Zoe’s Comments (group member since Jul 07, 2013)

Zoe’s comments from the Ask Carol McGrath group.

I'm currently reading André Wilmart's article "Alain Le Roux et Alain Le Noir, Comtes de Bretagne" in the Annales de Bretagne. Tome 38, numéro 3,
1928. pp. 576-602, of which a PDF is available at:
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/....

Wilmart states that on 8 September 1088, Alan had signed a document guaranteeing safe passage for St-Calais if the Bishop would submit to judgment by the King. During the trial, St-Calais referred to this agreement, causing uproar in the court. Alan then spoke calmly and clearly over the clamour and restated the agreement of 8 September, saying that he had given his word and the Bishop of Durham had come to the King to plead his cause. If there were any fault here, it was not the Bishop's but his own.

Alan then pleaded with the King (William II) not to force people into perjury but to respect their consciences - otherwise he believed himself obliged to refuse to serve the king.

Wilmart was impressed by Alan's audacious and chivalrous dedication to truth and honour. Elsewhere he described Alan as "rich and good", giving two examples: (1) he had intervened when William de Percy confiscated land belonging to lay tenants; (2) when Thomas the Archbishop of York took four acres from the monks of St Mary's for his own purpose, Abbot Stephen travelled to London to appeal to Alan, who persuaded the King to donate land to the monks as recompense.

Zoe wrote: "...It's all very suggestive of a pattern of interlocking [English, Scottish and Breton] marital alliances that history somehow overlooked."

It was therefore rather disappointing that in Neil Oliver's TV series "A History of Scotland", he inexplicably skipped the formative period of 1000-1200: yes, no Macbeth, no Malcolm III and no Earls of Huntingdon!

What's especially paradoxical is that "Oliver" is a name that known genealogical and linguistic connections imply almost certainly came to Scotland through Breton settlement of the Lowlands. Was it false modesty that led him to omit mention of this whole period?

In "Walking Through History", episode 2, Dunfermline was visited and the story of Malcolm III and his second Queen, St. Margaret, was told, but the contributers to this episode were:

Prof Richard Oram, Stirling University
Prof Robert Bartlett, St Andrews University
Dr Fiona Watson, writer and historian

Neil Oliver presented episode 1 on prehistoric Argyll, as prehistoric archaeology is his area of expertise, I understand that, but still?

Carol wrote: ...It is superb research indeed.

Much of the credit for the Sigrid conjecture belongs to K. McKenzie who I believe first proposed a connection between Alan and the Allerdales on soc.genealogy.medieval and others who discussed it there, whose posts inspired me to take a look at this family.

There may be even more to this than at first appears, for the Scottish heroine of the 1300s known as Black Agnes, was Agnes Randolph, Countess of Dunbar and March.

Randolph was a name of a family descended in male line from Alan's brother Ribald (see e.g. http://lewisathome.com/tag/alan-rufus/), and Agnes was of course Alan's mother's name.

Soon after Alan's death, many Bretons were invited north to Scotland, where they settled in large numbers in Ayrshire, many of them spreading around the other southern counties.

It's all very suggestive of a pattern of interlocking marital alliances that history somehow overlooked.

Perhaps I should add that I am not obdurately averse to Sharpe's notion that Alan and Gunnhild may have been a couple decades earlier than 1093.

The reasons for my concern about his claim of Matilda being their daughter I have already expressed.

However, there is another candidate for their daughter, namely the Sigrid (of unknown descent) who married Waltheof of Allerdale in Scotland (not the Waltheof we first think of), who was a son of Gospatric the Earl of Northumberland who was deposed in 1070. For Waltheof and Sigrid had at least five children, among whom were a daughter named Gunnhild and a son, the heir of Allerdale, whom they named Alan!

Let that sink in.

(1) Alan Rufus had played a major role in Harold's defeat, yet Gunnhild loved him.

(2) Alan acquired the lands of many defeated English lords before and after the rebellion of 1070, yet one of the lords who lost his extensive lands at that time had a granddaughter named Gunnhild and a grandson, the eventual heir, named Alan.

Why?

Two possibilities came to mind: either

(a) there was a kinship connection (as astonishing as that would be), such as Sigrid being our Alan and Gunnhild's daughter; or, even more amazingly,

(b) Alan had acted in a way that, despite all that they had suffered, endeared him to the conquered.

If case (b) is true, then it would seem that Alan was the only one of the Conqueror's commanders who became a hero to the English.

Not only to the English but also to the Scots, for the family of Waltheof of Allerdale became the lords of Dunbar and March.

In soc.genealogy.medieval in July this year, TJ Booth published a stern admonition against my conjectures about Matilda d'Aincourt being Alan's sister and marrying Walter in 1065, in direct contradiction of Richard Sharpe's meticulous scholarship and Keats-Rohan's approval thereof. He was quite shocked at my suggestion that perhaps they had been family friends of Edeva the Fair during King Edward the Confessor's reign.

He quickly descried that I had contributed this and many other statements to the Wikipedia article on Alan Rufus, and admonished me further for not citing sufficient evidence.

This galvanised me to action, so I've deleted almost all contentious statements from the Wikipedia article.

For other statements that he disputed, I supplied documentary evidence, some of which I cheekily obtained from Sharpe's and Keats-Rohan's own materials, such as the PASE record of Walter owning property in Derby under King Edward.

Carol wrote: "Charters with youngsters were often where permission was required. So might say 'With the consent of my heir William' or whatever.
from Elizabeth"

Please ask Elizabeth: for what purposes was a child's permission required?

A cluster of genealogies assert that Alan Rufus had a wife born c. 1042 whom they name as "Melisinde de Richmond", which is suspiciously similar to the name of his great-grandmother, Mélisende of Maine (c. 980 – 1017 ? or 1064 ?).

The later Melisinde was supposedly the daughter of Hariscoit III de Saint-Jacques and Melisinde de Nantes, but these genealogies go into time warps before this, with birth date uncertainties of 70 years for the same person.

Also, I haven't found any reliable source for the existence of a Melisinde of Nantes, or of a Hariscoit de Saint-Jacques.

Moreover, these genealogies claim that Melisinde de Richmond was a descendant of Mélisende of Maine, which would make not only a marriage, but any relationship at all, forbidden by the laws of the time.

So, these genealogies are utterly untrustworthy. As another example, they make the false claim that the son of Alan Rufus and Melisinde de Richmond was "Ruard d'Aboube Musard", born c. 1064.

In the world of historical fiction, one might however wonder, as Carol did, whether Alan was a widower, but the name "Melisinde" for his deceased wife would make me uncomfortable as a reader.

Incidentally, the English name Millicent is a variation on Mélisende.

For reference, two such wild genealogies are:

http://www.simonhoyt.com/h-linage-wor...

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-b...

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_o..., Thomas of Bayeux, Archbishop of York, "helped to put down [the 1088] rebellion led by Thomas' old mentor Odo of Bayeux".

After the rebellion was quashed, William II sent Alan Rufus with three other lords (Odo of Champagne, third husband of Countess Adelaide of Aumale, the Conqueror's sister; Roger of Poitou, a former rebel and son of Roger II of Montgomery; and Walter d'Aincourt) to persuade William de St-Calais the Bishop of Durham to surrender.

[Edit of 13 Nov 2014: Richard Sharpe holds Walter's wife Matilda to be Alan's daughter; I used to follow some genealogists in making her out to be Alan's sister, but now consider her to have been William I's daughter, perhaps his eldest.]

Not only Alan, but "Thomas also attended the trial for rebellion" of St-Calais, because the Bishop of Durham was "Thomas' sole suffragan, or bishop subordinate to York".

Here's another item to Alan Rufus's credit.

