Hoel, Count of Nantes

Who was Hoel, Count of Nantes?

Hoèl of Cornwall was count of Nantes, from 1148 to his death. He was raised the son of Duke Conan III and Maud FitzRoy, an illegitimate daughter of King Henry I of England. However, he was disinherited by his father when on his death-bed, as Conan III claimed that Hoèl was illegitimate and no son of his. Bertha then became heiress to Duke Conan's lands in Brittany, while Hoèl was allowed to remain in the Count of Nantes. He was accused by St. Bernard of Clairvaux of having an incestuous affair with his sister Bertha.

The traditional story of the disinheritance might be a fable. Viscount Charles de la Lande de Calan proposed, in 1908, that Hoël was an illegitimate son for whom Conan III decided to provide Nantes for his support. The name Hoël had been used for illegitimate sons of the counts of Nantes. Katherine Keats-Rohan, in 1996, proposed that Conan III disinherited his legitimate son for the purpose of unifying Brittany through the marriage of his daughter Bertha to her cousin Alan, whose father inherited two of the provinces of Brittany. Hoël was given Nantes for his lifetime. This arrangement would have required years of planning to implement, and might have begun before Hoël was born.