the northern conquerors of the Roman empire insensibly mingled with the
provincials, and rekindled the embers of the arts of antiquity. Their
settlements about the age of Charlemagne had acquired some degree
of order and stability, when they were overwhelmed by new swarms of
invaders, the Normans, Saracens, [68] and Hungarians, who replunged
the western countries of Europe into their former state of anarchy and
barbarism. About the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided
by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide
of civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady
and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened to the hopes
and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the increase, and rapid
the progress, during the two hundred years of the crusades; and some
philosophers have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars,
which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the maturity of
Europe. [69] The lives and labors of millions, which were buried in the
East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of
their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would
have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been
enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with
the climates of the East. In one respect I can indeed perceive the
accidental operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit
as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe
was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge;
and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were
comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This
oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords
of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages
as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of
letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor
and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil
society. But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords
were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and
improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy.
Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous
place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were
dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and
perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those
charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured
the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually
restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part
of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren
trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller
and nutritive plants of the soil. [691]
[Footnote 68: If I rank the Saracens with the Barbarians, it is only
relative to their wars, or rather inroads, in Italy and France, where
their sole purpose was to plunder and destroy.]
[Footnote 69: On this interesting subject, the progress of society in
Europe, a strong ray of philosophical light has broke from Scotland in
our own times; and it is with private, as well as public regard, that I
repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and Adam Smith.]
[Footnote 691: On the consequences of the crusades, compare the valuable
Essay of Heeren, that of M. Choiseul d'Aillecourt, and a chapter of
Mr. Forster's "Mahometanism Unveiled." I may admire this gentleman's
learning and industry, without pledging myself to his wild theory of
prophets interpretation.--M.]
_Digression On The Family Of Courtenay._
The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople, will
authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular fortunes
of the house of Courtenay, [70] in the three principal branches: I. Of
Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of which the last only has
survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.
[Footnote 70: I have applied, but not confined, myself to _A
genealogical History of the noble and illustrious Family of Courtenay,
by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay, and Rector of
Honiton; Exon. 1735, in folio._ The first part is extracted from William
of Tyre; the second from Bouchet's French history; and the third from
various memorials, public, provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of
Devonshire The rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and
more industry than criticism.]
I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and of
knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth is most
strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age, the laws and
manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks of society; the
dukes and counts, who shared the empire of Charlemagne, converted
their office to an inheritance; and to his children, each feudal lord
bequeathed his honor and his sword. The proudest families are content
to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree,
which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian
root; and their historians must descend ten centuries below the
Christian Êra, before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the
evidence of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first
rays of light, [71] we discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a
French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father;
his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay in the
district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From
the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are
conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the
grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the
first crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters) attached
him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second count of Edessa;
a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive, and able to maintain,
announces the number of his martial followers; and after the departure
of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with the county of Edessa
on both sides of the Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories
were replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with
corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms
and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately a
conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse litter
at the head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the flight of the
Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son
and successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valor than
in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is acquired and
maintained by the same arms. He challenged the hostility of the Turks,
without securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst
the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, [72] Joscelin neglected the
defence of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence,
Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his capital,
Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and disloyal crowd of
Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold attempt for its recovery,
and Courtenay ended his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left a
fair and ample patrimony But the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides
the weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual
pension, they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending,
and the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The
countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two children;
the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king; the son,
Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal, the first of the
kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the service of fifty
knights. His name appears with honor in the transactions of peace and
war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of
Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two
daughters with a French and German baron. [73]
[Footnote 71: The primitive record of the family is a passage of the
continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the xiith century.
See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France, (tom. xi. p. 276.)]
[Footnote 72: Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is fixed
by D'Anville four-and-twenty miles from the great passage over the
Euphrates at Zeugma.]
[Footnote 73: His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of
Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures of the kingdom, which must
therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and 1187. His
pedigree may be found in the Lignages d'Outremer, c. 16.]
