Maud, Countess of Huntingdon

Maud, Countess of Huntingdon (Template:Circa 1074–1130) or Matilda, was Queen of Alba as the wife of King David I. She was the great-niece of William the Conqueror and the granddaughter of Earl Siward.

Biography

Maud was the daughter of Waltheof, the Anglo-Saxon Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, and his French wife Judith of Lens. Her father was the last of the major Anglo-Saxon earls to remain powerful after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, and the son of Siward, Earl of Northumbria. Her mother was the niece of William the Conqueror, which makes Maud his grand-niece. Through her ancestors the Counts of Boulogne, she was also a descendant of Alfred the Great and Charles the Bald and a cousin of Godfrey of Bouillon.

She was married to Simon de Senlis (or St Liz) in about 1090.<ref name="weir">Weir, Alison (1995). Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy, Revised Edition. London: Random House. Template:ISBN. p. 192</ref> Earlier, William had tried to get Maud's mother, Judith, to marry Simon. He received the honour of Huntingdon (whose lands stretched across much of eastern England) probably in right of his wife from William Rufus before the end of the year 1090.<ref name="ODNB-Senlis">Matthew Strickland, "Senlis, Simon (I) de", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref><ref name="ODNB-David">G. W. S. Barrow, "David I (Template:Circa1085–1153)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2006 ; Maud (d. 1131): {{#invoke:doi|main}}</ref>

She had three known children by him:<ref name="ODNB-Senlis"/>

• Matilda of St Liz (Maud) (d. 1140); she married Robert Fitz Richard of Tonbridge; she married secondly Saer de Quincy, 1st Earl of Winchester.
• Simon II of St Liz (d. 1153)
• Saint Waltheof of Melrose (Template:Circa 1100–1159/1160)

Her first husband died some time after 1111 and Maud next married David, the brother-in-law of Henry I of England, in 1113.<ref name="weir"/><ref name="ODNB-David"/> Through the marriage, David gained control over his wife's vast estates in England, in addition to his own lands in Cumbria and Strathclyde.<ref name="ODNB-David"/> They had four children (two sons and two daughters):<ref name="weir"/>

1. Malcolm (born in 1113 or later, died young)
2. Henry (Template:Circa 1114–1152)
3. Claricia (died unmarried)
4. Hodierna (died young and unmarried)

In 1124, David became King of Scots. Maud's two sons by different fathers, Simon and Henry, would later vie for the Earldom of Huntingdon.<ref name="ODNB-David"/>

She died in 1130 or 1131 and was buried at Scone Abbey in Perthshire, but she appears in a charter of dubious origin dated 1147.<ref name="weir"/>

Depictions in fiction

Maud of Huntingdon appears as a character in Elizabeth Chadwick's novel The Winter Mantle (2003), as well as Alan Moore's novel Voice of the Fire (1995) and Nigel Tranter's novel David the Prince (1980).