which stretches over that district anciently called L’Isle de France,
the descendants of Athos took their title. The name of his wife, the
mother of the race, is nowhere recorded, although Bouchet, the historian
of the French branch of the Courtenay family, states that she was “une
dame de condition”; and the truth of this statement is verified by the
fact that in those days, when the prerogatives of birth were universally
acknowledged, her progeny were considered fitting mates for the noblest
in the kingdom.
Jocelyn de Courtenay, the son of Athos and his unnamed wife, married
twice: first, in the year 1060, Hildegarde, daughter of Geoffrey de
Ferole, Comte de Gastinois; second, Elizabeth, daughter of Guy, Seigneur
de Montlehery, by whom he had three sons—Milo, Jocelyn, and Geoffry.
At this period of history, the countries of Europe were undergoing one
of those strange religious convulsions which frequently occurred in the
Middle Ages. The passionate pilgrimage of Peter the Hermit drew motley
crowds of so-called Christians to the Holy Land. Wherever the small,
mean monk of Picardy, seated on his ass, “pusillus, persona
contemptibilis et sponte fluens ei non deerat eloquium,” as William of
Tyre describes him, preached the holiness of the Cause and the shame to
Christendom that the Sepulchre of the Saviour should remain in infidel
hands, his earnestness and enthusiasm, if not his eloquence, made
thousands of fervid converts.
In those days of lawlessness and violence, few men of rank but had the
stain of blood-guiltiness upon their souls. The richer hoped to buy
salvation and release from their wrongdoings by founding abbeys and
bestowing, out of their abundance, generous grants of land to maintain
the same; the poorer went pilgrimages, and purchased the promise of as
much future happiness as their possessions would afford.
But to the fighting noble of the day, whatever means he may already have
taken to obtain the pardon of the Church, the call to arms by Pope Urban
for the defence of the Holy Land, proclaimed, as it was, with all the
authority of the Head of Christendom, endowed with all the plenitude of
Papal indulgence, necessarily possessed a special attraction, for it
promised him not only remission of his sins, but also the hope that the
remission would be gained by exercising those very same deeds of
violence and rapine, the commission of which in his daily life had
probably brought him to believe that eternal punishment was his just
doom.
Small wonder, therefore, that knights and nobles in large numbers
endeavoured thus to gain everlasting advantages. Among the French
nobility who passed over to La Terre Sainte, Jocelyn II. de Courtenay is
numbered.
The principality of Edessa, a province so situated as not only to be
divided by the Euphrates, but by its position specially exposed to
enemies who surrounded it on all sides, was then held by Baldwin de
Bruges, a renowned knight, cousin to Godfrey de Bouillon. Baldwin’s
mother and the wife of Jocelyn, son of Athos, were sisters, their
children consequently being cousins.
According to the Archbishop of Tyre, the elder warrior gladly welcomed
his young kinsman, yielding to his charge those territories which lay
farthest from the enemy, but retaining under his personal supervision
the frontier, on which largely depended the safety of the Christian
dominions.
Blessed with all the advantages a good administration can bestow, and
protected from an unwearying enemy, to a certain extent, by the river,
the country ruled by Jocelyn de Courtenay acquired such prosperity and
opulence as to excite the envy of the neighbouring Christian Princes.
Indeed, as all chroniclers show, when the overpowering personality of
Godfrey de Bouillon was withdrawn, the promiscuous host which he led,
rent by great diversity of interests, composed of many nations, lost the
little cohesion it had once possessed, and rapidly fell apart.
Baldwin succeeding to the throne of Jerusalem, his cousin held undivided
sway over the whole province. For thirty years did the gallant Frenchman
defend his domains against the ever-returning infidel hordes, with
varying success—at times a conqueror, at times a captive, dying in a
manner befitting his life, for in his old age, weak with sickness,
broken with wounds, he caused himself to be carried before his troops as
he led them to succour their fellow-countrymen besieged by the Sultan of
Iconium.
On his advance, the terror his prowess inspired sufficed to force the
enemy to retire, news of which reaching the ears of the dying warrior,
he gave thanks to God that the last moments of his life should be
illumined with victory, and then immediately expired.
He was succeeded by Jocelyn, third of the name, the only son of his
first wife, a sister of Levon, an Armenian notable.
It is to be suspected that the wisdom, energy, and endurance which so
strongly characterized the father, and by which the little state,
threatened with innumerable enemies, could alone be preserved, were, to
some extent, deficient in the son, the deterioration probably being
caused by the mixture of Asiatic blood in his veins.
In all contemporary records, the Pullani or Poulaines, progeny of Frank
Crusaders and Syrian mothers, are spoken of with contempt and disdain,
and although no lack of valour or even military qualities can be
attributed to Jocelyn II., yet it is plain that the Eastern strain in
his descent rendered him unduly disposed towards the seductions of a
luxurious life; leading him to prefer the pleasures and ease of
residence in the agreeable city of Turbessel to the constant care and
hardships inseparable from an habitation in his fortified capital,
Edessa.
This lack of vigilance on his own part naturally re-acted on his
subordinates, and led, as a logical consequence, to a serious diminution
in the military spirit and power of the country. In addition, an
embittered feud with Raynald, Prince of Antioch, deprived him of the
only ally who could, if well disposed, afford prompt and efficient aid.
Therefore, when Zenghi, or Sanguine, as the name has been corrupted by
the Latin writers, leader of the Atabeks, with a vast host invaded the
city of Edessa, it fell into his hands before either the ruler or the
neighbouring Christian Princes were prepared to march to its assistance.
Defeated so often as to be without the means of efficient resistance to
the powerful invader, Jocelyn himself before long became the prisoner of
some wandering hordes. Carried a captive to Aleppo, he soon died,
crushed by the misery of his position and the unwholesomeness of his
surroundings, leaving one son, called by the same name as himself, and
two daughters.
Beatrice, his widow, for a while, with ability and courage, defended
Turbessel against the attacks of Zenghi’s successor, Noureddin, but
receiving inadequate support from the King of Jerusalem, she yielded the
task of holding the country to the effeminate Greeks, and they proving
incapable of the effort, the whole province, which from the time of the
Apostles had been the home and refuge of Christianity in the East, was
irretrievably overrun by the infidel.
Jocelyn III., with his mother and sister, took refuge in Jerusalem,
where, for more than twenty years, he led the existence inseparable from
the lot of those who supported the waning dominion of the Christians—one
constant struggle, not for supremacy, but for life. His fate is unknown:
history has no record of him after the siege of Jerusalem, so it may
well be surmised that he shared the fate of the slain when the Holy City
fell to the assault of the great Sultan Saladin.
Two daughters were the sole descendants of Jocelyn; consequently, with
him ended the House of the Courtenays of Edessa.
But while one branch of the parent stem had thus died off in less than
ninety years, the family tree itself flourished exceedingly, giving
great promise of that luxuriance which, in after generations, blossomed
into Royal magnificence.
The fall of Edessa, the bulwark of Christianity in the East, caused the
Second Crusade. Again in the roll of those who took the Cross is to be
found the name of Courtenay, for among the followers of King Louis le
Jeune were numbered William and Reginald of that name, and also Peter de
France, the King’s brother.
When Jocelyn of Edessa, together with his younger brother, Geoffrey
Courtenay, surnamed de Chapalu, sailed, in the year 1101, for La Terre
Sainte, the eldest son of the house, Milo de Courtenay, remained in
France, succeeding, on the death of his father, to the family domains.
He married Ermengarde, daughter of Renaud, Comte de Nevers, and by her
had three sons—William, Reginald, and Jocelyn. Of the last, nothing is
known but the name. William, who as aforesaid took part in the Crusade,
died in the Holy Land, leaving, on the extinction of the Counts of
Edessa and the death of Geoffrey de Chapalu, his uncle, Reginald, his
younger brother, sole heir to the name and possessions of his
forefathers.
In those days, when transit was difficult and the social barriers
between the noble and the roturier almost insurmountable, it was the
custom, well known to all who plunge into the intricacies of French
genealogy, and reasonable enough, considering the circumstances of the
times, for the males of a family of rank to marry, hardly without
exception, the daughters of their neighbours of like degree.
