Apparently an historian, Michael Jones, has discovered that in his opinion, a past king was illegitimate. He thinks that the correct and legitimate line, when traced down, results in a forklift driver from an outback town in Australia.
Now, in between fits of giggles, I was wondering if any posters knowledgable in royalty, lineage, history, etc could verify whether this is correct. Was King Edward IV illegitimate ?
Secondly, if this is true, I wouldn’t think anything would change, particularly since the “real” king doesn’t want anything to do with the whole royalty thing. But if he did wish to challenge the current royals for the throne, what would happen ?
Nothing would happen. It’s been a settled political and legal fact since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that Parliament can regulate the succession to the throne. Parliament has regulated it by the Act of Settlement of 1701, which confines the throne to Sophie, Electress of Hanover (1601-1714) “and the heirs of her body, being Protestants”. Hence anybody now claiming the throne would have to establish that he was Sophie’s closest Protestant heir. Edward IV long predated Sophie, the Act of Succession and the Glorious Revolution, and any questions about the legitimacy of monarchs subsequent to him would have been resolved by the Act of Settlement.
Edward IV was succeeded, briefly, by Edward V, and then by Richard III … who were the last of the Plantagenet kings. Richard III was overthrown by the first of the Tudors, Henry VII, who based his claim to the throne on his descent from the House of Lancaster* - to which the legitimacy or otherwise of Edward IV is not relevant (different branch of the family).
UDS is also right about the Act of Settlement resolving any mediaeval loose ends about the succession.
(*Actually, his claim to the throne was de jure belli et de jure Lancastriae - “by right of conquest and by right of Lancastrian blood”. The “right of conquest”, at least, would be difficult to argue with.)
the beauty of the English/British Monarchy is that it has been through so many bloodlines in its time that with a bit of digging you can trace it to pretty much anybody.
Only a very slight highjack: I asked a slimilar thing about any current Stuart Claimants to the throne and got a very thorough response – some of those responses are apropos here
I have just watched a recording of the TV programme which traced the Plantagenet line after Dr Micheal Jones discovered documentry evidence supporting the claim that Edward IV was illegitimate. The argument is as follows…
Henry VII’s claim was through his link to the House of Lancaster. However, his line was illegitimate as it comes through a liason between John of Gaunt (his Great Grandfather) and his mistress Catherine. This makes his claim very weak indeed and should have barred him from the throne. Henry knew this so he acted to strengthen his claim by marriage to Elizabeth of York - daughter of Edward IV. The crux is that the legitimacy of her line is now thrown into doubt and the marriage to Henry should not be relevant. As a result other, more distant parts of the Plantagenet line had a true claim to the throne.
The argument runs that Catherine herself had an affair with another man whilst John of Gaunt was away on campaign.
Jones discovered the official birthdate documents of Edward IV in Rouen cathedral, and given the gestation time, John of GAaunt could not possibly be have been the father, as he was away to the wars from late June through to early September.
Circumstancial evidence appears to back this up, as the birth of Catherine’s second child (legitimate) was celebrated in a manner far more befitting a firstborn, and EdwardsIV birth was apperantly a hardly celebrated occasion at all, unfortunately that child died very young.
Thus not only was Henry VII claim through John of Gaunt already weak, it was in fact non-existant.
Medieval histroy is full of purported miracles, but an 11 month pregnancy is not one of them.
It’s not exactly news that Henry VII’s claim on the throne was weak. He wasn’t even the legitimate Lancastrian claimant (I believe that would have been King Juao II of Portugal, a direct and legitimate descendant of John of Gaunt).
Henry claimed to rule, as Steve Wright points out, by conquest (which he did) and by “right of Lancastrian blood” (which he had, though weakly). By marrying Elizabeth of York – who had a legitimate Yorkist claim (a direct decendant of the Duke of York under Edward III). Since England had been fighting over this for years, everyone was happy to take the opportunity and give it a rest.
It’s interesting that the claim that Edward IV was illegimate was exactly the claim made by Richard III in justifying his own reign. Richard’s mother (still alive at the time) vehemently denied it (she was Edward’s mother, too, so was in a position to know) and was somewhat peeved that her son called her a whore. Richard quickly withdrew the claim in favor of one that claimed Edward’s marriage was bigamous.
If there had been any truth in the story that Edward was illegitimate, Richard would have been quick to continue using it as a pretext for his reign.
The act of Titulus Regius passed by Richard III disqualified Edward IV’s children from succession, on the grounds (revealed by a bishop, named Stillington) that his marriage was technically bigamous, due to an earlier marriage contract with … ummm … was the name Eleanor Butler? Rings a bell.
Titulus Regius was repealed by Henry VII, thereby re-legitimizing Edward IV’s children … many people have claimed, over the years, that this means Henry VII was much more likely than Richard III to have murdered the Princes in the Tower (since, by the repeal of Titulus Regius, Edward V automatically became legitimate heir and king again, or would have been if he hadn’t been conveniently dead.) I think, ultimately, we come back to the same point; Henry VII’s claim to the throne was legitimate because he said it was, and he had the troops to back it up …
Pro-Richard III types have been known to argue that the account of Richard accusing his mother of adultery was made up after the fact by pro-Tudor chroniclers out to blacken Richard’s name … it’s interesting to find out it might have had some basis in fact.
This stuff has been around since Horace Walpole’s Historic Doubts during the 1700s. There have been a number of excellent books arguing one side or another of the Mystery of the Princes in the Tower and the Ricardian claims. I recommend strongly Josephine Tey’s The Daugheter of Time, a more-or-less historical mystery novel in which a hospitalized modern detective applies his detecting skills while recuperating to the mystery.
FWIW, there’s an old tradition in our family that we’re illegitimately descended from Richard III, whose illegitimate son, John of Pontefract, used Richard’s badge of the White Boar until Henry VII caught and executed him at about age 19. However, about twenty years later, the first known ancestor of my family, William de Wildebore, becomes Mayor of Pontefract, seemingly out of nowhere. Family tradition holds that he was John’s son, and hence among the local gentry by right of birth (the heir of a royal bastard traidtionally being accorded noble status).