Ralph de Reresby was the son of
Isoreus de Reresby and
Amicia Deincourt.
From
Barons1
RALPH DE RERESBY, lord of Plesley. Exchanged the manor of Plesley for the manor of Ashover with his cousin Sir Robert de Willoughby. Coroner for Notts and Derby 1269. Gave his Lincolnshire estate to Barlings (p.14.) Died c.1275, when his goods were seized by the King.
Ralph de Reresby ... must also have served in parliament among the barones minores, and perhaps it was this position as an immediate vassal of the crown, which saved him from sharing in the rebellion, death, and forfeiture of his brother-in-law, Ralph de Normanville, in 1265. I suppose that he remained loyal to the crown, for in 1269 he was elected in the county court to serve as coroner for Derbyshire; an office then confined to the knightly class, the chief duties of which were to watch over the pleas of the crown and the interests of the crown» to enquire into deaths by violence, and to administer to criminals in
the sanctuaries in which they had taken refuge, the oath by which they abjured the realm.
Ralph de Reresby married Margery, sister and co-heir to the Ralph de Normanville, Lord of Thribergh and Stainton, who was slain at Evesham, and to Sir Adam de Normanville who soon after bought back the forfeited estate. His wife's portion at marriage was the land which had been formerly given by Ralph de Normanville to [Richard de Savile] the father of Ralph de Seiwell with Iclonia his wife 'ad liberum maritagium,' and this must have included the site of the manor house called The Ickles, for in 1252 Ralph de Reresby leased to Simon Scot of Rotherham "totam terram suam de Th' Ickles."
Shortly before his death Ralph de Reresby passed away the paternal estate in Lincolnshire, or the greater part of it, in free alms to the Abbey of Barlings, and exchanged, in a charter of three or four lines, the lordship of Plesley with his cousin Sir Robert de Willoughby for the romantic valley of Ashover, a domain which long remained with his descendants. The Greenhall close on the North side of the church is the site of the Old Hall at Ashover, but before the year 1302 Margery de Reresby had built for herself the New Hall which she afterwards bestowed upon her younger son.
...
[Ralph] must have died in 1275, for on the 19th January of the succeeding year, the sheriff of Nottinghamshire was commanded to seize upon the manor of Plesley, which Ralph de Reresby, lately deceased, had held in capite1, and had alienated without license2, and on the 3rd of February the sheriff of Derbyshire had an order to seize upon all his goods and chattels as of one who had died in debt to the King. It was the custom of the age to be buried in the nearest monastery, and I suppose that he found interment at Barlings, to which he had been so considerable a benefactor.
...
Ralph de Reresby's children and grandchildren found perhaps a resting place at Beauchief Abbey, and the earliest monument of a member of the family known t_ the Elizabethan heralds, was that at Thrybergh recording the death of Sir Thomas Reresby in 1439.
Footnotes
[1] i.e. held directly of the Crown
[2] i.e. given to someone without Royal approval
Ralph de Reresby died c. 1275
1
Footnotes
[1]
The Barons of Pulford in the Eleventh & Twelth Centuries, and their Descendants by Sir George R Sitwell, Scarborough, 1889; page xxviii
1252 - Abt 1275 (~ 79 years)