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From: "Peter Stewart" < >
Subject: Countess Lucy of Devon [was Re: FitzRichards]
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:35:08 GMT
References: <mailman.83.1175132608.5576.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com><PuFOh.3310$M.206@news-server.bigpond.net.au>


"Peter Stewart" < > wrote in message
news:PuFOh.3310$ ...
>
> "Wanda Thacker" < > wrote in message
> news: ...
>> Here is what I found at the FMG site, and it seems
>> that their sources were at least plausible.
>
> "Seems" on what basis?
>
>> but, conjecture is part of genealogy anyway, in the
>> absence of DNA. The best you can do is find sources
>> and state what they were and why you trust them and
>> then someone will come along and refute them later
>> anyway. I'm o.k. with, "not definite".
>
> But you haven't stated "why you trust them", so far you have only
> overstated what may be speculated from them.
>
> Do you have an idea of how many women like Lucy paid "pro anima" respects
> to great magnates who were neither their husbands not their brothers? How
> do you assess the likelihood of a relationship for Lucy as high, rather
> than merely notable or possible, given what you read on the FMG website?

It appears that Wanda doesn't intend to respond further, and I can't find
that the matter has been discussed before on SGM apart from a brief exchange
between Paul Reed and Douglas Richardson in August 2003 (subject "C. P.
Addition: Lucy, wife of Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Hertford, and Baldwin
de Redvers, 1st Earl of Devon").

The connection that Wanda found in the Medieval Lands database on the FMG
website, making Countess Lucy of Devon a sister of Gilbert de Clare, was
taken from Katherine Keats-Rohan, _Domesday Descendants_ (2002) p. 246,
stating:

"On the basis of an endorsement of her only known charter, a grant to
Stoke-by-Clare priory for the souls of Earl Baldwin (her husband) and Earl
Gilbert, she has been identified as the wife of Gilbert, earl of Hertford,
though there is no other evidence that he ever married (Comp. Peer. vi,
499). The endorsement reads: 'Carta de comitissa de Clara'. It is obvious
from the beneficiary and from the charter text that Lucy was a countess -
the widow of Earl Baldwin - and that she was a member of the de Clare
family, a fact noted acceptably and comprehensibly by a scribe of a Clare
foundation when he endorsed the charter. Her name strongly suggests as
affiliation with Ranulf I of Chester and his wife the Coutness Lucy. She
should be identified as a daughter of Richard fitz Gilbert and Adelisa of
Chester, daughter of Ranulf and Lucy, and hence sister, NOT wife, of Earl
Gilbert of Hertford, who died 1152/3. Lucy's charter was doubtless given
shortly after the death of her husband in 1155, two or three years after the
death of her brother who was buried at Stoke-by-Clare priory. She must have
died soon afterwards as there is no further record of her."

I don't agree with this at all, and in my view Douglas Richardson's subject
line above, following Robert Bearman in his edition of the Redvers family
charters, is a more plausible reading of the meagre evidence than Dr
Keats-Rohan's assertions.

First, it is of little consequence if there is no other evidence, apart from
the possible indication of one charter, that Earl Gilbert ever married - we
have no more than this for many marriages of his rank and time, and in his
case there is no direct evidence or statement that he was never married. The
fact that CP reports this as said for lack of evidence to the contrary,
while not even mentioning the Stoke priory charter, only suggests that this
document was unknown to the writer who ought to have considered it if known.

Secondly, the peripheral conclusions in DD are not supportable: to say that
Lucy "must" have died soon after this record because there isn't another is
scarcely more logical than to say she "must" have been a girl bride in the
early 1150s because there is no other record of her beforehad (and for that
matter, since Earl Gilbert's parents were most probably both born before
1100 this obverse pointless speculation would make it less likely that Lucy
was his sister). Some countesses of the 12th century didn't leave much of a
mark as widows, and she could have survived for years after Baldwin's death
for all we know. Also, her name _might_ suggest an affiliation with the more
famous Countess Lucy, but not particularly with that lady's third husband
Earl Ranulf of Chester - she had offspring by two other men as well as by
him. It seems to me that the name Lucy could be misleading, and just a
co-incidence as far as we can tell: Earl Baldwin's brother William de Vernon
was also married to a woman named Lucy, daughter of William de Tancarville,
so that this name alone is hardly compelling evidence for a specific
relationship.

Thirdly, the beneficiary and the charter text do not make it "obvious" that
Countess Lucy of Devon belonged to the Clare family, as claimed, while the
endorsement clearly enough suggests that the scribe at Stoke - who should
have known - thought she did not. The gift being to Stoke priory makes it
obvious only that Lucy had a connection to this house, but whether by birth
or marriage into the founding family cannot be discerned. Earl Gilbert's
married sister or remarried widow might equally have made a donation
remembering him a few years after his death. The text doesn't help much: it
is written in the third person, so is only a paraphrase of Lucy's actual
charter, and the relevant passage is as follows: "pro anima comitis
Baldewini et comitis Gilberti et omnium antecessorum suorum et pro seipsa et
omnibus amicis suis" (for the soul of Earl Baldwin and of Earl Gilbert and
of all their predecessors and for herself and all her loved ones) [see
_Stoke by Clare Cartulary, BL Cotton Appx. xxi_, edited by Christopher
Harper-Bill & Richard Mortimer (1982-84) part 1 p. 49 no. 69]. There is
nothing here to imply a different relationship to Gilbert from that to
Baldwin, whom we know to have been Lucy's husband.

It would be much less usual, I think, for a woman to refer to her brother in
this way than to a former husband. Gilbert's predecessors would have been
his sister's blood relatives, and in this event some language to distinguish
between them and her in-laws who were Baldwin's predecessors might be
expected. We don't know, of course, if the original charter contained more
detail, perhaps with more specific possessive pronouns making the meaning
plainer.

However, the endorsement in itself could not be plainer: Lucy if a sister of
Earl Gilbert would not have used "de Clara" as a surname, either before or
after marriage, and no scribe at Stoke would have called a daugher of the
family who was not an heiress "countess of Clare" anyway. Several other
Stoke priory charters of countesses of Clare with similar endorsments make
it perfectly clear that Lucy was supposed to have been the wife of an earl
of Clare, presumably Gilbert. Compare, for instance, op. cit. p. 47 no. 65,
charter of Countess Amice, wife of Gilbert's nephew Richard de Clare, earl
of Hertford, on folio 31r of the cartulary endorsed "Carta comitisse de
Clara"; this is identical to the endorsement of Lucy's charter on folio 32r
(that by the way correctly reads "Carta comitisse de Clara...", not "de
comitissa de Clara" as misquoted in DD). If the scribe oddly thought that a
sister of Gilbert could be meaningfully called "comitissa de Clara" he might
just as well have called Amice "comitissa de Gloucestria" after her own
family's earldom.

Peter Stewart



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