Visitations of the North; Or, Some Early Heraldic Visitations Of, And

THE PUBLICATIONS SURTEES SOCIETY YOL. CXLIV. NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS LIMITED THE PUBLICATIONS SURTEES SOCIETY ESTABLISHED IN THE YEAR H.DCCC.XXXIY. YOL. CXLIV. FOR THE YEAR M.CM.XXX. VISITATIONS OF THE NORTH PART III. A VISITATION THE NORTH OF ENGLAND circa 1480-1500 published for the Society bp ANDREWS & CO., SADLER STREET, DURHAM, AND BERNARD QUARITCH, 11 GRAFTON STREET, NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W. 1930 At a Meeting of the Surtees Society, held in Durham Castle, on Tuesday, December 3rd, 1929, the Dean of Durham in the chair, it was ordered, ‘ That a third volume of Early Heraldic Visitations of the North of England he edited for the Society hy Mr. C. H. Hunter Blair.’ CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.xi ABBREVIATIONS.xix A TABLE OF THE PEDIGREES ..... 1 THE VISITATION PEDIGREES.2 APPENDIX I, BEING A LIST OF THE PEDIGREES CON¬ TAINED IN ADD. MS. 5530 IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 167 APPENDIX II, BEING A LIST OF THE PEDIGREES CON¬ TAINED IN ADD. MS. 38133 IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 171 INDEX.175 INTRODUCTION This society printed in volumes 122 and 133 of its publica¬ tions certain sixteenth century herald’s visitations of the northern counties of England, edited by Dr. F. W. Dendy and entitled Visitations of the North. The Great War and other obstacles prevented the completion of the work as foreshadowed in the introduction to volume 122, pp. xlv-xlvi. Some years later the late Rev. C. V. Collier undertook to complete the series, but he had made little progress with it before his lamented death in 1929, when the present editor took over the work. To complete the plan outlined in volume 122, p. xlv, required only the publication of the 1575 visitation pedigrees of Northumberland and Yorkshire, but it was thought desirable to include, as suggested in the introduction to volume 133, the collection of early northern pedigrees contained in MS. Ashmole no. 831, the great value of which had been pointed out by Dr. H. H. E. Craster of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. When, however, the present editor had prepared the three visitations for the press it was found that the cost of printing them in one volume was prohibitive; it was therefore decided to print, in this volume, only the pedigrees in MS. Ashmole 831, leaving the two visitations of 1575 for a future volume. This volume therefore nOw contains only the pedigrees in MS. Ashmole no. 831, folios iv-87v, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, collated with MS. Dodsworth no. 81 in the same library. The manuscript from which these pedigrees are copied is entitled Stemmata vetusta prosapiarum regiarum Angliae et Galliae nobiliumque multarum Anglicarum a Roberto Glovero collecta atque transcripta. The manuscript is thus a copy made by Robert Glover (1544-88), pursuivant and herald, of an old manuscript, now lost, which may have been the official record of an heraldic visitation of the northern counties made in the later part of the fifteenth century. The names of the possible visiting heralds are unknown, but during the relevant time John Wrythe (1478-1504) was VISITATIONS OF THE NORTH Garter King of Arms and Roger Machado (1485-93) and Christopher Carhill (1493-1510) were successively Norroy Kings of Arms. Glover gives no title to his transcript, which is written in his formal secretary-hand with additions made by him in less formal writing. The Catalogue of the Ashmole manuscripts thus describes it: “ The first manuscript in this large folio volume is large enough to form a separate volume; it is fairly and widely written in the secretary-hand and vertically for the more ready continuation of the pedigrees from page to page; they are tricked in red roundles with red lines.” Roger Dodsworth (1585-1654) also made a copy, now contained in MS. Dodsworth no. 81, of the same roll though possibly from a different manuscript to that used by Glover. In his copy he refers to the original as “ my antient rolle of petigrees,” adding “ which are very authenticall and cited by Mr. Camden ” (post p. 23). Dodsworth’s copy is only a partial one, differing in details from Glover’s, but while it does not give all that are in the latter’s copy it does not include any pedigree which can be assigned to the late fifteenth century and which is not in MS. Ashmole 831. A collection of pedigrees similar to those here printed occurs in Add. MS. no. 5530 in the British Museum, in the hand¬ writing of sir Thomas Writh (or Wriothesley), Garter King of Arms (1504-34); a few also occur in Add. MS. 