Early seated in West Sussex, where Andrew de Camoys was Lord of Broadwater in the time of King John. His son Ralph, with whom Dugdale commences his account of the family, was among the rebellious barons who “returned to obedience” on the accession of Henry III, and served as Sheriff of Sussex in 1241. He died in 1258, seised of Wodeton in Surrey, Ditton (formerly known as Ditton-Camois) in Cambridgeshire, and Burwell in Oxfordshire, leaving Sir Ralph, his son and heir, then forty years of age. This second Ralph was again in opposition to the king during the Barons’ War, and one of the Council of State that governed the realm after the battle of Lewes. Shortly before his death in 1276, he had a grant of the manor of Trotton, which “then obtained the distinction of Camois Court, and included Woolbeding and other members.”—Dallaway's Sussex. The next in succession, Sir John was twice married, and both times to an heiress named Margaret; his first wife being the daughter of Richard Foliot, the second, of John de Gatesden. Each gave him a son; but the second Margaret, “better affecting Sir William Painell, departed from this her husband, and lived adulterously with him.” Sir John accepted the position with true philosophy, and in a practical and business-like spirit. He “came to an accord with Painell,” and by a deed, given under his hand and seal, formally made over to him all his right and title to his wife, and to all her goods and chattels. This curious charter, which has been preserved by Dugdale, is duly drawn out in legal form, and attested by eight witnesses. There can be little doubt that the contracting parties held it to be valid; for the right of a man to sell his wife long continued to be a favourite article of belief in England, and among the ignorant classes is far from having yet died out. The instances of such sales within the present century are too numerous to quote. Sometimes a halter is placed round the wife’s neck, and the market price varies from ₤40 and a supper (this is quite an exceptional case) to a quartern of gin and a bull pup. In 1815, a woman was put up to auction on the market-place of Pontefract, and changed hands for half-a-guinea; in 1820 a “decent-looking man” brought his wife into the cattle-market at Canterbury, hired a pen, and sold her to a townsman for 5s. On one occasion a beer-shop keeper at Little Horton (near Bradford) had the sale announced beforehand by the village bellman; on another (in 1877) the articles of sale were actually drawn up by an attorney. A woman who had fetched the unusual price of £ 15 defended her claim as the heiress to some property in 1825 against her husband’s relations, on the plea that a sale in the market-place constituted a legal divorce. As recently as 1881 a Sheffield artisan disposed of his helpmate for a quart of beer. It is said that the origin of this custom may be traced back to the old laws of the Longobards and West Goths, and is even discernible in the Pandects of Spain and the Netherlands. On the death of Sir John, the frail Margaret was formally married to her paramour; and in 1299 petitioned Parliament for her dower, which had been withheld from her by the King’s Attorney on the ground that she had forsaken Camoys of her own accord, and never been reconciled to him. She pleaded that she had committed no adultery, but "abode with Painell in virtue of that grant before recited.” Nor was her claim at once disallowed, but referred to the next Parliament, and the decision was only given against her two years afterwards. A statute was at the same time passed to prevent any similar transaction for the future.

Sir John’s son by his first marriage with the Foliott heiress, Sir Ralph, was a soldier from his earliest years. He had already been in the Scottish and Gascon wars, when, in 1305, he and many others received the honour of knighthood with Prince Edward “by bathing and other sacred ceremonies;” and went with him again to Scotland in the retinue of the elder Hugh Le Despencer. He was summoned to Parliament in 1313: in 1319 was Governor of Windsor Castle and Warden of Windsor Forest, and received in the same year a grant to himself, Elizabeth his wife, and Hugh their son, Dallaway, in his History of Sussex, makes this Sir Hugh a younger brother of Thomas Lord Camoys; but the charter above quoted sufficiently proves his parentage. He married the daughter of Sir Hugh de Brebeuf of Surrey, and left an only child, Elizabeth, the wife of Sir John Hamelin. of Westbury in Hampshire, then forfeited to the Crown. “But,” concludes Dugdale, “as he had been of the retinue of Hugh Despencer the elder, so was he an adherent to Hugh the younger; wherefore in 1 Edward III. he procured the king’s pardon for that transgression.” His eldest son, Sir Ralph II., who had married Joan Le Despencer, a daughter of the luckless favourite, and served in the French wars in the retinue of Henry Earl of Lancaster, was knighted in 1364 by John of Gaunt’s own hand during his Spanish campaign, but never received a writ of summons. He left three children; a son who d. s. p.; a daughter who was Abbess of Ramsey; and another married to Edmund Courtenay.

Thus ended the elder line; but there still remained the descendants of Sir John by his second wife, the discarded Margaret de Gatesden. Her grandson, Sir Thomas, was summoned to Parliament in 1383 In the same year, “being elected one of the Knights of the Shire of Surrey, he was specially discharged from that service, by reason he was a Banneret.”—Dugdale. as Lord Camoys of Broadwater, and stood so high in the good graces of Richard II., that he was among the obnoxious favourites subsequently removed from Court by the indignant nobles. Yet he was no ignoble minion, but a tried and most gallant soldier. He fought the French by sea and land; followed John of Gaunt on his romantic expedition to Castile; was retained to serve Henry V. in his wars with two knights, twenty-seven men-at-arms, and sixty archers; and commanded the left wing of the army on the glorious day of Agincourt. On this last occasion, he received the Garter as the meed of his services. His wife was Elizabeth Mortimer, eldest daughter of Edmund, third Earl of March, by his royal wife Philippa Plantagenet, and the widow of Harry Hotspur:—Shakespeare’s Lady Percy, whom he, by a strange error, invariably calls “gentle Kate.” Their son Sir Richard died in his father’s life-time, leaving a boy-heir who never lived to come of age, and two daughters; Margaret married to Ralph Rademilde of Rademilde in Sussex, and Eleanor, married to Sir Roger Lewknor. Lord Camoys himself died in 1430; and his wife, surviving him, held Trotton in dower, and lies buried under a stately tomb in the chancel of the parish church, which had been rebuilt by him about thirty years before. The slab of Petworth marble on which her brass rests is probably the largest ever taken from that quarry. She is represented in the stiff winged coif and flowing mantle of the time; her husband, in full armour, lies by her side, with his left hand on his sword-hilt, and the right clasped in hers; each wears the collar of SS fastened by a padlock round the throat; and a diminutive effigy of a praying monk stands at Lady Camoys’ knee.

The two grand-daughters shared the estates; and after the lapse of exactly four centuries, the barony of Camoys was called out of abeyance in favour of Thomas Stonor of Stonor in Oxfordshire, a descendant of the elder of these coheiresses. Lord Camoys had, however, probably a younger son; the “Sir Roger de Camois who in 22 Henry VI. was taken Prisoner in the Wars of France, and there detained in great misery. Whereupon Isabell his Wife had an Assignation of £40 per Annum for her life, to be paid by the Mayor and Commonalty of the City of London.” There is no mention of his posterity.

A Norman name: Camous; a local name