Ros family per Cleveland

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Ros family per Cleveland

Legg inn av Gjest » 30 des 2005 21:09:01

For anyone interested in what the Duchess of Cleveland had to say on the Ros
family back in 1889, here is a scan

Adrian


Ros. "It needeth not be doubted," says Dugdale, "that Peter, the ancestor of
the great Family of Lords Ros of Hamlake, originally assumed that Sirname in
King Henry the First's time from the Lordship of Ros in Holderness, {fn1}
where he then had his residence." He deliberately shuts his eyes to the fact
that five De Ros'—neither more nor less—are entered in Domesday; that is,
William, to whom the Conqueror had given the Abbey of Fécamp in 1079, with a small
Sussex barony added to its revenues; and Anchitel, Ansgot, Goisfrid, and
Serlo, who all held as under-tenants. "They derived their name from the parish
of Ros, now Rots, two miles from Caen, where they held a fief, but not the
entire domain, which pertained to the De Patrys and others. The family must have
been numerous at the time of the Conquest, and the formation of Domesday
Book, as five of the name are there inscribed. They had evidently all followed
Duke William to England, but did not stand high in his favour, for, with the
exception of William, to whom he gave the Abbey of Fécamp, they do not figure
among the tenants in chief either in 1086 or during the reign of William
Rufus. All our researches have failed to determine the exact relationship of
these five contemporaries, or indeed of a sixth, inscribed in 1090 on the roll of
[end of page 50] the Abbey of St. Stephen-of-Caen as William Gonnor de Ros.
Nor have we been more fortunate in discovering which among them or their
descendants was the father of Richard de Ros, who witnessed the foundation
charter of Aunay Abbey in 1131; or of the trouvère Adam de Ros, author of the
Descente de S. Paul aux Enfers. The history of this family is all the more
obscure, as it appears to have become extinct towards the latter end of the
fourteenth century.
"The origin of the Anglo-Norman family of De Ros is enveloped in the same
obscurity, as the English genealogists have no real ground for deriving it from
Anchitel, rather than from any of the other three companions-in-arms of Duke
William, who bore the same name, and are, like him, inscribed in Domesday
Book."—Recherches sur le Domesday.
There can be no question that the real history of the family in this country
commences with Peter de Ros, who married Adeline, the youngest but most
favoured of the sisters of Walter Espec, the famous Baron of Helmsley. She
brought a considerable inheritance, even though a preponderant share of Espec's
great barony was given to the Church. He had an only son, on whom he doated; a
promising and "comely" lad who "took great delight in swift Horses; "and one
unhappy day, in 1121, when he was spurring and pressing his horse to its utmost
speed, it stumbled and fell with him, breaking his neck. The bereaved
father, thus left childless, vowed to make Christ his heir, and founded three great
monasteries; one at Kirkham, near the scene of the accident, where he
converted his own "pleasant Seat into a religious House:" another at Rievaulx, also
in Yorkshire; and a third at Wardon, in Bedfordshire. In his latter years he
joined the community at Rievaulx: and this formidable champion died a
Cistercian monk. His portrait, though drawn by Abbot Ailred, one of the grateful
brethren whom he had endowed, is somewhat grim: "Black hair, long beard, his
stature taller by a Head than other men; great eyes, big face, high forehead,
and a voice like a trumpet." {fn2} It had rung over the field of
Northallerton, when, on the morning of the great battle, he harangued his men, and then,
taking the Earl of Albemarle by the hand, cried, "I faithfully promise you,
that I will conquer the Scots this day, or lose my life by them."
This match with Adeline Espec founded the fortunes of the house; but Peter's
grandson, Everard de Ros, made a still more fortunate marriage. His [end of
page 51] wife, Rose Trusbut, was the eldest daughter of Robert Trusbut, Baron
of Wartre in Holderness, and through the successive deaths of her three
brothers and two sisters—all issueless—was left his sole heiress and
representative. In honour of the great barony she had brought to them, her descendants
adopted her punning coat of arms, Trois bouts d'eau (three water-bougets) in
lieu of the golden Catherine wheel they had hitherto borne. {fn3}
Rose's two sisters, however, reached such extreme old age—Hillaria lived to
be ninety, and died six years before Agatha—that the whole inheritance only
came to her grandson. Everard himself died early—before 1185—leaving her a
young widow, and his son and heir Robert—one of the future potentates of the
realm—a lad of thirteen.
Robert Furfan, as he was surnamed, proved a man of fitful and capricious
temper, in his early years imprisoned for some offence or other against Cœur de
Lion, and again, in 1205, suffering sequestration under King John, who, only
five years before, had endowed him with the whole of the barony of his
great-grandmother's father, Walter Espec. In both cases the cloud of displeasure
passed over quickly: and it was in the zenith of his power and the flower of
his age—he can scarcely have been more than thirty—that he renounced the world
in 1209, and became a monk. But it was not for long. The very next year he
cast off his cowl and emerged from his monastery—a strange instance of the
latitude accorded even by the inflexible monastic rule to a great feudal lord—
resumed his barony, which had been committed to the custody of Philip de
Ulcote, and plunged with fresh vigour into the strife of parties and the clash of
arms. At first he was on the King's side, and duly rewarded with a grant of
some Cumberland manors; "but this favour," says Dugdale, "did not oblige him,
as it seemed;" for we next find him holding Carlisle Castle in open defiance
of the King's authority, and soon after ranged amongst the most resolute of
his opponents. He was entrusted by the Barons with the government of
Northumberland; was present at the sealing of the Great Charter at Runnymede, and one
of its twenty-five appointed Conservators. In the ensuing reign "he approved
himself firm and faithful to King Henry III.": and some time before his death
in 1226 assumed the habit of a Knight Templar, in which he was buried in the
Temple Church, London, where his tomb and effigy yet remain. He had married
