General Notes

It is to Liseux and the country surrounding it along the River Touques in Normandy that we must turn to pick-up the thread of our history, for it was there in the fateful year 1066 that Adam de Berthelot was living as a minor nobleman.
Liege overlord for the district was Count Guido de Brionne - a member of the de Brionne family, Dukes of Burgundy - whose castle known as "Brionne" stood a mile or so from Liseux and is to-day harked by the small town of the same name. Not far away there also lived the Montgomery family, close friends of Guillaume, Duke of Normandy, and as will be seen as this history unfolds the Roger de Montgomery from here was to become an influential friend of those close to him after the Norman invasion of England, where this same Roger became known as "Arundel".
When the Duke of Normandy took the decision to carry out that invasion and gathered together an army for the purpose, virtually all who owed him allegiance (as well as others invited to participate for a share in the spoils!) were called upon to assemble, bringing with them men and materials.
Among those so commanded was Guido de Brionne, who in turn gathered together all those sworn to serve him: it is known that one of these was Adam de Berthelot, who is understood to have been chosen by de Brionne as his personal esquire as well to have brought family retainers with him. That appointment as esquire demanded a rather special oath of fealty and service to be sworn by Adam, carrying with it as was the custom a two-way obligation on the part of both de Brionne and Berthelot.
When the invading army was assembled, de Brionne and his contingent, including Adam de Berthelot was put under the immediate command of Robert de Mortaine but in what we might term the division led by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. Robert and Odo were brothers and, importantly for their future and the future of those close to them, were also half-brothers trusted by the Duke of Normandy. After the successful invasion of England these family connections were to prove extremely beneficial to Berthelot and others.
And so it was that when the Normans came ashore on the beaches of Pevensey near Hastings in Sussex, on Michaelmas Day 29th September 1066, not only was the name Berthelot amongst them, but with him, the coat-of-arms bearing the left handed glove commemorating the event of two hundred years earlier.
The bloody battle of Hastings that followed ended as history tells us, with the death of Harold Godwinnson who had claimed the English throne for himself, and a great many killed and wounded on both sides. The Anglo-Saxon army was defeated, with the invaders in control of key parts of England from which to set about the country's complete subjugation.
This was not achieved quickly however; those to whom land and property belonged continued to resist Normans who came to take it away, whilst there was still plenty of fight left in other parts with tribes of Wales, Clans in Scotland and marauding Scandinavians ever eager to take advantage of any opportunities to plunder!
Even before being crowned King of England, Duke Guillaume had made plans for exercising the controls he knew were essential in a conquered country, and he wasted no time putting these in place. He did not disband all his army but retained the best fighting men and their commanders when he could be sure would carry out his wishes.
The record shows that Adam de Berthelot was amongst the first to be given land, receiving 6000 acres along the River Arun in Sussex, stretching from Northam to, and including, the hamlet of Stopham after which the estate was named. That he was not retained for military service and got the grant so soon and able to take up residence there not long after, all point to him having received injuries in the battle severe enough to incapacitate him, whilst the nature of the grant suggests he enjoyed influential patronage presumably from de Brionne and Mortaine since the Roger de Montgomery, also in their company, was given the huge estates that became part and parcel of the Earldom of Arundel, making him a next-door neighbour to Adam de Berthelot in Sussex!
However there is another dramatic piece of evidence of the regard with which Adam must have been held, this being the inclusion of his name upon the list of those chosen by King William himself to make up what was termed his "Roll of Honour" and accordingly inscribed upon the walls of the Abbey the King had built at Hastings to -for ever- commemorate both his victory there and those who had served him well in the battle that is, upon the walls of Battel (sic) Abbey.
Readers will have noted the change in spelling of "Guillaume" to "William", and this brings us to so many of the changes made in England to Norman names as the result of the Anglo-Saxon scribes putting into written form the sounds being heard out of Norman mouths.
Not just the King's name was Anglicised but so also were such others as de Brionne, which became "de Bryan"; Mortaine that ultimately became "Martyn"... and de Berthelot that became "de Bartelot"!
With no more than a few thousand men to control the whole of England, the King introduced a system that centralised his authority in a way never before achieved, and which turned into a single, cohesive nation those who had previously bickered and fought amongst themselves. What he did was to remain in place for hundreds of years, bringing about a social structure clearly recognisable today.
Annulling all existing land and property ownership, and after declaring one-third of all England to be "Royal Estate" owned by the Crown, King William then gave the remaining two-thirds to only eleven Normans either related or trusted and close friends.
Those so chosen became immediately extremely powerful, with vast estates that included control and authority over the people that lived within their boundaries, and presenting what on its face was an enormous administrative responsibility for them.
The King was both a realist and a pragmatist: he knew that in a newly conquered country still in a state of flux, attitudes and loyalties could change very quickly... Especially towards himself! He did two things that, above all else, ensured the continuation of his new system of governing England.
The first of these was to make very sure that each of the eleven received individual estates that were not only relatively small but separated from the rest by distance and scattered all over England, making it impossible for any of them to collect together a very large force without knowledge of it reaching royal ears!
The difficulties of looking after so many relatively small estates all over the place the King overcame by giving permission to these eleven premier Earls and Dukes the right to themselves appoint "household knights" who could be sworn to loyalty to their respective overlords. And to give to these knights and their descendants properties which, in effect, were then held by grace of that overlord. The Knights became responsible for administering and looking after such grants and for collection of taxes demanded by the Earl or Duke from whom the grant was received.
This tiered arrangements known as the "Feudal System", enabled the King to impose taxes and manpower needs upon the eleven who in turn imposed them... plus whatever was required for their own upkeep... upon the enfeoffed Knights.
