heiress presumptive

— Still maintaining an outward appearance of friendship with Elizabeth, he quietly spread among his own people copies of his pedigree, wherein he represented himself as the true heir to the crown of England, by descent from his ancestresses Philippa and Katherine of Lancaster: ignoring the facts—that, though the heir general of Katherine, he was not so of her elder sister Philippa; and that if he had been, the law which would have made these two sisters heiresses presumptive had been altered while they were children.