The Last English King

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Original claimants [ edit ] "Kings of France" (1340) [ edit ] Arms of Edward III, with the English lions and the French fleur-de-lys. The arms of France are in the 1st and 4th quarter as France was considered the senior kingdom.

Titles, styles, honours, and arms [ edit ] Half crown coin of James II, 1686 Titles and styles [ edit ]

It was not until the late 9th century that one kingdom, Wessex, had become the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Its king, Alfred the Great, was overlord of western Mercia and used the title King of the Angles and Saxons, but he never ruled eastern and northern England, which was then known as the Danelaw, having earlier been conquered by the Danes from southern Scandinavia. His son Edward the Elder conquered the eastern Danelaw, but Edward's son Æthelstan became the first king to rule the whole of England when he conquered Northumbria in 927, and he is regarded by some modern historians as the first true king of England. [3] [4] The title "King of the English" or Rex Anglorum in Latin, was first used to describe Æthelstan in one of his charters in 928. The standard title for monarchs from Æthelstan until John was "King of the English". In 1016 Cnut the Great, a Dane, was the first to call himself "King of England". In the Norman period "King of the English" remained standard, with occasional use of "King of England" or Rex Anglie. From John's reign onwards all other titles were eschewed in favour of "King" or "Queen of England". On 6 May 1682, James narrowly escaped the sinking of HMS Gloucester, in which between 130 and 250 people perished. [71] James argued with the pilot about the navigation of the ship before it ran aground on a sandbank, and then delayed abandoning ship, which may have contributed to the death toll. [72] Return to favour [ edit ]

The Jacobite pretenders were the deposed James II of England and his successors, continuing to style themselves "Kings of England, Scotland, France and Ireland" past their deposition in 1689. All four pretenders continued to actively claim the title King of France as well as that of King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1689 until 1807: After the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror made permanent the recent removal of the capital from Winchester to London. Following the death of Harold Godwinson at Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot elected as king Edgar Ætheling, the son of Edward the Exile and grandson of Edmund Ironside. The young monarch was unable to resist the invaders and was never crowned. William was crowned King William I of England on Christmas Day 1066, in Westminster Abbey, and is today known as William the Conqueror, William the Bastard or William I. The House of York claimed the right to the throne through Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, but it inherited its name from Edward's fourth surviving son, Edmund of Langley, first Duke of York. Andrews, Allen, Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, Marshall Cavendish Publications Ltd., London, 1976, p. 82. Main article: Williamite War in Ireland Battle of the Boyne between James II and William III, 11 July 1690 by HuchtenburgIn addition two failed claimants to the throne of England were also styled King of France. They are usually omitted from regnal lists. There was another truce in 1396 when Richard II married Isabella of Valois, a daughter of King Charles VI of France, thus marking the end of the second phase. Peace did not last long however, as, in 1399, Henry IV usurped Richard's throne while Richard was away in Ireland, thus provoking French hostility in 1403 which marked the beginning of the third phase of the war. The Angevins formulated England's royal coat of arms, which usually showed other kingdoms held or claimed by them or their successors, although without representation of Ireland for quite some time. Dieu et mon droit was first used as a battle cry by Richard I in 1198 at the Battle of Gisors, when he defeated the forces of Philip II of France. [39] [40] It has generally been used as the motto of English monarchs since being adopted by Edward III. [39] Name Henry VI was also now King of France united with Normandy, and Gascony, by the Treaty of Troyes, passed directly to the French king Charles VI; when Henry VI of England succeeded to the French crown in 1422 it was included as part of the jurisdiction. The Duke of Bedford was content and he made no appeal to return to England, returning only in 1425 to England in an urgent meeting with Bishop Henry Beaufort. Philip of Burgundy could hardly resist English wishes, for he needed their support after the murder of his father, John the Fearless by the henchmen of the dauphin (now de facto Charles VII of France). Henry V's arrangements had one fatal flaw: not until the last few days of his life had he thought he would predecease Charles VI. Moreover, the treaty had restricted Henry's freedom on his deathbed. The arrangements he had made were to cover the short term (up to Charles VI's death) and the long term (when Henry VI would become king of both France and England). This is a major reason for Burgundy's alliance with England and the steadfastness of English commanders to the battlefield. In 2009, Steven Pincus confronted that scholarly ambivalence in 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Pincus claims that James's reign must be understood within a context of economic change and European politics, and makes two major assertions about James II. The first of these is that James purposefully "followed the French Sun King, Louis XIV, in trying to create a modern Catholic polity. This involved not only trying to Catholicize England... but also creating a modern, centralizing, and extremely bureaucratic state apparatus." [172] The second is that James was undone in 1688 far less by Protestant reaction against Catholicization than by nationwide hostile reaction against his intrusive bureaucratic state and taxation apparatus, expressed in massive popular support for William of Orange's armed invasion of England. Pincus presents James as neither naïve nor stupid nor egotistical. Instead, readers are shown an intelligent, clear-thinking strategically motivated monarch whose vision for a French authoritarian political model and alliance clashed with, and lost out to, alternative views that favoured an entrepreneurial Dutch economic model, feared French power, and were outraged by James's authoritarianism.

