Fulk FitzWarin
[3] After his death, Fulk became the subject of a popular "ancestral romance" in French verse, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, relating his life as an outlaw and his struggle to regain his patrimony from the king.
[12] In the time of Robert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford (1174–1186), Fulk II gave land at Tadlow to Shrewsbury Abbey to settle a controversy over the patronage of the church of Alberbury, Shropshire, in his own favour.
[13] At some time before 1178 Fulk II married Hawise, one of the two daughters and co-heirs of Josce de Dinan[14] and his wife Sybil, widow of Pain fitzJohn.
It further states that young Fulk was bred with the four sons of King Henry, who all loved him except for Prince John (born 1166): Fouke le jeouene fust norry ou les iiij.
[24] In 1165 Henry II granted the castle of Whittington to Roger de Powys, a Welsh leader, and in about 1173 gave him funds for its repair.
[25] Fulk II successfully claimed for the restitution of Whittington, a judgement mentioned in the Pipe Roll for 1195 when he owed a Fine of 40 marks to have seisin: but he never paid this, and was dead by 1197.
He was accompanied by approximately fifty-two followers including his brothers William, Phillip and John, by his cousins, and by the family's many tenants and allies in the Marches.
It was sufficiently troublesome, however, that when in the spring of 1201 King John crossed into Normandy and Poitou to suppress a revolt by the Lusignans,[29] he assigned 100 knights to Hubert de Burgh with instructions for him to put down the activities of Fulk and his band, and those of a renegade in Devon.
[30] The Annales Cestrienses tell that in 1202 Fulk was obliged to make his escape by sea, and, having got away with a few of his followers, took refuge in Stanley Abbey near Chippenham, Wiltshire.
[39] For the huge fine of 1,200 marks levied upon Fulk for this marriage he secured pledges from his brother William and from Maud's father,[40] a tenant of the feudal barony of Skipton in Yorkshire.
[44] In 1213 the king granted timbers from Leicester Forest to Fulk for his dwelling at the Vavasour hereditament of Narborough, Leicestershire, and for the construction of a chamber there.
[47] Over the months immediately following he is found among the malcontent barons who, between their meetings at Bury St Edmunds in November and at the New Temple in January, sought to bring John to a realization of their grievances.
[48] By December 1215 Fulk's name appears in the list of English barons excommunicated by Pope Innocent III's bull, for his part in their opposition to the king.
[55] By 1220 Fulk had regained some favour with the young King Henry III and had been allowed to rebuild and fortify Whittington,[56] and to hold a weekly market and annual two-day fair there.
[63] Between 1221 and 1226 Fulk began to build his priory at Alberbury on a moated site at a bend in the river Severn on the border of England and Wales.
[65] Fulk, therefore, turned instead to the Grandmontine Order, following the example of Walter de Lacy's house founded at Craswall Priory in Herefordshire c. 1220–1225,[66] but placing Alberbury under the immediate authority of Grandmont Abbey in Limousin.
[42] In that year Theobald Walter the younger (son of Maud's first marriage) unsuccessfully challenged William Pantolf and Hawise his wife (Fulk's daughter) for title to the manor of Narborough in Leicestershire,[70] a Vavasour hereditament.
[37] Fulke's market at Narborough had received the king's re-confirmation in 1220, but a suit of 1276 shows that the manor had been given by Maud to her daughter Hawise,[71] who by her marriage to Pantolf became Lady of the barony of Wem,[72] as the FitzWarin Romance reminds us.
[85] In due course, Fulk by charter granted his entire manor of Lambourn to his daughter Mabil and to the heirs of her body, and acknowledged the fact before the Court of King's Bench in 1249.
[86] A seal-matrix of Fulk FitzWarin (equestrian) found at Little Bedwyn, Wiltshire, about five miles south of Lambourn, corresponds to a seal-impression on a charter in the Harleian collection which is dated probably early in the reign of Henry III, and therefore likely to represent Fulk III:[87] another FitzWarin charter with armorial seal, dated 1258, grants land and rent at Wantage.
[89] The marriage features in the Romance narrative (which calls her "une molt gentile dame") and is said to have occurred "a good while" after the death of Maud.
[90] It has been accepted (or asserted) that Clarice was the daughter (rather than the widow) of Sir Robert de Auberville, of Iden and Iham (Higham, in Icklesham[91]), near Winchelsea, Sussex.
[100] In March 1238 he was among the powerful men summoned by the king to Oxford, to deliberate upon Llywelyn's action in causing his son Dafydd to receive homage from the magnates of Gwynedd and Powys.
As Matthew Paris relates their interview, Fulk told him to leave England immediately, but Martin questioned his authority to demand it.
[107] The services owing by Fulk FitzWarin for a knight's fee held from Corbet at Alberbury had been set forth in a concord of 1248,[108] the Fine for which was recorded in the Great Roll of the Pipe for 1250 and remained unpaid in 1252.
She was buried at Alberbury Priory, and he died a year later and was laid to rest beside both of his wives in the monastery church, part of which was incorporated into later buildings at the site.
[123] During the later 13th century, when the actual events of Fulk's life were still in living memory or common report, a romance known as Fouke le Fitz Waryn, probably first in French verse, was written about him.
