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William of Jumièges, the Norman Benedictine monk who authored the "Gesta Normannorum Ducum", stated that Brian's father was Eozen. My "source" (http://www.geni.com/people/Eudes-comt...) seems confused about whether he stated who Brian's mother was.The charter of 1084 calls him a brother of Geoffrey and the two Alans, and states that he held the Honour of Brittany before Alan Rufus, so it would seem that Brian was the elder of the two.
In the Domesday Book, Ribald is called "Ribald the brother of Count Alan". Given that one purpose of the book is to determine who owns what and why, this is a shorthand for saying that Ribald received his properties from Alan, for this reason.
In the same vein, Domesday names "Bodin the brother of Bardulf", because he inherited properties from him.
Charters state that Bardulf is a brother of Count Alan, Geoffrey, etc, so it's possible that all of these were legitimate sons of Eozen and Agnes.
Seems that, for a couple of decades, Agnes was nearly full-time giving birth.
According to http://breizh-poellrezh.eu/DoldeBreta..."Every Breton has a duty to complete the pilgrimage of the seven cathedrals (St. Brieuc in St. Brieuc, St. Malo in St. Malo, St. Samson in Dol, St. Patern in Vannes, St. Corentin in Quimper, St. Pol-Aurélien in St. Pol-de-Léon, and St. Tugdual in Tréguier) during their lifetime, known as the Tro-Breizh. Anyone failing to complete or refuses to accomplish the pilgrimage during their life is sentenced to finish it after their death, by moving forward the length of their coffin every seven years."
The Normans set sail from Barfleur on the Cotentin for their journey to meet their Flemish allies at Saint-Valery-sur-Sommer. So it's likely that the Bretons sailed to Barfleur to join them.Incidentally, Brittany Ferries has a ship named "Barfleur".
Carol wrote: "Another mystery."Good fodder for the imagination, though.
Here are some events for 1079:1079 January 7: Eozen dies in Cesson-Sévigné, an eastern suburb of Rennes. He’s about 80. He is buried in the Cathedral of Saint Brieuc.
1079 (or after): “Comes Alanus Rufus” donates property to Swavesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, for the soul of “patris sui Eudonis comitis”, by undated charter witnessed by “…Ribaldus et Bardulfus fratres comitis…”
1079: Malcolm III plunders Northumberland for about three weeks unopposed before returning to Scotland with slaves and booty. Ligulf Lumley, one of Walcher’s counsellors, is very critical of Walcher’s failure to defend Northumberland. Walcher’s henchmen murder Ligulf.
In the second of Geoffrey's charters for 1084, Brian is simply described as a brother of Geoffrey, along with Alan Rufus and Alan Niger.The document does refer to someone illegitimate, but it's not Brian. If I understood Latin cases, I could tell whether it's referring to a sister, or to her husband Enisandus [presumably Musardus] de Pleveno.
Geoffrey's mother was Agnes, and Geoffrey inherited, so if Brian is legitimate then he is younger than Geoffrey and therefore a son of Agnes. I mention this because some genealogies claim that "Orguen" is not Agnes but Eozen's first wife, born about 1000; if so, she had no surviving children, otherwise one of them would have inherited Penthievre instead of Geoffrey, so if she existed she's not pertinent.
Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria (died after 1073), is interesting. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospatri..., "Gospatric was a great-grandson of Ethelred II through his mother, Ealdgyth, and his maternal grandmother, Ælfgifu, who had married Uchtred the Bold."Gospatric was "among the leaders of the uprising" of early 1068, "along with Edgar Ætheling and Edwin, Earl of Mercia and his brother Morcar". When this failed, Gospatric lost his earldom to Siward's son Waltheof, 1st Earl of Northampton.
"Gospatric fled into exile in Scotland and not long afterwards went to Flanders. When he returned to Scotland he was granted the castle at `Dunbar and lands adjacent to it' and in the Merse by King Malcolm." As a result, "his descendants held the Earldom of Dunbar, later known as the Earldom of March, in south-east Scotland until 1435".
Gospatric had 3 sons: (another) Gospatric, Dolfin and Waltheof of Allerdale.
