The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. III.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
ADDITIONAL NAMES GIVEN BY DUCHESNE.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Lislay : or Liele. "Of this name," says Dugdale, "there were several Families, one taking that Denomination from the Isle of Ely (as it is believed) the other from the Isle of Wight. But till King John's time, I have not seen any direct mention of either; nor can I be positive in affirming which of them is most antient." A third and more probable derivation of De Lisle is "from the Castle of Lisle, Normandy. Burcharde Insula witnessed a charter in Normandy c. 1066 (Gall. Christ, xi. 61 Instr.). Robert, his son, granted lands to Cerisy Abbey, temp. William I. (Mon. ii. 961). His descendants were chiefly seated in the North of England. Ralph, John, and Robert de Insula occur in Yorkshire, Otui or Otwer de Insula in Northumberland, 1165: from whom descended Sir John de Lisle of Woodburn in that county, whose descendants long continued there."—The Norman People. There is, however, a far earlier mention of the family in this country. "In the Wiltshire Domesday, one Humphrey de Lisle is recorded as holding of the King a fief of not less than twenty-seven manors. Of this Humphrey, I can say no more than that in January 1091 he was in attendance at Hastings on King William II., then about to embark for Normandy. He appears to have left a daughter and sole heiress, variously called Adelina de Insula and Adeliza de Dunstanville, for it was the custom of great heiresses to retain their paternal name after marriage."—Eyton's Salop. She was the wife of Reginald de Dunstanville, whom she survived; and, according to the Monasticon, gave the manor of Polton to Tewkesbury Abbey "for the health of his soul."
The Northumbrian Otui or Ottewell, above named, was the son of Robert de lisle by Isabel, daughter of Richard Camville, "who, with the consent of his wife, gave him Gosforth; and Henry II. confirmed the gift. Lisle's Burn, a streamlet that gives name to a small district in the parish of Corsenside, probably received this designation from Robert de Insula, to whom it chiefly belonged. Some antiquarians think the Scotch Leslies, who were Flemings, are the same race as the Northumberland Lisles or Insulas."—Mackenzie's Northumberland. The De Lisles were considerable landowners in the county, and are often to be met with in its records. In 1272, Robert de Lisle was Lord of Chipchase, held in 1307 by Peter de Lisle, with Whitwell, as part of a knight's fee of ancient feoffment. From them it passed to the Herons. John de Lisle was Sheriff in 1326; and Sir Robert de Lisle in 1409 and 1421, in addition to being three several times knight of the shire. This Sir Robert was seated at Felton, having married Mary, daughter and co-heir of Adomar of Felton, uncle to David Strabolgie, Earl of Athole. In 1502, when James IV. of Scotland had espoused the English princess destined to convey to her posterity the crown of both realms, the young Queen, on her stately progress Northwards, was received by a De Lisle as she entered Northumberland. "The XXVIth day of the month of June, the Qwene departed from the towne of New Castell, after the custome precedent, very richly and in fayr array. And the Mayr conveyid hir owte of the said towne, and after tuke lyve of hir. Haff a mylle owte of the said towne was Syr Humfrey Lysle and the Prior of Bryngburn" (Brlnckburn) "well apoynted and well horst, to the nombre of xx horses. Their folkes arayd of their livery."—Leland. Sir John Lisle is mentioned in 1523; Thomas Lisle in 1567; and Robert Lisle in 1638. After this, we hear of them no more. Felton appears to have passed to the Widdringtons.
There had been a branch long seated in the county of Durham, where Surtees believes they held Bradbury and the Isle (from whence he suggests the name is derived) in the first ages after the Conquest. They occur "in some of the earliest episcopal charters." Sir Henry de Lisle, Lord of Wynward and Redmarshall, by charter, dated 1306, gave both to his niece Catherine, the wife of Alan de Langton. But, far from perishing with him, the race flourished on for more than three hundred years. About the time that we lose sight of them in Northumberland, we find Talbot Lisle, a "steady loyalist," seated at Barmston. "His name occurs in several of the Parliamentary lists of recusants and malignants.
