   #copyright

Edward III of England

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History 1500 and
before (including Roman Britain)

   [USEMAP:24.png]
   Edward III
   By the Grace of God, King of England
   and France and Lord of Ireland
   Reign 25 January 1327 – 21 June 1377
   Coronation 1 February 1327
   Born 13 November 1312
   Windsor Castle
   Died June 21, 1377 (aged 64)
   Sheen Palace (See Richmond Palace)
   Buried Westminster
   Predecessor Edward II
   Successor Richard II
   Consort Philippa of Hainault
   (c. 1314–1369)
   Issue Edward, the Black Prince
   (1330–1376)
   Lionel of Antwerp (1338–1368)
   John of Gaunt (1340–1399)
   Edmund of Langley (1342–1404)
   Thomas of Woodstock
   (1355–1397)
   Royal House Plantagenet
   Father Edward II (1284–1327)
   Mother Isabella of France (c.1295–1358)

   Edward III ( 13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377) was one of the most
   successful English monarchs of the Middle Ages. He remained on the
   throne for 50 years; no English monarch had reigned for as long as
   Edward since Henry III, and none would until George III. Having
   restored royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father,
   Edward II, he went on to transform the Kingdom of England into the most
   efficient military power in Europe.

   Edward was crowned at the age of fourteen, following the deposition of
   his father. When seventeen years old he led a coup against his regent,
   Roger Mortimer, and began his personal reign. After defeating, but not
   subjugating, the Kingdom of Scotland, he declared himself rightful heir
   to the French throne in 1337, starting what would be known as the
   Hundred Years' War. Following some initial setbacks, the war went
   exceptionally well for England; the victories of Crécy and Poitiers led
   up to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny. Edward’s later years,
   however, were marked by international failure and domestic strife,
   largely as a result of his inertia and eventual bad health.

   Edward was also responsible for establishing the Order of the Garter,
   and his reign saw vital developments in legislature and government—in
   particular the evolution of the English parliament—as well as the
   ravaging of the Black Death. By character he was a temperamental man,
   but also capable of great clemency. He was, in most ways, a
   conventional king, and his interests lay mainly in the field of
   warfare. Highly revered in his own time and for centuries after, Edward
   III was denounced as an irresponsible adventurer by later Whig
   historians. This view has turned, and modern historiography credits him
   with many achievements.

Biography

Early life

   Edward was born at Windsor Castle on November 13, 1312, and was thus
   called "Edward of Windsor" in his early years. The reign of his father,
   Edward II, was fraught with military defeat, rebellious barons and
   corrupt courtiers, but the birth of a male heir in 1312 temporarily
   strengthened Edward II's position on the throne.

   On 20 January 1327, when the young Edward was fourteen years old, the
   king was deposed by his queen, Isabella, and her consort Roger
   Mortimer. Edward, now Edward III, was crowned on 1 February, and a
   regency was set up for him, led by Isabella and Mortimer.

   Mortimer, the de facto ruler of England subjected the young king to
   constant disrespect and humiliation, creating tension between the two.
   Mortimer knew his position as ruler was precarious, especially after
   Edward and his wife, Philippa of Hainault, had a son on 15 June 1330.

   Mortimer used his power to acquire a number of noble estates. Many of
   them belonged to Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel, who had remained
   loyal to Edward II in his struggle with Isabella and Mortimer. He had
   been consequently executed on 17 November 1326. His estates and titles
   were forfeited with his execution and therefore open for Mortimer to
   acquire. However the greed and arrogance of Mortimer caused him to be
   hated by many of the other nobles. All this was not lost on the young
   king.

   Shortly before his 18th birthday, Edward, with the help of a few
   trusted companions, staged a coup d'état at Nottingham castle ( 19
   October 1330) with the result that both Mortimer and his mother
   Isabella were arrested. Mortimer was sent to the Tower of London, and
   one month later, hanged. Isabella was forced into retirement at Castle
   Rising. With this dramatic event, the personal reign of Edward
   effectively began.

