Late Middle Ages

The English claim to the French throne

The English claim to the throne of France is one of the most famous legal disputes of the Middle Ages. From 1340, when Edward III first formally asserted it, until 1475, when his great-grandson Edward IV formally renounced it, the claim was a central feature of English foreign policy, the casus belli of the Hundred Years’ War, and a powerful source of English national identity. The claim was based on a real legal argument; it was also shaped by the political, economic, and personal ambitions of the kings who made it. The renunciation of 1475 was a recognition that the legal argument had, by then, become an embarrassment.

Isabella’s son and the lawyers of 1328

The English claim, in its simplest form, ran as follows. King Philip IV of France, who died on 29 November 1314, had three sons — Louis X (1314–1316), Philip V (1316–1322), and Charles IV (1322–1328) — all of whom in turn became king of France. The last of these, Charles IV, died on 1 February 1328, leaving only a daughter and an unborn child, which proved to be a daughter. The French crown, by male-preference primogeniture, ought to have passed to the nearest male relative of the dead king. The nearest male relative was Edward III of England, the son of Isabella of France, the daughter of Philip IV and the sister of the three dead kings. Edward’s mother, however, was a woman; and the question that the French lawyers of 1328 had to answer was whether a woman could transmit to her son a claim to the throne she herself could not hold.

The French solution, in 1328, was the Salic Law. The Salic Law was an old Frankish statute, known principally through the Lex Salica of the sixth century, that excluded women from the inheritance of the terra Salica, the Salic land. The law had never been applied to the succession of the French crown: the crown had, in fact, passed through a woman in the reign of Louis X, whose son John I had lived only five days, and it had been held by his daughter Joan, who had renounced her rights in 1316. The application of the Salic Law to the throne in 1328 was a political decision, dressed in a legal costume, and the costume was supplied by the lawyers of Philip of Valois, the new king.

The historical writing of the dispute is dominated by the work of the French historian Robert Holton and the English historian Pierre Chaplais; the modern legal history is treated in the work of James Bickerton and the more recent studies of Marie-Hélène Ensergueix. The English case, in legal terms, was always strong: the French precedent of 1316 was awkward for the Valois. The English case, in political terms, was never accepted by the French nobility, and the Valois kings therefore retained the throne.

The Salic Law: principle or pretext?

The Salic Law, as it came to be cited in the French politics of the 1330s, was a principle of public law. The lawyers of Philip VI — Guillaume de Dumoulin, Pierre de Cuisances, the archbishop of Sens, Guillaume de Trie — were at pains to argue that the throne of France, as a “royal and political dignity,” could not be transmitted through a woman. The principle, as Dumoulin put it, was “the kingdom of France is a fief of the Salic law.” The argument is, in retrospect, a circular one; it was, however, sufficient for the purpose. The peers of the realm — the dukes of Burgundy, of Normandy, of Aquitaine, the counts of Toulouse, of Flanders, of Champagne — accepted Philip of Valois as king. Edward of England, then a child of fifteen, accepted him too. The claim, as an act of state, was held in reserve.

The English case for the Salic Law was simpler. The English kings, since Henry II, had been dukes of Aquitaine; the duchy was a fief of the French crown; the question of whether the Salic Law applied to the duchy was, in effect, the question of whether the duchy could be held by a woman. The English kings, of course, were not women, but their claim to the duchy was, in effect, a claim of inheritance; and the inheritance of the duchy could, in principle, be argued to be subject to the same law as the inheritance of the throne. The two questions were different. The first was a question of public law. The second was a question of feudal law. The French kings, by holding them apart, kept both.

The quartering of the arms: propaganda of the claim

The formal assertion of the claim came in 1340. On 7 October 1340, in a great ceremony at Ghent, Edward III quartered the fleurs-de-lis of France with the leopards of England, and assumed the title “King of France and England, and Lord of Ireland.” The ceremony, witnessed by the Flemish and Imperial magnates, was a piece of propaganda. The arms were a declaration of intent; the title was a political statement. The claim, in short, had been made; the English crown would maintain it for the next 135 years.

