Your Application To Join The Official Victimhood Group Is Rejected

This meeting of the Official Victimhood Rejectees was written jointly by Michèle Schindler and me, and follows on from this post about Isabella of France, the Great Victim. Another person for whom victimhood and enormous suffering is often claimed for multiple reasons is Anne Neville, Richard III's wife and queen. She has, so Michèle tells me, been called a victim for, firstly and most importantly, having an arranged marriage to Edward of Lancaster, a marriage that might, if things had turned out differently, have made her a queen a dozen or so years before she actually did become one. Having one's marriage arranged to a person of similar or higher rank was pretty normal for a person of her status and era, you might think, and Anne's own father Richard Neville was married off to her mother Anne Beauchamp when he was *six* and she was eight, yet he's somehow not a victim or a pawn because of that. Anne is also portrayed as a victim for 2) being crowned queen of England, an exhausting ceremony for someone so terribly frail and sickly; 3) for being terribly frail and sickly, an assumption for which there is no evidence except that she died in her late twenties; 4) for having miscarriages, for which there is also no evidence; 5) for only giving birth once but 6) also for being forced to give birth at all, and 7) for having to be parted from her son for a month at one point when she voluntarily left for London. Numbers 5 and 6 also apply to Isabella of France, who's endlessly pitied for her sporadic sex life (as though we have any way of knowing how often she and Edward had sex) and for the fact that Edward gave her only four children, but who is also pitied for being Edward's 'brood-mare' and for being forced to bear a king's children when this daughter of the king of France and the queen of Navarre was, I dunno, dying to leap into bed with a latrine-cleaner instead or something.

By stark contrast to the frequently-pushed and grossly exaggerated victimhood of Queen/Saint Isabella and Anne, it sometimes seems that suffering endured by others not appointed Official Victims is met with, at best, indifference, and at worst what sometimes seems to be verging on actual callousness. So here is a meeting of the Rejected Applicants for Official Victimhood, some by me and some by Michèle.

*

Eleanor of Woodstock: Hello, people. I sent off an application a few years ago to be appointed an Official Victim. I pointed out that my brother married me off to a mere count when I wasn't even fourteen yet, after my dad had promised to make me a queen in Spain, and that the count was decades older than me and had four children already. He made me pregnant not long after the wedding and I gave birth to my first son when I was still only fourteen. Then, the git tried to repudiate me on the false grounds that I had leprosy and humiliated me in front of everyone. I thought I had a great case, but I didn't hear anything from the committee for months, so wrote again. Finally they responded by sending me back my application with the words "Rejected because you are not your tragic mother, the victimiest victim who was ever victimised, and therefore nobody cares" written across it.

Joan of the Tower: Same thing happened to me, sis. I applied on the grounds that, as everyone weeps and wails over our mum being betrothed to Dad when she was a little kid, I should be an Official Victim, given that Mum married me off to that horrid brat David Bruce when I'd just turned seven. After we grew up, he cheated on me constantly, and allowed his mistress Katherine to wield so much influence that some of his desperate barons had her assassinated. I pointed out in my application that this was pretty much what happened with Piers Gaveston, and that if my mum is an Official Victim, I should be too, because, well, it's the same situation, isn't it? But no, I was turned down because David is straight, and his cheating on me with women therefore doesn't count and doesn't matter, and also because I'm not my mother and not the most special, important, amazing, beautiful, desirable and tragic royal woman who has ever lived. I'm somehow not a helpless tragic pawn either, despite being sent at the age of seven to live in a kingdom I'd been raised to believe was my country's enemy so that my mum and my father-in-law could make a peace settlement.

Blanche de Bourbon, queen of Castile: When I applied, on the grounds that Pedro imprisoned me, aged fourteen, within days of our wedding while he went off with his pregnant mistress, and that I died having never regained my freedom eight years later, I was also rejected. They told me that Edward II greeted Piers Gaveston with excessive enthusiasm at Dover and soon afterwards only spoke a few words to tragic, long-suffering Isabella of France at their coronation banquet, and that this is clearly the most appallingly cruel and abusive treatment that any human being has ever inflicted on another. By comparison, a representative of the Official Victimhood organisation told me, being kept in solitary confinement for eight years and then murdered is absolutely nothing and there isn't one single iota of sympathy whatsoever left over for me.

"If you need help coping with your dread that a nobleman is wearing a piece of jewellery and laughing, I'm here for you, sis. Thoughts and prayers at this difficult time. Oh wait, I've just remembered, the story that Edward gave your presents to Piers was invented in the nineteenth century and never actually happened. There you go then, sorted."

Constanza of Castile: I was a king's daughter whose marriage to a king's son was arranged in 1371, and when I arrived in England as a teenager, I found that my husband, John of Gaunt, was deeply in love with Katherine Swynford and had four children with her over the next few years. I'm not all that fussed, to be honest, because my own father Pedro - husband of poor Blanche - fathered children with numerous women he wasn't married to, including my mother, but when I heard that Isabella of France has been appointed the Greatest Victim Of All Time because Edward II was in love with Piers Gaveston when she married him, I thought I might as well give it a shot. The Official Victimhood group rejected my application on the grounds that John and Katherine's relationship is one of the greatest love affairs of the Middle Ages and gives lots of people happy warm fuzzy feelz, so it doesn't matter that it was adulterous and it doesn't matter at all if my feelings or sensibilities were hurt. I mean, I'm nothing but a smelly religious fanatic, after all, and people practically cheer when I die because it means that my husband is free to marry his mistress at last. And as Queen Joan said a few minutes ago, the very same people who recoil in horror at the thought of Edward loving Gaveston are all beamingly indulgent and 'awwwww sho shweeeeeeet' when a married man falls in love with a woman.

Michael de la Pole: I feel all your pain. I tried to apply as well, because my wife made me father a child with her when I was barely thirteen and she was twenty. As if that was not traumatic enough, before I even turned of age, me, my father and my next younger brother William were forced to go to fight a war in France, because King Henry V felt he wanted to be King of France. We found only mud, blood and tears, and within a month, my father was dead of dysentery, my brother was injured, and I had to keep fighting. I ended up dying at Agincourt, age twenty, and no one but my family even cared about me dying because the English forces had won such an oh so wonderful, glorious victory, and it just puts a damper on the mood to think of dead minors, right? My application to the group was rejected because I`m a man, and men, apparently, can`t be victims. I only wish I had known this during my lifetime.

Joan Beaumont: I thought my application was really strong. I was married aged five to a thirteen-year-old who grew up so horrible even his own father tried to disinherit him as well as he could. He first impregnated me when I was thirteen years old and he was nearly twenty-two. I had a child and he impregnated me again almost immediately, and I gave birth to twins. I had three children when I was barely fifteen, and had to live with a man who was widely loathed and connected with violence whenever he was mentioned anywhere. I lost my oldest son before he was eight years old. I was finally was free of my husband when he died when I was twenty-three, but just when I thought I had found happiness with another man, I died in childbirth, just after my twenty-fifth birthday. I don`t think anyone even saw my application, I just heard some murmurs about how I was not important enough, and my second son grew up a good man so his father couldn`t really be that bad. But I did get to sit through a long lecture about the victimhood of some girl my son`s age, named Anne Neville. Apparently the poor pet had to marry a boy three years her senior when she was fourteen. He never did anything against her that anyone ever said or even implied, but he might have said something mean as a kid, so that is some real victimhood. Makes me grateful I only ever had to bear an adult man`s kids when I was barely in my teens.

Edward of Lancaster: That kid who said something supposedly bad was me, Joan dear. Supposedly I demanded that two men who had betrayed my father be beheaded, age seven. Never mind that one of them was dead in battle by the time I`m supposed to have said that, it still haunts me. I was sneerily rejected from the Official Victimhood Group because of it, even though I thought that having had my birthright taken from me age seven, chased to exile at the same age, separated from my father for a year, having to live off the charity of my mother`s relatives and then dying age seventeen trying to reclaim my birthright, in a war that was not even remotely my fault, would make my case a pretty good one. Apparently not, because a provably faulty rumour I said something bad as a child makes it all invalid.

Francis Lovell: Hi, I'm Joan Beaumont's son. I don't see myself as a victim, exactly, but I applied because I'm a bit sick of constantly being said to be, and portrayed, as the happy-go-lucky friend with the perfect life. Me and my siblings grew up with a mother young enough to be our sister and a father absolutely loathed for violence. He was so bad, I couldn't stand to even have prayers said for him twenty years after he died, or live in the same quarters he lived. My one-year-older brother died when we were children, not that anyone ever really cares. When my father died when I was eight, it was a relief, but it also meant I was made the king's ward and had to move away from my mother, my twin sister and my baby sister. My mother died when I was ten. My twin sister died before she was twenty-five, my wife lost one baby and then it turned out I couldn't ever have children again. Then my best friend was murdered, and in my quest to have revenge for him, my closest foster brother was also killed. I understand that a lot of that wasn't all that abnormal at the time, but you'd think it would get at least some compassion. But my application was rejected unread. Apparently, I'm lucky, and my best friend Richard's wife, Anne Neville, now she had a proper hard life.

