Alice FitzAlan, born in 1314 in Arundel Castle, died on 20 January 1385/86 in Knockin near Oswestry. She was the daughter of Alice De Warenne and Edmund FitzAlan. She died 7 Feb 1340. The Dictionary of National Biography says she married Bohun, Earl of Hereford as does John Burke.
FOUNDATION FOR MEDIEVAL GENEALOGY HAS ALICE AS DAUGHTER OF RICHARD FITZALAN WHOM OTHER SOURCES NAME AS HER GRANDFATHER.
"Her existence is proved by (1) Calendar of Inquisitiones post mortem[66] which states that the wardship of two parts of a messuage in Upton, Shropshire was "in the hands of Alesia the said Earl's daughter by his gift" and (2) the registers of Chaucombe Priory[67] which note that Alice's brother Edmund Earl of Arundel settled property on her and her husband Stephen de Segrave and also give Alice's date of death"
She married John (Stephen) De Segrave, 3rd Lord Segrave of Westhatch, Wiltshire, Bretby in Repton, Ashbourne, Derbyshire, Chaucombe, Northamptonshire, Stiveschale, Thurlaston in Dunchurch, Warwickshire, and North Piddle, Worcestershire. He died in1324-1325. He was the son of John De Segrave and Christine De Plessy or Plessets.
John was Constable of the Tower of London and predeceased his father, dying in Gascony.
He was granted letters of protection to travel in Scotland in 1305, 1307, and 1322. In 1314 he took prisoners to Scotland to exchange for his father John, who had been captured at Bannockburn. He was granted Stottesden Hundred in Shropshire for life in 1318. He supported Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and was pardoned for it in 1318. In 1323 Roger de Mortimer escaped from the Tower of London, which Stephen was Constable of and he was held responsible for it. His father had to put up 10,000 pounds as a bond to have him pardoned for misdemeanors in 1324. Also in that year he traveled to Gascony on business for the king and died while there. He was buried at Chaucombe Priory.
The Index Library
By British Record Society
Inquisition made at New Sarum before Richard le Wayte, the King's escheator in divers counties, 8th January,
19 Edward II [1327], by the oath of Roger de Colynburne, Walter dc
Stanle, John de Briguerd, Thomas de Haumbere, Hugh de Nuprude,
John Rayne, John atte Watere, William de Colynburne, Gilbert Gouschl,
John Gousche, John Bulkenap, and John alte Forde, who say that
Stephen de Segrave and Alice, his wife, held jointly in their
demesne as of fee, on the day the said Stephen died, the manor of
Westhatch, from the Abbess of Shaftesbury in chief, by the senvice
of 9 marks payable yearly to the said Abbess at her abbey of
Shaftesbury at Christmas, Easter, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist,
and Michaelmas, in equal portions, for all service, by feoffment of
John de Segrave, father of the said Stephen, who gave the said manor
to the said Stephen and Alice, and the heirs of Stephen. '
There is there one chief messuage, with a curtilage, which are
worth yearly 3s 4d. ; and the rent of 8 free tenants, each of whom
holds one messuage and one virgate of land, and pays 8s. yearly at
the above said terms in equal portions, 33s 4d and there is I Ib. of
pepper arising from the rent of one free tenant, who holds one
virgate of land, payable at Michaelmas, price l2d. ; and the rent of
7 bond tenants, two of whom each hold £ virgate and pay 6.?. 8d.
yearly, and five hold each 5 acres, and pay 4^. yearly at the same
terms in equal portions, 33^. ^d. There is of chershett of the same
7 bond tenants 7 cocks and 7 hens, payable at Martinmas, worth
3^. i\d., the price of a cock ?rent of 1 8 cottars, each of whom holds one cottage and one curtilage,
and pays yearly at the same terms 2s. in equal portions, 36^. Also
the works of the 5 bond tenants and 18 cottars are worth in the
Summer 2s. 1jworth yearly $$s., the price of the acre $d. ; and 1 1 acres of meadow
worth yearly 18s., the price of the acre 18pasture worth yearly 2s.
John de Segrave, son of the said Stephen, is his heir, and is aged
1 o years.
Chan. Inq. p.m., 19 Edward II, No. 91.
Antiquities of Shropshire - Page 151
by Robert William Eyton - 1857
Before I proceed with any account of the new Lords of Stottesden, it will be fitting to trace to its extinction the male line of De Gamages. Godfrey succeeded his father at Cotesmore, in Rutlandshire, and at Mansel Gamages, and other estates in Herefordshire and in Wales. He died in 1253, and I find an order to the King's Escheators to seize his lands, dated Oct. 2, of that year. Also in the same month, Alda, his widow, was suing John de Plessetis for a third of the manor of Stottesden, which she claimed as her dower. The cause was adjourned to Hilary Term following, but the litigated land being apparently seized into the King's hand, John de Plessetis moves the Court to reinstate him at once therein. This was probably done, either immediately or eventually, for I cannot suppose that Alda's claim was ever allowed. Godfrey de Gamages left three daughter and coheirs, viz. Elizabeth, Lucia, and Eufemia. Elizabeth appears to have been married to Henry de Pembruge, Junior, previous to April 20, 1254, when I find her, her husband, and her two sisters, jointly impleading one Richard de Tunderley for the lad of Trewarn, which, being a member of that Honour of Boghred late held in capite by Godfrey de Gamages, had been wrested from the said Godfrey by the said Richard de Tunderley, under the false pretence that it was a member of the Honour of Castle Matilda in Elvein.
On May 10, 1254, we find, as I have before related, that Henry de Pembruge,Senior, purchased from the King the marriages of Lucia and Eufemia de Gamages, for two of his other sons. The ladies were taken from the custody of Margery de Lacy, who I suppose had them in ward by reason of their late father's tenure at Mansel Gamages. I have also before alluded to another claim of two of these coheiresses, viz. Elizabeth and Euphemia, who, in 1263, were endeavouring once more to recover Stottesden from Hugh, son and heir of John de Plessetis above mentioned. Their claim ws unsuccessful, as the sequel will show.
It remains therefore to state that Lucia, the third coheiress,had probably deceased in the interval, without issue; and that the descendants of Henry and William de Pembruge, husbands respectively of Elizabeth and Eufemia de Gamages, represent that family of almost baronial rank, whose connection with Stottesden here ceases, but whose history as lords of Tong, I have already continued to a much later era.
We now return to John de Plessetis, the powerful and fortunate favourite of Henry III, and whose title to Stottesden was evidently framed in disregard of the better claims of hereditary descent. His history, as sometime Earl of Warwick, I need not dwell upon here. In the year following that in which Stottesden was given to him conditionally, he obtained a grant thereof in fee and inheritance, with all its liberties and appurtenances. In 28 Hen. III (1243-4) he had a grant of Market here, to be held weekly on Tuesdays, and a fair to be held annually on the eve, the day, and the morrow of the Assumption (August 14, 15, 16), together with the privilege of Free Warren.
The jurors of Stottesden Hundred, relating in1255 the status of this manor, said that "it was an escheat of the Lord King of the Land of the Normans, which Sir John de Plessy holds in capite of the King, who is enfeoffed in the same vill by Royal Charter, and for service of half a knight's fee. Therein are III hides of land, and they were used to be geldable, but now are not so, by Charter which the said John hath from the King: and he (John) hath withdrawn himself from suits of Hundred Courts, and from other things implied by the term geldable, these nineteen years past; wherby the King is damaged at the rate of L1 per annum, or L19 in all." The jurors also said that "Sir John de Plessy had a franchise in the vill of Stottesden, and had withdrawn himself from every kind of suit." They also reported how two hounds of Philip De Farlawe's having entered the warren of John de Plessy, but caught nothing therein, the said Philio had paid 4s. recompense to Henry de Chippenham, the Seneschal of Stottesden.
John de Plessetis was at this time Earl of Warwick; but for the mode in which he acquired and held that title I must refer elsewhere: at the Shropshire Assizes of January, 1256, he is so styled in two instances; the first, where he recovers the person and chattels of Robert de Bollisword, his native or villain, who he had previously sued for in the county court; the second, where Gilbert de Mitleton,having against him a suit of novel disseizen concerning a tenement in Stokes, retracts the same.
John de Plessetis, Earl of Warwick,died on February 26, 1263. The heir of himself and his first wife, Christiana de Sandford, was Hugh de Plessetis, aged twenty six years at his father's death. In April following this Hugh had livery of the manor of "Suttesdon" (read Stottesdon) "as a tenure in capite, by service of one knight's fee," his relief thereon being 100s. He had also livery of other lands inherited from his mother. He married Isabella, one of three coheirs of Philippa Bassett, sometime Countess of Warwick, and on Nov. 29, 1265, had livery of his said wife's estate. In 54 Hen. III (1269-70) Hugh de Plessetis gave the manor of Stottesden, in frank marriage with Christiana his infant daughter, to John, son of Nicholas de Segrave, which John seems at the time to have been about fourteen years of age. The jurors of Stottesden Hundred reported this transfer at the Assizes of September 1272, adding that it was without the King's consent. They also reported John de Segrave to be then seized thereof; but among the defaulters in their Hundred appears the name of Nicholas de Segrave, as though the father were accountable for the suit and service due from Stottesden while the son was in minority. At the Inquisition of Stottesden Hundred, taken in Novembrf, 1274, the jurors traced accurately the descent of this manor from John de Plessetis to Hugh de Plessetis. The alienation thereof by the latter they also dated in 1270, and explained that Nicholas de Segrave was to hold Stottsden for his life. This however he did not do; for though he himself lived till 1295, his son John ws in 1277 fully seized of Stottesden. There was a Military Summons returnable at Worcester on July 1 of the latter year, and John de Segrave responded thereto by acknowledging the service of one knight's fee in Stottesden, performable by himself and John Mallore, his serving man. The Feodary of 1284 consistently reports that "John de Segrave and Christiana his wife hold the manor of Stotresdon for one knight's fee of the King,in capite."
At the Assizes of 1292 the jurors of this Hundred said that John de Segrave claimed free warren in Stottesden; also to hold his free court there twice in the year, and decide all such pleas as the sheriff ordinarily decided; also the privilege of assizing bread and beer. Being questioned, as it seems, for his authority to exercise these franchises, John de Segrave pleaded the Grant of King Henry III of the manor and its liberties to John de Plessetis and his heirs. At the time of that grant, said he, the King held the two annual courts in question. As to assizing bread and beer, that was further justified and implied by the Grant of Market given to the same John de Plessetis by the same king. Hugh de Lowther (the Crown Attorney) hereupon started a favourite objection of his in such cases, viz. that a grant to John de Plessetis and his heirs could not extend to the present defendant, who was not his heir. The result was a reference of the matter to the next Parliament.
The Feodory of March, 1316, gives John de Segrave as Lord of Stottesden. He died in 18 Edw. II (1324-5), seized inter alia of this manor. His son Stephen had obtained, four years previously, a grant of the Hundred of Stottesden for life. He died in the same year, and apparently in the same foreign service as his aged father. The heir of both was John, son of the said Stephen, which
John was then in minority; but of him I need say no more. His career,as well as many other incidents in the fortunes of the great baronial house which he represented are the subject of a nobler and fuller record.
Some people believe that she belonged to her grandfather, Richard FitzAlan. I found a post on GEN-MEDIEVAL mailing list that says:
For evidence that Earl Richard had a such a daughter, Alice (or Alesia), see Calendar of IPM, 4 (1915):39, where she is specifically named. For evidence that Stephen de Segrave's wife, Alice, was Alice de Arundel, see Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th ser., 9 (1935-37), pg. 166, which in turn cites the Register of Chaucombe Priory. This article also cites other evidence which links Alice,wife of Stephen de Segrave, to the Fitz Alan/Arundel family of
Shropshire.
Some researchers equate her with Edmund FitzAlan's daughter Aline who married Roger le Strange. If Aline and Alice are one in the same, then she had three husbands
1. John De Bohun; 2. Roger le Strange; 3. John De Segrave.
They had children:
1.John Segrave, 4th Baron, married Margaret Plantagenet,Duchess of Norfolk
2.Eleanor
Royal ancestors of Magna charta barons: including ancestry of John Talbot ... - Page 101
by Carr Pritchett Collins - 1959
Plantagenet Ancestry
By Douglas Richardson, Kimball G. Everingham, David Faris
A genealogical history of the dormant, abeyant, forfeited, and extinct ... - Page 200
by Sir Bernard Burke - 1866
Savage-Stillman-Rogers-Lindsey-Dever and related families with Magna carta ... - Page 442
by Myrtle Savage Rhoades - 1971
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Bernard Plantipilosa
Bernard Plantapilosa (22 March 841 – 20 June 885[1]), or Plantevelue, which meant Hairyfeet or Hairypaws, son of Bernard of Septimania and Dhuoda, was the Count of Auvergne (as Bernard II) from 872 to his death. The Emperor Charles the Fat granted him the title of Margrave of Aquitaine in 885.
His mother's Liber Manualis mentions that he was born at Uzès in the year following the death of Louis the Pious. He was appointed Margrave of Septimania (or Gothia) sometime before 868. He was the lay abbot of Brioude between 857 and 868 and Count of Autun and from 864 to 869. He was deposed sometime before 876 and replaced by Bernard of Gothia in that year. He returned to favour under Charles the Fat. At sometime during the war against Boso of Provence, he obtained the county of Mâcon.
He married Ermengard, daughter of Bernard I of Auvergne (or perhaps of Guerin I). Their son was William I of Aquitaine.
Foundation for Medieval Genealogy
BERNARD "Plantevelue", son of BERNARD Marquis of Septimania & his wife Doda --- (Uzès 22 Mar 841-[20 Jun 885/16 Aug 886], maybe 6 Jan 886). The Manual of Dhuoda records the birth "XI Kal Apr", in the year following the death of Emperor Louis, at "Uzecia urbes" of the second child [Bernard] of Doda and her husband Bernard[122]. The Annales Bertiniani name "rex markiones Bernardum scilicet Tolosæ et iterum Bernardum Gothiæ, itemque Bernardum alium" in 868[123], this being Bernard Marquis of Gothia, although the date of his appointment has not so far been traced. Lay Abbot of Brioude 857/68. Comte d'Autun 864/69, deposed. Comte de Rodez 864/74. Comte d'Auvergne after 872. The Annales Bertiniani name "Bernardum Arvenicum comitem" in 877[124]. He obtained the county of Mâcon during the wars between the Carolingians and the Bosonids[125]. The 13th century obituary of the Eglise primatiale de Lyon records the death "VIII Id Jan" of "Bernardus comes"[126], although it is not certain that this relates to the same person.
His mother's Liber Manualis mentions that he was born at Uzès in the year following the death of Louis the Pious. He was appointed Margrave of Septimania (or Gothia) sometime before 868. He was the lay abbot of Brioude between 857 and 868 and Count of Autun and from 864 to 869. He was deposed sometime before 876 and replaced by Bernard of Gothia in that year. He returned to favour under Charles the Fat. At sometime during the war against Boso of Provence, he obtained the county of Mâcon.
He married Ermengard, daughter of Bernard I of Auvergne (or perhaps of Guerin I). Their son was William I of Aquitaine.
Foundation for Medieval Genealogy
BERNARD "Plantevelue", son of BERNARD Marquis of Septimania & his wife Doda --- (Uzès 22 Mar 841-[20 Jun 885/16 Aug 886], maybe 6 Jan 886). The Manual of Dhuoda records the birth "XI Kal Apr", in the year following the death of Emperor Louis, at "Uzecia urbes" of the second child [Bernard] of Doda and her husband Bernard[122]. The Annales Bertiniani name "rex markiones Bernardum scilicet Tolosæ et iterum Bernardum Gothiæ, itemque Bernardum alium" in 868[123], this being Bernard Marquis of Gothia, although the date of his appointment has not so far been traced. Lay Abbot of Brioude 857/68. Comte d'Autun 864/69, deposed. Comte de Rodez 864/74. Comte d'Auvergne after 872. The Annales Bertiniani name "Bernardum Arvenicum comitem" in 877[124]. He obtained the county of Mâcon during the wars between the Carolingians and the Bosonids[125]. The 13th century obituary of the Eglise primatiale de Lyon records the death "VIII Id Jan" of "Bernardus comes"[126], although it is not certain that this relates to the same person.
Duoda/Dhuoda, wife of Bernard of Septimania
Duoda
Some sources say that Dhuoda/Duoda is of unknown parentage, but the History of Normandy and England (By Francis Palgrave, Francis Turner Published 1851) says that she was the half sister of Louis I, The Debonaire of France. This would maker her father Charlemagne. She was probably born about 803.
She married at Aachen, 29 June 824 to Bernard, Duke of Septimania. He was the son of St. William of Gellone, who was a cousin of Charlemagne (patron saint of knights) and supports the likelihood of an inter-familial marriage. The fact that Louis I was Bernard's god-father also supports a family relationship.
She gave birth to their first son, William, on 29 November, 826. After William's birth she probably did not see her husband often because he spent much of his time away in Aachen at court. Bernard was sent to defend the Spanish March by Louis the Pious. It served as the border between Islamic Spain and Christian Europe. Prior to William's birth, Duoda had traveled with Bernard. He then sent her to Uzes to live.
In addition to missing her sons, she would have had to deal with the rumors from court that Bernard was having an affair with the Queen, Judith. And she would have worried that he might not survive in all of the civil wars between Louis and his sons.
Louis I, the Pious died in 840 and Bernard went to Uzes. Sometime while he was there, their second son Bernard was conceived. Bernard took part in the Battle of Fontenay, 25 June 841 and was on the losing side. This is the cause of William being sent away as a hostage, to the court of Charles the Bald, shortly before their son, Bernard was born. Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to their second son, Bernard, 22 March, 841. He was sent away to the Aquitaine soon after.
Soon after losing her sons, Dhuoda began writing her handbook to William. He would have been about 16 when she wrote to him. At some time afterwards, William began to travel with his father and fight in battles with him.
She may not have lived for very long after she wrote the Manuals, and refers to her bad health in her writing. She gave William instructions for her epitaph.
There are 73 chapters in the Liber Manualis, including an introduction invocation and a prologue. Her book is mostly moral advice for how her sons should live their lives. They contain some interesting social history, about the education of noble women during her time. Some historians indicate that women were uneducated as a whole, but if that is true, she was an exception. She makes reference to the Bible and obviously had read the works of the writers of her time. She uses Latin as well. Ther is a manuscript of her writing in th Bibliotheque National, Paris and fragments of one in the anguage of the Carolingians is in a library at Nimes.
