GEOFFREY DE LUCY (b), of Newington, son of Geoffrey, son and heir of Richard DE LUCY "the Loyal," justiciar of England (c), was an officer of the Crown under John and Henry III. At Christmas 1205 he was one of the King's barons assembled "in plena curia nostra" at Marlborough. He was appointed to see that no ship or boat left any port without the King's special precept, and in 1205 was Keeper of Sussex, and of Guernsey for a short time in 1207. In 1206 he was in the King's service abroad. According to Matthew of Paris, he was one of the King's evil counsellors during the Interdict. He was appointed keeper, of the castle of Merpins in Anjou, 6 September 1214. Though not originally of the Barons' party, he joined them before Magna Carta was wrested from King John; he seems to have returned to his allegiance immediately after that King's death, and was one of the leaders of the royal forces in the relief of Lincoln Castle, in May 1217, where he saved the life of William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, a leader of the Barons. In 1219 he set out for the Holy Land, returning before 1223, when he was in the King's service in Wales in the household of William de Mandeville. In November of that year he was appointed constable of Berkhamstead Castle; in 1224 joint keeper of the sea coast from Pevensey to Bristol with the barons of the Cinque Ports; from 1228 to 1233 keeper of Porchester Castle; in 1229 a justice in Eyre, co. Midx.
He married, in 1207, Juliane, widow of Piers DE STOKES, steward to King John (dead s.p. by August 1206), and daughter of Aymer LE DESPENSER, by Amabel or Maud, daughter and coheir of Walter DE CHESNEY, by Eve DE BROC, daughter and heir of Eustace. She was living in 1227. He died in 1234. [Complete Peerage VIII:257-8, XIV:457, (transcribed by Dave Utzinger)]
(b) The family appears to have taken its name from Luce, a commune in the department of Orne, about 6 kil. SE of Domfront, and in the bailiwick of Passeis. In the return of the Norman fees of 1172 there occurs the following: "De Passeis . . . Ricards de Lucceio j militem et sibi xvij milites" (H.F., vol xxiii, p. 697 e; so also in Red Book, Rolls Ser., vol ii, pl 639, but beginning "De Baillia de Basseis"). Luce lies geographically in Maine, and its real connection with Normandy dates from the occupation in 1092 of Domfront, the castle of Robert de Belleme, by Henry Beauclerc, the Count of the Cotentin. It seems probable that this particular connection between Henry I and the southern border of Normandy may have first brought the family to the King's notice, a view which is supported by the fact that in a charter for Seez Cathedral dated Feb 1131, Henry mentions a fief which he had bought from Richard de Lucy, and his mother Aveline.
(c) Bracton's Note Book, c 1159, which quotes verbatim the official report of a verdict given in Hilary term (1223) . . . Lewis C Loyd points out that, according to Robert de Torigni, when the Justiciar entered religion he was succeeded by his grandson Richard, son of Geoffrey. Roese therefore succeeded her brother, not her father or grandfather, and the inference to be drawn is that Richard the younger and Roese were Geoffrey's children by a first wife, and Geoffrey the younger his son by a second wife. The available evidence does not, however, exclude the possibility that the younger Geoffrey was illegitimate.