Gundred or Gundreda (Latin: Gundrada) (Normandy?, ca. 1048/1063 – Castle Acre, Norfolk, 27 May 1085)[1] was probably born in Flanders, sister of Gerbod the Fleming, 1st Earl of Chester. She is explicitly so called by Orderic Vitalis, as well as the chronicle of Hyde Abbey. Late Lewes Priory tradition made her daughter of William the Conqueror by his spouse Matilda of Flanders[2], but this is not accepted by modern historians. The early 19th-century writer Thomas Stapleton argued that she was a daughter of Matilda, born prior to her marriage to William. Edmond Chester Waters and Edward Augustus Freeman showed that this too could not be supported though some genealogical sources continue to make the assertion that she was William's daughter [3][4][5][6]
Gundred married in Normandy before 1070 or in 1077 William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey (d. 20 June 1088), who rebuilt Lewes Castle, making it his chief residence. In 1078 he and Gundred founded a Cluniac Priory at Southover, adjoining Lewes, where both were buried.[7][8] She died in childbirth at Castle Acre, Norfolk, one of her husband's estates, and was buried beside him at the Chapterhouse of Lewes Priory.

In the course of the centuries which followed both tombstones disappeared from the priory but in 1774 William Burrell, Esq., an antiquary, discovered Gundred's in Isfield Church (seven miles from Lewes), over the remains of Edward Shirley, Esq., (d. 1550), whose father John was Clerk of the Kitchen to King Henry VII, and had it removed on October 2, 1775, to St. John's Church, Southover, the nearest place to its original site, and placed inside and at the south-west corner of the church, where, until 1847, it could be seen on the floor between pews with a very fine inscription detailing its origins etc.

“Within this Pew stands the Tomb-stone
Of Gendred, daughter of William the
Conqueror, and wife of William, the
Earl of Warren, which having been deposited
Over her remaons in the Chapter House
OfLewes Priory, and lately discobered
In Isfield Church, was removed
To this place, at the expense
Of William Burrell, Esq.,
A.D. 1775”

In 1845, during excavations through the Priory grounds for the Brighton Lewes and Hastings Railway, the lead chests containing the remains of the Earl and his Countess were discovered. They were deposited temporarily beneath Gundred's tombstone. In 1847 a Norman Revival chapel was erected by public subscription, adjoining the present vestry and chancel. Prior to re-interring the remains in this chapel, both chests were opened to ascertain if there were any contents, which was found to be the case. New chests were made and used, and the ancient ones preserved and placed in two recessed arches in the southern wall. The Earl's chest has lost some lead. Gundred's chest remains in a good state of preservation. Across the upper part of the right arch is the name Gvndrada. Her tombstone is of black marble.[9]



Re: Daughter of William The Conqueror
Posted by: Carolyn E. Wood
Date: September 29, 2000 at 17:53:32
In Reply to: Re: Daughter of William The Conqueror by Gary Rea
539 of 2612

It might be good to read Stewart's references (below) before attacking him. I assume we are all interested in true descents, not wishful descents.

Brandenburg in his book on Charlemagne's descendants page 40 gives Gundred (with a question mark) as daughter of William the
Conqueror. However, in the notes, page 135, "William de Warenne calls in 1085 Queen Mathilde the mother of his wife." I think
most people will accept that Queen Mathilde was married only once (never mind Gerbod) and also that Gundred is not the Conqueror's nor Mathilde's daughter.

The 1085 charter was spurious. This is clear from both internal and external evidence. As William Addams Reitwiesner pointed out, there is a very detailed discussion of this in Early Yorkshire Charters,v. 8, which covers the Honour of Warenne.

The motivation for making Gundred daughter of William the Conqueror was to connect Lewes Priory with a famous origin. The spurious 1085 charter was part of their foundation charter, which itself is spurious. Many foundation charters are spurious, such as St. Werburg in Chester, St. Mary's Tyntern, co. Monmouth, etc. So one has to examine the internal and external
evidence carefully.

