Category: 12th Century - Meandering Through Time

Henry de Tracy and the Devon Manor of Lapford

9/2/2025

Nicholas Vincent, a Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia wrote in 2004 that the descent of the de Tracy’s is a ‘veritable mare’s nest, from which few genealogists have emerged unscathed’ and how right he was! If an expert can say that, what chance does an enthusiastic amateur like me have?

Arms of de Tracy: Or, a lion passant sable between two bends gemelles gules

Firstly, my interest in this family is regarding one Henry de Tracy who was the overlord of the manor of Lapford, a parcel of the barony of Torrington, held by my ancestor Richard Umfreville, and secondly the feudal baronies of Bradninch, Barnstaple and Torrington. A Henry de Tracy is known to have held these baronies, or parts of them during the reigns of King Stephen, Henry II and King John. There is a Henry de Tracy who died in 1165 and there is a Henry, his great-grandson, who died in 1274, however ‘my’ Henry appears not to be either of them. He had been quite elusive until I looked into the life of William de Tracy, one of the four murderers of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. I discovered, to my delight, that he had a son named Henry, this Henry is the one I have been looking for.

Miniature of the martyrdom of Thomas Becket c 1430 – 1440, Harley MS 2900, f. 56v

In 1180, some ten years after his father died in the Holy Land, Henry, later named Henry the Hunchback* appears holding the aforementioned Devon manor of Lapford where he is said to have ‘enlarged the Norman church.’ It would seem that the families of the four murderers inherited their guilt and made amends with charitable donations and repaired or enlarging churches in their manors as a form of penance. In Henry de Tracy’s case, the church of All Saints in Lapford received a brand-new tower, and later when the cult of Becket took off, it would be rededicated and its name changed to St Thomas of Canterbury.

St Thomas of Canterbury, Lapford, Devon. Photo Credit Philip Halling

Henry de Tracy held the manor of Lapford until it passed to the crown and in 1189 when it was returned to the aforementioned Richard Umfreville

* In 1236, an inquisition into the Devon manor of Morton (Morton Hampstead) we can find Henry referred to as a hunchback:

‘... the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury, for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of King Henry the king's ancestor. The same William had a son Henry de Tracy, le Bozu (a derogatory French term for a person with kyphosis or an abnormal convex curvature of the spine) was born in Normandy…’ - Inquisition Post Mortem, Saturday after St. Edmund the King, 4 Edw. I.

Arthur of Brittany

29/3/2020

On this day in 1187 the birth of Arthur, Duke of Brittany in Nantes in France to Geoffrey, son of Henry II, and his wife Constance

Arthur's paternal uncle King Richard I had no children and before setting off on his most favourite pastime - the Crusades he named the boy heir to his English throne. However, in 1199 when Arthur was twelve Richard had a change of heart and made John, his last remaining brother, heir. Quite a sensible thing to do as a country with a minor on the throne is nothing but trouble.

Richard was dead by the end of March 1199 and despite his estate being in order, there was trouble anyway. The barons of England supported Arthur - of course they did. England's hero the great William Marshall and John's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine stood on John's side.

The story goes that King John ordered his nephew's death and claimed the throne for himself. By the beginning of 1203, the boy had gone missing never to be seen again. Arthur's jailer, Hubert de Burgh stated that Prince Arthur of Brittany was castrated by John's men and died of shock!

It is interesting don't you think that the story of Arthur shows similarities to the disappearance of Princes in the Tower two-hundred years later. Heir’s to the throne go missing, their wicked uncle does the dirty deed and then the bodies are lost forever.

Joan, Countess of Toulouse

4/10/2019

The first week of October 1165 is thought to be the date of birth of Joan, Countess of Toulouse, the third daughter and seventh child of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1176, a Sicilian ambassador, who was in England to discuss Joan's marriage to William II of Sicily, wrote that he found the eleven-year-old princess to be a beauty. The image below is taken from a genealogical roll of the kings of England, it certainly shows she was a pretty girl.

