Magna Carta Surety Baron Geoffrey II de Say was one of the twenty-five medieval barons who were surety for Magna Carta in 1215. Join: Magna Carta Project Discuss: magna_carta
Caution: Geoffrey has a half-brother named Geoffrey (see below)
From his mother Geoffrey inherited in the old feudal barony of West Greenwich, based in Kent. During his lifetime he also managed to takeover the Kent feudal barony of Patrixbourne, because the two heiresses were married to Normans who took the side of the French king and forfeited their English lands.[4]
Geoffrey held lands in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Middlesex, Northamptonshire and Sussex, and also in Normandy.[1] He inherited the Barony of West Greenwich, Kent from his mother.[5] He is recorded in 1224 as having 42 knights' fees in Montgomeryshire, Wales.[1]
Geoffrey's father had granted Sayes Court, Deptford, Kent to the Knights Templar. Geoffrey recovered it in the later 1220s[1] in exchange for giving the Templars property at Saddlescombe, Sussex[1][6]
Life
Geoffrey appears in documents from 1197/8 (when he confirmed a grant of his father's) onwards.[1]
In 1202 Geoffrey was awarded compensation for lands lost to the French king in Anjou.[1]
In 1215 Geoffrey sided with other barons against King John, and was one of the Surety Barons for the Magna Carta.[1][7] A few months later most of his lands were confiscated: they were not restored until he returned to allegiance to the English Crown in 1217.[1]
Geoffrey went on pilgrimage twice: in 1219, to the Holy Land; and in 1221, to Santiago da Compostella.[1]
Geoffrey died in Poitou on 19 August 1230 while campaigning with Henry III.[1] He was buried at the Hospital of St Mary, Dover, Kent, of which he had been a benefactor.[1]
Research Notes
Different People with the Name Geoffrey de Say
Great care is needed to distinguish between different people of this period with the name Geoffrey de Say. Besides the Surety Baron of this profile there are:
In the Complete Peerage Cokayne has conflated Geofrey with both his father and his half-brother.[9] So do Burke's Peerage[10] and some other secondary sources.
Wife
Douglas Richardson discusses confusions over Geoffrey de Say's marriage history in Magna Carta Ancestry[1] and his 2007 post in soc.genealogy.medieval.[8]
Cokayne in his main entry for Geoffrey ascribes two wives to him: Alice, probably heiress of John de Chesney/Cheyne, and Margery de Briwerre.[9] So does Burke's Peerage.[10] I J Sanders in his English Baronies states that Margery de Briwerre was a wife of the Geoffrey of this profile.[11] So does Cawley.[12]
Alice de Cheyne (or Chesney) was Geoffrey's mother, not his wife. This is evidenced by contemporary documents. For instance in about 1198 Geoffrey and his father Geoffrey made a gift to the hospital at Drincourt (now called Neufchâtel-en-Bray[13]) for the soul of Geoffrey's mother Alice de Chesney.[2] There is a correction to Cokayne on the Notes on Medieval English Genealogy website.[14] By way of extra evidence that Alice was Geoffrey’s mother, this correction to Cokayne cites a grant confirmed by Geoffrey de Say son of Geoffrey de Say and Alice "de Chemunei" (a variant spelling of Cheyne). Cokayne himself shows Alice as the mother of the Geoffrey of this profile in a Mandeville pedigree.[15]
Margery (or Margaret) de Briwerre was probably the second wife of Geoffrey's half-brother of the same name, who would have been her third husband.[8] Her previous husbands were William de la Ferté and Eudo de Dammartin, and she was alive in 1233.[11][16] (Sanders and Cawley disagree on which of these previous husbands was the first, and which the second.)
Confirmation that Geoffrey married Hawise de Clare is given by a charter of about 1235 issued by his widow Hawise de Clare and his son William relating to property in Edmonton, Middlesex. There is also a record dated 1215 of Geoffrey having knights' fees held from the Earl of Clare by "free-marriage".[8]
Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Biography
For the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta in 2015, Professor Nigel Saul wrote a set of biographies of the Surety Barons. He and the Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Committee generously gave permission for them to be reproduced on WikiTree. They can be viewed here.
