Was He A Usurper? King Edward IV: Conclusion.

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Duke of Lancaster, Duke of York, Edmund Crouchback, Henry Bolingbroke, House of Lancaster, House of York, King Edward IV of England and Lord of Ireland, King Henry IV of England, King Henry VI of England, Usurper, Wars of the Roses

This is the concluding post to whether or not King Edward IV of England, Lord of Ireland was a usurper. I took the long and winding road through many posts to demonstrate that King Edward IV had a much more superior claim to the throne than King Henry VI.

For a long time I did not consider King Edward IV a usurper. However, over the last several years I have run into many other historians who do consider King Edward IV a usurper and I have changed my mind.

The main reasons why I did not consider Edward IV a usurper for many years was because his assuming the crown restored the superior claim to the throne via primogenitor that was broken when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne.

In other words, I viewed that when Edward IV became king he restored the line of hereditary succession to how it would have been had Henry IV never usurped the throne. For myself there was a sense of justice with the superior claim of Edward IV being restored which negated any claim of illegality

Or so I thought.

Edward IV took the throne during the Wars of the Roses which is generally considered the conflict for the crown that began with the reign of Henry VI and concluded with Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond becoming King Henry VII after defeating King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth field in August of 1485.

We have seen however, that the seeds for the War of the Roses were actually sown a few generations prior with the usurpation of Henry Bolingbroke as King Henry IV who stole the crown from King Richard II.

It is clear that Henry IV was a usurper. The definition of a usurper being someone who does not have the legal right to the throne. King Henry IV tried to legitimize his succession by outrageously claiming that Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster and Earl of Leicester (1245 – 1296) the second son of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence, was actually the eldest son of King Henry III and that King Edward I was, in reality, a younger son of King Henry III and therefore all Kings of England from Edward I to Richard II were usurpers.

In this scenario Henry Bolingbroke claimed that his right to the throne stemmed from his descent from his mother and not his father.

Henry Bolingbrook descended twice from King Henry III. The first line of descent was through the male line from King Edward I through to Edward III who was Henry Bolingbrook’s grandfather via his father, John of Gaunt fourth son of King Edward III of England.

The second line of descent was through the female line from King Henry III through to Bolingbrook’s mother, Blanche of Lancaster, a great-great granddaughter of King Henry III via Henry III’s second son Edmund Crouchback Earl of Lancaster.

This is the line which Henry Bolingbroke asserted gave him hereditary right to the throne. Again, Bolingbroke, erroneously claimed that Edmund Crouchback was the eldest son of King Henry III and not King Edward I.

The usurpation of the throne by Henry Bolingbrook raises an interesting question for the House of Lancaster. Namely, when a king clearly usurps the throne how does that illegal reign affect the next king, the son and heir?

In other words, since Henry IV was a usurper shouldn’t that technically bar or disqualify his son, in this case King Henry V, from legally assuming the throne when it came his time to succeed?

Apparently not. As they say, when there is a revolution or a war, those that win are able to rewrite the rules. When Henry IV died on March 20, 1413 his eldest son succeeded to the throne is King Henry V despite the fact that there were others who had the superior hereditary claim.

When the young King Henry VI succeeded to the throne 9 years later upon the death of his father in 1422 he was regarded as the legal King of England.

Therefore, despite Edward IV and his father Richard, 3rd Duke of York, having had the superior hereditary claim to the throne; this fact was irrelevant because King Henry VI was the legal monarch of England.

So when Edward, 4th Duke of York, took the throne from King Henry VI basically by force, without any intervention of Parliament to legalize an altered succession, his assumption of the throne as King Edward IV of England was indeed a userpation.

Was He A Usurper? King Edward IV of England.Part VII.

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3rd Duke of York, Cecily Neville, Duke of Lancaster, House of York, John of Gaunt, King Edward IV of England and Lord of Ireland, King Henry VI of England and Lord of Ireland, Margaret of Anjou, Richard Plantagenet, Wars of the Roses

Birth and ancestry

The future King Edward IV was born on April 28, 1442 at Rouen in Normandy, eldest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. Until his father’s death, he was known as the Earl of March. In previous entries I’ve outlined Edward’s descent several ways from King Edward III. However, his mother was also a direct descendant of King Edward III.

