Roger II le Bigod

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Framlingham, Suffolk, England
• Alternate birth: Abt 1150

Notes:

Earl of Norfolk. Hereditary Steward of the Household; Privy Councillor; Keeper of Hertford Castle 1191; Judge in the King's Court 1195, 1196, 1199, 1202; Chief Judge in the King's Court 1197; Warden of Romford Forest 1200.

Magna Carta surety.

Edward Maunde Thompson, in the Dictionary of National Biography (1886):

BIGOD, ROGER (d. 1221), second Earl of Norfolk, was son of Hugh, first earl [q. v.] On the death of his father in 1176, he and his stepmother, Gundreda, appealed to the king on a dispute touching the inheritance, the countess pressing the claims of her own son. Henry thereupon seized the treasures of Earl Hugh into his own hands, and it seems that during the remainder of this reign Roger had small power, even if his succession was allowed. His position, however, was not entirely overlooked. He appears as a witness to Henry's award between the kings of Navarre and Castile on 16 March 1177, and in 1186 he did his feudal service as steward in the court held at Guildford.

On Richard's succession to the throne, 3 Sept. 1189, Bigod was taken into favour. By charter of 27 Nov. the new king confirmed him in all his honours, in the earldom of Norfolk, and in the stewardship of the royal household, as freely as Roger, his grandfather, and Hugh, his father, had held it. He was next appointed one of the ambassadors to Philip of France to arrange for the crusade, and during Richard's absence from England on that expedition he supported the king's authority against the designs of Prince John. On the pacification of the quarrel between the prince and the chancellor, William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, on 28 July 1191, Bigod was put into possession of the castle of Hereford, one of the strongholds surrendered by John, and was one of the chancellor's sureties in the agreement. In April 1193 he was summoned with certain other barons and prelates to attend the chancellor into Germany, where negotiations were being carried on to effect Richard's release from captivity; and in 1194, after the surrender of Nottingham to the king, he was present in that city at the great council held on 30 March. At Richard's re-coronation, 17 April, he assisted in bearing the canopy. In July or August of the same year he appears as one of the commissioners sent to York to settle a quarrel between the archbishop and the canons.

After Richard's return home, Bigod's name is found on the records as a justiciar, fines being levied before him in the fifth year of that king's reign, and from the seventh onwards. He also appears as a justice itinerant in Norfolk. After Richard's death, Bigod succeeded in gaining John's favour, and in the first years of his reign continued to act as a judge. In October 1200 he was one of the envoys sent to summon William of Scotland to do homage at Lincoln, and was a witness at the ceremony on 22 Nov. following; but at a later period he appears to have fallen into disgrace, and was imprisoned in 1213. In the course of the same year, however, he was released and apparently restored to favour, as he accompanied the king to Poitou in February 1214, and about the same time compounded by a fine of 2,000 marks for the service of 120 knights and all arrears off scutages. Next year he joined the confederate barons in the movement which resulted in the grant of Magna Charta on 15 June 1215, and was one of the twenty-five executors, or trustees, of its provisions. He was consequently included in the sentence of excommunication which Innocent III soon afterwards declared against the king's opponents, and his lands were cruelly harried by John's troops in their incursions into the eastern counties.

After the accession of Henry III, Bigod returned to his allegiance, and his hereditary right to the stewardship of the royal household was finally recognised at the council of Oxford on 1 May 1221. But before the following August he died. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Hugh, as third earl, who, however, survived him only four years.

Roger married Ida de Tony about 25 Dec 1181. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Margaret le Bigod
2. Hugh II le Bigod died between 11 Feb 1225 and 18 Feb 1225.
3. Mary le Bigod

Notes:

Earl of Norfolk. Died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Edward Maunde Thompson, in the Dictionary of National Biography (1886):

