Too Many Williams

Recently I posted about a potential genealogical connection from the Pierpont family back to William the Conqueror. You can see it here. Some additional information has been given to me so I needed to do some further investigation. But before I get to that, there are a few items in the original post that bear some comment.

[William the Conqueror]

 

Tree Source Issues

There are a number of sources for family tree information. Some of the ones that I use for reference include Wikitree and geni.com as both of them draw composite information from a number of trees. I will sometimes use Wikipedia where the individuals being reviewed are well-known historical figures. But these sources all have limitations. A few of them showed up here.

 

Hill/Hulle genealogy – The Hill/Hulle genealogy listed was sourced primarily from geni.com. But it had some confusion about the parents of Lord Hugh de la Hulle (1175-1224). His parents were listed as:

Ayleth de Normandie de la Hulle (1152-1187), who is listed as being male and being “Son of Ozwell de Hill”, “Husband of Oseberre de Hulle” and “Father of Lord Hugh de la Hulle”

And, Oseberre de Hulle (1154-1200) is also listed as being male with the same “Son of Ozwell de Hulle”, “Husband of Ayleth” and “Father of Lord Hugh de la Hulle”

But it is impossible that both Ayleth and Oseberre are male and that they have the same parents. Also, note that the fathers of these two are separate entries in their database as one is “Ozwell de Hill” and one is “Ozwell de Hulle”. But two brothers cannot marry and have a child. Looking at other sources, it’s clear that Ayleth is female (her name would have been simply Ayleth de Normandie before her marriage and the “de la Hulle” part would be taken from her husband after marriage).

Thus, while I corrected the gender in my posting, it’s probably more likely that the parents of Ayleth are unknown and that Ozwell de Hill/Hulle is the father of Oseberre and I have perpetuated that error in my blog (I’ve added a comment to note it).

 

William the Conqueror family – geni.com is also confused about the family of Williams the Conqueror, specifically his son, Robert Curthose. Referring to the family tree below, in addition to the Robert’s four children (1a-1d), they list Henry I (4) as the child of Robert Curthose instead of the child of William the Conqueror. With so many duplicate names – William, Robert, Henry – it’s an easy mistake to make.

 

WikiTree looping – WikiTree is not without its problems too. The Hill genealogy listed in my posting is primarily from geni.com. The one in Wikitree is mostly the same in the lower generations, but goes awry in the middle of the list. In particular they show the father of Richard (1268-1317) as John Hill de Hull (1240-), John’s father as Adam Hill (1268-1317), and Adam’s father as Robert Hill (-1255). One can’t have the father of someone be 28 years younger than the son, but then the father of that individual dying 13 years before the son is born. This is obviously a mistake, which is why I chose to source from geni.com

 

Age gaps – one test for reasonability of a tree is the age gap between father and children. In the time frame being covered in my posting, individuals married younger than they do now – often in the mid-late-teens. They also generally had their children while in their early-mid-twenties, and rarely after age 30. The age gaps in the Hill/Hulle family as shown were: 17, 29, 31, 23, 18, 26, 26, 13, 25, 31, 24, 21, 23, 29. Since the age of birth for these individuals are often estimates based on events in the person’s life, the only one “out of range” is the 13-year gap between Sir Thomas (1255-1325) and Lord Richard (1268-1315). I’m not too bothered by this as it may just mean that the age estimate for one or the other is off by a few years due to errors in making the estimate of birth year. But we will also use this reasonability test in the below discussion about “too many Williams”.

 

Too Many Williams

Now let’s move onto the primary purpose of this post, trying to make the link from the Hill/Hulle family to William the Conqueror. First, let me list the first few generations of descendants of this family. I’ll use this, together with the list references in the discussion which follows.