Waltheof of Allerdale "had two sons and several daughters. Alan (fl. 1139), succeeded to Allerdale. The other son was named Gopspatric. An Octreda, either his sister or daughter, appears to have married Donnchad mac Maíl Coluim and become mother of William fitz Duncan, mormaer of Moray. William fitz Duncan appears to have inherited Waltheof's Allerdale territory from his mother. A definite daughter, Ethelreda, married Ranulf de Lindsay and then William de Esseville. Another, Gunnilda, married Uhtred of Galloway. Waltheof's partner appears to have been a woman named Sigrid or Sigarith."
Notice the names Alan and Gunnilda in the third generation!
This indicates that Alan Rufus, Alan Niger and Gunnhild were viewed very positively by the Anglo-Danes and Scots.
Uhtred of Galloway's son was Lochlann (aka Roland) of Galloway. Lochlann's son was the famous Alan of Galloway. (Now I see, in part, how the name "Alan" got to Galloway.)
Here's another item to Alan Rufus's credit.Christopher Norton's article "The Buildings of St Mary's Abbey, York and Their Destruction", published in The Antiquaries Journal / Volume 74 / Issue 01 / March 1994, pp 256-288, published by the Cambridge University Press, effuses:
"St Mary's Abbey, York was one of the richest Benedictine monasteries in the country and its buildings reflected its wealth and status. The quality of its architectural remains is of the highest order, and the collection of medieval sculpture from the site is outstanding. Indeed, the set of life-size column-figures brought to light in 1829 must count as one of the most exciting discoveries ever made in the field of the history of sculpture in this country."
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_o..., Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop of York, "helped to put down [the 1088] rebellion led by Thomas' old mentor Odo of Bayeux".After the rebellion was quashed, William II sent Alan Rufus with three other lords (Odo of Champagne, third husband of Countess Adelaide of Aumale, the Conqueror's sister; Roger of Poitou, a former rebel and son of Roger II of Montgomery; and Walter d'Aincourt) to persuade William de St-Calais the Bishop of Durham to surrender.
[Edit of 13 Nov 2014: Richard Sharpe holds Walter's wife Matilda to be Alan's daughter; I used to follow some genealogists in making her out to be Alan's sister, but now consider her to have been William I's daughter, perhaps his eldest.]
Not only Alan, but "Thomas also attended the trial for rebellion" of St-Calais, because the Bishop of Durham was "Thomas' sole suffragan, or bishop subordinate to York".
A cluster of genealogies assert that Alan Rufus had a wife born c. 1042 whom they name as "Melisinde de Richmond", which is suspiciously similar to the name of his great-grandmother, Mélisende of Maine (c. 980 – 1017 ? or 1064 ?).The later Melisinde was supposedly the daughter of Hariscoit III de Saint-Jacques and Melisinde de Nantes, but these genealogies go into time warps before this, with birth date uncertainties of 70 years for the same person.
Also, I haven't found any reliable source for the existence of a Melisinde of Nantes, or of a Hariscoit de Saint-Jacques.
Moreover, these genealogies claim that Melisinde de Richmond was a descendant of Mélisende of Maine, which would make not only a marriage, but any relationship at all, forbidden by the laws of the time.
So, these genealogies are utterly untrustworthy. As another example, they make the false claim that the son of Alan Rufus and Melisinde de Richmond was "Ruard d'Aboube Musard", born c. 1064.
In the world of historical fiction, one might however wonder, as Carol did, whether Alan was a widower, but the name "Melisinde" for his deceased wife would make me uncomfortable as a reader.
Incidentally, the English name Millicent is a variation on Mélisende.
For reference, two such wild genealogies are:
http://www.simonhoyt.com/h-linage-wor...
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-b...
I'm currently reading André Wilmart's article "Alain Le Roux et Alain Le Noir, Comtes de Bretagne" in the Annales de Bretagne. Tome 38, numéro 3,1928. pp. 576-602, of which a PDF is available at:
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/....
Wilmart states that on 8 September 1088, Alan had signed a document guaranteeing safe passage for St-Calais if the Bishop would submit to judgment by the King. During the trial, St-Calais referred to this agreement, causing uproar in the court. Alan then spoke calmly and clearly over the clamour and restated the agreement of 8 September, saying that he had given his word and the Bishop of Durham had come to the King to plead his cause. If there were any fault here, it was not the Bishop's but his own.
