de Traci correction to Sanders, Keats-Rohan

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Please note a correction for the record which you might want to adjust in any genealogies you manage.

A correspondent, Carol Macdonald, has convinced me that Sanders (under Barnstable, pp. 104-5) and Keats-Rohan (DD p.743) are wrong about there having been two Oliver de Tracis during the late 12th and early 13th century. As usual for this period there are very few records, but I've been shown two which seem to make it adequately clear that there was one generation of Olivers.

1. I think Sanders is the source for Keats-Rohan, and his only source in turn appears to be the Pipe Rolls for 31 Henry II, p. 164 https://archive.org/details/piperollsociety34pipeuoft/page/164/mode/2up

Page 164. Idem vicecomes redd. comp. de .c. s. et .xij. d. de firma de Boui terra Oliueri de Traci postquam captus fuit. Et de .xxxv. s. et .v. d. de terra Nimet terra ejusdem. Et de .iiij. l. et .iiij. s. de Ferminton' terra ejusdem. Et .iiij. s. et .vj. d. de terra ejusdem in civitate Exonie. Summa .xj. l. et . iiij. s. et .xj. d.

However, the interpretation appears to be wrong. Sanders and Keats-Rohan are apparently seeing this as a relief payment, implying that his father had died and this was a new Oliver. That does not appear to be correct. J. H. Round happened to mention it in his preface to this Pipe Rolls edition (p. xxviii) https://archive.org/details/piperollsociety34pipeuoft/page/xxviii/mode/2up :

"The king's revenue continues to be substantially augmented by wardships and escheats, lay and clerical" [...] "OTHER DEVON MEN WERE CLEARLY IN TROUBLE WITH HIM [the king] FOR BOVEY (TRACY) AND OTHER LANDS OF OLIVER DE TRACY WERE SEIZED WHEN OLIVER WAS CAPTURED, and those of Roger de Mandeville as a consequence of his arrest."
2. Devon. Feet of Fines.

Document 1, pp. 1-4 : https://archive.org/details/publications61devo/page/n43/

Mentions that the father of Oliver in 1196 was named Henry, and Oliver himself was married but did not yet have a son.

I think this is probably the original, but it seems to be in bad condition: http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT7/CP25(1)/CP25_1_40_1/IMG_0003.htm

3. Miscellaneous Inquisitions
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000023992122?urlappend=%3Bseq=79 inquisition 178 on pp. 59-60

In 1253 Henry de Tracy's father was named Oliver. It does not name his grandfather.

[Peter Stewart]

Am I missing something? I don't see a specific correction, but only a
difference of opinion without definitive authority on either side.

All of the sources cited by Keats-Rohan for her elder Oliver de Traci
are dated from the 1140s to the mid-1180s - she placed his death ca 1184
and that of her younger Oliver to 1210.

Are you suggesting that your sole Oliver lived to a great age and died
in 1210, or do you suggest an earlier death? And how do you account for
the Oliver de Traci and his father Henry both apparently living in 1196,
unless the mistake of Keats-Rohan is to miss an intervening generation,
i.e. Henry of the 1146 charter in Monasticon (vol 5, not 4 as misprinted
in DD) > Oliver captured and perhaps deceased by ca 1184 > Henry living
in 1196 > Oliver d 1210?

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Hi Peter. It could be that I am missing something of course. Here's how I understand it though...

The Henry in 1196 was described as Oliver's father, not his son, and he is not described as being alive. I read it as implying pretty clearly that he was someone who made grants before Oliver was making them. I'd say the implication is that he is dead.

Does that make sense of it?

Perhaps you are arguing that Keats-Rohan's argument is that a single Oliver could not have lived that long? That does not however seem to be her argument. She cites Sanders, and Sanders cites the Pipe Roll in the same way he usually does to show that a son paid for his inheritance. So he made a mistake. That seems quite clear to me and I've been spending a fair bit of time on Sanders so I'll lay a claim to knowing how to interpret his compressed footnotes.

We could switch to a NEW argument, never made by anyone I am aware of, that Oliver could not possibly have lived that long, but it would be a new argument. This is clearly not an argument used by Keats-Rohan or Sanders, and I'm not sure it is really convincing. But is that what you are saying?

I would say men often had adult careers which were this long? If Henry were not yet born in 1196, then it seems Oliver was born later in Oliver's life, which is also not really amazing?

Of course if there is any direct evidence for there being two Olivers that would change things, but I could not find any. Without any such direct evidence everything seems to hang on a quite weak chronological (lifespan) argument which, as I said, no one seems to have actually made.

If I am wrong, please let me know. You've certainly found errors in my thinking before. I have no emotional attachment to either hypothesis. :)

[Peter Stewart]

That the Henry documented in 1196 was an Oliver's father does not
preclude the Henry who occurs in 1253 from being the same Oliver's son.

As for the implication that Henry father of Oliver was already dead by
the time of the 1196 record, that may be correct but is not certain. Why
would some of the Tracys' tenants be noted as enfeoffed by Henry and
others by Oliver if the latter had already inherited the family's
tenancy-in-chief and they were consequently by then sworn to him instead?

>
> Does that make sense of it?
>
> Perhaps you are arguing that Keats-Rohan's argument is that a single Oliver could not have lived that long? That does not however seem to be her argument. She cites Sanders, and Sanders cites the Pipe Roll in the same way he usually does to show that a son paid for his inheritance. So he made a mistake. That seems quite clear to me and I've been spending a fair bit of time on Sanders so I'll lay a claim to knowing how to interpret his compressed footnotes.
>
> We could switch to a NEW argument, never made by anyone I am aware of, that Oliver could not possibly have lived that long, but it would be a new argument. This is clearly not an argument used by Keats-Rohan or Sanders, and I'm not sure it is really convincing. But is that what you are saying?

I don't see any argument from Keats-Rohan about Oliver's lifespan. I was
pointing out that a man who occurs along with his father Henry in 1146
and who independently from his father witnessed a charter of King
Stephen by 1154 (perhaps as early as 1140) can hardly be supposed the
same individual as a man who occurs as son of a Henry in 1196 with a
wife who had not yet given birth but might be expected to do so. Very
few people would ever have been prospective first-time fathers at the
age of ca 70 or more.

>
> I would say men often had adult careers which were this long? If Henry were not yet born in 1196, then it seems Oliver was born later in Oliver's life, which is also not really amazing?

Eh? The Henry of 1253 may not yet have been born in 1196. You have shown
no proof of the correctness of Keats-Rohan's statement that the younger
Oliver was son (rather than grandson as I suggested) of the elder Oliver.

>
> Of course if there is any direct evidence for there being two Olivers that would change things, but I could not find any. Without any such direct evidence everything seems to hang on a quite weak chronological (lifespan) argument which, as I said, no one seems to have actually made.

It is far from a weak chronological argument - in my view it is compelling.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I think the reasons for believing Henry the father of Oliver was dead (or perhaps, at a stretch, retired?) in 1196 are reasonably obvious. Oliver, or an Oliver, had been holding the barony from the 1160s, in Pipe Rolls, and baronial carta.

What is now new to this discussion in your reply is your reference to an Oliver "who occurs along with his father Henry in 1146 and who independently from his father witnessed a charter of King Stephen by 1154 (perhaps as early as 1140)". Trying to follow...

I suppose your second reference refers to the charter cited by Keats-Rohan from RRAN III, no. 659 https://archive.org/details/regestaregumangl03grea/page/244

I note that the editors mention that apart from this charter, this Oliver was first mentioned in 1147, which must be the first one you mention. They therefore think this charter was made relatively late in Stephen's reign. Sanders (p. 104) also mentions this record, saying that in 1147 this Oliver had not yet inherited and that he inherited sometime before 1165 which is when he first appears in the Pipe Rolls. An obvious difference between the reading of Sanders, and that of yourself and the RRAN editors, is that Sanders clearly does not believe Oliver was mentioned in 1147. But apparently he just missed it.

This 1146 or 1147 record is cited by Keats-Rohan and Sanders (and presumably the one you and the RRAN editors are referring to) as Monasticon Anglicanum V, p. 198, no. 4. https://archive.org/details/b30455832_0005/page/198/mode/2up

I can see that Oliver, Henry's son, is mentioned in that charter, but I think the context is such that he might not yet be of full age?

"[...] et ego cupiens haereditatem habere cum sanctis, et particeps fieri orationum sanctorum, et omnium monachorum Cluniacensium, pro salute animae meae, et patris mei, et matris meae, filiique mei Oliverii, et antecessorum et successorum meorum, hanc donationem, una cum filio meo Olivero, super altare sanctae Mariae Magdalenae, coram baronibus meis optuli, et carta mea confirmavi. [...] Haec carta facta est, anno ab incarnatione Domini m. cxlvj [...]."

So Oliver might have been born in the 1130s. On the other hand there is clearly nothing stunning about 70 year old men having children. The way this would have normally happened would be that he had taken a younger wife, presumably not his first. That might not be the most common occurrence, but it also seems far from unusual?

I also don't follow what point you are making with this remark "You have shown no proof of the correctness of Keats-Rohan's statement that the younger Oliver was son (rather than grandson as I suggested) of the elder Oliver." I think we are agreeing that Keats-Rohan shows no proof that there were two Olivers at all. She appears to have this idea from Sanders, who also gives no clear explanation for this idea - although his dating of Oliver's death to about 1184 and his footnote saying that it was at this time that Henry II released the lands strongly implies that he misread the Pipe Roll of that year - or at least I can say he read it quite differently to Round.

I think no one has claimed that any other documentary evidence exists for there being two Olivers. There is now only the new chronological argument which you are making? I can't yet see that it is compelling?

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Peter, reading your remarks again perhaps I did not sufficiently address your belief that the elder Henry might be alive in 1196. I think we need to consider what that long document actually says about him. It only mentions him, twice, in the context of saying that there were enfeoffments made by Oliver de Traci, or by his father Henry, in the past, before this new concord. My understanding is that he is only mentioned in order to cover older enfeoffments, and not just the ones from Oliver's time. I see no implication at all that he is alive. I also see no other record of any other 12th century Henrys and Oliver(s) appears continuously in the records from the 1160s.

[Peter Stewart]

For some reason you are not comprhending my point at all - in my
suggested scheme the Oliver in the pipe rolls from the 1160s was father,
not son, of the Henry referred to in 1196.

>
> What is now new to this discussion in your reply is your reference to an Oliver "who occurs along with his father Henry in 1146 and who independently from his father witnessed a charter of King Stephen by 1154 (perhaps as early as 1140)". Trying to follow...

I assumed you had reviewed the evidence cited by Keats-Rohan before
disputing her conclusion from this.

> I suppose your second reference refers to the charter cited by Keats-Rohan from RRAN III, no. 659 https://archive.org/details/regestaregumangl03grea/page/244
>
> I note that the editors mention that apart from this charter, this Oliver was first mentioned in 1147, which must be the first one you mention. They therefore think this charter was made relatively late in Stephen's reign. Sanders (p. 104) also mentions this record, saying that in 1147 this Oliver had not yet inherited and that he inherited sometime before 1165 which is when he first appears in the Pipe Rolls. An obvious difference between the reading of Sanders, and that of yourself and the RRAN editors, is that Sanders clearly does not believe Oliver was mentioned in 1147. But apparently he just missed it.

You just said "Sanders (p. 104) also mentions this record, saying that
in 1147 this Oliver had not yet inherited" and then you go on to say

"Sanders clearly does not believe Oliver was mentioned in 1147. But

apparently he just missed it." If you are posting in your sleep, this
discussion is going nowhere.

>
> This 1146 or 1147 record is cited by Keats-Rohan and Sanders (and presumably the one you and the RRAN editors are referring to) as Monasticon Anglicanum V, p. 198, no. 4. https://archive.org/details/b30455832_0005/page/198/mode/2up
>
> I can see that Oliver, Henry's son, is mentioned in that charter, but I think the context is such that he might not yet be of full age?
>
> "[...] et ego cupiens haereditatem habere cum sanctis, et particeps fieri orationum sanctorum, et omnium monachorum Cluniacensium, pro salute animae meae, et patris mei, et matris meae, filiique mei Oliverii, et antecessorum et successorum meorum, hanc donationem, una cum filio meo Olivero, super altare sanctae Mariae Magdalenae, coram baronibus meis optuli, et carta mea confirmavi. [...] Haec carta facta est, anno ab incarnatione Domini m. cxlvj [...]."
>
> So Oliver might have been born in the 1130s. On the other hand there is clearly nothing stunning about 70 year old men having children. The way this would have normally happened would be that he had taken a younger wife, presumably not his first. That might not be the most common occurrence, but it also seems far from unusual?

The Oliver who acted with his father in 1146 was probably born in the
1120s: at any rate he was old enough to be in a relatively small
entourage of King Stephen at Northampton some time by 1154 so clearly
born by the early 1130s at the latest.

The Oliver in 1196 in my view may have been a grandson of the Oliver
occurring from 1146 (the Monasticon charter is dated in that year, not
1147) and in pipe rolls from 1164/65 to 1184 after he had been captured
("captus fuit", not "captus est"). The language here does not suggest
that he was necessarily still living - I don't get how your are reading
that into Round's remark - but also it does not conclusively establish
that he was already dead, as I noted upthread.

The idea you are pursuing requires not only crediting that a man born by
the early 1130s who had inherited by the 1160s was a prospective
first-time father in 1196, but also that his father Henry who had been
dead at least since the 1160s was still the reference point for some
family feoffees after more than 30 years in his grave. It seems far more
plausible to me that there were two Henry > Oliver successions in turn,
and that the second Henry had perhaps retired to Normandy by 1196 while
his son Oliver was still in England.

> I also don't follow what point you are making with this remark "You have shown no proof of the correctness of Keats-Rohan's statement that the younger Oliver was son (rather than grandson as I suggested) of the elder Oliver." I think we are agreeing that Keats-Rohan shows no proof that there were two Olivers at all. She appears to have this idea from Sanders, who also gives no clear explanation for this idea - although his dating of Oliver's death to about 1184 and his footnote saying that it was at this time that Henry II released the lands strongly implies that he misread the Pipe Roll of that year - or at least I can say he read it quite differently to Round.

Round as far as I have seen did not say anything about Oliver's being
alive or dead at the time of the 1184 pipe roll entry. "Bovey ... and
other lands of Oliver de Tracy were seized when Oliver was captured" is
a straightforward paraphrase of the Latin record.

> I think no one has claimed that any other documentary evidence exists for there being two Olivers. There is now only the new chronological argument which you are making? I can't yet see that it is compelling?

No-one, apart from you by implication, has claimed that documentary
evidence exists for there being just one Oliver.

The likeliest succession that fits the documents and circumstantial
evidence seems to me:

Henry (I), acting with his son Oliver in 1146
|
Oliver (I), born by ca 1130, captured by 1184
|
Henry (II), whose feofees were still holding without yet being
re-enfeoffed by his heir in 1196
|
Oliver (II) who had control of the family's Devonshire lands, perhaps in
his father's lifetime, by 1196
|
Henry (III) mentioned in 1253.

This fits an unexceptionable pattern chronologically. Your alternative,
to my mind, does not:

Henry (I), acting with his son Oliver in 1146 so evidently born by the
early-12th century yet still with sub-tenants holding from no-one else
by 1196
|
Oliver (I), an independent adult in the entourage of King Stephen by
1154 yet still anticipating the potential birth of a first child in 1196

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 09-Mar-21 8:21 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

> Peter, reading your remarks again perhaps I did not sufficiently address your belief that the elder Henry might be alive in 1196. I think we need to consider what that long document actually says about him. It only mentions him, twice, in the context of saying that there were enfeoffments made by Oliver de Traci, or by his father Henry, in the past, before this new concord. My understanding is that he is only mentioned in order to cover older enfeoffments, and not just the ones from Oliver's time. I see no implication at all that he is alive. I also see no other record of any other 12th century Henrys and Oliver(s) appears continuously in the records from the 1160s.
>

Not every tenant-in-chief in the 12th century spent much time in
England, and I have seen no evidence to suggest that the Henry occurring
in 1196 stayed there for long between ca 1184 and 1196 - he may have
thought better of venturing to where his putative father Oliver had been
taken captive before the family's lands in Devonshire were seized, and
he may have deputed oversight of these to his son Oliver after they were
restored.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Thanks Peter, trying to address what I think are your points:

1. I saw that you were perhaps hinting that maybe there was an extra Henry between Oliver the boy of 1147 and Oliver of 1196. It seems now you have solidified this into an hypothesis. So turning to this, the obvious reason to be sceptical of this proposal hardly needs to be stated: there is no direct evidence for this extra Henry who does not appear in the Pipe Rolls. Your proposal of extra generations with repeating names is purely based on the argument that it would be amazing for a man to have a son in his 70s.

2. There is nothing illogical about what you describe me saying below.

"You just said "Sanders (p. 104) also mentions this record, saying that in 1147 this Oliver had not yet inherited" and then you go on to say "Sanders clearly does not believe Oliver was mentioned in 1147. But apparently he just missed it." If you are posting in your sleep, this discussion is going nowhere."

Sanders writes: "the first mention of Oliver is in 1165", although he was aware of the 1146/7 charter. So he made a mistake.

3. Concerning your summaries of the two proposals I would make two minor corrections. First, Oliver of 1196 does not need to have had no children before. He just had none alive at the time. Second, because he does not have to be an adult in 1146 I do not think he needs to be born after 1130.

4. In a nutshell, I'd say this is a case where Occam's razor is relevant. You are proposing four generations of men with a repeating pattern of names when we have no records of this doubling up of Henrys and Olivers. For example there are none of the normal records of them dying or taking up their inheritances, and there is a series of Pipe Roll records which shows Olivers, but no intervening Henry. The records taken at face value describe two generations and I still fail to see how this is chronologically sufficiently unlikely to have any real need to propose any major complications, such as a person hiding in France. That would be like arguing that genealogies showing people living above average age, or having more than one marriage, are unlikely?

5. If a Pipe Roll refers to an amount to be paid in relation to lands of an Oliver de Tracy who was captured, that implies he is alive, surely? But of course this is also not the only Pipe Roll record mentioning Oliver in the late 12th century. What we lack is any Pipe Rolls record of a Henry in these Devon lands, until the next century.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Apologies, it should have been: I do not think he needs to be born BEFORE 1130.

[Peter Stewart]

On 09-Mar-21 10:37 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

> Thanks Peter, trying to address what I think are your points:
>
> 1. I saw that you were perhaps hinting that maybe there was an extra Henry between Oliver the boy of 1147 and Oliver of 1196. It seems now you have solidified this into an hypothesis.

"Perhaps hinting" and "now ... solidifed" my foot - in my first posting
on the subject I suggested quite clearly "Henry of the 1146 charter in
Monasticon ... > Oliver captured and perhaps deceased by ca 1184 > Henry
living in 1196 > Oliver d 1210". If you comprehension of this is now
solidifying, please don't project this phenomenon onto me.

