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The Origin of the Crispins in Normandy

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Nick Wormley

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Feb 3, 2019, 12:51:41 PM2/3/19

I have written the following article to summarize research by myself and my brother in an attempt to determine the origin of the Crispin family, who were among the most important land-holders and knights in Normandy both before and after the Conquest.

We have spent a lot of time on this and feel it highlights some information that does not seem to have been brought to public attention previously. However, we are not historical academics, just amateur enthusiasts, and we will gratefully appreciate any comments, corrections or further ideas that might be offered in response. Thank you very much if you can help to further our project in any way.

The Origins of the Crispin Family

The first known member of the Crispin family was Gilbert Crispin I, lord of Tillieres and of lands near Lisieux, in Normandy. He lived from about 1,000 to 1045 or so AD and was an important member of the ruling class in Normandy. His probable descendant, Milo Crispin, wrote that Gilbert was “of renowned origin and nobility”. Anselm, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, said that the Crispins were “rich and of the first nobility of Normandy”.

Unfortunately neither of them elaborated on these statements and it is not clear who Gilbert Crispin’s parents or ancestors were. He is wrongly and repeatedly confused in many websites and books with Gilbert Count of Brionne – frequent statements that they were one and the same man are very unlikely to be correct, as they had different children and lived in different places!
Gilbert was supposedly nicknamed Crispin because he had spikey, brush-like hair. He was first mentioned in Duke Richard II’s entourage at Fecamp in 1025. In that year he was a witness to ducal confirmation of the foundation of Berney Abbey, between Lisieux and Brionne.

Duke Robert I put him in charge of Tillieres Castle between 1027 and 1034, and another frontier fortress at nearby Damville, to help defend the Norman border against invasion by the king of France 1,000 years ago. Gilbert defended Tillieres doggedly against King Henri of France in 1040, and only surrendered when he was personally ordered to by the young Duke William, who was later to become William the Conquerer and king of England.

Gilbert Crispin I and his wife Gunnor had children named Gilbert, William, Robert, Emma, Hesilia, nearly certainly Miles, and possibly Ralph.
The eldest son, Gilbert Crispin II, succeeded his father as the castellan of Tillieres. He, William and Miles are believed to have all fought at Hastings.
English genealogist Michael Stanhope, an expert in medieval family connections, has theorised that Gilbert Crispin I might have been the son of Gilbert de Brionne and a concubine. Gilbert de Brionne’s father was Geoffrey/Godfrey Count of Eu.

An alternative possibility is that Gilbert Crispin’s father was Geoffrey’s brother Guillaume d’Eu, Duke Richard II, or one of their cousins. Geoffrey and Guillaume were illegitimate sons of Duke Richard I of Normandy, so if any of these suggested relationships was correct, Gilbert Crispin would be directly descended paternally from the first three Dukes of Normandy. His grandfather or great grandfather would be Richard “The Fearless”, son of Duke William I – “called William Longsword”, who in turn was the son of Rollo the Viking, founder of Normandy at the beginning of the 10th Century.

Geoffrey and William d’Eu’s half-sister, Emma, was married to two pre-conquest kings of England – firstly Aethelred the Unready and secondly Cnut. She was also mother of the last Anglo Saxon king but one, Edward the Confessor. William the Conquerer’s claim to the English throne stemmed from this.

Therefore, Gilbert Crispin I may have been a 2nd cousin of both Duke Robert of Normandy (William the Conquerer’s father), and of King Edward the Confessor of England. Or alternatively, if he was an illegitimate son of Duke Richard II, he would have been Duke Robert’s half-brother and one of the Conquerer’s uncles.
If we could be certain that one of these hypothese was correct we would start the Crispin pedigree as follows:

1.Rollo the Viking, who may have come from Denmark or Norway, and led Viking raids in northern France at the end of the 9th Century. He was effectively the first “Duke” of Normandy, although at that time he was only styled Comte (Count) de Normandie. He married Poppa, daughter of Berengar, Comte de Bayeux. Rollo died before 933.

1.1 Guillaume (William) I, the second Duke of Normandy. Son of Rollo, born at Rouen c.900-905, and known as William “Longsword”. His first wife (or concubine) was called Sprota – “a noble Danish girl”. He was murdered in December 942.

1.1.1 Richard I, third Duke of Normandy, son of William and Sprota. Born at Fecamp in 932, and buried there on November 20th, 996. Known as Richard “The Fearless”. He married, secondly, Gunnor, of a noble Danish family, who had previously been his mistress. Their children included Duke Richard II of Normandy and Robert, the Archbishop of Rouen. One of their great grandsons was William the Conquerer.

Then, possibly, Duke Richard II, Geoffrey/Godfrey d’Eu, or perhaps his younger brother/half-brother William d’Eu,or one of their cousins. Geoffrey and William were illegitimate children of Duke Richard I, but by a different mistress to Gunnor.
Plus, maybe an additional generation, such as Gilbert de Brionne, who was the son of Geoffrey d’Eu – or, again, one of his cousins. Geoffrey was the Comte de Brionne from c.996 to his death in 1015. Gilbert de Brionne was born about 980 to 1000AD.

1.1.1.?.? Gilbert Crispin I.

This is all quite plausible and indeed likely. But in truth, not enough detail is known about the Norman aristocratic families of that time to confirm this hypothesis – or to propose any definite alternative Crispin descent from the ducal family through a daughter, or through a half-bloodline (step-children by re-marriages or half-brothers and sisters through illegitimacy involving mistresses). However, this may well have happened, even though we are unlikely to ever know.

The honest reality is that a large part of what is presented in history books and numerous websites as historical fact from those centuries has been innocently accepted and copied from unreliable sources. Much of this information is probably inaccurate to some degree, assumed, guessed or simply invented by monks and chroniclers to please their medieval patrons. None of the contemporary 11th and 12th century Norman authors and recorders – such as Dudo of Saint-Quentin, William of Jumieges, Orderic Vitalis, Robert de Torigni or Master Wace – are fully trustworthy by modern standards of accuracy. They wrote what they were told by various informants, sometimes decades, even a century and a half, after the events, or what they thought was probably true, long before official birth, death and marriage records, and neutral news reporting came into existence.

It is also very likely that some of the key people in this story are missing – just no longer recorded and invisible to us. There might have been other brothers or sisters, younger sons and daughters, nieces, nephews, in-laws and cousins, forgotten by history.

However, there is one compelling piece of evidence in a Norman charter, written about 960 years ago, that strongly encourages us to support the view that the Crispins were descended from the first three dukes of Normandy – and very possibly also the fourth.

See a Norman legal document from the French archives, in wonderful condition for 960 years of age, at:

http://www.cn-telma.fr/originaux/charte2704/

This charter is dated about 1054 to 1060. Gilbert Crispin II gives to Jumieges Abbey the fief (village) of Hauville, which he holds of Duke William. He receives back in return £200 in silver, a horse and 2 ounces of gold.
Hauville is beside the River Seine, next door to Jumieges, which is close to Rouen and to Brionne. It is also just north of Montfort-sur-Risle, Le Bec Hellouine, Le Theil Nolent, Plainville, Drucourt and other places held by the Crispins or connected to them through marriage or grants. This says that this area was just as much “home” to the Crispins in the 11th century as Tillieres was.

At the bottom of this charter, the first cross was made by Gilbert Crispin II as his mark (signature). Next to this is the cross written by his wife (not named). Then, the cross immediately following theirs was written by William Count of Normandy (soon to become William the Conquerer, king of England). Undoubtedly, they stood in the same room beside each other and must have chatted together while this business was being transacted, probably at Jumieges Abbey. It helps to support the idea that they might have been related – perhaps cousins.

There is an important suggestion of this in the charter. In those days, giving a charitable donation to a religious institution was partly viewed as making a deal with God. In return for his generosity to Jumieges Abbey, Gilbert Crispin II asked the monks to pray for God’s kindness towards the souls of his parents, wife and children, his lord Duke William, and of RICHARD THE GREAT PRINCE. This meant either Duke Richard I of Normandy (933-996), or his eldest son Duke Richard II, who died in 1026. Both were referred to in Norman writings as “the great prince”.

Both Richards died a long time before the 1054 charter, and whichever was intended in it, we wonder why his name was included, in first place, on Gilbert Crispin’s request list for God’s mercy. Such things were taken very seriously by medieval minds. Everybody believed in Heaven and Hell, and people were fully convinced in those times that the power of prayer would speed them through the torment of purgatory to eternal heavenly happiness. The more prayers that were said the better.

Pro anima clauses asking for prayers to be said for loved-ones’ souls were nearly always confined to close family members, including the donor’s parents, but almost never anybody prior to them, except for sometimes within the all-embracing phrase “my ancestors”. Naming somebody from outside the donor’s family who had lived four or five generations earlier would be highly unusual, almost unprecedented.

“The Falaise Roll”, page 137, claims that Richard I was named here because he was Gilbert Crispin’s great grandfather. Perhaps this book might have been muddling up Gilbert Crispin with Gilbert de Brionne, which happens frequently, but nevertheless its conclusion looks correct if Gilbert de Brionne was his father.

On the other hand, it is perhaps more likely that the Jumieges charter meant Duke Richard II, as he was closer in time to the first Crispin and was the ruler of Normandy when Gilbert was a young man. According to historian Elizabeth Van Houts, Richard II had a number of illegitimate children by several unidentified mistresses, and it seems very feasible that Gilbert Crispin I might have been one of them. If he was, then Duke Richard II would have been Gilbert Crispin II’s grandfather – a seemingly perfect explanation for the pro-anima clause.

The wording of this charter does clearly imply that the Crispin family was probably descended from “Richard the Great Prince”. It feels as though Gilbert Crispin may have purposely mentioned him to make a political public statement about the importance of his family connections. If so then his earliest-known ancestor was indeed Rollo the Viking.

A similar example is shown on page 29 of Oxford University historian Dr Katherine Keats-Rohan’s book “Domesday People”. She wrote:
“Sometime between 1100 and 1107, Roger Bigod and his wife Adelisa (de Tosny) gave a charter for Rochester Priory……….

The charter contains a highly-unusual pro anima clause for Norman the Sheriff, who was their Domesday (1086 ie 14 to 21 years earlier) antecessor in the manors granted and Roger’s predecessor as Sheriff.

