The Plantagenets (1154-1399)

[Baroness of Books]

Fascinating links, An Ard Ri, thank you.

 

[An Ard Ri]

The Empress Matilda sure was made of steel & one of my personal all time favourite Plantagenets.

 

[US Royal Watcher]

The Empress Matilda sure was made of steel & one of my personal all time favourite Plantagenets.

That's easy for you to say, but I bet she's wasn't Stephen's personal all time favourite Plantagenets.

It is a very interesting article. I'm going to have to find a few books on the Plantagenets--after I read about Richard III.

 

[Baroness of Books]

Yes, the Empress was bound and determined to fight for her rights and certainly gave Stephen a lot of sleepless nights (and he returned the favor!). If she couldn't keep the throne for herself, at least she was resolved that her son Henry would rule after Stephen. From what I've read, she and her DIL Eleanor of Aquitaine got along quite well.

 

[An Ard Ri]

That's easy for you to say, but I bet she's wasn't Stephen's personal all time favourite Plantagenets.

It is a very interesting article. I'm going to have to find a few books on the Plantagenets--after I read about Richard III.

Ha,ha indeed

Matilda is one royal lady (among many) whom I'd really like to know and read more on.
The Plantagenets are my favourite English Royal dynasty.

 

[Baroness of Books]

The Plantagenets are my favourite English Royal dynasty.

I definitely agree; this long-lived dynasty was packed with scandals, intrigue and some very strong royal women!

 

[An Ard Ri]

I definitely agree; this long-lived dynasty was packed with scandals, intrigue and some very strong royal women!

And even a king who turned up in car park several hundred years after his death

 

[Baroness of Books]

^^^And with a big "R" to mark the spot! Talk about subtlety.....

Look at what Geoffry d'Anjou started by sticking a sprig of planta genista in his hatband all those centuries ago.....

 

[An Ard Ri]

Danse Macabre’ Around the Tomb and Bones of Margaret of York

Makes me wonder what happened to her tomb,was it destroyed during the Reformation or during the French Occupation following the Revolution.

Danse Macabre’ Around the Tomb and Bones of Margaret of York

 

[An Ard Ri]

The spider in the web: the weaving of a new, Lancastrian England in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries

The spider in the web: the weaving of a new, Lancastrian England in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries

 

[CyrilVladisla]

Henry V was crowned on Passion Sunday in 1413. The month and day was April 9th.

On June 28th, 1462, on behalf of Henry VI, Queen Margaret signed a treaty of peace with France, providing for a hundred year truce and barring all Englishmen from entering France unless they were certified true subjects of King Henry.
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Henry IV marked his coronation by instituting a new order of chivalry, the Order of Bath, and his four sons were its first members.
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Philippa of Hainault's betrothal gift to Edward III was a compilation of Latin and French prayers and romances, including a translation of a pseudo-Aristotelian text. The text was De Secretis Secretorum.


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In 1443 Rene, Duke of Anjou, sent his daughter Margaret to live with her aunt, Queen Marie, at the French court.
Margaret spent a year at the French court.
The Burgundian chronicler Barante wrote:

There was no princess in Christendom more accomplished than my lady Margaret of Anjou. She was already renowned in France for her beauty and wit and her lofty spirit of courage.
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The King's College of Our Lady and St. Nicholas at the University of Cambridge was founded in 1441 by Henry VI.
King's College was built for the for the further education of 70 scholars from Eton College. Henry had founded Eton College in 1440.

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Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (1158-1186), the son of King Henry II, was a good friend of Prince Philippe of France.
Geoffrey spent much time at Philippe's court in Paris.
Philippe made Geoffrey his seneschal.
In the French administrative system of the Middle Ages, the seneschal was a royal officer in charge of justice and control of the administration in southern provinces.
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[An Ard Ri]

The love story of the dashing Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent.

Love in the Time of Plague

 

[Baroness of Books]

I actually read that novel mentioned in the article, The First Princess of Wales. I was always interested in Joan of Kent since she was a character in Anya Seton's wonderful novel, Katherine. I didn't realized that Joan was a Plantagenet and had such a colorful history.

 

[An Ard Ri]

I actually read that novel mentioned in the article, The First Princess of Wales. I was always interested in Joan of Kent since she was a character in Anya Seton's wonderful novel, Katherine. I didn't realized that Joan was a Plantagenet and had such a colorful history.

I am too BOB,a highly interesting and somewhat forgotten royal lady.Joan was Princess of Wales,Princess of Aquitaine,Countess of Salisbury,the 4th Countess of Kent & 5th Baroness Wake of Liddell!

