The Courtenays of Rougemont Castle descend from King David

The Courtenays of Rougemont Castle descend from King David

The authors of the book 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' claim that a un-
named family in Devonshire Endland is a member of the Rex Deus,
meaning they are a family descended from Jesus, and thus King David.
I have found that family, the Courtenays, who lived in Rougemont
castle in Denvonshire.

In 'The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization' we read in a
chapter titled the 'Digression On The Family Of Courtenay'
this passage that says the Courtnays made a claim they descend from
King David, and obtained the opinion of twenty lawers to prove it.
The reference to "the trade of a carpenter" can only refer to Jesus.

"It was not till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession
of a family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit
of the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility
provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They appealed
to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth; obtained a
favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and
modestly compared themselves to the descendants of King David, whose
prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages or the trade of
a carpenter. ^76 But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was
adverse, to their lawful claims."

Jon Presco

Copyright 2005

"Digression On The Family Of Courtenay


The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople,
will authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular
fortunes of the house of Courtenay, ^70 in the three principal
branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of which
the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred years.
[Footnote 70: I have applied, but not confined, myself to A
genealogical History of the noble and illustrious Family of
Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay, and
Rector of Honiton; Exon. 1735, in folio. The first part is extracted
from William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet's French history; and
the third from various memorials, public, provincial, and private,
of the Courtenays of Devonshire The rector of Honiton has more
gratitude than industry, and more industry than criticism.]
I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and of
knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth is most
strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age, the laws
and manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks of society;
the dukes and counts, who shared the empire of Charlemagne,
converted their office to an inheritance; and to his children, each
feudal lord bequeathed his honor and his sword. The proudest
families are content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages,
the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must
ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their historians must
descend ten centuries below the Christian æra, before they can
ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence of surnames, of
arms, and of authentic records. With the first rays of light, ^71 we
discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a French knight; his
nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father; his opulence,
in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay in the district of
Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From the
reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are
conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin,
the grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes
of the first crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were
sisters) attached him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the
second count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy to
receive, and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial
followers; and after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin himself
was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of the
Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories were replenished
with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with corn, wine, and
oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms and horses. In a
holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately a conqueror and a
captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse litter at the head
of his troops; and his last glance beheld the flight of the Turkish
invaders who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son and
successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valor than in
vigilance; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is acquired and
maintained by the same arms. He challenged the hostility of the
Turks, without securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch;
and, amidst the peaceful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, ^72 Joscelin
neglected the defence of the Christian frontier beyond the
Euphrates. In his absence, Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks,
besieged and stormed his capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended
by a timorous and disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were
oppressed in a bold attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay ended
his days in the prison of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample
patrimony But the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides the
weakness of a widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual
pension, they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending,
and the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The
countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two
children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king;
the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal, the
first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the
service of fifty knights. His name appears with honor in the
transactions of peace and war; but he finally vanishes in the fall
of Jerusalem; and the name of Courtenay, in this branch of Edessa,
was lost by the marriage of his two daughters with a French and
German baron. ^73
[Footnote 71: The primitive record of the family is a passage of the
continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the xiith
century. See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France, (tom. xi.
p. 276.)]
[Footnote 72: Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is
fixed by D'Anville four-and-twenty miles from the great passage over
the Euphrates at Zeugma.]
[Footnote 73: His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of
Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures of the kingdom, which
must therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and 1187.
His pedigree may be found in the Lignages d'Outremer, c. 16.]
II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder brother
Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued, near the
Seine, to possess the castle of their fathers, which was at length
inherited by Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his three sons.
Examples of genius or virtue must be rare in the annals of the
oldest families; and, in a remote age their pride will embrace a
deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as could not be
perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or, at least, of
power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay may blush for the
public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several merchants, after
they had satisfied the king's duties at Sens and Orleans. He will
glory in the offence, since the bold offender could not be compelled
to obedience and restitution, till the regent and the count of
Champagne prepared to march against him at the head of an army. ^74
Reginald bestowed his estates on his eldest daughter, and his
daughter on the seventh son of King Louis the Fat; and their
marriage was crowned with a numerous offspring. We might expect that
a private should have merged in a royal name; and that the
descendants of Peter of France and Elizabeth of Courtenay would have
enjoyed the titles and honors of princes of the blood. But this
legitimate claim was long neglected, and finally denied; and the
causes of their disgrace will represent the story of this second
branch. 1. Of all the families now extant, the most ancient,
doubtless, and the most illustrious, is the house of France, which
has occupied the same throne above eight hundred years, and
descends, in a clear and lineal series of males, from the middle of
the ninth century. ^75 In the age of the crusades, it was already
revered both in the East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the
marriage of Peter, no more than five reigns or generations had
elapsed; and so precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as
a necessary precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime
of their fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their
precedency before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had
the princes of the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that
hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote
candidates for the succession. 2. The barons of Courtenay must have
stood high in their own estimation, and in that of the world, since
they could impose on the son of a king the obligation of adopting
for himself and all his descendants the name and arms of their
daughter and his wife. In the marriage of an heiress with her
inferior or her equal, such exchange often required and allowed: but
as they continued to diverge from the regal stem, the sons of Louis
the Fat were insensibly confounded with their maternal ancestors;
and the new Courtenays might deserve to forfeit the honors of their
birth, which a motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. 3.
The shame was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary
blaze was followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these
nuptials, Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already
mentioned, the sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first
emperors of Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation of the
barons of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively
held and lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the
granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with the
blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a troubled
and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were mortgaged or
sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople depended on the annual
charity of Rome and Naples.
[Footnote 74: The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de Courtenay,
are preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the abbot and regent
Suger, (cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the age, (Duchesne,
Scriptores Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]
[Footnote 75: In the beginning of the xith century, after naming the
father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is obliged to
add, cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet we are
assured that the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was Robert the
Strong count of Anjou, (A.D. 863--873,) a noble Frank of Neustria,
Neustricus . . . generosæ stirpis, who was slain in the defence of
his country against the Normans, dum patriæ fines tuebatur. Beyond
Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a probable conjecture,
that the third race descended from the second by Childebrand, the
brother of Charles Martel. It is an absurd fable that the second was
allied to the first by the marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and
the ancestor of St. Arnoul, with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I.
The Saxon origin of the house of France is an ancient but incredible
opinion. See a judicious memoir of M. de Foncemagne, (Mémoires de
l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 548--579.) He had promised
to declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has never
appeared.]
While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic
adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a plebeian
owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and
multiplied. But their splendor was clouded by poverty and time:
after the decease of Robert, great butler of France, they descended
from princes to barons; the next generations were confounded with
the simple gentry; the descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be
visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more
adventurous embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier:
the least active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the
branch of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal
descent, in a dark period of four hundred years, became each day
more obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being
enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched by
the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists.
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/roman/TheDeclineandF
allofTheRomanEmpire-6/chap10.html


