Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/278

 to plead for Fulk and for his brother (then besieged in Bedford), while assuring him of his own fidelity, in proof of which he had made a truce with Llewellyn that he might be free to serve him (Royal Letters, ii. 233–5). In the previous year (1228), however, he had averted an expedition against Llewellyn as his 'amicus et familiaris' (Ann. Dunst. p. 82). On receiving a safe-conduct he reluctantly joined the besiegers of Bedford with Peter des Roches. Finding themselves suspected, they returned home (Ann. Dunst. p. 87), but came back before its fall (14 Aug. 1224). He also persuaded Fulk to submit ( ii. 205). The latter afterwards protested that he had been led on by the earl (, ii. 205, iii. 260). The earl now again appealed to Rome in vindication of his policy, but without effect (Ann. Dunst. p. 89).

On 11 Feb. 1225 he was among the witnesses to Henry's 'Third Charter' (Sel. Chart, p. 345), and in 1220 made peace with William Marshall and Llewellyn (Ann. Dunst. p. 100). In 1227 beheaded the opposition which supported the Earl of Cornwall against the king (, ii. 290), and in the same year he again received the honour of Brittany (Richmond) as he had held it under John.

In April 1229 he attended the council of Westminster to oppose the grant of a tenth to the pope (Ann. Tewk. p. 77), and forbad those within his dominion to contribute. On 17 July he was ordered to be at Portsmouth with his knights on 14 Oct., and when there (19 Oct.) received from the king a confirmation of the territory between Ribble and Mersey, being the three wapentakes he had purchased from Roger de Mersey (Eg. MS. 15664, fo. 47; Cheshire, i. 36–7). The expedition being postponed to the spring, he sailed with the king, and landing at St. Malo, 2 May 1230 (Royal Letters, No. 288), took part in the siege of Nantes (Pat. de Transfr. in Britan. p. 1, m. 3). On Henry's departure (20 Oct. 1230) he was left in Brittany, with Aumâle and William Marshall, in charge of the army (500 knights and 1,000 men-at-arms), and having fortified his castle of St. Jean Beveron, he made raids into Normandy and Anjou (, ii. 328–9). In June 1231 he captured the train of the French army, then invading Brittany, but arranged a truce with them for three years, 5 July (1231), and, reaching England about 1 Aug., joined the king in Wales at Castle Maud (ib. ii. 333; Ann. Worc. 422). He found him at war with Llewellyn (Ann. Tewk. 79), and, though honourably received by him, left him in anger, being accused of favouring Llewellyn (Ann. Dunst. 127). In a council at Westminster next spring (7 March 1232), he headed the opposition to a grant to the king on the plea that the barons had served in person (, ii. 339); but when Henry gave the Londoners permission that summer to drag Hubert from sanctuary at Merton, the earl intervened to prevent it (ib. ii. 347 ; Ann. Tewk. 80). He died at Wallingford on 26 (ib. 87) or 28 Oct. 1282, 'almost the last relic of the great feudal aristocracy of the Conquest' (Const. Hist. ii. 47).

His body was borne to its burial-place at Chester with great and unusual honour (Ann. Osn. 73); but his heart, in accordance with his wish; was interred at Dieulacres (Ann. Tewk. 87). He is said to have been of fiery spirit, but of small stature (, Ann. Osn. 73). His long tenure of the earldom of Chester (more than half a century), and the power of the influence he wielded, greatly impressed his contemporaries; monkish fables clustered round his memory (Man. Angl.), and his name fibres as a household word in the 'Vision of Piers Ploughman:' I kan rymes of Robyn Hood, And Randolph, Erle of Chestre. Possus, vii. l. 11.

a passage which has been held to imply the existence of a lost ballad-cycle on his life (, Percy Folio, i. 258; Sweet, Notes to Piers the Plowman, pp. 130–7;, Ancient Songs, i. vii. xlvi).

Shortly before his death he divested himself of his earldom of Lincoln in favour of his sister, Hawys de Quency (Vincent MSS. 215, 216). By her it was granted to her son-in-law, John de Lacy, constable of Chester, the grant being confirmed by the king, 23 Nov. 1232 (, Leicester, App. i. 39 b; Coll. Top. and Gen. vii. 130: Third Report on the Dignity of a Peer, p. 238).

Three of his charters to his men of Chester are printed in the Appendix to 'Eighth Report on Historical MSS.' (i. 350), and translated in Harland's 'Mamecestre' (i. 188–9), in which there is also (i. 200–2) a translation of his charter to Salford (circ. 1230), inaccurately printed in Baines's * Lancashire' (ii. 170). His charter to the nuns of Grenefield (Cart. Harl. Ant. 52, A. 16) is printed in Nichols's 'Leicester' (App. i. 39 b), and in Ormerod's 'Cheshire' are his charter of confirmation to St. Werburgh (i. 33) and his two charters to Stanlaw Abbey (i. 38). In the 'Monasticon' (vi. 114) is his confirmation of Cheshunt parsonage to his canons of the priory of Fougères. Three of his Dieulacres charters are printed s. v. and another one (Add. MS. 15771) at v. 325. His sundry benefactions are recorded by Dugdale (Baronage, i. 44 b).

Engravings of his seals are given in Vincent's 'Discovery of Brooke's Errors ' (p. 317),