Marriage and Children
Married on 14 January 1236, Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury, Kent, to Eleanor of Provence, with at least five children born:
- Edward I (b. 17 June 1239 – d. 7 July 1307)
- Margaret (b. 29 September 1240 – d. 26 February 1275), married King Alexander III of Scotland
- Beatrice of England (b. 25 June 1242 – d. 24 March 1275), married to John II, Duke of Brittany
- Edmund Crouchback (16 January 1245 – d. 5 June 1296)
- Katherine (b. 25 November 1253 – d. 3 May 1257), deaf and mute from birth, though her deafness may not have been discovered until age 2.
There is reason to doubt the existence of several attributed children of Henry and Eleanor.
- Richard (b. after 1247 – d. before 1256),
- John (b. after 1250 – d. before 1256), and
- Henry (b. after 1253 – d. young)
are known only from a 14th century addition made to a manuscript of Flores Historiarum, and are nowhere contemporaneously recorded.
- William (b. and d. ca. 1258) is an error for the nephew of Henry's half-brother, William de Valence, 1st Earl of Pembroke.
Another daughter, Matilda, is found only in the Hayles Abbey chronicle, alongside such other fictitious children as a son named William for King John, and an illegitimate son named John for King Edward I. Matilda's existence is doubtful, at best. For further details, see Margaret Howell, The Children of King Henry III and Eleanor of Provence (1992).
Read more about this topic: Henry III Of England
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or children:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“When we choose to be parents, we accept another human being as part of ourselves, and a large part of our emotional selves will stay with that person as long as we live. From that time on, there will be another person on this earth whose orbit around us will affect us as surely as the moon affects the tides, and affect us in some ways more deeply than anyone else can. Our children are extensions of ourselves in ways our parents are not, nor our brothers and sisters, nor our spouses.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)