Empress Matilda England GERMANY

   Other names for Matilda were Maud, ENGLAND Princess, ENGLAND Queen, GERMANY Empress, "The Empress" and Alice Ethelric.

   Ancestral File Number: 9FM0-NL. User ID: 37819489/151279089.

   General Notes:

"The Empress", Princess of ENGLAND, Empress of GERMANY 25 Jul 1110 Crowned in Mainz, Queen of England Apr- Nov 1141.

BOOKS
Barber Grandparents: 125 Kings, 143 Generations, Ted Butler Bernard and Gertrude Barber Bernard, 1978, McKinney TX, p92: "418U Matilda, (D of 407, M of 428); married 419T Geoffrey, `The Fair', Count of Anjou, (S of 403, F of 428)."

Kings and Queens of Great Britain, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute, 1990: "The Empress, Mar =1 Henry V German Emperor, =2 Geoffrey Count of Anjou, Reigned Apr- Nov 1141, Died 1167."

The Political History of England, Vol II, George Burton Adams Longmans Green and Co, 1905
p151: [1109] "...Just before the death of Anselm occurred that of Fulk Rechin, Count of Anjou, and the succession of his son Fulk V. He was married to the heiress of Maine, and a year later this inheritance, the overlordship of which the Norman dukes had so long claimed, fell in to him. Of Henry's marriage with Matilda two children had been born whosurvived infancy- Matilda, the future empress, early in 1102, and William in the late summer or early autumn of 1103..."
p154: "It was during the same stay in England that an opportunity was offered to Henry to form an alliance on the continent which promised him great advantages in case of an open conflict with the king of France. At Henry's Whitsuntide court, in 1109, appeared an embassy from Henry V of Germany, to ask for the hand of his daughter, then less than eight yearsold. This request Henry would not be slow to grant. Conflicting policies would never be likely to disturb such an alliance, and the probable interest which the sovereign of Germany would have in common with himself in limiting the expansion ofFrance, or even in detaching lands from her allegiance, would make the alliance seem of good promise for the future. On the part of Henry of Germany, such a proposal must have come from policy alone, but the advantage which he hope to gain from it is not so easy to discover as in the case of Henry of England...That he should have believed, as he evidently did, that a marriage with the young English princess was the most useful one he could make in this crisis of his af- fairs is interesting evidence, not merely of the world's opinion of Henry I, but also of the rank of the English monarchy among the states of Europe.
"Just as she was completing her eighth year, Matilda was sent over to Germany to learn the language and the ways of her new country. A stately embassy and a rich dower went with her, for which her father had provided by taking the regular feudal aid to marry the lord's eldest daughter, at the rate of three shillings per hide throughout England. On April 10, 1110, she was formally betrothed to the emperor-elect at Utrecht. On July 25, she was crowned Queen of Germany at Mainz. Then she was committed to the care of the Archbishop of Tier, who was to superintend her education. On January 7, 1114, just before Matilda had completed her twelfth year, the marriage was celebrated at Mainz, in the presence of a great assembly. All things had been going well with Henry. In Germany and in Italy he had overcome the princes and nobleswho had ventured to oppose him...The brilliant assembly of princes of the empire and foreign ambassadors which gathered in the city for this marriage was in celebration as well of the triumph of the emperor. On this great occasion, and in spite of her youth, Matilda bore herself as a queen, and impressed those who saw her as worthy of the position, highest in rank in the world, to which she had been called. To the end of her stay in Germany she retained the respect and she won the hearts of her German subjects."
p175: "In the spring of 1125 also occurred an event which again changed the direction of Henry's plans. On may 23, the emperor Henry V died, without children by his marriage to Matilda. The widowed Empress,as she was henceforth called by the English though she had never received the imperial crown, obeyed her father's summons to return to him in Normandy with great reluctance. She had been in Germany since her early childhood, and she was now twenty-three years of age. She could have few recollections of any other home. She loved the German people, and was beloved by them. We are told that some of them desired her to reign in her husband's stead, and came to ask her return of Henry. But the death of her husband had rendered her succession to the English throne a matter of less difficulty, and Henry had no mind to sacrifice his own plans for the benefit of a foreign people. In September, 1126, he returned with matilda to England, and in January following, at a great council in London, he demanded and obtained of the baronage, lay and spiritual, an oath to accept Matilda as sovereign if he should die without a male heir. The inference is natural from the account William of Malmesbury gives of this event, that in the argument before the council much was made of the fact that Matilda was a descendant of the old Saxon, as well as of the Norman, line. It is evident, also, that there was hesitation on the partof the barons, and that they yielded reluctantly to the king's demand.
"The feudalism of France and England clearly recognized the right of women to succeed to baronies, even of the first importance, though with some irregularities of practice and the feudal right of marriage which the English kings considered so important rested, in the case of female heirs, on this principle. The king's son, Robert of Gloucester, and his nephew Stephen, now Count of Boulogne, who disputed with one another the right to take this oath to Matilda's succession next after her uncle, David, king of Scots, had both been provided for by Henry in this way...The natural feeling in such cases is undoubtedly indicated by the form of the historian's statement referred to above, that Robert of Gloucester declined the suggestion that he should be king out of loyalty to `his sister's son.' It was the feeling that the female heir could pass the title on to her son, rather thanthat she could hold it herself.
