The Fourteenth-Century Mowbrays

A (long!) post about the influential English noble family who became dukes of Norfolk at the end of the fourteenth century.

Roger, first Lord Mowbray, was probably born not too long before 7 November 1257 (as Edward I took his homage and allowed him to enter his late father Roger's lands on 7 November 1278), and died shortly before 21 November 1297. [1] He had made an excellent marriage to Rohese de Clare, one of the daughters of Richard de Clare (1222-62), earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and Maud de Lacy (1223-89), daughter of Margaret de Quincy (d. 1266), countess of Lincoln. Rohese's siblings included Edward I's son-in-law Gilbert 'the Red' de Clare (1243-95), earl of Gloucester and Hertford, Margaret (d. 1312), countess of Cornwall, and Isabel, who married the Italian marquis of Montferrat. Roger Mowbray and Rohese de Clare's marriage was arranged in July 1270 by their mothers, Maud, dowager countess of Gloucester, and Maud, Lady Mowbray and Lestrange. Rohese's brother Earl Gilbert 'the Red' was one of the witnesses to the bond. [2]

Roger and Rohese's son and heir was John Mowbray. When Roger's inquisition post mortem was held in January 1298, John was said to be "aged 11 on the day of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist, 25 Edward I"; "aged 12 and more at the feast of the Assumption, 25 Edward I"; "aged 13 at the feast of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist, 25 Edward I"; "aged 11 at the feast of St. Cuthbert last"; "aged 12 and more." [3] These give possible dates of birth of 29 August 1284, 15 August 1285, 20 March 1286, or 29 August 1286. John Mowbray was "not yet of full age" on 1 June 1306 when Edward I allowed him full seisin of his father's lands, "for the good service he will do for the king in the present army of Scotland." [4] Therefore John didn't have to prove his age when he turned twenty-one, and we don't know his exact date of birth. From the grant by Edward I, we know he was certainly born after 1 June 1285, and he was probably born sometime in the second half of August 1285 or in the second half of August 1286, perhaps on the Beheading of St John the Baptist (29 August) as stated in some of his father's inquisitions, which might his explain his being given the name John. John Mowbray was one of the hundreds of men knighted with Edward of Caernarfon, prince of Wales, duke of Aquitaine, earl of Chester and count of Ponthieu, at Westminster on 22 May 1306, and was just a year or two younger than Edward.

On 29 November 1298 a year after the death of John's father Roger, Edward I made a "[g]rant to William de Brewosa, staying with the king in Flanders, of the marriage of John son and heir of Roger de Moubray, tenant in chief, so that he cause the said John to be married to Alina his daughter. Mandate to Roesia, late the wife of the said Roger, to deliver the said John to be married." [5] William de Brewosa's name is usually spelt 'Braose' nowadays, and he was lord of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales and of Bramber in Sussex. William's heirs were his two daughters, Alina or Aline, and Joan, who married Sir James de Bohun of Midhurst.

This statement by Edward I implies that John Mowbray and Aline de Braose married fairly soon after 29 November 1298, and the Complete Peerage says they married in Swansea in 1298. [6] John was then twelve or thirteen, and I have no idea how old Aline was. Her sister Joan was old enough to give birth in 1300, and was most probably older than Aline. John Mowbray and Aline had a son and heir, John the younger, born in Hovingham, Yorkshire on 29 November 1310. John the father was ill at the time and because of the worry over her husband's condition, Aline gave birth a few days prematurely, according to her son's proof of age taken in August 1329 (like his father, he was allowed to come into his lands before he turned twenty-one). Edward II's cousin Thomas, earl of Lancaster paid a messenger twenty shillings for bringing him the news of the birth, and as it happened, John Mowbray the son later married Thomas's niece Joan of Lancaster. [7]

John Mowbray the father joined the Contrariant rebellion against Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger - who was married to John's first cousin Eleanor de Clare - and was executed in York on 23 March 1322, alongside Roger, Lord Clifford. He was about thirty-five at the time. Cruelly, Edward II imprisoned John's widow Aline and their son John in the Tower of London, even though young John was only eleven when his father was executed. During his despotic period as the king's untouchable favourite in the 1320s, Hugh Despenser the Younger took the Gower Peninsula from Aline's father William de Braose, and after Hugh's downfall Aline made her feelings about him perfectly clear, calling him "the evil traitor" (le malveis tretre). [8]

A petition from Aline, c. 1327, referring to 'le malveis tretre Hugh le Despencier le fyz'

Young John Mowbray besieged the castle of Tickhill in early 1326, still only fifteen years old, with Robert Clifford, the twenty-year-old brother and heir of the executed Roger, Lord Clifford. John's maternal grandfather William de Braose died shortly before 1 May 1326, and his heirs were his daughter Aline and her nephew John de Bohun (b. 1300), son of her late sister Joan (d. 1316). William's much younger widow Isabel, Aline's stepmother, was given permission to marry the Gascon Simon de Montbreton, a close ally of Edward II and the Despensers, on 13 May 1326. [9] Aline herself married a second husband, Sir Richard Peshale, and died shortly before 20 July 1331. [10]

John Mowbray's marriage was granted to Henry, earl of Lancaster and Leicester, on 28 February 1327 the month after Edward II's forced abdication, and he married Joan, fourth of Henry's six daughters, before 4 June 1328. [11] Joan was probably born around 1313/15. Their only son, inevitably also named John, was born in Epworth, Lincolnshire around Midsummer 1340. [12] They also had two daughters, probably older than John: Eleanor, Lady Warr and Blanche, Lady Poynings. Their father arranged his daughters' future marriages in 1342/43. [13] Although Joan of Lancaster was not an heiress as she had a brother, and hence brought the Mowbrays no lands, the Lancaster connection meant that the Mowbrays were closely related to a lot of important people: the Arundels, the Percys, the de Burghs, the Uffords, etc. John Mowbray (b. 1340) was a nephew of Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster, and a first cousin of Blanche, duchess of Lancaster (1342-68), Edward III's daughter-in-law and Henry IV's mother.

