Alan fitz Flaad

Dol cathedral today. The present building was begun about a century after the time of Alan Fitz Flaad.

Mont St Michel, the isolated Norman monastery, on the Breton border, which Henry held against his brothers, William Rufus and Robert Curthose, in 1091.

Alan's role was formerly obscure because of the political implications of examining the origins of the Stewart dynasty. Holinshed, deriving his information from the work of Hector Boece, asserted that Banquo, Thane of Lochaber, was the ancestor of the Stewarts.[7] Distorting the role of Banquo, who is presented by Holinshed as Macbeth's chief accomplice in regicide,[8] William Shakespeare presented him flatteringly in Macbeth as a martyred ancestor of James VI of Scotland and I of England. These legends, accepted as history, became part of the foundation narrative of the Stewarts and forced later writers to trace the Stewart ancestry through Fleance, Banquo's son. David Symson, the Historiographer Royal of Scotland, in a work dedicated to Queen Anne, followed the chroniclers in having Fleance marry a daughter of the Welsh ruler Gruffydd ap Llywelyn,[9] and then introduced Walter as his son[10] and Alan fitz Walter, 2nd High Steward of Scotland as his grandson.[11] However, this greatly distorted the chronology, forcing Symson to transpose Alan Fitz Walter, actually born around 1140, to about 1073. This created a gap in the record, which was filled by multiplying the Alans and Walters in the Stewart line.

David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, in his Annals of Scotland, published in the 1770s, went some way to establish a convincing chronology for Walter Fitz Alan, who, he asserted, belonged to the reign of David I of Scotland (1124–53) and his successor, Malcolm IV. Moreover, he was the first of the Stewarts: there were none in the reign of Malcolm III (1058–93), as Symson had been forced to maintain.[12] He went on to demolish the legendary background to the Stewarts, which he described as "flattering and ignorant fictions". He showed that there was a need to distinguish the various Alans who were connected with the Stewart line, something he was unembarrassed to be unable to do:

Some of my readers may demand, "Who then was Alan the father of Walter, Stewart of Scotland in the reign of Malcolm IV?" ... In the reign of David I, before the middle of the twelfth century, the family of the Stewarts was opulent and powerful. It may, therefore, have subsisted for many ages previous to that time; but when, and what was its commencement, we cannot determine.[13]

Andrew Stuart, a notable Scottish MP, accepted Dalrymple's critical work on the legendary ancestors, although he included among these a crusader Alan who was subsequently to emerge as genuine.[14] He sought to establish a definite chronological framework, placing Walter Fitz Alan's death in 1177.

Not until the first decade of the 19th century did George Chalmers definitely prove that Walter Fitz Alan, an acknowledged link in the Stewart ancestry, came from Shropshire and was actually the son of Alan Fitz Flaald. This finally established Alan Fitz Flaad's existence and importance and confirmed the kinship between the Stewarts and the FitzAlan Earls of Arundel.[4] Even then, the legendary background took almost a century to fade. In 1858, Robert William Eyton, the distinguished historian of Shropshire, while clarifying Alan Fitz Flaad's connection with the county and details of his marriage, still tried to maintain a link with the legendary Banquo,[15] and even surmised that Flaad was actually Fleance.[16]

After an anonymous work of 1874 drew attention to a strong connection between Alan Fitz Flaad and Brittany, and confirmed Flaad's relationship to Alan the Seneschal,[17] J. Horace Round definitively established and publicized Alan Fitz Flaad's true Breton origins in 1901 in a collection of genealogical essays. Alan's father, Flaad (rendered in numerous ways, including Flaald and Flathald), was a son (or possibly a brother) of Alain, dapifer to the Ancient Diocese of Dol,[18] with its see at Dol-de-Bretagne, who had taken part in the First Crusade in 1097.[19] "Alan Dapifer" is found as a witness in 1086 to a charter relating to Mezuoit, a cell near Dol of the Abbey of Saint-Florent de Saumur. The area of Dol is near Mont-Saint-Michel and has figured in the history of the Duchy of Brittany since at least the rule of Nominoe. Round's genealogy was confirmed in 1904 by Sir James Balfour Paul, then Lord Lyon King of Arms, who, in a definitive work, The Scots Peerage, stated that "the Stewarts or Stuarts are of Breton origin, descended from a family which held the office of Seneschal or Steward of Dol."[20] He then reinstated Alan Fitz Flaad to his place in the ancestry of the Scottish royal family and gave a summary of what was known of his career.

Round provided a family tree[21] to embody his essential findings, which is adapted below.

Henry's royal seal, showing the King on horseback and seated on his throne. The images reflect Henry's peripatetic kingship, with the court constantly mobile while transacting business.

