Maud "Matilda" de Clere de Lacy - Alternative Data After Merges

Considering the mad popularity of "Matilda" in the early post-Conquest period, there doesn't have to *be* a "naming pattern". Between William the Conqueror's wife and Henry I Beauclerc's "Good Queen Mold" (nee Eadgyth), there was more than enough reason going around.

The Cleres are regrettably *very* sketchily documented, so any attempt to reconstruct the family is going to involve a lot of guesswork. (Nigel de Plumpton's wife Avice was definitely a Clere, not a Clare, but whether she was sister or cousin to Agatha de Clere is a matter of conjecture.)

The Cleres - even the Ormesby, Norfolk branch, which acquired some influence in Tudor times - had been so completely forgotten even by *Dugdale's* time (1606-1686, "Monasticon" published in several editions 1655-1673, his version of "Visitations of Yorkshire" compiled 1665-1666) that he could confidently set down that Nigel de Plumpton's wive Avice was a ClAre. (She wasn't - we disentangled that mess a couple of years ago.)

Let me see...the reason I posited a "first wife" for Ralph de Clere in the first place is that his named and documented wife, Mabel, was apparently much younger than he was and outlived him by quite a bit (she outlived her second husband, too).

It wasn't the usual thing for men to wait until they were middle-aged to get married (William The Marshal was a rare exception, as he had a lot of name-making to go through before he was "eligible"), so....

If you cut Matilda, you have to cut William also, and unite them under a Holding Profile "Nn de Clere".

There really isn't any other way she could have gotten muddled up with the ClAres, than by having a last name that was "close but no cigar" - i.e. ClEre.

We have so little documentation on those early Cleres, that an undocumented brother or cousin or whatever to Ralph de Clere can't be ruled out.

William. This guy: William, treasurer of York Minster

I had him as her half-brother, but they may have been full siblings for all the documentation that exists.

He's clearly *not* the same person as William de Rotherfield (then presumably Archdeacon of Richmond), as both of them - plus a William who was Archdeacon of the East Riding - witnessed a charter of Archbishop Walter de Gray, dated 3 Sep. 1220.

de Rotherfield succeeded to the treasurership in 1122.

"William" was THE #1 choice for sons' names from 1066 down to about 1600 or so, when it was finally overtaken by "John".

For what it's worth, I tracked down the "Lacy manuscript' that leeps getting referred to. It's actually called "Historia Laceiorum", and was written in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, maybe at Kirkstall Abbey, maybe at Whalley Abbey. William Dugdale had it set into print and put in volume 5 of his "Monasticon" starting on page 533 - there's a Hathitrust versionhere: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112109884418&view...

Dugdale, you may recall, was so ignorant of the existence of any Cl?re family not named Clare that he ascribed Nigel de Plumpton's wife to the Clares - which has led to mash-merging of Amice de Clare (wife and then widow of Baldwin de Redvers, 6th Earl of Devon) with Avice Plumpton (nee Clere). They were not the same person at all.

Moved William the treasurer and set him up with jump links - we're not *absolutely* certain that he's a Clere, but the tradition that Maud was his sister seems fairly widespread.

The problem keeps getting knottier. I think someone put far too much reliance on the descent of the manor of Kippax - and in an attempt to FORCE the dates to make sens, Matilda's birth date has been *fragged*.

She WASN'T twenty to fifty years older than her husband Roger de Lacy, Lord Pontefract, Baron of Halton , whose birth date has been established in the range 1170-1172. (That by itself rules out the Lady of Kippax as any daughter of his - he would have had to beget her at ten to fifteen years old, unless Alan of Galloway was fobbed off with an infant bride that he would have had to wait ten years or so to enjoy, *if* she lived so long.)

Looks like we need to look at some of the alternative explanations.

The 1214 Curia Regis roll that Cawley put so much faith in is not unambiguous: “John [de Lacy] de warrantia carte de terra de Kippes...should warrant the charters of his father Roger which Alan [de Galloway]...has concerning the maritagium of his sister”[1188].

