♀Elizabeth de Badlesmere

Elizabeth de Badlesmere^W (born about 1310) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of Bartholomew de Badlesmere and Margaret de Clare. She married William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton, and in 1338 became one of the four heirs of her brother, Giles de Badlesmere. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Elizabeth de Bohun (died 1385).

Early life

Elizabeth was a daughter of Bartholomew de Badlesmere and his wife, Margaret de Clare, and was born about 1310. She was still a child when the family fell. Her father, who had risen high in the service of Edward II, joined the Earl of Lancaster’s rebellion against the king^W, and her mother is said to have refused the queen entry to Leeds Castle in Kent in the summer of 1321 and to have been sent to the Tower of London when the castle fell. After the rebels’ defeat at Boroughbridge her father, it is said, was captured and hanged as a traitor at Canterbury on 14 April 1322.

First marriage

Before any of this, Elizabeth is said to have been married on 27 June 1316, while still a small child, in the chapel of the manor of Ernwood in Shropshire, to Edmund Mortimer^W of Wigmore. They had two sons, Roger and John. Edmund died at Stanton Lacy in Shropshire shortly before 21 January 1331/2, leaving her a widow at about twenty-one.

Second marriage and inheritance

William and Elizabeth are said to have married under a papal dispensation dated 13 November 1335, which was needed because William and her first husband, Edmund Mortimer, were related in the fourth degree of kindred. When her brother Giles de Badlesmere died in 1338, Elizabeth and her three sisters were found to be his heirs; the Kent jury described her as “Elizabeth the wife of Sir William de Bohun, earl of Northampton, aged 28 years”. Her share is said to have included the manors of Erith and Kingston in Kent, Drayton in Sussex, part of Finmere in Oxfordshire, and holdings in London. They are said to have had a son, Humphrey, born about 1341, who succeeded his father as Earl of Northampton, as well as their daughter Elizabeth de Bohun.

Death

Elizabeth died at Rochford in Essex on 8 June 1356, it is said, and was buried at the Black Friars in London. She had made her will a week earlier, on 31 May. William outlived her by four years.

Notes

Sources for her life

Her place among her brother’s heirs is from Giles de Badlesmere’s inquisition post mortem^W (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 185, p. 132), which names “Elizabeth the wife of Sir William de Bohun, earl of Northampton, aged 28 years; Maud the wife of Sir John de Veer, earl of Oxford, aged 30 years; Margery the wife of Sir William de Ros, aged 34 years; and Margaret the wife of Sir John Typetot, aged 21 years” as “sisters and next heirs of the said Giles”, and refers to lands “acquired by Bartholomew, his father”. Her mother is the “Margaret, late the wife of Bartholomew de Badelesmere” of the same inquisition and of Bartholomew’s own (vol. 7, no. 104).

Her father’s rebellion and hanging and her mother’s part at Leeds Castle are from G.E.C., Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1910), p. 372. Her first marriage, her sons by Edmund Mortimer, his death, the papal dispensation, her share of the Badlesmere lands, her children by William and her death, will and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 104 and 594, and his Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, pp. 309–310; Humphrey’s birth in 1341 is from Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. 6 (1895), p. 68. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility.

Her age

The Kent jury of 1338 gave her age as twenty-eight, which puts her birth about 1310. Richardson gives her as aged twenty-five in 1338 and born about 1313, which would make her about three at her first marriage.

The date of the second marriage

Richardson gives the marriage as made by the papal dispensation of 13 November 1335; Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. 6, p. 68, gives the marriage as in 1338 and calls her the third daughter of Bartholomew. The inquisition of 1338 shows only that she was married to William by then.

Her death

Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2011) gives 8 June 1356 at Rochford, with a will dated 31 May 1356; his earlier Magna Carta Ancestry (2005) gives 8 June 1355. Complete Peerage, 1st ed., gives 1356 (30 Edward III).