Monday, September 1, 2014

3.a.1 Maud de Caen m Ranulph de Meschines their son Hugh de Kevelioc

Maud of Gloucester, Countess of Chester (died 29 July 1189), also known as Matilda, was an Anglo-Norman noblewoman and the daughter of Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of King Henry I of England and Mabel, daughter of Robert fitz Hamon.

 Her husband was Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester (died Dec. 16, 1153).[2]

Lady Maud FitzRobert was born 1120 the daughter of Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester and Mabel FitzHamon of Gloucester. She had seven siblings including William Fitz Robert, 2nd Earl of Gloucester and Roger, Bishop of Worcester.

 She also had an illegitimate half-brother, Richard, Bishop of Bayeux, whom her father sired by Isabel de Douvres.

Her paternal grandparents were King Henry I of England and his mistress, Sybil Corbet. Her maternal grandparents were Robert FitzHamon, Lord of Gloucester and Glamorgan, and Sybil de Montgomery, daughter of Roger de Montgomery, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and Mabel Talvas of Belleme.

Marriage

Sometime before 1141, possibly as early as 1135, Matilda married Ranulf de Gernon, 4th Earl of Chester, and was accorded the title of Countess of Chester. Her husband had considerable autonomy in his palatine earldom.

In January 1141, Earl Ranulf and Countess Matilda were at Lincoln Castle when it was besieged by the forces of King Stephen of England. The following month, a relief army loyal to Empress Matilda and led by her father Robert earl of Gloucester defeated and captured the king in the fierce fighting, later known as the First Battle of Lincoln.

In return for his help in repelling the king's troops, the countess's father compelled her husband to swear fealty to Empress Matilda, who was Earl Robert's half-sister.

On August 29, 1146, Earl Ranulf was seized by King Stephen at court in Northampton. Stephen later granted him the castle and city of Lincoln sometime after 1151.

Children

                           Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester
                           Maud of Chester, and 
                           Hawise of Chester, 1st Countess of Lincoln.
  • possibly Richard of Chester (died 1170/1175), buried in Coventry.
  • Beatrice of Chester, married Raoul de Malpas
  • possibly Ranulf of Chester, fought in the siege of Lisbon, granted the lordship of Azambuja by Afonso I of Portugal.
Ranulf had an illegitimate son, Robert FitzCount (died before 1166), by an unknown mistress. His date of birth was not recorded.

 Robert married Agnes fitz Neal as her second husband.

One account contains an unsubstantiated rumor that Countess Maud poisoned her husband with the assistance of William Peverel of Nottingham, but there is no evidence that she did so; Earl Ranulf confirmed her grant to one of her servants, probably on his deathbed. She served as her minor son's guardian for nine years.

She was an important patron of Repton Priory in Derbyshire.She also made grants to Belvoir Priory.

The Rotuli de Dominabus of 1185 records property Wadinton de feodo comitis Cestrie, held by Maud, Countess of Chester. Although she was said to be about 50 years of age in that document, she was probably closer to 60 in that year.


Maud died on 29 July 1189, although the Annals of Tewkesbury records her death in 1190.

Maud married Ranulph II le Meschines



Ranulf II (also known as Ranulf de Gernon) (1099–1153) was an Anglo-Norman potentate who inherited the honour of the palatine county of Chester upon the death of his father Ranulf le Meschin, 3rd Earl of Chester. He was descended from the Counts of [Bessin] in Normandy.

In 1136 David I of Scotland invaded England as far as Durham but was forced by Stephen of England to negotiate treaties that involved granting Ranulf's lands to Scotland. Ranulf allied himself to Matilda to further his cause.

He took Lincoln Castle in 1141, which was retaken by Stephen in a siege in which Ranulf was forced to flee for his life. Ranulf enlisted the help of Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester to retake the castle and succeeded when King Stephen surrendered to him at Lincoln.

While Matilda ruled England, Stephen's queen Matilda of Boulogne managed to defeat Ranulf and his allies at Winchester, which eventually resulted in Stephen being able to resume the throne.

Early life

Ranulf was born in Normandy at the Château Guernon, around 1100. He was the son of Ranulf le Meschin, 3rd Earl of Chester and Lucy of Bolingbroke, who were both significant landowners with considerable autonomy within the county palatine.

His father had begun a new lineage of the earldom of Chester. Ranulf married Maud, daughter of Robert, 1st Earl of Gloucester and inherited the earldom in 1128.

Three years later he founded an abbey in North Wales, colonised by monks from the Norman Congregation of Savigny.

Loss of northern lands to Scotland

In late January 1136, during the first months of the reign of Stephen of England, his northern neighbour David I of Scotland crossed the border into England. He took Carlisle, Wark, Alnwick, Norham and Newcastle upon Tyne and struck towards Durham.

On 5 February 1136, Stephen reached Durham with a large force of mercenaries from Flanders and forced David to negotiate a treaty by which the Scots were granted the towns of Carlisle and Doncaster, for the return of Wark, Alnwick, Norham and Newcastle.

Lost from England to Scotland along with Carlisle was much of Cumberland and the honour of Lancaster, lands that belonged to Earl Ranulf's father and had been surrendered by agreement to Henry I of England in return for the Earldom of Chester.

Ranulf claimed that his father had at that time been disinherited. When he heard of the concessions made to the Scottish King, Ranulf left Stephen's court in a rage.

In the second Treaty of Durham (1139), Stephen was even more generous to David, granting the Earldom of Northumbria (Carlisle, Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire north of the Ribble) to his son Prince Henry. Ranulf was prepared to revolt in order to win back his lordship of the north.

Ranulf takes Lincoln


By this time Matilda, named as the future Queen by her father Henry I, had gathered enough strength to contest Stephen's usurpation, supported by her husband Geoffrey of Anjou and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. Prince Henry was to attend the English court that Michaelmas and Ranulf planned to overwhelm him on his return to Scotland.

Stephen’s queen Matilda of Boulogne heard about the plot and persuaded Stephen to escort Henry back to Scotland. Ranulf then used subterfuge to seize Lincoln Castle. He and his half-brother William de Roumare sent their wives to visit the constable’s wife there and then arrived (dressed in ordinary clothes and escorted by three knights), apparently to fetch the ladies. They then seized the weapons in the castle, admitted their own men and ejected the royal garrison.

Stephen eventually made a pact with the Ranulf and his half-brother and left Lincolnshire, returning to London before Christmas 1140, after making William de Roumare Earl of Lincoln and awarding Ranulf with administrative and military powers over Lincolnshire and the town and castle of Derby

The citizens of Lincoln sent Stephen a message complaining about the treatment they were receiving from Ranulf and asking the King to capture the brothers. The King immediately marched on Lincoln. One of his key pretexts was that according to the settlement, Lincoln Castle was to revert to royal ownership and that the half-brothers had reneged on this.

He arrived on 6 January 1141 and found the place scantily garrisoned: the citizens of Lincoln admitted him into the city and he immediately laid siege to the castle, captured seventeen knights and began to batter down the garrison with his siege engines.

Ranulf managed to escape to his earldom, collect his Cheshire and Welsh retainers and appeal to his father-in-law Robert of Gloucester, whose daughter Maud was still besieged in Lincoln, possibly as a deliberate ploy to encourage her father's assistance. In return for Robert's aid, Ranulf agreed to promise fidelity to the Empress Matilda.


Lincoln castle

To Robert and the other supporters of the Empress this was good news, as Ranulf was a major magnate. Robert swiftly raised an army and set out for Lincoln, joining forces with Ranulf on the way. Stephen held a council of war at which his advisors counselled that he leave a force and depart to safety, but Stephen disregarded the odds and decided to fight, but was obliged to surrender to Robert.

Ranulf took advantage of disarray amongst the king’s followers and in the weeks after the fighting managed to take the Earl of Richmond’s northern castles and capture him when he tried to ambush Ranulf.

Richmond was put in chains and tortured until he submitted to Ranulf and did him homage.

