"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. 

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.

Christmas book round-up

First of all, a happy Christmas to everyone and a very safe new year's, too. Thank you all for continuing to read this blog throughout 2012; I wish you and yours a prosperous Yuletide season!

I've said that I'd try to keep up with posts about what I'm reading, so here's a brief set of reviews of books I've read this autumn and winter. (With my own second novel coming out and rehearsals going on for a play in January, I actually find it's always a good idea to read somebody else's book in bed at night. To clear my head.)

The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: The tragedy of Mary, Katherine and Lady Jane Grey - (By Leanda de Lisle, 2010). One of the best historical biographies I've read, Leanda de Lisle's take on the lives of the troubled Grey sisters is clever, witty and moving. Unlike many biographies which boast endlessly about their "new" discoveries, de Lisle's book actually does offer a genuinely different (and convincing) portrait of the Grey girls - particularly Jane, the most famous member of the family. The book is not biased, being fair to all of the major players, most of whom hated each other in real life. Compulsively readable and fantastically written, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen is my favourite historical book that I've read in 2012.

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder - (By Evelyn Waugh, 1945). Nothing ever quite prepares you for Evelyn Waugh's lushly magnificent prose, even if you've read it many, many times before. Brideshead Revisited is, at heart, a love story between two men (what nature that love takes and how it expressed itself is still a subject of debate), but the label is not important here. It's also a story about choices, memory, the class system and the mysteries of the Catholic faith, played out across the life of a young middle-class boy called Charles Ryder who goes to study History at Oxford in 1922, where he meets Lord Sebastian Flyte, the gorgeous and flamboyant son of a Catholic marquess. In many ways, Brideshead Revisited reads like a paean of love to the aristocratic heyday of the inter-war years - a fact which Evelyn Waugh later regretted, claiming he'd written in such a hyperbolic way because the Second World War had made him hungry for "the days of plenty." It says something for Waugh's literary brilliance that the novel is simultaneously cited as being one of the great same-sex love stories of the twentieth century and the finest celebration of the Catholic religion ever written by an English author. Every time I return to Brideshead Revisited, I'm struck again by how beautiful it is, how clever it is and, often, by how incredibly funny Waugh made it. With a cast of unforgettable characters, Brideshead Revisited deserves its reputation as one of the finest novels of the last century.

Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown - (By Maureen Waller, 2003). This is the ugly side of the Glorious Revolution, the event still celebrated to the skies today by Ireland's Orange Order. By examining the events from the point-of-view of each major member of the Royal Family in 1688-1690, Maureen Waller delivers a devastatingly unpleasant story of filial betrayal and deceit. The one truly likable character to emerge from the entire sordid narrative is Maria-Beatrice of Modena, the Italian princess who was destined to become the last Catholic queen of Britain, when she married the future James II. In 1688, she was horribly traduced by her two stepdaughters, when they unfairly accused her of smuggling an impostor-baby into her rooms, to pass it off as the long-awaited Catholic heir. Armed with this smear campaign, Maria-Beatrice's son-in-law, William of Orange, invaded England, whipped up into anti-Catholic terror, and seized the throne, completing his victorious transformation into William III two years later at the Battle of the Boyne. Passionate, well-argued and moving, Ungrateful Daughters was a very good read.

A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of Charles I and Henrietta Maria - (By Katie Whitaker, 2011). This is a book I have been meaning to read for a while now, so I was pleased I got the opportunity. It is a dual biography of Charles I, the king who famously lost his head at the end of the English civil war, and his French wife, Henrietta-Maria, Louis XIII's youngest sister. Whitaker manages to be sympathetic to both, although the book probably deals with the Queen's life more than the King's. A Royal Passion is unashamedly a return to the "kings and queens" style approach to history; it's history from above, not below. But, as Dr. Whitaker shows, top-down history should have more of a place in today's studies, because the case of Charles I and Henrietta-Maria shows how important monarchy was, particularly in an age when it wielded such power. The biography manages to neatly balance the emergence of the couple's love for one another and it's very touching, alongside the mounting political problems that eventually led to the downfall of the monarchy and the civil war. Henrietta-Maria is treated sympathetically here, which I enjoyed, but her mistakes and occasionally erratic advice are not glossed over. A few minor elements of the story are not dealt with - such as recent evidence that suggests the possibility of the King having had an affair later on in the marriage, when he was in prison - but, overall, A Royal Passion is a fantastic portrait of a marriage that began in difficulty (Henrietta-Maria punched her fist through a palace window in rage when Charles dismissed her tribe of French-Catholic servants), evolved into a great love story and then ended in such a tragic way.

A Brief Life of the Queen - (By Robert Lacey, 2012). A short but succinct life of the current Sovereign, Robert Lacey's book is beautifully illustrated and a sympathetic approach to the life of Elizabeth II. A few members of the Royal Family, namely the current Prince of Wales, do not emerge too well from Lacey's narrative and he doesn't gloss over the Queen's rage at her courtiers' advice during the weeks after Princess Diana's death in 1997, but overall this is a fast-moving and convincing biography of one of the most successful leaders of the modern age.

