(Dugdale spells it St. Liz, according to the accepted English orthography) from the town so named in France. Simon de Senlis and his brother Garnerius, who together came to the Conquest of England, are described in the Monasticon (v. 90) as the sons of “Raundoel le Ryche,” but I can find no further account of their lineage. Yet it is clear that Simon was of high account and consideration, for in 1076 the Conqueror offered him the hand of his niece Judith, dowered with her two Earldoms of Huntingdon and Northampton. She had been married to Waltheoff, the son of Siward Earl of Northumberland, at the time that he had made his submission to the Conqueror, and received back his father’s principality four years before. But she had proved an evil wife, for when the Earl was charged with being a favourer and accomplice of the Earl of Norfolk’s rebellion, it was she “who had stood forth as his accuser in the ears of her uncle and though he maintained his innocence to the last, he was executed at Winchester in 1076. In this treason to her own hearth, the Countess Judith had probably a second and more congenial husband in view; but she indignantly refused to marry Simon de Senlis, who “halted on one leg,” and incurred the full measure of the Conqueror’s wrath by her disobedience. He seized her castle and honour of Huntingdon, and gave her town of Northampton to the disappointed Simon, “with the whole Hundred of Falkeley, then valued at ₤40 per annum, to provide shoes for his horses.” She fled, with her three daughters, in great terror to the Isle of Ely, where Hereward then offered an asylum to all malcontents and refugees, and there, and “in other obscure places, they were exposed to shift for themselves.” She reappears, however, as a great landowner in Domesday, and the foundress of a nunnery at Elstow, near Bedford; for she lived to be deeply sensible of her guilt, and “in great penitency continued all her life a widow.” She is said to have visited her husband’s tomb at Croyland - then venerated as the shrine of a martyred saint and working miracles of healing - with the offering of a superb pall; “but the gift was thrown back by unseen hands.”

Meanwhile, Simon, no whit discouraged, had patiently bided his time; and about 1089 - or thirteen years after he had been rejected by the mother - he wooed and won her eldest daughter, Maud. She brought him the two long coveted Earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon as her marriage portion; and was the mother of three children; Simon, his successor; Waltheoff, Abbot of Melrose; and a daughter named after herself. Her husband was the founder of the castle of Northampton and the neighbouring Priory of St. Andrew’s; and in his latter years assumed the cross, dying in 1115, on his way home from Jerusalem, at the French Abbey of Our Lady of Charity. “Maud consoled her widowhood with a loftier marriage. She became the wife of David of Scotland, one of the sons of Malcolm and of the holy Margaret, and who himself became one of the most renowned princes who ever wore the Scottish Crown. Through this marriage came the long connexion between the Earldom of Huntingdon and the royal house of Scotland, and through it too the blood of Waltheof, and thereby of j the long list of his forefathers, human or otherwise, Siward, Earl of Northumberland, was said to be the grandson of a Danish princess and a bear; and his father is supposed to have borne visible marks of his parentage, having long hairy ears, whence he was called Barn or Berne. passed into the veins of the later Kings of England, and also, if genealogists are to be trusted, into those of many of their subjects.” - Freeman.

Simon II. succeeded to the Earldom of Northampton only; for the Earldom of Huntingdon was, by special grace of Henry I., conveyed to his stepfather, David of Scotland, who, on ascending the throne on the death of Alexander I. in 1124, transferred it to his only son Henry. It was not till Henry died in 1152 that, after an interval of thirty-seven years, it reverted to Simon. This Earl, called by a hostile contemporary “a man forward in promises but slow in performance,” took part with Stephen, and “shared the bad fate”of the battle of Lincoln. He married Isabel de Beaumont, and died about 1154, leaving Simon III., his son and heir. Again the honours were divided. Simon III. became Earl of Northampton; but the Earldom of Huntingdon was obtained from Henry II. by Malcolm IV. King of Scots, the eldest son of Prince Henry (who had not lived to succeed his father on the throne), and therefore the grandson of David I. and the heiress Maud. It was, however, apparently not granted to him on account of his lineage, but in lieu of the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, “which he then rendered to the King.” When Malcolm died after a thirteen years’ reign, it passed to his brother and successor William the Lion, who forfeited it by joining the rebellion of the barons in favour of Prince Henry. The King, who was then in Normandy, sent over orders that an army should be forthwith levied to seize the castle and honour of Huntingdon, and deliver them to Earl Simon as the rightful heir. On receiving these “acceptable tidings,” Simon himself took the field; and appearing before the castle with a large force, obliged the King of Scots to surrender it into his hands. Thus the grandson of the first Earl actually became the eighth bearer of this erratic title. But the contest for its possession was far from being at an end; for his right was disputed by David Earl of Carrick (the younger brother of William the Lion): and the strife was prolonged with such persistence that “the King, moved with anger, swore, That neither of them should have it: and so caused the Castle to be demolished.” - Dugdale.

Earl Simon, in 1165, certified to eighty knight’s fees, and “notwithstanding King Henry’s rash Oath, enjoy’d the Earldom till his death in 1184.” He had married a very great heiress, Alice, sole child of Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln, who brought him her father’s princely Honour; but they had no children, and the Earldom of Northampton expired with him. That of Huntingdon was given by the King to William the Lion, who at once made it over to his brother; and the long-vexed question of David’s claim was finally set to rest.

This third Simon had two sisters, Amice and Hawise, of whom Dugdale tells us nothing, except that they were, at the time of their father’s death, in the custody of Hen. II. But he speaks of a branch surviving in the male line, derived from a junior Simon, who was a benefactor of Delapre Abbey, and the father of another Simon, mentioned under King John as having a suit for one knight’s fee in Cumton against David Earl of Huntingdon. Their descendants, “fixing at Seton in Com. Rutl. assumed that place for their surname; whose Heir-female Temp. Hen. VI. became the Wife of Sir William Fielding of Newnham in Com. Warr. Knight. From whom the Right Honorable Basil, now Earl of Denbigh, is Lineally descended.”