William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey

William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey, Lord of Lewes, Seigneur de Varennes (died 1088), was a Norman nobleman created Earl of Surrey under William II Rufus. He is among the few known from documents to have fought under William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. At the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086, he held extensive lands in 13 counties, including the Rape of Lewes, a tract now divided between the ceremonial counties of East Sussex and West Sussex.

Early career

William was a son of Rodulf or Ralph de Warenne and Emma, and reported to have descended from a sibling of Duchess Gunnor, wife of Duke Richard I. Chronicler Robert of Torigny reported, in his additions to the '' Gesta Normannorum Ducum'' of William of Jumièges, that William de Warenne and Anglo-Norman baron Roger de Mortimer were both sons of an unnamed niece of Gunnor. Unfortunately, Robert's genealogies are somewhat confused – elsewhere he gives Roger as the son of William, and yet again makes both sons of Walter de Saint Martin – while several of Robert's stemmata seem to contain too few generations.K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, "Aspects of Torigny's Genealogy Revisited", ''Nottingham Medieval Studies'' 37:21–27 Orderic Vitalis describes William as Roger's ''consanguineus'' – literally a "cousin", more generally a term of close kinship not typically used to describe brothers – and Roger de Mortimer appears to have been a generation older than him.

Charters report several earlier men associated with Warenne. A Radulf de Warenne appears in two charters, one dating between 1027 and 1035, the other from about 1050 and naming his wife, Beatrice. In 1059, a Radulf and wife Emma appear along with their sons Radulf and William. These occurrences have typically been taken to represent a single Radulf with successive wives, of which Beatrice was the mother of William and hence identical to the Gunnorid niece described by Robert de Torigny,G. H. White, "The Sisters and Nieces of Gunnor, Duchess of Normandy", ''Genealogist'', n. s. 37:57–65. yet the 1059 charter explicitly names Emma as William's mother. Re-evaluation of surviving charters led Katherine Keats-Rohan to suggest that Robert of Torigny compressed two generations into one, as he appears to have done elsewhere, with Radulf (I) and Beatrice being parents of Radulf (II) de Warenne and of Roger de Mortimer – a Roger son of Radulf de Warenne appears in a charter dated 1040/1053 – while Radulf (II) in turn married Emma, and as attested by the 1059 charter, they had as sons Radulf (III) as the heir in Normandy, and William. Associations with the village of Vascœuil led to identification of the Warenne progenitrix with a widow Beatrice, daughter of Tesselin, Viscount of Rouen, who appeared there in 1054–1060. Robert of Torigny shows a different Viscount of Rouen to have married a niece of Gunnor, perhaps suggesting that it was through Beatrice that William de Warenne was linked with Gunnor's family.

William was from the hamlet of Varenne, near Arques-la-Bataille, Duchy of Normandy, now in the canton of Bellencombre, Seine Maritime.K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, ''Domesday People, a Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166'' (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), p. 480. At the beginning of Duke William's reign, Radulf de Warenne was not a major landholder, while William de Warenne as a second son did not stand to inherit the family's small estates. During the rebellions of 1052–1054, the young William de Warenne proved himself loyal to the Duke and played a strong part in the Battle of Mortemer for which he was rewarded with lands confiscated from his kinsman, Roger of Mortemer, including the Castle of Mortimer and most of its lands. At about the same time, he acquired lands at Bellencombre including the castle that became the centre of William de Warenne's holdings in Normandy.G. E. Cokayne, ''The Complete Peerage'', Vol. XII/1 (London: The St. Catherine Press, 1953), p. 493.William Farrer, ''Early Yorkshire Charters'', Volume VIII; The Honour of Warenne (The Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1949), p. 3.

Conquest of England

William was among the Norman barons summoned to the Council of Lillebonne by Duke William when the decision was made to oppose King Harold II's accession to the throne of England. He fought at Hastings and was rewarded with numerous holdings. Domesday records his lands stretching over 13 counties, including the important Rape of Lewes in Sussex, several manors in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, the major manor of Conisbrough in Yorkshire and Castle Acre in Norfolk, which became his headquarters or caput