Who was William FitzOsbern?

 

n     The following is an excerpt from Who’s Who in Early Medieval England: 1066-1272 by Christopher Tyerman.  It serves as a good introduction to FitzOsbern.

 

 

William FitzOsbern (d. 1071) 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, according to the twelfth century writer Wace commanding the right wing at Hastings.  His importance was signaled by the vast English estates with which he was rewarded, notably in the Welsh 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 defense and assault against the Welsh, he assumed a 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 contribute 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.  Early in 1071 he was sent to Flanders to protect the regent, Richildis, and her son, Arnulf, the young count (and William I’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 traveled 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 they once did, the French invaders of 1066 secured their conquest by violence, often crude and extreme.  But it should be noticed that 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 suggest 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 defense of a widow and orphan.  Compared to the images manufactured by Norman apologists for King William himself, FitzOsbern may appear a throwback to a nastier, more vicious age.  Yet in achieving great power and transforming his destiny through the exercise of military strength and the expenditure of large sums of money, FitzOsbern and his master, ruthless opportunists both, had much in common. 

 

 

FitzOsbern was most certainly a man of his age.  Being the same age as William the Bastard and having his father serve as one of the young duke’s protectors indicates that the two probably grew up together; later chronicles hint that FitzOsbern was William’s closest and oldest personal friend, and therefore one of his most trusted companions.  Taking his father’s place as seneschal, FitzOsbern became one of the most powerful magnates in Normandy during William’s rise to power and consolidation of the duchy.  Unfortunately, there is little concrete documentation for his activities in the duchy previous to the Conquest: what is known is that he was seneschal, and witnessed numerous charters for the ducal court.  It would be safe to say that he took part in most major military actions in Normandy from the early 1050s on. 

 

The choice of FitzOsbern to build our conroi around was decided upon for several reasons:

1)     His nearly continuous involvement in military matters during the pre- AND post-conquest period

2)     There is plenty of evidence for his familia troops being of the paid, non-feudal variety

3)     The generosity with which he paid such troops allows us to be well-armed and equipped

 

 

For another biography of William FitzOsbern click here (external link). 

 

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