The Monks of Arden
In the Beginning
The midwife and two attendants hovered over the queen as the squalling newborn made its appearance. The mother’s moans subsided. Putting their heads together to form a shield from the prying eyes of the ladies of the chamber, the women muttered among themselves.
“What do you think?” whispered one.
“Whooee,” exclaimed another. “The work of the devil.”
“Quiet,” said the midwife. “Think nothing of it, my lady. She is touched, given to fits. In her village she is revered, but she makes trouble sometimes. She is here as a medium to convey God’s blessing. . . . The king demands that his queen give him a son,” the midwife whispered. “Girls, girls; too many girls; that’s all she gives me, he says.”
“Do we give him a boy?” whispered an attendant. They busied themselves washing the tiny body and soothing the exhausted queen. Other ladies prepared the crib. The midwife examined the distinguishing parts for several minutes until the infant’s objections ended the delay, whereupon she declared in loud voice, “It is a boy!” and handed him to the wet nurse.
* * *
“Show me my son,” demanded the king.
A nursemaid removed the swaddling cloth and presented the infant to the short-sighted Llewellyn ap Gwynedd. “Scrawny thing, isn’t he? Hmm. Not much of a boy either. Oh, well, I suppose I’ll have to make do.” The baby started to cry. “He doesn’t seem to care much for his father, does he? Here, take him.” The maid passed the child on to a waiting wet nurse and all grew quiet.
* * *
A few days later, the wise old midwife summoned a noted surgeon from Conwy. The queen’s chief attendant escorted him to the nursery where the infant lay.
“Look at this child,” she said. “When it was born, superstitious women thought it was the work of the devil. I seen parts not quite right, but never like this.”
She uncovered the infant and spread its legs. A prominent swelling the size of a grape protruded from where a penis might be. The surgeon took one look and dented it with the tip of his index finger. “Cyst,” he said. He withdrew a role of instruments from a pocket in his robe and picked out a small sharp lance. “Hold her down” he instructed the midwife. With a single quick motion he slit open the cyst and placed a towel over the site. The infant barely whimpered. He patted the area with the towel and when he removed it the cyst was gone.
* * *
“This way, your grace.” The captain of the palace guard led Queen Eleanor from her chamber down the stone steps leading to the river gate where he escorted her aboard the royal galley. Oarsmen struggled to move the boat upstream, but they had not gone half a mile before city rabble had crowded London Bridge and began to pelt her with stones and garbage, forcing her to seek refuge at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“Where is my son?” she demanded to know.
“He has returned from the campaign in Wales,” said the captain of the Tower garrison. “He is at Windsor Castle as we speak. You must lie low, my lady, while I return to the fight to drive Montfort’s men from the Tower. The king will be rescued and you and the king and Prince Edward will be reunited.”
Having earned the eternal enmity of Henry III, Simon de Montfort, was chased down and thrown to the anti-baronial rabble who took great sport in tormenting him to death. As the last scream during his dismemberment reverberated upward through the Tower keep, another sounded to take its place. This time, it was that of a squalling infant, blindly seeking his wet nurse’s breast.
“My god, Edward,” said the king, “no sooner is Montfort silenced than the shrieks of some stray urchin assault my ears.”
“Booty, father. Booty. Llewellyn’s firstborn. You think this bairn howls; you should have heard his father when we made off with him.”
“The princess has started giving you children. Why do you need to bring in an outsider? You should have taken his falcons, instead.”
“You know perfectly well, father, that Alphonso is dead. The rest are girls, the same as old Llewellyn’s brood. Besides, I have enough falcons, just not enough sons.”
“So, you intend to pass him off as your real son?”
“That I do, father. His father is Llewellyn ap Gwynedd. He comes from good stock. He’ll grow up and never know.”
What about the succession? Suppose the princess gives you a son of your own.”
“I’ll manage that if the time comes?”
* * *
“Am I not fulfilling my duty to give you sturdy offspring?”
“Yes, but I cannot risk losing you,” said Edward, somewhat disingenuously. His wife was barely out of her teens. “I do not want to tax your health unnecessarily.”
The prince and Princess Eleanor debated what to do about the Welsh infant Edward had snatched from Llewellyn at Gwynedd Is Conwy.
“What is he called?” said the princess.
