House of Aumâle

The House of Aumâle is a prominent Anglo-Norman family originally hailing form the small county of Aumâle in north-eastern Normandy, on the border with Picardy.
The house traces its descent from Adelais of Normandy, illegitimate daughter of Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy, and Herlève de Falaise. She was the full sister of William the Conqueror.

History

Adelais of Normandy was married three times. Her first marriage, to Engeurrand II, Count of Ponthieu, was annulled in at the Council of Rhiems in 1049 on the grounds of consanguinity, but left her with the County of Aumâle as her dowry. Her second marriage, to Lambert II, Count of Lens, younger son of Eustance, Count of Boulogne, ended when Lambert was killed in battle at Lille in 1054.
It is from her third marriage, to Odo of Champagne, in 1060 that the House of Aumâle descends.
Odo, son of Stephen, Count of Champagne, had killed a nobleman and fled to Duke William's court in Normandy after the death of his father in 1048; his uncle Theobald inherited the county of Champagne., Although Odo claimed the title Count of Troyes (the caput of Champagne), he was essentially a landless adventurer, albeit a noble one. He sought - and gained - the patronage of the Archbishop of Rouen, to whom the county of Aumâle owed fealty.
It was through the archbishop's influence that Odo gained the hand of Adelais and thus the county of Aumâle. The county was small, however, owing the service of only 10 knights to the archbishopm and Odo continuedf to lobby for more lands, that he might keep the Duke's sister in suitable manner.
It is unknown whether Odo took part in the conquest of England. He held no English lands at the time the Domesday surveyors undertook their great task. 
However, in 1087 Drogo de la Beuvrière, Lord of Holderness, poisoned his wife - possibly accidentally - and asked the Conqueror for permission to quit his English lands and return to Flanders. King William I granted Drogo's lands - known as the Barony of Burstwick - to Odo shortly before his death in September 1087. As well as the whole of Holderness, these lands included 35 Lincolnshire villages and Castle Bytham. The barony owed 20 knights'service.
Odo took an active part in the factional infighting among the sons of the Conqueror. In 1088 he was one of three counts who acted as 'prisoner's friends' when William de St Calias, bishop of Durham, faced King William II's justice for his part in a rebellion led by bishop Odo of Bayeux. Later that year, he was one of the eight founders of the great Benedictine monastery of St Mary's in York.
1090 he took the part of King William II, Rufus, against his older brother, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, and fortified Aumâle againts the Duke. In 1095, however, he took part in a plot with William, count of Eu, Roger de Mowbray, earl of Northumberland, Roger de Lacy, and Gilbert de Clare, to overthrow the king. The consiprators planned to depose William II and crown Odo's son, Stephen.
The plot failed. Odo and his co-conspirators were tried at the Council of Salisbury in 1096, where Odo was deprived of all his lands and imprisoned. Roger de Mowbray was likewise improsoned. William of Eu was blinded and castrated. Odo died in prison some time between 1096 and 1109.
Stephen, who had little to do with his father's plot to place him on the throne, was spared imprisonment. He had taken the cross in 1095 and at the time of the Council of Salisbury was already on his way to Jerusalem with Robert Curthose, but the House of Aumale was in disgrace. Its English lands were granted to the Norman lord Arnulf de Montgomery, brother of the infamous Robert de Bellême. But in 1101, with Henry I now on the English throne, Robert Curhose invaded in hopes of winning the crown from his brother. Robert de Bellême, back from crusade, and his brothers took Robert's side, and were deprived of their lands in 1102.
With the House of Bellême now in disgrace Stephen of Aumâle, also returned from crusade, was restored to his father's English lands and titles in Holderness and Lincolnshire. He rarely visited England, spending most of his time involved in the tortuous early 12th century politics of Normandy, where he is last recorded as one of the supporters of William Clito, son of defeated duke Robert Curthose, in 1127. It is possible he returned to the Holy Land in the expedition inspired by the Knights Templar in 1128. He was certainly dead by 1130.
His oldest son William had only recently come of age at the time he inherited his fathers lands in Normandy and England in 1130, and was therefore probably born in 1109 or shortly earlier.
William took a much greater interest in his English estates than his father. One of his first acts was to clear out interlopers who had settled on his estates without permission, He paid King Henry I 100 marks in order that he might not be prosecuted for these evictions.
