♂William de Warenne

William de Warenne^W (died 11 May 1138) was the second Earl of Surrey, a Norman lord who commanded for King Henry I at Tinchebray and Brémule and was present at the king’s death in 1135. He was the twenty-fifth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) through his daughter Ada de Warenne, and her twenty-sixth great-grandfather through his son William de Warenne, so by two separate lines of descent.

The second earl

William was the son and heir of William de Warenne, the first Earl of Surrey, and his wife Gundred. He was likely born about 1071, succeeded his father on 24 June 1089, when the first earl died at Lewes Castle of a wound taken at the siege of Pevensey, and was knighted before January 1091.

When the king’s elder brother, Robert Curthose^W, challenged Henry I for the English crown, William took Robert’s side, and about 1101 he was deprived of his earldom. He had it back the following year and from then on served the king: he was in command at the Battle of Tinchebray^W on 28 September 1106 and at the Battle of Brémule^W on 20 August 1119. By 1135 he was governor of Rouen, and he was one of the five earls present at Henry I’s death at Lyons that year. In 1136 he witnessed King Stephen’s second charter.

Marriage

At one time a marriage was proposed between William and an illegitimate daughter of Henry I. Anselm^W, Archbishop of Canterbury, objected that the two were kin, related on one side in the fourth generation and on the other in the sixth.

In 1118 William married Isabel of Vermandois^W, a daughter of Hugh the Great, Count of Vermandois^W, and a granddaughter of King Henry I of France. She was the widow of Robert, Count of Meulan^W, who died on 5 June 1118, and before his death she is said to have eloped with William while still Robert’s wife, already the mother of eight children. The checkered gold and blue shield of the Warennes was taken from the arms of her family, the counts of Vermandois.

William and Isabel’s children included William de Warenne^W, their eldest son and heir, and Ada de Warenne, who married Henry of Scotland, Earl of Huntingdon. William died on 11 May 1138 and was buried at Lewes Priory^W, where his parents lay.

Lines of descent

The two lines part with his children. Ada’s runs through her daughter Margaret of Scotland and Margaret’s son Henry de Bohun (1176–1220) to Henry’s son Humphrey de Bohun. The younger William’s runs through his daughter Isabel de Warenne, her daughter Maud de Warenne, and Maud’s granddaughter Maud of Eu (died 1241). Humphrey de Bohun married Maud of Eu, and the two lines meet again in their daughter Alice de Bohun. From her the pedigrees carry the descent down to John Washburn (died 1547), and so probably to Nancy Jane Blanchard.

Notes

Sources

William’s parentage, his birth “probably about 1071”, his succession, knighthood, loss and recovery of the earldom, his commands at Tinchebray and Brémule, his governorship of Rouen and presence at Henry I’s death, his witnessing of Stephen’s charter, his marriage in 1118, his death and burial, and his son William’s place as “1st s. and h.” are given in the first edition of the Complete Peerage (vol. 7, 1896, under Surrey, pp. 325–326). The same pages give his father’s death at Lewes Castle and burial at Lewes Priory, his mother Gundred’s burial there, and Isabel’s parentage. The second edition (vol. 6, 1926, under Huntingdon) names Ada, wife of Henry of Scotland, as the daughter of William, Earl of Surrey, and Isabel, daughter of Hugh, Count of Vermandois. These are compiled peerage accounts, not records of the time.

The elopement

The Complete Peerage (1st ed., vol. 7, pp. 325–326) says that Isabel, “being then the mother of 8 children”, had eloped with Earl William before her first husband’s death on 5 June 1118, citing G. W. Watson’s “Ancient Earls of Leicester” in The Genealogist. The same page notes that the “well known chequy [or and az] coat of Warren was adopted from that of Vermandois”, though the right to represent Isabel’s family passed to her eldest son by her first husband.

Anselm’s objection

The Complete Peerage (1st ed., vol. 7, p. 325, note) quotes Anselm’s ground of objection, that the pair were “ex una parte cognati in quarta generatione, et ex altera, in sexta”, and uses it to argue that Gundred was not a daughter of Queen Matilda, as an earlier theory had made her.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.