♀Isabel le Bigod

Isabel le Bigod was an English noblewoman, a daughter of Hugh le Bigod, Earl of Norfolk^W, and Maud Marshal, who was married first to Gilbert de Lacy of Ewyas Lacy and then to John FitzGeoffrey of Shere in Surrey, Justiciar of Ireland. She was the twenty-third great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Maud FitzJohn (died 1301).

First marriage

Isabel’s first husband, Gilbert de Lacy, was the son and heir of Walter de Lacy, lord of Weobley in Herefordshire and of Meath in Ireland. As her marriage portion she brought him lands at Great Connell in County Kildare. They had a son, Walter, and two daughters, Margery and Maud. Gilbert died late in 1230, in his father’s lifetime, and was buried at Llanthony Priory^W in Wales.

Second marriage

Before 12 April 1234 the widowed Isabel married John FitzGeoffrey, a son of Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Essex. John and Isabel had two sons, John and Richard, and four daughters, Maud, Isabel, Aveline and Joan. From 1245 to 1256 her husband governed Ireland for Henry III as its justiciar. He died near Guildford, in Surrey, on 23 November 1258.

The family

Their elder son, John FitzJohn, was still under age when his father died, and bought the custody of his own lands. He became one of the leading supporters of Simon de Montfort^W in the Second Barons’ War^W, and with the Earl of Gloucester he commanded the second division of the barons’ army at the Battle of Lewes^W on 14 May 1264. At Evesham the next year he was wounded and taken prisoner, and his lands were given away, but he was pardoned in July 1266 and recovered them under the Dictum of Kenilworth^W.

Notes

Sources

Isabel’s parentage, both marriages, her children by each husband and her marriage portion are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), BIGOD 2, p. 86, and VERDUN 3, p. 849, a printed genealogy of the medieval nobility. The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. V (1926), under FITZJOHN, p. 434, gives the same second marriage, the Great Connell lands (from a close roll of 1233–34) and Gilbert de Lacy’s death between 12 August and 25 December 1230 and his burial at Llanthony; her husband’s years in Ireland and his death are from pp. 433–434 of the same volume, and her son John’s career from pp. 434–435. No date of birth or death for Isabel is known.

Her father

One medieval chronicle makes Isabel a daughter of Ralph le Bigod, Earl Hugh’s son, and Berta de Furnival. The Complete Peerage shows this cannot be right, since Ralph was born after 1208, and traces it to a copyist who wrongly extended two words in the source that this chronicle and the Annals of Ireland share. Correctly extended, the passage says that Earl Hugh was the father of Ralph and of Isabel de Lacy, the wife of John FitzGeoffrey. Richardson also gives her as Earl Hugh’s daughter.