English claims to the French throne

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From 1340, English monarchs, beginning with the Plantagenet king Edward III, asserted that they were the rightful kings of France. They fought the Hundred Years' War (1337Template:Endash1453) in part to enforce this claim, though ultimately without success. From the early 16th century, the claim had lost any realistic prospect of fulfilment, although every English and later British monarch, from Edward III to George III, styled themselves king or queen of France until 1801.

Edward's claim was through his mother, Isabella, sister of the last direct line Capetian king of France, Charles IV. Women were excluded from inheriting the French crown and Edward was Charles's nearest male relative. On Charles's death in 1328, however, the French magnates supported Philip VI, the first king of the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty. Philip was Charles's nearest male line relative. French jurists later argued that it was a fundamental law of the kingdom that the crown could not be inherited through the female line. This was supposedly based on the 6th-century Frankish legal code known as the Salic law, although the link to the Salic law, which was tenuous in any case, was not made until the 15th century.

Edward, whose main concern was to protect his French fief of Gascony, spent much of his reign at war with the Valois kings but never secured the crown. His great-grandson, Henry V, following his crushing victory at Agincourt, was able to impose the Treaty of Troyes on the French in 1420. This stipulated that he and his heirs would succeed the Valois king Charles VI on his death. Both kings died in 1422 and Henry's son, Henry VI, was crowned king of both countries, creating the so-called "dual monarchy". However, he was only recognised as king in northern France. French resistance to the dual monarchy resulted in the English being expelled from France by 1453, ending the Hundred Years' War, but leaving Calais as the last remaining English possession.

Later English attempts to win the French throne failed, the last being an invasion by Henry VIII in 1523. Calais was lost in 1558. England and France continued to fight wars but none was over the claim to the crown. The use of the title by English and later by British monarchs was ignored by the French, as the claim had long ceased to have any practical significance. However, following the French Revolution, the new republican government of France objected to the practice and the title was no longer used from 1801. The claim was finally abandoned the following year.

Background

Anglo-French relations

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Since the Norman Conquest English kings had held territories in France. These were extensive at the height of the "Angevin Empire" of the House of Plantagenet in the 12th century, leading to a lengthy conflict with the French monarchs.Template:Sfn However, by the early 14th century the Plantagenet domains had been reduced to Gascony, also known as the Duchy of Aquitaine,Template:Efn-num in south-western France and the smaller enclave of Ponthieu in northern France.Template:Sfn

File:Guyenne 1328-en2.svg
France in 1328 Template:Legend striped Template:Legend Template:Legend

Until 1259, the English kings held Gascony as allod, that is, effectively, as independent sovereign territory. By the Treaty of Paris in that year, Louis IX forced Henry III of England to accept a new status for the duchy as a feudal dependency of the kingdom of France.Template:Sfn The lands were then held as a vassal of the French king for which the English king had to do him homage. The disparity between the feudal vassalTemplate:Ndashoverlord relationship and the political reality of both being sovereign kings led to tension and conflict.Template:Sfn

Contention over the political status of Gascony on two occasions resulted in war and the French king exercising his right as feudal overlord to confiscate the fief.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn A dispute in 1294 with Edward I over feudal rights caused Philip IV to order confiscation of the duchy, resulting in the Anglo-French Gascon War. Peace was eventually restored and the duchy returned in 1303. As part of the settlement, Edward I's son, the future Edward II, married Philip's daughter Isabella. However, another dispute and war in 1324 led Philip's son Charles IV to confiscate the duchy from his brother-in-law Edward II but it was again restored three years later.Template:Sfn

In 1327, Edward II was deposed and his and Isabella's son, Edward III, became king of England at the age of 14. Edward III's uncle, Charles IV, died the following year.Template:Sfn