The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland, 1740 - 1840 - (By A.P.W. Malcomson, 2006). A.P.W. Malcomson's account of marriage between, and in to, the Irish aristocracy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a beautiful book to look at. Full of illustrations, Malcomson discusses the extent to which class, money, land and love influenced how the aristocrats of the Ascendancy picked their mates. He's particularly interesting on those who married "in" to the Ascendancy, although at times his attempts to be utterly thorough can make the book a little dry for the casual reader. For anyone interested in Ireland's (in)famous Protestant Ascendancy, and probably for someone who has already done a bit of reading on them, The Pursuit of the Heiress is a good recommendation and I enjoyed it.

Evita: First Lady - (By John Barnes, 1996). This is not a sympathetic biography of Argentina's notorious first lady, although it's nowhere near as harsh as Mary Main's book Evita: The Woman with the Whip, which proved the inspiration for the famous musical based on Evita's life and death. Barnes presents Evita as shallow, materialistic and addicted to fame. There are times when one questions how much of this book is original research, but it's written well enough and it's easy to follow.

Bring Up the Bodies - (By Hilary Mantel, 2012). I wasn't a huge fan of the first installment in this series, Wolf Hall, and Bring Up the Bodies made me remember why. The historian in me could obviously query why on earth absolutely none of Thomas Cromwell's negative qualities are in any way acknowledged in this hagiographic fictional adaptation of his life, but Hilary Mantel has clearly done her research and she clearly believes that Cromwell was nothing like the unpleasant henchman of popular legend. The main problem with Bring Up the Bodies was one which bedeviled Wolf Hall, too; it insists upon itself. I don't like novels that tell me what to think - that tell me which character to like and what view to take. That's one of the reasons why I like books like Brideshead Revisited. No-one knows if you're supposed to like or loathe Sebastian's mother, Lady Marchmain; pity or despise the glamorous Celia, etc. In this series, Cromwell is presented as irredeemably commendable and his opponents as equally awful. In order to excuse Cromwell's worst actions, Mantel made Thomas More an unrelentingly unlikable character in Wolf Hall; in Bring Up the Bodies, it's the turn of Anne Boleyn and Henry Norris. Bring Up the Bodies is written by a very, very gifted writer, but at times it felt like a lecture and I'd rather have been left to make my own mind up about the astonishing figure who stands at the heart of the story.

Farewell, My Queen - (By Chantal Thomas, 2004). First published in French and recently adapted into a movie, starring Diane Kruger (below) and Lea Seydoux, Farewell, My Queen tells the story of the last three days in the palace of  Versailles from the point-of-view of a fictional servant, whose job it is to read aloud to the Queen while she takes her morning coffee. The novel, narrated in the first person, gives free rein to the servant-girl's obsessive devotion to Marie-Antoinette and it brilliantly captures the rising tide of panic as the full impact of the storming of the Bastille reaches the court. This is my second time reading Farewell, My Queen; at times, it feels like the translation into English may have diminished some of the text's drama, but it remains a very good book.

Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr - (By Linda Porter, 2011.) I preferred Linda Porter's first biography, of Mary Tudor, but this biography was still a fine one. It helped remind me of why the life of Henry VIII's sixth wife is so interesting, despite the fact that she's often looked upon as "the boring one." Katherine the Queen is sympathetic, well-written and enjoyable.

Lost Liners - (By Robert Ballard, 1997). You could certainly say this book about the most famous shipwrecks of the twentieth century is written by an expert; Robert Ballard is the man who discovered the remains of the Titanic in 1985. The illustrations are by the ludicrously talented marine artist, Ken Marschall, and they are incredible. It's a short but beautiful book.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - (By J.K. Rowling, 2003.) For some reason, people seem to generally agree that this is the "worst" book in the Harry Potter franchise. It's also the longest, which may have something to do with it. I love the Harry Potter books and I have to say that I really rather like Order of the Phoenix. In the first place, Dolores Umbridge is such a good villain that I had to punch my pillow in rage at several moments; secondly, it takes a gutsy author to take the risk of making her eponymous hero as irritating as Rowling does with moody Harry in this book. Too much Hogwarts is never a bad thing.

Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century - (By John Boswell, 1980.) This is an award-winning but hard-going book by the late, great, gender historian John Boswell, an academic at Yale. At times, Boswell's insistence that homophobia only arose in the Christian church well into the Middle Ages sounds a little too forced; as if he is so determined to believe the best of Christianity that he cannot quite bring himself to admit how that darkness actually arose. All that being said, however, Boswell's book is still utterly fascinating. He finds ample evidence to suggest that prior to the twelfth century, the Church in the West evinced very little hostility towards, or interest in, homosexuality and he does find several instances of it actually celebrating male-male relationships and ceremonies performed to do so. (There is next-to-nothing, I should point out, on same-sex female relationships in this book.) Brilliant, ground-breaking and flawlessly researched, Boswell's book deserved the awards it received and the uncomfortable questions it asks (but doesn't always fully answer) remind us all of how incredibly complex religious, cultural and sexual history can be. Reading books like this reminds me not just why I love history so much, but why it's so important and why it should always be written by men and women who take it as seriously as John Boswell did.

