General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> 1st Earl Of Hereford
William FitzOsbern was a military adventurer on a grand scale. The son of Osbern the Seneschal, one of William the Conqueror's murdered guardians, he became a close friend and steward of the duke. At the Council of Lillebonne in 1066 he urged the Norman barons to invade England and later played a leading role in the campaign commanding, according to the twelfth century writer Wace, the right wing at Hastings. His importance was signalled by the vast English estates with which he was rewarded, notably in the Wesh Marches. Within six months of Hastings, FitzOsbern was earl of Hereford and, with Odo of Bayeux, viceroy of England during William's absence in Normandy (March-December 1067). Heavily engaged in defence and assault against the Welsh, he assumed the task vital to rulers of the English since the seventh century. FitzOsbern set about his responsibilities with particular vigour and acumen. He became notorious for his generosity to his knights, lavishing special legal immunities and large wages on those who served him, this dispersal of treasure incurring, so William of Malmesbury two generations later claimed, the disapproval of the king. To reward his knights further, he settled many of them on lands previously belonging to the church. Uninhibited in exploiting his power over laity as well as clergy, he built a number of castles, for example at Clifford, Wigmore and Chepstow, with local forced labour. Such a policy was merely a continuation of earlier public obligations to contibute to the construction of ramparts which had been fully employed by rulers at least as far back as Ethelbald and Offa of Mercia in the eighth century. Now it provoked a revolt by an English dissident, Edric the Wild, in Herefordshire who allied with Welsh princes. Two years later, in 1069, FitzOsbern helped King William suppress the Northern insurrection and dealt with more trouble from Edric. He attracted further hostile comment from ecclesiastical writers by apparently advising a financially hard-pressed king in 1070 to seize treasure from the English monasteries. The main source for FitzOsbern's life, Orderic Vitalis, is torn between admiration at his material success and disapproval of his methods. Of the former there was no doubt. At Christmas 1070 he was in Normandy helping administer the duchy. Earl in 1071 he was sent to Flanders to protect the regent, Richildis, and her son, Arnulf, the young count (and William's nephew), against a rival claimant, Robert 'le Frison', Arnulf's uncle. To secure FitzOsbern's aid, Richildis offered him her hand in marriage. The air of chivalric romance was caught by the contemporary observation that FitzOsbern travelled to Flanders 'as if to a game.' If so, it proved fatal. He was killed in the decisive battle with Robert 'le Frison' at Cassel in February 1071.
FitzOsbern's dramatic career showed that the immemorial skills of warrior and warlord remained as central to the success of William the Conqueror as to that of any of the great fighting kings and heroes of the early Middle Ages. Whatever their political or administrative talents, which now seem rather less compelling than once they did, the French invaders of 1066 secured their conquests by violence, often crude and extreme. But it should be noticed the FitzOsbern secured his military support by rewards of cash and privileges as much as by grants of land: he relied on a paid host, not a 'feudal' levy in the classic sense. His life also suggests that in the eleventh as in other centuries, there was only a fine line separating art and nature: a murdered father; personal bravery; cruel conquest; great wealth and friendship with the great won by the sword; international fame for arms; a dowager in distress; the offer of marriage as well as power; and a death in the defence of a widow and orphan. Compared to the images manufactured by Norman apologists for King William himself, FitzOsbern may appear a throwback to