In her writing she tells William that above all else he should read and meditate upon the Psalms, because they contain wisdom and all things forseen. She stressed the importance of loyalty to the king and especially to his father. and told him that the proper behavior of a man should be based on devotion to God. She uses literary devices, numerology, puzzles, word plays, acrostics and poetry to teach the lessons in her writing.
She may have given him slightly different advice if she had been able to foresee the future. She completed her manual 2 February 843. Her husband Bernard revolted against the king, Charles the Bald and William stayed with his father. As a result, they both were killed. Bernard was executed in 844, by Charles the Bald and William joined the Aquitanians to avenge his death. He was killed in 848. She was probably living at the time Bernard was executed but most likely died before her son was killed.
She told William to “Love, venerate, welcome, and honor everyone, so that you may deserve the enjoyment of reciprocal benefit.”
“Surely, if sky and meadows were unfurled through the air like a scroll of parchment and if all the gulfs of the sea were transformed, tinged like inks of many colors, and if all earth's inhabitants born in the world from the beginning until now were writers (by some increase of human genius, an impossibility contrary to nature!), they would not be able to seize upon the grandeur, the breadth the loftiness, and be able to tell the depth, of the sublimity, and divinity and wisdom, and goodness, and mercy of him who is called God.”
“Furthermore,Trust that God is above and beneath, within and without, for he is higher, lower, deeper withing and farther without. He is above, because he presides over us and rules us; he sis sublime and as the Psalmist says, “his glory is over all the heavens.” He is beneath because he supports us all....In him we remain always. He is deeper within, because he fills us all and satisfies us with good things...He is farther without, because with his unassailable rampart he surrounds and defends and protects us all.”
You can see some of her work here http://pagesperso-orange.fr/bckg/english/dhuoda.htm and here http://home.infionline.net/%7Eddisse/dhuoda.html
Here is the prayer at the beginning of her work.
Divine Lord, high Maker of light, and Creator
of heaven's stars, Eternal King, Holy--
Deign to empower me, I entreat you,
raising me high to be at your hand,
You center that enclose the whirling firmament,
folding ocean and fields within your hand,
To you I commend William, my son—at your command
may well-being be lavished on him in all ways.
May he deserve to climb to highest peak,
swift-footed, happy, with those who are yours/
May his perceptions always be alert,
open, to you; may he live blissfully for ever;
When he's hurt, let him never burst into anger
or wander away, severed from your friends;
May your generous grace penetrate him,
with peace and security of body and mind,
In which he may flourish in the world, and have children,
holding what's here so as not to lose what's there
I...am asking you with all my strength:have mercy
on him.
I descend from her younger son called Bernard Plantapilosa.
The Frankish Church -
by John Michael Wallace-Hadrill – 1983
A history of the Middle Ages, 300-1500 - Page 198
by John M. Riddle- 2008
Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion ... - Page 248
by Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker - 2008
Encyclopedia of barbarian Europe: society in transformation - Page 143
by Michael Frassetto - 2003
Some sources say that Dhuoda/Duoda is of unknown parentage, but the History of Normandy and England (By Francis Palgrave, Francis Turner Published 1851) says that she was the half sister of Louis I, The Debonaire of France. This would maker her father Charlemagne. She was probably born about 803.
She married at Aachen, 29 June 824 to Bernard, Duke of Septimania. He was the son of St. William of Gellone, who was a cousin of Charlemagne (patron saint of knights) and supports the likelihood of an inter-familial marriage. The fact that Louis I was Bernard's god-father also supports a family relationship.
She gave birth to their first son, William, on 29 November, 826. After William's birth she probably did not see her husband often because he spent much of his time away in Aachen at court. Bernard was sent to defend the Spanish March by Louis the Pious. It served as the border between Islamic Spain and Christian Europe. Prior to William's birth, Duoda had traveled with Bernard. He then sent her to Uzes to live.
In addition to missing her sons, she would have had to deal with the rumors from court that Bernard was having an affair with the Queen, Judith. And she would have worried that he might not survive in all of the civil wars between Louis and his sons.
Louis I, the Pious died in 840 and Bernard went to Uzes. Sometime while he was there, their second son Bernard was conceived. Bernard took part in the Battle of Fontenay, 25 June 841 and was on the losing side. This is the cause of William being sent away as a hostage, to the court of Charles the Bald, shortly before their son, Bernard was born. Shortly afterwards, she gave birth to their second son, Bernard, 22 March, 841. He was sent away to the Aquitaine soon after.
Soon after losing her sons, Dhuoda began writing her handbook to William. He would have been about 16 when she wrote to him. At some time afterwards, William began to travel with his father and fight in battles with him.
She may not have lived for very long after she wrote the Manuals, and refers to her bad health in her writing. She gave William instructions for her epitaph.
There are 73 chapters in the Liber Manualis, including an introduction invocation and a prologue. Her book is mostly moral advice for how her sons should live their lives. They contain some interesting social history, about the education of noble women during her time. Some historians indicate that women were uneducated as a whole, but if that is true, she was an exception. She makes reference to the Bible and obviously had read the works of the writers of her time. She uses Latin as well. Ther is a manuscript of her writing in th Bibliotheque National, Paris and fragments of one in the anguage of the Carolingians is in a library at Nimes.
In her writing she tells William that above all else he should read and meditate upon the Psalms, because they contain wisdom and all things forseen. She stressed the importance of loyalty to the king and especially to his father. and told him that the proper behavior of a man should be based on devotion to God. She uses literary devices, numerology, puzzles, word plays, acrostics and poetry to teach the lessons in her writing.
She may have given him slightly different advice if she had been able to foresee the future. She completed her manual 2 February 843. Her husband Bernard revolted against the king, Charles the Bald and William stayed with his father. As a result, they both were killed. Bernard was executed in 844, by Charles the Bald and William joined the Aquitanians to avenge his death. He was killed in 848. She was probably living at the time Bernard was executed but most likely died before her son was killed.
She told William to “Love, venerate, welcome, and honor everyone, so that you may deserve the enjoyment of reciprocal benefit.”
“Surely, if sky and meadows were unfurled through the air like a scroll of parchment and if all the gulfs of the sea were transformed, tinged like inks of many colors, and if all earth's inhabitants born in the world from the beginning until now were writers (by some increase of human genius, an impossibility contrary to nature!), they would not be able to seize upon the grandeur, the breadth the loftiness, and be able to tell the depth, of the sublimity, and divinity and wisdom, and goodness, and mercy of him who is called God.”
“Furthermore,Trust that God is above and beneath, within and without, for he is higher, lower, deeper withing and farther without. He is above, because he presides over us and rules us; he sis sublime and as the Psalmist says, “his glory is over all the heavens.” He is beneath because he supports us all....In him we remain always. He is deeper within, because he fills us all and satisfies us with good things...He is farther without, because with his unassailable rampart he surrounds and defends and protects us all.”
You can see some of her work here http://pagesperso-orange.fr/bckg/english/dhuoda.htm and here http://home.infionline.net/%7Eddisse/dhuoda.html
Here is the prayer at the beginning of her work.
Divine Lord, high Maker of light, and Creator
of heaven's stars, Eternal King, Holy--
Deign to empower me, I entreat you,
raising me high to be at your hand,
You center that enclose the whirling firmament,
folding ocean and fields within your hand,
To you I commend William, my son—at your command
may well-being be lavished on him in all ways.
May he deserve to climb to highest peak,
swift-footed, happy, with those who are yours/
May his perceptions always be alert,
open, to you; may he live blissfully for ever;
When he's hurt, let him never burst into anger
or wander away, severed from your friends;
May your generous grace penetrate him,
with peace and security of body and mind,
In which he may flourish in the world, and have children,
holding what's here so as not to lose what's there
I...am asking you with all my strength:have mercy
on him.
I descend from her younger son called Bernard Plantapilosa.
The Frankish Church -
by John Michael Wallace-Hadrill – 1983
A history of the Middle Ages, 300-1500 - Page 198
by John M. Riddle- 2008
Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion ... - Page 248
by Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker - 2008
Encyclopedia of barbarian Europe: society in transformation - Page 143
by Michael Frassetto - 2003
Monday, September 14, 2009
Alice De Warenne and Edmund FitzAlan
Alice De Warenne was born 15 June 1287 and died 23 May 1338. She was the daughter of William de Warenne and Joan De Vere. She inherited the title and estates of Surrey, from her older brother John De Warenne, 8th Earl of Surrey, who had succeeed his grandfather. John de Warenne. This was because their father had been killed at a tournament. FitzAlan
She married Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel. He was born 1 May 1285 and died 17 November 1326. He was the son of Richard FitzAlan and Alice of Saluzzo. He inherited his earldom 9 March 1302 from his father. He was summoned to Parliament as Lord Arundel in 1306. He was a Lord Ordainer and fought in the wars with Scotland.
His brother in law John de Warenne was the only other noble besides Edmund to remain loyal to Edward II against Edward's mother Isabella and Roger Mortimer, who was her lover.
For his loyalty, the king granted him most of Roger Mortimers lands that had been forfeited. He also appointed Edmund Justice of Wales (1322) and he was Warden of the Welsh Marshes (1325) and he was Constable of Montgomery Castle.
He was captured in Shropshire by the Queen's men. On 17 November 1326, the Queen had him beheaded in Hereford. His lands and titles were forfeited to the Crown, but his son Richard was later able to recover them.
Children of Alice and Edmund:
1.Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel. He was called “Copped Hat”. Born Arundel Castle Sussex, 1306 and died 14 January 1376.
2.Edward Fitzalan (1308- 1398)
3.Alice Fitzalan (born 1310), married John de Bohun, 5th Earl of Hereford. 2nd marriage to John De Segrave
4.Joan Fitzalan (born 1312), married Warin Gerard, Baron L'Isle
5.Aline Fitzalan (1314- 1386), married Roger le Strange, 6th Baron Strange of Knockin
6.John Fitzalan (born 1315)
7.Catherine Fitzalan (died 1376), married firstly Andrew Peverell, and secondly Henry Hussey of Cockfield
8.Elizabeth Fitzalan (1320- 1389), married William Latimer, Baron Latimer of Corby
9.Eleanor Fitzalan
Women, art, and patronage from Henry III to Edward III: 1216-1377 - Page 172
by Loveday Lewes Gee – 2002
The barons' war; including the battles of Lewes and Evesham - Page 149
by William Henry Blaauw, Charles Henry Pearson - 1871
Edmund (1285-1326) married Alice, sister of John, earl de Warenne. A bitter enemy of Piers Gaveston. Arundel was one of the ordainers appointed in 1310; he declined to march with Edward II to Bannockburn, and after the king's humiliation he was closely associated with Thomas, earl of Lancaster, until about 1321, when he became connected with the Despensers and sided with the king. He was faithful to Edward to the last, and was executed at Hereford by the partisans of Queen Isabella on the 17th of November 1326.
His son, Richard (c. 1307-1376), who obtained his father's earldom and lands in 1331, was a soldier of renown and a faithful servant of Edward III. He was present at the battle of Sluys and at the seige of Tournai in 1340; he led one of the divisions of the English army at Crecy and took part in the siege of Calais; and he fought in the naval battle with the Spaniards off Winchelsea in August 1350. Moreover, he was often employed by Edward on diplomatic business. Soon after 1347 Arundel inherited the estates of his uncle John, earl of Warenne, and in 1361, he assumed the title of earl de Warenne or earl of Surrey. He was a regent of England in 1355, and died on the 24th of January 1376, leaving three sons, the youngest of whom, Thomas became archbishop of Canterbury.
Richard's eldest son, Richard, earl of Arundel and Surrey (c. 1346-1307) was a member of the royal council during the minority of Richard II and about 1381 was made one of the young king's governors. As admiral of the west and south he saw a good deal of service on the sea, but without earning any marked distinction except in 1387 when he gained a victory over the French and their allies off Margate. About 1385 the earl joined the baronial party led by the king's uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, and in 1386, was a member of the commission appointed to regulate the kingdom and the royal household. Then came Richard's rash but futile attempt to arrest Arundel, which was the signal for the outbreak of hostilities. The Gloucester faction quickly gained the upper hand, and the earl was one, and perhaps the most bitter, of the lords appellant. He was again a member of the royal council, and was involved in a quarrel with John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, whom he accused in the parliament of 1394. After a personal altercation with the king at Westminster in the same year Arundel underwent a short imprisonment, and in 1397 came the final episode of his life. Suspicious of Richard he refused the royal invitation to a banquet, but his party had broken up, and he was persuaded by his brother, Thomas Arunel, archbishop of Canterbury, to surrender himself and to trust to the king's clemency. At once he was tried, was attainted and sentenced to death, and bearing himself with great intrepidity, was beheaded on the 21st of September 1397. He was twice married and had three sons and four daughters. The earl founded a hospital at Arundel, and his tomb in the church of the Augustinian Friars, Broad Street, London, was long a place of pilgrimage.
His only surviving son, Thomas (1381-1415) was a ward of John Holand, duke of Exeter, from whose keeping he escaped about 1398 and joined his uncle, Archbishop Thomas Arundel, at Utrecht, returning to England with Henry of Lancaster, afterwards King Henry IV, in 1399. After Henry's coronation he was restored to his father's titles and estates and was employed in fighting against various rebels in Wales and in the north of England. Having left the side of his uncle, the archbishop, Arundel joined the party of the Beauforts, and was one of the leaders of the English army which went to France in 1411; then after a period of retirement he became lord treasurer on the accession of Henry V. From the siege of Harfleur he returned ill to England and died on the 13th of October 1415. His wife was Beatrix (d. 1430), a natural daughter of John I, king of Portugal, but he left no children, and the lordship of Arundel passed to a kinsman, John FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers
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She married Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel. He was born 1 May 1285 and died 17 November 1326. He was the son of Richard FitzAlan and Alice of Saluzzo. He inherited his earldom 9 March 1302 from his father. He was summoned to Parliament as Lord Arundel in 1306. He was a Lord Ordainer and fought in the wars with Scotland.
His brother in law John de Warenne was the only other noble besides Edmund to remain loyal to Edward II against Edward's mother Isabella and Roger Mortimer, who was her lover.
For his loyalty, the king granted him most of Roger Mortimers lands that had been forfeited. He also appointed Edmund Justice of Wales (1322) and he was Warden of the Welsh Marshes (1325) and he was Constable of Montgomery Castle.
He was captured in Shropshire by the Queen's men. On 17 November 1326, the Queen had him beheaded in Hereford. His lands and titles were forfeited to the Crown, but his son Richard was later able to recover them.
Children of Alice and Edmund:
1.Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel. He was called “Copped Hat”. Born Arundel Castle Sussex, 1306 and died 14 January 1376.
2.Edward Fitzalan (1308- 1398)
3.Alice Fitzalan (born 1310), married John de Bohun, 5th Earl of Hereford. 2nd marriage to John De Segrave
4.Joan Fitzalan (born 1312), married Warin Gerard, Baron L'Isle
5.Aline Fitzalan (1314- 1386), married Roger le Strange, 6th Baron Strange of Knockin
6.John Fitzalan (born 1315)
7.Catherine Fitzalan (died 1376), married firstly Andrew Peverell, and secondly Henry Hussey of Cockfield
8.Elizabeth Fitzalan (1320- 1389), married William Latimer, Baron Latimer of Corby
9.Eleanor Fitzalan
Women, art, and patronage from Henry III to Edward III: 1216-1377 - Page 172
by Loveday Lewes Gee – 2002
The barons' war; including the battles of Lewes and Evesham - Page 149
by William Henry Blaauw, Charles Henry Pearson - 1871
Edmund (1285-1326) married Alice, sister of John, earl de Warenne. A bitter enemy of Piers Gaveston. Arundel was one of the ordainers appointed in 1310; he declined to march with Edward II to Bannockburn, and after the king's humiliation he was closely associated with Thomas, earl of Lancaster, until about 1321, when he became connected with the Despensers and sided with the king. He was faithful to Edward to the last, and was executed at Hereford by the partisans of Queen Isabella on the 17th of November 1326.
His son, Richard (c. 1307-1376), who obtained his father's earldom and lands in 1331, was a soldier of renown and a faithful servant of Edward III. He was present at the battle of Sluys and at the seige of Tournai in 1340; he led one of the divisions of the English army at Crecy and took part in the siege of Calais; and he fought in the naval battle with the Spaniards off Winchelsea in August 1350. Moreover, he was often employed by Edward on diplomatic business. Soon after 1347 Arundel inherited the estates of his uncle John, earl of Warenne, and in 1361, he assumed the title of earl de Warenne or earl of Surrey. He was a regent of England in 1355, and died on the 24th of January 1376, leaving three sons, the youngest of whom, Thomas became archbishop of Canterbury.
Richard's eldest son, Richard, earl of Arundel and Surrey (c. 1346-1307) was a member of the royal council during the minority of Richard II and about 1381 was made one of the young king's governors. As admiral of the west and south he saw a good deal of service on the sea, but without earning any marked distinction except in 1387 when he gained a victory over the French and their allies off Margate. About 1385 the earl joined the baronial party led by the king's uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, and in 1386, was a member of the commission appointed to regulate the kingdom and the royal household. Then came Richard's rash but futile attempt to arrest Arundel, which was the signal for the outbreak of hostilities. The Gloucester faction quickly gained the upper hand, and the earl was one, and perhaps the most bitter, of the lords appellant. He was again a member of the royal council, and was involved in a quarrel with John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, whom he accused in the parliament of 1394. After a personal altercation with the king at Westminster in the same year Arundel underwent a short imprisonment, and in 1397 came the final episode of his life. Suspicious of Richard he refused the royal invitation to a banquet, but his party had broken up, and he was persuaded by his brother, Thomas Arunel, archbishop of Canterbury, to surrender himself and to trust to the king's clemency. At once he was tried, was attainted and sentenced to death, and bearing himself with great intrepidity, was beheaded on the 21st of September 1397. He was twice married and had three sons and four daughters. The earl founded a hospital at Arundel, and his tomb in the church of the Augustinian Friars, Broad Street, London, was long a place of pilgrimage.
