William de Say

Family/Spouse: Sibyl. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Hawise de Say died after 1317.
2. Agnes de Say
3. William de Say was born on 20 Nov 1253 in of Edmonton, Middlesex, England; died before 16 Sep 1295.

Notes:

Magna Carta surety.

Geoffrey married Hawise de Clare before 1215. Hawise (daughter of Richard de Clare and Amice of Gloucester) died after 1234. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Geoffrey married Alice de Cheyne before 1180. Alice (daughter of John de Cheyne) died after 1184. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1155
• Alternate death: Nov 1217
• Alternate death: 28 Nov 1217

Notes:

Earl of Hertford and of Gloucester. Also styled Earl of Clare.

Along with his son Gilbert, he was one of the 25 Magna Carta sureties.

Richard married Amice of Gloucester about 1180. Amice (daughter of William fitz Robert and Hawise of Leicester) died on 1 Jan 1225. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Amice fitz William.

According to RA, she was not "recognized" before her death as "Countess of Gloucester," despite CP's assertion to this effect. All contemporary charters and other documents involving her refer to her as countess of Clare, i.e., Hertford.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Aug 1147
• Alternate death: Abt 1155

Notes:

Allegedly killed at the siege of Burwell Castle. But: "Complete Peerage, vol. 11, p. 464, notes that Henry of Huntingdon says he and Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex, were killed in August 1144, but note (f) summarises evidence that William survived Geoffrey (who did not die until September 1144). Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, p. 681, refers to the same evidence as proving his survival 'by a few years', and dates his death to c. 1155 (although elsewhere she repeats the traditional date)." [Some Corrections and Additions to the Complete Peerage]

William married Beatrice de Mandeville. Beatrice (daughter of William I de Mandeville and Margaret fitz Eudes) was born about 1105; died before 19 Apr 1197 in Rickling, Saffron, Essex, England; was buried in Walden Abbey, Essex, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1100

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Aft 1115, of Clare, Herefordshire, England

Notes:

Also called Roger Fitz Richard. 2nd Earl of Hertford, but generally styled Earl of Clare.

Roger married Maud de St. Hilary. Maud (daughter of James de St. Hilary du Harcourt and Aveline) was born in of Field Dalling, Norfolk, England; died on 24 Dec 1193; was buried in Priory of Great Carbrooke, Norfolk, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1195

Notes:

Also called Maud de St. Hilaire du Harcouet.

Notes:

Earl of Gloucester. Governor of Wareham Castle, 1144.

"After Henry II's accession in 1154 William's status with his royal cousin began to change. The honour of Eudo Dapifer, which Henry had earlier promised to the earl's son, was given to another. Gloucester understandably yielded place of honour at court to members of the royal family like the king's brother William, and even to Robert, earl of Leicester, who was chief justiciar; but William was also regularly outranked by his uncle, Reginald, earl of Cornwall, who held no central administrative office. In the 1150s there is evidence of a certain ambivalence in Henry's government about Gloucester's right to be exempted from geld and other remittances. The earl's infrequent court appearances indicate that he was becoming a political outsider. Even though he was ultimately favoured by the bountiful royal fiscal patronage accorded to members of his class, served as a royal justice, and was promised that he would enjoy all the estates his father had held, William was to die with his career, earldom, and house in ruins." [Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

William married Hawise of Leicester about 1150. Hawise (daughter of Robert of Meulan and Amice de Gael) died on 24 Apr 1197. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Hawise de Beaumont.

Jordan married Lucy de Rumilly. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Lucy de Aulnay.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef 1130

Notes:

Also called William de Magnivil. Constable of the Tower of London, and thus keeper of the first person known to have been imprisoned there for political reasons, Ranulf Flambard.

William married Margaret fitz Eudes. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Margaret de Rye or de Ryes.

Notes:

Also called Richard de Clare; Richard of Ceredigion.

"Surprised and slain by the Welsh." [Royal Ancestry]

Richard married Alice of Chester. Alice (daughter of Ranulf le Meschin and Lucy of Bolingbroke) died after 1148. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Adeliza la Meschin. "[Richard fitz Gilbert's] wife was rescued from the Welsh by Miles of Gloucester." [Complete Peerage]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef 1154

Notes:

Also called James de St. James. Holder of both English and Breton lands.

James married Aveline. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Earl of Gloucester. Also called Robert de Caen; Robert fitz Roy; Rufus; Robert "The Counsel".

