Lords of the Honor of Clitheroe

[Stanley]

Lords of the Honor of Clitheroe
the DeLacys


An History of the Original parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe, by Thomas Dunham Whitaker, LL.D., F.S.A., Vicar of Whalley 4th edition, revised and enlarged, by John Gough Nichols, F.S.A. and the Rev. Ponsonby A. Lyons, B.A. Vol. 1. London: George Routledge and Sons, 1872.
My special thanks go to Diane for providing the text. Conversion to HTML by Steve Lassey
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CHAPTER THE SECOND
LORDS OF THE HONOR OF CLITHEROE
Respect only to general opinion, and to the authority of Dugdale, which has been held decisive, induces me to place at the head of this catalogue
ILBERT DE LACI, [1] a Norman adventurer, on whom the Conqueror undoubtedly conferred the great fee of Pontefract; but, as he is unnoticed under the survey of Blackburnshire by the authentic record of Domesday which was completed in the last years of the first William, and died early in the reign of Rufus, there is no evidence to prove that he was ever connected with the subject of this history. Ilbert, however, left a son,
ROBERT DE LACI, who was certainly lord of Blackburnshire, though it is now impossible to discover by what means he became possessed of it. [2] As, however, the Hundred of Blackburn at the time of Domesday constituted a part of those vast possessions which the Conqueror granted to Roger de Busli and Albert de Greslet, the probability is that Lacy acquired this free from them, and held it under them. This opinion is strengthened by a charter of Henry I [3] granting Boeland to this Robert, son of Ilbert, to be held of the Crown in capite, as it had heretofore been of Roger de Poitou.
---Footnotes---
1. This name is spelt with all the laxity of ancient orthography, Laci, Lacy, and Lascy. The earlier part of Dugdale's account of this family, Baronage, vol. i, p. 98, et seqq. is singularly inaccurate. He seems to have been principally misled by a MS. in Bibl. Bod. (G. 9, Cant.) f. 77b. which is little better than a collection of traditionary tales. Where I shall have occasion to differ fro him, I shall do it on the authority of original charters and assign my reasons. [The name is probably derived from a place now called Lassi, n the department of Calvados in Normandy. "Among the families who became seated in England at the time of the Conquest, none obtained more extensive possessions or attained to higher dignities than the Lacis. The first settler was an Ilbert de Laci. The account of his lands in Yorkshire fills seven pages of Domesday Book, and he had other lands in other counties. His Yorkshire lands form what in later times has been called the Honor of Pontefract. . . . . . I am unwilling to dwell upon what has already been often and well told; and I would refer those who wish for further information upon this subject to the Lacies Nobilitie of Sir John Ferne, to the Baronage of Sir William Dugdale, to the Antiquities of Cheshire by Sir Peter Leycester, who has corrected many errors committed by the author of the Baronage, and, last of all, to the beautiful history of this house incorporated by Dr. Whitaker in his History of Whalley." Joseph Hunter, South Yorkshire, vol. ii, pp. 200, 201.]
2. [In the "Account of Clithero Burgage," printed in Gregson's Fragments, p. 288, from Kenion's MSS. is an assertion that the Conqueror gave the whole Wapentake, with all its franchises, to Ilbert Lascy.]
3. Dugdale, ubi supra.

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That he was possessed, however, of this fee, by whatever means he acquired it, there can be no doubt, as he confirmed the original charter of Merlay, granted by Ilbert his son to Jordan le Rous. [1]
Robert, however, did not long enjoy his inheritance in peace, for, an. 1mo. Henry I. having espoused the better cause of Robert Curthose, he was dispossessed of all his lands by that monarch, and is stated by Dugdale to have gone twice into banishment, from which he did not return a second time.
After the second banishment of Robert we are told by the same writer that the fee of Pontefract (including that of Clitheroe) was granted first to [William] Travers, [2] and secondly to Hugh de la Val. The latter fact is certain; but it appears equally certain that Robert actually returned, and was restored, for we find him confirming several grants of churches made by Delaval during his temporary possession to the priory of Nostel, which was of his or perhaps his father's foundation. [3]
With equal certainty and on similar authority it may be proved against Dugdale that this Robert the First [4] founded the castle of Clitheroe, for it did not exist at the time of
---Footnotes---
1 Vide Merlay.
2. [Dr. Whitaker (following Dugdale in this error) gave this name as Henry Travers; but the words of Dugdale's authority are "Ea tempestate (A.D. 1135) Willielmus cognomento Transversus, qui honorem Fracti pontis (sic enim quoddam oppidum nominatur) ex dono Henrici regis habuerat, a quodam milite homine suo Pagano nomine apud ipsum oppidum letali vulnere percussus, post triduum in habitu monachali mortuus est. Et quem patri suo Roberto de Lesci rex Henricus abstulerat, Ilbertus de Lesceio filius ejus mox eundem honorem recuperavit." Richard of Hexham (edit. Twysden) 310; not Simeon of Durham, as Hunter, ii. 201. And see also John of Hexham, ibid. col. 272.]
3. The following are instances extracted from Burton's Mon. Ebor. of several alternate grants and confirmations between these parties: --
We now see the reason why the monks of Pontefract failed in their claim upon the Church of Whalley, under Delaval's grant (see before, p. 77): it was never confirmed, and all alienations made under an attainder, unless confirmed by the party attainted after his restoration, are held pro infectis.
4. I now find that I had overlooked another hypothesis with respect to the foundation of this castle, which will assign to it a still higher antiquity, namely, that it was the work of Roger of Poictou himself. For it appears from Domesday, under Bernulfswic, that Berenger de Todeni had held XII car. of land in that place, sed modo est in Castellatu Rog. Pictaviensis. We know that it was a disputable point much later whether Bernoldswic was or was not in Blackburnshire; and what can be meant by Castellatus if there was now no castle at Clitheroe? It may be answered that the word refers to Roger's great fee of Lancaster; but this is impossible, for, at the time of the Domesday Survey, Longcaster and Chercalongcastre were surveyed inter terras regis in Amunderness not yet granted out, and were so far from having a castle or being yet at the head of an Honor, much less a County, that they are taken as vills or berewicks appertaining to the manor of Halton. All is darkness and confusion with respect to the foundation of the Castle and Honor of Lancaster, and particularly with respect to Roger of Poictou, of which name there must have been two persons, for how could it be supposed that a follower of the Conqueror should forfeit under Stephen?

