Agnes Plantagenet - Did Empress Matilda actually have a daughter?

Started by Emily Damiano on Thursday, October 9, 2014
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10/9/2014 at 7:10 PM

I was just wondering if Geoffrey of Anjou and Empress Matilda actually had a daughter. I've never heard of her, and I'm almost positive the only ever had three sons. Does anyone else have any other information?

Private User
10/10/2014 at 6:13 AM

Geoffrey maybe did, but maybe not Matilda - Geoff is credited with two illegitimate daughters and a third would not be totally unlikely.

10/10/2014 at 8:26 AM

When something like this comes up it's easy to check secondary sources. Wikipedia and MedLands both list Geoffrey's children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Plantagenet,_Count_of_Anjou#C...
http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ANJOU,%20MAINE.htm#GeoffroyVdied1151B

The lists match No Agnes listed. That doesn't mean she didn't exist, but if she did I would want to see better evidence than a couple of vanity websites.

Private User
10/10/2014 at 8:32 AM

It would be nice if they had some documentation for this - without that, it's just "someone's family tree", possibly valid, possibly bogus.

No such place as "Anyore" in England or France, so I'm pretty sure *that* bit is pulled out of thin air.

Private User
10/10/2014 at 8:36 AM

Medlands credits Geoffrey with three illegitimate children: Hamelin de Warenne, Marie (who became a nun and abbess of Shaftesbury), and Emma (who married Dafydd ap Owain of Wales).

Given the known horniness of Plantagenet men, a third illegitimate daughter is not only not impossible - it's fairly likely.

10/10/2014 at 8:38 AM

mr Swanström for wiki before i was thrusting the information ..but now i realise its a site that evolve time by time i mean they ading the info when they get them

i do thrust more european genealogie site

one thing it sure we dont have husban/partner for agnes(for now) maybe they change the name once again(french are dislexik)loll

10/10/2014 at 8:40 AM

tk for posting that site http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ANJOU,%20MAINE.htm#GeoffroyVdied1151B

but its translated from french to english we can found better original source(french)

Private User
10/10/2014 at 8:57 AM

For what it's worth, Agnes Plantagenet has occasionally been equated with Adewis Plantagenet, d'Anjou, about whom there is not any more documentation.

10/10/2014 at 9:16 AM

with the time of french line tree (with precision of the name and proper title) we figure out very soon

but it create a biger problem (not into that discusion of Agnes )

http://www.geni.com/discussions/142112 as an exemple of the \( about real name +title)

french name + title =verryyyyyy longgggggggggg

Private User
10/10/2014 at 9:30 AM

Tried numerous permutations of "Anyore" on Google, and what comes up most often is Bognor, in Sussex (it has only had the suffix "Regis" since the 1920s, but it dates back before the Conquest).

A secondary find is "Bangor", in Wales.

10/11/2014 at 6:43 AM

Well, Matilda definitely did not have a daughter named Agnes, as then she would have been legitimate, and we all would most likely have heard more of her. She would have been Henry II's full sister. Can we unlink her from Matilda?

Private User
10/11/2014 at 8:02 AM

She's been shifted,although I had to make yet another "mistress" profile for her mother.

She may well *be* the same person as Adewis, but I have not been able to find confirmation of any such person marrying into the de Deols line (and I can read French, although not as well as a native).

Private User
10/11/2014 at 8:49 AM

Merci. Supporting documentation: only a "GEDCOM import", no further information offered. Source extremely dubious, as Matilda was *never* referred to as "Maud Adelaide" in her own time. Certainly not "Maud", as it would have been far beneath her dignity as Dowager Empress.

Private User
10/11/2014 at 9:02 AM

At least, not to her face....

Private User
10/11/2014 at 9:11 AM

Further footnote: apparently there was only one Emma daughter of Geoffrey V, and she did NOT marry any Guy de Laval.

The French sources say that Guy IV de Laval married Emma de Dunstanville, daughter of Reginald, first Earl of Cornwall (who was himself an illegitimate son of Henry I Beauclerc, and accordingly a loyal partisan of Empress Matilda).

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:01 PM

No proof, no proof, and again no proof. Saying something is so does not make it so.

