Endnotes & Citations - Edward II’s Nieces, The Clare Sisters: Powerful Pawns of the Crown

• 1. The National Archives E 101/333/15; M. Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (2008), 100; M. Prestwich, Edward I (1988), 78; S. Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen (2014), 177–8.

• 2. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

• 3. Cited in ODNB.

• 4. Calendar of Close Rolls 1288–96, 138, 151–2, Calendar of Patent Rolls 1281–92, 359–60, and Calendar of Charter Rolls, vol. 2, 1257–1300, 350–1, for Gilbert’s surrender of his lands and the re-grant. See Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 25, 1437–42 (2010), no. 319, for an example of the confirmation of the 1290 re-grant and the identities and birth order of Gilbert’s heirs 150 years later in 1440.

• 5. For Maud’s personality, feud with Gilbert and favouritism, see L. E. Mitchell, Portraits of Medieval Women: Family, Marriage, and Politics in England 1225–1350 (2003), 37–9, 42. Maud died before 10 March 1289: CCR 1288–96, 6.

• 6. M. A. E. Green, Lives of the Princesses of England, vol. 2 (1867), 331.

• 7. Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile, 338.

• 8. Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile, 337.

• 9. ODNB; L. F. Salzman, Edward I (1968), 92–3.

• 10. Green, Lives of the Princesses, vol. 2, 334–5; CCR 1288–96, 89.

• 11. Cockerill, Eleanor of Castile, 341–2; Green, Lives of the Princesses, 335–6.

• 12. Cited in Morris, Great and Terrible King, 231.

• 13. CIPM 1291–1300, no. 371, and CIPM 1300–7, no. 435, are the IPMs of Joan and Gilbert ‘the Red’, and give the younger Gilbert’s approximate date of birth. Eleanor of Provence, widow of Henry III and mother of Edward I, and Joan of Acre’s last surviving grandparent, died a few weeks after the birth of her latest great-grandchild, at Amesbury Priory in Wiltshire on 24 June 1291.

• 14. CCR 1288–96, 169–70.

• 15. CPR 1292–1301, 592, 606.

• 16. L. Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (2012), 119.

• 17. F. Underhill, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh (1999), 7.

• 18. ODNB; Morris, Great and Terrible King, 256.

• 19. CPR 1292–1301, 183.

• 20. The date of birth is based on a comment by a priory annalist that Joan of Acre was purified on the feast of St Clement, i.e. 23 November, in 1292. The ceremony of purification or churching normally took place forty days after childbirth, which would place Eleanor’s date of birth on or around 14 October. If Joan’s purification took place only thirty days after birth, as was sometimes the case with female children in this era, Eleanor was born on or about 24 October 1292. Annales Monastici, vol. 4, ed. H. R. Luard (1869), 511; also Annales de Wigornia, 511, cited in The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, ed. V. Gibbs, vol. 4 (1916), 271 note e. I owe the Annales Monastici reference to Brad Verity.

• 21. SC 1/22/156; Prestwich, Edward I, 233–4.

• 22. CPR 1292–1301, 9–13, 19, 20, 22, etc.

• 23. Elizabeth’s exact date and place of birth are given in CP, vol. 4, on the ‘Addenda & Corrigenda’ page near the front of the volume. Unfortunately, no source is cited for the statement.

• 24. CPR 1292–1301, 243.

• 25. Annales Londonienses 1195–1330, in ed. W. Stubbs, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 1 (1882), 133.

• 26. Underhill, 6.

• 27. E 101/369/11, fo. 96r (minstrels, gifts from the king, date of the wedding); C. Bullock-Davies, Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (1978), xxv (cloth). See also The Chronicle of Pierre Langtoft, ed. T. Wright, vol. 2 (1868), 368–9, a rhyming chronicle in French which says that at the time of mass knighting in May 1306 ‘Sir Hugh son of Hugh, called Despenser/Took there the maiden of noble kindred/ Whom Gilbert de Clare had begotten/On Joan the countess, surnamed of Acre’ (Sir Huge le fiz Hug, Despenser appellez/I prist la pucelle de gentil parentz/Quele Gilbert de Clare avoit engendrez/Sur Jone la countesse de Acres surnomez).

• 28. CCR 1307–13, 5; CPR 1301–7, 443, 526–7, 536.

• 29. Béarn lay within the part of France then ruled by the English kings, so it is not entirely correct to call him ‘French.’

• 30. CCR 1302–7, 533.

• 31. Cartulary of the Augustinian Friars of Clare, ed. C. Harper-Bill (1991), 12.

Chapter 2: The New King

• 1. CPR 1301–7, 460. Edward II duly granted Norfolk to his half-brother Thomas in late 1312.

• 2. CIPM 1291–1300, no. 604. Edmund was the only surviving legitimate son of Henry III’s younger brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall (1209 -72) and married Margaret, sister of Gilbert the Red’ Clare, Earl of Gloucester, in 1272.

• 3. The National Archives E 41/460; CChR 1300–26, 108.

• 4. CFR 1307–19, 18.

• 5. Edward I gave Gaveston custody of the lands of the late Edmund Mortimer in July 1304 and he must have been at least 21 then. Gaveston’s parents were already married by 30 June 1272 and he was their second child, with three younger siblings. CPR 1301–7, 244; J. S. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall 1307–1312: Politics and Patronage in the Reign of Edward II (1988), 21.

• 6. F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer (1837), 119–20; C. Bullock-Davies, A Register of Royal and Baronial Minstrels 1272–1327 (1986), 119.

• 7. Devon, Issues, 120.

• 8. N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321–1326 (1979), 34.

• 9. Scalacronica: The Reigns of Edward I, Edward II and Edward III, as Recorded by Sir Thomas Gray, ed. H. Maxwell (1907), 50.

• 10. Vita Edwardi Secundi Monachi Cuiusdam Malmesberiensis, ed. N. Denholm-Young (1957), 16.

• 11. Chronicon Galfridi de Baker de Swynebroke, ed. E. M. Thompson (1889), 4.

• 12. Cited in Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 110.

• 13. Vita Edwardi Secundi, 14–15, for the quotation.

• 14. Chronique Métrique de Godefroy de Paris, ed. J. A. Buchon (1827), 182, 196, 244.

• 15. Scalacronica, ed. Maxwell, 45; Scalacronica: By Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, Knight, ed. J. Stevenson (1836), 136: de soun corps vn dez plus fortz hom de soun realme. Eleanor’s seal can be seen in W. de Gray Birch, A History of Margam Abbey (1897), opposite p. 301.

• 16. CPR 1307–13, 1, 21, 50.

• 17. CFR 1307–19, 18, dated 16 March 1308.

• 18. CPR 1307–13, 74, 78–9.

• 19. R. M. Haines, Edward II: His Life, His Reign, and Its Aftermath, 1284–1330 (2003), 61–2.

• 20. The Chronicle of Lanercost 1272–1346, ed. H. Maxwell (1913), 187.

• 21. P. Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II’s Adoptive Brother (1994), 45; Calendar of Chancery Warrants, vol. 1: 1244–1326 (1927), 275; E. Hallam, The Itinerary of Edward II and his Household 1307–1327 (1984), 32.

• 22. See Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, for a discussion of Gaveston’s competent leadership in Ireland.

• 23. Underhill, 10, 157 note 26.

• 24. The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307 to 1334, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor (1991), 132.

• 25. CPR 1301–7, 443.

Chapter 3: Journeys to Ireland

• 1. J. C. Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II: Its Character and Policy (1917), 91 note 3.

• 2. Davies, Baronial Opposition, 91 note 3.

• 3. Davies, Baronial Opposition, 91 note 7.

• 4. Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. 4, eds. F. Madden, B. Bandinel and J. G. Nichols (1837), 64.

• 5. Vita, 7–8.

• 6. G. L. Haskins, ‘A Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II’, Speculum, 14 (1939), 76 (wicked and impious); Vita, 1–3, for the other details.

• 7. Recueil de Lettres Anglo-Françaises 1265–1399, ed. F J. Tanqueray (1916), 96.

• 8. Underhill, 10.

• 9. Vita, 8.

• 10. C 53/96, no. 24: Despenser witnessed a royal charter on 24 December 1309.

• 11. CCR 1307–13, 237; CCW, 308; CFR 1307–19, 54; CCR 1307–13, 198; Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery), vol. 2, 1308–48 (1916), 20.

• 12. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, 124.

• 13. See for example the case of Henry, Lord Beaumont, born in the duchy of Brabant in late 1339, who was not returned as his grandmother’s heir in 1349 as he should have been, and Edward III had to change the law: CIPM 1347–52, no. 415; CPR 1340–3, 72–3; CPR 1350–4, 63.

• 14. CCW, 357.

• 15. The Household Book of Queen Isabella of England for the Fifth Regnal Year of Edward II, 8th July 1311 to 7th July 1312, eds. F. D. Blackley and G. Hermansen (1971), 19, 157.