Early reign

                 English Royalty
               House of Plantagenet
   Armorial of Plantagenet
                    Edward III
       Edward, Prince of Wales
       Lionel, Duke of Clarence
       John, Duke of Lancaster
       Edmund, Duke of York
       Thomas, Duke of Gloucester
       Joan of England
       Isabella, Countess of Bedford
   Grandchildren
       Richard II
        Philippa, Countess of Ulster
        Philippa, Queen of Portugal
       Elizabeth, Baroness Fanhope and Milbroke
       Henry IV
        Katherine, Queen of Castile
        Edward, Duke of York
        Richard, Earl of Cambridge
        Constance of York
        Anne, Countess of Eu

   Edward chose to renew the military conflict with the Kingdom of
   Scotland in which his father and grandfather had engaged with varying
   success. Edward repudiated the Treaty of Northampton that had been
   signed during the regency, thus renewing claims of English sovereignty
   over Scotland and resulting in the Second War of Scottish Independence.

   Intending to regain what the English had conceded, he won back control
   of Berwick and secured a decisive English victory at the Battle of
   Halidon Hill in 1333 against the forces of the infant David II of
   Scotland. Edward III was now in a position to put Edward Balliol on the
   throne of Scotland and claim a reward of 2,000 librates of land in the
   southern counties - the Lothians, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire,
   Dumfriesshire, Lanarkshire and Peebleshire. Despite the victories of
   Dupplin and Halidon, the Bruce party soon started to recover and by the
   close of 1335 and the Battle of Culblean, the Plantagenet occupation
   was in difficulties and the Balliol party was fast losing ground.

   At this time, in 1336, Edward III's brother John of Eltham, Earl of
   Cornwall died. John of Fordun's Gesta Annalia is alone in claiming that
   Edward killed his brother in a quarrel at Perth.

   Although Edward III committed very large armies to Scottish operations,
   by 1337 the vast majority of Scotland had been recovered for David II,
   leaving only a few castles such as Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling in
   Plantagenet possession. These installations were not adequate to impose
   Edward's rule and by 1338/9 Edward had moved from a policy of conquest
   to one of containment.

   Edward's military problems, however, were on two fronts; the challenge
   from the French monarchy was of no less concern. The French represented
   a problem in three areas: first, they provided constant support to the
   Scottish through the Franco-Scottish alliance. Philip VI protected
   David II in exile, and supported Scottish raids in Northern England.
   Second, the French attacked several English coastal towns, leading to
   rumours in England of a full-scale invasion. Finally, the English
   king's possessions in France were under threat—in 1337, Philip VI
   confiscated the duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu.

   Instead of seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict by paying homage
   to the French king, Edward laid claim to the French crown as the only
   living male descendant of his deceased maternal grandfather, Philip IV.
   The French, however, invoked the Salic law of succession and rejected
   the claim, pronouncing Philip IV's nephew, Philip VI, the true heir (
   see below) and thereby setting the stage for the Hundred Years' War.

   In the war against France, Edward built alliances and fought by proxy
   through minor French princes. In 1338, Louis IV named him vicar-general
   of the Holy Roman Empire, and promised his support. These measures,
   however, produced few results; the only major military gain made in
   this phase of the war was the English naval victory at Sluys on 24 June
   1340.

   Meanwhile, the fiscal pressure on the kingdom caused by Edward's
   expensive alliances led to discontent at home. In response he returned
   unannounced on 30 November 1340. Finding the affairs of the realm in
   disorder, he purged the royal administration. These measures did not
   bring domestic stability, however, and a standoff ensued between the
   king and John Stratford, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

   Edward, at the Parliament of England of April 1341, was forced to
   accept severe limitations to his financial and administrative
   prerogatives. Yet, in October of the same year, the king repudiated
   this statute, and Archbishop Stratford was politically ostracised. The
   extraordinary circumstances of the 1341 parliament had forced the king
   into submission, but under normal circumstances the powers of the king
   in medieval England were virtually unlimited, and Edward took advantage
   of this.

Fortunes of war

   After much inconclusive campaigning on Continental Europe, Edward
   decided to stage a major offensive in 1346, sailing for Normandy with a
   force of 15,000 men. His army sacked the city of Caen and marched
   across northern France. On 26 August he met the French king's forces in
   pitched battle at Crécy and won a decisive victory. Meanwhile, back
   home, the returned David II was defeated and captured at the Battle of
   Neville's Cross on 17 October. With his northern border pacified,
   Edward saw an opportunity to stage a major offensive against France and
   laid siege to the town of Calais. The town fell in August of 1347.

