The House of York, which triumphed in the Wars of the Roses, attaining the throne in the person of Edward IV. (A. D. 1461), derived its claim to the crown through descent, in the female line, from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III. (the second son who lived to manhood and left children); while the House of Lancaster traced its lineage to John of Gaunt, a younger son of the same king Edward III., but the line of Lancastrian succession was through males. "Had the crown followed the course of hereditary succession, it would have devolved on the posterity of Lionel. ... By the decease of that prince without male issue, his possessions and pretensions fell to his daughter Philippa, who by a singular combination of circumstances had married Roger Mortimer earl of March, the male representative of the powerful baron who was attainted and executed for the murder of Edward II., the grandfather of the duke of Clarence. The son of that potent delinquent had been restored to his honours and estates at an advanced period in the reign of Edward III. ... Edmund, his grandson, had espoused Philippa of Clarence. Roger Mortimer, the fourth in descent from the regicide, was lord lieutenant of Ireland and was considered, or, according to some writers, declared to be heir of the crown in the early part of Richard's reign. Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, in whom the hereditary claim to the crown was vested at the deposition of Richard, was then only an infant of ten years of age. ... {822} Dying without issue, the pretensions to the crown, which he inherited through the duke of Clarence, devolved on his sister Anne Mortimer, who espoused Richard of York earl of Cambridge, the grandson of Edward III. by his fourth [fifth] son Edmund of Langley duke of York." Edward IV. was the grandson of this Anne Mortimer and Richard of York. _Sir J. Mackintosh, History of England, volume 1, pages 338-339._ The House of York occupied the throne but twenty-four years. On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, the crown was secured by his brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who caused Edward's two sons to be murdered in the Tower. The elder of these murdered princes is named in the list of English kings as Edward V.; but he cannot be said to have reigned. Richard III. was overthrown and slain on Bosworth field in 1485. ENGLAND: A. D. 1471-1485. The New Monarchy. The rise of Absolutism and the decline of Parliamentary government.