Saintonge in fief against his son. In 1036 Geoffrey Martel had to liberate William the Fat, on payment of a heavy ransom, but the latter having died in 1038, and the second son of William the Great, Odo, duke of Gascony, having fallen in his turn at the siege of Mauzé (10th of March 1039) Geoffrey made peace with his father in the autumn of 1039, and had his wife’s two sons recognized as dukes. About this time, also, he had interfered in the affairs of Maine, though without much result, for having sided against Gervais, bishop of Le Mans, who was trying to make himself guardian of the young count of Maine, Hugh, he had been beaten and forced to make terms with Gervais in 1038. In 1040 he succeeded his father in Anjou and was able to conquer Touraine (1044) and assert his authority over Maine (see Anjou). About 1050 he repudiated Agnes, his first wife, and married Grécie, the widow of Bellay, lord of Montreuil-Bellay (before August 1052), whom he subsequently left in order to marry Adela, daughter of a certain Count Odo. Later he returned to Grécie, but again left her to marry Adelaide the German. When, however, he died on the 14th of November 1060, at the monastery of St Nicholas at Angers, he left no children, and transmitted the countship to Geoffrey the Bearded, the eldest of his nephews (see Anjou).
See Louis Halphen, Le Comté d’Anjou au XI e siècle (Paris, 1906). A summary biography is given by Célestin Port, Dictionnaire historique, géographique et biographique de Maine-et-Loire (3 vols., Paris-Angers, 1874–1878), vol. ii. pp. 252-253, and a sketch of the wars by Kate Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (2 vols., London, 1887), vol. i. chs. iii. iv. (L. H.*)
GEOFFREY, surnamed Plantagenet [or Plantegenet] (1113–1151), count of Anjou, was the son of Count Fulk the Young and of Eremburge (or Arembourg of La Flèche); he was born on the 24th of August 1113. He is also called “le bel” or “the handsome,” and received the surname of Plantagenet from the habit which he is said to have had of wearing in his cap a sprig of broom (genêt). In 1127 he was made a knight, and on the 2nd of June 1129 married Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England, and widow of the emperor Henry V. Some months afterwards he succeeded to his father, who gave up the countship when he definitively went to the kingdom of Jerusalem. The years of his government were spent in subduing the Angevin barons and in conquering Normandy (see Anjou). In 1151, while returning from the siege of Montreuil-Bellay, he took cold, in consequence of bathing in the Loir at Château-du-Loir, and died on the 7th of September. He was buried in the cathedral of Le Mans. By his wife Matilda he had three sons: Henry Plantagenet, born at Le Mans on Sunday, the 5th of March 1133; Geoffrey, born at Argentan on the 1st of June 1134; and William Long-Sword, born on the 22nd of July 1136.
See Kate Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (2 vols., London, 1887), vol. i. chs. v.-viii.; Célestin Port, Dictionnaire historique, géographique et biographique de Maine-et-Loire (3 vols., Paris-Angers, 1874–1878), vol. ii. pp. 254-256. A history of Geoffrey le Bel has yet to be written; there is a biography of him written in the 12th century by Jean, a monk of Marmoutier, Historia Gaufredi, ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum, published by Marchegay et Salmon; “Chroniques des comtes d’Anjou” (Société de l’histoire de France, Paris, 1856), pp. 229-310. (L. H.*)
GEOFFREY (1158–1186), duke of Brittany, fourth son of the English king Henry II. and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born on the 23rd of September 1158. In 1167 Henry suggested a marriage between Geoffrey and Constance (d. 1201), daughter and heiress of Conan IV., duke of Brittany (d. 1171); and Conan not only assented, perhaps under compulsion, to this proposal, but surrendered the greater part of his unruly duchy to the English king. Having received the homage of the Breton nobles, Geoffrey joined his brothers, Henry and Richard, who, in alliance with Louis VII. of France, were in revolt against their father; but he made his peace in 1174, afterwards helping to restore order in Brittany and Normandy, and aiding the new French king, Philip Augustus, to crush some rebellious vassals. In July 1181 his marriage with Constance was celebrated, and practically the whole of his subsequent life was spent in warfare with his brother Richard. In 1183 he made peace with his father, who had come to Richard’s assistance; but a fresh struggle soon broke out for the possession of Anjou, and Geoffrey was in Paris treating for aid with Philip Augustus, when he died on the 19th of August 1186. He left a daughter, Eleanor, and his wife bore a posthumous son, the unfortunate Arthur.
