Category: Prince And Princesses

Death of Prince Arthur

2/4/2020

Today marks the death of Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.

Arthur and his new wife, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, had left their home at Tickenhill Manor, where they had been living since their marriage. Just before Christmas 1501, they arrived at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, a fine castle that stands on the River Teme.

Even before the arrived at Ludlow, Arthur was suffering from ill health, he had been growing weaker since his wedding and by the beginning of March the following year both Arthur and Catherine were afflicted by an unknown illness. Although the real cause has never been established many historians believe it was sweating sickness or tuberculous.

Catherine recovered, Arthur did not, he died this day, the 2nd April 1502. He was just fifteen.

Henry VII did not attend the funeral, many believe he was too devastated by the boy's death, Catherine did not attend either.
Arthur’s untimely death led to his younger brother, Prince Henry, becoming the heir to the young boy's throne, and inheriting his lands and his wife.

Certainly, the event was a turning point in history.

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Arthur of Brittany

29/3/2020

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On this day in 1187 the birth of Arthur, Duke of Brittany in Nantes in France to Geoffrey, son of Henry II, and his wife Constance

Arthur's paternal uncle King Richard I had no children and before setting off on his most favourite pastime - the Crusades he named the boy heir to his English throne. However, in 1199 when Arthur was twelve Richard had a change of heart and made John, his last remaining brother, heir. Quite a sensible thing to do as a country with a minor on the throne is nothing but trouble.

Richard was dead by the end of March 1199 and despite his estate being in order, there was trouble anyway. The barons of England supported Arthur - of course they did. England's hero the great William Marshall and John's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine stood on John's side.

The story goes that King John ordered his nephew's death and claimed the throne for himself. By the beginning of 1203, the boy had gone missing never to be seen again. Arthur's jailer, Hubert de Burgh stated that Prince Arthur of Brittany was castrated by John's men and died of shock!

It is interesting don't you think that the story of Arthur shows similarities to the disappearance of Princes in the Tower two-hundred years later. Heir’s to the throne go missing, their wicked uncle does the dirty deed and then the bodies are lost forever.

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Joan, Countess of Toulouse

4/10/2019

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The first week of October 1165 is thought to be the date of birth of Joan, Countess of Toulouse, the third daughter and seventh child of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1176, a Sicilian ambassador, who was in England to discuss Joan's marriage to William II of Sicily, wrote that he found the eleven-year-old princess to be a beauty. The image below is taken from a genealogical roll of the kings of England, it certainly shows she was a pretty girl.

William of Sicily and Joan were married in 1177 in Palermo, their marriage lasted twelve years until his death in 1189. There were no children born of the marriage.

History tells us that Joan and her brother, King Richard I had a close relationship, but this did not stop her being angered by his suggestion that she marry a brother of Saladin, the leader of the Islamic forces during the Crusades. However, negotiations came to nothing and Joan married Raymond, Count of Toulouse, in 1196.

It has been written of Joan that she was 'a woman whose masculine spirit overcame the weakness of her sex' a reference maybe to her heading a force during a siege of a castle while her husband was elsewhere. It is also claimed that showed that she was made of stronger stuff when she avenged her brother's death by having the man who killed him blinded and then flayed alive. However, this story if it be true at all has been linked to their mother, or to Marcadier, a general in the king's army.

In her marriage to Raymond of Toulouse, Joan gave birth to two children, Raymond in 1197 and a child in 1199, however, within a few weeks of the birth Joan was dead.

As a mark of her devotion, she was buried at her brother's side at Fontevraud Abbey.

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Margaret of England

28/9/2018

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It has been claimed that Margaret, the second daughter of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, was named after her aunt Margaret of Provence, the wife of King Louis IX of France. However, chronicler Matthew Paris states that she was named after Saint Margaret of Antioch who her mother called upon whilst giving birth. There is also some confusion over Margaret's date of birth which is stated as being either this day in 1240 or in the first weeks of October.

By the age of eleven Margaret had married the ten year old King Alexander III of Scotland, and it was in Scotland that Margaret is said to have spent a great deal of time in a miserable existence. Margaret's first child a daughter, also Margaret and later queen of Norway, was born ten years after her marriage.

