Catalogue description THE SEGRAVE INHERITANCE

The enthusiastic assistance of Samantha letters in the preparation of this section is recorded with particular gratitude. She was editing the Seagrave Cartulary (BL Harl. MS 4748) as part of her thesis 'The Seagrave family c. 1160-1295' (University of London PhD 1997). Any unreferenced statements in what follows are drawn from her work.

Stephen de Segrave was the younger son, and the heir, of an obscure but rising Leicestershire subtenant, Gilbert (d. 1200-1). Gilbert was a curialist who acted as under-sheriff of Leicestershire and justice in eyre, and he left his son a substantial holding in Seagrave (Leics.) with smaller holdings in six other vills in Leicestershire and three in Warwickshire. His eldest son Thomas had been outlawed shortly before his father's death. [Thomas had a son Hugh who granted lands in Cossington and Seagrave to Stephen, in exchange for Stephen's lands in Cadeby (Leics.).] Stephen achieved the highest prominence through the law and royal service. By 1207 he had married Rose, daughter of Thomas Despenser, and she brought him a few more small holdings in Leicestershire. [Her marriage portion seems to have been no more than a rent of 2s. in 'Burton', a rent of 13s. 4d. from a mill in Mountsorrel and 1 virgate in Barrow-upon-Soar. Her brother Hugh Despenser (d. 1238) was the father of Hugh the Justiciar (killed 1265).] By the time of his second marriage, to Ida, sister of Henry de Hastings (d. 1250), he was a much more important man, as was reflected by her marriage portion, the manor of Brownsover (Warws.) and 7½ virgates in Normanton le Heath (Leics.). [Stephen and Ida had no issue and her lands reverted to the Hastings family.] He accumulated an impressive estate, mostly through grants from the king and other magnates, but its nature was dictated by its origins. Unusually for the early 13th century, it was not based on a barony or an honour, with a caput and the accompanying formal structure; it was merely a scattering of individual manors over several shires in the Midlands, with a few to the north and south. Some of the holdings were tiny; some of the larger ones were made up of a number of smaller acquisitions. In Seagrave, one third was held in chief and two thirds of Leicester Abbey; in Mountsorrel the northern part was held of the earl of Chester and the southern of the earl of Winchester. [CIPM i, no. 334; iii, no. 297.] As a consequence, surviving charters at Berkeley are concerned with lands and services in a staggering number of places. [Another reason for the large number of Segrave charters in the muniments is that when the Mowbray inheritance was divided in 1483 Berkeley received most of the Segrave manors, while most of the former Bigod manors went to Howard.]. On Stephen's death in 1241 his son and heir Gilbert inherited five manors in Leicestershire (Seagrave, Sileby, Mountsorrel, Cold Overton and Diseworth) with numerous other holdings in the northern part of the county, four manors in Derbyshire (Bretby, Coton-in-the-Elms, Linton and Rosliston) and two in Warwickshire (Caludon and Kineton), with other holdings in Lincolnshire. That formed the core of the estate, but to the east and south were the manors of Stretton (Rutland), Barton Seagrave (Northants.), Fenstanton with Hilton and Alconbury with Weston (Hunts.), Wisbech (Cambs.) and Penn with 'Smethmeres' in Little Marlow (Bucks.); to the south-west was the manor of North Piddle (Worcs.) and to the north a collection of numerous holdings in the southernmost tip of Yorkshire, which eventually coalesced as the manors of Dinnington and Thwaite.

