General Notes

Lionel Plantagenet, b. 29 November, 1338 (of Antwerp), 3rd son of King Henry III, who became jure uxoris, Earl of Ulster, and was created 15 September, 1362, Duke of Clarence.* The prince was likewise a knight of the Garter, he had an only child by the heiress of Ulster, Philippa Plantagenet, who m. Edmond Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March. About four years after the death of the Duchess Elizabeth (25 April, 1368), King Edward concluded the terms of a new marriage for his son, the Duke of Clarence, with Violanta, or Jolantis, the dau. of Galeas, prince of Milan, and sister to John Galeas, who subsequently became 1st Duke of Milan. The bargain, for such it was in the strictest meaning of the word, was struck at Windsor, upon which occasion the wealthy and munificent Prince Galeas paid down for his daughter's dowry, the sum of 100,000 florins. This, however, was but a prelude to the unbounded munificence with which he received his son-in-law and his small but chosen retinue of English nobles, who in number amounted to about 200. When the duke married his affianced bride on 15 June, 1368, the luxury of the various feasts that followed upon the nuptial and the richness of the gifts presented by Galeas to the bridegroom and his followers were such as fairly to confound the imagination. The whole scene, as described by Paulus Jovius, is only to be paralleled by the wild dreamings of some eastern story. At one banquet, when the celebrated Petrarch was present, thirty courses succeeded each other, all composed of the choicest viands that the earth or sea could supply, and between each course, as many rare gifts were brought in by Galeas himself and presented by him to Clarence.

"But not five months after, the Duke of Clarence (having lived with this new wife after the manner of his own country, forgetting, or not regarding the change of air, and addicting himself to immoderate feasting), spent and consumed with a lingering disease, departed this world at Alba Pompeia, called also Longuevil, in the Marquisate of Montserrat, in Piedmont, on the vigil of St. Luke the Evangelist, viz., the 17th day of October, anno 1368."

The duke was first buried in the city of Pavia, but was afterwards brought over to England by Thomas Narbonne and others of the retinue, who had accompanied him in his nuptial expedition. The body was then conveyed to the church of the Augustine Friars, at Clare, in Suffolk, and finally deposited near the remains of his 1st wife, Elizabeth de Burgh. Violanta herself was afterwards m. to Otho, Marquis of Montserrat, but as the chronicler quaintly observes, her 2nd marriage was not more fortunate than her first; -- Otho soon perished ignobly in the mountains, being slain by a country stable-keeper.

At the death of Lionel, the Dukedom of Clarence became extinct.

* The title of Clarence was derived from the honour of Clare. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 434, Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence]

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Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, also called (1346-62) EARL OF ULSTER (b. Nov. 29, 1338, Antwerp--d. Oct. 17, 1368, Alba, Italy), second surviving son of King Edward III of England and ancestor of Edward IV.

Before he was four years of age Lionel was betrothed to Elizabeth (d. 1363), daughter and heiress of William de Burgh, earl of Ulster (d. 1333), and he entered nominally into possession of her great Irish inheritance. Having been named as his father's representative in England in 1345 and again in 1346, Lionel was created earl of Ulster and joined (in 1355) an expedition into France, but his chief energies were reserved for the affairs of Ireland. Appointed governor of that country, he landed at Dublin in September 1361. In November 1362 he was created duke of Clarence and in the following year his father made an abortive attempt to secure for him the succession to the crown of Scotland.

His efforts to secure an effective authority over his Irish lands were only moderately successful, and after holding a parliament at Kilkenny, which passed the celebrated Statute of Kilkenny in 1366, he threw up his task in disgust and returned to England. At Milan, on May 28, 1368, he married Violante, only daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, lord of Pavia, who brought him a rich dowry. Several months were then spent in festivities, during which Lionel was taken ill and died at Alba.

His only child, Philippa (1355-81), a daughter by his first wife, married in 1368 Edmund Mortimer (1352-81), 3rd earl of March, and through this union Clarence became an ancestor of Edward IV. [Encyclopædia Britannica CD '97]