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In August 1347, a decade into the Hundred Years War, the port city of Calais surrendered to King Edward III of England after an eleven-month siege. As the mayor of Calais and five of his fellow townsmen surrendered the city's keys to Edward, the King ordered their execution as punishment for their refusal to submit. While Edward refused the pleas of close friends to spare them, his pregnant queen Philippa of Hainault sank to her knees. She begged of her husband, "that for the Son of the Holy Mary and for the love of me, you shall wish to have mercy on these six men". Edward,
one of England's greatest warrior kings, was moved by his wife's intervention and relented. The tale of the townsmen or burghers of Calais is regarded as a vivid demonstration of the power of medieval queenship. However, Philippa's power and influence as Queen of England was not confined to this single spectacle. She effectively deputised for Edward as a political and military leader while he was away on campaign, and her dynastic connections on the continent made her a useful diplomat. Philippa and Edward were happily married and she performed her dynastic role effectively by having
several surviving sons to secure the future of the House of Plantagenet. Nevertheless, Philippa's childbearing prowess would also set the stage for the bitter internecine struggles which would divide the English realm in the century after her death. This is the story of Philippa of Hainault, Queen of England. The woman known to history as Philippa of Hainault was born in Valenciennes in the County of Hainaut, on the western borderlands of the Holy Roman Empire. While the historical county gives its
name to the modern-day Belgian province of Hainaut, Philippa's hometown of Valenciennes has been part of France since the 17th century. While her accepted date of birth is 24 June 1314, this is unlikely. The Queen was "almost fourteen years old" at her wedding in January 1328, according to the chronicler Jean Froissart who was patronised by Philippa in the 1360s. In 1319, King Edward II of England dispatched the Bishop of Exeter, Walter Stapledon, to the court at Hainaut to consider the suitability of the Count's daughters as a bride for Prince Edward,
the future Edward III. He left a detailed account of one of the Count's daughters who would be "nine years on St John's day next to come". This would place Philippa's date of birth on 24 June 1310 or 1311. While this account was later understood to have been a description of Philippa as she later married Edward, modern scholarship indicates that Stapledon was referring to Philippa's elder sister Margarethe. On the basis of Froissart's account, Philippa's biographer Kathryn Warner argues that she was born between January and March 1314. Philippa's father Count William I of Hainault was a member of the House of Avesnes, whose ancestral
estates were in the village of Avesnes-sur-Helpe in northern France. In addition to counties of Hainault and Avesnes, William also ruled over the counties of Holland and Zeeland and spent much of his life at war with the Count of Flanders. In 1305 he married Joan of Valois, the granddaughter of King Philip III of France. When the male line of the House of Capet was extinguished in 1328, Joan's brother became King Philip VI of France, asserting his claims over those of his distant cousin Edward III of England. The rival claims of Philippa's uncle and husband to the kingdom
of France would trigger an Anglo-French conflict which would last for more than a century. Philippa grew up in a large family with eight or nine full siblings, of whom around half survived into adulthood. Her father Count William also had at least eight illegitimate children whom he acknowledged as his own and may have brought up in his household. Count William ruled over a collection of small but wealthy counties in the Low Countries who owed their prosperity to their commercial relationship with England across the North Sea. It was no surprise that King Edward II
of England had sought the hand of one of William's daughters for his son and heir in the late 1310s. Bishop Stapelton's detailed account of William's daughter in 1319 noted that the girl was "brown of skin all over, much like her father." The Bishop's description of the Hainault girl has encouraged the notion that Philippa had African ancestry, and she was controversially included in the 100 Great Black Britons project in 2003. While Philippa's maternal ancestors included not only southern Europeans of darker complexion but also a chieftain of the Cumans,
a nomadic Turkic people from central Asia, none of this indicates African ancestry. It also does not account for the apparent dark skin of Count William, who was exclusively of northern European descent. While it remains unclear what Stapleton meant by describing the Count of Hainault and his daughter having brown skin all over, Kathryn Warner observes that there is no source during Philippa's queenship that remarks on her appearance being unconventional. Philippa grew up at a time of great uncertainty in western European politics. Medieval aristocrats
