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From: SFulton100< >
Subject: Gundred
Date: 31 Dec 1997 21:29:37 GMT


Could someone kindly comment on the parentage of Gundred, wife of William de
Warenne? I do not have her as a daughter of William the Conqueror, but
recently came across the following:

"Ordericus Vitalis, an old chronicler, who wrote a century after the event,
asserts that Gundreda was sister of one Gherbord, a Fleming, and in this is
followed by Dugdale, Mr. Stapleton, F.S.A., and Mr. Freeman, author of "The
Norman Conquest", notwithstanding the almost unanimous opinion of the old
genealogists and chroniclers, that she was the daughter of William the
Conqueror and his queen Matilda....Mr. Blaauw, in "Archoeologia" states that
Ordericus wrote his chronicle when a very old man, that in matters of royal
pedigree he has fallen into numerous acknowledged errors;...so that in the face
of the generally-received opinion, Ordericus's statement is discounted. Sir
George Duckett, Bart., who has made a special study of the Charters of Lewes,
has produced evidence to the fact that Gundreda is described as Matilda's
daughter, and the queen does not seem to have had a husband previous to William
the Conqueror, to whom she came as a young, unmarried girl....Among the
benefactors of Lewes Priory, Matilda is described as the mother of King Henry
and of the Countess Gundreda, while in the Charter of William I of the Manor of
Walton, in Norfolk, to Lewes Priory he calls Gundreda his daughter (filioe
meoe)....Again in the Ledger Book of Lewes, speaking of William de Warrenne, it
is said he married the Conqueror's daughter (conjus filiam desponsavit)....so
that we are disposed to accept the conclusion of Sir H. Ellis in his
introduction to Domesday Book that Gundreda was really daughter of the
Conqueror."
- A History and Genealogy of the Warren Family,
pp. 5-6, by Rev. Thomas Warren, F.R.S.A. Ireland, printed for private
circulation 1902.

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