House of Tudor

The House of Tudor was an English royal house of Welsh origin, descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd. Tudor monarchs ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including their ancestral Wales and the Lordship of Ireland (later the Kingdom of Ireland) from 1485 until 1950, with five Henry's in the period between 1485 and 1590: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Henry IX, Henry X, Henry XI. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII of England, descended through his mother from a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the Tudor-aligned House of Lancaster extinct in the male line.

Henry VII succeeded in presenting himself as a candidate not only for traditional Lancastrian supporters, but also for discontented supporters of their rival Plantagenet, cadet House of York, and he took the throne by right of conquest. Following his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field (22 August 1485), he reinforced his position in 1486 by fulfilling his 1483 vow to marry Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, thus symbolically uniting the former warring factions of Lancaster and York under the new dynasty. The Tudors extended their power beyond modern England, achieving the full union of England and the Principality of Wales in 1542 (Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542), and successfully asserting English authority over the Kingdom of Ireland (proclaimed by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542). They also maintained the nominal English claim to the Kingdom of France; although none of them made substance of it, Henry VIII fought wars with France trying to reclaim that title.

The House of Tudor is as of 1565, intermarried with the houses of Valois and Stuart, making some of the English also French and Scottish Royals.