Joan of Lancaster, Lady Mowbray, died on 7 July 1349 when her son was nine. Her widower John Mowbray (b. November 1310) married his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of John de Vere (b. c. 1312), earl of Oxford, and widow of the earl of Devon's son Sir Hugh Courtenay, in or before March 1351. Elizabeth was pregnant in May 1351, though she and John Mowbray did not have any surviving children that I know of. [14] Mowbray was slightly older than his new father-in-law, and he and the earl of Oxford really did not get along well; in 1353 Mowbray's brother-in-law from his first marriage, the duke of Lancaster, had to mediate between them and managed to settle their dispute. Rather startlingly, John Mowbray was claiming that he did not need to provide any food, drink or clothing for Elizabeth and her attendants or even for any children the couple might have. Her father Oxford, not surprisingly, objected to this strenuously. [15]

John Mowbray the son (b. June 1340) received a papal dispensation to marry Elizabeth Segrave on 25 March 1349, a few months before his mother Joan of Lancaster died. John's uncle Henry, earl and later first duke of Lancaster, requested the dispensation "to make peace between the lords John de Mowbray and John de Segrave and their successors, between whom, they being near neighbours, quarrels and scandals may arise." The couple were married by 10 August 1349, although John was still only nine years old. [16] Elizabeth was born in Croxton Abbey, Leicestershire on 25 October 1338 so was twenty months her husband's senior, and was the sole heir of her father John, Lord Segrave (1315-53). [17] She was also a co-heir, with her much younger half-sister Anne Manny (1354-84), to their mother Margaret, countess of Norfolk (c. 1322-99), Edward I's granddaughter, though ultimately Margaret outlived both her daughters and Anne's only child John Hastings, earl of Pembroke (1372-89), leaving her Mowbray/Segrave descendants as her sole heirs. Elizabeth Segrave was born just a few weeks after the death of her maternal grandfather Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, the elder of Edward II's half-brothers.

John Mowbray the father (b. November 1310) died on 4 October 1361, aged fifty, leaving his son John, who had turned twenty-one around Midsummer that year, as his heir. Mowbray's widow Elizabeth de Vere (d. 1375) and her third husband Sir William Cosynton later surrendered themselves to debtors' prison in London after Elizabeth's stepson John (b. 1340) sued them for wasting his estates given to her in dower. [18] John Mowbray the son and Elizabeth Segrave had a daughter and two sons: Eleanor, born on or just before 25 March 1364; John, born either on 1 June or 1 August 1365; and Thomas, probably born on or about 22 March 1367. [19] Thomas's IPM says he was thirty-three years and twenty-six weeks old when he died on 22 September 1399, which would place his date of birth around 22 March 1366. If his brother John was born in August 1365, this is impossible, and even if John was born on 1 June 1365 it is unlikely (albeit perhaps not impossible), given that women were "off limits" to their husbands until their purification forty days after childbirth, that Thomas was born only nine months and some weeks after his brother. To add to the confusion, two sets of jurors at their father's IPM stated that John was born in 1364, either at Whitsun or the feast of St Peter in Chains, but this is also impossible as his older sister Eleanor was born in March 1364. I imagine Thomas Mowbray was probably born in March 1367, not March 1366.

John Mowbray (b. 1340) left England shortly after 10 October 1367, and was "slain by Saracens" on his way to the Holy Land sometime between 17 June and 9 October 1368, aged only twenty-eight, leaving his three small children. As he died "in parts beyond seas", the jurors at his inquisition post mortem gave wildly varying dates for his death, and added disclaimers that they only 'thought' or 'understood' that he died on such and such a date "according to reports which came to England." [20] I can't find a date of death for his wife Elizabeth Segrave, Lady Mowbray, but she must have died before John, as his IPM records that he held several manors "by the courtesy of England of the inheritance of Elizabeth his wife, daughter and heir of John de Segrave," and that can only have been the case if she was dead. Perhaps she died after giving birth to Thomas. On 18 April 1372, John and Elizabeth's orphaned sons John and Thomas Mowbray were put in the care of their great-aunt Blanche of Lancaster, Lady Wake (d. 1380), Joan of Lancaster's eldest sister. [21] Elizabeth Segrave Mowbray's mother Margaret, countess and later duchess of Norfolk, outlived her by many years, but then, Margaret outlived just about everyone.

John Mowbray, born in 1365 and the heir of the Mowbrays, was made earl of Nottingham at Richard II's coronation in July 1377, but died on 8 or 10 February 1383 at the age of seventeen, unmarried. The jurors at his IPM estimated his brother and heir Thomas's death as anywhere between fifteen and nineteen, this latter age obviously being impossible as that would have made him older than John. [22] A few days later on 20 February 1383, Richard II promised to give Thomas Mowbray all his possessions in the king's hands if he married the heiress Elizabeth Lestrange of Blackmere, born c. 6 December 1373. Elizabeth, however, died on 23 August 1383, and Thomas married the earl of Arundel's daughter, also Elizabeth, widow of the earl of Salisbury's son William Montacute (d. August 1382). Richard II pardoned Thomas Mowbray a few years later for marrying without royal licence, and made him first duke of Norfolk in September 1397. [23] Thomas Mowbray is well-known to anyone who's read Shakespeare's play about Richard II as Henry of Lancaster's adversary in 1398, and the king exiled him from England for life in October that year.

When Margaret, formerly countess and now duchess of Norfolk in her own right, finally died on 24 March 1399, her rightful heir was her grandson Thomas Mowbray, who had also inherited the Segrave lands of his grandfather, Margaret's long-dead first husband John Segrave. Thomas Mowbray only outlived his grandmother by six months and died in exile in Venice on 22 September 1399, probably aged thirty-two (or thirty-three, according to his IPM). His heir was his and Elizabeth Arundel's elder son Thomas Mowbray, born 17 September 1385, who was executed by his uncle-in-law Henry IV in June 1405 leaving no children. [24] The Mowbray heir therefore was Thomas's (b. March 1366/67) younger son John, born in Calais on 3 August 1390, who married Katherine, daughter of Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort, earl and countess of Westmorland. Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, was keeper of the port of Calais, and had gone back to England at the time of his second son's birth; evidently Elizabeth was too pregnant to be able to accompany him. She sent a servant named John Kendale over the Channel to inform Thomas of their son's birth and to ask what he wished the boy to be named, and John Mowbray's baptism took place six days after he was born, after Kendale returned to Calais with Thomas's instructions. Robert Gousell, one of Earl Thomas's squires, "carried a sword erect to the [Mowbrays'] house" after the baptism. [25] Probably in 1401, Robert married Thomas's widow Elizabeth, dowager duchess of Norfolk and countess of Nottingham, sister of the earl of Arundel, and was the father of two of her daughters. 

