The family of King Edward I of ENGLAND,
1st Marriage to Leonor de Castilla 2nd Marriage to Marguerite of FRANCE
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Edward's first Marriage:-

Edward's second Marriage:-

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the evening of 17 June 1239. He was an older brother of Beatrice of England, Margaret of England and Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster. He was named after Edward the Confessor. From 1239 to 1246 Edward was in the care of Hugh Giffard (the son of Walter Giffard) and his wife, Sybil, who had been one of the midwives at Edward's birth. On Giffard's death in 1246, Bartholomew Pecche took over. Early grants of land to Edward included Gascony, but Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester had been appointed by Henry to seven years as royal lieutenant in Gascony in 1248, a year before the grant to Edward, so in practice Edward derived neither authority nor revenue from the province. He was popularly known as Edward Longshanks - on account of his being over 6ft tall.
Edward's first marriage (age 15) was arranged in 1254 by his father and Alfonso X of Castile. Alfonso had insisted that Edward receive grants of land worth 15,000 marks a year and also asked to knight him; Henry had already planned a knighthood ceremony for Edward but conceded. Edward crossed the Channel in June, and was knighted by Alfonso and married to Eleanor of Castile (age 13) on 1 November 1254 in the monastery of Las Huelgas.

Edward was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 19/08/1274 after the death of his father Henry III in 1272. As regnal post-nominal numbers were a Norman (as opposed to English) custom, Edward Longshanks is known as Edward I, even though he is the fourth King Edward, following Edward the Elder, Edward the Martyr, and Edward the Confessor.

Eleanor and Edward would go on to have sixteen children, and her death in 1290 affected Edward deeply. He displayed his grief by erecting the Eleanor crosses, one at each place where her funeral cortège stopped for the night. Three years after the death of his beloved first wife, Eleanor of Castile, at the age of 49 in 1290, Edward I was still grieving. But news got to him of the beauty of Blanche, daughter of the late King Philip III. Edward decided that he would marry Blanche at any cost and sent out emissaries to negotiate the marriage with her half-brother, King Philip IV. Philip agreed to give Blanche to Edward on the following conditions: 1) a truce was concluded between the two countries 2) Edward gave up the province of Gascony
Edward, surprisingly, agreed and sent his brother Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, to fetch the new bride. Edward had been deceived, for Blanche was to be married to Rudolph I of Bohemia and eldest son of Albert I of Germany. Instead Philip offered her younger sister Marguerite, a young girl of 11, to marry Edward (then 55). Upon hearing this, Edward declared war on France, refusing to marry Marguerite. After five years, a truce was agreed, under the terms of which Edward would marry Marguerite, would regain the key city of Guienne, and receive £15,000 owed to Marguerite. Edward was now 60 years old. The wedding took place at Canterbury on September 8, 1299. Edward soon returned to the Scottish border to continue his campaigns and left Marguerite in London. After several months, bored and lonely, the young queen decided to join her husband. Nothing could have pleased the king more, for Marguerite's actions reminded him of his first wife Eleanor, who had had two of her sixteen children abroad.
Marguerite soon became firm friends with her stepdaughter Mary, a nun, who was two years older than the young queen. She and her stepson, Edward (who was two years younger than her), also became fond of each other: he once made her a gift of an expensive ruby and gold ring, and she on one occasion rescued many of the Prince's friends from the wrath of the King. In less than a year Marguerite gave birth to a son, and then another a year later. It is said that many who fell under the king's wrath were saved from too stern a punishment by the queen's influence over her husband, and the statement, Pardoned solely on the intercession of our dearest consort, queen Marguerite of England, appears.
Margaret died just 10 years after her husband, at the age of 36, and was buried at Greyfriar's Church, Greenwich.

In 1306 Robert the Bruce rebelled and was crowned King of Scotland. King Edward I was desperate to punish the Scots and led another army to Scotland. (He had had many battles with the Scots during the previous 15 years) He died en-route on 7th July 1307.

Note: King Edward's Chair, sometimes known as St Edward's Chair or The Coronation Chair, is the throne on which the British monarch sits for the coronation. It was commissioned in 1296 by King Edward I to contain the coronation stone of Scotland — known as the Stone of Scone — which he had captured from the Scots who had kept it at Scone Abbey. The chair was named after England's only canonized king, Edward the Confessor, and was kept in his shrine of St Edward's Chapel at Westminster Abbey. All anointed English (and after the Union of 1707, British) sovereigns since 1308 have been seated in this chair at the moment of their coronation, with the exception of Queen Mary I.

Page updated 04/02/2013