| Nationality | Beauchamp, Thomas, eleventh earl of Warwick (1313/14–1369), soldier and magnate, was the son and heir of Guy de Beauchamp, tenth earl of Warwick (c. 1272–1315), and his wife, Alice Tosny, widow of Thomas Leyburn.
Childhood and early career
Beauchamp was probably born some time between August 1313 and 14 February 1314, most likely the latter date. He was no more than two years old when his father died on 12 August 1315, and the earldom thus underwent a long minority at a time of political instability. The custody of the lands of the earldom was granted on 21 June 1317 to Edward II's favourite Hugh Despenser the elder, but in July of the following year the young earl's marriage was granted to Roger (V) Mortimer of Wigmore (1287–1330), and he was placed in Mortimer's guardianship. Before Guy Beauchamp died the two families had apparently arranged that Thomas should marry Mortimer's daughter Katherine, so as to end a feud between the two families over the lordship of Elfael in the Welsh marches. Mortimer's imprisonment and subsequent escape into exile between 1322 and 1326 temporarily frustrated these plans, and Thomas's marriage may have been granted to Edmund Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, who stood high in favour at Edward's court in these years. In 1325 Arundel obtained a papal dispensation to marry the young earl to one of his daughters, but after Edward II's deposition Mortimer was granted the custody of the earldom's lands and he regained Warwick's marriage, for about this time Thomas and Katherine were married.
The return of political stability in the 1330s allowed Warwick, like many other young noblemen of his generation, to earn a reputation for military prowess on campaigns in France and Scotland. He was knighted and given livery of his lands on 20 February 1329, even though he was still well under age: perhaps this reflects the re-establishment of close links with Roger Mortimer. After Mortimer's fall Warwick served Edward III on campaign in Scotland in 1333, in 1334–5, and again in 1337 when he was appointed commander of the army in the north. After 1337, however, Edward's principal concern was the war with France, and Warwick played a leading part in most of the major campaigns of the first phase of the war. He was present at the stand-off at Buironfosse in the autumn of 1339, when both sides were prepared for battle but withdrew. In 1340 he accompanied the king at the siege of Tournai and in the negotiations that led to the truce of Esplechin on 25 September 1340. These campaigns precipitated a financial crisis for the king, however, and Warwick was one of a group of nobles close to the king who were imprisoned in Mechelen from September 1340 until May 1341 as sureties for the king's debts to the bankers of Mechelen and Louvain.
‘The devil Warwick’
When the war resumed in 1342, Warwick served in Brittany and was present with a large retinue at the siege of Vannes. He now began to gain a great reputation for courage and prowess. In 1346 he took part in Edward III's expedition to Normandy and Thomas Walsingham relates how, as the first to land at La Hogue, he and a small band of soldiers repulsed a much larger force of Frenchmen seeking to oppose the English landing, and thus enabled the English to disembark without resistance. At the battle of Crécy, according to Froissart, he was placed in the first battalion alongside Edward, the Black Prince, and fought with him in the fierce encounter late in the battle in which the prince 'won his spurs' (Chroniques, 3.183). After the victory at Crécy he accompanied the king to the siege of Calais, and in 1348 Edward granted him an annuity of 1000 marks on condition that he serve the king in war whenever he was required. He had been at the forefront of Edward's campaigns and had become one of the king's most important and distinguished companions-in-arms: well might the abbot and convent of Abingdon salute him in 1344 as 'the magnificent and powerful man and most energetic warrior' (BL, Beauchamp cartulary, fol. 49r).
Warwick's appetite for war seems in no way to have diminished as he grew older. Although he was by now more than forty, he left with the Black Prince for Bordeaux in 1355 and took part in the prince's raid across southern France later that year. At the battle of Poitiers (19 September 1356) he and John de Vere, earl of Oxford, commanded the vanguard, and Geoffrey Baker describes how, at the height of the battle, he and William Montagu, earl of Salisbury, struggled 'like lions' to see which of them could spill most French blood on the soil of Poitou (Chronicon Galfridi le Baker, 148). He took part with Edward III in the Rheims campaign of 1359, and in the following year was a witness to the treaty of Brétigny which brought a temporary end to the war.
Other theatres of war, however, still provided opportunities for the pursuit of a military career. In 1364, when Warwick was serving with the Black Prince in Gascony, he made arrangements to join the crusade led by Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, which culminated in the sack of Alexandria. Late in the year, however, he changed his mind and received authority from the pope to crusade with the Teutonic knights in Prussia instead. According to the Beauchamp Pageant, a much later source, which may none the less preserve earlier family traditions, Warwick captured the 'Kynges son of Lettowe [Lithuania] and brought hym into Englond And cristened hym at London namyng hym after hym self Thomas' (Beauchamp Pageant, 44). After his return to England Warwick served the king in an administrative rather than a military capacity, going on a mission to Flanders in 1366 and serving as a keeper of the truce on the Scottish border in the following year.
