Earl Thomas LANCASTER

   Cause of his death was Executed.

   Other names for Thomas were LANCASTER Earl, LEICESTER Earl, DERBY Earl, LINCOLN Earl and SALISBURY Earl.

   General Notes:

2nd Earl of LANCASTER, LEICESTER, DERBY, LINCOLN, and SALISBURY.

Executed 1322 KQGB.

BOOKS
Robert the Bruce King of Scots, Ronald McNair Scott, Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc, New York, 1982.
p200: "The truce signed in December 1319 held throughout 1321 and the northern counties had a short reprieve from the ravages of the Scots. But elsewhere in England events moved towards civil war. Hugh Despenser the younger, who after the death of Piers Gaveston had become the chief object of Edward II's affections, roused the anger of the Marcher Lords by his territorial aggrandizement in Wales. Taking to arms, they joined forces with the Earl of Lancaster and, marching on London, intimidated the King into sending the favourite and his father into exile. Their triumph was short-lived. Five months later their opposition had lost cohesion. Edward II, seizing his opportunity, raised an army, recalled the Despensers and advanced against the Marcher Lords. Some surrendered withouth a fight: others, under the Earl of Hereford, fled north to join the Earl of Lancaster at Pontefract. The final clash between King and earl was now to take place...
p201: "The English King, gathering his forces at Coventry, bypasseed Burton-on Trent, where Lancaster and Hereford had posted theirr army to block his passage of the river, and made for their headquarters at Pontefract. The earls hastily retreated northwards, hoping to link up with the Scots. But Andrew Harclay, the governor of Carlisle, by abrilliant move raised the leview of Cumberland and Westmorland and, avoiding the Scots in Teesdale, took up a position at Borooughbridge covering both the ford and the bridge by which the rebels would hve to cross the River Ure. Mindful of the lessons of Courtrai and Bannockburn, he posted his pikemen in schiltron formation opposite the bridge and ford supported by archers on both flanks.
"On 16 March Lancaster advanced to the attack, sending Hereford and the infantry to seize the bridge while he himself with the cavalry attempted to cross by the ford. Hereford was killed on the bridge as he led his men and Lancaster repulsed by the hail of arrows that decimated his horses. The next morning, with most Hereford's men deserting, he surrendered to Andrew Harclay. He was taken before Edward II at Pontefract who, without holding Parliament or consulting his peers, had his head cut off as ten years before the earl had done to Piers Gaveston."

Kings and Queens of Great Britain, Genealogical Chart, Anne Taute and Romilly Squire, Taute, 1990: "Thomas 2nd Earl of Lancaster and Leicester, Mar Alice Daughter of Henry De Lacy Earl ofLincoln, Divorced c1318, Executed 1322."

