As we have already seen the sad life of Edward-II, father of Edward-III, we now move on to the important events in the life of that monarch.
You may recall that Queen Isabella , mother of Edward-III and wife of Edward-II, was a sister of the French Monarch. Charles IV
If a king passes away without a male progeny, it was the custom in both England and France that his next brother will get the crown. Thus got King John the kingdom of England after the demise of Richard-I (Lion Heart).
The nobles did not prefer that son of a daughter can become the king.
That is how, when King Henry-I died, leaving no male progeny but only a daughter Matilda, the nobles conferred the kingship to Stephen. and only after considerable confusion and anarchy, Matilda's son could become Henry-II.
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Thus, when the crown of France did not have a surviving male progeny of the French Monarch, ( father of Queen Isabella), Edward-III claimed the throne of England as well as France. ( actually, the French Monarch did have three sons, but by a strange misfortune, all the three died one after another after each becoming king for a short while)
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Not at all unreasonable.!
and he almost made it by waging war and winning many notable victories in France.
In this prolonged struggle for the French Throne, he was ably supported by his sons. among whom the eldest son ( named Edward) known as Black Prince gained great fame for his courage, military tactics, chivalry and nobility.
He was the person expected to become the next king.
Unfortunately, he took ill and passed way even before the demise of EDWARD-III his father.
Edward-III was born in 1312.
He was married to Philippa in 1327, He was 15 years old then.
(Philippa was born in 1310 and so was two years senior to her husband!)
He became King of England in the same year thanks to the invasion by his mother Isabella and her admirer Mortimer.
He had a long rule of 50 YEARS .
He passed away in 1377.
He had a close-knit family-life and was very fond of all his sons and daughters. ( though his daughters did not have much luck to live long and flourish),
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In 1328, Charles IV of France died without sons or brothers. His closest male relative was his nephew Edward III of England, whose mother, Isabella of France, was sister of the deceased king.
Isabella claimed the throne of France for her son, but the French rejected it, maintaining that Isabella could not transmit a right she did not possess.
Furthermore, political sentiment favoured a Frenchman for the crown rather than a foreign prince.
Edward-III died in 1377, He was aged 65 then.
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Richard-II, son of Black Prince and grandson of Edward-III , became king. but he was a very young boy then, though of tremendous courage and sagacity.
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When Edward-III was yet to assume full control, Roger Mortimer and Isabella had concluded a peace treaty with Scotland. Edward III's sister was given in marriage to the King of Scotland.
1328, in accordance with the Anglo-Scottish peace treaty of Northampton, the four-year-old David was married to Joanna, sister of King Edward III of England. The boy succeeded his father, Robert I the Bruce, as king of Scots in , 1329.
But when Edward-III assumed full powers by a surprise attack on Mortimer and having him given death sentence, he repudiated the earlier peace treaty and resumed hostilities.
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Edward -III had a long reign ( about 50 years) and had a very happy and loyal family life with his wife Philippa. They had 13 children! and seven of them were boys.
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Edward III was supremely lucky in his bride.
Edward and Philippa had been married in 1328 to seal the political alliance that earlier supported Queen Isabella’s invasion of England. But if the teenage couple were not in love at the start, they quickly developed a strong bond of affection. Edward-iii was sixteen then and Philippa was 18. .
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1330- Edward-Black Prince
1332- daughter
1333-daughter
1337- William ( survived a few months
1338-Lionel-Duke of Clarence
1340- John of Gaunt-Lancaster
1341-Edmund-Duke of York
1343- daughter ( died as child)
1344- Mary
1346-Margaret
1347- son died due to plague
1348-son-died in infancy
1355-Thomas- Duke of Gloucester
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Edward and Phillipa produced 13 children in all. Their eldest child, Edward the Black Prince was born on 15 June, 1330 at the royal Palace of Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
2) Their second child, a daughter, was born at Woodstock in 1332 and named Isabella after her paternal grandmother. Isabella was her father's favourite daughter he was said to have doted on her.
3) A second daughter, Joan, named after Phillipa's mother, was born in the Tower of London in late 1333
4) son William was born at Hatfield in 1337, but survived only a few months.
