Baldwin de Redvers, 1st Earl of Devon

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There is a disagreement about whether Richard de Redvers was Earl of Devon. For those who think he was, the numbers of the medieval earls must be one greater.

Baldwin de Redvers, 1st Earl of Devon (? – 4 June 1155), was the son of Richard de Redvers and his wife Adeline Peverel.

He was one of the first to rebel against King Stephen, and was the only first rank magnate never to accept the new king.[1] He seized Exeter, and was a pirate out of Carisbrooke, but he was driven out of England to Anjou, where he joined the Empress Matilda. She made him Earl of Devon after she established herself in England, probably in early 1141.

He founded several monasteries, notably those of Quarr Abbey (1131), in the Isle of Wight, a priory at Breamore, Hampshire, and the Priory of St James, at Exeter. Some monastic chronicles call his father also Earl of Devon, but no contemporary record uses the title, including the monastic charters.

[edit] Family and children

He was married to Adeliz Baluun (d. circa 1146) and had children:

  1. Richard de Redvers, 2nd Earl of Devon. Married Denise de Dunstanville.
  2. Henry de Redvers
  3. William de Redvers, 5th Earl of Devon. Married Mabel de Beaumont.
  4. Matilda de Redvers, married to Anschetil de Greye.
  5. Maud de Redvers, married Ralph de Avenel.
  6. Alice de Redvers, married Roger II de Nonant.
  7. Hawise de Redvers, married Robert Castellan.
  8. Eva de Redvers, married Robert d' Oyly.

Between 1151 and 1155 he married Lucy, who was the widow of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Hertford.

It should be noted that the name de Redvers can also be found as de Reviers or Revières.

[edit] Sources

  • Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700 by Frederick Lewis Weis; Line 50-27
  • Complete Peerage of England Scotland Ireland Great Britain and the United Kingdom by G. E. Cokayne; Pages: IV:311-2,IV:312
  • Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, 106th Edition, Charles Mosley Editor-in-Chief, 1999, Page: 832
  • Robert Bearman, ‘Revières , Baldwin de, earl of Devon (c.1095–1155)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1163

[edit] References

  1. ^ Marjorie Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English (1993), p 69.
Preceded by
New creation		 Earl of Devon
1141-1155		 Succeeded by
Richard de Redvers, 2nd Earl of Devon
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