Appendices: Biographical Details & Inheritances - Edward II’s Nieces, The Clare Sisters: Powerful Pawns of the Crown

Appendix 1: Brief Biographical Details of the Clare Sisters

For ease of reference, the key dates in the sisters’ lives:

Eleanor, born c. 14 October 1292 at Caerphilly Castle, South Wales; married 1) Hugh Despenser the Younger 26 May 1306, widowed 24 November 1326; married 2) William Zouche before 26 January 1329, widowed 28 February 1337; died 30 June 1337 aged 44, buried at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire

Margaret, born sometime between the autumn of 1293 and the autumn of 1294, possibly in Ireland; married 1) Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, 1 November 1307, widowed 19 June 1312; married 2) Hugh Audley (later Earl of Gloucester, d. 10 November 1347), 28 April 1317; died 2 April 1342 aged 47 or 48, buried at Tonbridge Priory in Kent

Elizabeth, born 16 September 1295 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire; married 1) John Burgh 29 September 1308, widowed 18 June 1313; married 2) Theobald Verdon 4 February 1316, widowed 27 July 1316; married 3) Roger Damory c. 30 April/3 May 1317, widowed 12 or 13 March 1322; died 4 November 1360 aged 65, buried at the Minoresses outside Aldgate, London

Eleanor:

• 1. Hugh ‘Huchon’ Despenser, lord of Glamorgan, 1308/09 – 8 February 1349; m. Elizabeth Montacute

• 2. Edward Despenser, c. 1310 – 30 September 1342; m. Anne Ferrers

• 3. Isabella Despenser, c. 1312 – after 1356 and before 1369; m. Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel

• 4. Joan Despenser, c. mid-1310s – 15 November 1384; a nun

• 5. Gilbert Despenser, c. mid- or late 1310s – 22 April 1382; m. Ela Calveley

• 6. Eleanor Despenser, c. late 1310s or early 1320s – shortly before 15 February 1351?; a nun

• 7. John Despenser, c. late 1310s or early 1320s – shortly before 10 June 1366; m. ?

• 8. Unnamed Despenser son, b. and d. shortly before 13 January 1321

• 9. Margaret Despenser, c. 2 August 1323 – 1337; a nun

• 10. Elizabeth Despenser, c. 2/14 December 1325 – 13 July 1389; m. 1) Maurice, Lord Berkeley and 2) Sir Maurice Wyth

• 11. William Zouche, c. 1330 – after 6 December 1390; a monk

(The birth order and birthdates of the Despenser children as shown here may not be completely accurate. Huchon and Edward were certainly the two eldest Despenser boys, and Gilbert was older than John and was the third eldest Despenser son to survive into adulthood. Isabella was certainly the eldest girl, and Margaret and Elizabeth were the fourth and fifth daughters respectively. It is highly likely that Joan was the second daughter, as she was betrothed in 1323, and Eleanor the third, as she was betrothed in 1325. Whether Gilbert and John were older or younger than their sisters Joan and Eleanor, and how the unnamed boy who died in infancy at the beginning of 1321 fits into the birth order, is uncertain.)

Margaret:

• 1. Joan Gaveston, c. 12 January 1312 – 13 January 1325; betrothed to John Multon, son and heir of Thomas, Lord Multon of Egremont

• 2. Margaret Audley, c. 1321/22 – c. 7 September 1349; m. Ralph Stafford, later Earl of Stafford

Elizabeth:

• 1. William Burgh, Earl of Ulster, 17 September 1312 – 6 June 1333; m. Maud of Lancaster

• 2. Isabella Verdon, 21 March 1317 – 25 July 1349; m. Henry, Lord Ferrers of Groby

• 3. Damory child, probably Margaret, c. 23 May 1318 – between 1329 and 1337; apparently unmarried

• 4. Elizabeth Damory, c. 1321/2? – c. 1361/62?; m. John, Lord Bardolf

The schedules of the November 1317 division of the Clare inheritance are now in the National Archives in Kew: C 47/9/23 (Audley), 24 (Despenser) and 25 (Burgh/Damory). The Earl of Gloucester’s Inquisition Post Mortem of July/August 1314 listing his lands in twenty English counties, Wales and Ireland is in Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1307–17, no. 538, pp. 325–54. The dower granted to his widow Maud on 5 December 1314 which was shared out among her three sisters-in-law and their husbands after her death in 1320 and amounted to well in excess of £2,000 annually can be seen in Calendar of Close Rolls 1313–18, pp. 131–9. Eleanor and Hugh Despenser the Younger received lands worth £1,415 a year in 1317, and a reversion of £945 from Countess Maud in 1320, to a total of £2,443; Hugh and Margaret Audley received lands worth £1,384 in 1317 and a reversion of £928, to a total of £2,314; and Elizabeth Burgh and Roger Damory received lands of £1,391 plus a reversion of £881, to a total of £2,274.^[619]

