his life. He may have been out of favour with the new king, Henry V. Henry—as Prince of Wales—had fallen out with his father a few years before, and Ros had supported King Henry over his son. William Ros died in Belvoir Castle on 1 November 1414. His wife survived him by twenty-four years; his son and heir, John, was still a minor. John later fought at Agincourt in 1415, and died childless in France in 1421. The Barony of Ros was then inherited by William's second son, Thomas, who also died in military service in France seven years after his brother. Background and career under Richard II The exact date of William Ros's birth is unknown. He was described in 1394 as about twenty-three years old, which would place his birth year around 1370. The Ros family was an important one in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and the historian Chris Given-Wilson has described them as one of the greatest fourteenth-century baronial families to never receive an earldom. Ros's father was Thomas Ros, 4th Baron Ros, who fought in the Hundred Years War under Edward III (particularly in the Poitiers campaign of 1356). Several years before William's birth, King Edward instructed Thomas Ros to remain with his army on his Irish estates "to prevent the loss and destruction of the country". Thomas married Beatrice, the widow of Maurice Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond and daughter of the first Earl of Stafford. He died in Uffington, Lincolnshire in June 1384, and his eldest son John—William's elder brother—inherited the title as fifth Baron Ros. Ros also had two younger brothers, Robert and Thomas, "of whom nothing is known". John's career was brief. By 1382 he had married Mary, half-sister of the Earl of Northumberland. John fought for the new king, Richard II (heir of Edward III, who died in 1377), in the 1385–86 Scottish campaign and with the Earl of Arundel in France the following year. During the early 1390s, John made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; he died in Paphos on 6 August 1393, on his return journey to England. John and Mary had not produced an heir, and (although he was never expected to succeed to the barony) Ros was next in line. He inherited as sixth Baron Ros, by which time he had been knighted and appointed to the Privy Council. Inheritance and marriage The Ros estates were primarily in the east