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I hope this helps others…“Roger Benjamin” should absolutely be removed from any family lineage that portrays him to be the son of Eustace IV and Constance of France. Anyone that truly still questions this can simply go online and find the email contact of any medieval author/professor. Contact them and they will quickly clear up this “falsity.” Eustace IV and Constance had no children together. Period.
I have attempted to find where this theory of “Roger Benjamin” as son of Eustace IV and Constance can be attributed. In all of the online communities I can find it attributed to only one source. The source is a research paper found online at “https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE76439” by Paul Kingsley Benjamin Jr. from 1993. It is entitled, “The Heritage of the Benjamin's Who Settled McLean County, Illinois, and Legacies of Their Descendants, First Edition.”
On page 15, the author can be found referencing this "Roger Benjamin" and providing his theory as to his existence. Of course he cites no source that speaks of a relationship between “Roger”, Eustace and Constance. I have personally checked the sources he provided.
He does, however, provide from his citations the proof of the use of the surname “Benjamin” in the 12th century. This information can be verified within “A Dictionary of English Surnames” by R.M. Wilson, Third Edition, Routledge of London and New York. This was first published as “A Dictionary of British Surnames in 1958 by P.H. Reaney. Mr. Benjamin cites the 1966 edition.
It reads:
Benjamin, Benjaman: Beniamin 12th MedEA (Nf) (Northfolk); Roger Beniamin 1166 P (Nf) (Norfolk). Hebrew Benjamin “son of the south”, interpreted in Genesis “son of the right hand”, much less frequent than Adam. The surname is also found in Berkshire, Cambridgeshire and Wiltshire before 1250.
The two sources of this information found in the “Dictionary of Surnames” are “The Social Structure of Medieval East Anglia”, Oxford 1927 by D.C. Douglas and “The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Twenty Sixth Year of Henry the Third”, ed. H.L. Cannon, Yale Hist. Pub. 1918.
Of course these only prove that there was a person with this name. Nothing else.
Thank you to Mr. Benjamin for his efforts, and to all the researchers who come after him.
I am a proud member of the Benjamin family. I am passionate about my research and I strive for truth and certainty within it. I do not wish to disappoint or upset others that may have been connecting themselves to Royalty because of this false information. My wish is that they are simply set free by the truth.
I encourage all researchers to continue on the search for "Roger Benjamin" to whom we may still be a descendant.
Sincerely.