Eleanor’s heir on her death in 1337 was her eldest son Hugh ‘Huchon’ Despenser, then 28 or 29 years old. Huchon had no children from his marriage to the Earl of Salisbury’s daughter Elizabeth Montacute, and his heir after he died in February 1349 was his nephew Edward (1336–75), eldest son of his brother, Eleanor Despenser’s second son, Edward (c. 1310–42) and Anne Ferrers. The younger Edward married Elizabeth Burghersh, and their only surviving son was Thomas, who was 2 years old when Edward died in 1375. Thomas Despenser, lord of Glamorgan and briefly Earl of Gloucester from 1397 to 1399, married Edward III’s granddaughter Constance of York in 1379 when they were both children. Thomas’s heir was his daughter Isabelle Despenser, born posthumously on 27 July 1400 six-and-a-half months after his death. Isabelle had a son from her second marriage: Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, born 1425. After Henry and his little daughter Anne died in 1446 and 1449 respectively, Isabelle’s heir was her daughter Anne Beauchamp, born 1426. Anne married Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to posterity as the ‘Kingmaker’. Richard Neville and Anne née Beauchamp’s daughters Isabel and Anne Neville, Eleanor Despenser’s heirs, married Edward IV’s brothers George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III.

Margaret’s heir on her death in 1342 was her only surviving child Margaret Stafford née Audley, though the older Margaret’s widower Hugh Audley kept all her lands in his hands until his death in 1347, by the custom called the ‘courtesy of England’. Margaret Stafford enjoyed her inheritance for less than two years: she died in 1349 in her late 20s. After her widower Ralph Stafford died in 1372, their heir was their second but only surviving son Hugh Stafford, Earl of Stafford. Hugh Stafford and his wife Philippa Beauchamp had five sons; Ralph, the eldest, was murdered by Richard II’s half-brother John Holland in 1385 in Hugh’s lifetime, and the earldom of Stafford and the Clare/Audley inheritance passed next in succession to Hugh’s three sons Thomas, William and Edmund. Thomas Stafford died in 1392 and William in 1395, both childless. Edmund Stafford, the fourth son and Earl of Stafford, was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury in July 1403, and left a son Humphrey, not yet a year old, from his marriage to Edward III’s granddaughter Anne of Gloucester. Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford, was made first Duke of Buckingham in 1444, and outlived his eldest son, also Humphrey. His heir on his death in 1460 was thus his grandson Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham and heir to the Clare/Audley lands. Henry Stafford was executed by Richard III in 1483, and his son and heir Edward, Duke of Buckingham, by Henry VIII in 1521.

Elizabeth’s heir on her death in 1360 was her granddaughter Elizabeth Burgh, only child of Elizabeth’s late son William, Earl of Ulster, then 28 years old. Elizabeth Burgh the younger had married Edward III’s second son Lionel of Antwerp in August 1342 when she was 10 and he not yet 4. Lionel and Elizabeth were made Duke and Duchess of Clarence in 1362 the year before Elizabeth died, and their only child and heir Philippa was born at the royal palace of Eltham in Kent on 16 August 1355. Philippa of Clarence married Edmund Mortimer, great-grandson of the Roger Mortimer executed in 1330 and heir to his father’s earldom of March, in or before December 1358 when she was 3 and he 6. Philippa and Edmund’s second child and first son Roger Mortimer was born on 11 April 1374. When he came of age he inherited the earldoms of March and Ulster and Elizabeth Burgh’s share of the Clare inheritance. Roger’s son and heir Edmund was born in November 1391, and after he died childless in Ireland in January 1425 left his wealth, lands and titles to his sister Anne Mortimer’s son Richard, third Duke of York (1411–60), the father of Edward IV and Richard III, and the heir of Elizabeth Burgh.

C	Chancery (National Archives)
CCR	Calendar of Close Rolls
CChR	Calendar of Charter Rolls
CCW	Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244–1326
CFR	Calendar of Fine Rolls
CIM	Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous
CIPM	Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem
CMR	Calendar of Memoranda Rolls Michaelmas 1326–Michaelmas 1327
CP	The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, ed. V. Gibbs
CPL	Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers: Letters
CPR	Calendar of Patent Rolls
DL	Duchy of Lancaster (National Archives)
E	Exchequer (National Archives)
EHR	English Historical Review
FCE	Fourteenth Century England
IPM	Inquisition Post Mortem
ODNB	Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PROME	Parliament Rolls of Medieval England
SAL MS	Society of Antiquaries of London, manuscript
SC	Special Collections (National Archives)
Underhill	F. Underhill, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh
Vita	Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young