Descent from Walter the Deacon

[mard...@yahoo.com]

According to John Ravilious ("Domesday Descent from Walter the Deacon to Martin de la See* 26 Nov 2003), Walter the Deacon had a son Robert Fitz Walter whose son William (d bef 1167) married Juliana, dau of John Fitz Valerian.

If this is the case, who is the father of Robert Fitz Walter who married Hawise de Guerres? They apparently also had a son William (d 1162/66).

Keats-Rohan is not clear on this or I have misread something somewhere.

[Andrew Lancaster]

John may not be right about this, and I wonder if that is still his position. Keats-Rohan seems fairly clear to me about this, and I am not aware of any arguments that have been made against what she says. Domesday Descendants pp.507-8 says that the William who married Juliana is the son of Robert de Hastings of Sussex. She cites the Pipe Rolls for 31 Henry I in Essex and Sussex.

[Andrew Lancaster]

I later remembered that Rev. Eyton made a footnote on this subject in his Antiquities of Shropshire. https://books.google.be/books?id=uEpNAAAAMAAJ&vq=waleran&pg=PA134

I should say I have not looked into the topic of Juliana much, but another source to keep in mind is the definitive pair of articles by J A Clarence Smith in Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, concerning the Hastings of Little Easton, the other family you are mentioning, and I did spend time on them. See my webpage which summarizes conclusions which are the same on most points as his, and I understand other people such as Rosie Bevan have come to similar conclusions over the years. http://users.skynet.be/lancaster/Hastings%20of%20the%2012th%20century.html

I think a very basic point to make about the surname Hastings is that it not only was it an early one, and therefore difficult to trace, but also that it probably had more than one origin, perhaps all gravitating towards the spelling of a place very important to the Normans. In Little Easton it may well even come from the placename now spelled as Easton (this judging from the spellings they really used at first). The several midlands families, one of which ended up more commonly spelled as Hasteng, may have another origin.

[John Watson]

Dear Andrew,

You have obviously done a great deal of research into the early Hastings families, so I would like to ask you a question. In your opinion, are William fitz Robert de Hastings and William de Hastings, king's dispenser and steward of Bury St. Edmunds, the same person?

Regards,
John

[janette...@talk21.com]

Dear All
I am delighted that interest has rekindled in the early Hastings families. I spent over 15 years struggling with them particularly from the angle of the Sussex based family. I worked from the postings of John Ravilious and followed the various arguments referred to by Andrew Lancaster above before scouring the available primary sources.

In terminal despair of producing a descent that would be acceptable, some months ago I posted a synopsis of my findings [Robert fitz Ralph, March 9th] some of which I repeat below. I have added to the original, and clarified some of the points.

I said at the time that firstly, I hoped I could suggest to your satisfaction that the entry below for two Roberts of Hastings from Mediaeval Lands could be amalgamated.

These two entries are:

2.ROBERT FitzRalph de Hastings(-after 1086).“Appropriations of the King[‘s land] in Essex” in Domesday Book includes “in Colchester...a certain church of St. Peter...of the king’s alms” of which “Robert fitzRalph of Hastings claims 3 parts and Eudo the steward holds the fourth”. It is not known whether Robert’s father was Ralph de Hastings who is named above. 

[Ralf de Hastings DB. It seems that he in fact had two holdings in Ardleigh Essex, of Roger de Raimes. For the larger one, of 30 acres he is named as Ralf of Hastings, but further down is the mention that ' In Ardleigh Roger holds in demesne 6 free men with 1 hide and 2 ploughs ...of this, Ralph holds 10 acres'. There is no other Ralph listed as holding of Roger, and DB convention frequently assumes the reader will make the connection to the last named holder of that Christian name. Neither of these are particularly large; perhaps that is why there has been such coyness at taking the face-value nomenclature and considering that Robert fitzRalf of Hastings is the son of this Ralf de Hastings].

