This name has always been stigmatized as an interpolation, on the ground of the generally accepted account of its origin, which - endorsed both by Glover and Dugdale—assigns to it a later date. “The Fitz Warine Chronicle tells us that William Peverel advertised through many lands a Tournament to be held at his Castle in the Peak, whereat he who acquitted himself best should have to wife Melette, Peverel’s youngest niece, and with her the Lordship of Whittington in Shropshire: - that to this Tournament came Guarine de Metz of Lorrain (eventually the victor), also Owen Prince of Wales, and ten sons of John Duke of Brittany, and some others whose existence seems more or less fabulous. After the Tournament, says the same authority, Guy, the youngest of the ten brothers of Brittany, remained in England, and conquered with the sword many fair lands, and he was called Guy le Estrange, and from him came all the great Lords of England who have the surname of Estrange.” - Eyton's Salop. The story rests solely upon tradition, and in some of its details is demonstrably false. If the tournament ever took place at all, it must have been between 1137, when Owen Gwynned succeeded to the sceptre of North Wales, and 1147, when the last Peverel, who was Lord of Whittington died. “The advent of Guy le Strange, as yet unmarried, at such a period, is irreconcilable with the fact that the three brothers, whom this narrative would make his sons, were all enfeoffed by Henry II. at a time when, according to the same narrative, the eldest of them could not have been of age.” —Ibid, John Duke of Brittany is “unknown to any other record:” William Peverel’s coheirs were not his nieces, but his sisters, and “neither of them was at any time wife of Guarin de Metz. “The sons of the latter are moreover found attesting deeds at a time when, according to this narrative, their father was yet unmarried, for it expressly says that he “had neither wife nor child.”—Ibid. I think the authenticity of the legend may fairly be considered as disposed of.

But Eyton, after “a long search made in reference to this question,” has provided a substitute for the imaginary Duke John of Brittany. He has discovered the true ancestor of the Le Stranges in Rodland or Ruald Extraneus, who witnesses two grants to the Norfolk Priory of Castle Acre, one by Roger Fitz-Wimer, Seneschal to the second William de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey (1089-1135): and the other by Alan Fitz Flaald and Adeline his wife, the known ancestors of Fitz Alan, early in the reign of Henry I. Another deed, recently brought to light in the Castle-Acre chartulary, proves him to have been the father of John Le Strange, who in 1165 held a knight’s fee in the Norfolk barony of these same Fitz Alans, and was the elder of the four brothers of which, at the accession of Henry II., the family was composed. Most probably they were of Breton lineage.

“But the tenure of a single Norfolk fee by Roland Le Strange was insignificant, and it is not for any paternal ancestry of the Stranges that we must look, if we wish to account for their great ascendency. As a race they were distinguished for their abilities in field and in council. They were distinguished yet more for the most steadfast loyalty. The feoffments of Henry Fitz Empress and William Fitz Alan I. were tributes to men of ascertained ability. For three long-lived and successive generations, the heads of this House were indefinitely trusted by contemporary Kings. For the same period no Le Strange ever betrayed such trust, or was suspected of betraying it” —Ibid.

The wife of Roland Extraneus, who was the daughter of Ralph Fitz Herlewin, or de Hunstanton, by Helewise de Plaiz, had two brothers who neither of them left issue; and thus Hunstanton and their other Norfolk manors (five knight’s fees in all) devolved on her eldest son John. She had three other sons, Hamon, Guy, and Ralph, who were all - as well as John—enfeoffed in Shropshire by Henry II. during the first years of his reign. Guy received Alveley; Hamon, Cheswardine; John, Ness (now Great Ness); and Ralph, Little ErcalL But John’s was the only line that outlasted the century. Guy, Sheriff of Shropshire for fifteen years under Henry II., left one son who died in the prime of life in 1195; Hamo had died s. p. in 1160, and been succeeded by John as tenant in chief at Cheswardine; and Ralph survived his only son Ronald, and died in 1194.

