General Notes

!Inherited the Castle of Arundel in dowry from the deceased King Henry I when she married William "with the Strong Hand" de Albini.  [Roll of the Battle Abbey]

MINOR, WAITE LINE

!Ped. of Charlemagne

!2nd wife and widow of Henry I of England. [Magna Charta Barons, p. 415]

!No issue from King Henry. This source calls her Adelaide of Louvain. [Knight's Popular History of England, Vol. 1, p. 273]

Widow of Henry I, King of England; m.2. William d'Aubigny; mother of Alice d'Aubigny. [Royal Descents, p. 417]

Given the earldom of Arundel on her marriage to King Henry. [Falaise Roll, p. 101]

2nd wife of Henry I, king of England; m.2 1138, William d'Aubigny, Earl of Arundel. [Ancestral Roots, p. 3]

Dau. of the Count of Louvain; 18-year-old bride of King Henry I of England; girl of such beauty that she was called the Fair Maid of Brabant; gentle and understanding and she strove to be a good wife to the melancholy Henry, but she failed to bear his children. [The Conquering Family, p. 5]

Dau. of Godfrey I "Labarbe"; m. King Henry I of England, no children; m. William III de Aubigny; mother of Alice who m. John, Count of Eu. [GRS 3.03, Automated Archives, CD#100]

In 1150 Alice the Queen withdrew to the nunnery at Afflighem in her native Brabant, where she died in 1151. [Castle Rising, p. 15]

b.c. 1104, 1st dau. of Godfrey I a la Barbe, Duke of Lower Lorraine, and Ide of Chiny; m.1 King Henry I; m.2 William I d'Aubigny; mother of William II d'Aubigny who m. Maud de St. Hilaire. [Charlemagne, Alfred the Great, and Other Ancestors, Chart 2928]

Adeliza was the daughter of Godfrey of Louvain, duke of Lower Lotharingia, and became in her mid- to late teens, the 2nd wife of Henry I in January of 1121, abt 3 years after the death of Henry's first wife Matilda. Adeliza had no children by Henry during the 15 years as his wife, but had 7 by her 2nd husband, William De Albini. Henry's need for a wife in 1120 was made urgent by the death of his son and heir William in the White Ship disaster.
   Most likely in 1138, 3 years after the death of Henry I, Adeliza m. William d'albini Pincerna, son of the butler of first Henry and then Stephen. William d'Albini pincerna senior had solidly supported Stephen, as did William d'Albini pincerna, the younger until 1139. 'Their court was at Arundel (also referred to as the rape of Arundel).
   By Nov 1139 the elder William was deceased and the younger William was earl of Lincoln, created by Stephen.
   Adeliza was an active monastic patron following Henry I's death. Her gifts were to Waltham Abbey (early Charters of Waltham Abbey), Readin Abbey (Reading Abbey Cartularies), the monks of St-Vincents, Knights Templars, Waverly Abbey and others. The only surviving Pipe Roll from Henry's reign indicates that in 1130 Adeliza held land in Oxfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Berkshire, Gloucestershire (Berkeley), London, Middlesex and Devon.
   William d'Albini attended Stephen's Christmas court in 1141 and attested as earl of Sussex for the first time ... and confirming Arundel to him in perpetuity.
   Adeliza retired to the monastery of Affligem (favored by her father and brothers) shortly before her death in 1151. Another article has suggested that Adeliza as a child was educated at Afflighem, South Brabant.
  Adeliza's failure to bear Henry I a child during the 14 years of their marriage (1121-34) is indeed puzzling, given the number of children both legitimate and illegitimate he had previously sired, and given the fact that after her second marriage, at the age of about 35, she went on to produce 7 children. First and foremost we should remember that Henry and Adeliza m. 1121, when he was in his mid-fifties, a goodly age in that time. It appears from what little we can surmise about the birth dates of his illegitimate and legitimate children that the birth rate among them had already tapered off quite strikingly by 1120, and it's quite possible Henry was no longer quite as successful in reproductive mode as he had once been. Furthermore, I know of no historian who has stated that Henry and Adeliza ever became particularly close or devoted to each other, certainly no more so than Henry had been with his first wife the good Queen Edith-Matilda. If his marriage to Adeliza failed on that very basic level, her childlessness by him would not be quite so surprising.
   One theory is that Henry perhaps was not terribly serious about fathering another child, but always expected, or at least hoped, that his legitimate daughter Matilda the Empress would succeed him. This was because he truly wanted the old Anglo-Saxon royal blood, which Matilda had through her mother, to return to the English throne. Certainly there is plenty of evidence that one of the reasons Henry usually cited to justify her succession to the throne when, in the last years of his life, he repeatedly got his barons to swear allegiance to Matilda as his heir, was that she carried the blood of the Old English kings as well as that of the Norman conquerors. [UTZ@aol.com]

Dau of Godfrey Barbutus, Duke of Louvaine and Brabant, and Ida de Namuer, Countess de Namuer. [Floyd Gingrich <gingrichfe@juno.com, 25 Aug 2001]