“I heard them call out the name Penfelyn . . . for that yellow hair, I suppose . . . I have it,” said the prince. “You shall go on a tour to Irnham. You will stay with the Luttrell family.”
“To what purpose, Edward?”
“The child will be part of your entourage, and in a few months you will return home with a new baby boy. How does that sound?”
“Perhaps after we come back,” said Eleanor, “if he remains cloistered here for a few years, when he finally does come out, busybodies will have lost interest in counting on their fingers and toes trying to figure out why they ever scratched their heads over this. It will no longer be an issue.”
“I am afraid it will always be an issue. One day I will be king and you will be queen. Busybodies never stop prying and speculating.”
“I can go to Irnham, of course, but why? Why do you insist on sheltering this kidnapped bairn? Because he’s another boy? I’m not so sure. He frightens his nursemaids.”
“You are talking gibberish, Eleanor. How on earth could a boy only a few weeks old frighten anybody?”
“They are the ones who feed him and clean his bum. They know things you do not. The Welsh wet nurse who came with him said some at Conwy believed he had the devil in him.”
“The devil? By my baldric and sword, I do not know what you are talking about. ”
“Your son Alphonso came into this world a sound lad without ambiguity. Not so this hapless little chap.”
“He is what I say he is, Eleanor. I insist on it.”
“As you will, Edward. As you will, but be forewarned that to force him down a path other than what is ordained by God may very well destroy him and imperil your soul.”
* * *
“To the White Tower and move smartly,” the captain ordered. A large tilt-covered carriage rumbled behind five horses harnessed in single file. The armorial of Plantagenet identified it as a royal conveyance. The body was further decorated with the silhouettes of eagles against a background of forest green. The cartwright had painted the undercarriage and iron-clad wheels red. Woodcarvers fashioned ornate gargoyles that were mounted at the corners fore and aft.
The carriage was covered with a tightly woven golden tapestry twenty feet long supported on arches of tough and flexible ash. Two windows on each side could be closed during inclement weather. It was in this fine carriage that the ladies and gentlemen of the privy chamber installed fur rugs and satin cushions for the royal family and their attendants. The children’s governess arranged a box of dolls and other toys in one corner.
Wagons carried tents and a portable pavilion; others, food, water, and kitchen essentials. Two grooms attended a string of a half dozen palfreys that trailed behind the wagons.
The palace guard provided ten archers and ten crossbowmen plus twenty more men-at-arms for protection. Armored knights on powerful destriers stationed themselves at the four corners of the wagon.
On the day of their departure, the princess gathered her staff to bid them farewell and leave instructions about their conduct while she was away, as well as her expectations upon her return. Since the king and the prince would be busy with the residue of Montfort’s forces at the Isle of Ely, the lord chamberlain would function as representative in their absence.
Grooms mounted the lead and fifth horses harnessed to the carriage. The household staff formed two lines facing each other at the tower entrance. Footmen stationed themselves on either side of the steps to the rear entrance of the carriage as the princess exited the tower. She was followed by two ladies-in-waiting, her young daughters Eleanor and Joan, and a nurse carrying a covered basket. With everyone aboard, the bishop gave his blessing and the procession left the Tower of London and proceeded to Ermine Street, which would take them north to Irnham.
* * *
King Henry’s military forces were stretched to the limit. He had committed his navy to an expedition into the Holy Land. His final land offensive to subdue what remained of the Montfort barons who had fled to Ely, therefore, had to be supported by mercenaries. Both sides of the dispute had been reduced to chest-thumping and shouting at each other, except that the king still had access to funds and the barons did not. What the king lacked was a sufficient number of men-at-arms. Since the companies sold their services to the highest bidder, and the barons had exhausted their resources, the king won the auction. But the king had had to pay a heavy price. In order to secure the funds, he was forced to sign the Treaty of Abbeville with Louis IX in which he agreed to give up a claim on Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou already lost by King John. Louis agreed to let him keep Gascony and parts of Aquitaine. In effect, he sold a territorial claim to the French king in exchange for Louis’ friendship and the funds necessary to subdue the remnants of the barons’ revolt.
Ely had long been a refuge for dissidents. Surrounded by impassable swamps it was an island in the fens easily defended by a small force. This relative isolation was, however, a double-edged sword. Difficulty of access was offset by the difficulty of escape. If entrapment were effected, escape was nearly impossible.
