Chapter 8

De Warenne

The Warenne earls of Surrey had been stalwart supporters of the crown since William de Warenne, the first earl, had fought alongside William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. The family held a total of sixty knights’ fees in England. They had lands stretching from Lewes in Sussex to Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire, with their main landholdings at Castle Acre in Norfolk; they also had extensive estates in Normandy, including Mortemer and Bellencombre.¹ In January 1148 the third earl had been killed at Laodicea, fighting in the rearguard of France’s King Louis VII during the Second Crusade.² He left a teenage daughter, Isabel de Warenne, as his sole heir and one of the most prized heiresses in England and Normandy. The earl had been a strong supporter of King Stephen; he fought alongside the king during the Anarchy – Stephen’s battles with his cousin, the Empress Matilda, to control England – and supported his wife, Queen Matilda, after King Stephen was captured at Lincoln. This affinity with Stephen’s regime helps to explain why, in the same year that her father died, and as part of Stephen’s attempts to control the vast Warenne lands, Isabel was married to Stephen’s younger son, William of Blois, who became Earl of Surrey, by right of his wife. William, it seems, was a little younger than his Isabel, having been born in 1137. Isabel was probably in her early teens. William was removed from the succession to the crown, by his own father when Stephen made a deal with Empress Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou, that the crown would go to him on Stephen’s death.³

The agreement, sealed at Winchester in 1153, guaranteed William’s position as the foremost magnate in the realm, with the lands from Isabel’s earldom and the inheritance of his mother’s county of Boulogne. Isabel and William had been married for just over ten years when he died in October 1159, while he was returning home to England after King Henry II’s expedition to Toulouse. William was buried at the Abbey of Montmorel, in Poitou. Their marriage had been childless, and Isabel was again an important heiress, so she had little respite from the marriage market. By 1162 Henry II’s youngest brother, William X, Count of Poitou, was seeking a dispensation to marry her. The dispensation was refused by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the grounds of consanguinity. The objection was not due to a blood relationship between Isabel and William, but between William and Isabel’s first husband, William of Blois, who were second cousins. It has often been suggested that this was a love-match rather than an arranged marriage. We will, of course, never know how Isabel felt but William died shortly afterwards, at Rouen on 30 January 1164, supposedly of a broken heart. One of William’s knights, Richard Brito, was among the quartet who murdered Thomas Becket in 1170, and is said to have cried as he struck his blow ‘for the love of William, the King’s brother’.⁴

Henry II was not to be thwarted, however, in his plan to bring the de Warenne lands into the royal family. His illegitimate half-brother, Hamelin, a son of Henry’s father, Geoffrey of Anjou, by an unnamed woman, was married to Isabel in 1164. The couple wed in April; Isabel’s trousseau cost an impressive £41 10s 8d.⁵ Hamelin became the fourth Earl of Surrey by right of his new wife and, in an unusual step for the time, took his wife’s surname, so that he was known as Hamelin de Warenne, rather than Hamelin Plantagenet.

The marriage appears to have been highly successful. Hamelin was loyal to his brother, Henry II, and supported the king during the conflict with his sons in 1173. He was among the nobles chosen to escort Joanna, the king’s daughter, to her marriage to William, King of Sicily; the nobles were ordered not to return home until they had seen ‘the King of Sicily and Joanna crowned in wedlock’.⁶ Hamelin continued his support of the crown when his nephew Richard I succeeded in 1189. He played a prominent part in English politics while Richard was absent on the Third Crusade, supporting the chancellor during the chaos caused by the intrigues of the king’s brother, John. He was one of the treasurers for the collection of the king’s ransom, and carried one of the three swords at Richard I’s second coronation at Winchester on 17 April 1194. He was also present at John’s coronation on 27 May 1199. Isabel was widowed for a second time when Hamelin died on 7 May 1202; in the same year, she granted sixty beasts to St Katherine’s Priory at Lincoln, for the soul of her husband, ‘namely 40 as of his gift and 20 as of hers’.⁷ Isabel herself died the following year, possibly in her seventieth year; she was buried in the chapterhouse at Lewes Priory, beside Hamelin.

