Rose of Dover (d. 1261), Richard of Chilham and an Inheritance in Kent

Rose of Dover (d.1261), Richard of Chilham and an inheritance in Kent

richard cassidy

Visitors to the ruins of Lesnes Abbey may notice a plaque on a wall:

The burial place of the heart of Roesia of Dover, great great grand-daughter of the founder of this abbey, Richard de Lucy.

The discovery of the heart in 1939, during excavations at the abbey, and its re-interment in 1952, were recorded in this journal.¹ Rose’s life, her struggles to hold on to her inheritance, and her difficulties with her feckless husband, the royal bastard Richard of Chilham, are not only a little-known chapter in the history of an important Kent estate; they also illuminate the problems of an heiress in the thirteenth century, who lost control of her lands to her husband, and the unusual measures which the king took to protect Rose from her husband’s financial difficulties. In addition, it may be useful to try to disentangle the confusion about Richard, who was also known as Richard son of the king, Richard de Warenne and Richard of Dover (leading writers like Hasted to think that Rose had several husbands named Richard, while Dugdale confused Richard with his half-brother, Richard of Cornwall). There is a further problem of distinguishing Richard from his son and grandson, both called Richard of Dover.²

Fortunately, Rose of Dover’s ancestry is fairly clear, linking her to two families who were significant landowners in Kent (Fig. 1). As the plaque at Lesnes says, the abbey there was founded in 1178 by Richard de Lucy, who was Henry II’s Justiciar. Richard de Lucy had accumulated estates in many parts of the country, and near the end of his life he gave part of his manor of Lesnes to endow the abbey.³ The Justiciar’s oldest son died before him. That son’s two sons died young, so the Justiciar’s grand-daughters Rose and Maud de Lucy became the heirs to the Lucy inheritance. Rose married into a baronial family. Her husband John of Dover was another heir, with family estates, mostly in Kent and Essex, known as the barony of Chilham, or the lands of Fulbert of Dover.⁴ They made up fourteen or fifteen knights’ fees, with the service of providing castle ward at Dover castle.

John died about 1198, leaving Rose as a widow, now known as Rose of Dover (the first). Rose and her son Fulbert became wards of William Brewer, the long-serving administrator, notorious as one of King John’s evil counsellors. Fulbert was married to Brewer’s daughter Isabel, and Brewer appears to have helped himself to part of the Lucy inheritance.⁵ Rose maintained the Lucy family connection to Lesnes abbey, with a gift of more land in Lesnes.⁶ The machinations of William Brewer have already been discussed at length by Sidney Painter and Ralph Turner,⁷ so we can move on to the second Rose of Dover, only child of Fulbert and Isabel, and thus heiress to both Lucy and Dover inheritances.

This Rose is the heiress who married Richard, the illegitimate son of King John. Richard’s mother was a daughter of the earl of Surrey, possibly Isabel de Warenne. His parentage was openly acknowledged – he is sometimes known in the official records as Richard son of the King. His arms, shown in thirteenth-century rolls of arms, make his Plantagenet ancestry fairly plain: they were the royal arms, but with two rather than three lions.⁸ His seal combines these arms with the inscription ‘Seal of Richard de Warenne’, drawing attention to both parents.⁹

Rose and Richard were married by 1214, when King John gave to Richard all the land which belonged hereditarily to his wife, which was in the custody of William Brewer. Brewer was ordered to hand over Rose’s property.¹⁰ As Rose’s husband, Richard was given possession of the castle of Chilham,¹¹ the seat of the barony which Rose had inherited from Fulbert of Dover. From then on, he was often referred to as Richard of Chilham.

In 1215, Richard was knighted,¹² and he was shortly to be caught up in the civil war, fighting for his father King John, then for his half-brother Henry III, against Louis of France and his baronial supporters. King John appointed Richard constable of Wallingford, commanding an important stronghold.¹³ Richard’s great moment as a military leader came in August 1217, when he was one of the commanders of the fleet which defeated a French invasion force off Sandwich. According to the chronicler Wendover, Richard personally beheaded the French commander, Eustace the Monk.¹⁴

This battle effectively ended the French threat to Henry’s minority government. Richard then began his brief official career, as sheriff of Berkshire and keeper of the honour of Wallingford. As sheriff, he appears to have left the work to his deputy, Henry de Scaccario, that is, Henry of the Exchequer. Each year, from 1218 to 1221, when the sheriff was supposed to present his accounts for the year, it was Henry who came to the Exchequer on Richard’s behalf. And when the sheriff was meant to bring cash to the Treasury, it was Henry who did so, saying that Richard was on the king’s service, or simply that Richard was in Kent or in Scotland.¹⁵

In April 1220, Richard announced that he was going overseas.¹⁶ He joined the fifth crusade, and got as far as Egypt. This had its advantages: a court case against him was deferred because of his status as a crusader.¹⁷ And, characteristically, while on crusade he borrowed 20 marks from an Italian cardinal at Damietta, and didn’t pay it back – his brother the king repaid the loan for him, several years later.¹⁸

As constable of Wallingford during King Henry’s minority, Richard was presumably host to his half-brother, who spent long periods in Wallingford castle with his tutor.¹⁹ Despite this, there are few signs of a close family connection in later years. Richard is described in the records as the king’s brother, but was evidently not part of the royal household; he never crops up on the royal charter witness lists, and never receives the gifts of venison and timber which were distributed to Henry’s favourites. In 1221, he was paid £40 to retain him in the king’s service, and in 1222 he received a gift of 20 marks.²⁰ The former nurse of the king’s sister, Isabel, appointed Richard as her attorney, to collect a payment from the sheriff of Essex.²¹ Otherwise, there is little sign of Richard being involved in the affairs of the royal family. After his early career as a sheriff, he was also little involved in administrative roles. He was one of the collectors of the fifteenth for Kent in 1225,²² but he played very little part in public and political affairs for the following 20 years. For most of that time, almost the only traces of Richard and Rose concern debts and lawsuits.

Richard’s debts to the king began with the scutage of 1217, a tax of 2 marks per fee on the 14 fees of the barony of Chilham.²³ This debt keeps cropping up throughout the 1220s, with other debts being added to it. Richard persistently fails to come when summoned, and threats keep being made against him: Richard’s land is to be taken into the king’s hand; he is to be distrained; he can have the land back if he agrees to pay by instalments; and so on.²⁴ He was also building up debts to moneylenders, and he owed money to William Scissor (William the tailor) which was to be recovered by distraint of lands and chattels – perhaps an early example of the aristocratic tradition of not bothering to pay your tailor’s bills.²⁵

At that point, the king stepped in, in Rose’s interest. In September 1227, he ordered the sheriff of Kent not to let Richard waste, sell or damage the manor of Northwood,²⁶ which was assigned to Rose for her maintenance. Richard was not to be allowed to lay hands on the manor or interfere with it in any way;²⁷ from which it seems probable that Richard had been proposing to do precisely that. It is also worth noting that the order is phrased like the writ of prohibition of waste.²⁸ This writ is often directed to guardians and to women holding dower, to prevent them wasting property. It is unusual for such instructions to apply to a husband – court records of around this period do not seem to show any other examples.

Meanwhile, Richard and Rose were involved in a long-running lawsuit, trying to establish Rose’s right to the manor of Lesnes, against Robert fitz Walter and Richard de Montfichet.²⁹ The case went through many stages from 1219 until the eyre, reaching Kent in September 1227, heard the long and tangled tale, and decided that it should be settled by a duel.³⁰ Each side nominated its champions – hired thugs, in reality – to meet at the next session of the eyre, in Essex late in October. Evidently, Richard and Rose won. The agreements between the litigants survive in the feet of fines: after the duel, Robert fitz Walter recognized Rose’s right to the land, and quitclaimed to Richard and Rose, and to Rose’s heirs, for which Richard and Rose gave him 60 marks (£40).³¹

In fact, Richard and Rose had to borrow the money. The liberate roll shows a writ to pay Richard £40 on 15 November 1227.³² And on 30 November, Richard came to the court, which had then reached Hertford, and paid over the money.³³ So Richard and Rose had gained the manor, but increased their debts. In March 1228, the fine roll set out the terms for Rose to repay the £40 which the king had lent to Richard, and committed the manor of Lesnes to Rose.³⁴

Their problems promptly began again. The very next day, the sheriffs of Kent and Essex were ordered to take into the king’s hand Richard and Rose’s manors of Warden (perhaps Warden in Sheppey, or maybe Wenden, in Saffron Walden, Essex) and Chingford (Essex).³⁵ In fact, one Robert of Westminster was already holding Chingford, which he had taken from Richard as a pledge – presumably, security against a debt.³⁶ Similarly, Rose’s manor of Wenden, Essex, was left in possession of Henry fitz Aucher, who had seisin of the manor, so that he could answer to Benedict Crispin, the moneylender, for a debt which Richard owed against that manor.³⁷

It would seem that Rose made little progress in repaying the money Richard had borrowed, for in May 1229 the sheriffs were told to take into the king’s hand all her manors except Lesnes, which she was to keep for her maintenance.³⁸

