LIONEL OF ANTWERP, DUKE OF CLARENCE, third son of Edward III, was born at Antwerp on the 29th of November 1338. Betrothed when a child to Elizabeth (d.1363), daughter and heiress of William de Burgh, 3rd Earl of Ulster (d.1332), he was married to her in 1352; but before this date he had entered nominally into possession of her great Irish inheritance.

Having been named as his father's representative in England in 1345 and again in 1346, Lionel was created Earl of Ulster, and joined an expedition into France in 1355, but his chief energies were reserved for the affairs of Ireland. Appointed governor of that country, he landed at Dublin in 1361, and in November of the following year was created Duke of Clarence, while his father made an abortive attempt to secure for him the crown of Scotland. His efforts to secure an effective authority over his Irish lands were only moderately successful; and after holding a parliament at Kilkenny, which passed the celebrated statute of Kilkenny in 1367, he threw up his task in disgust and returned to England.

About this time a marriage was arranged between Clarence and Violante, daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, Lord of Pavia (d.1378); the enormous dowry which Galeazzo promised with his daughter being exaggerated by the rumour of the time. Journeying to fetch his bride, the duke was received in great state both in France and Italy, and was married to Violante at Milan in June 1368. Some months were then spent in festivities, during which Lionel was taken ill at Alba, where he died on the 7th of October 1368.

His only child Philippa, a daughter by his first wife, married in 1368 Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March (1351-1381), and through this union Clarence became the ancestor of Edward IV. The poet Chaucer was at one time a page in Lionel's household.

      Excerpted from:

      Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed. Vol VI.
      Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 428.

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Other Local Resources:

• Hundred Years' War
  
• King Edward III
  
• Edward, the Black Prince
  
• John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster
  
• Edmund of Langley, Duke of York
  
• Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester
  

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Lionel, Duke of Clarence, on the Web:

• Genealogy - ThePeerage.com
  
  

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