Isabel, the daughter (though of more than doubtful legitimacy) [end of page
52] of William the Lion, King of Scots, and widow of Robert de Brus, and left
two sons, between whom he divided his possessions. To William, as the
firstborn, he gave his great Yorkshire barony; to Robert his smaller fief in
Northumberland, adding to it a Scottish barony, to be held of the elder by military
service. For each he built a great castle as the head of their Honour:
Hamlake for William, and Werke for Robert.
William had, like himself, taken up arms with the confederate barons, and
been mulcted in a heavy fine. "Nevertheless, as soon as he discerned an
opportunity, he flew out again," joined the revolt against Henry III., and was taken
prisoner at the battle of Lincoln; but his father procured his release on
bail. The next heir, Robert, was, again, deeply engaged in the baronial war,
held a command under Simon de Montfort at Lewes, and was summoned to parliament
by the barons in 1264 as Lord Ros of Hamlake. {fn 4} Some twenty years
before, he had gained the third great matrimonial prize awarded to the family, in
receiving from Henry III. the hand of the heiress of Belvoir. "But not," adds
Dugdale, " without a round compensation ; for it appears that both he and
his wife in 32 Hen. III. were debtors to the King in no less than the sum of
3,285 1, xiijs, ivd, and a Palfrey; of which sum, the King was then pleased to
accept by two hundred marks a year, until it should all be paid." In those
days, this represented, at the very least, .£55,000 of our money; but the
inheritance thus acquired was proportionately splendid. Isabel de Albini brought
him, as the appanage of her honour and castle of Belvoir, a domain that a
prince might well afford to envy—the whole wide stretch of territory granted by
the Conqueror to Robert de Todeni.
The first Lord Ros was followed by ten others, all men of action busied in
the affairs of the realm, and constant on the battle-field, whose fortunes I
cannot attempt to follow in any degree of detail. Isabel's son, who put in a
claim to the crown of Scotland in right of his pseudo-royal great-grandmother,
received from Edward I. the castle of Werke upon Tweed, forfeited by the
treason of his kinsman. But this stronghold, one of the keys of the Border, was
judged too important for the custody of a subject, and his successor
transferred it by exchange to the Crown. The uncle of this third Lord, Sir John de
Ros, was very eminent in the days of Edward II. and Edward III. He had taken
part energetically with Queen Isabel against the Despencers ; and on her son's
accession was summoned to parliament as a baron, appointed Steward of the
Royal Household, and chosen as "one of those twelve Lords by whom it was
resolved the King (being young) should be governed." In 1336 he was named "Admiral
of the Seas from the Thames mouth northwards," and died the year following,
leaving no heir to his barony. The fourth Lord Ros was a renowned soldier. He
[end of page 53] led one of the brigades at Cressy, and died on a pilgrimage
to the Holy Land, as did his nephew John, sixth Lord. The next in succession
was the "William, Lord Roos," who had a dispute concerning some right of
pasturage in Lincolnshire with Robert Tirwhitt, one of the Justices of the King's
Bench, which was decided by the King in his favour. Tirwhitt was ordered to
make a humble apology," delivered before all the Knights, Esquires, and Yeomen
of his" (Lord Ros') "party then present; " which he prefaced by a singular
acknowledgment—all the more singular as coming from one of the law officers of
the Crown." My Lord Roos," said he, "I know well that you being of such
Birth, Estate, and Might that if you liked, you might have comen to the foresaid
Lawday in such a way, that I had been of no might to make any party." He then
proffered a fine of five hundred marks, with two tuns of good Gascon wine,
two oxen, and twelve sheep ; but Lord Ros would only accept the latter "for
the dinner of those here present." His son and heir John spent the whole of his
brief life under arms. In 1416—being then not yet eighteen—he went with
Henry V. to France, and distinguished himself so greatly before Rouen, that he
received a grant of the Norman castle of Basqueville; but was slain in a
disastrous encounter near the castle of Beaufort, while still under age. With him
fell his young brother William, the Duke of Exeter, and "many more of the
English Chivalry." Thomas, his nephew, who succeeded his father, when only four
years old, as tenth Lord Ros, was a staunch Lancastrian, and after that
memorable Palm Sunday on Towton Field,
"Where the river ran all gory,
And in hillocks lay the dead,
And seven and thirty thousand
Fell for the White and Red—"
he fled with the King to Berwick. He was attainted on the accession of
Edward IV., and died the same year, leaving, by Philippa, sister and co-heir of
John Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, two sons, Edmund and John ; and three
daughters; Eleanor, married to Sir Robert Manners of Etal Castle in Northumberland;
Isabel, the wife of Thomas Grey (or, as others say, of Sir Robert Lovell): and
Margaret, who is supposed to have died unmarried." His lands," says Leland,
"stood confiscate: and Bellevoir Castell was given in keeping to the Lorde
Hastings; the which coming thither upon a tyme to peruse the ground, and to lye
in the castell, was suddenly repelled by Master Harington, a Man of Power
thereabout, and Friend of the Lorde Ros: whereupon the Lorde Hastings cam
thither another tyme with a strong power, and upon a raging wylle spoiled the
castelle, defacing the roofes, and taking the leades off them, wherewyth they were
all coverid. Then fell alle the Castell to ruine; and the tymber of the
roofs uncovered rotted away; and the soyle between the waulles at the last grew
full of Elders; and no habitation was ther till that of late Dayes the Erle of
Rutland hath made it fairer than ever it was." [end of page 54]
The attainder was reversed when Henry VII. came to the throne, and Edmund,
as eleventh Lord Ros, enjoyed his own again. But he was never married; and his
brother must have died in early life, as there is no further mention of him.
The old line had at last come to an end; and the sisters became
co-heiresses: only Eleanor had children ; and her son, Sir George Manners, succeeded as
twelfth Lord Ros, and was the father of the first Earl of Rutland, who
undertook the restoration of her ancestral castle, completed by his successor in the
