William Marshal 1st Earl of Pembroke: Encyclopedia II - William Marshal 1st Earl of Pembroke - Biography

William Marshal 1st Earl of Pembroke - Biography

When William was about six years old, his father John Marshal had switched sides between King Stephen and Empress Matilda. When King Stephen besieged Newbury Castle, John had to give William to Stephen as a hostage for John's keeping his word that he would surrender Newbury Castle. John broke his word, and when Stephen ordered John to surrender immediately or watch as he hanged William in front of the castle, John replied that he could always make another son, and a better one, too. Stephen could not bring himself to hang William.

As a younger son of a baron without much to leave him, William learned to make his own way: He was knighted in 1167 and was making a good living out of winning tournaments (which at that time were bloody, hand-to-hand combat, not the jousting contests that would come later); he fought in 500 such bouts in his life and never lost once. As a young knight he served in the household of his uncle, Patrick of Salisbury, 1st Earl of Salisbury. In 1168 his uncle was killed in an ambush, and William was injured and captured in the same battle, but was ransomed by Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1170 he was appointed tutor in chivalry for Henry the Young King and stood by the young king during the Revolt of 1173-1174; he even knighted the young king during this revolt. However, in 1182 William Marshal was accused of undue familiarity with Marguerite of France, the Young King's wife, and exiled from court. He went to the court of King Henry II that Christmas to ask for trial by combat in order to prove his innocence, but this was refused. A few months later the young king died, and on his deathbed he asked that William Marshal to fulfil his vow of going on Crusade. William fulfilled this promise, crusading in the Holy Land from 1183 to 1186; while there he vowed to be buried as a Knight Templar. Upon his return in 1186, William rejoined the court of King Henry II.

He continued to serve the king of England for forty-nine years: through the rest of Henry II's reign, all of Richard I's, all of John's, and three years into that of Henry III. William once came face to face with Richard in battle (when he was rebelling against his father) and could have killed him but killed Richard's horse instead, to make that point clear. He supported King John when he became king in 1189, but they had a falling out when William did homage to King Philip II of France for his Norman lands. William left for Leinster in 1207 and stayed in Ireland until 1212, when he was summoned to fight in the Welsh wars. He witnessed the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

For his service to them, the Plantagenets gave him as his bride (in August 1189, when he was 43 and she 17) the second-richest heiress in England, Isabel de Clare, who had inherited large estates in England, Wales, Normandy and Ireland. Her father, Strongbow, had been Earl of Pembroke, and this title was granted to William. They had five sons and five daughters, and every one of them survived into adulthood. Their eldest son would marry (in April 1224) Eleanor, the nine-year-old sister of Henry III (and daughter of King John). William made numerous improvements to his wife's lands, renovating Pembroke Castle and Chepstow Castle.

It was William whom King John trusted on his deathbed to make sure John's nine-year-old son Henry would get the throne. It was William on June 15, 1215 at Runnymede who dealt with the barons who made King John agree to the Magna Carta, and it was William who dealt with the kings of France (Louis VII and Philip Augustus). When they would not take the English king's word, they would take William's.

On November 11, 1216, upon the death of King John, William Marshal was named by the king's council (the chief barons who had remained loyal to King John in the First Barons' War) to serve as both regent of the 9 year old King Henry III, and regent of the kingdom. William's first action after being named as regent was to reissue the Magna Carta, in which he is a signatory as one of the witnessing barons.

William Marshal's health failed him in February 1219. In March 1219 he realized that he was dying, so he summoned his eldest son, also William, and his household knights, then he left the Tower of London for his estate at Caversham in Oxfordshire, near Reading, where he called a meeting of the barons, Henry III, the papal legate, the royal justiciar (Hubert de Burgh), and Peter des Roches (Bishop of Winchester and the young King's guardian). William rejected the Bishop's claim to the regency and entrusted the regency to the care of the papal legate; he apparently did not trust the Bishop or any of the other magnates that he had gathered to this meeting. He wanted to be buried as a Knight Templar, so he was invested into that order before he died on May 14, 1219 at Caversham, and was buried in the Temple Church in London, where his effigy may still be seen.

After his death, his eldest son, also named William, commissioned a biography of his father to be written called L'Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki