CLARENCE.
(Vol. ix., p. 85.)
Clarence is beyond all doubt the district comprehending and lying around the town and castle of Clare in Suffolk, and not, as some have fancifully supposed, the town of Chiarenza in the Morea. Some of the crusaders did, indeed, acquire titles of honour derived from places in eastern lands, but certainly no such place ever gave its name to an honorary feud held of the crown of England, nor, indeed, has ever any English sovereign to this day bestowed a territorial title derived from a place beyond the limits of his own nominal dominions; the latest creations of the kind being the earldoms of Albemarle and Tankerville, respectively bestowed by William III. and George I., who were both nominally kings of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. In ancient times every English title (with the exception of Aumerle or Albemarle, which exception is only an apparent one) was either personal, or derived from some place in England. The ancient earls of Albemarle were not English peers by virtue of that earldom, but by virtue of the tenure of lands in England, though, being the holders of a Norman earldom, they were known in England by their higher designation, just as some of the
Barons De Umfravill were styled, even in writs of summons, by their superior Scottish title of Earl of Angos. If these earls had not held English fees, they would not have been peers of England any more than were the ancient Earls of Tankerville and Eu. In later times the strictness of the feudal law was so far relaxed, that in two or three instances English peers were created with territorial titles derived from places in the Duchy of Normandy.
As to the locality of Clarence, see Sandford's Genealogical History, 1707, p. 222. There is a paper on the subject in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1850. The king of arms called Clarenceux, or in Latin Clarentius, was, as it has been very reasonably conjectured, originally a herald retained by a Duke of Clarence. (Noble's History of the College of Arms, p. 61.) Hoping ere long to send you some notes respecting certain real or seeming anomalies amongst our English dignities, I reserve some particulars which may, perhaps, farther elucidate the present question.
Goldencross.
Your correspondent Honoré de Mareville has wandered too far in going to the Morea to search for this title. Clare in Suffolk was one of the ninety-five manors in that county bestowed by the Conqueror upon Richard Fitzgilbert, who (as well as his successor Gilbert) resided at Tunbridge, and bore the surname of De Tonebruge. His grandson Richard, the first Earl of Hertford, fixed his principal seat at Clare, and thenceforth the family took the surname of De Clare; and in the Latin documents of the time the several members of it were styled Ricardus (or Gilbertus), Dominus Clarensis, Comes Hertfordiensis. The name of the lordship thus becoming the family surname, it is easy to see how in common usage the formal epithet Clarensis soon became Clarence, and why Lionel, the son of Edward III., upon his marriage with Elizabeth de Burgh, the grand-niece and heiress of the last Gilbertus Clarensis, should choose as the title for his dukedom the surname of the great family of which he had now become the representative.
Vokaros.