# English claims to the French throne

From 1340, English monarchs, beginning with the Plantagenet king Edward III, claimed to be the rightful kings of France and fought the Hundred Years' War, in part, to enforce their claim. Every English and, later, British monarch from Edward to George III, until 1801, included in their titles king or queen of France. This was despite the English losing the Hundred Years' War by 1453 and failing to secure the crown in several attempted invasions of France over the following seventy years. From the early 16th century, the claim lacked any credible possibility of realisation and faded as a political issue.
Edward's claim was based on his being, through his mother, the nearest male relative of the last direct line Capetian king of France, Charles IV, who died in 1328. However, Philip of Valois, from a cadet branch of the Capetians, became king instead, as the French magnates preferred a French rather than a foreign monarch. The justification given was that the crown supposedly could not be inherited through the female line and Philip was Charles's nearest male relative through the male line. From 1337, Edward spent most of the rest of his life at war with Philip and his Valois successors, in part, to pursue his claim to the throne, although Edward's main concern was, in fact, to protect his rights to his lands in Gascony, in south west France. He never succeeded in securing the French crown and after he died in 1377, the war petered out.
Subsequent English monarchs traced their claim to the French throne to Edward and his claim through his mother. Initially, this was rebutted by the French on the basis of a vague appeal to custom. However, from the 15th century, the Valois case came to be based on the assertion that the 6th century Frankish legal code known as Salic law applied to the succession and excluded inheritance of the crown by or through women. In 1415 Henry V revived the claim after a period of peace and invaded France. Following his crushing defeat of the French at Agincourt, he succeeded in taking control of northern France and was declared heir of the Valois king, Charles VI. Both kings died in 1422 and Henry's son, Henry VI, was crowned king of both countries, creating the so-called dual monarchy of England and France. However, 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.
Further invasions to claim the throne were attempted by Edward IV in 1475, Henry VII in 1492 and, finally, by Henry VIII who repeatedly invaded France between 1513 and 1523 with that objective. All failed and by this time the claim had become wholly unrealistic. England and France would continue to fight wars but none were over the claim to the crown. Calais was lost in 1558 but monarchs of England and Great Britain nevertheless continued to include France in their titles, even in treaties with French kings. Because of the improbable and unrealistic nature of the claim, the inclusion was ignored. However, following the French Revolution, the new republican government of France objected to the practice and the title ceased to be used in 1801 and the claim finally abandoned the following year.

## Background
### Anglo-French relations

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, leading to a lengthy conflict with the French monarchs. However, by the early 14th century the Plantagenet domains had been reduced to the Duchy of Gascony, also known as Aquitaine, as well as some other smaller territories.
Until 1259, the English kings held their ancestral Angevin lands in France 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 Gascony as a feudal dependency of the kingdom of France. 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 these feudal concepts and the political realities of the relationship between two kings led to tension and conflict. Disputes over the political status of Gascony and the nature of the feudal relationship resulted in a number of confrontations, culminating in confiscations of the duchy in 1294 and 1324. Agreements were reached eventually restoring the duchy on both occasions, but not until 1303 and 1327 respectively.

### French succession

From the election of Hugh Capet in 987 until 1316, the French crown passed uninterrupted from father to son, providing, for the time, such unusual dynastic continuity that it has been called the "Capetian miracle". However, this was brought to an end by Louis X dying in 1316 and leaving only a daughter, Joan. His queen, Clémence, was pregnant with a posthumous son, John, but he died five days after birth. This created an unprecedented situation as the question of female succession to the crown had never before needed to be considered. Louis's brother, Philip, acted quickly to set Joan aside and, he had himself crowned king, becoming Philip V. He then called an assembly of the kingdom to ratify his accession, which met four weeks later in early 1317, and declared "a woman could not succeed to the crown of the kingdom of France." In 1322, Philip V died leaving only daughters and, consistent with the 1317 assembly's declaration, they were set aside and his brother, Charles IV acceded to the throne.
From the 15th century, French writers began arguing that the royal succession had, without interruption, been regulated by Salic law, a 6th century Frankish legal code, and it was claimed that this specified that succession to the French crown could not be by or through a woman. The fullest exposition of the Salic law's claimed role in the French succession was published in 1464 in an anonymous tract known as Pour ce que plusieurs. This 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.
In fact, 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. 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 was in a short note in a treatise written by Jean de Montreuil between 1409 and 1414. Even then, the claim that Salic law excluded women from inheriting the French crown was based on one particular clause in the law which, in reality, had no direct relevance to the succession to the throne.

