Mabel fitz Robert

Notes:

Also called Mabel Fitz Hamon.

Mabel married Robert of Gloucester before 1122. Robert (son of Henry I, King of England and (Unknown mistress or mistresses of Henry I)) was born about 1090; died on 31 Oct 1147 in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England; was buried in Priory of St. James, Bristol, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. William fitz Robert died on 23 Nov 1183; was buried in Kernsham Abbey, Somerset, England.
2. Matilda of Gloucester died on 29 Jul 1189.
3. Mabira de Caen was born in of Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England; died after 1190.
4. Robert fitz Robert was born in of Conarton in Gwithian, Cornwall, England; died in 1170.

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]

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.

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]