travelled between their estates and Philippa's childhood was split between Valenciennes and her father's estates in Holland. Philippa spoke French and Flemish and was likely acquainted with the Arthurian romances and the religious texts in her father's small library. In 1323, Count William made peace with the Count of Flanders by giving up his claim to Flanders in exchange for formal recognition as Count of Zeeland. This gave William the opportunity to arrange advantageous marriages for his daughters. Philippa likely joined her family at the double
wedding ceremony in Cologne in February 1324, where her elder sisters Margaret and Joanna were married to Ludwig IV of Bavaria and Wilhelm of Jülich respectively. The 42-year-old Ludwig was one of Europe's most powerful men. He had recently defeated his cousin and rival, Frederick of Austria, consolidating his claim as King of Germany. Wilhelm of Jülich was also heir to the county of Jülich, which straddled the present-day borders of Germany and the Netherlands. Philippa may have attended the wedding of her mother's cousins King Charles IV of France and Joan of
Evreux in Paris on 5 July 1324. The youngest of King Philip IV's three sons, Charles had come to the throne after his elder brothers died without heirs. He was therefore desperate for a son to secure his lineage. In December 1325, Philippa accompanied her mother to Paris to visit her dying grandfather Charles of Valois. During her stay at the French capital, Philippa likely met Edward of Windsor, the heir to the English throne, and his mother Queen Isabella, who was the sister of the King of France. Isabella had travelled to France to broker a peace agreement between her
husband and her brother but was in no hurry to return home. She was appalled by the influence of Edward II's courtier and rumoured lover, Hugh Despenser the Younger. Hugh Despenser used his favoured position to appropriate the lands of leading aristocrats and even the queen herself. In late 1325, Isabella issued an ultimatum and declared that she would remain in France until Edward dismissed Despenser. The young Philippa was to be a major player in the scandal that embarrassed the English court. Prince Edward had accompanied his mother to France
in order to pay homage to the King of France for the duchy of Aquitaine, which was now reduced to the region of Gascony. Although Edward was already betrothed to a Spanish princess, Isabella may have been in correspondence with the Hainault court about the prospect of a union between Edward and Philippa even before the latter arrived in Paris with her mother. An unofficial arrangement appears to have been made in December 1325 when Joan and Philippa were in France, suggesting that Philippa met her future husband for the first time. The pair may have met on
a second occasion at Joan of Evreux's coronation as Queen of France in May 1326, though Philippa's attendance is uncertain. The marital negotiations could not have taken place without the knowledge of Philippa's father Count William. It was he alone who could provide the men and ships for an invasion of England and he had been on poor terms with King Edward since the early 1320s. Relations between the two rulers deteriorated over pirate raids in the North Sea. In addition, the prospect of having the heir to the English throne as his son-in-law was attractive enough to encourage
him to join the rebellion against the anointed sovereign of England. In late 1325, Isabella gained another powerful ally in Roger Mortimer, an English nobleman who had escaped from the Tower of London after an unsuccessful rebellion to remove Hugh Despenser. Philippa may have met Mortimer in early 1326 while he was in Hainault to discuss invasion plans with Count William. Isabella and Edward visited the Hainault court in the summer, and on 27 August Edward and Philippa were formally betrothed in the town of Mons. Even before receiving news of the unsanctioned engagement,
King Edward wrote to his son demanding he return to England. If the 13-year-old prince had even wished to do so, he was an effective prisoner of his mother and had little choice. On 24 September 1326, Isabella and Mortimer launched their successful invasion of England. Exactly two months later Hugh Despenser was executed in gruesome fashion. As the pair took effective control of the kingdom, the fate of Edward II remained open to question. In January 1327, Edward was forced to abdicate the throne in favour of his teenage son, who was
crowned King Edward III on 1 February 1327. The deposed monarch, known as Edward of Caernarvon, after his birthplace in Wales, lived in relative comfort at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire until his mysterious death in September 1327. Edward III later announced that his father had been murdered, and the late king's fondness for male companionship inspired the apocryphal tale that a red-hot poker had caused his demise. Meanwhile, Philippa spent much of 1327 preparing for her nuptials with the newly enthroned Edward III. Since Edward and Philippa were cousins, their
proposed marriage required a papal dispensation, which was granted in August by Pope John XXII in Avignon. Philippa landed in Dover in December 1327, a few days before Edward II's funeral at Gloucester. She and Edward III were married in York on 25 January 1328, the first anniversary of the King's accession to the throne a year earlier. Philippa of Hainault, just shy of her 14th birthday, was now England's queen consort. Despite this, she had little influence in a court which remained under the control of her mother-in-law Isabella and her chief counsellor, Roger Mortimer.
