The Norman Castle of Vaux or De Vallibus is mentioned by Orderic Vitalis (775): and the Terra di Vallibus continued in the possession of the family to which it gave their name till the time of King John (Rotuli Normaniæ 4 John). Two brothers, Robert and Aitard de Vaux, appear in Domesday as mesne-lords in Norfolk. The former was probably the same Robert de Vals or de Vaux who, six years before, gave his tithes to St. Evrault (Orderic Vit. 576). Both of them held of Roger Bigod. “Robert de Vallibus, who held Pentney of Bigod, founded a Priory there for the souls of Agnes his wife and their children. Oliver was one of the barons in arms against King John; and 29 Hen. III. answered for thirty-two knight’s fees. Robert his son died (as I take it) before him; and left William his son, who about 30 Hen. III. married Alianor, daughter of William Ferrers Earl of Derby, and died s. p. less than seven years afterwards. John de Vaux, his brother, appears to have been his heir: and 49 Hen. III. for his faithful services was made Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, and soon after Constable of Norwich. He died 16 Ed. I., and left two daughters and coheirs: Petronel, married to Sir William de Nerford, and Maud, to Sir William de Ros, Lord of Hamlake, between whom his great estates were divided. Sir William is said to have twenty-five knight’s fees with his lady, and the Lord Ros, nineteen with his.”—Blomfield's Norfolk. The other brother, Aitard or Ethard, who was much less richly endowed, gave his name to Vaux’s Manor in Norfolk, where his posterity “continued for many ages.” John de Vaux, in 1320, is the last mentioned.—Ibid.

Hubert de Vaux, supposed to be the grandson of the founder of Pentney Priory,The son of this first Robert, Robert II., in his grant to Castleacre Priory of a mill and meadows in Pentney, mentions his three brothers, Robert Pinguis, Gilbert, and Hubert. If this was the same Hubert who received Gilsland about 1156, he must then have been well advanced in years. received from Henry II. a grant of the barony of Gilsland—one of the three great fiefs into which Ranulph de Meschines had divided the frontier districts of Cumberland, “Gilsland and Lyddale to guard the passes from Scotland by land, and Burgh to guard the approaches by sea.” It comprised a broad tract of country adjoining Northumberland; “a tract,” says Camden, “so cut and mangled with the brooks, or so full of rivulets, that I should suppose it to have taken its name from these gilles, The ancient description of its boundaries, defining them by the water-sheds, adds to each name the quaint corollary “as heaven water deals”: a boon dealt out with no niggardly hand to “Ye Northern dryades, all adorn’d with mountains steep, Upon whose hoary heads the winter long doth keep.” had I not read in the register of Lanercost Church that one Gill, the son of Bueth, who in a charter of Henry II. is called Gilbert, anciently held it, and probably left his name to it.” The original Celtic owner had stoutly maintained his rights. Ranulph’s younger brother, William de Meschines, to whom Gilsland had been first granted, found his new barony “no bed of roses,” for “he was never able to get it out of the hands of the Scots; as Gill, son of Bueth, held the greater part of it by force of arms.”—Ibid. He “owned the lion’s hide while still on the lion’s back,” and, weary of the contest, asked and obtained from Henry I. the barony of Coupland in exchange. Thus Gill was left in undisturbed possession till his death, for during the following reign Cumberland remained wholly in the hands of the Scots, and was only recovered by Henry II.

Hubert de Vaux had no doubt earned his share of the reconquered territory

by helping to drive out the Scots, and perchance by former services rendered to the King during his long struggle with Stephen, but nothing is actually known of his history. Henry II.’s charter included, with Gilsland, Corby and the manor of Catterlen, near Penrith, where a branch of the family was seated till the middle of the seventeenth century. Irthington was his caput baroniæ, where, at Castlestead, marked by some remains of Roman work, Gill Bueth had had his dwelling- place. According to the Magna Britannia, the De Vaux, “suffering it to decay, built Naworth out of the materials thereof;” but in reality they never resided there at all, and Naworth was not built till 1335, when Ranulph de Dacre obtained license to castellate from Edward III. Hubert bore chequy Or and Gules; and on his seal a gryphon eating a lacert.

