Some corrections and additions to the Complete Peerage: Volume 1: Argentine

ARGENTINE

Volume 1, page 196, note b:
The family took its name from Argenton in Poitou, and not from Argenton in Berry, nor from Argentan in Normandy.

K.S.B. Keats-Rohan [Domesday People I, p.177 (1999)] says that the Domesday tenant Dauid De Argentomo was "Norman, from Argentan, dépt. Orne". This is perhaps based on his likely identity with David latimer, a tenant of William de Braose in Dorset, who originated from Briouse-Saint-Gervais, Orne, arr. Argentan [p.471].

Page 196:
Laura, [wife of Reynold d'Argentine (d.1307/8),] da. of Hugh (DE VERE), 4th EARL OF OXFORD ... d. in 1292, and was bur. in the Church of the White Friars at Norwich.

This statement was probably copied from Blomefield's History of Norfolk [vol.4, p.417]. But Blomefield's account seems to be a miscopying of the account of the church of the Carmelites in Norwich in Weever's Ancient Funerall Monuments, which begins "Sir Oliuer Ingham Knight, obijt 1292. Dame Lo... Argentein. Dame Eleanor Boteler ..." Blomefield seems to have transferred the year of death from Sir Oliver Ingham to Dame Lo[ra] Argentein. There is also some doubt as to whether Lora was buried in Norwich at all, as her husband Reynold's gravestone survives in Baldock church, Hertfordshire, and there is a drawing of it, together with matching gravestones for Lora, their son John and his first wife Joan, in the collections of the Elizabethan antiquary James Strangeman [British Library, Sloane MS 1301, fo.146b].

The Argentine gravestones were discussed by Judith Middleton-Stewart in Inward Purity and Outward Splendour, p. 263 (2001). She suggested that all four were originally at Wymondley Priory, and said that Lora's body might have been moved there from Whitefriars, Norwich. She stated that the gravestones were moved at the dissolution to Little Wymondley church, which has since undergone extensive restoration, and speculated that the three missing stones might be in the crypt of that church. However, the suggestion concerning Lora rests partly on the apparently erroneous statement that she died in 1292, and the evidence for the removal to Little Wymondley is not explained. The extensive restoration of that church took place in the 19th century, whereas Reynold's gravestone was already at Baldock by the time of Weever.

[Douglas Richardson pointed out the discussion by Middleton-Stewart in December 2012.
Item last updated: 21 January 2013.]

Volume 1, page 197:
He [John d'Argentine] d. s.p.m. legit. 18 or 26 Nov. 1382, leaving his 3 daughters, or their issue, his coheirs. ... (3) Maud, wife of Sir Ives FitzWarin.

Maud had previously been married to John Ferrers and Sir Richard de Merton (d. 1370), and as the widow of Sir Richard she had licence, 20 January 1372, to marry Sir Ives FitzWarin [Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1370-1374, p. 166].

That the marriage between Sir Ives Maud, the widow of Sir Richard de Merton, took place is proved by a presentation by Sir Ives in 1401, "for this turn", to "Torrington Rectory (or chapel) of St James in the Castle of Chepyngtoryton" [F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, The Register of Edmund Stafford (A.D. 1395 - 1419), p. 214 (1886)]. The third presentation to the chantry of the chapel of Chepyngtoriton castle had been included in the assignment of dower to Maud from Merton's estates in 1371 [Calendar of Close Rolls, 1369-1374, p. 339].

In 1405 Ives and Maud sought her reasonable dower in respect of a free tenement which was of John Ferrers, formerly her husband, in Shillingham [in Saltash], Cornwall [CP 40/576, rot. 151; see image at AALT]. In 1401 the defendants of that plea, identified as the heirs of Martin, brother of John, son of William de Ferrers, had sought the manor of Newton Ferrers, Devon, which they said Ives and Maud were holding contrary to the form of an earlier fine [CP 40/577, rots 303, 303d; see images at AALT:  1 ,  2  and  3 ; the fine was CP 25/1/286/35, number 12].

[Ivor West, in February 2003, provided evidence for Maud's first marriage, including further information on Richard de Merton from J.J. Alexander, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, vol. 20, p. 256. Douglas Richardson supplied references to further relevant records. Douglas Richardson also provided the evidence of the marriage to John de Ferrers in April 2021.
Item last updated: 20 June 2021.]