The propaganda of the claim was sustained for the rest of the war. The English chancery, from 1340 to 1422, used the combined title; the English royal style, on seals and coins, took it for granted. The chronicler of the Brut, working in the 1430s, simply assumed that the English king was the king of France; the chronicler of the Annales Henrici Quinti, writing the official history of Henry V’s reign, treated the French throne as a right of the English king. The propaganda of the claim was not, of course, the only propaganda of the war. The English, as the Gesta Henrici Quinti shows, also had a rhetoric of crusade, of justice, and of legitimate inheritance. The claim to France was, however, the most distinctive note.

The propaganda was effective. The Flemish chronicler Jean Froissart, who had no reason to be partial to the English crown, accepted the claim as a working fact; the Italian humanists of the later fourteenth century, who took the claim seriously as a piece of legal argument, used the English case as a stick to beat the French king. The English monarchy, in the century after 1340, had acquired a self-image that was not merely the island king, but the king of two kingdoms.

The claim as a war aim

The claim, as a war aim, was fought over in three great settlements: the Treaty of Brétigny of 1360, the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, and the Treaty of Picquigny of 1475. Each of these treated the claim as the central question; each of them, in different ways, modified it.

The Treaty of Brétigny, signed on 8 May 1360, was a settlement in which the claim was, in effect, put aside. Edward III renounced his claim to the French throne in exchange for the full sovereignty of Aquitaine, the Ponthieu, and Calais, and a ransom of three million crowns for King John. The renunciation was never implemented: the treaty of 1360 was a “preliminary” document, and the “final” treaty was never signed. The claim, in this sense, remained on the table.

The Treaty of Troyes, signed on 21 May 1420, was a settlement in which the claim was, in effect, decided in England’s favour. Henry V was recognised as regent of France and heir to the French throne; the dauphin was disinherited; the infant Henry VI, son of Henry V and Catherine, was to be king of both realms. The treaty was an extraordinary document, signed by a lucid Charles VI and his council, and it implied the abandonment of the Salic Law. The death of Henry V on 31 August 1422, six weeks before the death of Charles VI, left the infant Henry VI as king of both realms, but the treaty was not implemented. The dauphin, the future Charles VII, was never reconciled, and the war went on.

The Treaty of Picquigny, signed on 29 August 1475, was the final settlement. Edward IV renounced the claim; he was paid 75,000 crowns down and 50,000 crowns a year. The renunciation was final, and the claim was at last extinguished. The English royal style, which had included the title “King of France” since 1340, was modified; the title was retained formally until 1801, but the claim was dead.

The abandonment of 1475

The abandonment of the claim in 1475 was, in part, a recognition of reality. The English crown, after the loss of Aquitaine in 1453, the loss of Normandy in 1449, and the disaster of the Hundred Years’ War, was no longer in a position to assert the claim. The French monarchy, under Louis XI, was a centralised state with a powerful army and a full treasury; the English monarchy, under Edward IV, was a kingdom recently emerged from civil war. The settlement of 1475 was an act of prudence. The pension, while it lasted, was a real asset; the renunciation, while it was a humiliation, was also a release.

The historiography of the claim is dominated by the work of the French historians. Pierre Chaplais, in his English Medieval Diplomatic Practice (1982), has shown how the claim was used in the chancery. Robert Holton, in Le droit de la guerre et de la paix dans la pensée médiévale (1981), has examined the legal doctrine. The English case, in the form given to it by the Tudor chroniclers, was, in part, a piece of Whig history. The lawyers of Edward III, in 1340, had a real case; the lawyers of Edward IV, in 1475, had no case at all. The claim, from being a legal argument, had become a piece of rhetoric; and the rhetoric was abandoned in 1475.

The English claim to the French throne is one of the most famous legal disputes of the Middle Ages. It shaped the Hundred Years’ War, the propaganda of both sides, and the political life of both kingdoms for more than a century. The claim was based on a real legal argument, but it was also shaped by the political, economic, and personal ambitions of the kings who made it. The claim was finally renounced in 1475, but its long shadow can be traced in the politics, the literature, and the memory of both kingdoms for centuries to come.

References and further reading

  • Pierre Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, 2 vols. (London: HMSO, 1982).
  • Robert Holton, Le droit de la guerre et de la paix dans la pensée médiévale (Paris: Pedone, 1981).
  • Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years’ War, vols. I–V (London: Faber & Faber, 1990–2021).
  • Christopher Allmand, Henry V (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970; London: Yale University Press, 1992).
  • Marie-Hélène Ensergueix, L’idée d’empire dans le débat juridique des XIVe–XVe siècles (Paris: Cujas, 2010).