sentcltr quondam serviens 
 Abbati et Conventui de Lesnes qui obiit •primo die mensis Januarii 
 1425. Cujusanime. . . .' — ' Here lies Roger Sentcler, formerly 
 serving the abbot and convent of Lesnes, who died on the 
 first day of the month of January, 1425. Whose soul . . .' 
 This is preserved in Weever's Funeral Monuments, as well as 
 in the Vet. MSS. in bib. Cot., from which he took it. Lesnes 
 Abbey was founded by Sir Richard Lucie, chief justice of 
 England, the fellow-excommunicate of Hugo St. Clare, pin- 
 cerna ; and he himself became its abbot. Roger must have 
 had dignified service under the later abbot of his time before 
 they would give him funeral immortality in the sacred build- 
 ing. Many individuals could yet be discovered of such kind. 
 In Henry the Seventh's reign the Issue Rolls of the Privy 
 Purse tells of a court doctor, Rauffe Sentcler, and gives the 
 interesting information that the royal medical fee was then, 
 at the palace of Sheen, the sum of £1.
 
 CORONER OF KENT. 357 
 
 Hasted in his History of Kent, under 'Woodland, 1 has mi 
 difficult account of no fewer than four of the surname holding 
 it, the last of whom was Thomas, who held it 1 2 Ed. I V., 1473, 
 'whose descendants passed it away at the end of Eenry 
 Seventh's reign.' His information cannot refer to the AMIiaiu 
 St. Cleres, though the names are similar, and must mean 1 1 
 Medway and Thames people. In 9 Ed. III., 1336, John, son 
 to John St. Clere, enjoyed Woodland, he says, and the former 
 John of these two was Dominus John, the coroner, as far as 
 can be made out. What adds strength to this is that Hasted 
 says that Hamon Crevequer of the ' great family,' held it 
 before the St. Cleres, and that the second John was succeeded 
 by a Thomas, who could quite well be the Thomas of Frothe- 
 wick and Tilbury already noted. Thomas died 4 Henry IV.. 
 1403. The wife of a Philip Sinclair, Margaret, also is recorded 
 as its holder 1 Henry VI., 1423. Thomas of 1473 referred 
 to by Hasted, separates them entirely from the Aldham St. 
 Cleres of Kent and Sussex, because the last Thomas of them 
 died in 1435, the end of male descent to his branch. It is one 
 of the Aeslinghams who is meant by an entry in the Calen- 
 dar of Inquisitions after Death, and seemingly he of 1473 : 
 Thomas Seinclere, armiger, 15 Ed. IV.; null' tenuit terr' negue 
 ten' in comitat' Essex — 'Thomas Sinclair, armsbearing, 15 Ed. 
 IV. : He held no lands nor tenements in the county of Essex : ' 
 which record of 1476 was written in transactions about his 
 will. This appears to give the history of the separation of the 
 Aeslinghams into the family at Tilbury and Frothewick, Essex, 
 and into this Kent family whose remains are as interesting as 
 they are difficult to reduce to clear coherence. 
 
 The coroner's successors must be closed, on the knowledge 
 yet attained, with the history of some Anthony Sinclairs of 
 curious character. In the national record office, Fetter 
 Lane, details are to be got of a Sir Anthony of Kent as late 
 as the time of Charles the Second. In 1666, the year of the 
 great fire, he, poor as Job, petitioned the king for some consi- 
 deration on the extraordinary grounds, which do not seem 
 questioned by the ungrateful or impecunious gay vh, 
 
 that he had lost ^2500 a year, which was an immense income 
 at that time, and ^5000 in goods, by raising troops for the 
 royal service in Kent; that he had three brothers who were 
 slain in the king's battles; that he himself had been severely
 
 358 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 wounded; and, lastly, that arrears were due from the ex- 
 chequer both to his father and grandfather. Such men as 
 these did not deserve to have their representative beggared, 
 and then for ever neglected, lie is certainly the last landed 
 Kentish Sinclair, but his descendants may now be numerous 
 men of the people, if right inquiry were made, ' in the civilest 
 place of all this isle.' Such a tale as this would make the 
 hackneyed catch once again respectable, Sic transit gloria 
 mundi. What aids to corroborate it effectually and finally, 
 is an entry in the Pell Records. It is a payment by the 
 privy seal, 31st Dec. 1606, to John Williams, London gold- 
 smith, for ' part of a gold chain ' which James the First gave 
 to Sir Anthony ' Sencleer,' as it is spelt in the record. This 
 was soon after the gunpowder plot, when the popular enthu- 
 siasm for the king's safety opened for him the purse of the 
 house of commons, and he was unusually liberal of pre;- 
 accordingly. The union of Scotland with England was also 
 on the carpet, and gifts were more than somewhat free. The 
 spirit of the time is shown by the Spanish ambassador giving 
 a chain to one who brought him the news that the report was 
 false that James had been killed by a poisoned knife. At this 
 period also, the king of Denmark, the brother-in-law of James, 
 came to visit his sister the queen, and for him fabulous feasts, 
 masquerades, and generosities were provided. The Danish 
 ambassador was Sir Andrew Sinclere, knt., of Scandinavian 
 birth, and he was a special favourite of the English court on 
 that occasion. The 1'<U llrc<>nh have, ' By order dated last of 
 April 1 6 14: To George Herriott, jeweller to the queen, the 
 sum of ^320, for one diamond bought of him, and by his 
 majesty bestowed upon his trusty and well-beloved servant, 
 Sir Andrew Sinclere, knight, without account, imprest, or 
 other charge to be set upon him for the same or any part 
 thereof.' This is the Edinburgh Heriot of whom Sir Walter 
 Scott has made so much. Sir Lewes Lewknor has various 
 attentions to pay of the hospitable kind, by virtue of his court 
 office, to Sir Andrew, the Lewknors of Sussex being already 
 familiar names. But he who got the piece of a chain is the 
 Sinclair or Sencleer of present interest. His Danish kinsman 
 no doubt enjoyed his English hospitality and friendliness. 
 Sir Anthony Sencleer of this reign was the father or grand- 
 father of the Sir Anthony Sinclair of Charles the Second's
 
 CORONER OF KENT. 
 
 31') 
 
 time, and that the exchequer owed the elder Anthony money is 
 somewhat suggested by such gift-giving. James was curiously 
 easy in getting into money difficulties, and amusingly cunning 
 in staving off results from day to day, if his describers are to 
 be believed. With the later Sir Anthony this branch m 
 be left entirely. He seems to have been quenched out of tin- 
 noblest chivalry of England, by the chronic generosity and 
 loyalty of his line to the wretched Stuarts or 'stewards,' who 
 never really rose above the official temper of the distinguished 
 Scottish office from which they took their names, for all their 
 unfortunate and at last tragic coquetting with autocracy. 
 The genuine monarchical spirit of the Norman dynasty they 
 never could, by reason of the fate and stamp of nature, arrive 
 at by any of their miserable assertions. If a Sir Anthony. < if 
 stranger's blood even, had had such a bill of deeds to back 
 him as this one had for Charles the Second, and came with it 
 to a duke of Normandy of the descent of Rogenwald the 
 Kich, the father of Rollo the Rich, and progenitor of the 
 truest men of Europe, the Sinclairs among them, or to a 
 William First or Second, or a Henry Beauclerc, he would 
 have not been sent empty-handed away, but kept as a comes 
 worthy of their best lands and titles. Gold chains and similar 
 miseries were the measures of the Stuarts for such supporters. 
 In some books Sir Anthony is a St. Leger. 
 
 But let swift return be made to the Essex Sinclairs, who 
 are the last of the Aeslinghams to be described, the descendants 
 of Hugo St. Clare of Becket fame or notoriety. Mention 
 must be made of a Robert de St. Clair who had properties n.'.-n- 
 Dover, and especially the manor of Hastingleigh, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Ashford. Of him next to nothing, however, is 
 known. There is record of his marriage to a Joan in 1331, 
 and also that he had four sons, Robert, William, Richard, and 
 Thomas. Jeake's Charters, page 49, shows that a ( ruy Si . ( lere 
 held the then perhaps most coveted position in the kingdom, 
 constable of Dover Castle, and warden of the Cinque Ports. 
 He held them separately and together; and if he was one of 
 these Hastingleighs, they also are not without distinct ion down 
 to this day. These offices were objects of ambition to even 
 king's sons, Henry the Seventh's second boy, 1 Lenry, after* ards 
 Henry the Eighth, being appointed to them in 1493.
 
 360 THE SIN CL A IRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 THE ESSEX MEN. 
 
 The John Sinclair who is recorded as possessing Tilbury and 
 other Essex estates in 1334, married the daughter of Sir 
 Anthony Culpepper, died without issue, and the family of his 
 relation Dominus John, the coroner, succeeded lain. Thomas 
 has been referred to as holding Frothewick and other manors 
 near St. Osyth in 1364, and Tilbury with its pertinents in 
 1384. His descendants remain in possession. In the rolls 
 of parliament a.d. 1391, there is a complaint by the abbot 
 of St. Osyth against John Rokell. John Sinclair had sold a 
 wood to" several persons who at the instigation of Rokell 
 refused to pay their duties to the abbot. The latter gained 
 the cause. The Sinclairs had never lost footing in this county 
 from the Conquest, or at all events from the time William 
 Rufus granted the lordship of Colchester to Eudo St. Clare, 
 his dapifer, the builder of Colchester Castle, and the founder 
 of its abbey of St. John the Baptist. The De Veres, earls 
 of Oxford, by marriage secured the lordship of Colchester, but 
 the lineage did not forget to secure some of the estates of Eudo, 
 their kinsman. Though of the Hamo Dapifer family, they 
 were near enough to share some of Eudo's fees as well as heir 
 parts of Robert Fitz-Hamo's, and much of his brother's, Hamo, 
 the dapifer and viscount of Kent. But compared with these 
 magnates the Essex men of the fourteenth century had small 
 portions. They grew into distinction none the less. They 
 are mentioned in 1406, 1446, and in 1454 as of standing. At 
 the prolonged and imposing funeral ceremonies of King 
 Edward the Fourth in 1483, first at Westminster Abbey and 
 then at Windsor, Sir Thomas St. Claire took a leading position. 
 In a little work printed from the MSS. of the lord lyon of 
 Scotland, Sir James Balfour, in the Advocates' Library, Edin- 
 burgh, there is a remarkable account of this event in English 
 history. Divers knights and esquires of the household bore 
 the body, accompanied by the nobles of the kingdom, to the 
 services held at Westminster. 'The large and broad cloth of 
 gold on a rich canopy of cloth imperial, fringed with gold and
 
 THE ESSEX MEN. 361 
 
 blue silk,' which formed the pall, was borne by four knig] 
 of whom Sir Thomas St. Clair was the first. When the pro- 
 cession arrived at Windsor, Sir Thomas is mentioned firs!, of 
 the ' eight knights without the hearse.' More of his history 
 has not been found, but that he held high rank and office in 
 the royal presence is clear enough. The hereditary ability 
 shines fully out from the history of Sir John Sinclair in the 
 reign of Henry the Eighth, 1509 till 1547. His father John 
 had added the manor of Coldhall, Great Bromley, in tlio Teinl 
 ring hundred, to the patrimonial estates. He died, Morant 
 says, on the 26th August 1493. Henry the Seventh's troubled 
 reign he lived in, dying about the time Perkin Warbeck pre- 
 sented himself as one of the princes in the tower, reputed 
 murdered by Richard III. their uncle. Willoughby, lord 
 Brooke, was steward of the household to Henry VII., and 
 Thomas Butler, earl of Ormond, a chief figure, both of whom 
 could reckon kin with John Sinclair. The lords Lovell and 
 Zouche, hunted to sanctuary at Colchester as being the 
 favourites of Richard, and illustrious rebels of the reign, were 
 related to the Kent and Sussex family by the marriage of one 
 of Thomas Sinclair's co-heiresses. The Guildfords and other 
 such names of the time were familiar by close ties. When the 
 young successor of this John of Essex appeared at Eenry 
 the Eighth's court he was no stranger, and took duo place 
 accordingly. His father resided till his death at Hedingham 
 Castle, and the chief possessions were its pertinents, with 
 Chichridill, St. Cleres, Frodewick, Fenhouse, Danbury, and 
 Cold-Hall. Portions he held from his relations, by frequent 
 affinities, the De Veres, earls of Oxford, and the lords I >arcy ; 
 but he was also an in capite holder. There is record of him 
 in 1512 as 'John Seyntclere of St. Osith's, alias Chicheridill, 
 sheriff of Essex and Hertford.' In 15 13 it is noted that he 
 had by king's appointment the same sheriffship, ami that he 
 demitted it on 23d Jan. 15 15. There are survivals of son 
 the accounts of his office, such as sums he paid to the kin 
 duke of Lancaster, to Henry, earl of Essex, to the infirmmen 
 of St. Albans, to the prior of the Carthusian house ot the 
 salutation of St. Mary near London, which have at least an 
 antiquarian interest. He was a commissioner of the | 
 for Essex. In Brewer's Letters and Papers oj tin- Retgn ot 
 Henry the Eighth he appears knight of the body in the royal
 
 362 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 household as early as 15 1 6. In 1523 and 15241161 a subsidy 
 commit Loner in Essex, the officers of the i. Id being 
 
 then those responsible thai the king should have money. He 
 has fresh grants of commission of the peace in I ir the 
 
 years 1525, 1526, and 1530. It would seem, to.., th.it he 
 acquired about these years some land in Kent, for he lias 
 returns from Newington in this county. As a relic of him 
 there actually exists one of his writings among the Earleian 
 charters of the British .Museum. It i- entitled: 'Indenture 
 between Sir John Seyntcler, knt., and George Harper and 
 Thomas Colepepper, son and heir to Sir Alexander I lolepepper, 
 declaring a bond for 200 marks to be void : <'uw .</>/., 34 
 Hen. YIN.' Its seal is not the least interesting pari of 1 1 1 « - 
 document, and it is of value further as showing that ties still 
 existed to the Colepeppers. 
 
 Sir John Sinclair's most remarkable work was the share he 
 took in the suppression of the monasteries and nunneries in 
 this reign, in 1535 Henry Eighth ordered a general visita- 
 tion of the monasteries, and appointed Thomas Cromwell, the 
 famous earl of Essex, visitor-general. Cromwell appointed 
 commissioners, and armed them with eighty-six articles of 
 inquiry, the visitation beginning in the October of that year. 
 In 1536, the lesser monasteries, to the number of 376, were 
 suppressed by art of parliament, adding /,'32,ooo yearly to 
 the income of the crown; ^100,000 being the \ ;i lue of plate 
 mi, I goods sci/cd. In 1537 there was a visitation of the larger 
 monasteries, disclosing mysteries demanding further reforma- 
 tion. The report of it was published next year. The complete 
 suppression took place in 1539. Camden says that the mon- 
 asteries numbered altogether 643, the colleges 90, the chantries 
 and fee chapels 2374, and the hospitals no. There were 
 twenty-light mitred abbots, peers of parliament, of whom 
 three hajTsuperior positions to the rest. Abbot John Beche, 
 one of the latter, was hanged at Colchester in 1539 for ob- 
 duracy in not subscribing to the king's supremacy over the 
 Hnglish church. He was the abbot of St. John Baptist 
 there, founded by Eudo Sinclair more than four hundred years 
 previously. Times and necessities change. Sir John Sinclair 
 of his lineage was now one of the most active in practically 
 levelling such foundations, and had Eudo lived in the latter 
 period he would probably be of the same mind. In a com-
 
 THE ESSEX MEN. 363 
 
 munication from Sir John Sinclair to the lord privy seal 
 occurs this passage: 'Yesterday I was with the abbot of 
 Colchester, who asked me how the abbot of St. Oswith did as 
 touching his house ; for the bruit was the king would have it. 
 To the which I answered, that he did like an honest man, for 
 he said, I am the king's subject, and I and my house and all 
 is the king's; wherefore if it be the king's pleasure, I, as a 
 true subject, shall obey without a grudge. To the which the 
 abbot answered, The king shall never have my house but 
 against my will and against my heart ; for I know by my 
 learning, he cannot take it by right and law. Wherefore, in 
 my conscience, I cannot be content ; nor shall he ever have it 
 with my heart and will. To which I said, Beware of such 
 learning ; for if ye hold such learning as ye learned in Oxen- 
 ford when ye were young ye will be hanged ; and ye are 
 worthy. But I will advise you to conform yourself as a good 
 subject, or else you shall hinder your brethren and also your- 
 self.' In Dugdale's Monasticon Sir John appears in the history 
 of the monasteries. Himself and two other knights, with 
 about twenty armigeri, and Thomas Cromwell, earl of Essex, 
 visitor-general, were the commission which inquired into the 
 nunnery of Polesworth, in records which have survived ; and 
 he no doubt took a large share in that greatest religious 
 revolution of English history. Cromwell, the blacksmith's son 
 of Putney, could be trusted as to his choice of sufficient ad- 
 jutants in so perilous a reform, which was the real cause of 
 the loss of his head ultimately. See Froude's history. 
 
 From being knight of the household Sir John Sinclair 
 became master ; but he could not have held the office long, for 
 Sir John Gage was controller of the household in 1544, the 
 descendant of his relative Alianor Sinclair of the Aldham family. 
 Gage went that year to the French war under the duke of 
 Norfolk, and is mentioned as controller. In 1554 he was 
 Queen Mary's lord chamberlain, and was engaged quelling 
 the London rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, one of whose 
 adherents, Sir George Harper, seems to have been he of the 
 Harleian indenture. Sir John Sinclair of Danbury died 25 
 November 1546, a year before the death of his vigorous 
 sovereign, the first secular head of the English church. 
 
