List of English monarchs




. Listed in red are The Heptarchy, the collective name given to the seven main Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms located in the southeastern two-thirds of the island that were unified to form the Kingdom of England.
This list of kings and queens of the Kingdom of England begins with Alfred the Great, who initially ruled Wessex, one of the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which later made up modern England. Alfred styled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons from about 886, and while he was not the first king to claim to rule all of the English, his rule represents the start of the first unbroken line of kings to rule the whole of England, the House of Wessex.
Arguments are made for a few different kings thought to control enough Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to be deemed the first king of England. For example, Offa of Mercia and Egbert of Wessex are sometimes described as kings of England by popular writers, but it is no longer the majority view of historians that their wide dominions are part of a process leading to a unified England. Historian Simon Keynes states, for example, that "Offa was driven by a lust for power, not a vision of English unity; and what he left was a reputation, not a legacy." This refers to a period in the late 8th century when Offa achieved a dominance over many of the kingdoms of southern England, but this did not survive his death in 796.
In 829 Egbert of Wessex conquered Mercia, but he soon lost control of it. It was not until the late 9th century that one kingdom, Wessex, had become the dominant Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Its king, Alfred the Great, was overlord of western Mercia and used the title King of the Angles and Saxons, but he never ruled eastern and northern England, which was then known as the Danelaw, having earlier been conquered by the Danes from Scandinavia. His son Edward the Elder conquered the eastern Danelaw, but Edward's son Æthelstan became the first king to rule the whole of England when he conquered Northumbria in 927, and he is regarded by some modern historians as the first true king of England. The title "King of the English" or Rex Anglorum in Latin, was first used to describe Æthelstan in one of his charters in 928.
The Principality of Wales was incorporated into the Kingdom of England under the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, and in 1301 King Edward I invested his eldest son, the future King Edward II, as Prince of Wales. Since that time, except for King Edward III, the eldest sons of all English monarchs have borne this title.
After the death of Queen Elizabeth I without issue, in 1603, King James VI of Scotland also became James I of England, joining the crowns of England and Scotland in personal union. By royal proclamation, James styled himself "King of Great Britain", but no such kingdom was actually created until 1707, when England and Scotland united to form the new Kingdom of Great Britain, with a single British parliament sitting at Westminster, during the reign of Queen Anne.

House of Wessex

House of Denmark

England came under the control of Sweyn Forkbeard, a Danish king, after an invasion in 1013, during which Æthelred abandoned the throne and went into exile in Normandy.

House of Wessex (restored, first time)

Following the death of Sweyn Forkbeard, Æthelred the Unready returned from exile and was again proclaimed king on 3 February 1014. His son succeeded him after being chosen king by the citizens of London and a part of the Witan, despite ongoing Danish efforts to wrest the crown from the West Saxons.

House of Denmark (restored)

Following the decisive Battle of Assandun on 18 October 1016, King Edmund signed a treaty with Cnut under which all of England except for Wessex would be controlled by Cnut. Upon Edmund's death just over a month later on 30 November, Cnut ruled the whole kingdom as its sole king for nineteen years.

House of Wessex (restored, second time)

After Harthacnut, there was a brief Saxon Restoration between 1042 and 1066.

House of Godwin

Disputed claimant (House of Wessex)

After King Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings, the Witan elected Edgar Ætheling as king, but by then the Normans controlled the country and Edgar never ruled. He submitted to King William the Conqueror.

House of Normandy

In 1066, several rival claimants to the English throne emerged. Among them were Harold Godwinson, Harald Hardrada and Duke William II of Normandy. Harald and William both invaded separately in 1066. Godwinson successfully repelled the invasion by Hardrada, but ultimately lost the throne of England in the Norman conquest of England.
After the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, William the Conqueror made permanent the recent removal of the capital from Winchester to London. Following the death of Harold Godwinson at Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot elected as king Edgar the Ætheling, the son of Edward the Exile and grandson of Edmund Ironside. The young monarch was unable to resist the invaders and was never crowned. William was crowned King William I of England on Christmas Day 1066, in Westminster Abbey, and is today known as William the Conqueror, William the Bastard or William I.

House of Blois

left no legitimate male heirs, his son William Adelin having died in the White Ship disaster. This ended the direct Norman line of kings in England. Henry named his eldest daughter, Matilda, as his heir. Before naming Matilda as heir, he had been in negotiations to name his nephew Stephen of Blois as his heir. When Henry died, Stephen invaded England, and in a coup d'etat had himself crowned instead of Matilda. The period which followed is known as The Anarchy, as parties supporting each side fought in open warfare both in Britain and on the continent for the better part of two decades.

