William de Beauchamp

Notes:

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Beauchamp_(d.1268)

He was an English baron and hereditary sheriff.

He was born and lived in Elmley Castle, Worcestershire the eldest son of Walter de Beauchamp (judge) and his wife Joan de Mortimer, daughter of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore.

On the death of his father in 1236 he became hereditary Sheriff of Worcestershire which title he held until his own death.

He died in 1268. He had married Isabel, daughter of William Mauduit and sister of William Maudit, 8th Earl of Warwick. They had 8 children, of which his heir was William, who inherited the title of Earl of Warwick from his uncle.

Buried:
Grave location, historical photo, and genealogical information:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=113692297

William married Isabel Mauduit. Isabel was born ca 1217, Buckinghamshire, England; died ca 1268, Elmley Castle, Worcestershire, England; was buried , Cookhill Priory, Cookhill, Worcestershire, England. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_de_Beauchamp,_9th_Earl_of_Warwick

Described as a vigorous and innovative military commander, he was active in the field against the Welsh for many years, and at the end of his life campaigned against the Scots.

His father was William de Beauchamp (d.1268) of Elmley Castle and his mother Isabel Mauduit, sister and heiress of William Mauduit, 8th Earl of Warwick, from whom he inherited his title in 1268.

He became hereditary High Sheriff of Worcestershire for life on the death of his father in 1268.

He was a close friend of Edward I of England, and was an important leader in Edward's invasion of Wales in 1277. In 1294 he raised the siege of Conwy Castle, where the King had been penned in, crossing the estuary. He was victorious on 5 March 1295 at the battle of Maes Moydog, against the rebel prince of Wales, Madog ap Llywelyn.

He married Maud FitzJohn. Their children included:

1. Isabella de Beauchamp, married firstly, Sir Patrick de Chaworth and, secondly, Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester

2. Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick, who married Alice de Toeni, widow of Thomas de Leyburne


Buried:
Grave location, biography, and historical photo:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=63441401

William married Maude Fitzjohn, Countess of Warwick. Maude (daughter of John FitzGeoffrey, Lord of Shere and Isabel Bigod) was born ca 1238, Surrey, England; died 16/18 April 1301, Worcestershire, England; was buried , Greyfriars, Worcester, Worcestershire, England. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_de_Beauchamp

An English noblewoman and wealthy heiress, she was born in about 1263 in Warwickshire, England, the only daughter of William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick and Maud FitzJohn. Her paternal grandparents were William de Beauchamp of Elmley Castle and Isabel Maudit, and her maternal grandparents were Sir John FitzGeoffrey, Lord of Shere, and Isabel Bigod.

She married firstly Sir Patrick de Chaworth, Lord of Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, South Wales. The marriage produced one daughter, Maud Chaworth (2 February 1282- 1322), married Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, by whom she had seven children.

Following Sir Patrick's death in 1286, Lady Isabella had in her possession four manors in Wiltshire and two manors in Berkshire, assigned to her until her dowry should be set forth along with the livery of Chedworth in Gloucestershire and the Hampshire manor of Hartley Mauditt which had been granted to her and Sir Patrick in frankmarriage by her father.

That same year 1286, she married secondly Sir Hugh le Despenser without the King's licence for which Sir Hugh had to pay a fine of 2000 marks.

Together Lord and Lady Despenser had four children:

1. Hugh le Depenser, Lord Despenser the Younger (1286- executed 24 November 1326), married Eleanor de Clare, by whom he had children.

2. Aline le Despenser (died before 28 November 1353) married Edward Burnell, Lord Burnell

3. Isabella le Despenser (died 4/5 December 1334), married firstly as his second wife, John Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings, by whom she had three children. Their descendants became the Lords Hastings; she married secondly as his second wife, Sir Ralph de Monthermer, 1st Baron Monthermer.

