Kitley Heritage - Courtenay quartering de Redvers impaling Champernowne.

5/ Quarterly 1 & 4 Or three torteaux 2 & 3 Gules a lion rampant or Impaling Gules powdered with billets or a saltire vair – Courtenay quartering de Redvers impaling Champernowne.

Sir John Courtenay, son of Sir Phillip of Powderham, married Joan, daughter of Alexander Champernowne c 1400, but the significance of this marriage to the Bastard lineage, and the reason for the impalement being displayed at Kitley, is not yet clear (q.v. shield 6). It should also be noted that the artist commissioned to point the heraldry has made an error in the tinctures for the de Redvers quartering, which should be Or a lion rampant azure.

The Courtenays, later to become Earls of Devon, take their name from the town of Courtenay in France. Fortified by Athon in the early tenth century, it was he who gave the name of the town to his family. His son, Jocelyn de Courtenay, fought in the Crusade to the Holy Land in 1096. The family did not arrive in this country until nearly a century after the Bastards had become (re)settled here, when Reginald de Courtenay sailed to England in the company of Queen Eleanor in 1152. He later married Hawise, daughter of Robert d’Abrinces, a descendant of the de Bryonis’ of Okehampton, thereby becoming Baron of Okehampton and Hereditary Sheriff of Devon in the right of his wife. She was a descendant of Godfrey, Earl of Ewe, who was the son of Richard, 1st Duke of Normandy, the grandfather of William the Conquoror. The next marriage in the lineage was that of Robert de Courtenay, son of Reginald & Hawise, to Mary, daughter and heiress of William Redvers, Earl of Devon. This marriage explains the presence of the hereditary de Redvers quartering in the Courtenay arms, although the family arms are not often seen in the manner in which they are portrayed in the Kitley shield. Rather, they usually show the Courtenay coat alone, with a label of three points azure, the latter said to have been adopted as a differencing mark to distinguish the English line from their French kinsmen.

The family seat has been at Powderham Castle since c1320, when it was given to Margaret, daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford & Essex, who was later killed in the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, upon her marriage to Hugh de Courtenay. His father, also Hugh, Baron of Oakhampton & High Admiral of the West Seas, had fought alongside Humphrey de Bohun in the Battle of Caerlaverock in 1300. Three generations of Courtenays are known to have fought at the Siege of Calais in 1347, and it is likely that they had also all been at Crecy the year before.

Three sons of Hugh & Margaret also fought under the Black Prince at the Siege of Navaret in 1366.