♂Henry of England

Henry of England (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272), King Henry III, was King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine for fifty-six years, a king who came to the throne at the age of nine and spent the later part of his reign in conflict with his barons. He was the twenty-third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Edward of England (1239–1307).

The boy king

Henry was born at Winchester, the son and heir of King John^W and Isabel of Angouleme. He came to the throne on 19 October 1216, the day his father died, and he was crowned at Gloucester on 28 October 1216 and again at Westminster Abbey on 17 May 1220. Before his accession he had been contracted to marry Yolande of Brittany^W, a daughter of Pierre de Braine, Duke of Brittany, but the contract was later voided. In 1226 he gave up his rights in the city and county of Angoulême, the city of Saintonge and the castles of Cognac and Merpins to his mother and stepfather, and in January 1227 he declared himself of full age and began to rule in person.

Marriage

In 1235 Henry was married by proxy to Jeanne de Dammartin, the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Simon de Dammartin, Count of Ponthieu and Montreuil, but the marriage was annulled without being consummated, on the grounds that the two were related in the fourth degree of kindred. On 14 January 1236, at Canterbury Cathedral, he married Eleanor of Provence^W, the second daughter and co-heiress of Raymond Berenger, Count of Provence^W, by Beatrice of Savoy^W. Henry and Eleanor had nine children, among them their eldest son, Edward, who succeeded his father as King Edward I^W.

The barons

Henry’s personal control of the royal finances, without the barons taking part, bred discontent, and the influence of the queen’s Savoyard kinsmen over his government turned the barons further against him. His Lusignan half-brothers drew him into a disastrous venture in France. In 1258 his need for money forced him to accept a council of barons to advise him and oversee the government, and in 1259 he gave up his claim to Normandy and the crown’s other hereditary lands in France in return for territories in Gascony that had been lost.

By 1263 Henry’s chief opponent among the barons was his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester^W. In the civil war^W that followed, Montfort captured Henry and his eldest son, Edward, at the Battle of Lewes^W in Sussex on 14 May 1264, and he ruled England in the king’s name until he was defeated and killed at the Battle of Evesham^W on 4 August 1265. By the Treaty of Montgomery^W in 1267, Henry recognized Llywelyn ap Gruffudd^W as Prince of Wales.

Death

Henry made a will and died at Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk on 16 November 1272, while Edward was still abroad on his way home from the crusade, and he was buried at Westminster Abbey. His heart was kept apart from his body: in 1292 the Abbot of Winchester delivered Henry’s heart to the Abbess of Fontevrault^W, to whom the king had promised it when he visited her house in 1254. Fontevrault was the abbey where his mother had died in 1246.

Notes

Sources

Henry’s birth, accession, coronations, both marriages, his reign, his death and burial and the gift of his heart are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), vol. I, ENGLAND 4, pp. 42–46. His father’s death and his mother’s death at Fontevrault are from ENGLAND 3, p. 26, and Edward’s return from the crusade from ENGLAND 5. These are printed genealogies of the medieval royal family and nobility, citing the chronicles, the royal rolls and the modern histories of the reign.

The first marriage

Richardson dates the annulment of the proxy marriage to Jeanne de Dammartin to 27 April 1236, which falls after the wedding at Canterbury on 14 January 1236. He does not explain the order of the two dates.