This accident of geography was not lost on Captain Erich von Hofstein, commander of the Prussian military company hired by Henry to rout the bloodied remnants of the barons’ revolt.
The Wolf Company, as their captain had named them, was a mercenary army of three thousand men-at-arms, among them archers, crossbowmen, cavalry, and infantry. This was not some ragtag collection of military adventurers but, rather, a disciplined military organization with the captain at its head and a handful of knights serving as his direct subordinates. They had a paymaster, smiths, carpenters, cart- and wheelwrights, cooks and bakers, a surgeon, trumpeters and pipers, and even a legal staff to negotiate their mercenary contracts.
The captain divided his mission into two parts: gaining access to the Isle of Ely and subduing the enemy. He sent two spies ahead who reported back to him that the barons’ forces were depleted and weak. The captain judged that their conquest would be less of a challenge than actually getting his troops to Ely Cathedral where the barons were holed up.
He sent six men to scout the perimeter of the isle. The news was not good. Two of the men had drowned in the soupy mire of the fen. The isle was isolated except for a single causeway built by the Romans centuries before, but still passable on foot. The captain concluded that to send his troops in single-file would be to invite disaster, even in the face of the reduced force that camped in the cathedral. The answer was to widen and strengthen the causeway in order to get his cavalry and wagons from the high ground, across the fen, and onto the isle quickly in massive numbers.
The Wolf Company disembarked from its barges on the River Nene at the old Roman town of Durobrivae. From there they decamped to a rise four miles to the northwest of Ely. For three months they felled trees and widened the causeway to accommodate their war machine, whereupon they moved in force to surround Ely Cathedral. The company took the barons’ men prisoner without resistance and turned them over to the king’s men. In return, the captain of the king’s guard handed the Wolf Company’s treasurer two large sacks of gold florins.
* * *
As Princess Eleanor’s entourage approached their destination, St. Andrew’s church emerged above the landscape atop a small hill. Clustered around the base of the hill were cottages made of wood, a few more substantial houses, and fish ponds. As they drew near the south side, Irnham Hall came into view.
Sir Geoffrey Luttrell and Lady Agnes welcomed Princess Eleanor and her children to the manor as honored guests. Of the four Luttrell estates, Irnham was the grandest. Irnham Hall, the ancient seat of the Paynells passed on to Geoffrey Luttrell. Lady Agnes had prepared a special guest house for her visitors. One room was assigned to the princess for private use by her and her attendants. The remainder of the indoor space was furnished with a large bed, a narrow trestle table for the use of the nursemaid when attending the infant Penfelyn, a bench, and a crib. The other children, the nurses, and the children’s governess shared the big bed.
The grooms slept with the horses in the stable. The footmen and men-at-arms were housed in village inns, with the soldiers performing guard duty in shifts.
The arrival of the royal guests was marked by a lavish banquet held in the great hall. Representatives of the neighboring noble families came from as far away as Lincoln, Derby, Leicester, and Peterborough to honor the princess who would be the next queen of England, and her son the infant Penfelyn, designated the Earl of Snowdonia.
The boy was just learning to walk and soon became the darling of the Luttrell daughters. They vied for turns at tending to him, giving him toys and tidbits, and leading him around hand-in-hand.
Under the ever-watchful eyes of his nurses and attendants, the little earl was allowed to be the center of the children’s games. He was always surrounded by a bevy of girls, his sisters Eleanor and Joan, and the Luttrell daughters Margery, Lucy and Elizabeth. The Luttrell brothers Andrew and Aubrey thought it great sport to try to upset the girls’ play, but they were so outnumbered they were rarely successful. Besides, they were old enough to understand the noble status of the little earl, and restrained themselves when attempting to get his attention.
One of the estate’s cabinet builders was an adept woodcarver who had fashioned an exquisite doll’s head from a choice piece of lime wood. He passed it on to Lady Agnes’s dressmaker who created several tiny gowns with drawstrings at the neck that could be changed at will. For hair, she had snipped several locks from the head of a blond housemaid, which she stuck on the head to create a little girl’s dream doll.
“Like you. Like you,” the little girls squealed as they thrust the doll in the little boy’s face.
The Luttrell sisters were so enchanted with the doll that they wanted more of them, which the obliging household staff supplied. The imperious little girls demanded that the same blond housemaid donate her hair for every one of them. The woman had to keep her head covered for some time after that until her hair grew out.
