second surviving son of King Edward III of England and ancestor of Edward IV.

Before he was four years of age Lionel was betrothed to Elizabeth (d. 1363), daughter and heiress of William de Burgh, earl of Ulster (d. 1333), and he entered nominally into possession of her great Irish inheritance. Having been named as his father's representative in England in 1345 and again in 1346, Lionel was created earl of Ulster and joined (in 1355) an expedition into France, but his chief energies were reserved for the affairs of Ireland. Appointed governor of that country, he landed at Dublin in September 1361. In November 1362 he was created duke of Clarence and in the following year his father made an abortive attempt to secure for him the succession to the crown of Scotland.

His efforts to secure an effective authority over his Irish lands were only moderately successful, and after holding a parliament at Kilkenny, which passed the celebrated Statute of Kilkenny in 1366, he threw up his task in disgust and returned to England. At Milan, on May 28, 1368, he married Violante, only daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, lord of Pavia, who brought him a rich dowry. Several months were then spent in festivities, during which Lionel was taken ill and died at Alba.

His only child, Philippa (1355–81), a daughter by his first wife, married in 1368 Edmund Mortimer (1352–81), 3rd earl of March, and through this union Clarence became an ancestor of Edward IV.