Agnes, daughter of Payn fitzJohn
Overview
Biography
Agnes, born c.1125, was the daughter of Payn fitzJohn and Sibyl, sister of Geoffrey II Talbot. The Chronicle of John of Worcester says Payn had been one of Henry I’s chamberlains and sheriff of Shropshire and Hereford, who who died in 1137, fighting the Welsh along the border (3.228-29). Agnes and her sister Cecily were the heirs of Sibyl’s brother, Geoffey, who died in 1140, dividing the inheritance. When Cecily died, her estates passed to Agnes’s descendants (Sanders, English Baronies, 144). Agnes married first Warin de Mountchesney, who died c. 1162, then Haldenald de Bidun, who died before 1185. Agnes died 1190-91.
According to the Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis, Agnes had three sons, Ralph, William, both knights, and Hubert, a clerk, and two daughters, one of whom one was married to Stephen Glanvill, and the other to William Paynel (#116). (In one of her donations, #134, Agnes names a son-in-law, Robert of Mortimer, and a daughter, Alice.) The Rotuli has several entries listing her possessions: #83, her "vill" of Dinton is worth 22 pounds with the following stock: viz. 3 plough-teams, 200 sheep, 4 cows, one bull, 4 sows, and one boar; #116, she herself has 11 librates of land in Holkham, without stock, and her land in Holkham could sustain stock of one plough-team and 100 sheep, and then it would be worth 13 pounds. The land belongs to the fee of the earl of Sussex, and the above lady holds it of her son, Ralph (footnote 156 cites a torn round which suggests that her dower would have been in Oxborough or Didlington in South Greenhoe Hundred, the Domesday manors of her husband’s family). #126, Agnes de Mountchesney has Burgh in Clavering Hundred and it is worth 20 pounds per annum and belongs to the fee of Saint Etheldreda; #127, Agnes de Mountchesney has 16 librates of land in Sutton in Happing Hundred of the fee of Roger Bigod; #129, Agnes de Mountchesney has 16 librates of land in Sutton in Happing Hundred of the fee of Roger Bigod. Agnes made a number of donations to the church and abbey at Godstow, some specifically for the care of sick nuns.
The material in this biography is drawn from: The Chronicle of John of Worcester, v.3, The Annals from 1067 to 1140, ed. and trans. P. McGurk (Oxford, 1998); I.J. Sanders, English Baronies: A Study of Their Origin and Descent, 1086-1327 (Oxford, 1960); John Walmsley, ed. trans., Widows Heirs, and Heiresses in the Late Twelfth Century: The Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et Puellis (Tempe, Arizona: ACMRS, 2006). Emilie Amt’s edition of The Latin Cartulary of Godstow Abbey (Oxford: Oxford University, 2014) and her article "The Foundation Legend of Godstow Abbey: A Holy Woman's Life in Anglo-Norman Verse." Writing Medieval Woman's Lives, ed. C.N. Goldy and A. LIvingstone (Palgrave, 2012), introduced me to Agnes.
Letters from Agnes, daughter of Payn fitzJohn
A letter to Public (1150-89, probably after 1185)A letter to Public (1150-89, probably after 1185)
A letter to Public (1150-91)
A letter to Public (1184-91)