It was within this scenario that Adam de Bartelot and other Normans proceeded to make new lives in an atmosphere that would have been largely hostile and made it essential for the possession of land to remain in their hands. It was to remain a matter of tradition for a long time, that no Norman male property owner should permit a daughter to marry an Anglo-Saxon for fear of this situation changing. Generally at first there were very few marriages to local women either because of this matter of land ownership or as the result of distrust and dislike for the conquerors, although this disappeared after a while.
Given these attitudes, and knowing from records that at the time of his death Adam had two sons at least in England, both old enough to hold property, it can be assumed that he was joined at Stopham by a wife who came from Liseux. The couple may well have had other offspring but if so nothing has been recorded to evidence this was the case.
In order to trace the path which is to lead us to America we shall be concentrating upon these two sons of Adam, the elder of whom was baptised Robert with his younger brother named Radolphus, more familiarly recorded as "Ralph", but before doing this - and because of the long-term effects the bonds first forged between Adam and the de Bryans were to have upon all that followed, it is necessary for us to achieve a more detailed appreciation of just what happened to Guy de Bryan and his family.
As is known, de Bryan was one of those retained by the King to Command his soldiers and this is evidenced clearly in the then contemporary "Anglo-Saxon Chronicles" begun in the reign of King Alfred (871-99) and completed in 1154.
Those chronicles tell us of the landing at the mouth of the River Taw in North Devon of an Irish army under the leadership of dead Harold Godwinnson's sons in the year 1069... only three years after the Norman arrival. When King William heard of that landing he ordered Guy de Bryan to march there with all haste and to drive the Irish off. The Chronicles report:-
"After this came Harold's sons from Ireland at Midsummer with sixty-four
ships into the mouth of the Taw and went unexpectedly inland. Earl Bryan
came upon them unawares with no small host, fought with them and killed
all the best men in that fleet, the other small host fled out to the ships.. and
Harold's sons went back to Ireland."

It was certainly a victory for Earl de Bryan.. but one for which he, and many of his male successors, were to pay dearly, for not only was he immediately sent off to fight the Welsh but the precedent was set for future de Bryans to be consistently and repeatedly called upon to serve their monarchs in army or navy until finally no males remained to carry on the de Bryan name!
Just how far this tradition influenced the family's future is no better illustrated than by King Edward I's elevation of the then Guy de Bryan to the rank of "Baron Tallatharn" with the gift to him of Tallatharn Castle in the Marches of Wales... along with a command that de Bryan not leave the place until the Welsh tribes had been subdued! As we know that was to take centuries! Historical records naming de Bryans and their achievements leave no doubt but that their menfolk were allowed scant time to look after either their families or their many estates.
In spite of the family's relatively short period of existence that so much information should exist about it is due to its eminence as soldiers etc.; in similar circumstances other families have virtually disappeared from the record books without trace!
From the list of properties (and it is unlikely to be complete) owned by the de Bryans, it can be seen that they were widely distributed and would have required some form of localised supervision in nearly each case; besides which those were extremely dangerous times when there was always someone ready to take advantage of any failure by landowners to safeguard their properties. It follows without question that de Bryans not only had to appoint others to do this in their name, but because of their own absences that those chosen to do this could be entirely trusted. It has to be remembered that in the de Bryans' case it was often not just property that had to be protected, but their womenfolk and children!
With Guy de Bryans esquire and special companion, Adam de Bartelot, now a landowner himself - and in any event incapacitated - it was logical and in complete accord with fealty expectations that the father's sworn duty should be undertaken by his elder son, Robert. Probably so much a matter of honour as to make refusal unthinkable, nevertheless the promise of adventure and personal advancement that would surely have accompanied a position of such trust must have looked irresistible to any young Norman man whose father was still alive and occupying the family estate.
We should here take note of some of the marriages entered into by members of the de Bryan family because of what these tell us about its standing and influence.. factors that would have loomed large to Robert.
Elizabeth de Bryan married William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury; Maude de Bryan married Nicholas Martyn (Mortaine) of Waterston Manor, Piddleton, Dorset, an estate to figure large in our story; Phillipa married (i) Sir John Devereux & (ii) Sir Henry le Scrope; Elizabeth wed Sir Robert Lovell and her daughter, Matilda, became Countess of Arundel; whilst Avril married the Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. Such connections were capable of extending family influence to the monarchy itself!
It can come as no surprise to anyone that Robert chose as he did by accepting - as his father had done before him - a role of trusted steward to the de Bryan family with the power to assure the continuation of loyalty to that family by his appointment of his own sons and relatives to the various estates.
The scenario represented by what we now know includes Adam's death circa 1077, agreement between his two sons by which the younger was given the family property, Stopham, by the elder Robert who was already sworn to serve the de Bryans and had elected to continue with them. It should also be noted that Robert even permitted his young brother Ralph to take unto himself the descriptive title "de Stopham" as well as a separate coat-of-arms in which the traditional three left-handed gloves were replaced by crescents. Because crescents are the correct "blazons" to be used by younger sons, this substitution was entirely correct.
In effect, what had taken place was the establishment of two branches of the same family - one continuing to use the family name de Bartelot with the other able to describe itself as "de Stopham"; each had its own coat-of-arms but sharing the same descent.
Although this might cause some minor confusion for the researcher, it became resolved and clarified in 1379 when Joan de Stopham married her cousin John de Bartelot and both took up residence at Stopham to adopt a coat-of-arms composed of both gloves and the crescents as a quartering.
Adam de Berthelott was seventh in descent from Prince Berthelot, nephew to Charlemagne.