Succession to the French throne

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} From the election of Hugh Capet in 987 until 1316, the French crown passed uninterrupted from father to son in the Capetian dynasty, providing, for the time, such unusual dynastic continuity that it has been called the "Capetian miracle".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn However, this was brought to an end by Louis X dying in 1316 and leaving only a daughter, Joan. His posthumously born son, John, died five days after birth.Template:Sfn This created an unprecedented situation as the question of female succession to the crown had never before needed to be considered.Template:Sfn Louis's brother, Philip, acted quickly to seize power. He set Joan aside and, after John's death, had himself crowned king, becoming Philip V. He then called an assembly of magnates to ratify his accession, which met four weeks later in early 1317. Recognising political reality, it confirmed Philip as king but, in so doing, the assembly declared "a woman could not succeed to the crown of the kingdom of France."Template:Sfn In 1322, Philip V died leaving four daughters and no son.Template:Sfn Consistent with the 1317 assembly's declaration, Philip's daughters were set aside by the magnates and his brother, Charles IV, acceded to the throne.Template:Sfn

From the 15th century, French writers began arguing that succession to the throne was, and always had been, governed by Salic law, a 6th-century Frankish legal code, which they claimed prohibited inheritance of the crown by or through a woman. They also claimed that the 1316 and 1322 successions were determined by the application of Salic law.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn However, Salic law had fallen into obscurity and disuse after the Carolingian era until it was rediscovered by a small group of scholars at the Abbey of St-Denis in the mid-14th century.Template:Sfn There is no reliable evidence that Salic law played any part in the successions of 1316 or 1322 and the earliest known link made to it in connection with the succession to the throne is dated to a French treatise written around 1413.Template:Sfn

Plantagenet claimants

Template:See also

Edward III's claim

Template:Further Template:Chart top Template:Tree chart/start Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart Template:Tree chart/end |- |style="text-align: left;"|Notes: Template:Notelist-la Template:Chart bottom The first English claim to the French throne was made by the Plantagenet king, Edward III.Template:Sfn In 1328 Charles IV of France died, leaving only a daughter, Marie; a second daughter, Blanche, was born posthumously.Template:Sfn The successions to the French throne in 1316 and 1322 had, by this time, set the clear precedent that a woman could not succeed to the crown.Template:Sfn Charles's closest male relative was Edward whose claim to the throne was through his mother, Isabella, Charles's sister. The English representatives in France attempted to press Edward's claim but attracted little support. The French magnates preferred Charles's next closest male relative, his cousin, Philip of Valois, a male line descendant of Charles's grandfather Philip III. Among other objections, the magnates did not want a foreign king, as they saw it, as their monarch. Edward was also still a minor and his accession might put in power his mother Isabella who was unpopular with the French nobles.Template:Efn-num Nevertheless, they justified their choice on the basis that "the mother had no claim, so neither did the son", according to the chronicler of Saint-Denis.Template:Sfn

In the influential mid-15th century tract Pour ce que plusieurs, it was claimed that Philip defeated Edward's claim by citing Salic law and its supposed prohibition on inheriting the crown through a woman. This subsequently became a widely held belief. However, there is no evidence that Salic law played any part in the succession debates of 1328.Template:Sfn In any event, Philip acceded to the throne as Philip VI, the first of the Valois kings. Although legal arguments were, no doubt, deployed in the discussions, ultimately the magnates made a political choice, the by-product of which was that the prohibition on women succeeding to the French crown was extended to men claiming the crown through a woman.Template:Sfn Edward accepted Philip's accession and did him homage for the Duchy of Aquitaine (Gascony) in 1329.Template:Sfn Template:Multiple image

In 1337, a dispute arose between Philip and Edward regarding Edward's feudal obligations which resulted in Philip ordering the confiscation of Gascony. Edward declared war on Philip in response.Template:Sfn In retrospect, this was seen as the opening conflict of the Hundred Years' War that lasted to 1453.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn While campaigning in the Low Countries in 1340, Edward made his first public declaration that he was claiming the French throne.Template:Sfn He had consistently omitted France from his titles prior to 1340, with the exception of a small number of documents sent to his allies in France in October 1337.Template:Sfn Indeed, prior to 1337, no one, even in England, seriously doubted that Philip VI was the rightful king of France.Template:Sfn However, on 26 January 1340 in a ceremony in the Friday Market in the Flemish city of Ghent, Edward formally proclaimed that he was the true king of France.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn At the same time Edward quartered his armsTemplate:Mdashthe arms of EnglandTemplate:Mdashwith the royal arms of France.Template:Sfn His aim, at this point, was probably a tactical one, to encourage Flemish support for his struggle against Philip by supposedly giving his supporters some legal protection:Template:Sfn that they were not technically rebelling against the French crown.Template:Sfn