No sooner had the war with France resumed in 1369, however, than he joined John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, in the expedition that raided from Calais to the Pays de Caux: according to the Anonimalle chronicle, news of the arrival of 'the devil Warwick' (Anonimalle Chronicle, 61) at Calais in support of Gaunt's force was enough to make the duke of Burgundy and his army, encamped near Calais, withdraw under cover of darkness to avoid risk of an encounter with the English. Walsingham, who seems particularly to have admired him, describes him as a 'spirited warrior' (Historia Anglicana, 1.282), and, like the Anonimalle chronicle, records that the French army was astonished to hear of his arrival and fled even before he had landed. Warwick's enthusiasm for campaigning not only alarmed the French, but also led to a dispute with Gaunt, who had hitherto confined his military activity to raids in the area around Calais. Burgundy's withdrawal, however, laid the way open for Gaunt, with Warwick, to invade Normandy, but the English army failed to take Harfleur, its main objective, and returned to Calais by the end of October. There Warwick succumbed to the plague and died on 13 November 1369 at the age of fifty-five.
Wealth and expenditure
Warwick's distinction as a soldier brought him both honours and material benefits. In 1344 Edward III appointed him sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire for life, and marshal of England during his pleasure. Some four years later he was one of the founder members of the Order of the Garter, taking precedence after the prince of Wales and the duke of Lancaster [see also Founding knights of the Order of the Garter]. In December 1347 the king made him a gift of £1366 11s. 8d. 'for good service in the war beyond the seas' (CPR, 1345–8, 440), and seven months later he was retained by the king for life at a fee of 1000 marks p.a. In 1353 the king ensured Warwick's victory in a lawsuit to recover the lordship of Gower from John (II) Mowbray, although Richard II was to reverse the judgment in 1397. Warwick also acquired, partly by gift and partly perhaps by purchase, a substantial collection of jewels, plate, and reliquaries, most of which he bequeathed to his children. At his baptism, for example, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, had given him a gold box containing a piece of bone of St George, and the Black Prince gave him an eagle brooch, which he left to his daughter Philippa.
Beauchamp spent some of his wealth on building work at Warwick. He began the construction of the new chancel at St Mary's Church, Warwick, but little more than an extension to the crypt and the foundations of the chancel had been built by the time of his death, and he ordered his executors to complete the work. He was responsible for the construction of Caesar's Tower, the Clock Tower, and part of the north-east curtain wall at Warwick Castle. Some of this work may have been financed out of the ransoms of prisoners he took at Poitiers: the archbishop of Sens, for example, was ransomed for £8000. In the early 1340s he bought land and property, mainly in Warwickshire, though he acquired some manors elsewhere. However, the Beauchamp cartulary records few purchases of lands after c.1348, and one of the purposes of his earlier purchases may have been to make provision for his younger sons. In 1344 Edward III granted him permission to carry through a major re-enfeoffment of the lands of the earldom to ensure their descent in tail male, but his younger sons were given a life interest in some of the lands. However, not only Guy, his eldest son, but also his third son, Reinbrun, and fifth son, Roger, died during their father's lifetime, a private sorrow that cast a shadow over his public fame and prestige.
Children and connections by marriage
Beauchamp was buried in the chancel of St Mary's Church, Warwick, next to his wife who had predeceased him by no more than three months. Somewhat later, perhaps when the chancel was complete, the present tomb with alabaster effigies of the earl and countess was constructed. He had five sons: Guy, who died on 28 April 1360, leaving two daughters as his coheirs, Elizabeth (d. c.1369) and Katherine, who became a nun (under the 1344 entail they were barred from inheriting the earldom); Thomas Beauchamp (1337x9–1401) who succeeded to the earldom and, under the entail of 1344, to most of its lands; Reinbrun, who died in 1361; William Beauchamp (c. 1343–1411), who inherited the castle and honour of Abergavenny; Roger, who died in 1361 while still a child; and at least six daughters, most of whom made distinguished marriages that reflected their father's prestige and extended the family's influence widely through the nobility. Maud (d. 1403) married Roger, Lord Clifford; Philippa married Hugh Stafford, earl of Stafford; Alice (d. 1383) married first John Beauchamp of Hatch and afterwards Sir Matthew Gournay; Joan married Ralph, Lord Basset of Drayton, and may have died in her father's lifetime, for she is not mentioned in his will; Isabell (d. 1416) married first John, Lord Strange of Blakemere, and later William Ufford, earl of Suffolk; after his death she became a nun. Margaret married Guy de Montfort and when he died she too became a nun. Dugdale followed John Rous in suggesting that Warwick had three further daughters—Agnes, Juliana, and Katherine—but none of them is mentioned in his will. |