The five young girls were fond of sitting in a circle with young Penfelyn in the center. They cradled their dolls and passed them around among themselves. The infant propped up in the middle showed great interest in this activity, welcoming any opportunity to hold a doll offered to him. The boys continued to circle the little party astride their hobby horses, charging between the seated girls at every opportunity in their attempt to attract young Penfelyn’s attention and offer him a ride, but the only toy they could all agree on was a large ball filled with moss that they passed from one to another. The boys, unlike the girls, quite naturally hurled the ball with all the force they could muster and were pleased when they succeeded in knocking one the girls off balance. They would laugh and she would threaten tears. At this point their chaperones invariably stepped in to stop the mayhem, much to the delight of the young earl who laughed at all the fun the entire time.
* * *
A year passed during which the infant Penfelyn grew rapidly. By the time he and his mother were preparing to return home, he was racing around on his hands and knees ready to learn to walk. He began using words one and two at a time and asserting his independence.
During their stay in Irnham, the men of the Princess Eleanor’s entourage had become the darlings of the local demimonde, living the easy life in town of well-placed young men with much time on their hands. Among them the young knight Richard of Leicester had grown smitten with a certain merchant’s daughter. Toward the end of the year her physical proportions showed certain changes suggesting that in order to maintain public order, Richard would either have to marry her and take her back to London, or he would have to remain in Irnham.
The princess and Sir Geoffrey concluded that to take a country girl back to London under the royal umbrella was out of the question. She and now he would have to make their way in the village and the princess would have to return to London short one equestrian guard. Richard, it seems, had had either the good luck or the bad luck, depending on your point of view, of being required to abandon his potentially upward trajectory as a knight of the royal court to become a yeoman merchant with a wife and child in the village of Irnham. On the plus side, he had just earned a predictable, if pedestrian, future.
* * *
Contrary to the custom of baptizing babies at or shortly after birth, the ceremony celebrating the prince’s new son took place when he was a year old. Boniface of Savoy, Archbishop of Canterbury presided at the christening on Whitsunday in the year 1270. The spectacle commenced with a gathering on the porch of St. Paul’s cathedral. Present were the designated godsibs* Lord Thomas and Lady Elizabeth of Aylsworth and Lord Gilbert of Monmouth. The prince and princess accompanied their son who was in the arms of his nurse. Here, the child would be instructed before he could be christened. He was forbidden entry into the church before instruction because he was not yet a Christian.
The archbishop began the required exorcism by making the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead. Placing his hand on the whole head he said, “What is the child’s name?”
“Penfelyn of Snowdonia,” the prince replied.
The archbishop then spat into his left hand and used his right thumb to smear saliva on the infant’s nostrils and ears. He then made the sign of the cross on the baby’s right hand saying, “So that you may sign yourself and remain in the Catholic faith forever. Go, Penfelyn, into the temple of God.”
The christening party entered the cathedral and gathered around the baptismal font. Dozens of invited guests followed them in and took their places in the sanctuary.
The archbishop added drops of chrism, a mixture of oil and balm, into the font. The nurse removed the boy’s christening gown and passed him into the arms of the archbishop who glanced at him once, but then could not help but take a second look. “What is the child’s name?”
“Penfelyn of Snowdonia.” The prince repeated.
The archbishop addressed the infant in Latin. The godsibs replied on his behalf.
“Do you renounce Satan?”
“I renounce him.”
“And all his works?”
“I renounce them.”
“What do you seek?”
“Baptism.”
“Do you wish to be baptized?”
“I do.”
The archbishop immersed the infant in the baptismal font three times. “I baptize thee in the name of the Father . . .”
Penfelyn resurfaced with a howl that could be heard out in the street. The priest struggled with the wet and slippery one-year-old and immersed him another time. “. . . and of the Son . . .,” and finally in an orgy of flailing and holy words, “. . . and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
The shrieking Penfelyn was welcomed into the Church in a spray of holy water that left the archbishop and the prince, princess, and nurse maid drenched. The priest quickly handed the child back to the maid who dressed him, as the clergyman and onlookers dried themselves.
* * *
The prince sent a secret dispatch to Grand Master Guillaume de Villaret on the Isle of Rhodes in which he invited the Knights Hospitaller who successfully conquered the isle, to join the prince’s force on its way to Cyprus.