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..the Domesday Survey; and in the interval of Delaval's possession, during the banishment of Lacy, we find the former expressly granting, under the dependencies of the church of Whalley, capellam Sci. Michaelis in Castro de Clyderhow.
It was indeed antecedently to be expected that the 28 manors within the hundred, now united into one Honor, should not have remained two generations longer without a common centre: a temporary residence at least was erquired for th lord, a court-house for the transaction of his business, and a fortress for the defence of his lands. In a country not abounding with strong positions an insulated conical rock of limestone rising out of the fertile plain between Penhull and Ribble would naturally attract his attention, and here, therefore, the first Lacy of Blackburnshire and second of Pontefract fixed the castle of Clitheroe, the seat of his barony, to which a numerous train of dependents during a period of seven succeeding centuries have owed homage and service. Robert de Lacy also founded the Cluniac priory of St. John in Pontefract, to which, however, he refused a confirmation of the church of Whalley, granted by his disturber Delaval, and, dying, left two sons, Ilbert and Henry. [1]
ILBERT DE LACY, the oldest son of Robert and the companion of his exile, was distinguished by his fidelity to King Stephen, and by his valour in the Battle of the Standard, fought near Northallerton; and, having married Alice, daughter of Gilbert de Gaunt [afterwards remarried to Robert de Mawbray [2]], died without issue. He was therefore succeeded by his brother
HENRY DE LACY the first, who, rivalling his ancestors in the devout liberality of the times, A.D. 1147, founded a Cistertian abbey at Barnoldswick, and afterwards translated it to the more genial climate of Kirkstall. He is remembered as lord of Blackburnshire by having granted out the manor of Alvetham, with Clayton and Accrington, to H. son of Leofwine, which was the second alienation of that kind after the accession of his family to the Honor of Clitheroe. Of the successive restitutions of these brothers by Stephen and Henry II. to the estates of their family, related by Dugdale in a narrative inextricably confused, after the decisive evidence before adduced that the restoration really took place under Robert their father, it is now become superfluous to speak; suffice it therefore to say, that Hnery, of whose marriage however nothing is recorded, [3] left a son
ROBERT DE LACY the second, of whom it is very confidently told by Dugdale, on the authority of his MS. [4], that he founded the castle of Clitheroe and the chapel of St. Michael, with the consent of Geoffry dean of Whalley. The falsehood, however, of this story has
---Footnotes---
1. Rob. de Lacy confirms to the abbey of Selby the manor of Hamelden, given by his father for the soul of Hugh his brother. Lands quitcl. here by John son of Hugh de Lacy, of Gateford. burton's Mon. Ebor. p. 395.
2. [Addit. MS. 26,741, f. 262.]
3. [His wife is omitted by Dugdale; but elsewhere she is thus mentioned: "Iste Henricus duxit in uxorem sororem Willielmi Vesci rectoris de Berwic, et genuit ex ea Robertum. Nescitur ubi sepultus fuit; creditur quod ipse in Terra Sancta obiit vij kalends Octobris." Historia Laceiorum, in the Monasticon, under Kirkstall. Further, he name was Albreda, as appears by a charter of her son Robert de Lacy to the Abbey of Kirkstall quoted in Brooke's Discovery of Errours, 1594, p. 63, also in Addit. MS. 26,7 41, f. 262b.]
4. MS. in Bibl. Bodl. G. 9, Cant. f. 98b.

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already been proved. He married Isabella, daughter of . . . . . ., and, dying without issue, [August 21,] 1193, [1] was interred in the abbey of Kirkstall. With him ended the male line of ths great family, [2] and in fact the blood of the Lacies itself, so that he had no other resource than to devise his vast estates, consisting of sixty knight's fees, to his uterine sister [3] AWBREY, daughter of Robert de Lizours, who married
RICHARD FITZEUSTACE, [4] lord of Halton, and constable of Chester, who died sometime bfore 1178, 24 Hen. II. leaving
---Footnotes---
1 ["Inventum est in chronicis abbatim de Kyrkestall pro anno regis Henrici quarto et Anno Domini Mcxciiii, mensis Augusti die xxj,., viz. xij. kal. Februarii (sic) obiit bonae memoriae dominus Robertus de Lascy, secundus fundator monasterii de Kyrkestall, et ibi sepelitur." Monasticon Anglicanum, 1682, p. 857. "Iste Robertus obiit anno Regis Ricardi primi et anno quarto Anno Domini 1193, et duodecimo kalendas Septembris." Duchy of Lancaster, Class xxv. Bundle AA. No. 8 (7). Dr. Whitaker had here adopted the erroneous date "12 kal. Feb." following the Monasticon and the Cotton MS Tib. A. xix. f. 60b.]
2. With him too terminates my unpleasing task of detecting the perpetual errors of Dugdale and his authorities. Sir Peter Leycester will henceforward be my guide, in whose account of the Constables of Chester I have not been able to detect a single mistake; but Sir Peter Leycester wrote, as every historian if possible ought to do, from original evidences. [Whatever the merits of Leycester, I cannot allow the expression "the perpetual errors of Dugdale" to pass without a protest. Dugdale, no doubt, fell into some errors, like every mortal genealogist; but they are not those of a blunderer, and his great merit is that, like Sir Peter Leycester, he always cites his authorities. J.G.N.]
3 ["Et iste Ricardus duxit sororem Roberti de Lascy quae vocabatur Awbray Lisours, de qua genuit duos filios, scilicet Johannem constabularium, fundatorem domus de Stanlowe, et fratrem Robertum hospitolarem, et duas filias, scilicet Saram et Abreiam. Sara fuit data Robert de Aldeforde. Altera vero scilicet Abreia data fuit Henrico Beset. Et notandum quod Abreia isa fuit soror Roberti de Lascy ex parte matris et non ex parte patris, quia pater Aubreiae fuit Robertus de Lysours. Successit tamen dicto Roberto de Lascy in heredem quia nullum heredem habuit de se genitum nec alium tam propinquum." Harl. MS. 1830, f. 4, 4b. But these statements of the monastic historian are now shown to be unfounded, as will appear in the following notes.]
4 [The family of Albreda de Lizours had been seated at Sprotborough in Yorkshire from the time of the Conqueror, when Roger de Busli included that manor in his great fee. The following account of the family is abstracted from that given by the historian of South Yorkshire: "Among the principal of the persons who attached themselves to Roger de Busli was Fulk de Lizours. He is supposed to have been a relation of Roger. His name, and that of Albreda his wife, are joined with those of Roger de Busli and Muriel his wife in the foundation deed of the priory of Blythe. In the time of the sons of the Conqueror appear two brothers, Fulk and Torard, both known by the addition de Lusoriis or de Lizours. Whether they were sons of the former Fulk, or that this Fulk is the same person, does not appear on the face of any record. Torard was the ancestor of the Lizours of Nottinghamshire, where they continued for some centuries; while Fulk had the lands of Sprotborough, with a portion of the Nottinghamshire lands. The charters in the coucher of Blythe relating to lands at Billingley show that Fulk had a son named Robert de Lizours. He made an illustrious marriage with the widow [l. cousin] of Henry de Lacy."
Subsequently to his writing the foregoing, Mr. Hunter arrived at a different conclusion in regard to the manner in which the family of Lizours was substituted for the first race of Lacy. It was founded on the following passage of the Pipe Roll of 1131:
"Robertus de Lusoriis reddit compotum de viij li. vj s. viij d. ut ducat in uxorem sororem Ilberti de Laci. In thesauro iiij li. Et debet iiij li. vj s. viij d." (Magnus Rotulus Pipae 31 Hen. I. edit. 1833, p. 8.) Upon which, as editor, he made the following remarks in his Preface: "A new view is opened of a very important fact in the history of one of the great feudal tenancies of England, which became at length, as it still continues, a fief of the Crown, the Honor of Pontefract. The original grantee was an Ilbert de Lacy, whose great possessions are described in Domesday Book. From him descended other Lacies, who held this fee till the reign of Richard I. when Robert, the last of them, deceased without issue. On his death the fee descended to Albreda de Lizours, of whom there exists a fine of the fifth year of King Richard, showing her in possession, and to whom she disposed of it. The question is how Albreda stood related to the last Laci last seized; and Dugdale, together with the whole body of later genealogists, has followed the Historia Laceiorum, an historical fragment written not earlier than the time of Henry VI. printed in the Monasticon from a chartulary. The writer of this little piece of history declares Albreda to have been half-sister ex parte materna, to the last of the Lacies. But as it would show a rule of descent of which it is presumed no similar instance can be produced from those times, and might, if admitted, lead to general conclusions that were erroneous in respect of the inheritance of feudal tenures under the early monarchy, it is of importance to observe that in this Roll there is an entry in the accounts for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire that Robert de Lizours paid 8l. 6s. 8d. that he might take to wife the sister and heir of Ilbert de Lasci, a second of that name, and there can scarcely be a doubt that Albreda, the issue of that marriage, was cousin and heir, and not half-sister, of the last Lasci, and therefore a partaker of the blood of the Ilbert de Lasci who was the original grantee from the Conqueror.
The true lines of descent will be made apparent at one view by the following table:
[shown elsewhere as a graphic]
I cannot close this note without mentioning with regret that, notwithstanding that the passage of Mr. Hunter's preface above recited was extracted at full in the Appendix to the First Edition of Baines's History of Lancashire, vol. iv. p. 765, in order to point out this very important amendment in the Lacy genealogy, yet it has been overlooked in the new edition of that work, 1870, where at vol. ii. p. 14, the old statement is repeated, that on the death of Robert de Lacy, "his possessions were inherited by his maternal sister Aubrey." Nor has the discovery been duly introduced into Courthope's Historic Peerage, 1857, or Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages, 1866, for in both these works Albreda Lisours is still designated as "his half-sister." Mr. Hulton again, in the Whalley Coucher Book, 1847, pp. 2, 76, scarely ventured to deviate from Dugdale's account, although he had an intimation of the passage in the pipe-roll of 31 Hen. I., derived from Dodsworth, -- still unaware of Hunter. So venerable and pertinacious is error, and so difficult is it to substitute truth in its place. J.G.N.]