Check this oit, and note that it HAS sources: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_IV_de_Laval

Notes et références

* ↑ Généalogie de Guy IV sur le site Medieval Lands [archive]
* ↑ Orderic, t. IV, p. 333.
* ↑ Gesta Cons. Andegav.
* ↑ Chronique des comtes d'Anjou, p. 262.

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:05 PM

Emma d'Anjou marrying Dafydd ap Owain [Gwynedd - THAT Owain Gwynedd] is referenced several times in the Pipe Rolls between 1174 and 1214, as well as in the Welsh chronicles. So that's pretty definite.

10/11/2014 at 4:09 PM

i dont say. i found on a genealogy site it look solid for me

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:11 PM

The confusion undoubtedly arises because Emma de Dunstanville was *also* an illegitimate member of the House of Anjou, at one remove (her father was an illegitimate son of Henry I Beauclerc).

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:11 PM

No, when things are this messed-up you MUST go to primary sources if there are any. And the Pipe Rolls are about as primary as you're going to get.

10/11/2014 at 4:19 PM

stop with the illegetimate legetimate plz its not a contest or a bloodline path i do .

i do try to make (amateur genealogie) and add or try to add profile for bigger tree on geni as i find few site genealogie good line with infos

it fit madame Helms

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:26 PM

Sorry, it's a legal point rather than a moral one. Emma being the daughter of Geoffrey of Anjou and a woman who was not his wife, took her completely out of the succession and made her a reasonable match for a prince of Gwynedd whose own claim was clouded and more by force than by right.

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:32 PM

Dafydd was the product of a first-cousin marriage, which Welsh law permitted but English canon law did not - and in any case he wasn't the oldest. He and his other brothers ganged up on their eldest brother Hywel and drove him off the throne, and when Hywel came back with an army Dafydd raised one of his own and defeated and killed Hywel. The other brothers then decided it wasn't a good idea to oppose Dafydd....

Private User
10/11/2014 at 4:35 PM

We're dealing with the politics of at least three kingdoms here, so naturally it gets very complicated.

Henry I Beauclerc > Reginald de Dunstanville > Emma de Dunstanville = Guy de Laval.

Geoffrey d'Anjou > Emma d'Anjou = Dafydd ap Owain Gwynedd.

Two different women. Period end of sentence.

10/11/2014 at 4:53 PM

oh this is very complicate for me lol

10/11/2014 at 5:00 PM

There seems to be a problem here with the numbering. Perhaps there are two different systems in use for the Lavals.

In French Wikipedia Guy III died between 1130 and 1142. He married Emma, perhaps daughter of Henry I. Guy IV died between 1180 and 1185. He married Emma, daughter of Reynold de Dunstanville.

Geni has about the same. Guy III, died 1146, married Emma, daughter of Henry I. Guy IV died 1174, married Emma, daughter of Reynold de Dunstanville.

However, this discussion at SGM calls the same two men Guy IV and Guy V:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/soc.genealogy.medi...

The argument here centered around the question of whether the earlier Emma could really have been a daughter of Henry I when that would make the younger Guy and the younger Emma first cousins. There is charter evidence that the younger Emma was a daughter of Reynold (not Geoffrey) but no evidence of a dispensation.

In an earlier but related discussion Doug Richardson addresses the problem that the wife of Dafydd is called the sister of Henry II. He thinks this means she was not the widow of Guy de Laval (but Leo van de Pas seems to think she was).

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/ArGLCI...

10/11/2014 at 5:15 PM

Maven, I think you could get some spirited argument about whether the Empress' name was really Maud or Matilda. Doug Richardson has argued for many years, with increasing success I think, that Maud was the vernacular English version of Mathilde. Matilda, he says, is a mistake by historians who have assumed that was also the English form, when in fact Matilda as an independent name didn't enter the English world until the pseudo-historicism of Romantics like Sir Walter Scott.

Since the Empress' name apparently derives in a straight line from Matilda of Flanders, who was godmother of Matilda of Scotland, who was mother of the Empress, you might be able to make a good case that she was really called Matilda, but I think it is more likely she would have recognized that her name in English was Maud while her name in her own language (Norman-French) was Mathilde or some variation.

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