• Born: Abt 1161, Berkeley, Gloucester, England
• Married: 1177, Gloucestershire, England

  Research Notes:

Smyth states that "the daughter of…lord Maurice was married to Osbert Gifford kt, by whome he had issue, Osbert Gifford and others, which Osbert became servant to King Henry the third in the eighth year of his raigne", citing a charter at Berkeley, close roll and fine roll records. The chronology of the Giffard family suggests that Matilda must have been one of her parents’ older children and that her husband must have been Elias. This suggested identification of her husband appears to be corroborated by the charter dated to after 1220 under which “Thomas de Berkeley” granted “the reversion of the land in Foxcote which his wife Lucy holds in dower” to “Osbert Gyffard his nephew” [who is identified as Osbert [II] Giffard, son of Elias Giffard]. . ¹

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The wife of Elias Gifford, mother of Osbert, was ... named Maud, and she is evidently the Matilda Gifford holding half of Helidon, one of the manors of the Twyford Giffords in later times, in 1199. She was apparently holding it as part of her dower, and in the Testa de Nevill we find Isabel Gifford holding a moiety of Helidon. This is evidently Isabel Bocland holding it as dower.

... [In] the Lives of the Berkeleys, vol. i, p. 123, we find that Thomas de Berkeley gave the manor of Foxcote to his nephew, Osbert Gifford, his sister's son, and the author gives as his authority a charter in Berkeley Castle. This accounts for the item in the Inquisition of 31 Henry III which shows that Osbert Gifford held Foxcote of Maurice de Berkeley. There can be no doubt but that Maud, second wife of Elias Gifford of Brimsfield, the father of Elias and Osbert Gifford, and the mother of Osbert, was the daughter of Maurice de Berkeley or FitzHarding, who died in 1189. ²