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Birth:          ABT 1071 Crowland and Spalding, Lincolnshire, England
Death:          1141 

Notes
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=jweber&id=I01864
Lucy, living 1130, widow susscessively, of Ives Taillebois and Roger Fitz Gerold; m. 
probably c 1098 Ranulph III le Meschin. [Ancestral Roots]

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He [Ranulph le Meschin] married Lucy, widow of Roger FITZ-GEROLD (by whom she 
was mother of William de Roumare, afterwards Earl of Lincoln). He died 17 or 27 
January 1128/9, and was buried at St. Werburg's, Chester. The Countess Lucy 
confirmed, as his widow, the grant of the Manor of Spalding to the monks of that place 
(f). [Complete Peerage III:166, XIV:170, (transcribed by Dave Utzinger)]

(f) She paid 500 marks to King Henry in 1130 for license to remain unmarried for 5 
years.

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The following copied from www.linacre.ox.ac.uk/research/prosop/PRSPN2.stm,
gives the latest research on the ancestry of Lucy:
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Antecessor Noster:
The Parentage of Countess Lucy Made Plain

A lot of ink has flowed on the subject, but there can be no doubt that the 'mysterious' 
Countess Lucy of Chester was William Malet's thrice-married granddaughter, the 
daughter of Robert Malet's sister and Turold the Sheriff of Lincoln (dead by 1079). 
The suggestion was first made by R. Kirk in 1888. As N. Sumner has more recently 
observed: 'This account has the merit of explaining why the lordship of Spalding and 
other places in Lincolnshire were held after Ivo's death not by Beatrice, his direct heir 
and the daughter of his marriage to Lucy, but by the later husbands of Lucy, Roger fitz 
Gerold and Ranulph Meschines.' It is clear from her charters that Lucy was an heiress; 
as was to be expected, her estates passed to the sons of her second and third 
marriages. Kirk's work was based upon conjecture, and contained a number of errors. 
The question of Lucy's parentage has therefore remained open. Nevertheless, there is 
proof that Kirk was right.

A spurious charter of Crowland Abbey made Turold of Bucknall (the Sheriff) the 
founder of the priory of Spalding as a cell of Crowland. It also called Turold brother of 
Godiva countess of Mercia, but subsequently described Godiva's son Earl Algar as 
Turold's cognatus (cousin). A genealogia fundatoris of Coventry Abbey made Lucy a 
daughter of Earl Algar and sister and heiress of earls Edwin and Morcar. The 
Peterborough Chronicle and the Pseudo-Ingulf's Chronicle of Crowland both made 
Lucy the daughter of Algar and niece or great-niece of Turold. We know that William 
Malet was half-English, so these traditions probably boil down to a relationship 
between Countess Godiva and William's English mother.

In 1153 a charter [RRAN, III, 180] of the future Henry II for Lucy's son Ranulf II of 
Chester referred to her uncles Robert Malet and Alan of Lincoln. Alan of Lincoln was 
the successor, and almost certainly the son, of Domesday's Alfred of Lincoln. 
Chronologically, it is most unlikely that Alan was Lucy's uncle. It was probably another 
of Alfred's sons whom Domesday described as Alfred nepos [nephew or grandson] of 
Turold, then holding a fee which was certainly thereafter held with the rest of the 
senior Alfred's fee by his heir Alan. Domesday provides a further indication that Alfred 
senior married another of William Malet's daughters when it names a William as 
Alfred's predecessor in two of his manors. Other parts of each of these manors 
(Linwood and Rothwell) were held in 1086 by Durand Malet, who was probably 
William's son. It seems that Henry's charter can be explained by seeing a scribe, 
perhaps in search of rhetorical balance, commit the error of ascribing two uncles to 
Lucy, instead of a niece (Lucy) and a nephew (Alan of Lincoln) to Robert Malet, who 
was uncle to both.