At the time of his father's death, whom he survived some seventy years, Hugh must have been quite a young child. Little is heard of him at first, no doubt on account of his youth, but he appears as king's dapifer in 1123, and before that date he was constable of Norwich Castle and governor of the city down to 1122, when it obtained a charter from the crown. Passing the best years of his manhood in the distractions of the civil wars of Stephen and Matilda, when men's oaths of fealty sat lightly on their consciences, he appears to have surpassed his fellows in acts of desertion and treachery, and to have been never more in his element than when in rebellion. His first prominent action in history was on the death of Henry I in 1135, when he is said to have hastened to England, and to have sworn to Archbishop William Corbois that the dying king, on some quarrel with his daughter Matilda, had disinherited her, and named Stephen of Blois his successor. Stephen's prompt arrival in England settled the matter, and the wavering prelate placed the crown on his head. Hugh's reward was the earldom of Norfolk. The new king's energy at first kept his followers together, but before Whitsuntide in the next year Stephen was stricken with sickness, a lethargy fastened on him, and the report of his death was quickly spread abroad. A rising of turbulent barons necessarily followed, and Bigod was the first to take up arms. He seized and held Norwich; but Stephen, quickly recovering, laid siege to the city, and Hugh was compelled to surrender. Acting with unusual clemency, Stephen spared the traitor, who for a short time remained faithful. But in 1140 he is said to have declared for the empress, and to have stood a siege in his castle of Bungay; yet in the next year he is in the ranks of Stephen's army which fought the disastrous battle of Lincoln. In the few years which followed, while the war dragged on, and Stephen's time was fully occupied in subduing the so-called adherents of the empress, who were really fighting for their own hand, the Earl of Norfolk probably remained within his own domains, consolidating his power, and fortifying his castles, although in 1143-4 he is reported to have been concerned in the rising of Geoffrey de Mandeville. The quarrel between the king and Archbishop Theobald in 1148 gave the next occasion for Hugh to come forward; he this time sided with the archbishop, and received him in his castle of Framlingham, but joined with others in effecting a reconciliation. Five years later, in 1153, when Henry of Anjou landed to assert his claim to the throne, Bigod threw in his lot with the rising power, and held out in Ipswich against Stephen's forces, while Henry, on the other side, laid siege to Stamford. Both places fell, but in the critical state of his fortunes Stephen was in no position to punish the rebel. Negotiations were also going on between the two parties, and Hugh again escaped.

On Henry's accession in December 1154, Bigod at once received a confirmation of his earldom and stewardship by charter issued apparently in January of the next year. The first years of the new reign were spent in restoring order to the shattered kingdom, and in breaking the power of the independent barons. It was scarcely to be expected that Hugh should rest quiet. He showed signs of resistance, but was at once put down. In 1157 Henry marched into the eastern counties and received the earl's submission. After this Hugh appears but little in the chronicles for some time; only in 1169 he is named among those who had been excommunicated by Becket. This, however, was in consequence of his retention of lands belonging to the monastery of Pentney in Norfolk. In 1173 the revolt of the young crowned prince Henry against his father, and the league of the English barons with the kings of France and Scotland in his favour, gave the Earl of Norfolk another opportunity for rebellion. He at once became a moving spirit in the cause, eager to revive the feudal power which Henry had curtailed. The honour of Eye and the custody of Norwich Castle were promised by the young prince as his reward. But the king's energy and good fortune were equal to the occasion. While he held in check his rebel vassals in France, the loyal barons in England defeated his enemies here. Robert de Beaumont, earl of Leicester (d. 1190), landing at Walton, in Suffolk, on 29 Sept. 1173, had marched to Framlingham and joined forces with Hugh. Together they besieged and took, 13 Oct., the castle of Hagenet in Suffolk, held by Randal de Broc for the crown. But Leicester, setting out from Framlingham, was defeated and taken prisoner at Fornham St. Geneviève, near Bury, by the justiciar, Richard de Lucy, and other barons, who then turned their arms against Earl Hugh. Not strong enough to fight, he opened negotiations with his assailants, and, it is said, bought them off, at the same time securing for the Flemings in his service a safe passage home. In the next year, however, he was again in the field, with the aid of the troops of Philip of Flanders, and laid siege to Norwich, which he took by assault and burned. But Henry returned to England in the summer, and straightway marched into the eastern counties; and when Hugh heard that the king had already destroyed his castle of Walton, and was approaching Framlingham, he hastened to make his submission at Laleham on 25 July, surrendering his castles, which were afterwards dismantled, and paying a fine. After these events Hugh Bigod ceases to appear in history. His death is briefly recorded under the year 1177, and is generally mentioned as occurring in the Holy Land, whither he had accompanied Philip of Flanders on a pilgrimage. It is to be observed, however, that on 1 March of that year his son Roger appealed to the king on a dispute with his stepmother, Hugh being then dead, and that the date of his death is fixed 'ante caput jejunii,' i.e. before 9 March. If then, he died in Palestine, his death must have taken place in the preceding year, 1176, to allow time for the arrival of the news in England. Henry took advantage of Roger's appeal to seize upon the late earl's treasure. Besides the vast estates which he inherited, Hugh Bigod was in receipt of the third penny levied in the county of Norfolk.

