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St Michaels Mount Cornwall by AJP
The Baron Berry Pomeroy in about 1165 was 1st Henry Pomerai, He gave lands to the Priory of St Nicholas in Exeter. He accounted for £80 6s 8d for the fine for his lands & paid £29 7s 8 d for his knights fees in England.
He married Rohese sister of Reginald Earl of Cornwall, whose mother, Sybil Corbett, was one of the many mistresses of Henry I , son of William the Conqueror.
Henry I had 27 illegitimate offspring & provided for all of them, giving titles & lands to the son and providing highborn marriages for the daughters. This 1st Henry Pomeroy died about 1165.
Accounts vary. One Visitation say it was the 1st Sir Henry , another it was his son but
Dates suggest it was the 2nd Sir Henry Pomeroy who, in 1193, captured and fortified St Michaels Mount on behalf of Prince John in the time when Richard I was the ever absent king .Born in Aquitaine, From 1189 to 1199 Richard Plantagenet became overlord of Brittany as well as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine & Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, & Nante & King of England
The 2nd Sir Henry Pomeroy founded Knights Templar Preceptory at Trebeigh in 1150 ,of which no trace remains , with one Reginald Marsh .
This baron Henry Pomeroy died 1193-4 by his own hand -which resulted in an attainder that removed all his property and the disinheritance of his feudal lands. Whether it was because he was accused of treason or because he committed suicide the result was the same Everything was taken into the Crowns possession for 3 generations.
Both suicide and treason were a horrible disgrace , a dishonour & a blot on the family escutcheon.
This 2nd Henry married 1st Maud de Vitri daughter of the Constable of the Court of Henry 1. She gave him his heir, the 3rd of 9 sequential Henry Pomeroy's .
2nd he married Rose or Rohesia Bardolf, sister of Doun Bardolf (1177–1205), lord of a moiety of the feudal barony of Shelford, Nottinghamshire. who gave him Josceline .
Henry died in 1194 but in 1193 he captured St Michael Mount on behalf of Prince John and fortified it against King Richard 1 Richard was the 4th son of King Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and as such was not expected to accede to the throne . However all of his brothers, except the John, youngest, died before their father.
King Richard I , Richard the Lionheart, was known to be absent of his kingdom of England for most of his 10 year reign .However he had apparently returned to England , to Winchester, at about the time that Josceline Pomeroy, was tried for High Treason at Winchester.
The Evidence.
1] John Russell of Kingston had to pay 50 marks to the royal treasury for the hand of his bride the widow Rose Bardolf. Her new husband not only got Rose herself, and therefore potential heirs of their bodies, but also a lifetime interest in her dower lands, which would been 1/3rd of the lands of her former husband.
John Russell of Kingston Russell was a household knight of King John , however his pedigree does not apparently descend to the later 16th century
John Russell, Earl of Bedford, despite the existence of historical writings and pedigrees to the contrary.
These are now considered an invention with linkages invented in order to justify the funding, and the desire of their patron, the later lord John Russell,
for a noble line back to the Conquest.
[a mark was about 8 oz in weight of gold or silver, commonly used in transactions but never as a coinage in England. It was worth 160 pence or two-thirds of a pound sterling. ]
2nd son Joscelin of Tale and Payhembury in east Devon paid scutages on at least 32 Knights fees.
On 8 th April 1194 he was tried for high treason at Winchester, then the seat of government.
King Richard was absent for most of his reign leaving England in the care of co- regent and very ambitious William Longchamp. A Norman of humble origin he rose to become Lord Chancellor, Chief Justiciar, and Bishop of Ely. He soon dominated England becoming known for being dictatorial, and 'an intolerable tyrant'.
Prince John, his brother & heir, set himself up as the Alternative King and took control of the royal castles at Windsor and Wallingford, setting up his own court. When Richard was captured in 1192 the Holy Roman Emperor demanded a ransom of 150,000 marks (100,000 pounds of silver) It had to be delivered to him before he would release Richard. This sum was 2–3 times the annual income for the English Crown and Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, worked to raise the ransom. She raided the exchequer and taxed clergy and laymen a quarter of the value of their property; the gold and silver treasures of the churches were confiscated, and money was raised from the scutage and the carucage taxes.
( Carucage was the replacement for the more ancient tax of danegeld, a tax based on the size of an estate & scutage was levied on holders of a knight's fee under the feudal land tenure of knight-service.)
Just before the money was paid Prince John with King Philip of France offered the Holy Roman Emperor 80,000 marks to keep Richard prisoner until Michaelmas 1194, an offer that was declined. Richard was released on 4 Feb 1194, at which time Philip of France sent a warning to John: "Look to yourself; the devil is loose".
The calendar ran from 25th March to 24th March so Feb was just before New Year.
King Richard covered the 560 miles home in 4 weeks, landing in England just before New Year, on 7th of March. London opened it gates to him as did most of the other castles which had sided with John, [ who happened to be in Normandy after celebrating Christmas as he always did.] Only the castle at Nottingham resisted so the King went north to do battle and lay siege to Nottingham Castle, which after a few day surrendered. Richard then went south to the Royal Court and Treasury at Winchester.