time of Elizabeth. Since then, Belvoir has been burnt to the ground and
entirely rebuilt by another of the family; for Eleanor de Ros' splendid dowry has
never passed away from her lineage, though her ancient barony is no longer
theirs. It went to the only child of the third Earl of Rutland, Lady Elizabeth
Manners, married to William Cecil, Lord Burghley; and though, on the death
of her son, it reverted to the sixth Earl, Francis, it was again lost through
want of a male heir, and fell to his daughter, Lady Catherine. She was the
wife of George Villiers, the famous Duke of Buckingham, and the mother of
several children, but they all died s.p., and the barony lapsed into abeyance for
a century and a quarter. At last, in 1806, it was granted to Lady Henry Fitz
Gerald, who adopted the name of De Ros, and transmitted it to her posterity.
At least two other baronies by writ were held by the house of De Ros. Robert
Furfan's second son Robert, to whom he gave the barony of Werke in
Northumberland, was, according to Dugdale, summoned to parliament 22 Ed. I., or
sixty-seven years afterwards; but from the date it appears most probable that it
was his son of the same name. The first Robert, as the son of William the Lion's
daughter, was named Regent of Scotland and guardian of the young King and
Queen with John Baliol in 1255. Both were vehemently accused by their charges;
the Queen protesting that she was kept like a prisoner in a solitary place
near the sea, without wholesome air or proper attendance; and Robert de Ros was
sentenced to pay the enormous sum of 100,000 marks—a fine afterwards remitted
—for " greatly misdemeaning himself in his trust."
The second Robert, summoned as "Robertus Ros de Werke" in 1293, forfeited
his barony by his foul treason. "About a year after" (his summons) "being far
in love with a Scotch woman, whom he had a mind to make his Wife, he
endeavoured to inveigh William de Ros of Hamlake (his kinsman) to the Scots party,
acknowledging that he himself was of their confederacy; who refusing to be thus
wrought upon, rebuked him for that attempt, and represented to him how
scandalous such an act would be to their whole Family. Howbeit all this prevailed
not, for that night he got privately away to the Scots; which being discerned
by William, he forthwith hasted to the King (then at Newcastle-upon-Tine) and
signifying to him the perfidiousness of this his Kinsman, desired some help
to defend the Castle of Werke, lest it should be surprised by the Scots,
through the means of that treachery; who accordingly sent a thousand of his men
which were quartered the night following at Prestfen ; whereof this Robert
[end of page 55] being aware, he took a power of Scots out of the Garrison of
Rokesburgh ; and privily surrounding the Village, gave them a Signal; viz.
Tabart and Surcoat, commanding that whosoever naming the one word, if the party
to whom he expressed it, did not answer the other, they should kill him. And
thereupon entering Prestfen, he set fire to the Houses; which so astonished
the English, that divers of them slew those of their own party, and many were
taken prisoners, and most barbarously used. But this vile and unworthy act was
not long unrevenged; for shortly after King Edward made slaughter of no less
than ten thousand and fifty-three of the Scots, in the Battel of Dunbar."
Dugdale adds, that Robert de Ros, "then marching in the Scots army with Banners
displayed," was with them at the burning of his own town of Werke.
The fair lady for whose sake he forswore his allegiance is not named, and if
he married her she must have been his second wife. The first—I should rather
say the only—wife of his ever mentioned, was Margaret, sister and co-heir of
the great Yorkshire baron, Peter de Brus of Skelton. She inherited from her
mother, Helewise of Lancaster, the castle and honour of Kendall, which she
gave to her son William. From him it descended to his grandson, who dying s.p.
32 Ed. III., left an infant daughter, afterwards married to Sir William Parr,
and the ancestress of the Parrs of Kendall. But according to another account
given by Dugdale, Robert had no son at all; only two daughters, Margaret
Salvain and Isabel de Knock; "which Isabel lived not long, I guess "; for in 1312
Margaret, as sole heir of Robert de Ros, petitioned the King for pardon of
her father's forfeiture, and had letters patent granted to her in terms of her
request. The confusion may arise from his having fused two Roberts into one.
The second Robert was the elder brother of William of Igmanthorpe, one of t
he three De Ros' summoned to parliament in 1293, who left descendants in the
male line till the seventeenth century. Leland mentions them: "Ros, that
dwellith at Ingmanthorpe in Yorkeshir a 2. Miles a this side Wetherby, cummith of
a Younger Brother in Descentes tyme past of the House of the Lord Ros.
Wetherby longgid in tymes past also to the House of this Ros, and divers other
theraboute." The line had only "of late" expired when Dugdale wrote.
Some of the family that had crossed the Border early in the thirteenth
century are now represented by a numerous and flourishing Scottish clan. Hugh de
Ros of Geddes, temp. Alexander II. (1214-1249), was the father of a second
Hugh, who acquired Kilravock in Nairn through the heiress of the Bissets, and
had a crown charter of the barony from John Baliol. This must have been the
same Hugh who, with Thomas de Ros, is found among the barons who appended their
seals to the famous proclamation issued by Robert Bruce after the battle of
Bannockburn. Kilravock is still held by his lineal descendants. The name
became Rose and often Ross (in either case the lineage may be recognized by the
water-bougets on the coat of arms); and was widely spread. From a branch
settled in Hampshire descended F. M. Lord Strathnairn, whose [end of page 56]
peerage was conferred in 1866 for his eminent services as Commander-in-chief
during the Indian Mutiny. No such feats of arms have been recorded in India since
the great days of Clive. In that terrible summer campaign, during which "not
a man in the force enjoyed his natural health or strength, months of marching
under an Indian sun having told on the strongest," he vanquished armies that
twentyfold out-numbered his own, and carried by assault the rock-citadel of
Gwalior—reputed the strongest fort in India—with a mere handful of men. Yet
of the victorious troops under his command not more than one-third were
English. He received the baton of a Field Marshal in 1877, and died unmarried at a
good old age in 1885.