• 16. CCR 1307–13, 351; Household Book, xiv; CIPM 1272–1300, 227, for Barnwell.

• 17. E 101/380/4, fos. 16r and 22r, and CCW, 263 (Emma and Joan); SC 8/147/7323 (Maud); J. Ward, Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (1295–1360) (2014), 69, 77, 141, and Underhill, 115 (Suzanne and Anne); Petitions to the Pope 1342–1419, ed. W. H. Bliss (1896), 74 (Petronilla and Agnes). Pernel or Petronilla Pagham later served Maud of Lancaster’s daughter Elizabeth Burgh (1332–63), namesake granddaughter and heir of Elizabeth Burgh née Clare: CPR 1350–4, 307.

• 18. Household Book of Queen Isabella, xiv, xv, xxvi, 31, 157, 203; E 101/380/4, fo. 22r, for 1324/25.

• 19. An attendant of Queen Isabella called Cecily, wife of John Chaucomb, is mentioned in 1324/25 and 1327; possibly this was Cecily Leygrave’s married name. E 101/380/4, fo. 22r; CPR 1327–30, 27.

• 20. Annales Londonienses, 200.

• 21. CPR 1307–13, 397.

• 22. Vita, 20–21.

• 23. CPR 1307–13, 405.

• 24. J. R. S. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke 1307–1324: Baronial Politics in the Reign of Edward II (1972), 131.

• 25. Household Book, 31, 37, 139, 20; CFR 1307–19, 117–8 (Wallingford and Gaveston’s other lands).

• 26. Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon Auctore Canonico Bridlingtoniensi, in ed. W. Stubbs, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 2 (1883), 42, records the birth of the Gavestons’ infant, but does not name her; Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, 78–9; Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 93–4.

• 27. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 94.

• 28. Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, 77.

• 29. CCR 1307–13, 448–9; Foedera, Conventiones, Literae, vol. 2.1, 1307–27, ed. T. Rymer (1818), 153.

Chapter 4: Two Young Widows

• 1. Bullock-Davies, Register of Minstrels, 143; R. Rastall, ‘Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England’, Univ. of Manchester PhD thesis, (1968), 62.

• 2. Flores Historiarum, ed. H. R. Luard, vol. 3 (1890), 335.

• 3. Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. W Dugdale, vol. 2 (new edition, 1819), 61. I owe this reference to Brad Verity.

• 4. J. R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307–1322: A Study in the Reign of Edward II (1970), 127.

• 5. Vita Edwardi Secundi, 25.

• 6. Flores Historiarum, vol. 3, 152–3.

• 7. Annales Londonienses, 206–7.

• 8. Vita, 25.

• 9. Annales Paulini 1307–1340, in ed. W. Stubbs, Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, vol. 1 (1882), 271; Anonimalle Chronicle, 86.

• 10. Vita, 26.

• 11. Johannis de Trokelowe et Henrici de Blaneforde Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley (1866), 77.

• 12. Vita, 26.

• 13. Vita, 26–8.

• 14. Vita, 26–7.

• 15. Vita, 27, and for Gaveston’s execution, see also: Annales Londonienses, 207; Annales Paulini, 271; Anonimalle, 86; Chronicon Galfridi de Baker, 5; Gesta Edwardi de Carnarvon, 44; Flores Historiarum, vol. 3, 152; Lanercost, 198; Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, ed. E. M. Thompson (1889), 17–18; Johannis de Trokelowe, 77.

• 16. Foedera 1307–27, 203–5.

• 17. CFR 1307–19, 136–7; CCR 1307–13, 427–8; CPR 1307–13, 465.

• 18. Anonimalle, 86; The Brut or the Chronicles of England, part 1, ed. F. W. D. Brie (1906), 207; Vita, 30; Johannis de Trokelowe, 77.

• 19. Vita, 29.

• 20. Lanercost, 203; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 85.

• 21. CPR 1324–7, 281.

• 22. Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 99.

• 23. CChR 1300–26, 111, 131; CPR 1307–13, 497, 502; CCR 1307–13, 225–6, 538; CPR 1313–17, 576–8. The older Margaret, Countess of Cornwall, died shortly before 16 September 1312: CFR 1307–19, 146.

• 24. SC 8/192/9551; CCW, 433. The petition begins Mon tresch[er] e treshon [ur]able seign[eur] a v[ost]re hautesce monstre Margarete de Gavastoun contesse de Cornewaille.

• 25. CCW, 394; CPR 1313–17, 87. Her brother the Earl of Gloucester was also in Canterbury at this time: C 53/100, no. 16.

• 26. Davies, Baronial Opposition, 91 note 7.

Chapter 5: The Earl of Gloucester’s Heirs

• 1. T. Stapleton, ‘A Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts of the Tenth, Eleventh and Fourteenth Years of King Edward the Second’, Archaeologia, 26 (1836), 341.

• 2. Thomas Clare (c. 1245–87), younger brother of Gilbert ‘the Red’, left sons Gilbert and Richard, but they died in 1307 and 1318, and when Richard’s infant son Thomas died in 1321, the male Clare line ended completely. The heirs of Thomas Clare (d. 1287) were his daughters Margaret Badlesmere and Maud Clifford: CIPM 1317–27, no. 275.

• 3. CFR 1307–19, 201; CIPM 1307–17, 325; 1313–18, 131–9 (lists Maud’s dower); T. B. Pugh, ‘The Marcher Lords of Glamorgan and Morgannwg, 1317–1485’, in ed. T. B. Pugh, Glamorgan County History, III: The Middle Ages (1971), 167. The earl’s IPM: CIPM 1307–17, no. 538, pp. 325–54.

• 4. CFR 1307–19, 202.

• 5. CIPM 1307–17, 352–3.

• 6. CFR 1307–19, 224–5. Damory was with the king on 3 February 1315: CPR 1313–17, 248. He is presumably the ‘Roger Amory’ who was involved, with a large group of other men, in an assault on the sheriff of Cornwall in or before July 1309: CPR 1307–13, 236–7.

• 7. CPR 1313–17, 622, 666; Davies, Baronial Opposition, 221.

• 8. CFR 1307–19, 353, 355, 363.

• 9. CIPM 1327–36, no. 275.

• 10. Vita, 123; SC 8/42/2053, CIM 1308–48, no. 509 and CCR 1318–23, 596, for Bletchingdon; M. Altschul, A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares, 1217–1314 (1965), 305, for Easton; also see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol4/pp237–242 (accessed 25 May 2018). Evidently the Damory brothers were on good terms: Roger appointed Richard as his attorney in June 1320 when he went overseas. CPR 1317–21, 455.

• 11. CFR 1307–19, 228, 230, 234, 237; CCR 1313–18, 307.

• 12. CCR 1313–18, 139.

• 13. Foedera 1307–27, 259 (Oxford); TNA E/101/375/15; E/101/376/2; E/101/375/16 (Gaveston’s funeral arrangements); C. F. R. Palmer, ‘The Friar-Preachers of Kings Langley’, The Reliquary, 23 (1882–3), 156 (£15); Hamilton, Piers Gaveston, 166 note 84 (£144).

• 14. Hamilton, Gaveston, 100, 166–7.

Chapter 6: The First Abduction

• 1. Fryde, Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 33, claims that Despenser took the castle from Maud directly with his ‘characteristic brutality’. There is no evidence whatsoever that Maud was at Tonbridge at the time, or that anyone was hurt during the episode.

• 2. CPR 1313–17, 306–7; CFR 1307–19, 248; CIPM 1307–17, 351–2.

• 3. CIPM 1307–17, 352; CCR 1313–18, 301.

• 4. CIPM 1307–17, 353.

• 5. The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Brand, Curry et al (2005), January/February 1316 Parliament, 352–3.

• 6. C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, vol. 5 (1932), 105; The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, ed. F. Palgrave, vol. 1 (1827), 295.

• 7. CPR 1307–13, 568. He was replaced on 4 January 1315, just after Gaveston’s funeral: CPR 1313–17, 207.

• 8. PROME, January/February 1316 parliament, 352–3.

• 9. CPR 1327–30, 481; CCR 1330–3, 53.

• 10. Margaret Badlesmere née Clare was one of the two daughters and ultimately the two co-heirs of Thomas Clare (c. 1245–87), lord of Thomond in Ireland and younger brother of Gilbert ‘the Red’. Thomas’s elder son Gilbert (1281–1307) was briefly married to Hugh Despenser the Younger’s sister Isabella.

• 11. Cited in The Political Songs of England, ed. T. Wright (1839), 264.

• 12. J. R. Maddicott’s biography of Badlesmere in the ODNB calls him an ‘able man’ and states that Edward II’s inability to retain his loyalty speaks volumes about the king’s failings.

• 13. CPR 1317–21, 467–8, 473.

• 14. CPR 1313–17, 384, 432–3.

• 15. M. Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe (2001), 109.

Chapter 7: Widowed Again

• 1. His IPM is in CIPM 1317–27, no. 54. The Staffordshire jurors stated on 8 October 1316 that Elizabeth Burgh was ‘pregnant with a living child’. The Shropshire and Oxfordshire jurors also knew she was pregnant, but Wiltshire, Herefordshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire appear not to have heard.

• 2. CFR 1307–19, 294, 116–17.

• 3. He was buried at Croxden Abbey in Staffordshire, just a couple of miles from his main seat at Alton; Elizabeth left a bequest of money to the abbey in her will thirty-nine years later.

• 4. SC 1/63/150; the transcription and translation are mine. A bachelor was a knight in another knight’s or lord’s retinue.

• 5. Damory witnessed a grant to Bartholomew Badlesmere on 24 October 1308 with other members of Gloucester’s retinue such as Richard Clare, Roger Tyrell and Fulk Peyferer: CCR 1307–13, 246. Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. 4, 64, for Dunstable.

• 6. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary of the Wardrobe Accounts’, 320.

• 7. CCR 1313–18, 430.

• 8. Johannis de Trokelowe, 95; Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 320.

• 9. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 187.

• 10. CPR 1313–17, 576–8; CCW, 433, 459, 463.

• 11. Davies, Baronial Opposition, 433.

• 12. CPR 1313–17, 162; Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, vol. 3, 1307–1357, ed. J. Bain (1887), nos. 383, 583.

• 13. CFR 1319–27, 51–2; CPR 1327–30, 30; CCR 1327–30, 27.

• 14. C 53/103, nos. 38, 43.

• 15. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 343.

Chapter 8: Two Favourites, Two Weddings

• 1. CFR 1307–19, 316–17; CPR 1317–21, 125.

• 2. CPR 1313–17, 535.

• 3. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 339. Joan Montacute née Verdon married her second husband Thomas Furnival in February 1318, still only 14-and-a-half-years old.

• 4. Vita Edwardi Secundi, 87; Flores Historiarum, 178; Phillips, Aymer de Valence, 119.

• 5. Vita, 80.

• 6. Vita, 87.

• 7. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 338; CIPM 1327–36, no. 395.

• 8. CIPM 1327–36, nos. 83, 389.

• 9. CIPM 1327–36, no. 395 (visit); CPR 1313–17, 641 (Scales). The favour to Scales was recorded at Clarendon, and Elizabeth might have travelled there to meet her uncle and returned to Amesbury with him and Damory, bearing in mind that subjects were supposed to travel to their king and not vice versa.

• 10. Elizabeth’s brother-in-law Hugh Despenser the Younger witnessed three of Edward’s charters in Andover on 11 April (C 53/203, nos. 16, 18, 32), though Roger Damory himself did not.

• 11. CPR 1313–17, 644.

• 12. CPR 1313–17, 662–3; CPR 1317–21, 26.

• 13. Underhill, 18, 135; E 101/377/2.

• 14. Petitions to the Pope 1342–1419, 22 (vow); Ward, Lady of Clare, 143 (will). See also S. S. Morrison’s Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England (2002) for Elizabeth’s love of pilgrimage.

• 15. CPR 1317–21, 42.

• 16. CPR 1313–17, 664.

• 17. Underhill, 19. She is much more indulgent towards Verdon and his abduction of Elizabeth from Bristol Castle, speculating that Elizabeth consented to and desired the match: 15–16.

• 18. Moor, Knights of Edward I, vol. 1, 10–11. The Damory brothers’ mother, or stepmother, was called Juliana, and they had a sister Katherine, who married Sir Walter Poer or Poure of Oxfordshire. Inquisitions and Assessments Relating to Feudal Aids 1284–1431, vol. 1, ed. A. S. Maskelyne (1899), 81.

• 19. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 337–8.

• 20. Underhill, 135.

• 21. CCW, 468; CPR 1313–17, 664. She surrendered them to the king sometime before her wedding, and she and Audley received them back jointly.

• 22. CP, vol. 1, 347. Hugh Audley’s mother Isolde, wife of Walter Balun (d. 1287) and secondly of Hugh Audley the Elder, was long believed to have been a member of the Mortimer family, though genealogist Douglas Richardson has discovered evidence that she was the daughter of Sir Roger le Rous (d. 1294) of Gloucestershire. See his post on www. soc.genealogy.medieval, ‘C. P. Addition: Isolde le Rous, wife of Walter de Balun and Hugh de Audley, Lord Audley’, dated 17 December 2017 (accessed 13 February 2018). Alice Audley married Ralph Greystoke, who was born in 1299, so she was probably a few years younger than her brothers James and Hugh and born c. late 1290s or 1300.

• 23. T. F. Tout, The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History (second edition, 1936), 315.

• 24. CPR 1313–17, 578.

• 25. CCW, 470; CPR 1313–7, 660–1, 666.

• 26. Johannis de Trokelowe, 98–9.

Chapter 9: A Rich Inheritance

• 1. CCR 1313–18, 404–5, 469, 560, 576.

• 2. The division is C 47/9/23, 24 and 25.

• 3. Pugh, ‘Marcher Lords’, 167, 603 note 1.

• 4. Alice Lacy’s grandfather Edmund Lacy was the brother of the Clare sisters’ grandmother Maud Clare née Lacy, Countess of Gloucester. Like the Clare sisters, Alice was a great-granddaughter of Margaret Quincy, Countess of Lincoln.

• 5. CPR 1317–21, 5–6, 10; E 40/1432; SC 8/18/868A to H.

• 6. CPR 1317–21, 415, 587.

• 7. CPR 1317–21, 46; CCR 1313–18, 575; Foedera, 345–6; Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 329, for the surrender of Knaresborough to Edward; CIM, no, 392.

• 8. CFR 1307–19, 225, 316.

• 9. CPR 1317–21, 34, 46, 58.

• 10. CPR 1317–21, 2, 23, 39, 44, 79, 81, 99, and many more.

• 11. M. Saaler, Edward II (1997), 97.

• 12. See Appendix 2 of my Hugh biography, Downfall of a King’s Favourite.

• 13. CPR 1317–21, 133, 292; CCR 1313–18, 542; CCR 1318–23, 71; SC 8/83/4018A. C 53/104, 105 and 106 are the charters issued by Edward II in the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth years of his reign; Hugh Audley witnessed five charters in the eleventh regnal year which ran from 8 July 1317 to 7 July 1318, but none at all in the twelfth or thirteenth, July 1318 to July 1320. All five charters are dated August 1317, and an unspecified ‘Hugh Audley’ witnessed another on 7 December 1317. It is not always possible to determine in the records of Edward II’s reign whether Audley or his father of the same name was meant.

• 14. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, 139–47, 317–19,

• 15. CPR 1317–21, 60, 103, 120–1; CCR 1313–18, 531–2.

• 16. CPR 1317–21, 208, 257, 456.

• 17. PROME, August 1321 parliament; CCR 1318–23, 494.

• 18. Flores Historiarum, vol. 3, 342.

• 19. Lanercost, 230; Vita, 115.

• 20. M. Prestwich, ‘The Court of Edward II’, The Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, ed. G. Dodd and A. Musson (2006), 66–7.

• 21. CPR 1317–21, 66–7.

• 22. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 337.

Chapter 10: The New Favourite

• 1. CPR 1317–21, 125; Elizabeth Verdon is wrongly called ‘Isabella’.

• 2. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 338; CPR 1317–21, 146, 181. For Roger Damory and Elizabeth Burgh’s children, see also Chapter 13.

• 3. M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272–1377 (1980), 161.

• 4. C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (1999), 27.

• 5. Vita, 87.

• 6. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 224; Aymer de Valence, 131.

• 7. Foedera 1307–27, 370; CCR 1318–23, 112–4.

• 8. Foedera 1307–27, 377; Tout, Place of the Reign, 315, 350.

• 9. CCR 1313–18, 109–10.

• 10. His third son Edward Montacute, who later married Edward II’s niece Alice of Norfolk, accompanied him to Gascony, and there is a reference in one of Edward II’s accounts to his boat there, La Peronele. The younger William Montacute also appears in the king’s accounts some years later. E 101/380/4, fo. 7v.

• 11. E 101/506/23, mems. 1, 2; C 53/105, nos. 26, 31; CPR 1317–21, 292; CCR 1318–23, 10, 31.

• 12. CCR 1318–23, 143; CPR 1317–21, 251; CFR 1307–19, 374.

• 13. CPR 1317–21, 583.

• 14. CCR 1318–23, 81.

• 15. CPR 1317–21, 342, 362; CCR 1318–23, 71, 138; C 53/104.

• 16. CP, vol. 6, 190 note d.

