Vance

Vance is a contraction of the Anglo-Norman de Vaux, also written de Vans and Latinised as de Vallibus, from the Old French vaus, the plural of val: of the valleys. The form belongs to a naming habit the Conquest brought over with it. Some of the early Norman nobility who arrived in England distinguished themselves by putting 'de', of or from, before the name of their village or estate in France. That is a territorial surname, and it was a direct consequence of feudal landownership. The name was a claim on ground before it was a label for a family.

In England the introduction of family names is generally attributed to the preparation of the Domesday Book, completed by 1086. Surnames were taken up first among the feudal nobility and gentry and spread only slowly to the rest of society, and Christopher Daniell dates what may be the first recorded use of a modern surname inherited by several generations to 1140. By 1400 most English families, and those of Lowland Scotland, were using hereditary surnames. The de Vaux were early into that system because they were precisely the class it started with.

William's invasion force landed at Pevensey in Sussex on 28 September 1066, and on 14 October it met Harold Godwinson's army at Hastings. Robert and Aitard de Vaux rode in the retinue of Roger Bigod, and the family was granted land for its service in the battle, taking estates in Norfolk. Land was the whole currency of that autumn. William claimed ultimate possession of the country his armies had taken and asserted the right to dispose of it as he saw fit; from then on all land was held directly from the king in return for military service.

The scale of the transfer can be measured. Historians put the number of Norman landholders at around 8,000, a very small group set over the native English population, and the Domesday Book of 1086 documents the result: by that date only about five per cent of the land in England south of the Tees was still in English hands. Families like the de Vaux were the instrument of that replacement, and a surname that had described a valley in Normandy became a name written into English soil.

The de Vaux grants lay in the least settled part of the new kingdom. Hubert de Vaux obtained the barony of Gilsland, which straddled Cumbria and Northumberland. Ranulf de Vaux held the lordships of Tryermayne, Sowerby, Carlatton and Hubbertby in Cumbria. Robert de Vaux received the barony of Dalston, also in Cumbria, though he went back to Normandy rather than sit on it. Three members of the family were later given the status of Knight of the Garter.

This was frontier duty rather than a comfortable endowment. In the winter of 1069-70 William's forces systematically devastated Northumbria in the Harrying of the North, and he wore his crown ceremonially at York on Christmas Day 1069 as a symbol of his authority over the region. The Treaty of Abernethy in 1072 made Malcolm of Scotland William's man, but left it deliberately unclear whether that covered Cumbria and Lothian only or the whole Scottish kingdom. A house seated on Gilsland lived inside that unresolved question.

The habit that made the name could also shed it. Robert de Strickland, a grandson of Hubert de Vaux of Gilsland, is the ancestor of the Stricklands of Gilsland, a family carrying a different surname off the same stock. The Willes family of Warwickshire likewise descend from Hubert de Vaux.

Under a system in which the surname was the estate, a younger son who took new ground could arrive under a new name without any sense of having broken the line. That is why the de Vaux descent runs considerably wider than a count of everyone spelling the name Vaux, Vans or Vance would ever show, and why the Vance page is really the story of one branch that kept the original word.

The family crossed the border it had been posted to guard. Adam de Vaux, son of Hubert of Gilsland, obtained lands in Carrick. William de Vaux, son of John de Vaux of Dalton, obtained the barony of Dirleton in Lothian, and from John de Vaux of Dirleton descend the Vass of Lochslin, reckoned septs of Clan Ross and Clan Munro. One Norman house had put branches on both the western and the eastern approach to Scotland.

The line that matters most to the modern spelling settled in the south-west. In Galloway the family became the Vans of Barnbarroch, a Wigtownshire house of standing from the fifteenth century, while the clipped border form Vance took hold along the Anglo-Scottish frontier itself. In England the name stayed thickest in Northumberland and Cumbria, and it later gathered in the industrial north-east, on Tyneside and in Wearside and Durham, and in London.

The Vances of Ireland are held to descend from an ancestor of the de Vaux out of Scotland, and the name arrived in force with the seventeenth-century plantation of the northern counties. It took root there. Andrew Vance (1815-1862) practised as an Irish barrister and served as a government official. John Vance, who died in 1875, sat as Member of Parliament for Dublin and for Armagh. A Joseph Vance served as an Anglican priest in Ireland.

The name went out with the church and the empire as readily as with the emigrant ship: George Vance (1828-1910) rose to be Dean of Melbourne. It also stayed at home. Foy Vance, born in 1974, is an Irish musician, and Demi Vance, born in 1991, is a Northern Irish footballer.

From Ulster the name travelled to the Appalachian backcountry in the eighteenth century, and the earliest American Vances on record are frontier men. David Vance (c. 1745-1813) served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Wilson Vance (1845-1911) is recorded as an American soldier, and Joseph W. Vance (1841-1927) as an American military officer.

The settled generations went into office and into print. Joseph Vance (1786-1852) became governor of Ohio. Elijah Vance (1801-1871), John L. Vance (1839-1921) and Calvin B. Vance (1842-1926) all sat as American politicians, and David Vance (1836-1912) combined a shipmaster's career with public office. Women of the name kept the other record of the same century: Florence Steele Martin Vance (1840-1924) as a diarist and letter writer, Ada Reedy Vance and Sallie Ada Vance as poets.

Leon Vance (1916-1944), an American Air Force officer, received the Medal of Honor. Joseph Williams Vance Jr. (1918-1942) served as an American naval officer in the Second World War. Gene Arden Vance Jr. (1963-2002), an American staff sergeant, was killed in action.

In civilian life the name turns up across American public work. Sheldon B. Vance (1917-1995) served as an American diplomat. Harold Sines Vance (1889-1959) ran an automobile company and then held government office. Robert C. Vance (1894-1959) was a newspaper publisher and philanthropist, Rupert Vance (1899-1975) a sociologist and demographer, and James E. Vance Jr. (1925-1999) a geographer. Joseph McArthur Vance (1868-1948) and Edward Vance, born in 1957, both practised as architects.

Dazzy Vance (1891-1961) pitched in American baseball, and Columbus Vance (1902-1982), Joe Vance (1905-1978), Sandy Vance and Cory Vance followed him onto the mound. Jack Vance (1916-2013) wrote fantasy and science fiction. Louis Joseph Vance (1879-1933) wrote novels and then screenplays and produced films. Vivian Vance (1909-1979) acted and sang, and is best remembered for playing Ethel in I Love Lucy, while Nina Vance (1914-1980) worked as an artistic director.

The British bearers kept to performance as well. Alfred Vance (1839-1888) sang and wrote songs for the English music hall. Dennis Vance (1924-1983) produced and directed for British television. Tommy Vance (1941-2005) broadcast on British radio, and Chris Vance, born in 1971, is an English actor. Janetta Vance (1855-1921) competed as a British archer, and James Vance (1877-after 1897) played as a Scottish inside left.

The name reached the other dominions on the same tide. Bob Vance (1924-1994) played and then administered New Zealand cricket, and Robert Vance, born in 1955, played New Zealand cricket after him. Colin Vance (1929-2018) and Murray Vance, born in 1980, played Australian rules football. Jack Vance (1933-2013) and Jonathan Vance, born in 1964, both reached general officer rank in the Canadian forces, Samuel Vance (1879-1947) shot for Canada, and Jean Vance worked as a British-Canadian biochemist.