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North and South
Stories and Genealogy of Theodore Charles Anderson and Sara Carlene Shuttleworth
Ivo de Taillebois - A Norman Knight
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This page has been visited 4955 times
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This story involves many of the Medieval Kings and Queens, Dukes and Earls of England, Scotland, Norway and France.
To set the stage for this tale, you have to go way back in time, about 2000 years or so.
The Britons
In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar, then general of the Roman armies in Gaul, decided that it would be fun to try a little summer invasion of the Island of Britain. When he did so, he found two major tribes already living there, a people the Romans called the Britons occupied the southern 2/3rds of the island and the Picts the northern 1/3rd, in what is now known as Scotland.
Nobody knows where the Britons came from. Like the Druids before them, they were just there and had been there for thousands of years. Perhaps they were the Druids. Who knows?
They were not a particularly fierce or warlike people but they did paint their bodies blue when they went into battle, which must have been an interesting sight.
The Romans conquered them easily and occupied the southern part of England without too much trouble.
The Picts were something else again. The Romans never did subdue them. In fact, in 122 A.D. the Roman Emperor Hadrian had to build a fortified wall all along the Scotch Border to keep them out.
The Britons really didn't like the Romans much and, thinking that discretion was the better part of valor, began to move across the English Channel to a peninsula in France now known, naturally enough, as Brittany.
The Saxons
The Saxons were a bunch of Germans. Their modern-day descendants in northern Germany are considered ethnic Germans; those in the eastern Netherlands are considered to be ethnic Dutch; those in modern France, ethnic French; and those in England, ethnic Anglo-Saxons.
Their earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, near modern Holstein, Germany.
Around 450 A.D. or so, the Saxons began to migrate to the island of Great Britain. Saxon raiders had been harassing the eastern and southern shores of England for centuries before. Many Saxons had settled in England as farmers long before the end of Roman rule.
In 449, however, following a particularly devastating raid in the north from the Picts and the Vikings, the Roman administration invited two Saxon warlords — traditionally cited as Hengist and Horsa — to occupy the isle of Thanet in north Kent and to act as mercenaries against the Picts at sea. After they defeated the Picts, they returned with demands for more lands.
When this was rejected, they revolted against Roman rule and started the line of Anglo-Saxon Kings.
The Saxons were not kind to the Britons, confiscating their lands whenever it suited them. As they took over more and more of England, more and more Britons fled across the Channel into Brittany in France.
The Normans
The Normans were really Vikings from Scandinavia, mostly Norwegians. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Vikings invaded, pillaged, and ultimately settled along the north-western French coast on the English Channel.
In 911, the French Carolingian ruler Charles, the Simple allowed a group of Vikings, under their leader Rollo, to settle in northern France with the idea that they would provide protection along the coast against future Viking invaders. This proved successful and the Vikings in the region became known as the Northmen or Normans from which the name Normandy is derived.
The Normans quickly adapted to the indigenous culture, renouncing paganism and converting to Christianity. They adopted the language of their new home and added features from their own Norse language, transforming it into the Norman language. They further blended into the culture by intermarrying with the local population.
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The Norman Conquest
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From about the 6th century, Anglo-Saxon Kings sat on the Throne of England.
In the late 10th century, Danish attacks on England became so bad that in 991 the then Saxon King of England Aethelred II, the Unready agreed to marry Emma, the daughter of the Duke of Normandy, to cement a blood-tie alliance with the Normans for help fight against the Danes.
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Edward,the Confessor
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Their son, Edward, the Confessor (1004–1066), was the next-to-last Anglo-Saxon King of England from the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 until his death in 1066.
Edward's reign was generally marked by peace and prosperity.
King Edward, the Confessor died on the 5th of Janurary, 1066 with no direct heir to the throne. As the story goes, on his death bed, he pointed to his brother-in-law, Harold Godwinson, the Earl of Wessex. This was taken by the noblemen present to mean that Edward had chosen Harold as his successor, though some say it was really a curse.
That very day, the assembly of the kingdom's leading notables approved Harold for coronation, which took place the following day. He became Harold II, King of England.
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It was the first coronation in Westminster Abbey. Although later Norman historians point to the questionable suddenness of this coronation, it is more probable that it took place so soon because all the nobles of the land were already at Westminster for the feast of Epiphany and not because of any usurpation of the throne on Harold's part.
But two other nobles also claimed the English Crown.
One was King Harald III of Norway, commonly known as Harald Hardrada, whose claim was based on a supposed agreement between the previous King of Norway, Magnus I, and Harthacanute, the previous Danish King of England, whereby if either died without heir, the other would inherit both England and Norway. Harald Hardrada formed an alliance with Harold's estragned and rebellious brother Tostig Godwinson who had been banished from England by his brother.
