Beauchamp (noble family, Bedford)

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The Beauchamp family was an Anglo-Norman aristocratic family that was the leading noble family in Bedfordshire from about 1080 to 1265 . The family owned land mainly in Bedfordshire, but also in Buckinghamshire , Hertfordshire , Cambridgeshire , Essex and Huntingdonshire , which at the beginning of the 13th century comprised over 45 Knight's fee . Despite the local predominance of the family in Bedfordshire, few members of the family had any major political significance. There is no evidence that the family with the family Beauchamp from Worcester was related.

The family from around 1080 until the end of the anarchy

The founder of the family was Hugh de Beauchamp , presumably from Normandy , who , through marriage to Matilda , the heiress of Ralf Tallebosc and his wife Azelina , acquired extensive land holdings in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. This made him the largest landowner in Bedfordshire after the Crown. The center of the holdings was Bedford Castle , for which the family claimed the hereditary office of constable. During the so-called Anarchy , Bedford Castle was disputed between the daughter of Hugh's eldest son Simon and the sons of his second son Robert until King Henry II gave the castle to Payn de Beauchamp , a son of Robert, in the 1150s .

Bedford Castle site in 2007. Bedford Castle, the center of the Beauchamp family's holdings, has almost no remains.

The family under the kings from the House of Plantagenet until 1265

Like many of their contemporaries, the Beauchamps made donations to churches and monasteries. In the 11th and 12th centuries the family considered St Albans and Bermondsey , among other things , but Rohese , the wife of Payn de Beauchamp, donated Chicksands Priory around 1150 . Her son Simon de Beauchamp converted the collegiate monastery in Newnham near Bedford into a priory around 1166 . Simon's son William de Beauchamp was one of the rebels against the king during the First Barons' War . In 1215, Bedford Castle was conquered by royal troops under Falkes de Bréauté . After the end of the Barons' War, Bréauté did not want to surrender the castle again. He rebelled against the king, who then had the castle conquered and destroyed in 1224. William de Beauchamp got the castle back on the condition that it not be fortified again. William's younger brother Geoffrey served as a military and civil servant in Wales and Gascony . In 1257, William de Beauchamp left the family estates to his son of the same name, William de Beauchamp . However, he died in 1262, allegedly he was poisoned. As a result, his underage brother, John, became heir of the estates. He supported the aristocratic opposition under Simon de Montfort during the Second War of the Barons and fell on August 4, 1265 at the Battle of Evesham . As a result, the daughter of his eldest brother, Simon, who had already died, became the heir to the estate, but she died shortly afterwards without children. Finally, the inheritance was divided into an elaborate division of the estate between the three sisters of John de Beauchamp and their descendants.

Tribe list

  1. Hugh de Beauchamp (before 1080 – about 1118); ∞ Matilda
    1. Simon de Beauchamp († 1136 or 1137); ∞ NN
      1. Daughter ∞ Hugh Beaumont († after 1140) 1138 Earl of Bedford , forfeited in 1142, then Hugh Poer, called Hugo Pauper , son of Robert de Beaumont , Comte de Meulan , Earl of Leicester , and Elisabeth de Vermandois
    2. Robert de Beauchamp († before 1130); ∞ NN
      1. Miles de Beauchamp († between 1142 and 1153)
      2. Payn de Beauchamp († before 1155); ∞ Rohese de Vere , daughter of Aubrey II. De Vere , Chamberlain of England, and Adelisa de Clare, widow of Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex
        1. ? Helen
        2. Simon de Beauchamp (around 1145–1206/07), Lord of Bedford; ∞ Isabella, she was second married to Nicholas de Kenet
          1. William de Beauchamp (1185-1260); ∞ (1) 1207 Gunnora de Lanvalay, probably daughter of William de Lanvalay and Gunnora de Saint-Clair; ∞ (2) Ida Longespée , daughter of William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury , and Ela, Countess of Salisbury , widow of Ralph de Somery
            1. (1) John de Beauchamp († before 1232)
            2. (2) Simon de Beauchamp († 1256); ∞ Isabel
              1. Joan de Beauchamp
            3. (2) William de Beauchamp († 1262)
            4. (2) John de Beauchamp (after 1241–1265 at the Battle of Evesham )
            5. (2) Matilda de Beauchamp († before 1275); ∞ (1) Roger de Mowbray, Lord of Thirsk († 1266), son of William de Mowbray , Baron of Axholme , and Avice; ∞ (2) Roger Lestrange († 1311)
            6. Ela de Beauchamp; ∞ Baldwin Wake , son of Hugh Wake and Joan de Stuteville
            7. (2) Beatrice de Beauchamp; ∞ (1) Thomas FitzOtes of Mendlesham (Suffolk), son of Otes FitzWilliam and Margaret; ∞ (2) William de Munchensi of Edwardstone, son of William de Munchesi and Joan de Crek
          2. Geoffrey de Beauchamp († after 1257)
          3. ? Robert de Beauchamp, attested in 1248
      3. ? Oliver de Beauchamp (* probably 1110/25; † before 1157); ⚭ NN - offspring

Web links

  • Kathryn Faulkner: Beauchamp, de, family (per. C. 1080 – c. 1265). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  • Charles Cawley, Medieval Lands, Untiteld English Nobility A - C, Beauchamp ( online , accessed July 27, 2020)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ C. Gore Chambers, GH Fowler: The Beauchamps, barons of Bedford . In: The Publications of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society , 1 (1913), p. 1
  2. Jump up ↑ Joyce Godber: History of Bedfordshire: 1066-1888 . Bedfordshire County Council, Bedford 1969, p. 24
  3. Jump up ↑ Joyce Godber: History of Bedfordshire: 1066-1888 . Bedfordshire County Council, Bedford 1969, p. 82