Life was a very precarious commodity to a man of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries. He lived in an atmosphere of continuous warfare, and
if by nature, mental or physical, he was disinclined for this turbulent
existence, the only refuge open to him lay in the celibate seclusion of
the cloister. It frequently occurred, therefore, that females inherited
paternal estates.
To this cause may well be attributed the fact that the possessions of
the Courtenays had become largely augmented, for Reginald is described
as Seigneur of Montargis, Chateau Renard, Champignelle, Tanlay, Charny,
Chantecoq, and several other seigneuries, all situated in the Pays de
Gastinois and the country round Sens, many of which, in the time of his
progenitors, were unmistakably the property of neighbouring families.
The possession of great wealth, at all periods of the world’s history,
has been held as a claim to consideration; and when such opulence is
combined with high rank and birth, the fortunate owner may well cherish
lofty ambitions.
In the early part of what we call the Middle Ages, the coat armour borne
by a warrior surely denoted his lineage and descent, for, unless assumed
for purposes of disguise, heraldic insignia were used as a means of
showing to which family an individual belonged—not, as now-a-days, to
which family an individual wishes the world to think he belongs.
In addition to those claims to nobility which are known to be possessed
by Athos, the fact is also acknowledged that he and his descendants used
the arms attributed to the ancient counts of Boulogne—three torteaux or,
on a field gules—arms which were undoubtedly borne by Eustace de
Bouillon, when he and his illustrious brother Godfrey journeyed on the
Crusade.
It may, therefore, well be believed that the ancestors of the Courtenays
came from the same stock as the even more ancient house of Boulogne; and
it is easy to understand that the only daughter and heir female of
Reginald de Courtenay was considered a fitting mate for Peter de France,
seventh son of King Louis le Gros.
Indeed, the relations between the Crown and the great nobles of the
kingdom rested far more on a basis of equality than the pretensions of
the monarch cared to allow.
Sismondi declares that the real domains of Louis VI. consisted only of
five towns, including Paris and Orleans, together with estates, probably
large, in the immediate vicinity; the remainder of the country being
divided among the great nobles, some of whom possessed equal, if not
more, extensive territories than their titular Sovereigns.
The young Prince Peter having but little estate left him by his father,
and no title—for he is always styled the “King’s son” or “the King’s
brother”—took to himself the name of Courtenay, and from him and his
wife, Elizabeth, sprung that branch of the family which flourished in
France for more than six hundred years. Five sons and six daughters
issued from this union, the eldest daughter, Alix, marrying, as her
second husband, Aimar, Comte d’Angouleme, by whom she had one daughter,
Elizabeth, who, in her turn, became the wife of John, and the mother of
Henry III., both Kings of England.
That portion of the Eastern Empire which, having been conquered by the
Latin knights errant remained in their power, for twelve years had been
ruled by Baldwin of Flanders and his brother, Henry, a wise and politic
prince, upon whose death, in 1217, the male line of the House of
Flanders became extinct.
From respect to the laws of succession, the crown was thereupon offered
to Peter de Courtenay, son of Elizabeth de Courtenay and Peter of
France, who had married Yolande, daughter of the Count of Hainault, and
sister to both the late Emperors, Baldwin and Henry. The proffered
honour, doubtless, was great, yet the accession to the Imperial purple
proved the precursor of heavy calamities to the unfortunate Emperor and
his descendants. Peter de Courtenay, it is true, bore the reputation of
a valorous knight and a courageous warrior. He served with distinction
in the Crusade against the Albigenses, prompted, perhaps, by a desire to
merit the forgiveness of the Church, whose servants in his own domain he
had, if the chroniclers are to be believed, treated with the haughty
intolerance characteristic of the arrogant seigneur of the period.
But at that critical time in the history of the Eastern Empire, the
wearer of the Imperial Crown required not only courage, but talents and
diplomacy of the highest degree, such as Peter neither possessed nor
found opportunity of acquiring.
Arriving at Rome in company with his wife, Yolande, and his children,
Pope Honorius, after some pressure, was induced to crown him and his
consort; but, as Gibbon hints, performed the ceremony in the Church of
St. Lawrence, without the walls, lest by the act itself any right of
sovereignty over the ancient city should be bestowed or implied.
