Hawise, countess of Aumale (died March 11, 1214) was the daughter and heiress of William "the Fat" (le Gros), Count of Aumale and Cicely, daughter and co-heiress of William fitz Duncan. She became countess of Essex as well by her marriage to the third earl of Essex, William de Mandeville.
Hawise was countess in her own right when she married, on Jan. 14, 1180, William earl of Essex. On his death late in 1189 the widowed Hawise was described by chronicler Richard of Devizes as “a woman who was almost a man, lacking nothing virile except the virile organs.”[1] In addition to her inherited lands in Normandy and England (which included much of the eastern part of Yorkshire known as Holderness), she received in dower one-third of the substantial Mandeville estates.
After a widowhood of less than a year, she remarried. Her second husband was William de Forz or Fortibus of Oleron. The Poitevin was one of the commanders of the crusading fleet of King Richard I, and the match is said to have been forced on Countess Hawise by that king.[2] The countess gave birth to a son and eventual heir, also named William.
Her second husband died in 1195. That left her and her lands in the king's gift once again, and King Richard gave her in marriage to Baldwin de Béthune, his companion on crusade and in captivity. Baldwin had previously served King Henry II as ambassador to the count of Flanders in 1178. The next year he and Earl William de Mandeville had escorted King Philip Augustus to visit the tomb of newly-canonized Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury.[3] King Henry had promised Baldwin marriage to a rich heiress, but King Richard had chosen to give that heiress in marriage to another. Now Richard fulfilled his father's promise with an even wealthier heiress, but their enjoyment of her Aumale lands in Normandy was short-lived. King Philip Augustus took Aumale in August 1196 and it remained in the hands of the French king thereafter.[4] Baldwin died in Oct. 1212.
When King John proposed a fourth husband, Hawise declined; she was forced to pay a fine of 5,000 marks for her inheritance, her dower lands, and 'that she be not distrained to marry’. By September 1213 she had paid £1000 of that fine.[5]