He died in 1164, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert. But Gill Bueth had also left descendants, From one of his sons the family of Denton claims descent; and another (if not the first) Bueth has left his name to Bewcastle, or Bueth's castle. who were not likely to ignore their ancient claim to Gilsland; and according to tradition, a second Gill caused the new Lord “much disturbance, and found many partisans in the country.” Robert determined to be rid of this troublesome rival; and appointing a tryst at Castlestead, treacherously slew him on the very hearthstone of his father’s house, to which he had come in good faith and full assurance of safety. The story further goes, that it was in expiation of this foul crime that Robert founded Lanercost Priory in 1169, and magnificently endowed it. Though “he was of so much account with Henry II., that the King did little in Cumberland without his advice and counsel, yet could not his conscience be at quiet until he made atonement for the murder of Gill Bueth by endowing Holy Church with part of that patrimony that caused the murder.”—Hutchinson’s Cumberland. During the invasion of William the Lion (1173-74) he had the custody of the city and castle of Carlisle; and though both threatened and bribed to surrender his trust, held on bravely till he was in great straits for provision, and had forced the Scots to retire. He married a great Cumberland heiress, Ada de Engaine, then the widow of Simon de Morville, but their only child died in his lifetime, and his brother Ralph was his heir. The line terminated with Ralph’s grandson, Hubert II., whose daughter Maud, Lady of Gilsland, carried the barony to the Multons; and her great-great-granddaughter Margaret again transferred it to the Dacres. The husband of this second heiress, Ranulph de Dacre, who was summoned to Parliament in 1321, was ancestor, in the female line, of the Lords Dacre of the South (see Fiennes); and, in the male line, of the Lords Dacre of the North. The latter acquired by marriage the baronies of Greystock and Wemme, and ended in 1569 with George, fifth Lord, whose sisters conveyed his great domain to the Howards. This last Lord Dacre, “being a child in years, and then ward to Thomas Duke of Norfolk, was, by a great mischance, slayne at Thetford, in the house of Sir Richard Fulmerstone, by means of a vaunting horse of woode standing within the same house; upon which horse, as he meant to have vaunted, and the pins at the feet not being made sure, the horse fell upon him, and bruised the brains out of his body.” Sir Richard inhabited the former house of the Benedictine nuns of St. George, and a dark stain on the wall of the Long Gallery or Ambulatory long continued to be pointed out as the blood of poor little Lord Dacre. “

They tell you Sir Richard was designedly the Cause of his Death, by having the Pins of one of the Wheels taken out, in order that at his Death he might enjoy the Estate; and this is the occasion of the frightful Stories among the Vulgar, of that Knight’s appearing so often, to the Terror of many: But’tis mere Fiction; for the Spots on the Wall are nothing more than is seen in many Plasterings; and it was no manner of Interest to Sir Richard to be the Author of such a Villany.”—Blomfield's Norfolk.—Stowe. According to a singular family arrangement, not uncommon in those days, this poor boy was, at the time of his death, troth-plighted to the daughter of his guardian, who had married his mother, the widowed Lady Dacre. When she became Duchess of Norfolk, it was agreed that her son should take Lady Margaret Howard to wife, and that her three daughters should marry the Duke’s three sons, Lord Arundel, Lord Thomas, and Lord William Howard. Lady Margaret, as we have seen, lost her intended bridegroom, and one of the three sisters also died early; but Anne and Elizabeth Dacre lived to fulfil their appointed destiny, and their brother’s property was divided between their husbands. They were very great heiresses. The Countess of Arundel, who was the eldest, had the two baronies of Greystock and Brough in Cumberland, the baronies of Barton and Duffton in Westmoreland, the barony of Wemme with other lands in Shropshire, and the estates in Lancashire, Bedfordshire, and Leicestershire. Elizabeth, the younger, “Bessie with the broad apron,” brought to Lord William Howard—the “Belted Will” of Border renown—the baronies of Naworth and Gilsland in Cumberland, the property in the counties of Durham and York (including Hinderskelf, where the stately palace named Castle Howard was afterwards built), and the barony of Morpeth with a great estate in Northumberland—all now possessed by her descendant and representative, the Earl of Carlisle.

Many junior branches survived of the house of De Vaux; for the first Hubert who came into Cumberland had provided for more than one of his kinsmen. Reginald de Vaux, who, according to Hutchinson, was his brother, received Castle Sowerby, Carlatton, and Hubertby, and was called Reginald de Sowerby; Ralph also held some land in the county; and Robert (another brother) was enfeoffed of Little Dalston, where his descendants, taking the name of their manor, were seated during a long succession of generations. The last was Sir George Dalston, who, having no heir male, sold Dalston Hall in 1761. Several other families “took their beginning” from younger sons of the house of Gilsland; as Vaux of Triermain, of Ainstaplygh, of Catterlen, and of Caldbeck, &c. (vide Hutchinson). Triermain, with the enchanted castle in the Vale of St. John, vanishing and reappearing by magic art, that supplied Sir Walter Scott with the scenery of one of his poems, had been granted by the fourth baron of Gilsland, who died about 1234, to his brother Ralph. Ralph’s posterity continued there for upwards of four hundred years, the line expiring with John de Vaux, whose daughter and heiress, Mabel, about the middle of the seventeenth century, married Christopher Richmond of High-head Castle, Cumberland. One of the six granddaughters and co-heiresses of Christopher was the wife of Peter Brougham, a great-great uncle of the first Lord Brougham, and had two sons, who died s. p. Yet, when, in 1830, Henry Brougham obtained his peerage, he took the title of Lord Brougham and Vaux.