Edward's next step was to publish a written statement of his claim, and the justification for it, in a "Manifesto" issued from Ghent on 8 February 1340, "in the first year of our reign over France".Template:Sfn The implication was that he was claiming to be king of France only from 1340 rather than from 1328.Template:Sfn The Ghent Manifesto declared that Edward was the rightful monarch because he was "closer in blood" to Charles IV than Philip:Template:Sfn Template:Quotation He went on to claim he would rule in accordance with French law and on the advice of the French nobles. His aim was to restore peace to the kingdom and he had only resorted to war to defend his rights because of Philip's unreasonableness.Template:Sfn

In November 1340, Edward delivered to Pope Benedict XII a document setting out the legal case justifying his claim. This was expanded upon in a more detailed legal brief used at a peace conference in 1344 presided over by Benedict's successor, Clement VI, at the papal palace at Avignon.Template:Sfn The legal argument put forward was that a prohibition on inheritance by a female, which was accepted as being a rule of the French succession by virtue of the decision of the 1317 assembly, did not prevent inheritance of the crown through a female.Template:Sfn The French had claimed, vaguely, that it had been established by custom that the crown could not be inherited through females.Template:Sfn In response, the English lawyers argued that there was no "custom and practice" to be deciphered, only the express enactments of the assemblies in 1317 and 1322. The issue in hand could not have been considered by those bodies because there were no candidates who could have claimed the crown through a female. The English also appealed to principles of Roman law which permitted inheritance through females.Template:Sfn

One potential weakness in Edward's claim was that Louis X's daughter, Joan, had given birth in 1332 to a son, Charles of Navarre. Applying the arguments of Edward's lawyers could mean that he had priority over Edward's claim. But the case for Charles of Navarre attracted little attention or support.Template:Sfn In 1328, Edward had been the only Capetian descendant to formally declare a counter-claim to Philip of Valois. Joan had not done so, and a retrospective claim by someone who had not been born at that time was seen as dubious.Template:Sfn

In the legal context of the time, the arguments put forward by the English lawyers in the 1344 legal brief, while not conclusive, constituted a significant challenge to the Valois case.Template:Sfn Clement VI attempted to reach a compromise at the conference at Avignon which involved the English setting aside the dynastic claim but Edward refused to do this and the negotiations failed.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Although there are questions around Edward's sincerity in launching his claim to the French crown, he seems, at this point, to have been determined to pursue it. As the historian Mark Ormrod remarks, there are indications that he "was beginning to believe the force of his own arguments".Template:Sfn The conference failed to result in a settlement, but the brief and the arguments put forward in it were repeatedly cited and used by the English as the basis of the Plantagenet claim throughout the Hundred Years' War.Template:Sfn

Edward continued to use the title during the war until peace was agreed with Philip's son, John II, at the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360. Edward renounced all claims to the French throne in return for full sovereignty over GasconyTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and the grant of substantial additional lands in France.Template:Sfn Edward revived his claim in 1369 in response to the attempt by John's son, Charles V, to exercise feudal rights in Gascony. In retaliation, Charles sought to confiscate Gascony and the war resumed.Template:Sfn The French successfully pushed the English back and by 1375 there was little left of Edward's previously extensive territories.Template:Sfn During the subsequent truce negotiations at the Conference of Bruges in 1375 and 1376 the English negotiators, nevertheless, refused to renounce the claim to the French throne.Template:Sfn Edward died shortly afterwards in June 1377.Template:Sfn

The modern consensus is that the throne of France was not the main objective of Edward's French policy.Template:Sfn His primary concern was preserving and extending his lands in Gascony and ensuring that he had full sovereignty over them.Template:Sfn The claim to the crown could be used as a negotiating tool to achieve that end, although, at various times, he may well have regarded securing the crown of France as a real possibility.Template:Sfn

