Long to reign over us: A brief history of the British monarchy (Part 2)

Her Majesty the Queen is the second-longest reigning  monarch in British history, so far. She acceded to the throne following the death of her father, King George VI, in 1952 and she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

James VI of Scotland did not have an easy start in life. As parental dysfunction goes, James had parents who made Jason and Medea's marriage look like the front cover of House and Garden. When he was still a baby, his father Lord Darnley was found dead amidst the smoking ruins of a house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Who authorised Darnley's assassination is probably one of the most famous unsolved murder mysteries in British history, but at the time suspicion fixed on James's mother - the ethereally beautiful and scandal-prone Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was already unpopular with many of her subjects; most of them had embraced the new hard-line form of Protestantism known as Presbyterianism and so they subsequently resented their stunning young queen for her French upbringing and Catholic faith. Shortly after James's first birthday, she was overthrown in a Presbyterian-led coup and fled to neighbouring England. Nineteen years later, she was executed for her alleged complicity in plotting the murder of her Protestant cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

Robbed of both his parents, little James VI found himself king before he could walk or talk. The Scottish monarchy was pitched into another period of prolonged instability, with coups, rebellions and counter-coups shaping the young king's life. It's hard to doubt that James's adult obsession with defending the Divine Right of Kings sprang from his childhood experiences, in which he had seen the consequences of a monarchy that had been reduced to being the plaything of ambitious politicians. Everywhere he went, James's personal skills were limited by the all-powerful Presbyterian Kirk and the aristocrats who supported it - the so-called "Lords of the Congregation." James himself was phenomenally bright and very well-educated, but he had precious few opportunities to employ his talents and even his personal life was subject to the whims of his Presbyterian minders. As a young teenager, he fell violently in love with his French cousin, the handsome and sophisticated Duke of Lennox, but the Presbyterian lords around him disapproved; they lured James to Ruthven Castle where they kidnapped him and then banished Lennox back home to France. Lennox died eighteen months later, allegedly of heartbreak, and James wrote a poem in his memory called An Ode to a Phoenix, in which he allegorised Lennox as a beautiful bird killed by the envy of others.

Six years later, James did his duty and married Anne, the daughter of the King of Denmark and Norway (then ruled by the same monarchy.) Anne of Denmark (left) was a vivacious and fun-loving blonde, who found life in Edinburgh almost as difficult as her husband did. Presbyterians have never exactly been famous for being flash with their cash and Lutheran-raised Anne resented the fact that her allowance as queen was so restrictive. Despite James's teen obsession with the late Duke of Lennox, as an adult he produced seven children with his Danish queen - Henry-Frederick, Elizabeth, Margaret, Charles, Robert, Mary and Sophia. In 1603, James received news that his elderly cousin, Queen Elizabeth, had passed away in London and he was now King James I of England and Ireland. He and the queen travelled south to London, where they were duly crowned and Anne was finally given free rein to spend as she liked in the magnificent palaces of the English royals - Whitehall (the largest palace in Europe at the time), Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court and Windsor Castle. Not content with these and the turtle-shell bed she felt was an essential purchase, Anne eventually decided she needed a little chez of her own and the King duly built the pretty riverside mansion called Queen's House in Greenwich for her, which stands to this day and was the sight for some of the equestrian events of the 2012 London Olympics. Dripping with jewels and spending like a maniac, I don't think Anne of Denmark missed life in the shadow of the Kirk too much. The lairds would have been even further riled to know that, in London, Anne openly expressed sympathy for the persecuted Catholic minority.

James, however, struggled with his new role as king of a united Britain. He had several key political aims - the first was to create a united British state, the second was to maintain the monarchy (rather than parliament) as the dominant political power in Britain and the third was to end England's long-running war with Spain. In the latter, he was certainly successful; with Elizabeth I and her old adversary, Philip II, both dead, their successors, James and Philip III, were able to end the hostilities that had persisted since the defeat of the Spanish Armada. With peace concluded, there was even talk of marrying James's son to Philip's daughter, Maria-Anna. (The talks fell through when pious Maria-Anna point-blank refused to marry a Protestant.) However, in his aims to create Great Britain, James was thwarted. England, Scotland and Ireland may all have had the same king, but each of them had their own parliaments that met in London, Edinburgh and Dublin; they had their own customs, needs and laws and they were reluctant to unify under one parliamentary system. Even the subject of a British flag was unpopular, despite James's enthusiasm for the idea. But perhaps his greatest failure as monarch was in trying to ameliorate the power of Parliament. Everything he did seemed to antagonise them.

