Old family; or, The Setons of Scotland and America

8 THE AT EN ELS. [a.D. 1124
of Lessay, as appears in the Charter of King Henry II. and
from the Bull of confirmation of Pope Urban III. Herre-
villa was presumably a village founded bv Herve (Latinized
Herveius) Avenel, and called for himself Herveville — in Latin
Herveii villa- — and bv corruption Herrevilla, as in the text.
In 1 191 William Avenel, lord of Les Biards and seneschal
to the Count of Mortaine, is found father to Roland, Nich-
olas, and Oliver. A Ralph is also mentioned. The elder
line of Avenel held Les Biards until the extinction of that
branch, or perhaps main trunk, of the family in Normandy in
1 258. There are Counts of Avenel among the French noblesse
to-day ; but although they bear the name — taken from the
lands they have in some way acquired — they are a compara-
tively modern family. Sir Francis Turner Palgrave, treating
of baronial castles in Normandy, gives Amfreville as the seat
of the " Umfrevilles, the Avenels, and many more " (Appen-
dix III., 651), and also " BIARS: hence the Avenels and
the Vernons. This family became very illustrious in Eng-
land, and still more in Scotland." In the thirteenth centurv
Alice, heiress of Sir William Avenel, brought to the Vernons
the vast estate of Haddon, in Derbyshire. Another branch,
seated at Blackpool, in Devonshire, ended about 1450 in three
co-heiresses.
In Scotland the Avenels held one of the most important
baronies of the March, or Border. Robert Avenel, the first
Lord of Eskdale, received his lands from King David I.,
whom he accompanied back from England to Scotland, like
many other Anglo-Norman nobles, who there founded new
families, which in some cases rose to greater eminence and
lasted longer than the older ones of their kin who remained
in the South. Robert de Avenel, in the reign of King Mal-
colm IV., gave the monks of Saint Mary's Abbey, at Mel-
rose, parcels of land in Eskdale, reserving to himself the right
of hunting the wild boar, deer, or stag, also a yearly rent of