The other claimant was William, Duke of Normandy because of his blood ties to Aethelred II through his Norman wife Emma, who was William's Grandmother. William further claimed that he had been promised the English crown by Edward, the Confessor himself and that Harold Godwinson had sworn to support his claim.
The stage was set for a big fight.
Harold II fights it out with the Norwegians
In the spring of 1066, England was invaded by Harald Hardrada of Norway. Not really Harald himself but by Harold II's brother Tostig Godwinson.
Tostig crossed the channel from Flanders where he had assembled an army and a fleet of ships. He tried to take the Saxon strongholds of East Anglia and Lincolnshire but was driven back by the Saxons Edwin, Earl of Mercia and his younger brother Morcar, Earl of Northumberland.
These two guys were the grandsons of Leofric III, the Great (968-1057) and the famous Lady Godiva (980-1067) of Coventry. Their sister, Ealdgyth (Edith) (1041-1086) had married Harold II and become the Queen of England. Their much younger niece, Lucy de Malot, later was forced to marry Ivo which made for a really messy situation.
Deserted by most of his followers, Tostig withdrew to Scotland, where he spent the summer trying to recruit fresh forces. Harold II offered his brother a third of the kingdom if he would join him. Tostig asked what Harold II would offer the King of Norway. "Six feet of ground or as much more as he needs, as he is taller than most men," was Harold's response. Tostig saw that his cause was lost and decided to join up with his brother to defeat the Norwegians.
Advancing on York, the Norwegians were met on 12 September by the Saxon army still under the command of the brothers Edwin and Morcar. The Norwegians were defeated, leaving both Tostig and Harald III dead, thus ending the Norwegian's claim to the crown and getting rid of a bothersome brother in the process.
King Harold II himself spent the entire summer on the south coast with a large army waiting for William to invade from Normandy. But on 8 September as he ran out of food and supplies, he decided that William wasn't coming and told his army to go home.
The Norman Invasion
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William the Conquer
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Meanwhile, over in Normandy, William was indeed assembling an army. He recruited soldiers from all of northern France, Brittany, the Low Countries and Germany.
The Britons especially saw this as an opportunity to take back from the Saxons what they considered their homeland. Thousands signed up.
Many soldiers in his army were second- and third-born sons who had little or no inheritance under the laws of primogeniture. William promised that if they brought their own horse, armor, and weapons to join him, they would be rewarded with lands and titles in his new realm.
By the summer of 1066, William was ready to go. He had an invasion fleet of some 600 ships and an army of 10,000 foot soldiers and 2000 knights on horseback. He gathered his ships at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme intending to sail in August, but bad weather in the channel forced him to delay the crossing.
This weather delay turned out to be godsend for William. Had he landed in August as originally planned, Harold II would have been there waiting for him with a fresh and numerically superior force. When William finally did land in Sussex on 28 September, Harold wasn't anywhere around.
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When Harold II heard of the landing, he responded in haste. Rather than wait long enough to reassemble the full strength of his southern English Army, he rushed south pausing in London only long enough to gather up a few troops.
They fought at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October, 1066.
It was a close battle, but in the end, Harold II was killed by an arrow in his eye. His brothers Earl Gyrth and Earl Leofwine were also killed.
William had won and was forever after known as "the Conquer".
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Hermengarde de Anjou (1018-1076)
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One of the Knights that William recruited for his conquest of England was Ivo de Taillebois ("Wood Cutter" in French, corrupted to John Tallboys or Talbot in English) (also known as the Earl of Holland and later the Baron of Kendal) (Ted's 29th Great Grandfather).
Ivo's parentage and ancestry has been the subject of many articles and conflicting theories. The consensus is the he was born in 1036, probably in Cristol, Calvados, France of scandalous parentage. It appears that Ivo began life as the out-of-wedlock child of Hermengarde of Anjou (1018-1076) (Ted's 30th Great Grandmother), a direct descendant of Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and a man said to be Reinfred Taillebois (the woodcutter) (Ted's 30th Great Grandfather). She was 18 at the time and had just married Geoffrey, Count of Gatinais (1004-1046), who was 14 years older than she. As a descendant of Charlemagne, Ivo would also then have descended from Charlemagne's forefathers who are documented back to Antenor, King of the Cimmerians, who in died about 443 BC! Now that's really a long way back.
Now, here's where it really starts getting interesting.
Hermengrand and Count Jeoffrey had a son named Fulke IV (or Foulques depending on how you want to spell it) (1043-1109).
