the most powerful English noble of his time. He held estates in more than 20 English counties, including the lordship of Tewkesbury, wealthy manors in Gloucester, and the great marcher lordship of Glamorgan. He himself acquired the Kilkenny estates in Ireland and the lordship of Usk and Caerleon in south Wales, making him the greatest lord in south Wales; in Glamorgan especially he was almost an independent prince.

Son of Gilbert de Clare (the 6th Earl), Richard succeeded to the earldoms in October 1230. He refused to help King Henry III on the French expedition of 1253 but was with him afterward at Paris. Thereafter he went on a diplomatic errand to Scotland and was sent to Germany to work among the princes for the election of his stepfather, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, as king of the Romans. About 1258 Gloucester became a leader of the barons in their resistance to the king, and he was prominent during the proceedings that followed the Mad Parliament at Oxford in 1258. In 1259, however, he quarreled with Simon de Montfort (Montfort, Simon de, Earl Of Leicester), Earl of Leicester; the dispute, begun in England, was renewed in France, and he was again in the confidence of the king. This attitude, too, was only temporary, and in 1261 Gloucester and Montfort were again working in concord.