4. Phillip le Despenser (died 1313), married as his first wife Margaret de Goushill, by whom he had issue.


Buried:
Grave location, historical portrait, biography, and cemetery photo:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=103523964

Isabella married Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester. Hugh (son of Hugh le Despenser, 1st Baron le Despencer and Aline Bassett) was born 01 Mar 1261, Gloucestershire, England; died 27 Oct 1326, Bristol, England; was buried , Tewkesbury Abbey, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Despenser_the_Younger

He was the son and heir of Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Winchester (the elder Despenser), and Isabella daughter of William, 9th Earl of Warwick. He rose to national prominence as royal chamberlain and a favourite of Edward II of England. A series of subsequent controversies eventually led to him being hanged, drawn and quartered.

Hugh le Despenser the younger was knight of Hanley Castle, Worcestershire, King's Chamberlain, Constable of Odiham Castle, Keeper of the castle and town of Portchester, Keeper of the castle, town and barton of Bristol and, in Wales, Keeper of the castle and town of Dryslwyn, and the region of Cantref Mawr, Carmarthenshire. Also in Wales, he was Lord of Glamorgan which gave him possession of Cardiff Castle. In addition he was Keeper of the castles, manor, and lands of Brecknock, Hay, Cantref Selyf, etc., in County Brecon, and, in England of Huntington, Herefordshire. He was given Wallingford Castle although this had previously been given to Queen Isabella for life.

In May 1306 Hugh le Despenser the younger was knighted, and that summer he married Eleanor de Clare, daughter of Gilbert de Clare, 9th Lord of Clare and 7th Earl of Hertford and Joan of Acre.

Eleanor's grandfather, Edward I, owed the elder Despenser 2,000 marks (£1,000,000 at today's prices) and the marriage settled this debt, and was a reward for the elder Hugh's loyal service.

When Eleanor's brother, Gilbert, was killed in 1314 at the Battle of Bannockburn, she unexpectedly became one of the three co-heiresses to the rich Gloucester earldom, and in her right, Hugh inherited Glamorgan and other properties. In just a few years Hugh went from a landless knight to one of the wealthiest magnates in the kingdom.

Eleanor was also the niece of the new king, Edward II of England, and this connection brought Despenser closer to the English royal court. He joined the baronial opposition to Piers Gaveston, the king's favorite (and Hugh's brother-in-law, as Gaveston was married to Eleanor's sister Margaret).

Eager for power and wealth, Despenser seized Tonbridge Castle in 1315, after his brother-in-law's death under the misapprehension that it belonged to his mother-in-law (he relinquished it on discovering that the rightful owner was the Archbishop of Canterbury).

Hugh le Despenser the younger became royal chamberlain in 1318. As a royal courtier, Despenser maneuvered into the affections of King Edward, displacing the previous favorite, Roger d'Amory. This was much to the dismay of the baronage as they saw him both taking their rightful places at court and being a worse version of Gaveston. By 1320 his greed was running free. He also supposedly vowed to be revenged on Roger Mortimer because Mortimer's grandfather had killed Hugh's grandfather, and once stated (though probably in jest) that he regretted he could not control the wind. By 1321 he had earned many enemies in every stratum of society, from Queen Isabella to the barons to the common people. There was even a plot to kill Despenser by sticking his wax likeness with pins.

Finally the barons prevailed upon King Edward and forced Despenser and his father into exile in August 1321. Following the exile of the Despensers, the barons who opposed them fell out among themselves, and the King summoned the two men back to England. Early in the following year, King Edward took advantage of these divisions to secure the surrender of Marcher Lord Roger Mortimer, and the defeat and execution of the Earl of Lancaster, the Despensers' chief opponents. The pair returned and King Edward quickly reinstated Despenser as royal favourite. The time from the Despensers' return from exile until the end of Edward II's reign was a time of uncertainty in England. With the main baronial opposition leaderless and weak, having been defeated at the Battle of Boroughbridge, and Edward willing to let them do as they pleased, the Despensers were left unchecked. This maladministration caused hostile feeling for them and, by proxy, Edward II. Despenser repeatedly pressed King Edward to execute Mortimer, who had been held prisoner in the Tower of London, following his surrender. However, Mortimer escaped from the Tower and fled to France.