Sources

1) Calendar of Close Rolls 1288-96, p. 22; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1272-1307, p. 392; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1291-1300, no. 472.
2) Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, C.6087.
3) CIPM 1291-1300, no. 472.
4) CCR 1302-07, pp. 390, 422.
5) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1292-1301, p. 323.
6) Complete Peerage, vol. 9, p. 379.
7) CIPM 1327-36, no. 250.
8) The National Archives SC 8/173/8631.
9) CPR 1324-27, p. 267; CIPM 1317-27, no. 53 (Joan), no. 433 (John de Bohun), no. 701 (William de Braose).
10) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-37, p. 267.
11) CPR 1327-30, p. 26; Kenneth Fowler, The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310-1361 (1969), p. 256 note 16.
12) CIPM 1361-65, no. 144.
13) The National Archives BCM /D/1/1/9 and 10.
14) Calendar of Papal Letters 1342-62, pp. 375, 385.
15) TNA BCM/D/1/1/5.
16) CPL 1342-62, p. 305; Petitions to the Pope 1342-1419, p. 151; CPR 1348-50, p. 373; CCR 1349-54, p. 51; TNA BCM/D/1/1/13 and 14.
17) CIPM 1352-60, nos. 116, 121.
18) CIPM 1361-65, no. 144; CPR 1367-70, p. 244.
19) CPR 1367-70, p. 237 (Eleanor); CIPM 1365-69, no. 397 (John); CIPM 1399-1405, no. 268 (Thomas).
20) CPR 1367-70, pp. 22, 158; Complete Peerage, vol. 9, p. 384; CIPM 1365-69, no. 397.
21) CCR 1369-74, p. 370.
22) CIPM 1377-84, nos. 819-29.
23) CPR 1381-85, pp. 229, 236; CPR 1389-92, p. 16; CIPM 1374-77, no. 105; CIPM 1377-84, nos. 1022-27; Calendar of Charter Rolls 1341-1417, p. 369.
24) CIPM 1399-1405, nos. 264, 268.
25) CIPM 1405-13, no. 336.

The House on the Strand (2): Henry Champernoune and the Carminowes

I'm on a real House on the Strand kick at the moment, after my post the other day about Sir Otto Bodrugan. Here's one about Otto's brother-in-law Sir Henry Champernoune, and two other fourteenth-century characters in the novel, the brothers Sir Oliver and Sir John Carminowe.

A pic of my treasured hardback, first edition copy of The House on the Strand. I love the evocative cover image.

Henry Champernoune is, apart from the dashing and attractive Otto Bodrugan, the most likeable male fourteenth-century character in Daphne du Maurier's novel, being a thoroughly decent and kind person. In his lifetime, Henry's last name often appeared in its Latinised form, 'Campo Arnulphi', and was also spelt Champernon, Champernoun, Chambernon, Chaumbernoun, etc. He was the son and heir of William Champernoune, whose inquisition post mortem was held in March 1305. [1] Henry was then said to be either aged thirty and more, or thirty-three and more, placing his date of birth sometime in the early or mid-1270s. From his father he inherited the manor of 'Trevelowan', where his nephew Henry Bodrugan was born in September 1311, Tywardreath, and two manors and two hamlets in Devon, including Ilfracombe.

Henry Champernoune and Joan Bodrugan's son William, presumably named in honour of Henry's late father, was said to be either sixteen or eighteen in 1329, and was therefore born around 1311/13 and was the same age as his Bodrugan cousins Henry, William and Otto. They also had a daughter, Joan, who married Nicholas Bonevyle or Bonville before 3 February 1329. Nicholas issued a deed, witnessed by Sir Otto Bodrigan and Sir John Carminowe among others, which was dated at his father-in-law's manor of "Tywardraith, Friday after the Purification 3 Edward III," i.e. 3 February 1329. [2]

Henry often appears in the chancery rolls being given commissions of oyer et terminer in Cornwall, and was one of the most important men in the county. On 3 November 1324, Henry was one of two men appointed by Edward II "to survey all measures" of wine, ale and corn in Cornwall, on the grounds that some merchants used measures smaller than the standard, "to the great deception and manifest loss of the people." On 29 April 1325, however, he was declared to be too "sick" to execute his duties and was replaced. [3] Henry died shortly before 8 May 1329 in his mid or late fifties, leaving his sixteen or eighteen-year-old son William as his heir. [4] An entry on the Close Roll of 1436, over a century after Henry's death, helpfully clarifies his lines of descent. His son William had daughters Katherine and Elizabeth. Katherine died without children, and Elizabeth had a daughter Margaret, who had a son John Herle. Henry Champernoune's daughter Joan and her husband Nicholas Bonville had a son William Bonville, who had a son John, who had a son William Bonville. [5] Edward III granted a "[l]icence for Joan late the wife of Henry de Campo Arnulphi to marry whomsoever she will of the king's allegiance" (an exceedingly common licence) on 24 October 1331, and she was still alive in May 1334. [6] I'm not sure if she ever did remarry, though.

Turning to the Carminowe brothers Oliver and John, they both also sometimes appear as commissioners of oyer et terminer in Cornwall in Edward II's reign, and in fourteenth-century documents their name was spelt Carmino, Carmenou, Carmenowe, Carminou, Carmynou, Carmynowe, Carmenho, Carmynewe, Karmino, Kaermino, Kaermynowe and approximately 259 other ways as well. In The House on the Strand, Sir Oliver Carminowe is married to his second wife Isolda Ferrers and has two young daughters with her (and several children from a previous marriage who are not mentioned but not seen), and his brother Sir John is married to Joan(na) Glyn but is having an affair with Henry Champernoune's wife Joan(na) Bodrugan, a supremely unpleasant character. There were in fact at least four and perhaps five Carminowe brothers, the sons of Roger Carminowe, who died shortly before 20 December 1308. Roger's eldest son and heir was Oliver, said somewhat vaguely to be aged thirty and more in Roger's IPM of January 1309, which, if it's in any way correct and not just the jurors' best guess, would place Oliver's date of birth around the late 1270s. [7] 

An entry on the Patent Roll in June 1320 makes it clear that Oliver had younger brothers John, Richard and the oddly-named Mivan, and a sister named, inevitably, Joan. [8] (There were just too many Joans and Johns in fourteenth-century England.) Additionally, a "Roger son of Roger Carmenou" became parson of St Stadian in the diocese of Exeter in 1309, so there, apparently, is another brother. [9] Roger Carminowe's widow Joan (agh!), the brothers' mother or stepmother, was still alive in 1320, and that year Oliver was married to his first wife, Elizabeth. None of the wives of the younger Carminowe brothers John, Richard and Mivan are mentioned, so they might not have married yet. It may also be that Oliver and Elizabeth had no children yet, as the entry talks of "the heirs of their bodies, and failing such issue...". (though maybe they did and the grant just referred to the possibility of their children dying before Oliver). Somewhat confusingly, another entry on the Patent Roll in 1321 states that Oliver was the brother and heir of Roger Carminowe, not son and heir, though that may be a clerical error. [10]

