General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> 1st Earl Of Pembroke, Kt.
The office of Marshal to the king was a hereditary perquisite of a middling Wiltshire family. The duties were various, but mainly they consisted of acting as second-in-command to the constable of the royal household, maintaining order in the palace and guarding it, looking after the stables, keeping the rolls of those who performed their military service, and checking the accounts of various household and state departments.
From this family came William Marshal, whose biography was written by his squire John of Earley so providing us with one of the deepest and most fascinating insights into the life of a great baron of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
His father, John Marshal, whom the Gesta Stephani rather unkindly describes as 'a limb of hell and the root of all evil' was a man who loved warfare, and played the game of politics with great success. At first he supported Stephen but, when he began to realise the failings of the King and the potentialities of Matilda's party, he changed sides. Almost immediately he proved by a consummate act of bravery and hardihood, that he was worth having: escorting Matilda to safety in his castle at Ledgershall, John found that the party was going dangerously slowly because Matilda was riding side-saddle, so he persuaded her to ride astride, and stopped behind to delay the pursuers at Wherwell. His force was soon overpowered by the numbers of the enemy, and John took refuge with one of his knights in the Abbey. The opposing party promptly set fire to the church, and John and his knight had to take cover in the tower, John threatening to kill his knight if he made any move to surrender. As the lead of the roof began to melt and drop on the two soldiers, putting out one of John's eyes, the enemy moved off, convinced that they were dead. They escaped, in a terrible state, but triumphant, to John's castle.
He plainly expected his children to be as tough as himself, as an incident of the year 1152, when William was about six, will show. King Stephen went to besiege Newbury Castle, which Matilda had given John to defend; the castellan, realising that provisions and the garrison were both too low to stand a long siege, asked for a truce to inform his master. This was normal practice, for if the castellan were not at once relieved, he could then surrender without being held to have let his master down. Now John had not sufficient troops to relieve the castle, so he asked Stephen to extend the truce whilst he, in turn, informed his mistress, and agreed to give William as a hostage, promising not to provision and garrison the castle during the truce. This he promptly did, and when he received word from Stephen that the child would be hung if he did not at once surrender the castle, he cheerfully replied that he had hammer and anvils to forge a better child than William.
The child was taken out for execution, but at the last moment Stephen relented with that soft heart that was his undoing, and though his officers presented such enticing plans as catapulting William over the castle walls with a siege engine, he would not give in. Later on he grew attached to the child, and one day when William was playing an elementary form of conkers with the King, using plantains, the child saw a servant of his mother, the lady Sibile (sister of the Earl of Salisbury), peeping in to check up on his safety. William cried out a greeting and the servant had to run for his life. The child did not know what dangers he was running, but it was good and early training for his future career.
When he was thirteen William was sent to serve in the retinue of his father's cousin, the chamberlain of Normandy. This was his apprenticeship in knighthood, and was to last eight years. As a squire he would learn by experience all the skills of a knight, and the elaborate code of honour that went with it. After he had been knighted in 1167, he began to go round the tou