The Sinclairs of England

Foreword

M. Guy Boulianne, the Editor-in-Chief of Editions Dedicaces, whom I have known for over 20 years and with whom I have shared a common fascination with the Sinclair story, has asked me if I would be prepared to write a foreword for this book. I had a number of reservations about doing so and shared them with M. Boulianne.  

Before I deal with those reservations, I think it important to put The Sinclairs of England in a proper context.  Up to the point where Thomas Sinclair began to write this book, the story of the Sinclairs in what is now the UK, was entirely centred on the Scottish families of the name.  And it would not be wrong to say that this is also true for the period after Thomas published his book. Put another way, we are looking at virtually the only attempt to organize the history of the various Sinclair families that existed for nearly 1000 years on the English side of the border.  When you think of it this way, you realize that what Thomas Sinclair was attempting to do is massive and that he got it done at all is a tribute to tenacity and a broad reach of historical research and knowledge. It would have broken many a lesser man and that we have it at all is of benefit to historians of any stripe and not just to Sinclairs. 

My first reservation about writing a foreword for such a book is that I am neither a researcher nor an historian and in the light of this, it takes some temerity to take on the task. But I will say that I have read much on the subject of the history of the Sinclairs, mostly, it has to be said, as an enthusiast rather than a note-taking scholar looking for concordance amongst sources.

The second reservation has to do with the book itself as well as Thomas Sinclair the writer. This is the way I put it to M. Boulianne: Thomas Sinclair has written a dense and discursive text, but for all we know, he might well have made it all up out of whole cloth.  The book is infuriating for not having an index [which makes it hard to go back and find material] but even worse he cites no sources. Finally, he says things that no one else says and the upshot is that people quote him and hence unproven facts if not outright errors are perpetuated. For example Thomas says that 9 St. Clair Knights fought at the battle of Hastings.  No one else has ever said or written that except Thomas and of course the subsequent people who quote him. Drives me crazy. 

In this vein, and as a an aside, Thomas Sinclair was related to a branch of the Caithness Sinclairs called the Broynach family. In the late 1700's the Broynachs disputed the transfer of the title of Earl of Caithness to the Rattar Family but the Broynachs were deemed ineligible to succeed to the title by act of Parliament because of the illegitimacy of a grandmother. Nevertheless, 100 years later we see Thomas resurrecting the cause of the Broynachs with dubious evidence. This does not speak well of Thomas' interest in factual material presented in a disinterested manner.  

I said to M. Boulianne,  that if I did write the foreword, I would want to say such things and was M. Boulianne okay with this if I did?

M. Boulianne, to his credit,  replied that the truth was paramount in book publishing. So I here I am.

I have consulted others on the matter of the Sinclairs of England and Thomas Sinclair. The first is Gerald Sinclair of Australia co-author of the recently published and acclaimed book The Enigmatic Sinclairs which is an attempt to separate out factually provable parts of early Sinclair history from conjecture and outright confabulation. The second person I have consulted is Captain Craig Sinclair of north Yorkshire in the UK who has spent some time with Thomas and the Sinclairs of England. He agrees with much of what I have said above about Thomas' unreliability but goes on to say that that not all of it should be jettisoned for, as the popular saying goes, we would be guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

First off, although Thomas is the only one to put a number to the St Clair Knights at Battle of Hastings, there is no evidence to say nine. But there could have been; there just isn't any contemporary evidence to support it. The Norman poet Wace reports as follows In his chronicle, The Roman de Rou, written between 1160 and 1170:

Normant a pie e a cheual

Les assaillment comme uassal

Donc poinst Hue de Mortemer,

Od lui li sire d'Auuiler,

Cil d'Onebac e de Saint Cler;

Engleis firent mult enuerser.

Translated to English -

The Normans attacked them courageously on foot and on horse.

Then Hugh of Mortemer spurred his horse; he had with him the lord of Auvilliers, and the lords of Les Oubeaux and of Saint-Clair. They overthrew many Englishmen. (translation Wace, p. 188)

Captain Sinclair goes on to say "I call some of the chaps like Thomas Sinclair as the 'chocolate fireguard' historians of antiquity.

Thomas Sinclair's errors? Well, I describe the book as a glorious mess. Glorious because there are things within this book which are absolute gold, and can be backed up with solid primary source evidence. However, there are equally, moments where his assumptions are veering toward and beyond some of those awful history programmes I see on the History Channel."

I know what the Captain means. Such programmes begin with the following script: 'If we assume that A might have been in [name a place] and that he had read [name a document], he might have taken the road to the north end [of the named place] to meet B who we are pretty sure was not there but might have been and A then might have said to B [such and so].

