The Most Perfect Knight’s Countess: Isabella de Clare, Her Daughters, and Women’s Exercise of Power and Influence, 1190–ca. 1250

Abstract

Isabella de Clare, the wife of William le Marshal—and the heiress through whom he acquired his wealth, titles, and influence—has been far less studied than her famous husband. The same is true of their daughters. The careers of Countess Isabella and three of her five daughters who are the focus of this article—Maud Bigod Warenne, Isabelle de Clare Plantagenet, and Eva de Braose—demonstrate that they were political actors in their own right. These women were strategic in their political activities, associating themselves and their marital kin with their own siblings rather than becoming subsumed under their husbands’ political shadows. This pattern of kinship-based political activity within the larger Marshal kinship became the standard mode of action for successive generations.

If any man could be considered to have been “raised from the dust,” that man would be William le Marshal.¹ His loyalty to the royal line led to his being rewarded, in 1189, with a most prestigious marriagepartner, Isabellade Clare, daughter of Richard fitzGilbert de Clare, earl of Pembroke and lord of Striguil, and Eofe [Eva], daughter of Diarmid Mac Murchada, king of Leinster. Their thirty-year marriage, which ended with William’s death in 1219, was seemingly the ideal combination of business and emotional partnership. The couple was rarely separated—as attested to by where their children were born, which included England, Wales, France, and Ireland. The family, including their ten children, seems to have been close-knit; and even through the anxieties of the reign of King John, who was notoriously paranoid about the Marshal’s prestige and influence, Williamand Isabella were able to maintain their lands, titles, and status, although not without some considerable effort at times. Indeed, both Pembroke and Leinster—the two most prestigious of Countess Isabella’s splendid honors—were only reluctantly released to the couple, with the former coming into Marshal hands only at the end of Richard I’s reign.²

William le Marshal has been an enduring subject of study; not so his illustrious wife, Isabellade Clare. There is admittedly little documentary evidence available to attempt to reconstruct her life.³ Nevertheless, the most commonly used text when discussing William’s career, the Historyof William le Marshal, places Isabella squarely at the center of the family dynamic in the last three decades of the Marshal’s life, and presents her as an actor—at least in some capacity as a countess suo jure—on the public stage.⁴

This essay focuses on Countess Isabella and three of her daughters—the eldest, Maud, and two others, Isabelleand Eva—as equally engaged actors, even before the death of Isabellaand William’s five sons brought the family estates into the hands of the five daughters and their heirs. They were active not just because of the prestige of their birth; documentary, literary, and historical sources suggest that there was a family ethos conveyed by Williamand Isabella to all their children—male and female—and that they embraced it as much as did their brothers.

The sources for the lives of these women are not parallel. Indeed, sources for Countess Isabella’s career are extremely limited: references to her in the History, which was commissioned by William the Younger, according to the poem, shortly after the Marshal’s death;⁵ a very few acta, and references to her religious patronage, especially of Tintern Abbey in Wales and a number of religious houses in Ireland. In contrast, somewhat more substantive documentary evidence survives for these three sisters, in large part because all three were widows at some point in their lives. Maudand Isabelleremarried, and Maud, in particular, took after her father in being physically resilient. She was the only child still alive in 1245 when her two youngest brothers, Walterand Anselm, died, and so was the only immediate heir—all the rest of the thirteen co-heirs were grandchildren of Isabellaand William.⁶ Their lives coincided with the significant expansion of the royal chanceryin the reign of Henry III, which meant that their public activities were better recorded and archived. In addition, the political activities of the three sisters invited comment from some of the more prominent chroniclers and historians of the day, in particular Roger of Wendoverand Matthew Paris. In order to present a more comparative picture of their lives, it is therefore necessary to treat perhaps un-parallel, even somewhat unreliable, sources as comparable to some extent.

