In Burke's _Extinct Peerage_ it is stated that John de Lacy, first Earl of
Lincoln, died A.D. 1240, leaving one son and two daughters. The latter were
removed, in the twenty-seventh year of Hen. III., to Windsor, there to be
educated with the daughters of the king. One of these sisters, Lady Maud de
Lacy, married Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; but I can find no
mention of either the name or marriage of the other. Am I correct in
identifying her with "Dorothy, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln," who
married Sir John Welborne (see _Harl. MSS._ 888. 1092-1153.)? The dates in
the Welborne pedigree perfectly correspond with this assumption.
Another question relative to this family is of greater interest, and I
should feel sincerely obliged by any answer to it. Simon de Montfort, earl
of Leicester, married Eleanora, daughter of King John, and had by her five
children. The fourth son is called Richard in Burke's _Royal Families_,
vol. i. p. xxiii.; and the report is added, that "he remained in England in
privacy under the name of Wellsburn." In the _Extinct Peerage_, the name of
the same son is Almaric, of whom it says: "When conveying his sister from
France, to be married to Leoline, Prince of Wales, he was taken prisoner
with her at sea, and suffered a long imprisonment. He was at last, however,
restored to liberty, and his posterity are said to have flourished in
England under the name of Wellsburne." Is it not to be presumed that the
above Sir John Welborne (living, as he must have done, in the latter half
of the thirteenth century, and allying himself with the great family
especially protected by Henry III., uncle of the De Montforts) was himself
the son of Richard or Almaric de Montfort, and founder of that family of
Wellesburne, said to have "flourished in England"? The De Montforts no
doubt abandoned their patronymic in consequence of the attainder of Simon,
earl of Leicester, and adopted that of Wellesburne from the manor of that
name, co. Warwick, in the possession of Henry de Montfort temp. Ric. I.
The only known branch of the Welborns terminated (after ten descents from
Sir John) in coheiresses, one of whom married in 1574, and brought the
representation into a family which counts among its members your
correspondent