Baron St Maur

Baron St Maur was a barony created by writ in 1314 for the soldier Nicholas de St Maur (died 1316), of Rode in Somerset.

The descent of the "baronial" St Maur family (which should be distinguished from the apparently unrelated "Seymour" (anciently "de St Maur") family of which was Queen Jane Seymour) is given as follows by Wilhelmina, Duchess of Cleveland in her Battle Abbey Roll (1889): Wido de St Maur, lord of the manor of St Maur, near Avranches, in Normandy, came to England 1066, and was deceased before 1086, when William FitzWido his son held a barony[1] in Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucester, and ten manors in Somersetshire (of which Portishead was one) (sic, actually held by "William of Monceaux") from Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances.

He had children: The Somerset historian Collinson stated William FitzWido as the Domesday Book holder of the Somerset manor of Horsington in Somerset, and two vills namely Cheriton and Combe, the last of which was given by a member of his family to the Knights Templar who made of it a cell.

[2] William FitzWido also held the Gloucestershire manor of Dyrham.

In the Church of St Lawrence at Rode no trace remain of the St Maur family, although in the eastern corner of the south aisle survives a deeply recessed wall tomb, inside which local tradition has it that the remains of one of the St Maur family was buried.