GEOFFREY  , surnamed

PLANTAGENET [Or PLANTEGENET] (1113-1151), count of Anjou, was the son of Count Fulk the Young and of Eremburge (or Arembourg of La Fleche; he was born on the 24th of August 1113 . He is also called " le bel " or " the handsome," and received the surname of Plantagenet from the habit which he is said to have had of wearing in his cap a sprig of broom (genet) . In 1127 he was made a knight, and on the 2nd of June 1129 married Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England, and widow of the emperor Henry V . Some months afterwards he succeeded to his father, who gave up the countship when he definitively went to the kingdom of Jerusalem . The years of his government were spent in subduing the Angevin barons and in conquering Normandy (see ANJou) . In 1151, while returning from the siege of Montreuil-Bellay, he took cold, in consequence of bathing in the Loir at Chateau-du-Loir, and died on the 7th of September . He was buried in the cathedral of Le Mans . By his wife Matilda he had three sons: Henry Plantagenet, born at Le Mans on Sunday, the 5th of March 1133; Geoffrey, born at Argentan on the 1st of June 1134; and William Long-Sword, born on the 22nd of July 1136 . See Kate Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings (2 vols., London, 1887), vol. i. chs. v.-viii.; C6lestin Port, Dictionnaire historique, geographique et biographique de Maine-et-Loire (3 vols., Paris-Angers, 1874-1878), vol. ii. pp . , 254-256 . A history of Geoffrey le Bel has yet to be written; there is a biography of him written in the 12th century by Jean, a monk of Marmoutier, Historia Gaufredi, ducis Normannorum et comitis Andegavorum, published by Marchegay et Salmon; " Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou " (Societe de l'histoire de France, Paris, 1856), pp . 229-310 .

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