He married Anne, daughter of Sir William Blakiston, and left a numerous issue."—Surtees' Durham.
John de Insula, Prior of Finchale, who was consecrated Prince-Bishop of Durham in 1274, must have belonged to this family, though not to the baronial De Lisles, "whose armorial bearings some later authors have foolishly attributed to him."—Ibid. He probably sprung from a decayed and impoverished branch, as he is expressly said to have been of mean extraction, and far too sensible a man to be ashamed of it. On one occasion, when a neighbour had sent him some country ale that made him very ill—" See," said he, "the force of custom; you all know my origin, and that neither from my parents nor my country I can derive any taste for wine, and yet now my country liquor is rendered utterly distasteful to me." He provided his old mother with a fitting establishment, and there is a comical account of her perplexities in her new position. "Once, when he went to see her—'How fares my sweet mother?' quoth he. 'Never worse,' quoth she. 'And what ails thee, or troubles thee? has thou not men and women, and attendants sufficient?' 'Yea,' quoth she, 'and more than enough: I say to one, Go, and he runs; to another, Come hither, fellow! and the varlet falls down on his knees; and in short, all things go on so abominably smooth that my heart is bursting for something to spite me, and pick a quarrel withall.'"—Greystanes.
The several baronial families of this name may have been of the same stock, but nothing that I have yet seen goes to prove it. The first whom Dugdale speaks of, Brian de Lisle, reputed one of King John's evil counsellors, left no heir male. He commanded the Royal forces in Yorkshire, and "when the Barons grew lofty and turbulent," had charge of the castles of Knaresborough and Bolsover, and various grants of forfeited estates. Under Henry III., he was again Constable of several Royal fortresses, Warden of all the Royal forests throughout England, and enriched with further Royal benefactions. He died in 1232, being then Sheriff of Yorkshire. Blandford-Brian, once Brianston, the "Brientins-towne" of Camden, and now the seat of Lord Portman, retains his name in Dorsetshire.
The next mentioned, Warine de Lisle of Kingston-Lisle in Berkshire, was the son of a Robert whose mother, Alice, had been a granddaughter of Warine FitzGerold, Chamberlain and Treasurer to Henry II. This Alice was an heiress, and the daughter of an heiress; and her grandson Warine was the husband of a third, Alice de Teys, who brought him Chilton-Teys. He served the two first Edwards in their Scottish wars, and was Constable of Windsor Castle, but, having taken up arms with the Earl of Lancaster, was hanged at York in 1327. His son Gerard, who could count up seven successive campaigns under Edward III., was summoned to parliament in 1357, but the line expired in the ensuing generation with Warine II. He was a Banneret, retained to serve the King in all his wars with twenty men-at-arms and thirty archers; and had licence to build a castle at Shirburn in Oxfordshire, which is now the residence of the Earls of Macclesfield. His wife was Margaret, heiress of the Pipards of Buckinghamshire, by whom he had Gerard, who died s. p. in his lifetime, and Margaret, sole heiress, married in 1366, at her mother's manor-house of Wengrave, to Thomas, Lord Berkeley. The marriage contract was signed when the little bride was only seven years old, and "by reason of her tender years," it was proposed that she should remain with her father four years longer. But this postponement was overruled, though it scarcely seemed unreasonable to defer her wedding till she had reached the ripe age of eleven! "The sickness of Lord Maurice (Thomas' father) "increasing, they were married in November following at Wengrave, Bucks; and his lordship being unable to attend, sent three of his household knights, and twenty-three of his household esquires. The knights attended in their liveries of fine cloth of ray furred with miniver; and the esquires in coarser ray and less costly fur. The young bridegroom" (he was only fourteen), "was clad in scarlet and satin, and wore a silver girdle; and the Lord Maurice himself, though he kept house" (from illness), "in honour of the marriage made himself a suit of cloth of gold, and gave the minstrels forty shillings."—Lysons Cambridge. Margaret de Lisle brought her youthful husband a great estate in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Cornwall, and Devon. One of her manors—West Hendred—was held by a curious tenure: "the service of buying the King's ale."
