♂Raoul d'Exoudun

Raoul d’Exoudun (died 1 May 1219) was a nobleman of Poitou, a younger son of the house of Lusignan^W, who became Count of Eu^W in Normandy and lord of the rape of Hastings^W in England by his marriage to the heiress Alice of Eu. He was the twenty-second great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Maud of Eu (died 1241).

Family and marriage

Raoul is said to have been a younger son of Hugue de Lusignan, Sire de Lusignan, and of Bourgogne de Rancon, Dame de Fontenay, the daughter of Geoffroy de Rancon, Seigneur de Taillebourg. He took his name from Exoudun, a place near Melle in Poitou, and he held the lordships of Melle and Chizé. Alice married Raoul d’Exoudun in or before 1191, and by the marriage he became Count of Eu. Richard I gave him Driencourt, the place now called Neufchâtel-en-Bray, and in December 1195 Richard kept Driencourt and the county of Eu for his own side in his treaty with the King of France.

Between two kings

On 28 January 1199/1200 Raoul and his brother, the Count of La Marche^W, swore fealty to King John, who gave Raoul the castle of Civray in Poitou. The peace did not last. In 1201 John quarreled with the Lusignans over his marriage to Isabella of Angoulême^W, and seized the Count of Eu’s lands in England; his steward in Normandy was ordered to besiege Driencourt, and Raoul soon lost his Norman lands as well. The two brothers appealed to the King of France, and in the summer of 1202 Raoul rode with the French king as he overran the county of Eu and laid siege to Arques, a siege raised when news came of John’s victory at Mirebeau^W on 1 August.

In 1214 John brought an army to Poitou against the Lusignans, but came to terms with them at Parthenay on 25 May. Raoul was promised the rape of Hastings and the honor and castle of Tickhill^W, and a yearly payment of 6,000 pounds of Tours, the value of his Norman lands, until John won those lands back for him. He was not at the battle of Bouvines^W on 27 July: two days earlier he was with King John at Saint-Jean-d’Angély. He was one of those who swore to the truce on the English king’s behalf on 18 September 1214, and in April 1216 he was named to arrange a further truce with France. In December 1216 the young Henry III thanked him, with other lords of Poitou, for his faithful service to John. Only after orders of September 1217 was Tickhill castle itself handed over to him.

Death

Raoul died at Melle on 1 May 1219 and was buried in the priory of Fontblanche at Exoudun, which he had founded. The abbeys of Eu, Le Tréport and Fontevrault kept the day of his death in their obituaries. Alice outlived him by twenty-seven years, and in August 1219 she bought back the county of Eu from the King of France for 15,000 marks of silver.

The family

Raoul and Alice had a son, Raoul, and two daughters: Maud, who became the first wife of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and Jehanne. Jehanne, Dame de Criel, became the third wife of Pierre Mauclerc^W, who had once been Count of Brittany. Maud’s line is believed to run on to John Washburn (died 1547).

Notes

Sources

Raoul’s parentage, his lordships, his marriage, his career between the English and French kings, his death and burial, and the names of his children are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, 1926, under Eu, pp. 159–163), which cites the original charters, the English chancery rolls and the obituaries of Eu, Le Tréport and Fontevrault. Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 2), names him, “Raoul (or Ralph) d’Exoudun (or d’Issoudun), Count of Eu, Baron of Hastings”, as the father of Maud of Eu by Alice, the daughter of Henry, Count of Eu.

Exoudun, not Issoudun

The Complete Peerage places his home at Exoudun, near Melle and La Mothe-Saint-Héray in Poitou, and not at Issoudun in Berry: both names were usually written in Latin as Exoldunum, and there was in the same years a different Raoul, Seigneur d’Issoudun, who made his will in July 1212 and died without children by 1215. Alice’s own charter of 1219 still calls her husband “Radulfi de Ysoudun”.

His father

The Complete Peerage makes Raoul a younger son of Hugue VIII, Sire de Lusignan, and calls it a mistake that some older French works made him a son of Hugue IX; that mistake arose because Raoul is often styled, between 1208 and 1219, the brother of the Count of La Marche.

His burial

The Complete Peerage gives his burial as the priory of Fontblanche. The chronicle of the counts of Eu that it quotes says instead that he died in Poitou and that Alice had him carried to the abbey of Foucarmont in Normandy and buried behind the high altar, where his arms were painted, the arms of the counts of La Marche with a red label.

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.