Although the new regime had eliminated the hated Despenser, Mortimer and Isabella were no less corrupt. For Edward III, the companionship of his young wife would have been a welcome respite from his overbearing mother and her presumed lover. Philippa's wedding was but one of three major events in two weeks which involved the Hainault family and its close relatives. On 17 January 1328, Philippa's brother-in-law Ludwig of Bavaria was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome. Since Pope John XXII in Avignon was Ludwig's enemy and had excommunicated him, Ludwig was crowned by
a cardinal and set up an antipope of his own. A week after the wedding, King Charles IV of France died aged 33 on 1 February 1328, leaving behind two daughters and a pregnant wife. If Joan of Evreux were to give birth to a boy, the baby would become King of France at the moment of his birth. In the event, Joan gave birth to a daughter on 1 April, and with the extinction of the male line of King Philip IV, the closest claimant through the female line was King Edward III of England, Philip's grandson via Queen Isabella. Although Edward had the strongest claim, French elites
could never countenance the prospect of the King of England becoming their own sovereign. Instead, they enthroned Philippa's maternal uncle Philip of Valois, who became King Philip VI on 1 April 1328 and was crowned in Reims on 29 May 1328. Isabella was infuriated by Philip's accession, but Edward had no choice but to pay fealty to Philip in 1329 to secure his French domains of Ponthieu and Aquitaine. Meanwhile, Philippa was only granted a modest annual allowance in April 1329 and remained under the shadow of her mother-in-law. King Edward himself was desperate to exercise
his royal power. In October 1328, Roger Mortimer became earl of March, giving him control of the borderlands of England and Wales. This encouraged a rebellion by the king's great-uncle Henry, earl of Lancaster, which was defeated by Mortimer's forces in January 1329. While the failure of Lancaster's rebellion temporarily strengthened Mortimer's position, Edward III was cultivating his own supporters behind the scenes. Meanwhile, rumours abounded that the former Edward II was still alive in Corfe Castle in Dorset. This prompted an active campaign to liberate him and restore him to his throne. Amid these uncertainties for the young
royal couple, Philippa became pregnant in autumn 1329. This forced Isabella to arrange Philippa's coronation as Queen of England on 18 February 1330 and to grant her the lordship of Glamorgan in South Wales, which had been confiscated from Hugh Despenser's widow. Unbeknownst to the royal family, the King's uncle Edmund, Earl of Kent, was plotting with William Melton, Archbishop of York, to free Edward II and restore him to power. Kent's swift arrest and execution in March 1330 is an indication that the former King was still alive and remained a threat to the regime.
Mortimer and Isabella were present for the birth of Philippa's son Edward on 15 June 1330 at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire. While Edward is known to history as the Black Prince, during his lifetime he was known as Edward of Woodstock. His birth strengthened King Edward's hand, and on 19 October 1330 the King and a group of loyal knights broke into Isabella's chamber at Nottingham Castle while she was meeting with Mortimer and their allies. Mortimer was arrested and was taken to the Tower of London before being executed for regicide on 29 November 1330. Isabella was granted
an allowance of £3,000 a year and remained at liberty while being kept at a distance from court. The young King was keen to bring harmony to his realm and restored the estates of the Despensers, Henry of Lancaster, and the family of the late earl of Kent. Decades later, Edward would also rehabilitate the Mortimer family and bring them back into royal favour. With Edward now in control of his kingdom, Philippa assumed a more prominent role at the glamorous court festivities. She was given a host of estates which increased her income to £4,000 a year, although this was not enough to meet her household expenses. While she received
additional sums from Edward's Exchequer, her debts continued to pile ever higher. Notwithstanding their cost, the young royal couple's lavish court entertainments inspired a sense of optimism after a decade of disorder. King Edward maintained close relations with his in-laws, and in early 1331 Count William of Hainault went to France to mediate on disagreements between England and France. A few months later, Philippa's mother, Joan of Valois, visited England with her daughter Joanna and her son-in-law Count Wilhelm of Jülich. They likely attended the series of jousting
tournaments which were held in the summer of 1331. In September, Philippa was attending a joust at Cheapside in London when the ladies' grandstand collapsed. While the Queen's coronet was damaged, she persuaded her husband not to punish the carpenters, and the tournament continued the following morning after overnight repairs. In late spring 1332, Philippa gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Isabella. While the royal couple was staying at Knaresborough Castle in April 1333, Philippa obtained a pardon for a pregnant woman named Agnes of Scarborough,
who had been sentenced to hanging for theft. Philippa would gain a reputation for interceding on behalf of pregnant or young women facing execution. Around this time, Philippa began her third pregnancy and spent her first trimester at Bamburgh Castle while the King went to war with King David II of Scotland, the infant son of Robert the Bruce and Edward's own brother-in-law. After recapturing the port of Berwick-upon-Tweed, Edward defeated a Scottish army at the Battle of Halidon Hill on 18 July 1333. This was an early demonstration of his military prowess.
