Chapter 13: In the King’s Favour - Edward II’s Nieces, The Clare Sisters: Powerful Pawns of the Crown

While Margaret Audley languished at Sempringham and Elizabeth Burgh at Barking, their sister Eleanor Despenser rose to great prominence. Edward II, implacably spiteful to those he believed had betrayed him, was immensely loyal and generous to people he loved and were faithful to him. Eleanor as well as her husband Hugh benefited from his munificence and his great affection for her. She was so high in the king’s favour and so close to him in and after 1322 that one Flemish chronicler even claimed that Hugh Despenser gave her to Edward for sex, and that she was imprisoned after the two men’s downfall in 1326 in case she was pregnant by the king.^[1] Any relationship between Edward II and Eleanor Despenser would, of course, have been incestuous, and therefore the allegation should be treated very seriously. There is no conclusive evidence to prove that they were lovers, though there are ample instances of closeness between the two in the king’s chamber accounts in the 1320s. Between 1322 and 1326 Eleanor spent most of her time at court, Edward frequently gave her large sums of money, and on the rare occasions they were apart they exchanged letters and gifts. In the summer of 1326—when we are fortunate to have the evidence of Edward’s last chamber account in its entirety—they spent considerable time together, sometimes with Eleanor’s husband there and sometimes not, sailed along the Thames in the king’s barge, and dined ‘privately’ or ‘secretly’ together. In October 1324, Edward was rowed across the River Thames to a house opposite the Tower of London for a secret assignation with a lover, and it is not impossible that this was Eleanor. There is much evidence of Edward’s great regard for his eldest niece early on in his reign, when he paid her expenses and often gave her money. The amounts of cash increased substantially in the 1320s: in the early 1310s Eleanor received between about £3 and £10 regularly, and by the 1320s this had gone up to £100 or 100 marks (£66). On 9 April 1325 and again on 2 December 1325, for example, Edward gave Eleanor 100 marks.^[2] Eleanor gave her uncle sets of clothes on 1 November 1324 and 3 December 1325, an oddly wifely thing to do. In June and October 1325 Edward gave Eleanor caged larks, goldfinches and three swans, and on another occasion two gallons of honey to make a sweet called sucre de plate when she was pregnant. Eleanor sent him presents every New Year including a palfrey horse in 1326, and during her pregnancy in 1325 he accommodated her at his manor-house of Sheen, where she gave birth.^[3]

Hugh Despenser the Younger himself was called the king’s ‘husband’ by an abbey annalist in 1326, chronicler Jean le Bel thought Hugh was executed that year partly because he had been ‘a sodomite, above all with the king himself’, chronicler Geoffrey le Baker wrote that Despenser bewitched Edward’s mind, and the writer of the Anonimalle that Edward ‘loved [Hugh] dearly, with all his heart and mind, above all others’.^[4] It does seem as though something intimate was going on between the Despensers husband and wife, and Edward II. The Flores Historiarum, a chronicle written at Westminster Abbey, accused the king of taking pleasure in ‘illicit and sinful sexual intercourse’, which might mean sex with men, incestuous sex with his niece, or both.^[5] The Flores author despised Edward II and so may not be a particularly reliable source, though Edward did spend a lot of time in Westminster and London, and perhaps the chronicler picked up information or rumours. Sir Thomas Gray, whose father of the same name served in Hugh Despenser’s retinue in the 1320s and who may therefore have been privy to accurate information, wrote in his chronicle called Scalacronica that Edward II led a ‘debauched life’, and added that he ‘loved and entirely trusted’ Hugh Despenser.^[6] There is no evidence at all, however, that Hugh Despenser raped Queen Isabella—an invention of two writers of the early twenty-first century—or that he had sex with her.^[7]

In or before 1323, Edward II took possession of a ship which he renamed after his niece, calling it La Alianore la Despensere. Originally it was a Spanish ship, which was lost off the coast of the Isle of Wight and taken to Portchester, Hampshire. It is surely highly revealing that Edward decided not to name the ship after any of his children or anyone else—he already had one called La Isabele after his wife—but after his niece. This was not only a great honour for Eleanor, it was a very public declaration of the important place she held in the king’s life and heart. Edward also spent £130 on another ship which was named La Despenser in Hugh Despenser the Younger’s honour. It was meant to be a gift from Hugh to Edward, but the king himself paid for it.^[8]

It is also perhaps revealing that in Edward’s extant chamber accounts, Eleanor Despenser is the only woman besides Queen Isabella herself to be given the honorific title ma dame, ‘my lady’. Jeanne de Bar, the Countess of Surrey and another niece of the king, was not called ma dame, and neither were Edward’s sister-in-law the Countess of Norfolk or even his own royal daughters Eleanor of Woodstock and Joan of the Tower. The only sisters of Edward II alive after 1316 were Mary, nun of Amesbury Priory, and Margaret, Duchess of Brabant in the Low Countries, with whom Edward had little contact. He was certainly fond of Mary, and she visited his court on occasion and left with gifts, but he never sent her large sums of money and frequent letters and gifts as he did with their niece Eleanor Despenser. Mary does not appear in Edward’s two last chamber accounts of 1324/26, whereas Eleanor and her husband frequently do.

