heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE HOTHAMS. 189
The eldest son, Peter, married a daughter of Thomas Staunton, by
whom he had several children. His eldest son, John, was created a Knight
of the Bath, which Order, Camden says, is of great antiquity, and, according
to Anstis, was conferred as early as William the Conqueror.*
He was also summoned as baron of the realm 8th Edward II., 1296,
though Dugdale says, " after this John, none of his descendants had the
" like summons."
His grandson, John, married again into the family of Stafford, and
had an only child, Alice, who married twice. Her second husband was
Sir John Trussel ;
her first husband was Hugh le Despencer, son of Edward
le Despencer, whose father was the Hugh le Despencer commonly called
" the younger," who was executed by order of Queen Isabella, wife of
Edward II., at Hereford, November 28th, 1326. The family tradition is that
Hugh the husband of Alice was also executed that same year, and that in
consequence of this, the ancient arms of the family of Hotham were changed
by Thomas Hotham, the great-uncle of Alice, with the advice of the Bishop
of ElyṪhis
is possible, though Hugh must have been a very young man at
that time. Perhaps he was his grandfather's esquire, and perhaps, because
of his relationship, involved in the same fate by that " angry and outrageous
" woman." But I can find no evidence of this, or that any one was
executed at the same time, except Simon de Reading, late marshal of
the King's house, who was " hanged on the same gallows, but ten foot
" lower." f Alice, too, must have been very young, as she did not die
until forty-three years afterwards, viz. 1370 perhaps only lately married.
But they had two children, Hugh, and Anna who afterwards married
Edward Boteler, and they would be entitled, as their mother was an
heiress, to quarter the arms of Hotham with the family coat of Le Despencer.
And if we realize the horror and execration with which the
Le Despencers were then regarded, we can imagine how any family coat
associated therewith would be accounted as utterly disgraced. For Holinshead
says he was "drawn in his own cote armour, about the which there
" were letters embrodered plaine to be read conteining a parcell of the
" 52nd Psalm 1-7." In the Harleian MS. we are told (vol. i. p. 89), " She
" made her poor condemned adversary, in strange disguise, attend her
" progress. He was set upon a poor lean deformed jade, and clothed in
" a tarbrace the robe in those days due to the basest of thieves and
" rascals and so was led through all the towns and villages with trumpets
" sounding before him, and all the spiteful disgraces and affronts that they
" could devise to cast upon him." Dallaway mentions Hugh le Despencer
as one of the few instances of those who suffered the indignity of being
compelled to appear
in tabards with their arms reversed.
A 2
* Encyclopedia Heraldica. \V. Berry. f Stowe.