Argentein Fee

The Argentein Fee held of the Honour of Skipton comprises two knight’s fees (28 carucates) of old enfeoffment held by John de Argentein in 1166.
Sources:
The Argentein Fee (Clay, Charles Travis: Early Yorkshire Charters, Vol 7 - The Honour of Skipton, 1949, p107-108)
Notes on the Argentein Family (Philips, Chris)

Assets

The fee’s lands were in Little Wymondley, Graveley and Wallington in Hertfordshire. The Argenteins also held two carucates in Great Wymondley by royal serjeantry, in return for serving with a silver cup at coronations. The family has a colourful history, and over the generations added other estates to their holdings.

History

Reginald de Argentein was in possession of the fee in 1102 and died before 1130, when his widow was a royal ward. Reginald seems to have been the first of the Argenteins to hold land of Skipton. His father may have been David de Argenton, who held four manors in Dorset, Essex and Cheshire at the time of Domesday.
John de Argentein was conformed in his father Reginald’s possessions by King Stephenm including the cup-bearing serjeantry. By 1166 John held one knight’s fee in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire, from the barony of Robert Foliot, in addition to the two fees held of the Honour of Skipton. John was alive to witness charters of 1170-1177.
Reginald de Argentein inherited his father’s estates. He served as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire from 1193 to 1195, and sheriff of Eseex and Hertfordshire for six months in 1197. From 1191 to 1202 he served as a royal justice, both in Westminster and the provinces. He died in 1203. In addition to the alnds he inherited from his father, he held additional portions of knight’s fees in Wiltshire, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, HUntingdonshire and Suffolk. Reginald had four sons - John, his heir; Richard; Oliver, who joined the baronial rebellion against King John; and Reginald.
John de Argentein inherited the fee on his father’s death in January 1203, and died without issue before 1216. His brother Richard inherited the estate by then.
Richard de Argentein had married Bedfordshire heiress Emma, daughter of Robert de Broy of Bletsoe, in 1200. She died by 1203, leaving an infant daughter, Margaret, who became the subject of a custody dispute between Richard and his father-in-law. Eventually the two settled, with Richard gaining custody provided he did not marry Margeret off without consent from Robert as the girl was his heir. (When the girl did marry Walter de Patteshull , she took the Broy estate into his family.)
Following Emma’s death, Richard married Cassandra, daughter of Robert de Lisle in 1204. Though she was not an heiress, her father settled land in Exning and Newmarket in Suffolk on his son-in-law. Cassandra bore Richard’s heir, Giles. Between 1216 and 1218 Richard founded the priory of Little Wymondley, endowing with with land in Little Wymondley and the advowson of the parish church.
In 1219 Richard joined the Fifth Crusade, helping capture the Egyptian town of Damietta, where he founded a church of St Edmund in a converted mosque. By 1224 he was back in England, and served as sheriff of Cambridgeshrei and Huntingdonshire, and of Hertfordshire and Essex. He was also made constable of Hertford Castle. He successfully defended the castle during an eight-week siege by the rebel Falkes de Breaute I the summer of 1224, though he was severely wounded in the stomach. He held the office of constable until 1228. From January to November 1227 he was one of two royal stewards. In 1230 he took part in Henry II’s attempt to seize Normandy back from France. In 1231 his heir Giles and another son were captured by the Welsh in an expedition against Prince Llewllyn.
Richard lost favour in factional disputes at court in the early 1230s, which resulted in the fall of Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent. He was back in favour by 1234. IN 1240 he joined the Barons’ Crusade, and was the leader of the last 20 knights to hold the Tower of David, the citadel of Jerusalem, when the Turks entered in August 1244. Ricahrd and his knights were allowed to leave under a flag of truce, and he returned to England, where he died in 1246.
Richard’s son Giles de Argentein succeeded him. Giles joined Simon de Monfort’s faction in the Baronial Revolt, and became a senior rebel. He was one of 12 men nominated by the barons to serve on Henry II’s reform council in 1258. He served asa royal steward from 1258-1260, but at that point Henry III asserted his authority. De Monfort made Giles constable of Windsor Castle after the baronial rebels captured it from Prince Edward in 1263. Giles remeained with the rebel faction when the revolt broke into open warfare in 1264. It isn’t clear if he fought at the Battle of Lewes on 14 May 1264, when De Montfort and the rebels defeated the royalists, but he was appointed one of the Council of Nine who ran the country on the barons’ behalf. Giles did fight at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, when the rebels were defeated by Prince Edward. As a leading rebel, all of Giles’ lands, including those he had from the Honour of Skipton, were confiscated, though they were returned under a general pardon in 1266.
Giles survived another 16 years, dying shortly before 24 November 1282, though he never again held royal office.
Reginald de Argentein succeeded his father Giles. He was said to be 40 at the time of his father’s death. He did not hold high office, but answered military summons against the Welsh in May 1282, and again in May 1283. He was summoned to Parliament in Shrewsbury in September 1283, and again in 1297. He asnwered several musters for campaigns against the Scots in the 1290s, and asnwered his final muster, at Berwick-on-Tweed, in June 1301, when he was nearly 60. He died shortly before 3 March 1308. One of his younger brothers, Giles d’Argentan, acted as Edward II’s personal bodyguard at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and successfully got the king off the battlefield before returning to the fray, where he was killed.
