Adrienne Dillard reviews a new biography of Charles I

Leanda de Lisle's first book, After Elizabeth, was a fascinating account of the dying days of the Tudor dynasty and the subsequent transfer of power to the Scottish ruling house. Now, after best-selling accounts of the Grey and Tudor families, de Lisle has returned to the Stuarts, with a biography of King Charles I, the autocratic monarch whose reign ended in civil war, his execution, and the temporary abolition of the British monarchy. With new research from previously unused private documents and a focus on Charles's marriage to the unpopular French princess, Henrietta Maria, this biography is already garnering interest and applause amongst fans of royal and political biographies. 

The White King is released today in the United States and it is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Its British release date is on 11th January. I am delighted to host this review of The White King by American novelist Adrienne Dillard, who is the author of two novels set at the Tudor court - Cor Rotto, inspired by the life of Elizabeth I's cousin, Katherine Carey, and The Raven's Widow, based on the life of Catherine Howard's confidante Jane, Lady Rochford. 

The Martyr King: Adrienne Dillard's review of Leanda de Lisle's "The White King"

As a Tudor historian, it is nearly impossible to review works set during the time period without seeing the content through the jaundiced lens of your own biases.  More often than not, there is room for multiple interpretations of the documented evidence, but it can be hard to overcome the instinctual gut-reaction humans experience when faced with an opinion that differs from one they wholeheartedly embrace about historical figures they have come to cherish.  That uncomfortableness is invaluable when we seek academic growth, but it makes reading for pleasure a challenge.  Thankfully, I had few preconceived notions about England’s first Caroline king, and when I was offered the opportunity to review the latest take on his life, I leapt at the chance.  Few things can compare to the joy I feel when introduced to a new historical subject and this beautifully crafted biography did not disappoint.

The subtitle of Leanda De Lisle’s The White King calls the monarch a traitor, murderer, and martyr, but upon completion of the book, I have come away with the impression that the only fitting descriptor used is martyr.  The other titles seem far too subjective for this oft-misunderstood king.

Though Charles’ reign came many years after the death of the ginger-haired tyrant at the head of the Tudor court, the spectre of Henry VIII looms large throughout this biography.  His reign and personality are held against those of Charles I to show how vastly different they were and just how much the world had changed in the intervening years.  The charges of tyranny lodged against the latter monarch pale in comparison to the actual tyranny perpetrated by Henry VIII and his children, yet none of their reigns ended with the humiliation of the scaffold, as Charles’ did.  Even more striking are the parallels De Lisle makes with our current political climate – where “populism meets religious justifications for violence” and “the rise of demagogues, who whip up mobs by feeding off ethnic and religious hatreds.”

De Lisle brings the figures surrounding Charles I to life with the strident confidence that accompanies the historian who fully understand their subject.  All of their graces and foibles are fully explored; their ever-changing allegiances reported without a hint of sentimentality.  If their motivations are not revealed in the primary sources, they are left unexplained here, preserving the jarring atmosphere Charles must have felt during his reign.  Even the most historically savvy reader is never quite certain where loyalties lie or how often the tides will turn.  In the hands of a less experienced historian these twists would be rendered into a confusing mess, but De Lisle deftly navigates the murky waters with expert precision.

My favorite part of The White King was the focus on Robert and Henry Rich and their cousin, Lady Lucy Carlisle. Having spent the better part of the last decade researching Catherine Carey, Lady Knollys, it was refreshing to see the role her descendants played during this tumultuous time in English history. The fealty they showed their monarch was far from the devotional loyalty Lady Knollys was known for in her lifetime, but the Puritan proclivities of their great-grandfather, Francis, remained un-diluted. I often found myself wondering what their grandmother, Lettice, would have thought of their intrigues. Lady Carlisle appears the most like her ancestor. Like Lettice, she even bore an uncanny resemblance to the queen she served.

I thoroughly enjoyed De Lisle’s inclusion of the correspondence between the king and his wife, Henrietta Maria, recently unearthed from the Belvoir archives.  Through their words, the unjust depictions of the queen fall apart at the seams, and Henrietta Maria is finally given the recognition she deserves.  The emphasis on Charles family life is most touching here.  The love and devotion they showed to him speaks volumes about his character.

A well-written and impeccably researched biography, The White King seeks not to revise the history of England’s Civil Wars, but uncover the truth hidden beneath the grime of centuries of propaganda and myth.

"A History of the English Monarchy" extract: Lord of Warriors and Ring-Giver of Men

My most recent book A History of the English Monarchy covers the English Crown from Roman rule to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, when the monarchy began to shift into a British institution. To mark almost a year since it was released, I'm posting short extracts from each of the book's seven chapters, over the  next few days.

The book begins with Conquest: The violent birth of the monarchy, a chapter which covers the longest time-span of all seven by narrating the development of monarchy in England from 30 B. C., beginning with the suicide of the goddess-queen Cleopatra and the seeming victory of Britain's republican rulers in Rome, through to the reign of England's most famous royal saint, King Edward the Confessor. This short extract discusses the importance of the family of Alfred the Great, the Wessex line of kings who helped unite England in the ninth and tenth centuries.

After Alfred, who died in October 899 , there was a succession of four kings of his line who expanded the borders of Wessex and the authority of its Crown. Alfred’s son, King Edward the Elder, was acknowledged as overlord of sizeable portions of the country by 920. Like his father, he styled himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, rather than solely of Wessex, a telling indicator of their family’s growing power. It was his son, and Alfred’s grandson, Æthelstan, who could justifiably claim to be the first King of England by conquering the last of the Viking kingdoms at York. He also forced the Welsh and Scottish royals to acknowledge him, reluctantly, as their overlord and the chroniclers gave him the rather magnificent Tolkein-sounding epithet of ‘lord of warriors and ring-giver of men’. His successor and younger brother, King Edmund the Just, was called ‘lord of the English, guardian of kinsmen, loved doer of deeds’. It was a strong line of Christian warrior-kings who, from Alfred the Great to Edmund the Just, took a small kingdom on the brink of annihilation to be conqueror and liberator of an entire nation. It was this family, and their followers, who gave birth to the kingdom of England. 

In 946, King Edmund was murdered by a crazed ex-thief, shortly after attending Mass for Saint Augustine’s Day. Edmund was succeeded by his brother Eadred, who died in 955 and bequeathed the crown to Edmund’s handsome teenage son Eadwig, nicknamed Eadwig the Fair due to his good looks. Young and lusty Eadwig had other things on his mind than the piety and conquest of his forebears. He was determined to enjoy his kingship, not endure it. Things got off to a decidedly rocky start when the young monarch skipped-out on his own coronation banquet, an event at which his absence was rather likely to be noted. Wondering where the star of the show had gone, his courtiers made the horrible (in hindsight) decision of sending the saintly Dunstan to find him. Dunstan, abbot of the great monastery at Glastonbury, found the King romping in bed with a young woman – according to some sources, with two. To say that the leading champion of monastic reform in England did not see the funny side of the King’s actions would be something of an understatement. Later stories suggested that one of the women had been the young King’s future mother-in-law and that an enraged Dunstan had dared drag the King, possibly mid-coitus, out of bed and back to the banquet. Eadwig’s intermission performance at his coronation set the tone for the rest of the reign, marked as it was by deteriorating relations between throne and Church.  

