Lionel of Antwerp
Lionel of Antwerp died five months after the most expensive wedding of the century, and his descendants' claim caused the Wars of the Roses. He was the second surviving son of Edward III, born at Antwerp while his father was campaigning, and was married at four to the heiress of the earldom of Ulster, which made him an Irish magnate before he could read. He was enormous - contemporaries put him near seven feet - and was made Duke of Clarence. Sent to Ireland as lieutenant in 1361 to recover a lordship that had shrunk to a strip round Dublin, he failed at that and presided instead over the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366, which forbade the English settlers to speak Irish, marry Irish, or follow Irish law - an admission that the colonists were becoming indistinguishable from the colonised. His first wife having died, he was married in 1368 to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II, for a dowry that made the match famous. The wedding at Milan lasted for days, the guests included Petrarch and probably Chaucer, and thirty courses were served with a gift after each. He died at Alba in October, five months later - of the food and drink, said his English companions, who accused the Visconti of poison. His only child Philippa carried the line to the Mortimers and then to the house of York. That is the whole importance of him. York's claim to the throne ran through Lionel, Edward III's second surviving son, and Lancaster's through John of Gaunt, the third - so the Yorkist case was senior, and rested on descent through two women. Whether a claim could pass that way is what a century of English politics was fought over.
- Lived: 1338 CE – 1368 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: noble
