England under the Angevin Kings, Volume INorgate, Kate
History
England under the Angevin Kings, Volume I
Norgate, Kate
Anjou, House of; England -- Civilization -- 1066-1485; Great Britain -- History -- Angevin period, 1154-1216
[662] The story of this wooing is curious, and linked in
a curious fashion to the old days when Fulk Nerra and Odo
were fighting for Touraine. Gelduin, the “devil of Saumur,”
when Odo’s mistaken tactics and his own loyal service had
cost him the loss of his heritage, refused all the offers of
compensation made to him by his penitent count, and merely
asked him for a certain “bare hill” on the south bank of the
Loire, half way between Amboise and Blois, where he built the
castle afterwards known as Chaumont, and there remained as a
perpetual thorn in the side of the Angevin lords of Amboise,
till in 1035 he gave up his possessions to his son Geoffrey and
went to end his days in peace in an abbey which he had founded
on an estate of his own, hard by the battle-field of Pontlevoy.
Geoffrey’s delicate beauty won him the surname of “the Maiden,”
but beneath his girl-like face lay a spirit as manly and as
noble as that of his father. In 1066 the hot northern blood
in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece
Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the
host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But
after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was
still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally;
and it was Geoffrey’s well-earned influence with the Conqueror
which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of
his former lord and the daughter of his present one (_Gesta
Amb. Domin._, Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 173, 174, 184). On the
marriage see also Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 573. After the Conqueror’s death Geoffrey found the state of
things in England no longer to his mind, made over his estates
there to his nephew Savaric, and came home once more, to be
received with open arms by the couple whom he had helped to
marry. He dwelt at their court as an honoured guest for the
rest of his days, lived to complete his hundredth year without
the loss of a single faculty save the light of his still
beautiful eyes, and was buried at last by his father’s side
in the abbey of our Lady of Pontlevoy (_Gesta Amb. Domin._,
Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 185, 197, 198).
[663] On the flight from Antioch see Will. Tyr., l. v. c. 10,
and all the historians of the first crusade. On Stephen’s
second expedition and death see Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 789
_et seq._; Will. Tyr., l. x. c. 20; and Will. Malm. _Gesta
Reg._, l. iv. c. 384 (Hardy, pp. 593, 594).
[664] “Nutriendum promovendumque.” Will. Newb., l. i. c. 4
(Howlett, vol. i. p. 31).
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