It is not sufficiently clear *whose* sister is under discussion here, except that it probably isn't Alan's. Could it have referred to *Roger's* sister? The timing on that would be much more fortuitous for a first wife for Alan of Galloway (and we don't need to scratch our heads over the Clare/Clere problem, because if that is correct Matilda was *not* her mother - Alice FitzRichard was.)

PS: "1188" is a note-identifier, *not* a date.

Pulled the following from a highly rancorous discussion on Soc.gen.medieval, because it references and itemizes the conclusions drawn by Keith Stringer in the 1972 article proposing a Lacy first wife for Alan of Galloway:

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Alex Maxwell Findlater
Sep 28, 2005, 4:31:47 PM
to
The Lacy identity of Alan of Galloway's first wife was proposed by Stringer in 1972 (Dumfries & Galloway NHAS Transactions Vol XLIX). The evidence adduced by Stringer is sixfold:

1 In 1254 Roger de Quincy granted Kippax to Edmund de Lacy. Quincy was the husband of Alan's eldest daughter Helen, who we know was not a daughter by Margaret of Huntingdon as Helen was not an heir to Earl John, Margaret's brother, and who we know inherited the Constableship of Scotland, and so was an elder half sister of Dervorguilla.

2 In ca 1223 Alan ordered his bailiff to take possession, apparently as an escheat, of Swillington, which pertained to Kippax.

3 The Curia Regis Rolls of 1214 show Alan acting against John de Lacy (father of Edmund) "de warantia carte de terra de Kippes". Stringer quotes in English that " John de Chester shall warrant the charters of his father Richard (per Stringer recte Roger) which Alan ... has anent the maritagium of his sister (the "his" is not specific between father and son and Stringer says "sister or dau of Roger de Lacy, constable of Chester")

4 A letter of Pope Honorius III of March 1222 states that Alan had married within the prohibited degrees of consanguinuity. His later wife was the daughter of Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster (of the Weobley Lacys), so an earlier Lacy wife (of the Pontefract Lacys) would fit the bill.

5 Stringer also suggests that there would not appear to be a suitable earlier marriage in Alan's pedigree to allow for him and his descendants to hold Kippax.

6 He also refers to the Close Rolls 1242-47, apparently showing, but without quotation, that Helen of Galloway's maritagium was in the Honour of Pontefract.

It seems to me that if the scribe had in his notes written "R", it could have been for Roger when he wrote it, but when he transcribed it in the quote in item 3, he expanded it to the more usual Richard.

However, the argument is more complex and more persuasive than anyone has yet (to my memory) suggested. Clearly once such a case as this has been made and accepted, those who later propose it do not feel the necessity to rehearse the whole argument, whether this is actually necessary or not.

The quote above
". Sciant omnes presentes et futuri has Litteras visuri [et] audituri . Quod ego Alanus filius Roll(andi) . Dominus Galuuath' Scotie Constab(ularius) quitam clamaui . Rogero de lascy . Centrie Constab(ulario) [et] heredibus suis . de me [et] heredibus meis aduocationem ecclesie de kipeis . Hijs Test(ibus) . Eustacio de Vescy Roberto Walensi . Willelmo de bello monte . hugone despensario . Thoma fratre suo . Gilberto fili(o) Cospatric . Radulfo de Campania . Ricardo clerico de creuequor litterarum scriptore . [et] multis aliis."

is not sourced, but I assume it to be another piece of unattributed evidence of which Stringer was unaware when he wrote the 1972 article. At all events, it would seem to support his argument.

Finally as to the identity of "Ricardo clerico de creuequor litterarum scriptore" T and C are notoriously interchangeable, or alternatively confusable, and to anyone familiar with Galloway this must be Troqueer. Richard is clearly the priest of Troqueer. Old forms of Troqueer have for "Tro" "Treve", from the Brythonic "tref", a place, as in Threve, Terregles and many other Galwegian place names.

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I call special attention to point 3, where Stringer is quoted as calling Alan of Galloway's first wife "sister or dau[ghter]" of Roger de Lacy.

Chronologically, "daughter" requires a whole lot of fudging of birth and marriage dates, but "sister" fits right in, no problem.