The Career of Isabella de Clare, Countess of Pembroke, Lady of Striguil and Leinster

Isabella, suo jure Countess of Pembroke, Lady of Striguil, and Lady of Leinster, became an important member of the Marshal’s “inner circle” as soon as they were married. Her familial and affinal connections provided political allies for her husband as well as marriage partners for their children. Without Isabella, William would never have risen to the heights he attained. Indeed, any man who married Isabella would have achieved ready-made renown just from his association with her.

William, at least according to the History, was not reticent about admitting what he owed to Isabella. In one of the most oft-referenced episodes, concerning King John’s attempt to disenfranchise the earl and countess while they were in Ireland in 1207, Johndemanded a second of Williamand Isabella’s sons as hostage while they were to be overseas. Although William had already apparently determined that he would release the boy to the king, he nevertheless “called in private for the countess and some of his closest followers” to consult with them about this “villainous request.”⁷Isabella, who was pregnant, is presented to their retainers as the “true” lord of the land:

My lords, here you see the countess whom I have brought here by the hand into your presence. She is your lady by birth, the daughter of the earl who graciously, in his generosity, enfeoffed you all…. She remains here with you, as a pregnant woman. Until such time as God brings me back here, I ask you all to give her unreservedly the protection she deserves by birthright, for she is your lady, as we well know; I have no claim to anything here save through her.⁸

William was compelled to return to the king’s side, leaving his heavily pregnant wife and the majority of their household retainers in Ireland. One of the most prominent of the Leinstervassals, Meiler fitzHenry, Lord of Offaly and justiciar of Ireland, at the urging of King John, used William’s absence as an opportunity to invade Kilkenny. Although King Johntried to taunt Earl William with the rumor that his wife was besieged at Kilkenny Castle by Meiler and his followers and that their most loyal retainer, John of Earley, had been killed in the skirmish, in fact it turned out that Isabella had easily quelled the rebellion in Ireland. She demanded hostages from not only Meiler, who surrendered his own son to her, but also from his associates, among them Philip de Prendergast and David de la Roche. “When the King heard all this, he was not at all amused ….”⁹Indeed, when William decided to return all the hostages, except those of the ringleader Meiler, Countess Isabella objected:

Once the countess was informed of this, I can tell you that she was not at all pleased, for they had done her many a wrong and hurt, and their crimes were many. I can assure you that, had he listened to her, the earl would have exacted a savage revenge on them.¹⁰

The importance of Isabella’s cooperation in the maintenance of family business is highlighted by the number of acta created during William’s lifetime to which she either attested or consented: at least ten extant charters. These primarily granted lands to religious foundations in Ireland, but they also include the foundation charters of the important Irish Cistercian abbeys of Tintern Parva (de Voto) and Duiske.¹¹ It was standard procedure for heiresses to agree formally to grants made by their husbands, but the combination of attestation and William’s explicit inclusion of Isabella in all of his eleemosynary grants suggests a more coordinated series of transactions.¹²

Perhaps the most significant testament to the importance of Isabella in the “family business” of the earldom and marshalcy is the passage in the History in which the Earl, on his deathbed, “asked for his son, the noble, loyal countess, Sir John the Marshal, and other advisers in his entourage, those in whom he placed the greatest trust.” The purpose of the conference was to impress upon the Marshal’s closest advisers that they should demand that the young King Henry be placed under the care of the papal legate in order to guarantee his safety.¹³It is, indeed, significant that Williamconsidered Isabella one of the people who could potentially have the ear of influential magnates and Marshal allies in order to effect such an outcome.

