Hugh FitzRalph, lord of Greasley

Was he the son of Ralph Wandersey, of Selston, Wandersley & Levington?

Biography

Hugh FitzRalph de Levington was born in 1184 in Greasley, England. He died on 28 Apr 1261.

Hugh married Agnes de Greasley, daughter of Ralph de Greasley and Isabella de Muskham.

Agnes De Gresley [Parents] was born in 1214 in Arlington, England. She died in 1265. She married Hugh De Levington.

They had the following children:

• F i Alice Fitz Hugh De Gresley
• M ii Ralph Fitz Hugh De Gresley was born in 1227.

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Notes

We pass over the rebellion of the Barons in Henry II.’s reign and their severe repression ; together with the necessity under which Richard I. was to subdue John’s stubborn resistance at the Nottingham Castle; and we return to Ralph de Greasley in the thirteenth year of King John. He made a to him fortunate match in marrying Isabella de Muschamp. She was the sole heiress of the lordships belonging to her family, which had descended to them from Robert de Muschamp, who had been senescal (steward) to Gilbert de Gaunt, and whose estates were held by military service. It was a great accession of wealth to Ralph de Greasley, and doubtlessly gave him increased importance in respect of his enhanced military obligations to the crown. There is, however, a discrepancy in respect of the name of Ralph de Greasley’s wife. While one authority states that it was Isabella, another, viz.: the “Register de Beauvale,” in the British Museum, maintains that it was Agnes, a sister of Isabella, but that must be an error, because a contemporary official document, dated from Windsor on the 25th of June of the seventeenth of John, enjoins the King’s Sheriff of Nottingham and Derby to give full possession, without delay, to Ralph de Greasley and Isabella his wife, of her inheritance from Robert de Muschamp. But there was a hitch yet. The succession duty of £100 (2,000 or more in our money) was not paid when King John died, and the Sheriff on that account did not deliver the possession to Ralph de Greasley and his wife until the reign of Henry III. They had a daughter named Agnes. about whom Ralph, her father, had entered into an arrangement, under which he would pay the King 500 marks for his permission to marry Agnes to one Robert Lupus, and if that marriage should fall through, then he would marry her as the King should will or advise it. Eventually Agnes de Greasley married one Hugh FitzRalph (doubtlessly the Hugh FitzRanulf of the Torr Manuscripts), who was the first recorded Patron of Greasley, which was then a Rectory, of which we read in Domesday: “There was a church and priest, and wood pasture, nine quarantins long by six quarantins broad.” As there was a doubt whether Agnes or Isabella had been Ralph de Greasley’s wife, so there is a doubt as to who the Hugh FitzRalph was, who married their daughter Agnes; but it is held that he was the son of Ralph Wandesley, Lord of Selston. He was a widower when he married Agnes, having lost his first wife Idonea, and is said to have been one of the Barons who had taken up arms against King John to wring Magna Charta from the unwilling monarch. He rendered homage to Henry III., from whom in 1251 he, among other privileges, obtained a grant of free warren, dated April 10th, 36th Henry III. Hugh FitzRalph and Agnes his wife had two sons, the elder of which was named Ralph, and he had a daughter named Eustachia, who became sole heiress of all the property of the de Greasleys, and the de Muschamps of old together.

Source: Rodolph Baron von Hube, “Griseleia in Snotinghscire,” (1901) < link >

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(fn. 6) It appears that the sons of Robert de Muschamp died without issue. Hugh, eldest son of Robert de Muschamp, by Idonea his wife had no heirs, neither had his brother Robert by Agnes, the sister of Almeric de Gassi, knight, nor their brother Andrew, because Raph de Greseley 15 Joh. (fn. 7) (as in Greseley is shown) made fine to the king of five hundred marks for having the land which was Robert de Muschamp's, father of Isabella, wife of the said Raph, and that he might marry Agnes his daughter, to Robert Lupus (Love:) which marriage either came not to perfection, or Rob. Lupus died without issue; for Hugh Fitz-Raph, and Agnes his wife, daughter and heir of Raph de Greseley, in 12 H. 3. (fn. 8) gave account of 15l. for their relief of three knights fees, which the said Raph de Gresele, held of the honour of Peverell, Nott. viz. two in Claindon, and one in Gresele, with the appurtenances.

Source: Robert Thoroton, 'South Muskam and South Carleton', in Thoroton's History of Nottinghamshire: Volume 3, Republished With Large Additions By John Throsby, ed. John Throsby (Nottingham, 1796), pp. 148-152. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/thoroton-notts/vol3/pp148-152 [accessed 14 October 2023].

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The High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests is a position established by the Normans in England. The High Sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown. Formerly the High Sheriff was the principal law enforcement officer in the county but over the centuries most of the responsibilities associated with the post have been transferred elsewhere or are now defunct so that its functions are now largely ceremonial. The High Sheriff changes every March. 1236–1239: Hugh Fitz Ralph and Robert de Vavasour, Lord of Bilborough.

Of the family which took its name from Greasley the following is a short account, the chief authorities being Thoroton's Nottinghamshire (1790) ii. 239-41, Dugdale's Monasticon (ed. Ellis) vi. 13, and Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire i. 175-6 : —

Ralph, in the time of William the Conqueror, had a son Richard : and he had a son Hugh Fitz-Richard, whose son William (occ. 1 140) first bore the name of Greasley. His wife's name is not recorded, but his son was Ralph de Greasley who married Isabella (or Agnes) an heiress of the family of Muscamp, and was lord of Greasley and Selston as well as, in right of his wife, lord of Muscamp in Nottinghamshire. He probably died in 1228. Their daughter was undoubtedly Agnes, who married Hugh Fitz-Ralph in about a.d. 1215, and from whom the husband assumed the name of Greasley. There is some evidence that she had first in about 1210 married Robertus Lupus. The children of Hugh (who seems to have died in 1260) and Agnes were certainly Ralph and perhaps Hugh. With Ralph's daughter Eustachia the male line of de Greasley failed for the second time and finally. Eustachia may have had a sister Idonea, but if so, the latter died without issue, and Eustachia became sole heiress. She married firstly William de Cantelupe and had a son William born in about 1292.

Source: Falconer madan (Publication date 1899). “The Gresleys of Drakelowe.” Page 210-211. < Archive.Org >

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William de Ros of Ingmanthorpe, 3rd son, served in Scotland and Gascony. He married Eustache, widow of Sir Nicholas de Cauntelo, daughter and heir of Ralph fitz Hugh, son of Hugh Fitz Ralph, by Agnes daughter and heir of Ralph de Gresley.

Source: “Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700,” 7th or 8th Edition, 170:27

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References

1. https://www.genealogics.org/timeline.php?primaryID=I00385371&tree=LEO cites
   1. Weis, Frederick Lewis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists who came to America bef.1700, 7th Edition, 1992. 148.
2. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Levington-3 cites
   1. Please see reference to Hugh FitzRalph (Ranulph) and the Greasleys at https://archive.org/details/The_Gresleys_of_Drakelowe/page/n225/mod...
3. “A correction to Complete Peerage” (August 8, 2010). < SGM > Simon de Driby (died after 1286) married Alice FitzHugh, daughter of Hugh FitzRalph of Greasley, Notts and his second wife Idonea.