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Updated: May 7, 2025
The Black Prince married the daughter of the Earl of Kent; Lionel became Earl of Ulster in the right of his wife; John of Gaunt married the heiress of Lancaster and became Duke of Lancaster; Thomas of Woodstock married the heiress of the Bohuns, Earls of Essex and of Hereford; the descendants of Edmund, Duke of York, absorbed the great rival house of Mortimer; and other great houses were brought within the royal family circle.
Fuller wrote in his "Worthies," that "some who justly hold the surnames of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets, are hid in the heap of common men."
The Braose family continued to hold Gower, but the rest of their possessions passed to other houses Brecon to the Bohuns of Hereford, Elvael to Mortimer, Abergavenny to Hastings, Builth first to Mortimer and then to the Crown. Glamorgan, during our period, was attached to the earldom of Gloucester.
In later times the manor belonged to the Bohuns, and it came into possession of the Earls of Devon through the marriage of Margaret de Bohun with Hugh Courtenay, the third earl. In 1645 the castle was besieged, unsuccessfully, by Fairfax, but in the following year it was taken by Colonel Hammond.
The English-speaking peninsula of Gower, with the castle of Swansea, was still held by a junior branch of the decaying house of Braose, whose main marcher lordships had been divided a century earlier between the Bohuns and the Mortimers. Its spendthrift ruler, William of Braose, was the last male of his race.
The Bohuns were one of the very few aristocratic families really dating from the Middle Ages, and their pennon had actually seen Palestine. But it is a great mistake to suppose that such houses stand high in chivalric tradition. Few except the poor preserve traditions. Aristocrats live not in traditions but in fashions. The Bohuns had been Mohocks under Queen Anne and Mashers under Queen Victoria.
An aged negro butler, one of the freed slaves brought from Virginia by the Bohuns, admitted him to the hall and took his card, smothering his own wonderment. For in those days nobody disturbed the silence and the peace of decay of the Bohun mansion save its master. And Duncan had long to wait in the wide, gloomy, musty hall before the servant returned.
There were untitled men well known to be descended from knights who had broken the Saxon ranks at Hastings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. There were Bohuns, Mowbrays, DeVeres, nay, kinsmen of the House of Plantagenet, with no higher addition than that of Esquire, and with no civil privileges beyond those enjoyed by every farmer and shopkeeper.
Fuller wrote in his 'Worthies, that "some who justly hold the surnames of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets, are hid in the heap of common men."
The way things get about is through the Hugo Bohuns. Nothing escapes their quick eyes and slow hearts. Their mission is to peer into society, like professional astronomers ever on the watch to detect the slightest change in the phenomena.
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