It was not till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession
of a family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit
of the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility
provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They appealed
to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth; obtained a
favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and
modestly compared themselves to the descendants of King David, whose
prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages or the trade of
a carpenter. ^76 But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was
adverse, to their lawful claims. The Bourbon kings were justified by
the neglect of the Valois; the princes of the blood, more recent and
lofty, disdained the alliance of his humble kindred: the parliament,
without denying their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an
arbitrary distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father
of the royal line. ^77 A repetition of complaints and protests was
repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless pursuit was terminated in
the present century by the death of the last male of the family. ^78
Their painful and anxious situation was alleviated by the pride of
conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the temptations of fortune
and favor; and a dying Courtenay would have sacrificed his son, if
the youth could have renounced, for any temporal interest, the right
and title of a legitimate prince of the blood of France. ^79
[Footnote 76: Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published by
the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all in
octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt
Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ Jurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2.
Representation du Procedé tenû a l'instance faicte devant le Roi,
par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation de l'Honneur et
Dignité de leur Maison, branche de la royalle Maison de France; à
Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui a porté Messieurs de
Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de Courtenay, à se retirer hors
du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide, for which the Courtenays
expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of the blood.]
[Footnote 76: Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published by
the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all in
octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita sunt
Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ Jurisconsultorum; Paris, 1607. 2.
Representation du Procedé tenû a l'instance faicte devant le Roi,
par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation de l'Honneur et
Dignité de leur Maison, branche de la royalle Maison de France; à
Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui a porté Messieurs de
Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de Courtenay, à se retirer hors
du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide, for which the Courtenays
expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of the blood.]
[Footnote 77: The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by
Thuanus Principis nomen nusquam in Galliâ tributum, nisi iis qui per
mares e regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a
Ludovico none beatæ memoriæ numerantur; nam Cortini et Drocenses, a
Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos minime recensentur.
A distinction of expediency rather than justice. The sanctity of
Louis IX. could not invest him with any special prerogative, and all
the descendants of Hugh Capet must be included in his original
compact with the French nation.]
[Footnote 78: The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger, who
died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last female was
Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont. Her title of
Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed (February 7th,
1737) by an arrêt of the parliament of Paris.]
[Footnote 79: The singular anecdote to which I allude is related in
the Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu connues, (Maestricht,
1786, in 4 vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor quotes his author,
who had received it from Helene de Courtenay, marquise de
Beaufremont.]
III. According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of
Devonshire are descended from Prince Florus, the second son of
Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. ^80 This fable of the
grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our
antiquaries, Cambden ^81 and Dugdale: ^82 but it is so clearly
repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family
now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful
historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to the king's
son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions in France, and
obtained from the English monarch a second wife and a new
inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the Second
distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald, of the name and
arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race, of the
Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to
reward his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress;
and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in
Devonshire, where his posterity has been seated above six hundred
years. ^83 From a Norman baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been
invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived the
honor of Okehampton, which was held by the service of ninety-three
knights; and a female might claim the manly offices of hereditary
viscount or sheriff, and of captain of the royal castle of Exeter.
Their son Robert married the sister of the earl of Devon: at the end
of a century, on the failure of the family of Rivers, ^84 his great-
grandson, Hugh the Second, succeeded to a title which was still
considered as a territorial dignity; and twelve earls of Devonshire,
of the name of Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred
and twenty years. They were ranked among the chief of the barons of
the realm; nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they
yielded to the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament of
England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest families,
the Veres, Despensers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns, and even the
Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of Lancaster, a
Courtenay, bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of
Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength
and number of his kindred. In peace, the earls of Devon resided in
their numerous castles and manors of the west; their ample revenue
was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of
Edward, surnamed from his misfortune, the blind, from his virtues,
the good, earl, inculcates with much ingenuity a moral sentence,
which may, however, be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a
grateful commemoration of the fifty-five years of union and
happiness which he enjoyed with Mabe his wife, the good earl thus
speaks from the tomb: --
"What we gave, we have;
What we spent, we had;
What we left, we lost." ^85
But their losses, in this sense, were far superior to their gifts
and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were the
objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery
and seizin attest the greatness of their possessions; and several
estates have remained in their family since the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled
the duties, and deserved the honors, of chivalry. They were often
intrusted to levy and command the militia of Devonshire and
Cornwall; they often attended their supreme lord to the borders of
Scotland; and in foreign service, for a stipulated price, they
sometimes maintained fourscore men-at-arms and as many archers. By
sea and land they fought under the standard of the Edwards and
Henries: their names are conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and
in the original list of the Order of the Garter; three brothers
shared the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in the lapse of
six generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise the
nation and country from which they derived their origin. In the
quarrel of the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of
Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the field
or on the scaffold. Their honors and estates were restored by Henry
the Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by
the nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was created Marquis of
Exeter, enjoyed the favor of his cousin Henry the Eighth; and in the
camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French monarch.
But the favor of Henry was the prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was
the signal of death; and of the victims of the jealous tyrant, the
marquis of Exeter is one of the most noble and guiltless. His son
Edward lived a prisoner in the Tower, and died in exile at Padua;
and the secret love of Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the
princess Elizabeth, has shed a romantic color on the story of this
beautiful youth. The relics of his patrimony were conveyed into
strange families by the marriages of his four aunts; and his
personal honors, as if they had been legally extinct, were revived
by the patents of succeeding princes. But there still survived a
lineal descendant of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a younger branch
of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham Castle above
four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the
present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and
improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently
restored to the honors of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still
retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the innocence, and
deplores the fall, of their ancient house. ^86 While they sigh for
past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings: in
the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid æra is
likewise the most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be
inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who wandered over
Europe to solicit alms for the support of their dignity and the
defence of their capital.
[Footnote 80: Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol. i. p. 786. Yet
this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward III.
The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey
was followed by oppression on one side and ingratitude on the other;
and in the sixth generation, the monks ceased to register the
births, actions, and deaths of their patrons.]
[Footnote 81: In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of
Devonshire. His expression, e regio sanguine ortos, credunt,
betrays, however, some doubt or suspicion.]
[Footnote 82: In his Baronage, P. i. p. 634, he refers to his own
Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the register of Ford Abbey,
and annihilated the phantom Florus, by the unquestionable evidence
of the French historians?]
[Footnote 83: Besides the third and most valuable book of
Cleaveland's History, I have consulted Dugdale, the father of our
genealogical science, (Baronage, P. i. p. 634--643.)]
[Footnote 84: This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de
Rivers, ended, in Edward the Fifth's time, in Isabella de Fortibus,
a famous and potent dowager, who long survived her brother and
husband, (Dugdale, Baronage, P i. p. 254--257.)]
[Footnote 85: Cleaveland p. 142. By some it is assigned to a Rivers
earl of Devon; but the English denotes the xvth, rather than the
xiiith century.]
[Footnote 86: Ubi lapsus! Quid feci? a motto which was probably
adopted by the Powderham branch, after the loss of the earldom of
Devonshire, &c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays were, Or, three
torteaux, Gules, which seem to denote their affinity with Godfrey of
Bouillon, and the ancient counts of Boulogne.]
The History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire - Vol 6
by Edward Gibbon