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. 

Anne Boleyn's pregnancies: stress or sorrow?

Claire Ridgway, whose new book On This Day in Tudor History is out next month (very excited), gives her take on the debate about Anne Boleyn's pregnancies. What happened in 1534 and 1536 when Queen Anne allegedly miscarried? Were the pregnancies all that they seemed or was one the result of hysterical stress. 

You can read Claire's excellent article on them by clicking here.

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". 

A state funeral for Richard III? Don't make me laugh.

Richard III died in battle on 22nd August 1485. He had been King of England and Lord of Ireland for just over two years, having seized the throne from his teenage nephew, Edward V, back in 1483. Richard's death put his opponent, Henry Tudor, on the throne as Henry VII and it brought to an end the Plantagenet kings who had ruled England since the accession of Henry II in 1154. Richard's wife, Anne Neville, and his only legitimate son, the late Prince of Wales, had both predeceased him. His corpse was publicly displayed in the most humiliating fashion by the victorious Tudors, before it was hastily buried. A generation later, it vanished from the historical record and it was presumed lost to history. That was until a few weeks ago, when a group of archaeologists came across the biggest find since the identification of the Romanovs and unearthed what is quite possibly Richard III's skeleton - buried beneath a car park in Leicester.

The skeleton bares all the marks of someone who died in battle and, interestingly, it has a curvature of the spine. (For years, Richard's modern-day supporters insisted that he had no such deformity and that the whole thing had been invented by malicious Tudor propagandists.) In the hope that this is indeed the body of the last Plantagenet monarch, the historian and politician Chris Skidmore, has submitted a proposal to the House of Commons that calls for the remains to be given a full state funeral. To quote: -

"... this House notes the discovery of a skeleton beneath a car park in Leicester believed to be that of Richard III; [it] praises the work of the archaeologists and historians responsible for the find; hopes that DNA evidence will prove the remains to be those of the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty; and calls upon the government to arrange a full state funeral for the deceased monarch, and for his remains to be interred appropriately."

On the surface, it's a fair enough request. If the remains are identified as Richard III's, it's inconceivable that they wouldn't be accorded some kind of Christian burial and, if so, why not a state one? The remains of the Romanovs were solemnly re-interred in Saint Petersburg in 1998, once science had ascertained that the skeletons were authentic. Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and Louis's younger sister, Elisabeth, were exhumed from their mass grave and buried with incredible pomp once the French monarchy was restored in 1815. Two hundred years later, when the stolen heart of Louis and Marie-Antoinette's youngest son was identified, it too went into the Bourbon vault, near his parents. Why shouldn't Richard III be granted the same honours? Particularly since he was a king and the country he ruled over is still a monarchy. Furthermore, the request is coming from an elected politician (Chris Skidmore is the Conservative MP for Kingswood) and a respected historian (his books include a biography of Edward VI, a groundbreaking look at a scandal surrounding Elizabeth I and a very well-received account of the battle that took Richard III's life back in 1485.)

But there are several reasons why I, personally, feel the very notion of "a full state funeral" for Richard III is silly, frivolous and border-line obscene. 

To give a brief synopsis of Richard's historical reputation: from the moment the Tudors took power, Richard's name was worth less than mud. He was described as a child-murdering hunchback, who had stolen the throne from his young nephew, slaughtered his way through the aristocracy of England and generally participated in every political crime in England from the fall of Henry VI until the Battle of Bosworth twenty-four years later. Richard's reputation as one of the great villains of history was further cemented when he was shredded by the pens of Saint Thomas More and then by William Shakespeare. Then, in the seventeenth century, people began to question if Richard really had been as bad as the Tudors made him out to be. This gave rise to a view of Richard as being one of the most wronged leaders in history - a king more sinned against than sinning. In the twentieth century, this birthed the Richard III Society, a group of talented history enthusiasts, who seek to rehabilitate Richard III's reputation and whose passion for their cause has, unfortunately, often discouraged historians from pointing out that it's ridiculous to lavishly praise a monarch who ruled for only two years and who, in those two years, did nothing of note except to hold onto power until it was ripped from him by Henry Tudor, Margaret Beaufort and the Stanley family. There is also the fact that Richard has been the prime suspect in the murder of his two nephews - 12 year-old Edward V and 10 year-old Richard of Shrewsbury - ever since the two boys disappeared in the summer of 1483. For Ricardians, Richard was the real victim and various intriguing theories have been suggested to point the finger at other culprits. Not one of whom had the opportunity or motive to get rid of them like Richard did, but I digress.

