the Domesday Aubrey.[1] We owe to that accomplished genealogist, our late valuable and much lamented member, Mr. Stapleton, the information which has set us right upon this point; and which he made known in his memoir on the Barony of William of Arques, in the county of Kent, which was read at our first Archæological meeting at Canterbury, and afterwards printed in the Archæologia of the Society of Antiquaries.[2]
William of Arques, the Domesday lord of Folkstone, left two daughters his coheiresses, of whom Emma the younger was married, first to Nigel de Monville, and secondly to Manasses comte of Guisnes in Flanders. By the latter alone she had issue, and that an only daughter named Rosa, otherwise Sibilla, who, having been married to Henry castellan of Bourbourg, died in her father's lifetime, leaving again a single female heiress, named Beatrice. It was this Beatrice who was destined to convey the dignity of a comte to the man who might win her in marriage. Her grandmother, Emma, was still living, and it was by her advice, being an English woman, that a husband was selected in the English court for the future comtesse of Guisnes. The nobleman of her choice was Aubrey de Vere, son of Aubrey the king's chamberlain.[3]
The marriage of Beatrice is said to have been hastened because she was in precarious health, and lest, in case of her death without issue, the comté of Guisnes should revert to the next heir, by name Arnold de Gand. The comte Manasses died in the year 1137; whereupon Henry de Bourbourg, the father of the young heiress, dispatched a message to his son-in-law, Aubrey de Vere, requiring him to come immediately to take possession of the county of Guisnes, and obtain investiture from his
- ↑ Probably Ver in the Bessin, not Vire, of which Hugh Earl of Chester was castellan in the reign of William the Conqueror. See Stapleton's Rolls of the Norman Exchequer, vol. i. pp. lxxx., cliii., vol. ii. p. clvii.
- ↑ Vol. xxxi. pp. 216—257.
- ↑ Leland has a fabulous pedigree: "Ex libello genealogiæ Comitum Oxoniensium," tracing the Veres in a male line of Erles of Genney, alias Gisney, from Milo Duke of Angiers, living in the year 800. This is founded, of course, on the connection with the Comte of Guisnes, which is related in the text. After a string of princely alliances, it terminates with a fictitious marriage between Albery de Ver Erle of Genney, who came over at the Conquest, and Beatrice a sister of the Conqueror. It is to be regretted that Arthur Collins, in his "Historical Collections on the noble families of Cavendish, Holles, Vere, Harley. and Ogle," fol. 1752, has given some credence to this forgery. The memoirs of the house of Vere in that work occupy pp. 214—243.
