Amice or Avicia de Plumpton (de Clere) - No she is NOT a De ClAre!

I show Avicia Plumpton to be the daughter of Gilbert de Clare and Isabel Marshal. Nigel Plumpton being her second husband

There were two of her. One was a de ClAre, daughter of Gilbert de Clare and Isabel Marshal. This was NOT the one who married Nigel de Plumpton - he probably never even met her.

The other one was a de ClEre, most likely of Sinnington, Yorkshire (Nigel de Plumpton was a Yorkshireman and his family had been Dalesmen for generations). She may have been a daughter of Ralph III de Clere and sister to Agatha de Clere (who married William le Rus).

This confusion keeps happening because everybody has heard of the de Clares, but only serious historians/genealogists even know there ever was a family de Clere (let alone several of them).

...possibly daughter of Roger III de Clere. Seems every generation had both a Ralph and a Roger. :-P

Roger III is my 42nd Great grand but through Agatha so no help there. I'm taking another look at the Plumpton connection.

An IPM exists for Nigel de Plumpton which indicates that he was long dead by 1270 (possibly since c. 1240), that his son Robert was a mere four and a half years old, and that Robert may have had three sisters (several references to "three dowers for three ladies"). The dating is quite obscure, but Robert was (still) a minor in 1256, when his guardian William de Ireby paid 20 shillings for an assize about the church at Corthorpe, Yorkshire.

There is no mention of any Clare presence whatsoever.

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=vuZVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&lpg...

A further note is that an unexplained "William de Plumpton" is one of the inquisitioners. (Possibly son of John, legitimated? son of an earlier Sir Nigel de Plumpton?)

Possibly the son of Nigel Plumpton and Juliana? But it all seems to be at odds with the visitation of Yorke records.

That whole mess is explained by the surviving papers from a lawsuit between Juliana "of Warwick" (she didn't belong to the family, she was an upper-level servant to it) and Peter de Plumpton.

It seems old Sir Nigel was a bit of a horndog. He married Maria "de Eboraco" (of York) and had with her Peter and probably Robert. But at some time he took up with this Juliana and had a son John with *her*. After Maria died, Sir Nigel tried regularizing his situation with Juliana by marrying her (and presumably having John legitimated). Once Sir Nigel died, Juliana sued Peter for her dower rights - and Peter counterattacked with a claim that she had never been his father's wife but only his mistress and that they were carrying on while his mother (Maria) was still alive.

The upshot, though, was that Peter had to buy Juliana off with some lands of approximately equal value, which indicates that she *did* have some legal claim and may indeed have been Sir Nigel's second wife (though this does not prove they weren't having an affair earlier).

John's status was sufficiently clear in the eyes of the law that he could use the name "de Plumpton" and even cosign a charter with his father and half-brother.

Another possible explanation for William is that he was the son of Gilbert de Plumpton, old Sir Nigel's (little) brother. He'd be a man of mature years by then, at least, but that's pretty much the age bracket they used to look for for IPMs.