I know that Richard III died at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and was suceeded on the English throne by Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII. Right?
What, if any, was the family relationship between the two men?
They were distantly related, both being descendents of Edward III. However, that was not the basis upon which Henry succeeded Richard. Richard was a member of the Yorkist line (from Edward III’s son Edmund of York) while Henry was connected to the royal Plantagenet family only through the Beauforts, a legitimized bastard line (from Edward III’s son John of Gaunt and his mistress).
Considering the the five or so generations between them and Edward III, I suppose that would make them 5th cousins or something like that.
Henry Tudor’s claim to the throne was very flimsy indeed and was legitimized, if that’s the word, only on the field of battle.
According to this site – http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~humphrys/FamTree/Royal/famous.descents.html – Edward III is the ancestor not only of Henry VII and Richard III but also of approximately 80 percent of the current population of England and a large chunk of the population of the United States.
Henry VII descended from Edward III’s third son, John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster), through a rather convoluted way. Richard III descended through Edward III second son (The Duke of Clarence) and his fourth son (Duke of York).
The Yorkist claimed descent from the Duke of Clarence put them in a more legitimate position. The Lancastrians said that Salic Law didn’t allow descent through the female line (The Duke of Clarence’s daughter), though, of course, all Plantagenets were descended through a female line themselves.
Henry claimed the throne due to right of conquest, not right of blood. He was not the actual Lancastrian heir, which at the time was King John II of Portugal. John wasn’t interested in the English throne, and wouldn’t have been a popular candidate, anyway, so Henry Tudor announced he was the legitimate Lancastrian claimant.
Edward III reigned from 1327 to 1377. He had five sons who survived to adulthood. The eldest was Edward the Black Prince, who died the year before his father. His son became Richard II, and reigned from 1377 to 1399, but left no children.
Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, was the second son. He died in 1368, leaving one daughter, Philippa, who married Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March. His son Roger Mortimer was Richard II’s legal heir, but was executed the year before Richard died. He left a son Edmund, who died childless, and a daughter Anne, more on whom below.
Edward III’s third son, John of Gaunt, time-honored Duke of Lancaster, died in 1399, having married three times. His son by his first marriage had been exiled during Richard II’s reign, and returned to England, allegedly at first to reclaim his Lancastrian inheritance. But he instigated a rebellion against Richard II, who was for a variety of reasons not well liked, and became Henry IV. His eldest son became Henry V, who conquered France and married Catherine, the daughter of the King of France, attempting to combine the realms in that way. When he died, he left an infant son, who became Henry VI, an ineffectual and part-time catatonic person in whose name various people governed.
John had a mistress, Catherine Swynford, whom he married after the birth of their illegitimate children, who received the surname Beaufort. The eldest of these was John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, whose son, also John, became 1st Duke of Somerset. His daughter and heiress was Margaret Beaufort.
Edward III’s fourthson, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, died in 1402, leaving two sons. The eldest died in 1415 without surviving progeny; the younger, Richard, Earl of Cambridge, died the same year, after having married Anne Mortimer, heiress to the Clarence line (noted above). Their son Richard became Duke of York and heir of line to the English throne, though it was actually held by Henry VI. It was a commonplace in the 1450s that the childless and weak Henry would be succeeded by the well-liked and forceful Richard.
However, Henry had been married when young to Marguerite d’Anjou, and in 1453 she surprised the world by giving birth to a son, Edward. There were allegations at the time that her close friend and supporter, who was one of the Beauforts, was actually the father of the child, whom Henry, having one of his out-of-touch-with-reality phases, wasn’t even aware had been born.
Richard married Cicely Neville, whose mother was yet another Beaufort and whose father was a great northern noble. They had four sons: Edmund, Edward, George, and Richard.
The birth of Edward to Henry and Marguerite led to the idea that the Lancastrian line would continue, and the supporters of the House of York were angry about this. Battles broke out, and in one of them, in late 1460, Richard of York and his eldest son were killed. His second son Edward then claimed the throne as Edward IV, and deposed Henry, who was put in comfortable confinement.
Edward reigned from 1461 to 1471, when Marguerite rallied the Lancastrians to a successful revolt that put Henry back on the throne briefly – at which point Edward returned from Flanders, where his sister was duchess consort, with an army, and reclaimed the throne. Implicated in this whole mess were Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, called the Kingmaker from his machinations, and George of Clarence, Edward’s younger brother, who had made common cause with the Lancastrians, apparently with the idea that he could then overthrow them and take the throne. During or immediately after this episode, a variety of people were executed or slain, including Edward the heir to Lancaster, Henry VI, Neville, and George of Clarence.
