Marguerite Mortimer née Fiennes (d. 1334)

Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, first earl of March, is, for fairly obvious reasons, one of the most famous and written-about people of Edward II's era. I often feel, though, that the women in Roger's life, with the exception of Queen Isabella, are little known, and are undervalued and sometimes downright ignored. In an attempt to rectify this, here's a post about Roger's Anglo-French mother Marguerite Fiennes.

Marguerite was probably born around 1270, and was one of the two daughters of the Anglo-French nobleman Guillaume de Fiennes, who was killed at the battle of Courtrai in July 1302, and the French noblewoman and heiress Blanche de Brienne, lady of Loupelande. Blanche was born in c. 1252, and was a granddaughter of John de Brienne (d. 1237), king of Jerusalem by his first marriage, and elected Latin Emperor of Constantinople in 1229. 

Marguerite had a younger sister called Jeanne or Joan, who married John, Lord Wake, landowner in Cumberland and Yorkshire. Their elder son Thomas, Lord Wake was born in 1298 and they had a younger son John as well, and their daughter Margaret, who was presumably named after her maternal Fiennes aunt and was perhaps Marguerite's goddaughter, married Edward II's half-brother the earl of Kent in 1325 and was the mother of Joan of Kent, princess of Wales. Jeanne Fiennes was left a widow with three small children in 1300. Marguerite and Jeanne also had a brother, John or Jean, who unlike them lived most of his life in France and married one of the many daughters of Guy de Dampierre, the very long-lived count of Flanders.

Marguerite Fiennes spent most of or all her life in England, and married Edmund Mortimer around 1285. He was many years her senior, probably close to twenty

He died in 1304, and his heir was his and Marguerite's elder son Roger, who was probably born around 25 April or 3 May 1287.

Marguerite died in early 1334, having outlived her daughter Maud Mortimer de Verdon, who died in 1312 leaving three daughters; her younger son John Mortimer, who died childless in 1318; her elder son Roger Mortimer, who was executed in November 1330; and her grandson Edmund Mortimer, who died in late 1331. Her heir at her death was her five-year-old great-grandson Roger Mortimer, born in November 1328, later the second earl of March.