As far as James was concerned, kings and queens were closer to God than they were to rest of mankind. Parliament's role was therefore simply to advise the king, but he was under absolutely no obligation to take that advice. When Parliament attempted to force the king to do things that he didn't want to do (like harsher measures against Catholics or an end to the extravagance of the royal court), then James would react with apoplectic fury. Where the late Queen Elizabeth had deftly manipulated Parliament by flattering them into voting her the money she needed, James I harangued them and demanded, not requested, their financial assistance. By the time James died in 1625, after twenty-two years on the British thrones, relations between Parliament and the monarchy were at an all-time low and James's twenty four year-old son, Charles I, inherited a particularly unenviable situation. 

It would therefore be easy to write James VI/I off as a political failure. However, whilst the British Isles could not be united legislatively, they had been united by the monarchy and it would be this unity which eventually gave birth to the United Kingdom and, through it, the British Empire. He was also responsible for the mammoth cultural task of translating the Bible into perfect English - thereby giving the world the hauntingly magnificent King James Bible. He had survived the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which aimed to blow up the King, his heir and the Houses of Parliament in retaliation for the penal laws in place against English and Welsh Catholics. He had been clever enough to balance the very different religious requirements of his kingdoms - he had been raised in the Calvinist-Presbyterian tradition in Scotland, but wisely did not attempt to impose the more liberal Anglican view of Christianity on them once he became Governor of the Church of England in 1603. He had admittedly done nothing to end the legal discrimination against Catholics or Puritans in England and Wales, but he had not caved in to populist demand that he start a kind of Protestant Inquisition against them, either. He had fathered heirs with his wife, despite the fact that he was far more attracted to his own gender. (After Lennox, he was obsessively devoted to the Earl of Somerset and, after him, the King got all in a fluster over the muscular legs of the gorgeous Duke of Buckingham, whom everybody else seemed to find insufferably annoying.) He had been a great patron of the arts, music, architecture and literature (Shakespeare received more backing from James I than he ever did from Elizabeth I.) He had overseen the expansion of British colonies in Ulster and America. And he had attempted to impose the new view of monarchy, prevalent with most European philosophers in the seventeenth century - that royal power should be absolute, that regional characteristics must be subordinated to a centralised culture and government, and that only a unified state could be a strong one. It's undeniable that James blundered and made many errors, but to dismiss his entire reign as a grotesque embarrassment is to misrepresent it. Whatever his failings, James I had arguably made the monarchy central to the emerging notion of being British. In doing so, he had successfully tied the Crown to a sense of national identity; the monarchy was, and arguably still is, far more central to the emotional identity of the British than parliament ever could be.

The Uncrowned Queen of Ireland: The Life of Isabel of Gloucester

"And if his name be George, I'll call him Peter;

For new-made honour doth forget men's names."

- From William Shakespeare's King John

Isabel of Gloucester was the first woman since 1066 to marry a future king of England, who never became queen herself. She shares that rather sad honour with only four other women in English history - the aristocratic Mary de Bohun, who died before her husband seized the throne as Henry IV in 1399; the feisty Lady Anne Hyde, the mother of Mary II, who died whilst her husband (the last Catholic King of Britain) was still Duke of York; Sophia-Dorothea of Celle, who was divorced and imprisoned in a grim German castle on grounds of adultery, long before her equally-adulterous husband became King George I in 1714 and, of course, one expects, the late Princess Diana, who was divorced and subsequently died in a tragic car crash when her ex-husband is still heir-apparent.

Isabel of Gloucester has more in common with Sophia-Dorothea and Diana than she does with Mary de Bohun and Anne Hyde. Like them, the reason she never made it onto the consort's throne was because she was divorced, not because she died prematurely. Isabel had no say in her divorce, nor in her life after it. In many ways, Isabel's story is a sad reflection of the stultifying and miserable lives that many medieval women were forced to lead - particularly the women of the upper classes. Although they, theoretically, lived lives of far greater comfort than the vast majority of the population, their bodies were so integral to the merger and acquisition of aristocratic lands and assets that most daughters of the nobility were shuttled around depending on their menfolk's whims and political aspirations. For a very long time, there was a pervasive view amongst male historians that the royal and aristocratic women of the Middle Ages had been nothing more than "animated title deeds." And whilst glamorous or tenacious queens like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marguerite of Anjou, Matilda of Scotland and Matilda of Boulogne might suggest that this is far too simple a view, the lives of women like Isabel of Gloucester indicate that in many ways it's a grim but horrifically fair assessment of wealthy women's role in medieval society.