Edward's claim to the French throne was inherited by his grandson and successor as king of England, Richard II.Template:Sfn The war in France continued but gradually petered out and a truce was signed in 1389.Template:Sfn Richard pursued a policy of peace with France for the rest of his reign,Template:Sfn but nevertheless continued to use the style king of France.Template:Sfn He also continued to actively advance his grandfather's claim whenever the opportunity arose. In 1396, during failed negotiations with the French to convert the truce into a permanent peace, Richard demanded not only restoration of all Edward's lands under the Treaty of Brétigny with full sovereignty, but retention of the French title and royal arms.Template:Sfn

The Lancastrians

File:Illumination of Henry IV (cropped).jpg
Henry IV, the first Lancastrian claimant

Henry IV

Richard was deposed in 1399 by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, duke of Lancaster, who, as Henry IV, became the first of the Lancastrian kings. Richard died shortly afterwards, most likely murdered.Template:Sfn As well as claiming the crown of England, Henry asserted that he was also the de jure king of France,Template:Sfn but, as the historian Christopher Allmand has commented, he "appears to have had no burning ambition to secure the French crown".Template:Sfn Like Richard, he followed a policy of peace with France, while, at the same time, insisting on using the style king of France.Template:Sfn The two kingdoms were more focussed on domestic issues and the fragile truce was mostly maintained,Template:Sfn despite intermittent breaches.Template:Sfn

Although Henry was a grandson of Edward III, the legitimacy of his accession remained in question.Template:Sfn If succession through a female is permitted, another descendant of Edward, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, had an arguably stronger claim to both the English and French crowns than Henry,Template:Efn-num making Henry a usurper.Template:Sfn In an attempt to override the Mortimer claim, Henry claimed the English throne as "heir male"Template:Efn-num of Henry III, by-passing anyone claiming through a female.Template:Sfn

The position in respect of the French claim was more difficult for the Lancastrians to justify. Applying the same genealogical principles that had given Edward his claimTemplate:Mdashpermitting inheritance through femalesTemplate:Mdashwould clearly mean that Mortimer, rather than Henry, was the rightful English claimant to the French crown.Template:Sfn Furthermore, the historian Ian Mortimer has noted, Template:Quotation In an attempt to resolve these issues, Henry IV had the Lancastrians' right to both crowns confirmed by an Act of Parliament in the statute 7 Henry IV, c. 2. of 1406. This aimed to embed in English law the Lancastrian right not only to the English throne but also, explicitly, to the French one as well.Template:Sfn

Henry V and the dual monarchy

Template:Further

File:Hundred Years War 1429 copy.svg
France in 1429
Recognising the dual monarchy: Template:Legend Template:Legend Recognising Charles VII: Template:Legend

It was not until the accession of Henry V, the second Lancastrian king, in 1413 that Edward III's claim to the French crown was actively pursued again,Template:Sfn ending the truce of 1389.Template:Sfn Like his immediate predecessors he took the title of king of France when he came to the throne.Template:Sfn Then, in 1414, he formally demanded from the French the crown of France. He subsequently reduced his demands, first to restoration of what had been the Angevin territories in France and later to the lands ceded to Edward III by the Treaty of Brétigny. When none of these demands were met, he invaded France in 1415.Template:Sfn

By 1420 Henry had inflicted an overwhelming defeat on the French at Agincourt, occupied Normandy, brought the powerful Philip the Good of Burgundy over to his side and had forced on the French king, Charles VI, the Treaty of Troyes.Template:Sfn This gave control of the French government to Henry as regent and promised him the crown.Template:Sfn In the treaty Charles stipulated: Template:Quotation Thus, the dauphin, Charles's own son, also called Charles, was disinherited.Template:Sfn Up until this point Henry had always referred to himself as king of France in all his interactions with the French. However, under the treaty, Henry instead took the title "heir (héritier) of France" in place of king of France.Template:Sfn

For Henry V, successfully pursuing the claim to the French throne and establishing a Lancastrian "dual monarchy" of England and France had become a key objective because it would secure the prestige and position of the new Lancastrian dynasty.Template:Sfn It was the alliance with Burgundy, which lasted until 1435, that made this a viable objective. The weakening of the Valois cause through the alliance allowed Henry to adopt a very different strategy to Edward III and ensured that the crown could remain his principal war aim.Template:Sfn Prior to the Treaty of Troyes, it was a weakness in Henry's position that Mortimer had a stronger claim to the French crown than his own, even if the Mortimer family never asserted it.Template:Sfn According to the historian Anne Curry, it was left deliberately ambiguous in the treaty whether the Lancastrian right to the French throne was by virtue of inheriting Edward III's claim or it was a new right specifically ceded by Charles VI as the incumbent king of France.Template:Sfn

