Guillaume III Talvas

Notes:

Count of Ponthieu and Alençon.

Guillaume married Helie of Burgundy about 1115. Helie (daughter of Odo I of Burgundy and Sibylla of Burgundy) was born about 1080 in Dijon, Côte-d'Or, Burgundy, France; died on 28 Feb 1142. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Ela of Ponthieu was born in of Alencon, Orne, Basse-Normandie, France; died on 4 Oct 1174.
2. Guy II of Ponthieu died in 1147.
3. Clemence de Ponthieu died before 20 Nov 1189.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Baptised: St. Martin, Sées, Orne, Normandy, France
• Alternate death: Aft 1130
• Alternate death: Bef 8 May 1131

Notes:

Earl of Shrewsbury. Count of Ponthieu. Exiled and attainted 1102. Described by the ODNB as "a brilliant military architect but sadistically cruel."

"Robert de Bellême, seigneur de Bellême (or Belèsme), seigneur de Montgomery, viscount of the Hiémois, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury and Count of Ponthieu, was an Anglo-Norman nobleman, and one of the most prominent figures in the competition for the succession to England and Normandy between the sons of William the Conqueror. He was a member of the powerful House of Bellême. Robert became notorious for his alleged cruelty. The chronicler Orderic Vitalis calls him 'Grasping and cruel, an implacable persecutor of the Church of God and the poor... unequalled for his iniquity in the whole Christian era.' The stories of his brutality may have inspired the legend of Robert the Devil." [Wikipedia]

"The chroniclers have given Robert de Bellême an appalling reputation, though his actions as a man of violence and an oppressor of the church were probably little worse than those of his contemporaries. He was faced with an enormous task in trying to hold together his family's extensive lands, which lay in very unstable regions, and it proved to be impossible without the support of an effective ruler. Although Bellême was a capable soldier and an efficient administrator, it was his misfortune that he lacked political judgement, as his support of Robert Curthose and failure to establish satisfactory relations with Henry I indicate." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

Robert married Agnes de Ponthieu before 9 Sep 1087. Agnes (daughter of Guy I and Ada) died after 1100. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 1105 and 1106

Notes:

Countess of Ponthieu.

"Agnes, who was sole heir to her father's comté, was treated cruelly by her husband, who kept her shut up for a long time in his castle at Bellême. She escaped by the help of a faithful chamberlain, took refuge with Adela Countess of Blois and retired to Ponthieu; whence she never returned to her husband." [Complete Peerage]

"[D]espite the lurid story of marital collapse given in Orderic Vitalis's ecclesiastical history (Ordericus Vitalis, Eccl. hist., 4.300), there are no signs of discord between Robert and his father-in-law, Count Gui, with whom he judged a plea in the ducal court at Rouen in 1093. Robert witnessed a charter given by Gui, apparently on his deathbed, and it may be that Agnes returned to Ponthieu in the later 1090s to act on her father's behalf because of his advanced age. She probably took her son with her since he does not attest Robert's acts until 1106. Only one act of Agnes as countess of Ponthieu is known and she must have died in 1105 or 1106, when Robert ceased to use the title count of Ponthieu." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

Notes:

Date of arrangement. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the actual marriage may not have taken place until about 1092.

Notes:

Earl of Shrewsbury. Also styled, variously, as Earl of Arundel, of Chichester, of Sussex, and of Shropshire. Regent in Normandy during the Conquest. A loyal servant to the dukes of Normandy, he became an important administrator in post-Conquest England and Wales, and (following the disgrace of bishop Odo) the richest of William's tenants-in-chief. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography points out that "Alone of all the Conqueror's vassals, Roger de Montgomery gave his name to a British county, appropriately in Wales." He died as a monk.

Roger married Mabel de Bellême about 1050. Mabel (daughter of William I Talvas and Hildeburg) died in Dec 1077 in Bures-sur-Dives, Normandy, France; was buried in Troarn, Calvados, Normandy, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 2 Dec 1079

Notes:

Also called Mabel Talvas; Dame de Alencon, de Seez, and Belleme; Countess of Shrewsbury and Lady of Arundel.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Earl Roger's first wife, Mabel de Bellême, has been depicted unforgettably for posterity by Orderic Vitalis, though that historian never saw her. He describes her as 'a forceful and worldly woman, cunning, garrulous, and extremely cruel', 'a perfidious woman', and 'a cruel woman, who had shed the blood of many and had forcibly disinherited many lords'; and he recounts several stories to her discredit related to him by colleagues at St Evroult. Whatever allowances can be made for Mabel there must have been something particularly aggressive and brutal about her for four of her vassals to ride at night into her castle at Bures [-sur-Dives] and cut off her head as she lay in bed after a bath. Her murderer Hugh Bunel was among those whom she had disinherited and was never caught. The date of the murder must be December 1077, not 1082 as long accepted from a marginal note in the editio princeps of Orderic. There is evidence that Mabel, like a very few other baronial wives, was a tenant-in-chief in England, but no evidence that she ever visited that land or the Montgomery estates there.

Notes:

Count of Ponthieu. He is the "Wido" on the Bayeux Tapestry.

Guy married Ada. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Adila, Adda. She died before her husband, on a 5 March.

Roger married Emma. Emma died after 1067. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Between 1055 and 1060
• Alternate death: 1070

William married Hildeburg. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 20 Nov 1052

Notes:

Count of Ponthieu.

Hugh married Bertha of Aumale. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Hugh married Joscelina d'Equiqueville. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, quoting "a letter written a century later by Ivo, bishop of Chartres, to prevent a marriage within the prohibited degrees", has her as a daughter of Wevie, not her sister Senfrie. We follow Todd A. Farmerie's model, linked from the citation below.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 963
• Alternate death: 1028

Notes:

Seigneur de Belleme and d'Alencon.

Guillaume married Mathilde de Condé-sur-Noireau. Mathilde died about 1033. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Count of Ponthieu. Supposed to have killed in battle Arnold II, Count of Boulogne, and married his widow; or perhaps the noble he kiled was Baldwin I of Boulogne.

Notes:

"He built the castle at Aumale." [Complete Peerage I:351, note (d)]

(Unknown) married Senfrie. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Senfria; Seinfreda.

Ivo married Godehilde. Godehilde died after 1005. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Hugo Miles. His origins are unknown; our only real source for him is the 1088 chronicle of Hariulf, chronicler of Saint-Riquier, which notes that he never called himself Count of Ponthieu and that his son Enguerrand was the first to do so. He was an avocat of the abbey of Saint-Riquier and castellan of Abbeville. Many geneaological cites claim, without any obvious evidence, that he married Gisela, a daughter of Hugh Capet.