The
Battle Abbey Roll
Listed
below are details taken from this Roll but the following should first
be read:
From the 1911 Edition of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition: (on LoveToKnow Free Online
Encyclopedia)
BATTLE ABBEY ROLL.
This is popularly supposed to have been a list of William the Conquerors
companions preserved at Battle Abbey, on the site of his great victory
over Harold. It is known to us only from 16th century versions of it
published by Leland, Holinshed and Duchesne, all more or less imperfect
and corrupt. Holinsheds is much the fullest, but of its 629 names
several are duplicates. The versions of Leland and Ducheslle, though
much shorter, each contain many names found in neither of the other
lists. It was so obvious that several of the names had no right to
figure on the roll, that Camden, as did Dugdale after him, held them to
have been interpolated at various times by the monks, not without their
own advantage. Modern writers have gone further, Sir Egerton Brydges
denouncing the roll as a disgusting forgery, and E. A. Freeman
dismissing it as a transparent fiction. An attempt to vindicate the roll
was made by the last duchess of Cleveland, whose Battle Abbey Roll (3
vols., 1889) is the best guide to its Contents. -
It is probable that the character of the
roll has been quite misunderstood. It is not a list of individuals, but
only of family surnames, and it seems to have been intended to show
which families had come over with the Conqueror, and to have been
compiled about the 14th century. The compiler appears to have been
influenced by the French sound of names, and to have included many
families of later settlement, such as that of Grandson, which did not
come to England from Savoy till two centuries after the Conquest. The
roll itself appears to be unheard-of before and after the 16th century,
but other lists were current at least as early as the 15th century, as
the duchess of Cleveland has shown. In 1866 a list of the Conquerors
followers, compiled from Domesday and other authentic records, was set
up in Dives church by M. Leopold Delisle, and is printed in the duchess
work. Its contents are naturally sufficient to show that the Battle Roll
is worthless.
See Leland, Collectanea Holinshed,
Chronicles of England; Doehesne, His/or/a Norm. Scriptores; Brydges,
Censu~a Literaria; Thierry, Conqut,e c/c lAngleterre, vol. ii. (1829);
Burke, The Roll of Battle Abbey (annotated, 1848); Planch, The Conqueror
and His Companions (1871/2) duchess of Cleveland, The Battle Abbey Roll
(1889); Round, The Companions of the Conqueror (Monthly Review, 1901,
iii. pp. 91-Ill). (J. H. R.)
The
Battle Abbey Roll
CORBETT: Corbat (sic)
and his two sons, Roger and Rodbert (sic), are named by
Ordericus among "the faithful and very valiant men"
employed by Roger de Montgomeri in the government of his
new Earldom of Shrewsbury. Corbet was also, according to
tradition, consulted by William the Conqueror as to the
defence of the Welsh Marches.
His ancestry, Blakeway tells us,
ascended "to a very remote antiquity". The name
denotes in Norman-French a raven: whether in allusion to
the famous Danish standard (the Reafan), of which their
ancestor might have been the bearer from Scandinavia
under Rollo, or whether from a less noble source, cannot
be determined.
It is certain that Corbet came
with his second and fourth sons, Roger and Robert, to the
invasion of England by Duke William of Normandy. Besides
the two sons who settled in Shropshire, the eldest and
the third, Hugh and Renaud, stayed behind.
Hugh is mentioned in some
charters of the Abbey of Bec, in Normandy; and Renaud was
in Palestine in 1096, with his two sons, Robert and Guy.
From the last of these descended five generations, all of
them men of eminent rank in France, distinguished
crusaders in the Holy Land, and castellans or viscounts
of St. Pol, which the Corbets continued to hold until
Hugh Corbet, knight, fourth descendant of Guy, sold his
viscountcy to the Count de St. Pol, in order to raise
money that he might follow St Louis on his crusading
expedition against the Moors of Africa.
Robert, son of Hugh,
accompanied his father to Tunis, and was drowned there in
1270. Hugh, his son, settled near Cambray; and his
descendants for four generations lived at various places
in the Netherlands, till James Corbet removed to Antwerp;
and Robert, grandson to James, migrated to Spain, where
he left a fair posterity. These Corbets of France and
Flanders bore three ravens for their arms, in token of
their descent from the third brother.
A branch also of the Corbet
family settled in Scotland, and were even allied to the
Royal family there; for, in 1255, the Archbishop of St.
Andrews writes a letter to the English Chancellor, Walter
de Merton, on behalf of his 'beloved and especial friend,
Nicholas Corbet, cousin of my Lord the King,' who had
then certain affairs pending at the court of Henry III."