Meanwhile Edward IV had married Elizabeth Woodville, a woman of relatively poor circumstances with a widespread and greedy family. They had a number of children, notably two sons, Edward and Richard, and the eldest daughter Elizabeth.
When Edward IV died in 1483, his eldest son, aged 13, became kind as Edward V, and his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest of the York boys, was named his guardian. This did not sit well with the Woodvilles, who thought that they ought to be his guardians – and they got quashed.
But meanwhile, years before, Catherine of France, widow of Henry V, had remarried a Welsh courtier named Owen Tudor, and their son Edmund Tudor was named Earl of Richmond. Edmund married Margaret Beaufort, heir of line of the Beaufort lineage among the Lancastrians, and their son Henry succeeded his father as Earl of Richmond.
Richard of Gloucester, Lord Guardian of the Realm under the young Edward V, then circulated the information that his brother had earlier and secretly taken marriage vows with the now-deceased Eleanor Butler, making his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid, and illegitimating all their children, including the current king. He was then asked to take the throne as Richard III and did do so, putting the former Edward V and his brother in comfortable confinement in the Tower of London.
Two years later, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond landed in Wales and rallied an army of Welshmen and Lancastrians behind him, killing Richard III at Bosworth Field, and assuming the throne as Henry VII. He in turn married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV, “uniting the claims of York and Lancaster.” Their second son became Henry VIII, whose reign is a whole different story.
Either Richard III or Henry VII had the two Princes in the Tower executed – the story that they had been executed only spread about the land after the Battle of Bosworth through the influence of Bishop Morton of Ely, who was the tutor of Thomas More, writer of the major account about it.
Hmph. And people think Coronation Street and EastEnders are British soap opera…
Well done, Polycarp
You know, I just covered this a few weeks ago in my AP European History class, and** Polycarp’s** summation is so much more detailed and…succinct than mine was.
(sound of serial numbers being filed off and new paint applied…)
Next year my lesson will be better! 
Henry VIII’s mother was Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV of England, brother to Richard III. She married Henry’s father Henry VII (Bolingbroke) who defeated Richard at Bosworth Field, …so that means Richard III was the Great-Uncle of Henry VIII.
Yes, bravo!
Yes, but were any of them zombies?
(You’ve replied to a seven year old thread.)
Wouldn’t it be more correct to say an ancestor … rather than the ancestor … ? Since the same could be said about any identifiable ancestor of that generation.
Are you nitpicking a seven-year-old “the”? 
Since we’re nitpicking 7 years later, I’ll point out that Edward was actually Richard of York’s eldest son (born in 1442). Edmund was the second son (born in 1443).
For those who want help understanding relationships from both sides of the family, a couple of historical novels by Philippa Gregory might help: The Red Queen (told from the point of view of Margaret Tudor, the mother of Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII, and so who was one grandmother of Henry VIII), and The White Queen (told from the point of view of the other grandmother of Henry VIII, Elizabeth Woodville, who was also the sister-in-law of Richard III).
There’s also a non-fiction book by the excellent Alison Weir, The Wars of the Roses, which neatly lays out the familial connections as part of the conflict. A fascinating read, if you’re interested at all in that period.
And Thomas Costain does a superb job in his pageant of England series, ending with “The Last Plantagenets”.
After all that churning of the lines of succession, one thing I recall reading was that Henrys (VII and VIII) were very sensitive about competing claims, and any hint of ambition combined with any tenuous claim could land you in the Tower for an extended stay.
Henry VII and Richard III were third cousins one removed.
Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, and Richard III were third cousins ie they shared a Great Great Grandparent Edward III.
Edward III -> John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster) -> John Beaufort (1st Earl of Somerset) -> John Beaufort (1st Duke of Somerset) -> Margaret Beaufort -> Henry VII.
Edward III -> Edmund of York -> Richard of Cambridge -> Richard of York -> Richard III.
All’s well that ends well since Henry marries Edward IV’s daughter, his fourth cousin, Elisabeth and brings the houses of Lancaster and York together in the body of Henry VIII although it is Henry’s elder sister Margaret that continues the line to the present day.
Complex. The succession of Henry VII is the largest distance in terms of genealogy that occurred in the English monarchy.
I bet there’s a few good plays that someone could scribble together out of all that history…