Marie de St Pol

Marie de St Pol, Countess of Pembroke (c. 1303 – 1377) was the second wife of Franco-English nobleman Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, and is best known as the founder (or foundress) of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Family and early life

Marie was born into the powerful French house of Châtillon, Counts of Saint Pol. Her father was Guy IV, Count of Saint-Pol and her mother was Marie of Brittany. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Châtillons married more often into the royal line than any other noble family, and they were renowned for holding prominent positions as Cardinals and Constables of France. Marie herself was cousin to Charles, Duke of Brittany. She was the fourth daughter of Guy, Count of St Pol and Marie of Brittany. She had four sisters and two brothers, but nothing is known about her childhood. She was also the great-granddaughter of Henry III of England through her mother.

Marriage to the Earl of Pembroke

Marie and Pembroke were married in Paris in 1321. Both Philippe V of France and Edward II of England were involved in the negotiations for her marriage. Marie was only seventeen when she married, whilst her husband was already fifty. It was his second marriage after the death of his first wife Béatrice de Clermont in 1320. Almost nothing is known of their three years of marriage except the occasion of his death in France on 23 June 1324. They had no children.

Legend has it that she was maiden, wife, and widow all in the space of a single day when her husband was killed in front of her in a friendly jousting match, arranged to celebrate their marriage in 1324.

After Aymer's death, Marie was free to use her considerable wealth for religious and charitable ends.

Temple Newsam, Leeds In 1327, Marie de St Pol was granted the estate at Temple Newsam, Leeds by Edward III in exchange for estates in Hertford, Haverford, Higham Ferrers, Monmouth and Hodenak. The order was strengthened when the nearby community at Waterbeach was closed. In 1355 and 1366, Marie acquired papal bulls to allow the college its own chapel, which was the first college chapel to be built in Cambridge. This chapel building still exists as the Old Library, immediately to the left (or north) of the college gatehouse. It should not be confused with the later classical chapel to the south by Sir Christopher Wren.

Marie arranged for the fellows of the college to be the counsellors and instructors of the nuns at Denny Abbey. As well as lands in France that she held in her own right, she also acquired the estates that had belonged to her husband. However, in 1372 her lands in France were confiscated by King Charles V.

Marie drew up her will on 20 February 1377 at her estate of Braxted Park in Great Braxted in Essex, which stipulated that she wanted to be buried in the choir of the chapel at Denny in the habit of a Franciscan nun.

In 1992 a memorial was placed on a pillar opposite her husband's splendid tomb effigy in Westminster Abbey, situated in the north ambulatory. Designed by Donald Buttress, Abbey Surveyor, the memorial was made from slate and stone with partial gilding, and bears the Countess's coat of arms and the inscription:

“MARY DE ST POL COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE 1304 AD 1377”.