Flaad and his son Alan had come to the favourable notice of King Henry I of England who, soon after his accession, brought Flaad and Alan to England. Eyton, consistently following the theory of the Scottish origins of the Stewarts, though this was because he was part of the entourage of the Queen, Matilda of Scotland,[22] Round pointed out that Henry had been besieged in Mont St Michel during his struggle with his brothers,[1] an event which probably occurred in 1091. He is known to have recruited Breton troops at that time and, after his surrender, left the scene via the adjoining regions of Brittany, where Dol is situated. This is a likely explanation for the Bretons in the military retinue he brought to England after the death of William Rufus.

Alan's career in England can be traced largely through his presence as a witness to charters granted by the king during his travels in the first decade or more of his reign. Some of his activities were traced by Eyton, and his researches overlap with William Farrer's calendar of Henry I travel. All of the business in which he took part was ecclesiastical, involving grants, sometimes disputed, to churches and monasteries.

Miniature from illuminated Chronicle of Matthew Paris, showing Henry enthroned and symbolically holding a church. Alan Fitz Flaad's business at court seems invariable to have involved donations to the church.

Alan appeared in Henry I's company at least as early as September 1101, probably at a court held in Windsor Castle,[23] when he witnessed important grants to Norwich Cathedral, confirming its foundation and various endowments.[24][25] Next, he appeared with the king at Canterbury in 1103,[26] where he witnessed the grant of a market to the nuns of Malling Abbey and land acquisitions by Rochester Cathedral, then in the process of rebuilding.[27]

Later that year[28] or early in the next,[29] Alan was with the king in the New Forest, where the business concerned Andover Priory, a daughter house of the great Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Florent de Saumur.[30] He was probably selected deliberately for this meeting because of his family's close connections with Saumur Abbey: one of his uncles was a monk there.[19] William Rufus had decreed that all chapels in the parish of Andover church should be handed over to the monks or destroyed.[31] One problem at issue revolved around the Foxcote chapel, which was evidently being defended from destruction or annexation by Edward de Foscote, a local landowner. Another seems to have been the administration of justice in the monastic estates.[32] Wihenoc, a monk of St Florent, had initiated an action against the reeve of Andover to have these issues clarified and resolved. Alan Fitz Flaad was called upon to witness a compromise, although Foxcote was among the properties confirmed to the priory by Pope Eugenius III in 1146.[33]

In the autumn of 1105 Alan was called to York to witness confirmation of Ralph Paynel's transfer of his refounded Holy Trinity Priory in York to Marmoutier Abbey, Tours[34][35] and his many endowments of the priory itself.[36][37] At some point, he also witnessed the Roger de Nonant's gift of the church at Totnes and various tithes to the Abbey of SS Sergius and Bacchus at Angers, a gift which was earmarked as being for the souls of the royal family.[38]

In May 1110 Alan was at court at Windsor again to witness the king's settlement of a property dispute between Hervey le Breton, Bishop of Ely, and Ranulph Flambard, Bishop of Durham, resolved in favour of the former.[39]

Probably only later does he appear as a witness to a royal command issued to Richard de Belmeis I, the Bishop of London and the king's viceroy in Shropshire, to see that justice was done in the case of a disputed prebend at Morville.[40][41] The collegiate church there had been dissolved and replaced with a priory attached to Shrewsbury Abbey[42] and it seems that the son of one of the prebendaries was resisting the loss of what he regarded as his patrimony. Alan is listed among a group of Shropshire magnates, including Corbets and a Peverel, meeting perhaps during Henry I's 1114 military expedition into Wales. Johnson and Cronne tentatively place the meeting at Holdgate Castle in Shropshire. Eyton dates the event earlier, around the time of a royal expedition to Shropshire in 1109.[43] Whatever the date, it shows Alan as an important member of the Shropshire landowning class.

Alan's rapid ascent to wealth and power was a symptom of troubled times. The abortive revolt of Robert de Belleme in 1102 had torn apart the Anglo-Norman system of governing the Welsh Marches. With other Breton friends, Alan had been given forfeited lands in Norfolk and Shropshire, including some which had previously belonged to Robert de Belleme himself.[44] Robert had proved a threat to Henry in both the Welsh Marches and in Normandy, so the king was determined to insert reliable supporters to counterbalance or replace his network of supporters. Alan received more land as he proved his worth. A large portfolio of lands in Shropshire and around Peppering, near Arundel in Sussex, was taken from the holdings of Rainald de Bailleul,[45] ancestor of the House of Balliol, which was also later to provide a king of Scotland. These were lands granted to Rainald by William the Conqueror in recognition of his role as Sheriff of Shropshire. There is no evidence that Rainald or his successor, Hugh, were rebels, and it seems that their lands came to Alan as a consequence of his elevation to the shrievalty of the county.[43] He also gained a stake in the very large estates of Ernulf de Hesdin by marriage to his daughter, Avelina.[46]