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. ==Marriage and issue==

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 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. • 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, predeceasing her mother. Upon her father's death. Marrying William de Forz. After his death she courted: • Simon de Montfort. Despite the younger Simon de Montfort (second son of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester) having acquired the very valuable rights to her remarriage in 1264, (female tenants-in-chief or widows of such requiring royal licence to remarry) she refused to marry him and hid away in Breamore Priory in Hampshire and later in Wales. • Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster. In 1268 her marriage was granted to Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster, son of King Henry III, but she refused to marry him either. Instead however, her daughter Aveline de Forz (1258–1273) did marry Edmund in 1269, but died five years later, aged 15. ==Widowhood==

{{multiple image|header=Two of Isabel's seals 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. Her net income in the 1260s is known to have risen by 2/3rds, from £1,500 to £2,500 (now equivalent to ). From about 1274 her estates were being managed by Adam de Stratton, a notorious money-lender, in association with the Tuscan bankers the Riccardi family of Lucca. In 1276 she gave her office of Chamberlain of the Exchequer to Stratton, probably as a reward for his financial services, and he continued as her chief financial official until at least 1286. She apparently owned her own copy of the Statutes of the Realm and being very litigious, with her advisers she prosecuted in the law courts dozens of cases, both civil and criminal. Selling the Isle of Wight It is known that King Edward I (1272–1307) had long wanted to acquire Isabel's estates. In 1276 he proposed that she should sell him the lands in southern England which she had inherited from her brother, but the conveyance was not completed. Following the death in 1274 of her daughter and last surviving heir apparent, Aveline, a certain John de Eston was found (against expectations) by a jury at her inquisition post mortem to be Isabel's next heir. In 1278 this John de Eston quit-claimed to the Crown her lands in the north and in the County of Aumale and its associated lands. In 1293 King Edward I re-opened negotiations to acquire Isabel's southern lands, and while travelling from Canterbury in Kent, Isabel was taken ill and stopped near Lambeth in Surrey, opposite the Palace of Westminster. One of Edward's favourite servants, Walter Langton, who was a clerk in chancery, rushed to her and drafted a charter to confirm the sale of the Isle of Wight to the king. It was read to the dying Isabel, who ordered her Lady of the Bedchamber to seal it on her behalf. She died at nearby Stockwell in the early morning of 10 November 1293, aged 56, and was buried at Breamore Priory in Hampshire. ==Succession==

After Isabel's death, the feudal barony of Plympton 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. ==Countess Wear, Exeter==

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. 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. ==Legends and traditions==

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. 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". Isabel is also said to have given 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. 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. ==Notes==