 

[Baroness of Books]

Just love her titles! Makes me want to re-read that book.

 

[An Ard Ri]

Just love her titles! Makes me want to re-read that book.

Pity that her burial site at Greyfriars, Stamford in in Lincolnshire, England was not saved from destruction in 1538 during the suppression of that Friary

 

[Baroness of Books]

Oh, darn it! No chance of her skeleton being discovered as another historic find.

 

[An Ard Ri]

Oh, darn it! No chance of her skeleton being discovered as another historic find.

Well I guess its a possibility in the future...if they ever decide to pull down the hospital which now sits on the old Friary!

 

[XeniaCasaraghi]

I'm reading the sunne in splendor now. Don't know if I'm going to be able to finish it. I have such a problem with Margaret d'Anjou and I really shouldn't. She was defending her husband and her sons rights. But I still feel the War of the Roses is her fault, her and Henry IV.

 

[Baroness of Books]

I hope you do finish Sunne in Splendour, Xenia, I find that one of the best novels in the Plantagenet saga and it gives such a good, sensitive portrayal of Richard III. Margaret d'Anjou isn't a sympathetic character, true, but she was fighting for the rights of both her husband and son and while she comes across as a driven and cruel woman, she certainly had her reasons. If Henry VI had been capable of maintaining his hold on the throne and didn't have his periods of mental incapacity, he'd have never been deposed by the York faction and the Cousins' War wouldn't have started. The same can be said of Richard II being deposed by the Lancastrian Henry IV.

 

[XeniaCasaraghi]

So can it be said that Lancaster won the War of the Roses, or do you consider both sides won in the end?

 

[Ish]

I would consider that both sides lost and both sides won. Henry VII was the Lancastrian heir, in a manner, but he wasn't technically a Lancaster. Elizabeth of York was not the York heir due to her gender, but her son (Henry VIII) would have been had he been born during the lifetime of either of Elizabeth's brothers.

 

[Baroness of Books]

Many considered Elizabeth to be the rightful York heiress barred from her gender from ruling, but she was crowned Queen Consort and it was considered somewhat of a triumph by the York supporters that she did sit on the throne. She actually strengthened Henry's claim to the throne, too, though he delayed her coronation by several years to accustom the public to seeing just him on the throne as the rightful ruler. Both sides did win with the merging of the both royal houses as well.

 

[Nice Nofret]

Sorry to disagree; I have a more sombre look on wars - for me, both sides and the country lost during the war of the roses. By chance alone Henry Tudor outlived the other claimants and was a strong enought personality to rule. His claim on the throne was weak - He got his claim from the battlefields; an tiny bit from his mother and a hug lot from his wife.

 

[SElizabeth]

Could anyone give me the title of a really great book on the War of the Roses........I have always been interested in that time period of European History? Thanks! Sherry

 

[Ish]

Sorry to disagree; I have a more sombre look on wars - for me, both sides and the country lost during the war of the roses. By chance alone Henry Tudor outlived the other claimants and was a strong enought personality to rule. His claim on the throne was weak - He got his claim from the battlefields; an tiny bit from his mother and a hug lot from his wife.

I disagree here.

Both sides lost out during the war, and after it. The Lancaster and York lines were decimated through the war. The country lost out during the war, but I think it won in the end. Following Henry VII's accession the throne had 60+ years of stability in its monarch, under Henry VII and Henry VIII, more than 100 if you count until the death of Elizabeth I. While there were problems in each of the subsequent reigns, and many attempts to contest the rights of each of the Tudor monarchs to rule, the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII brought a stability in the monarch not seen since before the War began.

Henry VII had a much stronger claim than people like to admit. Not simply through his bloodline - although the fact is that he was the senior male claimant through his descent from John of Gaunt (disregarding the fact that his great-grandfather was born out of wedlock). The senior male claimant through John's legitimate children was the king of Portugal - which meant that the Lancasters had a choice between supporting a claimant through the Beaufort line or supporting a foreign monarch. This is not the weak claim that people like to pretend it is.

Even without Henry's very valid blood line, there is also the fact that he won his throne on the battlefield. This makes his claim as strong as the claims of Edward IV, Henry IV, Stephen, and William the Conqueror. Heck, this makes his claim stronger than that of Edward IV or Stephen as he, unlike them, made sure that his rival claimant was dead.

Marrying Elizabeth of York did not make Henry's claim stronger. They were not co-monarchs, he did not rule jure uxoris. He married her because marrying her strengthened the claim of their children - Elizabeth could not inherit her father's throne because she was a woman, but her sons could inherit through her, much like Henry had inherited through his mother. Henry had a claim because of his bloodline that became a bigger one when he defeated Richard III. Marrying Elizabeth of York was just icing on the cake - marrying her helped get him the support of some of the Yorkist supporters who didn't want to support Richard.

