04 May, 2018

1315: An Eventful Year for Sir John Haudlo

The year 1315 for Sir John Haudlo involved 1) the illegal seizure of a castle, 2) marriage to a wealthy widow without Edward II's licence, 3) temporary confiscation of both his and her lands as punishment for marrying without royal permission, and 4) imprisonment by the earl of Arundel. Here's a post about it.

John Haudlo (or Hadlow in modern spelling) was probably born in the early to mid-1280s or thereabouts*, was one of the many men knighted with Edward of Caernarfon in May 1306, and was a long-term adherent of the Despensers: he went overseas with Hugh the Elder in October 1305, for example, and served him for many years. [CPR 1301-7, p. 382] By 3 August 1299, John Haudlo was married to his first wife Joan, daughter and heir of John FitzNigel. [CPR 1292-1301, p. 430] John had three sons, Richard, Nicholas and Thomas; Joan FitzNigel was the mother of Richard, and John's second wife Maud Lovel née Burnell, for whom see below, was the mother of Nicholas and Thomas. John's eldest son Richard died in December 1342 before his father and left a son Edmund Haudlo, born around 1339 and John's heir to many of his manors when he died in August 1346. [CIPM 1336-46, nos. 441, 667] John also had a daughter called Joan, almost certainly from his first marriage, and he and Maud Burnell had daughters called Elizabeth and Margaret.

* That's just my best guess. He's unlikely to have been born much before 1280, as he lived until 1346.

On or a little before 20 May 1315, utterly disgruntled at Edward II's pretence that the dowager countess of Gloucester was pregnant by her husband eleven months after his death at Bannockburn and his refusal to order the partition of the de Clare inheritance among Gloucester's three sisters and heirs, Hugh Despenser the Younger seized Tonbridge Castle in Kent. See here for more info. Sir John Haudlo was one of the men who took the castle with Hugh. Neither he nor Hugh himself was ever punished for this illegal seizure, though a Robert Haudle, presumably a relative of John Haudlo, and a John Clerk had their goods confiscated "for the seizing of the castle of Tonbrugge and other enormities" ('enormities' not specified). Hugh Despenser, John Haudlo and the other adventurers gave up the castle on 23 May 1315, and Hugh, presumably accompanied by John, rode to see Edward II at Hadleigh in Essex and to explain himself in person. I bet that was an interesting conversation. Assuming Hugh's motive was to shame Edward II into admitting that Maud de Clare née de Burgh was not pregnant and to begin the partition of the Clare lands, his escapade failed.

One lady related to the Despensers by marriage was Maud Burnell. Maud was born around 1290/91; she was said to be twenty-four or twenty-five, or "twenty-five and more," in September 1315. [CIPM 1307-17, no. 611] She was the daughter of Philip Burnell (d. 1294), the niece of Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel (d. 1302), and the great-niece of Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells and chancellor of England (d. 1292). Maud's elder brother Edward Burnell, born on 22 July 1287 - not 1286 as often stated, not least by me on previous occasions - married Hugh Despenser the Elder's eldest daughter Alina Despenser in or soon after May 1302. Edward died in August 1315 aged twenty-eight, and as he was childless, his sister Maud was his heir. Maud married her first husband Sir John Lovel(l) of Titchmarsh (b. 1288/89) sometime before 1312; their daughter Joan Lovel was born that year. Sir John Lovel was killed at the battle of Bannockburn on 24 June 1314, and his and Maud's two-year-old daughter Joan was named as his heir in his Inquisition Post Mortem of October 1314. [CIPM 1307-17, no. 520] Unbeknownst to the jurors, however, Maud née Burnell was pregnant, and gave birth to John's posthumous son John Lovel around December 1314. Maud Burnell and John Lovel (1288/89-1314) were, via their son John the younger, ancestors of Richard III's friend Francis, Lord Lovel(l): his great-great-great-great-grandparents, if I've worked it out correctly.

