Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/379

 Exchequer, ed. Hall, vol. iii. pp. cccxii–xv;, ‘Surrender of the Isle of Wight’ in Geneal. Mag. for May 1897).

[Matt. Paris's Chron. Majora, Ann. Dunstaple, Tewkesbury, Burton, Wykes, and Osney in Ann. Monastici, Red Book of the Exchequer, Chron. de Melsa (all in Rolls Ser.); Rymer's Fœdera, Calendarium Genealogicum, Excerpta e Rot. Finium, Cal. Rot. Cartarum (all Record Comm.); Rot. Parl. vol. i.; Cal. Patent Rolls; Dugdale's Monasticon, v.; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 64–6; Doyle's Official Baronage, i, 27; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, i. 56, ii. 102; Poulson's Hist. of Holderness, i. 33–9.]  WILLIAM or  (d. 1285), archbishop of York. [See .]

WILLIAM, titular (d. 1296), was the fourth son of Isabella of Angoulême, widow of King John, by her second husband, Hugh X of Lusignan, count of La Marche. He took his surname from his birthplace, the Cistercian abbey of Valence (Flores Hist. iii. 672), a few miles south of Lusignan. In March 1242, when Hugh X provided for the partition of his lands after his death, among his numerous children, William was assigned as his share Montignac in the Angoumois, and Bellac and Champagnac in La Marche (, Complete Peerage, vi. 204). The death of Isabella in 1246 and the desperate fortunes of their father after the French conquest of Poitou left the prospects of the young Lusignans very gloomy in their own home. Accordingly in 1247 three of them cheerfully accepted the invitation of their half-brother Henry III to establish themselves in England. William went to Henry's court along with his brothers Guy and Aymer [see, d. 1260] and his sister Alice, subsequently the wife of John de Warenne, earl of Surrey or Warenne (1231?–1304) [q. v.] They landed at Dover along with the papal legate William, cardinal-bishop of Sabina, and were most affectionately received by the king, who now made it his chief care to procure for them ample provision. William, though still very young and not yet a knight (, iv. 627), obtained a great position by the rich match which his half-brother arranged for him. On 13 Aug. 1247 he was married to Joan de Munchensi, the only surviving child of the wealthy Baron Warin de Munchensi of Swanscombe by his first wife, Joan, fifth daughter and ultimately coheiress of William Marshal, first earl of Pembroke [q. v.] Joan and her only son John were already dead, and the whole of her share of the great Marshal inheritance, divided into five portions on the death of Earl Anselm, her last brother, in 1245, was therefore actually belonging to the bride. It included the castle and lordship of Pembroke, possession of which gave her a sort of claim to the palatine earldom, whose regalian rights she was thus enabled to exercise. The Irish liberty of Wexford was her other chief share of the Marshal estates. These latter were delivered to William and Joan on their marriage day (Cal. Doc. Ireland, 1171–1251, p. 433). Numerous other grants were bestowed on the young couple, including one of 500l. a year in land (Cal. Rot. Pat. p. 21. For other grants up to 1258, including the castle of Goderich, the keepership of the manors of Bayford and Essendon, and the wardenship of the town and castle of Hertford, see, Official Baronage, iii. 8; Rotuli Cartarum, pp. 65–72, 83–8; Excerpta e Rot. Fin. pp. 216 and 264; Cal. Rot. Pat. pp. 24–30. In 1251 his custody of Hertford, Bayford, and Essendon was converted into the lordship of those possessions).

It soon became the chief ambition of William to put himself in the position of the old Earls of Pembroke. It has been much disputed when he became Earl of Pembroke. The probability seems that he was never formally created earl, but that, as exercising all the rights of earl over the ‘comitatus’ of Pembroke as protector of his wife's inheritance, he was loosely called ‘Earl of Pembroke’ very occasionally in early years, but more frequently as his position became more established. His own position seems to have been that he claimed the comitatus as an inheritance of his wife (e.g. Rot. Parl. i. 30–2, 35; cf., Const. Hist. of the House of Lords, pp. 66–7). He is occasionally called earl in official documents from 1251 onwards, and is also called ‘comes de Valencia’ in February 1254 (Rôles Gascons, i. 388) and in 1258 (Waverley Annals, p. 349); but no chronicler calls him Earl of Pembroke until 1264 (, p. 26, Rolls Ser.), and even up to his death his usual title is ‘Sir William de Valence, brother [afterwards uncle] of the king.’ It is the same with his son, Aymer de Valence [see, d. 1324], who is not usually described as earl until the death of his mother, the real countess, in 1317. The probabilities suggest that William was never much more than titular Earl of Pembroke, while his near kinship to the crown made the need of such a title less necessary (cf. however Mr. G. W. Watson's remarks in Complete Peerage, vi. 206, which also point to a negative conclusion;, Hist. Peerage, ed. Courthope, p. 376, assigns the title to about 1264; , Official Baronage, iii. 8, gives 1251 as its date). 