Maud de Prendergast

Maud de Prendergast
Lady of Offaly
Spouse(s) David FitzMaurice
Maurice de Rochford
Maurice FitzGerald, 3rd Lord of Offaly, Justiciar of Ireland

Issue

Juliana FitzGerald, Lady of Thomond
Amabel FitzGerald
Noble family Prendergast
Father Sir Gerald de Prendergast
Mother N.N de Burgh
Born 17 March 1242
Ireland
Died before 1273

Maud de Prendergast, Lady of Offaly (17 March 1242 – before 1273),[1] was a Norman-Irish noblewoman, the first wife of Maurice FitzGerald, 3rd Lord of Offaly, Justiciar of Ireland, and the mother of his two daughters, Juliana FitzGerald and Amabel.[2] Maud was a descendant of Strongbow, the Irish kings of Leinster and Thomond, and Brian Boru. Her own descendants included most of the medieval noble families of England. She married three times; Maurice FitzGerald, 3rd Lord of Offaly was her third husband.

Family

Maud was born in Ireland on 17 March 1242, the daughter of Sir Gerald de Prendergast of Beauvoir (died 1251), and his second wife, who was one of the daughters of Richard Mor de Burgh and Egidia de Lacy.

Maud had an elder half-sister, Marie de Prendergast from her father's first marriage to Maud Walter. Marie was the wife of Sir John de Cogan by whom she had issue. Maud's paternal grandparents were Philip de Prendergast, Lord of Enniscorthy, Constable of Leinster, and Maud de Quincy, a granddaughter of Strongbow, through the latter's illegitimate daughter Basilie de Clare who married Robert de Quincy, Constable of Leinster. Her great-grandfather, Maurice de Prendergast, Lord Prendergast had played a prominent part in the Cambro-Norman invasion of Ireland led by Strongbow, and was rewarded with much land in counties Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary, Mayo, Wicklow, and Cork. Her maternal great-grandparents were William de Burgh and Mór O'Brien; Walter de Lacy, Lord of Trim and Margaret de Braose.

Marriages and issue

When she was a young child, Maud was married to, firstly David FitzMaurice, who died by 17 March 1249, which was her seventh birthday; her second husband was Maurice de Rochford. Between 1258 and 28 October 1259, following Maurice de Rochford's death which occurred sometime before May 1258, she married her third and last husband, Maurice FitzGerald, 3rd Lord of Offaly, Justiciar of Ireland (1238–1286). He was the son of Maurice FitzGerald, 2nd Lord of Offaly and Juliana.

Together Maurice and Maud had two daughters:

Maud died on an unknown date. In 1273, her husband Maurice married his second wife, Emmeline Longespee (1252–1291) but fathered no children by her.[3]

Maud de Prendergast was an ancestress of most of the medieval noble families of England; through Elizabeth of York the current British royal family descends from her. Henry VIII's queens consort Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr[4] were four of her many notable descendants.

Ancestry

References

  1. ↑ Douglas Richardson, Gen-Medieval Archives, retrieved 4 September 2009
  2. ↑ The Complete Peerage, Vol.VII, p.200
  3. ↑ note:The Complete Peerage, Vol.VII, p.200 confirms what many genealogists, including Douglas Richardson have now since established: namely that Maurice FitzGerald and Emmeline Longespee did not have children together contrary to prior belief that she was the mother of his daughters. Emmeline married FitzGerald in 1273 when Juliana was already 10 years old, and her own heiress was Maud La Zouche, Baroness Holland, who was a granddaughter of her elder sister, Ela Longespee, which proves that Emmeline did not bear any children.
  4. ↑ Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 803.