Disputed claimants

Matilda was declared heir presumptive by her father, Henry I, after the death of her brother on the White Ship, and acknowledged as such by the barons. Upon Henry I's death, the throne was seized by Matilda's cousin, Stephen of Blois. During the ensuing Anarchy, Matilda controlled England for a few months in 1141—the first woman to do so—but was never crowned and is rarely listed as a monarch of England.

House of Anjou

King Stephen came to an agreement with Matilda in November 1153 with the signing of the Treaty of Wallingford, where Stephen recognised Henry, son of Matilda and her second husband Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, as the designated heir. The royal house descended from Matilda and Geoffrey is widely known by two names, the House of Anjou or the House of Plantagenet, after his sobriquet. Some historians prefer to group the subsequent kings into two groups, before and after the loss of the bulk of their French possessions, although they are not different royal houses.
The Angevins ruled over the Angevin Empire during the 12th and 13th centuries, an area stretching from the Pyrenees to Ireland. They did not regard England as their primary home until most of their continental domains were lost by King John. The direct, eldest male line from Henry II includes monarchs commonly grouped together as the House of Plantagenet, which was the name given to the dynasty after the loss of most of their continental possessions, while cadet branches of this line became known as the House of Lancaster and the House of York during the War of the Roses.
The Angevins formulated England's royal coat of arms, which usually showed other kingdoms held or claimed by them or their successors, although without representation of Ireland for quite some time. Dieu et mon droit was first used as a battle cry by Richard I in 1198 at the Battle of Gisors, when he defeated the forces of Philip II of France It has generally been used as the motto of English monarchs since being adopted by Edward III.

Disputed claimant

Louis VIII of France briefly won two-thirds of England over to his side from May 1216 to September 1217 at the conclusion of the First Barons' War against King John. Prince Louis landed on the isle of Thanet, off the north Kent coast, on 21 May 1216, and marched more or less unopposed to London, where the streets were lined with cheering crowds. At a grand ceremony in St. Paul's Cathedral, on 2 June 1216, in the presence of numerous English clergy and nobles, the Mayor of London and Alexander II of Scotland, Prince Louis was proclaimed King Louis I of England. In less than a month, King Louis I controlled more than half of the country and enjoyed the support of two-thirds of the barons. By signing the Treaty of Lambeth in September 1217, Louis gained 10,000 marks and agreed he had never been the legitimate king of England. King Louis I of England remains to this day one of the least known kings to have ruled over England.
The House of Plantagenet takes its name from Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, husband of the Empress Matilda and father of Henry II. The name Plantagenet itself was unknown as a family name per se until Richard of York adopted it as his family name in the 15th century. It has since been retroactively applied to English monarchs from Henry II onward. It is common among modern historians to refer to Henry II and his sons as the "Angevins" due to their vast continental Empire, and most of the Angevin kings before John spent more time in their continental possessions than in England.
It is from the time of Henry III, after the loss of most of the family's continental possessions, that the Plantagenet kings became more English in nature. The Houses of Lancaster and York are cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet.

House of Lancaster

This house descended from Edward III's third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Henry IV seized power from Richard II.

House of York

The House of York claimed the right to the throne through Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, but it inherited its name from Edward's fourth surviving son, Edmund of Langley, first Duke of York.
The Wars of the Roses saw the throne pass back and forth between the rival houses of Lancaster and York.

House of Lancaster (restored)

House of York (restored)

House of Tudor

The Tudors descended in the female line from John Beaufort, one of the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt, by Gaunt's long-term mistress Katherine Swynford. Those descended from English monarchs only through an illegitimate child would normally have no claim on the throne, but the situation was complicated when Gaunt and Swynford eventually married in 1396. In view of the marriage, the church retroactively declared the Beauforts legitimate via a papal bull the same year. Parliament did the same in an Act in 1397. A subsequent proclamation by John of Gaunt's legitimate son, King Henry IV, also recognised the Beauforts' legitimacy, but declared them ineligible ever to inherit the throne. Nevertheless, the Beauforts remained closely allied with Gaunt's other descendants, the Royal House of Lancaster.
John Beaufort's granddaughter Lady Margaret Beaufort was married to Edmund Tudor. Tudor was the son of Welsh courtier Owain Tudur and Catherine of Valois, the widow of the Lancastrian King Henry V. Edmund Tudor and his siblings were either illegitimate, or the product of a secret marriage, and owed their fortunes to the goodwill of their legitimate half-brother King Henry VI. When the House of Lancaster fell from power, the Tudors followed.
By the late 15th century, the Tudors were the last hope for the Lancaster supporters. Edmund Tudor's son became king as Henry VII after defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, winning the Wars of the Roses. King Henry married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, thereby uniting the Lancastrian and York lineages.
With Henry VIII's break from the Roman Catholic Church, the monarch became the Supreme Head of the Church of England and of the Church of Ireland. Elizabeth I's title became the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Disputed claimant