William of Sicily and Joan were married in 1177 in Palermo, their marriage lasted twelve years until his death in 1189. There were no children born of the marriage.

History tells us that Joan and her brother, King Richard I had a close relationship, but this did not stop her being angered by his suggestion that she marry a brother of Saladin, the leader of the Islamic forces during the Crusades. However, negotiations came to nothing and Joan married Raymond, Count of Toulouse, in 1196.

It has been written of Joan that she was 'a woman whose masculine spirit overcame the weakness of her sex' a reference maybe to her heading a force during a siege of a castle while her husband was elsewhere. It is also claimed that showed that she was made of stronger stuff when she avenged her brother's death by having the man who killed him blinded and then flayed alive. However, this story if it be true at all has been linked to their mother, or to Marcadier, a general in the king's army.

In her marriage to Raymond of Toulouse, Joan gave birth to two children, Raymond in 1197 and a child in 1199, however, within a few weeks of the birth Joan was dead.

As a mark of her devotion, she was buried at her brother's side at Fontevraud Abbey.

Arthur of Brittany

29/3/2019

On the 29th March 1187 the birth of Arthur, Duke of Brittany in Nantes in France to Geoffrey, son of Henry II, and his wife Constance.

Arthur's paternal uncle King Richard I had no children and before setting off on his most favourite pastime - the Crusades he named the boy heir to his English throne. However, in 1199 when Arthur was twelve Richard had a change of heart and made his last remaining brother John heir. Quite a sensible thing to do as a country with a minor on the throne is nothing but trouble.
Richard was dead by the end of March 1199 and despite his estate being in order, there was trouble anyway.

The barons of England supported Arthur - of course, they did !

England's hero the great William Marshall and John's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine stood on John's side.

The story goes that King John ordered his nephew's death and claimed the throne for himself. By the beginning of 1200, the boy had gone missing never to be seen again.

It is interesting don't you think that the story of Arthur shows similarities to the disappearance of Princes in the Tower two-hundred years later?

Heir’s to the throne go missing, their wicked uncle does the dirty deed and then the bodies are lost forever.

Norman Lords in Cornwall

14/9/2018

Penhallam Manor Cornwall

What remains of the once impressive Penhallam Manor can be found in the North of Cornwall not too far from Cornwall’s border with Devon and a few miles north of the villages of Weeks St Mary’s and Jacobstow. Its walls, which are still clearly visible, are at ground level and covered in grass. On a visit last year I found the surrounding thick woodland in full bloom, making it very easy for me to visualise how the manor once had been. The remains of the manors moat is still visible, albeit dried and the only safe access is at the designated entrance which was, in fact, the drawbridge.

Once within the manor walls we find each room is clearly seen and marked, what will help is some knowledge of how a medieval manor was built and run that will make all the difference, because it really appears as a lot of square, grass covered clumps. Now cared for by English Heritage the site is well maintained but is off the beaten track and a good twenty minute walk is needed to get there.

The Manor, excavated in 1968 and again in 1973, was built of stone and constructed on four sides of a courtyard and probably built between the 12th and 13th centuries on the site of its original Norman structure. This original building, the Camera, was a suite of rooms or a single room was used by family members or an important guest. This structure was built between 1180 and 1200 with additions to the buildings were added by 1224. The remains we see today were built when the last male owner of the house inherited it between 1224 and 1236. The final addition appeared around 1300. The house at its completion contained a camera, hall, service rooms, chapel, lodgings and a gatehouse. It was abandoned by the 14th century its stones taken from the site and probably used in constructions elsewhere. This manor house was the principle residence of the Cardinham family whose progenitor held this land under the king soon after the conquest of England, they were also one of the largest owners of land in the county of Cornwall. Penhallam, for a brief time, was where the power lay.

