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- Eleanor of Castile (Abt 1241 - 28 Nov 1290) was the first queen consort of Edward I of England. She was also Countess of Ponthieu in her own right from 1279 until her death in 1290, succeeding her mother and ruling together with her husband. Eleanor was born in Castile [Hispania] daughter of Saint Ferdinand, King of Castile and Leon and his second wife, Joan, Countess of Ponthieu. Her Castilian name, Leonor, became Alienor or Alianor in England, and Eleanor in modern English. She was the second of five children born to Fernando and Jeanne. Her elder brother Fernando was born in 1239/40, her younger brother Louis in 1242/43; two sons born after Louis died young. For the ceremonies in 1291 marking the first anniversary of Eleanor's death, 49 candlebearers were paid to walk in the public procession to commemorate each year of her life. This would date her birth to the year 1241.
Ponthieu was one of six feudal counties that eventually merged to become part of the Province of Picardy, in northern France. Its chief town was Abbeville. During the Hundred Years' War* (roughly 1337-1453), Ponthieu changed hands a number of times In late August of 1346, during his campaigns on French soil, Edward III of England reached the region of Ponthieu. While there, he restored the fortress at Crotoy that had been ruined. In April, 1369 Charles V of France conquered Ponthieu, and a month later declared war on England. In 1372 an English army under the leadership of Robert Knolles invaded Ponthieu, burning the city of Le Crotoy. Also during the Hundred Years' War; in 1435, Charles VII of France bribed Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, to break his alliance with the English in exchange for possession of Ponthieu.
*The Hundred Years' War was a series of wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet, also known as the House of Anjou, for the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings. The House of Valois claimed the title of King of France, while the Plantagenets claimed the thrones of both France and England. The Plantagenet kings were the 12th-century rulers of the kingdom of England, and had their roots in the French regions of Anjou and Normandy. The conflict lasted 116 years but was punctuated by several periods of peace, before it finally ended with the expulsion of the Plantagenets from France (except from the Pale of Calais) by the House of Valois. However, the war nearly ruined the Valois, while the Plantagenets enriched themselves with plunder. France suffered greatly from the war, since most of the conflict occurred in that country. The "war" was in fact a series of conflicts and is commonly divided into three or four phases: the Edwardian War (1337-1360), the Caroline War (1369-1389), the Lancastrian War (1415-1429), and the slow decline of Plantagenet fortunes after the appearance of Joan of Arc (1412-1431). Several other contemporary European conflicts were directly related to this conflict: the Breton War of Succession, the Castilian Civil War, the War of the Two Peters, and the 1383-1385 Crisis. The term "Hundred Years' War" was a later term invented by historians to describe the series of events [4]
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