Stephen had been effectively deposed and Matilda ruled in his place. In September 1141, Robert of Gloucester and Matilda besieged Winchester. The queen responded quickly and rushed to Winchester with her own army, commanded by the professional soldier William of Ypres.

The queen’s forces surrounded the army of the empress, commanded by Robert, who was captured as a result of deciding to fight his way out of the situation. The magnates following the empress were forced to flee or be taken captive.

Earl Ranulf managed to escape and fled back to Chester. Later that year Robert was exchanged for Stephen, who resumed the throne.

Defection to Stephen

In 1144 Stephen attacked Ranulf again by laying siege to Lincoln Castle. He made preparations for a long siege but abandoned the attempt when eighty of his men were killed whilst working on a siege tower that fell and knocked them into a trench, suffocating them all.

In 1145 (or early 1146) Ranulf switched allegiance from the Empress Matilda to Stephen. Since 1141 King David had been allied to Matilda, so Ranulf could now take up his quarrel with David of Scotland regarding his northern lands.

It is probable that Ranulf's brother-in-law Phillip, (the son of Earl Robert), acted as an intermediary as Phillip had defected to the king. Ranulf came to Stephen at Stamford, repented his previous crimes and was restored to favour. He was allowed to retain Lincoln Castle until he could recover his Norman lands.

 Ranulf demonstrated his good will by helping Stephen to capture Bedford from Miles de Beauchamp and bringing 300 knights to the siege of Wallingford.

Stephen welcomed Ranulf’s support but some of the king's supporters, (especially William de Clerfeith, Gilbert de Gant, Alan, 1st Earl of Richmond, William Peverel the Younger, William d'Aubigny, 1st Earl of Arundel and John, Count of Eu), did not.

Many of the magnates were alarmed when it was discovered that Ranulf wanted the king to take part in a campaign against the Welsh. Ranulf's opponents counselled the king that the earl might be planning treachery, since he had offered no hostages or security and could easily be ambushed in Wales.

Stephen contrived a quarrel with Ranulf at Northampton, provoked by an advisor who told the earl that the king would not assist him unless he restored all the property he had taken and rendered hostages. The earl refused these terms.

He was accused of treason and was arrested and imprisoned in chains until his friends succeeded in coming to terms with the King on 28 August 1146. It was then agreed that the earl should be released, provided he surrendered all the royal lands and castles he had seized (Lincoln included), gave hostages and took a solemn oath not to resist the king in future.

Ranulf, arrested in contravention of the oath which the king had sworn to him at Stamford, revolted as soon as he regained his liberty and "burst into a blind fury of rebellion, scarcely discriminating between friend or foe”.

 He came with his army to Lincoln to recover the city but failed to break into its north gate and his chief lieutenant was slain in the fighting. Ranulf also tried to recover the castle at Coventry, by building a counter castle.

 The King came with a relief force to Coventry and although wounded in the fighting, drove Ranulf off and seized his hostages, including his nephew Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, whom Stephen refused to release unless Gilbert surrendered his own castles. Gilbert, while agreeing to the condition, revolted as soon as he was at liberty. This action pushed the Clares into a conflict from which they had previously remained aloof.

Agreement with King David

In May 1149 the young Prince Henry met the king of Scotland and Ranulf at Carlisle, where Ranulf resolved his territorial disputes with Scotland and an agreement was reached to attack York. Stephen hurried north with a large force and his opponents dispersed before they could reach the city.

The southern portion of the honour of Lancaster, (the land between the Ribble and the Mersey), was conceded to Ranulf, who in return resigned his claim on Carlisle. Hence the Angevin cause secured the loyalty of Ranulf.

Prince Henry, whilst trying to escape south after the aborted attack on York, was forced to avoid the ambushes of Eustace, King Stephen’s son. Ranulf assisted Henry, creating a diversion by attacking Lincoln, thus drawing Stephen to Lincoln and allowing Henry to escape.

Treaty with Robert, Earl of Leicester

The Earl’s territory in Leicestershire and Warwickshire brought him face to face with Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester, whose family (including his cousin Roger de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Warwick and his brother Waleran de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Worcester) controlled a large part of the south Midlands.

