♂Godefroy of Louvain

Godefroy of Louvain was Duke of Lower Lorraine^W and Count of Brabant and Louvain, and was known as Godefroy “à la Barbe”. He was the twenty-sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Adelise of Louvain (died 1151).

Godefroy is said to have married first Ide, the daughter of Albert III, Count of Namur^W. Their eldest daughter, Adelise of Louvain, became Queen of England as the wife of King Henry I.

Notes

Sources

Godefroy’s titles, his marriage to Ide and his daughter Adelise are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 1, 1910, under Arundel, pp. 233-235), in the account of Adelise’s second husband. The peerage calls Adelise his daughter “by his 1st wife”, so it implies a later marriage, but it names no other wife. It is a printed compilation, and no record made in Godefroy’s own lifetime is cited for him, so each statement about him is compiled rather than documented. The Complete Peerage names no parents for Godefroy.

The descent

The line from Adelise to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her daughter Alice d’Aubigny and her descendants to John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547. That the John Washburn of the pedigrees was this man is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent is probable.