Indeed, it is quite apparent to all who read early French history that the King exercised merely nominal authority over the nobility, and was considered but as a chief and leader among those of equal birth and descent, though differing in degree. It cost King Louis VI. a vast deal of trouble to reduce the pretensions of the Seigneurs of Montlehery, who, allied by marriage to the houses of Flanders and Courtenay, conceived themselves in all essentials to be equal to and independent of their titular monarch, while even more cogent testimony to the same effect, redolent also to a great degree of the atmosphere of the times, is borne by the subjoined letter from Thibaut, Comte de Champagne, to the Abbot of St Denis, Governor of the Realm in the absence of the King:—“This is to let you know that Renaud de Courtenay hath done great injury to the King, ... for he hath seized on certain merchants that are the King’s subjects, who have discharged their toll at Orleans and Sens, and hath stripped them of all their goods. It is, therefore, necessary, to order him in the King’s name, they be set at liberty and all that belongs to them restored. In case he refuse ... and you be desirous to march an army against him, ... let me know, and I will send you aid.”
After the extinction of the elder branch in the persons of the Emperor Baldwin and his son, the House of Courtenay became so divided that, in the many ramifications of descent and consequent division of goods, the Seigneurs de Champignelles, de Tanlay, d’Arrablay, de Ferté Loupiere, etc., lost their pride of place, and were undistinguishable from the remainder of the nobility, direct evidence of which is furnished by the fact that Bouchet, who certainly loses no opportunity of enhancing the grandeur of the race, places over the arms of the Lord of D’Illier the nine-pointed coronet of a seigneur, and not, as on other occasions, the crown, embellished with fleur-de-lys, which designated the Royal House of France.
Yet the right of the Courtenays to be considered of Royal blood is incontrovertible, testimony to it being borne by many deeds of partition and contracts of marriage to which members of the reigning family affixed their signatures, in each case describing themselves as relations and cousins.
Moreover, even in the nineteenth century, the head of the House of Courtenay received a summons to the funeral of Henri Dieudonné, Comte de Chambord, Henri Cinq de France, as “notre parent et cousin.”
Fifteen years after the surviving members had lodged a final petition for the restoration of their rights of blood, “by the eternal doom of Fate’s decree,” the death of Charles Roger de Courtenay, the last male of the line, the controversy was closed; and thus what Gibbon calls the plaintive motto of the House: “Ubi lapsus, quid feci?” for the second time in history received the endorsement of truth.
But while two branches of the race grew, flourished, and fell, a third division rose to rank and fortune in this island, becoming closely allied by links of property and title with Devon, the fairest shire in the English land—links which the space of 750 years has strengthened, the glamour of an historic name, the charm of many a noble nature, have rendered unbreakable.
In olden times, a nation made it a point of honour to claim descent from ancestors who had participated in the siege of Troy. Fashions change. In the twentieth century, if an individual rises to such eminence that he is elevated to the peerage, the world knows he must have had a father, and presumes he had a grandfather. When the presumption can be carried back for a generation or two, the basis of an ancient descent is so firmly laid that a visit to the Heralds’ College will inevitably result in the discovery of a progenitor among those who fought with Norman William at the battle of Senlac, undoubtedly, judging from their reputed descendants, the most prolific band of warriors that ever peopled a conquered country.
In this, as in some other attributes, the Courtenays differ from the modern aristocracy.
The first mention of a Courtenay in English history occurs in the reign of Henry II., and although Bouchet, with true prophetic instinct, considers it necessary to allege that a certain Guillaume de Courtenay crossed over with the army of William of Normandy, the Battle Abbey roll of William Tailleur does not contain the name; but a “Cortney” may be found in the probably inaccurate transcriptions of the same, which have been inserted in the Chronicles of Stowe and Holinshed. A certain degree of doubt, however, exists as to the identity of the first Courtenay mentioned in English records.
Dugdale, copying the register of the monks of Forde Abbey—a foundation which benefited largely by the munificence of the family, and, as long as the spring flowed, lost no opportunity of gratifying their ancestral pride—declares that the founder of the name in this country was Reginald, a son of Florus, younger son of Lewis le Gross, King of France, who assumed the name of Courtenay from his mother, the heir female of that family.