Selected case-studies of Anglo-Norman families

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Selected Family Studies

The following summaries are intended to complement the Lands of the Normans database, providing more detailed discussions of several of the leading Anglo-Norman families mentioned on the Rotulus de Valore Terrarum Normannorum. These highlight some of the difficulties that the sources pose to historians seeking to reconstruct Anglo-Norman genealogies - a necessary prerequisite for any analysis of family strategies, inheritance practices, and so on. The sample presented here is small but it does provide some contrasts between families: far more can be said about the various offshoots of the powerful Hommet clan, for example, than the family of Amundevilla.

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The following abbreviations are used in the footnotes.

Abbreviations

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AMUNDEVILLA

In 1172 Roger de Amundeuilla or Amondevilla was holding 1 fief in the bailliage of Tinchebray. He most probably derived his surname from Mondeville (CA, cant. Caen). He was already associated with King John before his accession, witnessing John's acts as count of Mortain for the nuns of Mortain (issued at the count's castle of Torigny), the canons of Bourg-Achard near Rouen, and the canons of Plessis-Grimoult (issued at Lillebonne, another of the count's chief properties). 1 He also appeared as John's steward in a charter that was issued at the Norman abbey of Lyre, but which was in favour of the abbey of Ardenne near Caen and concerned the nearby Gloucester castelry of Évrecy (both of which are very close to Mondeville). John had become earl of Gloucester in right of his wife in 1189, and may have thereby acquired a pre-existing connection between Roger and the honour of Gloucester in Normandy; and in 1203 Roger had custody of the heir of one of the tenants of the honour of Gloucester, Robert of Cardiff, probably in South Wales. Roger's connections with Count John may well have caused his lands at Airan and Condé to be seized by ducal bailiffs during John's revolt against Richard the Lionheart in 1193-4. As the database shows, he also acquired several manors in Worcestershire through his marriage to Mabel, the widow of Hugh de Say of Richard's Castle (Herefs.). 2

Roger played a role in the administration of Normandy; on 18 March 1200, for instance, he was one of the justices who held an inquest into the rights of Gilbert Malesmains and the abbey of Troarn in the marshes near the abbey. His connections with Norman administration probably explain his appearance as a witness for William du Hommet, constable of Normandy, when the latter pledged Langrune-sur-Mer to William Poignard, the vicomte of Caen, at the Caen exchequer (1190 x 1196), and he also acted as a surety for the same constable of Normandy. 3

Roger lost his English lands in 1204, but there is little evidence for him in Normandy thereafter. He is unlikely to have been the man of this name who appears in Lincolnshire in 1205. In 1225 'Petronilla de Amondeuilla, sister of Roger de Amondeuilla, knight', granted half the patronage of the church of St-Aignan-de-Crasmesnil (CA, cant. Bourguébus) to William Acarin, dean of St-Sépulcre de Caen, and as 'Petronilla de Crasmesnil, sister of Roger de Amondevilla, knight', she enfeoffed a certain William Le Guerrier of Falaise with property at the same locality. 4

In the late twelfth century Roger had consented to and sealed a charter of Helias de Amondeuilla, granting property at Touffréville (CA, cant. Troarn) to the abbey of Troarn. No family connection has been established here, but it seems likely that Helias represented a well-documented junior branch of the same family, which by 1204 was more firmly established in England than Normandy but, as the charter for Troarn shows, retained some land in its ancestral homeland. A man called Helias de Amundevilla appeared in the bailliage of Gavray in 1172 and as a tenant of the bishop of Lincoln in the reign of Henry II: he was apparently a younger son of Jollan or Goslin de Amundevilla, steward of the bishop of Lincoln, by Beatrice, daughter of Ralph Paynel, and had succeeded his brothers Walter and William by 1168 (the Goellenus de Amundevilla who held land near Caen from the abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel in the third quarter of the twelfth century was presumably either their father or another member of the same family). Helias was dead by early 1200, when his daughter Alice complained that her brother Jollan had not allowed her the dowry that her father had allotted to her at Winthorpe (Leics.). Jollan appears to have remained in England in 1204, but had been succeeded by his brother Peter by Michaelmas 1211. Another Helias de Amondeuilla, son of Ralph, appears in various parts of eastern England in the 1210s and 1220s and was one of the coheirs of his uncle, the Huntingdonshire baron Nigel de Louvetot.5

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ANGERVILLE and l'ISLE

Amongst the confiscated lands listed in the 'Roll of the Value of the Lands of the Normans' of June 1204 was Old Ingarsby and Willoughby Waterleys (Leics.), which had been forfeited by a certain Robert d'Angerville. Any attempt to identify Robert's family reveals the difficulties of trying to align Norman and English evidence when assessing the impact of the 'loss of Normandy'. A number of people called de An(s)gervilla appear in Normandy and England at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, but it is unlikely that they were all from the same family or even all took their name from the same place. The William d'Angerville who appears in 1201 as a benefactor of the abbey of Aunay at Le Repenty (CA, cant. Aunay-sur-Odon, cne. St-Georges d'Aunay) may have taken his name from the hamlet of Angerville in the same commune (although the reverse is possible); while the Reginald d'Angerville who endowed the abbey of La Noë near Évreux in 1208, witnessed by his brother William, presumably derived his name from Angerville (EU, cant. Évreux-sud).

