Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke
Anglo-Norman nobleman (1194-1241)
Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke (c. 1194/1207 – 27 June 1241) was the third son of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke and Countess Isabel, the daughter of Richard de Clare. He was a member of the Marshal family.
Early life
By calculating back from the date of his coming of age, Gilbert must have been the child with which his mother was pregnant during the insurrection against the Marshals in Leinster in 1207, and so was born in Ireland at the beginning of his father's political exile there. He would have been about twelve when his father died, and the Marshal biographer calls him then a 'clerk' which signifies he was then in minor orders.
He was credited with the title 'magister' (master) in 1234 which he only would have acquired from a period of advanced study at a major school. The name of his private tutor is known to have been Master Henry of Hoo. In 1227, he was presented to Westminster abbey's wealthy living of Oakham in Rutland at which point he was still an acolyte one of the minor clerical orders. His orders did not stop him taking a sexual partner, by whom he had a daughter Isabel. He was destined at the time for a distinguished career in the church, and indeed was reconciled to it, as he built a large mansion for himself in Oakham.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q448342. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1194, 1207, 1241 and 1234.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.