John De Warenne and Alice le Brun

John De Warenne was born 1230-1231 Warren,Sussex, England and died 1304 at Kennington, near London, England. John was the son of Maud Marshal and William de Warenne. He married Alice le Brun born about 1224 in Lusignan, France and died 1290.

A genealogical history of the dormant, abeyant, forfeited, and extinct ...‎ - Page 669
by Sir Bernard Burke - 1866


The history and antiquities of Lewes and its vicinity‎ - Page 126
by Thomas Walker Horsfield, Gideon Algernon Mantell - 1824
John de Warenne (Plantagenet), Earl of Warren and Surrey. This nobleman was but five years of age at the time of his father's decease, and was placed in ward with Peter de Savoy the Queen's brother. When he attained majority, he attached himself zealously to Henry III in his conflicts with the barons, and maintained the cause of the king with his sword at the battle of Lewes. His lordship was a person of violent and imperious temper, and was often betrayed into acts of great intemperance; as in the instance of assaulting Sir Alan Zouch, and Roger his son, in Westminster Hall, when he almost killed the one and wounded the other. And again, when Edward I issued the first writs of Quo Warranto, his lordship being questioned at to the title of his possessions, exhibited to the justices an old sword and unsheathing it, said, “Behold, my lords, here is my warranty, my ancestors coming into this lands by the sword, and I am resolved with the sword to defend them, against whomsoever shall endeavor to dispossess me; for that king did not himself conquer the land, and subdue it, but our progenitors were sharers and assistants therein” The earl was constituted, by King Edward, general of all his forces on the north of Trent, for the better restraining the insolence of the Scots; whereupon he marched into Scotland, and so terrified the inhabitants that they immediately sued for peace, and gave hostages for their future good conduct. But the war soon after breaking out afresh, his lordship sustained a signal defeat at Strivelin, when his troops fled first to Berwick, and thence to England. The earl m. 1st, 1247, Alice dau. Of Hugh le Brun, Count de la March, and half sister by the mother of King Henry III, and 2ndly, Joan, dau. Of William, lord Mowbray, and by the former had issue,

William, who was killed in a tournament at Croyden, in his father's lifetime, 23 Decembert 1285. He m. Joane, dau of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and left a posthumous son, John.

Alianore, m. to Henry, Lord Percy
Isabel, m. to John de Baliol, afterwards King of Scotland.

His lordship d. in 1304, and was s. by his grandson.

I believe that the Peter of Savoy mentioned in the above was the Queen's uncle and not her brother.

Alice's mother was Isabel de Angouleme. Hugh le Brun was also known as Hubert de Burgh and Hugh X Lusignan. Isabel had been the wife of King John before marrying secondly Hugh/Hubert. This meant Alice was half sister to Henry III.

At the time of their marriage, John De Warenne was only 12 years old. The Gentlemen's magazine says that Matthew Paris recorded Alice as having died in 1256 but that the Register of Lewes Priory shows her death to have occurred in 1290. She was also buried in Lewes Priory, before the high alter, under a marble monument with a sculpture of a dragon or wivern on it. It has a branch in its mouth, the crest of the Warrens.

The history of Lewes says that William continued firm in his adherence to the king. “He joined the king in Guinne in 1254, and two years afterwards he was present with other Peers in Westminster Hall when the Archbishop of Canterbury, supported by several Bishops, pronounced, with lighted candles, all those excommunicated, who should violate the two great charters of the kingdom. In the same year, says Dugdale “he had the tertium denarium of the County of Surrey yielded him by the King's Precept, then sent to the barons of the Exchequer.” Dr. Watson concludes that this grant was confirmed to him on account of his then coming of age. The castle of Pevensey was afterwards entrusted to his charge by the confiding monarch, and soon after he went over to the barons. His defection however, was not of long continuance; again he joined the royal forces, and was actively engaged in the defence of Rochester castle, against the brave but too arbitrary Earl of Leicester.

The little glory which the Earl of Warren had won by his able defence of Rochester castle, was soon tarnished. The battle of Lewes followed shortly after, and the Earl adhered to the royal party; but basely sought his safety by a flight from the field of battle, deserting his royal master, and escaping to the continent. All the lands and possessions of Earl Warren in England, except the castles of Reigate and Lewes, were given, by grant under the great eal to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and De Warren was banished the realm by public edict of the Earl of Leicester. The battle of Evesham, which shortly followed, wrested from the barons their temporary power and gave liberty to the captive king. The estates of the Earl of Warren were restored to him, and with them the unbounded confidence of the monarch.