A William d'Angerville, son of Robert d'Angerville, issued a charter in April 1199 concerning properties near Angerville-l'Orcher (SM, ar. Le Havre, cant. Criquetot-l'Esneval), and he and his son Robert, both described as knights, issued an act in 1222 (AD Seine-Maritime, 18 HP 2, two acts). In the first of these acts, William d'Angerville confirmed grants at Gonfreville made by Richard de Moulines (a landowner from the Cinglais district south of Caen) to the abbey of Le Valasse. Hence he must be the William d'Angerville who was holding lands in the fief of Clare at Angerville-l'Orcher and in the fief of Moulines at Gonfreville-l'Orcher (SM, ar. Le Havre, chef-lieu du cant.), c. 1207 and c.1220 (RHF, xxiii, 641, 645, 708, 709). In 1229, however, the unnamed heir of this William, named with his mother Alice, was under age and in royal custody; perhaps he was Robert's son (Jugements de l'Échiquier, no. 435).

The Robert d'Angerville who lost the manors of Old Ingarsby and Willoughby Waterleys (Leics.), and also a knight's fee in Sproughton (Suffolk), in 1204, had held them from Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, to whom King John restored them early in 1205; he had also forfeited Newbottle (Northants.), in the honour of Leicester. Robert d'Angerville recovered Ingarsby and Willoughby quite quickly, however, for in 1210 he was resisting a claim to them from John du Hommet, and was also claiming Newbottle from the same John du Hommet in 1207. The evidence from the royal courts shows that this Robert d'Angerville was a kinsman of John du Hommet through John's mother Hawise (Hadeisa), daughter of William de Crèvecœur and sister or half-sister of the Norman baron Robert de Bonnebosq; although ambiguously worded, the court roll entry appears to state that Hawise's mother was also Robert's grandmother. These texts would mean that Robert d'Angerville was the son of another sibling or half-sibling of Robert de Bonnebosq. The lands in question appear to have descended to John du Hommet from the family of Le Pin, which had held Newbottle in the mid-twelfth century. 6

Genealogical Table: Hommet-Cléville

Can we identify the family of Robert d'Angerville of Old Ingarsby, the cousin of John du Hommet? A Robert d'Angerville appears in the Pays d'Auge in the years immediately following the Capetian conquest of Normandy (RHF, xxiii, 709); if this were the English Robert d'Angerville, it this would explain why he was treated as a 'Norman' by English royal officials between 1204 and about 1207. Moreover, the lands of a Robert d'Angerville or Robert Teillart at Dozulé (CA, ar. Caen) and St-Étienne-la-Thillaye and Beaumont-en-Auge (CA, cant. Pont-l'Évêque) were taken into royal hands before c. 1220. It is tempting to believe that this was Robert d'Angerville of Old Ingarsby, so that the adoption of the name Teillart referred back to the ancestors of the family of Le Pin from whom, as we have seen, the English Robert d'Angerville probably inherited Newbottle. It is therefore quite possible that the English Robert d'Angerville was the same man as Robert Teillart; that he initially remained in Normandy, appearing in the earliest records of Norman fiefs after the Capetian conquest; and that by 1207 he had returned to England, forfeiting his Norman estates and laying claim to his ancestral English lands. 7

Robert Teillart of Angerville presumably took his name from Angerville (CA, cant. Dozulé). The lordship of this particular place called Angerville came into French royal hands in or soon after 1204 (QN, no. 26). In addition, a William d'Angerville held a fief c.1220 at Cléville, which had been one of the main properties of Jordan, father of John du Hommet and husband of Hawise de Crèvecœur (RHF, xxiii, 621). William's family had been prominent in the region of Cléville since at least the beginning of the twelfth century; he probably took his name from the same Angerville as Robert Teillart . An earlier William d'Angerville and his son Robert appear c.1105 in an act concerning the village of Airan, near Cléville. In the second half of the twelfth century, a William son of William d'Angerville made a grant to the abbey of Troarn concerning Airan, with the consent of his mother Hawise, who renounced any dower rights at Airan; since he had no seal, the act was sealed by a knight called William Gernon. William issued a similar act witnessed by a certain Thomas Gernon (BN, ms. lat. 10086, fols 102r - 104r). Other evidence shows that this Hawise was the daughter and coheir of Ralph de l'Isle, and that she had four husbands in succession, William d'Angerville, William Gernon, Robert de Juvigny, and Ralph de Merlay (probably in that order); when William Gernon sealed the act of the younger William d'Angerville, it was as his stepfather and perhaps his guardian as well, while Thomas Gernon was the half-brother this William d'Angerville. Hawise may even have had another husband before William d'Angerville, for it is not clear who the father of her eldest son, Geoffrey, was; he is unlikely to have been the Geoffrey d'Angerville who appears in the Bessin in 1219 (BN, ms. fr. 21659, pp. 32-3).

Was Robert d'Angerville of Old Ingarsby also a son of Hawise de l'Isle? Her son William d'Angerville did have a brother called Robert, mentioned in 1201, but the context shows that this was almost certainly his half-brother Robert de Juvigny, who was then facing claims to his property from his cousin John of Earley. The evidence for Hawise's offspring is abundant but it does not reveal a son called Robert d'Angerville. By William Gernon, apparently her second husband, Hawise had Thomas Gernon, a Cotentin landowner and already a knight by 1196; she was presumably also the mother of Thomas's brother John, and possibly of another William Gernon, a monk. By Robert de Juvigny, who held Cardonville on Hawise's behalf in 1180, she had two sons, Robert (fl. 1208) and Peter (fl. 1222); one of them was the father of Peter de Juvigny (fl. 1247) who pledged Fontenai-sur-Orne and Tanques (near Argentan) to Guérin de Glapion c.1207. 8 The Borgugnia, wife of Eustace de Bueuill' who had inherited land from her father Robert de Juvigny (de Jouigneio) in the Forest of Fécamp may also have been Hawise's daughter; although this is a long way from the known lands of Robert de Juvigny, husband of Hawise de l'Isle, it should be noted that it was the viscount of Caux who summoned Hawise's son Robert de Juvigny to a court in Normandy in 1200 (AD Seine-Maritime, 18 HP 2; Curia Regis Rolls, i, 257).

