From Grente-mesnil (now Grandmesnil) in the arrondissement of Lisieux. Hugh de Grente-mesnil, “a brave Souldier,” fought stoutly at Hastings, and “was that day in great peril: his horse ran away with him, so that he was near falling, for in leaping over a bush the bridle rein broke, and the horse plunged forward. The English seeing him ran to meet him with their hatchets raised, but the horse took fright, and turning quickly round brought him safe back again.”— Wace. Two years after the battle he was appointed, with Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, William Fitz Osbern, and others, one of the Justiciars of England during the King’s absence in Normandy. He was Viscount of Leicestershire and Hampshire, and according to Domesday, held one hundred and four Lordships, of which two-thirds, with the Honour of Hinckley—in right whereof he was Lord High Steward of England - were in Leicestershire. He lived to be a very old man, and in 1094, “being grown aged and infirm, he took upon him the habit of a Monk; and within six days afterwards departed this life, whereupon Bernard and David, two Monks of St. Ebrulfe’s” (a Norman monastery he had restored and endowed), “having seasoned his Corps with Salt, and wrapped it in an Hide, conveyed it to Normandy, where it was honourably buried on the South side of their Chapter-house.”—Dugdale. His elder sons left no posterity: but from the fourth, Ivo, descended Hugh de Grentemesnil, whose daughter Petronill became his sole heir, and brought to her husband, Robert Blanchmains, Earl of Leicester, the Honour of Hinckley and the Hereditary Stewardship of England, which afterwards passed, through her daughter Amicia, to the Montforts. This Countess Petronill left a singular bequest to the church of Leicester - a coil of her own hair, twisted into a rope, by which she desired that the lamp always kept alight in the choir might be suspended. It is further recorded of her, that when she was taken prisoner with her husband at Leicester, “desirous of lessening the prize which their enemies had obtained, she drew from her finger a ring set with a precious stone of great value, and threw it into the river.”—Bullington and Ploughley's Oxon.

A branch of the Meynells is of very early date in Yorkshire: but how—or if at all—related to Hugh the Justiciar, we are not informed. “Stephen, Sire de Mesnil, temp. William I., obtained great estates in York and Notts. His son Robert and grandson Stephen joined in the foundation of Scarth Abbey, York (Burton, Mon. Ebor. 357). Hence the Lords Meynil of York. Gilbert, One pedigree of the Meynells calls this Gilbert a younger brother of the Hugo de Grentemesnil who was in the Conqueror’s army, and yet makes him by a manifest absurdity, the father of Robert Meynell, mentioned in 1165! second son of Stephen I., was of Notts 1130, and was ancestor of the Meynells of Meynil Langley.”—The Norman People. The first Lord Meinill was Nicholas, great grandson of the second Stephen, who, for good service in the Welsh wars, had a debt of one hundred marks remitted to him by Edward I., besides a grant of free warren on all his lands in Yorkshire. He afterwards served in the Scottish campaigns, and had summons to parliament in 1295. Five years previously, he had brought a charge against his wife of an attempt to poison him, and though she is said to have successfully cleared her character, would never see her again. The barony became extinct with his son Nicholas in 1322: but was re-granted in 1336 to an illegitimate son of the same name, who married a daughter of Lord Ros of Hamlake, and left an only child, Elizabeth. She married John, second Lord D’Arcy, conveying this second Barony of Meinill to her descendants, with whom it remained till 1418, when it fell into abeyance among the sisters of the eleventh Lord D’Arcy.

Gilbert, the ancestor of the Meynells of King’s Langley, was the father of Robert, who 12 Hen. II. held five knight’s fees of Ralph Fitz Herbert One of these was Langley in Derbyshire. His son William was seated there, and bore the arms of his feudal suzerains, the Fitz Herberts; to which Hugo, the next heir, Steward to the Earl of Derby, added the horse-shoes of the Ferrers. Hugo’s grandson, who represented Derbyshire in Edward I.’s fifth parliament, married an heiress, the daughter of Robert de la Ward, Steward of the Household to Edward I., and again changed his coat of arms for the Vair, Ar. and Sa. of the De la Wards, which his descendants continued thenceforward.

In the next generation, Hugh Meynell, who fought at Cressy and Poictiers, was a baron by writ 1 Ed. III.; but the summons was not repeated, either to his son or his grandson. With the latter the elder line failed; but a younger brother, William, of Yeavely and Willington, was the direct ancestor of Hugo Meynell Ingram, of Hoar Cross in Staffordshire, at whose death in 1871 the family became extinct. The name of Ingram was taken on account of the great inherit­ance of the Viscounts Irvine, which eventually came to the descendants of the third of the five sisters of the last Viscount, Elizabeth Ingram, married in 1782 to Hugo Meynell, younger, of Bradley.

A Norman name: Ménilles, local name