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succeeded him, [1] Eustace surnamed of Chester, Richard a leper, Peter, whom I conjecture tohave been Peter de Cestria the long-lived Rector of Whalley, [2] and Alice. This
ROGER DE LACY, [3] the terror and scourge of the Welsh, for his severe executions upon whom, together with the general ferocity of his temper, he was denominated Hell, [4] succeeded to the fees of Pontefract and Clyderhow, in consequence of a fine, levied between himself and Aubrey his grandmother, devisee under the will of Robert de Lacy, in 1195, or little more than a year after the death of the latter; Richard RitzEustace and John his son not having lived to enjoy this great inheritance.
He was now lately returned from the Holy Land, whither he accompanied Richard I. in the third crusade, having assisted at the memorable siege of Acre [5], where so many of his countrymen and equals perished.
There is something evidently allusive to the temper and achievements of Roger de Lacy in his great seal, of which some drawings have been preserved. On the obverse side, instead of the equestrian figure usual in that situation, is the spirited figure of a griffon rending the body of some other animal; [6] and on the indorsement, an armed man
---Footnotes---
1 So Sir Peter Leycester, and this is confirmed by a fine levied at Clyderhow, 7 Ric. I. before Roger de Lacy in person, where we meet with some other persons of the Halton family, of whom I do not know that they are mentioned anywhere else. Coram Rog. de Lacy, Const. Cest., et fratre Roberto, filio Ricardi avunculi Rogeri, Eustatio fratre suo, &c. [Elsewhere the wife of John de Lacy is thus described: "habuit in uxorem Aliciam Vere uxorem (sic) Willielmi Mandeville Comit. Essex. Vid. 5 Ric. I. habuit exitum Rogerum, Eustachium, Richardum cui pater dedit willam de Moore, Galfridus testis cum Rogero fratre suo in anno 5to Joh'is, Alicia. Addit. MS. Brit. Mus. 26-741, f. 262b.]
2 See in the Coucher Book, (Chetham Soc.) p. 94, a charter in which he styles himself "Petrus de Lascy rector ecclesie de Whalleye. As before noticed in p. 80, he is stated to have been a bastard son. (Ibid. p. 280.)
3 ["This Roger was living at the time of the death of his relative Robert de Laci, and there was a fine levied in the King's court at Winchester on April 21, 5 of Richard I. that is, about a year after the death of Robert de Laci, by which Albreda passed to her grandson all the Laci lands, he quit-claiming at the same time to her the lands which had been Robert de Lizours her father's. (This most important document was first made public by Sir Peter Lecester. It is printed also in Ormerod's History of Cheshire, i. 510.) This Roger was the founder of a second family of Laci, for he assumed that surname, and seated himself at Pontefract, abandoning his hereditary house of Halton. His usual style was Roger de Laci, constable of Chester, by which description I have seen his name in an original charter of Albrey de Vere, Earl of Oxford, which, if, as I believe, of the first Earl, shows that the name of Laci was used by him immediately on his entering on the Laci fee." Hunter, South Yorkshire, ii. 202.]
4. ["Rogerum de Hell, a Vallensibus ita cognominatum eo quod eosdem Wallicos, Regi Angliae rebelles, tanquam inferni (sic), undique devastavit." Historia Laceiorum. Such is the authority for this oft-repeated soubriquet; which, notwithstanding, seems an exceedingly unlikely one. Among the witnesses to a charter of John de Scotia, Earl of Chester, which is printed by Ormerod, iii. 308, occurs the name of Rog' Hell senescallo Cestr', the original, it may be suspected, of this imaginary nickname of the Constable.]
5. It is curious and edifying to contrast the scenes which took place respectively before this obscure and remote place (St. John de Acre) at the close of the 12th and 18th centuries. In the former, the armies of France and England are seen fighting together against the Moslem infidels, under the common banner of the Cross; in the latter, appears a Christian knight leading a Mohammedan army against a host of apostate Frenchmen, crusading in the cause of atheism.
6. [In perfect impressions of this device it will be seen that it is the serpent which is really stinging the neck of the griffin; the latter being, no doubt, intended to typify Wales, in allusion to the name of Griffith (Griffinus) borne by the Welsh princes. As for the reverse, it appears to be one of those antique cameos which were continually adopted into the English seals of the period: but, unfortunately, this is only preserved (so far as has hitherto been found) in the rude tricking by Randle Holmes (Harl. MS. 2064, f. 307.) from which the engraving in the Plate is derived.
In another seal attributed to Roger de Lacy, being a signet of small dimensions there is an antique gem of a human head, which is circumscribed VIRGO EST ELECTVS A DOMINO. But qu. did not this really appertain to the Prior of Pontefract? It is engraved in Vetusta Monumenta, vol. i. pl. liv.
The Constables of Chester, who were engaged in constant warfare with the Welsh, appear to have adopted the device of the serpent stinging the griffin as early as the reign of Henry I, when it first appears in the seal of William FitzNigel, four generations before Roger de Lacy. The engraving here given is from the Tabley MSS. Lib. C. 133b, where it is attached to the charter printed in Ormerod's History of Cheshire, i. 507, note. It will also be found (less perfectly drawn) in Sir P. Leycester's Antiquities of Cheshire, edit. 1673, p. 264. William his son had a similar seal. (Ormerod, i. 508.)
The seal of Roger de Lacy and its reverse here introduced are extracted from Ormerod's Cheshire, i. 511, and were engraved from an impression in white wax, appendant to a charter in the possession (1816) of Mr. Thomas Sharp of Coventry.
The interlaced device which Ormerod (ibid.) calls "the fret," occurring on the reverse of the seal of Roger, is certainly meant to echo the surname of Lacy. Heralds have given it the name of the Lacy fret.]