 His son John succeeded him, and in 1554, the year after 
 the accession of Mary, Morant says that he passed St. Gere's
 
 364 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Hall to Thomas, lord Danbury, by fine. Other parte of hii 
 property went also, a Gason being another sue© or. As far 
 as can be discovered he was the last of this branch. It' there 
 were more of them they nni.-i have lived the dignified hut 
 often very quiet life of lords of the manors. The history of 
 the manors is, however, silent about them after Mar -n, 
 
 and John, son of Sir John, must have died without male 
 issue. 
 
 Those Essex men have left relies both of their existence and 
 antiquity which take high place among archaeological remains. 
 The chapel at Danbury Place, which has been mentioned, makes 
 one of the curious chapters with all antiquaries. Gough's 
 Monumental Tablets gives the fullest account of its three 
 crusading figures, St. Clares of the Esses branch, with the 
 usual crossed legs and lions at the feet. By drawing com- 
 parisons between the figures and their niches, as also from the 
 character of the building, they give their date as early as 
 Richard Coeur de Lion. One knight was carved in the attitude 
 of prayer, with his hands palm to palm, his sword sheathed, 
 and his lion looking towards him; the second, drawing his 
 sword, the face of his lion turned away from him; and the 
 third, returning Ids sword into its scabbard, the lion looking 
 half. An imaginative writer has evolved a world of symbolic 
 meaning from these attitudes. The first hero means, home a 
 returned crusader; the second, one who died in the holy wars; 
 and the last, death on his way home to England It would be 
 delightful if faith could agree fully with symbolism gener- 
 ally ; and in the instances of these three Sine lairs, encourage- 
 ment might come to verify by long research such romantic 
 possibilities of chivalrous biography as these sculptural atti- 
 tudes might indicate. It is more to be depended on, that they 
 were distinguished warriors of the gallant periods of English 
 knighthood, when fighting the Paynim or the Saracen was far 
 less an affair of bitterness than of high poetical sentiment. 
 
 But after looking on that picture of antique devotion to the 
 cross and the sword, look on this of modern sacrilege. On 
 1 6th October 1779, some men of the temper that would botanise 
 on their mothers' graves, went by forwardness or stupid magis- 
 terial permission into the north aisle of this church at Danbury, 
 and commenced, for antiquarian curiosity of the unpardonable 
 kind, to dig beneath the figures of these knightly crusaders.
 
 WOLSEY'S APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS. 365 
 
 They found their leaden sealed coffins ; opened them violently ; 
 pulled off the shrouds, with dismembering effects ; and, worst 
 of all, invited the vulgar mob for a livelong day to examine 
 the remains of these great men of other times. There were 
 fabulous curiosities as to the liquid by which knights, templar 
 and others, were perfectly preserved for centuries. Here 
 was an opportunity not to be missed by the ' gropers among 
 dead men's bones,' in the spiritual as well as material sense of 
 that phrase. But a veil must be drawn over the test which 
 their enthusiasm applied towards analysis of the preservative 
 fluid in those leaden coffins. Gough tells the story, to which 
 there is nothing parallel, not even the experiments of nine- 
 teenth century scientists. To disturb the ashes of the dead is 
 always next to being a cursed employment, in whatever interest 
 it may de done. The genial symbol-reader might not be singu- 
 lar in wishing that the figures had fully drawn their swords 
 on that occasion, and used them with crusading energy and 
 efficiency. One hundred and eight years ago, this the last sight 
 of the Essex branch was seen, and such a last ! But so 
 strangely are human things related that such sacrilege may 
 go more to keep their names immortal than even the noblest 
 deeds could. The hill of Danbury, Essex, by the Thames, 
 beneath London, is a land-mark and a watch-tower to this 
 lineage, as it had been for ages to the world's greatest city ; 
 and its chapel will always stand fixed to memory as some- 
 thing notable that has been. Gough's engravings of its three 
 crusaders pay tribute to their handsome forms and faces. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 WOLSEY'S APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS. 
 
 The story of none of the lineage might be more instructive 
 than that of a John Sinclair of Henry the Eighth's reign, if 
 it could be well revived from the considerable evidence which 
 still exists. It is impossible to state with security whether he 
 was one of the Essex branch. He may have been one of the 
 younger members of some of the landed families who were out
 
 3 65 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 of property, though he himself i in possession of land But 
 there is no necessity for speculation, and it is best that I 
 should have independent treatment. John ' Sender,' a Wo) 
 wrote his name, was his vice chamberlain and appreciator- 
 general; and when about 1527 the suite of the cardinal-legate 
 contained such men as William Stanley, earl of Derby, Cuth- 
 berl Tonstall, bishop of London, Sir Thomas More, chancellor 
 of the duchy of Lancaster, author of Utopia, and thirty to forty 
 similar names, with cSoo horse, as Cavendish writes, to be \ i 
 chamberlain was a post of honour and much business. Tindal 
 has culled from Eall, Stow, and Eerbert thai when the cardinal 
 went to France to confer with King Francis for Eenry the 
 Eighth, he had those named, Lord Sandes, king's chamber- 
 lain, Sir Eenry Guilford, and others like, with 1200 hoi 
 ( if John Sinclair's doings there are glimpses as early as 1524. 
 On May 28th, John Seint-Clere, esquire, appreciator-general 
 to the most reverend father in God, Thomas, lord legate- 
 cardinal, archbishop of York, and bishop of Durham, lakes 
 an inventory of the late Thomas Howard, first duke of Nor- 
 folk's goods, 'plate, Jewells, and quick catell remaining in the 
 castle of Framyngham and thereabout in the county of Suffolk.' 
 On 12th July 1526. there is a hit, c which seems of the nature 
 of sequence to this valuation, from the reigning duke of 
 Norfolk, son of the first, better known as the earl of Surrey, 
 victor at Flodden Field. ' My sister,' says he, 'will deliver 
 the goods,' and 'the coming of Master Synclere shall be nothing 
 displeasant to her.' He writes from Henyngham. At this 
 time the cardinal was intent on gathering moi 
 
 ' For mine own ends : indeed to gain the popedom, 
 And fee my friends in Rome.' 
 
 The duke of Norfolk was his supporter when, the year before, 
 his raising of money from the people without consent of par- 
 liament stirred an insurrection in London. To save himself 
 he got the ringleaders pardoned, barely escaping King Henry's 
 anger at this" earlier period of his fortunes. The duke was 
 probably his debtor in some way. But in passing from this 
 suggestive record, the duke's title of ' master ' to John Sinclair 
 indicates his position as one learned in the law, the word 
 having then a technical force, though not confined always to 
 erudition in law. The foundation of his secular colleges was
 
 WOLSEY'S APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS. 367 
 
 the stalking-horse by which the cardinal compelled money 
 into his purse. It was he who began the suppression of the 
 monasteries, to get revenues ostensibly for the new institutions. 
 In 1524 Pope Clement VII. gave him a bull to suppress St. 
 Frideswid's priory in Oxford, on the site of which to build his 
 college of Christ Church, and another on nth September to sup- 
 press as many monasteries as would make 4000 ducats annually 
 for his colleges. The practical part of these doings was in the 
 hands of John Sinclair, thus a forerunner to his kinsman Sir 
 John, who was so busy a few years after similarly on the 
 greater scale. It is curious to remember that one of the 
 Simon Sinclairs, earls of Huntingdon, Northampton, and 
 Lincoln, was a generous donor to this same priory, which was 
 in the diocese of Lincoln. But the institution of Wolsey's 
 heart was the university or college of Ipswich, his birthplace 
 in Suffolk. Its dean, William Capon, writes in 1528 to the 
 cardinal, advising him as to additional improvements, and 
 giving many details of the merrymaking of the season, quite 
 conscious of his lord's sympathy with the subject. He tells of 
 nine ' bukks ' sent to help the popular mirth, ' oon from Mr. 
 Sentclere, your grace's servaunt ; ' and they were ' spent on 
 our said Lady's day in your grace's college, and in the town 
 of Gipeswiche.' Not long after this the proud cardinal came 
 into the compass of a praemunire, and ' fell like Lucifer, never 
 to hope again.' Great events occurred the next few years, and 
 John Sinclair took active part in them. He was one of those 
 to whom the papal bull, connected with the divorce of 
 Katharine of Arragon, Henry the Eighth's first queen, was 
 first read in solemn assembly, 31st May 1529 ; and he had his 
 responsible share in the arrangement by which the bishops of 
 Lincoln and Bath, after oath taken, were appointed to summon 
 the king and queen to appear on June 18, between 9 and 10 
 o'clock a.m., in the parliament chamber, Blackfriars, London. 
 Cardinal Wolsey's opposition to Anne Bullen caused his over- 
 throw. Ralph Sadler, who played diplomatic and warlike 
 parts then, discerned as early as 1st Nov. 1529, that 'divers 
 of my lord's servants, Mr. Sayntclere, &c, are sworn the king's 
 servants.' This 'master's' traditions were his king in preference 
 to the clergy. But John was friendly with Wolsey after his 
 fall, and they have business together about ships on the 
 Thames, Mr. Sayntclere then living 12 miles from Oxford, the
 
 368 THE SIN CLAWS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ditto of communication being April 1530, and the cardinal 
 dying 30th November of the ame year. 
 
 The heraldic visitators of Oxford of 1574 found the Sinclair 
 arms in Stafford manor-house, < ornburj Park, now a Beat of 
 the duke of Beaufort; and Burke could make nothing of the 
 puzzle it was to hhn when lie found it among the Harleian 
 JN1SS., where the visitation is. It is worth while suggesting 
 tli.it this John was holder of Cornbury Park, which in Henry 
 the First's time was a royal seat, and appears in connection 
 with Hamoand Eudo, the dapifers, and other lineage nam 
 signatures and otherwise, of which the Chronicle of Abingdon 
 monastery gives details. In the list of the gentry of ( Oxford- 
 shire, drawn up by Henry the Sixths commissioners in 1433, 
 a Johannis Chantclere occurs. There must have been a per- 
 manent Oxford family, of whom John, the vice-chamberlain 
 of the cardinal was, the fellow-servitor of Thomas Cromwell 
 before both became king's servants. As early as the fifth y< 
 of this reign, 15 14, there is notice of a John Seinteler, arrni- 
 gerus, of Kebworth, who bore anus, 'The sun in its glory, or; ' 
 but it is not possible to discover whether he is one with the 
 appreciator-gencral. Several families of the line used this 
 blazon. From the Conquest one branch of St. Cleeres held under 
 the Mohuns of Oxfordshire, better known as earls of Somerset. 
 The same Oxford visitation of 1574 testifies to this, and it 
 is probable that the Oxfordshire family's origin may thus be 
 traced : ' William de 31ohun or Moyne came into England with 
 the Conqueror, and was the most noble of all his host, having 
 divers noblemen under him, as St. John, St. Cleere, and others.' 
 Another record says he had forty-five nobles in his troop. 
 ' AVilliam de Moyon,' Auguste le Provost and Duncan found, 
 ' was lord of Moyon, three leagues to the south of Saint Lo. 
 The remains of the castle belonging to this family, one of the 
 most distinguished in England under the Norman dynasty, 
 may still be seen.' He fought at Hastings ; and his locality 
 of Saint Lo, the home land of Sinclairs, together with his 
 following, would seem to prove him of the ducal lineage. It 
 is only so that such underholding and trooping can be under- 
 stood. 
 
 In July 1524 the vice-chamberlain got a lease of the 
 manor of Lammershe in Essex, which belonged to the countess 
 of Richmond a little before. Wolsey, who was abbot of St.
 
 WOLSEYS A PPRECIA TOR-GENERA L A ND THERS. 369 
 
 Albans among his many other dignities, gave, 1st June 1 s 
 John Sender the office of keeper of the woods of Brumeham 
 and a dozen places besides belonging to the monaster v. I 
 this he had a salary. He had previously, in 1525, been 
 granted the keepership of Tyteinanger, Hertfordshire, with 
 so much a day. These are but specimens of many similar 
 benefits. Of their public relations, 'the inventory of all I 
 have, it is the king's,' of Shakespeare's celebration, shows 
 John Sinclair's ordinary work and duties. The means are 
 extant on which something like a biography of him might be 
 made, but more industry in his favour perhaps is not here 
 required. 
 
 That there were distinguished kinsmen of his then in Eng- 
 land, not necessarily holders of land, may be inferred from a 
 note of ' Capitaine John Seinctclier.' King Francis of France 
 had equipped 150 greater ships, 60 smaller ones, 25 from the 
 Levant, and 10 Genoese, to make a descent upon England in 
 1545. It was all but as formidable an invasion as that of tin; 
 Spanish Armada in 1588, and the more to be dreaded that at 
 first there were only 60 ships to oppose to them, though 
 afterwards increased to 100. The French made landings on 
 the Isle of Wight and three places in Sussex, and had some 
 severe skirmishing with the English fleet, but nothing was 
 done. The greatest effort of France at sea ended in a si 
 of Boulogne of the fiasco character, and a peace was patched 
 up. The English fleet when it had orders to sail on 10th 
 August 1545 to find the enemy, was made up of three divisions 
 of 25 ships each. The vanward division was commanded by 
 Sir Thomas Clere, admiral, the second ship of which was I lap- 
 tain Sinclair's, one of the largest. Its name was ' The .1 hesus 
 of Lubick,' its burden 600 tons, and carrying 300 men. < >ut 
 of the landholding ranks it is only incidentally that any lineage 
 in England can be seen. Even the clergy cannot from the 
 records they have left be traced much further than as isol 
 individuals. The Sinclairs of England grew scarce, but they 
 have not become extinct even in the lineage name. I !ould the 
 local names be followed with some scientific accuracy, it would 
 be discovered that noble and good branches of the same bl 
 are now flourishing. But certainties must be given that may 
 leave such inferences. In 1627 Thomas Sinclair was vicar oJ 
 Broke, near St. Edmundsbury, Suffolk, in the very district 
 
 2 A
 
 37 o THE SINCLAIRS "I J WGLAND 
 
 ,,,,,. descendants of the Bradfields might b( Di 
 
 Thomas Tanner, bishop of St. Notitia 
 
 .1/,, and other antiquarian works, writes a I btei to 
 
 Peter le Neve, esq., Norroy king-at-arms, dated Mar. 30, 
 1704, in which a suggestive final paragraph occurs, the m 
 being written from Norwich, where be then resided. ''I 
 
 atleman thai brings this, Mi ' lair, travelled with Mr. 
 
 Windham, and bas since lived in hie family : is a well wis! 
 fco English antiquities, and has taken greal 1 ■ the 
 
 old writings at Felbrigge, of which he will be able to give you 
 a good account. He is uow going again beyond sea with Mr. 
 Gray. By Letting him have a sight of the Do lay Book, 
 or any other old things you have in your custody, you will 
 xriv much oblige a person of his curiosity ; and also, sir, your 
 humble servant, Thomas Tanner.' A not thai the p 
 
 of the -urv.y wanted was county of Norfolk, of which P( 
 1,- Nevo li:ul a fac-simile copy from the originaL This .Mr. : 
 clair is of die Norfolk stock, and seems i" have been a Learned 
 tutor. His antiquarian temper has bad recent example in Lis 
 kinsman, the genealogist, Alexander Sinclair, II ELI i rho 
 
 died in [877, the second son of Sir John of Dlbster. < »n all 
 that relates to the Scottish line he is an authority, a* the kind 
 favour by his nephew, the earl of Glasgow, of his MSS. for 
 examination, enables to be distinctly Btated on real know- 
 ledge of his work. Broomhall manor, Norfolk, was held by 
 Robert St. Cleer in 1721, and he combined the proprietor and 
 clergyman, as a kind of link to plainer lives which some of the 
 name must have lived there. Another Rev. Robert a 
 in a bond, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, among 
 the Rawlinson MSS., in which on appointment to the rectory 
 of Bulphan, Essex, 8 June 1722, he promises to indemnify 
 John Robinson, bishop of London, against all action-. II- 
 was, however, the son of "William Sinclair, commissary of 
 Caithness, his mother being one of the I : indside. 
 