Eadwig died before his twentieth birthday and he was succeeded by his younger brother Edgar, who was made of more conventionally holy stuff. Dunstan was back in royal favour as Edgar’s new Archbishop of Canterbury. Together, the two men organised a magnificent pageant of royal power at Bath in 973. It was an innovative coronation ceremony, which helped set the tone for nearly all that followed. As Edgar was enthroned as ‘Eadgar Rex Anglo’ (‘Edgar, King of the English’), the choir sang the story of Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointing King Solomon in the Old Testament. Today, those words still ring out at British coronations, albeit to the splendid music of Handel. Edgar was invested with the crown, the ring, the rod, the sceptre and the sword as symbols of his political, spiritual, judicial and military duties. These too are still part of the insignia of a British monarch.

A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I is available on British and American Amazon. 

Dominic Pearce on the Civil War Queen

I am delighted and excited that Dominic Pearce's biography of Henrietta Maria of France, wife of King Charles I, is available now from Amberley. Henrietta Maria's marriage coincided with the clash between parliamentarianism and absolutism in Britain, with the Queen's extravagance, Catholic faith and French upbringing cited by her husband's opponents as some of the causes for the civil war that cost thousands of lives and eventually toppled the monarchy in 1649. 

Dominic has kindly shared what attracted him to the story of the charismatic and controversial Bourbon princess, who was the younger sister of King Louis XIII of France, Queen Elisabeth of Spain and the mother of kings Charles II and James II.

By Dominic Pearce

When I started to research Henrietta Maria’s life I knew the story would be good. The queen was the muse of Anthony van Dyck, she survived two civil wars (the second one in France), outlived her husband and five of her children, and gave five monarchs to England – two children and three grand-children. To my delight I found an exceptional story that went a good deal further even than this. First there is the French background. Henrietta Maria was born in 1609. Her father was King Henri IV, a French national hero who saved his country from destruction at the end of the sixteenth century. Her mother was his second wife Marie de Médicis - famous as the builder of the Palais de Luxembourg, and for the cycle of paintings about her life by Rubens.

Henrietta Maria lived in France not only as a child but also from 1644 to 1660, and she died in France. The French history alone is mesmeric. It gives new insights into the queen’s life and the choices she made. It shines a new light on the English history of the period, so often viewed in isolation.

Second the queen’s character. Many of her letters survive. They are eloquent. She was strong, straightforward, intelligent, and filled with energy. She had a highly developed sense of fun. She was devoted to Charles I, utterly loyal. She was immensely courageous. I cannot say she was always the easiest person, but she is impressive, and she certainly had, when she chose, an irresistible charm.

Henrietta Maria with her husband, Charles I, departing for the hunt

Third the English Civil War. I discovered that, without Henrietta Maria, the conflict would not have started in the way it did. There was a real political problem in England (and Scotland) regardless of the queen. However she was at the heart of what happened – and not just as a victim. This is not the place to explain what she did during the war, but I can say she was nearly killed three times. There is more - her cultural patronage, the ups and downs of her marriage and family life, her sheer professionalism as a queen consort.

We can be close to Henrietta Maria. I have already said we have her letters. In the French court memoirs of the period we know how she appeared to her highly sophisticated compatriots. She is described in English letters, and appears in the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. We have an eye witness account of her reaction, when she heard of the death of Charles I. We know what the furniture and ornaments were in the Château de Colombes, when she died (they were quite something). I was very lucky to have the opportunity to research this extraordinary woman who lived in such a period of history. She really is worth knowing more about.

A History of the English Monarchy

Henry V at Agincourt. Throughout the book, I am fascinated by the ways in which the legends of Camelot fuelled the monarchy's veneration of martial victory.

I am very excited to say that my new book A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I was released this week by MadeGlobal Publishing. I've been writing about the monarchy on this blog for a few years, so it was great fun to write the story of the Crown from its beginnings under Roman rule, right the way through to the accession of the first 'British', as opposed to English, sovereign in 1603. Thank you so much to everyone who has commented on my royal history posts in the past; for those who order History, I hope you enjoy it! Throughout, I was fascinated by the influence of the Arthurian legends in shaping how English kings, and their subjects, viewed and shaped the early monarchy. I was also particularly interested in telling the story of how the English Crown interacted with its Welsh, Scottish, and Irish neighbours, so chapters 3, 4, and 7 are heavy on exploring the often surprising story of how each part of the British Isles related to one another in that fascinating, bloody, compelling period of History. UK customers can order the book here; US and Canadian customers here.

The blurb reads: In A History of the English Monarchy, historian Gareth Russell traces the story of the English monarchy and the interactions between popular belief, religious faith and brutal political reality that helped shape the extraordinary journey of one of history’s most important institutions. From the birth of the nation to the dazzling court of Elizabeth I, A History of the English Monarchy charts the fascinating path of the English monarchy from the uprising of the Warrior Queen, Boadicea, in AD 60, through each king and queen up to the 'Golden Age' of Elizabeth I. Russell offers a fresh take on a fascinating subject as old as the nation itself.

INFORMATION: Each chapter is divided into sections, chronicling the monarchy’s story.

Chapter 1 - Conquest: The violent birth of the monarchy

* Britannia
* The Barbarian Conspiracy
* Seven Kingdoms
* Praying men, fighting men, and working men
* Edward the Confessor

Chapter 2 - God, Life and Victory: The coming of the Normans
* The Conqueror
* The Red King
* Beauclerc
* When Christ and His saints slept
* The Lioness in Winter


Chapter 3 - From Scotland to Spain: The empire of the Plantagenets
* Eleanor
* Henry
* Diarmait na nGall
* Murder in the Cathedral
* Family Strife
* Come, and see the place
* Sic Gloria Transit Mundi


Chapter 4 - Diluted Magnificence: The birth of Parliament
* The Wrath of God abideth upon him
* Crowned with a bracelet
* Know, Sire, that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is dead
* The Jewish Diaspora
* Until a king is provided


Chapter 5 - Enemies Foreign and Domestic: The fourteenth-century monarchy
* Our friends do fail us all
* The glory of the English
* Shameless fire was thus mixed with sacred flame


Chapter 6 - Spilled Blood Does Not Sleep: The Wars of the Roses
* Necessitas non habet legem
* This story shall the good man teach his son
* The lords in England kill their enemies
* The sun in splendour
* No more sons of the royal blood


Chapter 7 - As the Law of Christ Allows: The rule of the Tudors
* The Welsh Moses
* Bluff King Hal
* The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
* Deborah and Josiah
* The Queen of Scotland rises on the world
* That Good Old Princess

Epilogue - The word 'must'

Resounding to the Name of Mary: British queens and the Virgin

16 November is the Feast of the Patronage of Our Lady in the Roman Catholic communion and in honour of the Virgin's feast day, I would like to briefly profile the queens of England and Scotland who shared her name.

