Ralph de Greystoke, 1st Baron Greystoke

Ralph de Greystoke, 1st Baron Greystoke (15 August 1299 – 14 July 1323), was an English peer and landowner.

Descent and title Greystoke was the son of Robert fitz Ralph (heir and second son of Ralph Fitzwilliam ) and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Neville of Scotton, Lincolnshire.

Ralph Fitzwilliam descended from a family seated at (and named for) Grimthorpe, near Pocklington in the Yorkshire Wolds. The Greystoke family, though taking their name from estates in Cumberland, possessed large Yorkshire holdings centred at Nunburnholme, also near Pocklington: John Baron de Greystok, following the failure of his marriage and issue, granted his estates in fee simple to his cousin Ralph, Baron Fitzwilliam, son of his aunt Joan de Greystok, On John's death in 1306 the entire barony reverted to Fitzwilliam as feudal lord, who was sometimes called Lord of Greystoke.

William, Robert fitz Ralph's elder brother, predeceased their father, and Robert succeeded as Ralph Fitzwilliam's heir, when Fitzwilliam died between November 1316 and February 1317. his inquisitions recorded Ralph, then aged 18 years, as heir to his very extensive estates.

Career

Ralph obtained dispensation from Pope John XXII to marry Alice Audley (1300–1358), daughter of Hugh de Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Stratton Audley and Isolt le Rous, Ralph de Greystoke died on 14 July 1323 at Gateshead, County Durham.

The survivors Greystoke's widow, Alice, remarried to Ralph Neville, 2nd Baron Neville de Raby, who held guardianship of the Greystoke estates for William, Ralph Greystoke's heir, an infant when his father died. Alice's dower was assigned by the king in August 1323. Elizabeth, Ralph's mother, who long outlived both husband and son, made a will, and in 1346 died and was buried at Butterwyk, her heir being her grandson William (Ralph's son), then aged 24 years. William succeeded his father in 1342, as William de Greystoke, 2nd Baron Greystoke, and in 1344 by fine covenanted with his feoffees that the dowers of his mother and his grandmother should at their deaths revert to himself and to the male heirs of his body, and only in default of such issue of his own to descend to Robert, Ralph or William, the heirs of Ralph de Neville and Alicia. Such default did not occur.