Territorial evolution of France face up to the formidable challenge with which they were presented. The Duke of Normandy William the Conqueror became King of England in 1066 through his victory at Hastings over the Saxons. On the extinction of his male line of descent, his heir was the Duke of Anjou, Henry Plantagenet, grandson by his mother of Henry I of England. Two months before he ascended to the English throne, as Henry II, he married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, the richest heiress in the French kingdom and ex-wife of the King of France. The kings of France nevertheless, held some trump cards:
On the Death of His Grace, the Duke of Albemarle or History, indure." Indeed, the general consensus among both historians and the author of this ballad is that Monck was essential to the eventual unification of England, Scotland, and Ireland under the banner of Charles II: "Yet who like You, when Fate seem’d most to frown, / Sav’d an Usurp’d, Secur’d on Envied Crown, / And Three Great Kingdoms did from Ruine free, / Deserves those Honors which are pay’d to Thee." On the Death of His Grace, the Duke of Albemarle On the Death of His Grace, the Duke of Albemarle is an English broadside ballad published in 1670,