"William of Malmesbury states, in his account of these events, that he had often heard Bishop Roger of Salisbury say that he considered himself released from this oath to Matilda because it had been taken on conditionthat she should not be married out of the kingdom except with the counsel of the barons...
"Matilda's return to her father, and Henry's evident intention to make her the heir of his dominions, of Normandy as well as of England, seem to have moved King Louis to some immediate action in opposition. The separation of the duchy from the kingdom, so important for the interests of the Capetian house, could not be hoped for unless this plan was defeated...
"...The situation demanded measures of direct defence, and Henry was led to take the decisive step, so eventful for all the future history of England, of marrying Matilda a second time. Immediately after Whitsuntide of 1127, Matilda was sent over to Normandy, attendedby Robert of Gloucester and Brian Fitz Count, and at Rouen was formally betrothed by the archbishop of that city to Geoffrey, son of Fulk of Anjou. The marriage did not take place till two years later..."
p180: "Geoffrey and Matilda weremarried at Le Mans, on June 9, 1129, by the Bishop of Avranches, in the presence of a brilliant assembly of nobles and prelates, and with the appearance of great popular rejoicing. After a stay there of three weeks, Henry returned to Normandy,and Matilda, with her husband and father-in-law, went to Angers. The jubilation with which the bridal party was there received was no doubt entirely genuine...But this happy outcome of Henry's policy, which promised to settle so many difficulties, was almost at the outset threatened with disaster against which even he could not provide. Matilda was not of gentle disposition. She never made it easy for her friends to live with her, and it is altogether probable that she took no painsto conceal her scorn of this marriage and her contempt for the Angevins, including very likey her youthful husband. At any rate, a few days after Henry's return to England, July 7, 1129, he was followed by the news that Geoffrey had repudiatedand cast off his wife, and that Matilda had returned to Rouen with few attendants. Henry did not, however, at once return to Normandy, and it was two full years before Matilda came back to England.
"The disagreement between Geoffrey and Matilda ran its course as a family quarrel. It might endanger the future of Henry's plans, but it caused him no present difficulty...Now followed some years of peace, in which the history of Normandy is as barren as the history of England had long been, until the marriage of Matilda raised up a new claimant to disturb the last months of her father's life..."
p188: "In the following [1131] summer [Henry] returned to England, and brought back with him Matilda, who had now been twofull years separated from her husband; but about this time Geoffrey thought better of his conduct, or determined to try the experiment of living with his wife again, and sent a request that Matilda be sent back to him. What answer should be given him was considered in a meeting of the great council at Northampton, September 8, almost as if her relationship with Geoffrey were a new proposition; and it was decided that she should go. A single chronicler records that Henry took advantage of this coming together of the barons at the meeting of the court to demand fealty to Matilda, both from those who had formerly sworn it and from those who had not. Such a fact hardly seems consistent with the same chronicler's record of the excuse of Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, for violating his oath; but if it occured, as this repetition of the fealty was after Matilda's marriage with Geoffrey and immediately after a decision of the baronage that she should return to him, it would make the bishop's argument a mere subterfuge or, at best, an exception applying to himself alone. Matilda immediately went over to Anjou, where she was received with great honour.
...On March 25, 1133, was born Matilda's eldest son, the future Henry II; and early in August the king of England crossed the channel for the last time, undoubtedly to see his grandson. On June 1, of the next year, his second grandson, Geoffrey, was born..."
p202: [1136] "In the presence of Innocent something like a formal trial occurred. The case was argued by champions of the two sides, on questions which it belonged to the Church to decide, or which at least the Church claimed the right to decide, the usurpation of an inheritance, and the violation of an oath...Stephen's advocates suddenly spring on their opponents a new and most disconcerting argument, one which would have had great weight in any Church court, and which attacked both their claims at once. Matilda could not be the rightful heir, and so the oath itself could not be binding, because she was of illegitimate birth, being the daughter of a nun...The sudden advancing of the doubt at this time shows, however, that it had lingered on the minds of some in the Church. It is not likely that the point would have been in the end dangerous to Matilda's cause, for it would not have been possible to produce evidence sufficient to warrant the Church in reversing the decision which Arch- bishop Anselm had carefully made at the time..."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol I, The Conquering Family, Thomas B Costain, Doubleday & Co, Garden City, 1949, p4:
"The situation looked hopeless until the King's last remaining legitimate child,the Empress Matilda, was left a widow by her aged husband and returned to England.
