Guillaume Pecche aka William Peccatum

Additional Curator's Notes: There is confusion about the parentage of Guillaume Pecche. He could NOT have been the son of Adeline De Domfront. She died in about 1043 at the age of 18. She had one son, Geoffrey de Percche, born either 1042 or 1043. It has been accepted by many that Guillaume was born in the 1060's. However, there are comments that his second marriage happened at an advanced age. It is most likely Guillaume was born c. 1020-1030, in Brittany, and arrived in England during the reign of Edward the Confessor. See the article below for the reasoning behind this supposition. Maria Edmonds-Zediker, Curator, 6/7/2010

http://www.1066.co.nz/Mosaic%20DVD/library/people/peche.htm

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1. Guillaume1 Peche, Lord Of Cloptunna and Dalham1 was born in Normandy, possibly, and died Aft. 1088 in Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly, 10 miles southwest of Bury St. Edmunds, or at Dalham, about 4 miles north of Wickhambrook2. He married Alfwen3. She died Abt. 1088.

The Clopton Family is constantly changing, a product of human history, its evolutions and revolutions. Very little is known about these first Cloptons. There is no record of their hopes and dreams, their fears and wishes, only the niggardly scraps of information contained in a few tattered and shattered legal documents remain to mark their lives. As the new millennium stretches before us let us look back to the year 1000 and begin our journey through time as the ancient ones whisper their stories. See "Of Norman Blood"

Child of Guillaume Peche and Alfwen is:

+ 2 i. William2 Clopton, Gent., of Clopton Hall, Suffolk, born in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly, 10 miles southwest of Bury St. Edmunds; died in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly. All Saints Church at Wickhambrook dates from about 1240, too late to be the burial place for William and Anne, although there was probably an earlier church. A small Saxon figure is on the south wall.

He married Anne Grey, of Buckingham Castle, County Norfolk5, daughter of John Grey, of Buckingham Castle, County Norfolk. She died in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly'.

3. Walter3 Clopton, Knt., of Clopton Hall (William2, Guillaume1 Peche, Lord Of Cloptunna and Dalham)6 was born in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly, 10 miles southwest of Bury St. Edmunds, and died Aft. 1154 in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly7.

He married Chewyt8.

Child of Walter Clopton and Chewyt is:

+ 4 i. William4 Clopton, Sir William of Clopton Hall, born in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly, 10 miles southwest of Bury St. Edmunds; died Aft. 1216 in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly.

4. William4 Clopton, Sir William of Clopton Hall (Walter3, William2, Guillaume1 Peche, Lord Of Cloptunna and Dalham)9 was born in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly, 10 miles southwest of Bury St. Edmunds, and died Aft. 1216 in Clopton Hall, Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly10.

He married Cockerell11, daughter of William Cockerell, Sir William.

Children of William Clopton and Cockerell are
:
+ 5 i. Walter5 Clopton, of Wickhambrook, born in Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly, 10 miles southwest of Bury St. Edmunds; died in Wickhambrook, County Suffolk, possibly.

6 ii. Richard Clopton, of Wickhambrook.

he Descendants of Guillaume Peche, Lord of Cloptunna and Dalham

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http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/c/l/o/Jeffrey-B-Clopton/...

Notes: The parentage or ancestry of Guillaume Pecche (William Peccatum) is unknown and there seems to be little chance of determining his origins. It has been suggested that there was a close relationship between Guillaume Pecche and Richard de Bienfaite, progenitor of the House of de Clare in England, and that he may have entered England at the conquest in the retinue of Richard FitzGilbert, Seigneur de Bienfaite, second cousin to Duke William ‘the Conqueror’.

It is known that Guillaume Pecche (William Peccatum), progenitor of the Cloptons of Suffolk and the Pecches, Barons of Bourn in Cambridge, was an undertenant to Richard de Bienfaite (FitzGilbert) at the Domesday Survey in 1086; of whom he held Clopton and Dalham in Suffolk and at Gestingthorpe in Essex. However, he was also an undertenant of Aubrey de Vere, progenitor of the earls of Oxford, at Belchamp Walter in Essex, in the immediate vicinity of Gestingthorpe; and he held at Stoke Holy Cross in Norfolk of Roger le Bigod, progenitor of the earls of Norfolk. His holding in Norfolk was held in 1242 by his great-great-grandson Gilbert Pecche, Baron of Bourn. It is not unlikely that Guillaume Pecche held lands in addition to these and it is recorded that he received a grant of Over in Cambridgeshire from the Abbot of Ramsey for life and for the life of his first wife Alfwen.