## Plantagenet claimants
### 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 no children except a daughter, 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. The magnates did not want, among other objections, a foreign king, as they saw it, as their monarch, but 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 and Edward declaring 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. Edward 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. However, on 26 January 1340, Edward formally proclaimed that he was the rightful king of France in a ceremony in the Friday Market in the Flemish city of Ghent. At the same time Edward quartered his arms—the arms of England—with 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. It provided them with the argument 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:
   Since therefore the kingdom of France has devolved upon us by the clearest right owing to the death of Charles of noted memory, the last king of France, brother germane of our lady mother, and the lord Philip of Valois, son of the king's uncle, and thus farther removed in blood from the said king, has intruded himself by force into the kingdom while we were yet of tender years and holds that kingdom against God and justice...we have recognised our right to the kingdom and have undertaken the burden of the rule of that kingdom, as we ought to do, resolving....to cast out that usurper when opportunity shall seem most propitious.
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 at the papal palace at Avignon in 1344. The legal argument put forward in the brief 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. Although the applicability of Salic law did not figure in the Valois arguments until the 15th century, the French had claimed, vaguely, that it had been established by custom that the crown could not be inherited through females. The English lawyers, in the brief, argued that there was no "custom and practice" to be deciphered, only the express enactments of the assemblies in 1317 and after the death of Philip V in 1322. The issue in hand could not have been considered by those bodies in 1317 or in 1322 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.
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. Benedict's successor, Clement VI, who presided over the conference at Avignon, attempted to reach a compromise that 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 Mark Ormrod has remarked, there are indications that he "was beginning to believe the force of his own arguments". Although the conference failed to result in a settlement, 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.
Philip VI died in 1350 and was succeeded by his son John II. The Valois kings issued royal ordinances in 1375, 1392 and 1407 regulating the succession and declaring that the crown should pass from father to eldest son. No reference to Salic law was made and no justification for the rule of succession given except that the 1407 ordinance declared it was a "right of nature". In practice, the crown passed, father to son, in the direct line House of Valois until 1498.
Edward continued to use the title during the war until peace was agreed at the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, when he renounced all claims to the French throne in return for full sovereignty over Gascony. He was also granted substantial additional lands in France. Edward revived his claim in 1369 in response to the Valois king, Charles V, attempting 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, but during the subsequent truce negotiations at the Conference of Bruges in 1375 and 1376 the English 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 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 royal arms and title.

### The Lancastrians
#### Henry IV

Richard was deposed in 1399 by his cousin, Henry Bolinbroke, duke of Lancaster, who, as Henry IV, became the first of the Lancastrian kings. 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 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. Another descendant of Edward, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, had an arguably stronger claim to both the English and French crowns than Henry, making Henry a usurper. Henry's father was John of Gaunt, Edward's third surviving son, whereas Mortimer was a descendant of Edward's second son, Lionel of Antwerp, albeit through the female line. As such, Mortimer could be considered as having a superior claim to the throne. There was, nevertheless, not a clear answer to who was the rightful king in these circumstances. The rules of succession to the English crown, including whether descent through a female would have priority over a more junior male line descent, were far from settled at this time. With these issues in mind, and in an attempt to override the Mortimer claim, Henry claimed the throne as "heir male" of Henry III.
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 claim—permitting inheritance through the female line—would clearly mean that Mortimer, rather than Henry, was the rightful English claimant to the French crown. Furthermore, Ian Mortimer has noted,
   Henry IV claimed the throne of France as heir general of Philip IV (in preference to the heir male) at the same time as claiming that of England as 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.
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 revived and 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 to pursue Edward III's claim to the crown.
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 due course. In the treaty Charles stipulated:
   it is agreed that immediately after our death and thenceforward, the crown and realm of France and all their rights and appurtenances shall remain and perpetually be with our said son, King Henry and his heirs.
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 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 northern half 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

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 (1455-1487), as Henry VI's Yorkist opponents held the Lancastrians responsible. The Yorkist leader, Richard, Duke of York, had inherited the Mortimer claim to the English throne as his maternal uncle was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, giving him an arguably superior claim to that of the Lancastrians. By the same measure, Mortimer also had had a stronger claim than the Lancastrians to the French throne. In 1460, Richard attempted to depose Henry and formally submitted to the House of Lords his claim 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, 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. 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. As king of France, Edward would grant Charles full sovereignty over his domains, which would be expanded to include Champagne, leaving the rest of the kingdom to Edward. As 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.
Although Edward's brother, Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England, styled himself king of France he also conceded the French kings' right to use the title. However, Richard 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 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.

## After the Plantagenets

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

### The Tudors

Henry VII, the first Tudor king, followed a similar path to Edward IV that led to the Treaty of Picquigny. In 1489 Henry announced that he was claiming the French throne and, in 1492, he invaded France from Calais in alliance with the Breton opponents of Charles VIII of France. He instructed his army to "make his arrival within his realm of France for the recovering of his right there". Henry withdrew following the Treaty of Étaples, under which Charles agreed both to pay him a large subsidy and to cease supporting the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck. By this time the claim was very much theoretical and primarily used for tactical purposes in negotiations with the French kings.
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. According to 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". In the early part of his reign he repeatedly invaded France with the aim of claiming the crown and becoming the rightful king of France. In 1513, he even anticipated being crowned in Paris. Henry thought his claim to the throne would be enthusiastically supported by the French people. In all, he invaded France three times in the decade from 1513, even occupying Tournai for six years as king of France. Henry treated Tournai not as an English conquest but part of his kingdom of France. His last attempt to take the crown was a march on Paris in 1523, which Stephen Gunn calls "in effect, the last campaign of the Hundred Years' War".
The hoped for support of the French people to his claim never emerged and Henry lost interest in pursuing it. As early as 1520, Henry declared during the Field of the Cloth of Gold that it was "a title given to me which is good for nothing". 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. Boulogne was evacuated in 1550 and in 1558, Calais, the last remaining English possession in mainland France, was lost as well. 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. England would continue to fight multiple wars with France, but none involved the claim to the French throne.

### Later use of the title

The title nevertheless continued to be used by English and British monarchs for the next 250 years 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 fixated with it, and commissioned a book rebutting the claim which was reprinted several times up to the mid-16th century. But this changed with the passage of time.
By the time of Henry VIII it was clearly an unrealistic objective. The title, therefore, became, as William Pitt later described it, "a harmless feather, at most, in the crown of England." It was ignored by both sides as an unrealisable fantasy, even though the English continued to use it in diplomatic interactions. Louis XIV even accepted that his arch-enemy, William III, could use the title in the text of the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697. Equally, the English did not try to challenge the French kings' use of the title.
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. The title was finally abandoned as a result of the Treaty of Amiens of 1802, although George III 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.