 There is a monumental tablet to 'the good Mrs. St. Clair,' 
 who died in 1727, ' the year terrible for fevers.' She was the 
 wife of Patrick Sinclair, rector of Norfolk livings from 1700 
 till 1750, to one of which Horace "Walpole presented him. 
 In the Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica there is a 
 monumental inscription taken from Wilford, Nottingham- 
 shire : ' Near this place are deposited the remains of George
 
 WOLSEY'S APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS. 371 
 
 Sinclair, M.A., late rector of this parish, who died 12th June 
 1 775, aged 46 years.' The arms are those of the earldom of 
 Caithness, impaling a chevron between three roses, gules, and 
 on a chief as many mullets of the first. It is suggested thai 
 this is for the Stevenson Sinclairs, descendants of the baronet 5 
 of Longformacus. In the parish register his burial is noted 
 as having taken place on 23 June 1775. It is probable that 
 he was not of English but Scottish birth. There was a Robert 
 Sinclair, recorder of York, who married in 181 1 Elizabeth 
 Sothern, daughter of Sothern of Darrington Hall, Yorkshire. 
 He was Irish, if so modern a date is of interest at ah. Other 
 professions might add quotas to such collection as this, but the 
 reading would possibly be less lively than what is desirable. 
 Thornbury in New and Old London tells of a parliamentary 
 commission inquiring into the evils of farming the Fleet prison 
 even to murder of the prisoners by the officials, and ho men- 
 tions ' the case of Captain David Sinclair, an old officer of 
 courage and honour,' as a very bad one against the lessee 
 Bambridge for wringing guineas out of those in his power. 
 ' Bambridge, who disliked his prisoner, had boasted to one of 
 his turnkeys that he would have Sinclair's blood. Selecting 
 the king's birthday, when he thought the captain would be 
 warm with wine, he rushed into Sinclair's room with his escort, 
 armed with musket and bayonet, struck him with his cane, 
 and ordered the men to stab him with their bayonets if he 
 resisted being dragged down to the strong-room. In that 
 damp dark dungeon Sinclair was confined, till he lost the use 
 of his limbs and also his memory ; and when near dying he 
 was taken into a better room, where he was left four days 
 without food.' This was in 1726. In one of the rolls of the 
 treasury of Henry III., Ed. I., and Ed. II., the king gave 
 John Bray, hostiarium of the king's treasury, the custody of 
 the heir of John Sinclair, lately keeper of the king's palace, 
 Westminster, and of the gaol of the river of Fleet, on payment 
 of ,£10 yearly. These offices were then in capite and heredi- 
 tary. Only men of high quality were given such power over 
 their fellows, and comparisons and coincidences are curious 
 and instructive at interval of four or five centuries. But 
 Dr Johnson's Life of Savage has equally melodramatic inci- 
 dent connected with a Mr. James. Sinclair. The blackguard 
 verse- writer, Richard Savage, who claimed to be the unacknow-
 
 37 2 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 lodged son of an earl, Rivers, and of the countess of Maccl 
 field, w:is roystering in Robinson's coffee house, Charing < > 
 and, wounding a servant girl who tried to Btop the quarrel 
 raised by bis insulting some gentlemen there, he ran -Mr. 
 Sinclair through the body, 'when he was uoi in a posture of 
 defence,' his point held towards the ground, as the evidei 
 bore. Savage was taken to Newgate, and tried at the < >ld 
 Bailey for murder, but had the king'e pardon, through the plead- 
 ing of tli«- countess of Eertford, Lord Tyrconnel, and Mi 
 Oldfield, the actress. Jt is said the can I Blaoclesfii 
 
 < did all she could to bring Savage to the .'.'allows.' Dr. John- 
 son, like Lord Tyrconnel and others, noble and simple, v, 
 credulous that she was his mother, ae he said ; and there are 
 many fanciful tales of his birth and upbringing, bidden in I 
 humbles! of London scenes ; but a drunkard's imag i nation is 
 apt to be a troublesome one, like his weapon. The tragedy 
 took place in 1727. To be murdered thu£ in doubtful company 
 by 'the bastard,' as he loved to call himself (the greatest mon- 
 ster intellectually, morally, and physically of his time without 
 compare, whether of shoemaker Eolborn blood or of the \h- 
 of countesses and earls, whose adulterous shamelessness was 
 mi generis) seems not an enviable fate. The incarnation of un- 
 grateful clever tavern rascaldom, rhymed on tl m all other 
 subjects; and the devil may himself mend, since there are in 
 the lines marks of remorse that he cut off a young man whom 
 he figures as probably doing great things for his country but 
 that he had met with him. 
 
 To prevent, however, too sudden wandering down to modern 
 times, a short return may be made to Henry the Eighth's 
 reign, when his business with Scotland brought him into close 
 personal relations with one of the kin, who was as much English 
 as he well could have been, whether native or not. Henry's 
 sister Margaret was queen there, and after the death of her 
 husband in 15 13, James Fourth, at the battle of Flodden, a 
 French and an English party began to develop. Alexander, 
 duke of Albany, a Frenchman by birth and speech, had been 
 declared regent, but did not come from France till 15 15. He 
 was the head of the French party, while the English faction 
 rallied around Queen Margaret, aided by her brother Henry 
 the Eighth's protection and active interference. Alexander 
 was the son of the first duke of Albany, second son of James
 
 WOLSETS APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS. 373 
 
 II., who had first married Lady Catherine Sinclair, daughter 
 of William, prince of the Orkneys and earl of Caithness, but 
 was divorced from her because of nearness of blood, as the- 
 church decided, making their son the bishop of Moray illegiti- 
 mate. The French Alexander was the son of another will-. 
 Queen Margaret's parallel character to that of her brother, in 
 the matter of marriages and affairs of the heart, complies 
 the politics inextricably. In 15 16 Henry tried to have the 
 regent removed, because it was dangerous that the heir pre 
 sumptive to the crown should have the guardianship of Queen 
 Margaret's young son, the king. She had married the earl of 
 Angus, and their daughter Margaret was born at Harbottle 
 Castle, Northumberland. Her husband left her then, and her 
 domestic troubles never ceased afterwards. In 1522 Henry 
 again wrote to the parliament to expel the duke of Albany, 
 on the pretence that he wished to marry the queen, his sister ; 
 but this also came to nothing, though he sent Lord Dacres 
 to the borders with some troops. Margaret even joined with 
 the regent. Henry, however, sent the earl of Surrey across 
 the borders to get the regency for her. The duke of Albany 
 Henry tried to seize on his passage from France, but lie 
 passed through, and landed with 3200 French soldiers, the 
 French interests being his. Indeed much of the coquetting 
 rather than war on the border was to aid the wars going on 
 in France. The English party made Albany's attempt to meet 
 Surrey futile. Next year the regent was away again, and 
 the queen and her favourite, Hamilton, earl of Arran, stirred 
 up the king, now fourteen, to assume the reins of government, 
 they being the real rulers. Douglas, earl of Angus, her hus- 
 band, with other nobles, upset this arrangement ; and he became 
 regent in the king of England's interest, holding the young 
 king's person, which was the prize of ambition. In 1526 an 
 attempt to seize the boy failed. Queen Margaret had married 
 next to Henry Stuart, and induced the king, her son, so that 
 she might rule again, to escape to Stirling. The Douglases 
 had to°retire to England, 1528, Henry the Eighth agreeing 
 to a truce of five years. 
 
 During all this scheming a Patrick Sinclair figured con- 
 snicuouslv. In the State Papers of Henry tic Eighth the 
 references to him are quite voluminous. There are many 
 letters written to, by, and about him in the collection. Queen
 
 374 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Margaret commends herself heartily to him in one, and 
 
 her strange literature, 'Yours ze \\t" — 'Yours ye know.' 
 
 Surrey writes Wolsey from the bordi Sinclair says that 
 
 Albany mus1 invade England or Bend the Frenchmen (6000 
 upwards) home, for Scotland cannot upport them.' Patrick 
 Sinclair, as she writes to her brother, was her 'trusty and 
 true servant, and ever hath been to the king my husband.' 
 At no time was lie more of a friend to her than when she v. 
 writing to Henry Eighth, ber'dearest bi 'to pn 
 
 your sister's son. who is nearest to you next to your own 
 children.' In [526 he was ambassador to the king of Eng- 
 land, and many letters testify to his kind reception. One by 
 Cardinal Wolsey is especially remarkable, recommending Pat- 
 rick Sinclair as 'right (rusty' to Henry, then at Winchester, 
 and reciting long and faithful services to his sister's party. 
 Bishop Clerk's letter thence telling of the king's imperturb- 
 able silence as to what passed privately between himself and 
 Patrick, is a study as to secular wisdom baulking the clerical 
 curiosity of the cardinal-legate's scouts. Master Magnus, 
 the English ambassador at the northern conn, writes to 
 Wolsey that Patrick is one of the six nobles then wholly 
 devoted as 'right good Englishmen.' He is never tired of 
 praising him as ' an honest gentleman,' 'our good friend and 
 special lover,' and as 'very forward' in the cause. 'Patrick 
 Sinclair and Mr. John Chisholm are nightly with us,' writes the 
 ambassador. Queen Margaret Tudor's letter to her brother 
 Henry the Eighth in Patrick's favour, is one of the high 
 historic documents, part of which runs, 'Wherefore I beseech 
 your grace kindly to be his good prince for my sake, and that 
 you shall give commandment to the earl of Surrey and the 
 lord Dacres, that he may be received and well treated in your 
 said realm, if he has need : And this you will do at my request. 
 But Patrick's throne of favour with the lady was not always 
 so steady as this, though he was true to her when the duke 
 of Albany's hard hand gave her, as she writes, 'not ^1000 
 Scots ' yearly, and when her ' cupboard must be pledged.' 
 There are worse clues of Ariadne than the money supply for 
 getting through the labyrinths of monarchical p>olitics. His 
 temporary eclipse is explained by letters between Cardinal 
 Wolsey and the duke of Norfolk, who was earl of Surrey at 
 Flodden. Margaret had complained to the cardinal that
 
 WOLSEY'S APPRECIATOR-GENERAL AND OTHERS. 375 
 
 Norfolk slighted her in not answering one of her letters; and 
 to the priest's inquiries the soldier writes that Patrick Sinclair 
 and Henry Stuart, who was becoming the favourite, had fallen 
 at variance, and he could not write letters then by Patrick as 
 bearer because Patrick ' cannot please her now.' Henry Stuarl , 
 he informs the cardinal, is made lieutenant to Lord Maxwell 
 of some two hundred men of special dignity, and ' he doth put 
 in and out at his pleasure, which Patrick Synclere did beim 
 He says for final, ' To please Henry Stuart she quarrelled with 
 Patrick Synclere for not bringing a letter from me.' By and 
 by Sinclair regained his position, but the Maxwell connection 
 kept up the variance with native bitterness. Margaret's 
 letter-writing was almost as strong a passion with her as 
 Henry's theological books were to him. From 28 Dec. 15 15 
 when Lord Dacre received her in great state at his castle of 
 Morpeth, with the lord chamberlain, Archibald Douglas, 
 Will Carmichael, Dan Carr, and, as she writes in a letter of 
 1520, her ' man of law, Pet Synglar,' throughout the entassement 
 of interests she is continually busy. In 1523 she writes to 
 Surrey that she wishes to ' steal out of Scotland,' because 
 Albany keeps back her income, and will compel her to sign 
 papers detrimental to her son. 
 
 Her marriage to King James IV. had brought considerable 
 correspondence between the two parts of the island. Lord 
 Dacre writes Henry, 20th July 15 12, from Carlisle, of a huge 
 ship the gallant monarch had built, of which Lord Sinclair 
 was the captain ; and few things from these valuable State 
 Papers are more amusing than another letter of 13 April 
 1513 on the same subject to Henry from his ambassador, Dr. 
 Nicolas West, telling of an interview with James. ' 1 1 e talked 
 of his great ship, said that she shot 16 pits of great ordnance 
 on each side, that he had two more ordnance in her than the 
 French kingdom ever had to the siege of any town : which 
 methought to be a great crack.' West speaks of one piece of 
 ordnance three yards long, carried from Edinburgh CasUe, 
 which 'shoots a stone bigger than a great penny loaf. Hie 
 ambassador went to see Queen Margaret Tudor at Ian ithgow 
 Palace, and was 'fetched by Sir John Sinclair on Sunday. 
 ' When she died in 1541 of palsy at Meffen she left no will, 
 but wished the king her son, James V., to be told to be good 
 to the earl of Angus, and to her daughter Margaret Douglas.
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF I NGLAND. 
 
 The attendants were to ask him it' thii daughter could gel .-ill 
 ber goods. She had do more money than ^2500 
 I, ni then to j ; '<-'5 Bterling. The bang came on the day of 
 her death too late to speakwith her, and Boon went away, 
 Leaving orders that Oliver Sinclair and another member al 
 
 of bis privy chamber should Lock up all her g I- for bii 
 
 use. 
 
 This Oliver seems to have heired Patrick** >n and 
 
 traditions. The jealousy .-mil feud, especially of Lord M 
 well, ha.l their satisfaction i,e.: year in the person "t this the 
 so-called favourite, who has received so much iL r M<u:mt abt 
 Solway Moss ought to be the scandal of the Maxwells and 
 others who, quarrelling with their king, preferred to he ] , 
 oners than to do his j u t commands. It was not thai they 
 refused to war under Oliver. He was of better blood than any 
 in that kingdom, the lords of Roslin, NTithsdale, Newburgh, 
 <fcc., princes of Orkney and also in Scandinavia. They never 
 questioned his dignity. Hew.,. Oliver Sinclair of Pitcarnis 
 and Whytekirk. a younger son of Sir Oliver "f Roslin, and 
 the nephew of the lord Sinclair and e.nl of Caithness, His 
 
 grandfather had 1 □ lord chancellor of Scotland, prince of 
 
 Orkney and Shetland, doing homage to the Lang of Norway, 
 earl of Caithness, lord of Roslin, Pentland, Herbertshire, 
 Nithsdale, etc; and he himself laid the tack of Orkney and 
 Shetland when, for Mate reasons, they were given to the 
 crown by hi- family. Because he Loved the Long, and bis 
 nohles hated him, a. handful of English cavalry were allowed 
 to disgrace both the sovereign and his first minister. The 
 death of James V. was Largely eaused by shame at the 
 event, and sorrow for the disobedience of his nobles. Lord 
 .Maxwells yearly income was only ,£166, 13s. 4d., from the 
 returns Henry the Eighth got taken of the estates of his 
 prisoners ; and he was one of the richest. It coidd not be 
 much of< indignity to serve under Oliver with a pocket of that 
 weight. But the historians are wron^r. and Froude as much 
 as the others; it was no matter at all of ignorance of war, 
 inequality of condition, or of plebeian m rsus patrician. The 
 patricianism was all the other way, as Kini: James knew ; and 
 probably he was taught so by his English mother, Patrick's 
 eulogist. James Sinclair and Alexander Sinclair were also 
 prisoners requiring to be ransomed, by that vile day's work of
 
 THE SOUTH-WEST. 
 
 377 
 
 betraying them and their brother. Wolsey, Cromwell, More, 
 Surrey, the Despensers, Buckingham, and even a Gaveston, 
 are ignoble only after they are politically dead. Every little 
 dog can bark complacently and courageously on the bodies of 
 dead lions. Oliver's daughter's husband, Hamilton of Bothwell- 
 haugh, fought out part of justice from a Linlithgow window 
 for him in the destiny sense. The ' favourite ' awaits vindica- 
 tion, and he shall yet get it, being as honourable and as brave 
 a man as was in the kingdom. Of his military sufficiency his 
 governorship of Tantallon Castle is proof positive. Sir Ralph 
 Sadler, the English governor of it at one period, had the most 
 careful respect for his warring skill, as his letters to England 
 show still. But more perhaps than enough of this semi- 
 English discursus. That Henry the Eighth knew the family 
 well, as of his own people as well as beyond the Tweed, one of 
 his last public acts is testimony, if such could be required 
 when Sir John Sinclair was one of the great men in his 
 household as in his state and clerical affairs, and when John 
 Sinclair was the vice-chamberlain of the cardinal-legate, and 
 fellow king's-servant afterwards with his vicar-general, Thomas 
 Cromwell. In 1546, the year before his death, the king, having 
 his council with him at Guildford, Surrey, writes to the 
 council at London : ' His Majesty prayeth you also to write to 
 the warden of the Westmarches, that he signify to Olyver St. 
 Cleare (who offereth to come in to redeem his pledge), that 
 whensoever he come to Carlisle, his pledge shall be truly and 
 safely delivered to return at liberty to Skotland.' 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 THE SOUTH-WEST. 
 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, lord of Thorigny and Estremeville, and 
 the earl of Corboil, in Normandy, lord marcher of Wales 
 generally and of the lordship of Glamorgan in particular was 
 lord of Tewkesbury in Gloucester also. He was the earliest 
 Sinclair in this county, but enough has already been said ot 
 him as the 'knight of Rye ' of the first two Norman kings 
 reigns. Carte the historian usually calls him Robert de
 
 378 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Thorigny. The History of Cambria, translated in 15S4 from 
 Blanch Parry's Welsh MS., a gentlewoman oi' the queen, ie 
 
 lull of his story ; and certainly nut the least interesting part 
 of it is the account of the rise of the famous Cecils, through 
 this Robert Sinclair's favour to the first of them, Roberl Cecil, 
 
 who came to Wales with him. for the conquest so celebrated. 
 The writer of the history says he gathered the details faith- 
 fully from records in custody of the right honourable Sir 
 William Cecil, knight of the garter, the lord Burghley, and 
 lord high treasurer of England, the well-known minister of 
 Queen Elizabeth. These Cecils were the earls of Salisbury, 
 of whom the conservative marquis is now the representath 
 But Kobert Fitz-Hamo was succeeded by no son, his daughter 
 .Maud, married to Kobert, the son of Henry L, Beauclerc, 
 getting his lands in the west; and her son accumulates under 
 his earldom of Gloucester no fewer than 230 knights' fees. 
 That some of Fitz-Hamo's own lineage found their homes in 
 these border lands the frequent record of their name of Sancto 
 Claro amply testifies. They may have been the descendants 
 of his brother, William of London, to whom he gave the castle 
 of Ogmor and the four knights' fees in South Wales in 109 1. 
 The whole region on both sides of the Severn, ' Sabrina fair, 
 virgin, daughter of Locrine,' half way up to its source, was 
 well under the sway of the Sancto Claro gem ; though they 
 held most on the Welsh side, as far as Pembroke. The king's 
 son Robert, and John Lackland afterwards, swallowed up much 
 of it for want of male heirs, or rather by skill of marriages. 
 Fitz-Hamo's other brother Richard, however, is certainly the 
 ancestor of some of the name in these counties. He got as 
 his share of the Welsh conquest the castle of Neth and 
 three knights' fees, the properties of both him and his brother 
 William being large and frequent in various parts of England 
 besides. Richard took his local name of Granville from a side 
 estate of Thorigny in Normandy, to which he was made heir, 
 and it had variations such as Greenfield, Grandeville, Greenvil, 
 according to the fashions of time or place. Much has not 
 been discovered of members of his family as actually possessing 
 estates in Gloucester, their chief situation being in Devon and 
 Cornwall, as will appear. There is a Thomas Sinclair, among 
 the ' additional charters,' British Museum, of Kyngeswoode, 
 near Bristol, the scene of Wesley's first foundation of
 
 THE SOUTH-WEST. 379 
 
 methodism in 1739. H e claims lands in the town of Durham. 
 Gloucester, 39 Ed. III., 1346. In the Placita de Quo II 
 of Edward I. Johannis de Saneto Clara in Com. (;/<<■ 
 Langetr' is one of those swearing in favour of John Maltra 
 as to his right, against the king's challenge, to Wodec< 
 John Sinclair was himself a Gloucestershire holder, and, as it 
 would seem, of Staverton, and of a St. Clare which is I 
 out of local memory. Staverton, of 287 acres, with a rental of 
 £$15i between Cheltenham and Gloucester, was held in the 
 Returns of Owners of Land, 1873, by Capt. Louis St. (lair, 
 but he may or may not be of the ancient house of Richard. 
 
