FURNIVAL

The best authorities state that the first of this name, known in England, was Girard de Furnival, who came over from Normandy, temp. Richard I., and accompanied the crusade to the Holy Land. It is impossible to reconcile this fact with the entry on the Battle Roll. The male line of the Furnivals became extinct in 1383, at the decease of William, the fourth Baron, who left an only daughter and heiress Joan. This lady became the wife of Thomas Neville, brother of Ralph, first Earl of Westmoreland, and left a daughter and heir, Maud, who wedded Sir John Talbot, and thus entitled that renowned soldier to be summoned to parliament as "Baron Furnival." His Lordship's subsequent heroic achievements in France, won for him the Earldoms of Shrewsbury, Waterford, and Wexford, and thenceforward the Barony of Furnival merged for two centuries in the higher honours, until the demise of Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1616. That nobleman left daughters only; the youngest of whom Alethea, wife of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, eventually inherited the Barony of Furnival, and transmitted it to her descendants the Dukes of Norfolk, until by the decease s.p. of Edward, ninth Duke, in 1777, it fell into abeyance between his Grace's nieces, and still continues in the same state, the present co-heirs being Lords Stourton and Petre.

--(This name appears on the Battle Abbey Roll).