Gone Medieval - The Rise & Fall of England's Richest Dynasty

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

Throughout Medieval history, figures like Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, and William the Conqueror are commonly forefront when many think of the middle ages. However, some important figures and families are a mystery, and The Warenne Earls of Surrey are no exception. In this episode, Matt is joined by historian and author Sharon Bennett Connolly to focus on one of the richest dynasties in the world to date. From their extensive family tree, wealthy origins, and abrupt end, we explore the history of this influential family.Defenders of the Norman Crown: Rise and Fall of the Warenne Earls of Surrey, book by Sharon Bennett Connolly Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. Some names are etched into our minds when we think about the medieval period. Others, for reasons that can be quite difficult to work out, seem to have slipped from the top table and been forgotten in the bustle of the feast below. The Warren family is an example of just where that has happened. At the absolute core of what was going on in post-conquest English politics for generations, they just aren't an instantly recognisable name as they perhaps should be. So I'm delighted to be joined today by Sharon Bennett Connolly, who is going to talk to us about her book on the Warren

Earl's of Surrey and hopefully clear up the mystery of why we don't know enough about the Warrens. Thank you very much for joining us, Sharon. Thank you, Matthew. It's marvelous to have you here. So why were you attracted to the Warren's story? What was it about their first? family that made you want to write about them? It's sort of been growing and growing through the years because I grew up near Cunnisborough Castle, which is in South Yorkshire. It's a gorgeous Norman keep.

And the only thing that I knew about it when I was a kid was that Walter Scott was driving by and decided that Ivanhoe's dad would live there because it would look like a Great Saxon Stronghold, which is hilarious soon as it's Norman. And then after university, I actually volunteered there giving guide her to us. that time they were talking about Walter Scott and Ivanhoe and the fact that William the Conqueror's

daughter was married to the first Earl of Warren who owned the castle and that Henry the second's half-brother built it. So I thought I was very into royal history then. So I thought, oh, this is great. Royal links. I love it. And that's where I started looking into it. And it turned out that one of those facts wasn't actually true because Condrada de Warren, the first Earl's wife, wasn't William the Conqueror's daughter. Hamlin Plantagenet was Henry the second's half brother. So it was like getting the facts straight then. It's like, oh, who is this family?

And I started looking into them. And I've been looking into them ever since. So it's about 30 years. I never thought I'd get the chance to write their book because I didn't think anyone else would be interested. So when I actually sent the proposal to pen and sword, I sent them two, one for ladies of Magna Carta, which I was pretty sure they'd go for.

And I just sent the Warren idea in as well, thinking they probably won't go for it, but I've got to send it in. And they went for both. I'm like, great, I'm finally writing the Warren story. Nobody's heard of them, though. So it's going to be hard, but it's been great to have such a fantastic story. And they were into everything through history for 300 years. You see them in every part of the story, but nobody's heard of them. Yeah, I think some of the best stories are the ones that we don't know. And then you sort of read the book and you think, how have I not known about these people? all of this time, they crop up in so many of the stories that people will recognise

and their names are imprinted on all of these various events in post-conquest years in England. They're at the absolute core of it, but we never quite noticed that they're there. No, exactly, because we're all so busy concentrating on the kings and queens that we don't look at the people below them, and they're the people who have the really interesting stories and the stories that are still to be told, because we've been so busy concentrating on the kings. We all know the kings. We don't necessarily know who served them in military and legal roles and things.

And yet these are the people that are making it all happen for the kings. Yeah, exactly. So what do we know about the early origins of the Warren family before they come over to England with the Conqueror? Well, they came from a place called Verene in Normandy. The first Earl was related to William the Conqueror. his mother was a granddaughter of William the Conqueror's grandmother's sister. There was second cousins or first cousins once removed or something.