 The Exon Domesday Book has already been quoted to show 
 that Britel Sinclair, the brother of Richard and of William, 
 all three the sons of Walter, earl of St. Cler, held properly in 
 Somersetshire shortly after the Conquest : — ' 7 de dim hida q 
 ten& britel de sco claro h ht Rex. G' — 'And from the half 
 hide which Britel Sinclair held the king has no tax.' This 
 was in the Bolestane hundred. Reference has also been 
 made to a signature of his to the charter of the foundation 
 and endowment of the priorate of Montacute, Somerset, and 
 to two of his fellow-witnesses, Robert Bruce and Jordan de 
 Barneville. Bruce was probably his nephew or brother-in-law, 
 from the marriage of his sister Agnes Sinclair to Bruce of 
 Bramber, Sussex, and of Brecknock, Wales. The Barnevilles 
 were not only closely connected with Britel, but with the Aes- 
 lingham Sinclairs of Kent and Essex, who were directly 
 Hamoes, Robert and others of Barneville appearing in the 
 Rochester register and the Moiiadicon. They held land in 
 Kent as well as in Somerset. Britel Sinclair does not occur, 
 with his surname, in any of the ancient records except the 
 Exon Domesday Book ; but the Exchequer Domesday, after the 
 fashion of the time, gives a Britel, without other indication, 
 an immense number of holdings in the south-western count 
 especially under his blood-relation, William, earl of Moreton, 
 half-brother to the Conqueror. There can be little doubl thai 
 this is he, and that he knew the value of Adam Sinclair's 
 system of underholding, in preference to the in capih . particu- 
 larly from those of the royal lineage. That Ralph Sinclair, 
 the castellan of Norwich, Adam's brother, was the steward of 
 the earl of Morton, goes to show the same. It would hardly 
 be safe, however, to assume as proved that this is the only
 
 380 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Britel of the large magnitudes; l -m if i- extremely near a 
 proof, compared with the proofs usually possible of such 
 .•mi iquity. 
 
 The quest ion arises, Was he the ancestor of i beSomei 
 family who are so frequent in the documents of nil the reigi 
 down to the sixteenth century, or were they of the 'Hamo' 
 Sinclairs? Was Richard of Granville, the boh of Bamo of 
 Normandy, their ancestor, as he was thai of the Devon family 
 and of the Cornwall? The brother of Richard, king 
 chamberlain, ancestor of the Bradfielde and Aldhams 
 England, and brother also of William, dapifer to Que 
 Margaret Atheling of Scotland, ancestor of the R 
 princes of Orkney, dukes of Oldenburgh, and a whole scries 
 of other noble branches, Britel is more difficult to fix as an 
 ancestor. Indeed, what evidence there isfromSomei ma 
 
 to point thai he died without issue, though this cannot for a 
 moment be asserted. Describing the pariah of St. (1. 
 Cornwall, the Complete Parochial History of Cornwall has a 
 passage that, it' founded on good authority, might help to 
 settle the question : ' From this parish was denominated an 
 ancient family of gentlemen surnamed De St. < Leare, from 
 whence are descended the St. Clears of Tud will in Devon, who, 
 suitable to their name, gave for their arms, in a field azure, 
 the sun in its glory, shining, or, transparent; of which tribe 
 was that Roh rtus de Sancto Claro qui U nt t dt cent libratas /< rrce 
 in hundredo de Mertock in comit. Somerset.' With apparent 
 mistake, such as that the parish gave the men their name 
 instead of the men the parish, some of this seems as well- 
 grounded as it will be found illustrative. If Robert of Mar- 
 tock was of the Cornwall family, then the Somerset people 
 were the descendants of Richard Sinclair of Granville, brother 
 of Robert Fitz-Hamo, Ilamo Dapifer, and William Sinclair. 
 Britel's successors in Somersetshire, if hehad any, are forever in 
 the hades of antiquity, it must be feared, should corroboration 
 of this quotation come. One thing is at least gained, namely, 
 thatthe unity of the lineage of the 'knight of Rye' with Sinclairs 
 is fully settled by this account of matters in itself, if there had 
 been no other evidence. In the face of the Parochial History 
 it is hardly possible to credit Britel with the chief Somerset- 
 shire bouse, and one of the Hamoes seems the only otber 
 ancestor for it.
 
 THE SOUTH-WEST. 
 
 The author of The Norman People, however, finds that 
 Britel was the ancestor of a Dorsetshire family, and this clears 
 up many if not all difficulties. It is not perhaps fair to 
 suspect his research, because he makes William, the dapifer of 
 the English Margaret, queen of Scotland, one of Britel's 
 Dorsetshire descendants, though he is certainly as wrong in 
 this as the industrious Stow was in making William the Lion 
 on his ransom take the Sinclairs to Scotland. The Bolestane 
 estate in Somerset was only one of many in several counties, 
 as was the Norman system of tenure then, and Britel may 
 have had no more connection than such particular one with 
 Somerset. There is, in the most absolute state records, various 
 reference to a Dorset high family; and this author, being an 
 enthusiast for Norman things generally, is more than likely to 
 be right, and to have had facts for his statement that Britel 
 founded it. In the Magnum Rotulum Sccacarii of 31 Hen L, 
 1 131, under 'Nova Placentia 7 Nov Conventiones ' this 
 oocurs : ' Dorseta : In pdon br B: Witto de sco Claro vj s 7 
 viij d,' and in another entry ' xix s.' These sums as taxes 
 represented considerable property in this county alone. As 
 far as times and places are concerned he could quite well have 
 been the son of Britel, and it is he probably whom the author 
 of The Norman People sent wrongly to Scotland. It is true 
 there is not much subsequent trace of him, or of any descendants 
 of his, unless those in the neighbouring county of Hampshire 
 were his branch. Winchester had great attraction in the 
 earlier periods. The Chronica of John of Oxford mentions a 
 William de St. Cleer engaged in important money business 
 with the bishop of Winchester, 19 Ed. I, 129 1. A William de 
 St. Clare appears prominently in papers about Edward First's 
 Welsh, Scottish, and French wars; and in a charter of lands 
 in the ' Monasticon to the abbey of Tichfield, Southampton, by 
 Edward the Second, Dominus William de Sancto Claro is ;i 
 witness, Stanewoode being part of the grant. This Lord 
 William had a Geffrey de Sancto Claro of Southampton, 
 Hampshire, as one of his antecessors, who is noted as holding 
 some land from the counts of the island, the Brians of the 
 Isle of Wight, in 7 Henry III. 1222. It is he who is mentioned 
 in the Rotuli Litterarum Clamarum in Turri Londoniemi as 
 holding land in the counties ruled by the viscount or sh 
 of Winchester and Dorsetshire, 'An 17 Jo 1216 : Mandat est
 
 382 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Vic' b'/ Wigorfi ' Dorset ' <) fac Phii Britofi I ram <) fuil Jofcia 
 de Bonevitt r (laut'i de Sco Claro in J J.iittis Buis tnd q a mdiu 
 Dno Regi placdit fl Ap Rading -J VII die Aprit.'— 'The 
 
 seventeenth year of King John, 1210 : It was commanded the 
 sheriff of Winchester and Dorset, thai be give to Philip In-itoor 
 Britel, the land wliich belonged to John de Bonevilleor Barne- 
 
 ville, and to Geffrey de Sinclair, held in his bailliwict 
 provinces of jurisdiction, to be held as long as the lord the 
 king shall please : at Reading, 7 1 1 1 April.' If the Britoea 
 could be identified with the descendants of Britel, no more 
 distinguished race is there in English history; but such a 
 possibility would open endless worlds of inquiry. The carta 
 of Walter Brito for Henry Second gave him as holding 15 
 knights' fees in Somerset as from the/eo£?aof Mortaine, from 
 which Britel held most of his lands in the Conqueror's time. 
 John of Boneville would seem to be one of the Barnevilles so 
 much connected with Britel Sinclair and the Sinclairs near 
 Rochester on both sides of the Thames. Another curious 
 thins: which misdrt connect this Geffrev Sinclair with the 
 Hamo Sinclairs of Stapleton, Somerset, if indeed these were 
 not, after all, Britel's people, is the fact that in 9 Hen. IV., 
 1408, Sir William Boneville held a part of the lands of the 
 Somerset family, as the half of the manor of Stapleton and 
 Sayes Place in Martock. lie is the descendant of the John 
 of Boneville of the record. But this will have further light 
 upon it in the account of the family, for whom it is difficult 
 to settle origin decisively as from Richard, the brother of 
 Robert Fitz-Hamo, or Britel, the third son of Walter of Med- 
 way, earl of St. Cler in Normandy. On the whole, it is safe to 
 leave Lord William Sinclair of Dorsetshire as the representative 
 of the line of Britel. The Somersets may be reckoned, on pre- 
 ponderating grounds, the descendants of Richard Sinclair of 
 Granville, the founder not only of this branch but of the 
 Devonshire and Cornwall Sinclairs. 
 
 The Aldham Sinclairs of Kent and Sussex held largely also 
 in this county of Somerset. In 4 Ed. III., 1331, John, the 
 son of John, was possessed of Chiselbergh manor. In 17 Ed. 
 III., 1344, his wife Alicia died seized of it. It seems to have 
 come with Alicia, for it was by the death of John Daubernoun 
 it went to the Aldham s, and as Alicia was a widow she may 
 have had it through her first husband. Much has already
 
 THE SOUTH-WEST. 
 
 383 
 
 been said of this manor in describing the Aldham-St. Cl- 
 in 9 Ed. III. this John died, and the Inquisitions after h 
 find him possessed in Somersetshire of not only Chisellx 
 manor with the feoda appertaining, but of West Chinni 
 manor, Tenne, and, in one feoda, Chilterne, Dunmere, and 
 Michell Weston, with Norton of Taunton manor. The great* r 
 portion of these came to him by his father John's marriage to 
 Joan Aldham, who brought him much of the Aldham proper- 
 ties, and, through her mother, of the Montacute or Montagu 
 estates. The Montacutes, the earls of Salisbury, wei 
 Somersetshire family, and it was at their castle of Montacute, 
 Somerset, Britel Sinclair signed its lord's charter to the priory 
 of Montacute near the castle, and such signatures were usually 
 a fair presumption of affinities. The Aldham Sinclair.-; held 
 large footing in the county till they became extinct in the 
 male line, 1434, their three co-heiresses dividing these among 
 the other properties to their husbands. In 10 Rich. II., 1387, 
 John Sinclair, chevalier, and his wife Maria had N01 A 
 "Wcle, Pennard, Chiltern, Chiselbergh, with the advowson. 
 West Chinnock manor was given to her as part of his widow's 
 provision, 11 Rich. II., 13S8. Sir Philip Saintclere has it in 
 9 Hen. IV., 1408. But the Somersetshire estates were 
 regular part continuously of the Aldham-Sinclairs' esl at es, and 
 enough has been written of them under their other lands. 
 They, in any case, were later holders in the county than the 
 original descendants of the Hamo family, and their origin and 
 history belong in greater degree to the districts near London. 
 One further general line of inquiry may be suggested. In 
 the List of the Norman Barons who J '< night at Hastings this is. 
 'William de Moyon, with several manors, received Dunster 
 Castle, in Somersetshire, which became the principal abode of 
 his successors. His grandson, also called William, was created 
 earl of Dorset, by the empress, Matilda, on account of the 
 services he rendered her in the war against Bang Stephen. 
 The barons Mohun, of Okehampton, were descended from him, 
 and this branch was not extinguished before the commence- 
 ment of the eighteenth century. 5 Among the Harleian MSS. 
 the Oxford visitation of 1574 has a description of the firsl 
 William, who came from Moyon, near St, Lo, which became 
 his local surname : ' William de Mohun or Moyne came into 
 Eno-land with the Conqueror, and was the most noble of all
 
 384 THE SISCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 his host, having divers noblemen under him as St. John, 
 Cleere, and others. . . . He was earl of Sum.] It i 
 
 question where this St. Cleere settled \ and it is also discus- 
 sible whether Williiim, 'the most noble of all his host,' was 
 not of the same male Rollo descent as this nobleman who, with 
 forty-four others of rank, followed him to England. _ The 
 Mohuns, Yorke says (and Vincent cannot contradict him, he 
 confesses), were earls of Somerset and Dorset together. 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 THE SOMERSET FAMILY. 
 
 A quotation" from Colinson's History of Somerset, printed in 
 
 1 79 1, gives some knowledge. 'A little to the northwest of 
 Ash is Stapleton, which for a number of successions belonged 
 to the family of St. ( lare or De Sancto Claro. In 6 Hen. III. 
 Robert de St. Clare held of the king in chief ten pounds a year 
 of land in Stapleton, by the service of finding an armed servant 
 with a horse in the king's army for forty days at his own cost. 
 He was succeeded by his son Robert, who, 7 Hen. III., paid 
 ten marks for his relief of the land which he held here of the 
 king by serjeanty. This Robert died 2 Ed. II., being then 
 certified to hold the manor of Stapleton of the crown in capit'; 
 by the service of holding a towel before the queen at the 
 feasts of Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, and likewise at 
 the king's coronation. Robert de St. Clare, his grandson, suc- 
 ceeded to the manor of Stapleton, of which he died seized 10 
 Ed. III. , leaving issue another Robert, his son and heir. Which 
 last-mentioned Robert held only a moiety of this manor, of 
 which he died seized 33 Ed. III., and was succeeded by Richard, 
 his son and heir. The other moiety was held 42 Ed. III. by 
 Ralph Seyncler (as the name was sometimes written), who 
 died without issue, as also did the above-mentioned Richard 
 and Margaret his wife, upon which the manor reverted to 
 Robert de St. Clare, a cousin of the above-mentioned lords, 
 who died 46 Ed. III., and Sibill his wife bad an assignment of 
 the third of this manor for her dower, remainder to Sir 
 William Bonville, knt., and his heirs, 9 Hen. IV. Sir
 
 THE SOMERSET FAMILY. 
 
 38; 
 
 William Bonville held a moiety of the manor of Stapleton 
 and a messuage and one carucate of land in Martock, called 
 Sayes-Place (after the family of Say), from the earl of Somi 
 At this time there was a chapel in Stapleton, which seems to 
 have been built by one of the St. Clares. It was subservient 
 to the church of Martock, but has long since been destroyed, 
 and nothing further appears memorable of it or the place.' 
 Colinson's conclusion is rather too absolute, but he deserves 
 all commendation for what he has preserved. In the will of 
 Sir Wm. Bonville, who was generally described as of Shute, 
 Devonshire, which he made on 13th August 1407, in the time 
 of Edward III., he gave, among an extensive list of benefits to 
 friends, priests, &c, ^20 to his daughter Dame Catherine 
 Cobham, ,£20 to his daughter Elizabeth Carewe, andtoRaulvn 
 Sayncler, to purchase a corrody for his life, ^20. Whether 
 Raulyn was of the Somerset or Devon Sinclairs there is not 
 anything to show. 
 
 There are considerable records existing which are safe to 
 keep the memory of this family to indefinite periods, and 
 Stapleton was only one of their several manors. A calendar 
 of old documents has, under the heading of ' Dorset and Somer- 
 set,' Richard I., 1 195-6, 'Ralph de Seincler owes forty marks 
 for having recognisance of 5^ knights' fees, of which his fal her 
 was possessed in the day when he took the garb of religion, 
 by the pledges of Herbert Fitz-Herbert and Henry de Alneto.' 
 Among what are called new promises by Hubert, archbishop 
 of Canterbury, is the pipe roll extract, dated 7 Ric. I., 
 'William de Seincler accounts for twenty marks for having 
 plenary seizin of his land of Stapleton, and he has delivered 
 them into the treasury, and is quit.' An early notice is ' An 
 3 Johann. a.d. 1202: Rotuli de Oblatis : Kum'sel : Walt' de 
 Esseleg dat duo R lx marc argent ut recognico q fi Rad de Si 1 1 
 Claro airanavit q a ipm remaneat * qd de ce'to no utat r 8* 
 ipm WaFtni n' brevi de recto' — 'In the third year of John, 
 A.d. 1202 : rolls of aids or offerings: Somerset: Walter of 
 Esselegham gives to his lord the king 60 marks silver as the 
 peace-offering because he arraigned Ralph Sinclair, and beci 
 he remanded him, and that he did not use, as regards the rest, 
 except what Walter had of his right of office.' It could well 
 be that this sheriff Walter was a son of Hugo Sinclair, pin- 
 cerna, of Aeslingham; and that Ralph got free in the rebellious 
 
 2 B
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 year of some of the barons, on 60 marks, i- po iibly owing to 
 his relationship to the sheriff. Th ly difficult to 
 
 infer about, but it is quite po ible thai Ralph bad 1 to 
 
 be among the rebels at the beginning of John's reign. Hi* 
 treatment of the queen, I abella of Gloucester, by divorcing 
 her after he had .secured by her mosi of the lands of her 
 grandmother Matilda or Mabel Sinclair, daughter of Robert 
 Fitz Hamo, was one private cause thai the S01 family 
 
 should have do love for him, and there was enough public 
 cause besides. Bui they do noi seem to have been ruined by 
 Ralph's course, whatever it was in the full lighi of bis time. 
 
