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21 August 1485, the day before his victory over Richard at Bosworth Field, and caused Richard's "Titulus Regius" to be repealed and expunged from the Rolls of Parliament.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,
Battle of Barnet Warwick, Shakespeare has the Yorkist king lustily demand Warwick's skin. Shakespeare presents the Nevilles as brothers who are willing to die for each other, whereas the three sons of York—Edward, Gloucester, and Clarence—are slowly driven apart by their own goals and ideas. Professor of English John Cox suggests that Shakespeare did not share the impression given in post-battle ballads that Edward's triumph was divinely ordained. He argues that Shakespeare's placement of Clarence's last act of betrayal immediately before the battle suggests that Edward's rule stems from his military aggression, luck, and "policy". Shakespeare also explicitly excludes Edward from action sequences,