Marie de Coucy was the second wife of King Alexander II of Scotland. The daughter of a French lord, when her husband died of a fever in the Hebrides in 1249, Marie moved swiftly to ensure the succession of their seven year-old son, Alexander III. The boy, who went on to be one of medieval Scotland's greatest kings, was crowned at Scone at the height of summer. With the kingdom properly established under her son, Marie was able to remarry to a fellow Frenchman, to undertake pilgrimages to the great shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Kent and to split her time between France and Scotland. She died in her native country in 1285, in her late sixties. Her death spared her from enduring the death of her son, who was killed in a riding accident a year later. 

The mothers of the queens of England

To mark the completion of my new book on the British royal families (release date, 2014), I thought I'd post on the mothers of the English queens, from 1066 to 2013. It's technically a slightly disingenuous list, because I've also included the mothers of the male consorts, but for ease of titling, I hope no-one will mind recourse to the feminine title. I have also included those men and women who never became royal consorts, despite the fact that their spouses were, at one point, sovereigns.

Claire Bloom discusses playing Lady Marchmain

Award-winning actress Claire Bloom has played some of history's most famous women, including Katherine of Aragon in Henry VIII, the Tsarina Alexandra in Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna and Queen Mary in The King's Speech, as well as appearing in adaptations of Richard III,  The Brothers Karamazov and acting opposite Charlie Chaplin. In 1981, she won critical acclaim for her fantastic and intelligent performance as Teresa Flyte, the Marchioness of Marchmain (above), in one of the most successful British television dramas - a twelve-part adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited.

 

Central to Brideshead's themes are its treatments of both the English aristocracy and the Catholic faith, with Bloom's Lady Marchmain operating as their greatest proponent. Trapped in a failing marriage to her estranged husband, who cavorts in Venice with his mistress while Lady Marchmain divides her time between their London townhouse and palatial seventeenth-century home at Brideshead Castle, the marchioness's devotion to her religion has led to her described as either the heroine or antagonist of the story. For some, Teresa's quiet elegance and charm masks her suffocating control over her children, that pushes at least two of them to the edge of a nervous breakdown. In the novel, she is unfailingly polite and dignified, leading her son Sebastian's unhappiness with her to baffle the novel's narrator, Charles, although he too eventually comes to regard her sumptuous charm with suspicion. In the 2008 movie version of the story, which saw Emma Thompson take up the role (left), Lady Marchmain was cast squarely as the root of all her children's problems, with Lord Marchmain actually referring to her "crucifying" their second son, Sebastian, with her controlling ways.

 

However, in her autobiography, Claire Bloom defends Lady Marchmain with, I think, a very fair personal take on the character she played.

 

"I still find it puzzling when I am told I played a manipulative and heartless woman; that is not how I saw her. Lady Marchmain is deeply religious, and her dilemma includes trying to raise a willful brood of children on her own, while instilling them with her rigid observance of the Catholic code. Sebastian is both an alcoholic and a homosexual, and from her point of view, he lives in a state of mortal sin. She has to fight for his soul by any means in her power, with the knowledge that her efforts may lead to his destruction. A born crusader, the Marchioness confronts her difficult choices head on; her rigidity of purpose, which I don't in any way share, is understandable in context. The aspect that rings most true is her sense of being an outsider, a Catholic in Protestant England. Not such a leap from being a Jew in Protestant England as one would imagine."

 

How will the Royal birth be announced?

 

An interesting article from Yahoo that neatly summarises the mix of modernity and tradition that we can expect when the Court formally announces the, God-willing, safe delivery of the royal child expected to be born to their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge later this week.

 

This blog will also be running a series on the event - including traditions of royal birth, the baby's name and the Duchess's role in the monarchy.

My new book

Quite a few readers of this blog have asked about my first non-fiction book and I'm very excited to be able to say that it will be out this spring! I have written a book called A Thing More Glorious: A History of the British Monarchy, which is being published by the amazing team at MadeGlobal and which has been an incredible experience to write and research. Beginning with the coming of the Romans and ending with the Diamond Jubilee of 2012, A Thing More Glorious is supposed to be a thorough but intimate history of the British Crown, how it's developed, why it still matters and why it remains one of history's greatest stories. I hope I've done it justice and I'm looking forward so much to being able to share it with everyone here. I'll keep the blog updated with posts about how A Thing More Glorious is going and when it will be available to order!

Hyde Park on Hudson

I haven't had a chance to see Hyde Park on Hudson yet, but I'm very excited to. It's based on the true story of the royal state visit to the United States by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (our late Queen Mother) on the eve of the Second World War. Bill Murray plays President Roosevelt, with Laura Linney as his distant cousin, Margaret Suckley, Olivia Williams as the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Samuel West and Olivia Colman as King George and Queen Elizabeth.

Thy Choicest Gifts in Store: The ten longest reigning monarchs in English history

With a brief eleven-year exception in the middle of the seventeenth century, the British Isles has seen monarchical rule since the days of the Roman Empire. It was not until the aftermath of the Second World War that republicanism would once again make itself felt in the isles, thanks to the proclamation of the independent Irish republic. This is a list of the ten monarchs who have reigned for the longest period of time.

1. Victoria (1837 - 1901) (64 years) Princess Victoria of Kent was eighteen-years-old when she was woken in the middle of the night to be told that her elderly uncle, King William IV, had died and she was now Queen of the United Kingdom. Her first words as queen were apparently, "I will be good." She married her handsome German cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and they had nine children together. Victoria's popularity briefly dipped in the aftermath of Albert's death, when her mourning for him was so intense that she withdrew from public life. However, Victoria's reign saw the rapid expansion of Britain's power and wealth and the Queen became inextricably linked with imperial prosperity in most of her subjects' minds. Her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 were extremely popular, proving that the monarchy had recovered from the Queen's earlier breakdown. Respected and admired, she died at the age of eighty-one at her island summer palace on the Isle of Wight in January 1901. She was succeeded by her eldest son, who became King Edward VII. Her grandchildren included King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, Queen Maud of Norway and Queen Victoria-Eugenia of Spain.