 There inu-t have been two or three anted 
 Richard of < rranville or Britel, the ancestor, could be n achi '1 : 
 and here is the only difficulty of tracing, to unusual fulne 
 The successors are plain. At the beginning of Henry I 
 Third's reign the baron Roberi held Stapleton as the caj 
 baronicc to hi- other manors. <>n 18th October 1264, in this 
 monarch's reign, there is a Somersetshire inquisition made in 
 virtue of a writ dated Canterbury 3d October, on Saturday, 
 St. Luke's, hy command of W. de Wenlige, the king's esch( ator 
 citra Trent, before Kobert de Sancto Claro, escheator of the 
 county of Somerset, regarding the age of Hugh Lovel hi- 
 proof of heirship to the harony of Kari Lovel, worth ^150, 
 Lady Eva Lovel being dowered in tierce. The esch< 
 son was one of the king's courtiers, and held various lands by 
 Serjeant v : the tenure sought after as the most honourable, 
 because testifying to a family's personal services or relation- 
 ship to the crown. Richard de Sancto Claro died in this 
 same year possessed of Mertock, Stapleton, and other lands. 
 In the Rotuli in < 5 xarii of Hen. III., Ed I., and Ed. 
 
 II., he appears with his wife, under Somersetshire: ' Soms' 
 Kicus Seincler & Margareta ux' ejus dant decern libras p lie 
 adquir' duas ptes duabus pcium marrii de Stapleton cum ptin' 
 
 « Somerset : Kichard Sinclair and Margaret his wife give ten 
 
 pounds for license to acquire two parts to the two, of the divi- 
 sions of the manor of Stapleton, with its followings.' 
 
 Of Robert, his son, The Hundn R lis have notices, and it 
 is to be remembered that this valuable survival has not its 
 fame by showing the best side of men, being Edward the First's 
 challenging of the rights all round of landholders in England. 
 In the hundred of Martock, Somersetshire, the jurati have
 
 THE SOMERSET FAMILY. 3 s 7 
 
 their statement thus: 'Dicunt et quod Robs de Sender Riot' 
 de Bolougne etc pcipuunt et retinuit Hvia de astraura set 
 nesciunt quo waro.' In the Hundred Forinser de Sum 
 com Som's', concerning subtractions made, or supposed to be 
 made, from the crown's possessions, he occurs ao-ain : ' Et 
 RoBs de Sco Claro subt a xit secta hundr' jam xii. annis etaps' 
 q a m sect' pdcessor' sui face consuevert & subtracta fuit ista 
 secta tempe Thome de ph a m te firmar' man'ii & hundr' de Sum'- 
 ton ' — ' And Robert Sinclair has taken possession of a part of 
 the hundred for twelve years past, which part his predecessors 
 were accustomed to pay for, and this section was possessed in 
 the time of Thomas de Perham, fee-farmer of the manor and 
 hundred of Somerton.' This is evidently bordering land which 
 from paying some rent went by purchase, heirship, gift, or 
 other accident into possession of the lords of the manor, and 
 the king would know, or his commissioners, that no parch- 
 ments or particular grants could be shown for the possession ; 
 and hence the crown's opportunity, so widely and often 
 unjustly exercised by Edward the First. 
 
 Another Robert Sinclair had a deal of trouble of this kind. 
 In the Quo Warranto records, which are an account of the 
 following up of the knowledge gained by The Hundred Rolls, 
 as to whom attack should be made upon, he appears several 
 times, and especially about some disputed parts of his manor 
 of Somerton. He was summoned to answer as to his rights 
 in a court in Somersetshire ; but the most valuable account of 
 him is his being summoned by William of Chiselham, the 
 king's commissioner, to Exeter, to state his rights to parts of 
 the properties which he held. The piece at Somerton in par- 
 ticular had to be fought for. ' Robert Sinclair came,' says the 
 record, 'and said that Richard le Bure, his grandfather, had 
 it with certain tenements, as gift from Ralph de Huse or 
 Hussey.' These le Bures were his lineage, who had taken 
 this name first in Normandy and then in Essex; and the 
 curious corroborative thing is that branches of them were 
 on the Thames in close local and other connection with the 
 Sinclairs there, showing the universal knowledge Sinclairs had 
 of each other then all over England. The Bures afterwards, 
 too, became dukes of Dorset, which is another fact binding 
 the south-western counties, in themselves, and also to Kent 
 and Essex. Sir Francis Palgrave's Rot Curiae Regis throws
 
 3 SS THE SINCLAI1 iLAND. 
 
 considerable light on th< [que but piquant relationships. 
 
 In in)(j-i2oo, for example, Hugo de I and Hugo de S 
 
 Glare are arbiters about lands in Tilbury, E ng to 
 
 Sibilla, aunt of John of Wirrefit Id in that county. Jordan de 
 
 I lures was a donor to St. .John's Abbey, Colchesl which 
 
 Budo St. Clare was founder, and the Jordans were a B »mei 
 family as early as the .Jordan who Bigned the kfontac 
 priory charter with Britel Sinclair. The II ! eys 
 
 are also of similar connections in old records with the Bun 
 Topesfield, Essex, having two of its manors in their | m, 
 
 Gereberl Bt. Clair's family being its regularly accepted pro- 
 prietors. The Brocs, of Canterbury fa rlj lords of 
 
 (Jobham, had I Icesl re, Bomersel , as our, perhaps t heir original, 
 scat, situate exactly between Somerton and Mai tock, belonging 
 to these Somerset Sinclairs. 'Simon,' the pet name of the 
 
 earls of Huntingdon, Northampton, Lincoln, and, had they 
 
 pushed their rights, of Northumberland, Cumberland, and 
 Westmoreland, was a favourite also with the Burt . But this 
 Robert Sinclair who appeared al ! rater, must have been the 
 son of the Robert of Tlu Hundred Rolls, 1274, and he died in 
 1309. The Richard Sinclair mentioned was one with Richard 
 le Bare. The name Robert, from Robert Fit/.- llamo's £ai 
 became popular even above their ancestor Richard's. It is 
 Robert, a grandson, that dies in 1337, the successor of the 
 Robert who died in 1309. lie was ] — 1 — 1 of Stapleton 
 manor, Andredseye, Saltmore, Bergham, and indefinite moor 
 and pasture lands. 
 
 In passing, it might be inquired if Walter de Stapleton, 
 bishop of Exeter and h igh- treasurer of England in the reign of 
 Richard II., was one of the lineage. When Queen Isabella 
 and Mortimer got the Spencers upset and hanged, and the 
 king dethroned, Walter, whom Richard had left guardian of 
 London for him, was beheaded in 1326 by the populace. 
 Tindal says, ' He was a great benefactor to Oxford, founded 
 and endowed Exeter college, and built Hart hall. The reason 
 of the mob's fury against him was that, being the treasurer 
 of the kingdom, he had persuaded the king's council to cause 
 the itinerant justices to sit in London, who finding that the 
 citizens bad offended in many things, deprived them of their 
 liberties, fined some, and inflicted corporal punishment on 
 others.' He gives Walsingham as his authority. Rapin says
 
 THE SOMERSET FAMILY. 3 lg 
 
 of him as a churchman, ' Walter Stapleton, bishop of I 
 was eminent for his learning and capacity in the adminisi 
 tion of the public affairs; and particularly for loyalty to 
 Edward II., bis sovereign, for which he lost his life.' Til 
 notes that, 'With him may be joined Walter of Merton, h\ 
 of Eochester, and founder of Merton college in Oxford in 1267.' 
 But this were opening too wide a field, the Stapletons being 
 of themselves a great English family, whatever their further 
 consanguinity. 
 
 Before leaving Edward the First's searches for anything 
 which had no charters, mention must be made of an Everard 
 Sinclair who in the hundred of Stane, county Somerset, was 
 challenged as to some payments and possession of tenements 
 said to be subtracted from the hundred and added to his lands 
 in Allberry. He was a side member. Robert died possessed 
 of Stapleton, Somerton, &c, and also of Budelege manor. This 
 is another of the same to Buddleigh in Devonshire, which 
 binds these Stapletons to Richard Sinclair of Granville more 
 closely. In 18 Ed. III., 1345, Elizabeth Seincler had at her 
 death Stapleton and its pertinents. In 1352, a Robert holds 
 these manors, who died in 1360, leaving two sons, Richard and 
 Ralph, between whom there was a division of the lands. 
 Richard married a Margaret, but died without issue, as also 
 died Ralph in 1369, the properties being left to their cousin 
 Robert, showing that there were several branches in the county. 
 In the Rolls of the Court of the Treasury is account of Richard 
 put in possession of his parts of Stapleton: 'Soms': Fcept' 
 est Johi de Bekynton esc' R in com Soms' qd accepta securitate 
 ab Rico fil' & her' Robti de Seynteler def de res' relevio 
 suo & eidem Rico de duabus partibus mami de Stapleton juxta 
 M'tok q de R tenet in capite p s'vicium medietatis uni 3 feodi 
 plen' seis hre fac salvo '— ' Somersetshire : It was commanded 
 to John of Bekington, escheator of the king in the county of 
 Somerset, that having received security from Richard, the son 
 and heir of Robert Sinclair, dead, of a reasonable sum, he may 
 make full possession to Richard of two parts of the manor of 
 Stapleton near Martock, which he holds of the king in capite 
 by the service of half one knight's fee.' The same escheator, 
 who had also Dorset county under his jurisdiction, has busn 
 of settling estates heired through an ' Edithe Seintelere.' The 
 manors of Athelardeston, Hywyssh, Chanflour, with returns
 
 77//: SINCLAI1 /'. 
 
 andadvo* on , were of her right in Somi ire,andPodyi | 
 
 ton and \\ esl Chikerill, with the pertinents, in I 1 
 
 There La a dati ntrj in th( e R n ferring I 
 
 which is worth transcribing : • K |' quinque marcU quai 'I hon 
 Wiu-M, solvil conces 11 RoBto Seintcler qd ipe du mafiti 
 
 de Btapleton '-11111 ptin' etc dare po 11 & eoncedere ^fato Thome 
 1 end ad totana vitam Boam sub forma 1 'The king, for 
 five marks which Thomas Warrene paid, granted to Bobi 
 Sinclair thai be may give 1 wo 1 the manoi 
 
 with the pertinents, &c., to Thomas the aforesaid, to be held I 
 Ins whole life as fee farm.' This may mean the much earlier 
 Robert who bad connectiona with a Thomas who lain 
 Somerton manor as already referred to. 
 
 i »f the present, the cou in Robei t, then 
 Berved in the British Museum, dated 29 Edward III.. 1356, 
 having devices on a shield on the still attached BeaL Se is 
 /,' hertus Saincler <f< ■' de Stapieton, and hia parch- 
 
 ment conveya a gift of lands to the famous abbey of Glaston- 
 bury in his own county of hire. The chief men of 
 the kingdom were the grantors of such, and this would be some 
 evidence of the position of these lords of manora if thea 
 not any more facts. He died in 1372, and hi ilia 
 Sentcler n< I year. Hi- manora were Stapieton, Botecle, 
 Coker, Somerton, etc., mentioi 
 
 In the escheat I 6 Ed. 1 1 L 
 
 , Ric. II. in the national record office, Fetter Lane, Lon- 
 don, where worlds of information are lying dead, _ood 
 as dead, in Btores of ancient M 5., Sibilla Sentcler, co. Some] 
 was the subject of an inquisition after death. Her properl 
 were put in list by the escheator, William de Cheyna She 
 ha.l the third part" of Stapieton, Milton, Fauconberge, part 
 of Lymington manor, Todenham manor, Somerton manor, 
 Compton manor, Dowden, &c. 
 
 After this the family became even more numerous in the 
 county, and the consequent divisions of fees imp ed the 
 
 branch gradually, till they passed, chiefly under local nan 
 which were the fashion, among the body of the great English 
 nation, which owes much to the decline of its nobility into 
 the stream of energetic everyday life. But there were good 
 branches who long held lands. Sir John Sinclair of the 
 Aldham Sinclairs, Kent, had the custody of Estham for the
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. 39 , 
 
 heir of the wife of William Sinclair of Kyngswoode in Edward 
 the Third's time, and the beginning of that of Richard II. 
 Laetitia, dying in 1377. Besides Estham she had part of the 
 manor of Castlecary, with the advowson of the chapel on it. 
 In 20 Ric. II., 1397, William Seyntclere held Ashebrunll 
 manor, and at the same time Robert held Andredseye manor. 
 There is a mention of a William Seint Cler in the Rolls of the 
 Treasury, Hen. III., Ed. I. and II., and also of a Nicholas, 
 his brother, as of Somerset. They had a cause at Westminster 
 about land, and Ivo of Ashelond was their fellow defendant. 
 John of Legyh and Isabella, the wife of Nicholas de llelmunden, 
 recovered some lands from the three in Croukhern. They are 
 not dated closely enough to be fixed in pedigree, and indeed 
 they may be an indirect branch of the main Somerset Sinclairs. 
 There is much yet to be gathered of these westerns of the 
 Hamo or perhaps, though less likely, of the Britel blood ; but 
 for the present their tale must end with Nicolas Seyntcler, 
 miles, who had Alicia as wife, the Calendars of Inquisitions 
 after Death of 19 Edward IV., 1480, state. This is forty-six 
 years after the extinction in the male line of the Aldham 
 Sinclairs of Kent, Sussex, and also of Chiselbergh and other 
 manors in Somerset. Sir Nicolas Sinclair, in all probability, 
 left heirs to his three properties of Pokeston, Cammelerton, 
 and Churchill. He would, however, by the manors he held, 
 seem to have been of yet another side branch from that in 
 which the Roberts were so numerous. It is difficult to do 
 sufficient justice to these holders by serjeanty and men of 
 distinction, on the materials yet made available, of which 
 there is good further abundance lying undisturbed, in Fetter 
 Lane and elsewhere, awaiting shape. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. 
 
 In the reign of Henry the Eighth, John Leland the itinerairl 
 and antiquary wrote. The Itinerary was begun and finished 
 in 1542, but his Collectanea lay in MS. till his death. Both 
 have valuable notes of the branches of the St. Clare family 
 in Devonshire and Cornwall. 'There is yet,' said he, • m
 
 392 THE SIN( LAIRS OF ESC, I. AS Ik 
 
 Devonshire one of the Saincl Cleres, :i man of meately fair 
 Landes that descendith of a lounger Brother of the Principal 
 llmisc of 8. Clere of Devonshire.' He tells something al 
 this 'principal house': ' Mr. Gage Controller of the King 
 House bath the substance of the lands of the Saincl 
 that was the chiefest of thai name yn Devon hire be the 
 Heire Generale.' Another of bis notes attaches suggestively 
 with this: 'One told me thai much of the Lande that Mr. 
 Gage hath is landes of the 8. Clares in Kente.' Thie Sir John 
 Gage, controller of the household, kniL'ht of the garter, w 
 the grandson of Eleanor Sinclair, the third daughter of the 
 Thomas Sinclair of Kent, Sussex, and half a dozen count 
 more, who died without male to heir him in 1435. ^ Leland's 
 hearsays are right, and certainly he had the b< mtem- 
 
 porary information, this Devonshire family was a branch of 
 the AMhain , v t. Clares, descendants of Richard, the son of 
 Walter of Medway, earl of St. Cler, and they might have bi 
 treated under that special lineage. But though it may be 
 true, as Leland says, that they were the 'principal hoc 
 they may serve to introduce another, and a greater English 
 house of their kin, whose first holdings were in their county. 
 As these were the 'principal bouse' of Devonshire, so the 
 other was of Cornwall, though the Litter did not confine itself 
 at all to one county, as the chief Devonshire family appears 
 to have done. The tatter's lands centred around Exeter, look- 
 ing towards the English Channel, while those of the Cornwall 
 family were on the other side of the county to the north, 
 looking over St. George's Channel and the estuary of the 
 Severn to Wales, where they had large properties. But the 
 name Leland gives those on the Exeter side, of the 'principal 
 house,' need not be disputed, in favour of the more famous 
 and probably wealthier kinsfolk, their importance belonging in 
 greater degree to Cornwall. 
 
 It was the regular way for a family to have its church 
 founded near its seat, and the - de Sancto Clam is 
 
 mentioned in 29 Hen. III., 1245, as giving more than double 
 the returns of seven others in the county. There were ' debts 
 to the king,' and in that year the bishop of Exeter was ordered 
 to distrain on these churches, the debtor being John "SVak, a 
 cleric. This was the home church of the elder main line. In 
 the Inquisitiones ad Quod Damnum, No. 128, A 14 Ed. II.,
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. 393 
 
 1321, appears, 'WilVus Seintcleer : Baunton balliva et hund' 
 parcett' maner' de Baunton: Devon' 1 — 'William Sinclair: 
 Baunton bailliwick and hundred, a portion of the manor of 
 Baunton, Devonshire.' These inquisitions were as to losses to 
 the king, and he here seems to make a claim to a pari of 
 Baunton manor, the seat of the ' principal house.' 
 
