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From: "Stewart, Peter" <>
Subject: RE: French & English Courtenays
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 09:51:53 +1000


> -----Original Message-----
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> Sent: Thursday, 23 May 2002 19:41
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> Subject: Re: French & English Courtenays
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>
><snip>
> It's Seversmith, not Silversmith, and volume 5 was printed in
> Chevy Chase, Maryland, in 1958, not in Los Angeles.
> Seversmith's discussion of the English Reginald de Courtenay
> (ancestor of the Courtenays of Devon) appears on pp.
> 2419-2424.
>
> Seversmith's argument that the English Reginald de Courtenay
> was not the same person as the French Reginald de Courtenay
> appears on p. 2423, and consists of four parts. First is the
> chronology, as the English Reginald was born about 1125,
> while the French Reginald's parents were married around 1095.
> Second is their personal characters, the French Reginald
> being a glorified bandit while the English Reginald escaped
> the notice of any chroniclers, and is known only through
> charters. Third is their social status, the French Reginald being
> a nephew of the Count of Odessa and having a daughter who
> married a son of the King of France (who took her name of
> Courtenay), while the English Reginald was only the lord of a
> not very large manor, not a baron, and not even a knight. The
> fourth is that there is no actual evidence to support the
> suggestion that they were the same person -- the connection
> was made by Cleaveland in his 1735 Courtenay genealogy and
> has been repeated uncritically ever since.

Many thanks for posting this - different widows for the two men, if G
Estournet provided evidence for them [in *Les chevaliers du Donjon*,
_Annales de la Société historique et archéologique du Gâtinais_ 38 (1926)]
would be a useful addition to the arguments.

Given my luck in getting copies from French journals, it may be some time
before I can check this. And given my reading disability ("Silversmith" for
Seversmith, indeed) it may not be worth the wait.

Peter Stewart

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