Eleanore de Clare

Family/Spouse: Hugh le Despencer. Hugh (son of Hugh (the Younger) Le Despencer and Isabella de Beauchamp) was born on 01 Mar 1290; died on 29 Nov 1326 in Hereford, Herefordshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Elizabeth Despencer was born in 1326 in Stoke Gifford, Gloucestershire, England; died on 13 Jul 1389.

Notes:

3rd Earl of Gloucester

He was a powerful Norman noble. Also known as `Red` Gilbert de Clare, probably because of his hair color, he built Caerphilly Castle.
Gilbert inherited his father`s estates in 1262 and took on the titles, including Lord of Glamorgan, in 1263.
Being under age at his father`s death, he was a ward of Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford. In April 1264, he led the massacre of the Jews at Canterbury, as Simon de Montfort had done in London. Gilbert de Clare`s castles of Kingston and Tonbridge were taken by the King. However the King allowed his Countess, who was in the latter, to go free because she was his niece; and on 12 May he and Montfort were denounced as traitors. Two days later, just before the battle of Lewes, on 14 May, Montfort knighted the Earl and his brother Thomas. The Earl commanded the second line of the battle and took the King prisoner, having hamstrung his horse. As Prince Edward had also been captured, Montfort and the Earl were now supreme. On 20 October 1264, the Gilbert and his associates were excommunicated by the Papal Legate, and his lands placed under an interdict.
In the following month, by which time they had obtained possession of Gloucester and Bristol, the Prince and the Earl were proclaimed to be rebels. They at once entered on an active campaign, the Earl, in order to prevent Montfort`s escape, destroying ships at Bristol and the Bridge over the Severn. He shared the Prince`s victory at Kenilworth on 16 July, and in the battle Evesham, 4 August, in which Montfort was slain. He commanded the second division and contributed largely to the victory. The castle of Abergavenny was committed to his charge on 25 October and on the 29th the honor of Brecknock was added.
On 24 June 1268 he took the Cross at Northampton. At Michaelmas his disputes with Llewelyn were submitted to arbitration, but without a final settlement. At the end of the year 1268 he refused to obey the King`s summons to attend Parliament, alleging that, owing to the constant inroads of Llewelyn, his Welsh estates needed his presence for their defense. At the death of Henry III, 16 November 1272, the Earl took the lead in swearing fealty to Edward I, who was then in Sicily on his return from the Crusade. The next day, with the Archbishop of York, he entered London and proclaimed peace to all, Christians and Jews, and for the first time, secured the acknowledgment of the right of the King`s eldest son to succeed to the throne immediately. Thereafter he was joint Guardian of England, during the King`s absence, and on his arrival in England, in August 1274, entertained him at Tonbridge Castle.
His first marriage to Alice floundered, and they separated in 11267; allegedly, Alice`s affections lay with her cousin, Prince Edward.
After his marriage to Alice de Lusignan was finally annulled in 1285, he married Joan of Acre, a daughter of King Edward I of England and his wife, Eleanor of Castile. By the provisions of the marriage contract, their joint possessions could only be inherited by a direct descendant. On 3 July 1290 the Earl gave a great banquet at Clerkenwell to celebrate his marriage of 30 April 1290. Thereafter, he and she are said to have taken the Cross and set out for the Holy Land, but in September he signed the Barons` letter to the Pope, and on 2 November surrendered to the King his claim to the advowson of the bishorpric of Llandaff. In the next year, 1291, his quarrels with the Earl of Hereford about Brecknock culminated in a private war between them. Both were imprisoned by the King, and the Earl of Gloucester, as the aggressor, was fined 10,000 marks, and the Earl of Hereford 1,000 marks. He died at Monmouth Castle on 7 December 1295, and was buried at Tewkesbury, on the left side of his grandfather Gilbert de Clare.

