Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/85

Manny of the witnesses to the letters patent issued by the king respecting the complaints of the people of Aquitaine against the government of the Black Prince (Fœdera, iii. 901;, vii. 462).

The king by letters patent of 6 Feb. 1371 licensed Manny to found a house of Carthusian monks to be called La Salutation Mere Dieu (, Historical Account of Thomas Sutton and of his Foundation in Charterhouse, 1737, pp. 167-73). But this foundation, known as the London Charterhouse, appears to have been created ten years before. When the black death was raging in 1349, Manny had purchased from the hospital of St. Bartholomew thirteen acres of land outside the ' bar of West Smithfield,' and had it consecrated for a burial-ground. According to Manny's own statement no fewer than fifty thousand persons were buried there during that year (ib.) He built on it a handsome chapel of the Annunciation, which gave it the name of 'Newchurchhaw,' and obtained a bull from Pope Clement VI to allow him to endow a college with a superior and twelve chaplains (ib. ;, Calendar of Wills in Court of Husting, ii. 26, 107}. But this plan seems to have been dropped. Michael de Northburgh, bishop of London, purchased the place and the patronage of the chapel from Manny, and, dying on 9 Sept. 1361, left by his will 2,000l., with certain leases, rents, and tenements, to found a convent of the Carthusian order in 'Newchurchhaw' (''Hist. MSS. Comm''. 9th Rep. App. pt. i. p. 47 ; Shabpe, ii. 62). Yet in the letters patent of February 1871 and Manny's charter, dated 28 March 1371, Manny appears as the founder, and the only mention of Northburgh is that the monks are to pray for his soul and those of his successors, as well as for Manny and his family. A papal bull 'in favour of 'the new house of the Mother of God,' usually attributed to Urban V, but proved by Bearcroft (pp. 176-80) to have been granted by Urban VI in 1878, recites that Northburgh and Manny founded 'conventum duplicem ordinis Cartusiensis.' This probably points to the solution of the enigma.

Manny died in London on or about 15 Jan. 1372 (, ed. Lettenhove, viii. 482, xxii. 184 ; cf., p. 121). He left directions that he should be buried without any pomp in the choir of the church of the Carthusian monastery which he had founded ; the king and his sons with numerous prelates and barons followed him to the grave. John of Gaunt had five hundred masses said for his ; soul (ib.) His will, dated 30 Nov. 1371, and proved at Lambeth 13 April 1372, instructed his executors to pay a penny to every poor person coming to his funeral, to pray for him and the remission of his sins (, Baronage, ii. 150;, Testamenta Vetusta, i. 85-6). The tomb of alabaster with his effigy, which he ordered to be made 'like unto that of Sir John Beauchamp in Paul's in London,' remained until the dissolution in the church of the Charterhouse, where also his wife and his brother, Sir William Manny, were buried (ib.; Collectanea Topographica et Heraldica, iv. 309).

Manny married Margaret, daughter and heir of Thomas 'of Brotherton,' second son of Edward I, and widow of John, lord Segrave, who died in 1352. She succeeded her father as countess-marshal and Countess of Norfolk, and many years after Manny's death was created Duchess of Norfolk. By her Manny is said to have had one son, Thomas, who was drowned in a well at Deptford during his father's lifetime. His only surviving child, Anne, who was seventeen years of age at his death, and had been married since 1368 to John Hastings, earl of Pembroke, became his heir, and outliving her husband, who called himself 'Lord de Manny,' by nineteen years, she died in 1384. The 'Escheats Roll' enumerates estates of Manny and his wife in sixteen English counties, besides his properties in Calais and Hainault. Pembroke sold the latter, including the ancestral estate of Mauny, to his wife's cousin, Henry de Mauny, youngest son of Sir Walter's brother Thierri, who married Anne, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. Henry's granddaughter, who took the veil, was the last of the name in the direct line, and Mauny passed by inheritance to the Sires de Renesse, who still held it at the end of the eighteenth century (, xxii. 178). In his will Manny leaves small legacies to two illegitimate daughters, called Mailosel and Malplesant, who had taken the veil.

Manny was clearly one of the ablest and boldest of Edward III's soldiers of fortune, but his merits certainly lost nothing in the hands of his countrymen, Jean le Bel, Jean de Kleerk, and Froissart. He was a fellow-townsman and patron of Froissart, who visited Valenciennes in his company in 1364 (i. 125), and gave expression to his gratitude directly in his poems (ed. Schiller, ii. 9), and indirectly in the prominence he assigns to his benefactor in his 'Chronicles.' 'Mon livre,' he says (viii. 114) himself, 'est moult renluminé de ses prouesses.' He is represented, especially in the Breton scenes, as the mirror of the chivalrous daring of the time, as 'sagement emparlé et enlangagé' (v. 200). Yet his vengeance on Mirepoix, as