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From: "Douglas Richardson " < >
Subject: Re: Fact of Fiction? Re: Helen verch Llewelyn of Wales married John E of Huntington (1207-37)
Date: 21 Apr 2005 20:46:30 -0700
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In-Reply-To: <d494el$egu$1@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>
Dear Newsgroup ~
I had a long talk today with Andrew B.W. MacEwen of Maine, the resident
expert on all things Scottish. The talk was very illuminating. I
asked Mr. MacEwen numerous questions and he had a ready answer for
nearly all of them. Clearly Mr. MacEwen has done his homework.
Basically he says that the only source that states that Malcolm, Earl
of Fife, married a daughter of Llywelyn is the Melrose Chronicle. Mr.
MacEwen has not one but two editions of the Melrose Chronicle in his
personal library. At my request, he examined both of them for me. He
read me the Latin and it was very easy to follow. Under the year 1230
it is stated that Earl Malcolm senior died and that he was succeeded by
his nephew "nepos", the younger Malcolm, who afterwards ["postea"]
married the daughter of Llywelyn. Since the senior Earl Malcolm is
thought to have died in 1228 or 1229 (sources vary on the exact date
according to Andrew), it seems likely that the death of the senior
Malcolm took place in 1228 or 1229 and that the younger Earl Malcolm
married the daughter of Llywelyn in or before 1230.
Melrose Chronicle is written in different hands, so Mr. MacEwen is
uncertain as to the exact dating of this particular entry. However,
the entry would appear to date prior to 1266, when the chronicle was
stopped, and possibly as early as 1230 itself. Mr. MacEwen says there
is a discussion regarding the dating of the various written hands which
is published in the "facsimile" edition of the Melrose Chronicle.
As for the evidence of Earl Malcolm's second wife, Ellen, he says there
is no record of Ellen as his wife in the earl's lifetime. He said
that the Scotichronicon records that Earl Malcolm's widow married
Donald, Earl of Mar. He didn't provide the date, but it can be easily
found in Scots Peerage or Complete Peerage. He added that there is a
rent roll dated 1290 in which Ellen, Countess of Mar, is named. He
said a transcript of the rent roll was published in Stevenson's
Illustrations of Scottish History. It is commonly assumed that Ellen,
Countess of Mar, named in the 1290 record is the same woman as Earl
Malcolm's surviving widow. Mr. MacEwen has no problem with that. Mr.
MacEwen continued to explain that for reasons he has not understood,
all secondary sources in turn identify Earl Malcolm's widow as being
the same woman as his earlier wife, the daughter of Llywelyn. On this
score, Mr. MacEwen says "This is impossible."
Mr. MacEwen says that the Earls of Fife were the premier comital family
of Scotland in this time period. As such, they would have had
sufficient status to contract a marriage to a legitimate daughter of
Prince Llywelyn. Since Llywelyn had a legitimate daughter named
Susanna available in the right time period to marry Earl Malcolm, Mr.
MacEwen has considered it a distinct possibility that this Susanna was
Earl Malcolm's first wife. However, there are no contemporary records
at all which provide the given name of either of Earl Malcolm's wives
during the earl's lifetime.
Mr. MacEwen said there is little in print written on the early Earls of
Fife. He knows of one article by Geoffrey Barrow which is entitled
"Earls of Fife in the 12th Century," which appeared in Proceedings of
the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 83 (1953): 51-62. Other than
that, nothing.
He said that when earlier scholars decided that Ellen, Countess of Mar,
named in 1290 record must be Earl Malcolm's earlier wife, there was
some apparent confusion between her and Llywelyn's proven legitimate
daughter, Ellen, wife of John of Scotland and Robert de Quincy. It was
finally decided that the two Ellen's must be separate and distinct
women. Yet, there seems to have been no effort made to check the
chronology to see if the unnamed wife Earl Malcolm married in 1228/30
was the same person as the wife we know as Ellen who subsequently
married Donald, Earl of Mar. It was more or less assumed the two wives
were the same person.
Mr. MacEwen says the chief problem in resolving the issue of the wives
of the early Earls of Fife is that the cartulary of their chief
foundation, Culross, was destroyed in a fire before any abstracts were
ever made from it. The destruction of this one cartulary is surely an
enormous loss. Had it survived, there presumably would have been
successive charters issued by each of the Earls of Fife, along with
dutiful reference to their wives and mothers.
Regarding my three wives scenario, Mr. MacEwen said he had considered
that possibility as well. However, given there is so little known
about Earl Malcolm's life, he thought it best to stick to the two wives
scenario and leave it at that. He stated emphatically that Earl
Malcolm's second surviving wife, Ellen, was clearly much younger than
Earl Malcolm and that it is impossible chronologically for Ellen to be
the same person as the daughter of Llywelyn.
Mr. MacEwen is not sure why the chronological issue over the two wives
was overlooked for so long. He said as far as he knows he's the first
person to have spotted the problem. I asked him about the possibility
of writing an article on this subject as a correction to Complete
Peerage and Scots Peerage. He said he has material in his files for
many articles and this is just another potential article. All the
same, he is working on several other articles at present. He
complained how much time they take to get them finished and done well.
He asked if I was interested in writing an article on the matter
myself. I said no, I also have more material than I have time to
handle. He closed by wishing me well with my Magna Carta Ancestry book
and we signed off.
Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah
Website: www.royalancestry.net
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