Hugh Despenser the Younger and Edward II tells the story of the greatest villain of the fourteenth century, his dazzling rise as favorite to the king and his disastrous fall.Born in the late 1280s, Hugh married King Edward I of Englands eldest granddaughter when he was a teenager. Ambitious and greedy to an astonishing degree, Hugh chose a startling route to power: he seduced his wifes uncle, the young King Edward II, and became the richest and most powerful man in the country in the 1320s. For years he dominated the English government and foreign policy, and took whatever lands he felt like by both quasi-legal and illegal methods, with the kings connivance. His actions were to bring both himself and Edward II down, and Hugh was directly responsible for the first forced abdication of a king in English history; he had made the horrible mistake of alienating and insulting Edwards queen Isabella of France, who loathed him, and who had him slowly and grotesquely executed in her presence in November 1326.
This edition of Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe is now presented in an easy-to-read font and features a striking new cover decision, creating an accessible reading experience.
The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king's chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps lover.
Pugh, T. B., 'The Marcher Lords of Glamorgan and Morgannwg, 1317– 1485', Glamorgan County History, III: The Middle Ages, ed. T. B. Pugh (1971). Rastall, Richard, 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England', Univ. of Manchester PhD ...
It's set during the Wars of the Roses and is narrated by Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and his wife, Katherine Woodville, sister to Queen Elizabeth Woodville. Buckingham is best known for helping Richard III to the throne ...
The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family tells the story of the ups and downs of this fascinating family from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, when three Despenser lords were beheaded and two fell in battle.
Pugh, R. B., 'A Fragment of an Account of Isabel of Lancaster, Nun of Amesbury, 1333–4', in ed. L. Santifaller, Festschrift zur Feier des Zweihundertjährigen Bestandes des Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchivs, vol. 1 (1949), 487–98.
T. B. Pugh (1971) Rastall, Richard, 'Secular Musicians in Late Medieval England' Univ. of Manchester PhD thesis, 1968 Redstone, V. B., 'Some Mercenaries of Henry of Lancaster, 13271330', TRHS, 3rd series, 7 (1913) Saul, Nigel, ...
Fans of her first novel, The Traitor's Wife, will be thrilled to find that this story follows the next generation of the Despenser family.
Another who had attached himself to the Queen's party was the King's own brother, the Earl of Kent. Kent had returned to France on 25 August, in company with Surrey, who had been appointed captain of the English forces in Aquitaine.
He was, it seems, doomed by his inheritance.' Historian Ian Mortimer's description of Edward II is the starting point of Stephen Spinks' new analysis of this ultimately tragic story of sex, revenge and savagery.