Stephen's eldest son John was married, by March 1227, to Emma de Cauz, an exceptionally well endowed heiress [Emma was the daughter of the royal falconer Roger de Cauz and his wife Nichola, daughter and heir of Bartholomew de Leigh. She inherited manors in Beds., Bucks., Hunts., Northants., Sussex and Wilts.] but he died without issue between Easter 1229 and Nov. 1230, when Stephen paid £100 to have Emma's marriage and the custody of her lands; he gave Emma in marriage to John de Grey, a younger brother of Richard de Grey of Codnor. [Stephen dowered Emma with a small holding in Henlow (Beds.) which he had been granted by Hubert de Burgh, a rent of 20s. in Gamlingay (Cambs.) which he had acquired, and rents in Cambridge which the young John de Segrave had acquired: below, BCM/D/5/4/1 [GC 561]. Stephen had evidently granted to his son John some lands which suited his wife's inheritance. None of the holdings which made up Emma's dower occur later in Segrave hands, and Henlow certainly stayed with the Greys.] By Nov. 1233 John had granted to Stephen de Segrave his manor of Cold Overton (Leics.) and lands in Raunds (Northants.), which may have been in return for the grant of the marriage to John. Stephen's second son and heir Gilbert was by Sept. 1231 married to another heiress, a rather less wealthy one, Amabel, daughter and coheir of Robert de Chaucombe. A fine of Sept. 1231 recorded the agreement between Robert and Gilbert about Amabel's marriage portion and the division of the estate on Robert's death between Amabel and her sister Milicent, wife of Ralph Basset. Robert died in 1236 and Milicent died without issue in 1246 leaving Amabel to inherit all of her father's lands, comprising the manors of Chacombe (Northants.), Aspley in Ullenhall (Warws.) and Great Dalby (Leics.), land in Oxfordshire and various small holdings in Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Lincolnshire. Those went well with Gilbert's paternal lands, to which he added the manors of Ashbourne (Derb.) and Alspath in Meriden (Warws.) and other small holdings within his inherited manors. In Nov. 1243 he agreed a dower portion [Penn (Bucks.), Alconbury (Hunts.), North Piddle (Worcs.) and the Yorks. lands. Ida also held Wisbech and rents of 39s. 3d. from 'Conches Mill' (Northants.), 4 marks in Henton (Oxon.) and 3s. 4d. in Beaconsfield (Bucks.).] for his stepmother Ida de Hastings, who in 1247 was abducted and married by Hugh Pecche. [Hugh was a younger brother of Gilbert Pecche of Bourn (d. 1291).]

When Gilbert died on campaign in France in 1254 his son and heir Nicholas was only 16 or 17 and his wardship was granted to the Lord Edward; in April 1258 he paid 300 marks to have seisin of his lands before he was of full age. He was probably married as a minor, since his wife, Maud de Lucy, does not seem to have brought him any lands. Nicholas held less than half the Segrave estate for most of his life, as Ida de Hastings lived on until 1289 and his mother Amabel until 1282 or later. Amabel held Seagrave, Mountsorrel, Whetstone and a third of Sileby (Leics.), Bretby, Coton and Rosliston (Derb.) and Smethmeres (Bucks.) in dower. She took those and her own inheritance to a second husband, Roger de Somery (d. 1273). By Roger she had two sons, Roger and John. During her second widowhood she granted her inherited manor of Aspley to her younger son John de Somery and his issue, with remainder to her eldest son Nicholas de Segrave. John was also granted the newly acquired manor of Witherley (Leics.), and Smethmeres and Morton (Bucks., connected with Penn) by his half-brother Nicholas with the same remainder, and John evidently died without issue since all the lands reverted to the Segraves. [John was holding the Buckinghamshire lands by the mid 1280s, presumably having been granted them shortly after his mother's death, since she had held Smethmeres in dower.] Peter de Segrave was probably a younger son of Gilbert and Amabel; in 1260 he was holding Dunsthorpe (Lincs.), c. 1265 he had £6 10s. of land in Stretton (Rutland) and in Jan. 1292, when described as of Peckleton (Leics.), he had lands in Leicestershire, but he died soon after leaving a widow Eleanor, and Dunsthorpe and Stretton reverted to his brother Nicholas. Gilbert's daughter Alice married William Mauduit, who succeeded to the earldom of Warwick in 1263 and died without issue in 1268.

