Issue of Edward III of England

Adam Rutherford, a twentieth-century geneticist, has claimed that it is "virtually impossible" that a person with a predominantly British ancestry is not descended from Edward III.

The heirs presumptive through Lionel of Antwerp were passed over in favour of the powerful Henry IV, descendant of Edward III through John of Gaunt.

These Lancaster kings initially survived the treason of their Edmund of Langley (York) cousins but eventually were deposed by the merged Lionel/Edmund line in the person of Edward IV.

Internecine killing among the Yorks left Richard III as king, supported and then betrayed by his cousin Buckingham, the descendant of Thomas of Woodstock.

Finally, the Yorks were dislodged by the remaining Lancastrian candidate, Henry VII of the House of Tudor, another descendant of John of Gaunt, who married the eldest daughter of Yorkist King Edward IV.

Roger Mortimer had therefore a more senior right to the crown than Henry, but Edward III had reverted this ranking in 1376 by omitting Philippa from the order of succession.

He was buried at York Minster on 10 February 1337,[5][6][7] where survives his monument with effigy in the north quire aisle, the position of his burial being unknown.

A legend was developed, although without foundation, claiming that Edmund Crouchback was older than his brother King Edward I and had been passed over in the succession because of physical infirmity.

Gaunt's great-granddaughter from this union, Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), was the senior legitimate descendant of the Beauforts and married into the House of Tudor, producing a single child Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, who in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth seized the throne from his mother's second cousin King Richard III (1483–1485) and ruled as King Henry VII (1485–1509).

While the Beaufort offspring had been legitimized by Richard II by act of parliament and papal bull, after Gaunt's eventual marriage to Katherine Swynford, this was later, by letters patent issued by Henry IV, conditioned that they be barred from ascending the throne.