CHAP. 10. and thrown into prison, where he was treated with such severity, that shortly afterwards, on his return to England, he died. Nicholas de Family of Briwere. Nicholas de Segrave succeeded his father Gilbert. He united himself with the barons under Montfort, and was one of those who endeavoured to compel the king to submit to the ordinances of Oxford. He is said to have bestowed church livings upon schismatical persons, but it is difficult to understand what is meant by schism at that period. He probably supported those clerical men who, with Grosteste, the celebrated bishop of Lincoln, insisted upon the independence of the church of England. He was, however, particularly excommunicated, on that account, by the archbishop of Canterbury. At Northampton we find him in arms against the king, and when the royal army took that place by assault, he fled to London. There the citizens, who had raised troops in aid of the barons, made him their general, and he marched with Gilbert de Clare and Henry de Hastings to the siege of Rochester, and was afterwards present at the battle of Lewes, in which the king was defeated and made prisoner. At the victory obtained by prince Edward, he was himself taken prisoner, after being severely wounded, and his lands were given to prince Edmund; but subsequently, being admitted to composition, in virtue of the terms obtained by the brave defenders of Kenilworth, he, under the surety of Geoffry de Grenville and some others, obtained a full pardon, and the restitution of his manors, with the power of taxing his tenants for the amount of his composition. Such power seems to have been generally granted, and it probably had the effect desired by the court, of irritating the tenantry against the great land-owners, and of causing them to look to the crown for protection. It is certain that the barons, thus circumstanced, began to be uneasy and mistrustful; and the tenants, called upon to send knights of the shires to parliament, generally sent men attached to the court, who struggled hard to take this power of taxing them from the barons, and at length succeeded in establishing the law of parliament, that the king should advise with them, before he consulted the barons, concerning any fiscal ordinance.-Nicholas de Segrave attended prince Edward to the Holy Land. His possessions were large, and in this county he held Bretby, Rosliston and Chilcote. The family of Bardolf was connected with this county in the reign of Henry III. when William de Bardolf held Ockbrook and Elmton in Derbyshire, besides extensive manors in Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Sussex, together with the manor of Shelford in Nottinghamshire. He adhered to the king during the confederacy of the barons under Montfort, earl of Leicester, and was made prisoner at the fatal battle of Lewes. William Briwere was much distinguished during part of the reign of Henry III. and in the reigns of his father, his uncle and his grandfather, chiefly for his constant adherence to the crown during those turbulent periods. He stood so high in the estimation of Richard I. that when that sovereign set out on his expedition to the Holy Land, he and Hugh de Bardolf (the uncle of the above-mentioned William) were the two laycommissioners, who with the bishops of Durham and Ely, to whom the administration of justice, according to the laws and customs of the realm, was entrusted. When Richard, then in Palestine, had received intelligence CHAP. 10. that the bishop of Ely had abused his trust, the other commissioners were William de appointed by his special letters to superintend the administration of the laws. Briwere. Irritated by this exclusion, the bishop excommunicated William de Briwere and his colleagues, and had sufficient influence to obtain of the pope a confirmation of this display of ecclesiastical authority. It was however of little avail in lessening the estimation in which Briwere was held; and when Richard was brought prisoner to Worms in Germany, he was one of the principal persons sent to treat about the royal ransom. The places of trust to which he was called, and the matters of high arbitration which were confided to his decision, are proofs of his character for probity and wisdom. It was in the 6th of John that he obtained a grant in fee-farm of the manor of Chesterfield, with Brimington and Whittington; and of the soke and whole wapentake of Scarsdale. During the tumults of that reign he was appointed one of the commissioners who had charge of the royal forces, and early in the reign of Henry III. he was entrusted with the command of the castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But however we may admire the integrity of this eminent baron, we cannot but lament his attachment to those arbitrary principles, that, during a great portion of his long life, had caused such dissensions between the barons and the crown, and had carried desolation into every district of the kingdom. When the parliament, as it was then constituted, was assembled at Westminster, in the January of the year 1223, the arbitrary conduct of Hubert de Burg had been brought under consideration, it was resolved to petition the young king, then in his sixteenth year, that he would be pleased to cause the Charters of their liberties, signed by his father and sworn to by himself, to be strictly observed throughout the kingdom. A deputation, headed by the venerable Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, presented the petition to the king in council, and the archbishop, pleading in behalf of a cause which he had so long and so strenuously espoused, insisted that Henry could not in the face of heaven refuse to yield to their request, as he had, on the departure of the Dauphin, sworn in presence of the assembled peerage of England, that those Charters should be