At this point, Richard joined Henry III’s forces sailing for Brittany.³⁹ This was a sound move, as it put into abeyance at least two pending court cases against him, and he was granted respite from his debts.⁴⁰ But the relief could only be short-lived. In 1231, the Kent accounts show that Richard owed the king debts of £37, and Richard and Rose owed 10 marks for a loan from the Treasury – perhaps the remainder of the loan to settle the Lesnes case. Yet again, they were to be distrained.⁴¹

Richard meanwhile seems again to have been planning to abuse his position as an heiress’s husband. In July 1232 the sheriff of Essex was told to proclaim that no-one should buy the lands and woods which Richard held from Rose’s inheritance, or take them as gift or security, without the king’s permission. An order to Richard forbade the sale, gift or pledging of lands, on pain of forfeiture.⁴²

And so it went on, with Richard’s debts continuing to mount, despite all the part-payments and seizures of land and threats of distraint.⁴³ There is nothing else to report until 1238, when Richard and Rose’s son appears in the records, as ‘Richard son of Richard de Warenne son of king John’ (Fig. 2); Richard junior had been given a wardship by his father, which he sold for 100 marks to Bertram de Criell, then sheriff of Kent.⁴⁴ In 1242 Richard junior began a military career, receiving an annual fee of 50 marks from the king and joining King Henry’s expedition to Gascony.⁴⁵

The family was suddenly back in favour. In April 1242, the Justices of the Jews and the sheriffs of Essex and Kent were told not to distrain Rose, on account of any money which Richard had borrowed from the Jews, because her manors of Wenden and Chingford in Essex and Northwood and Lesnes in Kent had been assigned to Rose for her sustenance, in the king’s presence.⁴⁶ And the king apparently advanced Richard more money – 20 marks to buy equipment, as he was going by the king’s order with two knights and 12 serjeants to expel the king’s enemies from Lundy Island.⁴⁷ Lundy, in the Bristol Channel, had become the refuge of William Marsh, or de Marisco, outlaw, pirate and suspect in a case of attempted regicide. He had been lurking there for years. At the end of May 1242, the records say that Richard of Chilham was sent to deal with this outlaw. It is possible that Richard was recalled to active service, and returned to the swashbuckling activities of his youth, but it seems more likely that the references to Richard of Chilham actually mean his son, just beginning a career as a military commander. In any event, the expedition was a success; the island was taken, and the pirate gang captured. In June, the bailiffs of Bristol gave Richard 40s. for taking the pirates back to London.⁴⁸ And in London, William Marsh was dragged through the streets and hanged.

It can hardly be a coincidence that in January 1243 Richard senior was granted a pardon for £100 of a debt he owed to Benedict Crispin, the moneylender.⁴⁹ It is worth noting that this order was issued at Bordeaux, where Richard junior was serving with the king – in fact, just a few days before, another entry on the fine roll had ordered payment of his fee for Easter term to ‘our beloved and faithful Richard of Dover’.⁵⁰ In 1244, Richard junior was granted two deer, as a gift from the king, and in 1245 he was pardoned a 20 mark amercement imposed by the forest eyre, both signs that he at least was in royal favour.⁵¹ Also about this time, the survey of fees held by military service showed that Richard and Rose still had extensive interests in Kent. They had just over 16 fees, with only 2¼ held in demesne.⁵²

Of course, they were by no means out of their usual financial morass. They had pledged the income from two manors in order to pay back £200 to the people who had guaranteed their debt to Crispin.⁵³ They had leased the manor of Ringwould, but not given seisin to the tenant. The ensuing court case led to yet another distraint in 1245, with the sheriff of Kent being told to take in hand all their lands and chattels.⁵⁴ And so their troubles continued.

There are also a number of surviving feet of fines which look as if they might be records of vifgage, as described by Paul Brand⁵⁵ – property was handed over for a fixed term, in return for a cash payment in advance, and little or no rent to be paid during the term. For example, land in Chingford was leased to William of York for a consideration of £180, with nothing to pay for 15 years.⁵⁶ And Lesnes itself was let for 16 years in return for 1,000 marks (£667).⁵⁷

Meanwhile, Richard’s debt to the Exchequer continued to grow, quite spectacularly, with an amercement of £100 for taking a whale without permission. This seems to have happened shortly before his death in 1246.⁵⁸ In June 1246, Rose did homage for all the lands which Richard had held in chief from Rose’s inheritance.⁵⁹ In November, the Exchequer had still not caught up with all Richard’s debts; the Kent account recorded: ‘Richard of Chilham owes £28 12d. for three debts. The sheriff is ordered to make money from his chattels, as much as necessary, and pay to the Exchequer in part-payment of the debt’.⁶⁰

