Plectrude

Plectrude (Latin: Plectrudis; German: Plektrud, Plechtrudis)[1] (died 718) was the consort of Pepin of Herstal, the mayor of the palace and duke of the Franks, from about 670.

[3] During the reign of Pepin, she appears as his joint signatory in every legal instrument issued by him that is still preserved, which was unusual for this time period.

Charles' contemporaries most likely did not consider him illegitimate, as he was born while his mother Alpaida was married to Pepin the Frank, and noblemen practiced polygamy in this period.

[6][7] [8] In 715, the Neustrian nobility rebelled against her in alliance with Radbod of Friesland and defeated her in the Battle of Compiègne, which took place on September 26, 715, causing her to take refuge in Cologne.

In 716, Chilperic II, the king of the Franks, and Ragenfrid, the mayor of the palace, led an army into Austrasia, near Cologne, where Plectrude had gone.

Plectrude entered a convent, and died shortly after in the same year in Cologne, where she was buried in the monastery of St. Maria im Kapitol which she had founded.

Her sons by Pepin were: Using the translation done by and provided by Paul Fouracre and Richard A.Gerberding in Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography, 640-720, of the Annales Mettenses Priores (The Earlier Annals of Metz), Plectrude is described as “keeping Charles(Martel) from the legitimate governance of his father’s authority,” as well as having “decided to rule with feminine cunning more cruelly than was necessary,” and is blamed for the Neustrians rising up against her and her grandson.

"Plectrud desired to promote her grandson, Theudoald, she was keeping Charles from the legitimate governance of his father's authority and she herself, with the infant, in a womanly plan, presumed to control the reins of so great a kingdom.