The deathbed scenes in the History are both poignant and pointed—especially so if, as presumed, the author was a member of the comital household. Isabella seems rarely to have left her husband’s side and she acted as one of the witnesses to the Earl Marshal’s nuncupative will, which he then “sealed with his private seal and those of the countess and his son ….”¹⁴ When he announced his decision to be buried as a Templar, William preceded his vows with an invitation to his wife: “‘Fair lady, kiss me now, for you will never be able to do it again.’ She stepped forward and kissed him, and both of them wept.”¹⁵After this episode, Isabella left the room until the final death scene. The author is careful to ensure that Countess Isabella is depicted as being present for every single component of the Marshal’s death, not only because the couple was known to be a devoted one, but also to act as witness to the distribution of goods and estates—many of which no doubt William controlled by right of his wife—in order to guarantee their peaceful transfer to the designated child or monastic foundation so rewarded. Even at the very end, the author takes pains to state—in the middle of describing William’s funeral and a prostrate Isabella—that she and her eldest son donated an annuity of 100s to Reading Abbey, where William had lain in state.¹⁶ Clearly, even in a family-commissioned work of literary biography intended only for the consumption of the family itself, it was important to place Isabella as the person through whom all estates passed to the next generation.

Isabella’s social and political influence incorporated not just her personal activism but also the familial and affinal connections her parents had bequeathed her and which her husband adopted upon their marriage. These also provided their children with marriage partners at the most exalted level and opportunities for political and social engagement that they all exploited readily (see Fig. 3.1). William’s circle of friends and allies before 1190 were the result of his natal family connections—relatively minor despite the prestige of the Marshalcy—and friendships derived from his loyalty to the royal line. Isabella’s connections, both familial in the multiple branches of the Clare family, and affinal in those whose estates were either embedded into her lordships—such as the Barrys of Manorbier, the lords of Tenby, and tenants connected to Striguil—or neighbors adjacent to her vast estates: the Braoses, Cantilupes, Mortimers, Bohuns, and Lacys as well as the kin of the comital House of Chester. Isabella’s familial connections became the Marshal’s intimates and, eventually, the wives and husbands of their children and, after their deaths, of their grandchildren (see Fig. 3.2).

Fig. 3.1

Marriage alliances of the children of William le Marshal and Isabella de Clare

Fig. 3.2

Marriage alliances of grandchildren and heirs of William le Marshal and Isabella de Clare

Isabella’s political activities were shrouded by the robust nature of Earl William’s career. She was also more or less continuously either pregnant or caring for and overseeing young children. Even if her last child, Joan, had been born sometime between 1208 and 1210—she was the only daughter still unmarried at William’s death in 1219, but wed soon after, so it is likely that her birth was at least eleven years before his death¹⁷—Isabella would have been overseeing the care and training of at least four of the youngest children in the second half of her married life. Moreover, the bearing of ten children in the space of about fifteen to seventeen years must have taken its toll.

Isabella’s surviving acta are few in number, in part because her period of widowhood was so brief. Most of the grants she made were to religious houses, probably to commemorate William’s death, as the eleemosynary dedications closely parallel those William had made that explicitly included her. In addition, very soon after William’s demise she instructed Hubert de Burgh, then justiciar, to send her the writs of seisin that had been addressed to sheriffs in England and to the justiciar in Ireland. She also negotiated, in July 1219, the delivery of the family’s Normandy estates to herself and her two eldest sons.¹⁸ Although she issued only one charter that required the consent of her son, William the Younger, he in turn confirmed a grant she made in her widowhood to William le Tailor after her death.¹⁹

Isabella was apparently struck down with a serious illness in the winter of 1220. A letter written by her son Williamto King Henry III in the days before her death on 11 March describes him as rushing to Chepstow to his mother, who was gravely ill, when he encountered the king’s messenger on the Monday after the feast of St. Matthew.²⁰It is likely that, if Isabella had survived this illness to live a few more years, she would have become more involved in the daily business of her estates, even as she apparently relinquished the oversight of some properties—especially those in France and Ireland—to her sons. Her death so soon after her husband’s makes her a more obscure figure than she might have been, but the evidence of her active life nonetheless demonstrates that Isabella was anything but a “silent partner” in her marriage; indeed, she seems to have had a hand in the success of both her husband and her progeny. One legacy that both Isabella and her husband conveyed to their children might, indeed, have been the result of their own special relationship, as well as their separate experiences with allies, friends, and extended family. Both seem to have imparted the importance of loyalty—to family, as well as to friends and affines—to their children.

