Richard de Clare

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]

1. Maud de Clare died in 1213.
2. Hawise de Clare died after 1234.
3. Gilbert de Clare was born about 1180; died on 25 Oct 1230 in Penrose, Brittany, France; was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England.

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:

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]

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: 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:

Sometimes also called Ranulph le Meschin, but that seems to have originally been applied to his son, as "meschin" means "younger" or "junior." Vicomte de Bessin; Count of Bayeux.

"The Bessin is an area in Normandy, France, corresponding to the territory of the Bajocasses tribe of Gaul who also gave their name to the city of Bayeux, central town of the Bessin. [...] The Bessin corresponds to the former diocese of Bayeux, which was incorporated into the Calvados département following the French Revolution." [Wikipedia]

Ranulph married Margaret d'Avranches. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

The ODNB calls her "Matilda, daughter of Richard, vicomte of the Avranchin."

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

Notes:

Vicomte of the Bessin. Fought at the battle of Val-es-Dunes, 1047.

Ranulph married (Unknown daughter of Richard III of Normandy). [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Possibly named Alice, Adeliza, etc. AR calls her "Alice of Normandy."

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Abt 1082
• Alternate death: Aft 1082
• Alternate death: Aft 1084

Notes:

Viscount of the Avranchin. Probably Scandinavian in origin. Shown in some sources (including CP) as a son of a "Thurstan le Goz", son of Ansfrid, a Dane.

Another persistent genealogical tradition is the identification of his wife as "Emma de Conteville," an alleged daughter of the Conqueror's mother Herleve by her husband Herluin. His wife is in fact unknown.