Isabel and Hamelin had four surviving children. Their son and heir was William, who would become the fifth Earl of Surrey. William was born in the late 1160s and was probably raised in Normandy; five days after his father’s death, William was allowed to do homage for his father’s estates.⁸ He witnessed a charter issued by King Richard I at Rouen in September 1197 and witnessed several of his father’s charters in the years before Hamelin’s death in 1202. In the first eighteen months after his succession to the earldom, William was in Normandy, playing a major role in the defence of the duchy against King Philip II Augustus of France. When King John lost the majority of his Continental possessions, in 1204, Warenne was refused permission to do homage to King Philip for his Norman lands, despite promising that he would remain loyal to John. In compensation for the loss of his Norman estates, Warenne received Stamford and Grantham in Lincolnshire. In 1206, Warenne served on the king’s expedition to Poitou and in the following year took part in the peace negotiations with Scotland. During the build up to the baronial rebellion, Warenne was supportive of his cousin, King John, taking charge of baronial hostages and acting as a guarantor for the terms of peace with the church in order to get the papal interdict lifted.

With the outbreak of civil war Earl Warenne sided with the crown, he negotiated with the rebels at Northampton in May 1215. He was named as one of the Royalists present at the issue of Magna Carta on 15 June in the same year and was at the siege of Rochester in the November. On 26 May 1216, Warenne was given the charge of the Cinque Ports. However, on 6 June the rebel army led by Louis of France was allowed to enter the earl’s castle at Reigate unopposed and later in the month, Warenne submitted to Louis at Winchester, alongside his cousin, William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, and the earl of Arundel. It has been suggested that Warenne defected due to a personal grievance after John seduced one of his sisters in the 1190s, but it seems more likely that the earl had seen the way the wind was blowing and thought King John’s cause doomed. Warenne’s personal rebellion lasted less than a year. By March 1217 he was taking instructions from the new king, Henry III, over his lands at Stamford and on 17 April, at Chichester, he was reconciled with the Royalists, after a truce was negotiated by Guala, the papal legate.⁹ On 17 June, eager to safeguard his interests in France, Warenne sent formal letters to Louis to notify the French prince of his decision to return to the Royalists.

William de Warenne had three sisters, Ela, Isabel and Matilda; however, it is possible Matilda was Hamelin’s illegitimate daughter by an unknown woman. Ela married twice, firstly to a Robert de Newburn, of whom nothing else is known, and secondly to William Fitzwilliam of Sprotborough, a village just a few miles from the Warenne stronghold of Conisbrough Castle, Yorkshire. After she was widowed for the second time, Ela issued a charter mentioning both of her husbands by name, and all of her children. In this charter, Ela granted to Roche Abbey, just a few miles south of Conisbrough, ‘five virgates of land in Rottingdean [Sussex], together with three villeins and their sequels’. Her gift was confirmed by her brother after her death.¹⁰

A second sister, Isabel, was given land in Sowerby and Sowerbyshire, Yorkshire, in frank-marriage, by her father, Hamelin. Isabel married, firstly, to Robert de Lascy, who died in 1193; after his death, Isabel rendered account at Michaelmas 1194 of 80 marks for her reasonable dower from his land. Payment was completed at Michaelmas 1196.¹¹ Isabel was married for a second time, to Gilbert de Laigle, Lord of Pevensey, no later than the spring of 1196. In 1200 she was involved in a dispute with Roger de Lascy, constable of Chester and lord of Pontefract, cousin of Isabel’s first husband, Robert. Isabel complained that Lascy had disseised her of part of her dower from her first marriage, whereas Lascy claimed that Isabel’s dower was excessive. In 1201, Gilbert de Laigle stated that Isabel had been married in another county in the time of Robert de Lascy’s father, Henry de Lascy, and that Robert had dowered Isabel with a third of his prospective inheritance and that, after his father’s death in 1177 or 1178, Robert had assigned Isabel’s dower in a third of 100 librates of land. Roger de Lascy stated that she was dowered in specified lands and the service of five knights’ fees.¹² I was unable to discover the final outcome of the legal proceedings. However, it seems that the two families resolved their disagreement with a marriage between Roger’s son, John de Lacy, and Alice de Laigle, the daughter of Gilbert, in 1214. Isabel also held the manor of Northease in the rape of Lewes from her brother, William, and, as a widow after the death of her second husband, she gave a third of it to Michelham priory, which she had founded with Gilbert de Laigle in 1229; the priory later held the same land from earl Warenne, who, as Isabel’s brother, was also her heir.

