But on his death in 1087 the advantage really given to Anjou by the treaties of Alençon and Blanchelande at last became apparent. From the moment when Robert came into actual possession of the fief with which he had been twice invested by an Angevin count, the Angevin overlordship could no longer be denied or evaded. The action of the Cenomannians forced their new ruler to throw himself upon Fulk’s support. Their unquenchable love of freedom caught at the first ray of hope offered them by Robert’s difficulties in his Norman duchy and quarrels with his brother the king of England, and their attitude grew so alarming that in 1089 Robert, lying sick at Rouen, sent for the count of Anjou and in a personal interview besought him to use his influence in preventing their threatened revolt. Fulk consented, on condition that, as the price of his good offices, Robert should obtain for him the hand of a beautiful Norman lady, Bertrada of Montfort.[527] Fulk’s domestic life was as shameless as his public career. He had already one wife dead and two living; Hermengard of Bourbon, whom he had married in 1070[528] and who was the mother of his heir,[529] had been abandoned in 1075 without even the formality of a divorce for Arengard of Châtel-Aillon;[530] and Arengard was now set aside in her turn to make way for Bertrada.[531] These scandals had already brought Fulk under a Papal sentence of excommunication;[532] he met with a further punishment at the hands of his new bride. Bertrada used him simply as a stepping-stone to higher advancement; on Whitsun-Eve 1093 she eloped with King Philip of France.[533] [527] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 681. [528] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1070. [529] _Gesta Cons._ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 140. [530] According to a charter in Marchegay, _Documents inédits sur l’Anjou_, p. 96, Fulk married Arengard on Saturday the feast of S. Agnes (January 21) 1075--_i.e._ what we call 1076, as the year was usually reckoned in Gaul from Easter to Easter; see editor’s note 4, as above. The _Art de vérifier les dates_, however (vol. xiii. p. 62), refers to a document in Dom Huyne’s collection where the marriage is dated 1087. [531] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 681, seems to date Bertrada’s marriage about 1089. The Chron. Turon. Magn. puts it in 1091 (Salmon, _Chron. Touraine_, vol. i. p. 128); but a charter in Marchegay, _Archives d’Anjou_, vol. i. p. 365, shows that it had already taken place in April 1090.