Richard Richard Richard de Camville

The inconsistencies between the known data surrounding the Oxfordshire and Warwickshire Camvilles are sufficient to create suspicion that two different branches are involved.

Gerald/Gerard de Camville, who was the oldest of four brothers and married Nicolaa de Haye, pretty definitely belongs to the Warwickshire branch and looks like the oldest son of the founder of Coombe Abbey.

The three(?) Richard Camvilles of Oxfordshire would then be cousins of the Warwickshire family, not members of it. This would resolve the difficulties in dating and birth order that result when trying to fit them all together.

The current setup includes two brothers:

Guillaume de Camville
Gautier, Sire de Canville

It is also possible they are father and son, with Gautier being of the "Conquest generation". "Gautier de Can(ou)ville" is found on the Dives roll as having something material to do with William's success - either by participating, or by substantially supporting from the sidelines.

Then there are these four characters:

Richard "Puignant" (Domesday Book 1086)
Unknown Profile (Domesday Book 1086)
William de Camville (Domesday Book 1086, subtenant of Richard Puignant, no last name given)
Walter de Camville (reference to witnessing a charter in the late 11th century, need to find)

The brothers "Puignant" (assumed to be Camvilles because their holdings match known Camville holdings of a generation or so later) probably weren't at Hastings, but probably had a lot to do with securing the country for William afterward. The by-name means "fighter".

I have Gerald de Camville, I who married a De Vere as the son of Richard "Puignant", which is negotiable as long as he remains in a senior line. This line produces at least two and probably three consecutive Richards, ending with Isabel de Camville who married Robert d'Harcourt and brought the manor of Stanton into the Harcourt family.

In the junior line I have put Sir Richard de Camville, of Warwickshire, his brother Hugh de Camville, and Richard's four sons Gerard de Camville, II, Castellan of Lincoln Castle, Richard de Camville, Walter de Camville, and William de Camville of Clifton, and daughter Matilda de Ros (extant charters confirm these relationships).

This reconstruction is partly conjectural, based on the difficulty of fitting Richard-as-son-and-heir into a family where the son and heir was explicitly Gerald.

to the book THE ROYAL DESCENTS OF 600 IMMIGRANTS by Gary Boyd Roberts a Richard de Camville married Milicent of Rethel, daughter of Gervais of Rethel and Elizabeth of Namur, which makes her a descendant of Charlemagne. Their son William de Camville married Auberee de Marmion. After that we have another William who married an Iseuda, Thomas who married Agnes, and Felicia who married Philip Durvassal. I cannot find this particular line here.

*A* Richard de Camville - there were apparently two or three (or more) of him living at about the same time, and people got confused as to which one was whom.

The Richard de Camville (of Oxfordshire) who married Millicent de Rethel (apparently Richard II of a three-consecutive-Richard line) had one and only one son, the third and final Richard, and at least one daughter, Isabel (sometimes miscalled Millicent).

The manor of Stanton came to Richard (II) via his marriage to Millicent de Rethel. When he died, his son was still a minor. King Henry II took the opportunity to grab off the manor of Stanton and give it to one of his henchmen. Richard (III) de Camville got it back from Richard the Lionheart, but there was apparently a quid pro quo requiring him to join the Third Crusade. He never came back, did not marry, left no heirs, *had no brothers*.

Meanwhile Isabel had gotten married to Robert d'Harcourt, who became lord of Stanton jure uxoris (in right of his wife), just as Isabel's father had acquired it. Robert and Isabel got busy producing heirs, and ever since the manor has been known as Stanton Harcourt.

There was a different Richard de Camville up Warwickshire way, who *did* have heirs who successfully carried on his line. It seems to have been the Warwickshire Richard who had a son William who married Aubree de marmion.

The precise origin of the Camvilles is obscure - they were originally believed to have come from Canville-les-deux Eglises, until somebody pointed out that there are no traces of settlements in that area dating back anywhere close to the Conquest (the two churches that give the town its name are relatively modern).

Another possibility is Canville-la-Rocque, which has a castle whose oldest parts trace back to about the 12th century.

Perhaps the most interesting possibility, in light of some of the early variant spellings of "Camville" (e.g. "Canouille"), is Canouville, which has been settled since at least Gallo-Roman times and includes remnants of a Roman-style amphitheater. It has been reported that there once were traces of a fortification dating back to circa the 11th century.

Whichever location the Camvilles came from, they apparently arrived in a bunch - not one single ancestor, but a small group, probably relatives, possibly brothers. They don't start sorting out neatly until the early 12th century, so which branch descends from which person is none so easy to figure out.

