Matilda (Maud the Empress) of England (1102-1167), was left the sole legitimate child of Henry I. by the loss of his son in the White Ship (1120). She married (1) Emperor Henry V, Emperor of Rome, and was crowned at Mainz (1114), but was
widowed in 1125 and married (2) Geoffrey IV. le Bel, Plantaganet, 10th Count of Anjou and Maine, Duke of Normandy, having won the Duchy from Stephen, son of Fulk V. the Younger, 9th Count of Anjou, King of Jerusalem, and his wife, Ermengarde.
See their ancestral lineage elsewhere in Vol. I. Her first husband was thirty years older, her second husband, ten years younger than herself. Henry made the barons recognize the Empress as his heir (1126, 1131, and 1133), but when he died
Stephen ignored her claim to rule England by hereditary right. The Normans preferred his chivalrous geniality to her haughtiness and they disliked the House of Anjou as much as they did the House of Blois, into which Stephen's mother, the
Conqueror's daughter Adela, had married. The Empress appealed to the Pope in vain (1136) and Archbishop Thurstan of York defeated her uncle and champion, David I., King of Scotland (1084-1153) at the Battle of the Standard (1138); but at last
she landed in England. Geoffrey was the original Plantaganet, so named by his companions for the broom corn he wore on his person. 