Edward III of England

Henry II was King of England from 1154 to 1189 and the first monarch of the House of Plantagenet. Born at Le Mans in 1133 to Geoffrey V of Anjou and Empress Matilda, he inherited Anjou and Normandy, gained Aquitaine through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, and took the English crown two years later, ruling lands that stretched from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees. He rebuilt royal government after the civil war called the Anarchy, and his legal reforms, among them itinerant justices and sworn juries, laid the foundations of English common law. His reign was marked by his quarrel with Archbishop Thomas Becket and by rebellions led by his own sons. He died at Chinon in 1189 and was succeeded by Richard I.

Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart, was King of England from 1189 to 1199 and one of the leading commanders of the Third Crusade. Born at Oxford in 1157, a son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, he was brought up in his mother's duchy of Aquitaine and became its duke, rebelling against his father more than once before succeeding him. He spent almost his entire reign abroad, campaigning in the Holy Land against Saladin, where he took Acre and Jaffa but never recovered Jerusalem. Returning overland, he was held for a vast ransom in Germany while England was governed by his officials and his mother. He died in the Limousin in 1199 and was succeeded by his brother John.

John was King of England from 1199 to 1216, the youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Born at Oxford in 1166, he succeeded his brother Richard I and by 1204 had lost Normandy, Anjou and most of the family's continental lands to Philip II of France. Heavy taxation to fund attempts at their recovery, together with quarrels with the church and with his barons, provoked a rebellion that forced him to accept Magna Carta at Runnymede in June 1215, the charter that first set down in writing that the king was subject to law. War resumed almost at once, and he died at Newark in October 1216, leaving the throne to his nine-year-old son Henry III.

Henry III was King of England from 1216 to 1272, one of the longest reigns in English history. The son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême, he was born at Winchester in 1207 and crowned at the age of nine while much of the country was still in rebel hands, ruling through regents until 1234. A devout and artistically minded king, he rebuilt Westminster Abbey in the Gothic style as a shrine for Edward the Confessor and as the burial church of his dynasty. His reliance on foreign relatives and his costly foreign schemes provoked the baronial reform movement of 1258 and the Second Barons' War, in which Simon de Montfort briefly controlled the government before being defeated by the king's son, the future Edward I.

Henry V was King of England from 1413 to 1422 and the most successful English commander of the Hundred Years' War. Born at Monmouth in 1386, the son of Henry IV and Mary de Bohun, he fought at Shrewsbury as a teenager and governed Wales during the Glyndwr revolt. As king he renewed the war in France, taking Harfleur and winning an overwhelming victory at Agincourt in 1415 against a far larger army, then systematically conquering Normandy. The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 recognised him as heir to the French throne and gave him Catherine of Valois in marriage. He died at Vincennes in 1422, aged thirty-five, leaving a son not yet a year old as king.

John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, was an English commander in the closing stages of the Hundred Years' War and the father of Margaret Beaufort. Born in 1404, the son of John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, and a grandson of John of Gaunt, he was captured at the battle of Bauge in 1421 and spent some seventeen years as a prisoner in France. Ransomed at last, he was created Duke of Somerset in 1443 and given command of an expensive expedition to France that achieved little and cost him the king's favour. He died in 1444, leaving an only daughter, Margaret, then a year old, whose Beaufort descent supplied the Lancastrian element of the Tudor claim.

Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, was the leading English magnate of the mid-fifteenth century and the father of Edward IV and Richard III. Born in 1411, he combined descent from Edward III's fourth son, Edmund of Langley, with the senior Mortimer claim inherited from his mother, Anne Mortimer, and he was the first of the family to use Plantagenet as an actual surname. He served as lieutenant of France and of Ireland and returned to England to demand reform of Henry VI's government, twice governing as Lord Protector during the king's incapacity. Excluded by the court party around Margaret of Anjou, he took up arms, and in 1460 was recognised as heir to the throne. He was killed at the battle of Wakefield that December.

Henry VI was King of England from 1422 to 1461 and again briefly from 1470 to 1471, and the only English king also crowned king of France. Born at Windsor in 1421, the son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, he succeeded before his first birthday, and the realm was governed by his uncles for sixteen years. Pious, bookish and averse to war, he presided over the loss of nearly all Lancastrian France by 1453 and over a court so divided that Richard, Duke of York, twice took power as protector. The quarrel became the Wars of the Roses. He founded Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, and died in the Tower of London in 1471.

Edward IV was King of England from 1461 to 1470 and again from 1471 to 1483, the first monarch of the house of York. Born at Rouen in 1442, the eldest surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, he took up his father's claim after the defeat at Wakefield and won the crown at the age of eighteen, confirming it with a crushing victory at Towton. His secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1464 alienated his ally the Earl of Warwick, who drove him briefly into exile in 1470; he returned to win at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. His second reign brought financial recovery and relative peace. He died in 1483, leaving two young sons.

Lady Margaret Beaufort was the mother of Henry VII and the last representative of the Beaufort line of the house of Lancaster. Born in 1443, the only child of John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, she was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt and an heiress of enormous value in the marriage market. Married to Edmund Tudor, she was widowed at thirteen and gave birth to her only child, Henry, at Pembroke Castle in 1457. Through decades of Yorkist rule she worked, latterly with Elizabeth Woodville, for his succession, and after his victory at Bosworth in 1485 she was a formidable presence at his court. A noted patron of learning, she founded Christ's and St John's colleges at Cambridge.

George, Duke of Clarence, was the third surviving son of Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the younger brother of Edward IV. Born at Dublin in 1449, he was created Duke of Clarence when his brother became king. In 1469 he married Isabel Neville, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, against the king's wishes and joined Warwick's rebellion, briefly siding with the restored Lancastrian regime before returning to Edward's allegiance in 1471. The reconciliation proved temporary; his continued opposition led parliament to condemn him for treason, and he died in the Tower of London in February 1478.