♀Maud of England

Maud of England (about 8 February 1102 – 10 September 1167), the Empress Maud, was the daughter and heiress of King Henry I of England and the widow of a Holy Roman Emperor, who fought King Stephen for the English crown and in 1141 was proclaimed “Lady of the English”. She was the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Henry of England (1133–1189).

Empress and heiress

Maud was born in London about 8 February 1102, the daughter of Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy^W, by his first wife, Maud of Scotland^W, a daughter of Malcolm III, King of Scots. As a girl of about eight she was married to the Emperor Heinrich V^W; he died at Utrecht on 23 May 1125. In 1126 her father declared her his heir. Her second husband was Geoffrey of Anjou^W, the son and heir of the Count of Anjou. Geoffrey and Maud were married at Le Mans on 17 June 1128. The bridegroom was fourteen; the bride, already an empress, was twenty-six. Their eldest son, Henry, was born at Le Mans on 5 March 1133.

Lady of the English

On her father’s death in 1135 Maud at once entered Normandy to claim her inheritance. The border districts submitted to her, but England chose her cousin Stephen^W as its king, and Normandy soon followed. In 1139 she landed in England with 140 knights and was besieged by Stephen at Arundel Castle. In the civil war^W that followed, Stephen was captured at Lincoln^W in February 1141 and imprisoned at Bristol, and in April 1141 a council of the English church at Winchester declared Stephen deposed and proclaimed Maud “Lady of the English”. Her seal of about this time shows her seated on a throne, with the legend “MATHILDIS DEI GRATIA ROMANORV[M REGINA]”, Matilda, by the grace of God, Queen of the Romans.

The victory did not hold. Stephen was released and had himself crowned again on the anniversary of his first coronation. Geoffrey, meanwhile, won Normandy, entering Rouen in January 1144, and in 1149 he and Maud together ceded the duchy to their son Henry. Geoffrey died in 1151. In 1153 the Treaty of Westminster^W provided that Stephen should remain king for life and that Maud’s son Henry should succeed him.

Death

Maud, “late Empress of Almain”, died at Rouen on 10 September 1167 and was buried at Bec Abbey^W in Normandy. At her death her wealth was given to the poor and to hospitals, churches and monasteries.

The family

Geoffrey and Maud had three sons. Henry, the eldest, became King Henry II of England^W. Geoffrey, born at Rouen on 1 June 1134, became Count of Nantes^W and held three castles in France as his share; he died without children on 26 July 1158. William Longespée^W, born at Argentan on 22 July 1136, sought to marry the widowed Isabel de Warenne, Countess of Surrey, but Archbishop Thomas Becket^W opposed the match because William was related to her first husband in the third degree; William died at Rouen on 30 January 1163/4 and was buried in the cathedral there.

Lines of descent

Both lines from Maud to Nancy Jane Blanchard run down her father’s side, through Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975), and both pass through her son Henry of England (1133–1189). They meet again in Joan of England (1272–1307), whose parents, Edward of England (1239–1307) and Eleanor of Castile (died 1290), both descended from Maud.

Notes

Sources

Maud’s birth, parentage, both marriages, her claim to England and Normandy, her death and burial, and her sons are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, ENGLAND 1, pp. 1–3, a printed genealogy of the medieval royal family that cites the English and Angevin chronicles, charters and seals; the seal is described there from Birch’s catalog of the seals in the British Museum (1887). Henry’s birth is from ENGLAND 2, p. 5. Burke’s Peerage (1869, p. xviii) also names her as the daughter of Henry I by Maud of Scotland and styles her “Matildis Imperatrix”.

The dates of the marriages

Richardson gives Maud’s age as eight in 1110 and cites the annals of that year for her first marriage; Burke’s Peerage says she was “betrothed and wedded in her eighth year (1115)” and dates her marriage to Geoffrey to 3 April 1127. Richardson gives Le Mans, 17 June 1128, the date followed here.