From Pierrepont, near St. Sauveur, in the Côtentin, which, up to the seventeenth century, continued in the possession of the family. Louis de Pierrepont, in 1690, received from Louis XIV. the barony and marquesate of Biars; and some of the name are still to be found in Lower Normandy. They were originally divided into three branches, of which the first bore Paly of six, Or and Ature, a chief Gules; the others, Azure a chief indented Or;—in the latter case nearly the same arms as those originally borne by the English house.

Three brothers of this name occur as under-tenants in Domesday: “Reinaldus de Perapund” in Norfolk: and Godfrey and Robert “de Petroponte” in Suffolk. The two latter held in addition about nine thousand acres in Sussex under Earl Warren, to whom, as there is some reason to believe, they were very near of kin (IV. S. Ellis, Sussex Archæologia, vol. xi.). Rainald’s son William held four thousand more acres in the county, and founded the powerful family of Poynings (sec p. 55). Godfrey’s estates eventually passed to Robert’s successors. Henstead in Suffolk, part of his great manor of Wrentham, was called from him Henstead-Perpound’s.

Robert, the progenitor of the great house of Pierrepont, held one of the largest, if not the largest manor in Sussex, Hurst-Pierpoint, extending over several different parishes, which was transmitted to his descendants in unbroken male succession for nearly three centuries. Hugh, Robert, and William, who witness a deed of their suzerain’s in the Lewes chartulary previous to 1148, were probably his sons. Hugh left only a daughter named Beatrix, married to William de Warren, Lord of Wirmegay. Robert appears in the Liber Niger, as well as Simon de Pierrepont, with whom he (or another Robert) went to the siege of Acre under Cœur de Lion. One of Simon’s grandsons, Guy, was Lord of Glazeley in Shropshire, and adopted the name of his manor, where his posterity continued for five generations. At the same date, John de Perpund held land by serjeantry in Nottinghamshire; and another Simon, ten knight’s fees of the Earl Warren (Testa de Nevill). This Simon died s. p.: and was succeeded by his brother Sir Robert, who sided with Henry III. against the barons, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Lewes. It was his marriage that transplanted the family to Notts; for his wife Annora, the sister and sole heir of Lionel de Malavers or Mauvers, brought him Holme—since Holme Pierrepont, and a great estate in that county. On his seal first appears the present coat of Pierrepont: Argent semée of cinquefoils Gules, a lion rampant Sable, “probably adopted by his father, who may have married a Clifton, a Nottinghamshire family, whose arms resemble these in all but tinctures.” —W. S. Ellis. Yet it is certain that Sir Robert’s eldest son Simon, and Simon’s heiress Sibilla, who carried away Hurst- Pierpont and the Sussex estates to the Uffords, used the original coat of their house, as borne by Robert de Pierrepont at the siege of Acre (see Dansey’s Crusaders): Azure a chief chequy Or and Gules; which (with the chequers of Warren added in honour of their suzerain) was that retained by two of the French families of this name (see p. 381).

Sir Robert’s second son and namesake, who, on Simon’s death, became the head of the family, bore his father’s coat, and, succeeding to his mother’s inheritance, settled at Holme-Pierrepoint He fought in Scotland with Edward I.: and several of his descendants, in their turn, rendered good service in the field. One was among the foremost at Halidon Hill: another, a stout Yorkist, was knighted by Edward IV. after the battle of Barton: and a third was made a Knight Banneret in 1513 for his valour at the sieges of Tournay and Therouenne.

The last Simon de Pierrepont of Hurst had received a summons to par­liament in 1293, but, as I have already said, left no son. A second peerage was granted by Charles I. to Robert Pierrepont, who was created Baron Pierrepont of Holme-Pierrepont and Viscount Newark in 1627, and Earl of Kingston in the ensuing year. The family property had by this time been largely increased, notably by purchases of Church lands; and the new Earl is described as “a person of excellent parts and ample Fortune.” He was in addition an ardent loyalist; yet Clarendon has “a pleasant story, which administered some mirth” at Court, to tell of his parsimony. The King was in great need of subsidies: and “there were two great men who lived near Nottingham” (where he then was) “both men of great fortunes and of great parsimony, known to have much money lying by them, Pierrepont Earl of Kingston, and Leake Lord Dencourt To the former the Lord Capel was sent: to the latter, John Ashburnham of the Bedchamber, each of them with a letter, all written with the King’s hand, to borrow of each five or ten thousand pounds. Capel was very civilly received by the Earl, and entertained as well as the ill accommodations in his house, and his manner of living, would admit He expressed, with wonderful civil expressions of duty, 'the great trouble he sustained, in not being able to comply with His Majesty’s commands;' he said, 'all men knew that he neither had, nor could have money, because he had every year, of ten or a dozen which were past, purchased a thousand pounds land every year; and therefore he could not be imagined to have any money lying by him, which he never loved to have. But he said he had a neighbour' (Lord D’Eyncourt) 'who lived within a few miles of him, who was good for nothing, and lived like a hog, not allowing himself necessaries, and who could not have so little as twenty thousand pounds in that scurvy house in which he lived;' and concluded with great duty to the King, and detestation of the Parliament, and as if he meant to consider further of the thing, and to endeavour to get some money for him, which though he did not remember to send, his affections were good, and he was afterwards killed in the King’s service.”

