Herinnering in geschrift en praktijk in religieuze gemeenschappen

children , 25 while the Warenne Chronicle contains an important and unique chapter on Ernulf of
Hesdin, the crusading great-grandfather of Earl Patrick, which can only have come through
Ala’s remaining cordial contact with her daughter. 26 When Isabel the heiress eventually
remarried in 1164 she swapped one royal son, William IV, for a royal (half) brother Earl
Hamelin. Yet, on Isabel’s part there is precious little evidence for special devotion to her first
husband’s memory. 27 Perhaps the fact that they did not have children is partly to blame for what
looks like a lacuna. If they had had children then the demands of her as mother would have
reminded her, if not forced her, to keep his memory alive more actively. In fact, she gave birth
in quick succession to Hamelin’s children and was clearly fully occupied with her new life as
Hamelin’s wife. What is hard for us to know is whether these remarriages were voluntary or
more or less forced upon the Warenne women by the English kings. In the case of Isabel, one
of the richest women of her time, she probably had little choice. King Stephen was keen to
associate the Warenne honour with his own dynasty and to this end arranged for her to marry
his second son. After William IV’s death in 1159 there is evidence that Isabel was involved with
King Henry’s full brother William of Anjou only for this match to be halted at the order of
Archbishop Thomas Becket causing William to have died from heart ache. 28 That it had taken
more than five years after William IV’s death before Isabel planned to remarry, suggests that
she may have been affected deeply by the loss of him. In contrast, only months passed between
William of Anjou’s death in January 1164 and Isabel’s marriage to King Henry II’s halfbrother
Hamelin in the late summer with the Pipe Roll of that year revealing that the king paid
for her expenses. 29 Despite this seeming haste, all surviving evidence suggests that the match
of Isabel and Hamelin was a productive one.
By way of conclusion I would argue that any discussion of a dying memorial tradition is in
effect a discussion of the birth of a new one which then, and only then, allows us in retrospect
to identify the previous one as having died. But one can never be categorical. As we have seen
in the case of the revived Warenne presence in Saint-Bertin, memories can last long and can
give the impression of having disappeared only to pop up again. In families the fading away of
memories is tied up with ‘moving on’ after death to new marriages which create new alliances
and new political situations which make traditions linked to old alliances less appropriate, less
relevant, and less urgent. Hence old traditions are easily supplanted. Yet, there is always the
danger on our part that we forget that many memories remained unrecorded and may have
survived in other ways, orally, attached to objects or otherwise. As historians we must be
extremely careful in our interpretation of silences. In institutions there is often a more fluent
transition from one tradition to the next due to the written record leaving a paper trail. This
too, however, can be misleading, if historians argue that the institutional memory represents
a living tradition on the part of the families associated with monastic houses.
25
Early Yorkshire Charters. Vol. VIII, no. 111; Van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past, 1066-1203’, p. 114.
26
The Warenne Chronicle, ed. van Houts and Love, par. 21 (Hyde Chronicle, ed. Edwards, pp. 301-02).
27
He is never mentioned explicitly by name or as Isabel’s first husband, and only occurs in references such as ‘all
earls of Warenne’ (Early Yorkshire Charters. Vol. VIII, no. 59, pp. 105-06, or ‘all my [sc. Hamelin’s] predecessors’
(Early Yorkshire Charters. Vol. VIII, no. 54, p. 101, no. 64, pp. 110-11; ‘all counts and countesses of Warenne’ in
a joint charter of Hamelin and Isabel (Early Yorkshire Charters.Vol. VIII, no. 74, p. 116). It is noteworthy that
William IV is actually overlooked in a joint charter by Hamelin and Isabel for Southwark priory that enumerates
individual earls (Early Yorkshire Charters.Vol. VIII, no. 80, p. 123 note).
28
‘The ¨Draco Normannicus¨ of Etienne de Rouen’, ed. R. Howlett, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry
II and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols (London, 1884-9), vol. II, pp. 589-762 at p. 676.
29
Early Yorkshire Charters.Vol. VIII, p. 18 (reference to Pipe Roll 10 Henry II, p. 20 [Michaelmas 1164]).
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