Geoffrey de Mandeville: A study of the Anarchy - John Horace Round

It will have been noticed that in this pedigree I assign to Gervase a brother Alan. I do so on the strength of a charter of Archbishop Theobald, late in the reign of Stephen, to Holy Trinity, witnessed inter alios by "Gervasio de Cornhill et Alano fratre ejus,"[912] also of a charter I have seen (Duchy of Lanc., Cart. Misc., ii. 57), in which the first witness to a charter of Gervase is Alan, his brother. The "Roger fitz Alan" for whom I suggest an affiliation to this Alan occurs among the witnesses to a grant made by Ralph, and witnessed by Reginald de Cornhill.[913] This suggests such paternity, and his name, Roger, would then be derived from Roger, his paternal grandfather. We have here, at least, another clue which ought to be followed up, for Roger fitz Alan is repeatedly found among the leading witnesses to London documents of the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, his career culminating in his appointment as mayor on the death of the well-known "Henry fitz Ailwin" in 1212.[914]

The fact that Gervase and Alan were brothers tempts one to recognize in them the "Alanus juvenis et Gervasius fratres," who witness a grant to (their cousin) Robert fitz Ralph fitz Herlwin,[915] and the "Alanus juvenis" and "Gervasius frater Alani" of a similar document.[916] But, unluckily, we find this same Alan elsewhere styled "Alanus filius Huberti juvenis."[917] Possibly they were sons of that Hubert to whom his father was "nepos." But the question, for the present, must be left in doubt.

Both Gervase de Cornhill and Henry his son appear, it may be added, from the evidence of charters, to have lent money on mortgage, and to have acquired landed property by foreclosing. A curious allusion to the mercantile origin and the profitable money-lending transactions of Geoffrey is found in a sneer of Becket's biographer, when, as Sheriff of Kent, he opposed the primate's landing.[918] The contemporary allusion to such pursuits, in the Dialogus, breathes the same scornful spirit for the trader and all his works.[919] Gervase, I think, may have been that "Gervase" who, at the head of the citizens of London, met Henry II. in 1174 (Fantosme, l. 1941); he would seem to have lived on till 1183, and was probably, at his death, between seventy and seventy-five years old. Among his descendants were a Dean of St. Paul's (1243-1254) and a Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (1215-1223).

[881] Dialogus, i. 10.

[882] Such is the reading given by Anstis, who saw this star among the duchy records. It is greatly to be hoped that it may still be found. Anstis describes the device as "a Lyon."

[883] Duchy of Lancaster: Royal Charters, No. 22.

[884] Rot. Pip., 31 Hen. I., pp. 144, 145, 147-149. Compare the clause in Henry's charter guaranteeing to the citizens "terras suas et vadimonia." Here the possession has to be paid for.