Eleanor de Clare

Who was Eleanor de Clare?

Eleanor de Clare was the wife of the powerful Hugh Despenser the younger. She was born in 1292 at Caerphilly in Glamorgan, Wales. She was the eldest daughter of Gilbert de Clare, 6th Earl of Hertford and 7th Earl of Gloucester, and Joan of Acre, daughter of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile; thus she was a granddaughter to Edward I of England. With her sisters, Elizabeth de Clare and Margaret de Clare, she inherited her father's estates after the death of her brother, Gilbert de Clare, 4th Earl of Gloucester at Bannockburn in 1314.