Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
In previous blog posts we have talked about Pedro I of Castile, his relationship with María de Padilla and how to strengthen his alliance with England in the civil war he was waging against Henry of Trastámara for the throne of Castile, arranged the marriage of two of his daughters with two sons of the King of England Edward III. The eldest of them, Constanza, married Juan de Gante and from that marriage was born Catalina de Lancaster, first princess of Asturias, who also has an entry on the blog.
Less known is the other marriage between the daughters of Pedro I of Castile and the offspring of Edward III of England. When Constance traveled to England in 1371 after her marriage to John of Gaunt, she did so accompanied by her sister Elizabeth. There she arranged for her to marry John's younger brother, Edmund of Langley.
Edward III had initiated a policy of creating new titles for his children, positions that would be destined to become the most distinctive of the English aristocracy to this day. To his eldest son, the Black Prince, he bestowed the title of Duke of Cornwall; his second son, Lionel of Antwerp was made Duke of Clarence; and the third offspring of him, the aforementioned John of Gaunt, received the title of Duke of Lancaster. It was not until the reign of Edward III's successor, Richard II, that his other sons gained the same dignity:Thomas of Woodstock was named Duke of Gloucester and Edmund of Langley, who already held the title of Earl of Cambridge, received the Duke of York, newly created. In this way his wife, our protagonist Isabella of Castile, became the first Duchess of York.
However, the union between the Castilian princess and her English husband was not exactly happy. According to the chronicler Thomas de Walsingham (a contemporary of the couple) this was due to Elizabeth's "relaxed morals", to which the rumor mill of the time attributed an affair with John Holland, Duke of Exeter (and stepbrother of Richard II), which apparently began only two years after the wedding with Emundo. This fact raised doubts about the paternity of the couple's third child, Richard de Conisbrough.
In this regard, it is significant that Elizabeth had a clause written in her will asking King Richard II (whom she appointed her heir) to endow her with a pension when she died to his son Richard. And sure enough, when Elizabeth died in 1392 Richard II gave Conisbrough a pension of £500 a year. But when the king was deposed by John of Gaunt's son, Henry IV, this pension was no longer paid (even though Conisbrough was supposed to be a cousin of the new king). And it is also significant that neither Edmund of Langley, his father and Duke of York, nor his elder brother Edward, who inherited that dukedom, provided anything in their wills in favor of Richard, who was not even mentioned. More than one historian has pointed to this detail as an argument to maintain that Richard was not the son of Edmund of Langley, but of John Holland.
In one of those twists and turns so common in history, Richard de Conisbourgh's son, Richard Plantagenet, ended up inheriting the title of Duke of York, which some doubt was his grandfather. And the possible illegitimacy of the holders of a great English title does not end here. Some may have recognized the name of Conisbrough's son, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, as the man who started the dynastic conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster known as the Wars of the Roses. And as a consequence of that war, two of Richard Plantagenet's sons would come to wear the English crown on their heads:Edward IV and Richard III.
What is certain is that two great-grandchildren of Elizabeth of Castile, the first Duchess of York, were kings of England. What is not so clear is that both were also descendants of her husband, Edmund of Langley.
Elizabeth of Castile died on December 23, 1392 and is buried in the English town of King's Langley.
Fonts| History … the interesting bits:Isabella of Castile, the Controversial First Duchess of York
Matthew Lewis:Richard, Duke of York. King by right
Image| Wikimedia commons.Duke of York arms