Plantagenet Dynasty

1 Key excerpts on "Plantagenet Dynasty"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Kings & Queens of England

  • W M Ormrod(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • The History Press

    (Publisher)

  - 4 -

  The House of Plantagenet 1272-1399

  W.M. Ormrod

  I t was the Angevin symbol of the sprig of broom, planta genista, that gave the House of Plantagenet its name; but while in origin the title might be supposed to date back to Henry II’s assumption of the throne in 1154, it was not in fact used by the English royal family until the fifteenth century. To call the kings of England from 1272 to 1399 ‘Plantagenets’ is therefore something of a fiction. There is, however, some justification for treating the rulers from Edward I to Richard II as a distinct group. First, although most of these kings attempted, in one way or another, to regain the French territories lost under King John and Henry III, they also gave much attention to the British Isles: this was the period in which the English monarchy not only clung tenaciously to its claims to the lordship of Ireland but also conquered Wales and attempted (and failed) to subdue the independent kingdom of Scots.

  It was during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the English monarchy therefore gave its first indications of a coherent ambition for the unification of the British Isles. Secondly, the loss of the overseas territories meant that, to pursue their wars, rulers were dependent on the resources of the kingdom of England, and had to enter into tax negotiations with their subjects through the newly evolving institution of Parliament. Finally, this was a period during which two kings – Edward II and Richard II – were forced to give up their thrones through their incompetence and tyranny. The latter of these depositions brought to an end the direct line of descent of the English crown and heralded the arrival of a new dynasty, the House of Lancaster.

  EDWARD I (1272-1307)

  The first king since the Norman Conquest to bear the Old English name of Edward was born on 17 June 1239, the first child of Henry III and Queen Eleanor of Provence. Edward and his younger brother, Edmund ‘Crouchback’, were both named in honour of Anglo-Saxon royal saints: Henry III’s devotion to Edward the Confessor is well known, but he also had a strong attachment to the cult of St Edmund of East Anglia, centred at Bury St Edmunds. Edward was trained in the school of hard knocks: his emergence to manhood and public life coincided with Henry III’s quarrel with the English barons, and Edward early earned himself a reputation not merely for the vigour and ruthlessness that would be a hallmark of his kingship but also for a tendency to shift his loyalties: he moved from being a supporter of Simon de Montfort’s reform programme to being his bitterest enemy; and after the Battle of Evesham, in which the prince decisively defeated the opponents of the Crown, he was commemorated in verse as one who changed his allegiance in the same way that the leopard was then believed to change its spots.

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