Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/385

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Clare
377
Clare

she called herself both) married, a second time, Theobald, lord Verdon, who however died in the following year. She then married, a third time, Robert (or Roger) Damory, baron of Armoy, by whom she had two daughters: Elizabeth, who married Lord Bardolph; and Eleanor, who married John de Raleigh. Her third husband Damory was attainted for taking part with Thomas, earl of Lancaster in 1321, and was pardoned, but died the same year; and from that time she enjoyed in her own right a large portion of the property of the earldom of Gloucester. She appears to have maintained a high character for piety and love of learning. Among her other acts of beneficence was that which is perpetuated in the name of a college in Cambridge. University Hall had been founded in 1326 for the maintenance of fifteen scholars, but in 1336 its revenues were found to be insufficient, and Lady de Clare obtained various grants of ecclesiastical preferments for it, and otherwise helped it so liberally that by 1346 it began to be called Clare Hall; and in 1359 Lady de Clare gave it formally as its founder a body of statutes, which are dated from her residence at Bardfield in Essex. At her death, which occurred on 4 Nov. 1360, her heiress was her granddaughter Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of her son William de Burgh. In her will, in which she calls herself Elizabeth de Burgh, lady of Clare, she left considerable legacies in money, plate, and books to the college which she had founded, as well as to other religious establishments in and near Cambridge and other parts of the eastern counties. She was buried at Ware, Hertfordshire, by the side of her third husband.

[Cooper's Memorials of Cambridge, vol. i.; Leland's Collectanea, pp. 356, 462-3, 474, 555; Nichols's Royal Wills, pp. 21-43; Mullinger's Hist. Univ. of Camb.]

E. S. S.

CLARE, GILBERT de (d. 1115?), baronial leader, was the son of Richard Fitz-Gilbert [see Clare, Richard de, d. 1090?], and heir to his English possessions. Though, like his father, here entered among the Clares, he was commonly known as Gilbert FitzRichard or Gilbert de Tunbridge. He is first mentioned as fortifying his castle of Tunbridge (spring of 1088), in conjunction with his brother Roger, against William Rufus (Ord. Vit. iv. 17). Resisting the king on his march into Kent, his castle was stormed, and he himself wounded and taken prisoner (Flor. Wig.) He next appears (June 1095) as warning the king, on his northward march,' of an ambuscade (Ord. Vit. iii. 407). It was apparently in the next year (29 Aug. 1096) that, visiting Colchester with his sister and brother-in-law (Eudes), he laid one of the foundation-stones of the latter's abbey of St. John (Mon. Angl. iv. 608). Both he and his brother Roger were in attendance on the king at his death (August 1100). He is found witnessing a charter of his successor at Norwich on 3 Sept. 1101, and from a charter (vide infra) which has escaped notice, it appears that, with his brother and his two cousins (the sons of Baldwin), he was at Westminster with King Henry at Christmas 1101. The date of his settlement in Wales is involved in some obscurity. It is said to have originated in a raid of Owen, son of Cadogan, in revenge for which Gilbert FitzRichard was allowed to seize Cardigan, the territory of Cadogan. But the ‘Annals of Wales (p. 35) assign this event to 1111, while the ‘Brut’ (p. 105) places the conquest in 1107, and Gilbert complains to Henry against Owen in 1111 (p. 113, cf. the Iter Cambrense, p. 47 n.) Mr. Marsh labours to show that Gilbert was lord marcher of Striguil, and an earl, but this is improbable. He appears in 1113 as consenting to his mother's charter (Mon. Angl. iii. 473), and died, according to the ‘Brut’ (p. 143), in 1114, after a long illness; but according to the ‘Annals of Wales’ (p. 36), in 1117. It was he who turned the church at Clare into a cell of Bec (Mon. Angl. vi. 1052). He married Adeliza (ib. ii. 601, 603; iii. 473), said to have been a daughter of the Count of Clermont (Will. Jum. viii. 37, but cf. Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvi. 150 n.), by whom he left three sons, Richard (d. 1136?) [q. v.], Gilbert, earl of Pembroke and Walter [see Clare, Walter de], and a daughter Rohaise, wife of Baderon de Monmouth (Mon. Angl. iv. 597). Two younger sons, Baldwin and Hervey, are mentioned in one of his wife's charters (ib. ii. 601). Of these, Baldwin appears, from charters, to have been constantly in attendance on Stephen, and at Lincoln, where he was captured after a valiant defence (Ord. Vit. v. 128), he acted as spokesman to the king's forces, ‘loco stans excelso, omnium oculis in eum erectis’ (Hen. Hunt, 271). For a list of his benefactions to religious houses, see Dugdale's ‘Baronage’ (i. 207-8).

[Ordericus Vitalis (ed. Société de l'Histoire de France); William of Jumièges; Florence of Worcester (Eng. Hist. Soc.); Monasticon Anglicanum (new ed.); Annales Cambriæ (Rolls Ser.); Brut y Tywysogion (ib.); Henry of Huntingdon (ib.); Gerald's Iter Cambrense (ib.); Planché's Earls of Gloucester (Journal Arch. Assoc. vol. xxvi.); Marsh's Chepstow Castle; Freeman's William Rufus; Dugdale's Baronage; Charter in Register of St. John's Abbey (Harl. MS. 312, f. 72).]

J. H. R.