heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE DE MAULEYS. I I I
small monasteries first suppressed by Henry VIII., the gross income as
returned by the Prior to one of the King's Commissions being only
128 is. g\d. (Arch. Cant., vol. v. p. 20511.)
Robert de Turnham had two sons. The eldest, Stephen, seems to
have held the office of Seneschal of Anjou, 1186, and his name is connected
with one of the most romantic episodes in English history.*
Johanna, youngest daughter of Eleanor and Henry II., was affianced
to William the Good, King of Sicily. When his bride arrived, he was so
much impressed with her beauty and sweet temper, so far exceeding anything
that Peter of Blois (his old tutor and her father's chaplain) had described,
that he greatly augmented the already immense dower which he had
promised.
He seems to have been, however, an old man, and soon died childless,
leaving her large legacies in his will. On these, his successor, King Tancred,
immediately laid violent hands, and, to prevent her complaints, shut her up
in prison at Messina.
The fair widow, however, contrived to communicate with her brother,
Richard I., and he at once hastened to his sister's rescue, liberated her from
the power of the tyrant, and forced him to disgorge some part, at least, of
the spoil. An arm-chair of solid gold, footstools of gold, an embroidered
tent, a table of the same, with tressels twelve feet long, with urns and vases
of same precious materials, formed, we are told by Piers of Langtoft and
others, part of her household chattels so recovered. Moreover, Tancred
was compelled to compound for her dower and legacies with the enormous
payment of 40,000 ounces of gold.
Richard, however, as some acknowledgment, presented Tancred with
the famous " sword, Escalibert," the brand of the great King Arthur, lately
found at Glastonbury during his father's antiquarian researches for the tomb
of that king :" And Richard at that time gave him a fair juelle,
The good sword Caliburn, which Arthur luffed so well."t
Richard was also rewarded for his zealous care of his sister by the
arrival of his mother Eleanor with the fair Berengaria, daughter of Sancho
the Wise, King of Navarre, with whom the lion-hearted King had been
much smitten at a tournament at Pampeluna, her native city, and whom
he would long ago have married but for his compulsory betrothal to
the fair and frail Alice of France.
Eleanor, now 70 years of age, was anxious to see her son married, and
therefore exerted herself to accomplish this object but the same reason
;
made her anxious to return home, and she gladly committed the destined
bride to her daughter Johanna, as a chaperon, and then sailed for Rome.
*
Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England ; Berengaria. t Robert of Brune.