The Earl of Warren appears to have partaken of all the distinguishing qualities of the English baron: with his wealth, and honours, and independence, he was haughty, imperious, and tyrannical. A dispute arising in 1268, between him and Henry de Lacy, afterwards Earl of Lincoln, concerning a certain pasture, the lordly disputants assembled their respective retainers, resolving to determine, by a pitched battle, the right which each claimed. The interposition of the king, prevented the mutual slaughter, and upon an inquiry being made into the circumstances, the right was adjudged to Lacy.

About two years after this dispute with de Lacy, the earl was guilty of a still more serious outrage; and one, whose consequences he felt for many succeeding years. He had been long engaged in a law suit, with Alan Lord Zouche, of Ashby, concerning the title to a certain manor. During the trial before the king's judges in Westminster hall, the earl and his armed attendants attacked Lord Zouche, and his eldest son Sir Roger, with drawn swords, so that, says Dugdale, “he almost killed the one, and wounded the other.” The earl was fined in the sum of 10,000 marks, and was compelled, with fifty of his followers, who had been engaged in this act of violence, to walk on foot from the New Temple, to Westminster hall, and there to take an oath, that what they had done, was not out of any prepense malice, but only out of sudden heat and passion. In consequence of this submission and fine, a pardon was granted to the earl and his followers, in the following terms:--

The King to all &c., greeting,Whereas our well-beloved and faithful John de Warren, Earl of Surrey, for himself and his men, hath put himself upon the king's mercy to be fined at his pleasure for a certain trespass and assaults, lately committed by the same earl and his men upon Alan la Such, (or Zouche), and Roger his son, in the King's Hall in Westminster, as it is said: Whereupon the said Alan hath summoned the said Earl in the King's Court before the king himself.

Now we have remised to the said earl, and to all his men, and to all those that can be discharged of that trespass, all indignation and anger of mind, which we had conceived against them by occasion of the aforesaid trespass.

All we have pardoned to them the suit, (or breach), of our peace, which to us belongs, or in any other manner can belong to that trespass, in whatsoever manner happening, either by the death or other harm of the aforesaid Alan and Roger, or either of them, by means of the trespass and assaults aforesaid; intestimony, &c.

Witness the King at Winton, the 4th day of August

This writ of pardon was not granted him, till after Prince Edward had pursued him with a strong power to his castle at Reigate, where he had shut himself up; but finding the prince determined to force him to obedience to the laws of the kingdom, he made a most humiliating submission, imploring mercy, and afterwards made his peace with the king, as appears by the foregoing document. The fine was afterwards reduced by Edward I to 8,400 marks, and an acceptance of the same, by two hundred marks per annum, was agreed to. This mark of royal favour, was occasioned by the noble reception that King Edward received at Reigate, on his return from quelling the insurrections in Gascony.

Edward I returned to England the 12th of August, 1289, after staying more than three years abroad on sundry weighty affairs, and on the 21st of August, in the same year, he dates a commission of Sewers by his letters patent, from Lewes, to inquire into the truth of a complaint from Kent, touching the sewers, and to make redress accordingly. This was nine days after his arrival in England, and as John, Earl of Warren, was in his particular confidence, it is likely his errand at Lewes, was to consult the earl, touching several abuses committed in his absence, by the judges of the realm, and officers of the crown; for the king very soon afterwards removed almost all the judges, for high misdemeanors and corruption in their offices; some he banished, and fined them all most severely, by which he got, (what indeed he then much wanted,) about 100,000 marks, all his historians affirm: and no doubt, he had the satisfaction, at the same time, of riding over the field of battle, at Lewes, in which he had borne so gallant, though unfortunate, a part, twenty-five years before, in his father's reign.

In 1276, 6 Edward I, the king employed commissioners to make inquiry throughout the kingdom, by what warrant or title (Quo Warranto), the landholders enjoyed their estates, in order that those who could not exhibit a valid claim to their possessions, might be compelled to restore them to the king, or obliged to submit to a pecuniary composition, for the privilege of retaining them. As John de Warren, has the honour of putting a temporary stop to this iniquitous mode of recruiting the public treasury, the history of the proceeding is worthy of notice. It shall be given in the words of Holinshed.
“Many were thus called to answere, till at lengthe the Lord John Warren, Earle of Surrey, a man greatly beloved of the people, perceiving the King to haue caste his net for a praye, and that there was not one whyche spake against those so bitter and cruell proceedings, and therefore being called afore the Justices aboute this matter, he appeared, and being asked what right he held his lands? He sodenly drawing forth an old rusty sworde “By this instument (sayde he), doe I holde my landes, and by the same I entende to defende them. Our auncestors coming into this realme with William Conquerour, conquered theyr landes with the swords and with the same will I defende me from all those that shall be aboute to take them from me; he did not make a conquest of the realme alone, our progenitors were with him as participators and helpers with him.”

