Robert “Roger” de Baskerville

Personal and Family Information

Robert was born about 1086, the son of Geoffrey Martel de Baskerville but his mother is unknown. The place is not known.

He died after 1127. The place is not known.

His wife is not known. They were married, but the date and place have not been found. Their three known children were Ralph (c1100-1149), Thomas (c1117-?) and James (c1120-?).

Pedigree Chart (3 generations)

Events

Notes

Note 1

!Alias: Roger – The names Robert and Roger de Baskerville were likely used interchangeably in early Norman records. No separate line descends from a distinct “Roger,” and all land and titles converge under Robert .

He appears in Domesday , donated land to Gloucester Abbey in 1109, and was still active in 1121, when his "fee and service" were included in the dowry of Sibyl de Neufmarché. His sons Ralph and Thomas , and grandson Roger , confirm a single generational path.

!Note: Eardisley is sometimes listed among Robert’s holdings, but no Domesday evidence supports this. It likely entered the family through the marriage of Ralph de Baskerville to Sybil de Braose, heiress of Eardisley. It is excluded from Robert’s early land list.

— Confirmed Holdings of Robert :

Estate Notes

Brobury 2 hides

Stretton Sugwas 2+ hides

Yarsop 1+ hides

Yazor 5 hides

Brilley Hay in the wood, held of Gruffydd ap Maredudd

Gloucester 1 hide

!Source: Genealogy of the Baskerville Family and Some Allied Families Including the English Descent from 1266 A.D., by P. Hamilton Baskervill, 1912, page 17

in the Year A.D. 1109, 43 yers after the Conquest, Henry I, on the maarriage of his eldest daughter levied a territorial impost of three shillings fr every hide of land, and returns were made in consequence by the barons. &c, in which Adam de Port returns names of Radulphes de Baskerville and Hugo de Lacy, and that of Robertus de Baskerville.

!Source: ENGLISH UNTITLED NOBILITY A-C Foundation for Medieval Genealogy https://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/enguntac.htm#_Toc157779256

ROBERT de Baskerville . The Historia sancti Petri Gloucestriæ records that "Robertus de Baskevilla", on returning from Jerusalem, donated "unam hidam extra muros eiusdem civitatis", in 1109 "rege Henrico confirmante, tempore Petri abbatis" [abbot from 1104 to 1113][374].

!Source: The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. I. by The Duchess of Cleveland. Prepared by Michael A. Linton https://www.1066.co.nz/Mosaic%20DVD/library/Battle%20Roll/Baskeruile.html

…, n 1109, Robert de Baskerville, on his return from the Holy Land, granted lands to Gloucester Abbey . Either he, or another of the same name, held five knight's fees in 1165 of Hugh de Laci in Herefordshire; and Radulph de Baskerville one fee under Adam de Port in the same county. Combe continued theirs for at least 200 years; and they were frequent benefactors to St. Peter's Abbey, where one of them, Bernard de Baskerville, assumed the habit of a monk.

!Source: Eyton Vol 05 https://www.melocki.org.uk/eyton/Vol05.html

LAWTON.

The wife of Ralph de Baskervill [1150 - 1190] has been before alluded to as having remarried to Roger fitz William, suspected to have been her first husband's Murderer. This Lady was undoubtedly the same with Nesta ap Griffith [not likely see below], who after Ralph de Baskervill's death is said to have contested his grant of Trosdref Mill to the Monks of Brecknock. Ultimately she withdrew this opposition and became herself a Benefactress of the Priory. Her Quit-claim seems to show that she was surviving later than the year 1203. [5]

-

Note that Nesta, the daughter of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn has no known relatioship to the de Baskervilles. That Nesta actually married Bernard de Neufmarché and by 1125 had a grown son who killed his father, making her already in her 40’s and it possible, but unlikely for her to be involved with Robert de Baskerville born about 1086, but definitely impossible for her to be the wife of Sir Ralph [1150 - 1190], mentioned by Eyton, and unlikely for her to have been the mother of Robert’s sons. The Nesta ap Gruffydd refered to was the daughter of The Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd Prince of South Wales [1132 - 1197]. She was refered to because of her daughter Agnes, who married Sir Robert de Baskerville [~1173 - ] at a much later date. i’d love to see any real proof otherwise.

Coplestone-Crow, B. The Baskervilles of Herefordshire, 1086-1300. Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club, Herefordshire. Vol. XLII, 1979, Part I, pp 18-39

https://www.woolhopeclub.org.uk/system/files/documents/transaction/woolhope-club-transactions-volume-xliii-1979-part-i.pdf

The first Baskervilles of whom we have any reliable record are Robert and

Ralph, who held lands in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire respectively in 1086.

Robert de Baskerville was a major under-tenant of Roger de Lacy in Hereford-

shire. He had 2 hides at Brobury, an unspecified quantity of land at Eardisley,

2+ hides at Stretton Sugwas, 1+ hides at Yarsop and 5 hides at

Yazor. He also had a hay in the wood at Mateurdin which he held of

Gruffydd ap Maredudd of Deheubarth.3 Ralph held 2 hides at Combe

Baskerville and 2 hides at Windrush in Gloucestershire of Roger de Lacy.4 Robert

witnessed a charter of the bishop of Hereford on behalf of Roger de Lacy in 1085

and was still alive in 1109, when on returning from Jerusalem he gave a hide of

land outside the city walls of Gloucester to the abbey there.s

ROGER DE BASKERVILLE

Roger, who was possibly a son of Robert, seems to have been one of the

lieutenants of Bernard de Neufmarehe in his conquest of the Welsh kingdom of

Brycheiniog in the years 1088 to 1093. According to William Rees he had lands

given him at Drostre within the later lordship of Pencelli.6 He

gave a burgess in Brecon to Brecon Priory in 1103-7.7 Roger seems to have begun

the process of organizing the lands he and his family had in Brycheiniog into some