Earl Warenne looked out for his sisters and when the king confiscated the vills of Westcott and Witley from Gilbert de Laigle when he joined the French after 1204, the earl made a fine on his sister’s behalf, as Gilbert’s wife, for these vills; Westcott was, in fact, part of Isabel’s dower. In 1207 the earl paid 3,000 marks, in instalments, for Gilbert’s entire estate, for the use of his sister.¹³ Gilbert died shortly before 19 December 1231 and in January 1232 his lands were assessed in Sussex, Surrey and Southampton, in order that a reasonable dower could be assigned to Isabel, who died sometime before 30 November 1234, leaving no children by either marriage and naming her brother, William, as her heir.¹⁴

One of the sisters of William, fifth Earl Warenne – although it is not clear which – bore an illegitimate son, Richard Fitzroy (also known as Richard de Chilham or Richard of Dover), by her cousin, John (the future King John). Richard was feudal baron of Chilham in Kent and was appointed constable of Wallingford Castle during the baronial revolt. In 1217 he took part in the naval battle off Sandwich that finally put an end to Louis of France’s hopes to take the English throne. When William de Warenne, fifth Earl of Surrey, joined the baronial revolt in 1215, it was suggested that he had turned against John because of his earlier seduction of the earl’s sister, which resulted in the birth of Richard Fitzroy. However, Richard had been born around 1190, some twenty-five years before Magna Carta, so either William de Warenne liked to hold grudges, or he joined the revolt for other reasons. Various attempts have been made to identify which of the Warenne sisters was Fitzroy’s mother, all to no avail. There are few clues, though one is an entry in the Annales Cestriensis, or Chester Annals, which has an entry for 1200 stating, ‘W. de Warren, the mother of the king’s son [Richard] is killed.’¹⁵ However, this may be a misleading, false report, as none of William de Warenne’s sisters died in 1200, and none of them had a name beginning with ‘W’. The mystery deepens.

Alice de Lusignan

William’s third sister, Matilda or Maud, married Henry, Count of Eu and Lord of Hastings, who died around 1190. She then married Henry d’Estouteville, a Norman lord. Matilda had at least one son by Henry d’Estouteville, John, who would be his mother’s heir and inherit the lands she held in her own right. It is the story of Matilda’s daughter by her first marriage, however, that deserves to be told here. Matilda de Warenne and Henry, Count of Eu and Lord of Hastings, had four children, two sons and two daughters. Alice was the eldest of the daughters, her sister Jeanne being younger. Sadly, both sons, Raoul and Guy, died young and in consecutive years, with Guy dying in 1185 and Raoul in 1186, leaving Alice as heir to her father’s lands.¹⁶ Very little is known of Alice’s early years; we do not even have a year for her birth. Given that her grandparents did not marry until 1164, her parents would not have married until the early 1180s, which would mean it is likely that Alice was born sometime around the mid-1180s. On her father’s death in 1191, she came into possession of lands in both England and Normandy, France and became suo jure Countess of Eu and Lady Hastings.

As Alice’s mother, Matilda, had married again to Henry d’Estouteville of Eckington, Lord of Valmont and Rames in Normandy, and had a son, John, by d’Estouteville, it was John, Alice’s half-brother, therefore, who became the heir to all the Warenne lands Matilda held in her own right. This left Alice solely with the inheritance from her father. The struggle to obtain and hold on to this inheritance would be the driving force in Alice’s adult life. Her mother’s brother William de Warenne actively supported his niece in her fight to retain her paternal inheritance. In August 1209, Alice officially received the Comté of Eu from Philip II Augustus, King of France, when she also made a quitclaim of all rights to Neufchatel, Mortemer and Arques. Mortemer was a part of the de Warenne ancestral lands in Normandy, given to William I de Warenne by William the Conqueror; suggesting that Alice was renouncing her own rights to the French de Warenne lands, as a granddaughter of Isabel de Warenne, Countess of Surrey.¹⁷