38133’ which is connected with Robert Aske (d. 1537); both these versions appear to have been taken from a common source. The version here printed is a verbatim copy of MS. Ashmole no. 831 collated with MS. Dodsworth no. 81. The additions from Dodsworth’s copy are printed in italics; the names omitted by him are enclosed in round brackets; any additions made by the present editor are in square brackets. This manuscript was evidently one of the primary sources of the Norcliffe MS. printed in volume XVI of the publications of the Harleian society,1 2 the original of which has hitherto been untraced. The compiler of that manuscript translated the greater part of his original into English, whilst sixteen of the pedigrees here printed do not appear in the Harleian volume.3 1 A list of the pedigrees contained in these MSS. is printed in the Appendices post pp. 167 and 171. 2 SS 122, p. xlvi if. 3 Ashton (2), Brandon, Darell, Daubeny, Fauconberg, Fitzhugh, ■Goushill, Helperby, Lassels, Montagu, Moubray, Poull, Roos, Saige and Toft. INTRODUCTION If the suggestion made above, that the original manu¬ script contained the official record of a herald’s visitation is right, then it is the earliest known and the first fruits of the incorporation of the College of Arms by Richard III in 1483. The first visitation to be made under a Royal Commission was that of 1528-29.4 The pedigrees themselves bear authentic marks of being such a record; they are also, so far as the present editor has been able to test them, of high quality and of general accuracy, fully justifying Dodsworth’s verdict of “ very authenticall.” They are also remarkable for the intimate details recorded of the different families and give the impression that their maker got his information at first hand in personal touch with living members of the particular family whose pedigree he entered. Such details as the following seem, to the editor, to point to this. Stanhope (p. 13) holds the third part of Touxford in Clay by knight’s fee and can spend four hundred marks of rent per annum. Conyers (p. 92) can spend a thousand marks of rent a year. Clervaux (p. 104) can spend three hundred marks a year. Strangwais (p. 106) can spend a thousand marks or more a year and, not to extend the list unduly, Agnes a younger daughter of John Vavasour (p. 69) married John Bekwith of Clint who has twenty marks a year. The care taken to enumerate the numerous younger children of a family and to record their marriages or very frequent early deaths also leads to the same conclusion. So also do such details as that Richard, second son of John Vavasour and his wife Isabel de la Haye, is “ marred in the Spirit ” (p. 59) or that Joan and Eleanor, daughters of Henry lord Fitzhugh, are twins and Joan is a nun at Dartford (p. 133). The pedigrees are interesting to the student of the social history of the time, for they give first-hand evidence of the large families then usual, of the high death rate amongst young children, and of the frequent re-marriages of the heads of families and of heiresses as well as of the custom of unmarried daughters and widows adopting a religious life. Of the former, nuns are mentioned at the Yorkshire monasteries of Swine (p. 102), Watton (p. 131), Ellerton (p. 125), Sinningthwaite (pp. 69 and 118) and at others farther afield such as Rusper (p. 103), Dartford (pp. 132/3) and Barking (p. 139) as well as some whose monasteries are 4 SS 122, p. xiv ff. VISITATIONS OF THE NORTH not named. Of the latter, for example, Margery widow of lord Scrope became a minoress at London (p. 41). The widows of Nicholas Fitzwilliam (p. 76) and sir John Constable (p. 102) were both veiled after their husbands’ deaths. The pedigrees are in Latin except that of the royal house of France (pp. 6/8) and that of Montagu (pp. 49/50) which are in Old French. The manuscript begins with the pedigree of the sovereigns of England from William the Conqueror to Edward IV; this was apparently compiled to show the righteous claim by descent of the House of York, and Edward’s in particular, to the crown; it omits the Black Prince and Richard II. The pedigree of France gives four descents from St. Louis to show the right of Edward III to the throne of France. The pedigrees do not appear to have all been made in the same year, but fall, for the most part, within the last twenty years of the fifteenth century. That of the royal house dates before 9 April 1483, when Edward IV died, but it is not earlier than 10 November 1480, when his daughter Bridget was born.5 It will be seen from the notes appended to the pedigrees that most of them date a few years later than that of the royal house.

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