Reflections on Archbishop la Zouche, etc.

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Hickory

Reflections on Archbishop la Zouche, etc.

Legg inn av Hickory » 30. januar 2008 kl. 1.50

First, I would like to express my profound thanks to everyone for
arguing the issue of the Archbishop William la Zouche's parentage as
strenuously as you have done. I have learned a tremendous amount from
proponents of both sides of the issue. Secondly, I would like to
apologize for asserting so positively that Millicent de Monte Alto's
daughter Elizabeth was the daughter of her first husband. The charter
made no mention of the father and the chronology of both Millicent and
Millicent's mother make it clear that they both must have entered into
what we would consider today to be child marriages. If Elizabeth's
father were Eudo la Zouche it would seem likely that Elizabeth's
Poyntz marriage was also likely to have been a child marriage, but
that would not have been seen as being in anyway strange by the
participants concerned.

Concerning Lubbesthorpe, my knowledge has been significantly broadened
by this debate and I have nothing new I can offer. However, the
material does admit, in many instances varying interpretations. I
would, therefore, like to offer my synthesis of the material everyone
has already so generously provided and which I have verified, though
admittedly in a rather quick and cursory fashion.

I now agree that the first la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe cannot have been
a son of Millicent de Monte Alto, but must have been some relation to
her husband. As Millicent's husband was certainly older, the
possibility remains open that the first William of Lubbesthorpe may
even have been Eudo's son by a former wife, as people in early
medieval England did not share the same reluctance people would have
now of using the same name for two siblings. Alternatively, he could
have been a brother, a nephew or a cousin. I doubt if it will ever be
possible to determine with absolute confidence the proper affiliation
of the first William la Zouche, barring the discovery of previously
unnoticed charters.

The second lord of Lubbesthorpe, William's son Roger la Zouche, it is
clear was married to a woman named Juliana (or Julia in a later
Mallory-related charter where her dower is mentioned) and had several
la Zouche sons, Roger born around 1292, Eudo, Alan, and Ralph. Juliana
also had a family by her Mallory husband and became the ancestress of
the future Lords of Walton on the Wold and of Tachebrook Mallory.

However, no direct mention appears of a William la Zouche of
Lubbesthorpe in the evidence so far presented. The evidence is
indirect, being deduced from the fact that William and Roger la Zouche
obtain permission in 1337 to have divine service regularly said for
the souls of their ancestors progenitors in both Lubbesthorpe and
Clipsham. No mention, however, is made of them actually being from
either of these two locations and other connections than birth in
Lubbesthorpe can explain this location choice for younger sons of the
first Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth.

Particularly, in the case of Lubbesthorpe, services were already being
said on behalf of the parents of the first baron under the provisions
of a patent of 1302 to the first Roger la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe made
shortly before his death at a time when he already must have known he
was dying. In 1337 Roger and William la Zouche, if they were the sons
of the first Baron, by means of having the inclusive term progenitors
included in the patent they received would have been able to fairly
cheaply provide for their parents in addition to their grandparents
and other relatives already provided for. Most of their resources
could be devoted to Clipsham which, again, if they were the first
baron's sons, was under their joint control.

An important issue was raised about the age for becoming a priest,
etc. In an effort to sort things, I quickly went through several books
on canon law as applied to England at the Institute of Historical
Research of the University of London. What I discovered was that in
medieval English canon law there no mention was made of a minimum age
with regard to becoming a priest and there were no penalties attached
to members of the minor clerical orders being granted a benefice.
Likewise, though priests could be removed from office for marriage, if
the marriage were kept discretely enough in the background so as not
to be noticeable, then, under common law and church law, any children
of such a marriage were considered legitimate. In addition, not all
advowsons required the approval of the local bishop for the individual
the patron presented. Many, by the terms of their establishment or by
long custom, were left entirely to the discretion of the owner of the
advowson, itself. There was a certain more-or-less-ness about the
medieval English approach to canon law and it was not until the mid-
Tudor period well after the reformation was in full swing when statute
was actively used to over-ride custom and bring more logical order to
the system on an across-the-board basis. The upshot of this is that,
without a knowledge of the custom of the time of the diocese concerned
and the local human relations network, no relevant deductions
concerning the age of an individual receiving a benefice can be made.
It doesn't mean it would always be impossible to use canon law, just
that adequate contextual knowledge must be available, which I do not
feel is the case in this situation.

