Note 662 — Chapter V · GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS. 1128–1139.

The story of this wooing is curious, and linked in a curious fashion to the old days when Fulk Nerra and Odo were fighting for Touraine. Gelduin, the “devil of Saumur,” when Odo’s mistaken tactics and his own loyal service had cost him the loss of his heritage, refused all the offers of compensation made to him by his penitent count, and merely asked him for a certain “bare hill” on the south bank of the Loire, half way between Amboise and Blois, where he built the castle afterwards known as Chaumont, and there remained as a perpetual thorn in the side of the Angevin lords of Amboise, till in 1035 he gave up his possessions to his son Geoffrey and went to end his days in peace in an abbey which he had founded on an estate of his own, hard by the battle-field of Pontlevoy. Geoffrey’s delicate beauty won him the surname of “the Maiden,” but beneath his girl-like face lay a spirit as manly and as noble as that of his father. In 1066 the hot northern blood in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally; and it was Geoffrey’s well-earned influence with the Conqueror which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of his former lord and the daughter of his present one (Gesta Amb. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 173, 174, 184). On the marriage see also Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 573. After the Conqueror’s death Geoffrey found the state of things in England no longer to his mind, made over his estates there to his nephew Savaric, and came home once more, to be received with open arms by the couple whom he had helped to marry. He dwelt at their court as an honoured guest for the rest of his days, lived to complete his hundredth year without the loss of a single faculty save the light of his still beautiful eyes, and was buried at last by his father’s side in the abbey of our Lady of Pontlevoy (Gesta Amb. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 185, 197, 198).