Richard’s death was followed in 1247 by that of their son, Richard of Dover.⁶¹ He had been building a successful career in royal service, first in Gascony, then in command of castles on the Welsh border.⁶² These deaths in quick succession may explain why Matthew Paris, writing some time later, recorded both their deaths in his list for 1245.⁶³

As a widow, Rose was at last in control of her own lands, even if many had been mortgaged and produced no income, and she was still burdened by the debts which Richard had accumulated.⁶⁴ The sheriff of Kent was ordered to carry out inquiries into how much land Richard had held and what goods he owned on the day he died, but to leave Rose in peace.⁶⁵ There are a few pieces of evidence for Rose now taking a more active role, after years in which she appears in the records only as Richard’s wife. There is a deed from 1248, in which she requests the Prior of Holy Trinity London to pay £10 to a merchant of Douai, from the money which the prior owes to Rose.⁶⁶ In the same year, she acknowledged a debt of 50 marks to an Exchequer official, John de Neville, in a transaction concerning the sale of grain.⁶⁷ Also in 1248, she granted the manor of Lutton, Northants., to William Marmion and his wife Loretta, who was Rose’s daughter. The annual rent was to be a pair of gilded spurs, or 6d.⁶⁸

In 1250, Rose paid a fine of 100 marks, so that she could marry whomever she pleased.⁶⁹ She married again, to William of Wilton, a fairly prominent judge, and for some years Rose again appears only as a wife: in 1256, for example, William and Rose were granted a weekly market and annual fair at their manor of Lesnes; in the same year, William and Rose were granted respite from payment of Richard of Chilham’s debts, which still hung over them. William of Wilton was to die in 1264 at the battle of Lewes, fighting on the king’s side.⁷⁰ Rose was already dead by then; the wardship of her lands and heir was granted to Queen Eleanor early in 1261.⁷¹ The heir was Richard of Dover II, Rose’s grandson. There is an extent of Rose’s property in Kent, among the Inquisitions Post Mortem.⁷² It was probably drawn up in 1264 or 1265, and says that Richard was then just 21.

The extent values the Kent properties alone at £181 a year (Chilham, £48; Northwood, £21 9d.; Kingston, £18; Ringwould, £32; Lesnes, £52; a mill at Dover, £10), plus the advowsons of five churches in Kent. This is quite a considerable sum, given that the average value of an early thirteenth-century barony has been calculated as about £200 a year, while a man would need £10-20 a year to support himself as a knight.⁷³ This figure also helps to put into context the debts which Richard had accumulated – he owed the king more than a year’s income from Rose’s estates in Kent. The extent points out that Richard and Rose had also held the manor of Chingford in Essex, but the valuers did not know what that was worth. Other property in Lutton (Northants.), and Wenden (Essex) has also been mentioned above, so the total value of the estate must have been somewhat greater than £181 a year.⁷⁴

Richard the grandson died without issue in 1266, and the next heir was Isabel of Dover, his sister. She was married to David, Earl of Atholl, and the barony of Chilham then passed into his hands. Unfortunately, the estate was still burdened with Richard’s debts. Matters finally came to a head in 1270, in a case before the Exchequer of Pleas.⁷⁵ David, Earl of Atholl denied responsibility for Richard of Chilham’s debts to the king, totalling £212, and for Richard of Dover I’s rather smaller debts. His case was that he and his wife had not inherited any lands which belonged to Richard of Chilham, Isabel’s grandfather (because the lands had belonged to Rose); nor had they inherited any property from Richard of Dover, Isabel’s father, because he had died in Rose’s lifetime (and thus never come into possession of the barony). The Barons of the Exchequer accepted this second argument, but on the major debt they were clear that Atholl had to pay.

Their reasoning demonstrates the contemporary legal view of a husband’s power over his wife’s property. They said that the debts were attached to the holding; Richard had done homage to the king for the holding; he and Rose had had children, so that, if he had outlived her, he would have continued to occupy the holding for his lifetime; and if he had enfeoffed somebody with part of the barony, his heirs would have had to stand by that arrangement. The heirs to the property had to repay the debts from the property, even if it had belonged to the wife rather than the husband.

That judgment sums up the practical implications of the legal theory about the husband’s powers over his wife’s property. These powers affected not just the wife, but also her heirs. Richard and Rose are unusual because the king stepped in several times to protect Rose’s property from waste or sale, and to reserve part of her estates for her support. This did not prevent Richard running up debts to the Exchequer, which sometimes resulted in lands being seized, and to moneylenders, who occupied the manors he had put up as security.