The Earl Marshal’s reputation was based fundamentally on the notion of loyalty. Abandoned, more or less, by his family as a mere child during the civil war between King Stephenand Empress Matilda, William’s devotion to the royal family as well as to his political allies might have been a reflection on the lack of stability he experienced in his youth. With his marriage came a level of constancy that probably outshone anything that came before, and that stemmed, in all probability, from Countess Isabella, which only enhanced his understanding of the importance of family and friends. Thus, it was that most of the connections, marriages, and associations made for and by Williamand Isabella’s children tended to reinforce the alliances established by Isabella’s line. These were the people the Earl and Countess Marshal could trust.

Isabella’s Daughters: Toughness, Devotion, and Political Sophistication in the Early Thirteenth Century

The careers of Williamand Isabella’s daughters, especially Maud, Isabelle, and Eva, reflected the combination of familyloyalty and activism that typified the careers of their mother, Isabella, as well as their father, William. The consistency with which all three Marshal women focused their social and political energies on reinforcing natal ties to relations, affines, and allies could not have been accidental, especially since two of them—Isabelleand Eva—became embroiled in the rebellion of their brother Richard le Marshalagainst King Henry III in the 1230s. This level of political engagement might be seen as a kind of family policy, one in which the daughters as well as the sons engaged as respected and valued partners and allies.

Although it is not possible to know the exact parameters of the political education experienced by the children of magnates in medieval England, it is clear from the careers of the Marshal daughters and grandchildren that such an education—informal as it might have been—occurred.²¹ Whether it was imparted through observation and emulation, or Williamand Isabella provided their children with more specific lessons in political acuity, Maud, Isabelle, and Eva proved adept at navigating the sometimes tense political environment that followed their father’s death. Almost nothing is known about their other sisters, Sibyland Joan, who predeceased their (first and only) husbands and so had few, if any, outlets for independent political action, but the sophistication of their daughters’ careers as political actors in their own right might demonstrate that this training might also have rubbed off on them.²²

The activities of these three daughters of Isabellaand William are enmeshed in their biographies, so I am going to treat them somewhat individually, and pull together my general assessment of their importance in the political effectiveness of the Marshal earls at the end. Although Maud, Isabelle, and Eva all outlived their first husbands (unlike their sisters Sibyland Joan), and therefore attained a certain level of independence in widowhood, their political activities were neither confined to their periods of singleton status nor to the goals and agendas of their living or late husbands.

Maud la Marshal was the longest-lived of all the Marshal siblings: Although one of the eldest children (in birth order she was probably two or three out of the ten),²³she was the only daughter of Williamand Isabella to survive to inherit after the deaths of her five brothers in 1245.²⁴Maud was one of the Marshal children to appear most regularly in the History. In the introduction of the ten children made about two-thirds into the poem, Maud is presented as

Matilda [sic], to whom God had shown great favour in granting her the gifts of wisdom, generosity, beauty, nobility of heart, graciousness, and … all the good qualities which a noble lady should possess. Her worthy father, who loved her dearly, married her off … to the best and most handsome party he knew to Sir Hugh Bigot, who … became earl on his father’s death.²⁵

Maudalso figures prominently in William’s deathbed scenes, especially in the moving moment when he asks his daughters—in particular Maudand his youngest, Joan—to sing to him. “She had no wish to do so, for her life at the time was a bitter cup, but she had no wish to disobey her father’s command. She started to sing, since she wished to please her father, and she sang exceedingly well, giving a verse of a song in a sweet, clear voice.”²⁶

Maud’s longevity and her position as the eldest sister provided her with a kind of ready-made status of doyenne of the family. Widowed twice over—her first husband was Hugh Bigod, earl of Norfolk, and her second was William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, both of whom had close ties to her parents—Maud had an active life as a dowager that expanded considerably in its final years when she adopted the title Countess Marshal and Marshal of England to describe her rise in status. Like her mother, Maud’s official acta are few, but because she was a widowfor a number of years after William de Warenne’s death and also survived to inherit from her brother Walter, she appears in a greater variety of sources than her mother ever did. Maud was an active landholder, with dower from both of her husbands as well as marriage-portion and, eventually, the inherited estates of Striguil (Chepstow) and Carlow in Ireland. She was also able to secure portions of the Warenne estates in fee farm, including the castellany of Cunniburg Castle.²⁷ One of her first acts as widow, before her remarriageto William de Warenne, was to transfer some Bigod property to her younger son, Ralph. She then confirmed this grant after she was widowed a second time.²⁸

Although not overtly political before attaining the title, Maud’s career reflected that of her mother in many ways. She promoted familial alliances through the marriages of her children, and retained an overt loyalty to the crown that was not reflected in the actions of her Bigod sons, but which her son John de Warenne (who was raised in the royal nursery after his father’s death) largely followed.²⁹ Once she attained the title Marshal of England, Maud used her newly acquired influence to enrich her children, patronize family monastic foundations—Marshal, Bigod, and Warenne—and was ultimately buried in the family foundation of Tintern Abbey, where her mother and brothersWalterand Anselm had been laid to rest. Maud’s career followed the trajectory of many elite women as family leaders and maintainers of family cohesion. Her most forthright statement of political importance was, however, her assumption of the title Marshal of England, which she used from the moment she inherited the Marshalcy in 1245, thereby preventing her son Roger Bigod from attaining the title until her death in 1248. She did—probably in anticipation of her demise and in order to avoid the payment of relief—transfer the lordship of Striguil and Chepstow Castle to him in 1248.³⁰

Maud’s sisters Isabelleand Eva had far more adventurous careers, ones with far more overt political effects. Of the three, Eva was the most politically active, although the reasons for her activity probably did not initially lie with her, but with the circumstances of her husband’s death. Eva’s marriageto William de Braose, son of Reginald de Braoseand Grecia de Briwerre, and lord of Brecon and Abergavenny, enhanced what was already a close and intimate political friendship between the Marshal-Clare kinship and several generations of Braose men. This union is described in the History: “He gave Eve in marriage to the son of the lord of Briouze [sic], to William fitzReginald. He must be very wise, powerful, and of great reputation, a man whom God has given a mind to place his family to such advantage.”³¹

The Braoses seem to have been troubled—perhaps even cursed—in their inability to navigate the stormy seas of baronial-royal relations during the reign of King John. Reginald’s older brother, William de Braose, after a period of royal favor, fell from grace with tragic consequences for his wife (Maud de Clare, sister of Isabellela Marshal’s first husband, Gilbert de Clare) and their eldest son, both of whom King John imprisoned and starved to death. William de Braose himself was outlawed and his lands and estates granted instead to his younger brother, Reginald, who retained about half of the estates and eventually parceled the remainder out to his disinherited nephew, John. Reginald, as the most prominent member of the Braose clan, lost no time in consolidating his position by forming an alliance with Williamand Isabella la Marshal. His eldest son, William, was ready to marry and the earl and countess Marshal had a daughter ready for him: Eva. As the History confirms, Evawas married before Earl William’s death in 1219, but it is unclear when it actually occurred. Williamand Eva produced four daughters somewhere between 1220 and 1229: Isabella, Maud, Eve, and Eleanor.³²Maudeventually married Roger de Mortimerof Wigmore, Evemarried William de Cantilupe, Eleanormarried Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, and Isabella … well therein lies the story that ultimately made Eva la Marshal’s career.

