# Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Arundel

Isabel le Despenser (born c. 1312 – living 1356, and died by 1374/5) was an English noblewoman who was married as a child to Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel. The marriage ended in annulment. Her father is famous for being the favourite of Edward II of England; he was executed as a result of his position and actions. Through her mother, Isabel was a great granddaughter of King Edward I of England.

## Early life

Isabel was born about 1312. She was the eldest daughter of Hugh le Despenser, 2nd Baron le Despenser and Eleanor de Clare, suo jure 6th Lady of Glamorgan. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Joan of Acre, Princess of England, making Isabel a great-granddaughter of King Edward I by his first consort, Eleanor of Castile. She was named after her paternal grandmother, Isabella de Beauchamp, Baroness Despenser.
Isabel's betrothal was contracted to cement an alliance between her father and Edmund FitzAlan, 2nd Earl of Arundel, a loyal supported the King since the 1320s. 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.

## Marriage

On 9 February 1321 at the royal manor Havering-atte-Bower, Isabel married Richard FitzAlan, heir to the earldom of Arundel. 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.
After their father was executed for treason on 24 November 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. Elizabeth married Maurice de Berkeley, 4th Baron Berkeley, who was ironically a grandson of Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, the man largely responsible for the execution of Isabel and Elizabeth's father Hugh.
In 1331 Isabel's husband became Earl of Arundel.

## Annulment

On 4 December 1344, Richard FitzAlan petitioned the pope for an annulment of his marriage to Isabel. King Edward III supported the petition, which was on the grounds that they had never freely consented to marry, that they both had renounced their vows at puberty, but they had been "forced by blows to cohabit, so that a son was born". The annulment was granted by Pope Clement VI.
After the annulment, Isabel retired to five manors in Essex that were given to her by her ex-husband. Richard, following receiving a papal dispensation, married Isabel's first cousin Eleanor of Lancaster, with whom he had apparently been having an affair. Richard and Eleanor had five children who survived into adulthood.

## Issue

Richard and Isabel had one son, Edmund FitzAlan, born in 1329, and Lawrence claims that he had two sisters called Phillipa and Isabel. Richard and Isabel's son Edmund was the heir to the earldom of Arundel until he was declared illegitimate by the annulment of his parents' marriage.
Edmund married Lady Sybil de Montacute, daughter of William Montacute, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Catherine Grandison. He was knighted in 1352 and owned manors throughout the counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Sussex. He served the King in Flanders and communicated "the present state of the Roman church in Italy" to King Edward III on behald of Pope Urban V. In 1369 and 1370, Edmund fought in several military campaigns in France including the Battle of Pontvallain under the command of his second cousin once removed, Edward the Black Prince, during the Hundred Years' War.
When his father died in 1376 Edmund quarrelled with his half-siblings, the children of his father's second marriage, over inheritance rights. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London until he was released in 1377 by request of his brothers-in-law, then. Despite his protests, he lost his inheritance and died sometime before 12 February 1382.

## Ancestry

Ancestors of Isabel le Despenser, Countess of Arundel :