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286 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
Earl William is, however, to be remembered for other things than
that. He seems to have been a man of great influence with King John,
and to have used it for some purpose. In 1213 he was one of four great
barons who bound themselves by oath to see that the King performed
what the Pope had determined. In 1215 he was joined in commission
with Archbishop Langton and others, for the safe conducting of all who
should come to London to implore the King's pardon for their offences.
At Runnymede, he was one of those who appeared on the King's side,
and one of the few counsellors by whose advice and persuasion the King
put his seal to the Magna Charta. He was one of those selected to see
that the King carried out his promises and was also a witness to the
;
Charter which John gave to the archbishop at the Temple for confirmation
of the rights of the Church and the clergy of England. In 1216, when
John, by his persistent ill-conduct had made himself odious to the people,
he sided with the barons, and Louis the son of the King of France, against
him ; but as soon as John was dead, he swore allegiance to Henry III.
Peter Langtoft calls him " The gode Earle of Warrenne." He was present
one of the
at Henry's coronation, and, in the ninth year of his reign,
witnesses to his confirmation of the two great charters of the realm at
Westminster.
In 1227 he joined the discontented barons against the King,
but it is a token, not only that he had been again received into royal
favour, but was trusted by the people, that, in 1237, the King, putting from
him such counsellors as were disliked, admitted him with the Earl of
Ferrers and Fitz-Geoffrey in their room. He established a house for the
Crutched Friars in Reigate, and died 1240.
His first wife was Maud, daughter of William de Albini Earl of
Arundel ;
his second wife, Maud, daughter and co-heiress of William
Earl of Norfolk.
Mareschal Earl of Pembroke, and widow of Hugh Bigod
The arms of Mareschal, Per pale or and vert, a lion rampant gules may
be seen in the east window of the chapter-house. His natural son, Griffin
de Warrenne, married Isabella, sister of Robert de Pulford, and their son
John married Audela, daughter and heiress of Griffin de Albo Monasterio
(or Blanch Minster), whose arms, argent fretty gules,
are in the small
quatrefoil of the south-west window of the chapter-house.
John, the eldest legitimate son of Earl William, but five years of
age at his father's death, succeeded him. When only thirteen he attended
the Parliament held in London, which sharply rebuked the King, Henry III.,
for his many and high exactions of clergy and laity. Six years after he
joined the King at Guienne, and when, in 1258, the barons came to Oxford
to compel the King to submit to the provisions they made, he was one
of twelve lords elected on the King's part to settle matters with them,
and he refused to consent to them. In the forty-sixth year of Henry III.