ROBERT DE ALUERS OF NORTHAMPTON

Leaving for a time William Danvers and his family, let us endeavour to disentangle the story of his ancestry.  We have it on the authority of the Domesday record that a Robert de Aluers, in the year 1086, held a house in capite—that is, direct from the King—in the town of Northampton; and it is more than probable that this Robert is one of those of that name whom in the same record we find holding as sub-tenants in the neighbourhood.  Unfortunately, however, the surname of a sub-tenant is rarely given in the Domesday Book, and it is, therefore, only occasionally that one of them can be identified.

Battle Abbey Roll

The name de Auvers appears in its contracted form, Dauers, in two of the most authentic copies of the Battle Abbey Roll, those of Holingshed and Duchesne.  We know quite well that many authorities deny the existence of such a roll at or near the period of the Conquest; while others, though going so far as to allow the existence of the roll, assert that its custodians were as venal as those of the golden book of Fiesole, and for a money payment would enter therein the name of any family, thereby giving its ancestry a false claim to the antiquity and honours of Senlac.

Amongst men of note who condemned the roll was the late Sir Egerton Brydges, an accomplished historian and genealogist; yet he was willing to admit that those families whose names appear in the Liber Niger, or other authentic records of the twelfth century, may fairly be assumed to date from the Norman Conquest.  Now, the Duchess of Cleveland, in the preface to her work on the Battle Abbey Roll, has pointed out that of the seven hundred and forty names which are included in Holingshed’s and Duchesne’s copies of the roll, far the greater number belong to families whose names occur in authentic early records, while only a dozen unquestionable interpolations can be discovered when Sir Egerton Brydges’ test is applied.  Surely, then, the name of Danvers has a right to a place in such a roll; for it is one which is found in Domesday book, while three of its members are mentioned in the Liber Niger, and we have found another member of it at Tetsworth in the early part of the twelfth century.  Therefore we may pass on to inquire how it came about that Robert de Aluers acquired a house at Northampton, and whence he came.

Northampton was an important town at the period of the conquest—one which had often figured in the wars of the Danes and Saxons; and here, after the Conquest, Simon de St Liz, whom William made Earl of Northampton, built a strong castle, in which many great councils were held during the reigns of our Norman kings.  Domesday Book tells us that in the reign of Edward the Confessor the town had sixty burgesses and as many mansions.  At the time of the Survey the three largest householders were Robert de Mortain, who, as his share of the spoil of the town, had thirty-seven mansions; William de Peverel, who had thirty-two; and the Bishop of Coutances, who had twenty-three.

Norman Origins of the Danvers Family

Robert de Alvers is the subject of a long notice by MM. Léchaudé- D’Anisy et de Ste-Marie in the first part of their work, Recherches sur le Domesday. These gentlemen, accomplished Norman antiquaries, made themselves thoroughly acquainted with all that they could learn from the ancient records of the province regarding the history of the Norman families of the period of the Conquest; and having done so, attempted to compile a history of those of them whose ancestors are mentioned in the Domesday Book.  Unfortunately, they were not able to complete the work, but they published the first part of it, which includes a memoir of the Danvers family.  But it must be noted that these gentlemen wrote from a French point of view, and not with the intention of showing the descent of our English houses.  ‘Alvers, Robert de,’ obtained a house in Northampton from the Conqueror, and was himself of French origin, and the source of the English family of the name.  Our authors state that there were many places named Anvers in the provinces of Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and the Isle of France, and they proceed to mention families of the name of de Auvers which they consider had a right to claim descent from Robert de Auvers of the Domesday Book.  In Normandy they find in the Livre de Cens et Rentes of the Abbey of Mont St Michel (a manuscript compiled in the year 1270) that the abbey had bought land of Garin de Auvers, in the field de Auvers, in the parish of Ardevon.  Jean de Auvers held of the abbey the fief of André Auvers, in the commune of Monthébert.  Also they found the names of Ralph and Randolph de Auvers in the same book; and in the book of rents of the Abbey of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte (compiled A.D. 1296) they find the names of Reginald and Ralph de Auvers, and in the same record many concessions to the abbey ‘ab antiquitate de dono armigeri de Auvers.’  In Maine are two parishes named ‘Auvers’—Auvers-Montfaucon, belonging to the house of Assé, of which at an early period a cadet took the name of Auvers.  The other village is Auver le Hamon, formerly a barony, of which in the twelfth century Robert de Auvers was lord.  He contributed to the priory of Solesme, and also to the foundation of the Abbey of Boisrenou, in the year 1189.  Our authors, though they do not give further reason for so doing, ascribe the origin of the last-mentioned family to Robert de Auvers of the Domesday record, and consider the other families named branches of it.  Clearly these gentlemen place the origin of the de Auvers family either in Auvers of Normandy, or in one or other of the places of the name in Maine.