On 15 January 1315, Maud Lovel née Burnell vowed not to marry again without the king's licence (standard procedure for the widows of tenants in chief). [CCR 1313-8, p. 208] She broke this vow mere months later when she married her second husband Sir John Haudlo without Edward II's permission. (John's first wife Joan FitzNigel was obviously dead by then, but I haven't been able to find the date of her death.) News of their marriage had reached Edward II's ears by 4 December 1315 when he ordered all their lands to be taken into his hands as punishment (also standard procedure). The lands were restored to the couple on 16 February 1316. [CFR 1307-19, pp. 268, 271] As Maud's late brother Edward had married into the Despenser family, and as John Haudlo was a long-term Despenser retainer, the couple must have known each other for a long time. They had two sons together called Nicholas and Thomas, who used their mother's maiden name and were called Burnell, and two daughters Elizabeth and Margaret, plus they each had two children from their first marriages. Nicholas Burnell, younger half-brother of John Lovel (b. 1314) and Richard Haudlo, was said to be twenty-three when his father died in 1346, which would put his date of birth around 1323 (though I suspect he was somewhat older than that). When Edward Burnell's widow Alina née Despenser finally died in 1363, Nicholas Burnell was vaguely and most unhelpfully said to be "thirty years and more." [CIPM 1361-5, no. 489] His brother Thomas Burnell, and their mother Maud, were dead by 17 May 1341 when their father John Haudlo arranged "divine service daily" for Maud's and Thomas's souls, and the souls of Edward II and Hugh Despenser the Elder. [CPR 1340-3, p. 194] Maud Burnell died on 18 July in an uncertain year. [Complete Peerage, vol. 6, p. 400 note h]

Most probably, John Haudlo and Maud Lovel née Burnell married after the death of her brother Edward on 23 August 1315. Edward Burnell's death left Maud a substantial landowner in eleven counties, and she was therefore a very attractive proposition as a wife. John himself was also a fairly important landowner, especially in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and they were something of a power couple. Doubtless both parties were attracted to the other's lands and income, and it's hardly likely to have been a marriage based solely or even mostly on romance and fine feelings, but I don't know, something about them makes me think that there was physical attraction and lust, perhaps love, as well. See here for a previous post of mine about Maud, and about her frankly rather unpleasant legal manoeuvres to settle the bulk of her estates on her children with John Haudlo and her shunting her Lovel son behind them. Her mother Maud née Fitzalan, incidentally, also married without royal licence around the same time, when she wed her third husband Simon Criketot sometime before June 1316. Maud née Fitzalan was the sister of the earl of Arundel (d. 1302), whereas Criketot wasn't even a knight, so it must have been a love or lust match.

So, Sir John Haudlo and Maud Lovel née Burnell almost certainly married after 23 August 1315, and they must have married before 9 October 1315, as on that date John was captured by Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel and three of his men - Roger de Cheygne, Thomas de Wynesbury and Thomas le Jay - in the village of Clun, Shropshire (which belonged to Arundel himself).* "With force and arms," so John stated later, they captured him, took him from Clun to Winsbury, from there to Arundel's castle at Oswestry, from there to Arundel's castle at Shrawardine, from there back to Clun, and from there to Bridgnorth. He was imprisoned until 26 December 1315, and forced to acknowledge a staggeringly massive fine of £4,000 to Arundel (in modern terms, a good few million) in order to secure his release.

[* Source for what follows: Year Books of Edward II, vol. xxv, Part of Easter, and Trinity, 1319, ed. for the Selden Society by John P. Collas (London, 1964), pp. 130-132.]

What on earth that was all about, I have no idea, but it's surely significant that Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, was Maud Burnell's first cousin: her mother Maud and his father Richard were brother and sister, and they were both grandchildren of John Fitzalan and Isabella Mortimer. As far as I can work out, after Maud's brother Edward died in August 1315, Arundel was her nearest adult male blood relative. John Haudlo was captured in Clun, which was one of Arundel's possessions, so perhaps John and Maud had gone there to visit the earl shortly after their wedding. Clearly Arundel did not react to the news ("Surpriiiiiiiise, we got married! We can haz pressie?") anything like as well as they'd hoped. To put it mildly. In the Trinity term of 1319, Edmund, earl of Arundel was attached to answer John Haudlo concerning John's capture and imprisonment, but the matter was complicated by the fact that Clun lay in the March, where the king had no jurisdiction and where "the earl has the keeping of the law." Arundel did not deny what he had done, but stated via his attorney that he had no case to answer because the king's writ did not run in the March. And "John [Haudlo] says that his writ ought not to be quashed for the aforesaid reason, because he says that he is the lord king's man, and not the man or tenant of the aforesaid earl; whereupon, seeing that the aforesaid town of Clun is within the crown of England and the lord king's domain, he asks judgement." The two men were given a date to appear in court again and to get John's complaint settled. Unfortunately I don't have Edward II's year books for 1320 and I can't find the matter in the chancery rolls, so I don't know how, or if, it was resolved, or why the earl of Arundel thought it was a good idea to seize and imprison his cousin's new husband for about ten weeks, and drag him halfway round Shropshire.

