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RE: William the Conqueror/St. Clair??



Robert J. Stevens,
	Yes, William the Conqueror (William the Bastard), was The 75h Duke of Normandy and descended from our Rollo the Viking (1st Duke of Normandy and began the St. Clair line).  William's father, Robert the Devil (6th Duke of Normandy) had a sister Eleanor (St. Clair line of course) that m. Baldwin  Earl of Flanders.  Their daughter was Matilda married her cousin, William the Conqueror.
	Do you all know that the 6th Duke Robert's aunt (thus a St. Clair) was Queen Emma of England--twice.  First she was married to King Ethelred of England and when he died, she returned to Normandy because of all the infighting and outfighting.  So Canute the Great, King of Norway and Denmark, came out on top.  It was diplomatically correct in those days to ignore the woman you were sort of unofficially married to in order to make a strategically important marriage.  So Canute then officially married Emma even though she was older (I wonder how much) and for awhile a St. Clair gal was Queen of Norway, Denmark and England.  It was because of this link with Emma and a great stretch of imagination that William concluded that he had a right to the English throne.
Emma's son, Edward the Confessor, by King Ethelred d. Jan. 1066 childless.  But several years before his death the English had searched and found Edgar Athling  and his two sisters ad their mother Agathe, whose paternal grandfather had been King Edmund Ironsides, living in Hungary.  (How and why they got to Hungary is in itself quite a story)
They brought them back to England but this young Edgar turned out to be unsuited as a King (?)   This was the official end of the line from maybe King Alfred (don't quote me on this part).  Then there was a valient attempt by Harold Godwineson, a powerful and popular Saxon Earl who became king until William the Conqueror arrived.  The book "Harold, The Last Anglo-Saxon King" by Ian W. Walker is just great to read on this subject.
	Now one of those sisters of Edgar Athling was Margaret who lived as a captive of William in England.  Following the conquest, our William St. Clair s/o Walderne who m. his cousin Margaret, sister of  the Devil Duke Robert (Thus our William was a cousin to William the Conqueror), was hanging around London also. There were a group of people that became fed up with King William (the Conqueror), among those were our William St. Clair.  So he went back to Scotland where he had been before the Conquest and during this time, it came about, that he became the Steward to this Margaret (about 24 years old) who became the wife then of Scotland's King Malcolm in 1070 at Dunfermline.  Margaret's oldest dau was  Eadgyth or Edith.  She m. Henry I of England in 1100 thus uniting the Norman and Saxon royal houses and from whom descend all the rest of the English royalty one way or another.  This is in another interesting book called " St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland" by Alan J. Wilson.

Laurel of Portland, OR
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From: 	Robert J. Stevens[SMTP:snevets@execpc.com]
Sent: 	Friday, July 3, 1998 10:26 AM
To: 	sinclair@zilker.net
Subject: 	William the Conqueror/St. Clair??


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