His only surviving son, Thomas (1381-1415) was a ward of John Holand, duke of Exeter, from whose keeping he escaped about 1398 and joined his uncle, Archbishop Thomas Arundel, at Utrecht, returning to England with Henry of Lancaster, afterwards King Henry IV, in 1399. After Henry's coronation he was restored to his father's titles and estates and was employed in fighting against various rebels in Wales and in the north of England. Having left the side of his uncle, the archbishop, Arundel joined the party of the Beauforts, and was one of the leaders of the English army which went to France in 1411; then after a period of retirement he became lord treasurer on the accession of Henry V. From the siege of Harfleur he returned ill to England and died on the 13th of October 1415. His wife was Beatrix (d. 1430), a natural daughter of John I, king of Portugal, but he left no children, and the lordship of Arundel passed to a kinsman, John FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers
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edited by Hugh Chisholm - 1910
William De Warenne and Joan De Vere
WILLIAM de Warenne (1256-murdered Croydon 15 Dec 1286). He was ambushed and slain after attending a tournament at Croydon[371]. m ([Jun 1285]) JOAN de Vere, daughter of ROBERT de Vere Earl of Oxford & his wife Alice de Sanford (-23 Nov 1293 or before, bur Lewes Priory
SOURCE: FOUNDATION FOR MEDIEVAL GENEALOGY
MEDIEVAL LANDS PROJECT
CHARLES CAWLEY
The Magna charta barons and their American descendants with the pedigrees of ... - Page 165
by Charles Henry Browning - 1898
The Gentleman's magazine - Page 584- 1845
SOURCE: FOUNDATION FOR MEDIEVAL GENEALOGY
MEDIEVAL LANDS PROJECT
CHARLES CAWLEY
The Magna charta barons and their American descendants with the pedigrees of ... - Page 165
by Charles Henry Browning - 1898
The Gentleman's magazine - Page 584- 1845
John De Warenne and Alice le Brun
John De Warenne was born 1230-1231 Warren,Sussex, England and died 1304 at Kennington, near London, England. John was the son of Maud Marshal and William de Warenne. He married Alice le Brun born about 1224 in Lusignan, France and died 1290.
A genealogical history of the dormant, abeyant, forfeited, and extinct ... - Page 669
by Sir Bernard Burke - 1866
The history and antiquities of Lewes and its vicinity - Page 126
by Thomas Walker Horsfield, Gideon Algernon Mantell - 1824
John de Warenne (Plantagenet), Earl of Warren and Surrey. This nobleman was but five years of age at the time of his father's decease, and was placed in ward with Peter de Savoy the Queen's brother. When he attained majority, he attached himself zealously to Henry III in his conflicts with the barons, and maintained the cause of the king with his sword at the battle of Lewes. His lordship was a person of violent and imperious temper, and was often betrayed into acts of great intemperance; as in the instance of assaulting Sir Alan Zouch, and Roger his son, in Westminster Hall, when he almost killed the one and wounded the other. And again, when Edward I issued the first writs of Quo Warranto, his lordship being questioned at to the title of his possessions, exhibited to the justices an old sword and unsheathing it, said, “Behold, my lords, here is my warranty, my ancestors coming into this lands by the sword, and I am resolved with the sword to defend them, against whomsoever shall endeavor to dispossess me; for that king did not himself conquer the land, and subdue it, but our progenitors were sharers and assistants therein” The earl was constituted, by King Edward, general of all his forces on the north of Trent, for the better restraining the insolence of the Scots; whereupon he marched into Scotland, and so terrified the inhabitants that they immediately sued for peace, and gave hostages for their future good conduct. But the war soon after breaking out afresh, his lordship sustained a signal defeat at Strivelin, when his troops fled first to Berwick, and thence to England. The earl m. 1st, 1247, Alice dau. Of Hugh le Brun, Count de la March, and half sister by the mother of King Henry III, and 2ndly, Joan, dau. Of William, lord Mowbray, and by the former had issue,
William, who was killed in a tournament at Croyden, in his father's lifetime, 23 Decembert 1285. He m. Joane, dau of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and left a posthumous son, John.
Alianore, m. to Henry, Lord Percy
Isabel, m. to John de Baliol, afterwards King of Scotland.
His lordship d. in 1304, and was s. by his grandson.
I believe that the Peter of Savoy mentioned in the above was the Queen's uncle and not her brother.
Alice's mother was Isabel de Angouleme. Hugh le Brun was also known as Hubert de Burgh and Hugh X Lusignan. Isabel had been the wife of King John before marrying secondly Hugh/Hubert. This meant Alice was half sister to Henry III.
At the time of their marriage, John De Warenne was only 12 years old. The Gentlemen's magazine says that Matthew Paris recorded Alice as having died in 1256 but that the Register of Lewes Priory shows her death to have occurred in 1290. She was also buried in Lewes Priory, before the high alter, under a marble monument with a sculpture of a dragon or wivern on it. It has a branch in its mouth, the crest of the Warrens.
The history of Lewes says that William continued firm in his adherence to the king. “He joined the king in Guinne in 1254, and two years afterwards he was present with other Peers in Westminster Hall when the Archbishop of Canterbury, supported by several Bishops, pronounced, with lighted candles, all those excommunicated, who should violate the two great charters of the kingdom. In the same year, says Dugdale “he had the tertium denarium of the County of Surrey yielded him by the King's Precept, then sent to the barons of the Exchequer.” Dr. Watson concludes that this grant was confirmed to him on account of his then coming of age. The castle of Pevensey was afterwards entrusted to his charge by the confiding monarch, and soon after he went over to the barons. His defection however, was not of long continuance; again he joined the royal forces, and was actively engaged in the defence of Rochester castle, against the brave but too arbitrary Earl of Leicester.
The little glory which the Earl of Warren had won by his able defence of Rochester castle, was soon tarnished. The battle of Lewes followed shortly after, and the Earl adhered to the royal party; but basely sought his safety by a flight from the field of battle, deserting his royal master, and escaping to the continent. All the lands and possessions of Earl Warren in England, except the castles of Reigate and Lewes, were given, by grant under the great eal to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and De Warren was banished the realm by public edict of the Earl of Leicester. The battle of Evesham, which shortly followed, wrested from the barons their temporary power and gave liberty to the captive king. The estates of the Earl of Warren were restored to him, and with them the unbounded confidence of the monarch.
The Earl of Warren appears to have partaken of all the distinguishing qualities of the English baron: with his wealth, and honours, and independence, he was haughty, imperious, and tyrannical. A dispute arising in 1268, between him and Henry de Lacy, afterwards Earl of Lincoln, concerning a certain pasture, the lordly disputants assembled their respective retainers, resolving to determine, by a pitched battle, the right which each claimed. The interposition of the king, prevented the mutual slaughter, and upon an inquiry being made into the circumstances, the right was adjudged to Lacy.
About two years after this dispute with de Lacy, the earl was guilty of a still more serious outrage; and one, whose consequences he felt for many succeeding years. He had been long engaged in a law suit, with Alan Lord Zouche, of Ashby, concerning the title to a certain manor. During the trial before the king's judges in Westminster hall, the earl and his armed attendants attacked Lord Zouche, and his eldest son Sir Roger, with drawn swords, so that, says Dugdale, “he almost killed the one, and wounded the other.” The earl was fined in the sum of 10,000 marks, and was compelled, with fifty of his followers, who had been engaged in this act of violence, to walk on foot from the New Temple, to Westminster hall, and there to take an oath, that what they had done, was not out of any prepense malice, but only out of sudden heat and passion. In consequence of this submission and fine, a pardon was granted to the earl and his followers, in the following terms:--
The King to all &c., greeting,Whereas our well-beloved and faithful John de Warren, Earl of Surrey, for himself and his men, hath put himself upon the king's mercy to be fined at his pleasure for a certain trespass and assaults, lately committed by the same earl and his men upon Alan la Such, (or Zouche), and Roger his son, in the King's Hall in Westminster, as it is said: Whereupon the said Alan hath summoned the said Earl in the King's Court before the king himself.
Now we have remised to the said earl, and to all his men, and to all those that can be discharged of that trespass, all indignation and anger of mind, which we had conceived against them by occasion of the aforesaid trespass.
All we have pardoned to them the suit, (or breach), of our peace, which to us belongs, or in any other manner can belong to that trespass, in whatsoever manner happening, either by the death or other harm of the aforesaid Alan and Roger, or either of them, by means of the trespass and assaults aforesaid; intestimony, &c.
Witness the King at Winton, the 4th day of August
This writ of pardon was not granted him, till after Prince Edward had pursued him with a strong power to his castle at Reigate, where he had shut himself up; but finding the prince determined to force him to obedience to the laws of the kingdom, he made a most humiliating submission, imploring mercy, and afterwards made his peace with the king, as appears by the foregoing document. The fine was afterwards reduced by Edward I to 8,400 marks, and an acceptance of the same, by two hundred marks per annum, was agreed to. This mark of royal favour, was occasioned by the noble reception that King Edward received at Reigate, on his return from quelling the insurrections in Gascony.
Edward I returned to England the 12th of August, 1289, after staying more than three years abroad on sundry weighty affairs, and on the 21st of August, in the same year, he dates a commission of Sewers by his letters patent, from Lewes, to inquire into the truth of a complaint from Kent, touching the sewers, and to make redress accordingly. This was nine days after his arrival in England, and as John, Earl of Warren, was in his particular confidence, it is likely his errand at Lewes, was to consult the earl, touching several abuses committed in his absence, by the judges of the realm, and officers of the crown; for the king very soon afterwards removed almost all the judges, for high misdemeanors and corruption in their offices; some he banished, and fined them all most severely, by which he got, (what indeed he then much wanted,) about 100,000 marks, all his historians affirm: and no doubt, he had the satisfaction, at the same time, of riding over the field of battle, at Lewes, in which he had borne so gallant, though unfortunate, a part, twenty-five years before, in his father's reign.
In 1276, 6 Edward I, the king employed commissioners to make inquiry throughout the kingdom, by what warrant or title (Quo Warranto), the landholders enjoyed their estates, in order that those who could not exhibit a valid claim to their possessions, might be compelled to restore them to the king, or obliged to submit to a pecuniary composition, for the privilege of retaining them. As John de Warren, has the honour of putting a temporary stop to this iniquitous mode of recruiting the public treasury, the history of the proceeding is worthy of notice. It shall be given in the words of Holinshed.
“Many were thus called to answere, till at lengthe the Lord John Warren, Earle of Surrey, a man greatly beloved of the people, perceiving the King to haue caste his net for a praye, and that there was not one whyche spake against those so bitter and cruell proceedings, and therefore being called afore the Justices aboute this matter, he appeared, and being asked what right he held his lands? He sodenly drawing forth an old rusty sworde “By this instument (sayde he), doe I holde my landes, and by the same I entende to defende them. Our auncestors coming into this realme with William Conquerour, conquered theyr landes with the swords and with the same will I defende me from all those that shall be aboute to take them from me; he did not make a conquest of the realme alone, our progenitors were with him as participators and helpers with him.”
“The Kyng understoode into what hatred of his people by this means hee was fallen, and therefore to anoyd civill dissention and war that might thereby ensue, he left off his begun practice; so that the thing which generally shuld haue touched and bene hurtful to all men, was nowe sodeingly stayed by the manhood and couragious stoutness only of one mand the foresaid Earle.”
The “ manhood and couragious stoutness” of the Earl, might, as is stated, put a stop to the proceedings of the Quo Warranto commission at that time, but the wealth that had accrued to the royal treasury from the forfeitures and compositions, were too great, to permit such an effectual mode of supplying the wants of the monarch to be altogether relinquished: and on the following year, the 7th Edward I, Earl Warren was summoned by name, before John de Reygate and his associates, the Justices itinerants in the County of Sussex, to shew by what authority he claimed to have free warren and free-chace, in the towns of Worth, Ditching, Clayton, Withiam, Cuckfield, Keymer, Street, Balcomb, Plumpton, Chailey, Ardingly, Hoadly, Lindfield, Westmeston, Wenham, Newick, Barcombe, Hamsey Benham, Swanburghe, Kingston, Iford, Westoke, Hounsdean, Smythewyk, Holinstrow, Rodmill, Piddinghoe, Telescombe, Southease, Newhaven, Middleburgh, Iwonesmere, Ovingdean, Falmer, Balmer, Patcham, Brighthelmston, Slaugham, Bolney, Hurst, Mediam, Crawley, Wyndlesham, Hangleton, Atlingworth, Blatchington, Wyke, Withdean, Twyning, Poynings, Newtimber, Selscomb, Pycombe, Pynkeden, Porleslade, Aldington, Farncomb, Molescombe, or Mousecombe, Abburton, Fulking, Perching, Sandes, Hedesnell, Lesefield, and Feld, in the County of Sussex.
The damage to the king, by John de Warren's holding the warren and chase in the towns above-mentioned, was stated by William de Gyselingham to be a thousand pounds. It was adjudged that the king should seize nothing by his writ for the present.
In 1297, the Earl was general of all the King's forces on the north side of Trent. This appointment brought him in contact with the immortal Wallace, a man whose name is associated with all that is glorious, and is consecrated in the memory of the true patriot. This noble minded man, refusing to swear fealty to the King of England, whose forces were overrunning and desolating the Scottish kingdom, aspired to the honest fame of a patriot hero, and re-animated the drooping courage of his countrymen, when the nobles of the land had submitted to ignominious thraldom. When the chiefs of Scotland submitted, without striking a blow for freedom, to Henry de Percy, at Irwine, Wallace supported by a gallant band, found means to avoid the disgrace of surrendering to the usurper, and effected a retreat, but to strengthen his power. On the Earl of Warren's entering Scotland, he found the spirit of resistance greater than he had reason to expect. He advanced to Stirling, near to which place, but on the opposite side of the Forth, the army of Wallace was assembled. Terms of submission were demanded by the English general from the Scottish hero, and the demand was received as it deserved to be—with scorn: and the only answer which he condescended to give to the insulting invaders was, “that his army was not come to treat for peace, but to try the matter by battle.” A contest , ensued and the Scots were victorious.
Six thousand of the English army are said to have fallen on this occasion, amongst whom was Sir Hugh Cressingham, to whose turbulent importunities the disaster is, in a great measure, to be attributed. Cressingham's body was recognised by the victors amongst the heaps of slain, and to shew their destination of this unfeeling and arbitrary minister, they treated his lifeless frame with an indignity, justifiable only amongst barbarians.
The Earl again appears in the page of history in 33 Edward I, when he was acting in command under the king, who had penetrated to the extremity of Scotland; this was the last public act of his life, for in the same year he died at Kennington, near London, in the 70th year of his age, and the 65th of his earldom, and was buried before the high altar in the Priory of Lewes, in the midst of the pavement, under a plain tomb, or grave stone, on which was written the following epitaph:--
“Vous qe passer ou bouche close
Priez pur cely ke cy repose:
En vie coe vous este jadis fu,
Et vous tiel, serretz come je su;
Sire John Count de Gareyn gyst yey;
Dieu de sa alme eit mercy.
Ky pur sa alme priers,
Troiz mill jours de pardon avera.”
“Thou that dost tread this silent way,
Forget not for the dead to pray;
The bones that in this tomb are laid,
In life's fair bloom were once array's;
Like them shall thine in time consume,
And others trample on thy tomb.
John Earl of Warren's buried here:
May mercy his flown spirit cheer!
For his repose whoever prays,
Gains an indulgence of three thousand days.”
The high esteem in which the Earl of Warren was held by the king, is evinced by the special precept, directed to the then Bishop elect of London, whereby, signifying “how pious, and before Almighty God, a meritorious work it was, to pray continually for the dead, that so they might be more easily delivered from the burthen of their sins; and that the Earl, who had been a most faithful and useful subject and servant to him and the whole realm, was then departed this life, to his very great sorrow; he required him, that he should cause his soul to be commended to the mercy of God, by all the religious and ecclesiastical persons, throughout his whole diocese of London.”
A similar precept was directed by the King to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his whole province; to the Abbots of St. Augustine's in Canterbury, Westminster, Waltham, St. Albans. St. Edmunds-bury, and Evesham.
The folly of the times did not stop here. Indulgences were granted to all who should pray for the soul of the deceased earl. The Archbishop of Canterbury promised a remission of forty days of pain from the period of purgatory to every good Christian, who should pray for the soul of the noble earl. Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, a like period, Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, thirty days; the Bishop of Durham forty days; the Bishop of Carlisle forty days; the Bishop of Lincoln forty days; the Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield, forty days; and John Bishop of Chichester, forty days.
There are but few grants of this earl to the Priory of Lewes. The following charters however relative to this house are recorded in the Register Book of Lewes Priory. A charter by which the Earl grants unto the Prior and Convent an annual rent of six shillings for ever out of his manor of Meeching, for which the religious quit claimed to the earl and his heirs, all the right and claim which they had in stagno scitu et sect molendini in villis de Meching ae Pedingho. Another by which he gave to the monks a messuage in the vill of Suthwerk. Another by which he gave them the advowson of the church of Dewesbury.
The earl married Alice, daughter of Hugh le Brun, by whom he had William, who died in the life time of his father, being unfortunately slain at a tournament at Croydon, in Surrey; Eleanor, who was married to a son of Henry, Lord Percy, and afterwards to the son of a Scotch earl; and Isabel, who was united to John de Baliol, who became King of Scotland.
