House of Bethune


The House of Bethune is a French noble house from the province of Artois in the north of France whose proven filiation dates back to Guillaume de Béthune who made his will in 1213. This family became extinct in 1807 with Maximilien-Alexandre de Béthune, duke of Sully.
There are other families called de Bethune or Bethune, but their links with the house of Bethune is not proven.

The original House of Béthune

Lords of Béthune and Advocates of Arras

In 1639 André Du Chesne gave a lineage that went back to 1037, but the proven filiation dates back to Guillaume de Béthune called "Le Roux" who made his will in 1213 and died soon after.

Béthunes, Dukes of Sully

There are other families called de Bethune or Bethune, but their links with the extinct house of Bethune is not proven.

Desplanques (or des Planques) family who took the name de Bethune in the XVIIth Century

Claiming lineage from the Lords of Carency, a disputed descent, a family called Desplancques or des Plancques from the city of Béthune in Artois, added in the XVIIth Century the name "Béthune" to its name and then took only the name "de Béthune".
The « des Planques » are not mentioned in the Genealogy of the house de Béthune written in 1636 by the genealogist André Du Chesne.
The genealogist Gustave Chaix d'Est-Ange writes in 1905 about this family : "The name of Desplanques is very widespread in Artois and in reality there is no proof that the Desplanques family from which the princes of Béthune-Hesdigneul and the counts of Béthune-Sully today belonged had belonged before the end of the 16th century to the nobility of this country".
The genealogist Joseph Valynseele writes in 1962 about the Béthune Hesdigneul family : This family does not possess the antiquity and the illustration to which it claims and which some authors have conceded to it: its filiation is established in an authentic way only from the 17th Century and it is completely alien to the house of Bethune, now extinct".
The first undoubted member of this family was Michel Desplanques , lieutenant of castel and of the city of Béthune in Artois. His son Pierre Desplanques had two sons. Jean Desplanques, the elder, gave rise to the family of Béthune-Hesdigneul while Georges Desplanques, the younger, led to the family of Béthune-Saint-Venant which later became Béthune-Sully
;Branch called Bethune-Hesdigneul
;Branch called Béthune-Saint-Venant
;Branch called Béthune-Sully
In 1101 King Henry I of England, raised an army of 500 knights, two of its leaders being Robert IV of Béthune and his eldest son Baldwin, Lord of Chocques. When in 1104 the force was doubled to 1000 knights, Robert was again one of the most prominent. Before his death in 1128 he had been granted the lands of Chedworth and Yanworth in Gloucestershire. By 1165 his grandson Robert V was Lord of Gayton, Northamptonshire, his principal seat in England, and held many other manors in Northamptonshire as well as lands in Hertfordshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. All were sold in 1242 by his grandson Robert VII.
Baldwin of Bethune, the third son of Robert V, gained extensive lands in England, both in his own right as companion of successive kings and in right of his wife, the Countess Hawise of Aumale. On his death in 1212, his estates went to his son-in-law William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke while his wife's holdings went to her son William de Forz, 3rd Earl of Albemarle. After 1242, no mention of members of the Bethune family living in England is found until 1709.

Bethunes of Scotland

Early Bethunes in Scotland

According to Bishop John Leslie, there were members of the Bethune family in Scotland before 1093. However the first surviving evidence is a century later, when around 1192 a charter of Lindores Abbey mentions Robert de Bethune, probably Robert VI of the Artois family. Before 1210 the cartulary of Arbroath Abbey records a cleric John de Bethune. Around 1220 Robert de Bethune is mentioned in connection with St Andrews Cathedral Priory and Sir David de Bethune, a knight, in another Arbroath document. From then on the names of clerics and knights called Bethune occur increasingly in Scottish records, mainly in the counties of Angus and Fife, but it is not possible to link the scattered references into a family tree. For that one has to wait until the knight Sir Alexander de Bethune who, according to Hector Boece, in 1314 sat in the Parliament of Scotland held at Cambuskenneth and in 1332 died fighting for the Bruce legitimists against the Balliol rebels at Dupplin Moor. Tradition makes him the father of Robert, who married the heiress of Balfour.
Over the centuries the pronunciation of the family name shifted from the original French bay-tune to the Scots bee-tn, usually written Beaton. From about 1560, members of the family started using the French spelling again. In the funeral oration delivered for Archbishop James Bethune in 1603, the Bethunes in Scotland are said to descend from a member of the French family who went to Scotland around 1449 and married the heiress of Balfour. The man in question is named as Jacques de Béthune, also known as Jacotin, whose father Jean died at Agincourt in 1415. No Scottish records bear out this assertion.

Bethune of Balfour

Bethune of Creich

Bethune of Bandon

Around 1630 a Scot named Hercules Bethune emigrated to Sweden, became an officer in the Swedish Army and married a Swedish woman. His descendants, who were naturalised and ennobled, provided generations of army officers until the last male died in 1800. The family, written Bethun in Swedish records, claimed descent from Archibald Bethune, second son of James, 6th Laird of Creich, and used a version of the arms of Bethune of Balfour.
Originally, the arms of the Lords of Béthune were the same as those of the town they ruled, that is Argent, a fesse gules. When at an early date they became Advocates of the Abbey of Saint Vaast at Arras, they adopted new arms suitable to their higher status, which were Bends or, on a field azure. After the marriage of Guillaume II to the heiress Mahaut, at her request their son changed his arms to those of her Dendermonde family. As it happened, these arms were the same as the old arms of Béthune, Argent, a fesse gules.
When knights of the Bethune family started affixing their seals to documents in Scotland, they used the same fesse as their relations in France. Examples are Sir David de Bethune in 1286 and Sir Andrew de Bethune in 1292. Through marriage with an heiress, the Scottish family altered to Azure, a fesse between three mascles or and this shield was then quartered with that of Balfour to produce the arms used by the Bethunes of Balfour from about 1350 to 1672. By a law that year, all Scottish arms had either to be matriculated by the Court of the Lord Lyon or forfeited. Lyon then changed the ancient Bethune shield slightly to Azure, a fesse between three lozenges or. However, when Eleanor Bethune of Balfour matriculated her arms in 1837, Lyon changed them back to the original Azure, a fesse between three mascles or. Her descendants in the male line have not matriculated the arms.
Junior branches of the Scottish Bethunes used the family arms with slight variations, three sets being matriculated in 1672: Bethune of Bandon, Bethune of Blebo, and Bethune of Langhermiston who died out in the male line almost immediately. The arms of Bethune of Blebo descended to the Bethune Baronets, who have also died out in the male line, while the arms of Bethune of Bandon descended to the Bethunes of Craigfoodie and Rowfant, who continue in the male line but have not matriculated the arms.

Unrelated Bethunes

Medieval scholars called Bethune

No connection has been established with the grammarian Eberhard of Béthune, while Robert de Béthune, Bishop of Hereford, may be related but proof is lacking.

Béthune barons of Belgium

There is no known relationship with the Belgian family of de Béthune, made Barons of Belgium in 1855 and Papal Counts in 1866, which includes the architect Jean-Baptiste de Béthune, the artist Ade Bethune, and the politician Sabine de Béthune.

Bethunes of the Highlands and Islands

In 1778 a book by the Reverend Thomas Whyte, minister of Liberton, claimed that many families in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland called Bethune or Beaton descend from a Peter Bethune, said to be a member of the Bethunes of Balfour. Nobody has yet produced any evidence for this link, which remains unproven and was almost certainly mistaken. Many of the people covered in his work were members of the Beaton medical kindred, an unrelated Scottish family commonly confused with the Bethunes of Fife.