The Morris Clan

EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND

HUSBAND:
Edward III. King of England. Chart A1.
Born 13 NOV 1312 at Windsor, England; son of EDWARD II, King of England and Isabella of France.

Unfortunately, his father Edward II was a weak king and aroused ill-feeling by his dependence on favourites. The neglected queen, Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer, imprisoned and murdered Edward II, taking up the reins of government themselves during the minority of the heir.

Edward III was crowned on January 25, 1327 after reaching majority (age 14). He was the first king to rule by a parliamentary title. At first he was under the dual control of a regency council of barons led by Henry of Lancaster and a court dominated by Mortimer, his mother’s lover, who was clearly angling for the throne himself. In such a court Edward was forced to grow up fast.

He married Philippa of HAINAUT on 24 JAN 1328.

Despite having an unusually happy marriage, Edward was a notorious womaniser. His mistress, Alice Perrers, became a byword for corruption. The king also founded an order of knighthood, the Order of the Garter, allegedly as a result of an incident when a lady, with whom he was dancing at a court ball, dropped an item of intimate apparel (possibly a sanitary belt, though sources describe it as being made of velvet). Gallantly picking it up to assuage her embarrassment, Edward tied it around his own leg, and remarked Honi soit qui mal y pense ('Shame on him who thinks evil of it'), which became the motto of the Order of the Garter. The woman in the case is known only as the "Countess of Salisbury". Some say it was Edward's daughter-in-law, Joan of Kent, but a more likely candidate is Joan's mother-in-law from her first marriage.

As soon as Edward III reached the age of eighteen, in 1330, he was ready to strike. He overthrew Mortimer and removed Isabella. With Lancaster’s connivance, the King’s servants seized Mortimer at Nottingham Castle, in the Queen Mother’s chamber. Mortimer's supporters disappeared and he was charged before his peers in Parliament with an appalling range of crimes, of most of which he was quite clearly guilty, and was executed. Isabella was forgiven and was allowed to retire to live a quiet life on a reduced income at Castle Rising in Norfolk.

Following his successful coup Edward pursued a very sensible policy of toleration. There was no wholesale slaughter of Mortimer’s followers and most of them were absorbed without difficulty into the life of the kingdom. Mortimer’s grandson was later restored to all his grandfather’s titles and was to prove a faithful supporter of the King.

His most remarkable achievement that he was able to turn the baronage into one great happy family, with himself as their leader and friend. Edward partly did this by marrying many of his own children to the sons and daughters of magnates, thus tying great houses such as Mortimer and Lancaster to his own dynastic ambitions. Many of his descendants can also thus trace their ancestry through these great families of the kingdom rather that through alliances which he may have otherwise attempted to create with foreign powers.

The reign of Edward III was marked by several important victories over France, including the battles of Crecy and Poitiers. His first major military success was the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, which he undertook in support of the new Scottish king, Edward Balliol. On the death of the French king, his own grandfather Charles IV in 1328, Edward claimed the French throne, declaring war on Philip VI in 1337. He was declared King of France on January 26, 1340.

Edward was not only a great leader and soldier, but also a superb host, with “a diet of war, wine, women, good parties and just enough cultural activity to satisfy the more literate of his colleagues,” and so his court was fully appreciated by the barons.

Edward took great care to promote the knightly image enshrined in the cult of St. George and King Arthur.

In 1346, Edward was accompanied on his French campaign by his eldest son, the Black Prince, who proved a capable military leader. Edward left much of the subsequent campaigning to the prince, himself concentrating on the Scots. However, many of his gains were short-lived. He and the prince fell out over political policy at home, and the government was left largely in the hands of a younger son, John of Gaunt.

Edward died of a stroke on 21 JUN 1377 at Richmond, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His son Edward, the Black Prince had pre-deceased him, and he was succeeded by his young grandson, King Richard II of England.

The Wars of the Roses were a civil war among the descendants of King Edward III over the throne of England. Each branch of the family claimed to have a superior claim, because their ancestor was older, and/or because their claim was through a male line instead of a female one, and/or because their claim was through legitimate offspring instead of bastards.

WIFE:
[F6166293]. Philippa of HAINAUT. (Philipa d' AVESNES (Countess) of HAINAUT)(Hainault).
Born 24 JUN 1311 at Valenciennes (then in Flanders, now France); daughter of WILLIAM III, Count of Holland and HAINAUT and Jeanne de VALOIS.

She married Edward at York Minster, on 24 January 1328, eleven months after his accession to the English throne and, unlike many of her predecessors, she did not alienate the English people by retaining her foreign retinue upon her marriage by bringing large numbers of foreigners to the English court. She gave birth to her first son, Edward, nine days before her sixteenth birthday.