John de Warenne was the Earl Warenne and also called (incorrectly) the Earl of Sussex. He was an eminent English lord during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I of England. John de Warenne was son and heir of the Sixth Earl, William de Warenne, and succeeded upon his father's death in 1240. He and his family claimed the earldom of Sussex but never held it de jure. He married Alice de Lusignan, half sister of Henry III; and, except for a brief period in 1262 to 1263, he strongly supported his friend the young lord Edward (afterward Edward I ) during the Barons' Wars. In 1264 he defended Rochester Castle against Simon de Montfort until relieved by Edward. They then repaired to Warenne's town of Lewes, where the royal army was defeated (in May 1264), and Warenne escaped to France. In 1265 he landed in Pembroke with Henry III's half brother William de Valence and took part in the campaign that ended at the Battle of Evesham (August 4, 1265) with Montfort's death. The successful claim of Warenne's son-in-law John de Balliol to the throne of Scotland gave Surrey a strong interest and a leading part in Scottish affairs. However, after the treaty between Scotland and France in 1295, Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, and Warenne won the Battle of Dunbar. Edward I then appointed him keeper of the realm of Scotland, but in 1297 he was defeated by William Wallace at Stirling Bridge. He fought in Edward's later campaigns in Scotland and took part in the victory at Falkirk in 1298. Surrey, John de Warenne, 7th Earl of. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 25, 2003, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
JOHN de Warenne (1231 or after-Kennington [Nov] 1304, bur Lewes Priory). He succeeded his father in 1240 as Earl of Surrey. He was one of the guardians of the realm on the death of King Henry III, until the return of Edward I from crusade. He was appointed keeper of the realm of Scotland 3 Sep 1296, but never assumed the post as he was defeated by the Scots at the battle of Stirling[368]. m (Aug 1247) ALIX de Lusignan, daughter of HUGUES X "le Brun" Sire de Lusignan, Comte de la Marche & his wife Isabelle Ctss d’Angoulême ([1224]-after 9 Feb 1256). She is named "Aelesia" by Matthew of Paris when he records her visit to England in 1247 with her brothers to her uterine half-brother King Henry III and her subsequent marriage with "Johanni comiti Warenniæ adolescenti"[369]. Matthew of Paris records her death in early 1256
SOURCE: FOUNDATION FOR MEDIEVAL GENEALOGY
MEDIEVAL LANDS PROJECT
CHARLES CAWLEY
A genealogical history of the dormant, abeyant, forfeited, and extinct ... - Page 669
by Sir Bernard Burke - 1866
The history and antiquities of Lewes and its vicinity - Page 126
by Thomas Walker Horsfield, Gideon Algernon Mantell - 1824
John de Warenne (Plantagenet), Earl of Warren and Surrey. This nobleman was but five years of age at the time of his father's decease, and was placed in ward with Peter de Savoy the Queen's brother. When he attained majority, he attached himself zealously to Henry III in his conflicts with the barons, and maintained the cause of the king with his sword at the battle of Lewes. His lordship was a person of violent and imperious temper, and was often betrayed into acts of great intemperance; as in the instance of assaulting Sir Alan Zouch, and Roger his son, in Westminster Hall, when he almost killed the one and wounded the other. And again, when Edward I issued the first writs of Quo Warranto, his lordship being questioned at to the title of his possessions, exhibited to the justices an old sword and unsheathing it, said, “Behold, my lords, here is my warranty, my ancestors coming into this lands by the sword, and I am resolved with the sword to defend them, against whomsoever shall endeavor to dispossess me; for that king did not himself conquer the land, and subdue it, but our progenitors were sharers and assistants therein” The earl was constituted, by King Edward, general of all his forces on the north of Trent, for the better restraining the insolence of the Scots; whereupon he marched into Scotland, and so terrified the inhabitants that they immediately sued for peace, and gave hostages for their future good conduct. But the war soon after breaking out afresh, his lordship sustained a signal defeat at Strivelin, when his troops fled first to Berwick, and thence to England. The earl m. 1st, 1247, Alice dau. Of Hugh le Brun, Count de la March, and half sister by the mother of King Henry III, and 2ndly, Joan, dau. Of William, lord Mowbray, and by the former had issue,
William, who was killed in a tournament at Croyden, in his father's lifetime, 23 Decembert 1285. He m. Joane, dau of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and left a posthumous son, John.
Alianore, m. to Henry, Lord Percy
Isabel, m. to John de Baliol, afterwards King of Scotland.
His lordship d. in 1304, and was s. by his grandson.
I believe that the Peter of Savoy mentioned in the above was the Queen's uncle and not her brother.
Alice's mother was Isabel de Angouleme. Hugh le Brun was also known as Hubert de Burgh and Hugh X Lusignan. Isabel had been the wife of King John before marrying secondly Hugh/Hubert. This meant Alice was half sister to Henry III.
At the time of their marriage, John De Warenne was only 12 years old. The Gentlemen's magazine says that Matthew Paris recorded Alice as having died in 1256 but that the Register of Lewes Priory shows her death to have occurred in 1290. She was also buried in Lewes Priory, before the high alter, under a marble monument with a sculpture of a dragon or wivern on it. It has a branch in its mouth, the crest of the Warrens.
The history of Lewes says that William continued firm in his adherence to the king. “He joined the king in Guinne in 1254, and two years afterwards he was present with other Peers in Westminster Hall when the Archbishop of Canterbury, supported by several Bishops, pronounced, with lighted candles, all those excommunicated, who should violate the two great charters of the kingdom. In the same year, says Dugdale “he had the tertium denarium of the County of Surrey yielded him by the King's Precept, then sent to the barons of the Exchequer.” Dr. Watson concludes that this grant was confirmed to him on account of his then coming of age. The castle of Pevensey was afterwards entrusted to his charge by the confiding monarch, and soon after he went over to the barons. His defection however, was not of long continuance; again he joined the royal forces, and was actively engaged in the defence of Rochester castle, against the brave but too arbitrary Earl of Leicester.
The little glory which the Earl of Warren had won by his able defence of Rochester castle, was soon tarnished. The battle of Lewes followed shortly after, and the Earl adhered to the royal party; but basely sought his safety by a flight from the field of battle, deserting his royal master, and escaping to the continent. All the lands and possessions of Earl Warren in England, except the castles of Reigate and Lewes, were given, by grant under the great eal to Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and De Warren was banished the realm by public edict of the Earl of Leicester. The battle of Evesham, which shortly followed, wrested from the barons their temporary power and gave liberty to the captive king. The estates of the Earl of Warren were restored to him, and with them the unbounded confidence of the monarch.
The Earl of Warren appears to have partaken of all the distinguishing qualities of the English baron: with his wealth, and honours, and independence, he was haughty, imperious, and tyrannical. A dispute arising in 1268, between him and Henry de Lacy, afterwards Earl of Lincoln, concerning a certain pasture, the lordly disputants assembled their respective retainers, resolving to determine, by a pitched battle, the right which each claimed. The interposition of the king, prevented the mutual slaughter, and upon an inquiry being made into the circumstances, the right was adjudged to Lacy.
About two years after this dispute with de Lacy, the earl was guilty of a still more serious outrage; and one, whose consequences he felt for many succeeding years. He had been long engaged in a law suit, with Alan Lord Zouche, of Ashby, concerning the title to a certain manor. During the trial before the king's judges in Westminster hall, the earl and his armed attendants attacked Lord Zouche, and his eldest son Sir Roger, with drawn swords, so that, says Dugdale, “he almost killed the one, and wounded the other.” The earl was fined in the sum of 10,000 marks, and was compelled, with fifty of his followers, who had been engaged in this act of violence, to walk on foot from the New Temple, to Westminster hall, and there to take an oath, that what they had done, was not out of any prepense malice, but only out of sudden heat and passion. In consequence of this submission and fine, a pardon was granted to the earl and his followers, in the following terms:--
The King to all &c., greeting,Whereas our well-beloved and faithful John de Warren, Earl of Surrey, for himself and his men, hath put himself upon the king's mercy to be fined at his pleasure for a certain trespass and assaults, lately committed by the same earl and his men upon Alan la Such, (or Zouche), and Roger his son, in the King's Hall in Westminster, as it is said: Whereupon the said Alan hath summoned the said Earl in the King's Court before the king himself.
Now we have remised to the said earl, and to all his men, and to all those that can be discharged of that trespass, all indignation and anger of mind, which we had conceived against them by occasion of the aforesaid trespass.
All we have pardoned to them the suit, (or breach), of our peace, which to us belongs, or in any other manner can belong to that trespass, in whatsoever manner happening, either by the death or other harm of the aforesaid Alan and Roger, or either of them, by means of the trespass and assaults aforesaid; intestimony, &c.
Witness the King at Winton, the 4th day of August
This writ of pardon was not granted him, till after Prince Edward had pursued him with a strong power to his castle at Reigate, where he had shut himself up; but finding the prince determined to force him to obedience to the laws of the kingdom, he made a most humiliating submission, imploring mercy, and afterwards made his peace with the king, as appears by the foregoing document. The fine was afterwards reduced by Edward I to 8,400 marks, and an acceptance of the same, by two hundred marks per annum, was agreed to. This mark of royal favour, was occasioned by the noble reception that King Edward received at Reigate, on his return from quelling the insurrections in Gascony.
Edward I returned to England the 12th of August, 1289, after staying more than three years abroad on sundry weighty affairs, and on the 21st of August, in the same year, he dates a commission of Sewers by his letters patent, from Lewes, to inquire into the truth of a complaint from Kent, touching the sewers, and to make redress accordingly. This was nine days after his arrival in England, and as John, Earl of Warren, was in his particular confidence, it is likely his errand at Lewes, was to consult the earl, touching several abuses committed in his absence, by the judges of the realm, and officers of the crown; for the king very soon afterwards removed almost all the judges, for high misdemeanors and corruption in their offices; some he banished, and fined them all most severely, by which he got, (what indeed he then much wanted,) about 100,000 marks, all his historians affirm: and no doubt, he had the satisfaction, at the same time, of riding over the field of battle, at Lewes, in which he had borne so gallant, though unfortunate, a part, twenty-five years before, in his father's reign.
In 1276, 6 Edward I, the king employed commissioners to make inquiry throughout the kingdom, by what warrant or title (Quo Warranto), the landholders enjoyed their estates, in order that those who could not exhibit a valid claim to their possessions, might be compelled to restore them to the king, or obliged to submit to a pecuniary composition, for the privilege of retaining them. As John de Warren, has the honour of putting a temporary stop to this iniquitous mode of recruiting the public treasury, the history of the proceeding is worthy of notice. It shall be given in the words of Holinshed.
“Many were thus called to answere, till at lengthe the Lord John Warren, Earle of Surrey, a man greatly beloved of the people, perceiving the King to haue caste his net for a praye, and that there was not one whyche spake against those so bitter and cruell proceedings, and therefore being called afore the Justices aboute this matter, he appeared, and being asked what right he held his lands? He sodenly drawing forth an old rusty sworde “By this instument (sayde he), doe I holde my landes, and by the same I entende to defende them. Our auncestors coming into this realme with William Conquerour, conquered theyr landes with the swords and with the same will I defende me from all those that shall be aboute to take them from me; he did not make a conquest of the realme alone, our progenitors were with him as participators and helpers with him.”
“The Kyng understoode into what hatred of his people by this means hee was fallen, and therefore to anoyd civill dissention and war that might thereby ensue, he left off his begun practice; so that the thing which generally shuld haue touched and bene hurtful to all men, was nowe sodeingly stayed by the manhood and couragious stoutness only of one mand the foresaid Earle.”
The “ manhood and couragious stoutness” of the Earl, might, as is stated, put a stop to the proceedings of the Quo Warranto commission at that time, but the wealth that had accrued to the royal treasury from the forfeitures and compositions, were too great, to permit such an effectual mode of supplying the wants of the monarch to be altogether relinquished: and on the following year, the 7th Edward I, Earl Warren was summoned by name, before John de Reygate and his associates, the Justices itinerants in the County of Sussex, to shew by what authority he claimed to have free warren and free-chace, in the towns of Worth, Ditching, Clayton, Withiam, Cuckfield, Keymer, Street, Balcomb, Plumpton, Chailey, Ardingly, Hoadly, Lindfield, Westmeston, Wenham, Newick, Barcombe, Hamsey Benham, Swanburghe, Kingston, Iford, Westoke, Hounsdean, Smythewyk, Holinstrow, Rodmill, Piddinghoe, Telescombe, Southease, Newhaven, Middleburgh, Iwonesmere, Ovingdean, Falmer, Balmer, Patcham, Brighthelmston, Slaugham, Bolney, Hurst, Mediam, Crawley, Wyndlesham, Hangleton, Atlingworth, Blatchington, Wyke, Withdean, Twyning, Poynings, Newtimber, Selscomb, Pycombe, Pynkeden, Porleslade, Aldington, Farncomb, Molescombe, or Mousecombe, Abburton, Fulking, Perching, Sandes, Hedesnell, Lesefield, and Feld, in the County of Sussex.
The damage to the king, by John de Warren's holding the warren and chase in the towns above-mentioned, was stated by William de Gyselingham to be a thousand pounds. It was adjudged that the king should seize nothing by his writ for the present.
In 1297, the Earl was general of all the King's forces on the north side of Trent. This appointment brought him in contact with the immortal Wallace, a man whose name is associated with all that is glorious, and is consecrated in the memory of the true patriot. This noble minded man, refusing to swear fealty to the King of England, whose forces were overrunning and desolating the Scottish kingdom, aspired to the honest fame of a patriot hero, and re-animated the drooping courage of his countrymen, when the nobles of the land had submitted to ignominious thraldom. When the chiefs of Scotland submitted, without striking a blow for freedom, to Henry de Percy, at Irwine, Wallace supported by a gallant band, found means to avoid the disgrace of surrendering to the usurper, and effected a retreat, but to strengthen his power. On the Earl of Warren's entering Scotland, he found the spirit of resistance greater than he had reason to expect. He advanced to Stirling, near to which place, but on the opposite side of the Forth, the army of Wallace was assembled. Terms of submission were demanded by the English general from the Scottish hero, and the demand was received as it deserved to be—with scorn: and the only answer which he condescended to give to the insulting invaders was, “that his army was not come to treat for peace, but to try the matter by battle.” A contest , ensued and the Scots were victorious.
Six thousand of the English army are said to have fallen on this occasion, amongst whom was Sir Hugh Cressingham, to whose turbulent importunities the disaster is, in a great measure, to be attributed. Cressingham's body was recognised by the victors amongst the heaps of slain, and to shew their destination of this unfeeling and arbitrary minister, they treated his lifeless frame with an indignity, justifiable only amongst barbarians.
The Earl again appears in the page of history in 33 Edward I, when he was acting in command under the king, who had penetrated to the extremity of Scotland; this was the last public act of his life, for in the same year he died at Kennington, near London, in the 70th year of his age, and the 65th of his earldom, and was buried before the high altar in the Priory of Lewes, in the midst of the pavement, under a plain tomb, or grave stone, on which was written the following epitaph:--
“Vous qe passer ou bouche close
Priez pur cely ke cy repose:
En vie coe vous este jadis fu,
Et vous tiel, serretz come je su;
Sire John Count de Gareyn gyst yey;
Dieu de sa alme eit mercy.
Ky pur sa alme priers,
Troiz mill jours de pardon avera.”
“Thou that dost tread this silent way,
Forget not for the dead to pray;
The bones that in this tomb are laid,
In life's fair bloom were once array's;
Like them shall thine in time consume,
And others trample on thy tomb.
John Earl of Warren's buried here:
May mercy his flown spirit cheer!
For his repose whoever prays,
Gains an indulgence of three thousand days.”
The high esteem in which the Earl of Warren was held by the king, is evinced by the special precept, directed to the then Bishop elect of London, whereby, signifying “how pious, and before Almighty God, a meritorious work it was, to pray continually for the dead, that so they might be more easily delivered from the burthen of their sins; and that the Earl, who had been a most faithful and useful subject and servant to him and the whole realm, was then departed this life, to his very great sorrow; he required him, that he should cause his soul to be commended to the mercy of God, by all the religious and ecclesiastical persons, throughout his whole diocese of London.”
A similar precept was directed by the King to the Archbishop of Canterbury for his whole province; to the Abbots of St. Augustine's in Canterbury, Westminster, Waltham, St. Albans. St. Edmunds-bury, and Evesham.
The folly of the times did not stop here. Indulgences were granted to all who should pray for the soul of the deceased earl. The Archbishop of Canterbury promised a remission of forty days of pain from the period of purgatory to every good Christian, who should pray for the soul of the noble earl. Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, a like period, Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, thirty days; the Bishop of Durham forty days; the Bishop of Carlisle forty days; the Bishop of Lincoln forty days; the Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield, forty days; and John Bishop of Chichester, forty days.
There are but few grants of this earl to the Priory of Lewes. The following charters however relative to this house are recorded in the Register Book of Lewes Priory. A charter by which the Earl grants unto the Prior and Convent an annual rent of six shillings for ever out of his manor of Meeching, for which the religious quit claimed to the earl and his heirs, all the right and claim which they had in stagno scitu et sect molendini in villis de Meching ae Pedingho. Another by which he gave to the monks a messuage in the vill of Suthwerk. Another by which he gave them the advowson of the church of Dewesbury.
The earl married Alice, daughter of Hugh le Brun, by whom he had William, who died in the life time of his father, being unfortunately slain at a tournament at Croydon, in Surrey; Eleanor, who was married to a son of Henry, Lord Percy, and afterwards to the son of a Scotch earl; and Isabel, who was united to John de Baliol, who became King of Scotland.
John de Warenne was the Earl Warenne and also called (incorrectly) the Earl of Sussex. He was an eminent English lord during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I of England. John de Warenne was son and heir of the Sixth Earl, William de Warenne, and succeeded upon his father's death in 1240. He and his family claimed the earldom of Sussex but never held it de jure. He married Alice de Lusignan, half sister of Henry III; and, except for a brief period in 1262 to 1263, he strongly supported his friend the young lord Edward (afterward Edward I ) during the Barons' Wars. In 1264 he defended Rochester Castle against Simon de Montfort until relieved by Edward. They then repaired to Warenne's town of Lewes, where the royal army was defeated (in May 1264), and Warenne escaped to France. In 1265 he landed in Pembroke with Henry III's half brother William de Valence and took part in the campaign that ended at the Battle of Evesham (August 4, 1265) with Montfort's death. The successful claim of Warenne's son-in-law John de Balliol to the throne of Scotland gave Surrey a strong interest and a leading part in Scottish affairs. However, after the treaty between Scotland and France in 1295, Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296, and Warenne won the Battle of Dunbar. Edward I then appointed him keeper of the realm of Scotland, but in 1297 he was defeated by William Wallace at Stirling Bridge. He fought in Edward's later campaigns in Scotland and took part in the victory at Falkirk in 1298. Surrey, John de Warenne, 7th Earl of. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 25, 2003, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
JOHN de Warenne (1231 or after-Kennington [Nov] 1304, bur Lewes Priory). He succeeded his father in 1240 as Earl of Surrey. He was one of the guardians of the realm on the death of King Henry III, until the return of Edward I from crusade. He was appointed keeper of the realm of Scotland 3 Sep 1296, but never assumed the post as he was defeated by the Scots at the battle of Stirling[368]. m (Aug 1247) ALIX de Lusignan, daughter of HUGUES X "le Brun" Sire de Lusignan, Comte de la Marche & his wife Isabelle Ctss d’Angoulême ([1224]-after 9 Feb 1256). She is named "Aelesia" by Matthew of Paris when he records her visit to England in 1247 with her brothers to her uterine half-brother King Henry III and her subsequent marriage with "Johanni comiti Warenniæ adolescenti"[369]. Matthew of Paris records her death in early 1256
SOURCE: FOUNDATION FOR MEDIEVAL GENEALOGY
MEDIEVAL LANDS PROJECT
CHARLES CAWLEY
Matilda/Maud Marshal
Lady Maud Marshal was born at Pembroke Castle, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1192. She died 1247/48. She was the daughter of William Marshal and Isabel De Clare
The Bigod earls, say that “Her career as a wife and mother had shaped the destinies of two of the greatest families in England (and, incidentally, the two greatest families in East Anglia). When her funeral held at Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, her eldest son, Roger was naturally present among the mourners. Also in attendance were his younger brothers, Hugh and Ralph, along with Maud's son by her second marriage the teen aged John de Warenne. Together the four of them acted as pallbearers that day, carrying their mother's body through the great abbey church and into the choir, where Maud was finally laid to rest.”