Mounting Crusade to regain Acre. You must join me in this effort to regain control of the Holy Land. The Templars and Louis IX are with us. We will launch our attack from Cyprus. Your nobles and knights will establish a beachhead to the north of the city, the Templars to the south. The French will join the Wolf Company in a frontal assault. We depart on Ascension Day. God and the winds willing we should reach your shores by the holy day of the Assumption of Mary.
Signed: Edward Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine
Upon receiving the dispatch, Villaret and his men departed for Cyprus where they immediately began the construction of floating siege towers to be towed to Acre by Edward’s war galleys.
* * *
“God and my king have ordained that I should join his Crusade to drive the infidels from the holy land,” the prince declared. “Wife, you must accompany me on this holy adventure.”
“But what of the children?” she protested.
“We shall send them to Cippenham Moat along with their tutors.”
“I do not want to leave my children for such a long time,” she continued. “They will scarcely remember their parents by the time we return.”
“It is a price we must pay. It is our sacred duty.”
“How long will we be away?”
“Preparations have begun. I have already ordered the fleet to assemble. We shall go by sea. It will take a month for us to reach Cyprus where we will launch our invasion. We should return in two years, if not sooner. Time will pass quickly and your sacrifice will be to the glory of God.”
* * *
The mamluks, former slave soldiers highly trained as riders, archers, lancers, and swordsman, had assembled a large defensive force in Acre behind the formidable stone works constructed ironically by their enemy Louis IX during an earlier, failed occupation. A thousand men-at-arms gathered around a large force of artillery arrayed immediately behind the sea wall. The principal defensive weapon against a seaborne invasion was the trebuchet, a catapult capable of hurling missiles four hundred yards. Loaded with balls of Greek fire they constituted a fearsome defense capability.
The English fleet headed toward Gibraltar and included twenty siege galleys of a hundred-twenty oars each. The professional oarsmen were assisted by sails on the open sea. They divided themselves into two teams who worked in shifts in battle, one shift maneuvering the galley and the other shift fighting.
The prince had ordered built thirty-six taridas at the Smallhythe shipyards. Specially designed to transport horses, they had flat-bottoms, were oared, and could be beached where the horses would be unloaded through a ramp in the stern. Each transport carried forty horses and their grooms plus the oarsmen. The remainder of the fleet consisted of twenty war galleys, ten supply ships, and the prince’s royal galley.
The ninety-foot long, eight-hundred ton war galleys with crews of eighty could transport five hundred men-at-arms with their squires and equipment. Edward’s fighting force on its way to Cyprus totaled fifteen hundred horses and ten thousand men, three thousand of whom were fighters from the Wolf Company.
The Knights Templar prided themselves in their small, elite force and were already on Cyprus. They also controlled a large banking network the Crusaders had access to. King Louis IX of France, with the help of the Templar bank, commissioned Italian merchant ships and sailed south to the African coast where he caught the easterly current. Four hundred Knights Hospitaller sailed from Rhodes to Cyprus where they joined Louis’s hired fleet at the port of Paphos Ktima.
Prince Edward’s mighty fleet remained becalmed at sea for the three days required for the royal galley to reach Rhodes where the princess would be installed in the Hospitaller’s castle for the duration of the siege. Bidding her farewell, the prince left the royal galley at the port and joined his captains for the remainder of the voyage to Cyprus. They arrived on the holy day of the Assumption of Mary, as predicted. The prince took this as an augury of great things to come. The next month’s activities included military training exercises, a tournament, and the construction of castles on the siege galleys.
Louis’s forces took the southern current aboard the Italian merchant ships they had commissioned for the voyage. They arrived in Cyprus in time to complete Edward’s plan. Louis’s infantry included serfs whose skills ranged from carpentry and shipbuilding to farming and agriculture. They would fight when they must, work when they could. Louis’s men divided themselves between the warriors who strutted among themselves and the locals, and the agrarians who sought to establish an agricultural base from which the army could launch itself. In the end, the martial spirit prevailed.
* * *
“The mamluks have destroyed Haifa to deter the Christian Crusaders,” said Edward, “but the joke is on them. That undefended rubble shall be the launching pad for the Templar’s surge from the south.”
