Saire is one of the “Surety Barons” named for the enforcement of the Magna Carta signed by King John of England in 1215.

SAIRE de QUINCEY, the Surety, born before 1154, was a Baron present at Lincoln when William the Lion of Scotland did homage to the English monarch in October 1200. He obtained large grants and immunities from King John and was created Earl of Winchester, 2 March 1207, having been governor in 1203 of the Castle of Ruil in Normandy. He is creditted with rewriting Magna Charta from the Charter of King Henry I and the Saxon Code. Because he had opposed the King’s concession to the Pope’s legate, he was bitterly hated by King John. One of the Barons to whom the City and Tower of London were resigned, Saire de Quincey was excommunicated with the other Barons the following year. He was sent, with Robert FitzWalter, the Surety, by the other Barons, to invite the Dauphin of France to assume the Crown of England and, even after the death of King John, he kept a strong garrison in Montsorell Castle in behalf of Prince Louis. When the Barons, being greatly outnumbered, were defeated by the troops of King Henry III, Saire de Quincey, with many others, was made prisoner and his estates forfeited. In the following October his immense estates were restored upon his submission. In 1218 the Earl of Winchester went with the Earls of Chester and Arundel to the Holy Land, assisted at the siege of Damietta in 1219, and died 3 November in the same year, on the way to Jerusalem. His wife was Margaret Beaumont, whom he married before 1173.

At the beginning of John’s reign, Saire de Quincey was not a Baron, much less a great one. In the civil war the King had had the advantage over the rebels. Few of the Barons had had much actual military experience. The Barons’ contribution to the war was the scutage they paid, a war fund substituted for the contingent of knights owed to the King’s service. The money was collected from vassals, and mercenary knights were paid from it. Many of the mercenaries were regulars who served the same Baron from campaign to campaign, but those Barons who are known to have had extensive military experience were only Saire de Quincey, Robert FitzWalter, William de Mowbray, William d’Albini, Roger de Cressi and Robert de Roos.