When King Stephen too the throne in 1135, William supported him from the outset. He had been too young to swear allegience to the EAmpress Mathilda in 1125. In August 1138 he was one of the English leaders who defeated the army of David, King of Scots, at the Battle of the Standard near Northallerton, Yorkshire. In gratitude, King Stephen made him Earl of York, though this title was not recognised by King Henry II when he came to the throne in 1154. 
William was a big man, and kept getting bigger. His nickname 'le Gros' means 'the Fat'. By 1150 he could no longer ride a horse. From the strart of Henry's reign, William appears to distanced himself from politics and devoted himself to administering his own estates and founding religiions houses. Among his foundations were the Augustinian priory at Thornton in north Lincolnshire (1139), and the Cistercian abbeys at Bytham in Lincolnshire (1147, though it moved to Vaudey in 1149), Meaux in Holderness (1150). Along with Gilbert of Ormsby he co-founded the Gilbertine North Ormsby Priory in 1148, and he was a benefactor of the houses of St Bees, Bridlington, Nun Cotham, Pontefract, St Leonard's Hospital (York), St Nicholas (Exeter), and Whitby.
In 1160, he married Cecily FitzDuncan, heiress of the honours of Skipton and Copeland (Egremont). They had one child, Hawise.
William's focus on his English estates includes working them directly a generation before manorialism became more widespread in the 1180s. As early as 1165 he contracted to sell all the fleeces from his extensive Yorkshire sheep flocks in bulk to the wealthy Flemish financier and wool merchant William Cade.
Despite declining health in his later years, he made no provision for the marriage of his daughter Hawise, who was about 18 at the time of his death in 1179. English suggests this may have been the action of a doting father at the request of a beloved daughter with a distaste for marriage.
Whetever the reason, it left Hawise a royal ward when her father died. King Henry II had no such compunctions for her feelings, and ordered her to marry his faithful courtier William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex. Their wedding at de Mandeville's castle of Pleshey in 1180 was the social event of the year. Nevertheless, the marriage was childless. Hawise'grandmother, Alice de Romilly, died in 1187, and her mother Cecily in 1189, and Hawise inherited their estates in Skitpon and Copeland.
It was during this time that Hawise and de Mandeville subinfeudated the castle at Bytham, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, and its associated manor to William Coleville in exchange for the service of one knight.
After de Mandeville's death in 1189 King Richard ordered Hawise to marry his Poitevin admiral William de Forz. Hawise at first refused, giving in only when Richard ordered bailiffs to sell goods and chattels from her estates until she agreed.
The reluctant bride had a son by de Forz, also named William, born probably around 1192. In 1196 King Philip of France invaded Normandy, and Aumâle, on the border, was one of the first castles to fall. It was never recovered, but the English House of Aumâle continued to claim the title of count under the Latinised version, the counts of Albermarle. for many generations.
William de Forz died fighting in Normandy alongside King Richard in 1196, and Richard orderd Hawise to marry another of his faithful allies,. Baldwin of Béthune. This marriage was also childless, though Béthune had a daughter, Alice, from an earlier marriag.e/
AFter Béthune's death in 1212, Hawise promised King Jophn 5,000 marks (a huge sum, representing more than 5% of annual royal income) in order that she may not be married again. She enjoyed two years of independent widowhood where she could administer her own estates directly, rather than through a husband, before she died on 11 MArch 1214 and the estates passed to her son William II de Forz.
Unlike many of his northern neighbours, the younger de Forz remain loyal to King John during the baronial revolt. Though young, he took an actrive part in fighting the rebel Northerners, and used the turbulence of the period to enlarge his holdings by seizing rebel castles, including reclaiming Castle Bytham. His refusal to give these castles back once peace had been restored led to his rebellion against the young King Henry III.

Sources
English, Barbara: The counts of Aumâle and Holderness 1086-1260 (PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 1977)
English, Barbara: The Lords of Holderness 1086-1260 (Hull University Press, 1991)
Farrer, Early Yorkshire Charters, vol 3, pp26-117 (Ballantyne, Hanson & Co, 1916)
Power, Eileen: The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (Ford Lectures, 1941)
Wild, Rev John: A History of Castle Bytham (Henry Johnson, 1871)

Founding Date

1060

Leader

Hawise of Aumâle

Leader Title

Count

Notable Members

• Hawise of Aumâle