Isabel de Muschamps - Updates

Isabel de Muschamps

• Father: Robert de Muschamps
• Spouse: Ralph de Greasley, son of Roger de Greslet (-1230) and Margaret de Longchamps

Children

1. Agnes de Gresley married Hugh FitzRalph

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Biography

On 23 Nov 1213, Ralph de Gresley fined 500 marks for having the land of Robert de Muscamp, father of Isabella, his wife (Rot. de Oblatis, 507).

Isabel was the daughter of the Robert de Muschamps who held lands in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and who died before 8 July 1212 when his lands were taken into the king's hand (Rot. Lit. Claus, i. 120).

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(fn. 6) It appears that the sons of Robert de Muschamp died without issue. Hugh, eldest son of Robert de Muschamp, by Idonea his wife had no heirs, neither had his brother Robert by Agnes, the sister of Almeric de Gassi, knight, nor their brother Andrew, because Raph de Greseley 15 Joh. (fn. 7) (as in Greseley is shown) made fine to the king of five hundred marks for having the land which was Robert de Muschamp's, father of Isabella, wife of the said Raph, and that he might marry Agnes his daughter, to Robert Lupus (Love:) which marriage either came not to perfection, or Rob. Lupus died without issue; for Hugh Fitz-Raph, and Agnes his wife, daughter and heir of Raph de Greseley, in 12 H. 3. (fn. 8) gave account of 15l. for their relief of three knights fees, which the said Raph de Gresele, held of the honour of Peverell, Nott. viz. two in Claindon, and one in Gresele, with the appurtenances.

Source: Robert Thoroton, 'South Muskam and South Carleton', in Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire: Volume 3, Republished With Large Additions By John Throsby, ed. John Throsby (Nottingham, 1796), pp. 148-152. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/thoroton-notts/vol3/pp148-152 [accessed 14 October 2023].

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Of the family which took its name from Greasley the following is a short account, the chief authorities being Thoroton's Nottinghamshire (1790) ii. 239-41, Dugdale's Monasticon (ed. Ellis) vi. 13, and Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire i. 175-6 : —

Ralph, in the time of William the Conqueror, had a son Richard : and he had a son Hugh Fitz-Richard, whose son William (occ. 1 140) first bore the name of Greasley. His wife's name is not recorded, but his son was Ralph de Greasley who married Isabella (or Agnes) an heiress of the family of Muscamp, and was lord of Greasley and Selston as well as, in right of his wife, lord of Muscamp in Nottinghamshire. He probably died in 1228. Their daughter was undoubtedly Agnes, who married Hugh Fitz-Ralph in about a.d. 1215, and from whom the husband assumed the name of Greasley. There is some evidence that she had first in about 1210 married Robertus Lupus. The children of Hugh (who seems to have died in 1260) and Agnes were certainly Ralph and perhaps Hugh. With Ralph's daughter Eustachia the male line of de Greasley failed for the second time and finally. Eustachia may have had a sister Idonea, but if so, the latter died without issue, and Eustachia became sole heiress. She married firstly William de Cantelupe and had a son William born in about 1292.

Source: Falconer madan (Publication date 1899). “The Gresleys of Drakelowe.” Page 210-211. < Archive.Org >

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We pass over the rebellion of the Barons in Henry II.’s reign and their severe repression ; together with the necessity under which Richard I. was to subdue John’s stubborn resistance at the Nottingham Castle; and we return to Ralph de Greasley in the thirteenth year of King John. He made a to him fortunate match in marrying Isabella de Muschamp. She was the sole heiress of the lordships belonging to her family, which had descended to them from Robert de Muschamp, who had been senescal (steward) to Gilbert de Gaunt, and whose estates were held by military service. It was a great accession of wealth to Ralph de Greasley, and doubtlessly gave him increased importance in respect of his enhanced military obligations to the crown. There is, however, a discrepancy in respect of the name of Ralph de Greasley’s wife. While one authority states that it was Isabella, another, viz.: the “Register de Beauvale,” in the British Museum, maintains that it was Agnes, a sister of Isabella, but that must be an error, because a contemporary official document, dated from Windsor on the 25th of June of the seventeenth of John, enjoins the King’s Sheriff of Nottingham and Derby to give full possession, without delay, to Ralph de Greasley and Isabella his wife, of her inheritance from Robert de Muschamp. But there was a hitch yet. The succession duty of £100 (2,000 or more in our money) was not paid when King John died, and the Sheriff on that account did not deliver the possession to Ralph de Greasley and his wife until the reign of Henry III. They had a daughter named Agnes. about whom Ralph, her father, had entered into an arrangement, under which he would pay the King 500 marks for his permission to marry Agnes to one Robert Lupus, and if that marriage should fall through, then he would marry her as the King should will or advise it. Eventually Agnes de Greasley married one Hugh FitzRalph (doubtlessly the Hugh FitzRanulf of the Torr Manuscripts), who was the first recorded Patron of Greasley, which was then a Rectory, of which we read in Domesday: “There was a church and priest, and wood pasture, nine quarantins long by six quarantins broad.” As there was a doubt whether Agnes or Isabella had been Ralph de Greasley’s wife, so there is a doubt as to who the Hugh FitzRalph was, who married their daughter Agnes; but it is held that he was the son of Ralph Wandesley, Lord of Selston. He was a widower when he married Agnes, having lost his first wife Idonea, and is said to have been one of the Barons who had taken up arms against King John to wring Magna Charta from the unwilling monarch. He rendered homage to Henry III., from whom in 1251 he, among other privileges, obtained a grant of free warren, dated April 10th, 36th Henry III. Hugh FitzRalph and Agnes his wife had two sons, the elder of which was named Ralph, and he had a daughter named Eustachia, who became sole heiress of all the property of the de Greasleys, and the de Muschamps of old together.

Source: Rodolph Baron von Hube, “Griseleia in Snotinghscire,” (1901) < link >

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References

1. https://homepages.rpi.edu/~holmes/Hobbies/Genealogy2/ps30/ps30_499.htm
2. “Matilda de Vesci, wife of Thomas de Muschamp (d. 1190)” John P. Ravilious Jan 22, 2012, 7:10:55 AM < SGM > Isabel coheiress of Sir Robert de Muschamps married secondly Ralph de Greasley, having issue Agnes married Hugh FitzRalph ex quo Ralph FitzHugh of Greasley (see below) (evidence drawn from Farrer's HKF). . … Isabel was the daughter of Robert de Muschamps who held lands in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and who died before 8 July 1212 when his lands were taken into the king's hand (Rot. Lit. Claus, i. 120). On 23 Nov 1213, Ralph de Gresley fined 500 marks for having the land of Robert de Muscamp, father of Isabella, his wife (Rot. de Oblatis, 507).
3. (Msg from John P. Ravilious, Jan. 23, 2012 < SGM > You are quite right: the Muschamps of South Muskam, Northants. were a different family, or a (senior ?) branch of the same family as the Muschamps of Berwickshire and Northumberland. The latter had a grant of Wooler from Henry I, so they branched off quite early if they were of the same stem. As to the issue of one or two Roberts de Muschamp, the record from the priory of Alnwick indicates there were two in succession, and that the last had a daughter Isabella. This is correct as to the latter portion (there were two other daughters, Cecily and Marjorie, not mentioned therein) and as I said, there may have been a second Robert, but he was not the father of the three coheiresses.