General Notes

William de Vesci was a person in great esteem with Edward I and constituted by that monarch, in the 13th year of his reign [1285], justice of the royal forests beyond Trent, and the next year one of the justices itinerant touching the pleas of the forests. After succeeding his brother, he was made governor of Scarborough Castle, and the year ensuing, doing his homage, had livery of all those lands in Ireland which were of the inheritance of Agnes, his mother, and he was made at the same time justice of that kingdom. But during his sojourn there, he was accused in open court in the city of Dublin, in the presence of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and others, of felony and challenged to the combat by John FitzThomas, for which he subsequently instituted a suit before the chief justice of Dublin against the said FitzThomas on a charge of defamation in saying that he, the said William de Vesci, had solicited him to a confederacy against the king, which charge, being denied by FitzThomas, and a schedule by him delivered into court containing the words which he acknowledged, he was, thereupon, challenged to the combat by this William, and he accepted the challenge. But the king, being apprised of the proceedings, prohibited the battle and ordered the combatants to appear before him at Westminster, to which place William de Vesci came accordingly, mounted upon his great horse covered, as also completely armed with lance, dagger, coat of mail, and other military equipments, and proffered himself to the fight, but FitzThomas, although called, appeared not. The affair was afterwards brought before parliament but dismissed owning to some informality. It was finally submitted to the award of the king, but the ulterior proceedings are not recorded. In the 23rd Edward I [1300], William de Vesci was again in the wars of Gascony, and he was summoned to parliament as a Baron 24 June, 1 October, and 2 November, 1295. His lordship was one of the competitors for the crown of Scotland through his grandmother, Margaret. (The illegitimacy of this lady and her sisters, daus. of William the Lion, is obviously established by the fact of their claim being at once dismissed, whereas, had they been legitimately born, their pretensions were prior to those of either Baliol or Bruce, who had sprung from David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of King William.) He m. Isabel, dau. of Adam de Periton, and widow of Robert de Welles, by whom he had an only son, John, who was justice of the forests south of Trent, and was in the wars of Gascony, and who m. Clementina, a kinswoman of Queen Eleanor, but d. s. p., v. p. On the decease of this son, his lordship enfeoffed Anthony Beke, bishop of Durham, in the castle of Alnwick and divers other lands, in trust for William, his bastard son, who became possessed of all his other estates. This trust the prelate is said to have basely betrayed and to have alienated the property by disposing of it for ready money to William Percy, since which time the castle of Alnwick and those lands have been held by the Percys and their representatives. His lordship d. in 1297, when all his great inheritance passed to his bastard son, William de Kildare, save the estates above-mentioned in Northumberland, and the Barony of Vesci became extinct. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 555, Vesci, Barons Vesci]