Primary source for Isabel Marshall's birth date

[The Hoorn]

A couple of sources, namely Charles Cawley's Medieval Lands website and Douglas Richardson's Royal Ancestry (2:185), state that Isabel Marshall, daughter of William Marshall and Isabel de Clare, was born on 9 October 1200. She later married, on 9 October 1217, to Gilbert de Clare.

I looked at the source footnotes for each author but I could not find where the information came from.

Can anyone tell me which primary source was used to establish Isabel's birth date?

Thanks!

[The Hoorn]

WOW! Guess I have this board stumped - LOL.

[joe...@gmail.com]

Same date is suspicious, no? Do you think this was someone seeing a "17 years and more" and marking it as "before oct 9" which got changed to "oct 9" as an error?

She is also frequently mentioned as being christened in April 1206 in Pembrokeshire, and I have likewise never seen evidence of this

[CE Wood]

Other sources cited for 9 Oct 1200:

ES II #83
ES III.1 #156
Paget, _The Lineage and Ancestry of H.R.H. Prince Charles_, p15, 16, 181.


CE Wood

[Peter Stewart via]

Perhaps Douglas Richardson is too busy to respond to this query immediately - but it's too soon to say that a professional historian is 'stumped' for an answer. This will be interesting when he gets round to it, as knowing the precise birthdate for a female ca 1200 is highly unusual. As far as I am aware there is no primary source for Isabel's birthdate, but I stand to be corrected on this.

The Medieval Lands website adds that she was born in Pembroke castle, but this birthplace may be even less capable of proof than the date. According to David Crouch, in *William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147-1219*, second edition (2002) pp 86-87, "[King] John was still issuing orders to the sheriff of Pembroke and to 'his' barons and knights of Rhos and Pembroke in October 1200 ... It seems likely that Pembroke came into the hands of its new earl at some time between October 1200 ... and May 1201, when William Marshal appears as the patron of the burgesses of Pembroke'. It is scarcely likely that William's wife would have given birth in Pembroke castle before it came into his hands.

By the way, Isabel married Gilbert de Clare on 9 October 1214, not 1217 - this appears to be a misprint in CP vol 5 p 695 where two sources are cited, of which one gives 1214 and the other no year for the marriage.

Peter Stewart

[taf via]

On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 6:34:54 PM UTC-8, Peter Stewart via wrote:
> On 27/01/2015 6:57 AM, The Hoorn via wrote:
>
> > A couple of sources, namely Charles Cawley's Medieval Lands website
> > and Douglas Richardson's Royal Ancestry (2:185), state that Isabel
> > Marshall, daughter of William Marshall and Isabel de Clare, was born
> > on 9 October 1200. She later married, on 9 October 1217, to Gilbert
> > de Clare.
> >
> > I looked at the source footnotes for each author but I could not
> > find where the information came from.
> >
> > Can anyone tell me which primary source was used to establish Isabel's
> > birth date?
>
> Perhaps Douglas Richardson is too busy to respond to this query immediately -
> but it's too soon to say that a professional historian is 'stumped' for an answer.
> This will be interesting when he gets round to it, as knowing the precise
> birthdate for a female ca 1200 is highly unusual. As far as I am aware there is
> no primary source for Isabel's birthdate, but I stand to be corrected on this.
>

As Mr. Richardson's starting material was Faris' Plantagenet Ancestry,
which gives the same date, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for him
to report to us a primary source. Richardson, in MCA, does place her
birth in Pembroke Castle, which I do not see in available snippets
from Faris, so perhaps he has a primary source for this addition.
Both Faris and Cawley probably got the birthdate from Paget (or ES),
and it seems pretty likely that it somehow derived from her marriage
date, either by the suggested extrapolation from an age, or simply by
a clerical error that directly transferred the date from one life
event to another. Either way, as has been pointed out by others in
this thread, both the coincidence with her marriage date and the
extreme dearth of records that would enable such a date to be
identified would seem to render it unlikely to be authentic.

That is not the case, however. Her Wikipedia entry does give this
date for her birth, and containing as it does all the knowledge of the
world, Wikipedia is never wrong. (It got the date from The
Peerage.com, a typical internet genealogical magpie collection,
although at least it cites sources, in this case Alison Weir,
Britain's Royal Family:The Complete Genealogy. Weir does give the
date, but doesn't cite her sources, so it can't be traced further -
again, Paget seems likely.)

taf

[Peter Stewart via]

On 29/01/2015 1:25 AM, taf via wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 at 6:34:54 PM UTC-8, Peter Stewart via wrote:
>> On 27/01/2015 6:57 AM, The Hoorn via wrote:
>>
>>> A couple of sources, namely Charles Cawley's Medieval Lands website
>>> and Douglas Richardson's Royal Ancestry (2:185), state that Isabel
>>> Marshall, daughter of William Marshall and Isabel de Clare, was born
>>> on 9 October 1200. She later married, on 9 October 1217, to Gilbert
>>> de Clare.
>>>
>>> I looked at the source footnotes for each author but I could not
>>> find where the information came from.
>>>
>>> Can anyone tell me which primary source was used to establish Isabel's
>>> birth date?
>> Perhaps Douglas Richardson is too busy to respond to this query immediately -
>> but it's too soon to say that a professional historian is 'stumped' for an answer.
>> This will be interesting when he gets round to it, as knowing the precise
>> birthdate for a female ca 1200 is highly unusual. As far as I am aware there is
>> no primary source for Isabel's birthdate, but I stand to be corrected on this.
>>
> As Mr. Richardson's starting material was Faris' Plantagenet Ancestry,
> which gives the same date, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for him
> to report to us a primary source. Richardson, in MCA, does place her
> birth in Pembroke Castle, which I do not see in available snippets
> from Faris, so perhaps he has a primary source for this addition.

If there is a primary source for the date and place (and as you suggest,
I'm not holding my breath), then David Crouch has goofed in overlooking
this as evidence for an important point in his biography of William
Marshal. If not (and like you, I suspect this is the case) then another
professional historian has goofed by copying from someone else's work
without doing his own. There's a first time for everything...

Peter Stewart