In January 1334 Philippa gave birth to her second daughter, whom she named Joan after her mother. As Edward continued his war in Scotland, Philippa's brother-in-law Count Wilhelm of Jülich joined Edward's campaign in July and August 1335. Edward also received the support of Robert of Artois, who was married to the namesake half-sister of Philippa's mother Joan of Valois. Robert fled into exile after attempting to claim the county of Artois by forging his father's will. In the meantime, his wife Joan was imprisoned by her half-brother King Philip of France. Meanwhile,
Edward aimed to strengthen his dynastic links to the continent by arranging the marriage of his newborn daughter Joan with Frederick, the son of Duke Otto of Austria. As the sister-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor, Philippa could influence the German princes on the matter. The royal couple remained in northern England over Christmas 1335, and Philippa became pregnant again in April 1336. While Edward resumed his Scottish campaign in the summer, Philippa presided over a royal council on 2 September 1336 to consider the situation in Scotland, where Edward was attempting to install
the nobleman Edward Balliol on the Scottish throne in return for cessions of land. During the campaign, King Edward's only brother John of Eltham, the earl of Cornwall, died of a fever at the age of 20. The royal bereavements continued into early 1337, after Philippa gave birth to a short-lived son named William. A few months later, Philippa's father Count William of Hainault died on 7 June 1337. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, Count William II of Hainault. The fateful year of 1337 also witnessed the start of the conflict between England and France known
as the Hundred Years War. This began when Philip VI confiscated the duchy of Aquitaine from Edward III in response to the latter's refusal to give up the fugitive Robert of Artois. In response, Edward revived his claim to the whole of France and declared war on Philip. Between July 1338 and November 1340, Edward was frequently on the continent seeking allies. Philippa accompanied her husband on these diplomatic missions as personal companion, trusted political advisor, and a conduit to her powerful relatives on the continent. Not long after their arrival in Antwerp
in July 1338, the royal couple's lodgings caught fire and they had to escape in their nightclothes. Philippa remained in Antwerp to give birth to her second surviving son in November, who was given the unusual name of Lionel after the Arthurian knight. During the latter stages of the Queen's pregnancy, Edward sailed up the Rhine with his brother-in-law Wilhelm of Jülich, whom he created earl of Cambridge. At the city of Cologne, where Wilhelm's younger brother was archbishop, the King worshiped at the shrine of the Three Kings in the city's cathedral. In September,
Edward met with Ludwig of Bavaria and senior imperial princes at Koblenz, where he obtained an alliance against France and an appointment as a vicar of the Holy Roman Emperor. During Edward's stay in Koblenz, he met a man called "William le Galeys" or William the Welshman, who claimed to be the king's father. The so-called Fieschi letter, written by a papal notary to King Edward III in around 1337, claimed that the deposed Edward II had escaped from Berkeley Castle. From there, he had fled to the continent before establishing himself in northern Italy.