But we have some further particulars regarding the ancient Norman family de Auvers, for the knowledge of which we are indebted to the kindness of the Abbé J. Briant, formerly Vicar of Auvers, and now Curé of Binniville, a village in the neighbourhood of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte.  This Auvers, one of the three just mentioned, is in the peninsula of the Cotentin, which was formerly a portion of the dukedom of Normandy.  Auvers is situated three or four miles west of Carentan, a town at the base of the peninsula, while about twelve miles north west of Auvers is the town of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte.

The Abbey of St Sauveur was founded by Neel, Vicomte of St Sauveur and Seigneur d’Auvers, about the year 1087, and was endowed by him with a large part of his lands.1  The rest of his possessions passed eventually to his neighbours, the family of Harcourt, one of whom, Richard de Harcourt, married Jeane Tesson, niece and heir to Roger, nephew or grandson of Neel.  Thus the Harcourts, neighbours and allies of the family of St Sauveur, became lords of that town and also of Auvers.

To return to Neel.  We find that about the year 1090 2 he confirmed to the Abbey of St Sauveur the donations which had been made to it, ‘ex dono bonorum hominum,’ as follows:

William de Auvers, son of Helge, gives the tithes of the mill of Neuville (Nova Villa), and in Ingulvilla the tithes of three vassals.

Robert de Auvers, and William, son of Turges, give to the abbey all that they hold in the church of Auvers, and the tithes of a mill in Tornebosc.  Robert also gives the tithes which he holds in Auvers, and three cottages.

William, son of Helge, de Alvers—the village here bears the name by which Robert de Alvers is called in Domesday Book—also gives to the abbey all that he had in the church—that is (scilicet) de Alvers, with the consent of his lord, Eudes, viscount (Eudes, brother to Neel).

We gather from the above that the de Auvers family was one well known by that name, and that they were a family of good standing, having vassals, and property in three places besides that which they possessed in the village of Auvers.  And we think there are two considerations which may be made use of to support the view that it was from this branch of the family that the English family took their origin, and they are as follows:  The family of Auvers and that of the Harcourts were neighbours in the Cotentin, and we find that shortly after the Conquest these families3 were together large landholders in the village of Frolesworth, in Leicester, not far from Northampton; and it may be worth noting that, at the time of the Survey, a Robert, possibly Robert de Alvers of Northampton, held the manor of Schernford, only two miles distant from Frolesworth.

Geoffrey de Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances

Moreover, in another way, we think we find a connection between the de Auvers family of the Cotentin, and Robert Danvers of Northampton, for Auvers Cotentin was in the diocese of Geoffrey de Mowbray, Bishop of Coutances, who, as we have seen, was one of the three largest householders in Northampton, and who was a kinsman of Neel, lord of St Sauveur and Auvers.  Not improbably Robert de Auvers was one of the knights who fought under the Bishop’s banner as lord of St Lo, and thus we may account for the presence of the knight with his one house, and the Bishop with his three-and-twenty, together in Northampton.  For this Bishop of Coutances was not a mere Church dignitary; he preferred, we are told, the title of ‘lord of St  Lo,’ and was a worthy companion in arms of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.4

These were the two churchmen who spent the night before the battle of Senlac in rousing the spirits of William’s army to a high pitch of religious fervour, as soldiers in a cause blessed of God and the Pope.  In the Bayeux tapestry we see the Bishop depicted in the thick of the fight, animating the soldiers, club in hand, for, as a priest, he might not with a sword shed blood.

Therefore we think that of the three villages mentioned by the French antiquaries, in one of which they would place the origin of the Danvers family, we may with good reason select Auvers, Cotentin; where, as we have distinct evidence, a family taking its name from the village was seated before and at the time of the Conquest—evidence which is wanting for that early period in the case of the two places in Maine bearing the same name.

AUVERS, COTENTIN

Village

Alvers, or Auvers, Cotentin, is a typical Norman, one might almost say English, village, for even now it differs little in appearance from many a village of our own country.  The road from the busy little town of Carentan leads to the village through a hilly country, presenting in its broad grassed borders and big wild hedges, in which beech and oak and elm are plentifully interspersed, a sight very familiar to wanderers in the by-ways of England.  The pretty, straggling village, with its thatched stone cottages, scattered amongst orchards and gardens, and dominated by the ancient church, brought strongly to mind another home of the Danvers family which we had lately visited, the village of Epwell in north Oxfordshire.