Turold is evidenced in Domesday Book as a benefactor of Crowland Abbey, to which 
he gave a parcel of land at Bucknall. The abbey also held land at Spalding that had 
probably been granted to it by Earl Algar and there is evidence to suggest that Turold 
the Sheriff gave further land there to the abbey of St Nicholas, Angers, before 1079. 
Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois subsequently founded, or perhaps re-
founded, a priory at Spalding subject to St Nicholas, Angers. A revealing phrase from 
the Register of Spalding Priory reads: 'mortuo quia dicto Thoraldo relicta sibi herede 
Lucia predicta' [at his death Turold left an heir, the aforesaid Lucy]. The word heres, 
'heir', was often used of the child who was to inherit his/her father's property. Lucy 
later confirmed the gifts of all three of her husbands: 'pro redempcione anime patris 
mei et matris mee et dominorum meorum et parentum meorum' [for the souls of my 
father and mother, my husbands and my (other) relatives]. The association of the 
priory with such a small group of people and the description of Lucy as heres of Turold 
strongly hint at Lucy's parentage. But we can go further still.

In their initial benefaction Ivo and Lucy referred to 'antecessorum suorum Turoldi 
scilicet uxorisque eius regine' [our 'ancestors' Turold and his wife]. The reference to 
Turold's wife indicates that some part of his landholding had come to him through his 
wife, something also indicated by the occurrence of William Malet amongst those who 
had held the Domesday lands of Lucy's first husband Ivo Taillebois before him. The 
apparently vague Latin words antecessor and predecessor can both be used to mean 
something like 'predecessor'. Each of them conveys a range of very precise meanings 
in different circumstances. The description of Turold and his wife as antecessores of 
Ivo and Lucy may be compared to the usage in a charter in the cartulary of Mont-
Saint-Michel by which the Angevins Hugh Chalibot and his wife confirmed the grants 
of her father, who was described as antecessor noster. Other examples of this phrase 
show clearly that it was used by a married man to describe the parent from whom his 
wife had inherited the property she brought to the marriage. Acting on her own 
account (normally after her husband's death), the heiress will often describe herself as 
the daughter of the parent her husband described as antecessor noster. A rare use of 
the phrase was to indicate the couple's immediate predecessor, not her father but her 
brother. In Lucy and Ivo's case the plurality of their antecessores, Turold and his wife, 
puts the matter beyond doubt. Lucy's parents were indeed Turold the Sheriff and a 
daughter of William Malet.

K. S. B. Keats-Rohan
Linacre College
Oxford
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_of_Bolingbroke
Lucy of Bolingbroke (died circa 1138)[1] was an Anglo-Norman heiress in central 
England and, later in life, countess of Chester. Probably related to the old English 
earls of Mercia, she came to possess extensive lands in Lincolnshire which she 
passed on to her husbands and sons. She was a notable religious patron, founding or 
co-founding two small religious houses and endowing several with lands and 
churches.
A charter of Crowland Abbey, now thought to be spurious, described Thorold of 
Bucknall, perhaps the same as her probable father Thorold of Lincoln, as a brother of 
Godgifu (Godiva), wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia.[2] The same charter contradicted 
itself on the matter, proceeding to style Godgifu's son (by Leofric), ?lfgar, as 
Thorold's cognatus (cousin).[3] Another later source, from Coventry Abbey, made Lucy 
the sister of Earls Edwin and Morcar Leofricsson, while two other unreliable sources, 
the Chronicle of Abbot Ingmund of Crowland and the Peterbrough Chronicle also make 
Lucy the daughter of Earl ?lfgar.[3] Keats-Rohan's explanation for these accounts is 
that they were ill-informed and were confusing Lucy with her ancestor, William Malet's 
mother, who was in some manner related to the family of Godgifu.[3]

Although there is much confusion about Lucy's ancestry in earlier writings, recent 
historians tend to believe that she was the daughter of Thorold, sheriff of Lincoln, by 
a daughter of William Malet (died 1071).[4] She inherited a huge group of estates 
centred on Spalding in Lincolnshire, probably inherited from both the Lincoln and the 
Malet family.[5] This group of estates have come to be called the "Honour of 
Bolingbroke".[6]

