Another red herring - the third crusade (1 of 3)

I am tackling another red herring - the story that William de Beaumont went on the Third Crusade with Roger Constable of Chester (alias Roger de Lacy).

I will take this in three parts:-
1. Whether this man, the first of the Yorkshire Beaumonts, went on the Crusade;
2. Where the story of Roger going on the Crusade seems to have come from;
3. What Roger seems actually to have been doing during the time of the Third Crusade.

The story of the Yorkshire Beaumonts starts with a William, who was an associate of this Roger. This article is not about his background or about his connexions with Roger. It is simply about whether this William de Beaumont went on the Crusade, most specifically whether he went with Roger.

The full story appears in Thomas Dunham Whitaker's History of Whalley, and was copied from there by various local history authors (1), and now numerous online resources.

The story is that at the time of coming into his inheritance [i.e. the Pontefract honour] (in 1193-1194) Roger....

... was now lately returned from the Holy Land, whither he had accompanied Richard I 

in the third crusade, having assisted at the memorable siege of Acre, where so many of 

his countrymen and equals perished.......

and then a paragraph further down:

“In this crusade he was accompanied by William de Bellomonte, ancestor of the Beaumonts of Whitley Beaumont, in Yorkshire, who received from his patron the grant of ten oxgangs of land in Huddersfield, and who, from the frequency with which he attests the charters of Roger, appears to have been almost his inseparable companion for the remainder of their lives. It was the practice of those days for dependents to adopt, with some distinction, the armorial bearings of their patrons; it has always been usual to add to them some charge in memory of signal achievements, and thus a lion rampant in the shield of the Beaumonts attests their ancient connexion with the house of Lacy, and an orl of crescents alludes (not obscurely) to some triumph over the standard of Mohammed” (2).

I suspect that this story also appears in the earlier editions of Whitaker's book, though I haven't seen them. It would have been written shortly before 1800. (3)

Title page

Whitaker lived at Holme, between Burnley and Todmorden. He was very interested in and knowledgeable about the enormous parish of Whalley, indeed Holme was part of it and had been his family's home for hundreds of years. Perhaps he was a little in thrall to R.H. Beaumont of Whitley, both as an antiquarian and because RHB was the owner of Little Mitton, which is also covered in the book. RHB's journeys between his two estates would have followed the valley of the Calder, passing Whitaker's house at Holme.

T.D. Whitaker (from his History of Whalley)

Whitaker was the younger by about ten years. The 1818 edition of course was produced after RHB's death (4) and specifically Whitaker does NOT say that he obtained the crusade story from him. Nor I believe is any mention of it to be found amongst RHB's papers (5).

If Whitaker's account is not the earliest time this story comes, will someone please tell me.

Could William de Beaumont have gone anyway? This is a tough one, and I don't think we will ever know. Without any evidence it seems silly to believe that he did. Another theory (it is no more) will be mentioned in the third of these articles. My firm impression is that where we do know the names of crusaders, these tend to be great lords, not minor knights. And was he even a knight?

The name Beaumont occurs often in the regions from which crusaders came, so at any given time there are bound to be several Williams. If one of these were found to have gone on the Third Crusade, it would be a question of looking at the context, such as names and backgrounds of his companions, before concluding who that was. Even then, it would be circumstantial evidence, which would be somewhere between very convincing and very slight!

However to conclude this part, I don't think Whitaker's story is of any value as evidence, and I have no other reason to suppose that this William de Beaumont went on the Third Crusade.

In Parts 2 and 3 I will consider evidence as to whether Roger Constable of Chester went.
..................

(1) For example Pratt, History of Cawthorne, p.23. Also the 1827 account of Kirkstall Abbey.

(2) Quoted from the 1818 edition of Whitaker’s History of Whalley, p.178. The same text is at p.242 of Vol. 1 in the Fourth edition, 1872. No source or authority is given.

Added this 7 Nov. 2020: Another version, this from George Fox's (c.1827) History of Pontefract, p.92:-  Roger succeeded to the estates, and took the name of Lacy. He continued to fight against the Mahometans, accompanied by his confidential friend, William de Bellamonte..... Roger was present at the memorable siege of Acre...... [and so on, with no authority given, of course].

(3) In the 1818 edition Whitaker states that 19 years have elapsed since the publication of the first edition, and that he has rectified various mistakes. But:-
A. The William/Roger crusade story comes in a section dealing with the Lordship of the Honour of Clitheroe (which went with Pontefract), and it seems so odd to have mentioned any Beaumont there.
B. The number of oxgangs (or bovates) later granted to William was twelve, according to other sources which appear to cite from the charter itself. An unimportant error in itself, which I mention only to show that it is not the most careful passage of writing.
C. I fear historical conclusions based on heraldry tend to be very unreliable. In the 1872 edition of the History of Whalley, vol. 1 p.243, is a note from John Gough Nichols dismissing any connexion between crescents and crusades, and I agree so much, but not with the rest of it. Nichols says there that the lion of the Beaumonts is against a blue (azure) background with a lion surrounded by fleurs de lys, but that is the arms of an unrelated and rather grander family. The arms &c of the Yorkshire Beaumonts had a red background and the lion is surrounded by said crescents, here seen with the famous bulls head - all of which is of much later date than the Third Crusade.

From the Beaumont of Whitley etc Family Tree which was printed c.1873
This does not mention the Third Crusade. It starts by stating that the name is derived
from a place in France on the river Sarte (Sarthe), which in the case of this family is most likely wrong!

(4) Published in his History of Craven (1812), is Whitaker's obituary of RHB, who was "..... an excellent judge of forgeries....."

(5) RHB contributed information to Whitaker, clearly.  The book includes plates of several of RHB's family which he must have contributed and which seem to me not relevant to Whalley or Mitton at all! Much information about the friendship between the two is contained in the Introduction to the 1872 edition. The Whitley archive contains (DD/WBC/239) a letter from a genealogist or herald perhaps of the c17 which mentions the crescents but makes no connexion to the crusade. I have seen two or three other theories as to the origin of these "demi-lunes" - all much as likely or as unlikely.

EMB June 2020

Added 16 December 2020. 

I have just come across the 2018 Thesis (Canterbury Christchurch University) by Andrew David Connell on the Constables of Chester, in which is stated on page 168 that William de Beaumont had served with Roger Constable of Chester on crusade under Richard I. The source cited for this (or for an early grant to William) is Bodleian Library MS Dodsworth 155 fo. 151r.  I shall check again but the thesis seems to make no other mention of Roger in the crusade. I am sceptical and am trying to check the source. It seems to be part of what is referred to in the Falconer Madan Catalogue Volume 2 part 2 at page 959 (deeds of Richard Beaumont Esq of Mirfield). Unless there is evidence that Roger Constable of Chester went on the third crusade I am unlikely to believe that William did!