Baudements, Chacenays, Joinvilles, Noyers and Traînels.^40 It has been
suggested that the Conflans were also a cadet branch of the house of
Brienne, to place alongside Bar-sur-Seine and Ramerupt, but the evi-
dence to support this is inconclusive at best. It is fair to suppose, though,
that the two dynasties were closely related.^41 While most of the Briennes’
marriage partners thus came from within Champagne, the family was, of
course, quite capable of looking out beyond its borders if circumstances
dictated. Thus, for instance, there may well have been a brief alliance
between Walter I of Brienne and Bar-sur-Seine and Count Fulk IV‘le
Réchin’of Anjou.^42 By contrast, it seems rather less likely that one of
Erard II’s sisters, Mary or Matilda of Brienne, married into the house of
Saint-Omer in Flanders.^43 However, we can be much more confident
about Erard’s own marriage. Some time in the mid-1160s, he wedded
Agnes of Montbéliard. She was a kinswoman of the count of Bar (that
is, the imperial lordship just to the east of Champagne, whose principal
town was Bar-le-Duc).^44 It is worth noting that Erard was present
when Henry of Bar did homage to the German emperor, Frederick
I‘Barbarossa’, at Besançon in 1178.^45 The close connection between
the Briennes and the Montbéliards would prove to be of enormous
advantage to both families, more than thirty years after the marriage
thathadlinkedthem.
We can trace the Briennes’place in Champenois society not just
through their marriage alliances, but also through the development of
the dynasty’s heraldic device. The obvious place to look for such coats of
arms is on surviving seals. Hence, it is highly unfortunate that we have
so few of these that date from before 1200, and especially since we know
that the counts had a seal by the 1130s at the latest. What little evidence
there is, spanning the rest of the twelfth century, suggests that the
Briennes’heraldic devices varied a great deal over the course of this
period. A cross seems to be visible on some of Walter II’s seals, and a
row of rings appears as late as 1199. In short, the‘definitive’Brienne
arms were rather slow to develop. Eventually, of course, the senior line of
the family settled onazure billetty a lion rampant or, with the crucial move
(^40) For these marriages, seeGenealogy 1.
(^41) For a recent attempt to argue that the Conflans were a cadet branch of the house of
Brienne, see Baudin,Les sceaux des comtes de Champagne, 367, 548–9.
(^42) For a brief summary of Fulk’s tangled matrimonial career, see J. Bradbury,‘Fulk le
Réchin and the Origin of the Plantagenets’,inStudies in Medieval History Presented to
R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth and J. L. Nelson (Woodbridge,
43 1989), 36–7.
See, above all, the classic work of A. Giry,‘Les châtelains de Saint-Omer, 1042– 1386 ’,
44 part 1,Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes35 (1874), 325–55.
For this marriage, see Perry,John, 22, 24–6.^45 ‘Catalogue’, no. 78.
The Briennois Context 19