Terms
Contents
Chapter LIX
Part I
Chapter LIX
Part II
Chapter LIX
Part III
Chapter LX
Part I
Chapter LX
Part II
Chapter LX
Part III
Chapter LXI
Part I
Chapter LXI
Part II
Chapter LXI
Part III
Chapter LXI
Part IV
Chapter LXII
Part I
Chapter LXII
Part II
Chapter LXII
Part III
Chapter LXIII
Part I
Chapter LXIII
Part II
Chapter LXIV
Part I
Chapter LXIV
Part II
Chapter LXIV
Part III
Chapter LXIV
Part IV
Chapter LXV
Part I
Chapter LXV
Part II
Chapter LXV
Part III
Chapter LXVI
Part I
Chapter LXVI
Part II
Chapter LXVI
Part III
Chapter LXVI
Part IV
Chapter LXVII
Part I
Chapter LXVII
Part II
Chapter LXVIII
Part I
Chapter LXVIII
Part II
Chapter LXVIII
Part III
Chapter LXVIII
Part IV
Chapter LXIX
Part I
Chapter LXIX
Part II
Chapter LXIX
Part III
Chapter LXIX
Part IV
Chapter LXX
Part I
Chapter LXX
Part II
Chapter LXX
Part III
Chapter LXX
Part IV
Chapter LXXI
Part I
Chapter LXXI
Part II