The chancery rolls don't give the identity of Oliver Carminowe's first wife, but the Visitation of the County of Cornwall and P. L. Hull's very useful 1976 article 'Thomas Chiverton's Book of Obits' in Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries identify her as Elizabeth Pomeroy, and state that Oliver's first son and heir was named Roger after his father. In July 1344 there's a reference on the Patent Roll to "John son of Oliver Carmynou, the elder", so Oliver and Elizabeth had another son whom they presumably named after Oliver's next eldest brother. [11] As well as their sons Roger and John, Oliver and Elizabeth had daughters Elizabeth, who married Sir John Arundell, and Maud, who married into the Trevarthian family. The Arundel(l)s were a well-known family of medieval Cornwall, not to be confused with the Fitzalan/Arundel family originally from the Welsh marches, who became earls of Arundel in the late thirteenth century. The Visitation also gives the name of the fourth (or fifth) Carminowe brother as Minan - actually Minanus, but that's the Latin form. 

Unfortunately, there's a lot of terrible and incorrect information about the Carminowe family floating around online. A few sites say that Oliver's first wife Elizabeth was the sister of John Holland, duke of Exeter, which is impossible; Holland wasn't even born until the 1350s, was made duke of Exeter in September 1397 and was executed in January 1400, and his sisters, also born in the 1350s, were Joan and Maud. His mother was Edward II's niece Joan of Kent, also the mother of King Richard II (b. 1367) by her last marriage to Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales. Joan herself was only born in 1326/27, so the idea that she could have a daughter mentioned in the chancery rolls in 1320 who was old enough to marry a man born c. the late 1270s is beyond absurd.

I haven't been able to find any inquisitions post mortem for the Carminowes, except for Roger's in 1308/09, until much later in the fourteenth century, and they don't appear in the chancery rolls all that often either. I also can't locate any record of Sir Oliver Carminowe's death. One of the last references I can find to him dates to October 1340, when he was exempted from being put on assizes or juries and from being appointed sheriff, coroner, mayor or escheator, almost certainly because of his age, as he was probably over sixty by then. In January 1341, however, he appears as a tax-collector in Cornwall. [12] Oliver's younger brother Sir John Carminowe died sometime before 26 January 1332, leaving a son named Walter, then under twenty-one, as his heir. Edward III granted custody of Sir John's lands and Walter's marriage rights to his brother John of Eltham, earl of Cornwall, until Walter came of age, but two months later Earl John gave the lands, custody of Walter himself, and the rights to his marriage to Walter's mother Joan(na), John Carminowe's widow. [13] Walter had a son, Ralph, who married Henry Champernoune's granddaughter Katherine Champernoune.

Sir Oliver Carminowe's first son and heir Sir Roger Carminowe had a son Sir Thomas, who had a son Thomas (not given the title of Sir in his inquisition post mortem), who died in November 1388 leaving his daughter Joan Carminowe, said to be three years old at his IPM in March 1389, as his heir. Thomas also left his widow, named Katherine. Joan Carminowe died on 21 February 1396, unmarried and still a minor in the king's wardship, and her heirs were her kinsmen John Arundell, grandson of Oliver Carminowe's daughter Elizabeth, said to be aged twenty-eight (so born c. 1368), and John Trevarthian, said to be aged thirty-six (so born c. 1360), son of Oliver's daughter Maud. [14] An undated indenture still exists between John Arundell and John Trevarthian dividing "the inheritance of Carmynouwe" between themselves. [15] Oliver Carminowe's two daughters with his second wife Isolda Ferrers, Margaret and Joan, whom we meet as characters in The House on the Strand, also married and had descendants.

Sources

1) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1300-07, no. 312.
2) Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, A.8921.
3) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1319-27, pp. 314-15, 344.
4) CIPM 1327-36, no. 209.
5) Calendar of Close Rolls 1435-41, p. 19.
6) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1330-34, p. 191; CIPM 1327-36, no. 569.
7) CIPM 1307-17, no. 141; CFR 1307-19, pp. 34-35.
8) CPR 1317-21, p. 449.
9) CPR 1307-13, p. 119.
10) CPR 1317-21, p. 561.
11) CPR 1343-46, p. 401.
12) CPR 1340-43, pp. 44, 118.
13) CPR 1330-34, pp. 242, 261.
14) CIPM 1384-92, nos. 666-67; CIPM 1392-99, nos. 615-16.
15) CAD, A.10409.

The House on the Strand and Sir Otto Bodrugan (1290-1331)

Probably my favourite novel of all time is Daphne du Maurier's The House on the Strand, which I must have read ten times. Our 1960s narrator, Dick, is staying at his friend Magnus's house in Cornwall, and on multiple occasions ingests a powerfully hallucinogenic drug which takes his mind back to the fourteenth century while his body remains in the twentieth. He wanders around the Cornish countryside following people many hundreds of years dead only he can see and who can't see him, and becomes obsessed with their lives, to the point where it starts to destroy his marriage and the drug starts to damage his body. The fourteenth-century sections are set at the end of Edward II's reign and beginning of Edward III's, and the last time Dick travels back in time in his mind, it's a few years later, just after the Black Death in 1348/49. The two King Edwards, Isabella of France and Roger Mortimer do not appear as characters, but are mentioned a few times in the narrative. Daphne du Maurier's descriptions of the Cornish landscape are simply brilliant, especially when she describes the differences between what it looked like 650 years previously and the modern 1960s landscape, e.g. Dick wakes from one of his trips to find that he's soaking wet, having waded through water that wasn't there in his fourteenth-century vision.

One of the fourteenth-century characters in the novel is Sir Otto Bodrugan, a real person, as are all of the fourteenth-century characters. (Du Maurier did a great deal of research, and at one point in House on the Strand a debt of £200 Otto owed to Sir John Carminowe is mentioned; that's recorded on the Close Roll on 3 February 1331.) Otto was the son and heir of Henry Bodrugan, his mother was Sybil Maundevill or Mandeville, and he was born at the manor of Bodrugan, Cornwall on 6 January 1290. He was baptised at the church of St Goran on the day after his birth, and his godmother was Joan Treviur, "who especially loved him." [1] Otto was the heir of his father Henry, who died shortly before 23 January 1309, and also of Henry's uncle William Bodrugan, who died shortly before 26 March 1308. Henry was said to be "aged thirty and more" at William's inquisition post mortem in April 1308, but he must have been a good bit older than thirty then, as his son Otto was born at the start of 1290. Otto's name was also often spelt Oto or Otho or even Otes in the fourteenth century.

