Generations 1 - 15
 

Generation No. 1

1.  ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA

Child of ARTAVASDE* MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA is:
2. i. FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, d. 306, Eboracum (modern York).
 

Generation No. 2

2.  FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS (ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) died 306 in Eboracum (modern York).  He married (1) THEODORA.    He married (2) FLAVIA IULIA* HELENA Abt. 270 in Drepanum, daughter of LEO* THE ARMENIAN.  She was born Bet. 248 & 249 in Prob. Drepanum in Bithynia, and died Bet. 328 & 329.

Notes for FLAVIUS* VALERIUS CONSTANTIUS:
Became Ceaser in AD 293

Notes for FLAVIA IULIA* HELENA:
Saint Helena, also called HELEN (b. c. 248, Drepanon?, Bithynia, Asia Minor--d. c. 328, Nicomedia; Western feast day August 18; Eastern feast day [with Constantine] May 21), Roman empress who was the reputed discoverer of Christ's cross.
Helena was married to the Roman emperor Constantius I Chlorus, who renounced her for political reasons. When her son Constantine I the Great became emperor at York (306), he made her empress dowager, and under his influence she later became a Christian. She was devoted to her eldest grandson, Crispus Caesar, whom Constantine made titular ruler of Gaul, but a mysterious embroilment in the imperial family culminated with the execution of Crispus and Fausta, Constantine's second wife and Crispus' stepmother. Thereafter, the story became current that Fausta had accused Crispus of attempting to seduce her--hence Crispus' execution (326). Fausta, in turn, was denounced by the grief-stricken Helena and was executed shortly afterward. Immediately after the double tragedy Helena made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She caused churches to be built on the reputed sites of the nativity and of the Ascension.

Before 337 it was claimed in Jerusalem that Christ's cross had been found during the building of Constantine's church on Golgotha. Later in the century Helena was credited with the discovery. Many subsequent legends developed, and the story of the "invention," or the finding of the cross, enhanced by romances and confusions with other Helens, became a favourite throughout Christendom.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Flavia Iulia Helena was probably born in the city of Drepanum in Bithynia. Various sources indicate that Drepanum was renamed Helenopolis by Helena's son Constantinus I to honour and to perpetuate Helena's memory (e.g., Sozom., Hist. Eccl., 2.2.5). Procopius (Aedif. 5.2.1-5) mentions that Constantine changed the name of Drepanum to Helenopolis because his mother was born there. Her year of birth may be established on Eusebius' remark (VC., 3.46) that she died at the age of about eighty years. Since she probably died in 328/9, she must have been born ca. 248/9. Helena was of low social origin. Ambrose (De obit. Theod.,42) calls her a stabularia and Eutropius (Brev. 10.2) mentions that she was born ex obscuriore matrimonio. Philostorgius (Hist. Eccl., 2.16) calls her `a common woman not different from strumpets' (cf. also Zos. 2.8.2 and 2.9.2). Constantius I Chlorus and Helena probably met in Drepanum ca. 270. It is very likely that the pair lived in concubinage, an accepted form of cohabitation for people of different social origin. In 272/3 Helena gave birth to Constantine in Naissus. It is not known whether Helena bore any other children besides Constantine. When in 289 Constantius became Caesar and married Theodora, he separated from Helena and Helena's life recedes into obscurity.

Although it has been suggested that from her childhood on Helena had felt great sympathy for Christianity, it is more likely that she only converted after 312 when her son Constantine began to protect and favour the Christian church. Eusebius reports that Helena was converted by Constantine and that he made her a devoted servant of God (VC, 3.47). That she once was Jewish, as suggested by the Actus Sylvestri and taken seriously by J. Vogt is most unlikely. There are indications - e.g. her sympathy for the martyr Lucian, Arius' teacher - that Helena was favourable towards Arianism.
 
 

Children of FLAVIUS* CONSTANTIUS and FLAVIA HELENA are:
3. i. CONSTANTINE*3 II, b. Abt. 27 Feb 273, Naissus modern day Yougoslavia; d. 22 May 337.
 ii. CONSTANTIUS II.
 iii. CONSTANS.
 

Generation No. 3

3.  CONSTANTINE*3 II (FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 27 Feb 273 in Naissus modern day Yougoslavia, and died 22 May 337.  He married (1) PANKALA*.    He married (2) FLAVIA MAXIMA FAUSTA 307 in Prob. Trier, daughter of MAXIMIAN and EUTROPIA.  She died in Slain by order of Constantine himself.

Notes for CONSTANTINE* II:
Constantine I, the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity, not only initiated the evolution of the empire into a Christian state but also provided the impulse for a distinctively Christian culture that prepared the way for the growth of Byzantine and Western medieval culture. He was born on February 27, probably in the later AD 280s, at Naissus (modern Nis, Yugos.). A typical product of the military governing class of the later 3rd century, he was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, an army officer, and his wife (or concubine) Helena; his full Latin name was Flavius Valerius Constantinus. In AD 293 his father was raised to the rank of Caesar, or deputy emperor (as Constantius I Chlorus), and was sent to serve under Augustus (emperor) Maximian in the West. In 289 Constantius had separated from Helena in order to marry a stepdaughter of Maximian, and Constantine was brought up in the Eastern Empire at the court of the senior emperor Diocletian at Nicomedia (modern Izmit, Tur.). Constantine was seen as a youth by his future panegyrist, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, passing with Diocletian through Palestine on the way to a war in Egypt. (see also Index: Roman Republic and Empire)

Career and conversion.
Constantine's experience as a member of the imperial court--a Latin-speaking institution--in the Eastern provinces left a lasting imprint on him. Educated to less than the highest literary standards of the day, he was always more at home in Latin than in Greek: later in life he had the habit of delivering edifying sermons, which he would compose in Latin and pronounce in Greek from professional translations. Christianity he encountered in court circles as well as in the cities of the East; and from 303, during the great persecution of the Christians that began at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia and was enforced with particular intensity in the eastern parts of the empire, Christianity was a major issue of public policy. It is even possible that members of Constantine's family were Christians.
In 305 the two emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, abdicated, to be succeeded by their respective deputy emperors, Galerius and Constantius. The latter were replaced by Galerius Valerius Maximinus in the East and Flavius Valerius Severus in the West, Constantine being passed over. Constantius requested his son's presence from Galerius, and Constantine made his way through the territories of the hostile Severus to join his father at Gesoriacum (modern Boulogne, Fr.). They crossed together to Britain and fought a campaign in the north before Constantius' death at Eboracum (modern York) in 306. Immediately acclaimed emperor by the army, Constantine then threw himself into a complex series of civil wars in which Maxentius, the son of Maximian, rebelled at Rome; with his father's help, Maxentius suppressed Severus, who had been proclaimed Western emperor by Galerius and who was then replaced by Licinius. When Maximian was rejected by his son, he joined Constantine in Gaul, only to betray Constantine and to be murdered or forced to commit suicide (310). Constantine, who in 307 had married Maximian's daughter Fausta as his second wife, invaded Italy in 312 and after a lightning campaign defeated his brother-in-law Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge near Rome. He then confirmed an alliance that he had already entered into with Licinius (Galerius having died in 311): Constantine became Western emperor and Licinius shared the East with his rival Maximinus. Licinius defeated Maximinus and became the sole Eastern emperor but lost territory in the Balkans to Constantine in 316. After a further period of tension, Constantine attacked Licinius in 324, routing him at Adrianople and Chrysopolis (respectively, modern Edirne and Üsküdar, Tur.) and becoming sole emperor of East and West.

Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The triumphal arch erected in his honour at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the "inspiration of the Divinity" as well as to Constantine's own genius. A statue set up at the same time showed Constantine himself holding aloft a cross and the legend "By this saving sign I have delivered your city from the tyrant and restored liberty to the Senate and people of Rome." After his victory over Licinius in 324, Constantine wrote that he had come from the farthest shores of Britain as God's chosen instrument for the suppression of impiety, and in a letter to the Persian king Shapur II he proclaimed that, aided by the divine power of God, he had come to bring peace and prosperity to all lands.

Constantine's adherence to Christianity was closely associated with his rise to power. He fought the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the name of the Christian God, having received instructions in a dream to paint the Christian monogram ( ) on his troops' shields. This is the account given by the Christian apologist Lactantius; a somewhat different version, offered by Eusebius, tells of a vision seen by Constantine during the campaign against Maxentius, in which the Christian sign appeared in the sky with the legend "In this sign, conquer." Despite the Emperor's own authority for the account, given late in life to Eusebius, it is in general more problematic than the other; but a religious experience on the march from Gaul is suggested also by a pagan orator, who in a speech of 310 referred to a vision of Apollo received by Constantine at a shrine in Gaul.

Yet to suggest that Constantine's conversion was "politically motivated" means little in an age in which every Greek or Roman expected that political success followed from religious piety. The civil war itself fostered religious competition, each side enlisting its divine support, and it would be thought in no way unusual that Constantine should have sought divine help for his claim for power and divine justification for his acquisition of it. What is remarkable is Constantine's subsequent development of his new religious allegiance to a strong personal commitment.
 

Commitment to Christianity.
Shortly after the defeat of Maxentius, Constantine met Licinius at Mediolanum (modern Milan) to confirm a number of political and dynastic arrangements. A product of this meeting has become known as the Edict of Milan, which extended toleration to the Christians and restored any personal and corporate property that had been confiscated during the persecution. The extant copies of this decree are actually those posted by Licinius in the eastern parts of the empire. But Constantine went far beyond the joint policy agreed upon at Mediolanum. By 313 he had already donated to the Bishop of Rome the imperial property of the Lateran, where a new cathedral, the Basilica Constantiniana (now S. Giovanni in Laterano), soon rose. The Church of St. Sebastian was also probably begun at this time, and it was in these early years of his reign that Constantine began issuing laws conveying upon the church and its clergy fiscal and legal privileges and immunities from civic burdens. As he said in a letter of 313 to the proconsul of Africa, the Christian clergy should not be distracted by secular offices from their religious duties ". . . for when they are free to render supreme service to the Divinity, it is evident that they confer great benefit upon the affairs of state." In another such letter, directed to the Bishop of Carthage, Constantine mentioned the Spanish bishop Hosius, who was important later in the reign as his adviser and possibly--since he may well have been with Constantine in Gaul before the campaign against Maxentius--instrumental in the conversion of the Emperor.
Constantine's personal "theology" emerges with particular clarity from a remarkable series of letters, extending from 313 to the early 320s, concerning the Donatist schism in North Africa. The Donatists maintained that those priests and bishops who had once lapsed from the Christian faith could not be readmitted to the church. Constantine's chief concern was that a divided church would offend the Christian God and so bring divine vengeance upon the Roman Empire and Constantine himself. Schism, in Constantine's view, was inspired by Satan. Its partisans were acting in defiance of the clemency of Christ, for which they might expect eternal damnation at the Last Judgment. Meanwhile, it was for the righteous members of the Christian community to show patience and long-suffering. In so doing they would be imitating Christ, and their patience would be rewarded in lieu of martyrdom--for actual martyrdom was no longer open to Christians in a time of peace for the church. Throughout, Constantine had no doubt that to remove error and to propagate the true religion were both his personal duty and a proper use of the imperial position. His claim to be "bishop of those outside the church" may be construed in this light. Other such pronouncements, expressed in letters to imperial officials and to Christian clergy, demonstrate that Constantine's commitment to Christianity was firmer and less ambiguous than some have suggested. Eusebius confirmed what Constantine himself believed: that he had a special and personal relationship with the Christian God.

Constantine's second involvement in an ecclesiastical issue followed the defeat of Licinius; but the Arian heresy, with its intricate explorations of the precise nature of the Trinity that were couched in difficult Greek, was as remote from Constantine's educational background as it was from his impatient, urgent temperament. The Council of Nicaea, which opened in the early summer of 325 with an address by the Emperor, had already been preceded by a letter to the chief protagonist, Arius of Alexandria, in which Constantine stated his opinion that the dispute was fostered only by excessive leisure and academic contention, that the point at issue was trivial and could be resolved without difficulty. His optimism was not justified: neither this letter nor the Council of Nicaea itself nor the second letter, in which Constantine urged acceptance of its conclusions, was adequate to solve a dispute in which the participants were as intransigent as the theological issues were subtle. Indeed, for more than 40 years after the death of Constantine, Arianism was actually the official orthodoxy of the Eastern Empire.

The Council of Nicaea coincided almost exactly with the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the reign of Constantine, at which, returning the compliment paid by the Emperor's attendance at their council, the bishops were honoured participants. But Constantine's visit to the West in 326, to repeat the celebrations at Rome, brought the greatest political crisis of the reign. During his absence from the East, and for reasons that remain obscure, Constantine had his eldest son, the deputy emperor Crispus, and his own wife Fausta, Crispus' stepmother, slain. Nor was the visit to Rome a success. Constantine's refusal to take part in a pagan procession offended the Romans; and when he left after a short visit, it was never to return.
 

Final years.
These events set the course of the last phase of the reign of Constantine. After his defeat of Licinius he had renamed Byzantium as Constantinople: immediately upon his return from the West he began to rebuild the city on a greatly enlarged pattern, as his permanent capital and the "second Rome." The dedication of Constantinople (May 330) confirmed the divorce, which had been in the making for more than a century, between the emperors and Rome. Rome had long been unsuited to the strategic needs of the empire: it was now to be left in splendid isolation, as an enormously wealthy and prestigious city--still the emotional focus of the empire--but of limited political importance.
It was perhaps in some sense to atone for the family catastrophe of 326 that Constantine's mother, Helena, embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Her journey was attended by almsgiving and pious works and was distinguished by her church foundations at Jerusalem and at Bethlehem. By the initiative of Eutropia, Constantine's mother-in-law, a church was also built at Mamre, where, according to an interpretation of Genesis shared by Constantine and Eusebius, Christ had first shown himself to men in God's appearance to Abraham; but the most famous of these foundations followed the sensational discovery of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The discovery was taken up with enthusiasm by Constantine, who instigated the building of a great new basilica at the spot, offering unlimited help with labour and materials and suggestions as to design and decoration.

Constantine's interest in church building was expressed also at Constantinople, particularly in churches of the Holy Wisdom (the original Hagia Sophia) and of the Apostles. At Rome, the great church of St. Peter was begun in the later 320s and lavishly endowed by Constantine with plate and property. Meanwhile, churches at Trier, Aquileia, Cirta in Numidia, Nicomedia, Antioch, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere owed their development, directly or indirectly, to Constantine's interest. (see also Index: Old Saint Peter's Basilica)

The Emperor was an earnest student of his religion. Even before the defeat of Licinius he had summoned to Trier the theologian and polemicist Lactantius, to be the tutor of Crispus. In later years, he commissioned new copies of the Bible for the growing congregations at Constantinople. He composed a special prayer for his troops and went on campaigns with a mobile chapel in a tent. He issued numerous laws relating to Christian practice and susceptibilities: for instance, abolishing the penalty of crucifixion and the practice of branding certain criminals; enjoining the observance of Sunday and saints' days; and extending privileges to the clergy while suppressing at least some offensive pagan practices.

Constantine had hoped to be baptized in the Jordan River, but perhaps because of the lack of opportunity to do so--together possibly with the reflection that his office necessarily involved responsibility for actions hardly compatible with the baptized state--he delayed the ceremony until the end of his life. It was while preparing for a campaign against Persia that he fell ill at Helenopolis. When treatment failed, he made to return to Constantinople but was forced to take to his bed near Nicomedia. There, Constantine received baptism, putting off the imperial purple for the white robes of a neophyte; and he died on May 22, 337. He was buried at Constantinople in his Church of the Apostles, whose memorials, six on each side, flanked his tomb. Yet this was less an expression of religious megalomania than of Constantine's literal conviction that he was the successor of the evangelists, having devoted his life and office to the spreading of Christianity.
 

Assessment.
The reign of Constantine must be interpreted against the background of his personal commitment to Christianity. His public actions and policies, however, were not entirely without ambiguity. Roman opinion expected of its emperors not innovation but the preservation of traditional ways; Roman propaganda and political communication were conditioned, by statement, allusion, and symbol, to express these expectations. It is significant, for instance, not that the pagan gods and their legends survived for a few years on Constantine's coinage but that they disappeared so quickly: the last of them, the relatively inoffensive "Unconquered Sun," was eliminated just over a decade after the defeat of Maxentius.
Some of the ambiguities in Constantine's public policies were therefore exacted by the respect due to established practice and by the difficulties of expressing, as well as of making, total changes suddenly. The suppression of paganism, by law and by the sporadic destruction of pagan shrines, is balanced by particular acts of deference. A town in Asia Minor mentioned the unanimous Christianity of its inhabitants in support of a petition to the Emperor; while, on the other hand, one in Italy was allowed to hold a local festival incorporating gladiatorial games and to found a shrine of the imperial dynasty--although direct religious observance there was firmly forbidden. In an early law of Constantine, priests and public soothsayers of Rome were prohibited entry to private houses; but another law, of 320 or 321, calls for their recital of prayer "in the manner of ancient observance" if the imperial palace or any other public building were struck by lightning. Traditional country magic was tolerated by Constantine. Classical culture and education, which were intimately linked with paganism, continued to enjoy enormous prestige and influence; provincial priesthoods, which were as intimately linked with civic life, long survived the reign of Constantine. Constantinople itself was predominantly a Christian city, its dedication celebrated by Christian services; yet its foundation was also attended by a well-known pagan seer, Sopatros.

An objective assessment of Constantine's secular achievements is not easy--partly because of the predominantly religious significance with which the Emperor himself invested his reign, partly because the restlessly innovatory character that dissenting contemporaries saw in his religious policy was also applied by them to the interpretation of his secular achievement. Some of Constantine's contributions can, in fact, be argued to have been already implicit in the trends of the last half century. So may be judged the further development, taking place in his reign, of the administrative court hierarchy and an increasing reliance upon a mobile field army, to what was considered the detriment of frontier garrisons. The establishment by Constantine of a new gold coin, the solidus, which was to survive for centuries as the basic unit of Byzantine currency, could hardly have been achieved without the work of his predecessors in restoring political and military stability after the anarchy of the 3rd century. Perhaps more directly linked with Constantine's own political and dynastic policies was the emergence of regional praetorian prefectures with supreme authority over civil financial administration but with no direct control over military affairs; this they yielded to new magistri, or "masters," of the cavalry and infantry forces. The reduction of the prefects' powers was seen by some as excessively innovatory, but the principle of the division of military and civil power had already been established by Diocletian. A real innovation, from which Constantine could expect little popularity, was his institution of a new tax, the collatio lustralis. It was levied every five years upon trade and business and seems to have become genuinely oppressive.

A lavish spender, Constantine was notoriously openhanded to his supporters and was accused of promoting beyond their deserts men of inferior social status. More to the point is the accusation that his generosity was only made possible by his looting of the treasures of the pagan temples as well as by his confiscations and new taxes; and there is no doubt that some of his more prominent supporters owed their success, at least partly, to their timely adoption of the Emperor's religion.

The foundation of Constantinople, an act of crucial long-term importance, was Constantine's personal achievement. Yet it, too, had been foreshadowed; Diocletian enhanced Nicomedia to an extent that was considered to challenge Rome. The city itself exemplified the "religious rapacity" of the Emperor, being filled with the artistic spoils of the Greek temples, while some of its public buildings and some of the mansions erected for Constantine's supporters soon showed signs of their hasty construction. Its Senate, created to match that of Rome, long lacked the aristocratic pedigree and prestige of its counterpart.

In military policy Constantine enjoyed unbroken success, with triumphs over the Franks, Sarmatians, and Goths to add to his victories in the civil wars; the latter, in particular, show a bold and imaginative mastery of strategy. Constantine was totally ruthless toward his political enemies, while his legislation, apart from its concessions to Christianity, is notable mainly for a brutality that became characteristic of late Roman enforcement of law. Politically, Constantine's main contribution was perhaps that, in leaving the empire to his three sons, he reestablished a dynastic succession, but it was secured only by a sequence of political murders after his death.

Above all, Constantine's achievement was perhaps greatest in social and cultural history. It was the development, after his example, of a Christianized imperial governing class that, together with his dynastic success, most firmly entrenched the privileged position of Christianity; and it was this movement of fashion, rather than the enforcement of any program of legislation, that was the basis of the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Emerging from it in the course of the 4th century were two developments that contributed fundamentally to the nature of Byzantine and Western medieval culture: the growth of a specifically Christian, biblical culture that took its place beside the traditional Classical culture of the upper classes; and the extension of new forms of religious patronage, between the secular governing classes and bishops, Christian intellectuals and holy men. Constantine left much for his successors to do, but it was his personal choice made in 312 that determined the emergence of the Roman Empire as a Christian state. It is not hard to see why Eusebius regarded Constantine's reign as the fulfillment of divine providence--nor to concede the force of Constantine's assessment of his own role as that of the 13th Apostle.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

NOTE: Also see <http://www.apostolics.net/constantine.html> for additional information
                          <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/conv-const.html>
                          <

Marriage Notes for CONSTANTINE* and FLAVIA FAUSTA:
On 28 October 312 Fausta's brother, the emperor Maxentius, suffered defeat and lost his life in the famous Battle of the Milvian Bridge. The next day his body was recovered from the Tiber River. Constantine had the severed head affixed to a pike and carried through the streets of Rome.[[9]] We do not know Fausta's reaction to this act of brutality.
 