"Henry's interest in affairs of state revived in earnest with the arrival of his daughter. He proceeded with the vigor of his younger days to insure her succession to the throne, calling another parliament and demanding that her right be acknowledged by all. He had one precedent to quote in support of his claims. Seburge, the wife of Cenwalch, King of the West Saxons, had been chosen to succeed that monarch...The assembled nobility decided unanimously in favor of Matilda. The first to take the aoth was Stephen of Blois, son of Adele, the Conqueror's fourth daughter."
p5: "Matilda brought back three things from Germany: the richlyjeweled crown she had worn, the sword of Tristan, and the most imperious temper that ever plunged a nation into conflict..."
p7: "...The ex-Empress was refusing, emphatically and passionately, to concur in the marriage with Geoffrey of Anjou on which Henry had decided, the young man who had fallen into the habit of wearing the `planta genesta' in his hat. She had many good reasons for objecting to this match. She had been an empress and for eleven years had outranked all the queens of Europe. Must she now marry a mere count, a descendant, moreover, of some wild creature of the woods call Tortulf...He was a youth of fifteen years...[she] and accomplished woman of twenty-five.
"...The Empress seems to have continued, however, on the friendliest of terms with Adelicia, although it would have been hard to find two natures more diverse. The beautiful and gentle Queen entertained a real affection for her dark and willful stepdaughter, who was practically herown age..."
p8: "...Somehow the daughter was persuaded to consent...At any rate, give in she did, emerging from her retirement with a smoldering air of resignation. Henry went to Normandy hemself and saw to it that the nuptials were solemnized by the Archbishop of Rouen on August 26 in the year 1127."
p9: "Stephen was at the bedside of Henry, and he heard the dying King give instructions to Robert of Gloucester, who stood on the other side of the couch, for his burial. Heheard also the low tones in which Henry asserted that he bequeathed all his dominions to his daughter..."
p14: "...[Stephen] was taken to Gloucester, where the Empress was in residence...The records make no mention of a meeting between thetwo rivals, but it is certain that that Matilda had Stephen summoned to her presence... There may have been an attempt at escape. Whatever the cause, he was heavily loaded with chains and taken to Bristol.
"In the meantime the Empress made a triumphal entry into Winchester... She followed the usual procedure of scooping in whatever was there in the way of royal treasure. A court of nobles and bishops was invoked and a quick decision reached. Robert of Winchester announced it. `Having first, as is fit, invoked the aid of Almighty God, we elect as Lady of England and Normandy the daughter of the glorious, the rich, the good, the peaceful King Henry; and to her we promise fealty and support.'"
p16: "...The victorious Empress, fresh from her election as Lady of England, came to London; for not until London acquiesced could the crown and ermine be properly bestowed...When a deputation appeared before her at Westminster, it was at once clear, however, thatthe lady who received them with haughty reserve and frown was no true daughter of their gentle Queen Mold. Norman to her fingertips, to the inmost recesses of heart and mind, the Empress was not ready to reason with them...
"`You have given all to my enemy!' she cried. `You have made him strong against me. You have conspired for my ruin, and yet you expect me to spare you!'
"The Londoners now understood the situation they faced, but they showed no signs of giving in. The demanded instead an assurance that she would rule by the laws of Edward the Confessor and not by the exacting methods of her father, who had been oppressive as well as just.
"Robert of Gloucester stood at his sister's shoulder and it is certain that he whispered to her to be calm, to weigh her words, to dissemble if she could not agree. If she heard him, she ignored his wise counsel. Instead she raged at the deputation...finally driving them from her presence with threats of whatshe meant to do.
"When the Londoners left it was plain to Robert of Gloucester and the rest of the group about the Lady of England that a serious mistake had been made. They had been disturbed by the unbending attitude of the merchants, the independence shown as they withdrew in a silent body.
"...The Empress was entering the White-Hall where supper was to be served...when the bells of London began to ring...In a trice the streets were filled with armed men shouting defiance and converging by preconceived plan on the precincts of Westminster...Without waiting to change her clothes, the Lady of England mounted and rode at top speed from the city with her brother and a party of her closest adherents. They did not realize it then, but as soon as those bells started to toll she had ceased to be Lady of England...It is said that after each stop several faces were missed from the ranks. Doubts had entered the minds of the barons..."
p20: [Treaty of Wallingford] "...[According to Matthew Paris] The Empress was at Wallingford and the settlement was due to her efforts. `The Empress,' he writes, `who would rather have been Stephen's paramour than his foe, they say, caused King Stephen to be called aside, and coming boldly up to him, said, "What mischievous and unnatural thing go ye about to do? Is it meet the father should destroy the son, or the son kill the sire? etc., etc."'
"This, of course, has no roots in truth. The Empresswas not in England when these events occurred, and had she been there, her last thought would have been to counsel peace. Not that resolute lady whose whole life had been dedicated to the winning of the crown! There are certain pieces of evidence on this point, however, which make the possibility of Henry being the son of Stephen a little more than mere survise. The Empress was in England the year before the birth of the prince and swore at first furiously and definitely that she would not go back to Geoffrey, then changed her mind hurriedly. In some sources it is said that Henry called Stephen his father during the cross-water negotiations, a statement which seems to carry the hallmark of invention on the face of it..."

The Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes, Elizabeth Longford, 1991, Oxford Univ Press pxix: "Normans and Plantagenets Genealogy: Matilda, mar (1) Emperor Henry V, mar (2) Geoffrey Plantagenet, died 1167."

A History of the English Speaking People Winston S Churchill Vol I The Birth of Britain Dodd Mead & Co p187:
"The Anglo-Norman State was now powerful. Henry was lord of England, Normandy, and Maine. In 1109 his only legitimate daughter, Maud, was betrothed to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany..."
p188: "There were two claimants, each of whom had a fair share of right. The King had a daughter, Matilda, or Maud as the English called her, but although there was no Salic Law in the Norman code this clanking, jangling aristocracy, mailed and spurred, did not take kindly to the idea of a woman's rule..."
p190: "King Henry in the grey close of his life set himself to fill the void with his daughter Maud as female king. He spent his remaining years intrying to establish a kind of `pragmatic sanction' for a family succession which would spare his widespread domains from civil war. At the age of eight Maud had been betrothed to the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1125, five years after the `White Ship' sank, he died, and at twenty-two she was a widow and an Empress. We have many records of this remarkable princess, of whom it was said `she had the nature of a man in the frame of a woman.' Fierce, proud, hard, cynical, living for politics above all other passions, however turbulent, she was fitted to bear her part in any war and be the mother of one of the greatest English kings.
"Upon this daughter, after mature consideration, Henry founded all his hopes. On two separate occasions he called his murmuring barons together and solemnly swore them to stand by Maud. Subsequently, in order to enhance her unifying authority, and to protect Normandy from the claims of Anjou after his death, he married her to the Count ofAnjou, thus linking the interests of the most powerful state in Northern France with the family and natural succession in England. The English mood has never in later ages barred queens, and perhaps queens have served them best. But here at this time was a deep division, and a quarrel in which all parties and all interests could take sides. The whole interest of the baronage...was to limit the power of the Crown and regain control of their own districts..."
p192: "In 1139 Maud, freed from entanglements that had kept her in France, entered the kingdom to claim her rights. As Stephen had done, she found her chief support in the Church. The men who had governed England under Henry II, antagonised by Stephen's weakness towards the barons, joined his enemies. In 1141 a more or less general rebellion broke out against his rule, and he himself was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lincoln. The Bishop of Winchester, Stephen's own brother and hitherto his main supporter now went over to Maud's side. For nearly a year Maud, uncrowned, was in control of England. The Londoners after some trial liked her even less than Stephen. Rising in fury, they drove her out of the capital. She fought on indomitably. But the strain upon the system had been too great. The Island dissolved into confused civil war. During the six years that followed there was neither law nor peace in large parts of the country."
p195: "...The Empress Maud gave up her slender hopes of success in the following year [1148] and joined her son in the duchy. Nineteen years of life remained before her, but she never set foot in England again. Works of piety, natural to the times, filled many of her days. But during the years that followed Henry's triumph she played an important political part as regent in Normandy and in his hereditary Angevin dominions. During her interventions in England in quest of the crown the charge of arrogance was often levelled against her; butin her older age she proved a sagacious counsellor to her son."

The Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol IV, The Age of Faith, Bk V, The Climax of Christianity, Ch XXV, The Recovery of Europe, Sec VIII, England, p669: "In his last days Henry made the barons and bishops swear fealty to his daughter Matilda and her young son, the future Henry II. But on the King's death Stephen of Blois, grandson of the Conqueror, seized the throne, and England suffered fourteen years of death andtaxes in a civil war marked by the most horrible cruelties..."

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1981, Micropaedia, Vol VI, p690, Matilda: "also called Empress Maud, Born 1102 London, Died 10 Sep 1167 Rouen France, claimant to the English throne whowaged a long and ultimately unsuccessful war against King Stephen of England (ruled 1135-1154). Her son Henry of Anjou succeeded Stephen as King Henry II. The only daughter of King Henry I of England (ruled 1100-1135), Matilda was married to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V in 1114. He died in 1125, and three years later she was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou. Although Henry I had designated Matilda as he heir, upon his death (Dec 1135) a sudden coup d'etat brought Stephen tothe English throne. Matilda invaded England in Sep 1139 to claim her inheritance, and in Feb 1141 her army captured Stephen. Elected `Lady of the English' by a clerical council in April, she entered London in June, but her arrogance and tactless demands for money provoked the citizens to expel her before she could be crowned. By the time she released Stephen in Nov, her cause was doomed. In Dec 1142 Matilda made a dramatic escape from besieged Oxford Castle. Finally, in 1148, she retired to Normandy, one of her husband's possessions. She exercised considerable influence over King Henry II."
Vol II, p397, David I: "...David recognized his niece, the Holy Roman empress Matilda (died 1167), as heir to Henry I in England, and from 1136 he fought for her against King Stephen (crowned as Henry's successor in Dec 1135)...While fighting for Matilda again, he was defeated in the Battle of the Standard...In 1141 David reentered the war on Matilda's behalf, and in 1149 he knighted her son Henry Plantagenet (afterward King Henry II of England) who acknowledged David's right to Northumberland..."

