Fulk FitzWarin ( – c. 1258), variant spellings (Latinized Fulco filius Garini, Welsh Syr ffwg ap Gwarin), the third (Fulk III), was a prominent representative of a marcher family associated especially with estates in Shropshire (on the English border with Wales) and at Alveston in Gloucestershire. In young life (c. 1200 – 1203), early in the reign of King John (1199–1216), he won notoriety as the outlawed leader of a roving force striving to recover his familial right to Whittington Castle in Shropshire, which John had granted away to a Welsh claimant. Progressively rehabilitated, and enjoying his lordship, he endured further setbacks in 1215–1217.
Thereafter, his connections with the court of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and his usefulness to the English king placed him in the midst of a larger conflict in which he lost Whittington to Llywelyn for a year in 1223–1224, though that prince was said to have married his daughter. During the 1220s Fulk founded Alberbury Priory in Shropshire, which became the smallest and last established of the three English houses dependent upon the Order of Grandmont. Always ready to defend his rights, Fulk lived to a ripe old age and was buried at Alberbury beside his two wives, leaving heirs and daughters and a plentiful posterity among whom the name of Fulk FitzWarin was continuously renewed in later centuries. His grandson was Fulk V FitzWarin, 1st Baron FitzWarin (1251–1315).George Edward Cokayne The Complete Peerage of England Scotland Ireland Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant Extinct or Dormant, ed. Vicary Gibbs; vol. V, p. 495, Baron FitzWarin.
After his death, Fulk became the subject of a popular "ancestral romance" in French verse, Fouke le Fitz Waryn, relating his life as an outlaw and his struggle to regain his patrimony from the king.T. Wright (ed. and transl.), The History of Fulk Fitz Warine, an Outlawed Baron in the Reign of King John, Warton Club, (London 1855) (Internet Archive). This survives in a prose version, and combines historical material with legendary and fantastical elements which are heroic rather than strictly biographical.K. Bedford, 'Fouke le Fitz Waryn: Outlaw or Chivalric Hero?', in A.L. Kaufman (ed.), British Outlaws of Literature and History: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Figures from Robin Hood to Twm Shon Catty, (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2011), p. 97.
Origins Although the name Fitz Warin means "son of Warin", it was Fulk's grandfather, Fulk I FitzWarin, whose father's name was Warin, or Guarine, of Metz, in Lorraine.G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, V, p. 495, note (c)Suppe, F., 'Fitzwarine family (per. c. 1145-1315)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), Vol. "F", pp. 953–4. Warin (who appears in the Romance of Fouke le Fitz Waryn as "Warin de Meer") is, however, a "shadowy or mythical figure" about whom little is known. Whatever his origin, the head of this family is generally held to have come to England during the reign of William the Conqueror (1066–1087). Neither he nor his sons were then tenants-in-chief (i.e. important vassals or feudal barons): their estates were granted by later kings.Janet Meisel, Barons of the Welsh Frontier: The Corbet, Pantulf, and Fitz Warin Families 1066–1272, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), p. 34. (See also J.A. Meisel, "The Lives of Obscure Men: A Study of Three Baronial Families on the Welsh March 1066-1272" (Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley 1974)).
Fulk I was associated with the Peverels: William Peverel the Younger granted him a knight's fee in Tadlow, Cambridgeshire, before 1148 which King Henry II confirmed in 1154.Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire,, VII, pp. 67–68 (Internet Archive). Henry rewarded Fulk I for his support of the Empress Matilda during the civil war by conferring upon him the royal manor of Alveston in Gloucestershire (by 1155)J. Hunter (ed.), The Great Rolls of the Pipe for the Second, Third, and Fourth Years of the Reign of Henry II (Eyre & Spottiswoode, London 1844), p. 49, 100, 167 (Internet Archive). and the manor of Whadborough in Loddington, Leicestershire.J. Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, Vol. 3 part 1: East Goscote Hundred (John Nichols, London 1800), pp. 332–34 (HathiTrust). See first charter, p. 333b. His son Fulk II held those properties after the death of his father in 1171.Meisel, Barons of the Welsh Frontier, pp. 34, 35 In the time of Robert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford (1174–1186), Fulk II gave land at Tadlow to Shrewsbury Abbey to settle a controversy over the patronage of the church of Alberbury, Shropshire, in his own favour. The FitzWarin land tenure at Alberbury, held from the Fee of Caus, was therefore presumably already in place.'Alberbury', in R.W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (John Russell Smith, London 1858), VII, p. 69 (Internet Archive).
At some time before 1178 Fulk II married Hawise, one of the two daughters and co-heirs of Josce de DinanPainter, The Reign of King John, p. 49 (Google). and his wife Sybil, widow of Pain fitzJohn. Josce had held Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches for the Empress Matilda during the civil war, but it was not expedient for Henry II to confirm Ludlow to Josce, and in place thereof, he granted to him the large manorial estate of Lambourn in Berkshire,'Parishes: Lambourn', in W. Page and P.H. Ditchfield (eds), A History of the County of Berkshire, Vol. IV (V.C.H., London 1924), pp. 251–266 (British History Online). with its appurtenances, amounting to a considerable value.'Ludlow', in R.W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (John Russell Smith, London 1857), V, at pp. 243–48 (Google).Hunter, Great Rolls of the Pipe, 2, 3 and 4 Henry II, p. 34 (Internet Archive). Josce died by 1167, and Lambourn became the inheritance, in two parts, of his daughters Hawise and Sybil (who married Hugo de Plugenet). Fulk II and Hawise de Dinan were the parents of Fulk FitzWarin III.
