latter branch of this illustrious house, the following particulars are related by the elegant Gibbon.* "According to the old register of Ford Abbey, the Courtenays of Devonshire are descended from Prince Florus, the second son of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. This fable of the grateful, or venal monks, was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Camden and Dugdale: but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to the King's son, Reginald of Courtenay abandoned his possessions in France, and obtained from the English Monarch a second wife, and a new inheritance. It is certain, at least, that Henry the Second distinguished in his camps and councils, a Reginald, of the name and arms, and, as it may be fairly presumed, of the genuine race of the Courtenays of France. The right of wardship enabled a feudal lord to reward his vassal with the marriage and estate of a noble heiress; and Reginald of Courtenay acquired a fair establishment in Devonshire, where his posterity has been seated above six hundred years. From a Norman Baron, Baldwin de Brioniis, who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the wife of Reginald, derived the Honor of Oakhampton, which was held by the service of ninety-three knights; and a female might claim the manly offices. of hereditary Viscount or Sheriff, and of Captain of the royal Castle of Exeter. Their son Robert married the sister of the Earl of Devon. At the end of a century, on the failure of the family of Rivers, his great grandson, Hugh the Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered as a territorial dignity; and twelve Earls * This historian, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em pire, Vol. XI. octavo, has condensed the most important information relative to the Courtenays from Cleaveland's Genealogical History of the Family. "Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, Vol. I. p. 786. Yet this fable must have been invented before the reign of Edward III. The profuse devotion of the three first generations to Ford Abbey, was followed by oppression on one side, and ingratitude on the other; and in the sixth generation, the monks ceased to register the births, actions, and deaths, of their patrons." Earls of Devonshire, of the name of Courtenay, have flourished in a period of two hundred and twenty years. They were ranked among the chief of the Barons of the realm: nor was it till after a strenuous dispute, that they yielded to a fief of Arundel, the first place in the Parliament of England. Their alliances were contracted with the noblest families; the Veres, Despencers, St. Johns, Talbots, Bohuns, and even the Plantagenets themselves; and in a contest with John of Lancaster, a Courtenay, Bishop of London, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, might be accused of profane confidence in the strength and number of his kindred. In peace, the Earls of Devon resided in their numerous castles and manors of the west: their ample revenue was appropriated to devotion and hospitality; and the epitaph of Edward, surnamed, from his misfortune, the Blind, and from his virtues, the Good, Earl, inculcates, with much ingenuity, a moral sentence, which, however, may be abused by thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of the fifty-five years of the union and happiness which he enjoyed with Mabel his wife, the good Earl thus speaks from the tomb: What we gave, we have; What we left, we lost. But their losses in this sense were far superior to their gifts and expences; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were the objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for livery and seisin, attest the greatness of their possessions; and several estates have remained in their family since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In war, the Courtenays of England fulfilled the duties, and deserved the honors, of chivalry. They were often entrusted to levy and command the Militia of Devonshire and Cornwall; they often attended their supreme Lord to the borders of Scotland; and in foreign service, for a stipulated price, they sometimes maintained fourscore men at arms, and as many archers. By sea and land, they fought under the standard of the Edwards and Henries; their names are conspicuous in battles, in tournaments, and and in the original list of the Order of the Garter: three brothers shared the Spanish victory with the Black Prince; and in the lapse of six generations, the English Courtenays had learned to despise the nation and country from which they derived their origin. In the quarrel of the two roses, the Earls of Devon adhered to the house of Lancaster, and three brothers successively died either in the field, or on the scaffold. Their honors and estates were restored by Henry the Seventh. A daughter of Edward the Fourth was not disgraced by the nuptials of a Courtenay: their son, who was created Marquis of Exeter, enjoyed the favor of his cousin, Henry | the Eighth; and in the camp of Cloth of Gold, he broke a lance against the French Monarch. But the favor of Henry was the prelude of disgrace; his disgrace was the signal of death; and of the victims of the jealous tyrant, the Marquis of Exeter is one of the most noble and guiltless. His son Edward lived a prisoner in the Tower, and died an exile in Padua: and the secret lover of Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps, for the Princess Elizabeth, has shed a romantic colour on the story of this beautiful youth. The relics of his patrimony was conveyed into strange families by the marriage of his four aunts; and his personal honors, as if they had been legally extinct, were revived by the patents of the succeeding Princes. But there still survived a lineal descendant of Hugh, the first Earl of Devon; a younger branch of the Courtenays, who have been seated at Powderham Castle above four hundred years, from the reign of Edward the Third to the present hour. Their estates have been increased by the grant and improvement of lands in Ireland; and they have been recently restored to the honors of the Peerage. Yet the Courtenays still retain the plaintive motto, which asserts the innocence, and deplores the fall, of their ancient house. While they sigh for past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings. In the long *Ub lapsus: Quid feci ?"-Where was my honor tarnished? What have I done ?-- A motto which was probably adopted by the Powderham branch after the loss of the Earldom of Devonshire, &c. The primitive arms of the Courtenays were, Or, three torteaux, Gules; which seem to denote their affinity with Godfrey of Bouillon, and the ancient Counts of Boulogne." |