Alan then pleaded with the King (William II) not to force people into perjury but to respect their consciences - otherwise he believed himself obliged to refuse to serve the king.
Wilmart was impressed by Alan's audacious and chivalrous dedication to truth and honour. Elsewhere he described Alan as "rich and good", giving two examples: (1) he had intervened when William de Percy confiscated land belonging to lay tenants; (2) when Thomas the Archbishop of York took four acres from the monks of St Mary's for his own purpose, Abbot Stephen travelled to London to appeal to Alan, who persuaded the King to donate land to the monks as recompense.
Mod
Alan escorted St-Calais from Durham to Salisbury for the trial, which was delayed by a couple of months. After the trial, St-Calais was placed under arrest in Wilton Abbey. When released, Alan escorted him to the port (which port? [Edit of 13 Nov 2014: it was Southampton]) whence St-Calais was sent to Normandy for exile. St-Calais became an important adviser to Robert Curthose for a few years, but in 1091 regained favour with William II and returned to England to resume his post as Bishop of Durham.A couple of years after that, Alan passed away. Wilmart doesn't give a cause or a place, but wrote that it seems that Alan died "unexpectedly and in remarkable circumstances". A lot of latitude there for authorial imagination!
Wilmart gets the year of Alan's death wrong: 1089 instead of 1093, though he does puzzle over "Count Alan", without adding a "Niger", signing documents on and after 1091.
Quoting the Wikipedia article on Wilmart:"Dom Andre Wilmart, O.S.B. [Order of Saint Benedict: he was a monk] (1876 - Paris, April 21, 1941) was the Benedictine medieval scholar and liturgist of St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough.
He was a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America from 1928.
He is responsible for the name and the works of John of Fécamp being recovered.
His bibliography includes more than 375 books and articles."
From Wikipedia: "St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough":"Saint Michael's Abbey is a Benedictine abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire, England. The small community is known for the quality of its liturgy, which is sung in Latin and Gregorian Chant, its pipe organ, and its liturgical publishing and printing. It is also the national shrine of St Joseph.
The Abbey was founded in 1881 by the Empress Eugénie (1826–1920) as a mausoleum for her late husband Napoleon III (1808–1873), and their son the Prince Imperial (1856–1879), both of whom rest in the Imperial Crypt, along with Eugénie herself, all in granite sarcophagi provided by Queen Victoria."
According to http://seattletimes.com/html/travel/2... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highcle..., the TV series "Downton Abbey" is filmed at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the home of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, about 5 miles south of Newbury, Berkshire.There is a real Downton, in Wiltshire, and Alan made donations to the religious community there.
Again from Wikipedia:
"Manor House in Downton is probably the longest-inhabited house in the South of England, used as a religious house from its construction around 850 until the Reformation.
King John is said to have had a palace in Downton on one of the islands by the Moot. When the palace was taken down, it was believed the stone was used in the construction called New Court House."
Goodness, Alan seems to have been continually travelling all over England, Brittany, Anjou, Maine and Normandy. Such a busy gentleman!Since he conducted so much business in Wiltshire, his association with Gunnhild is unsurprising.
I wonder if his brother Brian had been making tours and donations (as Earl of Cornwall, etc) in Wilton and Downton before his incapacity, then Alan acted in his stead? It would be the Breton thing to do.
Newbury, Berkshire (5 miles north of Highclere Castle) is 4 miles south of Chieveley, Berkshire, where my second cousin Peter Kitchen's matrilineal ancestor Betty Piper lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s.Before she married Moses Piper (a shepherd/labourer of Chieveley), Betty was Elizabeth Bennet. Living a short ride across the county boundary from Jane Austen, was she the (undisguised) model for the main character in Pride and Prejudice?
Peter told me that Betty was a widow before she married Moses. We don't know her first husband's name, but perhaps I may fancy he was a Darcy Williams?
Curiously, we do have Williams's in another branch of the family, and a Darcy Tweed. [Edit of 13 Nov 2014: Darcy was a decorated hero due to his clever actions at Mont Saint-Quentin in the Second Battle of the Somme in WW1, capturing two machine guns and numerous German troops, thus saving many allied lives.]
