King Edmund I Mortimer

The Mortimers always ranked after all of the royal princes, who received dukedomes when they didn't. That in itself is highly telling and shows clearly that they were not considered to even be in the running (except by popular acclaim and a very brief period as mere pawns of Richard's own feud with Bolingbroke).

Since English law is all about precedents cases such as Matilda/Henry II and Arthur/John Lackland bore a lot of weight.

Henry IV did have the Edmund Crouchback story investigated, but it was quickly dismissed and not used. His big hoo-ha about descending from Henry III seems to have been about stressing his right via an entail of that king, and not a claim that all Kings since had been usurpers.

Female succession had been considered since Henry III, with entails providing for the princesses Eleanor and Joan to inherit the throne in their own right and to transmit it to their heirs, with their husbands as mere consorts.

Again, I'd ask you guys to look up the idea of representation. The Earl of March wasn't the heir by "any succession law allowing female iheritance" since female inheritance could, and at this time WAS, conditional on notions of representation. For example, if Richard II had been a girl, the throne would have passed to John of Gaunt, but if Lionel survived, Philippa could have succeeded him. Might seem silly now but these were real legal issues considered and determined at the time which affected how things proceeded.

The Lancastrians seem to have flirted with male-only inheritance but this was quickly undone at the behest of Henry V who wanted his issue male or female to succeed.
 
"As the previous chapter shows, Richard II did not feel bound to recognize the provisions of Edward III's entailment. Nevertheless he seems to have observed the principle of exclusively male primogeniture, recognizing Henry of Lancaster as having precedence over Roger Mortimer from 1394-98. He also elevated his uncle, the duke of York, to the position of heir apparent. There the question is: did he formally recognize York in a settlement of the throne? Although no such document exists today, there is good reason to believe that one was drawn up. The first piece of evidence is Henry IV's failure to cite Edward III's entail when claiming the throne in 1399. As a result of Adam Usk's chronicle, we know there was a high degree of confusion as to the process whereby Henry IV could claim the throne. Even if Henry did not have possession of Edward III's actual letter patent - which Richard II might have destroyed - there were men living who could have attested to its creation. It is likely therefore that there was a legal reason why it was not used. One such legal reason could have been a more recent entailment by Richard II, which would have rendered it void. There is evidence in Jean Creton's chronicle that Richard's intentions for the throne were widely known in court circles (discussed below). Given the Scottish, French and English entailments of the throne, it would have been very unlikely for Richard to have drawn up his will in April 1399 and not made provision for the inheritance of the throne.

(...) whether they would prefer any of these three - Edmund of York, Edward or Richard of Conisburgh - to be king instead of Henry. This not only suggests that a settlement had been drawn up by Richard II which named York as his heir but that it also named York's two sons. It also suggests it was known well enough for its contents to be put to the test. It met with disapproval.

Given all these circumstances, it is very likely that Richard drew up a settlement of the throne in conjunction with his will in April 1399, in much the same way as Edward III had drawn up his entail in conjunction with his will in October 1376. In both cases, the royal settlement was not treated as permanently binding.

(...)

It may seem obvious why Richard II's settlement of the throne was set aside in 1399; but the reality is that the mechanics of that act were both complicated in their own right and also led to further complications. Clearly Edward III's settlement had led John of Gaunt and his son, Henry of Lancaster, to believe that, in the event of Richard not having a son, the throne would pass to the house of Lancaster. Henry's return to England in 1399 and his success was only made possible by the agreement of the one person who could have rightfully challenged him for the title, Richard's designated heir, Edmund, duke of York. Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, was a mere eight-year-old and in no position to fight. Thus Henry's path to the throne was unopposed. But when it actually came to claiming his inheritance, he ran into difficulties. First there was the question of whether Henry should be recognized as the heir, and rule the kingdom while Richard was allowed to continue as nominal king for his lifetime. The situation in Scotland may well have been a precedent for this, Robert II having been removed from power in 1384 and left as titular king for the last six years of his life, real power passing to his son and heir, the future Robert III. However this possibility was ruled out by September 10, when official documents stopped being dated according to Richard's regnal year. With parliament due to assemble on the 30 September, there was a limited time to find a solution to the problem of how to make Henry of Lancaster a legitimate king.