Genealogical Table: l'Isle, Angerville, Juvigny
Map: The Norman property of Hawise de l'Isle and her family

The property of Hawise de l'Isle and her children does not reveal any direct connection with Robert d'Angerville of Old Ingarsby. Hawise's inheritance included property at Hazelbury Bryan (Dorset), Neuville-sur-Port and Huppain (CA, cant. Ryes, cne. Port-en-Bessin-Huppain), Cardonville (CA, cant. Isigny), Bayeux, and Fresnay-Buffart (apparently close to Falaise). Her sons disputed their Anglo-Norman inheritance with each other, with their mother, and with their cousin John of Earley, son of Hawise's sister Ascelina. In 1200-1, when Hawise was still alive, Robert de Juvigny was holding Hazelbury while Thomas Gernon held Neuville-sur-Port, but after her death this came to the Juvignys, presumably as compensation for the loss of Hazelbury in the wake of the Capetian annexation of Normandy. Hawise also appears at Fontenai-sur-Orne as 'Hawise lady of l'Isle' with her son Robert de Juvigny, who described himself, with some economy of truth, as her heir. No man called Robert d'Angerville was involved in these disputes and transactions, however.9 The complex evidence for Hawise de l'Isle and her progeny does not reveal whether Robert d'Angerville of Old Ingarsby was her son, or whether he even derived his name from the same place called Angerville as her first husband. It would certainly be possible that Hawise was his mother, if her husband William d'Angerville was the son of John du Hommet's grandmother, the wife of William de Crèvecœur. We may also note that in the honour of Osmanville in 1179-80 Robert de Juvigny held half of Cardonville (CA, cant. Isigny), which had reverted to Hawise by 1197-8; yet John du Hommet also had a fief in the honour of Osmanville, confiscated when he returned to England (MRSN, i, 7; ii, 374; RHF, xxiii, 709). This is slight evidence linking the Robert d'Angerville of Old Ingarsby and his cousin John du Hommet with William d'Angerville of the Pays d'Auge and also with his wife Hawise de l'Isle. It is entirely possible that the Robert d'Angerville who lost and then regained his lands in the honours of Bigod and Leicester was the son of William d'Angerville and Hawise de l'Isle; that he derived his name from Angerville in the Pays d'Auge; and that he was related not only to John du Hommet - perhaps through his paternal grandmother - but also through his mother to the families of l'Isle, Gernon, Juvigny, Merlay, and Earley. Unfortunately, this reconstruction must remain entirely hypothetical, but it represents one of the less contradictory matches to the available, often conflicting evidence.

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BACON ('Norman' family)

In the reign of William the Conqueror, William Bacon held land in the Bessin from Hugh d'Avranches, earl of Chester, and in the reign of Henry I, Richard Bacon was described as the cognatus et familiaris of Ranulf Meschin, viscount of Bayeux and earl of Chester (d.1129).10 By the mid-twelfth century, there appears to have been a 'Norman' family or families with some lands in England, and one or more 'English' branches, which will not be discussed here, although the renowned Franciscan scholar Roger Bacon (d.1292?) may have been descended from one of them. By the end of the twelfth century, the most important 'Norman' Bacon family were lords of Le Molay (now Le Molay-Littry, CA, cant. Balleroy); another Bacon family, lords of Formigny (CA, cant. Trévières), frequently witnessed the charters of the lords of Le Molay and were probably a junior branch of the same family.

Map: The Norman lands of the Families of Bacon and Saint-Rémy

Genealogical Table: Bacon

In the mid-twelfth century Roger Bacon, lord of Le Molay issued an act for the Templars that mentioned his mother Matilda (Mahilluis) and brother William (M. Miguet, Templiers et Hospitalliers en Normandie (Paris, 1995), 156-7). Roger Bacon was also the brother or half-brother of another prominent lord of the Bessin, Philip de Colombières: at some point between 1156 and 1161 Roger helped Philip to make peace with the bishop of Bayeux after Philip's nephew had murdered the bishop's niece. (Actes de Henri II, i, no. CLXII). It was apparently this Roger whose sister Agnes married the Anglo-Norman lord Ralph de l'Isle (Curia Regis Rolls, i, 426-7; for their daughters Hawise de l'Isle and Ascelina and their husbands, see Angerville). This Roger or his son of the same name was the father of William, lord of Le Molay, who was head of the Norman family at the time of the 'loss of Normandy'; William also had a sister, Galiena, and was a kinsman of the sons of the constable of Normandy, William I du Hommet: although the exact relationship has not been established, William Bacon referred to the constable's son Henry in 1200 as his cognatus.( Jugements de l'Échiquier, no.117; AD Calvados, H 190, H 955). Another kinsman of William Bacon of Le Molay, quite possibly his younger brother, was a certain Simon or Simeon Bacon (d.c.1223), son of a Roger Bacon, who was the first husband of the Norman heiress Matilda, lady of Vassy. 11 This William Bacon of Le Molay had been succeeded by his son, another William Bacon, by Michaelmas 1213, when his widow received her dower in the lands that he and his father Roger had held. ( Jugements de l'Échiquier, no.117). William Bacon the younger may have died by 1245, when a certain Silvestra, lady of Le Molay, appears as a widow (AD Calvados, H non classée, cartulaire de Cordillon, fol. 5r). In 1248 and 1261 William the younger's son Roger was lord of Le Molay, and the family continued to hold Le Molay in the following century (AD Calvados, H 380, H 190, H 152).

