Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 29 May 2026 by Allen Gurney

William de Gournay II (fl. c. 1210–1250)

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Knight; Lord of Harpley; father of the Crusader-turned-rebel Sir John de Gournay I.

Born
c. 1210, Harpley, Norfolk. Son of Matthew de Gournay (G29) and Rose de Burnham. 1
Died
c. 1250 or later. Attested living 1234 and 1243 (Norfolk records). 2
Occupation / Status
Knight ("Sir William de Gournay, Knt. II"). Lord of Harpley, Hardingham, and associated Norfolk manors. 3
Buried
Unknown. No record. 2
Marriage(s)
Katherine de Ingoldesthorpe — almost certainly a daughter or sister of Thomas de Ingoldesthorpe, on the wording of the 1243 fine they levied together with him over forty acres of marsh at North Wootton, Norfolk. By Katherine, William was father of Sir John de Gournay I (G27). 4

Highlights

  • Father of the most dramatic figure in the junior branch. William's son Sir John de Gournay I (G27) fought on the rebel side at the Battle of Lewes (1264), had his estate seized for his rebellion against Henry III, was presented by a jury in 1257 for not accepting knighthood when required, and then accompanied the future Edward I on Crusade to the Holy Land in 1270. He also established the family coat of arms — argent, a cross engrailed gules — that his descendants bore thereafter. 5
  • Attested in two separate years — 1234 and 1243. Daniel Gurney's pedigree cites two independent Norfolk records for William II, confirming he was a living and active landholder across a substantial span of years. This is particularly useful for a figure about whom no narrative detail survives. 6
  • Wife Katherine, of the Ingoldesthorpes of Norfolk. Identified from the wording of a 1243 fine that William and Katherine levied with Thomas de Ingoldesthorpe over marshland at North Wootton; the quitclaim's reference to "the heirs of the said Katherine" makes Thomas her father or brother. The Ingoldesthorpes were leading Norfolk gentry — Thomas the Sheriff of Norfolk under Henry III; later heiresses of the line married into the Jernegan and Neville families. Their arms — a cross engrailed, gules and argent reversed from Gurney's — placed them in the same small heraldic cousinage of cross-engrailed Norfolk knights (Gurney, Ufford, Ingoldesthorpe) who all sent men with Edward I on the 1270 crusade. 7

Children

Name Dates Mother Notes
Sir John de Gournay I fl. c. 1240–1280; living 1245 Katherine (de Ingoldesthorpe) G27 in direct line. Present at Battle of Lewes 1264; accompanied Edward I to Holy Land 1270. Established family arms: argent, a cross engrailed gules. 8
Edmund de Gurnay Held a quarter of a knight's fee in Houghton, 1303 (31 Edw. I) Katherine Named in Daniel Gurney's pedigree. Held a quarter of a knight's fee in Houghton of the honour of Wormegay, 1303. 9
Thomas fl. c. 1240s Katherine Named in a Norfolk fine. 9

Narrative

William de Gournay II is a transitional figure: securely documented but personally elusive. The sources confirm he was lord of Harpley and the associated Norfolk manors inherited from his father Matthew, that he was a knight, and that he was living and active in 1234 and 1243 — but no specific deed, court appearance, or personal act survives to bring him into sharper focus. His significance lies primarily in what his son became.

His wife Katherine — a daughter or sister of Thomas de Ingoldesthorpe, the Norfolk knight whose family bore the cross engrailed in reversed colours from the Gurneys — gave him at least three children. The eldest, Sir John de Gournay I (G27), became the most colourful member of the junior branch since Gerard de Gournay went on Crusade. John was a rebel, a penitent, a Crusader, and ultimately the man who established the heraldic identity that the family carried for the rest of its English history. The shared engrailed-cross arms of Gurney, Ufford, and Ingoldesthorpe — three Norfolk houses who all sent men on Edward I’s crusade — suggest a small, allied cousinage of Norfolk knights into which Katherine’s marriage had brought William a generation before. William’s second son Edmund held a minor knight’s fee in 1303. A third son Thomas appears in a Norfolk fine.