Edward VI named Lady Jane Grey as his heir in his will, overruling the order of succession laid down by Parliament in the Third Succession Act. Four days after his death on 6 July 1553, Jane was proclaimed queen—the first of three Tudor women to be proclaimed queen regnant. Nine days after the proclamation, on 19 July, the Privy Council switched allegiance and proclaimed Edward VI's Catholic half-sister Mary queen. Jane was executed for treason in 1554, aged 16.

House of Stuart

Following the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 without issue, her first cousin twice removed, King James VI of Scotland, succeeded to the English throne as James I in the Union of the Crowns. James was descended from the Tudors through his great-grandmother, Margaret Tudor, the eldest daughter of Henry VII and wife of James IV of Scotland. In 1604, he adopted the title King of Great Britain. However, the two parliaments remained separate until the Acts of Union 1707.

Interregnum

No monarch reigned between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Between 1649 and 1653, there was no single English head of state, as England was ruled directly by the Rump Parliament with the English Council of State acting as executive power during a period known as the Commonwealth of England. After a coup d'etat in 1653, Oliver Cromwell forcibly took control of England from Parliament. He dissolved the Rump Parliament at the head of a military force and England entered a period known as The Protectorate, under Cromwell's direct control with the title Lord Protector.
It was within the power of the Lord Protector to choose his heir and Oliver Cromwell chose his eldest son, Richard Cromwell, to succeed him. Richard lacked both the ability to rule and confidence of the Army, and he was forcibly removed by the English Committee of Safety under the leadership of Charles Fleetwood in May 1659. England again lacked any single head of state during several months of conflict between Fleetwood's party and that of George Monck. Monck took control of the country in December 1659, and after almost a year of anarchy, the monarchy was formally restored when Charles II returned from France to accept the throne of England. This was following the Declaration of Breda and an invitation to reclaim the throne from the Convention Parliament of 1660.

House of Stuart (restored)

After the Monarchy was restored, England came under the rule of Charles II, whose reign was relatively peaceful domestically, given the tumultuous time of the Interregnum years. Tensions still existed between Catholics and Protestants. With the ascension of Charles's brother, the openly Catholic James II, England was again sent into a period of political turmoil.
James II was ousted by Parliament less than three years after ascending to the throne, replaced by his daughter Mary II and her husband William III during the Glorious Revolution. While James and his descendants would continue to claim the throne, all Catholics were barred from the throne by the Act of Settlement 1701, enacted by Anne, another of James's Protestant daughters. After the Acts of Union 1707, England as a sovereign state ceased to exist, replaced by the new Kingdom of Great Britain.
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Acts of Union

The Acts of Union 1707 were a pair of Parliamentary Acts passed during 1706 and 1707 by the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland to put into effect the Treaty of Union agreed on 22 July 1706. The acts joined the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain.
England, Scotland, and Ireland had shared a monarch for more than a hundred years, since the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when King James VI of Scotland inherited the English and Irish thrones from his first cousin twice removed, Queen Elizabeth I. Although described as a Union of Crowns, until 1707 there were in fact two separate crowns resting on the same head.
There had been attempts in 1606, 1667, and 1689, to unite England and Scotland by Acts of Parliament but it was not until the early 18th century that the idea had the support of both political establishments behind it, albeit for rather different reasons.

