Robert Walerand

Robert Walerand (died 1273), was Justiciar to King Henry III (1216–1272). He was throughout his reign one of the king's familiares. Among the king's household knights he stands in the same position as his friend John Mansel among the royal clerks. Walerand was most notably employed by the king in the ill-fated scheme of raising money from the barons for his second son Edmund to take up the crown of Sicily, offered by the Pope in 1254. His forceful exactions in that connection were one of the causes of the rebellion of Simon de Montfort and the Barons' War, which ended however with royal victory at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. His principal residence was Siston, Gloucestershire.

Walerand was the eldest son of William Walerand of Whaddon, Wiltshire, by his wife Isabel de Berkeley, daughter of Roger de Berkeley of Dursley, by her second marriage. The family was descended from Waleran Venator, "Waleran the Hunter", who held 51 manors in the Domesday Book of 1086, including Whaddon and several in Hampshire within the New Forest and is thus thought to have been an official of that royal forest. Robert's brother John Walerand, rector of Clent in Worcestershire, was in 1265 appointed seneschal and joint custodian of the Tower of London. His sister Alice Walerand was the mother of Alan Plugenet of Kilpeck and another sister, also named Alice, was abbess of Romsey Abbey.

In 1246 he received the custody of the estates formerly held by the heirs of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (d.1219) and in 1247 of those of John de Munchanes (Excerpta e Rot. Fin. i. 458, ii. 14). In Easter 1246 he was appointed Sheriff of Gloucestershire (List of Sheriffs to 1831, p. 49; Dugdale, Baronage, i. 670).

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