10 comments:

Sonetka said...

So her sons from her second marriage used her maiden name as their surname and she favored them over her son from her first marriage -- the latter seems like it's something that would probably be common enough, if unfortunate, but how common was the first? I thought using the mother's surname traditionally implied illegitimacy, which they surely wouldn't want -- or was it one of those situations where the wife is sufficiently wealthy and powerful that the husband changes his name to hers as well?

Jules Frusher said...

Funny how the king's writ didn't run in the march only when it suited him. I'm sure Arundel was more important to Edward at that point than Haudlo, and so it would have suited him to allow marcher law. However, when it came to Gower, later in the reign, it was English law that prevailed in order to please Despenser. It was all very much a grey area. But I've always liked John Haudlo.

Kathryn Warner said...

Sonetka - no, in the fourteenth century it didn't imply illegitimacy, and wasn't that uncommon. William la Zouche, lord of Ashby, who married Edward II's niece Eleanor Despenser née de Clare in 1329, was the son of Robert Mortimer and Joyce la Zouche, and his brother was called Hugh Mortimer. Piers Gaveston's elder brother Arnaud-Guilhem used the name of their mother Claramonde de Marsan. John Haudlo kept his own name.

Jules - I've always liked John as well. With Ingelram Berenger, he was one of the most loyal Despenser adherents for decades, and even in 1341 remembered Hugh the Elder.

Goatberry said...

How DO you tell the players without a scorecard? I'm utterly lost!

Goatberry said...

And... Are you going for yr doctorate any time soon?

Sonetka said...

Thanks! I figured it couldn't have been a particularly negative thing from the context but didn't know very much about it and wanted to find out more. Were there any particular unwritten rules that were followed (I mean, did they tend to take the surname of the wealthier/high status parent or something like that?) or was it a more esoteric thing?

Also just wanted to say that the world needs more people named Claramonde and Ingelram :).

sami parkkonen said...

I wonder if the main protagonist died of a Black Death which arrived to England around 1346-47. Or he could have been one of the men who died in the Crecy campaign around the same time.

Patricia O said...

Interesting article. Off-topic (and will have to wait till I am "in funds") but should your books be read in any particular order. It will only be book singular in first instance anyway.

jill said...

love your blog Kathryn!

'Plea Rolls for Staffordshire: 2 Edward II', in Staffordshire Historical Collections, Vol. 10, Part 1, ed. G Wrottesley (London, 1889), pp. 1-6. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/staffs-hist-collection/vol10/pt1/pp1-6
Contains: extracts from the Coram Rege Rolls and pleas of the crown for the period 1307-27

Coram Rege. Hillary, 2 E. II.
¶Buks. A precept was sent to the Sheriff, that whereas King Henry, the King's grandfather, in the partition of the Knight's fees formerly belonging to Hugh de Albini, Earl of Arundel, amongst the heirs of the said Hugh, had assigned to John fitz Alan the kinsman and one of the heirs of the said Hugh, the service of two parts of a Knight's fee which Robert Bataile then held in Embreton, and it was shown ex parte Edmund, Earl of Arundel, the kinsman and heir of the said John, that Ralph Basset of Drayton, one of the coparceners of the inheritance of the said Hugh, unjustly detained the said two parts, the King wishing to do justice, had commanded the Sheriff to summon the said Ralph to be Coram Rege at three weeks from Easter last, on which day the Sheriff returned that he had summoned the said Ralph Basset, and a day was given to the parties at the Quindene of Michaelmas, on which day the parties appeared by their attornies, and a day was given to them at the Quindene of Hillary, on which day the said Earl Edmund appeared by attorney, and Ralph de Folville appeared on the part of Ralph Basset and produced Letters of Protection of the King, which had been granted to the said Ralph Basset of Drayton, whilst in Scotland in the retinue of John de Crumbwelle, and to last till the day of St. John the Baptist following. The case was therefore to stand over, sine die. m. 17.

Kathryn Warner said...

Hi Jill, that's brilliant, thanks so much for sharing (and for the kind words!). I've actually used the Plea Rolls for Staffs quite a bit (especially in a book I have coming out next year) but had missed that bit, so am delighted to see it!