Chapter LXI: Partition Of The Empire By The French And

Venetians.—Part IV.

In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a
fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman empire
insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the embers
of the arts of antiquity. Their settlements about the age of
Charlemagne had acquired some degree of order and stability, when
they were overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans,
Saracens, 68 and Hungarians, who replunged the western countries
of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism. About
the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided by the
expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom: the tide
of civilization, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a
steady and accelerated course; and a fairer prospect was opened
to the hopes and efforts of the rising generations. Great was the
increase, and rapid the progress, during the two hundred years of
the crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious
influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked
rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe. 69 The lives and
labors of millions, which were buried in the East, would have
been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native
country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have
overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have
been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly
correspondence with the climates of the East. In one respect I
can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the crusades, not
so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger
portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil,
without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of
ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small,
alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive
system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of
the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker
ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction
of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the
poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and
order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord
of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and
every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron
weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that
undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be
allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were
dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these
costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from
their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters
of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the
artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the
most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration
which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air
and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants
of the soil. 691

68 (return) [ If I rank the Saracens with the Barbarians, it is
only relative to their wars, or rather inroads, in Italy and
France, where their sole purpose was to plunder and destroy.]

69 (return) [ On this interesting subject, the progress of
society in Europe, a strong ray of philosophical light has broke
from Scotland in our own times; and it is with private, as well
as public regard, that I repeat the names of Hume, Robertson, and
Adam Smith.]

691 (return) [ On the consequences of the crusades, compare the
valuable Essay of Heeren, that of M. Choiseul d’Aillecourt, and a
chapter of Mr. Forster’s “Mahometanism Unveiled.” I may admire
this gentleman’s learning and industry, without pledging myself
to his wild theory of prophets interpretation.—M.]

_Digression On The Family Of Courtenay._

The purple of three emperors, who have reigned at Constantinople,
will authorize or excuse a digression on the origin and singular
fortunes of the house of Courtenay, 70 in the three principal
branches: I. Of Edessa; II. Of France; and III. Of England; of
which the last only has survived the revolutions of eight hundred
years.

70 (return) [ I have applied, but not confined, myself to _A
genealogical History of the noble and illustrious Family of
Courtenay, by Ezra Cleaveland, Tutor to Sir William Courtenay,
and Rector of Honiton; Exon. 1735, in folio._ The first part is
extracted from William of Tyre; the second from Bouchet’s French
history; and the third from various memorials, public,
provincial, and private, of the Courtenays of Devonshire The
rector of Honiton has more gratitude than industry, and more
industry than criticism.]

I. Before the introduction of trade, which scatters riches, and
of knowledge, which dispels prejudice, the prerogative of birth
is most strongly felt and most humbly acknowledged. In every age,
the laws and manners of the Germans have discriminated the ranks
of society; the dukes and counts, who shared the empire of
Charlemagne, converted their office to an inheritance; and to his
children, each feudal lord bequeathed his honor and his sword.
The proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness of the
middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and
lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their
historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian æra,
before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence
of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first
rays of light, 71 we discern the nobility and opulence of Atho, a
French knight; his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless
father; his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of
Courtenay in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to
the south of Paris. From the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh
Capet, the barons of Courtenay are conspicuous among the
immediate vassals of the crown; and Joscelin, the grandson of
Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the first
crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters)
attached him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second
count of Edessa; a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive,
and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial
followers; and after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin
himself was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of
the Euphrates. By economy in peace, his territories were
replenished with Latin and Syrian subjects; his magazines with
corn, wine, and oil; his castles with gold and silver, with arms
and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years, he was alternately
a conqueror and a captive: but he died like a soldier, in a horse
litter at the head of his troops; and his last glance beheld the
flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and
infirmities. His son and successor, of the same name, was less
deficient in valor than in vigilance; but he sometimes forgot
that dominion is acquired and maintained by the same arms. He
challenged the hostility of the Turks, without securing the
friendship of the prince of Antioch; and, amidst the peaceful
luxury of Turbessel, in Syria, 72 Joscelin neglected the defence
of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence,
Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his
capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and
disloyal crowd of Orientals: the Franks were oppressed in a bold
attempt for its recovery, and Courtenay ended his days in the
prison of Aleppo. He still left a fair and ample patrimony But
the victorious Turks oppressed on all sides the weakness of a
widow and orphan; and, for the equivalent of an annual pension,
they resigned to the Greek emperor the charge of defending, and
the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The
countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two
children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a
king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of
seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in
Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His name appears with
honor in the transactions of peace and war; but he finally
vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; and the name of Courtenay, in
this branch of Edessa, was lost by the marriage of his two
daughters with a French and German baron. 73

71 (return) [ The primitive record of the family is a passage of
the continuator of Aimoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the
xiith century. See his Chronicle, in the Historians of France,
(tom. xi. p. 276.)]

72 (return) [ Turbessel, or, as it is now styled, Telbesher, is
fixed by D’Anville four-and-twenty miles from the great passage
over the Euphrates at Zeugma.]