I have read the Sinclairs of England but I have to say it was not an easy read and it seemed at times unfocussed and all over the place. Captain Sinclair puts it this way: I've spent the last 10 years working through Thomas' tortuous book. I have a callus on my forehead from banging it so much! But you just can't leave it alone. So please don't dismiss it completely as pure fabrication. It is that, but it isn't also.

I think that is as well as it can be put.

With all this in mind, you can now read the book and mine for the gold and discard the dross.

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Rory A. P. Sinclair

Past President,

Clan Sinclair Association of Canada

Preface

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If the purpose of this work had been merely genealogical, it would have followed the usual course of publication by subscription at high price, for the delight of collectors of county histories, family records, and curiosities of antiquarian literature.

It is hoped that the contents will be of decided interest to lovers of English antiquities, but the direct appeal is to the large public who accept with appreciation any real contribution to the history of their country. To get at the spirit of past periods through tracing the action of particular families, is a new historical method; and the immense mass of personal materials which is now open to research in England, makes the field one of the most promising. A view of facts from the side of the ruled rather than from the usual monarchical standpoint of historians, must have its practical use; and it ought to be especially grateful to a time when democracy has learnt rights, and is dimly seeing duties.

The pedigree mania, with which even America is smitten, has little to do with the inquiry; substantial showing of the lives of a line in the press of national growth, being the intention. With the Romans a Fabian or Julian stock was an inspiration to the simplest member of the populus; and because the width of a remarkable family's connections causes an inevitable democratic feeling, there is no danger of that exclusiveness which is at once the nemesis and cause of ridicule to higher position, however nobly gained. No country has been more generous than this in receiving worth into its best grades.

To contemporary republicanism there is somewhat of wonder when it realises how free to persistent ability all offices and honours in England have been and still are. It was thought that the days of science would bring men to a dead level socially; and the evolutionary hypothesis which reduced, or threatened to reduce, mankind to brotherhood with the ape in the first place, and with the whole animal world ultimately, was considered to be the most effective destroyer of all pride of race and position. But human nature returns; and the doctrine of survival of the fittest would create, if left to itself, an aristocracy which for iron exclusiveness and the worst vices of selection, might surpass all domination that the world has yet seen. The poor and the miserable, below a certain point, would be exterminated; and the fittest must lord it over the earth, as prime monkeys, to an extent beyond conception.

An easier way of social existence which left chances to such broken lives as those of Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, and many others lame of body, is to be preferred to that of the so-called reign of law (for law is as unrealisable as everything else in the eternally limited province of human science); and nothing in our history is more comforting than the knowledge that some field was allowed at all times for the rise of every talent to its rights. There was nepotism enough, but in this there has been at least political safety, for the presumption is usually in favour of experienced stocks having the most natural aptitude for ruling position, though it has never been forgotten that to this law there are brilliant exceptions, who must have their places.

No democracy can ever get free from some form of aristocracy, but the wisdom is to keep the best men and women as healthy as possible by continual mixture with the elect of the people.

It is an ethnological fact that marriage of those too near of kin is as dangerous as of those too distant in blood, cousins to cousins, northerns to southerns, Swiss villagers to Swiss villagers, Desdemonas to Othelloes; and social unions in a country have similar dangers.

But it is the insight that is to be got as to the formation of the nation, from the Norman Conquest downwards, individually rather than collectively, that was the attraction of the toil expended on this subject; and if others also realise something of the inner life of the past through these gatherings, the object will be attained.

A word of detail is that the varied spelling of certain places and names is followed because of peculiar light thus thrown on changes of historical value.

London, 1887

The Sinclairs of England

Introduction

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Novelty and originality are great aids to all narration.

There has been for the last two hundred years so little written or known of the English branch of the Sinclair family, that what were simply taken from the various records, authentic and available, ought to have much of those desirable qualities. The Scottish house has had for many centuries the full light of fame over it. The Danish Sinclairs, of whom Sir Andrew, ambassador to James First of England from the king of Denmark, is a prominent figure; the Swedish, known most by Count Malcolm's tragic death returning from his embassy to the Porte during the Czarina Catherine's reign, in the violent time of the hats and caps, - Major Sinclair of Carlyle's Frederick the Great; the Norwegian, Russian, and German, remarkable by their literary, civil, and military positions of substance and honour: these are all better to the front than the forgotten Englishmen.

With the Romans it was piety not to neglect the ashes of the fathers. In real generosity of feeling dwellers in these happy islands of the west cannot but be their successful rivals. The dark clouds of antiquity arc over many of our brave actions as a race; but we have not been disrespectful of the past, and the world of writings in our national keeping are unique for their quantity and equality.

There is a notable Irish family of the last two centuries upwards, of whom the Rev. John, girt, with sword and pistols at the siege of Derry, is the hero; and the History of Belfast and Froude's English in Ireland give knowledge of a family of civic and political importance in Ulster's chief town. Recent American, African, and Australian offshoots show the old ability and courage.