John, the common ancestor of the two great baronial families that bore the name, was the first of seven John Le Stranges, who followed each other in lineal succession as chiefs of a house “remarkable for longevity, activity, and loyal steadfastness.” They had a castle and park at Cheswardine; but the head of their Honour was the frontier fortress of Knockyn, traditionally said to have been founded by Guy the Viscount Round this, their principal stronghold, “the Stranges gradually amassed an extent of territory which made them formidable even to their own suzerains the Fitz Alans, and constituted the Chatelleny or Fee of Knockyn.” They were enterprising and energetic Barons Marcher. John II., who died in 1237, an old man of more than eighty, had spent fully fifty years of his life in the active discharge of the duties of his station. King John greatly favoured and trusted him, and he never swerved from his loyalty, but proved himself a faithful liegeman to the very end. In 1226, Henry III. acknowledged his “great services, large outlay, and losses,” by the remission of some arrears due to the Crown. John III. was invested with even wider authority. In 1232 he was Constable of the three castles of Shrewsbury, Montgomery, and Bridgenorth, with “the greater trust or custody of the counties of Salop and Stafford:” and in 1240 had the further charge of the castle and county of Chester conferred upon him by a patent, “equivalent,” says Eyton, “to appointing him to the high office of Justiciar of Chester.” He was in arms against the Welsh even in advanced old age, summoned to parliament as a baron in 1260, and stood fast to the Crown throughout the brunt of the Barons’ War. His younger son Hamo was equally and zealously loyal; but he had the mortification of seeing the elder, John IV., break away from the honoured traditions of his house, and join Simon de Montfort. During the brief supremacy of the barons, this younger John held his father’s office of Constable of Montgomery, but “had small joy of his possession. In a midnight march through Kari, he was attacked by the Welsh, and two hundred of his men slain.” He was not, with the other insurgent barons, compelled to compound for his estate after the battle of Evesham, being “probably shielded from punishment by the name he bore,” but peaceably succeeded his father as second Lord Strange of Knockyn in 1269. He added materially to his influence and possessions by his marriage with Joan de Somery, daughter of Roger, Baron of Somery, and Nichola, sister and coheir of Hugh de Albini, the last Earl of Arundel of his line; and John V., following his father’s example, again espoused an heiress, Maud, the only child of Roger D’Eivill of Walton D’Eivill in Warwickshire. Yet none of his successors ever attained the position in the county that had been held by the first Lord Strange. They were not slack of service in the field; nor backward in doing their duty there: and one, at least, of them made another great alliance. This was John VIII., nephew and heir of John VII., with whom the direct line of descent closed in 1323; and his wife was one of the coheirs of the last Lord Mohun of Dunster, and sister of Philippa Duchess of York, to whose share of the lands the Le Stranges in process of time succeeded. Their grandson, who died in 1461, was the last Lord Strange of Knockyn. He had been selected by Edward IV.’s up start Queen as an eligible husband for one of her many portionless sisters, and married Jaquetta Widville, by whom he left an only child, Joan, the wife of George, son and heir-apparent of Thomas Stanley, the first Earl of Derby of that name. The Stanleys thus became representatives of the elder line of Le Strange, and held the barony till it lapsed into abeyance on the death of the fifth Earl.

The first Lord Strange of Knockyn left, besides his heir and successor, John IV., three younger sons, Hamo, Roger, and Robert. Hamo (already mentioned) was the loyal Sheriff of Shropshire who stood fast for the King when his elder brother joined Simon de Montfort, and was rewarded by splendid grants, comprising Stretton and the fortalice and hundred of Ellesmere. He went with Robert to the Crusade of 1270, in the train of Prince Edward, and died in Palestine. “The elder brother,” says Eyton, “perished in the expedition; the younger barely survived it” Hamo left no children, and Ellesmere passed, by Royal grant, to the next brother, Sir Roger, summoned to parliament as Dominus de Ellesmere in 1294; but he, too, was without an heir, and it reverted to the Crown on his death in 1311.