5) In 1338, Philippa and Edward traveled to Euope to arrange alliances in support of Edward's claim to the French throne. Philippa stayed in Antwerp, where her son, Lionel, later Duke of Clarence, was born on November 29, 1338. He was to grow to be nearly seven feet tall.
6) Philippa gave birth to another son John of Gaunt, later Duke of Lancaster, on March 6, 1340 at Ghent.
7) A further son, Edmund, who would be created Duke of York, was born at Langley in June of 1341.
8) In 1343, Phillipa gave birth to daughter Blanche who died soon after she was born.
9) On October 10, 1344 she gave birth to a daughter named Mary,
10) another daughter, Margaret, was born in 1346.
11) William was born at Windsor in 1347.(died young)
12) Their last child, Thomas was born at Woodstock in 1355.
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Isabella ( 1332 – 1382), married Enguerrand VII de Coucy, 1st Earl of Bedford. Had issue. .
Joan ( 1334 – 1348) died of the plague in Bordeaux, on her way to marry Peter of Castile. No issue.
Blanche (1342), died young.
Mary ( 1344 – 1362), married John IV, Duke of Brittany. No issue.
Margaret 1346 – 1361), married John Hastings, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. No issue.
Shakespeare's immortal play King Richard-II,
is about the rule of this young king.
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Richard-II ascended the English throne in
1377 However, between 1377 and 1380, actual power was in the hands of a series of councils. The political community preferred this to a regency led by the king's uncle, John of Gaunt, although Gaunt remained highly influential.[49]
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Thomas of Woodstock was born in 1355.
He was made Duke of Gloucester.in 1385.
He was the youngest uncle of King Richard-II
Richard-ii was born in 1367.
( son of Black Prince and grandson of Edward-iii). On the death of Edward-III, he became the King of England. in 1377. He was just 10 years old then.
Thus Thomas of Woodstock ( Duke of Glocester) was 12 years elder to Richard-II.
and had some experience in warfare in France.
However, he had three surviving elder brothers, namely
Lionel-Duke of Clarence
John of Gaunt ( Duke of Lancaster)
Edmund-(Duke of York)
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Thus there was never any breach of rules of royal ascension in the crowning of King Richard-II. -except that he was a mere boy then while all his uncles were much senior and had military prowess.
Lionel( Duke of Clarence) passed away in 1368. ( 1338-1368)
So, he died even before Edward-III.
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The next two uncles of Richard-II, were John of Gaunt ( Duke of Lancaster) and Edmund ( Duke of York).
These two uncles were very loyal to the memory of their father Edward-III and their illustrious brother the Black Prince.
Actually, they were the informal guardians of the boy Richard-II.
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Not so, the last son of Edward-III, the Duke of Gloucester. Perhaps, he thought that a senior brother had precedence over a very young grandson. ( like King John's claim over that of Arthur).
So, he conspired with some nobles to seize the crown for himself. To this scheme, neither John of Gaunt nor Duke of York were agreeable. They stood by the young boy king Richard-II.
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Thomas of Woodstock was the leader of the Lords Appellant, a group of powerful nobles whose ambition to wrest power from Thomas's nephew, King Richard II of England, culminated in a successful rebellion in 1388 that significantly weakened the king's power. Richard II managed to dispose of the Lords Appellant in 1397, and Thomas was imprisoned in Calais to await trial for treason.
During that time he was murdered, probably by a group of men led by Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, on behalf of Richard II.
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Shakespeare's play King Richard-II, begins sometime after Richard-II asserted his royal power.
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Now, as for Duke of Clarence
Lionel had only one child, Philippa, daughter of his first wife Elizabeth.
In 1368 she married Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March. Their granddaughter and eventual heir, Anne Mortimer, married into the Yorkist branch of the English royal family and was the mother of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York.
Even though Richard was a descendant in the male line of Edward III, the House of York based its claim to the English throne on descent through the female line from Lionel to establish a lasting blood line. (Edward's first-born son, the Black Prince, had no legitimate descendants past his two sons Edward of Angoulême and King Richard II.)[6] Lionel was the ancestor of Kings Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III and all later British monarchs except for Henry VII, whose wife Elizabeth of York was Lionel's descendant.
