Revised 6 January 2006 for CD-ROM THE SCUDAMORES OF UPTON SCUDAMORE: A KNIGHTLY FAMILY IN MEDIEVAL WILTSHIRE, 1086-1382 by Warren Skidmore Third edition Akron, Ohio ::2006 ALSO BY WARREN SKIDMORE Thomas Skidmore (Scudamore), 1605-1684, of Westerleigh, Gloucestershire, and Fairfield, Connecticut; his ancestors and his descendants to the ninth generation. First edition, 1980 Second edition, 1985 The Scudamores of Upton Scudamore, a knightly family in medieval Wiltshire, 1086-1382. First edition, 1982 Second edition, 1989 Skidmore Rickmansworth, England; Delaware; North Carolina and West 1555-1983. (with William F. Skidmore) 1983 Thomas Stonestreet of Birchden, Withyham, East Sussex, and of “Birchden” in Charles County, Maryland, with his posterity down to the sixth generation. First edition, 1983 Second edition, 1984 Third edition, 1985 Copyright © 1989 by Warren Skidmore All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (2006) The changes to this third edition have been largely cosmetic. A few small errors of fact have been silently corrected.. The type sizes for both the text and the footnotes has been increased to 12 point to replace smaller texts that saved money when the two earlier edition of this book were self-published.. I have added an Appendix V about the stone effigies (now on new plinths) in the church at Upton Scudamore, and an abstract on page 97 of a recently found Merbury deed which tends to support a bit of an old Welsh pedigree of the family. I wrote in 2005 a new long essay Some Notes on the Scudemer (Skydmore) family in the 11th to the 14th centuries for the new CD-ROM of 2006. It is supplemental to the present book and includes a revision of my account found here of the family at Poston in Herefordshire, some notes on the origin of the surname, and the possible (but unproven) connection of the family with that of Malbanc in France.. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1989) When I sent the manuscript of the first edition of this book off to the printers in April 1982 I felt reasonably certain that there would not be any significant additions made to it in my lifetime. Every likely lead had been pursued at the Public Record Office, the British Museum (now the British Library), the county record offices, and in the published book (notably the several series of the printed chancery rolls). The book went quietly out-of-print in 1987. Only a few typographical errors were noticed and even fewer additions had been reported to me at that time. Recently there has been a plethora of new finds! Almost every page of this edition has been augmented and revised. Perhaps the most important of the new data is the discovery and excavation of the site of the chapel at Corras in Kentchurch. Ralph [de Scudemer] may very well have a hand in the building of the chapel there, and beyond doubt either he (or his sons) made a gift of the tithes of the chapel to the abbey at Gloucester in 1100 with the consent (probably encouragement) of Harold de Ewyas. I had missed identifying the Rainald (never found with a surname) who was iii a stepson of Ralph. I now feel certain that he was probably born at Rouen in France, a son of Erkembald fitz Erkembald, and an adult by 1086. He and his stepfather were both tenants of Alfred of Marlborough at the time of the Domesday Book if my conclusion is correct. Two more chapters (XVI and XVII) have been added to accommodate the Herefordshire family. This branch of the family has now been brought down to the point where they acquired (by 1386) an interest at Kentchurch and began the construction of the fortified tower and the house adjoining which still survive at Kentchurch Court. This, quite coincidentally, is about the same time as the death of Sir Peter Scudamore IV (the last of the family at Upton Scudamore) and we end this account of both branches in the last quarter of the 14th century. The tentative identification of Alfred of Marlborough with an Alfred Maubanc found earlier in Normandy is the work of Bruce Coplestone-Crow who published a monograph on the fief of Alfred de Marlborough in the Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in 1986. I have used his work to great advantage (as the footnotes to the revised version of the Herefordshire chapters will show) and this book has benefited in innumerable other ways from my correspondence with him. R. G. Woodman published four essays in 1985 of great interest. Upton Scudamore (27 typewritten pages) brought the history of this place down to the arctic winter of 1962/3 when he was resident in the parish at the Old Rectory. He also did a history of Norton Bavant, The