[PNH: To that last point, note that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that "Hugh Bigod retained his earldom and Bungay Castle, as well as the four royal manors first granted to him in 1153, but he may have lost the right to collect the earl's third penny."]

Hugh married Juliana de Vere. Juliana (daughter of Aubrey de Vere and Alice de Clare) died after 1185. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1199

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1050
• Alternate death: 10 Sep 1107, Earsham, Norfolk, England
• Alternate death: 15 Sep 1107, Earsham, Norfolk, England
• Alternate death: Bef Aug 1221

Notes:

Earl of Norfolk.

"Roger Bigod was one of the tight-knit group of second-rank Norman nobles who did well out of the conquest of England. Prominent in the Calvados region before 1064 as an under-tenant of Odo of Bayeux, he rose in ducal and royal service to become, by 1086, one of the leading barons in East Anglia, holding wide estates to which he added Belvoir by marriage and Framlingham by grant of Henry I. His territorial fortune was based on his service in the royal household, where he was a close adviser and agent for the first three Norman kings, and the propitious circumstances of post-Conquest politics. Much of his honour in East Anglia was carved out of lands previously belonging to the dispossessed Archbishop Stigand, his brother Aethelmar of Elham, and the disgraced Earl Ralph of Norfolk and Suffolk. Under Rufus -- if not before -- Roger was one of the king's stewards. Usually in attendance on the king, he regularly witnessed writs but was also sent out to the provinces as a justice or commissioner. Apart from a flirtation with the cause of Robert Curthose in 1088, he remained conspicuously loyal to Rufus and Henry I, for whom he continued to act as steward and to witness charters. The adherence of such men was vital to the Norman kings. Through them central business could be conducted and localities controlled. Small wonder they were well rewarded. Roger established a dynasty which dominated East Anglia from the 1140s, as earls of Norfolk, until 1306. Roger's byname and the subsequent family name was derived from a word (bigot) meaning double-headed instrument such as a pickaxe: a tribute, perhaps to Roger's effectiveness as a royal servant; certainly an apt image of one who worked hard both for his masters and for himself." [Christopher Tyerman, Who's Who in Early Medieval England, 1996]

Roger married Adeliza de Tosny. Adeliza (daughter of Robert de Tosny and Adelaise) died after 1136. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aft 1130

Notes:

"Keats-Rohan [...] suggests that Roger had only one wife. She also refers to a charter of of the time of Henry I (therefore 1100 or later) of Roger and Adelisa for Rochester Priory, attested by their children William, Humphrey, Gunnor and Matilda; on the hypothesis of the Complete Peerage, this would imply that the first wife survived at least until 1100, despite the suggested birth date of around 1095 for Hugh, seen as a son of the second marriage." [Chris Phillips, Some Corrections and Additions to The Complete Peerage]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Great Addington, Northampton, England

Notes:

"Slain in a riot in London." [Complete Peerage]

Also known as Alberic; Albericus de Ver.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

"Vere, Aubrey (II) de (d. 1141), administrator, was the son and successor of Aubrey (I) de Vere and Beatrice, his wife. While the family was from Ver, south of Coutances in Normandy, there is no evidence that Aubrey senior or his descendants held lands either there or in Brittany, with which they retained ties. The elder Aubrey was most probably the younger son of a Norman lord who prospered in England after the conquest, becoming a royal chamberlain. Probably born in the early 1080s, Aubrey junior married Alice (d. 1163?), daughter of Gilbert de Clare, before 1107. He was to become one of the most prominent royal administrators of the later years of the reign of Henry I and the early years of Stephen. It is likely that Aubrey (II) began his administrative career as royal chamberlain, possibly inheriting that office from his father when the latter died c.1112. By 1121 he was sheriff of Essex, and, later in that decade, of London and Middlesex. The extent of the king's confidence in de Vere is evident in his appointment as joint sheriff, with Richard Basset, to the custody of eleven counties in 1129-30. This unprecedented situation was probably part of an effort to collect arrears and to adjust the shrieval farms. While the king had levied one fine of 550 marks and four war-horses against him for having allowed a prisoner to escape, and another of at least 100 marks for permission to resign the shrievalty of Essex and Hertfordshire, these fines had gone largely uncollected -- another sign of royal favour. In 1133 Henry I bestowed the hereditary office of master chamberlain of England on de Vere; the office was to remain in the de Vere family until 1703. Although his royal service was primarily confined to England, he was at least twice with Henry I in Normandy.

