A previously unnoticed granddaughter of King Harold II

[transemacabre]

For some years, researchers had noted a peculiar epitaph for one William D'Eyncourt, preserved in Lincoln cathedral records, attesting that the aforesaid William was regia styrpe progenitus (of royal stock) and was raised in the court of King William II Rufus

Comments

[anonymous]

I don't know of any source that claims that Alan "attacked" Wilton, and no contemporary source says he "abducted" her.

Anselm acknowledged that Alan and Gunhilda loved each other, which is mysterious in itself as Alan was one of the architects of her father Harold's defeat at Hasting.

The Gospatric who had been Earl of Northumbria, but was deposed by William I in 1070 and fled to Malcolm III's Scotland, had a son named Gospatric and another son named Waltheof of Allerdale whose wife, named Sigrid, is said to have been born about 1075 and died about 1126.

This Waltheof and Sigrid had at least 5 children; one son was Waltheof's heir Alan of Allerdale (hmm? Which Alan could they have named him after?) and a daughter they named Gunhild.

Let that sink in. It looks like at least one parent was fond of both Alan Rufus and Gunhild. But why? Was Sigrid another daughter of Alan's and Gunhild's?

Or perhaps Alan's and Gunhild's forbidden love had become legendary, as that of Lancelot and Guinevere later would? (Did Alan and Gunhild perhaps provide the prototype of the Lancelot/Guinevere story?)

In the early 12th century, a flood of Bretons settled in Ayrshire, among them the ancestors of the Stewarts, whose progenitor was Alan the Dapifer (Steward) of Dol in Brittany. So Alan became a popular name in south-west Scotland. However, Alan of Allerdale was already born before the Stewards went north, so that's not why he was so named.

[anonymous]

Very interesting response. It would be nice to think of Alan Rufus and Gunhilda's love as becoming somewhat legendary at the time, but I suppose like most things in this period there is no evidence to enlighten us on their relationship, other than the two letters written by Anselm.

I asked about the reference to the 'attack on Wilton' and the 'abduction' / 'savouir' of Gunhilda in the original blog because having read the letters in Latin there is no mention of this. In fact, I agree with the anon commentator in that at least in Anselm's view Gunhilda acted out of love. This love caused great annoyance and concern from Anselm because to him, she turned her back on god for the pleasures of the carnal...absolute no no in Anselm's book. However, haven't quite made my mind up on Alan or Gunhilda's motives for their actions so I found the mention of their possible children very interesting so thank you for the reply.

[transemacabre]

Very intriguing about Sigrid, wife of Waltheof of Allerdale! Those names do stand out, don't they? And Sigrid would be an appropriate name for a granddaughter of King Harold (who's own mother was a Dane).

Anselm acknowledged that Alan and Gunhilda loved each other, which is mysterious in itself as Alan was one of the architects of her father Harold's defeat at Hasting.

I have a feeling there's a whole epic story here and we are only scratching the surface of it.

[ext_2491272]

Trevor Foulds is cited in Richard Sharpe's article as suggesting that perhaps Matilda d'Aincourt was a daughter of William the Conqueror. Orderic Vitalis doesn't mention her in his list of children of William I and Queen Matilda, which is I suppose why some historians have overlooked her, but several contemporary royal documents name "Matilda, daughter of the King".

On reflection, I think Foulds is probably right: William I had a first son named Robert after his father, and a second son named William, why wouldn't he have a daughter named Matilda after his beloved wife? As it happens, Princess Matilda appears to have been one of his older daughters, as we'd expect.

Walter d'Aincourt and his wife Matilda had three sons, named William, Ralph and Walter. I've read that Walter senior's father may have been named Ralph, so why had he a son named William - unless it were Matilda's father's name?

Foulds's hypothesis neatly explains why Matilda's son William d'Aincourt was "of royal descent" and why he was tutored in the court of William II "Rufus": he was the Conqueror's grandson and the Red King's nephew.

Had Matilda been the daughter of Alan and Gunhilda, one would expect to see a son of hers named Alan d'Aincourt, but the name Alan did not occur in any generation of the d'Aincourt family.

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Edith Swannesha (aka Edeva the fair, aka Edeva the Rich) owned over 100 properties in 1065, making her one of England's leading landowners. Why? Remember that this was before her husband Harold became king. If she was an heiress, then her father and/or mother were of high rank, so who were they?

Harold's second marriage, to Edith the sister of Edwin and Morcar, was strategic, so perhaps his first marriage also was.

