Robert Walerand
[1] Among the king's household knights he stands in the same position as his friend John Mansel among the royal clerks.
Walerand was most notably employed by the king in the ill-fated scheme of raising money from the barons for his second son Edmund to take up the crown of Sicily, offered by the Pope in 1254.
His forceful exactions in that connection were one of the causes of the rebellion of Simon de Montfort and the Barons' War, which ended however with royal victory at the Battle of Evesham in 1265.
The daughter of Roger de Berkeley and Hawise, her dower lands included Siston and Coberley.
[2] Robert's brother John Walerand, rector of Clent in Worcestershire, was in 1265 appointed seneschal and joint custodian of the Tower of London.
His half sister Alice de Rochford (Isabel's daughter by Thomas de Rochford)[3] was the mother of Alan Plugenet who received Kilpeck, and another sister, also named Alice, was abbess of Romsey Abbey.
In 1246 he received the custody of the estates formerly held by the heirs of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (d.1219) and in 1247 of those of John de Munchanes (Excerpta e Rot.
As early as 1252 he was described as "Seneschal of Gascony" (Royal Letters, Henry III, ii.
Walerand was an accomplice of Peter's trick of persuading the prelates to entrust them with blank charters, which they wrote-up at Rome, and so compelled the English church to pay nine thousand marks to certain firms of Sienese and Florentine bankers who had advanced money to Alexander on Henry's account ('Ann.
At the parliament of Westminster on 13 October 1255 Richard of Cornwall bitterly rebuked Walerand and the Bishop of Hereford because they had 'so wickedly urged the king to subvert the kingdom' (Matt.
He was one of a commission of three appointed to investigate the crimes of William de l'Isle, Sheriff of Northampton, in the famous case of 1256 (Matt.
On 12 June 1256 Walerand was associated with Richard, Earl of Gloucester, in an embassy to the princes of Germany (Fœdera, i.
About this time he was entrusted with the custody of St Briavel's Castle and manor in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire (Dugdale, Baronage, i.
670), and a little later (1256–1257) he was made steward of all forests south of the Trent and governor of Rockingham Castle (ib.).
On 20 February 1257 Simon de Montfort and Robert Walerand were empowered to negotiate a peace between France and England (Royal Letters, Henry III, ii.
He witnessed on 2 May the king's consent to a project of reform (Select Charters, p. 381; Fœdera, 370, 371).
He was so far trusted by the barons that he was appointed warden of Salisbury Castle under the provisions of Oxford (ib.
On 29 January 1262 Walerand was elected one of a commission of six, of whom three were barons, to appoint sheriffs (Fœdera, i.
On 10 March he was made a member of the embassy appointed to negotiate peace with France (Royal Letters, ii.
Later Walerand and his colleagues laid their report before the magnates in London (Flores Hist.
He also became warden of the Cinque Ports (Royal Letters, Henry III, ii.
During the chancellorship of Walter de Merton in 1262, the great seal was put into the hands of Walerand and Imbert of Munster.
In 1263, when Prince Edward committed his robbery of jewels and money upon the New Temple, Walerand was one of his chief helpers ('Ann.
Walerand, together with John Mansel and Peter II of Savoy, were regarded as the three chief advisers of the king ('Ann.
When the barons went to war against Henry III in 1264, Walerand exerted himself on the king's side.
He and Roger Leybourne induced the Londoners to pay a fine of twenty thousand marks to the king for their transgressions (Liber de Antiquis Legibus, pp.
He then resumed his work as judge, and from April 1268 until August 1271 many records survive detailing assizes to be held before him (Excerpta e Rot.
A curious political poem from Cottonian MS. Otho D, viii., quoted in the notes to Rishanger's Chronicon de Bello (Camden Society, p. 145), refers to him thus: Walerand married in 1257 Maud Russell (d. 1306–7), the eldest daughter of his neighbour Ralph Russell of Dyrham, which manor adjoined his home of Siston, but left no issue (Dugdale, i.
His nephew and heir, Robert II Waleran, was an idiot, and never received livery of his lands, some of which passed to his sister's son, Alan Plugenet.
Since Robert II Waleran was an idiot, it is not clear why was he allowed to have an Will, also given that Alan Plugenet was holding his guardianship.