The two earls concluded an elaborate treaty between 1149 and 1153. The Bishops of Chester and Leicester were both entrusted with pledges that were to be surrendered if either party infringed the agreement.

Death


In 1153 Henry granted Staffordshire to Ranulf. That year, whilst Ranulf was a guest at the house of William Peverel the Younger, his host attempted to kill him with poisoned wine.

Three of his men who had drunk the wine died, while Ranulf suffered agonizing pain. A few months later Henry became king and exiled Peverel from England as punishment.

Ranulf succumbed to the poison on 16 December 1153: his son Hugh inherited his lands as held in 1135 (when Stephen took the throne), while other honours bestowed upon Ranulf were revoked.

Ranulph II's father


Ranulf le Meschin, 3rd Earl of Chester (1070−1129) was a late 11th- and early 12th-century Norman magnate based in northern and central England. Originating in Bessin in Normandy, Ranulf made his career in England thanks to his kinship with Hugh d'Avranches - the earl of Chester, the patronage of kings William II Rufus and Henry I Beauclerc, and his marriage to Lucy, heiress of the Bolingbroke-Spalding estates in Lincolnshire.
Ranulf fought in Normandy on behalf of Henry I, and served the English king as a kind of semi-independent governor in the far north-west, in Cumberland and Westmorland, founding Wetheral Priory. After the death of his cousin Richard d'Avranches in the White Ship Disaster of November 1120, Ranulf became earl of the county of Chester on the Anglo-Welsh marches. He held this position for the remainder of his life, and passed the title on to his son.


Ranulf le Meschin's father and mother represented two different families of viscounts in Normandy, and both of them were strongly tied to Henry, son of William the Conqueror. His father was Ranulf de Briquessart, and likely for this reason the former Ranulf was styled le Meschin, "the younger".Ranulf's father was viscount of the Bessin, the area around Bayeux.

 Besides Odo, bishop of Bayeux, Ranulf the elder was the most powerful magnate in the Bessin region of Normandy. Ranulf le Meschin's great-grandmother may even have been from the ducal family of Normandy, as le Meschin's paternal great-grandfather viscount Anschitil is known to have married a daughter of Duke Richard III.

Ranulf le Meschin's mother, Margaret,(Maud) was the daughter of Richard Goz. Richard's father Thurstan Goz had become viscount of the Hiémois between 1017 and 1025, while Richard himself became viscount of the Avranchin in either 1055 or 1056.

 Her brother (Richard Goz's son) was Hugh d'Avranches "Lupus" ("the Wolf"), viscount of the Avranchin and Earl of Chester (from c. 1070). Ranulf was thus, in addition to being heir to the Bessin, the nephew of one of Norman England's most powerful and prestigious families.


We know from an entry in the Durham Liber Vitae, c. 1098 x 1120, that Ranulf le Meschin had an older brother named Richard (who died in youth), and a younger brother named William.

 He had a sister called Agnes, who later married Robert de Grandmesnil (died 1136).

Historian C. Warren Hollister thought that Ranulf's father Ranulf de Briquessart was one of the early close companions of Prince Henry, the future Henry I.Hollister called Ranulf the Elder "a friend from Henry's youthful days in western Normandy", and argued that the homeland of the two Ranulfs had been under Henry's overlordship since 1088, despite both ducal and royal authority lying with Henry's two brothers.

Hollister further suggested that Ranulf le Meschin may have had a role in persuading Robert Curthose to free Henry from captivity in 1089.

The date of Ranulf senior's death, and succession of Ranulf junior, is unclear, but the former's last and the latter's earliest appearance in extant historical records coincides, dating to 24 April 1089 in charter of Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, to Bayeux Cathedral.

 Ranulf le Meschin appears as "Ranulf son of Ranulf the viscount"

In the foundation charter of Chester Abbey granted by his uncle Hugh Lupus, earl of Chester, and purportedly issued in 1093, Ranulf le Meschin is listed as a witness. His attestation to this grant is written Signum Ranulfi nepotis comitis, "signature of Ranulf nephew of the earl".