 It is the younger brother's descendants who have survived 
 
 to ruemory most. Sir William Pole, who died in 1635, leaves 
 
 account of them in his Collections, under the heading ' Todwell,' 
 
 a well-known place a few miles from Exeter. ' Todwell or 
 
 Tudwell,' says he, ' in this parish, was possessed by inhabitants 
 
 of that name. The first of which, that I find, was Jordan de 
 
 Todwilla, whom lineally succeeded John, Jordan, Raph, Raph, 
 
 and W r illiam Todewill, the last whose daughter Jone married 
 
 unto John St. Clere, of which name of St. Clere seven 
 
 succeeded each other, and the last being a man well qualified, 
 
 but that by prodigality have consumed his estate, whereof 
 
 being ashamed, did (a malo ad pejus) counterfeit lunacy, and in 
 
 that humour pulled down his house, and sold timber and 
 
 stones, affirming that none of his posterity could prosper as 
 
 long as that house, where so much sin had been commits d, 
 
 stood, and it was credibly reported that a dead man, booted 
 
 and spurred, was found in one of his fish ponds, and also 
 
 the bones of divers children. It is now built by Arscot, 
 
 a young brother of Arscot, of Annery, who married tin' 
 
 said Gabriel St. Clere's daughter, and is now the dwelling 
 
 house of their son.' Sir William gives other particulars of 
 
 the younger branch. 'A manor called Buddeleigh. after the 
 
 dissolution, was sold unto St. Clere of Tudwell, and by < tabriel 
 
 St. Clere sold unto Thomas Ford of Bagster, esquire.' This 
 
 St. Clere of Tudwell, probably bought it from his kinsfolk, the 
 
 Somerset house, who were in possession of it. If it could 
 
 be proved that it was heired from them, the younger branch 
 
 may have themselves been descendants of Richard Sinclair of 
 
 Granvill, Cornwall, and Wales, though it is safer to follow 
 
 Leland, these proprietors of Toodvill and Buddeley being not 
 
 very early possessors of them in any case. Of another pr< 1] »er1 y 
 
 Pole says, 'William Hidon had issue Eliza or Isabel, wife of 
 
 ' Richard Seint Clare of Todewill, and Clisthidon continued in 
 
 the name of St. Clare unto Gabriel, who sold the same unto 
 
 Edward Parker, esquire, his brother-in-law.' Again., 'John
 
 394 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Carew, of Bickleigh, married Gilbert St. Clare's daughter, and 
 died without issue.' Of Kynawersy, of 'the Knights ' Hidon, 
 which was a proi)erty made up of seven farms, he says it ' by 
 the heir came unto Seintcler.' It belongs to the Lord Idd< 
 lcigh (Northcote) family in later centuries. Those Binclairs 
 had a third part of Torrington Parva. Egidia, one of the 
 three daughters and coheiresses of William ('.news, became 
 the wife of William St. Clere, and brought tin- to him. 
 
 The Rev. Richard Polwhele, in his History of Devonshire, 
 published in 1797, goes over Sir William Pole's ground. 
 'The manor of Polsloe,' says he, 'to which Budleigh is subs< 1 
 vient, was sold after the dissolution to St. Clere of TidwelL By 
 < iilbert St. Clere it was sold to Thomas Ford of Bagster . . . 
 Tidwell, in this parish, is called in a deed of the thirteenth 
 century Toddewille, in another Thodewille. But its etymon is 
 generally referred to a well on this estate, which ebbs and 
 liows like the tide. Tidwell had lords so named. The first I 
 find was Jordanus de Tidwella. Joan, the daughter of the last 
 of that line, was the wife of John de St. Clere, of which name 
 (St. Clere) seven came successively in that pleasant place. 
 Gabriel St. Clere, after he had wasted his estate by excessive 
 hospitality, began to take his house to pieces, and sell the 
 timber, stone, and glass ; affirming that neither he nor his 
 posterity could prosper as long as one stone stood upon another 
 of a house where so many sins had been committed.' Polwhele 
 then goes on to tell the tale of Hubert Sinclair of Bridgenorth 
 fame, who died to save Henry the Second's life, 'we are told a 
 descendant of this family.' This has already been discussed, 
 Hubert proving to be one of the Hamo family who were 
 constables of Colchester ( 'astle, as far as can be discovered, 
 and not one of the Aldhams, though they are all one kin. 
 ' Tidwell,' he continues, ' was rebuilt by Arscot, a younger 
 brother of Arscot of Annery, who married Gabriel St. Clere's 
 daughter; in Sir William Pole's time it was the residence of 
 their son. About sixty years ago the Arscots sold Tidwell to 
 counsellor Walrond, who on his purchasing the estate built a 
 new house, leaving the old mansion as a residence for a tenant.' 
 
 These Sinclairs had also Nether Ex by heirship from the 
 lords Carew of those parts. On the western side of the parish 
 in which they had Toodville, was Hayes Faimi, the birthplace 
 of Sir Walter Raleigh. Many other brave men by sea and
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. 395 
 
 land were their familiar friends in the district of 'little 
 London,' as Exeter was called, from its importance and spirit. 
 It was the house of that farm, of which his father had the 
 remnant of an eighty years' lease, that Raleigh's still existing 
 letter of 26 July 1584, shows him to have wished to pun 1 
 so that he might enjoy again his early experiences. He was 
 unsuccessful in the attempt, great courtier of Elizabeth though 
 he then was. The Devon visitation of 1562, Harleian MS., 
 889, gives various items of information. The Fords were 
 bound by many affinities, and in the end made but too practi- 
 cal use of them. Joan Ford was the wife and widow of Gabriel 
 Saintclere, esquire ; George Ford married Joan Sinclair, the 
 daughter of Gilbert Sinclair of Budleigh, in Devon ; and a 
 Joan Ford married John Sinclair, son and heir of Gilbert. 
 There was a Mark Sinclair who married a lady of the name 
 Bois in this county. But the Hulls of Lackbeare are equally 
 intertwined. John Hull, armiger, four generations before this 
 visitation of 1562, had for second wife Johanna, daughter of 
 Richard St. Cleere of Ashperton or Ashburton, armiger, a 
 property which afterwards gave title to one of the Fords. 
 Hervey, the Clarence king-at-arms, in 1567 drew the shield 
 of William Hull of Larkebeare with seven quarterings, of 
 which the Talbot arms and the St. Cleere arms, per pale or 
 and az the sun in his beams counterchangcd, made two. John 
 Holbeame of Holbeame, of another distinguished Devonshire 
 landed family, had in the generation previous married Maria, 
 daughter of Gilbert St. Cleere of Budleigh. 
 
 There is one scrap in the printed Harleian Miscellany, which, 
 for all the parenthetic additions of some editor, does not give 
 much satisfaction: 'Gilbert St. Cleere of Toodwell, in county 
 Devon, married Joan daughter of John Strawbridge of ( Jolly- 
 ton, and had Agnes wife of John, Ann and heire of Thomas 
 Carew of Bykeley, county Devon [son of Edmund lord ( !ar< w 
 Joane wife of George Ford [of Islington aet 17. 30 1 1. V I 1 1. 
 George, William, Thomas, and Philippa St. Cleer the dauglri 
 
 At Wilton, of the great nunnery, in Wiltshire, in a church 
 there, a ten-inch monumental pictorial brass exists to John 
 Coffer and to his wife Philippa St. Cleer, this daughter. John 
 is in the kneeling attitude. The date is 1585. Above the 
 female effigy is the shield of her husband, an armiger or squire, 
 and one quarter has the St. Cleer arms : Per pale or and azure
 
 396 THE SIKCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 a sun counterchanged. A professional heraldist mighi on tl 
 evidence fix the house of Devonshire as a branch of the Kent 
 and Sussex great family, their arms being .-ill but the same. 
 There is no reason why they should not be fully so accepted, 
 
 if it be remembered that they were not the only family of the 
 lineage in that county. This John is also called Consure for 
 surname with some coats of anus, and is supposed to have heen 
 horn out of England. He was dapifer or steward to the fail 
 of Pembroke, then great master of the household to Queen 
 Elizabeth, and his surname Coffer, like SO many, grew from 
 his ollice. Names were at that time nearly as fluently poetical 
 as they were with the Greeks in their legendary mythological 
 period, lie had been steward or dapifer then for 38 years, 
 dying in 15S7 at the age of 77. While he held this office 
 royalty twice visited the earl at "Wilton. It is also said, 
 somewhat contrarily to prevailing literary tradition, that it 
 was then and there Sir Philip Sydney wrote the Arcadia for 
 the countess of Pembroke, his immortal sister, who 'herself 
 could sing Clorinda lays.' Here too, on Sir Philip's introduc- 
 tion, Edmundus Spencer Londoniemis Anglicorum Podarum 
 nostri seculi facile princeps, became a friend to Pembroke. 
 Spenser dedicated his poem, The Ruins of Time, celebrating his 
 heart's ideal, his ' Phillisides,' slain 1586 in peerless prime, to 
 the mourning sister, 'the right noble and beaut ifull ladie, the 
 ladie Marie, countess of Pembroke.' If Philippa Sinclair was 
 one of the Kent family, she would be close enough friends 
 with the Sydneys, who were tenants, ' keepers of sheep,' a 
 Howard once said, previously on her people's estates there. 
 Some of Spenser's lines actually seem cunning hidden compli- 
 ment to the steward of the earl, who no doubt was very kind 
 to him as a stranger. ' Coffers made of heben wood ' that in 
 them ' did most precious treasure hide,' is one of the poet's 
 visions, which Philippa Sinclair's husband may have been 
 substance for. At such a home the mind of England was in 
 its hisrhest flowerinc:. To have transformed Consure, for his 
 entertainment of the angel visitor, 
 
 ' Into that starre 
 In which all heavenly treasures locked are,' 
 
 susrsrests the rather wild but fruitful wantonness of Elizabethan
 
 THE DEVONSHIRE HOUSE. 397 
 
 art. However good an earl's dapifer, and friend to one of the 
 "worthiest, this destiny seems too elevated. 
 
 There is a notice of the younger branch in The Proa di 
 of Chancery in the Reiyn of Elizabeth, and it seems to be their 
 last appearance in records. S.s. 19. No. 61 reads, 'Elizabeth 
 Saintclere, wife of Gabriel Saintclere, plaintiff: Thomas Ford 
 and Robert Mylls, defendants : object of suit — pi-emises : 
 For x-elief of the plaintiff and her children, charging the de- 
 fendant Thomas Ford with keeping away her husband from 
 her and family, and by fraudulent means procuring a convey- 
 ance of the capital messuage, barton, and demesne of Tudwell, 
 on which the plaintiff had a settlement as jointure, and also 
 his manor of Budleigh, and lands in Budleigh and Ashburton, 
 and by fraudulent practices and promise of payment to plain- 
 tiff of a rent-charge of ^10, procured her to levy a line with 
 her husband of all his estates, to the utter ruin of the plaint ill' 
 and her family, the defendant not allowing her access to her 
 husband : county Devon.' Who the members of her family 
 were, male and female, it would be interesting to know, but 
 they seem to have made nothing out of this Ford of sharp 
 practice, and henceforward had to be of the people, to gain 
 some livelihood instead of the plentiful one thus lost to them 
 by the frantic follies of the ' well-qualified ' Gabriel, whose 
 conscience grew too tender for his people's good, and too fitted 
 for the schemes of designers. But total ruin cannot have come 
 suddenly to such wealthy landholders, and there is ground to 
 believe that they survived Ford's skill. In the J' inga in 
 
 Chancery: Elizabeth, No. 10 is another entry of interest: 
 ' Hugh Pomerye, esq., plaintiff ; Gawen St. Gere, Sampson 
 Letheby, Barbara his wife, John Keyner, and Thomas Jones, 
 defendants; object of suit to quit plaintiff 's possession \ pre- 
 mises, the manor of Engesdon, otherwise called the manor of 
 Over Engesdon, in the parish of Ilsington, and divers lands 
 in Ilsington the inheritance of plaintiff: Devon co.' Gawen 
 St. Clere is thus holding some of the patrimonial estates, and 
 the names with him are his managers or tenants. The parish 
 of Ilsington is at Ashburton, a town a dozen miles or more 
 south-west of Exeter, while most of the rest of the estates, as 
 Budleigh, Clisthidon, Tidwell, were on the other, the eastern, 
 side oAhe Ex river. Gawen St. Clere was a proprietor later 
 than Gabriel, but more with regard to him or Ins descendants
 
 398 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 has not been found. He lost in this case, as may be inferred 
 from Prince's assurance that the family of Pomeroy is oneoi 
 great antiquity, and that 'the particular branch from which 
 the noble house of Haberton springs was settled at Engesden, 
 co. Devon, temp. James I.' Viscounl Eaberton of the Irish 
 peerage, therefore, is the present represent alive of Gawen St. 
 Clere's opponent in the time of Queen Elizabeth. A Peter 
 Sentle devised a messuage and laud in .Morton I lainpsted 
 some time previous to this from his fee to Nicolas Losk< 
 but it may be doubted whether he is of the Devon houses at 
 all, though the locality argues in his favour. 
 
 This distinguished branch has some of its members in the 
 church, of whom one may serve for more. In the Valor 
 Ecdesiasticus of Henry VII., the estimates of the revenues of 
 the church, under Dn-anat' de Plymtr 1 : Infra arcMiaconat' 
 fy dioc. Exori in p'd'co ram. Devon, comes Clysthydon, of 
 which George Sinclair was rector. There is a detailed account 
 of the sources of its income from returns, offerings, lamb's 
 wool, the total being ^20 and 5d. money, which represents 
 more than that of a rectory in general now. 
 
 That the Devonshire house is the same with the Aldham- 
 Sinclairs, one other monumental record would seem to prove, 
 especially by similarity of arms. In Braybrook, Rothwell 
 hundred, Northampton, there is a mural monument with the 
 arms, a sun in its glory, and having two side inscriptions, 
 ' Mulier tirm us dominum ipsa laudebitur' — 'The woman rever- 
 encing her lord shall be praised,' and '■Fallow, gratia vana 
 pulchntudo — 'Gracefulness is fleeting and beauty is hollow.' 
 The chief inscription runs, ' Mariae ex antiquae et lionoratae 
 noUlitatis Sinclerorum Devoniensi familia oriundae BraybroMae 
 acerbiore fata defunctae uxori suae Jidissimae atque optimae 
 Thomas Valens moestus maritus summi amoris et sempiternae 
 pietatis ergo posuit : Obiit sub expectatione resurredionis spe 
 quarto die Septembris anno salutis hnmanae 1571 ; Lucius 
 monumenta manebunt.' It may be translated, 'To Mary, risen 
 from the Devonshire family of the ancient and honoured 
 nobility of the Sinclairs, his very faithful and good wife dead 
 by too bitter fate at Braybrook, Thomas Valence her surviving 
 husband has placed this therefore with the highest loye and 
 eternal devotion : She died in the hope of the resurrection on 
 the fourth day of September in the year of human salvation
 
 THE SIN CL A IRS OF CORNWALL. 
 
 157 1. Tears will remain her monument.' These arc the 
 Sancto Claro and Valoniis families in the dearest 
 relations in the sixteenth century, as they so often were I 
 the Conquest, and long before it in Normandy. The Vali 
 constables of Hertford Castle, most famous as earls of Pem- 
 broke, married to royalty; and, influencing in the first degree 
 England's interests as generals and statesmen, they are one of 
 the chief stocks of its brilliant history. The Sinclairs were evi a 
 of more ancient and honoured nobility than they, for if the 
 Valences had royalty ties by marriage the others had it by 
 lineage of blood. One other house, the last to be described, 
 will go further to corroborate this, which has been shown per- 
 haps too abundantly. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF CORNWALL. 
 
 The parish of St. Cleer is very well known by the strange 
 stones so interesting to antiquaries and all others called ; The 
 Hurtlers and Wringdon Cheese.' It took its name from the 
 family which were its proprietors. At the time when Domt 
 Book was written, the place was still called Treloen (from w hich 
 the Trelawney, beloved of 40,000 Cornishmen), Niveton, or 
 Trethac ; but in 1288 till 1291, when Pope Nicolas had senl 
 a commission over England for his taxatio ecclesiastica, or 
 annates to the full value without escape, the family had its 
 church of St. Clair in full order, which meant that its mansion 
 there was equally perfected, giving the name to the whole 
 district. The annate or yearly tax to Kome was 10 marks tor 
 the church. It had all the peculiarities of construct inn by a 
 Norman family. The massiveness of its doorway of Norman 
 ai'chitecture was celebrated, and this part of the building re 
 mained for ages to attest the wealth and civilisation of the 
 men of the period. St. Cleer is pre-eminently a mining parish, 
 and this most ancient of all British industries made tin- pro 
 prietors of it then of similar weight to those who now have 
 minerals in their estates. The Ferrers earls of Derly had 
 their names from being iron-masters, and were for this the
 
 4 oo THE SINCLA1RS OF l SGLAND. 
 
 first barons of Normandy. There is, or was, a chapel also of 
 fine building in St. Cleer, and the carefully built well a little 
 north of the church, attached bo it, was one of the wond< i 
 The wdl and chapel were • nnected with a great anci 
 nunnery here also. The baptistery of St Cleer and the way- 
 side cross are remnants of a state of thing 
 and brillianl in that end of the island. 
 