Like his father, Hugh Despencer the Elder, was accused by a significant number of people of widespread criminality. Despenser seized the Welsh lands of his wife's inheritance, ignoring the claims of his two brothers-in-law and cheated his sister-in-law Elizabeth de Clare out of Gower and Usk. During his exile he became a pirate in the English Channel, "a sea monster, lying in wait for merchants as they crossed the sea". In 1318 he murdered Llywelyn Bren, a Welsh hostage in his custody. He imprisoned Sir William Cokerell in the Tower of London where he was forced to pay to save his life, and he forced Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln, to give up her lands.

Queen Isabella had a special dislike for Hugh le Despenser the younger. (Froissart wrote that "he was a sodomite.")[homosexual] Alison Weir, in her 2005 book Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England, speculates that he had raped Isabella and that was the source of her hatred. While Isabella was in France to negotiate between her husband and the French king, she formed a liaison with Roger Mortimer and began planning an invasion. Despenser supposedly tried to bribe French courtiers to assassinate Isabella, sending barrels of silver as payment.

Roger Mortimer and the Queen invaded England in October 1326. Their forces numbered only about 1,500 mercenaries to begin with, but the majority of the nobility rallied to them throughout October and November. By contrast, very few people were prepared to fight for Edward II, mainly because of the hatred that the Despensers had aroused. The Despensers fled West with the King, with a sizeable sum from the treasury. The escape was unsuccessful. Separated from the elder Despenser, the King and the younger Despenser were deserted by most of their followers, and were captured near Neath in mid-November. King Edward was placed in captivity and later forced to abdicate in favour of his son. The elder Despenser (the father) was hanged at Bristol on 27 October 1326, and younger Despenser (the son) was brought to trial.

Hugh le Despenser the younger tried to starve himself before his trial, but he did face trial on 24 November 1326, in Hereford, before Mortimer and the Queen. In Froissart's account of the execution, Despenser was then tied firmly to a ladder, and ?in full view of the crowd? had his genitals sliced off and burned in his still-conscious sight, then his entrails slowly pulled out, and, finally, his heart cut out and thrown into the fire. Froissart (or rather Jean le Bel's chronicle, on which he relied) is the only source to describe castration, where all other contemporary accounts have Despenser hanged, drawn and quartered (which usually involved castration). Finally, his corpse was beheaded, his body cut into four pieces, and his head mounted on the gates of London.

Four years later, in December 1330, his widow was given permission to gather and bury his remains at the family's Gloucestershire estate, but only the head, a thigh bone and a few vertebrae were returned to her.

Eleanor and Hugh had nine children to survive infancy:

1. Hugh le Despencer, 2nd Baron le Despencer (1308-1349), 2nd Baron Le Despencer, who was restored to his grandfather's title of Baron le Despencer in 1338. He had no surviving children.

2. Gilbert le Despencer

3. Edward le Despenser, (1310-1342), soldier, killed at the siege of Vannes; father of Edward II le Despenser, Knight of the Garter, who became Baron Le Despencer in a new creation of 1357.

4. Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Arundel (1312-1356), married Richard Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel.

5. John le Despenser, (1311-June 1366).

6.Eleanor le Despenser, (c. 1315-1351), nun at Sempringham Priory

7. Joan le Despenser, (c. 1317-1384), nun at Shaftesbury Abbey

8.Margaret le Despenser, (c. 1319-1337), nun at Whatton Priory

Elizabeth le Despenser, born 1325, died 13 July 1389, married Maurice de Berkeley, 4th Baron Berkeley.


Buried:
Grave location, photo of tomb, and biography:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=84236536

Hugh married Eleanor de la Clare, Lady of Glamorgan. Eleanor (daughter of Gilbert (The Red) de la Clare, 7th Earl of Hertford and 3rd Earl of Gloucester and Princess Joan of Acre) was born 03 Oct 1292, Caerphilly, Wales; died 30 Jun 1337, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England; was buried , Tewkesbury Abbey, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England. [Group Sheet]