See also
| Husband: | Ivo TAILLEBOIS (1036-1094) | |
| Wife: | Lucy +* of BOLINGBROKE (1070-1138) | |
| Children: | Beatrix (c. 1060- ) | |
| Marriage | 1083 | |
| Name: | Ivo TAILLEBOIS | |
| Sex: | Male | |
| Father: | - | |
| Mother: | - | |
| Birth | 1036 | |
| Death | 1094 (age 57-58) | |
| Name: | Lucy +* of BOLINGBROKE | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Father: | Thorold + (1040-1079) | |
| Mother: | Alvarissa + MALET (1044- ) | |
| Birth | 1070 | Spalding, Lincolnshire, England |
| Occupation | Countess Consort of Chester | |
| Title | Countess Consort of Chester | |
| Death | 1138 (age 67-68) | |
| Name: | Beatrix | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Birth | 1060 (est) | |
Ivo Taillebois (1036–1094) was a powerful Norman nobleman in 11th century England.
The name Taillebose or Taillebois, means "cut bush" in French, but the reasons for using this name are not known. There is a town named Taillebois in Lower Normandy for example, with which people using this surname may have been associated. It in the arrondisement of Argentan, and a noble French family who used this surname lived in the area. A note in the cartulary of La Trinite de Vendôme mentions a copy of the grant of the church and patronage of Cristot by Ives Taillebois to the abbey. It should be mentioned that the placename may itself have been derived from a personal name. In any case this is what Hector de la Ferrière-Percy felt when writing his Histoire du Canton d'Athis, Orne, et de ses Communes (1858 p. 297). According to him the Norman Taillebois family, who he believes to be that of Ivo in England, were based in Briouze, just to the south of Taillebois, from at least the 11th century. Because there was a Taillebois family in France, it is possible that the Taillebois individuals we find in England all arrived at different times and were perhaps only distantly related.
Other men using this name in England during this period include...
Ralph Taillebois, High Sheriff of Bedfordshire who appears as a witness on one of Ivo's charters and is widely thought to be a brother
William Taillebois of Lincoln
Ivo was among the followers of Duke William of Normandy who invaded England in 1066 and is listed on the Battle Abbey Roll. He shared in the distribution of lands among the Norman Barons, and received the lordship of Kendal as his allotment of the spoils. It consisted of a large portion of Northern Lancashire and Southern Westmorland.
His centre of power, however, appears to have been in Lincolnshire, where he probably became High Sheriff of Lincolnshire after the downfall of Merleswein in 1068. He married Lucy, probable daughter of Turold, the Sheriff of Lincolnshire before the conquest.[1] and subsequently Countess of Chester, from whom he received all her ancient family domains, thus making him one of the most influential nobles in England in his day. In 1071, King William, with Ivo leading his army, besieged the Isle of Ely where the rebel leader Hereward the Wake was based. Later, after Hereward, who had escaped capture during the siege, was caught and imprisoned, Ivo dissuaded William from freeing him.
Ivo had at least two daughters. Lucy who married the Earl of Chester, Ranulph le Meschin and Beatrix, who married Ribald of Middleham, son of Eudo of Penthièvre, and was probably his only legitimate child. According to the annalist Peter of Blois, Ivo and Lucy's "only daughter, who had been nobly espoused, died before her father; for that evil shoots should not fix deep roots in the world, the accursed lineage of that wicked man perished by the axe of the Almighty, which cut off all his issue." Peter did not like Ivo.
Ivo de Taillebois is also sometimes represented in modern texts as being a brother to Fulk, Count of Anjou, France[citation needed]. More contemporaneously, he was said to be an ancestor of William Lancaster who is one of the earliest known users of the surname Lancaster.
[edit] In fiction
Ivo Taillebois appears as a character in Charles Kingsley's novel on Hereward the Wake. He is also a major character in Marcus Pitcaithly's Hereward trilogy.
Lucy (died c. 1138), sometimes called Lucy of Bolingbroke,[1] was an Anglo-Norman heiress in central England and, later in life, countess-consort of Chester. Probably related to the old English earls of Mercia, she came to possess extensive lands in Lincolnshire which she passed on to her husbands and sons. She was a notable religious patron, founding or co-founding two small religious houses and endowing several with lands and churches.
A charter of Crowland Abbey, now thought to be spurious, described Thorold of Bucknall, perhaps the same as her probable father Thorold of Lincoln, as a brother of Godgifu (Godiva), wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia.[2] The same charter contradicted itself on the matter, proceeding to style Godgifu's son (by Leofric), Ælfgar, as Thorold's cognatus (cousin).[3] Another later source, from Coventry Abbey, made Lucy the sister of Earls Edwin and Morcar Leofricsson, while two other unreliable sources, the Chronicle of Abbot Ingmund of Crowland and the Peterbrough Chronicle also make Lucy the daughter of Earl Ælfgar.[3] Keats-Rohan's explanation for these accounts is that they were ill-informed and were confusing Lucy with her ancestor, William Malet's mother, who was in some manner related to the family of Godgifu.[3]
Although there is much confusion about Lucy's ancestry in earlier writings, recent historians tend to believe that she was the daughter of Thorold, sheriff of Lincoln, by a daughter of William Malet (died 1071).[4] She inherited a huge group of estates centred on Spalding in Lincolnshire, probably inherited from both the Lincoln and the Malet family.[5] This group of estates have come to be called the "Honour of Bolingbroke".[6]
[edit] Marriages
The heiress Lucy was married to three different husbands, all of whom died in her lifetime. The first of these was to Ivo Taillebois, a marriage which took place "around 1083".[7] Ivo took over her lands as husband, and seems in addition to have been granted estates and extensive authority in Westmorland and Cumberland.[8] Ivo died in 1094.[9]
The second marriage was to one Roger de Roumare or Roger fitz Gerold, with whom she had one son, William de Roumare (future Earl of Lincoln), who inherited some of her land.[10] The latter was the ancestor of the de Roumare family of Westmorland.[11] Roger died in either 1097 or 1098.[12]
Sometime after this, though before 1101, she was married to Ranulf le Meschin, her last and longest marriage.[13] A son Ranulf de Gernon, succeeded his father to the earldom of Chester (which Ranulf acquired in 1121) and a daughter, Alice, married Richard de Clare.[6]
Upon her death, most of the Lincolnshire lands she inherited passed to her older son William de Roumare, while the rest passed to Ranulf II of Chester (forty versus twenty knights' fees).[14] The 1130 pipe roll informs us that Lucy had paid King Henry I 500 marks after her last husband's death for the right not to have to remarry.[15] She died around 1138.[6]
[edit] Religious patronage
Lucy, as widowed countess, founded the convent of Stixwould in 1135, becoming, in the words of one historian, "one of the few aristocratic women of the late eleventh and twelfth centuryes to achieve the role of independent lay founder".[16] Her religious patronage however centered on Spalding Priory, a religious house for which her own family was the primary patron. This house (a monastic cell of Crowland) was founded, or re-founded, in 1085 by Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois.[16]
Later, she was responsible for many endowments, for instance in the 1120s she and her third husband Earl Ranulf granted the priory the churches of Minting, Belchford and Scamblesby.[16] In 1135, Lucy, now widowed for the last time, granted the priory her own manor of Spalding for the permanent use of the monks.[16] The records indicate that Lucy went to great effort to ensure that, after her own death, her sons would honour and uphold her gifts.[17]