Eleanor’s father-in-law Hugh Despenser the Elder, now 61 years old and a loyal ally of Edward I and Edward II ever since he had come of age in the early 1280s, was made Earl of Winchester in May 1322. Under normal circumstances the earldom would have passed to Hugh the Younger and Eleanor one day, but as the situation in the 1320s was anything but normal, it never did. Various contemporary chroniclers say that Hugh the Younger desired his late brother-in-law Gilbert’s earldom of Gloucester. Although he never received it, after the Battle of Boroughbridge on 16 March 1322 Edward II gave Hugh alone, and Hugh and Eleanor jointly, dozens of manors confiscated by the Contrariants. Eleanor alone received the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray, the Warwickshire village of Shustoke and the Northamptonshire village of Crick, all forfeited by her cousin John Mowbray. The manors were intended to pass after her death to her third son Gilbert Despenser, though again, never did. (These grants to Eleanor and Gilbert are the first time the boy appears on record, though he might have been as old as 6 or so in July 1322.) Eleanor also received the Bedfordshire manor of Sundon which had belonged to her cousin Margaret’s executed husband Bartholomew Badlesmere, to pass one day to Gilbert.^[9] Eleanor and Hugh Despenser’s eldest son Huchon was their heir and was set to receive Eleanor’s third of the earldom of Gloucester, his grandfather’s earldom of Winchester, and all the other Despenser lands; Hugh had made arrangements in 1315 for their second son Edward Despenser to receive a number of manors on the death of his (Hugh’s) mother’s cousin Idonea Cromwell; and now the Despensers were sorting out lands for their third son, thanks to the forfeiture of their enemies. Eleanor appears to have been in Yorkshire with her husband and uncle from May to July 1322 when the king handed out these grants to her and Despenser, though she parted from them out of necessity when they went on an unsuccessful military campaign to Scotland in August 1322. In October 1322, the month she turned 30, and probably in other months that year, Eleanor attended Queen Isabella. She also spent at least some of the period from January to March 1323 in and around London with Isabella.

Hugh Despenser the Younger had huge ambitions in Wales, and by early 1325, with grants of territories from the king to him and Eleanor directly and wardships held during the heirs’ minorities, he controlled almost all South Wales. In the summer of 1322, Hugh forced Elizabeth Burgh to exchange her valuable Welsh lordships of Usk and Caerleon for the much less valuable lordship of Gower, which Edward II granted to him and Eleanor on 9 July 1322. This was the price Elizabeth paid to regain her freedom and to be allowed to leave Barking Abbey. In 1324, Despenser forced William Braose, formerly lord of Gower, to take legal action against Elizabeth to recover his land from her, and thus managed to gain control of Gower and Usk and to deprive his sister-in-law of them both. Edward II gave Despenser all the ‘corn, hay, grass, animals and goods’ in Usk and Gower and other manors recently granted to him and Eleanor, permitting him to keep all his own goods, crops and livestock and also to take Elizabeth’s. In the records of this grossly unfair land deal in the Chancery records, Eleanor Despenser was called ‘the king’s niece’ but Elizabeth Burgh was not. Elizabeth was, in fact, called ‘late the wife of John Burgh’, her two subsequent marriages to Theobald Verdon and Roger Damory being ignored.^[10] Edward II gave the Surrey manor of Kennington to Hugh Despenser the Elder on 4 April 1322, and the grant refers to the king’s dead favourite incorrectly as ‘Robert Damory’.^[11] Although this was probably just an error by one of his clerks, it gives the impression that the king was now so dismissive of the man he had once ‘much loved’ that, three weeks after Roger’s death, he struggled to remember his name. Edward also ignored the fact that Elizabeth Burgh and Roger Damory had held Kennington jointly, and that it now rightfully belonged to her.

