William Chamberlayne1

M, #1741, b. circa 1436, d. before 1471

Father*Richard Chamberlayne1,2,3 b. 1391, d. 1439
Mother*Margaret Knyvet1,3 b. c 1412, d. shortly before 12 May 1458
William Chamberlayne|b. c 1436\nd. b 1471|p59.htm#i1741|Richard Chamberlayne|b. 1391\nd. 1439|p56.htm#i1671|Margaret Knyvet|b. c 1412\nd. shortly before 12 May 1458|p56.htm#i1672|Sir Richard Chamberlayne|b. 1320\nd. 24 Aug 1396|p75.htm#i2232|Margaret Loveyne|b. c 1372\nd. 18 Apr 1408|p75.htm#i2233|Sir John Knyvet|b. c 1380\nd. 9 Nov 1445|p56.htm#i1673|Elizabeth Clifton|b. c 1392\nd. b 8 Dec 1461|p56.htm#i1674|

Birth*circa 1436 4 
Probate1470 Witness=Richard Chamberlayne5 
Death*before 1471 4,3 

Last Edited6 Oct 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 238-12.
  2. [S192] F. N. Craig, "Chamberlains in the Marbury Ancestry", p.318.
  3. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 53-10.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 238-12.
  5. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Chamberlain 12.

Maud Cromwell1

F, #1743

Father*Sir Ralph Cromwell1,2,3 d. 27 Aug 1398
Mother*Maud Bernacke1,4,3 b. bt 1335 - 1338, d. 10 Apr 1419
Maud Cromwell||p59.htm#i1743|Sir Ralph Cromwell|d. 27 Aug 1398|p58.htm#i1715|Maud Bernacke|b. bt 1335 - 1338\nd. 10 Apr 1419|p58.htm#i1716|Ralph de Cromwell|d. b 28 Oct 1364|p59.htm#i1744|Anice de Bellers||p59.htm#i1745|Sir John Bernacke|b. bt 1305 - 1306\nd. 20 Mar 1346|p58.htm#i1717|Joan Marmion|d. 2 Oct 1361 or 13 Oct 1361|p58.htm#i1718|

Marriage*before 1377 Principal=Sir William Fitzwilliam2,5,3 
Living*1415 3 

Last Edited20 Nov 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-36.
  2. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 132-9.
  3. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Fitzwilliam 9.
  4. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 132-8.
  5. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Marmion 9.

Ralph de Cromwell1

M, #1744, d. before 28 October 1364

Father*Ralph de Cromwell2,3 b. c 1292
Mother*Joan de la Mare4,3 d. 9 Aug 1348
Ralph de Cromwell|d. b 28 Oct 1364|p59.htm#i1744|Ralph de Cromwell|b. c 1292|p59.htm#i1747|Joan de la Mare|d. 9 Aug 1348|p85.htm#i2550|Sir Ralph de Cromwell|d. c 2 Mar 1299|p59.htm#i1748||||||||||

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Marriage*1351 Principal=Anice de Bellers5,3,6 
Death*before 28 October 1364 1,3 
Residence* 5 

Family

Anice de Bellers
Child

Last Edited13 Oct 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-34.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-33.
  3. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-6.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-33.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-34.
  6. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Marmion 9.
  7. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-7.

Anice de Bellers1

F, #1745

Father*Roger de Bellers1,2 d. 1326
Anice de Bellers||p59.htm#i1745|Roger de Bellers|d. 1326|p59.htm#i1746||||||||||||||||

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Marriage*1351 Principal=Ralph de Cromwell3,4,2 
Name Variation Avice3 
Name Variation Amice4 
Married Name Cromwell 

Family

Ralph de Cromwell d. b 28 Oct 1364
Child

Last Edited13 Oct 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-34.
  2. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Marmion 9.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-34.
  4. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-6.
  5. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-7.

Roger de Bellers1,2

M, #1746, d. 1326

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Death*1326 1 
Occupation England, chief baron of the Exchequer (Edward II).3 
Name Variation Belers2 
Residence* Bunny, Nottinghamshire, England3 
Occupation* England, Chief Baron of the Exchequer under Edward I3 
Residence Bunny, Nottingham, England3 

Family
Children

Last Edited13 Oct 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-34.
  2. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Marmion 9.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-34.

Ralph de Cromwell1

M, #1747, b. circa 1292

Father*Sir Ralph de Cromwell2,3 d. c 2 Mar 1299
Ralph de Cromwell|b. c 1292|p59.htm#i1747|Sir Ralph de Cromwell|d. c 2 Mar 1299|p59.htm#i1748||||Sir Ralph de Cromwell|d. b 18 Sep 1289|p59.htm#i1751|Margaret de Somery|d. a 18 Jun 1293|p59.htm#i1749|||||||

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Marriage* Principal=Joan de la Mare4,3 
Birth*circa 1292 3 

Family

Joan de la Mare d. 9 Aug 1348
Child

Last Edited30 Aug 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-33.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-32.
  3. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-5.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-33.
  5. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-6.

Sir Ralph de Cromwell1

M, #1748, d. circa 2 March 1299

 

Father*Sir Ralph de Cromwell d. b 18 Sep 1289; son and heir4
Mother*Margaret de Somery2,3 d. a 18 Jun 1293
Sir Ralph de Cromwell|d. c 2 Mar 1299|p59.htm#i1748|Sir Ralph de Cromwell|d. b 18 Sep 1289|p59.htm#i1751|Margaret de Somery|d. a 18 Jun 1293|p59.htm#i1749|||||||Sir Roger de Somery|b. c 1208\nd. b 26 Aug 1273|p59.htm#i1753|Nichole d' Aubigny|b. c 1206\nd. 1240|p59.htm#i1752|

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Death*circa 2 March 1299 1,3 
Arms* Arg. A chief az. Over all a bendlet gu. (Guillim).5
Summoned*1 September 1294 serve in Gascony5 
Event-Misc*1 November 1296 Going to Scotland for K.5 
Summoned7 July 1297 serve against the Scots5 

Family
Child

Last Edited26 Dec 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-32.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  3. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-4.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 55-29.
  5. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 256.
  6. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-5.

Margaret de Somery1

F, #1749, d. after 18 June 1293

Father*Sir Roger de Somery3,4 b. c 1208, d. b 26 Aug 1273
Mother*Nichole d' Aubigny2 b. c 1206, d. 1240
Margaret de Somery|d. a 18 Jun 1293|p59.htm#i1749|Sir Roger de Somery|b. c 1208\nd. b 26 Aug 1273|p59.htm#i1753|Nichole d' Aubigny|b. c 1206\nd. 1240|p59.htm#i1752|Ralph de Somery|d. 1211|p86.htm#i2552|Margaret Marshal|d. a 1243|p86.htm#i2553|Sir William d' Aubigny|b. c 1165\nd. 1 Feb 1220/21|p59.htm#i1756|Mabel of Chester|b. c 1172|p59.htm#i1757|

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Marriage* Groom=Sir Ralph Basset of Drayton1,5,6,4 
Marriage*before 26 January 1270/71 2nd=Sir Ralph de Cromwell7,5,8 
Death*after 18 June 1293 as a nun9,5,10 
Event-Misc*26 January 1270/71 He and w. Margaret claim to be coheirs of Ralph de Somery (Inq.), Principal=Sir Ralph de Cromwell11 
Event-Misc10 October 1273 Margaret is coheir of Nichola and of Roger de Somery, dec., Principal=Sir Ralph de Cromwell11 
Event-Misc12 April 1274 Livery to them of lands at Barwe and Caumpeden as 1.5 Kt. Fee, Principal=Sir Ralph de Cromwell11 

Family 1

Sir Ralph Basset of Drayton d. 4 Aug 1265
Children

Family 2

Sir Ralph de Cromwell d. b 18 Sep 1289
Children

Last Edited25 Aug 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-30.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-30.
  4. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 261.
  5. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-3.
  6. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 1, p. 52.
  7. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  8. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 14.
  9. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 55-29.
  10. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 228.
  11. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 256.
  12. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-4.
  13. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 52.
  14. [S342] Sir Bernard Burke, Extinct Peerages, p. 27.
  15. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 138-4.

Sir Ralph Basset of Drayton1

M, #1750, d. 4 August 1265

 

Father*Baron Ralph Basset of Drayton2,3 d. bt 1254 - 1261
Sir Ralph Basset of Drayton|d. 4 Aug 1265|p59.htm#i1750|Baron Ralph Basset of Drayton|d. bt 1254 - 1261|p86.htm#i2551||||Ralph Basset|d. 1211|p485.htm#i14537||||||||||

ChartsAnn Marbury Pedigree

Death*4 August 1265 Evesham, Worchestershire, England, slain at the Battle of Evesham. Burke says: "when the Earl of Leicester perceived the great force and order of the royal army, calculating upon defeat, he conjured Ralph Basset and Hugh Dispenser to retire, and reserve themselves for better times; but they bravely answered, "the if he perished, they would not desire to live."4,2,3,5 
Marriage* 1st=Margaret de Somery1,3,6,7 
Arms* Or. 3 piles gu. A canton ermine (Glover).8
Occupation*1264 England, M.P.2 
(Simon) Battle-Evesham4 August 1265 Evesham, Principal=Edward I "Longshanks" Plantagenet King of England, Principal=Simon VI de Montfort9,5,10 
Event-MiscMichaelmas 1265 Rob. de Tateshale, jun., seized Keteby, Olewelle, Someridiby, and Lit. Danby, Leic., which were of Ralph Basset, who was killed at Evesham. He also seized 180 acres at Estwenyr, Norf., from Wm. Constable, who was on the side of the Earl of Leicester. His bailiffs took lands and rents at Marum, Toft, and Cunyngeby from 3 persons who were not rebels. [Since he was only 16 years old at the time, I wonder if this note might refer to his father, who was also a son of Robert, so a "jun.", although the grandfather was dead by this time. -GEB], Principal=Sir Robert de Tateshal11 

Family

Margaret de Somery d. a 18 Jun 1293
Children

Last Edited1 Feb 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 55-29.
  3. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-3.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  5. [S342] Sir Bernard Burke, Extinct Peerages, p. 27.
  6. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 1, p. 52.
  7. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 261.
  8. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 52.
  9. [S342] Sir Bernard Burke, Extinct Peerages, p. 15.
  10. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 31.
  11. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 5, p. 11.
  12. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-4.

Sir Ralph de Cromwell1

M, #1751, d. before 18 September 1289

 

Marriage*before 26 January 1270/71 2nd=Margaret de Somery2,3,4 
Death*before 18 September 1289 1 
Arms* Arg. A chief gu. Over all a baston az. (Segar)5
Event-Misc*26 January 1270/71 He and w. Margaret claim to be coheirs of Ralph de Somery (Inq.), Principal=Margaret de Somery6 
Event-Misc10 October 1273 Margaret is coheir of Nichola and of Roger de Somery, dec., Principal=Margaret de Somery6 
Event-Misc12 April 1274 Livery to them of lands at Barwe and Caumpeden as 1.5 Kt. Fee, Principal=Margaret de Somery6 
Summoned*1 July 1277 serve against the Welsh, and will serve himself.6 
Event-Misc*27 June 1282 Gift of 6 bucks from Sherwood Forest6 
Summoned30 September 1283 Shrewsbury, Parliament6 
Event-Misc2 December 1285 Having served with K. in Wales, has his scutage in Warw., Leic., Bucks., Glou., Notts., and Derb.6 
Summoned15 July 1287 Gloucester, Council6 

Family 1
Child

Family 2

Margaret de Somery d. a 18 Jun 1293
Children

Last Edited26 Dec 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-31.
  3. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-3.
  4. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 14.
  5. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 255.
  6. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 256.
  7. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 55-29.

Nichole d' Aubigny1

F, #1752, b. circa 1206, d. 1240

Father*Sir William d' Aubigny2,3,4 b. c 1165, d. 1 Feb 1220/21
Mother*Mabel of Chester5,3,4 b. c 1172
Nichole d' Aubigny|b. c 1206\nd. 1240|p59.htm#i1752|Sir William d' Aubigny|b. c 1165\nd. 1 Feb 1220/21|p59.htm#i1756|Mabel of Chester|b. c 1172|p59.htm#i1757|Sir William d' Aubigny|b. c 1139\nd. 24 Dec 1193|p86.htm#i2565|Maud de St. Hilary|b. c 1132|p86.htm#i2566|Hugh of Kevelioc|b. 1147\nd. 30 Jun 1181|p59.htm#i1758|Bertrade de Montfort|b. 1155\nd. 1227|p97.htm#i2903|

Birth*circa 1206 3 
Marriage*circa 1225 Barrow, Leicestershire, England, 1st=Sir Roger de Somery6,3,4,7 
Death*1240 Dudley Castle, Staffordshire, England3 
Deathbefore 1254 4 
Married Name Somery D' 

Family

Sir Roger de Somery b. c 1208, d. b 26 Aug 1273
Children

Last Edited25 Aug 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-30.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-29.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-2.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-29.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-30.
  7. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 219.
  8. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 228.
  9. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 137-3.
  10. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 262.
  11. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 261.
  12. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 264.

Sir Roger de Somery1

M, #1753, b. circa 1208, d. before 26 August 1273

 

Father*Ralph de Somery2,3 d. 1211
Mother*Margaret Marshal2 d. a 1243
Sir Roger de Somery|b. c 1208\nd. b 26 Aug 1273|p59.htm#i1753|Ralph de Somery|d. 1211|p86.htm#i2552|Margaret Marshal|d. a 1243|p86.htm#i2553|Sir John de Somery|d. bt 1189 - 1199|p86.htm#i2555|Hawise Paynel|d. b 1194|p86.htm#i2554|John FitzGilbert (?)|b. c 1106\nd. b Michaelmas in 1165|p89.htm#i2641|Sybil de Salisbury|b. c 1120|p89.htm#i2642|

Birth*circa 1208 of Sedgley, Staffordshire, England4 
Marriage*circa 1225 Barrow, Leicestershire, England, Bride=Nichole d' Aubigny5,4,6,3 
Marriage*before 1254 2nd=Amabil de Chaucombe7,8,4,9,10 
Death*before 26 August 1273 shortly before 26 Aug 1273, holding Manors of Clent in Staff., Bradfield, Stanford, Yngepenne, Hodicot, Hildesle, Kingeston, Cumpton, Yatingeden, and Englefield, together 8 1/4 Fees in Berks., Middelton and Abingworth as 1 1/2 Fee in Surr., Woleye, Cradleye, and Dudley with borough, Worc., Seggesley, Mere, and Swyneford in Staff., Bordesle in Warw., Newport Paynel and c. 9 1/2 Fees in Bucks., Campeden and borough, Glou., and Barrow in Leic. He was g.s. of Ralph de S., to whom K. John gave Mere Manor, Staff, and he married 1, Nicholaa de Albiniaco, and 2, Anabel. His s.h. Ralph, 18 on 24 June last ob. s. p. , and the 4 daus. of Nicholaa, viz. Margaret, Joan, Mabel, and Maud are all married.11,4,6,12 
Arms* D'or a deux leons d'azure passans (Glover).12
Residence* Dudley Castle, Dudley, Warwick, England13,6 
Event-Misc1229 He suceeded his nephew Nicholas and mande an agreement with Maurice de Gant, granting him Dudley and Sedgley for 7 years and undertaking not to marry in that term without Maurice's permission.14 
Event-Misc1230 He was involved in the war against France14 
Event-Misc1234 He was allied with Hubert de Burgh in rebellion against the Poitevin influence on King Henry III14 
Event-MiscJanuary 1233/34 He was appointed to remain at Shrewsbury to maintain order14 
Summoned11 July 1245 Chester with arms and horses14 
Event-Misc20 July 1247 Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, He had a grant of free warren14 
Feudal*5 November 1247 Great Tywe, Oxfordshire, 1 carucate12 
Protection*May 1253 to Gascony14 
SummonedJuly 1257 Chester14 
Event-Misc1258 He was one of 12 elected to treat with the King's Council, and one of 24 appointed by the barons14 
Feudal23 January 1260 Stanford Manor, Berks., as 1 Kt. Fee12 
Note*1262 Dudley, Warwick, England, built Dudley Castle without license for which he was warned6,14 
Summoned25 May 1263 Hereford14 
Event-Misc*10 August 1263 Roger de Somery was directed to deliver the counties of Salop and Stafford to Hamon Lestrange, Principal=Hamo le Strange14 
Summoned*16 October 1263 the King at Windsor for Council9 
Event-Misc*16 March 1264 Lic. for him to enclose his dwelling places of Duddeleg Manor, Staff., and of Welegh, Worc., with ditch and wall of stone and lime, and to crenellate same.9 
Event-Misc23 February 1265 Complaint re breaking doors of his hall and damaging his Manor of Aspele, Warw.9 
FeudalMichelmas 1265 Burmingham Manor, Warw.9 
Event-Misc*19 October 1265 Roger de Somery is married to Amabel, wid. of Gilb. de Segrave, Principal=Amabil de Chaucombe9 
Event-Misc1266 He was one of 8 "persons of most potent nobility" chosen to draw up the "Dictum of Kenilworth"14 
Event-Misc3 August 1266 Complaint re burning his houses at Dudley9 
Event-Misc29 September 1267 Commissioner re peace between the King and Llwellyn ap Griffin9 
Event-Misc14 March 1268 Roger de Somery was a Commissioner re dispute between Llewellyn, P. of Wales, and Gilb., E. of Gloucester, Witness=Sir Gilbert de Clare "the Red"9 
Event-Misc*11 November 1275 Grant to Wm. de Valencia custody of his lands and marriage of heirs, Principal=Sir William de Valence12 
Event-Misc*6 February 1277 Grant to Joan, wife of Wm. de Valencia, custody of Bradefeld Manor in minority of his heirs, Principal=Joan de Munchensi12 

Family 1

Nichole d' Aubigny b. c 1206, d. 1240
Children

Family 2

Amabil de Chaucombe b. c 1210, d. c 1278
Child

Last Edited25 Aug 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-30.
  2. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 55-29.
  3. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 219.
  4. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-30.
  6. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-2.
  7. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-30.
  8. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 81-29.
  9. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 261.
  10. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 217.
  11. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 55-28.
  12. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 262.
  13. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-30.
  14. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 228.
  15. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 137-3.
  16. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 264.

Amabil de Chaucombe1

F, #1754, b. circa 1210, d. circa 1278

Father*Robert de Chaucombe1,2 b. c 1175
Mother*Julian Chaucomb2 b. c 1170
Amabil de Chaucombe|b. c 1210\nd. c 1278|p59.htm#i1754|Robert de Chaucombe|b. c 1175|p59.htm#i1755|Julian Chaucomb|b. c 1170|p107.htm#i3195|Hugh Chaucombe||p136.htm#i4075|Hodierne Chaucombe||p136.htm#i4076|||||||

Birth*circa 1210 Arundel, Sussex, England2 
Marriage*before 30 September 1231 Groom=Sir Gilbert de Segrave2,3,4,5 
Marriage*before 1254 Groom=Sir Roger de Somery1,6,2,3,5 
Death*circa 1278 6,2,5 
Burial* Chaucombe Priory, Northamptonshire, England2,5 
Married Name Somery 
Name Variation Anabel Chaucomb2 
Event-Misc*19 October 1265 Roger de Somery is married to Amabel, wid. of Gilb. de Segrave, Principal=Sir Roger de Somery3 
Event-Misc*19 October 1265 Amabil, widow of Gilbert de Segrave and mother of Nicholas, and heiress of Hugh de Chaucombe, founder of Chaucombe Priory, is now wife of Rog. de Sumery7 
Event-Misc2 November 1273 She is to have £100 lands in dower, viz., Manors of Bradfield £60, Swyneford £16 18s. 4 3/4d., Clent £8 17s. 5 1/4d., Cradele £8 6s 0 3/4d., and Seggeley Park8 
Protection*1 August 1276 over seas.7 
Summoned*1 July 1277 serve against the Welsh7 
Summoned2 August 1282 serve against the Welsh7 

Family 1

Sir Gilbert de Segrave b. c 1185, d. b 8 Oct 1254
Child

Family 2

Sir Roger de Somery b. c 1208, d. b 26 Aug 1273
Child

Last Edited25 Aug 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-30.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 261.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 16B-26.
  5. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 217.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 81-29.
  7. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 235.
  8. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 262.
  9. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 4, p. 233.
  10. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 16B-27.

