The House of Tudor was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the Scottish House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, descended through his mother from the House of Beaufort, a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.
Elizabeth Woodville, later known as Dame Elizabeth Grey, was Queen of England from 1 May 1464 until 3 October 1470 and from 11 April 1471 until 9 April 1483 as the wife of King Edward IV. She was a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic civil war between the Lancastrian and the Yorkist factions between 1455 and 1487.
Lady Margaret Beaufort was a major figure in the Wars of the Roses of the late fifteenth century, and mother of King Henry VII of England, the first Tudor monarch.
Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, was the only surviving daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence and his wife Isabel Neville. As a result of Margaret's marriage to Richard Pole, she was also known as Margaret Pole. She was one of just two women in 16th-century England to be a peeress in her own right without a husband in the House of Lords.
Katherine Seymour, Countess of Hertford was a younger sister of Lady Jane Grey.
Earl Mountbatten of Burma is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, created in 1947 for Rear Admiral Louis Mountbatten, who in 1946 had been created the first Viscount Mountbatten of Burma. He was later promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.
Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was the daughter of the Scottish queen dowager Margaret Tudor and her second husband Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and thus the granddaughter of King Henry VII of England and the half-sister of King James V. She was the grandmother of King James VI and I.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent English politician and nobleman of the Tudor era. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of his dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.
Maud Carnegie, Countess of Southesk, titled Princess Maud from 1905 to 1923, was a granddaughter of Edward VII. Maud and her elder sister, Alexandra, had the distinction of being the only female-line descendants of a British sovereign officially granted both the title of Princess and the style of Highness.
Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, sex, legitimacy, and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.
From the year 1340 to 1802, excluding two brief intervals in the 1360s and the 1420s, the kings and queens of England and Ireland also claimed the throne of France. The claim dates from Edward III, who claimed the French throne in 1340 as the sororal nephew of the last direct Capetian, Charles IV. Edward and his heirs fought the Hundred Years' War to enforce this claim, and were briefly successful in the 1420s under Henry V and Henry VI, but the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty, was ultimately victorious and retained control of France, except for Calais and the Channel Islands. Following the Hundred Years War, English and British monarchs continued to call themselves kings of France, and used the French fleur-de-lis as their coat of arms, quartering the arms of England in positions of secondary honour. This continued until 1802 when Britain recognised the French Republic and therefore the abolition of the French monarchy. The Jacobite claimants, however, did not explicitly relinquish the claim.
Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk, was an English noblewoman. She was the second child and eldest daughter of King Henry VIII's younger sister, Princess Mary, and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. She was the mother of Lady Jane Grey, de facto Queen of England and Ireland for nine days, as well as Lady Katherine Grey and Lady Mary Grey.
Eleanor Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, also known as Elyanore Clifford was the third child and second daughter of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk and Princess Mary Tudor, the Dowager Queen consort of France. She was a younger sister of Lady Frances Brandon and an elder sister of Henry Brandon, 1st Earl of Lincoln. She was also a younger paternal half-sister of Lady Anne Brandon and Lady Mary Brandon from her father's second marriage. After her mother's death in 1533, her father remarried to Catherine Willoughby and Eleanor became an elder half-sister of Henry Brandon, 2nd Duke of Suffolk and Charles Brandon, 3rd Duke of Suffolk.
Lady Jane Grey, also known as Lady Jane Dudley after her marriage and as the "Nine Days' Queen", was an English noblewoman who claimed the throne of England and Ireland from 10 to 19 July 1553.
Cecily of York, also known as Cecelia, was the third daughter of King Edward IV of England and his queen consort Elizabeth Woodville.
Catherine of York was the sixth daughter of King Edward IV of England and his queen consort Elizabeth Woodville.
British history provides several opportunities for alternative claimants to the English and later British Crown to arise, and historical scholars have on occasion traced to present times the heirs of those alternative claims.
Since William the Conqueror claimed the English throne, succession has been determined by bequest, battle, primogeniture, and parliament.
The succession to the childless queen of England Elizabeth I was an open question from her accession in 1558 to her death in 1603, when the crown passed to James VI of Scotland. While the accession of James went smoothly, the succession had been the subject of much debate for decades. In some scholarly views, it was a major political factor of the entire reign, even if not so voiced. Separate aspects have acquired their own nomenclature: the "Norfolk conspiracy", Patrick Collinson's "Elizabethan exclusion crisis", the "Secret Correspondence", and the "Valentine Thomas affair".
