Sir Gilbert Fitz Richard de Clare and Tonbridge

   Another name for Gilbert was Gilbert de Clare Lord of Clare.

  General Notes:

~Weis' Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America before 1700, 8th Edition, 66:25, 177A:7, 184:3, 184A:3, 246B:24, 246D:24, Gilbert de Clare married Isabella de Beaumont. He was the son of Gilbert Fitz Richard and Adeliza de Clermont-en-Beauvaisis. They were the parents of Richard de Clare, "Strongbow." He was heir to the English possessions of his father. By King Henry I, 1107-77, he was also granted the Lordship of Cardigan. He is the common ancestor of the two powerful Clare families - the Earls of Hertford and Gloucester and the Earls of Pembroke. ¹⁶⁰

  Information about this person:

• Background Information. ¹⁴¹
Gilbert Fitz Richard styled also de Clare and de tonbridge, Lord of Clare, &c., son who succeeded to the English possessions of his father. He was born before 1066, and was founder of the Priory at Clare, 1090. Henry I granted him granted, 1107-1111, the Lordship of Cardigan.

Gilbert married Adeliza, daughter of Hugh comté de Clermont in Beauvaisis, by Marguerite, daughter of Hilduin comté de Montididier et Roucy. Gilbert died in 1114 or 1117. His widow married as her 2^nd husband, (?Bouchard) de Montmorency.

~Cokayne's Complete Peerage, 2nd Edition, (Clare), Vol. III, pp. 242-243

• Background Information. ⁹⁰²
Gilbert de Clare, baronial leader, was the son of Richard Fitz Gilbert, and heir to his English possessions. Though, like his father, here entered among the Clares, he was commonly known as Gilbert Fitz Richard or Gilbert de Tunbridge. He is first mentioned as fortifying his castle of Tunbridge (spring of 1088), in conjunction with his brother Roger, against William Rufus [Ord. Vit. iv. 17]. Resisting the king on his march into Kent, his castle was stormed, and he himself wounded and taken prisoner [Flor. Wig.] He next appears (June 1095) as warning the king, on his northward march, of an ambuscade [Ord. Vit. iii. 407]. It was apparently in the next year (29 Aug. 1096) that, visiting Colchester with his sister and brother-in-law (Eudes), he laid one of the foundation stones of the latter's abbey of St. John [Mon. Angl. iv. 608]. Both he and his brother Roger were in attendance on the king at his death (August 1100). He is found witnessing a charter of his successor at Norwich on 3 Sept. 1101, and from a charter [vide infra] which has escaped notice, it appears that, with his brother and his two cousins (the sons of Baldwin), he was at Westminster with King Henry at Christmas 1101. The date of his settlement in Wales is involved in some obscurity. It is said to have originated in a raid of Owen, son of Cadogan, in revenge for which Gilbert Fitz Richard was allowed to seize Cardigan, the territory of Cadogan. But the Annals of Wales [p. 35] assign this event to 1111, while the Brut [p. 105] places the conquest in 1107, and Gilbert complains to Henry against Owen in 1111 [p. 113, cf. the Iter Cambrense, p. 47 n.] Mr. Marsh labors to show that Gilbert was lord marcher of Strigul, and an earl, but this is improbable. He appears in 1113 as consenting to his mother's charter [Mon. Angl. iii. 473], and died, according to the Brut [p. 143], in 1114, after a long illness; but according to the Annals of Wales [p. 36], in 1117. It was he who turned the church at Clare into a cell of Bec [Mon. Angl. vi. 1052]. He married Adeliza [ib. ii. 601, 603; iii. 473], said to have been a daughter of the Count of Clermont [Will. Jum. viii. 37, but cf. Journ. Arch. Assoc. xxvi. 150 n.], by whom he left three sons, Richard (d. 1136?), Gilbert, earl of Pembroke and Walter, and a daughter Rohaise, wife of Baderon de Monmouth [Mon. Angl. iv. 597] Two younger sons, Baldwin and Hervey, are mentioned in one of his wife's charters [ib. ii. 601)]. Of these, Baldwin appears, from charters, to have been constantly in attendance on Stephen, and at Lincoln, where he was captured after a valiant defence [Ord. Vit.v. 128], he acted as spokesman to the king's forces, 'loco stans excelso, omnium oculis in eum erectis' [Hen. Hunt, 271]. For a list of his benefactions to religious houses, see Dugdale's Baronage [i. 207-8].

[Sources cited by author: Ordericus Vitalis (ed. Société de l'Histoire de France); William of Jumièges; Florence of Worcester (Eng. Hist. Soc.); Monasticon Anglicanum (new ed.); Annales Cambriæ (Rolls Ser.); Brut y Tywysogion (ib.); Henry of Hungingdon (ib.); Gerald's Iter Cambrense (ib.); Planché's "Earls of Gloucester" (Journal Arch. Assoc. vol. xxvi.); March's Chepstow Castle; Freeman's William Rufus; Dugdale's Baronage; "Charter in Register of St. John's Abbey" (Harl. MS. 312, f. 72).]

~ John Horace Round, The Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. IV, p. 377

Gilbert married Adélaide de Clermont, daughter of Hugues de Creil comté de Clermont-en-Beauvaisis and Marguerite de Rameru ^192,141.^,902 (Adélaide de Clermont was born about 1058 in Northamptonshire, England and died in England.)