GEOFFREY (c. 1152–1212), archbishop of York, was a bastard son of Henry II., king of England. He was distinguished from his legitimate half-brothers by his consistent attachment and fidelity to his father. He was made bishop of Lincoln at the age of twenty-one (1173); but though he enjoyed the temporalities he was never consecrated and resigned the see in 1183. He then became his father’s chancellor, holding a large number of lucrative benefices in plurality. Richard nominated him archbishop of York in 1189, but he was not consecrated till 1191, or enthroned till 1194. Geoffrey, though of high character, was a man of uneven temper; his history in chiefly one of quarrels, with the see of Canterbury, with the chancellor William Longchamp, with his half-brothers Richard and John, and especially with his canons at York. This last dispute kept him in litigation before Richard and the pope for many years. He led the clergy in their refusal to be taxed by John and was forced to fly the kingdom in 1207. He died in Normandy on the 12th of December 1212.
See Giraldus Cambrensis, Vita Galfridi; Stubbs’s prefaces to Roger de Hoveden, vols. iii. and iv. (Rolls Series). (H. W. C. D.)
GEOFFREY DE MONTBRAY (d. 1093), bishop of Coutances (Constantiensis), a right-hand man of William the Conqueror, was a type of the great feudal prelate, warrior and administrator at need. He knew, says Orderic, more about marshalling mailed knights than edifying psalm-singing clerks. Obtaining, as a young man, in 1048, the see of Coutances, by his brother’s influence (see Mowbray), he raised from his fellow nobles and from their Sicilian spoils funds for completing his cathedral, which was consecrated in 1056. With bishop Odo, a warrior like himself, he was on the battle-field of Hastings, exhorting the Normans to victory; and at William’s coronation it was he who called on them to acclaim their duke as king. His reward in England was a mighty fief scattered over twelve counties. He accompanied William on his visit to Normandy (1067), but, returning, led a royal force to the relief of Montacute in September 1069. In 1075 he again took the field, leading with Bishop Odo a vast host against the rebel earl of Norfolk, whose stronghold at Norwich they besieged and captured.
Meanwhile the Conqueror had invested him with important judicial functions. In 1072 he had presided over the great Kentish suit between the primate and Bishop Odo, and about the same time over those between the abbot of Ely and his despoilers, and between the bishop of Worcester and the abbot of Ely, and there is some reason to think that he acted as a Domesday commissioner (1086), and was placed about the same time in charge of Northumberland. The bishop, who attended the Conqueror’s funeral, joined in the great rising against William Rufus next year (1088), making Bristol, with which (as Domesday shows) he was closely connected and where he had built a strong castle, his base of operations. He burned Bath and ravaged Somerset, but had submitted to the king before the end of the year. He appears to have been at Dover with William in January 1090, but, withdrawing to Normandy, died at Coutances three years later. In his fidelity to Duke Robert he seems to have there held out for him against his brother Henry, when the latter obtained the Cotentin.
See E. A. Freeman, Norman Conquest and William Rufus; J. H. Round, Feudal England; and, for original authorities, the works of Orderic Vitalis and William of Poitiers, and of Florence of Worcester; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum, and Lanfranc’s works, ed. Giles; Domesday Book. (J. H. R.)
GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH (d. 1154), bishop of St Asaph and writer on early British history, was born about the year 1100. Of his early life little is known, except that he received a liberal education under the eye of his paternal uncle, Uchtryd, who was at that time archdeacon, and subsequently bishop, of Llandaff. In 1129 Geoffrey appears at Oxford among the witnesses of an Oseney charter. He subscribes himself Geoffrey Arturus; from this we may perhaps infer that he had already begun his experiments in the manufacture of Celtic mythology. A first edition of his Historia Britonum was in circulation by the year
