Ralph Ufford

Sir Ralph Ufford († April 9, 1346 in Kilmainham ) was an English knight and royal justiciar of Ireland .

origin

Ralph Ufford was a younger son of Robert Ufford, Lord Ufford (1279-1316) and his wife Cicely († 1325), a daughter of Robert de Valoignes . His older brother Robert Ufford was made Earl of Suffolk in 1337 .

Military career

In 1324, Ufford accompanied Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent , when he traveled to Paris to negotiate peace during the Saint-Sardos War . In either 1335 or 1336, Ufford took part in one of King Edward III's campaigns during the Second Scottish War of Independence . to Scotland part, while he belonged to the English occupation of Perth . Before 1337 he was promoted to Knight Bachelor . At the beginning of the Hundred Years War he was a knight in the royal household and accompanied the king to Flanders from 1338 to 1340 . Before September 1342 he had been beaten to the Knight Banneret , and the king promised him a pension of £ 200 annually, as long as he had not received land from which he could draw an adequate income. In October 1342 he led three knights, eleven squires and eight mounted archers back to Flanders.

Justiciar of Ireland

In May 1343, Ufford's annual pension was increased by £ 100, and another token of the king's favor was his marriage in June 1343 to Matilda of Lancaster , a distant cousin of the king and widow of William de Burgh, 3rd Earl of Ulster . William de Burgh was murdered in 1333, after which his holdings in Ireland were occupied by Irish rebels. His heir was Williams and Matilda's underage daughter Elizabeth , who had been married to Lionel of Antwerp , a son of the king. In 1344 Ufford was appointed justiciar , i.e. deputy, of the king in Ireland. This office had already been held by his grandfather Robert of Ufford in the 13th century, but it was more obvious that Ufford was to enforce the claims of his wife and especially those of her son-in-law Lionel of Antwerp to the de Burghs in Ireland. For this purpose, the king provided him with a force of 40 men-at-arms and 200 archers, so that Ufford was quite able to enforce the royal authority in Ireland militarily. This inevitably led to tensions with the local Anglo-Irish nobles from the beginning of his tenure, against whom his wife's claims were partially directed. In addition, the local nobles suspected Ufford of wanting to enforce the claims of other English nobles to Irish possessions, and they even accused him of being generally hostile to most of the local nobles.

Shortly after arriving in Dublin in July 1344 , Ufford moved to Munster in the south. So he asserted the royal rights in Youghal and Inchiquin in County Cork , after Maurice FitzGerald, 1st Earl of Desmond after the death of Giles de Badlesmere, 2nd Baron Badlesmere in 1338 occupied these regions. In addition, he secured the royal administration of the lordships of the Ormond family for the widowed Countess of Ormond, a daughter of the English Earl of Hereford and her new husband Thomas Dagworth . Here, too, the Earl of Desmond had already wanted to take over the administration. Ufford moved back to Dublin via Leinster , assuring the king that he had resolved the unrest in Munster and secured royal rule in Leinster. In March 1345 he moved north to Ulster . At the Moirypass he lost a number of horses as well as his luggage and his war chest in a raid, but in Ulster he deposed the ruling Ó Néill and replaced him with a rival relative. In the south there was now a revolt by the Earl of Desmond. Thereupon Ufford moved with his army again to Munster in the summer of 1345. He strengthened his army to more than 2000 men by October, which enabled him to conquer the rebel castles. William Grant, the Seneschal Desmonds, he had executed as a traitor by Hanged, drawn and quartered , while the Earl himself defected to local Irish rebels as an outlaw. Ufford had Maurice FitzGerald, 4th Earl of Kildare arrested - allegedly in an ambush - because he accused him of lacking support. Kildare remained in custody while his reign was occupied by Ufford.

In early 1346, however, Ufford fell ill. He retired to the Johanniterkommende Kilmainham near Dublin, where he died in April. His wife Matilda fled back to England with his body. Ufford was buried in Campsey Ash , Suffolk, and his widow entered the Augustinian convent there in 1347 . Ufford had a daughter, Maud , from his marriage to Matilda , who may not be born until after his death.

The violent tenure of Ufford in Ireland appeared to have clarified relations between King Edward III. and the Anglo-Irish magnates. After Ufford's death, the king rehabilitated the Earls of Desmond and Kildare, both of whom served as royal justiciar during the 1350s.

Web links

• Robin Frame: Ufford, Sir Ralph (d. 1346). 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
• Ralph de Ufford on thepeerage.com , accessed February 2, 2016.