And:

3.ROBERT de Hastings Domesday Book records Rye “land of the Church of Fecamp, in Guestling Hundred” in Essex, held by “the Abbot of Fecamp”, in which manor “Robert de Hastings” held land of the abbot m ---. The name of Robert’s wife is not known. Robert & his wife had one child:

[This is somewhat obscure. DB for Hastings Rape in Sussex, not Essex,, records that Robert of Hastings held 'a new quarter' in Guestling Hundred of the Count of Eu, as well as 2 1/2 hides from the Abbot of Fecamp in the manor of Rameslie [usually equated with Rye] also in Guestling Hundred. The interposition of 'Essex' in the record by the author creates a confusion.]


a)WILLIAM de Hastings(-after 1131). The 1130 Pipe Roll records "Wills fil Robti de Hasting" in Sussex in respect of "de Lestagio de Hasting et de Ria". The reference to his father suggests that William may only recently have inherited the property.m JULIANA, daughter of JOHN FitzWaleran & his wife ---.The 1130 Pipe Roll records "Juliana uxor Willi de Hasting" in Essex "de veti aux militu de fedo Waleri Avi sui".

We find that a Wiliam de Hastings gave land and churches in Colchester:

RRAN1821 [1128-31]Westminster
Precept by Henry 1 to G[ilbert] Bp of London and Hamo St Clare and all the burgesses of Colchester: That the Canons of [SS Julian and Botolph] Colchester hold the lands and churches which W[illiam] de Hastings gave them at Colchester well and honourably with all the liberties with which any one ever held them. Witness G. de Clinton

In the Domesday Book, none of the other claimants to the Hastings name held lands or churches in Colchester, only Robert fitz Ralph de Hastings as detailed above in the Mediaeval Lands entry; therefore it would seem reasonable to equate Robert fitzRalph de Hastings with Robert, father of William de Hastings who married Juliana fitz Waleran.

Keats Rohan does not include the full list of mentions of Robert son of Ralph of Hastings:

He appears in official capacity as the addressee in four charters of Henry 1:

RRAN 619, to Rembert and Robert of Hastings [1107, 1109 or 1115, Westminster dates; the Regesta suggests 1102, but the petitioner was Abbot Ralph, 1107-24]
RRAN 752 Raibert de Hastings and Robert filio Radulfi [1106, Marlborough];
RRAN 859, to Henry Count of Eu and R the son of R de Hastings [1102-7, Westminster]
RRAN1670 to R. son of R. de Hastings, and D. de Pevensel [the latter being Drew de Pevensey, heir to Reinbert the sheriff].

And he is also listed as a witness to a charter at Vaudreuil, dated as ?1128 [RRAN 1550]

The suggestion that William had only recently inherited in 1130 seems quite probable. He appears as William de Hastings as witness to two charters [RRAN 1689, 1690] from Rouen, dated 1131 Feb? concerning Fecamp abbey, overlords of Robert de Hastings' holding in the manor of Rameslie [Rye], along with other local Sussex lords, Anselm de Freauville, Geoffrey de Courville, W. de Saint-Martin and G. de Saint-Leger.

William and Juliana both appear in the Pipe roll for Essex for 31 HI; William owed 70s for his debt [de deb.] to Jocelyn of London [Goisl. Lond. ]. His debt 'poni i Sudsexa', which confirms the descent from the Sussex-holding branch of the family.

In the next entry, Juliana wife of William de Hastings owed £7 of the old military aid [de veti. aux. ilitu] of the fee of Waleran her grandfather.

Henry 1's confirmation of the gift of the Colchester churches, with a last proposed date of 1131, may be seen as either exactly contemporaneous with the grant, or a hurried confirmation of a recent grant following the death of the grantor. Mediaeval Lands shows 'after 1131' for William's death, but it may have been that very year. There is no sign of him in later charters, and I can't help feeling that it may have been a sudden, and for the Hastings of Sussex family, disastrous death.

It is noticeable that the inheritance that went to the Monceux family though William's wife Juliana daughter of John fitz Waleran does not appear to include any holdings that might have been William's patrimony; conversely, I am not sure that the Sussex Hastings inherited anything from John fitz Waleran. It has been assumed that the descent to Herst and Warbleton was from one or two daughters of William and Juliana and there is no evidence that they had any sons,

The next appearance of a fee-holding Hastings in Sussex is Robert son of Harald of Hastings, who spends three years scrabbling to find £20, pledged by Simon de Criol in 1158; he pays £15 in 1159, and the final 100s in 1160.[Pipe Rolls] Simon de Criol is hardly likely to have funded an illegitimate claim, so the inference is that Robert was the heir to William.

