This name is not territorial, though it erroneously became D’Avenant, or Davenant, in England. It is evidently one of the familiar sobriquets or nicknames The Roll contains many instances of them, including Talbot, one of the greatest of our historical names; and they abound in the Magni Rotuli Scaccariæ Normannæ, as well as in our own official records of the twelfth century. There is the good-looking man - Belhomme, Belteste, Bellejamb, Bello Viso, Le Merveillus, with the beautiful beard, Belebarbe; the ugly man, Vis de Chen, Vis de Lou, Mal Taillie; the brave man, Tire Avant, L’Espe; the grave man, Qui non ridet; the undecided man, Qui va, qui vadet; the short man, Petitsire, Courtecuisse; the man whose cap sits awry, Tort Chapel; the more unfortunate one whose neck or hand is crooked, Tort Col, Tortemayns; the man of doubtful lineage, Sanc Mesle; the thin man, Homo Magri (he was a Roscelin) the grasping man, Prentout, &C.&C. Primogenitus, Probus Homo, Le Chauf, Le Mauvenu or Malvenu, and Saunchef (brainless), speak for themselves; but others are more difficult of interpretation, such as Megresauce, Seignesauce, Eil de Boeuf, Quinque panes, Bat les Boes (can this be Flog the Oxen?), Bat Lapel, Folenfaunt (madcap?), Peu de Let, Amara herba, Tasteavor, Embrasseterre, Baillabien, Uldebert Bona- Filia, and Dionysia Escorche-boef. Pie de Lievre must, I fear, have been a runaway, as Oil de Larrun was a thief; and the unhappy cognomen borne by Agnes Mala Mulier is equally intelligible. Here and there we come upon the memorial of some pretty woman, as Beaupel (fair skin), La Blondesse, Agnes la Bele, Amabil Blancfrunt; or of some love-passages, as Duceparole, Duzamour, Fynamour, Playndamour, &c. in which the Normans delighted; and in this instance, at least, a highly complimentary one. The French avetiant^-engaging, pre­possessing—was at one time adopted into our own tongue. Hengist’s daughter Rowena—the maiden of the “fair face and flattering tongue” is thus described : “Of body she was right avenant, Of fair color, with sweet semblaunt.”

Sometimes it was given as a Christian name. “Avenant uxor Willielmi Wad.” occurs in Norfolk in 1199.—(Rotuli Curiae Regis.).

Contemporary with her we find Godefrid and Richard Avenant in Normandy (mentioned in the Exchequer Rolls of 1198); and the name was of even earlier date in England. Osbert Avenant witnesses a charter of Hugh, Abbot of St Edmund’s (elected in 1157) to William Fitz Leo in Suffolk. “Petrus Auenaund” held of Earl Warren’s fee in Gressinghall, Norfolk. “Avenant” paid a fine in Cornwall in 1213. The pedigree of the family given by Sir Richard Hoare begins with Sir John Davenant, living in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., but neither to him, nor to nine generations of his descendants, is any place of habitation assigned. Yet, according to Collinson, Wood-Avenant (now Wood-Advent) in Somersetshire, was held by them soon after the time of Hen. III.; and they were very early settled in the parish of Sible-Hedingham in Essex, where in the fourteenth century Nicolas Davenant held part of a knight’s fee of John, seventh Earl of Oxford. Their place (only sold in the last century) was named from them, Davenant’s Land, and William, tenth in descent from Sir John, rebuilt the house in 1571, as appears by an inscription on the outer girder of the roof. His son John, citizen and merchant of London, was the father of, 1, Edward, of Whiddy Island, co. Cork; 2, John, Bishop of Salisbury, who died in 1641, and is buried in Salisbury Cathedral; 3, William, of Breedon-super- Mont, Leicester; 4, James, and 5, Ralph. Edward’s grandson, John Davenant, was of St. Martin’s in New Sarum and Landford in Wilts, where he took up his abode, and his son served as Sheriff of the county in 1686. But the next heir died childless, leaving his estate, encumbered with heavy mortgages, to his three sisters, Rebecca, Catherine, and Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Woodford.

Sir William Davenant, the Poet Laureate of Charles II., was, according to another pedigree given in Hoare’s ‘Wiltshire,’ the great-nephew of the William Davenant who re-built Davenant’s Land. His father It is shrewdly suspected that he was the son of Shakespeare. “Mrs. Davenant is represented as a woman of beauty and gaiety, and a particular favourite of Shakespeare’s, who was accustomed to lodge at the Crown on his journies between Warwick and Oxford.”—Chalmers. One of the young poet’s first attempts in verse was an Ode in remembrance of Master William Shakespeare. kept the Crown Tavern at Oxford, and was Mayor of the town in 1621. Born in 1605, he made his first appearance at Court as the page of the Duchess of Richmond at sixteen, and subsequently lived for six or seven years in the family of Fulk Greville, Lord Brooke. The loss of his patron forced him to have recourse to the stage as a bread-winner; and his plays and masks were acted with such success and applause that, on the death of Ben Jonson, the Queen procured for him the vacant laurel. But his lucky star was soon eclipsed by the coming storms of the Civil War. He was twice apprehended as “the King’s friend”; escaped to France, returned to England to serve as Lieut.-Gen. of Ordnance under one of his former patrons, Lord Newcastle; was knighted for his gallantry at the siege of Gloucester; and finally, when the royal cause was lost, went back to Paris and professed the Roman Catholic faith. It was then he commenced his principal work, ‘Gondibert’; but the two first books, published in England, attracted little notice, and he sought to mend his fortunes in America. He embarked for Virginia, but the vessel was captured by an English cruiser, and he was imprisoned in Cowes Castle till, in 1650, he was transferred to the Tower, and ordered to be tried by a High Commission Court. His life was spared—some say by the intervention of Milton—but he remained in prison for two whole years. On his release the poor poet opened a theatre in Rutland House, Chester-house- yard, and received the patent of a playhouse, under the title of the Duke’s Company, when his friends came back to power at the Restoration. He died eight years afterwards, and was buried with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey.

He had married Frances, daughter of James Molins, and had numerous descendants. One of these, James Davenant, of Clearbrook in Herefordshire, married Ann, daughter of Sir Robert Corbet of Stoke in Shropshire, and in the end his heiress, for both her brothers died childless, and none of her sisters married. Corbet Davenant, her only child, took the name of Corbet in 1783, and received a baronetcy three years afterwards. But he left no posterity.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Avenel.