General Notes

William de Cantilupe, the first of this family upon record, served the office of sheriff for the cos. of Warwick and Leicester in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th years of King John [1202, 1203, and 1204]. In the next year he was made governor of the castles of Hereford and Wilton, and was subsequently sheriff of Herefordshire. In the 11th of the same reign [1210-11], being then the king's steward, he gave 40 marks for the wardship of Egidia, Lady of Kilpeck, widow of William Fitz-Warine, and in three years afterwards, when the king was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III, he remained so faithful as to become one of the monarch's chief counsellors. We find him, however, arrayed afterwards under the baronial banner and joining in the invitation to Louis of France. But within the same year he forfeited estates of Richard de Engaine and Vitalis de Engaine, two leading barons in the insurrection, and was appointed governor of Kenilworth Castle, co. Warwick. In the reign of Henry III, he continued attached to the cause of royalty, and acquired immense possessions in the shape of grants from the crown of forfeited lands. He d. in 1238, leaving five sons, viz., William, his heir; Walter, a priest; John, Lord of Snitterfield; Nicholas, of Ilkeston; and Thomas, Lord Chancellor of England. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, pp. 100-101, Cantilupe, Barons Cantilupe]