William I the Conqueror as King of the English and his death on September 8, 1087.

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Doomsday Book, Duke Alan of Brittany, King of the English, Robert of Normandy, William I the Conqueror, William Rufus

At Christmas 1085, William ordered the compilation of a survey of the landholdings held by himself and by his vassals throughout his kingdom, organised by counties. It resulted in a work now known as the Domesday Book. The listing for each county gives the holdings of each landholder, grouped by owners. The listings describe the holding, who owned the land before the Conquest, its value, what the tax assessment was, and usually the number of peasants, ploughs, and any other resources the holding had. Towns were listed separately.

All the English counties south of the River Tees and River Ribble are included, and the whole work seems to have been mostly completed by August 1, 1086, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that William received the results and that all the chief magnates swore the Salisbury Oath, a renewal of their oaths of allegiance. William’s exact motivation in ordering the survey is unclear, but it probably had several purposes, such as making a record of feudal obligations and justifying increased taxation.

Death and aftermath

William left England towards the end of 1086. Following his arrival back on the continent he married his daughter Constance to Duke Alan of Brittany, in furtherance of his policy of seeking allies against the French kings. William’s son Robert, still allied with the French king, appears to have been active in stirring up trouble, enough so that William led an expedition against the French Vexin in July 1087. While seizing Mantes, William either fell ill or was injured by the pommel of his saddle. He was taken to the priory of Saint Gervase at Rouen, where he died on September 9, 1087. Knowledge of the events preceding his death is confused because there are two different accounts.

Orderic Vitalis preserves a lengthy account, complete with speeches made by many of the principals, but this is likely more of an account of how a king should die than of what actually happened. The other, the De obitu Willelmi, or On the Death of William, has been shown to be a copy of two 9th-century accounts with names changed.William’s grave before the high altar in the Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Caen.

William left Normandy to Robert, and the custody of England was given to William’s second surviving son, also called William, on the assumption that he would become king. The youngest son, Henry, received money. After entrusting England to his second son, the elder William sent the younger William back to England on 7 or 8 September, bearing a letter to Lanfranc ordering the archbishop to aid the new king. Other bequests included gifts to the Church and money to be distributed to the poor. William also ordered that all of his prisoners be released, including his half-brother Odo.

Disorder followed William’s death; everyone who had been at his deathbed left the body at Rouen and hurried off to attend to their own affairs. Eventually, the clergy of Rouen arranged to have the body sent to Caen, where William had desired to be buried in his foundation of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. The funeral, attended by the bishops and abbots of Normandy as well as his son Henry, was disturbed by the assertion of a citizen of Caen who alleged that his family had been illegally despoiled of the land on which the church was built. After hurried consultations, the allegation was shown to be true, and the man was compensated. A further indignity occurred when the corpse was lowered into the tomb. The corpse was too large for the space, and when attendants forced the body into the tomb it burst, spreading a disgusting odour throughout the church.

William’s grave is currently marked by a marble slab with a Latin inscription dating from the early 19th century. The tomb has been disturbed several times since 1087, the first time in 1522 when the grave was opened on orders from the papacy. The intact body was restored to the tomb at that time, but in 1562, during the French Wars of Religion, the grave was reopened and the bones scattered and lost, with the exception of one thigh bone. This lone relic was reburied in 1642 with a new marker, which was replaced 100 years later with a more elaborate monument. This tomb was again destroyed during the French Revolution but was eventually replaced with the current ledger stone

Malcolm III, King of Scots: Conclusion

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Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Edgar Ætheling, Malcolm III of Scotland, William I the Conqueror, William II of England, William Rufus

Malcolm III and William Rufus

When William Rufus (William II of England) became King of England after his father’s death, William I the Conqueror, Malcolm did not intervene in the rebellions by supporters of Robert Curthose which followed. In 1091, William Rufus confiscated Edgar Ætheling’s lands in England, and Edgar fled north to Scotland. In May, Malcolm marched south, not to raid and take slaves and plunder, but to besiege Newcastle, built by Robert Curthose in 1080.

This appears to have been an attempt to advance the frontier south from the River Tweed to the River Tees. The threat was enough to bring the English king back from Normandy, where he had been fighting Robert Curthose. In September, learning of William Rufus’s approaching army, Malcolm withdrew north and the English followed. Unlike in 1072, Malcolm was prepared to fight, but a peace was arranged by Edgar Ætheling and Robert Curthose whereby Malcolm again acknowledged the overlordship of the English king.

In 1092, the peace began to break down. Based on the idea that the Scots controlled much of modern Cumbria, it had been supposed that William Rufus’s new castle at Carlisle and his settlement of English peasants in the surrounds was the cause. It is unlikely that Malcolm controlled Cumbria, and the dispute instead concerned the estates granted to Malcolm by William Rufus’s father in 1072 for his maintenance when visiting England. Malcolm sent messengers to discuss the question and William Rufus agreed to a meeting. Malcolm travelled south to Gloucester, stopping at Wilton Abbey to visit his daughter Edith and sister-in-law Cristina. Malcolm arrived there on 24 August 1093 to find that William Rufus refused to negotiate, insisting that the dispute be judged by the English barons. This Malcolm refused to accept, and returned immediately to Scotland.

It does not appear that William Rufus intended to provoke a war, but, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, war came:

For this reason therefore they parted with great dissatisfaction, and the King Malcolm returned to Scotland. And soon after he came home, he gathered his army, and came harrowing into England with more hostility than behoved him ….