Fought at Brémulé, 20 Apr 1119, where Henry I defeated Louis VI. Present at the death of Henry I in Dec 1135. Commander-in-chief for the Empress Maud from 1139 on. From Complete Peerage: "In 1140 he burnt Nottingham, and in Feb. 1141 he and his son-in-law, Ranulph, Earl of Chester, relieved Lincoln and took Stephen prisoner, sending him to Bristol. He accompanied Maud in her progress to Winchester and London, and when the citizens drove her out fled with her to Oxford. He took part in the fighting at Winchester and helped Maud escape from the city, but was captured 14 Sep. (1141) at Stockbridge and taken prisoner to Rochester. Shortly afterwards he was exchanged, without concessions on either side, for Stephen, who was set at liberty on 1 Nov., and Robert then joined Maud at Bristol, and with her proceeded to Oxford. In June 1142 Maud sent him over to her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, to urge him to invade England. It would appear that on this occasion Robert entered into a treaty of alliance with Miles of Gloucester, Earl of Hereford. Geoffrey declined to help until he had conquered Normandy, whereupon Robert joined him in his campaign. On hearing that Maud was besieged in Oxford, Robert hurried back to help her, taking with him her son, afterwards Henry II. He captured Wareham and other places, and on Maud's escape from Oxford he and Henry met her at Wallingford, and they went to Bristol, which was Robert's chief residence till 1146. In 1143 Robert defeated Stephen at Wilton, and in 1144 blockaded Malmesbury, Stephen refusing battle; but Maud's party was now so much reduced that Stephen was able to take Faringdon, which Robert had fortified. In the spring of 1147 Robert took Henry, Maud's son, back to Wareham and sent him over to Anjou; and in the same year, he founded Margam Abbey." Shortly thereafter he died of a sudden fever, in the priory of St. James in Bristol, which he had earlier founded; his death effectively ended Maud's military campaign. The Dictionary of National Biography (1909) said that "his sister's cause almost invariably prospered when she allowed him to direct her counsels, and declined as soon as she neglected his advice."

He was highly literate, a patron of scholars and chroniclers such as Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of Malmesbury, the latter of whom wrote the Historia Novella at his request. An enemy, Baldwin Fitz Gilbert, called him someone who "threatens much but does little, lionlike in his speech, but like a hare in his heart, great in eloquence but insignificant through laziness", which is pretty much the same insult lobbed by all of history's meatheads at people who are, like Robert, both well-spoken and ruthless at war. When Ralph Peters calls the slayer of Osama bin Laden, warlord of Libya and Afghanistan, commander of a secret empire of unimaginable violence, a "pussy", it's the voice of Baldwin Fitz Gilbert we hear. No matter how many cities you burn, if you also talk like an intellectual, some people will feel that you've let the meathead side down.

Robert married Mabel fitz Robert before 1122. Mabel (daughter of Robert fitz Hamon and Sibyl de Montgomery) died on 29 Sep 1157. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Mabel Fitz Hamon.

Notes:

Earl of Leicester. Also called, but only by later historians and genealogists, Robert de Beaumont.

Twin brother of Waleran, Count of Muelan, 1st Earl of Worcester. After their father's death, the two brothers were raised together in the royal household. Much detail on his career here.

Justiciar of England, 1155-1168.

Robert married Amice de Gael after Nov 1120. Amice (daughter of Ralph II de Gael) died in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Amice de Montfort.

She died as a nun in Nuneaton Priory. Complete Peerage says she died after 1168. Royal Ancestry says she died on a 31 August, year uncertain.

William married Agnes de Grandmesnil. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also spelled Romelli, Rumelli, etc.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Abt 1100

Geoffrey married Adeliza de Balts. Adeliza died before 1100; was buried in Westminster Abbey, Westminster, Middlesex, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Athelaise.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Feb 1120, Normandy, France

Notes:

Also called Eudo de Ryes; Eudo de Bric; Eudes the Steward; Eudo Dapifer.

Seneschal to Kings William I and Henry I. Founder of St. John's Abbey at Colchester. Blind for the final fifteen years of his life.

Eudes married (Unknown first wife of Eudes fitz Hubert). [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

The discussion starting at this post on SGM makes it clear that it's much more likely that Eudes's daughter Margaret was by an unknown wife, not by Rohese de Clare.

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 death: Jan 1129
• Alternate death: 17 Jan 1129
• Alternate death: 27 Jan 1129

Notes:

Also called Randle; Ranulf de Briquessart; de Bricasard; Ranulf du Bessin; Ranulf of Chester.

Earl of Chester. Vicomte of Bayeux. Commander of the royal forces in Normandy, 1124.

"Ranulph le Meschin, styled also, 'de Briquessart,' Vicomte de Bayeux in Normandy, s. and h. of Ranulph, Vicomte de Bayeux, by Margaret, sister of Hugh (d'Avranches), Earl of Chester abovenamed, being thus 1st cousin and h. to the last Earl (whom he suc. as Vicomte d'Avranches, &c., in Normandy), obtained, after the Earl's death in 1120, the grant of the county palatine of Chester, becoming thereby Earl of Chester. He appears thereupon to have surrendered the Lordship of the great district of Cumberland, which he had acquired, shortly before, from Henry I. In 1124 he was Commander of the Royal forces in Normandy. He m. Lucy, widow of Roger Fitz-Gerold (by whom she was mother of William de Roumare, afterwards Earl of Lincoln). He d. 17 or 27 Jan. 1129, and was bur. at St. Werburg's, Chester. The Countess Lucy confirmed, as his widow, the grant of the Manor of Spalding to the monks of that place." [Complete Peerage III:166, incorporating corrections from volume XIV.]