William’s own career unfolded during the turbulent middle decades of Henry III’s reign — a period of growing tension between the crown and the barons that would explode into open civil war at Lewes in 1264, after William was probably already dead. He lived through the first flush of Simon de Montfort’s reforming ambitions and the political crisis that accompanied them. His son John would choose the rebel side at Lewes and pay for it with a temporary forfeiture — a choice that suggests the Gournay family of Harpley had political sympathies that William may have shared but never acted on publicly.

Citations

  1. Daniel Gurney, Record of the House of Gournay (1848), pedigree p. 286: "Sir WILLIAM DE GOURNAY, Knt. II. Lord of Harpley, &c.; liv. 1234 & 1243." Son of Matthew de Gournay (proof: plea Appendix LIII, Daniel Gurney, Record (1848) p. 278; pedigree continuity). ↩
  2. Attested living 1234 and 1243: Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 286. No death date recorded. Son John living 1245 (Daniel Gurney, Record (1848) pedigree). ↩
  3. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 286: "Sir WILLIAM DE GOURNAY, Knt. II. Lord of Harpley, &c." ↩
  4. Daniel Gurney, Record of the House of Gournay (1848), Part II, pp. 325–326 and Appendix LVI no. 3. The 1243 fine (27 Henry III) is between Thomas de Ingaldestorp on one side and William de Gurnay and Katherine his wife on the other; the quitclaim runs "de se et heredibus ipsius Katarine" — "of themselves and the heirs of the said Katherine" — a standard medieval signal that the lands traced through her family. Daniel Gurney concludes Katherine was "of the family of Ingoldesthorpe," a reading restated and sharpened in the 1858 Supplement (Note 113, p. 786). Heraldically corroborated: the Ingoldesthorpes bore gules, a cross engrailed argent — the Gurney coat with the colours reversed (Daniel Gurney, Record, Part I, p. 326). An earlier cell label in Daniel Gurney's own pedigree table on p. 286 reads "probably a Baconsthorpe," but is hard to support independently — no Baconsthorpe family of standing is documented in Norfolk in the 1240s, and the label appears to have been retro-applied from a later, separately documented Katherine Baconsthorpe (daughter of Edmund Baconsthorpe) who married G28's grandson Sir William III. ↩
  5. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pp. 279 and 286: Sir John I's Lewes rebellion, Holy Land Crusade, and heraldic arms. ↩
  6. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 286: "liv. 1234 & 1243." Source documents not specified beyond Norfolk records. ↩
  7. Daniel Gurney, Record of the House of Gournay (1848), Part II, pp. 325–326 (narrative and Latin transcription of the 1243 North Wootton fine at Appendix LVI no. 3); Supplement to the Record of the House of Gournay (1858), Note 113, p. 786 (Ingoldesthorpe pedigree sketch — "Redde Thomas" in the time of Richard I; his son sheriff of Norfolk in 1236; Ela m. Sir Hugh Jernegan c. 1250; Isabel m. John Neville, Marquis Montacute, under Henry VI; engrailed-cross arms shared with Gurney and Ufford; all three houses represented on Edward I's 1270 crusade). Source records the 1243 fine as TNA-class Pedes Finium for Norfolk, 21–41 Henry III (now in CP 25/1). ↩
  8. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pp. 279, 286: Sir John de Gournay I, living 1245; Lewes 1264; Holy Land 1270; arms established. Full detail in G27 fact sheet. ↩
  9. Daniel Gurney, Record (1848), pedigree p. 286: "EDMUND DE GURNAY, held a quarter of a knight's fee in Houghton, of the honour of Wormegay, in 1303, 31 Edw. I." Thomas: "THOMAS, Norf. fine." ↩