25. PAUNCEFOOT

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Fay Sampson’s Family History

This site is a work-in-progress. There is a massive amount to cover. I have included both male and female lines, and some go back 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)

 

RICHARD PAUNCEFOOT (25)

 

RICHARD PAUNCEFOOT. There are two conflicting trees for the ancestry of the Pauncefoots. One is derived from the successive lords of the manor of Hasfield in Gloucestershire and The Baronetage of England.

The Hasfield succession has the father of a younger Richard as Richard Pauncefoot son of George. According to this, Richard senior was the first to hold the lordship of Hasfield.

We have no information about his father other than his name, nor about his mother.

The Baronetage of England tells us that these Pauncefoots were descended from Bernard Pauncefoot, who is listed in the Domesday Book as holding several estates.

Richard senior was lord in 1199, more than a century after the Domesday Book. This was the year that saw the death of Richard Lionheart (Richard I) and the start of the reign of his brother King John.

In 1191 Richard the Lionheart was captured while returning from the Third Crusade. The staggering ransom exacted by the Duke of Austria amounted to a quarter of the annual income of every man in England. This for a man who never learned to speak English and said he would gladly sell the country if he could find a buyer.

Hasfield lies seven miles north of Gloucester and six mile south west of Tewkesbury, on the west bank of the River Severn. It is low-lying terrain and subject to flooding.

Hasfield Court was built on the site of the former Pauncefoot Court.

Hasfield with Hasfield Court[1]

  

HUMPHREY PAUNCEFOOT (25)

 

HUMPRHEY PAUNCEFOOT appears on Richard Whiting’s pedigree of the Pauncefoots as the son of Grimbald Pauncefoot and the daughter and heir of Lord Crickhowell.[2] This identification is suspect. It appears to refer to a later generation in which Grimbald Pauncefoot married Sybil de Turberville, who brought him Crickhowell as part of her dowry.

Humphrey owned estates in 1148, so was probably born in the first half of the 12th century.

Whiting appears to have derived his tree, in part, through the successive ownership of manors like Little Somborne in Hampshire, owned in the Domesday Book by the Norman Bernard Pauncefoot. Not all the lords of the manor are known. Whiting has evidently calculated from the dates that Humphrey must be the grandson of Bernard Pauncefoot.

We have no reliable  information about his parents, nor about his wife.

The Domesday Survey of 1086-7 has Bernard Pauncefoot owning estates in Hampshire (5), Somerset (2), Dorset (1, plus a smaller piece of land) and Wiltshire (1 holding). We do not know whether Humphrey inherited all of his grandfather’s properties, but he certainly had two of the Hampshire manors: [3]

Hunfridus Pancheuot was recorded at Winton in Hampshire in 1148.[4] This probably indicates that his father had died by then. If the birth date of his son is correct, Humphrey must have been quite young.

In 1166 Humphrey Pauncefoot held a fee and a half of the old feoffment of Humphrey de Bohun and this included the estate in Little Somborne which had belonged to Bernard Pauncefoot in 1086.

Worthy Pauncefoot was held of the Bohuns, Earls of Hereford. Thus in 1166 Humphrey Pauncefoot held one and a half knights’ fees of Humphrey de Bohun (Red Bk. of Exch. i, 243)

In 1166 we also find Humphrey and Eustace Pauncefoot as tenants of lands in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, which probably included Hasfield, where the alternative Pauncefoot tree is based. We know that the Pauncefoot came to England at the Norman Conquest, some time between 1066 and 1086, the date of the Domesday Survey. The family could not have grown very large in a century or less. It is very likely that this is the same Humphrey Pauncefoot. This would provide a link between the two trees.

We do not know the relationship between Humphrey and Eustace Pauncefoot. They are likely to have been brothers, cousins or father and son.

Richard Whiting’s tree credits Humphrey and his wife with one son, Geoffrey, sometimes recorded as Godfrey. Geoffrey is thought to have been born around 1178, which would be consistent with his marriage in 1204.[5]

Humphrey’s life thus included the reign of the first Plantagenet king, Henry II (1154-1189). When peace was restored to England after the war between Stephen and Matilda, Henry, who was Matilda’s son, turned his attention to establishing his empire from the Scottish borders to the Pyrenees. His writ did not run as far as Wales, but the Welsh kings were subdued. Between 1169 and 1177 Henry twice invaded Ireland. We do not know if Humphrey fought in any of his campaigns.

We have no information about when Humphrey died.

 

[1] https://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/01/26/02/1260280_5dc6779a.jpg. Pauncefoot Court stood on the site of the present Hasfield Court.
[2] Richard Whiting. Whiting of Wood: A Mediaeval Landed Family, 1974 (MS in DRO).
[3] A History of the County of Hampshire: Vol 4 (1911), ed. William Page. www.british-history.ac.uk
[4] http://books.google.co.uk . A Dictionary of English Surnames.
[5] http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com

 

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