Its earlier genealogy is uncertain, but an ingenious and learned, though admittedly in part hypothetical, attempt to trace it to the Banquho of Boece and Shakespeare, Thane of Lochaber, has been recently made by the Rev. J. K. Hewison (Bute in the Olden Time [vol. II.] pp. 1-38, Edinburgh, 1895).1

Mr. Hewison's volume opens with the words :

The origin of the royal house of Stewart has long remained a mystery, perplexing historical students, who feel tantalized at knowing so little concerning the hapless victim of the jealousy of King Macbeth-Banquo, round whom Shakespeare cast the glamour of undying romance, and to whom the old chroniclers of Scotland traced back the family of Stewart.

The author's glamour' augurs ill, and in spite of the unique advantage he enjoyed in having access to the late Lord Crawford's MS. collections on the subject, we soon find ourselves wandering, alas, with Alice in Wonderland.

It may be concluded that Walter, the son of Fleadan, son of Banchu, is identical with Walter, son of [A]llan (or Flan), son of Murechach of the Lennox family, if not also with Walter, son of Amloib, son of Duncan of the other genealogy. Chronology easily permits of the equation of Murdoch, the Maormor of Leven with Banchu . . . who might have survived even his son Fleance-we, meantime, only assuming that Fleance was slain in Wales. Ban-chu, the pale warrior, would be his complimentary title; the old surname of his family . . also descended to his son, Flan-chu, the red or ruddy warrior, known to his Irish kinsmen as Fleadan.

We are surely coming to the Man-chu dynasty. But no.

This Irish form of the name Fleadan tan (i.e. either Fleadan the Tanist or Fleadan the younger) imports a significant idea—

1 Vol. XLVIII. p. 344.

Fleanchus . . . is the Latinised form of Flann-chu, the Red or Ruddy Dog. .. and is also a sobriquet-the Bloodhound. This nomenclature is evidently a reminiscence of the dogtotem or dog-divinity, etc., etc.

There remains, however, the standing puzzle' why Walter the first Stewart was made by the old romancers a son of Fleance son of Banquo, though his father was indisputably Alan son of Flaald. One solution offered by our author is that "Ailin or Allan may have become the family name"; but his own view is that

The native name of Banquo's son would be the common Goidelic one Flann, which signifies rosy or fair, and has an equivalent in Aluinn, beautiful, fair, to which the word Alan, both in Britanny and Ireland, may be traced.

Thus it was that Flann' would become 'Alan' in Britanny, "more especially when, in the vulgar tongue of Dol, the former, denoting a pancake, would sound like a nickname." And if we should still have our doubts, is there not, at Dol, to this day—

an imposing edifice, built of granite, in the purest Norman style of architecture of the twelfth century, which tradition names 'La maison des Plaids,' and avers was the revenue office and court-house of the archbishops. This name, "the House of the

1 See p. 116, note 2, above. It will be seen that to assert, as here, that Alan and Fleance' were the same will not overcome this difficulty.

Plaids," is touchingly significant of Fleance with the royal wearers of the tartan.

But I really cannot pursue further these "ingenious and learned new lichts. A dreadful vision of dog-totems, arrayed in the Stewart tartan, and feasting, with fiery visage, on pancakes in the streets of Dol, warns me to leave this realm of wonders and turn to the world in which we live. From "the House of the Plaids" I flee.1

Fortunately Flaald is a name, for practical purposes, unique; and we need not, therefore, hesitate to recognise in "Float filius Alani dapiferi" who was present (No. 1136) at the dedication of Monmouth Priory (1101 or 1102) the long-sought missing link. We thus connect him with the fourth, the remaining cell of St. Florent de Saumur in England. But we have yet to account for his appearance as a baron' of the lord of Monmouth, William son of Baderon. The best authority on Domesday tenants, Mr. A. S. Ellis, confessed that he had failed to trace the lords of Monmouth in Britanny. The key, however, to the whole connection is found in the abbey of St. Florent de Saumur and in its charters calendared in my work. In the latter half of the eleventh century many Bretons of noble birth were led to

1 It is positively the fact that the author so renders the name of the Maison des Plaids,' where the (Arch)bishops are supposed to have held their pleas (" plaids ").

2 Domesday Tenants of Gloucestershire, p. 46.

take the cowl. Among them was William, eldest son of that Rhiwallon, lord of Dol, whom, on the eve of the Norman Conquest, Duke William and Harold of England had relieved when he was besieged by his lord. Rhiwallon's son William, who was followed by his brother John (No. 1116), entered the abbey of St. Florent de Saumur, and became its abbot himself in 1070. Zealous in the cause of the house he ruled, he clearly urged its claims at Dol, receiving not only local gifts, but also, as its chronicle mentions, the endowments it obtained in England. Of the two families with which we are concerned the lords of Monmouth can, by these charters, be traced to the neighbourhood of Dol, for William son of Baderon confirms his father's gifts at Epiniac and La Boussac (No. 1134), which places lay together close to Dol. The presence among the witnesses to these charters of a Main of La Boussac and a Geoffrey of Epiniac affords confirmation of the fact. Guihenoc, the founder of the house in England (probably identical with "Wihenocus filius Caradoc de Labocac),"1 undoubtedly became a monk of St. Florent,' and resigned his English fief to his nephew William (son of his brother Baderon), who is found holding it in Domesday.

Some charters were specially selected by me from the Liber Albus of St. Florent (Nos. 1152-4) to illustrate, about the end of the Conqueror's reign,

1 Lobineau, Histoire de Bretagne, II. 219.

2 Calendar, Nos. 1117, 1133.

the little group of Dol families who were about to settle in England.' Among the witnesses to one of them are Baderon and his son the Domesday tenant. But the one family we have specially to trace is that which held the office of " Dapifer " at Dol. "Alan Dapifer" is found as a witness, in 1086, to a charter relating to Mezuoit' (a cell of St. Florent, near Dol). He also, as "Alanus Siniscallus," witnessed the foundation charters of that house (ante 1080) and himself gave it rights at Mezuoit with the consent of "Fledaldus frater ejus," the monks, in return, admitting his brother Rhiwallon to their fraternity. He appears as a witness with the above "Badero in No. 1152, and in 1086 as a surety with Ralf de Fougères (No. 1154). Mentioned in other St. Florent documents, he is styled in one, "Dapifer de Dolo. And it is as "Alanus dapifer Dolensis that he took part in the first crusade, 1097. This style is explained in a charter of 1095, recording a gift to Marmoutier by Hamo son of Main, with consent of his lord "Rivallonius dominus Doli castri, filius Johannis archiepiscopi," in which we read:

1 It would, no doubt, be a rash conjecture that the "Herveus botellarius" of these charters (Nos. 1153, 1154) was the ancestor of those Herveys, from whom the Butlers of Ireland are descended. But if it should eventually prove to be no mere coincidence, the Butlership of Ireland would have had an origin curiously parallel to the Stewardship of Scotland. 2 Lobineau, p. 250.

9 Ibid. 137, 138, collated by me with the Liber Albus at Angers. 4 Ibid. 232, 234. 5 Ibid. 310. 6 Ordericus Vitalis (Société de l'histoire de France), vol. III. 507.