Ranulf de Meschines

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[edit] Ranulph de Meschines III "le Briquessart" (1121-1129: First Earl, Second creation)

(Kings: Henry I) (Family Tree)

Window from Chester Town Hall staircase
Window from Chester Town Hall staircase

[edit] Summary

Born circa 1070 at Briquessart, Livry, France. An indirect inheritor, Ranulph le Meschin, Earl of Chester was also Vicomte de Bayeux. He was also known as Ranulph de Briquessart. He succeeded to the title of Vicomte d'Avranches on 25 November 1120 and was created Earl of Chester in 1121. He was Commander of the Royal forces in Normandy in 1124. He died either on 17 or 27 January 1128 at Chester and is buried at St. Werburg's, Chester. His wife, Lucy survived him, and in 1130 paid 500 marks to King Henry for license to remain unmarried for 5 years.

  • Parents: either Gherbod II or (more likely) Ranulph Meschines, Viscount of Bayeux and Maud (Margaret d'Avranches) sister of Earl Hugh of Avranches
  • Spouse: Lucy D'AVRANCHES Countess of Chester (possibly born as Lucy Taillebois of Mercia, and a descendant of Leofric and Godiva). Ranulf DE BRIQUESSART "Le Meschin", Earl of Chester and Lucy D'AVRANCHES Countess of Chester were married about 1098.
  • Children: Adelize/Alice DE GERNON, Ranulf de Gernon Viscount d'Avranches, Earl of Chester.
Arms - white lion on red
Arms - white lion on red
Arms - gold lion on blue
Arms - gold lion on blue

Ranulf de Meschines has arms which are, on the Queens Park Suspension Bridge a white lion on a red ground and in the stained glass of the town hall possibly a red lion on a gold ground. To add further confusion some versions of the arms of his son Ranulf de Gernon (shown in the church window on his page) and that shown on the bridge also differ - the window shows a metallic lion on a red field, while the bridge shows the opposite. Could it be that one or the other has got the arms of the father and son mixed up? The arms on the lodge in Grosvenor Park don't help much as they also show that the father and son had oppositely coloured arms, but in this case they have become blue and gold!

[edit] Before Chester

Ranulf only became earl at the rather advanced age of 51 (in 1120). Prior to this he had constructed Appleby Castle which he appears to have started around 1100. Originally this would have been an earth ringwork and bailey fortress. The square stone keep of Appleby is one of the best preserved examples of its type and was added in 1170 (by Hugh de Morville). It is known as "Caesar's Tower" - this is similar to the Agricola Tower at Chester Castle neither of which had anything to do with the Romans. Ranulf ceded Appleby to the crown when he became earl of Chester.

Ranulfs family (his brother William) also constructed Egremont Castle.

[edit] An indirect claim

Following the loss of the White Ship, the earldom passed through the First Earl Hugh's sister Maud to the drowned Richard's first cousin Ranulph I, in 1121.

The King at the time was Henry I (c. 1068/1069 – 1 December 1135) who was the fourth son of William the Conqueror and therefore had a solid claim to throne.

Chester's annual fair was reorganized by Ranulph, who provided new regulations governing its hours of opening. St Giles Hospital was founded in the time of Ranulph, for lepers - it had a burial ground St_Giles_Cemetery, in which the heads of Welshmen killed in battle with Hugh_of_Cyfeiliog were reputed to have been buried in 1170.

How Ranulph became wealthy isn't clear but it may have something to do with the downfall of the Malet family of Eye. Ranulph became the largest landholder in Lindsey through his marriage (c.1093) to a woman referred to as "Countess Lucy", (c.1079-1138), possibly the granddaughter maternally of William Malet, lord of Graville.

[edit] Who was Lucy?

Legend has it that Malet's mother was English, and that he was the uncle of King Harold II of England's wife Edith (the claim being that he had a sister Aelgifu who married Aelfgar, Earl of Mercia, who was the father of Ealdgyth). Legend also claims that William Malet buried Harold after the battle.