Royal accounts suggest that this William could have accompanied the King to Antwerp, where he may have met Philippa. After becoming pregnant for the sixth time in late spring 1339, Philippa spent the winter at Louvain. There she met her brother Count William II and her mother Joan, who had retired to Fontenelle abbey near Valenciennes after the death of her husband. On 26 January 1340, the royal family arrived in the Flemish town of Ghent, where Edward III was officially proclaimed King of France. On 6 March 1340, Philippa gave birth to her son John,
known to history as John of Gaunt. Three months later, King Edward III won a great naval victory over the French at the Battle of Sluys on 24 June 1340. In September, while the English were besieging the French at Tournai, Edward met Joan of Valois, who successfully brokered an Anglo-French truce. This enabled Edward and Philippa to return to England in November 1340 during the early stages of the Queen's seventh pregnancy. In January 1341, Philippa's chaplain Robert de Eglesfield founded a new college at the University of Oxford named Queen's Hall in
her honour, which survives as Queen's College. In addition to the Oxford college, Philippa also patronised several other religious houses and hospitals around the country. On 5 June 1341, Philippa gave birth to her son Edmund at the royal palace of Langley in Hertfordshire. The birth of three healthy sons in less than three years helped Edward III secure his line of succession but would become a source of instability to the kingdom by the end of the century. A few weeks earlier, the two-year-old Lionel of Antwerp was betrothed to the eight-year-old Elizabeth de Burgh, who stood to inherit her family's vast estates in Ireland.
In late 1341, King Edward returned to lead a campaign in Scotland. According to the French chronicler Jean le Bel, the King developed an infatuation for the countess of Salisbury after rescuing her from a besieged castle. When she resisted his advances, he violently assaulted her and left her unconscious. Most historians reject le Bel's account since the count of Salisbury, William Montacute, was one of the King's closest friends. Kathryn Warner notes that le Bel referred to the countess as Alice rather than Catherine, and may have confused her for Alice of Norfolk,
who was brutally beaten to death in 1351 by her husband Edward Montacute, William's younger brother. After returning to England, in January 1342 Edward granted his son John of Gaunt the earldom of Richmond in Yorkshire. This had previously belonged to Duke John III of Brittany, whose death in April 1341 caused a succession crisis in the duchy that would reignite the Anglo-French conflict. In February, Philippa joined Edward at a great tournament to celebrate their son Lionel's betrothal to Elizabeth de Burgh. By then she was heavily pregnant with
her daughter Blanche, who died shortly after her birth in March. In late spring and summer, Philippa's brother Count William II visited England to participate in a series of tournaments hosted by the King. These included the joust in August 1342 which brought together the cream of English nobility, its purpose being to celebrate the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp and Elizabeth de Burgh. Although both were still children, the King may have decided to formalise the union to protect Elizabeth from abduction, a fate that several wealthy heiresses had
suffered. Philippa was granted custody of her daughter-in-law's estates in Ireland until she attained her majority. Elizabeth joined her husband Lionel and the younger royal children in the joint household attached to the Queen. In September 1342, Edward III intervened in the War of the Breton succession by sending an army to support the claim of John of Montfort. While Edward himself soon left to take command, his efforts were unsuccessful and the renegade Robert of Artois was killed in action in November. Edward of Woodstock had been formally appointed regent in
his father's absence, though Queen Philippa was entrusted with ensuring that the King's instructions to bury Robert at Blackfriars church were carried out. In May 1343, after returning to England, the King made his son Edward the Prince of Wales. Edward III held another magnificent tournament of 300 knights at Windsor in January 1344, though it was at this event that his close friend, the Count of Salisbury, was mortally injured. Around this time, Dowager Queen Isabella joined Edward and Philippa on a hunting trip, an indication of the King's closer relations with his
mother. Meanwhile, Philippa became pregnant with her daughter Mary who was born in October 1344 at Bishop's Waltham in Hampshire. In 1344, King Edward made serious efforts to strengthen his alliance with his cousin Duke Jan III of Brabant by proposing the marriage of his eldest children to those of the Duke. These efforts were abandoned after Edward failed to secure papal dispensation for the union of two pairs of cousins. In June 1345, the King turned his attention to the Iberian Peninsula and proposed marrying the five-year-old John of Gaunt to Queen Maria of Castile's younger
