Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II

Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526715635
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II tells the story of the greatest villain of the fourteenth century, his dazzling rise as favorite to the king and his disastrous fall.Born in the late 1280s, Hugh married King Edward I of Englands eldest granddaughter when he was a teenager. Ambitious and greedy to an astonishing degree, Hugh chose a startling route to power: he seduced his wifes uncle, the young King Edward II, and became the richest and most powerful man in the country in the 1320s. For years he dominated the English government and foreign policy, and took whatever lands he felt like by both quasi-legal and illegal methods, with the kings connivance. His actions were to bring both himself and Edward II down, and Hugh was directly responsible for the first forced abdication of a king in English history; he had made the horrible mistake of alienating and insulting Edwards queen Isabella of France, who loathed him, and who had him slowly and grotesquely executed in her presence in November 1326.

Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II

Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526715635
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II tells the story of the greatest villain of the fourteenth century, his dazzling rise as favorite to the king and his disastrous fall.Born in the late 1280s, Hugh married King Edward I of Englands eldest granddaughter when he was a teenager. Ambitious and greedy to an astonishing degree, Hugh chose a startling route to power: he seduced his wifes uncle, the young King Edward II, and became the richest and most powerful man in the country in the 1320s. For years he dominated the English government and foreign policy, and took whatever lands he felt like by both quasi-legal and illegal methods, with the kings connivance. His actions were to bring both himself and Edward II down, and Hugh was directly responsible for the first forced abdication of a king in English history; he had made the horrible mistake of alienating and insulting Edwards queen Isabella of France, who loathed him, and who had him slowly and grotesquely executed in her presence in November 1326.

Edward II

Edward II PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445641321
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
He is one of the most reviled English kings in history. He drove his kingdom to the brink of civil war a dozen times in less than twenty years. He allowed his male lovers to rule the kingdom. He led a great army to the most ignominious military defeat in English history. His wife took a lover and invaded his kingdom, and he ended his reign wandering around Wales with a handful of followers, pursued by an army. He was the first king of England forced to abdicate his throne. Popular legend has it that he died screaming impaled on a red-hot poker, but in fact the time and place of his death are shrouded in mystery. His life reads like an Elizabethan tragedy, full of passionate doomed love, bloody revenge, jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness and obsession. He was Edward II, and this book tells his story. The focus here is on his relationships with his male 'favourites' and his disaffected wife, on his unorthodox lifestyle and hobbies, and on the mystery surrounding his death. Using almost exclusively fourteenth-century sources and Edward s own letters and speeches wherever possible, Kathryn Warner strips away the myths which have been created about him over the centuries, and provides a far more accurate and vivid picture of him than has previously been seen.

Edward the Second

Edward the Second PDF Author: Christopher Marlowe
Publisher: [London, Printed for the Malone Society by J. Johnson at the Oxford University Press] 1925 [i. e. 1926]
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description


The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family

The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 9781399016032
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps lover.

Edward II's Nieces, The Clare Sisters

Edward II's Nieces, The Clare Sisters PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526715597
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
“A great book to introduce you to three fascinating sisters whose marriages during the reign of the infamous Edward II transformed England.” —Adventures of a Tudor Nerd The de Clare sisters Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth were born in the 1290s as the eldest granddaughters of King Edward I of England and his Spanish queen Eleanor of Castile, and were the daughters of the greatest nobleman in England, Gilbert “the Red” de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. They grew to adulthood during the turbulent reign of their uncle Edward II, and all three of them were married to men involved in intense, probably romantic or sexual, relationships with their uncle. When their elder brother Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, was killed during their uncle’s catastrophic defeat at the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314, the three sisters inherited and shared his vast wealth and lands in three countries, but their inheritance proved a poisoned chalice. Eleanor and Elizabeth, and Margaret’s daughter and heir, were all abducted and forcibly married by men desperate for a share of their riches, and all three sisters were imprisoned at some point either by their uncle Edward II or his queen Isabella of France during the tumultuous decade of the 1320s. Elizabeth was widowed for the third time at twenty-six, lived as a widow for just under forty years, and founded Clare College at the University of Cambridge. “Another enjoyable read on women in history that don’t always get the limelight that they deserve. Kathryn Warner has done it once again by providing a well-written, well-researched, informative and engaging read.” —Where There’s Ink There’s Paper

Isabella of France

Isabella of France PDF Author: Kathryn Warner
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445647419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The fascinating story of the exceptional woman who wrested power from Edward II and changed the course of English history

Scalacronica

Scalacronica PDF Author: Thomas Gray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description


Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II

Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II PDF Author: Paul Doherty
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1472112407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
In chess, from the time of Queen Isabella of England, the queen has been considered the most powerful and feared piece on the board. Known to chroniclers as the 'she-wolf', Isabella, daughter of Philip IV of France, married King Edward II of England in 1308 in a union intended to create a lasting peace between the two countries. But after 13 years of enduring her husband's unkind and dissolute nature she fled abroad. With her lover, the exiled Roger Mortimer, she raised an army of mercenaries and invaded England, successfully deposing Edward. Popular belief holds that Edward was murdered in an infamous manner at Berkeley Castle near Gloucester, at the order of his wife and her lover. But after Mortimer's execution a letter arrived at court that cast doubt over Edward's death and raised the possibility of his escape. The evidence remains controversial to this day, and here Paul Doherty examines it in his fascinating detective study, set in one of the most turbulent and exciting periods of English history.

Robert the Bruce

Robert the Bruce PDF Author: Stephen Spinks
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445685086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
A new and revealing portrait of the king behind the legend during the turmoil of the First Scottish Wars of Independence, based on primary sources.

Queen Isabella

Queen Isabella PDF Author: Alison Weir
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345497066
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Alison Weir's Mary Boleyn. In this vibrant biography, acclaimed author Alison Weir reexamines the life of Isabella of England, one of history’s most notorious and charismatic queens. Isabella arrived in London in 1308, the spirited twelve-year-old daughter of King Philip IV of France. Her marriage to the heir to England’s throne was designed to heal old political wounds between the two countries, and in the years that followed she became an important figure, a determined and clever woman whose influence would come to last centuries. Many myths and legends have been woven around Isabella’s story, but in this first full biography in more than 150 years, Alison Weir gives a groundbreaking new perspective.