Earl Edmund LANCASTER

   Other names for Edmund were ENGLAND Prince, LEICESTER Earl, SICILY King, "Crouchback" and LANCASTER Earl.

   Ancestral File Number: 8WKN-XG. User ID: 4727460.

   General Notes:

"Crouchback", Prince of ENGLAND, King of SICILY 6 Mar 1267-1296, Earl of
LANCASTER 6 Mar 1254/1255, Founder of the LANCASTER Royal Family of England,
Earl of LEICESTER Aug 1265.

BOOKS
A History of the English Speaking People Winston S Churchill Vol I The Birth of Britain Dodd Mead & Co p270:
"...Meanwhile Henry had secretly accepted greater Continentalobligations. The death of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick in 1250 revived at Rome the old plan of uniting Sicily, over which he had ruled, to the Papal dominions. In 1254 Henry III accepted the Papal offer of the Sicilian Crown for his younger son Edmund. This was a foolish step, and the conditions attached to the gift raised it to the very height of folly. The English King was to provide an army, and he stood surety for a mass of Papal debts amounting to the vast sum in those daysof about L90,000. When the King's acceptance of the Papal offer became known a storm of indignation broke over his head..."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol III, The Three Edwards, Thomas B Costain, 1958, Doubleday & Co
p87: "...[Philip the Fair of France] had two sisters, the princess Blanche and Marguerite. Blanche was as lovely as he was handsome; gay, sparkling, slender, with a small foot and a trim ankle. This was the picture of her supplied to Edward by his brother Edmund, who was sent to Paris to make a report. Edward still grieved for his lost Eleanor but he was considering a second marriage, if only for reasons of state. The feminine fashions of the day were the least revealing of almost any period, and Edmund must have secured some of his information from gossipy sources. Authentic or not, the report he sent back depicted the fair Blanche as a veritable fairy-tale princess..."
p102: "Deeply apologetic over what he considered his failure as a diplomat, Edmund finally sent on to Edward an amended treaty of marriage in which the name of the younger sister, Marguerite, was inserted in place of Blanche..."
p103: "The next year the queen was at Woodstock and gave birth to a second son, who was given the name of Edmund after the perplexed negotiator of the marriage bond..."
p135: "The favorite [Piers Gaveston] went so far as to give offense to the one man who of all others should have been exempt from his insults.Thomas of Lancaster was a first cousin of the king, being the son of Prince Edmund, a brother of Edward I..."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol II, The Magnificent Century, Thomas B Costain, 1951, Popular Library
p20: "Edmund Born 1245,Died 1296, Selected King of Sicily, 1254, but never succeeded to throne..."
p171: "Edmund, the second son, arrived on January 16, 1245...
"The King was devoted to all his children, although he seems to have displayed some preferencefor Edmund, who became known as Crouchback. Whether this was due to a deformity, which might explain Henry's special solicitude for him, or was merely a nickname bestowed on him when he was at the Crusades has never been satisfactorily settled.Edmund, at any rate, was handsome, sunny of disposition, and likable. When at Windsor, Henry always had his children around him..."
p231: "...Then in 1254 Conrad died, leaving as heir Conradin, an infant of two years. Manfred, the son ofthe beautiful Bianca Lancia, took after his imperial father in many respects. He was a man of great ability and furious ambition. Having no faith in the disinterestedness of Manfred, Innocent decided that, as the kingdom of Sicily was a fief ofRome, the time had come for him to act. Having failed with Richard of Cornwall, he offered Sicily to Charles of Anjou, a brother of Louis of France. Charles would have grasped at the chance but had no means of financing the venture. As a lastresort the Pope then approached Henry and proposed that he accept the throne for his second son, Edmund.
"Henry was thrilled to the marrow of his bones. The opportunity of which he had dreamed, of redeeming th calamity of Normandy's loss,had come at last. Perhaps he consulted his own inner circle of advisers, perhaps only Mansel... The upshot was that at Vendome on March 6, Master Albert, acting for the Pope, formally ceded the kingdom to Edmund. Thsi was confirmed at Assisi two months later by Innocent himself...
"...Innocent would fight the Germans in Sicily as Henry's agent and that the responsibility for the total cost had been assumed by the English King..."
p233: "One of the new Pontiff's [Alexander IV's] first acts was to repeat Edmund's confirmation as King of Sicily. No progress was made, however, in the matter of ousting Manfred, and each passing month made the situation more desperate..."
p234: "Before the papal delegates were heard Henry staged a diversion which he hoped would create a more friendly attitude on the part of his magnates. He brought his son Edmund before the meeting, dressed in Apulian costume, and introduced him to the assemblange as the King of Sicily.Edmund was twelve years old and had developed into a handsome and engaging youth.
"`Behold my son Edmund,' said the King, beaming with pride, `whom God of His gracious goodness hath called to the excellency of kingly dignity. How comely and well worthy he is of all your favor! How cruel and tyrannical must be they who would deny him effectual and seasonable help, both with money and advice!'
"...This was the first public acknowledgment of the obligation Henry had assumed to pay all the costs of the Sicilian war, and the magnates sat in a stunned silence while the papal representative presented a balance sheet. England now owed Rome the sum of 135,000 marks. This was not all. Henry, it developed, had promised tolead an army into Sicily to assist in establishing his son on the throne, and the demand was now formally made that he appear with eighty-five hundred men in Naples the following year.
"The barons, under these circumstance, proceeded to show how cruel and tyrannical they could be by refusing all financial aid and advice. They had not been consulted and they considered themselves free of all obligation in the matter..."
p324: "...[After Evesham] the damands for vengeance, short of death, however, were so insistent that the wise councels of Edward, the giver of victory, were swept aside. His brother Edmund, who had played no part in the fighting, clamored for the utmost severity, being rewarded himself with the earldom of Leicester and the state offices of the dead leader...
"...All the adherents of Simon de Montfort, which meant a full half of the substantial owners of property in the country, were disinherited and their lands given to the King fordisposal. The charter of London was annulled. The De Montforts were stripped of everything and banished from the kingdom..."

