Rohese de Vere, Countess of Essex

Rohese de Vere, countess of Essex (c. 1110-1167 or after) was daughter of Aubrey de Vere II and Adeliza/Alice of Clare. She married twice. Her first husband, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex, became earl in 1140, and Rohese thereafter was styled countess. The couple had at least three children: Geoffrey III, William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex, and Robert. The first two became earls of Essex. Her husband Earl Geoffrey rebelled against King Stephen in late 1143. Rohese's whereabouts are unknown; their eldest son seems to have been sent to Devizes, a stronghold of the supporters of the Empress Matilda. When Earl Geoffrey died an excommunicate rebel in 1144, his widow remarried swiftly. Her second husband, Payn de Beauchamp, lord of Bedford, had opposed King Stephen earlier in the reign. The couple founded a double monastery at Chicksands, Bedfordshire, for nuns and canons of the Gilbertine Order. They had one son, Simon de Beauchamp II. The countess was widowed a second time in 1155 or 1156. She gained the guardianship of her minor son. When he was near his majority, Countess Rohese worked with Simon to convert the secular canons of St. Paul's, Bedford, to regular canons and moved them to Newnham, Bedfordshire.

According to the "Walden Chronicle," when the countess's eldest son, Geoffrey de Mandeville III, earl of Essex, died in 1166, Countess Rohese was at Chicksands Priory enjoying a visit by her sister Alice of Essex. One member of the entourage who was escorting the earl's body to Walden Abbey, founded by her first husband, rode to Chicksands and informed Rohese of her son's death. He suggested that she send knights to seize the earl's body for burial at Chicksands. She rejected that suggestion, but when she later attended her son's funeral at Walden, she did seize the altar goods and other objects that her son had given to Walden and gave them to Chicksands Priory.

The countess almost certainly spent the remainder of her life at Chicksands, although probably without joining the religious community as a nun. She witnessed a charter of her son Earl William in 1170, the last evidence of her life which can be dated, and when she died she was buried in the Chicksands chapter house. [ John Leland, "Itinerary" vol. 5, 150

She is sometimes confused with another, contemporary 'Countess Rohese,' who was the wife of Gilbert de Gant, Earl of Lincoln. While Earl Geoffrey's eldest son Ernulf de Mandeville is sometimes listed as the child of Countess Rohese, there is strong evidence that he was the earl's illegitimate son, born before Geoffrey's marriage to Rohese.

ources

*Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom by G. E. Cokayne, vol. X:Appendix J:116

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