• 17. E 101/506/23, mem. 1; C 53/105, nos. 26, 31; C 53/106, no. 34; CCR 1318–23, 138. He had, however, become enormously wealthy as a result of the king’s infatuation with him: in July 1319 seven men acknowledged that they owed him almost £2,500, and he had a few debtors in Ireland as well. CCR 1318–23, 154, 202.

• 18. J. S. Hamilton, ‘Charter Witness Lists for the Reign of Edward II’, Fourteenth Century England I, ed. Nigel Saul (2000), 5–6, 17; C 53/112 and 113.

• 19. Cartae et Alia Munimenta quae ad Domimium de Glamorgancia Pertinent, vol. 3 (1910), 1063–5.

• 20. Anonimalle Chronicle, 92–3; Chronicon Galfridi de Baker de Swynebroke, 10; Lanercost, 208, 229; Scalacronica, ed. Maxwell, 70.

• 21. Cited in S. Phillips, Edward II (2010), 98.

• 22. True Chronicles of Jean le Bel, 1290–1360, trans. and ed. Nigel Bryant (2011) , 31.

• 23. See Chapter 17 below.

• 24. SC 8/56/2760, 61 and 62; SC 8/162/8098; CPR 1317–21, 440–1, 510.

• 25. CPR 1317–21, 468, 472.

• 26. J. S. Hamilton, ‘Some Notes on ‘Royal’ Medicine’, Fourteenth Century England II, ed. C. Given-Wilson (2002), 37; Phillips, Edward II, 363 note 222; Prestwich, ‘Court of Edward II’, Reign of Edward II, ed. Dodd and Musson, 71.

• 27. Recueil de Lettres Anglo-Françaises 1265–1399, ed. F. J. Tanqueray, 313–14, Lassam or Lysan d’Avene was a keeper of the peace in Glamorgan. Eleanor sent Inge another letter dated at Westminster on 29 January, probably either in 1318 or 1321, in which she referred to a debt she owed to her father-in-law’s long-term adherent Sir Ingelram Berenger: Calendar of Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, ed. J. Goronwy Edwards (1935), 219.

• 28. SC 1/36/88; E 199/31/8.

• 29. Woolgar, Great Household, 12, 46, 190.

• 30. CPR 1317–21, 418, 421, 426, 449, 452, 455.

• 31. E 40/386 Cartulary of the Augustinian Friars of Clare, 32–3; C53/107, nos. 24, 27–32.

• 32. Flores Historiarum, 342.

• 33. CCR 1318–23, 494.

• 34. CFR 1319–27, 2–3.

• 35. CCR 1318–23, 268.

• 36. Vita, 109.

• 37. CPR 1317–21, 531–2. Eleanor and Hugh Despenser the Younger’s son and heir Huchon asked for the same grant to be inspected and confirmed in November 1343, as it had been ‘lost by accident’. CPR 1343–5, 132.

Chapter 11: The Despenser War

• 1. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 340.

• 2. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 338.

• 3. Ancient Correspondence Concerning Wales, 180–1.

• 4. CPR 1317–21, 572–3, 578; CFR 1319–27, 51–2; CCR 1318–23, 365.

• 5. W. H. Stevenson, ‘A Letter of the Younger Despenser on the Eve of the Barons’ Rebellion, 21 March 1321’, EHR, 12 (1897), 759 (in French; my translation).

• 6. CFR 1319–27, 51–3, 55, 57, 58 etc; CCR 1327–30, 27.

• 7. CPR 1317–21, 587; CFR 1319–27, 57.

• 8. CPR 1321–4, 65; SC 8/57/2829.

• 9. SC 8/99/4925. The man was Matthew Crauthorne; his appointment is in CFR 1319–27, 59.

• 10. Stevenson, ‘Letter’, 760–1.

• 11. CFR 1319–27, 51, 55.

• 12. SC 8/123/6145.

• 13. CCR 1318–23, 368, 371.

• 14. The Brut or the Chronicles of England, 213; Johannis de Trokelowe, 109; Annales Paulini, 303.

• 15. CCR 1318–23, 541–3.

• 16. CCR 1318–23, 541–2; CPR 1321–4, 294; J. C. Davies, ‘The Despenser War in Glamorgan’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 9 (1915), 55–6.

• 17. CCR 1318–23, 541–2; Vita, 110–11.

• 18. CPR 1321–4, 164–5, 169, 319.

• 19. CPR 1321–4, 15–18.

• 20. CCR 1318–23, 402, 408; CFR 1319–27, 70.

• 21. CFR 1319–27, 80; CPR 1321–4, 37.

• 22. Calendar of Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales, ed. W. Rees (1975), 139–40.

Chapter 12: Contrariants

• 1. CCR 1318–23, 516; S. Waugh, ‘The Profits of Violence: The Minor Gentry in the Rebellion of 1322 in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire’, Speculum, 52 (1977), 850.

• 2. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 305; CCR 1318–23, 511–12.

• 3. CCR 1318–23, 526.

• 4. CCR 1318–23, 522.

• 5. CCR 1318–23, 522.

• 6. Palgrave, Parliamentary Writs, vol. 2, 261: mes Roger pur ceo qe notre seignour le Roi vous ad en temps moult amez e fuistes de sa meygne e prives de lui e auez sa niece esposee, notre dit seignour le Roi de sa grace e sa realte met en respit execucioun de ce jugement a sa volunte.

• 7. The Brut or the Chronicles of England, 216–17

• 8. Ward, Lady of Clare, 84.

• 9. J. Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry 1066–1500 (1995), 84, 184: Elizabeth paid 3 shillings to keep her father’s anniversary on 7 December 1351. Ward, Lady of Clare, 76: she kept her brother’s anniversary on 23 June in 1352 and paid 2 shillings and 3 pence, and John Burgh’s on 18 June and Theobald Verdon’s on 27 July (the exact dates of their deaths), giving 1 shilling and 4 pence and 2 shillings and 1 pence respectively. On 12 March 1351, the twenty-ninth anniversary of Damory’s death, she provided enough wheat to bake 1,240 loaves for the poor, and 900 herring.

• 10. Vita, 123.

• 11. G. A. Holmes, ‘A Protest Against the Despensers, 1326’, Speculum, 30 (1955), 210: feut pursui et oppres tant qil deuya.

• 12. Underhill, 29.

• 13. Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, vol. 3, 1342–62, ed. W. H. Bliss and C. Johnson (1897), 113.

• 14. A Collection of All the Wills, Now Known to be Extant, of the Kings and Queens of England, ed. J. Nichols (1780), 29; CPR 1334–8, 102.

• 15. Holmes, ‘Protest’, 210; CCR 1318–23, 428.

• 16. CCR 1318–23, 578, 651; CCR 1323–7, 65.

• 17. Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales, 139–40.

• 18. In her will of 1355, Elizabeth left a bequest to the Franciscan friary in Ware, which might suggest that Damory was buried there. The friary was not, however, founded until 1338 so Roger cannot have been buried there in 1322, but it may be that his body was moved there a few years later. In 1322 and 1338 the manor of Ware belonged to Thomas, Lord Wake (1298–1349), who is not known to have had any close connections to the Damorys (or to Elizabeth, for that matter).

• 19. CCR 1318–23, 421, 425, 428; CFR 1319–1327, 99; CCR 1323–7, 51; Tout, Place of the Reign, 315.

• 20. CCR 1318–23, 429.

• 21. SC 8/6/299.

• 22. V. Gibbs, ‘The Battle of Boroughbridge and the Boroughbridge Roll’, The Genealogist, new series, 21 (1905), 223.

• 23. Gibbs, ‘Battle of Boroughbridge’, 225; C. Moor, Knights of Edward I, vol. 2, 157–8; CP, vol. 6, 190.

• 24. Calendar of Memoranda Rolls (Exchequer): Michaelmas 1326-Michaelmas 1327 (1968), no. 2160. Gwenllian was a great-granddaughter of King John, Margaret Audley’s great-great-grandfather, and was the only child of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. She was taken to Sempringham on the death of her father in December 1282 when she was only about 6 months old, and died there in 1337.

• 25. Le Livere de Reis de Britanie e le Livere de Reis de Engletere, ed. J. Glover (1865), 345.

• 26. CCR 1318–23, 440; Underhill, 33–4.

• 27. CMR, nos. 1593, 2160, 2198.

• 28. CPR 1321–4, 269.

Chapter 13: In the King’s Favour

• 1. Cited in Phillips, Edward, 363–4 note 222, and Prestwich. ‘Court of Edward II’, Reign of Edward II: New Perspectives, 71.

• 2. E 101/380/4, fo. 31r; Society of Antiquaries of London Manuscript 122, 40.

• 3. E 101/380/4, fos. 19v, 22v; SAL MS 122, 7, 28, 29, 41, 46.

• 4. Phillips, Edward, 98 (husband); True Chronicles of Jean le Bel, 1290–1360, 31; Galfridi de Baker, 10; Anonimalle, 92–3.