Children of CONSTANTINE* and PANKALA* are:
4. i. BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, d. 868.
 ii. CRISPUS, d. Ordered Slain by his father Constantine.
 

Generation No. 4

4.  BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR (CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) died 868.

Child of BASIL*I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR is:
5. i. LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR.
 

Generation No. 5

5.  LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR (BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)  He married ZO* TAUTZAINA.

Child of LEO* and ZO* TAUTZAINA is:
6. i. ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, d. 914.
 

Generation No. 6

6.  ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA (LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) died 914.  She married LOUIS*I, WESTERN EMPEROR.  He died 928.

Child of ANNA* PORPHYOGENETA and LOUIS* is:
7. i. CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7 VIENNE.
 

Generation No. 7

7.  CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7 VIENNE (ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)  He married TEUTBERGA* OF TROYES.

Child of CHARLES* VIENNE and TEUTBERGA* TROYES is:
8. i. CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE.
 

Generation No. 8

8.  CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE (CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)  She married BOSCO* TAILLEFERII, COUNT OF PROVENCE.  He died 965.

Child of CONSTANCE* VIENNE and BOSCO* TAILLEFER is:
9. i. GUILLAUME*9 TAILLEFER, COUNT OF PROVENCE, d. Abt. 944.
 

Generation No. 9

9.  GUILLAUME*9 TAILLEFER, COUNT OF PROVENCE (CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) died Abt. 944.  He married ADELAIDE* OF ANJOU.

Child of GUILLAUME* TAILLEFER and ADELAIDE* ANJOU is:
10. i. CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, b. Abt. 986; d. 25 Jul 1032.
 

Generation No. 10

10.  CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES (GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 986, and died 25 Jul 1032.  She married ROBERT* CAPETII, KING OF FRANCE 1005, son of HUGH* FRANCE and ADELAIDE* POITOU.  He was born 971, and died 1031.

Notes for CONSTANCE* TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES:
Constance of Provence (2nd wife of Robert II of France)
 

Notes for ROBERT* CAPETII, KING OF FRANCE:
Robert II, King of France

Title(s): King of Castile
King of Leon
Emperor of Spain

Marriage Notes for CONSTANCE* TAILLEFER and ROBERT* CAPET:
Constance married Robert II, King of France, he was age 34. She was his second wife.At age 34, Robert married Constance of Provence

Children of CONSTANCE* TAILLEFER and ROBERT* CAPET are:
11. i. ROBERT11 CAPET, ROBERT I, DUKE OF BURGUNDY, b. 1011; d. 21 Mar 1076, Fleury-sur-Ouche, Unknown.
12. ii. HENRY* CAPETI, KING OF FRANCE, b. Apr 1008; d. 04 Aug 1060, of unknown causes in Vitry-en-Brie, France.
 iii. HUGH CAPET, b. 1007.
13. iv. ADELA* CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, b. 1009, France; d. 08 Jan 1079, Missinesmonastre, France.
 

Generation No. 11

11.  ROBERT11 CAPET, ROBERT I, DUKE OF BURGUNDY (CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1011, and died 21 Mar 1076 in Fleury-sur-Ouche, Unknown.  He married HELIA DE SEMUR 1033.

Marriage Notes for ROBERT CAPET and HELIA DE SEMUR:
Helia de Semur married Robert I, Duke of Burgundy, at age 22

Child of ROBERT CAPET and HELIA DE SEMUR is:
14. i. CONSTANCE12 CAPET, b. 1046, Unknown; d. 1092, Unknown.
 

12.  HENRY*11 CAPETI, KING OF FRANCE (CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Apr 1008, and died 04 Aug 1060 in of unknown causes in Vitry-en-Brie, France.  He married ANNE* OF KIEV 1051, daughter of JAROSLAV* and INGIGERD* OLAFSDOTTIR.  She was born 1024, and died 1066.

Notes for HENRY* CAPETI, KING OF FRANCE:
Henry I, King of France

Marriage Notes for HENRY* CAPET and ANNE* KIEV:
At age 27 Anne married Henry I, King of France, he was age 43

Child of HENRY* CAPET and ANNE* KIEV is:
15. i. PHILIP*12 CAPETI, KING OF FRANCE, b. 1052; d. 29 Jul 1108, of natural  causes in an unknown place.
 

13.  ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE (CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1009 in France, and died 08 Jan 1079 in Missinesmonastre, France.  She married (1) RICHARDIII, DUKE OF NORMANDY Jan 1026.    She married (2) BALDWIN* V 'THE PIOUS' COUNT OF FLANDERS Bet. 1028 & 1031, son of BALDWIN* and ELEANOR* CURTHOSE.  He was born Aft. 1012 in Lille, France, and died 01 Sep 1067 in Lille, France.

Marriage Notes for ADELA* CAPET and RICHARD:
Adela married Richard III, Duke of Normandy, at age 18

Notes for BALDWIN* V 'THE PIOUS' COUNT OF FLANDERS:
Baldwin V, Count of Flanders
Title(s): King of England (1413 - 1422)

Children of ADELA* CAPET and BALDWIN* FLANDERS are:
16. i. MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, b. 1031; d. 02 Nov 1083, of natural  causes at Caen, Normandy, France; Stepchild.
17. ii. BALDWIN* VI 'THE PEACEABLE' COUNT OF FLANDERS, b. Mons, Hainault, Belgium; d. Abt. 1070; Stepchild.
 iii. ROBERT I OF FLANDERS.
 iv. JUDITH COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND.
 

Generation No. 12

14.  CONSTANCE12 CAPET (ROBERT11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1046 in Unknown, and died 1092 in Unknown.  She married ALPHONSO JIMENOVI, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON, son of FERDINAND* JIMINO and SANCHA* LEON.  He was born Abt. 1030 in Unknown, and died 30 Jun 1109 in Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain.

Notes for CONSTANCE CAPET:
Constance Capet (daughter of Robert I, Duke of Burgundy)
 

Notes for ALPHONSO JIMENOVI, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON:
Alphonso VI, King of Castile and Leon
 

Child of CONSTANCE CAPET and ALPHONSO JIMENO is:
18. i. URRACA13 JIMENO, QUEEN OF CASTILE AND LOEN, b. 1081, Unknown; d. 08 Mar 1126, Saldana, Spain.
 

15.  PHILIP*12 CAPETI, KING OF FRANCE (HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1052, and died 29 Jul 1108 in of natural  causes in an unknown place.  He married (1) BERTHA* OF HOLLAND.    He married (2) BERTRADE* DE MONTFORT 1092, daughter of SIMON* MONTFORT and AGNES* D'EVREUX.  She was born 1059, and died Aft. 1117.

Notes for PHILIP* CAPETI, KING OF FRANCE:
Philip I, King of France

Title(s): King of Leon
Emperor of Spain

Notes for BERTHA* OF HOLLAND:
Bertha of Holland (wife of Philip I of France)
 

Children of PHILIP* CAPET and BERTHA* HOLLAND are:
19. i. LOUIS*13 CAPETVI, KING OF FRANCE, b. Abt. 1081; d. 01 Aug 1137, of natural  causes at Paris, France.
 ii. CONSTANCE CAPET.
 

16.  MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS (ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1031, and died 02 Nov 1083 in of natural  causes at Caen, Normandy, France.  She married WILLIAM* CURTHOSE, "WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR" Abt. 1053, son of ROBERT* CURTHOSE and HARLETTE (HERLEVA).  He was born 1028 in Castle of Falaise, Normandy in the Autumn, and died Bet. 08 & 09 Sep 1087 in St. Gervais, Rouen, France.

Notes for MATILDA* OF FLANDERS:
     Matilda of Flanders (wife of William the Conqueror)

     French MATHILDE, or MAHAULT, DE FLANDRE (d. 1083), queen consort of William I the Conqueror, whom she married c. 1053. During William's absences in England, the duchy of Normandy was under her regency, with the aid of their son, Robert Curthose (see Robert II [Normandy]), except when he was in rebellion against his father. The embroidery of the Bayeux tapestry was once wrongly attributed to her.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Notes for WILLIAM* CURTHOSE, "WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR":
     BYNAME: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, or THE BASTARD, or WILLIAM OF NORMANDY, French GUILLAUME LE CONQUÉRANT, or LE BÂTARD, or GUILLAUME DE NORMANDIE (b. c. 1028, Falaise, Normandy--d. Sept. 9, 1087, Rouen), duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England from 1066, one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages. He made himself the mightiest feudal lord in France and then changed the course of England's history by his conquest of that country.
     EARLY YEARS: William was the elder of two children of Robert II of Normandy and his concubine Herleva, or Arlette, the daughter of a burgher from the town of Falaise. In 1035 Robert died when returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and William, his only son, whom he had nominated as his heir before his departure, was accepted as duke by the Norman magnates and his feudal overlord, King Henry I of France. William and his friends had to overcome enormous obstacles. His illegitimacy (he was generally known as the Bastard) was a handicap, and he had to survive the collapse of law and order that accompanied his accession as a child.
     Three of William's guardians died violent deaths before he grew up, and his tutor was murdered. His father's kin were of little help; most of them thought that they stood to gain by the boy's death. But his mother managed to protect William through the most dangerous period. These early difficulties probably contributed to his strength of purpose and his dislike of lawlessness and misrule.
     Ruler of Normandy: By 1042, when William reached his 15th year, was knighted, and began to play a personal part in the affairs of his duchy, the worst was over. But his attempts to recover rights lost during the anarchy and to bring disobedient vassals and servants to heel inevitably led to trouble. From 1046 until 1055 he dealt with a series of baronial rebellions, mostly led by kinsmen. Occasionally he was in great danger and had to rely on Henry of France for help. In 1047 Henry and William defeated a coalition of Norman rebels at Val-ès-Dunes, southeast of Caen. It was in these years that William learned to fight and rule.
     William soon learned to control his youthful recklessness. He was always ready to take calculated risks on campaign and, most important, to fight a battle. But he was not a chivalrous or flamboyant commander. His plans were simple, his methods direct, and he exploited ruthlessly any advantage gained. If he found himself at a disadvantage, he withdrew immediately. He showed the same qualities in his government. He never lost sight of his aim to recover lost ducal rights and revenues, and, although he developed no theory of government or great interest in administrative techniques, he was always prepared to improvise and experiment. He seems to have lived a moral life by the standards of the time, and he acquired an interest in the welfare of the Norman church. He made his half brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeux in 1049 at the age of about 16, and Odo managed to combine the roles of nobleman and prelate in a way that did not greatly shock contemporaries. But William also welcomed foreign monks and scholars to Normandy. Lanfranc of Pavia, a famous master of the liberal arts, who entered the monastery of Bec about 1042, was made abbot of Caen in 1063.
     According to a brief description of William's person by an anonymous author, who borrowed extensively from Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, he was just above average height and had a robust, thick-set body. Though he was always sparing of food and drink, he became fat in later life. He had a rough bass voice and was a good and ready speaker. Writers of the next generation agree that he was exceptionally strong and vigorous. William was an out-of-doors man, a hunter and soldier, fierce and despotic, generally feared; uneducated, he had few graces but was intelligent and shrewd and soon obtained the respect of his rivals.
     NEW ALLIANCES: After 1047 William began to take part in events outside his duchy. In support of his lord, King Henry, and in pursuit of an ambition to strengthen his southern frontier and expand into Maine, he fought a series of campaigns against Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou. But in 1052 Henry and Geoffrey made peace, there was a serious rebellion in eastern Normandy, and, until 1054 William was again in serious danger. During this period he conducted important negotiations with his cousin Edward the Confessor, king of England, and took a wife.
     Norman interest in Anglo-Saxon England derived from an alliance made in 1002, when King Ethelred II of England married Emma, the sister of Count Richard II, William's grandfather. Two of her sons, William's cousins once removed, had reigned in turn in England, Hardecanute (1040-42) and Edward the Confessor (1042-66). William had met Edward during that prince's exile on the Continent and may well have given him some support when he returned to England in 1041. In that year Edward was about 36 and William 14. It is clear that William expected some sort of reward from Edward and, when Edward's marriage proved unfruitful, began to develop an ambition to become his kinsman's heir. Edward probably at times encouraged William's hopes. His childlessness was a diplomatic asset.
     In 1049 William negotiated with Baldwin V of Flanders for the hand of his daughter, Matilda. Baldwin, an imperial vassal with a distinguished lineage, was in rebellion against the Western emperor, Henry III, and in desperate need of allies. The proposed marriage was condemned as incestuous (William and Matilda were evidently related in some way) by the Emperor's friend, Pope Leo IX, at the Council of Reims in October 1049; but so anxious were the parties for the alliance that before the end of 1053, possibly in 1052, the wedding took place. In 1059 William was reconciled to the papacy, and as penance the disobedient pair built two monasteries at Caen. Four sons were born to William and Matilda: Robert (the future duke of Normandy), Richard (who died young), William Rufus (the Conqueror's successor in England), and Henry (Rufus' successor). Among the daughters was Adela, who was the mother of Stephen, king of England.
     Edward the Confessor was supporting the Emperor, and it is possible that William used his new alliance with Flanders to put pressure on Edward and extort an acknowledgment that he was the English king's heir. At all events, Edward seems to have made some sort of promise to William in 1051, while Tostig, son of the greatest nobleman in England, Earl Godwine, married Baldwin's half sister. The immediate purpose of this tripartite alliance was to improve the security of each of the parties. If William secured a declaration that he was Edward's heir, he was also looking very far ahead.
     Between 1054 and 1060 William held his own against an alliance between King Henry I and Geoffrey Martel of Anjou. Both men died in 1060 and were succeeded by weaker rulers. As a result, in 1063 William was able to conquer Maine. In 1064 or 1065 Edward sent his brother-in-law, Harold, earl of Wessex, Godwine's son and successor, on an embassy to Normandy. William took him on a campaign into Brittany, and in connection with this Harold swore an oath in which, according to Norman writers, he renewed Edward's bequest of the throne to William and promised to support it.
     When Edward died childless on Jan. 5, 1066, Harold was accepted as king by the English magnates, and William decided on war. Others, however, moved more quickly. In May Tostig, Harold's exiled brother, raided England, and in September he joined the invasion forces of Harald III Hardraade, king of Norway, off the Northumbrian coast. William assembled a fleet, recruited an army, and gathered his forces in August at the mouth of the Dives River. It is likely that he originally intended to sail due north and invade England by way of the Isle of Wight and Southampton Water. Such a plan would give him an offshore base and interior lines. But adverse winds detained his fleet in harbour for a month, and in September a westerly gale drove his ships up-Channel.
     THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS: William regrouped his forces at Saint-Valéry on the Somme. He had suffered a costly delay, some naval losses, and a drop in the morale of his troops. On September 27, after cold and rainy weather, the wind backed south. William embarked his army and set sail for the southeast coast of England. The following morning he landed, took the unresisting towns of Pevensey and Hastings, and began to organize a bridgehead with between 4,000 and 7,000 cavalry and infantry.
William's forces were in a narrow coastal strip, hemmed in by the great forest of Andred, and, although this corridor was easily defensible, it was not much of a base for the conquest of England. The campaigning season was almost past, and when William received news of his opponent it was not reassuring. On September 25 Harold had defeated and slain Tostig and Harald Hardraade at Stamford Bridge, near York, and was retracing his steps to meet the new invader. On October 13, when Harold emerged from the forest, William was taken by surprise. But the hour was too late for Harold to push on to Hastings, and he took up a defensive position. Early the next day William went out to give battle. He attacked the English phalanx with archers and cavalry but saw his army almost driven from the field. He rallied the fugitives, however, and brought them back into the fight and in the end wore down his opponents. Harold's brothers were killed early in the battle. Toward nightfall the King himself fell and the English gave up. William's coolness and tenacity secured him victory in this fateful battle, and he then moved against possible centres of resistance so quickly that he prevented a new leader from emerging. On Christmas Day 1066 he was crowned king in Westminster Abbey. In a formal sense the Norman Conquest of England had taken place.
     KING OF ENGLAND: William was already an experienced ruler. In Normandy he had replaced disloyal nobles and ducal servants with his own friends, limited private warfare, and recovered usurped ducal rights, defining the feudal duties of his vassals. The Norman church flourished under his rule. He wanted a church free of corruption but subordinate to him. He would not tolerate opposition from bishops and abbots or interference from the papacy. He presided over church synods and reinforced ecclesiastical discipline with his own. In supporting Lanfranc, prior of Bec, against Berengar of Tours in their dispute over the doctrine of the Eucharist, he found himself on the side of orthodoxy. He was never guilty of the selling of church office (simony). He disapproved of clerical marriage. At the same time he was a stern and sometimes rough master, swayed by political necessities, and he was not generous to the church with his own property. The reformer Lanfranc was one of his advisers; but perhaps even more to his taste were the worldly and soldierly bishops Odo of Bayeux and Geoffrey of Coutances.
     William left England early in 1067 but had to return in December because of English unrest. The English rebellions that began in 1067 reached their peak in 1069 and were finally quelled in 1071. They completed the ruin of the highest English aristocracy and gave William a distaste for his newly conquered kingdom. Since his position on the Continent was deteriorating, he wanted to solve English problems as cheaply as possible. To secure England's frontiers, he invaded Scotland in 1072 and Wales in 1081 and created special defensive "marcher" counties along the Scottish and Welsh borders.
     In the last 15 years of his life he was more often in Normandy than in England, and there were five years, possibly seven, in which he did not visit the kingdom at all. He retained most of the greatest Anglo-Norman barons with him in Normandy and confided the government of England to bishops, trusting especially his old friend Lanfranc, whom he made archbishop of Canterbury. Much concerned that the natives should not be unnecessarily disturbed, he allowed them to retain their own laws and courts.
     William returned to England only when it was absolutely necessary: in 1075 to deal with the aftermath of a rebellion by Roger, earl of Hereford, and Ralf, earl of Norfolk, which was made more dangerous by the intervention of a Danish fleet; and in 1082 to arrest and imprison his half brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux and earl of Kent, who was planning to take an army to Italy, perhaps to make himself pope. In the spring of 1082 William had his son Henry knighted, and in August at Salisbury he took oaths of fealty from all the important landowners in England, whosoever's vassals they might be. In 1085 he returned with a large army to meet the threat of an invasion by Canute IV (Canute the Holy) of Denmark. When this came to nothing owing to Canute's death in 1086, William ordered an economic and tenurial survey to be made of the kingdom, the results of which are summarized in the two volumes of Domesday Book.
     William was preoccupied with the frontiers of Normandy. The danger spots were in Maine and the Vexin on the Seine, where Normandy bordered on the French royal demesne. After 1066 William's continental neighbours became more powerful and even more hostile. In 1068 Fulk the Surly succeeded to Anjou and in 1071 Robert the Frisian to Flanders. Philip I of France allied with Robert and Robert with the Danish king, Canute IV. There was also the problem of William's heir apparent, Robert Curthose, who, given no appanage and seemingly kept short of money, left Normandy in 1077 and intrigued with his father's enemies. In 1081 William made a compromise with Fulk in the treaty of Blancheland: Robert Curthose was to be count of Maine but as a vassal of the count of Anjou. The eastern part of the Vexin, the county of Mantes, had fallen completely into King Philip's hands in 1077 when William had been busy with Maine. In 1087 William demanded from Philip the return of the towns of Chaumont, Mantes, and Pontoise. In July he entered Mantes by surprise, but while the town burned he suffered some injury from which he never recovered. He was thwarted at the very moment when he seemed about to enforce his last outstanding territorial claim.
     DEATH: William was taken to a suburb of Rouen, where he lay dying for five weeks. He had the assistance of some of his bishops and doctors, and in attendance were his half brother Robert, count of Mortain, and his younger sons, William Rufus and Henry. Robert Curthose was with the King of France. It had probably been his intention that Robert, as was the custom, should succeed to the whole inheritance. In the circumstances he was tempted to make the loyal Rufus his sole heir. In the end he compromised: Normandy and Maine went to Robert and England to Rufus. Henry was given great treasure with which he could purchase an appanage. William died at daybreak on September 9, in his 60th year, and was buried in rather unseemly fashion in St. Stephen's Church, which he had built at Caen. (F.Ba.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
David C. Douglas, William the Conqueror (1964); and Frank Barlow, William I and the Norman Conquest (1965), are the definitive biographies. Earlier works still of value are E.A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, vol. 1-2, 2nd ed. (1870); 3-5, 1st ed. (1869-75); and F.M. Stenton, William the Conqueror and the Rule of the Normans (1908, revised 1967). Among the standard textbooks on William and the Norman Conquest of England are F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (1943); and Frank Barlow, The Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042-1216 (1955). There is a vast literature on the Conquest. A useful introduction is provided by Dorothy Whitelock et al., The Norman Conquest: Its Setting and Impact (1966); and C. Warren Hollister (ed.), The Impact of the Norman Conquest (1969).

