Lucy of Bolingbroke or Lucia Thoroldsdottir of Lincoln (died circa 1136)[1] was an Anglo-Norman heiress in central England and, later in life, countess of Chester.
Probably related to the old English earls of Mercia, she came to possess extensive lands in Lincolnshire which she passed on to her husbands and sons.
[2] The same charter contradicted itself on the matter, proceeding to style Godgifu's son (by Leofric), Ælfgar, as Thorold's cognatus (cousin).
[3] Keats-Rohan's explanation for these accounts is that they were ill-informed and were confusing Lucy with her ancestor, William Malet's mother, who was in some manner related to the family of Godgifu.
He appears to have been twice married since he was ancestor of the English family surnamed 'of Lancaster' or Taillebois who descended from the thegn Eldred, alive in 1086.
[6] Lucy, as widowed countess, founded the convent of Stixwould in 1135, becoming, in the words of one historian, "one of the few aristocratic women of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries to achieve the role of independent lay founder".
[16] Later, she was responsible for many endowments, for instance in the 1120s she and her third husband Earl Ranulf granted the priory the churches of Minting, Belchford and Scamblesby, all in Lincolnshire.