of them in turn made use of it as a bribe to secure the support of the Earl of Chester. The right therefore of the Count of Eu remained in obeyance, until the restoration of the Honour of Tickhill was made one of the conditions in 1214 of King John's treaty with the Lusignans. Idonea de Vipont, the rival claimant of the Honour of Tickhill, was the heir of a younger line of the family of de Busli, which sprung from Ernald the younger brother of Roger de Busli of Domesday. Ernald was part owner of the Norman fief of Builli, and joined in the sale of the tithes in 1065.33 He was amply provided for out of his brother's English Barony, and fixed his residence at Kimberworth, where he had a park 108 as well as a castle. He had also many other manors, which were afterwards reckoned as 6 knight's fees, and were held by his descendants under the successive lords of the Honour of Tickhill. Ernald witnessed in 1088 his brother's foundation of Blyth Priory, but it appears from the pleadings in the suit instituted by his descendant, that he died before his nephew, the younger Roger de Busli.109 Ernald's son Jordan died a monk of Blyth, and was buried in that Priory.110 But Jordan's son Richard was attracted like many of his contemporaries by the greater austerities and severer discipline of the Cistercian order, which was then gaining ground in Yorkshire. He was with his neighbour Richard fitz Turgis joint founder in 1147 of Roche Abbey, which was built amongst the woods and crags in a secluded valley on the verge of his lordship of Maltby. Richard's son John de Busli was the father of Idonea de Vipont, who disputed in 1219 the Countess of Eu's title to the Honour of Tickhill. It appears from an office copy of the pleadings, which was made in 1648 and is preserved amongst Dodsworth's MSS. in the Bodleian Library, that Robert de Vipont for himself and his wife Idonea claimed against Alice Countess of Eu possession of the castle and town of Tickhill with the appurtenances, except six knights' fees which were already in their own hands. The claimants said that Idonea's predecessor (antecessor) Roger was seised in the premises in demesne as of his fee and right in the time of King Henry the elder (meaning Henry I.), and that he held them on the year and day of his death; and they said that from Roger the right descended to his cousin (cognatus) Jordan, who was the son of Roger's uncle (avunculus :), and that from Jordan the right came to his son Richard, and from Richard to his son John, of whom Idonea was the sole daughter and heir, and for the proof that these averments are true, the claimants put in pledge the body of their freeman Robert son of Direman. The Countess in defence of her right pleaded by way of demurrer, that she ought not to be compelled to reply to this claim, whilst Robert de Vipont refused to deliver up possession of Tickhill Castle, which he had agreed with the King to do, when he received in exchange the Castle and Shrievalty of Carlisle. This demurrer was overruled, when the Countess pleaded that she ought not to reply, because the Plaintiff's pedigree was incomplete on the face of it, for the claimants aver that the right descended from Roger to Jordan the son of his uncle, and yet they do not state the name of this uncle; although the claimants were bound to certify the Court how Jordan was the son of Roger's uncle, and whether he was uncle on the father's side or on the mother's. To this plea the claimants made rejoinder, that Jordan was the son of a certain Ernald, who was brother of Roger de Busli the father of the said Roger, so that if the said Roger the Younger died without heirs of his body, the said Ernald would be his heir. But because Ernald died in the lifetime of the younger Roger, the right descended to Jordan son of Ernald, when Roger died without issue.. To this the Countess replied, that Jordan son of Ernald was not the heir of the said Roger, because Roger (meaning Roger the cousin of the said Jordan) had a sister named Beatrix, who was the mother of Henry Count of Eu, who was father of Count John, who was father of Count Henry, of whom she the said Countess was the daughter and heir. And the Countess asked to have a day given to try the issue raised, and she named as her attorneys in the suit Geoffrey de Balliol or Geoffrey de St. Leger. 109 In the meanwhile Robert de Vipont was within his rights. in keeping possession of Tickhill Castle, for when the Castle and Shrievalty of Carlisle were given him in recompense for surrendering the Castle and in repayment for his outlay in repairing it, it was agreed that he was not to be called upon to settle accounts with the Exchequer, until the King's Court had adjudicated on his claims to the Castle and Honour of Tickhill,112 PEDIGREE II. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE PLEADINGS IN THE LAW SUIT The suit dragged on for two years, but the Countess would have been a formidable antagonist on account of her relationship to the King's mother, and her connexion with the Justiciary Hubert de Burgh, even if her case had been weaker than it was. But her pedigree could not be disputed, and the Viponts practically withdrew their claim in 1222 by consenting to a final concord, by which they acknowledged the right of the Countess to the Castle and Honour of Tickhill, saving and excepting the right to six and a half Knights' fees in Maltby Sandbeck and Kimberworth in Yorkshire and in divers manors in Notts. The pleadings in this suit enable us to correct three glaring errors, which disfigure all the received pedigrees. For they prove that Beatrice de Busli Countess of Eu was the daughter and not the sister of Roger de Busli of Domesday; and that she was the wife not of Robert, but of |