Brother of St. Leger, who d. 677, Bishop of Autun
Seigneur de Verennes, near Dieppe, France. REF Baronage1. Lord of Reigate, Lews, Coningsburgh; Lord of Bellencombre, in Normandy. Commander in the Norman Army, Sep 1066.
Gundreda the wife of William de Warren has been claimed to be a daughter of William the Conqueror. This is not correct. See the full examination of these claims, and the disproof, by C. T. Clay, *Early Yorkshire Charters*, volume VIII, pp. 40-46.
William declared her his daughter, implying she was not Matilda's daughter. http://www.patpnyc.com/conq/wwarenne.shtml
The following is from pboren@pnut.rand.org (Pat Boren) and may contain errors. WILLIAM de WARENNE was considered a near kinsman of William the Conqueror. He received large grants of land in England in recognition of his distinguished part in the Battle of Hastings. In 1075, he was appointed joint chief justiciar and helped suppress the rebellion of the earls of Hereford and Norfolk. In 1077 he founded the St. Pancras Priory of Lewes (where he is buried), the first house of the Cluniac order in England. The position of his castle at Lewes rendered his loyalty especially useful to King William Rufus during the rebellion of 1088, for which he was granted the earldom of Surrey. In addition to Lewes, William held over 40 manors in Sussex. He married Gundred and had Reginald, Edith, and William.
Gunreda died in childbirth 06 Jun 1085.
One of the Norman aristocrats who fought at the Battle of Hastings and became great landowners in England.
He was a son of Ralph de Warenne and Emma and a grandnephew of duchess Gunnor, wife of duke Richard I of Normandy. As a young man he helped secure duke William's hold on Normandy, most notably in the campaigns of 1052 through 1054 which culminated in the Battle of Mortemer. After this battle Roger de Mortemer forfeited most of his lands, and the duke gave them to William. The de Warenne surname derives from the castle of that name on the River Varenne, which flows through the territory William acquired in Upper Normandy.
William was one of the nobles who advised duke William when the decision to invade England was being considered. He fought at Hastings, and afterwards received the Rape of Lewes in Sussex, and subsequently lands in twelve other shires. In addition to the cluster around Lewes, there were clusters around the castles he built at Castle Acre in Norfolk and Conisbrough in Yorkshire. By the time of the Domesday survey he was one of the wealthiest landholders in England.
William was loyal to William II, and it was probably after the rebellion of 1088 that he was created Earl of Surrey. He died shortly afterwards of wounds he received while helping suppress the rebellion.
He married twice, first to Gundred (Latin: Gundrada), sister of Gerbod, Earl of Chester, and secondly to a sister of Richard Gouet. William and Gundred had three children: William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey (d. 1138); Edith de Warenne who married Gerard de Gournay; and Reynold de Warenne, who inherited lands from his mother in Flanders and died before 1118.
It was at one time thought that Gundred was a daughter of William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda of Flanders. This was disproved in the 19th Century but nevertheless remains in many faulty genealogies. William and Gundred were married around 1070, when her brother Frederick was killed by Hereward the Wake.
~~~~~~William de Warren was from Varenne in Dieppe at Bellencombre in Normandy. William, Count of Varenne, who was at Hastings, was entrusted with governing England during Duke William's absences in Normandy, along with Bishop Odo and William FitzOsberne. His son, William Warren II became Earl of Surrey. William III joined the first Crusade and died in the Holy Land. William de Warren held many lordships throughout England. In Shropshire he was an under-tenant to Earl Roger. Held Whitchurch. http://www.infokey.com/Domesday/Shropshire.htm
Lord of Lewes, Reigate, and Coningsburgh; Lord of Bellecombre and Mortemer, in Normandy.
The following is from pboren@pnut.rand.org (Pat Boren) and may contain errors.