The NORMAL EXPLANATION for this pro anima clause would be A RELATIONSHIP between Roger’s family and Norman, who is usually assumed to have been an Englishman”.

So Dr Keats-Rohan confirms that when a prayer request was made for a person who had lived at some time in the past, and who was not obviously a member of the donor’s family, IT NORMALLY MEANT THAT IN FACT THEY WERE INDEED RELATED.
Presumably the same explanation would apply in the case of Gilbert Crispin II making a prayer request for Duke Richard – who must surely have been his ancestor?

Gilbert Crispin I held Tillieres as a vassal of Gilbert de Brionne, and Gilbert Crispin II also held the fortress at Damville as a vassal of Brionne’s eldest legitimate son Richard FitzGilbert (alias de Bienfait and de Clare). Before then, the Crispin’s earliest-known land holdings appear to have been a number of villages near Lisieux, which were all owned by Gilbert de Brionne or his father Godfrey. Ancient charters show that Gilbert Crispin’s second son William was a vassal of the Count of Brionne at Livarot, Blangy, Strapigney, Bournainville, le Mesnil-Hubert and Druicort. Interestingly, Gilbert Crispin I and/or II also owned a mill on the outskirts of Brionne, probably within sight of the town’s castle, later donating it to nearby Bec Abbey. This all indicates a strong, early connection between the Crispins and Gilbert de Brionne, certainly in the time when Gilbert Crispin I was a young man. It certainly suggests that he might have been Brionne’s illegitimate son or cousin.

There is one fly in the ointment when hypothesising a Crispin descent from Gilbert de Brionne’s family. But we also have two potential solutions to get round it:

A Raoul de Telgers is said, in an ancient chronicle, to have married a daughter of Richard de Bienfait (Clare), son of Gilbert de Brionne. “Telgers” is thought to have been a Norman-Latin way of writing Tillieres, so he may have been a member of the Crispin family who lived there. He could have been Radulfus Crispinus, who witnessed a charter before 1066. If so, this would be an impediment to the idea that the Crispins were descended from Geoffrey or William d’Eu, because a Crispin son and a Brionne/Eu daughter would be close cousins and so not permitted to marry by the Church.

If it was Ralph Crispin who married Bienfait’s daughter, thus showing that Gilbert Crispin I could not have been a son of the Counts of Brionne or Eu, there is one other possibility that nevertheless could still make the Crispin family descendants of Duke Richard I. Gilbert Crispin I’s wife was called Gunnor, but it isn’t clearly proved whether she was Gunnor d’Aunou or Gunnor d’Anet. These two ladies have pretty certainly been confounded long ago. Gunnor d’Aunou was a close relative of Gilbert de Brionne and granddaughter or great granddaughter of Duke Richard. So if she was the Crispins’ matriarch, then Gilbert Crispin II’s pro-anima request for the soul of Richard the Great Prince might just have been made because he was descended from the ducal line through his mother, not through his father…..

Alternatively, however, Raoul de Telgers is very likely to have been Raoul de la Cunelle, a vassal of the Crispins who held some land in Tillieres, and he might perhaps have been identified in this instance by the Tillieres toponym. Raoul de la Cunelle would be perfectly suitable to marry into the Bienfait/Clare family – he was a great grandson of Ralph d’Ivry and so part of the nobility and the right kinship grouping. He shared a common ancestor with Richard de Bienfait in Duchess Sprota, making them third cousins, but this should have just scraped past the Church consanguinity regulations so a marriage between their families would be legal. Finally, Raoul de la Cunelle was Gunnor d’Anet’s first cousin, possibly once removed, so he was probably a relative of the Crispins in the same social class.
Richard de Bienfait ratified a religious donation of land by Raoul de la Cunelle, so clearly they knew each other.

Although there is good evidence that the Crispins were most probably direct descendants of Rollo the Viking, William “Longsword and Duke Richard “The Fearless”, it is not firm proof. So various possible alternatives should also be considered.

Another suggested pedigree in older books, and slavishly repeated on the internet, has Gilbert Crispin as a son of Crespin Ansgot de Bec and Heloise de Guines. This is a long-standing, traditional belief, which would make him the grandson of Guillaume de Bec (c.918 to 1000AD) and Bertha de Vermandois. His great grandparents would thus be Hrolf Turstain (a nephew of Rollo) and Gerlotte de Blois.

This version of events contains a difficulty, however, because it shows Gilbert as a brother of Herluin, Abbot of Bec, which seems unlikely because Gilbert Crispin was not named in Ansgot’s sons’ inheritance. A 19th Century embellishment involving “Crispina daughter of Rollo” marrying Grimaldi of Monaco is pretty certainly an invention.

A broader family tree, through the wives and mothers of these men, would bring the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, early kings of France and King Alfred the Great of England into Gilbert Crispin’s list of ancestors.

A suggested Crispin descent from Ansgot apparently dates right back to the late 1000s, when William of Jumieges is said to have written that the first Gilbert Crispin and Herluin de Bec, who founded the Abbey of Bec in 1034, were both sons of Ansgoth and Heloise. Herluin described himself in a charter as a son of Ansgot.

(I might be misunderstanding this slightly: I haven’t seen William’s actual wording, and perhaps Gilbert Crispin being a brother of Herluin may have been a later assumption, simply based on the Crispins’ generous donations to Bec Abbey).

But 70 or 80 years later another chronicler of Norman families, Orderic Vitalis, seems to have implied that Gilbert Crispin was in fact Gilbert de Brionne – overlord of Herluin – again, this might have been a later assumption, and this idea is now discredited.

Neither of these beliefs was known to Miles Crispin, the monk at Bec Abbey and clearly a younger member of the same Crispin family, who in the early 1100s wrote in Latin “On the Origins of the Noble Crispins”. He claimed that Gilbert of Tillieres was the first to bear the name Crispin and although “of renowned origin and nobility”, that he founded the Crispin line.

Obviously, Gilbert I didn’t spring spontaneously out of the ground, but we can see that the very earliest writings show conflicting ideas about his parents.
Gilles Andre de la Roque listed these possibilities in his (heavily-criticised) book “Histoire Genealogique de la Maison de Harcourt”, in 1662, seeming to come to the view that the “house of Bec-Crespin” descended from “Ansgoth de Bec-Crespin”, he being the father of the first Gilbert Crespin.

One of the Crispin family’s large and widespread possessions in Normandy was the barony of Bec-Crespin, which was an area surrounding the chateau of Bec-Crespin, a few miles north of Le Havre, close to the town of Montivilliers. They held this castle and title from very early times – probably from the lifetime of Gilbert Crispin IV, in the mid 1100s, onwards, but whether any earlier than that is unclear. Our guess is that it was named after its Crispin family owners, but not necessarily right at the beginning of the dynasty.
There are a number of places called Bec in Normandy, just as there are many Becks in northern England. It was just a locational name, of Viking origin, for somewhere with a stream.

The Abbey of Bec is at a completely different place to Chateau du Bec-Crespin – a long way to the south west near the town of Brionne – so it would be a mistake to link Herluin of Bec Abbey to any Crispin of Bec Crespin castle simply through the word Bec. Yet, past antiquarians seem to have done just that and muddled these two places up, wrongly connecting Ansgot to Bec Crespin?
In the same way, there is also some historical evidence associating Ralph de Bec (another supposed son of Ansgot and brother of Gilbert Crispin I according to an early source) with other places named Bec near Fecamp – le Bec au Cauchois, and Bec-de-Mortagne – 20 or more miles further north than Bec-Crespin castle. One of Ralph de Bec’s sons was Walter de Bec-au-Cauchois, so Ralph seems unlikely to have been of the same family as Gilbert Crispin, whose descendants owned Bec-Crespin.

Past confusion about various places called Bec probably muddied the water about the Crispins’ origins. Ansgoth feels dubious.

Maybe, however, the Ansgoth version of events is partially true. Perhaps, just guessing, Heloise and Ansgoth might have been part of the family of, or were related in some way even if only through marriage, to Godfrey d’Eu and his son Gilbert de Brionne. One of Michael Stanhope’s suggestions is that, just possibly, Heloise was a sister of Gilbert de Brionne and her son Herluin, Abbot of Bec, was Brionne’s nephew. This would make Ansgoth and Heloise Gilbert Crispin’s relatives, but the exact relationship having been garbled during later centuries……?

The Crispins were clearly part of a kinship network involving several top aristocratic families, particularly the d’Ivry family, the de Crepon family and a branch of the ducal family through Geoffrey d’Eu. This implies relationships between these families: kinship connections were a seriously important part of Norman culture, binding land-owning families closely together for many generations through repeated, arranged inter-marriages. This strengthened and protected them in a violent, turbulent age. No-one in the higher levels of society could just marry who they fancied – that would have been completely unthinkable.

One likely suggestion is that the Crispins may have originated in the Crepon family. The monk called Milo Crispin, writing a century after the time of Gilbert Crispin I, said that Gilbert was given the nickname Crispin from the Latin phrase pinus crispinus – meaning he had bristly hair that stuck out like pine needles. It is probably true, but just maybe this tale was instead a bit of invented family folklore…?

Perhaps Crepon/Crespon/Crespin/Crispin are all one and the same name?
Crispin is written Crespin in French, and the village and family name Crepon was sometimes also written as Crespon.

André La Fresnaye, in the “Nouvelle Histoire de Normandie”, p. 110, 1814, called the commander of Tillieres castle Guillebert de CRESPON. Another French history book, “Revue de Rouen et de Normandie”, Volume 13, p. 268, 1845, called Osborn de Crepon, Ralph d’Ivry’s son-in-law, Osbern de CRESPON. Of course, there was great variation in historical spellings, but even so these examples make it worthy of consideration.

The authors of a history book called “The Falaise Roll”, Mordecai Jackson Crispin and Leonce Macary , noted this on page 138: “….while there is nothing known on record to indicate that Crispin and Crepon may have been the same name, they are nevertheless very similar”.

On the other hand, Gilbert de Brionne appears to have also been called Crispin in the past, which has caused great confusion for centuries. Many books and websites still wrongly claim that he and Gilbert Crispin I were the same man. Gilbert de Brionne is not thought to have been a member of Osbern de Crepon’s family, but there might have been a Crepon wife or mother in his unclear maternal ancestry. If so, either of these Gilberts might possibly have taken the name Crispin from their mother’s family.

