Person:Roland Le Strange (2)

Roland, also apparently known as Roald, Riuallon or Rhiwallon was a man who established himself under the first generations of Normans in England, though he was probably not Norman himself. His family held Hunstanton in Norfolk. Hamon Le Strange (p.23) points out that he is not known to have lands in the midlands like all his sons. His origins are unknown, but much speculated-upon. Hamon Le Strange has listed the several charters where he seems to appear under different versions of his name.

Wife and children

He is named together with his wife Mathilda (Maud) as parent in a charter of his son John Lestrange, made between 1160 and 1179 (Hamon Le Strange p.5).

Eyton and Hamon Le Strange show how John signed many charters during his life, and his brothers are sometimes named in them also, and at least in cases involving Guy and Hamon, they are described as his brothers. Ralph names John as his brother in one of his charters given by Eyton (Vol.8 p.10).

Hamon Le Strange specifically says that he knows of no daughters in the family (p.20).

First name and the possible connections it indicates

Rhiwallon is the "real name" which the famous medievalist J H Round proposed for him, seeing him as a Breton immigrant, with a name that morphed in England into more traditional French names.^[5] This opinion has been accepted for example by Katherine Keats-Rohan, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and the Le Strange genealogist Hamon Le Strange. Le Strange put forward the Latin forms of the names to show how easily they could all be confused, and proposed Riuallonus as the best spelling for the Latin version of his name.

On the other hand, his family remembered him Roland. As Eyton pointed out, the one clear mention of him by his son John called him Roland (Rollandus in Latin; and it also mentioned his mother Mathilda).^[6] Hamon Le Strange (p.4) found another mention of "Rollandus extraneus" by John's great great grandson, "John Lestrange IV" (Johannes Estraneus quartus, as he was already numbered in his own document). And the 20th century genealogist Cecil L'Estrange Ewen used the name Roland when referring to the ancestor of the Lestrange family of Hunstanton and Knockyn, because he felt there was some chance that in fact the various records might refer to two people.^[7]

Round and others have speculated that the Breton name, combined with the closeness Riuallon/Roland clearly had to the Breton Alan fitz Flaald, his overlord in at least some places, indicate that he was a relative and ally who may have came to England together with the ancestors of the FitzAlan and Stewart families, whose roots were around Dol, in Brittany close to Normandy. The name Riuallon had been used there also in the family of the lords of Dol. But Alan may come to England after the Lestranges.

According to Hamon Le Strange (p.9):

"For several successive generations it may almost be said that there is not a fitz Alan charter that is not witnessed by a le Strange and vice versa."

However the two families came to Norfolk, it seems very likely that their establishment in Shropshire, in a position to confront the Welsh Marches, was connected, although Hamon Le Strange thinks they followed almost a generation later, in the time of Henry II (p.25).

Second name and the possible connections it indicates

The second name simply means "foreigner" and in this period second names were often simply descriptions and heritable surnames were not common. Therefore genealogists must be cautious of automatically assuming people called foreign are all related.

This leaves open the question of why someone from eastern French speaking Brittany would be called "foreign" by the French in England. Did Riuallon have a connection to somewhere further away such as western Britanny, or maybe even Lorraine? Before this evidence all became clear, Eyton thought it possible that the Le Strange family really did have a link with Warin of Metz, who like the Bretons was associated with the Le Stranges in a legend. (Lorraine, where Metz is, was considered part of the Holy Roman Empire, "Germany", not France. So it was "foreign".) Eyton points out that on one occasion a great grand daughter of fitz Warin was even called by the surname Le Strange.^[8]

In England however, Riuallon seems to have married into a longer established mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman family, gaining Hunstanton in Norfolk through the marriage. Cecil L'Estrange Ewen points out that the neighbouring Lestrange family in Litcham, also eventually under fitz Flaald's family, descended from a man with the Anglo-Danish first name of Siward or Seward who was in England before Alan Fitz Flaad. L'Estrange Ewen thought it likely that this Siward is the one who appears on some of the same charters as Roland/Riuallon, and might even be older. This Siward seems not to have used the Lestrange surname himself, and L'Estrange Ewen thinks he also appeared in Domesday book, farming in the lands of Archbishop Stigand being farmed by William Noyers, and perhaps he was the bailiff of William Noyers.^[9] Bretons had been in the area since before 1066, but there had already been a rebellion led by Bretons in the area. Fitz Flaald and his group are identified by Round as a new group, more loyal to Henry I.

Two options seems worth considering:

1. That if Siward is really an older relative of Rivallon, maybe Rivallon was named after the new overlord's family?

2. If Rivallon was established separately to Siward, maybe their shared surname is a sign of a marriage alliance or similar alliance of families. (The few heritable surnames that existed in this period are often difficult to explain and probably not always inherited paternally.)

1. ↑ Roland le Strange, in Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families.

   Cawley does not give parents.

2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5} Le Strange, Hamon. Le Strange records : a chronicle of the early Le Stranges of Norfolk and the March of Wales, A.D. 1100-1310: with the lines of Knockin and Blackmere continued to their extinction. (London;  New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916)
   Chapter 1.

   Le Strange also does not believe that the parents of Roland are known.

3. ↑ Eyton, Robert William. Antiquities of Shropshire. (London: J.R. Smith, 1854-1860).
4.   Roald ‘Le Strange' (?), in Lundy, Darryl. The Peerage: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe.
5. ↑ Round, "The Origin of the Stewarts" in Studies in Peerage and Family History, p.122
6. ↑ Antiquities of Shropshire, Vol. X, p.260
7. ↑ Cecil L'Estrange Ewen (1946) Observations on the Le Stranges With Some Corrections of Prevalent Genealogical Errors'. A scan can be found behind paywall on WorldVitalRecords. Online transcriptions can be found here and here
8. ↑ Antiquities of Shropshire Vol II p.8.
9. ↑ The Victoria history of the county of Norfolk https://archive.org/stream/victoriahistoryo02doub#page/13/mode/1up