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- Matilda of Flanders (French: Mathilde de Flandre; Dutch: Mathilda van Vlaanderen) (c. 1031 – 2 November 1083) was the wife of William the Conqueror and, as such, Queen of England. She bore William nine or ten children who survived to adulthood, including two kings, William II and Henry I.
As a niece and granddaughter of kings of France, Matilda was of grander birth than William, who was illegitimate, and, according to some suspiciously romantic tales, she initially refused his proposal on this account. Her descent from the Anglo-Saxon royal House of Wessex was also to become a useful card. She was about 20 when they married in 1051/2. William was some three years older, and had been Duke of Normandy since he was about eight.
Matilda was about 35, and had already given birth to most of her children, when William embarked on the Norman conquest of England, sailing in his flagship Mora, which Matilda had given him. She governed the Duchy of Normandy in his absence, joining him in England only after more than a year, and subsequently returning to Normandy, where she spent most of the remainder of her life, while William was mostly in his new kingdom. She was about 51 when she died in Normandy in 1083.
Apart from governing Normandy and supporting her brother's interests in Flanders, Matilda took a close interest in the education of her children, who were unusually well educated for contemporary royalty. The boys were tutored by the Italian Lanfranc, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1070, while the girls learned Latin in Sainte-Trinité Abbey in Caen, founded by William and Matilda as part of the papal dispensation allowing their marriage.
Matilda, or Maud, was the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders and Adèle of France, herself daughter of Robert II of France.
Like many royal marriages of the period, it breached the rules of consanguinity, then at their most restrictive. A papal dispensation was finally awarded in 1059 by Pope Nicholas II. Lanfranc, at the time prior of Bec Abbey, negotiated the arrangement in Rome and it came only after William and Matilda agreed to found two churches as penance.
Matilda and William had four sons and at least five daughters. The birth order of the boys is clear, but no source gives the relative order of birth of the daughters.
Sons
- Robert, born between 1051–1054, died 10 February 1134. Duke of Normandy, married Sybil of Conversano, daughter of Geoffrey of Conversano.
- Richard, born c. 1054, died around 1075.
- William Rufus, born between 1056 and 1060, died 2 August 1100. King of England, killed in the New Forest.
- Henry, born late 1068, died 1 December 1135. King of England, married Edith of Scotland, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland. His second wife was Adeliza of Louvain.
Daughters
- Agatha, betrothed to Harold II of England, Alfonso VI of Castile, and possibly Herbert I, Count of Maine, but died unmarried.
- Adeliza (or Adelida, Adelaide), died before 1113, reportedly betrothed to Harold II of England, probably a nun of St Léger at Préaux.
- Cecilia (or Cecily), born c. 1056, died 1127. Abbess of Holy Trinity, Caen.
- Matilda, "daughter of the King", born around 1061, may have died about 1086, (but to Trevor Foulds's suggestion, she may have been identical to Matilda d'Aincourt).
- Constance, died 1090, married Alan IV Fergent, Duke of Brittany.
- Adela, died 1137, married Stephen, Count of Blois. Mother of King Stephen of England.
There is no evidence of any illegitimate children born to William.
William was furious when he discovered she sent large sums of money to their exiled son Robert. She effected a truce between them at Easter 1080.
(See "Stories" under the Memories tag, or visit Wikipedia for additional information.)
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1031 - 1083 (51 years)
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