Chapter 4: Two Young Widows - Edward II’s Nieces, The Clare Sisters: Powerful Pawns of the Crown

Edward II held a huge celebration to celebrate Margaret Gaveston’s purification on 20 February approximately forty days after Joan Gaveston’s birth, which cost him 40 marks for the minstrels including one called ‘King Robert’.^[1] Margaret’s sister Elizabeth Burgh also bore her first child in 1312, on 17 September, the day after her seventeenth birthday. It was a boy called William, and he became the heir to his grandfather’s earldom of Ulster after his father John. William Burgh is often called William Donn, ‘the Brown’, presumably a reference to his hair colour.

The year 1312, in fact, proved a fertile one for all four Clare siblings. Eleanor Despenser gave birth sometime in 1312 to her eldest daughter Isabella Despenser, who was probably her third child after Huchon and Edward. She was named after Eleanor’s late mother-in-law Isabella Despenser née Beauchamp (it was conventional in the early fourteenth century to name one’s eldest daughter after her paternal grandmother). According to the Westminster chronicle Flores Historiarum, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth’s brother Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, and his wife Maud Clare née Burgh had a son born in April 1312 who died before the end of the year.^[2] Supposedly, the boy was called John, and the chronicle from Tewkesbury Abbey says that the boy was buried in the abbey.^[3] It seems a little odd that the boy would have been called John and not Gilbert, Richard or Thomas, the usual male Clare names; the chronicler may be mistaken on this point. The queen of England, Isabella of France, was now 16 or 17, and she and Edward II also had their first child in 1312. The Clare siblings’ first cousin, the future King Edward III, was born at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312, and thus was conceived in York in late February or thereabouts, only a few days after the festivities which marked Joan Gaveston’s birth.

The Ordainers pursued Piers Gaveston, and the earls of Pembroke and Surrey – normally allies of the king but infuriated now by his behaviour – besieged him at Scarborough Castle in May 1312 after Edward II rather foolishly left him there. Gaveston had to surrender after only nine days, as Scarborough was not provisioned for a longer siege. He was placed in the custody of the royal cousin Aymer Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who was tasked with taking him south to Gaveston’s own castle of Wallingford, and a parliament would be held in the south of England to discuss and determine the favourite’s fate. Edward and Gaveston kept in touch via messengers until 9 June, the day Gaveston and Pembroke reached the village of Deddington in Oxfordshire.^[4] The whereabouts of Piers’ wife Margaret and baby daughter Joan in all of this is unfortunately unknown; Margaret may have travelled south to Wallingford Castle, or remained in her uncle’s retinue in the north of England. The men who had besieged her husband at Scarborough Castle met Edward II in York between about 26 and 28 May 1312. Perhaps Gaveston was also there and she was able to see him one last time, and maybe she sent him letters as he journeyed south. On the night of 9 June, the Earl of Pembroke went to visit his wife Beatrice a few miles away and left Gaveston behind at the priory of Deddington under guard; the men were now only thirty miles from Wallingford, but Gaveston would never reach his own castle or see it again, or his wife and child. Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who loathed Piers Gaveston for his presumption and his insulting nicknames, seized an opportunity for revenge. On the morning of Saturday, 10 June, Piers Gaveston woke to the sound of chaos outside: the Earl of Warwick and a large armed force had surrounded the priory, and Gaveston heard the earl call out ‘Arise, traitor, you are taken!’^[5] He looked out of the window and shouted down that the ‘black dog of Arden’ had arrived. Warwick hurled back the not terribly witty retort that he was no dog, but the Earl of Warwick.^[6]