The village boasts a fine Norman church, which would look quite in place in any English village, and this, with its churchyard, stands in an angle of the grounds of the Château d’Auvers, long the residence of the family of Morin d’Auvers, descended by heiresses from the Harcourts, anciently barons of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte and Auvers.

The château is a building of the eighteenth century, and is approached by two fine lime-tree avenues; it is surrounded by well-wooded grounds, but these as well as the house have a somewhat neglected and forlorn appearance, due perhaps to the fact that the owner, the representative of the family, lives elsewhere.

Church

The church is in excellent preservation, but, like so many of our English country churches, has the brand-new look which a modern restoration too often confers.  The edifice was originally Norman, but was probably completed and enlarged during the Early English period.  It consists of a central tower, a nave and north and south aisles, which are continued to the east end of the church; indeed, the church east of the chancel arch is slightly broader than the western portion.  The chancel arch is Early English, the east window Decorated.  The font is coeval with the Norman building, circular, enriched with an arcading of round-headed arches.

On a brass plate affixed to the pillar to the south of the altar is the following inscription:

‘Cy gist Haut et puissant Seigneur Messire Pierre Armand de Saint Marie, Marquis D’Auvers.  Que la pieté, la droiture et son exactitude a remplir tous ses devoirs ont rendu plus recommandable encore que noblis se de son extraction.  Une mort saintement prévenne a terminé sa vie le 28 de Jan.  MDCCV. à l’age de LXVI. ans.’

To the north-east of the church is the burial-place of the family, with many monuments, none, however, of ancient date.  The latest is that of the Countess ‘Angele de Grosmesil, Comtesse Morin d’Auvers,’ who died at Rome, September 23, 1878.  Here, as in many other churches of Normandy, any ancient monuments which may once have existed have been destroyed, and their destruction is laid by the people at the door of the Protestants; but, though the Huguenots of the sixteenth century did, doubtless, in the iconoclastic rage, destroy many a fair shrine and tomb, the men of the Revolution, the men who rifled and destroyed the tombs of the Kings of France at St Denis, were yet more destructive; while the monuments which were left, instead of being honoured and preserved, have, in the case of many churches, both in Normandy and in England, been destroyed by the too great zeal of the church restorer of modern times.

ROLAND DE ALVERS AND THE NORMAN CONQUEST

And now we may picture Roland of Alvers leaving home in the autumn of the year 1066 to join the army which Duke William was assembling at Dives for the invasion of England.  A tall, large-limbed man, broad-chested and long- armed, with big bony hands well fitted to grasp sword or lance, of ruddy complexion, with bushy eyebrows overhanging his deep-set blue eyes.  His head guarded by the conical helmet, and the face by the projecting nose-piece; his body protected by a coat of mail, while from his neck hung the great kite-shaped shield; at his side is the long straight sword, and his right hand wields the heavy spear which the Norman knight made his weapon of first offence.

‘Mailed hauberks and brassarts the knights mostly wore,

 Steel hose and bright helmets they all of them bore;

 With shields on their necks, and with hand grasping lance,

 And each knight was known by his own cognizance.’ 5

Whether the Norman knights bore, as did those of later times, armorial bearings upon their shields is a debated question, but we may be sure that, if so, the cognizance upon the shield of de Alvers was the chevron and mullets which his descendants displayed not long after the time of the Conquest.

And, doubtless, our knight fought in the centre of the army with the Normans who formed it, and were led by the Duke’s half-brothers-Robert, Earl of Mortain, and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with whom was the Bishop of Coutances.  And when, by stratagem not less than by valour, the English entrenchment on the hill of Senlac was won, and the footmen had cleared the way for the charge of William’s knights, Norman lance and sword overmatched the broad English axe; and the burghers of London, and the Thegns and Housecarls of Middlesex, and Kent, and Oxford, and Berkshire, fell and died where, through the battle, they had stood round the Golden Dragon of Wessex under which their forefathers had fought at Assendun.  But with them fell many a Norman soldier, and of the invading army few were those who escaped unhurt from the perils of the day.  Amongst the survivors, so tradition says, was the knight of Alvers.  ‘Fort en loyalté,’ he reaped the reward of his valour in manors in Northampton, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire, given to him by the leaders of the centre of the Norman army under whom he fought.

GENEALOGIES OF THE DANVERS FAMILY

Harleian Collection

Amongst the Harleian collection of manuscripts is one, No. 4031, which includes an interesting sketch of the origin of the Danvers family in England, and runs as follows:

‘Danvers, whose surname Alverse or Aluers, after ye French pronunciation Auvers, is now written Danvers.  Alvers was and yet is the name of a village or town in France within or adjoining the Duchy of Normandie, from whence there came a knight into England with William, Duke of Normandie, at the Conquest, who being planted here in regard of that Towne, of which before his coming he was, both he himself at that time, and his posterity were surnamed by the same and called diversly at divers times, but in terms not much differing—de Alverse, de Aluers and de Auvers.  And now at last Danvers.