The Political History of England 1216-1377, Vol III, T F Tout, 1905, AMS Press,
p78: "...Candidates to both crowns were sought for in England. Since 1250 Innocent IV had been sounding Richard, Earl of Cornwall, as to his willingness to accept Sicily. The honourable scruple against hostility to his kinsman, which Richard shared with the king, prevented him from setting up his claims against Conrad. But the deaths both of Conrad and of Frederick II's son by Isabella of England weakened the ties between the English royal house and the Hohenstaufen, and Henry was tempted by Innocent's offer of theSicilian throne for his younger son, Edmund, a boy of nine, along with a proposal to release him from his vow of crusade to Syria, if he would prosecute on his son's behalf a crusading campaign against the enemies of the Church in Naples. Innocent died before the negotiations were completed, but Alexander IV renewed the offer, and in April, 1255, Peter of Aigueblanche, Bishop of Hereford, accepted the proferred kingdom in Edmund's name. Sicily was to be held by a tribute of money and service, as a fief of the holy see, and was never to be united with the empire. Henry was to do homage to the pope on his son's bejalf, to go to Italy in person or send thither a competent force, and to reimburse the pope for the large sums expended by him in the prosecution of the war. In return the English and Scottish proceeds of the crusading tenth, imposed on the clergy at Lyons, were to be paid to Henry. On October 18, 1255, a cardinal invested Edmund with a ring that symbolized his appointment. Henry stood before the altar and swore by St Edward that he would himself go to Apulia, as soon as he could safely pass through France..."
p79: "...It was in vain that Henry led forth his son, clothed in Apulian dress,before the Lenten parliament of 1257, and begged the magnates to enable him to redeem his bond...He besought Alexander to give him time, to make terms with Manfred, to release Edmund from his debts on condition of ceding a large part of Apuliato the Church...Edmund's Sicilian monarchy vanished into nothing, when, early in 1258, Manfred was crowned king at Palermo. Before the end of the year, Alexander cancelled the grant of Sicily to Edmund..."
p129: "...[1265] At last a general sentence of forfeiture was pronounced against all who had fought against Edward, either at Kenilworth or Evesham. There was a greedy scramble for the spoils of victory. The greatest of these, Montfort's forfeited earldom of Leicester, went to Edmund the king's younger son. Edward took back the earldom of Chester and all his old possessions..."
p134: "...Nowhere save in France did the Holy War win more powerful re- cruits than in England. In 1268 Edward himself took the cross,and with him his brother Edmund of Lancaster, his cousin Henry of Almaine, and many leading lords of both factions..."
p144: "...[1276] Earlier than this, [Edward I] made himself the champion of Blanche of Artois, the widow of Henry III of Navarre and Champagne. He wished that Joan, their only child, should bring her father's lands to one of his own sons, and, though disappointed in this ambition, he mangaged to marry his younger brother, Edmund of Lancaster, to Blanche. Thoughthe French took pos- session of Navarre, whereby they alike threatened Gascony and Castile, they suffered Blanche to rule in Champagne in her daughter's name, and Edmund was associated with her in the government of that county.
p146: "...In 1284 Philip gained a new success in winning the hand of Joan of Champagne which went to the King of France as the natural protector of his son & his son's bride. With his brother's withdrawal from Provins to Lancaster, Edward lost one of hismeans of influencing the course of French politics..."
p187: "...[1294] Edward sent this brother, Edmund, to reply for him. As Count of Champagne and the step-father of Philip's wife, Joan, Edmund seemed a peculiarly acceptable negotiator...Meanwhile, Edward and Philip were to arrange a meeting at Amiens to settle the conditions of a permanent peace, by which Edward was to take Philip's sister, Margaret, as his second wife, and the Gascon duchy was to be settled upon the offspring of the union. That Edward or Edmund should ever have contemplated such terms is a strong proof of their zest for peace. It soon became clear that Edmund had been outrageously duped, and that the whole negotiation was a trick to secure for Philip the permanent possession of Gascony...
"...Philip's treachery was thus manifest, and in great disgust Edmund withdrew from France. Edward was deeply indignant..."
p196: "...The Gascon expedition was the first to start. Early inMarch 1296, Edmund of Lancaster, accompanied by the Earl of Lincoln, landed at Bourg and Blaye. John of St. John was still maintaining himself in that district as well as at Bayonne. On the appearance of the reinforcements the Gascon lords began to flock to the English camp, and a large force was at once able to take the field. On March 28 an attempt was made to capture Bordeaux by a sudden assault. On its failure Edmund, who did not possess the equipment necessary for a formal siege, sailed up the river to Saint-Macaire and occupied the town. But the castle held out gallantly, and after a three weeks' siege Edmund retired to his original position on the lower Gironde. Even there he found difficulty in holding his own, andbefore long shifted his quearters to Bayonne. He had exhausted his resources, and found that his army could not be kept together without pay. `Thereupon,' writes Hemingburgh, `his face fell and he sickened about Whitsuntide. So with want of money came want of breath too, and after a few days he went the way of all flesh.' Lincoln, his successor, managed still to stand his ground against Robert of Artois. At last Artois made a successful night attack upon the English, captured St. John, and destroyed all his war- train and baggage. The darkness of the night and the shelter of the neighbouring woods alone saved the English army from total destruction. `After this,' boasted William of Nangis, `no Englishman or Gascon dared to go out to battle against the Count of Artois and the French.' At Easter, 1297, a truce was concluded which left nearly all Gascony in French hands..."