In pursuance of a promise to the Venetians, the Emperor Peter, having
first sent his wife and children by sea to Constantinople, directed his
forces against the Kingdom of Epirus, then under the rule of Theodore
Comnenus. Failing in his object, he fell, either by force or fraud, into
the hands of the Greek despot, and died, by assassination or in prison,
without having entered his Imperial dominions.
With a discretion rare, indeed, in those days, Philip, his eldest son,
refused the honour of the purple, contenting himself with the Marquisate
of Namur, his paternal fief; whereupon Robert, the younger brother,
accepted the burden of the crown, and having, with due precaution,
journeyed to Constantinople, was there crowned by the Patriarch Matthew,
with all pomp and circumstance, in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia.
But in the grandeur of his coronation consisted the only splendour of
his reign. All historians combine in representing Robert as deficient in
every quality requisite for the high station he occupied and the
necessity of the realm he had been chosen to rule; even Bouchet,
self-appointed laureate to La Maison Royale de Courtenay, after
describing the death of the Emperor on his return journey from Rome,
whither he had gone to solicit against his own rebellious subjects the
thunders of the Pope, is constrained to admit that to the weakness of
this ruler may justly be attributed the disgraces which occurred in the
reign of his successor.
Robert dying childless, the crown descended to his brother, Baldwin, the
infant son of Yolande, born during his father’s captivity. The
impossibility of an empire in the throes of dissolution being governed
by a child of seven years, compelled the barons of the realm to invite
John of Brienne, the old King of Jerusalem, to bring his wisdom and
experience to their aid; but the seeds of disintegration had too long
been sown. Notwithstanding a two-fold victory against the invader, on
the death of the veteran in 1237, the Latin supremacy in the East well
nigh vanished.
The youthful Baldwin de Courtenay, during the life of John of Brienne,
visited many European courts in the vain hope of obtaining aid, military
or pecuniary, for the defence of his forlorn dominions, and in the
subsequent five and twenty years of his reign these visits were more
than once repeated, each time with less result, and though, in fruitless
efforts to raise men and money, he alienated his own patrimony of Namur
and Courtenay, although in desperation he sold the sacred treasures of
his capital—the Crown of Thorns and other relics reputed equally
holy—yet his utmost efforts could in no wise avert the doom which
threatened the Empire, but only availed to postpone for a while the
final catastrophe.
At last the determination of Michael Palæologus brought the struggle to
an end. Constantinople was invested and taken by the Greeks, the last
remnant of Latin sway, in the person of the Emperor Baldwin and his
family, taking refuge on board the Venetian fleet, which lay anchored in
the Bosphorous.
With Baldwin and his son Philip, titular Emperor of Constantinople,
ended the elder branch of the Courtenay family, for the latter left one
daughter only, who married Charles of Valois, a prince aptly described
as “son of a King, brother of a King, uncle to a King, and father to a
King, but yet himself no King.”
The elevation of three of its members to the Imperial throne undoubtedly
conferred great honour on the House of Courtenay, but the after results
most adversely affected the surviving members. While other families
connected with the French monarchy increased in wealth and influence,
the severe struggles made by three generations to maintain their
Imperial dignity so impoverished the ancestral domains that the
successive holders, though undeniably of Royal descent and near
relationship to the reigning dynasty, were not esteemed, and could not
obtain recognition of their claims to be considered as Princes of the
Blood Royal. It is true, however, that much doubt exists as to whether
in the early days of the French nobility, kinship with the King implied
any superiority of rank over others nobly born.
Le Comte Boulainvilliers, to whose family the Seigneurie of Courtenay,
after its alienation, had been given as a royal fief, declares, in his
“Dissertation sur la Noblesse de France”: “The French knew nothing of
Princes among themselves; consanguinity (_parenté_) to Kings gave no
rank the same as if descended in the male line. This is evident by the
examples of the Houses of Dreux, of Courtenay, and the junior branches
of the House of Bourbon.”