Okay, question:

IF everyone here agrees that '--- de Lacy' in FMG is Matilda, then why isn't ROGER (-1211, bur Stanlow Priory). A manuscript history of the Lacy family names “Rogerium de Hell…alium filium…Eustachium et plures alios” as the children of “Johannes constabularium Cestriæ” & his wife, adding that Roger was called “de Hell” by the Welsh because a Welsh rebellion was crushed there, and that he died in 1206 “in festo sancti Remigii” and was buried “in choro monachorum de Stanlaw”[449]. Constable of Chester. He was heir to his paternal grandmother's first cousin, Robert de Lacy, in 1193 and adopted the name Lacy. The Red Book of the Exchequer, listing scutage payments in [1194/95], records "Rogerus de Cestria successor Henrici de Lascy" paying "xliii l xv s, xliii milites et tres partes" in Yorkshire[450]. Matthew Paris records the death in 1211 of "Rogerus Cestriæ constabularius”[451]. m MATILDA de Clare, daughter of ROGER de Clare Earl of Hertford & his wife Matilda de Saint-Hilaire (-bur Stanlow Priory 'tagged' in Geni as her father and mother?

http://fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ENGLISHNOBILITYMEDIEVAL3T-Z.htm#dau...

Dear Tink, the confusion between Cleres and Clares is old and long-standing, and has troubled this site more than once before.

Cawley isn't always right, and sometimes goes for the obvious when the answer requires a bit more digging. (He's all wet on the early Camvilles, for instance.)

With Matilda, we *don't* have primary evidence for who her parents were, and we *do* have two conflicting traditions. Tradition 1 calls her a "Clare", possibly because her granddaughter Matilda de Lacy *did* marry into the Clares; but Tradition 2 calls her "sister of the treasurer of the York church" (York Minster), and there were no Clares in that office at that time.

A while back, we jumped through a number of hoops sorting out Amice de Clare, widow of the Earl of Devon, from Avice de Clere, who married Nigel [II] de Plumpton of Yorkshire. Somebody tried to insist they were the same person, in the face of various bits of evidence that they were not - discrepant ages, discrepant geography, a bid for the hand of Amice of Devon from Baldwin de Guines, etc. *Agatha* de Clere (of Yorkshire) was well enough established to prove the survival of a family by that name in Yorkshire up to that time, though we still don't know for sure if Avice was her sister or her cousin. But a Clere she surely was, and relatively local to the Plumptons - Nigel didn't have to trot all the way to Devon to find a bride.

So, Matilda...there are really only two possible treasurers of York Minster who could have been her brother. One is known only as "William the treasurer", family name unrecorded, tenure circa 1218 to 1222 - if there was ever a Clere in the office, he's the likely one. On the other hand, his successor was William de Rotherfield, who served from 1222 to 1246 (but where is the Clere connection?).

This is a riddle to which we may never find a good answer.

Thanks for you excellent reply, Private User

The "--- de Lacy" citation is for the (presumptive) first wife of Alan of Galloway, whose dower was apparently the manor of Kippax in West Yorkshire. This manor had previously been in Lacy hands, and there was a court case over it that provides some further inklings. Parties to the suit were John de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln (son of Roger "de Hell" and Matilda) and Alan of Galloway, in which John was advised to verify the charters of his father, concerning "the maritagium of his sister".

The extant text does *not* make it clear whether the "sister" in question was John's, or his father's. But if you look at the chronology, it's almost certainly the latter. Roger had been head of the family de facto since 1183, when his father died, and de jure since 1194, when he was adjudged to have come of age. John was born somewhere around 1192, and any sister of his must have been born a year or two either side of him -- which is pushing it REAL HARD for establishing a marriage with Alan of Galloway in the bracket 1200-1206. What's more, it makes it very hard to believe that such a baby-wife could have had a daughter in that time bracket - but, as additional records indicate, there was at least one (Ellen de Galloway, who married Roger de Quincy "before 1223").

On the other hand, a sister of *Roger* de Lacy, born say 1180, would fit right into the chronology - old enough to wed, bed, and bear. And Roger, as her brother and head of the family, would still be responsible for providing her dower.