Many authors have written about the legal theory.⁷⁶ Briefly, if a woman inherited an estate held in chief, the king would give the heiress in marriage, with her land. Her husband would then do homage. The husband was entitled to possession and profits of her estate, during their joint lives. Seisin was held jointly, in principle; but as the wife could not take legal action as an independent person, the benefit of joint seisin belonged to the husband alone: ‘He may occupy the lands and exclude her from posession, he may demise them, and recover, receive and squander the rents of them, in spite of her protest’.⁷⁷

While the marriage lasted, the husband could do whatever he liked with the property. If the wife outlived him, she could then attempt to undo transactions he had made without her consent – there was a writ, cui in vita, specifically for this purpose – but she had to prove that she had not been consulted, and could not contradict her husband during his lifetime. If they had children, and he outlived her, then he retained possession of her estate for the rest of his life. Such was the theory, and such circumstances must have arisen quite often. The demographic probability was that about a quarter of all inheritances should have gone to women, but ‘the right of the heiress was less to enjoy property than to transmit it’.⁷⁸

Rose’s life exemplifies many aspects of the problems of the heiress. William Brewer used his role as guardian, with the privilege of his position at the court of King John, to divert part of the Lucy inheritance to his own family. Rose did not recover her property from Brewer; when she married, it was transferred to her husband, who then had an unassailable right to use her property as he wished. Richard incurred debts to the king and to moneylenders, which led to manors being seized and chattels distrained. It would seem that it was only through the most unusual intervention of the king, her brother-in-law, that Rose was allowed to keep some of her manors for her own maintenance, and Richard was prevented from wasting or selling her property. As a widow, Rose could run her own affairs, but had to pay a fine in order to remarry freely. She was at last able to transmit to her grand-children the properties in Kent listed in the survey carried out after her death, but the estate was heavily burdened by the debts run up by Richard, which were still outstanding some 25 years after his death.

acknowledgements

This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, on 14 July 2009. The author would like to thank: Professor David Carpenter, his supervisor at King’s College London; Ms Christine Voth, who first noticed the story of Richard and Rose in the fine rolls; and Mr Douglas Richardson, for his advice on genealogical matters; the author alone is responsible for any mistakes introduced by his simplification of a very complex family tree.

endnotes

References to unpublished manuscripts all relate to documents in The National Archives, London. The major published series of rolls are abbreviated:

CChR Calendar of the charter rolls (London 1903)

CFR Calendar of the fine rolls of the reign of Henry III (available both on the Henry III Fine Rolls Project’s website (http://www.finerollshenry3.org.uk) and within Calendar of the fine rolls of the reign of Henry III 1216-1242, ed. P. Dryburgh and B. Hartland, technical eds A. Ciula and J.M. Vieira, 3 vols (Woodbridge, 2007-9)

CLR Calendar of the liberate rolls, Henry III (London 1916-64)

CPR Calendar of the patent rolls, Henry III (London 1898-1908)

CR Close rolls of the reign of Henry III (London 1902-38)

CRR Curia regis rolls (London 1922- )

PR Pipe rolls, published by the Pipe Roll Society

RLC Rotuli litterarum clausarum ed. T.D. Hardy (London 1833-44)

RLP Rotuli litterarum patentium ed. T.D. Hardy (London 1835)

¹ E. Harrison, ‘Report for the year ended 31 December 1939’, Archaeologia Cantiana, liii (1940), xli-xlii; F.W. Jessup, ‘Annual report for the year ended 31 December 1952’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxv (1952), xliii; F.C. Elliston-Erwood, ‘Lesnes Abbey, Erith’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxvi (1953), 151-2. Also reported in ‘Excavations at Lesnes Abbey’, The Times 30 July 1952, 3.

² E. Hasted, The history and topographical survey of the county of Kent, 2nd edition (Canterbury 1797), II, 231-2. W. Dugdale, The baronage of England (London 1675), I, 462. The confusing Richards: N. Denholm-Young, Richard of Cornwall (Oxford 1947), 2-3; C. Given-Wilson and A. Curteis, The royal bastards of medieval England (New York 1995), 130. The confusion is made worse by the existence of another Richard of Dover, with an estate in Havering (see for example CChR, I, 320). The Havering Richard is clearly not the same as Richard of Chilham – see his Inquisition Post Mortem, C132/16/17. There is a short biographical account of Richard of Chilham (Simon Lloyd, ‘Chilham, Sir Richard of (d.1246)’, ODNB, OUP, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/46706, accessed 15 June 2010]), but nothing comparable about Rose.

