Edmund Plantagenet

• General Notes
  • [brownlee.ged]
    
    Edmund Plantegenet by name Crouchback (b. Jan. 16, 1245, London, Engla nd - d. c.\June 5, 1296, Bayonne, France), fourth (but second surviving) s on of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, who founded the h ouse of Lancaster.
    At the age 10, Edmund was invested by Pope Innocent IV with the king dom of Sicily (April 1255) , as an expression of his conflict with the Ho ly Roman emperor, who held Sicily; but Edmund was never more than an absen tee titular king, and Pope Alexander IV canceled the grant (December 1258) .
    In 1265 Edmund received the earldom of Leicester, and two years lat er was created Earl of Lancaster. He joined the crusade of his elder broth er, the Lord Edward (1271-1272); and Edward on his accession as King Edwa rd I, found in Edmund a loyal supporter. In 1275, two years after the dea th of his first wife, Edmund married Blanche of Artois, the widow of Hen ry III of Navarre and Champagne, and assumed the title Count Palatine of C hampagne and Brie. When the court of King Philip IV of France pronounced t hat the king of England had forfeited Gascony, Edmund renounced his homa ge to Philip and withdrew with his wife to England. He was appointed lieut enant of Gascony in 1296but died in the same year, leaving his Son Thom as to succeed him in his English possession.
    Edmund's nickname "Crouchback" (meaning "Crossback," or crusader) w as misinterpreted, probably intentionally, by his direct descendant. Ki ng Henry IV, who, in claiming the throne (1399), asserted that Edmund h ad really been Henry III's eldest son but had been disinherited as a hunch back.