Daughter of William the Conqueror who married Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois, governed his counties while he was on crusade and for years after his death, and raised King Stephen of England and Henry, bishop of Winchester.
Adela of Normandy was the youngest daughter of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders. Married around 1080–1084 to Stephen-Henry, Count of Blois, she became countess of Blois, Chartres and Meaux, and while her husband was away on the First Crusade from 1096 to 1100, and again from 1101, she governed his lands. After he died in the Holy Land in 1102 she ruled for her sons until about 1107 and shared power with Theobald until she entered the nunnery of Marcigny in 1120.
Adela was one of the most admired lay patrons of her generation. Poets wrote verses for her, the bishop and canon lawyer Ivo of Chartres corresponded with her, and the historian Hugh of Fleury dedicated his church history to her. Her son Stephen of England took the English throne in 1135 and her youngest son Henry became bishop of Winchester, so the family she raised stood at the centre of the English civil war that followed.
Adela was born around 1067, probably in Normandy, and was close in age to her brother Henry I of England, who remained her ally throughout his life. She was educated well enough to read Latin, perhaps at her mother's abbey of Holy Trinity in Caen, where her sister Cecilia was a nun. William married her to Stephen-Henry, heir of Theobald III, count of Blois, probably to gain an ally against the French king and the counts of Anjou, and the wedding took place at Chartres between about 1080 and 1084, when she was around fifteen and her husband some twenty years older.
Stephen-Henry succeeded his father in 1089. The counts held Blois, Chartres, Châteaudun and Meaux along with scattered lands in Champagne and Berry, and charters show Adela acting jointly with her husband from early in the marriage. She bore at least five sons, among them William, Theobald, Stephen and Henry, and several daughters.
Adela is unusually visible for a lay woman of her time because churchmen wrote to her and about her. Ivo of Chartres treated her as a ruler to be reasoned with, at times rebuking her for pressing her rights against the Church, and Anselm, who visited her when she was ill in 1105, trusted her as a go-between with her brother. Baudri of Bourgueil wrote a long Latin poem imagining her bedchamber hung with embroideries of her father's conquest of England, and Hildebert of Lavardin praised her learning and rule in elegant verse. Such poems were written in hope of patronage and show how she wished to be seen rather than how she behaved.
Orderic Vitalis called her a wise and spirited woman who governed her husband's lands well, but he also preserved the story that after Stephen-Henry fled from Antioch she urged him, even in their bed, to return to the crusade and restore his honour. Historians have often retold this as the portrait of a formidable wife shaming a weak husband, but Orderic wrote a generation later and the anecdote served his moral purpose, while Stephen-Henry's own letters show a trusting partnership. Her decision to set aside her eldest son and her tenacity in defending her counties' rights point to a firm and practical ruler.
When Stephen-Henry left for the East in 1096 he entrusted his counties to Adela, and his letters from the crusade treat her as his partner in government and ask her to rule well and care for their children. She presided over courts, made grants, confirmed the foundation of churches and settled disputes between monasteries and lords, and her letters with Ivo of Chartres show her arguing over the rights of count and bishop. Stephen-Henry came home in 1100 with treasures from the East but also the shame of his flight from Antioch; in 1101 he set out again, and Adela resumed the government.
After his death in 1102 Adela ruled for her sons. Around 1107 she passed over her eldest son William, perhaps because he was thought unfit to rule, married him to the heiress of Sully and made Theobald count. She kept a hand in government for years afterwards, issuing charters with Theobald and backing him in his wars against Louis VI of France. According to Orderic Vitalis she provided the wedding feast at Chartres in 1106 when Bohemond I of Antioch married Constance, daughter of Philip I of France, and Bohemond preached his new expedition in the cathedral there.
Adela's family ties drew her into English affairs. In 1105 Anselm, in exile over the investiture dispute, told her that he was ready to excommunicate her brother, and Adela arranged for the two men to meet at L'Aigle in Normandy that July, a meeting that opened the way to the settlement of 1107. She also sent her son Stephen to be brought up at Henry's court, where he became the king's favoured nephew and received the county of Mortain and great English estates.
Her patronage ran through the monasteries and churches of her counties. She gave land and privileges to religious houses, supported rebuilding, and offered her youngest son Henry as a child to Cluny, where he became a monk before rising to be abbot of Glastonbury and bishop of Winchester.
In 1120 Adela retired to the Cluniac nunnery of Marcigny in Burgundy, a house founded by Abbot Hugh of Cluny for women of noble families, and took the veil. In November that year her daughter, the countess of Chester, drowned with her husband in the wreck of the White Ship. From Marcigny Adela still wrote to Theobald and to the bishop of Chartres about the affairs of her old counties, and she lived to see Henry made bishop of Winchester in 1129 and Stephen crowned king of England in December 1135. She died at Marcigny on 8 March 1137, although some sources give 1138, and was probably buried there.