NOTE N. p. 80. The Marriage of William and Matilda

That William’s marriage with Matilda was forbidden by Papal authority, and that the Papal dispensation for the marriage did not issue till some years after the marriage had been celebrated, are facts which have long been known. But the remarkable paper communicated by Mr. Stapleton in 1846 to the Archæological Journal (iii. 1) threw a new light on the whole matter. The essay, like all Mr. Stapleton’s writings, is brimful of curious learning, but, as usual, his power of arranging and making use of his facts is by no means equal to his diligence and acuteness in bringing them together.

Mr. Stapleton’s propositions, as far as I can disentangle them, are three;

First, That Matilda, before her marriage with William, was mother of two children, Gerbod and Gundrada, whose father was Gerbod, known as the Advocate of Saint Bertin.

Secondly, That the ecclesiastical opposition to the marriage of William and Matilda was not owing—at least not wholly owing—to any consanguinity or affinity between them, but to the fact that Matilda, at the time of William’s courtship, had a husband still living.

Thirdly, That the delay in the celebration of the marriage was caused by the necessity of obtaining a divorce.

Of these three propositions Mr. Stapleton has, I think, convincingly made out the first; the second and third I cannot accept.

That Gundrada, the wife of Earl William of Warren, was the daughter of Matilda, but not the daughter of King William, is manifest from the language employed by Earl William in his grant to the Priory of Lewes (Stapleton, Arch. Journ. iii. 21; Monasticon, v. 12). He makes his gifts

“Pro salute animæ meæ et animæ Gundradæ uxoris meæ et pro animâ domini mei Willelmi Regis, qui me in Angliam terram adduxit, et per cujus licentiam monachos venire feci, et qui meam priorem donationem confirmavit, et pro salute dominæ meæ Matildis Reginæ, matris uxoris meæ, et pro salute domini mei Willelmi Regis, filii sui, post cujus adventum in Anglicam hanc cartam feci, et qui me Comitem Surreiæ fecit.”

It is utterly inconceivable that Earl William would have used this language, if King William had been the father of his wife. In such a case he would have described his wife as the daughter of King William. He would never have drawn the pointed distinction which he does draw between Matilda his lady, the mother of his wife, and William his lord, who has done for him such and such favours. On the other hand there is the earlier charter of King William himself to the same Priory, which is granted, according to the text in the Monasticon (v. 13),

“Pro animâ domini et antecessoris mei Regis Eduuardi, et pro animâ patris mei Comitis Rotberti, et pro meâ ipsius animâ et uxoris meæ Matildis Reginæ, et filiorum atque successorum nostrorum, et pro animâ Guillelmi de Warrennâ et uxoris suæ Gondradæ filiæ meæ et heredum suorum.”

Here William, according to the received text, certainly calls Gundrada his daughter. But the manuscript is said to be nearly illegible, and the reading to be very doubtful. Mr. Stapleton (p. 2) for the words after “Gondradæ” silently reads “pro me et heredibus meis.” Mrs. Green (i. 72) mentions that the words “filiæ meæ” are clearly in a different and later hand. This is admitted by Mr. Blaauw, in an article in the Archæologia (xxxii. p. 108), written expressly in answer to Mr. Stapleton, but he argues that the insertion represents the true reading, and objects to Mr. Stapleton’s reading on other grounds. But it strikes me that Mr. Blaauw’s text, if genuine, does not upset Mr. Stapleton’s position. The words “filiæ meæ,” taken by themselves, would of course prove the person spoken of to be William’s own daughter. But they must be taken in connexion with the other charter of William of Warren. It is far more likely that a man should use the words “filia mea” of his wife’s daughter—his own daughter for many purposes of law—than that a man should speak of his wife’s parents in the extraordinary way which we must attribute to William of Warren, if Gundrada really was William’s daughter.

Another Lewes charter (Monasticon, v. 14), in which Matilda is spoken of as the mother of Gundrada—“Mathildis Regina, mater Henrici Regis et Gundradæ Comitissæ”—is of course evidence for Matilda being the mother of Gundrada as well as of Henry, but it does not prove them to have been children of the same father. It is plain why those two only among Matilda’s children are spoken of. Henry was the reigning King, Gundrada was the local benefactress.