"When Aubrey de Vere's son William de Vere asserted that his father was 'justiciar of all England', and privy to important royal secrets, he seems to have meant that his father had travelled extensively as a justice, rather than that he had been chief justiciar of the realm. William of Malmesbury describes him as causidicus -- a pleader or advocate -- and skilled in the law. De Vere may have served as an itinerant justice under Henry I; he certainly did so in Stephen's reign. He had accepted Stephen's rule by Easter 1136, and when the king was summoned before an ecclesiastical council after his arrest of Roger of Salisbury and other bishops in 1139, he sent de Vere as his advocate. Aubrey de Vere was killed in a London riot on 15 May 1141, perhaps while supporting his son-in-law Geoffrey de Mandeville, first earl of Essex (d. 1144). [...]

"His family was to prove one of the longest lasting in the history of the English aristocracy. His eldest son was made earl of Oxford in the year of Aubrey (II)'s death, and although its descent was several times transmitted through collaterals, and twice interrupted by forfeitures, the title nevertheless passed to no fewer than nineteen successive descendants, until the twentieth earl, also Aubrey de Vere, died without a male heir in 1703."

Aubrey married Alice de Clare before 1106. Alice (daughter of Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare and Alice de Clermont) died in 1163 in St. Osyth Priory, Essex, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"Adeliza the wife of Aubrey de Vere is attested by a fairly unimpeachable source, her own son William in notes added to his life of St Osyth. According to him she lived for 22 years as a widow at St Osyth's priory in Essex, so she evidently died ca 1163." [Peter Stewart, citation details below]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1088

Notes:

Also called Robert de Toesni; Robert de Toeni; Robert de Todeni.

The location of Belvoir Priory was originally in Lincolnshire, but is now in Leicestershire. "Belvoir" is pronounced "beaver."

Robert married Adelaise. Adelaise died before 1093; was buried in Belvoir Priory, Belvoir, Leicestershire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Bef 1040, of Ver, Manche, Normandy, France
• Alternate death: Abt 1112
• Alternate death: Bef 1113

Notes:

Tenant of the bishop of Coutances in Normandy, 1086. Sheriff of Berkshire after 1106.

"Aubrey de Vere I was almost certainly a Norman who derived his name from Ver in the Cotentin and probably had connexions with the adjoining duchy of Brittany. He was born probably before 1040. The Conqueror granted him, with other lands, the great estates of an English thegn named Wulfwine in Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridge. In 1084 he attested a royal charter for Lessay as Aubrey the Chamberlain. In 1086 he held in chief 14 estates in Essex, with 2 houses and 3 acres in Colchester, 9 estates Suffolk, 7 in Cambs, and 2 in Hunts. He also held Kensington in Middlesex and two properties in Northants of the Bishop of Coutances, land in Hunts of the Abbey of Ramseyand land in two places in Essex of Count Alan of Brittany. The head of his barony was at (Castle) Hedingham in Essex, where he had planted a vineyard. It is usually assumed that he is identical with, and not the father of, the Aubrey de Vere who attested a writ at Westminster (September 1102 to Easter 1103 and a charter for Abingdon (1101-06). Not later than 1106 he was acting as sheriff of Berkshire, being styled simply Aubrey. Within the next few years he was acting as a justice in Northants, being styled Aubrey the Chamberlain, and as sheriff of Berkshire, being styled Aubrey de Berkshire. At the dying request of his eldest son, not later than 1106, he gave Abingdon Abbey his church of Kensington with its appurtenances and 2 hides and 1 yardland; but as he resided mostly in Essex, he founded a priory at Earls Colne as a cell of Abingdon. He seems to have held 1 1/2 knights' fees of the Abbey of St. Edmund. He married Beatrice, whose parentage is unknown. He died before 1113 (almost certainly in 1112), at Colne Priory, and was buried with his wife in the church there." [Complete Peerage X:194-5]