The similarity of placenames (Cheveley, Cambridgeshire compared to Chieveley, Berkshire) is also very curious.
Well, coincidences are everywhere.
In answer to the question of why two brothers were both named Alan, in Domesday People Revisited (http://www.academia.edu/2039901/Domes... [sic]) Keats-Rohan says, on page 16, in clearing up an historian's confusion between two sisters, both named Matilda Chesneduit:"The doubling of a name within a family was common into the early modern period, even if both survived infancy".
According to Wilmart's reading, the painting in the Register of the Honour of Richmond of William conceding The Land of Count Alan, states that this occurred in relation to the Siege of York (in 1069 [or perhaps 1068?]). Judging by the picture, it was in the Castle just after its recapture from the Danes. The writing on the painting also states that this was when Earl Edwin's lands in "Eborakshire" (Yorkshire) were given to Alan. So, it was before the Harrying, not as a consequence of it or of Edwin's later rebellion.It's a fair guess, then, that in 1069 [or 1068?] Alan defeated Edwin, and also participated in recapturing York.
The sheer number of knights depicted as occupying the background and wearing Alan's colours suggests that, at least in the mind of the painter, he provided the bulk of the forces for the battles.
The content of Alan's speech before King William II at St-Calais' trial shows that Collins' comment that Alan (he thought Fergant) was so courageous that he had no fear of William the Conqueror, fits Alan Rufus to a tee.So I'd still really like to know what Alan did during the Harrying which was conducted from (late?) Dec 1069 to Jan 1070.
To reiterate, did he participate in the awful destruction and killings of civilians, to his shame? (But if so, what is the evidence? And is this consistent with his character, as documented in 1088 when he was always urging leniency?)
Or, as I prefer to imagine, was he busy elsewhere (where? doing what?), learnt what was happening, then stepped in to stop it? Is this why Gunnhild loved him?
Zoe wrote: "According to Wilmart's reading, the painting in the Register of the Honour of Richmond of William conceding The Land of Count Alan, states that this occurred in relation to the Siege of York (in 1069)..."York (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History... from the Norse Jórvík meaning "horse bay") had been the Roman legionary fortress Eboracum - according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eboracum, probably after the Common Brythonic word Eborakon, meaning "place of the yew trees".
The same article cites evidence that the surname "Ivry" (of a family related by marriage to Alan's) derives from "Eborakon".
Speaking of Bretons, Keats-Rohan's (2012) article, Domesday People Revisited, states that the sire of the illustrious Montmorency family had given name Hervey - so they're Breton too!
Hi fellow authorsSpeaking of great navigators...
Even allowing for Cook, Tasman, Columbus, the Vikings etc., were any greater than the Pacific Islanders who in their flimsy craft settled thousands of square miles of the unexplored South Pacific?
James and I touch on this in our historical adventure-romance Fiji: A Novel.
We are a Down Under father-and-son writing team; we seek more reviews for 'Fiji' and would like to hear from anyone interested in doing a ‘review exchange’ via kindle gift –
i.e. If you are prepared to do an honest review of ‘Fiji’ for Amazon, Goodreads and anywhere else you care to post it, we will be happy to reciprocate and review one of your books.
Warning: ‘Fiji’ is not for the prudish or the squeamish. Set in exotic 19th Century Fiji, it’s reflective of an era in which violence and lust were in plentiful supply.
The storyline: In the mid-1800's, Fiji was a melting pot of cannibals, warring native tribes, sailors, traders, prostitutes, escaped convicts and all manner of foreign undesirables. It's in this hostile environment in our story that an innocent young Englishwoman and a worldly American adventurer find themselves. Despite their differences, there’s an undeniable chemistry between them. When their lives are suddenly endangered by marauding cannibals, they are forced to rely on each other for their very survival.
The first half dozen chapters can be read free of charge if you click on the Amazon link and then click on the book’s cover: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057YCZM0/
If ‘Fiji’ appeals and you are prepared to do a review exchange as per above, let us know. Thank you!
Lance & James
Co-authors of The Orphan Trilogy
Based on the 11th century "Norman French" (i.e. Gallo) version of the Song of Roland, which names him, Count Eozen's Gallo name is Eudon.
