♀Maud de Mandeville

Maud de Mandeville (died 27 August 1236) was an English noblewoman, Countess of Hereford by her marriage to Henry de Bohun and Countess of Essex in her own right after her brother’s death in 1227. She was the twenty-second great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Humphrey de Bohun.

Marriage to Henry de Bohun

Henry married Maud de Mandeville, a daughter of Geoffrey Fitz Peter^W, Earl of Essex, and of his first wife, Beatrice de Say. Her maritagium^W, the land her family gave with her, included the manor of Wheatenhurst in Gloucestershire. They had three sons, Humphrey, William and Henry, and a daughter, Grace, who married Robert de Dunstanville. Through Humphrey’s line she was probably an ancestor of John Washburn (died 1547), from whom Nancy’s Washburn forebears descend.

Henry, Earl of Hereford, was one of the twenty-five barons elected to guarantee the observance of Magna Carta in 1215. He went on crusade in 1219 and died on 1 June 1220, and he was buried in the chapter house of Llanthony Priory^W outside Gloucester. Maud was given her dower in the manor of Oaksey in Wiltshire until their son Humphrey should assign it.

Countess of Essex

Maud’s brother William de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, died without children on 8 January 1226/7, and as his only sister of the whole blood she was his heir, becoming Countess of Essex in her own right. By then she had married Roger de Dauntsey, of Dauntsey and Wilsford in Wiltshire. The couple received her brother’s lands on 29 October 1227, but not Pleshey Castle until 22 February 1227/8.

The inheritance came with her brothers’ debts. By her own charter Maud granted the manors of Walden and Debden to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be held until a debt of 7,160 marks, for which her brothers Geoffrey and William had bound themselves, was paid off at £120 a year. In 1229/30 she received the manors of Gussage in Dorset and Debden in Essex, with property in Winchester, by a settlement with her half-brother John Fitz Geoffrey.

The divorce

A suit of divorce between Maud and Roger was under way by 1232. A church court pronounced the divorce, and on 24 April 1233 Maud had a writ for the return of all the lands of her inheritance that Roger held. According to the Complete Peerage, the sentence was later revoked by papal letters, and Maud was adjudged to be Roger’s lawful wife after all. Roger received her lands on 3 July 1236 and Kimbolton Castle on 14 July. Maud died seven weeks later, on 27 August 1236. She and Roger had no children, and her son Humphrey succeeded her as Earl of Essex.

Notes

Sources

Maud’s parentage, maritagium and children, her inheritance in 1227, her second marriage, the settlement with her half-brother and her death on 27 August 1236 are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 1); her son’s succession as Earl of Essex is from the same page (Bohun 2). Her brother William’s death, the livery of his lands and of Pleshey Castle, her charter to the Archbishop, the divorce suit and its reversal are from the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 5, 1926, pp. 132–134, under Essex); her dower in Oaksey is from vol. 6 (1926), p. 459, under Hereford.

The divorce

Richardson gives only that Maud and Roger “were divorced 24 April 1233”. The Complete Peerage adds that the sentence was revoked by papal letters, so that Roger had livery of her lands in July 1236, and that Roger was still living in August 1238.

Her name

Maud’s father was Geoffrey Fitz Peter. She and her brothers took the name Mandeville from the earls of Essex, whose inheritance came to them through their mother, Beatrice de Say, a granddaughter of Beatrice de Mandeville (Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 5, p. 121). Her brother William’s charter to Shouldham Priory names “Galfridi filii Petri patris mei et Beatricis de Say matris mee”, Geoffrey Fitz Peter my father and Beatrice de Say my mother.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.