Chaleys

for Challiers (as it is given in Abbot Brompton's list), or Escaliers; according to the French spelling, D'Ecalles or D'Escalles (Dives Roll). The name became Scales in the English tongue, but in allusion to the earlier "Escaliers," the seal of Hugh de Scales, attached to a grant of some churches to Lewes Priory, shows an armed man, putting his right foot on the step of a ladder, and with his hands resting upon it, as in the act of climbing. Its origin is "apparently not Norman, as it is not found in the Duchy till the time of Philip Augustus. It was probably derived from Acquitaine, where the Viscounts of Scales had been of importance since the time of Charles Martel, c. 730, at which epoch they had a grant of the ruined Abbey of Tulle and its estates. These were restored to the church by Aldemar, Viscount of Scales, 930 (Gal. Christ, ii. 262). Gausbert, his brother, was ancestor of the family of Scales, which continued at Limoges, 1201 (lb. vi. 200 Instr.). Harduin de Scallers or de Scallariis (probably one of this family), had extensive grants in Herts and Cambridge 1066, and he and his posterity also held three knight's fees in Yorkshire by gift of Alan; Earl of Richmond."—The Norman People.

Dugdale's pedigree opens with the Hugh I have already mentioned, and never alludes to his descent from Harduin, which, though highly probable, seems never to have been exactly proved. Three generations of Hardouin's successors are spoken of by Burton, but none of them bore the name of Hugh. Soon after 1086, Earl Alan granted Smeaton, part of his demesne near Richmond, to Harduin's son Malger; and in the time of Stephen, Turgis Fitz Malger was a benefactor of Fountains Abbey; his son William de Scalers confirming his gifts (Mon. Ebor. 149, 201).

Hugh de Scalers, the contemporary, and perchance the near kinsman of the latter, founded a baronial family of high estate and ample possessions. "Their castle at Middleton, near Lynn, in Norfolk, was a magnificent building; and though now in ruins, yet they bespeak the dignity and power of the founder, and the difference between ancient and modern nobility."—Banks. Hugh's barony included Whaddon in Cambridgeshire (held by Harduin at the Conquest); with Berkhempstead in Essex, and he transmitted in all fifteen knight's fees to his descendants. The line is regularly traced to his great-grandson Geoffrey, the successor of an elder brother who had died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1220; but from this point Dugdale hesitates in naming the next heir. John de Scalers was Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire for several years under Henry III.; but he believes that it was Robert de Scales who "represented the principal remaining branch of this Family." There is at least no doubt that its splendour dates from the time of his son Robert, first Lord Scales, who was seated at Middleton, and summoned to parliament by Edward I. He subscribed the famous letter sent to the Pope in 1301 by the barons assembled at Lincoln as Robertus de Scales Dominus de Newselles, a Hertfordshire manor that had come to him through his grandmother Alice, the sister and heir of William and Peter de Rossa, or de Roucester. The two next Lords, Robert III. and Robert IV., were both engaged in the French and Scottish wars, and the latter, again, married a rich wife, Catharine, one of the three co-heiresses of William de Ufford, second and last Earl of Suffolk. His son Roger was "among other Eminent Persons, forc'd to march with Jack Straw in the Insurrection of the Commons," and died in 1385, leaving, by the heiress of Sir John de Northwood, Robert, fifth Lord Scales, then a boy of fourteen. He proved sickly and short-lived, being scarcely over thirty at the time of his death, and was followed in due succession by his two sons, Robert and Thomas. Robert, who was never summoned to parliament, is said by Holinshed to have been slain at the siege of Lovers Castle, in Normandy, on the march of Henry V. from Caen towards Rouen. He died unmarried. Thomas was the last, and far the most distinguished of the seven bearers of this title. Very early in life he had been retained to serve the King in France with twenty men-at-arms and sixty archers, and in his recital of his services, two years before his death, he recounts how he was there taken prisoner, and "put to Ransom at thirty-five thousand Saluces, to the great damage of himself and. his Friends: his Lands in England being, in regard of his long absence, likewise much wasted, with great loss of his Goods, besides many Wounds and Bruises in his Body." He assisted at the taking of thirty-six French castles and towns; was present with Lord Talbot at the siege of Orleans, and sent in 1436 to quell a rising in Normandy, during which he put many of the insurgents to the sword, and fired their towns and villages. In 1442, he was one of the Ambassadors employed to treat for peace with France. Five years after this, "being decay'd in Strength," he made a vow to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and obtained leave of absence from the King for that purpose; but it seems he regained his health and changed his mind, for he continued resident in Normandy as Seneschal of the Duchy, and Constable of Vire, and lived at least twelve years longer, a staunch Lancastrian to the last. Stowe asserts that he was murdered in 1460, but Dugdale makes no mention of this, and fixes the date of his death a year earlier. His only son was already dead; and his daughter Elizabeth, then twenty-four years of age, and the wife of Henry Bourchier, second son of the Earl of Essex, inherited the whole of his possessions. She was soon after left a widow; and the great matrimonial prize, thus thrown open to competition, was at once appropriated by the King for his brother-in-law, Anthony Wydville. The upstart "Lords of the Queen's blood," ready to "wrack the Kingdom" for the maintenance of their new-blown honours, had become a by-word for greed and presumption, and when the Bonville and Scales heiresses—the two greatest heiresses in the land—were given in marriage, the one to her son, the other to her brother, a furious storm of indignation was aroused. "Every unmarried Lord," says old Habington, "imagin'd that the bestowing of these two great heires on the Queen's kindred, was an injury to his own hopes." Anthony was summoned to parliament in 1462 as Lord Scales in right of his wife; but she remained childless in her second marriage, as she had been in her first, and died before him.

The barony of Scales, after his execution, fell into abeyance between the representatives of the two daughters of the third Lord Scales and the Ufford heiress, Margaret Lady Howard and Elizabeth Lady Felbrigg; and no less than ten families of co-heirs are furnished by Margaret's descendants alone. Two manors in Norfolk are named Scales How and Scales Hall.

The family survived in the male line some few years more. Whaddon, one of the Cambridgeshire manors held by Harduin in 1086, had been inherited by Sir John de Eschales, Sheriff of Berks and Oxon in 1451. At his death in 1467, he left only three daughters: Alice, married to John Moore; Anne, married to John Harcourt; and Margaret, married to Henry Moyne. Several of their ancestors lie buried in the parish church; but "the brass plates have all been taken away from their gravestones. The old manor house of Whaddon was pulled down a few years ago."—Lysons.

A nephew of the first Hugh, Stephen d'Eschales (as he is called in the Liber Niger) certified to fifteen knight's fees in 1165, and was followed by his son John, obt. 1217, and his grandson Richard, obt. 1230. Richard's successor was a daughter. "Baldwin de Freville paid two hundred marks for the wardship of his heiress, Lucia, and took her to wife."—Dugdale.

--Cleveland