> So turning to this, the obvious reason to be sceptical of this proposal hardly needs to be stated: there is no direct evidence for this extra Henry who does not appear in the Pipe Rolls. Your proposal of extra generations with repeating names is purely based on the argument that it would be amazing for a man to have a son in his 70s.

No it is not. I also explained that the first Henry was evidently born
by the early-12th century, and so is unlikely to have been the same man
as the reference overlord of some family tenants in 1196. In your scheme
we have to credit that this Henry born by 1110 was the paternal
grandfather of a second Henry who died in 1274 according to Sanders (and
not so far disputed by you). A span of at least 164 years from the birth
of a grandfather to the death of a grandson is not impossible, but
extraordinary and so requiring stronger evidence than an appeal to
Occam's razor simply because you can't find full prosopographic details
in the pipe rolls. These are not an encyclopedia of every landholder who
existed in the 12th century. Sanders noted that (the first) "Henry's
name is not mentioned in the pipe rolls and the first mention of Oliver
is in 1165 when he owed 500 m. for his share of Barnstaple. This
suggests that Henry had died in the reign of Stephen [i.e. by October
1154] and that the lands had been seized into the hands of the king, who
released them only after the payment of a heavy fine". The reason
Sanders wrote that "Henry was living in 1147" is that he occurs in the
narrative of that year in 'Gesta Stephani'. We have no later record of
him, unless he was the same as the Henry whose enfeoffments were still a
current reference point in 1196 which I think implausible.

> 2. There is nothing illogical about what you describe me saying below.
> "You just said "Sanders (p. 104) also mentions this record, saying that in 1147 this Oliver had not yet inherited" and then you go on to say "Sanders clearly does not believe Oliver was mentioned in 1147. But apparently he just missed it." If you are posting in your sleep, this discussion is going nowhere."
> Sanders writes: "the first mention of Oliver is in 1165", although he was aware of the 1146/7 charter. So he made a mistake.

There is no "1146/7 charter" and no mistake about it in Sanders. Oliver
had not yet inherited when he acted along with his father in a donation
recorded in the Monasticon charter dated 1146, and he had not yet
inherited when Henry was still active in 1147 as mentioned in 'Gesta
Stephani'. Oliver was not mentioned in 1147 so Sanders cannot have "just
missed" this.

> 3. Concerning your summaries of the two proposals I would make two minor corrections. First, Oliver of 1196 does not need to have had no children before. He just had none alive at the time. Second, because he does not have to be an adult in 1146 I do not think he needs to be born after 1130.
>

Reading this as corrected, "needs to be born before 1130", is consistent
with the evidence but not definite. The first indication we have of
Oliver's age is that he was an adult (i.e. 21 or older) before the end
of Stephen's reign in October 1154. We don't know for certain that the
timeframe of his reaching adulthood was narrowed to the end of the range
1140-1154, and without establishing exactly when Stephen was in
Northampton this may never be known for sure. However, he was plainly
born by ca 1133.

> 4. In a nutshell, I'd say this is a case where Occam's razor is relevant. You are proposing four generations of men with a repeating pattern of names when we have no records of this doubling up of Henrys and Olivers. For example there are none of the normal records of them dying or taking up their inheritances, and there is a series of Pipe Roll records which shows Olivers, but no intervening Henry.

I'm not suggesting that a Henry intervened in the pipe roll records from
1165 to 1184 when Oliver occurs, but rather than a second Henry became
the heir after Oliver's lands were seized when he had been (fuit)
captured by 1184. We don't know from the evidence whether these lands
were restored to the same Oliver by 1196 or if he had died before then.
We only know that in 1196 an Oliver who as yet had no heir had enfeoffed
some and a Henry who is not represented as dead some other tenants of
the family lands in Devonshire.

> The records taken at face value describe two generations and I still fail to see how this is chronologically sufficiently unlikely to have any real need to propose any major complications, such as a person hiding in France. That would be like arguing that genealogies showing people living above average age, or having more than one marriage, are unlikely?

Who said anything about "hiding in France"? Henry first occurs in a
charter of his father dated 1110. He apparently married a daughter of
Juhel from whom he obtained his share in Barnstaple, and the family had
holdings in Normandy that Loyd described as "somewhat widely scattered".
It would have been a great deal easier to evade potential captors while
moving around a wide swathe of Normandy than stuck in a single
Devonshire fief.

>
> 5. If a Pipe Roll refers to an amount to be paid in relation to lands of an Oliver de Tracy who was captured, that implies he is alive, surely?

How many times must I repeat that the sheriff accounting for Oliver's
lands "postquam captus fuit" only states that Oliver had been captured
before then, rather than whether or not he was still living. Obviously
when lands were seized in such circumstances the rights of an heir were
not immediately recognised. This pipe roll entry does imply that
Oliver's capture was not ancient history, but we don't know exactly what
the tense meant except that for some reason it was not written as
"captus est" or "captus erat" so the writer may have thought of Oliver's
troubles as over and done with. That is a reasonable assumption on the
part of Sanders and Keats-Rohan.

But of course this is also not the only Pipe Roll record mentioning
Oliver in the late 12th century. What we lack is any Pipe Rolls record
of a Henry in these Devon lands, until the next century.
>

So? At some point between 1184 and 1196 the holding in Barnstaple was
restored to someone in the Tracy family who does not occur in the pipe
rolls within this timeframe. A bland assertion that Occam's razor
requires this to have been an Oliver rather than a Henry is not a safe
basis for asserting a "correction" to Sanders and Keats-Rohan.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Thanks Peter for trying to lay out an alternative scenario. However I have to say that I think your new summary of your case makes the weakness of it unclear. Clearly the simple way to say it is that you are arguing that it is extraordinary, almost unbelievable, that a man would have his heir in his 70s. I don't really see that there is much more to the case you are making? You've tried to make it look a bit more solid but I think it is a bit over-stretched...

1. You write "A span of at least 164 years from the birth of a grandfather to the death of a grandson is not impossible, but extraordinary and so requiring stronger evidence than an appeal to Occam's razor simply because you can't find full prosopographic details in the pipe rolls."

Is that really a valid statement? Firstly, the way you have calculated this 164 years, which includes 3 overlapping lifespans, is not exactly a standard index people will honestly be able to recognize as big or small, but if you think about how you have defined it, it is not really remarkable at all, especially if the middle generation might have had his heir late in life. It will be the age of grandfather and father at the time the ancestor of their eventual heir was born, plus the full lifetime of the third generation.

In this case the third generation, which has nothing to do with the question (consider the "gambler's fallacy") was a man who lived to around 80, and was succeeded by a grandchild. So in this example, the 164 includes the entire 4th generation as well.

For example, being very rough about it, 30 + 30 + 70 = 130 or 40 + 40 + 80 = 160 might be very common sorts of total that three generations might add up to. (I don't think the 12th century is a period where people like this were having children very young, and neither was it a period where infant mortality might be seen as unusual.) So is 164 really a big number? I don't see it.

More to the point, why are you incorporating information about the lifespans of the father and son of Oliver at all? Is there some dispute about them? To say it again, I think the clearest way to state your argumentation is that the proposed late 12th century baron Oliver was unlikely to have had his heir in his 70s.

2. Secondly, in your posts you are sometimes selectively implying that there are no records of who the tenant of chief in Barnstaple was. There is a kind of "maybe we will never know" argument implied. That would be a common problem of course, so it sounds superficially reasonable, but in this case there are multiple records indicating it was an Oliver, and we even know that over this quite reasonable span of a few decades his father's name was given than Henry more than once. No living Henry is mentioned in any record from this period however, and so demanding that others must prove an extra Henry-generation did *not* exist appears to be a classic "argument from ignorance" - i.e. a logical fallacy.

The simple fact of the matter is that we have no record of this extra generation, and no logical reason to propose one apart from the above-mentioned slightly unusual age Oliver would have to had his heir. You are effectively proposing a person, not based on any record of that person, but in order to achieve the standard 3 generations per century.

It is true that Occam's razor won't provide a perfect proof. But rejecting Occam's razor makes no sense in a case like this. The logic you are using could just as easily be used to argue for even more Henrys and Olivers in the 12th century. What would stop us from proposing that every record for Henrys or Olivers is a new person? Not pure logic, but the common sense that helps us work in everyday reality. Occam's razor is essentially a codification of part of that common sense.

To summarize, I think that to propose that a short sequence of records which seem to describe the same person are actually two people, a grandfather and grandson, I think you should have some "red flag" which is a bit stronger than a man having his heir in his 70s - especially in the 12th century when there were so many atypical things going on.

3. Indeed you also seemed to argue that it is inexplicable that enfeoffments made by the father of Oliver who was alive in 1196 would be memorandized long after he was dead. I find that a surprising argument as well, if that is your intended argument. Surely people in exactly these generations were constantly making special efforts to get old pre-Henry II enfeoffments on record, because of the great uncertainties which continued for a long time after the Anarchy. A quote from Sidney Painter which I cited once for another case from this period comes to mind, “Anyone who has been through the Curia Regis Rolls knows how frequent were claims to lands on the ground that they had been held by an ancestor in the reign of Henry I”. It seems to me that a concern with the enfeoffments of the pre-Angevin generations was standard practice, for a very good reason!

On a technicality, you wrote: "The reason Sanders wrote that "Henry was living in 1147" is that he occurs in the narrative of that year in 'Gesta Stephani'." As far as I can see Sanders is citing the charter which Dugdale dates at 1146, and does not mention the Gesta Stephani. Normally Sanders worked in a way which makes it fairly clear what his sources were for each sentence. I'd been reading the RRAN editorial note the same way, because I did not know there is a Gesta Stephani mention. It did not seem shocking that 20th century authors might revise a year transcription in Dugdale. Thanks for that extra source. I see Henry is mentioned at least twice:
https://archive.org/details/gestastephanire01sewegoog/page/n71/
https://archive.org/details/gestastephanire01sewegoog/page/n113/
I presume it is the second one you are dating to 1147? How is the year decided in this case?

Regards
Andrew

[Peter Stewart]

On 10-Mar-21 8:16 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

> On a technicality, you wrote: "The reason Sanders wrote that "Henry was living in 1147" is that he occurs in the narrative of that year in 'Gesta Stephani'." As far as I can see Sanders is citing the charter which Dugdale dates at 1146, and does not mention the Gesta Stephani. Normally Sanders worked in a way which makes it fairly clear what his sources were for each sentence. I'd been reading the RRAN editorial note the same way, because I did not know there is a Gesta Stephani mention. It did not seem shocking that 20th century authors might revise a year transcription in Dugdale. Thanks for that extra source. I see Henry is mentioned at least twice:
> https://archive.org/details/gestastephanire01sewegoog/page/n71/
> https://archive.org/details/gestastephanire01sewegoog/page/n113/
> I presume it is the second one you are dating to 1147? How is the year decided in this case?

I assumed that before purporting to correct Sanders you would have
checked the references he gave on p. 104 note 7 for his statement that
"Henry was living in 1147 but some time before 1165 he was succeeded by
his son Oliver". This is plainly not the second (the Monasticon charter
dated 1146, showing that Oliver was Henry's son) or the third (the pipe
roll for 1164/65, showing that by then Oliver had inherited the family's
share of Barnstaple). That leaves the first reference, expectedly for
the first detail to be proved ("Idem, pp. 52, 135"), which if you
bothered to look is to 'Gesta Stephani'.

The passage in question is neither of those to which you gave links, but
of course to the last mention of Henry de Tracy in the work (in your
preferred 1846 edition here:
https://archive.org/details/gestastephanire01sewegoog/page/n151). In the
1886 Rolls series edition cited by Sanders, on p. 135, the editor had
placed this in 1147 (here:
https://archive.org/details/chroniclesofreig03howl/page/134/mode/2up).

Note that someone has pencilled "1148?" beside the marginal gloss in the
copy digitised on Internet Archive. In fact, this should be 1149
according to the 1976 edition by Potter and Davis, p. 222.

That Henry was born BY 1110 does not mean that he was born IN 1110. By
that year his father had become a monk, so that presumably his elder
brother was of full age by then if not Henry as well. On this evidence
alone he may have been born decades earlier: the span of 164 years in
your scheme is the minimum interval possible between his birth and the
death of his namesake whom you suppose to have been his grandson,
Sanders his great-grandson and who by my suggestion may have been his
great-great-grandson.

Your ideas of logic are in my view too fuzzy for it to be worth
prolonging this discussion. Perhaps someone else may wish to take it up.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Thank you for noting that idem. So Sanders did cite the Gesta. That covers the technicality. But I don't agree with your "logic" on the main question. I suppose the important point is to make clear what your logic is: a man can not be expected to have an heir when he is 70. I think you are trying to make this fuzzy, but it is quite a simple argument.

I have also in the meantime found interesting references in Stapleton's edition of the Norman exchequer rolls, which says this 2 Oliver theory comes from Dugdale. Stapleton claims to show that it is wrong.

https://archive.org/details/MagniRotuliScaccariiNormanniaeSubRegibusAngliae.Volume2.1844/page/n245/mode/2up

[Peter Stewart]

It is not this alone that leads me to think your logic fuzzy. For
starters, you keep ignoring the nuance of "captus fuit" and pretend that
my "argument" (which I have not characterised as other than a
suggestion, only "arguing" implicitly that you have failed to prove your
asserted "correction") is only about the age at which Oliver in 1196 was
a prospective father.

As to that point, when you can produce actual examples of Anglo-Norman
lords in the 12th-13th century siring their first child when aged at
least 63 and perhaps 70+, you may have a stronger (but still far from
conclusive) case to present.

Then you will need to explain why the exchequer clerk and/or the sheriff
of Devonshire chose to write of Oliver's capture with "fuit" yet then of
Roger as "comprehensus" instead of the more ominous "captus".

And still you won't have proved your case. Sanders and Keats-Rohan are
not infallible, of course, but they are also not a pair of bumblers who
make things up as they go along without any evidentiary basis.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Peter you should not really present yourself as defending Sanders and Keats-Rohan should you? You clearly agree with me (and Stapleton and Carol Macdonald who wrote to me) that Dugdale, Sanders, and Keats-Rohan don't look convincing, because the extra generation with an unattested Henry is a radical new and original idea from you. It does not come from them. The 1196 document causes them a major problem. If they were looking convincing, you would not need to insert this new generation in your "suggestion".

I do however appreciate your remark about this being a suggestion. I think it can be a great service to when "new" scenarios are being proposed to try to provide alternative scenarios, even if that leads us to having to admit there is no good proposal we can make that stands out as most likely. Its just that I still think in this case that there really is an obvious straightforward proposal to make which explains the 1196 document without any problem. I feel no special attachment to it, but I can't see any justification yet for dismissing it.

As to the importance of the word "fuit" indeed I don't really see why that is important. It does not seem to be an unusual word really? The only valid point I could get out of your remarks on the wording in that specific Pipe Roll is that it is a bit unclear what happened. That does not however seem to prove or disprove anything, or make any of the possible options more or less likely? I'd appreciate further explanation if I'm truly missing something.

Concerning examples of heirs having children after 63, I think you are well aware that men's male heirs were often minors when they died, and men also often died older than 63. So it is just a matter of naming some people in the overlap group, but why are you asking this? Let's be honest. This is one of those demands you make sometimes which are not really intended to lead to any sort of conclusion, and indeed you have already indicated that such evidence would not convince you, and, what's more, me failing to find examples really wouldn't be a valid disproof of anything.

Regards and thanks
Andrew

[Mark Jennings]

On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 2:26:30 PM UTC, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 1:47:24 PM UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> >
> > And still you won't have proved your case. Sanders and Keats-Rohan are
> > not infallible, of course, but they are also not a pair of bumblers who
> > make things up as they go along without any evidentiary basis.
> >
> > Peter Stewart
>
> Peter you should not really present yourself as defending Sanders and Keats-Rohan should you? You clearly agree with me (and Stapleton and Carol Macdonald who wrote to me) that Dugdale, Sanders, and Keats-Rohan don't look convincing, because the extra generation with an unattested Henry is a radical new and original idea from you. It does not come from them. The 1196 document causes them a major problem. If they were looking convincing, you would not need to insert this new generation in your "suggestion".
>
> I do however appreciate your remark about this being a suggestion. I think it can be a great service to when "new" scenarios are being proposed to try to provide alternative scenarios, even if that leads us to having to admit there is no good proposal we can make that stands out as most likely. Its just that I still think in this case that there really is an obvious straightforward proposal to make which explains the 1196 document without any problem. I feel no special attachment to it, but I can't see any justification yet for dismissing it.

I have really enjoyed reading this thread - it showcases the best of SGM - robust debate, logic, deep scholarship, and subject matter expertise rolled into one.

Peter can speak far more eloquently for himself, but it strikes me that you two are not so very far apart after all - I think the main challenge to the initial post has been that these reconstructions are not definitive "corrections" per se to the earlier work of both Sanders and Keats-Rohan, but alternatives, usefully demonstrating that these sources (rightly treated as magisterial) might not be gospel in this case - something I imagine the respective authors would themselves have acknowledged, and reminding us all that, so often, things cannot be 100% done-and-dusted after the space of 900 years...

[Peter Stewart]

I am not defending Sanders and Keats-Rohan on their specific scheme
Henry > Oliver > Oliver - quite obviously, or I would not have suggested
the alternative Henry > Oliver > Henry > Oliver in the first place - but
rather on the reasonableness of their conclusion from the evidence they
adduced, and which you demonstrably neglected to assess fully before
trying to shoot them down with a "correction" on the matter.

The 1196 document was not cited by them, and it does indeed throw a
spanner into the works as conceived by them. I cannot read the Latin
text of this, and have to assume that the damaged original was
accurately represented in the English version cited upthread. This then
means that the identity of the father Henry and son Oliver in 1196 needs
to be considered with regard to the father Henry and son Oliver in 1146.

Your remark that "people in exactly these generations were constantly

making special efforts to get old pre-Henry II enfeoffments on record"

is not very helpful if their old enfeoffors were a belligerent for and
an adherent of King Stephen, as were the Henry and Oliver of 1146. I
would think the tenants noted as enfeoffed by 1196 might have preferred
to reference initial overlords, living or dead, who had not been
opponents in arms of the reigning dynasty and fugitives from their justice.

> I do however appreciate your remark about this being a suggestion. I think it can be a great service to when "new" scenarios are being proposed to try to provide alternative scenarios, even if that leads us to having to admit there is no good proposal we can make that stands out as most likely. Its just that I still think in this case that there really is an obvious straightforward proposal to make which explains the 1196 document without any problem. I feel no special attachment to it, but I can't see any justification yet for dismissing it.

Good, and I have not dismissed it - repeatedly I have acknowledged that
your single Henry > single Oliver scheme is possible, though I consider
it implausible.

