Baron Ralph de Limesi, I

From http://users.ox.ac.uk/~prosop/prosopon/issue6-1.pdf

Ralph de Limésy: Conqueror’s Nephew?

The Origins of a Discounted Claim

Peter Jackson (University of Oxford)

The name of Ralph de Limésy is well enough known to medieval prosopographers, both as a substantial tenant-in-chief in several counties in post-Conquest England and as the founder (ca 1095) of a Benedictine house at Hertford as a cell of St. Alban’s. From the seventeenth century, attempts have been made to put some flesh on the bones of this powerful but obscure figure by asserting that he had a very specific claim to royal patronage: that he was, in fact, the ‘sister’s son’ of William the Conqueror.1 The purpose of the present note is not to test this claim (which has long been discounted),2 but to trace its origin a little further back – and to demonstrate its surprising resilience. ...