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trampling on the body of an enemy, whose head he holds up triumphantly with the right hand, while the left sustains an antique heater shield.
In this crusade he was accompanied by William de Bellomonte, ancestor of the Beaumonts of Whitley Beaumont, in Yorkshire, who received from his patron the grant of ten oxgangs of land in Huddersfield, an who, from the frequency with which he attests the charters of Roger, appears to have been almost his inseparable companion for the remainder of their lives. It was the practice of those days for dependants to adopt, with some distinction, the armorial bearings of their patrons; it has always been usual to add to them some charge in memory of signal achievements, and thus a lion rampant in the shielf of the Beaumonts attests their ancient connexion with the house of Lacy,

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and an orle of crescents alludes (not obscurely) to some triumph over the standard of Mohammed. [1]
In his connexion with the Honor of Clitheroe, Roger de Lacy gave to the abbey of Stanlaw the lordship of Merland, the advowson of the church of Rochdale, with four oxgangs of land in Castleton (the valuable glebe of the present vicarage), and Brandwood, an uncultivated tract, then considered as part of Rossendale. The Coucher Book of Whalley proves with what enthusiastic ardour this example was followed by the inferior proprietors of lands in that district, who seem for a time to have been even ambitious of stripping themselves and their families to enrich this popular foundation. Roger de Lacy also granted the villa de Tunlay, and manor of Coldcoats, with Snodworth, to Geoffry son of Robert dean of Whalley. He served the office of sheriff for the county of Lancaster in the 7th, 8th, and 9th of Richard I., and is found occasionally presiding in his own courts at Clitheroe. He died Oct. 1, 1211, and was interred in the abbey of Stanlaw, [2] leaving, by Maud de Clare his wife, a daughter married to Geoffry dean of Whalley; and
---Footnotes---
1. The above affords a similar instance in the family of Neville, and probably of the same date. [I do not know to what coat of Neville our author here alludes: but in regard to the coat of Beaumont his heraldry must certainly be dismissed as imaginary. The lion of Beaumont is of gold, borne on an azure field, which is gerated or semee either with fleurs de lis, with billets, or crescents, in the several branches. The family was French, claiming descent from the royal house of France; and a branch which remained in that country, seated at Brienne-sur-Aube in Champagne, retained the same coat, but geraty with billets. As for crescents, they are a common kind of gerating, and the fancy that they, in any family, allude to the Crusades is entirely unproved. J.G.N.]
2. ["Anno Domini 1211 obiit Rogerus de Lacy, secundus fundator et novicius loci Benedicti de Stanlow, in festo Sancti Remigii. Cuit successit Johannes filius ejus." (Cotton MS. Titus F. III. f. 258.) The designation "novicius" implies that he had been invested with the monastic habit in his fatal illness, as was then a frequent custom.. "Habuit exitum Johannem, Rogerum, Robertum qui assumit cognomen de Constable." (Add. MSS. 26,741, f. 263.) From Robert the family of Constable, of Flamborough in Yorkshire, is said to be descended. Peacham, Compleat Gentleman, 1622, p. 171.]

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JOHN DE LACY, who, after the death of Alice de Aquila, his first wife, [1] without issue, married Margaret, daughter and coheiress of Robert de Quincy, son of Saher, Earl of Winchester. This Robert had married Hawys, fourth sister and coheiress of Ranulph Blondeville, Earl of Chester and Lincoln, who gave to her, in the distribution of his lands and honours, the latter earldom, [2] scilicet quantum ad me pertinuit, ut inde Comitissa existat. From her it descended to Margaret her daughter, who, marrying John de Lacy as above, Henry III. by patent [3] dated 23 Nov. 1232, reg. 17, re-granted it to the said John, and the heirs of his body begotten upon Margaret his then wife. [4] John de Lacy granted the two medieties of the rectory of Blackburn to the monks of Stanlaw, and the manor of
---Footnotes---
1 ["Alice, daughter to Peter de Aquila: she was buried at Norton abbey." Sir Peter Leycester.]
2. [Shortly before his death, which occurred at the castle of Wallingford in Berkshire, on the 28th of Oct. 1232. The charter by which he transferred the Earldom of Lincoln is still extant in the British Museum, and is printed in the Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i. p. 313. See "The Descent of the Earldom of Lincoln," a paper by John Gough Nichols, in the Lincoln volume of the Archaeological Institute, 1848, p. 271. Immediately after the Earl of Chester's death the Countess Hawise transferred the Earldom of Lincoln to her son-in-law John de Lacy, an arrangement no doubt contemplated by his uncle the late Earl, and completed and confirmed by royal charter on the 23rd of November 1232. Ibid. p. 272.]
3 [The date of this patent was within one month of the death of the Earl of Chester. "In terms equally simple with those employed in the last transfer of the Earldom, the King declared that, at the request of Hawise de Quency, he had granted to John de Lascy, Constable of Chester, those twenty pounds which Ranulph late Earl of Chester and Lincoln had received as the third penny of the county of Lincoln, by the name of Earl of Lincoln, and which the said Earl had in his life given to the said Hawise his sister; and which twenty pounds John de Lascy was to have and hold by the name of Earl of Lincoln, to him and his heirs issuing of Margaret his wife, the daughter of the said Hawise, for ever." (Memoir on the Earldom of Lincoln, p. 272.) Four years later, at the marriage and coronation of Queen Alianor in 1236, John de Lascy is mentioned by Matthew Paris simply as "Constable of Chester," and the passage is very interesting, as showing the feudal relationship of the Constable to the Earl. "The Earl of Chester [the John le Scot,] carried the Sword of Saint Edward which was called curtana, before the King, as a sign that he was Earl of the Palace, and had by right the power of restraining the King if he should commit an error. The Earl was attended by the Constable of Chester, who kept the people away with his staff when they pressed forward in a disorderly manner." John de Lacy in his seal as Earl of Lincoln (of which the engravings given on p. 243 are lent by the Archaeological Institute,) adheres to the old coat of his family, but possibly the cinquefoil under his feet may have some allusion to LIncoln, though it is generally considered to be the special badge of the county of Leicester. The second engraving of the great seal is from Ormerod, i. 513, and apparently, judging by the remaining letters, from a different matrix, though the same design.]
4 [The Countess Margaret was remarried to Walter Marshal, the fourth of five brothers who successively inherited the Earldom of Pembroke, and who also died without issue 24 Nov. 1246. There is in the British Museum a chater (Harl. 52 H. 44) in which she styles herself Countess of Lincoln and Pembroke: and in a charter of Maurice abbot of Kirkstall cited hereafter she is so designated. The annexed seal of Margaret de Lacy offers a very remarkable assemblage of early heraldic devices. In the centre is the old coat of Lacy surmounted by a flaming star or sun, with or without any special meaning. The margin, in place of a legend, is occupied alternately with the mascle of Quincy, and a double-tailed lion, possibly to typify that she was twice a Countess, for the lion was borne by both her husbands. The original is in the treasury of St. Joh's college, Cambridge.]