“The Kyng understoode into what hatred of his people by this means hee was fallen, and therefore to anoyd civill dissention and war that might thereby ensue, he left off his begun practice; so that the thing which generally shuld haue touched and bene hurtful to all men, was nowe sodeingly stayed by the manhood and couragious stoutness only of one mand the foresaid Earle.”

The “ manhood and couragious stoutness” of the Earl, might, as is stated, put a stop to the proceedings of the Quo Warranto commission at that time, but the wealth that had accrued to the royal treasury from the forfeitures and compositions, were too great, to permit such an effectual mode of supplying the wants of the monarch to be altogether relinquished: and on the following year, the 7th Edward I, Earl Warren was summoned by name, before John de Reygate and his associates, the Justices itinerants in the County of Sussex, to shew by what authority he claimed to have free warren and free-chace, in the towns of Worth, Ditching, Clayton, Withiam, Cuckfield, Keymer, Street, Balcomb, Plumpton, Chailey, Ardingly, Hoadly, Lindfield, Westmeston, Wenham, Newick, Barcombe, Hamsey Benham, Swanburghe, Kingston, Iford, Westoke, Hounsdean, Smythewyk, Holinstrow, Rodmill, Piddinghoe, Telescombe, Southease, Newhaven, Middleburgh, Iwonesmere, Ovingdean, Falmer, Balmer, Patcham, Brighthelmston, Slaugham, Bolney, Hurst, Mediam, Crawley, Wyndlesham, Hangleton, Atlingworth, Blatchington, Wyke, Withdean, Twyning, Poynings, Newtimber, Selscomb, Pycombe, Pynkeden, Porleslade, Aldington, Farncomb, Molescombe, or Mousecombe, Abburton, Fulking, Perching, Sandes, Hedesnell, Lesefield, and Feld, in the County of Sussex.

The damage to the king, by John de Warren's holding the warren and chase in the towns above-mentioned, was stated by William de Gyselingham to be a thousand pounds. It was adjudged that the king should seize nothing by his writ for the present.

In 1297, the Earl was general of all the King's forces on the north side of Trent. This appointment brought him in contact with the immortal Wallace, a man whose name is associated with all that is glorious, and is consecrated in the memory of the true patriot. This noble minded man, refusing to swear fealty to the King of England, whose forces were overrunning and desolating the Scottish kingdom, aspired to the honest fame of a patriot hero, and re-animated the drooping courage of his countrymen, when the nobles of the land had submitted to ignominious thraldom. When the chiefs of Scotland submitted, without striking a blow for freedom, to Henry de Percy, at Irwine, Wallace supported by a gallant band, found means to avoid the disgrace of surrendering to the usurper, and effected a retreat, but to strengthen his power. On the Earl of Warren's entering Scotland, he found the spirit of resistance greater than he had reason to expect. He advanced to Stirling, near to which place, but on the opposite side of the Forth, the army of Wallace was assembled. Terms of submission were demanded by the English general from the Scottish hero, and the demand was received as it deserved to be—with scorn: and the only answer which he condescended to give to the insulting invaders was, “that his army was not come to treat for peace, but to try the matter by battle.” A contest , ensued and the Scots were victorious.

Six thousand of the English army are said to have fallen on this occasion, amongst whom was Sir Hugh Cressingham, to whose turbulent importunities the disaster is, in a great measure, to be attributed. Cressingham's body was recognised by the victors amongst the heaps of slain, and to shew their destination of this unfeeling and arbitrary minister, they treated his lifeless frame with an indignity, justifiable only amongst barbarians.

The Earl again appears in the page of history in 33 Edward I, when he was acting in command under the king, who had penetrated to the extremity of Scotland; this was the last public act of his life, for in the same year he died at Kennington, near London, in the 70th year of his age, and the 65th of his earldom, and was buried before the high altar in the Priory of Lewes, in the midst of the pavement, under a plain tomb, or grave stone, on which was written the following epitaph:--

“Vous qe passer ou bouche close
Priez pur cely ke cy repose:
En vie coe vous este jadis fu,
Et vous tiel, serretz come je su;

Sire John Count de Gareyn gyst yey;
Dieu de sa alme eit mercy.
Ky pur sa alme priers,
Troiz mill jours de pardon avera.”

“Thou that dost tread this silent way,
Forget not for the dead to pray;
The bones that in this tomb are laid,
In life's fair bloom were once array's;
Like them shall thine in time consume,
And others trample on thy tomb.
John Earl of Warren's buried here:
May mercy his flown spirit cheer!
For his repose whoever prays,
Gains an indulgence of three thousand days.”

The high esteem in which the Earl of Warren was held by the king, is evinced by the special precept, directed to the then Bishop elect of London, whereby, signifying “how pious, and before Almighty God, a meritorious work it was, to pray continually for the dead, that so they might be more easily delivered from the burthen of their sins; and that the Earl, who had been a most faithful and useful subject and servant to him and the whole realm, was then departed this life, to his very great sorrow; he required him, that he should cause his soul to be commended to the mercy of God, by all the religious and ecclesiastical persons, throughout his whole diocese of London.”

A similar precept was directed by the King to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his whole province; to the Abbots of St. Augustine's in Canterbury, Westminster, Waltham, St. Albans. St. Edmunds-bury, and Evesham.

The folly of the times did not stop here. Indulgences were granted to all who should pray for the soul of the deceased earl. The Archbishop of Canterbury promised a remission of forty days of pain from the period of purgatory to every good Christian, who should pray for the soul of the noble earl. Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, a like period, Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, thirty days; the Bishop of Durham forty days; the Bishop of Carlisle forty days; the Bishop of Lincoln forty days; the Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield, forty days; and John Bishop of Chichester, forty days.

There are but few grants of this earl to the Priory of Lewes. The following charters however relative to this house are recorded in the Register Book of Lewes Priory. A charter by which the Earl grants unto the Prior and Convent an annual rent of six shillings for ever out of his manor of Meeching, for which the religious quit claimed to the earl and his heirs, all the right and claim which they had in stagno scitu et sect molendini in villis de Meching ae Pedingho. Another by which he gave to the monks a messuage in the vill of Suthwerk. Another by which he gave them the advowson of the church of Dewesbury.

The earl married Alice, daughter of Hugh le Brun, by whom he had William, who died in the life time of his father, being unfortunately slain at a tournament at Croydon, in Surrey; Eleanor, who was married to a son of Henry, Lord Percy, and afterwards to the son of a Scotch earl; and Isabel, who was united to John de Baliol, who became King of Scotland.

John de Warenne was the Earl Warenne and also called (incorrectly) the Earl of Sussex. He was an eminent English lord during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I of England. John de Warenne was son and heir of the Sixth Earl, William de Warenne, and succeeded upon his father's death in 1240. He and his family claimed the earldom of Sussex but never held it de jure. He married Alice de Lusignan, half sister of Henry III; and, except for a brief period in 1262 to 1263, he strongly supported his friend the young lord Edward (afterward Edward I ) during the Barons' Wars. In 1264 he defended Rochester Castle against Simon de Montfort until relieved by Edward. They then repaired to Warenne's town of Lewes, where the royal army was defeated (in May 1264), and Warenne escaped to France. In 1265 he landed in Pembroke with Henry III's half brother William de Valence and took part in the campaign that ended at the Battle of Evesham (August 4, 1265) with Montfort's death. The successful claim of Warenne's son-in-law John de Balliol to the throne of Scotland gave Surrey a strong interest and a leading part in Scottish affairs. However, after the treaty between Scotland and France in 1295, Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, and Warenne won the Battle of Dunbar. Edward I then appointed him keeper of the realm of Scotland, but in 1297 he was defeated by William Wallace at Stirling Bridge. He fought in Edward's later campaigns in Scotland and took part in the victory at Falkirk in 1298. Surrey, John de Warenne, 7th Earl of. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 25, 2003, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.


JOHN de Warenne (1231 or after-Kennington [Nov] 1304, bur Lewes Priory). He succeeded his father in 1240 as Earl of Surrey. He was one of the guardians of the realm on the death of King Henry III, until the return of Edward I from crusade. He was appointed keeper of the realm of Scotland 3 Sep 1296, but never assumed the post as he was defeated by the Scots at the battle of Stirling[368]. m (Aug 1247) ALIX de Lusignan, daughter of HUGUES X "le Brun" Sire de Lusignan, Comte de la Marche & his wife Isabelle Ctss d’Angoulême ([1224]-after 9 Feb 1256). She is named "Aelesia" by Matthew of Paris when he records her visit to England in 1247 with her brothers to her uterine half-brother King Henry III and her subsequent marriage with "Johanni comiti Warenniæ adolescenti"[369]. Matthew of Paris records her death in early 1256

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MEDIEVAL LANDS PROJECT
CHARLES CAWLEY