2. Elizabeth II (1952 -) (60 years+) The current Queen succeeded to the throne following her father's death from lung cancer in February 1952. Pretty and conscientious, Elizabeth II came to the throne at a time when Britain's empire and economy were collapsing under the after-effects of the Second World War. Her reign has witnessed perhaps some of the most profound social, political, cultural, demographic and economic changes to the country in history; yet, throughout them, the Queen has remained consistently popular. Support for the monarchy has never dipped below 70% during her time as Sovereign. Although respect for the institution did waver in the 1990s, thanks largely to scandals surrounding the Queen's children and their spouses. The marriage of her grandson, the Duke of Cambridge, to Catherine Middleton in 2011 and the national rejoicing surrounding the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 showed the depth of affection that still surrounds the royal family in the United Kingdom. The Queen's Christian faith, tireless work ethic, appreciation for the constitutional limitations on her office and her support for the Commonwealth have also earned her the respect of the country's political leaders and the wider international political community. Should Elizabeth II reign beyond 2016, she will become the longest-reigning sovereign in British history, besting the record of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Uneasy Lies the Head... the ten shortest reigns in English history

At the time of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh's ninetieth birthday, I posted two posts about the longest- and shortest-serving royal consorts in English history. This is a list of the ten shortest reigns on Saint Edward's throne since 1066.

1. Jane ("Lady Jane Grey") (July 1553) Jane's reign was so short that it became her historical nickname - "the nine-day queen." She was placed on the throne by a palace coup in the summer of 1553, when the death of her teen cousin, Edward VI, threatened to end the Protestant Reformation in England. Edward's presumed successor was his sister Mary, a devout Catholic. However, on his deathbed, Edward altered the succession laws in favour of his sixteen year-old cousin, Jane. Jane was intellectually brilliant and certainly one of England's most intelligent rulers. She was also a fiery "born-again" Christian, who despised the Catholic religion and who could be counted upon to nurture the growing extremism of the Edwardian reformation. However, the chop-and-change attitude to the succession did not please the common people, who rallied to support the Princess Mary in overwhelming numbers. Jane was deposed after less than two weeks on the throne, as Mary entered London at the head of a triumphal army. Offered her life if she would abandon her Protestant faith, Jane refused and she was executed at the age of seventeen in February 1554. Victorians were obsessed with her story and portrayed her as the quintessential sacrificed young maiden. Modern research indicates that Jane was a good deal feistier than the romantic legend of her life suggested. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she was regarded as a Protestant martyr. Her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, was beheaded on the same day as his wife. Her father and father-in-law had already been executed for their part in putting her on the throne. 

Long to reign over us: a brief history of the British monarchy (Part 1)

Above: The German-born King George II, who ruled Britain between 1727 and 1760; he was the last British ruler to lead his army into battle. A slightly less glamorous death awaited him, however, when he died on his toilet after suffering a massive stroke.

"Royalty is a Government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a Government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting things." - Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867)

There has been monarchy in the British Isles for thousands of years. Like an aged relative, it's hard to imagine it being young. It's even harder to believe that the monarchy has only managed to survive for so long by constantly adapting. Forget the conical-bra-themed self-reinvention of Madonna - the real mother of spicing up your image to suit the times is the British monarchy. The trick is that the monarchy has the knack of making itself look like a beacon of continuity. It's constantly changing, especially when it has to in order to keep the public's love, but it manages to hold on to just enough of the past to stay familiar. It's a hard juggling act and some kings and queens have been better at it than others.

A quick note on how the monarchy is numbered - since this confuses some people. After 1066, it's customary to start putting numbers after rulers' names. So, for instance, there have been four kings called William in British history - in 1066, 1087, 1689 and 1830. This means that when the current Duke of Cambridge becomes king, he will be called King William V. The woman a king marries usually gets the title of queen, because of her marriage to the king. However, this type of queen is called a 'queen consort,' and because she is married to a king and doesn't hold power in her own right, she does not get a number after her name. If there were no males left in the royal family and a woman inherited the throne in her own right, then a woman got a number after their name. For example, there have actually been five queens in English history called Elizabeth. However, three of them - Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the late Queen Mother) - achieved their title by marrying a king; they were queen consorts. Only two, Elizabeth I in 1558 and the current Queen in 1952, came to the throne in her own right and inherited power from her father. They are known as 'queen regnants.' When there is a queen regnant, her husband does not get the title of 'king,' he becomes a prince, because in royal tradition, a king is always higher than a queen and if a queen rules in her own right, nobody can be higher than her. That is why the current Queen's husband is called "Prince Philip". 

The Cunard sisters

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Great Britain was not accustomed to the sensation of inferiority. America, although large and rich, was still viewed as a parvenu republic whose influence was confined to a continent that none of the other great powers were interested in; Imperial Russia had an empire that was second in size to Britain's, an economy drastically smaller and a political system which, to the British, bordered on the barbaric and arcane. France, Britain's theoretical ally and rival, was prone to revolution - as changes of regime in 1804, 1814, 1815, 1830, 1848, 1852 and 1870 had shown. The only country that Britain could not dismiss was Imperial Germany - newly unified and hungry for the glory that Britain enjoyed. The two countries competed in everything - army, navy, diplomacy, economy, art, industry and colonialism. The rapid expansion of the German navy under Admiral von Tirpitz gave Britain cause for alarm; the expansion of her commercial passenger fleet simply caused patriotic pique. Britannia was supposed to rule the waves in all its guises - be it military and commercial - and this newfound teutonic one-up-manship quite simply would not do.

The arrival of four lavish luxury liners, all named after members of the German imperial family, caused distress in London and Liverpool. The British Empire no longer had the largest passenger ships in the world. Then when another German company launched the Deutschland in 1900, which took the Blue Riband award for the fastest westbound crossing of the North Atlantic, it was clear that something had to be done. The British government were prepared to offer generous financial assistance to the Cunard Line to enable them to build a duo that would resoundingly crush the humiliation posed by the German liners, in terms of both size and speed. The only contractual stipulation was that if Britain ever needed the ships to perform for the Royal Navy during war-time, then Cunard would have to oblige. No such offer was made to Cunard's British rivals, the White Star Line, who, by that stage, were simply far too heavily-financed by J.P. Morgan for the British government's liking.

Although today all Cunard ships are named after British queens, before 1936 they were all named after provinces of the ancient Roman empire. (Hence why they all ended with -ia, whilst the adverb-inspired White Star's ended with -ic.) The first sister was named Lusitania, after the ancient Roman province of Portugal, and she was built at the John Brown shipyards on the Clydebank in Scotland. Weighing in at 31,550 tons, she was launched by Lady Inverclyde. She sailed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in September 1907 and immediately recaptured the Blue Riband for Britain; wresting it from the Deutschland.

The second ship, Mauretania, was named after Roman northern Africa and she was built at Swan Hunter shipyards on the Tyne in north-eastern England. She was launched by Winston Churchill's aunt, Anne, Duchess of Roxburghe, Queen Victoria's former Mistress of the Robes. Entering service in November 1907, two months after her sister, the Mauretania was slightly larger and slightly faster. The 31,900-ton liner took the Blue Riband and held it, quite incredibly, for the next twenty-two years. 

