Yet another Matilda... Matilda of England was a daughter of Henry II of England, a granddaughter of the Empress Matilda, a great-granddaughter of Matilda of Scotland, and a great-great-granddaughter of Matilda of Flanders. She married Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and of Saxony, on February 1st, 1168, as shown here in an illustration for the Gospels of Henry the Lion, made in about 1188.
MATILDA of Flanders was the wife of William, Duke of Normandy, who snatched the English throne from Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
William’s third son, Henry I, married another Matilda, the daughter of King Malcolm III of Scotland,* who herself was a great-granddaughter of King Edmund ‘Ironside’, who lost the English throne to Cnut in 1016.
Matilda and Henry named their daughter Matilda too, and after her marriage in 1114 to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V, she was popularly known as ‘the Empress’. When her father Henry died in 1135, Empress Matilda, widowed ten years earlier and now the wife of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, was the King’s only heir.
However, her cousin Stephen stepped in, and through fourteen years of civil war he and his very determined wife, Matilda of Boulogne, clung to the crown of England, until the death of his son Eustace in 1153 led Stephen to name the Empress’s son Henry II as heir.*
Matilda of Scotland was baptised Edith, an Anglo-Saxon name she shared with the wife of King Harold, and with the wife of King Edward the Confessor: see Edith and Edward. The name Matilda was taken as a gesture to Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror and mother of Henry I.
Briefly, the four Matildas here are:
Matilda of Flanders,
Matilda of Scotland,
Matilda of Anjou (‘the Empress’), and
Matilda of Boulogne.
The Empress’s son Henry II of England had a daughter named Matilda, who married Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and of Saxony.
Précis
William the Conqueror’s wife was named Matilda of Flanders, and in the next hundred years there were three more powerful Queens named Matilda. One was her son Henry I’s consort, Matilda of Scotland; one was her granddaughter, Henry’s son the Empress Matilda; and the third was Matilda of Boulogne, wife of the Empress’s rival for the crown, Stephen. (58 / 60 words)
