L'Aigle family
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The Laigle family was a Norman family that derived from the town of L'Aigle, on the southeastern borders of the Duchy of Normandy. They first appear during the rule of Duke Richard II of Normandy, in the early 11th century, and they would hold L'Aigle for the Norman Dukes and Kings of England until the first half of the 13th century, when with the fall of Normandy to the French crown the last of the line was forced to abandon the ancestral lands, dying in England a few years later without surviving heirs. Their position on the borderlands, and near the headwaters of three rivers, the Risle, Iton and Avre, gave their small holding a special importance. Having been neighbors and benefactors of the Abbey of Saint-Evroul, the family receive favorable coverage in the 12th century chronicle of Orderic Vitalis.
The earliest known member of the family was Fulbert de Beina, who built a castle 'in the time of Duke Richard', hence before that duke's death in 1023.[1] The location of his origin, as represented by the toponymic Beina, remains unidentified and it is not possible to identify him among the many men named Fulbert appearing at the ducal court.
Fulbert's son, Engenulf, lord of Laigle, was the only prominent Norman noble to lose his life at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.[2] His sister Hiltrude married another prominent local baron, William fitz Giroie, while Engenulf's son and successor, Richer, married Judith, daughter of Richard le Goz, Viscount of Avranches.[1]
Like his father, Richer, lord of L'Aigle died fighting for William the Conqueror, in his case at the 1085-86 Siege of Saint-Suzanne, where his brother Gilbert also fought. As 'Gilbert de Aquila', this famous Norman knight would feature in Rudyard Kipling's tale, "Old Men at Pevensey", part of his Puck of Pook's Hill. A decade after the siege, Gilbert would be ambushed and killed by the vassals of Geoffrey II, Count of Perche, in what may have been a kidnap and ransom scheme gone awry. To prevent a blood feud, Count Geoffrey offered his daughter Juliana in marriage to the slain knight's nephew, Gilbert, lord of L'Aigle, the son of Richer.[3]
Gilbert, lord of L'Aigle, became the agent of Henry I of England in Normandy after the king succeeded in wresting it from his brother in 1106.[4] His loyalty to the king was also rewarded by the grant of lands in England, in the Rape of Pevensey. He died in the mid-1110s.
Richer, lord of L'Aigle, would succeed his father in their lands in Normandy, but King Henry had other plans for the family's English lands, which he intended to give to Richer's brothers, Engenulf and Gilbert. Richer, in turn threatened to turn L'Aigle over to King Louis VI of France if the English king would not give him his father's English possessions. Henry still refused, but was brought around by the intervention of Richer's uncle, Count Rotrou of Perche, but not before Louis had forced Richer to surrender L'Aigle, apparently in 1118, and it was only a year later that Henry was able to take it back. Again through Rotrou's influence with the king, it was restored to Richer.[5] The dispossessed brothers, Engenulf and Gilbert, would die in 1120 in the wreck of the White Ship along with Rotrou's son and wife, and the Count would leave his County of Perche in the hands of his sister Juliana, Richer's mother, and turn his attention to fighting Muslims in Aragon.[6] There in 1130 he would arrange the marriage of Richer's sister, Margaret, to a royal scion, García Ramírez, lord of Monzón, who was soon to become King of Navarre. With the conflict of King Stephen's reign, Richer, again with the support of Rotrou, could leverage his border castle to acquire royal concessions. Fearing that they might go over to the side of his rival Matilda and her husband the Count of Anjou, Stephen in 1137 gave them each a ducal castle, in Richer's case, Bonsmoulins.[7] Richer was in England in 1139 recruiting troops for Stephen, and was again headed for England in 1140 when he was set upon and taken prisoner by Robert, Earl of In 1140, while in England recruiting troops for Stephen, he was taken prisoner by another of Stephen's men, Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, as part of a private feud over Norman land and in spite of Rotrou's intercession on his behalf, a weakened King Stephen did not have the power to force his release.[8]
References
- ^ a b Ordericus Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy, trans. Thomas Forester, Vol. I (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), p. 393
- ^ Kathleen Thompson, "The Lords of Laigle: Ambition and Insecurity on the borders of Normandy" in Anglo-Norman Studies; XVIII; ed. Christopher Harper-Bill, Woodbridge, 1996, 177-80
- ^ Thompson, p. 50
- ^ Thompson, p. 55
- ^ Thompson, pp. 65-6
- ^ Thompson, p. 71
- ^ Thompson, p. 79
- ^ Thompson, p. 82
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