Alas, I think Alan Rufus died in a fire, as his epitaph uses "cineratur" to describe his death, Alan was in London in the 1090s and London suffered a conflagration in 1093, the year of Alan's demise.If the burning house on the Bayeux Tapestry really does depict Eadgifu and one of her children, then given Alan's close association with Eadgifu's properties and the love he shared with her daughter, one can hardly imagine how distressed Gunhild would have been. The epitaph states "Anglia turbatur": that England was in distress because of it.
Mod
Mod
A little more information on the London fire of 1093. According to “A New and Compleat History and Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster : the borough of Southwark, and parts adjacent; from the earliest accounts; to the beginning of the year 1770 ... By a society of gentlemen; revised, corrected, and improved, by Henry Chamberlain”, pp. 23-37, “A great part of this city was again destroyed by fire in the year 1093, and this calamity was succeeded by a great scarcity of corn, and almost all kinds of the necessaries of life.”Although I live in the southern hemisphere, I should have realised that August is late summer in England, and that the grain harvest is when? July-September? Lammas is 1 August, and the Harvest festival (which incidentally corresponds to the Chinese Lantern or Moon Festival) is usually in September.
A hot, dry summer would leave London susceptible to fire and cause a lean harvest.
Many notable people died prematurely in 1093: aside from Alan and his brother Count Geoffrey "Boterel", the deceased include King Malcolm, Rhys ap Tewdwr and Count Robert I of Flanders.The Aquitainian Viscount Aimery IV of Thouars (who served beside the Bretons at Flanders and whose family would later marry into Alan's) also died in 1093, as did his daughter Eleanor or Aenora; she had married Boson II Viscount of Chatellerault who had died the previous year.
And of course King William II nearly died during Lent in 1093, which is what prompted him to appoint an Archbishop of Canterbury, namely Anselm.
Not a good year for nobles, townsfolk or peasants.
To recap, Alan was important enough in 1082/1083 to command the royal household knights, before August 1086 to persuade William I to apologise to the City of York, in 1088 to bring the royal court to attend the foundation of St Mary's Abbey (despite whatever reluctance Bishop Odo and his majority party may have felt), and afterwards to witness royal charters immediately after the future Henry I.Alan escaped much notice precisely because he was so often right beside the King, who naturally received the lion's share of glory, and because he wasn't noted for causing trouble, as so many major barons were.
Were it not for the PASE Domesday database, I wouldn't have known that William I and Alan Rufus divided Earl Gyrth Godwinson's properties equally between them (28 each), an indicator that Alan may have been right beside William when Gyrth attempted to kill the King and that whatever Alan did then earned William's gratitude. (Another possibility is that Ralph the Staller aided William and was rewarded with those properties, and that they passed to Alan after Ralph junior rebelled in 1075.)
It's really interesting that Ralph de Gael's 1075 rebellion against King William and subsequent attempt to invade England with the Danes, did nothing to dampen his friendship with Alan's father Eozen in 1076. Complicated politics!
Alan didn't commission anyone to sing his praises, but much about him is discoverable in local stories and personal testimonials. Here are three examples.The tale of Mainard and Orwen tells how Alan expressed his gratitude to Orwen, his wet-nurse, by giving her Sibton Manor, how Mainard became Alan's chamberlain, and how the elderly couple fell in love and received Alan's blessing to marry.
Stephen of Whitby wrote of the tribulations of his little band of monks and how Alan twice intervened to rescue them, culminating in the foundation of St Mary's Abbey, York.
William de St Calais' supporters recorded how Alan took extraordinary steps to protect the Bishop from King William II's wrath.
Mod
Wow Zoe you are so informed! If you put all that into a book I would definitely buy it. Thanks for all this info!
Mod
Very interesting regarding Alan and his times.
Just read the Goodreads summary of Paula's book "Sons of the Wolf". Is Wulfhere an historic personage?All the thegns known to us by name probably had very interesting lives.
Almaer, Lord of Bourn, was a tenant of Edeva the Fair at some seven of her manors. The historian Katherine Keats-Rohan thinks he was a royal thane serving both Gyrth and Leofwine. If so, he must have been in the thick of the fiercest fighting when Duke William's horse was cut down and Gyrth charged down the hill to slay him only to be slain instead.
Amazingly, Almaer survived the battle and found favour with William's finest general, Count Alan, who made Almaer lord of eleven manors.
