In a piece on 10 March 2021 I said some stuff about this family in the c12, so this follows on.
Naming patterns and some other circumstantial evidence suggests that a Cotentin-connected Beaumont extended family had activities and properties on both sides of the English channel throughout the twelfth century. The Loss of Normandy in 1204 split some families of course and I think this was one such.
A notable event in this family was the gift of property at Néville-sur-mer to make a sub-priory of Montebourg abbey. This is known to have happened, or to have started, in the year 1163.
The principal donor then was "William the monk," whose gifts were confirmed or consented to by his nephew Thomas de Beaumont, as shown in copy charters in the Montebourg cartulary.
Thomas in fact was one of four brothers, the others being called Philip, Juhel, and Godfrey.
Earlier this year I obtained a complete copy of the Montebourg cartulary (MS Lat 10087) from the Gallica website of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (warm thanks to them). It is a pdf file consisting of about 180 images where each image shows a left and a right page (copying a book, in fact).
It is of course a manuscript record, not all in the same handwriting, and I must confess I cannot read all of it. Of course, it is nearly all in latin, with words severely abbreviated, a real test to my "O level" latin skills. Pages and individual items - eg transcripts or summaries of the (presumably now lost) original charters - are numbered with reasonable consistency.
Items 422 ff, on page 139 ff, on image 75 ff, are a long series of copy documents stating the original gifts by William the monk, and confirmations by various Beaumonts - Thomas, Philip, Peter, William, and Robert.
(Number 45 on page 27-28 / image 19 is a copy charter of Richard bishop of Coutances, in which the original gift by William the Monk is confirmed, and I think it is from this act that the date of this, 1163, is known)
No 453 on page 144, on Image 78, sets out a charter of a Ric[hard] de Bellomonte, knight ("miles") describing him as lord of Néville [-sur-mer] and dated August 1281.
Nos 462 and 463 on page 147 (image 79) are two charters of a Juhel de Bellomonte, also stated to be a knight ("miles") of which one has a Philip de Bellomonte for a witness, and the other is dated 1269.
At about page 250 (image 133) the system changes, and the continuation of the cartulary appears to be a place-by-place review of where the abbey owned property. Thus on page 278ff (image 146ff) we are again given details of the charters relating to Néville-sur-mer, these to some extent repeating information already given, and making clear that the places in respect of which the Beaumonts were confirming gifts to the abbey included several other settlements in the NE part of the Cotentin such as Cosqueville and Varouville.
No family tree can be attempted but clearly the twelfth century family continued for several generations as shown by these charters. Other evidence exists too, of which I just mention a couple of things;-
In 1247 both a Williermo de Bellomonte and an Icello (given as Juhel) de Bellomonte are named in context of a local enquiry into the value of a whale which had been caught at Quettehou (near Barfleur) (Cartulaire Normand No. 465 p.77).
A knight called Juhel was lord of Beaumont-Hague in the NW part of the Cotentin in the time of St.Louis (Mem.Soc. Nat. Academ. Cherbourg 1879 p.120)....It means Louis IX whose reign was 1226-1270.
Several Beaumonts - Ricardus, Juhellus, Johanna, Philippus, Guillelmus, Petrus, another Petrus, and Thomas - were remembered by Montebourg abbey with the days on which (but not the years) they died (Historiens de France, Vol. 23, pp. 553-556).
Many writers including the nineteenth century Saint-Pierre-Eglise historian Louis Drouet have noted that this Beaumont family came to an end by about 1330 with an heiress - called Thomasse - who married Raoul de Argouges.
EMB 12 May 2021
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