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Information found on the official English Royal website: <http://www.royal.gov.uk/history/william1.htm>

WILLIAM I
     Born around 1028, William was the illegitimate son of Duke Robert I of Normandy, and Herleve (also known as Arlette), daughter of a tanner in Falaise. Known as 'William the Bastard' to his contemporaries, his illegitimacy shaped his career when he was young. On his father's death in 1035, William was recognized by his family as the heir - an exception to the general rule that illegitimacy barred succession. His great uncle looked after the Duchy during William's minority, and his overlord King Henry I of France, knighted him at the age of 15.
From 1047 onwards, William successfully dealt with rebellion inside Normandy involving his kinsmen and threats from neighboring nobles, including attempted invasions by his former ally King Henry I of France in 1054 (the French forces were defeated at the Battle of Mortemer) and 1057. William's military successes and reputation helped him to negotiate his marriage to Mathilda, daughter of Count Baldwin V of Flanders. At the time of his invasion of England, William was a very experienced and ruthless military commander, ruler and administrator who had unified Normandy and inspired fear and respect outside his duchy.

     William's claim to the English throne was based on his assertion that, in 1051, Edward the Confessor had promised him the throne (he was a distant cousin) and that Harold II - having sworn in 1064 to uphold William's right to succeed to that throne - was therefore a usurper. Furthermore, William had the support of Emperor Henry IV and papal approval. William took seven months to prepare his invasion force, using some 600 transport ships to carry around 7,000 men (including 2,000-3,000 cavalry) across the Channel. On 28 September 1066, with a favorable wind, William landed unopposed at Pevensey and, within a few days, raised fortifications at Hastings. Having defeated an earlier invasion by the King of Norway at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York in late September, Harold undertook a forced march south covering 250 miles in some nine days to meet the new threat, gathering inexperienced reinforcements to replenish his exhausted veterans as he marched.

     At the Battle of Senlac (near Hastings) on 14 October, Harold's weary and under-strength army faced William's cavalry (part of the forces brought across the Channel) supported by archers. Despite their exhaustion, Harold's troops were equal in number (they included the best infantry in Europe equipped with their terrible two-handled battle axes) and they had the battlefield advantage of being based on a ridge above the Norman positions.

     The first uphill assaults by the Normans failed and a rumor spread that William had been killed; William rode among the ranks raising his helmet to show he was still alive. The battle was close-fought: a chronicler described the Norman counter-attacks and the Saxon defence as 'one side attacking with all mobility, the other withstanding as though rooted to the soil'. Three of William's horses were killed under him.

     William skillfully coordinated his archers and cavalry, both of which the English forces lacked. During a Norman assault, Harold was killed - hit by an arrow and then mowed down by the sword of a mounted knight. Two of his brothers were also killed. The demoralized English forces fled. (In 1070, as penance, William had an abbey built on the site of the battle, with the high altar occupying the spot where Harold fell. The ruins of Battle Abbey, and the town of Battle, which grew up around it, remain.)

     William was crowned on Christmas Day 1066 in Westminster Abbey. Three months later, he was confident enough to return to Normandy leaving two joint regents (one of whom was his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who was later to commission the Bayeux Tapestry) behind to administer the kingdom. However, it took William six years to consolidate his conquest, and even then he had to face constant plotting and fighting on both sides of the Channel. In 1068, Harold's sons raided the south-west coast of England (dealt with by William's local commanders); there were uprisings in the Welsh Marches, Devon and Cornwall. William appointed earls who, in Wales and in all parts of the kingdom, undertook to guard the threatened frontiers and maintain internal security in return for land.

     In 1069, the Danes, in alliance with Prince Edgar the Aetheling (Ethelred's great grandson) and other English nobles, invaded the north and took York. Taking personal charge, and pausing only to deal with the rising at Stafford, William drove the Danes back to their ships on the Humber. In a harsh campaign lasting into 1070, William systematically devastated Mercia and Northumbria to deprive the Danes of their supplies and prevent recovery of English resistance. Churches and monasteries were burnt, and agricultural land was laid to waste, creating a famine for the unarmed and mostly peasant population which lasted at least nine years. Although the Danes were bribed to leave the north, King Sweyn of Denmark and his ships threatened the east coast (in alliance with various English, including Hereward the Wake) until a treaty of peace was concluded in June 1070.

     Further north, where the boundary with Scotland was unclear, King Malcolm III was encroaching into England. Yet again, William moved swiftly and moved land and sea forces north to invade Scotland. The Treaty of Abernethy in 1072 marked a truce, which was reinforced by Malcolm's eldest son being accepted as a hostage.

     William consolidated his conquest by starting a castle-building campaign in strategic areas. Originally these castles were wooden towers on earthen 'mottes' (mounds) with a bailey (defensive area) surrounded by earth ramparts, but many were later rebuilt in stone. By the end of William's reign over 80 castles had been built throughout his kingdom, as a permanent reminder of the new Norman feudal order.

     William's wholesale confiscation of land from English nobles and their heirs (many nobles had died at the battles of Stamford Bridge and Senlac) enabled him to recruit and retain an army, by demanding military duties in exchange for land tenancy granted to Norman, French and Flemish allies. He created up to 180 'Honour (lands scattered through shires, with a castle as the governing Centre), and in return had some 5,000 knights at his disposal to repress rebellions and pursue campaigns; the knights were augmented by mercenaries and English infantry from the Anglo-Saxon militia, raised from local levies. William also used the fyrd, the royal army - a military arrangement which had survived the Conquest. The King's tenants-in-chief in turn created knights under obligation to them and for royal duties (this was called subinfeudation), with the result that private armies centred around private castles were created - these were to cause future problems of anarchy for unfortunate or weak kings. By the end of William's reign, a small group of the King's tenants had acquired about half of England's landed wealth. Only two Englishmen still held large estates directly from the King. A foreign aristocracy had been imposed as the new governing class.

     The expenses of numerous campaigns, together with an economic slump (caused by the shifts in landed wealth, and the devastation of northern England for military and political reasons), prompted William to order a full-scale investigation into the actual and potential wealth of the kingdom to maximize tax revenues. The Domesday survey was prompted by ignorance of the state of land holding in England, as well as the result of the costs of defence measures in England and renewed war in France. The scope, speed, efficiency and completion of this survey was remarkable for its time and resulted in the two-volumed Domesday Book of 1086, which still exists today. William needed to ensure the direct loyalty of his feudal tenants. The 1086 Oath of Salisbury was a gathering of William's 170 tenants-in-chief and other important landowners who took an oath of fealty to William.

     William's reach extended elsewhere into the Church and the legal system. French superseded the vernacular (Anglo-Saxon). Personally devout, William used his bishops to carry out administrative duties. Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070, was a first-class administrator who assisted in government when William was absent in France, and who reorganized the Church in England. Having established the primacy of his archbishopric over that of York, and with William's approval, Lanfranc excommunicated rebels, and set up Church or spiritual courts to deal with ecclesiastical matters. Lanfranc also replaced English bishops and abbots (some of whom had already been removed by the Council of Winchester under papal authority) with Norman or French clergy to reduce potential political resistance. In addition, Canterbury and Durham Cathedrals were rebuilt and some of the bishops' sees were moved to urban centres.

     William was so fearful at his coronation that there might be an uprising and he was so nervous that he shook visibly. His soldiers were equally on edge and those on guard outside the Abbey mistook the cries of acclaim for a call to arms and set about attacking the local populace.

     At his coronation, William promised to uphold existing laws and customs. The Anglo-Saxon shire courts and 'hundred' courts (which administered defence and tax, as well as justice matters) remained intact, as did regional variations and private Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions. To strengthen royal justice, William relied on sheriffs (previously smaller landowners, but replaced by influential nobles) to supervise the administration of justice in existing county courts, and sent members of his own court to conduct important trials. However the introduction of Church courts, the mix of Norman/Roman law and the differing customs led to a continuing complex legal framework. More severe forest laws reinforced William's conversion of the New Forest into a vast Royal deer reserve. These laws caused great resentment, and to English chroniclers, the New Forest became a symbol of William's greed. Nevertheless the King maintained peace and order. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1087 declared 'he was a very stern and violent man, so no one dared do anything contrary to his will ... Amongst other things the good security he made in this country is not to be forgotten.'

     William spent the last months of his reign in Normandy, fighting a counter-offensive in the French Vexin territory against King Philip's annexation of outlying Normandy territory. Before his death on 9 September 1087, William divided his 'Anglo-Norman' state between his sons. (The scene was set for centuries of expensive commitments by successive English monarchs to defend their inherited territories in France.) William bequeathed Normandy as he had promised to his eldest son Robert, despite their bitter differences (Robert had sided with his father's enemies in Normandy, and even wounded and defeated his father in a battle there in 1079). His son William Rufus was to succeed William as King of England, and the third remaining son, Henry, was left 5,000 pounds in silver. William was buried in his abbey foundation of St Stephen at Caen. Desecrated by Huguenots (1562) and Revolutionaries (1793), the burial place of the first Norman king of England is marked by a simple stone slab.

Other information on the web can be found at...<http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Conqueror.html>
 
 

Children of MATILDA* FLANDERS and WILLIAM* CURTHOSE are:
20. i. ROBERT13 CURTHOSEII, "DUKE OF NORMANDY", b. 1052; d. 1134.
 ii. WILLIAM CURTHOSEII, "RUFUS", b. Bet. 1056 & 1060, Normandy, France; d. 02 Aug 1100, Killed by his own Knight while hunting.

Notes for WILLIAM CURTHOSEII, "RUFUS":
     William (Rufus) met his death on a hunting expedition. Reports are that he went in pursuit of a stag, with Walter Tirel, one of his knights, who accidently shot him with the arrow intended to down the animal. William (Rufus) was so unpopular that tradition states that it was left to peasants to load his body onto a farm cart where he was then taken to Winchester for burial in the cathedral. It's also stated that the clergy refused to perform any rites over it.

21. iii. HENRY* CURTHOSEI, KING OF ENGLAND, b. Sep 1068, Selby, North Yorkshire, England; d. 01 Dec 1135, of natural causes at Lyons-la-Forêt, Angers, Normandy, France.
 iv. RICHARD CURTHOSE, d. 1081, Hunting accident?.
22. v. ADELA* CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS", b. Abt. 1062, Normandy, France; d. 08 Mar 1138, of natural  causes at Marcigny-sur-Loire, France.
 vi. CECILIA CURTHOSE, d. 1126.
 vii. ADALIZA CURTHOSE, d. Abt. 1065.
 viii. CONSTANCE CURTHOSE, m. ALAIN IV OF BRITTANY.
 ix. AGATHA CURTHOSE, d. Abt. 1074.
 

17.  BALDWIN* VI 'THE PEACEABLE' COUNT OF12 FLANDERS (ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born in Mons, Hainault, Belgium, and died Abt. 1070.  He married RICHILDE* OF HAINAULT, daughter of RENIER* OF MONS.  She died 15 Mar 1086.

Notes for BALDWIN* VI 'THE PEACEABLE' COUNT OF FLANDERS:
Baldwin VI, Count of Flanders

Title(s): Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenberg (1921 - 1931)
 

Notes for RICHILDE* OF HAINAULT:
Richilde of Hainault (w. of Baldwin VI, Count of Flanders)
 

Children of BALDWIN* FLANDERS and RICHILDE* HAINAULT are:
23. i. GILBERT*13 DE GAUNT.
 ii. BALDWIN II OF HAINAULT.
 iii. ARNOLPH III 'THE UNLUCKY' OF FLANDERS.
 

Generation No. 13

18.  URRACA13 JIMENO, QUEEN OF CASTILE AND LOEN (CONSTANCE12 CAPET, ROBERT11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1081 in Unknown, and died 08 Mar 1126 in Saldana, Spain.  She married RAYMOND OF BURGANDY.  He was born in Unknown, and died 24 May 1107 in Grajal de Campos, Leon, Spain.

Child of URRACA JIMENO and RAYMOND BURGANDY is:
24. i. ALPHANSO*14VII, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON, b. Abt. 1105, Unknown; d. 1157, La Fresneda, Aragon, Spain.
 

19.  LOUIS*13 CAPETVI, KING OF FRANCE (PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 1081, and died 01 Aug 1137 in of natural  causes at Paris, France.  He married (2) ADELAIDE* OF SAVOY 1115, daughter of UMBERTO* and GISELA* BURGUNDY.  She died 1154.

Notes for LOUIS* CAPETVI, KING OF FRANCE:
Louis VI, King of France
 

Marriage Notes for LOUIS* CAPET and ADELAIDE* SAVOY:
Adelaide married Louis VI, King of France, at age 34

Child of LOUIS* CAPETVI, KING OF FRANCE is:
25. i. PHILIPPE*14 CAPETIII, KING OF FRANCE, b. 03 Apr 1245, Poissy, France; d. 05 Oct 1285, of Natural Causes at Perpignan, France.
 

Children of LOUIS* CAPET and ADELAIDE* SAVOY are:
26. ii. LOUIS*14 CAPET, VII KING OF FRANCE, b. 1121; d. 18 Sep 1180, Paris, France of Natural Causes.
 iii. PETER CAPET OF FRANCE.
 

20.  ROBERT13 CURTHOSEII, "DUKE OF NORMANDY" (MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1052, and died 1134.  He married SYBILLA.

Children of ROBERT CURTHOSE and SYBILLA are:
 i. WILLIAM CLITO14 CURTHOSE, COUNT OF FLANDERS, b. 1101; d. 1128.
 ii. HENRY CURTHOSE, b. 1102.
 

21.  HENRY*13 CURTHOSEI, KING OF ENGLAND (MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Sep 1068 in Selby, North Yorkshire, England, and died 01 Dec 1135 in of natural causes at Lyons-la-Forêt, Angers, Normandy, France.  He married (1) MATILDA* (EDITH) DUNKELD OF SCOTLAND 11 Nov 1100 in Westminster Abbey, London, England, daughter of MALCOLM* (CANMORE) and ST-MARGARET* SCOTLAND.  She was born 1079 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, and died 01 May 1118 in of natural  causes at Westminster, London, England.  He married (2) ADELAIDE (ADELIZA) OF LOUVAIN Bet. 1121 & 1122, daughter of COUNT OF LOUVAIN GODFREY.

Notes for HENRY* CURTHOSEI, KING OF ENGLAND:
Title(s): Duke of Lancaster
Prince of Wales
King of England

     Henry was born on the road, so to speak. His mother had accompanied his father on his campaign to subdue the north. He was his mother's favorite and upon her death she left him her English estates which he was not allowed to hold during his father's lifetime. He was very well educated and thought a life in the church would be his career. He was in the hunting party when his brother William was killed and was received as King upon reaching Winchester with his brother's body. Henry was a wise ruler and a skilled diplomat. And when his brother Robert returned from the crusades and proved to be such an inefficient ruler, the people revolted and asked for Henry's help. Robert was taken prisoner and spent the rest of his long life in Cardiff Castle. When his only legitimate son , William was drown in the wreck of the White Ship, crossing the channel from Normandy, it was said to have been so grievous that Henry was never seen to smile again and in hope of another legitimate issue, he married again to Adaliza but upon no male heir, he designated his daughter Matilda to be his heir and chose for her her second husband Geoffrey Plantagenet. Even though Matilda and William were Henry's only legitimate offspring, he left a large illegitimate progeny of 21 or more children. Among them was Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was to champion his half-sister Matilda in her claim to the throne.
     Henry left England for Normandy in August 1135. While staying at Denis-le-Fermont, near Gisors, his all time favorite hunting place, he dinned on a favorite meal of lampreys which always disagreed with him but of which he had an excessive fondness. Ptomaine poisoning ensued and he died on December 1, 1135. His body was returned to England and buried in Reading Abby, but no trace of his tomb has survived and the probable guess is that a parking lot has been built on top of it.

Henry I byname HENRY BEAUCLERC (Good Scholar), French HENRI BEAUCLERC (b. 1069, Selby, Yorkshire, Eng.--d. Dec. 1, 1135, Lyons-la-Forêt, Normandy), youngest and ablest of William I the Conqueror's sons, who as king of England (1100-35) strengthened the crown's executive powers and, like his father, also ruled Normandy (from 1106).

Reign.
Henry was crowned at Westminster, on Aug. 5, 1100, three days after his brother, King William II, William the Conqueror's second son, had been killed in a hunting accident. Duke Robert Curthose, the eldest of the three brothers, who by feudal custom had succeeded to his father's inheritance, Normandy, was returning from the First Crusade and could not assert his own claim to the English throne until the following year. The succession was precarious, however, because a number of wealthy Anglo-Norman barons supported Duke Robert, and Henry moved quickly to gain all the backing he could. He issued an ingenious Charter of Liberties, which purported to end capricious taxes, confiscations of church revenues, and other abuses of his predecessor. By his marriage with Matilda, a Scottish princess of the old Anglo-Saxon royal line, he established the foundations for peaceable relations with the Scots and support from the English. And he recalled St. Anselm, the scholarly archbishop of Canterbury whom his brother, William II, had banished.
When Robert Curthose finally invaded England in 1101, several of the greatest barons defected to him. But Henry, supported by a number of his barons, most of the Anglo-Saxons, and St. Anselm, worked out an amicable settlement with the invaders. Robert relinquished his claim to England, receiving in return Henry's own territories in Normandy and a large annuity.

Although a crusading hero, Robert was a self-indulgent, vacillating ruler who allowed Normandy to slip into chaos. Norman churchmen who fled to England urged Henry to conquer and pacify the duchy and thus provided moral grounds for Henry's ambition to reunify his father's realm at his brother's expense. Paving his way with bribes to Norman barons and agreements with neighbouring princes, in 1106 Henry routed Robert's army at Tinchebrai in southwestern Normandy and captured Robert, holding him prisoner for life. (see also Index: Tinchebrai, Battle of)

Between 1104 and 1106 Henry had been in the uncomfortable position of posing, in Normandy, as a champion of the church while fighting with his own archbishop of Canterbury. St. Anselm had returned from exile in 1100 dedicated to reforms of Pope Paschal II, which were designed to make the church independent of secular sovereigns. Following papal bans against lay lords investing churchmen with their lands and against churchmen rendering homage to laymen, Anselm refused to consecrate bishops whom Henry had invested and declined to do homage to Henry himself. Henry regarded bishoprics and abbeys not only as spiritual offices but as great sources of wealth. Since in many cases they owed the crown military services, he was anxious to maintain the feudal bond between the bishops and the crown. (see also Index: Investiture Controversy)

Ultimately, the issues of ecclesiastical homage and lay investiture forced Anselm into a second exile. After numerous letters and threats between king, pope, and archbishop, a compromise was concluded shortly before the Battle of Tinchebrai and was ratified in London in 1107. Henry relinquished his right to invest churchmen while Anselm submitted on the question of homage. With the London settlement and the English victory at Tinchebrai, the Anglo-Norman state was reunified and at peace.

In the years following, Henry married his daughter Matilda (also called Maud) to Emperor Henry V of Germany and groomed his only legitimate son, William, as his successor. Henry's right to Normandy was challenged by William Clito, son of the captive Robert Curthose, and Henry was obliged to repel two major assaults against eastern Normandy by William Clito's supporters: Louis VI of France, Count Fulk of Anjou, and the restless Norman barons who detested Henry's ubiquitous officials and high taxes. By 1120, however, the barons had submitted, Henry's son had married into the Angevin house, and Louis VI--defeated in battle--had concluded a definitive peace.

The settlement was shattered in November 1120, when Henry's son perished in a shipwreck of the "White Ship," destroying Henry's succession plans. After Queen Matilda's death in 1118, he married Adelaide of Louvain in 1121, but this union proved childless. On Emperor Henry V's death in 1125, Henry summoned the empress Matilda back to England and made his barons do homage to her as his heir. In 1128 Matilda married Geoffrey Plantagenet, heir to the county of Anjou, and in 1133 she bore him her first son, the future king Henry II. When Henry I died at Lyons-la-Forêt in eastern Normandy, his favourite nephew, Stephen of Blois, disregarding Matilda's right of succession, seized the English throne. Matilda's subsequent invasion of England unleashed a bitter civil war that ended with King Stephen's death and Henry II's unopposed accession in 1154.
 

