The English royal house that began as a family of Welsh gentry. Its fortunes started to rise when Henry V’s widow, Katherine of Valois, married Owen Tudor (c.1400–61), her clerk of the wardrobe. He was executed after the Yorkists’ victory of Mortimer’s Cross (1461) during the Wars of the Roses, but his son Edmund (c.1430–56), Earl of Richmond, married Margaret Beaufort, and their son Henry was thus a descendant, though illegitimately, of the House of Lancaster. His claim to the throne became more acceptable after the death of Henry VI’s son Edward in 1471, and Richard III’s loss of the nobility’s support paved the way for Henry’s invasion of England and taking of the throne as Henry VII in 1485.

Henry safeguarded his claim to the throne by marrying Elizabeth of York, the Yorkist heiress: she bore him eight children, although four died in infancy. Arthur died soon after marrying Catherine of Aragon, and it was his younger brother who succeeded to the throne, as Henry VIII. Of his children, his only son, Edward VI, died in his youth. His elder daughter Mary died in 1558 after a childless marriage to Philip II of Spain, and Elizabeth I never married. With Elizabeth’s death (1603) the House of Tudor ended, and the throne passed to James VI of Scotland, of the House of Stuart.