Photos

Anyone looking for an instance of the exemplary royal servant of the middle ages could hardly do better than to examine the life of William Brewer. Aptly described by one modern writer as a ?die-hard Angevin?, his career, spanning fifty years, was a model of loyalty and usefulness. He served four Angevin kings, among them King John, who is reported to have attributed to Brewer the ability to know his master's mind; it was John, above all, who made Brewer extraordinarily wealthy, and by the time of his death he was the master of some sixty knights' fees focused in the southwest, with a newly created caput at Bridgwater, Somerset.