As it well known, Henry relied heavily on his legal advisers, especially Justice William Thirning, who dissuaded Henry from claiming the throne by right of conquest. Equally well known is the fact that Henry set up a committee to discover whether his maternal ancestor, Edmund Crouchback, was in fact the elder brother of Edward I. Hardyng states that he heard from the earl of Northumerbalnd that Henry IV had produced a chronicle on 21 September 1399 that claimed Edmund Crouchback was actually the elder brother. It is likely that he did so, for the matter was checked in 'all the chronicles of Westminster and of all the other well-known monasteries' by a committee at this time. Adam Usk, who served on this committee, repeats the various sources he found for dispelling any possibility of the story being true. There can be no doubt therefore that Henry was informed that it was a myth. And yet this belief is often stated as the reason why he claimed the throne as the heir of Henry III. Herein we have a objective inconsistency: we have good information that Henry was looking for a legal basis on which to base his claim to the throne, and we have good information that he was told the Edmund Crouchback story was false. So it does not make sense for historians to claim that, despite the legal advice, he went ahead ad based his claim to the throne on a known falsehood. It would have been better for him if he had claimed right of conquest.

Given the findings above, there is every likelihood that in 1399 there was some other reason why Henry IV mentioned Henry III in his claim to the throne. It could be that Thirning knew that Henry III had entailed the throne of England on his heirs male. In support of this it may be noted that, when Richard of York claimed the throne in 1460, the lords put forward more than one entail in support of the Lancastrian claim: 'dyvers entayles made to the heires male as for the corone of Englond'. Obviously the 1406 parliamentary settlement was one. But how many others were there? The entailment of Edward I would not have helped the lords' case, nor would Richard II's settlement (had it survived) So there were only two other English settlements that can have been relevant, so far as we know and suspect: those of Edward III and Henry III.

Stronger evidence that the Lancastrian claim depended on an entailment drawn up in the thirteenth century lies in the fact that Henry IV is noted in several sources as claiming the throne as the heir male of Henry III. There are two forms of evidence for this: implicit and overt. The implicit evidence lies in the wording of the Parliament Roll for 1399, which states that Henry issued a 'challenge' for the throne (in English) 'in as much as I am descended by right line of the blood from the good lord King Henry the third'. Reference to this 'right line of blood' implies that he believed that his was the pre-eminent claim, not because h e was the heir general of Henry III (which he was not - unless one believes the Crouchback legend, which even Adam Usk had given short shrift) but because he was the heir male. Thus the official line itself supports the 'heir male' aspect of his claim. It is worth noting that the official wording of Henry's claim is closely followed in a number of contemporary accounts, both in English and in Latin (tanquam per regium sanguinem veniens de rege Henrico) suggesting the official version was included in a newsletter circulated at the time.

(...)

One thing revealed by Adam Usk's details concerning the Crouchback legend is the level of desperation felt by Henry and his advisers in September 1399. It was no doubt this desperation that forced Henry to resort to what was apparently an unorthodox claim from a long-dead king. But as hinted at above, this unorthodox claim was a highly sophisticated one. It solved two problems: how Henry could claim the throne of England and how he could maintain the English claim to the throne of France at the same time, the latter having already passed through the female line in 1328.

This needs some further explanation as it would naturally strike any reasonably informed historian that Henry IV claimed the throne of France as the heir general of Philip IV (in preference of the heir male) at the same time claiming that of England as the heir male of Henry III (in preference to the heir general). He could not have it both ways, surely? Indeed, several historians - including myself - have stated that, if Henry's claim to England was justified, then his claim to France was wholly spurious. It turns out that we have probably not given Justice Thirning sufficient credit: Henry could have it both ways. If Henry III had outlined the rules of the succession exactly as the Scots did in 1281, then Henry IV's claim was good in respect to France as well as England. To start with England: the throne of England could not pass through Lionel to Philippa, and from her to the Mortimer family, because Lionel predeceased his father and the principle of representation only applied if the grandchild was male. It did not matter that Philippa had a son, Roger Mortimer: the 1281 model clearly ruled that the principle did not apply in the case of a female grandchild. Thus the male heir after Richard II's death should have been John of Gaunt's eldest son and heir, Henry IV. The elegant part of this solution was that the same rules could be applied to pass on to Henry the claim to France legally. The 1281 model indicated that, despite the emphasis on male primogeniture, the daughter of a king passed on a claim to the throne if she had no brothers. This was the basis on which Margaret of Norway was acknowledged as heiress to the throne of Scotland in 1284 and proclaimed queen in 1286, and on which Edward III claimed the throne of France in 1328, and Robert II inherited the throne of Scotland in 1371. However, Edward III's claim to the throne of France could not be conveyed to the Mortimers by his granddaughter Philippa for the same reason as above: the principle of representation did not apply in respect of female grandchildren. Therefore it is likely that these rules for the succession - extant now only in the form outlined by the Scots in 1281 but possibly formulated at an earlier date by Henry III - were the legal basis for Henry IV to claim he was rightfully king of both England and France.