Alice had been born into two of the noblest families of England and France, and married into a third. The daughter of Henry, Count of Eu and Lord Hastings, and Matilda, daughter of Hamelin and Isabel de Warenne, Earl and Countess of Surrey, made a prestigious marriage to Raoul de Lusignan, the second son of Hugh de Lusignan, a powerful Poitevin lord. It was Raoul’s brother, Hugh IX, who was the intended husband of Isabelle d’Angoulême, until King John married her instead. Raoul had been previously married to Marguerite de Courtney, but the marriage had been annulled by 1213, suggesting Alice and Raoul married around that time. On marrying Alice, Raoul became Raoul I, Count of Eu in right of his wife.

Raoul and Alice had two children together; a son, Raoul and a daughter, Mathilde. Raoul II de Lusignan, Count of Eu and Guînes, was married three times and had one daughter, Marie de Lusignan, by his second wife, Yolande de Dreux. Raoul died sometime between 1245 and 1250 and was buried at the Abbey of Foucarmont. Mathilde married Humphrey de Bohun, second Earl of Hereford and Earl of Essex, and they had seven children together, including four boys. Mathilde died in August 1241 and was buried in Llanthony Secunda Priory, Gloucester. Her husband was buried beside her when he died in September 1275.

In 1139, the Honour of Tickhill in Yorkshire had been granted to Alice’s grandfather John, Count of Eu, by King Stephen after John proved his rights as heir to the original owners, the de Busli family, through Beatrice, the sister of Roger de Busli, who died in 1102.¹⁸ However, in 1141, Empress Matilda captured the castle after Count John was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lincoln. The castle was not returned to Count John’s son, Henry, and seems to have stayed in royal hands for many years afterwards, with Richard I taking possession on his accession; he then gave it to his brother John, as part of his holdings. As a consequence, the castle was besieged by the bishop of Durham when John rebelled against Richard in 1194; it was surrendered only when the king returned to England following his capture and imprisonment in Germany, three years after Henry of Eu’s death.

In 1214 Alice, as Countess of Eu, was restored to the Honour of Tickhill by King John, as part of the conditions of an agreement with her husband’s family, the de Lusignans. However, Robert de Vieuxpont, who was in physical possession of the castle, refused to relinquish it, and claimed the castle in his own right. Alice appears in an entry dated 19 May 1221 in the Fine Rolls of Henry III in 1221 concerning Tickhill: ‘Order to the sheriff of Nottinghamshire to place in respite the demand that he makes from the men of the countess of Eu of the honour of Tickhill for suits of wapentake, amercements and defaults, until the king’s first arrival in those parts. Witness H. etc. By the same.’¹⁹ It took many years and much litigation before Alice finally took possession of Tickhill Castle in 1222.

Her husband, Raoul died on 1 May 1219 and was succeeded as Count of Eu by their son, Raoul II, still only a child. It was left to Alice, now dowager countess, to administer the Eu inheritance. She paid 15,000 silver marks to the French King to receive the county of Eu in her own name and regained control of her English lands, entrusted to her uncle, the earl of Surrey, as her representative, following her husband’s death.²⁰

Alice was a shrewd political survivor and may well have used the clauses of Magna Carta, which safeguarded the lands of widows, to press her case for the restoration of Tickhill. However, with lands in France and England, two countries often at war, she found herself caught between a rock and a hard place. In 1225 she handed Tickhill Castle to Henry III, until the end of hostilities with France, as a means of safeguarding her lands. Nevertheless, this did not save her when she was ordered to levy troops for the French king, Louis IX, as Countess of Eu, and send her forces to fight for him. As a consequence, Henry III seized Tickhill Castle, although it was only permanently attached to the English crown after Alice’s death.

