William I DE CANTELOU , King's Steward

  General Notes:

http://www.geneajourney.com/cntelou.html
Cantelou of Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, and Calne,
Wiltshire, England
William I de Cantelou, King's Steward, b abt 1160, of Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, England, d 7 Apr 1239. He md Mesceline de Braci abt 1182, daughter of Audulf de Braci. She was b abt 1167.
Children of William I de Cantelou and Mesceline de Braci were:

William II de Cantelou b abt 1185.
Daughter de Cantelou b abt 1190, of Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, England. She md (poss/prob) Thurstan de Montfort abt 1204, son of Henry de Montfort.
Walter de Cantelou, Bishop of Worcester, b abt 1192, of Aston Cantlow, Warwickshire, d 1266.
Wikipedia
William I de Cantilupe (died 7 April 1239) (anciently Cantelow, Cantelou, Canteloupe, etc, Latinised to de Cantilupo) was an Anglo-Norman baron and royal administrator.

Cantilupe was born c. 1159 in Buckinghamshire, the son of Walter de Cantilupe, recorded in 1166 as a minor landowner in Essex and Lincolnshire, who was a younger brother of Fulk de Cantilupe (died 1217/18), Sheriff of Berkshire in 1200/1. The family probably originated from the Norman manor which is now the small hamlet of Canteloup in Normandy, 11 miles east of Caen.

In 1198 he was Steward to John, Count of Mortain, the future King John(1199'961216), in which year his uncle Fulk de Cantilupe was also a member of the Count's household. From 1200 to 1204 he served as Sheriff of Worcestershire and in 1204 as Under-Sheriff of Herefordshire. In 1205 he took part in the ineffectual expedition to Poitou. In 1207, he was Sheriff of Worcestershire, serving until the end of the reign of King John in 1216. In 1209, following his appointment as Sheriff of Warwickshire and Sheriff of Leicestershire, his main residence became Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.

Cantilupe was granted several manors formerly held by rebel barons during 1215-16, at the time of the signing of Magna Carta (1215). He was commissioned by King John to negotiate the return of such rebels to peaceable relations. He served as gaoler of baronial hostages, which action probably gained him the description by the contemporary chronicler Roger of Wendover (died 1236) as one of John's "evil counsellors".

In 1204, he was granted the Warwickshire manor of Aston, to which as was usual, was appended his family name. The location now has a modern cartographical spelling as "Cantlow", one of the many ancient variants of the family name. This manor had previously been held by William the Chamberlain de Tankerville before it escheated to the crown.

In 1205, he was granted the manor of Eaton, Bedfordshire, (from 16th-century "Eaton Bray") which became the caput of the Cantilupe feudal barony. The grant, for knight-service of one knight, was in exchange for the manor of Coxwell, Berkshire, which had been previously granted to him. Eaton had been held at the time of William the Conqueror by the latter's brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, but later escheated to the crown. At Eaton, Cantilupe built a castle.

Following the death of King John in 1216, many of his appointees to governorships of royal castles were reluctant to hand over their castles to the regency council which governed during the minority of his son, the future King Henry III (1216'961272). They believed themselves obliged to hold their castles until Henry should have achieved 14 years of age, when he would be able to follow his own policy. These many refusals met with a forceful response from the council.

In 1217, under the regency council, during which year he was a Baron of the Exchequer, Cantilupe was at the siege of Mountsorrel Castle, Leicestershire, which was razed to the ground, and was also at the Second Battle of Lincoln. He served the council at the siege of Bedford in 1224.[4] He later served in Wales (1228 and 1231) and Brittany (1230).

William married Mesceline DE BRACI, daughter of Audulf DE BRACI and Unknown, about 1182. (Mesceline DE BRACI was born about 1167.)