The documentary evidence then seems distinctly to show that Gundrada was the daughter of Matilda, but not the daughter of William. One charter plainly implies that she was so; the others do not imply the contrary. But this is not all. There are two passages of Orderic, both quoted by Mr. Stapleton, which imply that Gundrada had a brother Gerbod, and that neither of them was son or daughter of William. Mr. Blaauw answers that Orderic’s authority is weak on this point, as he stumbles, if he does not contradict himself, in his whole account of William’s daughters. Now certainly, if Orderic simply left out Gundrada in a list of William’s daughters, the omission would prove nothing whatever against the least direct proof that she was his daughter. But it proves much more, when Orderic speaks of her incidentally in a way in which it is quite impossible that he should have spoken of a daughter of William, and when he gives her a brother whom no man ever for a moment fancied to be William’s son. In one of these two places (522 C) Orderic tells us that William the Conqueror gave the Earldom of Surrey “Guillelmo de Guarennâ, qui Gundredam sororem Gherbodi conjugem habuit.” In the other place (522 A; cf. 598 A) Orderic recounts the adventures of “Gherbodus Flandrensis,” his investiture with the Earldom of Chester, his return to his own country, and his misfortunes there. It is clear that Orderic did not look on Gundrada as a daughter of William; she was in his eyes simply the sister of Gerbod. Gundrada and Gerbod were therefore, beyond all doubt, children of Matilda, but they were not children of William. But I do not understand Mr. Stapleton when (pp. 20, 25) he gives them another brother, and Matilda another son, named Frederick. He must have been thinking of the Frederick whose existence he had himself established in p. 3. But this Frederick, as appears from Domesday, 196 b, was brother, not of Gundrada, but of her husband William of Warren.

Matilda then was the mother of Gerbod and Gundrada, but who was their father? There does not seem to be any distinct proof, but the Flemish charters collected by Mr. Stapleton (pp. 17–19) show that there was a whole succession of Gerbods, holding the office of Advocate (Advocatus, Avoué) of the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, and who are often simply described as Gerbod the Advocate. These Gerbods range over nearly the whole of the eleventh century, from 1026 to the reign of Robert the Frisian, that is between 1071 and 1093. There is, for instance (p. 17), a charter of Baldwin the Fourth in 1026, and among the signatures is “Signum Gerbodonis Advocati.” The same signature is added to charters of Baldwin the father of Matilda in 1056 (Cartulary of Saint Bertin, p. 181) and 1067. In the later charters up to 1087 we find mention of Gerbod and his wife Ada (p. 201), and of Gerbod and his brother Arnulf. Mr. Stapleton supposes—he seems to have no evidence but that of the charters themselves—that Gerbod the husband of Ada is the Earl of Chester and son of Matilda, and that Gerbod and Arnulf were their sons. This is in every way probable, but I cannot follow him when he assumes that the signatures of 1026, 1056, and 1067 all belong to one Gerbod, the father of the Earl of Chester and, according to him, the first husband of Matilda. This assumption seems to be the only ground for the inference that Matilda’s first husband was living at the time of her marriage with William, and that therefore the delay and difficulty about the marriage was caused by the necessity of obtaining a divorce. But it is surely simpler and more obvious to take the signature of 1026 to be that of her husband, and those of 1056 and 1067 to be those of her son. With the Gerbod of 1056 or, considering how young he must have been, with those who acted in his name, the Abbey of Saint Bertin had rather fierce disputes. See the narrative in the Cartulary, p. 183, and Count Baldwin’s charter, pp. 184, 185.

