28TH GENERATION


256327558. Roger DAMORY died in Mar 1322.

256327559. Elizabeth DE CLARE was born on 16 Sep 1295 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. She died on 4 Nov 1360. Elizabeth de Clare is known to history as the Lady of Clare. Born the daughter of one of England's great territorial magnates, she became his heir after the death of her brother at the disastrous Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. She married three times in quick succession, being widowed for the last time in 1321, when she was still only about twenty-seven.

Inheriting dowers from all three of her husbands, she also held lands outright from her father that were worth at least two thousand pounds a year. This provided her with an immense income by the standards of the day. As an indication of just how great an aristocrat she was, no fewer than ninety-three esquires took her livery.

She lived the rest of her life at Clare in Suffolk in great state. The details of her day to day dealings have been preserved in the finest set of household accounts to survive from this era.

The Lady of Clare was also a great patroness of the Church, giving lands and money to build churches and to endow them, notably Ely Cathedral. Her greatest claim to fame, however, probably stems from the fact that she was the founder of Clare College at Cambridge, the first college there specifically planned to include undergraduates. Children were:

child128163779 i. Elizabeth DAMORY.

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