| Nationality | Plessis, John de, seventh earl of Warwick (d. 1263), royal councillor, first appears in 1223 as a knight in the service of Henry III. His parentage and background are obscure, although it seems likely that he was of French birth. The chronicler Matthew Paris states that he was a native of Normandy. During his first few years in England he appears in close association with Hugh de Plessis, Drew de Barentin, and Nicholas de Bolleville, all of them knights retained in the royal household, with whom he was granted joint custody of the manor of Chalgrove in Oxfordshire from 1224 onwards. Hugh de Plessis was almost certainly a kinsman, perhaps John's father or elder brother. Drew and Nicholas may have derived their names from Barentin and Bolleville, in the Pays de Caux, north of Rouen. John de Plessis served in Wales in 1223 and 1228, on the Breton campaign of 1230, and from 1233 appears as a regular witness to royal charters, perhaps as a protégé of the king's chief minister, the alien Peter des Roches. He survived des Roches's fall, however, and in 1234 was appointed constable of Devizes Castle and keeper of the forest of Chippenham, offices he was to retain for the rest of his life.
Besides appearing as a frequent witness to charters at court, between 1238 and 1240 Plessis played a leading role in the collection of royal taxes, and in 1239 served briefly as sheriff of Oxfordshire. In 1242 he joined the king's expedition to Gascony, where in August 1242 he carried out negotiations with the count of Toulouse at Bordeaux. By this time he had already assembled a rich collection of wardships, widows, and escheats, including the manor of Stottesden in Shropshire, first granted to him in 1240 and confirmed to him in fee the following year. In 1234 he had married one of the heiresses in his custody, Christina, daughter of the Berkshire landowner Hugh of Sandford. Originally Plessis appears to have been betrothed to Christina's mother, Joan, but it was Christina that he married, suggesting that the marriage was very much an affair of convenience. Christina died before December 1242, when the king promised Plessis the marriage and lands of Margery, sister and heir of Thomas of Newburgh, earl of Warwick, and widow of the Norfolk baron John Marshal of Hingham or Hockering.
The king's award, which was to raise John de Plessis from relative obscurity into the highest ranks of the nobility, was an extraordinary one, and it may be no coincidence that it was made at Bordeaux on Christmas day, perhaps in the aftermath of Christmas feasting. Margery, the proposed bride, was effectively pressured into marrying Plessis against her will. Indeed it is possible that she had already contracted a second marriage, before her forced betrothal to Plessis. As a result, Plessis occupied an ambiguous position for the first few years of their union. It was not until 1245 that he was granted the third penny of the county of Warwick, and only in August 1247 that he was officially recognized as earl. In the meantime he was forced to come to an arrangement with his wife's family, guaranteeing him life possession of the earldom of Warwick and of Margery's other estates, principally the Oxfordshire barony of Hook Norton, should Margery die before him. In the event, following Margery's death in 1253, Plessis retained his earldom and, with the king's assistance, was able to detach the barony of Hook Norton from the rest of Margery's inheritance, so that it could pass to the son and heir of his previous marriage. This, like the betrothal to Margery, was a highly irregular arrangement, which can have done little to endear either Plessis or the king to the English baronage. At Plessis's accession, and throughout his time as earl, his estates were seriously depleted by the assignment of dower to two previous countesses of Warwick. None the less from 1243 onwards he controlled Warwick Castle and an estate of nearly fifty knights' fees.
From 1244 Plessis served as constable of the Tower of London, and in 1251 was appointed to hear pleas there as justice on eyre. In 1250 he was overseas, at least in part so as to make a pilgrimage to Pontigny, presumably to the shrine of St Edmund of Canterbury. In 1252 he took the cross, but did not go on crusade. He accompanied the king to Gascony during the expedition of 1253–4, and in September 1254 was preparing to return to England via his homeland in Normandy. To this end he obtained letters of safe conduct from Louis IX of France (r. 1226–70), but at Pons in Poitou, he and his companions, Gilbert of Seagrave and William Mauduit, Plessis's brother-in-law, were taken captive by the town's inhabitants. Seagrave died in captivity, and Plessis and Mauduit were not released until the following year. Shortly afterwards, in June 1255, Plessis was required to relinquish his custody of the Tower of London. He continued, however, as constable of Devizes, and remained high in royal favour. In November 1255 he was involved in the king's negotiations for the crown of Sicily, and in March 1258 was summoned to the king's campaign in Wales.
During the ensuing baronial rebellion John de Plessis was nominated by both the barons and the king to serve on the reforming council of twenty-four. As a baronial sympathizer he sealed letters against the king's Lusignan half-brothers, and in June 1258 was confirmed as constable of Devizes. In 1259 he was nominated as one of the council set to govern England in the absence of the king, and participated in various of the exchanges with Louis IX and Simon de Montfort, attendant upon that year's Anglo-French treaty of Paris. Although appointed to the west-country circuit of the special eyre of 1260 there is no evidence that he sat as a justice. He was summoned to the king's parliament proposed for Easter 1260, and to the Welsh campaign in August 1260, and by 1261 was back within the royalist camp, being appointed sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire by the king, and attending the royalist parliament in October 1261. In the same year he fined 400 marks with the crown to retain the manor of Kidlington, claimed as part of his barony of Hook Norton. In September 1262 he issued a charter granting a market to his burgesses at Warwick.
John de Plessis died on 25 February 1263, leaving his body and a small amount of land to the Augustinian canons of Missenden in Buckinghamshire. During his lifetime he had made gifts of timber to the Dominicans of Bristol, and to the hospital of the Holy Trinity at Berkeley. His son and heir of his first marriage, Hugh de Plessis (d. 1292), later granted land to Osney Abbey for the sake of his father's soul, and was permitted to inherit the Oxfordshire barony of Hook Norton. This passed via Hugh's son, also Hugh (d. 1301), to another Hugh de Plessis, who died childless in 1337. John was succeeded as earl of Warwick by William Mauduit, a nephew by marriage. His arms of six annulets or fauses roueles de gules are recorded on his seal, and may well be a family coat, unrelated to the arms of the earldom of Warwick. |