For instance, despite the fact that she was one of the greatest heiresses of her generation and married to a future king, we are not even one hundred percent sure of Isabel's Christian name. In part, this was because of the multi-lingual nature of the English empire at the time and the Middle Ages' promiscuous attitude towards spelling, but at various points Isabel is referred to as Isabella, Isobel, Avisa, Joan, Eleanor, Hawise or Hawisa. She was born sometime around 1173, probably on one of her father's vast estates. It was a year of rebellion, in which the elder sons of King Henry II openly rebelled against their father's authority and attempted to carve out political careers for themselves. Henry's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, sided with her boys against her husband, causing international scandal in the process. Isabel's father, William FitzRobert, Earl of Gloucester, was the King's cousin and he loyally sided with him to oppose the Queen and the princes. 

William, Earl of Gloucester was a grandson of the heroically fertile King Henry I, who had ruled England between 1100 and 1135. Unlike King Henry II, however, the Earl was not descended in the legitimate royal line. His father, Robert, had been one of Henry I's many bastards. (As another sign of how lowly women were esteemed, we have no idea who Robert's mother was - several women from Oxfordshire have been suggested, but so has a racy Welsh princess.) This generous dose of royal blood, coupled with his father's loyalty to Henry II's mother during the great civil war of the 1140s, meant that William of Gloucester stood high in the King's favour and he had managed to expand his considerable aristocratic holdings to become one of the great lords of the realm by the time of Isabel's birth. Through her father, the baby Isabel was not just related to the Royal Family, but also to some of the most powerful players in the Anglo-Norman nobility. Her uncle Roger was the Bishop of Worcester, her aunt Matilda was the phenomenally wealthy Countess of Chester and her late uncle Hamon had died a hero's death at the 1159 siege of Toulouse.

Isabel's mother was born Lady Hawisa de Beaumont, the daughter of the Anglo-French Earl of Leicester, who had served as England's de facto prime minister between 1155 and 1168. A powerful politician and a generous benefactor of the Church, Leicester's service to the King was yet another link between Isabel's family and the royals. Through him, Isabel was the niece of the current Earl of Leicester (earl then being the highest title available to the English aristocracy) and the Countess of Huntingdon and Northampton (whom Isabel may have been named after.) 

Despite her father's loyalty to the King during the princes' rebellion, for some reason Henry II began to regard the Earl of Gloucester with suspicion. Desperate to recover royal favour and to prove his loyalty to the regime, the Earl gave Bristol Castle (below) as a gift to the middle-aged monarch, when Isabel was about two years old. Of course, it says something for the Gloucesters' wealth that they were able to part with a castle and still remain one of the most affluent families in the empire. The gesture obviously worked, albeit temporarily, because a few years later Isabel's father accompanied the King on his journey to arbitrate a dispute between the kings of Navarre and Castile. There is some evidence, though, that he fell out of favour again and he was deliberately detained on the King's orders when the princes once again rebelled against their father. Whether this was because of the King's paranoia or because Gloucester had actually done something to justify his suspicions is hard to say.

We know very little about Isabel's childhood or her relationship with her parents, but it is safe to hazard the guess that she would have come as a disappointment to them. Isabel's only brother, Robert, had died before she was born and without a male heir, Lord Gloucester had been forced to negotiate a deal with the King, which would see all of the Gloucesters' vast wealth devolve to the Crown once the Earl passed away. Henry II's youngest, and favourite, son was Prince John, later enshrined as a villain in the Robin Hood legends. With the eldest son due to inherit his father's kingdoms in England and Normandy, the second set to inherit the Queen's ancestral duchy in the Aquitaine and the third married off to the heiress to the duchy of Brittany, King Henry was anxious to provide an inheritance for his youngest son, who was already being cruelly nicknamed "Lackland" by snickering courtiers. The Gloucester inheritance was perfect, because it would turn Prince John into a great magnate in his own right. The agreement hammered out between the King and the Earl therefore prepared the way for John to inherit everything when the Earl died, in return for marrying one of the Earl's three daughters - Mabel, Alice or Isabel.