Although the treaty was not accepted by the dauphin or in large parts of the country,Template:Sfn it did enable Henry, with his Burgundian allies, to take control of Paris, and most of northern France.Template:Sfn It was also accepted and formally approved by the highest judicial authority in France, the Parlement of Paris.Template:Sfn When Henry and Charles VI both died in 1422, Henry's infant son Henry VI succeeded to both crownsTemplate:Efn-num in accordance with the treaty,Template:Sfn initiating the so-called "dual monarchy".Template:Sfn However, the dauphin continued to dispute his exclusion from the succession and, as Charles VII, was recognised as king in the areas outside of English control south of the Loire.Template:Sfn In practice, France was partitioned between the north under the dual monarchy and Charles VII's "kingdom of Bourges" in central and southern France.Template:Sfn

The war continued and the Anglo-Burgundian forces initially pushed the border further south until the relief of Orléans in 1429 marked a turning point.Template:Sfn It was, however, the defection of the Burgundians to Charles in 1435, by the Treaty of Arras, that decisively impacted the war and meant that the dual monarchy could not survive.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Charles slowly drove the English northward, recovering Paris in 1436 and Normandy in 1450. By 1453, Gascony had been re-taken as well, leaving Calais and the Channel Islands as the last remaining English possessions,Template:Sfn but bringing the Hundred Years' War to an end.Template:Sfn Henry VI, and all his successors as monarchs of England, continued to be styled king or queen of France but it was now a title without substance.Template:Sfn

The Yorkists

Template:Further

File:Edward IV Plantagenet.jpg
Edward IV invaded France in 1475 ostensibly to overthrow Louis XI

The humiliation of the loss of France destabilised England and was one of the causes of the civil war known as the Wars of the Roses (1455Template:En dash1487), as Henry VI's Yorkist opponents held the Lancastrians responsible.Template:Sfn In 1460, the Yorkist leader, Richard, Duke of York, attempted to depose Henry and formally submitted to the House of Lords his claim to both the English and French crowns.Template:Sfn As well as being a male line descendant of Edward III, Richard was the heir of his late maternal uncle, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, who had arguably stronger claims than the Lancastrians to both the EnglishTemplate:Sfn and French crowns.Template:Sfn

Richard was killed in battle in 1460 before he could make good his claim to the English throne but his son, Edward IV, succeeded in overthrowing Henry in 1461. However, the Lancastrians managed to briefly restore Henry to the throne in 1470 with the support of Louis XI of France.Template:Sfn Edward recovered the throne the following year and, once he was secure, he re-asserted the claim to the French crown in response to Louis's interference.Template:Sfn

By the Treaty of London (1474), Edward made an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, and agreed to invade France the following year to claim the crown and overthrow Louis as a usurper. It was also agreed that, as king of France, Edward would then grant Charles full sovereignty over his domains, which would be expanded to include Champagne, leaving the rest of the kingdom to Edward.Template:Sfn As the historian Jonathan Sumption points out, "ostensibly, these were the old war aims of Henry V. But ... his real objective was more modest."Template:Sfn He was more interested in ensuring that a peace with France could be negotiated which enhanced the security of his position as king of England. The invasion took place in 1475, and Louis bought off Edward at the Treaty of Picquigny with a large cash payment and the promise not to support his domestic enemies. Edward then withdrew his army.Template:Sfn Thereafter, Edward adopted a peaceful, even timid, policy towards France.Template:Sfn