Corbet the Norman was dead
before 1086: for his son, Roger Fitz Corbet, is the
Domesday baron, and built a castle at Alfreton as the
head of his honour, which he names Caux, from Pays de
Caux, his former home in Normandy. "This was one of
the Border castles which, for two centuries after
Domesday, served its continuous purposes of aggression
and defence." Eyton's Shropshire.
It stood in a strong position,
commanding the pass called the Valley of the Rea; for, as
a former marcher fortress, "it was exposed to all
the turmoil of a hostile frontier"; and was taken
and burnt by the Welsh in the time of his successor.
Robert Fitz Corbet, the younger brother, held Longden and
Alcester; but his line died out in the following
generation, and it is Roger who is the ancestor of the
numerous families that have planted the name in the
county. He constantly appears as a witness to Earl
Roger's charters; and continued the faithful liegeman of
his two sons, for he and Ulgar Venator were the only
Shropshire chiefs that adhered to the last to Robert de
Belesme. He held Bridgnorth Castle for his Earl against
Henry I for three months; and it is, according to Eyton
"A question" whether he forfeited his estate by
his rebellion. His son, at all events, peaceably
succeeded to the barony in 1121; and the line continued,
without a break, for more than two hundred years after
that.
These Barons of Caus were
assiduous at their arduous post as guardians of the
frontier: and an ancient roll that names Robert Corbet
among those present with Couer de Leon at the siege of
Acre, is discredited by Eyton on the ground (among others)
that "a Lord Marcher was little likely to become a
crusader," having his hands so full at home. A
daughter of this house, however, crossed the hostile
border to become the wife of Welshman, Gwenwynwyn, Prince
of Powys. She was the sister of Thomas Corbet, Sheriff of
Shropshire and Staffordshire in 1248, whose wife Isabel,
was sister, and in her issue co-heir, to Reginald de
Valletort, a great feudal baron in the west. Their son
Peter served in the campaign that closed Llewellyn's
career, as well as in Edward I's Scottish wars, and was
summoned to Parliament by him in 1293. He was "a
mighty hunter," as his father had been before him*, and in 1281 received the King's
commission to destroy all wolves, wherever they could be
found, in the counties of Salop, Stafford, Gloucester,
Worcester and Hereford: one more proof - if another were
needed - that the alleged extirpation of wolves in Anglo-Saxon
times is a fable.
The next in succession, Peter,
second Lord Corbet, had no children, and settled his
estates on his wife, Beatrix de Beauchamp, for her life.
He died in 1322, and as she survived him and married
again, his brother and next heir, John, the last Baron of
Caus ("if such a title can be assigned to one who
never enjoyed his paternal estates, and was never
summoned to parliament), was reduced to a position of
comparative beggary." He prosecuted the claim to his
grandmother's Valletort's estates already ineffectually
advanced by his brother, but never succeeded in
recovering them. He, too, died s.p. sometime before 1347,
the year of the decease of his sister-in-law Beatrix,
then the wife of Sir John de Leyborne; and the estate (though
not the barony) of Cause passed to the descendants of her
first husband's two aunts, Alice de Stafford, and Emma de
Brompton, as next heirs.
The ancient name was far from
having died out with John Corbet (to whom, indeed, Burke
attributes no inconsiderable family), but the exact
relationship of its remaining representatives cannot now
be determined. "Dugdale tells us of a Roger Corbet,
summoned as a baron in 1327. It is difficult to say who
this was. Summarily, it may be safely stated of all the
families which have branched off from this house of Caus
that none of them can be descended from any later Baron
than he who died in 1222, and that therefore to decide
their exact affinity to the parent stock, must be the
work rather of a magician than an antiquary." Ibid
Not being conversant with the
black art, I will confine myself to the existing family,
whose pedigree is undisputed for the last seven hundred
years. Richard Corbet, their ancestor, held
Wattlesborough - one of Roger Fitz Corbet's Domesday
manors - of the Barony of Caus in 1179; and a tower of
his castle there is still standing. Blakeway claims for
him the honour of being the head of the house, assuming
that one of the earlier Barons of Caus resigned his
rights of primogeniture to a younger brother, and was
content to hold one of his own manors of him as an under-tenant.
But to this theory there are formidable objections.
"A Tenant-in-capite-per-baronium"
could not divest himself of his primogeniture or alienate
his barony in the way supposed. Instant forfeiture would
have been the consequence, and, failing that, his act
could not have bound his descendants. On his death his
son might have recovered the barony by process of mort
d'ancestre, and his descendants, however remote,
could have achieved the same end by the process of Grand
Assize.' Ibid At all events, the two lines
diverged as early as the reign of Henry II; the baronial
family bearing two ravens, and the knightly family a
single one - Or, un corbyn de Sable - which has
been cited as proof of their birthright.
