Person Page - 1368

     Matilda of Brandenburg (c. 1210 - 10 June 1261) was a daughter of Albert II, Margrave of Brandenburg, and Matilda of Lusatia. In 1228 she married Duke Otto I of Lüneburg, a son of William of Winchester. She died on 10 June 1261 in Lüneburg. Mathilde and Otto had the following known children:

Elizabeth (died 1266), married William II of Holland
Helen (died 1273), married Albert II, Duke of Saxony and Hermann II, Landgrave of Thuringia
Adelaide (died 1274), married Henry I, Landgrave of Hesse
Matilda (died around 1295), married Henry II, Prince of Anhalt-Aschersleben
Agnes, married Wizlaw II, Duke of Rügen
Albert (died 1279)
John (died 1277)
Otto, Bishop of Hildesheim (died 1279)
Conrad, Bishop of Verden (died 1300).¹

     Liudolf of Brunswick (about 1003 – 23 April 1038) was margrave of Frisia, count of Brunswick, count in the Derlingau and the Gudingau. He was a member of the Brunonen family.

Liudolf was a descendant of the Saxon family of the Brunonen. He was a son of Bruno I, Count of Brunswick, and Gisela of Swabia. The later Roman Emperor Henry III was his half brother. He married Gertrude and had four children. The Friesian counties Oostergo, Zuidergo and Westergo were controlled by him. Until the end of his life he administered the Frisian areas, and for two more generations the Brunonen family line inherited the title. How the Brunonen came to their position in the counties is not known. There is a theory that Liudolf took advantage of the reign of violence between Friesland Vlie and Lauwers of the counts of Holland. Not much is known about his life. He died in 1038 and was succeeded by his son, Bruno II. His daughter Matilda married Henry I of France, the widower of her aunt. One popular theory of the origins of Agatha, wife of Edward the Exile makes her another daughter.

Liudolf and his wife Gertrud had the following children:

Brun II (around 1024 – 26 June 1057)
Egbert (died 1068)
Matilda (died 1044), married King Henry I of France
Ida of Elsdorf.¹

     Matilda of Frisia (died 1044) was the second wife and first Queen of Henry I, King of the Franks.[1] She was the daughter of Liudulf, Margrave of Frisia and Gertrude. Her date of birth is unknown.

Matilda and Henry were married in 1043 after the death of his first wife, also named Matilda, daughter of the Emperor Conrad II. She died the following year during a Caesarean section. Henry married Anne of Kiev after her death.[1]¹

     John de Warenne (30 June 1286 – June 1347), 8th Earl of Surrey or Warenne, was the last Warenne earl of Surrey.

He was the son of William de Warenne, the only son of John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey. His mother was Joan, daughter of Robert de Vere, 5th Earl of Oxford.

Warenne was only six months old when his father died, and was 8 years old when his mother died. He succeeded his grandfather as earl when he was 19.

He was one of the great nobles offended by the rise of Edward II's favorite Piers Gaveston, and helped secure Gaveston's 1308 banishment. The two were somewhat reconciled after Gaveston's return the next year, but in 1311 Warenne was one of the nobles who captured Gaveston. He was however unhappy about Gaveston's execution at the behest of the earl of Warwick, which pushed him back into the king's camp.

The baronial opposition was led by the king's cousin Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and he and Warenne became bitter enemies. Private war erupted between the two, and over the new few years Warenne lost a good part of his estates to Lancaster.

Warenne was one of the four earls who captured the two Roger Mortimers, and in 1322 he was one of the nobles who condemned to death the earl of Lancaster.

Warenne and his brother-in-law Edmund Fitzalan, 9th Earl of Arundel were the last two earls to remain loyal to Edward II after the rise to power of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer. After Arundel's execution he went over to the queen's side, urging Edward II's abdication in 1327.

He was the guardian of his cousin Edward Balliol, and after Balliol lay claim to the Scottish throne, accompanied him on his campaign in Lothian. Balliol created Warenne earl of Strathern, but this was in name only for the properties of the earldom were held by another claimant.

Warenne died in 1347 and is buried at the monastery of Lewes. He was succeeded as earl by his nephew Richard Fitzalan, who was also earl of Arundel.

On 25 May 1306 Warenne married Joan of Bar, daughter of count Henry III of Bar and Eleanor of England, eldest daughter of king Edward I of England. The two were soon estranged and live apart, and had no children, though the marriage was never dissolved.

Warenne instead took up with Matilda de Nerford, by whom he had several illegitimate children, and later with Isabella Holland, sister of Thomas Holland, later earl of Kent.¹

     John Washington (c. 1631-1677) was an English Virginia planter and politician. He was the immigrant ancestor and great-grandfather of George Washington, first president of the United States of America.