A 'William Bacon of Formigny' appears in the act of William Bacon of Le Molay for Henry du Hommet's soul in 1200, and 'Roger Bacon, knight, of Formigny' in 1237 (AD Calvados, H 955, H 895). Hence there were probably two Norman landowners called William Bacon in 1204; and one of them forfeited the land of his wife, the daughter of Thomas Bardolf, at Bradwell-on-Sea (Essex), when King John seized the lands of those who remained in Normandy. Robert d e Saint-Rémy, the husband of another of Thomas's daughters, also lost his wife's share of the Bradwell estate in 1204.(Book of Fees, i, 120-1, 615; Rot. Norm., 127). In the early years of the thirteenth century a certain Juliana de Saint-Rémy held property at Formigny, where she gave property to the abbey of Aunay for the soul of her mother Cecilia with the consent of her father Robert.(AD Calvados, H 895). One explanation for this could be that Juliana's mother Cecilia was the daughter of Thomas Bardolf, and that in addition to Bradwell, she had also brought Formigny as her share of the Bardolf inheritance in marriage to Robert de Saint-Rémy. This would mean that the William Bacon who lost land at Bradwell in 1204 was William Bacon of Formigny, rather than his more powerful namesake the lord of Le Molay. Either could have been the William Bacon who lost land in 1204 at Dunsford in Devon.( Book of Fees, i, 612; Rot. Norm., 130).

Charter of Juliana de Saint-Rémy

In addition to these two 'main' Bacon families in Normandy, we find a Richard Bacon holding a fief of the honour of Montbray (Mowbray), c.1220; a Robert Bacon of Cesny, in the heart of the fitzErneis family lands, in 1246; a John Bacon of Landelles (fl. c. 1190) and a William Bacon of Landelles (fl. 1203); and a Robert Bacon who lost land at Dartford (Kent) in 1204 (RHF, xxiii, 619; AD Calvados, H 1559; ADC, H 7745, fol. 74v, no. 201, and MRSN, ii, 531, 536; Rot. Norm., 140). A relationship between these men and the Bacons of Le Molay and Formigny has not been established.

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FITZERNEIS

Map: The Norman lands of Robert VI fitzErneis

The fitzErneis family was prominent in central Normandy throughout the ducal period, and also acquired lands in several English counties. They typify the middle-ranking Norman barons who rarely attracted the attentions of chroniclers but who appear frequently in royal records. The family originated as a junior branch of the Taisson lords of Thury: the eponymous Erneis was the younger son of Ralph Andegavensis ('the Angevin') who appears to have arrived in Normandy from Anjou in the reign of Duke Richard II (996-1026). His two sons, Ralph I (or Rodulf) Taisson and Erneis, appear to have made a fairly equal division of property in the Cinglais district south-east of Caen some time in the mid-eleventh century; but whereas the Taissons later acquired substantial estates in the Bessin and the Cotentin as well, the fitzErneis family remained primarily based in the Cinglais. In the twelfth century many of their Norman lands were held from the earls of Gloucester. In England, the main Norman family acquired lands in Norfolk (including in the honour of the earls of Gloucester), Essex, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire; but other families surnamed fitzErneis appear in the North Midlands and North of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and while it is fair to presume that these were descended from the same family, this cannot be demonstrated here.

Much of our knowledge of the Norman family comes from a defective act of confirmation for the family's patronal abbey of St-Étienne-de-Fontenay, issued in 1217 by the last Robert fitzErneis ('Robert filius Erneis, the sixth in line from the first Robert fitzErneis, and nephew of Ralph Taisson son of Jordan Taisson').12 It shows that the first Robert son of Erneis, son of Ralph the Angevin and his wife Alpais, married Hacinsa, daughter of Fulk d'Aunou; he was killed in England, apparently at the Battle of Hastings itself, but William the Conqueror ordered Robert's brother Ralph fitzErneis to bear his body back to Fontenay. His widow Hathemudis or Chatemudis later married Osbern, a son of the Norman magnate Walter Giffard.

From Robert II onwards the name 'fitzErneis' ('son of Erneis') was used as an inheritable surname rather than a reference to actual paternity. He married Gersendis, daughter of another prominent magnate in the Cinglais, Robert Marmion.13 The act of 1217 states that their son Robert III was slain at Andreium, probably Audrieu (CA, cant. Tilly-sur-Seulles) in the Bessin; he may have perished during the wars between the supporters of King Stephen and Geoffrey of Anjou that plagued the duchy in the 1130s and early 1140s. He was succeeded by his son Robert IV, who married Rohese, sister of William de Courcy, seneschal of Normandy; Robert III also had at least three other sons, and was probably also the father of Matilda (fl. 1141-74), daughter of a Robert fitzErneis and wife of the Anglo-Norman magnate William Patric of La Lande-Patry (d.1174), to whom she brought Culey-le-Patry in the Orne valley in dowry. 14

The names of the fitzErneis cadets in this generation - Philip, Hasculf, Eudo, and Matilda - are suggestive. In the late 11th or early 12th century they also all occur in the family of Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët or Saint-James, the most prominent family in the county of Mortain in southwest Normandy (Power, Norman frontier, 516). This was a far remove from the fitzErneis interests, which mostly lay between Caen and Falaise. However, the fitzErneis family also acquired lands at Wells-next-the-Sea and Warham in Norfolk. These two villages are only 6 miles and 4 miles respectively from Field Dalling, the centre of the Saint-Hilaire barony in England. So it is possible that Robert III fitzErneis married a member of the Saint-Hilaire family, perhaps a daughter of Hasculf fitz Eudo, also known as Hasculf de Saint-James or Hasculf de Saint-Hilaire (d.1121 x 1129), and his wife Matilda, and that the marriage was intended to consolidate the families' mutual interests in North Norfolk.