Another thing we must keep in mind about Clipsham is that, even though
the future Archbishop received the benefice, he could not have
actually attended to the needs of the people serviced by the church
himself, which must have been attended to by someone else, as he was
studying at the university during this period of his life. Likewise,
later in his career in southwestern England, he could not have done
the work of a parish priest as he was working in Westminster (now a
part of London) in the service of the king. His first benefice, no
matter what his age or whether he was from Lubbesthorpe or
Haryngworth, was meant as a way of funding his education and, until he
became Archbishop, his later benefices were more in the nature of
income-producing awards from the king than an invitation to
ecclesiastical duty.

Another thing that needs to be cleared up is that, though an
individual possessing an advowson could not "present" himself to the
bishop for approval in those cases when a bishop's approval was
necessary, he could "suggest" that the bishop might be disposed to
consider him as an appropriate candidate. However, when a group of
individuals possessed an advowson, it was considered perfectly
acceptable for the members to choose one of their members to present
that individual to the bishop for approval. In 1330, William, John and
Roger la Zouche, the sons of William la Zouche of Haryingworth chose
Ralph Turville. Significantly, the Turvilles had a centuries long
connection with the both of the major Leicestershire branches of the
Mallory family and with the Motons. Among the Mallorys, though, the
connections between the Mallorys of Kirkby Mallory represented by
Anketil Mallory were far stronger with the Motons than were the
connections of the Walton on the Wold Mallorys represented by Reginald
Mallory. The daughter-in-law of the first baron married a Moton as her
second husband and, as the la Zouche wife of the Anketil Mallory
mentioned in the Archbishop's will, based on a best estimate of her
husband's likely birth range, is unlikely to have been born much
earlier than 1215 and perhaps even as late as 1222 or 1223, it would
be highly unlikely for Anketil Mallory's wife to have been a
Lubbesthorpe la Zouche, if she were the daughter of the second la
Zouche Lord of Lubbesthorpe. However, she could easily have been a
daughter of the first Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth, assuming that
the 10 surviving children of him and his wife were born over a 20 to
25 year period with his wife bearing children regularly from her
teenage years to her early 40s (i.e. till around 1220).

Going into a bit more detail about the three daughters of the first
Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth, the eldest is said to have married
Lord Deincourt. Realizing, of course, that there are various
possibilities, it still seems an economical explanation of the facts
to think that the second daughter Isabel was married to a Helwell and
started a family in the early 1320s and to further assume that a much
younger third daughter Thomasina did the same thing with Anketil
Mallory during the very early 1340s.

The issue of Helwell participation in the Beler murder was raised as a
means of supporting a Lubbesthorpe identification. However, the first
baron's oldest son was also involved which led to his exile and early
death. The Folville brothers had support from both the Lubbesthorpe
and Haryngworth la Zouche's, so this by itself (and given the current
state of our knowledge), would not be indicative of affiliation to
either branch.