Indeed, it is quite apparent to all who read early French history that
the King exercised merely nominal authority over the nobility, and was
considered but as a chief and leader among those of equal birth and
descent, though differing in degree. It cost King Louis VI. a vast deal
of trouble to reduce the pretensions of the Seigneurs of Montlehery,
who, allied by marriage to the houses of Flanders and Courtenay,
conceived themselves in all essentials to be equal to and independent of
their titular monarch, while even more cogent testimony to the same
effect, redolent also to a great degree of the atmosphere of the times,
is borne by the subjoined letter from Thibaut, Comte de Champagne, to
the Abbot of St Denis, Governor of the Realm in the absence of the
King:—“This is to let you know that Renaud de Courtenay hath done great
injury to the King, ... for he hath seized on certain merchants that are
the King’s subjects, who have discharged their toll at Orleans and Sens,
and hath stripped them of all their goods. It is, therefore, necessary,
to order him in the King’s name, they be set at liberty and all that
belongs to them restored. In case he refuse ... and you be desirous to
march an army against him, ... let me know, and I will send you aid.”
After the extinction of the elder branch in the persons of the Emperor
Baldwin and his son, the House of Courtenay became so divided that, in
the many ramifications of descent and consequent division of goods, the
Seigneurs de Champignelles, de Tanlay, d’Arrablay, de Ferté Loupiere,
etc., lost their pride of place, and were undistinguishable from the
remainder of the nobility, direct evidence of which is furnished by the
fact that Bouchet, who certainly loses no opportunity of enhancing the
grandeur of the race, places over the arms of the Lord of D’Illier the
nine-pointed coronet of a seigneur, and not, as on other occasions, the
crown, embellished with fleur-de-lys, which designated the Royal House
of France.
Yet the right of the Courtenays to be considered of Royal blood is
incontrovertible, testimony to it being borne by many deeds of partition
and contracts of marriage to which members of the reigning family
affixed their signatures, in each case describing themselves as
relations and cousins.
Moreover, even in the nineteenth century, the head of the House of
Courtenay received a summons to the funeral of Henri Dieudonné, Comte de
Chambord, Henri Cinq de France, as “notre parent et cousin.”
Fifteen years after the surviving members had lodged a final petition
for the restoration of their rights of blood, “by the eternal doom of
Fate’s decree,” the death of Charles Roger de Courtenay, the last male
of the line, the controversy was closed; and thus what Gibbon calls the
plaintive motto of the House: “Ubi lapsus, quid feci?” for the second
time in history received the endorsement of truth.
But while two branches of the race grew, flourished, and fell, a third
division rose to rank and fortune in this island, becoming closely
allied by links of property and title with Devon, the fairest shire in
the English land—links which the space of 750 years has strengthened,
the glamour of an historic name, the charm of many a noble nature, have
rendered unbreakable.
In olden times, a nation made it a point of honour to claim descent from
ancestors who had participated in the siege of Troy. Fashions change. In
the twentieth century, if an individual rises to such eminence that he
is elevated to the peerage, the world knows he must have had a father,
and presumes he had a grandfather. When the presumption can be carried
back for a generation or two, the basis of an ancient descent is so
firmly laid that a visit to the Heralds’ College will inevitably result
in the discovery of a progenitor among those who fought with Norman
William at the battle of Senlac, undoubtedly, judging from their reputed
descendants, the most prolific band of warriors that ever peopled a
conquered country.
In this, as in some other attributes, the Courtenays differ from the
modern aristocracy.
The first mention of a Courtenay in English history occurs in the reign
of Henry II., and although Bouchet, with true prophetic instinct,
considers it necessary to allege that a certain Guillaume de Courtenay
crossed over with the army of William of Normandy, the Battle Abbey roll
of William Tailleur does not contain the name; but a “Cortney” may be
found in the probably inaccurate transcriptions of the same, which have
been inserted in the Chronicles of Stowe and Holinshed. A certain degree
of doubt, however, exists as to the identity of the first Courtenay
mentioned in English records.
Dugdale, copying the register of the monks of Forde Abbey—a foundation
which benefited largely by the munificence of the family, and, as long
as the spring flowed, lost no opportunity of gratifying their ancestral
pride—declares that the founder of the name in this country was
Reginald, a son of Florus, younger son of Lewis le Gross, King of
France, who assumed the name of Courtenay from his mother, the heir
female of that family.