Marshal at Bannockburn deprived him of a rival, and in 1316 the marshalship was definitively granted to Thomas of Brotherton [q. v.], the king's brother. Before long Segrave resented Edward's policy, and attached himself closely to Thomas, earl of Lancaster [see Thomas, (1278?–1322)]. In 1317 Edward issued orders for his apprehension, which were, however, cancelled on 24 Sept. (Cal. Close Rolls, 1313–18, p. 569). In 1318 he was serving under Thomas of Lancaster against the Scots. In October 1320 he appeared at the Westminster parliament as one of Earl Thomas's proxies (Ann. Paulini, p. 290). He died in 1322.
Segrave married Alice, daughter of Geoffrey of Armenters, who had previously married Gerard Lisle. This union brought to Nicholas the manor of Stowe. The only child of the marriage was a daughter Matilda, who married Edmund de Bohun, a kinsman and political supporter of the Earl of Hereford (Rot. Parl. i. 410). She was thirty years old at her father's death. The barony thus became extinct, and Stowe passed to Alice's son by her former marriage (Baker, Northamptonshire, i. 441).
In the poem on the siege of Carlaverock, Segrave is described as one ‘whom nature had adorned in body and enriched in heart.’ The ‘Flores Historiarum’ (iii. 121) describes him as ‘unus de præstantioribus regni.’ His power centred in Northamptonshire, where he had his main seat at Stowe ‘of the nine churches’ near Daventry, and at his new castle of Barton Segrave. He also owned the manor of Weston in the same county, and the manors of Haydon, Essex, and Peasenhall, Suffolk, about which last he had a long suit with Alice, widow of Earl Roger Bigod (Cal. Close Rolls, 1307–13, pp. 152, 282, 504–5). Thomas de Flore, the executor of his will, had not wound up the business of his estate so late as 1329 (Cal. Close Rolls, 1327–30, p. 572).
[Rolls of Parliament, vol. i.; Rymer's Fœdera, vols. i. and ii.; Parliamentary Writs; Flores Historiarum, vol. iii.; Ann. Londin. and Ann. Paulini in Stubbs's Chronicle of Edward I and Edward II, both in Rolls Ser.; Hist. Documents relating to Scotland; Calendars of Close and Patent Rolls, Edward I and Edward II; Chronicle of Lanercost (Maitland Club); Nicolas's Siege of Carlaverock, p. 11, with a short biography, pp. 122–5; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 675; Gough's Scotland in 1298; Baker's Northamptonshire, vol. i.]
SEGRAVE or SEDGRAVE, STEPHEN de (d. 1241), chief justiciar, was son of Gilbert de Segrave, called also Gilbert, son of Hereward, who in 1166 held Segrave in Leicestershire as a fourth part of a knight's fee, under William, earl of Warwick. He took orders, but from a clerk became a knight. In 1201 he was sued as unjustly occupying a virgate of land in Segrave that had belonged to Thomas FitzGilbert, evidently his brother, then an outlaw. He was made constable of the Tower of London, with a salary of 50l., in 1203, and was fortifying it at the king's cost in 1221. Out of regard for Hugh le Despenser, Segrave's brother-in-law, John in 1208 remitted half a debt of 112 marks that, as his father's heir, he owed the crown. Remaining faithful to the king, he received from him in 1215 the lands of Stephen de Gaunt in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, and in 1216 the manor of Kineton in Warwickshire in fee, at a yearly rent. After the accession of Henry III his importance and offices rapidly increased. From 1217 onwards he was prominent as a judge, sitting at Westminster in 1218 and later, and being constantly employed as a justice itinerant, as in Bedfordshire in 1217–18, in Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1220, in Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Derbyshire in 1226–7, and in Yorkshire in 1231. In 1219 he was sent on the king's business to the legate, receiving payment for his expenses. He was given the custody of Sauvey Castle, Leicestershire, in 1220, in which year he received a grant from the king of the manor of Alconbury in Huntingdonshire. He was sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire from 1221 to 1223, and of Lincolnshire from 1222 to 1224. From 1228 to 1234 he was sheriff of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, and from 1229 to 1234 of Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire. His wealth increased, and he bought lands. In 1229 he made a simoniacal bargain with the pope's envoy Stephen, with reference to tithes. He was then one of the king's chief councillors, and on Henry's departure for Brittany in 1230 was left one of the justiciaries of the kingdom [see under Neville, Ralph, (d. 1244)]. In 1232 he bought the profits, other than the ferms paid into the exchequer, of the counties of Bedford, Buckingham, Warwick, and Leicester for life. On the fall of Hubert de Burgh [q. v.] in that year, the king on 29 July appointed Segrave chief justiciar, though he was only styled a knight (Matt. Paris, iii. 220), and gave him the custody of the castles of Dover, Rochester, Canterbury, Windsor, Odiham, Hertford, and Colchester. He was violently hostile to Hubert, and pressed the king to imprison him, and even to put him to death as a traitor.
Segrave as chief justiciar gave his full support to the system of administration by