Magna Charta Barons, says that Maud inherited Hempstead-Marshall, in Berks, and the office of Marshal of England, which her son, Roger Bigod, fourth Earl of Norfolk inherited. Maud married Hugh Bigod, and had sons Roger,Hugh and Ralph Bigod. An article printed by the British Archaeological Association, names a few more sons by Hugh Bigod, John and Simon. Blood royal, says that they married before Lent 1207. Some sources say that they also had a daughter Isabel, who married Gilbert de Lacy and John FitzGeoffrey.
Hugh Bigod
Hugh was one of the Magna Charta Sureties. He inherited fro his father in 1221 and became the 3rd Earl of Norfolk.The Bigod Earls, states that at the time of his death (1225), Hugh Bigod held some twenty-three manors, all of which lay in East Anglia. Ten were in Norfolk (Acle, Ditchingham, Earsham (with its half-hundred), Forncett, Framingham Earl, Halvergate, Hanworth, Lopham, Suffield and South Walsham), and a further eleven lay in Suffolk (Bungay, Dunningworth, Earl Soham, Earl Stonham, Framlingham, Hacheston, Hollesley, Hoo, Kelsale, Staverton and Walton). He also held manors at Dovercourt and Great Chesterford in Essex and some woodland at Romsford in Essex.
When he died Maud got 1/3 as her dower share and her son Roger inherited 2/3 until she died.
She remarried to William, Earl of Warren, son of Hamelin Plantagenet, Earl of Warren; her first husband's uncle. William Warenne , Earl of Surrey (1166-1240), was the son of Isabel Warenne and Hamelin Plantagenet. After this remarriage, she styled herself Marshal of England, Countess of Norfolk and Warenne.
William was also known as William Plantagenet. As previously stated, his father was Hamelin Plantagenet. His mother was Isabel De Warenne, daugher ot William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey.
He received the manor of Appleby, in North Lincolnshire from his father.
He had possessions in Normandy when England lost Normandy to the French in the year 1204. King John gave him Grantham and Stamford to compensate his Norman losses.
In 1204 he became Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and served in this position until 1206. He was a Warden of Welch marches between 1208-1213.
During the time that King John was having trouble with the barons, and when they tried to have the French king placed on his throne, William remained loyal. He advised the king to sign the Magna Charta. When King Henry III took the throne in 1217, William was also loyal to him.
He served two tenures as Sheriff of Wiltshire; 1200-1208 and 1213-1226.
In 1214 he served again as Lord Warde of the Cinque Ports.
When he married Maud, he became Earl of Salisbury, in right of his wife. They had a son John, who succeeded him and a daughter named Isabel, who married Hugh d'Aubigny.
William De Warenne died in 27 May 1240 and was buried at Lewes Priory.At the time of his death, his son John was a minor and was placed under the guardianship of Peter of Savoy.
The history of an East Anglian soke says that Maud was given a grant of William's lands in Norfold and Yorkshire, “to hold at farm at the following rents to the Exchequeer:---Manor of Gimingeham, L94 4s. 4D; of Acre, L41 12s 6d; of Marham, L4 12s 8 ½d; of Tefford (Thetford), L30 13s 4d; of Wakefield and Cuniburgh, L244 15s 8d, according to their extent and L100 yearly for increment.
During her lifetime she gave clothing to the nuns at Thetford and three marks a year out of her mill, near the village of Cesterford in pure and perpetual alms.
Maud next married Walter de Dunstanville, 2nd baron of Castle Combe. He was the son of Walter de Dunstanville, 1st baron of Castle Combe, by his wife Ursula, also surnamed Dunstanville. They had sons, Walter, John and Robert de Dunstanville.
The Magna charta barons and their American descendants with the pedigrees of ... - Page 76
by Charles Henry Browning - 1898
The Bigod earls of Norfolk in the thirteenth century - Page 31
by Marc Morris - 2005
The journal of the British Archaeological Association - Page 100
by British Archaeological Association - 1865
Blood royal: issue of the kings and queens of medieval England, 1066-1399 ... - Page 373
by Thelma Anna Leese - 1996
Complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United ... - Page 327
by George Edward Cokayne - 1896
The history of an East Anglian soke: studies in original documents ... - Page 19
by Christobel Mary Hoare Hood - 1918
Yorkshire: An historical and topographical introduction to a knowledge of ... - Page 169
by John Wainwright - 1829
The Bigod earls, say that “Her career as a wife and mother had shaped the destinies of two of the greatest families in England (and, incidentally, the two greatest families in East Anglia). When her funeral held at Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, her eldest son, Roger was naturally present among the mourners. Also in attendance were his younger brothers, Hugh and Ralph, along with Maud's son by her second marriage the teen aged John de Warenne. Together the four of them acted as pallbearers that day, carrying their mother's body through the great abbey church and into the choir, where Maud was finally laid to rest.”
Magna Charta Barons, says that Maud inherited Hempstead-Marshall, in Berks, and the office of Marshal of England, which her son, Roger Bigod, fourth Earl of Norfolk inherited. Maud married Hugh Bigod, and had sons Roger,Hugh and Ralph Bigod. An article printed by the British Archaeological Association, names a few more sons by Hugh Bigod, John and Simon. Blood royal, says that they married before Lent 1207. Some sources say that they also had a daughter Isabel, who married Gilbert de Lacy and John FitzGeoffrey.
Hugh Bigod
Hugh was one of the Magna Charta Sureties. He inherited fro his father in 1221 and became the 3rd Earl of Norfolk.The Bigod Earls, states that at the time of his death (1225), Hugh Bigod held some twenty-three manors, all of which lay in East Anglia. Ten were in Norfolk (Acle, Ditchingham, Earsham (with its half-hundred), Forncett, Framingham Earl, Halvergate, Hanworth, Lopham, Suffield and South Walsham), and a further eleven lay in Suffolk (Bungay, Dunningworth, Earl Soham, Earl Stonham, Framlingham, Hacheston, Hollesley, Hoo, Kelsale, Staverton and Walton). He also held manors at Dovercourt and Great Chesterford in Essex and some woodland at Romsford in Essex.
When he died Maud got 1/3 as her dower share and her son Roger inherited 2/3 until she died.
She remarried to William, Earl of Warren, son of Hamelin Plantagenet, Earl of Warren; her first husband's uncle. William Warenne , Earl of Surrey (1166-1240), was the son of Isabel Warenne and Hamelin Plantagenet. After this remarriage, she styled herself Marshal of England, Countess of Norfolk and Warenne.
William was also known as William Plantagenet. As previously stated, his father was Hamelin Plantagenet. His mother was Isabel De Warenne, daugher ot William de Warenne, 3rd Earl of Surrey.
He received the manor of Appleby, in North Lincolnshire from his father.
He had possessions in Normandy when England lost Normandy to the French in the year 1204. King John gave him Grantham and Stamford to compensate his Norman losses.
In 1204 he became Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and served in this position until 1206. He was a Warden of Welch marches between 1208-1213.
During the time that King John was having trouble with the barons, and when they tried to have the French king placed on his throne, William remained loyal. He advised the king to sign the Magna Charta. When King Henry III took the throne in 1217, William was also loyal to him.
He served two tenures as Sheriff of Wiltshire; 1200-1208 and 1213-1226.
In 1214 he served again as Lord Warde of the Cinque Ports.
When he married Maud, he became Earl of Salisbury, in right of his wife. They had a son John, who succeeded him and a daughter named Isabel, who married Hugh d'Aubigny.
William De Warenne died in 27 May 1240 and was buried at Lewes Priory.At the time of his death, his son John was a minor and was placed under the guardianship of Peter of Savoy.
The history of an East Anglian soke says that Maud was given a grant of William's lands in Norfold and Yorkshire, “to hold at farm at the following rents to the Exchequeer:---Manor of Gimingeham, L94 4s. 4D; of Acre, L41 12s 6d; of Marham, L4 12s 8 ½d; of Tefford (Thetford), L30 13s 4d; of Wakefield and Cuniburgh, L244 15s 8d, according to their extent and L100 yearly for increment.
During her lifetime she gave clothing to the nuns at Thetford and three marks a year out of her mill, near the village of Cesterford in pure and perpetual alms.
Maud next married Walter de Dunstanville, 2nd baron of Castle Combe. He was the son of Walter de Dunstanville, 1st baron of Castle Combe, by his wife Ursula, also surnamed Dunstanville. They had sons, Walter, John and Robert de Dunstanville.
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by Marc Morris - 2005
The journal of the British Archaeological Association - Page 100
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Blood royal: issue of the kings and queens of medieval England, 1066-1399 ... - Page 373
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Complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United ... - Page 327
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The history of an East Anglian soke: studies in original documents ... - Page 19
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by John Wainwright - 1829
The DE FERRERS Sisters
Thirteenth-century English inheritance law was based on primogeniture: the eldest son was the sole heir of his parents. There was an exception to this; when parents produced no surviving male offspring, Common Law stated that all their female children should inherit equal portions of the estate. In theory, the inheritance of property by women should not have caused any change within the feudal structure, since unmarried heiresses were governed by male guardians and married heiresses surrendered virtually all control over their property to their husbands. Here again, there was an exception; Common Law protected free widows, including widowed heiresses, from forced remarriage, thus providing noble heiresses in the thirteenth century with the opportunity to exercise direct control over their inherited property.
An heiress could be a baron, even a countess, in her own right. When the property was divided between several co-heiresses, blood family relationships, which might have been relegated to a secondary role by the marriages of these daughters, tended to become more significant, both politically and socially. This is the world that the daughters of William de Ferrers and Sibyl Marshal were born.
William de Ferrers was the eldest son and heir of William, earl of Derby. Sibyl Marshal, daughter of William Marshal and Isabel de Clare, was his first wife and they had seven daughters: Agnes, Isabel, Maud(also known as Mahaut), Sibyl, Eleanor, Joan, and Agatha. They had no surviving male children. This meant that as long as Sibyl lived, there was a probability that William would have no one to pass the earldom on to. In that case, the earldom of Derby would be divided among his seven daughters. When this happened, an earldom was referred to as extinct in the male line. Even though there were female heiresses, no one heiress would have enough land to sustain the title.
Sibyl Marshal was born into a large family. She was one of ten children--five boys and five girls. William Marshal, her father was one of the richest and most powerful men in England, due to his marriage to her mother Isabel De Clare, who was the heiress to the Earl of Pembroke. When William de Ferrers married Sibyl, sometime in 1218 or early 1219, she stood no chance to inherit any of her father's and mother's estates. She had five brothers, which appeared to be healthy and would inherit before she did. However, even though William de Ferrers did not benefit monetarily by marrying Sibyl, he would have benefited by making an alliance to the most powerful nobleman of the early thirteenth century. Sibyl's sisters made similar marriages to prominent nobles. William Marshal was politically very close to the young King Henry III.
William and Sibyl de Ferrers' seven daughters were born between 1220 and 1237, when she died. William's father did not die until ten years later. William remarried soon after her death, to Margaret de Quency. She was the daughter and coheir to Roger de Quency and Helen of Galway, the earl and countess of Winchester. Margaret produced a son, Robert who inherited the earldom of Derby upon his father's death, which prevented William's estate from being divided.
Even though daughters usually did not inherit their father's estate, it was still the duty of their father to provide for them by arranging marriages for them. William managed to arrange advantageous marriages for his four eldest daughters sometime before 1245. As his own father was still living, and he had not inherited yet. This would have made it necessary for him to make politically advantageous marriages for his daughters. The marriages he made for them all helped to consolidate political connections he had made to the families of their spouses. During this time period, families frequently gave the younger daughters to convents to become nuns, but William's daughters all married.
In 1245, Anselm and Walter Marshal, the last of their mother's brothers, died. Despite the odds, all five of their maternal uncles had died without male heirs. The result was that the vast estates of the earldom of Pembroke and Striguil in England and Wales and the lordship of Leinster in Ireland was divided among the Marshal's five daughters. Their mother, Sybil de Ferrers was the fourth. This meant that Sibyl's seven daughters became heirs to one-fifth of the largest and richest inheritance in the British Isles. Their share included the town and manor of Sturminster Marshal in Dorset, manors in Kent, Wiltshire, Bedford, and Norfolk, and the castle, town, and country of Kildare in Ireland, with the rents, issues, income, advowsons, knight's fee, and services that belonged to those properties.
It is doubtful that the daughters and grandchildren of William and Isabella Marshal had expected This unexpected inheritance while fortuitous, would also complicated their lives due to the continual negotiation over how the Marshal estates were to be divided. This inheritance stood to leave them in better financial positions than their father, who himself, had not yet inherited from his father.
The daughters of Sybil Marshal de Ferrers are an example of women during the Middle Ages not always having their destinies decided by men. They were able to work together and accomplish great things.
Six of the sisters survived their first husbands; of these, two never remarried, two of them married twice, and two of them married three times. The seventh sister died during her marriage. but the other five were widows at the time of their deaths, three of them lived as independent widows for many years.
The Ferrers not only had to deal with each other when it came to their joint share of the inheritance, they had their first cousins to contend with. The Ferrers sisters inherited only one-fifth of their maternal grandparent's estates. Their cousins inherited the other four-fifths.
Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, in her book Portraits of Medieval Women says, “By using the records of the central courts and the rolls of the royal chancery it is possible to discover what benefits the Ferrers sisters received from their inheritance, how they managed and maintained their property, and how they interacted with each other and with others outside their immediate family. Their actions reveal the sisters to have been intelligent and effective landholders, who protected their interests and their property even when they bickered among themselves for greater shares of the inheritance. Both the spirit of cooperation among them and the antagonisms directed against some of the family members continued to be played out in subsequent generations, especially among the first cousins.”
At the time that they inherited, three of the Ferrers sisters were married, one was widowed and about to be married again, and the three youngest were still under age.
The unmarried Ferrers sisters became wards of the king. This gave him control of the large and valuable inheritance, because he had control of who they married. As previously stated, providing advantageous marriages for their children was one of the most significant duties of a Medieval parent. William and Sibyl Marshal de Ferrers seem to have carefully chosen these marriages before she died.
Agnes, Isabel , Maud and Sibyl were all married to important barons of middle to high rank, even though they had not yet inherited from their grandparents and were still unlikely to. Agnes married William de Vescey, a lord from Yorkshire and connected to the Lacy family; Isabel marred Gilbert Basset, a close friend and ally of Earl Richard Marshal, the girl's uncle; Maud married Simon de Kyme, who was an important Lincolnshire landholder and also connected to the Lacy family; Sibyl married Franco de Bohun, who was lord of Midhurst, Sussex. His cousin was Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex. Franco's marriage to a daughter of the prestigious house of Pembroke raised his status.
Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, says that the marriages of William and Sibyl's daughters reflect his elevated status. all of the connections either directly or tangentially moved toward or into the Marshal orbit of political and marital alliances, or into the Marshal--Chester circle that was cemented by William's and Sibyl's own marriage.” She says that these marriages were a deliberate strategy and shows as proof the gift that Isabel de Ferrers received on her marriage to Gilbert Bassett. Her uncle Richard Marshal, gave her a manor in Hampshire, which included the town of Greywell. This is an indication that as a reward for marrying a Marshal ally, her uncle bolstered her dowry from his own possessions.
Part of the Ferrers families strategy was forming alliances through marriage. When they became widows, and gained control of who they married, they continued to make political alliances through marriage. Between 1245 and about 1270 the Ferrers sisters married collectively thirteen times. Agnes, the eldest, and Agatha, the youngest, each married once; Isabel second sister, and Joan next to youngest, each married twice; and Maud, third eldest, and Eleanor, third youngest, each married twice; and Maud, third eldest, and Eleanor, third youngest, each married three times.
Sibyl de Ferrers died before her husband Franco de Bohun, and before she received her part of the inherited estate. Her inheritance went to her son John de Bohun.
The marriages and remarriages made by the sisters after they inherited, were made with men who were connected to the Marshal family. These husbands were from Cheshire and the Welsh March, places in which the Marshals held authority, such as Dorset, or they were to men who were brothers or cousins of men who had married into the Marshals.
The sisters used their ties to their mother's family, rather than their father's the Earl of Derby's, which was not as powerful as the Marshal line. In this case, a family's political and social position did not come from the father's familial and social connections. When you read about families in the Middle Ages, the authors tend to indicate that the father's family or the husband's family were the only ones of significance to women. The case of the Ferrers sisters contradicts this idea. There are other examples of the wife's family being more politically important, such as the family of Anne Boleyn. Her mother's family was far more politically powerful than her father's, and the family in effect took orders from her maternal uncle. In both of these families, the husband's status was elevated by marriage, not the wife's.
The Ferrers sisters status was raised significantly by the inheritance they received as heirs to their mother. Their inheritance allowed them to advance politically and socially in a way that would not have been possible if they could only depend on the status of their father's or husbands' families.
The sisters all seem to have had good health. Of all the surviving sisters, Joan was the only one who predeceased her last husband. Agnes, Maud, Isabel, Eleanor and Agatha all lived as widows for long periods of time. Agnes was a widow for thirty seven years. Maud survived her husband for ten years. Agatha outlived her husband by more than thirty years. Some of the sisters lived to great ages. Agatha was about 79; Matilda was about 78; Agnes was about 80; Eleanor was about 48 at death; Isabel was about 41; Joan was about 47; Isabel died young. Surviving to adulthood was miraculous during the Middle Ages.