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Little Merlay to William de Nowell; and, dying July 22, 1240, was interred with his ancestors at Stanlow. He obtained from Henry III. a grant of diverse privileges within the Honor of Clitheroe, and particularly the Furca or Gallows at Clitheroe and in Tottington. [1] His son and successor was
EDMUND DE LACY [born 1230], who, [2] dying in the lifetime of his mother, never assumed the title of Earl of Lincoln. [3] He was educated at court under the immediate eye
---Footnotes---
1 Towneley MSS.
2 ["Anno Domini Mccxxx natus est Eadmundus de Lascy filius Johannis com. Lincoln. et constabularii Cestriae." (Cotton MS. Cleopatra C. III. f. 328.) As he did not survive his mother, the heiress of the Earldom, he never actually succeeded to that dignity, though there are some documents in which he is styled Earl of Lincoln by courtesy, as mentioned in the memoir on the Earldom before quoted, p. 273. "Post mortem autem dicti Johannis de Lacy, filius ejus Edmundus de Lacy constabularius et non comes vixit xiij annos et moriebatur Anno Domini Mcclviij nonas Junii et sepultus jacet apud Locum Benedictum juxta patrem suum." (Harl. MS. 1830, f. 6.) "Anno D'ni Mcciviij obijt Eadmundus Lascy ix kal. Junii." (Cotton MS. Clep. C. III. f. 328 b.) "Anno 1258 obiit Eadmundus de Lacy filius Johannis, quartus fundator, non. Junii, cui successit Henricus filius ejus. Horum ossa sunt modo apud Whalley." (Cotton MS. Titus, F. III. f. 258.)]
3. [The great seal of Edmund de Lacy is roughly represented in the Plate, fig. 6. It has been lately better engraved, but from a fractured impression, in The Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Journal, vol. i. p. 169, as here repeated. The legend appears tohave been SIGILL' EADMVNDI DE LASCY CONSTABVLARII CESTRIE.
His signet is also engraved in the Plate, fig. 7; but the original is really smaller, as in the woodcut. It has a shielf of the three garbs of Chester, and the legend: SECRETV. EADMVNDI DE LASCI.
The engravings here inserted are contributed by the Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Association, from their Journal, vol. i. p. 169; having been copied from a charter now in the possession of Charles Jackson, Esq. of Doncaster. The same seal was used by Edmund de Lacy at Easter 1258 (shortly before his death) to a confirmation charter to Roche Abbey. (ibid. p. 173).

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of King Henry III. and probably by his procurement married, to the great indignation of the good people of England, Alice de Saluces, a foreign lady, related to the Queen, and daughter of a nobleman of Provence. [1] He died June 5, 1258, [2] and was buried at Stanlaw; leaving
HENRY DE LACY [born 1251] [3], the last and greatest man of his line, who, from his peculiar connexion with the subject of this work, as well as his own personal qualifications, is entitled to a larger and more distinct commemoration than his ancestors. [4]
---Footnotes---
1 [This statement is derived from the historian Matthew Paris. There are two curious passages in his chronicle relating to this marriage; the first stating that Peter of Savoy, Earl of Richmond, (the Queen's maternal uncle and brother to Boniface archbishop of Canterbury,) "brought from his distant province some unknown ladies, in order to marry them to the nobles of England whom the King was educating as his wards;" and the second relating that the King stayed at Woodstock from the feast of St. Vitalis (April 28) until the morrow (May 2) of the apostles Philip and James, in 1247, in order to be present at the marriage of Edward (titular) Earl of Lincoln and Richard de Burgh, upon whom the young Provencal ladies were then bestowed. Richard de Burgh died before the end of the same year (as mentioned by Matthew Paris), and of his bride no other notice occurs; but the wife of Edmund de Lacy is identified as Alice daughter of Manfred marquis of Saluzzo, by Beatrix of Savoy, which Beatrix, after the death of her husband in 1244, was remarried to Manfred, a natural son of the Emperor Frederick, and afterwards Kng of Naples and Sicily. The Marquis of Saluzzo was fourth in descent from the marriage of Boniface marquis of Saluzzo with a former Alice of Savoy, in the twelfth century. And it is a fact hitherto unnoticed by our own peerage-writers that Alice Countess of Arundel (ob. 1292), the wife of Richard Earl of Arundel (1272-1302), was niece to the wife of Edmund de Lacy, being a daughter of her brother Thomas Marquis of Saluzzo, who lived until 1299. See Guichenon, Histoire Genealogique de la Royale Maison de Savoie, 1778, vol. i. p. 273, vol. iii. pp. 290, 318.]
2 [This favour he had granted to the monks seven years before, when he gave them the advowson of one moiety of the church of Blackburn," cum corpore meo apud Stanlowe sepeliendo, si contingat me in Anglia in fata decedere." Coucher Book of Whalley, (Chetham Soc.) p. 77.]
3 ["1251. Natus est Henricus de Lacy 3 idus Januarii." MSS. Cott. Vesp. D. xviii f. 17b and Cleop. C. iii. f. 328.]
4 [For a full biography of the Earl of Lincoln the reader may be referred to "The Siege of Carlaverock, by Sir Harris Nicolas," 4to 1828, introduced by the remark that his name occupies a prominent place in the records of almost every public event of his time. In the expedition to Scotland 1300, which the old peom of Le Siege de Karlaverok commemorates, the Earl of Lincoln led the van of the invading army.
Henry li bons Quens de Nicole
Ki proveste enbrasce e acole,
E en son cuer le a soveraine,
Menans le eschele promeraine
Baner out de un cendal safrin
O un lioun rampant purprin.
Leading the foremost squadron on
Comes Henry the good Earl of Lincoln,
Who prowess hugs with close embrace,
In his brave heart its sovereign place;
On his silk banner saffron-died
A purple lion ramps in pride.
Dying at his house near London, which had previously been the town residence of the bishops of Chichester, but which ever since his time has retained the name of Lincoln's Inn, Henry Earl of Lincoln was buried in St. Paul's cathedral, and an engraving of his monument may be seen in Dugdale's History of that church. "Anno 1310 obiit dominus Henricus Lacy Comes Lincolniae et Constabularius Cestriae in die Sanctae Agathae virginis anno etatis suae 60, et sepultus fuit in ecclesia Sancti Pauli Londini ad australem partem altaris Sanctae Mariae virginis. Cujus animae pro sue magna misericordia propitietur Deus. Amen." (MS. Cotton. Titus F. III. f. 258.)
There is a good impression of the first great seal of Henry Earl of Lincoln attached to the Addit. Charter 1438 in the British Museum (and a cast may be obtained from Mr. Robert Ready of that establishment). It is of the usual round form, but only 2 1/2 inch in diameter, and bears his equestrian figure in chain mail and surcoat, a large sword brandished in his right hand, and a crest in the form of an inverted crescent above his round-topped helmet, the visor of which is formed of crossed bars. On his shield, and on the housings of his horse, repeated in front and rear, are the arms of Lacy, Quarterly, a bend and file. Legend, S> HENRICI DE LACI COMIT' LINCOLNIE ET CONSTABVLAR' CESTR'. The bird in the first quarter is a misapprehension of part of the file or label. This signet occurs attached to a charter dated 1274 in the Duchy of Lancaster office.
At a subsequent date, the Earl relinquished his family coat for the rampant lion then generally affected by Earle, and which in his case was of the unusual tincture purpure, on a golden field. The great seal and accompanying counterseal, shown in these engravings, are from a charter dated 1303. A variation of the counterseal (of the same size) has occurred in the Duchy of Lancaster office: having the same shielf flanked not by dragons, but by lions, their backs towards the shield, and their heads hidden behind it. With the same inscription, SIGILLVM SECRETI.