Dugdale, writing in the seventeenth century, was not foolish enough to follow the erroneous account of Gundred's parentage in his Baronage (1:74). Citing Orderic, he stated simply she was "Sister of Gherbode, a Fleming, to whom King William the First had given the City and Earldom of Chester [Rex Guillelmus ...et Guillelmo de Guarenna, qui Gundreda, sororem Gherbodi conjugem habebat,
dedit Sutregiam. Orderic, ii, 221.].'

So if Dugdale was not led astray, it was simply the aspirations and stupidity of later scholars that carried them off onto the wrong path. The Chronicle of Hyde Abbey (Roll Series, p. 296), says of the Earl of Chester, "Quo tempore comes Cistrensis decessit Gerbodo, frater Gondradae comitissae. Flandriamque veniens...." So one main argument against a connection with the Conqueror or his wife was that they, as very important people, were completely omitted in these references (odd indeed if you are familiar with such source material).

Another main argument was a discovery of Chester Waters, published in 1884.
Archbishop Anselm had written Henry I (about 1107) stating that one of the kIng's daughters should not be married to William de Warenne because they were distantly related [cum ipse et filia vestra ex una parte sint cognati in quarta generatione, et ex altera in sexta (one was fourth in descent from a common ancestor, the other sixth)]. If Gundred had been Queen Maud's daughter, her son would have been first cousin of King Henry's daughter. That would have been the relationship objected to in 1107 if it were the fact, not some distant
connection.

The English historian Freeman (who had a high reputation for his day, but that
has not stood the test of time) finally admitteded false the theory that Gundred was daughter of the Conqueror or his wife QUeen Maud in the English Historical Review (1888). He examined the Lewes documents afresh "and stated that there was no ground either for the old belief that Gundreda was the daughter of king William and queen Maud, or ... that she was the daughter of the queen but not the daughter of the king.... There is nothing to show that Gundreda was the daughter either of King William or Queen Matilda; there is a great deal to show that she was not."

EYC 8:43-44 (and attached appendices) summarizes the internal evidence of this
(ONE, not two or more) charter that caused the controversy.

(1) It is a document from a fifteenth-century chartulary purporting to be the
foundation charter of Lewes priory, and states, "pro salute domine mee Matildis
regine matris uxoris mee." ["This document is not the transcript of a genuine charter; and there is strong evidence to show that it was the copy of a compilation of a later date."]

(2) "In a genuine charter of the Conqueror to Lewes priory there is an erasure
after the mention of Gundreda over which had been written in a later hand the words "filie mee." In other words, it was added to an original charter (yes, they do sometimes exist) at a later date.

(3) There is actually a genuine charter dated c. 1078-1082 which predates the
supposed foundation charter (original in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale. Ecole
des Chartes, lithograph facsimiles, no. 549), in which William de Warenne and
his wife Gundreda give the abbey of Cluny land and the church of St. Pancras, at Lewes, with the assent of King William I (who retained his lordship therein, as holder in chief). It is signed with the crosses of "Willelmi regis Anglonorum, M[athildis] regine Anglorum, Willelmi comitis filii regis, Willelmi de Warenna, Gundrede uxoris W. de Warenna, Robert de Bellomonte" and others,but no mention of relationship between William de Warenne and his wife and
William the Conqueror, his wife or son William is made. This is the genuine
foundation charter, and predates the forgery. "The latest date for the present
charter is 1083, when queen Maud died. Another charter dated 1081-3 (EYC 8:56-7, no. 4) is a confirmation by William I of the manor of Heacham, co. Norfolk (held by William de Warenne) given to Lewes priory to pray for the souls of King Edward, count Robert the king's father, the king himself and his wife queen Maid, his sons and successors, and then seperately for the souls of William de Warenne and Gundreda his wife. William II also later confirmed this
(no. 5).

