John of England

Edward II was King of England from 1307 to 1327. Born at Caernarfon in 1284, the son of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, he was the first English heir to hold the title Prince of Wales. His reign was dominated by conflict with his barons over his reliance on favourites, above all Piers Gaveston and later Hugh Despenser the Younger, and by military failure in Scotland, where Robert the Bruce destroyed an English army at Bannockburn in 1314. In 1326 his wife Isabella of France and the exiled baron Roger Mortimer invaded England, and in January 1327 Edward became the first English king to be deposed by parliament, in favour of his teenage son Edward III. He died later that year at Berkeley Castle.

Edward III was King of England from 1327 to 1377, one of the longest and most celebrated reigns of the Middle Ages. Born at Windsor in 1312 to Edward II and Isabella of France, he came to the throne as a boy after his father's deposition and took power into his own hands in 1330. Claiming the French crown through his mother, he opened the Hundred Years' War, winning at Sluys in 1340 and Crécy in 1346 and taking Calais, while his eldest son, the Black Prince, triumphed at Poitiers. He founded the Order of the Garter in 1348 and presided over the arrival of the Black Death and the steady growth of parliament. His many sons, and the rivalry of their descendants, shaped English politics for a century.

Edward of Woodstock, known to later ages as the Black Prince, was the eldest son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault and the most admired English soldier of his age. Born in 1330, he was created Prince of Wales in 1343 and commanded a division at Crécy in 1346 at the age of sixteen. Ten years later at Poitiers he captured John II of France, and from 1362 he ruled the principality of Aquitaine for his father. His later campaign in Castile drained his resources and his health, and he returned to England in 1371. He married his cousin Joan of Kent and died in 1376, a year before his father, so the crown passed instead to his young son Richard II.

Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, was the second surviving son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, born at Antwerp in 1338 while his parents were in the Low Countries. Through his marriage as a boy to Elizabeth de Burgh he became Earl of Ulster and one of the greatest landholders in Ireland, and in 1361 Edward III sent him there as lieutenant; the parliament he held at Kilkenny in 1366 produced the Statutes of Kilkenny. Created Duke of Clarence in 1362, he travelled to Italy in 1368 for a second marriage and died at Alba a few months later. His only child, Philippa, carried his line to the Mortimer earls of March and, through them, to the house of York.

Henry IV was King of England from 1399 to 1413 and the first monarch of the house of Lancaster. Born at Bolingbroke Castle in 1367, the son of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, he was one of the Lords Appellant who curbed Richard II in 1388 and was later exiled, his inheritance seized. He returned in 1399, deposed his cousin Richard and was accepted as king by parliament. His reign was spent defending that title against the revolt of Owain Glyndwr in Wales, the Percy risings in the north and repeated conspiracies, and against a persistent shortage of money. He was the first king since the Norman Conquest whose first language was English. He died at Westminster in 1413.

Richard II was King of England from 1377 to 1399, the son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent. Born at Bordeaux in 1367, he succeeded his grandfather Edward III at the age of ten and faced the Peasants' Revolt at fourteen, riding out to meet the rebels at Smithfield. His adult rule was marked by struggles with the Lords Appellant, who curbed his power in 1388, and by a later reassertion of royal authority that his opponents called tyranny. A notable patron of art and architecture, he rebuilt the roof of Westminster Hall. In 1399 he was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who took the throne as Henry IV, and he died at Pontefract Castle early in 1400.

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.