♀Maud Marshal

Maud Marshal (died 27 March 1248) was an English noblewoman, the eldest daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who was Countess of Norfolk by her first marriage and Countess of Surrey by her second, and who in her last years held the office of Marshal of England. She was the twenty-fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Isabel le Bigod.

Countess of Norfolk

Maud was the eldest daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke^W and hereditary Master Marshal, and his wife Isabel de Clare. She married Hugh le Bigod, the son and heir of Roger le Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, probably before Lent 1207. Her husband and his father were among the twenty-five barons chosen in 1215 to guarantee Magna Carta, and were excommunicated for it that December. Hugh did homage for the earldom of Norfolk on 2 August 1221 and died between 11 and 18 February 1225.

The couple had four sons, Roger, Hugh, Ralph and possibly William, and one daughter, Isabel.

Countess of Surrey

Before 13 October 1225, within eight months of Hugh’s death, Maud married William de Warenne, Earl of Surrey^W, as his second wife. He died on 27 May 1240. Her seal from the early 1240s shows her standing in a long dress and cloak, with the checkered shield of the Warennes on the reverse.

Marshal of England

When her brother Anselm, Earl of Pembroke, died in December 1245, Maud succeeded to the marshalcy^W, and she received royal recognition of her right to the office before 22 July 1246. She committed the office to her eldest son, Roger, and the king confirmed that commission in 1246. She died on 27 March 1248, styled Countess of Norfolk and Warenne, Marshal of England.

The family

Their eldest son, Roger, born in 1212 or 1213, succeeded as Earl of Norfolk and married Isabel of Scotland, a daughter of William the Lion^W, at Alnwick in May 1225. In 1245 he led the English delegation to the First Council of Lyon^W, and the same year he put his wife away, nominally because they were too closely related, until a church court compelled him to take her back in 1253. He held the marshalcy under his mother’s commission, confirmed by the king in 1246, and died in July 1270; he was buried at Thetford.

Notes

Sources

Maud’s parentage, both marriages, her children, her succession to the marshalcy and her death are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), BIGOD 2, pp. 85–86, a printed genealogy of the medieval nobility that cites the Complete Peerage, the chronicle of Matthew Paris and Birch’s catalog of seals in the British Museum, which describes her seal as the wife of William de Warenne, dated 1241–1245. Richardson names her mother as Isabel, daughter of Richard Fitz Gilbert, Earl of Pembroke, called “Strongbow”. Roger’s marriage and career are from the same pages.

The marriage date

“Probably before Lent 1207” is Richardson’s own estimate; no date for the wedding is given. No date of birth for Maud is given.