Eleanor of Woodstock: Blimey, the Official Victimhood Group committee really don't have much time for us lot, do they? Maybe if we just try a bit harder, we might be deemed special enough and tragic enough to be appointed Official Victims one of these years. Though I'm not holding my breath, to be honest. It seems that only one person can be made a Tragic Suffering Victim per century, and as Isabella of France has the fourteenth century covered and Anne Neville the fifteenth, I'm really not sure we'll ever get anywhere. Until the next session, folks!

A Sneer of Disdain: Isabella of France, the Victim

My friend, the historian and Francis Lovell biographer Michèle Schindler, came up with a fab idea recently. She and I were discussing our astonishment that some medieval women (mostly Isabella of France and Anne Neville) appear to have been sanctified and anointed as Official Victims, whereby every single thing that ever befell them is endlessly wept over, and writers fall over themselves trying to find new ways in which the women suffered more than anyone else, ever. Michèle and I, therefore, have written a Meeting of the Applicants Rejected by the Official Victimhood Group, which I'll post in a day or two; firstly, I just wanted to demonstrate what I mean about Isabella being endlessly portrayed as a victim, with examples.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know the drill. Isabella is a victim because Edward II didn't fawn all over her when she was twelve; she's a victim because there was a perfectly standard delay of a few weeks after her arrival in England before she received her dower lands; because Edward supposedly treated her like a 'brood-mare' or 'begat children on her and not with her'; because having an arranged marriage to one of the most powerful and highly-born men in Europe means she was a helpless, tragic pawn; because Edward failed to show any interest in her in the years between their betrothal and their wedding; because a modern writer invented a nonsense story that her husband stole their children from her; because Edward talked more to a dear friend he'd known for half his life at a banquet than he did to a twelve-year-old he'd only recently met; because Edward didn't love her or didn't love her enough or didn't love her uniquely and she was so so so so so special that she should have instantly become his one true love the nano-second he set eyes on her; and so on, ad bloody nauseam.

Pic 1, non-fiction published in the twenty-first century: A fifteen-year-old 'betrays no interest' in a four-year-old. A four-year-old who, because his previous three betrothals have all fallen through, is his fourth fiancée. A four-year-old whom he might, possibly, one day in the distant future, end up marrying, or then again he might be betrothed to someone else in a couple of years when the political situation and his father's foreign policy change. And where and how exactly would this interest manifest itself? Was the male partner in an arranged royal marriage generally expected to show an interest in his fiancée before their wedding? Did Lord Edward of England send excited letters to Doña Leonor of Castile in 1253/54, telling her 'Gosh, I'm so interested in the minutiae of your daily life, complete stranger'? Did Edward III send letters to Philippa of Hainault between their betrothal in August 1326 and their wedding in January 1328 that demonstrated a deep fascination with court life in Valenciennes? Did Richard II contact Anne of Bohemia saying 'Hey, Annie, what are you up to over there in Prague?' before their wedding in January 1382? If they did, I'm not aware of it. And another thing that occurs to me, given the age difference between Edward and Isabella, would it not be creepy if he did show an interest in her and in their future marriage? A twenty-year-old addressing a letter to a nine-year-old as his future wife? Yikes. But none of this is taken into consideration because those other queens of England aren't super important and super tragic like Isabella is, and the notion that an adolescent should show interest in the child he's been betrothed to as a means of ending a war between their fathers is taken for granted when the child is Isabella, because she's Just. That. Special. The fact that Edward, normally and unexceptionally, doesn't, means that OMG SHE'S SUCH A VICTIM!!!!

Pic 2, same non-fiction as before: The queen's dower lands were held by Edward II's stepmother Queen Marguerite from 1307 to 1318, so alternative arrangements had to be made for Isabella. These took a good few weeks to sort out, and she received her lands in May (not July) 1308 about three months after her arrival in England. (By way of comparison, Gilbert de Clare's widow Maud received her share of his estate six months after his death at Bannockburn, and it took officials another six months to divide up the de Clare inheritance for Gilbert's sisters.) Edward gave Isabella a household of close to 200 people, the largest any queen of England had ever had, and paid all the costs of it himself, but none of this is mentioned, because OMG SHE'S SUCH A VICTIM!!!! And she 'had to accompany Edward'? She had to spend time with her husband in royal palaces?! OMG SHE'S SUCH A VICTIM!!!! You just know that if Edward hadn't taken Isabella travelling with him, the narrative would be that she was abandoned, neglected, alone and unhappy, because the agenda is to portray Isabella as a long-suffering victim at every possible juncture. 

On 14 May 1308, Edward gave Isabella his French county of Ponthieu and its capital of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which he'd inherited from his Spanish mother the queen of England and his French grandmother the queen of Castile and Leon, but we're supposed to believe that 'there is no record of her receiving even petty sums' until July 1308, because OMG SHE'S SUCH A VICTIM!!!!

Pic 3, same non-fiction as before: Between Philippa of Hainault's arrival in England in December 1327 and the downfall of her mother-in-law Isabella in October 1330, only five acts of intercession by the young queen are recorded, so if Isabella managed three in her first few months in England, she was doing pretty well. In the seventeen years from February 1308 to March 1325, from her arrival in England until her departure for France, Isabella managed a total of seventy-nine acts of intercession with Edward II at an average of over four and a half per year. During the forty-one and a half years of Queen Philippa's marriage to Edward III, from her wedding in January 1328 until her death in August 1369, she made a total of seventy-six acts of intercession with her husband at an average of under two per year. On several occasions, Edward II let Isabella promote her clerks to bishoprics in opposition to his own choices, and on at least one occasion changed his mind and promoted her candidate instead. But none of this is mentioned because OMG SHE'S SUCH A VICTIM!!!! 

Pic 4, novel: "I was twelve, 12, as in twelve years old, as in the age that comes between eleven and thirteen, T W E L V E, and the people who were paid to pander to the every whim of the pampered pubescent daughter of the most powerful man in Europe assured me with complete sincerity and truthfulness that I was The Fairest Woman In All France. Unaccountably, however, they failed to explain to me that 1) a girl of twelve is not a woman, and 2) men in their twenties don't fancy young girls with developing bodies unless there's something seriously wrong with them, and even if they didn't understand that, you'd hope that a writer in the twenty-first century might." 

Incredible though it may seem, this tediously one-dimensional novel published in 2010 invites us to share Isabella's disbelief that a grown man isn't 'struck dumb' at the beauty and desirability of a child, and encourages us in these opening scenes to begin to view her as the tragic victim of cruel neglect and disregard that the novel is desperate to paint her as. Even if Isabella herself as the first-person narrator doesn't understand it, there are plenty of ways to construct a narrative that would make it apparent that a modern reader isn't supposed to share her bewilderment and horror that an adult doesn't find a twelve-year-old desirable. And I'm 99.9% sure that the real Isabella didn't expect Edward to sleep with her, because, contrary to what a lot of people nowadays seem to think, it was not normal and usual in the fourteenth century for men in their twenties to have sex with twelve-year-olds. But the opportunity to write Isabella and Edward with depth and nuance is passed up in favour of the predictable OMG SHE'S SUCH A VICTIM!!!! routine, and in doing so, the novel presents a man as abnormal for feeling no sexual attraction towards a child. The obsession some writers have with turning Isabella into a victim in every possible way they can leads them down pretty dark and disturbing paths sometimes. 

Pic 5, two novels: Fans of the Victim!Isabella school of thought have a creepy tendency to use the word 'ripe' for her, as though she's a piece of fruit rather than a human being, and she's 'matured rich and fertile' too, like a field of crops. I don't think I've ever read a description quite so dehumanising and leering while obviously trying to be highly complimentary. And oh look, there's Edward giving a 'sneer of disdain' like the sneering pantomime villain he is. Because an unwillingness to have sex with a child of twelve can only possibly be the result of disdain or repulsion, and cannot under any circumstances be interpreted as a humane gesture intended to spare an extremely young girl the trauma of experiencing intercourse, pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood before she is physically, mentally and emotionally ready for it. Because that might make Edward sympathetic to readers rather than a cruel disdainful unnatural monster (who, several pages later, starts to 'snivel', because of course he does), and there might be one page of the novel where Isabella isn't a tragic heartbroken neglected victim, and that would never do.