Family of William the Conqueror

1.      Robert Curthose (1051-1134) - inherited Normandy

a.      William Clito  (1102-1128) – died without children

b.      Richard (c. 1079-1100) – illegitimate, died young without children

c.      William (c. 1079-1111?) – illegitimate – went to Holy Land after 1106 as Lord of Tortosa and disappears from historical record after 1110

                                                              i.     Unnamed son, but possibly also named William

d.      Illegitimate daughter

2.      Richard (1054-1070) – died young without children

3.      William II of England (1056-1100) – no legitimate children, had several concubines, but no illegitimate children can be identified leading some to speculate that he was sterile

4.      Henry I of England (1068-1135)

a.      Empress Matilda (1102-1167) – married Henry V, became queen of Germany in 1110 – died without children

b.      William Adelin (1103-1120) – died young without issue

c.      As many as 24 illegitimate children

5.      5 or 6 daughters – no consideration by historians as possibilities

6.      No evidence of any illegitimate children

 

Looking at the six! Williams

Let’s make an initial pass as each of these six to see how many we can eliminate in our search for the potential link to the Hill/Hulle family, a potential “William” who could be the ancestor of “Ozwell”:

·        William the Conqueror – obvious he is just the starting point.

·        William Clito (1a) – because of the “Clito” attached to his name having a similar meaning to “Aetheling” for Aetheling William and because his date of birth in 1102 was the same as what we were looking for, he was the candidate that I examined in my initial post. But, as we see above, he died in 1128, three years before Ozwell was born. Therefore, we need to rule him out.

·        William (1c), illegitimate son of Robert – went to Holy Land in 1106 and appears to have died or been killed a few years later. Further investigation needed.

·        William? (1ci), son of William (1c) – Further investigation needed.

·        William II of England (3) – appears to have been sterile and has no known children, so can be ruled out.

·        William Aethling (4b) – as we see above, died young without issue, so can be ruled out.

Thus, there are only two possibilities left, the father-son combination (1c) and (1ci). Let’s see what we can find about them.

 

Looking at William (1c)

The McKay-Stephens family tree lists William De La Hulle (1079-1111) as the father of Ozwell. But they then have the year of birth for Ozwell as 1111 instead of 1131. There are several problems with this arrangement:

·        Since William (1c) disappeared from the historical record in 1110 when he was likely killed in Palestine, his having a son in 1111 would require that either Ozwell was born in Palestine to or William (1c) to have returned to Normandie. There is no record of this happening.

·        The birth year for Ozwell has been moved 20 years earlier than what has been given in most other sources in order for this connection to work.

·        The age-gap between William (1c) and Ozwell is 32 years (a bit high), and the age-gap between Ozwell and Oseberre is now 43 years (way too high to be reasonable).

Thus, I reject this as a possibility. I have seen a date of 1111 attached to Ozwell in a few other locations and they suffer from the same flaws because of it.

 

Looking at William (1ci)

William (1c) was born around 1079 when his father Robert Curthose was 28. His son, possibly also named William (1ci) would have been born in the period 1100-1105 when his father was age 21-26. If William (1ci) was the father of Ozwell, then the age-gap between them would be 26-31. Therefore, having this extra generation makes all the age-gaps quite reasonable and does not require the 20-year adjustment in Ozwell’s birth as in the above case. Since William (1c) went to Palestine sometime around 1106, this would also be consistent with his having a son before he left.

Finally, attaching the Aetheling (prince) designation to William (1ci) would also be appropriate since all the other male heirs of Robert II (1) passed away without any children who could inherit the throne of Normandy. Thus, this is a quite reasonable conclusion. But can we find any “proof”?

There is an excellent bit of research in WikiTree which was put together that you can read here. It’s attached to a page devoted to William de Hull, but if you scroll down to the “Research Notes:” they are all about William of Tortosa (1c) and his son (1ci). I’m not going to reproduce the whole thing here, but there are several compelling points made:

·        The name “Hill” (which originated with this individual) was taken from an English translation of his mother’s name, de Ribemont, which means “ribbon of hills”.

·        Robert II (1) would have wished to pass the crown to one of his [illegitimate] offspring as his only legitimate heir, William Clito, had passed away.

·        The Hill/Hulle family crest includes references to his ancestry with “Two Battle Axes to represent his father and grandfather’s royal battles” as well as a “Blue Ribbon that serves to connect the Spear to the small Shield on which appear the Two Battle Axes [which] represents his mother’s line Ribemont.”

This research contains many more details and seems fairly well put together. Having ruled out all other possible direct connections from William the Conqueror to the Hill/Hulle family, and thence to the New England Pierpont family, this seems to me to make a good case. There are also other references to the events referenced in this research (see here for one of them).