Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Arundel

Isabel le Despenser (1312 – living 1356, and died by 1374/5) was the eldest daughter of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare. She was descended from Edward I of England through her mother, while her father is famous for being the favourite of Edward II of England.

Isabel le Despenser
Countess of Arundel
Born	1312
Died	living 1356, and died by 1374/5
Spouse(s)	Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel ​ ​ (m. 1321; annulled 1344)​
Issue Sir Edmund FitzAlan, Knt.
Father	Hugh le Despenser the Younger
Mother	Eleanor de Clare

Marriage

Though he had stood against Edward II in the past, Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel had loyally supported him since the 1320s. Thus it must have seemed to be politically prudent to Edmund to marry his heir Richard to the eldest daughter of the King's closest friend and adviser Hugh le Despenser. For Hugh's part, a large incentive for him must have been that he could expect his daughter Isabel would one day become Countess of Arundel.[1]

On 9 February 1321 at the royal manor Havering-atte-Bower, Isabel was duly married to Richard FitzAlan, the heir to the earldom of Arundel.[2] Isabel was only eight at the time, while Richard was seven. Their respective ages would come up later when Richard would try to seek an annulment.[1]

Annulment and only child

Richard and Isabel had one son, Edmund Fitzalan (or Edmund de Arundel), born in 1329, and in 1331 Isabel's husband became Earl of Arundel. However, on 4 December 1344 Richard Fitzalan had their marriage annulled on the grounds that he had never freely consented to marry Isabel and that they both had renounced their vows at puberty but had been "forced by blows to cohabit, so that a son was born".[1] Isabel retired to several manors in Essex that were given to her by her ex-husband. After receiving a papal dispensation, Richard married Isabel's first cousin Eleanor of Lancaster, with whom he had apparently been having an affair.[1]

Richard and Isabel's only child, Edmund, was declared illegitimate by this annulment and so was unable to inherit his father's earldom. Edmund married before 1347 (and probably as a child), Lady Sybil de Montacute (or Montagu), daughter of William Montacute, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Catherine Grandison. Edmund was subsequently knighted in 1352 at about twenty-three years of age and became an aristocratic knight owning numerous manors throughout the counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Sussex. In 1364 Edmund was going to Flanders on the king's service. In 1368 Pope Urban V sent him to King Edward III to communicate verbally "the present state of the Roman church in Italy". When his father died in 1376 Edmund quarreled with his half-siblings, the children of his father's second marriage, over inheritance rights. Edmund was imprisoned in the Tower of London until he was released in 1377 by request of his brothers-in-law. In February 1381, Edmund went to Gascony on a military expedition. Sir Edmund de Arundel died before 12 February 1382. Sir Edmund and Lady Sybil de Montacute had three daughters who were his co-heiresses and who brought a failed suit in 1382 against their half-uncle, Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel (died 1397).

Father's execution

After their father was executed for treason in 1326, Isabel and her youngest sister Elizabeth were the only daughters of Hugh the Younger to escape being confined in nunneries, Isabel because she was already married and Elizabeth because of her youth.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Arundel

16. Hugh le Despenser 8.Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer 4.Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester 18. Philip Basset 9. Aline Bassett, later wife of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk 19. Hawise de Gray 2.Hugh Despenser the Younger 20. William de Beauchamp 10. William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick 21. Isabel Mauduit 5. Isabella de Beauchamp 22. John Fitzgeoffrey 11. Maud FitzJohn 23. Isabel Bigod 1. Isabel le Despenser 24. Gilbert de Clare, 4th Earl of Hertford 12. Richard de Clare, 5th Earl of Hertford 25. Isabel Marshal 6.Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford 26. John de Lacy, 1st Earl of Lincoln 13. Maud de Lacy 27. Margaret de Quincy, Countess of Lincoln 3.Eleanor de Clare 28. Henry III of England 14. Edward I of England 29. Eleanor of Provence 7. Joan of Acre 30. Ferdinand III of Castile 15. Eleanor of Castile 31. Joan, Countess of Ponthieu

References

1. Higginbotham, Susan. "Divorce, Medieval Style" Retrieved 15 October 2009. .
2. Given-Wilson (1991), p. 2.

Sources

• Given-Wilson, C. (January 1991). "Wealth and Credit, Public and Private: The Earls of Arundel 1306-1397". English Historical Review. 106 (418): 26. JSTOR 575362.