Sir Bertram de Criol (Criel, Crioill, Cyroyl, or Kerrial, etc.) (died 1256) was a senior and trusted Steward and diplomat to King Henry III. He served as Constable and Keeper of Dover Castle, Keeper of the Coast and of the Cinque Ports, Keeper of the receipts, expenses and wardships of the archbishopric of Canterbury, Constable of the Tower of London and Sheriff of Kent. Background and origins The historian Nicholas Vincent agrees with the Duchess of Cleveland in deriving the de Criol family from Criel-sur-Mer, Seine-Maritime, though Planché favoured Creil, Oise, and Dunlop offered Creully, Calvados. In Battle Abbey Roll lists the Duchesne recension has the name as "Escriols", the Anglicized "Kyriel" appearing in the earlier Auchinleck manuscript. Criel-sur-Mer is likely, because Robert, younger son of Robert, Count of Eu (d. c 1092), obtained it from his father, whose possession of Criel is shown from a charter to the Abbey of St-Michel du Tréport; in the Domesday Survey, Robert de Cruell held Esseborne (Ashburnham), Sussex, from his kinsman the Count of Eu, governor of the Rape of Hastings, and from these the de Criols and the ancient Ashburnham family are both supposed to descend. "Bartholomew" de Criol witnessed the confirmation charter of Henry, Count of Eu to Battle Abbey before 1140. Bertram, or Bertrand, de Criol was the eldest son of John de Criol and his wife Margery. John is known principally for a grant of the advowson of Sarre, in Thanet (to Leeds Priory, Kent) in 1194, title to which he had (perhaps by marriage) inherited from Elias de Crevecoeur, (son of that priory's founder), who had previously made a similar grant in 1138, confirmed by his Crevecoeur descendants. He may be the same John de Crioile alias Crihuil who granted to Henry de Cornhill his land and tenement at Wyvermerse (Essex) in c. 1179–82 in the presence of Prince John, Ranulf de Glanville, Hubert Walter, Roger fitzReinfrid and others, a residual claim to which was released to Hugh de Neville after 1216. Whether the identification of Cecilia, wife of Simon d'Avranches (Lord of Folkestone, died c. 1203) as a de Criol is correct, or whether she was the daughter of Simon son of Simon de Brixworth and Beatrice de Fraxineto, is undecided. Bertram de Crioll appears in the scutage for Poitiers in 1214. He has half a knight's fee in Sarre, from the Archbishop, in 1210–1212. Bertram's connection