Of this, in some respects, too cosmopolitan, though never numerous name, the English representatives can well bear now all the publicity which can be given to them. For the general mind, Sir Walter Scott has done much with regard to those lords of Roslin, who were the princes of Orkney and Shetland, earls of Caithness, dukes of Oldenburgh, and chief nobles of Norway. His verses in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and his notes to them, about what he well called the lordly line of high St.Clair, are of almost over-frequent reference, however much backed by chivalrous and splendid deeds. Even of chains of diamonds the fitful souls would get tired, if too much used.

With a direction to Sir Bernard Burke's no doubt well-grounded enthusiasm about the Scottish family's noble and royal claims and traditions, especially under Lord Sinclair, they may be left out of notice. His books alone, if there were not the libraries which are, could keep their memories green. The Vicissitudes of Families may be mentioned in particular as of easy reading and reference.

John Fordun, the old monk of Aberdeen, never felt easy in his mind with a genealogy till he got it to Noah; George Buchanan, the historian, went back through endless paths of Gaelic darkness with his Scot kings; the ingenious and useful, if too superstitious, Matthew Paris, had to get his Henries of England traced somewhere near the flood: our standard authority on peerage, baronetage, and all other rank, has almost laid himself open to the quiz of similar monastic scholasticism in his generous and perhaps scientific reckoning of Sinclair relationship through Scottish, Irish, Norman, Norwegian, and other blood, noble and royal, to the mythological Odin, god, king, and father to all the Dacians.

Of the English Sinclairs he has only a word or two, though they are closely knit with that great Burgh lineage to which he attaches, with evident interest, the northern family on slenderer grounds. Some related families, like the viscounts Gage of Firle Place, Sussex, know that there existed people here of the name; and the antiquaries have a vague suspicion of certain dark figures so yclept moving in the back-chambers of their wonderfully-made memories: but, practically, this is breaking entirely new ground; and with the special interest of such work, there cannot but be the accompanying imperfections.

The strongest arm in art, historic or other, is limited by thousands of chances. Human effort is at its best when sincerity is a sleepless watchman over what ability may come into exercise. To give the proper limits to the imagination where facts are broken and sparse, and also to preserve artistic unity, are a difficult enterprise.

Chapter I  At the Norman Conquest

Of those lithe athletic figures in armour on horseback around William, duke of Normandy, on that famous October day of 1066 near Hastings, nine at least were Sinclairs. With the Greek-like ease familiar from fine expression in tapestry, they moved in the inmost circles of his gallant surrounding. Hubert Sinclair, earl of Rye, was still in the strength of manhood, though he had near him his four sons in the flower of warriorhood. Radulph was the eldest, Hubert second, Adam third, and Eudo the youngest. The earl of St.Clare, Walderne, the brother of the earl of Rye, was also there, with his three sons, Richard, Britel, and William. It is not improbable that the earl of Senlis, though then a French and not a Norman subject, also added with his sons to the roll of De Sancto Claro in the decisive contest for England's sovereignty. Of him, however, there is no record existing with this established. The others are discernible in wonderful distinctness through those more than eight hundred succeeding years. Many of them, no doubt, did doughty feats at Senlac.

One is immortalised; and, considering how events suffer under the tooth of time, several more have been very kindly rescued from oblivion by the fates of the chances. In Wace's Roman de Rou, written within hearsay memory of living witnesses of the Norman Conquest, there is this passage in an admittedly very faithful description of the battle of Hastings, the chief event in his history of Rollo's line:

"‘Dunc puinst Hue de Mortimer,

Od li Sire d'Anvilier;

Cil d Onebac e de Saint Cler

Engleiz tirent mult enverser’"

It was at a critical point of the fight that this Sinclair, Richard, the son of Walderne, ‘overthrew many of the Angles’.

Angles they were, and not for a moment English, as we now understand the word. To dub the Normans with the name of Frenchmen, and so to gain sympathy for the supposed patriotic side, was hardly ingenuous procedure on the part of some late fanatical historians. We have as much honour now from the deeds of the brilliant conquerors as of the brave conquered of that memorable field. It may not be granted to some writers that the majority of present names is Norman, but we have all the fame of every gallant deed on both sides. It is not an enviable distinction, to have given an evil twist to the facts of this finest chapter in the growth of a great people, when Normannic united with Celtic and Saxon blood to form what Americans and others, with conscious meaning, call the Britisher. If there was patriotism it went on a false scent, and judicious treatment of history was left in the background.

