♀Maud of Eu

Maud of Eu (died 14 August 1241) was a noblewoman of the family of the counts of Eu in Normandy who married Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex. She was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Alice de Bohun.

Family and marriage

Maud was a daughter of Raoul d’Exoudun, Count of Eu and Baron of Hastings in Sussex, who also held lordships in Poitou, and of Alice, the daughter of Henry, Count of Eu. She is said to have been the first wife of Humphrey de Bohun, and an old pedigree of the Bohuns kept at Llanthony Abbey^W named her as the daughter of the count of Eu in Normandy. Humphrey and Maud had four sons and four daughters, among them Alice, who was married by an agreement of 1239 to Roger de Tony.

Death

Maud died on 14 August 1241 and was buried at Llanthony Abbey near Gloucester. An obituary kept in France marks her death on that day as that of the noble Matilda, Countess of Hereford. After Maud’s death Humphrey married Maud de Avenbury.

Lines of descent

The line runs from her daughter Alice de Bohun to Alice’s son Ralph de Tony, then to Ralph’s daughter Alice de Tony (died 1325), and on through Alice de Tony’s daughter Joyce la Zouche and several generations more. The pedigrees carry it down to John Washburn (died 1547), whom they make a son of Joan Mitton, and so probably to Nancy Jane Blanchard. The Notes explain why that last link rests on a historian’s identification rather than a record.

Notes

Sources

Maud’s parentage, her marriage, her children and her death and burial are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 99–100 (Bohun 2), which cites the Complete Peerage (vol. 5, 1926, p. 163, note d, under Eu, and vol. 6, pp. 459–462, under Hereford). Her daughter Alice’s marriage agreement of 1239 is from p. 824 (Tony 3).

The Llanthony pedigree and the obituary

Richardson cites the Bohun pedigree among the records of Llanthony Abbey, printed in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (vol. 6, part 1, 1830, pp. 134–136): “Humfredus [de Bohun] desponsavit primo Matildem filiam comitis de Ewe in Normannia”, Humphrey de Bohun married first Maud, the daughter of the count of Eu in Normandy. He also cites the obituary of Port, printed in the Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France (vol. 23, 1894, p. 452), under 14 August: “Obiit nobilis Mathildis, comitissa de Herefort”, there died the noble Matilda, Countess of Hereford, which goes on to name her as the daughter of Alice, Countess of Eu.

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.