Tag archieven: Edward II

King Edward II/[Edward the second Blogspot]/What happened after the barons killed Piers Gaveston

 

 

 

A post about what happened in the days after Piers Gaveston’s death, which I’d originally intended to coincide with the anniversary of said death, i.e. 19 June. Oh well, only six weeks late.Piers was killed at Blacklow Hill in Warwickshire on Monday 19 June 1312 – see this post, and Anerje’s great blog about Piers, for more details. On that day, Edward II was staying 150 miles away at Burstwick-in-Holderness near Hull, with Queen Isabella, who was about four months pregnant with Edward III. Let me emphasise the fact that Isabella was already pregnant when Piers died; too many websites give the impression that Edward only began a proper relationship with his wife after the death of his favourite, as though the killing of Piers Gaveston was a necessary step to ensure the continuation of the royal English line.

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King Edward II/[Edward the second Blogspot]/Isabella of France and her relationship with Edward II

This is a post which I originally wrote a few months ago as a guest post on my lovely friend Sarah’s history blog, which is now sadly defunct, though she writes one about Edward II’s grandfather Henry III instead, yay.Isabella of France, queen consort of England, lady of Ireland, duchess of Aquitaine, countess of Chester and Ponthieu, had a remarkably illustrious lineage: she was the daughter of Philip IV, king of France and of Joan, queen of Navarre and countess of Brie, Bigorre and Champagne in her own right. Isabella was the sixth of Philip and Joan’s seven children. Her three older brothers all reigned as kings of France, Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, her younger brother Robert died in 1308 aged about eleven, and she also had two older sisters, Marguerite and Blanche, who both died in early childhood in or shortly after 1294. Her paternal grandmother Isabel, queen of Philip III of France, after whom she was presumably named, was the daughter of King Jaime I ‘el Conquistador’ of Aragon and the granddaughter of King Andras II of Hungary; via the Hungarian line, Isabella of France was the seven greats granddaughter of Harold Godwinson, the king of England killed at Hastings in 1066.  She and her husband Edward II were related: her great-grandmother Marguerite of Provence, queen of France was the older sister of Edward’s paternal grandmother Eleanor of Provence, queen of England.  They were also related rather more distantly via the Castilian royal family, Edward’s great-grandmother Berenguela, queen of Castile and Leon, being the sister of Isabella’s great-great-grandmother Blanche of Castile, queen of France.

 

 

 

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King Edward II/[Edward the Second Blogspot]/Edward II and his children and why neither William Wallace nor Roger Mortimer was their father

 

This (long!) article was inspired by my huge irritation a) that so many people still think the Braveheart story of William Wallace fathering Isabella of France’s child is somehow factual – people hit this blog pretty well every day searching for it – and b) that the notion of Edward II not being the father of his own eldest child has so well and truly taken hold in the popular imagination.  For examples, if you can stomach them, seeherehereherehere and here, and the novels cited below.  Read them and weep.  I cannot adequately express my annoyance that a man with an Oxford doctorate on Isabella (Paul Doherty) wrote a novel (Death of a King) in which Edward III’s biological father is Roger Mortimer, which Doherty must know is absolute BS but chose to sex up his novel by including it anyway and thereby giving the notion spurious plausibility. Agh.
EDIT: Thanks to Susan Higginbotham for telling me about a very recent post claiming that Edward II may have been ‘cuckolded’ and not the father of his children, in the Yahoo group of the Richard III Society, no less.  Check out Susan’s excellent and elegant rebuttal.Braveheart features the future King Edward II as a fairly major character, with Edward – in real life, an enormously strong, athletic and handsome man – caricatured as a useless feeble court fop whose lover is thrown out of a window and whose wife cuckolds him with William Wallace.  There are countless historical inaccuracies in Braveheart, which have been well detailed elsewhere, and I won’t go into them here.  I just want to focus on one: the statement at the end of the film that Wallace is the real father of the baby Edward’s wife Isabella is carrying, who is, presumably, intended to be Isabella’s first-born child King Edward III.Let’s check some basic dates and facts here:

 

 

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King Edward II [Kathryn Warners’ Edward the second Blogspot]/Hugh, Lord Despenser (c. 1309-1349)