Other evidence of Crispin kinship connections with these families includes the close association of their names in a number of ancient Norman charters.
In one, a gift of land by Gilbert Crispin II to Jumieges Abbey was witnessed by William FitzOsborn and Hugh d’Ivry. In another, Robert Crispin witnessed a gift to the Abbey of Saint-Ouen in Rouen by Osborn de Crepon, along with William FitzOsborn and Count William and Countess Mathilda (future king and queen of England).

Gilbert Crispin II with his sons, plus Guillaume de Breteuil and Roger de Bienfait, all confirmed a gift of land at Guernanville in Normandy by Gilbert Crispin and William FitzOsborn’s sub-tenant there. Gilbert Crispin and William FitzOsborn had apparently inherited this place from Bishop Hugh d’Ivry, although more likely through Hugh’s sister Emma, William FitzOsborn’s mother. (It is not impossible that Hugh might have been Gilbert Crispin’s father).
Some years later, William Crispin, William de Breteuil and Roger de Bienfait combined together again to oppose Robert, Count of Meulan, claiming the abbey of Bec as part of his demesne lands.

Osborn de Crepon and Gilbert de Brionne were two of William the Conquerer’s guardians who protected him after the early death of his father, while he was still a boy. Osborn and Gilbert were clearly both part of the Crispin “kinship network”, although probably only related to each other by marriage, (Osborn was probably Gilbert Crispin’s wife’s uncle).

This all implies that these families were inter-related, but does not reveal the Crispins’ origin.

Michael Stanhope has no doubts about the importance of these kinship links. He says: “The main point to me about early charters of other people that the Crispins witnessed is a link to the FitzOsborn family, that is, to the d’Ivris. Prevost was unable to offer an explanation for this. The general answer is that Gilbert Crispin or his father was at least intermarried into the ducal circle, or was a family member. It had to be a close relationship, because the entire defence of the Norman border was placed in the hands of the Crispins; such a role would have usually only been given to a blood relative.”

Illegitimate ducal children could turn out to be difficult and dangerous to their legitimate siblings, and Van Houts says they were often given important clerical or secular roles to keep everybody happy. Perhaps this might explain why Gilbert Crispin was given the job of defending the Norman border at Tillieres castle as a successor to the Tosnys and Neil Saint-Sauvieur?

Another suggestion is that Gilbert Crispin I may have been a son of Harfast or Herfast, brother of Duchess Gunnor who married Duke Richard I of Normandy. This is a plausible idea.

It has been speculated that Harfast and Gunnor might have been children of the Danish king Harald Bluetooth or Blåtand, c.910 to c.987, but there is no sound evidence for this. It is clear, however, that they came from the Cotentin peninsular of Normandy, which was settled by a second wave of Vikings, probably from Denmark, around the time they were born.

Harfast had a powerful son Osborn de Crepon, who was seneschal to William the Conquerer and who married Emma, daughter of Ralph d’Ivry (half-brother of Duke Richard I). These people were the Crepon family and there is much to support this conjecture as being quite possibly the solution. It would certainly explain the Crispins’ close association to the Crepons and the d’Ivrys if they were part of the same family.

For example, if Harfast was Gilbert Crispin’s father, then Gilbert would have been a 1st cousin of Duke Richard II. Gilbert Crispin II would therefore be a second cousin of Duke Robert, and also be a 1st cousin of William FitzOsborn, who was Hugh d’Ivry’s nephew. This might explain why they both held land that had previously belonged to Bishop Hugh.

And if Gilbert Crispin I was a son of Harfast, he would thus be a brother of Osborn de Crepon. So Osborn’s daughter who married Baldwin de Meules and Exeter, younger son of Gilbert de Brionne, would have been Gilbert Crispin’s neice. …..A series of purely hypothetical possible relationships that would link all of these families together nicely!

But, if the Crispins were not part of the Crepon family, these links could instead be explained by Gilbert Crispin’s wife Gunnor, being Gunnor d’Anet, daughter of Osmund de Conteville, as she was Osborn de Crepon’s niece. However, Gilbert Crispin couldn’t have married her if he was a Crepon too, because they would have been close cousins and this was prohibited by Church consanguinity rules. If that was the case, then his wife must have been Gunnor d’Alnou instead, daughter of Baldric the Teuton.

On the other hand, it has been claimed that Baldric the Teuton’s wife was Alix, a sister of Gilbert de Brionne. So if Alix was Gunnor d’Anou’s mother then Gunnor would have been Gilbert de Brionne’s niece – meaning Gilbert Crispin couldn’t have married her either if he was a son of Gilbert de Brionne and therefore they were first cousins!

Take your pick….. If Gilbert Crispin I married Gunnor d’Anet then presumably he wasn’t a Crepon. If instead he married Gunnor d’Aunou then he wasn’t a Brionne.

Either of these two Gunnors might have been his wife, and one or the other must have been the subject of confusion by past antiquarians. Michael Stanhope and I both favour Gunnor d’Anet being correct, because for the next few generations the Crispin family had close associations with members of her family, but few with the descendants of Gunnor d’Aunou’s relatives. This is a significant sign, since continuing close kinship connections like this were very important in medieval family life and culture. It makes Gunnor d’ANET the strong favourite.

Finally, another medieval genealogy writer, Michael Harris, suggested in 2012 that the first Gilbert Crispin might have been a son of Viscount Erchembald, who was closely connected in some unclear way with Osborn de Crepon. (Maybe they were half-brothers, or might perhaps Erchembald have married a sister of Osborn – or a sister of Osborn’s wife, Emma d’Ivri, thus attaining land in Celloville?).

This sounds a good theory, because Erchembald definitely had a son named Gilbert, who was badly wounded defending Osborn against his assassins in 1040. But although very plausible it has its pros and cons – as do all of the other ideas for the origins of the Crispins.

It’s a tangled web and many jigsaw pieces have been lost.

Perhaps the French historian Astrid Lemoine-Descourtieux was right in thinking that Gilbert Crispin I’s parents might not have been amongst the highest level of the Norman nobility: that it was mainly Gilbert’s fighting skills that suddenly brought the family greater power in the early 11th century and propelled them to the top level…. As the Crispins’ early biographer, Milo Crispin of Bec abbey, apparently did not know who Gilbert’s parents were, maybe they were not famous names in the 900s. After all, historian David Douglas emphasized in his writings that a whole new nobility came into existence in the duchy in that ruthless and turbulent period of invasions and rebellions, particularly in the first quarter of the 1000s.

So at the end of this very long discussion, we can still only begin the Crispin family pedigree with Gilbert Crispin I….. although we strongly favour the evidence that he was probably a direct descendant of Duke Richard I, and maybe an illegitimate son of Duke Richard II.

The motto for anybody seriously studying family origins back as far as Norman times should be: “Take nothing on trust – question everything!”

Nick Wormley, February 2019.

taf

unread,

Feb 3, 2019, 3:33:28 PM2/3/19

[very long post, so I have deleted a lot without comment.

On Sunday, February 3, 2019 at 9:51:41 AM UTC-8, Nick Wormley wrote:
> English genealogist Michael Stanhope, an expert in medieval family
> connections, has theorised that Gilbert Crispin I might have been
> the son of Gilbert de Brionne and a concubine. Gilbert de Brionne’s
> father was Geoffrey/Godfrey Count of Eu.

Based on what?

> An alternative possibility is that Gilbert Crispin’s father was
> Geoffrey’s brother Guillaume d’Eu, Duke Richard II, or one of
> their cousins. Geoffrey and Guillaume were illegitimate sons of
> Duke Richard I of Normandy, so if any of these suggested relationships
> was correct, Gilbert Crispin would be directly descended paternally
> from the first three Dukes of Normandy.

Except that there isn't really any evidence he was related to the ducal house in any way. All too often a medieval genealogist will take someone of unknown/obscure origin and decide he must have been related to the ruling house because they are the only ones about who we have information.

> This is all quite plausible and indeed likely.

Why is it likely or even plausible?

> But in truth, not enough detail is known about the Norman aristocratic
> families of that time to confirm this hypothesis – or to propose any
> definite alternative Crispin descent from the ducal family through a
> daughter, or through a half-bloodline (step-children by re-marriages
> or half-brothers and sisters through illegitimacy involving mistresses).
> However, this may well have happened, even though we are unlikely to
> ever know.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that all Norman noblemen were descended from or related to the dukes. If there isn't enough evidence to ever know _how_ Gilbert Crispin was related to the dukes, there probably isn't enough information to ever know _that_ Gilbert Crispin was relate to the dukes.

> It is also very likely that some of the key people in this story are
> missing – just no longer recorded and invisible to us. There might have
> been other brothers or sisters, younger sons and daughters, nieces,
> nephews, in-laws and cousins, forgotten by history.

Again, you seem to be begging the question, positing undocumented individuals for the purpose of creating an avenue for an otherwise undocumented relationship.

> At the bottom of this charter, the first cross was made by Gilbert Crispin
> II as his mark (signature). Next to this is the cross written by his wife
> (not named). Then, the cross immediately following theirs was written by
> William Count of Normandy (soon to become William the Conquerer, king of
> England). Undoubtedly, they stood in the same room beside each other and
> must have chatted together while this business was being transacted,
> probably at Jumieges Abbey. It helps to support the idea that they might
> have been related – perhaps cousins.

How so? Is it your argument that William only witnessed charters for relatives, as opposed to doing so for noblemen who were not his relatives, or for unrelated vassals.

> There is an important suggestion of this in the charter. In those days,
> giving a charitable donation to a religious institution was partly viewed
> as making a deal with God. In return for his generosity to Jumieges Abbey,
> Gilbert Crispin II asked the monks to pray for God’s kindness towards the
> souls of his parents, wife and children, his lord Duke William, and of
> RICHARD THE GREAT PRINCE. This meant either Duke Richard I of Normandy
> (933-996), or his eldest son Duke Richard II, who died in 1026. Both were
> referred to in Norman writings as “the great prince”.

So everyone who sings 'God Save the Queen' is a relative of the Queen?

