When Henry of Bolingbroke began his campaign to reclaim his father’s land (and ultimately the throne), he started with a small army that quickly grew with the support of the other barons and nobles who felt threatened by Richard II’s recent actions. Henry Tudor, a Lancaster, who becomes Henry VII after the Battle of Bosworth While there are many similarities to the two occurances, there are significant differences that would distinguish what is a usurpation (which is seen as unfavorable, because it would be going against the will of God) and conquest (which was been accepted centuries before). Some may contest to this argument by comparing it to the usurpation of Richard II by Henry of Bolingbroke. In fact, this was a major conparison that Tudor would use to legitimize his use of force. At the time, right by conquest was still widely accepted, with the most famous example being William the Conqueror and his conquest 400 years earlier. Henry Tudor supported his bloodline claim by defeating Richard III in the the Battle of Bosworth and declaring his legitimacy through right by conquest. Therefore, in the eyes of the supporters for the Beauforts, it made sense for Henry Tudor to have a claim for the throne. This is important to Henry’s claim, because after all the male Lancasters died out supporters of the branch saw the Beaufort as the successors. Now going past a generation, Margaret Beaufort (mother of Henry Tudor) became the head of the Beaufort house after her uncles and brothers passed away without any legitimate heirs. This meant that John Beaufort, Henry Tudor’s maternal grandfather, was in line for the the throne after John of Gaunt’s legitimate children from his two previous marriages. The house (and children) of Beaufort werr legitimized as a sub-branch of the Lancaster by Richard II and Pope Boniface IX on separate occasions, after John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford got married. Although many claim that Henry was not of royal descent, that is technically not correct. Henry Tudor’s main blood claim was through his mother, Margaret Beaufort – heiress of the house of Beaufort. Now going back to Henry Tudor and how he fits into all of this. The main thing to get from understanding this family tree, is that based on the order of Edward III’s children, the Lancaster branch would be considered senior to the York branch. Henry of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt (aka: a Lancaster), was the one usurped Richard II. Richard II, the famous child-king, came to the throne because he was the son of Edward III’s eldest son (his father, Edward the Black passed away before Edward III did so through primogeniture Richard II became heir). The Lancaster and York branches started from the third and fourth son of Edward III. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was the third son of Edward III, while Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, was the fourth son.įrom there you can start to see some people we’ve mentioned in class before. So to clear that up first, let’s figure out where the Lancaster and the York branches come from first and how that adds credibility to Tudor’s claim. One of the reasons why it is difficult to understand the messy successions between Richard II to Henry Tudor is because one must understand the Plantagenet family tree first. Of course there were other factors that Henry Tudor used before and throughout his reign, but since we did get a chance to discuss most of those in class, I won’t touch on those too much. There are 3 main areas of legitimacy I will focus on in this blog: the bloodline, the conquest, and the marriage. Although we did not spend too much time debating the legitimacy of Tudor’s rise to the throne, I would like to talk more about it here and shed some light onto his claims. In my opinion, one of the most interesting parts – and highly contested parts at that – of British history is the rise of Henry Tudor. I felt like the textbook did not do a great job on highlighting the multiple reasons and ways Henry Tudor legitimized his throne – understandably so, since they were for the idea that the War of the Roses was a direct aftermath of Richard II’s deposition and it would be going against that theory if they considered Henry’s win over Richard III as a conquest and not a usurpation.
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