Should HENRY VII have been King of England and by extension were the Tudors the rightful rulers of England between 1485 and 1603? Furthermore, should Henry’s descendants still hold the throne today, or ought the crown to have gone to the descendants of George, Duke of Clarence, who was the brother of Edward IV? It’s a debate I see in the comments under my videos about the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors all the time, with some claiming that Henry took the throne by conquest (and so that’s that) and others maintaining that the true heirs are George’s descendants via his daughter, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, who was ultimately beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII.
It all hinges on what you believe constitutes a true right to the throne. Henry Tudor, the former Earl of Richmond, didn’t have a strong blood claim on the crown as he descended from Edward III’s third son, John of Gaunt, via an originally illegitimate line which was specifically barred from inheriting the realm. He only made his way to the crown by winning the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and deposing and killing Richard III in the process. However Richard had arguably usurped the throne too, taking it from his nephews Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury (the so-called Princes in the Tower) while his brother and the boys’ father had taken it not once, but twice, from Henry VI, who ultimately died in the Tower of London under very fishy circumstances. Go further back and you see that Henry VI’s grandfather, Henry Bolingbroke (aka Henry IV) had forcibly taken the crown from his cousin Richard II and if you travel all the way back to 1066, you have to concede that England was taken from the Anglo-Saxons by force by William the Conqueror, an illegitimate Frenchman. So does having the ‘right’ blood really matter that much? Is it not just a case of the winner takes it all? After all, if blood is all that matters then Henry’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, had a better claim than him, as did his wife, Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV. As for who should hold the throne now, does the fact that every monarch since Henry VII has Edward IV’s blood in their veins not trump the claims of the descendants of his brother? In this video from History Calling we unpick this complicated line of succession and ask did the victory of Henry VII at Bosworth reset the succession rules of English, later British history, or should we looking for a new royal family?
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THE WARS OF THE ROSES PLAYLIST [ Ссылка ]
TUDOR MONARCHS’ PLAYLIST
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THE LIFE OF HENRY VII (part 1)
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THE LIFE OF HENRY VII (part 2)
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LIFE OF MARGARET BEAUFORT, PART 1
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LIFE OF MARGARET BEAUFORT, PART 2
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WHAT HAPPENED TO EDWARD V AND RICHARD DUKE OF YORK?
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CAN DNA IDENTIFY THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER?
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READ MORE:
Chris Skidmore, Bosworth: the birth of the Tudors (London, reprint, 2014). [ Ссылка ]
S.B. Chrimes, Henry VII (New Haven & London, 2013). [ Ссылка ]
Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992) available at [ Ссылка ]
BUY OR RENT:
Britain’s Bloody Crown Presented by Dan Jones (2016) [ Ссылка ]
The White Queen (TV show, 2013) [ Ссылка ] (UK LINK) OR [ Ссылка ] (US LINK)
The King in the Carpark (2013). Documentary about the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton in 2012. [ Ссылка ]
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