73 (return) [ His possessions are distinguished in the Assises of
Jerusalem (c. B26) among the feudal tenures of the kingdom, which
must therefore have been collected between the years 1153 and
1187. His pedigree may be found in the Lignages d’Outremer, c.
16.]

II. While Joscelin reigned beyond the Euphrates, his elder
brother Milo, the son of Joscelin, the son of Atho, continued,
near the Seine, to possess the castle of their fathers, which was
at length inherited by Rainaud, or Reginald, the youngest of his
three sons. Examples of genius or virtue must be rare in the
annals of the oldest families; and, in a remote age their pride
will embrace a deed of rapine and violence; such, however, as
could not be perpetrated without some superiority of courage, or,
at least, of power. A descendant of Reginald of Courtenay may
blush for the public robber, who stripped and imprisoned several
merchants, after they had satisfied the king’s duties at Sens and
Orleans. He will glory in the offence, since the bold offender
could not be compelled to obedience and restitution, till the
regent and the count of Champagne prepared to march against him
at the head of an army. 74 Reginald bestowed his estates on his
eldest daughter, and his daughter on the seventh son of King
Louis the Fat; and their marriage was crowned with a numerous
offspring. We might expect that a private should have merged in a
royal name; and that the descendants of Peter of France and
Elizabeth of Courtenay would have enjoyed the titles and honors
of princes of the blood. But this legitimate claim was long
neglected, and finally denied; and the causes of their disgrace
will represent the story of this second branch. _1._ Of all the
families now extant, the most ancient, doubtless, and the most
illustrious, is the house of France, which has occupied the same
throne above eight hundred years, and descends, in a clear and
lineal series of males, from the middle of the ninth century. 75
In the age of the crusades, it was already revered both in the
East and West. But from Hugh Capet to the marriage of Peter, no
more than five reigns or generations had elapsed; and so
precarious was their title, that the eldest sons, as a necessary
precaution, were previously crowned during the lifetime of their
fathers. The peers of France have long maintained their
precedency before the younger branches of the royal line, nor had
the princes of the blood, in the twelfth century, acquired that
hereditary lustre which is now diffused over the most remote
candidates for the succession. _2._ The barons of Courtenay must
have stood high in their own estimation, and in that of the
world, since they could impose on the son of a king the
obligation of adopting for himself and all his descendants the
name and arms of their daughter and his wife. In the marriage of
an heiress with her inferior or her equal, such exchange was
often required and allowed: but as they continued to diverge from
the regal stem, the sons of Louis the Fat were insensibly
confounded with their maternal ancestors; and the new Courtenays
might deserve to forfeit the honors of their birth, which a
motive of interest had tempted them to renounce. _3._ The shame
was far more permanent than the reward, and a momentary blaze was
followed by a long darkness. The eldest son of these nuptials,
Peter of Courtenay, had married, as I have already mentioned, the
sister of the counts of Flanders, the two first emperors of
Constantinople: he rashly accepted the invitation of the barons
of Romania; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held
and lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the
granddaughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with
the blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a
troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were
mortgaged or sold: and the last emperors of Constantinople
depended on the annual charity of Rome and Naples.

74 (return) [ The rapine and satisfaction of Reginald de
Courtenay, are preposterously arranged in the Epistles of the
abbot and regent Suger, (cxiv. cxvi.,) the best memorials of the
age, (Duchesne, Scriptores Hist. Franc. tom. iv. p. 530.)]

75 (return) [ In the beginning of the xith century, after naming
the father and grandfather of Hugh Capet, the monk Glaber is
obliged to add, cujus genus valde in-ante reperitur obscurum. Yet
we are assured that the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet was
Robert the Strong count of Anjou, (A.D. 863—873,) a noble Frank
of Neustria, Neustricus... generosæ stirpis, who was slain in the
defence of his country against the Normans, dum patriæ fines
tuebatur. Beyond Robert, all is conjecture or fable. It is a
probable conjecture, that the third race descended from the
second by Childebrand, the brother of Charles Martel. It is an
absurd fable that the second was allied to the first by the
marriage of Ansbert, a Roman senator and the ancestor of St.
Arnoul, with Blitilde, a daughter of Clotaire I. The Saxon origin
of the house of France is an ancient but incredible opinion. See
a judicious memoir of M. de Foncemagne, (Mémoires de l’Académie
des Inscriptions, tom. xx. p. 548—579.) He had promised to
declare his own opinion in a second memoir, which has never
appeared.]

While the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic
adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a
plebeian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were
propagated and multiplied. But their splendor was clouded by
poverty and time: after the decease of Robert, great butler of
France, they descended from princes to barons; the next
generations were confounded with the simple gentry; the
descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural
lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous
embraced without dishonor the profession of a soldier: the least
active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch
of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in
a dark period of four hundred years, became each day more
obsolete and ambiguous; and their pedigree, instead of being
enrolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched
by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not
till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a
family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of
the Courtenays again revived; and the question of the nobility
provoked them to ascertain the royalty of their blood. They
appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth;
obtained a favorable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and
Germany, and modestly compared themselves to the descendants of
King David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of
ages or the trade of a carpenter. 76 But every ear was deaf, and
every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The
Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois; the
princes of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the
alliance of his humble kindred: the parliament, without denying
their proofs, eluded a dangerous precedent by an arbitrary
distinction, and established St. Louis as the first father of the
royal line. 77 A repetition of complaints and protests was
repeatedly disregarded; and the hopeless pursuit was terminated
in the present century by the death of the last male of the
family. 78 Their painful and anxious situation was alleviated by
the pride of conscious virtue: they sternly rejected the
temptations of fortune and favor; and a dying Courtenay would
have sacrificed his son, if the youth could have renounced, for
any temporal interest, the right and title of a legitimate prince
of the blood of France. 79

