The history of the Beauchamp family between 1268 and 1369 is the story of a family new to the ranks of the higher nobility attempting to consolidate their position both locally and nationally. The form of this thesis has been to examine this process by concentrating on three separate ‘perspectives’ in each seperate chapter. However, we would be well advised not to ignore the wider picture; to break down one single narrative into its component parts, albeit necessary for the purposes of historical analysis, presents us with the danger of viewing the subject in an artificially fragmented state, rather than as a natural, cohesive whole. Although I have attempted to bring the reader's attention to this fact at relevant points in text, the point must be made that the Beauchamp family, their method of land accumulation, and their cultivation of an affinity in the West Midlands were not isolated from each other but actually benefited from the developments in a parallel area of the Beauchamps' growing importance.

The personal strengths and actions of the Beauchamp earls were responsible for a substantial growth in their patrimony throughout this period. Primarily this was through successful marriage alliances, especially Guy Beauchamp's marriage to Alice de Tony. Through their military achievements they achieved valuable rewards such as Barnard Castle, and through political acumen Earl Guy achieved the Warwickshire manor of Sherborne, and his son gained the lordship of Gower. The lifetime shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, which secured Beauchamp control over the shrievalty of those two counties between 1344 and 1369, was the king's reward for the earl of Warwick's military abilities. Also, the growth of the earl's estates would have been aided by the presence of a bastard feudal network; land purchase was a very difficult process in the middle ages and the development of a Beauchamp affinity would have certainly eased the process of buying and selling land.

We should also bear in mind that, in the crisis over Gaveston, the earl of Warwick was able to act with a level of independent autonomy, both in the midlands and in national politics in general. This would have proved more difficult if he was in financial difficulties, but as it was, he had just substantially increased his estates by his marriage in 1310. A contrariant stand would likewise have been difficult to maintain if he did not enjoy control over his base in the midlands and the general support of the county community. In the later thirteenth century, Earl William was bought off by Edward I because he did not possess either the patrimony or the local support to oppose the king. The growth of the Beauchamp family estates, and the development of a midlands affinity can be seen to have given the earl of Warwick greater political independence. As Holmes has pointed out, the ‘heritage’ which the nobility ‘passed on and hoped to augment from generation to generation, was a unit of political power, and itself a creature of politics’.

With the establishment, on the death of Earl Thomas I in 1369, of the Beauchamp chapel in Warwick, the family had finally made Warwick their main centre of influence. The first two Beauchamp earls of Warwick appear to have been reluctant to attach themselves too closely to the heart of their fief. Earl William appears to have been more attached to his native Worcestershire, and chose to be buried in the same church as his father. Earl Guy preferred Bordesley Abbey, a Warwickshire setting which was isolated from the heart of his estate. However, Thomas I's resting place marked the final consolidation of the Beauchamps as earls of Warwick. Just over a century previously, when his grandfather had succeeded to the title, the Beauchamps were still provincial notables who had risen to the levels of the higher nobility by way of an administrative background, a fortunate marriage, and a substantial amount of luck. By 1369, Thomas Beauchamp was one of the most prominent figures of his generation, and the Beauchamps were one of England's oldest comital families.

Back to Home