Eudo Dapifer

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Eudo Dapifer (* in the 11th century; † 1120 ), also called Eudo von Ryes or Eudo FitzHubert , was the Seneschal ("Dapifer") of the English kings William the Conqueror , Wilhelm Rufus and Heinrich Beauclerk .

Life

He was the youngest son of Hubert de Ryes, a nobleman from Bessin . It was Eudo and his brothers Robert (later Bishop of Sées ) and Adam who escorted the young Duke Wilhelm safely to Falaise in 1046 after an assassination attempt , which earned Eudo the favor of the Duke. He stayed near Wilhelm even after the Norman conquest of England and after the death of William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford , in 1071 his successor as Seneschal of the current king. He also held this office under Wilhelm's two successors until his death in 1120. Eudo was thus an important official in the first decades of Anglo-Norman rule in England, acting for decades as an administrator, judge and advisor, but also as a general. He supported William II in the siege of Robert de Montbray in Newcastle (1095), witnessed the treaty with the Count of Flanders (1101) and accompanied Henry I on his campaign against Robert of Bellême, 3rd Earl of Shrewsbury (1101) .

He had received vast estates from his king in a dozen different counties, notably Cambridgeshire , Bedfordshire , Essex , Hertfordshire and Norfolk , which were collectively known as the Honor Eudo Dapifers and which brought him an annual income of £ 500.

Eudo's wife was Rohaise († 1121), a daughter of Richard de Bienfaite from the Clare branch of the Rollonids family, the family of the Dukes of Normandy. From this marriage he had a daughter, Margaret, who was married to William de Mandeville . Despite the close ties with the Mandeville family , he received 1103 other very lucrative manors that had been taken from William de Mandeville. Eudo died without a male heir, which is why his honor reverted to the crown, but it was passed on in 1140/41 by both King Stephen and his opponent Empress Mathilde to his grandson Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex .

Eudo was the founder of the Abbey of Saint John in Colchester , whose chronicle ( Chronicle of St. John's Abbey, Colchester ) contains numerous legends about the Ryes family.

literature

  • John Horace Round: The Legend of "Eudo Dapifer". In: The English Historical Review. Vol. 37, No. 145, 1922, ISSN  0013-8266 , pp. 1-34.
  • John Oswald Prestwich: The Military Household of the Norman Kings. In: The English Historical Review. Vol. 96, No. 378, January 1981, pp. 1-35.
  • François Neveux : La Normandie des ducs aux rois. Xe - XIIe siècle. Éditions Ouest-France, Rennes 1998, ISBN 2-7373-1113-6 .
  • Nicholas Vincent: Warin and Henry FitzGerald, the King's Chamberlains: the Origins of the FitzGeralds Revisited. In: Christopher Harper-Bill (Ed.): Proceedings of the Battle Conference in Dublin, 1998 (= Anglo-Norman Studies 21). Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge et al. 1999, ISBN 0-85115-745-9 , pp. 233-260, here p. 243.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Prestwich
  2. ↑ a b c d e cf. Vincent
  3. ↑ cf. JH Round
personal data
SURNAME Eudo Dapifer
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eudo of Ryes; Eudo FitzHubert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Seneschal ("Dapifer") of the English kings William the Conqueror, Wilhelm Rufus and Heinrich Beauclerk
DATE OF BIRTH before 1046
DATE OF DEATH 1120