FitzAlan

The FitzAlans were an Anglo-Norman house descended from Alan fitz Flaad, a Breton knight who came to England with Henry I; they shared ancestry with the royal Stuarts. As Marcher lords they held Oswestry and Clun; marriage to the d'Aubigny heiress brought them Arundel Castle and earldom in 1267.

The ninth earl Edmund stood by Edward II and the Despensers and was executed in 1326, but his son Richard recovered the title in 1331. Richard fought at Sluys in 1340 and commanded at Crécy in 1346.

The next earl, another Richard, joined the Lords Appellant against Richard II and was beheaded in 1397; the family was restored under Henry IV in 1400. Henry FitzAlan, the last male, died in 1580, and Arundel passed through his daughter Mary to the Howard dukes of Norfolk.