   After the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV in October of 1347
   his son Louis V, Duke of Bavaria negotiated with Edward to compete
   against the new German king Charles IV, but Edward finally decided in
   May 1348 not to run for the German crown.

   In 1348, the Black Death struck Europe with full force, killing a third
   or more of England's population. This loss of manpower, and
   subsequently of revenues, meant a halt to major campaigning. The great
   landowners struggled with the shortage of manpower and the resulting
   inflation in labour cost. Attempting to cap wages, the king and
   parliament responded with the Ordinance of Labourers (1349) and the
   Statute of Labourers (1351). The plague did not, however, lead to a
   full-scale breakdown of government and society, and recovery was
   remarkably swift.

   In 1356, while the king was fighting in the north, his oldest son, the
   Black Prince, won a great victory at the Battle of Poitiers. Greatly
   outnumbered, the English forces not only routed the French but captured
   the French king, John II. After a succession of victories, the English
   held great possessions in France, the French king was in English
   custody, and the French central government had almost totally
   collapsed. Whether Edward's claim to the French crown originally was
   genuine or just a political ploy, it now seemed to be within reach. Yet
   a campaign in 1359, meant to complete the undertaking, was
   inconclusive. In 1360, therefore, Edward accepted the Treaty of
   Brétigny, whereby he renounced his claims to the French throne but
   secured his extended French possessions.

Later reign

   Edward III and the Black Prince
   Edward III and the Black Prince

   While Edward's early reign had been energetic and successful, his later
   years were marked by inertia, military failure and political strife.
   The day-to-day affairs of the state had less appeal to Edward than
   military campaigning, so during the 1360s Edward increasingly relied on
   the help of his subordinates, in particular William Wykeham. A relative
   upstart, Wykeham was made Lord Privy Seal in 1363 and Lord Chancellor
   in 1367, though due to political difficulties connected with his
   inexperience the Rebel Alliance forced him resign to the chancellorship
   in 1371.

   Compounding Edward's difficulties were the deaths of his most trusted
   men, some from the 1361-62 recurrence of the plague. William Montacute,
   Edward's companion in the 1330 coup, was dead by 1344. William de
   Clinton, who had also been with the king at Nottingham, died in 1354.
   One of the earls of 1337, William de Bohun, died in 1360, and the next
   year Henry of Grosmont, perhaps the greatest of Edward's captains, gave
   in to what was probably plague. Their deaths left the majority of the
   magnates younger and more naturally aligned to the princes than to the
   king himself.

   The king's second son, Lionel of Antwerp, attempted to forcefully
   subdue the largely autonomous Anglo-Irish lords in Ireland. The venture
   failed, and the only lasting mark he left were the suppressive Statutes
   of Kilkenny.

   In France, meanwhile, the decade following the Treaty of Brétigny was
   one of relative tranquillity, but on 8 April 1364 John II died in
   captivity in England, after unsuccessfully trying to raise his own
   ransom at home. He was followed by the vigorous Charles V, who enlisted
   the help of the capable Constable Bertrand du Guesclin. In 1369, the
   war started anew, and Edward's younger son John of Gaunt was given the
   responsibility of a military campaign. The effort failed, and with the
   Treaty of Bruges in 1375, the great English possessions in France were
   reduced to only the coastal towns of Calais, Bordeaux and Bayonne.

   Military failure abroad and the associated fiscal pressure of
   campaigning led to political discontent at home. The problems came to a
   head in the parliament of 1376, the so-called Good Parliament. The
   parliament was called to grant taxation, but the House of Commons took
   the opportunity to address specific grievances. In particular,
   criticism was directed at some of the king's closest advisers. Lord
   Chamberlain William Latimer and Lord Steward John Neville, 3rd Baron
   Neville de Raby were dismissed from their positions. Edward's mistress,
   Alice Perrers, who was seen to hold far too much power over the aging
   king, was banished from court.

   Yet the real adversary of the Commons, supported by powerful men such
   as Wykeham and Edmund de Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March, was John of
   Gaunt. Both the king and the Black Prince were by this time
   incapacitated by illness, leaving Gaunt in virtual control of
   government. Gaunt was forced to give in to the demands of parliament,
   but by its next convocation, in 1377, most of the achievements of the
   Good Parliament were reversed.