Edward II had rarely shown much kindness or generosity to Elizabeth, in stark contrast to her eldest sister and despite his pretence in 1316 that he favoured her above his other nieces, and now he made his dislike only too apparent. Edward also lied to Elizabeth, stating that he would make up the difference between the values of Usk and Gower by giving her other lands, but failed to do so. Not only that, he actively menaced her by ordering her to spend Christmas 1322 with him in York, and after her arrival imprisoned her officials and councillors, thus leaving her alone and vulnerable. The king tried to force her to sign documents— documents ‘contrary to the law of the land’ according to Elizabeth— renouncing all her claims to Usk and the rest of her inheritance in Wales. Elizabeth argued her corner, bravely stood up to her uncle and refused to sign, and eventually fled from court ‘in great displeasure’. She had been on the long road back to Clare in Suffolk for five days when Edward sent men after her ordering her to return. He threatened to confiscate all her lands and never again allow her to hold even a foot of land from him if she did not. Elizabeth dictated a text setting out her uncle’s appalling treatment of her some years later, and an entry in the Chancery rolls confirms her narrative: on 7 January 1323, Edward seized all her English lands into his own hands again.^[12] On that day, the king was at the royal manor of Cowick in Yorkshire with Hugh Despenser and perhaps Eleanor, listening to four musicians playing ‘interludes’ for them in the hall and playing dice. This sounds like a very pleasant, relaxing occasion, were it not for the king’s bullying of his niece to benefit her brother-in-law and his willingness to ride roughshod over the laws of his own kingdom. In contrast to his harsh treatment of Elizabeth, Edward II invited Margaret Audley’s brother-in-law James, Hugh Audley’s older brother, to court at the beginning of 1323, and gave him two salmon.^[13]

At Christmas 1322 and New Year 1323, Eleanor Despenser was some weeks pregnant with her fourth daughter, who was at least her ninth child and who must have been conceived around the second week of November not long after Eleanor had been at Tynemouth Priory with Queen Isabella. Eleanor almost certainly spent the festive season with Edward II and Hugh in York before she headed south to attend Isabella in London. Perhaps she met Elizabeth at this time, and witnessed her uncle and husband bullying her sister. She must at the very least have been aware of what was going on. The only possible sign that Eleanor tried in any way to help Elizabeth comes from a letter written by Hugh Despenser the Younger to the sheriff of Glamorgan, Sir John Inge, in September or October 1322.^[14] Despenser told Inge to maximise his profit in the Gower peninsula before he gave it to la dame de Burgh, ‘the Lady Burgh’, a courteous but cold way to refer to his sister-in-law Elizabeth. He also wrote, with reference to Elizabeth, ‘regarding the lady’s wet-nurses, we have been requested that they be moved from Usk to Gower or elsewhere, and we have permitted this and wish it to be so’.^[15] (The haughty, self-important tone Despenser adopted here is entirely typical of his correspondence.) Presumably it was his wife Eleanor who had interceded on behalf of her sister, though Hugh did not clarify.

Besides this letter of Despenser, there is another reference to a wet-nurse of Elizabeth Burgh’s at Usk Castle in 1322.^[16] In the 1330s and later, Roger Damory’s heir was named as his daughter Elizabeth, who married John, Lord Bardolf. By English law, to be his sole heir, Elizabeth Bardolf must have been his only surviving legitimate child then. In 1329, however, there is a reference to two daughters and heirs of Roger Damory: Margaret and Elizabeth. Elizabeth Burgh certainly gave birth on or shortly before 23 May 1318 a little over a year after her wedding to Damory, when the king paid Damory’s messenger John Pyrro for bringing him news of the birth. Sadly the sex and name of the infant were not recorded in his account, though perhaps this was Roger and Elizabeth Burgh’s daughter Margaret; in the record of 1329, Margaret was named before her sister Elizabeth and would therefore seem to have been the elder.^[17] The child who required wet-nurses in the autumn of 1322 was perhaps Elizabeth Damory, later Bardolf, another daughter of Elizabeth Burgh and Roger Damory and apparently born in 1321 or 1322, perhaps even posthumously after Roger died on 12 or 13 March that year and when Elizabeth Burgh was imprisoned at Barking. Elizabeth Bardolf was Roger’s only surviving legitimate child by 1337. An agreement Roger and Elizabeth Burgh made with the Earl of Ulster on 25 August 1320 talks of their ‘children’, plural, though as this was a deal relating to land, it might mean any future children they may have, as well as any existing ones.^[18]

