“HENRY DE LACY was the eldest son of Edmund de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, by Alice, the daughter of the Marquess of Saluces in Italy. He succeeded his father in the earldom in 1257, at which time he was probably about nine years of age, his parents having been married in May 1247. The first circumstance relating to the Earl after his birth, of which we have any notice, was his marriage, in 1256, to Margaret, the eldest daughter and co-heiress of William de Longespee, the covenants of which are given by Dugdale. In 1269, the Earl became involved in a dispute about some lands with John Earl Warren, and each party prepared to establish his claim by force of arms; but their intention becoming known to the King, he commanded his Justices to hear and determine the cause, who decided it in favour of the Earl of Lincoln. William de Longespee, his wife’s father, died in the 52d Henry III.; and soon afterwards the Countess and her husband performed homage for, and obtained livery of, all the lands which had in consequence devolved upon her. In her right he is considered to have become Earl of Salisbury, the said William de Longespee having been entitled to that dignity, though he was never allowed it, as son and heir of William de Longespee, the natural son of King Henry II., by the well-known Rosamond Clifford, who obtained the Earldom of Salisbury by his marriage with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of William d’Evereux. On the feast of St Edward, 18th March 1272, the Earl of Lincoln received the honour of knighthood, and in the same year was appointed Governor of Knaresborough Castle. In 5th Edward I. he had livery of the fee which his ancestors had usually received ‘_nomine comitatûs Lincoln_’ with all the arrears from the time he was invested by King Henry III. with the sword of that earldom. Upon several occasions, between the 6th and 10th Edward I., he obtained grants of fairs, markets, and free-warrens in different parts of his domains; and in the year last mentioned, he accompanied the expedition then sent into Wales. Leland asserts that the Earl built the town of Denbigh, the land of which had been granted to him “from his having married into the blood of those princes, and that he walled it, and erected a castle, on the front of which was a statue of him in long robes; and that anciently prayers were offered in Saint Hillary’s chapel in that place, for Lacy and Percy.”