So it was like, I have to have the family tree out next to me to work out all these connections. But he was about 20, I think, when he commanded in his first battle, not when he fought his first battle. It doesn't say, couldn't find out when he actually, I don't think it was his first battle. the Battle of Mortimer in 1054, but he was one of the co-commanders of the battle. So he had very much a military upbringing and was one of the ones who William the Conqueror actually said on his deathbed about the fact that William de Warren had been with him at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. So while we haven't heard of him, everybody at the time knew of him. I mean, this bloat, when he came to England with William the Conqueror, he was given

lands around Lewis in Sussex. He then was given Cunnisborough in South Yorkshire in about 1068 after the harrowing of the north. And then he inherited lands in Norfolk around Castle Acre when his wife's brother was murdered by Herrwood the Wake. So he had these lands from the south coast all the way up to Yorkshire and he had lands in about 13 counties. He was the fourth richest man in England and the first richest after the royal members of the royal family. And he's still in the top 20, I think he's number 18, in the top 20 of the richest men in the world ever. When you think that he was alive a thousand years ago, that's a pretty impressive record. 11th century Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. Yeah, but there is actually some contemporary of his also in that list as well. And it isn't

William the Conqueror. I can't remember, is it Montemar or somebody. There is a second one in the list. So the first Earl comes across to England with William the Conqueror. You mentioned there that he'd been involved in the Battle of Mortimer previously. He was at the Battle of Hastings. He goes on to have a feud with Harrywood, Harry Wood the Wake, the famous rebel against William the Conqueror. So should we consider him as a martial figure? Is there anything more to him than a man who was pretty good with his sword on a battlefield

and reap the rewards of that success? I think he was primarily a marshal figure. When William the Conqueror went over to Normandy to sort things out there, he was one of the ones left in charge and he did sort out the rebellion of the earls for William. He was also quite a brutal man. He cut off the feet of the rebels so they couldn't actually fight again anymore either. I know I'm laughing, but it's a thousand years ago. Nowadays you just wouldn't do it. But in those days, it's like, come here, let's chop off your feet and then you can't rebel again.

He also, he must have been quite financially astute given the amount of money he managed to acquire. Although if you're of any, if I'm the Anglo-Saxon blood in you, that's probably not a redeeming feature, even that it must have been the Anglo-Saxons he took the money from. He definitely benefited from the conquest. But he and Gondrada also brought the Cluniacs to England. they founded the first Clooneyac monastery in England at St. Pancras in Lewis. After they were supposed to be going on a pilgrimage to Rome, because Rome was under attack, they couldn't make it.

They had to stop halfway, and they stopped at Clooney in Burgundy, which is where Gondrada's brother apparently had gone to have to accidentally killed his lord. So he'd gone there for penance. So they stopped there and decided that they would found the monastery in England. And that's where the confusion came from with Gunders, Gondrada being named as the daughter of William the Conqueror. And the founding charter was copied by another monk who accidentally are on purpose to emphasize royal links, put in that Gondrada was William the Conqueror's daughter.

And for 800 years, this has been wholly believed until in the 19th century, E.A. Freeman actually looked at the original charter, which says nothing about Gondrada being William the conqueror's daughter. So it was just a way for the monks to get money or accidental one of the other. I think it was probably a nefarious way to claim royal links. But yeah, so he was Marshall, yes, but he did found St. Pancras, which is also the Warren family mausoleum now. Most practically all the earls, I think there's only two who aren't buried there. And those two ones in France and ones in the Holy Land.

Eight hundred years of fake news, you know, I like to say that everything is medieval. Yeah, exactly. People have been fibbing about things to get money for longer than we can imagine. And do you think that piety, that increased level of piety, keenness to find monasteries, was perhaps reflective of his awareness of his martial life? You know, he'd taken lots of life on the battlefield. Was that a way to balance things out, do you think? I think probably, I mean, William Conquer had did the same thing, didn't he, by founding Battle Abbey.

I think it was just the way they were back then. You went to war, you fought, you killed, you founded a monastery to ease your souls. It was just, that's how they did it. And I think you've mentioned in the book that William Duwaren the first Earl is, as you say, you know, he's still counted amongst the richest men who have ever lived in the world in history. So how did the family's fortunes develop? He must have left presumably his son, the second Earl, a fairly good platform upon which to build. So where do the family fortunes go after the first Earl?

