General Notes

Walter de Lacy obtained, 9 King John [1208], a confirmation of his dominion of Meath, to be held by him and his heirs for the service of fifty knights' fees; as also of all his fees in Fingall, in the valley of Dublin, to be held by the service of seven knights' fees. In three years afterwards, King John passing into Ireland with his army, Laci was forced to deliver himself up and all his possessions in that kingdom and to abjure the realm. He was subsequently banished from England, but in the 16th of the same reign [1215], he seems to have made his peace, for he was then allowed to repossess Ludlow, with his castle; and the next year he recovered all his lands in Ireland, except the castle and lands of Drogheda, by paying a fine of 4,000 marks to the crown. After this we find him sheriff of Herefordshire in the 18th of John [1217], and 2nd of Henry III [1218], and in the 14th of the latter king [1230], joined with Geffrey de Marisco, then justice of Ireland, and Richard de Burgh, in subduing the King of Connaught, who had taken up arms to expel the English from his territories. So much for the secular acts of this powerful feudal baron. In Ireland he founded the abbey of Beaubec, which was first a cell to the great abbey of Bec, in Normandy, and afterwards to Furneise, in Lancashire. Walter Laci m. Margaret, dau. of William de Braose, of Brecknock, and in the year 1241, being then infirm and blind, departed this life, "Vir, inter omnes nobiles Hiberniae, eminentissimus," leaving his great inheritance to be divided amongst females, viz.., the daus. of Gilbert de Lacy, his son (who d. in his life time), and Isabel, his wife, sister of John Bigod, which daughters were Maud, wife of Peter de Geneva, and Margery, m. to John de Verdon. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 310, Lacy, Earls of Lincoln]