Catalogue description CLARE HOUSEHOLD.

This is a large collection of the private household accounts of three members of the Clare family, the earliest being Bogo de Clare, the second Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and the last Elizabeth de Burgh, lady de Clare. It is not known why they survive among the Chancery records. On her death Elizabeth de Burgh had an heir, her granddaughter Elizabeth, and bequeathed money, plate and books to Clare Hall in the University of Cambridge, which she had patronised, so there is no clear reason why the crown should inherit her household accounts. However, her landed property went to the Mortimer earls of March, and there are several possibilities as to how and when these records, together with estate records in other classes, passed from their archives to those of the crown during the fifteenth century. None of these possibilities has yet been confirmed.

Bogo de Clare

Bogo de Clare was a son of Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and a younger brother of Gilbert de Clare, who inherited the earldoms in 1261 and played a major part in the conflict between Henry III and Simon de Montfort, which ended with Simon's death at Evesham in 1265. Bogo was a churchman, a notorious pluralist, receiving his first preferment in 1259 and continuing to acquire new livings until his death in the autumn of 1294, when the author of the chronicle known as the Flores Historiarum described him as 'multarum rector ecclesiarum vel potius'. Eight of his accounts survive, seven of them in this section(E 101/91/1-7) and another, a badly damaged account for a journey from London to Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire just before Christmas 1284, in E 101/506/5. They include distinct wardrobe and household diet accounts. The earliest wardrobe account (E 101/94/7) runs from 14 June 1284 to 2 March 1285, and is a simple list of receipts and expenditure for that period; it includes payments for expenses made on journeys. The earliest household diet roll runs from 1 May to 5 December 1284 (E101/91/2). It gives details of the daily expenses of the household on its journeys through England and Wales. The texts of the wardrobe accounts only (E 101/94/3, 4, 6 and 7) are printed, with an introduction, in M S Guiseppi, 'The wardrobe and household accounts of Bogo de Clare, A D 1284-6', Archaeologia, LXX (1920), pp 1-56. They include receipts from property as well as sections for the expenses of cloths and livery, furs, jewels, cash liveries, expenses of messengers, purchases of horses, spices, wine and gifts.

Gilbert de Clare

Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford (1291-1314), son and heir of Gilbert de Clare, was one of the English magnates killed at the battle of Bannockburn. Only three items survive which relate to his household (E 101/91/8-10). They consist of one marshalsea account for the expenses of his horses from 20 October 1301 to 8 April 1302, one for his household expenses from 3 April to 25 December 1306, and an undated list of his household.

Elizabeth de Burgh, lady of Clare

Elizabeth de Burgh, lady of Clare, was the youngest sister and co-heir of Gilbert de Clare. She had already married John de Burgh, son and heir of Richard earl of Ulster, and been widowed before her brother's death. She subsequently married two other husbands, Theobald Verdun and Roger Damory, and survived them. She lived from about 1295 until 1360, and was one of the wealthiest women living in England during that period. It has been estimated that in the 1320s her estate yielded over 53,000 a year. About a hundred of her household accounts survive, and it has been estimated that these represent about a fifth of all the household accounts which survive from medieval England. They reveal a complex system of financial record-keeping, and include accounts of the clerks of her chamber and of her wardrobe, indentures made between them, livery rolls, cash, corn and stock accounts, two different forms of diet account, departmental accounts for the marshalsea, kitchen purchases, malt and brewing, and at least two types of counter-roll, which summarise expenses. For example, E101/93/16, E 101/946 and 7, and E 101/95/4, 5 and 8 are marshalsea accounts. Her accounts have been the subject of a detailed but unpublished study. They begin at the very end of the reign of Edward I1 and continue until a little after her death, when they include transactions by her executors (E 101/94/5). Two further accounts outside bundles 91 to 95 also belong to her: E loll5 10113, a daily counter roll, and E 101/510/14, an abbreviated daily counter roll. They were extensively used by G A Holmes in his study of The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth Century England (1957). Elizabeth de Burgh also had important interests in Ireland, of which there are details in R Frame, English Lordship in Ireland 1318-1361 (1982), especially pp 62-69.

There are many other medieval household accounts rolls elsewhere in E 101, and in C 47, SC 6, DL 28, DL 25 and DL 41. Rentals of the Clare estates are in SC 1 and ministers accounts in SC 6.

For references and dates of household accounts held at TNA, see Household Accounts from Medieval England, ed C M Woolgar (1992-93).

The lists of documents concerning Clare household are in the printed Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, vol xxxv, pp 82-84, and in the typescript addenda.