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[On attaining his majority he was admitted to the degree of knighthood together with the King's nephew Edmund of Almaine, [1] and fifty-four other gallant bachelors, upon the feast of St. Edward held at Westminster in the year 1272; and on the same occasion prince Edmund and he were respectively girt by the aged King Henry III. (in the last year of his reign) with the swords of the Earldoms of Cornwall and Lincoln. It was, however, five years after before he obtained livery of the fee which his ancestors had usually received nomine Comitis Lincolnie, with all the arrears from the time of his investiture.]
He was the confidential servant and friend of Edward the Frist, whom he seems not a little to have resembled in courage, activity, prudence, and every other quality which can adorn a soldier [2] or a statesman. In 1290 he was appointed first commissioner for rectify-
---Footnotes---
1 [Son of Richard Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans, who had died in 1271.]
2 Though he were not a long-lived man, his services began with the reign of Edward, and continued beyond it, for in the 1st year of Edward he besieged and took the cstle of Chartley in Staffordshire, which Robert de Ferrars had entered and detained by force from Hamo l'Estrange, to whom it had been granted by Henry III. upon the attainder of Ferrars.

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... the abuses which had crept into the administration of justice, especially in the Court of Common Pleas -- an office in which he behaved with exemplary fidelity and strictness. In 1203 he was sent ambassador to the French king to demand satisfaction for the plunders committed by the subjects of France upon the goods of the English merchants. After the death of Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army in Gascony, and viceroy of Aquitaine. In 1298 he raised the siege of the castle of St. Katharine near Toulouse, and expelled the French from the confines of that country. In 1299 he led the vanguard at the memorable battle of Falkirk. In the parliament of Carlisle, in the last year of Edward I. he had precedence of all the peers of England after the Prince of Wales; and, by a rare fortune, after the death of his old master, he seems to have retained the confidence of his son. This Earl died at his house of Lincoln's Inn, Feb. 5th, 1310, aged 60 years, and was interred in St. Paul's cathedral, where were erected, over his remains, a magnificent tomb and cross-legged statue in linked mail, which perished with many others in the great fire of London, but happily not until they had been perpetuated by the hand of Hollar.
Henry de Lacy received from his sovereign, in recompense of his services, the Honor of Denbigh in Wales, and additionally to his other titles styled himself, in consequence, Dominus de Roos and Rowennock. Over the gate of Denbigh castle his statue in robes is still preserved, and there, or at Pontefract, for traditions vary, his eldest son, the last heir male of the family, perished by a fall.
As lord of the Honor of Clitheroe, the many remaining evidences of this Earl's transactions prove him to have been active and munificent. For, besides many grants of inferior consequence, he rewarded his seneschal Oliver de Stansfeud with the manor of Worsthorn, and the Lelaleghs and Middlemores with the manor of the grange of Clivacher; he confirmed and extended the privileges of his borough of Clitheroe; and, above all, he gave to the monks of Stanlaw the advowson of Whalley with its dependencies, procured the removal of their abbey to that fertile and beautiful site, attended, as it appears, the translation in person, and laid the first stone of their conventual church. [1]
He married Margaret daughter of Sir William Longespee, [2] by whom he enjoyed all the lands, though not the title, of Earl of Salisbury; they had two sons, Edmund and John, and two daughters, Alice and Margaret. Of the two sons, both of whom died young, various accounts are given. One tradition is, that Edmund the eldest [born in 1271] was drowned in the draw-well of Denbigh castle; [3] but it appears from another account,

1 [See before, p. 90.]
2 [This marriage had been arranged in his boyhood, when his father fined in ten marks to the King for leave to contract it, Feb. 9, 41 Hen. III. (1257). MS. Dodsworth, lvi.]
3 [Leland says of the gate-house of Denbigh castle, "On the front is set the image of Henry de Lacy Erle of Lincoln in his stately long robes. . . . Sum say that the Erle of Lincoln's sunne felle into the castelle well, and there dyed: wherupon he never passid to finische the castelle." Itinerary, vol. vi. fol. 61.]

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that in 1282, the year in which Edward I. granted to Henry de Lacy the two cantreds of Roos and Rowennock, he gave to Edmund de Lacy his son Maud de Chaworth, then only five years old, in marriage, [1] but that Edmund died young, and that John his brother, running upon a turret of Pontefract castle, fell down and was killed. It is not probable that both these children perished by violent deaths, but rather that one tradition has been propagated out of the other. Of the two daughters, Margaret also died before her father, [2] who left of consequence his sole heir
ALICE DE LACY, who married at the age of 9, in her father's life-time, Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, and carried along with her an inheritance even then estimated at 10,000 marks per annum.
THOMAS EARL OF LANCASTER, though idolized by the monks, was both a weak man and a bad subject, bustling without vigour, and intriguing without abilities, so that, after having long disquieted the kingdom, by an influence which his vast possessions alone created, he at length suffered himself to be overpowered by Edward II. a man as weak as himself, and was beheaded at his own manor at Pontefract, March 22, 1321, leaving no issue. [3]
Of his transactions in the Honor of Clitheroe I recollect no memorial, excepting that, by charter dated at Whalley on the feast of St. James, A.D. 1316, he gave to the abbot and convent of that place Toxteth and Smethedon, as a more convenient site for their abbey. The monks, as we have seen, complained of the present situation: they wanted fuel, building timber, and even an extent of domain at Whalley; but when the charter of Toxteth was obtained these inconveniences were instantly removed, and they thought it prudent to retain their new grant and their old situation. [4]
---Footnotes---
1 ["Cui rex Edwardus isto anno [1282] dedit maritagium Matilde puelle quinqennys filiae et heredis Patricii de Chauworth, quam genuit de filia Will'mi de Bellocampo Comitis de Warwyke, quam postea duxit uxorem Hugo Despenser. Iste itaque Edmundus dominus et filius Henrici de Lacy statim juvenis est defunctus, nullo post se relicto herede de corpore suo procreato." (Cotton. MS. Cleop. C. III. f. 335 b.) At the marriage, when the bride was five years old, the bridegroom was eleven, having been born in 1271: "Anno Domini Mcclxxi natus est Eadmundus filius Henrici de Lascy x. kl. Sept." (Ibid. f. 328 b, and Vesp. D. XVII. f. 17 b.)
2 ["Dictus igitur Henricus Com Lincoln. de prefata Margareta uxore sua genuit aliam filium nomine Johannem et filiam unam nomine Alesyam. Sed Johannes iste priusquam annos nubiles attigisset super turrem quoddam in Castro de Pontefracto incaute discurrens lapsus est ultra muros et in terram collisus et constructus protinus expiravit, nullum post se sui corporis relinquens heredem." (Ibid.)
The Earl of Lincoln married for his second wife Joan, younger daughter and coheir of William Martin lord of Kemoys in Pembrokeshire, a baron of Parliament. He had no issue by her: and on her surviving him, her marriage was granted to Ralph de Monthermer; but she chose to marry, without his or the King's license, Nicholas Lord Audley, and from that marriage all the subsequent Lords Audley have descended. See Dugdale, Baronage, i. 106; Courthope, Historic Peerage, pp. 35, 317.]
3 [An impartial biography of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, by Sir Harris Nicolas, will be found in The Siege of Carlaverock, 1828. 4to. pp. 265-269.]
4 [See the particulars before stated in p. 92.]

