Ernulf de Hesdin (died 1097), also transcribed as Arnulf and Ernulphe, was a French knight who took part in the Norman conquest of England and became a major landholder under William the Conqueror and William Rufus, featuring prominently in the Domesday Book. He was disgraced as a suspected rebel and died while taking part in the First Crusade as part of the army of Robert Curthose.
Origins
As his sobriquet implies, Ernulf was probably born in the first half of the 11th century in the County of Hesdin, historically part of Picardy or Artois and centred at that time on Vieil-Hesdin, then a flourishing fortified town known as Hesdin on the bank of the Canche river, about 6 km from modern Hesdin. His family were minor landholders, vassals of the Counts of Hesdin, whose overlord was the Count of Flanders, through acquisition by marriage of the County of Artois circa 898.
The first Count of Hesdin who is definitely known through chronicles was Alulf I, who flourished around 1000. Around the middle of the century, there was another count of the same name, known as Alulf II, and he was followed by Walter I, who was contemporary with the Norman conquest of England and was noted for his piety. Walter's successor, Engelram, was count from 1072 to 1100. Engelram and his wife, Matilda, emulated and continued the work of Walter and immediately set about rebuilding the monastery at Auchy-lès-Hesdin, which had been destroyed by the Normans. They made it a priory of the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint-Omer. Ernulf must have come to maturity under the rule of Walter I but he had close links with Engelram and they appear at a number of points as allies and as benefactors of religious establishments.
Little is known of Ernulf's family, except that he had a brother called Ilbod, who is listed in Domesday as an important landholder in Essex and Oxfordshire.
Career
An enigmatic figure
Considerable interest developed in Ernulf after Robert William Eyton, a pioneering historian of Shropshire, showed in the 1850s that, through the marriage of his daughter, Avelina, to Alan fitz Flaad, Ernulf was an ancestor of the Stewart Kings of Scotland as well as the FitzAlan, Earls of Arundel. A letter to the Herald and Genealogist journal in 1866 then posed the question: "Who was Arnulph de Hesding?" However, the author then ably summarised what had become known of Ernulf's property holdings and offspring without adding anything to the biography. In a reply, Eyton himself opened up more areas for genealogical research but, as he confessed at the outset, did not try to answer the question posed. Henry Barkly remarked in 1888 that "despite all researches, Ernulph de Hesding still remains one of the most mysterious personages in Domesday." This remains true. A great deal is known of Ernulf's landholdings, including details of some of his numerous benefactions to monasteries, but biographical detail is absent, and an outline of his life has to be guessed from other information and legend.
