Family Notes

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--- Michael Altschul, *A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares,
1217-1314*, Baltimore MD (Johns Hopkins Press) 1965. p 37.

Even before the annulment (of Gilbert's 1st marriage), Earl Gilbert and King Edward I had discussed the possibility of a marriage into the royal family.  In May 1290, after a long delay pending the annulment and the necessity for a subsequent papal dispensation, Gilbert married Edward's fifth child and second surviving daughter Joan, who had been born at Acre in Palestine in 1272.  Joan of Acre was to outlive the Red Earl by some twelve years, but between 1290 and his death in 1295 they had a son and heir, the last Earl Gilbert, and three daughters, the eventual coheiresses of the Clare inheritance. (P) The children of Earl Gilbert the Red by his two marriages comprised the last
generation of the Clare family.

Joan of Acre, on the other hand [as compared to Gilbert's first wife Alice de
Lusignan], was a remarkably active woman in the dozen years following the Red Earl's death.  By the terms of the marriage agreement of 1290, the entire
inheritance was enfeoffed jointly on Gilbert and Joan.  This meant that it would
not be possible for her father Edward I to grant her only a third of the estates and control the rest himself during the long minority of her son Gilbert.  Joan was thus sole mistress of the inheritance, and she controlled it with marked ability.

From same, p 148:  "The marriage between Gilbert and Joan had long been
planned and long delayed.  Joan was Edward's second surviving daughter, born when her father was still on crusade in 1272.  In 1276 Rudolf of Hapsburg, the German Emperor, had prosed a marriage between the girl and his son Hartmann.  Negotiations were conducted in 1277 and 1278, but the whole project had to be abandoned when Hart,ann was accidentally killed in December, 1281.  In May, 1283, the king agreed to a marrige between his daughter and Earl Gilbert.  The earl had been separated from Alice de Lusignan since 1271, but a formal annulment was now required, and the marriage was finally dissolved in May, 1285. The king and the earl still had to wait for a papal dispensation for the new marriage, and it was only forthcoming in November, 1289.