³ Much of this background material derives from: W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, new edition (London 1817-30), VI, I, 456-7; G. Andrews Moriarty, ‘The first house of de Douvres or de Chilham’, New England Historical and Genealogical Register CV (1951), 36-42; J.H. Round, ‘The heirs of Richard de Lucy’, The Genealogist n.s. XV, 129-33; G.J. Turner, ‘Richard Fitzroy’, The Genealogist n.s. XXII, 105-10; A.W. Clapham, Lesnes Abbey in the parish of Erith, Kent (London 1915), 2-10; I.J. Sanders, English baronies (Oxford 1960), 111.

⁴ The first Fulbert of Dover is recorded as holding Chilham in 1086: Domesday Book: A complete translation, ed. A. Williams, G.H. Martin (London 2002), 24.

⁵ Rotuli chartarum, ed. T.D. Hardy (London 1837-44), I, 189.

⁶ Rotuli chartarum, I, 164.

⁷ S. Painter, The reign of King John (Baltimore 1949), 74-6; R. V. Turner, Men raised from the dust (Philadelphia 1988), 81-3, ‘The Mandeville inheritance 1189-1236: its legal, political and social context’, Haskins Society Journal I (1989), 163-6, and ‘Exercise of the king’s will in inheritance of baronies: the example of King John and William Briwerre’, Albion 22 (1990), 389-92, which paraphrases the previous article. Also mentioned in J.C. Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd edition (Cambridge 1992), 165n and 202-3.

⁸ D. Crouch, The birth of nobility: constructing aristocracy in England and France 900-1300 (Harlow 2005), 161. The first shield illustrated in the Dering Roll of about 1275 is that of ‘Richard fiz le Rei’, and it is described in Glover’s Roll as ‘Richard de Douvre de gules a deux leopardz d’or’: A.R. Wagner, Aspilogia, I ‘A catalogue of English mediaeval rolls of arms’, 14, and II, ‘Rolls of arms Henry III’, 130.

⁹ Reproduced in F. Sandford, A genealogical history of the kings of England (London 1677), 57.

¹⁰ RLC I, 168; RLP, 118b.

¹¹ RLP, 118b, then again in Patent Rolls 1216-25 (London 1901), 70.

¹² RLC I, 268b.

¹³ RLP, 185b, 186b, 199b.

¹⁴ Roger of Wendover, Flores historiarum, ed. H.G. Hewlett, Rolls Series (London 1886-9), II, 222. Similarly in Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H.R. Luard, Rolls Series (London 1872-83), III, 27. Also mentioned in the Waverley and Worcester annals, Annales monastici, ed. H.R. Luard, Rolls Series (London 1864-9), II, 288, and IV, 408. Robert of Gloucester, Metrical chronicle, Part II, ed. W.A. Wright, Rolls Series (London 1887), lines 10612 and 10628, mentions both the sea battle and Richard’s relationship to the Warennes.

¹⁵ For example: E159/3, m. 2, 6; E159/5 m. 7; PR 1218, 31; 1219, 158; 1220, 183; 1221, 1.

¹⁶ CPR 1216-25, 230-2; E159/3, m. 13.

¹⁷ CRR 8, 326-7.

¹⁸ CRR 8, 326-7; CLR I, 87; E372/72 rot. 13d.

¹⁹ N. Vincent, Peter des Roches (Cambridge 1996), 154-5.

²⁰ RLC I, 471, 521 and 525.

²¹ E368/8 m. 3d.

²² RLC II, 75.

²³ PR 1219, 150; 1220, 162; 1221, 205; 1222, 61; 1230, 111.

²⁴ CLR I, 58. Some examples from the memoranda rolls: E368/4 m. 12d; E368/5 m. 7d; E368/6 m. 19d; E368/7 m. 15; E368/8 m. 19d and E159/8 m. 5; E368/9 m. 9; E368/10 m. 1, 8d, 10; E159/9 m. 3, 12d (respite).

²⁵ Principal references: CRR 13, 239; CRR 14, 2457; CRR 15, 395.

²⁶ There are several places in Kent called Northwood, but a nineteenth-century court case identifies this one with the later manor of Whitstable: Law reports, Court of Common Pleas, ed. J.R. Bulwer, vol. II 1866-67 (London 1867), 694-5.

²⁷ RLC II, 199.

