Josce de Dinan

Josce eventually lost control of Ludlow and was granted lands in compensation by Matilda and her son, King Henry II of England, who succeeded Stephen in 1154.

But Matilda was less sanguine, and secured the support of her maternal uncle, the Scottish king David I, and in 1138 also that of her half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of Henry I.

Ludlow was an important strategic stronghold for control of the Welsh Borders, and Stephen decided to marry Pain's widow to someone he felt was trustworthy.

Josce's position was so strong that when Stephen granted much of the surrounding lands to Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, Ludlow was specifically exempted.

[1] Custody of Ludlow was contested not only by Stephen but also by Gilbert de Lacy, whose efforts to wrest the castle from Josce are the background to the medieval romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn;[14] the extant prose version dates from the 14th century, but it was originally a 13th-century poem, now lost.

[22] Josce's grandson Fulk fitzWarin, who died in 1258, is ostensibly the hero of a lost romantic poem called Fouke le Fitz Waryn.

[24] Other errors in the work include transposing some of the Welsh Marcher barons of King Henry I of England's reign into nobles of William the Conqueror's time, and omitting an entire generation of fitzWarins.

[25] Although scholars believe Fouke le Fitz Waryn draws on genuine tradition, the difficulty in separating the fitzWarin biographies makes it a problematic source.