♂Gilbert de Clare

Gilbert de Clare (died 25 October 1230) was an English nobleman, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, who joined the barons against King John in 1215 and fought on the side of Louis of France^W at Lincoln in 1217. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by four separate lines of descent, all through his son Richard de Clare (1222–1262): by three of them he was her twenty-third great-grandfather, and by the fourth her twenty-fourth.

Magna Carta and the war

Gilbert was the son and heir of Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, generally known as the Earl of Clare, and his wife Amice of Gloucester, and he was probably born about 1180. From his father he inherited the Clare estates, from his mother those of the earldom of Gloucester, and from his grandmother the honor of St Hilary.

In 1215 Gilbert and his father joined the barons’ confederacy against King John, and in June that year Gilbert was one of the twenty-five barons elected to guarantee that the king kept Magna Carta. Pope Innocent III^W excommunicated father and son for it. In the First Barons’ War^W Gilbert fought for Louis at the Battle of Lincoln^W on 19 May 1217 and was taken prisoner by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke^W. He was released, his lands were restored, and on 9 October 1217 he married his captor’s daughter, Isabel Marshal.

Earl of Gloucester

In November 1217, shortly after the death of his aunt Isabel, Countess of Gloucester, Gilbert was recognized as Earl of Gloucester, though his mother was still alive. In July 1222 the king ordered him to stop attacking the castle of Dinas Powys in Glamorgan, and in 1223 he joined his brother-in-law, the Earl Marshal, on an expedition into Wales. In 1225 he was present when King Henry III confirmed Magna Carta.

In July 1227 Gilbert took the part of the king’s brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall^W, against the king over the forest laws and the misgovernment of Hubert de Burgh^W; the king gave way, and that August met the barons at Northampton and promised to meet their demands. In 1228 Gilbert led an army against the Welsh and captured Morgan Gam^W, who was released the next year, and in Wales he found mines of silver, iron and lead.

Death in Brittany

Early in 1230 Gilbert crossed into Brittany with the king. He died on the way back, at Penros in Brittany, on 25 October 1230, when his heir Richard was eight. His body was carried by way of Plymouth and Cranbourn to Tewkesbury Abbey^W, where he was buried before the high altar in November 1230, and his widow raised a monument to him there. In the will he made in April and on 23 October 1230 he left the abbey the wood of Mythe and a gilt silver cross. On 30 March 1231 Isabel married Richard, Earl of Cornwall.

The family

Gilbert and Isabel had three sons, Richard, William and Gilbert, and three daughters, Amice, Agnes and Isabel. William, born on 18 May 1228, and his brother Richard were poisoned in 1258 while at breakfast with Prince Edward at Winchester; William died of it at Retherford and was buried at Durford Abbey^W on 23 July 1258, and Walter de Scotenay was executed for the crime on 26 May 1259. The youngest son, Gilbert, born in September 1229, became a clerk; in 1241, while still a minor, he was granted a pension of 16 marks from the church of Great Marlow, and in 1244 his stepfather, Richard of Cornwall, obtained a papal dispensation for him to hold church livings.

Lines of descent

The lines meet again in Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506), whose parents James Berkeley (about 1394–1463) and Isabel Mowbray (died 1452) both descend from Gilbert and Isabel; in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both do; and in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884) both do.

Notes

Sources

Gilbert’s parentage, inheritance, part in the rebellion of 1215 and at Lincoln, marriage, children, death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), CLARE 2, pp. 194–195, and G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. V (1926), GLOUCESTER, pp. 694–696. Both are printed accounts of the medieval nobility, citing the patent and close rolls, the chronicle of Matthew Paris and the annals of Tewkesbury. That he was taken prisoner by William Marshal is in both, and the Complete Peerage adds “whose daughter he married later”; the recognition as earl in his mother’s lifetime, the expedition of 1223, the mines in Wales and the route of his funeral are from the Complete Peerage, and the excommunication “in consequence” of his part in 1215, the meeting at Northampton and the bequests in his will are from Richardson. His birth “about 1180” is an estimate: Richardson gives “about 1180” and the Complete Peerage “probably circa 1180”.

Dates that differ

Richardson dates the excommunication 16 December 1215; the Complete Peerage gives December 1216, but Innocent III died in July 1216. Richardson has the burial on 11 November 1230 and the will dated 30 April and 23 October 1230; the Complete Peerage has the burial on 10 November and the will on 20 April and 23 October. The youngest son Gilbert’s birth is 13 September 1229 in Richardson and 12 September in the Complete Peerage.

His numbering

Richardson styles Gilbert the seventh Earl of Clare and fourth Earl of Hertford; the Complete Peerage numbers him the fourth in its line of earls of Gloucester, and Wikipedia’s article on him counts him the fifth Earl of Gloucester.