♀Ela Talvas

Ela Talvas (died December 1174) was a daughter of the Count of Alençon and Ponthieu who was the wife first of William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and then of Patrick, Earl of Salisbury; both of her husbands died by violence. She was the twenty-fifth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Isabel de Warenne.

Countess of Surrey

Ela was a daughter of William Talvas, Count of Alençon and Ponthieu^W, and of his wife Ela, a daughter of Odo, Duke of Burgundy^W. William de Warenne and Ela Talvas were married before 1143. Their daughter Isabel de Warenne was his sole heir.

William went on the Second Crusade^W under Louis VII of France and was killed by the Turks in the passes near Laodicea on 19 January 1147/8, leaving no son. Isabel, the heiress of the Warenne earls, carried the title to each of her two husbands, a son of King Stephen and then a half-brother of King Henry II, and each was recognized as Earl Warenne through her.

Countess of Salisbury

As a widow Ela married, as his second wife, Patrick, Earl of Salisbury^W, who served Henry II as captain general of his forces in Aquitaine. Their son William, born about 1150, succeeded his father as Earl of Salisbury^W. Patrick was killed by Guy de Lusignan on 27 March 1167/8, on his way home from a pilgrimage to Galicia in Spain, and was buried in the abbey of Saint-Hilaire at Poitiers. Ela outlived him by six years and died in December 1174.

Notes

Sources

Ela’s parentage, her marriage to William de Warenne before 1143, his crusade and death, Isabel’s place as “da. and sole heir”, and Ela’s second marriage are given in the first edition of the Complete Peerage (vol. 7, 1896, under Surrey, p. 326). Patrick’s offices, his death at the hands of Guy de Lusignan, his burial at Poitiers, and their son William, “s. and h. by second wife”, born about 1150, are in the same volume under Salisbury (p. 30). These are compiled peerage accounts, not records of the time.

Her death

The Complete Peerage gives two dates for her death: “4 or 10 Dec. 1174” under Surrey (p. 326), and 10 December 1174 under Salisbury (p. 30).

The descent through John Washburn

The line from Ela to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her daughter Isabel and her descendants to John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547. That the John Washburn of the pedigrees was this man is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is probable.