ABSTRACT
Marriage between close relatives was a common feature at the time, a device to help ensure that inheritances were kept safely within the family, thereby lessening any potential tension that might have been caused by conflicting interests. The ancestors of her two previous husbands, Lord Giles Badlesmere and Lord Hugh Despenser, had both been involved in the bloody confusion of Edward II's reign; Elizabeth's marriage to Despenser appears to have been arranged to lessen the enmity between the Montagu and Despenser families. She died in 1359 after nine years of marriage and bearing at least four children, and was buried next to her second husband in the Despenser chantry at Tewkesbury Abbey. One important aspect of medieval marriage was the consolidation of family fortunes to serve joint dynastic ambitions. The romantic ideal was certainly contained in poetry, piety and religious devotion, but the reality of marriage, as Margery described it, was support in difficult times and hard work.