Fairly obscure relatives of King Edward the Confessor had similar sized holdings, so perhaps Edeva was related to Edward? Then, Edward's death would have made her expendable. Moreover, her being related to Edward's mother, Emma of Normandy, would have been inconvenient while Harold was purging Norman and Breton influence from England. This would explain why she was set aside after Harold became King.

Suppose Edeva was a niece of Edward's. Edward was a first cousin of Duke William's father Robert and (through Emma's elder sister Hawise) of Alan's father Eozen (which incidentally made Eozen a potential claimant to the vacated throne, had he chosen to contest it).

Then Edeva and Alan would have been second cousins, at least partly explaining why Alan Rufus acquired 109 of her properties and why both he and his brother Alan Niger took Gunhilda under their wings. It's possible that their familial love was mistaken for the romantic sort by Anselm when he wrote those two letters. The later realisation of the magnitude of his error would explain why the Archbishop removed his copies of those two letters from his otherwise quite thorough personal archive.

Anselm's letters did assert that Gunhilda said she was no longer a virgin; perhaps this caused him to jump to the conclusion that Alan was responsible, when instead he may have been protecting her from further humiliations.

Alan's character is well attested both explicitly and tacitly by numerous witnesses, including Prior Stephen of Whitby, Queen Matilda, William de St Calais the Bishop of Durham, the Conqueror's sister Countess Adelaide of Aumale and Kings William I and William II, all of whom regarded him highly.

[ext_2491272]

To wit:

Adelaide's properties in both Normandy and England were adjacent to Alan's.

Queen Matilda recommended that Edwin's and Morcar's lands in Yorkshire be granted to Alan. This was the occasion when William named Alan his "nephew", thus placing him in line for the throne.

In 1083, King William put Alan in charge of the royal army besieging the indomitable castle of Sainte Suzanne in Maine.

During the Domesday Survey in 1086, Alan accompanied the King on inspections. Two of the leading Survey Commissioners, Archbishop Thomas of York and Bishop William de St Calais of Durham, were tenants of Alan's; one of St Calais's scribes wrote most of the Great Domesday Book.

Many years later, Stephen of Whitby wrote that, when oppressed by William de Percy, he and his monks were fortunate to have made the acquaintance of such a friend as Count Alan. Alan gave Stephen the church of St Olave in York, and persuaded the Conqueror to come up to give it a royal charter as a way of apologising to York for the harm he'd done when quashing the northern rebellions.

In early 1088, William II brought the whole royal court and all the bishops to York to found Alan's magnificent St Mary's Abbey. It was right after this that Alan's rival Bishop Odo of Bayeux plotted the King's overthrow. Most of the magnates supported Odo. Alan advised the King to promise fairer laws, so the English rallied behind the King and defeated some of the rebels themselves, while Alan and Thomas the Archbishop of York mopped up the rebellion in the North. Alan then marched south, defeating rebels as he went, then joined the royal army to pursue Odo. Finally, Odo's HQ at Rochester Castle was besieged and taken. Odo was sentenced to permanent exile, but Alan requested that the other conspirators, young and old, be forgiven.

St Calais had abandoned the King William II's army during the rebellion and holed up in Durham Castle, so after the dust settled, the King sent Alan with his aunt Countess Adelaide's (third) husband Count Odo of Champagne and Earl Roger of Montgomery's son Roger of Poitou to arrest St Calais. Walter d'Aincourt accompanied them and bore the royal writ: further evidence of Walter's royal connection being Norman.

At the trial in Salisbury Castle, Alan told the King that he had deplored St Calais's actions, but had sympathy for the man himself. When the King began to badger witnesses, Alan told him to respect freedom of conscience, otherwise Alan would believe himself obliged to cease all service to the King. After 3 months of deliberations, the King decided to let Alan escort St Calais to Southampton to take ship to exile in Normandy.

Incidentally, St Calais became, with Bishop Odo, one of Duke Robert's leading counsellors. In 1091, William II invaded Normandy, presumably with Alan's support, defeated his brother Duke Robert, and brought St Calais back to England, restoring him as Bishop of Durham.

[ext_2491272]

Alan was also an innovator: both Richmond Castle and St Mary's Abbey were architecturally many years ahead of their time. On his lands, he abolished the Danelaw. Boston in Lincolnshire he made into England's second port, spending his own money to encourage trade.

