William (Normandie) de Marisco (abt. 1110 - 1187)

Born about 1110 in England

Ancestors

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Note, who this profile is NOT about:

• This is NOT William Adelin, King Henry I's legitimate heir who died on the White Ship.^[1]
• This is NOT about William who was brother to queen Sybil in Scotland, whose husband King Alexander died 1124, who was an illegitimate daughter of King Henry I. Their mother's name is NOT KNOWN, and it is not clear if they shared their father. That William was already an adult in 1114, so much older than this one.

Biography

Anchorpoint, who this profile is definitely about: William de Marisco, was brother, sharing the same mother, of Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, Herbert fitzHerbert, and Rohese, who married Henry de Pomeroy. The identity of his father is less clear.

Not much is known about their mother who supposedly went by different names, Sybil/ Adela/ Lucia. She was a mistress to King Henry I, and then wife to Herbert fitzHerbert, chancellor for King Henry I of England.^[2]

In one record it is also noted that the three men as brothers but also says they shared a nepos (a younger blood relative) named Joellanus of Pomeroy, who is generally understood to be the same as Joscelinus.^[3] The shared connection to the Pomeroy family must also be through their mother, via Rohese de Pommery, who was known to be a sister of Reinald, who is believed to have married Henri de Pomery.^[4]

William's surname is known for example in a Tavistock charter dated to 1175-1184, which confirms that his brother is Reginald the Earl:^[5] "Willelmus de Marisco, frater Reginaldi comitis Cornub". This document also names his wife as Aliz, and shows that he was able to grant Netherbridge, in the manor of Werrington. Finberg, who published a version of this charter, explains him as follows, expressing doubts about the father of Willelmus de Marisco:^[5]

In 1166 'William the earl's brother' was returned as holding four fees of earl Reginald's barony, and, as 'William, brother of earl Reginald', half a fee of Robert the king's son (Red Book, pp. 253, 262). In 1177 Henry II offered the kingdom of Limerick, which was not in his power at the time, to ' Herbert Fitz Herbert [II], William, brother of earl Reginald, ad Joellanus de la Pumerai, their nephew', to be held for sixty knights' fees. At the same time he withheld their lands of inheritance in England. The offer was declined (Gesta Henrici Secundi, ed. Stubbs, 1867, i. 163, 172). In 1184 Joslenus de Pomerai and William de Marisco were at the head of a band of knights who sailed from Devonshire to Pembroke in the king's service (Pipe Roll Soc., xxxiii. 74). Three years later William the earl's brother was described as 'W. frater Camerarii' (ibid. xxxvii, pp. xxix, 155). This suggests that he was not, as Eyton supposed, a son of Henry I and Sibyl Corbet, but a son of the latter by her marriage with the king's chamberlain, Herbert Fitz Herbert I. The office of chamberlain descended to her eldest son Robert Fitz Herbert (Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire, vii. (1858) 148, 151,

Keats-Rohan says he had a son Reginald "as far as can be ascertained from the English translation in Cart. Launceston, 432, 435, 441".^[6] The records concerned all involve grants by William Giffard and his family's church and land at Bridgerule. A witness is William brother of the Earl and his son Reginald.

Research notes

Complete Peerage, and other sources, have often suggested that this William, as the brother of a royal bastard (Earl Reginald), must be the same as William the brother of queen Sybil in Scotland, who was another Royal bastard. This proposal is not really tenable. As explained by Thompson:^[7]

The brother of Queen Sibyl occurs as an adult at the latest in the 1120s and possibly before, while Reginald’s brother, William, lived on until the 1180s. Reginald’s brother is at no point described as the king’s son, however, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that William was Reginald’s half-brother, the son of Herbert fitz Herbert, particularly since the name William occurred in that family’s naming stock.

Sources

1. ↑ William Adelin
2. ↑ NOTE: both Complete Peerage, XI, Appendix D, and Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire vol.7, pp. 145, 148, 149, 157, say that Sibil was known by several names!
3. ↑ Benedict of Peterborough, vol 1, p.163, https://books.google.be/books?id=BqJmAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA172 p.172], p.173).
4. ↑ Complete Peerage vol.11 App. D cites a charter of Rainald Earl of Cornwall which calls “Rohesia de Pomeria” his sister, citing the journal of the Royal Institute of Cornwall, vol. i, pp. 29-32). Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants p.642 also cites Bearman's charters of the Redvers family App. II, no. 15a.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} H. P. R. Finberg, "Some Early Tavistock Charters" in The English Historical Review, Vol. 62, No. 244 (Jul., 1947), pp. 352-377 https://www.jstor.org/stable/556098
6. ↑ Keats-Rohan, Domesday Descendants, p. 988.
7. ↑ Kathleen Thompson, "Affairs of State: the illegitimate children of Henry I", Journal of Medieval History, Volume 29, Issue 2, June 2003, Pages 129-151