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Gilbert married Joan in 1290 in Westminster Abbey, London, England. Joan (daughter of Edward, I and Eleanor de Castilla) was born in Apr 1272 in Akko, Hazafon, Israel; died on 23 Apr 1307 in Clare , Suffolk, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Joan got her name from her birthplace, Akko (Acre), Hazofan, Palestine. It differentiates her from an earlier Joan born to her parents, who died in infancy. Joan of Acre was born while her parents were traveling to the Middle East on the Seventh Crusade. At least part of her childhood she spent in France with her maternal grandmother, Jeanne de Dammartin, Countess of Ponthieu. She was betrothed as a child to Hartman, son of King Rudolph I of Germany, but he died in 1282 after drowning in the Rhine.
In 1290, at Westminster Abbey, Joan married Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Hertford. He was nearly 30 years her senior.
Following her husband`s death in 1295, Joan clandestinely married Ralph de Monthermer, 1st Baron Monthermer, a knight in her household, in 1297. Her father, King Edward I, was enraged by this lowly second marriage, especially since he was arranging a marriage for her to an Italian nobleman. He had Monthermer thrown in prison, and Joan had to plead for the release of her husband. According to the St. Albans chronicler, she told her father, `No one sees anything wrong if a great earl marries a poor and lowly woman. Why should there be anything wrong if a countess marries a young and promising man?` At last her father relented, released Monthermer from prison in August 1297, and allowed him to hold the title of Earl of Gloucester and Hereford during Joan`s lifetime.
Joan died in childbirth in 1307 at the manor of Clare in Suffolk, England, a family possession, and was buried at the Augustinian priory there. Her child was stillborn. Miracles were said to occur at her grave, especially the healing of toothache, back pain and fever.

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Birth:
Acre
Akko, Palestine

Notes:

Known as `Longshanks` because of his 6`2` frame and the `Hammer of the Scots` (his tombstone, in Latin, read, Hic est Edwardvs Primus Scottorum Malleus, `Here lies Edward I, Hammer of the Scots`), Achieved fame as the monarch who conquered Wales and who kept Scotland under Inglish domination. He reigned from 1272 to 1307, ascending the throne of England on 21 November 1272 after the death of his father, King Henry III of England. His mother was Queen Consort Eleanor of Provence.
Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster. He married twice; his first marriage was to Eleanor of Castile and her death in 1290 affected Edward deeply. He displayed his grief by erecting the Eleanor crossed, one at each place where her funeral cortege stopped for the night (Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Hardingstone, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Westcheap and Charing).
Edward`s character greatly contrasted that of his father, who reigned in England throughout Edward`s childhood and consistently tended to favor compromise with his opponents. Edward had already shown himself as an ambitious and impatient man, displaying considerable military prowess in defeating Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. He gained a reputation for treating rebels and other foes with great savagery. He relentlessly pursued the surviving members of the de Montfort family, his cousins. In 1270 he traveled to Tunis, intending to fight in the Eighth Crusade alongside Louis IX of France, who died before Edward arrived; Edward instead travelled to Acre, in the Ninth Crusade. While in the Holy Land his father died; Edward arrived back in England in 1274.
One of Edward`s early achievements was the conquest of Wales. Under the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd (meaning `Like a Lion) had extended Welsh territories southwards into what had been the lands of the English Marcher lords, and gained the title of Prince of Wales although he still owed homage to the English monarch as overlord. Edward refused to recognize the Treaty which had been concluded by his father. In 1275, pirates in Edward`s pay intercepted a ship carrying Eleanor de Montfort, Simon de Montfort`s only daughter, from France (where her family had lived in exile) to Wales, where she expected to marry Llywelyn the Last, then ruler of the principality. The parties` families had arranged the marriage previously, when an alliance with Simon de Montfort still counted politically. However, Llywelyn wanted the marriage largely to antagonize his long-standing enemy, Edward. With the hijacking of the ship, Edward gained possession of Eleanor and imprisoned her at Windsor. After Llywelyn repeatedly refused to pay homage to Edward in 1274-75, Edward raised an army and launched his first campaign against the Welsh prince in 1276-77. After this campaign, Llywelyn was forced to pay homage to Edward and was stripped of all but a rump of territory in Gwynedd. But Edward allowed Llywelyn to retain the title of Prince of Wales, and the marriage with Eleanor de Montfort went ahead.
However, Llywelyn`s younger brother, Dafydd (who had briefly been an ally of the English) started another rebellion in 1282. Llywelyn died shortly afterwards in a skirmish. Subsequently, Edward destroyed the remnants of resistance, capturing, brutally torturing and executing Dafydd in the following year. To consolidate his conquest, he commenced the construction of a string of massive stone castles encircling the principality, of which Caernarfon Castle provides a notable surviving example. Wales became incorporated into England under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 and in 1301 Edward created his eldest son Edward Prince of Wales, since which time the eldest son of each English monarch has borne the same title. To help finance his war to conquer Wales, Edward I taxed the Jewish moneylenders. However, the cost of Edward`s ambitions soon drained the moneylenders dry. When the Jews could no longer pay, the state accused them of disloyalty. Already restricted to a limited number of occupations, Edward furthermore abolished their right to lend money at interest, and eventually restricted their extra-curricular movements and activities. Edward decreed that all Jews wear a yellow patch in the shape of a star attached to their outer clothing to identify them in public.
In the course of King Edward`s persecution of the Jews, he arrested all the heads of Jewish households. The authorities took over 300 of them to the Tower of London and executed them, while killing others in their homes. Finally, in 1290, the King banished all Jews from the country.
Edward then turned his attentions to Scotland and on 10 May 1291 Scottish nobles recognised the authority of Edward I. He had planned to marry off his son to the child queen, Margaret of Scotland (called `The Maid of Norway) but when Margaret died, the Scottish nobles agreed to have Edward select her successor from the various claimants to the throne, and he chose John Balliol over other candidates. Edward was anxious to impose his overlordship on Scotland and hoped that John Balliol would prove the most biddable candidate. Indeed, Edward summoned John Balliol to do homage to him in Westminster in 1293 and made it clear he expected John`s military and financial support against France. but this was too much for Balliol, who concluded a pact with France and prepared an army to invade England.
Edward gathered his largest army yet and razed Berwick, massacring its inhabitants, proceeding to Dunbar and Edinburgh. The Stone of Destiny was removed from Scone Palace and taken to Westminster Abbey. Until 1996, it formed the seat on King Edward`s Chair, on which all English monarchs since 1308 have Been crowned, with the exception of Mary I. In 1996, the stone was returned to Scotland, to return only during royal coronations. Balliol renounced the crown and was imprisoned in the Tower of London for three years before withdrawing to his estates in France. All freeholders in Scotland were required to swear and oath of homage to Edward, and he ruled Scotland like a province through English Viceroys.
Opposition sprang up, and Edward executed the focus of discontent, William Wallace, on 23 August 1305, having earlier defeated him at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. His plan to unite the two countries never came to fruition during his lifetime, however, and he died in 1307 at Burgh-by-Sands, Cumberland on the Scottish border, while on his way to wage another campaign against the Scots under the leadership of Robert the Bruce. Against his wishes, Edward was buried in Westminster Abbey.
King Edward is villainously depicted in the film Braveheart.