As a young man Nicholas de Segrave was a prominent rebel during the Barons' War and, having forfeited his lands, was obliged to redeem them in 1267, under the terms of the Dictum of Kenilworth, from Edmund of Lancaster for 2,000 marks at four times their annual value. That suggests that the lands which he held at the time were worth £333 a year, but both his step-grandmother and his mother were then alive, respectively holding perhaps one third and one third of two thirds of the whole estate, which may therefore have been worth up to £750 a year. Nicholas had a large family, six sons and two daughters who all reached adulthood long before his death. On the death of Ida Hastings in 1289 his three elder sons, John, Nicholas and Henry, paid a further 200 marks to Edmund of Lancaster under the Dictum for her dower in Penn, North Piddle, Dinnington and Thwaite, of which Penn went to John, the Yorkshire lands to Nicholas and North Piddle to Henry; in June 1290 the elder Nicholas and John acknowledged a debt of a further 400 marks to Edmund, which may have been for Ida's other lands. [If the total fine for Ida's dower holding was 600 marks, indicating an annual value of £100, either she received less than the traditional third (and thus the whole estate was worth less than £750 a year) or Edmund was more lenient in 1289-90 than 20 years earlier.] The younger Nicholas also had Barton Seagrave and Stretton in fee tail, and Henry had Ashbourne (Derb.). [Barton Seagrave and associated holdings and rents in Northampton had earlier been settled on Nicholas's sister Amabel when she married John de Plescy in 1270 but they reverted to the family when John (and Amabel, presumably) died without issue.] The elder Nicholas apparently did not provide for his son Geoffrey, who was granted Wisbech by his eldest brother John soon after their father's death in 1295, and by 1303 another brother, Simon, held Dunstall (Lincs.), but it is not clear whether by grant of his father or brother. The youngest brother Gilbert, a cleric, was bishop of London for three years before his death in 1316.

The eldest son, John (I), was in 1270 married (aged 14) to Christine, daughter of Hugh de Plescy, at the same time as his sister Amabel was married to Plescy's son and heir John. [Amabel's sister Eleanor is said to have married Alan Lord Zouche of Ashby (d. 1314), of whose three daughters one was a nun, Ellen married Nicholas St. Maur and Maud married Robert de Holland: GEC xii (2), 936.] Christine's portion was the manor of Stottesdon (Salop.). John de Segrave inherited on his father's death, and while the estate was not subject to dower, his mother being already dead, his superfluity of brothers had greatly diminished the inheritance. Of the 26 principal manors, a third were held by others. In 1292 Nicholas had been granted free warren in 12 manors; [Seagrave, Sileby, Cold Overton and Diseworth (Leics.), Bretby, Rosliston and Coton-in-the-Elms, probably including Linton (Derb.), Kineton and Caludon (Warws.), Fenstanton (Hunts.) and Chacombe (Northants.).] Mountsorrel, Wisbech and Alspath, where he did not have demesne, and Great Dalby were not included. Of the other ten manors, John already held Penn; Aspley and Witherley were held by Nicholas's half-brother John de Somery; North Piddle and Ashbourne by Henry; Dinnington, Thwaite and Barton Seagrave by the younger Nicholas; Stretton by either Peter de Segrave or the younger Nicholas; [Peter was alive in Jan. 1292; by 1295 the manor had been granted to the younger Nicholas by his father.] and Alconbury possibly by the elder Nicholas's aunt Eleanor de Howell [Eleanor quitclaimed her rights in Alconbury to Nicholas; that might suggest that the reversion of the manor on her stepmother Ida's death was her marriage portion, which she later surrendered, possibly because she had no issue.] Before his death in 1295 Nicholas recovered Alconbury, and John de Somery died without issue and his lands reverted, but John granted Wisbech to his brother Geoffrey in tail and by 1303 the younger Nicholas was holding Kineton, apparently for life (as it did not pass to his daughter Maud). All those manors eventually reverted to the main line. Geoffrey had died without issue by Jan. 1314 and Henry by Jan. 1318; Nicholas's daughter Maud died without issue in 1335, when his lands, including others which he had acquired, passed to her cousin John (II) Lord Segrave. The Lincolnshire lands were not recovered by John (I)'s descendants, and Simon may have founded a cadet line. [He may have been the father of Stephen, kinsman of John Lord Segrave, who in Dec. 1343 was holding lands in Leicestershire and Derbyshire for life, the reversion of which belonged to John.]