Cecily Neville was the youngest of the 22 children of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, in this case born to his second wife Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland. Her paternal grandparents were John Neville, 3rd Baron Neville de Raby, and Maud Percy, daughter of Henry de Percy, 2nd Baron Percy.

Her maternal grandparents were John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, and his third wife Katherine Swynford. John of Gaunt was the third surviving son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault.

She was the aunt of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, one of the leading peers and military commanders of his generation, a grand-aunt of Queen Consort Anne Neville, who married her son Richard III, and a great-great-grand-aunt of Queen Consort Catherine Parr, sixth wife of her great-grandson, King Henry VIII.

Cecily Neville increased her son Edward’s already strong claim to the throne. This claim was strengthened in 1447, when Richard Plantagenet 3rd Duke York became heir to the childless King Henry VI on the death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.

Allegations of illegitimacy were discounted at the time as politically inspired, and by later historians. Edward and his siblings George, Duke of Clarence, and Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, were physically very similar, all three being tall and blonde, in contrast to the Duke of York, who was short and dark. His youngest brother, who later became King Richard III, closely resembled their father.

Early life

Edward grew up amidst a background of economic decline at home, and military defeat abroad, exacerbated by a weak and corrupt central government.

Both he and his younger brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, were born in Rouen, where their father, the Richard, 3rd Duke of York, served as governor of English lands in France until 1445, when he was replaced by Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset. Edward and Edmund were probably brought up at Ludlow Castle, in the Welsh Marches, where the Duke of York was the dominant landowner.

English politics became dominated by the struggle between the Yorkists and supporters of the House of Lancaster, or Lancastrians, notably the Duke of Somerset, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and King Henry VI’s wife, Margaret of Anjou.

However, the birth of King Henry VI’s son, Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, in October 1453 created a viable Lancastrian figurehead, and the 1450s was dominated by political conflict between the two factions.

By the age of 17, Edward, the Earl of March was a political and military leader in his own right; after their defeat at the Battle of Ludford Bridge in 1459, his father and brother Edmund fled to Ireland, while the Earls of March, Salisbury and Warwick made their way to Calais. Edward’s name appears alongside those of his father, Warwick and Salisbury in widely circulated manifestoes declaring their quarrel was only with Henry’s evil counsellors.

In 1460, Edward crossed the English Channel with Warwick and Salisbury, and marched into London. At Northampton in July, he commanded one of three divisions in a Yorkist victory that led to the capture of Henry VI.

The Duke of York crossed from Ireland to England; on entering the Palace of Westminster, he declared himself king, a claim greeted by the assembled lords in silence. The Act of Accord agreed a compromise, whereby Henry VI remained king, but York and his descendants were designated his successors.

The implications of removing the legally accepted heir to the throne created substantial opposition to the Yorkist administration; in late 1460, Edward was given his first independent command and sent to deal with a Lancastrian insurgency in Wales.

Warwick remained in London, while York, Salisbury, and Edmund marched north to suppress another in Yorkshire; all three were killed following defeat at Wakefield on December 30 leaving Edward as the new head of the Yorkist party.

On February 2,1461, Edward won a hard-fought victory at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire. The battle was preceded by a meteorological phenomenon known as parhelion, or three suns, which he took as his emblem, the “Sun in splendour”.

However, this was offset by Warwick’s defeat at the Second Battle of St Albans on February 17, the Lancastrians regaining custody of Henry VI. The two met in London, where Edward was hastily crowned King Edward IV of England before marching north, where the two sides met at the Battle of Towton.

The battle was fought on March 29 in the middle of a snowstorm, it was the bloodiest battle ever to take place on English soil, and ended in a decisive Yorkist victory.

Queen Margaret fled to Scotland with her son Edward of Westminster, while the new king Edward IV returned to London for his coronation. King Henry VI remained at large for over a year, but was caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London. There was little point in killing him while his son remained alive, since this would have transferred the Lancastrian claim from a frail captive King to a Prince who was young and free.

Was He A Usurper? King Edward IV of England. Part I.

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5th Earl of March, Anne Mortimer, Edmund Mortimer, House of Lancaster, House of York, Joan of Kent, King Edward IV of England and Lord of Ireland, King Henry IV of England, King Henry V of England, King Henry VI of England, King Richard II of England, Usurper, Wars of the Roses

With the usurpation of the throne of England by Henry Bolingbroke as King Henry IV of England and Lord of Ireland this event brought instability to the Monarchy and planted the seeds for further usurpations during the period of the Wars of the Roses.