Another cadet of the baronial house, Robert de Vaux, settled at Harrowden in Northamptonshire, and added to his paternal coat a chevron Azure bearing three roses Or. His descendant, Nicholas, was created Lord Vaux of Harrowden in 1523, but never sat in parliament, as he died within the year. He was in great favour at the court of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., and contributed materially to its splendour. “At Prince Arthur’s marriage, he wore a gown of purple velvet, adorned with pieces of gold, so thick and massive, that beside the silk and furs, it was valued at ₤1000; as also a collar of SS weighing 800 pounds in nobles. This might be magnificent, yet it was becoming a packhorse to his own treasure.”— Banks. In those days, ₤1000 was equal to £12,000 of our present currency. His son, who married the heiress of Sir Thomas Cheney of Irtlingburgh, “attended Cardinal Wolsey on his embassy to make peace between the King of England, the Emperor, and Francis the French king. This peer, like his father, is noticed as having been a poet.”—Banks. The next Lord Vaux, “an enthusiastic devotee, had brought up all his children as rigid Catholics; and his eldest son gave up his native country, title, and estate, to enter a foreign monastery, where he died, in holy orders, during his father’s life. One of his daughters married a Roman Catholic gentleman named Brooksby, and, with her husband and her sister Anne, followed the fortunes of the notorious Jesuit Garnet, and were content to share his dangerous and uncertain mode of life.”—Jardine's Criminal Trials. The persecutions of the time constantly obliged him to shift his quarters from one hiding-place to another; but wherever he went, they went with him; and with him, in September, 1605, they undertook the celebrated pilgrimage to St. Winifred’s Well in Flintshire, that was to precede the immediate execution of the Gunpowder Plot. Anne Vaux, Mrs. Brooksby, Lady Digby, and many other ladies, walked barefoot from Holt to the Holy Well, when all the pilgrims spent the night in prayer. They had started from Sir Everard Digby’s house in Buckinghamshire, and “it is material to observe not only that Rookwood, one of the avowed conspirators, was a party to this pilgrimage, but that on their progress the pilgrims rested at the houses of Grant and Winter, at each of which mass was said by Garnet.”—Ibid. Some have conjectured that the warning letter to Lord Monteagle was written by Anne Vaux, who was nearly related to his wife; but the handwriting is not hers, and there is no positive proof that she was cognizant of the plot. She herself protested that she was not; nor was she directly implicated by any of the evidence given at the trial. She was certainly blindly devoted to Garnet, and, though neither of them were young people (the priest being fifty, and she forty years of age), her affection for him gave rise to scandal; yet the intercepted letters that he wrote to her from the Tower breathe no warmer feeling than paternal regard. She replied in more passionate terms, “To live without you is not life but death. ... I am and always will be yours, and so I beseech you to account me. ... I beseech you to help me with your prayers. . . . Commend me to some that for your sake will help me . . .,” &c. but even her letters express little beyond the agony of distress that any religious enthusiast might feel at parting with the spiritual guide and protector on whom she had depended for years. When he was arrested, she followed him to London, and was herself thrown into the Tower and cross-examined; but nothing whatever was elicited from her, and she is supposed to have ended her days in some Continental nunnery.

Her two nephews, Edward and Henry, successively fourth and fifth Lords Vaux, proved the last heirs-male of their ancient house. Edward had early formed a connection with a woman of very evil repute, Lady Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Banbury, who, when the Earl was gathered to his fathers at the ripe age of eighty-eight, married her paramour, and produced two sons, born in her first husband’s lifetime, whose existence she had kept secret till then. Lord Vaux was their reputed father; they bore his name; and to Nicholas, the eldest of them, he bequeathed all that he possessed. The Countess “is said to have destroyed the patent of creation of Nicholas Lord Vaux (which was never enrolled), together with divers deeds relating to the entailed estates, to secure them to these bastard sons, and thereby prevent Henry, the last lord, from succeeding to them.”—Banks. Having accomplished this first object, she presently set to work to prove that Nicholas was the rightful Earl of Banbury; and as such he sat and voted in the Convention Parliament of 1660. The further history of this strange claim, which was last put forward in 1808, takes rank among the causes célèbres in the records of disputed peerages.

Henry, the fifth and last Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who succeeded to nothing but the title and his brother’s munificent bequest of ₤10, died s. p. in 1663. The barony then lapsed between his three sisters: Mary, the wife of Sir George Simeon, Joyce, a nun, and Catherine Lady Abergavenny; and was called out of abeyance in 1838 in favour of Charles Mostyn, the representative of Lady Simeon.

A Norman name: Vaux; a local name