Alexander was Margaret's second child and heir to the throne of Scotland, his death three years after his brother David in 1281 would cause a succession crisis, this would end with one John Baillol being crowned as king of Scotland. Eventually, the enthronement of Baillol would lead to the Scottish Wars of Independence.

But what of Margaret? She outlived her father by three years, she was present at the coronation of her elder brother Edward I as king of England in Westminster in the August 1274.

Of Margaret it was written

‘She was a lady of great beauty, chastity, and humility, three qualities which are rarely found together in the same person.’

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Joan of the Tower

5/7/2018

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Born in the Tower of London on the 5th July in 1321 was Joan, the youngest of the four children of Edward II and Isabella of France.

Joan was born into a country fraught with tension. What started out as a feud eventually escalated into civil war - this feud was the result of Joan's father's reliance on the Despensers, a father and son act. History differentiates between the two by calling the son 'the Younger' - he was a royal favourite. This war came to an end following the Battle of Boroughbridge in March the following year with the execution of Thomas of Lancaster and the exile of both Despensers. However, the Despensers were to return as favourites until the end of Edward's reign.

When Joan was just seven she was contracted to marry David of Scotland, the four-year-old son of Robert the Bruce. This marriage formed part of the Treaty of Northampton. Under the terms of the treaty, England recognised Scotland's independence and Robert the Bruce as king. For their part, the Scots would pay an agreed sum of money to end the war.

Poor Joan entered into this unhappy marriage on the 17th July 1328 and was crowned as a Scottish queen the next year. David as king was an English sympathiser and disliked in Scotland and history sees him as a disastrous leader. On a personal level, he was a womaniser but left no illegitimate offspring. It is hard to say what Joan had to put up with during her thirty-four-year marriage to the Scottish king however the answer may lay in the fact that following his release from his eleven-year captivity in England Joan chose not to accompany him back to Scotland.

Where Joan lived during the last five years of her life is unknown, she may have lived at Castle Rising, one of her mother's properties however by 1358 she was living with her mother at Hertford Castle. I wonder what these two women talked of during their time together? Did they discuss the subject of living with men they cared little for or Joan's time as Queen of the Scots or maybe Isabella's affair with Roger Mortimer?

Oh to be a fly on the wall!

By the summer of 1358, Joan was caring for her dying mother who succumbed to death that year. Joan continued to live at Hertford Castle until her own death from the black plague in 1362.

She was buried in Christ Church Greyfriars, London. Her tomb no longer exists.

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Maud of Lancaster

4/4/2018

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Maud of Lancaster was one of two sisters who were co-heiress of Henry of Grosmont the Duke of Lancaster and Earl of Leicester. Maud was born on the 4th April in 1339, to Grosmont's wife Isabel de Beaumont at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire.

Bolingbroke Castle is now in ruins, but it was once a fine castle situated in what is known as the Lincolnshire Wolds. It was built by Ranulf Blondeville, Earl of Chester in 1220 however by the sixteenth century it had fallen into disrepair. On Blondeville's death the castle passed to his sister Hawise, eventually, via the de Lacy family it ended up as part of the estate of Thomas of Lancaster. Lancaster was executed for treason in 1322 and his estate for forfeited. A year later, Henry of Grosmont successfully petitioned to take possession of his brother's estates which included Bolingbroke.

Maud's sister Blanche was also born at Bolingbroke.

Maud was Grosmont's eldest daughter, her paternal grandparents were Henry of Lancaster and Maud de Charworth and her maternal grandparents were Henry Beaumont and Alice de Comyn. Both sets of grandparent held land in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. Her Beaumont grandparent's Lincolnshire estates were granted as a result of their association with the royal family. Edward II granted them a number of manor including Folkingham, Goady and Barton upon Humber.

On Grosmont's death in 1361, Maud and Blanche became wealthy heiresses, however the Earldom of Leicester passed to Maud's first husband and then on his death in 1389 to her sister Blanche's husband John of Gaunt, who was granted the Dukedom of Lancaster as a second creation.

On Maud's death on the 10th April 1362 Gaunt received her money and her lands to add to that of his wife share of the family estate. The Grosmont inheritance formed the foundations on which the Lancastrian's built their dynasty.

There is no image of Maud, however she may have resembled her sister. You can see an illustration of Blanche - pictured here with John of Gaunt.