Otto came into a few manors in Cornwall, and the Cornish jurors at his father's IPM in February 1309 knew exactly how old he was, stating correctly that he was "aged nineteen at the feast of the Epiphany last." Two "vacant plots in the place of a capital messuage" and a few acres of arable land and pasture in Luton, Bedfordshire which had belonged to Otto's late mother Sybil passed in 1309 to John Pouwers or Poer or Power, "aged twenty-three and more," Otto's older half-brother. [2] Sybil herself was the sister and heir of Sir Walter Mandeville, and was "aged twenty-four and more at the feast of St Michael last" in  early November 1288, putting her date of birth around 29 September 1264. [3] Sybil was married firstly to Peter Poer, and and she and her second husband 'Henry de Boderingeham' were granted the marriage rights of her own son John Poer on 2 February 1291, as a "[c]onfirmation of a bequest in the will of Eleanor [of Castile], the late queen". [4] I haven't been able to find the date of Sybil's death, but she had already passed away when her second husband Henry Bodrugan died in early 1309. As well as his descent from the Bodrugans and the Mandevilles, Otto Bodrugan was descended from the powerful Giffard family on his mother's side - two of Sybil's maternal Giffard uncles were archbishop of Canterbury and bishop of Worcester, and her aunt was abbess of Shaftesbury - and from the Pomeroy family on his father's. 

Below, part of the inquisition post mortem of Otto Bodrugan's father Henry in February 1309, showing the name Tywardraith or Tywardreath, which will be familiar to readers of The House on the Strand. 'Sir Henry de Campo Arnulphi' is the Latinised form of Henry Champernowne (or Chambernoun), also a character in the novel and Otto's brother-in-law.

Hugh Despenser the Elder sold Otto's marriage rights to Sir Henry Champernowne at an uncertain date before February 1311 [5], and Otto married Henry's sister Margaret while his own sister Joan married Henry himself. Otto Bodrugan and Margaret Champernowne had three sons, born in or before 1310, in 1311, and at an unknown date in the 1310s; see below.

Otto joined the Contrariant rebellion against Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Younger in 1321/22, and Edward II ordered the arrest of 'Otto de Botringham' on 7 December 1321. [6] (The unusual spellings of his and his father's last name that sometimes appear reveal that Chancery clerks in London didn't have a clue about Cornish names.) He fought against the royal army at the battle of Boroughbridge in March 1322. [7] During the York parliament of May 1322, Edward II pardoned Otto on the latter's acknowledgement of a due fine of 1,000 marks (£666). His lands were restored to him in July 1322. [8] In March 1324, Otto received a safe-conduct to go on pilgrimage to Santiago. [9] It must have been a relief to Otto, as to so many others, when Edward and the Despensers fell from power in 1326, and on 3 December that year Isabella of France made Otto keeper of Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, recently forfeited by Hugh Despenser the Younger. [10]

Sir Otto Bodrugan died shortly before 10 October 1331 at the age of forty-one, when the writ for his inquisition post mortem was issued, and it was held at the beginning of 1332. As is basically always the case, we don't know the cause of his death, though I imagine Otto didn't die in the dramatic way Daphne du Maurier describes it in House on the Strand. Otto's heir was his first son Henry, but sadly - as du Maurier mentions in the novel - Henry only outlived his father by three weeks, and did not know of his father's death. The reason why he was not informed is not explained in the inquisition, but perhaps Henry was seriously ill, and out of compassion his carers did not tell him Otto was dead, or perhaps he was so ill that he spent the last few weeks of his life unconscious. In late 1331/early 1332, Henry Bodrugan was "aged twenty-one and more," so he was already of age when Otto died, and was born in or before 1310, when his father was twenty or younger. Henry was married to a woman called Isabella, but they had no children. Otto's heir therefore was his second son William Bodrugan, born at 'Trevelouan' on 1 or 2 September 1311. Otto and Margaret also had a third son, named after his father, whose date of birth is not recorded, and Margaret outlived her husband and received her dower, as did her daughter-in-law Isabella, in March 1332. [11] 

None of Otto's three sons had any sons, and William left a daughter, Elizabeth, as his heir. Elizabeth married Sir Richard Sergeaux (d. 1393) also of the county of Cornwall, who married secondly Philippa Arundel (d. 1399), daughter of the earl of Arundel's disinherited son Edmund Arundel. Otto Bodrugan the younger, the third and youngest son of Otto, also left a daughter, Joan, as his heir.

Sources

1) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1307-17, no. 285.
2) CIPM 1307-17, nos. 10, 139; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1307-19, pp. 28, 35, 41.
3) CIPM 1272-91, no. 678; CFR 1272-1307, p. 258.
4) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1281-92, p. 420.
5) CPR 1307-13, p. 306.
6) CFR 1319-27, p. 85.
7) Vicary Gibbs, 'The Battle of Boroughbridge and the Boroughbridge Roll', Genealogist, new series, vol. 21 (1905), p. 224.
8) CFR 1319-27, p. 155; Calendar of Close Rolls 1318-23, p. 618; CPR 1321-24, pp. 183, 191.
9) CPR 1321-24, pp. 391, 399.
10) CFR 1319-27, p. 425; CCR 1323-27, p. 622.
11) CIPM 1327-36, nos. 385-86, 486; CFR 1327-37, pp. 277, 288; CCR 1330-33, pp. 444, 466.

Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, and Mary de Bohun, Countess of Derby

When Edward II's sister Elizabeth, countess of Holland, Hereford and Essex, died on 5 May 1316 at the age of thirty-three, she left seven surviving children from her second marriage to Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex (d. 1322). Elizabeth's fourth eldest surviving son, after John, born 1305, and Humphrey, born 1307, was William, a younger twin of Edward. Edward de Bohun drowned in Scotland in 1334 and left no children, and William was made first earl of Northampton by their first cousin Edward III in 1337. The de Bohun twins' year of birth is uncertain; they may have been born c. 1309 or c. 1312/13.