Warwick’s men overpowered the guards left by the Earl of Pembroke, dragged Gaveston out of the priory barefoot and bare-headed, and tore his belt of knighthood from him.^[7] Surrounded by armed men, Gaveston was forced to walk through the streets of Deddington with a large crowd taunting him. He was then given a mangy horse to speed his thirty-mile journey to the dungeons of Warwick Castle. All the way, ‘blaring trumpets followed Piers and the horrid cry of the populace’, many people rejoicing at the downfall of the detested favourite.^[8] The Annales Paulini say that Gaveston temporarily escaped from Warwick’s custody, and the Anonimalle that he was taken to Warwick’s castle of Elmley in Worcestershire first, but these statements seem rather improbable.^[9] At his castle of Warwick, Guy Beauchamp cast Gaveston into the dungeon, in chains, and waited for the earls of Lancaster, Hereford and Arundel to arrive. The Earl of Lancaster was a first cousin of Margaret Gaveston’s late mother Joan of Acre, and the Earl of Hereford was married to Edward II’s sister Elizabeth and hence was Margaret’s uncle-in-law, but her close familial relationships to them would not save her husband. Meanwhile, the Earl of Pembroke desperately tried to free Gaveston, not so much out of concern for his well-being but because he had sworn an oath to protect him and pledged his lands in support of the oath. He even asked Oxford University for help, to no avail, and in desperation turned to the Earl of Gloucester, who by now was clearly sick of his brother-in-law and refused to help even for his sister Margaret’s sake. He told Pembroke that Warwick ‘did this with our aid and counsel’ and ‘it only remains to advise you to learn another time to negotiate more cautiously’, a rather condescending comment from a man who had just turned 21 to one twenty years his senior.^[10]

Warwick, Lancaster and the others had every intention of killing Gaveston. Lancaster declared ‘while he lives there will be no safe place in the realm of England, as many proofs have hitherto shown us’. Probably, they could see no alternative to killing him; if they exiled him for the fourth time, an obstinate Edward, who refused even to try to live without his niece’s husband as a constant presence in his life, would only recall him yet again, civil war would break out, and thus they decided that ‘this man alone should die, who oppressed our people with wars and battles.’^[11] (What ‘battles’ they were referring to is unclear.) On 19 June, the Earl of Warwick sent a messenger to his prisoner. The man insolently told Gaveston ‘Look to yourself, my lord, for today you shall die the death.’^[12] The royal favourite was removed from his dungeon, and taken two miles along the road to Kenilworth where they reached Blacklow Hill on the Earl of Lancaster’s lands. Lancaster took responsibility for the bloody act: ‘Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, being of higher birth and more powerful than the rest, took upon himself the peril of the business, and ordered Piers, after three terms of exile, as one disobedient to three lawful warnings, to be put to death’. As Gaveston was the brother-in-law of the Earl of Gloucester, Lancaster and the others agreed to grant him the nobleman’s death by decapitation, rather than hanging. And so ‘they put to death a great earl whom the king had adopted as brother, whom the king cherished as a son, whom the king regarded as friend and ally.’^[13]

The Vita puts a most implausible speech in Gaveston’s mouth:

Oh! Where are the presents that bought me so many intimate friends, and with which I thought to have sufficient power? Where are my friends, in whom was my trust, the protection of my body, and my whole hope of safety; whose lusty youth, unbeaten valour, and courage was always aflame for hard tasks? They had promised to stand by me in war, to suffer imprisonment, and not to shun death. Indeed my pride, the arrogance that one single promise of theirs has nourished, the king’s favour and the king’s court, have brought me to this sorry plight. I have no help, every remedy is in vain, let the will of the earls be done.^[14]

While the earls of Lancaster, Hereford and Arundel stood some distance away, one of Lancaster’s Welsh men-at-arms ran Gaveston through with a sword, and as he lay dying on the ground, another cut off his head.^[15] The earls demonstrated their contempt for Gaveston by leaving his mutilated body lying on the dusty road, and returned post-haste to the safety of Warwick Castle. A group of Dominican friars from Oxford came across Gaveston’s body, either by accident or design – the Dominicans or Blackfriars were Edward II’s favourite order – and took it to their house, where they embalmed it and sewed his head back on. An enormous ruby set in gold, worth £1,000 and a gift from Edward, was found on Gaveston’s body, as were an emerald, a diamond ‘of great value’ and three more large rubies set in gold. Other items which had belonged to Gaveston and were seized by the Earl of Lancaster at Tynemouth in early May 1312 were eventually returned to the king – not to Gaveston’s wife Margaret – in February 1313.^[16] The Dominicans could not bury Gaveston as he had died under sentence of excommunication and hence could not be interred in consecrated ground, and ultimately he was not buried for two-and-a-half years after death even though the sentence had long been lifted by then. This was Edward II’s decision, not Margaret’s.