Timeline of English monarchs


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from: 886 till: 1013 color: w text:Wessex
from: 1013 till: 1014 color: d
from: 1014 till: 1016 color: w
from: 1016 till: 1042 color: d text:Denmark
from: 1042 till: 1066 color: w text:
from: 1066 till: 1066 color: g text:Godwin
from: 1066 till: 1135 color: n text:Normandy
from: 1135 till: 1154 color: b text:Blois
from: 1154 till: 1216 color: a text:Angevin
from: 1216 till: 1399 color: a text:Plantagenet
from: 1399 till: 1461 color: l text:Lancaster
from: 1461 till: 1470 color: y text:
from: 1470 till: 1471 color: l text:
from: 1471 till: 1485 color: y text:York
from: 1485 till: 1603 color: t text:Tudor
from: 1603 till: 1653 color: s text:Stuart
from: 1653 till: 1660 color: cw text:CW
from: 1660 till: 1707 color: s text:
from: 1689 till: 1702 color: o text:Orange-Nassau
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from:886 till: 899 color:w text:"Alfred the Great"
from:899 till: 924 color:w text:"Edward the Elder"
from:924 till: 924 color:w text:"Ælfweard of Wessex"
from:924 till: 939 color:w text:"Æthelstan"
from:939 till: 946 color:w text:"Edmund I"
from:946 till: 955 color:w text:"Eadred"
from:955 till: 959 color:w text:"Eadwig"
from:959 till: 975 color:w text:"Edgar"
from:975 till: 978 color:w text:"Edward the Martyr"
from:978 till: 1013 color:w text:"Æthelred"
from:1013 till: 1014 color:d text:"Sweyn"
from:1014 till: 1016 color:w text:"Æthelred"
from:1016 till: 1016 color:w text:"Edmund II"
from:1016 till: 1035 color:d text:"Cnut"
from:1035 till: 1040 color:d text:"Harold I"
from:1040 till: 1042 color:d text:"Harthacnut"
from:1042 till: 1066 color:w text:"Edward the Confessor"
from:1066 till: 1066 color:w text:"Harold II"
from:1066 till: 1066 color:w text:"Edgar the Ætheling"
from:1066 till: 1087 color:n text:"William I"
from:1087 till: 1100 color:n text:"William II"
from:1100 till: 1135 color:n text:"Henry I"
from:1135 till: 1154 color:b text:"Stephen"
from:1141 till: 1141 color:n text:"Matilda"
from:1154 till: 1189 color:a text:"Henry II"
from:1170 till: 1183 color:a text:"Henry the Young King"
from:1189 till: 1199 color:a text:"Richard I"
from:1199 till: 1216 color:a text:"John"
from:1216 till: 1272 color:a text:"Henry III"
from:1272 till: 1307 color:a text:"Edward I"
from:1307 till: 1327 color:a text:"Edward II"
from:1327 till: 1377 color:a text:"Edward III"
from:1377 till: 1399 color:a text:"Richard II"
from:1399 till: 1413 color:l text:"Henry IV"
from:1413 till: 1422 color:l text:"Henry V"
from:1422 till: 1461 color:l text:"Henry VI"
from:1461 till: 1470 color:y text:"Edward IV"
from:1470 till: 1471 color:l text:"Henry VI"
from:1471 till: 1483 color:y text:"Edward IV"
from:1483 till: 1483 color:y text:"Edward V"
from:1483 till: 1485 color:y text:"Richard III"
from:1485 till: 1509 color:t text:"Henry VII"
from:1509 till: 1547 color:t text:"Henry VIII"
from:1547 till: 1553 color:t text:"Edward VI"
from:1553 till: 1553 color:t text:"Jane"
from:1553 till: 1558 color:t text:"Mary I"
from:1554 till: 1558 color:t text:"Philip"
from:1558 till: 1603 color:t text:"Elizabeth I"
from:1603 till: 1625 color:s text:"James I"
from:1625 till: 1653 color:s text:"Charles I"
from:1653 till: 1658 color:cw text:"Oliver Cromwell"
from:1658 till: 1660 color:cw text:"Richard Cromwell"
from:1660 till: 1685 color:s text:"Charles II"
from:1685 till: 1689 color:s text:"James II"
from:1689 till: 1702 color:o text:"William III"
from:1689 till: 1694 color:s text:"Mary II"
from:1702 till: 1707 color:s text:"Anne"
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Titles

The standard title for all monarchs from Æthelstan until the time of King John was Rex Anglorum. In addition, many of the pre-Norman kings assumed extra titles, as follows:
In the Norman period Rex Anglorum remained standard, with occasional use of Rex Anglie. The Empress Matilda styled herself Domina Anglorum.
From the time of King John onwards all other titles were eschewed in favour of Rex or Regina Anglie.
In 1604 James I, who had inherited the English throne the previous year, adopted the title King of Great Britain. The English and Scottish parliaments, however, did not recognise this title until the Acts of Union of 1707 under Queen Anne.

Coronations