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Birth:          ABT 1187 
Death:          26 May 1250 

Notes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_I,_Duke_of_Brittany
Peter I (French: Pierre; c. 1187 – 26 May 1250), also known as Peter Mauclerc, was 
Duke of Brittany jure uxoris from 1213 to 1221, and regent of the duchy for his minor 
son John I from 1221 to 1237. As duke he was also 1st Earl of Richmond from 1218 to 
1235.
Origins[edit]

Peter was the second son of Robert II, Count of Dreux and Yolande de Coucy. The 
latter was in turn the son of Robert I of Dreux, a younger brother of Louis VII of 
France. Peter was thus a Capetian, a second cousin of Louis VIII of France.

Despite being of royal descent, as the younger son of a cadet branch Peter's early 
prospects were that of a minor noble, with a few scattered fiefs in the Île-de-France 
and Champagne. He was initially destined for a career in the clergy, which he later 
renounced, earning him the nickname Mauclerc (French: mauvais clerc, bad-cleric). 
He broke the convention of ecclesiastical heraldry by placing on the canton of his 
paternal arms the ermine, then reserved for the clergy.[citation needed]

Accession[edit]

In 1212 King Philip II of France needed to find a weak and faithful ruler for Brittany. 
The duchy lay athwart the sea lanes between England and the English territories in 
Gascony. Furthermore, it bordered on Anjou and Normandy, which the English had lost 
ten or twelve years before and were eager to recover. It was being ruled with less 
than a strong hand by Guy of Thouars, as regent for his young daughter Alix. Also 
worrisome was that Alix's older half-sister Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany, was in an 
English prison.

King Philip thus broke off the betrothal of Alix and the Breton lord Henry of 
Penthièvre, and turned to his French cousin Peter, then in his early twenties. Peter 
married Alix, and on 27 January 1213, paid homage to the king for Brittany.

There is some ambiguity regarding whether Peter should be considered duke or count. 
The duchy was legally held by his wife. The King of France and the Pope (and their 
courts) always addressed him as count, but Peter in his own charters called himself 
duke.

Relations with the English[edit]

In 1214 King John of England had assembled a formidable coalition against the 
French. He landed in Poitou while King Otto of Germany prepared to invade from the 
north. John chased off some French forces in the north of Poitou, and then moved to 
the southern edge of Brittany, opposite Nantes. Peter drove him off after a brief 
skirmish but did nothing to hinder John's subsequent movement up the Loire valley 
where he took a few Breton fortresses and then besieged La Roche-aux-Moines. 
John's Poitevin vassals, however, refused to fight against a French force led by the 
King of France's son Louis. Meanwhile, Otto's army was crushed at Bouvines, and the 
entire invasion foundered.

It is not clear why John attempted to capture Nantes, even less why he would do so 
the hardest way, via the very well-defended bridge across the Loire. Nor is it clear 
why Peter declined to harass his forces from the rear as John marched east. A likely 
explanation is that the two had come to some sort of agreement whereby John would 
leave Brittany alone for the moment, and in return the Bretons would not hinder him 
elsewhere.

John had a prize he could dangle in front of Peter: the Earldom of Richmond. This 
great English honour (land) had traditionally been held by the dukes of Brittany, and in 
fact a constant theme in Peter's political affairs was the desire to hold and retain the 
English revenues from Richmond.

Peter did not yield to King John's offers to accept the earldom and take up the King's 
side in his conflicts with the English barons, probably because he deemed the King's 
prospects too uncertain. Moreover, Louis was again fighting against the English. But 
when Louis was defeated, Peter was sent as one of the negotiators for a peace treaty. 
After the negotiations were completed (in 1218), William Marshal, the regent for the 
young Henry III of England, recognized Peter as Earl of Richmond, in place of Eleanor 
of Brittany who, as a potential threat to English crown, would never be released from 
imprisonment. The center of the earldom's properties in Yorkshire was in the hands of 
the Earl of Chester, whom the regent could not afford to antagonize, but Peter did 
receive the properties of the earldom outside of Yorkshire, which in fact generated the 
bulk of the earldom's income. In 1219 he participated in the capture of Marmande and 
the Siege of Toulouse during the Albigensian Crusade.

Consolidation of power[edit]

Peter turned his attention to his next goal. The authority of the dukes of Brittany had 
traditionally been weak, in comparison to the great peers of northern France. For 
example, the duke could not limit the building of castles by his counts. Nor did he 
have the right to guardianship of minor heirs of his vassals. Peter aimed to re-establish 
his relationship with his vassals (or subjects) more along the lines of what he knew 
from the Capetian royal court. To that end Peter simply declared new rules by fiat, and 
then faced the inevitable turmoil that resulted from the reaction of his barons. There 
followed a series of small civil wars and political maneuverings. In 1222 he suppressed 
a revolt by Breton barons in the Battle of Châteaubriant. By 1223, the barons had all 
acquiesced to the changes or been dispossessed.

