Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/193

 Robert of Bellême [q. v.] deprived him of his lands for an unknown reason, and when Bellême rebelled, in 1102, Pantulf offered him his services. They were rejected, and he turned to Henry I, who put Stafford Castle in his custody, with two hundred soldiers. Pantulf detached Bellême's Welsh ally, Prince Iorwerth ab Bleddyn [q. v.], by negotiation, and he persuaded the garrison of Bridgnorth to surrender to the king. The fief of Roger de Courcelles was probably his reward for these services (, Shropshire, viii. 46).

In 1112 Pantulf and his wife Lescelina and sons Philip, Ivo, and Arnulf confirmed their gifts to St. Evreux, and granted sixty marks in silver to the new church, which William did not live to see completed. Pantulf died about 1112. His eldest son, Philip, succeeded to his Norman, his second son, Robert, to his English, estates.

(fl. 1130), according to the cartulary of the nunnery of Caen, robbed the nuns of six pounds of silver (, ed. Le Prévost, iii. 221 n.) In the Bedfordshire pipe roll, 1130 (p. 104), an entry is found concerning a trial by combat between him and Hugh Malbanc, whose estates were contiguous to Robert's.

(d. 1176?), probably Robert's son, succeeded him. He attested a charter of Stone, Staffordshire, 1130–5, a royal charter in December 1137–8 (Pipe Roll), and made grants to Shrewsbury and Combermere Abbeys, 1141–55. He appears in 1165 in the ‘Liber Niger’ (ed. Hearne, i. 144), and in the Staffordshire pipe rolls of 1167 and 1168–9. He made a grant to Haughmond Abbey in 1175–1176, and died about 1176. He had three sons by a first wife—Hugh [q. v.], Hameline, and Brice, and two by Alice de Verdon—William and Norman (, Staffordshire, p. 493).

[Ordericus Vitalis, ed. Le Prévost, vols. ii. iii. and iv.; Eyton's Shropshire, ix. 157 sqq. and passim, and Court and Itinerary of Henry II; Dugdale's Warwickshire, i. 32, 90–5; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 693, 727, 860, 864; Erdeswick's Staffordshire, pp. 14, 139, 493; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 434; Gaston le Hardy's paper on Un Gentilhomme Normand au XI. Siècle in Mém. Soc. Antiq. Norman. 3rd ser. vol. vi. Dec. 1867, p. 735.] 

PAOLI, PASCAL (1725–1807), Corsican general and patriot, born on 25 April 1725, in the village of Rostino in Corsica, was the second son of Hyacinth Paoli, one of the leaders of the Corsican revolt of 1734 against the Genoese. Pascal's mother was Dionisia Valentini, daughter of one of the lesser nobles or caporali. Clement, Pascal's elder brother by ten years, was another patriot leader of the Corsicans. In 1736 Theodore, baron of Neuhof, having been proclaimed king by the Corsicans, the Genoese (to whose exchequer the French government was deeply indebted) applied for French help to expel Theodore and re-establish their own supremacy. A French force, under the Marquis de Maillebois, defeated Hyacinth Paoli in the Nebbio in 1738, and disarmed the islanders. Pascal, then a boy of fourteen, went into exile with his father to Naples. There he was placed at the military college, under a jesuit tutor, Anthony Genovese, professor of philosophy and political economy. After a brilliant career at the academy, Pascal received his commission as lieutenant in the cavalry regiment, mainly composed of Corsican exiles, of which his father was colonel. The young officer obtained a colonelcy and won distinction by his daring conduct of an expedition against the bandits of Calabria. In the meantime, the French having evacuated Corsica in 1741, the islanders' resentment of the Genoese yoke grew more acute, and in 1752 they again took up arms, and proclaimed Jean Paul Gaffori generalissimo. The Genoese procured Gaffori's assassination on 2 Oct. 1753, and the indignation thus aroused rendered any reconciliation impossible.

Thereupon a new constitution was decreed, and, after some temporary expedients, the Corsicans decided to offer the dictatorship to Pascal Paoli. Under his father's advice, Pascal had been preparing himself, as if with some presentiment of the high destiny awaiting him, to acquire a complete mastery of the art of government. When the assembled chiefs of Corsica finally resolved upon offering him the post of ruler of the island, Paoli was just entering his thirtieth year. On 29 April 1755 he disembarked in Corsica at the mouth of the river Golo, and on 25 July 1755 the supreme council elected him their generalissimo. His chief opponent at the outset was his former colleague and compatriot, Emmanuel Matra, who, jealous of the power awarded to Paoli, stirred up a civil war against him, and succeeded in enlisting the support of the Genoese. Matra surprised Paoli in the convent of Bozio, and the patriot was only saved by Matra's death in March 1756. Paoli vigorously carried on the war against the Genoese, and, having driven them successively from Bastia, Calvi, and San Lorenzo, he eventually drove them out of Ajaccio. Despairing of reconquering Corsica by their own arms, Genoa turned once more for aid to France, and a secret treaty was signed at Compiègne