From the castle of Omonville-la-Foliot; in La Manche, “Hence,” says Sir Francis Palgrave, “the great family of that name, amongst whose members Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of London, is conspicuous: and Robert Foliot certified to fifteen knight’s fees which his family had possessed since the Conquest” Gilbert Foliot - who had himself been the ancient opponent and rival of Thomas à Becket—was the Bishop officiating in Canterbury Cathedral when Henry II. did public penance for the murder of the Archbishop, and held in his hand the “balai,” or monastic rod, with which the castigation was inflicted. The King, clad in hair-cloth, his feet bare and bleeding, in the guise of a penitential pilgrim, knelt before the shrine of Becket, and placing his head and shoulders in the tomb, “received five strokes from each bishop and abbot who was present, beginning with Foliot, and three from each of the eighty monks.”—Dean Stanley. There were three bishops of this name; Gilbert, already mentioned, first Abbot of Gloucester, and successively Bishop of Hereford and London, who was excommunicated by Becket in 1169: Matthew Paris, tells us that “coming one night from the King after long conference had with him of the troubles with Archbishop Beckett; as he lay meditating and musing thereon in his bed, a terrible and unknown voice sounded in his ear— 'O Gilbert Foliot, While you compute what’s to be got, Your God’s the God of Astaroth.’ Which he, taking to come from the Devil, answered boldly— 'Devil or man, you lie, you sot, My God’s the God of Sabaoth.’”

“Gilbert Foliot,” writes Fuller, “was observed when a Common Brother of his Covent, to inveigh against the Prior; when Prior, against the Abbot; when Abbot, against the pride and laziness of Bishops; but when he himself was Bishop, all was well, and Foliot’s mouth, when full, was silent.” his cousin Archdeacon Robert, Bishop of Hereford in 1174, and one of the four English bishops present at the Lateran Council in 1179 when Alexander III. excommunicated the Waldenses and Albigenses; and lastly, Hugh, also Archdeacon of Salop, who founded and endowed Ledbury Hospital, and became Bishop of Hereford in 1219. The Foliots were of note in Devonshire, where Tavy-Foliot still keeps the name; and were landowners in Hampshire in the twelfth century. Sampson Foliot witnessed a charter of Baldwin, second Earl of Devon, who died in 1155; Walter Foliot, thirteenth century, held some lands at Exbury “by forty days' service in England of a man-at-arms”: and Geoffrey Foliot, fourteenth century, was a benefactor of Christ Church Priory. - Woodward's Hampshire. In Worcestershire Richard Foliot (grandson of John Foliot, who held Fenwick and Foliot’s fee in Yorkshire in the time of the Conqueror) was Lord of Longdon and Richmarsh in the reign of Henry II. “Their first habitation was, I believe,” says Nash, “at Morton Foliot, in the former parish.” From this Richard a direct male descent leads us to Aylmer Foliot, “the first of nineteen generations who did not marry and have children”; and who, though he left his duties unfulfilled in that respect, found an heir in a nephew or cousin named Robert A younger son of this house was Sir Thomas Folliott, governor of Ballyshannon, co. Sligo, under Queen Elizabeth, who was knighted by her Lord Lieutenant the Earl of Essex, and commanded a regiment at the victory of Kinsale. James I. created him Lord Folliott of Ballyshannon in 1619; but the title expired, within one hundred years, with his grandson.

The most ancient and considerable of the possessions of the family were in Yorkshire. “An extensive sweep of country, beginning between Smeaton and Norton, lying along the S. bank of the Went, and extending to the lands which compose the parish of Fishlake, comprehending what are now the separate townships of Norton, Fenwick, and Moseley, was granted out, in the original distri­bution of the Pontefract fee, to a family who are known by the addition of Foliot, in whom, and in their descendants the Hastings, this tract continued for many centuries. Flat and open land, presenting scarcely anything which could be regarded as a natural boundary, and assimilated in all its natural characters to the lands which formed the chace of Hatfield, it was early matter of question, whether Fenwick at least was not rather part of the Warren, than of the Laci fee.

“The Foliots and Hastings, however, uniformly attached themselves to the Lords of Pontefract, and were ever among the most considerable of their subinfeudatories. They had their mansion house at Fenwick, where are still some faint indications of its existence, while they had their chapel, a free chapel, called in early times, as at present, a priory, at Norton, where several of them, perhaps most of them, found interment as one by one they returned to the earth.

“The first Foliot known to Dodsworth was William, who in the time of Rufus, was a benefactor to the monks of Pontefract. The termination of the line was in the early part of the reign of Edward III., when it ended in two coheirs, Margery and Margeret, aged respectively seventeen and sixteen in 1329. Margaret married John Camoys; and Margery, who had all these lands, married Hugh de Hastings.”—Hunter’s South Yorkshire.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Folet.