Channel 4 has just broadcast a documentary stating, repeatedly, that some Australian bloke is King of England.  Does this sort of piffle now pass for public service broadcasting?

This absurd claim turns on some recently discovered evidence that, in 1441, Richard, Duke of York (NOT Richard III, but his dad, see below) was probably away campaigning when his eldest 'son', later to become Edward IV, was conceived; hence that Edward IV was illegitimate, and his daughter, Elizabeth, also had no claim to the throne.

A little background is needed here.  Edward III had a big family.  His eldest son (the Black Prince) pre-deceased him and the Black Prince's son (Richard II) became king (1377 - 1399).  Richard II was incompetent and was deposed by the son (Henry IV) of Edward III's third son (John of Gaunt).  Henry IV was succeeded in turn by his son, Henry V, and then his son, Henry VI, but who also then proved incompetent. 

Duke Richard had female descent from Edward III's second son (Lionel, Duke of Clarence) which gave him a competing claim to the throne against Henry VI.

Duke Richard eventually asserted his claim against Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses but he got killed in battle.  Edward IV thereupon inherited his dad's claim (which he should not have done if he were illegitimate); promptly triumphed at the battle of Towton (1461); and thereby became king.  Not bad going for a lad of 19 (who was as tall as Bill Clinton at 6 ft, 4 inches; looked uncannily like Bill Clinton; and had a similar reputation with the ladies).

Tony Robinson, the Channel 4 presenter, declared that Edward IV's illegitimacy meant that our Queen Elizabeth II has no right to be queen.  He said the throne should have passed down via the daughter (Margaret, Countess of Salisbury) of Edward IV's younger brother (George, Duke of Clarence).  What utter and complete piffle.

There was never the remotest prospect of this Margaret becoming queen. Her father, the Duke of Clarence, had been executed on attainder for high treason against his own brother, Edward IV; Margaret's brother, who was simple, had precedence over her; and, in those days, a queen regnant was not deemed feasible.  The monarch had to be male, and very preferably (after all the recent fighting) an adult and a soldier. 

Edward IV was succeeded by his son, Edward V, who was very quickly deposed by Richard III (Edward IV's youngest brother).  This was partly on the loudly proclaimed grounds that Edward IV had indeed been illegitimate.  So the Channel 4 view of illegitimacy was acted upon at the time.  However, most people then took exception to the apparent murder of young Edward V and his brother ('the princes in the tower') and they blamed Richard III who became deeply unpopular.  All the Lancastrians, and part of the Yorkists, thereupon championed Henry Tudor to depose Richard III.  Henry encouraged them by agreeing to marry Edward IV's daughter, Elizabeth, to heal the bad blood.

A little more background is needed.  Henry Tudor was descended from John of Gaunt (see above) via his mistress, Katherine Swinford, who subsequently became his third wife and thereby to, arguably, legitimise their issue as claimants to the English throne. (Paradoxically, Henry VII's grandmother was Catherine de Valois, the widow of Henry V and the daughter of King Charles VI of France; but these even posher relatives carried no rights of inheritance to the English crown.)  However, the main thing was a groundswell of opinion in favour of Henry to depose Richard; which he duly did at the Battle of Bosworth (1485) where Richard III was killed on the battlefield.

Henry VII then went out of his way to emphasise that he claimed the throne in his own right and NOT via marriage to Edward IV's daughter.  He made Parliament acknowledge his authority before he married Elizabeth.  He then married her on 18 January 1486 but waited until November 1487 to have her crowned as his queen. 

In short, the points raised by Channel 4 were widely aired and settled over 500 years ago; which makes the programme, with its sensational claims against the Queen, complete piffle. 

The final insult to viewers was a fleeting and dismissive reference to Sir John Conroy; which might have been a far more interesting line of enquiry.