This happened the very next year—in 1643. Mrs. Hutchinson (in her Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson) gives the following account of his death, which however singular, is “assuredly true,” being attested by other authorities: "My lord, professing himself to him” (Captain Lomax, one of the Parliamentary committee) “as rather desirous of peace, and fully resolved not to act on either side, made a serious imprecation on himself in these words: 'When,’ said he, 'I take arms with the king against the parliament, or with the parliament against the king, let a cannon bullet divide me between them:’ which God was pleased to bring to pass a few months after: for he, going to Gainsborough, and there taking up arms for the king, was surprised by my Lord Willoughby, and after a handsome defence of himself, yielded, and was put prisoner into a pinnace, and sent down the river to Hull; when my Lord Newcastle’s army marching along the shore, shot at the pinnace, and being in danger, the Earl of Kingston went up on deck to show himself and to prevail with them to forbear shooting; but as soon as he appeared, a cannon-bullet flew from the King’s army, and divided him in the middle, being then in the parliament’s pinnace, who perished according to his own unhappy imprecation.” The Royalist version of this melancholy affair is that the attack upon the pinnace was a bold attempt at a rescue by Sir Charles Cavendish. He “demanded the Earl,” and, “receiving: a refusal, discharged a drake at the boat, which unfortunately killed the Earl and his servant, who were 'placed as a mark to his friend’s shot.'”

His son and heir, a zealous Royalist, was created Marquess of Dorchester in 1644, but as he had no male heir, this new title expired with him in 1680. Three grand-nephews successively inherited the Earldom; one of them holding it for only two years; and the last, Evelyn, fifth Earl, received a renewal of the extinct Marquessate in 1706; and further, in 1715, the Dukedom of Kingston. He had one son who died before him, and three daughters, of whom Lady Mary, the eldest, was perhaps the cleverest, and without question the most eccentric, woman of her day. She married Edward Wortley Montagu; and in 1716 accompanied him on his embassy to Constantinople, whence she has the credit of having imported into England the native practice of inoculation, as a protection against the small-pox. She had first experimented on her own little boy, then three years old. On her return home, she had “the pre-eminence of wit and beauty at the Court of George I.;" and was at one time the fast friend of Pope; but their intimacy resulted in a bitter and life-long quarrel. At length, on the plea of ill-health, she left her husband to live abroad, and spent twenty-two years in Italy, only coming back to England when she became a widow in 1761—the year before her own death. She was then seventy-two, yet “she has,” writes Mrs. Montagu, “more than the vivacity of fifteen, and a memory that is perhaps unique. When Nature is at the trouble of making a very singular person, Time does right in respecting it. Medals are preserved, when common coin is worn out” Horace Walpole’s account of her is very uncomplimentary. “Lady Mary Wortley is arrived: I have seen her: I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity, are all increased. Her dress, like her languages, is a galimatias of several countries: the groundwork rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black- laced hood represents the first: the fur of a horseman’s coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second: a dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth: and slippers act the part of the last. When I was at Florence and she was expected there, we were drawing Sortcs Virgilianas for her: we literally drew ‘Insanam vatcm aspicies.’ It would be a stronger prophecy now, even than it was then.” Her celebrated Letters were not published till after her death.

Her brother, William Lord Newark, though he only lived to be twenty-one, left a son of his own name who succeeded his grandfather as Duke of Kingston; and a daughter, Lady Frances, married to Philip Meadows.

