Fulk Fitzwarin III

• General Notes
  • Fulke FitzWarine, who had a castle at Adderbury, the ruins of which were remaining at the time that Dugdale wrote. (Latter part of the 17th century.) This Fulke was left by Richard I to defend the Marches of Wales when that monarch set out himself for the Holy Land; and in the 7th of the same reign, 1196, he paid 40 marks to the crown for livery of Whittington Castle, in conformity with the judgment then given in his favour by the court of the King's Bench. After the accession of King John, however, this castle was seized by the crown and conferred on another person, which act drove FitzWarine and his brothers into rebellion, and they were in consequence outlawed; but through the mediation of the Earl of Salisbury, the King's brother, and the Bishop of Norwich, the outlawry was reversed and FitzWarine, upon paying 200 marks, and two courses, had livery of the Castle as his hereditary right; command being given to the Sheriff of Shropshire to yield him possession thereof accordingly. About this time he paid the crown 1,200 marks and two palfreys for permission to marry Maud, daughter of Robert Vavasour and widow of Theobald Walter. In the 12th of King John, 1211, he attended that prince into Ireland, and in the 17th he had livery of his wife's inheritance, lying in Amundernesse, in Lancashire.
    (Kin of Mellcene Thurman Smith, page 484)
    
    Fulk FitzWarin (also called Fulke or Fouke FitzWaryn or FitzWarren) was a medieval landed gentleman turned outlaw, from Whittington Castle in Shropshire. The traditional story of his life survives in an "ancestral romance", extant in English, French and Latin versions, which is based on a lost verse romance.
    
    According to the tale, Fulk FitzWarin was, as a young boy, sent to the court of King Henry II, where he grew up with the future King John. The latter becomes his enemy after a childhood quarrel. When he grows up, Fulk is stripped of his family's holdings, and takes to the woods as an outlaw. The story probably confuses the lives of two Fulk FitzWarins, father and son, who lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
    
    The tale of Fulk FitzWarin has been noted for its parallels to the Robin Hood legend. It is also similar to that of other medieval outlaws such as Eustace the Monk and Hereward the Wake.
    A modern fictional re-telling of Fitzwarin's story can be found in Elizabeth Chadwick's Lords of the White Castle. The book Shadows and Strongholds tells of the loss of the familial holding of Whittington to the Welsh family of Powys and of the relationship between Brunin Fitzwarin (later, Fulke Le Brun, father of Fulke Fitzwarin) and Hawise de Dinan (later Hawise Fitzwarin, mother to Fulke Fitzwarin).