Macropaedia, Vol VIII, p763, Henry I of England:
"...Henry married his daughter Matilda (also called Maud) to Emperor Henry V of Germany and groomed his only legitimate son, William, as his successor...
"The settlement was shattered in November 1120, when Henry's son perished in a shipwrick of the `White Ship', destroying Henry's succession plans.After Queen Matilda's death in 1118, he married Adelaide of Louvain in 1121, but this union proved childless. On Emperor Henry V's death in 1125, Henry summoned the empress Matilda back to England and made his barons do homage to her as his heir. In 1128 Matilda married Geoffrey Plantagenet, heir to the county of Anjou, and in 1133 she bore him her first son, the future King Henry II. On December 1, 1135, Henry I died at Lyons-la-Foret in eastern Normandy, whereupon his favorite nephew, Stephen of Blois, disregarding Matilda's right of succession, seized the English throne. Matilda's subsequent invasion of England unleashed a bitter civil war that ended with King Stephen's death and Henry II's unopposed accession in 1154."

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Matilda (Maud the Empress) of England (1102-1167), was left the sole legitimate child of Henry I. by the loss of his son in the White Ship (1120). She married (1) Emperor Henry V, Emperor of Rome, and was crowned at Mainz (1114), but was widowed in 1125 and married (2) Geoffrey IV. le Bel, Plantaganet, 10th Count of Anjou and Maine, Duke of Normandy, having won the Duchy from Stephen, son of Fulk V. the Younger, 9th Count of Anjou, King of Jerusalem, and his wife, Ermengarde. Her first husband was thirty years older, her second husband, ten years younger than herself. Henry made the barons recognize the Empress as his heir (1126, 1131, and 1133), but when he died Stephen ignored her claim to rule England by hereditary right. The Normans preferred his chivalrous geniality to her haughtiness and they disliked the House of Anjou as much as they did the House of Blois, into which Stephen's mother, the Conqueror's daughter Adela, had married. The Empress appealed to the Pope in vain (1136) and Archbishop Thurstan of York defeated her uncle and champion, David I., King of Scotland (1084-1153) at the Battle of the Standard (1138); but at last she landed in England. Geoffrey was the original Plantaganet, so named by his companions for the broom corn he wore on his person. It is through Geoffrey that the Plantaganet line from France was brought into the British royalty. He died in 1151. After Geoffrey's death Matilda lived in Normandy, charitable and respected. Matilda died in 1167. Geoffrey was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry. ("The Genealogy of Homer Beers James", V1, JANDA Consultants, © 1993 Homer James)

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ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 Also Maud, 9FM0-NL Born Bef 5 Aug 1102 Mar 22 May 1127 Le Mans Sarthe France, TCF BornAbt 1100-1103 Mar 26 Aug 1127 Normandy.

   Marriage Information:

Matilda married Emperor Henry GERMANY, V, son of Emperor Henry GERMANY, IV and Countess Bertha Maurine SAVOY, on 7 Jan 1114 in Mainz, Rheinhessen, Hesse-Darmstadt, Prussia, Germany. (Emperor Henry GERMANY, V was born on 8 Nov 1086 in Utrecht, , Netherlands, died on 23 May 1125 in Utrecht, , Netherlands and was buried in Cathedral, Speyer, Germany.)

   Marriage Information:

Matilda also married Count Geoffrey Plantagenet ANJOU, son of Count Fulk V ANJOU and Countess Ermentrude Du Maine ANJOU, on 22 May 1127 in Le Mans, Sarthe, Maine, France. (Count Geoffrey Plantagenet ANJOU was born on 24 Aug 1113 in , Anjou, France and died on 7 Sep 1151 in Chateau, Eure-Et-Loire, France.)