♀Margaret de Sully

Margaret de Sully (died about 1145) was Countess of Eu^W in Normandy as the third wife of Henry, Count of Eu, and a niece of King Stephen of England. After her husband became a monk she lived out her widowhood as a recluse. She was the twenty-fifth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son John of Eu (died 1170).

Family

Margaret was a daughter of Guillaume de Champagne, Sire de Sully, and of Agnes, the younger daughter and sole heir of Gilon de Sully, Sire de Sully-sur-Loire. Her father was the eldest son of Stephen, Count of Blois^W, and an elder brother of Stephen, who became King of England in 1135.

Countess of Eu

Margaret became the third wife of Henry of Eu, Count of Eu and lord of Hastings, the founder of the abbey of Foucarmont. Together they made gifts to that abbey, which their son John later confirmed as the gifts of “pater meus Henricus et mater mea Margarita”. 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 Margaret, in the words of the chronicle of the counts of Eu, lived “mout saintement et religieusement en maniere de recluse”. She survived him by five years and died on 15 December, about 1145. She was buried in the choir of the abbey church of Foucarmont. Henry and Margaret had a son, John, who succeeded him as Count of Eu and lord of Hastings.

Notes

Sources

Margaret’s parentage, her marriage, her widowhood and her death and burial are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, 1926, under Eu, pp. 155–156), which cites Anselme’s account of the seigneurs of Sully, a charter of her son John confirming what “pater meus Henricus et mater mea Margarita” had given to Foucarmont, the obituary of Le Tréport (“xviij kal. Jan. Obiit Margareta Augensis Comitissa mater Johannis”), and the chronicle of the counts of Eu written by a monk of Foucarmont in 1390. The chronicle says that she “vesquit apres son dit mary cinq ans” and lies “dedans le cheur de leur eglise”. 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.

A second son

A charter of hers in the archives of Seine-Inférieure begins “Ego Margarita Comitissa et filii mei Johannes et Stephanus”, naming a second son, Stephen, whom the chronicle of the counts of Eu makes a Master of the Templars in England.

The descent through John Washburn

The line from Margaret to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her 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.