Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster
English noble

Henry, 3rd Earl of Leicester and Lancaster (c. 1281 – 22 September 1345) was an English nobleman. He was the grandson of King Henry III of England (r. 1216–1272) and was one of the principals behind the deposition of King Edward II (r. 1307–1327), his first cousin.
Origins
He was the younger son of Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster, Earl of Leicester, a son of King Henry III by his wife Eleanor of Provence. The Earl Henry's mother was Blanche of Artois, Queen Dowager of Navarre. Through his mother, he was a half-brother of Queen Joan I of Navarre.
Henry's elder brother Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, succeeded their father in 1296, but Henry was summoned to Parliament on 6 February 1298/99 by writ directed to Henrico de Lancastre nepoti Regis ("Henry of Lancaster, nephew of the king", Edward I), by which he is held to have become Baron Lancaster. He took part in the Siege of Caerlaverock in July 1300.
Petition for succession and inheritance
After a period of long-standing opposition to King Edward II and his advisors, including joining two open rebellions, Henry's brother Thomas was convicted of treason, executed and had his lands and titles forfeited in 1322.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q950456. VIAF identifies the subject as 12178736. The Library of Congress control number is nr93018237. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1281, 1345, 1216 and 1272.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.