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Died:
Near Carlisle

Edward married Eleanor de Castilla in Oct 1254 in Burgos, Spain. Eleanor (daughter of Fernando de Castilla, III and Jeane d`Aumale) was born in 1241 in Burgos, Spain; died on 28 Nov 1290 in Herdeby, Lincolnshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Eleanor gained the title Queen Consort Eleanor of England on 19 Aug 1274, Comtesse de Montreuil in March 1279 and Comtesse de Ponthieu in March 1279.
Eleanor of Castile was the first Queen Consort of Edward I of England. Her given name was Leonor. For the ceremony marking the first anniversary of her death, 49 candle bearers appear, each candle commemorating one year of her life.
She married Edward I in October of 1254 and became queen in 1272. Theirs was one of the most successful royal marriages of all time, and she often accompanied her husband on his military campaigns, giving birth to his fourth son (later King Edward II) at Caernarfon in 1284, immediately after the conquest of Wales. She gave birth to fifteen children all told, six of whom survived into adulthood, but only four of whom outlived their parents.
Eleanor is remembered warmly by history as the queen who inspired the Eleanor crosses, but she was not so loved in her own time. Her English subjects considered her to be too foreign and greedy.
She and Edward seemed to have been more devoted to one another than to their offspring. Their daughter Joan of Acre was left to be raised by her grandmother in Ponthieu for much of her childhood. When their son Henry lay dying at Guildford, neither of his royal parents undertook the short journey from London to see him.
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Notes:

Fernando de Castilla gained the title Rey (King) Fernando III de Castilla in 1217 and Rey (King) Fernando III de Leon in 1230.

Fernando married Jeane d`Aumale. Jeane (daughter of Simon de Dammartin and Marie de Ponthieu) was born in 1216 in Dammartin, Seine-Et-Marne, France; died on 16 Mar 1279 in Abbeville, Somme, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]