♂Henry of Eu

Henry of Eu (died 12 July 1140) was Count of Eu^W in Normandy and lord of Hastings in England in the reign of King Henry I, whom he served, defied and served again. He founded the abbey of Foucarmont near Eu and died there as one of its monks. He was the twenty-fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John of Eu (died 1170).

Count of Eu

Henry was the son and heir of William, Count of Eu, by his first wife, Beatrice, a sister of Roger de Builly, lord of Tickhill. When Henry I came to Normandy in 1104, the count took the king’s side against the king’s brother, Duke Robert Curthose^W. In 1118 he prepared to join the revolt in favor of the duke’s son, William Clito^W, but the king had him arrested at Rouen and kept him in prison until he gave up his castles. The next year he was back on the king’s side at the battle of Brémule^W, on 20 August 1119.

The monk of Foucarmont

Henry married three times. His first wife, Maud, died on 30 March in or before 1109; his second was Hermentrude; and his third was Margaret de Sully, a niece of King Stephen. He was a patron of the Church on his lands: the canons of Eu remembered him as the man who first brought regular canons into their church, and in 1129 or 1130 he founded the abbey of Foucarmont, a daughter house of Savigny Abbey^W.

At the end of his life, with Margaret’s leave and while she still lived, Henry became a professed monk at Foucarmont. He died on 12 July 1140 and was buried in the chapter house of the abbey, where his tomb showed him in a monk’s habit. Henry and Margaret had a son, John, who succeeded him as Count of Eu and lord of Hastings.

Notes

Sources

Henry’s parentage, his part in the quarrels of 1104 and 1118, his presence at Brémule, his foundation of Foucarmont, his three marriages, his profession as a monk and his death and burial are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, 1926, under Eu, pp. 154–156). It cites the chronicler Orderic Vitalis, a charter of 1109 in which Henry remembered “domine Mathildis uxoris mee nuper defuncte”, a charter to Battle Abbey naming his late wife Maud and his present countess Hermentrude, the obituaries of Eu and Le Tréport, and the chronicle of the counts of Eu written by a monk of Foucarmont in 1390. That chronicle says that Henry, “au vivant de sa femme par le conge delle et licence”, became a monk at Foucarmont, and that he “gist en chapitre et est en sa lemme portrait en habit de moyne”. The Complete Peerage calls it the principal authority for the family, while warning that it is not accurate on the parentage of the earlier countesses.

The descent through John Washburn

The line from Henry to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through his son John and John’s 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 through him is probable.