A title of office, borne by several different families, of whom two, at least, ranked among the most ancient and honourable of Yorkshire. The Constables of Flamborough and their branches derived from the Barons of Halton, Constables of Chester, who, in right of this office, were Premier Barons in Hugh Lupus’ Palatine Earldom. “William Constabular” witnesses his charter to St. Werburgh’s Abbey; but, according to Wotton, the surname of Constable was first assumed nearly two hundred years afterwards, by the posterity of Robert de Lacy, the second son of a Baron of Halton who died in 1190, and from whom he received a grant of Flamborough. It cannot therefore be this family (now represented in the female line by Lord Herries) that is here designated. They bore Quarterly Gules and Vert, over all a bend Or. The Constables that gave their name to Burton-Constable and were created Viscounts of Dunbar by James I., have a more hazy genealogy. They claim descent from “Ulbert, son of the ‘Constable’ who fought on the Conqueror’s side at Hastings,” and a Saxon heiress named Erneburg; but of this “Constable” no mention is made by Wace in his account of the battle, nor can I find him entered in Domesday. In a commentary on the Bayeux Tapestry, published in France in 1881, I find that the “Turold,” whose name appears upon it, is believed not to be (as hitherto supposed) the dwarf holding the horse, but the figure on horseback, and represents Turold, Connétable de Bayeux, who is mentioned in contemporary charters, and apparently held the important castle of Rochester. It is even suggested that he, and not Queen Matilda, was the donor of the Tapestry. He died before the compilation of Domesday.

His son, Richard Fitz-Turold, held seventy knight’s fee in Cornwall and Devon under the Earl of Mortaine; and Ralph Fitz-Turold under Bishop Odo. His descendants (according to the same authority) took the name of Dinant, Dynham, and Caerdinan (from a castle), and built Restormel Castle. The author of The Norman People conjectures them to have been a junior branch of the house of De Gand or De Alost, deriving their name from an ancestor who was Constable of De Gand’s great barony of Folkingham. He shows that the arms of these Constables were the same as those of the De Gands (Barry of 6, Or and Azure, a bend Gules) minus the bend. But this coat was in reality that of Fulk d’Oyry, a great Lincolnshire baron, assumed from his co-heiress late in the thirteenth century, before which date the Constables bore Or, a fesse componée Argent and Azure, in chief a lion passant Gules, v. Poulson's Holderness.

It is however, clear, from the same authority, that there was a close connection between the families; for Poulson asserts that Erneburga, the great Saxon heiress who gave her name to Erneburg-Burton in Holderness, was twice married, first to Gilbert de Alost, and secondly to Ulbert le Constable. Burton passed to the descendants of Ulbert, “the name of Erenburg-Burton gradually yielding to that of Burton-Constable, and was held for many centuries as well in part of the Seigniory of Holderness, as of the Archbishop of York.” Yet she must have had children by her first husband, for several De Alosts, holding a share in the property, are mentioned in Yorkshire during the thirteenth century.

Robert le Constable, the eldest son of Ulbert and Erneburga, lived in the reigns of King Stephen and Henry II. and was styled De Halsham. His son perished in Coeur de Lion’s crusade; and his grandson, who married a kinswoman, Julian de Alost, was the father of another Robert, the husband of Adela or Ela de Oyry. She was one of three sisters, of whom Emma de Gousell (no doubt the eldest) became Lady of Gedney; but must herself have been a considerable heiress, for her grandson Sir Simon adopted her arms in lieu of his paternal bearing. Part of her possessions were, it would seem, included in the present park of Burton Constable (once stocked with the indigenous white cattle); for the solitary instance of a charter of free warren in Holderness before the time of Edward I. Edward I. first diswarrened Holderness, and granted license to his knights and tenants to kill game, enclose their woods, and make parks. was granted to Fulco d’Oyry by Hawise, Countess of Albemarle and Lady of the Seigniory.

The Constables were of high rank in Yorkshire, and intermarried with the first houses in the North of England; among their alliances were to be found co-heiresses of Lascelles, Umfraville, Eure, and Nevill; and they still “flourished in great splendour” in Camden’s time. Sir Henry Constable, “a man of parts and learning,” was in favour with James I., and received from him in 1620 a Scottish peerage as Viscount of Dunbar. It was successively held by his sons and two of his grandsons; but of these latter there was only a single descendant, Mary, the daughter of the third Viscount, who married Simon Scrope of Danby, but left no children. The last of them, William, succeeded to the title in 1714, not long before his death; and with him was extinguished the male line of the great old house of Burton Constable. The estates devolved by special entail on the second son of his sister Cecily, Cuthbert Tunstall, who duly assumed the name and bearing of the family. But within less than half a dozen generations they had twice again passed to female heirs; first to the Sheldons, and then to the Cliffords, who now bear the name and fill the place of the Constables. The house—a very fine one —principally dates from the Tudor period; but one part is said to have been built in King Stephen’s time, and is called Stephen’s Tower.

Poulson enumerates three younger branches; the Constables of St. Sepulchre’s Garth; the Constables of Kilnsea, Bentley, and Essington; and the Constables of Kirby Knoll and Upsall. The Constables of Freshmarsh and Catfoss in the same county were not of the same family, but derived from Roaldus, Constable of Richmond. Melton-Constable in Norfolk was the residence of a third and entirely distinct family, derived from “Anchitel, whose descendants were sometimes styled De Melton, and sometimes De Constable, from the office or place they held under the Bishop of Norwich, by whom they had been enfeoffed of it.”—Blomfield's Norfolk. This was in the time of Bishop William de Beaufoe, under whom Anchitel held Melton jointly with Roger de Lions.—Ibid. The last heir of this house, Sir Robert Constable, died in the fourteenth century, and his sister and heiress, Editha, conveyed Melton Constable to the Astleys. One of her descendants, Sir Jacob Astley, “was summoned by writ to the House of Lords in 1841, being a coheir of Sir John de Hastings, summoned to parliament as Baron Hastings 18 Ed. I.”—Burke.