A post today about Hugh, Lord Despenser, the eldest son of Hugh Despenser the Younger and Eleanor de Clare, and grandson of Hugh Despenser the Elder, earl of Winchester.  As was the case with many noble families of the Middle Ages, the Despensers were none too creative when it came to naming their children; the chancery rolls of the 1320s, when all three generations of Hugh Despensers were active, contain a few confusing references to ‘Hugh, son of Hugh le Despenser the son’.  Hrrrrrm.  Edward II’s last chamber journal of 1325/26 refers to Hugh by the short form Huchon, and the Anonimalle chronicle calls him Hughelyn or ‘little Hugh’, both of which I think are absolutely delightful.  In this post, I’ll call him Huchon to save any confusion with his father and grandfather, and because this seems to have been how he was known by his great-uncle Edward II.  I’ve also been known, along with Susan Higginbotham, to call him Hugh Despenser the Even Younger or HDEY for short.

 

 

 

 

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The Wars of the Roses/[Murreyandblue/WordPress.com]/Duke Richard of York (1), the man who would be king

 

 

On the 10th of October 1460, Richard Plantagenet 3rd duke of York walked into Westminster Hall wearing the full arms of England undifferenced. After a moment, he put his hand on the empty throne. When asked if he wished to see the king, he replied “I know of no one in the realm who would not more fitly come to me than I to him”. With those words, he declared to all those present that duke Richard had finally renounced his allegiance to king Henry VI and claimed the English crown by right of strict inheritance. York’s motive has puzzled historians ever since. Was it really his ‘natural disposition’ to champion the public interest, or was it the notion that he was the rightful king all along that stirred his ambition? This is the first of three essays in which I hope to explore that question from a personal perspective. I should add for the avoidance of doubt, that I have no intention of considering the validity duke Richard’s title: that is for another time. Neither is this a potted biography; I have included a few details of what I believe are some relevant friction points in his life for purely contextual reasons.

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[Susan Higginbotham’s History Refreshed]/Two [maybe three] little nuns

On January 1, 1327, Queen Isabella, having executed her enemies and imprisoned her husband, King Edward II, turned her attention to much smaller matters: Hugh le Despenser the younger’s little daughters. On that day, the queen issued an order that Eleanor le Despenser be packed off to Sempringham, a Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire, and veiled as a nun “without delay.” A similar order sent Margaret to Watton, another Gilbertine priory in Yorkshire. Coming just a few weeks after the brutal execution of the girls’ father and the imprisonment of their mother, the queen’s orders completed the unraveling of the privileged existence these girls had enjoyed.

Hugh le Despenser had left four sons and five daughters behind him. Isabel, the oldest of the girls, was about fourteen. She had been married as a child to Richard Fitzalan and thereby escaped her younger sisters’ fate.

 

 

 

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The Wars of the Roses/Lancaster and York/Usurpation and the right to the throne through females

File:Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York.jpg
RICHARD OF YORK, CLAIMANT TO THE ENGLISH THRONE
AND ONE OF THE MAIN LEADERS OF THE WAR OF ROSES
[WAR BETWEEN THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK,
BOTH DESCENDANTS OF KING EDWARD III]
[HISTORICAL IMAGE]

WAR OF THE ROSES
SCENE AT THE TEMPLE GARDEN
RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK, WEARING A
WHITE ROSE, TO CONFRONT
HIS POLITICAL RIVAL AND ENEMY,
EDMUND, BEAUFORT, 2ND DUKE OF
SOMERSET, FORCING HIM TO
CHOOSE A RED ROSE
THE NOBLE LORDS TAKING SIDES
THIS IS A SHAKESPEARE SCENE [HENRY VI]
AND NOT BASED ON ANY HISTORICAL
EVIDENCE
RICHARD II, WHOSE THRONE WAS
USURPED BY HENRY BOLINBROKE, THE
LATER KING HENRY IV
 
King Henry IV from NPG (2).jpg
KING HENRY IV, WHO USURPED THE THRONE OF RICHARD II AS
HENRY BOLINBROKE, HIS COUSIN
 
 
 
King Henry V from NPG.jpg
 
 
KING HENRY V
 
KING HENRY VI OF ENGLAND
[HISTORICAL IMAGE]
MARGARET OF ANJOU, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
MARGARET OF ANJOU, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
[HISTORICAL IMAGE]

TWO IMAGES OF MARGARET OF ANJOU, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
[FICTION]
 
