Family Notes

[SUSANNA KEENE.FTW]

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.

--- Michael Altschul, *A Baronial Family in Medieval England:
The Clares, 1217-1314*, Baltimore MD (Johns Hopkins Press)
1965. p 37
Secretly married to Ralph without her father's permission or
knowledge.
Ralph & Joan's children were excluded from the de Clare
inheritance.