Ranulf de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester

Part of the seal of Ranulf de Blondeville as Earl of Chester and Lincoln

Ranulf de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester, 1st Earl of Lincoln (* uncertain: 1172 Oswestry (Album Monasterium, Blonde Ville); † October 28, 1232 Wallingford , Berkshire ) was the 4th Earl of Chester in his family and the 6th Earl of Chester in general, 1st Earl of Lincoln and Vice-Count of Avranches . He was one of the last Norman barons who - while being granted lucrative privileges - showed unreserved loyalty to the Plantagenet house . He has been described as "almost the last relic of the great feudal aristocracy of the conquest ".

Richard the Lionheart

Ranulf was born in 1172 to Hugh de Kevelioc, 3rd Earl of Chester and Bertrada de Montfort. At the age of nine he followed his father as Earl, and it was not until he was of legal age, when he was knighted on January 1, 1187 in Caen , that he took control of his property in England and Normandy. Five weeks later, on February 3, 1187, he was married to Konstanze von der Bretagne , the widow of Duke Gottfried von Bretagne († 1186), a son of King Heinrich II. Konstanze was the mother of Duke Arthur I (* 1187 ) and his regent, who did not trust Heinrich, so he wanted to see a loyal follower at her side. Ranulf was now to rule the Duchy of Brittany and the County of Richmond in England in the name of his wife and his stepson, and he called himself Duke and Earl, but his establishment aroused resistance, especially from the Breton nobility, which Konstanze also opposed to joined the Plantagenets.

In the following years she managed to break away from the Plantagenets and thus came into enmity with her former brother-in-law Richard the Lionheart , who had designated her son Arthur as his heir in 1196. In return, Constanze approached the French King Philip II , who in turn was an enemy of Richard. In April 1196 the English king marched into Brittany with a mercenary army and demanded guardianship for his nephew, but Konstanze holed up with her son in the fortress of Brest . Near Carhaix their Seneschal Alain de Dinan was able to win a victory over Richard, who then had to withdraw from Brittany. Konstanze then brought her children to safety at the court of Philip II in Paris. The marriage of Konstanze with Ranulf von Chester was annulled in 1199, instead of him she married the Vice Count Guido von Thouars in the same year .

Johann Ohneland

In 1200 Ranulf married Clemence de Fougères, daughter of Guillaume de Fougères, sister of Geoffroi de ( House Fougères ) and widow of Alain de Dinan . He spent most of the following years in France and only finally returned to England after the French had conquered Normandy in 1204 . The following winter, parts of his property were temporarily confiscated because King John Ohneland suspected him of allying himself with the rebellious Welsh (as Earl of Chester, securing the border with Wales was one of his central tasks). However, Ranulf was able to overcome the king's concerns, fought in his Welsh campaigns from 1209 and accompanied the king on his campaign to Poitou in 1214 . In 1215 he was one of the barons who stood by the king's side in the aristocratic revolt after the defeat of Bouvines (July 27, 1214) and who on June 15, 1215 , witnessed the Magna Charta on his side ( ex parte regis ). In 1215 Ranulf was made lord of Lancashire and in 1216 he was High Sheriff of Lancashire , High Sheriff of Staffordshire and High Sheriff of Shropshire at the same time .

Henry III.

Even before King John's death, insurgent barons had offered the English crown to the French heir to the throne, Ludwig , whereupon Ludwig invaded southern England in the summer of 1216 and conquered Winchester . When King Johann died in autumn, his son Heinrich III was born. hastily crowned, and Ranulf followed suit, although it had been expected that he would lay claim to the reign. He used his political weight to affirm the Magna Charta, and helped defeat the rebels at Lincoln on May 20, 1217 . Three days later, on May 23, 1217, he was made Earl of Lincoln for it.

The end of this First War of the Barons brought Ranulf the opportunity to redeem a promise made to crusade in 1215. He joined the Damiette Crusade in May 1218 and returned to England after its failure in August 1220. In the following years he devoted himself - contrary to the politics of the regents - to the building of castles and thus to the consolidation of his power: the castles Bolingbroke Castle (near Spilsby in Lincolnshire), Chartley Castle in Staffordshire and Beeston Castle in Cheshire can be traced back to him but had to cede to the king in 1223. For a short time he was the castellan of Wallingford Castle . During this time he allied himself with Llywelyn ab Iorwerth , the Prince of Gwynedd in North Wales, whose daughter Elen ferch Llywelyn was married to his nephew and heir John of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon around 1222 .

In the last years of his life he again attested to the Magna Charta (1225) and took part in the campaign of King Henry III in 1230 . to France , which ended with a three-year armistice.

Death and inheritance

He died on October 28, 1232 at the age of sixty without heirs and was buried in St Werburg's in Chester (now Chester Cathedral ), with the exception of his heart, which went into Dieulacres Abbey , which he founded , and his internal organs which were buried at Wallingford Castle.

His property was bequeathed to his four sisters Matilda (Maud), Mabel, Agnes (Alice) and Hawise . The county of Chester came to Matilda, who passed it on to her son John of Scotland a month later; he had designated the county of Lincoln for Hawise between April 1231 and his death. Hawise also passed Lincoln on to her daughter Margaret de Quincy and son-in-law John de Lacy within a month of Ranulf's death .

literature

• George Edward Cokayne : The Complete Peerage Volume 3 (1913), pp. 167/168
• Robert Liddiard, Rachel McGuicken: Beeston Castle. English Heritage . 2007, ISBN 9781850749257 .
• Iain Soden: Sir Ranulf de Blondeville: The First English Hero , Amberley Publishing, 2009, ISBN 1848686935 .
• William Stubbs: The constitutional history of England in its origin and development , vol. 2nd, 1874.
• Christopher Tyerman: Who's Who in Early Medieval England, 1066-1272. Stackpole Books, 2001, ISBN 0811716376 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stubbs, p. 47
2. ^ MW Thompson: The origins of Bolingbroke Castle Lincolnshire. Medieval archeology 10 (1966), pp. 152-158
3. ↑ The Annales Londonienses report that Ranulphus comes Cestriæ had four sisters: primogenita ... Matilda ... secunda ... Mabillia ... tertia ... Agnes ... quarta ... Hawisia

predecessor	Office	Successors
Hugh de Kevelioc	Earl of Chester 1181-1232	Matilda of Chester
New title created	Earl of Lincoln 1217-1231	Hawise of Chester