William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke

William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (1146–1219) was an English aristocrat and statesman. He has been described as "greatest knight that ever lived" (Stephen Langton). Before him, the hereditary title of "Lord Marshal" designated a sort of head of household security for the king of England; by the time he died, when people in Europe (not just Britain) said, "the Marshal," they meant William.

When William was about six years old, his father John Marshal had switched sides between King Stephen and Empress Maud When King Stephen besieged Newbury Castle John had to give William to Stephen as a hostage for John's keeping his word that he would surrender Newbury Castle. John broke his word, and when Stephen ordered John to surrender immediately or watch as he hanged William in front of the castle, John replied that he could always make another son, and a better one, too. Stephen could not bring himself to hang William, of course, or his story would end here.

As a younger son of a baron without much to leave him, William learned to make his own way: He was knighted in 1167 and was making a good living out of winning tournaments (which at that time were bloody, hand-to-hand combat, not the jousting contests that would come later); he fought in 500 such bouts in his life and never lost once. As a young knight he served in the household of his uncle, Patrick of Salisbury, 1st Earl of Salisbury. In 1168 his uncle was killed in an ambush, and William was injured and captured in the same battle, but was ransomed by Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1170 he was appointed tutor in chivalry for Henry the Young King and stood by the young king during the Revolt of 1173-1174; he even knighted the young king during this revolt. However, in 1182 William Marshal was accused of undue familiarity with Marguerite of France, the Young King's wife, and exiled from court. He went to the court of King Henry II that Christmas to ask for trial by combat in order to prove his innocence, but this was refused. A few months later the young king died, and on his deathbed he asked that William Marshal to fulfil his vow of going on Crusade. William fulfilled this promise, crusading in the Holy Land from 1183 to 1186; while there he vowed to be buried as a Knight Templar. Upon his return in 1186, William rejoined the court of King Henry II.

He continued to serve the king of England for forty-nine years: through the rest of Henry II's reign, all of Richard I's, all of John's, and three years into that of Henry III. William once came face to face with Richard in battle (when he was rebelling against his father) and could have killed him but killed Richard's horse instead, to make that point clear. He supported King John when he became king in 1189, but they had a falling out when William did homage to King Philip II of France for his Norman lands. William left for Leinster in 1207 and stayed in Ireland until 1212, when he was summoned to fight in the Welsh wars. He witnessed the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

It was William whom King John trusted on his deathbed to make sure John's nine-year-old son Henry would get the throne. It was William on June 15 1215 at Runnymede who dealt with the barons who made King John agree to the Magna Carta, and it was William who dealt with the kings of France (Louis VII and Philip Augustus). When they would not take the English king's word, they would take William's.

On November 11 1216, upon the death of King John, William Marshal was named by the king's council (the chief barons who had remained loyal to King John in the First Barons' War) to serve as both regent of the 9 year old King Henry III, and regent of the kingdom. William's first action after being named as regent was to reissue the Magna Carta, in which he is a signatory as one of the witnessing barons.

For his service to them, the Plantagenets gave him as his bride (in August 1189, when he was 43 and she 17) the second-richest heiress in England, Isabel de Clare, who had inherited large estates in England, Wales, and Ireland. Her father, Strongbow, had been Earl of Pembroke, and this title was granted to William. They had five sons and five daughters, and every one of them survived into adulthood. Their eldest son William would marry (in April 1224) Eleanor, the nine-year-old sister of Henry III (and daughter of King John).

William Marshal's health failed him in February 1219. In March 1219 he realized that he was dying, so he summoned his eldest son, also William, and his household knights, then he left the Tower of London for his estate at Caversham in Oxfordshire, near Reading, where he called a meeting of the barons, Henry III, the papal legate, the royal justiciar (Hubert de Burgh), and Peter des Roches (Bishop of Winchester and the young King's guardian). William rejected the Bishop's claim to the regency and entrusted the regency to the care of the papal legate; he apparently did not trust the Bishop or any of the other magnates that he had gathered to this meeting. He wanted to be buried as a Knight Templar, so he was invested into that order before he died on May 14 1219 at Caversham, and was buried in the Temple Church in London, where his effigy may still be seen.

After his death, his eldest son, also named William, commissioned a biography of his father to be written called L'Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal.

Children of William Marshal & Isabel de Clare:

• William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (~1190 - April 6 1231), married (1) Alice de Betun, daughter of Earl of Albemarle; (2) April 23 1224 Eleanor Plantagenet, daughter of King John I of England

• Richard Marshal, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (>1190 - April 16 1234), married Gervase le Dinant

• Maud (or Matilda) Marshal (1192 - March 27 1248), married (1) Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk; (2) (<October 13 1225) William de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey; (3) Walter de Dunstanville

• Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke (d. June 27 1241), married (1) Margaret of Scotland, daughter of King William I of Scotland; (2) Maud de Lanvaley

• Walter Marshal, 5th Earl of Pembroke (>1198 - November 1245), married Margaret de Quincy

• Anselm Marshal, 6th Earl of Pembroke (d. December 22 1245), married Maud de Bohun, daughter of Earl of Hereford

• Isabella Marshal (October 9 1200 - January 17 1240), married (1) (October 9 1217) Gilbert de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford & 4th Earl of Gloucester; (2) Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall & King of the Romans

• Sibyl (or Sybilla) Marshal, married William de Ferrers, 5th Earl of Derby

• Eva Marshal, married William de Braose, Lord of Abergavenny

• Joan (or Joanna) Marshal, married Warin de Montchensy, Lord of Swanscombe

The end of the Marshal family

During the civil wars in Ireland, William, Sr., had taken two manors that the Bishop of Ferns claimed but could not get back. Some years after William's death, that bishop is said to have laid a curse on the family that William's sons would have no children, and the great Marshal estates would be scattered. Each of William's sons did become earl of Pembroke and marshal of England, and each died without issue. William's vast holdings were then divided among the husbands of his five daughters. The title of "Marshal" went to the husband of the oldest daughter, Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk, and later passed to the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk and then to the Howard dukes of Norfolk, becoming "Earl Marshal" along the way. The title of "Earl of Pembroke" passed to the husband of Joan Marshal's daughter, Joan de Munchensy, the first of the de Valence line of earls of Pembroke.

William Marshal in Fiction

Four generations of the Marshal family, from Isabel de Clare's parents through William fitzWilliam's fictitious bastard son, are the subjects of a series of four historical romances by Mary Pershall. Dawn of the White Rose (©1985) is the one about William Marshal and Isabel de Clare.

William Marshal also appears as a supporting character in Sharon Kay Penman's novel Time and Chance, and makes a minor appearance in When Christ and His Saints Slept.