In 1305 John bought the manor of West Hatch (Wilts.), surprisingly distant from the rest of the estate, and in Jan. 1314 he married his eldest son Stephen to Alice, who may have been a sister of Edmund earl of Arundel. Arundel granted lands in Repton and Ticknall (Derb.), Alspath (Warws.) and Barrow and Quorndon (Leics.) and the manor of Flecknoe (Warws.) to John and Christine for regrant to Stephen and Alice, and John granted to the couple Great Dalby, Melton Mowbray and Welby (Leics.), West Hatch, and Wisbech (which had reverted after Geoffrey's death). Four years later, in Jan. 1318, he settled more lands on them, Flecknoe (from Arundel) and the lands which he had recently inherited on his brother Henry's death, Ashbourne, North Piddle and a rent in Thurlaston (Leics.). As usual, the jointure was used to secure title to newly acquired lands. [i.e. West Hatch and the lands recently reverted from his brothers Geoffrey and Henry. Melton and Welby had been granted by the elder Nicholas to Hugh de Herdeberwe and his wife Isabel and then exchanged for a holding at Brailes (Warws.): BL Harl. MS 4748, f. 16d.; Hugh and Isabel also quitclaimed to Nicholas all the money which he had given them in free marriage: BL Egerton MS 3789, f. 103. That implies a relationship between Nicholas and Isabel which is unstated.] John's younger son John (d. 1343), [His son John died in 1349 leaving only a daughter Mary, who died a few weeks after, when her cousin John (II) Lord Segrave was her heir: CIPM viii, no. 463; ix. 598; GEC xi. 609 n. The elder John's daughter Elizabeth, who married Richard Foliot (d.s.p. 1325) and Roger Lord Northwood (d. 1361), had died without issue by 1335: GEC v. 541.] had by 1312 married Juliana, daughter and heir of John de Sandwich of Folkestone (Kent), and of his three daughters Ellen or Margaret [John's daughter was Margaret; Ferrers's wife in Feb. 1317 was named as Ellen (GEC v. 344), who may, however, have been a later wife.] was married to William de Ferrers of Groby, [Ferrers had been in wardship successively to the elder and the younger Nicholas de Segrave until he proved his age in 1293.] Eleanor to Nicholas de Kerrial of Croxton Kerrial (Leics.) and Stockbury (Kent) in 1304, and Christine to John de Mohun of Dunster in 1305.

John died in Oct. 1325 and Stephen only two months later, leaving two sons, John (II) (born 1315) and Stephen. Both Christine and Alice survived their husbands, Christine still living in 1331 and Alice in 1338 with both jointures and dowers, so it was a much reduced inheritance which was granted in wardship to Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, in Jan. 1327. John (II) married Brotherton's elder daughter Margaret, having been gradually allowed possession of some of his inheritance before he reached full age. Brotherton had granted portions of the estate to others; in Oct. 1331, when John was 16, he and John de Grey of Rotherfield were granted the manor of Seagrave by John de Grey of Codnor, and in Jan. 1333 he and Sir William Giffard were granted lands in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Surrey (a holding in Lambeth) and Oxfordshire (a small rent) by Sir John Germy. His brother-in-law, Edward of Brotherton, was dead by 13 Sept. 1337, which left John's wife and her sister Alice as coheirs apparent of their father. John was campaigning abroad when he heard c. 21 Sept. 1338 of his father-in-law's death, and he returned almost immediately to claim his wife's inheritance; a month later his daughter Elizabeth, the ultimate heir of Thomas of Brotherton, was born at Croxton Abbey. [CIPM x, no. 12.] Brotherton's widow Mary held a large proportion of the inheritance in jointure and dower, and Edward's widow Beatrice held the Sussex lands in jointure, but the remainder of the Brotherton lands in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex were divided between Margaret and Alice. On 15 Dec. 1338 John appointed an attorney to take seisin of the manors of Lopham, Forncett, Framingham Parva and Suffield (Norf.), Great Chesterford, Romford and Dovercourt with Harwich (Essex) and the hundred of Earsham (Norf.). The countess Mary died in 1362, Alice's purparty reverted to Margaret in 1382 and the widow Beatrice died in 1383, when Margaret inherited the whole Brotherton estate.

