♀Alice of Eu

Alice of Eu (died May 1246) was Countess of Eu^W in Normandy and lady of Hastings in England in her own right, the heiress of the old counts of Eu, who held her inheritance for a quarter of a century as a widow until she was forced to choose between her French and her English lands. She was the twenty-second great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Maud of Eu (died 1241).

Heiress of Eu

Alice was the daughter of Henry of Eu, Count of Eu and lord of Hastings, who died on 16 or 17 March 1183, and of Maud de Warenne, the daughter of Hamelin, Earl of Warenne. Her two brothers, Raoul and Guy, died as young children, and Alice was left the only sister and heir. Alice married Raoul d’Exoudun in or before 1191, and by the marriage he became Count of Eu. Raoul was a younger son of the Lusignans of Poitou, and when they fell out with King John in 1201 the couple lost their English lands. In April 1202, on a false report that Alice had died, King John sent her father’s brother John to the knights and burgesses of Eu as their count, granting him the county until a clearer and more rightful heir should appear.

Widow and countess

Raoul died on 1 May 1219, and that August Alice bought back the county of Eu from the King of France for 15,000 marks of silver. In September the knights and tenants of the honor of Tickhill and the rape of Hastings^W were ordered to answer to her. At Tickhill in 1219 she confirmed the lands of Roche Abbey for the souls of her late husband, herself and her son Raoul, with her uncle William, Earl of Warenne, as a witness. In November 1230, with the assent of her son and of her daughters Maud and Jehanne, she gave land to the priory of Fontblanche, her husband’s foundation.

She defended her rights in the English courts. Robert de Vespont and his wife Idoine claimed Tickhill castle in 1220 and gave up the claim by a fine early in 1222, and in 1230 Alice sued Stephen de Gaunt for land at Saltby in Leicestershire, setting out her descent from Beatrice, the sister of Roger de Builly. On 7 May 1225 she surrendered Hastings castle to Henry III, to be held until peace or a long truce was made with France.

The choice of 1243

She was also a vassal of the King of France, who summoned her in 1236 against the Count of Champagne and again in 1242 against the Count of La Marche, her husband’s own kinsman. After the truce of Bordeaux in April 1243, Louis IX insisted that his vassals give up the lands they held in England or lose those they held in France, and Henry III ordered an inquiry into those who had sided with France. Alice chose to keep her French possessions, and on 18 February 1243/4 she was ordered to deliver Tickhill castle to the king’s custodian. A few days earlier the sheriffs had been told to let her have the stock on her former lands. She never recovered the English estates.

Death

Alice died at La Mothe-Saint-Héray in Poitou on 13, 14 or 15 May 1246. Her will asked for burial at Foucarmont if she died away from her lands in Poitou, and at Fontblanche if she died there, and she was probably buried in the priory of Fontblanche at Exoudun.

The family

Raoul and Alice had a son, Raoul, and two daughters: Maud, who became the first wife of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and Jehanne. Jehanne, Dame de Criel, became the third wife of Pierre Mauclerc^W, who had once been Count of Brittany. Maud’s line is believed to run on to John Washburn (died 1547).

Notes

Sources

Alice’s parentage, her brothers, her marriage, her charters, lawsuits and summonses, the loss of her English lands, her will and her death, and the names of her children are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, 1926, under Eu, pp. 158–165), which cites the original charters, the English chancery and court rolls, the chronicle of the counts of Eu and the obituaries of Eu, Le Tréport and Fontevrault. Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 2), names Maud of Eu as the daughter of Raoul d’Exoudun “by Alice, daughter of Henry, 6 Count of Eu, Baron of Hastings, Sussex”.

The day of her death

The three obituaries keep three different days in May 1246: Le Tréport the 14th, Eu the 15th and Fontevrault the 13th. The chronicle of the counts of Eu says that she lived twenty-six years after her husband and died at her place called La Mothe, and that the monks of Foucarmont held her will. Pipe Roll entries of 1245 to 1247 that still charge the Countess of Eu for the fees of Tickhill and Hastings have been taken to show her alive in 1247; the Complete Peerage answers that the sums were entered through the king’s custodians of those honors, and are no proof that she was then living.

Her uncle John

The John whom King John sent to Eu in 1202 was a younger son of her grandfather Count John, described in the chronicle of the counts of Eu as a churchman, although his seal shows a knight on horseback. He was lord of the rape of Hastings before July 1205 and was living in April 1207.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.