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- Robert De Greidley and his sisters were under age at the time of their father's death and so they were all under the guardianship of their uncle Gilbert Bassett in 1191. Robert came of age in 1196 when he had scutage of his tenants and attended the King into Normandy. After marrying his wife Margaret, he acquired the lands of Werlingham and Weston in Suffolk. Between 1195 and 1203 he and his knights were almost every year engaged in military service. In 1203 he, along with other men were requested by the king as a favour to give him the aid of their men in the work then being done upon the ditches of Lancaster castle. He was made Baron of Manchester on 25 June 1204. De Greidley was one of the barons who were prominent in extorting the Charter of Liberties from King John, along with other barons taking up arms against him, for which cause as a "Christmas gift", a papal bull dated 16 December 1215 for a crime against The Church as well as King John thirty-one barons along with twenty-nine other barons who were considered to be "aiders and abettors" underwent the sentence of excommunication by the Pope. De Greidley, one of the aiders and abettors had his estates seized by the King John, who gave his Periton to Ralph Gernon and placed Adam de Yealand in charge of the castle of Manchester and the lands dependent upon it. De Greidley was present at the signing of the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215 at Runymede, and on 20 June 1215, he was at Runymede in King John's company. In 1217-18 Henry III restored to Robert his estates in Oxford, Lincoln and Rutland. Those in Lancaster had been previously restores. In the same year he was summoned to Parliament at Nottingham held that year to raise money. Also in 1217 he was taken prisoner in the Battle of Lincoln.
The Magna Carta resulted from an uprising of the Barons against the king in a struggle to reduce the king's absolute power and to produce laws protecting the rights of individuals and communities which the king should be bound to observe. This was the beginning of a struggle throughout the 14th century between kings and barons, resulting ultimately in the beginnings of the development of constitutional law. In 1218 Robert was with the king's forces at the siege of Neward, and in 1221 at the siege of Bytham Castle. The same years he De Greidley was appointed with three others to pursue and arrest the rebel Richard Siward with his adherents for opposing the king in the siege of Bytham Castle. In 1224 he was with the king's forces at the siege of Bedford, and in 1225 witnessed the reissue of the Magna Carta. De Greidley was appointed with Richard de Copeland a justice of the forest in Lancaster for the perambulation and disafforesting of those places so to be dealt with according to the "carte de foresta." In 1222 he paid to have a fair yearly at his manor of Manchester on the eve of the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, and in 1227, when the king attained his majority, obtained a charter of this privilege. He also obtained a charter to hold fairs at Swineshead in Lincoln. Robert De Greidley died in 1230 after returning to England from an expedition to Poicton, where he was serving the King at Nantes and where his health had been undermined by exposure and improper food. The inquest of service of 1212 listed among his properties: in Lincoln - Bloxholme, Swineshead, Sixhills, Hainton, Bracebridge, Canwick; in Norfolk - Tunstead; in Suffolk - Risby and Willisham. [The English Ancestry of Thomas Gridley of Windsor and Hartford, Connecticut (1612-1655) by Thomas Boslooper, PhD]
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1173 - 1231 (58 years)
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