The distinction between the "dedi et concessi" of the "Tertius Denarius" clause and the "reddidi" and "concessi" of those by which the king confirms to Geoffrey his ancestral estates is one always to be noted. The terms of what one may call this general confirmation are remarkably comprehensive, going back as they do to the days of King William and of the grantee's great-grandfather; and the profusion of legal verbiage in which they are enwrapped is worthy of later times. The charter also illustrates the adaptation in Latin of the old Anglo-Saxon formulæ, themselves the relics of those quaint jingles which must bear witness to oral transmission in an archaic state of society.[742]
The release of the lien (upon three manors) which Henry I. had held is a very curious feature. One of these manors, Sawbridgeworth in Herts., is surveyed in Domesday at great length. Its value had then sunk from £60 to £50; but early in the reign of Henry II., Earl Geoffrey gave it in fee to Warine fitz Gerold, the chamberlain, "per (sic) LXXIIII libratas terræ, singulas XX libratas pro servitio unius militis."[743]
Under this charter Earl Geoffrey held the dignity till his death, at which time we find him lord of more than a hundred and fifty knights' fees. The earldom then (1166) passed to his younger brother William, and did so, as far as we know, without a fresh creation. For the limitation, it is important to observe, in this as in other early creations, is not restricted to heirs of the body—a much later addition. As this point is of considerable importance it may be as well here to compare the essential words of inheritance in the three successive charters:—
| Stephen (1140). | Maud (1141). | Henry II (1156). |
|---|---|---|
| Sciatis me fecisse Comitem de Gaufrido de Magnavillâ de Comitatu Essexe hereditarie. Quare volo ... quod ipse et heredes sui post eum hereditario jure teneant de me et de heredibus meis ... sicut alii Comites mei de terra meâ, etc. | Sciatis ... quod ego do et concedo Gaufrido de Magnavillâ ... et heredibus suis post eum hereditabiliter ut sit Comes de Essexâ. | Sciatis me fecisse Gaufridum de Magna Villa Comitem de Essexa.... Et volo ... quod ipse Comes et heredes sui post eum habeant et teneant Comitatum suum ... sicut aliquis Comes in Angliâ, etc. |
It is noteworthy that the earliest of these three—the earliest of all our creation-charters—has the most intensely hereditary ring, a fact at variance with the favourite doctrine that the hereditary principle was a late innovation, and ousted but slowly the official position. It is further to be observed that the term "Comitatus," of which the denotation in Scottish charters has been so long and fiercely debated, has here the abstract signification which it possesses in our own day, namely, that of the dignity of an earl.
When we think of their father's stormy career, it is not a little strange to find these two successive Earls of Essex high in favour with the order-loving king, throughout whose reign, for more than thirty years (1156-1189), we find them honoured and trusted in his councils, in his courts, and in his host. Of Earl William Miss Norgate writes: "The son was as loyal as his father was faithless; he seems, indeed, to have been a close personal friend of the king, and to have well deserved his friendship."[744] His fidelity was rewarded by the hand of the heiress of the house of Aumâle, so that, already an earl in England, he thus became, also, a count beyond the sea.
Yet well might men believe that the awful curse of Heaven rested on this great and able house. At the very moment when Earl William seemed to have attained the pinnacle of power, when he had reached the point which his father had reached some half a century before, then, as in his father's case, the prize was snatched from his grasp. King Richard, rightly prizing the earl's loyalty and worth, announced his intention, at the Council of Pipewell (September, 1189), of leaving him, with the Bishop of Durham as his assessor, in charge of the kingdom, as Justiciar, during his own absence in the East. Such an office would have made the earl the foremost layman in the realm. But before the time had come for entering on his exalted duties, indeed within a few weeks of his appointment, he was dead (November 14, 1189).
Like his brother Geoffrey before him, the earl died childless; the vast estates of the house of Mandeville passed to the descendants of his aunt; to his earldom there was no heir.[745] Such was the end that awaited the ambition of Geoffrey de Mandeville. The earldom for which he had schemed and striven, the strongholds on which his power was based, the broad lands which owned his sway—all were lost to his house. And as if by the very irony of fate, Ernulf, his disinherited son, alone continued the race, that there might not be wanting in his hapless heirs an ever-standing monument to the greatness at once of the guilt and of the fall of the man whose story I have told.
[700] "Willelmi de Say et Galfridi de Mandeville, qui apud Borewelle interfecti fuerunt" (Chron. Ram., App. p. 347).
[701] "Isto itaque tali modo ad extrema deducto, nox quædam et horror omnes regis adversarios implevit, quique ex dissensione a Galfrido exorta regis annisum maxime infirmari putabant, nunc, eo interfecto, liberiorem et ad se perturbandum, ut res se habebat, expediorem fore æstimabant" (Gesta, p. 104). "Sicque Dei judicio patriæ vastatore sublato, virtus bellatorum qui secum manum ad perniciem miserorum firmaverunt plurimum labefacta est, cognoscentes Dominum Christum fideli suo Regi de hostibus dare triumphum, et adversantes ei potenter elidere, ad hoc expavit cor inimicorum illius" (Historia Eliensis, p. 628).