Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of King Henry VI, Phoenix Mill, 2004, pp; 17,18,19,217. ISBN 0 7509 3777 7 James's time in France had exposed him to the beliefs and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, and both he and his wife Anne became drawn to that faith. [47] [c] James took Catholic Eucharist in 1668 or 1669, although his conversion was kept secret for almost a decade as he continued to attend Anglican services until 1676. [49] In spite of his conversion, James continued to associate primarily with Anglicans, including John Churchill and George Legge, as well as French Protestants such as Louis de Duras, 2nd Earl of Feversham. [50] Royle, Trevor (2004). The British Civil Wars: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1638–1660. Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-29293-7. 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. Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (31 January 1788 – 13 July 1807), self-styled Henry IX and I, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland.

The Duke of Brittany's allegiance to the dual monarchy under the protectorate of Bedford was preserved through his abiding aim to preserve the independence of his duchy. Arthur de Richemont, a Breton nobleman, at first supported Henry V in the signing of the Treaty of Troyes, and he was created Count of Touraine by the English, but soon gave allegiance to Charles VII when Yolande of Aragon made him Constable of France. As the English were moving into Valois territory , relations with Brittany started to deteriorate in 1424 and when "open war" was declared the Estates-General took precautions against Breton raiders on the coast. Relations with Burgundy were much more important for English commerce. This house descended from Edward III's third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Henry IV seized power from Richard II (and also displaced the next in line to the throne, Edmund Mortimer (then aged 7), a descendant of Edward III's second son, Lionel of Antwerp).Quinn, Stephen. "The Glorious Revolution". Economic History Association EH.net . Retrieved 3 January 2019. From the 1340s to the 19th century, excluding two brief intervals in the 1360s and the 1420s, the kings and queens of England and Ireland (and, later, of Great Britain) 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 (later lost in 1558) and the Channel Islands (which had historically formed part also of the Duchy of Normandy). English and British monarchs continued to prominently call themselves kings of France, and the French fleur-de-lis was included in the royal arms. This continued until 1802, by which time France no longer had any monarch, having become a republic. The Jacobite claimants, however, did not explicitly relinquish the claim. Historical analysis of James II has been somewhat revised since Whig historians, led by Lord Macaulay, cast James as a cruel absolutist and his reign as "tyranny which approached to insanity". [162] Subsequent scholars, such as G. M. Trevelyan (Macaulay's great-nephew) and David Ogg, while more balanced than Macaulay, still characterised James as a tyrant, his attempts at religious tolerance as a fraud, and his reign as an aberration in the course of British history. [163] In 1892, A. W. Ward wrote for the Dictionary of National Biography that James was "obviously a political and religious bigot", although never devoid of "a vein of patriotic sentiment"; "his conversion to the church of Rome made the emancipation of his fellow-catholics in the first instance, and the recovery of England for catholicism in the second, the governing objects of his policy." [164] It is from the time of Henry III, after the loss of most of the family's continental possessions, that the Plantagenet kings became more English in nature. The Houses of Lancaster and York are cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet.

Cobbett, William (1818). The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol.33. London: T.C. Hansard . Retrieved 29 April 2020.

Monarchs of England, Wales and Ireland

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: Main article: Williamite War in Ireland Battle of the Boyne between James II and William III, 11 July 1690 by Huchtenburg The couple's first child, Charles, was born less than two months later, but died in infancy, as did five further children. [33] Only two daughters survived: Mary (born 30 April 1662) and Anne (born 6 February 1665). [34] Samuel Pepys wrote that James was fond of his children and his role as a father, and played with them "like an ordinary private father of a child", a contrast to the distant parenting common with royalty at the time. [35] [36]