♂Hugh le Despenser

Hugh le Despenser (1 March 1260/1 – 27 October 1326), called “the elder”, was an English baron who served Edward I as an envoy and soldier, stood by Edward II through every crisis of his reign, was made Earl of Winchester, and was hanged as a traitor at Bristol when that king’s government fell. He was the twenty-first great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Hugh le Despenser the younger (died 1326).

Early life and marriage

Hugh was the son and heir of Hugh le Despenser^W, of Loughborough in Leicestershire, and of Aline, the daughter and heiress of Philip Basset. His father sat in Simon de Montfort’s^W parliament and was killed on Montfort’s side at the Battle of Evesham^W on 4 August 1265, when Hugh was four. Before 1271 his mother married Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk^W.

Isabel de Beauchamp^W was the daughter of William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick^W, and Maud FitzJohn, and the widow of Patrick de Chaworth, lord of Kidwelly in Wales. After Patrick de Chaworth’s death in 1283, and by 1287, Isabel married Hugh le Despenser. Hugh and Isabel had two sons, Hugh and Philip, and three daughters, Aline, Isabel and Margaret.

In the king’s service

Hugh held lands from Loughborough and Wycombe to Hampshire, Wiltshire and Yorkshire, and was Justice of the Forest south of the Trent. He went overseas in 1286 and 1287, and in 1289 crossed again with his stepfather, the Earl of Norfolk. Edward I sent him abroad as his envoy in 1294 and on an embassy in 1296, and in 1300 to the court of Rome on the king’s special affairs. He fought in the king’s wars in Wales and Scotland, was at the siege of Caerlaverock^W in 1300, and was summoned to Parliament as a baron from 1295.

Not everyone thought well of him. In 1298 Maud le Barber testified in a London court that Saer le Barber had said Sir Hugh “kept more robbers with him than any man in England.”

The king’s friend

Isabel died shortly before 30 May 1306. At the coronation of Edward II^W on 25 February 1308 Hugh carried part of the royal insignia. In the quarrel that year over the king’s favorite Piers Gaveston^W, Hugh alone sided with the king against the barons, who made the king promise to send him from court. He was at the Battle of Bannockburn^W on 24 June 1314 and fled with the king to Dunbar, and from there by sea to Berwick.

In May and June 1321 the barons of the Welsh March ravaged his son’s lands in Wales and his own across England. That August Parliament accused both Despensers, chiefly for the son’s misconduct, of taking royal power to themselves and counseling the king badly; they were disinherited and exiled, and the elder Hugh went to the Continent. A council of the clergy declared the sentence unlawful about 1 January 1321/2. In March Hugh rode with the king against the rebels and was present at the judgment on the Earl of Lancaster^W. His lands were restored on 7 May 1322, and three days later he was created Earl of Winchester, with the castle of Brimpsfield in Gloucestershire and manors in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

Death

When Queen Isabella^W, whose influence he had always opposed, landed in England in September 1326, the king fled into Wales and sent the earl to defend Bristol. He surrendered it as soon as the queen arrived. The next day, 27 October 1326, he was tried without being allowed to speak in his own defense, condemned to death as a traitor, and hanged on the common gallows outside Bristol at the age of sixty-four. His head was sent to Winchester, and all his honors were forfeited. His son was executed at Hereford four weeks later.

Notes

Sources

Hugh’s parentage, lands and office, marriage, children, missions abroad, the 1298 testimony, his part in the quarrels of Edward II’s reign, his earldom and his death are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), DESPENSER 5, pp. 275–276, with his wife’s first marriage at LANCASTER 5, p. 483. His father’s death at Evesham, his mother’s second marriage, the Welsh and Scottish wars and Caerlaverock, the coronation of 1308, and his hanging outside Bristol at sixty-four with his head sent to Winchester are from G. E. C., Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. III (1890), p. 91. Both are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility; Richardson cites the patent rolls, the papal registers, the Complete Peerage and county histories. The phrase “kept more robbers with him than any man in England” is the testimony as Richardson quotes it.

His birth

Richardson gives 1 March 1260/1. The Complete Peerage (1890) gives 1262, and says he was aged 21 on 1 March 1283.

The date of the marriage

Richardson’s Despenser chapter says Isabel married Hugh “after 28 May 1281”, the date of a grant of his marriage; his Lancaster chapter says before 8 November 1287. The Complete Peerage (1890) places it shortly after 1 March 1283 and before 8 November 1286. Isabel’s first husband died shortly before 7 July 1283.

Hanged or beheaded

Richardson and the Complete Peerage say he was hanged. A herald’s visitation of Warwickshire of 1619, which Richardson quotes, has “decollatus”, beheaded, and Burke’s Peerage (1869) also says he was beheaded.