carried away by a sudden sickness, and thus the Visconti marriage brought little fruit to England.  Lionel’s only child, Philippa, the offspring of his first marriage, was married, just before her father’s death, to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, great-grandson of the traitor earl beheaded in 1330.  Lionel’s death added to the vast inheritance of the Mortimers and Joinvilles the lands and claims of Ulster and Clarence, and so Edward III.’s magnanimity in reviving the earldom of March after the disgrace of 1330 was rewarded by the devolution of its estates to his grand-daughter’s child.  The Earl of March was invested with a new political importance, for his wife was the nearest representative of Edward III, save for the dying Black Prince and his sickly son.  The fierce blood and broad estates of the great marcher family continued to give importance to Philippa’s descendants; and finally the house of Mortimer mounted the throne in the person of Edward IV.

The estates of Lancaster were annexed to the reigning branch of the royal house by the marriage in 1359 of John of Gaunt, Edward’s third surviving son, with Blanche of Lancaster, the heiress of Duke Henry, who became, after her sister Maud’s death, the sole inheritor of the duchy of Lancaster.  In 1362 John, who had hitherto been Earl of Richmond, yielded up this dignity to the younger John of Montfort, its rightful heir, and was created Duke of Lancaster at the same time that Lionel was made Duke of Clarence.  Ten years after her marriage Blanche died, leaving John a son, Henry of Derby, the future Henry IV., whose wedding, after his grandfather’s death, to one of the Bohun co-heiresses brought part of the estates of another great house within the grasp of Edward III.’s descendants.  Moreover, the other Bohun co-heiress became in 1376 the wife of Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest of Edward’s sons, the Gloucester of the next reign.  The three Bohun earldoms of Hereford, Essex, and Northampton were thus absorbed by the old king’s children and grandchildren.  John of Gaunt, like Lionel, lost his wife early and sought a second bride abroad.  In 1372 he married Constance of Castile, a natural daughter of the deceased Peter the Cruel.  Henceforth he was summoned to parliament as King of Castile and Leon as well as Duke of Lancaster, though it was not until the next reign that he took any actual steps to assert his claim.

John’s next younger brother, Edmund of Langley, Earl of Cambridge in 136% [1368?] married Isabella, Constance of Castile’s younger sister.  He was the future Duke of York, and as the only one of Edward III.’s sons who did not marry an English heiress, was the most scantily endowed of them all.  The union of his descendants with those of Lionel of Clarence gave the house of York a territorial importance which was, as we have seen, mainly derived from the Mortimer inheritance.  Thus the two lines of descendants of Edward III. which had most future significance were those which represented through heiresses the rival houses of Lancaster and March.  The history of the next century shows that the rivalry was only made more formidable by the connexion of both these lines with the royal family.  In this, the most striking triumph of the Edwardian policy, is also the most signal indication of its failure.  From it arose the factions of York and Lancaster.