²⁸ Compare the example in Bracton on the laws and customs of England, ed. G.E. Woodbine, trans. S.E. Thorne (Cambridge, Mass. 1968-77), III, 405-6.

²⁹ Principally: CRR 8, 25-6 and 262; CRR 10, 164 and 186-7; CRR 11, 135 and 2908; CRR 12, 136 and 969.

³⁰ JUST1/358, m. 2; also, with a few errors and omissions, in Bracton’s note book, ed. F.W. Maitland (London 1887), case 1764.

³¹ CP25/1/96/16, no. 189; summarized in Calendar of Kent feet of fines, ed. I.J. Churchill et al., KAS Records Branch, Vol. XV (1956), 103, and cxix-cxx. The agreement with Montfichet is CP25/1/53/22, no. 176, summarized in Feet of fines for Essex, I, ed. R.E.G. Kirk (Colchester 1899-1910), 75-6. There are several further land transactions by Richard and Rose in each of these volumes.

³² CLR I, 60.

³³ JUST1/229, m. 8d.

³⁴ CFR 1227-28, 96. This fine was noted in 1675 by Dugdale, The baronage of England, I, 462, but ignored in subsequent studies of the case. There was later another court case concerning the abbot of Westminster’s claim to property in Lesnes: CRR 16, 555.

³⁵ CFR 1227-28, 97-8.

³⁶ CR 1227-31, 37 and 194.

³⁷ CR 1227-31, 27 and 193.

³⁸ CFR 1228-29, 191-2.

³⁹ He is included on the 1229 muster roll: I.J. Sanders, Feudal military service in England (Oxford 1956), 124. In 1230, he is among those receiving letters of protection: CPR 1225-32, 361.

⁴⁰ CR 1227-31, 367 and 445. Richard and Rose were then involved in another long-running lawsuit, concerning land in Newington (it is not clear whether this is by Sittingbourne, or by Hythe): CRR 11, 416; CRR 13, 2703; CRR 14, 286, 919, 1440, 1932.

⁴¹ CR 1231-34, 10.

⁴² CR 1231-34, 149.

⁴³ E159/10, m. 1; Memoranda rolls 1231-32, ed. R. Allen Brown (London 1991), 1638, 1673, 1708, 2629; E159/15 m. 1d, 9; PR 1242, 145, 148, 149.

⁴⁴ E159/16 m. 9; E368/12 m. 10d.

⁴⁵ CLR II, 122; CPR 1232-47, 296, 318, 366; Receipt and issue rolls for the 26th year of the reign of Henry III, ed. R.C. Stacey, Pipe Roll Society NS 49 (1992), 91.

⁴⁶ CR 1237-42, 415; E159/21 m. 23.

⁴⁷ CR 1237-42, 443; CLR II, 136; Receipt and issue rolls for the 26th year of the reign of Henry III, 94. The classic account is F.M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward (Oxford 1947), II, 740-759, although Powicke refers to ‘a certain Richard de Chilham, of whom I know nothing’ (753).

⁴⁸ PR 1242, 257; CLR II, 138.

⁴⁹ CFR 1242-43, 34. Also, CR 1242-47, 43; Calendar of the plea rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, I, ed. J.M. Rigg, Jewish Historical Society of England (London 1905), 58.

⁵⁰ CFR 1242-43, 29.

⁵¹ CR 1242-47, 222, 370.

⁵² The book of fees ed. H.C. Maxwell Lyte (London 1920), 675 (and a similar survey, 654-7, 660-1, 669).

⁵³ CRR 17, 82; CR 1242-47, 43.

⁵⁴ CRR 16, 2251; CRR 18, 1710, 1735 and 1765.

⁵⁵ P. Brand, ‘Aspects of the law of debt, 1189-1307’, in Credit and debt in medieval England c.1180-c.1350, eds P.R. Schofield and N.J. Mayhew (Oxford 2002), 21, 31.

⁵⁶ Feet of fines for Essex, I, 145.

⁵⁷ CRR 16, 1222. There were further court appearances about non-payment of 100 marks a year for the manor of Lesnes: CRR 18, 806, 1710.

⁵⁸ E372/90, Kent rotulet. Mentioned in Thomas Madox, History and Antiquities of the Exchequer, 2nd edition (London 1769), I, 548.

⁵⁹ CR 1242-47, 435.

⁶⁰ E368/19 m. 10, and E159/23 m. 7d. CR 1242-47, 488.

⁶¹ Payment for his burial: CLR III, 141.

