Lady Boketon
Lucie de la Zouche
1279-1326

 

WITH LUCIE DE LA ZOUCHE, my 20th great grandmother, I returned to researching branches of the family tree that had made their way to England. In Lucie’s case, her branches came from several parts of France, and not without Viking roots, the same roots as Adelaide, in fact.

 

“Lucie, as I see it, you are the essential merge point of two notable families in my genealogy – the de la Zouches, and the de Greenes. What can you tell us about these two bloodlines?”

 

Lucie’s yellow Tudor headpiece held back her long ash blonde hair. the headpiece complemented her tight fitting pale green gown, giving her a formal appearance that belied her eagerness to talk.

 

“Both these families originated in the ancient Frankish kingdoms,” she clarified. “The Greenes from Normandy, and the de la Zouches from Bretagne, or what is also called Brittany, you know. My grandmother, Helen de Quincy, is from a French family as well. But she is also Scots on her mother’s side. She’s another whose lineage goes back to Charlemagne, but whose doesn’t?”

 

She laughed, as if all that history that would be featured in schools for a thousand years meant little to her.

 

“I married into the Greenes. Thomas was but 20 when my mother gave up hope of finding an older match for me. Both my parents were more interested in the uniting of two historied families than in whether I would be compatible with this boy, Thomas. I was 33 at the time,” she said, seeing the question in my eyes.

 

“There’s confusion about your age and birth year. Some of the reports I’ve run across have you born 3 years after Thomas.” I hoped she could clear up the confusion.

 

“Well, Eudo was definitely my father, and he died in 1279. I don’t see then how I could have been born in 1295 as those reports say.” She laughed at this idea. “No, I was always told my birth was in 1279. It was the memorable year after all the Jews had been imprisoned for coin clipping.”

 

“Coin clipping? What in the world is that?”

 

“Coins were made of solid gold or silver, and some merchants would shave a bit off the edges as a way to gain the precious metal for themselves. If you got a coin that was a bit shaved, you were getting cheated because it was worth less than it was supposed to. It was a crime punishable by death. Of course it wasn’t usually the Jews who did it, but they were always accused of terrible things they had no part in. Doesn’t coin clipping happen in your modern times?” Lucie asked, and finding it hard to believe that in the 21st century our coins in common circulation had very little precious metal in them.

 

“No, and most coins now are a standardized size not based on the amount or value of the metal in them, and have ridged edges to prevent that kind of thing. At least in my country,” I told her.

 

“But getting back to your marriage to Thomas. Thirteen years seems a huge age difference, especially when the female is the older person. What was that like for you?” I wondered out loud.

 

“You must understand that marriage in those days was not that often about romance or even caring for the other person. It was about preserving and enlarging family property, and thereby power, so that family members could have influence with the king. It seems that was the most important thing, to have influence. And I suppose I looked younger than my age. It’s true that I resisted behaving older than a child, as I was having fun and did not wish to take on adult responsibilities too early in life.”

 

Lucie leaned in then to share with me some of her more calculating thoughts. “I must admit, it did occur to me that being older than Thomas would provide a chance to have influence over him, before he got too old, too schooled in marital relationships by his brothers and advisors.

 

I nodded. That made sense to me, especially when the adult responsibility for women still meant managing a large family and larger house, with many servants. Being a bit older could work to shape Thomas’s expectations. “So, your true age was kept a secret from the Greene family on purpose?”

 

“Well, we just never mentioned it, and they didn’t ask.” My family was very active, traveling, gaming — you would call them sports now — tournaments, like most of the aristocracy enjoyed. I looked young for my age, too.” 

 

So had I for much of my adult life, I thought, but kept to myself. “I notice you call them the Greenes, rather than the de Greenes. Is there a difference?”

 

“Not really. De Greene just indicates that the family had French roots. Seven generations later the ‘de’ was dropped. De, you know, just means ‘of’ or ‘from’ in French, so the name in English just meant from the green, or of the green. Just like de Boketon — my noble class title — means of the town of the bok, or deer. And many generations after me that last ‘e’ on Greene was dropped too, by your third great grandfather, in fact.”

 

“With all these French roots, how did they all end up in England?” I should have been embarrassed by my ignorance of historic migrations, but Lucie was easy to talk to.

 

“Some came with William the Conqueror in 1066, others followed soon after. William gave a lot of land grants to his French followers. French was spoken in the English court for a while, and along with Latin it was the language of official documents. It was considered the language of diplomacy and commerce with Europe.

 

“This was changing, though, even in my day,” Lucie explained the difficulty of ruling an English speaking country as perpetual French invaders. “The clergy and aristocracy was finding it more advantageous to drop the obvious ties to France by the 14th and 15th centuries. And families started “anglicizing” their names. So de Greene eventually became just Greene.”

 

“The 14th century was full of extreme difficulties, wasn’t it? How did the famine and the plague effect you?”

 

“Oh you read about that? Yes, there was a great famine that started in 1315 with terrible weather that killed crops and then animals started starving and dying too. England had been a prosperous country, but this famine nearly destroyed everything. Our land tenants could not produce as much food as they had done, and this affected even the nobility and great houses like ours.

 

“They say this famine ended by 1317, but not everything returned to normal right away. The people and livestock were weakened, and disease was rampant. It was but the first of four periods of famine in that one century. I’m sure that contributed then to the spread of the Black Death across Europe and into England. I was gone by then — but my dear Thomas and son Henry had to fight to survive those times.”

 

“Your era was also quite geopolitically contentious, too, wasn’t it? It was the time of the early wars for Scottish independence. And then Edward II arresting the Knights Templar and basically stealing their lands.”

 

“Yes, and that added to the troubles during the Great Famine.  Many of our tenants’ sons had been conscripted into the king’s army to fight Wallace and the Scots in the early years of the century. And then that war continued against Robert the Bruce who gained victories over the king that were quite unexpected. So our estate didn’t have as many workers as it needed when the famine did come. Of course, we were much closer to London than to the border with Scotland where all the fighting was. But still, we felt the impact.

 

“It’s truly miraculous that any of us survived to continue the bloodline,” Lucie said. “We tried our best to maintain our way of life. You know, to keep up with the hunts and tournaments, and my husband’s dealing with the local barons. But it more and more became a daily battle to just strategize how to stay alive. After my death, Thomas became the high sheriff of Northampton for a couple years. So you know that even while we were married he was working to be noticed by the court for such a position.”

 

“What did the high sheriff do?” I wondered if it was similar to today’s law enforcement position.

 

“They were tax and rent collectors for the crown, mainly. But they also investigated crimes and often settled disputes between landowners and farmers if the barons couldn’t. They could take prisoners and gather a jury for trials if needed. Positions of this sort ran in the Greene family, so it was more or less expected of Thomas to become High Sheriff,” Lucie said, off-handedly.

 

I felt like I could talk with her for hours, but it was time to wrap up. “So from all the changes and challenges in your lifetime and era, what’s one piece of wisdom you’d like to pass along to women in today’s world?”

 

Lucie stared off into the distance for a minute as if seeing a particular face or place. Then she closed her eyes to listen to her inner voice. “I think my advice would be, find a way. No matter what is going on around you, find a way to secure what you need to survive with your spirit intact. Don’t give in to despair, for that helps no one, least of all yourself.”

 

Find a way had been a kind of motto of my own, I thought as Lucie’s consciousness evaporated. I was often looking for ways around obstacles, or engaging in “what if” problem solving — as in, what if we do it this way, or what if that comes first, etc. Maybe Lucie’s spirit had been passed down to me from one of the most difficult periods in history. It was an interesting thought.