Christopher Norton's article "The Buildings of St Mary's Abbey, York and Their Destruction", published in The Antiquaries Journal / Volume 74 / Issue 01 / March 1994, pp 256-288, published by the Cambridge University Press, effuses:

"St Mary's Abbey, York was one of the richest Benedictine monasteries in the country and its buildings reflected its wealth and status. The quality of its architectural remains is of the highest order, and the collection of medieval sculpture from the site is outstanding. Indeed, the set of life-size column-figures brought to light in 1829 must count as one of the most exciting discoveries ever made in the field of the history of sculpture in this country."

Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria (died after 1073), is interesting. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospatri..., "Gospatric was a great-grandson of Ethelred II through his mother, Ealdgyth, and his maternal grandmother, Ælfgifu, who had married Uchtred the Bold."

Gospatric was "among the leaders of the uprising" of early 1068, "along with Edgar Ætheling and Edwin, Earl of Mercia and his brother Morcar". When this failed, Gospatric lost his earldom to Siward's son Waltheof, 1st Earl of Northampton.

"Gospatric fled into exile in Scotland and not long afterwards went to Flanders. When he returned to Scotland he was granted the castle at `Dunbar and lands adjacent to it' and in the Merse by King Malcolm." As a result, "his descendants held the Earldom of Dunbar, later known as the Earldom of March, in south-east Scotland until 1435".

Gospatric had 3 sons: (another) Gospatric, Dolfin and Waltheof of Allerdale.

Waltheof of Allerdale "had two sons and several daughters. Alan (fl. 1139), succeeded to Allerdale. The other son was named Gopspatric. An Octreda, either his sister or daughter, appears to have married Donnchad mac Maíl Coluim and become mother of William fitz Duncan, mormaer of Moray. William fitz Duncan appears to have inherited Waltheof's Allerdale territory from his mother. A definite daughter, Ethelreda, married Ranulf de Lindsay and then William de Esseville. Another, Gunnilda, married Uhtred of Galloway. Waltheof's partner appears to have been a woman named Sigrid or Sigarith."

Notice the names Alan and Gunnilda in the third generation!

This indicates that Alan Rufus, Alan Niger and Gunnhild were viewed very positively by the Anglo-Danes and Scots.

Uhtred of Galloway's son was Lochlann (aka Roland) of Galloway. Lochlann's son was the famous Alan of Galloway. (Now I see, in part, how the name "Alan" got to Galloway.)

In the second of Geoffrey's charters for 1084, Brian is simply described as a brother of Geoffrey, along with Alan Rufus and Alan Niger.

The document does refer to someone illegitimate, but it's not Brian. If I understood Latin cases, I could tell whether it's referring to a sister, or to her husband Enisandus [presumably Musardus] de Pleveno.

Geoffrey's mother was Agnes, and Geoffrey inherited, so if Brian is legitimate then he is younger than Geoffrey and therefore a son of Agnes. I mention this because some genealogies claim that "Orguen" is not Agnes but Eozen's first wife, born about 1000; if so, she had no surviving children, otherwise one of them would have inherited Penthievre instead of Geoffrey, so if she existed she's not pertinent.

Here are some events for 1079:

1079 January 7: Eozen dies in Cesson-Sévigné, an eastern suburb of Rennes. He’s about 80. He is buried in the Cathedral of Saint Brieuc.

1079 (or after): “Comes Alanus Rufus” donates property to Swavesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, for the soul of “patris sui Eudonis comitis”, by undated charter witnessed by “…Ribaldus et Bardulfus fratres comitis…”

1079: Malcolm III plunders Northumberland for about three weeks unopposed before returning to Scotland with slaves and booty. Ligulf Lumley, one of Walcher’s counsellors, is very critical of Walcher’s failure to defend Northumberland. Walcher’s henchmen murder Ligulf.

Carol wrote: "Another mystery."

Good fodder for the imagination, though.

