LES AUTRES MARMION, LES NOBLES

 D'après le dictionnaire de la noblesse de La Chenaye-Desbois et Badier 1868

et Patrice Marmion - 1995  

"Très ancienne noblesse qui a été illustre en Normandie et en Angleterre, et qui tire son origine du Bailliage de Caen, où elle a fait sa première demeure"

Les armes des Marmion étaient : « de vair, et les puînés brisoient d’une fasce de gueules, frettée d’argent. » 

Les armes des Marmion en Angleterre portaient :  "Gules a lion vair"

Blason de Sir Philip MARMION, Knt., nat. circa temp. R. Jo.
mariée à Joan, daughter and coheiress of Sir Hugh, Baron of KILPECK

          

Sir P. M. bore the paternal arms alone, viz. "Vair, a fesse gules, fretty argent"   The arms of his wife(which, according to modern practice, would be borne upon an escutcheon of pretence) were Sable, a sword in pale, point downward, argent, hilt and pomel or. The lady being an heiress, this coat descended to her children

JOAN, daughter and coheiress of Sir Philip MARMION
marié à Sir Alex. FREVILE, Knt.

The arms of Sir A. F. were Or, a cross patonce gules. His wife being a coheiress of the families of Marmion and Kilpeck, bore, or by later usage might have borne, their arms quarterly

 

Une branche partit en Angleterre avec Guillaume le conquérant:

Robert Marmion 
Vicomte de Fontenay		 vivait, comme le rapporte Guillaume Dugdale, sous le règne de Guillaume le Conquérant, en 1066, il passa avec lui à la conquête du Royaume d’Angleterre, et eut pour fils,
Robert Marmion, 2ème du nom, 
Vicomte de Fontenay		 qui s’est marié, sous le règne Henri 1er Roi d’Angleterre, en 1128, à une nommée Mélisée, dont vint :
Robert Marmion, 3ème du nom
Seigneur et Vicomte de Fontenay		 mort la seconde année du règne d’Henri III, Roi d’Angleterre. Il soutint vigoureusement le droit de ce prince contre Geoffroy, Comte d’Anjou, qui lui disputait la couronne d’Angleterre. Le comte ne pouvant obliger Marmion à lui rendre Falaise, qu’il tenait pour le Roi Henri, assiégea le Château de Fontenay, le prit de force et le rasa en 1139. Robert Marmion eut de sa femme, nommée Philippe,

1. Robert, 4ème du nom,

qui suit,

2. Robert, dit le Jeune,

dont la postérité a subsisté longtemps en Angleterre ;

3. Guillaume, Chevalier, .

 duquel parle du Moulin, p. 355
Robert Marmion, 4ème du nom, dit le Vieux, mourut en 1248, et eut d’autres enfants :
Philippe Marmion qui s’est marié une première fois, à Jeanne Kelperk ; le nom de sa seconde femme est ignoré. Du premier lit vinrent :

Jeanne et Malère, femme de Raoul Cromwell, et Mathilde, mariée à Raoul Boteler
Et du second lit il eut :
Une fille, aussi nommée Jeanne,
mariée, 1 - avec Thomas, Mylord Lou ; et 2 - avec Henri Hillaire.

ROBERT MARMION

by J.R. Planché, Somerset Herald. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874.

This name, familiarised to the reader's ears by the noble poem of Walter Scott, will conjure up visions of  " Norham's castled steep,"  and the welcome that awaited there the --

" -- Lord of Fontenaye,
Of Lutterward and Scrivelbaye,
Of Tamworth Tower and Town;"

a fictitious personage, as "the Wizard of the North" admits, but invested by his genius with such a semblance of truth, that it is difficult not to believe in his existence.

Wace speaks of the companion of the Conqueror as "old Roger Marmion" but no Roger appears in the pedigree before the times of Richard I. It is generally conceived that Roger is either a clerical or typographical error, and that Robert, to whom William the Conqueror gave "Tamworth Tower and Town" shortly after the Conquest, must be the Marmion who had assisted him in the achievement.

Of that Robert the following story is told by Dugdale, on the faith of an ancient MS. in his day in the possession of John Ferrers, Esq, of Tamworth Castle.