On a purely pragmatic note, reburying Richard III with full state honours poses several problems in 2012. The first is that it would divide the country, not unite it; no matter what Richard's enthusiasts say, there is still a large cloud hanging over his involvement with his nephews and many - myself included - believe he was responsible for their deaths. Secondly, reburying a five hundred year old skeleton with the honours we would give to a recently-deceased royal, is wasteful and extravagant, particularly in the middle of a recession. Thirdly, Richard III died a practising medieval Catholic; he was killed thirty-two years before the Protestant religion even began. The official state religion of the United Kingdom today is Anglican Protestantism and the current Sovereign, who would need to grant permission for Richard to be buried on royal ground, is the head of that Church. Should we re-bury Richard III with the religious services of a church that he would quite probably have viewed as schismatic and heretical? Or should we compromise the spirit of the 1701 Act of Settlement and have a Catholic British state funeral? I don't think it's right that Catholicism is still being legislatively punished when it comes to the monarchy, but it's the law of the land. One way or the other, a state funeral would compromise the integrity of a monarch - if it's Protestant, Richard III; if it's Catholic, Elizabeth II. 

To round-off the pragmatic reasons why Richard III should not be given a state funeral, we can also turn to the issue of time. Whilst it is true that one of monarchism's great benefit is its tying together of past, present and future, Richard III died over half-a-millennium ago. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were reburied in 1815 - when most of the people who could remember them were still alive. The Romanovs were buried eighty years after their deaths, when Russia was still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of lawless depravity which had taken the royal family's life back in 1918. No-one alive today can remember Richard III and the country is not coming to terms with the aftermath of the Battle of Bosworth.

On a moral note, giving a state funeral to Richard III would be offensive to many people in this country. Again, myself included. It would re-focus attention on the fact that Richard has never been cleared of complicity in his nephews' murder. He was accused of it, on multiple occasions, during his lifetime - not just when the Tudors came to power and the accusation has to be taken seriously. (For what it's worth, I have not once read an argument that clears him that doesn't also read like a hard-working wishful fantasy.) If he didn't kill them, then where did they go? Richard's rule was incomparably damaged by the allegations that he had killed the two children; at any point, he could have salvaged his reputation by parading them through the streets to prove that they were still alive. He didn't. Which suggests to me that they were dead by the end of 1483, at the very latest. He swore to uphold their birthright; he then dispossessed them and they subsequently disappeared.  Richard has therefore never been satisfactorily cleared of one of the most grotesque crimes in the royal family's history. To bury him with full honours would incite the ire of people who, in perfectly good conscience, would object to their taxes paying for the ceremonial re-internment of a possible child-murderer. 

On the other hand, maybe Richard III didn't kill Edward V and his little brother. Maybe he simply robbed them of their birthright, isolated them from their friends and family, and then somehow magically misplaced them. It's just about possible that an overzealous Ricardian suffocated the two boys and dumped their bodies under a staircase in the chaos that followed Richard's seizure of power. They killed them for love of their king, but without his permission. But that still leaves us with the stark choice that Richard either killed them or lost them. Depending on which one you believe, it means that Richard III was either a merciless tyrant or the single most astonishingly incompetent leader in English history. As an absolute monarch and as the boys' legal guardian, the buck stopped with him. He is responsible for what happened to them; the question of his guilt is therefore only a question of degrees. To quote Shakespeare, "Say I slew them not?" "Then say there are not slain." With absolute power comes corresponding responsibility and, in that arena, Richard is to be found sorely lacking. 

Finally, there are sound philosophical reasons why Richard III should be interred quietly in a small Catholic service, like the heart of Louis XVII was in 2004, rather than in a state-funded parade.

For all his faults, Richard III was a practising Christian and it would be wrong to deny his remains access to the funerary rites of his faith. No matter how much time has passed. However, I am very uneasy with things like historical apologies, historical compensation and grand gestures of historical rehabilitation. I think it cheapens History and feeds the arrogance of Modernity. For instance - a few years ago, there was a very well-meaning campaign, led by a decorated veteran from the Battle of Britain, to have Anne Boleyn posthumously pardoned and then removed from her grave in the Tower of London so that she could be reburied in Westminster Abbey. The campaign even attracted the attention of the Home Secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury. But, ultimately, it failed. And it should have. Anne Boleyn still lies in the cold stone of the Tower of London's chapel and she is still, officially at least, a convicted traitor to her country and an adulteress.