Robert de Chaucombe1

M, #1755, b. circa 1175

Father*Hugh Chaucombe2
Mother*Hodierne Chaucombe2
Robert de Chaucombe|b. c 1175|p59.htm#i1755|Hugh Chaucombe||p136.htm#i4075|Hodierne Chaucombe||p136.htm#i4076|||||||||||||

Marriage* Principal=Julian Chaucomb2 
Birth*circa 1175 of Chaucomb, Northamptonshire, England2 

Family

Julian Chaucomb b. c 1170
Children

Last Edited24 Oct 2003

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-30.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.

Sir William d' Aubigny1,2

M, #1756, b. circa 1165, d. 1 February 1220/21

 

Father*Sir William d' Aubigny3,4,2 b. c 1139, d. 24 Dec 1193
Mother*Maud de St. Hilary3 b. c 1132
Sir William d' Aubigny|b. c 1165\nd. 1 Feb 1220/21|p59.htm#i1756|Sir William d' Aubigny|b. c 1139\nd. 24 Dec 1193|p86.htm#i2565|Maud de St. Hilary|b. c 1132|p86.htm#i2566|Sir William d' Aubigny "Pincerna (Strong Hand)"|b. 1110\nd. 12 Oct 1176|p86.htm#i2571|Adeliza of Louvain|b. 1103\nd. 23 Apr 1151|p86.htm#i2570|James de St. Hilary|b. c 1110\nd. c 1154|p86.htm#i2567|Aveline (?)||p86.htm#i2568|

Marriage* Principal=Mabel of Chester5,4,2,6 
Birth*circa 1165 of Arundel, Essex, England4 
Burial* Wymondham Abbey, Wymondham, Norfolk, England4,7 
Death*1 February 1220/21 Cainell, near Rome, Italy, |while returning from crusade7,8 
Title* 3rd Earl of Arundel8 
Arms* Gu. A lion rampant double queued or (M. Paris I)2
Name Variation William de Albini2 
Event-Misc*15 May 1213 He was a favorite of King John and witnessed the king's concession of the kingdom to the Pope, Principal=John Lackland8 
(Barons) Magna Carta12 June 1215 Runningmede, Surrey, England, King=John Lackland9,10,11,12,8,13
Event-Misc*14 July 1217 He joined Henry III after the royal faction won at Lincoln, had forfeiture of his possessions reversed and became justiciar., Principal=Henry III Plantagenet King of England8 
Event-Misc*1218 He left on crusade8 

Family

Mabel of Chester b. c 1172
Children

Last Edited27 Apr 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-29.
  2. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 6.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 149-25.
  4. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-29.
  6. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 50.
  7. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 129-1.
  8. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 8.
  9. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Longespée 3.
  10. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Warenne 3.
  11. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 56-27.
  12. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 60-28.
  13. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 34.
  14. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 132-2.
  15. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 149-26.
  16. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 134-2.
  17. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, v. 2, p. 29.
  18. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-2.

Mabel of Chester

F, #1757, b. circa 1172

Father*Hugh of Kevelioc1,2 b. 1147, d. 30 Jun 1181
Mother*Bertrade de Montfort3,2 b. 1155, d. 1227
Mabel of Chester|b. c 1172|p59.htm#i1757|Hugh of Kevelioc|b. 1147\nd. 30 Jun 1181|p59.htm#i1758|Bertrade de Montfort|b. 1155\nd. 1227|p97.htm#i2903|Ranulph de Gernon|b. c 1100\nd. 16 Dec 1153|p59.htm#i1763|Maud de Caen|b. c 1120\nd. 29 Jul 1189|p59.htm#i1762|Simon de Montfort|d. c 13 Mar 1180/81|p59.htm#i1760|Maud (?)|d. 1168|p59.htm#i1761|

Marriage* Principal=Sir William d' Aubigny4,2,5,6 
Birth*circa 1172 2 
Married Name Aubigny 

Family

Sir William d' Aubigny b. c 1165, d. 1 Feb 1220/21
Children

Last Edited18 May 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-28.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-28.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-29.
  5. [S325] Rev. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, p. 6.
  6. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 50.
  7. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 8.
  8. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 149-26.
  9. [S233] Frederick Lewis Weis, Magna Charta Sureties, 136-2.

Hugh of Kevelioc1

M, #1758, b. 1147, d. 30 June 1181

Father*Ranulph de Gernon2,3 b. c 1100, d. 16 Dec 1153
Mother*Maud de Caen2,3 b. c 1120, d. 29 Jul 1189
Hugh of Kevelioc|b. 1147\nd. 30 Jun 1181|p59.htm#i1758|Ranulph de Gernon|b. c 1100\nd. 16 Dec 1153|p59.htm#i1763|Maud de Caen|b. c 1120\nd. 29 Jul 1189|p59.htm#i1762|Ranulph I. le Meschin de Briquessart|b. c 1070\nd. 17 Jan 1128/29 or 27 Jan 1128/29|p102.htm#i3036|Lucy (?)|b. c 1068\nd. 1141|p59.htm#i1764|Robert de Caen|b. c 1090\nd. 31 Oct 1147|p59.htm#i1765|Maud FitzRobert|d. 1157|p59.htm#i1766|

Birth*1147 Kevelioc, Monmouthshire, Wales4,3 
Marriage*1169 Principal=Bertrade de Montfort5,3,6 
Death*30 June 1181 Leek, Staffordshire, England4,3,6 
Burial* St. Werburg's, Chester, Cheshire, England3 
Title* Earl of Chester, Viscount of Avranches6 
DNB* Hugh [Hugh of Cyfeiliog], fifth earl of Chester (1147-1181), magnate, was the son of Ranulf (II), fourth earl of Chester, and his wife, Matilda, daughter of Robert, earl of Gloucester, the illegitimate son of Henry I. He is sometimes called Hugh of Cyfeiliog (Meirionydd), because, according to a late writer, he was born in that district of Wales. His father died on 16 December 1153, when Hugh was still under age. His inheritance, on both sides of the channel, included the hereditary viscountcies of Avranches, Bessin, and Val de Vire, the honours of St Sever and Briquessart, and the Chester earldom together with its associated honours in England and Wales, making the earl one of the greatest of all Anglo-Norman landholders. Hugh came of age in 1162, when he took seisin of his lands and received his title. He was present in 1163 at Dover for Henry II's renewal of the Flemish money fief, and also attended the Council of Clarendon in January 1164. He failed to make a return to the English survey of knight's fees in 1166, and later apparently went unassessed under the 1168 aid taken for the marriage of the king's daughter.

Hugh joined the rebellion of Henry II's sons in 1173. Aided by Ralph de Fougères he utilized his great influence in the north-eastern marches of Brittany to incite the Bretons to revolt. Henry II dispatched an army of Brabant mercenaries against them. The rebels were defeated in a battle, and on 20 August were shut up in the castle of Dol, which they had captured by fraud not long before. On 23 August, Henry II arrived to conduct the siege in person. Hugh and his comrades had no provisions, and were therefore forced to surrender on 26 August on a promise that their lives and limbs would be saved. Eighty knights surrendered with them. Hugh was treated leniently by Henry, and was confined at Falaise, where the earl and countess of Leicester were also soon brought as prisoners. When Henry II returned to England he took the two earls with him. They were conveyed from Barfleur to Southampton on 8 July 1174. Hugh was probably afterwards imprisoned at Devizes. On 8 August, however, he was taken back from Portsmouth to Barfleur, when Henry II returned to Normandy. He was now imprisoned at Caen, and from there removed to Falaise. He was admitted to terms with Henry before the general peace, and witnessed the treaty of Falaise on 11 October.

Hugh seems to have remained some time longer without restoration. At last, at the Council of Northampton on 13 January 1177, he received grant of the lands on both sides of the channel which he had held fifteen days before the war broke out. In March he witnessed Henry II's award in the dispute between Alfonso IX, king of Castile, and Sancho V, king of Navarre. In May, at the Council of Windsor, Henry restored to him his castles, and required him to go to Ireland, along with William fitz Audelin and others, to prepare the way for the king's son. But no great grants of Irish land were conferred on him, and he took no prominent part in the Irish campaigns. Nevertheless, Chester's increased trade with Ireland amply profited the earldom in years to come.

Hugh's liberality to the church was not as great as that of his predecessors. He granted some lands in the Wirral to the abbey of St Werburgh, Chester, and made other special gifts to Stanlow Priory, St Mary's, Coventry, and the nuns of Bullington and Greenfield priories. He also confirmed his mother's grants to her foundation of Augustinian canons at Calke, Derbyshire, and those of his father to his convent of the Benedictine nuns of St Mary's, Chester. In 1171 he confirmed the grants of Ranulf to the abbey of St Stephen in the diocese of Bayeux. More substantial were his grants of Belchford church to Trentham Priory, and of Combe in Gloucestershire to the abbey of Bordesley, Warwickshire.

Hugh married in 1169 Bertrada, the daughter of Simon, count of Évreux. Hugh died at Leek in Staffordshire on 30 June 1181. He was buried next to his father on the south side of the chapter house of St Werburgh's, Chester, now the cathedral. His only legitimate son, Ranulf (III), succeeded him as earl of Chester. He and his wife also had four daughters, who became, on their brother's death, coheirs of the Chester earldom. They were: Maud, who married David, earl of Huntingdon, and became the mother of John the Scot, earl of Chester from 1232 to 1237, on whose death the line of Hugh d'Avranches became extinct; Mabel, who married William d'Aubigny, earl of Arundel (d. 1221); Agnes, the wife of William Ferrers, earl of Derby; and Hawise, who married Robert de Quincy (d. 1217), son of Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester. Hugh was also the father of several bastards, including Pagan, lord of Milton; Roger; Amice, who married Ralph Mainwaring, county justice of Chester; and another daughter, who married Richard Bacon, the founder of Rocester Abbey.

T. F. Tout, rev. Thomas K. Keefe
Sources

G. Barraclough, ed., The charters of the Anglo-Norman earls of Chester, c.1071–1237, Lancashire and Cheshire RS, 126 (1988), 140–96 · R. C. Christie, ed. and trans., Annales Cestrienses, or, Chronicle of the abbey of S. Werburg at Chester, Lancashire and Cheshire RS, 14 (1887), 19, 28 · T. A. Heslop, ‘The seals of the twelfth-century earls of Chester’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 71 (1991) [G. Barraclough issue, The earldom of Chester and its charters, ed. A. T. Thacker] · J. Tait, ed., The chartulary or register of the abbey of St Werburgh, Chester, Chetham Society, 82 (1923) · W. Stubbs, ed., Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis: the chronicle of the reigns of Henry II and Richard I, AD 1169–1192, 2 vols., Rolls Series, 49 (1867), 1.161, 277 · Chronica magistri Rogeri de Hovedene, ed. W. Stubbs, 2, Rolls Series, 51 (1869), 51, 118 · R. Howlett, ed., Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, 1, Rolls Series, 82 (1884) · Jordan Fantosme’s chronicle, ed. and trans. R. C. Johnston (1981), 12–18 · Ralph de Diceto, ‘Ymagines historiarum’, Radulfi de Diceto … opera historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 1: 1148–79, Rolls Series, 68 (1876), 378 · G. Barraclough, The earldom and county palatinate of Chester (1953) · G. Ormerod, The history of the county palatine and city of Chester, 2nd edn, ed. T. Helsby, 1 (1882), 29 · T. K. Keefe, ‘King Henry II and the earls: the pipe roll evidence’, Albion, 13 (1981), 191–222 · M. T. Flanagan, Irish society, Anglo-Norman settlers, Angevin kingship: interactions in Ireland in the late twelfth century (1989), 75, 144, 168, 291 · T. K. Keefe, Feudal assessments and the political community under Henry II and his sons (1983) · English historical documents, 2nd edn, 2, ed. D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway (1981), 449, 767 · Pipe rolls, 20 Henry II, 21 · W. Dugdale, The baronage of England, 2 vols. (1675–6) · L. Delisle and others, eds., Recueil des actes de Henri II, roi d'Angleterre et duc de Normandie, concernant les provinces françaises et les affaires de France, 4 vols. (Paris, 1909–27), vol. 1, p. 380; vol. 2, p. 23 · T. Stapleton, ed., Magni rotuli scaccarii Normanniae sub regibus Angliae, 2 vols., Society of Antiquaries of London Occasional Papers (1840–44) · H. Hall, ed., The Red Book of the Exchequer, 3 vols., Rolls Series, 99 (1896) · J. W. Alexander, Ranulf of Chester: a relic of the Conquest (1983)
Likenesses

seal, repro. in Ormerod, History of the county palatine, 1.32
© Oxford University Press 2004–5
All rights reserved: see legal notice      Oxford University Press


T. F. Tout, ‘Hugh , fifth earl of Chester (1147-1181)’, rev. Thomas K. Keefe, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14059, accessed 24 Sept 2005]

Hugh (1147-1181): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/140597 
(Witness) Event-Misc He was given Fallybrome by Hugh, 2nd Earl of Chester, Principal=Sir Richard de Phytun8 
Name Variation Hugh de Meschines3 
Event-Misc*13 July 1174 Alnwick, He joined the rebellion against Henry II and was taken prisoner6 
Note* Normandy, France, Vicomte d'Avranches4 

Family 1
Children

Family 2

Bertrade de Montfort b. 1155, d. 1227
Children

Last Edited24 Sep 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-28.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-27.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 125-28.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-28.
  6. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 50.
  7. [S376] Unknown editor, unknown short title.
  8. [S301] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Robert Abell, p. 107.
  9. [S284] Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, Wales 4.
  10. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 127-28.
  11. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 125-29.

Bertrade de Montfort1

F, #1759, b. circa 1060, d. 14 February 1117

Father*Simon I de Montfort2,3 b. c 1026, d. 25 Sep 1087
Mother*Agnes d' Evreux2,3 b. c 1030
Bertrade de Montfort|b. c 1060\nd. 14 Feb 1117|p59.htm#i1759|Simon I de Montfort|b. c 1026\nd. 25 Sep 1087|p97.htm#i2904|Agnes d' Evreux|b. c 1030|p97.htm#i2905|Amauri de Montfort|d. 1053|p113.htm#i3367|Bertrarde du Gommets|d. a 1051/52|p113.htm#i3368|Richard d' Evereux|b. 986\nd. 13 Dec 1067|p113.htm#i3369|Estephania de Barcelona|d. 1051|p113.htm#i3370|

Birth*circa 1060 Montfort l'Amauri, France3 
Marriage1089 5th=Count Fulk IV of Anjou "Rechin"3,4 
Marriage*1090/91 Conflict=Count Fulk IV of Anjou "Rechin"2,5 
Divorce*15 April 1092 Principal=Count Fulk IV of Anjou "Rechin"4 
Marriage*15 May 1092 Groom=Philip I of France3,4 
Death*14 February 1117 Fontevrault, France3,4 
Name Variation Beatrice (?)2 

Family 1

Philip I of France b. 1053, d. 29 Jul 1108
Child

Family 2

Count Fulk IV of Anjou "Rechin" b. 1043, d. 14 Apr 1109
Child

Last Edited24 Jul 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-28.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 118-23.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 159.
  5. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 198.

Simon de Montfort1

M, #1760, d. circa 13 March 1180/81

Father*Amaury III de Montfort2,3 b. c 1070, d. a 19 Apr 1136
Mother*Agnes de Garlande2 d. 1143
Simon de Montfort|d. c 13 Mar 1180/81|p59.htm#i1760|Amaury III de Montfort|b. c 1070\nd. a 19 Apr 1136|p113.htm#i3365|Agnes de Garlande|d. 1143|p113.htm#i3366|Simon I. de Montfort|b. c 1026\nd. 25 Sep 1087|p97.htm#i2904|Agnes d' Evreux|b. c 1030|p97.htm#i2905|Anselm d. Garland|b. c 1069\nd. 1118|p113.htm#i3375|(?) de Monthery|b. c 1073|p113.htm#i3376|

Marriage* Principal=Maud (?)4,2 
Burial* Evreux Cathedral, France2 
Death*circa 13 March 1180/81 4,2 
Burial Évreux Cathedral, Normandy, France3 
Title* Count of Évreux3 
Name Variation Simon III de Montfort2 
Event-Misc*1159 He was a vassal of both the King of France and the King of England in Normandy. He sided with Henry II in the war between those kings. Since Simon controlled the castles of Rochefort and Montfort, Louis was forced to make a truce, since communications between Paris, Orleans and Etampes were cut5 
Event-Misc1175 He joined the revolt of Young King Henry against his father, but was captured by the Count of Flanders who successfully besieged the castle of Aumale5 
Event-Misc1177 He attended the treaty of Ivry5 

Family

Maud (?) d. 1168
Children

Last Edited22 Jun 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 125-28.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 159.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 125-28.
  5. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 160.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 126-28.

Maud (?)1

F, #1761, d. 1168

Marriage* Principal=Simon de Montfort2,3 
Death*1168 3 
Married Name Montfort2 

Family

Simon de Montfort d. c 13 Mar 1180/81
Children

Last Edited24 Oct 2003

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 125-28.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 125-28.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.

Maud de Caen1

F, #1762, b. circa 1120, d. 29 July 1189

Father*Robert de Caen2,3 b. c 1090, d. 31 Oct 1147
Mother*Maud FitzRobert2,3 d. 1157
Maud de Caen|b. c 1120\nd. 29 Jul 1189|p59.htm#i1762|Robert de Caen|b. c 1090\nd. 31 Oct 1147|p59.htm#i1765|Maud FitzRobert|d. 1157|p59.htm#i1766|Henry I. Beauclerc|b. 1068\nd. 1 Dec 1135|p55.htm#i1629|Nesta verch Rhys|b. c 1073|p117.htm#i3498|Robert FitzHamon|b. c 1050\nd. Mar 1107|p59.htm#i1767|Sybil Montgomery|b. c 1058\nd. 1107|p117.htm#i3499|

Birth*circa 1120 3 
Marriage*circa 1141 Principal=Ranulph de Gernon4,3 
Death*29 July 1189 4,3 
DNB* Matilda, countess of Chester (d. 1189), magnate, was the granddaughter of Henry I by his illegitimate son Robert, earl of Gloucester (d. 1147), and Sibyl, the daughter of Roger de Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury (d. 1157). Before 1135 she married Ranulf (II), fourth earl of Chester (d. 1153), with whom she had a son, Hugh (d. 1181), who subsequently succeeded his father to the earldom. Matilda's marriage thus created a strong kinship alliance between two of the most powerful earldoms in twelfth-century England which was to prove especially significant during the disturbances of King Stephen's reign.

Matilda may have played a central role in the capture of Lincoln Castle in December 1140, a key turning point in the conflict that set in train the series of events that led eventually to the capture of Stephen. While their husbands were besieging Lincoln Castle, Matilda and her sister-in-law Hawise, countess of Lincoln, made a friendly social visit to the wife of the castellan. Under the pretext of providing an escort for his wife's safe return to his armed camp, Earl Ranulf penetrated and captured the castle. On the subsequent approach of the king's army towards Lincoln, it is unclear whether Matilda held the castle while Ranulf attempted to rally support or whether she was captured. None the less Ranulf escaped from the castle leaving his wife and sons to face the besieging royalists. Robert, earl of Gloucester, went to the aid of Ranulf since he was worried about the safety of his daughter and grandchildren. In the subsequent battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141 King Stephen was captured.

