Castellans of La Pommeraie, Normandy (De Gerville, Anciens Chateaux de la Manche). “A fragment of this Norman stronghold still remains in the Çinglais, not far from Falaise. It is there called Château Ganne - Ganelon’s Castle - a name given in Normandy to more than one such ruin, and commemorating the famous traitor of romance, who betrayed the Christian host ‘When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia.’ It is really the Château de la Pommeraie, and here, no doubt, was the original 'pomeraie’ or orchard which gave name to the stronghold and the family.” - Handbook for Devon. Two of the name - Hugue and Raoul de la Pomeraie - are on the Dives Roll. Of Hugh I can find no mention in Dugdale; but Ralph appears in Domesday holding sixty manors de capite; all of them, with only two exceptions, in Devonshire, where Berry Pomeroy became the head of his barony. He first built the castle whose ruins nobly crown its precipitous hill. His successor, William, had a younger son named Ethelward, who founded Buckfast Abbey in the time of Henry I., and whose name suggests an alliance with some Saxon house, but the earlier intermarriages are not given. Burke states that Joel de la Pommeraie married a bastard daughter of Henry I., the sister of Reginald, Earl of Cornwall; but neither the name nor the marriage occur in Dugdale’s pedigree. The elder brother, Henry, “taking heart at the imprisonment of Richard I. by the Duke of Austria,” declared for Prince John, garrisoned his castle of Berry-Pomeroy, and chased the monks from the famous Cornish monastery of “St. Michael of the danger of the sea,” which had been granted by the Earl of Mortaine in 1070 as a cell to its namesake in Normandy.

“Who knows not Michael’s mount and chair, the pilgrim’s holy vaunt; Both land and island twice a day, both fort and port of haunt?”

This formidable natural citadel was strengthened and fortified by Henry de la Pommeraie, “that there he might be,” says old Fuller, “a petty Prince by himself. But being ascertained of his Soveraigne’s enlargement, and fearing deserved death, to prevent it, he laid violent hands on himself, as Roger Hovedon doth report.

“But the Descendants from this Pomeroy make a different relation of this accident; affirming that a Serjeant of Armes of the King’s came to this Castle of Berry Pomeroy, and there received kind entertainment for certain days together, and at his departure was gratified with a liberal reward. In counterchange whereof he then, and no sooner, revealing his long concealed errand, flatly arrested his Host, to make his immediate appearance before the King, to answer a capital crime. Which unexpected and ill-carried Message, the Gentleman took in such despight, that with his Dagger he stabbed the Messenger to the heart.

“Then, despairing of pardon in so superlative an offence, he abandoned his home, and got himself to his Sister, then abiding in the island of Mount Michael in Cornwall. Here he bequeathed a large portion of his land to the religious people dwelling there, to pray for the redeeming of his soul; and lastly (that the remainder of his estate might descend to his heirs) he caused himself to be let blood unto death.” A local legend, on the other hand, asserts that he never left Berry Pomeroy, and when the King’s pursuivant came to arrest him, mounted his horse and leaped from the battlements into the valley below: “Out over the cliff - out into the night - Three hundred feet of fall.

“They found him next morning below in the glen, With never a bone in him whole - A mass and a prayer now, good gentlemen, For such a bold rider’s soul!”

The same story is told of more than one German robber-knight, beleaguered in his lofty eyry by his infuriated serfs during the peasants’ war.

But, though Henry de la Pommeraie thus forestalled his trial, Leland tells us he “lost the most part of his Enheritance.” His grandson and namesake twice changed sides in the baronial war; but at one time was found actively engaged for Simon de Montfort, and according to the Miracula Simonis (App. to Rishanger’s Chronicle, Camden So. Edition) the great Earl appeared after his death to this second Henry. In the following generation, another Henry was found in 1298 to be one of the next heirs of Roger, the last of the great house of Valletort (his grandmother having, as I conceive, been Alice de Valletort), and thus added to his possessions the barony of Harberton, and the castle of Tremarton in Cornwall. Harberton, however, with Brixham and another barony, Stokeley-Pomeroy in Devon, passed away to the two sisters of Sir John Pomeroy in 1422. An heir male remained to carry on the line; but “as to the Barony, whereof this Family was antiently possessed; I do not find,” says Dugdale, “that after King Hen. III.’s time, they ever had the benefit of Peerage, or place in Parliament by it; though the Capital seat thereof, viz. Birie, so held by that service, continued to them; it being evident, that in 11 Hen. VI. Edward Pomerei Esquire was then seised thereof.”

For more than a century after this, the Pomeroys were to be found at Berry- Pomeroy; till, in the reign of Edward VI., Sir Thomas Pomeroy wrought the utter downfall of the family by engaging in the Devonshire rebellion of 1549. He is described as “a symple gente,” and his life was perhaps spared on account of his feeble intellect; but no mercy was shown to the estate. He was involved in ruin; and after a short struggle, was forced to relinquish the stately home that had been the head of the honour since the days of the Conqueror, and Berry Pomeroy was sold to the Seymours. According to another account Sir Thomas “is said to have saved his life by making over the manor and castle of Berry Pomeroy to the Protector Duke of Somerset.” - Lysons. The “Wishing-Tree” of Berry Pomeroy - “the prettiest superstition of the place” - is the only one left in England. It is a lofty, wide-spreading beech. Whoever walks round the trunk three times with the sun, and three times backwards, thinking the while of the wish - unspoken and known to no one - will, it is confidently believed, find it come true. The dispossessed family continued till the reign of Elizabeth, “when the heiress is said to have married Penkeville. Younger branches were of Sandridge and of Ingesdon in this county: a co-heiress of Pomeroy of Sandridge married Gilbert, ancestor of the Rev. Pomeroy Gilbert of Bodmin, about a century ago. About the middle of the seventeenth century the co-heiresses of Pomeroy of Ingesdon married Thomas and Ford. Arthur Pomeroy, Viscount Harberton, is supposed to be descended from a younger son of the Pomeroys of Ingesdon.” - Lysons' Devonshire. They also held Tregony Castle (said to have been built by the same baron who revolted against Cœur de Lion) in Cornwall, till the extinction of the elder branch in the sixteenth century, when, according to Hals, the manor of Tregony-Pomeroy passed, with its heiress, to the Penkevilles. Yet, “in the parish church of Cuby is a memorial for Hugh Pomeroy of Tregony Pomeroy (of a younger branch, it is probable) who died in 1674.” - Lysons' Cornwall.

Lord Harberton’s ancestor, Arthur Pomeroy, first came to Ireland as chaplain of Arthur Capel Earl of Essex in 1672, and received from him the Deanery of Cork with other rich benefices. His son, again a clergyman, was the father of another Arthur, who married one of the co-heiresses of Henry Colley of Castle- Carbery in Kildare (the elder brother of the first Lord Mornington) and represented the county in parliament for twenty-three years. He received an Irish barony in 1783, and a Viscountcy in 1791, taking his title from the old Cornish barony of the Valletorts.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, De Pomerie. Pommeraie; a local name