Why Isabel was picked over her sisters to marry Prince John is anybody's guess, but the two were engaged when Isabel was only about three years-old. Isabel was quite probably the eldest of the three girls, since it is hard to believe that anything like her looks or personality would have influenced the royals in what was, essentially, a balance transfer. Her father died when she was about ten years old, leaving the lion's share of the inheritance to the de facto male heir, Prince John. Mabel later married the Seigneur de Montfort and Alice married the Earl of Hertford.

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. 

"I don't care about the Royal Wedding. So I'm going to complain about it constantly."

Elena Maria Vidal, author of Trianon, Madame Royale and The Night's Dark Shade, comments on the interesting (I'm playing fast and loose with the word) phenomenon of Royal Wedding killjoys.

"I found it rather amusing how so many people on Facebook, Twitter and around the internet kept proudly proclaiming: "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about the royal wedding....I happened to be up at 5 am and turned it on for a few minutes but I REALLY don't care. I'm an American and I'm above such medieval nonsense and besides...who cares? Have I told you that I DON'T care?" And so on and so forth. Finally, someone on Twitter said: "I am really not interested in the fact that you are not interested in the royal wedding.""

For Elena Maria's full article, click HERE.

Congratulations!

"Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

- Saint Catherine of Siena, quoted in today's wedding sermon

In his commentary for the BBC on today's happy events, the historian Simon Schama, author of A History of Britain and Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, himself a one-time socialist, remarked that in the midst of a zeitgeist which holds that this is a generation which does not value tradition or sentiment, the Royal Wedding was a grand refutation of that theory. As one million people surged down the Mall towards Buckingham Palace to cheer the couple's first appearance on the balcony, Schama stated the obvious when he said that the idea that this is a totally cynical generation obsessed with the individual must take something of a battering today. He also, thankfully, took a swipe at those who claim such outpourings of public sentiment are childish or naive, saying that it is a celebration of community, of nationhood and of sentiment. And that's a good thing.

As a family, we got up this morning at seven to watch the BBC's coverage of the event, beginning at eight. Shortly after the broadcast started, the news was broken that Her Majesty The Queen had bestowed on her grandson a title from each of the three peerages in the monarchy - England, Scotland and (northern) Ireland. His Royal Highness was to become Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus and I will be blogging on the historical background of those three titles later. For us, it was a wonderful moment to see the Prince getting married in the uniform of the Irish Guard which, of course, his late great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother had such a strong association with and which he himself is Colonel-in-Chief of. 

It was an absolutely wonderful day for all of us watching. It made me proud to be British and proud to be a monarchist. Without sounding too smug or triumphalist, I don't think there is another country in the world whose government could have commanded scenes like today. One million people surging calmly and happily down the Mall, having queued in some cases for days to be a part of today's historical events. It's just wonderful and I can't wait for next year's celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee! I remember watching the Golden back in 2002 and promising that I would be there with my friends and the people I loved in 2012 to celebrate. Apart from anything else, it was so much fun and it's great to have days like this. The royal couple are so obviously in love and the smiles they shared, as well as the giggle from the new Duchess of Cambridge after her second kiss, was great to watch. I really enjoyed myself. The coverage was excellent and some of the interviews with the assembled crowd were by turns moving and hilarious. 

Wearing a tiara loaned to her by the Queen and carrying a bouquet of forget-me-nots which she will lay on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior later today, Princess Catherine looked timelessly elegant in her Sarah Burton-designed wedding gown. The music was magnificent and it was touching to see on the parade's return to the Palace that every time her husband, who is a member of the Armed Forces, saluted his comrades, the Princess bowed her head in respect. The couple repeated this action when they passed the Cenotaph memorial to the Glorious Dead and they saluted men and women who died in the defence of the nation. Seeing the Prince and Princess's actions, I was reminded of only a few months ago of the actions of others - when rioters swung from the memorial's flags. 

