Eleanor of Lancaster
An 18th-century depiction of Eleanor and her second husband, Richard Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel
Lady Beaumont Countess of Arundel
Spouse	John de Beaumont, 2nd Baron Beaumont m. 1330; dec. 1342 Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel m. 1344; wid. 1372
Issue
Henry Beaumont, 3rd Baron Beaumont Matilda de Courtenay Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel John FitzAlan, 1st Baron Arundel Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury Joan Fitzalan, Countess of Hereford Alice Fitzalan, Countess of Kent Mary Fitzalan, Lady Strange of Blackmere Eleanor Fitzalan
Father	Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster
Mother	Maud Chaworth
Born	11 September 1318(1318-09-11)
Died	11 January 1372(1372-01-11) (aged 60) Arundel
Burial	Lewes Priory, Sussex

Eleanor of Lancaster, Countess of Arundel (sometimes called Eleanor Plantagenet;^[1] 11 September 1318 – 11 January 1372) was the fifth daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster and Maud Chaworth.

First marriage and issue

6 November 1330, she married John de Beaumont, 2nd Baron Beaumont, son of Henry Beaumont, 4th Earl of Buchan (c. 1288 - 1340) and his wife Alice Comyn (1289- 3 July 1349). They had two children:

1. Henry Beaumont, 3rd Baron Beaumont, (4 April 1340 – 17 June 1369). He was the first husband of the daughter of Maud de Badlesmere and John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford, Lady Margaret de Vere (died 15 June 1398), by whom he had issue.
2. Matilda Beaumont (died July 1367), married Hugh de Courtenay

Eleanor was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Philippa, and was in service to her in Ghent when her son Henry was born. John de Beaumont died in a tournament on 14 April 1342.

Second marriage

On 5 February 1344 at Ditton Church, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, she married Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel.^[2]

His previous marriage, to Isabel le Despenser, had taken place when they were children. It was annulled by Papal mandate as she, since her father's attainder and execution, had ceased to be of any importance to him. Pope Clement VI obligingly annulled the marriage, bastardized the issue, and provided a dispensation for his second marriage to the woman with whom he had been living in adultery (the dispensation, dated 4 March 1344/1345, was required because his first and second wives were first cousins).

The children of Eleanor's second marriage were:

1. Richard (1346–1397), who succeeded as Earl of Arundel
2. John Fitzalan (bef 1349 - 1379)
3. Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury (c. 1345 - 19 February 1413)
4. Lady Joan FitzAlan (1347/1348 - 7 April 1419), married Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford
5. Lady Alice FitzAlan (1350 - 17 March 1416), married Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent (Thomas Holand)
6. Lady Mary FitzAlan (died 29 August 1396), married John Le Strange, 4th Lord Strange of Blackmere, by whom she had issue
7. Lady Eleanor FitzAlan (1356 - before 1366)

Later life

The tomb effigy of Eleanor and Richard Fitzalan in Chichester Cathedral.

Eleanor died at Arundel and was buried at Lewes Priory in Lewes, Sussex, England. Her husband survived her by four years, and was buried beside her; in his will Richard requests to be buried "near to the tomb of Eleanor de Lancaster, my wife; and I desire that my tomb be no higher than hers, that no men at arms, horses, hearse, or other pomp, be used at my funeral, but only five torches...as was about the corpse of my wife, be allowed."

Ancestry

Sources

• Fowler, Kenneth. The King's Lieutenant, 1969
• Nicolas, Nicholas Harris. Testamenta Vetusta, 1826.
• Weis, Frederick Lewis, Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700, Lines: 17-30, 21-30, 28-33, 97-33, 114-31

Notes

1. ^ The surname "Plantagenet" has been retrospectively applied to the descendants of Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou and Empress Matilda without historical justification: it is simply a convenient, if deceptive, method of referring to people who had, in fact, no surname. The first descendant of Geoffrey to use the surname was Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York (father of both Edward IV of England and Richard III of England) who apparently assumed it about 1448.
2. ^ also called Richard de Arundel