The Legend
1] The story is told that King Richard I sent a messenger to Cornwall to arrest Henry Pomeroy on a charge of conspiracy with the King's brother, John. Henry Pomeroy stabbed and killed the messenger and hurried to his castle of Mount St.Michael in Cornwall, which he intended to defend until the ascension of King John.
This one fails because Henry died before John became king in 1199. It is possible that Richard I returned to England and had Josceline tried for treason at Winchester in 1194 in place of his brother. Attainder brought with it the idea of 'bad blood ' in the family.
Confirming this is Henry's son the 3rd Henry Pomeroy who handed over 700 marks the following year 1195 for the lands and title.
This tells us that his father was dead before 1195 and the barony attained - in the hands of the Crown- at least 4 years before 1199 when Richard I died and John became king.
2] local legend at Berry Pomeroy Castle is that in 1194 when the king's messengers came to arrest him, he mounted his horse and leaped from the battlements into the valley below. "Out over the cliffe, out into the night/three hundred feet of fall/ They found him next morning below in the glen/with never a bone in him whole/A mass and a prayer, good gentlemen all/For such a brave rider's soul."
This one falls at the first fence because there was no CASTLE battlements at Berry, not for another 300 years. In any case the ruins stand on the edge of a fairly steep slope but not a vertical cliff & which was most likely covered in trees 400 years ago.
No good trying to kill yourself if you jump and land in a tree !
3] Another story says that he committed suicide by having himself bled to death by his physician. This is the worst - to have someone in your employ kill you in cold blood. THAT seems most dreadfully cowardly.
https://sites.google.com/site/pomeroytwigs2/home
Legend has it that in a fit of remorse Henry Pomeroy either killed himself or had himself bled to death. One of the things that happened after a suicide was that all property reverted to the Crown. The lands of Berry Pomeroy did indeed revert to the Crown, either because of the manner of his death or because he was attainted for treason.
Henry Pomeroy having escaped the king's justice meant that the Kings justice fell on his blood brother his brother. Josceline was tried at Winchester on 8 April 1194. Everything he had, property, status, title, everything was lost to him and his heirs. His sentence for High Treason compelled him to become a monk at Forde Abbey. Being forced into a monastic house was a most unusual punishment for treason, the usual punishment was execution.
He went to Forde Abbey where he remained as a monk until , in 1199, he learned that Richard I was dead. He immediately left Forde and settled at his estates in east Devon at Payhembury
Joscelin Pomeroy's 'punishment' seems unusual. It suggests to me that their relationship to Henry I was in their favour. Richard I was a grandson of Henry I & was directly related to the Pomeroys, their mother being the illegitimate daughter of Henry I .
A ) MIGHT the legend of suicide have some foundation in truth.
B ) the sentence metered out to Josceline was lenient because the Pomeroys and king Richard had the same grandfather a. The Pomeroys were descended from the illegitimate children of King Henry I , and as such had status .
C) Having read further about attainders it seems more likely that this was a case of guilt by association. Joscelin, living in East Devon, far away from Cornwall and St Michael's Mount, may not have been drawn into his brother's treasonous activities, BUT was considered guilty because by association, by tainted family blood.
To plot against the king was treason which was punishable by death. Thus it might be considered an act of suicidal recklessness.
Or was suicide by ones own hand preferable to being hung drawn and quartered..?
Could the legend of suicide be a metaphor for treason OR could the legend of suicide have been designed to hide a worse crime, that of treason. ?
Which ever it was the results were the same. Attainting. All property and status was confiscated and returned to the Crown for several generations.
[ attainted; attainder was the metaphorical "stain" or "corruption of blood" which arose from being condemned for a serious capital crime (felony or treason). It entailed losing one's life, property and hereditary titles, and the right to pass them on to one's heirs.
Both men and women condemned of capital crimes could be attainted.
On 17th April 1164 King Richard I , who had lived all his life in France and spoke almost no English , was crowned at a 2nd coronation at Winchester. Within the month he had left England on Crusade .
King John, who was a nasty piece of work, unstable, vindictive and deeply vicious, assigned to the custody of the Berry Pomeroy barony to William Brewer, a prominent but deeply unpopular administrator and judge , & major landholder who founded and endowed three monasteries including Torre Abbey, on Torquay in 1196.
The custom of sending sons to be brought up in another family of equal status makes likely that this man might have had the Pomeroy heir Henry (3) as ward. When Josceline was forced to become a monk it seems possible it was by way of penance, to make some amends for the 'mortal sin' of his brother.
It would appear that they were both attainted and lost everything for the treason Could the ruthless warrior Richard the Lion Heart really have been that generous, because it was certainly a most unusual punishment for High Treason
There is another possible reason for the leniency. Family connections. King Richard, Henry and Josceline Pomeroy all shared a grandfather, they were cousins and Royal Blood flowed in Pomeroy veins.