Washington, son of Lawrence and Amphillis Twigden, was born in Purleigh, Essex, England around 1631 and emigrated to the Colony of Virginia in 1656. He had been second officer on a merchant ship that foundered in the Potomac River, but left after the ship was refloated.[1]

He first came to Virginia in 1656 and stayed at the house of Col. Nathaniel Pope, at the age of twenty-five he fell in love with the daughter of his host, Anne Pope. Washington married Anne Pope, daughter of plantation owner Nathaniel Pope, in 1658 and had three children, Laurence Washington, John Washington and Anne Washington. Their wedding gift from Pope consisted of 700 acres (2.8 km2) on Mattox Creek in Westmoreland County of Virginia's Northern Neck.[1]

Washington became a successful planter. He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses.[1] During the events leading to Bacon's Rebellion, he was appointed a Colonel in the Virginia militia and led a company of men to back a group of Marylanders during a supposed parley. Six chiefs of various tribes were killed, and retaliations increased.[2] He was criticized for this by William Berkeley, but received popular support.[3]

The local parish of the Anglican Church (the established church in Virginia, and thereby a tax district of the county) was changed to Washington in his honor.[1]

He is buried along with his wife at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Colonial Beach, Westmoreland County Virginia. His vault is the largest in the small family burial plot.

Children with Anne Pope:
Lawrence Washington 1659,
John Washington II 1661,
Anne Washington 1662.¹

     He was a knight and steward and councellor to Henry, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and to Edward, Ist Earl of
Lancaster. He was banished for a short time for killing Sir Robert de Holland (an enemy of the King), then
recalled to England.

     William X (1099 – 9 April 1137), called the Saint, was Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and Count of Poitou (as William VIII) between 1126 and 1137. He was the son of William IX by his second wife, Philippa of Toulouse.

William was born in Toulouse during the brief period when his parents ruled the capital. His birth is recorded in the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent for the year 1099: Willelmo comiti natus est filius, equivoce Guillelmus vocatus ("a son was born to Count William, named William like himself"). Later that same year, much to his wife's ire, Duke William mortgaged Toulouse to Philippa's cousin, Bertrand of Toulouse, and then left on Crusade.

Philippa and her infant son were left in Poitiers. Long after Duke William's return, he took up with Dangereuse, the wife of one of his vassals, and set aside his rightful wife, Philippa. This caused strain between father and son, until William married Aenor de Châtellerault, daughter of his father's mistress, in 1121. He had from her three children: Eleanor, who would later become heiress to the Duchy; Petronilla, who married Raoul I of Vermandois; and William Aigret, who died young.

As his father before him, William X was a patron of troubadours, music and literature. He was an educated man and strove to give his two daughters an excellent education, in a time when Europe's rulers were hardly literate.

When Eleanor succeeded him as Duchess, she continued William's tradition and transformed the Aquitanian court into Europe's centre of knowledge.

William was both a lover of the arts and a warrior. He became involved in conflicts with Normandy (which he raided in 1136, in alliance with Geoffrey le Bel of Anjou who claimed it in his wife's name) and France.

Even inside his borders, William faced an alliance of the Lusignans and the Parthenays against him, an issue resolved with total destruction of the enemies. In international politics, William X initially supported antipope Anacletus II in the schism of 1130, opposite to Pope Innocent II, against the will of his own bishops. In 1134 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux convinced William to drop his support to Anacletus and join Innocent.

In 1137 William joined the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but died of suspected food poisoning during the trip. On his deathbed, he expressed his wish to see king Louis VI of France as protector of his fifteen-year-old daughter Eleanor, and to find her a suitable husband. Louis VI naturally accepted this guardianship and married the heiress of Aquitaine to his own son, Louis VII.¹

     Aénor of Châtellerault, duchess of Aquitaine (Châtellerault, Vienne, France, c. 1103, – March 1130 in Talmont) was the mother of Eleanor of Aquitaine, arguably the most powerful woman in Europe of her generation[citation needed].

Aenor was a daughter of Viscount Aimery I of Châttellerault and his wife, Dangereuse de L' Isle Bouchard (d. 1151). Aenor married William X of Aquitaine, the son of her mother's lover, and had three children with him:

Eleanor of Aquitaine, Duchess of Aquitaine, and wife of both Louis VII of France, and Henry II of England.
Petronilla of Aquitaine, wife of Raoul I, Count of Vermandois.
William Aigret (who died at the age of four with his mother at Talmont)
The county "Châtelherault" later became a title belonging to the Dukes of Hamilton.¹