Another point which brought up was that the Archbishop's will
indicated a parent of his was still alive. It was mentioned that the
Latin word could also mean godparent. Out of curiosity, I checked a
dictionary of Latin created from medieval English source material.
When the word meant godparent the adjective "ecclesiasticus" would
apparently have been added. Although one can imagine this adjective
being dropped in a simple letter, I would think it less likely in a
will, especially when the next word after it appearing in the will
meant blood relative. Not only by way of association would one expect
the normal meaning of parent to be the case, but also it would appear
more likely when considering that the Archbishop had gone to a
university for what appears to have been 12 years of study and
graduated with a law degree. In writing his will, he would have been
sensitive to the meaning of the implications of the words he was
using. If he wished to have included a godparent, he would surely have
the full adjective + noun phrase required for this meaning. Otherwise,
should there have been a court case of any sort, had godparents been
meant, they would have been at a serious disadvantage. The question,
then, is why the Archbishop would have used parent rather than
"father" or "mother". I can only guess that, having become accustomed
to being, himself, addressed as father and to addressing God as
father, it somehow would have seemed more appropriate to use some
other more neutral term, especially as he would have outranked in
status any blood relation of his in England.

With regard to the Archbishop's will, it was written at the height of
the Black Plague of 1349 and he, himself, passed away in 1352.
Significantly, the first Baron la Zouche did not pass away till 1352.
I did not have time to check which one passed away first, but the
significant point is that the Archbishop would have had at least one
living parent in 1349 when the will was written had that parent been
the first Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth. It is not equally as certain
that Juliana (second husband Reginald Mallory of Walton on the Wold
who appears to have been a fourth cousin of the previously mentioned
Anketil Mallory, a junior member of Mallorys of Kirkby Mallory) would
have been alive in 1349, as she disappears from the record completely
from before the death of her second husband, which may or may not be
significant as women tend to be poorly recorded.

I am particularly grateful to the group as a whole for a far more
rounded picture of the descent of the Lubbesthorpe property than I had
before. It would, thus, appear that it was returned to the possession
of the first Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth on account of the Beler
murder and its aftermath to give appearance of punishing one of the
culprits, but with the intention that the baron would immediately
regrant it to Roger la Zouche II who would also receive a pardon. It
is a far better explanation of the facts as we know them to accept as
fact that his descendants continued to possess the property.

Finally, I would like to add a word about my bias. First and
foremost, I have a passionate love of history and the fuller and more
detailed the picture I can conjure up, the happier I am. Genealogy is
for me simply a tool, merely a convenient way for finding meaningful
patterns in what would otherwise often be a mass of disconnected data.
For this reason, it's irrelevant to me who the parents of the
Archbishop turn out to be, merely that the data be gathered,
evaluated, and, subject to further change with the advent of new data,
that the likelihood of his parentage be established to the extent it
is possible to do so. For myself, according to my way of evaluating
the data so generously provided by everyone, I would conclude that the
likelihood for the Archbishop's father being the first Baron la Zouche
of Harynworth is rather greater than it being the second la Zouche
Lord of Lubbesthorpe.

wjhonson

Re: Reflections on Archbishop la Zouche, etc.

Legg inn av wjhonson » 30. januar 2008 kl. 2.35

On Jan 29, 4:47 pm, Hickory <[email protected]> wrote:
Secondly, I would like to apologize for asserting so positively that Millicent de Monte Alto's daughter Elizabeth was the daughter of her first husband. The charter made no mention of the father and the chronology of both Millicent and Millicent's mother make it clear that they both must have entered into what we would consider today to be child marriages. If Elizabeth's father were Eudo la Zouche it would seem likely that Elizabeth's Poyntz marriage was also likely to have been a child marriage, but that would not have been seen as being in anyway strange by the participants concerned.

Since supposes evidence which is not present. We don't know when
Millicent was born, even within a decade-span, so we cannot know
whether she was betrothed as a child or not. She could have been as
old as 15 in 1254, or as young as 3. We simply do not know.

It certainly works better for Elizabeth to be a daugbter of Eudes, as
Elizabeth's known husband Nicholas, 2nd Lord Poyntz must have been
born abt 1278 "aged 30 at the death of his father" although even this
might be suspect as "30" is a fairly round number, perhaps he was
really 36 or something.

However even for Elizabeth herself, we simply have *no evidence
whatsoever* of how old she was. She had two children probably in the
1290s and that's about all we can say. So she was of child-bearing
age, and she hadn't entered menopause. And that's it.

