Gilbert Gifford (Marshall) (b. – d. )
John FitzGilbert (Marshall) (b. 1105 – d. 1165)
John FitzGilbert was the father of the most famous of the Marshalls, William Marshall. Fitz, in his second name (early surname), simply meant that John was the son of Gilbert. It is believed that the father is Gilbert Gifford.
The term “Marshal” also applies to John, although it was not used very often. Marshall is a high official in the household of a medieval king and is hereditary or the family job. Both John and Gilbert before him held the office of marshal in the royal household.
A Marshall is responsible mainly for the horses used by the King, his household, and his military. The role of marshal meant that he had charge of supplying the cavalry in the King’s military with horses. Later the Marshall was in command of the military forces.
The Marshal also entailed keeping order and ensuring that all the household members had somewhere to sleep as well as transport as the court journeyed on its military campaigns and travels.
Gilbert and John had dueled with William de Hastings and Robert de Voiz in a trial by combat for the right to hold the post of marshal in the household of King Henry I.
In 1130, when Gilbert (Marshall) died, John Marshall paid 40 marks for his job as marshal – indicating that the perks were worth considerably more than the fee. He was about twenty-five years old. He married the daughter of Walter Pipard at about that same time. Pipard was a minor Wiltshire landowner. John was taking the first steps toward extending his landholding and extending his sphere of influence.
When King Henry I died on 1st December 1135, his death was officially recorded as being from eating a surfeit of lampreys – although of course, this was accompanied at the time by the rumor of poisoning.
John FitzGilbert continued in his role as marshal for Henry I’s successor King Stephen for the next seven years. Henry had forced his barons to swear an oath to put his only remaining legitimate child, Empress Matilda, on the throne. We don’t know how John felt about that, and initially, his oath of loyalty was given to Stephen when he arrived in England ahead of Matilda and took control of the treasury as well as the crown.
We know that John went with Stephen to Normandy in 1137 and that John was sufficiently trusted by Stephen to be rewarded with custodianship of Marlborough Castle and Ludgershall. John held lands in the Kennet Valley in Wiltshire given to the family after the Conquest, including Hamstead Marshal and Tidworth. For John, it meant more power within Wiltshire but also increased hostility with the earls of Salisbury, who felt that Ludgershall belonged to them.
As the civil war between Stephen and Matilda gained momentum, John fortified his castles and began to attack those men in his locale who supported Matilda. “The chronicle of the Gestia Stephanie” describes King Stephen as “the root of all evil.” It certainly appears that John was rather good at skirmishing, raiding, and generally making a nuisance of himself. As with other warlords, he doesn’t always appear to have been too bothered by which side he was attacking. The chronicle notes that he “had no time for the idea of peace.” He was also known as a cunning opponent, as demonstrated in the tale of Robert Fitz Hulbert.
Robert Fitz Hulbert was a mercenary in the pay of Robert of Gloucester on behalf of Empress Matilda. In 1140 Fitz Hulbert seems to have decided that the route to fortune lay in supporting neither Stephen nor Matilda. He approached John, who had a bit of a reputation for doing his fair share of looting, and suggested that they could control John’s area of Wiltshire between them. John appears to have invited Robert to one of his fortified gaffs for a goblet of wine and to discuss the venture. Robert somehow ended up in one of John’s less comfy dungeons prior to being sold to the earl of Gloucester for five hundred marks… definitely cunning.
By 1141 John FitzGilbert (Marshall) seems to have felt that the tide had turned away from Stephen. This was probably to do with Stephen’s capture at Lincoln and imprisonment in Bristol, but it may also have had to do with the fact that Robert, earl of Gloucester (illegitimate half-brother of Matilda), held extensive lands that marched with John’s. John switched sides. It should be pointed out that some barons and knights changed sides more times than they changed their socks – at least John only did it once!
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle summed up the problem of King Stephen rather well:
When King Stephen came to England, he held his council at Oxford, and there he took Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, and the chancellor Roger, his nephews, and put them all in prison till they surrendered their castles. When the traitors understood that he was a mild man, and gentle and good, and did not exact the full penalties of the law, they perpetrated every enormity. They had done him homage and sworn oaths, but they kept no pledge; all of them were perjured, and their pledges nullified, for every powerful man built his castles and held them against him, and they filled the country full of castles.
No wonder the nineteen years of civil war came to be known as The Anarchy.
By May 1141, John can be found supporting Matilda, and, according to William Marshall’s biography, he saved the empress from capture that August during the rout of Winchester when Matilda’s siege was lifted by men loyal to Stephen. In truth, it was Robert of Gloucester who fought a rear guard action at Winchester, but it is undoubtedly true that John was fighting on the empress’s behalf at Wherwell Abbey with William D’Ypres when it was fired and John left for dead in the smoldering rubble. John survived the blaze but lost an eye when melted lead fell from the roof into his face.
As the year drew on, and John survived his injuries, it became clear that the feud with Salisbury’s earl had to end. John’s marriage to his first wife, Aline Pipard, was annulled. It was done in such a way that the two sons of this first marriage remained legitimate and there was no stain on Aline’s honour. She went on to marry Stephen de Gai who was the earl of Salisbury’s uncle. John then married the earl of Salisbury’s sister Sibylla in 1144. Not only did this bring peace between the two families (if for no one else in the area) but it meant that John elevated his social status once more and as the Empress Matilda’s position strengthened John’s name can be found on assorted charters of the period. John and Patrick of Salisbury seemed to have buried their differences given that the chroniclers of the period paint a picture of Wiltshire under the brother-in-laws’ heels. John took land that didn’t belong to him, not only from the laity but also the clergy (which probably accounts for the tone of the chronicles which were written by ecclesiastical types.) When King Stephen died on October 25 1154 Matilda’s eldest son Henry Fitzempress became king. John was rewarded well for his loyalty.
John is probably most famous, or possibly infamous, for the way in which during the siege of Newbury, another of John’s castles, (Historians and archeologists argue that the besieged castle was more likely to be at Hamstead Marshal rather than Newbury) that he handed over hostages including his five year old son William in order to buy time. King Stephen thought it was so that the garrison could prepare to exit stage left. However, as soon as the Reading road was cleared of besieging forces John took the opportunity to resupply the castle. When Stephen’s men threatened young William Marshall with hanging in response to John’s perfidy he retorted that he had the hammers and anvils to make more sons. Young William was the fourth of his sons and there were two younger ones after him named Ancel and Henry. It was only through King Stephen’s kindness and the charming personality of young William that the child survived the experience.
John died sometime between 1164 and 1165. His eldest son from his first marriage, named Gilbert after his grandfather died soon afterwards both of them having outlived John’s second son Walter. Thus it was the eldest son of the second marriage named John after his father who inherited John’s lands and job as marshal. When he died without legitimate male heirs the title and the lands passed to William Marshall who was by that time earl of Pembroke.
For those of you like a spot of historical fiction – Elizabeth Chadwick’s book published in 2007 entitled A Place Beyond Courage is about John FitzGilbert’s life from the end of King Henry I’s reign until the end of The Anarchy. Elizabeth Chadwick also has a blog, click on the link to find her non-fiction post about