The possibility of there being a close family connection or blood relationship to Richard de Bienfaite seems to be very speculative as well as highly unlikely. Also, because of the fact that the name Pecche was one of those nicknames of which the Normans were so fond, it can not be determined if he was the offspring of a family with a connection to Richard’s holdings of Bienfaite and Orbec in Normandy. If a blood relationship did exist, the best guess, in my opinion, there being no evidence, is that the relationship was a maternal connection through the unknown wife of Richard’s father Gilbert, Comte de Brionne; or the unknown wife (or an unknown daughter) of Richard’s grandfather Godfrey, Comte de Brionne. The wives of Godfrey and his son Gilbert are unknown and one of them may have had a connection to the counts of Flanders.

What is probably one of the most intriguing statements about William Peccatum is made by Coppinger in his Manors of Suffolk. Concerning the Cloptons of Kentwell Hall and the manor of Monks Melford, which reverted to the crown following the dissolution and which was granted to William Clopton of Kentwell in 1545, Coppinger states that the family is supposed to have taken their name from the parish of Clopton in the Hundred of Samford and to have given it to a manor in Wickhambrook before the conquest. If this statement is true, it opens some interesting questions concerning the time of the arrival of Guillaume Pecche in England and how he acquired possession of the manor of Clopton in Suffolk.

Assuming that Coppinger’s statement is accurate, events in England during the reign of King Edward ‘the Confessor’ may provide some clues. In the mid to late 1040’s, King Edward found it necessary to form his own party of supporters to offset the growing power of Godwine, Earl of Wessex and his family. King Edward was one of the sons of King Aethelred II (d.1016) and his wife Emma of Normandy, daughter of Duke Richard I.

King Aethelred was succeeded on the throne by Cnute, King of Norway and Denmark and married King Aethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. During the Danish reign, the English princes were sent to the Norman court for safety. In forming his own party after his succession, King Edward turned to the connections which he had made during the period of his exile and to the duchy of Normandy which had provided him with hospitality and protection during that period. It is believed that Normans originally followed King Edward’s mother to England when she married and that they faded into the background when she married King Cnute.

King Edward’s Norman policy was a natural outgrowth of the previous political and blood ties between England and Normandy. None of the Norman laymen who came to England during Edward’s reign were of the first rank and none received possessions of great extent. However, King Edward tenaciously pursued his Norman policy between 1042 and 1051. Norman clerks appeared at the English court, lands were transferred to Normans in the country, and Norman prelates were introduced into the church.

If Guillaume Pecche (William Peccatum) entered England during this period, he surely would have reached his majority, which would indicate that he was most probably a contemporary of Richard de Bienfaite who was born about 1025; and Duke William, who was born in 1028. King Edward’s Norman policy was ended in 1052, due to the position of Godwine, Earl of Wessex and the great power of his family. The Normans in the country became a virtual nonentity, making it unlikely that William Peccatum would have entered the country between 1052 and 1066.

William Peccatum married twice. His first wife was an English woman by the name of Alfwen (otherwise unknown) and it may have been by this marriage that he first came into possession of the lands of Clopton in Suffolk. He married secondly, seemingly at an advanced age, Isilia de Bourges, daughter and heiress of Herve de Bourges (Bituricensis) and his wife Jenita. The known issue of the first marriage were William de Cloptunne, Ralph Pecche, and Simon Pecche. The known issue of the second marriage were Hamon Pecche and Basilia Pecche. William de Cloptunne must have been a son of the first marriage since he was his father’s namesake, a common practice for a first son, and he did not hold any of the de Bourges lands. Hamon was heir to his mother and was the eldest son (or eldest surviving son) of the second marriage. His sister Basilia held Martley, a Bourges fee.

It can not be determined that William Peccatum came into England at the conquest with Richard de Bienfaite and it does not seem likely that William received his lands from Richard following the conquest. Of the Normans living in England at the time of the conquest, some returned to Normandy and joined the Norman army before the invasion, while others joined Duke William after the landing at Pevensey before the Battle of Hastings. Although William is recorded as an undertenant to Richard in 1086, he probably did not become an undertenant to Richard until after 1075. Evidence of Richard FitzGilbert’s involvement in the affairs of East Anglia occurs in 1075, when he took part in the suppression of the rebellion against Duke William by Ralph de Gael, Earl of East Anglia and others. It is not known if Richard possessed lands there before the rebellion, but he received Earl Ralph’s lands at Whaddon in Cambidgeshire, and two sokemen at Thurlow in the vicinity of Hundon. Earl Ralph’s large manor at Hundon was taken into the king’s hands. Richard FitzGilbert became important in the administration of the affairs of East Anglia and and he was the addressee, with the sheriff, of two writs instructing them to do justice toAbbot Baldwin of Bury concerning lands in Suffolk. Concerning Clare, from which Richard’s descendants took their name, Domesday Book states that Aelfric, Earl of Mercia gave “the church and all of the place” into the custody of Abbot Leofstan and his own son Whitgar. Following the Norman conquest, Duke William seized it into his own hands, but Whitgar retained the remainder of his estate. Whitgar’s lands were eventually forfeited, possibly due to his involvement with the rebel Hereward. There was some mysterious agreement between Whitgar and Richard FitzGilbert, but Whitgar’s forfeiture was the primary event in the formation of Richard’s East Anglian holdings. When these events took place can not be exactly determined. However, if the Ely land pleas took place in two stages, as suggested by some authorities, it may be significant that Richard FitzGilbert is not mentioned during the first stage in the early 1070s, but is very much in evidence during the second stage which took place c.1080.