> “The Falaise Roll”, page 137, claims that Richard I was named here because
> he was Gilbert Crispin’s great grandfather. Perhaps this book might have
> been muddling up Gilbert Crispin with Gilbert de Brionne, which happens
> frequently, but nevertheless its conclusion looks correct if Gilbert de
> Brionne was his father.

This work is completely unreliable.

> On the other hand, it is perhaps more likely that the Jumieges charter
> meant Duke Richard II, as he was closer in time to the first Crispin
> and was the ruler of Normandy when Gilbert was a young man. According
> to historian Elizabeth Van Houts, Richard II had a number of illegitimate
> children by several unidentified mistresses, and it seems very feasible
> that Gilbert Crispin I might have been one of them. If he was, then Duke
> Richard II would have been Gilbert Crispin II’s grandfather – a seemingly
> perfect explanation for the pro-anima clause.

The problem with this whole line of reasoning is that you have decided what the answer is and now you are trying to present the data in a manner that fits your conclusions. It takes more than just knowing that a man had illegitimate children to hypothesize your man was one of these, particularly when no primary document indicates there was any relationship.

> The wording of this charter does clearly imply that the Crispin
> family was probably descended from “Richard the Great Prince”.

Which wording is that?

> It feels as though Gilbert Crispin may have purposely mentioned him
> to make a political public statement about the importance of his family
> connections.

Given that he follows William, whose family connection to Richard is the relevant one? It wouldn't be the first time someone toadied up to their patron by glorifying the patron's ancestor.

> If so then his earliest-known ancestor was indeed Rollo the Viking.

But there is no indication this is the case.

> Presumably the same explanation would apply in the case of Gilbert Crispin
> II making a prayer request for Duke Richard – who must surely have been his
> ancestor?

No. Argument by analogy is problematic.

> Gilbert Crispin I held Tillieres as a vassal of Gilbert de Brionne, . . .

> This all indicates a strong, early connection between the Crispins and
> Gilbert de Brionne, certainly in the time when Gilbert Crispin I was a
> young man.

As you said, he was his vassal. That is a connection.

> It certainly suggests that he might have been Brionne’s illegitimate
> son or cousin.

No, it doesn't suggest anything of the sort.

> Although there is good evidence that the Crispins were most probably
> direct descendants of Rollo the Viking, William “Longsword and Duke
> Richard “The Fearless”, it is not firm proof.

I have not seen any good evidence this was the case.

> Another suggested pedigree in older books, and slavishly repeated on
> the internet, has Gilbert Crispin as a son of Crespin Ansgot de Bec
> and Heloise de Guines. This is a long-standing, traditional belief,
> which would make him the grandson of Guillaume de Bec (c.918 to 1000AD)
> and Bertha de Vermandois.

As with many such 'traditional' descents, this is unsupported nonsense. I very much doubt that Crespin Asgot de Bec even existed, as such, and the same for Heloise de Guines and Guillaume de Bec. There likely was a Bertha de Vermandois at some time in history, but not married to an obscure Norman.

> His great grandparents would thus be Hrolf Turstain (a nephew of Rollo)
> and Gerlotte de Blois.

More invention. All of these descents from nephews of Rollo are dubious. And Gerlotte de Blois is completely made up.

> A 19th Century embellishment involving “Crispina daughter of Rollo”
> marrying Grimaldi of Monaco is pretty certainly an invention.

Yes.

> A broader family tree, through the wives and mothers of these men,
> would bring the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, early kings of France
> and King Alfred the Great of England into Gilbert Crispin’s list of
> ancestors.

Except it wouldn't because the marriages are nothing but fantasy.

> A suggested Crispin descent from Ansgot apparently dates right back to the
> late 1000s, when William of Jumieges is said to have written that the first
> Gilbert Crispin and Herluin de Bec, who founded the Abbey of Bec in 1034,
> were both sons of Ansgoth and Heloise. Herluin described himself in a
> charter as a son of Ansgot.
>
> (I might be misunderstanding this slightly: I haven’t seen William’s actual
> wording,

This is critical. There is so much invention and creative interpretation out there that you simply cannot take the word of such things second hand.

> But 70 or 80 years later another chronicler of Norman families, Orderic
> Vitalis, seems to have implied that Gilbert Crispin was in fact Gilbert
> de Brionne – overlord of Herluin – again, this might have been a later
> assumption, and this idea is now discredited.

Again, you need to look at Orderic's writings and not later claims about what Orderic said.

> Past confusion about various places called Bec probably muddied the water
> about the Crispins’ origins. Ansgoth feels dubious.

At a minimum, he may be a chimeric combination of different people with the same given name.

> One of Michael Stanhope’s suggestions is that, just possibly, Heloise
> was a sister of Gilbert de Brionne and her son Herluin, Abbot of Bec,
> was Brionne’s nephew.

Based on what?

> The Crispins were clearly part of a kinship network involving several
> top aristocratic families, particularly the d’Ivry family, the de Crepon
> family and a branch of the ducal family through Geoffrey d’Eu. This
> implies relationships between these families:

This seems tautological. The existence of a kinship network is predicated on there being kinship, so of course it implies relationship, if it really existed. However, that their associations were of the nature of a kinship network is assumed here, so is not evidence of itself.

> No-one in the higher levels of society could just marry who they fancied
> – that would have been completely unthinkable.

There is every reason to think that Richard I did exactly that, and probably Richard II did as well for his second marriage.

> One likely suggestion is that the Crispins may have originated in the
> Crepon family.

No reason to think this.

> Perhaps Crepon/Crespon/Crespin/Crispin are all one and the same name?

Superficial similarities in name forms are usually misleading.

> The authors of a history book called “The Falaise Roll”, Mordecai Jackson
> Crispin and Leonce Macary , noted this on page 138: “….while there is
> nothing known on record to indicate that Crispin and Crepon may have been
> the same name, they are nevertheless very similar”.

The Falaise Roll is not a work of historical or linguistic scholarship that garners the respect of modern researchers.

> Other evidence of Crispin kinship connections with these families includes
> the close association of their names in a number of ancient Norman charters.
> In one, a gift of land by Gilbert Crispin II to Jumieges Abbey was witnessed
> by William FitzOsborn and Hugh d’Ivry. In another, Robert Crispin witnessed
> a gift to the Abbey of Saint-Ouen in Rouen by Osborn de Crepon, along with

> William FitzOsborn and Count William and Countess Mathilda.

Not everyone who witnessed charters can be assumed to have been related.

> Osborn and Gilbert were clearly both part of the Crispin “kinship network”,

No, they weren't clearly such.

> This all implies that these families were inter-related, but does not
> reveal the Crispins’ origin.

How so? based on witnessing a couple of charters? Again, this seems circular to me. You assume a kinship network was at play and then say the existence of a kinship network demonstrates a relationship.

> Michael Stanhope has no doubts about the importance of these kinship
> links.

Good for him.

> He says: “The main point to me about early charters of other people
> that the Crispins witnessed is a link to the FitzOsborn family, that
> is, to the d’Ivris. Prevost was unable to offer an explanation for
> this. The general answer is that Gilbert Crispin or his father was
> at least intermarried into the ducal circle, or was a family member.
> It had to be a close relationship, because the entire defence of the
> Norman border was placed in the hands of the Crispins; such a role
> would have usually only been given to a blood relative.”

To my eye, he is trying too hard to manufacture a connection.

> Illegitimate ducal children could turn out to be difficult and dangerous
> to their legitimate siblings, and Van Houts says they were often given
> important clerical or secular roles to keep everybody happy. Perhaps
> this might explain why Gilbert Crispin was given the job of defending
> the Norman border at Tillieres castle as a successor to the Tosnys and
> Neil Saint-Sauvieur?

Were the Tosnys and Saint-Sauviers ducal scions?

> Another suggestion is that Gilbert Crispin I may have been a son of Harfast
> or Herfast, brother of Duchess Gunnor who married Duke Richard I of
> Normandy. This is a plausible idea.

What makes this plausible? There is no evidence Herfast had more than one son.

> It has been speculated that Harfast and Gunnor might have been children
> of the Danish king Harald Bluetooth or Blåtand,

Calling this speculation is giving it too much credence. It was simply made up. Invented.

> Harfast had a powerful son Osborn de Crepon, who was seneschal to William
> the Conquerer and who married Emma, daughter of Ralph d’Ivry (half-brother
> of Duke Richard I). These people were the Crepon family and there is much
> to support this conjecture as being quite possibly the solution. It would
> certainly explain the Crispins’ close association to the Crepons and the
> d’Ivrys if they were part of the same family.

In this post alone you have already proposed a half-dozen completely different relationships that would 'certainly explain' some of the data? What does that tell you?

> But, if the Crispins were not part of the Crepon family, these links
> could instead be explained by Gilbert Crispin’s wife Gunnor, being
> Gunnor d’Anet, daughter of Osmund de Conteville, as she was Osborn de
> Crepon’s niece.

We don't know the precise genealogical connection between Osborn de Crepon and Osmund de Conteville. Anyhow, this is yet another relationship. You are simply playing 'pin the tail of the donkey' and every time the tail ends up somewhere different. That should really provide grounds for caution. Maybe it doesn't go on the donkey.

> Take your pick…..

My pick is:

E. none of the above.

> Finally, another medieval genealogy writer, Michael Harris, suggested in
> 2012 that the first Gilbert Crispin might have been a son of Viscount
> Erchembald, who was closely connected in some unclear way with Osborn de
> Crepon. (Maybe they were half-brothers, or might perhaps Erchembald have
> married a sister of Osborn – or a sister of Osborn’s wife, Emma d’Ivri,
> thus attaining land in Celloville?).

Where did Mr. Harris propose this? It seems like more speculative connect-the-dots to me.

> So at the end of this very long discussion, we can still only begin
> the Crispin family pedigree with Gilbert Crispin I….. although we
> strongly favour the evidence that he was probably a direct descendant
> of Duke Richard I, and maybe an illegitimate son of Duke Richard II.

We? You yourself spent the second half of the post talking about him not being descended from Richard I, but instead being a Gunnorid.

> The motto for anybody seriously studying family origins back as far as
> Norman times should be: “Take nothing on trust – question everything!”