• 5. Flores, vol. 3, 229: concubitus illicitos peccatis.

• 6. Scalacronica, ed. Maxwell, 70. Prestwich, ‘Court of Edward II’, 71, gives the rumours of an affair between Edward II and Eleanor Despenser some credence.

• 7. Paul Doherty, Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II (2003), 101–2, talks of ‘wife-swapping’ and suggests that Edward allowed Despenser to have sex with Isabella or even sexually assault her, for which there is no evidence.

• 8. La Alianore la Despensere is mentioned in E 101/379/7, fo. 7, E 101/380/4, fo. 32v, and SAL MS 122, 4. La Despenser is mentioned in E 101/380/4, fo. 19r (which says that it was ‘bought for the use of the king by Sir Hugh Despenser the son’), SAL MS 122, 7, 16, and CPR 1324–7, 172, 278, 325.

• 9. CChR 1300–26, 448–51; CPR 1321–4, 183, 327.

• 10. E 101/332/27, mem. 5; CPR 1321–4, 176, 183, 191; CPR 1327–30, 32; CChR 1300–26, 448–9; Cartae … de Glamorgancia Pertinent, vol. 3, 1100–1.

• 11. CChR 1300–26, 442.

• 12. Holmes, ‘Protest Against the Despensers’, 210–11; CCR 1318–23, 624.

• 13. E 101/379/7, fo. 3.

• 14. Cartae … de Glamorgancia Pertinent, vol. 3, 1101–4.

• 15. Cartae … de Glamorgancia Pertinent, vol. 3, 1103.

• 16. Ward, Lady of Clare, xvii note 14, citing SC 6/927/31.

• 17. Stapleton, ‘Brief Summary’, 338, for 1318. I owe the 1329 reference to Roger Damory and Elizabeth Burgh’s daughter Margaret to Douglas Richardson’s post of 9 October 2018 in soc.genealogy.medieval, citing http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT4/JUST1/Just1no1403/aJUST1no1403 fronts/IMG_6495.htm (both accessed 10 October 2018).

• 18. Elizabeth Bardolf née Damory was called Roger’s heir in 1337, 1338 and 1360/61, and thus, by contemporary inheritance laws in England, must have been his only surviving legitimate child then: CChR 1327–41, 426, CIPM1352–60, no. 637 (pp. 507, 509), and CPR 1334–8, 491. If Damory had had a legitimate son, the boy would have been his sole heir, and Elizabeth Damory’s sister Margaret mentioned in 1329 would have been their father’s joint heir if she had lived. Margaret Damory seems therefore to have died between 1329 and 1337. The 1320 agreement with Ulster is E 40/386.

• 19. CIPM 1336–46, 253–5; CIPM 1347–52, no. 56. The Lincolnshire jurors thought she was 33 in November 1347, which would place her date of birth three years before her parents even married.

• 20. Ward, Lady of Clare, 129; Underhill, 100.

• 21. CP, vol. 4, 48 note c. The modern name Nicholas was spelled Nichol in the fourteenth century. Elizabeth’s biographer F. Underhill (For Her Good Estate, 100) suggests that ‘the kinship was so distant he [Nichol] can hardly be classified as [Roger Damory’s] family’. She does not consider the possibility that Nichol was Roger’s son or even his nephew, or that the young Roger Damory was. J. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (1992), 103, 140, also suggests that Nichol was Roger’s nephew.

• 22. Ward, Lady of Clare, 2; CP, vol. 4, 48 note c; Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages, 140.

• 23. It is certain, however, that Elizabeth Bardolf née Damory, his daughter with Elizabeth Burgh, was his only legitimate child who survived into adulthood. If Nichol Damory had been Roger’s son from a previous marriage he would have been Roger’s heir, unless Roger’s first marriage was annulled and Nichol thus made illegitimate.

• 24. CPR 1338–40, 477; CPR 1358–61, 300; CPR 1361–4, 377; CPR 1364–7, 34; CIPM 1361–5, no. 573. Holton was granted to Roger Damory in 1317: CPR 1313–17, 615, 677; CPR 1317–21, 248.

• 25. CCR 1354–60, 16.

• 26. CPR 1358–61, 166; Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, 183; W. M. Ormrod, Edward III (2011), 469.

• 27. K. L. Wood-Legh, ‘The Knights’ Attendance in the Parliaments of Edward III’, EHR, 47 (1932), 412, describes Nichol Damory as a man ‘of more than ordinary knowledge and ability’.

Chapter 14: Unequal Treatment

• 1. CMR, no. 2133.

• 2. SAL MS 122, 81.

• 3. SAL MS 122, 2.

• 4. SC 1/37/4 and 45.

• 5. E 101/379/7, fo. 8.

• 6. See K. Warner, Edward II: The Unconventional King (2014), 165–6, and Warner, Isabella of France: The Rebel Queen (2016), 155–7, for the Tynemouth affair.

• 7. Prestwich, ‘Court of Edward II’, 71.

• 8. I explore this possibility in Chapter 16.

• 9. Chronicon Henrici Knighton, Monachi Leycestrensis, vol. 1, ed. J. R. Lumby (1889), 434: quae ut regina habebatur in regno dum regina in remotis agebat.

• 10. CPR 1327–30, 439, for her gifts to Damory. She wrote to the receiver of Ponthieu regarding ‘the affairs of the Earl of Cornwall’ in late 1311, which probably relates to financial support of some kind.

• 11. CPR 1321–4, 227, 229.

• 12. CPR 1324–7, 277, 304.

• 13. CChR 1300–26, 444, 446, 448–51; CPR 1321–4, 183, 327.

• 14. CPR 1321–4, 349.

• 15. E 101/379/17, mem. 2: son gesine.

• 16. CCR 1327–30, 47–8.

• 17. Davies, Baronial Opposition, 97.

• 18. John Rylands MS Latin 132, fos. 7a and 10b, cited in F. Taylor, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Latin Manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, part 1 (reprinted 1980), 235. I am grateful to Dr Jo Edge for bringing this document to my attention.

• 19. SC 1/46/4: n’re tresch’e dame la Roine.

• 20. CChR 1300–26, 466.

• 21. CPR 1330–4, 345.

• 22. See Chapter 11 of K. Warner, Downfall of a King’s Favourite: Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger (2018), and K. Warner, ‘‘We Might be Prepared to Harm You’: An Investigation into Some of the Extortions of Hugh Despenser the Younger’, Journal of the Mortimer History Society, 2 (2018), 55–69, for more details, and for Despenser’s threats.

• 23. SC 8/176/8753; SC 8/59/2947; Cartae, vol. 3, 1101–4.

• 24. CCR 1323–7, 65.

• 25. SC 8/35/1723 (petition); CPR 1321–4, 431 (Sandal); CChR 1300–26, 442 (Kennington).

• 26. CPR 1321–4, 382.

• 27. Ward, Lady of Clare, 63–4. Margaret Courtenay was born in April 1311 so was only 13/14 years old in 1324/25, and was born the year before Elizabeth’s son.

• 28. Ward, Lady of Clare, 64; Twigs Way, Virgins, Weeders and Queens: A History of Women in the Garden (2005).

• 29. E 101/380/4, fos. 11v, 16r, 24v.

• 30. Holmes, ‘Protest Against the Despensers’, 211. The park was back in Elizabeth’s hands by early May 1327, in her cousin Edward III’s reign: CPR 1327–30, 207.

Chapter 15: A Secret Lover

• 1. CCR 1323–7, 216.

• 2. E 101/380/4, fo. 19r: des quex le Roy fist p’uement son deduyt a cele place encont’ la Tour. The dictionary at www.anglo-norman.net (accessed 25 January 2019) translates faire son deduit as ‘to have one’s pleasure (of a woman)’, and faire lur deduit as ‘to make love’.

• 3. E 101/380/4, fo. 20r. Many payments to men working on the houses, including carpenters and plasterers, can be found in the same document. The owner of La Rosere was Agnes Dunley, or Anneys de Doneleye as the account calls her.

• 4. C 53/111, no. 18; CCR 1323–7, 319, implies that he was at court on the 24th.

• 5. E 101/380/4, fo. 20v.

• 6. Flores, 229.

• 7. E 101/380/4, fo. 19v: j robe de iiij garnamenz.

• 8. Ward, Lady of Clare, 141–2; Collection of All the Wills, 24–5.

• 9. SAL MS 122, 41.

• 10. CChR 1300–26, 448–51; CCR 1323–7, 519.

• 11. CCR 1323–7, 335.

• 12. SC 8/43/2017; CCR 1323–7, 125.

• 13. Pugh, ‘Marcher Lords’, 174.

• 14. E 101/380/4, fo. 22r.

• 15. E 101/380/4, fos. 22r, 22v.

• 16. C 53/111, nos. 12, 14.

• 17. SAL MS 122, 8.

• 18. Lanercost, 249; Flores, 226.

