Gilbert de Clare Earl of Pembroke

  General Notes:

Weis' Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700, 8th Edition, 184:4, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke m. Isabella de Beaumont.

~ Emperor Charlemagnes Descendents, vol. II, p. 18 ¹⁶⁰

  Information about this person:

• Background Information. ¹⁴¹
Gilbert Fitz Gilbert, styled also de Clare, was the 2^nd son of Gilbert Fitz Richard, styled also as Gilbert de Clare, lord of Clare, Tonbridge and Cardigan, by Alice, daughter of Hugh, count of Clermont. Gilbert attested charters of his father in 1114 or 1117, and of his elder brother, Richard for Clare Priory, and shortly after the death of his brother Richard, he joined his mother, his two surviving brothers, Walter & Baldwin, and his sister Rohese in granting a charter for Thorney Abbey. He became a great baron by obtaining the estates of his paternal uncles Roger and Walter who died without male heir. He succeeded Roger, sometime after Sep. 1131, in the baronies and castles of Bienfaite and Orbec in Normany, where he supported Stephen. He succeeded his uncle Walter as lord of Nether Gwent, with the castle of Strifoil, later known as Chepstow, probably in Mar 1137/8. In 1138, Stephen created him Earl of Pembroke, and Gilbert besieged and captured a castle or fortified town from the rebels.

Stephen also gave him the rape and castle of Pevensey. When the empress Maud landed in England in the autumn of 1139, Gilbert marched with the King to Arundel. At the battle of Lincoln, 2 Feb 1140/1, he was one of the nobles who fled when the first division of Stephen's army was put to flight, but he was among those who rallied to the Queen after she had recovered London in June. He was at Canterbury when Stephen sent was recrowned there at Christmas 1141. In 1144, Gilbert de Clare, invaded South Wales and captured or build Carmarthen Castle. In 1147, he rebelled, when Stephen refused to give him the castles surrendered by his nephew, Gilbert, 1^st Earl of Hertford. Stepehn took three of Gilbert's castles, but he appears to have made peace before his death the following year.

Gilbert de Clare married Isabel of Elizabeth, daughter of Robert de Beaumont, count of Meulan and 1^st Earl of Leicester, by Isabel or Elizabeth, daughter of Hugh the Great, comté de Vermandois, younger son of Henri I, King of France, who later married a 2^nd time to William de Warenne, 2^nd Earl of Surrey. Gilbert most likely died 6 Jan 1147/8, or possibly 1148/9, and was buried in Tintern Abbey. His widow was living in 1172.

~ Cokayne's Complete Peerage, 2nd Edition, Vol. X, (Pembroke), pp. 348-352

Gilbert married Isabella de Beaumont, daughter of Sir Robert de Beaumont Earl of Leicester and Isabella de Vermandois Countess of Leicester ¹⁴¹.^,529 (Isabella de Beaumont died after 1172 in England/France ¹⁴¹.)