| Home Surname List Name Index Sources Gedcom File | Eighth Generation14. Hugh
LE DESPENCER (THE OLDER)1
was born in 1262 in Rutolandshire, England. He died about 1326.
Hugh Le DeSpencer, the Elder, great great grandson of Thurston was born about
1262 and supported King Edward I in the war against his rival, the Earl of Lancaster.
He served in the Welsh war but was fined 2,000 marks because he married, without
the king's license, Isabel, daughter of William Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, the
widow of Patrick of Chaworth. He accompanied Edward to Scotland and fought in
the Battle of Dunbar (I) and the expediition against Flanders in 1297. The King
used him to negotiate for peace between Edward I and the King of the Romans and
the King of France. He served again in Scotland and then was sent to negociate
with France which led to the peace of 1303. In 1305 he was sent to see Pope Clement
V at Lyons and obtained a Papal bull which absolved King Edward from the oaths
he had been forced to take to his people. When Edward II was coronated as King,
Hugh carried part of the royal insignia. He defended the king's favorite, Gaveston,
in 1308 against the league of barons, which alienated him from the barons who
regarded him as a deserter from their cause. The parliament, which met at Northampton,
declared his dismissal from the council (Vita Edwardi II, ii. 158; annales Paulini,
i. 264). He was soon back in the favor of the King and received the castles of
Devises and Marlborough and soon became the chief adviser to the King. In 1312
he was sent, along with Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, to attempt to secure
London for the King, but a riot ensued and they fled the city (Annales Londondienses,
i. 215). After the murder of Gaveston by the barons, Hugh Despencer became the
head of the court party and plotted with the King to exact revenge against the
barons. He bitterly opposed the Earl of Lancaster, and accompanied the King on
his disastrous expedition to Scotland in 1314, and the defeat at Bannockburn,
which placed the King at the mercy of Lancaster, Hugh was forced to resign from
the court and the council. However, in 1318, when the king had recouped his strength
and was ready to oppose Lancaster, Hugh joined the other lords of the same party.
At approximately this time, his son, Hugh Despencer, the younger, joined the
King's side, and father and son received large land grants from the crown. They
were hated by the barons and were accused of acts of oppression and wrongdoing.
Because they were of noble family, they held the most prominent place in the
party against Lancaster's plans, and sought after their own advancement through
alliance with the King in opposing Lancaster. Because of their greed and amibition,
they used their influence from the King for their own purposes. Hugh the younger
began a quarrel with Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, and the latter formed
a league against the Despencers, which included the lords of the Welsh marches
and other powerful nobles, who in 1321 ravaged the Despencers' lands and captured
their castles in Wales and destroyed their manors and fences around their chaces
in England. The King tried to interfere on their behalf but was persuaded to
call a parliament and the King was pressured by parliament to consent to the
banishment of the Despencers. Finally, he consented to the banishment and in
July, 1321, the charges against them were formally stated and considered in parliament,
which caused the estrangement of the King from his people, since parliament had
usurped his authoriy and wouldn't allow the Despencers to see the King. The elder
Despencer went abroad, but by December of 1321 the King had obtained a condemnation
of the sentence from the convocation of the clergy, and on January 1, 1322, Archbishop
Reynolds declared it illegal and the elder Despencer returned, joined the King
in attacking his enemies. After the battle of Boroughbridge at which Lancaster
was defeated, he assisted the King in Lancaster's trial and condemnation, and
was created Earl of Winchester by the parliament held at York. Unfortunately,
the Despencers were hated by Queen Isabella, who had gone to France as an ambassador
to her brother Charles IV. War between the two countries seemed imminent, and
the queen refused the king's summons, until the Despencers were removed from
power, and the Queen plotted to overthrow the elder Despencer and his son. They
persuaded the King to outlaw the Queen and her son, who was with her, but she
arrived in England with an armed force in September 1326 and issued a proclamation
against the Despencers. The king fled before her army, and he sent Hugh the elder
to secure the town and castle of Bristol, but the Queen marched to Berkely, where
she recaptured the castle previously held by the Despencers and returned it to
its owner, Thomas, Lord Berkeley. Then she marched to Bristol, where most of
the people were on her side and turned the elder Hugh over to the queen. The
next day, October 27, 1326, he was sentenced to death, and executed as a traitor
by being hanged from a gallows 50 feet high, drawn, deboweled (See Braveheart)
and beheaded, his body given to the dogs after four days, his head was sent to
Winchester. Hugh and his nephew Edward Le DeSpencer had strongly supported Tewkesbury
Abbey in Gloucestershire, and between the two of them, completed the Choir, the
Roof, and the Chevet Chapels during the reigns of Edward II, III, Richard II
and Henry IV, between 1307 and 1413, and the remains of his body was entombed
there. His son, Hugh Le DeSpencer, the Younger, had accompanied King Edward II
in his flight from London to Cardiff in Wales, where they sought refuge in the
Despencers' castles at Caerphilly and Neath. The queen sent William de la Zouche
and Rhys ap Howel to capture them, and they surrendered on November 16, 1326
at Llantrissaint, and were brought to Hereford where the queen was waiting. The
younger Hugh was charged with piracy, complicity in the murder of Thomas, Earl
of Lancaster, and was condemned and was excuted as a traitor with a death similar
to his father, and his head was send to London where it was placed on London
Bridge. *(2).
Hugh LE DESPENCER (THE OLDER) and Isabel BEAUCHAMP
had the following children:
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