Chapter LXI
Part IV
Partition of the Empire by the French and Venetians

But their losses, in this sense, were far superior to their gifts
and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were the
objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery
and seizin attest the greatness of their possessions; and several
estates have remained in their family since the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled
the duties, and deserved the honours, of chivalry. They were often
intrusted to levy and command the militia of Devonshire and
Cornwall; they often attended their supreme lord to the borders of
Scotland; and in foreign service, for a stipulated price, they
sometimes maintained fourscore men-at-arms and as many archers. By
sea and land they fought under the standard of the Edwards and
Henries: their names are conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and
in the original list of the Order of the Garter; three brothers
shared the Spanish victory of the Black Prince; and in the lapse of
six generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise the
nation and country from which they derived their origin. In the
quarrel of the two roses, the earls of Devon adhered to the house of
Lancaster; and three brothers successively died either in the field
or on the scaffold. Their honours and estates were restored by Henry
the Seventh; a daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by
the nuptials of a Courtenay; their son, who was created Marquis of
Exeter, enjoyed the favour of his cousin Henry the Eighth; and in
the camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French
monarch. But the favour of Henry was the prelude of disgrace; his
disgrace was the signal of death; and of the victims of the jealous
tyrant, the marquis of Exeter is one of the most noble and
guiltless. His son Edward lived a prisoner in the Tower, and died in
exile at Padua; and the secret love of Queen Mary, whom he slighted,
perhaps for the princess Elizabeth, has shed a romantic colour on
the story of this beautiful youth. The relics of his patrimony were
conveyed into strange families by the marriages of his four aunts;
and his personal honours, as if they had been legally extinct, were
revived by the patents of succeeding princes. But there still
survived a lineal descendant of Hugh, the first earl of Devon, a
younger branch of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham
Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third
to the present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant
and improvement of lands in Ireland, and they have been recently
restored to the honours of the peerage. Yet the Courtenays still
retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the innocence, and
deplores the fall, of their ancient house. (86) While they sigh for
past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings: in
the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid aera is
likewise the most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of Britain be
inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who wandered over
Europe to solicit alms for the support of their dignity and the
defence of their capital.
http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume2/chap61.htm Also, there
is another line from Henry I of France and Anne of Kiev, as follows:
? 1. Philip I, King of France from 1060 to 1108, was born in
1052/3, and died in July 1108 in Meulan, buried at Abbaye St-Benoit-
sur-Loire. Henry I., father of Philip I., died in 1060, having
crowned his son, Philip, although he was only a child. Philip was
only eight years old at the time of his father's death. One of the
young king's uncles, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, became the regent.
Anne of Kiev, refused to be regent. Later she was abducted by Raoul
of Crepy, lived with him as his wife and married him when his wife
died. Widowed a second time, she lost her title as Queen and was
henceforth referred to as the Queen Mother. Of Baldwin's regency
little is known, although it appears to have been fairly lacking in
incident, but Burgundy, over which Robert ruled, took advantage of
the situation to assert its independence from the French crown; this
was to occur frequently in the course of the various Burgundian
dynasties. He married (1) Bertha of Holland (Frise), born about
1055, died in 1093, daughter of Florent (Florenz) I, Count of
Holland. They were divorced in 1091. They had the following children:
o 1. Louis VI., the Fat. See below.
o 2. Constance, who died in 1125, married (1) Hugh I., Count
of Champagne, and in 1106 (2) Bohemond I. of Antioch, who died in
1111.
When King Philip I. died in July 1108, he was succeeded by his son,
Louis VI.:
Philip I. married in 1092 (2) Bertrade of Montfort, daughter of
Simon I, Seigneur de Montfort (Count de Montfort-l'Amaury, and his
wife, Agnes, daughter of Richard, Count of Evreux, and widow of Fulk
IV., le Rechin, from whom descended Fulk V., the Younger, and the
Geoffrey Plantaganet, father of Henry II. of England. They were
separated in 1104. Bertade died in 1117. Philip and Bertrade had
four children as follows:
 1. Philip
 2. Fleury (Florus)
 3. Cecile, married (1) Tancred, Prince of Tiberias, who died
in 1112, and (2) Pons, Count of Tripolis, who died in 1137.
 4. an unnamed child.