‘The Norman knight of Alvers came into England at the Conquest of William the Conqueror, and was preferred to sundry lands and livings in the County of Bucks, Oxon and Berks, whereof the greatest parte had been ye inheritance of one Lewyn, an English Earle before ye Conquest.  And which lands for the most parte he held by knights service of Robert, Earl of Morteyn and Cornwall, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earle of Kent, and of Miles Crispin, Lord of Wallingford, who were all three half-brothers by ye mother to King William the Conqueror; insomuch as he is therefore supposed to have been of affinity to ye said King by his mother.  Which seemeth the more likely, for of his posterity some had ye Christian names of Rolland, Randulph, as some of ye ancestors of Arlotte, mother of ye King, had.’

Collins’ English Baronetage

Collins, in his English Baronetage, 6 says that the family of Danvers descended from Roland d’Auvers, who entered England with William the Conqueror, whose son Ranulph received of Crispin, Lord of Wallingford, whose knight he was, the manors of Dorney, Marlow, and Hitcham, to hold of his honor of Wallingford, and his son Roland was Dapifer to the Baron of Wallingford (Brian Fitz-Count).

Amongst the Harleian, Lansdowne, and Additional MSS.,7 many genealogies of the Danvers family may be consulted.  As regards the earliest members of the English family of the name, these genealogies, though they more or less differ, yet all agree in this, that a Ralph or Ranulph of Little Marlow, Hitcham and Dorney, was the son of the Norman knight who came to England with the Conqueror, and the common ancestor of the Danvers of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire.  All of these genealogies agree also in connecting the early members of the family with the honour of Wallingford, and we have the authentic evidence of the Liber Niger that Ruel de Aluerse was in the year 1165-66 a knight of that honor.

Wallingford

This ‘honor’ or ‘barony’ of Wallingford included many manors in the three counties just mentioned, and its lord at the time of the Conquest was Wigod, kinsman and cupbearer to Edward the Confessor.  At Wallingford Wigod received William on his march after the victory at Senlac; and here the Conqueror received the homage of Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, and of many Saxon nobles, and at Wallingford he married one of his most favoured nobles, Robert de Oilli, to Ealdgyth, Wigod’s daughter and heiress.  It is a question which has been debated by historians whether Wigod had a second daughter, Matilda, who married Miles Crispin, or whether this Matilda was the daughter of Robert de Oilli and his wife, the daughter of Wigod. 8  Freeman, in his History of the Norman Conquest, supports the former view, but the point is settled against him by a deed which may be found amongst the fragments of the ancient register of Oseney Abbey. 9  This is the record of an inquisition taken in the year 1183, before Ranulph de Glanvil, Justiciar, and it states distinctly that Matilda, the wife of Miles Crispin, Baron of Wallingford, was the daughter of Robert de Oilli, and that after Miles’ death, in the year 1107, she married Brian Fitz-Count.  Miles left no children, but Brian Fitz-Count had two sons by his wife Matilda; 10 they were, however, both lepers, and in the year 1154, having placed them in his Castle of Abergavenny, and his wife Matilda entering a convent in Normandy, Brian departed for the Holy Land.

DANVERS IN THE DOMESDAY BOOK

To return to the Danvers family.  We have given our reasons for believing that the ancestor of the family came from Alvers in the Cotentin in the year 1066, while twenty years after this we find a Robert de Alvers holding in capite a house in Northampton, and we have adduced evidence that about the same time a Ralph Danvers, son of the earliest member of the English family, was seated in Marlow, Hitcham, and Dorney, holding his lands of Miles Crispin, lord of the honor of Wallingford.  Now, we believe that this Ralph Danvers is a second member of the family of whom there is a record in the Domesday Book, for there we find that ‘Ralph’ held the manor of Dorney of Miles Crispin, as of the honor of Wallingford, while Ralph, and Roger, who as we shall find reason to believe was Ralph’s brother, held of Miles Crispin in Marlow and Hitcham, and Roger held, also of Miles Crispin, in Soleburie.

