28. FITZ MAYN

Sampson  Tree

 ALAN FITZ MAYN (28)

 

ALAN FITZ MAYN.  ‘Fitz’ means ‘son of’. It is therefore assumed that Alan’s father was called Mayn, but we have no further information about him. Nor do we know anything about  Alan’s mother or wife.

One online family tree has his father as Alan the Red (le Roux) of Brittany. This Alan was a famous warrior who accompanied the future King William I at the Battle of Hastings. It would explain why this family was subsequently known as le Rous, but detailed biographies of Alan the Red do not suggest a connection. He was associated with Richmond in Yorkshire, rather than Harescombe in Gloucestershire, where we find the le Rous family.

 Alan Fitz Mayn is thought to have been born in 1090, in the reign of William the Conqueror’s son William Rufus. This was only four years after the completion of the Domesday Book, which gave details of estates across the newly-occupied country.

This early date means that his father almost certainly came to England in the first years of the Norman Conquest.

The family settled at Harescombe in Gloucestershire in these early years. Records of Llanthony Priory show that Alan Fitz Mayn founded a chapel in Harescombe c.1150 and that he was a benefactor of it.

The present church of St John the Baptist dates from the 13^th century, but there is evidence of a church and priest before that.

We hear that: “The said Chaplain (of Harescombe church) shall be sustained by those things which Alan Fitz Mayn granted him at the “constitution ” of the said chapel; that it is to say, the second tithing of the wheat of his Demesne of Harsecumbe; the first, together with all the lesser tithes pertaining to the mother church of Harsefeld. The said Alan also granted for the sustentation of the Chaplain Ten acres of land (saving the tithe of the same to the mother church). He also gave to the mother church of Harsefeld one acre of land for a cemetery.”[1]

Harescombe is a village six miles south of Gloucester. It lies in a valley at the foot of the Cotswolds.

The only other information we have about Alan Fitz Mayn is that he witnessed a grant by Walter de Hereford of lands situated at Cerney to St Peter’s Abbey, and that he held a fee of the Bishop of Hereford called Mora. It is from the latter that the manor of Mora Alani, or Allensmore, is named. This is a village situated a few miles south of Hereford. It has a long-standing connection with the Rous family.

We know of one son, Roger Fitz Alan. It was after this that the family adopted the surname of Rous.

 

[1] Rev. John Melland Hall, “Harescombe: Fragments of Parochial History”, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 1885.