Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Marshal, John (d.1164?)
MARSHAL, JOHN (d. 1164?), warrior, was son and heir of Gilbert Marshal, who was unsuccessfully impleaded with him in the court of Henry I by Robert de Venoiz and William de Hastings for the office of master of the king's marshalsea (Rot. Chart. p. 46), from which the family took its name. In the ‘Pipe Roll’ of 1130 he is found paying for succession to his father's lands and office (p. 18) and in possession of an estate in Wiltshire (p. 23). In 1138 he fortified Marlborough and Ludgershall (Ann. Wint.), probably as one of the rebels of that year, for Stephen was besieging him in Marlborough when the empress landed, in 1139 (Cont. Flor. Wig. p. 117). In 1140 he was approached by Robert FitzHubert, who had seized Devizes Castle, and who hoped to secure Marlborough; but John, overreaching him, made him his prisoner, and then sold him to the Earl of Gloucester. His action in this matter is somewhat mysterious, but he seems to have been fighting, virtually, for his own hand (Will. Malm. Gesta; Cont. Flor. Wig.) In 1141, on the downfall of Stephen, he actively supported the empress, being present with her at Reading in May, at Oxford in July, and at the siege of Winchester in August and September. At the close of the siege (13 Sept.) he comes into prominence, being cut off with a small force, and forced to take refuge in Wherwell Abbey. The abbey was fired by the enemy, but John stood his ground, and, though surrounded by flames, refused to surrender to his foes. There is a stirring description of this scene in the ‘Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal,’ which here commences its narrative, and states that Marshal, though supposed to have perished, rejoined his friends, with the loss of an eye and other wounds. It was to his castle of Ludgershall that the empress first fled, and in the following summer (1142) he was again by her side at Oxford, where his brother William was acting as her chancellor. In 1144 he is described by the ‘Gesta’ as making Marlborough Castle a centre of predatory excursions, and as oppressing the clergy, a charge which is confirmed by the chronicle of Abingdon. About the same time he attended the court of the empress at Devizes. In 1149 he witnessed a charter of her son Henry at Devizes, and on the latter's accession he received a grant of crown lands in Wiltshire worth 82l. a year. Among them was Marlborough, which, however, he lost in 1158. He repeatedly witnessed Henry's charters, and was present at the council of Clarendon (1164). Not long afterwards he claimed in the archbishop's court Mundham, parcel of the archiepiscopal manor of Pagham, Sussex. Failing in his suit he made oath that justice was denied him, and appealed to the king. Henry summoned Becket to answer the complaint in his court, but the primate excused himself on the ground of ill-health when the case came on (14 Sept.) The king then summoned him to a great council at Northampton, where on 8 Oct. he was fined 500l. for not appearing in person in September. Next day he spoke on Marshal's case, alleging that the oath by which John had sworn to his refusal of justice was invalid, having been cunningly taken on a troparium. The king replied that John was detained in London as an official of the exchequer, but would come shortly (Becket Memorials, i. 30, ii. 390, iii. 50, iv. 40, 43). Becket's biographers take the case no further, but state that John and two of his sons died the same year. As to John, he was certainly dead at Michaelmas 1165; but it was not till a year later that his son paid relief for his lands (Pipe Rolls). It is possible that the two sons who died were Gilbert and Walter, the children of his first marriage. Gilbert did not survive him long, and the ‘Histoire’ says they died about the same time. By his second wife, Sibyl, sister to Earl Patrick of Salisbury, he left four sons: John, his successor; William [q. v.], afterwards Earl Marshal; Anselm; and Henry, afterwards bishop of Exeter. He appears to have largely increased his patrimony, and he held several estates as an under-tenant at his death. The ‘Gesta’ describes him, from Stephen's standpoint, as ‘a child of hell, and the root of all evil,’ but the Continuator of Florence terms him ‘a distinguished soldier,’ and the ‘Histoire’ praises his fidelity to the empress.
[Pipe Rolls; Rotuli Chartarum (Record Commission); Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Annales Monastici (Rolls Series); William of Malmesbury (ib.); Becket Memorials (ib.); Gesta Stephani (ib.); Hearne's Liber Niger Scaccarii; Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville; Meyer's Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal; Academy, 9 July 1892, p. 33.]