Muriel of Lincoln

The Woman Who Made a Legend Possible

Muriel of Lincoln, a Saxon heiress, was Nicola de la Haye’s grandmother

Nicola de la Haye held Lincoln Castle against a French siege and saved England, and everyone remembers her name.

Almost no one remembers her grandmother.

Muriel of Lincoln didn't lead armies or defy kings in any spectacular fashion, but without her calculated survival and strategic positioning, there would be no Nicola, no legend, no castle defense that changed the course of English history.

This is the story of the invisible foundation upon which greatness was built.

The Survivor's Daughter

After 1066, most Saxon lords lost everything—their lands, their titles, their entire futures disappeared as William the Conqueror handed England to his Norman knights like spoils of war.

But Muriel's father, Colswein of Lincoln, somehow managed to keep his holdings, and the Domesday Book provides the documentary proof of this remarkable survival.

This wasn't luck or accident—this was cold, hard value in the eyes of the new regime. The Normans needed more than swords and intimidation to actually rule England in any sustainable way; they needed local networks, local loyalty, and men who could make occupation feel less like conquest and more like legitimate governance. Colswein was one of those rare men who proved too useful to destroy, whose cooperation was worth more than his elimination.

And the fastest, most permanent way to lock in that kind of usefulness? Marriage between the old world and the new.

The Alliance

Muriel married Richard de la Haye, a Norman knight who would eventually become hereditary constable of Lincoln Castle, one of the most strategically important fortifications in England.

Look at what each side brought to this arrangement:

Muriel: Saxon legitimacy that couldn't be won at sword point, her father's established power base throughout Lincolnshire, and the kind of local knowledge that turned foreign occupiers into actual rulers.

Richard: Protection within the new Norman hierarchy, military authority backed by the crown, and a viable path forward in a completely transformed England.

You can call it strategy dressed as romance, or you can call it survival through alliance, but either way it accomplished something remarkable—it actually worked.

Through Muriel's presence and connections, the de la Hayes didn't just arrive in Lincoln as temporary occupiers—they became Lincoln itself, deeply rooted in the landscape and community. Their control of the castle transformed from a temporary royal appointment that could be revoked at any moment into a hereditary right that carried the weight of legitimacy, something that would echo through generations and establish them as an integral part of the region's power structure.

Two generations later, her granddaughter would stand on those same castle walls and refuse to surrender to French invaders who threatened England's independence. Nicola wasn't inventing the concept of female authority from nothing or making some unprecedented claim—she was standing on the foundation that Muriel had carefully constructed.

The Betrayal

Then came the Anarchy, those brutal twenty years of civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda that ripped England apart at the seams and forced people into impossible choices.

Lincoln Castle changed hands repeatedly during this chaos, becoming a strategic prize that both sides desperately wanted to control. And at one point during this turmoil, contemporary sources record that the constable's wife was deceived and tricked out of the castle in an elaborate scheme that handed control to enemy forces.

They don't actually name her in the records, but the timing fits perfectly with what we know, and the genealogy lines up in a way that makes the identification almost certain.

It was almost certainly Muriel who fell victim to this deception.

Here's the part that makes this story truly devastating: Her own son may very well have been the one who betrayed her.

Ralph de la Haye's loyalties during the Anarchy were murky at best and suspicious at worst, shifting in ways that suggest calculated self-interest rather than family solidarity. The war forced impossible choices on everyone, that's true—but families almost always stood together despite the chaos, making Ralph's apparent defection from his parents' side all the more striking. He appears to have sided against both his parents and his older brother, breaking the family unity that typically held even in civil war. The evidence we have suggests he was complicit in the scheme when Ranulf of Chester orchestrated the elaborate deception that ultimately drove Muriel from the castle she'd helped make a hereditary possession.

Just imagine that kind of betrayal—driven from your own stronghold, the seat of your family's power, possibly through the machinations of your own child.

Ralph would continue this pattern of schemes and shifting loyalties throughout his life, later causing serious problems for his niece Nicola during the Great Rebellion when she was trying to hold everything together. The family trickster, always playing multiple sides and looking for his own advantage.

What She Built

Despite the betrayal and the temporary loss of the castle, Muriel's fundamental legacy managed to hold firm against the chaos.

Her other son, Richard the younger, eventually inherited the constableship and restored the family's position at Lincoln Castle. By the time his daughter Nicola was born into this world, the family's authority over Lincoln Castle had acquired something that money couldn't buy and conquest couldn't create overnight: genuine history, substantial weight, and the appearance of permanence that comes from generations of continuous control.

All of that legitimacy and establishment can be traced back to Muriel's original strategic marriage and her navigation of the post-Conquest world.

The Women Who Held Everything Together

Muriel of Lincoln never led a dramatic last stand that chroniclers would celebrate, and she won no famous victories that would earn her a place in the historical narratives that men typically dominated. Her name appears only in the margins of history when it appears at all, easily overlooked in favor of more obviously dramatic figures.

But she accomplished what countless medieval women accomplished without fanfare or recognition:

• Held land and authority through conquest and chaos when everything was in flux

• Forged strategic alliances that legitimized new regimes and made foreign rule bearable

• Defended castles and family interests, sometimes even against their own blood when loyalties fractured

• Maintained stability and continuity while the men went off to make war and pursue glory

Medieval power didn't just flow through the men who wielded swords on battlefields and put their seals on important documents—it flowed just as powerfully through women who preserved what existed, who connected the old world to the new, and who simply endured when endurance itself was a form of resistance.

When we celebrate Nicola de la Haye's legendary defense of Lincoln Castle and her crucial role in English history, we're really celebrating the culmination of something that Muriel began generations earlier. A Saxon woman who married a Norman knight in the aftermath of conquest, who navigated the treacherous waters of civil war and even family betrayal, and who somehow managed to build a legacy strong enough and deep enough to last for generations after she was gone.

She wasn't spectacular in the way that makes for easy storytelling or obvious heroism, but she was something ultimately more important to the flow of history—she was foundational in ways that made other stories possible.

And foundations, invisible as they often are, are what legends are built on