Fulke IV married Bertrade de Montfort (1059-1117). Bertrade deserted her husband and bigamously married King Philip I of France.
Fulke V, the Young, King of Jerusalem
Before she deserted him, Fulke IV and Bertrande had a son named Fulke V (1092-1143) (Ted's 1st cousin, 30 times removed).
He became Count of Anjou upon his father's death in 1109 at the age of twenty. He was originally an opponent of the Norman King Henry II of England and a supporter of King Louis VI of France, but in 1127 he allied with Henry and arranged for Henry's daughter Matilda to marry his son Geoffrey V of Anjou.
Fulke V went on crusade in 1120 and became a member of the Knights Templar. After his return to Anjou, he began to subsidize the Templars and maintained two knights in the Holy Land for a year.
By 1127, Fulke V, then a widower, was preparing to return to the Holy Land when a messemger from King Baldwin II of Jerusalem arrived in Anjou. Baldwin II had no male heirs but had already designated his daughter Melisende to succeed him. Baldwin II wanted to safeguard his daughter's inheritance by marrying her to a powerful lord. Fulke V was a wealthy crusader, an experienced military commander, and a widower. His experience in the field would prove invaluable in a frontier state always in the state of war.
However, Fulke V held out for better terms than mere consort of the Queen; he wanted to be king alongside Melisende. Baldwin II, reflecting on Fulke V's fortune and military exploits, acquiesced. Fulke V abdicated his county seat of Anjou to his son Geoffrey V and left for Jerusalem, where he married Melisende on June 2, 1129. Later Baldwin II bolstered Melisende's position in the kingdom by making her sole guardian of her son by Fulke V, Baldwin III, who was born in 1130.
Fulke V and Melisende became joint rulers of Jerusalem in 1131 when Baldwin II died.
The Plantagenet Kings of England
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Meanwhile, back in France, Geoffrey V and Empress Matilda had a son named Henry II (1132-1189) (Ted's 3rd cousin, 28 times removed) known as "Curtmantle", who, in 1154, became the founder of the Plantagenet line of Kings of England.
Henry II was followed by:
 Richard I, the Lionheart
John, Lackland
Henry III
Edward I, Longshanks
Edward II
Edward III
Richard II
Henry IV
Henry V
Henry VI
Edward IV
Edward V
Richard III
(Ted's distant cousins all)
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Ivo de Taillebois (1036-1094)
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Ivo went to England in 1066 with William and was one of his field commanders at the Battle of Hastings.
As one of William's Commanders, Ivo would have been among the elite who provided him with ships, horses, men, and supplies for the invasion of England, in return for which William granted them English baronies and earldoms forcibly taken from the conquered Saxon lords.
The Norman army, estimated to be about 12,000 men, proved victorious at the Battle of Hastings. In that battle, and subsequently, Ivo appears to have served William as a loyal and effective fighter. The following description of Ivo, probably fairly accurate, appeared in a 12th century novel about the Norman Conquest:
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A proud man was Ivo de Taillebois as he rode next morning out of Spalding Town with a hawk on his fist, hound at heel, and a dozen men-at-arms at his back. An adventurer from Anjou, brutal, ignorant, and profligate, low-born too. Valiant he was, cunning, and skilled in war. Called 'thou old butcher' by King William, he and his group of Anjou rutters had fought like tigers by William's side at Hastings.
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Following the Conquest, William II, now King of England, rewarded Ivo by making him the Earl of Holland in Lincolnshire. Reportedly, William also gave Ivo lands that had belonged to the saxon Ælfgar III, the Earl of Mercia (remember Lady Godiva). Later, Ivo was granted the Castle and Barony of Kentdale (now Kendal), which had been held by the Saxon, Turold (Thorold) of Bucknall, Sheriff of Lincolnshire (Lady Godiva again), and which was located in that portion of Yorkshire that later became County Westmorland (now County Cumbria).
Although his win at the Battle of Hastings defeated the English Army, there remained pockets of resistance. One of these was the Isle of Ely. Ely wasn't really an island. It was at that time really a small hill surrounded by marshland.
In 1071, King William, with Ivo leading his army, besieged the "Isle", and in the course of the siege, the Saxon Lord Hereward shot an arrow through William's shield, pinning it to his breast. Ivo is credited with having saved William's life.
Later, Lord Hereward, who had escaped capture during the siege, was caught and placed under arrest in the custody of Robert de Horepol at Bedford. A year later King William was inclined to set Hereward free but Ivo de Taillebois didn't want anything to do with that. He dissuade the king from setting Hereward free, declaring that it was because of him that the country was not pacified.
