page_title: Robert Fitzwalter
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Fitzwalter / Family
caption_attribution_description: English: Medieval seal in the British Museum. Tag on exhibit reads: "Seal of Robert Fitzwalter" and "About 1213-19 England Silver PE 1841,0624.1" See BM database entry for more details.
context_page_description: Robert Fitzwalter was the leader of the baronial opposition against King John, and one of the twenty-five sureties of Magna Carta. He was feudal baron of Little Dunmow, Essex and constable of Baynard's Castle, in London, to which was annexed the hereditary office of castellain and chief banneret of the City of London. Part of the official aristocracy created by Henry I and Henry II, he served John in the wars in Normandy, in which he was taken prisoner by King Philip II of France and forced to pay a heavy ransom.
  Fitzwalter was implicated in the baronial conspiracy of 1212. According to his own statement the king had attempted to seduce his eldest daughter, but Robert's account of his grievances varied from time to time. The truth seems to be that he was irritated by the suspicion with which John regarded the new baronage. Fitzwalter escaped a trial by fleeing to France. He was outlawed, but returned under a special amnesty after John's reconciliation with the pope.
  Fitzwalter continued, however, to take the lead in the baronial agitation against the king, and upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1215 was elected "Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church".
context_section_description: Robert Fitzwalter was the son of Walter Fitz Robert of Woodham Walter and his wife Maud (or Mathilde), the daughter of Richard de Lucy of Diss (a member of the de Lucy family). Robert was a feudal baron of the fourth generation after the Norman conquest, great-grandson of Richard fitz Gilbert (d. c. 1090). His paternal grandfather was Richard fitz Gilbert's son Robert Fitz Richard, steward of Henry I, to whom the king had granted the lordship of Dunmow and of the honour or soke of Baynard's Castle in the southwest angle of the City of London, to which the hereditary office of castellain and chief banneret of the City of London was annexed, both of which had become forfeited to the crown by William Baynard. While steward Robert may have been descended from the powerful Norman counts of Brionne, among the higher ranks of the nobility of the Norman Conquest, the house of Fitzwalter belongs properly to the administrative families, who in the latter part of the twelfth century had stepped into the place of the old feudal houses. The house of Fitzwalter's possession of the soke of Baynard's Castle, which grew into an ordinary ward, brought it into intimate relations with the Londoners. Robert Fitzwalter was himself engaged in trade, and owned wine ships which received special privileges from King John.
  Nothing of Fitzwalter's birth and early life is recorded. A possible early record of him is a mention of a knight named "Robert Fitzwalter" at a tournament in Henry the Young King's retinue in 1180 at Lagny-sur-Marne. Fitzwalter was married to Gunnor or Gunnora, daughter and heiress of Robert de Valognes, some time before his father died in 1198. His eldest son, named Robert Fitzwalter, junior, was taken prisoner along with him at Lincoln, but died before him.  At his death, his heir, Walter, was under age, so that the son who fought with him at Lincoln must have been dead. This Sir Walter Fitzwalter (also known as Fitz Robert) of Dunmow Castle (c. 1222–1258), married to Ida Longespée, must have been either a younger son or a grandson. After the death of Gunnor (she was alive in 1207) it is said that Fitzwalter married a second wife, Rohese, who survived him. He had also a daughter, Christina, who married William FitzGeoffrey de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex.
caption: Robert FitzWalter's original seal-die, with modern wax impression, in the British Museum.[1]
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