♂Geoffrey Fitz Peter

Geoffrey Fitz Peter (died 14 October 1213) was an English royal official who rose from sheriff to Justiciar^W of England, the king’s chief minister, and who was girded with the sword of the earldom of Essex by King John on the day of his coronation in 1199. He was the twenty-third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent: the nearer runs through his daughter Maud de Mandeville (died 1236), and the other, through his son John FitzGeoffrey (died 1258), makes him her twenty-fourth great-grandfather.

Rise in the king’s service

Geoffrey was the second son, but in the end the heir, of Piers de Lutegareshale and his wife Maud. His elder brother Robert held Cherhill in Wiltshire until 1185, and by 1187 the manor was Geoffrey’s. He served Henry II as a Justice of the Forest from 1185 to 1189 and as sheriff of Northamptonshire, and under Richard I as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire.

Geoffrey married Beatrice de Say before 25 January 1184/5, when the couple, with her younger sister Maud and Maud’s husband William de Boclande, divided their father’s inheritance by an agreement made in the king’s court at Melksham. Beatrice and her sister had been in the king’s wardship since their father’s death in 1177, and a royal survey of 1185 records that Geoffrey had received Saham in Norfolk with William de Say’s daughter.

The Mandeville inheritance

When William de Mandeville^W, Earl of Essex, died childless in November 1189, his great estates passed for a time to Beatrice’s uncle, Geoffrey de Say, who was allowed to take them for a fine of 7,000 marks, which he never paid. In 1190 Geoffrey Fitz Peter paid a fine of 3,000 marks for all the lands of Earl William, on the ground that Beatrice was his rightful and nearest heir, and King Richard confirmed them to the couple by a charter dated at Messina on 23 January 1190/1. Beatrice died in childbirth before 19 April 1197 and was buried at Chicksand Priory^W; her body was later moved to Shouldham Priory^W in Norfolk, which Geoffrey founded before 15 June 1198.

Justiciar and earl

In July 1198 Richard made Geoffrey Justiciar of England, an office he held for the rest of his life, and soon afterwards he defeated the Welsh at Castle Maud. On the king’s death in 1199 he joined Archbishop Hubert Walter^W and William Marshal^W in persuading the magnates to swear fealty to John, who at his coronation on 27 May 1199 girded him with the sword of the earldom. The chronicler of Walden Abbey^W noted that this was done not without the indignation of many. The new king rewarded him with the manor of Aylesbury in 1204, the honor and castle of Berkhamsted in 1205 and Queenhithe in London in 1208.

Before 29 May 1205 Geoffrey married Aveline de Clare, the widow of William de Munchanesy and a daughter of Roger de Clare, Earl of Clare; John FitzGeoffrey was their son. Geoffrey died on 14 October 1213 and was buried at Shouldham. Matthew Paris^W wrote of him as the firmest pillar of the kingdom, a man whom the king feared above all others, and said that after his death England was like a ship in a storm without a rudder. His son by Beatrice, Geoffrey de Mandeville, succeeded him as Earl of Essex.

Lines of descent

Nancy Jane Blanchard descends from Geoffrey by two separate lines of descent. The first runs through his daughter Maud de Mandeville and her son Humphrey de Bohun, and probably through John Washburn (died 1547); the second runs through his son John FitzGeoffrey. The two lines meet again in Polly Knapp (1798–1863), whose parents, Joseph Knapp (1763–1839) and Eunice Carver (1763–1845), both descended from Geoffrey.

Notes

Sources

Geoffrey’s parentage, career, both marriages, the Mandeville inheritance, his grants, his death and burial, Beatrice’s death and burial, and his son Geoffrey’s succession are from the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 5, 1926, pp. 120–126, under Essex), which cites the pipe rolls, the charter rolls, the chronicles of Walden Abbey and the charters themselves. Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 1), makes Maud de Mandeville his daughter by Beatrice, and p. 849 (Verdun 3) makes John FitzGeoffrey his son by Aveline. The story of the contest for the inheritance in 1189–90 is also told in vol. 4 of the Complete Peerage (1916), Appendix H, p. 665.

The 1185 survey

The survey, the Rotuli de Dominabus, says that the two daughters of William de Say were in the king’s custody with Saham, and then: “Postea recepit Galfridus filius Petri Suham cum filia Willelmi de Say”, afterwards Geoffrey Fitz Peter received Saham with the daughter of William de Say.

Matthew Paris

“Erat autem firmissima regni columna … Unde Rex ipsum pre omnibus mortalibus sine dilectione formidabat … Unde post ejus obitum facta est Anglia quasi in tempestate navis sine gubernaculo.” (Matthew Paris, vol. 2, p. 558, as quoted in the Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 5, p. 125.) Paris and Roger of Wendover both give the date of his death, 14 October 1213.

His name and numbering as earl

The Latin records call him Galfridus filius Petri, Geoffrey son of Peter, rendered Geoffrey Fitz Peter or Geoffrey fitz Piers. Richardson numbers him the fourth Earl of Essex, counting the earlier Mandeville earls; other works, counting a new creation in 1199, call him the first Earl of Essex.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.