There is far more reason to believe that Anne Boleyn was the victim of a truly horrifying miscarriage of justice than there is to suppose that Richard III wasn't guilty of at least some of the crimes he was accused of, but that doesn't mean that pardoning her and re-burying her would be right. If we stand up in 2012 and say "Oh, that was awful, let's make it better," then we are guilty of breathtaking arrogance in assuming that our actions can ameliorate past horrors. History should be left alone, so that it can stand and remind us of the horrors of the past - and of man's inhumanity to man. We must never assume that a couple of glib words and a few pretty ceremonies can erase that. Anne Boleyn should be left where she is, because reburying her in Westminster Abbey would only serve our emotions - not hers or anyone who knew her. It is far more poignant to stand in Saint Peter-ad-Vincula's today and to see the tiny little spot of earth where she was dumped back in 1536 and to reflect on a terrible time in our history, when women (no matter how gifted or exalted) were the property of their menfolk and could be disposed of as such. If we moved her into Westminster Abbey, we could stand there and comfort ourselves by thinking - "Isn't it nice, though, that in the end she ended up here?" And we should never, ever, try to give the past a happy ending to suit our own sentimentality. We should remember what really happened and understand that, in History, there is no retraction. There can be no mea culpa big enough to take back what has been done. If you believe Richard III was framed by the Tudors, this state funeral will amount to nothing more than an attempt to put a Disney-like gloss on his story. It would give him a happily ever after that detracts from the truth of his actual story.

My friend Ellen Buddle put it well, when we were discussing this, and I hope she won't mind my quoting her in this post. Unlike me, Ellen has no real interest in the case of Richard III in the specifics, but rather in what the proposed state funeral would amount to in principle: -

"When we try and make these judgements on events that happened hundreds of years ago, we're actually not commenting on those events anyway. We're making contemporary political statements and dragging people into it that lived in a moral and political landscape completely different to our own. Trying to identify official, government-approved 'goodies' and 'baddies' in these scenarios is all about propaganda, and little to do with truth and justice. And therefore is a bit unsavoury. 

You also can't whitewash and erase the things British institutions once allowed and approved by saying, 'Oops, takeback!' in a more enlightened time. History has to stand as an example of the worst excesses of states. Undoing those decisions hundreds of years later is a way of saying 'We're nothing like that. We're so much better.' But there's no reason to take that as a given, and symbolic gestures that don't affect the living aren't evidence of it."

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. 

Can republics be snobbier than the Monarchy?

The National Post has a very interesting article upon the Monarchy and attitudes to class in Britain. Perhaps one of the things which people who aren't too well-acquainted with monarchical history will find surprising is how often various members of the British aristocracy have scorned and criticised the monarchy for being too "common". The gorgeous but fascist socialite, Lady Diana Mosley (nee Mitford), was extremely critical of the late Queen Mother, whom she rather unfairly and improbably characterised as a social climber. A little like members of the ci-devant nobility in pre-revolutionary France who criticised Marie-Antoinette for her farm at Versailles, because it was considered lacking in majesty.

Perhaps one of the most interesting points the article raises is that, contrary to popular misconception, the monarchy in Britain does not necessarily encourage snobbery and it cites the rather revealing example of how entrenched snobbery can be in the United States and France, both of them the most celebrated republics in the world and both founded, at least in theory, on the principle of equality. Historically, it's often true that "self-made" aristocracies or oligarchies, like those in the United States or, most obviously, in ancient republican Rome, can be the most precious and conscious of their status. I don't entirely know what I think of that argument, although there seems to be a lot of truth in it. In any case, The National Post raises an interesting point when it says: -

"Many commentators continue to follow Malcolm Muggeridge's argument that the monarchy is the source of class consciousness, that "the impulses out of which snobbishness is born descend from the Queen at the apex of the social pyramid, right down to the base." This neglects the fact that several countries routinely held up as progressive, egalitarian democracies - Holland, Sweden, Norway - are also monarchies. It also neglects the Olympic-class snobbery to be found in every non-royal society, from Ivy League America to the Crillon Ball crowd in Paris."

The full article can be accessed here and it's definitely worth a read. Perhaps one of the saddest and most interesting anecdotes is the tale of Queen Mary, consort of George V, obsessively pouring over her family tree and the Almanach de Gotha to see if she qualified as Rank I or II of royalty for the opening waltz at the wedding of the Kaiser's daughter in 1913. 

The Kings and Queens of England

A full table of the Kings and Queens of England, with their consorts. I also profiled the same for the French monarchy in an earlier post. Ordinarily, the lists start in 1066 with William I's conquest of England, a move which many academics deplore, understandably. Although that is admittedly where I also usually start my list, under the influence of "1066 and all that," this list starts at a shakier point in our royal knowledge - 802 A.D. For some reason, we British lost France's excellent ability to pick amazing sobriquets for our monarchs at precisely the time we were conquered by a French duke... Elizabeth I made a solid effort to revive the custom in her favour, though.

THE HOUSE OF WESSEX

(802 - 1013, 1014 - 1016)

EGBERT (802 - 839). He is said to have married Redburga, a princess of the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire.

AETHELWULF (839 - 856). He married twice; firstly to Lady Osburga and after her death to Princess Judith of France. After his death, Queen Judith married the next King of England, Aethelbald.

AETHELBALD (856 - 860). He married Judith of France, Dowager Queen; after his death, Queen Judith married Baldwin I, Count of Flanders.

AETHELBERT (860 - 865). He never married.

AETHELRED (865 - 871). He married Lady Wulfthryth.

