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 Bef 1059 - 1141 (~ 82 years)
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| Name |
Lucia Mercia |
| Birth |
Bef 1059 |
Lincolnshire, England  [1] |
| Gender |
Female |
| Death |
1141 |
England [1] |
| Person ID |
I51783 |
The Hennessee Family |
| Last Modified |
27 Aug 2018 |
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| Notes |
- Biography
Her origins have been the subject of discussion, but the modern position has been put forward strongly by Katherine S.B. Keats-Rohan, that she is daughter to the Anglo-Saxon sheriff Thorold of Lincolnshire, and a daughter of the Anglo-Norman Malet family, who inter-married with the English aristocracy before 1066.
Keats-Rohan put the case most directly in an online article for Prosopon.[1]
Keats-Rohan also discussed the family in Domesday Descendants, page 35, giving a pedigree on page 42. One of her sources is R.E.G. Kirk, ‘The Countess Lucy: Singular or Plural?’, Genealogist, n.s. 5, 60-75, 131-44, 153-73.[2]
Her titles therefore possibly came to her from her own parents according to Keats-Rohan, and not from her husbands. Keats-Rohan writes in the Prosopon Newsletter, 2 (May 1995):
Lucy was William Malet’s thrice-married granddaughter, the daughter of Robert Malet’s sister and Turold the Sheriff of Lincoln (dead by 1079). The suggestion was first made by R. Kirk in 1888. As N. Sumner has more recently observed:
‘This account has the merit of explaining why the lordship of Spalding and other places in Lincolnshire were held after Ivo’s death not by Beatrice, his direct heir and the daughter of his marriage to Lucy, but by the later husbands of Lucy, Roger fitz Gerold and Ranulph Meschines.’
[...]
...there to the abbey of St Nicholas, Angers, before 1079. Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois subsequently founded, or perhaps re-founded, a priory at Spalding subject to St. Nicholas, Angers. A revealing phrase from the Register of Spalding Priory reads: ‘mortuo quia dicto Thoraldo relicta sibi herede Lucia predicta’ [at his death Turold left an heir, the aforesaid Lucy]. The word heres, ‘heir’, was often used of the child who was to inherit his/her father’s property. Lucy later confirmed the gifts of all three of her husbands: ‘pro redempcione anime patris mei et matris mee et dominorum meorum et parentum meorum’ [for the souls of my father and mother, my husbands and my (other) relatives]. The association of the priory with such a small group of people and the description of Lucy as heres of Turold strongly hint at Lucy’s parentage. But we can go further still.
In their initial benefaction Ivo and Lucy referred to ‘antecessorum suorum Turoldi scilicet uxorisque eius regine’ [our ‘ancestors’ Turold and his wife]. The reference to Turold’s wife indicates that some part of his landholding had come to him through his wife, something also indicated by the occurrence of William Malet amongst those who had held the Domesday lands of Lucy’s first husband Ivo Taillebois before him.
Family
m.1 Ivo de Taillebois. Issue:
Another subject of long debate which Keats-Rohan is less conclusive about is whether she was the mother of Ivo Taillebois' one known daughter Beatrix (Beatrice). According to Keats-Rohan the evidence does not rule it out, but in the pedigree she proposes she leaves room for an unknown earlier wife for Ivo.
m. 2 Roger fitz Gerold
m.3 Ranulph "de Briquessart" le Meschin Earl of Chester. Issue:
Adeliza/Alicia des Meschines of Chester Wife of Richard FitzGilbert de Clare and Robert de Condet (Cundy), Lord of Thorngate
Agnes des Meschines of Chester m. Robert de Grandmesnil (Grentemesnil)
William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln
Ranulf "de Gernon" des Meschines, Earl of Chester
Sources
Kirk, R.E.G. (1889). The Countess Lucy : singular or plural? Hathitrust[3]
? "Antecessor Noster: The Parentage of Countess Lucy Made Plain" in PROSOPON: NEWSLETTER OF THE UNIT FOR PROSOPOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, no. 2 (May 1995) © Linacre College, Oxford;
? This is also online and contains summaries of some of the key primary documents. Hathitrust Internet Archive
? Kirk’s work was based upon conjecture, and contained a number of errors.
Also see:
FMG Medieval Lands project
Harleian Society. The Visitation of Cheshire in the Year 1580, The Publicatons of The Harleian Society (London: The Society, 1882) Vol. 18, Page 4: "The Genealogy of the Earles of Chester. [Harl. 1424, fo. 3. Harl. 1505, fo. 2.]"
end of bio [1]
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