Henry III. appears to have managed to live without quarrelling
with his children; but then he was a poor creature, and even was so
unkingly, and so little like what a Plantagenet should have been, that
he actually disliked war! He might with absolute propriety have worn
the lowly broom-corn from which his family-name was taken, while it
was a sweeping satire on almost all others who bore it. His heir,
Edward I., was a king of "high stomach," and as a prince he stood
stoutly by his father in the baronial wars. He, too, though the father
of sixteen children, dispensed with family dissensions, thus showing
that "The more, the merrier," is a true saying. Edward II. came to
grief from having a bad wife, Isabella of France, who made use of
his son against him. That son was Edward III., who became king in his
father's lifetime, and whose marriage with Philippa of Hainault is
one of the best-known facts of history, not only because it was an
uncommonly happy marriage, but that it had remarkable consequences.
This royal couple got along very happily with their children; but the
ambition of their fourth son, the Duke of Lancaster, troubled the
last days of the King, and prepared the way for great woes in the next
century. The King was governed by Lancaster, and the Black Prince, who
was then in a dying state, was at the head of what would now be called
the Opposition, as if he foresaw what evils his brother's ambition
would be the means of bringing upon his son.

Richard II., son of the Black Prince, had no children, though he
was twice married. He was dethroned, the rebels being headed by his
cousin, Henry of Lancaster, who became Henry IV. Thus was brought
about that change in the course of descent which John of Gaunt seems
to have aimed at, but which he died just too soon to see effected.
It was a violent change, and one which had its origin in a family