The Scudamore family and history
lyra
and the whole article, online, is useful reading for those
delving into family tree or historical research...
(quote, excerpts)
AN OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE SKIDMORE FAMILY
The Skydmore/Scudamore family came out of Normandy to work on the
castle at Ewyas Harold in Herefordshire either at its building in 1052,
or at the time that it was newly fortified shortly before 1071. The
Saxons knew nothing about castle building and it was King Edward the
Confessor (died 1066) who brought over a colony of Normans to build a
string of castles along the border to contain the Welsh. Ralph, the
ancestor of most of the persons of this name, was a Norman in England
well before the Conquest. He had three sons, Reginald, Walter and Hugh,
as well as a stepson, Rainald (a son of Erkembald fitz Erkembald)
______ all with good Norman names.
The surname is first found as de Scudemer, which suggests that it came
from a place. Alfred de Merleberge (Marlborough) to whom the Scudemers
owed fealty, was a great tenant in chief of William the Conqueror and
lord of the castle at Ewyas [Harold] at the time of the Domesday Book.
His name had nothing to do with the Marlborough in Wiltshire, nor
(apparently) with another Marlborough on the
Herefordshire-Monmouthshire border in the environs of his castle.
It is possible that the Scudamores took their name from the Scudemore
which Alan Plogenet, lord of Kilpeck, confirmed on 25 August 1275 to
the nuns at Aconbury. It survives as Scudamore Hill Wood, to be found
on modern maps about three miles northeast of Corras in Kentchurch.
Scudamore Hill may very well have been the family's first home in
England but we would be happier with this speculation if we had some
mention of the place (and its tenants) in the 11th or 12th century.
It may very well be that Scudemer was a lost place-name in Normandy or
Britanny. The castle builders in Herefordshire (and later William's
invaders) came out of parts of France closest to England --- the
departments of La Manche, Calvados and Seine Inférieure. Such negative
evidence as we have suggest that if Scudemer was in France it was a
tiny place that it gave its name to only one family and has long since
disappeared.
Scudemer and its near variants had pretty well died out as the usual
spelling of the name by the middle of the 14th century in favor of
Skydmore. Upton Scudamore became Upton Skidmore, or sometimes
Skidmore's Upton. The Herefordshire family followed the lead of their
Wiltshire cousins.
Skydmore persisted down to the time of the Tudors when it became
fashionable to have Norman ancestors. It was probably the family at
Holme Lacy (prominent at Court) who first went back to the old
spelling, but curiously even a hundred years later they were still
known by the commonalty as Skidmores even though they signed their
deeds and letters as Scudamore.
Down through the 19th century members of the family in England might be
known as Skidmore during the week and Scudamore on Sunday (when a child
was christened or a deed was signed) to the confusion of their
posterity.
In the United States Scudamore (in the New England family) finally
disappeared during the American Revolution, but there were later
Scudamores who came to America in the next century who have persevered
in that name down to the present day.
I have dealt with the land that Ralph held at the time of the Domesday
Book in 1086 [see The Scudamores of Upton Scudamore, a knightly family
in Medieval Wiltshire, 1086-1382 (2nd edition, 1989)] and what is said
there does not need repeating here. Within two years Alfred de
Marlborough's fief was divided and his only daughter kept a single
manor, for which she and her husband now owed fealty to Harold de
Ewyas. Harold, who gave his Christian name to the castle and its
environs, was a nephew of King Edward the Confessor and the new
overlord of Ralph de Scudemer.
Primogeniture was not yet entrenched in England and the three sons of
Ralph appear to have divided their father's lands into three parts, the
two younger sons owing fealty for their thirds to their elder brother
Reginald. Walter and Hugh remained in Herefordshire while Reginald
settled at Upton Scudamore, the caput of their honour and the most
important Scudamore fee in Wiltshire. Hugh's third disappears from
record, although it may have descended in some unknown way to Simon de
Park who held a third of Upton Scudamore in 1243 from Sir Godfrey
Scudamore, Reginald's eventual heir.
After this first division very early in the l2th century the lands
which descended from Reginald (in Wiltshire) and Walter (in
Herefordshire) were never again shared among siblings, and went always
to the eldest son and heir.
Some of the younger sons went into the church, occasionally with a
small endowment to insure that the bishop would not have to support
them if no benefice could be found for them. Others went into the army.
Some might be lucky enough to find a royal or noble patron or perhaps
an heiress. (Heiresses, however, were usually bestowed on heirs who
could maintain them in the comfortable manner suitable to their
station.)