 Some think that the Styojj Stanim of all the soutb-v 
 families was situated thus in < !omwall,and one writ i ly 
 
 says that the Somerset family of Stapleton, Somerton, and 
 other manors, and the Devon houses, the principal and side, 
 wen- all branches <>f the original < '■ «rn%\ ;ill Lords of tin- parish 
 of St. Cleer, Cornwall. A suggestive fact is that the heralds 
 have bracketed Cornwall and I. Sinclairs as having the 
 Same arms, Azure a sun in its glory or; on a canton gu. a 
 limi pass, ar., which is somewhat different from tin- Kent 
 family. This Es ex family must have been from Hamo de 
 St. ('lair of Colchester Castle, fee-farmer of Colchester, the 
 signer of Stephen's charter in 1146; ami thus the heroic 
 Hubert, his son, could be considered of the Cornwall branch as 
 well ,-is the Essex. But thf Esses men who succeeded to 
 Eudo's extinct male line were Been to 1m- of tin- Qamoes, and 
 this paves the way to what appears the origin of thf branch, 
 namely, that they wore the descendant- of Richard Sinclair of 
 Granville in Normandy, of Biddiford in l>evon, of Neth in 
 Wales, and of various other estates in England and France, 
 the brother of Robert of Thorigny, the ' knight of Rya' They 
 are certainly of the same lineage thus, directly or Indirectly, 
 and it may not be of great dill'erence whether the Sinclairs of 
 St. Cleer, Cornwall, be accepted as his descendants, or of some 
 member of the second Essex family, of the nearest consan- 
 guinity to Richard. Richard de Granville was his local name, 
 and the history of his successors is by no means lost. Other 
 descendants of the Cornwall house are difficult to find. Had 
 we the remarks of Leland on the Cornwall branch, which were 
 originally in the MS. of his Collectanea, there might be full 
 knowledge; but the indexes to such information remain, while 
 the text is gone, like the tantalising abstracts of the lost chap- 
 ters of Livy's history. An entry in The Great Roll* of the 
 Pipe, 4 Hen. II., 1158, Nova Place-lit ia 1 Nov" Connhtiones, 
 shows a Hugo Sinclair, it may be, the king's butler, doing
 
 THE SIN CL AIRS OF CORNWALL. 
 
 4ci 
 
 business with Cornwall : ' Id vie redd Comp de xx m are p 
 Rofo pecfc Monet Cornuat Hugoni de Sco Claro lifcavit p br 
 R : Et quiet' est.'—' The same sheriff accounted for 20 marks 
 silver for Roger, the fisher of Moneth, Cornwall, paid to Hugo 
 Sinclair for king's tax.' 
 
 A Peerage, published in 17 10 at London, throws light in the 
 quaintest style on these affairs. Under the heading « Gran- 
 ville, earl of Bath,' the author's account comes. 'This 
 ancient and noble family,' says he, 'takes its descent from 
 Rollo, the first duke of Normandy, which Rollo had two sons 
 William his eldest, surnamed Long Espee, who succeeded to 
 his dukedom, and Robert his second son, who was the first 
 earl of Corboile; Richard, fifth earl of Corboile ; Hamon 
 surnamed Dentatus, sixth earl of Corboile. The said Hamon 
 Dentahis had two sons, the eldest called after his own name 
 Robert Fitz- Hamon ; the second, as it is still the custom of 
 those countries, after the name of one of his lordships, Richard 
 de Granville, which surname of Granville, or by corruption 
 Grenville alias Greynville, Graynfield, and Grana-villa has 
 remained to his posterity ever since. The said brothers, 
 Robert Fitz-Hamon and Richard de Granville, accompanied 
 William the Conqueror in his expedition into England, and 
 were present with him at the great battle of Hastings in 
 Sussex, where King Harold was slain, and for their signal 
 services the Conqueror bestowed on them very large gifts and 
 honours, particularly to Richard de Granville the castle and 
 lordship of Biddiford, with other lordships lands and posses- 
 sions in Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Buckingham, many 
 whereof remain to his posterity to this day. After the deatli 
 of William the Conqueror, the said Robert Fitz-Hamon choos- 
 ing twelve knights for his companions, of which his brother 
 Richard de Granville was one, entered Wales with an army. 
 and defeating the Welsh slew Rhese their prince : made an 
 entire conquest of Glamorgan, and made the rest of Wales 
 pay tribute to the king of England. Wherefore Ring William 
 Rufus, in consideration of these and other great services of 
 the said Fitz-Hamo, and being likewise his near kinsman, 
 created him a free prince in all his conquered lands in Wal< 
 holding the same in vassalage of the king as his chief lord : 
 which the said Fitz-Hamon divided between himself and his 
 twelve knights, his companions. King William Rufus dying, 
 
 2 c
 
 4 o2 77//; SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 the said Fitz-Hamon, who by his gn bite had now gained 
 
 himself the name of The Great Fii Hcmon, was sent by K ; • 
 Eenry I. as general of his army against Prance, when 
 received a wound by the push of a pike upon his temples 
 whereof he died. The style ol the said Robert I it Elamon 
 ran in this manner, Sir Robert Fitz-Hamon, l>y the 
 God, prince of Glamorgan, earl of Corboile, baron of Thorigny 
 and Granville, hud of Gloucester, Bristol, Tewkesbury and 
 Cardiff, conqueror of Wales, near kinsman to the king, and 
 general of his highness' army in France. Robert Fit/ Elamon 
 thus dying, and leaving issue, one only daughter, Richard de 
 Granville his brother, as the next beir male, inherited \>y I 
 Norman laws all the estate and honours of hi- family in Nor- 
 mandy, and thereby became earl of Corboile, baron of Thorigny 
 ami Granville. At Ids town of Neith in Glamorganshire he 
 founded an abbey for religious monks, and endowed the same 
 
 with all those lands he held in Wales. In hi- old a rl- 
 
 ing to the devotion of those times, he took upon him the sign 
 of the cross, and setting forward to Jerusalem died in his 
 journey; leaving issue his son Richard de Granville, earl of 
 Corboile, ,Ve., who married Adelyne, widow to Hugh Montford, 
 and elder brother to Robert de Bellemont or Beaumont, earl 
 of Mollent in France and the first earl oi Leicester in Eng- 
 land after the Conquest, hy Elizaljeth, daughter of Hugh, tin- 
 great earl of Vermandois, son of Henry, kin France; 
 mixing thereby with the Mood of the house of Normandy the 
 blood-royal of France; from whose loins are directly and 
 lineally descended this family, and the ancient family of the 
 Granvilles seated in Devon and Cornwall. No subject 
 surpassed them in valour and nobleness of birth, nor in loyalty 
 and fidelity to the crown, which they have most eminently 
 shown in all ages since the Conquest; amongst whom must 
 be always remembered that famous Sir Richard who in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, being then vice-admiral of England, 
 with a single ship encountered the whole armada of Spain, 
 and with 100 men fought against 10,000, of which memorable 
 action Sir Walter Raleigh has written the relation in a par- 
 ticular treatise; and Sir Bevill, who so generously lavished 
 his blood and substance in defence of his king and country in 
 the civil wars, dying like his great ancestor Fitz-Hamon fighting 
 with his pike in his hand at the battle of Lansdowne. He left
 
 THE SIN CL AIRS OF CORNWALL. 403 
 
 issue by Anne his wife, eldest daughter and coheir to Sir John 
 St. Leger, knight, John, his son and heir, who by an imme- 
 diate succession from father to son beginning at the year of 
 our Lord 876 from Robert the son of Hollo, being upwards of 
 800 years, was the thirtieth earl of Corboile, baron of Thorigny 
 and Granville. He was created by King Charles II., a 
 1661, the 20th April, earl of Bath, viscount Lansdowne, 
 baron of Biddiford and Kilhampton, groom of the stole, first 
 gentleman of the bedchamber to his majesty, lord warden 
 of the stannaries, lord lieutenant of the counties of Cornwall 
 and Devon, governor of Plymouth, &c, and one of the lords 
 of his majesty's most honourable privy council. This addi- 
 tion of honours he got by his signal services and sufferings in 
 the civil wars, having upon the death of his father Sir Bevil 
 taken upon him the command of his regiment, being then but 
 sixteen years of age, and being present in several battles and 
 sieges, particularly in the fight at Newberry, where he was 
 left among the dead. But he was happily preserved for an 
 action of the greatest glory and importance to his country ; 
 being the first and chief instrument of that famous negotiation 
 with his kinsman, General Monk, by which the royal family 
 was re-enthroned without conditions. In memory of which, 
 besides the aforesaid additional honours, his majesty King 
 Charles II. did pass a warrant under the privy seal, whereby 
 he obliged himself, and recommended it to his successors, that 
 in case of failure of male issue to General Monk, the title and 
 dukedom of Albemarle should descend to the said earl, and 
 be continued in his family. His said majesty did likewise 
 pass to the said earl another warrant for the earldom of 
 Glamorgan, it being the first title enjoyed in England by his 
 great ancestor Fitz-Hamon.' 
 
 But enough of this somewhat frantic eulogist. He is, how- 
 ever, supported with most of his facts by genuine historic and 
 even by poetic records. In Banks' Dormant and Extinct 
 Baronaqe, Granville, who was created earl of Bath, is 
 described as having descended in a direct line as heir male 
 from Robert Fitz-Hamo, lord of Gloucester and Glamorgan 
 under William the Conqueror, Rufus, and Henry First, son 
 and heir of Hamon Dentatus, earl of Corboile, lord of Thorigny 
 and Granville in Normandy. The most valuable evidence is 
 to be found in the words of his creation as earl in 1661,
 
 4 04 THE S1NCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 where Charles II. says of the new earl thai he haa his 
 'descenl from the youngest son of the duke of Normandj 
 we (the king) from the elde.-t.' 'I'lx • promise of the dukedom 
 of Albemarle and earldom of < S-lamorgan is also authent icafc 'I 
 in a similar way. The third and last of these earls of Bath 
 died in 171 1, but some of the present greatest bouses have their 
 chief distinction by being married with the females of these 
 Granville Sinclair*, as for example the duke of Bridgewater 
 and his nephew (it-orge Granville Leveson-Gower, the first 
 duke of Sutherland, the earls ( iranviUe, the dukesof Buckingham 
 and Chandos, with others such. Nicolas in his Extinct Peerage 
 also goes over the same ground. John Granville, the 1 
 earl of Bath, died, he says, in August 1701, his son Char! 
 the second earl t welve days after his hither, and the t hird and 
 last of this noble, or, by Charles the Second's own decision, 
 royal lino, died unmarried in 171 1. 
 
 There is a small literature in the library of the British 
 Museum on these Granvilles. Tennyson in his poem in Tfu 
 Nineteenth Century of March 1S78, Tht Revenge: a Ballad of 
 the Fleet, has revived, almost to the very words, the story of 
 Sir Richard as told by his friend Sir Walter Raleigh. He has 
 done little more than to cut the prose into Lengths to give it the 
 appearance of verse, and yet the inherent interest of the tale 
 made it successful and popular. Sir Richard fought iifteen 
 hours with his single vessel, ' The Revenge,' fifty-three Spanish 
 'armadas,' as Sir Walter calls them, doing their utmost to 
 destroy him. He wished, and tried all he could, to blow up 
 his vessel when he had not a man able to fight longer, but 
 being wounded he did not carry out his determination, and 
 borne on to the Spanish admiral's ship he died admired as much 
 by those enemies as by his nation. His ship had so shattered 
 several of the Spanish vessels that a storm next day destroyed 
 them. It was to save his own men of Biddiford, Devon, who 
 were seeking food and water at Flores, an island of the Azores, 
 that Sir Richard imperilled ' The Revenge ' against the whole 
 Spanish fleet. The love of Cornwall and Devon men to each 
 other, is considerable explanation of the extraordinary 
 gallantry they showed in the Spanish naval wars of Elizabeth's 
 reign. In the collection of Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii., his 
 writing faculty is shown by an account of his voyage for Sir 
 Walter Raleigh to Virginia in 1585, settling that famous
 
 THE SINCLAIRS OF CORNWALL. 
 
 405 
 
 colony. Raleigh, Drake, Gi'anville, Hawkins, are names t<> 
 conjure with in affairs of the sea. There was another Sir 
 Richard famous as a general. In 1644, when Charles I. went 
 to Cornwall and Devon, it was chiefly Greenvil who so 
 thoroughly heat the earl of Essex out of those counties, ;is 
 can be read in Rapin or any other historian of that period. 
 His stubborn siege of Taunton in 1645 is one of the features 
 of the royalist successes in the Cornish, Devon, and Somerset 
 districts, which alone fairly met and beat the parliamentarians. 
 But earlier than this, in 1642, Sir Bevill Granville, a member of 
 parliament, had been distinguishing himself as a royalist in 
 Cornwall. Of Sir Ralph Hopton, sent by Charles with 150 
 horse, Rapin says, ' Hopton was well received in Cornwall, 
 and seconded by Sir Bevil Greenvil, a Cornish gentleman, 
 who so ordered it that the county declared for the king.' 
 Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion tells of him. Sir 
 William Waller, the parliamentarian general, was defeated at 
 Lawnsdowne Hill 5th July 1643, but Sir Bevil was slain in 
 the battle. He was one of the great civil and military heroes 
 of the royalists. So much was this the case that Oxford 
 university published a volume of verses by thirteen different 
 hands, in sorrow for his death and eulogium of his noble 
 character. Its title runs, Verses by the University of (>■■ 
 1643 on the Death of the Most Noble and Eight Valiant Sir 
 Bevill Greenvil alias Granvil Kt., Wlto teas slain by the Rebells 
 at the Battle on Lansdowne Hill near Bath July the 5, 1643. 
 The preface of the book, which is still extant, says that such 
 academical honours were never before given even to royalty ; 
 and undoubtedly the writers each excel the other in the 
 graphic art of highest panegyric. There is a portrait of his 
 fine thoughtful regular manly face, his hair over his brow 
 short, and otherwise long, after the Cavalier fashion. It was 
 taken at the age of 39 in 1640. The inscription is, ' Anglorum 
 Magnanimus Bevillus Granvil Cornubiensis Eques auratus.'— 
 'The magnanimous Bevill Granvil of the English, a Cornish- 
 man, and a golden -spurred knight.' 
 
 But, perhaps, after all, none of the line deserves more 
 honour than John the son of Sir Bevil, who on the death at 
 Lansdowne of his father, though only a boy, took his place, 
 and fought as heroically as man or hero could. At Newbury 
 he was all but killed, as has been noticed. Charles the
 
 4 o6 THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Second's dark fortunes he followed throughout, and tl,- 
 :. grant of 1660, before the restoration, showing the great 
 love between the two, both well aware of their kinsmanship. 
 Besides the offices described, there was a gift of property tothe 
 v.i lu.- of ^3000:1 year made to bim, if the king Bhould g 
 bis kingdom again. It is history at one of it- greatesl cri 
 how John Granville actually made Charles the Second ki 
 of England, after a manner which seems hereditary in 
 the lineage, from Eudo Sinclair's management for William 
 Rufus downwards. Monk was perhaps L< - tl"- real can-.' of the 
 restoration than John, who for his services was created carl 
 of Hath, lord Lansdowne, etc., and Loaded with all kinds of 
 additional honours and promisea Nothing shows more the 
 hitter state of feeling which .lames the Second induced in tl 
 noblest hearts of England, than that this John is found making 
 himself master of Plymouth in 1688, so that the Dutch fleet 
 may ride secure there for the purposes of the revolution under 
 William, prince of < frange, and his wife Mary Stuart, daughter 
 of the runaway king. Such a change of attitude is tribute to 
 the ability ami judgment of John Granville, who evidently had 
 not lost his head to mere royalist toryism, as the weak souls 
 do to whatever side they go. There is a preface addressed to 
 this earl of Bath in one of the books, still to be seen, from 
 which the writer of the Peerage of 1710 must have taken 
 several of his passages; and in it there is a general of the 
 lineage, who did various brilliant art ions in Continental war- 
 fare. 
 
 Volumes could be written about these gallant Granvilles, 
 who, though they kept this their local name of Normandy, 
 were of the very same blood as the St. Clares of France, as 
 has been shown in many ways. It has not been fixed, how- 
 ever, that they were the only Cornwall Sinclairs ; for the 
 Complete Parochial History of Cornwall may not be wrong in 
 making those of St. Cleer of the same branch as those of 
 Tudwell, in Devon, and of Martock and Somerton, in Somerset- 
 shire. Indeed, in the fourth parliament at Westminster, an. 
 2 and 3, Philip and Mary, 1555, the member of parliament 
 for West Loe, co. Cornwall, was John Seyntclere or St. Clere, 
 esquire. This may be seen in Brown Willis's Notitia Parlia- 
 mentaria. Westloe on the south coast is about ten miles from 
 St. Cleer, which is due north from it, near Liskeard ; and this
 
 CONCLUSION. 407 
 
 John may have been the head of the Cornisb family at that 
 period. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 If the object had been merely to get the highest proofs of 
 distinction for the lineage, it would have been an easier and 
 a more decisive path to have followed its Norman history ; 
 and after identifying itself, as it does to investigation, with 
 the line, and the legitimate line, of Eollo, the ne plus ultra of 
 most kinds of fame might have then been reached. But it is 
 of far more interest to watch it as it mixes with what may be 
 called, descriptively enough, the ruck of England's nobility. 
 and with its commoners and people. As much as such 
 things can be now detected, struggling against thousands of 
 difficulties, there was hardly a house of English historic nobility 
 which had not some connection with the Ryes, the Corboilcs, 
 the Sinclairs, the Granvilles, or whatever other variety of 
 appellation this one lineage has in the lapse of time received. 
 The youngest son of the duke of Normandy was their common 
 ancestor; the eldest son of which same duke was the ancestor 
 of Charles the Second, as he and his authorities settled in 
 a time when genealogies and successions to properties were 
 things of the severest science. Had fees not been partible, 
 even to kingdoms, and had the Salique law been preserved 
 (both solvents avoided in matters of private estate to wonderful 
 extent), the monarch of England now would be of this lineage, 
 as the legitimate heir to Henry the First, the last male of the 
 Norman dynasty on the throne. The Plantagenets, Tudors, 
 and Stuarts were, on principles of just primogeniture and 'true 
 male consanguinity, interlopers. Since Henry schemed 
 for his daughter Matilda, the crown of England ha 
 the prize of adventurers, and not too high type even o\ 
 that class. The Fulcs or Plantagenets were a lot of Gallic 
 robbers, not of the gallant vikiug, but of the common thiei 
 complexion; the Tudors were the fruit of a mesalliance oi B 
 queen of England, daughter of a French mad king, to a little 
 brewer of Wales (and they have left sufficient proofs of their
 
 THE SINCLAIR , OF l NGLAND. 
 
