English claims to the French throne

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.

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.

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.

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.

From the election of Hugh Capet in 987 until 1316, the French crown passed uninterrupted from father to son,[1] providing, for the time, such unusual dynastic continuity that it was called the "Capetian miracle".

"[5] In 1322, Philip V died leaving only daughters and, consistent with the 1317 assembly's declaration, they were set aside and his brother, Charles IV acceded to the throne.

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.

[11] 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.

[11] Disputes over the political status of Gascony and the nature of the feudal relationship resulted in a number of confrontations, culminating in confiscations of the duchy in 1294 and 1324.

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.

[21] 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.

[26] Edward revived his claim in 1369 in response to the Valois king, Charles V, attempting to exercise feudal rights in Gascony.

Applying the same genealogical principles that had given Edward his claim—permitting inheritance through the female line—would clearly mean that Mortimer, rather than Henry, was the rightful English claimant to the French crown.

[53] It was not until the accession of Henry V, the second Lancastrian king, in 1413 that Edward III's claim to the French crown was revived and actively pursued again,[54] ending the truce of 1389.

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.

[60] In the treaty Charles stipulated: it is agreed that immediately after our death and thenceforward, the crown and realm of France and all their rights and appurtenances shall remain and perpetually be with our said son, King Henry and his heirs.

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.

[65] Although the treaty was not accepted by the dauphin or in large parts of the country,[66] it did enable Henry, with his Burgundian allies, to take control of Paris, and most of northern France.

[70] However, the dauphin continued to dispute his exclusion from the succession and, as Charles VII, was recognised as king in the areas outside of English control south of the Loire.

[62] 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.

By 1453, Gascony had been taken as well, leaving Calais and the Channel Islands as the last remaining English possessions,[72] but bringing the Hundred Years' War to an end.

[20] Henry VI, and all his successors as monarchs of England, continued to be styled king or queen of France but it was now a title without substance.

[76] 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.

[78] 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.

The invasion took place in 1475, and Louis bought off Edward at the Treaty of Picquigny with a large cash payment and the promise not to support his domestic enemies.

[88] 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[89]) until the reign of George III.

[90] Henry withdrew following the Treaty of Étaples, under which Charles agreed both to pay him a large subsidy[91] and to cease supporting the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck.

[93] 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".

[104] 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.