"In the time of the Norman Conqueror, Robert Marmion having, by the gift of that king, the Castle of Tamworth, in the county of Warwick, with the territory adjacent, thence expelled those nuns he found there unto a place called Oldbury, about four miles distant, after which, within the compass of a twelvemonth it is said, making a costly entertainment at Tamworth Castle for some of his friends, amongst which was Sir Walter de Somerville, Lord of Whichover, in the county of Stafford, his sworn brother, it so happened that as he lay in his bed, St. Edith appeared to him as a veiled nun, with a crozier in her band, and advertized him, that if he did not restore the Abbey of Polesworth, (which lay within the territories of the Castle of Tamworth,) he should have an evil death, and go to ----." Well, it appears St. Edith did not mince her words, but spoke pure Anglo-Saxon, "and that he might be the more sensible of this her admonition," continues the narrator, "she smote him on the side with the point of her crozier, and so vanished away! Moreover, that by this stroke being much wounded, he cried out so loud that his friends in the house arose, and finding him extremely tormented with the pain of his wound, advised him to confess himself to a priest, and vow to restore them (the nuns) to their former possession. Furthermore, that having so done, his pain eased, and that in accomplishment of his vow, accompanied by Sir Walter de Somerville and the rest, he forthwith rode to Oldbury, and craving pardon of the nuns for the injury done, brought them back to Polesworth, desiring that himself and his friend Sir Walter de Somerville might be reputed their patrons, and have burial for themselves and their heirs in the Abbey, viz, the Marmions in the chapterhouse, and the Somervilles in the cloister." "However," adds worthy Norroy, "some circumstances in this story may seem fabulous" (as they undoubtedly do), "the main substance of it is certainly true, for it expressly appeareth by the very words of his charter, that he gave to Osanna the prioress, for the establishing of the religion of those nuns there, the church of St. Edith of Polesworth, with its appurtenances, so that the Convent of Oldbury (de Aldoberia) should remain in that place, and afterwards bestowed on them the whole lordship of Polesworth, with its demesnes in Waverton, which grant King Stephen afterwards confirmed."

Robert Marmion had a wife named Milicent, with whose consent he gave the neighbouring town of Butegate to the monks of Bardney, in the county of Lincoln, for the health of the souls of his father and mother (unfortunately not naming them), his own and his wife's soul, and the souls of their heirs.

No particular feats of arms are recorded of old Robert or Roger, as the case may be, either at Senlac or elsewhere; Wace merely says that in the great battle he and Raoul Taisson de Cingueleiz behaved themselves as barons should, and were afterwards richly rewarded.

When he died I have not found, but if deserving the epithet of "old" in 1066, he could scarcely have lived till the reign of Henry I, who granted to his son and heir, Robert, free warren in all his lands in Warwickshire, as Robert his father had, and particularly at Tamworth.

This second Robert possessed the strong Castle of Fontenai, near Caen, called from its ancient lords Fontenai le Marmion, to distinguish it from eight other communes of the same name in Normandy; and it is a question whether the "Sire de Fontenei" mentioned by Wace (l. 13,796) was the lord of another Fontenai, or, as it has been suggested, the same person he has previously spoken of as "le viel Rogier Marmion." Several other analogous instances occur in the Roman de Rou, and I think its author has been too hastily accused of inaccuracy.

The fate of the second Robert Marmion, who married a Maud de Beauchamp, whom I have not yet been able to affiliate, is deserving notice. "Being a great adversary to the Earl of Chester, who had a noble seat at Coventry in the eighth of Stephen, he entered the priory there, which was but a little distance from that Earl's castle, and expelling the monks, fortified it, digging in the fields adjacent divers deep ditches covered over with earth, to the intent that such as made approaches thereto should be entrapped; whereupon it so happened that as he rode out himself to reconnoitre the Earl of Chester's forces that began to draw near, he fell into one of them and broke his thigh, so that a common soldier presently seizing on him, cut off his head." * [Dugdale, Baronage, vol. i.]

The Marmions held the manor of Scrivelsby, in the county of Lincoln, by the service of performing the office of champion at the King's coronation: a co-heir of the family brought Scrivelsby and the championship into the family of Ludlow, and thence to that of Dymoke, and the office was claimed and served by Sir Henry Dymoke of Scrivelsby, most probably for the last time, at the coronation of his Majesty King George IV, July 19, 1821. But the name of Marmion indicates the possession originally of another office, as its meaning is much the same as Despenser. William Beauchamp of Bedford, connected with the Marmions, acted as grand almoner at the nuptials of King Henry III.

