Wem, United Kingdom

Stafford Castle and Wem were granted to him with a further 28 manors in the area bounded by Clive, Ellesmere, Tilley and Cresswell, with some of the manors within this area belonging to other lords (Prees to the Bishop of Lichfield, and Soulton to the King's Chapel in Shrewsbury Castle, for example).

Pantulf refused to participate in an 1102 rebellion against King Henry I led by Robert de Belesme and assisted the crown defeating it, by marching with the king on Shrewsbury, during which the roads in the area were found to be bad, thickly wooded, providing cover for archers: 6000 foot soldiers cut down the woods and opened up the roads. Hugo Pantulf, a descendant of William, was Baron of Wem in the mid 1100s: he attended the court of Richard the Lion Heart, was Sheriff of Shropshire, and likely attended the Crusades with the king, certainly paying scutage to towards his ransom.In 1986, the BBC's national celebrations for the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book focused on the town of Wem. This was because Wem was unique in having direct, unbroken male-line descendants of both its pre- and post-Conquest Manorial Lords: Pierre de Panthou and Dr. George Arden. The respective heirs were brought to the town for a special event, which was recorded for television and presented by historian Michael Wood.

The Norman town was probably enclosed by an earthwork: there is a record from the lord's steward of repairs to the town's enclosure in 1410, in which year the town had been "totally burnt and wasted by the Welsh rebels". There is some speculation that the town had walls by the 1400s, as Samuel Garbet recorded an annotation to Fabyan's Chronicle that Wem "was totally burnt to the ground, with its walls and castle" in the reign of Henry VI.

The supposed route of the walls or earthworks follows Noble Street, Wem Brook, the Roden and crossing the High Street between Leek Street and Chapel Street.

There were bars at the three entrances to the town, and a 1514 record exists of four men being employed to keep the bars on market days.

There is some thought that a market was held from the days of Pantuf, but King John certainly granted a charter in 1202. Initially, the permission was for a Sunday market. This was subsequently revised, in 1351, to a Thursday: this followed a decree of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Islip in the reign of Edward III that Sunday markets were banned. Wem's market day remains Thursday to this day.

The manor was held by some of the great baronial families: including the Earls of Arundel, and the Lords Dacre, Bradford and Barnard and, after the 14th century the lord of the manor was not resident.

During the course of 1483, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (linked by some historians with the murder of the Princes in the Tower), was engaged in rebellion against Richard III with Henry Tudor. By October of that year Buckingham's army were in the Hereford area, and fighting for survival and the campaign was unravelling in deteriorating weather; Buckingham's army deserted. Disguised as a simple labourer he fled north to Shropshire and went into hiding at Lacon Hall, the house of a local retainer, Ralph Bannister who betrayed him for £1000.

"he was disguised and digging a ditch at the time of his arrest; and on the approach of Thomas Mytton the sheriff, who came to apprehend him, he knelt down in the orchard wherein he was taken, and solemnly imprecated vengeance upon the traitor and his posterity, which curses are said to have been signally fulfilled...shortlie after [Bannister] had betrayed the duke his master, his sonne and heyre waxed mad, and so dyed in a bore's stye: his eldest daughter, of excellent beautie, was sodainly stricken with a foule leperye; his second sonne very marvellously deformed of his limmes and made decrepit; his younger sonne in a small puddel was strangled and drowned; and he, being of extreme age, arraigned and found gyltie of a murder, and by his clergye saved: And as for his thousand pounds, kyng Richard gave him not one farthing, howbeit some say he had a small office or a ferme to stop his mouth."

Buckingham was subsequently tried, convicted and executed for treason at Salisbury.

This incident is referred to by William Shakespeare in the play Richard III, in Act IV, scene iv: