Mortain was captured at the battle of Tinchebrai (1106) and forfeited his possessions. Some years later, Henry bestowed the comtéship on his nephew Stephen, who became king in 1135. On Stephen's death (1154) his surviving son William became count of Mortain, but when William died childless in 1159 the title was resumed by Henry II. On the accession of Richard I (1189) he granted it to his brother John, who was thenceforth known as count of Mortain until he ascended the throne (1199). With his loss of Normandy the "comté" was lost, but after the recapture of the province by the
Henry V, Count Palatine of the Rhine Brittany in April 1203, Henry effectively became the heir of his maternal uncle John Lackland to the English throne, this ended though when John's son (the future king Henry III) was born in October 1207. After he inherited further significant properties in Saxony from his brother William in 1213, Henry ceded the Palatinate to his son Henry the Younger and moved north. After his son's early death the next year, he left his Welf properties to his nephew, William's son Otto the Child, who became the first Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1235. Henry died in 1227 and is entombed in