General Notes

The early death of the brave son and successor of Saint Louis IX, King ofFrance, King Philip the Hardy of France, left his youngest daughter, thePrincess Marguerite, fatherless at a very tender age. If she possessedany comliness of person, her claims to beauty were wholly overlooked byher contemporaries, who admired the exquisite persons of her elderbrother and sister, Philip le Bel and Blanche le Belle. A marriage treatywas made between Edward and Blanche, but through the scheming of theirbrother Philip, Marguerite, then a child of eleven, was substituted and awar immediately ensued, lasting from 1294 to 1298, and by this timeMarguerite had grown up; as Edward was a widower of 60, he agreed to theterms and they were married Sept. 8, 1299, nine years after the death ofhis first wife. She is the ancestress of all the English nobility bearingthe name of Howard through her son Thomas and all who bore the name ofHolland through her son Edmund of Woodstock, through his daughter Joan,the Fair Maid of Kent, who married Sir Thomas Holland.