Nigel d'Aubigny

This article is not about Nigel de Albini of Cainhoe, also known as Nigel d'Aubigny

Nigel d'Aubigny, aka Neel d'Aubigny or Nigel de Albini (died 1129) was the younger son of a Norman aristocrat and supporter of Henry I of England. He is described as "one of the most favoured of Henry’s 'new men'",.[1] While he entered the king's service as a household knight and brother of the king's butler, William d'Aubigny, in the years following the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106 Nigel was rewarded by Henry with marriage to an heiress who brought him lordship in Normandy and with the lands of several men, primarily that of Robert de Stuteville.[2] The Mowbray honour became one of the wealthiest estates in Norman England. From 1107 to about 1118, Nigel served as a royal official in Yorkshire and Northumberland. In the last decade of his life he was frequently traveling with Henry I, most likely as one of the king's trusted military and administrative advisors . He died in Normandy, possibly at the abbey of Bec.[3]

Family

His father was Roger d’Aubigny, a Norman lord, and his mother Alicia; William d'Aubigny pincerna, 1st Earl of Arundel (d. 1176) was his nephew.

In 1107 Nigel married Matilda de L'aigle, sister of Gilbert de L'aigle, who had divorced the disgraced and imprisoned Robert de Mowbray, earl of Northumbria. She brought to the marriage with Nigel her ex-husband's lordship of Montbray (Mowbray) in western Normandy. They had no children.

Nigel divorced Matilda . He married Gundred de Gournay,[4] daughter of Gerard de Gournay and Edith de Warenne, in 1118. They had a son, Roger. In recognition of the importance of Norman lordship to Anglo-Norman aristocrats, Roger took the surname Mowbray.[5] The bulk of his estate, however, lay in England.

Notes

  1. ↑ Frank Barlow, William Rufus (1983) p.145.
  2. ↑ D. Greenway, The Charters of the Honour of Mowbray 1107-1191 (London: 1972)
  3. ↑ Greenway, pp. xvii-xviii.
  4. ↑
  5. ↑ Greenway, pp. xviii-xix.