Edward III King of England ^{1 2 3}

   Another name for Edward was Edward of Windsor.

  Research Notes:

From Wikipedia - Edward III of England :

Edward III (13 November 1312 - 21 June 1377) was one of the most successful English monarchs of the Middle Ages . Restoring royal authority after the disastrous reign of his father, Edward II , Edward III went on to transform the Kingdom of England into the most efficient military power in Europe. His reign saw vital developments in legislature and government-in particular the evolution of the English parliament-as well as the ravages of the Black Death . He remained on the throne for 50 years; no English monarch had reigned for as long since Henry III , and none would again until George III , as King of the United Kingdom .

Edward was crowned at the age of fourteen, following the deposition of his father. When he was only seventeen years old, he led a coup against his regent , Roger Mortimer , and began his personal reign. After defeating, but not subjugating, the Kingdom of Scotland , he declared himself rightful heir to the French throne in 1338, starting what would be known as the Hundred Years' War . Following some initial setbacks, the war went exceptionally well for England; the victories of Crécy and Poitiers led up to the highly favourable Treaty of Brétigny . Edward's later years, however, were marked by international failure and domestic strife, largely as a result of his inertia and eventual bad health.

Edward III was a temperamental man, but also capable of great clemency. He was, in most ways, a conventional king, mainly interested in warfare. Highly revered in his own time and for centuries after, Edward was denounced as an irresponsible adventurer by later Whig historians . This view has turned, and modern historiography credits him with many achievements[citation needed ].

Biography
Early life
Edward was born at Windsor on 13 November 1312, and was called "Edward of Windsor" in his early years. The reign of his father, Edward II , was fraught with military defeat, rebellious barons and corrupt courtiers, but the birth of a male heir in 1312 temporarily strengthened Edward II's position on the throne.[1] To further this end, in what was probably an attempt by his father to shore up royal supremacy after years of discontent, Edward was created Earl of Chester at the age of only twelve days, and less than two months later, his father gave him a full household of servants for his court, so he could live independently as if he were a full adult Nobleman.[2]

On 20 January 1327, when the young Edward was fourteen years old his mother the queen Isabella , and her lover Roger Mortimer deposed the king. Edward, now Edward III, was crowned on 1 February, with Isabella and Mortimer as regents . Mortimer, the de facto ruler of England, subjected the young king to constant disrespect and humiliation. On 24 January 1328 the fifteen year old king married sixteen year old Philippa of Hainault at York Minster .[3]

Mortimer knew his position was precarious, especially after Philippa had a son on 15 June 1330.[4] Mortimer used his power to acquire noble estates and titles, many of them belonging to Edmund FitzAlan, 9th Earl of Arundel . FitzAlan, who had remained loyal to Edward II in his struggle with Isabella and Mortimer, had been executed on 17 November 1326. However Mortimer's greed and arrogance caused many of the other nobles to hate him; all this was not lost on the young king.

The young, headstrong King had never forgotten the fate of his father, or how he himself had been treated as a child. At almost 18 years old, Edward was ready to take his revenge. On the 19 October 1330, Mortimer and Isabella were sleeping at Nottingham Castle . Under the cover of night, a group loyal to Edward entered the fortress through a secret passageway and burst into Mortimer's quarters. Those conducting the coup arrested Mortimer in the name of the King and he was taken to the Tower of London . Stripped of his land and titles, he was hauled before the 17 year-old King and accused of assuming royal authority over England. Edward's mother-presumably pregnant with Mortimer's child-begged her son for mercy to no avail. Without trial, Edward sentenced Mortimer to death one month after the coup. As Mortimer was executed, Edward's mother was exiled in Castle Rising where she reportedly miscarried. By his 18th birthday, Edward's vengeance was complete and he became de facto ruler of England.

Early reign

Edward chose to renew the military conflict with the Kingdom of Scotland in which his father and grandfather had engaged with varying success. Edward repudiated the Treaty of Northampton that had been signed during the regency, thus renewing claims of English sovereignty over Scotland and resulting in the Second War of Scottish Independence .

Intending to regain what the English had conceded, he won back control of Berwick and secured a decisive English victory at the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333 against the forces of the boy-king David II of Scotland . Edward III was now in a position to put Edward Balliol on the throne of Scotland and claim a reward of 2,000 librates of land in the southern counties - the Lothians, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire, Dumfriesshire, Lanarkshire and Peebleshire. Despite the victories of Dupplin and Halidon, the Bruce party soon started to recover and by the close of 1335 and the Battle of Culblean , the Plantagenet occupation was in difficulties and the Balliol party was fast losing ground.

At this time, in 1336, Edward III's brother John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall died. John of Fordun 's Gesta Annalia is alone in claiming that Edward killed his brother in a quarrel at Perth .

Although Edward III committed very large armies to Scottish operations, by 1337 the vast majority of Scotland had been recovered by the forces of David II, leaving only a few castles such as Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Stirling in Plantagenet possession. These installations were not adequate to impose Edward's rule and by 1338/9 Edward had moved from a policy of conquest to one of containment.

Edward faced military problems on two fronts; the challenge from the French monarchy was of no less concern. The French represented a problem in three areas: first, they provided constant support to the Scottish through the Franco-Scottish alliance . Philip VI protected David II in exile, and supported Scottish raids in Northern England . Second, the French attacked several English coastal towns, leading to rumours in England of a full-scale invasion.[5] Finally, the English king's possessions in France were under threat-in 1337, Philip VI confiscated the duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu .

Instead of seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict by paying homage to the French king, Edward laid claim to the French crown as the only living male descendant of his deceased maternal grandfather, Philip IV . The French, however, invoked the Salic law of succession and rejected the claim, pronouncing Philip IV's nephew, Philip VI, the true heir (see below ) and thereby setting the stage for the Hundred Years' War , by incorporating England's coat of arms, rampant lions, and France's coat of arms, the fleurs de lys, and he, in so doing, declared himself king of both England and France.[6]

In the war against France, Edward built alliances and fought by proxy through minor French princes. In 1338, Louis IV named him vicar-general of the Holy Roman Empire , and promised his support. These measures, however, produced few results; the only major military gain made in this phase of the war was the English naval victory at Sluys on 24 June 1340, where 16,000 French soldiers and sailors died.

Meanwhile, the fiscal pressure on the kingdom caused by Edward's expensive alliances led to discontent at home. In response he returned unannounced on 30 November 1340. Finding the affairs of the realm in disorder, he purged the royal administration.[7] These measures did not bring domestic stability, however, and a standoff ensued between the king and John de Stratford , the Archbishop of Canterbury .

Edward, at the Parliament of England of April 1341, was forced to accept severe limitations to his financial and administrative prerogatives. Yet, in October of the same year, the king repudiated this statute, and Archbishop Stratford was politically ostracised. The extraordinary circumstances of the 1341 parliament had forced the king into submission, but under normal circumstances the powers of the king in medieval England were virtually unlimited, and Edward took advantage of this.[8]

Fortunes of war

After much inconclusive campaigning in Continental Europe , Edward decided to stage a major offensive in 1346, sailing for Normandy with a force of 15,000 men.[9] His army sacked the city of Caen and marched across northern France. On 26 August he met the French king's forces in pitched battle at Crécy and won a decisive victory. Meanwhile, back home, William Zouche , the Archbishop of York mobilized an army to oppose David II, who had returned, defeating and capturing him at the Battle of Neville's Cross on 17 October. With his northern border having been secured, Edward felt free to continue his major offensive against France, laying siege to the town of Calais , which fell after almost a year-probably the greatest single military operation undertaken by the English state in the Middle Ages[citation needed ]-in August of 1347.

After the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV in October of 1347, his son Louis V, Duke of Bavaria negotiated with Edward to compete against the new German king Charles IV , but Edward finally decided in May 1348 not to run for the German crown.

