General Notes

REFN: 7623AN
The Conqueror and His Companions
by J.R. Planché, Somerset Herald. London: Tin sley Brothers, 1874.
The omission of the name of this personage, the subject o f so much
controversy, by the author of the "Roman De Rou," is not so remarka ble as
his silence respecting Eustace, Count of Boulogne, whose rank in his o wn
country, and the unenviable notoriety he had justly or unjustly acquired
in England, would, we should imagine, render it impossible for him to
have b een completely overlooked. Nor does the appearance of the name of
Peverel in the Roll of Battle Abbey, Duchsne's List, the rhyming
catalogue, and those re cently compiled by Messrs. De Magny and Leopold
Delisle, justify us in claimi ng for him, on their unsupported and very
questionable authority, the right t o be classed amongst the conquerors at
Senlac.
At the same time we have no e vidence, as in the cases of Roger de
Montgomeri, Hugh d'Avranches, and Henry De Percy, to warrant our,
entertaining a contrary opinion. We must therefore give him the benefit
of the doubt, particularly as we find him as early as 10 68 in charge of
the newly-built Castle of Nottingham, and at the time of the compilation
of Domesday the lord of one hundred and sixty-two manors in Engla nd, and
possessing in Nottingham alone forty-eight merchants' or traders' hou ses,
thirteen knights' houses, and eight bondsmen's cottages, besides ten
a cres of land granted to him by the King to make an orchard, and the
churches of St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Nicholas, all three of which we
find he gave with their land, tithe, and appurtenances by his charter to
the Priory of Len ton.
Surely his services must have been most important -- his reputation for
valour and ability well established, to have merited such magnificent
reward s. To have obtained for him from the wary and suspicious Conqueror
so importa nt a trust as the custody of Nottingham Castle -- at so early
an age too -- f or if the date of his death in the register of St.
James's, Northampton, one of his foundations, can be relied on, viz, 5th
kalends of February, 1113 (111 4 according to our present calculation), he
could scarcely have been more tha n four or five-and-twenty at the time of
his appointment.
How is it then tha t, previous to that period, no deed of arms is recorded
of him? That in all t he battles and commotions of which Normandy was the
theatre during the thirty years preceding the Conquest, the name of
Peverel, if such a family existed in the duchy, never crops up, even
accidentally, in any of the pages of the c ontemporary chroniclers?
A Ranulph Peverel also appears in Domesday as the lor d of sixty-four
manors. Of a verity, the merits of these Peverels must have b een great,
or their influence at Court from some cause or another extraordina ry.
Of course, if it were true, as we have hitherto been led to believe, that
William Peverel was a natural son of William the Conqueror, not a word
more need be wasted on the subject; but Mr. Eaton, in his History of
Shropshire, discredits the report, and Mr. Edward Freeman rejects it with
contempt and in dignation as the unvouched-for assertion of a Herald (see
vol. i, p. 72).
I am unfortunate in being opposed in my opinion to two such great
authorities; but until they produce something like evidence to support
theirs, I cannot co nsent to surrender my own.
Let us dispassionately examine the arguments, of th e first dissenter, Mr.
Eaton, who in refutation of the assertion says, "Its i mprobability arises
in two ways. It is inconsistent with the general characte r of Duke
William." To whom shall we refer for the general character of this master
of dissimulation, who so thoroughly understood and practised the polic y
of assuming a virtue if he had it not? To his paid servants and courtly
f latterers, Guillaume De Poitiers, his own chaplain, or Guy of Amiens,
his wif e's almoner, who, if he did write the "Carmen de