The history of the fitzErneis family in the second half of the twelfth century provides a good example of the problems of reconstructing genealogies from incomplete evidence, much of which is undated. In 1173, the lists of Norman rebels recorded by Roger of Howden name Eudo, William, and Robert fitzErneis in that order, adding a Roland fitzErneis later. 15 The great inquest into Norman knight-service in 1172 mentions only Eudo fitzErneis, whose lands were in the hands of Robert fitzErneis after 1204. 16 This would imply that Eudo was head of the family in 1172 and suggests that he led the family into rebellion the following year. Now a man or men of this name appear(s) as early as 1157, and Eudo, uncle of Robert VI, went on the Third Crusade and had died by spring 1194; it is presumably this Eudo who appears as seneschal of Nantes in Brittany for Henry II in 1185. It is unclear, though, whether there were two men called Eudo fitzErneis, both of them younger sons in successive generations.17 The Eudo who died in 1194 was certainly a younger son, since he was predeceased by Robert V, who certainly held the main fitzErneis inheritance on both sides of the Channel; Eudo's lands in England passed directly to his nephew Robert VI. Moreover, the fact that Robert VI's mother was of high status but not an heiress - she was apparently a sister of Ralph IV Taisson - makes it unlikely that Robert V had older brothers at the time of his marriage to her; Anglo-Norman families rarely allowed their younger sons to marry unless they could be found a suitable heiress with her own substantial inheritance, unless the family had acquired a sizeable property that could be bestowed upon the younger son (it was no doubt partly because of their poor prospects at home that we find several of the fitzErneis younger sons in royal service in the 1180s). A Eudo fitzErneis did indeed marry an heiress, namely Felicia, daughter of Nicholas de Lunda (Chartes de Jumièges, ii, nos CVI, CVII). Yet this marriage does not explain the prominence of Eudo in the 1172 inquest, since Felicia's lands lay in the Pays d'Auge, whereas Eudo's lands in the inquest were in the bailliage of Falaise or Oximin, which suggests that he was did have the main fitzErneis inheritance in his hands at the time.

It is possible that Robert V had died by 1172 and that the Robert fitzErneis who appears as a rebel in 1173 was the young Robert VI, still under age. This would explain his lower ranking in the list of rebels than Eudo and William, as well as the appearance in the 1172 survey of Eudo fitzErneis, his uncle, as head of the family, if he was holding the fitzErneis lands in trust until his nephew came of age. This ranking may simply reflect the degree of participation in the uprising, however. Two alternative reconstructions can therefore be offered here. Either there were two men called Eudo fitzErneis, younger sons respectively of Robert III and Robert IV, one of whom was the husband of Felicia de la Londe; or there was only one, who died in or shortly before 1194, the uncle of Robert VI and consequently son of Robert IV. 18

FitzErneis Genealogical Table: first proposed reconstruction

FitzErneis Genealogical Table: second proposed reconstruction

As well as Robert V and Eudo (d.c1194) Robert IV and Rohese de Courcy almost certainly had several other sons. They may have included the William fitzErneis who had married the Anglo-Norman heiress Nicola de la Haye by 1175 but who died childless in 1177 or 1178. If indeed the son of Rohese de Courcy, William would have been named after his uncle William de Courcy, but the name is found in the other fitzErneis families of Northern England as well. We cannot therefore be sure if this William was a member of the Norman line, although it should be pointed out that the Norman branch's manor of Hemingby is only about 15 miles from Nicola's manor of Brattleby, and even closer to Lincoln Castle where Nicola was the hereditary constable. In the short time that he held the La Haye lands, William fitzErneis burdened his wife's manor of Brattleby (Lincs.) with a heavy debt to the Jewish money-lender Aaron of Lincoln; since Aaron's debts later came into royal hands, the debt of William fitzErneis at Brattleby appears on the pipe rolls well into the reign of King John, more than a quarter of a century after William's death, confusing the historical record. In 1206 this debt was passed on to the daughter and heir of William fitzErneis, namely Matilda, wife of William de Gisnei, whom Nicola had apparently selected as a husband for her in the face of repeated royal pressure to marry her off to someone of the king's choice. By the standards of the day Nicola de la Haye was a formidable woman, and in her old age she achieved great fame defending of Lincoln Castle against the English rebels and their French supporters during the 'Magna Carta' civil war (1215-17).19 The Aimery fitzErneis who witnessed the treaty of Falaise in 1174 with Robert and Eudo fitzErneis was presumably another son of Robert IV, unless this is a mistake for 'Oliver'. The Roland fitzErneis who rebelled in 1173 and the Oliver who won the favour of Henry II's brother William of Anjou (d.1164), were presumably also Robert IV's sons; it would be characteristic of the French aristocracy of the time if Robert had named two of his younger sons after the heroes of the epic La Chanson de Roland.. Oliver's share of royal revenues at Maldon (Essex), which William of Anjou had given him, came to Eudo fitzErneis after Oliver's death in 1183, following vicious treatment at the hands of the servants of Henry II's son Geoffrey, duke of Brittany. Finally, Oliver had a brother John, mentioned in a late-twelfth-century act for the Templars.20 Robert V probably married a daughter of his distant kinsman Jordan Taisson, for Robert VI was frequently described as 'nephew of Ralph Taisson'. Robert VI was the last of the male line in Normandy, for he had no children by his wife Ala, sister and ultimately co-heir of Count Robert of Alençon. As the database shows, Robert VI held extensive lands in several English counties but forfeited them all in 1204, although he appears to have recovered them briefly in 1216, during the Magna Carta civil war. Since his younger brother William remained in England after 1204, the Norman lands passed after Robert VI's death to their sister Philippa and her sons John and William de Tournebu. William fitzErneis, however, did successfully claim the English lands as Robert's heir after the latter's death in 1220.21

