“Willelmus Arcarius” held a barony in the hundred of Sunburne, in Hampshire. (Domesday.) This family took its name from the office it held under the Dukes of Normandy before the Conquest. Its derivation is rather uncertain, but a family of L’Archer, still flourishing in Brittany, bears the same three arrows that were borne by the English Archers, differenced in tincture. The latter claim as their ancestor Fulbert l’Archer, the father of Robert, to whom the Conqueror entrusted the charge of his son, afterwards Henry I. But Robert the tutor was the son of William (see Fitz William) and not of Fulbert, who is neither found in Domesday, nor in any list now extant of the Conqueror’s companions. According to the habit of those times, Robert only took the name of Archer after his father's death, and was the undoubted progenitor of the Barons Archer.—Recherches sur le Domesday.

On his accession to the throne, Henry I. proved his gratitude to his former tutor by considerable grants of land; and Robert l’Archer added to these by marrying an heiress. His wife Sebit, the daughter of Henry de Villiers, sewer of the Earl of Warwick, brought him Umberslade in Warwickshire, which he transmitted to nineteen generations of his descendants in the male line. It was a regular and monotonous succession, unbroken by forfeiture or attainders, and unmarked by any violent transitions of fortune. His grandson was champion to Thomas Earl of Warwick, who by special grant conferred on him and his heirs, liberty to hunt and hawk in his demesne, paying twelve broad arrows and a couple of capons yearly at Whitsuntide as an acknowledgment. Thomas Archer served under John of Gaunt in the French wars; and was taken prisoner in 1373 while on a foraging expedition at Ouchy-le-Chaâteau near Soissons. His successor, again, was summoned in 1419, “as one that did bear ancient arms from his ancestors,” to serve the King in person for the defence of the realm. Sir Simon Archer, sheriff of Warwickshire in 1627, a man of letters well versed in antiquarian lore, aided Sir William Dugdale in compiling his history of the county. Thomas, his son, was a colonel in the service of the parliament, and raised a troop of horse at his own expense; but, on discovering the ulterior designs of his leaders, threw up his commission and left England; remaining abroad till the Restoration. His grandson was created Lord Archer of Umberslade in 1747; but this title expired in 1778 with Andrew, second lord, who left three daughters and coheiresses; 1. Sarah, first Countess of Plymouth and then Countess Amherst; 2. Elizabeth, married to Christopher Musgrave, a cadet of the house of Eden Hall; and 3. Maria, married to Henry Howard of Corby. All, except Maria, left children.

Sir Bernard Burke claims a descent from this house, for an Irish family of the name, “settled at a very remote period, in Kilkenny,” and now resident at Mount John, Wicklow. The Cornish Archers (one of whom represented Helston in parliament, temp. Henry VI.), bear totally different arms.

Another family, the Sherburnes of Stonyhurst in Lancashire, claimed descent from “a grandson of Geoffrey L’Arbalestrier (or Galfridus Balistrarius) named Robert de Shyrburne, to whom, temp. Richard I., John Earl of Morton, gave six carucates of land in Haconsall and Preesall. Robert had the manor of Hameldon by gift of his grandfather, and survived to 45 Hen. II.” —Bain's Lancashire. His grandson and namesake was Seneschal of Wiswall and Blackburnshire, having married the co-heiress of Wiswall; and his great- grandson attended Edward I. to the siege of Calais. Sir Nicholas Sherborne, who was created a baronet in 1685, was the last of the family. His son only lived to be nine years old, and his daughter, who was the wife of Thomas, eighth Duke of Norfolk, had no children. The Duchess gives an account of her father and mother on the stately monument that she erected to their memory in Milton Church. It is a wholesome picture of simple old-fashioned kindness and goodwill. Sir Nicholas imported wool from Jersey, and had all his poor neighbours taught to spin at Stonyhurst, where, for more than a year, several rooms were set apart for their use. When all had learned their lesson, he gave to each a pound of wool ready for spinning, and “a wheel to set up for themselves.” His wife survived him ten years, and “continued as long as she lived doing good.” She and her husband yearly distributed a sum of money to the poor on All Saints’ Day, “she serving them with her own hands”; and she sedulously attended to the sick and needy, keeping a store of medicines and necessaries—”an apothecary’s shop”—in her house for all who came. On her death in 1754, the estate reverted to the son of her aunt Elizabeth, Humphrey Weld of Lulworth Castle; and in 1794 Stonyhurst was leased to the Jesuit Fathers that had been expelled from Liège by the proscriptions of the French Revolution, and became a great Roman Catholic college. “The venerable house, which stands on an eminence, commanding extensive views of Calderbottom and Ribblesdale, yet screened from the north by the vast bulk of Longridge, was probably begun by Sir Richard Sherburne, who died 1594, and finished by his son, as the arms of both, with their cyphers and the date 1596, appear on the drawing-room chimney-piece. The domestic chapel was, according to the custom of our old mansions, above the gateway, till within memory, when a spacious and handsome oratory was fitted up, which, together with the size and general disposition of the apartments, rendered the whole easily convertible to the purpose to which it has been munificently devoted by the owner—a large Catholic seminary.”— Whitaker.

Stoke-Archer, in Gloucestershire, takes its name from a family that held it by serjeancy, and ended with Geoffrey le Archer in 1350. His daughter and eventual heiress, Joan, had two husbands; the second, who married her when she was “the elderly and wealthy widow of Sir Thomas de Berkeley,” was Sir William Whittington of Pauntley, the father of the famous Dick Whittington, who became Lord Mayor of London.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, de Arcis, de Arches.