Women of Edward II's reign: Eleanor de Clare

Beginning an occasional new feature, in which I look at some of the women of Edward II's reign. Today, Edward's niece, Eleanor de Clare.

Eleanor was born in the great castle built by her father, Caerphilly in Glamorgan, in October or November 1292. Her mother was Joan of Acre, the second oldest of Edward I's five surviving daughters, and her father was Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford. Joan was twenty at the time of Eleanor's birth, Gilbert forty-nine. Eleanor was Edward I's eldest granddaughter, and about eighteen months younger than her brother Gilbert, future earl of Gloucester. She had two younger sisters: Margaret, probably born in the first half of 1294 and the wife of Piers Gaveston, and Elizabeth, born in September 1295. Eleanor was only eight and a half years younger than her uncle Edward II.

Little is known about the childhood of the Clare sisters. Their brother Gilbert grew up, after 1299, in the household of their step-grandmother Queen Margaret, who was probably only about nine years older than Gilbert. Their father Gilbert the Red died in December 1295 at the age of fifty-two, only a few weeks after the birth of his youngest child Elizabeth, and in 1296, the widowed Joan was assigned Bristol Castle as a residence for her children. In early 1297, when Eleanor was four, Joan married her husband's squire Ralph de Monthermer, without her father's consent; he was hoping to marry her to the count of Savoy. Joan is supposed to have taken her young children with her to plead her case to her father, presumably hoping that the presence of his young grandchildren would persuade the king to be lenient. It didn't work, and de Monthermer was imprisoned for a time, although Edward I finally had to accept the inevitable, as he couldn't unmarry the couple.

At the age of thirteen and a half, Eleanor was married to Hugh le Despenser the Younger. Their wedding took place on 26 May 1306 at Westminster, in the presence of the king. Queen Margaret was probably not present, as she had given birth to the king's youngest child - another Eleanor - several weeks earlier. The king was close to sixty-seven and would die just over a year later. (Little Eleanor, Eleanor de Clare's aunt, died at the age of five in 1311.) Eleanor's mother Joan of Acre was surely present; she had another eleven months to live. I don't know if Hugh le Despenser's mother Isabel Beauchamp, daughter of the earl of Warwick, witnessed the wedding; she died a mere four days later. Another guest was Eleanor's uncle, the future Edward II, who had been knighted with Hugh (and almost 300 others) four days earlier. Already Prince of Wales, earl of Chester and count of Ponthieu and Montreuil, he was created duke of Aquitaine at this time. His beloved companion Piers Gaveston was knighted on the day of Hugh and Eleanor's wedding.

Hugh, who was somewhere in his late teens, was hardly a brilliant match for the king's eldest granddaughter. Although he was an earl's grandson, the step-grandson of another earl (Norfolk, who died this year) and brother-in-law of the king's nephew Henry of Lancaster, he had no hope of inheriting a title. His father's lands, mostly in the Midlands and Buckinghamshire, were extensive, but until the elder Hugh died, Hugh could expect to hold practically no land. Edward II gave him the former Templar manor of Sutton in Norfolk in 1309, his only gift to Hugh before he became royal favourite. In 1310, Hugh the Elder handed over half a dozen manors to his son, who evidently lived in somewhat straitened circumstances.

In an age where land was power, Hugh was a nonentity, which limited Eleanor's own influence. However, she was a familiar face at court, where she often attended Queen Isabella as lady-in-waiting, accompanying her on the royal trip to France in 1313. Isabella, Eleanor's aunt by marriage though several years younger, had a group of noblewomen who attended her on a rota basis, as they all had husbands and families and feudal responsibilities of their own. Eleanor had her own retinue, headed by her chamberlain John de Berkhamsted.

Away from court, her relationship with Hugh was pretty successful, to judge by the large number of children they had together. She was also close to her uncle Edward II, who paid all her expenses when she was at court, and even sometimes when she wasn't - a privilege not extended to his other nieces. She appears in contemporary documents as 'Lady Alianore le Despenser'. Edward's affection for her did not, however, extend to her husband at this time.

Eleanor and Hugh's lives changed completely when her brother Gilbert, earl of Gloucester was killed at the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314, when he was twenty-three. Eleanor's second cousin, Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, kept an overnight vigil over Gloucester's body, and sent it back to England with full honours and without demanding payment for it, as he was entitled to do. Gloucester's widow Matilda - sister of Robert Bruce's queen, Elizabeth - claimed to be pregnant, a pretence she kept up for a full three years. (Honestly, you couldn't make this up.) Her motives are obscure; perhaps she miscarried and couldn't accept it. Edward II was happy to support this pretence; the Gloucester lordship was extremely rich and he would have been much happier if Gloucester's son had inherited the lot. As things stood, though, Gloucester's three sisters were equal heirs to the inheritance. Under medieval law, sisters inherited equally; the law of primogeniture applied only to men.

