Hugh, sometimes referred to as "the younger Despenser", or "Hugh le Despencer the young", Earl of Winchester, was king Edward's lover after the death of Piers Gaveston. The king had him married to his niece Eleanor de Clare, daughter of his sister Joan of Acre, and in her right he inherited Glamorgan.

His greedy push for greater domination in south Wales was one of the things that roused the barons to exile him and his father in 1321. The pair returned the next year, the younger Dispenser was captured along with his father during Queen Isabella's rebellion.

Hugh was consigned to Berkeley Castle where he was basely murdered. The accounts of his death are myriad and gruesome. In one report, the presiding judge at Hugh's trial sentenced him to

...be emboweled and your bowels burned; and so go your judgment, wicked traitor.

In another, Hugh's

...member and testicles were first cut off, because he was a heretic and a sodomite, even, it was said, with the King.