Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth CenturiesRound, John Horace
History
Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Round, John Horace
Domesday book; Feudalism -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History -- Norman period, 1066-1154; Normans -- Great Britain
They hailed him Lord of Fontenaye,
Of Lutterworth and Scrivelbaye,
Of Tamworth tower and town
had nothing to do with 'Dispensator', but meant either a scullion or
a monkey, and was one of those nicknames that the Normans loved to
inexorably bestow on one another.
What was the actual relation of the Marmions to Robert 'Dispensator'
is a problem as yet unsolved. Mr Waters wrote:
It is generally believed that Scrivelsby and the rest of the
Honour of Dispenser came to the Marmions through the marriage
of Roger Marmion's grandson,[31] Robert Marmion, who was the
husband of Matilda de Beauchamp, the grand-daughter of Urso
de Abitot, and grand-niece of Robert Dispenser. But the Roll
proves that Roger Marmion was the immediate heir of Robert
Dispenser (p. 14).
I know of no such general belief. Stapleton, to whom one would
naturally turn, had pointed out long before, in his 'Rolls of the
Norman Exchequer', that this survey proves Roger Marmion to have held
the Lincolnshire fief of Robert 'Dispensator',[32] while those who
have identified the latter magnate with Robert 'Marmion' have traced
the descent of Scrivelsby in the Marmions even from the Conquest.[33]
In any case, as I wrote in my _Ancient Charters_ (1888) of a document
there published:
The succession of Urse [de Abetot] to this [Lincolnshire] fief
is a genealogical discovery which throws a wholly new light
on the very difficult problem of the relation of Marmion to
Despenser, and is fatal to the assertion of Mr Chester
Waters that 'Roger Marmion was the immediate heir of Robert
Dispenser'.
Moreover, in the Leicestershire Survey,[34] and still more in that
of Worcestershire,[35] we have evidence that Robert's inheritance
was shared between Beauchamp and Marmion which points there also to
descent through Urse de Abetot. In my _Geoffrey de Mandeville_ (pp.
313-5) I have suggested that in their rivalry for Tamworth,[36] the
Marmions embraced the cause of Stephen, and the Beauchamps that of
Maud, their variance being terminated under Henry II by a matrimonial
alliance. Such a compromise was common enough. It was agreed on in the
case of Grantmesnil; it was carried out at this very period in that of
Fitzharding and Berkeley; it was again resorted to at a later stage in
the history of the house of Berkeley; it was arranged in the case
of Hastings; and it was repeated in that of Boleyn, where the Butler
inheritance was at stake.[37]
[Footnote 1: _English Historical Review_, v. 96.]
[Footnote 2: I have discussed above (pp. 69-72) the bearing
of its evidence on the problem of Domesday assessment, so need
not recur to the subject here.]
[Footnote 3: See note 31 below.]
[Footnote 4: Vol. II. p. xcvi.]
[Footnote 5: _A Roll of the Owners of Land in the parts
of Lindsey_ ('Reprinted from the Associated Architectural
Societies Reports and Papers').]
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