Matilda survived her husband by forty-four years and remained unmarried throughout that period. She had dower of lands of the earldom of Chester valued at over £22 in 1185. She was occasionally involved in the public affairs of her husband's administration: for example she witnessed his charter in 1147–8 of a grant to the monks of Lenton, Nottinghamshire, which was witnessed also by, among others, the Welsh prince Cadwalader ap Gruffudd (d. 1172). Between 1141 and 1145 she received maritagium at Campden, Gloucestershire, lands that were strategically important to her husband, strengthening his position in the more southerly areas of his lordship. She also held maritagium at Great Gransden, Huntingdonshire. She was an active patron of religious houses. When married to Earl Ranulf she granted lands to Belvoir Priory, Leicestershire, between 1141 and 1147, to Bordesley Abbey, Worcestershire, in 1153, and refounded Repton Priory, Derbyshire, c.1150–1154. She witnessed her husband's charters to Garendon Abbey, Leicestershire, and to the nuns of St Mary's, Chester. In 1154–7, jointly with her son, she gave a charter to Walter, bishop of Chester, in reparation for the injuries inflicted by Earl Ranulf which had resulted in his dying excommunicate. As a widow she continued to patronize religious houses, making benefactions to her favourite priory at Repton. In 1185 she held dower in Waddington, Lincolnshire, worth £400. Matilda died on 29 July 1189.

Susan M. Johns
Sources

Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist. · William of Malmesbury, The Historia novella, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter (1955) · K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis, eds., Gesta Stephani, OMT (1976) · GEC, Peerage · G. Barraclough, ed., The charters of the Anglo-Norman earls of Chester, c.1071–1237, Lancashire and Cheshire RS, 126 (1988) · J. H. Round, ed., Rotuli de dominabus et pueris et puellis de XII comitatibus (1185), PRSoc., 35 (1913) · W. Farrer, Honors and knights' fees … from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, 2 (1924)
© Oxford University Press 2004–5
All rights reserved: see legal notice      Oxford University Press


Susan M. Johns, ‘Matilda, countess of Chester (d. 1189)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47213, accessed 24 Sept 2005]

Matilda (d. 1189): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/472135 
Name Variation Maud of Gloucester6 
Event-Misc*1172 She founded Repton Priory, Derbyshire7 

Family

Ranulph de Gernon b. c 1100, d. 16 Dec 1153
Children

Last Edited24 Sep 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-27.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-26.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-27.
  5. [S376] Unknown editor, unknown short title.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 132A-27.
  7. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 49.

Ranulph de Gernon1

M, #1763, b. circa 1100, d. 16 December 1153

Father*Ranulph III le Meschin de Briquessart1,2 b. c 1070, d. 17 Jan 1128/29 or 27 Jan 1128/29
Mother*Lucy (?)1,2 b. c 1068, d. 1141
Ranulph de Gernon|b. c 1100\nd. 16 Dec 1153|p59.htm#i1763|Ranulph III le Meschin de Briquessart|b. c 1070\nd. 17 Jan 1128/29 or 27 Jan 1128/29|p102.htm#i3036|Lucy (?)|b. c 1068\nd. 1141|p59.htm#i1764|Vicomte Ranulph I. of Bayeux|b. b 1046\nd. 1129|p102.htm#i3033|Margaret d' Avranches|b. c 1054|p102.htm#i3034|||||||

Birth*circa 1100 Castle of Gernon, Normandy, France3,2 
Marriage*circa 1141 Principal=Maud de Caen4,2 
Death*16 December 1153 poisoned by his wife and William Peverell3,2,5 
Burial* St. Werberg's, Chester, England3,2 
Title Earl of Chester5 
DNB* Ranulf (II) [Ranulf de Gernon], fourth earl of Chester (d. 1153), magnate, was the son of Ranulf (I), third earl of Chester (d. 1129), and his wife, Lucy of Bolingbroke (d. c.1138). He had a half-brother, William de Roumare, Lucy's son from a previous marriage to Roger fitz Gerold, and a sister, Alice, who married Richard de Clare (d. 1136). Among those who witnessed his charters were Benedict ‘brother of the earl’ (presumably an illegitimate son of Ranulf (I)), Foulque de Bricquessart (probably either a nephew of Ranulf (I) or another illegitimate son), and Richard Bacun, founder c.1143 of Rocester Abbey, Staffordshire, who described Ranulf (II) as his uncle (avunculus).
Succession to the earldom
On his father's death in January in 1129 Ranulf (II) succeeded to his lands and titles in England and Normandy. He had evidently attained his majority, so would probably have been born during the first decade of the twelfth century. His Norman interests lay in the Bessin (the area around Bayeux) and the Avranchin (the area around Avranches), and included the hereditary vicomté of Bayeux. In England his honour as earl of Chester lay principally in the north and midlands, with the most important demesnes in north and east Cheshire (such as Eastham and Macclesfield), in Warwickshire (Coventry), Leicestershire (Barrow upon Soar), and Lincolnshire (Greetham). On or after becoming earl of Chester, Ranulf (I) had surrendered to the crown his lordship of Carlisle and most of his wife's Lincolnshire inheritance based upon Bolingbroke, none of which came later to Ranulf (II). However, about one-third of Lucy's Lincolnshire estate, largely within the soke of Belchford, had remained with Ranulf (I), was retained by Lucy until her death c.1138, and did subsequently pass to their son. The disposition of these holdings was clearly the subject of negotiation with Henry I, for among the accounts charged to Ranulf (II) in the 1130 pipe roll was a debt of £1000 left by his father ‘for the land of Earl Hugh [of Chester]’ and another debt of 500 marks for a concord over his mother's dower. Lucy herself rendered further accounts, including one of 400 marks ‘for her father's land’.
Relations with Henry I and Stephen
During the closing years of Henry I's reign Ranulf (II) was present at royal councils in Northampton (8 September 1131, when magnates were required to swear fealty to the Empress Matilda), Westminster (29 April 1132), and Windsor (Christmas 1132). Although favoured by geld pardons in 1130 in Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire, totalling £21 4s. 0d., there is no sign that he enjoyed the king's familiarity as his father had done. On the other hand, his marriage (not later than 1135) to Matilda, daughter of Robert, earl of Gloucester, associated him with the party favouring the empress's succession (after his death, his widow issued a charter referring to the empress as her aunt). Despite this, in common with nearly every other Anglo-Norman magnate, he accepted King Stephen's accession, attending the royal council at Westminster at Easter (22 March) 1136 and witnessing the Oxford charter of liberties (which signalled the earl of Gloucester's submission to Stephen) in April of that year. To all appearances Ranulf remained a loyal subject until 1140, despite his father-in-law's formal defiance of the king (May 1138) and military leadership of the Angevins in England following the empress's invasion (September 1139).

An early test of Ranulf's allegiance came in February 1136, when Stephen granted Carlisle to Henry of Scotland in the first treaty of Durham. The terms were confirmed in a second treaty of 9 April 1139. Ranulf's resentment at the alienation of a lordship formerly held by his father explains, at least in part, his withdrawal from the royal council at Easter 1136 in protest at the elevated position enjoyed there by Henry of Scotland, and his attempt in 1140 to capture Henry and his wife on their return from Stephen's court. However, the significance of Carlisle in motivating Ranulf's behaviour should not be exaggerated. It lay far from his main territorial interests, and he seems to have played no part in the military campaigns against the Scots which reached a climax with their defeat at the battle of the Standard in August 1138. The earl of Chester's principal ambitions were focused instead on the north midlands, especially in Lincolnshire where his mother's inheritance lay.

Having antagonized the king through his bid to capture Henry of Scotland, Ranulf compounded his offence later in 1140 by contriving the seizure of the royal castle at Lincoln. He arrived unarmed with three knights, ostensibly to collect his wife, and the wife of William de Roumare, who had been paying a social visit. On being allowed in, they seized weapons, expelled the royal garrison, and admitted Roumare and his men. The king's response was to visit Lincolnshire, but instead of taking reprisals against the half-brothers he treated them with favour: William of Malmesbury said that he ‘added to [their] honours’ (Malmesbury, 80–81), the Gesta Stephani that he peaceably renewed a pact with Ranulf while intending to watch whether the promises were kept. Stephen left for London before Christmas, but made a surprise return during the festival to lay siege to Lincoln Castle. Ranulf managed to escape, obtained the armed assistance of his father-in-law, Robert, earl of Gloucester, and other Angevin adherents, raised soldiers from Cheshire and Wales, and marched back to Lincoln, where his wife and half-brother were continuing to resist the siege. At the battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141 both Stephen and Ranulf fought on foot. The king was captured, and the earl followed up his victory with sack and slaughter in the city itself.
Ranulf and the Empress Matilda
Although he played a leading role in the king's downfall, an event which looked set to bring the Empress Matilda to power, it seems clear that Ranulf fought primarily not on behalf of a contender for the throne, but for himself and his family. According to William of Malmesbury ‘he seemed ambivalent in his loyalty’ (Malmesbury, 82–3), and promised fealty to the empress only on condition that the earl of Gloucester would help him relieve Lincoln Castle. The speeches before the battle, put into the mouths of the protagonists by Henry of Huntingdon, have Ranulf perceiving the conflict in personal terms, to avenge the wrong done to himself, in contrast to Robert of Gloucester for whom the crown was at stake. Ranulf's ambivalence over the succession dispute, and consequent distrust by both parties, was repeatedly illustrated during the years which followed. He is not known to have attested any of the empress's charters after Stephen's accession. At the siege of Winchester in September 1141 he initially joined the queen's army, only to encounter such suspicion and hostility that he switched to the empress's camp; here, according to William of Malmesbury, his arrival was ‘late and ineffective’ (ibid., 102–03). His Norman castle at Bricquessart fell to the Angevins in 1142, and the castle he had taken at Lincoln withstood a siege by Stephen two years later. Although he subsequently met Stephen at Stamford (probably early in 1146, when the royalist cause was gaining ground) and apparently renewed his fealty to the king, even this reconciliation did not persist. He duly helped Stephen to capture Bedford town and besiege Wallingford Castle, but the king and the royalist magnates remained deeply suspicious of his failure to restore revenues from royal lands and castles he had seized, and thought he should give hostages to secure his good faith. He was again with the king at Northampton on 29 August 1146, but here his request that Stephen help him to campaign against the Welsh was seen as an attempted entrapment, and his refusal to give hostages or restore royal property led to his sudden arrest and imprisonment. He was released after agreeing to Stephen's terms and taking an oath not to resist the king in future, whereupon he set about trying to recover by force what he had been obliged to surrender. Subsequent campaigns led to armed confrontations with Stephen's son Eustace, and on at least two occasions, near Coventry (probably early in 1147) and Lincoln (1149), with the king himself.
Extension of Ranulf's basis of power
In the years following the battle of Lincoln Ranulf was also involved in a series of conflicts and negotiations with northern and midlands barons, including Alan, earl of Richmond, William, count of Aumale, Robert Marmion, and Gilbert de Gant, who was captured in the battle and forced to marry the earl's niece Rohese de Clare. His consistent purpose was to strengthen his authority from the west coast to the east, and to this end he kept a house in Lincoln with separate household officials, refined his honorial administration especially for financial affairs, and employed a scribe as accomplished as those in royal service. A charter issued by Stephen, undated but probably attributable to the brief reconciliation of 1146, demonstrates the extent of his ambitions. He was granted royal manors in Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire, the towns of Newcastle under Lyme, and Derby, land in Grimsby, and the soke of Grantham, plus the honours of William d'Aubigny Brito (Belvoir), Roger de Bully (Tickhill), and Roger de Poitou (Lancaster, although that which lay north of the Ribble was under Scottish control). He was also confirmed in his tenure of Lincoln Castle, including the right to retain ‘Lucy's tower’, a reference which hints at the hereditary claims which had underlain his seizure of the castle. Much of this may already have been encroached upon by Ranulf, and much was presumably surrendered as the price of his release following his arrest at Northampton: Lincoln, for example, was in Stephen's hands by Christmas 1146, and, despite attacks on the castle in 1147 and 1149, Ranulf failed to regain it.

The death of Robert, earl of Gloucester, in October 1147, followed by the retirement of the Empress Matilda to Normandy early in 1148, brought a change in the political context, and with it Ranulf's closer association with the Angevin party. There is charter evidence of a gathering at Chester of the king's principal baronial opponents, such as Roger, earl of Hereford, and Gilbert fitz Richard, earl of Hertford, some time in 1147 or 1148, and also of a visit by Ranulf during this period to the Angevin headquarters at Bristol. Most significantly, when the future Henry II (then aged sixteen) was knighted by David, king of Scots, at Carlisle on Whitsunday (22 May) 1149, Ranulf was in attendance. He did homage to King David, who granted him the honour of Lancaster (including lands north of the Ribble) in exchange for a renunciation of claims to Carlisle; it was also agreed that Ranulf's son would marry one of the daughters of Henry of Scotland. Ranulf almost certainly did homage to the future Henry II on this occasion also, for he addressed him as ‘his lord’ in a charter of March 1150 at the latest. The immediate consequences of this meeting were slight: a plan to launch a combined assault on York was thwarted by Stephen's arrival, Ranulf was blamed by the king of Scots for failing to deliver his promises, and the proposed marriage never took place. But the earl of Chester had clearly made a firmer commitment to the Angevin cause than at any previous time in the civil war, and he was prepared to be a witness to Henry's charters both on this visit and on his return to England in 1153.

Even so, Ranulf continued to put his own interests first. Some time between 1149 and 1153 he made a formal agreement with Robert, earl of Leicester, whereby each pledged to bring only twenty knights if obliged by his liege lord to fight against the other, and generally to limit the impact of the war upon their estates. In the event, both earls joined the Angevin campaign in 1153, but Ranulf still struck a hard bargain, securing from Henry (not later than April) a charter issued at Devizes attested by ten men ‘on the part of earl Ranulf’ to complement the eleven other witnesses. This made lavish grants in the north midlands, many repeating those given by Stephen probably in 1146 but also including the estates of several royalist barons which the earl was effectively being invited to seize. Among these were the holdings of William Peverel of Nottingham, who was widely believed to have been responsible for Ranulf's death, and who in 1155 was disinherited for the crime.

As a marcher earl, Ranulf had to cope with a resurgence of Welsh aggression. In 1136 or 1137 he led a disastrous expedition into Wales from which he was one of the few to escape alive. In 1146 raids into Tegeingl east of the River Clwyd by Owain, king of Gwynedd, prompted Ranulf's appeal to Stephen for military assistance; within days of the earl's arrest, the Welsh were invading Cheshire, and reached Nantwich before being driven out by his seneschal Robert de Montalt on 3 September. Four years later, in alliance with Madog ap Maredudd, king of Powys, he prepared an attack on Owain Gwynedd, but the enterprise collapsed after defeat at Coleshill. As this episode demonstrates, Ranulf fully appreciated the value of co-operation as well as confrontation with the Welsh princes. Cadwaladr, brother of Owain Gwynedd, was a son-in-law of Ranulf's sister Alice. He accompanied Ranulf to the battle of Lincoln, where Welsh forces figured prominently, and was welcomed to the earl's court in the late 1140s and early 1150s, when he witnessed charters as ‘king of Wales’ in defiance of his brother. A Welsh prince referred to by Orderic Vitalis as Maredudd—probably Cadwaladr's brother-in-law Madog ap Maredudd of Powys, but possibly Cadwaladr's son Maredudd—was also with Ranulf at the battle of Lincoln.

Despite Ranulf's interests in Normandy, none of his charters is known to have been issued there, and the focus of his attention was clearly upon the English side of the channel. He certainly lost his Norman estates during the civil war: Bricquessart fell to the Angevins in 1142, and the lands Ranulf held from the bishop and cathedral of Bayeux featured in a charter of Robert, earl of Gloucester, in September 1146. At Devizes in 1153 the future Henry II duly restored Ranulf's ‘Norman inheritance’, interpreting this liberally to include Breuil, the castle of Vire, and other holdings once associated with his family, together with comital status and extensive lordship in the Avranchin. As with Henry's other promises to Ranulf in 1153, however, these did not survive the earl's death, and his son succeeded, in Normandy as in England, substantially to the position enjoyed at Stephen's accession.
Philanthropy, death, and reputation
Ranulf founded four religious houses, an abbey for Savignac monks at Basingwerk, Flintshire, in 1131, priories for Benedictine monks and nuns at Minting, Lincolnshire, and Chester respectively (both at uncertain dates), and a priory for Augustinian canons at Trentham, Staffordshire. The last foundation, made on his deathbed in 1153, was probably the restoration of a house originally established by Hugh d'Avranches. At the end of his life he also compensated Lincoln Cathedral and the abbeys at Burton and Chester for the evils inflicted upon them, and soon after his death his widow and son made a grant to Walter, bishop of Chester, specifically for his absolution. The author of the Gesta Stephani suggests that he was excommunicated some time in the late 1140s, but, if so, reconciliation with the church seems apparent from a gift he made to Bordesley Abbey, Worcestershire, between 1149 and 1153, at the instigation, and in the presence, of Bishop Walter, and also from the fact that, according to later tradition, he was buried next to his father in Chester Abbey. Ranulf died on 17 December 1153 at Gresley, Derbyshire. According to the Gesta Stephani, the earl was given poisoned wine while a guest at the house of William Peverel. In this version, he ‘just recovered, only because he had not drunk much’, but in any event he did not survive for long. Ranulf's wife, Matilda, who in 1172 founded Repton Priory, Derbyshire, died on 29 July 1189. Their son Hugh of Cyfeiliog, born in 1147, succeeded him as earl of Chester, taking seisin of the lands in 1162.

Most contemporary verdicts upon Ranulf were unfavourable. Although Orderic Vitalis acknowledged his resourcefulness and daring, the Gesta Stephani criticized ‘the cunning devices of his accustomed bad faith’ (Gesta Stephani, 192–3), and Henry of Huntingdon, through a speech supposedly by the royalist spokesman at the battle of Lincoln, called him ‘a man of reckless daring, ready for conspiracy … panting for the impossible’, prone to defeat or, at best, to Pyrrhic victories (Historia Anglorum, 734–5). Clearly, his strategy during the civil war was to take every opportunity to enhance his territorial position, especially in the north midlands, and such commitments as he made, either to the king or to the Angevins, were calculated to that end. Other magnates followed similar policies, but Ranulf (II) was exceptionally ruthless in pursuit of his ambitions, and accordingly he was hated by many and trusted by none.

Graeme White
Sources

G. Barraclough, ed., The charters of the Anglo-Norman earls of Chester, c.1071–1237, Lancashire and Cheshire RS, 126 (1988) · Reg. RAN, vols. 2–3 · K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis, eds., Gesta Stephani, OMT (1976) · Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. D. E. Greenway, OMT (1996) · William of Malmesbury, Historia novella: the contemporary history, ed. E. King, trans. K. R. Potter, OMT (1998) · Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist., vol. 6 · R. C. Christie, ed. and trans., Annales Cestrienses, or, Chronicle of the abbey of S. Werburg at Chester, Lancashire and Cheshire RS, 14 (1887) · Pipe rolls, 31 Henry I · M. V. Taylor, ‘Some obits of abbots and founders of St Werburgh's Abbey, Chester’, Liber Luciani de laude Cestrie, ed. M. V. Taylor, Lancashire and Cheshire RS, 64 (1912) · Dugdale, Monasticon, new edn, vols. 3, 6 · Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, 71 (1991) [G. Barraclough issue, The earldom of Chester and its charters, ed. A. T. Thacker] · P. Dalton, ‘In neutro latere: the armed neutrality of Ranulf II, earl of Chester in King Stephen's reign’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 14 (1991), 39–59 · F. M. Stenton, The first century of English feudalism, 1066–1166, 2nd edn (1961)
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Graeme White, ‘Ranulf (II) , fourth earl of Chester (d. 1153)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23128, accessed 24 Sept 2005]

Ranulf (II) (d. 1153): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/231286 
Name Variation Radnulf de Gernon2 
Event-Misc*1 September 1131 Northampton, He witnessed the Charter to Salisbury granted by Henry I5 
Event-Misc1136 He was a witness to the Charter of Liberties5 
Battle-Lincoln*2 February 1140/41 Principal=Stephen of Blois, Stephen=John d' Eu, Stephen=Hugh Bigod, Ranulph=Robert de Caen, Stephen=William Peverell, Stephen=Sir William de Warenne, Stephen=Waleran de Beaumont7 
Event-Misc29 August 1146 He was seized at court by King Stephen5 
Title* Normandy, France, Vicomte d'Avranches3 

Family

Maud de Caen b. c 1120, d. 29 Jul 1189
Children

Last Edited24 Sep 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-27.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 132A-27.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-27.
  5. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 49.
  6. [S376] Unknown editor, unknown short title.
  7. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 28.
  8. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 50.

