• General Notes

  TITLE:  6th Earl of GLOUCESTER and Earl of HERTFORD
  Victory at Evesham in Aug. 1265.  Acceeded in 1262.
  
  Note: The eldest son and heir, Gilbert, was born on September 2, 1243,and was called Gilbert Goch ("the Red") after the fiery color ofhis hair. The Red Earl had seisin of his estates in 1263 64 andwas undoubtedly the single most powerful magnate of the realm,in the later years of Henry III's reign and under King Edward I,until his death on December 7, 1295.
  "Like his father Richard, Earl Gilbert the Red was marriedtwice. In 1253
  Richard arranged for the marriage of his son, then about tenyears old, to
  Henry III's niece Alice, daughter of Hugh de Lusignan, count ofLa Marche
  and Angouleme^me. Although she had two daughters, the matchproved to be both a personal and a political failure; Gilbertand Alice were formally
  separated in 1271 and the marriage was finally annulled in 1285.Even
  before the annulment, Earl Gilbert and King Edward I haddiscussed the
  possibility of a marriage into the royal family. In May 1290,after a long
  delay pending the annulment and the necessity for a subsequentpapal
  dispensation, Gilbert married Edward's fifth child and secondsurviving
  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 Bilbert, and three daughters, the eventualcoheiresses of the Clare inheritance. (P) The
  children of Earl Gilbert the Red by his two marriages comprisedthe last
  generation of the Clare family.
  --- Michael Altschul, *A Baronial Family in Medieval England:The Clares, 1217-1314*, Baltimore MD (Johns Hopkins Press) 1965.p 37. Continued under wives Alice and Joan of Acre.
  From the same, p 39-40: "Earl Gilbert the Red left a son andfive
  daughters. Of his daughters by Alice de Lusignan, the elder,Isabella, was
  born in 1263. In 1297 she was betrothed to Guy, son and heir ofWilliam de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Guy de Beachampsucceeded his father as earl in 1298, but the projectedmarriage, although still pending, never took place. Not until1216 was Isabella married, at the advanced age of fifty-three,to the Gloucestershire baron Maurice de Berkeley, and she diedwithout issue in 1338. The other daughter, Joan, probably bornsometime between 1264 and 1271, was married in 1284 to Duncan,earl of Fife, who died in 1288. The marriage of their sonDuncan (d. 1353) to Mary, daughter of Joan of Acre and Ralph deMonthermer, has already been mentioned [see note under Joan ofAcre]. In 1302 or shortly thereafter, Joan married anotherScots baron, Gervase Avenel. They entered the fealty of herkinsman Robert Bruce and were declared rebels by King Edward II.Her estates in England, which her father had given as a marriageportion at the time of her betrothal to the earl of Fife, wereforfeited, and later granted to Hugh Despenser, husband ofJoan's half sister Eleanor, the eldest daughter of Earl Gilbertthe Red and Joan of Acre."
  --- Michael Altschul, *A Baronial Family in Medieval England:The Clares, 1217-1314*, Baltimore MD (Johns Hopkins Press) 1965.p 39. Continued under Gilbert's son Gilbert (4) de Clare.
  From same, p 94: "Gilbert de Clare, the "Red Earl" ofGloucester and
  Hertford, was after Simon de Montfort the single most importantfigure in
  the later stages of the baronial opposition to Henry III. Fromhis father
  Earl Richard he inherited not only the great Clare estates andlordships in
  England, Wales, and Ireland, but also a position of leadershipamong the
  magnates of the realm; and he was destined to play an even moredecisive
  role in the civil wars which determined the fate of the strugglebetween
  king and baronage than his father had played in the initialstages of the
  movement for reform."
  From same, p 104, 107-108: "The victory at Lewes [over HenryIII, 14 May 1264] marked the high point of Simon de Montfort'sfortunes. ..... (P) Simon's supremacy was short-lived. ..

Details of Gilbert Goch's family with Joan of Acre PLANTAGENET