Saer de Quincy, 1st Earl of Winchester

[citation needed] Saer seems to have developed a close personal relationship with his 2nd cousin, Robert Fitzwalter (died 1235) the son of Walter Fitzrobert and Maud de Lucy.

[4] Although popular opinion seems to have blamed them for the capitulation, a royal writ is extant stating that the castle was surrendered at King John's command, and both Winchester and Fitzwalter endured personal humiliation and heavy ransoms at the hands of the French.

He was buried in Acre, the capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, rather than in Egypt, and his heart was brought back and interred at Garendon Abbey near Loughborough, a house endowed by his wife's family.

Robert de Quincy seems to have inherited no English lands from his father, and pursued a knightly career in Scotland, where he is recorded from around 1160 as a close companion of his cousin, King William the Lion.

By 1170 he had married Orabilis, heiress of the Scottish lordship of Leuchars and, through her, he became lord of an extensive complex of estates north of the border which included lands in Fife, Strathearn and Lothian.

His absence from English records for the first decades of his life has led some modern historians and genealogists to confuse him with his great uncle, Saer II, who took part in the rebellion of Henry the Young King in 1173, when the future Earl of Winchester can have been no more than a toddler.

Saer II's line ended without direct heirs, and his nephew and namesake would eventually inherit his estate, uniting his primary Scottish holdings with the family's Northamptonshire patrimony, and possibly some lands in France.

Arms of De Quincy: Gules, seven mascles or 3,3,1 , adopted at the start of the age of heraldry , circa 1200–1215.
Seal of Robert Fitzwalter (d.1235). So close was the alliance between both men that the seal shows the arms of Saer de Quincy ( seven mascles 3,3,1 ) on a separate shield before FitzWalter horse, with FitzWalter's own arms on his own shield and on his horse's caparison .
Arms displayed by Earl Saer on his seal on Magna Carta. These differ from his arms used elsewhere but can also be seen in stained glass at Winchester Great Hall .