The six Breton bishops were the other threat to the ducal power, for they had 
substantial landholdings (including control of all or part of the few cities in Brittany), 
and were recalcitrant in the face of Peter's attempts to raise revenues by increasing 
taxes or simply taking possession of episcopal holdings. For this he was 
excommunicated for a time in 1219–1221. Peter submitted in the end, but this was not 
to be the last of his conflict with the bishops.

Regency[edit]

Peter's wife died on 21 October 1221, leaving behind four young children. She was 
then only 21, and little is known about her beyond the basic genealogical facts. Her 
death meant that Peter was no longer duke, although he continued to rule the Duchy 
with undiminished authority, as regent for his son John, then a boy of four or so.

Alix's death changed Peter's goals in two ways. First, he aimed to acquire some 
additional territory, not part of the Duchy, to augment his retirement after his son came 
of age. Second, there was a strong tradition in France that a minor heir should, when 
coming of age, have his property in the state it was in when he inherited it. Thus Peter 
could not now take some risks without fear of harming the prospects of his son.

Peter helped Philip II's successor, Louis VIII, in his fight against Henry III of England 
(in the sieges of Niort and La Rochelle in 1224). He also accompanied Louis VIII by 
joining the Albigensian Crusade, but with the latter's death, he participated, with 
Count Theobald IV of Champagne and Count Hugh X of La Marche, in rebellions 
against the regent Blanche of Castile, between 1227 and 1234.[1]

Crusades and Death[edit]

Peter's son John reached the age of majority in 1237. Peter Mauclerc then 
participated in the Barons' Crusade to the Holy Land in 1239. While there, Peter's 
troops along with some local knights were attacked by heavily armed Mamluk cavalry, 
firing their bows, but the crusader force managed to outflank and defeat them, taking 
a few prisoners with them back to Jaffa.

In early November, two days into a march from Acre to Ascalon, Peter and his 
lieutenant Raoul de Soissons split off from the main force to conduct a raid. They 
divided their force in half and each waited in ambush along a possible route for the 
Muslim caravan which was moving up the Jordan to Damascus. Peter's half clashed 
with the Muslims outside of a castle, and after some fighting, he sounded his horn to 
summon Raoul. The Muslims were routed and fled inside the castle, where Peter's men 
followed them, killed many, took some captives, and seized the booty and edible 
animals of the caravan.[2] This minor victory would soon be overshadowed by a 
serious defeat at Gaza.

Back in France, he won some success against the English at sea in 1242 and 1243. In 
1249, he participated in the Seventh Crusade to Egypt under King Louis IX. He died at 
the sea before he was able to return home. He was buried in Braine.

Marriages and children[edit]
 
Peter was married three times.

His first wife was Alix of Thouars, Duchess of Brittany (1201-1221).[1] Alix and Peter 
had three children:
John I (to 1217-1286), duke of Brittany;
Yolande of Brittany (1218-10/10/1272), married (January 1236) to Hugh XI of 
Lusignan, Seigneur de Lusignan, Count of la Marche and Angoulême
Arthur of Brittany (1220-1224)
unnamed.

His second wife was Nicole († February 1232). Nicole and Peter had a son:
Oliver de Braine [a] (1231-1279), who inherited the Lordship of Machecoul (became 
Oliver I of Machecoul and founded the Machecoul branch of the House of Dreux).

His third wife was Marguerite de Montaigu, Lady of Montaigu, Commequiers, La 
Garnache [b] then Machecoul [c], and widow of Hugh I de Thouars († 1230), a brother 
to Guy of Thouars; this made Marguerite a paternal line aunt of Alix. They married by 
1236, and had no issue.

Parents
____ Robert II (ABT 1154 - 28 Dec 1218)
DE COUCY Yolande (ABT 1164 - 18 Mar 1222)

Siblings
____ Robert III (1185 - 1234)
DE DREUX Eleonore (ABT 1186 - Apr 1248)
DE DREUX Pierre (ABT 1187 - 26 May 1250)
DE DREUX Philippa (1192 - 17 Mar 1242)

Marriage To ____ Alix (1200 - 21 Oct 1221)
    m. 27 Jan 1213 

Notes

Parents
DE THOUARS Guy (ABT 1160 - 13 Apr 1213)
OF BRITTANY Constance (1161 - ABT 5 Sep 1201)

Children by ____ Alix 1200 - 21 Oct 1221
OF BRITTANY Yolande (1218 - 10 Oct 1272)

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