My mother did genealogy for many years and when she considered she was done with her side of the family tree she began on my father’s side of the family tree, even finding there were connections going back.
The Moulton histories proved as interesting as the Coffin side of the family tree. One of the most interesting people she rattled out from Pop’s side was a fellow named Sir Thomas de Moulton.
It was the fifth Sir Thomas de Moulton that Sir Walter Scott chose to make a leading character in his book titled, “The Talisman.” It turns out that Sir Thomas de Moulton was a trusted friend of King Richard The Lion Heart. Thomas de Moulton was said to have great physical strength, so much so he was “the admiration and envy of the knights at the great tournaments of England.” It was also said that when King Richard The Lion Heart was quite ill that he, Sir Thomas de Moulton took up an appropriate role in the king’s stead. They apparently were close friends as well.
I have copied the following from a website, which I seem to have lost track of. It seems to say, what I was told.
“In the year 1066 a Norman follower of William the Conqueror named Thomas Multon, or de Multon, accompanied his chief into England, and after the battle of Hastings was rewarded for his services with large grants of land in Lincolnshire. Here he built castles and religious establishments, maintained a retinue of soldiers, laborers and priests, and lived the life of a feudatory of the king. From this Norman the Moultons of England and America are said to have sprung. Between the time of the first Sir Thomas and the present, twenty-five generations of Moultons have been born; and through nine genearations, from the battle of Hastings, there continued to be some brave knights bearing the name of Sir Thomas, who was ready to respond to the king’s call to arms.
Sir Thomas of the fourth generation was sheriff during the ninth and tenth years of King John’s dynasty, and in the fifteenth year of his reign, attended the king in his expedition to Poitou. Two years later he was taken in arms with the rebelious barons and imprisoned in the Castle of Corff. This was the Thomas Moulton whose name appears upon Magna Charta as one of the English barons who wrung this great muniment of liberty from an unwilling king.
The fifth Sir Thomas de Moulton, Sir Walter Scott took as a leading character in his dramatic story, “The Talisman.” Being a trusted friend of Richard Coeur de Lion, and possessing great physical power, he was the admiration and envy of the knights at the great tournaments of England. In the Holy Land he was a leading crusader and was of all the knights the nearest to the king. Indeed, when Richard’s sickness laid him low, Sir Walter Scott claims that in “The Talisman” some parts are fanciful, but that so far as King Richard and Sir Thomas Moulton are concerned, he has followed English history.
From such men as these the American Moultons of this day; and among them are many who are the peers of their ancestors or of their fellow citizens in those qulities of head and heart which make men leaders and trusted companions of other men.
“All branches of the Moulton family had arms with devices somewhat different from each other in minor details, yet alike in the main, viz.: A plain field, either of silver or blue; crossed by three horizontal bars, generally red, sometimes sable. This continued for several hundred years, down to the arms which were granted in 1571 by the record: these are described as follows: Moulton: Argent, three bars (gules) between eight escallop shells, sable; three, two, two, and one. Crest: On a pellet a falcon rising argent, Granted in 1571.”
The name appears in various forms, as Multon, Muleton, Moulton, Moleton, Moulson and Moulton.
Three Moultons, Thomas, John and William, supposed to be brothers, settled in Winnacumnett, now Hampton, New Hampshire, and from these all or nearly all the Moultons of northern New England are descendants.”
There is a lot of geological information found on the internet. Such as I copied here from a quick search, and also from what I recall from Mom. This same story.
I love to look up the castles mentioned in Mom’s genealogy. The Egremont Castle is mentioned regarding one, out of several Thomas deMoulton’s. I am not sure which one.
Regarding the castle, it is stated that its owner had once possessed a horn that only “the rightful heir could blow.” You can learn about this very horn in the poem “The Horn of Egremont Castle” by William Wordsworth’s. It is fun to find your relatives in books. Even if the story is built upon a bit.
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