Lucy (?)1

F, #1764, b. circa 1068, d. 1141

Birth*circa 1068 2 
Marriage* Groom=Ives Taillebois3 
Marriage* Groom=Roger FitzGerold3,2 
Marriage*circa 1098 Groom=Ranulph III le Meschin de Briquessart3,4 
Death*1141 2 
Living*1130 3 

Family 1

Roger FitzGerold d. 15 Jul
Child

Family 2

Ranulph III le Meschin de Briquessart b. c 1070, d. 17 Jan 1128/29 or 27 Jan 1128/29
Children

Last Edited15 May 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-27.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 132A-26.
  4. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 49.

Robert de Caen1

M, #1765, b. circa 1090, d. 31 October 1147

Father*Henry I Beauclerc2,3 b. 1068, d. 1 Dec 1135
Mother*Nesta verch Rhys3 b. c 1073
Robert de Caen|b. c 1090\nd. 31 Oct 1147|p59.htm#i1765|Henry I Beauclerc|b. 1068\nd. 1 Dec 1135|p55.htm#i1629|Nesta verch Rhys|b. c 1073|p117.htm#i3498|William I. of Normandy "the Conqueror"|b. 1027\nd. 9 Sep 1087|p59.htm#i1768|Maud of Flanders|b. 1032\nd. 3 Nov 1083|p59.htm#i1769|Rhys ap Tewdr Mawr|d. Apr 1093|p136.htm#i4068|Gwladus fil Rhiwallon||p136.htm#i4069|

Birth*circa 1090 2 
Birth1100 Caen, France3 
Marriage*1119 Principal=Maud FitzRobert4,3 
Death*31 October 1147 Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, of fever2,3,5 
Burial* Priory of St. James, Bristol5 
Title 1st Earl of Gloucester6 
DNB* Robert, first earl of Gloucester (b. before 1100, d. 1147), magnate, was the illegitimate son of Henry I, king of England, and a woman identifiable as a member of the Gay family of Hampton and Northbrook, Oxfordshire. Probably the king's eldest bastard, he was born several years before his father's accession to the throne in 1100, the issue of one of at least three liaisons which Henry enjoyed with women from the neighbourhood of Woodstock, throughout his life one of his favourite resorts. It was believed in the late 1120s that his father had specifically commanded that Robert should receive training in letters and the liberal arts, but it is not known where he was educated.
Marriage and court factions
In the aftermath of the White Ship disaster of 1120, when his younger and legitimate half-brother, William, died, Robert shared in the largesse that the king distributed to reassert his political position. Robert was given the marriage of Mabel, the heir of Robert fitz Haimon, whose lands in the west country and Glamorgan had been in royal wardship since 1107. The marriage also brought Robert the Norman honours of Evrecy and St Scholasse-sur-Sarthe. Robert was raised to the rank of earl of Gloucester soon after, probably by the end of 1121. The new earl was closely engaged in his father's efforts to subdue rebellion in Normandy in 1123, leading forces from the Cotentin into central Normandy. William of Malmesbury and Simeon of Durham both remark on the king's reliance on the military judgement of his son. After the crushing of the Norman rebellions Earl Robert seems to have concentrated his efforts for a time on his marcher lordship of Glamorgan. A campaign in the west of the lordship added large tracts of land at the expense of the Welsh dynasty of Afan, and led to the foundation of the castle and lordship of Neath. In 1126 the earl secured a working relationship with the Welsh-dominated church of south Wales, under its aggressive bishop, Urban.

Earl Robert was by now perceived as the leader of one of the dominant factions of his father's court. In this same year the king further demonstrated his trust in Robert by transferring the custody of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, to the earl's castle of Cardiff, where he died in 1134. It was as a principal courtier that the earl disputed with Stephen, count of Mortain (who can be regarded as his rival at this time), the right to take first the oath to support the future succession of his half-sister, the Empress Matilda, to England at Christmas 1127. It may be that this early dispute set a pattern of antagonism between the two men, both rivals for power and influence at court. William of Malmesbury reported Roger of Salisbury as saying that Earl Robert was one of the few whose advice the king sought over the marriage of the Empress Matilda to Geoffrey, count of Anjou. Earl Robert, with Brian fitz Count, was entrusted with the task of overhauling the treasury in 1128–9: from this more than anything else it seems clear that Robert's hold on at least the practical business of the court in the final years of his father's reign was strong. This position of power doubtless accounts for the promotion of his own bastard son, Richard, to the see of Bayeux, where the earl had great interests, in 1134. Earl Robert was present at his father's deathbed at Lyons-la-Forêt, summoned in haste once the seriousness of the king's condition was known.
Robert, King Stephen, and the baronial wars
After his father's death on the night of 1 December 1135 his movements become highly significant in view of his later importance in the Angevin party. He helped escort the royal corpse to Rouen. William of Malmesbury states that he stayed in Normandy, as also did the empress and most of the court aristocracy. Robert de Torigni records that when news of Stephen's coronation reached Earl Robert at the end of December (probably as he travelled with his father's body to Caen), he was in discussion with Theobald, count of Blois, at Lisieux. Since the Norman barons had decided to offer the duchy to Theobald, it would seem that Earl Robert had not leapt to the defence of the Empress Matilda's claims but had gone with the majority. His next act was to give up (presumably to Stephen's agents) the castle of Falaise, which had been in his keeping, but not before removing much of the treasury deposited there. That he did so does not indicate lawlessness; what he took was doubtless his father's deathbed cash legacy. There is no clear evidence that he crossed with his father's body to England or attended the funeral at Reading in January.

Earl Robert's next appearance is not until Easter 1136 when he attended the great court of King Stephen at Oxford. Despite the retrospective reflections of William of Malmesbury, Earl Robert's actions in December in support of Count Theobald's candidacy demonstrate that at this time he was not a supporter of the empress's bid for the throne. This does not mean that he was in any way enamoured of Stephen either, but his actions over the next two years show a determination to make the best of the fait accompli of Stephen's coronation. The Gesta Stephani reports speculation that the earl himself might have claimed the throne, but his illegitimacy made his claim a poor one. Earl Robert did homage to the king, who, says the Gesta Stephani, had been anxious to attract him to his court. The Gesta also states that the earl's adherence was rewarded with ‘all he demanded in accordance with his wish’. If that were the case, it has proved impossible to trace what new grants were made to him, and it may be that all he received was a confirmation of Henry I's grants, such as the one obtained from Stephen by Miles of Gloucester.

Robert's next move must have been to the southern march of Wales, where a general rising of the Welsh followed in the wake of the murder of Richard de Clare in April 1136 by the Welsh of Gwent. There is good evidence that the earl's lordships of Glamorgan and Gwynllw^g were much troubled by the depredations of Morgan ab Owain (who styled himself king) from the east and the sons of Iestyn ap Gwrgan from the west. Treaties survive (which must have been reached before spring 1137) by which the earl bought peace from both factions by large territorial concessions. It is known that Earl Robert supported King Stephen at the siege of Exeter during the summer of 1136, with several other marcher barons, and it has been assumed that he worked to obtain an impolitic clemency for the garrison, but this is no more than speculation. In March 1137 he crossed with the king to Normandy, and was with him in the early part of his itinerary round the duchy. (William of Malmesbury is incorrect in having Robert cross later than the king, at Easter, for attestations place the earl in Normandy before then.)

There is no doubt that at some time after Easter there was a major difference between the king and Earl Robert. William of Malmesbury reports that the king connived at an attempted assassination of the earl. This does not seem credible, but it may well be that Earl Robert had come to believe that the king was trying to dispose of him. His position at court had ebbed considerably from what it had been in his father's days, and fear and disappointment may have combined to produce paranoia in the earl. Malmesbury reports a direct confrontation between the men not long after Easter (11 April) which was patched up. However, the earl did not accompany the king back to England in December, although Malmesbury says he civilly attended the king's departure. Orderic Vitalis reports rumours in the summer of 1137 that the earl was contemplating changing sides, so it seems clear that his growing disaffection was known before the end of the year, and Malmesbury says that this knowledge was general in England the next year.
Alliance with the Empress Matilda
Not long after Whitsun (22 May) 1138 Earl Robert formally notified the king from Normandy that he had withdrawn his allegiance from him. This defiance was accompanied by a general rising of the earl's vassals and allies in the west of England and the southern march, which seems from Henry of Huntingdon to have preceded the formal defiance sent from Normandy. It is not easy to account for the earl's extended stay in the duchy, unless he had hopes of uniting with Geoffrey of Anjou and carrying all of Normandy in one blow. They joined forces in June 1138, but the succeeding campaign was a disaster, with the Angevins routed by Stephen's lieutenant, Waleran, count of Meulan, who also wasted Earl Robert's Norman estates. Meanwhile, in England, the earl's party was badly beaten, his estates and castles in Kent were taken, and his allies in the March defeated. Earl Robert was at a loss at this point. It is not until September 1139 that he is heard of again. By then he had persuaded Geoffrey of Anjou to let him leave for England, taking the Empress Matilda and a small escort with him. The party landed at Arundel where it found shelter with Queen Adeliza, the widow of Henry I. Earl Robert left with a small retinue and slipped through to Bristol. In his absence King Stephen besieged the empress at Arundel, but the king later permitted her to join the earl at Bristol. Through his agency she received the submission of Miles of Gloucester, which made her lordship over the south-west and the marches fully effective.

Robert's first significant campaign, once the empress was established in England, was directed at the city of Worcester, which he sacked on 7 November 1139. This was direct retaliation on Waleran, count of Meulan, for the wasting of Earl Robert's Norman lands the previous year. Early in 1140 Robert seized the opportunity to gain a foothold in Cornwall by a marriage alliance between his brother, Reginald, and a daughter of the Cornish magnate William fitz Richard. He secured his brother's promotion to the earldom of Cornwall. King Stephen was able to retaliate quickly, however. The earl's allies' castles were seized, and in February Waleran of Meulan was able to take revenge for the sack of Worcester by pillaging the Vale of Evesham up to the town of Gloucester, taking and burning the earl's house at Tewkesbury. The spring seems to have been taken up in attempts to control Robert fitz Hubert, a Flemish mercenary, who had seized Devizes; he was captured and eventually hung at the earl's order, and the Flemings in the garrison delivered Devizes up to the king. At the end of May Earl Robert was delegated by his sister to negotiate at Bath with the king's envoys: the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Winchester, and the queen, but nothing came of the meeting. In August 1140 the earl made another visit to Bath, but this time in order to attempt to consolidate his power in the south-west by seizing the city. His attack failed. A little later John of Worcester reports his activity in quite a different direction, combining with the lord of Dudley and the earl of Warwick in a successful raid on Nottingham.

It may have been this distant chevauchée which inspired Robert to accept the invitation of his son-in-law, Ranulf (II), earl of Chester, to join in a relief expedition to Lincoln, which the king had besieged. The earls of Chester and Gloucester recruited a large army, including a force of Welsh under the kings of Glamorgan and Gwynedd. Their army encountered the king's army near Lincoln and dispersed it, capturing the king himself. The king was removed to Gloucester and then to Bristol, Earl Robert's principal English castle. Thereafter the earl seems to have escorted his sister, the empress, in her progress round England, doing his best to bring the uncommitted to support her coronation. He was with her in June when the Londoners drove her out of Westminster, and commanded her forces during the siege of Winchester. After gathering support at Oxford and reassessing their position, Earl Robert and the empress turned their attention to Bishop Henry of Winchester, whose attachment to the Angevin party was wavering. After a preliminary assessment of the situation in Winchester, the earl gathered as large a force as he could to take the city. But by now the king's party was gaining support and the empress's army at Winchester was not as impressive as might have been hoped.

On 14 September 1141 the earl gave up the siege and had the empress escorted to safety at Devizes, while he led a rearguard action to cover her escape. He fought a running battle until finally he was surrounded and captured at the ford of Stockbridge by Flemish mercenaries under the command of William (III) de Warenne, earl of Surrey. He was imprisoned first at Rochester, then moved back to Winchester, so as to assist the negotiations to exchange him for the king. By a complicated arrangement involving hostages, the king was released on 1 November from Bristol, and the earl from Winchester on 3 November. He joined the empress at Oxford, where she had settled her court.

In early March 1142 Earl Robert and the empress held a council at Devizes at which it was decided to send envoys to ask Geoffrey, count of Anjou, to come to England. On 14 June a second council heard that, on the contrary, the count desired Earl Robert to join him in Normandy. With some reluctance the earl consented and crossed from the Angevin-held port of Wareham at the end of the month. The earl was detained in Normandy for the duration of the count's successful campaign in Lower Normandy. The count refused to come to England, but allowed the earl to take back with him his eldest son, Henry FitzEmpress, now nine years of age. In Robert's absence the king had been inactive, due to a serious illness, until July, but in September he seized Wareham, cutting communications with Normandy, and then besieged the empress in Oxford for over two months until December. Earl Robert returned to England late in November 1142, but was unable to effect a relief of Oxford, and it was by the ingenuity of the garrison that the empress was smuggled out and away to Wallingford and safety. Oxford Castle surrendered just before Christmas.

The next year saw a significant victory at Wilton, from which the king barely escaped uncaptured, and as a consequence of which the castle of Sherborne fell to the empress. Earl Robert did not come away from the victory entirely with credit: he was blamed for the subsequent pillage of Wilton and its nunnery. Thereafter his war became one of feint and counterstroke based on castles, and the prospect of a decisive victory faded. A further peace conference in 1146 produced no result. In 1147 the situation was briefly complicated by the arrival in England of the adolescent Henry FitzEmpress on a quixotic mission which degenerated into a fiasco. Earl Robert refused to assist the boy when he found himself unable to pay his mercenary escort, and it was the king who had to bail Henry out. But the year was another of stalemate.
Death and progeny
Towards the end of 1147 Earl Robert fell ill with a fever, and died, probably in his late fifties, on 31 October 1147 at Bristol, where he was buried in the priory church of St James. He was survived by his wife, Mabel, until 1156, and there is some evidence from several sources that she exercised dower rights in the march after his death. The earl's lands were divided at the channel. His eldest legitimate son, William, took the earldom and English lands, and the second surviving son, Richard (Philip having died earlier in 1147), took the Norman lordships. A third son, Roger, entered the church, and was elected bishop of Worcester in 1163. Two younger sons, Hamo and Robert, pursued military careers. The earl's daughter, Matilda, married Ranulf (II), fourth earl of Chester, in the last years of the reign of Henry I. Earl Robert's eldest son, Richard, was illegitimate, but was none the less given the see of Bayeux in 1134, and died in 1142. Welsh genealogies mention an illegitimate daughter, Mabel, who married Gruffudd ab Ifor, lord of Senghenydd in upland Glamorgan.

Earl Robert was not the greatest patron of the church of his day. His patronage was concentrated on the Benedictines of Gloucester and Tewkesbury; he founded a priory of Tewkesbury, dedicated to St James at Bristol. In his last year, probably on his deathbed, he made moves to assist the Cistercians, who were attempting to set up a house in upland Glamorgan; the resultant abbey of Margam counted him as its founder.

Robert of Gloucester was one of the great aristocrats of his age. Between 1121 and his death he was rarely rivalled in England for power, wealth, and political influence. He was a consummate creature of the royal court, a great man of business, affable, and courtly. His consciousness of his own greatness comes through clearly in the work of his literary vassals, Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of Malmesbury: both tailor fulsome compliments to suit his taste, and address him as dux, not comes, equating his status with that of the great earls of pre-conquest England, or the continental dukes. He himself avoided the style comes and embraced that of consul, which seems to have suited better a mind oriented to the classical world and self-importance. His weaknesses appear after 1137. Although dogged and courageous once he had settled into support for his half-sister, his leadership of the Angevin party was without imagination. His policy was simply to build on his natural affinity in the west country, to grab territorial power, and beat down any local rivals. It was Earl Robert who set the pattern of regional political disintegration that plagued England between 1138 and 1154. Discovery of coins minted in his name in a hoard found at Box near Bristol in 1994 has revealed that Earl Robert was a leader in breaking the royal monopoly of the coinage, not a maintainer of it. The great coup of Lincoln in 1141 was no more than fortuitous, and Robert did not have the imagination to grasp the advantages his luck had brought him. He was a natural leader of men without much idea of where to lead them.

David Crouch
Sources

William of Malmesbury, The Historia novella, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter (1955) · William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum / The history of the English kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols., OMT (1998–9) · Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist. · K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis, eds., Gesta Stephani, OMT (1976) · Florentii Wigorniensis monachi chronicon ex chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols., EHS, 10 (1848–9) · Ann. mon. · R. Howlett, ed., Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, 4, Rolls Series, 82 (1889) · D. Crouch, ‘Robert, earl of Gloucester, and the daughter of Zelophehad’, Journal of Medieval History, 11 (1985), 227–43 · R. B. Patterson, ‘William of Malmesbury's Robert of Gloucester: a re-evaluation of the Historia novella’, American Historical Review, 70 (1964–5), 983–97 · R. B. Patterson, ed., Earldom of Gloucester charters (1973) · GEC, Peerage · M. Chibnall, The Empress Matilda (1991) · J. A. Green, The government of Henry I (1986) · D. Crouch, ‘Robert of Gloucester's mother and sexual politics in Norman Oxfordshire’, BIHR, 72 (1999), 323–33
© Oxford University Press 2004–5
All rights reserved: see legal notice      Oxford University Press


David Crouch, ‘Robert, first earl of Gloucester (b. before 1100, d. 1147)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23716, accessed 24 Sept 2005]

Robert (b. before 1100, d. 1147): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/237167 
(Henry) Battle-Bremule20 August 1119 Noyon, Normandy, France, Principal=Henry I Beauclerc, Principal=Louis VI of France "the Fat"5 
Event-Misc*1123 He brought a force to help take the castle of Brionne from the rebellious Norman barons.5 
Event-Misc*1126 Robert de Caen had custody of his uncle, the Duke of Normandy, Principal=Robert III Curthose5 
Event-Misc1127 He did homage to Empress Maud, recognizing her as successor5 
(Witness) Death1 December 1135 Angers, Maine-et-Loire, France, Principal=Henry I Beauclerc8,3,9 
Event-Misc1136 He founded St. James Priory at Bristol as a cell to Tewksbury5 
Event-MiscMarch 1136 He did homage to King Stephen for his English lands5 
Event-Misc1137 "He went to Normandy with Stephen but after a quarrel his English and Welsh estates were forfeited." He then became the commander-in-chief of Empress Maud5 
Event-Misc1140 He burned Nottingham5 
(Ranulph) Battle-Lincoln2 February 1140/41 Principal=Stephen of Blois, Principal=Ranulph de Gernon10 
Event-Misc14 September 1141 "He was captured at Stockbridge after helping Empress Maud escape from Winchester. He was exchanged for Stephen."5 
Event-Misc*June 1142 He attempted to persuade Geoffrey of Anjou, Maud's husband, to invade England. Geoffrey was busy conquering Normandy, so Robert joined him in that endeavor., Principal=Geoffrey V "the Fair" Plantagenet5 
Event-Misc*1143 Robert heard that Maud was besieged in Oxford, so returned to England, taking the future Henry II with him. Maud escaped from Oxford and went to Bristol, in Stephen's territory of Gloucestershire. He defeated Stephen at Wilton., Principal=Matilda Empress of England5 
Event-Misc1144 He besieged Stephen at Malmesbury, but Stephen refused to engage him5 
Event-Misc1147 He founded Margam Abbey5 
Event-MiscSpring 1147 He took the future Henry II and sent him to Anjou5 
Title* The Consul4 

Family

Maud FitzRobert d. 1157
Children

Last Edited24 Sep 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-26.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 124-26.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-26.
  5. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 185.
  6. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 63-26.
  7. [S376] Unknown editor, unknown short title.
  8. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 1-23.
  9. [S232] Don Charles Stone, Ancient and Medieval Descents, 11-2.
  10. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 28.
  11. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 186.
  12. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 63-26.