Other sources including a genealogia fundatoris of Coventry Abbey, claim Lucy is the daughter of Earl Aelfgar (therefore sister of Edwin and Morcar and grand-daughter of Godiva). Actual literary confirmation of the identity of "Lucy" is difficult to come by. However:

  • Ingulph's Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland records that William I King of England arranged the marriage of "Ivo Taillebois" and "Lucia sister of Edwin and Morcar"
  • Peter of Blois's Continuation of the Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland records the death of Ivo and his burial at the priory of Spalding, and the remarriage of his widow "hardly had one month elapsed after his death" with "Roger de Romar the son Gerald de Romar".
  • She is named as wife of Ranulf by Orderic Vitalis, who also names her first husband, but does not give her origin.
  • According to a charter of Henri Duke of Normandy (later Henry II King of England) issued in favour of her son Ranulf Earl of Chester dated 1153, Countess Lucy was the niece of Robert Malet of Eye and of Alan of Lincoln, as well as kinswoman of Thorold "the Sheriff".

A further William Malet (died c. 1121) was the third of his family to hold the honour of Eye and the lordship of Granville. He was either the younger brother, son, or nephew of Robert Malet, in other words, either a son or grandson of the first William Malet. He forfeited his English lands and was banished sometime between his father's death (c. 1106) and 1113. Several other barons lost their lands in 1110, so that year is likely. The precise cause is not known, but probably it is connected with the conflicts between Henry and King Louis VI of France during that period or possibly the revolt of Philip de Braose.

A rather cryptic note in "The history and gazetteer of the county of Derby" by Stephen Glover may shed some light on this, suggesting that Ranulf was on the side of William Clito in the first Norman rebellion of 1118-19. The source is a little problematic given that Ranulf did not become Earl until 1121:

  • Ranulph de Bricasard, the third earl of Chester, by his marriage with Lucia, the sister of the celebrated Edwyn and Morcar, the sons of Algar, duke of Mercia, seems to have strengthened his claims to the inheritance of lands, torn from those illustrious Saxons, and conferred by the Conqueror on his uncle Hugh Lupus, by this alliance. He certainly conciliated the attachment of the remaining English tenantry connected with a family so high in their estimation. Lucia had been twice married before: first, to Ivo Tailbois, a rude and imperious Norman adventurer, by whom she had an only daughter, who died young: secondly, to Roger de Romara, earl of Lincoln, by whom she had William de Romara, who held several high military appointments under king Henry the First. On his mother's third marriage, which was with Ranulph de Bricasard, he laid claim to her possessions, but Ranulph having placed them, as the dowry of his wife, under the wardship of the crown, and engaged to pay a very heavy sum for their recovery, his suit was rejected. Enraged at this injustice, he went over to Normandy, and joined the insurrection which had broken out in that country in favour of William, the son of duke Robert. There he continued in open hostilities for two years, when king Henry, to pacify him, not only gave him those manors in Lincolnshire, which had belonged to his mother, but also bestowed upon him the hand of a wealthy royal ward, Matilda, the daughter of Richard de Redvers.

[edit] Norman Rebellions

By 1124 the Earl was back in favour: - a serious aristocratic rebellion (the Second Norman Rebellion) broke out in Normandy in favour of William Clito, but the rebels were defeated as a result Henry’s intelligence network and the lack of organisation of the leaders, who were defeated at the battle of Bourgtheroulde in March 1124. Clito was the son of Robert Curthose - William the Conqueror's eldest son and so had a claim to the throne against his father's younger brother Henry. Clito's claim became even stronger in 1120 with the loss of the White Ship and the death of Henry I's only legitimate son - he became the obvious male heir to England and Normandy.

It is believed by some that Earl Ranulph commanded at least a part of the royal forces righting against the rebels. Ranulph had also benefited from the White Ship as his cousin Richard had drowned - leading to Ranulph's succession through his mother Maud, sister of Hugh of Avranches.

It has also been suggested that Ranulph was responsible for the capture of both Amaury de Montfort, (son the original Simon de Montfort count of Evreux) and Waleran de Meulan (Earl of Worcester) - others have them captured by William de Tancarville or Odo Borleng.

  • The campaign of 1124 opened with a spirited ride by the leading insur­gents from Beaumont to relieve Fatouville,3 a small castle near the mouth of the Seine, which was being attacked by the King's men. After a night's march the barons reached the place in safety, namely on the morning of the 25th March, and threw in supplies. The return journey, however, next day was less successful. Near Bourgtheroulde they found the Earl of Chester waiting to receive them with 300 men. Following his master's tactics he had dismounted part of his men-at-arms to fight on foot, with the archers posted in front of them, the rest of the men-at-arms remaining on horseback. On viewing these dis­positions Amaury, as a man of years and experience, swore 'By all the nations' -his usual oath- that they ought not to fight. But Waleran, with all the cheery confidence of youth, insisted on charging with forty men-at-arms, and was utterly discomfited, the horses being disabled by the fire of the archers. The end of it was that he, with two of his brothers-in-law, and some eighty men in all, were carried off in triumph.