> As to the importance of the word "fuit" indeed I don't really see why that is important. It does not seem to be an unusual word really? The only valid point I could get out of your remarks on the wording in that specific Pipe Roll is that it is a bit unclear what happened. That does not however seem to prove or disprove anything, or make any of the possible options more or less likely? I'd appreciate further explanation if I'm truly missing something.

You are missing that "captus fuit" is unidiomatic if not downright
ungrammatical. This sort of locution occurs infrequently in poetry and
very infrequently in prose (unless it is more common in Anglo-Norman
administratese anyway), because there is in theory no such tense - the
perfect would be "captus est" and the pluperfect "captus erat", while
using "fuit" appears to take the capture somehow to an even deeper
historical point than the latter.

I suspect that the writer didn't know Latin well enough to realise that
"captus" here is a participle in a passive verb and treated it as an
adjective, then used "fuit" to emphasise that the matter in question was
over and done with. Oliver had clearly taken to his heels and needed to
be captured, whereas Roger in the next passage had stayed put in order
to be simply arrested. The likeliest circumstance after 1165 and before
1184, when the Oliver of 1146 had held the Tracy part of Barnstaple (NB
without a continuous record of this in pipe rolls), would seem to be the
rebellion of 1173-74. If Oliver, born BY 1133 and inheriting between
1149 and 1165, had been taken prisoner - perhaps with violence - ten
years before the pipe roll report of 1184, it is not highly likely that
a share of the Barnstaple lordship was restored to him between 1184 and
1196.

>
> Concerning examples of heirs having children after 63, I think you are well aware that men's male heirs were often minors when they died, and men also often died older than 63. So it is just a matter of naming some people in the overlap group, but why are you asking this? Let's be honest. This is one of those demands you make sometimes which are not really intended to lead to any sort of conclusion, and indeed you have already indicated that such evidence would not convince you, and, what's more, me failing to find examples really wouldn't be a valid disproof of anything.

I have not represented anything as "disproof" of your hypothesis, but
only as indicating that it is unproven and not as persuasive as you
believe. This special pleading is a further example of fuzziness on your
part. Obviously some heirs died before their fathers and some men had
children born when they were advanced in age - especially by the
actuarial norms of the 1100s. However, 63+ is pushing it even with
stronger evidence than is available for the scheme you propose. This
relies on a succession of major life events across generations each
conveniently happening at the knock of its terminus ante quem. For all
we know from the evidence seen so far, the first Henry de Tracy may have
been born by ca 990 and his son Oliver by ca 1125. Eva, the widow in
1210 of the Oliver occurring in 1196, remained unmarried in the king's
gift until at least 1219 according to Testa de Nevill and afterwards she
was reportedly remarried to Thomas de London. If so, she was perhaps
young enough to have been a granddaughter of the Oliver of 1146. That he
was her first husband is not impossible, but unconvincing without firmer
evidence than arbitrary "Occam's razor" interpretation, much less with
the added proposal out of thin air that a prior wife and offspring may
have been obliterated before 1196.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Mar-21 8:56 AM, Peter Stewart wrote:

<snip>

> If Oliver, born BY 1133 and inheriting between 1149 and 1165

Correction - I should have written "inheriting between 1149 and 1154":
Henry was still living in 1149 when he is last mentioned in 'Gesta
Stephani', and Oliver was plainly the Tracy lord and not heir when he
witnessed King Stephen's charter at Northampton by October 1154.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I think I agree. Peter and I are not far off from each other. It is more about trying to properly register what the implications are of the evidence. For example is there a clear leading proposal we can make, or do we now just have an unknowable mystery?

But on the other hand, I think despite the implication of the rhetoric Peter actually agrees with me that Sanders and Keats-Rohan are wrong about at least one of the specifics here.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Thanks for those comments Peter. I don't see much to add for now. Probably we should now look again at the French evidence Stapleton brings. It seems Oliver took over a French inheritance from a William de Traci.

Maybe one thing to note: I was also thinking about how the Tracys were King Stephan adherents. However, it seems equally clear that they somehow did alright out of the Angevins and did not stay in the "bad books", apparently somehow getting control of more of the "Totnes" inheritance. It seems there is a story there which has been lost to us, perhaps also connected to the unfortunate Briouze family's fall from favour.

(It does not seem that we can assume that the elder Henry married an heiress of Juhel as discussed in Sanders. Or at least this does not seem to have created a consensus among the published scholars.)

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Mar-21 9:54 AM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

> Maybe one thing to note: I was also thinking about how the Tracys were King Stephan adherents. However, it seems equally clear that they somehow did alright out of the Angevins and did not stay in the "bad books", apparently somehow getting control of more of the "Totnes" inheritance. It seems there is a story there which has been lost to us, perhaps also connected to the unfortunate Briouze family's fall from favour.

I gather the Tracys obtained the whole of Barnstaple from King John
after the Briouzes met with disaster.

> (It does not seem that we can assume that the elder Henry married an heiress of Juhel as discussed in Sanders. Or at least this does not seem to have created a consensus among the published scholars.)

Well, the Juhel daughter marriage is apparently the Occam's razor
explanation for the acquisition by Henry of a share of Barnstaple - but
given the vagaries of inheritance in the period and dispute with the
other tenants, there must be some room for doubt.

The interpretation of patchy evidence is always fraught with
uncertainty. That is the bread-&-butter of Sanders, Keats-Rohan,
Stapleton and others who have looked into these questions. When the
bread goes stale and the butter rancid, someone else can always come
along with fresh fodder to chew on.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

And here is something tasty for Andrew and others to chew on: my
suggestion that in 1196 both a Henry and an Oliver de Tracy were living
is supported by primary evidence - here they are recorded in the Red
Book of the Exchequer in 1199/1200, when Henry de Tracy in Devon paid 1½
marks scutage in the first year of King John, and Oliver de Tracy is
included in the next list:

https://archive.org/details/redbookofexchequ9911grea/page/121/mode/1up

This in my view can only be my second Henry, since the first (whom
Andrew proposed as the person occurring in 1110 and named in 1196) could
not be still living in 1199/1200 unless he was at least around 100-110
years old.

The charter of his father William on becoming a monk at
Mont-Saint-Michel in 1110 was printed in full by Katherine Keats-Rohan
in her edition of the abbey's cartulary, p. 198:

"ego Guillelmus de Traceio, pro magnitudine delictorum meorum et pro
salvatione et remedio anime mee et animarum antecessorum meorum, apud
Montem Sancti Michaelis monachalem habitem Sancti Benedicti, Deo favente
et conventu ecclesie concedente, suscepi ... Signum Guillelmi de
Traceio. Signum Rohes uxoris sue. Signum Torgisi filii sui. Signum
Henrici filii sui. Signum Gieve sororis sue. Actum anno ab incarnatione
domini MCX."

Incidentally I made a stupid mistake in an earlier post in stating that
this Henry may have been born by ca 990, when plainly I should have
written ca 1090. Either way, of course, he would not have lived long
enough to pay scutage in 1199/1200.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I was just about to look at the Red Book references. Thanks Peter. I have not yet looked at it, but just as a first reaction yes that is interesting.

Eventually Oliver took over the English lands of an apparent relative named William. Presumably, as with many families, the Tracis were slowly dividing themselves into a French and English branch. So perhaps this Henry could be a French cousin?

Of course it would also be normal for there to be "junior" branches of the family in England also. So perhaps this Henry could be a younger brother of Oliver?

What I am not seeing immediately is how to imagine this Henry, a minor landholder, would be Oliver's father who was mentioned years earlier in 1196. I don't recall seeing cases of fathers passing on their main lands to their heir but retaining a smaller chunk. I suppose this would require a complex transaction that might have been a bit legally fraught with danger in this period, given the contestable nature of these lands they had apparently acquired from the Briouzes during the reign of Stephen? The Briouzes had not yet fallen out of favour, and Stapleton seems to think the 1196 concord was part of a compromise worked out between the conflicting claims of the two families, deriving from that Stephen-era grant to Henry?

Andrew

[Peter Stewart]

Golly this is tiresome. Do you have NO idea what you are looking at in
the Red Book? I am NOT your unpaid tutor in the basics of medieval
research. A "French cousin", presumably meaning a Norman, would quite
obviously not be assessed for scutage in Devon unless he held there. It
is PROOF POSITIVE that a Henry and an Oliver de Tracy were both living
and holding fees IN DEVON in 1199/1200, and so obviously are
overwhelmingly likely to have been the Henry and Oliver recorded as
enfoeffing tenants in 1196.

>
> Of course it would also be normal for there to be "junior" branches of the family in England also. So perhaps this Henry could be a younger brother of Oliver?

So after griping that the Henry whom I suggested to be living in 1196
did not occur in records (which is now shown to be false) you are ready
to summon into existence a whole new branch of the family, still
surnamed "de Tracy" as if they held nothing to provide a toponym of
their own and occurring nowhere at all outside your imagination?

> What I am not seeing immediately is how to imagine this Henry, a minor landholder, would be Oliver's father who was mentioned years earlier in 1196.

Who under the moon says he was a "minor landholder"? Have you even
bothered to look at the list he occurs in? I mistyped "1½ marks" when
the source says 50 marks and a ½, yet then you didn't have the nous to
realise that he actually paid more than anyone on the list of major
Devon personages except for his Barnstaple co-holder William de Briouze
at 55 marks?

> I don't recall seeing cases of fathers passing on their main lands to their heir but retaining a smaller chunk.

I didn't imply that this happened. My suggestion was that Henry's son
Oliver may have taken charge of the Devon holdings while his father
Henry (II) was in Normandy. That Oliver had the authority to enfeoff
tenants may indicate that he was his father's sub-tenant in some of the
Barnstaple holding and they became his under-tenants.

> I suppose this would require a complex transaction that might have been a bit legally fraught with danger in this period, given the contestable nature of these lands they had apparently acquired from the Briouzes during the reign of Stephen? The Briouzes had not yet fallen out of favour, and Stapleton seems to think the 1196 concord was part of a compromise worked out between the conflicting claims of the two families, deriving from that Stephen-era grant to Henry?

We don't know that there was a "Stephen-era grant to Henry" rather than
inheritance by his wife, but in any event the 1196 document does record
a compromise between the families. What has this to do with the
revelation you are now trying to minimise that your were clearly barking
up the wrong tree from the start with your fancy about a geriatric
prospective father? The missing Henry I proposed has been found. Get
over it.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Mar-21 7:33 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

Apart from the manifest evidence that the Henry assessed for scutage in
1199/1200 was at that time head of the Barnstaple family, and the Oliver
who was not yet a father in 1196 almost certainly his son since these
two were the only Tracy enfeoffors named then, where do you propose that
a "junior branch" originated?

Did you bother to read the 1110 charter of your "sole" Henry's father,
in which there was named an eldest son who does not occur subsequently
and from whom Henry must have inherited the Tracy patrimony between
their father's retirement to Mont-Saint-Michel and his own first
appearance in English records? Perhaps you think his aunt Geva may have
started an alternative Tracy line?

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

No Peter, I think you are off on a side track trying to force mistakes into what I write again, and that is indeed pretty tiresome and useless. I hereby place my tail between my legs and declare you to be alpha male Peter. Can we get back to genealogy? It was, as explained, just a quick note before looking at it more closely. I note that you've dodged the question of how a father could pass his barony to his heir decades before he died and then be found holding completely different lands. Or perhaps it is better to say, even if this is what happened, you have not explained how such an unusual situation would help us prove or disprove anything about the question at hand.

I used the term "French cousin" only as a loose term and simply meant that this might be the other branch of the family who is better known from French records, and discussed in Stapleton: Turgis who was brother of the first Henry, William who inherited his lands, etc. (So no I did not summon them into existence, and you know it.) They clearly also had significant (but different) English lands indeed, and I should not have used the word "minor". But I feel that if those lands were "major" this makes the problem with your new suggestion even bigger?

I disagree that you have found the missing Henry of 1196, father of Oliver. The man you have found does not appear to fit that bill at all, unless I am missing something. Funnily enough, MEDLANDS seems to have a better summary of the family than the one you are giving. (I had not checked until now.) Cawley apparently used Stapleton. He shows two Henrys in this period, apparent cousins of Oliver. I am not sure if MEDLANDS is right to distinguish these two younger Henrys, whose fathers were both named William. But in any case I don't see how him/them can be Oliver's father? But they/he do/does seem to match the record you found.

Just as an aside, the MEDLANDS notes remind me that when I looked at this family some time back I found myself reading this:

Vincent, Nicholas, "The Murderers of Thomas Becket", in: Fryde and Reitz eds, Bischofsmord im Mittelalter, pp.231-p.232. https://books.google.be/books?id=btg-_IyygYoC&pg=PA232 I can not see p. 233 at the moment on Google.

I see that Cawley integrates these Tracys into the tree with Oliver, but with some uncertainties marked. I don't at first sight see on what basis.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Peter please explain why you think it is manifest that the Henry assessed for scutage in 1199/1200 was at that time head of the Barnstaple family. This Henry is clearly a contemporary of Oliver, long after 1196. On what basis are you trying to insist on their being one single Anglo-Norman Traci patrimony in this period?

As for the 1110 charter, does this mean you now admit that I did not make-up the existence of another branch of the family, associated with French records, and discussed by Stapleton. Progress I suppose. :)

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Peter for the other Devon Tracy family see for example Sanders p. 20 (Bradninch) and Red Book I, p. 254.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

FWIW I notice MEDLANDS actually has 3 sets of Williams with sons named Henry, because there is another Traci family "of Toddington" down below in a separate sub-section. I can see that part of the issue here is that Cawley is trying to account for the published discussions I mentioned about the murderer of Beckett, and whether he was descended from an illegitimate son of Henry I.

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Mar-21 8:41 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

> Peter please explain why you think it is manifest that the Henry assessed for scutage in 1199/1200 was at that time head of the Barnstaple family. This Henry is clearly a contemporary of Oliver, long after 1196. On what basis are you trying to insist on their being one single Anglo-Norman Traci patrimony in this period?

What on earth do you think you are on about now? The Henry assessed for
almost the same amount in scutage as William de Briouze was either his
o-holder in Barnstaple or there is some phantom major landholder in
Devon who does not occur in any other record so far brought to light.

You objected before that there could be no other Henry than your single
man occurring from 1110 to 1149-65, King Stephen's warrior, whom you
insisted must also have been the man referred to in 1196.

Now you are trying to pretend that 1199/2000 is "long after" 1196 and
there is a second Henry fr Tracy at large in Devon who you tried to
characterise as a "minor" landholder to sustain your misconceived
"correction" that has fallen flat.

> As for the 1110 charter, does this mean you now admit that I did not make-up the existence of another branch of the family, associated with French records, and discussed by Stapleton. Progress I suppose. :)

I don't have a clue what new nonsense you are spouting here, unless you
are talking at cross purposes about the Tracy family of Becket's
assassin. The 1110 charter records a single Tracy family in Normandy,
with no scions available to account for your attempt to summon a
"junior" branch of major Devon landholders out of the ether. Toponyms at
this time were not shared around ad lib like surnames. If a branch of a
Norman seigneurial family held some other possession of their agnatic
line, or were granted some new English holding after the conquest, then
they almost always took a new toponym from that other place. Two Tracy
lineages with a Henry and an Oliver in Devon, both clearly keeping like
status with the Briouzes, would be more distinct than the records you
are failing to comprehend of these two men from 1196 and 1199/1200.

I suggest you prepare yourself better before coming up with any more
supposed "corrections" that waste a lot of time and end up nowhere.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Mar-21 10:47 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:

> Now you are trying to pretend that 1199/2000 is "long after" 1196

2000 is notably longer after 1196 than 1200, that I should have typed. I
wonder if John Schmeeckle has met with any Tracy revenants over the past
few decades.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 11-Mar-21 8:35 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

> No Peter, I think you are off on a side track trying to force mistakes into what I write again, and that is indeed pretty tiresome and useless. I hereby place my tail between my legs and declare you to be alpha male Peter. Can we get back to genealogy? It was, as explained, just a quick note before looking at it more closely. I note that you've dodged the question of how a father could pass his barony to his heir decades before he died and then be found holding completely different lands. Or perhaps it is better to say, even if this is what happened, you have not explained how such an unusual situation would help us prove or disprove anything about the question at hand.

I explained specifically that Henry's son Oliver may have been his
sub-tenant enfeoffing under-tenants. Did you not bother to read this
before pretending I had "dodged" your specious question?

The amount of pretentious waffle in your posts is trying, to say the least.

Someone else can take up the chore of trying to get through your
self-serving obtuseness, I'm not wasting more time on this.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:55:04 PM UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> On 11-Mar-21 8:35 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > No Peter, I think you are off on a side track trying to force mistakes into what I write again, and that is indeed pretty tiresome and useless. I hereby place my tail between my legs and declare you to be alpha male Peter. Can we get back to genealogy? It was, as explained, just a quick note before looking at it more closely. I note that you've dodged the question of how a father could pass his barony to his heir decades before he died and then be found holding completely different lands. Or perhaps it is better to say, even if this is what happened, you have not explained how such an unusual situation would help us prove or disprove anything about the question at hand.

> Did you not bother to read this
> before pretending I had "dodged" your specious question?
>
> The amount of pretentious waffle in your posts is trying, to say the least.
>
> Someone else can take up the chore of trying to get through your
> self-serving obtuseness, I'm not wasting more time on this.
>
> Peter Stewart

Peter these two replies are a bit silly, but at least not as silly as the bits I won't bother replying to.

1. "I explained specifically that Henry's son Oliver may have been his sub-tenant enfeoffing under-tenants." Clearly the problem I pointed at as soon as you raised this, and which you are avoiding, is that Oliver was tenant in chief in this period, not any Henry. Oliver and William appeared for decades before this as tenants in chief in Devon. The Henry you have found in 1199 replaces William of 1196, and Oliver continues to appear. In 1196 it was still William and Oliver (Red Book). You've conveniently chosen not to reply to everything I wrote.

2. "The 1110 charter records a single Tracy family in Normandy, with no scions available to account for your attempt to summon a "junior" branch of major Devon landholders out of the ether. " The two sons named in 1110 (Turgis and Henry) clearly account for two continuing lines present in both Devon and Normandy, right up to 1196 (William and Oliver, who already appears in 1166) and beyond (Henry and Oliver).

Again, look at Stapleton, the Red Book, and for that matter, perhaps you need to check MEDLANDS. :)

[lancast...@gmail.com]

My apologies Peter, I misread you on point 1. You are arguing Henry the father of Oliver was an active SUB-tenant of the same Oliver, his tenant-in-chief, although in 1199 he has taken over the old lands of William de Traci, who had been tenant in chief for many decades in another Devon fief. I think that would be a remarkable situation, and nothing in the evidence pushes us to propose anything like this. There is not much point me trying to spell this out, because I'm sure you are so much more able to argue against your own supposition here, that you'll undoubtedly end up criticizing me for not criticizing you properly or some such thing. Poor Occam's razor seems to have ended up in the trash bin?