Our Freemans and our Froudes are passionate pleaders to contemporisms when they might be aspirants to immortality in their line of art. It has been said of William of Malmesbury that his account of the grossness of the Angles or Saxons and of the refinement of the Normans, was probably true, because he had the blood of both in his veins; one could almost think that the historian special of the Conquest had discovered in his honest enough researches, that he was a descendant of some Saxon bondman, and felt therefore bound to see nothing good in what like the chronic Irishman he assails as the oppressor. There is a subtle truth in the saying that Herewald was the last of the English. He was the wake of the brave but brutal Angles; and it is reason for thankfulness that too much of the Teutonic, partially Tartaric, grating grit, is not conspicuous in our national composition.

At the warriors' table on the night of the battle, spread among the dead, where forsworn presumptuous Harold's standard all day had stood, these Sinclairs were; and there they also slept the sleep in mankind's estimation perhaps the most dignified possible on earth, that of conquerors after victory. On that very spot, Battle Abbey was to rise, as if to guard their memories for ever with its shelter; and it has not been altogether unsuccessful. Its roll of heroes, broken, and perhaps fuller also than it should be, still keeps the lord of St.Cler as one. The head of the then great family, Walderne, earl of St.Clare, had his name on the memorable list, the representative of all. It is true that Richard de Saint Clair is expressly mentioned in the roll in the church of Dives, Normandy, of the companions of the Conqueror in 1066; but this does not conflict, seeing that the warriors had then only first names, and were designated after some one or other of their estates. Huberts and Walters of various localities occur in the list. Through the advance to coronation and complete possession of the country, the family followed worthily their great chief; and their services are well seen by the offices they filled.

Dark gaps come in the history of kings themselves so far away in time; it is not wonder that there are clouds often over their noblest supporters. The sons of Hubert Sinclair, earl of Rye, can, however, be followed.

Radulph was sent with troops northward to secure the heart of England, and he was made castellan and earl of Nottingham. To him the castle of Nottingham was given to keep, and keep it well he did.

Another Radulph, of another strain, a semi-Saxon, had got the tower of Norwich to guard; but he was the worst traitor of the marriage-feast which cost Waltheof his head in 1075. After this Radulph of Waer took to flight, the young Hubert Sinclair was sent to take and hold it.

His cousin Richard, the hero of Hastings, went with him; and Domesday has its account of the pain and blood it cost to restore all the disorder. The lands of the rebellious burghers knew the necessary fire and sword. Hubert became the governor with the hand of iron, and Richard had gifts of land and house in the district where the soldiers had done soldiers' duty. Richard also was to the front among the high war and court officers of the time.

Adam got lands in Kent. He is known as of Campes there. His possessions were large; but all men were warriors who followed the duke of Normandy, and only the oblivion of time and the frequency of the military heroes, hide him in this character also. When troubles began in 1066 in Normandy, King William had sent him and his two brothers, afterwards the castellan of Nottingham and the governor of Norwich Tower, with their father Hubert, to quell the Cenomannic region, the most refractory part of the dukedom.

In the battle of Hastings itself, the rebellious spirit appeared, in the person of one of the Cenomannic nobles; and it needed good counsel and prompt hands to deal with them, their duke away in England. The work had been thoroughly done, and the sons returned to this side of the Channel. Adam was one of the able commissioners who compiled that wonder of the world, as to state record, The Domesday Book. It was the civil capacity of such born rulers that put the right finish to their valour and skill in war. The first opportunities which peace gave, were always eagerly taken advantage of, to shape things into beautiful civil polity.

When the father and three brothers went thus back to Normandy on that weighty enterprise, Eudo the youngest remained with the king, and of them all he was destined to become the greatest. He was in the king's immediate service, and his history is as remarkable as it is full.

Britel Sinclair was sent to Devonshire. In the fighting around Exeter he bore his share; and, when quiet came, he settled in Somersetshire and Cornwall.

What became of William, the youngest son of Walderne, is perhaps the most interesting, as it is at all events the most celebrated, of all the narratives of the Sancto de Claro family, whose representatives thus surrounded and followed their duke and their relation, when he conquered, with most masculine vigour, the malcontents of his plighted kingdom of England.

Chapter II   Before the Conquest

Far distant as 1066 is, there are previous and pleasing records of their doings too romantic and readable to be missed. In the early struggles of Duke William against the rebellious earls of Normandy, supercilious exceedingly as to his love-birth by Arlotta, the daughter of the tanner of Falaise, Hubert Sinclair, earl of Rye, figures, with these same sons of his, afterwards so famous, as the most loyal of vassals, according to his oath to Duke Robert, saint and devil, father of the brave boy.