Alan's father Eozen was a first cousin of King Edward the Confessor, which is perhaps why Alan owned Wyken Farm in Suffolk on 5 January 1066. It seems plausible that Alan might have known his near neighbour Edeva and perhaps met Almaer.
According to the Domesday Survey, King William obtained 28 of Earl Gyrth's manors, but so did Alan. Alan was known often to be at William's side, so was it Alan who slew Gyrth?
Did Alan somehow, despite the exigencies of the moment, capture Almaer on the battlefield to spare his life?
The thanes of the north such as Uchtred and his family have amazing stories, but others elsewhere have told them better than I can. Long story short, Uchtred's descendant Gospatric of Cumbria lost his post as Earl of Northumbria rather abruptly and perhaps unexpectedly in 1072 and fled north to King Malcolm III's kingdom.
There must have been a lot of pressure to remove Englishmen from the North after the rebellion of 1069 and the Harrying of 1069-70, but Alan was his own man: Domesday shows that he parcelled out his 200-plus Yorkshire manors among his own family and the surviving English, including Gospatric's cousins - and barred Normans from owning anything there.
Interestingly, within a generation, Gospatric's family began naming their heirs "Alan". The famous Alan fitz Roland of Galloway, who advised King John to sign the Magna Carta, was the son of Roland/Lochlann, son of Gunhild, daughter of Waltheof of Allerdale, son of Gospatric. Gunhild's brother was Alan of Allerdale, heir of this Waltheof.
The name "Gunhild" had already occurred in this family for generations, so no link to Harold, but "Alan" was a novelty.
Mod
During the Harrying of the winter of 1069-70, Alan's recently obtained property of Gilling, Earl Edwin's wealthy northern caput, seems to have been devastated - if the Domesday valuations are any guide.The English fled inland, to the Yorkshire Dales, where Alan had other manors.
It's scarcely recalled that Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who participated big-time in that Harrying, but for some reason obtained no land there for his exertions, conducted a second, and even more severe Harrying in 1080.
Alan would have been well-established in the North by then, so this wouldn't have helped his property values.
By 1082, when Odo was imprisoned and Alan's star was still rising, it was pretty clear that Alan and Odo were not friends.
Before King William left England for the last time on 2 August 1086, Alan had persuaded the Conqueror to refound St Olaf's Church in Earlsborough outside the walls of York and to apologise to the people of York for the numerous devastations that the Normans had caused. Imagine that!
Alan then conceived of a great work of compensation to the English church on the land he owned around St Olaf's: St Mary's Abbey.
In 1087, Bishop Odo was released from prison on the reluctant orders of the dying Conqueror, and looked forward to resuming his rightful place as the principal counsellor of the King.
Alas for Odo, William de St-Calais, Bishop of Durham, had usurped this role. Although St-Calais had done such sterling work during the Domesday survey and the compilation of its results, Odo didn't appreciate this, because the survey had revealed many hitherto concealed illegal property acquisitions committed by Odo and his clique.
In January or February of 1088, Alan invited the new king William II and the royal court up to join him in officially founding St Mary's Abbey.
Perhaps this was Alan's way of rubbing Odo's nose in it, because Odo swiftly conspired with the majority of Norman magnates to rebel.
At first the King was outmatched and in dire trouble, but Alan and his allies combined with the English fyrd to stamp on the rebels all over the land, and prevented reinforcements arriving from Normandy by destroying the first Norman fleet that dared enter the Channel.
For the moment, the English had their revenge.
Mod
Didn't Gospatrick have children? I thought I just read about a Gospatrick at the time of Roger Bigod..
Kathleen, indeed he did. For more details, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospatr....Gospatric's son Waltheof, Lord of Allerdale, is the ancestor of the two Alans I mentioned above, in message 89.
Furthermore, there was another Gospatric, a distant cousin, who remained in Yorkshire where he became a tenant-in-chief of 44 manors and a tenant of Alan Rufus in another 19. So he had 63 manors in total by the time of the Survey, comparable to a middle-rank Norman baron. Not too bad for a Cumbric Englishman in the war-ravaged North.