OK, but I don't see that approach in practice here. You seem to be intent of forcing some (any) connection to the dukes when there isn't the data to support any specific one.

taf

Nick Wormley

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Feb 3, 2019, 4:57:02 PM2/3/19

My goodness! What a rude, bad-mannered response. I placed a discursive article on a public forum, which I tried to make as balanced as I could within my knowledge, playing devil's advocate to some of my personal views, hoping for some pleasant, helpful responses or ideas. Instead you aggressively hammer me as though I am an imbecile and instantly shoot the whole lot down in flames.
I live in England and most people here would be offended by such a curt, ungentlemanly reply.
I don’t mind being corrected or guided - as I said at the start I am an amateur trying to learn about Norman history and genealogy - but I do not wish to speak to you again unless you can respond in a polite manner.
Nick.

P J Evans

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Feb 3, 2019, 5:57:40 PM2/3/19

What a *rude* reply to someone (an expert) who is pointing out how weak your first post is in terms of actual genealogy.

taf

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Feb 3, 2019, 6:00:47 PM2/3/19

On Sunday, February 3, 2019 at 1:57:02 PM UTC-8, Nick Wormley wrote:

> My goodness! What a rude, bad-mannered response. I placed a discursive
> article on a public forum, which I tried to make as balanced as I could
> within my knowledge, playing devil's advocate to some of my personal
> views, hoping for some pleasant, helpful responses or ideas. Instead
> you aggressively hammer me as though I am an imbecile and instantly
> shoot the whole lot down in flames.

Sorry you took it that way. I did not mean to imply imbecility on your part.
However, I did find much of your speculation to merit being shot down in flames. If you will pardon the mixed metaphor, it all seemed like a house of cards to me. I realize that this can be a hard blow when you have a natural pride in the product of your efforts. Still, as enticing as it is to say that a person of unknown parentage was really illegitimate son of the ruler, one really needs more evidence before calling such a proposal plausible, let alone likely.

And yes, I did it curtly, but there was just so much in your post to comment on that it would have taken days to go into detail on every point raised. If you choose to continue this discussion, it would be helpful were you to make shorter posts focused on the individual questions/relationships. Such posts are more likely to generate more detailed response.

> I don’t mind being corrected or guided

Here is my guidance - sometimes we have to be satisfied with 'there is insufficient data to allow his parents to be determined.'

> - as I said at the start I am an amateur trying to learn about Norman
> history and genealogy - but I do not wish to speak to you again unless
> you can respond in a polite manner.

That is entirely up to you.

taf

Peter Stewart

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Feb 4, 2019, 12:52:21 AM2/4/19

On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 4:51:41 AM UTC+11, Nick Wormley wrote:

<snip>

>
> Gilbert Crispin I and his wife Gunnor had children named Gilbert, William, Robert, Emma, Hesilia, nearly certainly Miles, and possibly Ralph.
> The eldest son, Gilbert Crispin II, succeeded his father as the castellan of Tillieres. He, William and Miles are believed to have all fought at Hastings.
> English genealogist Michael Stanhope, an expert in medieval family connections, has theorised that Gilbert Crispin I might have been the son of Gilbert de Brionne and a concubine. Gilbert de Brionne’s father was Geoffrey/Godfrey Count of Eu.

Apparently Michael Stanhope was not aware that, according to Orderic, a niece of Gilbert of Brionne was Gilbert Crispin I's mother-in-law: it is extremely implausible that he and his wife Gunnor could have been first cousins once removed.

Peter Stewart

Nick Wormley

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unread,

Feb 4, 2019, 5:53:51 PM2/4/19

On Monday, February 4, 2019 at 10:53:17 PM UTC+11, Nick Wormley wrote:
> Thank you Taf. I agree with your point, as a general principle. Of course, one should not set out to find evidence for ‘pre-conceived’ answers.
>
> However, I don’t feel that means we aren’t permitted to question the accuracy, if only in our minds, of a primary source unless there is evidence against it that would ‘stand up in court’.
>
> Orderic wrote about these family relationships a century later, living in a monastery in a different country, in a time when there were no official birth, death or marriage records. I think most historians would say that some of his writings are historically suspect, to some degree. So while I am not stating that what he wrote about Baldric the Teuton marrying a niece of Gilbert de Brionne was inaccurate, I feel it is perfectly reasonable to wonder about it.
> Gilbert de Brionne’s grandfather was born in 932 or 933, so it is unlikely that Gilbert and any siblings or cousins were born much before about 975 and maybe a few years later. It seems unlikely that a niece of his would be born much before 1,000AD. This was roughly about the same time as Gilbert Crispin, whose own children were born in the 1020s to 1030s. If their mother was a daughter of this niece, it does feel like stretching the timescale a bit to squeeze her in. OK, that is just playing a game with a few dates and it doesn’t rule the relationship out, but it does make me think about other possibilities. If Orderic called Baldric’s bride nepti, or similar, might this have meant Gilbert’s wife’s niece, or even just a younger female relative of either of them, bearing in mind there was some ambiguity in medieval use of the words nepos and nepti?
>

The family of Baudry the German held lands near Orderic's abbey, and his account of the relationships in question is fairly straightforward - he wrote that Gilbert of Brionne gave his "neptis" in marriage to Baudry and that they had six sons and several daughters ("Gislebertus comes Brionnæ nepos Ricardi ducis Normannorum Baldrico Teutonico ... neptem suam in coniugium dedit, ex qua nati sunt sex filii et plures filiæ"). It was not usual for the nieces of wives to be at the disposal in this way of their uncles by marriage, or for that matter young relatives more distantly connected by blood than a sibling's child, and I can see no solid reason from chronology to enter such remote possibilities into consideration. Gilbert of Brionne may have had an older sister whose daughter in turn was senior by a generation to Gilbert Crispin. Not knowing the details is not in itself sufficient reason to contradict Orderic, who was well acquainted with many people who would have known Baudry's family and took the trouble to name all six of his sons.

> All I am saying is that I think the primary source in this instance is reasonably questionable, and if we view it as correct until proved otherwise we might be locking ourselves into an error. If we don’t pose such thoughts, how can we learn? Any history book about Norman genealogy that insists on cast-iron, proven facts is going to be very thin. The important thing is to make clear that any conjecture to fill in the gaps is just that.

This approach could just as well extend to any information that is not supported by absolute proof - including the paternity of anyone who lived in the medieval era. How certainly do you know that Gilbert of Brionne was actually a son of Richard I of Normandy (who was born in 931 or 932 by the way, not in 933, since he was 10 years old in 942)?

Peter Stewart

Nick Wormley

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Feb 5, 2019, 3:28:01 AM2/5/19

Good points Peter. Thank you.

Nick.

mike

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Feb 15, 2019, 4:38:47 AM2/15/19

On Sunday, February 3, 2019 at 5:51:41 PM UTC, Nick Wormley wrote:>

>it is not clear who Gilbert Crispin’s parents or ancestors were. He is >wrongly and repeatedly confused in many websites and books >with Gilbert Count >of Brionne – frequent statements that they were one and the same man are very >unlikely to be correct, as they had >different children and lived in different >places!

I think you are right to say that Gilbert of Brionne and this Gilbert Crispin
are different people. And if this is a first effort, well done and thankyou for
posting.

>Gilbert was supposedly nicknamed Crispin because he had spikey, brush-like >hair. He was first mentioned in Duke Richard II’s entourage at Fecamp in >1025.

If you are quoting a source you need to be exact about which one and what they
say. As you say many have in the past conflated the 2 gilberts, and ascribed
this story to Gilbert of Brionne. Perhaps you might debunk this theory first as its still all over the internet.

Why not adopt the Stewart Baldwin approach and list what the historical
sources say about an individual, and then list the various theories and examine
them 1 by 1 to see if the evidence supports any of them. Its important to keep
the sources and theories separate so that readers can clearly see what is
historical and what is interpretation or speculation. At various points you
suggest or quote others who say this Gilbert Crispin might be a son of Richard
I, Richard II or Gilbert of Brionne or William of Eu, and others as well, but
its not always easy to follow.

>Gilbert Crispin I and his wife Gunnor had children named Gilbert, William, >Robert, Emma, Hesilia, nearly certainly Miles, and >possibly Ralph.

Who gives this family list? Is it from the work ascribed to Milo Crispin? If he
doesnt mention 'nearly certainly Miles' and 'possibly Ralph', you should keep
this separate. And do you mean Miles of wallingford and the man you call Raoul
de Telgers?

>A Raoul de Telgers is said, in an ancient chronicle, to have married a >daughter of Richard de Bienfait (Clare), son of Gilbert de >Brionne. “Telgers” >is thought to have been a Norman-Latin way of writing Tillieres, so he may >have been a member of the Crispin >family who lived there. He could have been >Radulfus Crispinus, who witnessed a charter before 1066.

an ancient chronicle eh? if you mean William of Jumieges, you should say. A
quick check suggests the T in _Telegeriis_ could easily be a mistake for an F,
and therefore = Fougeres and maybe nothing to do with the Crispins.

>Gilbert Crispin I’s wife was called Gunnor, but it isn’t clearly proved >whether she was Gunnor d’Aunou or Gunnor d’Anet.

i was going to ask what is the evidence she was either, but i think Peter has dealt with that.

>A suggested Crispin descent from Ansgot apparently dates right back to the >late 1000s, when William of Jumieges is said to have >written that the first >Gilbert Crispin and Herluin de Bec, who founded the Abbey of Bec I>n 1034, >were both sons of Ansgoth and >Heloise. Herluin described himself in a charter >as a son of Ansgot.

>(I might be misunderstanding this slightly: I haven’t seen William’s actual >wording, and perhaps Gilbert Crispin being a brother of >Herluin may have been >a later assumption, simply based on the Crispins’ generous donations to Bec >Abbey).

this seems pretty important. You should check to see if william did say that.
I'm not an expert but its possible the info on Herluins descent might be from
his biography by Gilbert Crispin [a different one, who's buried in Westminster
abbey] I think Herluin was a knight of Gilbert of Brionne. I've not seen it
suggested before that Herluin was brother of your Gilbert Crispin.