Shortly after Edward's death in 1483 his brother, Richard III, seized the throne.Template:Sfn Richard included in his style king of FranceTemplate:Sfn but also conceded the French kings' right to use the title.Template:Sfn However, he adopted a generally more aggressive stance towards France than Edward had latterly, for example encouraging privateering in the English Channel. The consequence was that the French feared that he had plans to revive the Hundred Years' War and the claim to the French throne. In fact, Richard was responding to the French harbouring of the Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII.Template:Sfn Richard's longer term intentions in relation to the claim to France are not knownTemplate:Sfn and after a two-year reign, he was overthrown by Henry.Template:Sfn Richard was the last Plantagenet king of England.Template:Sfn

Valois rebuttals

Template:Further Philip VI reacted furiously to Edward III's proclamation of his claim in 1340. He ordered a search of the kingdom for all copies of the Ghent Manifesto and had them destroyed. Anyone in possession of a copy was to be executed as a traitor.Template:Sfn However, the earliest known detailed rebuttal of Edward's claim was a treatise entitled Somnium viridarii by the French jurist Évrart de Trémaugon dated 1376. This based the Valois case on the vague authority of custom.Template:Sfn During the 14th century, Valois supporters simply asserted that by custom the French crown could not be inherited through females. As a result, Edward could not have inherited the crown and the Valois succession in 1328 was, therefore, valid. No mention was made of Salic law.Template:Sfn The Valois kings issued royal ordinances in 1375, 1392 and 1407 regulating the succession, but without making any reference to Salic law. Each ordinance declared that the crown should pass from father to eldest son but omitted any justification for the rule of succession other than the 1407 ordinance declaring it was a "right of nature".Template:Sfn

In response to the political crisis created by Henry V's invasion and the imposition of the dual monarchy, Valois apologists in the 15th century put forward Salic law as a more cogent argument and made it the centrepiece in the case against the English claim.Template:Sfn It was asserted that the royal succession had always been, without interruption, subject to Salic law and it was claimed that this specified that succession to the French crown could not be by or through a woman.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn This provided a more compelling rebuttal than the rather vague assertions of custom, by citing a specific and uniquely French law of great antiquity with associations with Charlemagne and the origins of the nation.Template:Sfn The first known link made to it was in a short note in a treatise written by Jean de Montreuil around 1413.Template:Sfn His polemic in support of the Valois, A tout la chevalerie, did not focus on the Salic law argument but did include the purported text that was later widely quoted as the relevant part of the law.Template:Sfn In reality, the text had no direct relevance to the succession to the throneTemplate:Efn-num but, nevertheless, it was interpreted by the Valois apologists as being determinative.Template:Sfn

Between 1413 and 1464, numerous tracts by French writers were published on behalf of the Valois justifying their cause on the basis of Salic law.Template:Sfn Jean Juvénal des Ursins was the first jurist to claim directly that Philip of Valois had been chosen as king in 1328 because of Salic law. His 1446 treatise, Tres crestien, tres hault, tres puissant roy, setting out the claim became the standard exposition of the Valois legal case.Template:Sfn The most comprehensive exposition of the Salic law's claimed role in the French succession was a tract entitled Pour ce que plusieurs, written and published anonymously in 1464 by Guillaume Cousinot, a French royal official.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn It was commissioned by Louis XI to rectify perceived weaknesses in des Ursins's treatise.Template:Sfn The tract was influential in establishing, as a central tenet of the French monarchy, the belief that Salic law had prohibited the inheritance of the French crown by or through women since ancient times.Template:Sfn From the second half of the 15th century and into the 16th century, this interpretation and application of Salic law found support among prominent French jurists, such as Claude de Seyssel, and came to be considered as a fundamental law of the kingdom of France.Template:Sfn This was tested in 1498 with the death of Charles VIII.Template:Sfn Until then, the crown had passed from father to son in the direct line of the House of Valois.Template:Sfn With Charles's death, the direct line came to an end. Demonstrating how embedded Salic law had become, his cousin and male line heir, Louis of Orléans, succeeded him as Louis XII without controversy or challenge even though over a dozen of his relatives were passed over because their relationship was through matrilineal descent.Template:Sfn

After the Plantagenets

All subsequent monarchs of England, and then Great Britain, continued to use the hollow title of king or queen of France (including in treaties with the FrenchTemplate:Sfn) until the reign of George III.Template:Sfn

File:Enrique VII de Inglaterra, por un artista anónimo.jpg
Henry VII launched an invasion of France in 1492 "for the recovering of his right there"