I now agree that the first la Zouche of Lubbesthorpe cannot have been
a son of Millicent de Monte Alto, but must have been some relation to
her husband. As Millicent's husband was certainly older,

We have no evidence that Millicent's husband Eudes was older than
she. He could have been anywhere from 16 years older, to 6 years
younger. We don't know.

the possibility remains open that the first William of Lubbesthorpe may
even have been Eudo's son by a former wife, as people in early
medieval England did not share the same reluctance people would have
now of using the same name for two siblings. Alternatively, he could
have been a brother, a nephew or a cousin. I doubt if it will ever be
possible to determine with absolute confidence the proper affiliation
of the first William la Zouche, barring the discovery of previously
unnoticed charters.

I don't think the issue is so much noticing unnoticed charters, but
rather, new synthesis of previously published material. New
understanding of the family structure lead to new searches in the
material for support or destruction of the theory.

The second lord of Lubbesthorpe, William's son Roger la Zouche, it is
clear was married to a woman named Juliana (or Julia in a later
Mallory-related charter where her dower is mentioned) and had several
la Zouche sons, Roger born around 1292, Eudo, Alan, and Ralph. Juliana
also had a family by her Mallory husband and became the ancestress of
the future Lords of Walton on the Wold and of Tachebrook Mallory.

Please show proof that Juliana had a son Ralph. You will as well need
some *firm and concrete* citations to back up the claim that Juliana
was the ancestress of later Mallory's. Please cite fully, the issue
being that we need to cross-check your claim against the underlying
source. Vauge citations won't suffice.


However, no direct mention appears of a William la Zouche of
Lubbesthorpe in the evidence so far presented. The evidence is
indirect, being deduced from the fact that William and Roger la Zouche
obtain permission in 1337 to have divine service regularly said for
the souls of their ancestors progenitors in both Lubbesthorpe and
Clipsham. No mention, however, is made of them actually being from
either of these two locations and other connections than birth in
Lubbesthorpe can explain this location choice for younger sons of the
first Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth.

Are you certain that the people they mention are their ancestors? The
CPR is online, have you checked to verify the exact language used?

... as the la Zouche wife of the Anketil Mallory
mentioned in the Archbishop's will, based on a best estimate of her
husband's likely birth range, is unlikely to have been born much
earlier than 1215 and perhaps even as late as 1222 or 1223, it would
be highly unlikely for Anketil Mallory's wife to have been a
Lubbesthorpe la Zouche, if she were the daughter of the second la
Zouche Lord of Lubbesthorpe. However, she could easily have been a
daughter of the first Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth, assuming that
the 10 surviving children of him and his wife were born over a 20 to
25 year period with his wife bearing children regularly from her
teenage years to her early 40s (i.e. till around 1220).

I'm unclear what you're talking about. Are you quite sure you're
working *from* your notes and not extemporaneously? Can you quote the
Archbishop's Will where he describes some Anketil living 50 to 150
years before himself?

Going into a bit more detail about the three daughters of the first
Baron la Zouche of Haryngworth, the eldest is said to have married
Lord Deincourt. Realizing, of course, that there are various
possibilities, it still seems an economical explanation of the facts
to think that the second daughter Isabel was married to a Helwell and
started a family in the early 1320s and to further assume that a much
younger third daughter Thomasina did the same thing with Anketil
Mallory during the very early 1340s.

Based on what evidence? Do you actually have any evidence that a
person named Thomasina Zouche existed, or that some Anketil Mallory
was married to some Thomasina ?

Another point which brought up was that the Archbishop's will
indicated a parent of his was still alive. It was mentioned that the
Latin word could also mean godparent. Out of curiosity, I checked a
dictionary of Latin created from medieval English source material.
When the word meant godparent the adjective "ecclesiasticus" would
apparently have been added.

