man Henry I "Beauclerc, " King Of England‏‎, son of William I "The Conqueror, " King Of England and Maud Of Flanders, Queen Of England‏.
Born ‎ Sep 1068 at Selby, Yorkshire, England, died ‎ Dec 1, 1335 at Angers, Maine-Et-Loire, France‎, buried ‎ Jan 4, 1334-1335 at Reading Cathedral, Berkshire, England
Name Suffix: " King Of England
Henry I was born in the year 1068---a factor he himself regarded as highly significant, for he was the only son of the Conqueror born after the conquest of England, and to Henry this meant he was heir to the throne. He was not an attractive proposition: he was dissolute to a degree, producing at least a score of bastards; but far worse he was prone to sadistic cruelty---on one occasion, for example, personally punishing a rebellious burgher by throwing him from the walls of his town.
At the death of William the Conqueror, Henry was left no lands, merely 5,000 pounds of silver. With these he bought lands from his elder brother Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, only to see them taken back again a few years later by Robert, in unholy alliance with his brother William Rufus.
Henry could do little to avenge such treatment, but in England he found numerous barons who were tired of the exactions and ambitions of their king. He formed alliances with some of these, notably with the important De Clare family. He and some of the De Clares were with William Rufus on his last hunting expedition, and it is thought that the king's death was the result of Henry's plotting.
Certainly he moved fast to take advantage of it; leaving Rufus's body unattended in the woods, he swooped down on Winchester to take control of the treasury. Two days later he was in Westminster, being crowned by the Bishop of London. His speed is understandable when one realises that his elder brother, Robert [Curthose], was returning from the crusade, and claimed, with good reason, to be the true heir.
Henry showed great good sense in his first actions as King. He arrested Ranulph Flambard, William's tax-gatherer, and recalled Anselm, the exiled Archbishop. Furthermore, he issued a Charter of Liberties which promised speedy redress of grievances, and a return to the good government of the Conqueror. Putting aside for the moment his many mistresses, he married the sister of the King of Scots, who was descended from the royal line of Wessex; and lest the Norman barons should think him too pro-English in this action, he canged her name from Edith to Matilda. No one could claim that he did not aim to please.
In 1101 Robert Curthose invaded, but Henry met him at Alton, and persuaded him to go away again by promising him an annuity of £2,000. He had no intention of keeping up the payments, but the problem was temporarily solved.
He now felt strong enough to move against dissident barons who might give trouble in the future. Chief amongst these was the vicious Robert of Bellême, Earl of Shrewsbury, whom Henry had known for many years as a dangerous troublemaker. He set up a number of charges against him in the king's court, making it plain that if he appeared for trial he would be convicted and imprisoned. Thus Robert and his colleagues were forced into rebellion at a time not of their own choosing, were easily defeated and sent scuttling back to Normandy.
In Normandy Robert Curthose began to wreak his wrath on all connected with his brother, thus giving Henry an excellent chance to retaliate with charges of misgovernment and invade. He made two expeditions in 1104-5, before the great expedition of 1106 on which Robert was defeated at the hour-long battle of Tinchebrai, on the anniversary of Hastings. No one had expected such an easy victory, but Henry took advantage of the state of shock resulting from the battle to annex Normandy. Robert was imprisoned (in some comfort, it be said); he lived on for 28 more years, ending up in Cardiff castle whiling away the long hours learning Welsh. His son William Clito remained a free agent, to plague Henry for most of the rest of his reign.
In England the struggle with Anselm over the homage of bishops ran its course until the settlement of 1107. In matters of secular government life was more simple: Henry had found a brilliant administrator, Roger of Salisbury, to act as Justiciar for him. R

Married/ Related to:

woman Matilda Of Scotland, Queen Of England‏‎, daughter of Malcolm III "Canmore" King Of Scotland and Margaret "Atheling", Queen Of Scotland‏.
Born ‎ 1079 at Scotland, died ‎ May 1, 1118 at Westminster Palace, London, Middlesex, England‎, 38 or 39 years
Name Suffix: Queen Of England