However, the editor of the Chester comital charters, Geoffrey Barraclough, thought this charter was forged in the period of Earl Ranulf II.

Between 1098 and 1101 (probably in 1098) Ranulf became a major English landowner in his own right when he became the third husband of Lucy, heiress of the honour of Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire. This acquisition also brought him the lordship of Appleby in Westmorland, previously held by Lucy's second husband Ivo Taillebois.

Marriage to a great heiress came only with royal patronage, which in turn meant that Ranulf had to be respected and trusted by the king. Ranulf was probably, like his father, among the earliest and most loyal of Henry's followers, and was noted as such by Orderic Vitalis.

 Ranulf was however not recorded often at the court of Henry I, and did not form part of the king's closest group of administrative advisers. He witnessed charters only occasionally, though this became more frequent after he became earl.

 In 1106 he is found serving as a one of several justiciars at York hearing a case about the lordship of Ripon. In 1116 he is recorded in a similar context.

Ranulf was, however, one of the king's military companions. When, soon after Whitsun 1101 Henry heard news of a planned invasion of England by his brother Robert Curthose, he sought promises from his subjects to defended the kingdom.

 A letter to the men of Lincolnshire names Ranulf as one of four figures entrusted with collecting these oaths. Ranulf was one of the magnates who accompanied King Henry on his invasion of Duke Robert's Norman territory in 1106.

Ranulf served under Henry as an officer of the royal household when the latter was on campaign; Ranulf was in fact one of his three commanders at the Battle of Tinchebrai.

The first line of Henry's force was led by Ranulf, the second (with the king) by Robert of Meulan, and third by William de Warrene, with another thousand knights from Brittany and Maine led by Helias, Count of Maine. Ranulf's line consisted of the men of Bayeux, Avranches and Coutances.

Must have been a great battle, with our great grandfathers all involved!

Lord of Cumberland


The gatehouse of Wetheral Priory, founded by Ranulf c. 1106

A charter issued in 1124 by David I, King of the Scots, to Robert I de Brus cited Ranulf's lordship of Carlisle and Cumberland as a model for Robert's new lordship in Annandale.


Ivo Taillebois, when he married Ranulf's future wife Lucy, had acquired her Lincolnshire lands but sometime after 1086 he acquired estates in Kendal and elsewhere in Westmorland. Adjacent lands in Westmorland and Lancashire that had previously been controlled by Earl Tostig Godwinson were probably carved up between Roger the Poitevin and Ivo in the 1080s, a territorial division at least partially responsible for the later boundary between the two counties.

 Norman lordship in the heartland of Cumberland can be dated from chronicle sources to around 1092, the year King William Rufus seized the region from its previous ruler, Dolfin. There is inconclusive evidence that settlers from Ivo's Lincolnshire lands had come into Cumberland as a result.

Between 1094 and 1098 Lucy was married to Roger fitz Gerold de Roumare, and it is probable that this marriage was the king's way of transferring authority in the region to Roger fitz Gerold. Only from 1106 however, well into the reign of Henry I, do we have certain evidence that this authority had come to Ranulf.

The "traditional view", held by the historian William Kapelle, was that Ranulf's authority in the region did not come about until 1106 or after, as a reward for participation in the Battle of Tinchebrai.

 Another historian, Richard Sharpe, has recently attacked this view and argued that it probably came in or soon after 1098. Sharpe stressed that Lucy was the mechanism by which this authority changed hands, and pointed out that Ranulf had been married to Lucy years before Tinchebrai and can be found months before Tinchebrai taking evidence from county jurors at York (which may have been responsible for Cumbria at this point).

Ranulf likewise distributed land to the church, founding a Benedictine monastic house at Wetheral. This he established as a daughter-house of St Mary's Abbey, York, a house that in turn had been generously endowed by Ivo Taillebois.

This had occurred by 1112, the year of the death of Abbot Stephen of St Mary's, named in the foundation deed. In later times at least, the priory of Wetheral was dedicated to St Mary and the Holy Trinity, as well as another saint named Constantine.