Richard Corbet's son married
the heiress of the old Anglo-Saxon family of Toret, and
thus acquired Moreton-Toret - now Moreton Corbet, and the
property of his representative. Wattlesborough, and the
principal part of the Corbet estate, was carried away in
the next century by "a great Shropshire heiress,"
the daughter of Sir Fulk Corbet, to John de la Pole, Lord
of Mawddwy, and Justice of North Wales.** "This happened again in 1583, when
the lands brought by the heiress of Hopton went by
marriage to the Wallops and Careys." - E.P.Shirley.
Four baronetcies were granted
to the Corbets in the first half of the following century:
two by James I, and two by his son. That bestowed upon
the head of the family, Sir Vincent Corbet, of Moreton-Corbet,
ranked third in point of seniority, and dated from 1642.
He was a devoted Royalist; and, in acknowledgement of his
services, his widow received a life-peerage as
Viscountess Corbet. The baronetcy expired in 1688 with
another Sir Vincent, who only lived to be eighteen: and
their ancestral estate of Moreton-Corbet passed out of
the family with his sister, Mrs Kynaston.
But the ancient name, "famous
even at the time of the Conquest," is carried on in
the direct line by the descendants of Richard, a younger
brother of the first baronet. One of them re-purchased
Moreton-Corbet about 1742: and to another, Sir Andrew,
the title was re-granted in 1808.
There is an old legend attached
to this house, which Blakeway endeavours to transfer to
Caus, in corroboration of the Baron's surrender of his
birth-right, though it is Moreton-Corbet that it has
always belonged. "Once upon a time, the heir went to
the Holy Land, and was detained so long in captivity,
that he was supposed to be dead, and his younger brother
engaged to marry, that he might carry on the line. On the
morning of the marriage, however, a pilgrim came to the
house to partake of the hospitalities of that festal
occasion; and after the dinner, revealed himself to the
assembled company as the long-lost elder brother. The
bridegroom would have surrendered the estate to him; but
he declined the offer, desiring only a small portion of
the land, which he accordingly received." - Antiquities
of Shropshire.
There were so many junior
branches of this family, that the mere enumeration of
them is laborious; but I believe almost all of them are
extinct: the three other baronies unquestionably are:
The oldest, granted in 1623 to
Sir John Corbet, of Sprowston Hall, High Sheriff of
Norfolk, only lasted till 1661: the year before his
brother Miles, one of the regicides who had escaped
beyond the sea, was captured at Delft, brought home, and
executed.
The next in date was held by
Sir John Corbet, of Stoke, "one of the five
illustrious patriots that opposed the enforced loan of
1627:" but surely subsequently to the baronetcy
conferred uon him in that very year. He was blessed with
ten sons and ten daughters; but the line failed in the
next century with two childless brothers (the elder of
whom had married Harriet, sister of the great Earl of
Chatham), and the estate passed to the nephew, Corbet D'Avenant.
The last baronetcy was received
in 1642 by Sir Edward Corbet, of Longnor, in Shropshire,
and Leighton, in Montgomeryshire, and expired in 1774.
Then there were Corbets of
Hadley and Tasley, Leigh, and Sundorne, &c. in
Shropshire: one branch in Cheshire and Lincolnshire;
another in Wales; and one, if not two, in Worcestershire,
where Chaddesley-Corbet keeps the name. "
In 1284, Sir Roger Corbet, of
Chaddesley, held Chetton (Shropshire) in capite, by the
service of finding a man to go to Wales on the KIng's
service, who was to take one bow, three arrows and a
caltrop; and also a cured hog; and when he reached the
King's army, he was to deliver to the King's Marshal half
thereof; and the Marshal was to give him daily of the
same half bacon for his dinner, as long as he staid in
the army, and he was to stay with the army as long as the
hog lasted." The term of his service might thus be
spun out by putting him on short commons.
*
Thomas, Baron of Caus, obtained in 1224
the King's licence to pursue any three boars through the
forests of Shropshire that he might unkennel in his own
forest; and twelve years later, a confirmation by charter
of the whole forest of Teynfrestanes - (Stiperstones).
**
Yet the annual value of the lands was
only £30, "because they lay on the confines of the
Marches, and were devastated from day to day, and partly
burned by the Welsh rebels." Bridgeman's Princes of
S. Wales.
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