Evidence 2]
When King Richard died unexpectedly in 1199 Joscelin immediately quit the religious life. This suggests that the attainer on him and his lands was reversed. King John returned to him the properties he had at Tale and Payhembury, near Forde Abbey, which were his due as 2nd son. There he settled and we hear no more of him. Whether he married and had children is unknown.
When the 2nd Henry Pomeroy's widow Rose or Rohese remarried in 1200 her future husband, John Russell of Kingston Russell, had to buy her from the Crown. The Bride Price was 50 marks of silver.
Evidence 3]
The Berry Pomeroy lands having been attained remained the under the control of the crown and the next generation the 3rd Henry Pomeroy paid 700 marks for his livery and the king's benevolence. This Henry made a prestigious marriage to Alice de Vernon daughter of William REVIERS, 5th Earl of Devon.
In the following generation, yet another Henry Pomeroy, the 4 th of 9 Henry Pomeroys , also had to pay a large sum, 600 marks, for his lands in 1211. This Henry married well taking as wife Johanne Vautort of Trematon sister of Roger de Vautort.The Feudal barony of Trematon was one of the three feudal baronies in Cornwall had its caput at Trematon Castle, near Saltash . In 1166 Trematon comprised 59 knight's fees, and 59 separate manors. Roger III de Vautort died childless died 1274, declared insane for disposing of most of the family's holdings for next to nothing leaving vast debts.
In those highly religious times suicide left a stigma of a family name, a mark of cowardice. That indelible stain lasted for several generations. All of which makes Joscelin Pomeroy's 'punishment' seem unusual and different. However since being attained affected an entire family it seems more likely that Joscelin was punished for being a traitors brother. Collateral damage.
With only title of Baron, the lowest rank of English nobility, and no other title by which they might re invent themselves, the Pomeroy family do appear to have suffered for several generations. They paid a heavy monetary price for at least 3 generations yet that bill of attainder could be reversed at the stroke of the king's pen, all forgiven and forgotten. Indeed it was in Joscelin's case, for when Richard I died in 1199 Joscelin immediately left Forde Abbey and retired to his Payhembury estates.
There is another way to look at the legend. To knowingly plot with someone like Prince John against the sovereign, the warrior king Richard, was tantamount to killing oneself. The punishment for treason was death. So could suicide by ones own hand have been preferable to being hung drawn and quartered..?
OR yet another thought - Could the legend of suicide be a metaphor for treason or was the legend designed to distract from Henry's treason.
Which ever way is was Sir Henry was almost certainly dead around the same time his brother was tried for treason in the spring of 1194. The reason we know this is because in that year, 1194, the his son had to pay a huge sum of 700 marks to the Crown for his 'livery of his lands'.
Which was the greater crime - self murder or treason?
'' Medieval accounts of suicide describe it as a private deed which its perpetrators did their best to conceal. It was often difficult to prove, and commonly the subject of discreet allusion by means of euphemism, metaphor and circumlocution.
Suicide was widely felt to be too terrible to talk about, and though the word suicida was coined as early as c. 1178, it was not accepted into general use, and seems to have vanished until well after the end of the Middle Ages.
The English crown was unique among medieval monarchies in its success in imposing the principle that any violent death within his kingdom was prima facie a crime against the king and therefore a matter for investigation by royal justice.''
Alexander Murray Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN:
Richard Carew in his Survey of Cornwall 1602 relates this thus.
St Michael's Mount captured, 1193 Sir Henry de la Pomeroy captured the mount, on behalf of Prince John, in the reign of King Richard I
Until Richard I raigne, the Mount seemeth to haue served onely for religion, and (during his imprisonment) to haue bene first fortified by Henry de la Pomeray, who surprized it, and expulsed the Monks: howbeit soone after, when hee became ascertained of his Soueraignes enlargement, the very feare of ensuing harme wrought in him a present effect of the vttermost that any harme could bring, namely, his death:
whereon, the olde cell and new fort, was surrendred to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the Kings behalfe. Thus Houeden reporteth.
But the descendents from this Pomeray, alias, Pomeroy, make a somewhat different relation of this accident: for they affirme, that a Sergeant at armes of the Kings, came to their auncestour, at his Castle of Bery Pomeroy, in Deuon, receyued kind entertaynment for certaine dayes together, and at his departure, was gratified with a liberall reward: in counter-change whereof, he then, and no sooner, reuealing his long concealed errand, flatly arresteth his hoaste, to make his immediate appearance before the King, for answering a capitall crime. Which vnexpected and il-carryed message, the Gent, tooke in such despite, as with his dagger hee stabbed the messenger to the heart: and then well knowing in so suparlatiue an offence, all hope of pardon foreclosed, he abandones his home, gets to a sister of his abiding in this mount, bequetheth a large portion of his land to the religious people there, for redeeming his soule: and lastly, causeth himselfe to be let bloud vnto death, for leauing the remainder to his heire: from which time forward, this place continued rather a schoole of Mars, then the Temple of peace. ( ?? A school of War rather than peace?)
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