[27] The sons of Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V., by her second marriage with a Welsh knight named Owen Tudor.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK.
1471-1485.
The Lancastrian line.—Henry, Earl of Richmond.
All the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the sword or the dagger, not only the last representatives of the elder and legitimate branch which had occupied the throne, but also the whole family of the Beauforts, the descendants of the natural sons of John of Gaunt, who had been legitimized by the grant of Richard II. Even in the female line there remained no one who showed any signs of disputing the claim of Edward IV. to the throne. The only descendants of John of Gaunt's first family who survived were the Kings of Spain and Portugal, who traced themselves back to John's eldest daughter; while the Beauforts were represented by Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of that Duke of Somerset who had died in 1444, the elder brother of the man who lost Normandy and fell at St. Albans. The Lady Margaret had married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the half-brother of Henry VI., and by him had a single child, Henry, now Earl of Richmond by his father's decease. In Henry the Beaufort line had its last representative, but he was but a boy of fourteen, and was over-sea in Brittany, whither his mother had sent him for safety, while she herself had wedded as her second spouse Lord Stanley, a peer of strong Yorkist proclivities.
Secure rule of Edward IV.
Neither the distant Spaniards nor the boy Henry of Richmond were seriously thought of—even by themselves—as claimants to the English crown, and King Edward might for the rest of his life repose on the laurels of Tewkesbury and Barnet, and take his ease without troubling himself about further dynastic troubles.