Robert, the last born of the family, had then been dead more than thirty-five years. Before their departure for the East, Hamo had enfeoffed him of Wrockwardine; and his wife was the heiress of Whitchurch, Alianor de Blancminster (i.e. White Church). John, the eldest of their two sons, commonly known as Lord of Whitchurch, died s. p. when he was only twenty-three; and Fulk, the second, succeeded in 1289 to “a very considerable inheritance. Thus, and by formal writ of Parliamentary summons, did Fulk Le Strange become first Baron of Blackmere; the originator of that noble succession which, after twice merging in lines greater than itself, is now no longer represented by a Talbot or a Howard, but is in abeyance between the heirs general of these illustrious races.”—Ibid. The name of Blackmere was adopted from the sombre lake adjoining the manor house of Whitchurch. The manor was held by the service of doing duty as Huntsman to Earl Warren, at the will and at the charges of the said Earl.

Fulk, “distinguished by various public offices and honours,” and a baron by writ in 1308, was zealously engaged in all Edward I.’s wars, and became Lord of Corfham in right of his wife Eleanor Giffard, one of the daughters and coheirs of the great Clifford heiress by the second husband who had so cruelly wronged her. Their son John, the next Lord, was one of the soldier-peers of Edward III., whose armour was seldom doffed till it was laid aside in their coffins. Yet he did not fall in battle, but after a life spent amid the din of conflict and turmoil of arms, died peaceably in 1349. He had two sons; Fulk, who never lived to be of age; and John, who married Lady Mary Fitz Alan, and was the father of the last heir-male, John, fifth Lord Strange of Blackmere, and of a daughter named Ankaret. According to Dugdale, the son again died a minor in 1375; but he left a widow (Isabel de Beauchamp) and a child to inherit his barony. This child, Elizabeth Le Strange, can scarcely have been nine years old when she followed him to the grave in 1383; yet she was already the wife of Thomas de Moubray, Earl of Nottingham; and Eyton even seems to imply that she left descendants! On her death the succession reverted to her aunt Ankaret, then married to Sir Richard Talbot, who had summons to parliament in 1386 as Richardo Talbot de Blakemere Ch’v’r; and succeeded his father as Lord Talbot a few years afterwards.

Two other cadets of this great house remain to be noticed, Eubolo and Hamon, both sons of John V., the third Baron of Knockyn, by Maud D’Eivill, Lady of Walton. Eubolo - a knight banneret who had seen much service in the Scottish wars—was the lover of the frail heiress, Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, who is said to have been repudiated by her first husband, the Earl of Lancaster, on his account, and promptly married him when she became a widow, He assumed in her right the title of Earl of Lincoln, but was summoned to parliament in 1326 only as Euboloni le Estrange. Edward II. had, as Eyton informs us, received several castles and manors from the Countess Alice “while she was single” (though, as she married at nine years old, this fact requires elucidation): and Edward III., partly on that account, and partly because Eubolo was “a valued servant,” bestowed upon them a munificent series of grants in 1330. These included the castle and hundred of Ellesmere, which, when Eubolo died s. p. five years afterwards, went to the head of the family, his nephew Roger, fifth Lord Strange of Knockyn.

Hamo, the youngest son, was enfeoffed in 1311 by his elder brother of Hunstanton in Norfolk, one of the original manors held by his ancestors, which, having been the cradle of his race, was the home of his descendants for the next four hundred and fifty years. “It is,” says Camden, “the place where King Edmund resided nearly a whole year, endeavouring to get by heart David’s Psalms in the Saxon language. But neither is it to be omitted on this account, that it has been the seat of the famous family of L’Estrange, knights, ever since the time of Ed. II.” During this long period, there is little to record of their history. They several times appear on the roll of Sheriffs, and married the heiresses of Vernon, Hastings, and Coke of Norfolk—the latter being a granddaughter of Chief Justice Coke. Sir Nicholas Le Strange received a baronetcy from Charles I.: and it was with the fifth baronet, Sir Henry, that this illustrious name finally expired in 1760. Armine, his elder sister and coheir, was the wife of Nicholas Styleman of Snettisham in Norfolk, one of whose descendants, in 1839, adopted the name of Le Strange.

It is retained by Betton-Strange, and Ness-Strange, two of their former manors in Shropshire.