I therefore accept the marriage, but the theory of the divorce seems to me quite untenable on every ground. It is remarkable enough that no hint should be found in any contemporary writer that Matilda had been married before her marriage with William, and that we are driven to infer the fact from the language of charters and from the most casual indications elsewhere. But we have more than one parallel case in Norman history. The Norman writers are absolutely silent about the marriage between Duke Robert and Estrith the sister of Cnut (see vol. i. p. 521). So again, we should never have known from the Encomiast of Emma that she ever was the wife of Æthelred. In his courtly pages the sister of Duke Richard is a virgin (see vol. i. p. 454) when she marries Cnut. So in the Norman writers Matilda is ever the daughter of Baldwin, never the widow of Gerbod. And, as Emma is called virgo, so Matilda is called puella, pucelle, demoiselle. But, if she is never called the widow of Gerbod, still less is she called his wife. In the case of Cnut and Emma, we know the real facts from the testimony of both English and Norman writers. In the case of William and Matilda, the Norman writers, in the silence of the English, have it all their own way, and we are left to the evidence of the documents. The English writers are silent through indifference; the Norman writers are silent through design. The best informed of all, William of Poitiers, leaves out the fact that there was any opposition to the marriage at all. But, if William’s marriage had been, not simply irregular or uncanonical, but a glaring act of adultery, committed in open defiance of a Papal command, it is hardly conceivable that so astounding a fact should have failed to find any chronicler.

Again, it may perhaps seem strange if William, when in search of a wife, preferred a widow with children to all the princely maidens who, we are told, were to be had for the asking. But it would be far stranger if, with so wide a field before him, his choice lighted on the married wife of another man. Would the wise men of Normandy have recommended such a step? Would Count Baldwin have consented to expose his daughter to such manifest shame? Would the Papal prohibition of the marriage have taken the form which it did take (see above, p. 89)? Would Pope Leo and the Council of Rheims have simply forbidden Count Baldwin to give his daughter in marriage to William the Norman? Would they not rather have warned William and Matilda, as later assertors of discipline warned Philip and Bertrada, against an act of shameless adultery? Can we conceive that Lanfranc would have stooped to interest himself in obtaining a dispensation for the guilty pair, or that a dispensation would ever have been granted by the most complying Pontiff? Such a dispensation could have been granted only on proof of some canonical impediment which rendered the former marriage of Gerbod and Matilda null and void. No proof of such an impediment is produced. It was a daring act on the part of William, Matilda, and Baldwin to contract an uncanonical marriage in the teeth of a direct Papal prohibition. But they would never have ventured on a step breathing such defiance to all law and morals as a marriage between a man and another man’s wife, contracted on the chance that her first marriage might be proved to be illegal.

I hold then that Gerbod was dead before 1049, and that the objection to William’s marriage with his widow was simply one of the usual canonical objections on the ground of kindred or affinity. This is asserted by all the writers who mention the subject (see above, pp. 94, 102, 106). But there is no small difficulty in making out what the nearness of kin between William and Matilda was. Mr. Stapleton (p. 22) assumes that their kindred consisted in the fact that Matilda’s “grandmother was a daughter of Duke Richard the Second of Normandy, and aunt of William the Conqueror.” If this could be made out, William and Matilda would clearly be within the prohibited degrees. But the pedigree does not seem to be at all certain. Baldwin the Bearded, Matilda’s grandfather, undoubtedly married a daughter of Richard the Good (Will. Gem. v. 13). But she could not have been the mother of Baldwin of Lisle. A daughter of Richard and Judith could not have been born before 1010 (see vol. ii. p. 586), at which time the younger Baldwin was a grown man, capable of marrying and rebelling against his father. Baldwin the Bearded must have been quite an old man when he married the daughter of Duke Richard. Moreri (art. Flandre) and the Art de Vérifier les Dates (iii. 4) both say, but without references, that she had no children, and the first wife of Baldwin the Bearded, the mother of Baldwin of Lisle and grandmother of Matilda, is called by them Ogiva of Luxemburg. This is doubtless the “Otgiva” or “Odgiva [Eadgifu?] Comitissa” who died in 1030 or 1031 (Ann. Baldinienses and Formoselenses, Pertz, v. 26, 35), only five or six years before Baldwin’s death. Oudegherst (Annales de Flandre, 63, 67, 75), who calls her Ognie and Odgona, has much to say about her, and about her son’s wonderful birth when she was fifty years old. However all this may be, it seems perfectly clear that Matilda was not the granddaughter of any daughter of Richard the Good. Failing Richard the Good, I cannot suggest any other common ancestor for William and Matilda, but it is quite possible that the marriage of William’s aunt with Matilda’s grandfather may have been held to produce some kind of affinity between William and Matilda.

