GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives
Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1998-12 > 0912700960
From: John Carmi Parsons< >
Subject: Re: Aveline de Forz
Date: 3 Dec 1998 08:02:40 -0800
Margaret Howell and I have corresponded regularly in recent years while we
were both preparing our books on the two Queens Eleanor in England in the
later thirteenth century. The information that Raymond Berengar IV of
Provence and his wife had, very early in their marriage two sons who were
probably twins, comes from a charter in which the couple made a donation
to a religious house for the souls of their sons. I can't remember the
exact date of the charter but it was, as I said, very early in their
marriage and this would indicate that the twins were probably born as the
result of the countess' first pregnancy. Thus the third child of this
marriage was Margaret (1221?-1295) who married Louis IX of France in 1234,
and the fourth was Eleanor (1223?-1291), who married Henry III of England
in 1236. I believe Gerard Sivery's _Marguerite de Provence: Une reine du
temps des cathedrales_ refers to the "twin" charter more explicitly than
does Miss Howell. The charter does not provide the names of the two boys.
Everything we know about the children born to Edmund of Lancaster and
Aveline de Forz comes from the Anglo-Norman chronicles written for
Edmund's niece Mary (1279-1332), daughter of King Edward I, by the
Dominican friar Nicholas Trevet. This chronicle is packed with a good
deal of intimate Plantagenet family lore that Mary probably told Trevet,
and given that his source was a ranking member of the family, his information
is not to be rejected out of hand. (Surprisingly though, the chronicle has
never been fully edited.)
According to Trevet, Aveline was the mother of two children who did not
survive. We know that her marriage to Edmund was consummated in Feb 1273, the
month in which Aveline turned 14, and that she died in November 1274. There is
not really enough time there to allow for pregnancies, which argues that the
children were twins. Furthermore, it is probable that the twins did not
survive birth. According to the laws and customs of England, if a man married
an heiress and she bore him a child that lived long enough for its cries to be
heard within the birth chamber, the husband and father was entitled to
continue to hold his wife's inheritance for the rest of his life, whether the
child survived or not. (This was known as "the courtesy of England.") We know
that Edmund of Lancaster did not hold Aveline's lands after her death; thus
any children she bore him could not have survived birth. In the thirteenth
century it was rare for twins to survive at all (Blanche of Castile's twin
sons barely survived birth), and a dangerous twin delivery could easily
explain Aveline's early death when she was not yet 16.
Aveline was the heiress to both her parents--to her father for the earldom
of Albemarle and the barony of Cockermouth, and to her mother (or rather
grandmother) for the earldom of Devon and the lordship of the Isle of
Wight. Her ancestry can thus be traced in CP under those earldoms and in
Sanders' _English Baronies_ under "Cockermouth."
John Parsons
On 3 Dec 1998 wrote:
> Hello,
> Yesterday i read the book "Eleanor of Provence" (really a superb
> book), written by Margareth Howell.
> Howell states that Eleanor was the fourth child and that her
> mother first two children were probably twin boys. Who can give me
> details on these sons who died very young?
> In this book one can read furthet that Aveline de Forz, married
> with Eleanor's son Edmund, died in 1274 after given birth to a
> twin. Alison Weir says that there was no issue of her marriage to
> Edmund. What is true? And can someone give me some info on the
> Forz-family?
> Greetings,
> Ryan Dewkinandan
>
>
This thread:
| Re: Aveline de Forz by John Carmi Parsons< > |