Earl Gilbert de Clare of Gloucester Gloucester "belonged to a family who had come to England with William the Conqueror and had increased its lands and importance over the centuries ... He was a colorful man, not only because of his bright red hair ... "[1]
Joan of Acre was the daughter of King Edward I and was born to Edward and his wife "Eleanor of Castile while they were crusading in the Holy Land in 1272" before the death of Edward's father Henry III. "On the leisurely journey back to England, the royal party stopped in Picardy to visit Queen Eleanor's mother, the widowed Queen Joan of Castile, countess of Ponthieu in her own right. When Edward and Eleanor went on to England, they left Joan with her grandmother for four years, so she was nearly seven when whe first came to England." [2]
Joan's father Edward I was "planning to win continental allies through Joan's marriage. He had arranged for her to marry Hartman of Habsburgh, king of the Romans in 1279, but duties and problems delayed Hartman's journey to England for the ceremony. On his way to marry her at last, eh was drowned in the Rhine. Earl Gilbert's first marriage, to King Henry II's niece Alice de Lusignan, ended in annulment in 1285 after producing two daughters but not the spousal accord that sometimes resulted from marital association. He and Joan wed in April 1290 after seven years' negotiations. The final agreement between king and earl called for Gilbert to surrender all his estates to Edward, who granted them back to Gilbert and Joan to be held jointly. The lands would remeain with the surviving spouse for life, and then pass to the heirs of their bodies; if they left no children, the estates would revert to the Crown. As the agreement deprived the daughters of Gilbert's first marriage of any hope of inheriting his lands, and as Gilbert, himself, essentially lost control of the devolution of his inheritance, his acceptance of the agreement is hard to fathom. Perhaps he was gambling on a lack of male issue to inherit Edward I's throne, thus opening the royal succession to Joan's children." [3]
[1] Frances A. Underhill, For her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 5, [GoogleBooks].
[2] Frances A. Underhill, For her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 5, [GoogleBooks].
[3] Frances A. Underhill, For her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 5-6, [GoogleBooks].