In 1047 it was only by the watchfulness of his fool that William's life was saved from conspirators who at opportunity would not do things by halves. Both Freeman and Cohen have described that terrible midnight gallop and pursuit. Though taken from Wace's Roman du Rou, they give full credence to the narrative; such rhyme being then the trustworthy and almost only medium of history. Cohen, better known as Sir Francis Palgrave, refers to the Voie du Duc as present geographical corroboration of the truth of the duke's ride. He also shows that the tale, in its best parts, could only have been told by William himself. The escape from Valognes, in the Cotentin, after the sudden alarum by the court-fool, has been digested by Freeman.

‘The duke arose, half dressed in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which was afterwards known as the Duke's Way. William crossed in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He entered the building and prayed for God's help on his way.

His natural course would now have been to strike for Bayeux, but the city was in the hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal districts. As the sun rose he drew near to the church and castle of Rye, the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The lord of Rye was standing at his own gate between the church and the mound on which his castle was raised. William was still urging on his foaming horse past the gate, but Hubert knew and stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this headlong ride. He heard that the duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side and never leave him till he was safely lodged in his own castle of Falaise. The command of their father was faithfully executed by his loyal sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose high in William's favour.’

In the ancient rhymes the tale is told with poetic fulness of question, answer, and narrative. Dramatic as well as historic interest, makes the several pages which the story occupies, to nearly a couple of hundred lines, full of colour, and well worth special reading, the old French in which they are written being easy enough to understand. A modest recent biography of William the Conqueror by Lamb, not Elia, gives much pictorial detail of this dangerous personal conspiracy in favour of Guy for duke, his aunt's son. Hubert himself, after the birds have flown, gets on horseback to guide the pursuers, leads them all roads but the right one, and saves his prince. The duke triumphed over these deadly enemies of his then, and Hubert had such favour with him that before the invasion of England he had promised to make him dapifer or seneschal of that kingdom, when it should come into his possession.

But this adventure was not the only cause of Hubert's popularity. In the difficulties of choosing his successor, Edward the Confessor thought often of William, his cousin of Normandy. Secretly he sent him a message by Goscelin of Winchester, an English merchant accustomed to traveling on the Continent. William must appoint his most trustworthy and capable subject to come to England to receive the king's mandates and the symbols of bequeathing the kingdom. A council of the earls was held, and no one could be induced to risk his life in such an embassy to what they all considered a barbarous nation. The cruelties perpetrated at Guildford shortly before, in the seizure and murder by Earl Godwin and his sons of Prince Alfred and the Norman nobles who accompanied him, were unanswerable arguments to all invitations to the high office. It was not fifty years yet since its guests the Danes were massacred on St.Brice's dreadful day.

Hubert Sinclair offered his services; and, with prophecies of tragedy, there was universal applause for his gallantry. He was appointed ambassador and executor between the princes. To impress the barbaric nation, he had a specially magnificent following. There is a highly picturesque description in monkish Latin, of the great equipage, grand pomp, horses housed brilliantly, terrible with foaming, and men in parti-coloured and attractive garments. The result followed that the embassy was received in special honour by the people and the king. The mission, further, was wholly successful, and Hubert brought back to Normandy all the mandates as well as the peculiar symbols which made his master heir to the crown of England. Some relics of the saints, a golden hunting-horn, and a stag's head, were the peculiar signs of possession to come. It is said that it was on his return from his successful visit that he had the appropriate promise of the dapifership of England.

Such transaction explains the sympathy of the pope and the religious world with William's expedition in 1066, to secure his rights from the usurping private nobleman, Harold, who had rebel blood in him enough to lead a stronger mind than his astray. The blessing of the Norman banner, a kind of earliest oriflamme, could have been no inconsiderate act, as giddy pleaders seem to hint. The world was always as far as possible ruled by fact, and no time was more honestly sincere in polity or religion than those centuries. The duke himself was as religiously inclined always as he was a cultivator of refined morality. Whether the story of Harold's oath is true or fable, he was out of account except as a king by violence, and, even for England then, law and order had some existence.

Of the reality of this mission of Hubert's there is the illustrative fact that Edward the Confessor, a well-known favourer of Normans, gave him a perpetual grant of the estate called Esce in The Domesday Book, now Ashe in Hampshire, says Freeman. In the time of King Edward the Confessor it is noted as having been held under Earl Harold. If not the very first land possessed by a Sinclair in England of which there is record, it is perhaps the most generally interesting by its historic association. As shall appear, there are indications of even earlier connection, but Ashe has very particular interest in respect to this kind of antiquity.

Hubert was not wanting either, in generosity on his part. He left at least one substantial mark of his visit. If he did not altogether establish the church of St.Mary, West-Cheap, London, he gave it great gifts. He had the advowson of it, and his family after him. That it was ordinarily in the Conqueror's time called New Church, is corroborative proof that he was the founder of it. Religious munificence was the highest type of honour then next to bravery and counsel.