It carried on growing. The second Earl managed to acquire stancholy. Castle in Wakefield and the whole of Wakefield, of course, to go with it. His problem wasn't so much money, it was finding a wife. He was also caught up in the discussion between King Henry I and Robert Kirtowse as to who should have the kingdom of England. And that's discussion in the sense of hitting each other over the head with big lumps of metal. And he was on Robert Kirtow's side for a long time until Kirtos came to England

was about to fight Henry and they made a piece of. agreement instead. And Robert went home with a pension of £3,000 a year, but left all his English supporters in England to their own devices. And Henry just disinherited them all and exiled them to Normandy. So William the Warren's then forced to go to Normandy and leave his English lands. His English lands have all been confiscated. So he goes to Robert Kurtos and says, this isn't fair. I fought for you. You've got this pension. And suddenly I've lost all my land. in England. I've only got my lands in Normandy, which were quite substantial, but they weren't as substantial as his English lands. It's not fair. And Robert actually agreed with him and said, you're right, it's not fair. I'll go and have a word with Henry.

So he went back to England, uninvited to Henry and said, this isn't fair. And Henry said, I didn't ask you to come here. That's not right. You can go back home. You've lost your pension. But all right, I'll let William the Warren have his lands back. got his lands back, but then changed sides and from that moment on supported Henry wholeheartedly because Henry had given him his lands back, that poor Robert had lost £3,000 a year by supporting him. They realised which side his bread was buttered in the end. But I mean, it perhaps shows the influence that they held that Henry wanted to confiscate all of their lands because they were dangerous in England and Robert was willing to put his neck on the line to help them out because they must have had so much power in Normandy that he needed them on side. I mean, it didn't work out

and he ended up pushing them across to Henry. But the willingness to do what the Warren's wanted must have been a signal of just how powerful and influential they were on both sides of the channel. Yeah, exactly. I mean, William the Warren also had a personal beef with Henry the first, which is probably why he supported Robert Kirtos in the first place, which was that in the 1090s,

William had wanted to marry Edith, the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland and St Margaret. and Edith was in a monastery at the time, in a nunnery, being educated. And William Rufus, the king at the time, said no and refused the marriage. And Odrick Ditalis records it as being she was destined for greater things. And when Henry the first came to the throne, he married Edith. And she changed her name to Matilda, so she was Matilda of Scotland after that. So William was a bit miffed that Henry had got the woman he wanted.

Henry tried to mollify him by suggesting that he marry one of Henry's illegitimate daughters. Unfortunately, the Archbishop of Canterbury put the mockers on that idea by saying, no, you're too closely related, you can't marry her. So it took William there weren't ages to find a wife. And when he did, she was actually already the wife of Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester. And there's Henry of Huntingdon tells a great story of the fact that he kidnapped is about the Vermandua, was Robert the Monmont's wife. And whilst she was still married,

and then Robert de Beaumont died of grief because his wife had betrayed him. Whether or not it's true, I don't know, but she did marry William about three months after Robert had died. It was a quick wedding afterwards, and that may be why Henry decided that there was this love story or kidnapping in there, but whether or not it really happened is open to question.

Yeah. So it's good to look backwards and invent a story. It's crazy when you think, you know, one of the richest men in the kingdom at the time and just couldn't get himself a wife, couldn't find love for all his money, you know, maybe there's a story in that. He was looking in all the wrong places, probably. Well, other men's bedchambers by the sound of it. But I think he aspired to having a royal bride as well, and I think that was a thing with him.

He'd looked at Scottish princess, then Henry I was the first daughter, although illegitimate, she was still the king's daughter. And then Isabelle de Vermandois, who he did eventually marry, He was the granddaughter of the King of France. So he definitely had aspirations to royalty. I'm trying to. I suppose it's only so much further you can climb up the social ladder if you're already incredibly wealthy and you've got an earldom.