This second and last Duke married, late in life, when he was enfeebled both in body and mind, one of the former Maids of Honour of the Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Chudleigh. She was the daughter of a captain in the army, who belonged to a good Devonshire family, and had served under Marlborough, but left his family in straitened circumstances, and Mr. Pulteney (afterwards Earl of Hath), being a friend of her mother’s, procured for her a place at Court. She proved a brilliant success; for she was “of enchanting beauty and quick wit, with great readiness of repartee:” aiming (as she herself said) on all subjects to be “short, clear, and surprising.” She hoped to have married the Duke of Hamilton, but he broke off the engagement; and, piqued and disappointed, she made a clandestine match with Captain Hervey, “a young seaman just out of his teens.” The marriage was performed at night, by the light of a solitary tallow candle stuck into an empty bottle; and remained a profound secret, unacknowledged either by bride or bridegroom. They were too poor to afford to lose her salary; and though she had two children (who died young) she continued to be Miss Chudleigh, the Maid of Honour. She presently took a hearty dislike to her young husband, and was never at ease till he had gone to sea, with “a fair wind down Channel” to speed him on his way; and, to make matters worse, her former admirer, the Duke, renewed his suit, which she was obliged to reject She then went with a party of friends to the church where her marriage had taken place, and while the others engaged the clergyman’s attention, furtively tore out the leaf of the register on which it was entered. Not long after, however, she managed to have the entry replaced, for Captain Hervey had meanwhile succeeded to the Earldom of Bristol, and as he was in wretched health she looked forward to becoming a Countess Dowager, with an ample jointure. In this she was disappointed; the Earl recovered; and with his collusion (as was then believed) she was publicly married in 1769 - twenty-five years after her first stolen wedding - to the Duke of Kingston. The Consistory Court of London had shortly before declared her free from any previous matrimonial contract; and the King and Queen, with all the great officers of State, “honoured her by wearing her favours.”

The weak old man whom she had inveigled into matrimony died four years afterwards, leaving her everything he possessed:—the estates for her life only, but the personalty absolutely—on condition she did not marry again. It was a lamentable close to the history of a proud and honoured race, for he was the last of his lineage, and with him expired a seven-hundred-year-old name.

The Duchess’ life had always been disreputable; but it now became so 0penly and outrageously licentious, that she had to escape from the clamour of the scandal it excited She sailed for Italy in a splendid yacht, and met with a triumphal reception at Rome, where the Pope, knowing nothing of her story, treated her as a princess. Hut she was quickly summoned home by the startling news that a sentence in the Ecclesiastical Court had established the validity of her first marriage, and that the Duke's heirs were about to prosecute her for bigamy. The banker at Rome (who was in their interest), at first refused to advance her money for her journey; but she stationed herself at his door, pistol in hand, and compelled him, vi et armis, to give her what she required. On her arrival at Kingston House, she found friends ready to espouse her cause;—among others, Lord Mansfield and the Duke of Newcastle; and the next night went to a masked ball in the character of Iphigenia. Her trial took place before the House of Lords, in Westminster Hall; and was attended by vast crowds, includ­ing Queen Charlotte and the Princess of Wales. She appeared in widow’s weeds, “a bale of bombazine,” attended with two waiting-women, “mourning maids of honour to support her when she swoons at her dear Duke’s name,” Horace Walpole calls them; a physician, an apothecary, a secretary, and a formidable array of counsel. She was then a large, shapeless woman of about fifty-six, with no traces of her former beauty; but she went through her part well, and never lost her presence of mind, even when the terrible record of her past life was unfolded by the Attorney General. She was found guilty, but claimed her privilege as a peeress, and was discharged without any punishment “The wisdom of the land,” writes Horace Walpole, “has been exerted for five days in turning a Duchess into a Countess, and yet does not think it a punishable crime for a Countess to convert herself into a Duchess. After a paltry defence, and a speech of fifty pages (which she had herself written, and pronounced very well) the sages, in spite of the Attorney General (who brandished a hot iron) dismissed her with the single injunction of paying the fees, all voting her guilty, but the Duke of Newcastle—her neighbour in the country—softening his vote by adding 'erroneously, not intentionally.’ So ends the solemn farce. The Earl of Bristol, they say, does not intend to leave her that name, nor the house of Meadows a shilling.” Yet she retained her fortune, and escaping the writ ne exeat regno, travelled all over the Continent, everywhere splendidly entertained as Duchess of Kingston, till she finally took up her abode in Paris, where she died in 1788.

It was not till then that the Duke’s nephew, Charles Meadows (the second son of his sister Lady Frances), entered into possession of the Kingston estates, “by devise from the Duchess,” and took the name and arms of Pierrepont. All the honours had become extinct at the Duke’s death; but two of them were revived in his favour in 1796, when he became Viscount Newark and Baron Pierrepont; and, ten years later, he was created Earl Manvers. He is now represented by his grandson.

A branch of this family once existed in Wales. “Gileston or Gilston, to which there was a manor or lordship attached, was so called from Sir Giles Pierpont, one of Bernard Newmarch’s knights. Joyce, daughter and heir of John Pierpont alias Parkville, married Walter or Watkin Gunter, eighth in descent from Sir Peter, a contemporary of Sir Giles.” —Jones' Brecon.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, de Perapund.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, de Perapund.