Ivo (Taillebois) de Taillebois (abt. 1036 - 1094)

Born about 1036 in Normandie, France [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 1094 at about age 58 in Kendal, Barony of Kendal, England

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Biography

Ivo appears to have arrived in England in the generation of William the Conqueror. He married into the Anglo-Norman Malet family of Lincolnshire. In 1092 (shortly before his death) William II Rufus drove the Scots from the Lake District and gave Ivo de Taillebois an interest in the area.

He was alive in 1086, and so his landholdings are mentioned in the so-called Domesday Book. These can be seen on specialized websites:

• Open Domesday https://opendomesday.org/name/ivo-tallboys/
• Profile on PASE website: http://domesday.pase.ac.uk/Domesday?op=5&personkey=39601

Brother: He had a brother Ralph who was sheriff of Bedfordshire and died shortly before 1086.^[1]

Wife: Countess Lucy. After many years of discussion Keats-Rohan has published what many see as a convincing confirmation that there was only one wife named Lucy, and that she was a daughter of sheriff Turold and a Malet. The Malets were one of the earliest Norman families to marry into the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. Lucy remarried twice, to Roger fitz Gerold and Ranulph Meschines.

Issue: One definite daughter Beatrice m. Ribald, illegitimate son of Eudes of Brittany, Count of Penthievre. Keats-Rohan denies that there is any evidence that Beatrice was only an illegitimate child of Ivo and Lucy.

This is important because according to annalist Peter of Blois, Ivo's "only daughter, who had been nobly espoused, died before her father; for that evil shoots should not fix deep roots in the world, the accursed lineage of that wicked man perished by the axe of the Almighty, which cut off all his issue." Ivo's only known heiress was Beatrix. Her sons by Ribald of Middleham, used the Taillebois surname on occasion, at least according to records from much later.

Somehow the Taillebois surname survived in the north, most notably around Cliburn in Westmorland, perhaps via descendants of Ivo's apparent brothers who also came to England. For example Keats-Rohan says that "William Taillebois who occurs in the Lincolnshire Domesday was doubtless a kinsman, perhaps the son of Thomas Taillebois; Robert and Thomas Taillebois attest Braose charters in the 1080/90s".^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Domesday People p. 283, the entry for Ivo

• Foster and Longley (1910) "Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey" The Publications - Lincoln Record Society 19 link
• Keats-Rohan, Katharine S B. "Antecessor Noster: The Parentage of Countess Lucy made plain" (PDF). Prosopon Newsletter Issue 2 (1995). Retrieved 2023-12-01. [1]
• K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166, Vol. I (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), p. 283. Keats-Rohan's entry in Domesday People is p.283 "Iuo Taillebois".
• K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166, Vol II (UK & Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2002), p. 42
• Kirk, R.E.G. (1889). "The Countess Lucy : singular or plural?" Hathitrust

Also see

• Wikipedia: Ivo Taillebois