Prevost, in his note on Wace (ii. 60), has a suggestion of the same kind, namely, that the canonical impediment was the affinity arising from the fact that Matilda’s mother, Adela of France, had been married, or rather betrothed, to William’s uncle, Richard the Third (cf. Palgrave, iii. 264). Again I am not canonist enough to say whether this would really have been any impediment to a marriage between Richard’s nephew and Adela’s daughter; but there seems to be no doubt that Richard the Third was married or contracted to Adela, daughter of King Robert. His marriage contract with an Adela, dated 1026, in which he endows her with large possessions, mainly in the Côtentin, is printed in D’Achery, Spicilegium, iii. 390, and Licquet, Hist. de Normandie, ii. 269 (see also Palgrave, iii. 137). M. Licquet (ii. 5) maintains that this Adela is not King Robert’s daughter, but some unknown wife of the name, whom he holds to have been the lawful mother of the monk Nicolas (see above, p. 380, and vol. i. p. 518). His chief grounds for this belief are that Adela is not described as the King’s daughter, and that the words of the deed (“annulo mihi in carnis unitate jungendam”) imply that the bride was already a grown woman, whereas Adela the daughter of King Robert was, in 1026, a babe in her cradle. Now the deed is drawn up in a rhetorical style; “Domina Adela” is once addressed in the vocative case, and that is the only mention of her name, though she is told that she is “juxta nobilitatis tuæ lineam dotata.” All this looks to me as if she was the King’s daughter, for whom the city and county of Coutances, and a good deal more, which the deed bestows upon her, would surely not be an unworthy dowry. As to her age, the statement that she was then an infant rests on the authority of William of Jumièges, which is generally very good, but which is in this case contradicted by dates. He says (vi. 6) that the elder Baldwin, at some time after the accession of Duke Robert in 1028, took away Adela as a babe from King Robert’s court, and brought her up as his son’s bride till she was marriageable (“A palatinis tricliniis adeptam tulit, et ad domum propriam in cunis asportavit, eamque usque ad annos nubiles diligenti curâ nutrivit”). But we read directly after that the younger Baldwin, puffed up by his royal connexion (“mox ut nobilis puellæ amplexibus cœpit frui”), rebelled against his father, who was restored by Duke Robert (see vol. i. p. 519). All this is said to have happened about the time of the death of King Robert (“quâ tempestate Robertus Rex Francorum moritur”), which took place in 1031. These two statements, in the same chapter, cannot be made to agree. The truth is that Adela could not possibly have been a mere baby in 1026. Her parents, Robert and Constance, were married in 998; her daughter Matilda was the mother of two children before 1049. Compare the imaginary genealogy of Herleva, vol. ii. p. 583.

Adela then, who was betrothed to Duke Richard, is the same person as Adela, daughter of King Robert, wife of Count Baldwin, and mother of Matilda. Richard’s early death seems to have hindered her actual marriage with him, but it may have been held that she had contracted an affinity with the ducal house of Rouen which made it unlawful for her daughter to marry Duke Richard’s nephew. Either then of these possible grounds of affinity, the marriage of the elder Baldwin with the daughter of Richard the Good or the marriage of the younger Baldwin with the betrothed wife of Richard the Third, seems to me far more probable than Mr. Stapleton’s theory of the divorce. It is also supported by the witness of all those writers who speak of the kindred between the parties. The expressions “cognata,” “consanguineum cubile,” &c., are indeed not strictly accurate, as the connexion was only by affinity; but it is far more likely that the writers who use them should laxly apply to affinity words which strictly refer only to kindred, than that they should speak in this way when the impediment really was that Matilda had a husband living. Mr. Stapleton’s arguments against this view seem singularly inconclusive. “The peculiarity of the birth of William the Conqueror,” he tells us (p. 22), “as being illegitimate, certainly forbids such a conclusion, coupled with the silence of the Pope at the Council of Rheims.” The Pope’s silence surely cuts one way as much as another. As for William’s bastardy, Mr. Stapleton would hardly argue that Duke Robert could have lawfully married Herleva’s mother or sister, or that William, as nullius filius, could have lawfully married his own mother or sister. William’s kindred with Eadward is constantly insisted on, notwithstanding his bastardy, and one cannot doubt that a marriage between him and one of the daughters of Emma would have been thought unlawful. Mr. Stapleton presently (p. 24) mentions the foundation of the Abbeys, and adds with some triumph that “no papal bull attests that this penance was enjoined merely for marrying within the degrees of kindred.” Still less does Mr. Stapleton produce any Papal bull attesting that it was enjoined for a shameless and obstinate course of adultery.