[Peter Stewart]

On 12-Mar-21 12:35 AM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:55:04 PM UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
>> On 11-Mar-21 8:35 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> No Peter, I think you are off on a side track trying to force mistakes into what I write again, and that is indeed pretty tiresome and useless. I hereby place my tail between my legs and declare you to be alpha male Peter. Can we get back to genealogy? It was, as explained, just a quick note before looking at it more closely. I note that you've dodged the question of how a father could pass his barony to his heir decades before he died and then be found holding completely different lands. Or perhaps it is better to say, even if this is what happened, you have not explained how such an unusual situation would help us prove or disprove anything about the question at hand.
>> Did you not bother to read this
>> before pretending I had "dodged" your specious question?
>>
>> The amount of pretentious waffle in your posts is trying, to say the least.
>>
>> Someone else can take up the chore of trying to get through your
>> self-serving obtuseness, I'm not wasting more time on this.
>>
>> Peter Stewart
>
> Peter these two replies are a bit silly, but at least not as silly as the bits I won't bother replying to.
>
> 1. "I explained specifically that Henry's son Oliver may have been his sub-tenant enfeoffing under-tenants." Clearly the problem I pointed at as soon as you raised this, and which you are avoiding, is that Oliver was tenant in chief in this period, not any Henry. Oliver and William appeared for decades before this as tenants in chief in Devon. The Henry you have found in 1199 replaces William of 1196, and Oliver continues to appear. In 1196 it was still William and Oliver (Red Book). You've conveniently chosen not to reply to everything I wrote.

This is a red herring - apart from the direct lineage of however many
Henrys and Olivers we are discussing, there was no other Tracy family
holding in Devon at anything remotely like the scale of the Briouze
share of Barnstaple. The Henry occurring in the scutage assessment of
1199/1200 was holding in Devon at this scale (50½ vs 55 marks). He does
not in any meaningful way that has been addressed replace "William of
1196". The Henry de Tracys who were recorded as sons of William de
Tracys were not named along with Oliver in 1196 as having enfeoffed
Barnstaple sub-tenants, and were not feudatories at anything like the
level of the Henry occurring in the 1196 agreement or the 1199/1200
scutage assessment.

You are attempting to shoe-horn every morsel of evidence into your
preconception that the Tracy succession in Barnstaple from 1130 to 1274
went Henry > Oliver > Henry, when this cannot plausibly account for the
Henry of 1196 and now clearly not at all for the Henry of 1199/1200.

> 2. "The 1110 charter records a single Tracy family in Normandy, with no scions available to account for your attempt to summon a "junior" branch of major Devon landholders out of the ether. " The two sons named in 1110 (Turgis and Henry) clearly account for two continuing lines present in both Devon and Normandy, right up to 1196 (William and Oliver, who already appears in 1166) and beyond (Henry and Oliver).
>
> Again, look at Stapleton, the Red Book, and for that matter, perhaps you need to check MEDLANDS. :)

The son Turgis named in 1110 is not proven to have had any descendants
at all, and he is the only other potential conduit on record for descent
from his father who became a monk at Mont-Saint-Michel. In 1172 Oliver
de Tracy (presumably the son of Henry from 1146 who was deprived and
captured before 1184) held the Norman lands in Cérences that would have
belonged instead to direct heirs of Turgis if he had any.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

This neatly illustrates your pattern of failing to comprehend plain
statements and then projecting your miscomprehensions onto me.

Far from "arguing Henry the father of Oliver was an active SUB-tenant of
the same Oliver, his tenant-in-chief" I have repeatedly suggested the
exact reverse.

My proposal all along has been that the Oliver who was captured by 1184
was succeeded by an elusive son named Henry, not directly by another
Oliver as per Sanders and Keats-Rohan (this second Oliver in my scheme
was the second Henry's son, and so the first Oliver's grandson, active
as a sub-tenant of his father Henry in Barnstaple and probably also
holding in his own or his - by 1196 - wife's right in Devon at an as yet
unquantifiable level, for which he was recorded in the scutage
assessment of 1199/1200.

I think the evidence posted here adequately supports the existence and
status of this second Henry as co-tenant-in-chief of Barnstaple in the
1190s, and that he cannot have been the Henry of 1110-1149/65.

One of the frustrating aspects of SGM is that when two people are at
loggerheads over evidence that they have taken the trouble to present
for newsgroup readers, others are often reluctant to come forward with
their views. This is flatly unhelpful on their part, as obviously one or
both of the proponents cannot be making sense to them on every point at
issue. Maybe this is because minds haven't been made up to a comfortable
point, maybe because some lurkers regard themselves as consumers rather
than contributors, and maybe because some actually enjoy vehement
disputation as a spectator sport. Whatever the reason, apart from an
appreciated post from Mark Jennings, this thread has been a dialogue
spiraling into a stoush without input from other perspectives. Tedious
and unrewarding.

Peter Stewart

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 5:49:35 PM UTC-5, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> One of the frustrating aspects of SGM is that when two people are at
> loggerheads over evidence that they have taken the trouble to present
> for newsgroup readers, others are often reluctant to come forward with
> their views. This is flatly unhelpful on their part, as obviously one or
> both of the proponents cannot be making sense to them on every point at
> issue. Maybe this is because minds haven't been made up to a comfortable
> point, maybe because some lurkers regard themselves as consumers rather
> than contributors, and maybe because some actually enjoy vehement
> disputation as a spectator sport. Whatever the reason, apart from an
> appreciated post from Mark Jennings, this thread has been a dialogue
> spiraling into a stoush without input from other perspectives. Tedious
> and unrewarding.
>
> Peter Stewart

I do fear to tread in here, as I am far more comfortable with German than with English genealogy. So just a few observations offered humbly from an ignorant outsider:

1) I don't really like appeals to Occam's razor in cases of sparse evidence, because for me the default answer to that should always be "we simply don't know". Hypotheses should definitely fit all available evidence (or else explain why certain evidence is unreliable), but if there are multiple hypotheses that fit all the evidence, then we simply can't come to a conclusion, and arguing about shades of likelihood becomes tiresome.

2) As I do not have access to either Sanders or Keats-Rohan, I do not know the evidences in this case. All I'm going off of is what I see in Medlands (which certainly has its own reliability issues). From Medlands it appears there was a de Tracy family that held Barnstaple in Devonshire and a de Tracy family that held Bradnich in Devonshire. These appear to be on opposite sides of Devonshire, so possible not closely related. At least in 1167/68 the holdings seem to have been of similar size, as (according to Cawley's reading of the Red Book) both Oliver de Tracy and William de Tracy were assessed 17 pounds 10 shillings for their lands in Devonshire. What gives me the most pause is the statement by Cawley that ""Oliver de Traci" paid a fine for "heritanda baroñ Willi de Traci" in Devonshire, dated [1199/1200]".

3) Since I am an ignorant outsider, and since Cawley obviously does not cite a lot of what has been referred to in the posts above, what would be useful to me would be a simple listing of all of the available evidences, without hypotheses or interpretations - so that one can get a good overview of what all of the jigsaw puzzle pieces in the box are before trying to piece them together.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Peter so in this scenario your "elusive" Henry, tenant in chief, managed to avoid ever being recorded in any exchequer record until long after his son Oliver had successfully been managing to appear in documents for years, for all the world as if he were tenant in chief. His father and son, were both named Oliver, and we have no record of that father dying, or the shy Henry taking up his inheritance, only a continuous series of records mentioning an Oliver. So it almost looks like you are saying that dumb luck created a situation which an evil genealogist-hating demon probably could not have out-done.

There are two records for your Henry, you argue: His son Oliver, not Henry himself, made the big deal in 1196 with Henry, supposed tenant in chief, and alive according to you, just mentioned as an aside. But then a significant number of years later, when his son Oliver was a few years from death, this Henry suddenly appears in an exchequer record (along with his son Oliver, who has been appearing in all the records as if he were tenant in chief for some time).

Is this summary correct? I am wondering why "elusive" Henry decided to come out of hiding so late in the story?

> My proposal all along has been that the Oliver who was captured by 1184
> was succeeded by an elusive son named Henry, not directly by another
> Oliver as per Sanders and Keats-Rohan (this second Oliver in my scheme
> was the second Henry's son, and so the first Oliver's grandson, active
> as a sub-tenant of his father Henry in Barnstaple and probably also
> holding in his own or his - by 1196 - wife's right in Devon at an as yet
> unquantifiable level, for which he was recorded in the scutage
> assessment of 1199/1200.

Secondly, I am wondering how you would explain the two Tracys in Devonshire, William and Oliver, 1194/5 (Red Book I, p.88, interesting reference to Hugh de Courtenay, Oliver in "per brevia"), or 1196/7 (p. 112), or indeed in the 1166 baronial cartae (pp.254-5) and 1167-8 (pp. 42-3).

The problem is that if I understand correctly you argue that William in this period was a minor landholder of a completely different scale to both his contemporary Oliver (who was again under "per brevia"), and his replacement (I think) - the Henry of 1199? I am frankly not seeing it, and figure having come this far I should be brave and say so, despite not looking forward to the torrent of insults you will now inevitably send. :) (...Not sure what makes people reluctant to join in.) I can guess from one of your remarks that there will be an obvious solution you are going to whallop me with, which will be something to do with the Briouze inheritance, and your surprising assertion that Oliver must be holding by his wife's right, but please can you make it clear how this can fit with those Red Book records?

I suppose your "elusive" Henry is also the one mentioned Red Book p. 160 (1201-12), where we can compare him to Oliver over the page on p. 162?

Andrew

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Just on Occam's razor (which comes up relatively often here) I tend to agree it is often invocated inappropriately. However, when it is not being used wrongly, to reject it fully can lead to ridiculous pseudo-problems. We are lucky that people who have to make decisions about machinery such as airplanes do not have to post first on SGM.

If we have a series of records for an Oliver de Traci in the same place, we tend to suggest that we have a good hypothesis to make, which looks better than any other: it is one person. If someone counter argues that every one of those records is probably in fact a different person, because no one can prove otherwise, you can't really argue against that with logic on its own. As David Hume pointed out long ago, we have no logical argument to justify why we think the sun will come up again tomorrow, but we all know we can make decisions based on such assumptions. To avoid problems coming from the necessary use of such common sense though, it is best practice to test proposals in a sceptical manner, when we have the opportunity to do so.

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 7:19:00 PM UTC-5, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

> Just on Occam's razor (which comes up relatively often here) I tend to agree it is often invocated inappropriately. However, when it is not being used wrongly, to reject it fully can lead to ridiculous pseudo-problems. We are lucky that people who have to make decisions about machinery such as airplanes do not have to post first on SGM.
>
> If we have a series of records for an Oliver de Traci in the same place, we tend to suggest that we have a good hypothesis to make, which looks better than any other: it is one person. If someone counter argues that every one of those records is probably in fact a different person, because no one can prove otherwise, you can't really argue against that with logic on its own. As David Hume pointed out long ago, we have no logical argument to justify why we think the sun will come up again tomorrow, but we all know we can make decisions based on such assumptions. To avoid problems coming from the necessary use of such common sense though, it is best practice to test proposals in a sceptical manner, when we have the opportunity to do so.

Sure, if I see the same name in records separated by a couple of years or even 5-10 years, I will assume they relate to the same person. When I see the same name over a span of more than 30 years, I start getting uneasy. And when I see the same name in records 70 years apart, at a time when records are known to be fragmentary and deaths were not yet systematically recorded, I get extremely uneasy and would like to see confirmatory evidence that they indeed relate to the same person.

Yes, of course it is possible that someone could have had an heir in their 70s. But for this time period it is, to my mind, just as possible that the record is simply missing a generation (or two). So, at least to my outsider's eyes, both your and Peter's hypotheses are equally plausible, and equally lacking in truly decisive evidence.

Luckily we are not building airplanes, but discussing medieval genealogy - I trust nobody's health or welfare will be affected if we don't come to a conclusion.

[Peter Stewart]

We can't come to a firm conclusion on the available evidence: that is
why I objected to the assertion of "correcting" Sanders and Keats-Rohan
in the first place and explicitly offered suggestions in response.

I became irate - as I usually will when people post as if knowing their
subject thoroughly but turn out not even to have checked all the sources
cited in the material they are purporting to "correct" - and I don't
propose now to go on engaging with Andrew since he continues to
misunderstand and mischaracterise my clearly stated positions in order
to create straw-man scenarios.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 12-Mar-21 10:52 AM, Carl-Henry Geschwind wrote:
> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 5:49:35 PM UTC-5, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
>> One of the frustrating aspects of SGM is that when two people are at
>> loggerheads over evidence that they have taken the trouble to present
>> for newsgroup readers, others are often reluctant to come forward with
>> their views. This is flatly unhelpful on their part, as obviously one or
>> both of the proponents cannot be making sense to them on every point at
>> issue. Maybe this is because minds haven't been made up to a comfortable
>> point, maybe because some lurkers regard themselves as consumers rather
>> than contributors, and maybe because some actually enjoy vehement
>> disputation as a spectator sport. Whatever the reason, apart from an
>> appreciated post from Mark Jennings, this thread has been a dialogue
>> spiraling into a stoush without input from other perspectives. Tedious
>> and unrewarding.
>>
>> Peter Stewart
>
> I do fear to tread in here, as I am far more comfortable with German than with English genealogy. So just a few observations offered humbly from an ignorant outsider:
>
> 1) I don't really like appeals to Occam's razor in cases of sparse evidence, because for me the default answer to that should always be "we simply don't know". Hypotheses should definitely fit all available evidence (or else explain why certain evidence is unreliable), but if there are multiple hypotheses that fit all the evidence, then we simply can't come to a conclusion, and arguing about shades of likelihood becomes tiresome.
>
> 2) As I do not have access to either Sanders or Keats-Rohan, I do not know the evidences in this case. All I'm going off of is what I see in Medlands (which certainly has its own reliability issues). From Medlands it appears there was a de Tracy family that held Barnstaple in Devonshire and a de Tracy family that held Bradnich in Devonshire. These appear to be on opposite sides of Devonshire, so possible not closely related. At least in 1167/68 the holdings seem to have been of similar size, as (according to Cawley's reading of the Red Book) both Oliver de Tracy and William de Tracy were assessed 17 pounds 10 shillings for their lands in Devonshire. What gives me the most pause is the statement by Cawley that ""Oliver de Traci" paid a fine for "heritanda baroñ Willi de Traci" in Devonshire, dated [1199/1200]".
>

Apologies, Carl-Henry - I meant to reply to this before but didn't get
round to it.

The list for 1167/68 in the Red Book has two Oliver de Tracy entries -
one owing 17 pounds ten shillings, the same as William de Tracy further
down, and the second occurring immediately below William de Briouze
owing 18 pounds and 1 mark, and a further 2 marks. William de Briouze
owed 28 marks. These are not apples to apples, they are debts
outstanding and not assessments for scutage.

The entry in 'Rotuli de oblatis et finibus' that is rendered on Medieval
Lands as 'a fine for "heritanda baroñ Willi de Traci"' actually reads
'Oliverus de Traci dat domino Regi mille m. pro habenda baronie Willelmi
de Traci' (Oliver de Tracy pays to the lord king 1,000 marks in order to
have the barony of William de Tracy), which was valued at 100 pounds in
England and 200 in Normandy. I don't know where Charles Cawley came by
his peculiar expansion of "hnda" as "heritanda" but this is the normal
contraction for the gerundive habenda, i.e. for having the barony of
William de Tracy and not explicitly for inheriting it. I would assume
that inheritance was the likeliest means of transfer, and that the
beneficiary was probably not the Barnstaple Oliver de Tracy whom we have
discussed so far but a Bradnich namesake, since there may have been two
of them in Devon around 1199/1200 as in 1167/68. The exchequer records
may not preserve enough information to say when two Oliver de Tracys
were active in Devon - I haven't looked.

The Barnstaple Oliver de Tracy owed a fine of 500 marks for the family's
holding there in 1165 and was assessed for scutage on 25 knights' fees
in the same year. The Tracy family at Bradnich may have been a
collateral line of the same family or possibly vassals of theirs in
Normandy who had adopted some of the same onomastics. At any rate, the
connection has not been established for certain and the descent from
Turgis the elder son of William de Tracy who became a monk in 1110 is
speculative.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 12-Mar-21 5:19 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:
> I would assume
> that inheritance was the likeliest means of transfer, and that the
> beneficiary was probably not the Barnstaple Oliver de Tracy whom we have
> discussed so far but a Bradnich namesake, since there may have been two
> of them in Devon around 1199/1200 as in 1167/68. The exchequer records
> may not preserve enough information to say when two Oliver de Tracys
> were active in Devon - I haven't looked.
>
> The Barnstaple Oliver de Tracy owed a fine of 500 marks for the family's
> holding there in 1165 and was assessed for scutage on 25 knights' fees
> in the same year. The Tracy family at Bradnich may have been a
> collateral line of the same family or possibly vassals of theirs in
> Normandy who had adopted some of the same onomastics. At any rate, the
> connection has not been established for certain and the descent from
> Turgis the elder son of William de Tracy who became a monk in 1110 is
> speculative.

Sorry, scrub the word Bradnich [sic] from this entirely - my memory
wasn't up to the task. Bradninch was the barony of Henry I's bastard son
William de Tracy, not of the line perhaps collateral to the Barnstaple
family.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I'm sorry Peter but in the context, and given that your template for such posts on this list unfortunately always include sections about how you were always right and other people are infuriatingly stupid, this reply basically just means that your Henry of 1199 in the Red Book is not something that has added anything to the discussion of what is likely or unlikely. This was the case with the long insult-laden series of discourses about the word "fuit". You are stepping out of the discussion just when I have pointed to the other entries in the Red Book and asked you to explain how they could fit with your "suggestion". But this particular type of evidence seems quite likely to be relevant.

I still can't see anything doubtful in Stapleton's straightforward correction to the 2 Oliver scenario which he believed came from Dugdale. So far what we have is that you've admitted the 2 Oliver scenario has a problem, and you're searching for some alternative scenario which might be equally convincing or better than Stapleton's. Honestly, I don't see that you achieved that at all so far. With every new bit of evidence we discuss you are needing to add new complications to your scenario, but there is no evidence for any of them. I notice in your new reply to Carl-Henry, you want to add still more Olivers into the story.

I think you need to explain all the evidence at once, rather than shifting focus from one bit to another and constantly changing the way you present your case, and look at the explanation of Stapleton.

For what it is worth I think no one has argued that William de Traci of Bradninch was necessarily son of Turgis, but it seems he held the same lands in France. Correct?

[lancast...@gmail.com]

On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 3:42:18 AM UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:

Carl-Henry, the only thing I would correct is that we are not really dealing with a scenario of Oliver being tenant in chief for a full 70 years. That is also not how Peter reads it. According to Peter's estimate, which seems reasonable, the Oliver proposed by Stapleton would have been born by 1133 (and I would add, likely quite close to that date), would have taken over the tenancy in chief by 1155, and was at least 63 when he had the son who eventually became his heir in 1210. As far as I can see, this "high" age of 63 is the only reasonable "argumentation" against Stapleton's correction to Dugdale (who Sanders probably followed, who was in turn apparently followed by Keats-Rohan).

