♀Margaret de Quincy

Margaret de Quincy (died before 30 March 1266) was an English noblewoman, the heiress of Robert de Quincy and of her mother’s claim to the earldom of Lincoln. She was Countess of Lincoln as the wife of John de Lacy and later Countess of Pembroke as the wife of Walter Marshal, married three times, and outlived her only son. She was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by four separate lines of descent, all through her daughter Maud de Lacy: by three of them she was her twenty-third great-grandmother, and by the fourth her twenty-fourth.

An heiress twice over

Margaret was the daughter and heiress of Robert de Quincy, eldest son of Saher de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, and of Hawise of Chester^W, a sister of Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln. She was born before 1217, the year her father died in London, and before 21 June 1221 she was married to John de Lacy, Constable of Chester, as his second wife. Although she was her father’s heir, no claim to her grandfather’s earldom of Winchester was ever made on her behalf, and in 1230 she and John gave up their claim to the main Quincy estates to her uncle Roger de Quincy, who granted them her mother’s dower in return, among it the manor of Grantchester in Cambridgeshire.

Her mother’s inheritance came to them instead. Ranulph had granted the earldom of Lincoln to his sister Hawise, and on 22 November 1232, at Hawise’s request, the king made John Earl of Lincoln, for himself and his heirs by Margaret. The terms of the grant show that Margaret was held to be in the succession to her mother’s earldom.

Widow and countess

John died on 22 July 1240, and in January 1240/1 Margaret’s dower was assigned to her: forty knights’ fees and many manors held in demesne. On 6 January 1241/2 she married Walter Marshal, Earl of Pembroke^W, and on 15 March 1242/3 the lands that came to her from her mother were delivered to her and the earl. Walter died without children at Goodrich Castle on 24 November 1245, and on 12 December a second dower was assigned to her. From then on she was styled Countess of Lincoln and Pembroke. Before 7 June 1252 she married a third husband, Richard de Wiltshire.

Last years

Margaret’s seal showed a lady standing beneath a carved canopy, in a long dress and fur cloak, holding a shield of arms. She wrote to the chancellor on behalf of the “poueres dames de Lacok,” the poor ladies of Lacock Abbey^W, and in June 1263 the king promised that her executors should have free administration of her goods. She was living early in March 1265/6 and died at Hampstead in Middlesex shortly before 30 March 1266, leaving a will. She was buried near her father in the church of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell^W.

The family

John and Margaret had one son, Edmund, and two daughters, one of them Maud. In 1237 John won for Maud a marriage to the young Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, then the king’s ward; the match caused a great commotion among the barons, and John and Simon de Montfort^W were removed from the king’s council. Maud and Richard were married on or about 25 January 1237/8, and in 1243 the king ordered the late earl’s two daughters sent to Windsor to be brought up with his own.

Edmund^W, who is said to have been born in 1230, was a minor when his father died and grew up a ward of the king; in May 1247 he was married at Woodstock to Alice de Saluzzo, a near kinswoman of Queen Eleanor of Provence. He died on 2 June 1258, before his mother, and was buried at Stanlaw. He seems never to have been formally invested as Earl of Lincoln, presumably because she outlived him.

Lines of descent

All four lines run through Maud de Lacy. They meet again in Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506), whose parents James Berkeley (about 1394–1463) and Isabel Mowbray (died 1452) both descend from John and Margaret; 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

Margaret’s parentage, her three marriages, her children, her death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), LACY 1, pp. 479–480, and G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. VII (1929), LINCOLN, pp. 676–680. Both are printed accounts of the medieval nobility, citing the patent, close, charter and fine rolls and the monastic annals. Her father’s place in the Winchester line and the absence of any claim for her to that earldom are from the Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. V (1893), LINCOLN, p. 90, and vol. VIII (1898), WINCHESTER, p. 169. Her dowers, the delivery of her mother’s lands, her style as countess of both earldoms, her letter, her executors and her burial near her father are from the Complete Peerage’s notes, pp. 679–680; her seal is described by Richardson from the British Museum catalog of seals. The order of 1243 for the daughters, and Edmund’s birth, wardship and earldom, are from the Complete Peerage, p. 680; Edmund’s marriage and death are from Richardson, LACY 2, p. 480.

Her second marriage

Richardson dates the marriage to Walter Marshal 6 January 1241/2; the Complete Peerage says about January 1241/2 and before 20 April 1242.

Her birth

Neither Richardson nor the Complete Peerage gives her birth date; Richardson says only that she was born before 1217.