Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March the siege of Melun. In February 1421 Mortimer accompanied the King back to England with his bride, Catherine of Valois, and bore the sceptre at Catherine's coronation on 21 February. He returned to France with Henry V in June 1421, and was at the Siege of Meaux, where the King fell mortally ill, dying on 31 August 1422. Henry V was succeeded by his nine-month-old son, King Henry VI, and on 9 December 1422 Mortimer was appointed to the Regency Council of the regency government, 1422–1437. On 9 May 1423 he was appointed the King's lieutenant in Ireland for nine
English claims to the French throne as their lawful king, and declared that "Women do not succeed to the throne of France." This was later said to have been based on the 5th century Salic law, but it is now known that the Salic Law was only rediscovered later and used by the lawyers of the Valois kings to fortify their masters' title with an additional aura of authenticity. At the time of Charles's death in 1328, there was once again a dispute over the succession. Although it had come to be accepted that a woman could not possess the French throne in her own right,