It appears to me that this is very weak argumentation. Such a chronology would be quite normal for a man who had no surviving children with his first wife, and then re-married. I believe that was common. We know Henry who succeeded his father Oliver in 1210 was a minor, and Peter seems to accept that his father was the same one who already seemed to be running the show in the 1196 Devon concord. (Peter thus needs to argue that Oliver was not really running the show, but instead his father the "elusive" Henry was, in the background.) So we know that quite some time before 1210, Henry's father Oliver was an adult who had not yet succeeded to have a male heir.

So it is not really a case where lack of documentation is the big issue. Effectively, Peter is claiming that the relatively good chain of documentation is accidently including and omitting people in such a way that it gives a misleading impression - as if by design. To me it seems that to make such arguments convincing you need to have some kind of explanation about why the documents would accidently give a completely wrong impression - for example a case of likely fraud. But that is missing here.

For what it's worth, I spent a reasonable proportion of my medieval genealogy time on Sanders in recent years and I think it is correct to say that the chronology required for Stapleton's scenario is not unusual for the 12th century, and much less likely-looking scenarios routinely go un-questioned (for example by Sanders and Keats-Rohan). I am not using that as an argument though, because I am all for an increased level of scepticism, and probably Peter and I agree on this.

That Oliver mentioned his father's enfeoffments in the 1196 document seems perfectly consistent with this father having died in the time of King Stephen, because the context of that deal was the negotiation to settle the situation with the Briouzes who had originally had the land which Oliver's father Henry had usurped during Stephen's reign. We know from other baronies that such situations often simmered away and caused friction and the need for adjusted agreements well into the next century. In the barony of Crick two competing claimant families apparently re-adjusted their share of the barony several times, back and forth, over generations, presumably as the two families felt stronger or weaker in the political climate. King John's time was when many of these unstable situations were finally closed off, but it means that until then, records such as the Henry de Tracy who Peter is pointing at in 1199 can be difficult to interpret with confidence.

As far as I can see, Peter has not really found a way to turn the Red Book information into any kind of consistent alternative narrative. I am interested to see if Peter or anyone else can improve upon that. I am quite open to whatever evidence and argumentation comes up, but to me it seems clear for now that Stapleton gave a straightforward "most likely scenario".

[lancast...@gmail.com]

As Cawley notes, the equation of Henry I's bastard son with the Bradninch baron is apparently no longer a subject of scholarly consensus. See Vincent, Nicholas, "The Murderers of Thomas Becket", in: Fryde and Reitz eds, Bischofsmord im Mittelalter, pp.231-p.232. https://books.google.be/books?id=btg-_IyygYoC&pg=PA232 "there is no evidence that Henry I's bastard, who died shortly after 1135, had any connection with the Devon barony of Bradninch".

[Peter Stewart]

On 12-Mar-21 7:18 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, March 12, 2021 at 3:42:18 AM UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
>> On 12-Mar-21 12:05 PM, Carl-Henry Geschwind wrote:
>>> On Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 7:19:00 PM UTC-5, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> Just on Occam's razor (which comes up relatively often here) I tend to agree it is often invocated inappropriately. However, when it is not being used wrongly, to reject it fully can lead to ridiculous pseudo-problems. We are lucky that people who have to make decisions about machinery such as airplanes do not have to post first on SGM.
>>>>
>>>> If we have a series of records for an Oliver de Traci in the same place, we tend to suggest that we have a good hypothesis to make, which looks better than any other: it is one person. If someone counter argues that every one of those records is probably in fact a different person, because no one can prove otherwise, you can't really argue against that with logic on its own. As David Hume pointed out long ago, we have no logical argument to justify why we think the sun will come up again tomorrow, but we all know we can make decisions based on such assumptions. To avoid problems coming from the necessary use of such common sense though, it is best practice to test proposals in a sceptical manner, when we have the opportunity to do so.
>>>
>>> Sure, if I see the same name in records separated by a couple of years or even 5-10 years, I will assume they relate to the same person. When I see the same name over a span of more than 30 years, I start getting uneasy. And when I see the same name in records 70 years apart, at a time when records are known to be fragmentary and deaths were not yet systematically recorded, I get extremely uneasy and would like to see confirmatory evidence that they indeed relate to the same person.
>>>
>>> Yes, of course it is possible that someone could have had an heir in their 70s. But for this time period it is, to my mind, just as possible that the record is simply missing a generation (or two). So, at least to my outsider's eyes, both your and Peter's hypotheses are equally plausible, and equally lacking in truly decisive evidence.
>>>
>>> Luckily we are not building airplanes, but discussing medieval genealogy - I trust nobody's health or welfare will be affected if we don't come to a conclusion.
>>>
>> We can't come to a firm conclusion on the available evidence: that is
>> why I objected to the assertion of "correcting" Sanders and Keats-Rohan
>> in the first place and explicitly offered suggestions in response.
>>
>> I became irate - as I usually will when people post as if knowing their
>> subject thoroughly but turn out not even to have checked all the sources
>> cited in the material they are purporting to "correct" - and I don't
>> propose now to go on engaging with Andrew since he continues to
>> misunderstand and mischaracterise my clearly stated positions in order
>> to create straw-man scenarios.
>>
>> Peter Stewart
>
> I'm sorry Peter but in the context, and given that your template for such posts on this list unfortunately always include sections about how you were always right and other people are infuriatingly stupid,

For the record, I challenge anyone to find a single post from me over
the past two decades that includes such content as is stated above to be
my invariable habit.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

You are even going to dispute that? Your own post, which I was replying to, noted that you often become irate like this. The excuse you gave in this case was, trying to track back this discussion, is supposedly (by your own account) a side issue that came up well into the discussion because I made a wrong assumption about an "idem" in a Sanders footnote. It had no bearing at all on the main topic except that it led me to call an 1146 charter an 1147 charter a couple of times.

In other words, there was no good reason to become irate, and you know very well that this is what you do all the time.

To repeat it one more time: the error I noted in Sanders and Keats-Rohan in my first post is correct, and you accepted that from the beginning. It was they who had not checked all the sources, including especially the concord of 1196 and Stapleton who noted the same error long ago. I see no big problem with that though, because we are all imperfect. I also never claimed any sort of kudos for this minor post about information which I noted that I was just passing through.

The subsequent discussion is about a new hypothesis you have proposed, and nothing to do with my original post, which was, just to say it again; completely correct. I find your new proposal completely unconvincing and THAT makes you irate. It is arbitrary. It assumes the records are misleading. That is a red flag. It is ALWAYS possible, but trivial, to use arbitrary scenarios to say that the information coming to our senses is misleading for reasons we can not perceive.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Peter FWIW, I think that this statement by you is where you crossed your rubicon, getting too focused on insults, and putting yourself in a corner. Since this post by you you've apparently been unable to write sensibly to me because it would involve back tracking on the strong wording? I think in common parlance this was intended to be a "gotcha" post, with the gotcha clearly flagged by the all caps bits...

"Golly this is tiresome. Do you have NO idea what you are looking at in the Red Book? I am NOT your unpaid tutor in the basics of medieval research. A "French cousin", presumably meaning a Norman, would quite obviously not be assessed for scutage in Devon unless he held there. It is PROOF POSITIVE that a Henry and an Oliver de Tracy were both living and holding fees IN DEVON in 1199/1200, and so obviously are
overwhelmingly likely to have been the Henry and Oliver recorded as enfoeffing tenants in 1196."

As you must have realized after posting it, there had long been two major Tracy families in Devon. In 1199 there were still two. This new Henry replaces a William, and Oliver is still there. Whatever happened the new Henry certainly does not superficially seem be the father of the old Oliver. So this specific statement about the evidence was not a good one, and after that I'm afraid it seems your posts are not constructive. Honestly I think you need to review the ideas you were expressing in that post.

[Peter Stewart]

On 12-Mar-21 5:19 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:

On reflection this does not stack up as well as the interpretation given
by Sanders and Keats-Rohan that the Oliver son of Henry in 1146 had a
son also named Oliver, or that presented by Andrew in which there was a
single Henry and a single Oliver from 1130 to beyond 1196.

There are various ways in which a father and son could both be
tenants-in-chief at the same time, for instance by royal grant to the
son or if he had inherited from his mother or held by right of his wife.
There are also various circumstances in which the son and heir of a
tenant-in-chief may have deputised for him in the late-12th century, for
instance if the father was incapacitated or away on crusade or
pilgrimage. Nonetheless, my loose suggestion on this basis is
unsustainable in the case of Barnstaple.

The two Oliver de Tracy entries in 1167/68 may be a record of father and
son, but not of the Barnstaple succession as laid out by Sanders since
his Oliver I lived until 1184 and Oliver II until 1210 whereas the
Oliver who received his share of Barnstaple back by enfeoffment from
William de Briouze in January 1196 was son of Henry. The concord
included a Barnstaple sub-tenant "Radulfo de Secheuill de dono Henrici
de Traci" enfeoffed by Henry the father of Oliver living at that time
("a predicto Oliuero uel Henrico patre suo"), and "Radulfus de
Seccheville" had held one knight's fee from Oliver de Tracy in his
return of 1166 (Red Book vol. i p. 255).

On this evidence it may be that the Oliver son of Henry named in 1146
had a son of the same name who had died before the settlement of
Barnstaple in 1196. In any event, the Oliver who had been captured by
1184 had been the Barstaple co-holder in 1166 and was made sub-tenant of
William de Briouze in 1196, as Andrew maintained without proving his case.

The necessity for two Olivers in 1199/1200 is obviated by the correction
from "heritanda" to "habenda" in the grant. This was perhaps a
non-heritable transfer of the holdings in England and Normandy of the
William de Tracy who had been deprived after the assassination of
Becket. In this case Oliver de Tracy does not need to have been his
heir, or even his relative for that matter.

The specific factor that bugged me into revising my thoughts on this is
that William de Briouze's agreement over Barnstaple in 1196 did not
require assent from any Henry de Tracy or other relative of Oliver. The
most obvious reason for this is that there were no such relatives in the
offing with potential future claims on the share being ceded to William
by Oliver. In other words, the Oliver of 1146 was apparently the only
child of the Henry who held half of Barnstaple from 1130 to 1149/54 to
remain living or a viable heir and parent-to-be, and if he had had a son
also named Oliver active in 1167/68 then this heir must have died before
January 1196 when Oliver's then wife Eva had as yet no offspring by him.

The pipe rolls and other exchequer records are not a comprehensive
listing of everyone who lived, what they held and when they died. Their
biographies are barely outlined, if at all, and without leaving
informative charters or rising to the notice of chroniclers we often
have to go by guesswork. In this case there are clearer indicators in
the administrative record than have been expounded upthread, and a lot
of time and energy have been wasted by overlooking these.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Thank you for that thoughtful analysis Peter. At this time I am still presuming that Henry of 1199/2000 in the Red Book is the nephew of Hugh de Courterne/Courteney, and son of the William de Traci who apparently was one of the murderers of Becket. As far as I can see MEDLANDS is probably right that this William and Hugh had an earlier uncle named William de Traci. Their relationship of these Brandninch Tracys to the Barnstaple Tracys seems to be difficult to reconstruct exactly now. Of course maybe that's just because I have not looked closely. Perhaps others have leads to that branch? I know that the identity of the Beckett murderers has been written about in recent decades in works I have not had a chance to read.

Concerning the Barnstaple case, I'll add a two more notes about sources.

1. I see Charles Cawley's MEDLANDS also notes a "an undated charter" wherein "domini Henrici de Tracy" requested a daily mass at Pilton St James, for the souls of "Henrici de Traci avi sui et Oliveri patris sui et Hawysiæ avæ suæ". His reference is Malmesbury, Vol. II, CLXXVI, p. 34. Charles sees this Henry as the 13th century one, of Barnstaple. Here is "Malmesbury" https://archive.org/details/registrummalmesb02malm/page/34/mode/2up

At first sight this adds to the case against two generations of Olivers.

2. I finally thought to look at Dugdale, who Stapleton describes as the source of the idea that there were two Olivers. I found it at Baronage Volume 1, p. 621. The EEBO transcription is still quite garbled but is here https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A36794.0001.001/1:6.239?rgn=div2;submit=Go;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=traci

From an old scan I can tidy it up a bit: [Oliver the son of Henry] died before 31 H. 2. as it seems: for in that year the Sheriff of Devon. accounted[r] to the Exchequer for the Profits of his Lands, and paid [s] vi l. xiii s. iv d. to Robert Manduit, for the maintenance of Oliver (his Son and Heir.)

The marginal references r and s are to Rot. Pip. 31 H. 2, which covered parts of 1184 and 1185, and has been discussed in this thread. https://archive.org/details/piperollsociety34pipeuoft/page/164/mode/2up

I wonder how Dugdale came to see a mention of Robert Mauduit here. He is mentioned in this Pipe Roll, but under Wiltshire.

Andrew

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Another source I have not been able to check, which Stapleton refers to as important, is described as "The Great Roll" of 7 Richard I, 1196. I am presuming this is an entry in the Pipe Rolls for that which, but those don't seem to be online. This would be an entry corresponding to the concord/fine in Devon which has already been discussed. Can anyone help out on this one? Am I understand the reference correctly?

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Saturday, March 13, 2021 at 7:19:13 AM UTC-5, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

> Another source I have not been able to check, which Stapleton refers to as important, is described as "The Great Roll" of 7 Richard I, 1196. I am presuming this is an entry in the Pipe Rolls for that which, but those don't seem to be online. This would be an entry corresponding to the concord/fine in Devon which has already been discussed. Can anyone help out on this one? Am I understand the reference correctly?

The publication of the 1196 fine at https://archive.org/details/publications61devo/page/n41/mode/2up, footnote 1, states "This document is partly obliterated. The translation of the illegible part has been made (within brackets) from a full copy of the fine, which is enrolled on the Pipe Roll for 7 Richard I., membrane 8d."

This appears to be E 372/41, printed in PRS NS 6 (per https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4050533 - though they date 7 Ric I to 1194/95 rather than 1195/96)

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Saturday, March 13, 2021 at 8:00:39 AM UTC-5, Carl-Henry Geschwind wrote:

> The publication of the 1196 fine at https://archive.org/details/publications61devo/page/n41/mode/2up, footnote 1, states "This document is partly obliterated. The translation of the illegible part has been made (within brackets) from a full copy of the fine, which is enrolled on the Pipe Roll for 7 Richard I., membrane 8d."

Just out of curiosity - is this the "partly obliterated" document used by the Devon and Cornwall Record Society? http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT7/CP25(1)/CP25_1_40_1/IMG_0003.htm

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I suspect so. (I mentioned the same one in my original first post.) It looks long enough (unlike the other fines in this set), and some of the names are there, but it is very hard to read.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

It seems a newer version of the argument Vincent's article about Becket's Murderers can be found here: http://www.canterbury-archaeology.org.uk/publications/4590809431 Unfortunately the footnotes cite the older article I cited previously of which variable pages can be seen on google books. https://books.google.be/books?id=btg-_IyygYoC

After a bit of work, I think I have most of the information from it concerning the de Tracys now.

[Peter Stewart]

The Latin text of the 1196 fine was printed by the Pipe Roll Society in
1894, vol. XVII (Feet of Fines of the Reign of Henry II and of the First
Seven Years of the Reign of Richard I, 1182-1196), here
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=718dZIz5GREC, on pp. 83-86 no. 100
- noted at the end, the original was "Mutilated and partly obliterated".

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

Thanks for pointing to these - the newer version refers to the older as
being a fuller account. On p. 231 in this Vincent writes: "The Tracy
descents is a veritable mare's nest, from which few genealogists have
emerged entirely unscathed". At least I am in a numerous company.

The family seems unusual in several respects. Apart from the remarkable
stamina of Oliver in siring an heir when he must have been aged at least
63 and perhaps as old as ca 75, there is the peculiarity that instead of
one agnatic family branching into several lines with different surnames,
in their case several different agnatic lines adopted Tracy as a surname
at least three times.

However, the impression I had of the Barnstaple line having been
markedly pre-eminent among them doesn't excuse the foolishness of
casting this into a fixed idea.

It's interesting that Geva the sister of William witnessed his charter
in 1110 along with his wife and sons. This is not usual, especially
since she does not appear to have been either a nun or anyone's wife.
This makes me wonder if she may have had a firm status in the family, as
a senior spinster, for some other reason. I suppose, given also the
chronology of her nephews, she may be a leading candidate for
identifying the mistress of Henry I who was mother to his bastard
William de Tracy, named like her brother.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 14-Mar-21 12:00 AM, Carl-Henry Geschwind wrote:

According to Nichols Vincent the January 1196 concord was also copied in
the pipe roll for 7 Richard I, pp. 111-112 - this would be in *The Great
Roll of the Pipe for the seventh year of the reign of King Richard the
First, Michaelmas 1195 (Pipe roll 41)* edited by Dorothy Stenton, Pipe
Roll Society Publications 44 (1929).

Vincent was ahead of the field about the single Henry > single Oliver
succession in Barnstaple from 1130 to 1196. In 'The murderers of Thomas
Becket' (2003) p. 240 note 126 he wrote: "the Oliver of 1195 was the
same man as the Oliver of the 1150s and 60s".

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

Nicholas Vincent in the 2003 article, p. 259 note 225 wrote: "Oliver de
Tracy ... joined the 1183 rebellion of the Young King Henry, during
which he was captured and imprisoned in the custody of Robert Mauduit
until the Spring of 1186". Identifying this Oliver as a namesake son
rather than the captured rebel himself was apparently Dugdale's
misinterpretation.

Vincent also gave a convincing identification of the Henry de Tracy who
occurs out of the blue in Devon when he owed 50½ marks scutage in
1199/1200 - this was evidently Henry the hunchback, son of Becket's
murderer William de Tracy whose lands had been confiscated long before.

In an IPM held on 23 November 1275 in Devon the following was stated:
"William de Tracy who held the barony of Braneys and Morton of the king
in chief, took part ... in the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury,
for which deed he went into exile and the barony became the escheat of
King Henry [II] ... The same William had a son Henry de Tracy the
hunchback (le Bozu), born in Normandy, who long after came to Geoffrey,
son of Peter, chief justice of England [from July 1198] ... praying him
to aid him in recovering his inheritance and for so doing he gave him
the said manor of Morton ...".

Vincent op. cit. p. 260 helpfully added: "Hugh de Couterne [a nephew of
Becket's murderer William de Tracy] retained custody of William's
English lands until 1199, and the accession of the next King, John. In
1199 John, in effect, put the lands up for sale, competing fines being
recorded from the Tracys of Barnstaple, and from Henry de Tracy, the
natural heir. Henry de Tracy was briefly allowed to take up possession,
but only after agreeing to grant away the manor of Moretonhampstead, one
of his father's principal possessions, to the King's justiciar, Geoffrey
fitz Peter."

