General Notes

!Queen of England. [Col. & Rev. Fam. of PA, p. 537]

NEWLIN, FOSTER LINES - 25th ggrandmother

!Brought up in the nunnery of Romsey by its abbess, her aunt Christina, and the veil which she had taken there formed an obstacle to her union with King Henry which was only removed by the wisdom of Anselm.  Matilda appeared before his court to tell her tale in words of passionate earnestness.  She had been veiled in her childhood, she asserted, only to save her from the insults of the rude soldiery who infested the land, had flung the veil from her again and again, and had yielded at last to the unwomanly taunts, the actual blows of her aunt. "As often as I stood in her presence," the girl pleaded," I wore the veil, trembling as I wore it with indignation and grief.  But as soon as I could get out of her sight I used to snatch it from my head, fling it on the ground, and trample it under foot.  That was the way, and none other, in which I was veiled."  Anselm at once declared her free from conventual bonds, and the shout of the English multitude when he set the crown on Matilda's brow drowned the murmur of Churchman or of baron. [WBH - England]

!The Norman nobles nicknamed her and Henry, Godgifu and Godric. [WBH - England]

!She retired to the monastery of Westminster where she spent her revenues in the relief of the sick and in acts of penitential piety.  She had, in the early years of her marriage, when Anselm was an exile from England, in consequence of his dispute with Henry about the right of investiture, considerable influence over her husband, if we may judge from a passage in one of her letters to the prelate. In this letter she says, speaking of the king, "His mind is not so provoked against you as some men think; and by God's good will, with my suggestions, which shall not be wanting, he will be more disposed to concord." [Knight's Popular History of England, Vol. 1, p. 270-1]

!Dau. of Malcolm III; wife of Henry I. [Chronicle of the Royal Family, chart]

Her chaplain was Bernard, a Norman appointed bishop of St David's in 1115 and the man responsible for foiling Llandaf's ambitions. He was the first of the bishops of St David to swear an oath of allegiance to Canterbury and to do homage to the king of England for the lands of the diocese. [A History of Wales, p. 121]

Dau. of Malcolm III Canmore and Margaret; m. Henry I, king of England; mother of Matilda. [Royalty for Commoners, p. 85]