The Normans set sail from Barfleur on the Cotentin for their journey to meet their Flemish allies at Saint-Valery-sur-Sommer. So it's likely that the Bretons sailed to Barfleur to join them.

Incidentally, Brittany Ferries has a ship named "Barfleur".

According to http://breizh-poellrezh.eu/DoldeBreta...

"Every Breton has a duty to complete the pilgrimage of the seven cathedrals (St. Brieuc in St. Brieuc, St. Malo in St. Malo, St. Samson in Dol, St. Patern in Vannes, St. Corentin in Quimper, St. Pol-Aurélien in St. Pol-de-Léon, and St. Tugdual in Tréguier) during their lifetime, known as the Tro-Breizh. Anyone failing to complete or refuses to accomplish the pilgrimage during their life is sentenced to finish it after their death, by moving forward the length of their coffin every seven years."

William of Jumièges, the Norman Benedictine monk who authored the "Gesta Normannorum Ducum", stated that Brian's father was Eozen. My "source" (http://www.geni.com/people/Eudes-comt...) seems confused about whether he stated who Brian's mother was.

The charter of 1084 calls him a brother of Geoffrey and the two Alans, and states that he held the Honour of Brittany before Alan Rufus, so it would seem that Brian was the elder of the two.

In the Domesday Book, Ribald is called "Ribald the brother of Count Alan". Given that one purpose of the book is to determine who owns what and why, this is a shorthand for saying that Ribald received his properties from Alan, for this reason.

In the same vein, Domesday names "Bodin the brother of Bardulf", because he inherited properties from him.

Charters state that Bardulf is a brother of Count Alan, Geoffrey, etc, so it's possible that all of these were legitimate sons of Eozen and Agnes.

Seems that, for a couple of decades, Agnes was nearly full-time giving birth.

Carol wrote: "I think you are right re the death date probably. If so this I can adjust easily as it comes towards the end. It would be 92 in this case. How do you think he died?"

92 or 93?

Since I have seem no assertion other than a scrambled and unsupported reference on a family tree from Geoffrey Boterel's descendants, I can only guess.

Since Alan was often in dangerous situations and didn't reach the age of 80 as his father and other relatives who died naturally did, it's a plausible guess that he died in battle.

It's said that his brother Geoffrey died fighting their very close cousin Duke Alan IV "Fergant" on 24 August 1093 near Dol. Maybe that had something to do with Alan Rufus's death also? But how would Alan Rufus have been involved? Why wasn't he with King William II instead?

Carol wrote: "... As for Alan's death dates I think I might also stick with 1089 but will look at Anselm's letters again before I do. ..."

In 1093, Alan donated land to Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds. Even if this were Alan Niger providing a burial plot for his brother (who is recorded as having been buried "outside the south door of the abbey"), Alan Rufus would still have died in 1093.

It's even possible that both of Anselm's letters to Gunnhild may have been written after his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury, since Anselm refers to himself as if he already has the authority that would rightly be his only then.

In that case, if I understand correctly that Anselm is referring to a living Alan Rufus in one of the letters, then Alan Rufus was still alive after 25 September 1093, at least 52 days later than Keats-Rohan believes. This would make it plausible for Alan to be at Wilton with Malcolm on 24 August.

I know the Europeans didn't have Hindu-Arabic numerals in the 11th century, but the "1089" figure looks suspiciously like an inversion of digits from "1098".

This may not be as improbable as it sounds, because I know that Plato's report of the estimate for when Atlantis (actually the island of Thera) foundered, as quoted in the middle ages, was out by a factor of 10, even though they didn't have the digit zero in those days either.

Carol wrote: "Yes I see the inheritance sequence both both called Alan, always odd."

Perhaps less odd in translation: their names mean Red Deer and Black Deer.

(In modern Breton idiom, which harkens back to Duke Alan II "the Fox" who comprehensively defeated the Loire Vikings, their names may be rendered as "Red Fox" and "Black Fox".)