From this baby-bride no fewer than seven families, the Talbots, Greys, Brandons, Plantagenets, Sydneys, and Shelleys, derived the title of Lisle, which was certainly never borne either by herself or her husband. Their only child, Elizabeth Berkeley, married Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and left three co-heiresses: 1, Margaret, the second wife of the famous John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury; 2, Alianor, first Lady de Ros, and then Duchess of Somerset; and 3, Elizabeth, Lady Latimer. All these sisters left descendants; but on Margaret's alone were the various titles conferred; and for them a perennial wealth of honours blossomed forth from generation to generation.[1] Besides five baronies, seven fugitive Viscountcies followed in quick succession; one of them granted in 1513 to Charles Brandon (afterwards Duke of Suffolk), merely because he was affianced to an heiress, Elizabeth Grey, who on coming of age positively refused to marry him. Finally, the vagrant title seemed to strike root in the house of Sydney, whose claim to it, as well as to the Earldom of Leicester, had been acquired through Lady Mary Dudley, the eldest daughter of John, Duke of Northumberland, beheaded at the accession of Queen Mary. There were seven Viscounts Lisle of this name, of whom the last died in 1743, without legitimate issue. His niece, Elizabeth Perry, became sole heiress, but of her six children one daughter only survived, the wife of Sir John Shelley, who took the name of Sydney on succeeding to the Sydney estates. Their son Philip married a natural daughter of King William IV., by whom he was created in 1835 Lord de L'Isle and Dudley.
Two other baronial families illustrated the old name of De Lisle. I will first treat of the Lords of Rugemont, who were perhaps of kin to those of Kingston-Lisle, and are in fact accounted of the same stock in one of the pedigrees furnished by the College of Arms; "but" (here Banks adds a word of wholesome warning), "the pedigrees of this family are very discordant to each other." Dugdale gives no hint of this relationship, but derives the first Baron of Rugemont from Robert de Lisle, the husband of Roese, widow of John de Tatteshall, and one of the daughters and co-heirs of John de Wahull. He had been in arms against King John; but received back his estates in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, York, and Kent, on making his submission to Henry III. From him descended another Robert, summoned to parliament in 1311, who "entered into Religion" in 1342, and was succeeded by his son and heir John, who had previously obtained from him a grant of the manor of Harwood in Yorkshire (then of the annual value of four hundred marks), "to the intent he might be better able to serve the King in his wars." This he did with such rare distinction as to be noted, even in that age of glorious memories, as one of the best soldiers of his day. The old father, cloistered in the Grey Friars, must have felt his heart swell with pride at his exploits in the French wars. The King loved and honoured him, and nobly rewarded him. In 1248 he received a pension of £200 a year "to support him in his degree of Banneret," supplemented three years afterwards by another of the same amount; altogether about £10,000 of our currency. "It is said by some," continues Dugdale, "that in 20 Ed. III., Sir Thomas Dagworth, Knight, with eighty Men-at-Arms, and an hundred archers, worsting Charles de Bloys, and the great Men of Britanny, who had one thousand Horse, the King thereupon made two Barons, viz. Alan Zouch, and John l'Isle, as also fifty Knights: But others affirm, that this was at the battle of Cressey, which hapned the same year.
"In 21 Ed. III. there being a Tourneament then held at Eltham, this John had, of the King's gift, a White Hood of Cloth, embroidered with Men in Blew colour, dancing; and Buttoned before with large Pearls." This was a costly, and no doubt highly coveted, mark of honour, grotesque as its fashion may appear to our eyes.
