♂William Marshal

William Marshal (died 14 May 1219) was an English knight, a younger son who served Henry II, his three sons and his grandson for fifty years, became Earl of Pembroke by his marriage to the heiress Isabel de Clare, and was Marshal of England and regent of the realm for the boy king Henry III from 1216 to 1219. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by five separate lines of descent: four through his daughter Isabel Marshal (died 1240), by three of which he was her twenty-fourth great-grandfather and by the fourth her twenty-fifth, and one through his daughter Maud Marshal (died 1248), by which he was her twenty-fifth.

A younger son

William was the fourth son of John le Marechal, by his second wife, Sibil, a sister of Patrick, Earl of Salisbury, and was born before 1152. In 1152 he was given as a hostage to King Stephen^W, when he was still a small child. By 1170 he was in the household of Henry the Young King^W, Henry II’s son, and he shared the young king’s rebellion against his father in 1173. He was knighted on 15 April 1173 by the Chamberlain of Tancarville.

He went on an embassy to France in 1188, and he was with Henry II when the king died in 1189. Shortly before, he is said to have spared the life of the king’s son Richard, who was then with the French, pursuing his father’s forces.

Earl of Pembroke

Henry II had granted William the marriage of Isabel de Clare, the heiress of Richard FitzGilbert, Earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow^W. Richard I confirmed the grant, and William and Isabel were married in August 1189. At Richard’s coronation on 3 September 1189 he is said to have carried the scepter with the cross as Earl of Striguil, or Pembroke. He became Steward of Leinster and the owner of vast estates in Ireland and England, and in 1191 he sat on the council of regency. That year Richard I restored to William and Isabel the Giffard lands at Longueville in Normandy, which came to Isabel by descent from Rohais, a sister of Walter Giffard, Earl of Buckingham.

When his brother John died in March 1193/4, William inherited the manor of Hempstead Marshal in Berkshire and the office of Marshal of the King’s Court. He was sheriff of Gloucestershire and of Sussex and constable of Chichester Castle, and in April and May 1199 he was one of the guardians of the realm, supporting John’s claim to the throne. On John’s coronation day, 27 May 1199, he was girded with the sword of the earldom of Striguil, and on 20 April 1200 he was confirmed as Marshal.

Between two kings

In May 1204, by a charter dated at Lisieux, William handed his castles in Normandy to the French king, to be returned to him if he came and did homage for them; he did homage, and kept them. In 1205 his eldest son was given to King John as a hostage, because the earl was under suspicion at court for that homage. He held his Norman lands until his death, one of the few barons who kept the favor of both the English and the French kings. On 28 March 1208 he was confirmed as Steward of Leinster and crossed to Ireland to secure his wife’s great possessions there.

He remained one of John’s principal counselors. He witnessed the charter of 15 May 1213 by which the king submitted his kingdom to the Pope, and in 1215 he was one of the envoys who treated with the barons over Magna Carta.

Regent

In 1216 William became regent of the realm and guardian of the young Henry III, and as Marshal he was present at the boy’s coronation on 28 October 1216. In the war with the rebel barons and their French ally, he took Gilbert de Clare prisoner at the Battle of Lincoln^W on 19 May 1217, and on 9 October that year Gilbert married William’s daughter Isabel. As regent William made a truce with France, reissued Magna Carta and put down the rebel barons.

He died at Caversham in Berkshire on 14 May 1219, aged about seventy, and was buried two days later in the New Temple Church^W in London. He made his will that year. Matthew Paris quoted lines that called him the “Sun of England”.

The family

William and Isabel had five sons, William, Richard, Gilbert, Walter and Anselm, and five daughters, Maud, Isabel, Sibyl, Eva and Joan. All five sons held the earldom of Pembroke in turn, and none of them left a child. William, born about 1190, was one of the twenty-five barons chosen in 1215 to enforce Magna Carta and died in April 1231. Richard rose against the king’s foreign advisers and died of a wound at Kilkenny Castle on 16 April 1234. Gilbert died on 27 June 1241 after a fall from his horse in a tournament at Ware, Walter died at Goodrich Castle in November 1245, and Anselm died on 5 December 1245, within a month of succeeding.

The Bishop of Ferns, from whom the elder William had taken some manors, is said to have cursed the family and foretold its end. When Anselm died the earldom went back to the Crown, and the great inheritance was divided among the five daughters or their heirs. Maud received the office of Marshal of England, Hempstead Marshal, Striguil Castle and the Irish honor of Carlow; Isabel’s share was the honor of Kilkenny and the castles of Usk and Caerleon.

Lines of descent

The lines meet again in Elizabeth le Despenser (died 1389), whose parents Hugh le Despenser (died 1326) and Eleanor de Clare (1292–1337) both descend from William and Isabel; in Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506), whose parents James Berkeley (about 1394–1463) and Isabel Mowbray (died 1452) both do; in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both do; and in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884) both do.

Notes

Sources

William’s parentage, career, marriage, death and burial, and the careers and deaths of his sons, are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. VI (1895), PEMBROKE, pp. 197–204, whose notes by G. W. Watson draw on the French poem L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, the chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough, the Norman rolls and charters in the French royal archives. Vol. V (1893), MARSHAL, p. 261, adds that he became Marshal of England and Earl of Pembroke in his wife’s right. His capture of Gilbert de Clare at Lincoln is from the 2nd ed., vol. V (1926), GLOUCESTER, which says Gilbert “was taken prisoner by William Marshal, whose daughter he married later”; the date of that marriage is from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), CLARE 2, p. 194. Richardson, BIGOD 2, p. 85, and CLARE 2, p. 194, names him as the father of Maud, his eldest daughter, and Isabel, his second, by Isabel, daughter of Richard Fitz Gilbert, called Strongbow, and styles him Knight, fourth Earl of Pembroke (or Striguil), hereditary Master Marshal.

His age

The Complete Peerage says only that he was born before 1152, the year he was given as a hostage, and that he died aged about seventy; together they make him a small child in 1152. The story of his sparing Richard’s life is given with “he is said to have”, and so is his carrying the scepter at Richard’s coronation, which the Complete Peerage takes from Benedict of Peterborough.

His numbering

Richardson counts him the fourth Earl of Pembroke, after the two earls of the Clare family and his wife; Wikipedia’s article on him counts him the first Earl of Pembroke of a new creation.

The sons and the curse

The Complete Peerage calls it “certainly singular that five brothers” held the earldom in succession and all died without children; its account of the curse, from the Bishop of Ferns, is given as what “is said” and what “subsequent writers have said”. An erratum in the same volume, p. 477, corrects the text to five sons, not six. Walter’s death is printed as 24 November 1215, a misprint: he succeeded in June 1241 and the earldom passed to Anselm in November 1245.

Sheriff and constable

The Complete Peerage gives him as sheriff of Gloucestershire 1190–1195 and 1199–1207 and of Sussex 1195–1205, and constable of Chichester Castle 1195–1208.