Earl of Richmond and away from any attempts of the French crown to acquire it and the related properties. From 1414 to 1435 the earldom of Richmond was held by John Plantagenet, Duke of Bedford. In 1453 it was conferred on Edmund Tudor, half-brother to King Henry VI. When Edmund's son Henry ascended the throne as Henry VII in 1485, the earldom of Richmond merged in the crown, and for the next forty years there was no further grant of the title. After Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, became King Henry VII of England, the title Duke of Richmond was created by 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