When the Queen returned from Westminster Abbey (where I thought the Bishop of London delivered a fantastic sermon), she turned to one of the footmen and said happily, "It's amazing." And, in more ways than one, it is. After all the smug criticism and the repeated carping in the press and from armchair intellectuals of "the tarnished crown," after years of being told that republicanism is a self-evident truth and anyone who is a royalist is either a snob or an idiot, it is amazing to find that people don't actually believe everything they're told. Billions tuned in from all over the globe to celebrate and millions thronged the capital city in a display of public happiness that you quite simply couldn't get from another political system. Proud, happy, fun - just a great, great day. Which I hope everyone reading this enjoyed too.

To Their Royal Highnesses, a very happy day and many congratulations. The love and affection between them was quiet but obvious. This was a wonderful moment and I am very happy.

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.

Daughter of Riches: The Life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and Queen of England (Part I)

“Reared with abundance of all delights, you had a taste for luxury and refinement and enjoyed a royal liberty. You lived richly in your own inheritance, you took pleasure in the pastimes of your women, you delighted in the melodies of flute and drum ... You abounded in riches of every kind.” 

- The poet Richard of Poitiers, writing on Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1176)

This is Part V of this blog's series on the lives of the Queens of England, with apologies for the delay since its last instalment, The Other Queen. The life of Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of the longest in English royal history and, furthermore, she was the queen of two countries and had a lengthy career as Queen Mother also. I have therefore decided to divide this instalment up into three posts - her career as queen of France, her career as queen of England and her widowhood.

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The Legend of Queen Astrid

This is a fascinating story and one that is not particularly well-known in English-speaking countries. 

On his excellent blog, The Cross of Laeken, Matterhorn (whose comments on this blog I always enjoy very much) reflects on the premature death of Queen Astrid (above), the glamorous Swedish princess who married Leopold III, King of the Belgians, and the public outpouring of grief at her passing which led directly to the hostility felt towards her husband's second wife, Princess Lilian. 

December 10th, 1541: The Execution of the Queen's lovers

Above: Torrance Coombs and Tamazin Merchant as the doomed lovers, Sir Thomas Culpepper and Queen Catherine Howard in Season 4 of the Showtime series The Tudors (2010.)

It had only been five weeks since the 50 year-old King of England, Henry VIII, had been informed at the All Souls' Mass that his teenage queen, Catherine Howard, had been accused of pre-marital promiscuity by a former servant of her aristocratic grandmother, in whose care Catherine had spent most of her childhood. The young queen had been detained in her apartments whilst Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, headed an investigation into the serving maid's accusations. That Catherine had not been a virgin at the time Henry had married her was a serious problem, one likely to bring shame upon the monarchy and result in the annulment of the royal marriage. The maid in question had confided in her brother, a Protestant fundamentalist called John Lascelles, that Catherine had enjoyed a fling with her music teacher, Henry Mannox, and after they had fallen out when he began boasting of their sexual encounters, she had moved onto her grandmother's secretary, the overbearing but dashing Francis Dereham, whom she had slept with for the best part of a year and even (allegedly) promised to marry. Catherine and Francis's engagement had been broken-off when Catherine was summoned to Court to act as a lady-in-waiting to the new queen, Anne of Cleves, in the winter of 1539, but within six months Catherine had, of course, attracted the attention of the ailing monarch and become his fifth wife. 

All of this was potentially deeply humiliating for the Royal Family, but it became ten times more serious when it turned out that Queen Catherine's dealings with these two men had not simply been confined to her youthful folly. Henry Mannox now served on her household staff as a musician, a relatively minor post to be sure, but Dereham, her one-time fiancé had been given the premier and intimate position of being the Queen's private secretary, one which meant he came into contact with Catherine on a daily basis. When the archbishop discovered this, he went straight to the King to say that given her past liaisons with both men, Catherine's appointments of them to her household staff at the very least suggested emotional infidelity to her husband and at worse that she was planning to resume sexual relations with them. If she hadn't done already, that is. "She has betrayed you in thought," he told the King, "and if she had an opportunity would have betrayed you in deed." Henry, for the first time in his life the victim of adultery rather than the perpetrator, burst into floods of tears in front of the eyes of his embarrassed councillors, who had absolutely no idea what they were supposed to say or do in such a situation. Archbishop Cranmer was ordered to extend his investigation into every detail of the Queen's private life in the sixteen months that she had been married to the King and to discover if she had indeed gone to bed with Mannox or, more probably, with Dereham, at any point since July of 1540.