The complexity of the problem would explain why, although royal family trees were produced in parliament to explain his descent, the exact details were not recorded by chroniclers. The matter was too complicated; only the essential details were important at the time. It would also explain why few people in England understood Henry's claim. As noted above, male entail itself was a particular feature of aristocratic life - it lay outside most normal landholders' experience, so it was far beyond the experience of most citizens, clerics, monks and the peasantry. A study of feet of fines in four countries has revealed that, in Richard's reign, only 1 per cent of grants were in tail male. Thus the sense of 'rightness' about a male-only entailment was shared only by a very small proportion of the population. As for the necessary deviation from the common law - implicit in the indivisibility of the Crown - this was probably understood by even fewer people. Finally, the technical detail of the principle of representation being applicable only in the case of male grandchildren would have gone over the heads of most contemporaries. If the reckoning put forward here is correct then Justice Thirning permitted Henry IV to claim the throne of England and the lordship of Ireland, together with the titles of Scotland and France, on a legal basis which very few people in England could have understood and which would have alienated the majority, who believed the common law should apply to succession in the royal family.

(...)

More generally, it is clear that the accession of King John had consequences for understandings of the rules of succession right across Europe. It set in motion a process whereby kings and independent dukes ad counts had to consider the succession law in their domains. The principle of representation was rejected altogether by Baldwin of Flanders in 1200. It was not rejected in England or Scotland, both of which kingdoms seem to have accepted the principle in relation to males but not females after 1216. This is the reason why Edward III paid no attention to the succession potential of the marriage of his granddaughter Philippa. The common law did not apply, as every monarch had realized, even Edward I. In permitting the principle of representation in respect of females, Edward I's settlement was the exception, not the rule, and even this was outside the common law as it implied female primogeniture, not division among co-heiresses. This is no doubt why Gilbert de Clare was required to swear an oath to uphold the terms of the settlement before he married the king's younger daughter. Not until 1404 would another settlement be drawn up that tolerated the idea that the principle of representation should apply in the cases of females, and even then it was contentious, as the two cases on the 1406 Parliament Roll reveal. No doubt the second of these, agreed on 22 December 1406, entailing the succession on Henry V and the heirs of his body, was one of the documents produced in defence of the Lancastrian claim against the duke of York in 1460. Very probably a copy of Edward III's entail was another. But behind them lay a royal tradition of considering the touchy business of the inheritance - a tradition which has now almost entirely vanished."


- IAN MORTIMER, Medieval Intrigue: Decoding Royal Conspiracies
 
To start with England: the throne of England could not pass through Lionel to Philippa, and from her to the Mortimer family, because Lionel predeceased his father and the principle of representation only applied if the grandchild was male.

And the basis for this statement is?
Its hard to tell what limits were set in this regard in the absence of anyone up to the Mortimers having a reason to push it in regards to the royal succession - all possible previous Plantagent kings have inherited via males (their father, brother, or grandfather).
 
To start with England: the throne of England could not pass through Lionel to Philippa, and from her to the Mortimer family, because Lionel predeceased his father and the principle of representation only applied if the grandchild was male.

And the basis for this statement is?
Its hard to tell what limits were set in this regard in the absence of anyone up to the Mortimers having a reason to push it in regards to the royal succession - all possible previous Plantagent kings have inherited via males (their father, brother, or grandfather).

He's explaining how Henry IV could have claimed the throne, the basis being an entail of Henry III which would have served both as a model for the Scottish one shortly afterward ad for Henry IV's own insistence on his Henry III-descent. Female representation seems to have been ruled out by all excepting Edward I.

As we have seen, other explanations come up short, either touching the Mortimers or Henry IV's right to France, and none account for the preservation of his title to France.

Note how the same procedure justifies Edward III's claim to France in place of his cousin the Queen of Navarre, whose son actually did homage to Henry IV as King of France.
 
