Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pantulf, William
PANTULF or PANTOLIUM, WILLIAM (d. 1112?), Norman knight, was one of Roger of Montgomery's tenants in the district of Hiêmes in the diocese of Séez. His mother's name was Beatrice, and she held lands ‘apud Fossas’ (not identified). William received large grants of land, and held authority in Roger's earldom of Shrewsbury, founded after 1071. He held eleven manors in Odenet Hundred, and Wem was their head. In 1073–4 he was in Normandy, and gave the two churches of Noron, near Falaise, and St. Evreux in Ouche, with forty marks to establish a cell at Noron, and tithes of all the churches and places and goods which should belong to him. The monks of St. Evreux contributed 16l. to a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Giles, near Nismes, which he was about to make. On 23 Oct. 1077 he was present with William I at the consecration of the church of Bec, and then went with a former abbot of St. Evreux to serve Robert Guiscard in Apulia. He was treated with honour, and was offered a gift of three cities if he would stay, but he returned to Normandy. In December 1082 he fell under suspicion of complicity in the murder of the Countess Mabel, Earl Roger's mother, who had deprived Pantulf of his castle of Piretum (Perai en Saonnais). Pantulf had had dealings with the murderer, Hugh of Jalgey, and took refuge with his family at the monastery of St. Evreux. He submitted to the ordeal of hot iron before the king's court at Rouen, and was acquitted. He gave four silk altar-cloths from Apulia to St. Evreux as a thank-offering. His estates were confiscated by Earl Roger (Ordericus Vitalis, ii. 433), but in 1085–6 he was in possession of twenty-nine manors in Shropshire, and others in Staffordshire and Warwickshire. After the death of William I, in 1087, Pantulf revisited Apulia, and in June 1092 gave the relics of St. Nicholas to Noron. Robert of Bellême [q. v.] deprived him of his lands for an unknown reason, and when Bellême rebelled, in 1102, Pantulf offered him his services. They were rejected, and he turned to Henry I, who put Stafford Castle in his custody, with two hundred soldiers. Pantulf detached Bellême's Welsh ally, Prince Iorwerth ab Bleddyn [q. v.], by negotiation, and he persuaded the garrison of Bridgnorth to surrender to the king. The fief of Roger de Courcelles was probably his reward for these services (Eyton, Shropshire, viii. 46).
In 1112 Pantulf and his wife Lescelina and sons Philip, Ivo, and Arnulf confirmed their gifts to St. Evreux, and granted sixty marks in silver to the new church, which William did not live to see completed. Pantulf died about 1112. His eldest son, Philip, succeeded to his Norman, his second son, Robert, to his English, estates.
Robert (fl. 1130), according to the cartulary of the nunnery of Caen, robbed the nuns of six pounds of silver (Ordericus, ed. Le Prévost, iii. 221 n.) In the Bedfordshire pipe roll, 1130 (p. 104), an entry is found concerning a trial by combat between him and Hugh Malbanc, whose estates were contiguous to Robert's.
Ivo (d. 1176?), probably Robert's son, succeeded him. He attested a charter of Stone, Staffordshire, 1130–5, a royal charter in December 1137–8 (Pipe Roll), and made grants to Shrewsbury and Combermere Abbeys, 1141–55. He appears in 1165 in the ‘Liber Niger’ (ed. Hearne, i. 144), and in the Staffordshire pipe rolls of 1167 and 1168–9. He made a grant to Haughmond Abbey in 1175–1176, and died about 1176. He had three sons by a first wife—Hugh [q. v.], Hameline, and Brice, and two by Alice de Verdon—William and Norman (Erdeswicke, Staffordshire, p. 493).
[Ordericus Vitalis, ed. Le Prévost, vols. ii. iii. and iv.; Eyton's Shropshire, ix. 157 sqq. and passim, and Court and Itinerary of Henry II; Dugdale's Warwickshire, i. 32, 90–5; Nichols's Leicestershire, iii. 693, 727, 860, 864; Erdeswick's Staffordshire, pp. 14, 139, 493; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 434; Gaston le Hardy's paper on Un Gentilhomme Normand au XI. Siècle in Mém. Soc. Antiq. Norman. 3rd ser. vol. vi. Dec. 1867, p. 735.]Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.214
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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