During the Middle Ages, becoming a widow could be to a woman's advantage. A widow was entitled to one-third of her husband's property and they could hold this property even if they remarried. A woman who was widowed several times, could amass a large amount of property. A widow was not placed under guardianship, which meant an unmarried woman was under the control of either a relative (usually male), the king or someone appointed by the king. As a widow, a woman could act as executor to another person's will as was legally entitled to write her own will. She could own, buy, sell and rent property, all things which a married woman could only do with the permission of her husband. A widow was able to act as a guardian for her children and make marriage arrangements for them. Many widows were patrons for priests and monasteries. A widow who owned property could hire, men to manage their estates, attorneys, and litigate in court, which married women had to do through her husband. Widows were not able to hold office, like judge, although I do know of a case where a woman was a sheriff.
Widows also had responsibilities. They had to pay taxes and supply soldiers to the king. They were not allowed to lead men into battle, but sometimes they had to defend castles owned by their family.
1.Eleanor married a series of times, and when she died, she was a countess in the West Country.
Her first marriage as a result of her elopement , while she was still the king's ward was to William de Vaux, who died in 1252. Arthur Collins's supplement to the Peerage says that William de Vaux had to pay a fine to the king of 26 marks per annum until 80 marks was paid for this transgression. He was apparently one of her father's household knights. Her second marriage was to Roger de Quency, earl of Winchester, again without licence from the king. This marriage made for some interesting familial connections. Roger's second wife was Maud, widow of Anselm Marshal and therefore, Eleanor's aunt by marriage. In addition to this, Roger's first marriage to Helen of Galoway produced a daughter Margaret, who married Eleanor's father William Ferrer's as his second wife, making her husband Roger's daughter her stepmother. So when Eleanor married Roger, she became the stepmother of her stepmother. After Roger de Quency died in 1264, she married Roger de Leyburn, with royal permission in 1267. Her third marriage gave her entry into the royal court, through a Poitevan noble, who was of high social status. Portraits of Medieval Women says he was landless, but the Dictionary of National Biography says he was granted the manor of Elham in Kent, by Edward I. The Dictionary of National Biography says that Roger de Leyburn accompanied Henry III to Gascony in 1253 and was intimate with his son Edward I, serving as his steward and keeping his purse. At a later point, he allied himself with barons rebelling against the king and as a result had his manor taken back from him, he resorted to marauding and eventually joined Roger de Clifford and Simon de Montfort, against the king. He was along with some other lords, won back over to the king and he was reinstated as steward to the king and queens households and appointed warden of the Cinque ports. The same source says that he was given 13 manors and that he was sheriff of Kent and warden of the forests beyond Trent. So, despite falling in and out with the royal family, he apparently held a place of favor with them. Roger de Leyburn died in 1271 and Eleanor died three years later in 1274.
2.Agatha gained power in the West Marches, when she married, Hugh de Mortimer, younger brother of Roger de Mortimer. Roger's wife, Maud de Braose, was also the Ferrers sisters' first cousin. Agatha must have been in the guardianship of her sister Agnes for a time. I found in a book called the Antiquities of Shropshire, that July 24, 1253, the king ordered Agnes to give give up her sister Agatha to Hugh, son of Ralph de Mortimer. Hugh held the manor of Chelmarsh and another called Cleybury. He was the sheriff of Shropshire and Staffordshire. He died in 1273 and she lived until 1306. Antiquities of Shropshire shows Agatha being required to send her service for the Muster against Lewelin in 1277 and in 1284 as owing money to the crown because of her share of the Marshal inheritance. She held lands in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire. She was also included in the military summons of 1300 against the Scots. July 12, 1306 the king's writ of Diem clausit extremum issued on her death showed that she owned estates in Bedfordshire, Dorsetshire, and Ireland.
3.Agnes was the most successful of the sisters. She became lady Kildare. She had political and economic control over much of Yorkshire and Northumberland. Her eldest son married into the royal family twice. When her husband William de Vesci of Kildare, died, she received as dowry the manor of Malton. The barony of Alnwick and the Scottish lordship of Sprouston, must have been part of her inheritance, because it passed to their son John. William de Vesci was Lord Justice of Ireland. Agnes' arms were depicted on her seal on a charter after her husband died, as follows: she appears in a gown embroidered with the arms, the cross patonce, of her husband. She is standing under a canopy. She is holding in her right hand a shield bearing the Vesci arms: gules, a cross patonce argent. On her left side is her own family's arms: vairy, or and gules. Her mantle is lined with the Ferrers vair. The combination of arms shows the union of two families. Although her husband's family is given precedence by the cross patonce bing nearer to her body, her pride in her own family is shown on the reverse side. It shows a tree with three shields hanging from it. There was originally a fourth shield which was dmaged. One is her husband's cross patonce. One is from her mother's family: party or and vert, a lion rampant. A third shows her paternal grandmother's family. This grandmother was one of the heiressesthe earl of Chester: azure, three garbs or. The missing shield may have shown her father's Ferrers line. On this seal, she showed not only her ties to her male relatives, but also to her female relatives, through the male medium of heraldry.
4. Isabel married Gilbert Basset, baron of Wycombe, who died c.1241. The Dictionary of National Biography says that Gilbert Basset died 1241 and was the eldest son of Alan Basset, both being barons of Wycombe. About 1231, Gilbert negotiated a truce with Llewellyn of Wales for Henry III. Alan Basset died in about 1232, when Gilbert succeeded him in the barony. Dugdale says that he was made governor of St. Briavels Castle and the Forest of Dean and that he had close relationships with the Earls Marshal. Gilbert joined the barons led by Richard Marshal (Isabel's uncle) When the barons refused to come to a summons by the king in June 1233, and also refused to meet the king's foreign relations, as a result, Matthew Paris says that Henry III was especially angry with Gilbert for being such a prominent part of this baronial rebellion. Gilbert forfeited a manor given to him by king John, and when he tried to regain it, Henry III declared him a traitor and threatened to hang him if he did not leave the court. One of Gilbert's nephews, a Richard Suard was taken hostage to assure Gilbert's good behavior.
The king summoned the rebellious nobles to meet him at Gloucester in August 1233, and they again refused, and were outlawed as a result. The king also ordered that the towns, castles and parks which belonged to these nobles were to be destroyed. After the death of the earl Marshall, Henry III received Gilbert back into favor and his estates were restored to him.
The occasion of Gilbert's death occurred in 1241. While he was out on a hunt, his horse tripped over a root and threw him and he was paralyzed as a result. He never recovered. Before the end of August, the same year, his only son Gilbert also died.
Isabel and Gilbert benefitted from their association and relationship to the Marshal family. When they married, Richard Marshal gave her a manor in Hampshire, including the town of Greywell as part of her dowry.
Gilbert was a knight of the king's household as well as his connections to the Marshals. Gilbert's father Alan and his brother Thomas had been knights under Isabel's uncle William Marshal II.
After Gilbert's death, Isabel married Reginald de Mohun, lord of Dunster, He was the chief Justice of all the forest of Trent under Henry III, and governor of Saubeye Castle in Leicester. He had land and knights fees in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. He owned the manors of Ottery, Stoke-Fleming, Monkton, and Galmeton, and the Maanor of Mildenhall, in Wiltshire and Greylkell in Southampton, which were given as giftsto his and Isabel's son William. He was obviously well off, enough so that he established a Cistercian abbey at Axeminster in Devon, in 1246. Reginald died in 1256.
5.Matilda/Maud married Simon de Kyme. He held a knights fee of her father in Fresken', Weynfeld, Bytoft, Skegnes and Wynethorp. Simon died in 1248 and some sources seem to think that they had a son named William who inherited the de Kyme property from him. Other sources state that William was Simon's brother. Within the same year after Simon died Matilda received permission to remarry to William “le Fortibus” de Vivonne. The Vivonnes were seneschals of Poitiers, Aquitaine, and Gascony. The History and Antiquities of Somersetshire says tha she had an assignment in dower of the manor of Shepton-Malet. It also says that Simon was her first husband and lists their four daughters, Joan, Cecily, Mabel, and Sybilla. William was also Lord of Chewton in Somerset. William must have inherited a considerable portion of land. The Battle Abbey roll says that he was given leave by Henry III to go to Poitou and recover “such lands and tenements as ought to descend to him by inheritance for the death of Americ de Vivonia, his uncle.” William died in 1259. When he died, he left considerable property to his four daughters. He held land in Poitou, and in England from his father, and land from his mother's Malet estates in England. She remarried Emery, viscount of Rouchechoard, who died about 1284. She lived fifteen ears after his death.
6.Sibyl Ferrers married Franco De Bohun September 21, 1247, without licence. Franco was the lord of Midhurst and he also inherited his mother's land in Ireland. He was sealer or Writs to King Henry III. When Franco died he left to their son John, Midhurst, Forde and Rustyntone as per extant taken at Franco's death.
7.Joan Ferrers married John De Mohun and they owned Sturminster-Marshall and one-third of the hundred of Loosebarrow in Dorset. She is mentioned in the chronicles of Tinturn abbey as John de Mohun's wife. He died before 1257. They had two sons, John and Robert. John was the son of Reginald de Mohun who had married her sister Isabel. She remarried about 1259 Robert de Aguillon. The plea rolls of 51 Henry III show that she was dead in 1277. Robert de Aguillon held her estates in curtesy until he died, and so her sisters gave patronage to her son James, apparently until he could inherit.
During their lifetimes, Agnes and her sisters had to work within and through the family to achieve many of their political and economic aims. Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, says “What detailed searching through the records reveals was a situation not unlike those that occur even today among members of a family: the sisters cooperated with each other, but also bickered among themselves. They helped each other when it was advantageous to do so, but individual sisters were not unwilling to antagonize their siblings when their own profit was at stake.”
In her book Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, says that the Ferrers sisters worked together when it was to their benefit. Sometimes they were co-plaintiffs with the other Marshall heirs at times in order to secure property or to sue tenants for trespass, debt or others proprietary actions.
They sisters acted as coheirs when the property they had inherited directly was threatened or when they felt they were not receiving the privileges due to them. Ms. Mitchell also says that The Ferrers sisters contributed to the well being of each other's children.
Inevitably, problems occur when six people share the ownership of property. If you compound the situation by factoring successive generations, deaths and marriages, the possible problems would boggle the mind.
Each of the sisters had some land from the property they held jointly, it was impossible to divide it equally. Each sister received jurisdiction over specific local courts, advowsons, and profits and rents from specific manors to make their shares more equal. Whoever decided how things were originally divided attempted to make the seven separate shares. This was not possible for all ot the inheritance, so the sisters had to cooperate with each other and control some of the lands cooperatively. It was also necessary to grant dower properties or cash settlements to the four surviving widows of the Marshal men. Eleanor Plantagenet, was the widow of William Marshal II the younger and wife of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester (and she was also sister of King Henry III) and Margaret de Quency, suo jure countess of Lincoln and dower countess of Pembroke, posed unusual problems.
Eleanor de Montfort was still a child when her first husband, William Marshal II, died. Given her young age, their marriage may not have yet been consummated before he died. Her dowry included the lands in England that were the Ferrers sisters inheritance. These included Luton, Bedfordshire, the family caput in that county. Instead of dividing the Irish lands that formed the lordship of Leinster, Eleanor was given an annuity of L400 taken from the profits of the lordship. When both Walter and Anselm Marshall died in 1245, King Henry III made the decision to pay Eleanor--his sister--her annuity from his own coffers in order to temporarily aleviate some of the problems of dividing the estates among the thirteen coheirs. He was counting on the other heirs to reimburse him later. However the Marshal heirs almost never paid the yearly amount allotted to each of them, and they accumulated huge debts to the Crown over the years. Henry III faithfully paid L400 a year to his sister according to the records of the Liberate Rolls. The rolls of the King's Remembrancer record the large debts owed by the heirs. For example, in 1255-56 five of the seven 'Ferrers heiresses each owed L217 2s 10 1/2d.
The dower owed to Margaret de Quency's Marshal was more problematic to the heirs. Because her husband, Walter, had been the last male heir invested with the earldom, she was entitled to a full one-third of the property. The Ferrers sisters, were compelled to give up the most prestigious portion of their inheritance, the Irish county of Kildare, for the duration of Margaret's life. King Henry III ordered the other heirs to compensate the Ferrers sisters from their shares of the inheritance, but they never received payments that equally anything near the value of these estates. The other heirs probably felt that the sisters should be content because they would eventually inherit them after Margaret de Quency died. They also may have felt that the sisters were not entitled to them in the first place.
An example of the heirs fighting amongst themselves can be shown in the case of Agnes de Vescy. She took a case to the Exchequer of Pleas in order to gain the partitioning of debt owed to her by all her coheirs, over thirty years after the Marshal estates had been divided. The case still appeared in the court records ten years later. Agnes sued her sisters, cousins, nephews, and nieces and several of the defendants sued each other for debts that had not been paid to them. These suits were for petty amounts,which amounted to a mere 125 marks among all thirteen coheirs.
Ms. Mitchell says that the sisters had other cases which can be found in court records. They sued for dower when their husbands died and litigated against tenants, bailifffs, and the like over debts, detinues, and trespasses committed by them. They were also sued for similar things themselves.
Tenants occasionally sued one of the heirs for novel disseisin or for entry into property she held. This means they were sued by litigants claiming that the sisters had dispossessed them of lands that were rightfully theirs. Having multiple co-heirs worked to their advantage in cases such as these. By law, all of the heirs had to be listed in the writ and all had to appear before the case could be heard in court. It would be nearly impossible to win a case when you had thirteen co-defendants.
As previously stated, part of the privileges that the sisters inherited was the right to have their own courts in the lands they inherited. In 1293, they demanded that the abbot of St. Thomas near Dublin appear before their liberty court of Kildare to answer the charge of darrein presentment, which was was an action brought to enquire who was in fact the last patron to present a benefice to a church then vacant, of which the plaintiff complained that he was deforced or unlawfully deprived by the defendant. The abbot insisted that he did not have to appear at their court, and the heirs insisted that he did. He said that the heirs were impinging upon the privileges given to his priory by William Marshal. The case appeared in the court of the King's Bench at every session for two years, but no final judgement is stated in the record. However, an inquisition did discover that the heirs were not entitled to summon the abbot to their court, and it was the abbot's own default that delayed the rendering of justice.
The sisters had a number of disagreements with other Marshal coheirs. In 1273, Humphrey de Bohun (coheir by right of his late wife, Eleanor de Braose, and the father-in-law of Robert de Ferrers, their half-brother) sued the Ferrers sisters for trespass. He also engaged in a lengthy contest with them over the wardship of a tenant's lands. This is another example of the strange familial relationships. Humphrey de Bohum married Eleanor de Braose, daughter of Eve Marshal and William de Braose. Eve was one of the daughters of William Marshal and therefore the aunt of the Ferrers sisters. Robert de Ferrers was their half-brother by their father's second marriage.
Joan and William de Valence were among the coheirs who had to reimburse the Ferrers sisters for the lands Margaret de Quency held in dower (Joan had inherited a full one-fifth portion of estate) and this caused conflict between the Valences and Agatha de Ferrers. But she managed to compel her more powerful cousins to release property they owed her after four years.
The Ferrers sisters sometimes exchanged property with the heirs outside their immediate family. This could be helpful in one party owned land adjoining or in the middle of another party's holdings, and vice versa. They could trade a piece of property for another piece of property in order to consolidate their holdings. For example, a three-way exchange apparently occured between Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, Maud de Ferrers, and Agatha de Ferrers because they were involved in suits of warranty of charter with each other in the 1270's and 1280's.
The sisters also made transfers of property amongst themselves. When Sibyl de Ferrer's son, John de Bohun of Midhurst, decided to sell a part of his inheritance to Maud de Ferrers and other heirs. However, Agnes tried to impinge on the sale by suing John for entry as of her right. Isabel (de Ferrers) Basset de Mohun was forced to sue her sister, Joan, and her brother-in-law, Robert Aguillon, for dower after Reginald de Mohun's death in 1258.
The sisters had disputes because of the complicated arrangements of their Irish inheritance. In 1257, Agnes made an agreement with her sister Joan and Joan's husband, Robert Aguillon, concerning the profits from a mill in Kildare, which was supposed to be a part of Joan's inheritance, but was still controlled by Margaret de Quency in dower. In 1266 Margaret de Quency and Agnes' sister Joan died. In addition to all of the other problems that came from redistributing Margaret's dower lands and Joan's portion, it gave Agnes an opportunity to gain part of her sister's share. Robert Aguillon would have been entitled to the mill in right of his wife, but Agnes would not give it to him. Robert sued Agnes and forced her into making a settlement.
In 1277, Agatha was a widow and she sued her sisters for withholding lands worth L12 6s 4d, which were part of her share in the vill of Newton-near-Jerpoint. The sisters did not answer the summons and Agatha was awarded the land by default.
Another conflic arose from the death of Margaret de Quency in 1266. The county of Kildare had been held by her in dower and it was now released. At this time there were only four sisters still living. Agnes received the castle and capital manor, which then became the lordship of Kildare, while the other sisters received scattered manors and vills in the county. Agnes, Maud, Eleanor, and Agatha--were to receive approximately equal shares of the issues from the pleas and perquisites of the county and its court and to appoint jointly a seneschal, chancellor, and treasurer who would administer the county and divide the proceeds among the coheirs. Agnes subverted this process by appointing her own administrators and keeping all of the profits for herself. Maud and her third husband Emery, Eleanor, and Agatha sued Agnes for their shares. The Irish common pleas court found in their favor and demanded that Agnes give up the county profits to her sisters, She refused, claiming that she had been ejected from seisin without having been summoned to defend herself. The case was adjourned to the court of King's Bench in 1272 and continued to be delayed until Hilary term, 1275, when judgement was supposed to be made. Agnes attempted to forestall judgement by pleading that Eleanor's death nullified the writ. The result was that the court decided that Eleanor left no heirs and her share was to be redistributed among the other three sisters. The court also found that Agatha owed Maud and Agatha shares of the disputed profits and ordered that new officials had to be appointed and that Agnes had to pay back the profits that she had previously owed to them.
