Alice of Chester

Notes:

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

Family/Spouse: Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare. Richard (son of Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare and Alice de Clermont) was born about 1090 in Hertford, Hertfordshire, England; died on 15 Apr 1136 in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales; was buried in 1136 in Chapter House, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Rohese de Clare
2. Roger de Clare was born in 1116 in Tunbridge Castle, Kent, England; died in 1173; was buried in 1173 in Stoke by Clare Priory, Suffolk, England.

Family/Spouse: Robert de Condet. Robert was born in of Thorngate Castle, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England; died about 1141. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Roger de Condet died before 1194.
2. Isabel de Condet was born after 1136; died after 1165.

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:

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:

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.