William VIII (X) OF POITOU
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The Rest of the Story: The Ancestors of Sarah May Paddock Otstott
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William OF POITOU's sister: Agnes OF POITOU & AQUITAINE ( -1157)

William VIII (X) OF POITOU (1099-1137)

Name: William VIII (X) OF POITOU 1
Sex: Male
Nickname: "the Saint"
Father: William VII (IX) OF POITOU (1071-1127)
Mother: Philippa OF TOULOUSE (1073?-1117)

Individual Events and Attributes

Birth 1099
Occupation (1) frm 1126 to 1137 (age 26-38) Count of Poitou
Group/Caste Membership Ramnulfids or House of Poitiers
Occupation (2) frm 1126 to 1137 (age 26-38) Duke of Aquitaine
Occupation (3) Duke of Gascony
Death 9 Apr 1137 (age 37-38)
Child Count 4
Marriage Count 1

Marriage

      picture     picture     picture     picture
      Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England     Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England     Tombs of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in Fontevraud Abbey     Issue of Eleanor & Henry
 
      picture    
      Palace of Poitiers, seat of the Counts of Poitou and Dukes of Aquitaine in the 10th through 12th    
 
Spouse Aénor (Eleanor) DE CHÂTELLERAULT ( - )
Children Eleanor OF AQUITAINE (1120?-1204)
Marriage aft Mar 1130 (age 30-31)

Individual Note

William X (1099 – 9 April 1137), called the Saint, was Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, and Count of Poitou (as William VIII) between 1126 and 1137. He was the son of William IX by his second wife, Philippa of Toulouse.

 

William was born in Toulouse during the brief period when his parents ruled the capital. His birth is recorded in the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent for the year 1099: Willelmo comiti natus est filius, equivoce Guillelmus vocatus ("a son was born to Count William, named William like himself"). Later that same year, much to his wife's ire, Duke William mortgaged Toulouse to Philippa's cousin, Bertrand of Toulouse, and then left on Crusade.

 

Philippa and her infant son were left in Poitiers. Long after Duke William's return, he took up with Dangereuse, the wife of one of his vassals, and set aside his rightful wife, Philippa. This caused strain between father and son, until William married Aenor de Châtellerault, daughter of his father's mistress, in 1121.

 

He had from her three children:

 

Eleanor, who would later become heiress to the Duchy;

Petronilla, who married Raoul I of Vermandois;

William Aigret, who died at age 4 in 1130, about the time their mother Aenor de Châtellerault died.

 

He also had two natural sons, William and Joscelin. These half brothers of Eleanor, along with Petronilla, accompanied Eleanor and Henry II to England when they left to claim the crown after Stephen died. According to the Pipe Rolls, which recorded wine bought for them and Petronilla, they were still part of Eleanor's court in 1156. After that, Eleanor's siblings drop from the record.

 

As his father before him, William X was a patron of troubadours, music and literature. He was an educated man and strove to give his two daughters an excellent education, in a time when Europe's rulers were hardly literate.

 

When Eleanor succeeded him as Duchess, she continued William's tradition and transformed the Aquitanian court into Europe's centre of knowledge.

 

William was both a lover of the arts and a warrior. He became involved in conflicts with Normandy (which he raided in 1136, in alliance with Geoffrey le Bel of Anjou who claimed it in his wife's name) and France.

 

Even inside his borders, William faced an alliance of the Lusignans and the Parthenays against him, an issue resolved with total destruction of the enemies. In international politics, William X initially supported antipope Anacletus II in the schism of 1130, opposite to Pope Innocent II, against the will of his own bishops. In 1134 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux convinced William to drop his support to Anacletus and join Innocent.

 

In 1137 William joined the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, but died of suspected food poisoning during the trip. On his deathbed, he expressed his wish to see king Louis VI of France as protector of his fifteen-year-old daughter Eleanor, and to find her a suitable husband. Louis VI naturally accepted this guardianship and married the heiress of Aquitaine to his own son, Louis VII.

 

NOTES:

Parsons, John Carmi. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, 20022

Note on Marriage to Aénor (Eleanor) DE CHÂTELLERAULT

Marriage also listed as 1121.

Sources

1Weis, Frederick Lewis & Sheppard, Walter Lee, Jr, "Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700: Lineages from Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Malcolm of Scotland, Robert the Strong, and other Historical Individuals". p 111, 110-25; 172, 183-4.
2"Wikipedia". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_X,_Duke_of_Aquitaine.