The tenants of Richard FitzGilbert are discussed by Richard Mortimer in his article 'The Beginnings of the Honor of Clare', published in "Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1980". He states the following concerning four “outsiders” who acquired estates on his fee:

As well as some quite substantial tenants who appear to have held only of Richard fitz Gilbert, we find a class of men who were tenants in chief in their own right, or important tenants of other lords, holding small estates on Richard’s fee. There was a certain amount of interpenetration with other fees. Two causes have been suggested for this phenomenon: simple annexation, taking advantage of political or tenurial confusion to make encroachments which were then covered by a legal formula; and gifts to powerful neighbours to placate them or make them well-disposed. None of the four ‘outsiders’ held very much on Richard’s fee, which may well reflect Richard’s power in preventing annexations. Robert Blund, a former sheriff of Norfolk and a tenant in chief in the area north of Bury, had acquired a sokeman worth 3s. at West Stow in the vicinity of his estates,which looks like annexation but is hardly significant. Walter de Caen, the tenant of a large barony on the Malet fee, held the estate of a former king’s thegn at Helmingham, closer to his own interests than Richard fitz Gilbert’s. This may have been annexation, but is just as likely to reflect mutual convenience. Frodo, the brother of abbot Baldwin of Bury St. Edmunds, was much in evidence on the Bury lands, but on the more distant parts toward Norfolk; of Richard he held a small estate at Depden between Bury and Clare, on whose initiative it is not possible to say. Still on the East Anglian lands, we may suspect the process happening the other way round in the case of William Pecche, who held half a hide of Aubrey de Vere in Belcamp, in the immediate vicinity of quite a substantial manor at Gestingthorpe held of Richard.

If there was some record or information indicating the age of William Peccatum at some point in his life or the date of his death, many questions concerning him and his family might be answered. At present, the nearest dated information concerning a member of the family (other than William’s grant of Over in 1088) concerns his son Hamon by Isilia de Bourges. He appears on the Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I (1130) and 24 Hen. II (1178) but was dead by 1185 when his widow and son Geoffrey were fined for the share of the Honor of Bourn devolving on her at the death without issue of her elder sister Maud (Peverel) de Dover. Hamon Pecche, feudal Baron of Bourn served King Henry I, and he was also with King Henry II at Dover in 1155/56, and witnessed the charter whereby Aubrey de Vere was granted the 3rd penny of the pleas of Oxfordshire, becoming Earl of Oxford. Hamon’s parentage is proved in two pleas (1228 and 1236) for the possession of Over between the Abbot of Ramsey and Hamon’s grandson Hamon Pecche (d.1241). The Abbot, relying on abbey documents identifies the elder Hamon as the son of William Pecche husband of Alfwen and the first grantee of Over. Hamon’s marriage took place between 1130 and 1135, and his daughter Maud was age 50 in 1185.

That there was a close connection between this branch of the Pecche family and the de Clares is evidenced by the arms of Hamon Pecche. The arms of the de Clare family were or, three chevronels, gules (three red chevrons on a field of gold). Robert FitzRichard, younger son of Richard FitzGilbert, bore for his arms or, a fesse and two chevronels, gules (a red band across the shield dividing it in thirds with a red chevronel above and below the band on a field of gold). Hamon Pecche’s arms were identical to those of Robert FitzRichard, but on a field of silver rather than gold. When the use of arms came into practice, it was not unusual for those with the right to bear arms to adopt a variation of their lord’s arms. The inter-relationship of families and feudal service can be seen in the variations of the arms of great lords. Two good examples are the variations of the quartered shield of the de Mandevilles and the checkered shield of the de Warennes. There is probably little doubt that Robert FitzRichard was Hamon Pecche’s lord. Robert FitzRichard was also Steward to King Henry I, from whom he received the barony of Dunmow, and it is stated that Hamon Pecche was one of the king’s favorites. Ralph Pecche, Hamon’s paternal brother of the half- blood, had the manor of Cheveley from Roger FitzRichard, which was confirmed by a charter of King Henry I. Roger FitzRichard was an elder brother of Robert FitzRichard and the eldest son and heir (he inherited the Norman lands of the family) of Richard FitzGilbert, Seigneur de Bienfaite and Orbec, Lord of Tonbridge and Clare.

