Notices of the Ellises of England, Scotland, and Ireland, from the conquest to the present time

MANOR OF HURST-PIERPOINT. 21
that the name has been variously written, viz., De Campania,
Champaigne, Champion, &c. The family under the former
appellation flourished from the time of Henry II. for several
generations, in knightly rank, in the county of Kent j branches
of equal pretensions being settled from very early periods in
Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Essex, in which latter
county alone the family seems to have survived the period of
the Wars of the Roses, and to have kept to the English or-
thography of the name, Campion, and sometimes Champion.
The name in any form does not appear in Domesday Book,
though there is no doubt the family came in with the
Conqueror. 1
As no account of the Norman or French origin of the family
has hitherto been published, it will not be altogether out of
place to supply it in this paper.
Chesnaye - Desbois, in his voluminous Dictionnaire de la
Noblesse, art. Champagne, thus speaks of the origin of that
house : —
"Hubert, sire d'Arnay, might have been a cadet of the
ancient Counts of Maine. Such, in fact, is the opinion of
Abbe Le Laboureur, in the second volume of his Additions
to the Memoirs of Castelnau. He was living 980-5-97, and
died before 1002, during the reign of King Robert, son of
Hugh Capet. His wife was Eremburga, or Ermengarde,
lady of Vihers, daughter according to some, according to
others niece, of Alberic, Sire de Montmorency, Constable of
France. She was married in 997, and had for her dowry
from Fulke-Nerva, Count of Anjou, her cousin-german, the
estate of Vihers, situate on the confines of Anjou and Maine,
which comprehends the barony of Champagne, the first in
Anjou, with the seigneuries of Peschesval, Avoise, Bailleul,
and St. Martin de Parce, which the descendants of Hubert
D'Arnay have constantly possessed, down to John, lord of
Champagne, in 1576. Eremburga remarried in 1002, Herve
de Sable. Her son,
" Hubert II., named Rasorius, after Herve de Sable, who
was so styled, and in whose household he was educated, was
1 As a full pedigree of the Campions of it is unnecessary to reproduce it in this
Danny has been published in Horsfield's paper ; it is also given in the History of
History of Zejues, Berry's Sussex Oenealo- Hurstpierpoint, 12mo, 1837.
gies, and in Vol. X. of Sussex Arch. Coll.,