(4) So the fictitious foundation charter of 1085 was not the first or even second charter. "A detailed examination of its contents confirms the suspicions which are invited by its general character and trend. After an invocation of the Trinity it proceeds to a discursive account of how William and his wife went to Cluny" [etc.] and "the grantor had caused king William II
in his council at Winchester to confirm the charter and witness it by the sign of the cross with his own hand and by the signs of the bishops, earls and barons then with him. There are in fact no subscriptions. Speaking generally it is difficult to conceive anything more dissimilar in form and tone to the genuine eleventh-century charters which have come down to us."

Several general tests are then applied to the charter. "The first discloses an
anachronism which cannot be explained away, and which is fatal to the authenticity of the charter. The grantor states that after the death of Gundreda his wife he gave to the monks of Lewes the manor of Heacham in Norfolk ... and that King William II had confirmed the gift.... But [in the actual
original which I referred to above] it is there stated that Heacham was to be
possessed by the monks as William de Warenne held it on the day when he was alive and dead." So the fictitious charter says that William de Warenne himself was alive when King William II confirmed it, but the original confirmation of William II which does survive states that William de Warenne
was dead. There is further discussion of internal evidence which also proves the foundation charter of 1085 to be spurious, but I will not go on here.

Further evidence of the fraud of the account in the Lewes Chartulary (which was compiled in 1444, but there is a copy at the Biblioteque National dated 1417)


William de Warenne I - was born about 1055, lived in Bellencombe, Seine Inferieure, France and died on 24 Jun 1088 in Lewes, Sussex, England . He was the son of Ralph de Warenne and Beatrix do Rouen.
William married Princess Gundred of England before 1077 in Normandy, France. Princess Gundred was born about 1063 in Normandy, France. She was the daughter of King Guillaume "Le Conquerant" de Normandie and Queen Matilda van Vlaanderen. She died on 27 May 1085 in Castle Acre, Acre, Norfolk, England .

Princess Gundred - It has been said that Gundred was not the daughter of William, the Conqueror, but that she was the daughter of Matilda of Flanders by, perhaps, a previous marriage. The Invincible Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 5, p. 26, says that the inseription on Gundred's tombstone describes her as wife of William de Warren and daughter of Wm., the Conqueror. Also in Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerage, pp. 154, 568 and 588, she is called daughter by Wm., the Conqueror, in a charter signed by Wm., William de Warren and Henry I, son of William, the Conqueror. Thus proving this much discussed question. E. E. W) (Sources: - 2)

Who was Gundred's father? The most consistent and logical information is that Matilda had two children by a previous relationship/marriage. Her son was Gherbod the Fleming (also spelled Gerbod) who was later made Earl of Chester by William the Conqueror and her daughter was Gundred. The father of both Gherbod and Gundred was also named Gherbod. He was also a Fleming and he appears to have held the hereitary office of Advocate of the Abbey of Saint Bertin in St. Omers. There is no evidence of what happened to Matilda's relationship/marriage to Gherbod. However William, Duke of Normandy sought her hand in marriage to bolster an alliance with Flanders at a time when he had his hands full with the King of France and the Count of Anjou. William may not have known she was married and had children while he was negotiating his marriage with her father, Baldwin V, Count of Flanders (who may have thought it wise not to mention her situation as he was eager for her to be married to William of Normandy). On the other hand, William was keenly interested in producing an heir and what better way than to marry a woman of proven fertility? By the way, Matilda was the granddaugher of Robert II, "The Pious", King of France. In this line she descended from Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Emperor of the West (742-813 A.D.). I've even seen a genealogy which shows all of Charlemagne's ancestors back to Adam. Believe what you will on that one!
In summary, Gundred was the daugher of the Queen of England, step-daughter of William the Conqueror, half-sister of the next two Kings of England and finally, wife of William de Warren and mother of the line of Warrens who came to America on the Mayflower.

Sister of Richard Gouet