sort of centralized lordship. This lordship eventually or simultaneously became

centred on the castle of Pencelli. When Bernard de Neufmarche gave his daugh-

ter Sibyl in marriage to Roger son of Miles of Gloucester in 1121, he gave as part

of her marriage portion in Brycheiniog 'the fee and service of Roger de Basker-

ville, of William Revel, of Robert de Turbeville and of Picard'.8 William Revel,

Robert de Turbeville and Picard held lands that were probably already organized

into the sub-lordships of Hay, Crughywel and Tretwr, the last two of which were

later held of the lords of Brecon by knight's service.9 It seems likely therefore that

Roger's lands too possessed a cohesion comparable with that of his associates in

Brycheiniog in the early 12th century.

Roger was still alive in 1127 when he witnessed along with Walter and Miles of

Gloucester, Robert de Turbeville and Picard a notification of Richard fitzPons of

Clifford conceding Aston to his wife Maud.'9 He may have

had lands in Elfael under Ralph de Tosny, lord of Clifford, before 1102 .

18

!Source: Full text of "A history of the county of Brecknock.

https://archive.org/stream/historyofcountyo02jone/historyofcountyo02jone_djvu.txt

A BASKERVILLE ONE OF THE BENEFACTORS.

-

About the same period the name of Baskerville appears conspicuous on the roll of benefactors

to the convent of Brecon. The first in the M.S. pedigrees of this family is Sir Ralph Baskerville,

who is said to have married Joan, the daughter of Rhydderch le gross of Arcop or Arcopp, whereupon

he settled in Herefordshire, and Sir Ralph Baskerville, his grandson, marrying Sibil, one of the daughters

of Adam de la Port, had with her a manor, lordship, and ample possessions in and about Eardisley

and Willersley, where they built a castle, or rather castellated mansion, wherein the elder branch of

the family resided, until the middle or latter end of the seventeenth century, and from whence they

spread by marriages into Aberedw, in Radnorshire, and the neighbourhood in which they still con-

tinue.^ Bernard Newmarch, though he did not think one of the ancestors of this family, who accom-

panied him in his expedition, of sufficient consequence to rank him among his knights, yet granted

him lands near Llandevailog tre'r graig and on the banks of the Llyfni, in Brecknockshire, for,

among the papers from which we are now extracting, we find a Robert or Roger Baskerville , by a charter, attested by Wilham de Breos and Maud his wife, and Jordan,^

archdeacon of Brecon, in consideration that the prior and monks will admit his son James into their

order, at the intercession of De Breos and his wife, grants them lands, the names of which are so

horridly disfigured that we are ashamed to introduce them, but he adds, if he shall not be able to

warrant these possessions to them, he will grant them sixty acres of land, ' quinqve solidatas terre,'*

being part of the lands brought him by his wife on their marriage, situated in the city of Worcester,

and then in the tenure of Osbert, the son of Gunnor, and he hkewise informs us that he and his

wife, in full chapter, had fraternized with the monks, and that their bodies and such part of their

property as ought to remain with or about them in the grave were to be buried there, whether they

died in Herefordshire or Breconshire, ' et sciendum est quod Ego et vxor mea suscepimus fraternitatem

illi^is ecclesie in capitulo ««o et in die obitus nostri corpora cum substantia, que sequi debit ibid sepelienda

ubicunque in comitatu Herefordie vel in provincia Brech. nobis contingatur.'

-

Ralph, another of this family, about the same period, gave them lands at Bredwardine, by a

charter attested by Wilham de Breos and his wife and William de Breos the younger, which he after-

wards confirmed Ijy another, in the presence of the elder de Breos and Maud de Saint Valeri, his

wife, and of Ralph Abbot of Wigmore. By two more instruments of the same nature, the first attested

by William de Oildebeof. then constable of Brecon, and William de Burchull, and the other, which he

confirmed by the impression of his seal, before Peter bishop of Saint David's, in the chapter of

Brecon, where he presented and caused it to be read before William de Breosa and many others,

French, Enghsh, and Welsh, clerks and laity, before whom he placed it upon the altar of Saint John ;

he gave to the convent a messuage, tenement and mill, called Trosdref mill, upon the river Llyfni,

with the tolls taken for grinding there, &c., " meum molendinum de Trosdref cum moltura, dbc, et

gurgitem et situm suum super Livini.' This grant was afterwards contested by Nest, the daughter of

Griffith and widow of this Ralph Ba.skerville, but the dispute ended by her recognizing the right of

the convent to the mill, discharging them of the arrears of the rent of a mark annually since the

death of her husband, and granting them a pound of incense yearly to pray for her soul.

-

The original grant of Robert or Roger Baskerville Avas again confirmed by Robert le Wafre,

who married Alice, one of his daughters, who describes it by the name of the mill of Llandevaillauc,

meaning Llandevailog tre'r graig, in which parish it was situated, and probably on the same spot

where it continues to this day. The witnesses are, Reginald de Breusia, Rich, le Bret. John de

Waldebeof, WiU. Pictaviensis or Peyton, Llewelyn son of Madoc, Will, de Burchull, Ralph the porter

{janitor) : and at a later period, though not long subsequent to these grants, Alice de Baskerville gave

to the same prior and convent a messuage or tenement, together with a croft, which Adam the smith

formerly held under her brother in the village of Bredwardine.