Philippa of Hainault - Later Years and Death

Later Years and Death

Always buxom and matronly, Philippa's figure had become stout in her later years. She had given birth to fourteen children and outlived nine of them. Three of her children died of the Black Death in 1348.

On 15 August 1369, Philippa died of an illness similar to dropsy in Windsor Castle at the age of fifty-five. She was given a state funeral six months later on 29 January 1370 and interred at Westminster Abbey. Her tomb, placed on the south side of the Chapel of Edward the Confessor, displays her alabaster effigy which was executed by sculptor Jean de Liège.

By all accounts, her forty-year marriage to Edward had been happy, despite his adulterous affair with her lady-in-waiting, Alice Perrers, during the latter part of it.

Read more about this topic:  Philippa Of Hainault

Famous quotes containing the words years and/or death:

    There had been years of Passion—scorching, cold,
    And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,
    Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    You know, if this is Venus, or some other strange planet, we’re liable to run into some high-domed characters with green blood in their veins who’ll blast at us with their atomic death rayguns, and there we’ll be with these—these poor old-fashioned shootin’ irons.
    Edward L. Bernds (b. 1911)