General Notes

Thomas de Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick, KG (c1348, founding member); born probably 14 Feb 1314/5; Hereditary Sheriff of Worcs and Pantler at Coronations, knighted Jan 1328/9, Marshal of England Feb 1343/4-69, Sheriff of Warwicks and Leics for life 1344, one of two Marshals of the English Army at Crecy 1346 (where jut commander Prince of Wales division) and Siege of Calais 1346-47, Admiral of the Fleet from mouth of Thames towards West by March 1352/3, Constable of English Army in Gascony and commander of the vanguard at victory over the French of Poitiers 1356; married after 22 Feb 1324/5 Lady Catherine de Mortimer, daughter of 1st Earl of March by Joan, daughter and heir of Piers de Geneville, and died of the plague 13 Nov 1369.  [Burke's Peerage]

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Thomas de Beauchamp, (whose sponsors were Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, and Henry, his brother, and Thomas de Warrington, prior of Kenilworth] 3rd Earl of Warwick, regarding whom we find the king (Edward II) in two years subsequently [1317] soliciting a dispensation from the pope to enable him to marry his cousin Catherine, dau. of Roger de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, under whose guardianship the young earl had been placed; an alliance eventually formed when his lordship had completed his fifteenth year. In two years afterwards, the earl, by special licence from the crown, was allowed to do homage and to assume his hereditary offices of sheriff of Worcestershire and chamberlain of the exchequer. This nobleman sustained in the brilliant reign of Edward III the high military renown of his illustrious progenitor, and became distinguished in arms almost from his boyhood. So early as the third year of that monarch [1330], he commanded the left wing of the king's army at Wyzonfosse, where Edward proposed to give the French battle, and from that period was the constant companion of the king and his gallant son in their splendid campaigns. At Cressy, he had a principal command in the van of the English army under the Prince of Wales, and at Poitiers, where Dugdale says he fought so long and so stoutly, that his hand was galled with the exercise of his sword and pole-axe; he personally took William de Melleun, archbishop of Sens, prisoner, for whose ransom he obtained 8,000 marks. After these heroic achievements in France, the earl arrayed himself under the banner of the cross and reaped fresh laurels on the plains of Palestine, whence, upon his return, he brought home the son of the King of Lithuania, whom he christened at London by the name of Thomas, answering for the new convert himself at the baptismal font, for his lordship was not more distinguished by his valour than his piety as his numerous and liberal donations to the church while living, and bequests at his decease, testify. This nobleman rebuilt the walls of Warwick Castle, which had been demolished in the time of the Maudits, adding strong gates with fortified gateways and embattled towers; he likewise founded the choir of the collegiate church of St. Mary, built a booth hall in the marketplace, and made the town of Warwick toll free. His lordship had issue by the Countess already mentioned, seven sons and nine daus., viz., Guy, called by Dugdale a "stout soldier," m. Philippa, dau. of Henry, Lord Ferrers, of Groby, and dying before his father, left three daus., viz, Katherine, Elizabeth, and Margaret, all nuns at Shouldham, in Norfolk; Thomas, inheritor of the honours; Reynburne, who left an only dau., Alianore, wife of John Knight, of Hanslope, in co. Bucks, by whom she left a dau., Emma, who m. William Forster, from whom the Forsters of Hanslope derived; William (Sir), K.G., Lord of Abergavenny; John, Roger, and Hierom, all d. unm.; Maud,* m. to Roger de Clifford; Philippa, m. to Hugh, Earl of Stafford; Alice, m. to John, Lord Beauchamp, of Hache, co. Somerset; Joane, m. to Ralph, Lord Basset, of Drayton; Isabel, m. 1st to John, Lord Strange, of Blackmere, and 2ndly, to William Ufford, Earl of Suffolk; Margaret, m. to Guy de Montford, after whose decease she took the veil at Shouldham; Agnes, m. 1st, --- Cokesay, and afterward --- Bardolf; Juliana, d. unm.; and Catherine, took the veil at Wroxhall, in Warwickshire.

The earl was one of the original knights of the Garter. His lordship d. 13 November, 1369, of the plague at Calais, where he was then employed in the military capacity and had just achieved a victory over the French; he was s. by his eldest son, Thomas.

* Those ladies' portraitures are curiously drawn and placed in the windows on the south side of the quire of the collegiate church at Warwick, in the habit of their time. Seven of them were married and have their paternal arms upon their inner garment, and on their outer mantle their husbands arms; the picture of Isabel, who married twice, is twice drawn. -- Dugdales Baronage. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage Ltd, London, England, 1883, pp. 30-31, Beauchamp, Earls of Warwick]