On the Authority of Augustin Vincent

That Ralph and Roger of the Domesday record belonged to the Danvers family receives strong support from a pedigree of the family which was compiled by Augustin Vincent, and is on record at the College of Arms. 11 Vincent as we learn from Noble’s History of Heralds’ College, entered the college about the year 1615, and early in his career became the favourite assistant of Camden, who employed him as his deputy in some of his visitations.  Vincent was also under-keeper of the records in the Tower, records from which he made voluminous collections.  He was a man, we are told, of great ability and industry, and all his work is still esteemed as being of a very trustworthy character. 12

The pedigree in question is one of the Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire branches of the Danvers family, and it asserts that the first of the name in England was Sir Roland de Alvers, who had three sons, Ralph, Roger, and Almar.  Sir Ralph, the eldest, was of Little Marlow, and had two sons—Sir Roland, the eldest, of Little Marlow, and Sir Geoffrey, the younger son, of Bourton in Oxfordshire.  Roger, Sir Ralph’s brother, was, Vincent tells us, of Soleburie (now Soulbury, Bucks), and ‘seemeth to have issue.’  Almar, the third son, was of Bourton in Oxon, and ‘seemeth to have died without issue.’

Not to follow this pedigree any further just now, we will only add, in confirmation of it, that Sir William Dugdale, who in the year 1638 joined the Heralds’ College, repeats Vincent’s statement that the Danvers family in England were descended from a Sir Roland d’Alvers that came in with the Conqueror. 13

Therefore we confidently assume that Sir Roland de Alvers was the first of the name in England, the father of Sir Ralph, of Marlow, Dorney, and Hitcham:  of Roger of Marlow and Soleburie, and father, or possibly uncle, of Robert de Alvers of Northampton.  It is true that Vincent does not mention Robert amongst the sons of Roland; but then he was writing only of the Bucks and Oxon branches of the family, and besides he may not have met with any record of Robert’s descent, and did not therefore introduce his name into the pedigree.  But it is only reasonable to suppose that this Robert of Northampton was the ancestor of the Danvers family of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, a family which from the earliest times tradition and similarity of cognizance have allied to the other branch of the family in England.  John Phillpotts, Somerset Herald in 1633, amongst his collections 14 has a note regarding the family which asserts that the Norman de Alverse, his Christian name is not given, who came into England at the time of the Conquest,15 was the progenitor of the families both of Buckinghamshire and of Leicestershire.

Sir Roland Danvers

Sir Roland was probably born about the same time as the Conqueror, A.D. 1027, and may very well have been brother to William de Auvers the son of Helge, whom we find amongst the early benefactors of the Convent of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte.  It seems likely that Roland married before the time of the Conquest, A.D. 1066, as we find his sons holding manors when the Survey was completed in the year 1086.  Probably Roland was then dead, or possibly he may have returned to Normandy, leaving his sons in possession of the inheritance which he had won in England.

Sir Ralph Danvers

We have already mentioned our opinion that Sir Roland’s son, Sir Ralph, married the sister of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, an opinion which is based upon the mention, in the charter of Alan Earl of Brittany and Richmond, of Robert de Aluers of that time, as son of Ralph and the Bishop’s sister.  This Ralph, the Duchess of Cleveland tells us, signed as witness to a charter of Robert Earl of Leicester’s to St Ebrulf’s monastery, and he is probably the same Ralph de Aluers whom we find signing, as one of Bishop Alexander’s men,16 to a charter given by Robert Earl of Leicester to the Bishop.

Born in Normandy, Ralph Danvers lived through the period of the Conquest, and witnessed the final struggles of the English for independence, the final establishment of the Norman rule in England, the stormy days of the Red King, the accession of Henry I, his struggle with, and defeat of, his brother Robert, and his marriage with Matilda of Scotland, an English princess, the niece of Eadgar Ætheling.  Ralph Danvers died at or about a time which was one of great sorrow throughout England, for it saw the death of Prince William—‘the Ætheling,’ as the English delighted to call him—drowned in the White Ship, off Barfleur, as he was returning to England.

According to Vincent, Ralph left two sons, Roland and Geoffrey, of whom the elder, Roland, succeeded his father in his Buckinghamshire and Berkshire estates, while Geoffrey received lands at Bourton in North Oxfordshire, and probably in Warwick also.

DANVERS IN THE LIBER NIGER

Liber Niger

Roland, the elder brother, is mentioned in an authentic record, to which we have now to refer, a venerable volume, the Liber Niger, of the Exchequer— called ‘niger’ from the black colour of its covers.  This book was compiled during the reign of Henry III, and includes a list of the knights’ fees of the kingdom during the year 1165 or 1166, a list which was prepared in anticipation of an aid to be demanded by Henry II on the occasion of the marriage of his eldest daughter Matilda with Henry the Lion, of Saxony.  The list in question returns the names of the King’s tenants in capite, who certify how many fees each holds and the names of those who hold them.  In the list—and let it be remembered that the list is one of unimpeachable authenticity—we find the names of three members of the Danvers family.  In Northampton Hugh de Auvers holds thirteen and a half carucates of land of Godfrey Ridel, the noble who succeeded Ranulph Glanville as Justiciar of the kingdom.  In Berkshire, of the honor of Wallingford, Ruel de Aluerse hold two knights’ fees; while in Warwickshire Robert de Aluers of Shuckborough holds three knights’ fees of William, Earl of Warwick.

