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cedent of Henry II., it might be doubted whether succession through a female was favoured by the constitution. If not, Henry could say with truth that he was the direct heir of his grandfather, Edward III. If, on the other hand, succession through females was valid, he could trace his descent through his mother from Henry III. by a very illustrious line of ancestors. And, in the words by which he formally made his claim, he ventured to say no more than that he was descended from the king just mentioned "by right line of the blood." In what particular way that "right line" was to be traced he did not venture to indicate.
It is unnecessary in this article to relate the history of the three successive kings belonging to the house of Lancaster (Henry IV., V., and VI.), as a brief epitome of their reigns will be found elsewhere (see vol. xi. pp. 659-662). With the death of the last-named sovereign the direct male line of John of Gaunt became extinct. But by his daughters he became the ancestor of more than one line of foreign kings, while his descendants by his third wife, Catherine Swynford, conveyed the crown of England to the house of Tudor. It is true that his children by this lady were born before he married her but they were made legitimate by act of parliament, and, though Henry IV. in confirming the privilege thus granted to them endeavoured to debar them from the succession to the crown, it is now ascertained that there was no such reservation in the original Act, and the title claimed by Henry VII. was probably better than he himself supposed.
We subjoin a pedigree of the royal and illustrious houses that traced their descent from John of Gaunt: –
TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL DESCENDANTS OF JOHN OF GAUNT. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. = Blanche, daughter and heiress of = Constance, the elder of the = Catherine, daughter of titular king of Castile. Henry, duke of Lancaster (first wife). 1 | I Philippa, Henry IV., = Mary de Bohun, =Joan. daughter Elizabeth, married first married to king of daughter and of Charles the to John Holland, duke John I., England. co-heir of Hum- Bad, king of of Exeter, who was king of phrey de Bohun, Navarre beheaded by Henry IV.; Portugal. earl of Hereford (second wife). afterwards to Sir John and Essex (first No issue. Cornwall, created Edward, wife). Baron Fanhope. king of Portugal. 1 II! 1 1 two daughters and heiresses of Peter, king of Castile and Leon (second wife). Sir Payne Roet, widow of Sir Owen Swvnfortl (third wife"). king of Alphonso Ferdinand, England. V. of duke of Portu- Viseu. gal- | John II. of Por- tugal. Emmanuel, king of Portugal ; whose de scendants have reigned in that country ever since. Henry V., =^ Catherine, Thomas, daughter duke of of Charles Clarence. VI. of France, afterwards married to Sir Owen Tudor. John, Humphrey, Blanche, Philippa, duke of duke of duchess married to Bedford. Gloucester, of Ba- F.ricVII.of varia. Denmark and XIII. of Sweden. Catherine, John Henry Thomas Joan Beaufort, married to Beaufort, Beaufort, Beaufort, wife of Ralph Prince Henry, earl of cardinal, duke of afterwards Somerset. Exeter. Henry III. | of Castile. John II., king of Castile. Henry VI. Edward, prince of Wales. Isabella of Castile, queen of Ferdinand of Aragon ; whose de scendants were kings of Spain till the coming in of the Bourbons in 1700. 1 1 Henry John Beaufort, Beaufort, earl of earl, Somerset, afterwards duke, of Somerset, i Edmund, = = Margaret earl of Beaufort. Richmond, son of Sir Owen Tudor by Catherine, widow of Henry V. Ncvill, first earl of West moreland, by whom she became an ancestor of Edward IV., Richard III., Wai-wick the King Maker, and many noble families. Henry VII , king of England. Henry VIII. Margaret. = James IV., king of | Scotland. 1 Mary. = Charles Brandon, i duke of Suffolk. d VI. Mary, queen of England. Elizabeth, queen of England. James V., king of i Scotland. Henry, earl of Lincoln. Mary Stuart. Frances, wife of Eleano Henry, earl of of H Dorset, created secon duke of Suffolk. of Cu James VI. of Scotland and I. of England, whose descendants have reigned in Great Britain ever since. Lady Jane Grey and others. land. (J. GA.)
LANCASTER, Sir James, an eminent English seaman of the Elizabethan period. In his early years he was in Portugal as soldier and merchant; in 1591 he made a voyage on his own account to the East Indies; in 1594-95 he had command of an expedition which made an attack on Pernambuco; and in 1600 he was placed at the head of the first fleet sent out by the newly-founded East India Company. During his later years he acted as one of the directors of the company. He died in 1620.
The original journals of Lancaster's principal voyage, during which he visited Java and Sumatra, have unfortunately been lost; and we only possess the narrative drawn up from them with questionable perspicacity by Purchas. The various portions of Hakluyt and Purchas relating to Lancaster have been edited for the Hakluyt Society by C. K. Markham (1879). The name of Lancaster Sound was bestowed by Baffin in honour of Sir James, on the strait trending westward from Baffin's Bay.
LANCASTER, Joseph (1778-1838), was born in Southwark in 1778, and was the son of a Chelsea pensioner. He had few opportunities of regular instruction, but he very early showed unusual seriousness and desire for learning. At sixteen he looked forward to the dissenting ministry: but soon after his religious views altered, and he attached himself to the Society of Friends, with which he remained associated for many years, until long afterwards he was disowned by that body. At the age of
twenty he began to gather a few poor children under his father's roof and to give them the rudiments of instruction, without a fee, except in cases in which the parent was willing to pay a trifle. Soon a thousand children were assembled in the Borough Road; and, the attention of the duke of Bedford, Mr Whitbread, and others having been directed to his efforts, he was provided with means for building a schoolroom, and supplying needful materials. The main features of his plan were the employment of older scholars as monitors, and an elaborate system of mechanical drill, by means of which these young teachers were made to impart the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic to large numbers at the same time. The material appliances for teaching were very scanty – a few leaves torn out of spelling-books and pasted on boards, some slates, and a desk spread with sand, on which the children wrote with their fingers. The order and cheerfulness of the school and the military precision of the children's movements were very striking, and began to attract much public observation at a time when the education of the poor was almost entirely neglected. Lancaster had the skill which gains the loyalty of subordinates, and he succeeded in inspiring his young monitors with fondness for their work and with pride in the institution of which they formed a part. As these youths became
