♂William de Bohun

William de Bohun^W was an English nobleman and soldier, Earl of Northampton in the reign of Edward III. He married Elizabeth de Badlesmere, and in 1338 she became one of the four heirs of her brother, Giles de Badlesmere. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth de Bohun (died 1385).

In the king’s service

William is said to have been a younger son of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and to have been born about 1310 or 1312. In 1330 he helped the young king seize the Earl of March, and from then on he was one of the king’s most active councilors; the king called him his kinsman. On 16 March 1336/7 he was created Earl of Northampton, and to support him in the dignity of an earl the king granted him the reversions of the castles and manors of Oakham in Rutland, Stamford and Grantham in Lincolnshire, and Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire. In 1338 his elder brother Humphrey granted him the office of Constable of England^W for life.

Marriage

William and Elizabeth are said to have married under a papal dispensation dated 13 November 1335, which was needed because William and her first husband, Edmund Mortimer, were related in the fourth degree of kindred. When her brother Giles de Badlesmere died in 1338, Elizabeth and her three sisters were found to be his heirs; the Kent jury described her as “Elizabeth the wife of Sir William de Bohun, earl of Northampton, aged 28 years”. They are said to have had a son, Humphrey, born about 1341, who succeeded his father as Earl of Northampton, as well as their daughter Elizabeth de Bohun.

Soldier

William sailed with the king’s expedition to Antwerp in July 1338, and in 1340 he is said to have taken a leading part in the English victory at Sluys^W and to have been with the king at the siege of Tournai. In the war over the duchy of Brittany^W he commanded for the king, and on 30 September 1342 he defeated the French claimant, Charles of Blois, at Morlaix^W, by the standard account. He fought at Crécy on 26 August 1346 and at the siege of Calais that followed, and in the 1350s he was a Knight of the Garter, a warden of the marches towards Scotland and admiral of the northern fleet.

Death

Elizabeth died at Rochford in Essex on 8 June 1356, it is said, and was buried at the Black Friars in London. William spent part of the next three years in Gascony. He is said to have died on 16 September 1360, and he was buried at Walden Abbey^W in Essex.

Notes

Sources for his life

His wife’s place among her brother’s heirs, and his style as “Sir William de Bohun, earl of Northampton”, are from Giles de Badlesmere’s inquisition post mortem^W (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 185, p. 132), which names the four sisters as “sisters and next heirs of the said Giles”.

His parentage, his part in the seizure of the Earl of March, the earldom and its castles, the constableship, his campaigns at Sluys, Tournai, Morlaix, Crécy and Calais, his later offices, the papal dispensation, his wife’s death and will, and his own death and burial are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, pp. 309–310, and his Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), pp. 104 and 594. G.E.C., Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. 6 (1895), pp. 67–68, agrees on the earldom, Sluys, Morlaix, Crécy, his death and his burial, and gives the Garter in 1350 and his son Humphrey’s birth in 1341. These are printed genealogies of the medieval nobility. Complete Peerage and Richardson both make his mother the Lady Elizabeth, a daughter of Edward I, which is why the king called him kinsman.

His birth

No record gives his birth. Complete Peerage, 1st ed., gives about 1310; Richardson gives about 1312 and calls him a twin of his brother Edward.

The date of the marriage

Richardson gives the marriage as made by the papal dispensation of 13 November 1335; Complete Peerage, 1st ed., gives the marriage as in 1338. The inquisition of 1338 shows only that they were married by then.

His wife’s death

Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2011) gives 8 June 1356 at Rochford, with a will dated 31 May 1356; his earlier Magna Carta Ancestry (2005) gives 8 June 1355. Complete Peerage, 1st ed., gives 1356 (30 Edward III).