Isabel de Forz, 8th Countess of Devon

She was the eldest daughter of Baldwin de Redvers, 6th Earl of Devon (1217-1245), of Tiverton Castle in Devon, by his wife Amice de Clare (c. 1220 – 1284), a daughter of Gilbert de Clare, 4th Earl of Hertford, 5th Earl of Gloucester, 1st Lord of Glamorgan. Her early life was apparently spent at Tidcombe near her father's seat at Tiverton.

Arms of de Forz: Gules, a cross patonce vair.[4]

At the age of 11 or 12 she became the second wife of William de Forz, 4th Earl of Albemarle (died 1260) , who held land in Yorkshire and Cumberland and was Count of Aumale in Normandy. When he died in 1260, their children were minors, so the wardship of his heir (whose name is not known), and his estates passed to the crown, namely King Henry III. One third of her late husband's estates were granted to Isabel as her dower, comprising one third of the feudal barony Holderness, half of the feudal barony of Cockermouth, and the feudal barony of Skipton. She was also granted the custody of two of her younger sons, Thomas and William. The king granted to his own son and heir apparent, Prince Edward (later King Edward I), the other two thirds of the estates and the marriage of the heir.[5]

She had six children by William de Forz, four sons and two daughters, who all predeceased her:[5]

• John de Forz, predeceased his father and mother;
• Teron de Forz, predeceased his father and mother;
• Thomas de Forz (died before April 1269), predeceased his mother;
• William de Forz (died before April 1269), predeceased his mother;
• Avice de Forz (died before April 1269) , daughter, predeceased her mother;
• Aveline de Forz (1259–1274), who in 1269 married Edmund Crouchback, son of King Henry III, but died childless four years later, aged 15,[5] predeceasing her mother.

Two of Isabel's seals

Showing her paternal arms of Redvers (a lion rampant) impaled by the dimidiated arms of her husband, William de Forz (a cross patonce). This seal displays a rare mixture of forms of marshalling.

The Redvers lion is repeated as a border around a shield containing the de Forz arms of her husband. Legend: SECRETUM ISABELL(A)E DE FORTIB(U)S (COMITISSA(E)) DEVONI(A)E ET INSUL(A)E ("Personal seal of Isabel de Forz, Countess of Devon and of the Isle")

After the death of her husband in 1260 Isabel lived with her children and her mother, Amice de Clare, at Burstwick in her barony of Holderness. Isabel and Amice jointly purchased the outstanding two thirds of the feudal barony of Holderness that Isabel did not already hold, and they administered the area jointly for some years.[5]

After Isabel's death, the feudal barony of Plympton[2] and eventually the Earldom of Devon passed to her 17-year-old second cousin once removed (Both shared common ancestry from William de Redvers, 5th Earl of Devon (died 1217), Isabel's great-grandfather and Courtenay's great-great-grandfather) Hugh de Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon (1276–1340),[2] feudal baron of Okehampton, Devon, who in 1335 was declared Earl of Devon.[3][9] In 1315 he petitioned Parliament, unsuccessfully, claiming his right as Isabel's heir, to the Lordship of the Isle of Wight and to the adjacent manor of Christchurch, part of the Feudal barony of Plympton.[10][11]

Countess Wear, now a suburb of Exeter, takes its name from a fish weir on the River Exe, about two miles downstream of the ancient walled city, which Isabel de Forz is said to have built in the late 13th century.[12] The details of the weir's construction are uncertain: a source of 1290 states that Isabel had it built in 1284 and thereby damaged the salmon fishing and prevented boats from reaching Exeter, but a later source of 1378 claims that she had had the weir built in 1272, leaving a thirty-foot gap in the centre through which boats could pass, until it was blocked between 1307 and 1327 by her cousin Hugh de Courtenay, 9th Earl of Devon.[13]

Sculpted corbel in Christchurch Priory, Dorset, possibly a portrait of Isabel

Two legends exist which feature Isabel de Forz. One, that of the Seven Crosses, of which there are many variations, relates that she came across a poor man carrying a basket containing what he said were puppies, but which were in fact seven of his children whom he was going to drown because he could not afford to keep them. After severely upbraiding him for his lack of morality, Isabel adopted the children and ensured that they were looked after and well educated until their adulthood when she found employment for all of them.[14]

The other legend concerns the disputed boundary of four parishes in East Devon which she, as Countess, was called upon to settle. She is said to have done this by arranging to meet the disputants on top of a marshy hill near the site whereupon she took off a ring from her finger and threw it into the middle of the bog declaring "that shall be the boundary". The place where these four parishes meet is called "Ring in the Mire".[15]

Isabel is also said to have gifted in perpetuity a water supply to the inhabitants of Tiverton, Devon. A ceremony to commemorate the gift, known as the Perambulation of the Town Leat still takes place in the town every seven years.[16][lower-alpha 2] There was also a tradition that she was responsible for the planting of Wistman's Wood, a stand of ancient stunted oak trees high on Dartmoor.[19]

• Inquisition Post Mortem #156, dated 1293.

• Sanders, I.J. English Baronies: A Study of their Origin and Descent 1086–1327, Oxford, 1960.

• Mrs Rose-Troup (1905). "The Lady of the Isle: Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Albemarle and Devon". Report & Transactions of the Devonshire Association. 37: 206–45.