By John Watson- Taylor. 



303 



This Geoffrey had four sons : Ernulph, Geoffrey, William, and 

 Eobert, of whom the last seems to have predeceased his brothers. 

 In the struggle between King Stephen and the Empress Maud the 

 father gave his allegiance alternately to both parties and from 

 both received valuable considerations until at last the King lost 

 patience, arrested him, and compelled him to surrender his lands 

 and strongholds, the sources of his power. Geoffrey, however, 

 managed to escape from custody, and with his eldest son, Ernulph, 

 he fled to the Fen-land, where his fury against the King led him 

 to every species of violence not only against the civil but even 

 against the ecclesiastical power. In 1 1 44 he was slain near Burwell 

 and his son, being taken prisoner, was banished and disinherited 

 as a punishment for the sacrilege they had committed. The earldom 

 thus devolved on the second son, Geoffrey (died 1166), and later 

 on the third son, William (died 1189), who both dying childless, 

 the earldom became extinct. 1 The earldom was revived by King 

 John in favour of Geoffrey Fitz Piers, 2 who had married the grand- 

 daughter of Beatrice de Mandeville (sister of the first earl), and 

 his son, Geoffrey, assumed the name of de Mandeville. This family 

 held, in Wiltshire, Chiriell and Winterslow, the former of which 

 passed to Maud de Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick, and the 

 latter to the descendants of Isabel de Vipount, two of the four 

 sisters in whom this line ended in 1298-9. 3 



Meanwile Ernulph, the eldest son of the first earl, re-appeared 

 in England in the reign of Henry II., 4 and among the grants of 

 land that he was permitted to retain were Bratton with Estrop in 

 Highworth, held by the service of forty days' ward at Devizes 

 Castle and 20s. yearly. He left at least two sons, Geoffrey and 

 Kalph, of whom the former succeeded him in the manor of Bratton. 

 To Geoffrey (I.) of Bratton succeeded his son, Geoffrey II., whose 

 wife was named Agnes, and one of his sons Geoffrey, but his heir 



1 Bound, Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 244. 

 2 Ibid, p. 39. 

 3 Dugdale, Baronage, L, 707. 

 4 Geoffrey de Mandeville, p. 228. 