Malcolm was accompanied by Edward, his eldest son by Margaret and probable heir-designate (or tánaiste), and by Edgar. Even by the standards of the time, the ravaging of Northumbria by the Scots was seen as harsh.

Death

While marching north again, Malcolm was ambushed by Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumbria, whose lands he had devastated, near Alnwick on November 13, 1093. There he was killed by Arkil Morel, steward of Bamburgh Castle. The conflict became known as the Battle of Alnwick. Edward was mortally wounded in the same fight. Margaret, it is said, died soon after receiving the news of their deaths from Edgar. The Annals of Ulster say:

Mael Coluim son of Donnchad, over-king of Scotland, and Edward his son, were killed by the French [i.e. Normans] in Inber Alda in England. His queen, Margaret, moreover, died of sorrow for him within nine days.

Malcolm’s body was taken to Tynemouth Priory for burial. The king’s body was sent north for reburial, in the reign of his son Alexander, at Dunfermline Abbey, or possibly Iona.

On June 19, 1250, following the canonisation of Malcolm’s wife Margaret by Pope Innocent IV, Margaret’s remains were disinterred and placed in a reliquary. Tradition has it that as the reliquary was carried to the high altar of Dunfermline Abbey, past Malcolm’s grave, it became too heavy to move. As a result, Malcolm’s remains were also disinterred, and buried next to Margaret beside the altar.

The Duke of Cambridge and royal genealogy

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Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, Duchess of Portsmouth, Duke of Cambridge, Elizabeth II, Eystein Glumra, HRH The Prince of Wales, King George VI, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of the United Kingdom, Kings of Wessex, Louise de Kérouaille, Prince of Wales, Thierry I of Liesgau, William I the Conqueror

Happy 31st birthday to HRH Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, Baron Carrickfergus, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Aide-de-camp to Her Majesty the Queen. In honor of his birthday I wanted to focus on The Duke of Cambridge and his genealogy.

I began to study a little more of the genealogy of the Duke of Cambridge and it brought up questions of ethnicity, nationality and I quickly realized how complex of a topic it really is!! In an article I wrote about changing the name of the House of Windsor, I touched upon the royal family’s Germanic roots. It is interesting to trace the nationality of the royal family through the decades from its origins as the Saxon Kingdom of the House of Wessex to today’s House of Windsor. Cerdic of Wessex, the first king of Wessex, reign circa 519-534, was of Germanic origins. The reason that the first king of Wessex was an ethnic German was due to the fact that many Germanic tribes invaded England after the fall of the Roman empire which succeeded in supplanting the native Celtic tribes.

The House of Wessex consolidated its kingdom and became the dominant power in England. However, within 500 years the House of Wessex was replaced by the French line of the Dukes of Normandy in the person of William I the Conqueror 1066-1087. William I of England was not from French stock but was from Norwegian stock as a descendant of Eystein Glumra, Jarl (Earl) of Oppland and Hedmark in Norway. The Plantagenets followed the Normans on the English throne and they were from the House of Anjou, a French noble house descended from Ingelger, Count of Anjou (died 888) . During their long tenure on the English throne the Plantagenet dynasty divided into two collateral branches, the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The Plantagenet dynasty was replaced by the Tudors in 1485 and they were of Welsh nationality and Stock. In 1603 the royal Stuart line from Scotland sat on the English throne. The Stuarts were not originally Scottish as they  were descendants of Alan fitz Flaad a man who was a Breton, an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France.

The Hanovarians followed the Stuarts on the British throne in 1714. The House of Hanover was a branch of the House of Guelph in Germany which itself was a collateral branch of the House of Este which were descendants of the Roman/Italian Attii family that migrated from Rome to Este and assisted in defending Italy against the Goths. The Family of Elizabeth II, the Wettins, was also from Germany with Dietrich (ca. 916-ca. 976), also known as Thierry I of Liesgau, being the earliest family member that historians can validate. The Wettin family, in the form of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha came to the British throne under King Edward VII, whose father, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, was a member of. In 1917 the Saxe-Coburg dynasty changed its name to Windsor because of social and political pressure during World War I. The Duke of Cambridge, as a grandson of the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Britain’s current monarch, Elizabeth II, is from the House of Glücksburg, which is a collateral branch of the House of Oldenburg. The House of Oldenburg was also Germanic in origin  with Elimar I, Count of Oldenburg 1101-1108 the founder of the line. The Oldenburg dynasty spread across Europe and ruled Denmark, Norway, Greece, Sweden and Russia at different times in history.

This shows that in the male or paternal line the genealogy of the Duke of Cambridge is of a diverse stock. On his mother’s side, the Duke of Cambridge is related to both the Spencer family as well as the Churchill family and other prominent noble families of Britain. The Duke of Cambridge is also a descendant of King Charles II of England and Scotland through two of the king’s mistresses, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine and Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This makes the future King William V of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of having the distinction of being the only British king who will be a descendant of King Charles I, King Charles II and King Charles III (assuming his father lives to succeed to the throne).

With King George VI having married the daughter of a Scottish Nobleman and the Prince of Wales having married the daughter of an English Nobleman, and with The Duke of Cambridge himself marrying an English woman, the future nationality of the British Royal family is moving away from the foreign dynasties that once sat on the British throne to become more native.