He's explaining how Henry IV could have claimed the throne, the basis being an entail of Henry III which would have served both as a model for the Scottish one shortly afterward ad for Henry IV's own insistence on his Henry III-descent. Female representation seems to have been ruled out by all excepting Edward I.

But where is the idea of representation having anything to do with the succession from?

As we have seen, other explanations come up short, either touching the Mortimers or Henry IV's right to France, and none account for the preservation of his title to France.
Gee, a usurper's claim comes up short. Who would have thought?

Mortimer (the author) seems to think that Henry IV was a more sympathetic/justified figure than I do, however.
 
Female succession had been considered since Henry III, with entails providing for the princesses Eleanor and Joan to inherit the throne in their own right and to transmit it to their heirs, with their husbands as mere consorts.

Again, I'd ask you guys to look up the idea of representation. The Earl of March wasn't the heir by "any succession law allowing female iheritance" since female inheritance could, and at this time WAS, conditional on notions of representation. For example, if Richard II had been a girl, the throne would have passed to John of Gaunt, but if Lionel survived, Philippa could have succeeded him. Might seem silly now but these were real legal issues considered and determined at the time which affected how things proceeded.

The Lancastrians seem to have flirted with male-only inheritance but this was quickly undone at the behest of Henry V who wanted his issue male or female to succeed.

Since you have just quoted Ian Mortimer to me, please allow me to quote Ian Mortimer back at you. As mentioned before, this is Mortimer's "The Fears of Henry IV"

So why did he stake his claim of descent from Henry III and not Edward III? Did he present a flawed claim to the throne?

The answer to this last question is not a straight yes or no, but it is much more of a yes than a no. Clearly there was an overriding reason why Henry could not claim the throne as the heir male of Edward III, in line with the settlement of 1376. We might speculate that he did not have the original document (which Richard had probably destroyed) but even if he did not, this cannot be the full answer because the official order of precedence in the royal charters of 1394 recognised Henry and all the male heirs of Edward III taking precedence over the Mortimers. In addition, one or two of those who had witnessed Edward III's entail were still alive. There was a far simpler and stronger reason why Henry had to forget about Edward III's entail. It was legally invalid.

This point has not been made in the historical literature before, and so it needs to be explained carefully. In 1290 Edward I had made a settlement of the Crown in which he had stipulated that the throne should pass to his son Edward and his heirs - not necessarily just male heirs - in preference to any younger sons whom the king himself might yet sire. Furthermore, he clearly stipulated that his own daughters and their heirs should inherit in preference to his brother, Edmund Crouchback, and his sons. This could have been considered a legal precedent, so that not only would female heirs thereafter have been able to be queens in their own right, but a daughter of an elder son would have taken precedence over the son of a younger son. John of Gaunt had himself admitted as much in 1376 when he petitioned first parliament and then council to decree that women could not transfer a right to the throne. By this reckoning, Edmund Mortimer should have taken precedence over Henry until Edward III drew up his entail in late 1376. However, if Edward I's settlement of 1290 could have been legally supplanted by Edward III's of 1376, it followed that it would in turn have been supplanted by any subsequent settlement made by Richard II. It is highly probable that, by April 1399, Richard had indeed made a settlement of his own. In such circumstances, Henry's chief legal adviser - Justice William Thirning - would have strongly advised Henry against depending on Edward III's entail for his claim to the throne.

The only legal avenue open to Henry was to question where English kings had the right to appoint their successors. If they did, then Richard II's settlement took precedence over Edward III's, and Duke Edmund was the legal heir. If they did not, all of these settlements were irrelevant. In these circumstances, and with little time to spare, Henry cut the Gordian knot and opted for the latter interpretation of the law. He claimed the throne as heir male of Henry III on the grounds that all subsequent settlements had been without legal foundation, and that the original male-only law of inheritance prior to the reign of Edward I should be restored. It was the only way in which he could claim to be next in line to the throne.

As a result of this, we can be sure that Henry's claim was not wholly lawful, for it depended on the dubious assumption that kings had never had the right to entail the throne away from their male line of descent. That is not to say it was unlawful - the subject was far beyond being legally black and white in 1399 - but it was a fudge at best, for never before had a king's right to settle the throne on a specific line of the royal family been questioned. It is hugely ironic that, although Henry had believed all his life that he and his father were Richard's legitimate heirs - and, in doing so, had trusted a king's right to appoint his successor - when it actually came to claiming the throne he was forced to do so in defiance of this very principle.
 