   Edward himself, however, did not have much to do with any of this;
   after around 1375 he played a limited role in the government. Around 29
   September 1376 he fell ill with a large abscess. After a brief period
   of recovery in February, the king died of a stroke at Sheen on 21 June.
   He was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson, King Richard II of
   England, son of the Black Prince, since the Black Prince himself had
   died the previous year.

Achievements of the reign

   Edward III depicted in Cassell's History of England (1902)
   Edward III depicted in Cassell's History of England (1902)

Legislation

   The middle years of Edward's reign was a period of significant
   legislative activity. Perhaps the best known piece of legislation was
   the Statute of Labourers of 1351, which addressed the labour shortage
   problem caused by the Black Death. The statute fixed wages at their
   pre-plague level and checked peasant mobility by asserting that lords
   had first claim on their men's services. In spite of concerted efforts
   to uphold the statute, it eventually failed due to competition among
   landowners for labour. The law has been described as an attempt "to
   legislate against the law of supply and demand", making it doomed to
   failure. Nevertheless, the labour shortage had created a community of
   interest between the smaller landowners of the House of Commons and the
   greater landowners of the House of Lords. The resulting attempts at
   suppression of the labour force angered the peasants, leading to the
   Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

   The reign of Edward III coincided with the so-called Babylonian
   Captivity of the papacy at Avignon. During the wars with France,
   opposition emerged in England against perceived injustices by a papacy
   largely controlled by the French crown. Heavy papal taxation of the
   English Church was suspected to be financing the nation's enemies,
   while the practice of provisions—the Pope providing benefices for
   clerics, often non-resident aliens—caused resentment in an increasingly
   xenophobic English population. The statutes of Provisors and
   Praemunire, of 1350 and 1353 respectively, aimed to amend this by
   banning papal benefices, as well as limiting the power of the papal
   court over English subjects. The statutes did not, however, sever the
   ties between the king and the Pope, who were equally dependent upon
   each other. It was not until the Great Schism in 1378 that the English
   crown was able to free itself completely from the influence of Avignon.

   Other legislation of importance includes the Treason Act of 1351. It
   was precisely the harmony of the reign that allowed a consensus on the
   definition of this controversial crime. Yet the most significant legal
   reform was probably that concerning the Justices of the Peace. This
   institution began before the reign of Edward III, but by 1350, the
   justices had been given the power not only to investigate crimes and
   make arrests, but also to try cases, including those of felony. With
   this, an enduring fixture in the administration of local English
   justice had been created.

Parliament and taxation

   Parliament as a representative institution was already well established
   by the time of Edward III, but the reign was nevertheless central to
   its development. During this period membership in the English baronage,
   formerly a somewhat indistinct group, became restricted to those who
   received a personal summons to parliament. This happened as parliament
   gradually developed into a bicameral institution. Yet it was not in the
   House of Lords, but in the House of Commons that the greatest changes
   took place. The widening of political power can be seen in the crisis
   of the Good Parliament, where the Commons for the first time—albeit
   with noble support—was responsible for precipitating a political
   crisis. In the process, both the procedure of impeachment and the
   office of the Speaker were created. Even though the political gains
   were of only temporary duration, this parliament represented a
   watershed in English political history.

   The political influence of the Commons originally lay in its right to
   grant taxes. The financial demands of the Hundred Years' War were
   enormous, and the king and his ministers tried different methods of
   covering the expenses. The king had a steady income from crown lands,
   and could also take up substantial loans from Italian and domestic
   financiers. To finance warfare on Edward III's scale, however, the king
   had to resort to taxation of his subjects. Taxation took two primary
   forms: levy and customs. The levy was a grant of a proportion of all
   moveable property, normally a tenth for towns and a fifteenth for
   farmland. This could produce large sums of money, but each such levy
   had to be approved by parliament, and the king had to prove the
   necessity. The customs therefore provided a welcome supplement, as a
   steady and reliable source of income. An 'ancient duty' on the export
   of wool had existed since 1275. Edward I had tried to introduce an
   additional duty on wool, but this unpopular maltolt, or 'unjust
   exaction', was soon abandoned. Then, from 1336 onwards, a series of
   schemes aimed at increasing royal revenues from wool export were
   introduced. After some initial problems and discontent, it was agreed
   through the Ordinance of the Staple of 1353 that the new customs should
   be approved by parliament, though in reality they became permanent.

