Waleran served as household knight to his elder brother Earl William and appears to have inherited the manors of Greetham and Cottesmore in Rutland from their father.

[1] Waleran was rather more successful politically than his elder brother, who died childless in 1184 and left him an unwelcome inheritance of debt and depleted estates.

Another way Waleran may have tried to retrieve the family fortunes was by commencing the sell off to local gentry of large swathes of the forest of Sutton, which at the time made up much of the north of Warwickshire.

He made a notable grant of revenues to the nuns of Pinley at Claverdon on their reception of his daughter Gundreda and niece Isabel for their upbringing and education there.

[5] By his first wife Margaret daughter of Humphrey III de Bohun he had Henry as son and heir to the earldom, and probably also Gundreda, confided as a child to the nuns of Pinley.