The press excitement surrounding the Lusitania and Mauretania was not just a result of patriotic sabre-rattling, but also because of a genuine sense of technological excitement. The two ships were not just larger than their German rivals, but a marvel of contemporary engineering because they were nearly twice the size of any ship then in existence. Their interiors, too, provoked much purple-hued commentary. Unlike the White Star Line, which preferred to decorate sister-ships (i.e. ones of roughly similar design, size and construction date) in almost identical styles, the 1907 Cunard sisters had individual aesthetics. To be reductive, the Lusitania was slightly more 'baroque' in her first class accommodation - particularly in her famous first class dining saloon (above) and the Mauretania was more conservatively English, with more use of mahogany, stained glass and a 'country house' feel in rooms like her first class lounge (below.) The Queens Grill on the current Cunard ship Queen Victoria is inspired by the first class lounges on-board the Mauretania.

For four years, the two Cunard sisters were the last word in ocean-going luxury, size, speed and safety. In 1911, Cunard's British rivals, White Star Line, struck back with the 45,000-ton Olympic. Half-again as large as the Mauretania, the Olympic and her two sisters that were still being built in Belfast - Titanic and Britannic - were never designed to challenge the Cunarders in terms of speed. They would take a full extra night to make it across the Atlantic, but they would carry their passengers in more stable and spacious accommodation. There would also be three of them, not two, meaning that they would be able to offer more regular services than the Cunard Line's flagships. In response, Cunard commissioned a third ship to be built on the Tyne and opted to play White Star at their own game. She was not to be as fast as the two elder ships, but rather she was to be roughly the same size as White Star's Olympic and to offer comparably luxurious quarters. 

Of course, by the time the new Aquitania was launched by the Countess of Derby in 1913, White Star's dream of a three-ship express run lay in tatters due to the Titanic disaster. All of the Cunard ships were revamped to carry more lifeboats since, like most of their contemporaries, they had been as unprepared as the Titanic had been. Named after the Roman province of western France, the Aquitania sailed on her maiden voyage in May 1914 and was dubbed "the ship beautiful," because of her palatial first class rooms. (Below) A month after she entered service, the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated on a state visit to Sarajevo and Europe slid into the carnage of the First World War.

During the war, the Aquitania was gutted of her beautiful interiors and served first as a hospital ship and then as a troop transport for the Royal Navy. The Mauretania was a warship, a troop transport and a hospital ship; whilst the Lusitania was tragically sunk by a German U-Boat with the loss of over one thousand civilian lives in 1915. When the war ended in 1918, the two surviving sisters re-entered service for Cunard and the triumphant British government exacted the ultimate commercial humiliation on a vanquished Germany. The former pride of the German maritime fleet - the 52,000-ton Imperator, launched into service by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1913 - was requisitioned and given to Cunard as reparations for the sinking of the Lusitania. She was kitted up in the Cunard colours (red and black funnels) and renamed Berengaria - which I like to think of as a bit of a transition name. It was the first Cunarder to be named after a queen of England (Richard I's wife in the twelfth century), but she still had the -ia ending.

Throughout the 1920s, Cunard ran a three ship service - now sailing from Southampton, rather than Liverpool. The Berengaria could be marketed as the company's impressive flagship (she wasn't the largest in the world; that honour went to White Star's Majestic); the Mauretania was still the world's fastest liner and the Aquitania represented a gracious alternative to the fast "jazz age"-style decoration of newer ships. It was a commercially successful operation, until the Great Crash of 1929 upended the world's economy. Passenger numbers plummeted and the three Cunard ships began to run at a financial loss for the first time in their history.

Inventive, if undignified, methods were used to try to make the vast ships turn a profit again. The Berengaria was sent on several "booze cruises" out of New York, to give alcohol-thirsty Americans a chance to escape Prohibition and drink themselves into a nautical stupor once the ship sailed outside American jurisdiction. The Mauretania was painted white (below) and tried to crack the cruise market. She was, however, too big and too old fashioned to cope well with exotic or hot ports of call. The Aquitania, which had been the most profitable of the three during the 1920s, went on short cruises to the Mediterranean. But these were piecemeal methods and the ships, particularly the Mauretania, were now simply too old to function properly for a company that could not afford to keep repairing ships that were unfashionable and consistently booked far below full capacity.

In 1934, Cunard and White Star bowed to economic reality and merged with one another to become the Cunard-White Star Line. Britain only needed one transatlantic luxury firm now, not two. This, of course, created the problem that they now had six liners available for the north Atlantic trade - the Majestic, Olympic, Homeric, Berengaria, Aquitania and Mauretania. Both White Star and Cunard had been making plans to build a new super-ship to modernise their companies' image and capture the new markets emerging as the Depression receded. They now wisely merged their finances and the new ship was named the Queen Mary in part because it avoided giving off the appearance of bias by picking either an -ia or -ic name. (Although as a sign of the way things were to go, her funnels were painted in the Cunard colours.) 

The Mauretania was withdrawn from service shortly after the 1934 merger. Her furnishings were sold at auction in the following year and she was bought by a scrapping firm, after paying an emotive final trip to her "birthplace" at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. As a sign of how much affection she'd been held in during her career, even the U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote a letter urging that she should be bought and preserved as a museum. The Berengaria, which helped maintain the transatlantic route whilst the Queen Mary was built, was retired in 1938 and met a similar fate. It was decided that the Aquitania should keep the new Queen Mary company until the new Queen Elizabeth was ready in 1940, which meant that when the Second World War broke out in 1939, the Aquitania was once again called-up to serve her country. Over the next six years, she transported nearly 400,000 soldiers for the Allied war effort. When the war ended in 1945, the former "ship beautiful" was used by Cunard to help the Canadian government in bringing "war brides" and their children over to Canada. By 1949, she had to be definitively retired as she was so old that she could not be brought in line with modern safety requirements. After a career that spanned nearly four decades, 1.2 million passengers, 3 million miles and two world wars, the Aquitania was sold for scrap metal in Scotland in 1950. 

Marie-Astrid: the Queen who never was

The 1981 marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer was one of the most famous media events of the century. The splendour of the day and the drama of the marriage's breakdown in the next decade helped remove memories of the fact that for most of the 1970s, Prince Charles's position as the world's most eligible bachelor had helped occupy the tabloids.

Before the lithesome loveliness of Diana lit up the nation's screens, Prince Charles was linked to a whole host of women. Some eligible; many decidedly not. Certain members of the Royal Family looked on in horror at the pretty, wealthy but racy young women Charles was involved with in the decade before he met Diana. None of them seemed quite right to take on the enormous responsibility of being the next Princess of Wales. They either weren't virgins, weren't aristocrats or there was some defect in their personality that made royal insiders doubt they would adjust well to the "glamour in aspic" of marrying into the royal house. 

