Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/241

 1 2 s. ix. SEPT. s, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 195 RUNNYMEDE (12 S. ix. 150, 177). There were 25 executors of the Great Charter. Of the north-country lords were Eustace de Vesci, William de Mowbray, Robert de Ros, John de Lacy, Richard de Percy. All these are well-known names in the north ; many of them appear in Domesday ; but, with the exception of Mowbray and Lacy, not among the greater tenants in chief at the time of the survey. Eustace de Vesci was closely connected by marriage with the King of Scots, and is said to have had -like Robert FitzWalter and William of Salisbury, the King's natural brother cruel wrongs to avenge upon the King. Of the Stamford confederates were the Earls of Hertford, Gloucester, Winchesster, Hereford, Norfolk, and Oxford ; Robert FitzWalter, William Marshall the younger, Gilbert de Clare, Hugh Bigod, William Mallet, John FitzRobert, Roger de Mum- bezon, Richard de Muntfitchet, William de Lanvalei, and William de Huntingfield. This second division embraced the more part of the remnant of the Conquest baronage, and the representatives of the families which had earned lands and dig- nities under Henry I. and Henry II. Among these the most prominent is Robert Fitz- Walter, a grandson of Richard de Lucy, and a descendant in the male line from the Norman house of Brionne. With him are Saer de Quenci, Earl of Winchester, possessor of half the inheritance of the f;*eat house of Leicester ; Henry Bohun, arl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who appear side by side as their descendants did when they defied Edward I., John's grandson; Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, the brother-in-law of the King's divorced wife ; William Marshall the younger, the son of the great earl whose adhesion was the main support of John ; William de Lanvalei, whose name recalls a justice of Henry II. 's curia ; Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, William Mallet, &c. Of the third class, which clung to John as long as he seemed to have any hope in resistance, William de Forz, titular Count of Aumale and Lord of Holderness, a feudal adventurer of the worst stamp, and William of Albini represent a body less hostile to John. Geoffrey de Say, who is found shortly after in arms against the King, and the Mayor of London complete the number. Matthew Paris (ii. 605) gives a further list of 38 barons who swore to obey the orders of the 25 : this list includes the Earls Marshal, Arundel, and Warenne, Hubert de Burgh, Warin FitzGerold, Philip of Albini and William Percy. The list of those counsellors by whose advice John declares that he issues the Great Charter is composed of the bishops with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Pandulf, the Papal envoy, at their head and those earls and barons who only left the King after the adhesion of the Londoners : it contains none of the northern barons, none of the second list of confederates ; and the selection was per- haps made in the hope of binding the persons whom it includes to the continued support of. the hard-won liberties. See Bishop William Stubbs's, ' The Constitu- tional History of England' (1883), i., I pp. 580ff., and his < Select Charters ' (1884), ! pp. 296-306. The statement that " not a single descen- dant of the executors of Ma.gua Charta now exists " is far too wide. The male heirs of their names and titles may not be found in the House of Lords ; but there must be many descendants of them extant in the female line. A. R. BAYLEY. The 25 executors of Magna, Charta were, in company with Stephen Langton and the Papal legate Pandulph, Eustace de Vesci, William de Mowbray, Robert de Ros, John de Lacy, Richard de Perci, the Earls of Hertford, Gloucester, Winchester, Hereford, Norfolk and Oxford, j Robert FitzWalter, William Marshall the younger, Gilbert de Clare, Hugh Bigod, William Mallet, John FitzRobert, Roger de Mumbezon, Richard de Muntfitchet, William de Huntingfield, William d' Aumale, William d' Albini and Geoffrey de Say. I have personal friends living now who are descendants of Geoffrey de Say, and in whose possession is a copy of the Charter, bearing his signature, and in John Burke' s ' History of the Commoners,' 1836, appears the following : Beckford of Fonthill Abbey, Co. Wilts. Mr. Beckford is, paternally or maternally, descended from all the Barons of Magna Charta, i or the twenty-five conservators of the public J liberties, elected under the provisions of the great Charter, from whom there is any issue ! surviving. This gentleman was, of course, the 1 famous author of ' Vathek.' J. C. RUSSELL PARSONS.