And so passed Piers Gaveston, the charismatic and notorious favourite and nephew-in-law of a king. He was in his early to mid-30s when he died, the father of a 5-month-old daughter and an illegitimate daughter, age unknown. The king heard the news on or just before 26 June, after he and the four months pregnant Queen Isabella had returned to York.^[17] Edward II’s primary reaction to Gaveston’s death at the hands of his cousin Lancaster and his brother-in-law Hereford was utter rage.^[18] Most of his subjects did not feel the same way: according to the Vita, ‘When Piers had met his end, and the voice of the people had dinned his death into the ears of all, the country rejoiced, and all its inhabitants were glad … The land rejoices, its inhabitants rejoice that they have found peace in Piers’ death.’^[19] To say that ‘everyone’ rejoiced is an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that Gaveston had been intensely unpopular. Edward would later demonstrate enormous concern and care for Gaveston’s earthly remains.^[20] He remembered Gaveston for the rest of his life, and honoured his memory; as late as June 1326, the last year of his reign, he was still having prayers said for Gaveston’s soul.^[21]

Unfortunately, it is far more difficult to ascertain what Gaveston’s widow Margaret thought and felt, whether or how much she grieved, whether she had ever been embarrassed to be married to someone so unpopular and controversial or did not care, or even when and how she heard the news of her husband’s execution. She and Edward paid for two clerks to watch over Gaveston’s embalmed body, which the Dominicans dressed in a cloth of gold.^[22] Margaret Gaveston née Clare was only 18 years old (or almost) when her husband was killed, and had been left alone with a young child, but no-one bothered to record her reaction to Gaveston’s sudden and shocking demise.

The king granted lands worth 2,000 marks or £1,333 a year to Margaret, ‘to hold, for her sustenance, and until the king shall make other provision for her’. It was difficult for Edward to give Margaret her full dower as Countess of Cornwall, as the legal status of Piers Gaveston was unclear; the king certainly believed that he was Earl of Cornwall at the time of his death, but the Lords Ordainer did not agree. The death of Margaret’s aunt in September 1312 neatly solved the financial problem. The aunt’s name was also Margaret and she was one of the three sisters of the late Gilbert ‘the Red’ Clare, and had been married to the previous Earl of Cornwall, Edward I’s cousin Edmund (1249–1300). This older Margaret had no children, and her dower lands reverted by right to the king as her late husband’s heir (after Edward I’s death in 1307, Edward II was Edmund of Cornwall’s closest male relative). Edward gave them to his niece, and also allowed Margaret to hold the royal manor of Burstwick, Yorkshire. Burstwick had been granted to Margaret and Gaveston during their time in Ireland, and was one of the manors they gave back to Edward when Gaveston was restored to the earldom of Cornwall on 5 August 1309. So keen was Edward to look after Margaret financially that the grant of lands to her which had been her aunt’s dower was made on the same day, 16 September 1312, as he and his clerks heard of the aunt’s death. Margaret Gaveston also became the high sheriff of the county of Rutland, and the income from the lands made her one of the richest people in the country.^[23]

Something of Margaret’s character is revealed by a petition she presented probably in 1315, calling herself ‘Margarete de Gavastoun, Countess of Cornwall’ and addressing her uncle the king as ‘my very dear and very honourable lord, your highness’. She stated that some of her Burstwick tenants wanted to be governed by the customs of the manor and others by the common law of England, and that she could not and did not wish to decide the correct course of action without Edward’s advice. On 7 November 1315, Edward ordered his chancellor to appoint two men to examine the matter, and to certify him as soon as possible of their findings.^[24] Surely no child of Gilbert ‘the Red’ Clare and Joan of Acre could have been a shrinking violet, though it is hard to imagine that Joan herself would ever have wished to consult the king regarding a matter on one of her manors or would have been unwilling to act without his counsel. Margaret was less sure of herself than her confident mother, and was arguably the quietest of the four Clare siblings. On the other hand, being the widow of a reviled royal favourite, she perhaps felt that she could not exercise her own power and agency as freely as she might have wished, and preferred to place the decision in her uncle’s hands to avoid incurring serious criticism of her actions.