The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Antonia Fraser, 1975, Alfred Knopf, p71: "Blanche of Artois, mar (2) Edmund Crounchback, Earl of Lancaster, 1245-96..."

The Later Middle Ages 1272-1485, George Holmes, 1962, Norton Library of England p258: "Appendix B Genealogical Table I The Plantagenets: Edmund Crounchback Earl of Lancaster (died 1296)..."

The New Columbia Encyclopedia, 1975, p1523, Lancaster House of: "Royal family of England. The line was founded by the second son of Henry III, Edmund Crouchback, 1245-1296, who was created Earl of Lancaster in 1267. Earlier (1254) the prince had been made titular King of Sicily when the pope offered that crown to Henry III in order to keep Sicily and the Holy Roman Empire separated. However, the English barons refused financial support for the Sicilian wars, and the title was withdrawn (1258). Later Edmund fought for his brother Edward I, in Wales and Gascony. His nickname `Crouchback', or crossed back, refers only to the fact that he went on crusade to Palestine in 1271 and, hence, was entitled towear the cross. Edmund's son Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, ?Abt 1277-1322, led the baronial opposition to his cousin Edward II."

ANCESTRY.COM
World Ancestral Chart No. 17779 James Carl Romans.

ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 8WKN-XG.

   Marriage Information:

Edmund married Countess Aveline Fortibus LANCASTER on 9 Apr 1269 in Abbey, Westminster, London, Middlesex, England. (Countess Aveline Fortibus LANCASTER died in 1274.)

   Marriage Information:

Edmund also married Princess Blanche Artois FRANCE, daughter of Count Robert ARTOIS, before 3 Feb 1275 in Paris, Seine, France. (Princess Blanche Artois FRANCE was born in , Navarre, Spain and died in 1302.)