The Rise and Fall of a Medieval Family

A historian’s fascinating account of two centuries in the lives of the powerful Despensers, famed for tragedy and scandal in medieval England. The Despensers were a baronial English family who rose to great prominence in the reign of Edward II (1307-27) when Hugh Despenser the Younger became the king’s chamberlain, favorite, and perhaps, lover. He and his father Hugh the Elder wielded great influence, and Hugh the Younger’s greed and tyranny brought down a king for the first time in English hist