It may have been that his lands in England brought him often there; and such strong sympathy with London's religious condition as is implied by this ecclesiastical connection, would seem to point to some continued presence. Few have been so fortunate as to have even so much of their good deeds chronicled for posterity as Hubert of Rye has had, but there is not further mention of him after his return to Normandy to quell the Cenomannic rising. He did not hold the dapifership he had been promised, but it is more than probable that he lived to see his youngest son Eudo enjoying the fruits of their loyal deeds towards the king, in this the position next to royalty itself.

The Rye family was a branch of the Sinclairs, lords of the castle of St.Lo, which Palgrave says gradually gathered around it the well-known town of that name in the Cotentin. They again had come to reside there from St.Clare, whence the local name, upon that historic river Epte which flows into the Seine not far from Rouen. There Rollo got his dukedom acknowledged by the king of France. The earls of Senlis to the east, in the direction of Paris, had gained great possessions; other members traceable from this castle of St.Clare, which the Germans would call the Schloss Stamm of the kin.

Chapter III   French Antecedents

It never was, nor shall it ever be, easy to fish substantial facts from that muddy pool of French history when it was difficult to know which was the king and which was the noble. What records there were the English took in battle and destroyed. To risk already the saying that the Sinclairs were equivalent connetables in those times when lords did what was right in their own eyes, with little or no reference to the sham royalty always claiming allegiance so helplessly, would not be judicious. But it is right to say, at all events at this stage of search, that dim lines of evidence seem to point to their Frankish rather than Norse origin in the male line.

That they speedily recognised the advantage of marriage with the Neustrian dynasty founded by Rollo is pretty well established. There may be more French blood in them than was usual among the Normans of the eleventh century, and their intellectual characteristics do not much combat the idea. That they were strangers from Kent in England some time before the ninth century may also allow some Celtic blood. The prevailing theory of the extermination of the Celts by the Saxons has nowhere more absolute living contradiction than in the bodily frames and mental peculiarities of the genuine Kentishmen.

It is to be gathered from Holinshed's Chronicles that the mother of William Longsword, the second duke of Normandy, was probably a Sinclair [Poppa de Valois]. His wife, Sprota, daughter of the famous, and specially generous if we may trust Palgrave, Hubert, earl of Senlis, there can be even less doubt about. To none more than to this Hubert were both Rollo and his son indebted for high acceptance among the French nobility, the most exclusive and turbulent men then alive. Palgrave says that Popee, Rollo's Neustrian wife, was the half-sister of a Bernard, and that Bernard took heartily to Rollo and his family. He gives Dudon de Saint Quentin as his authority. Rollo's line, he thinks, would have failed but for this Frenchman, Bernard of Senlis, who, trusted and worthy of Trust, fought well for the strangers he so much loved. He had his reward too, becoming lord of Coucy, and always a prime counsellor in times of danger.

So many have claimed false relationship to the dynasty of William the Conqueror, that it is neither safe nor at all assuring to those who know the state of things, to make much of such historical notices. The insuperable difficulty, that the use of first names was then and long after all but universal, is at once trap for the unwary and open door for the impostors. The luck of assuming a surname early belongs more perhaps to the Sinclairs themselves than to most European families. They also have suffered extremely, and particularly in England, as will soon appear, by that peculiar pride in first name which was effective contemporaneously but disastrous for posterity. Who, for example, in his senses could contend about the rights of a Welsh genealogy ? And there were features in those Gilberts and Fitz-Gilberts, Odoes and sons of Odo, that make problems of early Norman descent even more inscrutable. The threads sometimes can be scientifically unravelled, and one bit of success in this way is worth thousands of attempts, not to say falsifications.

Glimpses from fixed facts can be had back into the comparative darkness of Duke Richard's reign, the grandson of Rollo. He was married to Gunnora, a princess of the Danish line, and her female relations are by marriage closely related to this and other English notable names. Indeed, the comparative equality then between princes and their nobility goes far to excuse, if not explain, the ties so often found to exist by the heralds, of undoubtedly obscure persons with the line of the Conqueror. Accumulation of record and history puts the Sinclair family within the ducal circle, and for centuries. The rest, as the Gauls say, goes without saying.

It is not overshooting the mark to hint that, in the tenth century, the Norse dukes had the better side of the bargain in the alliances by marriage. It was England that widened the distinction of royalty and nobility to what has since prevailed. Father Hay, the Augustine friar, who was son to the widow of the last Sinclair baron of Roslin, and who had full access to the charters in the castle, says that the wife of Walderne, earl of St.Clare, was daughter to Duke Richard of Normandy. The friar wrote about the end of the seventeenth century.