Pic 6, non-fiction published in the twenty-first century: Isabella of France, one of the most awesome and powerful women in medieval English history, is written as a panting heroine from a bad 1950s bodice-ripper who 'surrenders herself' to Our Manly Hero's healing embraces. This is so, so bad it makes me want to bleach my brain. Make it stop make it stop make it stop.

There are of course far more examples of Isabella's super-tragic victimhood both from fiction and non-fiction, but I don't quite have the heart to get into any more now, because picking up books about Isabella of France involves having to read stuff like Edward II was 'too cowardly to become violent' with a woman and 'could not even beat his wife properly', and that raping a human being to death with a burning metal implement is 'ingenious', and I'm afraid I can't, I simply can't.

Master Richard of Gloucester and Katherine of St Albans

Master Richard of Gloucester was parson of the church of Stevenage ('Styvenache') in Hertfordshire in the 1320s, and was said to be "learned in the law". [1] In 1323/24, Edward II appointed Richard as one of the three proctors he sent to France to proffer his excuses to his brother-in-law Charles IV for his failure to travel to Amiens to pay homage to Charles as his overlord for his French territories; the other two were Master Richard de Erium, canon of York and "professor of both laws" (i.e. canon and civil), and John de Shordich, "professor of civil law" or "doctor of laws". [2] Richard of Gloucester was perhaps the man of this name presented to the church of Hynton in the diocese of Salisbury in October 1280, and in June 1328 was appointed dean of Tamworth in Staffordshire. [3] According to his inquisition post mortem, Richard did indeed, as per his name, come from Gloucester or close by ("he was born in the parts of Gloucester, as the jurors understand"), though he spent most of his life in the south-east of England, and specifically in London. [4] He was one of the twenty-two "priests and clerks" of London and Canterbury who took an oath on 13 January 1327 to "safeguard Isabella, queen of England, and Edward [of Windsor], eldest son of the king of England and heir-apparent" before Edward II's forced abdication. [5] Master Richard of Gloucester died shortly before 16 January 1329 when his will was proved, and on 7 February 1329 the writ for his inquisition post mortem was issued. He had held the manor of Woolwich in Kent, also sometimes called Southall(e) Marreys, from the king in chief. Richard's will was dated 24 November 1328 in London. [6] 

Although he was a churchman, Master Richard of Gloucester had a long-term relationship with a resident of London called Katherine, the daughter of Geoffrey and Isabella of St Albans. This relationship produced at least two sons: John, born in the summer of 1317, and Nicholas, born in the autumn of 1319. In October 1329 a few months after Richard's death, the mayor and aldermen of London granted Katherine custody of her and Richard's two sons, then aged twelve and ten. [7] In his will, Richard left Katherine his house on Friday Street in London for the rest of her life, and he also mentioned their two sons, though he only called them Katherine's sons and not his. That they in fact were his children is, however, apparent, and this was obviously widely known at the time. In 1342, Nicholas, the younger son, called himself "Nicholas of Gloucester, son of Katherine of St Albans", using his father's last name, and in 1338 John was referred to as "son of the late Master Richard of Gloucester". In his will, Richard bequeathed "to John her [Katherine's] son a certain hall erected on a stage over the street [Friday Street], together with a shop", and "to Nicholas, son of the said Katherine, a tenement in the parish of S. Brigid for life, except a portion sufficient for the maintenance of a chaplain to celebrate for the good of his [Richard's] soul and the souls of others." Richard also left a "certain tenement" to John of Gloucester, whom he called his "kinsman" and who would appear to have been his brother or nephew. 

Richard's inquisition post mortem of 1329 states that he held the manor of Woolwich "with remainder to John, parson of the church of Erdyngton, Adam son of Katherine de Sancto Albano [i.e. of St Albans], and Nicholas brother of the said Adam." The 1332 will of John of Gloucester, 'rector of Herdyngton', also survives, and talks of "the soul of Master Richard of Gloucester", though does not clarify the family relationship. [8] The 'Adam' mentioned here is a bit confusing, as no Adam, son of Katherine of St Albans, is mentioned in Richard's will; possibly this is a clerical error and meant Richard and Katherine's son John (who is not otherwise mentioned in the IPM), or possibly they had a third son together, or possibly Adam was Katherine's son from another relationship. By June 1342, Richard and Katherine's son Nicholas of Gloucester, born c. September/October 1319 and then twenty-two years old, was "lord of the manor of Southall Marreys", i.e. Woolwich. [9] His elder brother John was a bad lot, evidently: in August 1338 at a congregation of the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of London, it was decided that John, openly named as Master Richard's son, "and other incorrigibles should be committed to Newgate to prevent their doing mischief." [10]

I haven't been able to find much about Katherine of St Albans, though there's a reference in the Feet of Fines for London and Middlesex in the eighteenth year of Edward II's reign (July 1324 to July 1325) to "Master Richard de Gloucestr', John de Gloucestr', parson of the church of Herdington, and Katherine, daughter of Isabella de Sancto Albano." [11] Katherine appears on the Close Roll on 24 March 1337: "William de Pilardyngton, lord of Yeddyngg, lately granted by charter to Master Richard de Gloucestr', clerk, Sir John de Gloucestr', parson of Herdyngton church, and Katherine, daughter of Isabella de Sancto Albano, and to Richard her son and the legitimate heirs of his body" properties and fields in the town of Yeddyngg, i.e. Yeading, Middlesex. Although Katherine was still alive then, her son Richard was already dead without heirs of his body. [12]

Katherine of St Albans, therefore, had sons John and Nicholas, who were certainly also the sons of Master Richard of Gloucester, possibly a son Adam (unless he was a clerical error) who was named in Richard's IPM but not in his will, and another son, Richard, whom she presumably named after his father, Master Richard, or in his honour if Master Richard was not the father. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any other references to Katherine or to her sons except the ones cited in this post. Her relationship with Master Richard evidently was a long and serious one, albeit illicit given his position, and he made sure that she and their sons were well provided for after his death. To my mind, whatever you might think about a parson's affair with a woman, this does him credit. I haven't found any references to Richard being taken to task over having a sexual relationship, perhaps surprisingly given that a good number of people in London seem to have known about it.

Sources

1) Calendar of Patent Rolls 1321-24, p. 352; CPR 1324-27, p. 1.

2) CPR 1321-24, p. 426; CPR 1324-27, p. 1; Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, pp. 548-9; Pierre Chaplais, ed., The War of Saint-Sardos (1323-1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents, pp. 5-6, 12, 177-8, 189, 191.

3) CPR 1272-81, p. 398; CPR 1327-30, p. 301.

4) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1327-36, no. 223.

5) Calendar of the Select Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, vol. 1, 1323–64, p. 14.

6) CIPM 1327-36, no. 223; Calendar of Fine Rolls 1327-37, p. 119; Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, part 1, 1258–1358, p. 342.

7) Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, Letter-Book E, p. 239.

8) Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled, p. 382.

9) Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, Letter-Book F, p. 75.

10) Select Plea and Memoranda Rolls, vol. 1, p. 168.

11) Calendar to the Feet of Fines for London and Middlesex, vol. 1, no. 333.

12) Calendar of Close Rolls 1337-39, p. 115.

Isabelle Holland, Mistress of the Earl of Surrey, Aunt of Richard II's Half-Brothers

I've previously written posts about the last de Warenne earl of Surrey, John de Warenne (30 June 1286-29 June 1347), his disastrous marriage to Edward II's French niece Jeanne de Bar (c. 1295/96-1361), and his nine known illegitimate children. Here's a post about the earl's last mistress, Isabelle Holland.

The key piece of evidence identifying Isabelle as Earl John's mistress is his will, dated at his Yorkshire castle of Conisbrough on Sunday, 24 June 1347 five days before he died, wherein John refers to her as Isabelle de Holand, ma compaigne. This literally means 'my consort' or 'my wife'. In point of fact, Isabelle was not and could not have been John's wife, as he had married Jeanne de Bar on 25 May 1306 in the presence of her grandfather, Edward I. He was then nineteen going on twenty and Jeanne was about ten or eleven. King Edward had offered John his granddaughter's marriage on 15 May 1305, and John gladly accepted, though their marriage appears to have failed as early as August 1309, and by August 1310 John already had at least one illegitimate child. [1] In February 1316, having fathered several more illegitimate children in a long-term relationship with his mistress Maud Nerford, John de Warenne began to make strenuous though unsuccessful attempts to annul his marriage to Jeanne de Bar, so that he could marry Maud instead. He and Maud claimed that they had already been pre-contracted to marry when John wed Jeanne in 1306, which of course was nonsense, and failed. By c. 1320, John's relationship with Maud Nerford had ended, and he "removed her from his heart and ousted her from his company". [2] Given the nine illegitimate children named in his will and in other sources, at least one of whom was born in Conisbrough Castle, he must have embarked on another relationship or several.

