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 taking the French crown and after he died in 1377, the war petered out. However, subsequent English monarchs traced their claim to the French throne to Edward.
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 failedby 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==
===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 was 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 had himself crowned king, becoming Philip V. He then called an assembly of the kingdom to ratify his accession, which met four weeks later 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 1316 assembly's declaration, they were set aside and his brother, Charles IV acceded to the throne.
The exclusion of women from the succession was subsequently said to be based on the 5th century Salic law. It is now believed that it was not until much later that the justification of Salic law was deployed: it is thought to have been a theory put forward by the Valois kings' lawyers to fortify their masters' title with an additional aura of authenticity. It appears to be a 1413 work of Jean de Montreuil that first highlighted Salic law as being important to the French succession. Nevertheless, allusions to Salic law by (1240) and Jean de Vignay (c. 1340) suggest that there may have been an earlier awareness of it.
===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 vassals 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 the king of France seeking to confiscate the Duchy in 1294 and 1324.
==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 only 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 used as a legal basis for their preference the argument that "the mother had no claim, so neither did the son", in the words of the chronicler of Saint-Denis. Consequently, Philip acceded to the throne as Philip VI, the first of the Valois kings. 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. Although fighting continued until peace was agreed in 1360, in retrospect it was seen as the opening conflict of the Hundred Years' War that lasted to 1453.
Edward first publicly declared that he claimed the French throne in 1340. A small number of documents sent by Edward in October 1337 to his allies in France had described him as king of France and England but otherwise he had consistently omitted France from his titles prior to 1340. In the market-place of the Flemish city of Ghent, Edward was formally proclaimed the rightful king of France on 26 January 1340. This was followed by a written "Manifesto" dated 8 February 1340 and issued from Ghent which detailed his claim. Edward's aim in doing this was probably 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.) At the same time he quartered his armsthe arms of Englandwith the royal arms of France. Edward's Manifesto stated that it was issued "in the first year of our reign over France", implying that he was claiming to be king of France only from around 1340, and that his entitlement was because he was "closer in blood" to Charles IV than Philip who had "intruded himself by force into the kingdom while we were yet of tender years".
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. 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. By this point, the French were successfully pushing the English back and by 1380 there was little left of Edward's previously extensive territories. The war petered out and a truce was signed in 1389.
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.
===Henry V and the Lancastrian dual monarchy===
It was not until the accession of Henry V, the second Lancastrian king, in 1413 that Edward's claim to the French crown was revived and actively pursued once again. Both of Edward's two immediate successors, his grandsons, Richard II and the first of the Lancastrian kings, Henry IV, followed a policy of pursuing peace with France, although, at the same time, they continued to use the style king of France. Under them, there was mostly a fragile truce between England and France, particularly from 1389, albeit with occasional intermittent fighting. The two kingdoms were more focussed on domestic issues.
This changed with the accession of Henry IV's son, Henry V. 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.
Following the invasion, Henry formed an alliance with Burgundy which lasted from 1419 until 1435. By 1420 Henry had inflicted an overwhelming defeat on the French at Agincourt, occupied Normandy and had forced on the French king, Charles VI, the Treaty of Troyes. This not only gave Henry control of Paris and most of northern France but also the right to succeed Charles as king. 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 made this a viable objective. The weakening of the French side caused by the alliance allowed Henry to adopt a very different strategy to Edward III and ensured that the crown could remain his principal war aim.
However, Henry's claim, prior to the Treaty of Troyes, had suffered from the disadvantage that the Lancastrians were arguably usurpers to the English throne. Applying the same genealogical principles that had given Edward III his claim would mean that, in fact, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, rather than Henry, was the rightful English claimant to the French crownalthough it would have been futile of the Mortimer family to put forward a competing claim. Mortimer had a superior claim to both thrones as he was a descendant of Edward III's second son albeit through the female line. The Lancastrians were descended in the male line from Edward's third surviving son. In any event, according to Anne Curry, it was left deliberately ambiguous in the Treaty of Troyes 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.
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 disputed 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 taken as well, leaving Calais and the Channel Islands as the last remaining English possessions, but bringing the Hundred Years' War to an end.
===Wars of the Roses and the Yorkists===
Henry VI, and all his successors as monarchs of England, continued to be styled king or queen of France. However, from 1453, it was a title without substance. 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's Yorkist opponents held the Lancastrians responsible. The Yorkist leader, Richard, Duke of York, had an arguably superior claim to the English throne inherited from his maternal uncle, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. Mortimer also had had a stronger claim to the French throne than the Lancastrians. 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 Edward off at the Treaty of Picquigny with a large cash payment and the promise not to support his domestic enemies. Edward then withdrew his army.
Although Edward's brother, the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, styled himself king of France he also conceded the French kings' right to use the title.
==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.
===Tudors===
Henry VII, the first Tudor king, followed a similar path to Edward IV. 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.
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.
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==References==
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==External links==
* Text of Edward III's Ghent Manifesto, 1340 from 
* Text of the Treaties of Brétigny (1360) and Troyes (1420) from 
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Category:English monarchs
Category:British monarchs
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Category:Rival successions
Category:Style of the British sovereign