William de Bohun married Elizabeth, born c. 1310 as one of the four daughters, and ultimately the four Badlesmere co-heirs after their brother Giles's death in 1338, of Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere (executed 14 April 1322). Elizabeth was the widow of Edmund Mortimer, eldest son of Roger Mortimer (executed 29 November 1330), first earl of March. Edmund did not outlive his father very long: the writ for his inquisition post mortem was issued on 21 January 1332. [1] Elizabeth Badlesmere and Edmund Mortimer had a son, Roger Mortimer, born in Ludlow, Shropshire on 11 November 1328, later the second earl of March, and William de Bohun's stepson. [2]

Elizabeth Badlesmere and William de Bohun's son Humphrey was born in Rochford, Essex on 24 March 1342*, and they also had a daughter, Elizabeth (d. 1385), probably younger than her brother, who married Richard, earl of Arundel (c. 1347-97). Humphrey born in 1342 was heir to his father's earldom of Northampton, and was also heir to his unmarried and childless uncle Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex. William de Bohun died on 16 September 1360 and his older brother Humphrey on 15 October 1361, and the younger Humphrey proved his age on 8 April 1363 and came into the three earldoms. [3] It's worth noting that Humphrey de Bohun born in 1342 was a younger half-brother of Roger Mortimer (b. 1328), second earl of March and uncle of Edmund (b. 1352), the third earl, and that he was exactly the same age as Blanche of Lancaster, duchess of Lancaster, born 25 March 1342.

* According to his proof of age, though an entry on the Fine Roll dated 6 May 1363 says "...since the Annunciation last, on which day he came of full age," and the Annunciation is 25 March. [4]

Humphrey de Bohun the younger married Joan, eldest child of Richard, earl of Arundel (c. 1313-76) and his second wife Eleanor of Lancaster, before 27 October 1359, and Joan's brother the younger Richard married Humphrey's sister Elizabeth around the same time. [5] Humphrey was seventeen and Joan thirteen or fourteen when they married. They were to have two children, or at least, two children who survived infancy: Eleanor and Mary de Bohun, who shared their father's large inheritance between them. Eleanor de Bohun married Edward III's youngest son Thomas of Woodstock (b. 1355), duke of Gloucester and earl of Buckingham, and her sister Mary married Thomas's nephew Henry of Lancaster (b. 1367), later King Henry IV, son of Thomas of Woodstock's older brother John of Gaunt.

Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton, died on 16 January 1373, aged only thirty; his widow Joan outlived him by forty-six years. In his inquisition post mortem, his daughters and heirs Eleanor and Mary were said to be aged seven and more and four and more, or seven and three and more. [6] Unfortunately Eleanor and Mary's proofs of age, which would give us their exact dates of birth, no longer exist, though there are references to the proofs of age in the chancery rolls which make it apparent that they were both, like their father in 1342, born in the county of Essex.

There is, however, evidence that can narrow down Eleanor and Mary de Bohun's likely dates of birth. Eleanor was said to be "now of age", i.e. fourteen for a married woman, on 8 May 1380, and she and Thomas of Woodstock were given her share of her late father’s lands on 22 June 1380 after she proved that she had come of age. An inquisition taken in Essex on 9 April 1380 says that Eleanor was "aged 14 years on the feast of St Barnabas last", which if accurate would give her a date of birth around 11 June 1365, though in that case it is not clear why she and Thomas did not receive her lands until June 1380. [7] It seems most likely that Eleanor was born not too long before 8 May 1366.

The date of Eleanor de Bohun and Thomas of Woodstock's wedding is not recorded, but they were certainly married by 24 August 1376. [8] On 1 June in an unstated year, John of Gaunt ordered a large silver cup and matching ewer to be "delivered to our beloved sister the lady of Woodstock [la dame de Wodstok] on her wedding day." [9] That's certainly a reference to Eleanor de Bohun, and as Thomas of Woodstock did not receive a title until July 1377 on the day of his nephew Richard II's coronation, it made sense for Gaunt to refer to his new sister-in-law politely as 'the lady of Woodstock'. It's rather frustrating that Gaunt's letter on this matter does not give the year, though it might well date to 1374 rather than 1376, as it's recorded in his register in the middle of other letters and instructions dating to 1374. Thomas of Woodstock, born 7 January 1355, was rather more than eleven years older than his wife, so would have to wait a good while until she was old enough to consummate the marriage; it's entirely possible that Eleanor was only eight years old at the time of her wedding, and she certainly wasn't more than ten.

Eleanor’s younger sister and co-heir Mary de Bohun, who would marry John of Gaunt’s son Henry of Lancaster in early February 1381, was probably born not too long before 22 December 1370, as on 22 December 1384 she and Henry were given her share of her late father's lands as she had come of age. [10] The Essex inquisition of 9 April 1380 mentioned above states that Mary was then nine years old, which fits well with the likelihood that she was born in or a little before December 1370. Her father's IPM of early 1373 states, however, that she was then either three or four, whereas it seems more probable that she was actually only two years old when her father died, and that her sister Eleanor was six going on seven in January 1373, being approximately four years and eight months older than her sister. Mary was most probably only ten years old when she married Henry of Lancaster in February 1381 (born in April 1367, Henry himself was thirteen going on fourteen), and there are several references in her father-in-law John of Gaunt's register and in the chancery rolls to indicate that she would remain with her mother until she turned fourteen, and that Gaunt himself and his nephew Richard II gave Countess Joan money for Mary's maintenance.

Mary gave birth to her eldest child Henry of Monmouth, later King Henry V, in September 1386 when she was probably fifteen years and nine months old. As Ian Mortimer points out in his biography of Henry IV, a child born in April 1382 who has often been wrongly assigned to Mary and Henry was in fact Mary's nephew Humphrey of Buckingham, later called Humphrey of Gloucester after his father received the dukedom of Gloucester in 1385. [11] Humphrey was the eldest child of Eleanor de Bohun and Thomas of Woodstock, and was obviously named in honour of her late father. Eleanor had either recently turned sixteen or was shortly to turn sixteen when she gave birth to Humphrey. If I'm correct that Mary de Bohun was born not too long before 22 December 1370, it's physically impossible that she could have given birth to a child in April 1382; she would only have been ten years old when Humphrey was conceived in c. July 1381 and eleven when he was born. Bizarrely, one modern writer has given the non-existent child born to Mary and Henry in April 1382 the name 'Edward' and has stated that he only lived for four days. It's amazing how creative you can be when inventing details about non-existent children. The same writer has stated that Mary de Bohun turned fourteen on 15 February 1382, but no source is cited and I have no idea what it is, and if so, it's hard to explain why she and Henry were not given their lands until almost three years later in December 1384.

