Philippa, 5th Countess of Ulster

Philippa of Clarence (16 August 1355 – 5 January 1382) was the Countess of Ulster suo jure.

Philippa was born in Eltham Palace, Kent, England on 16 August 1355. She was the daughter and only child of Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence and Elizabeth de Burgh, 4th Countess of Ulster.^[1] Her father was the second son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault.

Philippa married Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March in about 1368 at Reading Abbey,^[2] forging an alliance that would have far-reaching consequences in English history. During her own lifetime, Philippa was the heiress presumptive to her first cousin Richard II, and would be displaced in the succession by any children of the king. After her death in 1382, her rights passed on to her son, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. When Richard resigned his crown without issue on 29 September 1399, the rightful heir was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, whose father Roger had died the previous year. However, the throne was usurped by Richard and Philippa's first cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, an event that later precipitated the Wars of the Roses. As a result of her seniority in the line of succession to the throne of the Kingdom of England and her marriage into the powerful Mortimer family, her descendants eventually succeeded to the throne as the House of York under Edward IV.

She died, most likely of a fever, on 5 January 1382 in Cork, Ireland, and was buried in Wigmore, Herefordshire.

Marriage and issue

She had five children by her marriage to Edmund Mortimer:

Ancestry

Notes