A dual monarchy gave Englishmen and northern Frenchmen alike the impetus to ensure complete suzerainty of France and to punish the treachery of Charles VII. In the 1420s, the English sent a small expeditionary force to France. As such, many English gentry were given French estates. The scheme was supported in 1417 during the conquest of upper Normandy during the reign of Henry V and was revived by Bedford. Most of Normandy, with the exception of Mont Saint-Michel, was stabilized. The Crotoy in the mouth of the Somme was also in Valois' hands, but was taken over by an English force, with Bedford's aid. Another expedition under the Duke of Exeter consisting of 1600 men (mostly archers) was sent to protect the Lancastrian-dominated part of France. Not only was most of Normandy cleared from the Armagnac French but there was also some attempts south of the Loire to endanger Charles VII's capital at Bourges. In practical terms, King Henry's claim to de jure sovereignty and legitimacy as king of France was only recognised in the English and allied-controlled territories of France which were under the domination of his French regency council, while the Dauphin ruled as King of France in part of the realm south of the river Loire. English stained glass window from c. 1350–77, showing the coat of arms of Edward III, which featured the three lions of England quartered with the fleurs-de-lys of France. [1]On 23 April 1430, Henry embarked from Dover for France in company with Cardinal Beaufort, the Duke of Bedford and the bishops of Thérouanne, Norwich, Beauvais and Évreux. On 16 December 1431, on the way to his French coronation in Paris, Henry travelled to the Basilica of St Denis, a hallowed burial place for French kings on the outskirts of Paris. Two days earlier, the coronation was carefully set to be held at the cathedral of Notre-Dame, on the first Sunday in Advent, which was the traditional day for a king of France to proceed to the cathedral, this being a symbolic parallel with the progress of the King of Heaven. Henry was preceded by twenty-five trumpeters and a guard of between two and three thousand men. The royal party's route took the usual ceremonial entry into Paris from the north. Soon after becoming king, James faced a rebellion in southern England led by his nephew, the Duke of Monmouth, and another rebellion in Scotland led by Archibald Campbell, 9th Earl of Argyll. [83] Monmouth and Argyll both began their expeditions from Holland, where James's nephew and son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, had neglected to detain them or put a stop to their recruitment efforts. [84] Frieda, Leonie (2003). Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (first Harper Perennial edition 2006). Harper Perennial. p.171. Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (31 January 1788 – 13 July 1807), self-styled Henry IX and I, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland. In England, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a former government minister and now a leading opponent of Catholicism, proposed an Exclusion Bill that would have excluded James from the line of succession. [62] Some members of Parliament even proposed to pass the crown to Charles's illegitimate son, James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. [63] In 1679, with the Exclusion Bill in danger of passing, Charles II dissolved Parliament. [64] Two further Parliaments were elected in 1680 and 1681, but were dissolved for the same reason. [65] The Exclusion Crisis contributed to the development of the English two-party system: the Whigs were those who supported the Bill, while the Tories were those who opposed it. Ultimately, the succession was not altered, but James was convinced to withdraw from all policy-making bodies and to accept a lesser role in his brother's government. [66]