[ext_2491272]

Alan was buried in the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds. His epitaph was fortunately copied down by a monk before the abbeys were demolished by that intemperate toddler Henry VIII. It reads:

Vixit nobilium: praefulgens stirpe Brittonum.
Stella nuit regni: comitis caro marcet Alani.
Anglia turbatur: satraparum flos cineratur.
Iam Brito flos regum: modo marcor in ordine rerum.
Praecepto legum: nitet ortus sanguine regum.
Dux uiguit summus: rutilans a rege secundus.
Hune cernens plora: « requies sibi sit, deus » ora.

In life, he was noble, of glittering British stock.
A star in the kingdom, Count Alan's flesh now withers.
England is deeply troubled, for the fairest of magnates has turned to dust.
Now the flower of the Kings of Brittany marks the natural order of things.
He was a teacher of the law, in whom ran the blood of kings,
A leader who attained the highest rank, his glory second to the King.
Weep for seeing this, and pray "May he rest in peace, O God".

The Latin is a poetic gem: it is succinct and rich in meaning.

Obvious themes include Britishness, royalty, mortality and the temporary nature of earthly glory.

There are also references to the cultural history of the Bretons: "satraparum" is from Persian: "Alan" means "Iran": the Alans were a people who migrated from eastern Iran to central Asia and thence both eastward and westward. The eastern branch were the ancestors of Genghis Khan (who of course was not yet born); the western became Roman citizens and settled peacefully in Brittany and Galicia.

"Dux" was the Roman title of the founder of Brittany, the Emperor Magnus Flavius Clemens Maximus, from when he was the military commander of Britain.

"Praecepto" (preceptor) has several denotations, of which perhaps the most pertient are a teacher of the law, and a local commander of a religious order of knights. Alan was both of those.

"Anglia turbatur" because Alan did much to improve the lot of the English people: he regularised tax rates, used its revenue to support civilian courts, maintained a professional standing army and paid its military expenses himself (when overseas he paid the salaries, equipment and entertainment of the royal army!), promoted trade, and in Yorkshire he defended the English while excluding Normans (especially the arch-oppressor Bishop Odo) from his domain.

[ext_2491272]

Alan was a male-line descendant of King Alan I of Brittany (died 907) who was the younger son of Count Ridoredh of Vannes (Gwened in Breton), a town and county settled in the 4th to 6th centuries from the Kingdom of Gwynedd in Wales.

Before Julius Caesar's time, the capital city of Vannes was called Darioritum and was the capital of the Veneti who were a naval power and a "fraternal" ally of Republican Rome, but after a falling out, Caesar conquered Vannes in 56 BC using innovative naval tactics devised by his legate and admiral Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. According to Caesar's "Bello Gallico", the Veneti often sailed to and from Britain and summoned aid from there when he attacked them.

Gwynedd is first mentioned on a late 5th century tombstone now in Penmachno church: "Cantiorix hic iacit/Venedotis cives fuit/consobrinos Magli magistrati". ("Cantiorix lies here. He was a citizen of Gwynedd and a cousin of Maglos the magistrate").

In 383, Magnus Maximus founded strategic (and historically important) military bases in Armorica (Gaul, west of the Seine and north of the Loire, including later medieval Brittany, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Blois) and in his native Galicia in north-west Spain. The legend in Wales and Brittany is that Armorica's governor was Conan Meriadoc, who was a Prince of Powys (which neighboured Gwynedd) and a relative of Elen the Welsh wife of Magnus Maximus.

Aside from Wales, early settlers to Brittany came from Cornwall (Kernow in Cornish) to the county of Kernev (Cornouaille in French) where Alan's mother Agnes was the daughter of Count Alan Canhiart, and from Devon (Dumnonia in Latin) to the region and subsequent kingdom called Domnonea which was later governed by Alan's father Eozen (Eudes in Latin).

[anonymous]

I have since been advised that Gwened was more probably settled from Gwent in south-east Wales, home of the Silures who gave the illustrious Legio II Augusta much grief for 20 years. Vannes in Brittany was also the site of the First Battle of Morbihan Bay, in which Julius Caesar's best admiral had to resort to a novel stratagem to defeat the local fishing fleet. The same people defeated the Loire Vikings at sea and on land; combined with a recently returned King Louis IV they placed so much pressure on William "Longsword" that he was assassinated and version 1 of Normandy collapsed.

So the House of Vannes (aka House of Rennes) the cadet branch of which Alan Rufus belong to, was formidable on land and at sea. Napoleon recognised this by placing both his premier officer training academies, army and navy, in Brittany, where they remain to this day.