On 9/06/2017 11:34 PM, Doug Thompson wrote: >> As I understand it the Sele priory fine cited by Doug Thompson blows >> this out of the water, since Reynold de Braiose in 1227 evidently >> thought that Berta (whichever Beauchamp she married) was a sister of >> Hugh de Mortimer's wife Annora who was living in 1241. >> >> Peter Stewart > True. And "thought that" is a bit of an understatement. I'm sure he knew his own sisters! > > This makes it really impossible that Berta was married to William 1 de Beauchamp. It looks to me as if Emma Mason has muddled the wives in early generations of the Beauchamp family. The chronology of the Walter de Beauchamp in the 1221 and 1227 records is puzzling. He was evidently underage in 1212 when Roger de Mortimer paid 3,000 marks in order to marry his daughter Joan to Walter. According to the 1227 fine, Berta de Braiose had been given her maritagium by her father William, who was deprived and exiled in 1208. So if Berta was married by 1208 to the same Walter de Beauchamp who later married Joan de Mortimer, he could only have been at most ca 16 years old at the time. Then Berta would have to have died by 1212, and her brother Reynold would have known for certain in 1221 if she had left any offspring living whose existence would justify Walter in holding on to her maritagium. But all this seems implausible to me. Assuming her brother Giles was aged 30 or more on becoming bishop of Hereford in 1200, he was born by 1170. Her sister Lauretta was married to Robert de Beaumont, earl of Leicester, in or after 1196 so was presumably born ca 1180. Their mother Maud de Saint-Valery evidently had her children from the mid- to late- 1160s onwards. But the Walter de Beauchamp who was lord of Elmley in 1221 was not born until ca 1192. This makes him far more probably a son of Berta de Braiose than her cougar-husband by 1208. This raises the question of whether Emma Mason has identified the right William de Beauchamp as the son of Amicia/Avicia of Salwarpe. I don't have time to pursue this at present. Does anyone know when Avicia's tenant Osbert fitz Walter de Broc was living? Peter Stewart