514
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. IL DEC. 24, 190*.
Alured de Monte-Sorel held three knights'
fees of Gerbert de Percy, a representative
of Roger Arundel, the Domesday owner of
Whitelackington.
In all the pedigrees of the Speke family which I have carefully examined I have been able to find no link establishing a connexion between the L'Especs of Yorkshire and those of Devonshire or Somerset. That there was a connexion, and that the West- Country Spekes claimed such in early times, is probable ; but, so far as I know, satisfactory evidence thereof is non-existent. It would appear that they were settled in Devonshire as early as the other branch is found in York- shire. Sir William Pole, who wrote in the early part of the seventeenth century, refers to Brampford Speke, a parish near Exeter, as follows :
" It hath a very longe tyme bine the inheritance of the name of Speak or Espeak, which have bine in the first tymes, not long after ye Conquest, men of very greate estate and condition, as it may appeare by this deede followinge, as exemplified in the lieger booke of thabbey of lior."
The deed need not be quoted here, but it would seem the manor of Brampford was conferred, as a reward for his services, upon the founder of the family. He was given also other manors in Devonshire and else- where ; then, after a time, branches were to be found settled in the adjoining county of Somerset, and also in Bedfordshire and Lancashire. The daughter of Sir Walter 1'Espec married Peter Roos, the founder of the family of the Duke of Rutland. Walter's only son was killed while hunting, whereupon the father, full of grief, became a monk, and died in 1153. I think it probable that he was brother to the grandfather of Richard 1'Espec, and that his (Walter's) father was one of the Conqueror's fortunate followers. I think there can be no question but the name 1'Espec is derived from the Norman-French 1'Espicier, in O.E. the spicer. In the reign of Ed- ward III. it became Speke. A variant was Speck. Leland writes it Spek. It is a strange circumstance that the name is not to be found in the 'Testa de Nevill.'
Richard 1'Espec's great-grandson Sir William Espec married Alice, daughter of Sir William Gervoise, of Exon, and had by her a son William, who married Juliana, daughter of Sir John de Valletort, of Clist St. Lawrence. They had two sons, William and John. John resided at Brampford ; his wife was Constance, daughter of John de Esse, and they had three sons, two of whom died s.p., leaving William the third son, who assumed the name of bpeke. John Speke, son of this William,
married Joan, daughter of John Keynes, of
Dowlish Wake (who died 8 Henry V.), and
thereby obtained estates in Dowlish which
had been acquired by the family of Keynes,
in the time of Henry III., by marriage with
the heiress of Thomas Wake. Sir John
Speke, Knt., the son of John Speke and Joan
his wife, married Alice, cousin and heiress
of Sir Thomas Beauchamp, Knt., who died in
1430, and in that way the Spekes acquired
Whitelackington, and also the manorof Ashill.
About the middle of the fifteenth century the
Spekes removed from Brampford to Somerset-
shire, taking up their residence first at
Whitelackington House, next at Dillington
House, and finally at Jordans.
Since writing the above, I believe I have traced the source of LADY RUSSELL'S error. In 'A Compleat [?] History of Somerset,' published at Sherborne in 1742, this paragraph occurs :
"Whitelackington, a village in soil rich and fertile, and in situation healthy and pleasant, once the seat of the family of L'Especs or Spekes. Their ancestor Richard Espec founded three goodly abbeys, Kirkham, Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, and Warden, in Bedford, in the second of which he lived two years, and there died and was buried. This Richard was the first that fixed his seat here, and from him twenty generations had descended in Camden's time "in 1607 !
This work was mainly a compilation from Camden, with additions by other writers, and the above extract affords another specimen of the way in which history is written.
WM. LOCKE RADFOED.
Ilminster.
WOOLMEN IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY (10 th
S. ii. 448). Appended to Miss E. Dixon's excellent paper on * The Florentine Wool Trades in the Middle Ages,' printed in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series, vol. xii., 1898, is a bibliography which your correspondent may find it worth his while to look at. G. L. APPERSON.
James Bischoff wrote 'A Comprehensive History of the Woollen and Worsted Manu- factures ' (London, 1842, 2 vols.), and John James a 4 History of the Worsted Manu- facture in England ' (London, 1857).
WILLIAM E. A. AXON.
Manchester.
Your correspondent will find some in- teresting particulars of the wool trade in Gloucestershire in ' The Cely Papers : Selec- tions from the Correspondence and Memo- randa of the Cely Family, Merchants of the Staple, 1475-88' (Royal Historical Society, Camden Series, iii. vol. i., 1900). For later times I may mention ' State of the Case and