observed. Upon this, William de Briwere, who was one of the king's council, arose and declared that it was unreasonable of the parliament to require the execution of Charters, which had been extorted by force. The archbishop replied, " William de Briwere, if thou didst love the king, thou wouldst not, in thine old age, strive to be an hinderance to the peace of his realm." Langton said this with tears, and the king, perceiving how much he was moved, exclaimed, "We have sworn to the observance of these Charters and our oath must be maintained." Orders were immediately sent to the sheriffs, not indeed commanding the observance of the Charters, but directing the summoning of twelve lawful and discreet knights in each county, who might declare what were the liberties enjoyed in such county during the reign of king John, and further directing that such liberties should be strictly respected. This was clearly an evasion of the prayer of the petition; but as the parliament was unacquainted, for some time, with the true nature of the precepts transmitted to the sheriffs, a subsidy was gratefully voted to the king, and this answered the temporary purpose of the deceitful and tyrannical court. СНАР. 10. This William de Briwere died at a very advanced age, leaving several William de daughters and an only surviving son, who seems not to have taken any very active part in the public transactions in that interesting period. He died without issue and his sisters became his joint heiresses. Briwere. Grey of Codnor. Richard de Grey, of Codnor in this county, was a distinguished baron, strongly attached to the party of the king during the last troublesome years of the reign of king John. On that account he had a grant of the confiscated lands of John de Humez, in Leicestershire, and was made governor of the Norman islands of Guernsey and Jersey. In the year 1252, he and his brother John were among the very few who offered to accompany Henry III. in his proposed expedition to the Holy Land, which the nation, notwithstanding the urgent preaching of the bishops of Winchester and Chichester, believed to be only a pretence for an extraordinary levy of money. So delighted was Henry to find his project supported by barons of such influence, that he publicly embraced the two brothers, kissed them and called them his fraternal associates. The king soon after relinquished his purpose, and Grey was appointed constable of Dover and warden of the Cinque ports. In this capacity he behaved with great integrity, but having discovered that Dover castle had been, by the connivance of the former governors, made the receptacle for the immense spoil of which the king's Poictevin troops had plundered the country, he was indignant at having been appointed to so dishonourable a post, and divulged the fact to Montfort and the confederates, who joyfully accepted the junction of a baron of his power and reputation to their party. He was accordingly entreated to retain his command, in their name; and when the barons met at Oxford, he was nominated as one of the commissioners on their part, who framed the provisions of Oxford, and became the baronial council of the earl of Leicester. An incident however occurred which created some mistrust in the minds of the confederates, and he was deprived of the command of Dover and the Cinque ports. The parliament assembled by Montfort passed an act for the perpetual banishment of the foreigners who had been the favourites and advisers of the king, and in the act, the uterine brother of Henry, Athelmar, bishop of Winchester, was particularly named. As this weak monarch had placed much confidence in this foreigner, he kept up a secret correspondence with him; advising him to procure the pope's authority for his residence at the see of Winchester, and then to return to England in defiance of the decree of parliament. A bull was obtained to this effect. Athelmar advanced as far as Paris on his way to this country, and sent before him the papal injunction, by the hands of a friar named Velasco, who was permitted, unexamined, to land at Dover. On hearing of this, Roger de Bigot, then justiciary of the realm, was despatched by the baronial council, to enquire by what authority the friar had been suffered to come on shore and publish a papal edict so detrimental to the government then established. The constable of the castle pleaded that the friar was a messenger who bore the king's signet; but this only served to irritate the barons. The justiciary was again sent to divest him of his post, in doing which he said, in the name of the counsel, "Richard de Grey, you being entrusted by the people of England, as a faithful warden of the ports, have suffered this person to land, without our knowledge, to the manifest violation of your oath. We esteem you, therefore, to be no CHAP. 10. longer worthy of this important trust; and we determine that you be fur- Grey, of ther questioned respecting a transgression tending to the public damage Codnor. of the whole realm." Lord Grey, notwithstanding this occurrence, remained attached to the barons' party, and was at Kenilworth with Simon de Montfort the younger, at the time when the earl of Leicester was victoriously marching from town to town along the vale of the Severn. About the same period, he and his son John having raised some re-enforcements from his various manors, was endeavouring to effect a junction with the confederates, when he was surprised in the night, by a division of the royal army under prince Edward, and both himself and his son were made prisoners. His estates were immediately confiscated, but three years afterwards, in consequence of the terms obtained by the barons at the capitulation of Kenilworth castle, he was admitted as one of those who were allowed to compound for their possessions. Other branches of the