One woman that Charles was linked to for a time was, on paper, perfect in all respects bar one. She was Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg; she was the eldest child of Luxembourg's reigning Grand Duke Jean and his elegant Belgian wife, Josephine-Charlotte. She had trained as a nurse, despite her royal upbringing, and now served as President of the Red Cross in Luxembourg - the kind of humanitarian charity work that the British Royal Family love. She was five years younger than Prince Charles, pretty, poised and having been born into royalty herself, she knew what to expect. By 1977, British tabloids like the Daily Express were confidently reporting that Buckingham Palace would soon be announcing the Prince's engagement to the twenty-three year-old Princess of Luxembourg.

The only problem, of course, was her religion. Like all members of Luxembourg's reigning family, Marie-Astrid was a Roman Catholic. One of her father's godparents had been Pope Benedict XV and the family retained close ties with the Vatican. For years, it was assumed that it had been Pope Paul VI who ruined Marie-Astrid's chances of becoming Queen of England by invoking the Ne Temere decree, which required that, as a Catholic, she should be married in a Catholic church and promise to raise her children as Catholics, too. Given that Marie-Astrid was going to marry the future head of the Protestant Church of England, that naturally created some problems and the whole thing had to be called off.

In fact, whilst it's unlikely that the Pope would have been too enthused about seeing Marie-Astrid's children raised as Protestants, it was Britain that torpedoed the match. Not Rome.

In the first place, there were laws in place that made such a marriage impossible. If Charles and Marie-Astrid had married, it would have been the first time a British sovereign legally married a Roman Catholic since the future James II married Maria-Beatrice of Modena in 1673. Their reign had ended in revolution and when their enemies triumphed at the Battle of the Boyne, laws were introduced banning any future monarchs from marrying a Catholic. When the future George IV attempted to marry a gentle Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, in 1785, he broke nearly every constitutional law applicable to his private life. The marriage was regarded as totally illegal and George was eventually forced to marry the far less appealing Princess Caroline of Brunswick - who may have been smelly and annoying, but at least she was Protestant and that was really all the British government cared about.

That the government considered it possible that Prince Charles might one day want to marry Princess Marie-Astrid is shown by the fact that there were several committees set-up to see if it was constitutionally possible to repeal the ban on British royals marrying Catholics. There was soft opposition, from the beginning, including from Charles's beloved grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who was not only a devout Protestant but was also naturally opposed to change. Concerns about how such a marriage would affect the already-volatile situation in Northern Ireland were also voiced. Early in 1980, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, set up a small committee to discuss the issue. According to her future biographer, Hugo Young, the Prime Minister herself was strongly opposed to changing the law or to encouraging the Prince's marriage to Marie-Astrid. And her objections rested squarely on the idea that the princess's religion was problematic and undesirable. Some of the committees other members later told Young that they had been shocked by "the extreme anti-Catholicism" of the Prime Minister.

Eventually the rumours about Charles and Marie-Astrid faded away. Maybe that's all they ever were. Neither Charles, nor Marie-Astrid, ever went firmly on the record about how much truth there had been in the idea that they could quite married. Evidently, Mrs. Thatcher considered it a possibility, but we don't know how sold on the idea Charles himself ever was. Charles soon announced his forthcoming marriage to the beautiful Diana Spencer - young, virginal, British, aristocrat and Protestant. And Marie-Astrid married a member of the deposed Austrian royal family, Archduke Carl-Christian, in 1982 (above.)

Prince Charles is now the father of two sons and is married to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall - one of the women who was considered so unsuitable for him in the 1970s. Marie-Astrid, now an Archduchess of Austria and Princess of Hungary, is the mother of five children. Her eldest, Marie-Christine, is married to the Count of Limburg-Stirum, and is a mother herself. Her eldest son, the twenty-six year-old Archduke Imre, is engaged to the American Catholic journalist and pro-Life activist, Kathleen Walker; his 24 year-old brother, Archduke Christoph, is engaged to the French diplomat's daughter, Adelaide Drapé-Frisch. (Both engagement pictures are below.) Marie-Astrid's two youngest children are 21 year-old Archduke Alexander and 18 year-old Archduchess Gabriella. 

How history might have been different if the rumours were right and the Prime Minister had supported the idea. Perhaps though, given Marie-Astrid's own devotion to her Catholic faith and the quiet lifestyle she now enjoys, things worked out for the best. 

4th August, 1900: The birth of the Queen Mother

When Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother died on Easter Saturday 2002, she was one hundred and one years old. She had outlived all of her brothers and sisters, her parents, her husband (by half a century) and her youngest daughter. Her eldest daughter, also called Elizabeth, had already reigned as the British sovereign for fifty years. Across the nation, television broadcasts were immediately stopped to make the official announcements, although the original BBC newsreader made a huge faux pas when he forgot to don the usual black tie, in his haste to make it to the studio.

The Queen Mother had been born the Honourable Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, the ninth child of Lord Bowes-Lyon and his wife, Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck. Elizabeth's father, Lord Bowes-Lyon (Claude), was an old Etonian, soldier and heir to the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne - one of the grandest titles in the Scottish aristocracy. Her mother, Cecilia, Lady Bowes-Lyon, was an elegant and deeply religious socialite. Claude and Cecilia Bowes-Lyon had been happily married for nineteen years, when their fourth daughter, Elizabeth, entered the world. Before her, they had averaged a child for every two years of their marriage and Elizabeth joined seven siblings - Mary, Patrick, John, Alexander, Fergus, Rose and Michael. Her eldest sister, Violet, had died seven years earlier at the age of eleven, as a result of diptheria; Lady Cecilia had been heartbroken.

When Elizabeth was four years old, her father became the new Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne - the fourteenth member of the family to hold that title since it was given to them by James VI in 1606. This meant the family now had several homes and a substantial private fortune. Their main home was the magnificent, if slightly terrifying, Glamis Castle in Scotland - which Shakespeare buffs will remember as the home of Macbeth. There was also a Baroque stately home in Durham called Streatlam Castle, which they visited infrequently. Their favourite home a very pretty country house at the gloriously English-sounding St. Paul's Walden Bury, where Elizabeth spent most of her childhood. She was described as "an exceptionally happy, easy baby: crawling early, running at thirteen months and speaking very young." She was close to both of her parents, especially her mother Cecilia - from whom she acquired her strong Protestant faith. Elizabeth was also particularly close to her childhood nanny, Clara Cooper Knight, and to her youngest brother, David, who was born in 1902. 

