66

Little Really Known

and towards its maintenance, as we know, Ilbert, as Lord of the Honour of Pontefract, contributed his Manor of Hambleton, which is just within sight of his Castle of Pontefract. But with that exception positively nothing is known of this founder of the great de Lacy family, in addition to his actual possession of the District, and the fact that he founded or rebuilt upon its ancient foundations Pontefract Castle and the Church of St. Clement within it.

It is even uncertain how long Ilbert survived his King and benefactor, though it is certain that he did. survive him since he received at the hands of William Rufus, the new King, the Charter granting him "the custom of chastelery of his castle, as he had it in the Conqueror's days, and in those of the Bishop of Baieux," to which we have already referred.

So little indeed is really known of this powerful Lord that not only is the exact date of his death unrecorded, but we cannot trace in history a single word or expression which can give us any clue that will enable us to come to some probable conclusion whether he used his enormous power wisely and thoughtfully,

6

week also like them he received his wages, which on the Sunday he distributed to the poor, so that he might fulfil the Seripture, Of thy just labours give to the poor.' And at length, the greater part of the Church being finished by the help of God, and the outbuildings also being completed by the watchfulness of the blessed Germanus, the devout shepherd led his sheep within the fold." Hugh, who was made Abbot by King Henry 1. in 1103, held the office about 20 years, resigning his Abbacy in 1126; and, dying a few years afterwards, was buried with honour in the Chapter House at Selby.

or harshly and selfishly; or will help us to build up a theory of what manner of man he was, in appearance, or in manner, or in disposition. This ancestor* of the royal family of Great Britain emerges suddenly from the darkness, the recipient of his King's bounty, we cannot say why; he lives for at least twenty years the almost unrestrained Lord of thousands, we cannot say how; he drops into a nameless grave,† we can

*Of course, it is true only in a restricted sense that Ilbert was the ancestor of the royal family of England. The large estates of the Duchy of Lancaster came to the royal family of England, and ultimately to the Crown, through successive defaults of male issue. Firstly, by the death in 1187 of Henry de Lacy they descended to the heir of his sister Albreda; and then by the death in early life of the male heirs of Earl Henry, they became vested in Alicia de Lacy, who married Thomas Plantagenet. He was beheaded on St. Thomas' Hill in 1322, and Alicia, his widow, the last of the de Lacy line, died childless in 1348. The estates then passed to Thomas's brother, Henry, who had no Lacy blood. His only son, Henry, had a daughter and sole heir, Blanche, who married John of Gaunt. Henry Plantagenet, the issue of this marriage, became Henry IV., from whom her present Majesty is descended. The total receipts from these estates amount on an average to about £75,000, from which sum, after the expenses of management, &c., are defrayed, from £40,000 to £45,000 are annually drawn for the "Privy Purse" of Her Majesty, whose personal income is thus derived from these and other ancestral estates, and not, as is frequently but erroneously supposed, from the general taxation of the country.

†We say nameless, because we can put no. confidence in the Historia Laceio um in Dugdale (V. 533-Ellis) however circumstantial may be its narrative. The statement is that Ilbert was buried at the right corner of the altar of St. Benedict (presumably in St. John's Monastery, Pontefract, which was not founded till after his decease), and that his wife was buried at the left corner, each under marble stones: that Robert died in the time of William Rufus, and was buried in the same Monastery: That Ilbert, the son of Robert, was buried at the left corner of the altar before which his grandfather had been interred, between the grave of Matilda, his mother, and the wall. This supposes that Ilbert the First and his wife, Robert and his wife, and Ilbert the Second,

68

Little Known

neither say when nor where; having lived we cannot say even approximately how long: while of the lineage, parentage, or country of his wife Avisia or Hawise we know absolutely nothing, being indebted for the certain record of her very name to its rehearsal in the Charter given to the monks of St. John in Pontefract by her son Robert; and being moreover uncertain whether Robert himself was the eldest or the elder of her children.

It is probable, though as yet no circumstance has come to light which affords sufficient proof of the absolute identity of the persons, that Ilbert and. Hawise were the owners of Bois l'Evêque, not far from Darnetal, near Rouen, the capital city of Normandy,

who predeceased his wife, were all buried in St. John's Church. Pontefract, which was not commenced till years after the death of Ilbert the First; while, moreover, we know that Robert survived Rufus for some years.-This singularly inaccurate statement occurs in the Kirkstall document, which was the original authority for the blunder as to Albreda de Lissours being the maternal sister of Robert de Lacy the Second, which till lately misled all genealogists, and to which we shall presently refer at length.