Earl John's relationship with Isabelle Holland began sometime before early 1344: on 26 February 1344, Pope Clement VI ordered him to "receive and treat with marital affection" his wife Jeanne de Bar, and in April/June that year there are more papal letters indicating that John was attempting, again, to have his marriage annulled. This time, he claimed that a) the 1306 papal dispensation issued to him and Jeanne for consanguinity was invalid, and that b) he had had an affair with his wife's aunt Mary, nun of Amesbury Priory (1279-1332, Edward I's fourth daughter), before he married Jeanne. [3] Again, John's attempts failed - the queens-consort of England and France, Philippa of Hainault and Jeanne of Burgundy, lobbied the pope on the countess of Surrey's behalf - and when he died, he was still married to Jeanne de Bar and had been for forty-one years. Given the wording in his will of June 1347, however, John was convinced that Isabelle Holland was his rightful wife, whatever anyone else said. 

Isabelle is not specifically identified in her lover's will, but the names of other people who also appear in the will make it apparent who she was, and an entry on the Patent Roll of December 1346 also identifies her. She was one of the daughters of Sir Robert Holland or Holand (born 1270s), a knight of Lancashire who became the steward and close associate of Edward II's cousin Thomas, earl of Lancaster and Leicester. Edward II imprisoned Robert after the Contrariant rebellion of 1321/22, though he escaped from prison in Northampton at an unknown date after 23 July 1326; Queen Isabella pardoned him in 1327; and in October 1328, he was waylaid in a wood in Essex and beheaded by a group of Lancastrians disgruntled at what they saw as Robert's betrayal of Earl Thomas in 1322. They sent his head to Thomas's brother and heir, Henry of Lancaster. Sir Robert Holland's career is fascinating; I'll try to write a post on him at some point. [4] 

Sometime before 13 May 1306, Earl Thomas of Lancaster had arranged Sir Robert Holland's highly advantageous marriage to Maud la Zouche. [5] Maud was the co-heir, with her elder sister Ellen or Elena, of their father Alan la Zouche, who owned lands in a few counties in the Midlands and south of England. Alan was born in 1267 and died in 1314, and his second daughter Maud was born in about 1288 or 1290; in April/May 1314, she was either twenty-four or twenty-six. [6] She was a good few years younger than her husband Robert, and somewhat younger than the man who would become her daughter's lover: John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, was born on 30 June 1286. Maud la Zouche Holland outlived her husband Robert by twenty years and died in May 1349. She was called Dame Maude de Hollande in the earl of Surrey's will of June 1347, and the earl left her four mares (iiij jumentz) from his stud-farm in Sussex and appointed her as one of his executors. [7]

Robert Holland and Maud la Zouche's eldest son and heir was also named Robert, and was said to be sixteen on 1 December 1328 and seventeen or "seventeen and more" in early January 1329, placing his date of birth around 1311/12 (though in July 1349, he was supposedly "aged thirty years and more at Easter last"). [8] Their second son was named Thomas, which might mean that the earl of Lancaster was his godfather, and Thomas Holland (d. late 1360) made a brilliant marriage to Edward II's niece Joan of Kent, later countess of Kent in her own right and princess of Wales; Thomas's children, born in the 1350s, were the older half-siblings of King Richard II. Both Thomas and his younger brother, Sir Otto or Otho Holland, were among the founder members of the Order of the Garter in 1348 (Thomas was number thirteen and Otto was the twenty-second). Robert (d. 1373), the eldest of the Holland brothers and their parents' heir, is more obscure than his younger brothers Thomas and Otto Holland, who both played important roles in Edward III's wars in France and were known as valiant and brilliant knights. Another Holland brother, Alan, appears on the Patent Roll on 15 November 1321 with his older brothers Robert and Thomas. [9] Otto Holland is not mentioned in that entry, and surely would have been, had he been born by then (as it talks of the "heirs male" of Robert Holland Sr and Maud la Zouche), so it would seem that he was born after November 1321 and was the fourth Holland brother. [10] John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, appointed Sir Thomas Holland as one of his executors in 1347, and left items - various pieces of equipment for destriers - to Sir Robert Holland Jr and Sir Otto Holland (Monsire Otes de Holande). Thomas Holland and his brother-in-law Sir John Darcy witnessed a quit-claim of Earl John's on 1 April 1346. [11]

The Genealogics website mentions four daughters of Robert Holland Sr (d. 1328) and Maud la Zouche (d. 1349): Eleanor or Alianore, who married Sir John Darcy and died in or before 1341; Maud, who married firstly John, Lord Mowbray (1310-61) in or before 1319, which was annulled, and secondly Sir Thomas Swynnerton (1313-61); Margaret, who gave birth to her son Roger, Lord la Warre (or Ware or Warr) in November 1326; and Elizabeth, who married Sir Henry FitzRoger (born 1318) before 1340 and had a son John, and died in 1387. The website does not mention Isabelle Holland as one of Robert and Maud's daughters, but an entry on the Patent Roll of 12 December 1346, relating to John de Warenne's attempts to pass on some of his lands to her after his death, calls her "Isabel de Holande, daughter of Robert de Holande, begotten on the body of Maud, late his wife". It could hardly be clearer that she was indeed one of their daughters. [12] An unnamed "daughter of Robert de Holand" is mentioned on 26 February 1322, when she was sent to the Tower of London as a hostage, with the children of other Contrariants. [13] 

I don't know how Isabelle Holland fits into the birth order of the nine Holland/la Zouche children. I did wonder if she might be the same person as her sister Elizabeth FitzRoger, as the names Isabel(le) and Elizabeth were often interchangeable, but Elizabeth married Henry FitzRoger before 1340, so she can't be. Margaret Holland gave birth to her son Roger la Warre as early as 1326, so she must have been one of the eldest Holland children, older than her brother Robert and surely born in or before 1310 (the Holland parents married in or before 1306). Elizabeth's son John FitzRoger was born after 1345 and perhaps as late as the early 1350s, and Elizabeth herself lived until 1387, so she would certainly seem to be one of the youngest Holland children, as was her brother Sir Otto. As Isabelle was not yet married when she began a relationship with the earl of Surrey in c. 1343, she would also appear to have been one of the younger Holland children. Sir Robert Holland was imprisoned in the spring of 1322 and remained in captivity for well over four years, and one assumes he was not allowed conjugal visits, with the result that Maud la Zouche is unlikely to have borne any children for some years after 1322. She may, however, have become pregnant again in c. 1327/28 in the period between her husband's escape from prison in Northampton sometime after 23 July 1326 and his murder. Born c. 1288/90, Maud was in her late thirties or forty years old when Robert was beheaded in October 1328, and although she was already a grandmother to Roger la Warre she was still of an age to bear another child in 1327/28.

Although it is impossible to establish Isabelle Holland's date of birth, she was several decades younger than John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, who was about two or four years older than her mother. Isabelle was also younger than John's oldest illegitimate children, one of whom was born sometime before August 1310, and another two of whom were born before 1316. John's much earlier mistress Maud Nerford was the daughter of Sir William Nerford of Norfolk and the niece of William, Lord Ros of Helmsley in Yorkshire, and Isabelle also had a noble background. She was a great-granddaughter of Nicholas, Lord Segrave (d. 1295) and a great-niece of Gilbert Segrave, bishop of London (d. 1316), and a great-great-great-granddaughter of Roger de Quincy, earl of Winchester (d. 1264). It's impossible to know how many women Earl John had relationships with, and how many mothers his children had, though the two women for whom he attempted to annul his marriage to Jeanne de Bar both came from noble families, and he deemed both Maud and Isabelle of suitably illustrious birth and rank for him to marry.

John and Isabelle's relationship would appear to have been well established by early 1344, when the earl began to entertain serious thoughts of marrying his lover. In 1347 John appointed Isabelle's mother and her brother Thomas as his executors, and left items to her other brothers Robert and Otto, and was evidently on very good and very close terms with the Holland family. He left Isabelle numerous items including all his beds, all the vestments for his chapel, his "gold ring with the good ruby", another five gold rings in a gold eagle, all his vessels of plain silver, and half of his livestock (la moyte de mon estor). Furthermore, she was to receive all of John's goods and chattels except those which went to pay his debts or which he had bequeathed elsewhere. Earl John died on 29 June 1347, five days after making his will and the day before his sixty-first birthday. At his inquisition post mortem held in Sussex on 10 July 1347, the jurors stated that Countess Jeanne "a year and more ago, crossed the sea with the king's licence...whether she is surviving or not the jurors know not." The Wiltshire and Dorset jurors also admitted that they had no idea whether she was still alive, though in fact Jeanne outlived John by fourteen years. She had surely travelled to her native county of Bar in eastern France; her nephew Count Henri IV (b. 1321) died in 1344 and was succeeded by her young great-nephew Edouard II, and subsequently by Henri's second son Robert, the first duke of Bar. [14]

It seems unlikely that Isabelle Holland was the mother of any of Earl John's children, except perhaps Katherine, who appears in his will simply as "Katherine my daughter" (Katerine ma fille). His six known sons were far too old to be Isabelle's children, as was his daughter Isabel, already a nun at Sempringham Priory in Lincolnshire in 1347. John's other daughter was named in his will as Johanne de Basyngg, so either she had married a man called Basing or her mother's name was Basing. In the fourteenth century, people born out of wedlock often used their mother's last name, though having said that, at least five of John de Warenne's sons (Sir William, Prior William, John, Thomas and Sir Edward) used the name de Warenne. 

