Stephen of Aumale

{{Short description|Count of Aumale (c. 1070–1127)}}

File:Armoiries Comtes Aumale.png

Stephen (Étienne) of Aumale ({{circa|1070}}–1127) was Count of Aumale from before 1089 to 1127, and Lord of Holderness.

==Life==

Stephen I was the only son of Odo, Count of Champagne, and Adelaide of Normandy, Countess of Aumale, daughter of Robert I, Duke of Normandy.George Edward Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England Scotland Ireland Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant Extinct or Dormant, Vol. I, ed. Vicary Gibbs (London: The St. Catherine Press, Ltd., 1910), p. 352 Via his mother, Stephen was therefore the nephew of William I of England and first cousin to his sons Robert II, Duke of Normandy and Kings William II and Henry I of England. Stephen succeeded his mother as Count before 1089.William Dugdale, The Baronage of England, Vol. I (London: Thomas Newcomb, 1675), p. 23

In the 1095 conspiracy against William II, the objective of the rebels was to place Stephen on the English throne.C. Warren Hollister, 'Magnates and Curiales in Early Norman England', Viator, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1977), p. 68 The leaders of the conspiracy were Robert de Mowbray and Guillaume III of Eu, Count of Eu.David Crouch, The Normans; The History of a Dynasty (London; New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), pp. 147–48 After the failure of the rebellion, Stephen was apparently not put on trial himself, perhaps because he was out of the king's reach in Normandy.Frank Barlow, William Rufus (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 358 Stephen's father Odo Count of Champagne lost his English lands for his complicity in this attempt to place his son on the throne.C. Warren Hollister, 'Magnates and Curiales in Early Norman England', Viator, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1977), p. 70

In 1096 Stephen joined the First Crusade as part of the army of his cousin Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy. Following the death of William II, in 1102 Stephen was given back his father's confiscated lands in England and became lord of Holderness in Yorkshire. He sided with Henry I in his war against Robert II of Normandy in 1104, but in 1118, when Robert's son William Clito rebelled against his uncle Henry I, Stephen supported William, together with Baldwin VII of Flanders. He finally submitted to Henry I in 1119.