Eleanor of Woodstock Eleanor of Woodstock Eleanor of Woodstock (18 June 1318 – 22 April 1355) was an English princess and Duchess consort of Guelders by marriage. She was regent of Guelders as the guardian of her minor son from 1343 until 1344. Eleanor was born at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire to King Edward II of England and his queen Isabella of France. She was a younger sister of Edward III of England and the second wife of Reginald II of Guelders, "the Black". Eleanor's maternal grandfather was famous King Philip the Fair. Eleanor was named after her paternal grandmother, Eleanor of Castile.
John of Gaunt scale and organisation to that of a monarch. He owned land in almost every county in England, a patrimony that produced a net income of between £8,000 and £10,000 a year. After the death in 1376 of his older brother Edward of Woodstock (also known as the "Black Prince"), John of Gaunt contrived to protect the religious reformer John Wycliffe, possibly to counteract the growing secular power of the church. However, John's ascendancy to political power coincided with widespread resentment of his influence. At a time when English forces encountered setbacks in the Hundred Years' War against France, and Edward