Isabel de Warenne

Circa 1203 Conisbrough Castle, South Yorkshire

Isabel de Warenne is a name little known today, but she was in fact one of the most significant women in Medieval England, with impeccable ties to royalty

– a relation of the kings of France and Scotland, and wife of William, son of King Stephen of England. As a young woman, Isabel became Countess de Warenne, following her father’s death on a crusade to the Holy Land, and she inherited vast estates stretching from Sussex to South Yorkshire. Her stability suffered a blow with the death of her husband in 1159. Isabel attracted the affections of William Fitzempress, a younger brother of King Henry

II – a match allegedly blocked by Archbishop Thomas Becket on the grounds of close blood relation – and after five years of widowhood, in

April 1164 entered a much less illustrious marriage to the king’s halfbrother Hamelin, the illegitimate son of Count Geoffrey of Anjou.

Hamelin decided to make a statement with a new residence at Conisbrough, featuring a splendid keep which can still be seen today. The evidence doesn’t make clear whether Isabel visited Conisbrough Castle, though surviving documents suggest her personal interest in the Conisbrough estates was confined to the final year of her life, and after Hamelin’s death. Isabel’s high status afforded her the opportunity to hold some influence. The countess is documented as having been in personal control of her estates after her first husband’s death, and was described in one charter as a full honorial peer – Our lady, Isabel Countess de Warenne (Isabel comitissa Warennie domina nostra). Even while Hamelin was still alive Isabel granted sole consent to a variety of charters and documents and took responsibility for a number of decisions including assenting her husband’s gifts to Lewes Priory in Sussex, founded by her eminent ancestors William, the first Earl de Warenne and his wife Gundrada.