Thomas, Count of Perche
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Thomas (1195-20 May 1217), Count of Perche, son of Geoffrey III, Count of Perche, and Richenza-Matilda of Saxony, daughter of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry II, King of England, and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Only seven when his father died, Thomas became Count of Perche under the regency of his mother and her new husband Enguerrand III, Lord of Coucy. He fought with his stepfather under Philip Augustus (soon to be Philip II, King of France), in the Battle of Bouvines which ended the Anglo-French War of 1202-1204, the French being victorious.
In 1216, the English barons rebelled in the First Barons’ War against John Lackland, and offered the English crown to Louis VIII the Lion, King of France. The death of King John ended this arrangement and the crown went to Henry III, John’s son. In the end, Louis VIII renounced the English crown, but in the interim fought the forces of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke. In the decisive Battle of Lincoln (1217), Thomas, the commander of the French forces, was killed.
Thomas married Hélisende Rethel, daughter of Hugh II, Count of Rethel, and Felicitas, daughter of Simon of Broyes. This union produced no children. His widow remarried Garnier de Traînel, Seigneur de Marigny.
Following Thomas' death in 1217, King Philip II of France would gain control of the castles of Moulins-la-Marche, Bonsmoulin, and Belleme, which had been contested since 1182.[1] Thomas’ uncle William, who was also Bishop of Chalons, succeeded him as the Count of Perche.[2]
Notes
- ^ What did the Frontier of Angevin Normandy Comprise, D.J. Power, Anglo-Norman Studies XVII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1994, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill, (The Boydell Press, 1995), 189.
- ^ Kathleen Thompson, The Monks of Tiron: A Monastic Community and Religious Reform in the Twelfth Century, (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 188.
References
- Freeman, Edward Augustus. The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and Its Results, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1879
- Thompson, Kathleen, Power and Border Lordship in Medieval France: The County of the Perche, 1000-1226, Royal Historical Society Studies in History New Series, 2009
- Tout, T. F., Periods of European History, Volume II: The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273, Rivingtons, London, 1932
- Bury, J. B. (Editor), The Cambridge Medieval History, Volume V, Contest of Empire and Papacy, Cambridge University Press, 1926