Guillaume VII de Parthenay, Sire de Parthenay

BIOGRAPHY Guillaume VII de Parthenay, sire de Parthenay, was the son of Jean I de Parthenay, sire de Parthenay et de Semblecay and his second wife Marie de Beaujeu, daughter of Guichard VI 'le Grand', sire de Beaujeu and Jeanne de Genève. About 6 March 1346 he married Jeanne de Mathefelon, dame de Durtal, daughter of Thibaut V de Mathefelon and Luce de Goulaine. Guillaume and Jeanne had two daughters, Marie and Jeanne, both of whom would have progeny, and a son Jean. Marie in 1376 married Louis I 'le Chevalier Vert' de Châlons, comte de Tonnerre, who died in 1398. In 1391 Jeanne married Guillaume IV de Melun, comte de Tancarville, killed in Agincourt in 1415.

From 1351 Guillaume found himself temporarily the head of the barony of Parthenay because of the captivity of his father. He inherited in 1358 on his father's death, and quickly became an influential figure in Poitou. In his _Histoire de la ville de Parthenay,_ the scholar and advocate Bélisaire Ledan (1832-1897) said of Guillaume that he was the most distinguished man of his family since Josselin II (died 1086).

In 1358 the dauphin Charles, regent of the kingdom, appointed Guillaume his lieutenant-general in Poitou, Touraine and Saintonge. The treaty of Brétigny-Calais of 1361-62 placed Poitou under English control. Consequently Guillaume became a vassal of the king of England, and was obliged to serve Edward, the 'Black Prince', which he did faithfully. He took part in Edward's expedition to Spain to return Pedro 'the Cruel' to the throne of Castile, which culminated in Edward's victory in April 1367 at Najera. After the death of John Chandos in 1369, Guillaume was named a governor of Poitou.

Guillaume fought against Du Guesclin at the siege of Thouars in 1372, but after the French victory he, like other great Poitevin lords like Louis d'Harcourt, vicomte de Châtellerault, was forced to pay homage to Charles V, king of France. He then helped to drive the English from Poitou and Saintonge. He was named the king's lieutenant and entrusted with the protection of certain fortified towns. In 1384 the king of France made him responsible for maintaining the peace in Poitou.

On 25 September 1396 Guillaume fought in the Battle of Nicopolis, the largest and last large-scale Crusade of the Middle Ages, in which a French-Hungarian army under Emperor Sigismund was defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Bayezid I.

Guillaume died on 17 May 1401, and is interred in the wall of the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix in Parthenay, where his funerary sculpture and that of his wife Jeanne de Mathefelon can still be seen. He is shown in the armour of a knight, his feet resting on a dog symbolising fidelity, a symbol that was usually reserved for funerary sculptures of women.

Having a great love of poetry, Guillaume commissioned from his chaplain Coudrette a work in verse entitled _Le roman de Mélusine ou histoire des Lusignan_ ('the Romance of Mélusine, or the History of the Lusignans').

Source: http://roglo.eu/roglo?lang=fr;p=guillaume;n=de+parthenay;