Philippa accompanied Edward on his expeditions to the Kingdom of Scotland (1333) and Flanders (1338-40), where she won acclaim for her gentleness and compassion. She is best remembered as the tender-hearted woman who, in 1347, interceded with her husband and persuaded him to spare the lives of the Burghers of Calais, whom he had planned to execute as an example to the townspeople following his successful siege. She acted as regent in England on several occasions when her husband was on the Continent.

Philippa grew portly in her later years, and this supported the affectionate English view of her as a sympathetic, homely, and motherly woman. She gave birth to 14 children and outlived 9 of them. Two died during the Black Death of 1348.

She died on 15 August 1369 at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England, of an illness akin to dropsy, and was buried at Westminster Abbey.

CHILDREN of Edward III, King of England and Philippa of HAINAUT:

Edward, the Black Prince. He was an outstanding military leader. He married Joan Of Woodstock The Fair Maid. Their only surviving child was Richard II who had no child, so once Richard was killed (and succeeded) by his cousin Henry IV, the senior line ceased to exist. He was called Edward of Woodstock in his early life, after his birthplace, and has more recently been popularly known as The Black Prince after the distinct plate armour he would wear during campaigns. An exceptional military leader and popular during his life, Edward died one year before his father and thus never ruled as king He died about 1376.
William BEAUFORT. Born about 1334. He died in 1337, aged about three, and is buried in York Minster.
LIONEL, Duke of Clarence. (Lionel Plantagenet)(Lionel of Antwerp). He married (1) Lady Elizabeth De Burgh (Chart A1). Their heir was a female who married a Mortimer, then a Mortimer woman married a York man, so the Lionel/Mortimer line merged into the York line. He married (2) Violante Visconti.
JOHN of GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster. Born in 1340. He married (1) Blanche of Lancaster, from whom he received Lancaster. He married (2) Constance Of Castile. He married (3) Katherine De Roet Duchess Of Lancaster. He married (4) Katherine Swynford. His legitimate heirs were the Lancasters: Henry IV who usurped the throne from his cousin Richard II; Henry V; and Henry VI who had the throne usurped from him by the first York king, Edward IV; Henry VI's only child was killed in the war, so the Lancaster line became defunct. John of Gaunt's illegitimate heirs were the Beauforts, until a Beaufort woman married a Tudor man, and they became the Tudors; on the deaths of his legitimate heirs, the Beauforts/Tudors claimed to be Lancasters and, therefore, senior to the Yorks, who were descended from a younger son than John. [Note: John of Gaunt also had legitimate descendants through his daughter Catalina, a grand-daughter of King Pedro I and the mother of King Juan II, but these Castillians engaged in their own wars over the Spanish succession and did not assert any claims to the English throne in the Wars of the Roses.] He died 1399.
EDMUND of Langley, First Duke of York. He married Isabel Of Castile & Leon. His descendants were the Yorks, and once they merged with the Lionel/Mortimer line, they claimed to be senior to the Lancasters, who were descended from a younger son than Lionel, and to the Tudors, who were descended from bastards debarred from the throne.
Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. He married Eleanor De Bohun. His heir was a female who married a Stafford, and then the Staffords became the Dukes of Buckingham. Nobody ever considered them serious contenders for the crown, at least until Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, rebelled against Richard III in 1483.
Isabella Plantagenet. She married Enguerrard VII De Courcy Earl Of Bedford.
Lady Margaret Plantagenet. She married John Hastings 4th Lord Hastings.

MISTRESS:
Alice PERRERS.
Perrers served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Philippa, King Edward’s wife, but became Edward's mistress before his wife’s death. However, the scandal was kept quiet until after Philippa's death, after which the King lavished gifts on Perrers. She was given property and even a selection of the late Queen’s jewels. Dressed in golden garments, Alice was paraded as The Lady of the Sun by the king's command.

Perrers' family background has been the subject of much speculation. She was apparently married twice, and "Perrers" appears to have been the surname of her first husband. She was also married to Sir William Windsor, a Westmorland aristocrat. He was a royal lieutenant in Ireland, meaning that he was absent from England for long periods of time. By Edward III, Perrers had a son named Sir John de Southeray (c. 1364-1383), who married Matilda Percy, daughter of Henry Percy. She may have had two daughters by the king: Jane, who married Richard Northland, and Joan, who married Robert Skerne.

SOURCES:

[S1]. The Royal Ancestry of the Hamblin Family. Compiled for the Hamblin Family Association by George Merrill Roy, I. A. G. Received from Geraldine Tenney Nelson.
[S2]. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_III_of_England.
[S3]. http://members.aol.com/dwidad/hchped.html
[S4]. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/nigel.battysmith/Database/D0005/I1185.html