[1] In 1080, Walcher, Bishop of Durham and earl of Northumbria, was murdered in Gateshead during a feud between his household knights and the old Northumbrian aristocracy.
William the Conqueror then gave the earldom to Aubrey, a Norman baron from Coucy[2] with large possessions in the Midlands.
[3] However, de Coucy soon resigned, probably shortly after a threat of Danish invasion in 1085.
He is listed as a tenant in the Domesday Book of 1086, but the notices suggest that he had recently forfeited his English possessions.
His sister Ermengarde had warned him of a plot to kill him by an Engeran who, according to the Vita Sancti Arnulfi (AASS Aug. 11, p. 240), subsequently became his widow's second husband.