• 19. E 101/380/4, fo. 22r; Saaler, Edward II, 97 (sturgeon).

• 20. CPR 1327–30, 27.

• 21. E 101/380/4, fos. 22v, 23r.

• 22. The War of Saint-Sardos (1323–1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents, ed. P. Chaplais (1954), 199–200; Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem, ed. Roger Twysden (1652), column 2767–8.

• 23. CIM, no. 1329.

• 24. E 101/380/4, fo. 23r: qils eient lalme mons’ Pieres de Gauerston counte de Cornewaille le plus en remembraunce.

• 25. CCR 1313–18, 468; CCR 1330–3, 547.

• 26. E 101/380/4, fo. 16r.

• 27. CPR 1324–7, 95, 153; CCR 1318–23, 288, 395; CIPM 1317–27, 393.

• 28. E 101/380/4, fo. 10v: l’res de secree seal a counte de Cestre et Huchoun le Despens’.

• 29. SAL MS 122, 41–3, 73.

• 30. E 101/380/4, fo. 20v.

• 31. CChR 1300–26, 448–9.

• 32. E 101/380/4, fo. 29r.

• 33. E 101/380/4, fos. 24r, 27r. The unconventional king himself bought two types of fish called roach and dace from a fisherman near La Rosere at this time, as he often did; his chamber accounts are full of entries about fish ‘bought by the king himself’.

• 34. E 101/380/4, fo. 29v. The Earl of Winchester was also at court on 14 February and 2 April, when he witnessed royal charters: C53/111, nos. 9, 10.

• 35. E 101/380/4, fos. 30v, 32r.

• 36. E 101/380/4, fo. 31r.

• 37. CPR 1324–7, 124.

• 38. SAL MS 122, 7, 8, 15.

Chapter 16: Intruder and Pharisee

• 1. War of Saint Sardos, ed. Chaplais, 199–200.

• 2. Vita, 140, 142; Adae Murimuth, 44.

• 3. SAL MS 122, 75.

• 4. SAL MS 122, 25, 27.

• 5. SAL MS 122, 28 (Caerphilly); CCR 1323–7, 510 (Sutton). See Chapter 11 of Downfall of a King’s Favourite for more details. Edward II had granted the manor of Banstead to Queen Isabella in 1318, though it was currently in his own hands, as with the rest of her lands: CPR 1317–21, 115.

• 6. SAL MS 122, 28–9, 36; E. B. Fryde, ‘The Deposits of Hugh Despenser the Younger with Italian Bankers’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 3 (1951), 361–2; SC 1/49/146 and 146A.

• 7. CCR 1323–7, 519, is the loan; CPR 1313–18, 459, identifies Madefrey; CCR 1323–7, 418, 423, and CMR, no. 2255 for Audley.

• 8. Vita, 142–3.

• 9. Vita, 144–5.

• 10. SAL MS 122, 38: Jak Pyk counta au Roi qe le dit mons’ Hugh fust tue.

• 11. Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem, ed. Roger Twysden, column 2767–8.

• 12. CCR 1323–7, 580–1; Foedera 1307–27, 615.

• 13. SAL MS 122, 28, 40–41.

• 14. SAL MS 122, 41; A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, ed. H. C. Maxwell, vol. 6 (1915), no. C.5924; SC 1/49/147 and 148; Fryde, ‘Deposits of Hugh Despenser the Younger’, 352 note 1; CPR 1324–7, 199.

• 15. SAL MS 122, 73, which refers to the young man as Huchon le Despenser fuitz le fuitz, ‘Huchon Despenser son of the son’.

• 16. SAL MS 122, 43: p’ p’er a n’re dame p’ la dame la Despens’ q dieu la donast hastiue deliu’aunce de son enfaunt xxxs (‘to pay to Our Lady for the Lady Despenser that God granted her a prompt delivery of her child, 30 shillings’).

Chapter 17: A Protest Against the Regime

• 1. SAL MS 122, 45, 46.

• 2. CCR 1323–7, 537–8.

• 3. CPR 1321–4, 15–16.

• 4. CCR 1323–7, 442.

• 5. CCR 1323–7, 543–4.

• 6. CCR 1313–18, 443; CPR 1321–4, 15, 179; CFR 1319–27, 167.

• 7. Ward, Lady of Clare, 1–3; Underhill, 39.

• 8. SAL MS 122, 51–2; CFR 1319–27, 375. Eleanor’s town of Melton Mowbray lay within the hundred of Framland.

• 9. SAL MS 122, 53.

• 10. SAL MS 122, 92.

• 11. CPR 1324–7, 266.

• 12. SAL MS 122, 66 (journey from Sheen and carts); CMR, no. 2264 (John at Kenilworth); P. Dryburgh, ‘Living in the Shadows: John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall (1316–36)’, Fourteenth Century England IX, ed. J. Bothwell and G. Dodd (2016), 28 (120 days).

• 13. Underhill, 37, 165–6 note 125, and see also below, Chapter 18. Elizabeth’s document is printed in the original French in Holmes, ‘Protest Against the Despensers’, and in English translation in Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 116–19.

• 14. CFR 1319–27, 389; CCW, 579.

• 15. SAL MS 122, 78. Joan Jermy was the sister of Alice Hales, wife of Edward II’s half-brother Thomas, Earl of Norfolk (b. 1300).

• 16. CPL 1342–62, 164, 254.

• 17. CPL 1342–62, 164; Petitions to the Pope 1342–1419, 75, 81.

• 18. M. Burtscher, The Fitzalans, Earls of Arundel and Surrey (2008), 45.

Chapter 18: The End of Hugh Despenser

• 1. SAL MS 122, 65–7, 68–9; CPR 1324–7, 277; CMR, no. 267. Eleanor was called ‘my lady, Lady Eleanor Despenser, consort of Sir Hugh’ in Edward’s chamber account at this time.

• 2. SAL MS 122, 69 (archers), 75 (meal). Will Balsham was called Queen Isabella’s cook in July 1329: CPR 1327–30, 404.

• 3. Annales Paulini, 312–13; Croniques de London, ed. G. J. Aungier (1844), 50; SAL MS 122, 66.

• 4. For Isabella as ma dame, see for example the Household Ordinance of 6 December 1318, cited in Tout, Place of the Reign of Edward II, 276, and for Philippa, Life-Records of Chaucer, ed. M. M. Crow and C. C. Olson (1966), 164, 169; CPR 1324–7, 304 (Eleanor at Henley); SAL MS 122, 78–9 (all other details in this paragraph), 92 (Tristan and Isolde). Unfortunately, none of the letters from Edward to Hugh and Eleanor Despenser or vice versa survive, only records of payments to the messengers who carried them.

• 5. SC 8/42/2054; SC 8/50/2492.

• 6. CPR 1321–4, 175, 269; CCR 1323–7, 133–4.

• 7. Ward, Lady of Clare, 64.

• 8. Ward, Lady of Clare, 2–4.

• 9. Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages, 95; Underhill, 40–41.

• 10. SC 8/165/8222; CPR 1327–30, 31, 69.

• 11. CPR 1324–7, 201, and CFR 1319–27, 370; and for Hugh’s move to Nottingham, CCR 1323–7, 418, 423, and CMR, no. 2255.

• 12. CPR 1334–8, 528.

• 13. CIPM 1317–27, no. 657; CCR 1323–7, 463.

• 14. Ward, Lady of Clare, 1–2, 4. Ward identifies ‘Lady Maria’ as Elizabeth’s friend Marie de St Pol, Countess of Pembroke, but Marie would have been referred to by her title rather than her first name, as she was in Elizabeth’s other accounts: see Lady of Clare, 42, 43, 77.

• 15. The last two chamber accounts of Edward II’s reign are E 101/380/4 and SAL MS 122. Mary was born in March 1279, so was five years older than her brother.

• 16. Ward, Lady of Clare, 1–3.

• 17. Records of the Borough of Leicester, ed. M. Bateson, vol. 1 (1899), 353.

• 18. Anonimalle, 124–7.

• 19. Anonimalle, 124–7, 129–30.

• 20. CPR 1330–4, 172.

• 21. CCR 1323–7, 655.

• 22. J. Ward, Women in England in the Middle Ages (2006), 113–4; Ward, Lady of Clare, xvii.

• 23. Ward, Lady of Clare, xvii-xviii, note 20, citing E 101/91/22; Underhill, 37, 87, 165–6 note 125.

• 24. Ward, Lady of Clare, 3.

• 25. CCR 1323–7, 620; CCR 1327–30, 16.

• 26. One of the two men chiefly responsible for bringing Despenser to the queen was Sir Robert Stangrave, whom Audley appointed as his attorney four months later: CPR 1327–30, 36.

Chapter 19: Deposition

• 1. Ward, Women in England in the Middle Ages, 113–14.

• 2. CMR, no. 2160.

• 3. CCR 1323–7, 624; CMR, no. 437.

