♀Elizabeth de Bohun

Elizabeth de Bohun^W (died 3 April 1385) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of the Earl of Northampton, who became Countess of Arundel and Surrey as the first wife of Richard FitzAlan, Admiral of England. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Elizabeth de Arundel.

Marriage

As the peerage histories tell it, Elizabeth was a daughter of William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton^W, a grandson of Edward I, and his wife Elizabeth de Badlesmere, a daughter of Bartholomew de Badlesmere. A marriage contract between Richard and Elizabeth de Bohun was dated 28 September 1359, and a papal dispensation^W was granted the same month, because the two were related in the fourth degree of kindred. Richard succeeded his father as Earl of Arundel in 1376. The next year he carried the crown at the coronation of Richard II^W and was made Admiral of the West and South.

Elizabeth died on 3 April 1385 and was buried at Lewes. On 15 August 1390 Richard married Philippe Mortimer, the widow of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, and a daughter of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March; he married her without the king’s license and was fined 500 marks for it. In 1397 Richard, by then the king’s bitter enemy, was beheaded in Cheapside.

The family

Richard and Elizabeth had three sons, Richard, Thomas and William, and five daughters, Eleanor, Elizabeth, Alice, Joan and Margaret. Their eldest son, Richard, died before his father. Thomas^W, born on 13 October 1381, was for a time the ward of John Holand, Duke of Exeter, who treated him very harshly; he escaped to the Continent and lived in great poverty at Utrecht with his uncle Thomas Arundel^W, the deposed Archbishop. About 4 July 1399 he landed in England with Henry, Duke of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV, and in 1400 he became Earl of Arundel.

Notes

Sources

Elizabeth’s parentage, her marriage, her death and burial, and her husband’s career and second marriage are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. 1 (1910), pp. 244–245, and Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 105 and 336–337; the names of the eight children, and her father’s descent from Edward I (pp. 336 and 602), are from Richardson. Her daughter Elizabeth’s marriage to Thomas Mowbray is in Richardson’s MOWBRAY section, p. 602. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility. Her son Thomas’s wardship, escape and return are from the Complete Peerage, p. 245.

Dates

No birth date is known. The Complete Peerage gives a marriage contract dated 28 September 1359 with a papal dispensation the same month; Richardson gives a license dated 17 October 1359 and a dispensation dated 9 September 1359.