I suppose it's taking the next step, isn't it? And so, I mean, a lot of these Warren Earls are also called William, aren't they? So we've had William the second Earl. What happens then with the next third Earl? He's called William. He was an interesting one because he was only about, 28 or 29 when he died. He'd been involved in the anarchy between Empress Matilda and King Stephen with his half-brothers who just happened to be the infamous Robert and Wooler and the Beaumont

the Bowman twins. You find them together all the time. You know, they were all three of them at the Battle of Lincoln. They all three of them ran away from the Battle of Lincoln when they were fighting for Stephen. But you look at that and you say, oh, naughty, they ran away. But then again, Stephen was going to lose that battle. It was quite obvious. And if they didn't run away, they would get captured and ransomed and could end up impoverished. I think that's one of the reasons the Warren's managed to stay rich for so long. They didn't get captured during battles and things. So it was more a sensible retreat rather than a full-scale, let's-leg-it boys. Yeah, I always imagine a lot of these medieval nobleman thinking, you know, it's risky to go into battle.

Obviously, they try to avoid it as much as they possibly could. And they'd be thinking, you know, it's dangerous. You could get killed or even worse. You could get captured and ransomed and end up absolutely broken. You know, it'd almost be better just to be killed on the battlefield than to be taken for all of your money. So there's plenty of good reason to run away from a medieval battle, particularly when it's not going very well. And again, Walleran and Robert Beaumont, incredibly famous people during the period. and their Warren half-brother seems to sort of just slip under the radar.

He's with them all the time doing all of these cool things with them and just as influential, probably more wealthy, perhaps more important at the time, but his story gets lost beneath theirs, which I think is a more famous story still. Yeah, and the thing is, I mean, William, the third Earl, in 1147 when all the barons were getting tired of the constant worry, it was William and Wallerun, try saying that quickly, who left England to go on the second crusade with Louis the seventh,

who happened to be cousin to both of them, because they were half-brothers, their mother was Isabel de Vermandua, who was a granddaughter of the King of France. So they were really close with the French king anyway. They were closely related. So they both decided to go on the crusade. Wallerun was about, what was it, 16 years older than William.

So you can imagine this young William, this earl who hadn't really had time to learn how to be an earl. He was helped a lot by his older brothers. And you can just see them having him their little brother tagging along behind them wherever they went. Wallerun decides to go on crusades. And William goes, yeah, I'll come with you. Can I come with you, big brother? See the one going, take your little brother with you.

And Warren's going, oh, do I have to? Exactly. Unfortunately, the third William didn't come back. He was killed at the Battle of Leodice. Adichia, Mount Cadmus. Luckily, he's got a couple of names. But he was fighting in the rearguard at Mount Cadmus and he was the most senior Earl that was lost, I think. But it's also the most least known about battle in the Crusades because Louis I just wrote one line home saying, oh, we lost this battle and I lost my cousin William and that's it. That's the explanation for it.

So again, the Warren's kind of full victim to this thing of big battle in the crusade. in the Holy Land where the King of France is there and lots of famous earls and counts and everything else and it gets a one-line postscript even though it's a place where the warrens fall and it would have been nice to know more about it and more about their story so it seems to be plagued by an effort for history to make them more anonymous than they should have been. Yeah, exactly. How can toilet training cows help save the planet? Should we start renting our clothes and why on earth is beds from the Happy Mondays now keeping bees? I'm Jimmy Doherty, presenter, farmer and conservationist. And these are just a few of the questions we'll be answering

on my new podcast on Jimmy's Farm from History Hit. Join me on the farm to hear from the likes of the founder of the Eden Project, Sir Tim Smith. It is only people who don't know what they're doing that can do marvellous things in some areas because received wisdom will sometimes you'll talk yourself out of it if you've got lots of people who've done it before. Professor Dita Helm on how to stop climate change. There may be all sorts of of products like avocados and everything will have palm oil in it, etc. And these have not just long distances involved in it, but they're not actually producing what could be produced

on the land and the frame that it's set. And my old friend, Jamie Oliver, I think I was stupid enough, naive enough, and unspoiled enough about the world that we live in. Listen to on Jimmy's Farm Now, wherever you get your podcasts. So I get a feeling you've got a soft spot for particularly some of the women, even amongst your soft spot for the Warren family. And Ida de Warren is someone who realizes that desire that we talked about a little bit

earlier for the Warrens to move into royal spheres. Can you tell us a little bit about Ida and the influence that she still has? Yes, Ada de Warren. She is the daughter of the second Earl. And after her father's death, it was the Beaumonts again, Waller and the Beaumont, who as the head of the family arranged her marriage as part of the 1139 treaty between the English and the Scots. And she was married to Henry of Scotland, the son of David I of Scotland. And he was the heir to the throne.

Unfortunately, he died the year before his dad, so he never became king and she never became queen. But she was mother to two Scottish kings, Malcolm the maiden, Malcolm the fourth, and William the first, William the Lion. And she was also the mother of three, I think it was daughters. And when you get the competition for the Scottish throne at the end of the 13th century between Robert the Bruce and John Balliol, their claims to the Scottish throne came through their descent from Ada's daughters. So even now, the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, is actually directly descended from Ada de Warren. and you can trace her descent all the way back to Ada de Warren, which I think William the second Earl would be quite impressed with that he's got all these royals down the line

because he did like his royal links. That's a massive achievement, but he'd probably still be annoyed that we don't know him. We don't know enough about him and the rest of his family. Yeah, we don't know him, but his descendant sits on the throne. Yeah, and has done for almost a thousand years at this point. And there's another lady in the fourth generation as well who sticks out as kind of the she's the fourth countess. So we don't have an earl at this point.

It descends in the female line to the countess of Warren, who was Isabel. Can you tell us a little bit about her? Well, Isabel, she's caused a lot of confusion over the years, and it's not her fault, bless her. It's just that because she was a woman, she was the fourth countess, when you actually look in the books about the earls of Warren,

they're counted in two different ways, and it's all because of Isabel. She was married first to King Stephen's son, William of Blois, which I can't pronounce, how we sound like I'm throwing up, because just about the same time as her father went on crusade, I think it was probably before he left on crusade, he decided to get his affairs in order and one of those affairs was he had one child, his daughter, Isabel. So he needed to get her married and settled and safe. And if she married the king's son, then the king would be obliged to look after her lands

and make sure she was safe, even though the Isabel and William at the time were only eight or nine years old probably. So they were married and he went off to crusade, didn't come back. So suddenly you've got these two children who are the Earl and Countess of Warren and the richest landowners in the country sort of thing after his father. And he was left out of the agreement for the throne in 1153, Wednesday. Stephen decided to make Henry, his heir, adopt Matilda's son. He basically disinherited poor William from the crown. Nobody seemed to think that William wanted the crown, except there is a story that he conspired with some Flemish soldiers

to have Henry waylaid and murdered. Unfortunately, William fell off his horse and broke his leg before the plot could be brought to fruition. and Henry quickly scarped to safety in Normandy so that it didn't happen again. And then when Henry came to the throne, he seems to have kept William close to him. And it was during the campaigning to lose in 1159, William was on his way back home when he caught a fever and died. I do think that Henry probably strategically kept William with him as much as he could,

keeping him and Isabelle apart. Because the more I think about it, the more I think that Isabelle and Will, William had had children. You've got this fledgling dynasty on the throne. Yes, Henry had a son. But if William and Isabel had had children, there would have been this rival dynasty available to take over if Henry faltered or just think if when King John was on the throne, if they'd had these warrants available, somebody might have actually turned around and said, actually, John, we're not inviting the French show, but we're going to get the warrants on. the throne. So I think Henry very sensibly, though probably not for Isabelle's favour,

decided to keep William and Isabel apart. Then when William died, Henry saw an opportunity to bring the Warren lands into the tantadinoff family by marrying Isabel to his illegitimate half-brother Hamelin. Now Hamelin was so impressed with his bride and the status of his bride, but he actually changed his name to de warren so although we've got a woman as the countess the family name carries on because hamelin takes her name very modern man takes her name rather than keeping his own for his illegitimacy but then you see we've got isabel the fourth countess then we've got william the fourth earl who was her first husband so how do you number her second husband and in some books he's numbered as the fifth earl and in other books he's numbered as the fifth earl and in other books he's