My initial interest was not with Penhallam itself but with another pre conquest manor known as Hele which, along with Penhallam and Poulza made up what is now the aforementioned Parish of Jacobstow. Before the conquest of England the land of Hele was owned by Colo who also held the manors of Week St Mary’s. Both Hele and Week St Mary’s were held by my direct ancestors from the middle of the 13th century. My ancestors marriage between the female heir of Weeks St Marys and male heir of Hele links my family with that of the manor of Penhallam, although not linked by blood my ancestors would have been directly involved with the family that held the manor. Unlike Penhallam the home of my ancient family at Week St Mary’s and Hele was probably a timber structure of which there are no remains, this and their land were lost simply due to the lack of male heir.

At the time of Edward the Confessor the people of Cornwall lived a more or less quite life in small settlements and their living earned from land and the sea, they had little or no knowledge of what was going on in the rest of the county let alone England itself. By 1068 the town of Exeter was in the hands of the Conqueror, the people of that city had not given up without a fight and neither had the inhabitants of Cornwall but by at least 1072 William I had total control of England and Cornwall. William held a number of manors in Cornwall himself such as the Manor of Brannel in the south of the county which incidentally becomes the property of the descendants of my family at Week St Mary’s by early in the 13th century. On the whole most of Cornwall was held by the conquerors half brother, Robert, Count of Mortain. Under Mortain in the north of Cornwall there were three other powerful men. Turstin the second most powerful man under Mortain who was Sheriff of Cornwall, Richard Fitz Turold, who was his steward, and Reginald de Vallatort.

It is Richard fitz Turold who we are interested in in connection with Penhallam. It is probable that fitz Turolds father was in Mortains entourage and was said to have been in command of the troops that secured Cornwall and was for this reason he was rewarded with Penhallam. It is probable that he built the foundations and moat which circled the later building. By 1087 Richard Fitz Turold succeeded his father at Penhallam still holding it under the family of Mortain. Due to the exploits of Mortains son and the loss of his the families lands Richard Fitz Turold was given Penhallam which he held directly from the king thus setting the family on the road to being one of the most powerful family in Cornwall.

Richard Fitz Turold son William received from his father the manor of Penhallam along with twenty seven other manors that made up the great Honour of Cardinham. Richard’s greatest achievement was the amassing of power and lands and William’s was getting his family through the doors into the royal court, albeit by the back door. William married his daughter to Reginald, Earl of Cornwall who was son of Henry I and his mistress Sibyl Corbett. By 1166 the manor had passed to Robert fitz William who held a vast amount of land in his own right, the manor of Bodardle and parts of the manor of Restomal all of which were the lands of the above named Tursin whose family had become extinct on the death of Walter Hay, who was Roberts brother in law. On his death Robert held these lands through that of his wife. It is more than likely that Robert built the stone keep at Restormal Castle.

Roberts son, also Robert was the first to use the name of Cardinham which was how the family were later known. Probably Robert built most of the house but it was his son Andrew de Cardinham who built the hall and western parts of the house. Andrew is named in a charter to the priory of St Michael’s Mount which was dated c 1223. Andrew had no sons to carry on the line of his ancestor Turold who conquered Cornwall for his Norman lords and when his nephew died so did the male line of Cardinham. Andrew did leave a daughter, Isolde. She had married into the de Tracy family but by him had no children. She later married William de Ferrers and had two sons. On the death of Andrew de Cardinham Isolde became a wealthy heiress and seems that she held her lands and had control of them herself , whether this was due to her being widowed for the second time or that she was in fact an independent and strong willed woman I don't know. Eventually the lands that had been in her family for nearly two hundred years passed into the Champernowne family. The exact relationship of the Champernowne family to the Cardinhams is not known but there would have been some family connection, there may have been some family ‘in fighting’ among the Cardinhams that caused Isolde to gift the land else where but even so it is unlikely that the lands of Isoldes ancestors would have passed out of the family into the hands of complete strangers. After Isoldes death and the transference of Penhallam to the Champernowne it is not known who exactly lived there. The Champernownes were tenants in chief directly under the king and who held much land in Devon so it would be more than likely that Penhallam was held by a Cornish family under them. It is known that the manor was held by the Beaupre family for a considerable time and they may have lived there but by mid 14th century the Cardinhams, Champernownes and Beaupres were extinct their blood intermingled with that of the wealthy land owning Cornishmen who once were their vassals.