The Hospitallers deployed to the north and the Templars to the south. The siege began. But the Templar captain did not reckon with the parched desert heat; his small number of troops surged ahead without sufficient water. Their energies flagged as their thirst soared. Their horses collapsed, and they were vanquished by the smug mamluks. The southern force of Edward’s advance crumbled.
Edward summoned the Templar commander Jacques de Molay to demand an explanation.
“What in the name of our savior Jesus Christ were you thinking?”
“My knights are the greatest tactical force ever brought to bear on these oriental heathens.”
“Your tactical force ran out of water, for God’s sake. How do you account for that?”
Edward would have sacked him on the spot if he could, but that was not possible.
* * *
Edward’s assault force was sea bound from Cyprus. The mamluk commander sultan Aybak monitored the prince’s approach from his redoubt. About a quarter mile offshore, beyond the range of the mamluk archers and artillery, six of the prince’s war galleys lined up in a row, port to starboard. They separated into units of two ships that maneuvered to within a hundred feet of each other. In addition to constructing castles fore and aft on four of the war galleys, the Cypriot carpenters had constructed three siege towers and placed them on their sides aboard three small barges. Oared pilot boats towed the barges into the spaces between the parallel galleys. Seaman quickly lashed the galleys together and pulled the ships close enough to allow them to erect the towers and lift them off the barges which, freed of their cargo, slipped out of the way. When the operation was complete, the machines consisted of three large platforms of two galleys each, supporting siege towers that could be driven up to the sea wall.
“What fools these Christians are,” the sultan laughed. “I have five hundred crossbowmen, a thousand archers, and three hundred cavalry staring at their puny fleet.”
At a range of four hundred yards Aybak launched a barrage of stone missiles. The ship’s captains ordered the vessels forward as many of the projectiles splashed into the sea. A few landed on deck causing little or no damage. Heartened, the siege galleys’ captains pressed forward toward the sea wall.
“Their defenses are useless,” the Englishmen cried out. The rain of boulders ceased, but moments later to the horror of the men on deck, the sky lit up with orange balls of flame hurtling toward them like fiery comets. “Greek fire*,” they screamed.
* * *
The Hospitallers established a beachhead at the poorly protected port of Achziv seven miles north of Acre. Two thousand knights, archers, and infantrymen disembarked and began their southward advance to engage the mamluks as they attempted to repel the prince’s war machine. Their commanders did not know that the mamluks had stopped the Templars, and that there was no south flank in their planned pincer maneuver. As they approached Acre, the sultan ordered reinforcements from the south who circled east of the city and met the Hospitallers head on. After two days of intense fighting, the Crusaders were forced to retreat back to their ships, where the mamluks bade them farewell with a shower of bolts and arrows.
* * *
The rain of fire on the fleet continued. Men on deck were doused in flaming pitch. The panicked victims jumped into the sea only to have the fire burn even hotter. They did not even have time to drown. The prince was taking heavy casualties, but the force, inspired by God, pressed on. The siege platforms crashed against the sea wall inside the minimal range of the trebuchets. Wicker ramps dropped down from the towers onto the top of the wall. Archers and crossbowmen on both sides exchanged fire, mamluks from the wall and stone towers, and the Crusaders from the castles fore and aft on the war galleys. Infantrymen with swords poured across the ramps to meet their opponents. The carnage continued for several days. Seamen attempting to suppress the fires set aboard their war ships by the Greek fireballs fell in great numbers to the crossbowmen’s bolts. Eventually, the onward rush of Crusader swordsmen began to slow as their resources were depleted.
Soon the situation grew desperate and the galley captains ordered the lines securing the siege platforms cut. The burning towers fell into the sea and the oarsmen began their retreat. Edward was ashen. Five of his original ten galleys survived in a condition that allowed them to move beyond range of the defender’s artillery. A mile offshore he met with his commanders and captains.
“You have performed heroically and have nothing to be ashamed of. I accept responsibility for this defeat. I am not sure that all of Christendom would have been able to mount a force sufficient to unseat these heathens. They own our Holy Land.”
Edward was correct in one respect, for this, the ninth Crusade, would be the last.
The survivors of the fleet limped back to Cyprus where the prince received the news that his father was dead. King Henry III died on the sixteenth of November in 1272. He was sixty-five years old. On the nineteenth of August in 1274, Prince Edward, known as Longshanks for his height of over six feet, was crowned King Edward I. In time Queen Eleanor presented him with a healthy son, Edward Prince of Wales.