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Of Alice de Lacy there is a very disgraceful story [1] told by Walsingham; and, were it..
---Footnotes---
1 I will only mention, on the authority of a memorandum in Dodsworth's MSS. which I have mislaid, that the fact which gave rise to the tragedy of Sir John Elland, of Elland, was a fray between the retainers of Earl Warren and the husband of this lady, on her account. This nearly fixes the era of that transaction, but not of the old song upon the same subject; concerning which Mr. Watson, History, p. 176, critically observes, "that it was penned some time after the facts," that is, a ballad, precisely in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins, was penned sometime after the earlier days of Langland and Chaucer. Doubtless. [Dr. Whitaker seems to cite Walsingham either from memory, or at second hand: but that historian assigns a precise date to the abduction of the Countess of Lancaster, namely, the Monday before Ascension day in 1317: "Anno gratie Millesimo trecentesimo decimo septimo, qui est annus regni regis Edwardi a Conquestu secundi decimus, tenuit rex Natalem, &c. . . . . Eodem anno, die Lunae Ascensionem Dominicam precedente, rapta est Comitissa Lancastriae nobilis viri domini Thomae comitis Lancastriae uxor legitima, apud Canforde in Dorsetia, per quendam militem de domo et familia Johannis comitis Warreniae, convocatis ad illud factum detestabile fautoribus (ut dicebatur) assensu regio plurimis Anglicorum; ducta est antem pompose nimis in despectum comitis dicti Lancastriae ad dictum Warennae comitem, ad castellum suum de Rigate. Dumque sic foemina duceretur, ecce in itinerando, inter sepes et nemora inter Haulton [Alton, in Hampshire] et Farnaham existentia, ductores vident eminus vela et vexilla. Aderant enim sacerdote cum populo facientes processionem more solito circa campos. Ductores igitur dictae comitissae timore subito et horrore percussi, putentes comitem Lancastriae vel aliquos per ipsum missos ad auferendum dictam dominam et tantam injuriam in ipsos cum minis et pompa. Cum quibus, quidam miserae staturae, claudus et gibbosus, suisque perpetuo intendens maliciis (Richardus dictus de Sancto Martino) dominam (proh dolor !) supradictam delusam miserabiliter (magno suffultus adjutorio) in suam exegit usorem, firmiter protestatus quod ipsam fide media cognovit carnaliter antequam fuerat desponsata comiti supradicto, quod etiam plane praedicta domina palam ubique recognovit, ac etiam verum esse fatebatur, nullo ducta timore. Ac sic quae toto tempore vitae suae nobilissima fuerat reputata domina, subito vergente rota fortunae, quod dictu turpe est, per totum orbem spurcissima meretrix acclamatur. Igitur dictus Richardus se supra se extollens, nomine uxoris suae praesumit in curia regia vindicare comtatus Lincolniae et Sarum, sed incassum, prout rei gestae sequentia plenius explanabunt. Fama facti hujus ad Summi Pontificis aures allata, misit idem Pontifex duos Cardinales, ut pacem facerent inter regem et barones et praecipue Thomam comitem, ut patebit inferius loco suo." Watson, in his Memoirs of the Earls of Warren and Surrey, vol. ii. p. 19, adds that "This affair occasioned a divorce between the Earl of Lancaster and his Countess, and the Earl, in a spirit of revenge, demolished the castle of Sandal near Wakefield, belonging to the Earl of Warren, wasting his manors on the north side of Trent."
After his death the Earldom of Lincoln was restored to her 20 Dec. 1322 (as shown by various documents cited in the memoir on the earldom before quoted, p. 276); she shortly afterwards married Ebulo le Strange, (younger son of the Lord Strange of Knockyn,) who having no issue by her was summoned to parliament as a Baron only until his death in 1335. Before the 5th of July in the following year the Countess had taken as a third husband Hugh de Freyne, a knight of Artois, who also was in consequence summoned to parliament, but not by the title of Earl. He died before the end of the same year (1336); and the Countess, dying on the 2d Oct. 1348, was buried by the side of her second husband Ebulo le Strange, in the conventual church of Barlings in Lincolnshire.
There are several seals of Alice Lacy, varying in design and remarkable for their heraldry, which is not entirely obvious to interpretation.
In one, the round seal engraved in this work, Fig. 10 of the Plate, the coats of the Earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury are impaled together, representing her claim as heiress to both these dignities -- an early and very remarkable example of impalement.
Dr Whitaker has mentioned (Third Edit. p. 181 note) that the impression from which this was engraved was found "wrapped up in a note written by Bishop Tanner." It has also been engraved in the History of Lacock Abbey by Bowles and Nichols, p. 148.
In an oval seal used by her 55 Hen. III. the only device is a shield of Chester (three garbs) suspended to a three-headed three. Legend, SIGILLVM A . . . DE LASCI. (Harleian Charter, 52 H. 43.)

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either pleasant or edifying to rake into the dust of libraries for ancient scandal, I could related more to the same purpose than has ever yet appeared; suffice it, however, to say that after having married two other husbands, Eubulo l'Estrange and Hugh de Frenes, she died A.D. 1348, [at her castle of Bolingbroke, co. Lincoln,] and was interred in the [neighboring] abbey of Barlings, next her second husband. With her expired the name of Lacy, which, even if she had left issue, would scarcely have been continued at the expense of Plantagenet.
But to return: in the year 1294, Henry de Lacy, despairing of male issue, surrendered all his lands to the King, who regranted them to the said Earl for the term of his life, and after his decease, to Thomas Earl of Lancaster, and Alice his wife, and the heirs of their bodies; failing of which they were to remain over to Edmund the King's brother (a remarkable proof of the Earl's attachment to the royal family,) and to his heirs for ever. [1] By this act the Honor of Clitheroe became united to the Earldom of Lancaster. Thus much is generally known: but the following particulars, which ascertain some important steps about this time in the descent of the Honor of Clitheroe, have been retrieved from an original decree of Edward III. relating to the advowd son of St. Michael in the Castle. [2] On the attainder of Thomas Earl of Lancaster, the Honor of Clitheroe and hundred of Blackburn were instantly seized into the King's hands, and remained in the Crown till the beginning of Edward III.'s reign, when, with the exception of Ightenhill Park, they were granted for a term of life to
QUEEN ISABELLA, of whom we have several transactions in this capacity upon record. [3]
---Footnotes---
1 [Dr. Whitaker here wrote evidently under a little mental confusion. Edmund the King's brother was not a different party, but the actual Earl of Lancaster; whilst his son Thomas the espoused husband of the heiress was not as yet Earl, but merely heir apparent to that dignity. The provision of remainder to the father would be in order that the heiress might be transferred to another son, had Thomas died before the consummation of the marriage. Thomas Earl of Lancaster is said to have been of full age at the death of his father in 1296, but he could scarcely have then been quite twenty, as his father's marriage was in 1276. Alice de Lacy was not unsuited to him in respect of years, for it appears that she was born on Christmas Day 1281. The inquisitions on her father's death vary, as such documents usually do, in regard to her age, but that for the county of Denbigh -- in which she was very probably born, is more precise and reliable: -- "fuit etatis xxix annorum die Natali Domini ultimo preterito."
(Inq. dated at Dynebagh, on Sunday before the feast of St. Peter in Cathedra, 21 Feb. 4 Edw. II. 1311.) At her espousals she was in her 9th year. (Cotton MSS. Cleop. C. III. f. 336.) This would thus be in 1290.]
2 Pen. auct.
3 No. 2 in the Plate is the seal of this Queen, appended to her charters as lady of the Honor of Clitheroe. [It is copied from the drawing in Harl. MS. 2064, f. 322, and was attached to a charter dated at Stratford le Bow, 26 June, 6 Edw. III. On the counter-seal is a shield quarterly of 1. England; 2. France; 3. Navarre; 4. Champagne.]