Finally, in 1317, the lands were divided. Countess Matilda had earlier been assigned her widow's dower, one third of the lands, which would be divided out among the three sisters when she died in 1320. Hugh and Eleanor's share was Glamorgan, and a few manors in England. Her younger sisters were by this time married to men Edward II trusted, Margaret to Hugh Audley and Elizabeth to Roger Damory; Audley and Damory were thereby catapulted to wealth and huge influence. The division of the Clare lands can be seen as one of the most significant events of Edward's reign, as Hugh le Despenser, ambitious and unscrupulous, used Eleanor's inheritance to force himself into power. He was chosen as Edward's chamberlain in 1318, used this proximity to the king to make Edward infatuated with him, and attempted to take over the entire Clare inheritance in South Wales.

The story of Hugh's rise to power has been told many times, so I won't repeat it here. The great Edward II historian J.R.S. Phillips has described him as the "classic example of a man on the make who succeeded in making it". It's a shame that we have no idea what Eleanor thought of her husband's misdeeds, his extortion of lands and property including some that belonged to Eleanor's sister Elizabeth, and his relationship with her uncle. That Hugh was Edward's lover seems 99% sure to me; Edward was infatuated with him. However, Hugh and Eleanor's sexual relationship also continued, as a few of their children were born after the start of Hugh's relationship with Edward.

There are even hints that Eleanor herself was involved in a sexual relationship with her uncle. This is stated directly in the Chronographia Regum Francorum, and the two are oddly linked in a document of the 1320s which mentions medicines bought for them 'when they were ill'. Edward sent her many presents, and after one short visit gave her the substantial sum of a hundred pounds. This was approximately half of Hugh and Eleanor's annual income prior to her brother's death. It has been postulated that the chronicler who castigates Edward for his 'sinful and illicit unions' had Edward's affair with his niece Eleanor in mind, rather than - or as well as - his sexual relationships with other men. However, this affair is far from certain, and in the absence of firm evidence we should give Edward and Eleanor the benefit of the doubt.

Edward II and Hugh definitely trusted Eleanor, however. In 1324 she was put in charge of the household of John of Eltham, Edward and Isabella's younger son, and it's often stated that she was put in Isabella's household as a 'housekeeper', or rather spy, with permission to read all Isabella's correspondence and keep an eye on her. Edward and Isabella's relationship had spectactularly deteriorated by 1324, and, sliding into war with her native France, Edward didn't trust her at all. However, I'm not sure how Eleanor is meant to have watched Isabella day and night - as she's alleged to have done - and also been in charge of Isabella's son somewhere away from the 'long-suffering' queen.

In 1326, Hugh and Edward II suffered the inevitable consequences of their tyranny, and fell from power. How Eleanor felt about the hideous death of her husband of twenty years can only be surmised. Whether she was a willing participant in Hugh's misdeeds, or if she had ever tried to mitigate Hugh's harshness, is unknown; if she did try, she was apparently unsuccessful. Perhaps she loved him; later, she had a splendid tomb built for him at Tewkesbury Abbey. In October 1326, she was in the Tower of London with her ten-year-old cousin John of Eltham, who had been left by his father the king in nominal charge of London. She surrendered the Tower to the mob, and was imprisoned there, for two years. Three of her daughters were taken from her and forcibly veiled, and her eldest son was imprisoned until 1331. Later, she lost her lands; Glamorgan was given to Edward III's queen, Philippa, although Edward III restored them to her after the downfall of his mother and Roger Mortimer.

In early 1329, Eleanor was abducted from Hanley Castle, Worcestershire, by William la Zouche, and married to him. Zouche was a distant cousin of Roger Mortimer, and was one of the men who arrested Hugh le Despenser in South Wales. He also besieged Eleanor's teenaged son at Caerphilly in late 1326/early 1327. Whether Eleanor consented to the marriage is unknown, but it was a fairly common problem for the Clare women, because of their huge wealth. In 1316 her sister Elizabeth was abducted and married to Theobald de Verdon, and in the 1330s Eleanor's niece Margaret Audley, daughter of her sister Margaret, suffered the same fate when she was taken by Ralph Stafford. Eleanor, who was thirty-six in early 1329, bore a son, also William, to her second husband. He was her tenth or eleventh child, and became a monk at Glastonbury Abbey.

Eleanor outlived her second husband, and died in June 1337 at the age of forty-four. She is buried at Tewkesbury Abbey, with many of her ancestors and descendants; she and Hugh le Despenser, and their son Hugh the Even Younger, were major benefactors of the abbey. Eleanor's fascinating life is the subject of Susan Higginbotham's novel, The Traitor's Wife.