II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder brother Milo,
the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued, near the Seine, to
possess the castle of their fathers, which was at length inherited by
Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his three sons. Examples of genius
or virtue must be rare in the annals of the oldest families; and, in a
remote age their pride will embrace a deed of rapine and violence;
such, however, as could not be perpetrated without some superiority of
courage, or, at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay
may blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several
merchants, after they had satisfied the king's duties at Sens and
Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not
be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count
of Champagne prepared to march against him at the head of an army. [74]
Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and his daughter
on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned
with a numerous offspring. We might expect that a private should have
merged in a royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France
and Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors of
princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long neglected,
and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace will represent the
story of this second branch. _1._ Of all the families now extant, the
most ancient, doubtless, and the most illustrious, is the house of
France, which has occupied the same throne above eight hundred years,
and descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle
of the ninth century. [75] In the age of the crusades, it was already
revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage
of Peter, no more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and
so precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary
precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their
fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their precedency
before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had the princes of
the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that hereditary lustre which
is now diffused over the most remote candidates for the succession. _2._
The barons of Courtenay must have stood high in their own estimation,
and in that of the world, since they could impose on the son of a king
the obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the name
and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress
with her inferior or her equal, such exchange often required and
allowed: but as they continued to diverge from the regal stem, the
sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal
ancestors; and the new Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors
of their birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to renounce.
_3._ The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary
blaze was followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials,
Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the sister
of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of Constantinople: he
rashly accepted the invitation of the barons of Romania; his two sons,
Robert and Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of the Latin
empire in the East, and the granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again
mingled her blood with the blood of France and of Valois. To support the
expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates
were mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended
on the annual charity of Rome and Naples.
[Footnote 74: The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay, are
preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the abbot and regent Suger,
(cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the age, (Duchesne, Scriptores
Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]
[Footnote 75: In the beginning of the xith century, after naming the
father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is obliged to add,
cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet we are assured that
the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the Strong count of
Anjou, (A.D. 863--873,) a noble Frank of Neustria, Neustricus...
generosÊ stirpis, who was slain in the defence of his country against
the Normans, dum patriÊ fines tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture
or fable. It is a probable conjecture, that the third race descended
from the second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an
absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the marriage of
Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St. Arnoul, with Blitilde,
a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin of the house of France is
an ancient but incredible opinion. See a judicious memoir of M. de
Foncemagne, (MÈmoires de l'AcadÈmie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p.
548--579.) He had promised to declare his own opinion in a second
memoir, which has never appeared.]
While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures,
and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian owner, the
younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied.
But their splendor was clouded by poverty and time: after the decease of
Robert, great butler of France, they descended from princes to barons;
the next generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the
descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural lords
of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous embraced without
dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least active and opulent might
sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition of
peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period of four hundred years,
became each day more obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead
of being enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully
searched by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was
not till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a
family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of the
Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility provoked them
to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They appealed to the justice
and compassion of Henry the Fourth; obtained a favorable opinion from
twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared themselves to
the descendants of King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by
the lapse of ages or the trade of a carpenter. [76] But every ear was
deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The
Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the princes
of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance of his
humble kindred: the parliament, without denying their proofs, eluded
a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary distinction, and established
St. Louis as the first father of the royal line. [77] A repetition of
complaints and protests was repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless
pursuit was terminated in the present century by the death of the
last male of the family. [78] Their painful and anxious situation was
alleviated by the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected
the temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay would have
sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for any temporal
interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of
France. [79]
[Footnote 76: Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published by the
princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all in octavo:
1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt Responsa
celeberrimorum EuropÊ Jurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2. Representation
du ProcedÈ ten˚ a l'instance faicte devant le Roi, par Messieurs de
Courtenay, pour la conservation de l'Honneur et DignitÈ de leur Maison,
branche de la royalle Maison de France; ‡ Paris, 1613. 3. Representation
du subject qui a portÈ Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison
de Courtenay, ‡ se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide, for
which the Courtenays expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of
the blood.]