John de Argentein inherited from his father at the age of 30. He had two younger brothers, Richard and Giles. John married Joan, daughter of Roger Brian, in 1302, and the couple gained the manors of Hatley, Bedfordshire, and Throcking, Hertfordshire, on Roger’s death in 1307. They had three daughters, Joan, Elizabeth and Denise. It is not clear when Joan died, but by April 1317 John had remarried, to Agnes, daughter of William de Beresford, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Agnes bore her husband a son. John held only local offices, and died shortly before 18 October 1318, aged around 40, leaving his six month old son, also named John, as his heir.
Agnes survived her husband by 57 years. As part of her dower settlement in January 1319 she received the Skipton manor of Little Wymondsley, and the Argentein holdings in Great Wymondley and Melbourne. She also received lands in Throcking, Colney and Halesworth. The rest of the Argentein estate was put into the care of her father, William de Beresford, during his grandson’s wardship. In 1321 he gave his daugher permission to remarry who she liked, and she chose John de Nerford, who died in February 1329. The marriage was childless. William died in 1326, and guardianship passed to Agnes’ brother, Simon de Beresford, a supporter of Roger Mortimer - in fact, Simon was confirmed as the Argentein guardian the day before the disappearance of Edward II.
Agnes probably met her third husband, John Maltravers, a leading ally of Mortimer, through her brother. They were married before 1330 when Edsward III arrested Mortimer. Both Simon and John were sentenced to death in November 1330 for their part in the deposing and murder of Edward II; Simon was executed, but John escaped to Flanders. Both men’s lands, including the Argentein fee, were confiscated.
Agnes’ dower lands were also confiscated, but were restored to her in 1331 at the request of Queen Philippa. Agnes received permission to go on pilgrimage in 1332, but her piety was a cover for visiting her husband in Flanders. She appears to have been instrumental in his rehabilitation into royal favour. He operated as an agent for the crown in Flanders, helping to secure in the Anglo-Flemish alliance of 1340. In 1342 Agnes gained permission to stay with him in Flanders as long as she liked, and in 1352 his lands were restored to him. He died in 1364, leaving much of his estate to Agnes, who now held extensive lands in eight counties. She died in 1375. Her marriage to Maltravers was childless. Agnes’ will included bequests to various religious houses.
Her son John de Argentein had been married in childhood to Margaret Darcy, some 16 years his senior. At the age of 20, in 1338. John de Argentein paid £100 to inherit his father’s lands a year early. He did not inherit his mother’s lands until the age of 50, when she died. During his minority and the early part of his majority he was in a dispute with his older half-sisters from his father’s marriage to Joan Brian over possession of the manors of Exning, Newmarket and Fordham, which had been settled on their mother on her marriage in 1302. He sued unsuccessfully in 1337 to gain possession of the manor of Fordham. Though his career was essentially a local one, he succesfully petitioned to serve the traditional Argentein role as cup-bearer at the coronation of Richard II in 1377 (he had been a minor at the coronation of Edward III in 1327). John died in November 1382. His wife Margeret survived him by less than a year. John’s legal heirs were his three daughters, Joan, Mathilda and Elizabeth, who each married and had children. Joan and Elizabeth died before their father. In 1381, a year before his death, he successfully petitioned the crown to allow his lands to pass to his illegitimate son William instead of his daughters.
William Argentein married Isabel, daughter of William Kerdeston in 1381. His inheritance of the Argentein estates was contested by the descendants of his legitimate half-sisters even before their father was buried. Mathilda, the surviving half-sister, said the Prior of Wymondley had been waylaid by evildoers on his way to her father’s funeral and forced to hand over deeds in a sealed chest, which later found its way to William Argentein. She, her husband Ivo Fitz Warin, and John’s widow Margeret were physically assaulted by the ruffians, she said. For two years after his father’s death William was embroiled in court cases, but was finally awarded the estates in 1384.
In 1399 William acted as cupbearer at the coronation of Henry IV, though he faced another court case to do so, for Mathilda’s husband Ivo FitzWarin claimed the right should have passed to him through his wife. In the same year, William married a second time, to Joan, the daughter and co-heir of a wealthy London grocer, John Hadley, and widow of Sir William Peche of Kent. Joan died on 21 March 1410, and William married a third time, to Margery, the daughter of Ralph Parlys and previously the widow of John Hervey of Thurleigh.
William performed military services in musters in the 1390s and early 1400s, and took part in the Battle of Agincourt in one of the Earl of Suffolk’s lances. He died in February 1419. His widow Margery died on 28 September 1427.
William’s son John predeceased him, so his heir was his six year old grandson John Argentein, but he died the following year. The Argentein lands passed through William and Margery’s daughters, Elizabeth and Joan, who married two brothers, William and Robert Arlington. Joan, the younger daughter, died at the age of 15 in 1429, and the entirety of the Argentein lands passed through Elizabeth into the Arlington family.

Parent Organization

Honour of Skipton