Stephen, Count of Blois

Stephen II of Blois
Seal of Stephen II
Spouse(s)	Adela of Normandy
Noble family	House of Blois
Father	Theobald III, Count of Blois
Mother	Garsinde du Maine
Born	c. 1045
Died	19 May 1102 Ramla, Hamerkaz, Israel

Stephen II Henry (in French, Étienne Henri, in Medieval French, Estienne Henri; c. 1045 – 19 May 1102), Count of Blois and Count of Chartres, was the son of Theobald III, count of Blois, and Garsinde du Maine. He is numbered Stephen II after Stephen I, Count of Troyes.

In 1089, upon the death of his father, he became the Count of Blois and Chartres, although Theobald had given him the administration of those holdings in 1074. He was the father of Stephen of England.

Count Stephen was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, often writing enthusiastic letters to his wife Adela of Normandy about the crusade's progress. Stephen was the head of the army council at the Crusaders' siege of Nicaea in 1097.^[1] He returned home in 1098 during the lengthy siege of Antioch, without having fulfilled his crusading vow to forge a way to Jerusalem. He was pressured by Adela into making a second pilgrimage, and joined the minor crusade of 1101 in the company of others who had also returned home prematurely. In 1102, Stephen was killed at the Second Battle of Ramla at the age of fifty-seven.^[2]

Family

Stephen married Adela of Normandy,^[3] a daughter of William the Conqueror around 1080 in Chartres. He fathered Adela's children:

1. William, Count of Sully^[3]
2. Theobald II, Count of Champagne^[3]
3. Odo, who died young
4. Stephen, King of England^[3]
5. Lucia-Mahaut, married Richard d'Avranches, 2nd Earl of Chester. Both drowned on 25 November 1120.
6. Agnes, married Hugh III of Le Puiset
7. Eleanor (d. 1147) married Raoul I of Vermandois (d. 1152) and had issue; they were divorced in 1142.
8. Alix (c. 1100 – 1145) married Renaud III of Joigni (d. 1134) and had issue
9. Adelaide, married Milo II of Montlhéry, Viscount of Troyes (divorced 1115)
10. Henry, Bishop of Winchester^[3]
11. Humbert, died young

A late 14th century source gives him an illegitimate daughter Emma, wife of Herbert of Winchester and mother of William of York, archbishop of York,^[4] but recent research suggests a different parentage for her.^[5]

Notes

1. Cartier, Étienne (1846) Recherches sur les monnaies au type chartrain frappées à Chartres, Blois, Vendoîns, Chateaudum, Nogent-le-Rotrou (Ferche), St. Aignan, Celles, Romorantin, Brosse, etc. Rollin, Paris, page 7, OCLC 27374228, in French
2. Tyerman, Christopher, God's war: a new history of the Crusades, (Harvard University Press, 2006), 87.
3. Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 248.
4. Davis, King Stephen, p. 172
5. Burton "William of York (d. 1154)" "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography"

References

• Davis, R. H. C. King Stephen 1135–1154, Third Edition London: Longman 1990 ISBN 0-582-04000-0.