General Notes

Note [CP V:518, just after the text concerning William FitzWilliam, d. bef. 1342]: The following information has been supplied by Mr. W. Paley Balidon, F.S.A., who has made a special study of the Yorkshire FitzWilliams.  For a well-documented pedigree of the main line down to the death of Sir John FitzWilliam of Emley in 1417, see "Baildon and the Baildons."

The family of FitzWilliam, notwithstanding the Norman form of the name, is certainly of Anglian or Scandinavian descent.  The story of William FitzGodric, cousin to Edward the Confessor, and his son William FitzWilliam, "Ambassador at the court of William, Duke of Normandy," and Marshal of the Norman army at Hastings, is obviously mythical, as is the story of the Conqueror's scarf, even if the scarf is seen today. [Bridges, "Northants", says that the first William FitzWilliam was a "natural son to the Conqueror"!]  William, son of Godric is , however, a real person, but he flourished a century and more after the Conquest. Godric's father was named Ketelborn; in a lawsuit in 1211 he is said to have been seised of land at Hopton, not far from Emley, on the day of the death of Henry I, 1 Dec 1135.  Godric was probably born about 1110-1115; there is no direct record of him.

William son of Godric was probably born about 1140; he occurs in the Pipe Rolls from 1169-70 to 1179-80, and was dead in 1194.  He married, probably about 1169-70, as her third husband, Aubrey, daughter and heir of Robert de Lisours (son of Fulk de Lisours, the Domesday tenant of Sprotborough and other West Riding manors under Roger de Busli), who married, about 1129-30, Aubrey, daughter of Robert de Lacy, lord of Pontefract, and in her issue heir of the great Lacy estates on the death of Robert de Lacy II, 1193-4.  Aubrey de Lisours was therefore a great heiress through both parents.  She married (1) Robert FitzEustace, c 1150, by whom she had issue John the Constable of Chester (died 1190, from whom the 2nd house of Lacy descended); (2) William de Clairfait, c 1167; and (3) William FitzGodric, c 1169-70.
[Complete Peerage V:518 Note]

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The following citation is part of the "obviously mythical" ancestry.

Sir William Fitz-William, who was living in 1117, Lord of Elmley and Sprotborough, m. Ella, dau. and co-heir of William, Earl of Warren and Surrey, and had Roger, to whom the Earl of Warren gave the lordship of Gretewell, and Sir William Fit-William, an elder son, his successor. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 215, Fitz-William, Baron Fitz-William]