Hugh III "The Elder" Le DESPENCER, Sir/Earl Winchester^{[1, 2]}

1260 - 1326  (66 years)

• Name	Hugh III "The Elder" Le DESPENCER
  Suffix	Sir/Earl Winchester
  Nickname	The Elder
  Born	1 Mar 1260	Of, Winchester, Hampshire, England Or Louch
  Gender	Male
  Cause of Death	[3]
  	hung, beheaded and dismembered
  Death	[3]
  	He was hanged in his armour and then beheaded. His body was cut into pieces for the dogs, his head sent to Winchester and put on display there.
  FamilySearch ID	LB55-134
  Knighted	1306	with Edward II   [3]
  Owned	1314	Cardiff, Wales   [3]
  Name	Earl OF WINCHESTER  [3]
  Name	Hugh DESPENSER  [3]
  Name	The Elder
  _UID	70BF73754B6048E793411E243CC48BA335BB
  Died	27 Oct 1326	Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng (Hanged, Drawn And Quartered)
  Buried	24 Nov 1326	Tewkesbury Abbey, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England
  Person ID	I22811	Carney Wehofer 2024 Genealogy
  Last Modified	30 Dec 2022

  
  

  Father	Sir Knight Hugh LE DESPENCER,   b. 5 Aug 1223, Loughborough, Leicestershire, England ,   d. 4 Aug 1265, Battle of Evesham, Worcestershire, England  (Age 41 years)
  Mother	Aline (Aliva) (Alice) BASSETT, Countess Of Norfolk,   b. 1241, Wooten Basset, Wiltshire, England ,   d. Bef 11 Apr 1281  (Age 40 years)
  Married	Abt 1260	Of Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England
  Family ID	F11638	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Isabel De BEAUCHAMP,   b. 1255, Warwick, Warwickshire, England ,   d. 30 May 1306, Elmley Castle, Worcestershire, England  (Age 51 years)
  Married	Bef 1286
  Children	1. Margaret LE DESPENCER,   d. Yes, date unknown   2. Isabel Le DESPENCER, Baroness Hastings,   b. 1286, Winchester, Hampshire, England ,   d. 4 Dec 1334  (Age 48 years)   3. Lord Hugh "The Younger" LE DESPENCER,   b. 1287, Barton, Gloucestershire, England ,   d. 24 Nov 1326, Hereford, Herefordshire, England  (Age 39 years)   4. Sir Philip LE DESPENCER,   b. 1289, Stoke, Gloucestershire, England ,   d. 24 Sep 1313  (Age 24 years)
  Last Modified	29 Aug 2016
  Family ID	F10566	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  DEATH: CAUS Executed via hanging, drawn & quartered. Hugh Dispenser, senior, so called to distinguish him from his son, who bore the designation of Hugh Despencer, junior, both so well known in history as the favourites of the unfortunate Edward II. Of Hugh, senior, we shall first treat, although as father and son ran almost the same course at the same time and shared a similar fate, it is not easy to sever their deeds. Hugh Despencer paid a fine of 2,000 marks to the king, in the 15th of Edward I, for marrying without license Isabel, dau. of William de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and widow of Patrick Chaworth; by this lady he had an only son, the too celebrated Hugh Dispenser, jun. In the 22nd of the same reign, he was made governor of Odiham Castle, co. Southampton, and the same year had summons to attend the king at Portsmouth prepared with horse and arms for an expedition into Gascony. In two years afterwards he was at the battle of Dunbar in Scotland, where the English triumphed, and the next year he was one of the commissioners accredited to treat of peace between the English monarch and the kings of the Romans and of France. In the 26th and 28th years of Edward, he was again engaged in the wars of Scotland and was sent by his sovereign, with the Earl of Lincoln, to the papal court to complain of the Scots, and to entreat that his holiness would no longer favour them as they had abused his confidence by falsehoods. To the very close of King Edward I's reign, his lordship seems to have enjoyed the favour of that great prince, and had summons to parliament from him from 23 June, 1295, to 14 March, 13222, but it was after the accession of Edward's unhappy son, the second of that name, that the Spencers attained that extraordinary eminence from which, with their feeble-minded master, they were eventually hurled into the gulf of irretrievable ruin. In the first years of Edward II's reign, we find the father and son still engaged in the Scottish wars. In the 14th year, the king hearing of great animosities between the younger Spencer and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and learning that they were collecting their followers in order to come to open combat, interfered and strictly commanded Lord Hereford to forebear. About the same time a dispute arising between the Earl of Hereford and John de Mowbray regarding some lands in Wales, young Spencer seized possession of the estate and kept it from both the litigants. This conduct and similar proceedings on the part of the elder Spencer exciting the indignation of the barons, they formed a league against the favourites and, placing the king's cousin, Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, at their head, they marched with banners flying from Sherburne to St. Alban's, whence they despatched the bishops of Salisbury, Hereford, and Chichester to the king with a demand that they Spencers should be banish, to which mission the king, however, giving an imperious reply in the negative, the irritated nobles continued their route to London when Edward, at the instance of the queen, acquiesced, whereupon the barons summoned a parliament in which the Spencers were banished from England and the sentence was proclaimed in Westminster Hall. To this decision, Hugh the elder submitted and retired, but Hugh the younger