General Notes

All the honours of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, became forfeited under his attainder, yet his brother and heir (Thomas having no issue), Henry Plantagenet, being a distinguished soldier in the Scottish wars, had livery of his lands in the 17th Edward II [1324] and was restored to the dignity of Earl of Leicester. This prince was subsequently one of the leaders in the great confederacy which overturned the power of the Spencers and deposed King Edward II. Upon the accession of Edward III, the earl had the honour of girding him with the sword of knighthood, and as soon as the new monarch was crowned, he was appointed, the king being a minor, his guardian. After which, in the parliament begun at Westminster, the attainder against his brother being reversed, he was restored to all the lands of his father and brother, with the Earldoms of Lancaster and Leicester, and the same year (1st Edward III) [1327-8], he was constituted captain-general of all the king's forces in the marches of Scotland. The earl m. Maud, dau. and heiress of Sir Patrick Chaworth, Knt., and had issue, Henry, Earl of Derby, his successor; Maud, m. 1st to William de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, by whom she had an only dau. and heiress, Elizabeth de Burgh, m. to Lionel, Duke of Clarence; the Lady Maud m. 2ndly, Ralph de Ufford, justice of Ireland, temp. Edward III, and brother of Robert, Earl of Suffolk, by whom she had an only dau., Maud, m. to Thomas, son of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford; Blanche, m. to Thomas, Lord Wake, of Lydell, and d. s. p.; Eleanor, m. 1st to John, son and heir of Henry, Earl of Buchan, and 2ndly, to Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel; Jane, m. to John, 3rd Lord Mowbray; Isabel, prioress of Ambresbury; and Mary, m. to Henry, Lord Percy. His lordship d. in 1345, was buried at Leicester (where his obsequies were attended by the king and queen in person), and was s. by his son, Henry, called "of Grosmont," from a castle in Monmouthshire, the place of his birth. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 431-2, Plantagenet, Earls of Chester, &c.]

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Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, EARL OF LEICESTER, LORD LANCASTER (b. c. 1281--d. Sept. 22, 1345), second son of Edmund ("Crouchback"), 1st Earl of Lancaster, and the brother of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster.

After his brother's execution in 1322, Henry was so little suspected of opposing King Edward II that he was allowed possession of another of the family titles, the earldom of Leicester (1324). He held lands adjacent to the increasing possessions in South Wales of Edward II's favourites, Hugh Le Despenser and his son and namesake, and in September 1326 he joined Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer after their return from France to depose the king. Henry captured Edward II at Neath Abbey and detained him at Kenilworth. He was a member of the deputation that informed the king of his deposition. In 1327 he was made chief of the Council of Regency, and after entering a petition in Parliament he was reinstated to much of the Lancastrian inheritance and allowed the title of Earl of Lancaster.

He soon quarreled with Mortimer. Lancaster complained that the Council of Regency was ignored and refused to attend the Salisbury Parliament of October 1328. He gathered troops at Winchester but was compelled to make peace. In 1330 he was one author of the plot that, with King Edward III's approval, overthrew Mortimer. About this time his eyesight failed, and after Mortimer's fall he retired from public life. [Britannica CD '97]