From the castle and barony of La Haye-du-Puits, in La Manche. “Hence came the great Eudo Dapifer, He is not the Eudo Dapifer of Domesday, who was son of Hubert de Rie, and has been constantly confounded with him. who acquired, whether by force or favour, the largest proportions of robbery, called conquest, in the counties of Sussex, Essex, and Suffolk. They expanded throughout England.” - Sir Francis Palgrave. The great fief of La Haye-du-Puits, in the arrondissement of Coutances, dates, according to M. de Gerville, from the first partition of Nor­mandy under Rollo, though its regularly continued annals commence only with Turstin Halduc, who held it in the eleventh century, and with his son Eudo founded Lessay Abbey a few years before the Conquest. From the splendour of their donations we may infer the extent of their domain in the Côtentin alone. Eudo, usually styled cum Capello (“du manteau,” or “capuchon”), though in a charter of 1074 he subscribes himself Eudo Haldub, married Muriel de Conteville, a half-sister of the Conqueror’s, who made him his Seneschal. He was one of the principal barons summoned to the council that decided on the invasion of England at Lillebonne, and probably the “Sire de la Haie”mentioned by Wace at Hastings, who “charged on, and neither spared nor pitied any; striking none whom he did not kill, and inflicting wounds such as none could cure.” His services were munificently recompensed; and much of his fortune was given to religious foundations, as William de Jumièges cites him “among the most magnificent of the Norman nobles, who signalized themselves by their zeal in building churches.” He died in 1098, and was buried in the chapter house of his Abbey of Lessay, where his altar-tomb, with his effigy clad in the “chappe”and “chaperon”from which he was named, remained till, during the evil days of the Revolution of 1789, it was knocked to pieces and used as building material. He left no son; and his only daughter Muriel carried the whole of his possessions to her cousin Robert de la Haye, with whom Dugdale begins the pedigree. This was the son of her father’s younger brother Ralph, who had been Seneschal to the Count of Mortaine, and had married Oliva, daughter of William de Albini Pincerna, the first of the name.

Robert, again, was a generous benefactor of the Church. He confirmed all the grants of Eudo al Chapel, with ample additions of his own; greatly enriching the monks of Tewkesbury and Castleacre; but, most of all, the favoured community of Lessay; and sending over for three Benedictine monks from thence, founded a Priory at Boxgrove, in Sussex, as a cell to their Abbey. He had received from Henry I., whose near kinswoman he had married, the gift of the honour of Halnac (now Halnaker) in that county, which eventually devolved on his daughter Cecily. Besides her, he had two sons, Richard and Ralph.

Richard emulated and even surpassed his father and grandfather’s zeal for the Church, as he was the founder of Barlings Abbey in Lincolnshire, St. Michel-du-Bois and Blanchelande in Normandy, and Cameringham in Norfolk as a cell to the latter. He is said by Taylor to have been captured by pirates, but I can find no mention of it by Dugdale. His wife was a great Norman heiress, Matilda de Vernon, Lady of Varenguebec, who brought him the title of Constable of Normandy, and was buried by his side under a magnificent tomb (only destroyed within the present century) in the Abbey of Blanchelande. They left three daughters. Gillette, the eldest, carried the barony of La Haie- du-Puits and the office of Constable in fee to Richard de Hommet; another (whose name is lost) married William de Rullos; and Nichola was the wife of Gerard de Camville. “Which Nichola, being an eminent Woman in her days, and stoutly adhering to King John,” received from him several forfeited estates in Lincolnshire, and was three times Sheriffess of the county.

Ralph, the younger of the two brothers, took Stephen’s part against Geoffrey of Anjou, and gallantly fought his battle in Normandy, till, in 1141, the tide of fortune turned against him, and he was forced to fly for refuge to his castle of La Roque, near Montchaton, then deemed altogether impregnable. But the triumphant Count pursued him thither, besieged his fastness, and reduced him to such dire extremity that, according to a form of capitulation that M. de Gerville assures us was then by no means uncommon, he had to give himself up “in the most humiliating posture” (crawling on all fours?) with a saddle on his back. Despite this ignominious experience, in the following reign he was once more in arms with the Earl of Chester and the King’s rebellious sons, and once more a prisoner at Dol in Brittany. I have met with no account of his wife - if he had one - nor of his children; and Halnaker undoubtedly passed to his sister Cecily, the wife of Roger de St. John.

Though the principal line of the Delahays thus early collapsed, others remained to carry on the name in different parts of the kingdom. One, seated at Netherfield Hays, near Battle Abbey, only became extinct about a century ago. Lord John de la Haye, of this house, took part in the Barons’ War against Hen. III. But it was the Scottish branch alone that attained eminence and importance.

William de la Haya settled in Lothian in the middle of the twelfth century, and was Pincerna domini Regis, or Butler of Scotland, during the reigns of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. He married Juliana de Soulis, daughter of Ranulph, Lord of Liddesdale, and died in 1170, leaving two sons: 1, William, represented by the Earls of Errol (in the female line) and the Earls of Kinnoull; 2, Robert, represented by the Marquesses of Tweeddale.

