Amicia (Arden) Bracebridge (1153 - 1210)

Born 1153 in Warwickshire, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 1210 at about age 57 in Warwickshire,England

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Biography

Amicia de Arden was the last surviving heiress of the Ardens of Kingsbury, Osbert I de Arden, and Osbert II de Arden. Her inheritance passed to her son, John de Bracebridge, and then later to his younger brother William de Bracebridge. Her husband was Peter de Bracebridge.^[1][2][3]

Two legal records recorded in 1208 and 1214 prove definitively that the three coheiresses of the Arden family in Kingsbury were daughters of Osbert II de Arden.^[4] The three sisters held rights in Kingsbury in this sequence:

1. Amabil de Arden, wife of Robert Fitz Walter. She apparently died without issue.
2. Adeliza de Arden, wife of Simon de Harcourt She apparently died without issue.
3. Amicia de Arden, wife of Peter de Bracebridge. Their sons John, and then William de Bracebridge were the eventual heirs of Osbert.

Also concerning the descent given in the legal case, the historians David Crouch and Ann Williams have argued that, in the words of Williams, Osbert I de Arden was the "the grandson, not the son of Thorkell; his father was Siward of Arden and his mother was probably Siward's wife Cecilia (PRO E13/76 m 71r)."^[5] The document they cite is a charter by Hugh de Arden, son of Siward, which names as Osbert de Arden his elder brother. Given the importance of elder brothers, who else could this Osbert be than the one who held Kingsbury?

Research notes

The historian Peter Coss understood the three sisters to be daughters of Osbert I, not granddaughters, but he was apparently unaware of the 1214 legal case, and other similar evidence mentioned above.^[6]

Even more confusing, the 17th century antiquarian Dugdale placed the three sisters in various different relationships, and in different generations.^[7]

Sources

1. ↑ Coss, Peter R., (1991) Lordship, Knighthood, and Locality: A Study in English Society, c.1180 - c.1280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.281-286.
2. ↑ Coss, (1987) "Knighthood and the Early Thirteenth-Century County Court" Thirteenth Century England II, p.56
3. ↑ 'Parishes: Kingsbury', in A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 4, Hemlingford Hundred, ed. L F Salzman (London, 1947), pp. 100-114. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol4/pp100-114 [accessed 27 August 2022].
4. ↑ Curia Regis Rolls, Vol.5, pp.241-2; Vol.7 pp.102-104. Also see the two sequential charters of the first two sisters in Middleton Manuscripts (Historical Manuscripts Commission), pp.8-10. A further source not yet consulted is Cotton Manuscript Appendix XXV 25, referred to by Stenton here and in editorial remarks by Warner and Ellis here.
5. ↑ Ann Williams. (1995) The English and the Norman Conquest. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, p.104
6. ↑ Coss, Peter R. Lordship, Knighthood and Locality : A Study in English Society, c.1180-c.1280. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p.280.
7. ↑ Compare the Kingsbury account to the bigger Arden pedigree under Curdworth, Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire 2nd ed., vol 1, p.925.