That's very useful. Can you fully cite this Latin dictionary? I
would add that to my list of resources, since the exact and particular
issue of what Latin usage in Medieval times has come up here numerous
times. It would be helpful to have a source to check.

that the Archbishop had gone to a
university for what appears to have been 12 years of study and
graduated with a law degree.

Possibly, but allowing this we must cite the exact source which states
this.

It is not equally as certain
that Juliana (second husband Reginald Mallory of Walton on the Wold
who appears to have been a fourth cousin of the previously mentioned
Anketil Mallory, a junior member of Mallorys of Kirkby Mallory) would
have been alive in 1349, as she disappears from the record completely
from before the death of her second husband, which may or may not be
significant as women tend to be poorly recorded.

"Appears to have been a fourth cousin" from what evidence?

Will Johnson

Peter Stewart

Re: Reflections on Archbishop la Zouche, etc.

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 30. januar 2008 kl. 2.54

"Hickory" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:fe031725-6f08-4df3-890d-5334a83d16d7@u10g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

<snip>

An important issue was raised about the age for becoming a priest,
etc. In an effort to sort things, I quickly went through several books
on canon law as applied to England at the Institute of Historical
Research of the University of London.

What exactly do you, and/or the authors of these "several books", mean by
"canon law as applied to England"? There was only canon law, promulgated by
Councils and popes, not a specific variety of canon law applying (or not) to
each part of Christendom with a different king. The Church of England with
its own supreme authority in canon law came along two centuries after
William la Zouche's time.

What I discovered was that in medieval English canon law there no
mention was made of a minimum age with regard to becoming a
priest and there were no penalties attached to members of the minor
clerical orders being granted a benefice.

Penalties? A parrochial rector had to be a priest, and a priest had to be at
least in his 25th year by a canon of the fourth Lateran Council. There is
nothing in this canon to exempt Enlgand, of course, and nothing for that
matter in the decretals collection of Clement V to this effect - that would
surely have been a celebrated freak of papal authority if he had either set
it down in writing or selectively applied it in practice.

Perpahs it would be useful to cite the several books, and preferably quote
the passage/s, on which your apparently novel conclusion above is based.

<snip of equally novel reflections on married priests, not relevant to the
early 14th century or to this thread as far as I can tell>

Another thing we must keep in mind about Clipsham is that, even though
the future Archbishop received the benefice, he could not have
actually attended to the needs of the people serviced by the church
himself, which must have been attended to by someone else, as he was
studying at the university during this period of his life. Likewise,
later in his career in southwestern England, he could not have done
the work of a parish priest as he was working in Westminster (now a
part of London) in the service of the king. His first benefice, no
matter what his age or whether he was from Lubbesthorpe or
Haryngworth, was meant as a way of funding his education and, until he
became Archbishop, his later benefices were more in the nature of
income-producing awards from the king than an invitation to
ecclesiastical duty.

Again, it would be useful to cite your source/s for alleged biographical
details on which such deductions (or guesses?) are based.

Peter Stewart

Gjest

Re: Reflections on Archbishop la Zouche, etc.

Legg inn av Gjest » 30. januar 2008 kl. 4.10

On Jan 29, 4:47 pm, Hickory <[email protected]> wrote:

The issue of Helwell participation in the Beler murder was raised as a
means of supporting a Lubbesthorpe identification. However, the first
baron's oldest son was also involved which led to his exile and early
death. The Folville brothers had support from both the Lubbesthorpe
and Haryngworth la Zouche's, so this by itself (and given the current
state of our knowledge), would not be indicative of affiliation to
either branch.

Just to clarify my intent in bringing this forward, it was not to
support an affiliation with the Lubbesthorpe branch, per se. Rather,
it was to indicate that one needs to take care in reading a
relationship into such an association in a particular transaction,
because another document may show a completely different association
that would give rise to a different relationship. I mentioned it to
emphasize the need for caution, not to specifically favor the
alternative.

taf

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