Ranulf married Lucy of Bolingbroke about 1098. Lucy was born in of Spalding, Lincolnshire, England; died about 1138. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"Lucy of Bolingbroke (died circa 1138) 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. [...] Lucy, as widowed countess, founded the convent of Stixwould in 1135, becoming, in the words of one historian, 'one of the few aristocratic women of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to achieve the role of independent lay founder.'" [Wikipedia]

Much controversy has ensued over her parentage. Appendix J to volume 7 of the Complete Peerage sums up the state of play in 1929: "The parentage of the Countess Lucy is one of the unsolved puzzles of genealogy. The only direct statements about it are in the Peterborough Chronicle and the pseudo-Ingulf’s Chronicle of Crowland, which agree in saying that she was daughter of Aelfgar, Earl of Mercia, and niece or grandniece of Thorold, sometime Sheriff of co. Lincoln. All that is certainly known is that she was niece of Robert Malet of Eye and of Alan of Lincoln, and that Thorold the Sheriff was a kinsman." The essay goes on to state that a good but not conclusive case can be made for her parents being Thorold the sheriff and an unnamed daughter of Robert Malet.

The ODNB calls Lucy merely "heir of the honour of Bolingbroke". In 1995 Katharine Keats-Rohan made a case for the Thorold hypothesis, but Rosie Bevan argued on SGM that "the main sticking point [...] is that although Lucy is mentioned a few times as Thorold's heir she is not named as his daughter." Bevan went on to propose that the incomplete evidence could as easily be used to argue that Lucy's parents were William Malet (son of Robert) and a daughter of earl Alfgar III.

The one point on which everyone appears to agree is that one of Lucy's parents has to have been a Malet, because in 1153 the future Henry II promised the honour of Eye to Ranulph, earl of Chester, to be held as "Robert Malet the uncle of his mother [i.e., Lucy] held it."

Notes:

Also called Hasculf, Harscoit. Seigneur de St.James et St. Hilaire du Harscouet.

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Between May and Sep 1068, Selby, Yorkshire, England
• Alternate birth: Between Feb and May 1069, Selby, Yorkshire, England
• Alternate birth: 1068-1069
• Alternate birth: 1068-1069

Notes:

Called "Beauclerc" by later historians, but not during his lifetime.

Died after eating lampreys, which had been forbidden to him by his physician. Body buried at Reading Abbey, England. Entrails buried at Port-du-Salut Abbey, France. The Middle Ages: weird.

Henry married (Unknown mistress or mistresses of Henry I). [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Made (by Henry I) hereditary Governor of Caen, circa 1105. Called by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (in the article on his father-in-law) "of south Wales." Called "Earl of Gloucester" by later chroniclers, but he was never styled that in his lifetime. Refounded Tewkesbury Abbey in 1092.

Robert married Sibyl de Montgomery between 1087 and 1090. Sibyl (daughter of Roger de Montgomery and Mabel de Bellême) died after 1107. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1049

Notes:

Also known as Robert de Beaumont. Count of Meulan. Created Earl of Leicester.

* One of the only fifteen "Proven Companions" of William the Conqueror at Hastings.

* Inherited the title Count of Meulan when his mother died in 1081; paid homage for it to Philip I of France and sat as a French peer in the parliament at Poissy.

* A member of the royal hunting party in the New Forest, 2 Aug 1100, during which William II was accidentally killed by an arrow. Pledged allegiance to Henry I, who created him Earl of Leicester in 1107.

* Excommunicated by Paschal II during the Investiture Controversy. Excommunication later revoked by Anselm, exiled archbishop of Canterbury; revocation later ratified by Paschal.

* Lived to be the last surviving Norman nobleman who was at Hastings.

Robert married Isabel de Vermandois in 1096. Isabel (daughter of Hugues le Grand and Adèle de Vermandois) died before Jun 1147. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Bef Jul 1147

Notes:

Countess of Leicester. Also called Elizabeth de Vermandois.

Royal Ancestry says she was living c. 1138 and that she died "13 (or 17) February, sometime before June 1147, when her son, William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey, left on crusade." Several sources say she died in the priory of Lewes, Sussex.

Via her two husbands and thirteen children, descent from her is so common among modern people with traceable medieval ancestry that Douglas Richardson once jokingly asserted the existence of an exclusive lineage organization called the Society of Non-Descendants of Isabel de Vermandois. Of the 19 root people in this database with demonstrable descent from any monarch, only three would be eligible for membership in such a group.