Edward III.’s second son, William of Hatfield, died in infancy.  For his third son, Lionel of Antwerp, when still in his childhood, Edward found the greatest heiress of her time, Elizabeth, the only daughter of William de Burgh, the sixth lord of Connaught and third Earl of Ulster, the representative of one of the chief Anglo-Norman houses in Ireland.  Even before his marriage, Lionel was made Earl of Ulster, a title sunk after 1362 in the novel dignity of the duchy of Clarence.  This title was chosen because Elizabeth de Burgh was a grand-daughter of Elizabeth of Clare, the sister of the last Clare Earl of Gloucester, and a share of the Gloucester inheritance passed through her to the young duke.  His marriage gave Lionel a special relation to Ireland, where, however, his two lordships of Ulster and Connaught were largely in the hands of the native septs, and where the royal authority had never won back the ground lost during the vigorous onslaught of Edward Bruce on the English power.  In 1342 the estates of Ireland forwarded to Edward a long statement of the shortcomings of the English administration of the island.[1] No effective steps were taken to remedy those evils until, in 1361, Edward III. sent Lionel as governor to Ireland, declaring “that our Irish dominions have been reduced to such utter devastation and ruin that they may be totally lost, if our subjects there are not immediately succoured”.  Lionel’s most famous achievement was the statute of Kilkenny.  This law prohibited the intermixture of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland with the native Irish, which was rapidly undermining the basis of English rule and confounding Celts and Normans in a nation, ever divided indeed against itself, but united against the English.  Lionel wearied of a task beyond his strength.  His wife’s early death lessened the ties which bound him to her land, and he went back to England declaring that he would never return to Ireland if he could help it.  His succession as governor by a Fitzgerald showed that the plan of ruling Ireland through England was abandoned by Edward III. in favour of the cheaper but fatal policy of concealing the weakness of the English power by combining it with the strength of the strongest of the Anglo-Norman houses.  Under this faulty system, the statute of Kilkenny became inoperative almost from its enactment.

    [1] Cal. of Close, Rolls, 1341-43, pp. 508-16.

The widowed Duke of Clarence made a second great marriage.  The Visconti, tyrants of Milan, were willing to pay heavily for the privilege of intermarriage with the great reigning families of Europe, and neither Edward III. nor the French king could resist the temptation of alliance with a family that was able to endow its daughters so richly.  Accordingly, the Duke of Clarence became in 1368 the husband of Violante Visconti, the daughter of Galeazzo, lord of Pavia, and the niece of Bernabo, signor of Milan, the bitter foe of the Avignon papacy.  Five months later, Lionel was