⁶² The younger Richard witnessed royal charters on 11 June 1244, 22 Sept 1246, 20 March 1247 and 15 June 1247: The royal charter witness lists of Henry III, ed. M. Morris, List and Index Society (2001). He and his wife received gifts of deer: CR 1242-47, 222 and 488. Service in Wales and the Marches: CPR 1232-47, 464, 489; CFR 1245-46, 663; CFR 1246-47, 79, 188, 292, 350. There are frequent references to his fees and expenses on royal service: CLR II, 156; II, 231; II, 275; III, 7; III, 50; III, 82; III, 114; and CFR 1242-43, 209, 264, 368, 485.

⁶³ Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, IV, 492.

⁶⁴ In 1253, she was allowed to offset the cost of Richard’s funeral against the debts which he owed to the king: CR 1251-53, 307. The Exchequer kept track of the debts: for example, memoranda rolls E159/23 m. 7d and E368/19 m. 10; E159/26 m. 4d; E159/30, m. 28d; E159/32 m. 24, 24d; E159/33 m 24d; E159/34 m. 32d; and Pipe Rolls E372/98 rot. 12 m. 1, 1d; E372/103 rot. 10 m.1.

⁶⁵ Inquiries in 1249 (E159/25 m. 3d) and 1252 (E368/28 m. 5d).

⁶⁶ E40/12943.

⁶⁷ E159/24 m. 3, 5d.

⁶⁸ The White Book of Peterborough, ed. S. Raban (Peterborough 2001), 82-3. See also Henry of Pytchley’s book of fees, ed. W.T. Mellows (Kettering 1927), 46-9.

⁶⁹ CPR 1247-58, 71; CFR 1249-50, 518.

⁷⁰ A. Harding, ‘Wilton, Sir William of (d.1264)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography; CChR, I, 452; E159/29 m. 19. A few years later, the sheriff was ordered to distrain William for Richard’s debts: E159/33 m. 24d, 25.

⁷¹ CPR 1258-66, 141. They were later briefly in the hands of Henry de Montfort (CPR 1258-66, 341), and after the fall of the de Montfort regime the wardships were granted to Guy de Marchia, the king’s nephew (CPR 1258-66, 532). In 1267, Queen Eleanor was also given all the debts which Richard of Chilham owed to the king: CR 1264-68, 286, and E159/41 m. 4d.

⁷² C132/47/17. Summarized in Calendar of inquisitions post mortem (London 1904), I, no. 924.

⁷³ S. Painter, Studies in the history of the English feudal barony (Baltimore 1943), 170-2.

⁷⁴ Richard presented Peter de Littlebiri to the church of Lutton, so Rose evidently held the advowson there: Rotuli Hugonis de Welles, Vol. II, Canterbury and York Society (London 1907), 179. There are court cases involving property in Wenden (Saffron Walden), Essex (CRR 13, 132, 366), Gloucestershire (CRR 16, 148B), and Cornwall (CRR 19, 784), and agreements concerning Wenden and a knight’s fee in Little Wyham, Essex (Feet of fines for Essex, 151, 150).

⁷⁵ Select cases in the Exchequer of Pleas, ed. H. Jenkinson and B. Formoy, Selden Society XLVIII (1932), case 121.

76 A few examples: Courtney Stanhope Kenny, The history of the law of England as to the effects of marriage on property (London 1879), 70-3; Pollock and Maitland, History of English law, 2nd ed., II, 403-14; S.F.C. Milsom, ‘Inheritance by women in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, in Studies in the history of the common law (London 1985), 231-60; J.C. Holt, ‘Presidential address: Feudal society and the family in early medieval England’, TRHS 33 (1983), 218, and 35 (1985), 9-21; E. Spring, Law, land, and family (Chapel Hill 1993), 13-32; M.M Sheehan, Marriage, family and law in medieval Europe (Toronto 1966), 16-30; P. Coss, The lady in medieval England 1000-1500 (Stroud 2000), 123-5; S. Johns, ‘The wives and widows of the earls of Chester’, Haskins Society Journal 7 (1995), 130-1.

⁷⁷ Kenny, The history of the law of England, 72.

⁷⁸ E. Spring, Law, land, and family, 11-12, 13. Other estimates for female inheritance, mostly concerning later periods: S.J. Payling, ‘The economics of marriage in late medieval England: the marriage of heiresses’, EcHR LIV (2001), 414; S.L. Waugh, The lordship of England: Royal wardships and marriages in English society and politics 1217-1327 (Princeton 1988), 18-19; K.B. McFarlane, The nobility of later medieval England (Oxford 1973), 144-5.

Fig. 1 The de Lucy family and Rose of Dover.

Fig. 2 Rose of Dover, Richard of Chilham and their heirs.