William was among the hostages given for William the Lion when he was released from captivity by Henry II., and obtained from him a grant of Herrol (now Errol) in Perthshire, “with all the privileges competent to a barony.” Gilbert, his grandson, was one of the Regents of the kingdom during the minority of Alexander III. Another Sir Gilbert was appointed Constable of Scotland “As Constable of Scotland, the Earl of Errol is by birth the first subject in the kingdom, and, as such, hath a right to take place of every hereditary honour.” - Wood's Douglas. by King Robert Bruce - an hereditary dignity that placed him next in rank to the blood Royal, and which yet belongs to his representatives: and William, fifth in descent from him, was created Earl of Errol in 1452. Francis, eighth Earl - a zealous Roman Catholic, who had been solemnly “called upon”by the parliament “to renounce papistry, or remove out of the kingdom” - was one of the three Earls that rose in rebellion against James VI., and defeated the Royal army at Strathavon in 1594. For this his punishment was of the slightest - a two years’ banishment: and in 1604 we find him employed as one of the commissioners to negotiate the treaty of Union. He died in 1631, “a loyal subject to the King, having had great troubles in his time, which he stoutly and honourably carried.” It was probably to avoid similar complications that his son and successor was bred up a Protestant. This, the ninth Earl, “lived in a manner so splendid, that he was obliged to dispose of his antient paternal Lordship of Errol,” that had come down to him from the time of William the Lion. The male line ended with the twelfth Earl in 1717, and the title passed, first to his sister Lady Mary Falconer, and on her death, to the grandson of the only remaining sister, Margaret, Countess of Linlithgow and Calendar. This, again, was through a female. Lady Linlithgow’s daughter, Lady Anne Livingstone, was the wife of the Earl of Kilmarnock; and her son, William Lord Boyd, succeeded in 1758 as thirteenth Earl of Errol, and, with the title, assumed the name and arms of Hay. From him the present and eighteenth Earl is directly derived.

Several junior branches remain in the male line. James Hay, a cadet of one of these (seated at Melginche in Perthshire), a “graceful and affable”young gentleman, who had been bred in France, accompanied James VI. to England, and was one of the profligate favourites whom the King most delighted to honour. He was advanced with startling rapidity, from one title to another: first, he became Lord Hay “without place or voice in parliament”: then, in 1615, Lord Hay of Sauley in Yorkshire: Viscount Doncaster in 1618, and Earl of Carlisle in 1622. He received “on a strict computation” above ₤400,000 from the Crown: - so fabulous a sum, reckoned by the present value of money, that I think it must be an exaggeration; but spent every farthing of it, and “left not a house or acre of land to be remembered by.” He led “a very jovial life,” and was chiefly noted for his fine clothes and wasteful suppers: Osborne, who calls him, “a monster in excess,” speaks of one pie “composed of ambergreese, magisterial of pearl, musk, &c., reckoned to my lord at ten pounds,” which was devoured at a single meal by a greedy courtier. He married, first, Honora, heiress of Lord Denny; and then the Lady Lucy Percy, with whose beautiful face Lely has made us familiar. She brought him no children; but by his first wife he had a son, who succeeded as Earl of Carlisle, and with whom the title expired in 1660. Fortunately his mother’s estate had been secured to him, and he resided chiefly in the island of Barbadoes, of which it would appear he was the proprietor.

About 1596, Lord Carlisle had introduced at court a young cousin of his own, named George Hay, who, though a man of a very different stamp, also rose high in the good graces of the King, and received from him a peerage in 1598. Charles I. created him Earl of Kinnoull and Viscount of Dupplin in 1633, with grants of the lands and earldoms of Orkney and Zetland, and many other estates in Scotland, and the office of Chancellor. He is praised for the justice, judgment, and eminent sufficiency”that gained him the “applause of all good men”: and is styled in his epitaph “the wise Lycurgus of our time.” The tenth Earl succeeded his father in the office of Lord Lion King-at-Arms.

Lord Tweeddale’s ancestor was Robert, the second son of the first De Haya who settled in Scotland. His descendants were seated at Lockermouth in Mid- Lothian, acquired through a Lindsay heiress; and one of them, Sir Gilbert, who swore fealty to Edward I. in 1296, obtained a great estate in Peebles by marrying Mary, heiress of Simon Fraser, whose arms he thenceforward quartered with his own. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, Sir William Hay, by another fortunate marriage, added to these the arms of Giffard, and their barony in East Lothian, which gave to his grandson, John, his title of Lord Hay of Yester. This was granted by James III. in 1478: and in 1646, another John, who commanded a regiment in the army of the Covenant, was created Earl of Tweeddale. Of his successor, the second Earl, it may be said - with even greater truth than it was, in after days, said of his son - that he belonged to a Squadrone Volante, for he served alternately on either side during the Civil War. He joined the standard of Charles I. when it was first raised at Nottingham in 1642: fought at the head of a Scottish regiment against the Royalists at Marston Moor in 1644: commanded another regiment against the rebels at Preston in 1648: assisted at the coronation of Charles II. at Scone in 1651; and sat in Cromwell’s parliament in 1655. He “waited on the King at the Restoration, and held office under him, and then under James II.: “joined cordially in the Revolution,” and was created a Marquess by William and Mary in 1694. This title has been successively borne by eight of his descendants. A younger son of the third Marquess, Lord Charles Hay, was the chivalrous captain in the Guards, who, on the bloody day of Fontenoy, when the French and English Guards paused to raise their hats in salute to each other as they met, stepped out of the ranks, and cried to the Comte d’Hauteroche, who commanded the French grenadiers, “Messieurs de la Garde française, tirez les premiers!” The Frenchman, as courteously, refused; “the English then gave a running fire: nineteen officers and three hundred and eighty soldiers of the French Guard were wounded, and their colonel, the Duc de Grammont, killed.”