THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER, LEICESTER, DERBY, AND LINCOLN, AND STEWARD OF ENGLAND. ANNO 1314.
Thomas of Lancaster, 2nd Earl of Lancaster (* around 1278; † 22 March 1322 at Pontefract Castle) was an English magnate and rebel. As an opposition magnate during the reign of his cousin King Edward II, he played a significant role during his reign. However, his politics ultimately failed and ended in an unsuccessful rebellion against the king.
Thomas of Lancaster came from a collateral line of the English royal house of Plantagenet. He was the eldest son of Edmund surnamed Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster and by his second wife Blanche d’Artois, Queen of Navarre.
His father was the second eldest surviving son of King Henry III, his mother was the widow of King Henry I of Navarre and the daughter of Robert I of Artois. On his father’s side, Thomas was therefore a grandson of the English King Henry III, nephew of King Edward I and cousin of King Edward II; on his mother’s side, he was a great-grandson of King Louis VIII of France and great-nephew of King Louis IX of France.
The splendour of his birth, and the vast possessions which he held in his own right, and by his marriage with Alice, daughter and heiress of Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, rendered him for a time the most powerful baron in the kingdom. Being of a turbulent disposition, and conscious of his rank and importance, he felt disgusted at the influence which Gaveston and the two Spencers successively exercised over the mind of his sovereign.
His resentment kindled into rebellion, and made him instrumental in the death of the former, and banishment of the latter. But while his fortune was impaired by the strange separation from his wife, he ventured a third time to take up arms and to march northward, intending to join some other disaffected and hostile forces. The step was fatal, for being encountered at Boroughbridge by Sir Andrew de Harcla, he was defeated and taken; and a few days after beheaded in his own castle of Pontefract, an. 15 Edward II. 1322.
The figure is copied from his seal, and exhibits one of the earliest instances of an emblazoned surcoat, and the first among the seals of the royal family, bearing a crest and lambrequin or mantling suspended from the helmet. This crest is a weevern or dragon, and is repeated on the horse’s head between a pair of straight horns. It seems that the custom of embellishing the caparisons of the horses with the arms of the rider, is anterior to the fashion of wearing emblazoned surcoats, as the seals of the two first Edwards testify. *)
Arms. Parti per pale gules three lions passant guardant in pale or. Under a label of three points azure, each charged with as many fleur de lys or, for Lancaster, and or a lion rampant purpure for Lacy; crest, a dragon – – – . It is worth observing that the great shield on his counterseal is charged with a label of 5 points.
AUTHORITY.
The figure and arms from the large seal in the Cotton Library, quoted and figured in Sandford’s History; vide page 107.
*) The most ancient we have met with is, the seal of Saer de Quincy, first Earl of Winchester. His arms are on the banner, shield and caparisons of the horse. If we refer the making of the seal to the date of his creation, it will be as early as 1207; if to the year of his death, no later than 1219. The first instance of an emblazoned surcoat is in the lives of the two Offas, by the hand of Matthew Paris, which cannot be much earlier than 1250. Those painted on the monumental figures of Robert of Normandy and William Longespee, are, to all appearances, done long after the tombs were constructed.
Source: Selections of the ancient costume of Great Britain and Ireland from the seventh to the sixteenth century by Smith, Charles Hamilton. London: Colnaghi, 1814.
