Many people with even a moderate interest in history will likely
have heard of Richard, 3rd Duke of York (1411-1460) and his
claim to the throne which made him a rival of the Lancastrian
King Henry VI (the sixth)- even if only from Shakespeare’s
‘history’ plays in which this claim is recounted at some length
by Richard himself. As Historians go, most simply take it for
granted that Richard and his sons the subsequent Yorkist Kings
Edward IV and Richard III had the ‘best’ and ‘strongest’ claim
to the throne- or at least one that trumped that of the
‘usurping’ Lancastrians. Either way, the superiority of the
Yorkist claim is generally stated as an undisputed fact by many
Medievalists. This is a view that I too shared until fairly
recently- and which likely a lot of other History students do-
but not anymore. In this post I will be examining this subject
in more detail- and try not to be too boring in the process! The
key questions that are to be addressed when looking at this
claim are thus 1- What was the natu