And of Penhallam, that too as we have seen is gone, it is now a protected and cared for ruin, a shell of what it once was. Even today, as mentioned in the first chapter, its remains are a good distance form ‘civilisation’ so its is fair to say that this may have been the reason that it fell into decay.

A Massacre at Acre

19/8/2018

20th August 1191

Below is one description, taken from the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi of King Richard I's attack on the Turkish forces as he made his way to Jerusalem with his army:

"King Richard pursued the Turks with singular ferocity, fell upon them and scattered them across the ground. No one escaped when his sword made contact with them; wherever he went his brandished sword cleared a wide path on all sides. Continuing his advance with untiring sword strokes, he cut down that unspeakable race as if he were reaping the harvest with a sickle, so that the corpses of Turks he had killed covered the ground everywhere for the space of half a mile."

A great piece of medieval PR by Richard de Templo, which makes the king sound like some sort of superman. He wasn't!

When he reached Acre he ordered the deaths of over 2,700 captives outside the walls of Acre in retaliation to Saladin's summarily beheading of his Christian prisoners. He was not the only one committing atrocities like this, they were the norm during the Crusades. On the very same day the Duke of Burgundy did the same with his captives, the vast majority were soldiers of a garrison just out side Acre, but 300 of those killed were wives and children, they were all barbarically slaughtered in full view of the Saracen camp:

"roped together in groups, attacked with swords, lances clubs and stones, their bellies slit open before their bodies burnt, in case gold and jewels had been swallowed"

Battle of Stratton

15/5/2018

The Cornish town of Stratton, that lies close to the boarder with Devon, was a manor owned by my ancestors in the early 12th century, its history, and theirs is quite fascinating. Stratton was the head of its hundred (a division of the county for judicial purposes) which is a good indicator of its importance in the north of Cornwall. It had a thriving agricultural and leather trade.

By the 17th century there was little to show that my ancestors ever lived there, however on the 16th May 1643, a civil war battle, the Battle of Stratton, took place at the base of Stamford Hill, less than a mile north of the family's castle.

The battle raged for most of the day, but by the end of it Henry Grey, Earl of Stamford, had lost half of his forces enabling the Cornish Royalist army to march across the border from Cornwall to Devon. It was a Royalist victory, and a quite remarkable one considering the three thousand Royalist troops, under Sir Ralph Hopton, faced Grey's Parliamentarian army that numbered over five and a half thousand.

By July, Hopton had lead his forces in two more battles, one at Crediton and one at Landsdowne, where Hopton was injured. A year later he successfully defended Devizes from an attack by William Waller's forces and two years after that he had taken up a defensive position in the Devon town ofTorrington, a battle that marked the end of Royalist resistance in the West Country.

Henry Grey, Earl of Stamford

Sir Ralph Hopton

Henry Grey's failure at Stratton and the surrender of the City of Exeter after a three month siege effectively ended his career as a Parliamentary commander.

Henry the Young King

25/2/2018

Henry II's reign would see the end of the Anarchy and claims by others to the crown of England and therefore it would be vitally important that Henry have an heir whose right to the throne was not questioned. Henry's new wife Eleanor was said to have been vocal and argumentative and their relationship somewhat ‘fiery’ but despite this Eleanor did manage to give Henry eight children, four of which were sons.

We can only wonder if, in the first months of their marriage, Eleanor was at all worried about her inability to produce male heirs. She must have had some concerns that she did not conceive a child straight away, did she think that the spectre of her marriage to Louis VII of France had come back to haunt her, after all, in all of those fifteen years she never gave the French king a son. However, Eleanor need not of worried, she would be pregnant by the Christmas of 1152 and her first child, a son would be born the following August. Eleanor must have sighed with relief, she knew that her position as wife to the future king of England was secured.