Surprisingly, given that she is the mother of the current Monarch, Queen Elizabeth's birthplace is something of a mystery to us. The 1901 census listed her place of birth as being at her family's country house at St. Paul's Walden Bury; her friend, Lady Cynthia Asquith, repeated this in a book she published in 1927. However, in a letter to an astrologer friend in 1978, the Queen Mother told him that she had actually been born in London; something which the Press Office at Buckingham Palace confirmed. Another version of events, which may square the circle, was that she had been born in an ambulance or at the home of the family doctor, Dr. Bernard Thomas G.P.

At the time of Elizabeth's birth (wherever it was), the Bowes-Lyon family lived a life of great privilege. Like most of their class, they had a veritable tribe of servants, numerous homes and all the mod-cons in electricity, travel, medicine and comfort which solidified the huge gulf between the social classes at the turn of the century. As the youngest, and very pretty, daughter of an earl, Elizabeth could confidently expect to exist in this world for the rest of her life, much like her mother and ancestors had done before her. She would spend her childhood travelling between her family's houses; then, at sixteen she would be launched into London Society as a debutante where, after a few years of parties and parental match-making, she would announce her engagement to an eligible young man from a similarly aristocratic background No-one, of course, could have predicted that Elizabeth would marry into the royal family or that the twentieth century would bring about unheard-of changes that helped destroy the Brideshead Revisited-esque world into which she had been born.

To give an idea of how extraordinarily long Elizabeth's life was, it's worth considering that when Elizabeth was born, the ruler of Britain was still Queen Victoria. There had never been a world war. The Titanic was a full decade away from being built. There were only three republics in all of Europe. Countries like Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia had not even been thought of. All of central Europe was still dominated by the empires of centuries-old royal families like the Austrian Hapsburgs. The German nation itself had only existed for three decades. Communism was an abstract theory that no-one ever expected to see implemented. Women still did not have the vote. The only way to cross an ocean was by ship; aeroplanes had not been invented. Russia was still a monarchy and its tsarina had just fallen pregnant with her youngest daughter, Anastasia, whose name was to become a legend in Elizabeth's own lifetime because of the rumours she had survived the Russian Revolution that killed the rest of her family. Elizabeth herself was to live through two world wars, the Titanic disaster, the sinking of the Lusitania, the Russian Revolution, the partition of Ireland, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the political career of Winston Churchill, the decline of the British Empire which, when she was born in 1900, was the largest empire in humanity's history; she would outlive the Cold War, the 'swinging sixties,' (one can imagine what she made of it), the entire career of Margaret Thatcher, all of the Northern Irish Troubles, multiple economic booms, then recessions, the death of Princess Diana and the rise of the Internet. When she was born in 1900, her house did not have a telephone; television had not been invented. She lived longer than the entire Soviet Union.

The little girl, who lived so long, was eventually to become one of the great stars of the British monarchical show. Hitler allegedly called her the "most dangerous woman in Europe," because of the job she did in bolstering British morale during the terrible years of the Blitz. Her admiring biographer, William Shawcross, wrote of her, "The core of her popularity and the major feature of the second half of her life was surely her permanence, both in her principles and in the pattern of her life. As she grew older, she showed great courage in not allowing the infirmities of her years to compel her into retirement. There was something immensely reassuring in her insistence on carrying out her commitments year after year, and the stamina which enabled her to do so. Britain changed enormously but she remained constant. This had particular resonance for all those who were feeling rudderless in the wake of the immense social upheavals of the late twentieth century. Her high spirits and her love of traditions and the quirkiness of Britain were an inspiration to millions." 

Two slightly more critical chroniclers were the historian Piers Brandon and the Labour MP Philip Whitehead, who wrote a ruthlessly unsentimental but very good history of the royal family - The Windsors: A Dynasty Revealed, in 2000. They wrote of Elizabeth's later life, "While eating, surrounded by a galaxy of crowned heads and waited on by a bevy of liveried footmen, the Queen Mother could happily exclaim: 'Look at us. We are just ordinary people around the table having an ordinary lunch.' Her political views were pickled in the past. 'Never trust the Germans, never trust them,' ... [she said] in 1991. [For her 100th birthday in 2000], the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul's was a magnificent affair but it was said that the Queen Mother would spend her actual hundredth birthday itself quietly with family and friends. What this meant was that she processed to Buckingham Palace accompanied by two military bands and a mounted escort of the Blues and Royals. And she received a 41-gun salute." But elsewhere in their book, Brandon and Whitehead acknowledged that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon had become a secret and invaluable weapon to the British monarchy - particularly once her husband unexpectedly became King George VI when his brother abdicated in 1936. That she had also played an invaluable role in ensuring the survival of the institution. They write, "When King George came to the throne a new star was born - his Queen. Brilliantly displaying those essential but barely compatible royal attributes - majesty and the common touch - she was, says John Grigg, 'beautiful, charming, sweet, affectionate, almost cuddly'. But she also exuded regal dignity on the public stage". 

Born in 1900, and outliving the entirety of the twentieth century, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was one of the most popular members of the British royal family at the time of her death in 2002.

How not to respond to a blog post

A few months ago, I blogged about a debate in London over a tourist poster that showed Mary I, sometimes known as "Bloody Mary," transforming into a zombie-demon. Aside from being stupid and ugly, which for me is the main criteria for condemning it, the poster had also thrown yummy mummies and historians in the Greater London area into something of a tizz. The mummies were mad because the ghoulish hologram traumatised their young progeny and the historians were face-palming all over the show because the advert perpetuated the idea that Mary Tudor was a blood-sucking hellish sociopath, who liked to beat young babies with her rosary beads and toss virtuous Protestant maidens into Vatican-sponsored incinerators. 

For those of you not up to date on your Tudor historiography, Mary I (painted above in 1544) was Henry VIII's eldest daughter; she ruled England, Wales and Ireland from July 1553 until her death in November 1558. During those five years, nearly 300 Protestants were burned to death for their faith, which led to the devoutly Catholic queen being nicknamed "Bloody Mary" when her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth, took the throne in 1558. Amongst historians, there has recently been a huge debate over whether or not Mary was quite the bloodthirsty incompetent that later Protestant historians portrayed her as; this is something which I did acknowledge in my post, but I did say that I think the rehabilitation of Mary might have gone a little bit too far.

Listen, I genuinely don't think that Mary Tudor was some sort of proto-Nazi who got her jollies from having hundreds of Protestants and anabaptists tortured and killed. But I do think that even by the standards of the Spanish Inquisition, she was a harsh and consistent persecutor of the nation's heretic minority. I think the pendulum of Marian revision has swung too far in the pro-Mary direction and to agree with the wonderful Leanda de Lisle, who spoke last week, we shouldn't have too "cuddly" a version of Mary. Or of any of the Tudors. They ruled as semi-absolute monarchs in a cut-throat and turbulent century. Cruelty, in one way or the other, was to be expected.

