Earl of Richmond rather than the English crown. It was then held either by members of the English royal families of Plantagenet and Tudor, or English nobles closely associated with the English crown. It was eventually merged into the English crown during the reign of Henry VII and has been recreated as a Dukedom. The title Earl of Richmond is associated with the now extinct Earldom, the earlier Lords of Richmond who held the Honour of Richmond, one of the most important fiefs in England, and eventually the Dukes of Richmond. The title Earl evolved from the French-Breton-Norman title Count ("Comte") from the
House of Tudor Catholic Mary I. On 1 November 1455, John Beaufort's granddaughter, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, married Henry VI's maternal half-brother Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond. It was his father, Owen Tudor (), who abandoned the Welsh patronymic naming practice and adopted a fixed surname. When he did, he did not choose, as was generally the custom, his father's name, Maredudd, but chose that of his grandfather, Tudur ap Goronwy, instead. This name is sometimes given as "Tewdwr", the Welsh form of Theodore, but Modern Welsh "Tudur", Old Welsh "Tutir" is originally not a variant but a different