Edmund, 1st earl of Lancaster

Edmund, 1st earl of Lancaster (born Jan. 16, 1245, London, Eng.—died c. June 5, 1296, Bayonne, France) was the fourth (but second surviving) son of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, who founded the house of Lancaster.

At the age of 10, Edmund was invested by Pope Innocent IV with the kingdom of Sicily (April 1255), as an expression of his conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor, who held Sicily; but Edmund was never more than an absentee titular king, and Pope Alexander IV canceled the grant (December 1258).

In 1265 Edmund received the earldom of Leicester, and two years later was created Earl of Lancaster. He joined the crusade of his elder brother, the Lord Edward (1271–1272); and Edward, on his accession as King Edward I, found in Edmund a loyal supporter. In 1275, two years after the death of his first wife, Edmund married Blanche of Artois, the widow of Henry III of Navarre and Champagne, and assumed the title Count Palatine of Champagne and Brie. When the court of King Philip IV of France pronounced that the king of England had forfeited Gascony, Edmund renounced his homage to Philip and withdrew with his wife to England. He was appointed lieutenant of Gascony in 1296 but died in the same year, leaving his son Thomas to succeed him in his English possessions.

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Edmund’s nickname “Crouchback” (meaning “Crossback,” or crusader) was misinterpreted, probably intentionally, by his direct descendant, King Henry IV, who, in claiming the throne (1399), asserted that Edmund had really been Henry III’s eldest son but had been disinherited as a hunchback.