de Fiennes de la Plaunche
John Carmi Parsons
Castile, queen of England, for the last year of her life (1289-90). Among
other valuable contents, the material in that manuscript permitted me to
identify correctly for the first time the wives of four English barons.
All four of these women were then damsels in Eleanor's household and the
clerk who kept the account identified all four as the queen's kinswomen
(*consanguinee Regine*). For the record, the four were Joan, wife of
John lord Wake of Liddell; Clemence wife of John de Vesci the younger; Marie
wife of Almeric de St Amand; and Alice wife of John de Montfort of
Beudesert. (Parsons, _The Court and Household of Eleanor of Castile in 1290_
[Toronto, 1977], pp. 41-55.)
Joan Wake, long known to have been a cousin of Queen Eleanor but described
as the daughter of "William de Fenes a count of Spain," turns out to have
been a daughter of William de Fiennes II, a baron in the Boulonnais related to
Eleanor through her maternal (Dammartin) ancestry. Joan was, in fact, a sister
of Margaret de Fiennes, wife of Edmund de Mortimer of Wigmore--also a marriage
arranged by their cousin the queen. Margaret de Mortimer too was once thought
to have been the daughter of (to quote the Latin history of Wigmore priory, a
foundation of the Mortimer family) "domini Willielmi de Fendles de Hispania,"
but on the basis of the arms on her seal she is now known to have been born a
Fiennes (the Latin history is edited in Dugdale, _Monasticon_ [Record
Commission edition (1819-46), vi, p. 351; _Complete Peerage_, ix, p. 283, s.v.
"Mortimer").
Clemence de Vesci was a daughter of Count Henry III of Avaugour in
Brittany, related to Queen Eleanor through the queen's paternal aunt
Berengaria of Leon who in 1224 married (as his 3rd wife) John de Brienne,
titular king of Jerusalem. Louis de Brienne, a son of this couple, married
Agnes de Beaumont, heiress to the viscountcy of Le Mans in France. Their
daughter Marie in 1281 married Henry III of Avaugour, and their daughter
Clemence, was married by Queen Eleanor's good offices, on 16 July 1290, to
John de Vesci junior. This identification was made possible solely
because Clemence was in England for a short while before her marriage, and
during that time Queen Eleanor's wardrobe clerk referred to Clemence by a
form of her birth family's name, "de Vagor" (Parsons, _Court and
Household_, pp. 46-48, 103, 108, 109).
Marie de St Amand (de Peyvre by her second marriage) was a descendant of
the marriage (ca 1207) of Enguerran de Picquigny, vidame of Amiens (d. 1224),
to Margaret daughter of Count John I of Ponthieu. Queen Eleanor and Marie de
Picquigny were both John I's great-great-granddaughters. Again, this
identification was possible only because the wardrobe clerk referred to Marie
as the "domicilla de Pynkeny" (F. Darsy, _Picquigny et ses seigneurs, vidames
d'Amiens_ [Abbeville, 1860], pp. 753-55; Parsons, _Court and Household_,
pp. 50-51.)
It's Alice de Montfort in whose birth family I am presently interested.
She has long been known as the daughter of a William de la Plaunche, and
as a cousin of Queen Eleanor. It now appears that William de la Plaunche was
a cadet or bastard of the house of Fiennes. There exists in France today a
family using the surname "de Fiennes de la Planche," whose arms are those of
the Fiennes, though with slight differencing in tincture and charge that
suggests either cadency or bastardy: a lion rampant on a field billetty, with
(in different versions) a bend or a baton for difference. The Fiennes arms
lack the billets and the bend or baton.
The thirteenth-century William de la Plaunche who was Eleanor of Castile's
kinsman also bore the lion rampant on a field billetty, as did his issue
in England through his son James de la Planche (d. 13##), who in 1289, also by
Queen Eleanor's agency, married Maud de Haversham, an heiress in Bucks. The
de la Planche-Haversham descendants are traced in _V.C.H. Buckinghamshire, iv,
pp. 368-70. In addition to Alice and James, William de la Planche also had a
son John, who received gifts from Edward I and Queen Eleanor when they arrived
in France in the spring of 1286. Alice de la Planche married John de Montfort
within a year thereafter, certainly by 28 March 1287 when Edward I, in an
unpublished letter, ordered his lieutenant in England to deal favorably with
John de Montfort who had married a cousin of the queen ("cum idem Johannes
karissime consorti nostre racione uxoris quam de genere suo duxit...fuerit
alligatus...."[Public Record Office, S.C. 1/45/46]).