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Henry the Young King

25/2/2018

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Henry II's reign would see the end of the Anarchy and claims by others to the crown of England and therefore it would be vitally important that Henry have an heir whose right to the throne was not questioned. Henry's new wife Eleanor was said to have been vocal and argumentative and their relationship somewhat ‘fiery’ but despite this Eleanor did manage to give Henry eight children, four of which were sons.

We can only wonder if, in the first months of their marriage, Eleanor was at all worried about her inability to produce male heirs. She must have had some concerns that she did not conceive a child straight away, did she think that the spectre of her marriage to Louis VII of France had come back to haunt her, after all, in all of those fifteen years she never gave the French king a son. However, Eleanor need not of worried, she would be pregnant by the Christmas of 1152 and her first child, a son would be born the following August. Eleanor must have sighed with relief, she knew that her position as wife to the future king of England was secured.

No doubt Eleanor was all the more thrilled when she gave birth to Henry's second son on the 28th February in 1155, this new child would be named Henry after his father. Tragedy struck in the April of 1156 when William, their firstborn died aged just three of a seizure leaving his fourteen-month-old brother Henry as heir to the throne.

History would refer to Henry as the 'Young King.'

Henry would grow, according to one source, into a "lovable, eloquent, handsome and gallant" young man, however, others saw him differently, there would be those who would call a "feckless and fatuous" youth. A written description of Henry tells us that he was "tall but well proportioned, broad-shouldered with a long and elegant neck, pale and freckled skin, bright and wide blue eyes, and a thick mop of the reddish-gold hair." a description that also has been applied to his younger brother Richard, later Richard I.

Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine's family are a prime example of a dysfunctional one and this lead to problems on many different levels, especially in regard to their children. Henry would join with his younger brothers Richard and Geoffrey in rebellion against their father. All the son of Henry and Eleanor have distinctive and forceful personalities, and Henry was no different he was seen as having charm and popularity but he was also seen as irresponsible.

At the age of just fifteen, and while his father still reigned, Henry was crowned king and two years following his coronation Henry married Margaret, the daughter of his mother's first husband the above named Louis VII of France and his second wife Constance of Castile. A birth of a son to the couple would secure Henry II's new Angevin dynasty, but it was not to be, Henry the Young King's son died at just three days old in 1177. Henry himself would die just six years later at the age of twenty-eight while on campaign in Limousin in France, probably of dysentery, estranged from his father. After his death, Henry II is said to have stated
"He cost me much, but I wish he had lived to cost me more"

Henry's death left his brother Richard as heir to his fathers throne.

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Birth of Catherine of Valois

17/10/2017

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Catherine of Valois, the beautiful and virtuous Kate from Shakespeare's Henry V is defined by the events of her later life, her marriage to Henry V, a suspected relationship with Edmund Beaufort, her affair with Owen Tudor and the ill-treatment of her body by diarist Samuel Pepys. However, little is known of her childhood and early life.

Catherine of Valois was born in Paris on the 27th October in 1401. She was the ninth child and the fifth daughter of King Charles VI of France and his queen, Isabella of Bavaria. Cathrine was born while France was in turmoil - the beginnings of a power struggle at home and the continuing conflict with the enemy over the sea, the English.

Catherine's mother Isabella receiving The Book of the City of Ladies

It is thought that Catherine had a troubled childhood and indeed she may have witnessed at first hand her father's bouts of mental illness and her mother struggling to come to terms with the situation. History tells us of the poverty ridden French court, but it doesn't tell us how it all affected her, and historians differ in their view of Catherine's upbringing, some suggest that her mother was cold and cruel and openly flaunted her lovers about court, while other say that she was kind, generous and very close to all her children.

By the time Catherine was seven years old, English king Henry IV was looking for peace with France, he considered that a match between his son and a French princess would bring this about and therefore the subject was discussed on and off over the following years, eventually though Catherine was betrothed to the future Henry V.

Shakespeare writes of their meeting

"You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues
of the French council, and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs."

These sweet and seductive words to Catherine would succeed where seventy years of battling did not.

The Hollow Crown : Tom Hiddleston as Henry V and Melanie Thierry as Catherine of Valois

Henry and Catherine were betrothed on 21st May 1420, they were married within a few weeks and Catherine would be a widow just over fifteen months later. Catherine son from her marriage to Henry V was Henry VI, his weak rule would bring about the Wars of the Roses and from Catherine's relationship with the son of a Welsh publican the mighty Tudor dynasty sprang.