No doubt Eleanor was all the more thrilled when she gave birth to Henry's second son on the 28th February in 1155, this new child would be named Henry after his father. Tragedy struck in the April of 1156 when William, their firstborn died aged just three of a seizure leaving his fourteen-month-old brother Henry as heir to the throne.

History would refer to Henry as the 'Young King.'

Henry would grow, according to one source, into a "lovable, eloquent, handsome and gallant" young man, however, others saw him differently, there would be those who would call a "feckless and fatuous" youth. A written description of Henry tells us that he was "tall but well proportioned, broad-shouldered with a long and elegant neck, pale and freckled skin, bright and wide blue eyes, and a thick mop of the reddish-gold hair." a description that also has been applied to his younger brother Richard, later Richard I.

Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's family are a prime example of a dysfunctional one and this lead to problems on many different levels, especially in regard to their children. Henry would join with his younger brothers Richard and Geoffrey in rebellion against their father. All the son of Henry and Eleanor have distinctive and forceful personalities, and Henry was no different he was seen as having charm and popularity but he was also seen as irresponsible.

At the age of just fifteen, and while his father still reigned, Henry was crowned king and two years following his coronation Henry married Margaret, the daughter of his mother's first husband the above named Louis VII of France and his second wife Constance of Castile. A birth of a son to the couple would secure Henry II's new Angevin dynasty, but it was not to be, Henry the Young King's son died at just three days old in 1177. Henry himself would die just six years later at the age of twenty-eight while on campaign in Limousin in France, probably of dysentery, estranged from his father. After his death, Henry II is said to have stated
"He cost me much, but I wish he had lived to cost me more"

Henry's death left his brother Richard as heir to his fathers throne.

The Galgano Sword

7/1/2018

Saint Galgano was born Galgano Guidotti in 1148 in Chiusdino, a village in what is now the modern province of Siena in Italy.

Galango was said to have been a medieval Tuscan knight, the son of a feudal lord. Galgano had a reputation for selfishness and being somewhat of a rebel in his youth. Galgano, after have a vision of the Archangel Michael, saw the error of his ways, abandoning his old life for that of a hermit at Rotonda di Montesiepi. To prove his total commitment to his new cause Galgano plunged his sword into a large stone forcing it through the rock up to its hilt, thus changing the sword into a cross a symbol of his new found piety.

Galgano died here on 30 November 1181 and since then pilgrims have arrived in large numbers and miracles have been performed. A papal commission was set up in 1185, after which Galgano was canonised in 1190.

For centuries the sword was thought to be a fake, but researchers revealed in 2001 that the sword is in fact, twelfth century. The University of Pavia, who tested the metal of the sword also used ground penetrating radar analysis and revealed that beneath the sword there was a cavity in which is thought to be the body of Galgano.

Incidentally, in the church, there are two mummified hands and these too are twelfth century. A local legend says that anyone who tried to remove the sword from the stone had their arms ripped off.

1163: Fry Island on the River Thames

8/11/2017

Fry’s Island or De Montfort Island, can be found in River Thames just above Caversham Lock at Reading, in Berkshire. The island is best known as the location of a duel, or trial by combat, between Robert de Montfort and Henry of Essex, the standard bearer to Henry II that took place in 1163.

According to W.M. Childs in his 1905 book The Story of the Town of Reading, a quarrel arose when Henry of Essex allegedly dropped the standard and cried out falsely that the King has been slain, an act of a coward according to de Montfort.
Both men were taken to the island, where Robert of Montfort

"thundered on him manfully with hard and frequent strokes."

Henry was injured and presumed dead and taken away by the monks of Reading for burial. However, Henry was alive. He recovered from his wounds and became a monk himself.