Edward of Westminster
1453 – 1471 · Generation XXI · House of Plantagenet
Edward of Westminster (1453–1471). The Lancastrian heir, killed at Tewkesbury at seventeen. The only child of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou, he was born at Westminster amid rumours — never proven, and dismissed by Henry — that another man had fathered him. The Act of Accord of 1460 disinherited him in favour of York’s line, and he fled with his mother through Wales to Scotland. After the second battle of St Albans the boy reportedly condemned two captured Yorkist knights to beheading, and in 1467 a Milanese envoy wrote that he spoke of little besides beheadings and war. After Towton he fled once more to Scotland, then kept court in exile in France until Margaret allied with Warwick, sealing the pact by marrying Edward to Warwick’s daughter Anne Neville in 1470. He landed in England on the day Warwick fell at Barnet and died three weeks later at Tewkesbury — in the rout, by contemporary accounts. He lies in Tewkesbury Abbey.
Place in the family
- Edward of Westminster was a first cousin once removed of King Henry VIII.
One of 26 people of House of Plantagenet (1126–1485) in this archive. The longest-reigning English house, counting its Angevin beginning and the rival Lancaster and York branches that fought the Wars of the Roses.
Line of descent: King William I The Conqueror → King Henry I → Matilda the Empress → King Henry II → King John → King Henry III → King Edward I Longshanks → King Edward II → King Edward III → John of Gaunt → King Henry IV → King Henry V → King Henry VI → Edward of Westminster.
Parents
- King Henry VI (1421 – 1471)
- Margaret of Anjou (1430 – 1482)