sister Eleanor of Portugal, then aged 17. The following month, Edward proposed the union of his eldest daughter Isabella of Woodstock and Infante Pedro, the son of King Alfonso XI of Castile. As the negotiations carried on into November, Edward III proposed the 15-year-old Prince of Wales as a more suitable match for Eleanor. On 26 September 1345, Philippa's younger brother Count William II of Hainault was killed while fighting rebels in Friesland. While the 38-year-old William had two illegitimate sons, he had no legitimate children with his
wife Johanna of Brabant. Under English law, the property of a deceased landowner without a son was divided among surviving daughters. Since William had four surviving sisters, Edward III claimed that Philippa had the right to inherit a quarter of William's lands. Under inheritance laws on the continent, all of William's possessions were inherited by his eldest sister Empress Margaret. The dispute over the Hainault inheritance led to tensions between Edward and his ally Emperor Ludwig. King Philip VI supported Margaret's claim on the grounds that the Hainault counties were
already part of the Holy Roman Empire, while the alternative would strengthen his English enemy. The situation was further complicated in summer 1346 when five of the seven imperial electors voted to depose Ludwig as Holy Roman Emperor and elect Charles of Luxembourg instead. Weeks after his election, Charles and his blind father King John of Bohemia joined the French army as Philip VI prepared to respond to devastating raids across Normandy by Edward III and the Prince of Wales in July. What ensued was a devastating victory of English longbowmen against the French knights at
the Battle of Crécy. The battle resulted in the deaths of thousands of French noblemen, including several of Queen Philippa's kinsmen. The heavily pregnant Queen was obliged to remain in England and gave birth to her tenth child, Margaret of Windsor, on 20 July 1346. While her husband and son were on the continent, a Scottish army invaded northern England. Three Flemish chroniclers describe Philippa raising an army and riding out to defeat the Scots at the Battle of Neville's Cross on 17 October, during which King David II of Scotland fell into
English captivity. The tale of Philippa leading the army at Neville's Cross was repeated by the Tudor historian Raphael Holinshed. It is also the subject of a 1789 painting by Benjamin West, commissioned by King George III for Windsor Castle. While Kathryn Warner dismisses Philippa's presence at Neville's Cross by citing correspondence in her name from Edward's siege camp at Calais on 21 September and 23 October 1346, Jordan Michelle Schoonover argues that it was not inconceivable that the Queen performed this action. She could, he argues, have sailed
to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to supervise the war effort against the Scots before returning to Calais after the victory. While the seven-year-old Lionel of Antwerp was officially named regent during Edward III's absence in France, Philippa would have been in a position to act on his behalf. Around this time, Philippa met her sister Margaret at Ypres to mend their relations over the Hainault succession. In March 1347, the English royal couple and their daughter Isabella met Louis de Male who had become Count of Flanders after his father's death at Crécy. While Louis agreed to marry Isabella
and recognise Edward as king of France, he fled to the French court soon thereafter. Calais' surrender in August 1347 created the conditions for Philippa's famous intercession to spare the burghers of Calais, whose anguish was memorably depicted by the sculptor Auguste Rodin in the late 19th century. However, Kathryn Warner and Lisa Hilton highlight inconsistencies in Froissart's account, such as the fact that Philippa could not have been heavily pregnant as the chroniclers described. Even if Philippa's intercession did otherwise take place in public,
they argue that Edward had made up his mind to spare the burghers. However, the Queen's intercession allowed him to do so in an apparently spontaneous gesture of clemency while maintaining a hard line against those who defied his will. In October 1347, Philippa's brother-in-law Ludwig of Bavaria died at the age of 65. His death secured the position of Charles of Luxembourg, though in January 1348 Edward III received four votes from German electors who hoped to install him as an anti-king to Charles. After Edward refused, Charles' election was confirmed in 1349,
and in 1355 he was crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. As Philippa and Edward returned to England in October 1347, the Queen was pregnant for the eleventh time. A few weeks before she gave birth to William of Windsor in May 1348, the King formally instituted the Order of the Garter on 23 April, St George's Day. Inspired by King Arthur's round table, Edward named 24 of his closest companions as knights of the Garter with himself and the Prince of Wales at the top of the list. According to legend, Edward adopted the
