Aleyn Gurnay of the county of Roxburghe rendered homage for his lands in 1296. His seal bears a squirrel feeding within two squares interlaced and legend S' Alani Gorley (Bain, II, p. 199,533). Of Norman origin, probably from Goumai-en-Brai in the arrondissement of Neufchatel.

(French) belonging to Gournay (France), anciently Gorniacus=(apparently) Gornus’s Estate [Latin-Gaul. poss. suff. -ác-us] This name was Latinized in mediæval rolls de Gorniaco; and it figures in some of the copies of the Roll of Battle Abbey as Gurnay.

This is a name of note in the history of the Conquest, and belonged to one of the first baronial families of Normandy. They occupied the frontier district called the Pays de Brai, an essart of the ancient Forest of Lyons, and an important post in the defence of the Duchy, that had been allotted to their ancestor by Rollo himself, and bore the name of Gournay, the head of their barony. They continued to hold this great fief till the time of King John, when it was seized by Philip Augustus. One remaining tower of their castle -”La Tour Hue" - was still standing at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was surrounded by a triple wall and fosse, and considered so strong a place that one boastful chronicler maintained that it could guard itself, and might resist an attack without a single man to defend it. This marvellous fortress is supposed to have been built by the father or grandfather of the Hugh de Gournay who was one of the chief commanders at the victory of Mortemar in 1054, and is mentioned by Wace at Hastings: “I vint li viel Hue de Gornai, Ensemble o li sa gent de Brai.”

He might well be called old Hue, “when we see Jehan de Flagy - or whoever wrote the old romance of Garin le Loherain - boldly introducing “Hues qui Gornay tient’ as meeting ‘la pucelle Blanchefors au cler vis’ at the court of Pepin.”—Taylor. He had first invaded England more than thirty years before, as one of the Norman leaders of the fleet with which the Saxon prince Edward, the son of Ethelbert, made an attempt to recover the kingdom after the death of Canute. On this second occasion he brought with him his son Hugh and the Sire de Brai - evidently a kinsman; with “numerous forces” that did great execution among the English. The Gournays were distinguished by a plain black shield; for they bore “pure sable;” a singular bearing, not unsuited to the descendants of one of the followers of the great Dux Piratarum, which was only exchanged for their present coat, Argent, a cross engrailed Gules, by Sir John de Gurney in the time of Henry III. “Hue le vieil” is said by the Norman chroniclers to have been mortally wounded at the battle of Cardiff in 1074, and thence brought home to Normandy to die. But the Welsh accounts fix the date of this battle nearly twenty years later, and he is believed to have been dead before 1086, as it was probably his son who appears as a great Essex baron in Domesday. Little more is known of the time when this second Hugh died, but he cannot have survived his father long. It is at least certain that he ended his days as a monk at Bec, and that in 1089 we find his son Gerard de Gournay Baron of Yarmouth, “a person of great power, stoutly adhering to King William Rufus against Robert Curthose Duke of Normandy, giving up his Castle of Gumay, and other strong­holds into his hands; and endeavouring to reduce all the adjacent parts to his obedience. Howbeit, after this, in An. 1096, Duke Robert, for ten thousand marks of Silver, delivering up Normandy unto Rufus, and thereupon travelling into the Holy Land; this Girard, with Edith his Wife (Sister to Earl Warren) accompanied him: But in this journey he died, his Wife surviving him, who after­wards married to Dru de Monceaux.”—Dugdale. Edith or Editha de Warrenne was the Conqueror’s grand-daughter (her mother had been the Princess Gundreda) and brought him three children; Hugh, his heir; “Gundreda the Fair,” the wife of Nigel de Albini; and another daughter whose name is lost, married to Richard Talbot, ancestor both of the Talbots of Bashall and the Earls of Shrewsbury. Her second husband, Dm de Monceaux, possessed himself of the honour of Gournay, probably as the guardian of his step-children during their minority; but it was only restored to Hugh de Gournay by the express mandate of Henry I. The King was very fond of this young kinsman, with whom he had grown up: (educatus cum Henrico I., et ab illo multum honoratus et dilectus, says the Latin pedigree) and “advanced him among his chief Nobles;” yet we find him ranked among the rebels who joined Stephen in 1134. Three years later, he deserted the new King, who took him prisoner at Pont Audemare, and “partly by good words and partly by threats, endeavoured to reconcile” him, with some show of success. His famous Norman castle was burnt down during Prince Henry’s rebellion in 1173; and he died in 1185, leaving a son of the same name, who was at the siege of Acre with Cœur de Lion: and lost a great part of his estates by taking part with the Barons against King John. They were restored to the next Hugh de Goumay by Henry III.; but he again “highly incurred the King’s displeasure,” for he appeared at a tournament in Nottinghamshire from which he had been ordered to keep away; and, worse still, “boldly presumed to hunt with Hound and Horn for the space of three days, in the King’s Chase at Bristoll, without leave, and contrary to the command of the Foresters. Whereupon the Constable of the Castle of Bristoll was required to seize all his Lands, Goods, and Chatties, within his Liberty.” He married Lucy de Berkeley, and left an only daughter, Julian, who became the wife of William Bardolph. With him ended the principal line of the house of Gournay; but two junior branches remained, the one seated in Somersetshire, the other in Norfolk.

The former—by far the most distinguished of them—has been conjectured by some to belong to a different family, and certainly bore different arms, Paly of 6, Or and Gules. It had been seated at Inglishcombe and Barew-Gurnay (then Berve) at the date of Domesday; for we there find both manors described as part of the great domain of Geffrey, Bishop of Coutances, and held under him by Nigel de Gournay. Barew reverted to the Crown, and was granted by William Rufus to Robert Fitz Harding (from whom it descended to his grand-daughter Eva); but Hawise de Gournay is mentioned at Inglishcombe in the beginning of King John’s reign, when she gave the church there to the monastery of Bermondsey in Surrey. Thomas, Baron of East Harptree at the same time “gave sixty marks for his lands at Inglishcombe, which he had by the grant of Hawise de Gournay.” She must have been either the heiress of the Gournays, or a widow dowered with their possessions, but how she was related to Thomas de Harptree does not appear. He was descended from a younger son of Ascelin Lupellus (see Lovel) who adopted the name of his manor, and founded a line of great feudal lords in the West of England, who in the time of Henry II. held a barony of thirteen knight's fees in Dorset, Gloucester, and Devon. Thomas’ mother had been an heires, Alice de Orescuilz or Orcas; and his wife Eva doubled his possessions by bringing him another barony nearly equal to his own. Collinson calls her Eva de Gorniaco or de Gournay, the heiress of the Gournays; but upon what grounds he does not attempt to explain, nor can I find that she had in her veins one drop of Gournay blood. She was the daughter of Robert Fitz Hardinge, or de Berkeley, and sister and heir of Maurice de Gant, who had taken the name of their mother Alice, sole child of Robert de Gant, Lord Chancellor of England in 1153, by his wife Alice, da. and h. of William Paganel and of Julian de Bahantune, a great Devonshire heiress. Eva’s paternal grandmother (after whom she was probably named) had been Eva de Esmond. Thus, though she undoubtedly represented four of the greatest families in the county, Berkeley, Gant, Paganel, and Dowai (Bahantune), she had nothing whatever to do with the Gournays; and yet it was this latter name, instead of one of the former, that was adopted by her son Robert. Dugdale, in his pedigree of the Earls of Lincoln calls her —"Emma uxor... Gurnai:” and in his account of the Gurneys, by some strange confusion, marries her, as Eve, sister of Maurice de Gant, to a namesake of her own grandson, Anselm de Gournay, whom he makes out to have been a younger brother of the last Hugh de Gournay of the elder line. This Robert de Gournay, who held in all no fewer than twenty-two and a half knight’s fees, was several times summoned to serve against the Welsh; and built the hospital of Gaunt, near Bristol, for the health of the soul of his uncle Maurice. By his wife, Hawise de Longchamp, he left Anselm his heir, the husband of Sybil de Vivonne, andthe father of John de Gournay, with whom the elder line terminated.The latter left only a daughter, Elizabeth, the wife of John ap-Adam, who is said to have “profusely squandered away” much of the great inheritance that came to her in 1291.

Elizabeth’s uncle, Thomas, who was seated at Farringdon-Gournay, carried on the line as heir male, and was father to Sir Thomas, of unenviable notoriety as one of the murderers of Edward II. To him and to Lord Maltravers had been committed the custody of the unhappy King at Berkeley Castle; and for the foul deed there done, he had to “fly into foreign parts on the change of times.” But he fled across seas in vain, for a price had been put upon his head, and he was captured at Burgos, and delivered up by the Spaniards to the emissaries of Edward III., who commanded him to be brought over to England. Whether, however, from some misunderstanding, or “secret practices” against him, he was executed at sea, during his voyage home. All his lands were confiscated to the King, who annexed them to the Duchy of Cornwall for ever, and to this day Faringdon-Gournay, Harptree, and several other Somersetshire manors (all parcel of the Goumay estate) belong to the Prince of Wales, as Duke of Cornwall Some favour was, however, shown to the children of the attainted Sir Thomas, who appear to have retained at least some part of his estates, till they reverted to the crown on the death of Sir Matthew de Gournay, the last of his family, in 1405. The name of this Sir Matthew constantly appears in the pages of Froissart He was a famous knight, of “consummate skill and reputation” in arms, who served in all the great battles of that glorious time, at Benamazin, Sluys, Cressy, Ingenny, Poictiers, and Nazaron in Spain, and fought the Saracens at the siege of Algezira. He long outlived all his contemporaries in the wars, and died at the great age of ninety-six, having nobly retrieved the ancient lustre of his name. It is still borne by several places in Somersetshire; Faringdon-Gurnay, Harptree-Gournay, Barew Gurnay, and the hamlet of Gourney-Slade.

The Norfolk Gurneys, who alone continue in the male line, were originally mesne-lords under their baronial cousins, and first appear in Norfolk temp. Hen. II. Unlike most families of so ancient a date, they have been faithful to their early home, and never migrated from the county in which they had settled. Sir John de Gournay was in amis against Hen. III. both at Lewes and Evesham, but obtained his pardon, and went with Prince Edward to the Holy Land in 1270. One of their manors, Harpley, had come to his grandfather Matthew through his marriage with Rose de Burnham or de Warrenne; another, West Barsham - long their residence - was brought by the heiress of the De Wauncys to Edmund Goumey, who lived in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., and was recorder, or, as it was then termed, standing counsel, of Norwich. On the failure of the direct line in 1661, the estates were divided among different co-heiresses; but there remained a descendant of one of the younger sons, John Gurney, an eminent silk merchant at Norwich about 1679, who may be said to have re-founded the present family. He made his fortune, adopted the tenets of the Quakers, and was the immediate ancestor of the Gurneys of Keswick, who derive from his second son Joseph.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Gurnai, Gournay. Gurney, local name