and the souls of his ancestors. The inquest, held in 1301-02, was favourable. The Barons' letter In 1301 Ralph FitzWilliam (as "Dominus de Grimthorpe") signed the letter of the barons to the pope, at the Lincoln parliament: John de Greystok, who was not at the parliament, also signed. Ralph was also employed as a representative of the East Riding before the exchequer in 1300, and as the king's agent was empowered to 'use all friendly ways' to exact a purveyance of grain from the Yorkshire monasteries in 1302. After a call in January 1303 to join his arms and force with John de Segrave to repress the Scots (an expedition defeated at the Battle of Roslin in February), he was summoned to attend Aymer de Valence with 13 men at arms in May 1303: "he to be retained and not allowed to leave the King's service as he did once before, giving a bad example to others, which offence he can only amend by now remaining constantly." Walter of Guisborough tells that in 1304 Ralph was commissioned with John de Barton to act as a justice to execute the statute of trailbaston (an itinerant judicial commission) in Yorkshire; but in the commissions of trailbaston in 1305 his name does not appear. In 1303 he sought seisin of his moiety title of one-fourth part of eighteen manors in Northumberland, held in chief by the service of an eighth part of two knight's fees, arising from his transaction by fine (under royal licence) with John Yeland, but which had been subinfeudated and were claimed by the tenants under Custom of England. Hearings in the Trinity term of 1304 suggest that Marjory, Ralph's wife, was by then dead, and a dispute had arisen between a younger John Yeland and Marjory's nephew John of Lancaster. Problems over the estate continued in 1313. Reversion of the Barony Following the death of John de Greystok, it was in 1306 that the Barony of Greystok reverted to Ralph FitzWilliam in fulfilment of the arrangements made eight years previously, and Ralph entered upon these lands in November 1306. Ralph was then completing a term of six months (from Easter to Michaelmas) with ten men at arms in the company of Aymer de Valence in the King's army against Scotland. He was immediately challenged, without success, for one-third of the manor of Greystoke as dower, by the Greystok widow,