The king took care of Gaveston and Margaret’s infant daughter Joan, his own great-niece. As Piers Gaveston had been a tenant-in-chief who held land directly from the king, by the law and custom of the time Edward II was now Joan Gaveston’s legal guardian, not her mother Margaret. He sent Joan to Amesbury Priory to be raised there. This was not Edward pushing his favourite’s child out of the way or cruelly depriving her of her mother’s care, but was a privilege for her. Several of Joan’s relatives lived at Amesbury, which had been fashionable among royal ladies since Edward’s grandmother Eleanor of Provence, Henry III’s widow, had retired there in the 1280s. Edward’s sister Mary and their niece Joan Monthermer, who was Margaret Gaveston’s half-sister and thus Joan Gaveston’s aunt, were nuns there, and in later years Isabella of Lancaster, daughter of the Earl of Lancaster’s brother Henry, also became a nun at Amesbury. Joan’s aunt Elizabeth Burgh lived at Amesbury for a year after her wedding and lived there again during a later pregnancy in 1316/17, and the three Clare sisters may have grown up there, at least partly. In 1312, there is every sign that Edward II was hugely fond of his niece Margaret and keen to look after her and her child, and he went out of his way to ensure that Margaret had lands to provide her with a large income (which was almost seven times higher annually than her elder sister Eleanor Despenser’s).

On 18 June 1313, a year almost to the day after Piers Gaveston’s execution, Elizabeth Burgh also suffered a great loss. Her husband John Burgh died in his early 20s, leaving her a widow at still only 17 years old with a 9-month-old son, William. Two of the Clare sisters had now become widows while still only in their teens, and both had infant children. Elizabeth had expected to be Countess of Ulster, but as John died in his father’s lifetime it was not to be, although her son was heir to his grandfather’s earldom. What or who killed John is unknown. He is a shadowy figure, as medieval noblemen who pre-deceased their fathers and never succeeded to their titles and lands generally are. Elizabeth remained in Ireland for the time being, under the protection of her powerful father-in-law Richard, Earl of Ulster. Young though she still was, c. 1313 Elizabeth almost certainly founded the Augustinian priory of Ballinrobe, County Mayo, supposedly to celebrate the birth of her son William and perhaps also in memory of her husband. Its origins are lost, but it stood on land which belonged to Elizabeth and John Burgh. Her paternal grandfather Richard Clare, Earl of Gloucester (1222–62), had been the man responsible for bringing the Augustinians or Austin Friars to England in 1248 when he founded Clare Priory in Suffolk, the first Augustinian house in England and the burial place of Elizabeth’s mother Joan of Acre.

The Clare sisters’ much younger first cousin Edward of Windsor (r. 1327–77), first child of Edward II and Isabella of France, had been born in the meantime, at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312. The country rejoiced at the birth of their future king, especially in London, where a public holiday was held on 14 November to mark the birth and where the inhabitants celebrated with free wine and feasts. The royal couple, leaving their baby son behind, spent two months in France between May and July 1313 when Isabella’s three brothers were knighted. Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, was left behind in England as regent, and his sisters Eleanor Despenser and Margaret Gaveston probably accompanied the king and queen to Paris. Margaret was with Edward II at Westminster on 28 November 1313 and at Canterbury on 20 February 1314, and was almost certainly with him on numerous other occasions during the five years of her widowhood, but establishing the Clare sisters’ itineraries is very difficult.^[25] The king was particularly generous to Eleanor Despenser in late 1313 and early 1314: he gave her £10 on 10 October, another £10 five days later, £5 on 27 October and 5 marks (£3 and 33 pence) on 29 October, £10 on 7 November, 10 marks on 19 November, £4 on 11 December and 5 marks on 4 February. The money was paid out to Hugh Despenser as her husband, but was specifically said to be for Eleanor.^[26] She was surely often at court with the king and frequently attended her aunt-in-law Queen Isabella, and therefore perhaps spent much time with her sister Margaret. Eleanor may have given birth again in or around 1314, following her three eldest children Huchon, Edward and Isabella Despenser. The birthdates and birth order of the middle five of her Despenser children are very difficult to establish, but she probably bore her second daughter Joan around 1314/15, naming her after her mother Joan of Acre, and perhaps her third son Gilbert Despenser a year or two later, naming him after her father and brother.