Succession to the British throne branch of the royal house of Lancaster, the House of Beaufort, assumed the English crown as Henry VII, after defeating Richard III, who was killed at the battle of Bosworth when leading a charge against Henry's standard. Richard was the last king of the House of York, and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. Henry declared himself king retroactively from 21 August 1485, the day before his victory over Richard at Bosworth Field, and caused Richard's "Titulus Regius" to be repealed and expunged from the Rolls of Parliament. After Henry's coronation in London in October that year, his first parliament,
The Last English King recounted in parallel with his recollections of the time before the battle, such as his accompanying Harold to William of Normandy's attack on Dinan. At the end of the novel the death of Harold is described. Rathbone has him buried in a shroud made from a banner depicting the "Fighting Man of Cerne". The Last English King The Last English King (1997) is a historical novel by English writer Julian Rathbone. The novel covers the time of the Battle of Hastings. It revolves around Walt Edwinson, a housecarl of Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. The story starts