Edward III and His Family

Abstract

The chroniclers and poets of the later Middle Ages credited Edward III with many successes, among which the production of a large family rated highly. The king had a total of twelve children, of whom no fewer than nine—five sons and four daughters—survived to maturity (fig. 1). Historians have not always been enthusiastic about the generous provisions made for this large family. Edward's very fecundity, viewed by fourteenth-century writers as a sure sign of God's grace, has been seen as a political liability because it exhausted resources, created a political imbalance between the crown and the younger branches of the royal family, and led ultimately to the deposition of Richard II and the Wars of the Roses.It is possible, however, to view Edward III's family arrangements in a different and rather more favorable light. Since the loss of many of their overseas territories in the thirteenth century, the Plantagenet kings had come to regard their remaining possessions as an inalienable patrimony to be handed on intact from father to eldest son. Unless younger children were able to create titles for themselves in foreign lands, kings had no option but to reward their sons with English earldoms. This was not a policy guaranteed to benefit the crown: the bitter quarrels between Edward II and his cousin Thomas of Lancaster showed very clearly the dangers that might arise when cadet branches of the Plantagenet dynasty became bound up with the English aristocracy.

The Earldom Endowments of 1337: Political Thought and the Practice of Kingship in Late Medieval England

“…152 In Edward III's twilight years, however, as the endowment programme the king set out for his children faltered and the aristocracy of his youth withered, the direction and nature of his patronage failed to live up to the expectations that had been established and strengthened earlier in his reign. 153 The king's mistress Alice Perrers, the royal chamberlain William Latimer and the financier Richard Lyons were accused of profiting from their manipulation of the king's counsels to such an extent that his own resources were insufficient to maintain either his household or his war, which forced the burden of taxation onto the community. 154 The commons of the Good Parliament of 1376 requested that the perquisites of the king's lordship should not be given without 'good and just cause' and that all the aforesaid profits should be reserved for the maintenance of his honour and his wars.…”