♀Eleanor de Clare

Eleanor de Clare (October 1292 – 30 June 1337) was an English noblewoman, the heiress of the lordship of Glamorgan in Wales, whose first husband was Hugh le Despenser the younger, the favorite of Edward II^W. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Elizabeth le Despenser (died 1389).

Early life and marriage

Eleanor was born at Caerphilly in Glamorgan in October 1292, the eldest daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford^W, and his second wife, Joan of Acre^W, a daughter of King Edward I. Her father died at Monmouth Castle on 7 December 1295, when she was three. Shortly after 14 June 1306, at thirteen, she was married at Westminster to Hugh le Despenser the younger^W, the son and heir of Sir Hugh le Despenser. Her mother died the next spring, on 7 April 1307. Hugh and Eleanor had four sons and five daughters; three of the daughters, Joan, Eleanor and Margaret, became nuns, at Shaftesbury, Sempringham and Whatton.

Heiress of Glamorgan

In 1314 Eleanor became one of the heiresses of her brother Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford^W, and her share brought the lordship of Glamorgan^W, with the castles of Llanblethian, Kenfeg, Neath, Llantrisant, Caerphilly and Whitchurch, and the manor of Stanford in the Vale in Berkshire. Her husband ruled the lordship, and his rule there was deeply unpopular with the Welsh. From 1322 to 1326 he directed the government of England for Edward II, her mother’s brother, and royal documents of those years call Eleanor the “king’s niece”. When the government fell in 1326, Hugh was captured with the king in Glamorgan, and he was executed at Hereford on 24 November 1326.

Widowhood and second marriage

Eleanor was treated with remarkable leniency, and her inheritance was restored to her on 22 April 1328. Shortly before 26 January 1328/9 she was abducted from Hanley Castle in Worcestershire by William la Zouche Mortimer, Lord Zouche of Richard’s Castle, and afterwards married him without the king’s license. He had been one of the queen’s supporters and was sent into Wales in November 1326 to pursue and capture Edward II.

On 5 February 1328/9 Roger de Mortimer^W, acting in the king’s name, ordered the couple’s arrest. Eleanor was held in the Tower of London and then in Devizes Castle, and in December 1329 she was made to give up Glamorgan and Morgannwg and the manors of Tewkesbury and Hanley until they paid an impossible fine of £50,000. They were pardoned on 22 February 1329/30, and in January 1330/1 she recovered her lands for a reduced fine of £5,000, which was never paid in full in her lifetime.

Eleanor and William had two sons, William, who became a cleric, and, it is said, Hugh. William died on 28 February 1336/7 and was buried at Tewkesbury Abbey^W in Gloucestershire. Eleanor made a will and died four months later, on 30 June 1337.

Notes

Sources

Eleanor’s birth, parentage, both marriages, her inheritance, her imprisonment and fines, her children and her death are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), DESPENSER 6, pp. 276–277, and BEAUCHAMP 5, p. 55, with her daughter Elizabeth at BERKELEY 7, p. 72, and her parents’ deaths at CLARE 4, p. 198. Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, pp. 642–645, gives the same account and calls her the eldest daughter. Both are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility, citing the Complete Peerage, the charter rolls, the chancery warrants and the monastic annals. The “king’s niece” is how the charter rolls and the chancery warrants style her, as cited by Richardson.

Her birth

Plantagenet Ancestry places her birth shortly before 23 November 1292, the day her mother was churched at Caerphilly after the birth, as the Annals of Worcester record it.

The children

Magna Carta Ancestry names four sons, Hugh, Edward, Gilbert and John, and five daughters, Isabel, Joan, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth, by Hugh le Despenser. Plantagenet Ancestry adds a fifth son, Philip. Of her sons by William la Zouche Mortimer, Richardson calls Hugh “allegedly” a son.