↑ I J Sanders. English Baronies. A Study of their Origins and Descent 1086-1327, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1960, pp. 97-98
↑ Edward Hasted. 'Parishes: Deptford,' in The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, Vol. 1 (Canterbury: W Bristow, 1797), pp. 340-371, accessed March 12, 2016, British History Online
↑ Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, Vol. I, p. ix
↑ 8.08.18.28.38.4 Douglas Richardson. 'Complete Peerage Addition: Hawise de Clare, wife of Geoffrey de Say, Magna Carta Baron', post in soc.genealogy.medieval, 10 Nov 2007, viewable on Narkive
↑ 9.09.1 G E Cokayne. Complete Peerage, revised edition, Vol. XI, St Catherine Press, 1949, pp. 468-470
Richardson, Douglas. Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 5 vols, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. Salt Lake City: the author, 2013. See also WikiTree's source page for ‘’Royal Ancestry’’. Vol. IV, p. 562
Richardson, Douglas. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 4 vols, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. 2nd edition, Salt Lake City: the author, 2011, Vol. III pp. 495-497, SAY 1. See also WikiTree's source page for ‘’Magna Carta Ancestry.’’ Partially viewable in snippets on Google Books.
Richardson, Douglas. 'Complete Peerage Addition: Hawise de Clare, wife of Geoffrey de Say, Magna Carta Baron', post in soc.genealogy.medieval, 10 Nov 2007, viewable on Narkive, accessed 28 November 2019
Acknowledgements
Magna Carta Project
As a surety baron, Geoffrey de Say's profile is managed by the Magna Carta Project. See Say-76 Descendants for profiles of his descendants that have been improved and categorized by the Magna Carta project and are in a project-approved trail to a Gateway Ancestor. See this index for links to other surety barons and category pages for their descendants. See the project's Base Camp for more information about Magna Carta trails.
This profile was revised for the Magna Carta Project by Michael Cayley, finishing 4 December 2019.
Rather more complicated than that, Isaac. King John accepted the French king as feudal overlord for Aquitaine. And this feudal relationship with France was to cause contention and difficulty till the end of the Hundred Years War.
To the earlier question (2017) Poitou was not France when this man died there.
It was Aquitaine, which was Angevin (ie greater England) under Plantagenet rule until the Treaty of Paris in 1259, I believe. At no time during this man's lifetime would he (or anyone born anywhere outside of the actual borders of France) thought of Poitou as France. (French, sort of. France, no.) So, we shouldn't call it France.
Any more than we'd call "Boston, Massachusetts" part of the United States of America in 1730. Similarly, when say "Alsace" or "Jerusalem" or "Kiev" is changing hands periodically, we need to get the top-level placename/domain right too. Let's do that everywhere, everytime.
The ONLY logically-viable alternative^1 is to exclusively use current geopolitical labels, which would require the complete suppression of all extinct political entities (eg USSR, Holy Roman Empire, Roman Empire, Plymouth Colony, New Netherland etc) and exclusively using today's current boundaries/labels. Or changing the way the site is programmed to support both.^2 Neither of which is not consistent with our "use their conventions not ours" credo.
So, as weird as it may sound, no, Poitou isn't France, not in 1230.
^1 Or we could just eliminate labels entirely and use latlongs, which would be horrible.
^2 It's not crazy to have separate place fields in the database for What-It-Is-Called-Today (or a geocoded or latlong) and What-It-Was-Called-Then. That would solve a lot of problems. But it's not how things are now.
Not sure you are right about the way the term France was used. In many situations the boundaries of the old Carolingian kingdoms were still important into modern times, even when the kingdoms did not have one person effectively controlling them. Unlike Burgundy and Lorraine, Aquitania, like the county of Flanders, was definitely part of West Francia.
Good question Susan. The text only says Poitou & the suggestions given in the dropdown don't include a note for year 1230. Even though all the suggestions show France, when I did some checking, it's shown by FMG - http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/AQUITAINE%20NOBILITY.htm - as a county in the duchy of Aquitaine (but also doesn't attach a date).
It was Aquitaine, which was Angevin (ie greater England) under Plantagenet rule until the Treaty of Paris in 1259, I believe. At no time during this man's lifetime would he (or anyone born anywhere outside of the actual borders of France) thought of Poitou as France. (French, sort of. France, no.) So, we shouldn't call it France.
Any more than we'd call "Boston, Massachusetts" part of the United States of America in 1730. Similarly, when say "Alsace" or "Jerusalem" or "Kiev" is changing hands periodically, we need to get the top-level placename/domain right too. Let's do that everywhere, everytime.
The ONLY logically-viable alternative^1 is to exclusively use current geopolitical labels, which would require the complete suppression of all extinct political entities (eg USSR, Holy Roman Empire, Roman Empire, Plymouth Colony, New Netherland etc) and exclusively using today's current boundaries/labels. Or changing the way the site is programmed to support both.^2 Neither of which is not consistent with our "use their conventions not ours" credo.
So, as weird as it may sound, no, Poitou isn't France, not in 1230.
^1 Or we could just eliminate labels entirely and use latlongs, which would be horrible.
^2 It's not crazy to have separate place fields in the database for What-It-Is-Called-Today (or a geocoded or latlong) and What-It-Was-Called-Then. That would solve a lot of problems. But it's not how things are now.