In addition to the sisters disputing over their shares, their heirs also became involved. They were continually petitioning the king to intervene in these disputes. The situation worsened when King Edward I removed Agnes's heir, William de Vescy (her second son), from his position as justiciar or Ireland and forced him to concede all his lands to the Crown as payment of his outstanding debts. Just when Agatha and Maud had recovered their shares of the pleas and perquisites of the county, their property was again taken from them because the escheator never determined which parts of the Irish property belonged to William de Vescy and which belonged to his aunts. Eventually, the sisters and their heirs received yearly cash settlements for their shares in the county of Kildare.
All of these suits would have been expensive and frustrating. But the sisters would have felt it was a worthwhile fight. The profits from an entire county such as Kildare would have been immense. But it could not have helped the sisters to retain their emotional ties to one another. They all lived in different places and these distances would have drawn them apart even without the financial disputes. But they had to maintain some sort of relationship in order to work together for their inheritance. Ms. Mitchell says that the younger sisters allied against Agnes, who was antagonistic toward them, her tenants and her own children as well as the religious communities she was patron to.
“Obviously, the economic relationship that Agnes and her sisters shared out of necessity must have had an effect on their personal relationships with each other. Although all of these activities and responsibilities might be defined as "domestic" in character, domesticity does not preclude political effects as well as personal. As mentioned before, land ownership (to the extent that people other than the king "owned" land) carried political responsibilities. One of the reasons why the Ferrers sisters seem to have taken their conflicts into the public arena of the king's court, instead of thrashing them out among themselves, is because the question of what belonged to whom carried consequences beyond their familial, domestic, private interests. Having an official record of the resolution of a conflict had become an important issue by the thirteenth century in England and the Ferrers sisters were clearly aware of the need to maintain their archives. If the county court of Kildare was administered en famille, then it behooved the sisters to establish clear boundaries regarding who was responsible, should they be called to account for poor administration of justice, for example. If all the sisters were subject to supplying the feudal levy, then it was vital for each one to know exactly how many soldiers she needed to supply. If a rebellion occurred--and several did occur during the lifetimes of the Ferrers sisters--then it was necessary, even imperative, that the family ranks whenever possible, in order to protect their property from undue confiscation. This, in fact, occurred among the Marshal heirs during the Barons' War and the rebellion of Simon de Montfort: those who inherited land (including Agnes and her sisters) remained, for the most part, loyal to the Crown while many of those who had not yet inherited or whose family associations lay more outside the Marshal family circle turned against the Crown and supported the earl of Leicester--for example, Agnes's sons John and William, and the sisters' half-brother, Robert de Ferrers, earl of Derby. Indeed, Agnes was rewarded for her support of the Crown, while her son, John, was fined a substantial amount before being forgiven his disloyalty.”
Despite all of the disputes, there was still familial loyalty. The Ferrers sisters and their heirs acted as patrons to the cousins who were not as well off.
Agnes had sons, but they all died without legitimate heirs. Isabel's children all apparently died without producing heirs. Maud, Sibyl, Joan and Agatha all had successful lineages that continued into the fourteenth century; Maud's heirs were four daughters by William "le Fort" de Vivonia, and who shared Maud's one thirty-fifth of the Marshal estates and who each gained one-fourth of the Vivonia patrimony. As you can see, the estate had been divided into thirty five parts, some of which were shared by more than one person.
Since Maud's heirs were all female, they had some of the same problems their mother and aunts had had. Maud's second husband, William "le Fort", was the son of Hugh de Vivonia, a Poitevan nobleman, and Mabel Malet, an heiress in the West Country. Maud's marriage to William was politically and economically advantageous for both adults, since it connected the Vivonia family to the Marshals. Their daughters--Joan, Cecily, Sibyl, and Mabel--were connected, in much the same way as Maud's marriages connected her, to Marshal family alliances along the Welsh March and to the Poitevan alliances established by the Vivonia family. These marriages were arranged in a way that prevented the king from gaining control of the young women and also prevented him from using them as profitable marriage "properties". Maud received royal threats to her security and position, but she refused to turn her daughters over to the king to be married to his choices and seems never to have been punished for her behavior, although the Close Rolls reveal a great deal of irritation on the part of Henry III when he was unable to gain control of the four girls.
The king, in 1259, had granted the girls' wardships and marriages to four members of his household--Ingram de Percy, Peter de Chauvent, Imbet de Munferant, and Laurence de Sancto Mauro--with the stipulation that if none of the knights to whom he granted the marriages actually married the girls, then Maud could purchase their marriages. (“Maud de Kyme, their mother, shall have preference over others if she shall wish to buy the said marriages, provided always that she give as much for them as others would”. CPR Henry III, vol. 5, p. 36) In fact, Maud resisted giving up her daughters to their guardians for two years and then sent her two younger daughters, Mabel and Sybil, to live overseas with their Vivonia relatives. The king finally granted Maud custody of her two elder daughters, Joan and Cecily, but retained their marriages.
Maud's daughters married as follows:
Joan married Reginald fitzPeter; Cecily married John de Beauchamp; Mabel married Fulk de Archiaco; and Sybil married Guy de Rouchechouard. It is highly probable that Maud arranged and negotiated for these marriages, probably by purchase.
I am sometimes overcome by gladness that as a woman, I did not live in an earlier era, because of all of the hardship and inequality that my female ancestors endured. But it is nice to find some of them who managed to take control of their own destiny.
CPR Henry III, vol. 5, p. 36
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An heiress could be a baron, even a countess, in her own right. When the property was divided between several co-heiresses, blood family relationships, which might have been relegated to a secondary role by the marriages of these daughters, tended to become more significant, both politically and socially. This is the world that the daughters of William de Ferrers and Sibyl Marshal were born.
William de Ferrers was the eldest son and heir of William, earl of Derby. Sibyl Marshal, daughter of William Marshal and Isabel de Clare, was his first wife and they had seven daughters: Agnes, Isabel, Maud(also known as Mahaut), Sibyl, Eleanor, Joan, and Agatha. They had no surviving male children. This meant that as long as Sibyl lived, there was a probability that William would have no one to pass the earldom on to. In that case, the earldom of Derby would be divided among his seven daughters. When this happened, an earldom was referred to as extinct in the male line. Even though there were female heiresses, no one heiress would have enough land to sustain the title.
Sibyl Marshal was born into a large family. She was one of ten children--five boys and five girls. William Marshal, her father was one of the richest and most powerful men in England, due to his marriage to her mother Isabel De Clare, who was the heiress to the Earl of Pembroke. When William de Ferrers married Sibyl, sometime in 1218 or early 1219, she stood no chance to inherit any of her father's and mother's estates. She had five brothers, which appeared to be healthy and would inherit before she did. However, even though William de Ferrers did not benefit monetarily by marrying Sibyl, he would have benefited by making an alliance to the most powerful nobleman of the early thirteenth century. Sibyl's sisters made similar marriages to prominent nobles. William Marshal was politically very close to the young King Henry III.
William and Sibyl de Ferrers' seven daughters were born between 1220 and 1237, when she died. William's father did not die until ten years later. William remarried soon after her death, to Margaret de Quency. She was the daughter and coheir to Roger de Quency and Helen of Galway, the earl and countess of Winchester. Margaret produced a son, Robert who inherited the earldom of Derby upon his father's death, which prevented William's estate from being divided.
Even though daughters usually did not inherit their father's estate, it was still the duty of their father to provide for them by arranging marriages for them. William managed to arrange advantageous marriages for his four eldest daughters sometime before 1245. As his own father was still living, and he had not inherited yet. This would have made it necessary for him to make politically advantageous marriages for his daughters. The marriages he made for them all helped to consolidate political connections he had made to the families of their spouses. During this time period, families frequently gave the younger daughters to convents to become nuns, but William's daughters all married.
In 1245, Anselm and Walter Marshal, the last of their mother's brothers, died. Despite the odds, all five of their maternal uncles had died without male heirs. The result was that the vast estates of the earldom of Pembroke and Striguil in England and Wales and the lordship of Leinster in Ireland was divided among the Marshal's five daughters. Their mother, Sybil de Ferrers was the fourth. This meant that Sibyl's seven daughters became heirs to one-fifth of the largest and richest inheritance in the British Isles. Their share included the town and manor of Sturminster Marshal in Dorset, manors in Kent, Wiltshire, Bedford, and Norfolk, and the castle, town, and country of Kildare in Ireland, with the rents, issues, income, advowsons, knight's fee, and services that belonged to those properties.
It is doubtful that the daughters and grandchildren of William and Isabella Marshal had expected This unexpected inheritance while fortuitous, would also complicated their lives due to the continual negotiation over how the Marshal estates were to be divided. This inheritance stood to leave them in better financial positions than their father, who himself, had not yet inherited from his father.
The daughters of Sybil Marshal de Ferrers are an example of women during the Middle Ages not always having their destinies decided by men. They were able to work together and accomplish great things.
Six of the sisters survived their first husbands; of these, two never remarried, two of them married twice, and two of them married three times. The seventh sister died during her marriage. but the other five were widows at the time of their deaths, three of them lived as independent widows for many years.
The Ferrers not only had to deal with each other when it came to their joint share of the inheritance, they had their first cousins to contend with. The Ferrers sisters inherited only one-fifth of their maternal grandparent's estates. Their cousins inherited the other four-fifths.
Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, in her book Portraits of Medieval Women says, “By using the records of the central courts and the rolls of the royal chancery it is possible to discover what benefits the Ferrers sisters received from their inheritance, how they managed and maintained their property, and how they interacted with each other and with others outside their immediate family. Their actions reveal the sisters to have been intelligent and effective landholders, who protected their interests and their property even when they bickered among themselves for greater shares of the inheritance. Both the spirit of cooperation among them and the antagonisms directed against some of the family members continued to be played out in subsequent generations, especially among the first cousins.”
At the time that they inherited, three of the Ferrers sisters were married, one was widowed and about to be married again, and the three youngest were still under age.
The unmarried Ferrers sisters became wards of the king. This gave him control of the large and valuable inheritance, because he had control of who they married. As previously stated, providing advantageous marriages for their children was one of the most significant duties of a Medieval parent. William and Sibyl Marshal de Ferrers seem to have carefully chosen these marriages before she died.
Agnes, Isabel , Maud and Sibyl were all married to important barons of middle to high rank, even though they had not yet inherited from their grandparents and were still unlikely to. Agnes married William de Vescey, a lord from Yorkshire and connected to the Lacy family; Isabel marred Gilbert Basset, a close friend and ally of Earl Richard Marshal, the girl's uncle; Maud married Simon de Kyme, who was an important Lincolnshire landholder and also connected to the Lacy family; Sibyl married Franco de Bohun, who was lord of Midhurst, Sussex. His cousin was Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex. Franco's marriage to a daughter of the prestigious house of Pembroke raised his status.
Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, says that the marriages of William and Sibyl's daughters reflect his elevated status. all of the connections either directly or tangentially moved toward or into the Marshal orbit of political and marital alliances, or into the Marshal--Chester circle that was cemented by William's and Sibyl's own marriage.” She says that these marriages were a deliberate strategy and shows as proof the gift that Isabel de Ferrers received on her marriage to Gilbert Bassett. Her uncle Richard Marshal, gave her a manor in Hampshire, which included the town of Greywell. This is an indication that as a reward for marrying a Marshal ally, her uncle bolstered her dowry from his own possessions.
Part of the Ferrers families strategy was forming alliances through marriage. When they became widows, and gained control of who they married, they continued to make political alliances through marriage. Between 1245 and about 1270 the Ferrers sisters married collectively thirteen times. Agnes, the eldest, and Agatha, the youngest, each married once; Isabel second sister, and Joan next to youngest, each married twice; and Maud, third eldest, and Eleanor, third youngest, each married twice; and Maud, third eldest, and Eleanor, third youngest, each married three times.
Sibyl de Ferrers died before her husband Franco de Bohun, and before she received her part of the inherited estate. Her inheritance went to her son John de Bohun.
The marriages and remarriages made by the sisters after they inherited, were made with men who were connected to the Marshal family. These husbands were from Cheshire and the Welsh March, places in which the Marshals held authority, such as Dorset, or they were to men who were brothers or cousins of men who had married into the Marshals.
The sisters used their ties to their mother's family, rather than their father's the Earl of Derby's, which was not as powerful as the Marshal line. In this case, a family's political and social position did not come from the father's familial and social connections. When you read about families in the Middle Ages, the authors tend to indicate that the father's family or the husband's family were the only ones of significance to women. The case of the Ferrers sisters contradicts this idea. There are other examples of the wife's family being more politically important, such as the family of Anne Boleyn. Her mother's family was far more politically powerful than her father's, and the family in effect took orders from her maternal uncle. In both of these families, the husband's status was elevated by marriage, not the wife's.
The Ferrers sisters status was raised significantly by the inheritance they received as heirs to their mother. Their inheritance allowed them to advance politically and socially in a way that would not have been possible if they could only depend on the status of their father's or husbands' families.
The sisters all seem to have had good health. Of all the surviving sisters, Joan was the only one who predeceased her last husband. Agnes, Maud, Isabel, Eleanor and Agatha all lived as widows for long periods of time. Agnes was a widow for thirty seven years. Maud survived her husband for ten years. Agatha outlived her husband by more than thirty years. Some of the sisters lived to great ages. Agatha was about 79; Matilda was about 78; Agnes was about 80; Eleanor was about 48 at death; Isabel was about 41; Joan was about 47; Isabel died young. Surviving to adulthood was miraculous during the Middle Ages.
During the Middle Ages, becoming a widow could be to a woman's advantage. A widow was entitled to one-third of her husband's property and they could hold this property even if they remarried. A woman who was widowed several times, could amass a large amount of property. A widow was not placed under guardianship, which meant an unmarried woman was under the control of either a relative (usually male), the king or someone appointed by the king. As a widow, a woman could act as executor to another person's will as was legally entitled to write her own will. She could own, buy, sell and rent property, all things which a married woman could only do with the permission of her husband. A widow was able to act as a guardian for her children and make marriage arrangements for them. Many widows were patrons for priests and monasteries. A widow who owned property could hire, men to manage their estates, attorneys, and litigate in court, which married women had to do through her husband. Widows were not able to hold office, like judge, although I do know of a case where a woman was a sheriff.
Widows also had responsibilities. They had to pay taxes and supply soldiers to the king. They were not allowed to lead men into battle, but sometimes they had to defend castles owned by their family.
1.Eleanor married a series of times, and when she died, she was a countess in the West Country.
Her first marriage as a result of her elopement , while she was still the king's ward was to William de Vaux, who died in 1252. Arthur Collins's supplement to the Peerage says that William de Vaux had to pay a fine to the king of 26 marks per annum until 80 marks was paid for this transgression. He was apparently one of her father's household knights. Her second marriage was to Roger de Quency, earl of Winchester, again without licence from the king. This marriage made for some interesting familial connections. Roger's second wife was Maud, widow of Anselm Marshal and therefore, Eleanor's aunt by marriage. In addition to this, Roger's first marriage to Helen of Galoway produced a daughter Margaret, who married Eleanor's father William Ferrer's as his second wife, making her husband Roger's daughter her stepmother. So when Eleanor married Roger, she became the stepmother of her stepmother. After Roger de Quency died in 1264, she married Roger de Leyburn, with royal permission in 1267. Her third marriage gave her entry into the royal court, through a Poitevan noble, who was of high social status. Portraits of Medieval Women says he was landless, but the Dictionary of National Biography says he was granted the manor of Elham in Kent, by Edward I. The Dictionary of National Biography says that Roger de Leyburn accompanied Henry III to Gascony in 1253 and was intimate with his son Edward I, serving as his steward and keeping his purse. At a later point, he allied himself with barons rebelling against the king and as a result had his manor taken back from him, he resorted to marauding and eventually joined Roger de Clifford and Simon de Montfort, against the king. He was along with some other lords, won back over to the king and he was reinstated as steward to the king and queens households and appointed warden of the Cinque ports. The same source says that he was given 13 manors and that he was sheriff of Kent and warden of the forests beyond Trent. So, despite falling in and out with the royal family, he apparently held a place of favor with them. Roger de Leyburn died in 1271 and Eleanor died three years later in 1274.
2.Agatha gained power in the West Marches, when she married, Hugh de Mortimer, younger brother of Roger de Mortimer. Roger's wife, Maud de Braose, was also the Ferrers sisters' first cousin. Agatha must have been in the guardianship of her sister Agnes for a time. I found in a book called the Antiquities of Shropshire, that July 24, 1253, the king ordered Agnes to give give up her sister Agatha to Hugh, son of Ralph de Mortimer. Hugh held the manor of Chelmarsh and another called Cleybury. He was the sheriff of Shropshire and Staffordshire. He died in 1273 and she lived until 1306. Antiquities of Shropshire shows Agatha being required to send her service for the Muster against Lewelin in 1277 and in 1284 as owing money to the crown because of her share of the Marshal inheritance. She held lands in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire. She was also included in the military summons of 1300 against the Scots. July 12, 1306 the king's writ of Diem clausit extremum issued on her death showed that she owned estates in Bedfordshire, Dorsetshire, and Ireland.
3.Agnes was the most successful of the sisters. She became lady Kildare. She had political and economic control over much of Yorkshire and Northumberland. Her eldest son married into the royal family twice. When her husband William de Vesci of Kildare, died, she received as dowry the manor of Malton. The barony of Alnwick and the Scottish lordship of Sprouston, must have been part of her inheritance, because it passed to their son John. William de Vesci was Lord Justice of Ireland. Agnes' arms were depicted on her seal on a charter after her husband died, as follows: she appears in a gown embroidered with the arms, the cross patonce, of her husband. She is standing under a canopy. She is holding in her right hand a shield bearing the Vesci arms: gules, a cross patonce argent. On her left side is her own family's arms: vairy, or and gules. Her mantle is lined with the Ferrers vair. The combination of arms shows the union of two families. Although her husband's family is given precedence by the cross patonce bing nearer to her body, her pride in her own family is shown on the reverse side. It shows a tree with three shields hanging from it. There was originally a fourth shield which was dmaged. One is her husband's cross patonce. One is from her mother's family: party or and vert, a lion rampant. A third shows her paternal grandmother's family. This grandmother was one of the heiressesthe earl of Chester: azure, three garbs or. The missing shield may have shown her father's Ferrers line. On this seal, she showed not only her ties to her male relatives, but also to her female relatives, through the male medium of heraldry.
