... In Italy it was borne by the Countess Matilda, the friend of Gregory VII., whose bequest was one of the pope's first steps to the temporal power, and who is introduced by Dante in the flowery fields of Paradise... It seems as if Matilde had been freshly introduced in Flanders when Count Philip married Matilda of Portugal; and this, and the old traditional Mehaut, went on side by side, just as in England did the full name Matilda, and the Anglicized Norman contraction Maude.  Of late years Maude has been fashionable, though not so near the original, nor so really graceful in sound as Matilda.  The earlier Mall and Moll were from Matilda, not Mary which came much later into use. (History of Christian Names, Yonge, 1884)

... The princes and lords of Powis, the chief seat of which was Matraval in Montgomeryshire, were called kings of Matraval, see Cambden's Britan. pag. 781.  Spenser says, that Merlin's mother was a nun, and named Matilda, daughter to Pubidius.—This Matilda and Pubidius are our poet's invention, as far as I can find:—no such names being mentioned in Morte Arthur, or in Jeffry of Monmouth, who in B. vi. C. 18. introduces Merlin's mother, who was a neice and daughter of the king of Demetia, i.e. South Wales, giving Vortegrin an account of her wonderful conception of her son.—A philosopher explains it (there introduced) that it was some Daemon or Incubus, "some guileful spright," partaking partly of the nature of man, partly of angels, and assuming a human shape, which begot Merlin;... (Orlando Furioso, Spenser-Upton, v.1, 1807)