At this, Hereward's jailer, Robert de Horepol, exclaimed:
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Alas, alas! Soon now, through the machinations of Ivo de Taillebois, this man once renowned for hosts of soldiers and the leader and lord of so many very eminent men, is to be taken from here and delivered into the hands of a detestable man and sent to the castle of Rockingham.
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Other accounts of Ivo at the time were also not exactly complementary.
An early history spoke of accusations made by Ivo as having ruined Ulfketul, the Saxon Abbot of Croyland Abbey, so that Ingulphus could be installed in his place. Ingulphus, who had been secretary to William the Conqueror, was a Saxon who had grown up in Normandy.
Showing kindness to the ejected Ulfketul, Ingulphus said, "Seeing that this venerable person was worthy of all favor and filial love, and was distinguished for his most holy piety, I had him placed in his ancient [Abbot's] stall", after which Ingulphus considered himself sort of a sub-Abbot during the remainder of Ulfketul's lifetime.
The common Saxon people over whom Ivo ruled in his Earldom had little love for him. They were forced to make supplications to him on bended knee. Ivo apparently tortured, harassed, worried, annoyed, incarcerated and tormented his subject without mercy.
The people were not the only recipients of Ivo's abusive treatment. It was said that "Ivo would follow the various animals of his subjects into the marshes with his dogs; drive them to a great distance, drown them in the lakes, mutilate some in the tail, others in the ear; while often, by breaking the feet and the legs of the beasts of burden, he would render them utterly useless".
Ivo was really not a very nice guy. At least, that was the Saxon's perception of him, biased as it probably was.
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Ivo's wives and children
Ivo, apparently married twice. First to Gondreda (1032-1075) in France, who later became the Countess of Warwick.
They had a son named Ælftred (Eldred) (the Englishman) (Ted's 28th Great Grandfather), later the Baron of Kendal (1058- ). He was only 8 years old when Ivo crossed the Channel with William, so he and his mother stayed at home in France until the fighting was over and then joined Ivo who by this time was up in Lincolnshire tacking charge of his new lands and harassing the locals.
After Lady Gondreda's death in about 1075, William II, having granted to Ivo the Barony of Kendal that previously had belonged to Turold of Bucknall, the Saxon Sheriff of Lincolnshire and the son of Leofric III and Lady Godiva, also gave Turold's daughter, Lucy (1060-1138), to Ivo as his second wife.
She was obviously much younger than he, but Ivo is said to have remarked, I have her father's lands, why not have the daughter too?"
You know what they say, "To the victor go the spoils".
Now, it turns out that Lucy was the Granddaughter of Leofric III and Lady Godiva, whose Grandsons Edwin and Morcar had fought for Harold II against and defeated Harald III of Norway. Relationships sure got mixed up in those days.
Ivo and Lucy had a daughter, Beatrice who married Ribald Middleham in about 1109.
Ivo de Taillebois became one of the most powerful men in the early Norman period, even through he was universally hated by his Saxon subjects. He held vast lands from the Midlands of Coventry and Warwick, all the way to the Border with Scotland.
His son, now Baron Eldred de Kendal, married Algitha. They had a son named Ketel (Baron Ketel de Kendal) who had a son named Orm (Lord of Seton, Orm de Kendal).
Orm married Athelreda. Their son Lord Gospatric of High Ireby de Workingham (Ted's 25th Great Grandfather) was the first to take Ireby as part of his surname.
From then on, all descendants used Ireby as their surname. The first to shorten it to just Irby was Robert Irby (Ted's 17th Great Grandfather) (1365-???? ).
Many important Irbys descended from Ivo de Taillebois; Barons, Lords, Members of Parliament, and just plain folks.
We'll pick up the story again in 1621 with Dr. William Irby (Ted's 8th Great Grandfather) (1625-1687) (visit Shipwrecked).
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Tune Mozart's Horn Concerto #4
The introductory tune used on this page is Mozart's Horn Concerto #4, 3rd Movement, Kirkle 495, one of the 4 horn concertos wriiten by Mozart for his friend, the Viennese cheese merchant and horn player, Joseph Leutgeb.
In the last movement, it is as though Mozart is deliberatley throwing down a challenge to the instrument and to the soloist to bring out the livelist of sounds - to give the ligibrious horn a touch of playfulness. He asks for it to be played fast and full of life.
With the opening theme reminiscent of the sound of hunting horns, the sheer exuberant thrill of the chase comes to mind. As horn and orchestra exchange melodies in a musical banter, it is impossible to resist the sheer enjoyment of the piece, as it dances to its conclusion.
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This page and all genealogical data contained on it are Copyrighted © 2007/2008
by Theodore C. Anderson
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