Anyway, after expressing the view that I think Elizabeth was more competent than Mary, I received this snippy little comment from a (you guessed it) anonymous reader. Ordinarily, I'd just post the comment and leave it at that, because apparently everyone has the right to free speech. But today, I thought - "Screw it." Actually, they don't. If they're going to be stupid, you should shut up. So, here's looking at you, Anonymous. The comment begins with a quote from my original article: - 

"The successes of Mary's reign do deserve to be analysed and appreciated for what they were, but the ludicrous revisionist attempt to suggest that the burnings were not unpopular or that the triumph of Protestantism was some weird Elizabethan fluke deserves to be treated with more than a little self-satisfied contempt." 

Oh please, you honestly think that with Protestants still an extreme minority in England (with no majority in any city to the extent that existed on the continent), and with the majority of the country pretty comfortable with Catholicism, that England would still have become protestant if there had been a Catholic heir after Mary? Especially one ruling for 40 years, and when they were implementing the same Counter-Reformation techniques that were so successful later in other places in Europe? (Except that they were doing it before the Council of Trent had even finished). How do you think that would have happened, exactly?
While Elizabeth was pretty talented, the fact that she was Protestant and ruled for 40 years is a MAJOR factor in the triumph of Protestantism, and to not recognize that is ludicrous in of itself. 
And honestly, what evidence do you have that the burnings really made people convert to Protestantism, etc? Foxe could only come up with one name, a guy who was already considering it before the burnings began. I know it seems like common sense to our modern sensibilities, but the fact is we just don't know how people felt about them. John Foxe's maltreatment of a lot of sources leading to his book often being the only one about many aspects of the burning certainly doesn't help. 

Well, let me begin by saying that starting a comment with the phrase 'Oh, please,' is the intellectual equivalent of a man stuffing a sock down his pants. You're trying to make yourself seem bigger than you are and it's not working. If you were intellectually capable of prosecuting the argument you're about to make, you wouldn't try to belittle your opponent through condescension before even starting. Would you? I.e. if you really were that big, you wouldn't need the sock. 

You ask, incredulously: "You honestly think..." - well, yes, I do, actually. Otherwise, I wouldn't have written it. A strange fluke I picked up at Oxford, I suppose.

You asked about a Catholic heir and what I think would have happened if Mary had produced one. Well, first of all, I have no idea about 'what if' because it's not real history, but if Mary had produced a child that was raised a Catholic, then, yes, I do think England might still be Catholic. However, I was a little confused about the next line of your argument because you seem curiously ill-informed about the exact nature of the Elizabethan religious settlement. You seem to be implying that it was Queen Elizabeth's religious faith, coupled with her longevity, that explains entirely the eventual triumph of Protestantism in England. Elizabeth I was, in fact, far more 'catholic' than is traditionally supposed. Like most of the country, she was what you called 'pretty comfortable with Catholicism'. But again, like most of the country, that comfort with traditional religion, (which is what it should be called rather than Catholicism, by the way), did not stop her siding with religious reformism after 1558. Why? Well, it seems that whilst most people were happy to conform, by 1558, they had lived under so many different variations of Christianity thanks to Henry, Edward and Mary that they were probably happy to adapt to any kind of "pick-n-mix" version of the "One True Faith," provided they were left in peace. It's not the stuff of martyrs, but there had been enough of them already, I suppose. Most people were comfortable with whatever was put in front of them, because they wanted to live, love and prosper without the fear of dying because of where they went on a Sunday. Under Mary and Elizabeth, those who chose to die for their faith made up an insignificant percentage of the population. And in both cases, the heroism of those martyrs led to them becoming ideological celebrities, both in their own time and in ours. 

Anyway, the so-called "via media" or Elizabethan Religious Settlement of 1559-1650 was not simply a result of the new Queen's allegedly protestant faith, like you suggested. Had Elizabeth had her way - which you seem to think she had - then, in fact, she would have produced a much more 'catholic' Church of England. Yes, it would have been separate from the jurisdiction of the Papal See, as it had been in her father's reign,  and there'd have been a serious trimming back on time devoted to the Virgin Mary and the saints. (And I for one am not thrilled about that, by the way - I love me some Hail Marys. But I digress.) Anyway, overall, if Elizabeth Tudor had gotten her own way, then the new Church of England would have been far more traditional in its liturgies, practices and hierarchy. However, this did not happen and that's because from the moment of her accession, Elizabeth was under sustained political pressure from the House of Commons and the emergent Puritan faction of elected MPs, who collectively forced Elizabeth to move "Left" on her religious settlement. Put simply, by 1559, the hostility towards Catholicism or traditional religion had solidified within much wider sections of the rural and urban elite than had been the case in 1553 - before Mary I took the throne. Why? Well, the obvious argument would be that  between 1554 and 1558, the burnings instituted by Mary Tudor's regime did harden hostility against Catholicism within the educated sectors of English society; meaning that when Elizabeth took the throne in November 1558, she found it impossible to ignore the concerns of the landed gentry and the elected politicians, all of whom put her under considerable pressure to create a far more 'protestant' Church of England. If you want evidence that the burnings were unpopular, then, I'm afraid, that's where it is. Whilst I understand that you're attempting to claim that the vast majority of English people didn't mind the 300 deaths by burning, it is quite simply absurd to make such a sweeping statement. You ask how I know the burnings weren't popular - one could justifiably flip the question and ask how do you know they were? The sad fact for historians is that we have almost no surviving sources that reflect public opinion amongst the majority of English Christians. The only parish records that survive and give any real kind of insight into grass-roots religious opinions are from the parishes that caused trouble to the government. In Mary's reign, those were the parishes that were too reformist; in Elizabeth's, they were the ones that were too conservative. I mean, maybe I'm wrong and you're right. Maybe you have a mass producing ouija board with impeccable results and a lot of time on your hands? But short of that, I'm not entirely sure how you could be any more clear about what the majority of Mary and Elizabeth's subjects thought than the rest of us are.

What is clear is that by the time Elizabeth came to the throne, the heresy trials and executions had galvanised opinion within a sizable section of the English and Welsh elite. Had that not existed, then the church Elizabeth created would have been very different and she would not have had to give way on things like church decorations, the Book of Common Prayer, clerical celibacy and clerical vestments. All of which she did, eventually, have to concede on in order to appease Protestant political pressure.

Of course, the main point of this is that whilst your arguments are wrong, you had the right to make them and it is always interesting to hear what readers think. However, your tone was smug, patronising and you entered the comment anonymously. To paraphrase a friend of mine - anonymity is tolerated, but manners are mandatory. Your comment was as irritating as it was stupid - and I've had quite enough of receiving remarks like it. I enjoy the debate - it's what history is about. I don't enjoy rudeness or running from one's own comments. It's cowardly and it's annoying. I don't write this blog to deal with passive aggressive nonsense from pseudo-intellectuals who can't sign their own names to their comments. 

Thank you.

You can read the original article here.