It is the message that counts, not the messenger. You behave like Blanche of
Castile who in 1250 received the news that her son had been captured, she
rewarded the messengers by having them hanged.
You are reverting to your old trick, if you can't address the issue, attack
the person.
With best wishes
Leo van de Pas,
Canberra, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Richardson" <royalancestry@msn.com>
Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval, soc.history.medieval,
alt.history.british, alt.talk.royalty
To: <gen-medieval@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Monday, November 19, 2007 2:31 PM
Subject: Maud Fitz Alan, wife of Robert de Brus the elder (died 1304):
Addition to Scots Peerage, Complete Peerage, and ODNB
Dear Newsgroup ~
When the anonymous person who posted the message below steps forward
and identifies himself, I should be happy to address the issues raised
in their post.
For the time being, I should like to point out that a full transcript
of the 1296 letter written by Robert de Brus the elder and Robert de
Brus the younger, Earl of Carrick can be found in the book, Anglo-
Scottish Relations, 1174-1328: Some Selected Documents, by E.L.G.
Stones, published in 1965, pp. 136, et seq This work can be found on
the internet at the following weblink:
http://books.google.com/books?id=438EoR ... 8edsAKiyWU
Mr. Stones kindly provides a transcript of the original letter in
French and an accompanying English translation.
As I stated in an earlier post, the discovery of the elder Robert de
Brus' marriage to Maud Fitz Alan is indeed a new addition to the
authoritative Scots Peerage and Complete Peerage, as well as the newly
published standard reference work, Oxford Dicitionary of National
Biography (ODNB). The absence of Maud Fitz Alan in the published
literature is yet another case of people being entirely too dependent
on secondary sources rather than original records to guide them to the
correct facts about medieval history.
Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah
+ + + + + + + + + + + + +
ANONYMOUS POST
Now that the blathering on this thread has gone quiet at last, I
thought it might be useful to you to have a few misstated loose ends
in posts from Douglas Richardson tidied up.
It is not strictly accurate to say that Robert the elder (for
convenience, Robert VI as in DNB) "resigned" the earldom of Carrick to
his son Robert VII - rather, this had been inherited by the son from
his mother, not by anyone's decision but in the course of nature when
she died. Robert VII was still underage at the time, but Robert VI
intended to leave Scotland - reportedly to avoid acknowledging John
Balliol as king - and travel to Norway. There he arranged the marriage
of his daughter Isabel to King Eric II, and it was probably in large
part due to this that he kept using the title "earl of Carrick" along
with his lower rank as lord of Annandale in the following years, as a
courtesy to Eric and Isabel as much as to aggrandise himself, since
kings at the end of the 13th century did not usually marry daughters
of men below comital rank.
It is quite untrue to say that we don't know what title Robert VII
used in 1296: he was earl of Carrick and we have his own word for it.
There are anough documents from around this time to leave no doubt on
the point, for instance the famous letter of 25 March 1296 from both
Roberts together, along with Patrick, earl of March & Dunbar and
Gilbert de Umfraville, earl of Angus, where only the younger Robert
used the title earl of Carrick, calling themselves "Robert de Brus le
veil, e Robert de Brus le juuene comte de Carryk", or the letter from
Earl John de Warenne to King Edward I in the early summer of 1297
referring to "le counte de Carricke" where this could mean only Robert
VII. Scrabbling around online for modern extracts in English is not
the way a professional historian should go about establishing
precisely what is in primary documents - and in any case, these
particular ones are published in books that any good library will be
found to hold.
As for the idea that the marriage of Robert VI to Maud Fitzalan was
somehow forgotten from the time of Joseph Bain's _Calendar of
Documents Relating to Scotland_, vol II, published in 1884, until
Richardson stumbled onto this - that of course is preposterous. The
same document was summarised in _Calendar of Chancery Warrants
Preserved in the Public Record Office...AD 1244-1326_ published in
1927. Competent historians and genealogists know a lot of things that
come as news to Richardson and, clearly, his consultant Andrew
MacEwan, and they know where to look for countless more. They do not
need to turn for poor advice to people whom they describe as "the
resident expert in all things Scottish", and needless to say unctuous
Obsessive-Compulsive formulations like that do not palm off
accountability for errors anyway.
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
GEN-MEDIEVAL-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the
quotes in the subject and the body of the message