The Kings and Queens of France

I thought I would post a genealogical table (of sorts) of various monarchies over the next few weeks. Traditionally, the French monarchy was seen by most people in Europe as the premier throne in Christendom. A view, understandably, rejected by the Hapsburgs at every available opportunity for eight consecutive centuries. In any case, because of her early conversion to Christianity, the French kings were entitled to be addressed as "His Most Christian Majesty," an honorific which later moved the kings of Spain and Portugal to such jealousy that they petitioned the Pope to grant them something similar (they got "His Most Catholic Majesty" and "His Most Faithful Majesty," respectively.)

The monarchy in France lasted over fourteen centuries and, even today, it still continues to provoke fairly heated debate. For purposes of clarity, I have excluded the Merovingian dynasty of kings, who ruled France between the fifth and eighth centuries A.D. Although some of that family bore the title "King of the Franks," the monarchy's power was in such a state of flux in that period that they often had to resort to the more honest title of "King of Paris."  I have chosen, therefore, to start with the Carolingian dynasty and continue up to the deposition of Louis-Philippe in 1848. I have not included the two Napoleons who used the title of "emperor" in the nineteenth century. Although they had the title, they were not technically monarchs and few royalists today would accept the Bonaparte family's claim as a legitimate one. In any case, they were "emperors", not "kings".

Cameo Consorts

After yesterday's post on Britain's longest-serving royal consorts, it seemed only fair to include the top ten shortest serving. Unsurprisingly, five of Henry VIII's six unlucky wives made the list.

1. Lord Guildford Dudley (13 days) The controversial husband of Jane Grey, Dudley was married off to her as a teenager as part of his father's attempts to retain power if the young King Edward VI died without heirs. The Dudley family's attempt to preserve the Protestant monarchy by placing their teenage daughter-in-law on the throne ended in abysmal failure when Mary Tudor seized the throne with popular support. Jane and Guildford were both executed a year later, both still teenagers. Traditionally Guildford has been presented as a weak and self-indulged character, with a teenage fondness for wine and women. An account of his execution was posted on this blog in February.

Prince Philip and the long-lasting consorts

Last night, ITV broadcast a very interesting interview with His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, who turns ninety this year and who is now also the longest serving consort in the British monarchy's history. Born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in 1921, Prince Philip married Princess Elizabeth after serving in the British Navy during the Second World War. When she succeeded her father as Sovereign in February 1952, he thus became the first male consort in the Crown's history since the death of Prince Albert in 1861. With a consortial tenure of fifty-nine years, today Prince Philip is the patron of over eight hundred charitable organisations, as well as being the founder of the acclaimed Duke of Edinburgh Award, a three-tiered physical activities programme for young people aged between fourteen and twenty-four. After watching the interview, I thought I'd profile the other "top ten" longest serving consorts in British history.

1. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (59 years) The handsome Greek prince and former officer in the British Navy had many family ties to England when he fell in love with the heiress to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, during the Second World War. A keen supporter of modernising the monarchy, he has served as consort since 1952.

2. Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (57 years) A conservative and conscientious German princess who married King George III in 1761, the year after he became king. A pen-pal and admirer of Marie-Antoinette's, Queen Charlotte remained steadfast during the enormous pressures of her husband's kingship, including the American Revolution, the overthrow of the French monarchy, the 1798 rebellion in Ireland, the war with France and, of course, the King's long battle with mental illness.

3. Philippa of Hainault (41 years) An elegant and demure Dutch princess who married King Edward III in 1328, she deliberately set herself up to be a model of royal dignity and restraint, in contrast to the unhinged glamour of her mother-in-law, Isabella. When she died in 1369, her confessor wrote, "She gave up her spirit, which I firmly believe was caught by the Holy Angels and carried to glory in Heaven for she had never done anything by thought or deed which could endanger her losing it."

4. Eleanor of Provence (36 years) The notoriously extravagant younger sister of the Queen of France, Eleanor was blamed for crippling the medieval monarchy's financial and political credit by her lavish lifestyle and constant intriguing. However, she also showed herself to be a resilient and tenacious tactician when it came to defeating the rebellions against her husband, Henry III.

5. Eleanor of Aquitaine (35 years) Eleanor married the future King Henry II of England after having only recently divorced her first husband, the King of France, a few weeks earlier. The marriage was tempestuous and ended in a civil war. Beautiful, ruthless and courageous, she was already a legend by the time she died in her mid-eighties. (Her early life is profiled in my blog-post, Daughter of Riches.)

The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Day 6): The Queen's Last Letter?