Ruel de Aluerse

To take, first, Ruel de Aluerse.  We may safely identify him with the Roland whom Vincent tells us was eldest son of Sir Ralph, and succeeded him in Little Marlow, which he held of the honor of Wallingford.  One of the biographers of the family tells us that he was ‘dapifer’ (steward) to Brian Fitz-Count, who followed Milo Crispin, as lord of the honour of Wallingford.  A second entry in the Liber Niger is that of Robert de Aluers, and regarding this Dugdale, in his History of Warwickshire,17 writes as follows: ‘Shuckborough, in Warwick, held before the Conquest by Lewinus, whose lands, together with those neighbouring of Turchil of Warwick, came to the ancient Earls of Warwick, who enfeoft of this place the family of Danvers, Dalvers or Davers, all which ways it is written in records, and that not long after the Conquest.  For certain it is that Robert de Aluers held three knights’ fees of William Earl of Warwick, 12 Henry II, de verteri feoffamento.  Robert de Aluers was descended from Roland D’Alvers, or Dauvers, that came in with the Conqueror, and was ancestor of the Danvers of Upton, Dauntesey, Culworth.’

Robert D’Aluers

Copy of a charter given by Robert D’Aluers to his man, John of Shuckborough, may be found in Madox’s Formulare,18 and it appears that the Shuckborough estate shortly passed to the family of that name.19

We believe that this Robert Danvers of Shuckborough was the Robert of Bourton whom Vincent tells us was son of Geoffrey, father of the Danvers who married Emma Chevauchesul, and whose name appears in the Thame Abbey register as a witness to the charter of Robert Chevauchesul.  Shuckborough is only a few miles distant from Bourton, and the date of the entry in the Liber Niger quite falls within the lifetime of Robert, 20 the son of Geoffrey.

Geoffrey de Alvers

According to Vincent, the father of Robert was Geoffrey de Alvers, whose shield Vincent’s pedigree of the family displays the chevron with three scallop-shells in the place of the three mullets.  This device would indicate that Geoffrey was a crusader or pilgrim, and not improbably he was one of the knights whom Godfrey de Bouillon summoned to his assistance at Jerusalem.  He is no doubt the Geoffrey, or Godfrey, de Alvers who signs to a charter given at Staneleigh near Kenilworth, circa 1122-25, to Kenilworth Priory. 21

GEOFFREY DANVERS OF BOURTON AND CHISELHAMPTON

The grandson of Geoffrey was the Danvers who married Emma Chevauchesul; we say ‘the Danvers’ because while the Chartulary of Thame Abbey points to ‘William’ (Gulielmus) as his name, Vincent calls him Geoffrey (Galfridus).  There is, however, some degree of satisfaction to be gained from this want of accord, namely this, that it shows that Vincent made use of records other than those of Thame Abbey—he does not mention Tetsworth—in constructing the table of descent which he gives; his evidence, therefore, is complementary to ours; and as regards the difference of the names, anyone who has been in the habit of studying ancient records, often decayed or mutilated, knows the difficulty which frequently occurs in verifying a proper name. 22  Of far more consequence it is that Vincent had learnt from records—probably those which he studied to such good purpose in the Tower, of which many have perished since his time—the marriage of a Danvers with Emma Chevauchesul: the name of his father and of his father’s seat, and of his eldest son.

Vincent calls Emma’s husband ‘of Bourton and Cheselhampton,’ and as lands in Chiselhampton (or to give the place its full name Chevauchesul- Hampton) formed a part of the estates of the Chevauchesul family, we may assume that lands in Cheselhampton, as well as in Tetsworth, formed the dowry of Aucher Chevauchesul’s daughter Emma.

Frolesworth

To return to the entries in the Liber Niger; those of Roland and Robert we have considered; there remains that of Hugh of Northampton.  Vincent does not mention him.  The author of the pedigree in the Lansdowne MS., 269, makes him the younger brother of Sir Ralph of Marlow and the ancestor of the Danvers of Frolesworth and Shakerston in Leicester.

Mr Nichols,23 in his great History of Leicestershire, states that very soon after the Conquest the lordship of Frolesworth was in the possession of a Norman, Thomas de Sacheville, and that at the same period the families of Danvers and Harcourt were considerable landholders there.  Felicia, daughter of Thomas, carried the lordship to the Danvers family by her marriage with Hugh de Auvers, a marriage which is authenticated by a charter quoted by Mr Nichols, by which Hugh and his wife Felicia make a donation to the church of Frolesworth.  They had a son, Bertram, who married Alice, relict of Robert de Burton (Robert Danvers de Burton?).  Nichols gives a series of charters, which carry on the descent of the Frolesworth family to the middle of the fourteenth century.

