(Vol. vii., p. 628.)
All persons will, I think, agree with MR. WARDEN in his very just
complaint of the carelessness with which many of the English Peerages
are compiled. It would be a task, little short of a new compilation, to
correct the errors and inaccuracies with which many of these productions
abound, the less pardonable now, because of the facilities afforded
for consulting the Public Records, should even our older genealogists,
without such aids, be in some degree excused; but as MR. WARDEN invites,
by a personal appeal, the rectification of a chronological error which
has crept into all the Peerages, founded upon the authority of Dugdale,
respecting the period of the death of Thomas, sixth Lord Fauconberge, I
am induced to send you a few Notes, which a recent examination of the
Records in the Tower of London has supplied.
When the facts are made patent, there will be no need to dwell upon
the inconsistencies pointed out by MR. WARDEN, and the alleged
incompatibility in regard to age for an union between two persons of
some note in family history, the son of the first Earl of Westmoreland
and his Countess Joan and the daughter and heir of the Lord Fauconberge,
who formed an alliance from which the co-heirs are, it is believed,
represented at this day.
The birth of William Nevill, Lord Fauconberge, afterwards created Earl of
Kent, second son of a marriage which took place early in, or just before,
the year 1397, may be assigned to in or about the year 1400; and we shall
presently see that his future wife was born on the 18th of October, 1406,
and married to him before the 1st of May, 1422.
Walter, fifth Lord Fauconberge, died on the 29th of September, 1362
(Esc. 36 Edw. III., 1st part, No. 77.), leaving a son Thomas (issue of
his first marriage with Matilda, sister and co-heir of Sir William de
Pateshull, Kt., Esc. 33 Edw. III., 1st part, No. 40., and _Rot. Orig._,
34 Edw. III., Ro. 2.), then a minor, under eighteen years of age.
Thomas, who was born circa 1345, was already in 1362 married to his
first wife Constancia, by whom he does not appear to have left any issue
surviving. His was rather an eventful life; some incidents not noticed by
Dugdale will be briefly cited. On the 10th of August, 1372, being then a
knight or chivaler, he had letters of protection on going abroad in the
king's service, in the company of Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick
(_Rot. Franc._, 46 Edw. III.). Here it seems he forgot his allegiance,
and having gone over to the French side was branded "tanquam proditor
domini Regis Angliæ" (Esc. 5 Ric. II., No. 67., 6 Ric. II., No. 180.,
and 11 Ric. II., No. 59.). Can this have been the origin of the error
in assigning his death to the year 1376? He was, however, yet living
in 1401, as in that year he succeeded to the reversion of the estates
which his step-mother Isabella (a sister of Sir John Bygot, Chivaler),
the widow of Walter Lord Fauconberge, held in dower (Esc. 2 Hen. IV.,
No. 47.). Not long after this, and apparently a few years only before
his death, and when somewhat advanced in years, he married a second
time. I have not been able to ascertain to what family his wife Joan, or
Johanna, belonged, but she survived her husband only a short time. About
the period of his marriage, too (9th August, 1405), an occurrence of
some importance to his descendants is recorded, namely, a grant by the
king to Sir Thomas Bromflete and Sir Robert Hilton, of the custody and
governance of all his estates in England, which had come into the king's
hands "ratione ideociæ Thomæ Fauconberge, Chivaler," to hold during the
life of the said Thomas. This grant, however, was in the following year,
on 24th December, 1406, revoked and annulled, because the said Thomas
had proved before the king and his council in Chancery, "quod ipse sanæ
discretionis hactenus fuerit et ad tunc existat," and he was thereupon
re-admitted to his estates which had descended to him "jure hæreditario
post mortem Walteri Fauconberge patris sui, cujus hæres ipse est" (_Rot.
Pat._, p. 1., 8 Hen. IV., m. 16.). He had only a few months before (15th
February, 1406) obtained from the king livery of an estate which had come
to him in {156} 1375 as one of the co-heirs, on his mother's side, of
his grandmother Mabilia, a sister of Otho de Graunson, upon the death
without issue of Thomas de Graunson, son of the said Otho. (_Rot. Pat._,
p. 1., 7 Hen. IV., m. 6.)