Nangis, Miss de
Birth : ABT 1097 of, Nangis
Family:
Spouse:
France, Flore Fleury Prince
Birth : ABT 1095 France
Death : AFT 1118
Parents:
Father: France, Philippe I King
Mother: Montfort, Bertrade de
Children:
Nangis, Isabelle Elisabeth Dame
Birth : ABT 1118 of, Nangis
A hundred years after the incumbency of Philip de Valletort brings
us to the period of the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) which so
successfully bled the noble families of England of their power.
Trevelyan states that the mass of the people of England looked on
with indifference but Freeman maintains that the sympathy of the
people of Devon was with the Lancastrian cause. This may well have
been due to the fact that the Courtenays of Devon were one of the
principal Lancastrian houses. From 1453 to 1456 the Rector of
Moreton was PETER COURTENAY, third son of Sir Philip Courtenay, the
Patron of the Living. He has the distinction of being the only
Rector of Moretonhampstead to have been raised to the episcopate.
After leaving Moreton he was successively Dean of Windsor and he
moved from Deanery at Exeter to the Palace in 1478, remaining Bishop
of Exeter until 1487 when he was translated to Winchester where he
died in 1492. Almost inevitably Courtenay was caught up in the
political struggle of his day, and being a Courtenay, found himself
at odds with the reigning House of York. So when Richard III
visited. Exeter in 1483 and - as Shakespeare makes him say - "the
Mayor in courtesy show 'd. me the castle, and. called it Rougemont",
Peter Courtenay was not in the city (or indeed within the diocese)
to take part in theofficial welcome. He was living across the
Channel in Brittany for reasons of personal safety, and did not
return to England until after Bosworth Field in 1485. The see of
Winchester was his reward for loyalty to the cause of Henry Tudor.
He is commemorated in the Courtenay Window in Exeter Cathedral
(Oliver).
St Andrews Church in history
[Abridged from The Parish Church of Saint Andrew, Moretonhampstead,
by John Anthony Benton, M.A. (Oxon.), Rector of Moretonhampstead
(1968-1974), Rural Dean of Moreton (1973-1974). First edition 1974,
revised by F.K. Theobald 1998. A list of Rectors is included in the
original, and is available here. References (in brackets) will be
found at the end of this document.]
According to Miss Cresswell the first named Rector was Alfred de
Haume in 1259, but this does not agree with J.F. Chanter's list of
Rectors recorded on the west wall of the Church, where the first
name given is that of Robert de Cumbe (or possibly de Combe) in
1276. This was during the episcopate of Bishop Walter Bronescombe
who was the first Bishop of the Diocese of Exeter to keep a
systematic register. Bronescombe's Episcopal Register states that
the Patron of the Living at that date was Sir Richard Fitz John, but
in 1298 the advowson was held by the King -Edward I - and then in
1309 the name of Sir Hugh Courtenay appears, and for six hundred
years the Courtenay family remained the Patrons almost without
interruption.
http://www.moretonhampstead.org.uk/texts/places/BentonB.htm
Retour à la page principale
Courtenay (de), John lord Okehampton Sexe: Masculin
Naissance : vers 1205
Décès : 03 mai 1274
Parents:
Père: Courtenay (de), Robert
Mère: Reviers (de), Mary
Famille:
Conjoint:
Vere (de), Isabelle Sexe: Féminin
Parents:
Père: Vere (de), Hugues
Mère: Quinci (de), Hawise
Enfant(s):
Courtenay (de), Hugues
________________________________________
Retour à la page principale
Courtenay (de), William Sexe: Masculin
Parents:
Père: Courtenay (de), Robert
Mère: Fitz-Duncan, Alice
Famille:
Conjoint:
Dunbar (de), Ada Sexe: Féminin
________________________________________
Retour à la page principale
Courtenay (de), Hugues Sexe: Masculin
Naissance : 1225
Décès : 02 février 1292
Parents:
Père: Courtenay (de), John lord Okehampton
Mère: Vere (de), Isabelle
Famille:
Conjoint:
Le Despencer, Eléanor Sexe: Féminin
Naissance : vers 1258
Parents:
Père: Le Despencer, Hugues baron Le Despencer 1
Mère: Basset, Olivia
Enfant(s):
Courtenay (de), Hugues comte de Devon
Courtenay (de), Isabel Sexe: Féminin
Naissance : 1283
________________________________________
Retour à la page principale
Courtenay (de), Hugues comte de Devon Sexe: Masculin
Naissance : 1274
Décès : 23 décembre 1340
Parents:
Père: Courtenay (de), Hugues
Mère: Le Despencer, Eléanor
Famille:
Mariage: 1292
Conjoint:
Saint John (de), Agnes Sexe: Féminin
Décès : 11 juin 1345
Parents:
Père: Saint John (de), John
Mère: FitzPiers, Alice
Enfant(s):
Courtenay, Hugh comte de Devon 2
Courtenay, Philip Sexe: Masculin
Courtenay, Eleanor Sexe: Féminin
Courtenay, Margaret Sexe: Féminin
Décès : 1385





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