Ralph "The Staller" de Gael (le Guader), Lord of Gaël, Earl Of Suffolk and Norfolk - Misparented, mismated, misidentified

Text of Oxford DNB article (copy-pasted):

Ralph the Staller, earl of East Anglia (d. 1068x70), magnate, was the son of a Breton father of the Montfort-Gael line. Since his brother was named Godwine, their mother may have been English and both Ralph himself and his son Ralph de Gael are styled anglicus (Englishman) in Breton ducal charters. Ralph's first attestation is no later than 1034, and he may have been born c.1010, supposedly in Norfolk (though this may be an inference from his later tenure of the East Anglian earldom). His unnamed father perhaps came to England with Emma of Normandy when she married Æthelred II in 1002. Emma made a Frenchman her reeve in Exeter, and perhaps gave Ralph's father the single manor which Ralph held in Cornwall, for his other lands, at least some of which he received from Edward the Confessor, were concentrated in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire. From 1050 he attested both royal charters and private transactions as ‘staller’, the title borne by important members of the king's household. His precise position is unknown: he is described in charters as the king's steward (regis dapifer: AS chart., S 1029), courtier (aulicus: AS chart., S 1036), and steward of the king's hall (procurator: AS chart., S 1042).

Ralph's landed wealth in England can be reconstructed from Domesday Book, which also reveals the existence of his brother Godwine, who was living in 1069, and a nephew, Alsige, possibly Alsige of Landwade, Cambridgeshire, a benefactor of Ramsey Abbey. Ralph himself patronized the abbeys of St Riquier in Ponthieu and St Bene't of Holme, Norfolk, though the lands which he gave to the former did not belong to the church in 1086 and only one of his gifts to St Bene't was in its possession at that date.

Ralph was one of those French followers of King Edward who were classed as ‘Englishmen’ after 1066; thus the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle correctly describes him as English. He entered the service of William I, who gave him the earldom of Gyrth (d. 1066) in East Anglia. He is addressed as earl in a series of early writs relating to Bury St Edmunds and was charged, with William, bishop of London, and the royal priest Engelric, with overseeing the process by which the English redeemed their estates from the Conqueror. He was alive in February 1068, when he attested a charter of William I for St Riquier, but died before the deposition of Æthelmær, bishop of East Anglia, at Easter, 1070. Ralph, styled comes, attests a charter of 1069 (Reg. RAN, 1.28) but whether this was the father or the son is unclear; Orderic Vitalis, however, says it was Ralph de Gael who defended Norwich in the summer of that year, when it was attacked by the Danish fleet sent to aid the English revolt in the north. Ralph the Staller left two sons, Ralph de Gael and Hardouin. It has been suggested that his wife was the Cambridgeshire magnate Eadgifu the Fair, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle specifically says that Ralph de Gael's mother was a Breton (ASC, s.a. 1075, texts D, E).

Ann Williams

this was curated by Pam Wilson if it is wrong then maybe she can correct this error

He's currently attached to the wrong family, and that's what needs correcting. Apparently he's "parents unknown" unless somebody has made some very recent discoveries.

I found that I was able to detach him - and did so.