The dates of William de la Planche's children's marriages suggests that
like Queen Eleanor, he was a great-grandchild of Count Aubri II of
Dammartin and a grandson of Aubri's daughter Agnes, who married William de
Fiennes I.
To date, however, I have not been able to document specific links between
William de la Planche and the Fiennes. Neither Dom Anselme nor Aubert de
la Chenaye des Bois indicates any such cadet or bastard lines of the
Fiennes in the first generations descended from the marriage of William I
and Agnes de Dammartin. In 1977 I was able only to point to the kinship that
certainly existed between Queen Eleanor and William; to the heraldic evidence
linking the de la Planches to the Fiennes; and to the still-flourishing de
Fiennes de la Planche family.
It seems very likely that the de Fiennes de la Planches originated with a
younger son of William de Fiennes I and Agnes de Dammartin. If any list
members can suggest further avenues of research, I would greatly
appreciate the information.
John C. Parsons
Todd A. Farmerie
> It seems very likely that the de Fiennes de la Planches originated with a
> younger son of William de Fiennes I and Agnes de Dammartin. If any list
> members can suggest further avenues of research, I would greatly
> appreciate the information.
Instead of answering your question, I have a question of my own for
you. What is your opinion of the possible objection to the Fiennes
Dammartin descent made by David Fiennes in a letter published in
Genealogists Mag.? Fiennes concludes that (based on his being left out
of an estate settlement) the oldest son, Engeraud de Fiennes, might not
have been son of Agnes de Dammartin. This would place into question
this route for the kinship of the daughters of William de Fiennes II
(son of Engeraud) and Queen Eleanor. I take it that you do not accept
this alternative reconstruction?
taf
John Carmi Parsons
Dammartin descendants. In correspondence with a present-day member of the
Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes family (I believe that is the correct spelling), I
learned that he himself challenges the usual filiation given for his ancestor
Giles de Fiennes as a younger brother of William de Fiennes II. I have
yet to see any evidence that would effectively challenge that filiation.
It is of course true that William de Fiennes II married Blanche de Brienne, a
granddaughter of Berengaria of Castile-Leon and John de Brienne, king of
Jerusalem. That descent would have made William's daughters Joan and
Margaret Eleanor of Castile's cousins regardless of the Dammartin descent.
It would not, however, account for Eleanor of Castile's close relations
with Giles de Fiennes, whom she clearly favored--he was a knight of her
household to the end of her life and witnessed her acts on several occasions
(see my aforementioned _Court and Household_, pp. 53, 154), and after he
married the English heiress Sybil Filliol late in the reign of Henry III,
Eleanor carefully protected their estates from the debts to the Jewry incurred
by Sybil's father (Calendar of Pleas in the Exchequer of the Jews, eds. J.M.
Rigg, H. Jenkinson, 3 vols [London, 1920-21], i, p. 273). Moreover, Eleanor's
husband Edward as early as August 1255 accepted as his chancellor Michael
de Fiennes, a younger son of the Fiennes-Dammartin marriage (Noel Denholm-
Young, _Seignorial Administration in England [Oxford, 1937], p. 12 note 6),
while the future William de Fiennes II was added to Edward's household by
Henry III even earlier than that, in July 1254, clearly in anticipation of
Edward's marriage to Eleanor (Parsons, _Eleanor of Castile: Queen and
Society in Thirteenth-Century England_ [New York, 1995], p. 13 note 19).
So, to respond to your question, I see a consistent pattern here that is
strongly suggestive of close and valued kinship ties, all of which I feel does
present obstacles to accepting David Fiennes' arguments without much further
research.
John C. Parsons