Gilbert Pecche, Baron of Bourn (d.1212), second son of Hamon Pecche by Alice Peverel, was a knight of the abbot of Bury and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land before 1188. He became heir to the family estates at the death of his brother Geoffrey in the same year. Gilbert Pecche married Alice FitzWalter, sister of the Magna Charta Surety Robert FitzWalter and daughter of Walter FitzRobert (son of Robert FitzRichard), Lord of Dunmow of the House of de Clare, and his wife Maud de Lucy, Lady of Dis. By this marriage, Gilbert Pecche had a part of the manor of Dis in Norfolk as his wife’s marriage portion. Gilbert Pecche’s son and heir, Hamon, was a minor at his father’s death, but had reached his majority by 1215, and joined his family (the de Clares) in the baronial revolt against King John. His lands in Essex, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and Lincoln were confiscated, but restored in October of 1217 when he returned to his allegiance, King Henry III having succeeded to the throne.

Information from: The Families of LOU DRAPER & CHARLIE MARTIN of Johnson and Henry Counties, Missouri" by James M McMillen, Arlington, Texas

Published in .pdf format 13 January 2010

The Clopton line, starting with the progenitor, is shown below, The spellings of Clopton, Cloptone, Cloptunne, Cloptuna, etc, were almost arbitrary and differences are unimportant. The name is spelled “Cloptú” on the stained glass windows in Holy Trinity Church in Long Melford (see under IX, John Clopton, page 21).

I Willimus Peccatume of Cloptuna (William de Cloptunne), lived in the 11th and early 12th Centuries. The name was sometimes given as Peccatú, which with Peccatume was the Latin form of the name, or as Péché, the Old French form. He was listed in the Domesday Book,24 under the designation Peccatú, but indexed

under Péché. He is shown holding three parcels of land in Suffolk, including Cloptuna in Wickhambrook, and one in Essex, all former church land possibly given him by William the Conqueror for his part in the Norman invasion of England. The name in either Latin or French means Sin. One can only speculate on the significance.

According to one unpublished source25 William de Cloptunne was married twice, the first time to (1) an English woman, Alfwen (died about 1088) and, apparently at an advanced age, the second to (2) Islia (died about 1121), daughter and heiress of Herve de Bourges and his wife Jenita.

Children of William de Cloptunne were:

Walter de Cloptunne (1), son and heir (below)

Simon Péché (1)

Ralph Péché (1)

Basilia Péché (2)

Hamon Péché (2) (died before 1185), married Alice Peverel, Issue:

Gilbert Péché (died 1212), married Alice FitzWalter

Geoffrey Péché

Guillaume PECCHE.

Spouse: Alfwen. Guillaume PECCHE and Alfwen were married in 1088. Children were: Sir William DE CLOPTUNNE, Ralph PECCHE, Simon PECCHE.

Spouse: Isilia DE BOURGES. Guillaume PECCHE and Isilia DE BOURGES were married. Children were: Hamon PECCHE, Basilia PECCHE.

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There is confusion about the parentage of Guillaume Pecche. He could NOT have been the son of Adeline De Domfront. She died in about 1043 at the age of 18. She had one son, Geoffrey de Percche, born either 1042 or 1043. It has been accepted by many that Guillaume was born in the 1060's. However, there are comments that his second marriage happened at an advanced age. It is most likely Guillaume was born c. 1020-1030, in Brittany, and arrived in England during the reign of Edward the Confessor.
In 1066 A. D. as a knight under William the Conqueror, William de Peche I helped the Normans conquer England. As a result, de Peche became a Baron. He and his descendants were given significant properties to hold for the king.

We should indeed be open to the possibility that Guilloume Peche did accompany William conqueror in the Battle of Hastings and became the Baron of Bourne-Clopton as a consequence, since he shows up in the knightly roster of those accompanying William Conqueror:

http://www.three-peaks.net/1066.htm

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The progenitor of this family is reported to be the following Guillaume Peche who accompanied the Conqueror from Normandy.
William (Guillaume) Peche of Cloptunna and Dalham (d after 1088) married Alfwen - their son
William de Clopton of Clopton and his son Walter de Clopton of Clopton Hall (d after 1154