There is indeed one other view, that maintained by M. Licquet (ii. 131) and followed by Mrs. Green (English Princesses, i. 4), namely that there was no real impediment to the marriage from either kindred or affinity, but that Pope Leo simply forbade the marriage on political grounds. Leo, the firm friend of the Emperor, did not wish to strengthen so doubtful a vassal of the Empire as Baldwin (see vol. ii. p. 97) by so close a connexion with the Duke of the Normans. This is unlikely in itself and unsupported by evidence. Even Papal authority could hardly go so far as to forbid a marriage to which there was no canonical objection; and if Leo did so, a prohibition arising from a temporary political cause would not have been so rigidly maintained by so many successive Pontiffs. And the place which the prohibition holds among the Acts of the Council distinctly shows that it was aimed against a contemplated breach of the ecclesiastical law of marriage. It comes in the middle of a series of citations and excommunications all aimed at offenders of that class, and among which a merely political prohibition would be strangely out of place. M. Licquet, like Mr. Stapleton, appeals to the silence of the Pope as to the motive of the prohibition. This silence is a difficulty according to any view, but it is a greater difficulty according to M. Licquet’s view than on any other. The actual reason is not minutely specified, but the position of the prohibition in the Acts of the Council is enough to show its general nature.

William then, I hold, married the widow of Gerbod. In choosing a widow for his bride, he only acted like several other great men of his century. Eadmund, Cnut, Harold, all married widows. Cnut and Harold married the widows of Kings whom they had helped to deprive of their Kingdoms. But the case which most exactly forestalled William happened just before the beginning of the century, in the person of Matilda’s maternal grandfather, King Robert. That most devout of Kings uncanonically married his widowed cousin (see vol. i. p. 507), and allowed himself to be worried by ecclesiastical censures out of his wife, and well nigh out of his life also. William characteristically stood his ground, and gained his point in the end in the teeth of Prior, Archbishop, Pope, and Council.

The date of the marriage is not given by any of the Norman writers. They all do their best to slur over the delays and difficulties about the marriage, and they would fain have us believe that Matilda was won as soon as wooed. The date 1053 comes from the Tours Chronicle (Bouquet, xi. 348), and in default of any better authority, I do not see that we can do otherwise than accept it. It also falls in singularly well, as Mr Stapleton suggests, with the date of the captivity of Pope Leo (see above, p. 98). Another date, 1047, is given in the late Chronicle of Saint Bavon (Corp. Chron. Fland. i. 552, “Wilhelmus Dux Normanniæ, uxorem duxit Mathildem filiam Balduini comitis Flandriæ, quæ postea peperit ei Wilhelmum, postmodum Regem Angliæ”). But this date cannot be accepted, as it is clearly inconsistent with the prohibition of the marriage in 1049. It has been sometimes said (see Bouet, p. 8) that Orderic (484 C) fixes the marriage in 1063, and it has thence been inferred that the marriage was repeated after Lanfranc had come back with the dispensation. But the words of Orderic do not really fix the marriage to 1063. He has been speaking of the death of Geoffrey Martel and other matters, and places the death of Geoffrey in 1060 or 1061. He then, in his usual fashion, takes the opportunity to enlarge on the greatness and prosperity of Normandy and its Duke about this time, and goes on to tell us of his wife and children. But there is nothing bearing on the date of the marriage.