To get to the reign of King Edward IV of England we need to examine the complex genealogy of the descendants of King Edward III of England and the ancestry of King Edward IV.

The heir presumptive to childless King Richard II of England was Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, a great-grandson of King Edward III’s second surviving son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence.

Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March

Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, was born at New Forest, Westmeath, one of his family’s Irish estates, on November 6, 1391, the son of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, and Eleanor Holland. He had a younger brother, Roger (1393 – c. 1413), and two sisters: Anne Mortimer; and Eleanor, who married Sir Edward de Courtenay (d. 1418), and had no issue.

Edmund Mortimer’s mother was Alianore Holland, born October 13, 1370 in Upholland, Lancashire, as the eldest child of Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, and Lady Alice FitzAlan, who herself was the daughter of Richard de Arundel, 10th Earl of Arundel, and his second wife, Eleanor of Lancaster, daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster, grandson of King Henry III.

Alianore Holland’s paternal grandparents were Thomas Holland, 1st Earl of Kent, and Joan of Kent, mother of King Richard II by her third marriage to Edward, the Black Prince. As such, Alianore’s father was a maternal half-brother to King Richard II.

Incidentally, Joan of Kent, was the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent (1301-1330), by his wife, Margaret Wake, 3rd Baroness Wake of Liddell. Edmund of Woodstock was the sixth son of King Edward I of England by his second wife, Margaret of France, daughter of King Philippe III of France.

Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March was thus a descendant of King Henry III and King Edward I and a half-great-nephew of Richard II through his mother, and more importantly a direct descendant of King Edward III through his paternal grandmother Philippa of Clarence, the only child of King Edward III’s second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence.

Because King Richard II had no issue, initially Edmund’s father, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March, was heir presumptive during his lifetime, and at his death in Ireland on July 20, 1398 his claim to the throne passed to his eldest son, Edmund, 5th Earl of March.

Thus in terms of male primogeniture, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March was heir to the throne over and above the House of Lancaster, including the children of Edward III’s third son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

However, on September 30, 1399, when Edmund Mortimer was not yet eight years of age, his fortunes changed entirely. King Richard II was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, the new Duke of Lancaster, who became King Henry IV and had his own son, the future King Henry V, recognized as heir apparent at his first Parliament.

The King put the young Edmund, 5th Earl of March and his brother Roger into the custody of Sir Hugh Waterton at Windsor and Berkhamsted castles, but they were treated honourably, and for part of the time brought up with the King Henry IV’s own children, John and Philippa.

The White Rose, Symbol of the House of York

Edmund Mortimer’s claim to the throne was the basis of rebellions and plots against Henry IV and his son Henry V, and was later taken up by the House of York in the Wars of the Roses, though Edmund Mortimer himself was an important and loyal vassal of Henry V and Henry VI.

Edmund Mortimer’s sisters, Anne and Eleanor, who were in the care of their mother until her death in 1405, were not well treated by Henry IV, and were described as ‘destitute’ after her death.

On his accession in 1413, King Henry V set Edmund Mortimer at liberty, and on April 8, 1413, the day before the new King’s coronation, Edmund Mortimer and his brother Roger were made Knights of the Bath.

King Henry V was succeeded by his nine-month-old son, King Henry VI, and on December 9, 1422 Edmund Mortimer was appointed to the Regency Council of the regency government, 1422–1437.

On May 9, 1423 he was appointed the King’s lieutenant in Ireland for nine years, but at first exercised his authority through a deputy, Edward Dantsey, Bishop of Meath, and remained in England.

However, after a violent quarrel with the King’s uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and the execution of his kinsman, Sir John Mortimer, Edmund Mortimer was “sent out of the way to Ireland”. He arrived there in the autumn of 1424, and on January 18 or 19, 1425 died of plague at Trim Castle.

Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March left no issue and his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, the eldest surviving son of his sister, Anne Mortimer and her husband, Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, had a better claim to the throne of the English kings of the House of Lancaster.

It was her line of descent which gave the Yorkist dynasty its claim to the throne. Anne was grandmother of kings Edward IV and Richard III.

Her dynastic marriage with Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, another descendant of King Edward III, increased her family’s claim to the throne of England. That will be addressed in the next entry.