Further, Henry did not outlive the surviving Yorkist claimants by chance. He didn't even outlive all of them - the fact that there is to this day a Yorkist claimant is proof of that. Henry outlived the next claimant, Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, because he had him executed. He did not outlive the Poles, the next claimants, who would then try to rise up against Henry VIII, only to be exiled and executed.

 

[CyrilVladisla]

One of Queen Margaret of Anjou's wedding gifts was a French-made collection of romances presented to her by the Earl of Shrewsbury, John Talbot.
The frontispiece features Henry VI and Margaret crowned.
John Talbot is kneeling before them.
The King's chamberlain and counselors are grouped behind Talbot.
Peeking from behind the chamber's walls are enormous daisies, Queen Margaret's (Marguerite's) emblem.
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Queen Margaret, consort of King Henry VI, tried to introduce silk weaving into England. She brought in foreign weavers.
Margaret became the patron of the Sisterhood of Silk Women, a guild based in Spitalfields, London.
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On the morning of October 13, 1453, Queen Margaret had a son who was called Edward.
The Queen had him named after Henry VI's favorite saint, Edward the Confessor, on whose feast day the child had been born.
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From 1399 onwards, the government of King Charles VI of France steadfastly refused to recognize Henry IV as king of England, denouncing him as a traitor to his lawful sovereign and referring to him when addressing English envoys, as "the lords who sent you".
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Queen Philippa's New Year gift to her husband King Edward III in 1333 was a silver cup, ewer, and basin.
The ewer was decorated with figures of Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, King Arthur, and Lancelot.
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[XeniaCasaraghi]

Hello, just wanted to bring this up for questioning. I have barely gotten a grasp of Plantagenet/War or Roses/who what why etc.
But in my minimal research it seems that York had the better claim and were the rightful Kings but that Lancaster had the overall better kings.

 

[Skippyboo]

Back then the line of succession wasn't as defined as it is now. Women were ignored. The very young were ignored. A lot of it was you capture the King and then get rid of him and now you're King.

Dan Jones wrote an excellent book called The Plantagenets it covers the time from the Anarchy to Henry IV overthrowing Richard II. He doing a second book dealing with Henry IV to Richard III

 

[Ish]

I wouldn't necessarily say that one had better monarchs than the other. It's a bit more complicated than all of that, and things aren't really on even ground there.

The Yorks had a better claim in the sense that they were of the more senior line, albeit through female descendants, than the Lancasters. However, the Lancasters came to power through conquest, therefore making their claim stronger overall.

A comparison would be the the Stuarts vs. the Hanovers; from a technical standpoint, the Stuarts have the stronger claim as they're descended from the more senior line. However, the Hanovers claim comes through a means of parliamentary conquest, therefore their claim is the stronger one overall.

As to which dynasty was a better one in terms of rulers, well that's hard to compare. Henry IV and V ruled for a collective 23 years as adults. Henry VI may have "ruled" for 39 years before he was overthrown the first time, but he was less than 1 when he became king (contrary to what Skippyboo's said, the very young were not ignored during the Plantagenet years, they were just easier to overthrow). Henry VI wasn't a good king when he himself was reigning though, and his failures as a monarch are what lead to the War in the first place. Had Henry VI been a good king - or even a sane king - then the Yorks wouldn't have been so successful in pursuing their cause.

As for the Yorks... Edward IV wasn't necessarily a bad monarch. He came to the throne after a period of chaos and did his best to try to restore order. However, he upset a lot of people because he didn't allow them to control him in the same manner that Henry VI had been controlled. Had Edward come to the throne through a more natural means of succession his reign may have been more successful. As for his successors - Edward V and Richard III, well, Edward's "reign" lasted for mere months and was during his minority, so we have no clue what kind of monarch he would have been. Richard reigned for 2 years, all while fighting for his throne. He may have been a great monarch himself had circumstances been different, as it seems like the actual reigning-type things he did were fairly successful. It's not what he did that he's remembered for, it's the chaos his ascension caused and his overthrowal.

I think it's important to remember when comparing the two dynasties that the Lancasters had essentially 40 years of reining under relative internal stability (under Henry IV, Henry V, and the minority of Henry VI) before things went bad. The Yorks on the other hand came to the throne in chaos, continued to reign throughout chaos, and only lasted on the throne for about 20-25 years. It's not entirely fair to say that the Lancasters in general were better monarchs than the Yorks as the circumstances were just too different.