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HOMMET AND SEMILLY

Genealogical Table: the family of Hommet (including Remilly)

The various families called Hommet played an important part in the history of Angevin Normandy, especially in the dioceses of Bayeux and Coutances. The following survey is based primarily upon their charters, of which at least 120 are known, many of them surviving in the original, supplemented with royal records. 22

The architect of the family fortunes was Richard du Hommet, constable of Normandy (d.1180). Richard's father was Robert nepos Episcopi, apparently a grandson of Odo bishop of Bayeux, and his mother appears to have been the heiress of an older family called Hommet (derived from Le Hommet-d'Arthenay near Saint-Lô). Richard's status and wealth were enhanced by marriage to Agnes, co-heiress of the families of Say and Remilly, bringing him the castle of Marigny and numerous properties in the Bessin, Cotentin, and elsewhere. King Henry II also rewarded him with extensive property in England and Normandy. These included the town of Stamford (Lincs.) with the nearby manor of Ketton (Rutland), and several estates that had belonged to Walter Giffard, earl of Buckingham, who had died without direct heirs in 1164: Lower Winchendon, Princes Risborough and Whaddon (Bucks.), Sheringham (Norfolk), Maisy (CA, cant. Isigny, cne. Grandcamp-Maisy), the haia or deer enclosure of La Luthumière (MN, cant. Valognes, cne. Brix), and Auppegard (SM, cant. Bacqueville-en-Caux). These acquisitions formed useful endowments for junior members of the Hommet family and help to explain why the family was able to establish several distinct branches.

Richard's wife Agnes, known as Agnes de Beaumont (from Beaumont-le-Richard, CA, cant. Isigny, cne. Englesqueville-la-Percée), was the daughter - and eventually heiress - of Jordan de Say and his wife Lucy de Remilly (or d'Aunay). The detailed history of the Says remains to be written, but they appear to have derived their name from Sey in the Cotentin (MN, cant. Montmartin-sur-Mer, cne. Quettreville), rather than from Sai near Argentan (which gave its name to an entirely separate Anglo-Norman family, prominent in Shropshire). Agnes must have inherited the Say and Remilly lands early in the reign of Henry II (1154-89), after the deaths of her brothers Enguerrand (fl. 1141), Gilbert (fl. 1151) and Peter (fl. 1154) de Say.23

Map: The construction of the Norman inheritance of Richard I du Hommet

Junior Branches: the Hommets of Semilly and Cléville

In 1179 Richard I du Hommet became a monk at the abbey of Aunay-sur-Odon, for which he had been patron, and his three sons divided his property. William acceded to the royal constableship in Normandy and took the lion's share on both sides of the inheritance of the Channel. Enguerrand I (d.1181) received the Say lands around the Aunay-sur-Odon, where the Says had founded the abbey of Aunay in the reign of Henry I, and Enguerrand probably also acquired the former Giffard estates at Princes Risborough and Auppegard, which his descendants certainly held in the early thirteenth century. Richard's youngest son, Jordan I (d.1192), received Sheringham, and probably a fief in the honour of Osmanville (CA, cant. Isigny) which his son John held c.1220.

Jordan was apparently appointed constable of the city of Sées in Southern Normandy by one of the Angevin kings. In addition, the two younger sons of Richard du Hommet also benefited from good marriages. Enguerrand I married Cecily, daughter and heiress of William de Semilly; their descendants mostly adopted her surname. As for Jordan I, the youngest son of Richard du Hommet, he married Hadeisa or Hawise, daughter and eventual heiress or co-heiress of William de Crèvecœur; her chief manor was Cléville near Caen and her other possessions mainly lay in the diocese of Lisieux, to the east of the main Hommet areas of interest. She also brought Jordan the manor of Humberstone (Leics.). Hawise's maternal ancestry and kin were complex. According to a plea of 1210, she had seisin of Ingarsby and Willoughby Waterless (Leics.), her brother or half-brother was Robert de Bonnebosq, and her mother was the grandmother of Robert d'Angerville, from whom John du Hommet claimed a knight's fee in Ingarsby and Willoughby in 1210. Since Hawise's mother has not been identified, the exact nature of Hawise's relationships to her brother or half-brother Robert de Bonnebosq and to her nephew Robert d'Angerville cannot be determined, but it is possible that Hawise, Robert de Bonnebosq, and the mother or father or Robert d'Angerville, were children of Hawise's mother by three different husbands.