In early 1230, William de Braosewas at the court of Llewelynab Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd, to negotiate a marriagebetween his daughter Isabellaand Llewelyn’s son and heir, Dafydd. Evidently, William’s activities in Gwynedd were not limited to negotiating this marriage. He and Llewelyn’s young wife, Joan Plantagenet, illegitimate daughter of King John, were found inflagrante delicto by Llewelyn’s guards.³³William was summarily tried and executed. A number of chronicles comment on the incident, among them the Brut y Tywysogyon, which states matter-of-factly, “That year William Breos [sic] the Younger was hanged by Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, after he had been caught in the prince’s chamber with King John’s daughter, the prince’s wife.”³⁴The scandal was incredible, but Llewelyn, in a letter he wrote to Earl William le Marshal the Younger right after the event, made no apology for his actions.³⁵Even more bizarre was the letter Llewelynsent to William de Braose’s widow, Eva, whom he saluted as “his dear friend,” sending her his “fondest greetings.” In this letter, Llewelyn states that he is still interested in completing the negotiations for the marriagebetween Isabellaand Dafydd and that these negotiations should not be affected adversely by the late unpleasantness between the two families.³⁶ In fact, the marriage did take place, although it did not seem to mitigate the hostility between Llewelyn and the marcher baronage and it availed the couple little—both Isabellaand Dafydd died young and without progeny.

Eva’s unexpected widowhood at such a time meant that she was more or less responsible for her four very young daughters and herself. She managed, despite the shocking circumstances of her husband’s death, to gain control of her dower and to retain guardianship of her daughters. She also seems to have delayed the marriages of the three younger girls for some years, perhaps to ensure that they would be connected to families who had gained her trust. For example, in 1242, Eva was cited by the Exchequer because she had failed to pay all of the fine she had made in order to marry her daughter, Eleanor, to Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex.³⁷ This suggests that she had control over the marriages of all her daughters—although she must have paid dearly for that privilege.

Eva’s widowhood resembles that of her older sister Maud in many respects—except she, perhaps understandably, did not remarry. She was careful to remain in close contact with her natal family and ensured that her daughters would retain those connections even after they married, which benefited them when they inherited their mother’s portion of the Marshal estates. In fact, Eva’s story does not end here: Her devotion to her family compelled her into an alliance with her brother Richard that landed her in the midst of a political rebellion that galvanized the kingdom.

Richard was not as patient with royal idiosyncrasies as either his father or his brother, William the Younger, had been. When he attained the earldom of Pembroke and the lordshipof Leinsterupon the death of his brother Williamin 1231, Richard became embroiled in a controversy with the young king Henry IIIand his principle advisor, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester. The first incident involved the elderly earl of Kent, Hubert de Burgh, who had been a close friend to the old earl of Pembroke; indeed, they, along with the papal legate, had been co-regents of the boy-king Henry. Once Henry came of age, he fell under the influence of certain Poitevin “foreigners” whose power was resented by the baronage. One of these was Peter des Roches, the bishop of Winchester. The first major casualty of this new alliance was Hubert de Burgh. In 1232, he was removed from his position as justiciar; his control of the Three Castles (Grosmont, Skenfrith, and White Castle in the volatile region of Monmouthshire in Wales—these had formerly been in the hands of the Braoses) was taken away and given (back) to Reginald de Braose (Eva’s father-in-law); and finally, he was arrested and imprisoned at Devizes Castle. Once ensconced at Devizes, four magnates were sent to deal with him: Richard le Marshal earl of Pembroke, William Ferrers earl of Derby, William de Warenne earl of Surrey, and Richard earl of Cornwall. This is a very interesting list. All four men were brothers-in-law—the two Williams and Richard of Cornwallwere all married to Richard le Marshal’s sisters. If this scheme devised by the bishop of Winchester was designed to limit the rebelliousness of the earl Marshal by threatening his kin, it backfired. Richard, instead, rescued Hubert de Burgh and tried to protect him, backed by his principle retainers, such as Gilbert Basset (who was married to his niece, Isabella Ferrers), and other members of his family as well, in particular two of his sisters, Isabelleand Eva.³⁸Isabelle’s participation in the controversy is not documented in public sources; instead it became the fodder for a particularly interesting moment in Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora. I am going to leave Eva’s activity in the conflict to follow this brief interlude.

