Some corrections and additions to the Complete Peerage: Volume 8: Lovel of Titchmarsh

LOVEL of Titchmarsh

Volume 8, page 217:
He [John (Lovel), Lord Lovel (d. 1310)] m., 1stly, about 1270, Isabel, sister and in her issue h. of William, and da. of Arnold DU BOIS, of Thorpe Arnold, co. Leicester.

William du Bois also had another sister, Joan, who was the wife of Thomas Corbet of Hadley, Shropshire, (d. c. 1300) and the mother of his son and heir Roger Corbet.

Elizabeth, the mother of Maud, and great-grandmother of William, son of Ives la Zouche, and Joan, the mother of Roger Corbet, were stated to have been the daughters of Alice de Tabbeneye [Tubney] in a plea in Michaelmas Term 1346 [CP 40/348, m. 438, abstracted in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, volume 12, page 62 (1891)].

Parts of the Bois estates are known to have passed to the descendants of Isabel's daughter and heir Maud, the wife of William la Zouche. In February 1296 William du Bois had licence for moieties of nine manors in seven counties to be settled (through Millicent, the mother of William la Zouche) on himself for life and then on William la Zouche and his wife Maud and the heirs of their bodies, with remainder to the right heirs of Maud [Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1292-1301, p. 184]. It appears that this intention was not carried out, as four of these manors - Thorpe Arnold (Leicestershire), Little Houghton and Brafield-on-the-Green (Northamptonshire) and Weston-in-Arden (Warwickshire) - were among those settled by fine in 1301 on William du Bois for life and then on William la Zouche and his wife Maud and the heirs of their bodies, with successive remainders to the heirs of the body of Maud and the right heirs of William du Bois [CP 25/1/285/25, number 264]. These four manors passed to the Zouches [Nichols, Leicestershire, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 366-367; VCH Northamptonshire, vol. 4, pp. 266-70; VCH Warwickshire, vol. 6, pp. 48-57].

The other five manors mentioned in the licence of 1296 - Tubney (Berkshire), Ebrington and Farmcote (Gloucestershire), Standlake (Oxfordshire) and Assington (Suffolk) - passed to the Corbets of Hadley [VCH Berkshire, vol. 4, pp. 379-380; VCH Oxfordshire, vol. 13, pp. 180-183; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward II, vol. 5, no 458 (p. 257); Calendar of Close Rolls, 1413-1419, pp. 401-404; Copinger, Manors of Suffolk, vol. 1, pp. 16-18]. By an undated deed William du Bois enfeoffed Roger Corbet - described as his 'nepos' - of the manors of Ebrington, Farmcote and Pebworth and the advowson of Ebrington [Devon Record Office, 1262M/TG/4]. In May 1313, soon after the death of William du Bois, Roger Corbet of Hadley had a pardon for acquiring in fee, without licence, from Master William de Bois a moiety of the manor of Assington [Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1307-1313, p. 574]. By 1316, Roger apparently held the whole manor [Feudal Aids, vol. 5, p. 43]. The manor of Tubney was also held by Roger Corbet as early as May 1316 [Feudal Aids, vol. 1, p. 53]. Roger Corbet's son and heir, John Corbet, was subsequently recorded on the Boroughbridge Roll as bearing the Bois arms with a label [Palgrave, Parliamentary Writs, vol. 2, div. 2, part 2, pp. 196-200].

(Copinger [Manors of Suffolk, vol. 1, p. 17] erroneously made Roger Corbet, rather than his father Thomas, the husband of the sister of William du Bois, citing an inquisition ad quod damnum that I have been unable to identify.)

[The deed describing Roger as William's 'nepos' and the circumstantial evidence was provided by Bridget Wells-Furby in March 2011. Douglas Richardson supplied the direct evidence from the plea of 1346, in December 2012.
Item last updated: 21 January 2013.]