• 4. CPR 1327–30, 16, 27, 66; SC 1/41/124.

• 5. CPR 1324–7, 346.

• 6. CPR 1327–30, 30; CCR 1327–30, 27.

• 7. CPR 1324–7, 338.

• 8. CCR 1327–30, 79.

• 9. CPR 1321–4, 16.

• 10. CPR 1327–30, 32.

• 11. CCR 1327–30, 15–16.

• 12. CPR 1327–30, 39.

• 13. K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310–1361 (1969), 256 note 16; CPR 1327–30, 8.

• 14. CPR 1327–30, 271; CFR 1327–37, 3; CCR 1327–30, 196.

• 15. Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, 28; CP, vol. 12B, 178; Underhill, 93.

• 16. CPR 1327–30, 198.

• 17. CPR 1334–8, 490.

• 18. CIPM 1327–36, no. 243; CPR 1327–30, 198; CFR 1327–37, 157.

• 19. CPR 1330–4, 476; CPR 1334–8, 384–5.

• 20. Underhill, 40–41.

• 21. CPR 1327–30, 243, 266; CCR 1327–30, 275–6.

• 22. CIPM 1413–18, no. 632.

• 23. John Haudlo, one of the most loyal of all Despenser adherents since before 1300, and his wife Maud (sister and heir of Hugh Despenser the Younger’s late brother-in-law Edward Burnell), went overseas on pilgrimage in 1327, and although this is only speculation, it is not impossible that they took Edward Despenser with them. CPR 1327–30, 171, 175, 188.

Chapter 20: Rebellion and Abduction

• 1. CIM 1308–48, nos. 1039, 1111.

• 2. CIM 1308–48, no. 1111; CFR 1327–37, 116–7; CPR 1327–30, 357.

• 3. CCR 1327–30, 528, 530–1, 593–4; CCR 1330–3, 286–7; CPR 1327–30, 484; CPR 1330–4, 26, 35.

• 4. CPR 1327–30, 376, 381, 485.

• 5. CCR 1327–30, 501.

• 6. CPR 1327–30, 422.

• 7. CCR 1327–30, 81, 121.

• 8. CPR 1327–30, 360, 374, 422.

• 9. CP, vol. 12B, 957.

• 10. Underhill, 63 (Bletchingdon); CPR 1358–61, 538 (a monk); CFR 1377–83, 46 (100 shillings); CFR 1383–91, 346 (alive in 1390); Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. W. Dugdale, vol. 2, 62, for Hugh Zouche, who was presumably named in honour of Hugh Mortimer (d. 1304), elder brother of William Zouche.

• 11. CPR 1321–4, 185, 190. His proof of age which gives his date of birth is in CIPM 1317–27, no. 336, and his IPM in CIPM 1353–60, no. 518; he died 1 September 1359.

• 12. ODNB; CFR 1327–37, 298; CPR 1330–4, 203, 292; CCR 1333–7, 110.

• 13. CPL 1305–41, 394; ODNB.

• 14. CPR 1327–30, 347; CCR 1327–30, 590; CCR 1330–3, 182.

• 15. CPR 1327–30, 500–1, 512, 541; CFR 1327–37, 161; CCR 1330–3, 5, 37. Isabella was at Tewkesbury on 26 June 1330: SC 1/38/195. Edward III was at Burford (Oxfordshire) on 21 June, Tewkesbury on the 27th and at Hanley at the 29th: Ormrod, Edward III, 613.

• 16. CPR 1327–30, 544; CPR 1330–4, 244.

• 17. CMR, no 2270; CCR 1323–7, 517, 645; CPR 1327–30, 552.

• 18. SC 8/157/7801; CCR 1330–3, 7; Adae Murimuth, 255.

• 19. CFR 1327–37, 118–9.

• 20. CFR 1327–37, 93.

• 21. CPR 1327–30, 492.

Chapter 21: The King Lives

• 1. CIPM 1336–46, no. 476.

• 2. CCR 1327–30, 530; CPR 1327–30, 547. Margaret Monthermer had no children with Henry Tyes, and his sister Alice Lisle was his heir: CIPM 1327–36, no. 48.

• 3. CCR 1327–30, 379; Underhill, 167 note 138, citing E 101/91/17.

• 4. CIPM 1327–36, no. 389.

• 5. Underhill, 95.

• 6. CFR 1327–37, 134–5.

• 7. CCR 1327–30, 526. The two acknowledged another joint debt on 3 July 1329: CCR 1327–30, 555.

• 8. Adae Murimuth, 255.

• 9. Ormrod, Edward III, 613.

• 10. CPR 1327–30, 557; CFR 1327–37, 168. The other two were Sir Fulk FitzWarin (who had pronounced the death sentence and reprieve on Roger Damory in March 1322) and George Percy.

• 11. CCR 1330–3, 17–18.

• 12. CFR 1327–37, 175, 181; CCR 1330–3, 14.

• 13. CCR 1330–3, 143.

• 14. CPR 1330–4, 74.

• 15. Underhill, 45; Ormrod, Edward III, 613; CIPM 1361–5, no. 573.

Chapter 22: A Belated Funeral

• 1. CCR 1330–3, 175.

• 2. See http://www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/research/projects/arch-ml-hugh-despenser.aspx (accessed 2 March 2018).

• 3. See CPR 1348–50, 48.

• 4. CCR 1330–3, 179, 182; CPR 1330–4, 53.

• 5. CFR 1327–37, 308, 344; CPR 1334–8, 171, 230.

• 6. CPR 1330–4, 51; SC 8/157/7801.

• 7. CCR 1333–7, 199; CCR 1337–9, 302.

• 8. CCR 1330–3, 178.

• 9. C 241/130/185; C 241/105/256; CCR 1330–3, 182.

• 10. CCR 1330–3, 284; Ward, Lady of Clare, 27, 42, 48, and Underhill, 126–7, for Chedworth. For other large debts of Zouche, see CCR 1330–3, 531, 551, 554, 557.

• 11. CPR 1330–4, 278.

• 12. Underhill, 87, for the cloth.

• 13. CMR, no, 2271 (banneret); CPR 1330–4, 41–2, 48; Foedera 1327–44, 805–6.

• 14. E 101/310/24. Curiously, Lancaster’s name does not appear on the list of envoys on the Patent Roll or Foedera (CPR 1330–4, 90–95, and Foedera 1327–44, 813) but certainly went, as this document, his and his household’s list of expenses, makes apparent.

• 15. CPR 1330–4, 49.

• 16. Phillips, Aymer de Valence, 234–5. Among the food the two ladies consumed during Marie’s visit to Clare were a swan, two curlews, sturgeon and whale-meat. Ward, Lady of Clare, 86.

• 17. CCR 1330–3, 325–6; CPR 1330–4, 246. Talbot became a household knight of Hugh Despenser the Younger in 1322, and married Despenser’s victim Elizabeth Comyn in or before July 1326 to Despenser’s evident amusement, as he lent Talbot 10 marks soon after hearing the news. Eble Lestrange was the second husband of Alice Lacy, Countess of Lincoln and the widow of Thomas of Lancaster, whom Despenser and Edward II persecuted in 1322.

• 18. SC 8/42/2091 and 2092.

• 19. PROME, September 1331.

• 20. CFR 1327–37, 308.

• 21. Vale, Princely Court, 238, 311–3. The Bohun twins were the third and fourth sons of Edward II’s sister Elizabeth, Countess of Hereford (1282–1316), and were born around 1309 or 1312/13.

• 22. CPR 1330–4, 278.

• 23. CPR 1330–4, 267, 342, 377, 462.

• 24. CPR 1330–4, 273, 277.

• 25. Collectanea et Topographica, vol. 4, 390, 394; for the tournament, see J. Munby, R. Barber and R. Brown, Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor (2007) , 35.

• 26. Underhill, 88, 182 note 14.

• 27. CCR 1330–3, 586; the three husbands were Thomas Furnival, Bartholomew Burghersh and William Blount.

• 28. CIPM 1327–36, nos. 389, 395.

Chapter 23: Death of an Earl

• 1. CPR 1338–40, 115, 445.

• 2. R. B. Pugh, ‘A Fragment of an Account of Isabel of Lancaster, Nun of Amesbury, 1333–4’, Festschrift zur Feier des zweihundertjährigen Bestandes des Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchivs, vol. 1, ed. L. Santifaller (1949), 489, 491, 498.

• 3. CPR 1330–4, 467.

• 4. CCR 1333–7, 131.

• 5. CPR 1330–4, 495.

• 6. CPR 1330–4, 470, 551.

• 7. Ward, Lady of Clare, 75, 87; Underhill, 113.

• 8. Underhill, 113–4; Ward, Lady of Clare, 25.

Chapter 24: A Third Abduction and a Death

• 1. CPR 1334–8, 283.

• 2. CPR 1334–8, 298.