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Just quick notes in response to what I take to be quick notes:

1. "The Latin text of the 1196 fine was printed by the Pipe Roll Society". ...Yes, that has been cited and linked to several times including the first post. As you note in a later post, after you have looked at Vincent, the matter is also supposed to be mentioned in the Pipe Rolls. As I've mentioned earlier, Stapleton noted this and actually implies that it is the Pipe Roll version which is most decisive. But I can't find a copy of that.

2. "the newer version refers to the older as being a fuller account". ...Yes, as I noted the new version of Vincent cites the old one for details and most sources on this topic. But the old one is only partly available online. If anyone has a copy of the old version, could you help me out seeing the relevant pages I have not yet seen?

3. "The family seems unusual in several respects. Apart from the remarkable stamina of Oliver in siring an heir when he must have been aged at least 63 and perhaps as old as ca 75, there is the peculiarity that instead of one agnatic family branching into several lines with different surnames, in their case several different agnatic lines adopted Tracy as a surname at least three times." ...Honestly I still think neither of these characteristics were remarkable, at least in this period. Although you've cast aspersions upon such comments, that's still my honest impression from spending a reasonable amount of time on the early feudal baronies in recent years. As you surely know, Henry I and other kings enfeoffed a lot of junior lines in England in the 11th and 12th century, favouring their supporters, and violating the inheritances of perceived enemies who often subsequently came back in to favour. This led to Anglo-Norman families with two landed lines, and contested claims even on their main lands. Compromises were being made and re-made for generations, and this situation which required continuing arbitrary royal interventions into inheritances, in order to patch up the effect of previous ones, clearly played a role in the build-up of baronial tension into John's time. Henry de Traci in Barnstaple seems to have had only small holdings in France before the grants which the Gesta Stephani says he received from Stephen (who'd been his overlord in France) of Briouze-claimed lands - the same matter which was still causing problems a generation later in 1196. It might going slightly too far to say this is the average baronial family of the period, but similar things happened in other lordships all around England.

4. "According to Nichols Vincent the January 1196 concord was also copied in the pipe roll for 7 Richard I, pp. 111-112 - this would be in *The Great Roll of the Pipe for the seventh year of the reign of King Richard the First, Michaelmas 1195 (Pipe roll 41)* edited by Dorothy Stenton, Pipe Roll Society Publications 44 (1929)." ...Yes, but it seems to be unusually difficult to find a copy of this. Does anyone have access to it? As far as I can see the originals are also not on AALT.

5. "Vincent was ahead of the field about the single Henry > single Oliver succession in Barnstaple from 1130 to 1196". ...I don't think that's an accurate description of the "field" unless you define the field as Sanders and Keats-Rohan. Sanders and Keats-Rohan (who follows Sanders) seem to be exceptions, but of course neither wrote anything detailed about it, and I think it is clear this has simply come from Dugdale. Stapleton had corrected Dugdale long before Vincent, and Stapleton is clearly someone scholars specializing in this family would have been aware of. FWIW, around the internet everyone follows MEDLANDS, which, as I'd mentioned quite some time back, also follows Stapleton and Vincent in this case, and quotes from both. It is good that you've now also looked at Vincent. I have great respect for Dugdale, Sanders and Keats-Rohan, but I do not see it as controversial to say that these three authorities can't be automatically treated as "the field" for every baronial family.

6. "Nicholas Vincent in the 2003 article, p. 259 note 225 wrote: "Oliver de Tracy ... joined the 1183 rebellion of the Young King Henry, during which he was captured and imprisoned in the custody of Robert Mauduit until the Spring of 1186"." ...And the open question I have posted about this is where this record mentioning Robert Mauduit comes from. Page 259 is not one I can see online. As I quoted, Dugdale first mentioned this connection to Robert Mauduit but he wrote as if Robert was mentioned in the Pipe Roll. I don't think he is. You seem to be saying Dugdale had another source in mind? Which?

Andrew

[Jan Wolfe]

On Sunday, March 14, 2021 at 7:12:22 AM UTC-4, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
...

> 6. "Nicholas Vincent in the 2003 article, p. 259 note 225 wrote: "Oliver de Tracy ... joined the 1183 rebellion of the Young King Henry, during which he was captured and imprisoned in the custody of Robert Mauduit until the Spring of 1186"." ...And the open question I have posted about this is where this record mentioning Robert Mauduit comes from. Page 259 is not one I can see online. As I quoted, Dugdale first mentioned this connection to Robert Mauduit but he wrote as if Robert was mentioned in the Pipe Roll. I don't think he is. You seem to be saying Dugdale had another source in mind? Which?
>
> Andrew

p. 258 (footnote 205 continues on p. 259)
By Easter 1173, the murderers were under imminent threat should they chose to remain in England. Reprisals extended to the cousins of William de Tracy, the Tracys of Barnstaple. In the mid 1160s, Oliver de Tracy had offered a substantial fine of 500 marks to retain possession of Barnstaple, an estate that in theory was subject to confiscation as an ill-gotten gain from the time of King Stephen. No attempt to recover this fine was made until Michaelmas 1176, when the King began to de mand repayment 205.

205 Pipe Rolls 12 Henry II, p. 94; 14 Henry II, p. 126; 22 Henry II, p. 142, with payments in every year thereafter until the debt was finally cleared at Michaelmas 1182: Pipe Roll 28 Henry II, p. 28. Perhaps not surprisingly, Oliver de Tracy thereafter joined the 1183 rebellion of the Young King Henry, during which he was captured and imprisoned in the custody of Robert Mauduit until the Spring of 1186, his lands being for a while held by the King: Pipe Rolls 31 Henry II, p. 164; 32 Henry II, p. 157.

[Peter Stewart]

Thank you, Jan.

The pipe roll entry for 32 Henry II cited by Vincent for Robert
Mauduit's custody of Oliver is as follows:

Idem [Willelmus Briewerre] redd. comp. de ix. l. et iij. s. et ix. d. de
exitu terre Oliueri de Traci in Deuenescira. In thesauro .xxviij. s. et
.vij. d. Et Roberto Malduit ad sustentationem ejusdem Oliueri a festo
Sancti Michaelis usque ad Clausum Pascha qualibet die .viij. d., .vj. l.
et .xv. s. et iiij. d. per breve regis. Et pro pannis ejusdem Oliueri
.xx. s. per breve Rannulfi de Glanuill'. Et quietus est.

I don't know how Dugdale took from "terre Oliueri de Traci" and "ad
sustentationem ejusdem Oliueri" that this individual was a different
Oliver de Tracy from the one recorded in the pipe roll for 31 Henry II
as having been captured. Perhaps is was the pidgin Latin of "captus
fuit" that threw him off.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 14-Mar-21 10:12 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> Just quick notes in response to what I take to be quick notes:
>
> 1. "The Latin text of the 1196 fine was printed by the Pipe Roll Society". ...Yes, that has been cited and linked to several times including the first post. As you note in a later post, after you have looked at Vincent, the matter is also supposed to be mentioned in the Pipe Rolls. As I've mentioned earlier, Stapleton noted this and actually implies that it is the Pipe Roll version which is most decisive. But I can't find a copy of that.

I cited it upthread - precisely in the "later post" you refer to:

"According to Nichols Vincent the January 1196 concord was also copied
in the pipe roll for 7 Richard I, pp. 111-112 - this would be in *The
Great Roll of the Pipe for the seventh year of the reign of King Richard
the First, Michaelmas 1195 (Pipe roll 41)* edited by Dorothy Stenton,
Pipe Roll Society Publications 44 (1929)."

The earlier citation from me said "The Latin text of the 1196 fine was

printed by the Pipe Roll Society in 1894, vol. XVII (Feet of Fines of
the Reign of Henry II and of the First Seven Years of the Reign of
Richard I, 1182-1196), here
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=718dZIz5GREC, on pp. 83-86 no.

100". Clearly two different publications of the Pipe Roll Society, each
of them adequately detailed as vols 17 (feet of fines 1182-1196) and 41
(pipe roll 7 Richard I) respectively. The Pipe Roll Society is not a
one-trick pony for publishing their pipe rolls series.

> 2. "the newer version refers to the older as being a fuller account". ...Yes, as I noted the new version of Vincent cites the old one for details and most sources on this topic. But the old one is only partly available online. If anyone has a copy of the old version, could you help me out seeing the relevant pages I have not yet seen?
>
> 3. "The family seems unusual in several respects. Apart from the remarkable stamina of Oliver in siring an heir when he must have been aged at least 63 and perhaps as old as ca 75, there is the peculiarity that instead of one agnatic family branching into several lines with different surnames, in their case several different agnatic lines adopted Tracy as a surname at least three times." ...Honestly I still think neither of these characteristics were remarkable, at least in this period. Although you've cast aspersions upon such comments, that's still my honest impression from spending a reasonable amount of time on the early feudal baronies in recent years. As you surely know, Henry I and other kings enfeoffed a lot of junior lines in England in the 11th and 12th century, favouring their supporters, and violating the inheritances of perceived enemies who often subsequently came back in to favour. This led to Anglo-Norman families with two landed lines, and contested claims even on their main lands. Compromises were being made and re-made for generations, and this situation which required continuing arbitrary royal interventions into inheritances, in order to patch up the effect of previous ones, clearly played a role in the build-up of baronial tension into John's time. Henry de Traci in Barnstaple seems to have had only small holdings in France before the grants which the Gesta Stephani says he received from Stephen (who'd been his overlord in France) of Briouze-claimed lands - the same matter which was still causing problems a generation later in 1196. It might going slightly too far to say this is the average baronial family of the period, but similar things happened in other lordships all around England.

"Unusual" does not mean "unexampled". I don't understand what is gained
by a disquisition on the uncertainty of baronial inheritance: the point
is that I can't think of (and you have not provided) anyone else aged
63+ with a wife of child-bearing age and no living issue or sibling with
potential rights to the disputed inheritance being ceded to the rightful
owner, as evidently were the personal circumstances of Oliver de Tracy
in January 1196. These would be unusual at any time in any place,
regardless of political turmoil.

>
> 4. "According to Nichols Vincent the January 1196 concord was also copied in the pipe roll for 7 Richard I, pp. 111-112 - this would be in *The Great Roll of the Pipe for the seventh year of the reign of King Richard the First, Michaelmas 1195 (Pipe roll 41)* edited by Dorothy Stenton, Pipe Roll Society Publications 44 (1929)." ...Yes, but it seems to be unusually difficult to find a copy of this. Does anyone have access to it? As far as I can see the originals are also not on AALT.

See point 1 above.

> 5. "Vincent was ahead of the field about the single Henry > single Oliver succession in Barnstaple from 1130 to 1196". ...I don't think that's an accurate description of the "field" unless you define the field as Sanders and Keats-Rohan. Sanders and Keats-Rohan (who follows Sanders) seem to be exceptions, but of course neither wrote anything detailed about it, and I think it is clear this has simply come from Dugdale. Stapleton had corrected Dugdale long before Vincent, and Stapleton is clearly someone scholars specializing in this family would have been aware of. FWIW, around the internet everyone follows MEDLANDS, which, as I'd mentioned quite some time back, also follows Stapleton and Vincent in this case, and quotes from both. It is good that you've now also looked at Vincent. I have great respect for Dugdale, Sanders and Keats-Rohan, but I do not see it as controversial to say that these three authorities can't be automatically treated as "the field" for every baronial family.

When I post to SGM I assume that the context of the thread will be
understood. I had earlier quoted from Vincent "The Tracy descents is a

veritable mare's nest, from which few genealogists have emerged entirely

unscathed". Subsequently by "the field" I meant the various authors whom
Vincent had cited for their errors and who did not realise that the
Oliver in January 1196 was the son of Henry in 1146. I am not obsessed
with Dugdale, Sanders and Keats-Rohan - there is a whole gallery of
others. For that matter, Vincent was also 18 years ahead of this forum.

> 6. "Nicholas Vincent in the 2003 article, p. 259 note 225 wrote: "Oliver de Tracy ... joined the 1183 rebellion of the Young King Henry, during which he was captured and imprisoned in the custody of Robert Mauduit until the Spring of 1186"." ...And the open question I have posted about this is where this record mentioning Robert Mauduit comes from. Page 259 is not one I can see online. As I quoted, Dugdale first mentioned this connection to Robert Mauduit but he wrote as if Robert was mentioned in the Pipe Roll. I don't think he is. You seem to be saying Dugdale had another source in mind? Which?

See Jan Wolfe's helpful post today and mine in reply.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

My thanks also to Jan.

Peter, thank you, yes I do understand that the 1196 Pipe Rolls are different from the 1196 Devon Feet of Fines even though both are published by the Pipe Rolls Society. My question was whether anyone has access to the 1196 Pipe Roll information relevant to this case, in any edition or form.

Concerning Vincent being ahead of this forum, I continue to find that a confusing way to describe things, which gives a misleading impression of the "field", exaggerating the novelty of the fairly routine information I posted at the start of this thread. Do you have anything against Stapleton? I notice you've avoided commenting about him from your side, though he was first mentioned quite far back in this discussion. He was ahead of Vincent by more than a century, and this is easier to find online. Vincent's main relevance to us is his focus is upon the Bradninch Tracy family, whose relevance to the Barnstaple one is periphery. Of course we need to be aware of them. I introduced Vincent to this discussion partly to help get past the phase where you insisted on ridiculing the idea of a second important related Tracy family in Devon in the 12th century. Thankfully, I think we are past that.

In other words, Vincent was following the "field" on the Barnstaple family, and does not present himself as discovering anything about them. Sanders and Keats-Rohan simply missed Stapleton's correction, whereas others did not. I don't think we need to over-dramatize this. In the end, after a difficult discussion, it seems to be a quite simple case. Your initial note about the old age of Oliver when his heir was born remains pretty much the only valid (though obviously far-from-decisive) concern, and was certainly worth noting.

Looking for more loose ends, I note that in your re-summary of sources that you have not mentioned the ancestry mentioned in the Malmesbury Abbey register which I noted (perhaps because I discovered it on MEDLANDS?), and so possibly you have not considered it? It does however appear to name 13th century Henry's grandfather as Henry. Although it is undated, the place involved, Pilton, is near Barnstaple, and as Chris Phillips has pointed out to me, the abbot is named as W, so a reasonable guess can be had at the approximate dating. Maybe there are a couple of options, but I would add that it is also difficult to see which other Henry Tracy might have been making this grant. The Barnstaple Tracy barony daughtered out after Henry, and the other line finished earlier.

Here it is again: https://archive.org/details/registrummalmesb02malm/page/34/mode/2up
"...ad instantiam et petitionem domini Henrici de Traci. eidem H. concessisse et præsenti carta confirmasse ... scilicit pro aninambus Henrici de Traci, avi sui, et Oliveri patris sui, et Hawysiæ avæ suæ..."

For abbots of Malmesbury: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol3/pp210-231

[Jan Wolfe]

With the descent from Henry de Tracy to son Oliver to son Henry apparently sorted out, it appears that the 2003 article by Nicholas Vincent also discusses what would be another set of corrections to Keats-Rohan. In Domesday Descendants (p. 743, same page as Oliver de Traci, son of Henry de Tracy, lord of Barnstable), Keats-Rohan states that Gracia de Traci was the "Daughter of William de Tracy, a natural son of Henry I," and that William de Traci was the "Second son of Grace, daughter of William de Tracy (d. c. 1135), a natural son of Henry I, and John de Sudeley, younger son of Harold de Ewias. Lord of the barony of Bradninch, Devon, an escheat of William Capra de Pomeroy. He died c. 1172, leaving a son William (d.a. 1194). Sanders, 20."

Is the following potential set of corrections already well-known?

Vincent states, (p. 230-234)

The family of William de Tracy, the fourth of the murderers, deserves an article to itself. Here I must confine myself to the broader outlines of the problem that it presents. Professor Barlow, who was unaware of any difficulty in the Tracy descent, writes as follows: >William, the second son of John de Sudeley, a descendant of Ralf of Mantes, count of the French Vexin, and Godgifu, the sister of King Edward the Confessor, chose to take his name from the family of his mother, Grace, daughter and heir of William (I) de Tracy, lord of Bradninch in Devon and illegitimate son of King Henry I. He held, besides the barony of Bradninch, lands in Gloucestershire and Somerset, and in 1165 had answered for thirty knight's fees. By 1170 he was a brave and experienced soldier, married and with a son who eventually inherited< [ftn 92].
...
The chief source of Barlow's errors is almost certainly to be found amongst the genealogical enthusiasms of the Hanbury-Tracy family, passed down in the present generation to the 6th Lord Sudeley - a peer of ancient lineage, who lists >ancestor worship< amongst his recreations in >Who's Who<. Lord Sudeley has brought to light many interesting things about the murderers of Becket, assembling evidences on William de Tracy that are of the utmost importance [ftn 94]. For his knowledge of the Tracy descent, however, he has relied too much upon the speculations of earlier writers. Two of the statements reported by Lord Sudeley, and thence by Barlow, appear to be correct. Becket's murderer William de Tracy did indeed answer for the Devon barony of Bradninch in 1165, and he did indeed father a son, known as Henry >the hunchback<. The rest of the story, although enshrined in the standard English Peerage and in any number of less exalted works of reference, is for the most part moonshine.

Let us begin with the bastard son of Henry I named William de Tracy, referred to by Robert de Torigni in his continuation of the chronicle of William of Jumièges. Torigni tells us nothing of this man save for his name and the fact that he was swift to follow his father to the grave [ftn 95]. In other words, there is no evidence that Henry I's bastard, who died shortly after 1135, had any connection with the Devon barony of Bradninch. Likewise, I can find no reliable evidence to suggest that the royal bastard fathered a daughter named Gracia. Gracia was unknown to Sir William Dugdale, and occurs in none of the early heraldic visitations or county histories. [ftn 96]. She seems to have been invented, perhaps in comparatively recent times, to explain certain irregularities in the Sudeley descent, and to justify the claims of the Hanbury-Tracy family of Toddington in Gloucestershire to be descended both from the blood royal of Henry I and from William de Tracy, the murderer of Thomas Becket. There was indeed a man named William de Tracy, brother of Ralph of Sudeley, who acquired Toddington from the Sudeley estate at some time in the 1130s or 40s, and who was therefore descended from Godgifu, from Drogo of Mantes and therefore from the most noble blood of both England and France [ftn 97]. It is from this William de Tracy that the Tracys of Gloucestershire, and hence the present Lord Sudeley, trace their origin. William de Tracy of Toddington seems not, however, to have been the murderer of Thomas Becket.