Maud FitzRobert1

F, #1766, d. 1157

Father*Robert FitzHamon1,2 b. c 1050, d. Mar 1107
Mother*Sybil Montgomery2,3 b. c 1058, d. 1107
Maud FitzRobert|d. 1157|p59.htm#i1766|Robert FitzHamon|b. c 1050\nd. Mar 1107|p59.htm#i1767|Sybil Montgomery|b. c 1058\nd. 1107|p117.htm#i3499|Hamon d. C. (?)|b. c 1006|p157.htm#i4709||||Roger de Montgomerie|b. b 1030\nd. 27 Jul 1094|p115.htm#i3438|Mabel Talvas|b. c 1015\nd. 2 Dec 1079|p115.htm#i3439|

Marriage*1119 Principal=Robert de Caen4,2 
Death*1157 2 
Name Variation Mabel FitzRobert5 

Family

Robert de Caen b. c 1090, d. 31 Oct 1147
Children

Last Edited27 Nov 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-26.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 63-26.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-26.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 63-26.
  6. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 185.
  7. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 186.

Robert FitzHamon1

M, #1767, b. circa 1050, d. March 1107

Father*Hamon de Crevecoeur (?)2 b. c 1006
Robert FitzHamon|b. c 1050\nd. Mar 1107|p59.htm#i1767|Hamon de Crevecoeur (?)|b. c 1006|p157.htm#i4709||||Hamo D. de Creully|d. 1047|p157.htm#i4710|Godeheut de Bellême|d. 27 Oct 1035|p158.htm#i4711|||||||

Birth*circa 1050 2 
Marriage* Principal=Sybil Montgomery3 
Death*March 1107 4,2 
DNB* Robert fitz Haimon [Robert FitzHaimon, Robert fitz Hamo] (d. 1107), magnate and soldier, was the son of Haimo, steward of William I and William II and sheriff of Kent. Robert was a grandson of Haimo Dentatus (as Denzs), lord of Torigny, Creully, and Évrecy, who was killed at the battle of Val-ès-Dunes in Normandy in 1047. Haimo the steward may well have come to England in the train of Odo, bishop of Bayeux, of whom he held the Norman honour of Évrecy. Haimo became sheriff of Kent and a minor tenant-in-chief in that county, over which Odo had been granted the rights of an earl. He had at least two sons, Robert, who was probably the eldest as he inherited the Norman estates, and Haimo, who succeeded to his father's lands and office in England.
Career in William Rufus's reign
A man named Robert FitzHaimon occurs as a witness to a charter of King William of 1074. It is not certain that this figure is identifiable with Robert fitz Haimon (d. 1107), nor has it been possible to trace an earlier reference in a Bayeux charter mentioned by G. T. Clark (‘Land of Morgan’, 2) and cited in the Dictionary of National Biography. The first clear reference to Robert fitz Haimon (d. 1107) occurs in 1088 as one of the barons loyal to William Rufus when a coalition of magnates, headed by Odo of Bayeux, sought to advance the claim of Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy, to succeed to the whole inheritance of William the Conqueror. Odo held Rochester against the king, and after the revolt Robert, with Henry de Beaumont, is mentioned as having persuaded Gundulf, bishop of Rochester, to build a stone castle (one of the earliest in England) for the king at Rochester. Robert's loyalty during the revolt was soon rewarded by the grant of the lands that had been Queen Matilda's in England, despite the fact that the king's brother, Henry, had petitioned for them. Henry might reasonably have expected to receive them, but the king had other plans. In addition Robert was granted estates in the south-west and in Buckinghamshire forfeited by Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, one of the rebels of 1088. Robert's marriage to Sibyl, a daughter of Roger de Montgomery, was a step that allied him with the lord of Shropshire and with the most powerful family in late eleventh-century England. It has also been suggested (Keats-Rohan, 27) that at about this time he recovered the lordship of Creully, which his grandfather had possibly lost in 1047.
Role in the conquest of Glamorgan
It is for his role in the conquest of Glamorgan that Robert is chiefly remembered. Soon after 1066 the Normans had moved across the Welsh border and, under William fitz Osbern, had established bridgeheads in south-east Wales. William the Conqueror travelled to Wales in 1081, and is said to have ordered the building of a castle at Cardiff in the kingdom of Morgannwg. The discovery there of coins of the Conqueror has led to debate whether an Anglo-Norman colony was established at this time, possibly even with a local mint; but the evidence is inconclusive. If a start was made on the conquest under William the Conqueror, the breakthrough nevertheless occurred during his son's reign, and was spearheaded by Robert fitz Haimon.

Information about the conquest is supplied by accounts composed by sixteenth-century antiquarians, Edward Stradling, Humphrey Llwyd, and David Powel, in which history, legend, and family pride are intermingled. Robert was said to have been invited to assist a man named Einion, possibly a son of Cedifor ap Gollwyn. The latter was in alliance with Iestyn ap Gwrgant against Rhys ap Tewdwr, a native Welsh leader in south Wales. From the standpoint of the Normans there was the prospect of gains in Wales. By endowing Robert with rich estates in Gloucestershire, including the port of Bristol, William Rufus had given his friend the resources of men and money for further conquests. According to Stradling, Robert and his forces arrived by water, presumably via the Bristol Channel. Their initial intervention was successful, and they were on the point of departure but returned, either because they were summoned by Einion, who according to Llwyd had failed to secure the hand of Iestyn's daughter in marriage, or, according to Stradling, because Robert did not receive the payment in gold he had been promised. When the Normans returned, however, they began to take lands for themselves.

The date of Robert's initial arrival in Morgannwg cannot be established precisely. William Rufus was preoccupied with suppressing the baronial revolt in 1088, and arguably would have not have had time to turn his attention to Wales at least until the following year. It may even have been the case that Robert's intervention in Glamorgan did not occur until 1093 when a more general Norman advance into Wales occurred after the death of Rhys ap Tewdwr, with advances into Brycheiniog, Ceredigion, and Dyfed.

It is likely that Robert remained only long enough to parcel out territories for his followers, to order the building of castles at key points, and to make donations from his new lands to the church. Here a mixture of piety and more mundane considerations intermingled. The church in south Wales was conservative by Norman standards, without clearly defined territorial dioceses, and as yet untouched by contemporary movements for reform. By giving Welsh monasteries to English houses, the Normans could strengthen their own authority in Wales and at the same time make pious benefactions. Robert was particularly generous to Gloucester Abbey which, under Abbot Serlo, was rapidly expanding its numbers and attracted several donations in the 1090s from members of Rufus's court. Robert gave to Gloucester the church of St Cadog, Llancarfan, and land at Penhow, probably in the closing years of the eleventh century and before he had decided to turn his attention to Tewkesbury. The broad outlines of the later lordship of Glamorgan may have begun to take shape under Robert. The original limits of his power seem to have been the region between the rivers Rhymni and Ogwr, and a start may have been made in establishing other lordships in the south, along the low-lying lands, while the Welsh retained the uplands.
Service to Rufus and Henry I
Robert was one of William Rufus's closest friends, and his frequent presence at court is attested in the witness lists of royal documents. The suggestion has even been mooted that the two were lovers (Barlow, 436), though there is no evidence of this. Robert was a member of the hunting party in the New Forest in August 1100 when Rufus was killed, and, according to one source, was warned by a monk of an ominous dream, which Robert duly reported to the king. The chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar, writing in the 1130s, added details about Robert's grief at the king's death, and noted that his new cloak was placed on the bier that conveyed Rufus's body to burial in Winchester Cathedral (L'estoire des Engleis, lines 6351–5, 6388–92).

Robert immediately entered the service of Henry I, and occurs as a witness to the charter of liberties, which the latter issued on 5 August 1100. Both he and his brother were witnesses to the letter that the new king sent to Archbishop Anselm, then in exile, to beg him to return to England. Henry I took advantage of his brother's death to seize the English throne while the eldest brother, Robert Curthose, was still absent on crusade. It soon became obvious that a rebel coalition, partly composed of those who had adhered to Curthose in 1088, was forming once again. At this critical juncture Robert fitz Haimon was mentioned as one of the few barons to remain loyal to the king, and when Curthose landed at Portsmouth in Hampshire in 1101 Robert acted as an intermediary.

Robert occurs frequently in the witness lists of documents issued in the early years of Henry's reign. In 1105 he was serving with the king's military household in Normandy, when he was surprised by Duke Robert's troops from Bayeux and had to take refuge in the tower of the church at Secqueville-en-Bessin. When the church was set on fire, Robert fitz Haimon was captured and taken as a prisoner to Bayeux. Here he was threatened by the local people because of his disloyalty to Duke Robert, and Henry, hearing of the plight of one of his key men, landed in Normandy and besieged Bayeux. Gontier d'Aulnay, governor of Bayeux, handed his captive over in the hope of winning Henry's favour, but refused to surrender the city. Henry thereupon set fire to it, and in the conflagration the cathedral was destroyed.

Robert was afterwards involved in a conspiracy whereby some citizens of Caen were prepared to hand the city over to Henry. Robert then served at the siege of Falaise where he received a wound that caused him to lose his senses, though he did not die until March 1107. According to William of Malmesbury there were those who believed that the wound was a punishment for the firing of Bayeux (Malmesbury, 2.475). It was suggested much later that such odium attached to Robert's name in consequence of the devastation of Bayeux, that it accounted in part for the resistance to the appointment as bishop of Bayeux of his son-in-law's illegitimate son. Robert may have received medical care from the renowned physician Faricius, abbot of Abingdon, for he made a gift of land to that house not long before his death. He was buried in the chapter house of Tewkesbury Abbey, and in 1241 his body was transferred to the church. Later a stone chapel, which still survives, was built over the founder's tomb.
Religious benefactions, character, and children
Other than Gloucester, Tewkesbury Abbey was the chief focus of Robert's religious benefactions. Originally Tewkesbury had been a cell of Cranborne Abbey in Dorset, but at some point Robert decided to establish an abbey there, and in 1102 the community transferred to the new church that was being built on the banks of the River Severn. The first abbot was Gerald, a chaplain of Earl Hugh of Chester. William of Malmesbury praised the new church and the charity of the monks. The abbey again received endowments from Robert's estates in Wales, including the parish church of St Mary, Cardiff, the chapel of Cardiff Castle, the church of Llantwit, and the tithes of Cardiff and his lands in Wales.

No contemporary details survive about Robert's appearance or personality, but he was clearly highly regarded by both Rufus and Henry I. He was frequently at court in both reigns, and his death was much regretted by King Henry. Robert and Sibyl had no sons, but according to the tradition preserved at Tewkesbury, four daughters. One daughter, Mabel, also called Matilda (by Orderic Vitalis) and Sibyl (wrongly, by Robert de Torigni) became sole heir, and married Robert, earl of Gloucester, the eldest illegitimate son of Henry I. Two sisters entered the religious life: Cecily became abbess of Shaftesbury, Hawise abbess of Winchester. An unnamed daughter, possibly one of these two, became a nun at Malling, for the king confirmed the land that had been granted to the nuns by her father. A fourth sister was said to have been Amice, who married a count of Brittany, but of her no trace has been found.

Judith A. Green
Sources

Le ‘Roman de Rou’ de Wace, ed. A. J. Holden, 3 vols. (Paris, 1970–73) · Reg. RAN, vols. 1–2 · William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum / The history of the English kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols., OMT (1998–9) · Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist., 4.128, 4.182, 4.220 · L'estoire des Engleis by Geffrei Gaimar, ed. A. Bell, Anglo-Norman Texts, 14–16 (1960), 210–12, ll. 6351–5, 6388–92 · D. C. Douglas, ed., The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church, Canterbury (1944), 55 · K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ‘The prosopography of post-conquest England: four case studies’, Medieval Prosopography, 14 (1993), 1–52 · Dugdale, Monasticon, vol. 2 · R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Norman conquest and the twelve knights of Glamorgan’, Conquerors and conquered in medieval Wales (1994), 19–29 · The historie of Cambria, now called Wales, ed. D. Powell, trans. H. Lhoyd [H. Llwyd] (1584) · F. Barlow, William Rufus (1983) · J. Hermant, Histoire du diocèse de Bayeux (1705) · M. E. F. A. Chigouesnel, Nouvelle histoire de Bayeux (1866) · L. Musset, ‘Actes inédites du XIe siècle, I, les plus anciennes chartes du prieuré de Saint-Gabriel (Calvados)’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 52 (1952–4), 125–9 · J. Thorpe, ed., Registrum Roffense, or, A collection of antient records, charters and instruments … illustrating the ecclesiastical history and antiquities of the diocese and cathedral church of Rochester (1769), 145–8 · A. G. Williams, ‘Norman lordship in south-east Wales during the reign of William I’, Welsh History Review / Cylchgrawn Hanes Cymru, 16 (1992–3), 445–66 · D. Crouch, ‘The slow death of kingship in Glamorgan, 1067–1158’, Morgannwg, 29 (1985), 20–41 · J. B. Smith, ‘The kingdom of Morgannwg and the Norman conquest of Glamorgan’, Glamorgan county history, ed. G. Williams, 3: The middle ages, ed. T. B. Pugh (1971), 1–43, esp. 7–24 · G. T. Clark, ‘The land of Morgan—the chief lords’, Archaeological Journal, 35 (1878), 1–13 · The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van Houts, 2, OMT (1995), 248–9 · R. A. Pezet, Les barons de Creully (1854) · G. T. Clark, ed., Cartae et alia munimenta quae ad dominium de Glamorgancia pertinent, ed. G. L. Clark, 6 vols. (1910)
Likenesses

stained-glass window, 1300–99, Tewkesbury Abbey · portrait, 1500–99 (with Sibyl), Bodl. Oxf., MS Top. Glouc. d.2, fol. 13r
Wealth at death

£300 in English estates: C. Warren Hollister, ‘Magnates and Curiales in early Norman England’, Viator, 7 (1977), 76
© Oxford University Press 2004–5
All rights reserved: see legal notice      Oxford University Press


Judith A. Green, ‘Robert fitz Haimon (d. 1107)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9596, accessed 24 Sept 2005]

Robert fitz Haimon (d. 1107): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/95965 
Occupation* Seigneur of Crelly4 
Event-Misc*circa 1105 He was made hereditary governor of Caen by King Henry I3 

Family

Sybil Montgomery b. c 1058, d. 1107
Child

Last Edited24 Sep 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 210-26.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 92.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 124-26.
  5. [S376] Unknown editor, unknown short title.

William I of Normandy "the Conqueror"1

M, #1768, b. 1027, d. 9 September 1087

 
 

Father*Robert I of Normandy2,3 b. c 1000, d. 22 Jul 1035
Mother*Arlette of Falais b. c 1003; bastard2,3
GodfatherHumphrey de Bohun4 d. bt 1080 - 1093
William I of Normandy "the Conqueror"|b. 1027\nd. 9 Sep 1087|p59.htm#i1768|Robert I of Normandy|b. c 1000\nd. 22 Jul 1035|p59.htm#i1770|Arlette of Falais|b. c 1003|p60.htm#i1771|Richard I. of Normandy "the Good"|b. c 958\nd. 28 Aug 1026|p60.htm#i1774|Judith of Brittany|b. 982\nd. 16 Jun 1017|p60.htm#i1773|Fulbert of Falais|b. c 970|p60.htm#i1772|Doda (?)||p122.htm#i3647|

Birth14 October 1024 Falaise, Normandy, France3 
Birth*1027 Falaise, Normandy, France1,5 
Birth1032 5 
Marriage*1053 Eu, France, Principal=Maud of Flanders6,3,5 
Death*9 September 1087 Priory St. Gervais, Rouen, Normandy, France1,3,5 
Burial* Abbey of St. Stephen, Caen, Normandy, France3 
Dickens* 7
DNB* William I [known as William the Conqueror] (1027/8-1087), king of England and duke of Normandy, was born at Falaise.
Family and background
William's father was Robert (II), duke of Normandy (d. 1035), called ‘the Magnificent’. The origins of his mother, who was named Herleva (fl. c.1010–c.1055), have been much debated on the basis of evidence which all dates from the twelfth century; she has been variously identified as the daughter of an undertaker or a tanner of Falaise, or as a woman of the ducal household. Although a permanent liaison unconsecrated by the church was fairly normal among the rulers of the emergent Norman duchy in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, William's birth was by standards which were becoming the norm during his own lifetime, and which have endured ever since, illegitimate; he is regularly described as bastardus in non-Norman contemporary sources. At a date for which the evidence is both late and contradictory, but which was probably shortly before the year 1030, Herleva was married to Herluin de Conteville. This marriage produced at least two sons and two daughters, the former of whom, Odo (d. 1097) and Robert (d. 1095), were subsequently to be advanced to the summit of Norman society by their brother as bishop of Bayeux and count of Mortain respectively. Probably in 1050 William married Matilda of Flanders (d. 1083), the daughter of Count Baudouin (V) of Flanders. The marriage produced four recorded sons and, in all probability, five daughters between 1051 and 1068. The males, in order of birth, were Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy from 1087 to 1106, Richard, who was killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest between 1069 and 1075, William Rufus [see William II], king of England from 1087 to 1100, and Henry I, king of England from 1100 to 1135 and duke of Normandy from 1106 to 1135. The known females, whose order of birth is unclear, were Adelida, Cecilia, Matilda, Constance, and Adela, countess of Blois (c.1067-1137).

Tutors named Ralph the Monk and William appear in charters which date from the late 1030s and early 1040s. Their presence, along with later indirect evidence, such as the poetry and histories written to celebrate the conquest of England, suggest that the young William received some sort of literary education, but specific detail is entirely lacking. The main contemporary narrative sources for William's career from the Norman side are the histories written by William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers and, from the English, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. All present problems of interpretation. Jumièges, who initially finished writing in the late 1050s, subsequently resuming work after 1066 and finishing in 1070 or 1071, wrote to glorify the history of Normandy's rulers. Poitiers, whose history was finished before 1077, wrote specifically to praise and justify William's career and the conquest of England. The chronicle, though annalistic and factual, has something of the character of a lament for the English defeat. The two most important historians of the first half of the twelfth century, Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury, also have their own angles on events; both were of Anglo-French parentage, with the former seeing the conquest as a moral problem to be analysed and the latter aiming to set events in the longer-term course of England's history.

William's father's control over his duchy was at times precarious. His problems, such as the rebellions of two close relatives, Archbishop Robert of Rouen and Bishop Hugues of Bayeux, highlight the theme of volatility within the ducal kindred, a powerful disruptive force in Norman political society. Another well-established theme in Normandy's history was regular conflict between the Norman rulers and their neighbours; William of Jumièges records that Robert fought wars against Brittany and the lords of Bellême. Robert gave notable support to the English princes Edward (the Confessor) and Alfred, the sons of King Æthelred the Unready, who had been in exile in northern France since 1016. The suggestion that Robert may have been briefly betrothed to a daughter of Cnut, king of England and Denmark (r. 1016–35), which was made by the Burgundian writer Ralph Glaber, raises the possibility that William might have been pushed to one side if his father had ever produced a son as the result of a Christian marriage. However, the young William's appearance in charters which date from his father's short reign surely indicates that he was acknowledged as a likely heir from the beginning. In January 1035 he was formally designated as Robert's heir, with the Norman magnates swearing fealty to him and the French king Henri I confirming the arrangement. Robert's death at Nicaea on the return journey from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land meant that William became duke of the Normans during his eighth year.
The establishment of ducal rule
There are signs that William's guardians tried initially to continue Duke Robert's policies on his son's behalf. In 1036 in particular, support was given to two separate invasions of England by the brothers Edward and Alfred, who both sought unsuccessfully to profit from the disorder in England which followed Cnut's death; Alfred was captured and killed, while Edward circumspectly withdrew when he appreciated that the English had by and large accepted Harold Harefoot as king. Although a chronology of William's first years is difficult to establish, it is as good as certain that those acting on his behalf were increasingly unable to maintain control within the duchy from the later 1030s onwards. At one point William's own entourage seemingly became so unsafe for the young duke that Herleva's brother deemed it necessary to conceal the boy in poor people's cottages at night for his safety. Two of William's aristocratic guardians were killed c.1040 and much of the duchy was disturbed by feuds between leading aristocratic families. Given the difficulties of these times, it is also extremely unlikely that William's power and reputation were in any way responsible for Edward the Confessor's succession to the English kingdom in 1042, as his panegyrist William of Poitiers would wish us to believe. From c.1042 onwards, when William was declared to be of age, he and those around him began steadily to reassert ducal authority. None the less in 1046–7 William's right to be duke was attacked by his cousin, Gui, count of Brionne. Gui and his associates, most of whom came from the leading aristocratic families of western Normandy, were defeated by an army led by William and the French king Henri I to the south-west of Caen at Val-ès-Dunes. Although William of Poitiers suggests that William played a leading role in the battle, the earlier—and in his case certainly more credible—account by William of Jumièges assigns a great deal of credit for the victory to Henri I.

