The Henrician Wars were a series of Wars that occurred in the wake of the succession crisis caused by the death of Henry IX and III, and his decision to divide his vast Western European Empire between his daughters. They included:
- French War of Succession: Caused by Henry’s decision to leave his Kingdom of France (“the land of my father”) to his daughter Marie d’Valois and her husband, Gaspard de Coligny, even though France followed Salic Law, that prevented inheritance through the female line. Marie sited the old English argument - the Kings of England had been the true Kings of France since the thirteenth century, and since the English and French thrones had been briefly United, Marie was now the rightful Queen. It had never been any other way. The Protestant Kings of Navarre, the Salic-Law heirs to the throne, fought a war to retake the throne, which was unsuccessful. Henry III, Louis II and Louis III of Navarre tried in vain to gain the crown from Marie and her son Henry IV of France.
- English Succession Dispute: Henry left his Kingdom of England to his daughter Elizabeth II of England. She divorced her husband with Papal consent and married another man. The children from her first marriage were deemed illegitimate and barred from succession. She was succeeded by her son from her second marriage, Henry X of England. Her grandson William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire, whose father was her son from her first marriage, tried to gain the throne but was executed for treason.
- Scottish Succession Dispute: Henry left Scotland, the “land of my mother”, to his oldest married daughter, Catherine, Queen of Scots. Although this was how the Scottish inheritance system was supposed to work, Catherine’s father Henry had a half-brother, James, Earl of Lennox, who was a member of the Stuart Family that had ruled Scotland for centuries, to which Henry’s mother Mary had belonged. Although at first James respected Catherine’s position and Henry’s decision to leave the throne to her, he was later implicated in a number of treasonous rebellions.