The blood-royal of France flowed in his veins, the blood-royal of England was to flow in his children's; and the union between Edmund Tudor and Margaret Beaufort gave Henry VII.

such claim as he had by descent to the English throne.
[Footnote 22: _Archaeologia Cambrensis_, 1st ser., iv., 267; 3rd ser., xv., 278, 379.] The Beauforts were descended from Edward III., but a bar sinister marred their royal pedigree.

John of Gaunt had three sons by Catherine Swynford before she became his wife.

That marriage would, by canon law, have made legitimate the children, but the barons had, on a famous occasion, refused to assimilate in this respect the laws of England to the canons of the Church; and it required a special Act of Parliament to confer on the Beauforts the status of legitimacy.

When Henry IV.