Meanwhile, in 1343, John had carried out a large-scale settlement. It may have been prompted by the death of his mother Alice, for in June a feoffee quitclaimed to John lands in North Piddle, Thurlaston, Whetstone and Ashbourne which he had had by John's grant and which had all been held (among others) by Alice in jointure. On Christmas Eve John granted to three feoffees all the Leicestershire manors and a bundle of other holdings, [Excluding Diseworth, which in Nov. 1343 had been granted to three feoffees for their lives.] all the Derbyshire manors, Alspath (Warws.), Stottesdon with Kingswood (Salop.), North Piddle (Worcs.), Dinnington (Yorks.), Penn with Smethmeres and Morton (Bucks.), Peasenhall (Suff.), Heydon (Essex), Barton Seagrave (Northants.) and Fenstanton with Hilton (Hunts.), and also the reversion of Whetstone and Ashbourne, held for life by his kinsman Stephen de Segrave, of Cold Overton (Leics.), Thurlaston and Flecknoe (Warws.) and 18s. rent in Chatteris (Cambs.), held for life by his brother Stephen, of the manor of Aspley (Warws.), held for life by Henry de Birmingham, and of the £17 rent in Wisbech (Cambs.) held for life by Joan 1a English. Dinnington, Peasenhall, Heydon and Barton Seagrave had been inherited by John in 1335 on the death of Maud, daughter of his great-uncle Nicholas, but the gains had been balanced by his grants to his brother, kinsman and Joan 1a English since his mother's death, or perhaps by grants by his mother. In March 1344, in the presence of his uncle the earl of Arundel and other nobles in London, he agreed that his grant of Christmas Eve would be executed and the lands regranted to himself and Margaret. They were then to be extended by six men, three of his part and three of Margaret's, and divided into moieties of which one would be delivered to Margaret for the maintenance of herself and her children and household and the payment of her debts. [Below, BCM/D/5/1/17 [GC 3051]. The witnesses included Sir John de Hales, presumably a relation of Margaret's mother Alice de Hales, and John's brother Stephen and his cousins John of Folkestone and Stephen de Segrave.] At Michaelmas a final concord duly settled Barton Seagrave, Peasenhall, Penn, North Piddle, Aspley, Alspath, Flecknoe and Thurlaston, Dinnington and Kingswood on John and Margaret, and other lands were later settled by final concords: by the time of John's death in 1353 the Leicestershire and Derbyshire lands and Wisbech, Chatteris, Fenstanton and Stottesdon were also held in jointure. [Margaret held Fenstanton and Stottesdon as 1/20 'of her own inheritance' and 19/20 in jointure. John's brother Stephen, Henry de Birmingham and Joan la English had presumably all died by Sept. 1344.] There remained only the manors of Alconbury, Chacombe, West Hatch, Kineton and Caludon, with a few holdings in Rutland and Leicestershire. In 1349 the cadet branch of Folkestone died out with the death of Mary de Segrave and the manor of Loddon (Norf.) reverted to John. [At his death in 1343 John 'le Uncle' had held Folkestone and a moiety of Moreton (Essex) by the courtesy, as well as Loddon: CIPM viii, no. 463. Although Moreton was of the Sandwich inheritance it seems to have passed to John with Loddon, as Thomas de Mowbray was holding a manor there in 1399: CIPM xviii, no. 274.]

John and Margaret had one son, John, and one daughter, Elizabeth. In May 1347 young John was betrothed to Blanche, daughter of Henry of Lancaster; it would have been an exceptional match, as Blanche was her father's coheir in 1361, and sole heir the following year, but it did not come off and Blanche was later married to the king's son, John of Gaunt. [Below, BCM/D/5/101/8 [SC 519]. Blanche was a mere baby in 1347: she was said to be only 14 in 1361. She married Gaunt in 1359. Her sister Maud, born in 1339, was married to Ralph, son and heir apparent of Ralph de Stafford, in 1344 (when he was less than eight); he had died by 1347, and in 1352 she married William duke of Bavaria, dying without issue in 1362: GEC vii. 410. It is possible that Blanche and Maud had a brother who died young, which would explain their early betrothals to boys less distinguished than the husbands to whom they were later married: GEC xii (1), 177.] By May 1349 Segrave was negotiating the double marriage with Mowbray, for John and Elizabeth to marry Mowbray's children Blanche and John. Young John de Segrave had died before his father's death in May 1353 and 14-year-old Elizabeth was her father's heir. [For the descent of the Brotherton inheritance, below, BCM/D/7. Elizabeth proved her age in Sept. 1353; CIPMx. no 121.] It was for some time a somewhat empty windfall, as only six manors in Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Wiltshire passed directly to the young couple, Elizabeth's mother Margaret holding much of the inheritance in jointure and having dower in Loddon and the rest of the Yorkshire lands. [CIPM xii, no. 397.]