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Blanche of Lancaster

12/9/2017

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Blanche of Lancaster was just twenty-three when she died this day in 1368. She was the first wife of John of Gaunt the son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault.

Blanche is said to have died of the plague that had ravaged the country that year. This was the plague's third appearance since it first arrived on English shores twenty years earlier. The previous outbreak in 1361, according to Henry Knighton an Augustinian canon of the abbey of St Mary of the Meadows in Leicester, had

'a general mortality oppressed the people. It was called the second pestilence and both rich
and poor died, but especially young people and children.'

The Leicestershire outbreak cost Blanche's parents their lives. In Lincolnshire that year there was an outbreak in Louth, a town just fifteen miles north of Bolingbroke Castle, where Blanche had given birth to Henry, the future Henry IV.

By 1368 Blanche was weakened by childbirth and susceptible to infection, she was therefore 'ripe for the picking' so to speak.

Blanche had given birth to a daughter in 1368 who died as an infant, it is plausible that Blanche may have died in childbirth her poor body weakened from the years of constant pregnancy. She was married at twelve/thirteen, had her first baby nine months later and was pregnant with another child before her body had chance to recover from the last until the aforementioned daughter born in 1368. Blanche died in Staffordshire where there was a recorded outbreak in 1369 which may have taken the life of her last child, it is not unreasonable to suppose the 'black death' took poor Blanche too.

French author Jean Froissart wrote that Blanche was 'young and pretty' even Geoffrey Chaucer was so inspired by her beauty that he wrote of her in his work The Book of the Duchess.

Blanche's body was laid to rest in Old St Paul's Cathedral in London, where Gaunt later joined her. Their tomb was destroyed by fire when the cathedral burnt down in 1666.

Note: Blanche's maternal aunt was Eleanor of Lancaster. Eleanor's first husband, John de Beaumont was also Blanche's paternal uncle.
meanderingthroughtime.weebly.com/history-blog/eleanor-of-lancaster

Note: What is interesting is that both Blanche and Eleanor dates of death are one day off being exactly fifty years apart.

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Marriage of Margaret Tudor to Archibald Douglas

5/8/2017

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The death of King James IV of Scotland in the September of 1513, whilst he was leading his troops in the Battle of Flodden, left Margaret a widow with an infant son. Just under a year later Margaret would marry Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus.

Of this marriage Polydore Virgil wrote

"This year also Margaret, queen of Scots, wife of James IV killed at Flodden in the fifth year of the king's reign, and elder sister of the King, after the death of her husband married Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, without the consent of the King her brother or the council of Scotland, with which he was not pleased. But after that there arose such strife between the lords of Scotland that she and her husband came into England like banished persons, and wrote to the King for mercy and comfort. The King, ever inclined to mercy, sent them clothing and vessels and all things necessary, wishing them to stay in Northumberland until they knew further of his wishes. And the queen was there delivered of a fair lady called Margaret, and all the country were commanded by the King to do them pleasure."

Her marriage to Douglas gave the Scottish Parliament an excuse to replace her with John Stewart, Duke of Albany.

In this extract from a 1950's tale of Margaret defending herself and the rights of her son.

"My lord," she said, her fingers clutched together to still their trembling, "be you sure no person in the world desires the good of my bairns so much as I do. No man will I support who seeks to harm the rights and privileges of my son's crown, but rather will I do all in my power to bring him justice." She looked round at the lords, her adversaries, but the most of them, playing nervously with quill or sand-box, would not meet her gaze. Only Albany stared at her steadfastly, his thoughts hidden behind the curtain of his eyes. "Do not think," she went on, "that I ever consented to such things as you accuse me of. It will never be found that I did aught to hurt the privilege of my son's crown or mine own honour. I pray you, therefore, my lord Duke, give no credence to such vile slanders of me."

With Douglas, Mary would have one child, a daughter, Margaret who would later give birth to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the ill fated husband of Mary Queen of Scots.

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Death of Prince Arthur

Arthur of Brittany

Joan, Countess of Toulouse

Margaret of England

Joan of the Tower

Maud of Lancaster

Henry the Young King

Birth of Catherine of Valois

Blanche of Lancaster

Marriage of Margaret Tudor to Archibald Douglas

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