♂Miles of Gloucester

Miles of Gloucester^W (died 24 December 1143) was an Anglo-Norman baron, sheriff and constable of Gloucester under King Henry I, who went over to the Empress Matilda^W in the civil war after Henry’s death and was created Earl of Hereford by her in 1141. He was the twenty-fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Margaret of Gloucester (died 1187) and, probably, Margaret’s descendant John Washburn (died 1547).

Constable of Gloucester

Miles was the son and heir, apparently the only son, of Walter of Gloucester, hereditary sheriff of Gloucester. In the spring of 1121 King Henry I gave Sibyl de Neufmarche in marriage to Miles of Gloucester, together with all the lands of her father and mother, and from them came the lordship of Brecknock^W. By a charter dated at Rouen, Henry confirmed Miles in all his father’s lands held of the crown, with the office of constable, and in 1130–31 Miles answered to the Exchequer for both Gloucestershire and Staffordshire.

The civil war

When Stephen^W took the throne in 1135, Miles was one of the great magnates of the West of England. He joined the new king, received two charters confirming him in his honors of Gloucester and Brecknock, attended the Easter court of 1136 and witnessed Stephen’s Charter of Liberties as constable. He was at the siege of Shrewsbury in 1138. But when the Empress Matilda arrived in England in 1139 to claim her father’s crown, Miles went over to her: he received her at Bristol, brought her to Gloucester, did homage there, and was given St Briavels Castle^W and the whole Forest of Dean.

Through the war that followed, known as the Anarchy^W, he stayed at her side. He went with her to Winchester, to Reading, where he acted as her constable, and to London in 1141, and fled with her back to Gloucester. At Oxford, on 25 July 1141, she created him Earl of Hereford, and she afterwards granted him the castle and honor of Abergavenny.

Death and burial

On Christmas Day 1136 Miles had founded a new priory of Llanthony^W outside Gloucester, to take in the canons who had fled the old priory of Llanthony in Monmouthshire. He died on 24 December 1143; according to the chronicler John of Hexham^W, he was killed by an arrow while out hunting. The abbey of Gloucester and the new priory disputed his body until Simon, Bishop of Worcester, settled the quarrel on 28 December: the monks of Gloucester let him be buried at Llanthony, provided the priory never took in his son Roger, Roger’s wife, or any lord of Gloucester Castle for burial without the abbot’s leave.

Miles was buried in the chapter house of Llanthony. His widow, Sibyl, is said to have entered religion in the same house; she was buried at his right hand, three of their sons later lay at his head, and their daughter Margaret was buried at her mother’s feet.

The family

The couple had five sons, Roger, Walter, Henry, William and Mahel, and three daughters, Margaret, Berthe and Lucy. Roger succeeded his father as Earl of Hereford and Constable of England in 1143 and founded Flaxley Abbey in Gloucestershire. All five sons died without children, and when the last of them, Mahel, died, the inheritance was divided among the three daughters and their husbands: Margaret, the wife of Humphrey de Bohun, is said to have had the constableship of England, Berthe the lordship of Brecknock, and Lucy the Forest of Dean.

Notes

Sources

Miles’s life is given in the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, 1926, pp. 451–454 and notes, under Hereford), which rests on the royal charters now among the Duchy of Lancaster records, the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I, the Gesta Stephani, J. H. Round’s Geoffrey de Mandeville, Dugdale’s Monasticon and the cartulary of St Peter’s, Gloucester. The charter giving him Sibyl is dated between 10 April and 29 May 1121; the same marriage and his creation as earl are also in vol. 1 (1910), p. 20. The Complete Peerage calls the Empress’s charter creating him earl probably the earliest surviving charter in which the actual date is found. His death by an arrow is from John of Hexham (“Venatui insistens et sagitta transfixus”), the graves in the chapter house from Aske’s Collections, and his five sons from Giraldus Cambrensis, whom the Complete Peerage accepts for want of proof to the contrary.

His father

The Complete Peerage gives Walter of Gloucester as hereditary sheriff of Gloucester and “probably constable”, and notes that he appears to have died, or retired to the earlier Llanthony, before 1129.

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.