Stephen du Perche (died 1205)

[7] Around 1200, Stephen gave land he possessed at Arponnel and in the forested gâtines (wasteland) between Chartres and Thiron-Gardais to the Knights Templar.

[8] By the early 1190s, Stephen held rights to a portion of the comital revenues of the manors at Rivray, Montlandon and Nonvilliers, the mills at La Poterie and the salt works at Nogent-le-Rotrou.

[4] In July 1200, King John of England, Richard's successor, appointed Stephen castellan of Châteauneuf-sur-Sarthe in the County of Anjou.

Stephen, however, had to give up the royal grant of lands he had received at Chambois, where he was reaping the profits of a Jewish moneylender he had brought in from the Île-de-France.

[12] Among his pious acts of preparation was the grant of a charter to Le Mans Cathedral promising comital protection for its property at Courgenard in the Perche.

[14] He made several religious bequests before departing,[16] including the endowment of a memorial requiem mass for himself to be celebrated in Chartres Cathedral annually on the anniversary of his death.

In March 1203 he decided not to rejoin the main army and went to southern Italy with Rotrou of Montfort and Yves of La Jaille.

[17] In 1204, after the partition of the Byzantine Empire by the crusaders, the new emperor Baldwin I granted Stephen the duchy of Philadelphia in Asia Minor as an imperial fief.

The grant of a large and autonomous fief, as connoted by the term "duchy", is an indication that Stephen was considered among the first rank of crusaders.

[21] The actual ruler of Philadelphia, Theodore Mangaphas, was defeated by the imperial regent Henry of Flanders at the battle of Adramyttion on 19 March 1205, bringing at least part of the region briefly under crusader control.

[8] Stephen's participation in the crusade and his brief career in Greece is narrated in Geoffrey of Villehardouin's chronicle and the Devastatio Constantinopolitana.