How John and Fulk came to blows The FitzWaryn Romance tells that Fulk II and Hawise lived in proximity to the king, and had sons Fulk, William, Philip, John and Alan (who appear as real historical persons in contemporary recordse.g. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire, VII, p. 69 (Internet Archive).). It further states that young Fulk was bred with the four sons of King Henry, who all loved him except for Prince John (born 1166): Fouke le jeouene fust norry ou les iiij. fitz Henré le roy, et mout amé de tous, estre de Johan... The story goes that Fulk and John quarrelled over a game of chess: John struck Fulk over the head with the chessboard, whereat Fulk's foot made a connection with the prince's abdomen, and John fell back, banging his head against the wall. John went off to tell his father, who had him beaten for complaining.Wright, The History of Fulk Fitz Warine, pp. 62–64 (Internet Archive).
This merry episode reflects a truth, for John was brought up under the tutelage of Ranulf de Glanvill (who became King Henry's Chief Justiciar in 1180), as were Ranulf's nephews Hubert Walter and Theobald Walter,C.R. Young, Hubert Walter, Lord of Canterbury and Lord of England (Duke University Press, Durham N.C. 1968), e.g. pp. 3–5. with whom (and with Ranulf's grandson Robert de Auberville), Fulk III later became closely connected by marriage.S. J. Bailey, 'Ranulf de Glanvill and His Children', The Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2, (Nov. 1957); R. Mortimer, 'The Family of Rannulf de Glanville', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research LIV (129), (May 1981), pp. 1–16. The milieus of the English royal court and the princely courts of Wales are never far distant from Fulk's story.
Career The lordship of Whittington
Fulk II encountered many problems in receiving his capital patrimony and other claimed lands. Among the latter was Whittington Castle, a site north-east of Oswestry which had been fortified by William Peverel the younger in 1138 in support of Empress Matilda.Meisel, Barons of the Welsh Frontier, p. 35 Fulk I, it is supposed, had held this from the Honour of Peverel.'Whittington', in R.W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire (John Russell Smith, London 1860), XI, at pp. 29–38 (Internet Archive). The Castle stands on the English (eastern) side of Offa's Dyke, the ancient boundary between England and Wales. During the late 1140s the lordship of Whittington, as with Oswestry and Overton, was ceded from English authority and became a Welsh marcher lordship within the Kingdom of Powys.P. Brown, P. King, and P. Remfry, 'Whittington Castle: The marcher fortress of the Fitz Warin family', Shropshire Archaeology and History LXXIX (2004), pp. 106–127.
In 1165 Henry II granted the castle of Whittington to Roger de Powys, a Welsh leader, and in about 1173 gave him funds for its repair.D. Stephenson, Medieval Powys: Kingdom, Principality and Lordships, 1132-1293 (The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2016), p. 286 (Google); citing F. Suppe, 'Roger of Powys, Henry II's Anglo-Welsh Middleman, and His Lineage', The Welsh History Review, Vol. 21 part 1 (2002), pp. 1–23. Fulk II successfully claimed for the restitution of Whittington, a judgement mentioned in the Pipe Roll for 1195 when he owed a Fine of 40 marks to have seisin: but he never paid this, and was dead by 1197.Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire, VII, pp. 70–71 (Internet Archive). It, therefore, remained in Welsh hands. Fulk III then renewed his father's claim,Painter, The Reign of King John, p. 52 and in 1197 offered relief of £100 for it as his inheritance. However, on 11 April 1200 King John granted it to Meurig (Maurice), son of Roger of Powis, who had offered half that sum. Again, after Maurice's death in August 1200, King John granted it to Maurice's son Werennoc.Meisel, Barons of the Welsh Frontier, p. 36
Rebellion and outlawry Whether John's refusal to honour Fulk's hereditary claim to Whittington was personal or political, it was this which by April 1201 drove Fulk openly into armed defiance of the king. He was accompanied by approximately fifty-two followers including his brothers William, Phillip and John, by his cousins, and by the family's many tenants and allies in the Marches. Although it is an important element in the Romance of Fouke, the uprising is not described in detail by more formal chroniclers.
It was sufficiently troublesome, however, that when in the spring of 1201 King John crossed into Normandy and Poitou to suppress a revolt by the Lusignans,Painter, The Reign of King John, p. 157 he assigned 100 knights to Hubert de Burgh with instructions for him to put down the activities of Fulk and his band, and those of a renegade in Devon.Painter, The Reign of King John, pp. 48, 84 The Annales Cestrienses tell that in 1202 Fulk was obliged to make his escape by sea, and, having got away with a few of his followers, took refuge in Stanley Abbey near Chippenham, Wiltshire. There he was besieged by the king's forces, after which Archbishop Hubert Walter with a number of the clergy got him away and kept him for some time in his court. Then Fulk set off quietly with many armed men to join the king of France.R.C. Christie (ed.), Annales Cestrienses: Chronicle of the Abbey of S. Werburg, at Chester Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, XIV (London 1887), pp. 46–47 (Internet Archive).