Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York

Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York

Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York (21 September 1411 – 30 December 1460), also named Richard Plantagenet, was a leading English magnate and claimant to the throne during the Wars of the Roses. He was a member of the ruling House of Plantagenet by virtue of being a direct male-line descendant of Edmund of Langley, King Edward III's fourth surviving son. However, it was through his mother, Anne Mortimer, a descendant of Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, that Richard inherited his strongest claim to the throne, as the opposing House of Lancaster was descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the third surviving son of Edward III. He also inherited vast estates and served in various offices of state in Ireland, France and England, a country he ultimately governed as Lord Protector due to the mental instability of King Henry VI. Richard's conflicts with Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, and other members of Henry's court, such as Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, and his competing claim to the throne, were leading factors in the political upheaval of mid-fifteenth-century England, and a major cause of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487). Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York has received more than 2,738,728 page views. His biography is available in 37 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 36 in 2019). Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York is the 2,109th most popular politician (down from 1,455th in 2019), the 451st most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 348th in 2019) and the 77th most popular British Politician.

Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York is most famous for being the father of King Edward IV.