King's Beasts, Hampton Court Palace

Pedigree chart showing descent from Clarence and Mortimer to Elizabeth of York, wife of King Henry VII and mother of King Henry VIII

King Henry VIII's mother was Elizabeth of York (1466–1503), eldest daughter and eventual heiress of King Edward IV of the House of York. The descent from Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, second surviving son of King Edward III (1327–1377), via the heiress Anne de Mortimer (1388–1411), gave the Yorkist dynasty its claim to the throne. Anne de Mortimer was the daughter and eventual heiress of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March (1374–1398), grandson and heir of Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence. This made Anne and her brothers potential heirs to the throne during the reign of the childless King Richard II, son of the Black Prince, eldest son and heir apparent of Edward III. In 1399 Richard II was deposed by Henry IV, son of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, 3rd son of King Edward III, and younger brother of the Duke of Clarence. Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March (1391–1425) (brother of Anne de Mortimer), being a more senior descendant of King Edward III, was thus a dynastic threat to Henry IV, who placed both Edmund and his brother Roger under royal custody. Anne de Mortimer married Richard of Conisburgh (1385–1415), the second son of Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York (fourth son of King Edward III). Her son was Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York (1411–1460), Yorkist claimant to the English throne, and father of kings Edward IV and Richard III. The daughter and eventual heiress of King Edward IV was Elizabeth of York (1466–1503), who married Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond who became King Henry VII on the defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and became the mother of King Henry VIII, whose paternal grandmother Lady Margaret Beaufort represented the House of Lancaster, being descended from John of Gaunt. Thus in the person of Henry VIII the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York, feuding parties in the Wars of the Roses, were united, symbolised by the Tudor rose, combining both colours. One of the King's Beasts, the Black bull of Clarence, an heraldic supporter of the arms of the Duke of Clarence, displays the Tudor rose. Similarly several of the other beasts display arms and badges seemingly indiscriminately and in promiscuous fashion, emphasising the confused union of all these dynasties and competing claims.

A twentieth-century equivalent set was made in plaster for display at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Known as the Queen's Beasts, these figures are now on display in the Canadian Museum of History in Quebec. Replicas of these in Portland stone are on display outside the Palm House at Kew Gardens, a former royal residence near Hampton Court. The Seymour beasts were omitted, the Queen not being descended from Jane Seymour, whose only son King Edward VI died unmarried. In the Queen's Beasts four new beasts replaced the three Seymour beasts and one of the dragons, namely the griffin of Edward III, the horse of Hanover, the falcon of the Plantagenet and the unicorn of Scotland.[18]

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  Some of the ten Queen's Beasts, made from plaster for the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, on display in the Canadian Museum of History, Quebec
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  Portland stone replicas of the Queen's Beasts in Kew Gardens, near Hampton Court

The Tudor Garden at Chapel Court, Hampton Court Palace

In 2009 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the accession to the throne of King Henry VIII, a new "Tudor Garden" was created in Chapel Court, Hampton Court, designed by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.[19] To decorate the garden eight small wooden King's Beasts were carved and painted in bright colours,[20] each to sit atop a 6-foot-high painted wooden column. The historically correct colours were researched by Patrick Baty, paint/colour consultant at Hampton Court.[21] The beasts are of a different design to those on the bridge, based on period drawings in the College of Arms.