Assessment
Henry I was a skillful, intelligent monarch who achieved peace in England, relative stability in Normandy, and notable administrative advances on both sides of the Channel. Under Henry, the Anglo-Norman state his father had created was reunited. Royal justices began making systematic tours of the English shires, but, although his administrative policies were highly efficient, they were not infrequently regarded as oppressive. His reign marked a significant advance from the informal, personal monarchy of former times toward the bureaucratized state that lay in the future. It also marked a shift from the wide-ranging imperialism of earlier Norman leaders to consolidation and internal development. In the generations before Henry's accession, Norman dukes, magnates, and adventurers had conquered southern Italy, Sicily, Antioch, and England. Henry won his major battles but preferred diplomacy or bribery to the risks of the battlefield. Subduing Normandy in 1106, he contented himself with keeping domestic peace, defending his Anglo-Norman state against rebellion and invasion, and making alliances with neighbouring princes. (C.W.Ho.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
There exists no adequate biography of Henry I. A.L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087-1216, 2nd ed. (1955), contains a good sketch and bibliography of the reign. On Henry's early years, see C.W. David, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy (1920); on Henry's administration, H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles, The Governance of Mediaeval England from the Conquest to Magna Carta (1963); C.H. Haskins, Norman Institutions (1960); and Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, vol. 2, ed. by H.A. Cronne and Charles Johnson (1956).

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Henry I (1068-1135) was the youngest son of William the Conqueror and third of the Norman line of kings. He succeeded his brother, William II, in 1100. Henry helped to unite the Saxons and Normans in England. To gain the favour of the Saxons, Henry married Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland and his Saxon wife Margaret.

During his reign, Henry worked to restrain the growing power of the barons. He promoted the Norman system of centralized rule and gave the royal courts greater authority. His wars against rebellious nobles in France helped start a feeling of English nationalism.
 
 

Notes for MATILDA* (EDITH) DUNKELD OF SCOTLAND:
     Matilda Dunkeld (1st wife of King Henry I)

     Matild's real name was Edith Dunkeld, but was renamed Matilda in honor of Henry's mother. She was the eldest daughter of Malcom III, King of the Scotts and St. Margaret. She was also the granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, which reinforced the Saxon royal blood in this family.

Marriage Notes for HENRY* CURTHOSE and MATILDA* SCOTLAND:
     At age 22, Matilda married King Henry I, who was age 32

Children of HENRY* CURTHOSE and MATILDA* SCOTLAND are:
27. i. MATILDA* "MAUDE"14 CURTHOSE, EMPRESS OF ENGLAND, b. 1102, London, England; d. 10 Sep 1167, near Rouen, France.
 ii. WILLIAM CURTHOSE, DUKE OF NORMANDY, d. 25 Nov 1120.
 iii. RICHARD CURTHOSE, d. 1120.
 

22.  ADELA*13 CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS" (MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 1062 in Normandy, France, and died 08 Mar 1138 in of natural  causes at Marcigny-sur-Loire, France.  She married STEPHEN* OF BLOIS, COUNT OF BLOIS 1080.  He was born Abt. 1045 in Unknown, and died 19 May 1102 in Killed in Battle at Ascalon (Tel Ashqelon), Israel.

Notes for ADELA* CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS":
Adela of Belois, (daughter of William the Conqueror)

     Adela was the one to come up with a compromise between her brother Henry I and Anselm when they reached a standoff concerning whether he would pay homage to the King for lands he claimed to have gotten from the Pope. Adela suggested the Bishops should pay the homage and therefore the King could inturn allow clerical investiture.
 
 

Notes for STEPHEN* OF BLOIS, COUNT OF BLOIS:
Stephen of Blois, Count of Blois (father of King Stephen)
 

Marriage Notes for ADELA* CURTHOS and STEPHEN* BLOIS:
At age 18 Adela married Stephen of Blois, Count of Blois, he was age 35

Children of ADELA* CURTHOS and STEPHEN* BLOIS are:
28. i. THEOBALD*14 DE BLOISII, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE, b. Abt. 1085; d. 10 Jan 1152, Lagny-sur-Marne, France; Stepchild.
29. ii. STEPHEN DE BLOIS, b. 1097; d. 1154.
 iii. WILLIAM DE BLOIS, COUNT OF CHARTRES, d. Aft. 1104.
 iv. HENRY DE BLOIS, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, b. Abt. 1099; d. 1171.
 

23.  GILBERT*13 DE GAUNT (BALDWIN* VI 'THE PEACEABLE' COUNT OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)

Notes for GILBERT* DE GAUNT:
Gilbert de Gaunt (son of Baldwin VI of Flanders)
 

Child of GILBERT* DE GAUNT is:
30. i. EMMA*14 DE GAUNT.
 

Generation No. 14

24.  ALPHANSO*14VII, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON (URRACA13 JIMENO, QUEEN OF CASTILE AND LOEN, CONSTANCE12 CAPET, ROBERT11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 1105 in Unknown, and died 1157 in La Fresneda, Aragon, Spain.  He married (1) BERENGARIA* OF PROVENCE 1128, daughter of RAYMOND* BERENGAR and DOUCE*.  She was born in Unknown, and died 03 Feb 1149 in Unknown.  He married (2) RYKSA* OF POLAND 1153.

Notes for BERENGARIA* OF PROVENCE:
Berengaria of Provence (daughter of Raymond Berengar I)
 

Marriage Notes for ALPHANSO* and BERENGARIA* PROVENCE:
Berengaria married Alphonso VII, King of Castile and Leon, at age 23

Marriage Notes for ALPHANSO* and RYKSA* POLAND:
Ryksa married Alphonso VII, King of Castile and Leon, at age 48

Children of ALPHANSO* and BERENGARIA* PROVENCE are:
31. i. SANCHO*15III, KING OF CASTILE, b. Abt. 1134; d. 1158.
32. ii. SANCHA* OF CASTILE AND LEON, d. 1179.
 

Child of ALPHANSO* and RYKSA* POLAND is:
33. iii. SANCHA* OF CASTILE AND15 LEON, d. 1208.
 

25.  PHILIPPE*14 CAPETIII, KING OF FRANCE (LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 03 Apr 1245 in Poissy, France, and died 05 Oct 1285 in of Natural Causes at Perpignan, France.  He married (1) ISABELLA* OF ARAGON, COUNTESS VON HOHENSTEIN 1262, daughter of JAMES* and IOLANDE* HUNGARY.  She was born 1243, and died 1271.  He married (2) MARY* LOUVAIN, OF BRABRANT 1274, daughter of HENRY* LOUVAINIII, DUKE OF BRABRANT.

Notes for ISABELLA* OF ARAGON, COUNTESS VON HOHENSTEIN:
Isabel of Aragon (daughter of James I, King of Aragon)

Title(s): Countess von Hohenstein  Countess von Hohenstein (1835 cr)

Marriage Notes for PHILIPPE* CAPET and ISABELLA* ARAGON:
At age 17 Philip married Isabel of Aragon, she was age 19

Marriage Notes for PHILIPPE* CAPET and MARY* LOUVAIN:
Mary married Philip III, King of France, when he was age 29

Children of PHILIPPE* CAPET and ISABELLA* ARAGON are:
34. i. PHILIP*15 CAPETIV, KING OF FRANCE (THE FAIR), b. Abt. 1268, Fontainebleau, France; d. 29 Oct 1314, of Accident at Fontainebleau, France.
35. ii. CHARLES* CAPET, COUNT OF VALOIS, b. 1270, France; d. 1325.
 

Children of PHILIPPE* CAPET and MARY* LOUVAIN are:
36. iii. MARGUERITE*15 CAPET, OF FRANCE AND CANTERBURY, b. 1282; d. 14 Feb 1317, of natural causes in Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire, England.
 iv. LOUIS CAPET.
 

26.  LOUIS*14 CAPET, VII KING OF FRANCE (LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1121, and died 18 Sep 1180 in Paris, France of Natural Causes.  He married (1) ALICE* DE BLOIS OF CHAMPAGNE Nov 1160, daughter of THEOBALD* DE BLOIS and MAUD* CARINTHIA.    He married (2) ELEANOR* DE POITIERS, OF AQUITAINE 25 Jul 1137, daughter of WILLIAM* X and AENOR* AIMERY.  She was born 1122 in an unknown place, and died 01 Apr 1204 in the monastery at Fontevrault, Anjou of Natural causes.  He married (3) CONSTANCE OF CASTILE Bef. 18 Nov 1153.

Notes for LOUIS* CAPET, VII KING OF FRANCE:
Louis VII, King of France (The Younger)

Title(s): Duke of Exeter
 

Notes for ALICE* DE BLOIS OF CHAMPAGNE:
Alice of Champagne (wife of Louis VII of France)
 

Marriage Notes for LOUIS* CAPET and ALICE* CHAMPAGNE:
Alice married Louis VII, King of France, at age 40

Notes for ELEANOR* DE POITIERS, OF AQUITAINE:
Eleanor of Aquitaine also called ELEANOR OF GUYENNE, French ÉLÉONORE, or ALIÉNOR, D'AQUITAINE, or DE GUYENNE (b. c. 1122--d. April 1, 1204, Fontevrault, Anjou, Fr.), queen consort of both Louis VII of France (in 1137-52) and Henry II of England (in 1152-1204) and mother of Richard I the Lion-Heart and John of England. She was perhaps the most powerful woman in 12th-century Europe.
Eleanor was the daughter and heiress of William X, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers, who possessed one of the largest domains in France--larger, in fact, than those held by the French king. Upon William's death in 1137 she inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine and in July 1137 married the heir to the French throne, who succeeded his father, Louis VI, the following month. Eleanor became queen of France, a title she held for the next 15 years. Beautiful, capricious, and adored by Louis, Eleanor exerted considerable influence over him, often goading him into undertaking perilous ventures.

From 1147 to 1149 Eleanor accompanied Louis on the Second Crusade to protect the fragile Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, founded after the First Crusade only 50 years before, from Turkish assault. Eleanor's conduct during this expedition, especially at the court of her uncle Raymond of Poitiers at Antioch, aroused Louis's jealousy and marked the beginning of their estrangement. After their return to France and a short-lived reconciliation, their marriage was annulled in March 1152. According to feudal customs, Eleanor then regained possession of Aquitaine, and two months later she married the grandson of Henry I of England, Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy. In 1154 he became, as Henry II, king of England, with the result that England, Normandy, and the west of France were united under his rule. Eleanor had only two daughters by Louis VII; to her new husband she bore five sons and three daughters. The sons were William, who died at the age of three; Henry; Richard, the Lion-Heart; Geoffrey, duke of Brittany; and John, surnamed Lackland until, having outlived all his brothers, he inherited, in 1199, the crown of England. The daughters were Matilda, who married Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria; Eleanor, who married Alfonso VIII, king of Castile; and Joan, who married successively William II, king of Sicily, and Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Eleanor would well have deserved to be named the "grandmother of Europe."

During her childbearing years, she participated actively in the administration of the realm and even more actively in the management of her own domains. She was instrumental in turning the court of Poitiers, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a Centre of poetry and a model of courtly life and manners. She was the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the romantic songs of the troubadours, and the historical matière de Bretagne, or "legends of Britanny," which originated in Celtic traditions and in the Historia regum Britanniae, written by the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth some time between 1135 and 1139.

The revolt of her sons against her husband in 1173 put her cultural activities to a brutal end. Since Eleanor, 11 years her husband's senior, had long resented his infidelities, the revolt may have been instigated by her; in any case, she gave her sons considerable military support. The revolt failed, and Eleanor was captured while seeking refuge in the kingdom of her first husband, Louis VII. Her semi-imprisonment in England ended only with the death of Henry II in 1189. On her release, Eleanor played a greater political role than ever before. She actively prepared for Richard's coronation as king, was administrator of the realm during his crusade to the Holy Land, and, after his capture by the Duke of Austria on Richard's return from the east, collected his ransom and went in person to escort him to England. During Richard's absence, she succeeded in keeping his kingdom intact and in thwarting the intrigues of his brother John Lackland and Philip II Augustus, king of France, against him.

In 1199 Richard died without leaving an heir to the throne, and John was crowned king. Eleanor, nearly 80 years old, fearing the disintegration of the Plantagenet domain, crossed the Pyrenees in 1200 in order to fetch her granddaughter Blanche from the court of Castile and marry her to the son of the French king. By this marriage she hoped to insure peace between the Plantagenets of England and the Capetian kings of France. In the same year she helped to defend Anjou and Aquitaine against her grandson Arthur of Brittany, thus securing John's French possessions. In 1202 John was again in her debt for holding Mirebeau against Arthur, until John, coming to her relief, was able to take him prisoner. John's only victories on the Continent, therefore, were due to Eleanor.

She died in 1204 at the monastery at Fontevrault, Anjou, where she had retired after the campaign at Mirebeau. Her contribution to England extended beyond her own lifetime; after the loss of Normandy (1204), it was her own ancestral lands and not the old Norman territories that remained loyal to England. She has been misjudged by many French historians who have noted only her youthful frivolity, ignoring the tenacity, political wisdom, and energy that characterized the years of her maturity. "She was beautiful and just, imposing and modest, humble and elegant"; and, as the nuns of Fontevrault wrote in their necrology: a queen "who surpassed almost all the queens of the world."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1950), is a major work with complete notes and a good bibliography and sources. H.G. Richardson, "The Letters and Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine," English Historical Review, 74:193-213 (1959), adds some unpublished sources to those gathered by Amy Kelly. Régine Pernoud, Aliénor d'Aquitaine (1965), gives more attention to the personality and politics of Eleanor herself, independently from the history of her two husbands.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Additional information can be found on the web at: <http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Eleanor.html>

Eleanor of Aquitaine
 

The Troubadour's Daughter
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born around 1122. Her grandfather, William IX, was the wealthy and powerful duke of Aquitaine. He was also a musician and poet, acknowledged as history's first troubadour.

William IX didn't just sing about love. By the time he was twenty he had married and divorced his first wife, Ermengarde. His second wife was Philippa (or Maud) of Toulouse, the widowed queen of Aragon. They had two sons, William and Raymond, and five daughters. When the Troubadour tired of Philippa, she moved to the same nunnery where Ermengard lived. After Philippa's death, Ermengarde tried to force William to take her back, but the duke had other ideas. He had abducted a married woman called Dangereuse ("dangerous" in French), and she was now his mistress.

In time the Troubadour decided that his elder son, William, should marry Dangereuse's daughter Aenor. (Dangereuse's husband was Aenor's father.) The younger William didn't want to marry Aenor, but he had no choice. The marriage took place in 1121, and a year or so later Eleanor of Aquitaine was born. She was followed by a daughter, Aelith (or Petronella) and a son, William Aigret.

When Eleanor was about five years old, William the Troubadour died and her father became Duke William X. A few years later, Eleanor's mother and brother died. Now Eleanor was heir to the vast realm of Aquitaine.

Like his father, William X was a patron of the troubadours and storytellers, and growing up in his court Eleanor developed a lifelong love of music and literature. Proud of his lively, intelligent daughter, William gave her an excellent education. She travelled through Aquitaine with him, preparing for her future role of duchess. Father and daughter were close, and it must have been a harsh blow for Eleanor when William, while making a religious pilgrimage, died suddenly of food poisoning.

Eleanor was just fifteen, and her life was about to change forever. On his deathbed William had asked his men to commend Eleanor to the care of Louis the Fat, king of France. Louis was no fool. He knew just what to do with his young, very beautiful, extremely wealthy ward - marry her off to his own son and heir. And so on August 1, 1137, Eleanor of Aquitaine married the future King Louis VII.

Queen of France
Both Eleanor and her husband were in their teens, but they had little else in common. Eleanor was high-spirited and strong-willed; Louis was a quiet, religious young man, regarded by some as a saint. No one ever mistook Eleanor of Aquitaine for a saint.

A few days after the wedding, Eleanor's father-in-law died and her husband became King Louis VII. Eleanor, who was not one to stay at home making tapestries, threw herself enthusiastically into the role of queen. To the dismay of many observers, the new king respected his wife's intelligence and consulted her frequently on matters of state. Queen Eleanor frequently visited Aquitaine, where she was well-regarded by her father's former vassals.

Eleanor's sister, Petronella, was also keeping busy. With Eleanor's encouragement, a nobleman divorced his wife to marry Petronella, which didn't make the family of Wife Number One very happy. War broke out, and Louis led his troops against a town called Vitry, setting it on fire. The townspeople sought refuge in a church, which burned down. More than one thousand people perished. Louis was wracked by guilt.

During the first years of her marriage Eleanor had just one child, who was stillborn. An influential miracle-working abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, told her that she was childless because God disapproved of her wicked ways. Either Eleanor temporarily mended her ways or God relented, because in 1145 she gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Marie. But Eleanor wasn't ready to settle down and be a typical medieval mommy.

The Second Crusade
In 1144 the city of Edessa (located in modern-day Turkey), which had been in Christian hands for almost fifty years, was captured by Muslims. Most of its citizens were massacred or sold into slavery. Inspired by this event and the preaching of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Louis VII and German emperor Conrad III organized their own separate military expeditions to the Middle East. The French and Germans had little interest in cooperating with each other; still, their dual effort is known as The Second Crusade.

Eleanor had no intention of sitting quietly at home while her husband went off on his adventure. The king's advisors may have been opposed to taking Eleanor and her company of 300 women along on the Crusade, but Eleanor was also offering the services of a thousand men from Aquitaine, and the king accepted. When they reached Antioch they were greeted by Eleanor's uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, who had become ruler of the city by marrying its young princess. Raymond entertained the crusaders in grand style, paying special attention to his flirtatious niece.

Although Raymond had a reputation for being a faithful husband, Eleanor's reputation was less spotless, and gossip about their relationship soon began to fly. The rumors followed Eleanor for the rest of her life. Many years later an English chronicler wrote sneeringly, "How Eleanor, queen of France, behaved when she was across the sea in Palestine... all these things are well enough known."

Whether or not Eleanor had an affair with her uncle, she was certainly influenced by him. When Raymond pleaded for Louis's help in defending Antioch, Eleanor took his side. When Louis refused to assist Raymond, Eleanor declared that she wanted a divorce. Louis, who adored his wife, was angry and hurt. He left Antioch and forced Eleanor to go with him. She never saw Raymond again. In 1149 he was killed in a battle against the Muslims. His severed head was sent to the caliph in Baghdad.

The Second Crusade was a failure, partly because of the quarreling among its leaders. Eventually Louis abandoned the cause and returned to France. Eleanor went with him -- on a separate ship. On their way home they stopped in Rome, where the pope persuaded them to go to bed together. The result of this papal intercession was a second daughter, Alix, born in 1150.

But the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII never truly recovered from Eleanor's scandalous behavior in Antioch, and in 1152 Louis granted Eleanor the divorce she desired. Eleanor was not destined to remain single for long.

Queen of England
In 1152, less than two months after her divorce from King Louis VII of France, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, the grandson of England's King Henry I. He was eighteen, eleven years younger than Eleanor. Their marriage scandalized observers. Eleanor, it was rumored, had previously had an affair with Henry's father.

In the words of a contemporary writer, Gerald of Wales, "Count Geoffrey of Anjou when he was seneschal of France took advantage of Queen Eleanor; for which reason he often warned his son Henry, telling him above all not to touch her, they say, both because she was his lord's wife, and because he had known her himself." But, ignoring his father's advice, Henry "presumed to sleep adulterously with the said queen of France, taking her from his own lord and marrying her himself. How could anything fortunate, I ask, emerge from these copulations?"

The first thing to emerge -- just five months after Eleanor and Henry's hasty marriage -- was a son, William. The child died a few years later. By then Henry had claimed the English throne. Eleanor, formerly queen of France, was now the queen of England.  Eleanor was in an advanced stage of pregnancy at the time Henry was crowned King so her coronation didn't take place until 25 December 1158. It is said that she declared "I am Queen of England by the wrath of God."

Eleanor and Henry had seven surviving children: Henry, Matilda, Richard, Geoffrey, Eleanor, Joan, and John. As the children grew up, Eleanor and her husband grew apart. At first Henry conducted secret love affairs. Then he began a public relationship with a knight's daughter, Rosamond Clifford, "the Fair Rosamond." Legend has it that the jealous Queen Eleanor confronted Rosamond with a dagger in one hand and a cup of poison in the other and forced her to choose which way she would die. (Rosamond did die in 1177, but probably of natural causes.)