>Neither of these beliefs was known to Miles Crispin, the monk at Bec Abbey and >clearly a younger member of the same Crispin family, >who in the early 1100s >wrote in Latin “On the Origins of the Noble Crispins”. He claimed that Gilbert >of Tillieres was the first to >bear the name Crispin and although “of renowned >origin and nobility”, that he founded the Crispin line.

if this work was written by the monk of Bec, (and the quote by Stanhope says
its full title is "How The Holy Virgin Appeared To William Crispin The Elder
And On The Origin Of The Crispin Family", [ed. Migne, cols. 735-744, 1856]),
and if he did belong to the family, it seems odd he didnt mention any claim for
ducal descent, if there was one. And if the author was the monk of Bec,
wouldnt he have mentioned if the founder of the family was the brother of its
first abbot?

>The Abbey of Bec is at a completely different place to Chateau du Bec-Crespin – a long way to the south west near the town of Brionne >– so it would be a >mistake to link Herluin of Bec Abbey to any Crispin of Bec Crespin castle >simply through the word Bec. Yet, past >antiquarians seem to have done just >that and muddled these two places up, wrongly connecting Ansgot to Bec >Crespin?

very possibly. it certainly confused me!

>The monk called Milo Crispin, writing a century after the time of Gilbert >Crispin I, said that Gilbert was given the nickname Crispin >from the Latin >phrase pinus crispinus – meaning he had bristly hair that stuck out like pine >needles.

this source seems quite important when discussing the origin of this family. It seems that in the 12th century, Gilbert Crispin was remembered more for his hairstyle than his descent.

good luck on the research

mike

mike

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Feb 15, 2019, 9:54:14 AM2/15/19

here is his article:
https://walterfitzgilbertdehamilton.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/further-notices-of-the-crispins/

I havnt read it, I just wanted to see what sources he had used, particularly
the miraculous one ;)

mike

Nick Wormley

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Feb 15, 2019, 4:08:00 PM2/15/19

Hello Mike,

Thank you very much for these helpful thoughts and suggestions. The approach to presentation that you recommend seems very sensible and I will attempt to set out some of what I posted again, in the clearer way that you and Taf have suggested. Not today, however, as this would need some time and checking of sources. I accept that I have been a bit brief on sources and that people do need them. I only meant in the first place to write an outline and suddenly that had reached 5,000 words, so it may be best to talk about one bit at a time.

Just for now, I will respond to several of your points in detail, and hopefully add more information on other questions that have been asked at a later date.

Firstly, Michael Stanhope’s writings about the Crispins, among others, can be read on his personal website, starting with an article he wrote in 2014 entitled “The Norman Elite”:

https://walterfitzgilbertdehamilton.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/the-norman-elite/

Since then he has added quite a number of hypothetical genealogical constructions, which you can find by working through the monthly archives list on the right hand side of the screen. Over time you will see that he may sometimes appear to contradict earlier thoughts, but he is simply presenting ideas as he works on them, in the realm of theoretical possibilities.

Secondly, yes I know it is important to read precisely what William of Jumieges and Orderic Vitalis may have written in relation to Gilbert Crispin I, Ansgot and Heloise etc, but unfortunately I don’t have a copy of William’s Latin writings and haven’t been able to obtain one. To be honest, my only income is a small pension and I have relied heavily on what is freely available on the internet. I can’t afford to build my own historical library, much as I would like to, or readily justify a trip to London or Oxford to see these passages in major archives. In any case, I am far from being the world’s greatest Latin scholar, having forgotten most of what I learnt at school long ago, so I was vaguely hoping that perhaps some kindly person might have William of Jumieges’ book and be willing to check, please, if he did write about this and if so what he put. If anybody could, I would be ever so grateful. Thank you!

I am woefully unclear about this because it was just my perception from struggling to translate a page in antique French from Giles Andre de la Roque’s (much-criticised) 17th century history of the Harcourts. I am not a great French scholar either, but as far as I think I understood it, la Roque wrote that Phillipe, lord of Plessy-Mornay, and others who had worked on the genealogy of his house, said that it descended from Ansgoth Crespin, lord of Bec Crespin.

But he also added that “The History of the Abbey of Bec” gave a different origin – that this house descended from Gilbert Crispin, “who first bore this nickname because he had curly/spiky (crespes) hair”.

La Roque also quoted William of Jumieges (late 11th century and nearly contemporary) as saying that the “trunk” (core/base?) of the family was Gilbert Crispin captain of Tillieres, who helped Abbot Herluin, son of Ansgoth and Heloise of the family of the Counts of Flanders.

Finally, la Roque appears to quote a fourth version of events from Orderic Vitalis, in which Gilbert Crispin is the same man as Gilbert Count of Brionne, living in 1080.
(Both Gilberts were dead well before that year. I don’t know if this means that today’s confusion stems from Orderic’s writings, or whether La Roque misunderstood and misquoted him? If I could see exactly what Orderic and William of Jumieges wrote it might clear up these points! Maybe I just translated it very badly....

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SZQYVqN7j0MC&pg=PA629&lpg=PA629&dq=Ansgoth+de+Bec&source=bl&ots=MMWKUhToKE&sig=tP-blK16LLyaZ1_UXSLch-8VCHs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG9qrvoLHXAhXIOiYKHc4LCxgQ6AEIMzAD#v=onepage&q=Ansgoth%20de%20Bec&f=false

However, although a disciplined approach to studying history, like any other subject, is of course right, I also feel that the ‘contemporary’ historical sources we have for the Norman period are not beyond hypothetical questioning and challenge.

In a sense, Orderic is not a Primary Source for events in the early 11th century: even his informants weren’t. It cannot be known who they were or whether the information they conveyed to him was totally accurate. It is unlikely that they could read or write, unless they were priests. Any knowledge they may have had about the family details of people who were born two, three or four generations prior to them was fairly certainly passed on by verbal tradition.

Unless such information is confirmed by other, separate, Norman sources, these genealogical details in the writings of Orderic Vitalis are accepted on faith, not absolutely-provable fact. A judge, in a modern court, would call them heresay and rule them inadmissible as evidence in a trial.

This does not mean, of course, that much of what he wrote might be in error; probably the large majority of it is accurate. But this is an assumption. We were not there and we cannot be certain about anything.

Thirdly Mike, I agree that Milo the monk at Bec, who is our main “biographer” for the earliest Crispin generations, might be expected to have known whether Gilbert Crispin I (his great grandfather?) was of ducal descent, and that if so he would have recorded this. But he doesn’t appear to have known anything about Gilbert’s ancestry.

I wonder, if perhaps, a cultural shift took place during the 11th and early 12th centuries, in which the old Viking attitude to mistresses being acceptable was steadily replaced by a much stricter moral stand by the comparatively recently-adopted Christian Church in Normandy. Maybe old ways of life took some decades to die out and by Milo’s time illegitimacy was becoming a moral taboo (comparable to the change from rakish 18th century debauchery to humourless Victorian virtue). Perhaps Milo, the presumably-esteemed biographer of several of the first abbots of Bec, knew that the first Crispin was illegitimate and preferred to brush that detail about the abbey’s most major family of patrons under the carpet? I don’t know this, I am just guessing. If any reader can confirm my suggestion or correct it please do so.

Any knowledge about the first Crispin was probably just passed on verbally across several generations until Milo put in writing “De Nobili Genere Crispinorum”. How many people today could tell you any information at all about their great grandparents? Very few.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=338xAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA324&lpg=RA1-PA324&dq=Luc+d'Achery+de+nobili+genere&source=bl&ots=h02_8XRGPk&sig=7vOZW-E1F72LNMlVYpvVtxPbcGI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjlve_H3s_XAhXpBcAKHXbxB8MQ6AEIUDAG#v=onepage&q=Luc%20d'Achery%20de%20nobili%20genere&f=false

Page 321. Section headed: “Miraculum quo B.Maria subvenit Guillelmo Crispino seniori: ubi de nobili Crispinorum genere agitur.”
This looks the same Latin passage to me as Mignes’ translation published in 1854.

Finally, before I bore everybody to sleep, you asked where my list of Gilbert Crispin’s children came from. Mid 11th century Norman charters name Gilbert II and William Crispin of Neufles as sons of Gilbert I and it is widely and generally accepted that his daughters were Hesilia, who married William Malet, and Emma Crispin, who married Pierre de Conde, living in the Risle valley. Robert Crispin is also recorded in Norman recordsas a mercenary in the Middle East. I could be more specific about original sources for these five if pressed, but I’m not aware that any historians have any doubts about them.

I suggested that that there might have been another brother called Ralph, for two reasons:

(1)I have read that Guillaume de Jumieges wrote (apparently Vol 3. page 312 if you have the book!) that Roger de Bienfate’s sister married ‘Rodolphe de Tillieres’. The Crispins were castellans of Tillieres Castle. This does not necessarily mean that this Ralph was a Crispin: other families lived at Tillieres too, eg the Crispins had a vassal there called Ralph de la Cunelle.

(2)There does seem to have been a Ralph Crispin living and presumably a grown man in pre-Conquest times. He is shown as a key witness in a charter for St Amand’s abbey. It was signed by Count William of Normandy and by Nicholas de Bacqueville. The third witness was a Ralph Crispin. As this must have happened no later than 1066, it implies that this Ralph was probably born no later than c.1045, which strongly suggests that he must have been a younger son of Gilbert Crispin I. (I have a reputable book source for this, on the internet, but I can’t find it this minute - please take my word for it for now).

The statement that Miles Crispin of Wallingford was nearly certainly a son of the first Gilbert Crispin is purely my own suggestion.

I think this because he had a son named Hugh who was an adult before 1087. This implies that the latest Hugh’s father might have been born was in the early 1040s and probably a few years earlier, and so chronologically he looks like a son of the first Crispin rather than his grandson.

The evidence comes from William the Conquerer’s confirmation charter of English gifts made to Bec Abbey in Normandy. (This is a separate, slightly-later charter from King William’s 1077 grand confirmation of donations made to Bec in Normandy).

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-7ISVNy75HUC&pg=PA64&dq=Hugh+son+of+Milo+Crispin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE3JW-3MXXAhWlJMAKHUrMDCEQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=%20Crispin&f=false

This charter has to date from between 1079, when Anselm became the Abbot of Bec, and 1087, when King William I died. So the list of gifts it records on pages 367 to 369 must have been written and sealed very close to the Domesday survey or at the most just several years earlier.

