Adeliza of Louvain

Adelaide of Leuven ( also Adeliza, Adela or Aleidis; * to 1103 in Leuven, † April 23, 1151 in Affligem, Belgium) was king consort of England.

She was the daughter of Godfrey I Barbutus, Duke of Lower Lorraine, Landgrave of Brabant and Louvain, and his wife Ida of Namur, born in Leuven.

On February 2, 1121 she was married to the English king Henry I, when she was around 15 years old. The widowed King, whose two sons from his first marriage died two years earlier, she only married to still get a male heir.

Although Henry I King of England is the one who holds the record for the largest number of illegitimate children, and Adelaide had the reputation of a beautiful woman in general, this nearly 15 -year long marriage remained childless.

Adelheid came as the wife of the king very rare in appearance. Whether it was in their nature or was at the request of the king, is uncertain. However, it was culturally well educated and well read, and distinguished himself as a patron of the arts. Allegedly, she also wrote a biography of Henry lives in poem form.

When her husband died in 1135, she first spent some time in the monastery at Wilton Salisbury. She was also present when Henry was buried on his first anniversary of his death in the Reading Abbey. Since she was very young relative, she married in 1139 after the mourning period William d' Aubigny, a close advisor of Henry.

She brought a considerable appanage as Dowager Queen and Castle Arundel into the marriage and King Stephen appointed her husband Earl of Arundel and Lincoln. While her husband stood on the side of King Stephen, she went more for her step-daughter Matilda, who reigned as Queen counter to her nephew Stephan short term.

Seven children of Adelheid and William lived to adulthood, including William d' Aubigny, the second Earl of Arundel. His son William was one of the co-signer of the Magna Carta. From him the later English queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard come from.

Adelheid donated during her second marriage even larger sums to the Church, especially to the monastery in Reading, where her first husband was buried.

Her last years she spent in Affligem Abbey in the county of Brabant country, they also endowed with lands. She was buried in the collegiate church Affligem beside her father Godfrey I of Leuven ( † 1139 ). Their tomb was destroyed during the French Revolution. Your bones, and her father, however, were found and re- buried in the cloister of the rebuilt abbey.