King Henry later became involved with his son Richard's fiancee, a French princess who also happened to be the daughter of Eleanor's first husband, Louis VII. Not surprisingly, Richard never married the girl.

In 1168 Eleanor returned to France to rule her restless subjects. Her court quickly became a center of culture. She was reunited with her eldest daughter from her first marriage, Marie, who shared her interests. But Eleanor wasn't content to spend the rest of her life patronizing troubadours and presiding over courts of love. She wanted more power than Henry was willing to give her, and she began plotting against him. Henry summoned her back to England, where she continued to scheme.

Eleanor the Eagle
In 1173, Eleanor's three eldest sons - Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey - rebelled against their father, Henry II, with Eleanor's support. They were forced to flee to France. Eleanor tried to follow, disguised as a man, but she was captured by Henry's forces.

King Henry kept Eleanor more or less imprisoned for sixteen long years. His sons continued to war against him; in the end even his favorite son, John, turned against him. Finally, in 1189, Henry II died. Eleanor and Henry's eldest son, Henry, was already dead, so Eleanor's favorite, Richard the Lionheart, became king. Richard soon went away on a crusade, leaving his mother as regent. "He issued instructions to the princes of the realm, almost in the style of a general edict, that the queen's word should be law in all matters," wrote a contemporary chronicler, Ralph of Diceto.

She proved to be a shrewd ruler. When Richard was taken hostage, Eleanor helped to raise his ransom money. She also stood up to Richard's brother John, who plotted to seize the throne. She even managed to get Richard and John to reconcile after Richard's return to England.

Eventually Richard died and John became king. Like Richard, King John respected his mother and heeded her advice. She, in return, supported him against his enemies. Eleanor was now quite elderly by the standards of her time, but she continued to lead an active life, travelling through Europe and arranging marriages for her grandchildren. In 1202 the ailing Eleanor was trapped in a castle by the army of the French king, with whom John was at war, but John freed her.

Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204 at the abbey of Fontevrault, which she had long patronized. She is buried there, as are Henry II and Richard the Lionheart.

According to Ralph of Diceto, Eleanor's life "revealed the truth of a prophecy which had puzzled all by its obscurity: 'The eagle of the broken bond shall rejoice in the third nestling.' They called the queen the eagle because she stretched out her wings, as it were, over two kingdoms - France and England. She had been separated from her French relatives through divorce, while the English had separated her from her marriage bed by confining her to prison . . . Richard, her third son - and thus the third nestling - was the one who would raise his mother's name to great glory."
 

Eleanor of Aquitaine (wife of King Henry II)
 

Marriage Notes for LOUIS* CAPET and ELEANOR* DE POITIERS:
At age 16 Eleanor married Louis VII, King of France, he was age 17

Marriage Notes for LOUIS* CAPET and CONSTANCE CASTILE:
At age 33 Louis VII, King of France (The Younger) married Constance of Castile, she was age 14

Children of LOUIS* CAPET and ALICE* CHAMPAGNE are:
37. i. MARGARET15 CAPET, b. 1158; d. 1198.
38. ii. PHILIP* AUGUSTUS CAPETII, KING OF FRANCE, b. 22 Aug 1165, Gonesse (near Paris), France; d. 1223, Mantes, France of unknown causes.
 

Children of LOUIS* CAPET and ELEANOR* DE POITIERS are:
39. iii. MARY*15 CAPET, OF CHAMPAGNE, b. 1145; d. 1198.
 iv. MARIE CAPET.
 

27.  MATILDA* "MAUDE"14 CURTHOSE, EMPRESS OF ENGLAND (HENRY*13, MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1102 in London, England, and died 10 Sep 1167 in near Rouen, France.  She married (1) HENRY V OF GERMANY.  He died 1125.  She married (2) GEOFFREY* PLANTAGENET, V COUNT OF ANJOU 1128, son of FULK* GATINAIS and ERMENTRUDE* MAINE.  He was born 24 Aug 1113, and died 07 Sep 1151 in Le Mans, Maine, France.

Notes for MATILDA* "MAUDE" CURTHOSE, EMPRESS OF ENGLAND:
Matilda also called MAUD, German MATHILDE (b. 1102, London--d. Sept. 10, 1167, near Rouen, Fr.), consort of the Holy Roman emperor Henry V and afterward claimant to the English throne in the reign of King Stephen.
She was the only daughter of Henry I of England by Queen Matilda and was sister of William the Aetheling, heir to the English and Norman thrones. Both her marriages were in furtherance of Henry I's policy of strengthening Normandy against France. In 1114 she was married to Henry V; he died in 1125, leaving her childless, and three years later she was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, effectively count of Anjou.

Her brother's death in 1120 made her Henry I's sole legitimate heir, and in 1127 he compelled the baronage to accept her as his successor, though a woman ruler was equally unprecedented for the kingdom of England and the duchy of Normandy. The Angevin marriage was unpopular and flouted the barons' stipulation that she should not be married out of England without their consent. The birth of her eldest son, Henry, in 1133 gave hope of silencing this opposition, but he was only two when Henry I died (1135), and a rapid coup brought to the English throne Stephen of Blois, son of William I the Conqueror's daughter Adela. Though the church and the majority of the baronage supported Stephen, Matilda's claims were powerfully upheld in England by her half brother Robert of Gloucester and her uncle King David I of Scotland. Matilda and Robert landed at Arundel in September 1139, and she was for a short while besieged in the castle. But Stephen soon allowed her to join her brother, who had gone to the west country, where she had much support; after a stay at Bristol, she settled at Gloucester.

She came nearest to success in the summer of 1141, after Stephen had been captured at Lincoln in February. Elected "lady of the English" by a clerical council at Winchester in April, she entered London in June; but her arrogance and tactless demands for money provoked the citizens to chase her away to Oxford before she could be crowned queen. Her forces were routed at Winchester in September 1141, and thereafter she maintained a steadily weakening resistance in the west country. Her well-known escape from Oxford Castle over the frozen River Thames took place in December 1142.

Normandy had been in her husband's possession since 1144, and she retired there in 1148, remaining near Rouen to watch over the interests to her eldest son, who became duke of Normandy in 1150 and King Henry II of England in 1154. She spent the remainder of her life in Normandy exercising a steadying influence over Henry II's continental dominions.

THE PERIOD OF ANARCHY (1135-54)
Matilda and Stephen.
Henry I's death precipitated a 20-year crisis whose immediate cause was a succession dispute. But there has been much debate among historians as to whether the problems of these years were the result of some deeper malaise.
No one was enthusiastic about accepting Matilda as queen, especially as her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, was actually at war with Henry at the time of his death. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, one of Henry's many illegitimate sons, was an impressive candidate for the throne, as were Henry's nephews, Theobald and Stephen of Blois. The outcome of the struggle in 1135 was unexpected: while Theobald, the elder brother, was receiving the homage of continental vassals for Normandy, Stephen took ship for England and claimed the throne. Having secured the treasury at Winchester, he was crowned on December 22.

Stephen had been quick and resolute in securing the crown. But after the first flush of victory he made concessions that, instead of winning him support, served to expose his weakness. One such concession was to King David of Scotland, who was also the Earl of Huntingdon in England. When David learned of Stephen's succession, he crossed the border by force. He was effectively bought off by Stephen's agreeing that David's son Henry should receive Carlisle, Doncaster, and the honour of Huntingdon. Stephen obtained the support of Robert of Gloucester by a lavish charter. He also granted a charter to the church forbidding simony and confirmed the rights of church courts to all jurisdiction over clerics. Stephen's lavish appointment of new earls (19 in the course of the reign) was intended in part as a way of undermining the power of the sheriffs and constituted a shift of power away from the centre. Expenditure in Stephen's early years was heavy and achievements few.

Stephen soon alienated the church. Much power in central government had been concentrated in the hands of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and his family. One of Roger's nephews was bishop of Ely, and another was bishop of Lincoln. This was resented by the Beaumont family, headed by the Earl of Leicester, and their allies, who formed a powerful court faction. They planned the downfall of the bishops, and, when a council meeting was held at Oxford in June 1139, they seized on the opportunity provided by a brawl in which some of Roger's men were involved. Rumours of treason were spread, and Stephen demanded that the bishops should make satisfaction. When they did not do so, he ordered their arrest. Thenceforth Stephen was in disfavour with the clergy; he had already forfeited the support of his brother Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, by failing to make him archbishop of Canterbury in 1137. As papal legate, Henry was to be the most influential member of the clergy in the realm.
 

Civil war.
Matilda did not land in England until 1139. She and her half brother Robert of Gloucester established themselves in the southwest; Stephen's main strength lay in the east. In 1141 Stephen was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, but Matilda alienated the Londoners and lost support. When Stephen was exchanged for Robert of Gloucester, who was captured at Winchester, Matilda's fortunes waned. The Angevin cause, however, prospered in Normandy. Although Matilda's son, Henry, mounted an unsuccessful invasion from Normandy in 1147, in 1153 he carried out a vigorous and effective campaign. Stephen, saddened by the death of his elder son Eustace, agreed to a compromise peace. He was to remain king, but he recognized Henry as his heir.
One chronicler said, "In this king's time there was nothing but disturbance and wickedness and robbery." Though this was an exaggeration, it is clear that disorder was widespread, with a great many adulterine castles built (that is, unlicensed castles). It was possible for the earls of Chester and Leicester to make a treaty without any reference to royal authority. Stephen's government lost control of much of England, and power was fragmented and decentralized.

There has been much debate as to why men fought in the civil war. It was much more than a simple succession dispute and can be seen as a natural reaction both to the strong, centralized government of Henry I and to the weak rule of Stephen. The aim of many magnates was to recover lands and offices to which they considered they had hereditary rights: much land had changed hands under Henry I. Men such as Ranulf de Gernons, 4th Earl of Chester, and Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex, changed sides frequently, obtaining fresh grants each time. Essex wanted to recover the lands and positions his grandfather had held. Most men, however, probably did not want to demolish royal government but rather wished to control and profit from it. The institutions of government did not disappear altogether. The period of the "anarchy" strengthened feudal principles of succession to land, but such offices as those of sheriff and castellan did not become hereditary.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Notes for GEOFFREY* PLANTAGENET, V COUNT OF ANJOU:
     Geoffrey IV, Count of Anjou (father of King Henry II)

Title(s): Duke of Lancaster
Prince of Wales
King of England

     By his marriage to Matilda, Geoffrey IV Plantagenet acquired a claim to Normandy and England. Forced to spend his whole life fighting his rivals and the Angevin Castellanos, he nevertheless succeeded in pacifying Anjou, which in 1151 he left to his son Henry (later Henry II of England), Count of Anjou and Maine and Duke of Normandy, who married Eleanor of Aquitaine after the annulment of her marriage to Louis VII of France. Thus the Anglo-Angevin empire of the Plantagenet dynasty was founded, extending from England to the Pyrenees.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

     The Book "Kings and Queens of England and Scotland" by Plantagenet Somerset Fry
Copyright 1999 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London
Text copyright 1999 Plantagenet Somerset Fry, states on page 20 that 'The "Plantagenet" surname was derived from the nickname borne by Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, between 1129 and 1251. Geoffrey wore a sprig of flowering broom (Planta genista) as his personal badge.' Hence, "Plantagenet"

Marriage Notes for MATILDA* CURTHOSE and GEOFFREY* PLANTAGENET:
     At age 14 Geoffrey married Matilda, who was age 26

Children of MATILDA* CURTHOSE and GEOFFREY* PLANTAGENET are:
40. i. HENRY*15 PLANTAGENET, II KING OF ENGLAND, b. 25 Mar 1133, Le Mans, Anjou; d. 06 Jul 1189, Fall from horse near Tours, and taken to Chinon Castle, Loire Valley, France.
 ii. GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET, COUNT OF NANTES, d. 1158.
 iii. WILLIAM PLANTAGENET, COUNT OF POITOU, d. 1164.
 

28.  THEOBALD*14 DE BLOISII, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE (ADELA*13 CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS", MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 1085, and died 10 Jan 1152 in Lagny-sur-Marne, France.  He married MAUD* CARINTHIA 1123, daughter of INGELBERT* CARINTHIA and UTA* PASSAU.  She was born Abt. 1105, and died 1160 in of natural  causes in an unknown place.

Notes for THEOBALD* DE BLOISII, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE:
Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Blois
Title(s): King of Kent ( 856 - 858)

Marriage Notes for THEOBALD* DE BLOIS and MAUD* CARINTHIA:
     At age 18, Maud married Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Blois,who was age 38.At age 18, Maud married Theobald II, Count of Champagne and Blois, he was age 38

Children of THEOBALD* DE BLOIS and MAUD* CARINTHIA are:
41. i. HENRY*15 DE BLOISI, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE, b. Bef. 1152, France; d. 1181.
42. ii. ALICE* DE BLOIS OF CHAMPAGNE.
 

29.  STEPHEN14 DE BLOIS (ADELA*13 CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS", MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1097, and died 1154.  He married MATILDA OF BOULOGNE, daughter of EUSTACEIII, COUNT OF BOULOGNE.

Children of STEPHEN DE BLOIS and MATILDA BOULOGNE are:
 i. BALDWIN15 DE BLOIS, b. Abt. 1126; d. Abt. 1136.
 ii. EUSTACE DE BLOIS, COUNT OF BOULOGNE, b. Abt. 1131; d. 1153.
 iii. WILLIAM DE BLOIS, COUNT OF BOULOGNE, d. 1159; m. ISABEL(LA)* DE WARRENNE; d. Abt. 1199.
 iv. MARY DE BLOIS, COUNTESS OF BOULOGNE, d. 1182; m. MATTHEW I COUNT OF FLANDERS; d. 1173.
 

30.  EMMA*14 DE GAUNT (GILBERT*13, BALDWIN* VI 'THE PEACEABLE' COUNT OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)  She married ALAN* PERCY, 2ND BARON PERCY, son of PERCY*.

Notes for EMMA* DE GAUNT:
Emma de Gaunt (wife of Alan, 2nd Baron Percy)
 

Child of EMMA* DE GAUNT and ALAN* PERCY is:
43. i. WILLIAM*15 PERCY, 3RD BARON PERCY.
 

Generation No. 15

31.  SANCHO*15III, KING OF CASTILE (ALPHANSO*14VII, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON, URRACA13 JIMENO, QUEEN OF CASTILE AND LOEN, CONSTANCE12 CAPET, ROBERT11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 1134, and died 1158.  He married BLANCHE* JIMENO OF NAVARRE, daughter of GARCIA* JIMENO and URRACA* CASTILE.  She died 11 Aug 1158.

Notes for SANCHO*III, KING OF CASTILE:
Sancho III, King of Castile
Title(s): Earl of Kent (1465 cr - 1st)
 

Notes for BLANCHE* JIMENO OF NAVARRE:
Blanche of Navarre (daughter of Garcia IV of Navarre)
 

Child of SANCHO* and BLANCHE* NAVARRE is:
44. i. ALPHONSO*16VIII, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON, b. 11 Nov 1155, Soria, Castile and Leon, Spain; d. 06 Oct 1214, Burgos, Castile, Leon, Spain of natural  causes.
 

32.  SANCHA* OF CASTILE AND15 LEON (ALPHANSO*14VII, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON, URRACA13 JIMENO, QUEEN OF CASTILE AND LOEN, CONSTANCE12 CAPET, ROBERT11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) died 1179.  She married SANCHO* JIMENOVI, KING OF NAVARRE, son of GARCIA* JIMENO and URRACA* CASTILE.  He was born 1150, and died 27 Jun 1194.

Notes for SANCHA* OF CASTILE AND LEON:
     Title(s): Countess of Artois

Child of SANCHA* LEON and SANCHO* JIMENO is:
45. i. BLANCHE* JIMINO OF16 NAVARRE, d. 1229.
 

33.  SANCHA* OF CASTILE AND15 LEON (ALPHANSO*14VII, KING OF CASTILE AND LEON, URRACA13 JIMENO, QUEEN OF CASTILE AND LOEN, CONSTANCE12 CAPET, ROBERT11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) died 1208.  She married ALPHONSO*II, KING OF ARAGON 1174, son of RAYMOND* BERENGAR and PETRONILLA* JIMENO.  He was born 1152 in Barcelona, Spain, and died 1196 in of Natural Causes in Perpignan, France.

Notes for SANCHA* OF CASTILE AND LEON:
Sancha of Castile and Leon (d. of Alphonso VII by 2nd wife)
 

Marriage Notes for SANCHA* LEON and ALPHONSO*:
Sancha married Alphonso II, King of Aragon, at age 22

Children of SANCHA* LEON and ALPHONSO* are:
46. i. PETER*16II, KING OF ARAGON, b. 1174, Unknown; d. 12 Sep 1213, Killed in Battle at Muret, France.
 ii. ALPHONSO*II, COUNT OF PROVENCE AND FORCALQUIER.
 

34.  PHILIP*15 CAPETIV, KING OF FRANCE (THE FAIR) (PHILIPPE*14, LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Abt. 1268 in Fontainebleau, France, and died 29 Oct 1314 in of Accident at Fontainebleau, France.  He married JOAN* DE BLOIS, I QUEEN OF NAVARRE 16 Aug 1284, daughter of HENRY* DE BLOIS and BLANCHE* CAPET.  She was born 14 Jan 1273 in Bar-sur-Seine, France, and died 02 Apr 1305 in OF Unknown AT Vincennes, Paris, France.

Notes for PHILIP* CAPETIV, KING OF FRANCE (THE FAIR):
Earl of Hereford
Duke of Lancaster
King of England

Marriage Notes for PHILIP* CAPET and JOAN* DE BLOIS:
     At age 17 Philip married Joan I, Queen of Navarre, she was age 12.

Child of PHILIP* CAPET and JOAN* DE BLOIS is:
47. i. ISABELLA* CAPET OF16 FRANCE, BOULONGE, b. 1292, Paris, Seine, France; d. 22 Aug 1358, of Natural Causes at Castle Rising, Norfolk, England.
 

35.  CHARLES*15 CAPET, COUNT OF VALOIS (PHILIPPE*14, LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1270 in France, and died 1325.  He married ISABELLA* OF ARAGON, COUNTESS VON HOHENSTEIN 1262, daughter of JAMES* and IOLANDE* HUNGARY.  She was born 1243, and died 1271.

Notes for CHARLES* CAPET, COUNT OF VALOIS:
Charles Capet, Count of Valois (son of Philip III of France)
 

Notes for ISABELLA* OF ARAGON, COUNTESS VON HOHENSTEIN:
Isabel of Aragon (daughter of James I, King of Aragon)

Title(s): Countess von Hohenstein  Countess von Hohenstein (1835 cr)

Marriage Notes for CHARLES* CAPET and ISABELLA* ARAGON:
At age 19 she married Philip III, King of France, he was age 17
 

Children of CHARLES* CAPET and ISABELLA* ARAGON are:
48. i. JOAN*16 VALIOS, (SISTER OF PHILIP VI, OF FRANCE).
49. ii. PHILIPPEVI, KING OF FRANCE, d. Aug 1350.
 

36.  MARGUERITE*15 CAPET, OF FRANCE AND CANTERBURY (PHILIPPE*14, LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1282, and died 14 Feb 1317 in of natural causes in Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire, England.  She married EDWARD* PLANTAGENET, I KING OF ENGLAND 10 Sep 1299 in Canterbury Cathedral, son of HENRY* PLANTAGENET and ELEANOR* PROVENCE.  He was born 17 Jun 1239 in Palace of Westminster, Middlesex, England, and died 07 Jul 1307 in Burgh-on-Sands, near Carlisle, Cumberland (Cumbria),  England.

Notes for MARGUERITE* CAPET, OF FRANCE AND CANTERBURY:
     After Edward's death Margaret moved to Marlborough Castle where she spent the rest of her widowhood, never remarying. She died Feb 14th, 1317. She was buried in the Church of Grey Friers in London which she co-founded, but her monument, and those of nine other members of the royal family interred there, was sold for 50 pounds by the greedy Lord Mayor in the reign of Elizabeth I, and subsequently lost.