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https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/usbiography/e/edwardiiiengland.html
King Edward III of England lived from
1312 to 1377. One of the most successful English monarchs of the middle ages, he turned England into a major European power.
Edward III was born at Windsor Castle, the eldest son of King Edward II and Queen Isabella. In his early years he was known as Edward of Windsor. On 24 January 1327, when Edward was 14, his mother and her lover Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, forced the imprisoned Edward II to abdicate in favour of his son, and thereafter ruled the country as Regents in the name of Edward III. On 11 October 1327 Edward II was murdered while a prisoner at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, leaving the country in the effective control of Isabella and Mortimer.
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On 1328 the sixteen year old Edward III married fourteen year old Philippa of Hainault at York Minster. From a Scottish perspective the major development during the Regency of Edward III was the Treaty of Edinburgh and Northampton, under the terms of which the English renounced their claims over Scotland in return for a payment of £20,000 Sterling.
Meanwhile Mortimer effectively ruled England for his own benefit, earning the dislike of many powerful people in the country and the hatred of the young Edward.
On r 1330, a group of supporters of Edward III burst into Nottingham Castle, where Mortimer and Isabella were sleeping, arrested them and took them to the Tower of London. The 17 year old Edward laid fourteen charges of treason against Mortimer, including the murder of Edward II. He then, without a trial, condemned Mortimer to death despite the pleas of Isabella, who was pregnant with Mortimer's child. Mortimer was executed a month later and Isabella was exiled to Castle Rising in Norfolk where she miscarried.
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Robert the Bruce of Scotland died on 7 June 1329 and was succeeded by his four year old son David II.
Edward III backed an invasion of Scotland by Edward Balliol, son of King John Balliol, which resulted in Edward Balliol being crowned King of Scotland r 1332. By the end of the year, however, he had been beaten back by Scottish nobles loyal to David II led by Sir Andrew Murray and retreated to England.
In 1333 Edward III, having formally renounced the Treaty of Edinburgh and Northampton, launched a major invasion of Scotland in support of Edward Balliol. Further conflict followed in 1334/5 and 1336/7. The pattern of what became known as the Second War of Independence was one of overwhelming English invasion which repeatedly captured large parts of Scotland but failed to conquer the country, interspersed with period in which the Scots slowly regained territory. When Edward Balliol was chased out of Scotland in 1337 he again turned to Edward III for support, but this time found him otherwise occupied.
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In 1337 Philip VI of France, an ally of the Scots, confiscated English territory in Aquitaine and Ponthieu. Edward III responded by laying claim to the Crown of France as a descendent via his mother of Philip IV. The scene was set of what would later be called the Hundred Years' War.
Edward III had a number of significant successes against the French during the 1340s, including the Battle of Crecy and the capture of Calais. In 1356, Edward's oldest son, Edward, the Black Prince, won a significant victory at the battle of Poitiers and captured King John II of France. The crown of France seemed within Edward III's reach, but in 1360 he signed the Treaty of Brétigny, under which he renounced his claims to the French throne in return for gaining full sovereignty over his extensive possessions in France. Achieving this rather than the crown of France may have been his aim all along.
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In 1346 David II of Scotland had launched an invasion of England in support of France. It culminated in the disastrous Battle of Neville's Cross on 17 October 1346 at which David was captured.
Edward Balliol again took the opportunity to invade Scotland, but this proved even less successful than his earlier attempts to control the country. On 20 January 1356 Balliol relinquished his claim to the Scottish crown to Edward III of England in exchange for an English pension.
Edward III was playing a bigger game in France at the time, and in any case still held David II of Scotland as captive, so paid little attention to Scotland. David II was released in 1357 in return for a huge ransom paid by Scotland and the acknowledgment that Edward III was his feudal superior.
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Edward III died on 21 June 1377, having ruled for over 50 years. The last 15 years of his reign were marked by a reduction in personal drive and involvement which saw the French recapture many of the English possessions in France, while an attempt to gain control of Ireland largely failed. Nonetheless, Edward is remembered as a highly successful king, whose military achievements were matched by significant developments in government and legislation, especially following the Black Death of 1348, when plague killed up to a third of the population of Europe.
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