Isabel le Despenser (born c. 1312 – living 1356, and died by 1374/5) was an English noblewoman who was married as a child to Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel.
Her mother was the eldest daughter of Joan of Acre, Princess of England, making Isabel a great-granddaughter of King Edward I by his first consort, Eleanor of Castile.
[3] Isabel's betrothal was contracted to cement an alliance between her father and Edmund FitzAlan, 2nd Earl of Arundel, a loyal supported the King since the 1320s.
It must have seemed to be politically prudent to Edmund to marry his heir Richard to the eldest daughter of the King's closest friend and adviser, Hugh le Despenser.
[1] King Edward III supported the petition,[1] which was on the grounds that they had never freely consented to marry, that they both had renounced their vows at puberty, but they had been "forced by blows to cohabit, so that a son was born".
He served the King in Flanders and communicated "the present state of the Roman church in Italy" to King Edward III on behald of Pope Urban V. In 1369 and 1370, Edmund fought in several military campaigns in France including the Battle of Pontvallain under the command of his second cousin once removed, Edward the Black Prince, during the Hundred Years' War.