• 3. CPR 1330–4, 276. Stafford was not, however, named among the knights given gifts by Eleanor of Woodstock on this occasion: Vale, Princely Court, 312–13.

• 4. CPL 1305–41, 544, for the vow; SC 8/64/3163 is Alice’s petition.

• 5. C 131/177/11.

• 6. CIPM 1370–3, no. 210: he was said to be between 26 and 30 years old when his father died in 1372.

• 7. SC 8/179/8915; CCR 1333–7, 580–1; CPR 1334–8, 394 (Caerwent).

• 8. CIPM 1336–46, no. 112.

• 9. CCR 1337–9, 302.

• 10. Cited in CP, vol. 4, 271 note d.

• 11. CIPM 1336–46, no. 132; CFR 1337–47, 25.

• 12. Underhill, 90.

Chapter 25: The Young Generation

• 1. John Smyth of Nibley’s The Berkeley Manuscripts: The Lives of the Berkeleys, Lords of the Honour, Castle and Manor of Berkeley, vol. 1 (published in Gloucester in 1883; originally written before 1640), 374, 377 gives them three daughters, Katherine, Agnes and Elizabeth. Assuming they really existed, none of them ever married. Katherine the eldest was said to have become a nun at Whirwell.

• 2. Underhill, 88–90; Ward, Lady of Clare, 25, 44–5, 51.

• 3. CIPM 1352–60, no. 333.

• 4. Underhill, 52, 89; Ward, Lady of Clare, 85. The younger Edward Despenser (1336–75), Eleanor Despenser’s grandson, married Elizabeth Burghersh, granddaughter of Elizabeth Burgh’s stepdaughter Elizabeth Verdon, so perhaps the lady was involved with this marriage as well.

• 5. Underhill, 63.

• 6. See http://www.clare.cam.ac.uk/data/uploads/about/ClareCollege Statutes.pdf, accessed 28 February 2018.

• 7. CPR 1350–4, 510.

• 8. Ward, Lady of Clare, 144; Collection of All the Wills, 30 (ma sale appelle Clarehall en Cantebrig).

• 9. F. A. Underhill, ‘Elizabeth de Burgh: Connoisseur and Patron’, in ed. J. H. McCash, The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (1996), 273.

• 10. A. R. Meyer, ‘The Despensers and the “Gawain” Poet: A Gloucestershire Link to the Alliterative Master of the Northwest Midlands’, Chaucer Review, 35 (2001), 417–18. Isabella was a daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1219) and by her first marriage was the mother of Richard Clare, Earl of Gloucester (1222–62), father of Gilbert ‘the Red.’

• 11. Adae Murimuth, 256–7.

• 12. Ward, Lady of Clare, 49.

• 13. J. Ward, ‘Noble Consumption in the Fourteenth Century: Supplying the Household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 41 (2005/8), 454; Underhill, 96, 138.

• 14. Ward, Lady of Clare, 61–2. Elizabeth’s other horses included palfreys called Bay Stanford and Sorrel Hobyn, and packhorses called Blauncherd of Walsingham and Grey Turnebole.

• 15. Ward, Lady of Clare, 87–8.

• 16. Underhill, 112–13.

• 17. Underhill, 110–12.

• 18. SC 1/54/28.

• 19. Her father, born probably in 1301, played dice with Edward II in Nottingham at Christmas 1324. His elder brother John, who died at age 18 in 1317, was briefly married to Elizabeth Burgh’s eldest stepdaughter Joan Verdon.

• 20. The younger William Montacute was born in Donyatt, Somerset on Sunday, 19 June 1328 (‘Sunday before the Nativity of St John the Baptist, 2 Edward III’): CIPM 1347–52, no. 244.

• 21. CPL 1305–41, 553. Giles Badlesmere’s mother was Margaret Clare, first cousin of the Clare sisters, and rescued by Hugh Despenser the Younger in 1319 when she was besieged in a house by a gang of armed men.

• 22. CPR 1343–5, 268.

• 23. CIPM 1336–46, no. 382; CFR 1337–47, 289.

Chapter 26: The Last Sister

• 1. Underhill, 182 note 14, citing E 101/93/12.

• 2. Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 182–3.

• 3. Henry Despenser was 19 in February 1361; see Petitions to the Pope 1342–1419, 364.

• 4. Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 81; Ward, Lady of Clare, 45, 136–7; Underhill, 101–2, 139–40; CPR 1345–8, 255.

• 5. CPR 1340–3, 500–1.

• 6. Underhill, 97–8; Ward, Lady of Clare, 62, 69, 77, 85; Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages, 100. William Ferrers was born in Newbold, Leicestershire on 28 February 1333: CIPM 1352–60, no. 195.

• 7. Ward, English Noblewomen of the Later Middle Ages, 99.

• 8. E 101/23/36; CCR 1343–6, 174; CPR 1343–5, 307.

• 9. The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbrook, trans. D. Preest (2012), 67.

• 10. Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, vol. 2, ed. G. H. Martin (1995), 30; CPR 1343–5, 366, 384; DL 25/2184. Grosmont was the brother of Elizabeth Burgh’s daughter-in-law Maud of Lancaster, and uncle of her granddaughter the younger Elizabeth Burgh; another of his six sisters, Isabella the nun of Amesbury, was Hugh Audley’s correspondent in the 1330s.

• 11. DL 27/36; DL 27/143 and 144; DL 25/733.

• 12. CIPM 1347–52, no. 56; CCR 1346–9, 344–5.

• 13. See Appendix 1 of K. Warner, Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger: Downfall of a King’s Favourite.

• 14. Underhill, 110.

• 15. Underhill, 135–6; CPL 1305–41, 544, mentions the habit and ring as part of Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln’s own vow of chastity in and after 1335.

• 16. Petitions to the Pope 1342–1419, 102, 300; CPL 1342–62, 113, 190, 561, 586.

• 17. Ward, Lady of Clare, xviii.

• 18. CPR 1345–8, 158, 477.

• 19. M. Livingstone and M. Witzel, The Road to Crécy: The English Invasion of France, 1346 (2005), 256–9.

• 20. Ward, Lady of Clare, 147.

• 21. CPR 1327–30, 42; CPR 1348–50, 514, for Jeanne.

• 22. CIPM 1347–52, nos. 56, 57.

• 23. Ward, Lady of Clare, 89, 93–5.

Chapter 27: The Final Years

• 1. Ward, Lady of Clare, 76; Underhill, 96.

• 2. CPR 1348–50, 411.

• 3. CIPM 1361–5, no. 573; CIPM 1370–3, no. 136.

• 4. Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 182–3, for the details in this paragraph.

• 5. Bletchingdon was in Elizabeth’s hands in September 1349: CIPM 1347–52, no. 205. The elder Richard Damory gave it to her husband Roger for life in 1312, and it reverted to him on Roger’s death in 1322 and was in his possession when he died in 1330: CIPM 1327–36, no. 275. It is not entirely clear why Elizabeth held the manor, and later in the century it passed to the Poure family, descendants of Roger and Richard Damory’s sister Katherine.

• 6. Underhill, 94; Ward, Lady of Clare, 46.

• 7. Underhill, 109.

• 8. Ward, Women of the English Nobility, 184.

• 9. CPR 1354–8, 352.

• 10. Devon, Issues, 172; W. M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, Journal of British Studies, 26 (1987), 410 note 46.

• 11. Collection of All the Wills, 22. The epitaph reads Hic jacet Rogerus Damory, baro, tempore Edwardi Secundi, et Elizabetha, tertia filia Gilberti Clare, comitis Gloucestriae, et Johannae uxoris ejus: ‘Here lies Roger Damory, baron, of the era of Edward II, and Elizabeth, third daughter of Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and his wife Joan’.

• 12. Testamenta Vetusta: Being Illustrations from Wills, ed. N. Harris Nicolas, vol. 1 (1826), 87.

• 13. Testamenta Vetusta, vol. 1, 76.

• 14. Elizabeth’s will is printed in Ward, Lady of Clare, 141–9 (the entire will, in English translation); Testamenta Vetusta, vol. 1, 56–9 (an abridged version, in English); Collection of All the Wills, 22–42 (the entire will, in the French original). The translations used here are Ward’s.

• 15. J. Ward, ‘Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady of Clare (d. 1360), in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500 (1994), 40–45, for Elizabeth’s visits to London and guests.

• 16. Underhill, 59.

• 17. CIPM 1361–5, no. 573.

• 18. Petitions to the Pope 1342–1419, 478. He wrote his will on 3 February 1381: CP, vol. 4, 48 note c.

• 19. CPR 1358–61, 166, 294.

• 20. CIPM 1361–5, no. 215 (‘Sunday the feast of the Decollation of St John the Baptist last’).

Appendix 3: The Descent of the Sisters’ Inheritances

• 1. Figures from Pugh, ‘Marcher Lords’, 603 note 2.