Eleanor de Bohun, Countess of Ormonde

Who was Eleanor de Bohun, Countess of Ormonde?

Eleanor de Bohun, Countess of Ormond was an English noblewoman born in Knaresborough Castle to Humphrey de Bohun, 4th Earl of Hereford, and Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward I of England and Eleanor of Castile. After the deaths of her parents, she was placed in the care of her aunt Mary Plantagenet and brought up at Amesbury Priory alongside various cousins including Joan Gaveston, Isabel of Lancaster and Joan de Monthermer. Edward II of England gave the priory a generous allowance of 100 marks annually for the upkeep of Eleanor and her younger cousin, Joan Gaveston.

Eleanor was married twice; first in 1327 to James Butler, 1st Earl of Ormond, who died in 1337 and secondly, six years later in 1343, to Thomas de Dagworth, Lord Dagworth who was killed in an ambush in Brittany in 1352.

By her first marriage, Eleanor was an ancestress of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr, Queen consorts of King Henry VIII of England. Other descendants include the dukes of Beaufort, Newcastle, Norfolk, earls of Ormond, Desmond, Shrewsbury, Dorset, Rochester, Sandwich, Arundel, and Stafford.