Ranulf gave Wetheral, among other things, his two churches at Appleby, St Lawrences (Burgate) and St Michaels (Bongate).

As an incoming regional magnate Ranulf would be expected to distribute land to his own followers, and indeed the record of the jurors of Cumberland dating to 1212 claimed that Ranulf created two baronies in the region.

Ranulf's brother-in-law Robert de Trevers received the barony of Burgh-by-Sands, while the barony of Liddel went to Turgis Brandos.He appears to have attempted to give the large compact barony of Gilsland to his brother William, but failed to dislogdge the native lord, the eponymous "Gille" son of Boite; later the lordship of Allerdale (including Copeland), even larger than Gilsland stretching along the coast from the river Ellen to the river Esk, was given to William.

Kirklinton may have been given to Richard de Boivill, Ranulf's sheriff.

Earl of Chester


Chester Cathedral today, originally Chester Abbey, where Ranulf's body was buried


1120 was a fateful year for both Henry I and Ranulf.

Richard, earl of Chester, like Henry's son and heir William Adeling, died in the White Ship Disaster near Barfleur on 25 November Only four days before the disaster, Ranulf and his cousin Richard had witnessed a charter together at Cerisy.

Henry probably could not wait long to replace Richard, as the Welsh were resurgent under the charismatic leadership of Gruffudd ap Cynan. According to the Historia Regum, Richard's death prompted the Welsh to raid Cheshire, looting, killing, and burning two castles.

Perhaps because of his recognised military ability and social strength, because he was loyal and because he was the closest male relation to Earl Richard, Henry recognized Ranulf as Richard's successor to the county of Chester.

In 1123, Henry sent Ranulf to Normandy with a large number of knights and with his bastard son, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to strengthen the garrisons there.

 Ranulf commanded the king's garrison at Évreux and governed the county of Évreux during the 1123-1124 war with William Clito, Robert Curthose's son and heir. In March 1124 Ranulf assisted in the capture of Waleran, Count of Meulan.

Scouts informed Ranulf that Waleran's forces were planning an expedition to Vatteville, and Ranulf planned an to intercept them, a plan carried out by Henry de Pommeroy, Odo Borleng and William de Pont-Authou, with 300 knights.A battle followed, perhaps at Rougemontier (or Bourgthéroulde), in which Waleran was captured.

Although Ranulf bore the title "earl of Chester", the honour (i.e., group of estates) which formed the holdings of the earl of Chester were scattered throughout England, and during the rule of his predecessors included the cantref of Tegeingl in Perfeddwlad in north-western Wales.

 Around 1100, only a quarter of the value of the honour actually lay in Cheshire, which was one of England's poorest and least developed counties. The estates elsewhere were probably given to the earls in compensation for Cheshire's poverty, in order to strengthen its vulnerable position on the Anglo-Welsh border.

The possibility of conquest and booty in Wales should have supplemented the lordship's wealth and attractiveness, but for much of Henry's reign the English king tried to keep the neighboring Welsh princes under his peace.

Ranulf's accession may have involved him giving up many of his other lands, including much of his wife's Lincolnshire lands as well as his lands in Cumbria, though direct evidence for this beyond convenient timing is lacking. That Cumberland was given up at this point is likely, as King Henry visited Carlisle in December 1122, where, according to the Historia Regum, he ordered the strengthening of the castle.
Carlisle Castle


Hollister believed that Ranulf offered the Bolingbroke lands to Henry in exchange for Henry's bestowal of the earldom. The historian A. T. Thacker believed that Henry I forced Ranulf to give up most of the Bolingbroke lands through fear that Ranulf would become too powerful, dominating both Cheshire and the richer county of Lincoln.

Sharpe, however, suggested that Ranulf may have had to sell a great deal of land in order to pay the king for the county of Chester, though it could not have covered the whole fee, as Ranulf's son Ranulf de Gernon, when he succeeded his father to Chester in 1129, owed the king £1000 "from his father's debt for the land of Earl Hugh".

 Hollister thought this debt was merely the normal feudal relief expected to be paid on a large honour, and suggested that Ranulf's partial non-payment, or Henry's forgiveness for non-payment, was a form of royal patronage.

