Anyone reading the article by Andrew MacEwan that was cited in the thread 'Re: Christine, natural daughter of King William the Lion of Scotland ?' will find this on p. 19: 'Matilda’s first marriage to Henry V, which did not require a dispensation, was in marked contrast to her second, to Geoffrey le Bel, count of Anjou, which did, as Chibnall shows in her biography of the Empress: “Whatever her personal wishes she finally acquiesced in her duty. In May 1127 she was escorted to Rouen by her brother Robert of Gloucester and Brian fitz Count for formal betrothal to Geoffrey of Anjou. Bishop Roger of Salisbury later complained that only they and John, bishop of Lisieux, were consulted about the marriage.” ... Only later in the book does Chibnall refer to the dispensation, “She had married into the house of Anjou, but she had also married a kinsman so close that papal dispensation had been necessary for the marriage to be valid.” [para] Neither Hollister in his *Henry I* nor Warren in his *Henry II* mentioned the dispensation, and Chibnall neglected to cite her source. Does any reader know its terms?' I'm not sure what MacEwan meant by 'Chibnall shows', since clearly he did not have proof from her work, but in any event there was no papal dispensation. Nothing on the question can be found in the extant documents of Honorius II, pope from 1124 to 1130, and we have two sources providing good evidence that he was not involved in the matter - first William of Malmesbury reporting he had himself heard from Roger, bishop of Salisbury, that Henry I consulted only the three men named above about the marriage (William expressed reservations about Roger's credibility on this point, and could obviously have contradicted him outright if there had been a papal dispensation), and secondly the anonymous 'Historia Gaufredi', written in the 1170s, stating that members of the Anglo-Norman hierarchy had examined the marriage and consented to it. Peter Stewart