Was there in fact any real ground for the suggestion of Lord
Fauconberge's idiocy? This is one of the gravest imputations that can
be cast upon a family, and it is a most unpardonable presumption to
make it lightly and without justice; but it is somewhat singular that
nearly fifty years afterwards, his only daughter and heir, born at the
very period when this charge was being refuted, and when he himself was
upwards of sixty years of age, became the subject of a commission issued
to inquire of her alleged imbecility and idiocy. The commissioners sat at
Gisburn in Cleveland in the county of York, on the 28th of March, 1463,
and it was then found by the inquest that "Johanna Fauconberge nuper
comitissa de Kent, fatua et ydeota est, et a nativitate sua semper fuit,
ita quod se terras et tenementa sua neque alia bona sua regere scit, aut
aliquo tempore scivit:" the jury also returned that she had not alienated
any lands or tenements since the death of William, late Earl of Kent,
her late husband. That Joan, the wife of Sir Edward Bethom, Kt., thirty
years old and upwards, Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Strangeways, Esq.,
twenty-eight years old and upwards, and Alice, wife of John Conyers,
Esq., twenty-six years old and upwards, were the daughters and heirs,
as well of the said William the late earl, as of the said Joan the late
countess. (Esc. 3 Edw. IV., No. 33.)
Thomas Lord Fauconberge died on the 9th of September, 1407, leaving the
above-mentioned Joan, or Johanna, his daughter and heir, an infant of one
year old. (Esc. 9 Hen. IV., No. 19.; see also Esc. 9 Hen. V., No. 42.)
His widow Joan had assignment of dower after her husband's death on 20th
October, 1408, and she herself died in the following year, on the 4th of
March, 1409. (Esc. 10 Hen. IV., No. 15.) A later inquisition, however,
taken on 1st of April, 1422 (Esc. 10 Hen. V., No. 22ᵃ.), states that the
said Joan, widow of Sir Thomas Fauconberge, Chivaler, died on the 23rd of
June, 1411. The first date is most probably the correct one, as a fact
would be more likely to be accurately stated by a jury impanneled a few
months only after the event recorded, than by an inquest taken after an
interval of twelve or thirteen years.
On the formal proof of age (Esc. 10 Hen. V., No. 22ᵇ.) of Joan
Fauconberge, daughter and heir of Thomas Lord Fauconberge and Joan his
wife, taken at Northallerton, in the county of York, on the 1st of May,
10 Henry V., 1422, she was described as the wife of William Neville. She
appears to have been born at Skelton in the said county, and baptized
in the church there on the feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist (18th of
October), 1406; and on the same feast in 1421, being the 9th of Henry V.,
she had accomplished her fifteenth year. Dugdale (tom. ii. p. 4.) has
fallen into a singular mistake in alluding to this event, not to speak of
the obvious inconsistency which those writers who follow his account have
introduced in assigning the year of Lord Fauconberge's decease to 1372,
thus making the daughter's birth to have occurred more than thirty years
after her father's death. It is this:--One of the witnesses, who speaks
to the period of the baptism of Joan, was named _Thomas_ Blawefrount the
elder, fifty years of age and upwards, and the reason assigned by him for
his remembrance of the event is as follows: "Et hoc scit eo quod Isabella
filia prædicti Thomæ desponsata fuit cuidam Johanni Wilton, et idem
Thomas fuit ad sponsalia eodem die quo præfata Johanna baptizata fuit,
propter quod bene recolit quod præfata Johanna fuit ætatis prædictæ."
Dugdale has by a strange oversight made the Isabella here described to be
the daughter of Thomas Fauconberge, and sister of Joan, instead of the
witness' own daughter.
It is not quite evident, from the language of the document which records
the imbecility of the Countess of Kent in March 1463, whether she was
then actually dead. It appears, however, clear that she survived her
husband, who lived but a few months to enjoy his newly acquired dignity.
The account given by Dugdale of John, son of Thomas Lord Fauconberge,
is scarcely intelligible. He says this lord "left issue John, his son
and heir," and subsequently adds, "which John died without issue in the
lifetime of his father."
Lord Fauconberge may have had a son by his former wife, but I have
seen nothing to confirm this supposition. By an inquisition taken
after the death of Sir Walter Fauconberge, Chivaler, at Bedford, on
the 18th of November, 1415, it was found that Joan, widow of one Sir
John Fauconberge, Chivaler, deceased, whom Thomas Brounflete, junior,
afterwards married, was then living, and that she granted to the said Sir
Walter all the estate which she had in certain rents payable by Matilda
Wake, formerly the wife of Sir Thomas Wake, Chivaler; that the said Sir
Walter died on the 1st of September, 1415, but the jurors knew not who
was his heir. (Esc. 3 Hen. V., No. 15.) Dugdale (vol. ii. p. 234.) cites
a feoffment dated 9 Hen. IV., 1407-8, which shows that Thomas Brounflete,
Esq., was then married to the said Joan, and consequently that Sir John
Fauconberge was dead at that time.
I must close this, for I fear I have now exceeded the limits which your
valuable paper may, with justice to others, spare to subjects of this
nature.