 
 

KING EDWARD IV, SON OF RICHARD, DUKE OF
YORK
[FICTION]
Richard III earliest surviving portrait.jpg
KING RICHARD III, SON OF RICHARD,
DUKE OF YORK
HISTORICAL IMAGE
King Henry VII.jpg
KING HENRY VII, THE FIRST TUDOR KING
AND FOUNDER OF THE TUDOR DYNASTY
HISTORICAL IMAGE
Dear Readers
Recently I wrote a letter to Encyclopaedia Britannica about
their History Page about the House of York.
See my letter
 
See the article of Encyclopaedia Britannica about
the House of York
 
Although I have much appreciation for their
historical work I had some comments about their
remarks on their Page, regarding the alleged ”usurpation”
of the House of Lancaster by the House of York,
by deposing King Henry VI by Edward of York, son
of Richard, Duke of York, in 1461, as the socalled
”weakness” in the claim to the throne by
Richard of York, because derived from females.
See my comments:
TRAVEL WITH ME TO THE PAST
ENTER THE WORLD

 

 

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The Wars of the Roses/Lancaster and York/Usurpation and the right to the throne by females/Letter to Encyclopaedia Britannica

 

 

 

File:Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York.jpg
RICHARD OF YORK, CLAIMANT TO THE ENGLISH THRONE
AND ONE OF THE MAIN LEADERS OF THE WAR OF ROSES
[WAR BETWEEN THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK,
BOTH DESCENDANTS OF KING EDWARD III]
[HISTORICAL IMAGE]

WAR OF THE ROSES
SCENE AT THE TEMPLE GARDEN
RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK, WEARING A
WHITE ROSE, TO CONFRONT
HIS POLITICAL RIVAL AND ENEMY,
EDMUND, BEAUFORT, 2ND DUKE OF
SOMERSET, FORCING HIM TO
CHOOSE A RED ROSE
THE NOBLE LORDS TAKING SIDES
THIS IS A SHAKESPEARE SCENE [HENRY VI]
AND NOT BASED ON ANY HISTORICAL
EVIDENCE
RICHARD II, WHOSE THRONE WAS
USURPED BY HENRY BOLINBROKE, THE
LATER KING HENRY IV
 
King Henry IV from NPG (2).jpg
KING HENRY IV, WHO USURPED THE THRONE OF RICHARD II AS
HENRY BOLINBROKE, HIS COUSIN
 
 
 
King Henry V from NPG.jpg
 
 
KING HENRY V
 
KING HENRY VI OF ENGLAND
[HISTORICAL IMAGE]
MARGARET OF ANJOU, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
MARGARET OF ANJOU, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
[HISTORICAL IMAGE]

TWO IMAGES OF MARGARET OF ANJOU, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
[FICTION]
 
 
 

KING EDWARD IV, SON OF RICHARD, DUKE OF
YORK
[FICTION]
Richard III earliest surviving portrait.jpg
KING RICHARD III, SON OF RICHARD,
DUKE OF YORK
HISTORICAL IMAGE
King Henry VII.jpg
KING HENRY VII, THE FIRST TUDOR KING
AND FOUNDER OF THE TUDOR DYNASTY
HISTORICAL IMAGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

LANCASTER AND YORK/USURPATION AND THE RIGHT TO
THE THRONE THROUGH FEMALES/LETTER TO ENCYCLOPAEDIA
BRITANNICA
TO THE EDITORS OF ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
YOUR ARTICLE ABOUT THE HOUSE OF YORK
SOME COMMENTS
Dear Editors,
At first I want to express my great admiration for your
large scale History Page about ther various periods
of human history
I especially paid attention on your contributions
to the English Late Medieval History and visited
your page about the Hundred Years War between England
and France  with pleasure, learning much of your
information
THE WARS OF THE ROSES
YOUR PAGE OF THE HOUSE OF YORK
COMMENTS
A historian myself, I wrote some articles about the
Wars of the Roses [1]
See some of my articles  below.
Regarding your excellent contributions,  I have  read
your page about the House of York with
much interest.
See
ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, HOUSE OF YORK
However I want to make some comments on your contribution,
referring to your remarks about the ”usurpation” of the House of
Lancaster by the House of York, as the ”weakness” of the
claim to the throne by Richard, Duke of York, being derived by
females.

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