numbered as the fourth Earl. Now to me, he's the fourth Earl because he's only got the title by right of his wife. So they should both be fourth earls because it's her title, not theirs. Yeah, but why make it simple when it can be so much more complicated than that? And I think on the point of the name as well, it's interesting that you mentioned Hamelin takes the Warren name, and they tend to be known as the Earls of Warren, but De Woreen was like their surname. They were actually Earls of Surrey and a couple of other places as well, but they tended to like to be known as the Earl of Warren. Is that right? Yeah. It's, strange because there's only, I think it's one other Earl who does it, which is Earl Ferris,

who's Earl of Derby. But yeah, they were known as much as Earl Warren as they were as Earl of Surrey. And even with the Earl of Surrey, they were generally known as Earl of Warren and Surrey. And one 18th century historian suggested it's because he was Earl even before he came over at the conquest, and he was an Earl de Varenne from the family, original family lands. even before then. But there's no record of that. It just seems to be that they just started calling him Earl Warren. So it just sort of stuck.

I suppose it's to suggest that he had got Norman lands as well, maybe. I wonder whether it's an easy way to sandwich all of their titles. So rather than pick one that stands out, just be called Earl Warren instead of Earl of this place, that place, somewhere else and some places in Normandy too. Oh, the other thought is that sometimes. in the 21st century will be writing about me. So I'm going to make it really difficult for her to make clear, you know, if we put a few William the Warren's in there and then have different

ways of using our titles, it will just make for a really confusing book. Yeah, so the second wasn't so concerned about the fact that Elizabeth II would be able to trace the dissent from him as the fact that Sharon Bennett Connolly wouldn't be able to write a book very easily on the family. Let's make it as confusing as possible. Exactly. And so after the fourth, Countess, how did the family fare when things begin to go wrong for King John? So as we approach Magna Carta, we head into the 13th century. They've been over in this country for sort of 150 years by this point doing incredibly well. How do they get on when things start to go wrong for King John? Well, that generation is really interesting because starters, John seems to have been quite close to

the family at one stage in that he fathered an illegitimate son on one of the daughters of Hamlin and Isabel. We don't know which daughter. They had three daughters and it was probably Isabel or Ella, but we don't know which was the mother. We just know that one of them was the mother of Richard of Chilham, King John's illegitimate son. But then that was used as an explanation as to why the fifth Earl, another William, decided to betray John in 1215 and side with the French. I'm not sure it was because the incident with his sister had happened 20 years before and he'd been loyal to John until that point. It seems more likely that when Prince Louis came over to invade England,

William saw which way the winds were blowing and thought the best way to protect his lands was to side with Louis against John. And to be fair, John's half-brother sided with Louis against John as well. So William wasn't the only leading noble to decide that his best option, was with the Frenchman. Unfortunately for both of them, Prince Louis then decided to start handing out lands and money to his French friends rather than his English friends, and it all turned a bit sour. So in 1217, Johns died in October 1216. So in 1217, William saw the opportunity to return to the fold sort of thing. And apparently he came back. He'd written to the Regency Council in about

April or May, 1217, saying, I want to come home. But he didn't actually swear allegiance until June 1217. So it's possible he was kept in place with the French as a sort of spy just to see what was going on before he finally came back to the fold. Just to add a bit more complexity to the story, a bit of side switching. And so I guess by this point then, we've got Henry III on the throne as the young king. The warrants have weathered the conquests, the feudy, sons of the conqueror and managed to come out of that okay, they've survived the anarchy,

and now they've weathered the baron's war that sort of surrounded Magna Carta. So then how do they progress into the rest of the 13th century? Well, William the Fifth Earl, then he had been married, but his wife had died in about 1215, and he had no children, and he was getting on a bit. So he decided he'd better find a wife, and he married Matilda Marshall, the eldest daughter. of William Marshall who had been recently widowed with the Earl of Norfolk's death. And they managed to produce two children before the Earl died in 1240. Her son and a daughter, John and Isabel. Now the son, John was about eight when his dad died.

