♀Elizabeth de Arundel

Elizabeth de Arundel^W was an English noblewoman, a daughter of the Earl of Arundel, who married four times and outlived all four of her husbands, among them Thomas Mowbray, first Duke of Norfolk. She was the eighteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Isabel Mowbray (died 1452).

First marriage

Elizabeth was a daughter of Richard FitzAlan^W, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and Elizabeth de Bohun. Before December 1378 she was married to William de Montagu, the son and heir of the Earl of Salisbury. They had no children, and on 6 August 1382 William was killed in a tilting match at Windsor.

Duchess of Norfolk

Elizabeth’s second husband was Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, whose first wife had died the year before. They married at Arundel Castle in July 1384, in the presence of the king and queen. Her marriage portion included the manor of Wing, in Buckinghamshire. Thomas became Earl Marshal and, in 1397, Duke of Norfolk, but in September 1398 Richard II^W banished him. Thomas died of pestilence at Venice on 22 September 1399 and was buried there in the abbey of St. George.

Two more marriages

Before 19 August 1401 the widowed duchess married Sir Robert Goushill, of Hoveringham, in Nottinghamshire. She married him without the king’s license, and her dower^W lands were ordered back into the king’s hands; she was pardoned on 28 September 1401 and her lands were restored. They had three daughters, Joan, Elizabeth and Joyce. Sir Robert was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury^W on 21 July 1403.

Before 18 April 1411 Elizabeth married her fourth husband, Sir Gerard Usflete, of Swanland, in Yorkshire, steward of the Duchy of Lancaster in Lincolnshire. They had no children, and he died in or before February 1421. In 1415 Elizabeth was one of the co-heiresses of her brother Thomas, Earl of Arundel. A printed genealogy gives her death as 8 July 1425, and she was buried with her third husband, Sir Robert Goushill, at Hoveringham, where a tomb is said to carry the figures of both.

The family

Elizabeth and Thomas Mowbray had two sons, Thomas and John, and three daughters, Elizabeth, Isabel and Margaret. Their elder son, Thomas^W, was born on 17 September 1385. He was drawn into the Scrope conspiracy of 1405, was captured in the priory of Monks Kirkby, in Warwickshire, and was executed without trial on 8 June 1405. The younger son, John^W, later became the second Duke of Norfolk.

Notes

Sources

Elizabeth’s parentage, her four marriages, her pardon, her daughters by Goushill, her inheritance, death and burial, and the children of her marriage to Thomas Mowbray, are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 338 and 602–603; her parentage and her daughter Isabel’s place in the family are also in Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, p. 256. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility. The tomb comes from Thoroton’s History of Nottinghamshire (1790), quoted by Richardson: “a fair tomb for sir Robert Gousell, and the dutchess of Norfolk his lady, upon which are their statues, as by the coronet on the head of hers is supposed.”

Dates and husbands

Richardson gives her birth as about 1371 in one place (aged 44 in 1415) and about 1372 in another. Sir Bernard Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (1869) names the same four husbands but puts Usflete third and Goushill fourth; Richardson’s dated grants and pardon put Goushill third. Usflete’s will was proved on 12 February 1420/1.