4. Isabel married Gilbert Basset, baron of Wycombe, who died c.1241. The Dictionary of National Biography says that Gilbert Basset died 1241 and was the eldest son of Alan Basset, both being barons of Wycombe. About 1231, Gilbert negotiated a truce with Llewellyn of Wales for Henry III. Alan Basset died in about 1232, when Gilbert succeeded him in the barony. Dugdale says that he was made governor of St. Briavels Castle and the Forest of Dean and that he had close relationships with the Earls Marshal. Gilbert joined the barons led by Richard Marshal (Isabel's uncle) When the barons refused to come to a summons by the king in June 1233, and also refused to meet the king's foreign relations, as a result, Matthew Paris says that Henry III was especially angry with Gilbert for being such a prominent part of this baronial rebellion. Gilbert forfeited a manor given to him by king John, and when he tried to regain it, Henry III declared him a traitor and threatened to hang him if he did not leave the court. One of Gilbert's nephews, a Richard Suard was taken hostage to assure Gilbert's good behavior.
The king summoned the rebellious nobles to meet him at Gloucester in August 1233, and they again refused, and were outlawed as a result. The king also ordered that the towns, castles and parks which belonged to these nobles were to be destroyed. After the death of the earl Marshall, Henry III received Gilbert back into favor and his estates were restored to him.
The occasion of Gilbert's death occurred in 1241. While he was out on a hunt, his horse tripped over a root and threw him and he was paralyzed as a result. He never recovered. Before the end of August, the same year, his only son Gilbert also died.
Isabel and Gilbert benefitted from their association and relationship to the Marshal family. When they married, Richard Marshal gave her a manor in Hampshire, including the town of Greywell as part of her dowry.
Gilbert was a knight of the king's household as well as his connections to the Marshals. Gilbert's father Alan and his brother Thomas had been knights under Isabel's uncle William Marshal II.
After Gilbert's death, Isabel married Reginald de Mohun, lord of Dunster, He was the chief Justice of all the forest of Trent under Henry III, and governor of Saubeye Castle in Leicester. He had land and knights fees in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. He owned the manors of Ottery, Stoke-Fleming, Monkton, and Galmeton, and the Maanor of Mildenhall, in Wiltshire and Greylkell in Southampton, which were given as giftsto his and Isabel's son William. He was obviously well off, enough so that he established a Cistercian abbey at Axeminster in Devon, in 1246. Reginald died in 1256.
5.Matilda/Maud married Simon de Kyme. He held a knights fee of her father in Fresken', Weynfeld, Bytoft, Skegnes and Wynethorp. Simon died in 1248 and some sources seem to think that they had a son named William who inherited the de Kyme property from him. Other sources state that William was Simon's brother. Within the same year after Simon died Matilda received permission to remarry to William “le Fortibus” de Vivonne. The Vivonnes were seneschals of Poitiers, Aquitaine, and Gascony. The History and Antiquities of Somersetshire says tha she had an assignment in dower of the manor of Shepton-Malet. It also says that Simon was her first husband and lists their four daughters, Joan, Cecily, Mabel, and Sybilla. William was also Lord of Chewton in Somerset. William must have inherited a considerable portion of land. The Battle Abbey roll says that he was given leave by Henry III to go to Poitou and recover “such lands and tenements as ought to descend to him by inheritance for the death of Americ de Vivonia, his uncle.” William died in 1259. When he died, he left considerable property to his four daughters. He held land in Poitou, and in England from his father, and land from his mother's Malet estates in England. She remarried Emery, viscount of Rouchechoard, who died about 1284. She lived fifteen ears after his death.
6.Sibyl Ferrers married Franco De Bohun September 21, 1247, without licence. Franco was the lord of Midhurst and he also inherited his mother's land in Ireland. He was sealer or Writs to King Henry III. When Franco died he left to their son John, Midhurst, Forde and Rustyntone as per extant taken at Franco's death.
7.Joan Ferrers married John De Mohun and they owned Sturminster-Marshall and one-third of the hundred of Loosebarrow in Dorset. She is mentioned in the chronicles of Tinturn abbey as John de Mohun's wife. He died before 1257. They had two sons, John and Robert. John was the son of Reginald de Mohun who had married her sister Isabel. She remarried about 1259 Robert de Aguillon. The plea rolls of 51 Henry III show that she was dead in 1277. Robert de Aguillon held her estates in curtesy until he died, and so her sisters gave patronage to her son James, apparently until he could inherit.
During their lifetimes, Agnes and her sisters had to work within and through the family to achieve many of their political and economic aims. Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, says “What detailed searching through the records reveals was a situation not unlike those that occur even today among members of a family: the sisters cooperated with each other, but also bickered among themselves. They helped each other when it was advantageous to do so, but individual sisters were not unwilling to antagonize their siblings when their own profit was at stake.”
In her book Linda Elizabeth Mitchell, says that the Ferrers sisters worked together when it was to their benefit. Sometimes they were co-plaintiffs with the other Marshall heirs at times in order to secure property or to sue tenants for trespass, debt or others proprietary actions.
They sisters acted as coheirs when the property they had inherited directly was threatened or when they felt they were not receiving the privileges due to them. Ms. Mitchell also says that The Ferrers sisters contributed to the well being of each other's children.
Inevitably, problems occur when six people share the ownership of property. If you compound the situation by factoring successive generations, deaths and marriages, the possible problems would boggle the mind.
Each of the sisters had some land from the property they held jointly, it was impossible to divide it equally. Each sister received jurisdiction over specific local courts, advowsons, and profits and rents from specific manors to make their shares more equal. Whoever decided how things were originally divided attempted to make the seven separate shares. This was not possible for all ot the inheritance, so the sisters had to cooperate with each other and control some of the lands cooperatively. It was also necessary to grant dower properties or cash settlements to the four surviving widows of the Marshal men. Eleanor Plantagenet, was the widow of William Marshal II the younger and wife of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester (and she was also sister of King Henry III) and Margaret de Quency, suo jure countess of Lincoln and dower countess of Pembroke, posed unusual problems.
Eleanor de Montfort was still a child when her first husband, William Marshal II, died. Given her young age, their marriage may not have yet been consummated before he died. Her dowry included the lands in England that were the Ferrers sisters inheritance. These included Luton, Bedfordshire, the family caput in that county. Instead of dividing the Irish lands that formed the lordship of Leinster, Eleanor was given an annuity of L400 taken from the profits of the lordship. When both Walter and Anselm Marshall died in 1245, King Henry III made the decision to pay Eleanor--his sister--her annuity from his own coffers in order to temporarily aleviate some of the problems of dividing the estates among the thirteen coheirs. He was counting on the other heirs to reimburse him later. However the Marshal heirs almost never paid the yearly amount allotted to each of them, and they accumulated huge debts to the Crown over the years. Henry III faithfully paid L400 a year to his sister according to the records of the Liberate Rolls. The rolls of the King's Remembrancer record the large debts owed by the heirs. For example, in 1255-56 five of the seven 'Ferrers heiresses each owed L217 2s 10 1/2d.
The dower owed to Margaret de Quency's Marshal was more problematic to the heirs. Because her husband, Walter, had been the last male heir invested with the earldom, she was entitled to a full one-third of the property. The Ferrers sisters, were compelled to give up the most prestigious portion of their inheritance, the Irish county of Kildare, for the duration of Margaret's life. King Henry III ordered the other heirs to compensate the Ferrers sisters from their shares of the inheritance, but they never received payments that equally anything near the value of these estates. The other heirs probably felt that the sisters should be content because they would eventually inherit them after Margaret de Quency died. They also may have felt that the sisters were not entitled to them in the first place.
An example of the heirs fighting amongst themselves can be shown in the case of Agnes de Vescy. She took a case to the Exchequer of Pleas in order to gain the partitioning of debt owed to her by all her coheirs, over thirty years after the Marshal estates had been divided. The case still appeared in the court records ten years later. Agnes sued her sisters, cousins, nephews, and nieces and several of the defendants sued each other for debts that had not been paid to them. These suits were for petty amounts,which amounted to a mere 125 marks among all thirteen coheirs.
Ms. Mitchell says that the sisters had other cases which can be found in court records. They sued for dower when their husbands died and litigated against tenants, bailifffs, and the like over debts, detinues, and trespasses committed by them. They were also sued for similar things themselves.
Tenants occasionally sued one of the heirs for novel disseisin or for entry into property she held. This means they were sued by litigants claiming that the sisters had dispossessed them of lands that were rightfully theirs. Having multiple co-heirs worked to their advantage in cases such as these. By law, all of the heirs had to be listed in the writ and all had to appear before the case could be heard in court. It would be nearly impossible to win a case when you had thirteen co-defendants.
As previously stated, part of the privileges that the sisters inherited was the right to have their own courts in the lands they inherited. In 1293, they demanded that the abbot of St. Thomas near Dublin appear before their liberty court of Kildare to answer the charge of darrein presentment, which was was an action brought to enquire who was in fact the last patron to present a benefice to a church then vacant, of which the plaintiff complained that he was deforced or unlawfully deprived by the defendant. The abbot insisted that he did not have to appear at their court, and the heirs insisted that he did. He said that the heirs were impinging upon the privileges given to his priory by William Marshal. The case appeared in the court of the King's Bench at every session for two years, but no final judgement is stated in the record. However, an inquisition did discover that the heirs were not entitled to summon the abbot to their court, and it was the abbot's own default that delayed the rendering of justice.
The sisters had a number of disagreements with other Marshal coheirs. In 1273, Humphrey de Bohun (coheir by right of his late wife, Eleanor de Braose, and the father-in-law of Robert de Ferrers, their half-brother) sued the Ferrers sisters for trespass. He also engaged in a lengthy contest with them over the wardship of a tenant's lands. This is another example of the strange familial relationships. Humphrey de Bohum married Eleanor de Braose, daughter of Eve Marshal and William de Braose. Eve was one of the daughters of William Marshal and therefore the aunt of the Ferrers sisters. Robert de Ferrers was their half-brother by their father's second marriage.
Joan and William de Valence were among the coheirs who had to reimburse the Ferrers sisters for the lands Margaret de Quency held in dower (Joan had inherited a full one-fifth portion of estate) and this caused conflict between the Valences and Agatha de Ferrers. But she managed to compel her more powerful cousins to release property they owed her after four years.
The Ferrers sisters sometimes exchanged property with the heirs outside their immediate family. This could be helpful in one party owned land adjoining or in the middle of another party's holdings, and vice versa. They could trade a piece of property for another piece of property in order to consolidate their holdings. For example, a three-way exchange apparently occured between Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, Maud de Ferrers, and Agatha de Ferrers because they were involved in suits of warranty of charter with each other in the 1270's and 1280's.
The sisters also made transfers of property amongst themselves. When Sibyl de Ferrer's son, John de Bohun of Midhurst, decided to sell a part of his inheritance to Maud de Ferrers and other heirs. However, Agnes tried to impinge on the sale by suing John for entry as of her right. Isabel (de Ferrers) Basset de Mohun was forced to sue her sister, Joan, and her brother-in-law, Robert Aguillon, for dower after Reginald de Mohun's death in 1258.
The sisters had disputes because of the complicated arrangements of their Irish inheritance. In 1257, Agnes made an agreement with her sister Joan and Joan's husband, Robert Aguillon, concerning the profits from a mill in Kildare, which was supposed to be a part of Joan's inheritance, but was still controlled by Margaret de Quency in dower. In 1266 Margaret de Quency and Agnes' sister Joan died. In addition to all of the other problems that came from redistributing Margaret's dower lands and Joan's portion, it gave Agnes an opportunity to gain part of her sister's share. Robert Aguillon would have been entitled to the mill in right of his wife, but Agnes would not give it to him. Robert sued Agnes and forced her into making a settlement.
In 1277, Agatha was a widow and she sued her sisters for withholding lands worth L12 6s 4d, which were part of her share in the vill of Newton-near-Jerpoint. The sisters did not answer the summons and Agatha was awarded the land by default.
Another conflic arose from the death of Margaret de Quency in 1266. The county of Kildare had been held by her in dower and it was now released. At this time there were only four sisters still living. Agnes received the castle and capital manor, which then became the lordship of Kildare, while the other sisters received scattered manors and vills in the county. Agnes, Maud, Eleanor, and Agatha--were to receive approximately equal shares of the issues from the pleas and perquisites of the county and its court and to appoint jointly a seneschal, chancellor, and treasurer who would administer the county and divide the proceeds among the coheirs. Agnes subverted this process by appointing her own administrators and keeping all of the profits for herself. Maud and her third husband Emery, Eleanor, and Agatha sued Agnes for their shares. The Irish common pleas court found in their favor and demanded that Agnes give up the county profits to her sisters, She refused, claiming that she had been ejected from seisin without having been summoned to defend herself. The case was adjourned to the court of King's Bench in 1272 and continued to be delayed until Hilary term, 1275, when judgement was supposed to be made. Agnes attempted to forestall judgement by pleading that Eleanor's death nullified the writ. The result was that the court decided that Eleanor left no heirs and her share was to be redistributed among the other three sisters. The court also found that Agatha owed Maud and Agatha shares of the disputed profits and ordered that new officials had to be appointed and that Agnes had to pay back the profits that she had previously owed to them.
In addition to the sisters disputing over their shares, their heirs also became involved. They were continually petitioning the king to intervene in these disputes. The situation worsened when King Edward I removed Agnes's heir, William de Vescy (her second son), from his position as justiciar or Ireland and forced him to concede all his lands to the Crown as payment of his outstanding debts. Just when Agatha and Maud had recovered their shares of the pleas and perquisites of the county, their property was again taken from them because the escheator never determined which parts of the Irish property belonged to William de Vescy and which belonged to his aunts. Eventually, the sisters and their heirs received yearly cash settlements for their shares in the county of Kildare.
All of these suits would have been expensive and frustrating. But the sisters would have felt it was a worthwhile fight. The profits from an entire county such as Kildare would have been immense. But it could not have helped the sisters to retain their emotional ties to one another. They all lived in different places and these distances would have drawn them apart even without the financial disputes. But they had to maintain some sort of relationship in order to work together for their inheritance. Ms. Mitchell says that the younger sisters allied against Agnes, who was antagonistic toward them, her tenants and her own children as well as the religious communities she was patron to.
“Obviously, the economic relationship that Agnes and her sisters shared out of necessity must have had an effect on their personal relationships with each other. Although all of these activities and responsibilities might be defined as "domestic" in character, domesticity does not preclude political effects as well as personal. As mentioned before, land ownership (to the extent that people other than the king "owned" land) carried political responsibilities. One of the reasons why the Ferrers sisters seem to have taken their conflicts into the public arena of the king's court, instead of thrashing them out among themselves, is because the question of what belonged to whom carried consequences beyond their familial, domestic, private interests. Having an official record of the resolution of a conflict had become an important issue by the thirteenth century in England and the Ferrers sisters were clearly aware of the need to maintain their archives. If the county court of Kildare was administered en famille, then it behooved the sisters to establish clear boundaries regarding who was responsible, should they be called to account for poor administration of justice, for example. If all the sisters were subject to supplying the feudal levy, then it was vital for each one to know exactly how many soldiers she needed to supply. If a rebellion occurred--and several did occur during the lifetimes of the Ferrers sisters--then it was necessary, even imperative, that the family ranks whenever possible, in order to protect their property from undue confiscation. This, in fact, occurred among the Marshal heirs during the Barons' War and the rebellion of Simon de Montfort: those who inherited land (including Agnes and her sisters) remained, for the most part, loyal to the Crown while many of those who had not yet inherited or whose family associations lay more outside the Marshal family circle turned against the Crown and supported the earl of Leicester--for example, Agnes's sons John and William, and the sisters' half-brother, Robert de Ferrers, earl of Derby. Indeed, Agnes was rewarded for her support of the Crown, while her son, John, was fined a substantial amount before being forgiven his disloyalty.”
Despite all of the disputes, there was still familial loyalty. The Ferrers sisters and their heirs acted as patrons to the cousins who were not as well off.
Agnes had sons, but they all died without legitimate heirs. Isabel's children all apparently died without producing heirs. Maud, Sibyl, Joan and Agatha all had successful lineages that continued into the fourteenth century; Maud's heirs were four daughters by William "le Fort" de Vivonia, and who shared Maud's one thirty-fifth of the Marshal estates and who each gained one-fourth of the Vivonia patrimony. As you can see, the estate had been divided into thirty five parts, some of which were shared by more than one person.
Since Maud's heirs were all female, they had some of the same problems their mother and aunts had had. Maud's second husband, William "le Fort", was the son of Hugh de Vivonia, a Poitevan nobleman, and Mabel Malet, an heiress in the West Country. Maud's marriage to William was politically and economically advantageous for both adults, since it connected the Vivonia family to the Marshals. Their daughters--Joan, Cecily, Sibyl, and Mabel--were connected, in much the same way as Maud's marriages connected her, to Marshal family alliances along the Welsh March and to the Poitevan alliances established by the Vivonia family. These marriages were arranged in a way that prevented the king from gaining control of the young women and also prevented him from using them as profitable marriage "properties". Maud received royal threats to her security and position, but she refused to turn her daughters over to the king to be married to his choices and seems never to have been punished for her behavior, although the Close Rolls reveal a great deal of irritation on the part of Henry III when he was unable to gain control of the four girls.
The king, in 1259, had granted the girls' wardships and marriages to four members of his household--Ingram de Percy, Peter de Chauvent, Imbet de Munferant, and Laurence de Sancto Mauro--with the stipulation that if none of the knights to whom he granted the marriages actually married the girls, then Maud could purchase their marriages. (“Maud de Kyme, their mother, shall have preference over others if she shall wish to buy the said marriages, provided always that she give as much for them as others would”. CPR Henry III, vol. 5, p. 36) In fact, Maud resisted giving up her daughters to their guardians for two years and then sent her two younger daughters, Mabel and Sybil, to live overseas with their Vivonia relatives. The king finally granted Maud custody of her two elder daughters, Joan and Cecily, but retained their marriages.
Maud's daughters married as follows:
Joan married Reginald fitzPeter; Cecily married John de Beauchamp; Mabel married Fulk de Archiaco; and Sybil married Guy de Rouchechouard. It is highly probable that Maud arranged and negotiated for these marriages, probably by purchase.
I am sometimes overcome by gladness that as a woman, I did not live in an earlier era, because of all of the hardship and inequality that my female ancestors endured. But it is nice to find some of them who managed to take control of their own destiny.
CPR Henry III, vol. 5, p. 36
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