Under the sub-heading “Milo Crispin concedes benefactions of his men”, the list shows Hugh son of Milo donating the entire manor of Swyncombe in Oxfordshire, as well as the tithes of 15 other manors, mostly also in Oxfordshire, but several in Gloucestershire, Berks and Bucks.

All of these manors (except one held from Robert d’Ouilly, Milo’s father-in-law) are shown in the Domesday Book to have belonged to Miles Crispin alone, both as lord and tenant-in-chief in 1086. In other words none of them were infeudated to sub-tenants. Miles Crispin kept these lands for himself and did not let them out to other tenants.

So if Hugh fitz-Milo, named as donating these manors with Miles Crispin’s consent in the Royal confirmation charter, was a tenant there, then he must have disappeared totally and very suddenly soon afterwards, with the effect that he did not exist in the Domesday survey of 1086.

Did this Hugh die, leaving no heirs or successors, and at that moment Miles Crispin decided to from then on keep all of these manors entirely as his own, not appointing a replacement tenant?

I don’t feel that is very likely. Moreover, if this Hugh had been a straightforward tenant of Miles Crispin before Domesday then he must have been an extremely pious or very wealthy man, to have given away a whole village and all the tithe incomes from so many other villages to a monastery across the sea in Normandy. Surely, he wouldn’t have been just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill tenant to display such generosity – it would imply he was in the top league of land-owners.

I think it is much more probable that the words Hugh fitz-Milo do really mean “Hugh, son of Miles Crispin” - probably not described as an official tenant in the Domesday Book because he was part of Miles’ close family, perhaps acting at the time of the Bec confirmation charter as a steward for his father during one of Miles’ Crispins’ recorded bouts of illness? Miles held over 80 manors altogether and he no doubt could have afforded such generous largesse.

The other ‘man of Milo’ recorded on the confirmation list, Richard fitz-Reinfried, gave the tithes of three manors, where Domesday does name him as being tenant of Milo Crispin.

(The tithes of three further Oxfordshire manors were also given by a Hugh, quite probably the same man, but these three were held of the king).

There is an opposite reason for questioning this conclusion in that Hugh did not inherit Miles Crispin’s extensive lands, and a cautionary note suggesting doubt was written by historian Katherine Keats-Rohan, who pointed out that there is also a Milo de Moli in the Domesday survey at Abingdon, holding some land of King William. She wonders if this might have been a different Miles to Miles Crispin, ie two Milos both living in the same patch, and if so, maybe this Milo de Moli might have been Hugh’s father?

Keats-Rohan says there was a de Molay family in the Wallingford area in the 12th century and they might have come from what is nowadays called Le Molay-Littry, near Bayeaux.

I feel this is a perfectly-reasonable comment to make, but I don’t view it as strong evidence that Hugh fitz-Milo in the Bec charter is likely to be from this other possible family instead. They do not appear to have been tenants of Miles Crispin or greatly-important in the area. I’m not sure, but maybe Dr Keats-Rohan was just quoting a later charter mention of Hugh fitz-Milo, still living in about 1115? If that was so, perhaps there was no other Moli/Molay family in Norman times in Abingdon: Milo de Moli holding a parcel of land of the king could just have been Miles Crispin identified by a different scribe as a variant spelling of Milo de Meules. Meules and Sap were villages in Normandy granted by Duke William before the Battle of Hastings to Baldwin de Brionne/Meules/Sap/Exeter etc – a son of Gilbert de Brionne and closely associated with the Crispin family at a number of locations. He was called Baldwin de Meules in the king’s 1077 Bec confirmation charter.

Evidence that Milo de Molis holding of the king at Wallingford could in fact have been Miles Crispin, identified on one occasion as a Latinised spelling of Meules, where he might have been a tenant of Baldwin, can be seen from this Google search:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?biw=1366&bih=651&tbm=bks&ei=-87xWsbRHYuXgAa-y6iIDA&q=Baldwin+de+Meules&oq=Baldwin+de+Meules&gs_l=psy-ab.12...239360.241385.0.243707.7.7.0.0.0.0.118.503.6j1.7.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.-chVtIfhp0c

Miles married Matilda d’Ouilly in 1083 (from memory) and then they may have had a daughter also called Matilda (Maud), but she may not have been his first wife. I am certainly inclined to think that Miles appears to have had an adult son living between 1079 and 1087. So therefore Miles was probably born in the 1020s to 1030s, and was presumably a brother of William Crispin I, not his son.

Miles probably fought at the Battle of Senlac in 1066 and it seems as though he was given by far the most Conquest rewards in the Crispin family. William and Gilbert II Crispin, who I guess were his brothers, may have fought in the conquest battle too, but the duke needed them to carry on with their vital defensive duties in the Norman homeland, not move to live in the new colony of England.

Why Hugh did not apparently inherit Miles’ lands is a difficulty that I don’t know how to answer. Perhaps he was illegitimate.

If anybody is still reading this I am sorry to have rambled on for so long. As a small gift for your fortitude, if you don’t already know this, there is a marvellous website provided by the University of Caen, giving easy public access to about (incredibly) 8,500 Norman charters and documents at:

https://www.unicaen.fr/scripta/

I hope this is helpful to somebody, somewhere.
Best wishes to all,

Nick.

Peter Stewart

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Feb 15, 2019, 6:47:07 PM2/15/19

You would do the newsgroup, and yourself, a favour by breaking up long posts into shorter ones focused on separate or at least related points at issue rather than trying to cover all at once. At any rate, that is how I shall respond (in no particular order, but just as I can find the time to dip in):

On Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 8:08:00 AM UTC+11, Nick Wormley wrote:

<snip>

> I suggested that that there might have been another brother called Ralph, for two reasons:
>
> (1)I have read that Guillaume de Jumieges wrote (apparently Vol 3. page 312 if you have the book!) that Roger de Bienfate’s sister married ‘Rodolphe de Tillieres’. The Crispins were castellans of Tillieres Castle. This does not necessarily mean that this Ralph was a Crispin: other families lived at Tillieres too, eg the Crispins had a vassal there called Ralph de la Cunelle.

I don't know where you can have read about a 3-volume edition of Guillaume de Jumièges but I can't find one. In any case, the information you are relating here is wrong:

First, the relevant passage was not written by Guillaume himself but appears in the additional book of the Gesta written by Robert de Torigny.

Secondly, the sister of Roger de Bienfaite in question was Avice and her husband was Raoul I of Fougères ("Rodulfo de Felgeriis", died 1124) not "de Tillières" at all.

> (2)There does seem to have been a Ralph Crispin living and presumably a grown man in pre-Conquest times. He is shown as a key witness in a charter for St Amand’s abbey. It was signed by Count William of Normandy and by Nicholas de Bacqueville. The third witness was a Ralph Crispin. As this must have happened no later than 1066, it implies that this Ralph was probably born no later than c.1045, which strongly suggests that he must have been a younger son of Gilbert Crispin I. (I have a reputable book source for this, on the internet, but I can’t find it this minute - please take my word for it for now).

I'm not sure what you mean by a "key" witness, but the Ralph Crispin ("Radulfus Crispinus") in this document (known from its transciption in the later pancarte and even later cartulary of Saint-Amand de Rouen) was the third witness listed after the subscription by Nicolas de Bacqueville. The first witness named after Nicolas was described as a chaplain ("Seufredus capellanus") and the second as his man ("Wigerus homo Nicholai"), so that Ralph Crispin named after the latter was presumably not of higher status than this. There is no circumstance I can see to connect him with the contemporary castellan of Tillières, Gilbert, who happened to have the same byname. At this time (the 1040s-60s) Crispin was not a patented surname belonging to one family exclusively: any number of lowlier people may have also acquired the same sobriquet from having spikey hair as children.

Peter Stewart

Peter Stewart

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Feb 15, 2019, 11:39:43 PM2/15/19

On Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 8:08:00 AM UTC+11, Nick Wormley wrote:

<snip>
>

> Secondly, yes I know it is important to read precisely what William of Jumieges and Orderic Vitalis may have written in relation to Gilbert Crispin I, Ansgot and Heloise etc, but unfortunately I don’t have a copy of William’s Latin writings and haven’t been able to obtain one. To be honest, my only income is a small pension and I have relied heavily on what is freely available on the internet. I can’t afford to build my own historical library, much as I would like to, or readily justify a trip to London or Oxford to see these passages in major archives. In any case, I am far from being the world’s greatest Latin scholar, having forgotten most of what I learnt at school long ago, so I was vaguely hoping that perhaps some kindly person might have William of Jumieges’ book and be willing to check, please, if he did write about this and if so what he put. If anybody could, I would be ever so grateful. Thank you!
>
> I am woefully unclear about this because it was just my perception from struggling to translate a page in antique French from Giles Andre de la Roque’s (much-criticised) 17th century history of the Harcourts. I am not a great French scholar either, but as far as I think I understood it, la Roque wrote that Phillipe, lord of Plessy-Mornay, and others who had worked on the genealogy of his house, said that it descended from Ansgoth Crespin, lord of Bec Crespin.
>
> But he also added that “The History of the Abbey of Bec” gave a different origin – that this house descended from Gilbert Crispin, “who first bore this nickname because he had curly/spiky (crespes) hair”.
>
> La Roque also quoted William of Jumieges (late 11th century and nearly contemporary) as saying that the “trunk” (core/base?) of the family was Gilbert Crispin captain of Tillieres, who helped Abbot Herluin, son of Ansgoth and Heloise of the family of the Counts of Flanders.
>
> Finally, la Roque appears to quote a fourth version of events from Orderic Vitalis, in which Gilbert Crispin is the same man as Gilbert Count of Brionne, living in 1080.
> (Both Gilberts were dead well before that year. I don’t know if this means that today’s confusion stems from Orderic’s writings, or whether La Roque misunderstood and misquoted him? If I could see exactly what Orderic and William of Jumieges wrote it might clear up these points! Maybe I just translated it very badly....
>
> https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SZQYVqN7j0MC&pg=PA629&lpg=PA629&dq=Ansgoth+de+Bec&source=bl&ots=MMWKUhToKE&sig=tP-blK16LLyaZ1_UXSLch-8VCHs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG9qrvoLHXAhXIOiYKHc4LCxgQ6AEIMzAD#v=onepage&q=Ansgoth%20de%20Bec&f=false
>

This obsolete work is not worth using for your purposes - for instance, the “The History of the Abbey of Bec” is a 15th-century compilation that confuses Gilbert I with his son Gilbert II, who is wrongly said to have been the first castellan of Tillières; while William of Poitiers, archdeacon of Lisieux, said nothing at all about the origin of this family.

