no letters patent or charters until the king came of age (Fœdera, i. 152). But the fifth crusade must have offered a convenient opportunity to him and others. In 1219 he sailed for the Holy Land along with Earl Saer of Winchester and Earl William of Arundel. Before he arrived the crusading host had been diverted to the siege of Damietta. There he seems to have arrived along with Saer de Quincy and other English, at the same time as the cardinal legate Pelagius (Flores Hist. iv. 44; Matt. Paris, iii. 41). This was in the autumn of 1219 (Kugler, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, p. 319). Saer de Quincy died on 3 Nov.('Ann. Wav.' in Ann. Mon. ii. 292). This date makes impossible the statement of Walter of Coventry that they only arrived after Damietta had been captured (ii. 246). The town fell into the crusaders' hands on 6 Nov. Fitzwalter, therefore, though he is not mentioned, must have taken part in the latter part of the siege (see for all points connected with; the crusade Röhricht, 'Die Belagerung von Damiette' in Von Raumer's Hist. Taschenbuch for 1876, and his other article in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, 1876). Eracles, in 'Recueil des Histor. des Croisades,' ii. 343, says that Fitzwalter arrived in the seventh month of 1219 (cf. also Publications de la Société de l'Orient Latin, Série Historique, iii. 66, 62, 65, 69).
The crusaders remained in Egypt until August 1221. But Fitzwalter had gone home sick ('Ann. Dunst.' in Ann, Mon, iii. 66), probably at some earlier period. He spent the rest of his life peaceably in England, thoroughly reconciled now to the government of Henry III. He must have by this time become well advanced in years. He was called 'Robert Fitzwalter, senior,' in the list of executors of the charter, and his son, presumably Robert Fitzwalter, junior, was taken prisoner along with him at Lincoln. On 11 Feb. 1225 Fitzwalter was one of the witnesses of Henry III's third confirmation of the great charter ('Ann. Burton.' in Ann. Mon. i. 232). In June 1230 he was one of those assigned to hold the assize of arms in Essex and Hertfordshire (Shirley, Royal Letters, i. 375). He died on 9 Dec. 1235 ('Ann. Theok.' in Ann, Mon. i. 99; Matt. Paris, iii. 334), and was buried before the high altar at Dunmow priory, the chief foundation of his house. He is described by Matthew Paris (iii. 334) as a 'noble baron, illustrious by his birth, and renowned for his martial deeds.' Administration of his goods and chattels was granted to his executors on 16 Dec. (Excerpta e Rot. Finium, i. 294). His heir, Walter, was at the time under age, so that the son who fought with him at Lincoln must have been dead (ib. i. 301). This Walter (d. 1257) must have been either a younger son or a grandson. After the death of Gunnor (she was alive in 1207) it is said that Fitzwalter married a second wife, Rohese, who survived him. He had also a daughter, Christina, who married William Mandeville, earl of Essex (Doyle, Official Baronage, i. 685).
A large legendary and romantic history gradually gathered round the memory of the first champion of English liberty. A picturesque tale, first found in the manuscript chronicle of Dunmow (MS. Cotton. Cleop. C. 3, f. 29), and reproduced in substance in the 'Monasticon' (ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, vi. 147), tells how Fitzwalter had a very beautiful daughter named Matilda, who indignantly rejected the immoral advances of King John. At last, as the maiden proved obdurate, John caused her to be poisoned, so that the bitterest sense of personal wrong drove Fitzwalter to take up the part of a constitutional leader. So generally was the story believed that an alabaster figure on a grey altar-tomb in Little Dunmow Church is still sometimes pointed out as the effigy of the unfortunate Matilda. Several poems and plays have been based upon this picturesque romance. In them the chaste Matilda is curiously mixed up with Maid Marian, the mistress of Robin Hood. Such are the plays called 'The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, afterwards called Robin Hood, with his Love to Chaste Matilda, the Lord Fitzwater's daughter, afterwards his faire Maid Marian,' and 'The Death of Robin Hood with the lamentable Tragedy of Chaste Matilda, his faire Maid Marian, poisoned at Dunmowe by King John.' Both were printed in 1601, and were written by Henry Chettle [q. v.] and Anthony Munday [q. v.] They are reprinted in the eighth volume of Hazlitt's 'Dodsley.' Michael Drayton [q. v.] also published in 1594 a poetical account of 'Matilda, the faire and chaste Daughter of the Lord Robert Fitzwalter,' as well as two letters in verse, purporting to be written between her and King John. Before 1639 Robert Davenport [q. v.] wrote another play, 'The Tragedy of King John and Matilda.' It was also believed in the seventeenth century that Robert Fitzwalter, 'or one of his successors,' was the founder of the famous Dunmow custom of giving a flitch of bacon to the couple that had never repented of their union for a year and a day.