Isabelle la Marshal, the wife, first, of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford and, second, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, would be an almost complete cypher were it not for the partiality for her second husband exhibited by the St. Albans chroniclers Roger of Wendoverand Matthew Paris.³⁹Roger, echoed by Matthew in his reworking of the latter’s history, places Isabelle at the center of the most significant moment in the conflict between Earl Richard le Marshal, Bishop Peter des Roches, and the young Henry III in 1233. The king commanded the earls and barons of England to attend a council in London on August 1. Richard le Marshal upon his arrival, “took up his abode with his sister Isabelle,” recently married to the king’s brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall; she asked him about the summons.⁴⁰ He replied that he was ordered to attend the conference of the king at Westminster. Rogerand Matthewdescribe Isabelle’s reaction thusly:

“You should know, my dearest brother, that your enemies are plotting to present arguments for your arrest to the king and the bishop of Winchester [that is, Peter des Roches]. They will do to you just what they did to Hubert earl of Kent.” The Marshal was at first reluctant to believe the words of a woman (even though a man’s heart beat in her breast) but he was convinced when she showed him the evidence of the plans for his capture and at length believed her.⁴¹

Richard, being a sensible man, made haste in the dark of night to Wales instead of Westminster, accompanied by Gilbert Basset, thereby foiling the plan, but also making it impossible for the council to go forward, and ultimately leading to his and Gilbert’s deaths in Ireland.

Isabelle was in the enviable position of being the sister-in-law of the king, so she could have given such advice to her beleaguered brother with impunity. Even if the scene existed only in the fertile imaginations of the St. Albans chroniclers, it is nevertheless a compelling tale. In contrast, Eva’s participation in the controversy was more active, given that her status as a widowcould render her more independent than Isabelle, who could not act entirely on her own. Although the chroniclers do not provide the specifics of her activities, it is clear that Eva must have been involved directly in the war against the des Roches faction because her marriage-portion and her dower—the castle and town of Totnes, the castle and land of Hay, and her dower lands in Hereford—were forfeited to the Crown and she was referred to as a “rebel.” Eva did not recover her lands until May 1234—after Richard le Marshal’sdeath in Leinster—when the king “received her into his grace.”⁴²If only Eva had had a literary retainer, as her mother Isabella had had in the author of the History, and as her sister Isabellehad had in Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris! The fact of the forfeiture of her lands is so tantalizing, but we must remain undernourished by this story: questions all unanswered. Clearly though, the very real likelihood that Eva’s experiences—her marriage, the death of her husband, her negotiations concerning the marriages of her children, and her devotion to her natal family—must have toughened her, and her toughness compelled her to act when her other siblings could—or would—not.

Isabelle, countess of Cornwall, however, was not nearly tough enough: The controversy and tragedy swirling around her brother and her natal family could have been a significant factor in her illness—according to Roger of Wendover she suffered from jaundice—and death in childbirth in 1240. Fortunately for us, Matthew Paris considered this episode important enough to include in his history. Knowing that death was near, and fearing for her as-yet unborn child, Isabelle made sure that both she and the infant were shriven. The nurses hoped that the child would be born alive, but it was dead; they named it Nicholas. Richard was in Cornwall at the time; when he heard the news he collapsed in tears and wept inconsolably. He made sure that she was buried at Beaulieu Priory and gave them grants for her obsequies.⁴³