WILLIAM de WARENNE was the second Earl of Warren and Surrey. In 1093 he sought to marry Mathilda (who eventually married King Henry I of England). This marriage may have been at the bottom of his hatred for Henry. In 1101 he shared in inviting Robert, Duke of Normandy, to invade England and because of this act, the king deprived him of his estates. Later Henry restored William to his former position and from that time on, William was the king's faithful supporter and trusted friend. William died in 1138. His wife was Isabel Vermandois, by whom he had William (third Earl of Surrey), Reginald, Ralph, Gundred, and Ada (who married Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, and whose daughter Margaret married Henry de Bohun).
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2nd Earl of Surrey
Warenne, William de From Varenne, near Bellencombre, Seine-Inf. Fought with William I at Hastings. Lord of the Sussex rape (area) of Lewes, with castle there; created Earl of Surrey, 1088; died same year from an arrow. Holdings in 13 counties all over the country. In modern money his holdings would be worth a £57 billion, a record in Britain during the last millennium.
He accompanied Robert Curthose in his 1101 invasion of England, and afterwards lost his English lands and titles and was exiled to Normandy. There he complained to Curthose that he expended great effort in the duke's behalf and had in return lost nearly everything. Curthose's return to England in 1103 was apparently made to convince his brother to restore William's earldom. This was successful, though Curthose had to give up he had received after the 1101 invasion, and subsequently William was loyal to king Henry.
To further insure William's loyalty Henry considered marrying him to one of his many illegitimate daughters. He was however disuaded by Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, for any of the daughters would have been within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity. The precise nature of the consanguinous relationship Anselm had in mind has been much debated, but it is most likely he was referring to common descent from the father of duchess Gunnor.
William was one of the commanders on Henry's side (against Robert Curthose) at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1108. Afterwards, with his loyalty thus proven, he became more prominent in Henry's court.
In 1110 Curthose's son William Clito escaped along with Helias of Saint-Saens, and afterwards Warenne received the forfeited Saint-Saens lands, which were very near his own in upper Normandy. By this maneuver king Henry further assured his loyalty, for the successful return of Clito would mean at the very least Warenne's loss of this new territory.
He fought at the Battle of Bremule in 1119, and was at Henry's deathbed 1135.
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William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey (d. 1138), was the son of William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey and his first wife Gundred, daughter of William I, the Conqueror. He is more often referred to as Earl Warenne or Earl of Warenne than as Earl of Surrey.
Sometime around 1093 he tried to marry Matilda (or Edith), daughter of king Máel Coluim III of Scotland. She instead married Henry I of England, and this may be the cause of William's great dislike of Henry I, which was to be his apparent motivator in the following years.
In 1118 William acquired the royal-blooded bride he desired when married Elizabeth de Vermandois. She was a daughter of count Hugh of Vermandois, a son of Henry I of France, and was the widow of Robert de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Leicester. By Elizabeth he had three sons and two daughters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Warenne%2C_2nd_Earl_of_Surrey
William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey (d. 1148), was the eldest son of the William de Warenne, 2nd Earl of Surrey and Elizabeth de Vermandois. He was thus a great-grandson of Henry I of France, and half-brother to Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester, Waleran IV de Beaumont, Count of Meulan, and Hugh de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Bedford.
He was generally loyal to king Stephen. He fought at the Battle of Lincoln (1141), and was one of the leaders of the army that pursued the empress Matilda in her flight from Winchester, and which captured Robert of Gloucester.
He was one of the nobles that, along with Louis VII of France, took crusading vows at Vezelay in 1146, and he accompanied the initial army of the First Crusade the next year. He was killed by a Turkish attack while the army was marching across Anatolia on their way to the Holy Land.
William married Adela (or Ela), daughter of William Talvas, count of Ponthieu, who was the son of Robert of Bellême. They had one child, a daughter, Isabel, who was his heir. She married first William of Blois, second son of king Stephen, and who became earl of Warenne or Surrey. After he died without children in October 1159, she married Hamelin, half-brother of Henry II, who also became Earl of Warenne or Surrey. He took the de Warenne surname, and their descendants carried on the earldom.
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