♂Fulk FitzWarin

Fulk FitzWarin^W (14 September 1251 – 24 November 1315) was an English baron, lord of Whittington Castle^W on the Welsh border in Shropshire, who was summoned to Parliament from 1295 as the first Lord FitzWarin and whose long quarrel with the Earl of Arundel led to a royal order of 1301 that the two men stop attacking each other. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Hawise FitzWarin (died 1344).

Early life

Fulk was born at Whittington on 14 September 1251, the only son and heir of Fulk FitzWarin and his wife, Constance, whom a compiled genealogy makes a daughter of Sir Ralph de Tony. He was twelve when his father, according to a chronicler of the time, drowned in the river Ouse while trying to escape from the battle of Lewes^W on 14 May 1264. The boy’s inheritance was soon bargained over: a royal grant of 22 June 1265, the price Simon de Montfort^W paid for the help of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd^W, Prince of Wales, gave Llywelyn the lordship over Whittington, so that its heir would serve him as his forebears had served the princes before him.

On 27 April 1273 Fulk’s age was proved^W before the king’s council at Westminster: he had been born at Whittington on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and would soon be twenty-two. Two days later his fealty was taken and he had livery of his father’s lands.

Marriage

Fulk married Margaret, a daughter of Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn^W, Prince of Upper Powys^W, before 25 February 1276/7. Fulk’s father had held the land of Bauseley, on the Welsh border in Montgomeryshire, as his right, until Gruffydd occupied it during a dispute with Thomas Corbet; Gruffydd kept it until Fulk married his daughter, and then gave it back to Fulk as his right. Later disputes arose, and Fulk lost Bauseley again.

Their son and heir was another Fulk. Their daughter was probably the Hawise, “daughter of Sir Fulk son of Warin”, who married Ralph de Goushill, a young heir who died before 30 August 1294, and later Robert Hoo. The record does not say which of the successive Fulks of Whittington was her father, but the dates fit this Fulk and Margaret, not his father, who drowned in 1264.

In the king’s service

Fulk, who is said to have been a knight, served in the king’s army in Wales in 1282 and was summoned to attend the king at Shrewsbury in 1283. From 24 June 1295 he was summoned to Parliament^W, and on that ground he is held to have become the first Lord FitzWarin; the summonses went on until October 1315, a month before his death. As lord of Whittington he joined in the Barons’ Letter^W to the Pope of 12 February 1300/1, and on 27 May 1301 he did homage for his lands in Wales to Edward, Prince of Wales, at Kenilworth.

His quarrel with Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel^W, was an old one: in 1293 Fulk accused the earl of ravaging his lands at Whittington with an armed force, and on 10 August 1301 the king ordered the two men to abstain from attacking each other. In 1313 Fulk was pardoned, as an adherent of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster^W, for any part he had taken against Piers Gaveston^W, the king’s favorite, whom Lancaster’s party had put to death the year before.

Later life and death

In 1302 Fulk had license to grant the manor of Alveston, in Gloucestershire, to his son Fulk, and in 1310 he arranged that he would hold Whittington for life, with the remainder to the younger Fulk and his wife, Alianore. He died on 24 November 1315. His son was then abroad, and on 5 January 1315/6 Alianore had livery of Whittington until her husband returned. Margaret outlived Fulk by more than twenty years, holding a third of the manor of Alveston as her dower.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Hawise, Hawise’s son Thomas Hoo (died 1380), Thomas’s son William Hoo (1335–1410), and William’s daughter Margaret Hoo, whose descendants include Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for his life

His life is told in the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 5, pp. 495–497, under FitzWarin, an article by G. W. Watson), which abstracts the records. His birth date and place come from the proof of his age of 27 April 1273 (Ch. Inq. p.m., Edw. I, file 3, no. 17), which says he would be twenty-two on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and that he was born at Whittington on that feast. The Complete Peerage calls his mother a daughter of Sir Ralph de Tony; its evidence is the half of Yarkhill, in Herefordshire, that Ralph’s widow, Parnel, gave Fulk’s parents in frank-marriage, and no record here names Constance’s parents outright. His father’s drowning, “in flumine vicino submersus”, is from the chronicler Rishanger (De Bellis, p. 34). The 1293 accusation against the Earl of Arundel is from the Coram Rege roll of Easter 21 Edward I, and the order of 10 August 1301 from the Close Roll of 29 Edward I. The grant to Llywelyn of 22 June 1265 is recited in an exemplification of 1343/4.

The Bauseley story is from an inquest taken in Shropshire on 25 February 1276/7, which gives the latest date for the marriage: Gruffydd held the land “until the Fulk fitz Warin now living married his daughter”. His death is dated by the writ of diem clausit extremum of 28 December 1315; there are no inquisitions after his death, and the escheator’s account for Whittington names 24 November as the day he died.

Title

The Complete Peerage (vol. 5, pp. 495–497) gives his rank as knight and his title as 1st Lord FitzWarin. It is a compiled genealogy, so the knighthood is stated only as its claim.

His daughter Hawise

The inquisition after the death of Ralph de Goushill (writ of 30 August 1294; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 3, no. 209) says that he “had a daughter by Hawis daughter of Sir Fulk son of Warin”, naming no number for the Fulk. The Complete Peerage (vol. 6, under Goushill) calls her a daughter of Sir Fulk FitzWarin, citing the same inquisition. Ralph was born about 1274 and their daughter Margaret in 1294, which fits a daughter of this Fulk, married before February 1277, rather than of his father, who died in 1264. The Complete Peerage’s FitzWarin article names no daughter Hawise, and the “Pedigree of Hoo” in Sussex Archaeological Collections 45 (1902), p. 196, says “I do not find that he had any daughter Hawise”. F. N. Craig, “Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 140 (1986), pp. 219–229, gives the FitzWarin descent.