TllK DESCENT OF THE EARLDOM OK OXFOIU). If)

the Domesday Aubrey.* We owe to that accomphshed genealogist, our hitc valuable and much lamented member, Mr. Stapleton, the information which has set us right upon this point ; and which he made known in his memoir on the Barony of William of Arques, in the county of Kent, which was read at our first ArchiDological meeting at Canterbury, and afterw^ards printed in the Archa^ologia of the Society of Antiquaries. William of Arques, the Domesday lord of Folkstone, left two daughters his coheiresses, of whom Emma the younger was married, first to Nigel de Monvillc, and secondly to Manasses conite of Guisnes in Flanders. By the latter alone she had issue, and that an only daughter named Rosa, otherwise Sibilla, wdio, having been married to Henry castellan of Bourbourg, died in her father's lifetime, leaving again a single female heiress, named Beatrice. It was this Beatrice who was destined to convey the dignity of a comte to the man who might win her in marriage. Her grandmother, Emma, was still living, and it was by her advice, being an English woman, that a husband was selected in the English court for the future comtesse of Guisnes. The nobleman of her choice was Aubrey de Vere, son of Aubrey the king's chamberlain.*^ The marriage of Beatrice is said to have been hastened because she was in precarious health, and lest, in case of her death without issue, the comte of Guisnes should revert to the next heir, by name Arnold de Gand. The comte Manasses died in the year 1137 ; whereupon Henry de Bourbourg, the father of the 3'oung heiress, dispatched a message to his son-in-law, Aubrey de Vere, requiring him to come immediately to take possession of the county of Guisnes, and obtain investiture from his "• Probably Ver in the Bessin, not Vire, with the Comte of Guisnes, which is of which Hugh Earl of Chester was related in the text. After a string of castellan in the reign of William the Con- princely alliances, it terminates witli a queror. See Stapleton's Rolls of the fictitious marriage between Albery de Ver Norman Exchequer, vol. i. pp. lxxx.,cliii., Erie of Genney, who came over at the vol. ii. p. clvii. Conquest, and Beatrice a sister of the •^ Vol. xxxi. pp. 216 — 257. Conqueror. It is to be regretted that ^ Leland has a fabulous pedigree : " Ex Arthur Collins, in his " Historical Collec- libellogenealogise ComitumOxoniensium," tions on the noble families of Cavendish, tracing the Veres in a male line of Erles Holies, Vere, Hurley. aii<l Ogle," fol. 1752, of Genney, alias Gisney, from Milo Duke has given some credence to this forgery. of Anglers, living in the year 800. This The memoirs of the house of Vere in that is founded, of course, on the connection work occupy pp. 214 — 24.3.