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Previously however to her death the attainder of Thomas Earl of Lancaster had been reversed, on the plea that he had not been tried by his peers; so that immediately upon that event Henry Duke of Lancaster succeeded to this Honor and Hundred, by virtue of the above-mentioned entail upon Edmund the King's brother and his heirs.
Of HENRY DUKE OF LANCASTER, as lord of the Honor of Clitheroe, the recorded transactions are the following: he founded an hermitage for [a female] recluse in the churchyard of Whalley; [1] granted the bailiwick of Blackburnshire to the abbey and convent of Whalley, together with the Townleys, Delaleighs, and Alvethams; and the manor of Downham to John de Dyneley. [2] This was the last alienation of a manor by the lord paramount within this Honor, as Great Merlay was the first. He died March 24th, 1360, having by his wife Isabel, daughter of Henry Lord Beaumont, two daughters and coheirs: Maud married to William Count of Hainault, and Blanch to John of Ghent, fourth son of King Edward the Third, Earl of Richmond, and afterwards in her right Duke of Lancaster.
JOHN OF GHENT, Duke of Lancaster, received by this marriage, as the purparty of Blanch, his wife, besides the fees of Pontefract and Lancaster, properly so called, the hundred of Blackburn or Honor of Clitheroe, with its appurtenances, thus described:
"The wapontake of Clyderhow, with the demesne lands there, the royal bailiwick of Blackburnshire, the manors of Tottington and Rachdale, the lordship of Bowland, the vaccary of Bouland and Blackburnshire, the forest of Blackburnshire, and park of Ightenhill, with the appurtenances in Blackburnshire." A few inquisitions and other acts of little importance are all the evidences which remain of his having exercised these extensive rights. [3] He died February 3, 1398, leaving a son,
HENRY OF BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Lancaster, then in banishment, who returning the year following deposed his unfortunate master Richard the Second; after which the Honor of Clitheroe, as a member of the Duchy of Lancaster, merged in the Crown. [4] But Henry the Fourth, conscious of the weakness of his title to the latter, and foreseeing that upon a restoration of the right heirs the Duchy, which was his own undisputed inheritance, would now, of course, as an accessory, follow the fortunes of its principal, "quia magis dignum trahit ad se minus dignum," with the consent of Parliament, anno regni 1 mo, made a charter entitled "carta regis Henrici 4ti de separatione Ducat. Lanc. a Corona;"
---Footnotes---
1 {See before, in p. 97.]
2 No. 1 in the Plate is the great seal of this Duke, appended to the grant of the manor of Downham, of which the original in green wax is in the possession of William Assheton, esq.
3 I have an impression of the seal of John of Ghent, but in too mutilated a state to be engraved. It has, as usual, an equestrian figure on one side, and on the other quarterly France and England, with the label of three points. [Such a seal of John of Ghent is described in Sandford's Genealogical History, second edit. p. 249, but I am not aware that it has been engraved. It is his privy seal as King of Castile and Leon which is engraved in Sandford (both editions) and copied in Nichol's History of Leicestershire. J.G.N.]
4 Fleetwood's Antiquity and History of the Duchy of Lancaster, MS. p. 36.

page 253
and in this charter it is declared that the Duchy of Lancaster "remaneat, deducetur, gubernetur, &c., sicut remanere, deduci, gubernari deberet, si ad culmen dignitatis regiae assumpti minime fuissemus." Notwithstanding this, all grants of lands, &c. passed under the great seal of England alone, through the remainder of this reign, and till the third of Henry V. when it was ordered that no transactions relating to the Duchy should be deemed valid "sub aliquo alio sigillo praeterquam sub sigillo nostro pro Ducatu praedicto." [1] And thus the matter rested till the deposition of Henry the Sixth, when Edward the Fourth, whose respective titles to the Crown and to the Duchy were precisely those of the House of Lancaster inverted, reasoning on the same principles with Henry IV. passed an act entitled "actus incorporationis necnon confirmationis inter alia ad Coronam Angliae in perpetuum de Ducat. Lanc." providing, however, that the said dukedom should be and remain a corporate inheritance, and should be guided and governed by such officers as in the times of Henry IV. V. VI.
After all, Henry the Seventh, -- who, independently of these acts of mere power, had the only legal title to this great inheritance, as heir in tail after the death of Edward son of Henry VI. under the deed of settlement upon the heirs male of John Duke of Lancaster and Blanch his wife, -- in the first year of his reign repealed the former Act of Edward IV. and entailed, along with the Crown, the Duchy of Lancaster, with its appurtenances, upon himself and the heirs of his body lawfully begotten.
These were the fortunes of the Honor of Clitheroe while it continued a member of the Duchy of Lancaster; that is, to the Restoration of Charles II. when that prince, in consideration of the eminent services of General Monck, bestowed upon him and his heirs, from which time to the present it has passed in the following channel:
---Footnotes---
1 Fleetwood's Antiquity and History of the Duchy of Lancaster, MS. p. 36. Qu whether by Act of Parliament? but so Fleetwood.

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Christopher Duke of Albemarle, leaving no issue by his wife, who was daughter and coheiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, gave her his estates; of which she died possessed 28 Aug. 1734, aet. 95, having, secondly, married Ralph Duke of Montagu, whose two daughters: Isabella, married first to the Duke of Manchester, and secondly to Edward Earl Beaulieu; and Mary, married to George Brudenell Earl of Cardigan, afterwards Duke of Montagu. Ralph Duke of Montagu died March 9th, 1708-9. Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of George Duke of Montagu, married, in 1767, Henry Duke of Buccleuch, and had issue a second son, Henry James Baron Montagu of Boughton, on whom the Honor of Clitheroe was settled, after the decease of the Duchess, his mother. [On his death in 1845, without male issue, it became the property of his cousin the present Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry.]
made a charter entitled "carta regis Henrici 4ti de separatione Ducat. Lanc. a Corona;"

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