Sometime before December 1346, John attempted to settle some of his lands on Isabelle, to pass to her after his death: the Yorkshire castles of Conisbrough and Sandal, and eight manors also in Yorkshire, including Wakefield, Halifax and Dewsbury. John's nephew and heir Richard, earl of Arundel, born c. 1313 as the son of John's sister Alice (1287-1338), however, refused to accept these arrangements. He petitioned Edward III complaining that he would be disinherited. Edward III agreed and revoked John's grant, though in fact Conisbrough Castle and John's other Yorkshire lands ended up passing to the king's fourth son Edmund of Langley, later earl of Cambridge and first duke of York (1341-1402). Edmund was almost certainly Earl John's godson; in his will John left valuable items to King Edward, Queen Philippa, their eldest son Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales, and Edmund of Langley. None of the many other royal children were mentioned in it. [15] 

Countess Jeanne, John de Warenne's legal widow despite all his efforts over the decades, was granted her large dower in Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Surrey on 24 August 1347. [16] It probably goes without saying, as John was pretending that he was married to Isabelle, that poor Jeanne de Bar was not mentioned in her husband's will. She was the only daughter of Edward I's eldest surviving daughter Eleanor (1269-98), so was a pretty important person, not that you'd know it from Earl John's treatment of her. They just seem to have been totally incompatible, and given that there was a rift between them as early as August 1309 when Jeanne can't have been more than thirteen or fourteen, I wonder if they ever had an intimate marital relationship at all. They certainly had no children.

Unfortunately, this post peters out lamely at this point, as I have no idea what happened to Isabelle Holland after John de Warenne's death in 1347. She was probably not yet thirty and perhaps a few years younger than that, and if she was conceived and born after Robert Holland's escape from prison after July 1326, she might not even have been twenty years old (!!). She was left many valuable posessions by the earl, and had a noble background and excellent connections: her sister-in-law Joan of Kent became countess of Kent in her own right on her brother's death in late 1352, and in 1361 married Edward III's eldest son Edward of Woodstock. She might therefore have made a good marriage, even if she did not become countess of Surrey, or at least chatelaine of Conisbrough and Sandal, as John de Warenne had wished. Possibly Isabelle does appear on record somewhere after 1347, and if I ever find the time I'll try to research the matter more. I hope she had a long and happy life.

Sources

1) Calendar of Chancery Warrants 1244-1326, p. 296; Calendar of Close Rolls 1302-7, p. 321; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1307-13, pp. 330, 594; CPR 1313-17, pp. 528-9.

2) CPR 1313-17, pp. 12, 401, 434, 528-9; The National Archives SC 8/87/4348.

3) Calendar of Papal Letters 1342-62, pp. 116, 169, 173.

4) CPR 1345-48, p. 221, identifies Isabelle; CCR 1323-27, p. 592, is Edward II's order of 23 July 1326 to move Robert Holland from imprisonment at Warwick Castle to Northampton; CPR 1327-30, p. 17, is Robert's pardon for breaking prison at Northampton.

5) Feet of Fines, Berkshire, CP 25/1/9/38, no. 10, dated 13 May 1306, talks of "Robert de Holond and Maud his wife" when the manor of Denford was given to them with remainder to Maud's father Alan la Zouche.

6) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1307-17, no. 458. Her younger sister Elizabeth la Zouche, about twenty in 1314, was a nun.

7) John's will is printed in Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 1, pp. 41-5.

8) CCR 1327-30, pp. 348, 491; CIPM 1327-36, no. 156; CIPM 1347-52, no. 199.

9) CPR 1321-24, p. 40.

10) Sir Otto Holland died in September 1359, and his eldest brother Robert was his heir: CIPM 1352-60, no. 557.

11) East Sussex Record Office, AMS4952/3.

12) CPR 1345-48, p. 221.

13) CPR 1321-24, p. 75.

14) CIPM 1347-52, nos. 54-5, John's IPM; also CPR 1345-48, p. 226.

15) CPR 1345-48, p. 221; CPR 1348-50, pp. 161, 164; Calendar of Charter Rolls 1341-1417, p. 63.

16) CCR 1346-49, pp. 314-17; CIPM 1361-65, no. 215.

Edward II's Tastes Did Not 'Run To Boys'

A claim I've sometimes seen in books - I'm not stating which ones, as I refuse to give them the publicity - is that Edward II's 'tastes ran to boys' or that he 'liked boys'. Um, no. This is an unpleasant smear and emphatically untrue. Edward II had relationships with men, not with boys. His 'male favourites', as the saying goes, were: Piers Gaveston, Roger Damory, Hugh Audley, William Montacute and Hugh Despenser the Younger, and three of them were older than he was.

- Piers Gaveston's date of birth is absolutely impossible to determine, though he was the second child of a couple who were already married by 30 June 1272. That in itself is not necessarily very helpful in determining his approximate date of birth - Edward II's own parents married on or about 1 November 1254, but he wasn't born until 25 April 1284 - though according to one Gascon commenter on my blog a few years ago, Piers's sister Amie was the Gavestons' fifth child and was born in 1285. Piers was likely born around the late 1270s or early 1280s, and in July 1283 at the latest (he was made the guardian of Roger Mortimer of Wigmore in July 1304 and must have been at least twenty-one then). He was older than Edward II by at least nine months and probably more. 

- Sir Roger Damory's father Robert died in c. July 1285, so even if Roger was posthumous he can't have been born later than c. March/April 1286, and he was probably a few years older than that. His elder brother Richard Damory was already active as a soldier and keeper of the peace by the late 1290s, therefore can't have been born later than the late 1270s or thereabouts. Roger Damory was either Edward II's own age or older, and was emphatically an adult and at least thirty when their relationship began in 1315.

- Sir Hugh Audley was the second child of a couple who married c. 1288/89 (his mother's first husband died in 1287), and was born sometime in the early 1290s. He was therefore a few years younger than Edward II, but was around twenty-three or twenty-five when their relationship began c. 1315/16, and was well into adulthood. He was already a knight when he joined Edward's household in late 1311.

- Sir William Montacute or Montague was older than Edward II: the eldest of his four sons was born in 1299, and one or several of his seven daughters might have been older than that. Given that Montacute became a father in or before the late 1290s, he isn't likely to have been born much after 1280 and was probably born in the 1270s. When his relationship with Edward began c. 1315/16, he was not only an adult, he was the father of many children and a husband of many years' standing (he married Elizabeth Montfort in or not long after 1292, though that doesn't say anything very much about his age).

- Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger was the second child of parents who married in c. December 1285, was born in the late 1280s, and became a father in 1308 or early 1309. His relationship with Edward II, about four or five years his senior, began in late 1318 or sometime in the first half of 1319, by which time Hugh was around thirty years old, a husband for thirteen years, and the father of at least half a dozen children.

Look, if you want to criticise Edward II, there are a million and one things you can reasonably criticise him for. Have at it, but don't slyly imply that he was a paedophile who was attracted to boys. That's a nasty, offensive little smear, it's entirely untrue, and in my opinion it comes across as pretty homophobic to boot.

William Thorneye of Lincolnshire, Sheriff and Alderman of London (d. 1349)

 I've been doing a lot of work on the social history of London from 1300 to 1350 for a forthcoming book, and have been endlessly fascinated by all the details I've found of Londoners' lives and families, etc. One man I've found a lot of information about was William Thorneye or Thorney, a pepperer from Lincolnshire who served as sheriff of London in 1339/40, was elected alderman of Coleman Street ward in 1342, and died sometime between 20 June and 27 July 1349, possibly of the Black Death. Everyone knows the story of Richard 'Dick' Whittington, four-times mayor of London; here's a post about a far lesser-known man, who a few decades earlier, also found that the streets of London were paved with gold.