The descendants of both Enguerrand I and Jordan I du Hommet would waver between French and English allegiance for several decades after 1204. Enguerrand's son William I de Semilly and grandson William II de Semilly both held Princes Risborough at various times before 1242, but the family remained lords of Aunay-sur-Odon. In 1204 Jordan's elder son John (d.1223) lost his English lands, but he later returned to England and forfeited his Norman lands; he was succeeded in his English lands by his daughter and heiress Lucy, wife of Richard de Gray, lord of Codnor (Derbys.). In 1260 Lucy attempted in vain to recover John's confiscated Norman property; at the same time she unsuccessfully laid claim to the land of her uncle, another William du Hommet (d.1243; a younger son of Jordan I), who had opted to remain in Normandy in 1204.

Map: the Norman lands of Hommets of Cléville

Genealogical Table: the Hommets (Cléville branch)

Map: the Norman lands of the Semilly branch of the Hommet family

Genealogical Table: the Hommets (Semilly branch)

The descendants of William I du Hommet

William I du Hommet, eldest son of the constable Richard I, succeeded to his father's office and held it until his death shortly after the Capetian annexation of Normandy, when he was succeeded by his grandson William II. A fine in England referred to him as alive in 1204, but an English plea implies that William II had succeeded by 1208 at the latest.24

William I du Hommet married Lucy (d.1184 x 1189), apparently a daughter of Robert I du Neubourg, seneschal of Normandy, for good circumstantial evidence suggests that when Robert's grandson Robert II du Neubourg made gifts to Southwick Priory (Hants.) for the soul of his amita (paternal aunt) Lucy, these were for the wife of William I du Hommet (a leading benefactor of Southwick).25. William and Lucy had at least and two (probably three) daughters and six sons who survived infancy, but they managed to make substantial provision for them all. King Henry II allowed William's eldest son Richard (II) du Hommet to marry Gila (d.c.1197), the eldest of the three daughters and coheiresses of Richard de la Haye. Richard II du Hommet profited from close ties to Richard the Lionheart to gain the manors of Pouppeville and Varreville, once held by Gila's predecessors; after Gila's death he married Eleanor, widow of Robert de la Haye, but predeceased his father (c.1199). William II du Hommet, eldest son of Richard and Gila, was allowed to inherit his mother's lands in 1200-1 and became head of the Hommet family and constable of Normandy upon the death of his grandfather William II, some time between 1204 and 1208 (most probably by Easter 1205). William II died in 1240 and was succeeded as constable by Jordan II, who was certainly a descendant of Richard II and Gila and appears to have been one of William II's younger brothers. A plea of 1208 refers to William's 'brothers', but nothing else is known of them unless Jordan was one.26

Map: The Norman lands of the descendants of William I du Hommet (senior branch)

William I's second son William (known as William de Sae, i.e. de Sey), his third son Henry, and the fourth, Thomas, may not have married. Thomas appears in the early 1200s with property inherited from his father at Vienne-en-Bessin, Balleroy, Beaumont-le-Richard, and several other locations in the Bessin. In 1203 King John placed Thomas in charge of the castle of Néhou in the Cotentin, the chief fortress of the rebel baron Richard de Vernon, whose wife Lucy du Hommet may have been Thomas's sister. Thomas was still alive in 1209 but may have died on a pilgrimage on which he embarked around that time.27

The fifth son, Jordan, was bishop of Lisieux from 1201 or 1202 to 1218; his share of the Hommet inheritance consisted of a scattering of property in the Bessin, including at Le Manoir, Sommervieu, and Louvières. Hence only the sixth, Enguerrand, established a cadet line. He held the lordship of Remilly from his nephew William II in parage and also the former Giffard fief of Auppegard; through marriage to a daughter of Nigel de Mowbray (Montbray) he acquired a portion of the lordship of Écouché near Argentan.28 At Enguerrand's death in 1220 his property passed to his daughter and her husband John de Brucourt.

Map: The Norman lands of the Hommets of Remilly

Of William I's daughters, Agatha married first William, heir of Ralph lord of Fougères, and then Fulk II Paynel. Her dowry lay at Lingreville in the Cotentin, and for a time her daughter Clemence de Fougères received Auppegard as her dowry when she married Earl Ranulf of Chester.29 Agnes, the other daughter of William I du Hommet, married the Anglo-Norman lord Baldwin Wake (d.1205), lord of Bourne (Lincs.), with Lower Winchendon (Bucks) as her dowry. Lucy du Hommet (fl. 1234), wife of Richard de Vernon (d. 1231 x 1234), lord of Néhou, may well have been another daughter (although the name Lucy is also found in the cadet line of Hommet-Cléville). In 1203 Thomas du Hommet, fourth son of William I, was given Néhou when King John confiscated it from Richard de Vernon, who had rebelled against him; presumably Thomas was keeping the castle in trust for his brother-in-law, and Richard de Vernon certainly recovered it after the fall of Normandy. (Power, Norman frontier, 227, 462, 527).

Map: The Norman lands of the youngest children of William du Hommet

By 1223 the descendants of Richard I du Hommet had therefore divided into several main branches: the senior branch, now based at Hommet and La Haye-du-Puits; the family of Brucourt, holding Remilly and Auppegard; the family of Semilly, whose main share of the inheritance of Richard I du Hommet was the Say lordship based around Aunay-sur-Odon; and the former lords of Cléville, now confined to their lands in Norfolk and the counties of Leicester, Lincoln and Northampton. Daughters' dowries had brought Lingreville in the Cotentin to the Paynels of Hambye, and Lower Winchendon to the Wakes of Bourne. Most of these lines were affected by the separation of England and Normandy in 1204: the Wakes lost land near Bayeux; the senior branch of the Hommets lost very substantial English property, particularly in the East Midlands; and the families of Hommet-Cléville, Semilly and Paynel all attempted for over a generation to maintain their lordship on both sides of the Channel. Only the Remilly branch appears unscathed by the events of 1204 since it did not apparently have any English lands to lose.

