♂Roger de Clare

Roger de Clare (died 1173) was an English nobleman, Earl of Hertford but generally styled Earl of Clare, who fought for Henry II in Wales and stood against Archbishop Thomas Becket^W over Tonbridge Castle^W. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by five separate lines of descent: by four of them he was her twenty-fifth great-grandfather, three through his son Richard de Clare (died 1217) and one through his daughter Aveline de Clare, and by the fifth, also through Richard, her twenty-sixth.

Earl of Clare

Roger was a son of Richard FitzGilbert, lord of Clare, and his wife Adeliz, a sister of Ranulf, Earl of Chester. In 1131, as Roger FitzRichard, he witnessed a charter of Henry I to the church of Salisbury. His elder brother Gilbert de Clare^W, the first Earl of Hertford, died between 1151 and 1153, probably unmarried, and Roger was his heir to the family’s great estates, which besides the honor of Clare in Suffolk included Tonbridge Castle in Kent. Henry II seems to have allowed him the earldom at once, and by January 1155/6 he witnessed one of the king’s charters as Roger, Earl of Clare.

In the king’s service

From 1157 Roger fought in Wales against Rhys ap Gruffudd^W. A chronicle kept at Bury St Edmunds tells that in 1157, when Henry of Essex^W, the hereditary standard-bearer, dropped the standard in a surprise attack by the Welsh and cried out that the king was dead, the king would truly have been lost had not Roger, Earl of Clare, “distinguished in birth and more distinguished in arms”, heartened the whole army.

In 1163 Roger refused Thomas Becket’s claim to his fealty for Tonbridge Castle, which the Clares held of the archbishops of Canterbury by the service of acting as their high steward. The king took Roger’s side, though a later archbishop, Hubert, won the fealty back. In 1164 Roger took part in the Constitutions of Clarendon^W, in 1166 he returned his knights’ fees as 149 in the Cartae Baronum^W, and in 1170 he was one of the commissioners of the Inquest of Sheriffs^W for Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Marriage and death

Roger married Maud de Saint Hilary, the daughter and heiress of James de Saint Hilary and his wife Aveline. He confirmed the gift of land at Dalling in Norfolk that her father had made to Savigny Abbey^W in Normandy, and Maud made a grant to Stoke-by-Clare Priory^W for the souls of Roger, herself and their children, witnessed by Roger’s brother Richard. Roger died in 1173, and their son Richard succeeded him as earl. By 1176 the king had given Maud in marriage to William d’Aubigny, Earl of Arundel^W, who died on 24 December 1193. Roger’s daughter Aveline married first William de Munchanesy and then Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Essex.

Lines of descent

The lines meet again in Elizabeth le Despenser (died 1389), whose parents Hugh le Despenser (died 1326) and Eleanor de Clare (1292–1337) both descend from Roger; in Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506), whose parents James Berkeley (about 1394–1463) and Isabel Mowbray (died 1452) both do; 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

Roger’s parentage, succession, earldom, service in Wales, the Tonbridge dispute, his part at Clarendon, his return of fees, the commission of 1170, his marriage, the grants to Savigny and Stoke, his death and Maud’s remarriage are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. VI (1926), HERTFORD, pp. 498–501, whose notes cite J. H. Round, the chronicles of Ralph de Diceto, Gervase of Canterbury and Robert de Torigny, Stubbs’s Select Charters, Dugdale’s Baronage, the Stoke Priory charters in the Cotton manuscripts and the pipe rolls. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), CLARE 1, p. 192, makes Richard de Clare the son and heir of Roger de Clare, second Earl of Hertford, by Maud, daughter and heiress of James de Saint Hilary, of Field Dalling, Norfolk; VERDUN 3, p. 849, makes Aveline the second wife of Geoffrey Fitz Peter and a daughter of Roger de Clare, Earl of Clare. The year of his death is the Complete Peerage’s; the family tree holds no date for it. Torigny’s chronicle records it in a single line: “Obiit etiam Rogerius comes de Clara; cui successit Ricardus filius ejus” (Roger, Earl of Clare, also died, and his son Richard succeeded him).

The standard in Wales

The Complete Peerage quotes the Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey: “in rei veritate, predictus Henricus de Essexia inclitum regem Henricum secundum, Walensium fraudibus interceptum, diem clausisse credidit extremum ; quod revera factum fuisset, nisi Rogerus comes Clarensis, clarus genere et militari clarior exercitio, ad corroborationem et animationem totius exercitus …” (the said Henry of Essex in truth believed that the renowned King Henry II, caught by the trickery of the Welsh, had met his last day, which would really have happened, had not Roger, Earl of Clare, distinguished in birth and more distinguished in feats of arms, [come] to strengthen and hearten the whole army). The quotation breaks off there.

Earl of Hertford or of Clare

The Complete Peerage, following Round, holds that the Clares were Earls of Hertford, known as Earls of Clare after their chief honor, and that an earlier earldom of Clare is not proved. It numbers Roger the second earl; Richardson calls him the second Earl of Hertford, and VERDUN 3 calls him Earl of Clare. That his brother Gilbert left no wife is the Complete Peerage’s “generally supposed”.

Tonbridge

The Complete Peerage adds, from Round’s The King’s Serjeants, that as high stewards the Earls of Clare received the dishes set out at the first course at the enthronement of an archbishop of Canterbury.

The children

The family tree holds two of Roger’s children, Richard and Aveline. The Complete Peerage makes Maud the mother of both (vol. V, 1926, ESSEX, p. 124, names Aveline as Roger’s daughter “by Maud, da. and h. of James de Saint Hilaire, of Dalling”); Richardson names Maud only as Richard’s mother. The Complete Peerage adds that Roger “appears to have had” two other sons, John and Richard, who witnessed their brother’s charters to Stoke Priory, and a daughter Mabel, wife of William de Helion, who was sixty in 1185.