ON June 30, 1267, Edmund Crouchback, the second son of Henry III, was effectively created the Earl of Lancaster, an event that has resonances 750 years later in 21st-century Britain.
The earldom was the greatest in a series of gifts that gave Edmund possession of a vast estate; at his death, he possessed 632 distinct properties spread across 25 English counties—with particular concentrations in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Staffordshire—and Wales. As a mark of its outstanding scale, this patrimony was transformed into a Dukedom in 1351. So valuable was it that, when the 2nd Duke, Henry Bolingbroke, usurped the Crown in 1399, there were some optimists who hoped that his independent income would be sufficient to free the kingdom from the burden of taxation. They were disappointed, as…