The Tudors

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Henry VII, the first Tudor king, followed Edward IV's example.Template:Sfn In 1489 he announced that he was claiming the French throne and made an alliance with the Breton opponents of Charles VIII.Template:Sfn Henry invaded France in 1492 with the instruction to his army to "make his arrival within his realm of France for the recovering of his right there".Template:Sfn However, he withdrew following the Treaty of Étaples, under which Charles agreed both to pay him a large subsidyTemplate:Sfn and to cease supporting the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck.Template:Sfn By this time the claim was very much a theoretical one and primarily used for tactical purposes in negotiations with the French kings.Template:Sfn

Henry VII's son, Henry VIII, was the last English monarch to take the claim literally and to actively pursue it, albeit by this time it was, in fact, an unrealistic objective.Template:Sfn According to the historian Richard Marius, making good the claim to the French crown was Henry's great passion and was, for him, a "dream to grant meaning to a life that would have seemed tiresome without it".Template:Sfn In the early part of his reign he repeatedly invaded France to claim the crown. In 1513, he even made plans to hold a coronation in Paris modelled on that of Henry VI.Template:Sfn He believed his claim to the throne would be enthusiastically supported by the French people.Template:Sfn In all, he invaded France three times in the decade from 1513, even occupying Tournai for six years as king of France.Template:Sfn Henry treated Tournai not as an English conquest but part of his kingdom of France.Template:Sfn His last attempt to take the crown was a march on Paris in 1523,Template:Efn-num which the historian Stephen Gunn calls "in effect, the last campaign of the Hundred Years' War".Template:Sfn

The anticipated support of the French people to his claim never emerged and Henry lost interest in pursuing it.Template:Sfn As early as 1520, Henry declared, during his summit meeting with Francis I of France known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, that it was "a title given to me which is good for nothing".Template:Sfn In 1544 he attempted a final invasion, but the objective was limited to the conquest and colonisation of the Boulonnais, as Henry had, by then, given up on any aspiration to claim the throne. During the campaign he seized Boulogne, the occupation of which was very different to the occupation of Tournai. Henry attached it, as a colony, to the kingdom of England rather than ruling it as a king of France.Template:Sfn Boulogne was evacuated in 1550Template:Sfn and in 1558, Calais, the last remaining English possession in mainland France, was lost as well.Template:Sfn Henry's daughter, Elizabeth I, attempted an invasion of France in the 1560s but her objectives were to support the Huguenots and to take Le Havre to swap it for Calais, rather than the crown.Template:Sfn England would continue to fight multiple wars with France, but none involved the claim to the French throne.Template:Sfn

Later use of the title

Template:Multiple image The title nevertheless continued to be used by English and British monarchs for the next 250 yearsTemplate:Efn-num with little impact on relations between the two countries. In the immediate aftermath of the Hundred Years' War its use by the English kings had been a cause of diplomatic strain with France. Louis XI, in particular, was preoccupied with countering the claim. But this changed with the passage of time.Template:Sfn By the time of the Tudors it was no longer seen as a practical objective.Template:Sfn As a consequence, the title became, as William Pitt later described it, "a harmless feather, at most, in the crown of England."Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn It was ignored by both sides as an unrealisable fantasy, even though the English continued to use it in diplomatic interactions.Template:Sfn When Louis XIV of France concluded the Treaty of Ryswick with his arch-enemy William III of England in 1697,Template:Sfn the French diplomats even allowed William to use the title in the text.Template:Sfn Equally, the English did not try to challenge the French kings' use of the title.Template:Sfn

This remained the position until the French Revolution and the subsequent revolutionary wars. In peace negotiations between Britain and France in 1797, the French strongly objected to the use of the title on the grounds that France had become a republic.Template:Sfn The title was finally abandoned with the British recognition of the French Republic in the Treaty of Amiens of 1802.Template:Sfn George III, had, however, pre-empted this when he took the decision in 1801 to remove the French quartering in the royal coat of arms and to drop king of France from his royal style used in the Act of Union.Template:Sfn

See also

Notes

Template:Notelist-num

References

Template:Reflist

Bibliography

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