English wine cask units the mediæval French and Italian "botte") or pipe was half a tun, or 1008 pints. Tradition has it that George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV of England, was drowned in a butt of malmsey on 18 February 1478. (However, Josephine Tey in "The Daughter of Time" suggests that "drowned in a butt of malmsey" means rather that George, Duke of Clarence, drank himself to death rather than literally drowning in a container of wine.) In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims he has received "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado".
Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence English royal family and was the mother of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York. Even though Richard was a descendant in the male line of Edward III, the House of York based its claim to the English throne on descent through the female line from Lionel to establish a lasting blood line. (Edward's first-born son, the Black Prince, had no legitimate descendants past his two sons Edward of Angoulême and King Richard II.) Lionel was the ancestor of Kings Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III and all later British monarchs except for Henry VII, whose wife Elizabeth of York was