From Mauduit, near Nantes. Some have sought out an ungracious meaning to this name, affirming that it signifies maledoctus, or evil-taught Geoffrey Maudit held in Wilts in capite 1086, and his brother William held a barony in Hampshire at the same date. The latter was afterwards Chamberlain to Henry I., and received from that King the hand and estates of one of his wards, Maud de Hanslape, who brought with her the feudal Barony of Hanslape in Bucks, “the castle and honour of Porcestre” (Porchester) and “Bergedone” (Berwedon) “in Com. Rutl. with the whole Soke, which Queen Maud gave to the before-specified Maud.” Their descendants held their Buckinghamshire barony “by the service of Chamberlain to the King in his Exchequer:” and one of them, William Mauduit, having married Alice de Newburgh, the daughter of Waleran, fourth Earl of Warwick, his son succeeded to that Earldom on the death of Margery, the last heiress, in 1263, “with the Castle and honour of Warwick, and all the manors and lands thereto belonging.” It was one of the fairest inheritances in England, but he only possessed it during four years, and left no son to succeed to it when he died. His only sister Isabel married William de Beauchamp, the “Blind Baron” of Elmley, and thus brought the Earldom of Warwick into the family that made it so famous. Isabel afterwards took the veil in the convent she had founded at Cokehill. Walton-Mauduit in Warwickshire took the name, as did Easton-Mauduit and Gaston Mauduit in Northamptonshire.

Castlethorpe in Bucks is the site of “the ancient Castle of the barony of Hanslape, taken and demolished in 1217 by Foulkes de Brent, when it was garrisoned against the King by its owner William Mauduit, one of the rebellious barons. It exhibits traces of very extensive buildings.”—Lysons.

The descendants of the Wiltshire baron long continued seated at Somerford Mauduit in that county, and one of them had summons to parliament as a baron of the realm. This was John Mauduit, who served as Sheriff 3 Ed. III., was Constable of Old Sarum, and died in 1347, leaving a son, “of whom,” says Dugdale, “I have not heard what became. But there was another John Mauduit, who had his residence at Wermenstre in Com. Wiltes;” and bequeathed a great inheritance to his little granddaughter Maud (then only nine years old) at his death in 1364.