76 (return) [ Of the various petitions, apologies, &c., published
by the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following, all
in octavo: 1. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay: addita
sunt Responsa celeberrimorum Europæ Jurisconsultorum; Paris,
1607. 2. Representation du Procedé tenû a l’instance faicte
devant le Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conservation
de l’Honneur et Dignité de leur Maison, branche de la royalle
Maison de France; à Paris, 1613. 3. Representation du subject qui
a porté Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de
Courtenay, à se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was a homicide,
for which the Courtenays expected to be pardoned, or tried, as
princes of the blood.]

77 (return) [ The sense of the parliaments is thus expressed by
Thuanus Principis nomen nusquam in Galliâ tributum, nisi iis qui
per mares e regibus nostris originem repetunt; qui nunc tantum a
Ludovico none beatæ memoriæ numerantur; nam _Cortini_ et
Drocenses, a Ludovico crasso genus ducentes, hodie inter eos
minime recensentur. A distinction of expediency rather than
justice. The sanctity of Louis IX. could not invest him with any
special prerogative, and all the descendants of Hugh Capet must
be included in his original compact with the French nation.]

78 (return) [ The last male of the Courtenays was Charles Roger,
who died in the year 1730, without leaving any sons. The last
female was Helene de Courtenay, who married Louis de Beaufremont.
Her title of Princesse du Sang Royal de France was suppressed
(February 7th, 1737) by an _arrêt_ of the parliament of Paris.]

79 (return) [ The singular anecdote to which I allude is related
in the Recueil des Pieces interessantes et peu connues,
(Maestricht, 1786, in 4 vols. 12mo.;) and the unknown editor
quotes his author, who had received it from Helene de Courtenay,
marquise de Beaufremont.]

III. 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. 80 This fable of the
grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our
antiquaries, Cambden 81 and Dugdale: 82 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. 83 From a Norman baron, Baldwin de
Brioniis, who had been invested by the Conqueror, Hawise, the
wife of Reginald, derived the honor of Okehampton, 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, 84 his great-grandson, Hugh the
Second, succeeded to a title which was still considered as a
territorial dignity; and twelve 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 the fief of Arundel the first place in the parliament
of England: their alliances were contracted with the noblest
families, the Veres, Despensers, 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_, from his virtues, the _good_, earl, inculcates with much
ingenuity a moral sentence, which may, however, be abused by
thoughtless generosity. After a grateful commemoration of the
fifty-five years of union and happiness which he enjoyed with
Mabe his wife, the good earl thus speaks from the tomb:—

“What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we left, we
lost.” 85

But their _losses_, in this sense, were far superior to their
gifts and expenses; and their heirs, not less than the poor, were
the objects of their paternal care. The sums which they paid for
livery and seizin 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 intrusted 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 in the original list
of the Order of the Garter; three brothers shared the Spanish
victory of 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 in exile at Padua; and the secret love of
Queen Mary, whom he slighted, perhaps for the princess Elizabeth,
has shed a romantic color on the story of this beautiful youth.
The relics of his patrimony were conveyed into strange families
by the marriages of his four aunts; and his personal honors, as
if they had been legally extinct, were revived by the patents of
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. 86 While they sigh for
past greatness, they are doubtless sensible of present blessings:
in the long series of the Courtenay annals, the most splendid æra
is likewise the most unfortunate; nor can an opulent peer of
Britain be inclined to envy the emperors of Constantinople, who
wandered over Europe to solicit alms for the support of their
dignity and the defence of their capital.

80 (return) [ 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.]

81 (return) [ In his Britannia, in the list of the earls of
Devonshire. His expression, e regio sanguine ortos, credunt,
betrays, however, some doubt or suspicion.]

82 (return) [ In his Baronage, P. i. p. 634, he refers to his own
Monasticon. Should he not have corrected the register of Ford
Abbey, and annihilated the phantom Florus, by the unquestionable
evidence of the French historians?]

83 (return) [ Besides the third and most valuable book of
Cleaveland’s History, I have consulted Dugdale, the father of our
genealogical science, (Baronage, P. i. p. 634—643.)]

84 (return) [ This great family, de Ripuariis, de Redvers, de
Rivers, ended, in Edward the Fifth’s time, in Isabella de
Fortibus, a famous and potent dowager, who long survived her
brother and husband, (Dugdale, Baronage, P i. p. 254—257.)]

85 (return) [ Cleaveland p. 142. By some it is assigned to a
Rivers earl of Devon; but the English denotes the xvth, rather
than the xiiith century.]

86 (return) [ _Ubi lapsus! Quid feci?_ 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.]