No wonder the popular response to Henry taking the throne was no better than a lukewarm "Okay, fine, he's de facto king.".

At best, Henry is struggling to find some basis to justify his claim to be first (not merely in line but first in line). At worst, some facts are being massaged ruthlessly.

Not a good basis upon which to begin a dynasty (or a fork in an existing dynasty).
 
Interesting! So presumably if for whatever reason Richard II dies/abdicates in 1399, an adult Mortimer could have trumped a boy Lancaster, for example, with some legality: although perhaps the Duke of York might have put up more of a challenge?
 
Interesting! So presumably if for whatever reason Richard II dies/abdicates in 1399, an adult Mortimer could have trumped a boy Lancaster, for example, with some legality: although perhaps the Duke of York might have put up more of a challenge?

Well, as Ian Mortimer somewhat aludes to here, it's hard to put an exact yes or no on the answer as the previous 3 or 4 kings had all issued entails which subtly altered the succession, so by this point any given king felt confident enough in their authority to essentially nominate their successor, so long as the nominee had a strong claim in the first place. In other words, this is an example of "the winner writes the history". If Mortimer could have outmanoeuvred Lancaster then there was almost certainly a piece of paper stating him as their heir (one which Henry surely destroyed upon coming to the throne). Similarly, if York could somehow outmanoeuvre both, and have March and Lancaster found ineligible for the throne - treason, perhaps, or unfit in some other manner - then he could challenge. However, I'm not aware that he had a faction supporting him. In fact I'm not even aware of him making any concerted effort for any power or influence, there were better candidates ahead of him. Therefore, York seizing the throne, at least AFAIK, would be "out of left field", so to speak.

However, to give a more substantial answer, yes Mortimer could. I agree (with Ian Mortimer) that it is virtually 100% that Richard had drawn up his own entail on who should succeed him and that the said nominee was Mortimer. Almost certainly said entail effectively reversed Edward III's document, and allowed female inheritance again. I figure this has to be the case as Mortimer's claim to the throne lies solely through female inheritance, and I think changing the succession to allow you to nominate anyone at all regardless of strength of claim is a step too far for this era. Edward I had already opened England up to the idea of female inheritance, so I can't see this being controversial in legality. Thus, female inheritance made Mortimer the closest heir, and it effectively served to act as a last middle finger to John of Gaunt, who had spent Richard's entire reign arguing for Henry to be the designated heir and who had originally played a key part in Edward's changing the law to favour the male inheritance in the first place. Richard absolutely hated John, and hated Henry further.

So, as long as Richard's will comes out into the public before Henry has summoned an army and marched on London, Mortimer is a shoe-in for the throne. The problem is that Richard did not like making public his entails (as said before, there is evidence that he originally accepted Henry as his heir, then quickly changed his mind - he didn't advertise that one either, so much so that at the time John wasn't even sure if he'd succeeded or not). He was a paranoid individual, convinced that everyone around him hated him, and events such as the Lords Appellant hardly convinced him otherwise - the issue was that his actions largely encouraged this behaviour. Heck, he sent Mortimer to be Lord Lieutenant of the Ireland at the age of 8 (straight after his father's death), and this is quite possibly to prevent Mortimer from developing a court faction which could have challenged Richard's authority, as well as being a perceived honour and practice at ruling a state. This, as I just said, also means that Mortimer doesn't really have much of a following to summon in order to take the throne properly - and he has to come from Ireland to take it. He had some, but not many. If Richard dies naturally then the public will likely be so glad that Richard is gone that they'd happily accept Richard's nominated heir simply because he's "not Richard". On the other hand, if Henry has taken England first, the public is in his pocket for saving them from "the tyrant".

So Mortimer definitely has the opportunity to beat Lancaster to the throne - but only if he moves first to secure the Kingdom. However, he has no motive to do this before Richard is dead, whereas Lancaster has been exiled and has every motive for moving first. Thus, Mortimer is only in a strong position when Henry is not ready to invade and seize the throne. Henry essentially has the aces here.

Oh, and as for the "boy Lancaster" bit. I'm not sure what you mean here. Henry IV was 8 years older than Mortimer. It was Mortimer who was "the boy".
 
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Oh, and as for the "boy Lancaster" bit. I'm not sure what you mean here. Henry IV was 8 years older than Mortimer. It was Mortimer who was "the boy".

I meant a role reversal...an adult Mortimer surviving, and only a child Lancaster remaining.
 
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