I ought to mention that the Chronicle of Tours, the only one which gives the date of the marriage, adds a most strange tale about William’s courtship;

“Tunc Guillelmus Dux Normanniæ Mathildem, filiam Balduini, Comitis Flandriæ, duxit in uxorem, in hunc modum. Quum ipsa a patre suo de sponso recipiendo sæpiùs rogaretur, eique Guillelmus Normanniæ a patre suo, qui eum longo tempore nutrierat, præ aliis laudaretur, respondit, numquam nothum recipere se maritum. Quo audito, Guillelmus Dux clam apud Brugis, ubi puella morabatur, cum paucis accelerat, eamque regredientem ab ecclesiâ pugnis, calcibus, et calcaribus verberat et castigat, sicque ascenso equo eum suis in patriam remeat. Quo facto, puella dolens ad lectum decubat, ad quam pater veniens, illam de sponso recipiendo interrogat et requirit, quæ respondens dicit, se nunquam habere maritum nisi Guillelmum Ducem Normanniæ quod et factum est.”—Chron. Turon. Bouquet, xi. 348.

This tale is found also in the French rhyming Chronicle of Philip de Mouskes, a writer of the thirteenth century (ii. 174, ed. Brussels, 1838). Matilda is thus described;

To the first offer of marriage her answer is thus given;

William then goes to Lille;

Matilda is throughout called “puciele” and “demoiselle.” William then kicks and beats her, much as in the story in the Tours Chronicle, and her consent is given in much the same way.

The remarkable thing about this tale is that it is evidently a myth which has fastened itself upon William in several forms, and, I suspect, on Harold also. The story of William beating or kicking his wife is, in two accounts, transferred from the beginning of their married life to the end. William of Malmesbury (iii. 273) tells, without believing it, a tale that William in his later days forsook his old chaste manner of life (“non desint qui ganniant eum cœlibatui antiquo renunciâsse quum regia potestas accrevisset”—the same singular use of the word cœlebs spoken of in vol. ii. pp. 383, 531), and took a concubine, the daughter of a priest. Matilda, in her jealousy, had the girl ham-strung (“per satellitem succiso poplite Matildis sustulerit”), a tale apparently taken from the story of King Eadwig’s wife or mistress—(Osbern or Eadmer, Vit. Od. Ang. Sacr. ii. 84). On this Matilda is beaten to death with a bridle (“illam ad mortem fræno equi cæsam”), whether by her husband’s own hand or not is not distinctly said. Now this story is clearly the same as Snorro’s story (Johnstone, 217; Laing, iii. 94) how, when William was setting out for England, his wife came to speak to him, perhaps to detain him, on which, being mounted, he struck her with his heel, so that the spur ran into her breast, and she died (“Enn er hann sá þat, þá laust hann til hennar med hælinom, oc setti sporan fyri brióst henni, svo at á kaf stód, fell hon vid oc feck bana”). And this again, I cannot help thinking, is the same as William of Jumièges’ story (vii. 35) of Harold kicking his mother when she implored him not to go forth to battle (see p. 436). The tale of a King kicking or beating his wife or mother was afloat, and it was easy to fill the blank with the name of either William or Harold.

One more point is suggested to me by the charge against William’s chastity brought in the last paragraph. Genealogists, local antiquaries, and romance-writers are fond of calling the well-known William Peverel of Domesday a natural son of the Conqueror. For this assertion I know of no authority, except a statement in Dugdale’s Baronage (i. 436) which is said to come “ex Coll. R. Gl. S.”—that is Robert Glover, Somerset Herald. We are there told that Ranulf Peverel “married the daughter of Ingelric, founder of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin le Grand in the city of London, who had been a concubine to William Duke of Normandy,” and that William Peverel was “begotten on her by the same Duke before the Conquest of this realm.” The uncorroborated assertions of a herald are not materials for history.