OTHER EARLY RECORDS

Liber Rubeus Scaccarii

Another venerable work of the same character as the Liber Niger, is the Liber Rubeus Scaccarii, which contains a copy of the roll of 1166, of the Liber Niger, and other scutage rolls and inquisitions, dating nearly up to the end of the reign of King John.  Amongst them is one of the 33 Henry II (1186), in which we find a Ruel de Aluers holding two fiefs in the honor of Wallingford.  The recently-printed transcript of the Liber Rubeus states that Rad de Anvers, circa 1210, held the fifth of a fief in Hattune, Middlesex, and it gives as alternatives of the name, Auvers, Anvers, Aunvers, Avers, Alverso and Alvers.

Placitorum Abbrevatio

The next record of which we shall make use is one which may be found in the Placitorum Abbrevatio, a volume of selections from the ancient rolls of the King’s Court, which was published by order of Government in the year 1811.  At page 51 we find Rohesia Pecche or Peachy, one of a fine old English family renowned in its day, bringing an action in the year 1207, or thereabouts, against Dionis de Auvers, concerning lands in Little Marlow.  At page 73 we find the reply of Dionis and the judgment.  Dionis asserts that the virgate of land in ‘Parva Merlawe,’ Little Marlow, belonged to her on the warrant of her son Roland, while Rohesia, like others who have a bad case, did not appear in court, ‘Nec dolor vel suspirium attornati ejus,’ which, very freely translated, may mean that her attorney did not find it worth while to waste his breath in the matter; judgment therefore was given for Dionis.

ROLAND DANVERS OF WOKEFIELD

About the same time we have the family again in court, and this time the trial is in Berkshire, and concerns lands in Wgfeld (Wokefield, five miles south of Reading), an ancient seat of the family.  The suit is an interesting one, but unfortunately the original record is in parts undecipherable.  Little, indeed, remains of it, excepting the name of Roland de Anuers and his opponent Nicholas de Bulehe, and Roland’s reply; and it is this, the reply, which is of most interest in the record of the case, for Roland states that the land in Woghfeld came to him from Torold the son of Geoffrey, his ancestor; and this case is almost certainly the origin of the family tradition that it is descended from the marriage of the Conquerer’s Norman knight with the daughter of Torold the son of Geoffrey, a Saxon Thegn.

This Roland is again met with in one or two other suits during John’s reign, and it may be presumed that he was either a careless or litigious man; but his passing troubles of so many centuries ago give us trustworthy evidence of the presence of the family in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire during the 13th century.

The Daughter of Torold, Son of Geoffrey the Saxon Thegn

The history of the elder branch of the family, that of Little Marlow and Dorney, will be found in a subsequent chapter.  We shall pass on to that of the younger branch, that of Bourton and Tetsworth in Oxfordshire; but we will first notice very briefly the tradition, repeated by three or four genealogists, of the family regarding the marriage with the daughter of the Saxon Thegn.

We believe that the tradition had its origin in the claim made by Roland Danvers in the year 1207, that certain lands in Woghfeld in Berkshire belonged to him in right of their having come to an ancestor as dower on his marriage (in maritagium) with the daughter of Torold the son of Geoffrey.  But Roland does not say who this ancestor was; he may have been, as Phillpotts asserts, in the table of descent already quoted, the Sir Roland of the time of the Conquest. 24  If so, Sir Roland married the lady in question before the Conquest, for we have seen good reason for believing that, nineteen or twenty years after, he had sons of age and capable of holding manors; or Sir Roland marrying shortly after the Conquest, died before the completion of the Domesday Survey, when his manors had been divided amongst his sons, whose names therefore appear in the Domesday record.  But there is really no evidence that it was the first Roland who married the Saxon heiress; the bridegroom may have been his grandson, the second Roland, great-grandfather to the Roland of 1207. 25

As the lands which Roland claimed were in Berkshire, the probability is that Torold was a thegn of that county, a county in which after the Conquest were many orphans and widows; for, as Professor Freeman writes, ‘To have been a thegn of Berkshire implied almost as a matter of course that he had died at Senlac.’  And it may be noticed that the village of Aston or Easton on the Berkshire downs, immediately beneath Blewbury Hill, the traditional site of a great battle between the Saxons and Danes, has from time immemorial been known as ‘Aston-Torold,’ and at an early period became a possession of the Danvers family.

