26. ROUS

Sampson  Tree

 HENRY ROUS (26)

 

HENRY ROUS is the only known son of Roger Fitz Alan, Lord of Harescombe in Gloucestershire. He was born around the start of the 13^th century, in the reign of Richard the Lionheart or his brother King John.

We do not know the name of his mother, his siblings or his wife.

Fitz means ‘son of’. Henry’s grandfather was Alan Fitz Mayn. Henry was the first to use the surname Rous, which was then passed down to succeeding generations.

The name Rous is a Norman one, from a word meaning ‘red’. It may originally have applied to someone with red hair, as with William the Conqueror’s son William Rufus.

Sometime between 1213 and 1222 Henry confirmed a grant to Llanthony Priory of ‘all that land of Southgrove’. This was Llanthony Secunda Priory, to which the Augustian canons had retreated in 1135 from the English-Welsh border, in the face of persistent attacks from the Welsh. They set up a second house in Hempsted on the southern outskirts of  Gloucester,  just 5 miles from Harescombe.

The land of Southgrove had come to him from his grandfather Alan Fitz Mayn. Henry’s father had given 2 acres of this to Llanthony Priory.

Henry also held land in the villages of Brockthorp and Allensmore in Herefordshire, as well as succeeding his father as Lord of Harescombe. The date of 1208 given for Roger Fitz Alan’s death means that Henry to the manor succeeded while still young.

Around 1241 the new Bishop of Hereford had reason to reprimand him. He proceeded against Henry for non-payment of ‘such an aid as he himself and his ancestors had been accustomed to make to the predecessors of the said bishop, as Bishops of Hereford at their entrance on their bishopric’.

Henry also witnessed a deed of gift to Llanthony Priory by Lawrence de Chandos of lands at Brockworth. His name, however, does not appear in the Llanthony registers nearly as often as his father’s did.

Though we do not know his wife’s name, we know of one son Roger le Rous. There were probably other children.

 

Henry is thought to have died around 1248, or in some accounts 1258. Either of these would be in the long reign of King John’s son, Henry III.

  

[1] Llanthony Secunda Priory.