The Truce of God was probably proclaimed throughout Normandy c.1042. According to Orderic Vitalis, after the battle of Val-ès-Dunes a siege lasting for three years was required to remove Count Gui from his castle at Brionne. So long a siege seems unlikely, because William was very active elsewhere in 1048 and was involved in campaigns outside Normandy by late 1049. Similarly improbable is William of Poitiers's assertion that William offered to pardon Count Gui, who, however, insisted on going into exile; the story is likely to be a topos of princely magnanimity, since William in later life treated all close kindred who opposed him very harshly indeed. Other rebels of 1047 were imprisoned or exiled. From the mid-1040s the lists of attestations to ducal charters begin regularly to include the names of William fitz Osbern, Roger de Montgomery, and Roger de Beaumont, men who were to be William's closest political associates in the decades ahead. His brother Odo, although in his mid- to late teens at most, was appointed to the bishopric of Bayeux in late 1049 or early 1050, a significant step in the assertion of William's authority in western Normandy.

The troubles of William's late childhood had been characterized by unauthorized aristocratic castle building and the consolidation of both the local territorial power of the greatest aristocratic families and their grip on the central and local offices of ducal government. Despite assertions in William of Poitiers that William destroyed unlicensed castles, it is clear that the young duke by and large accepted the changes in patterns of power which had taken place. He started to play an active role in the politics of northern France by the mid-1040s, and, by 1049, negotiations were under way for his marriage to Matilda, the daughter of arguably the most powerful of all the great territorial princes of northern France, Count Baudouin (V) of Flanders. The marriage, initially condemned by Pope Leo IX as within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, apparently took place in 1050. Norman bishops were present at the Council of Rheims at which the marriage was first condemned and, in 1050, the prior of Le Bec, Lanfranc, who was to be appointed to the archbishopric of Canterbury at William's behest after the conquest, visited Leo IX in Rome. This intense diplomatic effort was probably enough to allow the marriage to take place, although all the outstanding business connected with it was not cleared up until 1059.
Expanding horizons
The sequence of events during the five years after 1047 is difficult to determine precisely, with the dating of some events, notably the sieges of Alençon and Domfront, both uncertain and controversial. The nature and the chronology of William's contacts with King Edward the Confessor during 1051–2 in particular remain the subject of differing interpretations. Late in 1049 William joined the French king's campaign against Geoffroi Martel, count of Anjou, taking part in the successful siege of the castle of Mouliherne near Angers. William's participation in the campaign is likely to represent a continuation, not only of the victorious alliance of Val-ès-Dunes, but of a policy of support for the Robertian/Capetian kings of France which had been consistently followed by the rulers of Normandy since the middle of the tenth century.

William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers tell that Robert of Jumièges, the Norman archbishop of Canterbury, conveyed a promise from Edward to William that he would be king of the English after his death. Although this promise is not mentioned in the contemporary English sources, the information they provide about Archbishop Robert's itinerary suggests that William must have been informed of the promise in April 1051. The silence of the English sources makes it impossible to know precisely how far the offer of the succession contributed to the rebellion and exile of Godwine, earl of Wessex, and his family in 1051–2. It is, however, a reasonable supposition that the promise was one among a series of factors which drove Godwine to defy the king; the dispatch by Edward to William of Godwine's youngest son and his nephew as hostages suggests his antipathy to William's succession. This in turn almost certainly indicates that there was from the first a powerful opposition to William's succession among the English or Anglo-Danish aristocracy. The D text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's unique statement that William visited England during 1051 after Godwine's exile has sometimes been doubted, on the grounds of the chronicle's northern provenance and the absence of any reference to the visit in the Norman sources. Neither of these objections is convincing, especially now that the chronicle's compilation has been persuasively relocated to Worcester. Not only is the manuscript of the D text contemporary and pre-1066, the absence of any mention of the visit from the more politically sensitive C and E texts of the chronicle could be a consequence of a comprehensible desire not to embarrass the king and the kingdom's leading family. The silence of the Norman sources may well be explained either because they did not want to show William as a supplicant, or because William of Poitiers wanted to argue not only that William had been designated by Edward, but that his succession had the assent of the most powerful English magnates, something which was manifestly impossible when Godwine and his sons were in exile. William's visit, at a time when Edward must have seemed triumphant within his kingdom, must have been intended to confirm the earlier offer and to clarify the duke's prospects.

The status of any offer made to William must have been immediately thrown into doubt, however, when Godwine returned to England in 1052 with the backing of a powerful army. Poitiers's version of the events states that the promise to William received the assent of earls Godwine, Leofric, and Siward, as well as of Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, indicating that their assent must have been a part of the peace terms between Edward and Godwine. In the context of Godwine's earlier attitude and his power in 1052 this seems unlikely; Poitiers has probably compressed the real or feigned agreement which all four individuals may at some moment have given into a single collective assent, in a manner rather typical of his style. After 1052 William's prospects of succeeding peacefully to the English kingdom were remote, given the advance of Godwine's sons Harold and Tostig to the earldoms of Wessex and Northumbria respectively and the return to England in 1057 of Edward the Exile and his son, Edgar Ætheling.

Although the dating is controversial, it is likely that William also campaigned in southern Normandy in 1051–2, capturing and securing the castles of Alençon and Domfront, which their lord, Yves, bishop of the southern Norman diocese of Sées and holder of the lordship of Bellême, had apparently made available to his ally, Geoffroi Martel, count of Anjou. The political situation in the region to the south of Normandy had been drastically changed from the mid-1040s by Count Geoffroi's acquisition of lordship over the county of Maine, which placed him in a position directly to threaten Normandy if he wished to do so. After failing to take Domfront by a surprise attack, William's army settled down to a long siege. Count Geoffroi's retreat, attributed by William of Poitiers to the count's fear of Duke William, was more likely a strategic decision that it was not worth fighting a risky battle for the two castles. William then advanced rapidly on Alençon and captured it, before returning to take Domfront. William's conduct of this campaign displays the same capacity for tactical manoeuvring and for patient accumulation of advantage which was to be very often evident later. The capture of Alençon was preceded by a famous incident in which the defenders beat furs and pelts as an allusion, according to Orderic Vitalis, to the duke's maternal origins. After capturing the town, William reacted by having the culprits' hands and feet cut off. Such calculated cruelty was also to be a feature of his later career.

William's circumstances were rendered difficult by the developments which followed. By 15 August 1052 at the latest, Count Geoffroi and King Henri had formed an alliance which turned out to be directed primarily against William. William had apparently attempted unsuccessfully to forestall this development, since a charter shows that he made a visit to Henri on 15 August 1052. William's uncle, Guillaume, count of Arques, rebelled against his nephew soon after the siege of Domfront and established himself in his castle at Arques backed up by a formidable coalition of neighbouring princes from north-eastern France. The reasons for both developments are obscure. It is possible that William's English involvements alarmed his northern French contemporaries. Alternatively, Henri I may have decided that Count Geoffroi was becoming so successful that it had become folly to oppose him. Count Guillaume, who seems to have been a considerable support to his nephew during his adolescence, may well have been offended by William's advancement of his own protégés. William again moved with a rapidity which disrupted his enemies' attempts at co-ordination. Arques was speedily invested and a relieving force beaten off on 25 October 1053. After the castle's capture, King Henri retreated. A subsequent two-pronged attack aimed at Rouen and Upper Normandy was nullified when a group of Upper Norman magnates loyal to William defeated one of the two invading armies at the battle of Mortemer in February 1054. The other army, led by Henri and Count Geoffroi, left Normandy soon after.

As a consequence of these campaigns, William was able to gain some allies and some territory around Normandy's frontiers. Gui, count of Ponthieu, to the north-east of Normandy, who had been captured by William, made an agreement with him and, to the south of the duchy, the duke was able to establish a castle at Ambrières, some miles south of Domfront, which he was able to hold against Count Geoffroi's subsequent assault. Count Guillaume of Arques was permanently exiled from Normandy and his lands were redistributed to loyalists and, in 1054, William was able to secure the deposition from the archbishopric of Rouen of Count Guillaume's brother, Malger. In 1057, however, Count Geoffroi and King Henri were able to launch a second invasion of Normandy, again using the alliance with Bishop Yves to facilitate access to the duchy. William's army shadowed the invaders to the channel coast near Caen, evading battle until an opportune moment appeared, and pouncing only when his enemies were crossing the River Dives at Varaville. This victory at Varaville is a major landmark in William's fortunes since Normandy was not invaded again until near the end of his life. Bishop Yves of Sées abandoned his Angevin alliance and allowed the heiress to Bellême to be married to William's loyal follower Roger de Montgomery. William was pressing the attack into France when both Henri and Geoffroi died in 1060.

The deaths of Henri I and Geoffroi Martel created the conditions in which William was able to make territorial gains in northern France and establish a Norman predominance there which lasted for his lifetime. The new French king, a minor, came under the guardianship of William's father-in-law, the count of Flanders. The county of Anjou suffered a succession dispute and other powerful princes, such as Ralph, count of Amiens, Valois, and the Vexin, became William's allies.

In 1063 William was able to secure the succession of himself and his eldest son, Robert, to the county of Maine. The way in which William covered his acquisition in an apparatus of legitimacy in significant respects anticipates his treatment of the English kingdom. From William of Poitiers it is learned that Herbert (II), count of Maine from 1051 to 1062, had promised the succession to William. Not only are there good reasons for thinking that the promise may not have been as clear-cut as Poitiers suggests, but the prospect of a Norman succession to Maine also provoked extensive local resistance and the county's inhabitants offered it to Galtier, count of the Vexin. William campaigned by ravaging the countryside, accepting the surrender of individual castles and gradually isolating the town of Le Mans until it surrendered. Galtier was captured and died shortly afterwards; Orderic Vitalis reported rumours that William had him killed, but the evidence to support these accusations is not convincing. William proceeded to rule Maine within the social and customary framework of previous counts of Maine, to the extent, for example, of allowing his son Robert to do fealty to the count of Anjou.

William's final campaign in northern France before 1066 was a destructive advance into Brittany as far as Rennes, on which he was accompanied by Harold, earl of Wessex. Although no major acquisitions were made, the expedition undoubtedly served to overawe the count of Brittany, whose power was in any case rather insecure, and completed the establishment of a cordon sanitaire of friendly powers around Normandy's frontiers. Harold's presence enabled William to extract an oath from him to accept the duke's succession to the English kingdom. The reasons why Harold visited Normandy were the subject of disagreement among historians writing in the eleventh century. The basic version of events recorded most clearly by William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers, that Harold was sent by Edward the Confessor to renew his earlier offer of the succession, should probably be accepted; it is perhaps, however, open to doubt whether Harold expected to be asked to swear oaths on relics to that effect. The Norman sources show William treating Harold with full diplomatic courtesy, rescuing him from captivity at the hands of the count of Ponthieu and treating him as a distinguished soldier. William of Poitiers and subsequently Orderic see the oath-taking as essentially a means to allow William to succeed peacefully to the English kingdom and for Harold's political pre-eminence therein to be guaranteed. In practice, William had also established persuasive arguments for portraying Harold as a perjurer should he break his promise and take the English kingdom. Another sign that William had been preparing for an invasion of England after the Confessor's death is his early designation of his son Robert as his heir in or before 1063. Norman rulers had generally waited until the last months of their lives before clarifying the succession; like his father before him, William was preparing against a potentially fatal outcome to a hazardous project.
The 1066 campaign
William's victorious campaign in 1066 was a triumph of co-ordinated warfare, diplomacy, organization, and propaganda. His reaction to Harold's coronation, which followed a deathbed grant of the succession by Edward the Confessor, was to dispatch an embassy to Rome to secure the papacy's approval for the forthcoming invasion. The mission convinced Pope Alexander II to sanction the invasion with a papal banner. Although it has at times been suggested that no such banner was conferred, the combination of William of Poitiers's statements, later comments by Pope Gregory VII, and the whole apparatus of ritualized penance and crown-wearings which followed the conquest, which must be regarded as a logical consequence of the banner, constitutes convincing testimony. Assemblies of the great Norman magnates were also held, at one of which William of Poitiers portrays William persuading the faint-hearted that the enterprise was not too risky to be undertaken. The consecration of Duchess Matilda's abbey of La Trinité at Caen on 18 June 1066 was without doubt a ceremony intended to secure further divine approval of what lay ahead. The government of Normandy was placed in Matilda's hands, assisted by Roger de Montgomery and Roger de Beaumont, for the duration of the expedition.

William spent the summer of 1066 travelling around the duchy, meeting with his chief magnates and playing host to the many warriors from beyond the Norman frontiers who intended to take part in the forthcoming expedition. The invasion fleet had assembled in the estuary of the River Dives and in neighbouring harbours by July. Ships and men were subsequently moved to St Valéry-sur-Somme in Ponthieu, from where they crossed the channel on the night of 27–8 September, arriving at Pevensey before dawn. William of Poitiers in particular puts William's long delay down to a wait for a favourable wind. This may be correct, but it is also notable not only that the English fleet stationed in the channel was forced to disband on 8 September, but that King Harold had been forced to march north to meet the invasion by King Harald Hardrada of Norway and Harold's own brother Tostig. Waiting for a favourable wind may well have to be interpreted as waiting for the most favourable military conditions in which to cross. After the landing William moved his army from Pevensey to Hastings. His strategy was to wait on the south coast for Harold's advance. His troops deliberately ravaged the surrounding countryside to demonstrate Harold's inability to defend his people as well as to provision the army. The psychological pressure appears to have been very effective, since Harold marched his forces south very rapidly after decisively defeating Harald Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September, reaching the area of modern-day Battle on 13 October.

Once he was aware of Harold's advance, William marched his army out in good order, choosing a battle site on which the English were confined to the steep ridge on which the town of Battle now stands. Harold's attempt to surprise William by a rapid advance south seems to have backfired, since William had engineered a situation in which Harold's tired and under-manned army was trapped south of the woods of the Weald and was obliged to give battle at a time of William's choosing. The conduct and the course of the battle of Hastings remain topics of controversy among historians. It is nowadays generally accepted that the armies must have been roughly equivalent in size, with the English being possibly slightly larger; William is frequently thought to have deployed around 7000 troops, although it is quite likely that he had more. The battle lasted all day, an extraordinarily long period for the middle ages, indicating that the two armies were evenly matched. The site presented difficulties for both sides, since William's troops had to advance up a steep incline, while the manoeuvrability of the English was restricted by the surrounding woodland. William's generalship may well have been one decisive difference, since he was able to use his cavalry's mobility in one or more feigned retreats to disrupt the closely packed English infantry; another must have been the English lack of archers, a crucial weakness caused by the rapidity of Harold's advance, since his army did not possess the ability to keep their opponents at a distance or to disrupt their advance to close quarters. Harold's death late in the day, as his army disintegrated around him, proved ultimately to be decisive since it deprived the English of military leadership.

William's advance through the south-east of England and his march around London were both the tactics of a general who believed that his opponents might rally, and who did not wish to be cut off in a hostile country. By first securing important towns such as Dover, Canterbury, and Winchester, William safeguarded his rear. His opponents in London, who had proclaimed Edgar Ætheling as king, were thereby increasingly isolated within the south of the kingdom. Once William reached Wallingford the submissions began to come in and, although there was further fighting, he was able to be crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas day 1066. The ceremony, conducted according to an English ordo, emphasized William's belief that he succeeded as the Confessor's designated and rightful heir, and was held amid maximum security. The guards were so jumpy that the shouted acclamations within the abbey caused a panic and the burning of neighbouring houses, because a rebellion was feared.
Conquest and consolidation
William took further submissions in the weeks which followed his coronation, including, crucially, those of the earls of Mercia and Northumbria, Eadwine and Morcar. He also confirmed the privileges of the city of London and, according to William of Poitiers, made some laws. Before his departure for Normandy in March 1067, he seems to have done everything he could to project the image of a king who wished to rule in collaboration with his new English subjects, as well as with the support of the Normans, Bretons, Flemings, and other French who had accompanied him. It is likely that William fitz Osbern and Bishop Odo, nominated as earls at this time, and left in charge during William's absence, were given jurisdictions equivalent to the pre-1066 English earldoms of Wessex and Kent respectively. The writ confirming London's privileges, whose original survives, was written in Old English in traditional English style. Likewise a new issue of coinage was soon minted, again following pre-1066 patterns.

The six years after 1066 saw the breakdown of the Anglo-Norman regime of these first months. A combination of factors contributed to this. Not only were the incoming French greedy for lands and money, but William's wish to display himself as a king and the need to maintain security also meant that heavy taxes were levied. The expectations of the leading English were disappointed; Orderic Vitalis's description of Earl Eadwine's reasons for rebellion suggests that many must have thought their treatment by William not to be commensurate with their status. The temptation to revolt was increased by the arrival of invading armies from Scandinavia. The period between the battle of Hastings and the conclusion in 1072 of the peace of Abernethy with the king of Scots was dominated by a succession of demanding campaigns which gradually subdued England and the British Isles. The result, evidenced very clearly in Domesday Book, was the transference of lordship over almost all of England to Normans and other Frenchmen by 1086.

William spent from March to December 1067 in Normandy. He took with him several leading Englishmen, including Edgar Ætheling, Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury, and earls Eadwine and Morcar. Easter was spent at Fécamp, with many Normans and some northern French princes in attendance. The subsequent progress around Normandy included the consecration of two new abbey churches at Jumièges and St Pierre-sur-Dives. The contents of a narrative charter drawn up at Le Vaudreuil, regulating a property dispute at St James-de-Beuvron with the abbey of St Benoît-sur-Loire, do, however, indicate that even moments in this period of triumph had to be devoted to the perennial problems of defending Normandy's southern frontier. In the meantime, William's representatives in England, Bishop Odo and William fitz Osbern, had struggled to maintain control and had been able to hold down a restive population only by extensive castle building. Early in 1068 William led an army to the south-west, forcing Exeter's surrender and advancing into Cornwall. He returned to Winchester for Easter and at Whitsun Matilda, recently arrived from Normandy, was crowned queen at Westminster. Two charters which survive from this time show the king and queen surrounded by a large court attended by English and French, arguably the apogee of William's attempt to establish an Anglo-Norman state in England.

Shortly afterwards, earls Eadwine and Morcar rebelled and, at about the same time, Edgar Ætheling left court and took refuge with Malcolm Canmore, king of Scots. According to Orderic Vitalis, Eadwine rebelled because William had denied him genuine authority over his lands and because he had withheld a daughter promised to him in marriage; if correct, it indicates a telling lack of trust between William and one of his chief English subjects. Although Eadwine obtained Welsh allies and there was a rising in northern England, William was able to prevent his enemies combining by a swift march to the midlands and then to York. As in south-west England, where he had installed a Norman castellan at Exeter and a Breton earl in Cornwall, William had castles built at Warwick, Nottingham, and York and did the same on the return journey through Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge, in every case entrusting the site to a trusted follower. These fortifications were also undoubtedly intended as defences against an invasion from Scandinavia which William by then must have known was forthcoming. He and Matilda are known to have gone to Normandy for the winter of 1068–9. William returned to England in the spring in response to successful English attacks on York and Durham. He scattered his opponents, led again by Edgar Ætheling, outside York and returned south.

