Maine (province) in the context of "Henry II of England"

William the Conqueror (c. 1028 – 9 September 1087), sometimes called William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England (as William I), reigning from 1066 until his death. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 onward. By 1060, following a long struggle, his hold on Normandy was secure. In 1066, following the death of Edward the Confessor, William invaded England, leading a Franco-Norman army to victory over the Anglo-Saxon forces of Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, and suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands, and by difficulties with his eldest son, Robert Curthose.

William was the son of the unmarried Duke Robert I of Normandy and his mistress Herleva. His illegitimate status and youth caused some difficulties for him after he succeeded his father, as did the anarchy which plagued the first years of his rule. During his childhood and adolescence, members of the Norman aristocracy battled each other, both for control of the child duke, and for their own ends. In 1047, William quashed a rebellion and began to establish his authority over the duchy, a process that was not complete until about 1060. His marriage in the 1050s to Matilda of Flanders provided him with a powerful ally in the neighbouring county of Flanders. By the time of his marriage, William was able to arrange the appointment of his supporters as bishops and abbots in the Norman church. His consolidation of power allowed him to expand his horizons, and he secured control of the neighbouring county of Maine by 1062.

Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), also known as Saint Louis, was King of France from 1226 until his death in 1270. He is widely recognized as the most distinguished of the Direct Capetians. Following the death of his father, Louis VIII, he was crowned in Reims at the age of 12. His mother, Blanche of Castile, effectively ruled the kingdom as regent until he came of age, and continued to serve as his trusted adviser until her death. During his formative years, Blanche successfully confronted rebellious vassals and championed the Capetian cause in the Albigensian Crusade, which had been ongoing for the past two decades.

As an adult, Louis IX grappled with persistent conflicts involving some of the most influential nobles in his kingdom, including Hugh X of Lusignan and Peter I of Brittany. Concurrently, England's Henry III sought to reclaim the Angevin continental holdings, only to be decisively defeated at the Battle of Taillebourg. Louis expanded his territory by annexing several provinces, including parts of Aquitaine, Maine, and Provence. Keeping a promise he made while praying for recovery from a grave illness, Louis led the ill-fated Seventh and Eighth Crusades against the Muslim dynasties that controlled North Africa, Egypt, and the Holy Land. He was captured and ransomed during the Seventh Crusade, and later succumbed to dysentery during the Eighth Crusade. His son, Philip III, succeeded him.

The capital of Maine was Le Mans. In the thirteenth century it was annexed by France to the royal domain.

Gallo (endonym: Galo; French: langue gallèse) is a regional language of eastern Brittany. It is one of the langues d'oïl, a Romance sub-family that includes French. Today it is spoken only by a minority of the population, as the standard form of French now predominates in this area.

Gallo was originally spoken in the Marches of Neustria, an area now corresponding to the border lands between Brittany, Normandy, and Maine. Gallo was a shared spoken language among many of those who took part in the Norman conquest of England, most of whom originated in Upper (i.e. eastern) Brittany and Lower (i.e. western) Normandy, and thus had its part, together with the much bigger role played by the Norman language, in the development of the Anglo-Norman variety of French which would have such a strong influence on English.

The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America. It is bounded by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and by Cape Sable Island at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast. The gulf includes the entire coastlines of the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Maine, as well as Massachusetts north of Cape Cod, and the southern and western coastlines of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, respectively.

The gulf was named for the adjoining English colonial Province of Maine, which was in turn likely named by early explorers after the province of Maine in France. Massachusetts Bay, Penobscot Bay, Passamaquoddy Bay, and the Bay of Fundy are all arms of the Gulf of Maine.

Renaud (795 – 843) was Frankish Count of Herbauges, Count of Poitiers and Count of Nantes. His name is also spelled Rainaldus or Ragenold, and he is sometimes known as Reginald in English. He is referred to as Renaud of Aquitaine, but seems to have been a member of the Rorgonid family of Maine.

The County of Herbauges consisted of three pagi south of the Loire: Arballicus (Herbauges), Metallicus (the Mauges), and Teofalicus (Tiffauges) and was separate from the County of Poitou, of which Renaud also appears to have been Count. His appointment as Count is prior to July 835 when he appears in a battle against the Normans in Noirmoutier.

Geoffrey II, called Martel (1006 – 14 November 1060), son of Fulk the Black, was a French knight and Count of Anjou from 1040 to 1060 and Count of Vendôme from 1032 to 1056. He fought battles against William VII, Duke of Aquitaine, Theobald III, Count of Blois, and William, Duke of Normandy. During his twenty-year reign, Geoffrey II faced down the ambitions of the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervais de Château-du-Loir and was able to maintain his authority over the County of Maine. Martel founded the Abbey aux Dames in Saintonge and also, in collaboration with his wife Agnes, founded the Abbaye de la Trinité (Abbey of the Trinity) at Vendôme. He was described in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum as "a treacherous man in every respect, frequently inflicted assaults and intolerable pressure on his neighbors."