Philippa of Hainault and Her Times

ISBN: 9781334058325 出版年：2018 页码：357 Blanche C Hardy Forgotten Books

When Isabella the Fair, daughter of Philip le Bel and sister to three Kings Of France to be, was wedded in the great cathedral at Boulogne to Edward II, King Of England, in presence Of eight sovereign Kings and Queens, little could it have been dreamed that this union should sow the seeds Of war through a hundred years, nor that the bride's name should pass down to futurity in abhorrence as that Of the she-wolf Of France Never since the days Of Judith, wife Of Ethelwulf, had King Of England made so magnificent a match, and no cir cumstance was wanting to lend the ceremony all the pomp and splendour it deserved. Isabella was just fourteen, and had been betrothed since she was eight; while Edward was in his twenty-third year and, like all the Plantagenets, extraordinarily handsome. He had but just succeeded to the throne on his father's death; and the injunction to hasten his marriage was the only one Of that father's dying commands which he took pains to fulfil. For grim Old Edward Longshanks held but a poor Opinion of this son Of his, and hoped against hope that the French match Should lend him the pres tige and influence his own character could never command.