Loretta de Briouze

Loretta de Briouze , Countess of Leicester (uncertain: † March 4, 1266 ) was an English noblewoman and hermit .

Loretta came from the Anglo- Norman Braose family . She was the daughter of William de Braose, 4th Baron of Bramber and his wife Maud de St Valery . Her father was a powerful baron with extensive holdings in the Welsh Marches and southern England. Loretta married Robert de Beaumont, 4th Earl of Leicester , in 1196 . As a dowry she received from her father the estate of Tawstock near Barnstaple in Devon . Her husband, a powerful magnate and participant in the Third Crusade , died in 1204, the marriage had remained childless. Her husband's two sisters and their husbands inherited his estates, after lengthy negotiations Loretta received as Wittum lands in Hampshire , Berkshire and Dorset , from which she received an annual income of £ 140.

At the end of 1207, her father lost the favor of King John Ohneland , who subsequently persecuted her father and drove him into exile, where he died in 1211. The king's wrath struck her entire family, including her mother and brother, who died in the king's dungeon in 1210. Loretta also fell into the sights of the king, who forced her to promise not to remarry without his permission in November 1207. She then withdrew to France, whereupon her lands were occupied by the king. Before 1214 she had returned to England, where she had to renew her promise not to remarry without the king's permission, whereupon she got her goods back. She later donated it to the Hospitallers of the Order of St. John in Buckland Sororum in lands near Tawstock. Under the influence of Archbishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury, Loretta made a vow of chastity between 1219 and 1221 and lived from then on, together with two other women, as a hermit in Hackington near Canterbury . She stood up for the poor and promoted the Franciscan order, which founded its first settlements in England around this time. On April 29, 1265, during the Second War, the Baron was visited by Simon de Montfort , a grandson of one of her sister-in-law, who sought her advice on the question of the rights and privileges of the Stewards of England , an office that Montfort inherited her husband held.

Loretta died on March 4th, the year of her death being uncertain. She was buried in St Stephen's Church in Hackington. Her widowed sister Annora also lived as a hermit near Iffley in Oxfordshire from 1232 .

Web links

• Susan M. Johns: Briouze, Loretta de, countess of Leicester (d. In or after 1266). 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
• Barons de Braose: Loretta