Waltheof, 1st Earl of Northampton

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Waltheof, 1st Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton (1045- 1076) was the last of the Anglo-Saxon earls, remaining in England for a decade after the Norman conquest.

He was a son of Earl Siward of Northumbria, and, although he was probably educated for a monastic life, became Earl of Huntingdon and Earl of Northumbria about 1065. After the Battle of Hastings he submitted to William the Conqueror; but when Sweyn II of Denmark invaded Northern England in 1069 he joined him with Edgar Ætheling and took part in the attack on York, only, however, to make a fresh submission after their departure in 1070. Then, restored to his earldom, he married William's niece, Judith, and in 1072 was appointed Earl of Northampton.

Domesday Book (made by order of King William and finally completed in 1086) mentions Waltheof ("Walleff"); "'In Hallam ("Halun"), one manor with its sixteen hamlets, there are twenty-nine carucates [~14 km²] to be taxed. There Earl Waltheof had an "Aula" [hall or court]. There may have been about twenty ploughs. This land Roger de Busli holds of the Countess Judith." (Hallam, or Hallamshire, is now part of the city of Sheffield, in the county of South Yorkshire).

In 1075 Waltheof joined the conspiracy against the king arranged by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford; but soon repenting of his action he confessed his guilt to Archbishop Lanfranc, and then to William, who was in Normandy. Returning to England with William he was arrested, and after being brought twice before the king's court was sentenced to death. On the 31st of May 1076 he was beheaded on St. Giles's Hill, near Winchester. Weak and unreliable in character, Waltheof, like his father, is said to have been a man of immense bodily strength. Devout and charitable, he was regarded by the English as a martyr, and miracles were said to have been worked at his tomb at Crowland.

[edit] Family and children

He was married 1070 with Judith of Lens, daughter of Lambert II, Count of Lens and Adeliza, Countess of Aumale and had three daughters, the eldest of whom, Matilda, brought the earldom of Huntingdon to her second husband, David I of Scotland. One of Waltheof's grandsons was Waltheof (d. 1159), abbot of Melrose. His creation of the earldom of Northampton, however, died with him, and he would remain the last to hold a Saxon-era title until the Earl of Wessex nearly a thousand years later.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Preceded by: Cospatrick

Earl of Northumbria 1072–1075

Succeeded by: William Walcher