Falkes de Breauté was an Anglo-Norman soldier, possibly a mercenary, of dubious parentage with no particular aristocratic standing. Described mostly as the illegitimate child of a Norman knight and a concubine, possibly a knightly family from the village of Bréauté. Most chroniclers describe him as from common stock often referring to him by his first name which was derived from the scythe he once used to murder someone as a sign of contempt.

The first accurate records of his royal service are from 1206 when he was sent to Poitou by King John. Knighted upon his return to England in February 1207 he was entrusted with the wardenship of Glamorgan and Wenlock. As constable of Carmarthen, Cardigan and the Gower Peninsula he gained a fearsome reputation in the Welsh Marches.

During the First Barons' War as an unquestioning subject of King John, he earned both the title of the king's steward and the hate of baronial and monastic leaders alike. In November 1215, under orders of the king, de Breauté captured Hanslope, Buckinghamshire, a castle of William Mauduit, and soon afterwards he captured Bedford Castle belonging to William de Beauchamp. In reward John allowed him to keep it. As one of John's four captains of the loyalist army when Prince Louis of France invaded de Breauté was tasked with holding Oxford against the baronial forces.

In reward for exemplary service, King John gave de Breauté the hand in marriage of Margaret the daughter of Warin Fitzgerald, the royal chamberlain. This took place after the fact that Falkes had already kidnapped her to improve his standing. Falkes received not only Margaret's dowry from her father, but also as the widow of Baldwin de Revières, former heir to the Earl of Devon he inherited as her sons regent the estates connected to the title when his grandfather William de Revières died in 1217, making him a powerful man indeed.

Under Henry III, de Breauté continued to fight with the same loyalty he had shown John. That Christmas he was holding in total seven High Sheriffdoms including Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire and was proving to be a major obstacle to Louis and the rebel barons, although he lost Hertford and Cambridge in 1217.

Falkes seemed to be everywhere, at the end of February he led a royalist force in an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the port of Rye and after this, he captured the Isle of Ely. He joined the Earl of Chester to besiege Mountsorrel, and in response, the rebel Barons were forced to divide their forces, with Prince Louis and half the force remaining at the siege of Dover while the rest marched north to relieve Mountsorrel. This proved to play a critical role in the whole campaign leading up to the Battle of Lincoln.

After successfully relieving the siege at Mountsorrel the rebels marched to Lincoln to assist their force besieging Lincoln Castle; while the town had fallen to the rebels, the castle garrison had remained loyal to the King. When the rebel relief force finally got there they found William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, leader of the royalist forces had already arrived forcing a battle in the streets of the town itself.

However before the battle began de Breauté had led his own force into the castle itself, where his crossbowmen shot down at the rebels from the walls causing panic and chaos. During the battle, Falkes sallied out with such force that he drove deep into the enemy lines ending up first being captured before being rescued by his men. He fought on until the rebels fled with even the loyalist leaders acknowledging his role in a critical victory against superior forces.

However, with his unashamed lust for power and some of his more dubious actions during the war Falkes de Breauté had made many enemies; numbered among them were William Marshal. Due to being seen as a commoner by his peers as time passed his elevated position grew more and more tenuous as with no lands to base himself he relied increasingly on the favour of noblemen such as the Earl of Chester and Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, who only supported him due to their disenchantment with the rule of Hubert de Burgh.

Footnote: Part of Margaret's dowry was an area in London dominated by a manor which, because of her new husband, became known as Falkes' Hall. The name morphed through the years once the original reason for the name faded into history, first becoming "Foxhall" and later "Vauxhall."

In 1857, a Scottish engineer founded a company in Vauxhall which later became the Vauxhall Iron Works and then, in 1907, the Vauxhall Motor Company. This company used, as its logo, the griffin of Falkes de Breauté.