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.)