garter after the Countess of Salisbury's garter slipped off her leg at a ball. The King picked it up and proclaimed "Honi soit qui mal y pense". This, translated, means, "Shame on he who thinks ill of it". Historians believe that the tale was invented in the 15th century after men stopped wearing garters, and Lisa Hilton argues that the order's motto referred to his claim to the French throne. The optimism of the English court in early 1348 also reflected successful marriage negotiations with Castile. In 1347, the Castilians had agreed in principle to the marriage
of Eleanor of Portugal to Edward of Woodstock, but the English envoys were significantly delayed and upon their arrival, Eleanor had already married King Pedro IV of Aragon. In late 1347, Edward III succeeded in arranging the marriage of his second daughter Joan to Infante Pedro, the only legitimate son of King Alfonso XI of Castile. The 14-year-old Joan left England in the summer of 1348, but fell ill and died in Gascony. She was one of millions who had succumbed to the Black Death, the bubonic plague that killed prince and pauper as it swept through
Europe. Around this time, Philippa and Edward were also mourning the death of the newborn William. Some sources indicate that the royal couple also lost a son named Thomas of Windsor to the plague. The historian Kathryn Warner, however, argues that Thomas never existed and was invented to reconcile the Flemish accounts of Philippa being heavily pregnant at Calais. In late February 1350, Alfonso XI of Spain succumbed to the plague and was succeeded by Pedro, who imprisoned and executed his father's lover Eleanor de Guzmán. This provoked a civil
war between King Pedro and his illegitimate half-brother Enrique de Trastámara, who eventually emerged victorious in 1369. Meanwhile, King Edward was irritated by pirate attacks on English shipping led by the Franco-Castilian nobleman Carlos de la Cerda. On 29 August 1350, King Edward III intercepted and defeated the Castilian fleet at the Battle of Winchelsea off the Sussex coast. Large numbers of enemy ships were captured and sunk, although the English lost significant numbers of men. The Prince of Wales and John of Gaunt both participated in the battle, while
Queen Philippa anxiously observed proceedings from shore. A few days earlier, Philippa's uncle King Philip VI of France died and was succeeded by his son King John II. Her mother Joan of Valois died less than two years later on 7 March 1352 in her late fifties. Philippa herself was in her late thirties and had been Queen of England for over two decades. The Queen had not been pregnant since the birth of the short-lived William of Windsor in 1348, but on 7 January 1355 she gave birth to a son named Thomas at Woodstock. Later that year, Lionel of Antwerp and Elizabeth de Burgh gave
Philippa her first legitimate grandchild in August 1355, a girl named Philippa, after the Queen. Meanwhile, the war against France gained renewed intensity, and on 19 September 1356 the Black Prince won a great victory at the Battle of Poitiers. Philippa's cousin, King John II of France, was captured and paraded through the streets of London in May 1357. The imprisoned King spent the remainder of his life in relative comfort at Savoy Palace in London and attended the celebrations of the Order of the Garter in April 1358, when Philippa was appointed
the first Lady of the Garter. The event was the last major public appearance of the Dowager Queen Isabella, who died in August in her early sixties. Not long afterwards, Philippa injured her shoulder after falling from her horse while hunting. In November Philippa and Edward attended the wedding of their three-year-old granddaughter Philippa with Edmund Mortimer. He was the son and heir of Roger Mortimer, a knight of the Garter and the namesake grandson of the man who had deposed Edward II. The royal couple hurried to make arrangements for their seven unmarried children,
and on 19 May 1359, John of Gaunt married Blanche of Lancaster, whose father Henry of Grosmont was the Duke of Lancaster and one of Edward's most accomplished military leaders. The same day, the Queen's youngest daughter Margaret of Windsor married John Hastings, heir to the earldom of Pembroke in South Wales and a maternal grandson of the first Roger Mortimer. When King Edward and his four eldest sons returned to campaign in France in October, the Queen remained in England with the pregnant Blanche of Lancaster, who gave birth to a daughter on 31 March 1360. The girl was
named Philippa after her grandmother and would later become Queen of Portugal. After Edward's return to England in May 1360, he combined his household with the Queen's in an effort to take control of Philippa's spiralling debts. The royal marriages continued in spring 1361, when the Prince of Wales married his recently widowed cousin Joan of Kent. Since Joan was in her thirties and had previously been bigamously married to Thomas Holland and William Montacute, 2nd Earl of Salisbury, Philippa and Edward were initially opposed to the marriage. However, they