In 1348, the Black Death struck Europe with full force, killing a third or more of England's population.[10] This loss of manpower meant a halt to major campaigning. The great landowners struggled with the shortage of manpower and the resulting inflation in labor cost. Attempting to cap wages, the king and parliament responded with the Ordinance of Labourers (1349) and the Statute of Labourers (1351). The plague did not, however, lead to a full-scale breakdown of government and society, and recovery was remarkably swift.[11]

In 1356, Edward's oldest son, the Black Prince , won a great victory at the battle of Poitiers . The greatly outnumbered English forces not only routed the French but captured the French king, John II . After a succession of victories, the English held great possessions in France, the French king was in English custody, and the French central government had almost totally collapsed. Whether Edward's claim to the French crown originally was genuine or just a political ploy,[12] it now seemed to be within reach. Yet a campaign in 1359, meant to complete the undertaking, was inconclusive. In 1360, therefore, Edward accepted the Treaty of Brétigny , whereby he renounced his claims to the French throne but secured his extended French possessions in full sovereignty.

Later reign

While Edward's early reign had been energetic and successful, his later years were marked by inertia, military failure and political strife. The day-to-day affairs of the state had less appeal to Edward than military campaigning, so during the 1360s Edward increasingly relied on the help of his subordinates, in particular William Wykeham . A relative upstart, Wykeham was made Lord Privy Seal in 1363 and Lord Chancellor in 1367, though due to political difficulties connected with his inexperience, the Parliament forced him to resign the chancellorship in 1371.[13]

Compounding Edward's difficulties were the deaths of his most trusted men, some from the 1361-62 recurrence of the plague. William Montacute , Edward's companion in the 1330 coup, was dead by 1344. William de Clinton , who had also been with the king at Nottingham, died in 1354. One of the earls of 1337, William de Bohun , died in 1360, and the next year Henry of Grosmont , perhaps the greatest of Edward's captains, succumbed to what was probably plague. Their deaths left the majority of the magnates younger and more naturally aligned to the princes than to the king himself.

The king's second son, Lionel of Antwerp , attempted to subdue by force the largely autonomous Anglo-Irish lords in Ireland . The venture failed, and the only lasting mark he left were the suppressive Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366.[14]

In France, meanwhile, the decade following the Treaty of Brétigny was one of relative tranquillity, but on 8 April 1364 John II died in captivity in England, after unsuccessfully trying to raise his own ransom at home. He was followed by the vigorous Charles V , who enlisted the help of the capable Constable Bertrand du Guesclin .[15] In 1369, the French war started anew, and Edward's younger son John of Gaunt was given the responsibility of a military campaign. The effort failed, and with the Treaty of Bruges in 1375, the great English possessions in France were reduced to only the coastal towns of Calais, Bordeaux and Bayonne.[16]

Military failure abroad and the associated fiscal pressure of campaigning led to political discontent at home. The problems came to a head in the parliament of 1376, the so-called Good Parliament . The parliament was called to grant taxation, but the House of Commons took the opportunity to address specific grievances. In particular, criticism was directed at some of the king's closest advisors. Lord Chamberlain William Latimer and Lord Steward John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby were dismissed from their positions. Edward's mistress, Alice Perrers , who was seen to hold far too much power over the aging king, was banished from court.[17]

Yet the real adversary of the Commons, supported by powerful men such as Wykeham and Edmund de Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March , was John of Gaunt. Both the king and the Black Prince were by this time incapacitated by illness, leaving Gaunt in virtual control of government. Gaunt was forced to give in to the demands of parliament, but by its next convocation, in 1377, most of the achievements of the Good Parliament were reversed.[18]

Edward himself, however, did not have much to do with any of this; after around 1375 he played a limited role in the government.[19] Around 29 September 1376 he fell ill with a large abscess . After a brief period of recovery in February, the king died of a stroke (some sources say gonorrhea [20]) at Sheen on 21 June.[19] He was succeeded by his ten-year-old grandson, King Richard II , son of the Black Prince, since the Black Prince himself had died on 8 June 1376.

  Noted events in his life were:

• King of England, 1327-1377.

Edward married Philippa of Hainault, daughter of William Count of Hainaut, Holland & Zeeland and Joan, on 24 Jan 1328 in York, Yorkshire, England. (Philippa of Hainault was born on 24 Jun 1311 and died on 15 Aug 1369 in Windsor Castle, Windsor, Berkshire, England.)