Margaret de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln

Margaret de Quincy. Depiction around 1880

Margaret de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln (* around 1206; † March 1266 in Hamstead Marshall ), was an English noblewoman.

Origin and marriage to John de Lacy

She was born Margaret de Quincy to Robert de Quincy († 1217), the eldest son of Saer de Quincy, 1st Earl of Winchester , and Hawise , a sister of Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester . After her grandfather's death in 1219, she was theoretically the heir to the title of Earl of Winchester , but in fact her uncle Roger de Quincy inherited the title. Margaret was married to the wealthy Baron John de Lacy , Constable of Chester , before June 21, 1221 . Her husband probably resented the legal advisor Hubert de Burgh for not having become the heir to the title of Earl of Winchester, at least he remained his opponent until his fall in 1232. In 1232, however, after the death of her uncle Ranulph of Chester, Margaret inherited the title Countess of Lincoln through her mother Hawise , which was then passed on to her husband in November.

Marriage to Walter Marshal

Her husband died in 1240, when Wittum was given a third of her husband's estates for lifelong use on January 2, 1241, giving her annual income of around £ 315. In addition, after the death of her mother in 1243, she inherited the Bolingbroke reign and finally in 1264, after her uncle Roger had died without male descendants, parts of the lands of her father's family in Dorset . As a wealthy widow, she married Walter Marshal, 5th Earl of Pembroke , in 1242 . The marriage remained childless, her husband died in 1245. Only a few days later his brother Anselm died , so that the Marshal family died out in the male line. The rich family property, which brought in an annual income of over £ 2000, now had to be divided among her husband's five sisters and their descendants. Margaret, like two other widows of the Marshal brothers, was entitled to a widow. Margaret was given five rich estates in England for lifelong use, including Hamstead Marshall, the ancestral home of the Marshal family, and Caversham, Berkshire , but the final division of the inheritance led to lengthy arguments.

Between the death of her first husband in 1240 and her remarriage to Walter Marshal, she probably wrote Les reules Seynt Roberd , a directive for the good administration of the Countess of Lincoln's estates, based on a work by Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, the he had written for the administration of his diocese.

Next life

In addition to her inherited Bolingbroke rule, Margaret now owned the Wittum from her two marriages, which she administered herself. After the death of her second husband, she did not remarry, which repeatedly claimed that before 1252 the marriage to an unidentified Richard of Wiltshire was probably based on a misinterpreted document entry. She became a friend of Queen Eleanor , who she supported from 1247 against King Henry's half-brothers , the Lusignans . Her son Edmund married an Italian relative of the queen. In 1257 she arranged with Simon de Montfort , Hugh le Despenser and Walter de Ludham the marriage of her grandson Henry to Margaret Longespée , the eldest granddaughter and co-heir of William Longespée of Salisbury . After her son Edmund died in 1258, the king gave her the management of his grandson Henry's inheritance in August 1258 for the minority of her grandson Henry. During the Second War of the Barons , she supported the King and Queen. She did not allow her vassals to side with the barons against the king. She occupied the lands of two of her vassals who fought on the side of the barons.

She was buried in the Church of the Order of St. John in Clerkenwell , where her father had also been buried.

progeny

She had at least one son and three daughters, including John de Lacy

• Maud de Lacy (1223-1289) ∞ Richard de Clare
• Edmund de Lacy (around 1230–1258)

literature

• Louise J. Wilkinson: Women in Thirteenth-Century Lincolnshire . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2007. ISBN 978-0-86193-285-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)

Web links

• Jennifer C. Ward: Lacy [nee Quincy], Margaret de, countess of Lincoln (d. 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
• Margaret de Quincey on thepeerage.com , accessed November 22, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Louise J. Wilkinson: Women in Thirteenth-Century Lincolnshire . Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2007. ISBN 978-0-86193-285-6 , p. 50