- The Foundations of England: Or, Twelve Centuries of British History (B.C. 55-A.D. 1154) Vol. 2 James H. Ramsay;

A descendant of Simon (I) de Montfort would later (briefly) become Earl of Chester. Waleran was released for unknown reasons in 1129. He resumed an active role at court and he and his twin brother were both present at Henry I's deathbed (Henry famously died (1135) from eating "a surfeit of lampreys"). As for Amaury, Henry I King of England "took the county of Evreux into his own hands" because he "had forfeited the king's favour by his effrontery"

It has been suggested that during the revolt, Louis VI was distracted from active intervention because Henry I got his son-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, to threaten Louis from behind. Bourgetheroulde was a particularly messy battle - afterwards Henry decided to blind three of the more important prisoners. Charles the Good, count of Flanders, objected to the king, believing it was wrong to punish knights in this fashion. Henry replied that two of these prisoners were his own liegemen and that they had betrayed him by going to war against him, therefore deserving a punishment of death or mutilation. As for the third captive, Luke of La Barre, he had mocked Henry with scurrilous songs, and that if blind, he would give up this practice and provide an example for others.

Henry V is supposed to have died at Utrecht on 23 May 1125 although some sources cite him as the mysterious Anchorite who lived in the Hermitage at Chester.

[edit] Harold's Gold?

If anyone is into Anglo-Norman conspiracy theory there is a story in here somewhere: - a relative of the English King supposedly buries him (although the body could only be recognised by his wife) - the wife then flees to just where - Chester:

  • Immediatlie after he [William] had thus got the victorie in a pight field (as before ye haue heard) he first returned to Hastings, and after set forward towards London, wasted the countries of Sussex, Kent, Hamshire, Southerie, Middlesex, and Herefordshire, burning the townes, and sleaing the people, till he came to Beorcham. In the meane time, immediatlie after the discomfiture in Sussex, the two earles of Northumberland and Mercia, Edwin and Marchar, who had withdrawne themselues from the battell togither with their people, came to London, and with all speed sent their sister quéene Aldgitha vnto the citie of Chester, and herewith sought to persuade the Londoners to aduance one of them to the kingdome: as Wil. Mal. writeth. (Holinshed)'

..and there is the story that Harold isn't dead after all but living in the Hermitage in ...Chester.

And then the Malet family fall out of favour and their lands go to the Earl of ... Chester.

And who (back in 1071) had written to console the daughter of William I who had possibly been jilted by Harold and became a nun? - sources show that it was Anselm of Bec - later to found the Benedictine Abbey ... at Chester

There are other possible twists to the tale. Harold (house of Wessex) and the Earls of Chester and Northumbria (Leofric's House) had fair warning of the potential for war in 1066 and would have been well advised to make preparations to hide any gold and other treasures which they might have had. At least one hoard has been associated with Harold's brother.

[edit] Loss of lands to the Scots

It was not all plain sailing for the earl. In his first act as king David of Scotland (1124) made a grant or perhaps a reaffirmation of a previous grant to one of his followers, Robert de Brus, of the lordship of Annandale, on the frontier between his old principality and the lands of "Galloway":

  • David, by the grace of God King of Scots, to all his barons, men and friends, English and French, greetings. Know you that I have given and granted to Robert de Brus Ystrad Annan (Annandale) and all the land from the boundary of Dunegal of Srath Nid (Nithsdale) to the boundary of Randolph le Meschin; and I will and grant that he should hold and have that land and its castle well and honourably with all its customs which Ranulph le Meschin ever had in Carduill (Carlisle) and in his land of Cumberland on that day in which he had them most fully and freely. Witnesses: Eustace fitz John, Hugh de Morville, Alan de Perci, William de Somerville, Berengar Engaine, Randolf de Sules, William de Morville, Hervi fitz Warin and Edmund the chamberlain. At Scone.

Clearly "de Meschin" had lost land in the region.

[edit] Sources - Ranulph

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