William de Warenne

Early life William was the son of Reginald de Warenne, a royal justice and Sheriff of Sussex. His mother Alice had been heiress to the feudal baron of Wormegay in Norfolk, and it passed to William following his father's death. In 1195 Warenne served as a royal justice at Oxford with Hubert Walter, William Brewer and Geoffrey of Buckland. Warenne served again as a justice in 1198–1199 and then again during the first two years of the reign of John. His last service as a justice was in 1200. In 1200 John removed Warenne as a royal justice and appointed him as one of the four Justices for the Jews, replacing Simon of Pattishall. Warenne continued in that office until 1209. Besides judicial duties, Warenne also served in other capacities, working with Barre and Osbert fitzHervey to collect the carucage in 1194 in eastern England. In 1199 he again served with Barre and fitzHervey to impose amercements in the counties of Cambridge, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

As a reward for his service, Warenne was given custody of a number of lands confiscated from Prince John, including the Honour of Gloucester, which Warenne administered for the royal government from 1194 to 1196 during the captivity of King Richard I. Warenne's career was closely tied to Hubert Walter's, who promoted his career as a justice. Besides his royal service, Walter employed Warenne as a justice on ecclesiastical matters and sent him in 1194 to York to deal with complaints by the cathedral chapter of York Minster against their archbishop, Geoffrey. A sign of further ties between the two was that Warenne served as a witness on Walter's charters founding a monastery at West Dereham.

Marriage and family Warenne offered King John 500 marks for licence to marry Melisent, the widow of Richard de Montfichet and mother of Richard de Montfichet, lord of the manor of Stansted in Essex. Warenne's only surviving child and sole-heiress was his daughter, Beatrice, whom he married to Doun Bardolf, the holder of a one-half moiety of the feudal barony of Shelford in Nottinghamshire. Beatrice married secondly Ralph, and thirdly Hubert de Burgh. Beatrice had a son, William Bardolf, by her first marriage, who became the eventual heir of his maternal grandfather. Bardolf's rights to the barony were controlled by Beatrice's third husband, who did not relinquish them until his death in 1243. and was buried in St Mary Overy Priory (now Southwark Cathedral) in Southwark, Surrey. He gave gifts to the priory of St Mary Overy, to Carrow Abbey where one of his sisters was a nun, and to Lewes Priory, where his father had become a monk shortly before his death.