Sybil (wife of Pain fitzJohn)

Sybil was an Anglo-Norman noblewoman in 12th century England.

Historians disagree about Sybil's parentage. The entry for her first husband in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry states that Sybil was the niece of Hugh de Lacy.[1] The Complete Peerage states that Sybil was the daughter of Geoffrey Talbot and Talbot's wife Agnes, who was herself probably the daughter of Walter de Lacy.[2] The historian K. S. B. Keats-Rohan states Sybil was the daughter of Hugh de Lacy,[3] a view shared by fellow historians Judith Green and Paul Dalton.[4][5][lower-alpha 1] Others such as Bruce Coplestone-Crow and David Crouch agree with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography's designation of Sybil as Hugh's niece,[8] and daughter of Geoffrey Talbot and Agnes, the sister of Hugh de Lacy.[9][10]

Sybil married first Pain fitzJohn,[11] a marriage that took place around 1115.[1] Through Sybil, Pain acquired a number of holdings around Ludlow Castle,[12] as well as control of the castle itself.[13] Ludlow was an important strategic stronghold which controlled part of the Welsh Borders.[14] Sybil also brought her husband lands in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire.[7] Both King Henry I and King Stephen recognized Pain's right to his wife's lands. Sybil had inherited lands that originally had been held by her kinsman Gilbert de Lacy, the son of Roger de Lacy. Roger de Lacy had been banished from England in 1095 and his English estates confiscated; he had though retained his properties in Normandy. Roger's English possessions were given to his brother Hugh de Lacy, from whom Sybil had inherited them. On Roger's death Gilbert inherited the lands in Normandy, and pressed his claim to the family's former English estates. Coplestone-Crow notes that there was uncertainty hanging over the inheritance, and accounted for one reason why Sybil's husband worked to secure more lands around Ludlow.[12] Sybil was not the only recipient of Hugh de Lacy's lands; some went to Josce de Dinan and some to Miles of Gloucester.[6]

Pain died on 10 July 1137 and was buried in Gloucester Abbey.[1] Sybil retained control of Ludlow Castle until the middle of 1139, when she was forced to surrender it to King Stephen after a siege.[15] Stephen then married Sybil to Josce de Dinan,[16] probably because he felt that Josce trustworthy enough to control the castle.[15] Josce thus acquired control of Ludlow Castle in right of his wife, setting up the background to Gilbert Lacy's attempts to seize Ludlow from Dinan on which the medieval Welsh romance work Fouke le Fitz Waryn is based.[16] Josce, however, rebelled against Stephen and fortified Ludlow against the king.[17] Josce died in 1166.[18]

Sybil had two daughters, Cecily and Agnes with Pain.[3] The two girls married five times in their lives;[1] Cecily's three marriages failed to produce any direct heirs.[19] Cecily was first married to Roger, the son of Miles of Gloucester.[1] This alliance had been arranged by Cecily's father and the marriage contract specified that Roger would inherit all of Pain's lands, but at Pain's death the marriage had still not been formally contracted. In December 1137 King Stephen confirmed the terms of the settlement.[8] Stephen also settled the bulk Pain's lands on Cecily, which led to disturbances and a minor war among disappointed claimants.[20] Agnes first married Warin de Munchensy and then Haldenald de Bidun. She died sometime after 1185, when she was noted as a widow.[2] Presumably Sybil is the mother of Josce's two daughters — Sibil, who married Hugh de Pulgenet and died in 1212, and Hawise who married Fulk FitzWarin, who died in 1197.[18] In 1199 Sibil and Hawise petitioned the king regarding the ownership of the town and castle of Ludlow but were turned down.[21]

Notes

  1. ↑ Among other historians that accept Sybil as Hugh's daughter are Brock Holden[6] and W. E. Wrightman.[7]

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Mason "Pain fitz John (d. 1137)" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  2. 1 2 Cokayne Complete Peerage XII/2 pp. 270–271
  3. 1 2 Keats-Rohan Domesday Descendants p. 919
  4. ↑ Dalton "Eustace Fitz John" Speculum p. 360
  5. ↑ Green Henry I p. 133
  6. 1 2 Holden Lords of the Central Marches pp. 17–18
  7. 1 2 Wrightman Lacy Family p. 175
  8. 1 2 Coplestone-Crow "Payn fitzJohn and Ludlow Castle" Shropshire History and Archaeology pp. 171–172
  9. ↑ Coplestone-Crow "Payn fitzJohn and Ludlow Castle" Shropshire History and Archaeology p. 179
  10. ↑ Crouch Reign of King Stephen p. 79 footnote 21
  11. ↑ Keats-Rohan Domesday Descendants p. 538
  12. 1 2 Coplestone-Crow "Payn fitzJohn and Ludlow Castle" Shropshire History and Archaeology p. 178
  13. ↑ Green Henry I p. 174
  14. ↑ Crouch Reign of King Stephen p. 102 and footnote 55
  15. 1 2 Crouch Reign of King Stephen p. 102
  16. 1 2 Coplestone-Crow "Payn fitzJohn and Ludlow Castle" Shropshire History and Archaeology p. 181
  17. ↑ Chibnall Empress Matilda pp. 123–124
  18. 1 2 Keats-Rohan Domesday Descendants p. 434
  19. ↑ Newman Anglo-Norman Nobility pp. 172–173
  20. ↑ Green Aristocracy of Norman England p. 381
  21. ↑ Coplestone-Crow "The End of the Anarchy to the de Genevilles" Ludlow Castle: Its History & Buildings pp. 36–37

References

  • Chibnall, Marjorie (1991). The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19028-7. 
  • Cokayne, George E. (1982) [1959]. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant. XII/2 (Microprint ed.). Gloucester, UK: A. Sutton. ISBN 0-904387-82-8. 
  • Coplestone-Crow, Bruce (2000). "The End of the Anarchy to the de Genevilles". In Ron Shoesmith & Andy Johnson. Ludlow Castle: Its History & Buildings. Logaston Press. pp. 35–44. ISBN 1-873827-51-2. 
  • Coplestone-Crow, B. (1995). "Payn fitzJohn and Ludlow Castle". Shropshire History and Archaeology Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society LXX: 171–183. 
  • Crouch, David (2000). The Reign of King Stephen: 1135–1154. New York: Longman. ISBN 0-582-22657-0. 
  • Dalton, Paul (April 1996). "Eustace Fitz John and the Politics of Anglo-Norman England: The Rise and Survival of a Twelfth-Century Royal Servant". Speculum 71 (2): 358–383. doi:10.2307/2865417. JSTOR 2865417. 
  • Green, Judith A. (1997). The Aristocracy of Norman England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52465-2. 
  • Green, Judith A. (2006). Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-74452-2. 
  • Holden, Brock W. (2008). Lords of the Central Marches: English Aristocracy and Frontier Society, 1087–1265. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-954857-6. 
  • Keats-Rohan, K. S. B. (1999). Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents, 1066–1166: Pipe Rolls to Cartae Baronum. Ipswich, UK: Boydell Press. ISBN 0-85115-863-3. 
  • Mason, J. F. A. (2008). "Pain fitz John (d. 1137)" ((subscription or UK public library membership required)). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9615. Retrieved 3 March 2011. 
  • Newman, Charlotte A. (1988). The Anglo-Norman Nobility in the Reign of Henry I: The Second Generation. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-8138-1. 
  • Wrightman, W. E. (1966). The Lacy Family in England and Normandy 1066–1194. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. OCLC 798626. 
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