| Nationality | Mauduit, William, eighth earl of Warwick (1221x3–1268), magnate, was the son and heir of William Mauduit (c.1195–1257), lord of Hanslope, Buckinghamshire, and hereditary chamberlain of the exchequer, and his wife, Alice de Newburgh, the daughter of Waleran, earl of Warwick. Between August 1233 and July 1234, William was held as a royal hostage, in the custody of Herbert fitz Matthew, to ensure the loyalty of his father. In 1242 he was ordered to deputize for his father if necessary and accompany a treasure ship on its way to the royal army campaigning in Gascony, and in 1243 Henry III met the expenses he incurred in crossing to Gascony. In July 1253 William, together with John de Plessis, earl of Warwick, and the royal administrator Gilbert of Segrave, was seized by a mob at Pons, in Poitou, and imprisoned; Segrave, whose daughter Alice was William's wife, died during their captivity.
The heirs to the earldom of Warwick, William's parents, Alice de Newburgh and William Mauduit, were constrained to acquiesce in the life tenure of the earldom and its lands by John de Plessis, who held it by royal grant for life only, since Margery de Newburgh, the widowed granddaughter of Earl Waleran and the countess of Warwick in her own right, claimed that she had already remarried before Henry III designated John as her husband. In 1257 William succeeded to his father's claims and his barony of Hanslope, to the estate of Barrowden in Rutland, Hartley Mauditt, Hampshire (held by sergeanty of his chamberlainship) and to estates in Warwickshire which had formed the marriage portion of Alice de Newburgh. He also inherited the chamberlainship of the exchequer; the routine work was performed by official deputies, but the chamberlain received robes which were perquisites of office and enjoyed legal privileges.
William's political activities contrasted with those of his father, who sided with the baronial opposition in 1215–17, as well as in 1233. He was perhaps influenced by John de Plessis, a staunch supporter of the king; certainly Henry III believed him to be a potential supporter when, in February 1261, he summoned a group of the lesser barons, in an effort to shake off the restraints imposed upon him by Simon de Montfort and his supporters. William, like others who supported the king militarily, was granted an annual fee, in his case of 40 marks, payable in half-yearly instalments, which he received until May 1263. Between March 1258 and March 1264 he received regular royal summonses to render military service—a campaign against Llywelyn, the Welsh prince, was the usual reason given, but these levies helped to strengthen the king's hand against the baronial opposition.
John de Plessis eventually died in February 1263. Alice de Newburgh predeceased him, and William Mauduit, as her son, succeeded to the earldom of Warwick. In April 1263 he rendered to Henry III his homage as earl, but the comital inheritance had been mismanaged by twelfth-century earls, while the dower entitlement of the long-lived thirteenth-century countesses had further depleted its resources. William probably controlled little more than a third of the total resources of the earldom, and during the unrest in 1264 his activities were largely confined to within a 10 mile radius of Warwick Castle. A Montfortian commander, John Giffard, captured the castle, together with William and Alice. Its fortifications were destroyed, and the earl and countess were imprisoned in Kenilworth, pending payment of his ransom of 1900 marks. On 22 November 1265 William was granted forfeited estates to the value of £100, but at his death on 8 January 1268 he was in debt to the crown. He left no direct heir, and was succeeded by William (IV) de Beauchamp, the son of his deceased sister, Isabel Mauduit. William Mauduit was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart was interred at the Cistercian nunnery at Catesby, Northamptonshire, perhaps reflecting a devotion to the cult of Edmund Rich, some of whose relics were there. |