William Thorneye was born sometime in the early 1300s, perhaps after 1310, in the tiny village of Whaplode Drove in the South Holland district of southern Lincolnshire, near the Cambridgeshire border. His parents were named Ivo and Christiana or Christine; he had brothers whose names I haven't been able to learn for certain, though possibly one was Thomas; and he had a sister, Leticia or Lettice, who married a man named Stephen Bageneye and had three daughters. William Thorneye's three Bageneye nieces were: Alice, who married Richard Saleman and had a daughter named Margery before June 1349; Joan, who married Nicholas Rolle and had a daughter also named Margery before June 1349; and Maud, who married Stephen Bageys and was widowed by June 1349, and apparently had no children. William also had relatives in Crowland, six miles from Whaplode Drove, and owned a plot of land twelve miles away in or just outside Leverington, a village close to the town of Wisbech and over the border in Cambridgeshire. The plot was named Brodedrove in William's will of 1349, and amazingly there are still various roads called Broad Drove, Broad Drove East, etc around Wisbech. Another village just a few miles from Whaplode Drove is Thorney, and presumably is where William's family took its name. 

William Thorneye moved to London sometime before 1323, and became the apprentice of the pepperer John Grantham, who was mayor of London in 1328/29 and sheriff in 1322/23 (and died between 23 July 1344 and 31 January 1345). Pepperers were people, or rather men, who imported spices from abroad and sold them, and many of them became wealthy and influential and served as mayors, sheriffs and aldermen of London. It's also interesting to note that Grantham is a town in Lincolnshire and was presumably where John Grantham originally came from, or at least his ancestors did. Perhaps he favoured apprentices who came from his own native county. William Thorneye's will mentions that he had 'poor kinsfolk' in Crowland and Whaplode Drove and he left them bequests, though he himself became exceedingly well-off thanks to a successful career as a pepperer in London, and in the mid-1340s he was able to lend £250 to the abbot of Crowland, a few hundred thousand pounds in today's values. William held onto his Lincolnshire/Cambridgeshire connections for his entire life, despite his decades of residence in London and the success he found there.

In 1333, William was living in the parish of St Mary Aldermary* in London with a woman called Joan Armenters, much younger second wife and widow of John Armenters (d. 1306), sheriff of London in 1299/1300. I can't tell the nature of the relationship between William and Joan; she might have been his landlady, or they might have been lovers. William did later marry a woman called Joan, and possibly it was Joan Armenters, but 'Joan' was such an extraordinarily common name that I can't identify her. Whoever she was, William's wife Joan gave birth to their son around June or early July 1347 and died before 20 June 1349; details below. In 1333, William Thorneye and Joan Armenters shared a privy with neighbours Thomas Heyron - almost certainly the man of this name who was a vintner and the half-brother of John Chaucer, father of the great poet Geoffrey Chaucer (born c. 1342) - and Andrew and Joan Aubrey. Andrew Aubrey (d. 1358) was mayor of London in 1339/41. William Thorneye and Joan Armenters had, for some reason, removed the partitions in the five neighbours' common privy, and the Aubreys grumbled that 'the extremities of those sitting on the seats can be seen, a thing which is abonimable and altogether intolerable'. William was still living in the parish of St Mary Aldermary* in October 1336 when he was one of the neighbours questioned about the murder of Simon Chaucer, brother of Richard Chaucer, presumably the Richard Chaucer who died in 1349 and who was Geoffrey Chaucer's step-grandfather.

[* This church still exists and stands on the corner of Watling Street and Bow Lane, not far from Mansion House underground station.]

It's apparent that William Thorneye knew the Chaucer/Heyron family pretty well: as well as living next door to Geoffrey's uncle in 1333 and perhaps witnessing the murder of Simon Chaucer in 1336, in his 1349 will William mentioned a shop which he had purchased from John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father. Barney Sloane's (excellent) 2011 book The Black Death in London states that William Thorneye was John Chaucer's half-brother, but he wasn't; this appears to be a misreading of the part of William's will where he refers to John Chaucer and John's half-brother Thomas Heyron (John and Thomas had the same mother, Mary, Geoffrey Chaucer's grandmother, whose third husband was Richard Chaucer). We know from William Thorneye's will that he was born in Lincolnshire and that his parents were named Ivo and Christine, and he wasn't related to the Chaucers, a London family.

William was elected as one of the two sheriffs of London in September 1339, serving with Roger Forsham. There were always two sheriffs of London, and they only ever served one term (unlike the mayors, who were often re-elected) of one year. In February 1342, William was elected as alderman of Coleman Street, one of the twenty-four, later twenty-five, London wards. Aldermen usually held the position until they died, though were occasionally moved to another ward, and William did indeed serve as alderman until his death in 1349. He often appears in city letter-books and in the records of the London assize of nuisance as the alderman of Coleman Street, and also appears in the coroners' rolls during his period as sheriff in 1339/40.

In his will, William mentioned his 'children', plural, but only one is named in it: John Thorneye, William's only legitimate son and his heir. I haven't found any records of any other children William had, and that part of his will is slightly unclear and it might be referring to his brothers' children. John Thorneye proved on 8 July 1368 that he had come of age, i.e. twenty-one, so was born on or not long before 8 July 1347. John's mother was William's wife Joan, about whom I can discover nothing except that she was buried in the priory of St Helen, Bishopsgate, London sometime before 20 June 1349. William requested to be buried there with her, and I suppose he was. Possibly William became a father rather later in life, as his sister Lettice already had three daughters and two grandchildren in 1349, when William's son was only two years old. William might have been very roughly forty-ish in 1347 when John was born.

William made two long wills on 20 June 1349 in which he disposed of his many possessions and his property in London and in the area where he grew up in Lincolnshire/Cambridgeshire. He also left many generous bequests to numerous religious houses, including to the abbey of Thorney, a Benedictine house founded in 972 near his native village (see also here). William founded a chantry in the chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist in Whaplode Drove, and the parish church of Whaplode Drove is still dedicated to St John the Baptist. He left money for his 'poor kinsfolk' in his village and in Crowland and gave Brodedrove, his plot of land near Leverington, to five women and girls: his three nieces and two great-nieces, his sister Lettice's daughters and granddaughters. William owned a book called the Proverbs of Solomon which he bequeathed to his son John, and John also received his father's silver spoons, cups of mazer (maple-wood), pewter salt-cellars, mortars, pestles, weights and balances, and other utensils William had used in his profession as a spice merchant. He left a breviary to the chapel of St John the Baptist in Whaplode Drove, and another breviary, a psalter, a silver-gilt vessel for the Host and a silver-gilt chalice to the priory of St Helen in London, his wife Joan's burial-place and presumably his own. Finally, generous bequests of money went to William's apprentices and servants and to the houses in and around London that looked after lepers, and he showed a particular concern for the 'poor and maimed' living in religious houses in London and Lincs/Cambs, some of whom were his own kinsfolk, and left money for their care. Having made a lot of money and having become a man of some influence in London, William took a kindly and generous interest in those who were less fortunate, which I find moving and impressive. I also admire the way he remained loyal to the area where he grew up for the rest of his life.

William Thorneye died sometime before 27 July 1349 when one of his two wills was proved, and it's quite probable that he was one of the countless victims of the Black Death, then raging in London and elsewhere. John Thorneye was barely two years old when he was orphaned and cannot have remembered either of his parents, which makes me very sad, and it does bring home the tragic, appalling losses suffered by so many people during the terrible pandemic of bubonic plague in 1348/49. There are a lot of fourteenth-century London records detailing the guardianship of orphaned children and custody of them being granted to relatives, but unfortunately a record of John's case no longer seems to exist. He was, however, still alive in September 1401, aged fifty-four, and was then married to a woman called Isabel, so clearly someone looked after him, and he knew exactly who he was: 'John, son and heir of William de Thorneye, late pepperer'. The tenements and rents which belonged to John as his inheritance from William were faithfully held in trust for him for many years, and as soon as he proved in early July 1368 that he was now twenty-one, they were given to him.

Sources

Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, ed. R. R. Sharpe, part 1, 1258-1358.

Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London, ed. R. R. Sharpe, Letter-Books E, F, G.

Calendar of the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, ed. A. H. Thomas, vol. 1, 1323-1364.

Calendar of Coroners Rolls of the City of London 1300-1378, ed. R. R. Sharpe.

London Assize of Nuisance, 1301-1431: A Calendar, ed. H. M. Chew and W Kellaway.

The Support Group for People Maligned in Historical Fiction Meets Again!

Another meeting, years after the first one! This one was written partly by me and partly by Michèle Schindler, author of a great biography of Francis, Lord Lovell, who also writes a blog dedicated to Francis. Thanks for your great contributions, Michèle!

