General Notes

After the execution of his father effected his escape with the king, they were both soon after taken and delivered to the Queen when the unfortunate monarch, King Edward II, was consigned to Berkeley Castle where he was basely murdered in 1327. Hugh Despencer, the Younger, it appears was impeached before Parliament and received sentence "to be drawn upon a hurdle, with trumps and trumpets, throughout all the city of Hereford" and there to be hanged and quartered, which sentence was executed on a gallows 50 feet high, upon St. Andrews eve, 1326. Thus terminated the career of two of the most celebrated royal favorites in the annals of England. The Younger Hugh was a peer of the realm as well as his father, having been summoned to Parliament as a baron from July 29, 1314, to Oct. 10, 1325, but the two baronies of Spencer and the Earldom of Winchester expired upon the attainders of the father and son, Hugh, Jr., at his execution was quartered and the four quarters set up in different places, and his head on the London Bridge. Some years later his bones were collected and buried in Tewkesbury Abbey. Hugh Despenser, Jr., married Eleanor or Alianore, daughter of Gilbert de Clare and his wife Joan of Acre, daughter of King Edward I of England. Thus Hugh, Jr's, wife was niece of King Edward II. After the execution of Hugh his widow Eleanor with her children and family was confined in the Tower of London until the ensuing February, when she obtained her liberty. Before Jan. 26, 1328-9, she was abducted from Hanley Castle by Sir William le Zouche de Mortimer of Ashby, Co. Leicester, who subsequently married her. She was born Oct., 1292, and died June 30, 1337.