Notes for EDWARD* PLANTAGENET, I KING OF ENGLAND:
     BYNAME: EDWARD LONGSHANKS (b. June 17, 1239, Westminster, Middlesex, Eng.--d. July 7, 1307, Burgh by Sands, near Carlisle, Cumberland), son of Henry III and king of England in 1272-1307, during a period of rising national consciousness. He strengthened the crown and Parliament against the old feudal nobility. He subdued Wales, destroying its autonomy; and he sought (unsuccessfully) the conquest of Scotland. His reign is particularly noted for administrative efficiency and legal reform. He introduced a series of statutes that did much to strengthen the crown in the feudal hierarchy. His definition and emendation of English common law has earned him the name of the "English Justinian."
     EARLY LIFE: Edward was the eldest son of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. In 1254 he was given the duchy of Gascony, the French Oléron, the Channel Islands, Ireland, Henry's lands in Wales, and the earldom of Chester, as well as several castles. Henry negotiated Edward's marriage with Eleanor, half sister of Alfonso X of Leon and Castile. Edward married Eleanor at Las Huelgas in Spain (October 1254) and then traveled to Bordeaux to organize his scattered appanage. He now had his own household and officials, chancery and seal, with an exchequer (treasury) at Bristol Castle; though nominally governing all his lands, he merely enjoyed the revenues in Gascony and Ireland. He returned to England in November 1255 and attacked Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, to whom his Welsh subjects had appealed for support when Edward attempted to introduce English administrative units in his Welsh lands. Edward, receiving no help from either Henry or the marcher lords, was defeated ignominiously. His arrogant lawlessness and his close association with his greedy Poitevin uncles, who had accompanied his mother from France, increased Edward's unpopularity among the English. But after the Poitevins were expelled, Edward fell under the influence of Simon de Montfort, his uncle by marriage, with whom he made a formal pact. Montfort was the leader of a baronial clique that was attempting to curb the misgovernment of Henry.
     Edward reluctantly accepted the Provisions of Oxford (1258), which gave effective government to the barons at the expense of the king. On the other hand, he intervened dramatically to support the radical Provisions of Westminster (October 1259), which ordered the barons to accept reforms demanded by their tenants. In the dangerous crisis early in 1260 he supported Montfort and the extremists, though finally he deserted Montfort and was forgiven by Henry (May 1260). He was sent to Gascony in October 1260 but returned early in 1263. Civil war had now broken out between Henry and the barons, who were supported by London. Edward's violent behavior and his quarrel with the Londoners harmed Henry's cause. At the Battle of Lewes (May 14, 1264) his vengeful pursuit of the Londoners early in the battle contributed to Henry's defeat. Edward surrendered and became a hostage in Montfort's hands. He escaped at Hereford in May 1265 and took charge of the royalist forces, penned Montfort behind the River Severn, and, by lightning strategy, destroyed a large relieving army at Kenilworth (August 1). On August 4 he trapped and slew Montfort at Evesham and rescued Henry. Shattered and enfeebled, Henry allowed Edward effective control of government, and the latter's extreme policy of vengeance, especially against the Londoners, revived and prolonged rebel resistance. Finally, the papal legate Ottobuono, Edward's uncle Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and other moderates persuaded Henry to the milder policy of the Dictum of Kenilworth (Oct. 31, 1266), and after some delay the rebels surrendered. Edward took the cross (1268), intending to join the French king Louis IX on a crusade to the Holy Land, but was delayed by lack of money until August 1270. Louis died before Edward's arrival; and Edward, after wintering in Sicily, went to Acre, where he stayed from May 1271 to September 1272, winning fame by his energy and courage and narrowly escaping death by assassination but achieving no useful results. On his way home he learned in Sicily of Henry III's death on Nov. 16, 1272. (see also Index: Barons' War)
     ACCESSION AND CHARACTOR: Edward had nominated Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, Philip Basset, Roger Mortimer, and his trusted clerk Robert Burnell to safeguard his interests during his absence. After Henry's funeral, the English barons all swore fealty to Edward (Nov. 20, 1272). His succession by hereditary right and the will of his magnates was proclaimed, and England welcomed the new reign peacefully, Burnell taking charge of the administration with his colleagues' support. The quiet succession demonstrated England's unity only five years after a bitter civil war. Edward could journey homeward slowly, halting in Paris to do homage to his cousin Philip III for his French lands (July 26, 1273), staying several months in Gascony and reaching Dover on Aug. 2, 1274, for his coronation at Westminster on August 19. Now 35 years old, Edward had redeemed a bad start. He had been arrogant, lawless, violent, treacherous, revengeful, and cruel; his Angevin rages matched those of Henry II. Loving his own way and intolerant of opposition, he had still proved susceptible to influence by strong-minded associates. He had shown intense family affection, loyalty to friends, courage, brilliant military capacity, and a gift for leadership; handsome, tall, powerful, and tough, he had the qualities men admired. He loved efficient, strong government, enjoyed power, and had learned to admire justice, though in his own affairs it was often the letter, not the spirit of the law that he observed. Having mastered his anger, he had shown himself capable of patient negotiation, generosity, and even idealism; and he preferred the society and advice of strong counselors with good minds. As long as Burnell and Queen Eleanor lived, the better side of Edward triumphed, and the years until about 1294 were years of great achievement. Thereafter, his character deteriorated for lack of domestic comfort and independent advice. He allowed his autocratic temper full rein and devoted his failing energies to prosecution of the wars in France and against Scotland.
     PARLIMENT AND STATUTES: Shrewdly realistic, Edward understood the value of the "parliaments," which since 1254 had distinguished English government and which Montfort had deliberately employed to publicize government policy and to enlist widespread, active support by summoning representatives of shires and boroughs to the council to decide important matters. Edward developed this practice swiftly, not to share royal power with his subjects but to strengthen royal authority with the support of rising national consciousness. From 1275 to 1307 he summoned knights and burgesses to his parliaments in varying manners. The Parliament of 1295, which included representatives of shires, boroughs, and the lesser clergy, is usually styled the Model Parliament, but the pattern varied from assembly to assembly, as Edward decided. By 1307, Parliament, thus broadly constituted, had become the distinctive feature of English politics, though its powers were still undefined and its organization embryonic.
     Edward used these parliaments and other councils to enact measures of consolidation and reform in legal, procedural, and administrative matters of many kinds. The great statutes promulgated between 1275 and 1290 are the glory of his reign. Conservative and definitory rather than original, they owed much to Burnell, Edward's chancellor. With the vast developments and reorganization of the administrative machine that Burnell coordinated, they created a new era in English government. The quo warranto inquiry, begun in 1275, the statutes of Gloucester (1278) and of Quo Warranto (1290) sought with much success to bring existing franchises under control and to prevent the unauthorized assumption of new ones. Tenants were required to show "by what warrant" or right they held their franchises. Edward strove, unsuccessfully, to restore the feudal army and strengthen local government institutions by compelling minor landowners to assume the duties of knighthood. His land legislation, especially the clause de donis conditionalibus in the miscellaneous Second Statute of Westminster (1285) and the statute Quia Emptores (Third Statute of Westminster, 1290), eventually helped to undermine feudalism, quite contrary to his purpose. By the Statute of Mortmain (1279) the crown gained control of the acquisition of land by ecclesiastical bodies. The Statute of Winchester (1285) codified and strengthened the police system for preserving public order. The Statute of Acton Burnell (1283) and the Statute of Merchants (1285) showed practical concern for trade and merchants. These are but the most famous of many statutes aimed at efficiency and sound administration.
     WARS: Meanwhile, Edward destroyed the autonomous principality of Wales, which, under Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, had expanded to include all Welsh lordships and much territory recovered from the marcher lords. Domestic difficulties had compelled Henry III to recognize Llywelyn's gains by the Treaty of Shrewsbury (1267), but Edward was determined to reduce Llywelyn and used Llywelyn's persistent evasion of his duty to perform homage as a pretext for attack. He invaded Wales by three coordinated advances with naval support (1277), blockaded Llywelyn in Snowdonia, starved him into submission, and stripped him of all his conquests since 1247. He then erected a tremendous ring of powerful castles encircling Gwynedd and reorganized the conquered districts as shires and hundreds. When English rule provoked rebellion, he methodically re conquered the principality, killing both Llywelyn (1282) and his brother David (1283). By the Statute of Wales (1284) he completed the reorganization of the principality on English lines, leaving the Welsh marchers unaffected. A further Welsh rising in 1294-95 was ruthlessly crushed, and Wales remained supine for more than 100 years.
After 1294, matters deteriorated. Queen Eleanor had died in 1290, Burnell in 1292, and Edward never thereafter found such good advisers. The conquest and fortification of Wales had badly strained his finances; now endless wars with Scotland and France bankrupted him. He quarrelled bitterly with both clergy and barons, behaving as a rash and obstinate autocrat who refused to recognize his limitations. Philip III and Philip IV of France had both cheated him of the contingent benefits promised by the Treaty of Paris (1259). By constant intervention on pretext of suzerainty they had nibbled at his Gascon borders and undermined the authority of his administration there. After doing homage to Philip IV in 1286, Edward visited Gascony to reorganize the administration and restore authority. On returning to England in 1289 he had to dismiss many judges and officials for corruption and oppression during his absence. In 1290, having systematically stripped the Jews of their remaining wealth, he expelled them from England. French intervention in Gascony was now intensified; affrays between English and French sailors inflamed feelings; and in 1293 Philip IV tricked Edward's brother Edmund, earl of Lancaster, who was conducting negotiations, into ordering a supposedly formal and temporary surrender of the duchy, which Philip then refused to restore. The Welsh rising and Scottish troubles prevented Edward from taking action, and when at last, in 1297, he sailed to attack France from Flanders, his barons refused to invade Gascony, and William Wallace's rising forced him to return. He made peace with Philip (1299) and by Boniface VIII's persuasion married Philip's sister Margaret, and eventually recovered an attenuated Gascon duchy.
     For more than 100 years relations between England and Scotland had been amicable, and the border had been remarkably peaceful. Edward inaugurated 250 years of bitter hatred, savage warfare, and bloody border forays. The deaths of Alexander III of Scotland (1286) and his granddaughter Margaret, the Maid of Norway (1290), whom Edward planned to marry to his heir, Edward of Caernarvon (afterward Edward II), ended the line of succession. Many dubious claimants arose, and the Scottish magnates requested Edward's arbitration. Edward compelled the nobles and the claimants to recognize his suzerainty, and only then adjudged John de Balliol king (1292). Balliol did homage and was crowned, but Edward's insistence on effective jurisdiction, as suzerain, in Scottish cases eventually provoked the Scottish nobles to force Balliol to repudiate Edward's claims and to ally with France (1295). Edward invaded and conquered Scotland (1296), removing to Westminster the coronation stone of Scone. Wallace led a revolt in 1297, and Edward, though brilliantly victorious at Falkirk (July 22, 1298), could not subdue the rebellion despite prolonged campaigning (1298-1303).
     LAST YEARS: The strain of these years provoked heavy collisions between Edward and his magnates. He had quarrelled violently with his archbishops of Canterbury, John Peckham (1279-92) and Robert Winchelsey (1293-1313), over ecclesiastical liberties and jurisdiction. In 1297 Winchelsey, obeying Pope Boniface VIII's bull Clericis Laicos (1296), rejected Edward's demands for taxes from the clergy, whereupon Edward outlawed the clergy. His barons now defied his orders to invade Gascony and, when Edward went to Flanders, compelled the regents to confirm the charters of liberties, with important additions forbidding arbitrary taxation (1297), thereby forcing Edward to abandon the campaign and eventually to make peace with France. Although Pope Clement V, more pliant than Boniface, allowed Edward to exile Winchelsey and intimidate the clergy (1306), the barons had exacted further concessions (1301) before reconciliation. Edward renewed the conquest of Scotland in 1303, captured Stirling in 1304, and executed Wallace as a traitor in 1305; but when Scotland seemed finally subjected, Robert I the Bruce revived rebellion and was crowned in 1306. On his way to reconquer Scotland, Edward died near Carlisle. (see also Index: church and state)
(R.F.Tr.)

 Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

     More information can be found on the official Royals of England website at: http://www.royal.gov.uk/history/edward1.htm

Edward I
     Born in June 1239 at Westminster, Edward was named by his father Henry III after the last Anglo Saxon king (and his father's favorite saint) Edward the Confessor. Edward's parents were renowned for their patronage of the arts (his mother, Eleanor of Provence, encouraged Henry III to spend money on the arts, which included the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey and a still-extant magnificent shrine to house the body of Edward the Confessor), and Edward received a disciplined education - reading and writing in Latin and French, with training in the arts, sciences and music.
     In 1254, Edward travelled to Spain for an arranged marriage at the age of 15 to 9-year-old Eleanor of Castile. Just before Edward's marriage, Henry III gave him the duchy of Gascony, one of the few remnants of the once vast French possessions of the English Angevin kings. Gascony was part of a package which included parts of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the King's lands in Wales to provide an income for Edward. Edward then spent a year in Gascony, studying its administration.

The Book "Kings and Queens of England and Scotland" by Plantagenet Somerset Fry, Copyright 1999 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London Text copyright 1999 Plantagenet Somerset Fry, states on page 27 says: Edward is best remembered for his attempt to unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland under his personal rule as well as conquering Wales. In summoning the so-called "Model Parliament" in 1295 he had made an early attempt at representative democracy. When he left on crusade in 1270 he left heir to the throne, but he returned as King in 1274, his father Henry III having died two years earlier in 1272 while he was still away on crusade.

Edward was destined to become the outstanding English warrior king of the Middle Ages and fortunately inherited none of his father's weaknesses, taking instead, after his able uncle Richard of Cornwall. He also possessed his mother's strength of character, untempered by her frivolity. Edward set out to join the crusades in 1270 and the romantic (though probably untrue) story is told of Eleanor sucking the poison from his wounded arm after he was struck with a poisoned dagger. Edward died in 1370 campaigning in the north. He was struck down by dysentery having just completed his 68th year, a remarkable age for that era. He was taken back to Westminster and buried near his father and first wife with no adornment on his tomb.

Marriage Notes for MARGUERITE* CAPET and EDWARD* PLANTAGENET:
     Edward had so long mourned the death of his beloved, treasured first wife Eleanore, that it was surprising that he would marry again. However, at age 18, Margaret married King Edward I, he was age 60 years, 2 months, 23 days. Margaret landed at Dover on 08 Sep. 1299 and the marriage took place two days later. Although there was an age difference of about 40 years, the marriage was very good. Margaret was a devoted wife, a good stepmother and bore Edward two or three more children.

Children of MARGUERITE* CAPET and EDWARD* PLANTAGENET are:
50. i. THOMAS*16 PLANTAGENET, OF BROTHERTON AND NORFOLK, b. 01 Jun 1300, Cawood Castle, Brotherton, North Yorkshire, England; d. Aug 1338, of natural  causes at an unknown place.
51. ii. EDMUND PLANTAGENET, EARL OF KENT, b. 1301; d. 1330.
 iii. ELEANOR PLANTAGENET, b. 1306; d. 1311.
 

37.  MARGARET15 CAPET (LOUIS*14, LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1158, and died 1198.  She married (1) HENRY PLANTAGENET, " THE YOUNG KING", son of HENRY* PLANTAGENET and ELEANOR* DE POITIERS.  He was born 1155, and died 11 Jun 1183 in Died of fever in France.  She married (2) BELA III OF HUNGARY.

Notes for MARGARET CAPET:
     Margaret was the daughter of Henry's mother's first husband King Louis VII, Martel of France by another wife. She had been married to Henry II since Henry was 5 years old. Her father took exception to the fact that his daughter, Margaret had not been crowned with her husband and to appease him the ceremony was repeated at Winchester Cathedral on 27 Aug 1172.

Notes for HENRY PLANTAGENET, " THE YOUNG KING":
Henry the Young King also called HENRY FITZHENRY (b. Feb. 28, 1155, London--d. June 11, 1183, Martel, Quercy, Fr.), second son of King Henry II of England by Eleanor of Aquitaine; he was regarded, after the death of his elder brother, William, in 1156, as his father's successor in England, Normandy, and Anjou.
In 1158 Henry, only three years of age, was betrothed to Margaret, daughter of Louis VII of France and his second wife, on condition that Margaret's dowry would be the Vexin, the border region between Normandy (then held by England) and France. Henry II took advantage of Pope Alexander III's political difficulties to secure the Pope's permission for the children to be married in 1160. On June 14, 1170, the young Henry was crowned king (theoretically to rule in association with his father) at Westminster by Archbishop Roger of York. York's officiation, usurping a prerogative of the archbishop of Canterbury, exacerbated the dispute between the latter, namely, Thomas Becket, and Henry II, which ended with Becket's murder six months later. Crowned again on Aug. 27, 1172 (this time with Margaret), the Young King received no share of his father's power. (He was nevertheless called by contemporaries and by certain later chroniclers King Henry III.)

With his mother and his brothers Richard (the future Richard I) and Geoffrey, he nearly overthrew Henry II in 1173. Forgiven for this revolt, he intrigued further against his father with Louis VII. In 1182-83 he waged war against Richard over Poitou, and he was preparing to fight Richard again when he died in France of dysentery.

The Young King was so popular that the people of Le Mans and Rouen almost went to war for the custody of his body, and in his mother's hereditary lands he was immortalized in the "Lament for the Young King" by the troubadour Bertran de Born.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Child of MARGARET CAPET and HENRY PLANTAGENET is:
 i. WILLIAM16 PLANTAGENET, b. 1177; d. 1177.
 

38.  PHILIP* AUGUSTUS15 CAPETII, KING OF FRANCE (LOUIS*14, LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 22 Aug 1165 in Gonesse (near Paris), France, and died 1223 in Mantes, France of unknown causes.  He married ISABEL* OF HAINAULT, daughter of UNKNOWN* COUNT OF HAINAULT.  She died 1190.

Notes for PHILIP* AUGUSTUS CAPETII, KING OF FRANCE:
Philip II, King of France
 

Child of PHILIP* CAPET and ISABEL* HAINAULT is:
52. i. LOUIS*16 CAPETVIII, KING OF FRANCE, b. 05 Sep 1187; d. 08 Nov 1226, Montpensier, Auvergne, France of Natural Causes.
 

39.  MARY*15 CAPET, OF CHAMPAGNE (LOUIS*14, LOUIS*13, PHILIP*12, HENRY*11, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 1145, and died 1198.  She married HENRY* DE BLOISI, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE Abt. 1164, son of THEOBALD* DE BLOIS and MAUD* CARINTHIA.  He was born Bef. 1152 in France, and died 1181.

Notes for HENRY* DE BLOISI, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE:
Title(s): King of the English

Marriage Notes for MARY* CAPET and HENRY* DE BLOIS:
     At age 19, Mary married Henry I, Count of Champagne, who was age 12.

Children of MARY* CAPET and HENRY* DE BLOIS are:
53. i. THEOBALD*16 DE BLOISIII, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE.
 ii. HENRY DE BLOISI, KING OF JERUSALEM, d. 1197, Acre (Akko), Israel of an accident.
 

40.  HENRY*15 PLANTAGENET, II KING OF ENGLAND (MATILDA* "MAUDE"14 CURTHOSE, EMPRESS OF ENGLAND, HENRY*13, MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born 25 Mar 1133 in Le Mans, Anjou, and died 06 Jul 1189 in Fall from horse near Tours, and taken to Chinon Castle, Loire Valley, France.  He married ELEANOR* DE POITIERS, OF AQUITAINE 18 May 1152 in Bordeaux Cathedral, Gascony, Bordeaux, France, daughter of WILLIAM* X and AENOR* AIMERY.  She was born 1122 in an unknown place, and died 01 Apr 1204 in the monastery at Fontevrault, Anjou of Natural causes.

Notes for HENRY* PLANTAGENET, II KING OF ENGLAND:
Title(s): Earl of Huntingdon
Duke of Exeter

Henry II, byname HENRY OF ANJOU, HENRY PLANTAGENET, HENRY FITZ-EMPRESS, or HENRY CURTMANTLE (Short Mantle) (b. 1133, Le Mans, Maine--d. July 6, 1189, near Tours), duke of Normandy (from 1150), count of Anjou (from 1151), duke of Aquitaine (from 1152), and king of England (from 1154), who greatly expanded his Anglo-French domains and strengthened the royal administration in England. His quarrels with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, and with members of his family (his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and such sons as Richard the Lion-Heart and John Lackland) ultimately brought about his defeat.

Early life.
After receiving a good literary education, part of it in England, Henry became duke of Normandy in 1150 and count of Anjou on the death of his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, in 1151. Although the claim of his mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I, to the English crown had been set aside by her cousin, King Stephen, in 1152, Henry advanced his fortunes by marrying the beautiful and talented Eleanor, recently divorced from King Louis VII of France, who brought with her hand the lordship of Aquitaine. Henry invaded England in 1153, and King Stephen agreed to accept him as coadjutor and heir. When Stephen died the following year Henry succeeded without opposition, thus becoming lord of territories stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees.
The young king lacked visible majesty. Of stocky build, with freckled face, close-cut tawny hair, and gray eyes, he dressed carelessly and grew to be bulky; but his personality commanded attention and drew men to his service. He could be a good companion, with ready repartee in a jostling crowd, but he displayed at times the ungovernable temper of a furious animal and could be heartless and ruthless when necessary. Restless, impetuous, always on the move, regardless of the convenience of others, he was at ease with scholars, and his administrative decrees were the work of a cool realist. In his long reign of 34 years he spent an aggregate of only 14 in England.

