Baldwin de Redvers Earl of Devon

  General Notes:

Baldwin de Redvers, 1st Earl of Devon (died 4 June 1155), was the son of Richard de Redvers and his wife Adeline Peverel.

He was one of the first to rebel against King Stephen and was the only first rank magnate never to accept the new king. He seized Exeter and was a pirate out of Carisbrooke but he was driven out of England to Anjou, where he joined the Empress Matilda. She made him Earl of Devon after she established herself in England, probably in early 1141.

He founded several monasteries, notably those of Quarr Abbey (1131), in the Isle of Wight, a priory at Breamore, Hampshire, and the Priory of St James, at Exeter. Some monastic chronicles call his father also Earl of Devon but no contemporary record uses the title, including the monastic charters.

He was married to Adeliz Baluun (d. circa 1146) and had children:

1.Richard de Redvers, 2nd Earl of Devon. Married Denise de Dunstanville.
2.Henry de Redvers
3.William de Redvers, 5th Earl of Devon. Married Mabel de Beaumont.
4.Matilda de Redvers, married to Anschetil de Greye.
5.Maud de Redvers, married Ralph de Avenel.
6.Alice de Redvers, married Roger II de Nonant.
7.Hawise de Redvers, married Robert Castellan.
8.Eva de Redvers, married Robert d' Oyly.
9.
Between 1151 and 1155 he married Lucy, who was the widow of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Hertford.

The name de Redvers can also be found as de Reviers or Revières. ²⁶

  Research Notes:

The fourth Lord of the Island, Baldwin I (1107-1155), must rank as the greatest of the male line of de Redvers. By about 1135 he had founded the Island's first planned town at Yarmouth, founded the Island's greatest religious institution, Quarr Abbey and rebuilt the castle at Carisbrooke into an impregnable fortress. These were massive building projects. The castle alone required building a huge mound on Fitz Osborne's enclosure on top of which rose the stone keep that still dominates the skyline. Around the quadrangular Saxon earthworks curtain walls of hewn stone towered over the enclosed courtyard, as they still stand today.

Next to the stone quarry at Binstead Quarr Abbey was founded in 1132, with a dozen Norman Cistercian monks who began to tame the northern forest and with the adherence of lay members cultivated a new farmed area. Meanwhile the manor farms prospered under the de Redvers' neighbours from the Cotentin Peninsular of Normandy, among them the de Vernons and de Bournevilles of Chale (founded as a parish in 1114), the de Trenchards of Shalfleet, the de Lestre of Niton, the d'Oglandres of Nunwell, the de Sturs and the de Insular. By 1156 four Norman priories had been built and manned by Norman monks to manage the complex church taxes dedicated to the Norman abbeys.

In 1135 the peace of the Island was disrupted when King Henry I died and his nephew Stephen seized the throne from Henry's daughter Matilda. Baldwin unlike most of the other English barons supported Matilda and by his capture of Exeter that year triggered a nineteen year civil war. Overwhelmed by Stephen at Exeter Baldwin fell back to the impregnable Carisbrooke Castle only to be forced to surrender by an extraordinary drought which dried the castle well. Baldwin fled to France to return to Wareham in 1139 and to fight through to the siege of Winchester in 1141.

That year a defeated Stephen restored Baldwin's title to the Island and the Wight seems to have been spared the worst of the dreadful scenes that followed in the 1140s as the civil war degenerated into baronial anarchy. "You might behold villages of famous names standing empty" wrote a monk of Winchester in 1143 "fields whitened with the harvest as the year verged upon autumn, but the cultivators had perished by famine and the ensuing pestilence."

Although the Island fares badly in international wars, where it is on the front line, it is relatively sheltered during periods of civil war. In 1154, with the death of Stephen and the accession of King Henry II the Island appears to have emerged from the long civil war unscathed and Baldwin had added a new title, Earl of Devon.

In 1155 Baldwin was buried at Quarr to be succeeded by his son Richard II who died in France in 1162.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Address: Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of White.

Baldwin married Adelise Baluun.