 

 

D’une branche établie en Angleterre, était :

Roger Marmion 
Baron de Tamerworth, 		 (ou Tamworth Staffordshire) qui eut deux fils :

Geoffroy Marmion

 auteur d’une branche dont on n’a point de connaissances ;
Robert Marmion 
Baron de Tamerworth 
vivant aux environs de l’an 1187, qui eut pour enfants : Richard, et Mylord Marmion

 Robert, Chevalier

Alberede, 

 femme, en 1238, de Guillaume de Canville ; ils vivaient sous le règne d’Henri III, Roi d’Angleterre.
Geoffroy Marmion "de la même famille était Geoffroy Marmion vivant en Angleterre en 1140"
Robert Marmion On lit dans Matthieu Pâris, Hist. Major Angliae que l’an 1143, Robert Marmion chassa les moines de Conventrey de leur Abbaye, pour y bâtir une forteresse (peut-être le 3ème du nom, ci-dessus?)

Le château de Tamworth - Staffordshire

Autres MARMION en Angleterre:

Roger Marmion Il y a une Charte de Richard 1er , Roi d’Angleterre, pour l’abbaye de Grestain, en Normandie, de l’an 1188, en laquelle est compris Roger Marmion, qui y aumôna les dîmes de sa terre de Berwick, en Angleterre. Robert et Geoffroy y donnèrent aussi plusieurs biens.
Guillaume et Robert Marmion, Chevaliers, frères. Il y a une autre Charte du Roi Guillaume le Roux, pour l’abbaye de Hales-Owen, en Salop, où sont témoins Guillaume et Robert Marmion, Chevaliers, frères.
Philippe Marmion qui fut pris avec le Comte de Warwick à Pons, en Poitou, en 1254. Il donna plusieurs biens aux frères Hospitaliers d’Angleterre, comme il se voit par une Charte donnée de sa main. 

De la branche restée en Normandie, vraisemblablement, l’aînée était:

 
Roger Marmion, Chevalier, l’un de ceux qui accompagnèrent le Duc Guillaume le Bâtard, à la conquête du royaume d’Angleterre en 1066. Il eut pour fils,
Guillaume Marmion, Chevalier, seigneur de Fontenay le Marmion,  l’un des témoins qui signèrent aux fondations que firent Robert & Tesson à l’abbaye du val Richer en 1120. Son fils fut
Robert Marmion, 1er du nom,  Seigneur de Fontenay, Fondateur de l’Abbaye de Barbery en 1139. Il signa la Charte de Richard 1er , Roi d’Angleterre & Duc de Normandie, donnée à Rouen, en 1156, en faveur de l’Abbaye de Jumièges. Il eut pour enfants :

Robert, qui suit ;

Germaine, 

 femme en 1195, de Robert Tesson, Seigneur de Thury, fils de Robert Tesson, Seigneur de Thury et d’Harvise de Singlais.
Robert Marmion, 2ème du nom de sa branche, Seigneur et Vicomte de Fontenay,  est nommé entre les Chevaliers de l’honneur de Monfort en 1204, et aussi parmi ceux qui portaient bannière, en 1214, sous le Roi Philippe Auguste. Il céda, en 1223, à Robert des Ableges, Evêque de Bayeux, tout ce qu’il possédait dans la Baronnie de Creully ; il en est parlé dans la Gallia Christiana, tome XI, col. 367, et l’échiquier de Pâques, tenu à Caen l’an 1222, fait mention de ce Robert comme y étant présent.

D'autres MARMION en Normandie:

Thomas et Mathieu Marmion, Chevaliers. sont compris dans le Rôle de la subvention des Nobles de la province en 1304, dans la sergenterie de Dives et de Honfleur 
Monsieur Jean Marmion  est compris dans la Compagnie du Sire de Faugernon, qui fit sa montre en 1240
Agnès de Marmion On trouve un Laurent du Val, écuyer, marié à Agnès de Marmion, Dame de Gonneville.
Mathilde de Marmion Dès l’an 1212, un Olivier d’Harcourt était marié à Mathilde de Marmion 
Roger de Marmion, Chevalier, 
Seigneur de Varaville		 les mémoires de M. Bigot-Sousmesnil font mention de Roger de Marmion, Chevalier, seigneur de Varaville, vivant en 1223.
Robert Marmion, Chevalier, 
Vicomte de Fontenay		 Enfin dans les archives de Saint Sépulcre de Caen, on voit que Robert Marmion, vicomte de Fontenay, Chevalier, ratifia les donations faites sur son fief de Fresnay-le-Puceux, & que Philippe & Roger, ses fils, transigèrent avec Guillaume Acarin, Doyen & les chanoines du Saint-Sépulcre, par acte du lendemain de Saint-Marc en avril 1243, sur un procès intenté à l’occasion d’une portion de moulin qui avait été donnée au Saint-Sépulcre par feu Guillaume Marmion, clerc à Fresnay-le-Puceux, & dans l’arrangement cette portion fut échangée pour des terres audit lieu.
 

Alain Marmion 2002