Alice was renowned for her wide patronage, both secular and religious, and has left numerous charters as testament. She was a benefactor of both French and English religious houses, including Battle Abbey and Christ Church, Canterbury in England and Eu and Foucarmont – where her son would be laid to rest – in France. Alice issued a charter in 1219, to Roche Abbey, which was witnessed by her uncle William, Earl de Warenne. She also granted an annual allowance to Loretta de Braose, Countess of Leicester, who was living as a recluse at Hackington. Alice also granted several lands to others, such as Greetwell in the county of Lincoln, which had previously been held by Walter de Tylly in Alice’s name and was given to Earl de Warenne in August 1225; the earl was to annually render a sparrowhawk to Philippa de Tylly in payment.²¹ In 1232 Alice issued a charter to Malvesin de Hersy, of Osberton in the county of Nottingham, providing him with all customs due to Tickhill in return for two knights’ fees. Malvesin had been constable of Tickhill in 1220–1 and his brother Sir Baldwin de Hersy was constable of Conisbrough Castle, seat of earl de Warenne.

Having spent most of her life fighting for her rights to her lands in England and France, caught between two great nations whose relations were acrimonious to say the least, Alice appears to have conducted herself admirably. Her connections to the powerful de Lusignan and de Warenne families could not have harmed her situation. Having been a widow for almost thirty years, Alice died sometime in May 1246, aged in her sixties, probably between the 13th and 15th, at La Mothe St Héray in Poitou, France, leaving a will. It seems likely that she was buried at her husband’s foundation of Fontblanche Priory in Exoudon.²²

Alice’s uncle, William de Warenne, fifth Earl of Surrey, served in the administration of the minority government of Henry III throughout the 1220s. He had been appointed sheriff of Surrey in 1218 and remained in that post until November 1226. In 1220 he took part in the negotiations with both the French and the Scots. In the spring of 1223 Warenne went on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain but was back in England in time to join the campaign against Montgomery, providing the king’s army with twenty knights and being a witness to the terms of the truce with the Welsh.²³ The earl was a staunch ally of the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, who had been married to his cousin Beatrice de Warenne, the daughter and heir of William de Warenne of Wormegay. He supported de Burgh in 1223–4, when the justiciar’s position was threatened by rivals at court.

In 1227 Warenne briefly joined the confederation against the king, led by Henry III’s brother Richard of Cornwall, after having been replaced as sheriff of Surrey and forced to surrender the castle of Hornby, which he had been granted a couple of years earlier, to its rightful heir. The disaffected barons, including the earls of Pembroke and Chester, met at Warenne’s manor of Stamford to confirm their accord. Warenne was forced to surrender custody of Tickhill in the aftermath but was confirmed in his manors of Stamford and Grantham in 1228, his fall from grace having been soon forgiven, if not forgotten.

Warenne continued to be a part of the royal administration throughout the 1230s, serving as cup-bearer at the coronation of Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Provence, in 1236 and in 1237 he was one of the few surviving barons who had witnessed the original 1215 Magna Carta to witness the charter’s reissue. Warenne was also drawn into the downfall of his former patron, Hubert de Burgh, when he was imprisoned in 1232. De Warenne was one of the four earls tasked with keeping de Burgh in custody at Devizes Castle and when de Burgh’s enemies themselves fell in 1234, Warenne was the earl to accept the surrender of de Burgh’s castles at Bramber and Knepp, which had been taken by the former justiciar’s enemies.²⁴

William de Warenne was married twice. He was first married to Matilda, daughter of William d’Aubigny, Earl of Arundel, sometime before 1207. The marriage remained childless and Matilda died, possibly on 6 February 1215; she was buried at the Warenne foundation of Lewes Priory in Sussex.²⁵ Warenne married for a second time, before 13 October 1225, Matilda, widow of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and eldest daughter of the great William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke and regent of England during the minority of Henry III. The marriage appears to have been one of convenience, rather than genuine affection, Warenne being considerably older than his new wife. Warenne died in London on 27 or 28 May 1240, in his early seventies, and was buried before the high altar of Lewes Priory. The king, who referred to Warenne as his ‘beloved and faithful Earl Warenne’ ordered that a cross should be erected to his memory, on the road between Merton and Carshalton in Surrey.²⁶ Matilda died in March 1248 and was buried with her mother at Tintern Abbey. The couple had two children together. A son and heir, John, was born in 1231 and was a prominent magnate and military commander in the reigns of Henry III and Edward I. John also had an older sister, Isabel, who was born sometime between 1226 and 1230.

