THE JOURNAL OF THE British Archaeological Association. JUNE, 1872. ON THE FAMILY AND CONNEXIONS OF THE DOMESDAY TENANT OF CORFE. BY J. R. PLANCHE, ESQ., SOMERSET HERALD, V.P. THERE is a French work well known to the majority of antiquaries, which I have often thought would, if it were translated into English, and annotated by a competent editor, become one of the most popular as well as useful books in the library of every gentleman in this country. But it must be published under a new name, for it certainly has one of the driest and least attractive titles, at present, that could possibly be invented for it; although, at the same time, I must admit that it exactly expresses the true object of its compilation, L'Art de Vérifier les Dates. Who on earth, unacquainted with the work, would ever guess that it is a collection of admirably condensed memoirs, biographies, or personal histories, of all the sovereign princes in the world, from the earliest ages to the close of the eighteenth century, chronologically arranged, and containing the most interesting as well as valuable information respecting every great event, civil or military, of which any record exists, since the days of the deluge? A universal history, in fact, of the best description, because it possesses the unique and invaluable advantage of correcting its own errors, if any exist, by the comparison and verification of dates. Thence its name, "The Art of Verifying Dates," an art, the neglect of which by previous antiquaries has filled our national and county histories, our baronages and genealogies, with such an accumu 1872 16 lation of errors and contradictions, that the critical archæologist of the present day is bewildered by their number and staggered by their incredibility. The subject on which I propose to address you to-day affords us a remarkable instance of the confusion created by the non-verification of dates. Roger Fitz Gerald, brother, it is presumed, of the Robert Fitz Gerald who held Corfe in the time of the Conqueror, has been set down by Dugdale as the second husband of Lucia, widow of Ivo Taillebois; and after the death of Roger she is made to marry a third husband, Ranulf de Bricasard, or Le Meschin, Earl of Chester. His authority for this statement appears to be the continuator of Ingulf, Peter de Blois, who compiled his portion of the history of Croyland Abbey nearly one hundred years after the death of Ivo, and whose account seems to have been followed by Florence of Worcester; from a MS. of whose history, in the possession of the Archbishop of Armagh, Dugdale copied it in 1649. This error, which the comparison of dates would have strangled in its birth, has been the parent of a numerous progeny of blunders, increasing every year, and only recently detected by more critical antiquaries who know the value of "the art of verifying dates." An inquiry into the family and connexions of the Domesday holder of Corfe is peculiarly interesting to me, because it necessitates further investigation of points to which I have previously called your attention in my essays on the genealogies of the Earls of Salisbury and of Hereford. In that great survey of England to which I have just alluded, and which was completed in 1085, we read, "Robertus filii Geroldi tenet de Rege, Corfe"; which certainly cannot be construed to mean anything except that Robert Fitz Gerald held Corfe of the King (that is, William the Conqueror), the former tenants, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, being two persons named Wada and Egelric. Yet Hutchins says: "The town (i. e., Corfe) is not mentioned in Domesday Book, which is extraordinary considering that it was a place of note on account of the castle. There is, indeed, a Corfe surveyed (tit. 30); but it could not be this, which was then part of the demesne lands of the crown, and had been so long before and after; "whereas the other belonged' to Robert Fitz Gerald, and therefore was very probably Corfe It did not belong to him, whichever it was. He held of the King. Mullen." What other? There is no other Corfe mentioned in connexion with the name of Robert Fitz Gerald. He appears certainly as a holder in capite of seven hides of land in the hundred of Cocden (now Cocdean), which may have been at Corfe Mullen, as that place is in the said hundred. But this account is in the Inquisitio Gheldi, and not in Domesday; and there is no mention of Corfe Mullen in either record, nor of any other Corfe which Robert held of the King. He was tenant in chief of the land in the hundred of Cocdean. The editor of the new edition of Hutchins' Dorset leaves the above passage without any illustration or comment; and it is a point of considerable importance to my inquiry, as the late Mr. Stapleton seized upon it to support his views of the descent of the Romaras, Earls of Lincoln, in which he has been followed by Mr. John Gough Nichols in his papers on that subject (Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i, and Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute, 1848-50). I have said that Roger Fitz Gerald, also called De Roumare, or De Romara, is presumed to have been a brother of Robert the tenant of Corfe; because, however probable may be the assumption, the degree of relationship has never been positively proved. All that we learn of him is that he was the father of the first William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln, by a lady named Lucia, who, through the neglect of verifying dates, has been confounded, probably, with her mother (of the same name); married to her father before she was born, set down as the sister-in-law of her own son, and thus innocently made the cause of considerable trouble to the learned and curious in history and genealogy. Let us examine the dates connected with the