The years 1069 and 1070 undoubtedly represent the severest crisis of the post-conquest period. A large Danish army landed in northern England in the summer of 1069, apparently as a preliminary to a full-scale invasion by Swein Estrithson, king of Denmark. The Danes were joined by Edgar Ætheling and a large force of English rebels, and the combined army captured York on 20 September; the English were apparently ready to accept Swein as king. At approximately the same time a local rebellion overthrew Norman authority in Maine. It seems that William learned of the Danish invasion while hunting in the Forest of Dean, moving north after the fall of York. His initial strategy was one of containment, but after forcing a crossing of the River Aire near Pontefract, he advanced to York and spent Christmas there amid the ruined city; with a typical sense of royal magnificence, he sent to Winchester for his crown in order to hold a crown-wearing on the feast day. The Danish army, having refused to confront William in a pitched battle, retreated to the Humber and agreed to leave in the spring. After Christmas William took his army north into Northumbria, devastating the countryside as it went. This so-called ‘harrying of the north’ was condemned as barbaric by Orderic Vitalis and was described in lurid terms by Symeon of Durham. The objective, which was achieved, was to make the north of England temporarily uninhabitable and unable to support further rebellion. In either January or February 1070 his army crossed the Pennines in severe weather, defeated further revolts on the Welsh border, and organized the construction of castles at Chester and Stafford. He returned to Winchester for Easter to meet legates sent by the pope.

William's coronation by the cardinals at Winchester was an event without precedent in English history. It must be seen as a stage-managed ceremony by which the final seal of legitimacy was put on the conquest of England. Since 1066 William had worked closely with Pope Alexander II to give a religious aura to what had from the beginning been presented as a legal and divinely sanctioned enterprise in pursuit of William's just rights. In conformity with this pattern, for example, a papal legate with long experience of Norman affairs, Ermenfrid, bishop of Sion, confirmed a code of penance drawn up by the bishops of Normandy to be administered to all who had taken lives in the Hastings campaign and subsequently. The year 1070 may well also have been important in the foundation of Battle Abbey, the great monastery which William had founded on the field of Hastings as an act of contrition and as a memorial to the dead. Everything was done that could be done to sanitize the act of violence which the Norman conquest of England in the last resort was. There is ultimately no convincing reason to doubt the sincerity of William's efforts to placate what the eleventh-century mind saw primarily as a punishing God; they did, however, of course also serve a crucial political and propaganda purpose.

During 1070 the papal legates were involved in ecclesiastical synods which legislated for the reform of the English church. The 1070 Council of Winchester also began a process of depriving a number of English bishops of office, foremost among whom was the aged Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury. Their replacements were universally of continental origin, with the crucial see of Canterbury being given to Lanfranc, who thereafter played the central role in establishing the new Norman-French religious order in England. In 1071 William subdued the last pockets of English resistance, involving earls Eadwine and Morcar and Hereward the Wake on the Isle of Ely, and in the summer of 1072 he led an army into Scotland, supported by a fleet. King Malcolm Canmore, following a well-established tactic, retreated before the invader and then negotiated. By the resulting peace of Abernethy William became his lord, he gave hostages from his family, and he agreed to expel Edgar Ætheling from his court. Both the siege of Ely, which involved the construction of a causeway on to the isle, and the combined land-and-sea invasion of Scotland were considerable military feats. As a consequence of both, William had persuasively impressed his power on all his English and British enemies.
Rule over Normandy and England
The balance of William's priorities and the character of his rule manifestly changed from 1072. For the rest of his life he spent around four-fifths of his time in Normandy and France. This shift of interest may up to a point have been the result of personal preference. As a people, the English had after all done little to gain William's affection. According to Orderic Vitalis, he did set out to learn the English language, but abandoned the attempt. Political and military necessity must, however, have played a big part in determining William's new itinerary as the power of old rivals in northern France revived and new ones appeared. William had in fact returned to Normandy in the winter of 1070–71. His preoccupation at that point must have been the succession dispute in the county of Flanders between the widow and children of his wife's eldest brother, Count Baudouin (VI), and her next eldest, Robert the Frisian. A small army of intervention dispatched under the leadership of William fitz Osbern was, however, defeated at the battle of Kassel (20 or 22 February 1071), and fitz Osbern himself was killed. Robert the Frisian's victory meant that a very powerful, and previously friendly, northern French principality was henceforth hostile. In 1073 William organized a campaign which restored Norman authority in Maine. The expedition, which is notable for the participation of English troops, involved a typically systematic ravaging of the countryside and the eventual isolation of the town of Le Mans within the county. William appears, however, to have treated the rebels leniently in conformity with a pattern established since the county was first acquired in 1063.

Potentially very threatening was the revival of French kingship under Philippe I and of the county of Anjou under Foulques Rechin. In 1074 enemies on both sides of the channel sought to combine against William, as King Philippe offered the castle of Montreuil near Normandy's north-eastern frontier to Edgar Ætheling. Edgar's fleet was wrecked by storms in the North Sea, however, after which he bowed to the inevitable and made his peace with William and thereafter resided at his court; henceforth there was no longer a claimant of English birth to oppose William.

A combination of English and northern French enemies did, however, cause him great distress in 1075–6. The so-called ‘revolt of the three earls’ was hatched at the wedding feast of the Anglo-Breton Ralph, earl of East Anglia, and a daughter of the Norman William fitz Osbern. Ralph was joined in revolt by fitz Osbern's son, Roger, earl of Hereford, and, rather half-heartedly, by the last Englishman still holding an earldom, Waltheof of Northumbria. William, who was in Normandy, left the containment and the defeat of the revolt to deputies, returning to England only when he was informed that a Danish invasion was imminent. In fact, his generals prevented the rebel forces from uniting and the threat from Denmark evaporated. He spent Christmas at Westminster, attending the funeral of Edward the Confessor's queen, Edith. The rebels were harshly treated. Earl Roger lost his lands and was condemned to long-term imprisonment, many of the Bretons who had been involved with Earl Ralph were mutilated and exiled, and Earl Waltheof, who had thrown himself on William's mercy, was tried and then beheaded, according to English law, on 31 May 1076. Earl Ralph, however, escaped to his Breton lands and set about harassing Normandy from the castle at Dol. He received military support from Foulques Rechin, count of Anjou, and held firm when William commenced a siege in September 1076.

Some time later, probably in November, William's forces were surprised and defeated by a relieving force organized by King Philippe. This was the first serious military set-back of William's career. Orderic Vitalis, seeing God's hand at work, blamed the defeat on William's treatment of Waltheof, at whose tomb at Crowland Abbey miracles began to occur. Orderic also noted that thereafter William never drove his enemies from the field of battle and that life in general became more difficult for him. Given William's piety, the consecration of the church of his great monastic foundation of St Étienne of Caen on 13 September 1077 may well have been intended as an act of religious propitiation at a time of mounting problems.

Conflict broke out between William and his eldest son, Robert Curthose, either in late 1077 or in early 1078. Orderic Vitalis, the main source for events, describes a family quarrel at L'Aigle, after which Robert made an abortive attempt to capture the castle at Rouen before fleeing Normandy to recruit allies. The main source of friction is said to have been Robert's increasing irritation at his father's reluctance to give him real authority. The crisis may well be a consequence of disappointed expectations fomented by William's almost constant presence in Normandy after 1072. Robert had been designated as William's successor in Normandy in or shortly before 1063, and had also been declared count of Maine. Although William of Jumièges, whose history was completed by 1070–71, described Robert as being actually duke of Normandy, his real position was more ambiguous. Orderic in particular makes it clear that after 1066 responsibility for governing Normandy resided with Matilda and a group of major magnates, with charter evidence suggesting that this was still the case in 1075. After leaving Normandy, Robert sought support from the likes of King Philippe and Count Robert the Frisian. By the winter of 1078–9 he was established in the castle of Gerberoi to the south-east of the duchy. He appears to have met William's advance in open country and, in the resulting skirmish, William was wounded by his own son. The humiliated king retreated to Rouen. A settlement was finally brokered in the summer of 1080 and king and eldest son apparently reconciled.

The impact of the quarrel had kept William away from England for over three years and had given hope to old enemies such as the king of Scots, who had ravaged northern England in 1079. William's visit to England in 1080–81 was notable for great crown-wearings held at Christmas at Gloucester and at Whitsun at Winchester. It must have been during this period that William refused Pope Gregory VII's request that he become a vassal of the papacy; the letter written on William's behalf (probably by Archbishop Lanfranc) is a masterpiece of elegant simplicity: a payment of Peter's Pence would be sent to Rome because the levy had been paid by William's English predecessors, but as there was no precedent for vassalage, therefore the request was refused. In the autumn of 1080 William dispatched his son Robert to deal with the king of Scots, whom he pursued to Falkirk, where the terms of the peace of Abernethy were renewed. In 1081 William undertook an expedition into Wales, which was partly a pilgrimage to St David's, but also a military expedition to impose order after relatively stable relations among the Welsh princes had broken down after the death of King Caradog ap Gruffudd of Morgannwg at the hands of Rhys ap Tewdwr, king of Deheubarth. Later in 1081 the problems of maintaining order across his large lands took William to Maine to repulse an attack on the castle of La Flèche by Count Foulques Rechin. Christmas was spent at Le Mans before his return to Normandy. The result of these far-flung campaigns was to establish a modus vivendi with all the powers concerned which lasted until William's death.

William returned to England late in 1082 to arrest his brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux. Two twelfth-century sources, Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury, agree that Odo was involved in a scheme to purchase the papacy for himself and that he was recruiting warriors to assist him when William apprehended him in the Isle of Wight. An earlier source, the Gesta Dei per Francos of Guibert de Nogent, suggests that Odo was making preparations to succeed William after his death. Orderic, who described the scene of the arrest in a dramatic set-piece account, also has William accuse Odo of oppressing the English during the periods when he was acting as William's regent in England. The breach with Odo must have been a considerable loss to William. Although the bishop's extravagance and excessive ambition are well recorded, the combined evidence of Domesday Book, a number of chronicles, and records of land pleas shows that he had played a central role in the organization of the land settlement of conquered England and had at certain times undeniably acted as regent on his brother's behalf. William had him shut up in prison at Rouen during the rest of the king's life and allowed the estates of his bishopric to be plundered.

Further family misfortunes hit William in 1083, with the death of Queen Matilda on 2 November. This was followed, probably early in 1084, by Robert Curthose's second departure from court, again as a result of strained relations with his father. Matilda's death was an exceptionally serious blow, not only because he is said to have loved her deeply, but because she had often represented William in his absence and had played to the full the traditional role of early medieval queenship, organizing the household, distributing alms, and holding the royal kindred together. Robert's second exile, which lasted until after the king's death, was less significant than the first, since he did not attract support on anything like the same scale as before.

William's movements become very unclear in 1084 and 1085. In the former year, he certainly travelled at some point to Maine to tackle a local insurrection by Hubert, vicomte de Ste Suzanne, eventually leaving the task of reducing the rebel's castle to his military household. He may have visited England in the winter of 1083–4 when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that an exceptionally heavy geld of 6s. on the hide was levied. This was undoubtedly related to organizing England's defences against an invasion from Denmark and Flanders which was known to be in preparation. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells not only of exceptionally heavy taxation, but of troop movements on an unprecedented scale. Domesday Book demonstrates that parts of the east coast were ravaged to make a landing unattractive. The anticipated invasion did not, however, take place because the Danish king, Cnut IV, was murdered while at prayer in the church of Odense in July 1085.
The end of the reign
William spent Christmas 1085 at Gloucester. There, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells, in one of its most famous entries, he had ‘deep speech with his counsellors about the nature of the kingdom and of the kind of people with which it was peopled’ (ASC, s.a. 1085). The result was the Domesday survey. William's reasons for having the survey made and its results written down remain controversial. Its contents suggest above all an interest in resources and, therefore, in general terms in taxation; used selectively, and in specific relation to its basic units of lordship, shire, and hundred, it offered an excellent means to estimate what are traditionally called ‘feudal incidents’, as well as the general capacity of communities to pay. Although its interest in land disputes is erratic, its value as a record of tenure cannot be dismissed; in all probability it sought not to solve the massive problems consequent on the settlement of a new aristocracy in an alien land, but to set out once and for all who had gained what, with the settlement of disputes being left to the regular workings of the courts. Modern work has clarified greatly how the record was made. Above all, it has demonstrated how all the fundamental communal courts of shire and hundred and the central and local administrative capabilities of the English kingdom were focused for a short time on a single task. Crucial were the willingness of the newcomers to supply information about their lands and the capacity of local communities to supply evidence on oath. The Domesday survey also demonstrates how the newcomers had fostered the basic units of central and local government in England—often, of course, for their own selfish and exploitative purposes.

William travelled around the southern counties while the survey was in progress. The returns were brought to him before he left for Normandy in the autumn—it is, incidentally, unlikely that he saw any of the document now known as Domesday Book, since it is clear that this finished text was produced over a period which lasted into his son's reign. It is indeed possible, as has recently been suggested, that Domesday Book was entirely a product of William II's reign. The returns may well have been brought into William's presence on the occasion of the so-called ‘Salisbury oath’, taken from his tenants-in-chief and their major tenants, on 1 August 1086. A general oath of loyalty of this kind lies within a long early medieval tradition going back to the Carolingian period. Although its 1086 context remains somewhat mysterious, it, along with the Domesday survey, should probably be seen as setting a legal and tenurial seal on the Norman conquest of England. In the minds of William and his chief followers, a long and complex process of settlement and adjustment had been brought to a conclusion.

In the autumn, William left again for Normandy, taking with him, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler grimly noted, as much money as he could, obtained, as was his custom, by fair means and foul. His objective was to counter raids being launched into the Evrecin by King Philippe I from bases in the French Vexin—it is noteworthy how often after 1066 William's preoccupation on one side of the channel had encouraged his enemies on the other side to launch an attack. In this case, his response was notably aggressive. Instead of merely defending the frontier, as had been his normal policy, he claimed that overlordship over the Vexin had been granted to his father by Philippe's father in 1033. There is no trace of such a grant in sources earlier than Orderic Vitalis, even though there is undeniably a history of good relations between the Norman rulers and the counts of the Vexin during the 1020s and 1030s; the counts' known attendance at the Norman ducal court could possibly therefore be constructed in terms of lordship. It is, however, remarkable that William had not made any claim to the county in 1077 when the death of his godson Count Simon had created the circumstances which Philippe was exploiting. His actions in 1086 smack of opportunism. In July 1087 his army advanced into the Vexin and sacked the town of Mantes. But during the sack William was taken ill, either because of the heat, or because the pommel of his saddle ripped into his stomach as his horse tried to jump a ditch. The ailing king was carried back to Rouen and then moved for peace and quiet to the priory of St Gervase outside the city. Surrounded by clergy and magnates, he apparently remained lucid until the end, which came on 9 September. His corpse was transported by river and sea to Caen where he was buried in the abbey church of St Étienne which he himself had founded.

The two chief accounts of the Conqueror's deathbed pose interpretative problems. Orderic Vitalis's long account of the deathbed and the events which followed is filled out with rhetorical speeches. The whole is clearly intended as a parable on the morality or otherwise of the Norman conquest of England and on the vanity of worldly achievement. The earlier anonymous De obitu Willelmi, which may have been written in the last decade of the eleventh century, may well be a literary pastiche intended to illustrate how a great king died, rather than a record with any pretensions to historical accuracy, since it is plagiarized wholesale from two Carolingian sources, with only a small number of names and phrases changed to fit the personnel and circumstances of 1087.

Used carefully, these and other records make it clear that William sought atonement through extensive benefactions to the church and gifts to the poor. There was an amnesty for prisoners, although, according to Orderic, William tried to exclude his brother Odo from this; yielding to supplications, he eventually relented, while prophesying future trouble—here, as elsewhere, Orderic's attribution of foreknowledge to William could owe everything to the author's hindsight. The most acute problems concern the arrangements for the succession. William clearly honoured with great reluctance his promise that the absent Robert would succeed him as duke of Normandy. No source treats the English succession in an entirely clear-cut way. De obitu Willelmi records that he gave his crown and other regalia to his second surviving son, William Rufus. Orderic has him fatalistically leave the English kingdom in God's hands, while at the same time expressing the hope that William Rufus would succeed him and sending a letter to Archbishop Lanfranc ordering him to receive him. If it is accepted that the coronation was constitutive, then this can reasonably be interpreted as a bequest of the English kingdom to William Rufus. The whole issue needs to be set in the context of the permanent state of ambiguity in which William had left the English succession since 1066. There are occasional hints that Robert might have been expected to obtain both Normandy and England, such as his command of the 1080 expedition against Scotland, but no promise was ever made and Robert was too rarely resident in England for his succession to be taken for granted. From the 1070s onwards, the dissensions within the ruling family were such as in all probability to make a clear-cut solution impossible. William would also have been aware that the large cross-channel estate held by William fitz Osbern had been divided on the apparent basis that the first son received the Norman patrimony and the second the English acquisitions. Dividing England and Normandy also fitted into a long-standing Norman tradition whereby landed provision was made for the male siblings of the ducal family.
The man and his rule
A single thigh bone found when William's tomb was opened in 1961 is the basis for the suggestion that he was a tall man, about 5 feet 9 inches in height. He became extremely fat in the final years of his life. One of the few independent sections in the De obitu Willelmi makes it clear that his voice was harsh and rough. All this concurs with statements to the effect that he was physically imposing and with a great deal of anecdotal evidence which demonstrates that he was exceptionally strong; William of Malmesbury, for example, recounts that, while spurring on a horse, he could draw a bow which other men could not even bend. His one well-established pastime was hunting, which in the eleventh century was effectively a means of keeping in trim for war; the creation of large areas of royal forest in England, of which the New Forest is the best-known, was the result. He has no reputation at all for the patronage of letters, although he was not averse to having his achievements widely celebrated in verse.

Unusually for a young early medieval aristocrat, he showed little interest in sexual activity during adolescence, to the extent that William of Malmesbury reported rumours of possible impotence. His marriage to Matilda of Flanders appears to have been a loving one and the king was faithful to her in a way which was unusual in a medieval king. Interestingly, however, all three of their sons who reached adulthood turned out to be dissolute in one way or another. William Rufus was probably his favourite son. He is said by Orderic Vitalis to have treated his eldest son, Robert, contemptuously in public. Orderic also stresses William's generosity, cheerfulness, and magnificence; he was clearly a king who knew the value of display. He followed a chivalric code of behaviour, punishing, for example, those who hacked at Harold's corpse on the field of Hastings and keeping Edgar Ætheling at his court despite a multitude of offences, presumably because he was of royal blood. The faults most often remarked on were greed and cruelty. The former theme was most eloquently developed by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler who says that it was William's habit to sell land on very hard terms. The latter is suggested by Guibert de Nogent's comment that it was William's practice to incarcerate prisoners taken in war, whereas other contemporaries ransomed them. The fate of many who opposed William, from counts Gui of Brionne and Guillaume of Arques through to earls Roger of Hereford and Waltheof of Northumbria and the king's own brother Odo, is testimony to his ruthlessness. While the devastation of northern England in 1069–70 arguably replicates the behaviour of some of his English predecessors, the scale and the violence of his actions nevertheless stand out.

Throughout his life William's rule always paid respect to tradition and custom. His charters and, above all, William of Poitiers articulate the philosophy that his authority was legitimately constituted and legitimately justified. Although profoundly conservative, he possessed an energy and an instinctive political intelligence which still seem awesome across a gap of nine hundred years. He was a master at cloaking an act of violence or expediency within a framework of morality and law. In Normandy before 1066 he structured his power on the customary foundations of Norman ducal rule, while shaping a political society which carried all before it in 1066 and the years which followed. The pre-1066 Norman diplomas show a notable increase in the numbers of ducal prepositi and household officers, indicators in general terms of much more intensive administration which undoubtedly drew strength from the prevailing economic growth. The shaping of the Norman aristocracy through selective patronage and forfeiture created a formidable alliance of interest among a small group who dominated Norman and Anglo-Norman society during William's lifetime. Orderic Vitalis, describing the misfortunes of benefactors of his monastery of St Evroult, condemned William's rule in Normandy before 1066 as being at times arbitrary and partisan.