   Through the steady taxation of Edward III's reign, parliament—and in
   particular the Commons—gained political influence. A consensus emerged
   that in order for a tax to be just, the king had to prove its
   necessity, it had to be granted by the community of the realm, and it
   had to be to the benefit of that community. In addition to imposing
   taxes, parliament would also present petitions for redress of
   grievances to the king, most often concerning misgovernment by royal
   officials. This way the system was beneficial for both parties. Through
   this process the commons, and the community they represented, became
   increasingly politically aware, and the foundation was laid for the
   particular English brand of constitutional monarchy.

Chivalry and national identity

   The Great Seal of Edward III
   The Great Seal of Edward III

   Central to Edward III's policy was reliance on the higher nobility for
   purposes of war and administration. While his father had regularly been
   in conflict with a great portion of his peerage, Edward III
   successfully created a spirit of camaraderie between himself and his
   greatest subjects.

   Both Edward I and Edward II had conducted a policy of limitation,
   allowing the creation of few peerages during the sixty years preceding
   Edward III's reign. The young king reversed this policy when, in 1337,
   as a preparation for the imminent war, he created six new earls on the
   same day. They were:
     * Henry of Grosmont, 1st Earl of Derby. Inherited the titles of Earl
       of Leicester and Earl of Lancaster in 1345. Created Duke of
       Lancaster in 1351.
     * Hugh Audley, 1st Earl of Gloucester.
     * William de Clinton, 1st Earl of Huntingdon.
     * William de Bohun, 1st Earl of Northampton.
     * William Montacute, 1st Earl of Salisbury.
     * Robert de Ufford, 1st Earl of Suffolk.

   By 1362 he had created five more earldoms:
     * Lawrence Hastings was created Earl of Pembroke in 1339.
     * William of Juliers was created Earl of Cambridge in 1340.
     * Ralph Stafford was created Earl of Stafford in 1351.
     * Thomas Holland was created Earl of Kent in 1360. He was actually
       married to Joan of Kent who was heiress to the previous Earls.
     * Edmund of Langley was created Earl of Cambridge in 1362.

   At the same time, Edward expanded the ranks of the peerage upwards, by
   introducing the new title of duke for close relatives of the king. Only
   four Dukes were created during his lifetime:
     * Edward, the Black Prince. His first son. He was created Duke of
       Cornwall in 1337.
     * Henry of Grosmont. His paternal second cousin. He was created Duke
       of Lancaster in 1351.
     * Lionel of Antwerp. His second son. He was created Duke of Clarence
       in 1362.
     * John of Gaunt. His third son. He was created Duke of Lancaster in
       1362. He was actually married to Blanche of Lancaster who was the
       daughter and heiress of Henry of Grosmont.

   Furthermore, Edward bolstered the sense of community within this group
   by the creation of the Order of the Garter, probably in 1348. A plan
   from 1344 to revive the Round Table of King Arthur never came to
   fruition, but the new order carried connotations from this legend by
   the circular shape of the garter. Polydore Vergil tells of how the
   young Joan of Kent, Countess of Salisbury —the king's favourite at the
   time—accidentally dropped her garter at a ball at Calais. King Edward
   responded to the ridicule of the crowd by tying the garter around his
   own knee with the words honi soit qui mal y pense—shame on him who
   thinks ill of it.

   This reinforcement of the aristocracy must be seen in conjunction with
   the war in France, as must the emerging sense of national identity.
   Just like the war with Scotland had done, the fear of a French invasion
   helped strengthen a sense of national unity, and nationalise the
   aristocracy that had been largely Anglo-French since the Norman
   conquest. Since the time of Edward I, popular myth suggested that the
   French planned to extinguish the English language, and like his
   grandfather had done, Edward III made the most of this scare. As a
   result, the English language experienced a strong revival; in 1362, a
   statute ordered the English language to be used in law courts and, the
   year after, Parliament was for the first time opened in English. At the
   same time, the vernacular saw a revival as a literary language, through
   the works of William Langland, John Gower and especially Canterbury
   Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

   Yet the extent of this Anglicisation must not be exaggerated. The
   statute of 1362 was in fact written in the French language and had
   little immediate effect, and parliament was opened in that language as
   late as 1377. The Order of the Garter, though a distinctly English
   institution, included also foreign members such as the John V, Duke of
   Brittany and Sir Robert of Namur. Edward III—himself bilingual—viewed
   himself as legitimate king of both England and France, and could not
   show preferential treatment for one part of his domains over another.