"The first Aubrey de Vere was a Domesday tenant of the powerful Breton tenant-in-chief Count Alan Rufus, and was among a handful of Alan's Bretons who were also tenant-in-chief of their own fees. Aubrey's family probably came from Vair in Ancenis, in the Nantais; he occurs among a group of men from the Nantais in a charter given by Conan II c. 1050. He is usually assumed to have originated at Ver because he held land in 1086 of the Bishop of Coutances. [...] There is a real possibility that other de Ver families in England could have originated in the Cotentin, but the mass of evidence indicating Aubrey's Breton origins is overwhelming." [K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People]

Aubrey married Beatrice. Beatrice was buried in Earl's Colne Priory, Halstead, Great Bromley, Essex, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"She very probably was from a Cotentin family." [K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Bef 1066
• Alternate death: 1114

Notes:

Also called Gilbert de Clare; Gilbert de Tonbridge. Earl of Clare.

"The Welsh annals note his death in 1117." [Royal Ancestry]

Gilbert married Alice de Clermont. Alice (daughter of Hugues and Marguerite de Montdidier) was born in of Clermont, Oise, Picardie, France; died after 1136. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Adelaide de Clermont; Adeliza de Clermont-in-Beauvaisis.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Bef 1035
• Alternate birth: 1035
• Alternate death: May 1089
• Alternate death: Abt 1090

Notes:

Also called Richard "de Bienfaite", Richard de Clare, and Richard de Tonbridge. Joint chief justiciar of England in William's absence; in this role he suppressed the revolt of 1075.

Richard married Rohese Giffard. Rohese (daughter of Walter Giffard and Agnes Flaitel) died after 1113. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Or Rohais; Rohaidi; Roaxdis.

Ancestral Roots 8 has her as a daughter of the Walter Giffard who d. 1102; this poses some chronological difficulty. Complete Peerage, Domesday People, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography all agree that she was a sister, not a daughter, of that Walter Giffard.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 1101 and 1103
• Alternate death: 1102

Notes:

Also called Hugh de Clermont-en-Beauvaisis.

Count of Clermont, Breuil-le-Vert, Creil, Gournay, Luzarches, and Mouchy-Saint-Elou.

Hugues married Marguerite de Montdidier about 1080. Marguerite (daughter of Hildouin IV de Montdidier and Adele de Roucy) was born about 1050 in of Montdidier, Somme, Picardy, France; died before 1101. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Marguerite de Roucy.

Notes:

Seigneur de Tosny.

Notes:

Also called Gilbert de Brionne; Giselbert; Gilbert Crispin. Comte d'Eu & Brionne. Assassinated.

Notes:

Lord of Longueville. One of the fifteen proven companions of William the Conqueror. Complete Peerage (II:386-87) has him as "s. of Osborn de Bolebec, by Aveline, sister of Gunnor, wife of Richard, Duke of the Normans", and many reputable sources reflect this. But like much of our understanding of Norman family relationships prior to the Conquest, this comes to us from the twelfth-century chronicler Robert de Torigny, and in the case of this Walter Giffard's parentage, the chronological difficulty has casued many to suspect that de Torigny compressed two generations into one, and that Osborn de Bolebec and Wevia (the likely actual name of the woman called "Aveline" by CP) were his grandparents, not his parents.

Some have argued that this Walter's father was Osbert or Osbern Giffard of Brimpsfield, son of Osborn and Wevia and progenitor of three generations of Eliases Giffard. Keats-Rohan (Domesday People, p. 456), on the other hand, calls this Walter "Son of Walter Giffard of Bolbec." In the absence of firm information we're going with the hypothesis that Torigny inadvertantly combined two generations and both of them were named Walter.

Walter married Agnes Flaitel. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Ermengarde Flaitel.

Notes:

Lord of Clermont; Chamberlain of France for Henri I.

"The first Renaud (i.e. the 1054 seigneur of Clermont) was either dead by May 1061, or at any rate no longer royal chamberlain from then." [Peter Stewart, soc.genealogy.medieval, 20 Dec 2019]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1010

Notes:

Count of Montdidier & Roucy.

Hildouin married Adele de Roucy in 1031. Adele (daughter of Ebles I de Roucy and Beatrix of Hainaut) was born about 1014 in Roucy, Aisne, Picardy, France; died in 1062. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between 1015 and 1020
• Alternate death: 1063