illustrious family of Grey were connected with this county, at the period of which we are writing, but they will be found mentioned under the names of the manors they possessed, in the Parochial portion of our History. Blondeville. The earls of Chester were connected with this county, not only by their family alliance with the Ferrers, but by the possession of the ancient manor of Repton and other royalties on the south of the Trent. We have already noticed the conduct of the brave earl Ranulph, surnamed de Blonde- Ranulph de ville, on account of his having been born at the White Monastery in Powis-land, when Lincoln was taken by the royal forces early in the reign of Henry III. He visited the Holy Land, where he made many displays of his valour, and an incident related concerning his conduct on his voyage homewards is an amusing characteristic of the superstition then prevalent. During a dreadful storm, being requested by the master and the crew of the vessel to lend his aid for their common preservation, he told them to continue their labours until midnight, when, if the tempest should not abate, he would assist them; but he would do nothing until that time.— The storm increased: midnight arrived, and the master of the vessel called upon him to join in prayer with him and the crew for the salvation of their souls, for all hope of safety in this world was at an end. "Not so," replied Ranulph de Blondeville; "for, know ye, the hundreds of holy monks and nuns established and endowed by my forefathers and myself in different parts of my possessions in England, are at this hour of midnight rising to sing divine service. I put confidence in their unity of prayer, and already I feel my strength increased." With that he took an car in his hand and called upon the crew with words of encouragement. Their energy prevailed, and ere the morning dawned, the tempest had subsided, and they found themselves safe in a friendly port.-On his return to his native country, he opposed the arbitrary power displayed by Hubert de Burg, and notwithstanding his superstition, he most resolutely refused to permit the commissioners of the pope to levy their demands within the compass of his jurisdiction. He died in the year 1232, at Wallingford, after he had governed the palatinate of Chester for more than fifty years. An old hisD d CHAP. 10. torian relates, that, on the day of his death, a great company in the likeness Ranulph de of men, with a certain potent person, hastily passed by a hermit's cell near Blondeville. Wallingford. The hermit asked one of them what they were, and whither they were wending so fast?—The one thus questioned replied, "We are devils, and are making speed to the death of earl Ranulph, to the end we may accuse him of his sins."-The hermit, hearing this, adjured the devil to return the same way within thirty days, and let him know what was become of the earl. The devil thus adjured, came accordingly and said, "That the earl had been, for his iniquities, condemned to the torments of hell; but that the great white dogs of Deulacre,* and with them many others, did bark so incessantly, and fill the habitations of the devils with such a noise, that their prince expelled the earl from his dominions; and it is thus that the dogs of Deulacre have by their continual barking effected the liberation of many souls."-When the news of the earl's death was brought to Hubert de Burg, by a messenger, who expected to rejoice him by the intelligence that one of his most decided enemies was dead, that statesman, who, notwithstanding the arbitrary principles of his government, possessed more of the generous temperament of the soldier than of the cold policy of the minister, sighed deeply, and exclaimed, "God have mercy on his soul;" and, being then fasting, he called for his psalter; knelt before the crucifix, and sang the whole of it through without intermission, for the salvation of the soul of his deceased opponent. We may smile at the justiciary's superstition, but if we enter into the opinions that then prevailed, we cannot be insensible to the generous feeling that was mingled with this, to us almost ludicrous, act of mistaken piety. The first wife of earl Ranulph was Constance, of Bretagne, the same whom Shakspeare has immortalized in our dramatic poetry as an example of maternal sensibilities aroused in defence of the rights of her injured son. We confess we are somewhat startled, when we find this same Constance abandoned by her second husband, earl Ranulph, "by reason," say the Chronicles of Evesham, "that king John haunted her company." We cannot enter into these pretended suspicions of the noble earl, nor imagine for a moment that such a woman as the Constance of Shakspeare could in the slightest degree encourage the persecutor and usurper of her son's rights, her licentious brother-in-law, "to haunt her company;" particularly as we find it intimated by the same authority, that "by the advice and example" of king John, the earl divorced his wife, and espoused Clementia, the daughter of Ralph de Fengares and the youthful widow of Alan de Dinant, with whom he obtained great possessions both in France and England. Constance, almost as soon as she was divorced, married Guy de Thouars, the younger brother of the count de Thouars, and died in child-birth within a twelvemonth afterwards. Clementia had the manor of Repton, with other manors in Lincolnshire and Cheshire, assigned her for her dowry; but as the earl left no progeny, the earldom descended to John, surnamed the Scot, the son of his eldest sister Maude, wife of David, earl of Huntingdon; and the immense possessions enjoyed for nearly two centuries by the descendants of Hugh Lupus were divided between Maude and her three sisters as *The earl had founded the monastery of Deulacre, at Leek in Staffordshire, for white friars. |