SUMMARY

Let us briefly recapitulate what has now been advanced regarding the descent of the Danvers family.  We assume, on the authority of Vincent and Dugdale, that the first of the name in England was Roland de Alvers and in support of this view we find that the grandson and great-grandson of Roland were also so called.

Then as the sons of Roland we have Ralph of Marlow and Dorney, Roger of Soleburie, Almar of Bourton, and we think Robert of Northampton, or he may have been Roland’s nephew.  Next the sons of Ralph, Roland of Marlow and Dorney, and Geoffrey of Bourton.  Then, on the authority of Vincent, we have Robert the son of Geoffrey—the Robert of the Thame Abbey register, the son of the nephew of Alexander of Lincoln, and the Robert of Shuckburgh of the Liber Niger.  Then as the son of Robert we have the William of Bourton, Chiselhampton, and Tetsworth, who married Emma Chevauchesul; and we have following him his eldest son Robert, who, as we shall find in the next chapter, called his eldest son Geoffrey, and his second William.

NOTES TO CHAPTER TWO

2.1  Leopold Delisle’s History of the Family of St Sauveur-le-Vicomte. Valognes, 1867.

2.2 Chartulary of St Sauveur, quoted by Leopold Delisle in the appendix to his history.

2.3 Nichols’ History of Leicestershire, vol. iv, Part i, pp. 180 and 188.

2.4 ‘Il portrait la cotte de maille aussi et peut être même plus volontiers que la rochet.’—Dupont’s History of the Cotentin.

2.5 Wace’s Roman de Rou, translated by Sir Alexander Malet.

2.6 Collins English Baronetage,  (edition of 1771, vol. 1, p. 449).

2.7 Cf. Sims’ Manual for the Genealogist, his Index to Pedigrees, and Bridge’s Index to Pedigrees.  Also Marshall’s Genealogists’ Guide, and the Catalogues in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum.

2.8 Cf. Rev. J. C. Blomfield, Deanery of Bicester, Part i, p. 58, and Part vi, p. 91.

2.9 Cotton MSS., Vit. E. xv, p. 22.

2.10 Cf. Testa de Nevill, p. 115.

2.11 College of Arms, No. 51, Vincent MSS., p. 34.

2.12 A reverend seigneur of the college once remarked to the writer (Macnamara), ‘We swear by Vincent.’

2.13 History of Warwick, vol. 1, p. 308.

2.14 Lansdowne MSS., No. 269, p. 258.

2.15 Phillpotts in Lansdowne MS., 269.

2.16 Undated charter, No. 209, in the Registrum Antiquissimum of the Lincoln Cathedral muniments.

2.17 History of Warwickshire, vol. 1, p. 308.

2.18 Madox’s Formulare, No. 77.

2.19 For some account of this family refer to the index of Sir William Dugdale’s History of Warwick and to Baker’s History of Northampton, i, 62 and 371.  Dugdale, p. 310, writes:  ‘This family [Shuckborough] did bear the old arms of Danvers, only the colours different—sable, a chevron between three mullets arg—and it was usual with the tenants of great men to take arms resembling those of the lords they held from.’

2.20 In the Pipe Roll of Derbyshire of 22 Henry II (1175) Robert de Alvers pays a fine, and in the Pipe Roll of the same county of 1 John I (1199) Robert de Auvers appears. Possibly, these Roberts were Robert de Bourton and his grandson Robert, son of William Danvers and Emma Chevauchesul.

2.21 Salt Society’s Journal, vol. ii, p. 195.

2.22 In the Cottonian copy of the Thame Chartulary, made by Nicholas Charles in 1611, the tables of descent which he compiled from the evidence of the charters give William Danvers as the name of Emma’s husband. Not long since the writer submitted a Christian name occurring in a record of the fourteenth century to three experts, all of whom read it differently.

2.23 Nichols’ History of Leicester, vol. iv, Part i, pp. 180 and 188. See also Visitation of Leicester of 1619.

2.24 Duchesne, Histor. Norman Scriptores, Paris, 1619, fol. p. 1123, has amongst the names of those who flourished in England prior to the Conquest Dauers and Daueros, and p. 1125, names of those who came to England with the Conqueror, Dauvers and Dauernoun.

2.25 We would suggest an even later date for the marriage. Victoria History of the Counties of England states that Ralph Danvers, the father of the Roland who makes the 1207 claim, married one of the daughters of Torold, son of Geoffrey. This daughter was co-heiress of her brother Nicholas, one of Torold’s three sons. Vincent describes this Ralph Danvers as ‘Sir Raufe, of Wynterbourne’ and this is the first mention in the pedigree of the Winterbourne estates. -Ed.

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Digital edition first published: 1 Mar 2020             Updated: 12 Jul 2023                garydanvers@gmail.com