If Elizabeth Burgh had given birth not long before her uncle the king and Hugh treated her so appallingly, it makes their behaviour even more atrocious. Her sister Margaret may also have given birth to her only child with Hugh Audley not long before she was incarcerated at Sempringham Priory in May 1322, or perhaps she even gave birth there after the battle of Boroughbridge and after Audley had been imprisoned. When Margaret died in April 1342, her daughter and heir Margaret Stafford was said to be either 18 or 20, placing her date of birth between 1320 and 1322. The young woman was variously said to be either 24, 26 or, improbably, 30 when her father Hugh Audley died in November 1347, which also places her date of birth around 1321 or 1322.^[19] As Margaret Audley the younger was not yet married when she was abducted and forcibly married to Ralph Stafford in February 1336, a later date of birth is more likely, i.e. 1322; it would be odd by fourteenth-century standards if a noblewoman and great heiress was as old as 16 and still single, and it makes more sense that she was only 13 or 14. If this is the case, the young Margaret must have been born almost five years after her parents’ wedding on 28 April 1317. The older Margaret also took several years to become pregnant in her first marriage to Piers Gaveston, though this is partly explained by her youth at the time of her wedding in 1307—and, perhaps, by Gaveston’s preoccupation with Margaret’s uncle. Even so, it seems that Margaret Audley was, unlike her older sister Eleanor Despenser, not particularly fertile.

As well as his two daughters with Elizabeth Burgh, Roger Damory may have left illegitimate children. A namesake of his, Roger Damory, lived in Elizabeth Burgh’s household from 1331 to 1336 when he was still underage (i.e. under 21), so if this was Roger’s illegitimate son the boy must have been born after 1315 and perhaps during Roger’s marriage to Elizabeth Burgh. Elizabeth purchased cloth, shoes, candlesticks and other necessities for the young Roger and two other boys living in her household in 1331/32, and Roger remained there for five years.^[20] It is not impossible that he was a nephew of Elizabeth’s late husband (either legitimate or illegitimate), or a cousin’s son, but it seems far more likely that a boy called Roger Damory who lived in the household of Sir Roger Damory’s widow was the elder Roger’s namesake son. Sir Nichol Damory, an immensely capable knight and lawyer who enjoyed a stellar career covering much of the fourteenth century, was a long-term and important member of Elizabeth’s retinue, and was also high in her cousin Edward III’s favour. The Complete Peerage speculates that Nichol was a first cousin of Roger Damory’s nephew Richard Damory (c. 1314–75), son and heir of Roger’s older brother Richard (d. 1330).^[21] If this is the case, Nichol must either have been Roger Damory’s illegitimate son, or he was the son of another Damory brother who appears on no known record anywhere and whose existence has never been discovered. Nichol was a king’s scholar at Cambridge from 1318 to 1321, was a student of civil law by March 1326, and died in or shortly after February 1381 when he must have been well into his 70s.^[22] Going to Cambridge in 1318 probably means he was born in 1304 or a little earlier. Roger Damory’s date of birth is not known, but he cannot have been born later than 1286 and was certainly over 30 when he married Elizabeth in the spring of 1317, perhaps many years past 30. He surely, therefore, had previous relationships and perhaps one or several of them resulted in children, and as he would not have been expected to be faithful to Elizabeth, he might have fathered another son during his marriage to her.^[23]

Elizabeth Burgh knew Nichol Damory for decades: she spent £2 on a book of civil law for him in March 1326, and he was an executor and beneficiary of her will thirty years later. Nichol was also closely associated with Roger Damory’s legitimate daughter Elizabeth and her husband John Bardolf. The couple gave him the manor of Holton in Oxfordshire (which Elizabeth Bardolf inherited from her parents) for life in 1340, John appointed Nichol as his attorney when he went overseas in 1363, and the following year Nichol went to Ireland with Robert Bardolf, a relative of John to whom John gave an annual income of £10 for life from one of his manors.^[24] This lends credence to the notion that Nichol was Roger Damory’s illegitimate son and the half-brother of Elizabeth Bardolf, and another family link is that Nichol married a woman called Eleanor, widow of Alan Zouche, stepson of Elizabeth Burgh’s sister Eleanor Despenser.^[25] Sir Nichol Damory was trusted for many years by Elizabeth Burgh, and appears numerous times on record throughout the fourteenth century serving her cousin Edward III. He was appointed steward of the household of Edward III’s eldest daughter Isabella of Woodstock in 1359, for example, and in April 1364 was appointed by the king to conduct the funeral cortege of King John II of France, who had died in captivity in England, to Dover. He was also appointed as the king’s ambassador to the pope.^[26] Nichol Damory made his own way despite the burden of illegitimacy—assuming he was indeed illegitimate—and was a highly capable, respected and renowned knight.^[27] Elizabeth Burgh’s trust, support and fondness for a man who may well have been her husband’s illegitimate son reveals a great deal about her character.