'Richard FitzAlan, "Copped Hat", 5th Earl of Arundel' (9th Earl of Arundel per Ancestral Roots) (c.
1313 –
January 24,
1376) was an
English nobleman and
military leader.
Fitzalan was the eldest son of
Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel (8th Earl of Arundel per Ancestral Roots), and Alice de Warenne. His maternal grandparents were
William de Warenne, 8th Earl of Surrey and Joan de Vere. William was the only son of
John de Warenne, 7th Earl of Surrey.
He was born 1306 in Sussex, England and died Jan. 24, 1376 in Sussex, England. Around
1321, FitzAlan's father allied with
King Edward II's favorites, the
Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester and his namesake son, and Richard was married to
Isabel le Despenser, daughter of
Hugh the Younger. Fortune turned against the Despenser party, and on
November 17,
1326, FitzAlan's father was executed, and he did not succeed to his father's estates or titles.
However, political conditions had changed by
1330, and over the next few years Richard was gradually able to reacquire the
Earldom of Arundel as well as the great estates his father had held in
Sussex and in the
Welsh Marches. Beyond this, in
1334 he was made justice of
North Wales (later his term in this office was made for life), sheriff for life of
Caernarvonshire, and governor of
Caernarfon Castle.
Despite his high offices in Wales, in the following decades Arundel spent much of his time fighting in
Scotland (during the
Second Wars of Scottish Independence) and
France (during the
Hundred Years' War). In
1337, Arundel was made joint commander of the English army in the north, and the next year he was made the sole commander.
In
1340 he fought at the
Battle of Sluys, and then at the siege of
Tournai. After a short term as warden of the
Scottish Marches, he returned to the continent, where he fought in a number of campaigns, and was appointed Joint Lieutenant of
Aquitaine in 1340.
Arundel was one of the three principal English commanders at the
Battle of Crécy. He spent much of the following years on various military campaigns and diplomatic missions
In
1347 he succeeded to the
Earldom of Surrey (or Warenne), which even further increased his great wealth. (He did not however use the additional title until after the death of the Dowager Countess of Surrey in
1361.) He made very large loans to
King Edward III but even so on his death left behind a great sum in hard cash.
Arundel married twice. His first wife (as mentioned above), was
Isabel le Despenser. He repudiated her, and had the marriage annulled on the grounds that he had never freely consented to it. After the annulment he married
Eleanor of Lancaster, daughter of
Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster and
Maud Chaworth.
By his first marriage he had one son,
Edmund Arundel, who was bastardized by the annulment. This son married Sybil, a daughter of
William Montacute, 1st Earl of Salisbury. By the second he had 3 sons:
Richard, who succeeded him as 6th Earl of Arundel (10th Earl of Arundel per Ancestral Roots);
John Fitzalan,1st Baron Maltravers, who was a Marshall of England, and drowned in
1379; and
Thomas Arundel, who became
Archbishop of Canterbury. He also had 2 surviving daughters by his second wife: Joan, who married
Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford, and Alice, who married
Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent.
References
★ ''Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700'' by Frederick Lewis Weis, Lines: 8-31, 17-30, 21-30, 28-33, 60-32, 97-33