The French Interests of the Marshal Earls of Striguil and Pembroke, 1189–1234

Summary

The so-called ‘end of the Anglo-Norman realm’ in 1204 is a pivotal moment in the history of England and France. At first glance it appears to bring the Anglo-Norman chapter in the history of the two countries to a complete close: although the kings of England and their counsellors long nourished hopes that ‘England and Normandy would be one’, most of the aristocracy soon had to abandon their possessions on one or other side of the Channel. Yet although the broad outlines of this disengagement are well known, its details are still relatively unexplored – in marked contrast with the establishment of the ‘Anglo-Norman realm’ after 1066. It is true that no source comparable to Domesday Book documents the transformation of Norman and English landowning society after 1204, but there is no shortage of evidence for the impact of the Capetian conquest of Normandy. Rather, the evidence, though abundant, is disparate, and much of it unpublished. Yet the more that historians have probed these sources, the more apparent it becomes that for many landowners the events of 1204, although a rupture, did not mark the end of their cross-Channel interests.

The best-known example of a landowner who retained lands on both sides of the Channel, in defiance of the new circumstances, is the most famous magnate of the age,William Marshal, earl of Pembroke and Striguil and lord of Leinster. In addition to his landed wealth in the British Isles, William had held extensive lands in Normandy before 1204 in right of his wife, Isabel of Striguil (Chepstow), for which he did homage to Philip Augustus in 1205. After his death in 1219 Isabel negotiated with the king of France to keep her Norman lands, and when she died the following year her eldest son, William Marshal II, conferred them upon her second son Richard. However, with the death of his elder brother in 1231 Richard Marshal reunited the entire inheritance in Normandy and the British Isles, so that only after his death in 1234 did the Marshals lose their Norman inheritance. For thirty years after the Capetian conquest of Normandy, however, their activities ranged far and wide across France.