Princess Mary ENGLAND

   Another name for Mary was ENGLAND Princess.

   Ancestral File Number: 8WKN-G2.

   General Notes:

Princess of ENGLAND.

Became a Nun, Of the sixteen children of Edward I and Eleanor only Edward and Mary outlived their parents for any length of time.

BOOKS
Kings and Queens of Great Britain, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, 1990: "Mary, Nun at Amesbury, Died 1332."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol III, The Three Edwards, Thomas B Costain, 1958, Doubleday & Co
p14 Family Tree: "Mary, 1278-1333, Became a nun..."
p22: "There is a disagreement among authorities as to the numberof child- ren presented to Edward by his queen, some saying fifteen, others claiming a total of seventeen. On one point there is accord, however. Only four of the children were sons. Of the eleven or thirteen daughters, as the case may be, a number died in their infancy and nothing is known about them, not even their names. With those who lingered just long enough to acquire names, there has been little statistical recognition. Let us pick out one at random from the long list: Eleanor, Joanna, Margaret, Berengaria, Mary, Elizabeth, Alice, Blanche, Beatrice, Katherine...
"This much is well established, that all the royal children shared the Plantagenet beauty. Some of the daughters were blond and blue-eyed, some were cast in the duskier mold of Castile...
"Edward loved all his daughters devotedly, but he must have looked them over with an uneasy eye. Daughters made poor successors to a throne as contentious as that of England."
p45: "...Mary's lifeat four had been prearranged by her parents. She became a nun, veiled at the convent of Ambresbury in 1284, where the queen dowager, Edward's mother, Eleanor of Provence, had also taken the veil after the death of Henry III. Mary never forgotthat she was a royal princess. She was seen everywhre and proved as much of a gadabout as her sisters. Life in the convent did not prohibit an active social existence outside, and she made demands regularly on the king for gifts of money and wine for hier personal use. She died at fifty-four, the last survivor of the union of Edward and his first wife, Eleanor of Castile.
p128: "The word that the king was growing weaker had reached all parts of England. It came to the anxious ears of the queen, who was staying with her young family at Northampton, and to the nuns at Ambresbury, where the sixth daughter of the king, the Princess Mary, had taken the veil. The princess had not been forgotten; in fact, she lived a busy life. She paid regular visits to her royal father and received presents from him, of money, special foods, even horses. Although she wore nothing but the black serge robe of the Benedictines, she had luxurious quarters. At night she slept in a wide bed with hangings of satin and tapestry and she had her own pantry and her own staff of servants. She was, moreover, a great traveler and was probably as often on the road as at her post in the convent.
"The princess and the new queen had become the closest of friends and they decided to make a pilgrimage together to the shrines of St. Thomas..."

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 8WKN-G2 Died Bef 22 Jul ?1232<1332 Unmarried.