Marriages[edit]

The heiress Lucy was married to three different husbands, all of whom died in her 
lifetime. The first of these was to Ivo Taillebois, a marriage which took place "around 
1083".[7] Ivo took over her lands as husband, and seems in addition to have been 
granted estates and extensive authority in Westmorland and Cumberland.[8] Ivo died 
in 1094.[9]

The second marriage was to one Roger de Roumare or Roger fitz Gerold, with whom 
she had one son, William de Roumare (future Earl of Lincoln), who inherited some of 
her land.[10] The latter was the ancestor of the de Roumare family of Westmorland.
[11] Roger died in either 1097 or 1098.[12]

Sometime after this, though before 1101, she was married to Ranulf le Meschin, her 
last and longest marriage.[13] A son Ranulf de Gernon, succeeded his father to the 
earldom of Chester (which Ranulf acquired in 1121) and a daughter, Alice, married 
Richard de Clare.[6]

Upon her death, most of the Lincolnshire lands she inherited passed to her older son 
William de Roumare, while the rest passed to Ranulf II of Chester (forty versus twenty 
knights' fees).[14] The 1130 pipe roll informs us that Lucy had paid King Henry I 500 
marks after her last husband's death for the right not to have to remarry.[15] She died 
around 1138.[6]

Religious patronage[edit]

Lucy, as widowed countess, founded the convent of Stixwould in 1135, becoming, in 
the words of one historian, "one of the few aristocratic women of the late eleventh 
and twelfth centuries to achieve the role of independent lay founder".[16]

Her religious patronage however centered on Spalding Priory, a religious house for 
which her own family was the primary patron. This house (a monastic cell of Crowland) 
was founded, or re-founded, in 1085 by Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois.[16] 
Later, she was responsible for many endowments, for instance in the 1120s she and 
her third husband Earl Ranulf granted the priory the churches of Minting, Belchford 
and Scamblesby.[16] In 1135, Lucy, now widowed for the last time, granted the priory 
her own manor of Spalding for the permanent use of the monks.[16] The records 
indicate that Lucy went to great effort to ensure that, after her own death, her sons 
would honour and uphold her gifts.[17]

Parents
____ Turold (ABT 1020 - BEF 1079)
MALET Alvarissa (ABT 1048 - )

Siblings
OF MERCIA Lucy (Lucia) (ABT 1071 - 1141)

Marriage To DE TAILLEBOIS Ivo (ABT 1036 - 1094)
    m.  

Notes

Parents
DE CHATEAU-LANDON Geoffrey II "Ferreol" (1000 - 1 Apr 1046)
DE ANJOU Ermengarde (ABT 1018 - 21 Mar 1076)

Children by DE TAILLEBOIS Ivo ABT 1036 - 1094
DE TAILLEBOIS Christina (AFT 1086 - )
DE TAILLEBOIS Beatrix (1090 - 1112)

Marriage To FITZ GEROLD Roger (ABT 1050 - BEF 15 Jul 1098)
    m.  

Notes

Parents
DE ROUMARE Gerold (ABT 1020 - AFT Apr 1067)
____ Aubreye (ABT 1025 - )

Children by FITZ GEROLD Roger ABT 1050 - BEF 15 Jul 1098
DE ROUMARE William (ABT 1096 - BEF 1161)

Marriage To LE MESCHIN Ranulph "De Briquessart" (ABT 1070 - Jan 1129)
    m.  

Notes

Parents
DE BRIQUESSART Ranulf (ABT 1050 - 1129)
D'AVRANCHES Maud (or Margaret) (ABT 1054 - )

Children by LE MESCHIN Ranulph "De Briquessart" ABT 1070 - Jan 1129
LE MESCHIN Alice (Adeliza) (ABT 1094 - AFT 1142)
LE MESCHIN Ranulph "de Gernon" (1099 - 16 Dec 1153)
DE ST. PIERRE William (ABT 1103 - )

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