 Welsh low origin by essentially weak cruel immoral Celtic 
 tyrannical inefficiency, Elizabeth, I i by far of them 
 
 being, in all human if not legal probability, noi Celtic at all, 
 but an energetic English London Bullen); the Stuarl 
 underling, provincial, and upstart, in thi I meanings of 
 
 iImi.sc wonls; but the Scandinavian Bollo line were royal time 
 out of mind, and their conquests have been all of 1 1 1 • - royal 
 order. The Norse hero was in some i tan his 
 
 anc Dudo, the chronicler, Bays of his agreement a1 
 
 Cler in 912, with Charles, king of France, for Normandy and 
 Britanny, thai 'Bollo pu1 his bandc into the king's hai 
 which never his father, grandfather, or greal grandfather « 1 i • 1 
 to any one.' Tfu HeimsJcringla is the Skaldic ancienl authority 
 which tells of this and other historic events. Kingdoms d 
 tinguished themselves, like the Sicilies, by getting ruled by 
 .such manly pink of men. Nothing better than, nothing equal 
 to, them, has ever walked or 'ganged 1 the globe; and their 
 sincerity of simplicity in all matters of thorough and genuine 
 rule, stamped them above competition as kings among the 
 comites or peer chief s of the peoples. Should huxtering ever 
 again become of second interest, and higher things call uj 
 the best class of men to best action, there are, breathing the 
 old spirit of valour for energetic deeds, heirs still in this 
 kingdom to the traditions and very blood and bono of the 
 strongest European family. Mosl are bidden by local nanus, 
 but some of the lineage are clear. The extremities of the island, 
 like its centre, were wealthy, and are not wanting yet in gallant 
 representatives of Rollo Kich (for this is the earliest surname 
 of all), the duke of Neustria, son of Reginald Rich, jail of 
 Maere, says the HeimsJcringla, and of Kaumdahl, in Norway, 
 and prince of the Orkneys, in Dudo of St. Quentin's words, 
 ' Senex quidam inpartibus liu'-iiv.' 
 
 Jonathan Duncan, B.A., paid particular attention in his 
 List of the Norman Barons who fought at Hastings, to the 
 localities in Normandy whence Sinclairs came. ' Saint-Clair,' 
 he says, ' is an arrondissement of Saint-Lo. The remains of 
 the old baronial castle are still visible near to the church.' 
 Around St. Lo all the blood-related families of Thorigny, 
 Granville, Eye, had their shares of land as the Saint-Claire 
 increased, the lords of the arrondissement, whence the general 
 name ; though it is to be noticed that they carried this local
 
 CONCLUSION. 4 o 9 
 
 name earlier from the Vexin, as the Corboil earls did their 
 title from Picardy. These relations of the reigning d 
 ultimately made their home near the Norman centres of Caen 
 and Falaise, and this fully explains their whole ante-English 
 Neustrian history. Indeed, St. Cler in the Vexin, and I !o 
 or Corboile on the Sornme, about where Agincourt and Cressy 
 battles were fought, had something of foreign or of pioneering 
 in them, and only in the region of Caen could the joy of 
 national life be fully felt. St, Lo grew around their castle, 
 and the province of Coustance was largely if not altogether in 
 the possession of this branch of the Kollo lineage, the earl of 
 St. Cler being their head, but not their wealthiest member, at 
 the conquest of England in 1066. Their prevalence is sug- 
 gested by Mark Antony Lower's reference in his Patrony 
 Britannica, which has some good paragraphs on the name 
 'Three places called St. Clair occur in the Itin. de Normandie, 
 in the arrondissements, severally, of St. Lo, Havre, and Yvetot. 
 The widely-spread importance of this family is shown by the 
 fact that about twenty coats of arms are assigned to the name.' 
 But he knows only the Scottish branch, and of them alone 
 there are many more coats than these. Under ' Saint Clair, 
 Saint Clere,' he writes, 'This name, usually corrupted to 
 Sinclair, is of French origin, and springs from the gnat 
 family De Sancto Claro, in France.' He gives the right 
 account of William of Roslin, and notes that ' Richard de Sent 
 Cler occurs in the Domesday of Norfolk. ' He quotes from 
 Father Hay's Genealogie of the Sainte Claires of Bosslyn, 
 ' William Saintclair was second son to Walderne, earl of 
 Sainctclair in France, whose mother was daughter to Lhik.' 
 Richard of Normandy, father to William the Conqueror. Ee 
 was sent by his father to Scotland, to take a view of the 
 people's good behaviour. He was able for every game, agree- 
 able to all company, and styled the "seemly Saintclair." The 
 report of his qualifications came to the queen's ears, who 
 desired him of her husband because of his wisdom. The king 
 made him her cup-bearer ... He got also of the king ami 
 queen the barony of Roslin.' 
 
 A work could be written on the Sinclairs of Normandy and 
 of France. Even in very modern times there have been dis- 
 tinguished men of the lineage who, in all essential point 
 birth, language, and action, were entirely French, in 1S20
 
 4io THE LAIRS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Charle Ferdinand, the baron de St. Clair, colonel di cavaleru , 
 figured remarkably about th< unation of the duo de 
 
 Berry, 'Ji <zis assassinV He protested to the chamber that 
 he had warned the \ ery highesl authorities, police ■• 1 1 1 < 1 other, of 
 the conspiracy \ bul that these, being themselves involved in 
 it, had arrested and imprisoned him for hi- loyalty to his 
 Bourbon prince. His papers are published in book form, and 
 there are ninny references to his exl raordinary military i 
 aux bords du Rhin, dans Varm C en Angleterre, auz 
 
 Antilles, en Hollande, en Egypte, en Italic, en 1 I 
 
 tugal, in Russie, et en Allemagne. He bad sen twenty-three 
 years' service, got eighteen wounds, and gained innumerable 
 decorations. His enemy, M. Decazes, minister of pol 
 afterwards count, put him into greal difficulty, 
 accepted the cross of the legion of honour which one of the 
 Bourbons offered him, through the prince of Cond^, two y© 
 before the twenty-five yen- of service formally needed wi 
 expired. The honk is of historic in' as to a curiously 
 
 unsafe time. The baron does not scruple to bell ftf. Deo 
 his mind, ' N'etait point un parvenu comme lui, ma 
 descendant des dues di Normandu (du cdte maternel) et 
 comtes des Orcadei ei modes; un descendant de Jean comU de 
 Saint Clair qui en 1040 1 etre depouiUi la 
 
 plus brillante que de reconn&itre Cromwell; un descendant de 
 Henri comtt d< Saint-Clair qui en 1689 fui le seul membre des 
 parlement Britannique qui osait fain un protestation energigue 
 
 tre Vavenement de Guillaume prince d'Orangt <m trdm ■ 
 & a-/: le petit-JUs d\ Jean sin d\ Saint-Clair qui en 1715 
 sacrifia des biens immenses, et fui oblige de s'expatrier par son 
 
 rgique devout rm nt a la meme cause ; lefils de t harles Gedeon,, 
 baron de St. Clair, colonel commandant le regiment royal 
 s 'dois, 'i'ii apres a re m vie au service des rois de 
 
 France, fut sacrifie a Dijon le 29 Janvier 1793; victime de son 
 devourment pour Louis XVI.' — 'He was not an upstart like 
 him, but a descendant of the dukes of Normandy by his 
 mother's side ' [as well as his father's], ' and of the earls of the 
 Orkneys and the Hebrides ; a descendant of John, earl of St. 
 Clair, who in 1649 preferred to be despoiled of a condition in 
 life the most brilliant rather than recognise Cromwell : a 
 descendant of Henry, count of Saint Clair, who in 16S9 was 
 the only member of the British parliament who dared to make
 
 CONCLUSION. 4II 
 
 an energetic protest against the coming of William, prince of 
 Orange, to the throne of the Stuarts ; the grandson of John, 
 Lord Sinclair, who in 17 15 sacrificed immense property, and 
 was obliged to leave his country for his strong devotion to the 
 same cause; the son of Charles Gideon, baron de St. Clair, 
 colonel commanding the royal Swedish regiment, who after 
 having consecrated his life to the service of the kings of France, 
 was sacrificed at Dijon 29th January 1793, the victim of his 
 devotion for Louis the Sixteenth.' The name seems to have 
 a trick of being in at the chief events, and these extremely 
 characteristic Frenchmen, though of the Scottish branch, are 
 so European- in their relationships to persons and history, that 
 they may have footing wherever the lineage is discussed, and 
 they throw some light on English doings undoubtedly. 
 
 David Sinclair, professor of mathematics in the university of 
 Paris, was a stirring figure from 1600 till 1622. There are 
 some Latin tracts of his extant, one of them forming sixteen 
 quarto pages of hexameters, celebrating the coming of James 
 the First to the English throne in 1603, and finishing appro- 
 priately with an astronomical diagram of the king's horoscope. 
 There survive also thirteen Latin pages of his criticism of 
 Euclid and Archimedes. His skill of drawing gets him from 
 one of his admirers the title of eruditissimus Apelles, while 
 Le Sieur de Philalethe, Disciple de Monsieur de Sainct-Clair, 
 Conseiller et Professeur du Hoy es sciences mathematigues 
 attempts the squaring of the circle under his auspices. In 
 1607 David addresses Latin verses to the queen of France, 
 Margaret of Valois, on high political ground. Two lines of a 
 poem by 'A. M.' in his own praise may complete notice of 
 this distingue : 
 
 ' Ergo te (Sanclare) manent tua debita Iaudis 
 Praemia ; et ingenio debita palma tuo.' 
 
 Longfellow in Hyperion tells of some mediaeval or earlier 
 Abraham de St. Clair who recorded the fish-sermon of St. 
 Anthony, and Goethe, besides the male character of one of his 
 fictions, has a literary lady of the name among his court 
 amateur actors; but the searches would be endless of such 
 kind. The Franciscus de St. Clara of the Bodleian Library 
 was only a Sinclair as alias of his real name of Davenport, the
 
 412 ////: Sim l All 01 l NG1 
 
 author of the famous book of the eventeenth century, I >• u 
 Ha. 
 The great Cardinal Kuj Charo of the thirteenth 
 
 century, who first put the Bible into verses, and who wrote 
 perhaps the longest and ablest commentary upon it done b 
 theologian, is one <>f the lineage, tin- Italian pronunciation 
 accounting for the slight difference in the spelli the 
 
 name. To this it mighi be added, for problem, whethi 
 real Baint, if such have been, the St. ' lare lady whom 
 Francis of A- isi encouraged with • from her 
 
 friends for the religious life, was no! a representati 
 Shakespeare in Measun for M > iks of the 
 
 rest i.tint 
 
 • Upon the i, the votarista "f St. I 
 
 The violent Protestant, Anthony Munday, in hi I '■-/< 
 R " /.'/', published in 1590, tells with amusing wrath 
 the pilgrimages which were then made to Mount Falcon 'to 
 
 the body of St. Clare.' As climax In- 'There is li 
 
 wise by her a glass of tears thai she shed daily in remembrai 
 of the bitter passion of our Saviour; which ay, 
 
 are as fresh and sw© bhey were on the first day.' I 
 
 (here can be going too much afield in getting I 1 I aly, 
 Franco itself heing enough for illustration. One of 
 most interesting passages is Stanislas the king of Polar 
 information to Sir John Sinclair, the agriculturist, when on 
 his European tour, that there were then three noble famil 
 of Sinclairs known to him in Sweden. There are famili 
 still existing of the name in France (though the famous 
 Turgots got their lands in Normandy probably by marriage), 
 Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Norway; and much dis- 
 tinctive could be gathered of them, their numbers being always 
 few compared with the distances they are spread and the deeds 
 they some way or other come to do or to be near when done. 
 A Chevalier von Sinclair is one of the notable German 
 dramatists. To enter other field, however, now than the 
 political and social, would bring down an avalanche of new 
 matter, and the present purpose will not admit of such. 
 Delivered from all further digression or addition, the list of 
 the arms of the different English families may close the 
 subject.
 
 CONCLUSION. 4I3 
 
 St. Clere [Suffolk], or. a lion ramp. gu. 
 
 St. Cleer [Dorsetshire], ar. a lion ramp. gu. in a border sa. 
 
 crusally or. 
 St. Clere [Cornwall and Essex], az. a sun in its glory, or. ; on a 
 
 canton gu. a lion pass. ar. 
 St. Clere [Essex], gu. a fesse betw. tliree lions' beads erased or. 
 St. Clere [Suffolk], or. a lion ramp, tail forked and nowed gu. 
 
 collared ar. 
 St. Clere [Suffolk], or. a lion ramp, tail forked gu. collared ar. 
 St. Cleere, az. a sun in bis glory. 
 St. Cler, or. a lion ramp. gu. within a bordure sa. charged witli 
 
 eight bezants. 
 St. Clere, ar. two bars gu. Crest, a fox current ppr. 
 St. Clere, az. a star of sixteen points or ; on a canton gu. a lion 
 
 pass. ar. 
 St. Clere, or. a lion ramp. gu. tail forked collared of the field. 
 St. Clere, or. a lion ramp. gu. within a bordure sa. 
 St. Clere, or. a lion ramp, within a bordure sa. charged with cross 
 
 crosslets of the field. 
 St. Clere, ar. a cross engr. sa. voided of the field. 
 St. Clere, az. on a chev. ar. between three suns or. as many mullets 
 
 pierced sa. 
 St. Clere, az. three suns or. two and one. 
 
 St. Clere [Devon], per pale or. and az. the sun in his beams counter- 
 changed. (Hulls of Lackbeare). 
 St. Clere, az. three suns within a bordure engr. or. 
 St. Clere, gu. a fesse betw. three boars' heads, ar. 
 St. Clere, az. a sun in its glory, or. 
 St. Clere [Sussex], az. the sun in splendour, or. (viscounts 
 
 Gage). 
 St. Clere, per pale or. and az. a sun counterchanged. 
 St. Clere, or. a lion ramp. gu. collared ar. 
 St. Clere or St. Cleere, ar. a saltire sa. 
 
 Seyncle [Essex], gu. a fesse betw. three lions' heads erased or. 
 Seyncler, gu. a fesse betw. three lions' heads erased ar. 
 Sonclere or St. Clere [Devonshire], per pale or. and az. three suns 
 
 counterchanged. 
 Sonnclere, az. on a chev. ar. betw. three suns or. as many mullets 
 
 pierced gu. 
 Sonneclere, per pale az. and or. three suns counterchanur,!. 
 Sinclair, ar. on a cross sa. three crescents in fesse or. 
 
 The secret working of English life for centuries after the 
 Norman Conquest cannot be understood without full realisation 
 of the closeness of family ties between the Norman dynasty mid 
 their chief nobles. The political usefulness and craft (learnt
 
 4U THE SINCLAIRS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 1'n mi violent ambitions of kin Long before 1066 in Neu tria) of 
 encouraging local instead of lineage names, hid the actual 
 nepotism which whs the genuine a those centuries as to 
 
 rule. The hain't has also hitherto obscured beyond recognition 
 to historians the best class of facta by which to ilh, uur 
 
 national history. A new departure, full of hope and pregnant 
 with result, can now be made. What was fashionable with 
 the royal and first families of the land, spread by imitation 
 through the kingdom; and the smallest proprietors who 
 divided their fee or fees, produced as many fresh surnames as 
 they had sons to provide for. Extremes meet, and this 
 system became as dillicult to realise truth from, without 
 scientific as well as fortunate enlightenment and especial 
 study, as the exactly opposite plan of naming whole clans by 
 the same surname. An endless series of places is nearly, at 
 first sight, as unmanageable as a string of Johns, Donalds, 
 Thomases, Jameses ad infinitum, all with one and the sa 
 conclusion, or without it as with the Welsh. Stubbs in his 
 Constitutional History, who realizes the value of Norman nerve 
 to England more generously than any of the < >xford school of 
 historians, of which he is a substantial member, says that 
 nearly all the Norman nobility were of the stock of Rollo ; and, 
 with the further explanation of the necessity of hiding the 
 family oligarchy it was, from the conquered and en\ ious Saxons, 
 it will be seen that there was far more of the blood of the dukes 
 of Normandy in ruling and landed ranks than the usual 
 writers had a dream of. The same state of things, as applied to 
 the Sinclair branch of the ducal stock, gives the valuable 
 inference that, under many and most varied local names, it 
 makes up a valuable contingent of what Shakespeare writing 
 of the English in Richard II. patriotically and poetically called 
 ' this happy race of men.' 
 
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