Isabel was a little older. She was married to the Earl of Arndale. And she is, I think you said that you've got a different idea about how she approached Henry the third. or somebody told me that there was a different way of looking at her telling Henry the third off. When Henry accidentally, supposedly accidentally, stole some of Isabel's lands, when a chap died and left his land to his young son, some of the lands belonged to Isabel or some belonged to Henry. So Henry took the young boy into wardship and all of his lands. And Isabel wrote to Henry complaining that he'd taken some of her land. and eventually turned up at court and told him off and started shouting about

where are the liberties of England so often recorded, so often granted, so often ransomed? So basically, I can imagine her shouting in the middle of the hall in front of all the lords and that, just telling Henry off about misusing the liberties of England and Magna Carta to his own use and even a lawsuit and everything. But eventually Henry writes from France to his wife, Eleanor of Provence, says let her have what she needs, you know, but so long as she says nothing appropriate as she did before. So basically, so long as she doesn't tell me off again, she can have it back. If you be nice to me, you can have what you want, but don't shout at me again.

Exactly. So I just think that's a brilliant story for Isabel. And then you had John, her brother, who was the sixth Earl, and he was Earl from eight years old in 1240 until 30. 2004, I think it was. And he was very much like the first Earl, fully marshal, you know, everything was about war for him. It was very gruff, except he does seem to have loved his wife. And after she died, he didn't remarry. And he was involved in the De Montfort Rebellion. He was very much like Edward I. He sided with the Montfort at first, then saw which way the wind was blowing. So went with the Lord Edward, Henry the third son, and stayed. with the Royal Party, ran away from the Battle of Lewis. It's a bit of a tradition with the

Warren's. He was part of the ones who they chased after the Londoners and ended up lost from the rest of the battle by the time they realised they should be back at the battle. It was too late so they'd better get to Rye Gate Castle and then get to France before Simon de Montfort caught up with them. But he did come back and although he's not named at Evesham it seems likely that he was involved with the Battle of Evesham because he joined Edward when he escaped from De Monta's custody and he was very much with his cousin the Earl of Pembroke at the time they seemed to be very close and inseparable most of the time so because his cousin and his brother-in-law which made things a little helpful you know family ties that's the one thing

with the warrants, the family ties throughout their story. They are unlike the Plantagenets, which is Brother against Brother. With them, they seem to have been wholly supportive of each other throughout. There's no instances of bad sheep, black sheep or anything. Maybe that's why we've forgotten them. Every family needs, you know, lots of stories of people fighting each other during this period is what makes them interesting. So maybe they were just too nice to each other for us to remember them properly. And so the dynasty, at least in the direct mail, comes to a very abrupt end in 1347 with the death of the seventh Earl. And his story seems to have been one of kind of ongoing marital problems

that meant he kind of neglected to get himself a son. Is that a fair assessment of what happened to him? Yeah, he had plenty of sons. Unfortunately, none of them were with his wife. He'd been married at the age of 20 to Edward Ild the first granddaughter, Joan of Bar, which was a very prestigious marriage. but I think for a 20-year-old being married to a 10-year-old girl, it was bound to have its problems, at least in the first few years.

And it seems that although he did take young Joan back to Cunnisborough with him, he seems to have neglected her after that and found a new girlfriend in Matilda Dunerford and had a few sons with her. And you get this story of poor neglected Joan. Edward II actually sent a knight to Cunisborough to bring her to lodge her in the Tower of London because John had neglected her so much. This was in about 1216.

The Cunnesborough residents apparently really liked Joan, and they didn't realise that this knight was from the king. So they stopped him taking her, and he had to go back to the king and get a royal writ to actually say, release Joan into this knight's custody before they'd let her go. But yeah, you have all these stories of attempts at divorce from John so that he could marry initially Morden Erford. But then later another girlfriend, Isabella, Holland. And he'd had all these children with Mord and then Isabella.