Both Eleanor and Mary de Bohun lived tragically short lives. Mary died in June 1394, aged about twenty-three and a half, having borne six children in under eight years. Eleanor died in October 1399 aged thirty-three, just a month after losing her only son Humphrey of Gloucester. Their mother the dowager countess of Hereford outlived them both by many years and died in 1419, six years into the reign of her grandson Henry V. Mary de Bohun never became duchess of Hereford and Lancaster or queen of England as she died before her husband received those titles and before he took the throne in September 1399, and she was only countess of Derby. Henry buried her at the Newarke in Leicester, which was founded in 1330 by his great-grandfather Henry, earl of Lancaster, and extended by his grandfather Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster. Henry's stepmother Constanza of Castile and his brothers, sons of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster who died in infancy, were also buried in the Newarke.

Eleanor de Bohun lived through the tragedy of her husband Thomas of Woodstock's murder in September 1397, and wrote her will at Pleshy Castle in Essex on 9 August 1399. [12] To her son Humphrey she left a 'bed of black damask', a coat of mail, a psalter and several books in French. Seventeen-year-old Humphrey died on 2 September 1399, and Eleanor on 3 October 1399, but she did not update her will after his death; perhaps she was too ill or grief-stricken. In the end, only one of her children lived into adulthood and had children: Anne of Gloucester (1383-1438), countess of Stafford and Eu, ancestor of the dukes of Buckingham and numerous others. Eleanor's other three daughters died at the age of sixteen or younger.

Sources
1) Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-37, p. 293; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1327-36, no. 387.
2) CIPM 1347-52, no. 247.
3) CIPM 1352-60, no. 639; CIPM 1361-65, nos. 485, 543.
4) CFR 1356-68, pp. 258-59.
5) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1358-61, pp. 274, 304.
6) CIPM 1370-73, no.167.
7) CPR 1377-81, p. 502; Calendar of Close Rolls 1377-81, pp. 390-95; CCR 1381-85, pp. 511-16, 548; CIPM 1377-84, no. 201.
8) CPR 1374-77, p. 337.
9) John of Gaunt's Register 1371-75, no. 1431.
10) CCR 1381-85, pp. 511-16, 548.
11) Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self-Made King (2007), pp. 370-71.
12) Testamenta Vetusta, vol. 1, pp. 146-49.

The Marriages of Elizabeth Stafford (d. 1375)

Sir Ralph Stafford, made first earl of Stafford in 1351 and ancestor of the Stafford dukes of Buckingham, was born at Amington near Tamworth, Staffordshire on 24 September 1301. [1] After losing his first wife Katherine Hastang or Hastings, with whom he had daughters Joan and Margaret, Ralph abducted Edward II's great-niece Margaret Audley from her parents' home in Thaxted, Essex shortly before 28 February 1336, and married her. After the death of her older half-sister Joan Gaveston in January 1325, Margaret was sole heir to her mother Margaret de Clare's third of the earldom of Gloucester, and was a considerable heiress. She was about twenty years Ralph Stafford's junior, born sometime in the early 1320s.

Ralph Stafford and Margaret Audley had two sons and four daughters, though none of their children's dates of birth can be ascertained; Margaret may only have been thirteen or so when Ralph abducted her, and may therefore have been too young to bear children for some years. Their first son Ralph the younger married Maud of Lancaster (b. April 1340), elder daughter and co-heir of Henry of Grosmont, then earl of Derby and later the first duke of Lancaster, in Leicester on 30 November 1344, and it was arranged that Henry would have custody of both children until they were old enough to live together as husband and wife. [2] Ralph, however, died as a child sometime before late November 1347, when the inquisition post mortem of his maternal grandfather Hugh Audley, earl of Gloucester, stated that he was already dead. [3] The Stafford/Audley heir therefore was Ralph and Margaret's younger son Hugh Stafford, later the second earl of Stafford, who was born sometime between 1342 and 1346. Ralph, first earl of Stafford, died on 31 August 1372 a few weeks before his seventy-first birthday, having outlived his much younger second wife by more than two decades. His only surviving son Hugh Stafford was said to be between twenty-six and thirty years old in Ralph's IPM of October 1372. [4]

One of Ralph Stafford and Margaret Audley's daughters was Elizabeth Stafford, presumably born sometime in the late 1330s or early 1340s. She was betrothed on 12 March 1347 to Fulk ('Fouk' or 'Fouke') Lestrange, son and heir of John, Lord Lestrange of Blackmere, Shropshire, who was born c. 2 February 1331. [5] John, Lord Lestrange died on 13 or 14 July 1349, and his eighteen-year-old son Fulk followed him to the grave on c. 30 August 1349; it seems highly likely that both men died of the Black Death. Elizabeth Stafford and Fulk Lestrange were already married by then, but as she was still only a child, they had no children, and Fulk's heir was his brother John, born "about Easter, 6 Edward III," i.e. c. 19 April 1332. [6]

Elizabeth had only been widowed for a few weeks when her second marriage was arranged - as her first marriage can never have been consummated, it's not as though she might have been pregnant - on 19 October 1349. On that date, Edward III issued a "[l]icence for John de Ferrers, son and heir of Robert de Ferrers, tenant in chief, and Elizabeth daughter of Ralph, baron of Stafford, to intermarry." [7] There were two branches of the Ferrers family: the Ferrers of Chartley (Staffordshire), who were descended from Robert Ferrers, earl of Derby (c. 1239-79), and the Ferrers of Groby (Leicestershire), who were descended from Earl Robert's younger brother William. John Ferrers was a Ferrers of Chartley, and was born in Southoe, Huntingdonshire a little after 10 August 1331. [8] He was thus a few years Elizabeth Stafford's senior, and a few months younger than her first husband Fulk. Elizabeth and John's son Robert Ferrers was probably born on 31 October 1359; Elizabeth's inquisition post mortem gives 31 October 1357, but as Robert proved his age and was allowed to enter his father's lands on 24 July 1381, 1357 seems too early, and 1359 more plausible. The IPM of Robert's father John says that Robert was "aged seven and more" in June 1367, which also supports a date of birth of 31 October 1359. [9] Elizabeth became an earl's daughter in 1351 when her father Ralph was made first earl of Stafford, and the title passed in 1372 to her brother Hugh, who was probably younger than she, though it's hard to say for sure.

