On 9/06/2017 11:34 PM, Doug Thompson wrote: >> As I understand it the Sele priory fine cited by Doug Thompson blows >> this out of the water, since Reynold de Braiose in 1227 evidently >> thought that Berta (whichever Beauchamp she married) was a sister of >> Hugh de Mortimer's wife Annora who was living in 1241. >> >> Peter Stewart > True. And "thought that" is a bit of an understatement. I'm sure he knew his own sisters! > > This makes it really impossible that Berta was married to William 1 de Beauchamp. > > Peter, when you write > > "Giles had returned to England in 1213 and - of course - he and his > brother could do business other than with the king. I dare say that, > between them, they could even chew gum at the same time. > > From May 1216 Reynold was in possession of the Braiose lordships that > Giles had recovered in 1215. If their sister's maritagium (or even a > part of it) had been improperly withheld from the family at a time when > they needed every resource they could get hold of, why would they have > left Walter de Beauchamp in undisturbed possession when he was marrried > to Joan de Mortimer from 1212? " > > I wonder if you have a knowledge of the situation in England and Wales at that time? > It was not a place where Giles and Reynold could carry out business, chewing gum or not! > They were at war with the King, marching about with armies in Wales. Land disputes were only settled by force of arms. The niceties of legal documentation came later. The timeframe in question is 1213 to 1221. I doubt that Berta's maritagium was being retained by Walter against the interests of the Braiose brothers and their nephew John through those eight years before an effort was made either to force the issue or to reach an agreement. Troubled times are not the same as absolute country-wide mayhem. In troubled times, especially after the dramas afflicting the Braiose family, every resource may be called upon to ensure support, including a lapsed maritagium for instance that could provide for a new one to help co-opt another potential in-law. I just don't buy the conjectural explanation that the Braioses let it hang until 1221. > I value Matthew Tompkins' inputs which may explain some of the legal points in the fines. > > It looks to me now as if the 1227 fine could allow "Walter and his heirs by the daughter.." to mean the heirs through his mother, excluding heirs through his father's sons by a later wife. In my second post of this thread, on 31 May, I wrote: 'How certain is it that the original text doesn't mean "and their heirs descended from the daughters of William de Brewse", i.e. allowing for Walter de Beauchamp himself to be the son rather than husband of Berta?" A delayed response is better than none, but I don't know why it should take 10 days to acknowledge an obvious possibility from the incomplete evidence available. Peter Stewart