Béatrix de Vascoeuil

  General Notes:

K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, Vol. II, her son was Radulf de Warenne, p. 777

  Noted events in her life were:

• Background Information.
Beatrice, the wife of Rodulf de Warren, whose mother was almost certainly a sister of Gotmund Rufus de Vascoeuil, daughter of Tesselin, vicomté of Rouen. She was living about 1053.

~Some Some Corrections and Additions to the Complete Peerage for Surrey.

• From Gen-Medieval Archives. ¹⁹³
From: "Alan B. Wilson" <abwilsonATUCLINK2.BERKELEY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Orgins of Warenne Family
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 16:22:20 GMT

Stewart Baldwin on 5 Jun 1996 called our attention to an important article by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, "Aspects of Robert of Torigny's genealogies revisited,"Nottingham Medieval Studies xxxvii (1993), pp. 21-27. In this article it is demonstrated that Beatrix and Emma are not two wives of a single Rodulph (Ralph), but rather the wives of successive generations: Rodulph I and Rodulph II. William was daughter of Roduph II and Emma; not of Rodulph I and Beatrix as appears in Complete Peerage and L. C. Loyd. This leads to the following ancestral table for William de Warenne:

1 William de WARENNE Earl. Born circa 1055 of Bellebcombe, France. Died 24 Jun 1088 in Lewes (Sussex) England. Buried in Chapter House, Lewes (Sussex) England.
2 Rodulph II de WARENNE.
3 Emma.
4 Rodulph I de WARENNE. Born Circa 998 in France. Died Before 1059. 5 Beatrix de Vascoeuil. Born Circa 1020 in France. Died Before 1059. 10 Tesselin of Rouen vicomte. Born about 970. 11 ? de Bolbec. 22 Osbern de Bolbec. Born circa 940 of Longueville, Normandy. 23 Wevie de Crepon . Born about 944.

- Alan B. Wilson

From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <taf2ATpo.cwru.edu>
Subject: Re: William de Warenne
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:07:31 -0700

"Leo van de Pas" <leovdpaATiinet.net.au> wrote:

> I can find hardly anything about his ancestors but I found he seems to be a second cousin once removed of William the Conqueror. Can anyone add more to this?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> Gunnor unnamed sister
> -1031 /
> / Beatrice
> Richard II Duke of Normandy married Rodulf I de Warenne
> -1027 /
> / William de Warenne

This is the descent as presented in Robert de Torigny's interpolations into William de Juminges _Gesta_, except that he does not name William's mother as Beatrice, only as a "niece" of Gunnor. He shows Roger de Mortimer as brother of William de Warenne. (He elsewhere makes a different assingment for William, but this second one is clearly wrong, so will not be discussed further here.)

The name Beatrice comes from a series of charters showing Rodulf de Warenne married to a Beatrice, and later to an Emma. The second appears in a charter in which Rodulf's sons Rodulf and William are named. This charter follows too quickly on one showing Beatrice for the sons to be children of a second marriage to Emma, and likewise its failure to show a son Roger clearly shows that Roger de Mortimer was not brother of William. Thus the reconstruction shown above and followed by CP, ES, and most other references. This was only reevaluated with the publications of Keats-Rohan's article:

K S B Keats-Rohan. Aspects of "Torigny's Genealogy Revisited," Nottingham Medieval Studies 37:21-7.

She finds a charter in which a Beatrice seemingly identical to Rodulf's wife is named with her sons Rodulf and Roger, and likewise shows that Beatrice was still living while a Rodulf de Warenne was marriad to Emma. Based on these (and a similar pattern of compression of generations by Robert de Torigny seen in the Montgomerys) she suggested that historians were combining the records of two different Rodulfs - that Rodulf (I) married Beatrice, and by her had Rodulf (II) de Warenne and Roger de Mortimer (who by generation better fits an uncle of William anyhow), and that Rodulf (II) married Emma, having Rodulf (III, formerly II) and William de Warenne. In light of the charters she presents, this does appear the likely solution to the question.

Regarding Beatrice, she presents charters which seem to make her sister of Richard, Vicomte of Rouen, son of Tesselin. It is known that a niece of Gunnora married the Vicomte of Rouen, and Keats-Rohan identifies this man as Tesselin, father of Beatrice, making Beatrice the grand-niece of Gunnora. However, it must be mentioned that Elisabeth M C van Houts (in her _Robert of Torigni as Genealogist_ in _Studies in Medieval History presented to R. Allen Brown_, p.215-33.) cites an article I have been unable to get hold of which she claims proves that the Vicomte married to Gunnora's niece was Richard, and not his father Tesselin. If this is the case, then it would break the chain of descent back to Gunnora. It is possible that the Warenne family maintained some tradition of indirect kinship, descending from a niece of a niece of Gunnora, and that this subsequently was compressed/combined to become a blood relationship, or alternatively a reevaluation of the assignment of the niece's Vicomte husband in light of Keats-Rohan's work may alter the conclusions, but this remains to be determined.

Finally, it has been suggested that the Warenne ancestress, the niece of Gunnora, was sister of Joscelina, ancestress of the Montgomerys and likewise a niece. This was based on a documented pattern of close relationship between the families, but other such interactions among this kinship group show that the relationship between Warenne and Montgomery was hardly unique, and thus there is no reason to make the two nieces children of the same parents, rather than simply grandparents, so the parentage of the Vicomte's wife remains to be determined.

ta

Béatrix married Rodulf de Warenne Seigneur de Warenne.²⁸¹ (Rodulf de Warenne Seigneur de Warenne was born about 998 in Varenne near Bellencombre, Seine-Inferieure, Normandy, France and died after 1074 in Varenne near Bellencombre, Seine-Inferieure, Normandy, France ¹⁴¹.)