Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex to the crown, perhaps in part due to a large fine levied by Henry I due to his displeasure at the escape of an important political prisoner when William was in charge of the Tower of London. The King also held the substantial estate of Geoffrey's maternal grandfather Eudo "le Dapifer" to which Geoffrey laid claim. Geoffrey gained Eudo's lands and his father's offices during the shifting tides of fortunes of the two competitors for the English throne after King Henry I's death in 1135. He initially supported Stephen, who sometime in 1140 (most likely May of that year) made
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