Alexander Nisbet, an Edinburgh antiquarian, writing in 1722, quotes Jacob van Bassan's M.S., a foreigner who lived long at Roslin Castle, to the effect that Wolderne, Compte de St.Clare, was married to Helena, daughter to the duke of Normandy. [The Duke's daughter Helena/Eleanor was married to Baldwin of Flanders]. William, his second son, who went to Scotland and became steward to Queen Margaret Atheling there, marrying, Agnes Dunbar, daughter of Patrick, first earl of March, he shows to have been cousin-german to William the Conqueror. Holinshed says that Duke Richard had no issue; but he means merely that he had no sons, the writer's purpose being dynastic. Even if he did state this with the full meaning, his authority is both weaker and later than that of the Roslin investigators, having access as they had to the carefully preserved documents of, as one writer has it, the magnates of Scotland during the reigns up to the fourth James.

Nisbet says of Henry of this line, that he married to Florentia, daughter of the king of Denmark, with whom he got a great estate in Norway; of his son William, that he married the fair Egidia Douglas, granddaughter of Robert II, king of Scotland; and that their son William was the greatest subject by far of all others of his time. He shows how they got the principality of Zetland and Orkney under the king of Norway, and the dukedom of Oldenburgh in Denmark. This nobleman's offices and titles, some one has said, would have even pleased a Spaniard.

Writing of the earl of Douglas and James II of Scotland, when Edward IV reigned over England, Rapin says of James, ‘At the same time he gave the administration of affairs to the earl of Orcades, mortal enemy of Douglas’. Tindal gives the note to this, William Sinclare. But northern history is full of their deeds. The records of such a public family are as trustworthy documents as history can have; and what is true of the relationship of the first William, son of Walderne, to the Conqueror, is applicable also to Richard and Britel, his brothers, who remained in England.

There is no necessity to plead the case, because affinity will appear, sufficient for the gravest purpose, incidentally, as the English fortunes are described. In a chapter of antecedents, likelihoods are nearly as appropriate as what can thus be proved by recognised evidence. To give breathing-room, it may be said that the element of uncertainty is continually present in all genealogical and historic details. After this, the closeness of grasp upon facts is the test of right science. Do we not need our theatrical fool to tell us with hidden wisdom, like the court one in the palaces of ancient kings, that it is a wise bird which knows its own father ? The scientific mind is inclined to be wise over and beyond what is written or really knowable, and the humanest spirits have to save souls alive from the valuable but mechanic machineries of partial truth. The wings of imagination must not be clipped too closely. The creature will die for want of the food to be picked only on the wing. To the present quest also this is pertinent.

Why should not the Clare of Rochester in the county of Kent, who became the famous St.Clare of the ninth century in his hermitage on the banks of the Epte in France, be the progenitor, or, at all events, the earliest relation on record, of all the Sinclairs ? One writer says that it was considered immoral for priests to be unmarried in those centuries, but even if that cannot be admitted, what is more likely than that this saint either had set up his hermitage, the remains of which still exist, and whose well yet gives, it is said, clearer sight to the eyes, on the estate and under the protection of a relation from England, or was himself the first French Sinclair, a monk on his own land ? Rice of Oxford University is the recent authority as to the birthplace of this martyred saint of France, but in the books of the saints he is by the Roman Catholics also accounted an Englishman. His martyrdom by two tools of a lady whose conduct needed and got his thorough criticism, is one of the events consecrated in religion. It is not at all unlikely that the neighbouring castle, then in 894 just taking the name of St.Cler, was the scene of this woman's evil doings. The experience of history shows that virulence and violence of the fiercest kinds have happened among blood relations, love and hate being equally capable of supreme excellence by reason of the narrowness of the sphere.

It cannot be asserted on such slight ground, that the lord of the castle and the monk of the neighbouring lowly hermitage were absolutely of one strain in blood. It is true there are additional probabilities pointing in this direction. The history of the great Clares of England, the first of whom came here in 1066 and the last of whom died on the battlefield of Bannockburn, the earl of Gloucester, is suggestive to the effect that they were somehow a branch of the French house of St.Clare. They gained their best importance on this side of the Channel; but before the death of the martyr the whole family were Clares, and in all probability political exiles from Kent, who found a home in France. The history of Richard Clare, son of Gilbert, the greatest warrior of William's army, will have proved and near relation to the Sinclairs, of a kind other than this legendary. It is noteworthy that he seemed to have a special and, as it would appear, traditional love for England. He exchanged his estate of Brionne, of which he was earl, acre by acre, for land around Tunbridge in Kent; and here he built his famous castle and home, and seemed as if to the manner born of the county. It is true he had many estates elsewhere, but he seems to have further satisfied his likings for England, by getting his property in Suffolk called Clare, from which to become the earl of Clare. It is not improbable that the castle of St.Cler on the Epte was first that of Clare, and that only after the saint became a saint did it and some members of the lineage become St.Clair.

All this is professedly imaginative. The return to somewhat steadier ground is agreeable. Moulins, the Norman historian, says that the Bretons had possession of the ashes of Saint Clare during Rollo's earlier visits to France. He had been the bishop of Nantes, and this explains why the Bretons were so privileged. On one of these terrible comings of the Norse pirates they carried his remains inland for safety to Bourges. There is mention also of similar dealings with the relics of a Saint Maur. These things might show that the two families, the Sinclairs and the Seymours, were of the country, and not new importations from Scandinavia under the banners of Rollo. The Clares and the Maurs were not likely to have been confined to these two priests. Bernard of Senlis has been already noted, as the shrewd welcomer of the Norse Rollo to his native land; and that he was a St.Clare is also a problem amid the general obscurity.

In 912 Charles, king of France, met the Norse prince on the banks of the Epte, near St.Clare Castle, who then got installed in his dukedom of Normandy or Neustria by that remarkable proxy homage which sent Charles on his back in a double sense. Ne si, bi Got, cried Rollo to the demand of his personal submission. The French kings were long accustomed to ducal home insolence, and this king kept his temper as only sad experience can teach. That at that meeting Sinclairs were fully represented, and perhaps on both sides, could hardly but be. It was not for nothing that the place had so thoroughly fixed and then historic a name. If it is admissible to draw geographical conclusions at all into history and genealogy, this place may be used to the extent of suggesting that it took its name, as is usual, from its proprietors; and that, if so, they were not novi homines, but old patricians of the Gallic land.

Between this period and the conquest of England many changes must have been with the family. Walderne, the earl of St.Clare, resided, not at the castle whence his name and title came, but at the castle of St.Lo in the Cotentin, when Duke William got his and his sons' services in 1066; and for generations that must have been the chief home. The commune of St.Clair there is proof modern of this. Border troubles were continually prevalent near Rouen; but it is very probable that as Caen, Bayeux, and St.Lo became the more recognised centres of Norman policy and civilisation, the reason of the new home was to have the benefit of the presence of what was best in the dukedom. It is very plain, but quite substantial, politics, that absence from court is not good for the most legitimate of ambitions. Duke William was of Lower Normandy by birth, breeding, and heart.

The castle of St.Lo, Palgrave says, was built in the time of Charlemagne against the Danes. It became municipal, the town growing around it gradually, and taking its name. There is no evidence to show how early the Sinclairs had it in possession. Sir Andrew Malet, one of our ambassadors to European countries of this century, and an authority on Norman questions, said that the site of the castle was observable in his time, and that the English Sinclairs were of that stock. The aid to their prince was collected at St.Lo, and it is to this quarter of the Cotentin that it must be looked, for the right information as to the kind of men its culture made them, before the settlements were made in their new, or, it may be, former or first land.

The earl of Rye and his family were offshoots from St.Lo; and there are indications of yet other branches, which played considerable part in the Norman period of English history. The earls of Senlis, for example, with their previous strong ducal ties, by marriage and political valuable mutual aid, seem somewhat apart from the Conqueror's doings till the latter period of his reign; and their interests being within purely French territory at Senlis, it may be guessed that they had lost sight of Normandy for, as they no doubt judged, the wider field of the politics which had Paris for centre. When the western expedition drew the eyes of all Europe upon this island, the Sinclairs of Senlis freshened their memories, and came to their great relation fortune-hunting, and with much success. But these Sinclair earls of Senlis may have been the successors merely of the Bernard of Neustrian early history.

The mythological period, with families as with nations, being indication rather than any realised fact, cannot bear too much handling. Mythology, all the same, has its own particular charm; and it undoubtedly carries its very valuable offering of truth to the eyes and hearts which know its right worthy message.

Chapter IV   The Norman Civilisation

That strip of intricate needlework, nineteen inches broad and two hundred and ten feet eleven inches in length, called the Bayeux tapestry, which hung long in the cathedral there, is one of the worlds greatest historical monuments. Its art is only second to the high burden of history it carries. Those graceful Norman warriors in armour have no sufficient counterparts except among the sculptures of the ancient Greeks. There is the same fine masterful spirit in the whole composition. Straining after passing effect is completely absent, which is one of the best tests of the immortality of any art. The whole tale of the union of England with Normandy goes on, picture after picture, with a clear unconsciousness as of the free processions on the frieze of a Greek temple. Harold's visit, his aid in war, the oath, the embarkation, the landing, the battle: what history in words has ever excelled this work of fair ladies' hands in suggestiveness as to what is beautiful in woman or noble in man ? Were there absolutely nothing further extant as to the kind of people the Normans were, the proof should stand complete in this, of the existence of one of the world's polished nations. And such confidence in woman as is implied by committing the celebration of their fame to female wit, shows that those warriors couki bear what is considered the last test of manly culture, the wise