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'

The Mysterious Death of Henry VI

Novelist Susan Higginbotham, whose most recent book The Queen of Last Hopes was inspired by the life of Henry VI's controversial queen, Marguerite of Anjou, takes a look at the mysterious death of Marguerite's husband, Henry VI, when the Yorkist family deposed him for a second time in May 1471.

"Even if the evidence from the exhumation does not conclusively prove that Henry VI died a violent death, it still seems likely that he did. Henry had suffered many reversals over the years before his death, and had personally witnessed the Lancastrian defeat at Barnet, having been dragged along to the site with Edward IV's army. While the news of his son's death at Tewkesbury and his wife's being taken captive must have been shattering for Henry VI to hear, it is hard to believe that it was such an unexpected shock that it would have caused his death. And with Edward of Lancaster dead, it would have been foolish for Edward IV to keep the Lancastrian cause alive in the shape of his father. 

If Henry was murdered, as seems most likely, the identity of his murderer or murderers is one of the best-kept secrets in English history. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, has been credited with the deed in popular legend, but there is no evidence that he was the murderer or that he carried the deed out alone if he was. He was present at the Tower the night of Henry's death, but so were many others."

For the full article, click here to go to Susan's blog.

March 23rd, 1430: The Birth of Marguerite of Anjou, Queen of England

For a woman who lived a life packed with more than its fair share of melodrama, Marguerite of Anjou made a relatively quiet entry into the world. On the twenty-fourth day of March, her father René jotted a brief note in his Book of Hours to record the christening of his second daughter, Marguerite. She joined her five year-old brother Jean, three year-old Louis and two year-old Yolande as the fourth child of René of Anjou, current duc de Bar, comte de Provence and heir to the duchy of Anjou, as well as being the more controversial and disputed heir to the crowns of Aragon and the Naples.

Through her parents, young Marguerite, who was to acquire her historical fame thanks to her often savage defence of the House of Lancaster during England's War of the Roses, was related to the ruling families not just of Aragon and the Naples, but also Hungary, Poland, Moldavia, France, Walmachia and Dalmatia. She was also, distantly, related to the House of Plantagenet, who had ruled England in its purest form from 1054 to 1399 and who, for the last forty-one years had been ruling it in the form of the cadet branch of the dynasty, the Lancasters.

Despite his many dynastic ambitions, Marguerite's father was never ruthless enough to succeed in the cut-throat world of medieval politics which, by the fifteenth century, had entered one of its most amoral phases. Left to his own devices, René of Anjou would much rather have pursued his interests in literature and the arts - he himself was apparently quite a talented painter and poet.  (The most recent literary presentation of Marguerite's life by the novelist Susan Higginbotham draws its rather lovely title from a reference in René's poetry to Marguerite.) However, although René was not a great political operator, that is not to say he was an incompetent duke or, later, king and one Burgundian chronicle admiringly recorded of him, "No prince ever loved his subjects as he his, nor was in like manner better loved and well-wished than he was by them." He was certainly an affectionate father and given the fact that Marguerite's own future husband, King Henry VI, was also a personality much too gentle for realpolitik, it is interesting to speculate if her own protectiveness over her husband arose from similar childhood feelings for her father.

It seems likely that she did unconsciously emulate her own parents' marital dynamic, although it's important to stress that René had no history of mental illness, unlike Henry. One courtier wittily observed that all of the House of Lancaster's problems would have been solved if gentle Henry had been the queen and gutsy Marguerite the king. It was from her mother, Isabella, that Marguerite acquired a "courage above the nature of her sex." Isabella, twenty-nine at the time of her second daughter's birth, was Duchess of Lorraine suo jure, meaning that she held that prestigious title in her own right and had not ceded her inheritance to her husband, as so many medieval heiresses did. Beautiful and determined, Isabella was also politically savvy and  she oversaw a regency government in Anjou when René was compelled to go abroad pursuing his claims to various counties and kingdoms. Despite their differences in personality, it seems that René and Isabella's marriage was a happy one, albeit by the undemanding standards of the medieval nobility. 

Marguerite of Anjou was born into a time of great political and cultural unrest throughout the European continent and she had the singular misfortune to marry into a country crippled by ambitious claimants and magnates, whilst being ruled over by mild mannered and eventually imbalanced introvert. In the academic version of the Wars of the Roses still played out on paper five hundred years after the event, Marguerite has not been given a kind reputation. It is necessary to vilify her in order to make what happened in 1461 and again in 1471 seem like anything  other than an outrageously opportunistic usurpation. She has all too often been dismissed as an adulterous schemer - a view recently resurrected in Philippa Gregory's novel The White Queen. When allegations of adultery are not been flung at her, the idea that she herself was a vindictive harpy in the ilk of Edward II's wife refuses to go away. More sober-minded academics like Lisa Hilton, Christine Carpenter, Philip Erlanger and novelists like Susan Higginbotham have attempted to level the playing field in Marguerite's defence. As queen, she was certainly aggressively partisan, although given that she was married to the man who the War of the Roses was attempting to overthrow, that is perhaps understandable and in the final analysis, the assessment of Cambridge historian Professor Christine Carpenter, that Marguerite should be "given credit for taking on an impossible job" is perhaps the most kind.

The Queen who married a commoner

Claire Ridgway's The History Files is a great new idea for guest writers to upload articles about a full range of historical interests and one day soon, I hope to ask Claire to post a guest article about her new project! 

This week, journalist and Oxford graduate, June Woolerton, writes about the unusual love life of Katherine de Valois, the French princess who married King Henry V of England and became mother of King Henry VI.  Yet after her first husband's death, Katherine eloped with a handsome Welsh commoner called Owen Tudor and accidentally ended-up founding one of the most powerful and important families in European history.

June writes: -

"Kate Middleton will, one day, be the sixth queen of England to be called Katherine. The woman who introduced the name to the British royal family is buried just yards from the altar where this 21st century princess will take her wedding vows. Kate has made the headlines as a commoner who caught a king in waiting but almost six hundred years ago that first queen Katherine shocked society and changed the very fabric of royalty when she became the first English queen to marry outside the aristocracy. Katherine of Valois was one half of the most glamorous couple in her world. She married arguably the world’s most eligible bachelor. She was pretty, she was popular and she found herself under intense scrutiny. But there the similarities with her modern namesake end."

For June's full article at The History Files, click here. It's a fantastic story.