Assessment and character

   Edward III enjoyed unprecedented popularity in his own lifetime, and
   even the troubles of his later reign were never blamed directly on the
   king himself. Edward's contemporary Jean Froissart wrote in his
   Chronicles that "His like had not been seen since the days of King
   Arthur". This view persisted for a while, but, with time, the image of
   the king changed. The Whig historians of a later age preferred
   constitutional reform to foreign conquest and discredited Edward for
   ignoring his responsibilities to his own nation. In the words of Bishop
   Stubbs:

     Edward III was not a statesman, though he possessed some
     qualifications which might have made him a successful one. He was a
     warrior; ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish, extravagant and
     ostentatious. His obligations as a king sat very lightly on him. He
     felt himself bound by no special duty, either to maintain the theory
     of royal supremacy or to follow a policy which would benefit his
     people. Like Richard I, he valued England primarily as a source of
     supplies.

     – William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England

   Influential as Stubbs was, it was long before this view was challenged.
   In a 1960 article, titled "Edward III and the Historians", May McKisack
   pointed out the teleological nature of Stubbs judgement. A medieval
   king could not be expected to work towards the future ideal of a
   parliamentary monarchy; rather his role was a pragmatic one—to maintain
   order and solve problems as they arose. At this, Edward III excelled.
   Edward had also been accused of endowing his younger sons too liberally
   and thereby promoting dynastic strife culminating in the Wars of the
   Roses. This claim was rejected by K.B. McFarlane, who argued that this
   was not only the common policy of the age, but also the best. Later
   biographers of the king such as Mark Ormrod and Ian Mortimer have
   followed this historiographical trend.

   From what we know of Edward's character, he could be impulsive and
   temperamental, as was seen by his actions against Stratford and the
   ministers in 1340–41. At the same time, he was well-known for his
   clemency; Mortimer's grandson was not only absolved, but came to play
   an important part in the French wars, and was eventually made a knight
   of the Garter. Both in his religious views and his interests, he was a
   conventional man. His favourite pursuit was the art of war, and, as
   such, he conformed to the medieval notion of good kingship. He seems to
   have been unusually devoted to his wife, Queen Philippa. Much has been
   made of Edward's sexual licentiousness, but there is no evidence of any
   infidelity on the king's part before Alice Perrers became his lover,
   and, by that time, the queen was already terminally ill. This devotion
   extended to the rest of the family as well; in contrast to so many of
   his predecessors, Edward never experienced opposition from any of his
   five adult sons.

Family Tree

                                 Philip III
                                 (1270-1285)


                                  Philip IV
                                 (1285-1314)













   Charles of Valois
   († 1325)























































                                   Louis X
                            (1314-1316) Philip V
                           (1316-1322) Charles IV
                            (1322-1328) Isabella

   Edward II Philip VI
   (1328-1350)




                                 Edward III

   See here for a comprehensive family tree of British monarchs.

Issue

   Arms of Edward III and his sons, Trinity College Cambridge.
   Arms of Edward III and his sons, Trinity College Cambridge.
                      Name                          Birth            Death
   Edward, the Black Prince                    15 June 1330     8 June 1376
   Isabella                                    16 June 1332     1379
   Joan                                        1333             2 September 1348
   William of Hatfield                         16 February 1337 8 July 1337
   Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence     29 November 1338 7 October 1368
   John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster        24 June 1340     3 February 1399
   Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York         5 June 1341      1 August 1402
   Blanche                                     1342             1342
   Mary                                        10 October 1344  1362
   Margaret                                    July 20, 1346    1361
   William of Windsor                          24 June 1348     5 September 1348
   Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester 7 January 1355   8/9
                                                                September 1397
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_III_of_England"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