history of Lucia, daughter of Earl Algar, and wife of Ivo Taillebois. Her father is reported to have died in 1059. There is no indication that she was a posthumous child; and at any rate she could not be less than eleven or twelve years old in 1071, previous to which date she appears to have been married, 1 I have recently had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance of this gentleman, who contends that according to law, Corfe, being a royal demesne, could not have been held by Robert Fitz Gerald; and that there were various Corfes in the county, to either of which the passage may allude. But we have first to find another Corfe which was the property of the King, and was held of him by Robert Fitz Gerald. The legal question I leave others to decide, the proof of "ancient demesne of the crown" depending on evidence of the reign of Richard II. and therefore was probably some five or six years older. In those days great heiresses, we know, were frequently married, in order to secure their fortunes, whilst still in their childhood; but Lucia at the time of her marriage was not a great heiress, nor was there a probability of her ever becoming one. Her two brothers, the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, were in the prime of manhood; and although not married at that moment, as far as we know, the probabilities were that they would marry and have issue; failing which there was her sister, the queen of Harold, to come in as coheiress. That she eventually became sole heiress of her brothers does. not affect the argument. Ivo Taillebois is said to have died in 1114 or 1115; so that if she survived him, as she is said to have done, she must have been a wife for forty-three or four years; and if married when only twelve, her age at his death could not have been less than fifty-five, and it was more probably sixty. We are, then, asked to believe that at this age she became, hardly a month after the decease of her husband, the wife of "that illustrious young man, Roger de Roumare, son of Gerald de Roumare," to whom another writer tells us she bore a son named William de Roumare, afterwards Earl of Lincoln; and having disposed of the second husband at some unstated period, she married a third in the person of Ranulph de Briquesart, or Le Meschin, afterwards Earl of Chester, by whom she had a small family.2 It is perfectly astounding that the story first told by Peter de Blois circa 1190 should have been repeated, with little variation, by chronicler, genealogist, and editor, for seven hundred years without suspicion; the Rev. Mr. Bowles appearing to be the first person staggered by it some six and thirty years ago, when, in his IIistory of Laycock Abbey, he suggested that there had been a confusion of two ladies of the same name. But there are other facts hitherto unadduced as evidence on this point, which we elicit by a verification of dates, not merely demonstrating the improbability, but the impossibility, of the events so circumstantially narrated. In 1122 William de Roumare must have been of full age, as he in that year claimed of King Henry I certain lands which his stepfather, Ranulf, had surrendered to the King for the earldom of Chester. Now if Ivo Taillebois did not die before 2 Flor. Wigorn. 1 Peter de Blois. 1114 or 1115, the said William must have been a promising boy in his teens at that period, and therefore assuredly not the son of Ivo's widow by a second husband. Again, in 1131 (31st of the same King), we find the Countess Lucia, widow of Ranulf Earl of Chester, binding herself, under a penalty of five hundred marks of silver, not to take another husband, without license from the crown, within the next five years; which at the venerable age the daughter of Algar must have reached, had she been living at that date, would really seem to have been a very unnecessary obligation. The fact that at that date (1131) her son, Ranulf Gernons, was of full age, enables us to place his birth about 1110; so that even he was born four years before the death of Ivo, though asserted to be the eldest son of the third husband of Algar's daughter.1 That monkish writers should copy the assertions of their predecessors without question, I can readily understand; but that Dugdale, who was familiar with the legal records of the kingdom, and who constantly refers us to the Pipe Roll of the 31st of Henry I (believed at that time to be the 5th of Stephen), which so completely disposes of the question, is remarkable; and not less so the repetition of the story in a note by the translator and editor of Ordericus, in Mr. Bohn's Antiquarian Library. It being evident that two ladies of the name of Lucia have been confounded by the monastic historians, Mr. Bowles' suggestion that the second Lucia, wife first of Roger Fitz Gerald, and secondly of Ranulf de Briquesart, was the sole daughter and heiress of the first Lucia by her only husband, Ivo Taillebois, is so reasonable that, although as yet uncorroborated by positive authority, it may be received with considerable confidence, notwithstanding two assertions with which it is irreconcilable. The first is that of the continuator of Ingulf, who states that Ivo had by his wife Lucia an only daughter, married to a husband of noble rank, who died before her father (scilicet previous to 1115 at the latest), and who, therefore, could not be the Countess Lucia living in 1131. The second is the account in Florence of Worcester's Chronicle, 1 Roger Fitz Gerald appears as lord of Spalding before the death of Rufus in 1100, which seems to contradict the assertion that Ivo only died in 1114. But be that as it may, Lucia, daughter of Algar, if born in 1058, must have been seventy-three in 1131. That she could have been the mother of Ranulf Gernons is almost beyond the bounds of possibility. |