There is no doubt that some of the more authoritarian aspects of William's rule, most notably his insistence on his right selectively to install garrisons in magnates' castles, provoked resentment. The 1050s and 1060s also witnessed the evolution of the close co-operation between ducal government and the church which subsequently became so central to Norman rule in England. The clear-sighted and scholarly Lanfranc was established as William's chief adviser in ecclesiastical matters by the mid-1050s at the latest. Secular and religious authority were formidably combined in pre-1066 Normandy. As a result, a papal legate visited Normandy in 1054 to carry out a canonical deposition of William's uncle Archbishop Malger; not for the last time, the excellent relations which William had with the papacy were turned to political advantage. William and his wife's foundation of the two abbeys of St Étienne and La Trinité of Caen in the late 1050s and early 1060s as a penance for their once-forbidden marriage further enhanced their religious standing. Among the aristocracy, the king's two half-brothers, Bishop Odo and Count Robert of Mortain, and William fitz Osbern, Roger de Montgomery, Roger de Beaumont, William (I) de Warenne, Hugh, earl of Chester, and Richard fitz Gilbert stand out. William was to a degree fortunate in that a churchman of Lanfranc's stature chose to become a monk in Normandy, but the way in which he was employed to boost Normandy's, and William's, reputations in, for example, his missions to Rome of 1050, 1059, and 1066 showed exceptional judgement.

There was no attempt before 1066 to remove the Norman duchy from the orbit of the regnum Francorum nor, after 1066, to make it part of a sort of cross-channel kingdom. Both William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges stress the king's Normanness and several Norman charters triumphantly extol his military achievements as duke of Normandy. William permitted his son's designation as his successor to be confirmed by King Philippe I and, after 1066, in contrast to England, the Laudes were sung in Normandy in praise of the French king. William's post-conquest scheme of cross-channel government was essentially a geographically expanded version of his pre-1066 rule in Normandy, since he relied on his close kindred, most notably Queen Matilda, Bishop Odo, and, until 1071, William fitz Osbern, to act on his behalf. As a result the disintegration of family solidarity in the last ten years of his life caused great trouble. The marriages which he arranged on behalf of his daughters continued the policies of earlier Norman dukes by creating unions with other northern French princely families; Constance was married to Alain, count of Brittany, and Adela to Étienne-Henri, count of Blois. Palpable symbols of authority, such as charters and coins, demonstrated little in the way of integration between Normandy and England, and William's seal was a double-sided one celebrating the power of the rex of the English and the patronus of the Normans. The political and legal traditions of Maine were also respected and treated as distinct; while the restive Manceau aristocracy were quelled in a series of campaigns, their ranks were never culled like their Norman and English counterparts. Although he sought to impose his will on the Welsh and the Scots to guarantee England's security, insisting on an acknowledgement of overlordship and the payment of tribute, and encouraged Lanfranc's attempts to spread ecclesiastical reform to Ireland, he did not seek to extend his kingly authority in the British Isles beyond the lands that his English predecessors had traditionally ruled. His method of dealing with the frontiers of the English kingdom did, however, draw on Norman, rather than English, precedents, since both on the Welsh border and in northern England he supported the establishment of territorial castellanries. Herefordshire (until 1075), Shropshire, and Cheshire became earldoms, the second two certainly on the model of a Norman comté, and their lords were allowed licence to make advances into Welsh territory; this in due course resulted in the subjugation of considerable parts of Wales, but it should not be assumed that this was William's original intention.

In England the attribute of William's rule most praised by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler was his stern enforcement of the traditional kingly responsibility of justice; he was ‘stronger than any predecessor of his had been’ (ASC, s.a. 1087). His rule was structured around the belief that he was Edward the Confessor's designated heir and he claimed to govern according to the laws of King Edward. Although his visits to England after 1072 were relatively infrequent, they were characterized by a very strong sense of power and majesty. His itinerary largely replicated that of Edward the Confessor and he seems rarely to have advanced north of the old kingdom of Wessex once his authority over the kingdom had been secured. He is known to have worn his crown at his palaces at Winchester, Westminster, and Gloucester on the great religious festivals and, even if he did not always follow the sequence indicated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it is the majesty and the theatre which the chronicler's statements imply which are crucial; triumphalism and display are also very evident in his rule in Normandy after 1066. At Caen, Rouen, London, and Winchester he was a great builder, and surviving monuments such as the White Tower in the Tower of London and the western parts of the abbey church of St Étienne of Caen demonstrate the scale and originality of work undertaken on his behalf.

Until very modern times, it was generally argued that William's power in the English kingdom (and as a result the strength of the kingship that he passed on to his successors) was based on the systematic introduction of what was too facilely termed ‘feudalism’; the quotas of knight-service agreed between William and his tenants-in-chief and the bishoprics and chief monasteries of the kingdom were seen as the basis for a new kind of feudalized kingship which allowed the king to bind his chief subjects to him by oath and service and to exact so-called feudal incidents, such as reliefs, wardship, and aids. Although the introduction of service quotas and the collection of reliefs and the like were undoubtedly a feature of post-1066 kingship, the core of William's authority resided in the monarchical legacy of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors, and, in particular, in the numerous rights and revenues he had inherited from them, in the all-encompassing power of the king's peace, and in the extensive jurisdictional powers he held.

These latter enabled William to oversee and intervene in the distribution of English land to the Normans and other French; it is above all evident from Domesday Book that a set of principles derived from William's announced status as the Confessor's heir was used to try to contain the land disputes and the local violence which attended the Norman settlement. In the circumstances, it is likely that William's rule was perforce much more interventionist in the English localities than that of his predecessors had ever been, thereby accelerating the centralization of justice and the subsequent creation of the common law which occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The regime established in England by William and his companions has elements which we would now regard as colonial; all significant resources and power were in the hands of a dominant foreign élite. Care was, however, taken to regulate relations between newcomers and natives. The murdrum fine was undoubtedly developed in a way designed to protect the newcomers against guerrilla attacks. On the other hand, solicitude was shown for English women who fled to nunneries to escape either marriage or abduction by the invaders; Lanfranc, with William's concurrence, decreed that they should renounce their vows if they had no vocation. The appearance of Englishmen on juries at the time of the Domesday inquest and their continued employment as moneyers are but two examples of their integration into the new regime and of how their skills were utilized to maintain English administrative practices and legal stability.

William's personal piety was consistently praised by his contemporaries. Even that stern critic of kings, Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85), wrote that he was pre-eminent among kings and expressed admiration for his devotion to the moral and spiritual welfare of the church. In both Normandy and England he presided at and gave support to ecclesiastical synods which legislated in (it must be said) a rather cautious way for the good organization of the church and the extirpation of the perceived abuses of simony and clerical marriage; foremost among these were the series of councils held in England by Lanfranc from 1072 onwards and the 1080 Council of Lillebonne in Normandy. He was a major patron of monasteries, himself founding two great abbeys at St Étienne of Caen and Battle, and making donations to a host of other churches. His life is characterized by dramatic acts of atonement, such as the penitential foundation of the two abbeys, the holding of great consecration ceremonies at strategic moments, and acts of restitution such as his gifts to the cathedral church of Le Mans after his troops had damaged it during the siege of 1073. He was capable of extravagant religious display, prostrating himself in total humility, for example, before Archbishop Ealdred of York and the legate of Hugh, the great abbot of Cluny. After becoming king he was an ecclesiastical patron on an extensive scale, giving gifts to many churches in France and, for example, financing the construction of a tower at the great abbey of St Denis.

William's policy towards the church within his lands and towards the papacy has been somewhat distorted by the commentary on the later quarrels between Anselm and kings William II and Henry I by the monk Eadmer of Canterbury. Throughout his life William believed it to be his right to dominate and safeguard the welfare of the church within his territories, expecting the papacy to support him when required. He respected papal authority and canon law as he understood it, as long as it did not infringe his customary prerogatives; thus, for example, he accepted fully that ultimate jurisdiction over the primacy dispute between Canterbury and York lay with the papacy, just as the deposition of bishops was something which could only be done by the papacy. He worked closely with Alexander II, and his collaboration with many of the goals of the reforming papacy stood him in good stead with Gregory VII. The suggestion that he deliberately excluded papal authority from his territories and restricted contact with Rome derives principally from new circumstances and policies initiated during the pontificate of Gregory VII. Gregorian novelties, such as the demand for fealty and the request that Lanfranc visit Rome regularly, were resisted; once more, as numerous texts make clear, William's rule was being structured around the traditional rights of English kingship. Conduct of Anglo-Norman relations with the papacy became more circumspect. In due course, as Lanfranc's letters to the anti-pope Clement III make clear, once the emperor Henry IV had attacked Rome and sponsored an anti-pope, William and Lanfranc took it upon themselves to organize the church within the Anglo-Norman lands themselves while the spiritual leadership of Christianity was in doubt.
Achievement
The Conqueror's death was followed by the collapse of order in Normandy and, within months, by the outbreak of a war of succession between his sons. Both were directly related to William's excessively authoritarian rule within the duchy and his inability to resolve problems within his family. The cohesion of the ducal and royal kindred and of the Norman aristocratic class had been quite exceptional during the period of William's rule. In sociological terms, the breakdown of the last decade of his life was, however, of a kind which resembled earlier crises in Norman history. In the same way, he failed to solve the (probably insoluble) problems associated with Normandy's place within the French kingdom. Paradoxically, the conquest of England magnified many problems by extending geographically the networks of potential hostility. His basic achievement can, however, be perceived within this confusion in that he created the circumstances which made his sons wish to continue his cross-channel realm. A very capable soldier and a formidable personality, his great qualities surely lie in the will and determination which allowed him to sustain a war of conquest over six years and then to maintain overall control over the settlement of a new aristocracy and the start of the integration of native and newcomer.

David Bates
Sources

The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall, OMT (1998) · The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E. M. C. van Houts, 2 vols., OMT (1992–5) · ASC · Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist. · William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum / The history of the English kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols., OMT (1998–9) · A. Farley, ed., Domesday Book, 2 vols. (1783) · M. Fauroux, ed., Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066 (Caen, 1961) · Les actes de Guillaume le Conquérant et de la reine Mathilde pour les abbayes caennaises, ed. L. Musset (Caen, 1967) · D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, eds., Councils and synods with other documents relating to the English church, 871–1204, 2 (1981) · The letters of Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. H. Clover and M. Gibson, OMT (1979) · F. M. Stenton and others, eds., The Bayeux tapestry (1957) · D. M. Wilson, ed., The Bayeux tapestry (1985) · The Carmen de Hastingae proelio of Guy, bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. F. Barlow, OMT, [2nd edn] (1999) · F. Barlow, ed. and trans., The life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, 2nd edn, OMT (1992) · Eadmeri Historia novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, Rolls Series, 81 (1884) · John of Worcester, Chron. · D. Bates, ed., Regesta regum Anglo-Normannorum: the Acta of William I, 1066–1087 (1998) · R. Fleming, Domesday Book and the law (1998) · D. Bates, William the Conqueror (1989) · D. Bates, Normandy before 1066 (1982) · D. C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (1964) · D. Bates, ‘The Conqueror's adolescence’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 25 (2003), 1–18 · R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Poitiers and his history’, The writing of history in the middle ages, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (1981), 71–100 · R. H. C. Davis, ‘William of Jumièges, Robert Curthose and the Norman succession’, EngHR, 95 (1980), 597–606 · T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais, eds., Facsimiles of English royal writs to AD 1100, presented to Vivian Hunter Galbraith (1957) · E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The origins of Herleva, mother of William the Conqueror’, EngHR, 101 (1986), 399–404 · R. Fleming, Kings and lords in conquest England (1991) · M. de Boüard, Le château de Caen (Caen, 1979) · F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 2nd edn (1979) · C. P. Lewis, ‘The early earls of Norman England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 13 (1990), 207–23 · R. A. Brown, ‘The battle of Hastings’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 3 (1980), 1–21 · F. Barlow, William Rufus, new edn (2000) · E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Latin poetry and the Anglo-Norman court, 1066–1135: the Carmen de Hastingae proelio’, Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989), 39–62 · V. H. Galbraith, The making of Domesday Book (1961) · D. R. Roffe, Domesday: the inquest and the book (2000) · S. P. J. Harvey, ‘Recent Domesday studies’, EngHR, 95 (1980), 121–33 · H. B. Clarke, ‘The Domesday satellites’, Domesday Book: a reassessment, ed. P. Sawyer (1985), 50–70 · J. C. Holt, ‘1086’, Domesday studies: papers read at the novocentenary conference of the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of British Geographers [Winchester 1986], ed. J. C. Holt (1987), 41–64 · E. Z. Tabuteau, ‘The role of law in the succession to Normandy and England, 1087’, Haskins Society Journal, 3 (1991), 141–69 · J. O. Prestwich, ‘The military household of the Norman kings’, EngHR, 96 (1981), 1–35 · D. Bates, ‘The origins of the justiciarship’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1981), 1–12, 167–71 · J. Le Patourel, ‘The Norman succession, 996–1135’, EngHR, 86 (1971), 225–50 · J. L. Nelson, ‘The rites of the Conqueror’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1981), 117–32, 210–21 · G. Garnett, ‘“Franci et Angli”: the legal distinctions between peoples after the conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 8 (1985), 109–37 · G. Garnett, ‘Coronation and propaganda: some implications of the Norman claim to the throne of England in 1066’, TRHS, 5th ser., 36 (1986), 91–116 · J. Campbell, ‘The late Anglo-Saxon state: a maximum view’, PBA, 87 (1995), 39–65 · J. Campbell, ‘Some agents and agencies of the late Anglo-Saxon state’, Domesday studies: papers read at the novocentenary conference of the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of British Geographers [Winchester 1986], ed. J. C. Holt (1987), 201–18 · S. Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor [sic]’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 10 (1987), 185–222 · J. Gillingham, ‘The introduction of knight service into England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1981), 53–64, 181–7 · J. C. Holt, ‘The introduction of knight service into England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 6 (1983), 89–106 · M. Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec (1978) · F. Barlow, The English church, 1066–1154: a history of the Anglo-Norman church (1979) · H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the Anglo-Norman church and kingdom’, Studi Gregoriani, 9 (1972), 79–114 · H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and the penitential ordinance following the battle of Hastings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20 (1969), 225–42 · F. Barlow, ‘William I's relations with Cluny’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 32 (1981), 131–41
Likenesses

coins, BM, NPG · embroidery (Bayeux Tapestry), Bayeux, France [see illus.] · wax seal, BL
© Oxford University Press 2004–5
All rights reserved: see legal notice      Oxford University Press


David Bates, ‘William I (1027/8-1087)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29448, accessed 23 Sept 2005]

William I (1027/8-1087): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/294488 
Hume* 9
Title*between 1066 and 1087 King of England 
Battle-Hastings*14 October 1066 Hastings, Sussex, England, Principal=Harold II Godwinson, William=Count Eustace II of Boulogne, William=Robert de Burgo, William=William Percy "Als Gernons", William=Robert de Stouteville, William=Robert de Beaumont, William=William FitzOsbern, William=Walter Giffard "the Elder", William=William Malet, William=Ralph III de Tony, William=William de Warenne10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 
(Witness) Knighted1073 by William the Conqueror, Principal=Robert II de Bellême18 
HTML* 
Catholic Encyclopedia
History of the British Monarchy
William I
William the Conqueror
The Conqueror and His Companions
Famous Men of the Middle Ages
The Normans
 

Family

Maud of Flanders b. 1032, d. 3 Nov 1083
Children

Last Edited23 Sep 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-24.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-23.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S324] Les Seigneurs de Bohon, online http://www.rand.org/about/contacts/personal/Genea/…
  5. [S232] Don Charles Stone, Ancient and Medieval Descents, 11-1.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-24.
  7. [S336] Charles Dickens, A Child's History of England.
  8. [S376] Unknown editor, unknown short title.
  9. [S337] David Hume, History of England, Chapter IV.
  10. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 50-23.
  11. [S338] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 8th ed., 270-24.
  12. [S342] Sir Bernard Burke, Extinct Peerages, p. 42.
  13. [S285] Leo van de Pas, 30 Jun 2004.
  14. [S342] Sir Bernard Burke, Extinct Peerages, p. 89.
  15. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 38.
  16. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 94.
  17. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 142.
  18. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 163.
  19. [S347] Carl Boyer 3rd, Medieval English Ancestors of Certain Americans, p. 183.
  20. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 169-23.

Maud of Flanders1

F, #1769, b. 1032, d. 3 November 1083

Father*Count Baldwin V of Flanders2,3,4 b. 1013, d. 1 Sep 1067
Mother*Adèle of France2,4 b. c 1003, d. 8 Jan 1079
Maud of Flanders|b. 1032\nd. 3 Nov 1083|p59.htm#i1769|Count Baldwin V of Flanders|b. 1013\nd. 1 Sep 1067|p148.htm#i4438|Adèle of France|b. c 1003\nd. 8 Jan 1079|p148.htm#i4439|Count Baldwin I. of Flanders "the Bearded"|b. 980\nd. 30 May 1036|p148.htm#i4440|Otgiva of Luxembourgh|b. c 995\nd. 21 Feb 1030|p177.htm#i5286|Robert I. of France "the Pious"|b. 27 Mar 972\nd. 20 Jul 1031|p92.htm#i2758|Constance of Provence|b. c 986\nd. 25 Jul 1032|p92.htm#i2759|

Birth*1032 1,2 
Marriage*1053 Eu, France, Principal=William I of Normandy "the Conqueror"5,2,3 
Marriage* Principal=Gerbod of St. Omer2 
Burial* Caen, Normandy, France2 
Death*3 November 1083 Caen, Calvados, France1,2 
Name Variation Matilda of Flanders (?)2 
Crowned*1066 England5 

Family 1

Gerbod of St. Omer
Child

Family 2

William I of Normandy "the Conqueror" b. 1027, d. 9 Sep 1087
Children

Last Edited26 Nov 2004

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-24.
  2. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  3. [S232] Don Charles Stone, Ancient and Medieval Descents, 11-1.
  4. [S232] Don Charles Stone, Ancient and Medieval Descents, 31-3.
  5. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-24.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 169-23.

Robert I of Normandy1

M, #1770, b. circa 1000, d. 22 July 1035

Father*Richard II of Normandy "the Good"2,3 b. c 958, d. 28 Aug 1026
Mother*Judith of Brittany2,3 b. 982, d. 16 Jun 1017
Robert I of Normandy|b. c 1000\nd. 22 Jul 1035|p59.htm#i1770|Richard II of Normandy "the Good"|b. c 958\nd. 28 Aug 1026|p60.htm#i1774|Judith of Brittany|b. 982\nd. 16 Jun 1017|p60.htm#i1773|Richard I. of Normandy "the Fearless"|b. 933\nd. 20 Nov 996|p91.htm#i2708|Gunnora (?)|d. 1031|p147.htm#i4391|Duke Conan I. of Brittany|d. 27 Jun 992|p60.htm#i1776|Ermengarde of Anjou||p60.htm#i1775|

Marriage* Danish wife, 1st=Arlette of Falais4,3 
Birth*circa 1000 Normandy, France3 
Death*22 July 1035 Nicea, Bithynia, Asia Minor, while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem1,5 
Death28 July 1035 Nicea, Bythynia, Turkey3 
Name Variation Robert "The Magnificent" 
Name Variation Robert 'the Devil" 
Name Variation Robert II the Devil (?)3 
HTML* 
Map of Normandy
 

Family

Arlette of Falais b. c 1003
Children

Last Edited10 Jul 2005

Citations

  1. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-23.
  2. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-22.
  3. [S218] Marlyn Lewis, Ancestry of Elizabeth of York.
  4. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 121-23.
  5. [S285] Leo van de Pas, 30 Jun 2004.
  6. [S168] Frederick Lewis Weis, Ancestral Roots, 130-23.
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