A History of the Plantagenets, Vol III, The Three Edwards, Thomas B Costain, 1958, Doubleday & Co
p135: "The favorite [Piers De 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. He was hereditary high steward of England and the holder of five earldoms including Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby. He entertained on a lavish scale...Lancaster's great castle at Pontefract must have been filled with guests at all seasons...
"Lancaster was a man of overweening ambition but entirely lacking in the qualities which must go with the achievement of high objectives; and insensitive, coarse, violent fellow, lethargic in person and dull of wit. Because of his rank, however, he was the most powerful man in the kingdom and certainly should never have been selected by the upstart Gascon as a butt for his jests...
"...The faults of the head of the family [were] well known to all the collateral branches, the brothers and uncles and cousins. Cousin Lancaster was the leader of the opposition whereEdward II was concerned. He knew all about that young man's record and thought poorly of him from every standpoint."
p139: "...Some of the English nobility, with Cousin Lancaster as spokesman no doublt, went to Edward and told him that unless he banished Gaveston from court they would absent themselves from the coronation. Edward, taken seriously aback, assured them that he would arrange matters to their satisfaction."
p177: "The Scottish victory at Bannockburn did not bring peace...The English, humiliated and angered beyond measure, were not so disposed [to discuss terms with the Scots]; they proceeded to take the military command out of the feeble hands of Edward and entrusted the army to Cousin Lancaster, who, as it soon developed, was no better..."
p182: "It happened that before Bannockburn the Earl of Lancaster had displayed his lack of patriotism in a rather extraordinary way. He did not accompany the royal army and he did not send any of his men. Instead he assembled quite a considerable army at his castle of Pontefract in the openly expressed belief that if Edward were successful against the Scots he would return with his victorious army and compel the barons to give up the concessions they had won from him. This sorry pretense paid him golden dividends. Edward returned a fugitive to face an angry Parliament at York; and there was Lancaster with his fresh troops to make sure of the king's submission...
"Lancasterfollowed up his advantage the next year when a special session of Parliament was held at Lincoln. Here he was appointed head of the council to govern all the acts of the king.
"Edward's cousin had won a complete victory. The king was nowunder his thumb. Lancaster had made himself the power behind the throne..."
p184: "To make matters worse, [Lancaster] found himself involved at this time in a private war. He had married Alice, the handsome twelve-year-old daughter of Henry de Lacy, and through her had inherited the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. It was not a happy marriage. They had no children, and the good earl indulged himself in one illicit romance after another. About the time he began to realize thatholding the reins of power was not an unmixed advantage, the lady ran away from their castle at Caneford in Dorset. There was one trait in Lancaster's character that everyone knew: he would pursue a personal grudge with unrelenting bitterness to the end of his days. His wife's defection roused him to unusual fury and he accused the Earl of Warenne of carrying her off. Warenne denied this but he did acknowledge that he had assisted the lady in making her escape. Lancaster refused to believe him and proceeded to burn the Warenne lands. He even seized the earl's castle at Knaresborough..."

Political History of England 1216-1377, Vol III, T F Tout, AMS Press, 1905,
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 managed to marry his younger brother, Edmund of Lancaster, to Blanche..."
p224: "...In the same way Edward's young nephew, Thomas of Lancaster, ruledover the three earldoms of Lancaster, Derby, and Leicester, and by his marriage to the daughter and heiress of Henry Lacy, was destined to add to his immense estates the additional earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury..."
p238: "...[1307] The readiness with which the barons acquiesced in Edward's reversal of his father's policy shows that they had regarded the late king's action with little favour. Lincoln, the wisest and most influential of the earls, even found reasons for the grant of Cornwall to Gaveston, and kept in check his son-in-law, Earl Thomas of Lancaster, who was the mostdisposed to grumble at the elevation of the Gascon favourite..."
p245: "The Earl of Lincoln governed England as regent during the king's absence. In February, 1311, he died, and Gloucester abandoned the campaign to take up the regency...The most important result of Lincoln's death was the unmuzzling of his son-in-law, Thomas of Lancaster. In his own right the lord of the three earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby, Thomas then received in addition his father-in-law's twoearldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. The enormous estates and innumerable jurisdictions attached to these five offices gave him a territorial position greater by far than that of any other English lord..."
p246: "...[1311] Nor were Earl Thomas [of Lancaster]'s personal connexions less magnificent than his feudal dignities. As a grandson of Henry III, he was the first cousin of the king. Through his mother, Blanche of Artois, Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne, he was thegrandson of the valiant Robert of Artois, who had fallen at Mansura, and the great-grandson of Louis VIII of France. His half-sister, Joan of Champagne, was the wife of Philip the Fair, so that the French king was his brother-in-law as well ashis cousin, and Isabella, Edward's consort, was his niece..."
p273: "...Lancaster had long been at variance with his wife, Alice Lacy. On May 9, 1317, the Countess of Lancaster ran away from him, with the active help of Warenne and by thesecret contrivance of the king. Private war at once broke out between the two earls..."

The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Antonia Fraser, 1975, Alfred Knopf, p71: "Thomas Earl of Lancaster, 1276-1322..."

The Later Middle Ages 1272-1485, George Holmes, 1962, Norton Library of England p258: "Appendix B Genealogical Table I The Plantagenets: Thomas Earl of Lancaster (died 1322)..."

   Marriage Information:

Thomas married Alice LACY, daughter of Earl Henry De Lacy LINCOLN. (Alice LACY died in 1348.)