isabellacapets: Claramonde (or Clarmunda, or Claramunde) de Marsan was a thirteenth-century Gascon h
isabellacapets:Claramonde (or Clarmunda, or Claramunde) de Marsan was a thirteenth-century Gascon heiress and noblewoman. Many of the details of her life are unclear. Her father, Arnaud-Guillame de Marsan, came from a family of wealthy landowners. Her sister was Miramonde de Marsan, wife of the mayor of Bordeaux.Her first husband, Arnaud de Lescun, was the father of her eldest child Fortaner, although he died, leaving Claramonde a widow. On June 30, 1272, she married the knight and noble Arnaud de Gabaston. At their marriage, they acknowledged their debt of 20,000 sous to Edward I, king of England. Gascony, a semi-independent territory, spent much of the thirteenth century consumed by conflict and was technically owned by the English. The relationship between Gascony and Edward I would have great effects on Claramonde and her family. Edward I, distrustful of the rebellious Viscount de Bearn, Gaston VII, took one of his daughters as a hostage, and then the Viscount himself. Gaston was eventually forced to swear not to leave the king’s court without permission, along with four Gascon knights- Arnaud was one of them. Arnaud was also, in his life, a hostage to Alfonso III de Aragon and Philippe le Bel de France, along with being a knight in Edward I’s service. Together, Arnaud and Claramonde held the castles of Roquefort-de-Marsan,Montgaillard-des-Landes, Hagetmau, St. Loubouer, Louvigny and Gabaston. They had five children; Arnaud-Guillame de Marsan, and Piers, Gerard, Raimond-Arnaude, and Amie de Gaveston. Because Arnaud-Guillame’s surname is the same as his mother’s and not Arnaud’s, some think he may have been Arnaud de Lescun’s son and that Claramonde remarried while pregnant.Claramonde seems to have died in 1287, of unclear causes. Four of her castles were then claimed by Edward I. Without her, her family’s financial situation fell apart, further driving Arnaud, and his sons, into working for Edward I. She is well known, if wrongfully so, because of a myth (sometimes mistaken for historical fact, but lesser so today) created in the early seventeenth century, having to do with the life of her son. Her son, Piers, became well known to history, in part, for being in a relationship with Edward I’s son, King Edward II. The two loved each other, but Piers was hated by the nobility and many of the English people, and “the evil male sorcerer” and “cursed Gascon” was eventually executed. To make the story and family seem more sensationalized, the English Renaissance writer and historian John Stow wrote in his Annales that “the father of this Piers was a traitor to the king of France, and was for the same executed, and that his mother was burned for a witch, and that the said Piers was banished for consenting to his mother’s witchcraft”. -- source link
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