William FitzOsbern (abt. 1023 - 1071)

Born about 1023 in Normandy, France

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 20 Feb 1071 at about age 48 in Flanders

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Biography

William became a close friend of his kinsman William the Conqueror and, at the Council of Lillebonne, urged the Norman barons to invade England. He played a leading part in the events leading up to, as well as during, the Battle of Hastings. According to Norman chroniclers, FitzOsbern led the right-wing of the forces at the Battle of Hastings.

FitzOsbern was one of William's senior administrators and worked on his behalf in Normandy and Flanders. In England he was one of the first Normans to be granted an Earldom, part of which became the Earldom of Hereford. C. P. Lewis, who wrote his Oxford (ODNB) biography describes it as follows:^[1]

He was not even 'earl of Hereford', as he appears in most historical writing. The king certainly made him an earl (comes) in England in 1067, but the title was personal, not territorial, and he had comital authority not just over Herefordshire but probably throughout the southern shires where Harold Godwineson had been earl. His main base, indeed, was not Hereford but Winchester. [...]

Because he had taken over as earl from Harold, William was drawn into the Welsh borders and especially the district around Hereford, where he encouraged economic development by extending the privileges of Breteuil to the borough. [...]

Within at most four years he had laid the foundations of the southern marches, taking much land from the Welsh of Gwent for himself and his men and establishing an embryonic division into an 'Englishry' and a 'Welshry'.

(His Earldom, if we should connect it to a region, was therefore closer to the large old Anglo-Saxon Earldom of Wessex, which was based on the older kingdom of Wessex. It nevertheless contained the core of what would become the smaller Anglo-Norman Earldom of Hereford.)

FitzOsbern had extensive lands in Normandy, from both his father's and mother's side. The centrepiece of these was Breteuil.

He held land near Port-en-Bessin, near Bayeux. He was the lord of Lyre, Rugles, Ferté-Fresnel, and, within Ferté-Fresnel, of Glos-la-Ferrière, an 'ancienne motte féodale.' William FitzOsbern donated the tithes of his mares of Glos-la-Ferrière to Lyre Abbey. Ferté-Fresnel was the principal part of the fief de Russy to which was attached Argouges-sous-Mosles.

William FitzOsbern was killed in a battle at Cassel in Flanders on 22 February 1071. He was buried at the Abbey of Cormeilles, Normandy, France.

His English lands went to his son Roger, who forfeited them as a rebel in 1071. His French lands went to his son William.

Although both he and his English heir Roger were dead by the 1086 Domesday survey, William is still mentioned in Domesday book.^[2]

The last section of the Oxfordshire survey deals with the lands within the county which had been held by William fitz Osbern, Earl of Hereford. The earl had played a very important part in the reduction and settlement of the country in the critical period following King William's coronation. But early in 1071 he was killed in Flanders, and his lands passed to Roger, his second son, who lost them in consequence of an irresponsible rebellion in 1075. In most parts of England, the Fitz Osbern fee was incorporated into the royal demesne, or granted out to different tenants in chief, and it is only in Oxfordshire that it is described under a separate rubrication. Most of the tenants holding of the fee in 1086 were men of considerable importance.

Map of his Oxfordshire mentions in Domesday book: https://opendomesday.org/name/earl-william-son-of-osbern/

Uncertain Second Marriage

Concerning the proposed marriage of William and Richilde in Flanders, C.P. Lewis calls it "William of Malmesbury's incredible moralistic tale that in 1071 he was intent on marrying Count Arnulf's mother and ruling Flanders himself".

A recent discussion on SGM questions the plausibility of a marriage between William and Richilde.^[3] Peter Stewart writes,

"The purported marriage of William and Richilde is not in the least plausible to me, because the many contemporary sources that would surely have reported such a marital alliance for the twice-widowed lady fail to do so. The account derives mainly from William of Malmesbury, writing in 1124/25. He of course was not the sole recipient of information about public events in Flanders more than 50 years earlier, including the extraordinarily mismatched appointment of William fitz Osbern by Richilde's second husband Balduin VI of Flanders as a co-guardian of their sons along with a king of France who was the count's first cousin; nor was he privy - as he implicitly represented himself - to the personal motives of an amorous old man and an ambitious woman.

"The story is in *Gesta regum Anglorum*, as translated in the Oxford edition by Roger Mynors, Rodney Thomson & Michael Winterbottom (1998) vol. 1 p. 475:

"But to this record of successes fortune set a discreditable end when, to satisfy his passion for a woman, the pillar of that great kingdom, wise counsellor of both England and Normandy, went off to Flanders and met his death in an ambush. For Baldwin the elder ... Matilda's father, had two sons, Robert who during his father's lifetime married the countess of Frisia and was nicknamed 'the Frisian', and Baldwin, who ruled Flanders for some years after his father, and died young. He left, by his wife Richildis, two children, Arnulf and Baldwin, and appointed as their guardians Philip king of the French (his mother was the king's aunt) and William Fitz Osbern. William gladly took up the position in hopes, by undertaking to marry Richildis, of winning a more distinguished name for himself. But she, with a woman's ambition, was forming plans beyond her sex, and by exacting new taxes from the people of the province she roused them to revolt. They sent a message for Robert the Frisian, urging him to answer the appeal of his native country and seize the reins of power, while they renounced any loyalty to Arnulf, who was now called count. Nor indeed was there any lack of support for the party of the ward. Thus Flanders was for some time a prey to internal dissensions, and Fitz Osbern, who had surrendered entirely to his passion for the woman, found this intolerable; in fact, he got together a band of knights, and entered Flanders. There he was warmly received at first by those whom he had come to protect, and in a few days' time was riding confidently from one castle to another, lightly armed and with few companions. Robert the Frisian on the other hand, who did not fail to notice his folly, laid an ambush and caught him off his guard. In vein he fought bravely; he and Robert's nephew Arnulf were killed."

"Another twist on the story was given in the 13th-century annals of Winchester: according to this William the Conqueror, desiring a marriage between Richilde and William fitz Osbern (described as the king's nephew), is supposed to have gone to Flanders personally in 1070, along with his French counterpart (Philippe I), in order to subdue Richilde for his purpose either by love or by force majeure ("Hoc anno volens rex comitissam Flandriæ nepoti suo Willelmo filio Osberni accipere, cum rege Franciæ Flandriam venit, ut amore vel viribus sibi illam subiceret"). The outcome is not mentioned in this version of the story, perhaps taken from William of Malmesbury but with the annalist failing to understand that "the pillar of that great kingdom" referred not to the king but to William fitz Osbern himself as governor of England. The legend that he was newly married to Richilde when he was killed at Cassel was repeated, and popularised among genealogists, by Jacques de Meyere in 1538 ("Cecidit inter alios ... Guilelmus, Osbernius Normannus gente, nouus Richildis maritus")."

Sources

1. ↑ C. P. Lewis "William fitz Osbern, earl (d. 1071)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2. ↑ 'The Domesday survey: Introduction', in A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 1, ed. L F Salzman (London, 1939), pp. 373-395. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol1/pp373-395 [accessed 11 November 2018]
3. ↑ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/gCPM4WsjFJk/DAbuDOstBgAJ

Other websites

• Phillips, Weber, Kirk and Staggs Families of the Pacific Northwest, by Jim Weber, rootsweb.com