This Gospatric did better than Alan's Norman chum Walter d'Aincourt, who held Derby under Edward the Confessor in 1065, in 1088 was entrusted by William II with a royal writ, and Trevor Foulds suggested (and I believe) was a son-in-law of King William I, and was TIC of 32 manors and a tenant (of the Archbishop of York) in 3 others.
Still, Gospatric's 63 manors were a let-down from the 94 he had held in 1066, but what really stands out is that although he was replaced *entirely* by every other TIC including King William, where Alan held sway Gospatric retained all but a few of his former properties, and those Alan gave to other, elsewhere dispossessed, Englishmen.
Moreover, within the "Land of Count Alan in Yorkshire" Gospatric was over-compensated by gaining more additional manors there than he had lost.
Alan was probably very fond of Cumbrians, because they were British and Alan's own male line came to Brittany from Cymru - either Gwynedd, or, as now seems more likely, Gwent.There are hints that Alan's female line was from the (apparently hereditary) Queens of Mercia; if so, he probably had a soft spot for Mercians also, though he had little land there.
That Alan was buried at the shrine of the royal martyr King Edmund of East Anglia suggests that his family were staking some sort of a claim there, too.
Many of Alan's manors had either no (recorded) tenant (presumably he held them in demesne) or the tenant was English - often the same person who held it in 1066, or their son. Certifiable Normans seem rather scarce on the ground where Alan was.
In fact, the only tenants of Alan's whom we don't know to have been either English or Breton were Aubrey de Vere (whom Keats-Rohan thinks was Breton), Geoffrey de Tournai (in Belgium), someone called Gerard (who could have been Breton), a Humphrey (either German, Norman or their way of writing the Old English Hunfrið), an Odo (a Frankish name, but also used by Bretons), Osbern (but he could have been Anglo-Danish), Picot (the count's man, and I'm guessing not the notorious sheriff), Robert (the count's man, but Alan also had a full brother named Robert), Roger Bigod (I guess foisted on Alan by King William), Thomas the Archbishop of York (whose brother Samson was named after a Breton saint), William Peverel (thought by some historians to have been a favoured bastard son of King William's), the famous William de St Calais (who was a canon at Bayeux with Thomas and Samson), another William, and many unnamed knights.
That's all. It may seem like a lot of foreigners, but you should see the list of Englishmen and women.
Ok, here's a list of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Danish tenants of Count Alan's, plus a few tenants whose names I'm very uncertain about.Numerous unnamed "English men" and "English women" and "sokemen",
Ælfric the priest,
Adestan,
Almær of Bourn,
Almær's son,
Beornwulf,
Donewald,
Ealdræd,
Ermengot (correction - Keats-Rohan says Ermengot's name is Breton, but Asgot held the same plot of land pre-Harold, so there is continuity),
Ernegis,
Eskil,
Fredegis,
Fulcwig (previous owner Godwig),
Gamal's sons (who inherited from their father Gamal, which I guess is an English name, not the Hebrew/Arabic name meaning camel - but you cannot exclude any possibility among Bretons),
Goding,
Godric (a steward, with many manors),
Gollan,
Gospatric (discussed in message 94 above),
Grim,
Gyrth (the count's man),
Hademar (is German, as it's currently used in West Germany, but is it Anglo-Saxon?),
Kolgrimr,
Kolsveinn,
Landric (apparently German, but is it English?),
Modgifu (a free woman),
Nardred,
Northmann,
Ordmaer,
Orm,
Thor,
Thorkil,
Toli (? Google finds this as a "Spanish" name!),
Turstin,
Uhtred,
Wigwin (English or Breton?),
Wimund (the count's man),
Wulfbert,
Wulfgeat,
Wulfmaer.
Zoe wrote: "A cluster of genealogies assert that Alan Rufus had a wife born c. 1042 whom they name as "Melisinde de Richmond", which is suspiciously similar to the name of his great-grandmother, Mélisende of Maine..."It just occurred to me that this "Melisinde de Richmond" was of the right age and had an appropriate name to be a sister of Alan Rufus. Given his known generosity to his brothers and sisters (legitimate and illegitimate), cousins, in-laws and servants, Alan might well have brought more than one sister and her husband to England.
Alternatively, "Melisinde" may have been the name of Alan's (half-)sister who married Enisant Musard, in which case the modern genealogists got confused between the different Musards.