Reign.
His career may be considered in three aspects: the defense and enlargement of his dominions, the involvement in two lengthy and disastrous personal quarrels, and his lasting administrative and judicial reforms.
His territories are often called the Angevin Empire. This is a misnomer, for Henry's sovereignty rested upon various titles, and there was no institutional or legal bond between different regions. Some, indeed, were under the feudal overlordship of the king of France. By conquest, through diplomacy, and through the marriages of two of his sons, he gained acknowledged possession of what is now the west of France from the northernmost part of Normandy to the Pyrenees, near Carcassonne. During his reign, the dynastic marriages of three daughters gave him political influence in Germany, Castile, and Sicily. His continental dominions brought him into contact with Louis VII of France, the German emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), and, for much of the reign, Pope Alexander III. With Louis the relationship was ambiguous. Henry had taken Louis's former wife and her rich heritage. He subsequently acquired the Vexin in Normandy by the premature marriage of his son Henry to Louis's daughter, and during much of his reign he was attempting to outfight or outwit the French king, who, for his part, gave shelter and comfort to Henry's enemy, Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. The feud with Louis implied friendly relations with Germany, where Henry was helped by his mother's first marriage to the emperor Henry V but hindered by Frederick's maintenance of an antipope, the outcome of a disputed papal election in 1159. Louis supported Alexander III, whose case was strong, and Henry became arbiter of European opinion. Though acknowledging Alexander, he continued throughout the Becket controversy to threaten transference of allegiance to Frederick's antipope, thus impeding Alexander's freedom of action. (see also Index: papacy)

Early in his reign Henry obtained from Malcolm III of Scotland homage and the restoration of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, and later in the reign (1174) homage was exacted from William the Lion, Malcolm's brother and successor. In 1157 Henry invaded Wales and received homage, though without conquest. In Ireland, reputedly bestowed upon him by Pope Adrian IV, Henry allowed an expedition of barons from South Wales to establish Anglo-Norman supremacy in Leinster (1169), which the King himself extended in 1171.

His remarkable achievements were impaired, however, by the stresses caused by a dispute with Becket and by discords in his own family.

The quarrel with Becket, Henry's trusted and successful chancellor (1154-62), broke out soon after Becket's election to the archbishopric of Canterbury (May 1162; see Becket, Saint Thomas). It led to a complete severance of relations and to the Archbishop's voluntary exile. Besides disrupting the public life of the church, this situation embroiled Henry with Louis VII and Alexander III; and, though it seemingly did little to hamper Henry's activities, the time and service spent in negotiations and embassies was considerable, and the tragic denouement in Becket's murder earned for Henry a good deal of damaging opprobrium.

More dangerous were the domestic quarrels, which thwarted Henry's plans and even endangered his life and which finally brought him down in sorrow and shame.

Throughout his adult life Henry's sexual morality was lax; but his relations with Eleanor, 11 years his senior, were for long tolerably harmonious, and, between 1153 and 1167, she bore him eight children. Of these, the four sons who survived infancy--Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, and John--repaid his genuine affection with resentment toward their father and discord among themselves. None was blameless, but the cause of the quarrels was principally Henry's policy of dividing his dominions among his sons while reserving real authority for himself. In 1170 he crowned his eldest son, Henry, as co-regent with himself; but in fact the young king had no powers and resented his nonentity, and in 1173 he opposed his father's proposal to find territories for the favoured John (Lackland) at the expense of Geoffrey. Richard joined the protest of the others and was supported by Eleanor. There was a general revolt of the baronage in England and Normandy, supported by Louis VII in France and William the Lion in Scotland. Henry's prestige was at a low ebb after the murder of Becket and recent taxation, but he reacted energetically, settled matters in Normandy and Brittany, and crossed to England, where fighting had continued for a year. On July 12, 1174, he did public penance at Canterbury. The next day the King of Scots was taken at Alnwick, and three weeks later Henry had suppressed the rebellion in England. His sons were pardoned, but Eleanor was kept in custody until her husband died.

A second rebellion flared up in 1181 with a quarrel between his sons Henry and Richard over the government of Aquitaine, but young Henry died in 1183. In 1184 Richard quarrelled with John, who had been ordered to take Aquitaine off his hands. Matters were eased by the death of Geoffrey (1186), but the King's attempt to find an inheritance for John led to a coalition against him of Richard and the young Philip II Augustus, who had succeeded his father, Louis VII, as king of France. Henry was defeated and forced to give way, and news that John also had joined his enemies hastened the King's death near Tours in 1189.

In striking contrast to the checkered pattern of Henry's wars and schemes, his governance of England displays a careful and successful adaptation of means to a single end--the control of a realm served by the best administration in Europe. This success was obscured for contemporaries and later historians by the varied and often dramatic interest of political and personal events, and not until the 19th century--when the study of the public records began and when legal history was illuminated by the British jurist Frederic William Maitland and his followers--did the administrative genius of Henry and his servants appear in its true light.

At the beginning of his reign Henry found England in disorder, with royal authority ruined by civil war and the violence of feudal magnates. His first task was to crush the unruly elements and restore firm government, using the existing institutions of government, with which the Anglo-Norman monarchy was well provided. Among these was the King's council of barons, with its inner group of ministers who were both judges and accountants and who sat at the Exchequer, into which the taxes and dues of the shires were paid by the King's local representative, the sheriff (shire-reeve). The council contained an unusually able group of men--some of them were great barons, such as Richard de Lucy and Robert de Beaumont, earl of Leicester; others included civil servants, such as Nigel, bishop of Ely, Richard Fitzneale, and his son, Richard of Ilchester. Henry took a personal interest in the technique of the Exchequer, which was described at length for posterity in the celebrated Dialogus de scaccario, whose composition seemed to Maitland "one of the most wonderful things of Henry's wonderful reign." How far these royal servants were responsible for the innovations of the reign cannot be known, though the development in practice continued steadily, even during the King's long absences abroad.

In the early months of the reign the King, using his energetic and versatile chancellor Becket, beat down the recalcitrant barons and their castles and began to restore order to the country and to the various forms of justice. It was thus, a few years later, that he came into conflict with the bishops, then led by Becket, over the alleged right of clerics to be tried for crime by an ecclesiastical court. A result of this was the celebrated collection of decrees--the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164)--which professed to reassert the ancestral rights of the King over the church in such matters as clerical immunity, appointment of bishops, custody of vacant sees, excommunication, and appeals to Rome. The Archbishop, after an initial compliance, refused to accept these, and they were throughout the controversy a block to an agreement. The quarrel touched what was to be the King's chief concern--the country's judicial system. (see also Index: Clarendon, Constitutions of)

Anglo-Saxon England had two courts of justice--that of the hundred, a division of the shire, for petty offenses, and that of the shire, presided over by the sheriff. The feudal regime introduced by the Normans added courts of the manor and of the honour (a complex of estates). Above all stood the royal right to set up courts for important pleas and to hear, either in person or through his ministers, any appeal. Arrest was a local responsibility, usually hard upon a flagrant crime. A doubt of guilt was settled by ordeal by battle; the accused in the shire underwent tests held to reveal God's judgment. Two developments had come in since William the Conqueror's day: the occasional mission of royal justices into the shires and the occasional use of a jury of local notables as fact finders in cases of land tenure. (see also Index: criminal court, procedural law, common law, shire court, feudalism)

Henry's first comprehensive program was the Assize of Clarendon (1166), in which the procedure of criminal justice was established; 12 "lawful" men of every hundred, and four of every village, acting as a "jury of presentment," were bound to declare on oath whether any local man was a robber or murderer. Trial of those accused was reserved to the King's justices, and prisons for those awaiting trial were to be erected at the King's expense. This provided a system of criminal investigation for the whole country, with a reasonable verdict probable because the firm accusation of the jury entailed exile even if the ordeal acquitted the accused. In feudal courts the trial by battle could be avoided by the establishment of a concord, or fine. This system presupposed regular visits by the King's justices on circuit (or, in the technical phrase, "on eyre"), and these tours became part of the administration of the country. The justices formed three groups: one on tour, one "on the bench" at Westminster, and one with the King when the court was out of London. Those at Westminster dealt with private pleas and cases sent up from the justices on eyre.

Equally effective were the "possessory assizes." In the feudal world, especially in times of turmoil, violent ejections and usurpations were common, with consequent vendettas and violence. Pleas brought to feudal courts could be delayed or altogether frustrated. As a remedy Henry established the possessory writ, an order from the Exchequer, directing the sheriff to convene a sworn local jury at petty assize to establish the fact of dispossession, whereupon the sheriff had to reinstate the defendant pending a subsequent trial at the grand assize to establish the rights of the case. This was the writ of Novel Disseisin (i.e., recent dispossession). This writ was returnable; if the sheriff failed to achieve reinstatement, he had to summon the defendant to appear before the King's justices and himself be present with the writ. A similar writ of Mort d'Ancestor decided whether the ancestor of a plaintiff had in fact possessed the estate, whereas that of Darrein Presentment (i.e., last presentation) decided who in fact had last presented a parson to a particular benefice. All these writs gave rapid and clear verdicts subject to later revision. The fees enriched the treasury, and recourse to the courts both extended the King's control and discouraged irregular self-help. Two other practices developed by Henry became permanent. One was scutage, the commutation of military service for a money payment; the other was the obligation, put on all free men with a property qualification by the Assize of Arms (1181), to possess arms suitable to their station. (see also Index: property law)

The ministers who engaged upon these reforms took a fully professional interest in the business they handled, as may be seen in Fitzneale's writing on the Exchequer and that of the chief justiciar, Ranulf de Glanville, on the laws of England; and many of the expedients adopted by the King may have been suggested by them. In any case, the long-term results were very great. By the multiplication of a class of experts in finance and law Henry did much to establish two great professions, and the location of a permanent court at Westminster and the character of its business settled for England (and for much of the English-speaking world) that common law, not Roman law, would rule the courts and that London, and not an academy, would be its principal nursery. Moreover, Henry's decrees ensured that the judge-and-jury combination would become normal and that the jury would gradually supplant ordeal and battle as being responsible for the verdict. Finally, the increasing use of scutage, and the availability of the royal courts for private suits, were effective agents in molding the feudal monarchy into a monarchical bureaucracy before the appearance of Parliament.
 

Significance.
Henry II lived in an age of biographers and letter writers of genius. John of Salisbury, Thomas Becket, Giraldus Cambrensis, Walter Map, Peter of Blois, and others knew him well and left their impressions. All agreed on his outstanding ability and striking personality and also recorded his errors and aspects of his character that appear contradictory, whereas modern historians agree upon the difficulty of reconciling its main features. Without deep religious or moral conviction, Henry nevertheless was respected by three contemporary saints, Aelred of Rievaulx, Gilbert of Sempringham, and Hugh of Lincoln. Normally an approachable and faithful friend and master, he could behave with unreasonable inhumanity. His conduct and aims were always self-centred, but he was neither a tyrant nor an odious egoist. Both as man and ruler he lacked the stamp of greatness that marked Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror. He seemed also to lack wisdom and serenity; and he had no comprehensive view of the country's interest, no ideals of kingship, no sympathetic care for his people. But if his reign is to be judged by its consequences for England, it undoubtedly stands high in importance, and Henry, as its mainspring, appears among the most notable of English kings.
(M.D.K.)
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
W.L. Warren's Henry II (1973) is the one full biography (with bibliography). The best short accounts are still those of Kate Norgate in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 26 (1891) and Doris M. Stenton in the Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, ch. 17 (1929), both with full bibliographies. The classical essay by William Stubbs, his introduction to the Gesta Henrici ("Rolls Series," 1867), was reprinted by A.H. Hassall in his collection of Historical Introductions to the Rolls Series, pp. 89-172 (1902). Many contemporary sources are translated in D.C. Douglas and G.W. Greenaway (eds.), English Historical Documents II (1952), including the whole of the Dialogue of the Exchequer (Dialogus de Scaccario), of which the best edition, with translation, is that by Charles Johnson (1950). For Henry's judicial reforms, the best account is still that in F. Pollock and F.W. Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed. (1898). See also D.M. Stenton, English Justice Between the Norman Conquest and the Great Charter, 1066-1215 (1965).

Related Internet Links:
The Murder of Thomas Becket

Assize of Clarendon
Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Book "Kings and Queens of England and Scotland" by Plantagenet Somerset Fry, Copyright 1999 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London Text copyright 1999 Plantagenet Somerset Fry, states on page 21& 22, that "The first Plantagenet king of England was Henry II, and is generally regarded as the greatest of the thirteen kings that ruled for 331 years." It further states that, " rivel families within the dynasty that struggled to seize the crown took the names of Lancaster and York, but that they were actually Plantagenets, and as a dynasty, the Plantagenets made their greatest contribution in the development of English law, especially the unique Common Law, and by sponsoring a splendid architectural heritage." And on page 23 the book describes Henry II as being strongly built, with a loenine (lion like) head, freckled face and red hair.
     His succession in 1154 made him lord over a vast empire. His titles were: Count of Anjou and Touraine and Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and his empire stretched from the Cheviot Hills to the Pyrenees and his holdings in France exceeded even those held by the the French king himself. This area was known as the Angevin Empire because the country of Anjou was it's center and the Empire stayed in tact until the death of Richard I in 1199.
     Well known is the incident of the King and Thomas Becket, Archbiship of Canterbury, when after a quarrel in 1170, Henry was heard in exasperation, crying out, "Will not someone rid me of this turbulent priest?" In response, four of the King's knights pursued the archbishop into the cathedral and murdered him in front of his alter.

The closing years of Henry's reign were taken up by quarrels with his surviving sons, who were incited to rebel against him by their mother, Queen Eleanor, from whom Henry had separated. In 1189 he received word at Tours that his youngest and favorite son John was siding against him with his enemy. Heart broken and prematurely aged at 56, he set out to meet King Philip II of France. While they were speaking, still seated on their horses, a clap of thunder caused Henry's horse to rear and throw him. Badly shaken, he was carried on a litter to the castle of Chinon, where he died July 06, 1189, calling for heaven's vengeance on his rebellious family.

Henry II (1133-1189) was the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and a grandson of Henry I. He became king in 1154, the first English ruler of the Plantagenet family. At the height of his power, Henry ruled England and almost all western France. His marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, the most famous woman of the age, brought the duchy of Aquitaine under his control. Henry also claimed to rule Scotland, Wales, and eastern Ireland.

Henry II tried to make the Roman Catholic Church in England submit to his authority. This policy brought him into conflict with Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Henry made Anglo-Saxon common law, rather than the revised Roman law, the supreme law of the land in England. In addition, Henry introduced trial by jury and circuit courts. In his later years, Henry's sons often rebelled against him.
 
 

Notes for ELEANOR* DE POITIERS, OF AQUITAINE:
Eleanor of Aquitaine also called ELEANOR OF GUYENNE, French ÉLÉONORE, or ALIÉNOR, D'AQUITAINE, or DE GUYENNE (b. c. 1122--d. April 1, 1204, Fontevrault, Anjou, Fr.), queen consort of both Louis VII of France (in 1137-52) and Henry II of England (in 1152-1204) and mother of Richard I the Lion-Heart and John of England. She was perhaps the most powerful woman in 12th-century Europe.
Eleanor was the daughter and heiress of William X, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers, who possessed one of the largest domains in France--larger, in fact, than those held by the French king. Upon William's death in 1137 she inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine and in July 1137 married the heir to the French throne, who succeeded his father, Louis VI, the following month. Eleanor became queen of France, a title she held for the next 15 years. Beautiful, capricious, and adored by Louis, Eleanor exerted considerable influence over him, often goading him into undertaking perilous ventures.

From 1147 to 1149 Eleanor accompanied Louis on the Second Crusade to protect the fragile Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, founded after the First Crusade only 50 years before, from Turkish assault. Eleanor's conduct during this expedition, especially at the court of her uncle Raymond of Poitiers at Antioch, aroused Louis's jealousy and marked the beginning of their estrangement. After their return to France and a short-lived reconciliation, their marriage was annulled in March 1152. According to feudal customs, Eleanor then regained possession of Aquitaine, and two months later she married the grandson of Henry I of England, Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy. In 1154 he became, as Henry II, king of England, with the result that England, Normandy, and the west of France were united under his rule. Eleanor had only two daughters by Louis VII; to her new husband she bore five sons and three daughters. The sons were William, who died at the age of three; Henry; Richard, the Lion-Heart; Geoffrey, duke of Brittany; and John, surnamed Lackland until, having outlived all his brothers, he inherited, in 1199, the crown of England. The daughters were Matilda, who married Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria; Eleanor, who married Alfonso VIII, king of Castile; and Joan, who married successively William II, king of Sicily, and Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Eleanor would well have deserved to be named the "grandmother of Europe."

During her childbearing years, she participated actively in the administration of the realm and even more actively in the management of her own domains. She was instrumental in turning the court of Poitiers, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a Centre of poetry and a model of courtly life and manners. She was the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the romantic songs of the troubadours, and the historical matière de Bretagne, or "legends of Britanny," which originated in Celtic traditions and in the Historia regum Britanniae, written by the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth some time between 1135 and 1139.

The revolt of her sons against her husband in 1173 put her cultural activities to a brutal end. Since Eleanor, 11 years her husband's senior, had long resented his infidelities, the revolt may have been instigated by her; in any case, she gave her sons considerable military support. The revolt failed, and Eleanor was captured while seeking refuge in the kingdom of her first husband, Louis VII. Her semi-imprisonment in England ended only with the death of Henry II in 1189. On her release, Eleanor played a greater political role than ever before. She actively prepared for Richard's coronation as king, was administrator of the realm during his crusade to the Holy Land, and, after his capture by the Duke of Austria on Richard's return from the east, collected his ransom and went in person to escort him to England. During Richard's absence, she succeeded in keeping his kingdom intact and in thwarting the intrigues of his brother John Lackland and Philip II Augustus, king of France, against him.

In 1199 Richard died without leaving an heir to the throne, and John was crowned king. Eleanor, nearly 80 years old, fearing the disintegration of the Plantagenet domain, crossed the Pyrenees in 1200 in order to fetch her granddaughter Blanche from the court of Castile and marry her to the son of the French king. By this marriage she hoped to insure peace between the Plantagenets of England and the Capetian kings of France. In the same year she helped to defend Anjou and Aquitaine against her grandson Arthur of Brittany, thus securing John's French possessions. In 1202 John was again in her debt for holding Mirebeau against Arthur, until John, coming to her relief, was able to take him prisoner. John's only victories on the Continent, therefore, were due to Eleanor.

She died in 1204 at the monastery at Fontevrault, Anjou, where she had retired after the campaign at Mirebeau. Her contribution to England extended beyond her own lifetime; after the loss of Normandy (1204), it was her own ancestral lands and not the old Norman territories that remained loyal to England. She has been misjudged by many French historians who have noted only her youthful frivolity, ignoring the tenacity, political wisdom, and energy that characterized the years of her maturity. "She was beautiful and just, imposing and modest, humble and elegant"; and, as the nuns of Fontevrault wrote in their necrology: a queen "who surpassed almost all the queens of the world."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1950), is a major work with complete notes and a good bibliography and sources. H.G. Richardson, "The Letters and Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine," English Historical Review, 74:193-213 (1959), adds some unpublished sources to those gathered by Amy Kelly. Régine Pernoud, Aliénor d'Aquitaine (1965), gives more attention to the personality and politics of Eleanor herself, independently from the history of her two husbands.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Additional information can be found on the web at: <http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Eleanor.html>

Eleanor of Aquitaine
 

The Troubadour's Daughter
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born around 1122. Her grandfather, William IX, was the wealthy and powerful duke of Aquitaine. He was also a musician and poet, acknowledged as history's first troubadour.

William IX didn't just sing about love. By the time he was twenty he had married and divorced his first wife, Ermengarde. His second wife was Philippa (or Maud) of Toulouse, the widowed queen of Aragon. They had two sons, William and Raymond, and five daughters. When the Troubadour tired of Philippa, she moved to the same nunnery where Ermengard lived. After Philippa's death, Ermengarde tried to force William to take her back, but the duke had other ideas. He had abducted a married woman called Dangereuse ("dangerous" in French), and she was now his mistress.

In time the Troubadour decided that his elder son, William, should marry Dangereuse's daughter Aenor. (Dangereuse's husband was Aenor's father.) The younger William didn't want to marry Aenor, but he had no choice. The marriage took place in 1121, and a year or so later Eleanor of Aquitaine was born. She was followed by a daughter, Aelith (or Petronella) and a son, William Aigret.