At some time between 1171 and 1 175, when the Becket murderers were labouring under a sentence of major excommunication, William de Tracy of Toddington occurs together with his son Henry, both in the county court of Oxfordshire and at Winchcombe Abbey, witnessing an award to the monks of Winchcombe in company with the abbots of Winchcombe, Eynsham and Oseney [ftn 98]. This is surely inconceivable had he been the excommunicate murderer of the archbishop. Likewise, although both the murderous William de Tracy and William de Tracy of Toddington fathered sons named Henry; Henry de Tracy of Toddington inherited his father's estate with no apparent difficulty and can be found as a Gloucestershire landowner in the early years of the thirteenth century [ftn 99]. By contrast, Henry de Tracy >the hunchback<, the murderer's son, was born in Normandy, obtained only the briefest of tenures as lord of Bradninch, and may well have defected to the Capetians following the Plantagenet loss of Normandy after 1200 [ftn 100]. As for Gracia, the supposed link between Toddington, Bradninch and King Henry I; I can offer no certain solution, save to suggest that she may first appear in an early-modern pedigree of the Sudeley family [ftn 101]. Having been brought to the attention of the local Gloucestershire historian A.S.Ellis in the 1870s, this pedigree was noticed at second hand by the editors of Cockayne's >Complete Peerage<, whence it has passed, mythical but unchallenged into the writings of numerous more recent scholars [ftn 102]. Lord Sudeley and his family can rest assured that they are descended, via their Sudeley ancestors, from the very noblest of stock. Their Tracy blood, however, came to them, neither from Henry I nor from the Tracys of Bradninch, but, as I shall endeavour to demonstrate on another occasion, from the Tracy family of Barnstaple, prob ably from the marriage of a sister of Henry de Tracy of Barnstaple to John, the father of Ralph of Sudeley [ftn 103].

92 Barlow, Thomas Becket, pp. 235-6.
...
94 See Lord Sudeley 's articles, Becket's Murderer William de Tracy, in: Family History n.s. 73, vol.XIII, no. 97 (1983), reprinted in The Sudeleys, Lords of Toddington, Cambridge 1987, pp. 73-97; Toddington and the Tracys, in: Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society LXXXVIII (1969), pp. 127-72, with corrections in Ibid. XC (1971), pp.216-19.

95 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Ordenc Vitalis and Robert of Torigni ed. E.C.M. Van Houts, 2 vols., Oxford 1992-5, vol.1I, pp. 248-51.

96 See the entries on the families of Sudeley and Tracy of Barnstaple in W. Dugdale, The Baronage of England, 2 vols., London 1 675-6, vol. I, pp. 428, 62 1 -2, and see, The Visitation of the County of Gloucester taken in the year 1623 ed. J. Maclean and W. C. Heane (Harleian Society XXI) 1885, p. 165. In the early county history by Samuel Rudder, A New History of Gloucestershire, Cirencester 1779, p. 770, Rudder makes William de Tracy of Toddington the son of John of Sudeley via a marriage to Grace, here described as the daughter of Henry de Tracy of Barnstaple. Rudder accepts, however, that it was William of Toddington who took part in the murder of Becket. John Britton, Graphic Illustrations with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Toddington, Gloucestershire, the Seat of Lord Sudeley, London 1840, pedigree pp. 1, 5, likewise states that William de Tracy of Toddington was the murderer of Becket, but describes him as the grandson of an entirely mythical William de Tracy baron of Barnstaple, with further, equally implausible links to the Tracys of Barnstaple intruded into the account of William's son >Olliver<. John of Sudeley's wife is referred to, but without name, in Pipe Roll 31 Henry I, p. 79.

97 The principal evidences here are BL ms. Additional Charter 70879, the grant of Todding ton by Ralph of Sudeley to William de Tracy, before 1 166 as proved by Red Book, vol.I, p. 295; and a further original charter, printed in The Original Acta of St Peter's Abbey Gloucester с 1122 to 1263 ed. R. B. Patterson (Gloucestershire Record Series XI) 1998, pp.209-10 no. 272, by which William de Tracy confirms an award by Ralph of Sudeley >my brother< of land at Yanworth, Gloucestershire, before 1148.

98 Landboc sive registrum monasterii beatae Mariae virginis et sancti Cenhelmi de Winchelcumba ed. D. Royce, 2 vols., Exeter 1892-1903, vol.I, pp. 191-3. Also witnessed by Alard Banaster sheriff of Oxfordshire (1170-75), by Henry abbot of Winchcombe (11 7 1-81) and by the abbots of Eynsham and Oseney.

100 William de Tracy of Toddington witnesses a charter of Otuel of Sudeley (1 192 X 1 198): BL Sloane Charter ХХХШ.З. By 1238, his Gloucestershire land was held by William, apparently son of Henry de Tracy: Curia Regis Rolls, vol. XVI no. 149 N.; Acta of St Peter's Gloucester, p. 190 no. 245. For Henry de Tracy of Toddington, party to a settlement with Abingdon Abbey and witness to Gloucestershire charters of the 1220s, see Two Cartularies of Abingdon Abbey ed. C. F. Slade and G. Lambrick, 2 vols., (Oxford Historical Society n.s. XXXII-III) 1990-92, vol.I, pp. 246-7 no. 391; The Cartulary of the Abbey of Eynsham ed. H.E.Salter, 2 vols., (Oxford Historical Society XLIX, LI) 1907-8, vol. I, pp. 138 no. 187. The charter in Registrum Malmesburitnse ed. J. S. Brewer and C. Trice Martin, 2 vols., (Rolls Series) London 1879-80, vol.1I, pp. 34-5, no. 176, in which с 1210 abbot W(alter) of Malmesbury (1208-22) sanctioned a daily mass in the church of St James Pilton for the souls of Henry de Tracy, the then lord, and of Henry and Hawise his grandparents and Oliver his father, is read by Lord Sudeley as proof of the descent of Toddington. In reality it refers to the manor of Pilton in Devon, and to the Tracy lords of Barnstaple. Cf. Ibid. vol. II, p. 34 no. 175.

100 See below pp. 259-262.

101 For the descent of Toddington in the thirteenth century, we depend upon an equally unreliable source, described by Lord Sudeley, Toddington and the Tracys, pp. 1 37-8, with corrections in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society XC (1971), p.216.

102 A. S. Ellis, On the Landholders of Gloucestershire named in Domesday Book, in: Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society IV (1879-80) p. 177, whence The Complete Peerage ed. G.E.Cockayne and others, vol. XI, appendix D, pp. 109-10n.; vol. XII, part I, p. 413, where on investigation it transpires that the only relevant source cited is Ellis' pedigree. The Peerage, in turn, serves as the basis for the remarks in Sanders, English Baronies, pp.20, 85-6. It is intriguing that John Britton, Graphic Illustrations ... of Toddington, 1840, although written under the patronage of the then Lord Sudeley, contains no reference to Gracia, but instead describes William de Tracy of Toddington as the grandson of an entirely fictional William de Tracy baron of Barnstaple.

103 I hope to deal with the Devon Tracys at greater length in another article.

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Good point Jan. Keats-Rohan does indeed have an entry for Grace, whose existence seems to be doubted now. Indeed, Vincent seems convincing in arguing that there is no real reason to suggest any link at all between 1. the Sudeley/Tracys and 2. Henry I's illegitimate son and 3. The family we have been discussing which included the two Devon lines.

[Jan Wolfe]

On Monday, March 15, 2021 at 4:25:53 PM UTC-4, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
...

> Good point Jan. Keats-Rohan does indeed have an entry for Grace, whose existence seems to be doubted now. Indeed, Vincent seems convincing in arguing that there is no real reason to suggest any link at all between 1. the Sudeley/Tracys and 2. Henry I's illegitimate son and 3. The family we have been discussing which included the two Devon lines.

Vincent does suggest that John de Sudeley's wife may have been a daughter or Henry de Tracy of Barnstable. Keats-Rohan repeats the same claim about "Grace, daughter of William de Tracy, a natural son of Henry I" in the entries on page 725 for Johannes and Radulf de Sudeley, so these entries would be subject to the same correction.

Vincent stated that he hoped to "deal with the Devon Tracys at greater length in another article." I don't see an obvious candidate for such an article in his list of publications, which starts here, https://people.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/null(397c53a8-7c77-4977-b4cb-95ad248bc474)/publications.html?page=0.

[Peter Stewart]

On 16-Mar-21 7:59 AM, Jan Wolfe wrote:
> On Monday, March 15, 2021 at 4:25:53 PM UTC-4, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> ...
>> Good point Jan. Keats-Rohan does indeed have an entry for Grace, whose existence seems to be doubted now. Indeed, Vincent seems convincing in arguing that there is no real reason to suggest any link at all between 1. the Sudeley/Tracys and 2. Henry I's illegitimate son and 3. The family we have been discussing which included the two Devon lines.
>
> Vincent does suggest that John de Sudeley's wife may have been a daughter or Henry de Tracy of Barnstable. Keats-Rohan repeats the same claim about "Grace, daughter of William de Tracy, a natural son of Henry I" in the entries on page 725 for Johannes and Radulf de Sudeley, so these entries would be subject to the same correction.

Keats-Rohan made a slip in her entry for Henry de Tracy on p. 743:
"William de Tracy and Roesia his wife ... their children Turgis, Henry
and Geve" - Geva was explicitly called William's sister, not his
daughter, in the text of the charter edited by Keats-Rohan and quoted
upthread.

The pipe roll for 31 Henry I, cited by Keats-Rohas as the only authority
for identifying Gracia as wife of John de Sudeley, does not name this
lady - it just calls her John's wife, p. 62 in the Pipe Roll Society
edition by Judith Green (2012): "Johannes de Sulleia reddit compotum de
.x. m. argenti pro placito vxoris sue. In thesauro xl. s. Et debet .vij.
m. argenti."

Peter Stewart

[Jan Wolfe]

Yes, the relationship of the witness Geve/Geva/Gieva to William de Tracy is another error to correct in Domesday Descendants based on Vincent's article. Vincent mentions (p. 237) that William's 1110 charter was witnessed by "Rose, his wife, Gieva his sister and by Turgisius and Henry his sons."
In footnote 96 (p. 232) quoted above in a previous post, Vincent notes that the pipe roll for 31 Henry I refers to the wife of John de Sudeley but does not state her name.

[Peter Stewart]

Jan your spotting in Vincent's 2003 article is far more proficient than
mine - can you see any mention of a Henry de Tracy active ca 1174-1191
apart from the Toddington man whose father was William living 1171/75?

In the *Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells*
vol. 1, online here: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1,
no. 128 is "Inspeximus by Henry de Traci of a gift made by Oliver de
Tracy his father to St. Andrew Wells and Reinald bishop of Bath of the
church of Bovy; and confirmation of the said prebend and church of
Suthbovy to Jocelin bishop of Bath and Glastonbury ...". This indicates
that Oliver (the man captured in 1184) made his donation while Reginald
fitz Jocelin was bishop of Bath & Wells from 23 June 1174 to 26 December
1191, and that Henry confirmed this under Reginald's second successor
Jocelin who was bishop from 28 May 1206 until 19 October 1242. No
difficulty there.

However, a Henry de Tracy occurs fairly frequently in the time of
Reginald (1174-1191) when Oliver of Barnstaple either had no son or
anyway no son who lived until January 1196, see here
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/pp20-47, nos. 132, 141,
142, 144-146 and here
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/pp47-69 nos. 178, 183,
229 and 238.

I'm stumped by this.

Peter Stewart

[Jan Wolfe]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 1:23:58 AM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
...

> Jan your spotting in Vincent's 2003 article is far more proficient than
> mine - can you see any mention of a Henry de Tracy active ca 1174-1191
> apart from the Toddington man whose father was William living 1171/75?
>
> In the *Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells*
> vol. 1, online here: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1,
> no. 128 is "Inspeximus by Henry de Traci of a gift made by Oliver de
> Tracy his father to St. Andrew Wells and Reinald bishop of Bath of the
> church of Bovy; and confirmation of the said prebend and church of
> Suthbovy to Jocelin bishop of Bath and Glastonbury ...". This indicates
> that Oliver (the man captured in 1184) made his donation while Reginald
> fitz Jocelin was bishop of Bath & Wells from 23 June 1174 to 26 December
> 1191, and that Henry confirmed this under Reginald's second successor
> Jocelin who was bishop from 28 May 1206 until 19 October 1242. No
> difficulty there.
>
> However, a Henry de Tracy occurs fairly frequently in the time of
> Reginald (1174-1191) when Oliver of Barnstaple either had no son or
> anyway no son who lived until January 1196, see here
> https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/pp20-47, nos. 132, 141,
> 142, 144-146 and here
> https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/pp47-69 nos. 178, 183,
> 229 and 238.
>
> I'm stumped by this.
>
> Peter Stewart

I did not see any mention of a Henry other than the son of William de Tracy of Toddington active ca 1174-1191 in Vincent's article.
I wrote to Professor Vincent this afternoon. He sent me the text of the confirmation of a grant by Henry son of William de Tracy, which I am posting with his permission:

Geoffrey fitz Peter Shoreham, 20 June 1199
Notification of the King’s confirmation of the manor of Morton as granted by Henry son of William de Tracy.
B = PRO E 368/105 (LTR Exchequer Memoranda Roll 6/7 Edward III) m.39d, shown to the Exchequer 14 May 1333 on behalf of Hugh de Courtenay.
Date conflicts with the charter at Verneuil. Cf. Cal.Chart.R. 1226-57, 44-5.
Ioh(ann)es Dei gratia rex Angl(ie) dominus Hibern(ie) dux Norman(nie) Aquit(anie) comes And(egauie) archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, com(itibus), baron(ibus), iustic(iis), vicecom(itibus) et omnibus ball(iu)is et fidelibus suis salutem. Sciatis nos concesssisse et presenti carta confirmasse donationem quam Henr(icus) fil(ius) Will(elm)i de Tracy fecit Gaufr(id)o fil(io) Petri com(iti) Essex’ de manerio de Morton’ cum omnibus pertin(entiis) suis habend(um) et tenend(um) eidem Gaufr(id)o et her(edibus) suis de predicto Henr(ico) et her(edibus) suis in perpetuum per liberum seruicium unius speruarii sori per annum pro omni seruicio et exactione ad ipsum Henr(icum) et her(edes) suos pertinente. Quare volumus et firmiter precipimus quod idem Gaufr(id)us et her(edes) sui predictum maner(ium) habeant et teneant de prefato Henr(ico) et her(edibus) suis imperpetuum per predictum seruicium sicut carta eiusdem Henr(ici) testatur. Testibus hiis: Will(elm)o Maresc(allo) com(ite) de Penbroc, Will(elm)o de Braosa, Hug(one) Bard’, Simon(e) de Pateshull’, Petro de Stok’. Dat’ per manus S(imonis) Wellen’ archidiac(oni) et I(ohannis) de Gray apud Sorham xx. die Iun(ii) anno regni nostri primo.

[Peter Stewart]

On 16-Mar-21 5:19 PM, Jan Wolfe wrote:

<snip>

> I wrote to Professor Vincent this afternoon. He sent me the text of the confirmation of a grant by Henry son of William de Tracy, which I am posting with his permission:
>
> Geoffrey fitz Peter Shoreham, 20 June 1199
> Notification of the King’s confirmation of the manor of Morton as granted by Henry son of William de Tracy.
> B = PRO E 368/105 (LTR Exchequer Memoranda Roll 6/7 Edward III) m.39d, shown to the Exchequer 14 May 1333 on behalf of Hugh de Courtenay.
> Date conflicts with the charter at Verneuil. Cf. Cal.Chart.R. 1226-57, 44-5.
> Ioh(ann)es Dei gratia rex Angl(ie) dominus Hibern(ie) dux Norman(nie) Aquit(anie) comes And(egauie) archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbatibus, com(itibus), baron(ibus), iustic(iis), vicecom(itibus) et omnibus ball(iu)is et fidelibus suis salutem. Sciatis nos concesssisse et presenti carta confirmasse donationem quam Henr(icus) fil(ius) Will(elm)i de Tracy fecit Gaufr(id)o fil(io) Petri com(iti) Essex’ de manerio de Morton’

Thanks for posting this, Jan. It's a wonder that John wasn't shameless
enough to call a spade a spade, or in this case a bribe, rather than a
donation.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 16-Mar-21 5:19 PM, Jan Wolfe wrote:

Interestingly the last reference appears to imply that Vincent thought
the Henry de Tracy (the hunchback, son of William de Tracy of Bradninch)
granting Morton to Geoffrey fitz Peter was the same man as the Henry de
Tracy in the first Bath and Wells charter I posted about today.

However, the inspeximus and confirmation in "Cal. Cart. R. 1226-57,
44-5" is by a Henry de Tracy assenting to grants of Bishop Jocelin of
Bath (28 May 1206-19 October 1242) of the advowson of Suthbovy to
William Briwere and of the latter to the hospitallers of Bruges, and
"the prebend and church of Suthbovy" were confirmed to Jocelin bishop of
Bath by Henry son of Oliver de Tracy (presumably of Barnstaple) as in my
earlier post today.

The plot thickens - indeed it coagulates.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

On 16-Mar-21 6:33 PM, Peter Stewart wrote:

<snip>

> Interestingly the last reference appears to imply that Vincent thought
> the Henry de Tracy (the hunchback, son of William de Tracy of Bradninch)
> granting Morton to Geoffrey fitz Peter was the same man as the Henry de
> Tracy in the first Bath and Wells charter I posted about today.
>
> However, the inspeximus and confirmation in "Cal. Cart. R. 1226-57,
> 44-5" is by a Henry de Tracy assenting to grants of Bishop Jocelin of
> Bath (28 May 1206-19 October 1242) of the advowson of Suthbovy to
> William Briwere and of the latter to the hospitallers of Bruges, and
> "the prebend and church of Suthbovy" were confirmed to Jocelin bishop of
> Bath by Henry son of Oliver de Tracy (presumably of Barnstaple) as in my
> earlier post today.
>
> The plot thickens - indeed it coagulates.

Unless, at a stretch, Oliver de Tracy of Barnstaple felt free to give
Suthbovey to Bishop Jocelin from the Bradninch lordship in his brief
tenure after he had paid "pro habenda" (not "heritanda") the barony of
William the murderer of Becket. Bovey Tracy is closer to Bradninch (ca
29 miles) than it is to Barnstaple (ca 45 miles).

