George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine). He appears as a character in William Shakespeare's plays "Henry VI, Part 3" and "Richard III", in which his death is attributed to the machinations of Richard. George was born on 21 October 1449 in Dublin at a time when his father, the Duke of York, had begun to challenge Henry VI for the crown. His godfather was James FitzGerald, 6th Earl of Desmond. He was the third of the four sons of Richard and Cecily who survived to adulthood. His father died in 1460. In 1461 his elder brother, Edward,
Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York VII, he became an ancestor to all subsequent English monarchs. Richard of York was born on 21 September 1411, the son of Richard, 3rd Earl of Cambridge, by his wife Anne de Mortimer, the daughter of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. Anne Mortimer was the great-granddaughter of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of King Edward III (r. 1327–1377). After the death in 1425 of Anne's childless brother Edmund, the 5th Earl of March, this ancestry supplied her son Richard, of the House of York, with a claim to the English throne that was, under English law,