Alan fitz Flaad

Eyton, consistently following the theory of the Scottish origins of the Stewarts, thought this was because he was part of the entourage of the Queen, Matilda of Scotland;[7] Round pointed out that Henry had been besieged in Mont-Saint-Michel during his struggle with his brothers,[1] an event which probably occurred in 1091.

Alan appeared in Henry I's company at least as early as September 1101, probably at a court held in Windsor Castle,[8] when he witnessed important grants to Norwich Cathedral, confirming its foundation and various endowments.

[9][10] Next, he appeared with the king at Canterbury in 1103,[11] where he witnessed the grant of a market to the nuns of Malling Abbey and land acquisitions by Rochester Cathedral, then in the process of rebuilding.

[12] Later that year,[13] or early in the next,[14] Alan was with the king in the New Forest, where the business concerned Andover Priory, a daughter house of the great Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Florent de Saumur.

[17] One problem at issue revolved around the Foxcote chapel, which was evidently being defended from destruction or annexation by Edward de Foscote, a local landowner.

Alan Fitz Flaad was called upon to witness a compromise, although Foxcote was among the properties confirmed to the priory by Pope Eugenius III in 1146.

[25] Probably only later did he appear as a witness to a royal command issued to Richard de Belmeis I, the Bishop of London and the king's viceroy in Shropshire, to see that justice was done in the case of a disputed prebend at Morville.

[26][27] The collegiate church there had been dissolved and replaced with a priory attached to Shrewsbury Abbey[28] and it seems that the son of one of the prebendaries was resisting the loss of what he regarded as his patrimony.

Alan is listed among a group of Shropshire magnates, including Corbets and a Peverel, meeting perhaps during Henry I's 1114 military expedition into Wales.

A large portfolio of lands in Shropshire and around Peppering, near Arundel in Sussex, was taken from the holdings of Rainald de Bailleul,[31] ancestor of the House of Balliol, which was also later to provide a king of Scotland.

[39] The Liber Albus of St Florent mentions that one of the monks present when Alan made the gift was Wihenoc, who initiated the action at Andover.

[13] Alan acquired Upton Magna, the manor in Shropshire on which Haughmond Abbey was later built, as part of the group of estates that had belonged to earlier sheriffs.

[45] He granted the tithes from his demesne at Burton on Trent to the monks of Léhon in Brittany, where there was a priory subject to the Abbey of Marmoutier: this is known from its confirmation some decades later by his grandson, Alan fitz Jordan.

[13] Alan fitz Flaad married Avelina, daughter of Ernulf de Hesdin, a tenant-in-chief in ten counties at the time of Domesday,[48] who was killed on crusade at Antioch.

[49][50] The Burkes' Royal Families of 1848 was one of the sources that asserted Alan's wife was the "daughter and heir of Warine, Sheriff of Shropshire, temp.

He read in Dugdale's History of Warwickshire that Sybil of Wolston had confirmed a gift of land made by her mother, Adeliza, to Burton Abbey.

[31] It is known that Avelina de Hesdin, as a widow, made a claim for her dower, relating to Eaton manor, against Everard of Calne, Bishop of Norwich.

[69]Andrew Stuart, a notable Scottish MP, accepted Dalrymple's critical work on the legendary ancestors, although he included among these a crusader Alan who was subsequently to emerge as genuine.

This finally established Alan Fitz Flaad's existence and importance and confirmed the kinship between the Stewarts and the FitzAlan Earls of Arundel.

Alan's father, Flaad (rendered in numerous ways, including Flaald and Flathald), was a son (or possibly a brother) of Alain, dapifer to the Ancient Diocese of Dol,[74] with its see at Dol-de-Bretagne, who had taken part in the First Crusade in 1097.

Round's genealogy was confirmed in 1904 by Sir James Balfour Paul, then Lord Lyon King of Arms, who, in a definitive work, The Scots Peerage, stated that "the Stewarts or Stuarts are of Breton origin, descended from a family which held the office of Seneschal or Steward of Dol.