[Footnote 77: The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by Thuanus
Principis nomen nusquam in Galli‚ tributum, nisi iis qui per mares e
regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a Ludovico none beatÊ
memoriÊ numerantur; nam _Cortini_ et Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso
genus ducentes, hodie inter eos minime recensentur. A distinction of
expediency rather than justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not
invest him with any special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh
Capet must be included in his original compact with the French nation.]
[Footnote 78: The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger, who
died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last female was
Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont. Her title of
Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed (February 7th, 1737) by
an _arrÍt_ of the parliament of Paris.]
[Footnote 79: The singular anecdote to which I allude is related in the
Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu connues, (Maestricht, 1786, in 4
vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor quotes his author, who had received
it from Helene de Courtenay, marquise de Beaufremont.]
III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of
Devonshire are descended from Prince _Florus_, the second son of Peter,
and the grandson of Louis the Fat. [80] This fable of the grateful or
venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden
[81] and Dugdale: [82] but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and
time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this
imaginary founder. Their most faithful historians believe, that, after
giving his daughter to the king's son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned
his possessions in France, and obtained from the English monarch a
second wife and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry
the Second distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the
name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race,
of the Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord
to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress;
and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in Devonshire,
where his posterity has been seated above six hundred years. [83] From
a Norman baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by
the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived the honor of
Okehampton, which was held by the service of ninety-three knights; and a
female might claim the manly offices of hereditary viscount or sheriff,
and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married
the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end of a century, on the failure
of the family of Rivers, [84] his great-grandson, Hugh the Second,
succeeded to a title which was still considered as a territorial
dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire, of the name of Courtenay, have
flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years. They were ranked
among the chief of the barons of the realm; nor was it till after a
strenuous dispute, that they yielded to the fief of Arundel the first
place in the parliament of England: their alliances were contracted with
the noblest families, the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns,
and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of
Lancaster, a Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of
Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength and
number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in their
numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue was
appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward,
surnamed from his misfortune, the _blind_, from his virtues, the _good_,
earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence, which may,
however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful
commemoration of the fifty-five years of union and happiness which he
enjoyed with Mabe his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the tomb:--
"What we gave, we have;
What we spent, we had;
What we left, we lost." [85]
But their _losses_, in this sense, were far superior to their gifts and
expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were the objects
of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery and seizin
attest the greatness of their possessions; and several estates have
remained in their family since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the
honors, of chivalry. They were often intrusted to levy and command the
militia of Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their supreme
lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign service, for a
stipulated price, they sometimes maintained fourscore men-at-arms and
as many archers. By sea and land they fought under the standard of
the Edwards and Henries: their names are conspicuous in battles, in
tournaments, and in the original list of the Order of the Garter; three
brothers shared the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in the
lapse of six generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise
the nation and country from which they derived their origin. In the
quarrel of the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of
Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the field or
on the scaffold. Their honors and estates were restored by Henry the
Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by the
nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was created Marquis of Exeter,
enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry the Eighth; and in the camp of
Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French monarch. But the
favor of Henry was the prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was the signal
of death; and of the victims of the jealous tyrant, the marquis of
Exeter is one of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a
prisoner in the Tower, and died in exile at Padua; and the secret love
of Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth, has
shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful youth. The relics
of his patrimony were conveyed into strange families by the marriages
of his four aunts; and his personal honors, as if they had been legally
extinct, were revived by the patents of succeeding princes. But there
still survived a lineal descendant of Hugh, the first earl of Devon,
a younger branch of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham
Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to
the present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and
improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently restored to
the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still retain the plaintive
motto, which asserts the innocence, and deplores the fall, of their
ancient house. [86] While they sigh for past greatness, they are
doubtless sensible of present blessings: in the long series of
the Courtenay annals, the most splendid Êra is likewise the most
unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be inclined to envy the
emperors of Constantinople, who wandered over Europe to solicit alms for
the support of their dignity and the defence of their capital.
[Footnote 80: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet
this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward III.
The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey was
followed by oppression on one side and ingratitude on the other; and in
the sixth generation, the monks ceased to register the births, actions,
and deaths of their patrons.]