CHAN17 May 2004

Child:

1.
woman Empress Of Germany Matilda‏
Born ‎ Feb 7, 1100-1101 at Winchester, Hampshire, England, died ‎ Sep 10, 1167‎, 66 years, buried ‎ at Rouen Cathedral, Rouen, France
MATILDA (1102-1167), empress, was the daughter of Henry I of England by his first marriage. She was betrothed in 1109 and married in 1114 to the German emperor Henry V. When her husband died (1125) leaving her childless, her father, whose only surviving legitimate child she then was, persuaded his reluctant barons to accept her, on oath, as his successor (Jan. 1, 1127). The novel prospect of a female ruler was itself unwelcome; Matilda's 17-year absence in Germany (where she was not unpopular) and her apparent arrogrance estranged her from her father's subjects. Difficulties also might result from her remarriage to provide for the succession. Her marriage in 1128 to Geoffrey Plantagenet, heir to Anjou and Maine (designed by Henry I, like her first marriage, for political ends), whose father, CountFulk, departed immediately after the ceremony to become the consort of Melisende of Jerusalem, flouted the barons' stipulation that she should not marry outside England without their consent, and was unpopular in Normandy and England. On Henry I's death, his nephew Stephen by prompt action secured England and was recognized by Pope Innocent II. Matilda and Geoffrey, however, made some headway in Normandy. Matilda's subsequent challenge to Stephen's position in England mainly depended on the support of her half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester. After the defeat and capture of Stephen at Lincoln (Feb. 1141), Matilda was elected "lady of the English" and would have been queen could she have proceeded to coronation, but active support for her cause still came mainly from the western counties. Her chance of consolidating her precarious victory was swiftly destroyed by a reaction initated by her tactless handling of London. After her defeat at Winchester in Sept. 1141, her supporters, slowly reduced by death and defection, maintained a stubborn defense until Earl Robert died (1147) and Matilda retired (1148) to Normandy, of which her husband had gained possession. She continued to interest herself in the government of the territories of her eldest son, the future Henry II of England. Her career was not entirely unsuccessful: all the subsequent monarchs of England have been her descendants, not Stephen's. She died in Normandy on Sept. 10, 1167.


2nd marriage/ relation
man Henry I "Beauclerc, " King Of England‏‎, son of William I "The Conqueror, " King Of England and Maud Of Flanders, Queen Of England‏.

Married/ Related to:

woman UNKNOWN Concubine‏‎

Still Living.

CHAN17 May 2004

Child:

1.
woman Constance Fitzhenry‏
Born ‎± 1100‎


3rd marriage/ relation
man Henry I "Beauclerc, " King Of England‏‎, son of William I "The Conqueror, " King Of England and Maud Of Flanders, Queen Of England‏.

Married/ Related to:

woman Daughter Of De Caen‏‎

Still Living.

CHAN17 May 2004

Child:

1.
man Robert De Caen, Earl Of Gloucester‏
Born ‎± 1088 at Caen, Normandy, France, died ‎ Oct 31, 1147 at Bristol, Gloucestershire, England‎, approximately 59 years
Name Suffix: Earl Of Gloucester
[Source: Who's Who in Early Medieval England, Christopher Tyerman, Shepheard-Walwyn, Ltd., London, 1996]
ROBERT, EARL OF GLOUCESTER had all the kingly attributes except one: legitimacy. The eldest of Henry I's twenty or so bastards, literate, intelligent, brave, adept at the factional politics of court, and a patron of both the church and the arts, Robert had to stand back to watch others compete for the throne, literally so in 1127 when he lost his claim to precedence over his cousin Stephen of Blois when doing homage to his half-sister the Empress Matilda. It was some measure of an increase in orderliness and legal propriety that William the Bastard could inherit a duchy and win a crown, while his grandson, Robert, whose personal crudentials were second to none, had to be content with a supporting role.
Under Henry I, Robert was prominent in a party consistently loyal to the king. In 1119, Robert fought at Brémule against the king of France and in 1123 against the Norman rebels; in 1126, he was given custody of his uncle Robert Curthose. Despite acquiescing in Matilda's succession, he still fought against the Angevins on Henry's behalf in the 1130s. Robert's reward was in lands in South Wales and the West Country and the earldom of Gloucester (1122). After Henry's death in 1135, it was not his loyalty to the Empress which swayed him so much as his own self-interest: arguably, his hesitation in deciding where that lay allowed Stephen to grab the throne.
Admired by William of Malmesbury, Robert has traditionally been seen as a noble, chivalrous defender of the hereditary rights of his half-sister. His actions between 1135 and 1139 suggest more selfish motives. His unusual conditional homage to Stephen in 1136 signalled his importance to the new king but it may also have been forced on him by his isolation among the English baronage and the threat to his lands in South-East Wales posed by a Welsh revolt, the crushing of which, it has recently been suggested, may have prompted Robert's literary protégé, Geoffrey of Monmouth, to write his 'History of the Kings of Britain.' Although Robert cooperated with Stephen at the siege of Exeter in 1136, he soon became alienated from the new regime, not least because of the favours granted to the Beaumont twins, Waleran of Meulan and Robert of Leicester, old rivals from the court of Henry I. Opposition to the Beaumonts provide a leitmotif in the rest of Robert of Gloucester's career, not least in the fighting at Wareham (1138), Worcester (1139) and Tewkesbury (1140).
It was probably the growing influence of Waleran of Meulan in particular that led to Robert distancing himself from the king in Normandy in 1137 and his fears of assassination by the royalist mercenary, William of Ypres. In 1138, the formal break with Stephen occurred, but after the failure of the Angevins to capture Normandy in 1138-9, Robert, perhaps in desperation lest his English estates would be lost, landed at Arundel with Matilda to dispute the English throne. In England, Robert provided the judicious advice, material support and personal charm that Matilda so conspicuously lacked. That she retained followers at all may in part have been the achivement of her gregarious and generous half-brother with his knack for friendship. Although playing the leading military role on the Empress's side, Robert also managed to use the civil war to build an almost impregnable power-base for himself in South-West England, centred on Bristol, a control that the vicissitudes of the wider dynastic struggle did little to challenge. 1141 saw his greatest triumph in the crushing defeat of the king at Lincoln in February, but his victory exposed the vulnerability of his position. Unless he looked after his own interests, he would have no more guarantee of security at an Angevin than at a Blois court. The former suddenly looked a forlorn prospect after the Rout of Winchester in September, where only R


4th marriage/ relation
man Henry I "Beauclerc, " King Of England‏‎, son of William I "The Conqueror, " King Of England and Maud Of Flanders, Queen Of England‏.

Married/ Related to:

woman A Concubine Edith‏‎

Still Living.

CHAN17 May 2004

Child:

1.
woman Mathilda Of England‏
Born ‎ 1086, died ‎ Nov 25, 1120 at The Wreck Of The "White Ship" Off Barfleur‎, 33 or 34 years


5th marriage/ relation
man Henry I "Beauclerc, " King Of England‏‎, son of William I "The Conqueror, " King Of England and Maud Of Flanders, Queen Of England‏.

Married/ Related to:

woman Nest Ferch Rhys, Princess Of Deheubarth‏‎, daughter of Rhys Ap Tewdwr, Prince Of South Wales and Gwladys Ferch Rhiwallon‏.
Born ‎± 1073 at Dynevor, Carmarthenshire, Wales, died ‎ 1157 at Anglesey, Wales‎, approximately 84 years
Name Suffix: Princess Of Deheubarth
Known as the most beautiful woman in Wales. She had many lovers. In Christmas 1180, Owain ap Cadwgan of Cardigan came to visit Gerald and Nesta. He so lusted after her that, later that night, he attacked the castle and carried her off and had his way with her. This upset Henry I so much that the incident started a war.

CHAN17 May 2004

Child:

1.
man Henry Fitzhenry‏
Born ‎± 1105, died ‎ 1157‎, approximately 52 years