*We have not overlooked the Charter attributed to this chieftain, which is at Winchester College, and which professes to refer to a gift by Hildebert de Laceio and his wife Hadrude, of the Mansion at Twiswick, to the Monks of the Holy Trinity at Rouen, to which, as we have already mentioned, the de Lacy family made so many contributions, for his own soul, and those of his Lord, King William, of his parents, of his friends, of his wife, and of his son Hugh; but we cannot readily assign to it a place in the life of Ilbert de Lacy, for it requires the assumption that he had a wife named Hadrude, presumably before he had Hawise, and that he had by Hadrude a son named Hugh, which would open many questions totally irreconcilable with established chronological facts; while the Charter itself does not appear ever to have been enrolled among the archives of the Monastery at Rouen.

Of his Ancestry.

69

and that an Emma de Lacy,* who was a nun at St. Amand, of Rouen, in the year 1069 (and had given to that Abbey twenty-two acres of land in Bois and Mount Maimart, which the Abbess sold to a Monk of La Trinité du Mont) was Ilbert's sister. Later on, in 1080, an Enguerrard, son of Hilbert (probably Ilbert de Lacy-as there was at the time no other Ilbert who would have been spoken of by his Baptismal name alone) gave to the same Trinité du Mont two-thirds

*Among the Lansdowne MS. (229 fo. 42) we have found a Proginies de Lacy," headed by a pricked coat of arms, Or, a fess gules. It may be thus translated:" A.D. 1066, William, called the Bastard, came to the Conquest of England, and was crowned at London on Monday after Christmas. With whom came a certain noble man, Hugh de Lacy, who founded the Priory of Llanthony, in Wales, in honour of the Most High and of St. John the Baptist, in his lands of Ewyas upon the banks of the Hondhu; and it was dedicated by the Bishop of the Diocese, by name Urban, Bishop of Llandaff, A.D. 1108. Which Hugh died without heir of his body, and lies buried at Weobley, under the wall of the chancel there, on the right hand side: to whose soul God be gracious. Amen. And thus the inheritance of the said Hugh fell to his two sisters, named Ermeline and Emma, till then in Normandy, crowned (coronati) and was divided between them. Of whom Ermeline departed without an heir of her body; and so the whole heritage of the said Hugh remained complete and unbroken with the said Emma, her sister, which Emma had a son by

Gilbert de Lacy by name.' Accepting this statement as it stands, the Emma de Lacy of St. Amand might have been this Emma, the daughter of Hugh and mother of Gilbert, in which case she would apparently have been no relative to the Pontefract de Lacies, or only a distant one. But the MS. is manifestly incorrect in the assumption that Hugh was the founder of this branch of the de Lacies; while the fact that Enguerrard, son of Hilbert, was a benefactor to the Nunnery in which Emma de Lacy lived, was probably more than a coincidence. The point which has, we believe, never hitherto been noticed deserves a more careful investigation than we can give to it. We must perforce content ourselves with putting the difficulty on record, leaving to others the task of effecting its solution.

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Robert, his Son,

of the tithes of Bois l'Evêque; and when we have mentioned that this Enguerrard was apparently a great person, as his signature precedes that of the Count of Morton, and that he was Governor of Caen, but expelled by the townspeople just before the battle of Tinchebrai, in 1106, we have mentioned all that is known of those relatives, or suspected relatives, of Ilbert de Lacy, who did not succeed in gaining a settlement in England, but remained in their native Normandy.

Besides Hugh, afterwards Abbot of Selby, Robert de Lacy was the only clearly-proved son of Ilbert who survived his father. He is called by Ordericus Vitalis Robert Fitz Ilbert (Rodbertus Ilberti filius, DUCHESNE, 786) and Robert de Pontefract (DUCHESNE, 805), but very little more is known of him than of his father Ilbert. When he entered into possession of what we should style his patrimony, he appears to have received a grant from William Rufus of "all the lands his father held on the day he died," and to have taken in hand almost immediately (at least as early as 1090), the foundation of a Monastery at Pontefract, the seat of his Ilonour. Thus, while as a mere satellite of the King, Ilbert had contented himself with giving a tributary gift to help forward the Royal establishment of Selby Abbey, Robert, in this respect excelling his father, took in hand the

*An early copy of this Charter is, as we have already mentioned, among the muniments of the Duchy of Lancaster.