Edward III's claim The first English claim to the French throne was made by the Plantagenet king
Edward III. In 1328 Charles IV of France died, leaving only a daughter,
Marie; a second daughter,
Blanche, was born posthumously. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Edward accepted Philip's accession and did him
homage for the
Duchy of Aquitaine (Gascony) in 1329. 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. In retrospect, this was seen as the
opening conflict of the Hundred Years' War that lasted to 1453. While campaigning in the
Low Countries in 1340, Edward made his first public declaration that he was claiming the French throne. 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. Indeed, prior to 1337, no one, even in England, seriously doubted that Philip VI was the rightful king of France. 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. At the same time Edward
quartered his armsthe
arms of Englandwith the
royal arms of France. 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: that they were not technically rebelling against the French crown. 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". The implication was that he was claiming to be king of France only from 1340 rather than from 1328. The Ghent Manifesto declared that Edward was the rightful monarch because he was "
closer in blood" to Charles IV than Philip: 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. 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,
Pope Clement VI, at the
papal palace at Avignon. 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. The French had claimed, vaguely, that it had been established by custom that the crown could not be inherited through females. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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 Gascony and the grant of substantial additional lands in France. 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. The French successfully pushed the English back, and by 1375 there was little left of Edward's previously extensive territories. 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. Edward died shortly afterwards in June 1377. The modern consensus is that the throne of France was not the main objective of Edward's French policy. His primary concern was preserving and extending his lands in Gascony and ensuring that he had full sovereignty over them. 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. Edward's claim to the French throne was inherited by his grandson and successor as king of England,
Richard II. The war in France continued but gradually petered out and a
truce was signed in 1389. Richard pursued a policy of peace with France for the rest of his reign, but nevertheless continued to use the style
king of France. He also continued to 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.
The Lancastrians , 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 king of the
Lancastrian branch of the House of Plantagenet. Richard died shortly afterwards, most likely murdered. As well as claiming the crown of England, Henry asserted that he was also the
de jure king of France, but, as the historian
Christopher Allmand has commented, he "appears to have had no burning ambition to secure the French crown". Like Richard, he followed a policy of peace with France, while, at the same time, insisting on using the style
king of France. The two kingdoms were more focussed on domestic issues and the fragile truce was mostly maintained, despite intermittent breaches. Although Henry was a grandson of Edward III, the legitimacy of his accession remained in question. 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, making Henry a usurper. In an attempt to override the Mortimer claim, Henry claimed the English throne as "heir male" of
Henry III, by-passing anyone claiming through a female. 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 claimpermitting inheritance through femaleswould clearly mean that Mortimer, rather than Henry, was the rightful English claimant to the French crown. Furthermore, the historian
Ian Mortimer has noted, 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.
Henry V and the dual monarchy 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, ending the truce of 1389. Like his immediate predecessors he took the title of
king of France when he came to the throne. 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. 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. This gave control of the French government to Henry as regent and promised him the crown. In the treaty Charles stipulated: Thus, the
dauphin, Charles's own son, also called
Charles, was disinherited. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Although the treaty was not accepted by the dauphin or in large parts of the country, it did enable Henry, with his Burgundian allies, to take control of
Paris, and most of northern France. It was also accepted and formally approved by the highest judicial authority in France, the
Parlement of Paris. When Henry and Charles VI both died in 1422, Henry's infant son
Henry VI succeeded to both crowns in accordance with the treaty, initiating the so-called "dual monarchy". 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. In practice, France was partitioned between the north under the dual monarchy and Charles VII's "
kingdom of Bourges" in central and southern France. 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. 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. 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, but bringing the Hundred Years' War to an end. 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.
The Yorkists 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 (14551487), as Henry VI's
Yorkist opponents held the Lancastrians responsible. In 1460, the Yorkist leader,
Richard, Duke of York, attempted to depose Henry and formally submitted to
Parliament his claim to both the English and French crowns. As well as being a Plantagenet and a male line descendant of Edward III, Richard was the heir of his late maternal uncle,
Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, who had arguably stronger claims than the Lancastrians to both the English and French crowns. Richard was
killed in battle in 1460 before he could make good his claim to the English throne, but his son succeeded in overthrowing Henry in 1461, becoming
Edward IV. However, the Lancastrians managed to briefly
restore Henry to the throne in 1470 with the support of
Louis XI of France. 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. 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. As the historian
Jonathan Sumption points out, "ostensibly, these were the old war aims of Henry V. But ... his real objective was more modest." 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. Thereafter, Edward adopted a peaceful, even timid, policy towards France. Shortly after Edward's death in 1483 his brother,
Richard III, seized the throne. Richard included in his style
king of France but also conceded the French kings' right to use the title. 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. Richard's longer term intentions in relation to the claim to France are not known and, after a two-year reign, he was overthrown by Henry. Richard was the last Plantagenet king of England.
Valois rebuttals 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. 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. 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. 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". 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. 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. 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. The first known link made to it was in a short note in a treatise written by
Jean de Montreuil around 1413. 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. In reality, the text had no direct relevance to the succession to the throne but, nevertheless, it was interpreted by the Valois apologists as being determinative. 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.
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. 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. It was commissioned by
Louis XI to rectify perceived weaknesses in des Ursins's treatise. 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. 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. This was tested in 1498 with the death of
Charles VIII. Until then, the crown had passed from father to son in the direct line of the House of Valois. 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. ==After the Plantagenets==