The mention of Matilda suggests the name of her supposed sister, Judith, the wife of Tostig. I have all along (see vol. ii. p. 134) doubted whether she really was a daughter of Baldwin the Fifth. She is called his daughter by Florence (1051) and twice by Orderic. In one place (638 C) he reckons the daughters of Baldwin and Adela as “Mathildis Regina Anglorum et Juditha, Tostici Ducis uxor.” Elsewhere (492 D, see p. 303) he says of William and Tostig, “duas sorores, per quas amicitia sæpe recalescebat, in conjugio habebant.” Orderic is followed by Alberic in the thirteenth century, who gives (p. 98) Baldwin and Adela three sons, Baldwin, Robert, and Philip, and two daughters, “Judith, quam nupsit Tosticus Comes Nordanubriorum in Angliâ, et Mathildem prædictam Normannorum Ducissam.” She is also called Baldwin’s daughter by two writers of the fifteenth century, who record her second marriage with Duke Welf of Bavaria. Botho in his Picture Chronicle of Brunswick (Leibnitz, iii. 325) says of Baldwin (whom by the way he confounds with his son, marrying him to Richilda instead of Adela) that he had “eyne dochter de het Jutta, de nam Konigh Heroden in Engelant, dar wart se geheten Wichanda, do nam se dar na Hertoghen Wolpy den olden in Beyeren.” The honest Nether-Dutch is pleasant to read, but it is strange to make Judith the wife of Harold—degraded into Herod—instead of Tostig. But Botho repeats the statement in p. 327, nor does he stand alone in it. In Arenpeck’s Bavarian Chronicle (Leibnitz, iii. 661) we read of Welf, how “accepit Reginam Angliæ, tunc viduam, filiam scilicet Balduini nobilissimi Comitis Flandriæ, Juditham, in uxorem.” These accounts are of course simply amusing, but we shall presently see that, as for their chief blunders, they sin in decent company.

Florence then and Orderic are the only early authorities who call Judith a daughter of Baldwin the Fifth. And the authority of Orderic is lessened by a manifest error which he has fallen into with regard to Baldwin’s family. He makes him (526 C) the father of Udo, Archbishop of Trier, who was really the son of Count Eberhard of Nellenberg (Gest. Trev. ap. Pertz, viii. 183). On the other hand, the local Chronicle of the Counts of Flanders (Corp. Chron. Fland. i. 86) distinctly calls Matilda Baldwin’s only daughter. Baldwin married Adela “genuitque ex eâ duos filios, Balduinum Montensem et Robertum Frisonem, et unam filiam nomine Mathildem.” We now fall back on our own writers and remember that the Worcester Chronicle (1051) called Judith only the “mage” of Baldwin, while Eadward’s Biographer (pp. 404, 424) distinctly called her his “soror.” We now turn to the Saxon Annalist, and, among some wild stories, we find the same relationship distinctly asserted. Judith, as before, is Harold’s widow. Welf of Bavaria (Pertz, vi. 764) “duxit viduam Haroldi Ducis Anglorum [see above, p. 226] Judihtam nomine.” But in an earlier passage we read (vi. 694), “Hujus Haroldi conjux, amita Rodberti Comitis de Flandriâ, ex cognatione beati Ethmundi Regis fuit.”

Here, comparing this passage with the Biographer, we may find the key to the whole matter. The Biographer says that Judith was Baldwin’s sister and Eadward’s niece, which last statement greatly puzzled me. The Saxon Annalist, evidently writing quite independently, calls her the aunt of Baldwin’s son Robert, and also calls her a kinswoman of Eadward (we should of course read Ethwardi for Ethmundi). That is, she was a daughter of Count Baldwin the Bearded by his Norman wife, the daughter of Richard the Good. She thus exactly answers all the descriptions. She is sister of Baldwin of Lisle, aunt of Robert the Frisian, and she is, in a vague sense, niece of Eadward, that is, daughter of his first cousin. The pedigree stands thus;

Judith would thus be, not Matilda’s sister but her aunt, an aunt however possibly younger than herself. Odgiva, the first wife of Baldwin the Bearded, died in 1031. His daughter by the Norman Princess, the child of his old age, could not be born before 1032 or 1033. Matilda, the daughter of parents married in 1027, may well have been older.

We have here, I think, another proof of the accuracy of the Biographer in matters coming within his own province, and that in a case where his statement seemed, at first sight, puzzling and suspicious. I do not however know why he calls her Fausta, or why the Brunswick picture-chronicler calls her Wichanda. Judith was an obvious name for her, being that of her maternal grandmother the wife of Duke Richard. Possibly, as Miss Yonge suggests (Christian Names, ii. 345), this Hebrew name, in its form of Jutta, may have got confounded with the Northern Gytha.