Elizabeth Stafford Lestrange Ferrers was widowed again on 3 April 1367, when John Ferrers was killed at the battle of Najera in Spain, the only high-ranking Englishman who fell there. Almost eight years later, around 26 January 1375, she married her third husband Sir Reynold (or Reynald or Reginald) Cobham of Sterborough. On that date, Edward III's son John of Gaunt, Elizabeth's second cousin once removed, gave her wedding gifts of a gilded silver cup and matching ewer, and a gold tablet (John seems to have been very fond of Elizabeth, as he often sent her expensive wine and New Year gifts; he fought at the battle of Najera in 1367 with his eldest brother the prince of Wales and John Ferrers). [10] Reynold Cobham must have been a few years younger than Elizabeth: in November 1361 he was said to be aged "thirteen at Whitsun last", which puts his date of birth sometime around early June 1348. [11] Reynold's father was Reynold Cobham the elder, born c. 1295 and thus over fifty when his son was born; his mother was Joan Berkeley (probably born late 1320s), daughter of Edward II's custodian in 1327, Thomas, Lord Berkeley, and a granddaughter of Roger Mortimer, first earl of March. Reynold, twenty-six years old when he married Elizabeth, sister of Hugh, earl of Stafford, had not been married before.

Sadly, Elizabeth did not have much time to enjoy her third marriage, as she died on 7 August 1375. [12] It's impossible to know what killed her, but it certainly seems possible, given that she was still in her thirties, that she died during pregnancy or after childbirth. Her dower lands from her first marriage to Fulk Lestrange belonged by right to Fulk's great-niece Elizabeth Lestrange, who was said to be aged "one and three-quarters and five weeks" on 8 October 1375 (and who married Thomas Mowbray, b. 1367, earl of Nottingham and future duke of Norfolk, but died as a child in the early 1380s). Her dower lands from her second marriage to John Ferrers passed to her and John's son Robert, who married Margaret Despenser, youngest daughter of Edward, Lord Despenser (1336-75). The Ferrers line continued, and one of Elizabeth Stafford's descendants via her son Robert Ferrers and Margaret Despenser was Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth queen.

Reynold Cobham (b. 1348) was the grandson of Thomas, Lord Berkeley (d. 1361), Edward II's custodian of 1327. Edward's other custodian was Lord Berkeley's brother-in-law Sir John Maltravers. When Maltravers died in 1364, his heirs were his granddaughters Joan and Eleanor, whom I wrote about in the last post. Eleanor, born probably in 1344 or early 1345, was married to John Arundel, marshal of England and the second son of the earl of Arundel, and was widowed on c. 6 December 1379 when John Arundel drowned in the Irish Sea. John left as his heir his and Eleanor's eldest son John Arundel the younger (b. 30 November 1364), who sometime before 1 August 1380 married Elizabeth Despenser, elder sister of Margaret Despenser who married Robert Ferrers, above.

Reynold Cobham, widowed from Elizabeth Stafford since August 1375, married the widowed Eleanor Maltravers not too long before 10 August 1380 about eight months after John Arundel's death, when the couple were pardoned for marrying without the necessary royal licence. [13] A greater problem was that the couple had received no papal dispensation for consanguinity: they were second cousins, both great-grandchildren of Maurice (d. 1326) and Eva (d. 1314), Lord and Lady Berkeley. According to the page 'Cobham Family' in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, this caused great problems for their son when Henry IV seized his inheritance on the grounds that he was illegitimate, even though Eleanor and Reynold had separated for a while and then remarried in 1384 having acquired a papal dispensation.

In 1380, Reynold was thirty-two and had no children, and Eleanor was probably thirty-six and had five sons and two daughters from her first marriage, born between 1364 and the mid or late 1370s. She gave birth to Reynold's son and heir, inevitably also called Reynold Cobham, on c. 11 November 1381. She and Reynold also had a daughter whom they named Margaret, most confusingly, as one of Eleanor's two Arundel daughters was also called Margaret (Margaret Arundel married William, Lord Ros after 11 August 1394). [14] Reynold Cobham the elder died on 6 July 1403, aged fifty-five, and Eleanor Maltravers Arundel Cobham died on 10 January 1405, aged sixty. Her grandson, yet another John Arundel (b. 1385), son of her eldest son John Arundel (1364-90), was her heir; her son Reynold Cobham (b. 1381) was his father's heir, but not hers. [15] 

Eleanor's will still survives, and, calling herself Alianor Arundell, she requested burial with her first husband John Arundel (d. 1379) at Lewes Priory in Sussex. [16] It's interesting to note that she still used her first husband's name a quarter of a century after his death, rather than calling herself Cobham. Perhaps that was simply a matter of prestige, as John Arundel's younger brother Thomas Arundel (d. 1414) was the present archbishop of Canterbury, and his nephew, also Thomas (d. 1415), was the earl of Arundel - a title which passed to Eleanor's Arundel descendants after Earl Thomas died without legitimate issue. Finally, let me point out that the famous Eleanor Cobham (b. early 1400s), who became duchess of Gloucester by marriage to Henry V's brother Humphrey and was imprisoned for witchcraft, was the granddaughter of Elizabeth Stafford's widower Reynold Cobham (1348-1403) from his second marriage to Eleanor Maltravers. 

Sources

1) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1317-27, no. 354.
2) Knighton's Chronicle, ed. G. H. Martin, vol. 2, p. 30; The National Archives DL 27/36.
3) CIPM 1347-52, no. 56; "...with remainder to Ralph, son of Ralph baron of Stafford, and Maud, daughter of Henry de Lancaster, earl of Derby, and the heirs of their bodies. The said Ralph son of Ralph is dead." Maud of Lancaster later married Queen Philippa's nephew Wilhelm of Bavaria.
4) CIPM 1370-73, no. 210.
5) Calendar of Close Rolls 1346-49, pp. 246-47; CIPM 1347-52, no. 223. Fulk was "aged 18 years at the feast of the Purification last" in August 1349.
6) CIPM 1347-52, nos. 223-24; CIPM 1352-60, no. 203.
7) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1348-50, p. 407.
8) CIPM 1352-60, no. 122: he was said to have been born "this side St Lawrence, 5 Edward III" at his proof of age on 26 October 1353.
9) CIPM 1365-69, no. 140; CIPM 1374-77, no. 105; CCR 1381-85, p. 4.
10) John of Gaunt's Register 1371-1375, no. 1659, "...livrez a la dame de Ferers le jour de son marriage de nostre doun".
11) CIPM 1361-65, no. 59.
12) CIPM 1374-77, no. 105.
13) CPR 1377-81, p. 538.
14) CIPM 1399-1405, nos. 760-70. Margaret Arundel was an attendant of Richard II's first queen Anne of Bohemia, and on 11 August 1394 after Anne's death, Richard gave Margaret an annuity of forty marks "until she marries with the king's consent." CPR 1391-96, p. 518.
15) CIPM 1399-1405, nos. 1115-22.
16) Cited in Evelyn H. Martyn, History of the Manor of Westhope (1909), p. 21, though the author wrongly identifies Eleanor as her mother-in-law Eleanor of Lancaster, countess of Arundel (d. 1372).