Ranulf died in January 1129, and was buried in Chester Abbey. He was survived by his wife and countess, Lucy, and succeeded by his son Ranulf de Gernon.A daughter, Alicia, married Richard de Clare, a lord in the Anglo-Welsh marches.

 One of his offspring, his fifth son, participated in the Siege of Lisbon, and for this aid was granted the Lordship of Azambuja by King Afonso I of Portugal.

Ranulf's mother and her husbands


Lucy of Bolingbroke ( 1074 - 1144) was an Anglo-Norman heiress in central England and, later in life, countess of Chester. Probably related to the old English earls of Mercia, she came to possess extensive lands in Lincolnshire which she passed on to her husbands and sons. She was a notable religious patron, founding or co-founding two small religious houses and endowing several with lands and churches.

The heiress Lucy was married to three different husbands, all of whom died in her lifetime. The first of these was to Ivo Taillebois, a marriage which took place "around 1083". Ivo took over her lands as husband, and seems in addition to have been granted estates and extensive authority in Westmorland and Cumberland. Ivo died in 1094.

Ivo Taillebois was a Norman most probably from Taillebois, a small hamlet in Saint-Gervais de Briouze, Calvados. He sold land at Villers to the Abbey of Saint-Étienne, Caen and donated a church of Christot in Calvados.

 The latter diploma was attested by his brother Robert. Another brother, Ralph Taillebois, was High Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Ivo succeeded him as sheriff after Ralph's death shortly before 1086.

In 1071 King William, with Taillebois leading his army, besieged the Isle of Ely where the rebel leader Hereward the Wake was based. Hereward escaped capture during the siege but was caught and imprisoned; Taillebois dissuaded William from freeing him.

His power base appears to have been in Lincolnshire, where he probably became High Sheriff of Lincolnshire before 1068.He married Lucy, daughter of Turold, the Sheriff of Lincolnshire before the conquest,later Countess of Chester, in whose name he held the extensive honor of Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire.

In the Domesday Book he appears as a tenant-in-chief also holding Bourne and many of its manors. William Rufus further endowed him with the lands of Ribblesdale and Lonsdale in Cumbria on the border with Scotland, possibly for his service as a royal steward.

He was also granted the Barony of Kendal by William Rufus, consisting of a sizable portion of Westmorland.
Ivo attested several charters for William the Conqueror before 1086, including the abbey of St. Armand and the abbey of St. Peter, Ghent, and several for William II Rufus including the abbey of St. Florent, Saumur and the abbey of St. Mary, La Sauve Majeure.

He had at least two daughters: By his first wife, whose name is not known,[9] he had:

  • Beatrix de Taillebois-Hephall ( b. unknown-d. ca. 1120), who married Ribald, brother of count Alan Rufus.[1]
With his second wife Lucy, they had:
  • a daughter who married Eldred of Lancaster.

Lucy's second marriage was to one Roger de Roumare or Roger fitz Gerold, with whom she had one son, William de Roumare (future Earl of Lincoln), who inherited some of her land.

The latter was the ancestor of the de Roumare family of Westmorland.
 Roger died in either 1097 or 1098.

Sometime after this, though before 1101, she was married to Ranulf le Meschin, her last and longest marriage.

 A son Ranulf de Gernon, succeeded his father to the earldom of Chester (which Ranulf acquired in 1121) and a daughter, Alice, married Richard de Clare.

Upon her death, most of the Lincolnshire lands she inherited passed to her older son William de Roumare, while the rest passed to Ranulf II of Chester (forty versus twenty knights' fees).[14] The 1130 pipe roll informs us that Lucy had paid King Henry I 500 marks after her last husband's death for the right not to have to remarry. She died around 1138

Another set of interesting great grandparents, and marriages all to strengthen their landholdings, but all still associated with the Royal Courts.
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Richard I (8 SeptembeKing of England from 6 July 1189 until his death. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy (as Richard IV), Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Count of Nantes, and Overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period.

He was the third of five sons of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was known as Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior.










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