*

Edward II: Welcome to the latest meeting of the Support Group for People Maligned in Historical Fiction, everybody! I'm delighted to see so many of you here! Well, actually, I'm not, because it means that your posthumous reputations have been suffering because of the rubbish certain writers have been saying about you. A lot has happened since our last meeting, and regarding depictions of myself, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that most writers and documentary makers are now backing off the claim that I was murdered by red-hot poker, because they realise that the vile, sadistic little tale is no longer tenable. The bad news is, they don't really want to let go of it, so we get YouTube documentaries where the presenter goes 'right, let's see an enactment of what it might have looked like if Edward really had been tortured to death like that!' and the camera lingers lovingly on the agonised and screaming face of the actor playing me. And if that wasn't bad enough, the presenter chortles and says something like 'why don't we watch that again, in slow motion?' I worry about these folks, I really do. Anyway, anyone else need to vent about what's been written or said about them?

Margaret Beaufort: Lots and lots and lots of people have decided that I murdered the Princes in the Tower in 1483, despite having no access to the Tower and, let's face it, no motive either, unless you count wanting to put Richard III's young son, or one of his nephews, on the throne.

Edward II: Weird, that one, isn't it? As though you could have predicted in advance that Richard's son would die the following year. Did you have the gift of foresight, Margaret? I'm guessing not.

Margaret Beaufort: Well, I'm the most ambitious and evil person who ever lived, you know, who spent every second of my life cackling evilly and calculating how I was going to put my son on the throne one day, even when there were about 67 people in the succession ahead of him. Apparently I was planning to murder them all.

Anne Lovell: Margaret dear, that's because they imagine you were unnaturally and weirdly obsessed with your son. And with Joan of Arc as well, hahaha, as if. You didn't have a normal maternal relationship with Henry, because somehow, only my cousin Anne Neville is allowed to love her son. Or her husband, apparently. I'm not sure what else I should have done to make it clear that I loved my husband Francis. Commit treason for him? Refuse to remarry after he vanished? Oh wait, I did. Not that you'd ever know it from novels.

George of Clarence: I feel your pain, dear cousin. I also suffer from the need in novels to make my sister-in-law Anne Neville the absolute centre of everything. Several novelists have me mistreat my wife Isabel when our first baby died, so Anne could watch horror-struck. This was my and Isabel's baby who died, but somehow novels think it was all about Anne. Those novels also insist I wanted to murder her to keep her from marrying my brother. And you know what this is based on? A later source saying I sent her somewhere to hide her. I didn't even do that, but it'd still be a million miles from trying to murder her!

Elizabeth Woodville: Not only do lots of people dismiss me as not the rightful queen of England at all, and blather on and on and on and on waaaaay beyond tedium about freaking Melusine and my and my mother's amazing witchy powers, I've now been called - wait for it - an 'Essex Girl'. And have been accused of murdering half my husband's court, including his supposed first wife Eleanor Talbot, her brother-in-law the duke of Norfolk, and who the heck knows who else.

Joan Geneville: That's awful, Elizabeth. I've never been accused of murder, but most writers carry on as though I didn't even exist. I'd been married to Roger Mortimer for just under thirty years when he was executed in November 1330, and we had a dozen kids together. He's now been written up everywhere as the greatest romantic hero of all time because he formed an alliance with Isabella of France. Amazing how Edward II cheating on Queen Isabella is the most unforgivably appalling thing ever, and makes her the most tragic neglected victim who ever lived, but when she supposedly has an affair with my husband, no-one seems to bother about me or even notice the double standards.

Constanza of Castile: Ohhhh, I know exactly what you mean, Joan. To be honest, I wasn't all that bothered about my husband John of Gaunt having a long-term affair with Katherine Swynford, and actually, just between you and me, I kind of liked Katherine. She was good fun. And after all, my father had affairs and fathered children with just about every woman he ever laid eyes on, including his cousin and at least one of my mother's cousins, and my mother was his chief mistress and not his wife. Come to think of it, his real wife was kept in prison. But you know what, I do seriously object to being depicted as a smelly religious zealot, who offends my husband's nostrils with my unpleasant body odour because I don't wash enough. I mean, come onnnnn. And worshipping my dead dad? I loved my father, but obviously I do not worship him. That is so offensive to my religious sensibilities.

Eleanor de Bohun: I don't think any of us ladies come out very well in that novel, Constanza, except Katherine, oh, and Blanche of Lancaster as well, who exists in a kind of cloud of perfect gorgeous saintliness. It describes me as having a fish mouth, and then later, a mouth like a haddock. I can't even visualise what kind of mouth a haddock actually has, to be perfectly honest - can anyone? - but I'm pretty sure I'm not being complimented. And Joan of Kent is nothing but a 'mound of flesh' at her son's coronation, apparently.

Anne Lovell: I feel you, ladies! One novel describes me as having "skin the colour and consistency of porridge". I'm trying to imagine human skin that's the same consistency of porridge, and not getting very far. What the hell, people? I can also offer some absolute horror at seeing the fact that Francis and I had no children used against me in horrifying ways. The nicest of that was still one book that had me worrying that I was lesser than my cousin Anne Neville, who had a child despite "everyone thinking she was too frail to carry a child to term". Just why everyone would be so worried about my cousin's childbearing ability is a mystery, but at least that particular novel didn't blame my childlessness on the fact that I am too ugly or too repulsive for my husband to touch. 

Blanche de Bourbon: Coming back to Constanza's point, the real wife of King Pedro would be me. Obviously not blaming you for this, Constanza, sweetheart, because you weren't even born yet, but your dad Pedro put me in solitary confinement while he went off with your mum. And he had affairs with plenty of other women, as you point out. But me, I just get completely ignored. Imprisoned by my husband two days after my wedding and kept there for eight years until he finally had me bumped off, and does anyone care? Nope! All they do is weep and wail about Edward II supposedly ignoring Isabella at their coronation banquet, like that's the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone. Quite honestly, I'd settle for being maligned in historical fiction if writers ever even remembered that I existed!

Joan Geneville: I'm with you there, Constanza. When I'm not being ignored as though I never even existed, despite decades of loyalty to my husband, I'm written as grossly overweight and hopelessly unattractive, or so cold and frigid in bed that Roger is forced to look elsewhere for affection and intimacy, the poor lamb. Did I mention that Roger and I had twelve children?

Anne Beauchamp, countess of Warwick: Good evening, fellow maligned people! Not only did I suffer the indignity of being declared legally dead so that my sons-in-law could take my lands, I see that one novel condemns me as a bad mother as well, so besotted with my dear Richard that I ignored our daughters and only cared about saving my own skin after my daughter Anne Neville was widowed and in potential danger. So that's nice.

William Stanley: I feel your pain. Just because I kind of, eh, suddenly betrayed my Yorkist leanings at the Battle at Bosworth field does not mean I spent my entire life victimising everyone around me. Do you know that at least three novels insist I abused my dear first wife Joan? The horror of that being printed! And based on what, me switching sides in the civil war nearly twenty years after her death? Joan and me were very happy! And since we're on the subject, I never sat on the fence. You're looking for my brother Thomas. And I never molested anyone. That I even have to say this!

Edward II: Astonishing how so many writers confuse you and your brother Thomas, William, as though you were clones of each other, or even one person shared between two bodies. So weird. And sorry to hear you've been accused of abusing your wife. Poor William Hastings joined us once, to tell us about being painted as a child rapist and murderer in one series of novels, the poor man. And there's this one novel that has my father-in-law and all three of my brothers-in-law sexually abusing my wife when she was a child. I mean honestly. I can't stand any of those French gits - well, Louis is bearable, I suppose, and the younger Philip and I get on pretty well as long as we keep the Channel between us - but what a thing to invent about them! Far worse even than the voyeuristic dwarf spying on me and Isabella consummating our marriage in one novel. I shudder at the memory.

William Stanley: Is that the novel with 'passion' in the title that has you being 'noisily buggered' by Piers, Edward? That description is about as erotic as cholera.

Edward: *shudders again* Do. Not. Remind. Me.

Thomas Becket: Good evening, my fellow maligned men and women. Can someone explain to me why writers of the 20th and 21st century, always seem to want to explain everything with sex? My friend Henry was no prude, but even he would think it ridiculous. I took a vow of chastity in my youth and kept it, and no one in my own time doubted it. This has not stopped novelists from insisting I sexually desired Henry, and only stood up for the rights of the church as ploy for revenge because he rejected me. Because somehow, that's not far-fetched or ridiculous at all, while the idea that I stood up for ideals that were widely shared during my lifetime because I actually believed in them is considered unlikely. I don't expect I will ever understand this.

