Another red herring (2 of 3) (a 17th century copying error)

This is Part 2. Part 1 should be read first.

Did Roger Constable of Chester / Roger de Lacy (call him what you will) go on the Third Crusade?

A statement that he did was made by William Dugdale in his printed "Baronage" in the 1670s. I believe this is the earliest such statement in print. Dugdale said:-

This Roger was (Joreval. 1248. l. 3) at the siege of Acon (in the Holy Land,) with King Richard the First, An. 1192. (4 Rich. 1.) and (Joreval. 1248. l. 3) likewise in that sharp fight against the Saracens, who endeavored to relieve it; as also at the siege (Mat. Paris, p. 30?) and taking of Damieta.

There are other, later, books on Roger that do not repeat this (1).

I suspect that Thomas Dunham Whitaker, writing as he did in the late 1790s (2), may well have had a copy of an early edition of Dugdale's Baronage and taken this information from it, omitting the statement that Roger was also at the siege of Damietta because he [Whitaker] knew that at least that part of it must be wrong (3).

So what of the rest of it? "Acon" or "Achon" means Acre, a long siege of which was ended by the Crusaders in July 1191.

The source given by Dugdale is "Joreval 1248 line 3." By that he meant a chronicle which had been printed in 1652, in a book of which I should suppose Dugdale himself must have had a copy. The printed book is Twysden, "Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem" [ten chroniclers], where in line 3 of Column 1248 is indeed mention of "Roger de Lacy" as one of the knights involved in a particular engagement - corresponding, I feel sure, to the "sharp fight" mentioned by Dugdale.

This chronicle, printed in 1652, had come from an abbot of Jervaulx, hence "Joreval," and it appears, but don't quote me as to the details, to be in this particular respect a version or copy of something at one time said to be by Geoffrey de Vinsauf, nowadays thought to have been written in the early thirteenth century by "Richard of Holy Trinity."

It is a story of a surprise attack by the "Turks," memorable in one way because the Normans were caught with their trousers down (in a sense).  The king himself therefore, and many others with him, on the urgency of the moment, proceeded without their cuishes to the fight, some even without their breeches, and they armed themselves in the best manner they could ..... This from a modern and anonymous translation (Cambridge, Ontario, 2001).

The same story is available in various other editions, and the key point is that most of those give the name as Roger "de Sacy." Thus, on its own, the source which I think was used by Dugdale and fed the information to Thomas Dunham Whitaker, is not remotely authoritative.

In the table below, the left hand column shows names mentioned in Hollinshed's 1577 chronicle in context of the Third Crusade fairly generally, whilst the other five columns give the names of the knights involved in accounts of the specific "sharp fight" incident (4).

And yet this appears to be the only story naming our Roger in the Crusade. It appears to be based on a copying error. Furthermore a Roger "de Sacy" certainly was a crusade companion of king Richard (5).

So I am not convinced. Please read Part 3 where there is a story that Roger Constable of Chester was actually in England at the time.

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(1) For example Ormerod, Cheshire, vol 1 page 510 in the 1819 edition does not mention this where it would if it was going to! William Beamont (no relation, I think) in his 1873 History of Halton and Norton, at p.20, states that Roger was present, with Richard Coeur de Lion, at that historic event, the storming of Acre, but cites no reference, and a modern book quoting that agrees with me that there is no supporting evidence (Kathryn Hurlock and Paul Oldfield, editors: Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Boydell Press, 2015), p.135 in an article by Andrew Abram).

(2) See part 1.

(3) That siege of Damietta was some years after Roger's death in fact. Nevertheless the Damietta bit found its way into at least one other book (Foss' Judges of England; but this doesn't cite the authority). Incidentally, Roger's son John de Lacy gave a charter at Damietta in 1218 (Pontefract Chartulary no. XXI).

(4) The "Joreval" version is especially corrupt. "Count Henry" and "the earl of Leicester" are two different people, whilst Henry "the Teuton" is the standard-bearer of the King. "R" or "Regis" has been extended as Reginald, making one person into two. The Hollinshed information is extracted from the text made available by the "Hollinshed Project." "Poole" is a sensible translation from "Etang!" The other texts are from publications found by Google or from my old notes of printed texts. I think the incident took place at Jaffa rather than Acre.

(5) There are a number of other primary or near-primary source mentions of Roger de Sacy in the specific context of the Third Crusade. His name occurs with spelling variations such as Sassy, Satya, Sacie etc.. Anyone interested could refer to the Itinerary of Richard I by Lionel Landon (Pipe Roll Society, 1935) and to a detailed article (in French) by Francoise Vielliard called "Richard Coeur de Lion et son Entourage Normand" (2002), which can be read on persee.fr.


EMB June 2020