While Matthew’s focus on the goodness and pietyof Isabellepresents Richard of Cornwall in the most favorable light, he—and Roger of Wendover—also emphasize the important connection she was able to make between her familyand the earldom of Cornwall. The power locus of the Clare-Marshal affinity centered on the March of Wales, with important secondary alliances in Somerset, Dorset, and the southeast. The establishment of the earldom of Cornwallfor Henry III’s younger brother, Richard, was an important step in solidifying a second nexus of royal influence where there previously had been none outside Winchester. The move, however, isolated Richard of Cornwall from potential allies and affines because of the longstanding relationships established by the Marcher baronage in the twelfth century. The marriageof Earl Richard and Isabelle created a ready-made series of alliances between the second Plantagenet familia and the important magnates of the western region of England and southern Wales. Moreover, the double-Clare connection made by Isabelle’s marriageto Earl Gilbert de Clare, which linked the Sussex branch of the family to the Pembroke and Striguil branch, provided Earl Richard with political linkages through his wife that he would not have been able easily to penetrate without the marriage. These connections between the Marshal earls and their principle allies and kin are also suggested by the four brothers-in-law sent to deal with earl Hubert de Burghand by the activities of Eva la Marshal de Braose in her widowhood. Thus, the political ties that were established by the men as magnates were not simply reinforced by their ties of marriage. The women who became the connections between them could contribute to their most important political and social alliances, as well as furnish future generations with suitable marriage partners to reinforce such alliances. This, indeed, occurred among all the progeny of Williamand Isabella la Marshal and their respective spouses.

Conclusions: The Importance and Ubiquity of Noblewomen in Medieval Public Life

All this evidence, as patchy as it might be, points to an image of Isabellade Clare and her daughters as gaining a public status in their own right. They had an impact on the lives and careers of their husbands over and above the mere material benefits of property and heirs they conveyed to their spouses. Isabellade Clare, countess of Striguil and Pembroke and Lady of Leinster, shaped the life and career of William le Marshal from the day they were wed until the day of her own death. She imbued their marriage with the aristocratic coloring necessary for her husband’s further success. She imparted her values of action, strength of purpose, and dedication to her sons and daughters alike. And, finally, she ensured that William’s last days were spent in comfort, security, and love—while providing an example of devotion to her daughters that would be their model for the rest of their days. This slip of a girl was not a mere fertile vessel for the Marshal’s generative ambitions. She could be considered the architect—through her fecundity, her landed wealth, and her social status—of the political community of the thirteenth century. Moreover, because of the failure of her sons to produce progeny, her daughters became destined to continue and preserve her legacy.

The three surviving daughters of Williamand Isabella le Marshal embodied the values they learned from their parents in particular, but typical, ways. They united their children—and, in the case of Maud la Marshal’s second marriage, themselves—with lineages that had been long associated with both the Clare and the Marshal families. They supported and protected their siblings and natal kin, not only against other members of the baronage but also against the Crown, when necessary. They likely absorbed, through close association with both their parents, a degree of political sophistication that served them well in their adult lives.

Although among the most prominent noblewomenof the first half of the thirteenth century, Isabellade Clare and her daughters were not unique. Indeed, they were only four in a host of active, engaged, effective noblewomen, from Ela Longespee, Countess of Salisbury and her daughters, to the women related to the Earls of Chester, to the women of the Lacyfamily, to numerous others whose careers in many ways paralleled or mirrored those of the Marshal women. Moreover, these women were well acquainted with each other. The marriage strategies of future generations throughout the thirteenth century actually connected these “matrilinities” again and again.⁴⁴ It is not unreasonable to suppose that each successive generation imparted expectations of service, duty, and obligation to their daughters in ways that continued to reflect on the careers of their predecessors. This might make these women extraordinary, but at the same time they were unexceptional. The ubiquity of such women as active members of their families on every level to which they were able to gain access suggests that it is time to rethink the notion of an exclusive fraternity of political actors in medieval Britain and Ireland. The sorority within politically engaged families deserves a place at the historical table as well. Indeed, the exploration of women’s political action in medieval Europe made by numerous scholars in the last twenty years—many of whom grace the pages of this collection—suggests that typical presumptions about the creation and maintenance of political communities everywhere—that these are the products of individual male actors whose relationships were external to family considerations—are significantly flawed because they do not take into account the important roles played by familial alliances managed and maintained by and through women. Once historians acknowledge the importance of women in these political acts, alliances, and connections, the shape of the political community changes dramatically. While men might have been the public “face” of the communities of the realms, the strategies and activities employed and deployed within those communities were invented, strategized, and sustained by women as much as by men.