Reading back over my post from last year, when I analysed the debate over whether or not the letter (above) allegedly written by Anne Boleyn to the King on the fourth day of her imprisonment, I think perhaps that I should have been slightly harder on it. I still agree fundamentally with my conclusion that there probably was a letter, but that it's since been lost or accidentally destroyed. However, I think I was wrong to suggest that the May 6th letter probably contains authentic sayings from a lost-original. I tend to agree now that it's either entirely genuine (extremely unlikely) or a complete, if sentimental, forgery. And in the comments section for the original post, many thanks to Little Miss Sunnydale for putting forward Professor R.M. Warnicke's theory about how such letters were forged in Elizabethan school rooms. I think it's an excellent theory and could potentially explain a lot about the letter's origins. To quote from my original article: -

"The letter's authenticity has been the subject of debate therefore since the earliest days of Tudor historiography. Writing his biography of Henry VIII in 1649, Lord Edward Herbert believed it was probably a forgery, perhaps penned by a pious devotee of Anne’s sometime in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; on the other hand, Gilbert, Bishop of Salisbury, writing his 7-volumed History of the Reformation of the Church of England thirty years later was convinced that it was genuine. Having spent a lifetime compiling the Original Letters of Henry VIII’s reign in the mid-19th century, the archivist Henry Ellis positively gushed about the letter’s style, panache and validity and pointed out that there were always some alterations in Anne Boleyn’s handwriting depending on her mood. There are, for instance, considerable differences between the letter she wrote to her father from the Hapsburg Empire in 1514, that penned to Cardinal Wolsey after the plague epidemic of 1528 and one she dispatched to her friend, Lady Wingfield, in the summer of 1532. The unsentimental and sombre giant of Victorian historians, J.A. Froude in his The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon and History of England, accepted Ellis’s arguments and believed that all clear documentary evidence pointed to the letter being authentic."

For the full post I wrote last year discussing the debate over whether the letter is real or not, click HERE.

The Sixth Catherine

On Friday, Catherine Middleton will be marrying into the British Royal Family and one day, God willing, becoming our country's queen consort and the sixth to be called Catherine. I have already blogged a little about this on my Popular blog, but I thought I would post some information here on the five other Queen Catherines in British history. And to wish everyone a great royal wedding day!

Catherine de Valois (1401 - 1437)

Queen of England 1420 - 1422

Wife of King Henry V and mother of King Henry VI

Married into the English Royal Family at the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Troyes, France on June 3rd 1420

Parents: Charles VI, King of France and his queen, Isabeau of Bavaria-Ingolstadt

Born: Hôtel Saint-Pol, Paris, October 27th 1401

Died: In childbirth at Saint Saviour Abbey, London on January 3rd 1437

Buried: Westminster Abbey, London

Immortalised in Shakespeare's play Henry V, Catherine de Valois was a picture perfect medieval princess, with ivory white skin, long golden hair and delicate, beautiful features. Her marriage to King Henry V in 1420 symbolised the English military triumph over France, although it survived only marginally longer than Catherine's own marriage. She was left a widow at the age of twenty-one following her husband's death on military campaign and she was sidelined from affairs of state by the regency council set up to rule in the name of her infant son, Henry VI. Bored and lonely, the Queen Mother later eloped with a Welsh chamberlain, Owen Tudor, and by him had three more sons and became the grandmother of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. Tragically, the so-called "bride of peace" died at the age of thirty-six and, as the king's mother, she was buried in Westminster Abbey. In a macabre twist, her body was exhumed during the reign of King Charles II and found to be perfectly preserved, whereupon the famed diarist, Samuel Pepys, stole a kiss from the dead queen's lips.

Katherine of Aragon (1485 - 1536)

Queen of England 1509 - 1533

First wife of King Henry VIII and mother of Queen Mary I

Married into the English Royal Family twice. Her first husband was Arthur, Prince of Wales, who she married at Saint Paul's Cathedral, London, on November 14th, 1501.  She later married King Henry VIII at the Church of the Observant Franciscans in Greenwich on June 11th, 1509.

Parents: Ferdinand V, King of Aragon and his wife Isabella I, Queen of Castile

Born: The Episcopal Palace at Alcala de Henares, Spain, on December 16th, 1485.

Died: Kimbolton Castle on January 7th 1536 of cancer

Buried: Saint Peter's Cathedral in Peterborough, England.

Katherine of Aragon was a Spanish princess who won her subsequent fame for being the first of Henry VIII's six wives and for her heroic stance against his divorce of her in the 1530s. Originally married to his brother, who died during an outbreak of the plague in 1502, Katherine's marriage to Henry was initially opposed on these grounds by various conservative clergymen, despite the Vatican's dispensation of Old Testament Law. The marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon was conventionally satisfactory by contemporary royal standards, with Katherine being well-equipped by both upbringing and personality to carry out the duties of a queen with dignity and confidence. A string of pregnancies ruined her figure and she was deeply humiliated when the King elevated his bastard son to the title of duke, which Katherine took as an insult to both her and her daughter, Princess Mary. She resisted Henry's attempts to divorce her in favour of Anne Boleyn - a stance which won her praise and condemnation in equal measure. She was praised for her tenacity and courage, but also later blamed for having allowed her attachment to her royal status blind her to the wider implications of her stance for the Catholic faith in England. A devout Roman Catholic, Katherine was horrified by her husband's break with Rome and the establishment of the independent Church of England. She was banished from court in 1531, stripped of her title in 1533 and she died with great dignity after an agonising battle with cancer in 1536.

