Edward III
Edward III reigned for fifty years, began the Hundred Years' War, and founded the Order of the Garter. Born at Windsor in 1312, he was fourteen when his mother Isabella and Roger Mortimer deposed his father, and he was crowned in January 1327 as their figurehead. At seventeen he ended it. In October 1330 he and a small party entered Nottingham Castle through a tunnel, seized Mortimer in the queen's chamber, and had him hanged. He ruled personally from then on. He restored the crown's standing by campaigning. He defeated the Scots at Halidon Hill in 1333, and in 1337, after Philip VI declared Gascony forfeit, claimed the French throne through his mother — the beginning of a war that outlasted him by eighty years. The early campaigns went spectacularly well. The French fleet was destroyed at Sluys in 1340; at Crécy in 1346 English longbowmen and dismounted men-at-arms destroyed a much larger French army; Calais fell in 1347; and at Poitiers in 1356 his son the Black Prince captured the French king. The Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 gave him a third of France in full sovereignty. He cultivated chivalry deliberately, founding the Garter around 1348 with a round-table mythology. The Black Death arrived in 1348 and killed perhaps a third of the population; the Statute of Labourers attempted to hold wages at pre-plague levels. He worked closely with parliament because war required taxation, and the Commons became a permanent element of government. His later years were senile and dominated by his mistress Alice Perrers. He died in 1377.
- Lived: 1312 CE – 1377 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: king, head_of_state