Mod
Carol wrote: "It is possible that she was a sister. She certainly could make a good story. I shall send Swan-Daughter at the weekend. Just remember it is fiction!"Thank you very much! Yes, I shall happily make allowance for the imaginative plot and narrative elements.
What I'm keeping my eye out for are details of medieval life from your researches: what fabrics and clothes people wore, what they ate, how buildings looked, how they spoke to each other and deported themselves, how things were made, and so on.
These would nicely round out my notes on Alan's life story, in case I should ever write it up as a novel (as someone on Quora recently suggested). Musing idly, I have formed some notions of chapter headings.
My wish is to put Alan's story in context, as his background and milieu not only explain much about his actions but also enhance his distinctive character.
Ideally, Alan's biography would be one a series of books on the Bretons (especially the sovereign house), from their origins (as diverse families across the Old World who converged on Brittany) to modern times.
Rather than rehash old legends and fairy-tales, I'd like to tell the true stories of the fascinating events that inspired them, showing how they weave together in the personal histories of this family.
There'd be accounts of the Romans, Persians, Jews, Gauls, Britons and Irish, among others. Julius Caesar, Livia Augusta, Gratian, Magnus Maximus, Theodosius, Conan Meriadoc, Riothamus, Cerdic, and the founders of the House of Anjou would all have roles. So would the Aurelian emperors, Honorius, Attila the Hun, Aetius, Arvandus, Anthemius, Syagrius, Clovis, the Moors, Charles Martel, Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Alfred the Great, Edward the Elder, the Queens of Mercia, Edward the Confessor, Harold and Gyrth Godwinson, Eadgifu the Fair and Gunhild of course, the main actors (well-known or neglected) of the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses, and many many other persons.
The problem is not in finding something to say, but rather in deciding what not to include lest each novel take forever to complete. That's a weakness of mine, you see.
The Revolt of the Earls was in early 1075. Alan received many of Ralph de Gael's best properties in East Anglia, so it seems likely Alan was in the army with Geoffrey de Montbray, Robert Malet and William of Warenne (who was a subordinate of Alan's at Sainte-Suzanne in 1083 and with him at Pevensey in 1088) which defeated Ralph - though Alan's name, as usual, was not mentioned in accounts.Ralph left his wife Emma de Breteuil in Norwich Castle to negotiate while he sailed to Denmark.
On 18 December 1075, Ealdgyth Godwinson, Edward the Confessor's Queen, died at Winchester. William gave her a state funeral and buried her in Westminster Abbey.
Ralph succeeded in persuading Cnut the Holy and Hakon to provide a fleet of some 200 ships with which he returned to (vainly) threaten England the next year (1076).
This having failed, Ralph went immediately to Brittany where he joined up with his wife on their extensive estates at Gael and Montfort.
Ralph promptly joined Eozen's continuing rebellion against Hoel of Kernev, Regent of Brittany and Alan's maternal uncle, leading to the siege of Dol.
On 31 May 1076, Waltheof, having been denounced by his wife Judith, was executed at Winchester for his peripheral role in the previous year's Revolt.
King William invaded Brittany in September to support Hoel in the siege, but in early November Ralph and Hoel patriotically patched up their differences and drove William away.
(Invading Brittany almost never works, as even the Americans discovered to great cost. The only exceptions occurred when the Bretons were bitterly divided down the middle: the Viking conquest of 917-936, Henry II's overlordship, the first phase of the Hundred Years's War, and the French conquest in 1488, are all instances of that.)
Amidst the events of 1075 and 1076, William and Alan still made time to sign writs and charters in London.
Ask Carol McGrath
Books mentioned in this topic
Fiji (other topics)The Orphan Trilogy (other topics)
92 or 93?
Since I have seem no assertion other than a scrambled and unsupported reference on a family tree from Geoffrey Boterel's descendants, I can only guess.
Since Alan was often in dangerous situations and didn't reach the age of 80 as his father and other relatives who died naturally did, it's a plausible guess that he died in battle.
It's said that his brother Geoffrey died fighting their very close cousin Duke Alan IV "Fergant" on 24 August 1093 near Dol. Maybe that had something to do with Alan Rufus's death also? But how would Alan Rufus have been involved? Why wasn't he with King William II instead?