lurked in divers places, sometimes on land, and sometimes at sea, and was fortunate enough to capture, during his exile, two vessels near Sandwich, laden with merchandise to the value of D40,000, after which, being recalled by the king, an army was raise which encountered and defeated the baronial forces at Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire. In this action, wherein numbers were slain, the Earl of Lancaster was taken prisoner, was carried to his own castle at Pontefract, and there, after a summary trial (the elder Spencer being one of his judges), beheaded. The Spencers now became more powerful than ever and the elder was created Earl of Winchester, the king loading him with grants of forfeited estates. He was about the same time constituted warden of the king's forests on the south of Trent. Young Spencer obtained, like his father, immense grants from the lands forfeited after the battle of Boroughbridge, but not satisfied with those, and they were incredibly numerous, he extorted by force whatsoever he please. Amongst other acts of lawless oppression, it is related that he seized upon the person of Elizabeth Comyn, a great heiress, the wife of Richard Talbot, in her house at Kennington, in Surrey, and detained her for twelve months in prison until her compelled her to assign to him the manor of Painswike, in Gloucestershire, and the castle and manor of Goderich, in the marches of Wales, but this ill-obtained and ill-exercised power was not formed for permanent endurance and a brief space only was necessary to bring to to a termination. The queen and the young prince, who had fled to France and had been proclaimed traitors through the influence of the Spencers, ascertaining the feelings of the people, ventured to return and landed at Harwich with the noblemen and persons of eminence who had been exiled after the defeat at Boroughbridge, raised the royal standard and soon found themselves at the head of a considerable force, when, marching upon Bristol where the king and his favourites then were, they were received in that city with acclamation, and the elder Spencer being seized (although in his ninetieth year), was brought in chains before the prince and the barons, and received judgment of death, which was accordingly executed by hanging the culprit upon a gallows in the sight of the king and of his son upon St. Dennis's day, in October, 1326. It is said by some writers that the body was then cut to pieces and given to the dogs. Young Spencer, with the king, effected his escape, but they were both soon afterwards taken and delivered to the queen, when the unfortunate monarch was consigned to Berkeley Castle where he was basely murdered in 1327. Hugh Spencer, the younger, it appears, was impeached before parliament and received sentence "to be drawn upon a hurdle with trumps and trumpets throughout all the city of Hereford," and there to be hanged and quartered, which sentence was executed on a gallows 50 feet high, upon St. Andrew's eve anno 1326 (20 Edward II), Thus terminated the career of two of the most celebrated royal favourites in the annals of England. The younger Hugh, as well as his father, was a peer of the realm, having been summoned to parliament as a baron from 29 July, 1314, to 10 October, 1325, but the Baronies of Spencer and the Earldom of Winchester expired under the attainders of the father and son. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 166, Despencer, Earl of Winchester] ******* Hugh le Despenser ("The Elder Despenser"), 1st Lord (Baron) le Despenser of the 1295 Creation and 1st and last Earl of Winchester, so created 10 May 1322; called to Parliament by writ 24 June 1295, thus being deemed to have been created a baron; sole person of rank to take Edward II's part in the quarrel with his nobles over the notorious royal favourite Piers Gaveston, whom Edward was eventually induced to banish; later represented Edward in negotiating a treaty with his nobles at the time of Gaveston's murder by them in 1312; at Battle of Bannockburn 1314; banished from court by the machinations of his enemies Feb 1314/15; disinherited and exiled in perpetuity Aug 1321, through malign influence over Edward; this judgement reversed Jan 1321/2 and May 1322; and after Edward II had fled to Wales was convicted as a traitor and hanged 27 Oct 1326, when all his honours were forfeited. [Burke's Peerage] ------------------------------------------------------------- Hugh and his son were favorites of King Edward II (a weak king) and helped him throw off the mastery of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. Edward's reliance on the Despencer's drew the ire of his wife Isabel. She had become the mistress of Roger de Mortimer while on a diplomatic mission to France. In September 1326 the couple invaded England, executed the Despencers, and deposed Edward II in favor of his son, Edward III. See Encyclopedia Britannica, Edward II. *********

  
  

• Sources

  [S602] Gedcom provided by, John Woodward "Jack" Buschman, February 10, 2002 (Reliability: 2). [S641] Ancestral Roots Of Sixty Colonists Who Came To New England Between 1623 And 1650, Weis, Frederick Lewis, (Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc., 1992). [S1160] FamilySearch Family Tree (http://www.familysearch.org), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ((http://www.familysearch.org)), accessed 30 Dec 2022), entry for Hugh III "The Elder" Le DESPENCER, person ID LB55-134. (Reliability: 3).