♀Isabel Mauduit

Isabel Mauduit (died after January 1269) was an English noblewoman, the only sister and heir of William Mauduit, Earl of Warwick, through whom the earldom of Warwick passed to the Beauchamp family. She was the twenty-third great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son William de Beauchamp (died 1298).

Marriage and the Warwick inheritance

Isabel was a daughter of William Mauduit, Baron of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire, who held the hereditary office of Chamberlain of the Exchequer^W and died in April 1257. She married William de Beauchamp, of Elmley and Salwarpe in Worcestershire. Their sons included William, the heir; Walter, of Alcester and Powick, who died in 1303; and John, of Holt, who was living in 1297.

Isabel’s brother, William Mauduit, became Earl of Warwick^W in 1263 and died childless on 8 January 1267/8, leaving her as his heir. It was not Isabel who took up the title: their eldest son took the style of Earl of Warwick in the lifetime of both his parents, and did homage on 9 February 1267/8. Isabel had founded a nunnery at Cokehill^W in Worcestershire, and by then she had probably taken the veil there.

Last years

She was still living on 7 January 1268/9, when her husband made his will and named her together with the church and nuns of Cokehill. He died within the next four months. The date of her own death is not known.

Notes

Sources

The account of the Warwick inheritance, the son’s homage, the will and Cokehill, and her father’s office and death, are from G.E.C., Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. VIII (1898), WARWICK, pp. 55–56. The younger sons Walter and John are from the Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. II (1912), BEAUCHAMP, pp. 44–47, which calls her “Isabel Mauduit, heiress of the Earls of Warwick”. Her parentage and marriage are also given by Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), BEAUCHAMP 4, p. 53. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility; the Complete Peerage cites the inquisitions taken after death and her husband’s will.

The will and Cokehill

The Complete Peerage quotes the historian Courthope: Isabel “is presumed therefore to have taken the habit of a nun at Cokehill nunnery, which she had founded”, a presumption “borne out by the will” of her husband, dated 7 January 1268/9, which names her with the church and nuns there. The same will calls her son “Willielmus, primogenitus meus, comes Warewici”.