DESCENDANTS OF JOHN OF GAUNT.
(Vol. vii., p. 628.)
All persons will, I think, agree with Mr. Warden in his very just complaint of the carelessness with which many of the English Peerages are compiled. It would be a task, little short of a new compilation, to correct the errors and inaccuracies with which many of these productions abound, the less pardonable now, because of the facilities afforded for consulting the Public Records, should even our older genealogists, without such aids, be in some degree excused; but as Mr. Warden invites, by a personal appeal, the rectification of a chronological error which has crept into all the Peerages, founded upon the authority of Dugdale, respecting the period of the death of Thomas, sixth Lord Fauconberge, I am induced to send you a few Notes, which a recent examination of the Records in the Tower of London has supplied.
When the facts are made patent, there will be no need to dwell upon the inconsistencies pointed out by Mr. Warden, and the alleged incompatibility in regard to age for an union between two persons of some note in family history, the son of the first Earl of Westmoreland and his Countess Joan and the daughter and heir of the Lord Fauconberge, who formed an alliance from which the co-heirs are, it is believed, represented at this day.
The birth of William Nevill, Lord Fauconberge, afterwards created Earl of Kent, second son of a marriage which took place early in, or just before, the year 1397, may be assigned to in or about the year 1400; and we shall presently see that his future wife was born on the 18th of October, 1406, and married to him before the 1st of May, 1422.
Walter, fifth Lord Fauconberge, died on the 29th of September, 1362 (Esc. 36 Edw. III., 1st part, No. 77.), leaving a son Thomas (issue of his first marriage with Matilda, sister and co-heir of Sir William de Pateshull, Kt., Esc. 33 Edw. III., 1st part, No. 40., and Rot. Orig., 34 Edw. III., Ro. 2.), then a minor, under eighteen years of age.
Thomas, who was born circa 1345, was already in 1362 married to his first wife Constancia, by whom he does not appear to have left any issue surviving. His was rather an eventful life; some incidents not noticed by Dugdale will be briefly cited. On the 10th of August, 1372, being then a knight or chivaler, he had letters of protection on going abroad in the king's service, in the company of Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (Rot. Franc., 46 Edw. III.). Here it seems he forgot his allegiance, and having gone over to the French side was branded "tanquam proditor domini Regis Angliæ" (Esc. 5 Ric. II., No. 67., 6 Ric. II., No. 180., and 11 Ric. II., No. 59.). Can this have been the origin of the error in assigning his death to the year 1376? He was, however, yet living in 1401, as in that year he succeeded to the reversion of the estates which his step-mother Isabella (a sister of Sir John Bygot, Chivaler), the widow of Walter Lord Fauconberge, held in dower (Esc. 2 Hen. IV., No. 47.). Not long after this, and apparently a few years only before his death, and when somewhat advanced in years, he married a second time. I have not been able to ascertain to what family his wife Joan, or Johanna, belonged, but she survived her husband only a short time. About the period of his marriage, too (9th August, 1405), an occurrence of some importance to his descendants is recorded, namely, a grant by the king to Sir Thomas Bromflete and Sir Robert Hilton, of the custody and governance of all his estates in England, which had come into the king's hands "ratione ideociæ Thomæ Fauconberge, Chivaler," to hold during the life of the said Thomas. This grant, however, was in the following year, on 24th December, 1406, revoked and annulled, because the said Thomas had proved before the king and his council in Chancery, "quod ipse sanæ discretionis hactenus fuerit et ad tunc existat," and he was thereupon re-admitted to his estates which had descended to him "jure hæreditario post mortem Walteri Fauconberge patris sui, cujus hæres ipse est" (Rot. Pat., p. 1., 8 Hen. IV., m. 16.). He had only a few months before (15th February, 1406) obtained from the king livery of an estate which had come to him in 1375 as one of the co-heirs, on his mother's side, of his grandmother Mabilia, a sister of Otho de Graunson, upon the death without issue of Thomas de Graunson, son of the said Otho. (Rot. Pat., p. 1., 7 Hen. IV., m. 6.)
Was there in fact any real ground for the suggestion of Lord Fauconberge's idiocy? This is one of the gravest imputations that can be cast upon a family, and it is a most unpardonable presumption to make it lightly and without justice; but it is somewhat singular that nearly fifty years afterwards, his only daughter and heir, born at the very period when this charge was being refuted, and when he himself was upwards of sixty years of age, became the subject of a commission issued to inquire of her alleged imbecility and idiocy. The commissioners sat at Gisburn in Cleveland in the county of York, on the 28th of March, 1463, and it was then found by the inquest that "Johanna Fauconberge nuper comitissa de Kent, fatua et ydeota est, et a nativitate sua semper fuit, ita quod se terras et tenementa sua neque alia bona sua regere scit, aut aliquo tempore scivit:" the jury also returned that she had not alienated any lands or tenements since the death of William, late Earl of Kent, her late husband. That Joan, the wife of Sir Edward Bethom, Kt., thirty years old and upwards, Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Strangeways, Esq., twenty-eight years old and upwards, and Alice, wife of John Conyers, Esq., twenty-six years old and upwards, were the daughters and heirs, as well of the said William the late earl, as of the said Joan the late countess. (Esc. 3 Edw. IV., No. 33.)
Thomas Lord Fauconberge died on the 9th of September, 1407, leaving the above-mentioned Joan, or Johanna, his daughter and heir, an infant of one year old. (Esc. 9 Hen. IV., No. 19.; see also Esc. 9 Hen. V., No. 42.) His widow Joan had assignment of dower after her husband's death on 20th October, 1408, and she herself died in the following year, on the 4th of March, 1409. (Esc. 10 Hen. IV., No. 15.) A later inquisition, however, taken on 1st of April, 1422 (Esc. 10 Hen. V., No. 22ᵃ.), states that the said Joan, widow of Sir Thomas Fauconberge, Chivaler, died on the 23rd of June, 1411. The first date is most probably the correct one, as a fact would be more likely to be accurately stated by a jury impanneled a few months only after the event recorded, than by an inquest taken after an interval of twelve or thirteen years.
On the formal proof of age (Esc. 10 Hen. V., No. 22ᵇ.) of Joan Fauconberge, daughter and heir of Thomas Lord Fauconberge and Joan his wife, taken at Northallerton, in the county of York, on the 1st of May, 10 Henry V., 1422, she was described as the wife of William Neville. She appears to have been born at Skelton in the said county, and baptized in the church there on the feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist (18th of October), 1406; and on the same feast in 1421, being the 9th of Henry V., she had accomplished her fifteenth year. Dugdale (tom. ii. p. 4.) has fallen into a singular mistake in alluding to this event, not to speak of the obvious inconsistency which those writers who follow his account have introduced in assigning the year of Lord Fauconberge's decease to 1372, thus making the daughter's birth to have occurred more than thirty years after her father's death. It is this:—One of the witnesses, who speaks to the period of the baptism of Joan, was named Thomas Blawefrount the elder, fifty years of age and upwards, and the reason assigned by him for his remembrance of the event is as follows: "Et hoc scit eo quod Isabella filia prædicti Thomæ desponsata fuit cuidam Johanni Wilton, et idem Thomas fuit ad sponsalia eodem die quo præfata Johanna baptizata fuit, propter quod bene recolit quod præfata Johanna fuit ætatis prædictæ." Dugdale has by a strange oversight made the Isabella here described to be the daughter of Thomas Fauconberge, and sister of Joan, instead of the witness' own daughter.