The first Whitley Charters (5) Muncebote or Montbegon

So was there anyone called John Muncebote?

Indeed there was, though it is a surname not often found, and the spelling varies.

In about 1218 John "Mucenbot" was accused of wounding and robbery:-

Rolls of the Justices in Eyre, Yorkshire 1218-1219, Selden Society, 1937, vol.56 (*1)

The things Hugh of Swillington accused him of taking have been translated as a brooch, a knife, and a headdress. John Mucenbot was acquitted. 

In one of the earlier pieces in this series I pointed to possible connections between him, people called Swillington, and the early Beaumonts.

I think the best or most correct rendering of his name is Mucenbot or Mucenbote. Dodsworth's transcript of John's own charter gives that spelling.

There are one or two other references to people with this surname, such as Nicholas Mucenbot who can be found in Cambridgeshire a generation before this (several references in the Pipe Rolls and Chancellors Roll).

Is Montbegon a real name?

Certainly, and a Roger de Montbegon (*2) was a "big shot" in the affairs of the north of England in the early thirteenth century who had land interests in very many places including near Whitley.

In some instances, that surname has been rendered as something rather like Muncebote. For example, in the Testa de Nevill, or Liber Feodorum (Book of Fees) (a collection of lists of feudal landholdings first printed in 1804), the name "Muncebech" appears (Testa de Nevill - 1807 edition - p.365, p.367) ("Muntebech'" where same info. in the more modern edition, known as the Book of Fees, p.1103).

This may be the trap some antiquarian historians fell in. I only guess, but I am thinking of Nichols and/or Whitaker. R.H. Beaumont did not fall into that trap.

But that particular reference without any doubt is to Roger de Montbegon and his successors (in his mother's lands) (see below).

Was there ever anyone called John de Montbegon?

In short, no there was not. It seems someone mixed up the names and assumed that John was Roger's son, a tempting theory. But the connexions between Roger de Montbegon's lands and those of later people such as the Beaumonts would need a whole book to try to write down seriously. 

Roger de Montbegon died in 1226. He left no children. A lot of the lands he had controlled in his lifetime were from his mother, and on his death, childless, they were inherited by her heirs in a complicated succession. Roger's own heir (for what came from his father, principally Hornby, Lancashire) was a distant relation called Henry de Monewden. (*3) 

If John de Montbegon existed and was Roger's son, he would have inherited Hornby Castle; if William de Beaumont had been John's heir, then he would have inherited it.

Roger de Montbegon's successors in his mother's lands were the husbands of her daughter and granddaughter from her second marriage. (*4)

(*1) Another - somewhat earlier, I think, reference to him, perhaps, is in another Selden Society volume of the "Pleas before the King....," 1952, vol.68, at page 26. The Selden Society volumes are not available online.

(*2) The name Montbegon, Monte Begonis, is from Mont Bougon between Argentan & Vimoutiers. The reasoning is given in Keats-Rohan's "Domesday People," page 405.

(*3) There are references in the Fine Rolls in April 1226 to Roger having died and in September 1226 to Henry de Monewden as his heir. The latter order was that after enquiries by law-worthy knights of the counties of Lincolnshire and Lancaster, it was established that Henry of Monewden is the cousin and the next heir of Roger de Montbegon of the lands and tenements that he held in chief of the king. Also from the Patent Rolls: - sine dilatione liberari faciat Henrico de Munegeden, heredi Rogeri de Monte Begonis [without delay deliver [Hornby Castle] to Henry de Monewden, the heir of Roger de Montbegon] (dated February and March 1227). I do not think Roger had held any lands in Yorkshire "in chief." The interests in the Pontefract honour were not held "in chief" and moreover he held them as heir of his mother,  so in his death they went to her next heirs.

(*4) Roger de Montbegon's mother was called Matilda. After he died her heirs were the people mentioned in the Testa de Nevill:- Eudes de Lungvillers (husband of Matilda's daughter Clementia de Malherbe) and Geoffrey de Neville (husband of Matilda's grand-daughter Mabel de la Mare). They each had two knights fees for the land of Roger "de Muncebech" (Testa de Nevill p.365 and p.367). For a family tree see Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. 3 p.318.

EMB 19 July 2021