• General Notes

  [SUSANNA KEENE.FTW]
  
  Cousin to Earl of Chester.
  
  REF: K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Linacre College, Oxford
  (http://www.linacre.ox.ac.uk/staff_pages/prosop/PRSPN2.stm)
  Antecessor Noster: The Parentage of Countess Lucy Made Plain
  
  A lot of ink has flowed on the subject, but there can be no
  doubt that the 'mysterious' Countess Lucy of Chester was
  William Malet's thrice-married granddaughter, the daughter of
  Robert Malet's sister and Turold the Sheriff of
  Lincoln (dead by 1079). The suggestion was first made by R.
  Kirk in 1888. As N. Sumner has more recently observed: 'This
  account has the merit of explaining why the lordship of
  Spalding and other places in Lincolnshire were held after Ivo's
  death not by Beatrice, his direct heir and the daughter of his
  marriage to Lucy, but by the later husbands of Lucy, Roger fitz
  Gerold and Ranulph Meschines.' It is clear from her charters
  that Lucy was an heiress; as was to be expected, her estates
  passed to the sons of her second and third marriages. Kirk's
  work was based upon conjecture, and contained a number of
  errors. The question of Lucy's parentage has therefore remained
  open. Nevertheless, there is proof that Kirk was right. A
  spurious charter of Crowland Abbey made Turold of Bucknall (the
  Sheriff) the founder of the priory of Spalding as a cell of
  Crowland. It also called Turold brother of Godiva countess of
  Mercia, but subsequently described Godiva's son Earl Algar as
  Turold's cognatus (cousin). A genealogia fundatoris of Coventry
  Abbey made Lucy a daughter of Earl Algar and sister and heiress
  of earls Edwin and Morcar. The Peterborough Chronicle and the
  Pseudo-Ingulf's Chronicle of Crowland both made Lucy the
  daughter of Algar and niece or great-niece of Turold. We know
  that William Malet was half-English, so these traditions
  probably boil down to a relationship between Countess Godiva
  and William's English mother. In 1153 a charter [RRAN, III,
  180] of the future Henry II for Lucy's son Ranulf II of Chester
  referred to her uncles Robert Malet and Alan of Lincoln. Alan
  of Lincoln was the successor, and almost certainly the son, of
  Domesday's Alfred of Lincoln. Chronologically, it is most
  unlikely that Alan was Lucy's uncle. It was probably another of
  Alfred's sons whom Domesday described as Alfred nepos [nephew
  or grandson] of Turold, then holding a fee which was certainly
  thereafter held with the rest of the senior Alfred's fee by his
  heir Alan. Domesday provides a further indication that Alfred
  senior married another of William Malet's daughters when it
  names a William as Alfred's predecessor in two of his manors.
  Other parts of each of these manors (Linwood and Rothwell) were
  held in 1086 by Durand Malet, who was probably William's son.
  It seems that Henry's charter can be explained by seeing a
  scribe, perhaps in search of rhetorical balance, commit the
  error of ascribing two uncles to Lucy, instead of a niece
  (Lucy) and a nephew (Alan of Lincoln) to Robert Malet, who was
  uncle to both.  Turold is evidenced in Domesday Book as a
  benefactor of Crowland Abbey, to which he gave a parcel of land
  at Bucknall. The abbey also held land at Spalding that had
  probably been granted to it by Earl Algar and there is evidence
  to suggest that Turold the Sheriff gave further land there to
  the abbey of St Nicholas, Angers, before
  1079. Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois subsequently
  founded, or perhaps re-founded, a priory at Spalding subject to
  St Nicholas, Angers. A revealing phrase from the Register of
  Spalding Priory reads: 'mortuo quia dicto Thoraldo relicta sibi
  herede Lucia predicta' [at his death Turold left an heir, the
  aforesaid Lucy]. The word heres, 'heir', was often used of the
  child who was to inherit his/her father's property. Lucy later
  confirmed the gifts of all three of her husbands: 'pro
  redempcione anime patris mei et matris mee et dominorum meorum
  et parentum meorum' [for the souls of my father and mother, my
  husbands and my (other) relatives]. The association of the
  priory with such a small group of people and the description of
  Lucy as heres of Turold strongly hint at Lucy's parentage. But
  we can go further still. In their initial benefaction Ivo and
  Lucy referred to 'antecessorum suorum Turoldi scilicet
  uxorisque eius regine' [our 'ancestors' Turold and his wife].
  The reference to Turold's wife indicates that some part of his
  landholding had come to him through his wife, something also
  indicated by the occurrence of William Malet amongst those
  who had held the Domesday lands of Lucy's first husband Ivo
  Taillebois before him. The apparently vague Latin words
  antecessor and predecessor can both be used to mean something
  like 'predecessor'. Each of them conveys
  a range of very precise meanings in different circumstances.
  The description of Turold and his wife as antecessores of Ivo
  and Lucy may be compared to the usage in a charter in the
  cartulary of Mont-Saint-Michel by which the Angevins Hugh
  Chalibot and his wife confirmed the grants of her father, who
  was described as antecessor noster. Other examples of this
  phrase show clearly that it was used by a married man to
  describe the parent from whom his wife had inherited the
  property she brought to the marriage. Acting on her own account
  (normally after her husband's death), the heiress will often
  describe herself as the daughter of the parent her husband
  described as antecessor noster. A rare use of the phrase was to
  indicate the couple's immediate
  predecessor, not her father but her brother. In Lucy and Ivo's
  case the plurality of their antecessores, Turold and his wife,
  puts the matter beyond doubt. Lucy's parents were indeed Turold
  the Sheriff and a daughter of William Malet.
  
  K. S. B. Keats-Rohan
  Linacre College
  Oxford

Details of Lucy's family with Ivo FitzRichard de Roumare de Taillebois