William of Jumièges correctly identified Gilbert I as the first castellan, but said nothing about his origin. He named the man only once, briefly, writing about the siege of Tillières by king Henri I.

Robert de Torigny added a passage touching on the background of Herluin, abbot of Le Bec, describing his father Ansgot as a man of Viking descent and his mother Héloïse as related to the counts of Flanders. There is nothing in this account specifying anything more than these vague statements.

Orderic, as discussed before, related that Gilbert of Brionne married his niece to Baudry the German by whom she had six sons and several daughters, including the wife of Gilbert I. Baudry had both a brother and a son named Wiger, and Nicolas de Bacqueville was another of the six sons. That the latter had a man in his entourage also named Wiger (hardly surprising, since vassals frequently used the same names as their lords) who witnessed along with a man named Ralph Crispin is not enough evidence to suggest further blood relationships.

Peter Stewart

Peter Stewart

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Feb 15, 2019, 11:58:19 PM2/15/19

On Saturday, February 16, 2019 at 8:08:00 AM UTC+11, Nick Wormley wrote:

<snip>

> However, although a disciplined approach to studying history, like any other subject, is of course right, I also feel that the ‘contemporary’ historical sources we have for the Norman period are not beyond hypothetical questioning and challenge.
>
> In a sense, Orderic is not a Primary Source for events in the early 11th century: even his informants weren’t. It cannot be known who they were or whether the information they conveyed to him was totally accurate. It is unlikely that they could read or write, unless they were priests. Any knowledge they may have had about the family details of people who were born two, three or four generations prior to them was fairly certainly passed on by verbal tradition.
>
> Unless such information is confirmed by other, separate, Norman sources, these genealogical details in the writings of Orderic Vitalis are accepted on faith, not absolutely-provable fact. A judge, in a modern court, would call them heresay and rule them inadmissible as evidence in a trial.
>
> This does not mean, of course, that much of what he wrote might be in error; probably the large majority of it is accurate. But this is an assumption. We were not there and we cannot be certain about anything.

You appear to be saying that because Orderic may have made errors, that is sufficient warrant to proceed as if he was very likely wrong on any point where you would prefer this to be the case.

If we cast into doubt all the details on 11th-century Norman affairs and people that come to us only from Orderic, without actual evidence or even rationale to contradict him on specific points, we will have sacrificed a vast amount of information on the subject in favour of 21st-century speculation that can equally never be proved.

Orderic was certainly wrong at times - mostly about events and people distant from Normandy, and especially about women who were alien to his monastic concerns. But he took pains to get things right about earlier generations of the families exercising power and patronage in his time and sphere, and most of his aristocratic contemporaries would have known perfectly well who most if not all of their great-grandparents were.

Peter Stewart

Nick Wormley

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Feb 17, 2019, 4:07:09 AM2/17/19

Hello Peter,

Thank you very much indeed for your helpful information. I am grateful to you for clearing up my confusion about whether Willam of Jumieges and other Norman recorders wrote anything about the origin of the Crispins and I am glad to have that point clarified. Apologies to readers for my having been a bit misleading on this question previously.

Secondly it is interesting to have it settled that Avice de Bienfait married Rodolfo de Felgeriis, the F in his toponym having been mistakenly confused in past times as a T. Now knowing that she did not marry a Crispin removes one potential impediment of consanguinity against Gilbert Crispin I possibly being a closeish blood relation of Gilbert de Brionne.

On the other hand, if Radulfus Crispinus in the St Amand Cartulary did happen to be a younger son of Gunnor d’Annou, then Nicholas de Bacqueville would have been his maternal uncle. This might be a reason for his appearance in the Lamberville charter as a witness. I think there must have been some association between them, whether a family relationship or just vassalage.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MXhkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA80&dq=Radulfus+Crispinus+Saint+Amand&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQt_SPssLgAhVlqHEKHdp2DAUQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=Radulfus%20Crispinus%20Saint%20Amand&f=false

I haven’t proved that this Ralph Crispin was a member of the Tillieres family of Crispins and you haven’t proved that he wasn’t. It remains a possibility either way, and should be stored in a file clearly marked “Possibilities”.

PS. I am not suggesting for a moment that we should jettison Orderic Vitalis; simply that perhaps sometimes clues may be found elsewhere and we are free to think about them.

Thanks again,

Regards,

Nick.

Peter Stewart

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Feb 17, 2019, 6:23:30 AM2/17/19

It is practicably unthinkable that Ralph Crispin was a nephew of Nicolas de Bacqueville yet witnessed after his liegeman Wiger - family connections mattered greatly, which is incidentally why Norman aristocrats would have been able to name most if not all of their great-grandparents. Collateral links were just as important as ancestry.

It is also implausible that Ralph took his sobriquet Crispin from blood relationship to a brother-in-law of Nicolas. The co-incidence of two unrelated men haveing the same byname is far more likely. Bynames from appearance or other personal traits were frequent before surnames came into regular use. Just because one of these, reflecting a faitly common attribute, happened to turn into the hereditary surname of one lineage doesn't by any means obviate its use for unrelated people.

It is tempting to take a blinkered view of the distant past when focusing on a few individuals, assuming that whatever attaches to them must have been unique or at least special, when a broader study might show this to be nothing of the sort.

Peter Stewart

Peter Stewart

Nick Wormley

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Feb 17, 2019, 8:47:55 AM2/17/19

How much do you know about Wiger beyond the words ("Wigerus homo Nicholai")?

I have just shown that Hugh FitzMilo was listed in a charter of donations to Bec in the early 1080s as “a man of Milo”, (section headed “Milo Crispin concedes benefactions of his men”). but it is pretty definite that Hugh was actually Miles’ Crispin’s son. Liegemen were often relatives.

To say that the co-incidence of two unrelated men having the same byname is far more likely than this Ralph Crispin being a blood relative of the first Gilbert Crispin’s family is just guessing. It would equally seem a coincidence that Nicholas de Bacqueville had a brother-in-law named Crispin and an unrelated vassal also called Crispin. Either version is possible and I feel it is wrong to be dogmatic from this small amount of (original?) material.

If we decide that this witness Ralph Crispin cannot have been related to Nicholas de Bacqueville’s sister Gunnor d’Annou, then if anything, I think that gives stronger cause to wonder if the first Crispin wife was instead Gunnor d’Anet, and that these two ladies have in the past been confounded.

You have the last word now Peter if you want to. It’s a lovely sunny day here and I am going out to enjoy it.

Nick.

Peter Stewart

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Feb 17, 2019, 4:14:32 PM2/17/19

On Monday, February 18, 2019 at 12:47:55 AM UTC+11, Nick Wormley wrote:
> How much do you know about Wiger beyond the words ("Wigerus homo Nicholai")?

I know that Wiger was of relatively modest status - the charter was subscribed by Nicolas along with duke William, but only witnessed by Wiger who was named after a chaplain. Ralph Crispin is named after Wiger, again witnessing but not subscribing.

> I have just shown that Hugh FitzMilo was listed in a charter of donations to Bec in the early 1080s as “a man of Milo”, (section headed “Milo Crispin concedes benefactions of his men”). but it is pretty definite that Hugh was actually Miles’ Crispin’s son. Liegemen were often relatives.

I'm afraid you have not shown this at all, but only assumed it. The charter says: "Et quod Milo Crispinus dedit eidem monasterio et, ipso concedente, homines eius Hugo filius Milonis et Ricardus filius Rainfridi". This wording is very strong evidence that Hugo was not the son of Milo Crispin, but rather of a namesake of his. If Crispin was a family surname, Hugo would have been called by it too or at least described as "filius eius". When sons made donations in the lifetime of their fathers these were almost invariably given jointly with their fathers rather than just by concession of their fathers in the capacity of overlords.

> To say that the co-incidence of two unrelated men having the same byname is far more likely than this Ralph Crispin being a blood relative of the first Gilbert Crispin’s family is just guessing. It would equally seem a coincidence that Nicholas de Bacqueville had a brother-in-law named Crispin and an unrelated vassal also called Crispin. Either version is possible and I feel it is wrong to be dogmatic from this small amount of (original?) material.

Chronology has to be taken into account, along with other circumstantial evidence. We are told that Gilbert I was the originator of the surname Crispin in his family because he acquired this as a byname from his spiky hair as a child. We are told that he had three sons, Gilbet, William and Robert. If a witness in the 1040s-1060s called Crispin took this name from relationship to Gilbert, it could only be as his son - personal bynames that became family surnames did not transfer to collateral branches, and a grandson would have been too young. In that case you would need to explain:

1. Why we are told of three sons when there were more than three
2. Why a nephew of Nicolas de Bacqueville was not considered of sufficient status to subscribe along with him but only to witness after a chaplain and a liegeman

> If we decide that this witness Ralph Crispin cannot have been related to Nicholas de Bacqueville’s sister Gunnor d’Annou, then if anything, I think that gives stronger cause to wonder if the first Crispin wife was instead Gunnor d’Anet, and that these two ladies have in the past been confounded.

I can't follow the reasoning behind this statement - how does a man's being unrelated to a woman affect her likely identity in this way?

Peter Stewart

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taf

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Feb 13, 2023, 3:40:40 PM2/13/23

On Monday, February 13, 2023 at 8:30:10 AM UTC-8, Cliff Augot wrote:

> I must confess that I am feeling somewhat guilty about straying from the primary subject of the conversation.

No need to feel guilty. A little bit of subject drift is normal - indeed, it can be some of the most productive, as discussion flows with the knowledge of the contributors rather than simply question-response-end. Were a new thread started every time things drift a little, related discussion can become disjointed. Just please don't shift to an entirely unrelated subject in the same thread, as sometimes happens when new contributors simply respond to an existing thread to initiate a new discussion of something else.

taf

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