In addition to the families mentioned above, such as Vernon, Wake, Fougères and Paynel, the Hommets were related to several other prominent Anglo-Norman families, including the Bacon lords of Le Molay and, through the Says, the families of Orval, Port and Saint-Jean as well as the powerful Breton family of Montfort-en-Goël. 30 In these cases the exact relationship has not been determined.

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TAISSON

The family of Taisson (meaning 'badger') was descended from Ralph Andegavensis, an immigrant from Anjou in the reign of Duke Richard II (996-1026), and became established in the district of Cinglais, south of Caen, especially Thury (now Thury-Harcourt, CA, ar. Caen, ch.-lieu du cant.). Later generations acquired substantial lands in the Cotentin, including at La Colombe (MN, cant. Percy) and La Roche-Tesson (cne. La Colombe), lying in the fief of the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel (Chronique de Robert de Torigni, ed. L. Delisle (2 vols, Paris, 1872-3), ii, 75). The history and genealogy of the Taissons has been well documented, most notably by Léopold Delisle and Lucien Musset, and so the following account will merely pick out a few details from the decades before and after the fall of Normandy in 1204. 31

Jordan Taisson (d.1178), son of Ralph III Taisson, greatly expanded the family's wealth through marriage to Leticia, neptis (niece or granddaughter) and coheiress of Roger the Viscount, lord of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in the Cotentin; Leticia also inherited the honour of Épinay-Tesson (CA, cant. Isigny, cne. Cartigny-Épinay) in the western Bessin from the Port family. The eldest son of Jordan and Leticia, Ralph IV Taisson, later arranged a partition with another descendant of Roger the Viscount, Fulk des Prés, which was very much in Ralph's favour.(Rot. Norm., 16-17, 18-19). Ralph IV also married an heiress, Matilda, elder daughter and coheiress of Enguerrand Patric, head of an important family in the Bessin and Passais (the region of Domfront in southern Normandy). Through this marriage, Ralph acquired not only the lordship of La Lande-Patry (OR, cant. Flers) but also a share of Patrixbourne and River (Kent) and Down Ampney (Gloucs.). Ralph IV had also inherited North Wheatley (Notts.) and Laughton-en-le-Morthen (Yorks.). In the reign of King John, Ralph IV rose to great prominence in Normandy, even acting as the seneschal of the duchy between 1201 and 1203; but in 1204 he remained in Normandy and forfeited all his and his wife's English lands (see database).32 When Ralph IV died, however, his estates were divided between his three daughters: the eldest, Petronilla, and her husband William Paynel received the lands in the southern Cotentin as well as La Lande-Patry, and adopted the name Taisson; the second, Joanna, and Robert Bertrand (Bertram) received the lordship of Thury; and the youngest, Joanna, and her husband Richard de Harcourt inherited the lordship of Saint-Sauveur.33

Genealogical Table: the Taisson family

Map: The Norman lands of Ralph IV Taisson

The William Taisson who appears with Ralph Taisson in 1190, and the Robert Taisson who appears near Taisson estates in central Normandy in 1221 with his brothers Geoffrey (a priest), Roger, and Ralph Taisson were presumably related to the main Taisson family (ADC, H 1872, H 1485).

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Abbreviations

Archives Départementales in Normandy:

AD Calvados	Caen, Archives du Calvados
AD Eure	Évreux, Archives de l'Eure
AD Orne	Alençon, Archives de l'Orne
AD Seine-Maritime	Rouen, Archives de la Seine-Maritime
BN	Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Arch. Nat.	Paris, Archives Nationales

Départements (main administrative divisions) of Normandy:

CA	Calvados
EU	Eure
MN	Manche
OR	Orne
SM	Seine-Maritime
ar.	arrondissement (main subdivision of a département)
cant.	canton (main subdivision of an arrondissement)
cne.	commune (equivalent to a civil parish)

Published sources:

Actes de Henri II	Recueil des actes de Henri II, roi d'Angleterre et duc de Normandie, ed. L. Delisle and E. Berger (3 vols and intro., Paris, 1909-27)
Book of Fees	Liber Feudorum. The book of fees commonly called Testa de Nevill (3 vols, PRO, London, 1920-31)
Curia Regis Rolls	Curia Regis Rolls, Richard I - Henry III (20 vols to date, HMSO, 1922 -)
Domesday Descendants	Domesday Descendants. A prosopography of persons occurring in English documents 1066-1166: II (Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum), ed. K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (Woodbridge, 2002)
Jugements de l'Echiquier	Recueil des Jugements de l'Échiquier de Normandie au XIIIe siècle, ed. L. Delisle (Paris, 1864)
MRSN	Magni Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniæ, ed. T. Stapleton (2 vols, London, 1840-4)
QN	'Querimoniæ Normannorum, 1247', in RHF, xxiv, I (Paris, 1904), 1-73
RHF	Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet et al. (24 vols, Paris, 1738-1904)
Rot. Claus.	Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (2 vols, London, 1833-44)
Rot. Norm.	Rotuli Normanniæ in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1835)
Rot. Pat.	Rotuli litterarum patentium in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1835)

Footnotes