Lord Lisle was a Founder Knight of the Garter: and received in 1351 a grant of the Shrievalty of Cambridge and Huntingdon, with the office of Constable of Cambridge Castle, to hold during life. His last French campaign was with the Black Prince, whose victories he shared in 1355. He died the year following, leaving as his successor his son Robert, the last of the family ever summoned to parliament, with whom Dugdale brings their story to a close. According to the Yorkshire Archaeologia, Robert had no children, and in 1365 transferred the castle and manor of Harwood to the husband of his sister and heiress, William de Aldeburgh. But a nephew, cousin, or male heir of some kind there must have been, as the line was carried on for a long succession of generations in Cambridgeshire, where they "held very considerable lands," and resided at the manor of Great Wilbraham, otherwise Lisle's. "'The male heir of the family, Edmund de Lisle,' says Camden, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, 'is still living lord of the place, remarkable for his age, and blessed with a numerous family.' William Lisle, probably grandson to Edmund, afterwards one of the Esquires of the Body to Charles I., quitted his fellowship of King's College on succeeding to this estate: he was a learned antiquary, particularly conversant with the Saxon language, on which subject he published some treatises. We have not been able to gain any further information concerning the family of Lisle, nor to discover whether it is extinct, or when this manor passed from them or their representatives."—Lysons' Cambridge. There was a Sir George Lisle, who defended Faringdon House in 1645 against Cromwell, and possibly belonged to this stock. That it is now totally lost sight of may be inferred from the fact that the usual crowd of claimants to a dormant barony, so sedulously collected by Burke, is in this case wanting.
The other Barons De Lisle, conjectured to have taken their name from the Isle of Wight, were, "as seems probable, derived from Baldwin de Redvers, Earl of Devon and Lord of the Isle of Wight, for in a MS. pedigree in the College of Arms it is stated that 'Geffery de Insula, son of Jordan de Insula, temp. Hen. I. and Stephen, dedit terras in puram elemosin' p' a' ia Com' Baldwin Devonsciorre.'"—Banks. They were summoned to parliament before either of their namesakes, for John de Lisle, made Constable of Carisbrook in 1266 "by reason of the turbulency of the times," was a baron by writ in 1293, and signs the famous letter to the Pope in 1299 as Dominus de Wodeton. This manor, and all the rest of his estate, was in Hampshire, except Bonchurch and Shanklin, which he held in the Isle of Wight. His son, summoned in 1307 as Johanni de Insula Veda, died s. p., leaving a brother, Walter, on whom the barony apparently did not devolve. Walter's descendants are said to have continued at Wodeton till the time of Henry VIII.; but here, again, we light upon the rara avis of a disregarded and unsolicited barony. Sir Bernard does not even enter it among his Dormant and Extinct Peerages.
An Irish family, claiming a common origin with the O'Briens, now holds the title of Baron Lisle, conferred in 1758 on John Lysaght of Mountnorth, co. Cork: but not, as far as I can ascertain, in right of any intermarriage with the English Lisles.
In Scotland, the family certainly existed for over three hundred years.
About 1243, Radulphus de Insula dominus de Duchal, a barony in Renfrewshire, witnesses several grants to Paisley Abbey. From him descended John de Lisle, to whom and to his wife Margaret de Vaux, David II. granted the lands of Buchquhan in Stirlingshire; and Sir Robert Lyll or Lyle, "a baron of an ample fortune," created Lord Lyle by James II. in 1445. His son Robert was Justiciar of Scotland under James IV., and the grandfather of James, Master of Lyle, the last of the family, who, in 1556, died without succession in his father's lifetime. His brother-in-law, Sir Neil Montgomerie, inherited the castle and barony of Duchal. These Lisles quartered the coat of Mar (one of their ancestors having married a co-heiress of the Earldom), and bore, unlike their English namesakes, Gules, a fret Or.