Giffards of Fonthill Giffard, and also The Barony of Ewyas Harold & the Wiltshire Manors. All are useful. John Hunt (now of Potton, Bedfordshire) has continued to dig in the archives with renewed ferocity now that London is so close. He turned up the two Inquisitions ad quod damnum on the chantries at Upton Scudamore that have been added to Appendix I. On a damp day in September 1988 Judy and John Hunt and myself made a pilgrimage to the church at Clifton Reynes, Buckinghamshire, to look at the heraldry on the tomb of Katherine (Scudamore) Reynes and her husband. The shields carved there suggest that her paternal grandmother was a Stokes, another new discovery. I continue to be greatly indebted to William F. Skidmore of Knoxville, Tennessee, who has turned the present revision into a handsome Times-Roman typeface. We have in progress another book tentatively titled Thirty generations of the Scudamore/Skidmore family in England and America and he has put almost 400 pages of this into the computer. A provisional first draft of this book should be available for study later this year. iv In this edition I have supplied the reference coordinates from the Ordnance Survey maps. The one inch maps are widely available in England through bookstores; large shops usually carry the entire collection. The larger scale maps (1:25,000) are much harder to find. Of these nos. ST 84 (Warminster), SO 42 (Garway), SO 33 (Vowchurch) and SO 32 (Longtown) cover the principal places mentioned in this book. A catalogue may be requested from the Director General, Ordnance Survey, Romsey Road, Maybush, Southampton S09 4DH. Note that the last (of three) digits of both the eastings and northings are estimated visually from the maps. In the interim between editions of ths book Linda (Skidmore) Moffatt has founded a Skidmore society and published several issues of a newsletter devoted to this family name throughout the world. The newsletter will be a clearing house for data for the family and anyone with queries or unpublished material is urged to write her at 2 Burley Road, Winchester, Hampshire S022 6LJ. Finally, an article by Cynthia Inions on Kentchurch (illustrated with several fine colour photographs by Tim Beddow) which appeared in the March 1989 issue of Country Homes must be mentioned. It updates nicely the three-part series on the house and family that appeared in Country Life some 23 years ago on the 15th, 22nd and 29th of December 1966. THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION The Scudamores of Herefordshire and Wiltshire appear to have been Normans (or Bretons) who were in England building castles before the conquest. I have attempted to tell their story as completely as the surviving records allow from the Domesday Book down to the death of the last Scudamore lord of Upton in 1382. It can not be said that my effort is an unqualified success for we have not recovered enough homely detail to make living personalities out of any of them. Primarily it is a history of their lands that comes through loud and clear; the human condition of the tenants eludes us largely. I have had to resist an inclination to retell the history of England in these pages, and the present book is best read with a textbook history of the period close at hand. I am very fond of Doris Mary Stenton’s English Society in the Early Middle Ages, an inexpensive Penguin book, which has gone through several editions and is nicely written. Lady Stenton’s learning will illuminate almost every page of this essay on the Scudamores and is highly recommended to my readers. v One thing that must certainly set the Scudamores apart from the other knightly families in Wiltshire in this period is the number of their charters that have survived fortuitously down to the present day. In 1364 when the last Sir Peter Scudamore was off to the wars in France he set up a trust in which he mentions a small sealed chest or coffer left in the custody of his wife Joan where he had lodged his last will and also the other muniments of the family. His will is lost to us, but presumably most of the charters once preserved there do survive in three different collections. The most valuable lot is to be found copied into the Hungerford family cartulary now deposited in the Wiltshire Record Office at Trowbridge. This is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge my appreciation to the staff there who produced it for me and then agreed to oversee the microfilming of it so that I might translate the Upton Scudamore charters at my leisure on this side of the Atlantic. An edition of the whole of the cartulary is in progress (1991) by John L.