When Eleanor was about five years old, William the Troubadour died and her father became Duke William X. A few years later, Eleanor's mother and brother died. Now Eleanor was heir to the vast realm of Aquitaine.

Like his father, William X was a patron of the troubadours and storytellers, and growing up in his court Eleanor developed a lifelong love of music and literature. Proud of his lively, intelligent daughter, William gave her an excellent education. She travelled through Aquitaine with him, preparing for her future role of duchess. Father and daughter were close, and it must have been a harsh blow for Eleanor when William, while making a religious pilgrimage, died suddenly of food poisoning.

Eleanor was just fifteen, and her life was about to change forever. On his deathbed William had asked his men to commend Eleanor to the care of Louis the Fat, king of France. Louis was no fool. He knew just what to do with his young, very beautiful, extremely wealthy ward - marry her off to his own son and heir. And so on August 1, 1137, Eleanor of Aquitaine married the future King Louis VII.

Queen of France
Both Eleanor and her husband were in their teens, but they had little else in common. Eleanor was high-spirited and strong-willed; Louis was a quiet, religious young man, regarded by some as a saint. No one ever mistook Eleanor of Aquitaine for a saint.

A few days after the wedding, Eleanor's father-in-law died and her husband became King Louis VII. Eleanor, who was not one to stay at home making tapestries, threw herself enthusiastically into the role of queen. To the dismay of many observers, the new king respected his wife's intelligence and consulted her frequently on matters of state. Queen Eleanor frequently visited Aquitaine, where she was well-regarded by her father's former vassals.

Eleanor's sister, Petronella, was also keeping busy. With Eleanor's encouragement, a nobleman divorced his wife to marry Petronella, which didn't make the family of Wife Number One very happy. War broke out, and Louis led his troops against a town called Vitry, setting it on fire. The townspeople sought refuge in a church, which burned down. More than one thousand people perished. Louis was wracked by guilt.

During the first years of her marriage Eleanor had just one child, who was stillborn. An influential miracle-working abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, told her that she was childless because God disapproved of her wicked ways. Either Eleanor temporarily mended her ways or God relented, because in 1145 she gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Marie. But Eleanor wasn't ready to settle down and be a typical medieval mommy.

The Second Crusade
In 1144 the city of Edessa (located in modern-day Turkey), which had been in Christian hands for almost fifty years, was captured by Muslims. Most of its citizens were massacred or sold into slavery. Inspired by this event and the preaching of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Louis VII and German emperor Conrad III organized their own separate military expeditions to the Middle East. The French and Germans had little interest in cooperating with each other; still, their dual effort is known as The Second Crusade.

Eleanor had no intention of sitting quietly at home while her husband went off on his adventure. The king's advisors may have been opposed to taking Eleanor and her company of 300 women along on the Crusade, but Eleanor was also offering the services of a thousand men from Aquitaine, and the king accepted. When they reached Antioch they were greeted by Eleanor's uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, who had become ruler of the city by marrying its young princess. Raymond entertained the crusaders in grand style, paying special attention to his flirtatious niece.

Although Raymond had a reputation for being a faithful husband, Eleanor's reputation was less spotless, and gossip about their relationship soon began to fly. The rumors followed Eleanor for the rest of her life. Many years later an English chronicler wrote sneeringly, "How Eleanor, queen of France, behaved when she was across the sea in Palestine... all these things are well enough known."

Whether or not Eleanor had an affair with her uncle, she was certainly influenced by him. When Raymond pleaded for Louis's help in defending Antioch, Eleanor took his side. When Louis refused to assist Raymond, Eleanor declared that she wanted a divorce. Louis, who adored his wife, was angry and hurt. He left Antioch and forced Eleanor to go with him. She never saw Raymond again. In 1149 he was killed in a battle against the Muslims. His severed head was sent to the caliph in Baghdad.

The Second Crusade was a failure, partly because of the quarreling among its leaders. Eventually Louis abandoned the cause and returned to France. Eleanor went with him -- on a separate ship. On their way home they stopped in Rome, where the pope persuaded them to go to bed together. The result of this papal intercession was a second daughter, Alix, born in 1150.

But the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII never truly recovered from Eleanor's scandalous behavior in Antioch, and in 1152 Louis granted Eleanor the divorce she desired. Eleanor was not destined to remain single for long.

Queen of England
In 1152, less than two months after her divorce from King Louis VII of France, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, the grandson of England's King Henry I. He was eighteen, eleven years younger than Eleanor. Their marriage scandalized observers. Eleanor, it was rumored, had previously had an affair with Henry's father.

In the words of a contemporary writer, Gerald of Wales, "Count Geoffrey of Anjou when he was seneschal of France took advantage of Queen Eleanor; for which reason he often warned his son Henry, telling him above all not to touch her, they say, both because she was his lord's wife, and because he had known her himself." But, ignoring his father's advice, Henry "presumed to sleep adulterously with the said queen of France, taking her from his own lord and marrying her himself. How could anything fortunate, I ask, emerge from these copulations?"

The first thing to emerge -- just five months after Eleanor and Henry's hasty marriage -- was a son, William. The child died a few years later. By then Henry had claimed the English throne. Eleanor, formerly queen of France, was now the queen of England.  Eleanor was in an advanced stage of pregnancy at the time Henry was crowned King so her coronation didn't take place until 25 December 1158. It is said that she declared "I am Queen of England by the wrath of God."

Eleanor and Henry had seven surviving children: Henry, Matilda, Richard, Geoffrey, Eleanor, Joan, and John. As the children grew up, Eleanor and her husband grew apart. At first Henry conducted secret love affairs. Then he began a public relationship with a knight's daughter, Rosamond Clifford, "the Fair Rosamond." Legend has it that the jealous Queen Eleanor confronted Rosamond with a dagger in one hand and a cup of poison in the other and forced her to choose which way she would die. (Rosamond did die in 1177, but probably of natural causes.)

King Henry later became involved with his son Richard's fiancee, a French princess who also happened to be the daughter of Eleanor's first husband, Louis VII. Not surprisingly, Richard never married the girl.

In 1168 Eleanor returned to France to rule her restless subjects. Her court quickly became a center of culture. She was reunited with her eldest daughter from her first marriage, Marie, who shared her interests. But Eleanor wasn't content to spend the rest of her life patronizing troubadours and presiding over courts of love. She wanted more power than Henry was willing to give her, and she began plotting against him. Henry summoned her back to England, where she continued to scheme.

Eleanor the Eagle
In 1173, Eleanor's three eldest sons - Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey - rebelled against their father, Henry II, with Eleanor's support. They were forced to flee to France. Eleanor tried to follow, disguised as a man, but she was captured by Henry's forces.

King Henry kept Eleanor more or less imprisoned for sixteen long years. His sons continued to war against him; in the end even his favorite son, John, turned against him. Finally, in 1189, Henry II died. Eleanor and Henry's eldest son, Henry, was already dead, so Eleanor's favorite, Richard the Lionheart, became king. Richard soon went away on a crusade, leaving his mother as regent. "He issued instructions to the princes of the realm, almost in the style of a general edict, that the queen's word should be law in all matters," wrote a contemporary chronicler, Ralph of Diceto.

She proved to be a shrewd ruler. When Richard was taken hostage, Eleanor helped to raise his ransom money. She also stood up to Richard's brother John, who plotted to seize the throne. She even managed to get Richard and John to reconcile after Richard's return to England.

Eventually Richard died and John became king. Like Richard, King John respected his mother and heeded her advice. She, in return, supported him against his enemies. Eleanor was now quite elderly by the standards of her time, but she continued to lead an active life, travelling through Europe and arranging marriages for her grandchildren. In 1202 the ailing Eleanor was trapped in a castle by the army of the French king, with whom John was at war, but John freed her.

Eleanor of Aquitaine died in 1204 at the abbey of Fontevrault, which she had long patronized. She is buried there, as are Henry II and Richard the Lionheart.

According to Ralph of Diceto, Eleanor's life "revealed the truth of a prophecy which had puzzled all by its obscurity: 'The eagle of the broken bond shall rejoice in the third nestling.' They called the queen the eagle because she stretched out her wings, as it were, over two kingdoms - France and England. She had been separated from her French relatives through divorce, while the English had separated her from her marriage bed by confining her to prison . . . Richard, her third son - and thus the third nestling - was the one who would raise his mother's name to great glory."
 

Eleanor of Aquitaine (wife of King Henry II)
 

Marriage Notes for HENRY* PLANTAGENET and ELEANOR* DE POITIERS:
     At age 30 Eleanor married King Henry II, he was age 19. Eleanor was a formidable wife for Henry II and at least eleven years his senior. Her date of birth is usually given as 1122, though some sorces cite 1120. Her last son, the future king John was born when she was 44 years old. This is the second oldest royal childbirth age in history. The marriage lasted 37 years, 1 month, 19 days.

Children of HENRY* PLANTAGENET and ELEANOR* DE POITIERS are:
 i. WILLIAM16 PLANTAGENET, COUNT OF POITIERS, b. 1153, Died as a child; d. 1156.
54. ii. HENRY PLANTAGENET, " THE YOUNG KING", b. 1155; d. 11 Jun 1183, Died of fever in France.
 iii. RICHARD PLANTAGENET, I " THE LION-HEART", b. 08 Sep 1157, Beaumont Palace, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England; d. 06 Apr 1199, of gangrene from a battle wound; m. BERENGARIA OF NAVARRE; b. Abt. 1163; d. Abt. 1231.

Notes for RICHARD PLANTAGENET, I " THE LION-HEART":
Richard I, byname RICHARD THE LION-HEART, or LION-HEARTED, French RICHARD COEUR DE LION (b. Sept. 8, 1157, Oxford--d. April 6, 1199, Châlus, Duchy of Aquitaine), duke of Aquitaine (from 1168) and of Poitiers (from 1172) and king of England, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou (1189-99). His knightly manner and his prowess in the Third Crusade (1189-92) made him a popular king in his own time as well as the hero of countless romantic legends. He has been viewed less kindly by more recent historians and scholars.

Early life.
Richard was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and he was given the Duchy of Aquitaine, his mother's inheritance, at the age of 11 and was enthroned as duke at Poitiers in 1172. Richard possessed precocious political and military ability, won fame for his knightly prowess, and quickly learned how to control the turbulent aristocracy of Poitou and Gascony. Like all Henry II's legitimate sons, he had little or no filial piety, foresight, or sense of responsibility. He joined his brothers in the great rebellion (1173-74) against their father, who invaded Aquitaine twice before Richard submitted and received pardon. Thereafter Richard was occupied with suppressing baronial revolts in his own duchy. His harshness infuriated the Gascons, who revolted in 1183 and called in the help of the "Young King" Henry and his brother Geoffrey of Brittany in an effort to drive Richard from his duchy altogether. Alarmed at the threatened disintegration of his empire, Henry II brought the feudal host of his continental lands to Richard's aid, but the younger Henry died suddenly (June 11, 1183) and the uprising collapsed. (see also Index: Angevin empire)
Richard was now heir to England, and to Normandy and Anjou (which were regarded as inseparable), and his father wished him to yield Aquitaine to his youngest brother, John. But Richard, a true southerner, would not surrender the duchy in which he had grown up, and even appealed, against Henry II, to the young king of France, Philip II Augustus. In November 1188 he did homage to Philip for all the English holdings on French soil and in 1189 openly joined forces with Philip to drive Henry into abject submission. They chased him from Le Mans to Saumur, forced him to acknowledge Richard as his heir, and at last harried him to his death (July 6, 1189).
 

King of England.
Richard received Normandy on July 20 and the English throne on September 30. Richard, unlike Philip, had only one ambition, to lead the crusade prompted by Saladin's capture of Jerusalem in 1187. He had no conception of planning for the future of the English monarchy and put up everything for sale to buy arms for the crusade. Yet he had not become king to preside over the dismemberment of the Angevin empire. He broke with Philip and did not neglect Angevin defenses on the Continent. Open war was averted only because Philip also took the cross. Richard dipped deep into his father's treasure and sold sheriffdoms and other offices. With all this he raised a formidable fleet and an army, and in 1190 he departed for the Holy Land, travelling via Sicily.

Sicily.
Richard found the Sicilians hostile and took Messina by storm (October 4). To prevent the German emperor Henry VI from ruling their country, the Sicilians had elected the native Tancred of Lecce, who had imprisoned the late king's wife, Joan of England (Richard's sister), and denied her possession of her dower. By the Treaty of Messina Richard obtained for Joan her release and her dower, acknowledged Tancred as king of Sicily, declared Arthur of Brittany (Richard's nephew) to be his own heir, and provided for Arthur to marry Tancred's daughter. This treaty infuriated the Germans, who were also taking part in the Third Crusade, and it incited Richard's brother John to treachery and rebellion. Richard joined the other crusaders at Acre on June 8, 1191, having conquered Cyprus on his way there. While at Limassol in Cyprus, Richard married (May 12) Berengaria of Navarre.

The holy land.
Acre fell in July 1191, and on September 7 Richard's brilliant victory at Arsuf put the crusaders in possession of Joppa. Twice Richard led his forces to within a few miles of Jerusalem. But the recapture of the city, which constituted the chief aim of the Third Crusade, eluded him. There were fierce quarrels among the French, German, and English contingents. Richard insulted Leopold V, duke of Austria, by tearing down his banner and quarrelled with Philip Augustus, who returned to France after the fall of Acre. Richard's candidate for the crown of Jerusalem was his vassal Guy de Lusignan, whom he supported against the German candidate, Conrad of Montferrat. It was rumoured, unjustly, that Richard connived at Conrad's murder. After a year's unproductive skirmishing, Richard (September 1192) made a truce for three years with Saladin that permitted the crusaders to hold Acre and a thin coastal strip and gave Christian pilgrims free access to the holy places.

Imprisonment.
Richard sailed home by way of the Adriatic, because of French hostility, and a storm drove his ship ashore near Venice. Because of the enmity of Duke Leopold he disguised himself, but he was discovered at Vienna in December 1192 and imprisoned in the Duke's castle at Dürnstein on the Danube. Later, he was handed over to Henry VI, who kept him at various imperial castles. It was around Richard's captivity in a castle, whose identity was at first unknown in England, that the famous romance of Blondel was woven in the 13th century.
Under the threat of being handed over to Philip II, Richard agreed to the harsh terms imposed by Henry VI: a colossal ransom of 150,000 marks and the surrender of his kingdom to the Emperor on condition that he receive it back as a fief. The raising of the ransom money was one of the most remarkable fiscal measures of the 12th century and gives striking proof of the prosperity of England. A very high proportion of the ransom was paid, and meanwhile (February 1194) Richard was released.
 

Return to England.
He returned at once to England and was crowned for the second time on April 17, fearing that the independence of his kingship had been compromised. Within a month he went to Normandy, never to return. His last five years were spent in warfare against Philip II, interspersed with occasional truces. The King left England in the capable hands of Hubert Walter, justiciar and archbishop of Canterbury. It was Richard's impetuosity that brought him to his death at the early age of 42. The Vicomte of Limoges refused to hand over a hoard of gold unearthed by a local peasant. Richard laid siege to his castle of Châlus and in an unlucky moment was wounded. He died in 1199. He was buried in the abbey church of Fontevrault, where Henry II and Queen Eleanor are also buried, and his effigy is still preserved there.

Assessment.
Richard was a thoroughgoing Angevin, irresponsible and hot-tempered, possessed of tremendous energy, and capable of great cruelty. He was more accomplished than most of his family, a soldier of consummate ability, a skillful politician, and capable of inspiring loyal service. He was a lyric poet of considerable power and the hero of troubadours. In striking contrast with his father and with King John, he was, there seems no doubt, a homosexual. He had no children by Queen Berengaria, with whom his relations seem to have been merely formal. Although he purportedly had an illegitimate son, and although he married (but had no children), he enjoyed more the company of men, especially soldiers on the Crusade. He had a love-hate relationship with Philippe of France and apparently had an affair with his wife's brother, Sancho.
(G.W.S.B.)
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
K. Norgate, Richard the Lion Heart (1924, reprinted 1969), a very full, somewhat old-fashioned narrative, strongly based on chronicle and other recorded sources; F.M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, 1189-1204, 2nd ed. (1961), a brilliant survey of the Angevin Empire on the eve of its disintegration that illustrates Richard's strategic and tactical skill; L. Landon, Itinerary of King Richard I (1935), essential basic information, dating the King's movements, and listing his charters; S. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 3 (1954), a highly readable, reliable, mainly political narrative, beginning with a good account of the Third Crusade; Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1950), a readable and informative narrative on the Angevin Empire from the unusual viewpoint of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard's mother.

Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica

In march 1199 Richard besieged the town of Chalus in Limousin, in which the local landlord had refused to give up to him. While riding before the town walls one morning Richard was struck on the right shoulder by an arrow. He made light of the wound and brought the seige to a successful end a day or two later. His physician Marchadeus had done a bungling job of removing the arrow, so gangrene set in and he died on April 06, 1199. He was body was buried beside his father at Fontervrault, and his heart was buried separately at Rouen.

55. iv. GEOFFREY II PLANTAGENET, DUKE OF BRITTANY, b. 1158; d. 1186.
 v. JOAN PLANTAGENET, b. 1165; d. 1199; m. (1) WILLIAMII, KING OF SICILY; m. (2) RAYMONDVI, COUNT OF TOULOUSE; b. 1156; d. 1222.
 vi. MATILDA PLANTAGENET, b. 1156; d. 1189; m. HENRY THE LION, DUKE OF SAXONY AND BAVARIA; b. 1129; d. 1195.
56. vii. ELEANOR* PLANTAGENET, b. 13 Oct 1162, Domfront, Normandy, France; d. 31 Oct 1214, Burgos, Castile, Leon, Spain of natural  causes.
57. viii. JOHN* PLANTAGENET, I KING OF ENGLAND, b. 24 Dec 1166, Beaumont Palace, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England; d. 19 Oct 1216, of natural causes at Newark Castle, Lincolnshire, England.
 

41.  HENRY*15 DE BLOISI, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE (THEOBALD*14, ADELA*13 CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS", MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA) was born Bef. 1152 in France, and died 1181.  He married MARY* CAPET, OF CHAMPAGNE Abt. 1164, daughter of LOUIS* CAPET and ELEANOR* DE POITIERS.  She was born 1145, and died 1198.

Notes for HENRY* DE BLOISI, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE:
Title(s): King of the English

Marriage Notes for HENRY* DE BLOIS and MARY* CAPET:
     At age 19, Mary married Henry I, Count of Champagne, who was age 12.

Children are listed above under (39) Mary* CAPET, of Champagne.

42.  ALICE* DE BLOIS OF15 CHAMPAGNE (THEOBALD*14 DE BLOISII, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE, ADELA*13 CURTHOS, "COUNTESS OF BLOIS", MATILDA* OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)  She married LOUIS* CAPET, VII KING OF FRANCE Nov 1160, son of LOUIS* CAPET and ADELAIDE* SAVOY.  He was born 1121, and died 18 Sep 1180 in Paris, France of Natural Causes.

Notes for ALICE* DE BLOIS OF CHAMPAGNE:
Alice of Champagne (wife of Louis VII of France)
 

Notes for LOUIS* CAPET, VII KING OF FRANCE:
Louis VII, King of France (The Younger)

Title(s): Duke of Exeter
 

Marriage Notes for ALICE* CHAMPAGNE and LOUIS* CAPET:
Alice married Louis VII, King of France, at age 40

Children are listed above under (26) Louis* CAPET, VII King of France.

43.  WILLIAM*15 PERCY, 3RD BARON PERCY (EMMA*14 DE GAUNT, GILBERT*13, BALDWIN* VI 'THE PEACEABLE' COUNT OF12 FLANDERS, ADELA*11 CAPET, (ADELAIDE) OF FRANCE, CONSTANCE*10 TAILLEFER, (DE TOULOUSE) OF ARLES, GUILLAUME*9, CONSTANCE* OF8 VIENNE, CHARLES* CONSTANTINE COUNT OF7, ANNA*6 PORPHYOGENETA, LEO*5VI, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, BASIL*4I, MACEDONIAN EMPEROR, CONSTANTINE*3 II, FLAVIUS* VALERIUS2 CONSTANTIUS, ARTAVASDE*1 MAMIKONID, PRINCE OF ARMENIA)  He married ALICE* TUNBRIDGE, daughter of RICHARD* TUNBRIDGE, EARL OF CLARE.

Notes for WILLIAM* PERCY, 3RD BARON PERCY:
Title(s): Count of Hartenau

Notes for ALICE* TUNBRIDGE:
Alice Tunbridge (daughter of Richard, Earl of Clare)
 

Child of WILLIAM* PERCY and ALICE* TUNBRIDGE is:
58. i. AGNES*16 PERCY.

Generations 16 - 24

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