Isabel d’Aubigny

Isabel was a strong character who was not afraid to fight for her rights against the highest in the land. With her impeccable parentage and family connections, it is no surprise that she made a suitably prestigious marriage. At no older than 8 years of age Isabel was married, in 1234, to 20-year-old Hugh d’Aubigny, fifth Earl of Arundel. Hugh’s father, William, third Earl of Arundel, had died in 1221 on his way home from the Fifth Crusade. William had been succeeded as fourth earl by his oldest son and namesake, who died three years after his father, aged just 21, leaving the earldom to his brother Hugh.²⁷

On their marriage, Isabel’s father granted the couple a manor at Marham in Norfolk, worth £40 a year in rent. The charter for this grant offers the only details available for the marriage. In 1242 Hugh accompanied the king on his expedition to Aquitaine. However, after just nine years of marriage, on 7 May 1243, Hugh died, leaving Isabel, at 17 years of age, a childless widow, with a rather large dower. Within weeks of her husband’s death, on 29 May, Isabel’s marriage was granted to Pierre de Genevre, a Savoyard favourite of the king, Henry III. However, the Patent Rolls show that provision was made for Isabel to remain unmarried should she so wish, a right guaranteed her by clause 8 of Magna Carta; although she would have to pay Pierre for the privilege. Given that she never remarried, she must have been more than happy to pay.²⁸

The Arundel inheritance was divided between Hugh’s four sisters: Mabel, Isabel, Nicholaa and Cecily. The earldom itself went to Hugh’s nephew, his sister Isabel’s son, John FitzAlan. As the earl’s widow, Isabel was well provided for, with her dower including the hundred and manor of Bourne in Lincolnshire, the manors of Wymondham and Kenninghall in Norfolk, Stansted in Essex and several properties in Norfolk and Buckinghamshire. Suffice to say, she was a very wealthy widow and would continue to be styled Countess of Arundel until her death.

In 1249, a year after her mother died, Isabel founded the only English convent that was part of the Cistercian order. Established at Marham, two Cistercian abbots had inspected it in its first year. Isabel’s brother, John de Warenne, sixth Earl of Surrey, the bishop of Norwich and Henry III himself all issued charters confirming the abbey’s foundation. Along with other endowments, Isabel herself made eleven grants to the abbey in its early years, giving it a strong economic foundation. In 1252 Isabel was granted papal permission to visit the Cistercian house at Waverley to consult with the abbot about her convent; Waverley’s annals record that she granted 4 marks and a cask of wine to the monks there.

Isabel was very protective of her property rights and went on the offensive when they were threatened, even if that meant going against the king. In 1252 she did just that. One of her tenants, Thomas of Ingoldisthorpe, held a quarter knight’s fee from Isabel at Fring and Snettisham; he also had property in the honour of Haughley, as an escheat from the crown. On his death in 1252 Henry III took all of Thomas’s lands in wardship until Thomas’s heir was of age, including Isabel’s quarter knights’ fee. In March of 1252 Henry granted the wardship of the lands and marriage of the heir to his former treasurer and keeper of the king’s wardrobe, Peter Chaceporc. Had Thomas held his lands in chief from the king, Henry would have been within his rights to take prerogative wardship. However his land at Haughley was held from the honour of Haughley, which was in the king’s hands as an escheat and Isabel was treated unjustly in being denied the wardship of his heirs.

