Over twenty years ago, at the inaugural meeting of the newly founded Haskins Society in Houston, Texas, I delivered a talk entitled ‘The Tale of the Cradle- Robber Baron’, a marital history of an aristocratic male, Aubrey III de Vere, first earl of Oxford (d. 1194). Two decades ago scholars generally portrayed women of the medieval aristocracy as marriage pawns – pawns of the crown as rewards or bribes for the king’s policies or pawns of their male relatives in the game of recruitment and alliance between families – and the earl’s first two wives appeared to have played the role of pawn beautifully. The story of the earl’s marriages had a dramatic conclusion, however. Yet even in that early incarnation of this paper, the earl’s third wife, Agnes, refused to fit the pawn’s role gracefully. She had a tendency to burst into the limelight and threatened to steal the show. Within months of the earl’s marriage to a very young bride originally intended for his brother, his new father-in-law was accused and convicted of treason. The earl sought an annulment, but Agnes appealed successfully to the pope, and they remained married until the earl’s death. In this telling of the tale, I feel no qualms about allowing Agnes center stage and star billing. The other principals in her drama include the earl’s younger brother Geoffrey de Vere and Agnes’s father Henry of Essex. In supporting but crucial roles are two high-ranking members of the clergy, Pope Alexander III and Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London, with Vere kin making cameo appearances as a sort of dramatic chorus.

Agnes of Essex, countess of Oxford (1151–1206+), has attracted the attention of a few historians since I delivered that initial version of her story in 1983. Christopher Brooke provides the fullest treatment to date, using her story to illustrate ‘the harshest edge’ of twelfth-century customs and how those customs could clash with the teachings and laws of the Church. He suggests that her case played a significant role in Pope Alexander III’s development of the canon law of matrimony in the later twelfth century, particularly in regards to the issue of consent by verba de praesenti.