William de Mandeville inherited the estates of his father Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Domesday tenant-in-chief, around 1100.[2] He was Constable of the Tower of London at that time,[3] and thus keeper of the first person known to be imprisoned there for political reasons, Ranulf Flambard. Flambard's escape in February 1101 would have significant consequences for William.[4]
It is not known if William was in some way complicit in the escape of Flambard, or was simply a careless keeper. Regardless, as a punishment, in 1103 Henry I confiscated the three richest of William's Essex estates, Sawbridgeworth, Saffron Walden, and Great Waltham, comprising about a third of his entire holdings, as well as the constableship giving them to Eudo Dapifer, William’s father-in-law.[5][6] Little is known of William's activities after this.
Beatrice de Mandeville (d. 19 Apr. 1197), married William de Say (d. Aug. 1144).[10] Their granddaughter Beatrice de Say took some of the Mandeville inheritance to her husband, Geoffrey fitz Peter.
^George Edward Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. V (The St. Catherine Press, Ltd., London, 1926), p. 113
^K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People, I Domesday Book, (Boydell Press, 1999) p. 227
^Ronald Sutherland Gower, The Tower of London, Vol. ii (George Bell & Sons, 1902), p. 179
^ abJ. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, (Longmans, Green, 1892), p. 37
^ abC. Warren Hollister, Henry I, Editor Amanda Clark Frost (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 2003), p. 173
^ abNicholas Vincent, 'Warin and Henry fitz Gerald, the King’s Chamberlains: The Origins of the FitzGeralds Revisited,' Anglo-Norman Studies 21 (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1999) pp. 223-260