Isabel took her grievances direct to the king, in an audience she is said to have berated Henry III for trampling on the rights laid out in Magna Carta. She is said to have asked, ‘Where are the liberties of England, so often recorded, so often granted, and so often ransomed?’²⁹ According to Matthew Paris, the chronicler and a personal friend of Isabel’s (though no particular fan of Henry), Henry scorned Isabel’s argument, ‘derisively and curling his nostrils’ and asked if the nobles of the realm had given her permission to speak on their behalf.³⁰ Isabel argued that the king had given her the right to speak thus in the articles granted in Magna Carta and accused the king of being a ‘shameless transgressor’ of the liberties laid down in the Great Charter, breaking his sworn oath to uphold its principles. At the end of the audience, Henry refused to be moved. ‘After listening to her [civilly] reproachful speech, the king was silent, and the countess, without obtaining or even asking for permission, returned home.’³¹

Isabel was one of the great nobles of England, the daughter of one earl and wife of another, and was obviously undaunted by an audience with the king. Although the king did not react to her reprimand immediately he did, eventually, admit that he may have been in the wrong, issuing a letter to her on 23 May 1253 saying:

Since the king has learnt that Thomas of Ingoldisthorpe, whose son and heir is in the custody of Peter Chaceporc by concession of the king, did not hold from the crown of the king in chief but from the honour of Haughley, which is in the hand of the king as his escheat, and that the same Thomas held from Hugh de Aubigny, once earl of Arundel, a quarter part of the fee of one knight with appurtenances in Fring and Snettisham and the service of which was assigned to Isabella, countess of Arundel, the widow of the foresaid earl, in dower, he has returned to the same countess custody of the foresaid quarter part of a fee with appurtenances; and the foresaid Peter is ordered to give the countess full seizin of the foresaid custody.³²

Isabel’s victory was incomplete, however, as in late 1253, while the king was overseas in Aquitaine, she instigated legal proceedings against Peter Chaceporc ‘for custody of Ingoldisthorpe’. Whether Chaceporc had not relinquished the land, or she believed she was entitled to more land than was returned to her, we do not know. Isabel in fact lost the suit and was amerced £20 (30 marks) for a false claim. The writ was witnessed by Henry III’s queen, Eleanor of Provence, and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall. As persistent as ever, and although he was overseas, Isabel appealed directly to the king, who responded with a pardon, although it seems he still smarted from the upbraiding she had given him earlier in the year:

3 April. Meilham. Henry, by the grace of God king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and count of Anjou sends greeting to his beloved consort E, by the same grace queen of England, lady of Ireland, duchess of Normandy and Aquitaine and countess of Anjou and to his beloved and faithful brother, R. earl of Cornwall. Know that we have pardoned our beloved and faithful Isabella countess of Arundel the 30m. at which she was amerced before our justices against our beloved and faithful … Peter Chaceporc, our Treasurer, for custody of Ingoldisthorpe. We, therefore, order you to cause the same countess to be quit of the aforesaid 30m. by our seal of England provided she says nothing opprobrious to us as she did when we were at Westminster and as we have signified to her by letter. Witness myself.³³

Isabel obviously had an eye for business, given that she could so concern herself with a quarter knight’s fee out of the sixty that she held. A wealthy widow with impressive family connections, she was renowned not only for her religious endowment of the Cistercian convent at Marham, but also as a patron of religious texts, having commissioned at least two saints’ lives, including the life of St Richard of Wyche by Ralph Bocking. Isabel could count among her friends Richard Wych himself, the bishop of Chichester who was later canonised, and Matthew Paris. Paris translated a life of Saint Edmund of Abingdon into Anglo-Norman verse for Isabel’s personal use.

Isabel died shortly before 23 November 1282 and was laid to rest at her own foundation at Marham; her dower properties passed to her husband’s great-great nephew, Richard FitzAlan, eighth Earl of Arundel. Having spent almost forty years as a childless widow, Isabel never remarried, her remarkable life was dedicated to the patronage of her convent at Marham and religious writers, such as Paris and Bocking. This incredible woman stands out as the countess who reprimanded and humbled her king for his injustices, using Magna Carta to its greatest effect.

It is notable that not one but two of the granddaughters of Isabel and Hamelin de Warenne used the clauses of Magna Carta to assert their rights, as widows, over their inheritances. The Warenne family had been at the heart of royal administration since the time of Henry II but were not afraid to bring the crown to task when it abused its powers, especially when touching their own rights, and particularly when touching the rights of the Warenne women.