gave their consent in the autumn. In the spring of 1361, Philippa's daughter Mary of Waltham married John de Montfort, the claimant to the duchy of Brittany. While John would later take control of Brittany, the 17-year-old Mary died in September a few months after the wedding. Her younger sister Margaret followed her to the grave a few weeks later, leaving Isabella of Woodstock as Philippa's only surviving daughter. In June 1362, the Black Prince was named prince of Aquitaine and crossed the Channel to take over its government, never to see his mother again. To mark his fiftieth
birthday in November 1362, the King named his sons Lionel of Antwerp, John of Gaunt, and Edmund of Langley the dukes of Clarence, Lancaster, and Cambridge respectively. Although Philippa was not yet 50, her health deteriorated rapidly after her shoulder injury. While Edward III is unlikely to have remained entirely faithful to Philippa during their first three decades of marriage, there is no record of the King fathering any illegitimate children. The Queen's illness led Edward to take on Alice Perrers from the Queen's household as his permanent mistress. Alice, who was born in 1348,
gave Edward a son and two daughters between 1364 and 1366. Given her own incapacity, Philippa may have given her blessing to the King's affair. Royal records show that the Queen was still able to travel, albeit less frequently. In January 1365, Philippa celebrated the news of the birth of Edward of Angouléme, the first son of the Black Prince and Joan of Kent. Six months later, Philippa's 33-year-old daughter Isabella of Woodstock married Enguerrand de Coucy. He was a French nobleman up to ten years her junior who was made Earl of Bedford in 1366. In January 1367, Philippa received news that Edward and Joan had their second son,
named Richard of Bordeaux. Three months later, John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster had their first son, Henry Bolingbroke. Philippa could not have known at the time that the two boys would become England's next two kings, Richard II and Henry IV. At the time of his son's birth, John of Gaunt was campaigning in Spain with his brother Edward. Although the campaign had been successful, the Black Prince fell seriously ill and remained an invalid until his death in 1376. Queen Philippa herself was approaching her end, but she lived to learn of the demise of her 30-year-old son Lionel
of Antwerp, who died in Italy in October 1368 shortly after his marriage to his second wife, Violante Visconti. The previous month, Philippa's daughter-in-law Blanche of Lancaster died at the age of 26. In December, Philippa attempted to broker the marriage of the widowed John of Gaunt with Margaret of Flanders, the heiress to Flanders and four French counties. She was too late, as Count Louis of Flanders informed her that Margaret was to marry Philip, the youngest brother of King Charles V of France. King Charles was also the Duke of Burgundy and the founder of one of the
most powerful dynasties of late medieval Europe. The negotiations show that Philippa remained politically active despite her poor health. On 22 June 1369, Philippa interceded on behalf of Alice Marchant and Margaret Melbury, two pregnant women who faced the death penalty for theft. These were among her last items of business, and she died on 15 August 1369, aged 55, with her husband King Edward III and her youngest son Thomas of Woodstock in attendance. Philippa of Hainault was one of the longest-serving queen consorts in English history. Born into a small but ambitious dynasty in the Low Countries,
Philippa was not only Queen of England but closely related to the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor. In nearly four decades as Edward III's queen, she was almost always at her husband's side at home and abroad as a trusted advisor and diplomat. While she struggled to keep control of expenditures at her husband's glamorous court, the Flemish chroniclers show her as an effective deputy for the King in political and military affairs. Philippa's tenure as queen witnessed the early decades of the Hundred Years War, including the great English victories at Crécy and Poitiers,
as well as the Black Death and further outbreaks of plague. In an era of high mortality, Philippa gave her husband twelve children and outlived seven of them. While none of her sons ever became King, her grandson Richard II succeeded to the throne in June 1377 after the death of Edward III. The Wars of the Roses that tore England apart in the 15th century would be fought between the descendants of her third son, John of Gaunt and her fourth son, Edmund of Langley. What do you think of Philippa of Hainault? Was she one of the most effective queens
of medieval England, or was her influence exaggerated by chroniclers close to her court? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
