2»<» S. V. 118., April 3. '68.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



269 



LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 3. 1858. 



• mateg. 



WILLIAM BE WAKENNE, FIRST EABL OP SURREY, 

 AND GUNDRADA, DAUGHTER OF WILLIAM THE 

 CONQUEROR. 



An error which occurs in Lappenberg's His- 

 tory of England under the Norman Kings, trans- 

 lated by Thorpe, appears to be of sufficient 

 magnitude to deserve a Note. At p. 291. of 

 Lappenberg's work we are informed that Henry I. 

 " deprived his own brother-in-law, William de 

 Warenne, of the earldom of Surrey," for his ad- 

 herence to Kobert Duke of Normandy ; and again, 

 in the next page, when Robert had been insidi- 

 ously induced to visit England : — 



" Assvirancea of royal favour were readily given him by 

 his brother, and he received not onlj' a safe conduct for 

 his return home, but also the restoration of the Earldom 

 of Surrey to their common brother-in-law." 



Now the William de Warenne who married 

 Gundrada, one of the daughters of the Conqueror, 

 and who was thus the common brother-in-law of 

 Kobert and Henry, died eleven years before the 

 latter ascended the throne of England : and what- 

 ever were his other faults, and they were not a 

 few, we nowhere read that he joined the ranks of 

 rebellion against his lawful prince ; and certainly 

 not against Henry I. 



It was William de Warenne, second Earl of 

 Surrey, son of the first earl, who was deprived of 

 his earldom for his repeated acts of rebellion 

 against King Henry I., and again restored by 

 that monarch. This earl is said by Wace, in the 

 Roman de Rou, to have bestowed on the king the 

 nickname of " Pied de Cerf," from his passion 

 for hunting, which had previously so largely mani- 

 fested itself in his father and brother : — 



" Li quens Willame le gabout, 

 Pie de cers par gab I'apelout." 



Earl William the Second appears never to have 

 been well disposed towards King Henry, and for 

 this, and perhaps other witticisms (for as Wace says 

 he was a joker), he was much disliked by the king. 



The mother of this earl was Gundrada, of whose 

 parentage doubts have been entertained from the 

 earliest periods. Ordericus Vitalis, who wrote in 

 the early part of the twelfth century, asserts that 

 she was the sister of Gherbod the Fleming ; but 

 this statement is corrected by Sir Henry Ellis in 

 his General Introduction to Domesday Booh (vol. 

 i. p. 506.). 



In a MS. in the British Museum, quoted in the 

 Record of the House of Gournay, she is called a 

 base daughter of the Conqueror : — 



" William E. of Warren came into England with Wil- 

 liam the Conqueror ; and by William Rufus was created 

 E. of Surrey ; he married Gundreda, a 6ase daxighter of 

 William the Conqueror." 



Gundrada is not mentioned by that name by 

 any of the Chroniclers, with the exception of 

 Ordericus Vitalis, but she is expressly called 

 the daughter of Queen Matilda in William de 

 Warenne's second charter of foundation, granted 

 to Lewes priory, in the reign of William II. In 

 this Charter are these words : — 



" Donavi pro salute anima; meae et anim® Gundred» 

 uxoris meae et anima domini mei Wilielmi regis, qui me 



in Anglicam terram adduxit, &c et pro salute 



dominse meae Matildis reginae, matris uxoris mea" &c. 



Gundrada is also acknowledged by the Con- 

 queror himself as his daughter, in a charter 

 produced by Sir Henry Ellis, the original of 

 which is preserved in the Cott. MS. Vesp. F. iii. 

 fol. 1. In this charter King William gives to the 

 monks of St. Pancras (at Lewes) the manor of 

 Walton in Norfolk, " pro anima domini et ante- 

 cessoris mei regis Edwardi .... et pro anima 

 Gulielmi de Warenna, et uxoris sua3 Gundredae, 

 fHioE mem, et heredibus suis." 



It must, however, be admitted that upon refer- 

 ence to the original, the words filioR mem, with 

 many others, appear defaced ; but a transcript of 

 the charter, given in the Monasticon, contains 

 them, and there can be no doubt they were 

 originally there. 



And again, in the Ledger-Book of Lewes are 

 these words : — 



" Iste " (William de Warenne) " primo non vocabatur 

 nisi solummodo Willielmus de Warren, postea vero pro- 

 cessu temporis, a Willielmo Rege et Conquestore Angliae, 

 cujus filiam desponsavit, plurimum honoratus est," &c. 

 (Watson's House of Warren, vol. i. p. 36.) 



After all this it must appear strange that no 

 one of the early chroniclers, not even William of 

 Malmesbury, who wrote in the former part of 

 the twelfth century, and who enumerates the 

 daughters of King William, makes mention of 

 Gundrada. But if we do not find the name of 

 this daughter of the Conqueror in any historian, 

 she occurs, though under a different appellation, 

 in a record whose veracity is indisputable. 



In the first volume of the Domesday Book, fol. 

 49. is this entry : — 



" Hanteseire. In Basingestoc Hd. Goisfridus fiHa3 regis 

 camerarius tenet de Rege, Heclie .... Goisfridus vero 

 tMiet eam de rege, pro servitio quod fecit Mathildi ejus 

 Jif'uB." 



Now here we observe that there is no more 

 trace in the chroniclers of William's having a 

 daughter named Matilda, than that he had one 

 named Gundrada ; but Mr. ^laauw (Archmologia, 

 vol. xxxii. p. 119.) suggests, that the Gundrada 

 of the charters and the Matilda of Domesday- 

 Book may be the Dano-Norman and Flemish 

 names of the same individual ; " an identity," says 

 Thorpe in a note in Lappenberg's England under 

 the Norman Kings (p. 215. n. 1.), 

 " of which I hardly entertain a doubt, the components of 

 either name being synonymous with those of the other. 



