and Lancaster was soon in active opposition. When the parliament was held at Salisbury in October 1328, he and some other lords met in arms at Winchester and refused to attend. He then retired to Waltham. At this crisis Robert Holland, a favourite with the queen-dowager and Mortimer, who had betrayed Earl Thomas, and had done much damage to Earl Henry's lands, fell into the hands of his enemies, and was beheaded by his captor. His head was sent to Lancaster.
Many lords approved of Lancaster's attempt to overthrow Mortimer, and chief among them were the king's uncles, the Earl of Kent and Thomas, earl of Norfolk, the marshal. A meeting of bishops and barons was held in St. Paul's on 19 Dec. At the time the king and Mortimer were ravaging the lands of Lancaster and his party, and were on the point of declaring war against them. A message was therefore sent to the king, praying him to desist. Lancaster remained at Waltham until 1 Jan. 1329, when he went up to London, held a parley with the discontented bishops and barons at St. Paul's, and met the marshal, who was lodging at Blackfriars, and was reconciled to him, for there had been enmity between them on account of Holland's death and other matters. The next day Lancaster formed a confederacy of magnates and of some of the chief citizens at St. Paul's, and a schedule of complaints and demands was drawn up. On the 4th, however, the royal army entered Leicester, which belonged to the earl, and laid waste the surrounding country. Lancaster and some of his party, including six hundred Londoners, marched to meet it, and advanced as far as Bedford. There he found, however, that the Earls of Kent and Norfolk had made their peace with Mortimer, and as his troops were disorderly he could not venture to meet the king's army. Archbishop Mepeham interceded for him, and on the 11th or 12th the king accepted his submission, inflicting on him a fine of 11,000l., which was never paid. In the following December he was sent on an embassy to France in company with the Bishop of Norwich, and was there until after 5 Feb. 1330 (ib. pp. 775, 779). About this time a failure in his sight, which had been troublesome in 1329, ended in blindness, and probably on account of this infirmity he is described as already an old man (Geoffrey le Baker, pp. 43, 46). Nevertheless he attended the parliament held at Nottingham on 19 Oct.; he had brought Edward to see the necessity of ridding himself of the insolence of Mortimer; blind as he was he evidently took part in devising the means by which Mortimer was to be seized, and the next morning when he heard that his enemy was taken shouted for joy. Mortimer's overthrow was followed on 12 Dec. by the grant of a full pardon to Lancaster and his companions for their expedition to Bedford (Fœdera, ii. 802). The earl's blindness, which he bore with patience, forced him to retire from active life; he gave himself wholly to devotion, and in 1330 began to build a hospital near the castle at Leicester, in honour of the annunciation, for fifty infirm old men, a master, chaplains, and clerks. His foundation was completed on a grand scale by his son [see Henry, Duke of Lancaster]. He also gave an angel of the salutation to Walsingham, which was said to be of the value of four hundred marks. His name occurs in some public documents of a later date, for he still held the office of steward of England. But it is unlikely that he took any personal part in affairs (ib. 1083, 1084; Froissart, i. 347, 350, evidently confuses him with his son). He died on 22 Sept. 1345, and was buried on the north side of the high altar of the church of his hospital; the effigy on his tomb had no coronet. Lancaster was courteous and kind-hearted, of sound judgment, religious, and apparently of high principle.
By his wife Maud he had a son, Henry of Lancaster [q. v.], who succeeded him, and apparently two other sons who died in childhood, and six daughters: Maud, who married first William de Burgh, earl of Ulster [q. v.] (d. 1332), and secondly, Ralph de Ufford, heir of Robert, earl of Suffolk (d. 1345), whom she survived; Blanche, married Thomas, lord Wake of Lydell; Jane, married John, lord Mowbray; Isabel, prioress of Amesbury; Eleanor, married first John, lord Beaumont (d. 1342), and secondly, in 1346, Richard, earl of Arundel; Mary, married Henry, lord Percy.
[Ann. Paulini, i. 317, 319, 342–4, Gesta Edw. III, ii. 99, Vita Edw. II, ii. 280–4, Vita et Mors Edw. II, ii. 308, 313, 315, all in Chronicles Edw. I and Edw. II, Rolls Ser.; Expenses of John of Brabant, Camden Misc., ii. 1 sqq. (Camden Soc.); Scalacronica, pp. 152, 153 (Maitland Club); Geoffrey le Baker, pp. 21, 25, 27, 29, 42, 43, 46, ed. E. M. Thompson; Knighton, cols. 2546, 2552–4 (Twysden); Murimuth, pp. 46, 49, 58 (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Rymer's Fœdera, ii. 36, 704, 775, 779, 802, 1083, iii. 50, 65, 81, Record ed.; Stubbs's Const. Hist. ii. 358, 369–72; Dugdale's Baronage, p. 782; Doyle's Official Baronage, ii. 311; Leland's Itin. i. 17; Nichols's Leicestershire, i. ii. 329.]
HENRY of Lancaster, first Duke of Lancaster (1299?–1361), son of Henry, earl of Lancaster (1281?–1345) [q. v.], and his