And he tried every excuse in the book to get this divorce. He claimed he'd been forced into the marriage by the king that he and Joan were two claims. closely related. Then Maudenurford claimed that he'd married her before he'd married Joan, so he couldn't be married to Joan. And then I think the last one, which shows how desperate he was, he claimed that he'd had a sexual relationship with Jones Aunt Mary. So that his marriage with Joan was illegal. Jones Aunt Mary had been a nun since the age of seven. And although she had a reputation for being a gambler and being at court a little too often. It was a bit far-fetched and she was also dead so she couldn't actually say whether or not

it had happened, which was quite handy for John, except the divorce still wasn't allowed. None of the priests were having it. He was ordered to go back to his wife. So he ended up, he and Joan never had children. It sounds a bit like John was working his way backwards through the How to Get Out of Your Medieval Marriage Playbook. It's like, well, you know, this one didn't work, so let's go to the next level and how bad can we make this? You know, what if I say I slept with? her aunt, but nothing seemed to work. No, and it's so sad because then all of a sudden the line just ends. His sister's son, Richard Fitzhalla, inherits most of the earldom.

And he's an early Earl of Arandall, so he gets the Eldham of Surrey. But the Yorkshire lands go to the king, which had been part of an agreement earlier when John was trying to redistribute his lands to protect, to give them to his children. he'd agreed with Edward the third that if he could do this, he'd give Edward his Yorkshire lands. So Edward held him to this when he finally died as well and took the Yorkshire lands, which ended up with Edmund of Langley,

the first Duke of York, and of course, which is why Richard of Cornisbra was born at Conisbury Castle. So the Warren's really, your Yorkist lot, inherited. My lot owe a lot to the Warrens. And that really brought to an end kind of a glittering career of 300 years in England and English politics. And so I guess if we come full circle to where we started, why do you think the Warren family are so little known today, given the huge impact and importance that they had and the critical events of this period that they are absolutely intimately wrapped up in? Why don't we know so much about them?

I think it is because they died out in 1347 and they died out so completely. Although there were eight generations of earls because the seventh Earl succeeded his grandfather, his father had died just after he was born. So you have these eight generations of warrants. But except for the early first and second earls who did have a number of sons, from the third Earl onwards, there was a daughter and then there was one son from isabel and hamlin they had one son William had one son john had one son and then William had one son so there was no wider

warren family after the first two earls so once they died out they died out completely except for the illegitimate children of the last earl the warren name just died out completely wasn't in the story in the books anymore, it wasn't in the history because there was nobody even a brother to carry on the line. And it was nearly 700 years ago that they died out. And then you have the Walls of the Roses and the Tudors and that, so all that dramatic story. And people stopped looking at the families.

You looked at the royals and the kings and queens, so the families behind the throne sort of got neglected. I suppose when their family, tree becomes that narrow. There's nobody who's looking back at their own Warren heritage and celebrating that because as you say, it's so narrow and they've kind of completely vanished from the political landscape. There's nobody saying, well, I hold my position because I'm a descendant of the Warren family. And so that kind of allows them to be not quite erased. I don't think there's an active erasal of them. They just kind of disappear into the mists of time. And they're swallowed up in other

families as well, like the Scottish royal family, you know, William I, his son. He actually used the name William the Warren before he came to the throne. But then, you know, once he's on the throne, he's the Scottish king and it just follows down the line that they're kings of Scots first and Warren's second. But when you think of where the warrants are now, they're sat on the throne. It's interesting how many times people kind of adopted that Warren name as well because they wanted to celebrate their links to them, even though we've managed to forget who they are now. So thank you so much for joining us, Sharon. Thank you so much for sharing some insights about the Warren family. If you'd like to learn

a little bit more, I can thoroughly recommend Sharon's book, Defenders of the Norman Crown, rise and fall of the Warren Earls of Surrey. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify. It really does help us to attract new listeners and for them to find the podcast. If you're enjoying the podcast and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below.

Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit. Thanks.