The Last English King

Product Information

Charles, John Foster Kirk, History of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, (J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1863), 36. Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge, Henry V: the Typical Mediaeval Hero, C. P. Putnam's Sons, London, New York, 1901. The Tudors descended in the female line from John Beaufort, one of the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt (third surviving son of Edward III), by Gaunt's long-term mistress Katherine Swynford. Those descended from English monarchs only through an illegitimate child would normally have no claim on the throne, but the situation was complicated when Gaunt and Swynford eventually married in 1396 (25 years after John Beaufort's birth). In view of the marriage, the church retroactively declared the Beauforts legitimate via a papal bull the same year. [61] Parliament did the same in an Act in 1397. [62] A subsequent proclamation by John of Gaunt's legitimate son, King Henry IV, also recognised the Beauforts' legitimacy, but declared them ineligible ever to inherit the throne. [63] Nevertheless, the Beauforts remained closely allied with Gaunt's other descendants, the Royal House of Lancaster.

During his last years, James lived as an austere penitent. [150] He wrote a memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England, specifying that Catholics should possess one Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the Treasury, the Secretary at War, with the majority of the officers in the army. [151] While the position of King of France was restored between 1814 and 1848, subsequent British monarchs did not pursue the claim to the French throne, whether of the Kingdom of France or of the French Empire. Maclagan, Michael; Louda, Jiří (1981). Line of Succession: Heraldry of the Royal Families of Europe. London: Macdonald & Co. p.17. ISBN 0-85613-276-4.Henry I left no legitimate male heirs, his son William Adelin having died in the White Ship disaster of 1120. This ended the direct Norman line of kings in England. Henry named his eldest daughter, Matilda (Countess of Anjou by her second marriage to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, as well as widow of her first husband, Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor), as his heir. Before naming Matilda as heir, he had been in negotiations to name his nephew Stephen of Blois as his heir. When Henry died, Stephen travelled to England, and in a coup d'etat had himself crowned instead of Matilda. The period which followed is known as The Anarchy, as parties supporting each side fought in open warfare both in Britain and on the continent for the better part of two decades. James allowed Roman Catholics to occupy the highest offices of his kingdoms, and received at his court the papal nuncio, Ferdinando d'Adda, the first representative from Rome to London since the reign of Mary I. [99] Edward Petre, James's Jesuit confessor, was a particular object of Anglican ire. [100] When the King's Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland, began replacing office-holders at court with "Papist" favourites, James began to lose the confidence of many of his Anglican supporters. [101] Sunderland's purge of office-holders even extended to the King's brothers-in-law (the Hydes) and their supporters. [101] Roman Catholics made up no more than one-fiftieth of the English population. [102] In May 1686, James sought to obtain a ruling from the English common-law courts that showed he had the power to dispense with Acts of Parliament. He dismissed judges who disagreed with him on this matter, as well as the Solicitor General, Heneage Finch. [103] The case of Godden v. Hales affirmed his dispensing power, [104] with eleven out of the twelve judges ruling in the king's favour. [105]

Anne "made the greatest single impact upon his thinking" and that she converted shortly after the Restoration, "almost certainly before her husband". [48] The future Louis VIII of France briefly won two-thirds of England over to his side from May 1216 to September 1217 at the conclusion of the First Barons' War against King John. The then-Prince Louis landed on the Isle of Thanet, off the north Kent coast, on 21 May 1216, and marched more or less unopposed to London, where the streets were lined with cheering crowds. At a grand ceremony in St. Paul's Cathedral, on 2 June 1216, in the presence of numerous English clergy and nobles, the Mayor of London and Alexander II of Scotland, Prince Louis was proclaimed King Louis of England (though not crowned). In less than a month, "King Louis" controlled more than half of the country and enjoyed the support of two-thirds of the barons. However, he suffered military defeat at the hands of the English fleet. By signing the Treaty of Lambeth in September 1217, Louis gained 10,000 marks and agreed he had never been the legitimate king of England. [44] "King Louis" remains one of the least known kings to have ruled over a substantial part of England. [45] Name

Main articles: Monmouth Rebellion and Argyll's Rising James portrayed c. 1685 in his role as head of the army, wearing a general officer's state coat Historical analysis of James II has been somewhat revised since Whig historians, led by Lord Macaulay, cast James as a cruel absolutist and his reign as "tyranny which approached to insanity". [162] Subsequent scholars, such as G. M. Trevelyan (Macaulay's great-nephew) and David Ogg, while more balanced than Macaulay, still characterised James as a tyrant, his attempts at religious tolerance as a fraud, and his reign as an aberration in the course of British history. [163] In 1892, A. W. Ward wrote for the Dictionary of National Biography that James was "obviously a political and religious bigot", although never devoid of "a vein of patriotic sentiment"; "his conversion to the church of Rome made the emancipation of his fellow-catholics in the first instance, and the recovery of England for catholicism in the second, the governing objects of his policy." [164] The dual monarchy of England and France existed during the latter phase of the Hundred Years' War when Charles VII of France and Henry VI of England disputed the succession to the throne of France. It commenced on 21 October 1422 upon the death of King Charles VI of France, who had signed the Treaty of Troyes which gave the French crown to his son-in-law Henry V of England and Henry's heirs. It excluded King Charles's son, the Dauphin Charles, who by right of primogeniture was the heir to the Kingdom of France. Although the Treaty was ratified by the Estates-General of France, the act was a contravention of the French law of succession which decreed that the French crown could not be alienated. Henry VI, son of Henry V, became king of both England and France and was recognized only by the English and Burgundians until 1435 [2] as King Henry II of France. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] He was crowned King of France on 16 December 1431. [9]

Van der Kiste, John (2021). James II and the first modern revolution. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. [ ISBNmissing] Johnson, Richard R. (1978). "Politics Redefined: An Assessment of Recent Writings on the Late Stuart Period of English History, 1660 to 1714." William and Mary Quarterly 35 (4): 691–732. doi: 10.2307/1923211 The Act of Union 1707 declared the joining of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to a new Kingdom of Great Britain. The Kingdom had four Monarchs until 1801. They also styled themselves Queen/King of France; however, none of them made any official move to depose Louis XIV and his successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI, or the First French Republic that followed them: Prince Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein, born 24 May 1995 in London – the first heir in the Jacobite line born in the British Isles since James III and VIII, The Old Pretender, in 1688. Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of King Henry VI, Phoenix Mill, 2004, pp; 17,18,19,217. ISBN 0 7509 3777 7

British Monarchs

Frieda, Leonie (2003). Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (first Harper Perennial edition 2006). Harper Perennial. p.171.