1158–1162. Robert de Hastingues witnessed a charter of Henry 11 at Foucarmont with his wife Isabel, her mother Avelina and Thomas and Reinald de St Leger, sons of William; Avelina was probably the wife of their brother William He is shown in Red Book of the Exchequer in 1166 on the carta of John Count of Eu as 'Robertus de Hastinges, dimidium militem' [of the old feoffment]

It may be that as with all the other claimants to the Hastings name, Robert de Hastingues came to it through marriage.

DB shows that the holder TRE of Cortesley, the large manor on the sea edge west of the Norman town of Hastings [location number two, as longshore drift had driven the settlement east from Bulverhythe to the Priory valley, whence it would later remove again eastwards to the Bourne valley, the present 'Hastings Old Town' ] was one Godwin, who continued to hold under the St Leger overlordship in 1086.

It is not unlikely that one of the family of Godwin might have married into the family of Robert Fitz Ralf de Hastings and called the resulting son Harald.

I hope this is adequate to establish that William de Hastings who married Juliana fitz Waleran is from a different branch from those based in Essex and Suffolk.

As for the name 'Hastings', all of the forms recorded in the Place Names of Sussex have the 'H', which precludes it from being a differential,of 'Aistan' or any of the other Eston/Easton place names. I refer to the conflation of Hesdin and Hastings in a reference to Ernulf de Hesdin in my previous post, and as Andrew Lancaster points out there is also the family of Hasteng,who seem to have no relationship. The other branches he refers to do may well have the same filial relationship to the ur- Hastings family as the descendants of Walter the Deacon.

It may be of interest to quote at length from the introduction to The Place Names of Sussex' Mawer and Stenton, Cambridge 1929] p. xxiiv – xxiv:

“..evidence which proves that in the eighth, and indeed the eleventh century, the eastern part of the county was regarded as distinct from Sussex in the strict sense of the word. An eighth century chronicle, written in Northumbria as a sequel to the work of Bede, records that in 771 Offa king of the Mercians 'Haestingorum gentum armis subegerat'. The Haestingorum gens of this passage can be no other than the Hastingas whose name is still preserved in Hastings, and the fact that their subjugation is recorded by a Northumbriam annalist who was very incurious about southern affairs shows that they were an important people. Despite all the forces which were tending to obliterate the ancient tribal divisions of southern England, the Haestingas were still considered to be a separate people in the time of Aethelred ll. Under the date 1011 the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle states that the Danes by that year had harried, south of the Thames 'all of the Centigas and the South Saxons and the Haestingas and Surrey and Berkshire and Hampshire and great part of Wiltshire'. A people whose individuality was so long remembered cannot have been a mere fragment of a larger kingdom, and it is highly probable that at an early date the Haestingas possessed a dynasty of their own.

More than this cannot safely be said, for the territory of the Haestingas cannot be defined with any certainty and their relationshilp to the true South Saxons, the men of Aelle and his sons, is uncertain. It is suggestive that the Chronicle does not attribute any fighting to Aelle in the country east of Pevernsey [c477- 491 AD], and it would seem that the territory of the Haestingas coincided roughly with the Rape which still bears their name. That it was somewhat larger than this is probable, for the name Hastingford in Hadlow down in Pevensey Rape certainly means the ford of the Haestingas, and may well have denoted the point at which a traveller from the north-west first entered their country.”

Andrew Lancaster suggests that the Hastings name was of importance to the Normans, which I too have commented on previously. Perhaps the importance was to both Normans and Saxons, and lay in the antiquity of the denomination.

I hope that the questions I raised in my previous post and the brief references I made to subsequent Sussex Hastings family members might encourage others to look further into their descent.

With all best wishes

Janette Gallini

[Andrew Lancaster]

On Saturday, May 6, 2017 at 1:45:34 PM UTC+2, John Watson wrote:
> You have obviously done a great deal of research into the early Hastings families, so I would like to ask you a question. In your opinion, are William fitz Robert de Hastings and William de Hastings, king's dispenser and steward of Bury St. Edmunds, the same person?

No I think they are definitely different. Different parents, different spouses/widows, different heirs, died at different times, owned different things.

Regards
Andrew