| Nationality | Beauchamp, Guy de, tenth earl of Warwick (c. 1272–1315), magnate, was the son of William (IV) de Beauchamp, ninth earl of Warwick (c. 1238–1298), and his wife, Matilda (or Maud) (d. 1301), daughter of John fitz Geoffrey; he succeeded his father as earl on the latter's death in 1298. During the reign of Edward I he distinguished himself by service in Scotland and elsewhere. Soon after the battle of Falkirk (22 July 1298), he received Scottish lands valued at 1000 marks per annum. In May of the following year he was given protection on going overseas on the king's business, and received a respite of his father's debt of £180 to the Riccardi of Lucca. Present at the wedding of Edward I to Margaret of France at Canterbury on 10 September 1299, in the following year he participated in the siege of Caerlaverock. At Easter 1301 he was among the English negotiators who met with French envoys at Canterbury seeking the release of King John Balliol. He was also one of seven earls who sealed the letter of 12 February 1301 to the pope, rejecting his authority on the Scottish question. In recognition of his service, in 1301 Beauchamp was granted an extension on the payment of his own and his ancestors' debts to the crown. He campaigned in Scotland in 1303–4, being present at Perth and at the siege of Stirling in the company of the prince of Wales. In 1305 he received a grant of murage and pavage for the town of Warwick for a term of seven years. He was ordered to join Prince Edward in London in March 1307, as a member of the party preparing to travel to France, but this journey was not undertaken. Later in 1307 Edward I rewarded Warwick's service one last time by granting him John Balliol's lordship of Barnard Castle in co. Durham.
Earl Guy was present at the death of Edward I at Burgh-on-Sands on 7 July 1307. He may on that occasion, as the author of the Brut chronicle relates, have been one of those charged to look after Edward of Caernarfon, and particularly to prevent the return from exile of Piers Gaveston. He alone among the leading earls did not seal Gaveston's charter of enfeoffment as earl of Cornwall dated 6 August 1307. Indeed, from the outset of the reign of Edward II, Guy de Beauchamp is consistently named by chroniclers and informed correspondents as being among the leaders of the opposition to the crown. In part this may have resulted from the new king's Scottish policy, which jeopardized the earl's own holdings. At the coronation of Edward II, along with the earls of Lancaster and Lincoln, he carried a ceremonial sword. He was certainly among those who called for Gaveston's return to exile following the coronation, and even after this was achieved he remained in opposition. Although he attended the Northampton parliament in August 1308, and appears occasionally in the witness lists of the charter rolls between August and November, Warwick refused to be reconciled with the king, despite such gifts as the grant of four templar manors in Warwickshire in December 1308. As the author of the Vita Edwardi secundi remarks, 'The Earl of Warwick alone could not be prevailed upon. He said that he could not with a clean conscience go back upon what had been decided' (Vita Edwardi secundi, 7).
After Gaveston's return to England following his second exile in June 1309, tensions again surfaced between the king and his magnates. The Black Dog of Arden, as the favourite nicknamed him, was a driving force behind the commissioning and the drafting of the ordinances of 1311. In October 1309 he joined the earls of Lancaster, Lincoln, Oxford, and Arundel in refusing to attend a council at York because of the favourite's presence. In February of the following year he was forbidden to come armed to parliament, but that very parliament forced the king on 16 March 1310 to agree to the appointment of the lords ordainer to reform his household and realm. The earl of Warwick was particularly active in the drafting of the ordinances. The author of the Vita describes him as the leader of the genuine reformers, and he consistently attended meetings, generally along with the earls of Lancaster, Hereford, and Pembroke, at which the actual drafting of the ordinances took place. He was present at their publication on 27 September 1311 at St Paul's.
Warwick is perhaps best known for his role in the death of Gaveston. After the favourite had surrendered at Scarborough on 19 May 1312, he was conducted south by Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke. At Deddington, Oxfordshire, on 10 June, Warwick seized the prisoner and conveyed him back to Warwick Castle, where he was tried after a fashion and sentenced to death. Although Warwick is depicted standing over the beheaded Gaveston in the late fifteenth-century Rous roll, the execution actually took place on the lands of the earl of Lancaster, and according to the Annales Londonienses the earl of Warwick refused to accept the corpse when presented with it by four shoemakers, ordering them to return it to the site of the beheading. Needless to say, relations with the king were strained by this violent confrontation. England came close to civil war, and protracted negotiations were entered into which finally resulted in the pardon of Warwick and others only in October 1313. Nevertheless, the earl refused to serve with the king in Scotland in the 1314 campaign that culminated in the disaster at Bannockburn. Despite this military setback, or perhaps because of it, by early 1315 Warwick, according to the Annales Londonienses, was 'the principal member of the king's council' (Stubbs, 1.232). Within months, however, the earl was dead.
Warwick died, aged forty-three, on 12 August 1315. He was buried at Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire, a Cistercian house patronized by the Beauchamps and to which Earl Guy had previously given his library, which included a large number of romances and saints' lives. Walsingham's chronicle reports a rumour that the earl was poisoned by unnamed members of the king's inner circle. Warwick is described in the chronicles as a man of 'wisdom and probity' (Chronicon de Lanercost, 216), and 'a discriminating and highly literate man, the wisdom of whom shone forth through the whole kingdom' (Stubbs, 1.236). 'In wisdom and council', the Vita says, 'he had no peer' (Vita Edwardi secundi, 63). One of the great magnates of England, the earl of Warwick held lands in nineteen counties, the march of Wales, and Scotland, with the greatest concentration of his holdings being in Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Plans for his marriage to Isabel de Clare, daughter of the earl of Gloucester, seem to have fallen through, and he married Alice, widow of Thomas of Leyburn and sister of Robert Tosny, early in 1309. Their son Thomas Beauchamp, probably born on 14 February 1314 and named after the earl of Lancaster, was his heir. |