General Notes

REFN: 1791AN
The Conqueror and His Companions
by J.R. Planché, Somerset Herald. London: Tin sley Brothers, 1874.
This is supposed to be another inaccuracy of Master Wace' s, and we are
told by M. le Prévost that we should read Roger instead of Will iam, the
Norman poet having substituted the name of the son for that of the
father. That William, the son of Roger De Roumare, was not at Hastings I
rea dily admit, but Wace does not say he was. He simply mentions a "Dam
Willame d e Romare," and unless we could clearly show there was no such
person then exi sting, it is hardly fair to tax an almost contemporaneous
author with even un intentional misrepresentation. The pedigree of the
family of Roumare is one o f the most puzzling in the whole catalogue of
Norman nobility. The diligent s tudy of forty years has not enabled me to
penetrate its mysteries. Edward of Salisbury, one of its most important
members, has still to be satisfactorily affiliated, and the Roger de
Roumare suggested to be substituted for the Will iam of Waee is equally
difficult to identify.
It is almost impossible to mov e a step in these directions without
acknowledging our obligations to the lat e Mr. Stapleton, who has done so
much to elucidate the descent of our Anglo-N orman ancestors.
To him we are indebted for the information that previous to t he Conquest
there lived a certain G-erald, who had two wives, Albreda and Emi cia, and
a son probably by the first, who is presumed to be the Robert Fitz G erald
of Domesday, and the brother of Roger Fitz Gerald, father of William de
Roumare, created Earl of Lincoln by King Stephen.
In my paper on "The Famil y and Connections of Robert Fitz Gerald," the
Domesday holder of Corfe, in th e county of Dorset (Congress of the
British Archaeological Association, at We ymouth, 1872), I exposed the
absurd story, stereotyped in English History, of the three husbands of
Lucia, Countess of Chester, which had been first doubt ed by the Rev. Mr.
Bowles in his "History of Laycock Abbey;" but with the par ticular object
of that Paper I have at present nothing to do.
All that we kn ow of Roger Fitz Gerald, also called De Roumare, or De
Romara, is that he was the father of the William De Roumare, first of
that name, Earl of Lincoln, b y a lady named Lucia, who, through the
neglect of verifying dates, has been c onfounded probably with her mother,
married to her father before she was born , set down as the sister-in-law
of her own son, and thus innocently made the cause of considerable
trouble to the learned and curious in history and genea logy. The first
fact we are in possession of respecting Roger Fitz Gerald is his
appearance as Lord of Spalding in the county of Lincoln, before the death
of Eufus in 1100. The date of his marriage is unknown, but his son
William must have been of full age in 1122, as in that year he claimed of
King Henry 1 certain lands which his step-father, Ranulf De Briquessart,
had surrendere d to the King for the earldom of Chester. It is clear,
therefore, that Roger was dead and William twenty-one and upwards in
1122, so that the latter could not possibly have fought at Senlac, seeing
that he was not born till at leas t thirty years after it.
It is a question, indeed, whether his father Roger De Roumare was present
at Hastings, as we find him Lord of Spalding thirty-four years
afterwards, and are informed that he was a young man newly married at
that period, and I am not aware of any reliable evidence to the contrary.
Bu t, as I have already observed, there is nothing in what we do know to
disprov e the statement of Wace, that there was a William De Roumare in
the ranks of the Norman army of invasion. Without relying on the
statement of Peter De Blo is, that Roger Fitz Gerald had an elder brother
named William, by whom Lucia was honourably received on her marriage, and
whom the writer inaccurately sty les Earl of Lincoln, there is every
probability