On 2/05/2016 9:34 AM, Peter Stewart via wrote: > > On 2/05/2016 9:15 AM, Peter Stewart via wrote: >> On 2/05/2016 7:02 AM, Peter G. M. Dale via wrote: >>> Greetings Peter, Patricia, et al, >>> >>> Thank you for your comments and clarifications. From my initial post is it fair to say that I can take the following positions? >>> >>> [1] There is no conclusive evidence that Margaret was the daughter of Eudo >>> >>> [Position taken - Eudo can be inferred as Margaret's father from the 2nd Charter of the Empress (this is based on the assumption that Geoffrey II de Mandeville and William fitz Otuel are brothers via their mother Margaret dau. of Eudo). Is there any conclusive evidence that Margaret is the dau. of Eudo, i.e. charter evidence?] >> It is a particularly strong - I would say conclusive - inference from >> Matilda's charter that Geoffrey's mother was the daughter and heiress of >> Eudo - note that the empress stated "Et haec reddo ei ut rectum suum ut >> habeat et teneat haereditabiliter" regarding the Norman estates and >> dapiferate, and "quia hoc est rectum suum" regarding the English >> inheritance. >> > I should have added that Round disagreed with this - he noted "The > clause certainly favours the belief that a relationship existed, but it > was probably collateral, instead of lineal." > > The only source we have (albeit less than fully reliable) makes the > relationship direct through Eudo's daughter Margaret. Round's > probability contradicting this was based on the estates of Eudo > escheating to the Crown at his death - but why this would happen despite > a collateral rather than direct heir having rights to the inheritance he > did not discuss. Henry I was not the most scrupulous legalist of the > age. Evidently Geoffrey's mother was already dead, or at least not able > to carry this great power to her second husband Otuel. > It was not as simple as my last sentence above. The matter was discussed at length by Warren Hollister in 'The misfortunes of the Mandevilles', *History* 58 (1973), reprinted in his collected essays *Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World* (1986) - regarding the descent of Geoffrey from Eudo through Margaret, Hollister concluded (in note 31) "The passage [in Tintern abbey's Genealogia fundatoris: 'Rohesia ... renupta Eudoni, dapifero ... Margareta filia eorum nupta fuit Willielmo de Mandevill, et fuit mater Gaufridi comitis Essexiae et jure matris, Normanniae dapifer'] was known to Round but rejected by him (and by the editors of *Complete Peerage*, V, 114) on the grounds that Eudo's lands did not pass directly to Geoffrey de Mandeville but were in Henry I's hands in 1130. This can hardly stand as an objection when one recalls that three former Mandeville manors were also in royal hands, and that Geoffrey's rights were in conflict with those of [his maternal half-brother] William fitz Othuer." Eudo died in Normandy in February 1120, allegedly after being blind for the past 15 years, and Otuel drowned in the White Ship disaster on 25 November of the same year. The history of Mandeville holdings as well as those of Eudo is too complicated to detail here, but it is worth reading Hollister's article as a corrective to Round and CP over this. Peter Stewart