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Thanks Peter and Jan! Peter I wonder if the signatories on those Liber Albus references were all strictly meant to be contemporaries of the original transactions? I started looking around briefly but could not find a decisive answer yet. However it does seem the register itself would have been from the 13th century. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/fasti-ecclesiae/1066-1300/vol7/xxi-xxix https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/v-xiv

[Peter Stewart]

On 16-Mar-21 7:54 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 6:23:58 AM UTC+1, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:

<snip>

>> In the *Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells*
>> vol. 1, online here: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1,
>> no. 128 is "Inspeximus by Henry de Traci of a gift made by Oliver de
>> Tracy his father to St. Andrew Wells and Reinald bishop of Bath of the
>> church of Bovy; and confirmation of the said prebend and church of
>> Suthbovy to Jocelin bishop of Bath and Glastonbury ...". This indicates
>> that Oliver (the man captured in 1184) made his donation while Reginald
>> fitz Jocelin was bishop of Bath & Wells from 23 June 1174 to 26 December
>> 1191, and that Henry confirmed this under Reginald's second successor
>> Jocelin who was bishop from 28 May 1206 until 19 October 1242. No
>> difficulty there.
>>
>> However, a Henry de Tracy occurs fairly frequently in the time of
>> Reginald (1174-1191) when Oliver of Barnstaple either had no son or
>> anyway no son who lived until January 1196, see here
>> https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/pp20-47, nos. 132, 141,
>> 142, 144-146 and here
>> https://www.british-history.ac.uk/wells-mss/vol1/pp47-69 nos. 178, 183,
>> 229 and 238.
>>
>> I'm stumped by this.
>>
>> Peter Stewart
>
> Thanks Peter and Jan! Peter I wonder if the signatories on those Liber Albus references were all strictly meant to be contemporaries of the original transactions?

The Henry de Tracy puzzling me is named repeatedly as a witness to acts
of Bishop Reginald, that as far as I can see must be taken to indicate
that he was active during Reginald fitz Jocelin's episcopacy
(1174-1191). There was no other bishop of Bath & Wells of this name.

I don't see how this could be Henry the hunchback, since throughout
those years the Bradninch barony was confiscated after Becket's murder
and he didn't occur locally until he had arranged a restoration with
Geoffrey fitz Peter and King John in June 1199.

Maybe it could possibly be Henry of Toddington, who apparently occurs
from 1148, although his father was living until the mid-1170s and his
appearance in the diocese of Bath & Wells - some 80 miles away from
their family's holdings - would be a mystery, quite apart from the
question of Bovey having been donated to the bishop by a Henry de
Tracy's father Oliver followed by consistent occurrences of a Henry
including his confirmation regarding the advowson of South Bovey.

By the way, the occurrence at Malmsbury of a Henry de Tracy son of Henry
does seem to me more likely to be a Toddington father and son - the
places are about 40 miles apart.

Peter Stewart

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Sorry Peter but I think I've missed something. Which record mentions a Henry son of Henry at Malmesbury?

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I notice that the VCH edition of the Devon Domesday equates these two Bovys. https://archive.org/details/cu31924028099152/page/n493/mode/2up

BTW that volume also mentions another record of the 1196 case, "Abbrev. Placit." rot. 5. https://archive.org/details/cu31924028099152/page/n621/mode/2up

[Peter Stewart]

On 16-Mar-21 9:32 PM, lancast...@gmail.com wrote:

> Sorry Peter but I think I've missed something. Which record mentions a Henry son of Henry at Malmesbury?

Apologies, my memory has played hooky again - I was thinking (if that's
even close to the right word) about the Henry de Tracy who arranged for
a daily mass to be said at St James chapel in Pilton for the souls of
his grandfather Henry, grandmother Hawise and father Oliver, here
https://archive.org/details/registrummalmesb02malm/page/34/mode/2up, as
posted upthread and sinking insufficiently into my consciousness.

This Henry was of course not son of another Henry, but actually the son
and heir of the Oliver who had been captured in 1184 and regained the
family's disputed share of Barnstaple by 1196.

Peter Stewart

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 6:02:13 AM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> The Henry de Tracy puzzling me is named repeatedly as a witness to acts
> of Bishop Reginald, that as far as I can see must be taken to indicate
> that he was active during Reginald fitz Jocelin's episcopacy
> (1174-1191). There was no other bishop of Bath & Wells of this name.
>
> I don't see how this could be Henry the hunchback, since throughout
> those years the Bradninch barony was confiscated after Becket's murder
> and he didn't occur locally until he had arranged a restoration with
> Geoffrey fitz Peter and King John in June 1199.
>
> Maybe it could possibly be Henry of Toddington, who apparently occurs
> from 1148, although his father was living until the mid-1170s and his
> appearance in the diocese of Bath & Wells - some 80 miles away from
> their family's holdings - would be a mystery, quite apart from the
> question of Bovey having been donated to the bishop by a Henry de
> Tracy's father Oliver followed by consistent occurrences of a Henry
> including his confirmation regarding the advowson of South Bovey.
>
> By the way, the occurrence at Malmsbury of a Henry de Tracy son of Henry
> does seem to me more likely to be a Toddington father and son - the
> places are about 40 miles apart.
>
> Peter Stewart

Please forgive me for wondering about the geography here. As I see it, Toddington in Gloucester is slightly more than 45 km (not miles) by straight line from Malmesbury Abbey and slightly less than 75 km by straight line from Bath, the seat of bishop Reginald, while both Barnstaple and Bovey Tracy are about 125 km by straight line from Bath. So just on the basis of geographical proximity it would seem that the Henry de Tracy of Toddington would be a more likely candidate than a Tracy from Devon to be the Henry de Tracy who is witnessing bishop Reginald's acts.

[Jan Wolfe]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 6:47:23 AM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> ... Henry de Tracy who arranged for

> a daily mass to be said at St James chapel in Pilton for the souls of
> his grandfather Henry, grandmother Hawise and father Oliver, here
> https://archive.org/details/registrummalmesb02malm/page/34/mode/2up, as

> posted upthread ...

> This Henry was of course not son of another Henry, but actually the son
> and heir of the Oliver who had been captured in 1184 and regained the
> family's disputed share of Barnstaple by 1196.
>
> Peter Stewart

About the date of this document, Andrew mentioned above that the abbot in this document is named as W. From the source he suggested, here are the abbots during Henry's lifetime:
Walter Loring, mentioned as abbot-elect 1208.
John Walsh, assent to election 1222.
Geoffrey, assent to election 1246.
William of Colerne, assent to election 1260.
The document names grandparents Henry and Hawise and father Oliver, but not mother Maud. When did Maud de Braose die?
By the way, this document suggests an addition to the Henricus de Totnes entry in Domesday Descendants. Keats-Rohan does not state the given name of Henry's wife or identify the mother of Henry's heir Oliver. She states, "By 1139 he was holding the honour of Barnstable in Devon, formerly the holding of Alfred fitz Juhel of Totnes. The honour probably came to him by grant of King Stephen, against whom Alfred had fought in the previous year, though the possibility that his wife was a sister of Alfred cannot be excluded. He was married secondly to Cecily de Rumilly of Skipton."

[lancast...@gmail.com]

Hi Jan, yes I've noticed that in internet genealogies including MEDLANDS the supposed heiress wife is sometimes given the name Helewise, and at least in the case of MEDLANDS this is explicitly coming from this charter. (The Totnes connection is, as in Keats-Rohan, recited as a common proposal, but not argued for.)

However, I think we're probably all thinking that Henry did NOT marry an heiress, after all the evidence we have now seen. Not only does the Gesta Stephani says this outright, but also in 1196 his heir was seen as a usurper compared to the Briouzes. If the Tracys and Briouzes got an heiress each, then the way this dispute was summarized would not make much sense.

Thanks for listing those abbots.

[Jan Wolfe]

Yes, I understand that the documents about sharing the property with the Braose family dispel the notion that Henry's wife was a sister of Alfred de Totnes.
I asked the wrong question in my post. I meant to ask when Eve Fitz Warin died (Henry's mother according to some sources). Since Henry didn't mention his mother, I thought that perhaps that suggested that she was still living at the time of the donation. That would perhaps help identify which W. was abbot at the time. By the way, which Fitz Warin was Eve's father?

[lancast...@gmail.com]

I have not really looked for that particular bit of information. MEDLANDS says "The king ordered the sheriff of Berkshire to "take into the king’s hands" the lands of "Fulk fitz Warin and Eva de Tracy and her sister on account of the son and heir of Thomas de London, who they detain from the king", dated to [1218/19][87]. This document suggests that Eva was closely related to Fulk FitzWarin [III], maybe his sister. "

[joseph cook]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 12:30:01 PM UTC-4, Jan Wolfe wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 6:47:23 AM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> > ... Henry de Tracy who arranged for
> > a daily mass to be said at St James chapel in Pilton for the souls of
> > his grandfather Henry, grandmother Hawise and father Oliver, here
> > https://archive.org/details/registrummalmesb02malm/page/34/mode/2up, as
> > posted upthread ...
> > This Henry was of course not son of another Henry, but actually the son
> > and heir of the Oliver who had been captured in 1184 and regained the
> > family's disputed share of Barnstaple by 1196.
> >
> > Peter Stewart
> About the date of this document, Andrew mentioned above that the abbot in this document is named as W. From the source he suggested, here are the abbots during Henry's lifetime:
> Walter Loring, mentioned as abbot-elect 1208.
> John Walsh, assent to election 1222.
> Geoffrey, assent to election 1246.
> William of Colerne, assent to election 1260.
> The document names grandparents Henry and Hawise and father Oliver, but not mother Maud. When did Maud de Braose die?

I suspect sometime after 1266 when she inherited Tawstock and before 1274 when her husband died without naming her?
--Joe C

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 1:01:46 PM UTC-4, Jan Wolfe wrote:

> I asked the wrong question in my post. I meant to ask when Eve Fitz Warin died (Henry's mother according to some sources). Since Henry didn't mention his mother, I thought that perhaps that suggested that she was still living at the time of the donation. That would perhaps help identify which W. was abbot at the time. By the way, which Fitz Warin was Eve's father?

Cawley shows as the latest records for her during her lifetime a fine paid in 6 Hen III and a mention in the pipe roll for 7 Hen III, so she seems to have lived until at least 1222/23. She is named as defunct in a charter dated to May 1270 also cited by Cawley.

[Peter Stewart]

I'm not sure that Eva's connection has been determined for certain - I
would surmise that her parents were perhaps Fulk II (died 1198, whose
mother was also an Eva) and Hawise de Dinan.

I can't find get hold of Janet Meisel's book *Barons of the Welsh
Frontier* in my current state of mobility, but maybe later in the day I
will reach it.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

These people were not crows flying from point to point, but earthbound
creatures who had to pass around Cotswold hills and other pesky features
that bent their routes out of geometric lines.

I'm not sure where you are locating Toddington - I take it to be the
Gloucestershire manor of that name north of Winchcombe, that is shown as
40.6 miles (65.33 kms) from Malmesbury in Wiltshire via Cheltenham on
Google Maps. I don't see any likely shorter way, certainly not as short
as 45 kms (just under 28 miles).

In the case of distance from the seat of bishops Reginald and Jocelin, I
measured this (also using Google Maps) from Wells rather than Bath. I
think there was an abbot resident in Bath through their time.

Peter Stewart

[Carl-Henry Geschwind]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 7:15:57 PM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:

> >
> These people were not crows flying from point to point, but earthbound
> creatures who had to pass around Cotswold hills and other pesky features
> that bent their routes out of geometric lines.
>
> I'm not sure where you are locating Toddington - I take it to be the
> Gloucestershire manor of that name north of Winchcombe, that is shown as
> 40.6 miles (65.33 kms) from Malmesbury in Wiltshire via Cheltenham on
> Google Maps. I don't see any likely shorter way, certainly not as short
> as 45 kms (just under 28 miles).
>
> In the case of distance from the seat of bishops Reginald and Jocelin, I
> measured this (also using Google Maps) from Wells rather than Bath. I
> think there was an abbot resident in Bath through their time.
>
> Peter Stewart

Fair enough. And yes, I'm using that same Toddington. Using my favored distance-measuring site (luftlinie.org - yeah, I know, in German), I get the over-the-road distance from Wells to be 122 km to Bovey Tracy, 123 km to Barnstaple, and 128 km to Toddington - given the uncertainties essentially equidistant.

Also, at least as I read the wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Abbey#Norman_Conquest_to_the_Dissolution), it would seem that Bath Abbey was the seat of the bishop from 1090 to 1197, when Reginald's successor tried moving it to Glastonbury Abbey; Wells did not become a favored seat for the bishops again until after 1245. Then again, this may be completely wrong.

[Peter Stewart]

Well, it may be completely right - what I think and what is fact can be
(more pleasingly for others than for myself) quite different.

Jocelin was called bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, though his diocese
evidently still included Wells. However, Henry de Tracy witnessed acts
of Reginald apart from confirming Bovey to Jocelin.

If the Oliver de Tracy who reached a settlement over Barnstaple in 1196
married Eva not long before then (assuming she was a sister to Fulk III
fitz Warin who was evidently born in the 1170s), then I assume his son
Henry made a donation to Malmesbury - without naming his mother among
the deceased to benefit from daily masses - because Eva was still
living and holding lands of her own in Wiltshire (from Fulk II fitz
Warin's wife Hawise de Dinan).

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

I am plainly missing something, as I don't follow why the Henry son of
Oliver and grandson of Henry and Hawise at Malmesbury should be thought
the son of Maud de Braose. Assuming the abbot of Malmesbury to be Walter
Loring, I supposed this was Oliver's son by Eva, born after January
1196, and that Hawise was Oliver's mother the first wife of King
Stephen's supporter Henry (lord of Barnstaple from 1130 to before
October 1154, later married to Cecily de Rumilly who was the earl of
Chester's aunt-by-marriage - the Barnstaple Tracys apparently pursued
wives with Welsh border connections).

Peter Stewart

[Douglas Richardson]

Dear Carl-Henry ~

Eve de Tracy was still living in 1238. See Summerson, Crown Pleas of the Devon Eyre of 1238 (Devon & Cornwall Rec. Soc., n.s., vol. 28) (1985): 117.

Sometime in the period, c.1248-1252 Lady Eve de Tracy, having the "maturity of years," requested permission to stay in Godstow Abbey. See Brewer, Monumenta Franciscana 1 (Rolls Ser.) (1858): 98–99, which may be viewed at the following weblink:

https://books.google.com/books?id=KFlFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA98

Douglas Richardson, Historian and Genealogist

[joseph cook]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 8:05:10 PM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> On 17-Mar-21 9:56 AM, joseph cook wrote:
> > On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 12:30:01 PM UTC-4, Jan Wolfe wrote:
> >> On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 6:47:23 AM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
> >>> ... Henry de Tracy who arranged for
> >>> a daily mass to be said at St James chapel in Pilton for the souls of
> >>> his grandfather Henry, grandmother Hawise and father Oliver, here
> >>> https://archive.org/details/registrummalmesb02malm/page/34/mode/2up, as
> >>> posted upthread ...
> >>> This Henry was of course not son of another Henry, but actually the son
> >>> and heir of the Oliver who had been captured in 1184 and regained the
> >>> family's disputed share of Barnstaple by 1196.
> >>>
> >>> Peter Stewart
> >> About the date of this document, Andrew mentioned above that the abbot in this document is named as W. From the source he suggested, here are the abbots during Henry's lifetime:
> >> Walter Loring, mentioned as abbot-elect 1208.
> >> John Walsh, assent to election 1222.
> >> Geoffrey, assent to election 1246.
> >> William of Colerne, assent to election 1260.
> >> The document names grandparents Henry and Hawise and father Oliver, but not mother Maud. When did Maud de Braose die?
> >
> > I suspect sometime after 1266 when she inherited Tawstock and before 1274 when her husband died without naming her?
> I am plainly missing something, as I don't follow why the Henry son of
> Oliver and grandson of Henry and Hawise at Malmesbury should be thought
> the son of Maud de Braos

You are missing nothing except me reading a post with a quick error far to fast.
--Joe

[Jan Wolfe]

Thanks, Douglas and Carl-Henry and all. Sorry about confusing the thread by initially asking about Henry's wife rather than his mother.

[Peter Stewart]

Thanks, this places her more securely as belonging to the same
generation as Hawise de Dinan's son Fulk III fitz Warin who was born in
the 1170s and lived until the late-1250s.

Peter Stewart

[Peter Stewart]

Having stretched high enough to retrieve Janet Meisel's *Barons of the
Welsh Frontier* (1980), she did not specify the placement of Eve in the
fitz Warin family.

She discussed the large Wiltshire inheritance of Fulk II's wife Hawise
de Dinan and then wrote (p. 95):

"Through the marriage with Hawise, Fulk II acquired a number of
additional manors near Stanton Fitzwarren ... In addition, Eva de
Brassingburn held one-half knight's fee in Leigh of Eva de Tracy, who
held it of Fulk III, who held it of William de Lamfelay, who held it of
the king, and the prior of Stiviton held £5 of land of Eva de
Brassingburn, who held it of Eva de Tracy, who held it of Fulk, who held
this land in chief. Eva de Brassingburn also held a knight's fee in
Westbury of Eva de Tracy, who held it of Fulk, who held this land in chief."

Meisel had written (p. 36): "Fulk III ... was almost certainly a young
man in his twenties when he succeeded his father in 1198".

Peter Stewart

[Jan Wolfe]

On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 10:12:03 PM UTC-4, pss...@optusnet.com.au wrote:
...

> Having stretched high enough to retrieve Janet Meisel's *Barons of the
> Welsh Frontier* (1980), she did not specify the placement of Eve in the
> fitz Warin family.
>
> She discussed the large Wiltshire inheritance of Fulk II's wife Hawise
> de Dinan and then wrote (p. 95):
>
> "Through the marriage with Hawise, Fulk II acquired a number of
> additional manors near Stanton Fitzwarren ... In addition, Eva de
> Brassingburn held one-half knight's fee in Leigh of Eva de Tracy, who
> held it of Fulk III, who held it of William de Lamfelay, who held it of
> the king, and the prior of Stiviton held £5 of land of Eva de
> Brassingburn, who held it of Eva de Tracy, who held it of Fulk, who held
> this land in chief. Eva de Brassingburn also held a knight's fee in
> Westbury of Eva de Tracy, who held it of Fulk, who held this land in chief."
>
> Meisel had written (p. 36): "Fulk III ... was almost certainly a young
> man in his twenties when he succeeded his father in 1198".
>
> Peter Stewart

Thank you, Peter.

[Jan Wolfe]

In the entry for Judhael/Juhel de Totnes, Keats-Rohan (Domesday People, p, 285) states, "We know from the work of the monk Herman, who records a visit of monks from Laon to Judhael at Barnstaple, and that Juhael's wife was the sister of Germond of Picquigny (Hermani monachi de Miraculis S. Mariae Laudunensis de gestic verabilis Bartholomei episcopi et S. Norberi Libri Tres, in PL, clvi, cols 983-4)."
Of which Germond of Picquigny was Judhael's wife the sister?
Leo's database (citing Europäische Stammtafeln, J.A. Stargardt Verlag, Marburg, Schwennicke, Detlev (Ed.).
13:143) has her as the sister of Guermond de Picquigny, Vidame d'Amiens, and the daughter of Eustache de Picquigny, Vidame d'Amiens, who was a brother of Guermond de Picquigny, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the son of Guermond de Picquigny (https://www.genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00385032&tree=LEO)
Is this correct?
(I'm asking because as the mother of the wife of Philip de Braose, she is an ancestor of Henry de Tracy's wife Maud de Braose.)