{fn1 Besides this residence in Holderness, to which the name, said to be
derived from it, was certainly given, there is Seaton-Ros, also in Yorkshire;
Lullington-Ros in Kent, held by Goisfrid under Bishop Odo at Domesday:
Cratfield-Le Roos, in Suffolk, Melton-Roos, Lincoln, &c.}

{fn 2 "In visage was he some deal gray, And had black hair, as I heard say;
But then of limbs, he was well made, With bones great, and shoulders braid.
When he was blyth, he was lovely And meek, and sweet in company ; But who in
battle might him see, Another countenance had he."—Barbour.}

{fn 3 This is proved by the shield of arms in Hunmanby Church, East
Yorkshire, where Everard de Ros and Rose Trusbut are buried. The wife's coat is on
the dexter side of the shield—a place of honour occasionally accorded to
great heiresses. The seal of Devorguil of Galloway, appended to her foundation
charter of Baliol College, Oxford, in 1282, affords an instance in point. Her
paternal coat—the Lion of Galloway—is on the dexter side, and the Orle of
Baliol, borne by her husband, on the sinister side of the shield.
The Catherine wheel may have been an allusion to Rots or Rotte (Roue).}

{fn 4 According to Banks, he had received a previous summons, as Rob's de
Ros de Belv'r, from Henry III., in 1260.}

_The Battle Abbey Roll_ by Duchess of Cleveland (1889) Vol iii pp 50-7.

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