Maud of Lancaster
Maud of Lancaster died childless at twenty-two, and her death made her sister's husband the richest man in England. She was the elder daughter of Henry of Grosmont, first Duke of Lancaster - one of the outstanding soldiers and diplomats of the century and the author of a devotional book about his own sins - who left no sons. She was married at about twelve to Ralph of Stafford, who died within a year, and then in 1352 to William of Bavaria, count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland. That was a considerable match: it tied Lancaster to the Low Countries at a moment when English wool and English diplomacy both ran through them. It went wrong in a way the sources describe plainly. William became violently insane after 1357, killed a knight at his own table, and was confined for the remaining three decades of his life, with his brother Albert governing in his place. Her father died of plague in March 1361 and she died of it in April 1362, having outlived him by thirteen months and inherited half of an enormous estate. The whole of it therefore passed to her younger sister Blanche, and through Blanche to John of Gaunt, who was made Duke of Lancaster in her right. That inheritance funded the house of Lancaster, the deposition of Richard II by her nephew Henry IV, and eventually a civil war. There was a suggestion at the time that she had been poisoned, which the chroniclers record and nobody has ever substantiated; plague was killing enormous numbers that spring and needs no help as an explanation. She was buried at Rijnsburg in Holland rather than with her family, which is the last thing recorded of her, and her sister followed her within seven years - so both daughters of the greatest English magnate of the century were dead before either was thirty.
- Lived: 1339 CE – 1362 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: noblewoman
