William de Cantilupe († 1251)

William de Cantilupe (also William II de Cantilupe or Cantelupe ) († February 22, 1251 ) was an English nobleman.

Origin and role in the war of the barons

William de Cantilupe was the eldest son of William I de Cantilupe and his wife Mazilia. Walter de Cantilupe , Bishop of Worcester, was a younger brother of his. Like his father, the chronicler Roger von Wendover also counted William II de Cantilupe to the poor advisers of King John Ohneland . During the First War of the Barons , he sided with the king and took part with his father in the siege of Mountsorrel Castle and the subsequent Battle of Lincoln in 1217 .

Follower of the Earls of Chester

In the 1220s, Cantilupe was part of the retinue of Earl Ranulf of Chester . Like his father, he was one of the barons who appeared armed in front of the Tower of London in November 1223 under the leadership of Ranulf of Chester to protest against the government of Hubert de Burgh . Together with Chester, however, he later submitted to the king. As a follower of Chester he took part in Henry III's campaign in France in 1230 . part. After Chester's death in 1232, he was one of the executors of Chester, after which he entered the service of John of Scotland , the new Earl of Chester. In 1236 he went on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela .

Court official in the service of the king

After the death of John of Scotland, Cantilupe moved to the king's service in 1238, where he took over the office of Royal Steward . In addition, he became sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1239 . Like his father, who had also held the post of Royal Steward, Cantilupe became a loyal and capable supporter of the King. After his father's death in 1239, he inherited the family's estates, including Eaton Bray in Bedfordshire and Aston Cantlow in Warwickshire . As early as 1238, through the favor of the king , he was able to acquire the guardianship of Eva de Briouze , one of the daughters and co-heirs of the Marcher Lord William de Briouze . He married her in July 1241 to his son William III , so that he earned the Honor of Abergavenny in Wales and half of the Honor of Totnes in Devon and was able to significantly enlarge the family's possessions. In 1241 Cantilupe served as one of the mediators between the King and Welsh prince Dafydd of Gwynedd. When the king set out for the Saintonge campaign in south-west France in 1242 , Cantilupe was supposed to keep the peace in England together with Archbishop Walter de Gray of York and Bishop Walter Mauclerk of Carlisle. In 1245 he took part in the council in Lyon as a representative of the English barons , where he made a comprehensive complaint about the Pope's high monetary demands.

Family and offspring

Before 1216 Cantilupe had married Millicent (also Maud ), the widow of Amaury de Montfort, Earl of Gloucester and daughter of the French nobleman Hugo V von Gournay . She brought as a dowry lands in Oxfordshire with 6.5 Knight's fees in the marriage, but for which he had to lead a lawsuit with Gilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Gloucester , since Clare claimed the possessions of Montforts as the new Earl of Gloucester.

Cantilupe had five sons with his wife, including:

• William III
• Thomas de Cantilupe , Bishop of Hereford

His widow Millicent became the governess of the minor Margaret , a daughter of King Henry III, who became the Scottish King Alexander III in 1255 . had married. She died in 1260.

Web links

• BW Holden: Cantilupe, William (II) de (d. 1251). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004