4.RALPH4FITZ-STEPHEN (THOMAS3, AIRARD2, STEPHENS1) was born in England, and died in England.
Notes for RALPHFITZ-STEPHEN: Stevens Genealoge. Some Descendants OF THE Fitz Stepben Famile IN ENGLAND AND NEW ENGLAND. BY C. ELLIS STEVENS, LL.D., D.C.L. F.S.A. (EDINBURGH) KNIGHT COMNANDER OF THE ORDER OF CHRIST OF PORTUGAL. NEW YORK PRIVATELY PRINTED 1904 RALPH FITZ STEPHEN, son and heir of Thomas Fitz Stephen, captain of the White Ship, flourished in the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I, and had issue;
I. RALPH, Baron of Wapley, of whom presently. II. William, who took Holy Orders, was a monk of the Benedictine Order at Canterbury Cathedral, a close friend of St. Thomas a'Becket, a judicial official in association with the great Archbishop, and eventually Chief Justice of the Circuit Court of England. He was present at the Council of Northampton, October 13, 1164, and was sitting near Becket when Hubert of Bosham gave the rash advice to the Archbishop to excommunicate his enemies if they laid hands on him. William induced the Archbishop to refuse this advice, as the latter afterwards confessed when during his exile he met William at St. Benedict's on the Loire.2 He was present in Canterbury Cathedral and an eye witness to the assassination of Becket. And he subsequently wrote the "Life of St.Thomas"--which is the principal historical authority for Becket's biography.1 In this work he introduced a description of the city of London as it appeared at that time -- being "by far the most graphic and elaborate account of London during the twelfth century",2 and one of the earliest references to any European capital. This account has been published in Stow's "Survey of London", and in Hearne's edition of Leland's "Itinerary". The "Life of St. Thomas" was first printed in Sparks' "Historicae Anglican‘ Scriptores" 1723. The chief later editions are those of Dr. Giles, 1845, and Rev. J. C. Robertson, 1877. William Fitz Stephen appears to have escaped most of the disadvantages of intimacy with Becket, and has himself preserved a Latin poem of some ninety lines which he composed and presented to King Henry II, in the chapel of Bruhull, in return for which the King granted him a pardon. In 1171-90 he was High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, part of the time in association with his brother Ralph.1 In 1176 he was appointed a national judge on the establishment of Circuit Courts, and was placed by Henry II at the head of the six judicial circuits, into which the kingdom was then divided. His circuit included Gloucestershire, and his court decisions are recorded in that, and during four following years in fourteen other counties. His name appears as Chief Justice Itinerant so late as the first year of the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion.2 The earliest known use of the seal in this family is recorded of him, 1131, at the chapel of Harscombe, in attesting a deed between Roger, Prior of Lathbury Abbey, and Roger Fitz Alan--his manuscript of his history among the Lansdowne volumes (No. 398) in the British Museum, and a fragment in the Bodlian Library at Oxford.
1 The historian Hume who relies on William Fitz Stephen mainly for his facts about Becket, gives a curious illnstration of the social conditions of the period, Vol. II, p. 15. "His historian and secretary, Fitz Stephens mentions among other particulars, that his appartments were every day in winter covered with clean straw or hay, and in summer with green rushes and boughs, lest the gentlemen who paid court to him and who could not by reason of their great number find a place at table should soil their fine clothes by sitting on a dirty floor." He refers to a fendal provision by which the Lordship of Aylesbury was held, which required on the King's visits straw for the floor in winter and "grass or herbs" in summer.
2
1 Cyclop‘dia of National Biography, Vol. XIX, 211, 212.
2 Vit. S. Thom‘, 12, 59. Children of RALPHFITZ-STEPHEN are:
