Lucy of Bolingbroke or Lucia Thoroldsdottir of Lincoln was an Anglo-Norman heiress in central England and, later in life, countess of Chester. Probably related to the old Englishearls of Mercia, she came to possess extensive lands in Lincolnshire which she passed on to her husbands and sons. She was a notable religious patron, founding or co-founding two small religious houses and endowing several with lands and churches.
Ancestry
A charter of Crowland Abbey, now thought to be spurious, described Thorold of Bucknall, perhaps the same as her probable father Thorold of Lincoln, as a brother of Godgifu, wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. The same charter contradicted itself on the matter, proceeding to style Godgifu's son, Ælfgar, as Thorold's cognatus. Another later source, from Coventry Abbey, made Lucy the sister of Earls Edwin and Morcar, Ælfgār's sons, while two other unreliable sources, the Chronicle of Abbot Ingmund of Crowland and the Peterbrough Chronicle also make Lucy the daughter of Earl Ælfgar. Keats-Rohan's explanation for these accounts is that they were ill-informed and were confusing Lucy with her ancestor, William Malet's mother, who was in some manner related to the family of Godgifu. Although there is much confusion about Lucy's ancestry in earlier writings, recent historians tend to believe that she was the daughter of Thorold, sheriff of Lincoln, by a daughter of William Malet. She inherited a huge group of estates centred on Spalding in Lincolnshire, probably inherited from both the Lincoln and the Malet family. This group of estates have come to be called the "Honour of Bolingbroke".
Marriages
The heiress Lucy was married to three different husbands, all of whom died in her lifetime. The first of these was to Ivo Taillebois, a marriage which took place "around 1083". Ivo took over her lands as husband, and seems in addition to have been granted estates and extensive authority in Westmorland and Cumberland. Ivo died in 1094. The second marriage was to one Roger de Roumare or Roger fitz Gerold, with whom she had one son, William de Roumare, who inherited some of her land. The latter was the ancestor of the de Roumare family of Westmorland. Roger died in either 1097 or 1098. Sometime after this, though before 1101, she was married to Ranulf le Meschin, her last and longest marriage. A son Ranulf de Gernon, succeeded his father to the earldom of Chester and a daughter, Alice, married Richard de Clare. Upon her death, most of the Lincolnshire lands she inherited passed to her older son William de Roumare, while the rest passed to Ranulf II of Chester. The 1130 pipe roll informs us that Lucy had paid King Henry I 500 marks after her last husband's death for the right not to have to remarry. She died around 1138.
Religious patronage
Lucy, as widowed countess, founded the convent of Stixwould in 1135, becoming, in the words of one historian, "one of the few aristocratic women of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to achieve the role of independent lay founder". Her religious patronage however centered on Spalding Priory, a religious house for which her own family was the primary patron. This house was founded, or re-founded, in 1085 by Lucy and her first husband Ivo Taillebois. Later, she was responsible for many endowments, for instance in the 1120s she and her third husband Earl Ranulf granted the priory the churches of Minting, Belchford and Scamblesby. In 1135, Lucy, now widowed for the last time, granted the priory her own manor of Spalding for the permanent use of the monks. The records indicate that Lucy went to great effort to ensure that, after her own death, her sons would honour and uphold her gifts.