"(Le Sire) de Canouville" is found on the Battle Abbey rolls, the Falaise Roll, and the Dives-sur-Mer wall plaque, and is identified as "Gautier" on the Battle Abbey compilation. This doesn't indicate that he was actually in William's invading army, but does strongly suggest that he supported the enterprise in some substantial way - perhaps supplying money, men (sons?), and/or materiel.

Have you read THE ANTIQUITIES OF WARWICKSHIRE by William Dugdale? The book is online now. On pg 621 in the section titled Arrow has an interesting history of the Camville-Marmion connections and p. 623 a chart of the Camville family.

Nice chart. Dugdale made one mistake, though, and assumed they were all the same family. Richard-who-married-Millicent had a brother Roger. There is no Roger among the sons of RIchard-who-founded-Coombe-Abbey.

Interesting. And no one to ask. I'll give this project to my sister. She lives in Oxford and is an authority on Medieval history.
Virginia

It's difficult to get (and keep) them all sorted out - even Cawley at Medieval Lands was not successful. But when there is a complete non-match between two versions of allegedly the same line, eventually light dawns over marble head - "D'oh! There must have been (at least) two of him!"

Well duh, supposedly they all trace back to Gautier, Sire de Canouille. But it's *very* clear from the various Conquest rolls and from the Domesday Book that several related "Canouilles" came over at about the same time and made themselves useful to King William, who rewarded them (as was his wont) with landholdings here and there.

They also had that vexatious medieval habit of overusing the same few first names ad nauseam.

Unfortunately the Camvilles seem to have gone extinct in the male line somewhere around the 14th century, so Y-DNA research isn't going to be much help, mtDNA research may be too difficult to sort out, and autosomal DNA is flat useless because at that distance there's no sorting anything out from all the background noise.

If you think the Camvilles are problematical, you should try keeping track of the Porhoet/Rohan/Zouche family! They were so madly in love with the name "Alain" that there was one in every branch of the family in every generation (the first Zouche was an Alain, as was the first Porhoet vicomte de Rohan, and no they were not the same person).

Okay, I just found out the source for the smash-merging of the Richard Camvilles. Wouldn't you know, it was Sir Bernard Burke his own damnself! (Earlier editions of Burke's Peerage were error-riddled because he was none too careful about sourcing his information - there have been gradual improvements over time.)

This appears to be verbatim or closely paraphrased from Burke (almost certainly an older edition):
"In the time of King Stephen, Richard de Camville was founder of Combe Abbey, co. Warwick, and was one of the witnesses in the 12th of the same reign [1147], to the convention between that monarch and Henry, Duke of Normandy, regarding the succession of the latter to the crown of England. This feudal lord appears to be a person of great power during the whole of King Henry's reign, and after the accession of Richard I, we find him one of the admirals in the expedition made by that monarch into the Holy Land. He was subsequently governor of Cyprus, whence he went without the king's permission to the siege of Acre and there died."

Richard de Camville (of Warwick) confirmed as founder of Coombe [current spelling] Abbey, circa 1148-50. He had a wife, unnamed. His son and heir Gerard was old enough to witness charters, and Richard's brother Hugh was another witness. Source: Dugdale Monasticon V, Combe, Warwickshire, I, p. 584.

Cannot confirm the 1147 reference - there was a brief incursion by the teenage Henry of Anjou that year, but he had only a small force and was soon sent packing.

The Richard de Camville who went crusading with Richard I was CERTAINLY NOT the same person as the founder of Coombe Abbey *or* the second husband of Melisende de Rethel. He was a double orphan circa 1176, Melisende having died before 1171 (charter of Jumieges, 1170/71, made by the senior Richard "for the souls of my wife Adelice and second wife Millicent" (the younger Richard subscribed but did not witness the charter), and the senior Richard falling sick and dying in Apulia as a member of the entourage to deliver Henry II's daughter Joan to her promised husband, William II of Sicily [1176].

What Henry II did next shows that the younger Richard was considered not yet to be of age - he grabbed the manor of Stanton and placed it in the custody of Richard Rufus. It took young Richard until 1190 and the favor of the next King (Richard I) to bring Stanton back to the Camville family. But they didn't keep it, because young Richard went off on the third Crusade and never came back. As of 1192/93 the holder ("jure uxoris") was Robert Harcourt, and the manor remained in Harcourt hands and eventually became known as Stanton Harcourt.

I've already gone over reasons why the younger Richard Camville of Stanton was *probably* not the same person as the Richard Camville who was the younger brother of Gerard Camville and had the manor of Benham in his name for the years 1194-1198. And if he wasn't the same person - then Gerard's father was not the man who married Melisende de Rethel.

But Gerard's behavior in regard to Benham, i.e. trying to claim it, is another indicator - if he had the faintest shadow of a right to Stanton, he would certainly have tried to claim *it*. He didn't try, therefore he had no right at all.