For the death of Katherine's first husband, click HERE.

For Katherine's portrayal in movies and television, click HERE.

For an account of Katherine's own death in 1536, click HERE.

Catherine Howard (?1523 - 1542)

Queen of England 1540 - 1542

Fifth wife of King Henry VIII

Married into the English Royal Family at Oatlands Palace in Surrey on July 28th, 1540.

Parents: Lord Edmund Howard and his first wife, Lady Jocasta Howard (née Culpepper.)

Born: Sometime between 1522 and 1525 in southern England

Died: Executed in the Tower of London on February 13th, 1542

Buried: The Tower's chapel of Saint Peter-ad-Vincula

The eldest daughter of an impoverished aristocrat, Catherine was brought to court as a lady-in-waiting in 1539 through the patronage of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk. Petite and flirtatious, she caught the attention of the middle-aged monarch almost immediately and he began making serious advances to her in the Easter of 1540. As soon as his divorce from his fourth queen was finalised that summer, he married Catherine in a private ceremony and immediately showered the young woman with gifts. Fun-loving and extravagant, Queen Catherine had no interest in politics, but her family had many enemies and when allegations concerning her private life surfaced in the autumn of 1541, those enemies capitalised on the scandal shamelessly. Allegations that Catherine had not been a virgin at the time of her marriage led to wider investigations and a letter discovered in the bedroom of the noted womaniser, Sir Thomas Culpepper, suggested that she had been unfaithful after the marriage too. Abandoned by friends and family, the poor girl was executed on a cold morning in February 1542.

For an account of Catherine's lavish fashion tastes, click HERE.

For the on screen portrayals of Catherine Howard, click HERE.

For an account of Catherine's execution in 1542, click HERE.

Katherine Parr (1512 - 1548)

Queen of England and Ireland 1543 - 1547

Sixth wife of King Henry VIII

Married into the English Royal Family at Hampton Court Palace on July 12th, 1543.

Parents: Sir Thomas Parr and his wife, Lady Maud Parr (née Green.)

Born: In 1512, probably in the south of England

Died: As a result of post-natal complications at Sudeley Castle on September 5th, 1548

Buried: Sudeley Castle Chapel

The daughter of two courtiers, Katherine was married twice before coming to court herself in 1543. Both marriages ended in widowhood but the Dowager Lady Latimer, as she was when Henry VIII began courting her, had a reputation for elegance, charm, intelligence and diplomacy. Despite this, her marriage to the King brought her many enemies, who despised her devotion to the Protestant faith. Her zeal in promoting evangelical theology almost lost her the King's favour and it was only by supplicating herself entirely to his will that she was able to survive the crisis. After Henry's death, she married again to the ambitious and seductive Lord High Admiral, Thomas Seymour, who broke her heart when he attempted to seduce (and possibly molest) her teenage stepdaughter, the future Queen Elizabeth. Pregnant with Seymour's child, Katherine died in childbirth at the age of thirty-six.

For Katherine's position as Queen of Ireland, click HERE.

For movie and television versions of Katherine, click HERE.

For an account of Katherine's death, click HERE.

Catherine of Braganza (1638 - 1705)

Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland 1662 - 1685

Wife of King Charles II

Married into the British Royal Family at the Church of Saint Thomas Becket in Portsmouth on May 22nd, 1662

Parents: João IV, King of Portugal and his queen, Maria-Luisa of Medina-Sidonia

Born: Vila Viçosa in Portugal on November 25th, 1638

Died: Belém Palace, Portugal on December 1st, 1705

Buried: The Hieronymites Monastery, Belém, Portugal

Described by her mother-in-law, Queen Henrietta-Maria, as "a saint," Catherine was demure, gentle and devoutly Catholic. Her enormous dowry helped bolster the British Empire's expansion in India and she is credited with popularising the habit of drinking tea in England. However, her failure to produce a living child after four miscarriages led to calls from many courtiers and politicians for her to be set aside. This was something the King refused to do, despite his numerous public adulteries, which Catherine endured with great dignity. Despite her childlessness and his unfaithfulness, King Charles and Queen Catherine were relatively happy together and cared for one another deeply. She was faithful to him whilst he lived and to his memory after he died. Her quiet devotion to her Catholic faith led to her being targeted during the outburst of hysterical sectarianism known as the "Popish Plot," but as with the divorce crisis earlier in the reign, she weathered the drama gracefully. She may very well have been instrumental in helping with her husband's alleged deathbed conversion to Catholicism in 1685. The widowed Catherine returned to Portugal in 1692, after her religion again earned her public disapproval from the Protestant regime of William III and her niece, Mary II. Faced with the nervous breakdowns of her brother, King Pedro II, in 1701 and 1704, Catherine assumed the regency and lead the Portuguese government with great skill, despite having no formal political training. She was widely mourned when she died in 1705.

For an account of her husband's womanising, click HERE.