Francis Lovell: Hello, everyone, Anne Lovell's husband here. I'm King Richard III's annoying stupid friend whom he lets tag along, so it appears, and I'm always sleeping with every available woman, up to and including Margaret of York, only not with my wife. I'm not very intelligent but I exude misplaced confidence. Or I could introduce myself as simply Francis, Viscount Lovell, but I doubt if anyone would even recognise me without these novel tropes. All of which are naturally untrue, but that's what novels have drummed into people's heads I was.

Edward II: I don't understand it either, Thomas, and Francis, sorry to hear you've also been a victim of everything being reduced to sex. What gets me as well is the novelist who moaned on social media and blogs about how horribly over-sexualised modern historical fiction is, while writing a series of novels where my dad tries to seduce the young girl who is, in this bizarre fictional universe, his own half-sister. Because my great-aunt's husband Simon de Montfort had an affair with my grandmother, supposedly, and was the real father of my father. Simon was hundreds of miles from my grandmother when she and King Henry conceived my father, but hey, let's not let that minor detail spoil the story. When films can make William Wallace the real father of my son even though he'd been dead for seven years, and when novels and social media can make Roger Mortimer the real father of my son even though he was in Ireland at the time, anything is possible. Right, that's all we've got time for today, folks! Hope you've found this venting session cathartic and helpful. Until the next time!

6 July 1332: Birth of Elizabeth de Burgh, Duchess of Clarence

Elizabeth de Burgh, duchess of Clarence and countess of Ulster, a daughter-in-law of Edward III and Queen Philippa, was born on 6 July 1332. Her mother was Maud of Lancaster (c. 1310/12-1377), third of the six daughters of Henry, earl of Lancaster and Leicester and one of the sisters of Henry of Grosmont, first duke of Lancaster. Via her mother, Elizabeth de Burgh was a great-granddaughter of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, and thus was a second cousin of Edward III. Elizabeth's father was William de Burgh, earl of Ulster (b. September 1312), whose mother Elizabeth de Clare (b. September 1295) was a granddaughter of Edward I and one of Edward II's nieces. Elizabeth de Burgh's grandmother was, therefore, a much older first cousin of Edward III, making Elizabeth the king's first cousin twice removed as well as his second cousin. As the daughter of Maud of Lancaster, Elizabeth had a large number of relatives among the higher English nobility: her first cousins included the great heiress Blanche, duchess of Lancaster, the Percy earls of Northumberland and Worcester, the earl of Arundel, the countesses of Kent and Hereford, and Lords Mowbray and Beaumont, and her younger half-sister was the countess of Oxford.

William's father, Elizabeth's grandfather John de Burgh, died in 1313 when William was a baby, and he succeeded his grandfather Richard de Burgh as earl of Ulster after Richard's death in July 1326. William de Burgh and Maud of Lancaster married sometime between 1 May and 16 November 1327 when William was fourteen or fifteen and Maud about the same age, perhaps a little older. William's marriage had been granted to Maud's father on 3 February 1327. [1] It's interesting to me that six of Henry, earl of Lancaster's seven children married (the exception was his second daughter Isabella, who became prioress of Amesbury Priory), and five of them became parents (his eldest daughter Blanche, Lady Wake had no children), and in all cases, there was a delay of a few years before they had children. Henry of Grosmont married Isabella Beaumont in 1330, and their first surviving child was born in April 1340, though another daughter is mentioned in 1338/39 who must have died young; Maud and William de Burgh's daughter was born five years after their wedding; Joan, the fourth daughter, married John Mowbray in 1328 and gave birth to her only son in 1340, though her two daughters were probably older; Eleanor the fifth daughter married John Beaumont in 1330 when they were both about twelve or thirteen, and had her only Beaumont son in late 1339; and Mary the youngest Lancaster child married Henry Percy in 1334 when they were also both about twelve or thirteen, and gave birth to her first child in 1341.

Elizabeth de Burgh was just eleven months old when her twenty-year-old father was murdered near Belfast on 6 June 1333, and she was his sole heir and, ultimately, also the sole heir of her grandmother Elizabeth de Clare, who lived until November 1360. As well the earldom of Ulster, she inherited the third of the earldom of Gloucester which passed to her grandmother Elizabeth after her brother Gilbert fell at Bannockburn in 1314. As for her mother, Maud of Lancaster remained a widow for ten years and married her second husband, the earl of Suffolk's younger brother Sir Ralph Ufford, in or before August 1343. Maud's only child from her second marriage, Maud Ufford, married Thomas de Vere, earl of Oxford and was the mother of Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford (1362-92), Richard II's favourite. After she was widowed from Ralph Ufford in 1346, Maud of Lancaster became a canoness in Suffolk for the remaining thirty years of her life.

Elizabeth was named as William de Burgh's sole heir in his inquisition post mortem of August/September 1332. The Buckinghamshire jurors gave her exact date of birth, whereas all the other jurors, in England and Ireland, merely estimated that she was a year old, or a year and a half, or even (wrongly) two years old. This might, emphasis on the might, mean that she was born in Buckinghamshire or at least spent time there in infancy. [2] Several years ago, I found possible references to one and perhaps even two further daughters of William de Burgh and Maud of Lancaster. On 16 July 1338, there is a reference on the Patent Roll to 'Isabella, daughter and heir of William, late earl of Ulster'. It's entirely possible that this means Elizabeth, as Isabella was a variant form of the name Elizabeth and they were sometimes used interchangably, though by this stage they seem to have been considered separate names, and Elizabeth de Burgh was otherwise always called 'Elizabeth'. And on 6 April 1340, Edward III granted the marriage of 'Margaret, daughter and heir of William de Burgo, earl of Ulster' to his sister Eleanor of Woodstock and her husband Reynald for the use of their second son Eduard of Guelders (b. 1336). [3]

Assuming William and Maud did have other daughters, they must have died young, as Elizabeth was certainly William's sole heir. This means that if Maud did give birth to two more daughters, she must have been pregnant with twins when William was killed and the IPM jurors did not know of her pregnancy. Possibly, though, 'Isabella' simply meant Elizabeth, and 'Margaret' was a clerical error and also referred to Elizabeth - and for some reason she did not marry into the county of Guelders.

Elizabeth de Burgh was related to Edward III and his children via both her parents, but they were not *that* closely related, and Edward snapped up the great heiress for one of his and Queen Philippa's sons. Lionel of Antwerp was the royal couple's third son after Edward of Woodstock (b. June 1330) and William of Hatfield (b. January 1337), but was their second eldest surviving son, as William died shortly after his birth. Born on 29 November 1338, Lionel was nearly six and a half years Elizabeth's junior.

Elizabeth and Lionel of Antwerp married on 15 August 1342 in the Tower of London; the date is recorded in the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the city. [4] Lionel was still only three years old to her ten on their wedding day. Their only child, named Philippa after her paternal grandmother and godmother Philippa of Hainault, queen of England, was born on 16 August 1355 thirty-seven weeks after Lionel's sixteenth birthday, and thirteen years almost exactly to the day after Elizabeth and Lionel's wedding. [5] Elizabeth was twenty-three when her daughter was born, but was to have no more children. She came into her grandmother's large inheritance when Elizabeth de Clare died at the age of sixty-five in late 1360, but only outlived her by three years, and died in Ireland in December 1363 when she was only thirty-one years old, just over a year after Edward III celebrated his fiftieth birthday by making his second son duke of Clarence (and his third son John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster). Lionel held all her lands for the rest of his life - he himself died in October 1368 a few weeks before his thirtieth birthday - by the custom called the 'courtesy of England', and they then passed to Elizabeth and Lionel's only child Philippa of Clarence, countess of March and Ulster, and then to her son Roger Mortimer, earl of March (1374-98).

Sources

1) Kenneth Fowler, The King's Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster 1310-1361 (1969), p. 256 note 16; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1327-30, p. 8.
2) Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem 1327-36, no. 537.
3) CPR 1338-40, pp. 115, 445.
4) Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, vol. 1, p. 153.
5) CIPM 1365-69, no. 385.

Pride: The LGBTQ+ History Series

I'm delighted and honoured to have been invited to take part in the second season of 'Pride: The LGBTQ+ History Series', a documentary series by Canadian filmmakers Mark Kenneth Woods and Michael Yerxa. You can see the trailer of the second season on Youtube here (and the first season here). Information about each episode is here; you can see me in the fourth episode, 'Manchester', talking about Edward II for a few minutes.

In Canada, the series is available on Out TV (and see also here for more info; if you have Amazon Prime and are in the right geographical area, you might be able to access it). In New Zealand, it will be shown on TVNZ, beginning tomorrow, 15 June. For the rest of us, we'll just have to hope that it's broadcast somewhere where we can see it, soon! I think what Mark and Michael are doing is really important and I was thrilled to be a small part of it.