At a later date a younger son might be apprenticed to a wealthy London
merchant or tradesman, with the expectation that this would improve his
lot. But invariably the younger sons had to be content with a lower
standard of living than their fathers and elder brothers, and younger
sons of younger sons (doubly denied) and their posterity tend to
disappear from view.
Since younger sons usually went elsewhere to seek their fortunes, this
poses a problem for the family historian. There is nothing so difficult
to prove as a removal. Migrations across the Atlantic are particularly
difficult to trace. We know the origin of Thomas Skidmore (Scudamore)
of New England because a power of attorney to sell his home at
Westerleigh, Gloucestershire, still survives. Another Thomas Skidmore
who went somewhat later to Delaware can be identified because he named
one of his plantations in Kent County, Delaware, Rickmansworth after
his old home in Hertfordshire.
Edward Skidmore of Cecil County, Maryland, clearly came from a family
in England of either "small gents" or the substantial yeomanry. The
same is true of still another Thomas Scudamore of Baltimore County,
Maryland, whose origin in Herefordshire is known. Both Maryland
families are extinct, so the matter in these cases becomes academic.
Younger sons are just as difficult to identify in England. As long as a
family stayed on the manor or in the parish a valid pedigree can
usually be pieced out. When they got ambitious and took off for London
or some more promising abode we generally can not identify their old
home without either an inordinate amount of work or a bit of good
fortune.
There was, for example, a large migration of Skydmores into the
Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, andMiddlesex areas early in the reign
of King Henry VIII, 1509-47. Some of them are clearly related to one
another, and probably had a recent common ancestor. Such evidence as we
have suggests that a part of them came out of Rowlstone in
Herefordshire, which had for several generations produced far more sons
than their meager acres could support. Some of the Rowlstone men we
have been able to follow to new homes in Herefordshire, Monmouthshire,
Yorkshire, and elsewhere as the text will reveal. We can predicate that
there were other sons who were swallowed up in both London and the
provinces who left no clue as to their origin.
Still earlier the great plague at the middle of the 14th century proved
to be a massive unsettler. It advanced across England and in places
carried away as much as a third of the population. There were abundant
opportunities for the survivors of every social station to improve
their lot with the fields, manors, houses, honours, pulpits, positions,
and the other possessions of the recently dead. There was a shortage of
farm laborers and the great lords who survived tended to promote their
better tenants to more rewarding acres in either their old domain or to
their new estates elsewhere.
I have written earlier that down to the time of Edward III (1327-77)
Skydmore was Skydmore's cousin everywhere. But in the 14th century new
families turn up in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Devon who
cannot be tied with certainty to the main families at Upton Scudamore
or Rowlstone although there can be little doubt that they were closely
related in some unknown way.
Something needs to be said about the heraldry of the Scudamores. Their
stirrups are well known, and in Wiltshire can be traced back with
absolute certainty to 1323. In Herefordshire the evidence is not so
convincing. The Llfyr Baglan, a collection of old Welsh pedigrees
written down between 1600 and 1607, says that John Skydmore of Rowlston
bore gules 3 sterropes orr. Presumably this was the John Skydmore
(alias Ewyas) who was apparently living as late as 1370. He was
ancestor to most (probably all) of the family which came after him in
Herefordshire, and this would imply that his posterity there and
elsewhere had (by usage) a presumptive right to paint the stirrups on
their carriage doors.
Alas, there is no contemporary evidence to support the statement made
in the Baglan book and it may stem from the genealogical investigations
made by John Guillim for the Holme Lacy family. It presumably was
Guillim who put together the erroneous pedigree making a mythical Sir
Thomas Scudamore of Holme Lacy (who married in 1354) a younger son of
Sir Peter Scudamore of Upton Scudamore.
This fabrication was well received until the present century. There is
a letter dated 4 June 1606 in the Duchess of Norfolk deeds at the
Public Record Office from Guillim to Sir John Scudamore at Holme Lacy
mentioning Peter Scudamore of good note in Wiltshire "the seal of the
same as your seal." It may very well be that Guillim appropriated the
stirrups for the Herefordshire family to strengthen what he must have
known was an unlikely descent.
An earlier arms of the Upton Scudamore family is supposed to have been
a cross paty, fitchy in the foot which certainly figures in the stained
glass in the church at Upton Scudamore. It is said to have been used on
a deed to Dore Abbey in Herefordshire in the 12th century, but as the
cartulary and most of the muniments once at Dore are now lost this does
not seem to be capable of proof.
It should not be assumed that any portion of these notes is to be
thought of as finished or complete. Many discoveries remain to found in
record repositories around the world.
http://www.skidmoregenealogy.com/overview.htm