EDWARD IV., King of England. During the reign of Richard II. the heir presumptive to the crown was Roger Mortimer, earl of March, the son of Philippa Plantagenet, who was the only child of Lionel, duke of Clarence, the second of tho sous of Edward III. that left any descendants. Roger, earl of March, died in Ireland, where ho was lord-lieutenant, or governor, in 1393. His son, Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, was a child of only ten years of ago at the deposition of Richard II. in 1399; but in his person resided the right to the crown by lineal descent so long as lie lived. Although however his name was mentioned on several occasions in connection with his dangerous pretensions, and he more than once ran the risk of being made a tool of in the hands of persona more ambitious than himself, he never made any attempt against the Louse of Lancaster. We may here remark that much confusion has been introduced into the common accounts of Edmund Mortimer by his being confounded with his uncle Sir Edmund Mortimer. It was tho latter personage, for instance, who, having married the daughter of Owen Gloudower, engaged with the Percles In their insurrection in 1403, and performed the rest of the part assigned to the Lord Mortimer in Shakspere's play of the First Part of Henry the Fourth.' It is to him also we suppose that we are to attribute the pun put by the common histories into the mouth of his nephew the Earl of March at the coronation of Henry IV., when, on that king claiming the crown as the heir male of Henry III., he said that he was indeed liceres Malus. The young Earl of March, with the other children of his father, was detained in a sort of imprisonment at Windsor during all the reign of Henry IV., but on the accession of Henry V. he was set at liberty. In 1415 he became involved in the conspiracy planned against Henry V. by Richard, earl of Cambridge ; but it is most probable that he was not answerable for the use which was made, or rather intended to be made, on this occasion, of his name. Indeed the common account
makes him to have been the person who gave Henry information of the conspiracy, after he had been applied to by the Earl of Cambridge, who had married his sister, to join it. After tho accession of Henry VI. he was sent as lord lieutenant to Ireland ; and he died there, in the castle of Trim, in 1424. He left no issue, nor did his brother Roger, nor his sister Eleanor ; but his sister Ann, married to the Earl of Cambridge, had a son named Richard, who consequently became his uncle's representative, and (at least after the death of his mother) the individual on whom had devolved the claim by lineal descent to the crown. This Richard was also the representative of Edward III.'s fifth son, Edmund, duke of York, his father, the Earl of Cambridge, having been the second son of that prince, whose eldest son and heir, Edward, duke of York, had fallen nt the battle of Agincourt, leaving no issue, only a few months after his brother had been executed for the conspiracy mentioned above. At the time of his uncle's death, Richard, in consequence of his father's forfeiture, had no title ; but he seems to have immediately assumed that of Earl of March, at least he is so called by some of the chroniclers, and the same title was also afterwards borne by his son, although the right of either to it may be questioned, inasmuch as it appears to have been only descendible to heirs male. Richard however is best known by his title of Duke of York, which he took iu 1425, on being restored in blood and allowed to inherit the honours both of his father and uncle. But it is important to recollect that the claim of the house of York to the crown in opposition to the house of Lancaster was not derived from Edward Il l.'s fifth son, Edmund, duke of York, who was younger than John of Gaunt, the founder of the house of Lancaster, but from Lionel, duke of Clarence, who was that king's third son, John of Gaunt being his fourth.