490); there were situated their castle of Skipsea and the family foundation of Meaux, a Cistercian house. They had also important estates in Lincolnshire, in Craven, and Cumberland. They were sometimes described as earls of Holderness (Rishanger, p. 63, Rolls Ser.; Chron de Melsa, ii. 107). Hawise's father had been created Earl of Yorkshire in 1138. But they were more often called earls of Albemarle, a name taken from their Norman county of Aumâle, from which they originally obtained comital rank. Aumâle had been lost with Normandy under John, and William the younger is perhaps the first of his house with whom the once foreign title had an exclusively English signification. In the quarrel between John and his barons the young earl supported the king until the defection of the Londoners (Rog. Wend. iii. 300, English Hist. Soc.) He was one of the twenty-five executors of Magna Charta, though probably the least hostile to John on the list. On 11 Aug. he was made constable of Scarborough Castle (Rot. Lit. Pat. pp. 152, 154). On war breaking out between king and barons in September, William went over to John's side, being the only one of the twenty-five who fought for him (Walter of Coventry, ii. 225). He took part in John's devastating march from St. Albans to the north (Rog. Wend. iii. 348), and was made warden of the castles of Sauvey, Rockingham, and Bytham (ib. iii. 353). But on the capture of Winchester on 14 June 1216 by Louis of France, William went back to the side of the triumphant barons, though their subsequent disasters once more brought him round to the king (cf. Rot. Lit. Pat. p. 199). He continued to support Henry III, and was on 17 Dec. made constable of Rockingham and Sauvey Castles. He shared with his close associate Randulph de Blundevill, earl of Chester [q. v.], in the long siege of Mount Sorrel, Leicestershire, which began after Easter 1217 (Hemingburgh, i. 250), fought on 20 May at the battle of Lincoln (Melrose Chron. p. 131), and in August joined in Hubert de Burgh's naval victory over Eustace the Monk off Dover (Matt. Paris, Chron. Majora, iii. 28–9).
William had won so strong a position during the years of disorder that he was indisposed to submit himself to the rule of the young king's ministers. He was the most conspicuous representative of the feudal reaction towards the ancient ideal of local independence for each individual baron. Dr. Stubbs in describing him as a ‘feudal adventurer of the worst stamp’ (Const. Hist. i. 581) is not too severe on his character, though he rather ignores his ancestral position in the country as representative of his mother's house. Aiming at reviving the separatist policy of the Anglo-Norman baronage, William found his chief allies in Falkes de Breauté [q. v.] and the other foreign adventurers whom John had established in the country. As early as 1219 Albemarle had shown his hostility to Hubert de Burgh [q. v.] the justiciar, and had been declared a rebel and excommunicated by the legate for persisting in attending a prohibited tournament. But the real struggle began in 1220, when the justiciar called on the barons to surrender to the crown the royal castles which had remained in their hands since the troubles in John's reign. William refused to surrender his two royal castles of Rockingham and Sauvey, and exerted himself to strengthen the fortifications of the latter. However, immediately after his second coronation on 17 May, the young king marched in person against the two castles. The garrisons fled in terror, and on 28 June William was compelled to make a formal surrender of his castles, and to pledge himself to submit to the judgment of his peers. He probably bought off his excommunication by taking the crusader's vow and submitting himself to the legate. But many complaints against him seem to have been brought, and the barons adjudged Bytham to William de Colville. William therefore prepared to resist to the uttermost the attempt to ruin him, and before the end of the year had collected a large force at Bytham, the centre of his power in South Kesteven. At Christmas William attended Henry's court at Oxford. Thence, without note of warning or solemn defiance, he fled to Bytham, and rose in revolt early in January 1221. He plundered the country far and wide and cruelly tortured his prisoners (Rog. Wend. iv. 66–7). He attacked the castles of Newark, Sleaford, and Kimbolton, but was disgracefully repulsed (Dunstaple Ann. p. 63). He was still summoned to great councils, and professed to set off to attend one at Westminster. However, he next captured Fotheringay Castle. Thence he issued letters, directed to the mayors of English towns, which granted safe conduct and ‘his peace’ to merchants ‘as if he alone ruled over the realm’ (Walter of Coventry, ii. 247). It was, says Dr. Stubbs, ‘an assumption of feudal or royal style worthy of the days of Stephen’ (Const. Hist. ii. 33). On 25 Jan. Pandulf held a council at St. Paul's, in which he excommunicated Albemarle for the second time. The great council voted a special scutage of ten shillings on every knight's fee, called the ‘Scutagium de Biham.’ An army