November 25th, 1533: The Marriage of the King's Bastard

Anne Boleyn liked to play match-maker and in the chill winter of 1533, the 26 year-old queen had reason to feel especially pleased with herself on this front. She had just managed to arrange the marriage of her young cousin, Lady Mary Howard, to the King's illegitimate son, Henry, Duke of Richmond. The married couple were both aged only fourteen at the time and, at the King's insistence, the consummation of their marriage was delayed for the time being. The King's own late brother, Prince Arthur, had died within months of his marriage in 1501 to Katherine of Aragon, who subsequently went on to become Henry's first wife.  Now, the King apparently agreed with his own late father in believing that it was the premature consummation of that marriage which had hastened young Arthur's road into the grave in 1502. Katherine, of course, famously declared that their six month marriage had been virginal. Whatever the truth, the English government's version of that long-ago union was now used to justify keeping young Henry and Mary apart on their wedding night.

Despite a later reputation for jealousy, Anne Boleyn was always charm itself to anyone, regardless of their position or potential threat, provided they agreed with her. The 14 year-old duke was apparently one such character and he had recently accompanied his biological father and stepmother on a state visit to France, by which time the queen-to-be had almost certainly already begun promoting the idea of a marriage between the teenage Henry and her pretty Howard cousin. From Anne's point-of-view, it made shrewd political sense to keep Richmond well within the family fold until she herself produced a legitimate son and neutralised any idea that the throne might pass to him when the King died. More importantly, Anne Boleyn took the obligations of family very seriously and despite an occasionally fraught relationship, she was well aware that her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, had been firm in supporting her ascent to the throne. This match was the perfect way to repay the duke's loyalty to her, by arranging for his only daughter to marry into the extended royal family. Anne's recent academic biographer, E.W. Ives, has gone so far as to say, "Perhaps Anne felt she had paid her debts to the Howards by persuading Henry to marry his illegitimate son, the duke of Richmond, to her cousin Mary without the large payment the king would normally have expected for disposing of so valuable a match."

Perhaps. Clearly, Anne's influence could be felt all-over the marriage, both in terms of sense and sentiment. As Professor Ives has said, the King did not request the normally enormous payment from Norfolk, which can only have been down to the Queen's influence, since there is no other reason for it. And aside from politics, the marriage between Henry, Duke of Richmond and Mary Howard was also one which bore all the hallmarks of having been arranged by someone who took a real and genuine pleasure in match-making. To begin with, the bride's brother and her groom were the best of friends; indeed, they had been raised together and educated together. Furthermore, both bride and groom were highly well-educated and both took an interest in poetry and the arts, as well as in emergent Protestantism. They were also of exactly the same age and they were both physically attractive. The duke was the son of the King and his one-time mistress, Elizabeth Blount, a famously beautiful woman, who some palace servants still rated as even more beautiful than the current queen. Born shortly after the final miscarriage of King Henry's first wife, the bastard baby was swiftly acknowledged as his own by the King, who showered the child with lavish presents, wealth, an enormous household and titles, taken from England, Ireland and Wales. The title of "Duke of Richmond," given to the child when he was only six years-old, was one which Queen Katherine of Aragon had felt the insult of particularly; Richmond had been the title held by the King's own father in the years before he had come to the throne. To the Spanish queen, it seemed like an ominous sign that Henry was planning to place his bastard above her own daughter in the line of succession.

In the boy's case, Anne decided to try honey, where Katherine had opted for vinegar. If she felt any concern about the prospect of the young duke supplanting her own 2 month-old daughter Elizabeth in the succession, she gave no outward sign of it. Instead, lavish parties were thrown and gifts were showered upon her de facto stepson as he was married in a glittering ceremony to her attractive and vivacious cousin. Since Richmond was undeniably illegitimate, Anne cannot have worried too much about any threat he posed to her own child - but, better safe than sorry.

Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond would never have any children together. Three years after their marriage, at the age of seventeen, the duke lost his battle with tuberculosis and Mary, now a widow before her eighteenth birthday, was to one day share her family's imprisonment in the Tower of London when another royal cousin - Queen Catherine Howard - incurred the wrath of her husband. Eventually, Mary was released when it established beyond doubt that she had no knowledge of Catherine's adultery. She died in 1557, having spent the last decade of her life estranged from her father and voluntarily living away from Court.

Obituary: Diana, Duchess of Wellington (1921 - 2010)

The Daily Telegraph and The Times are carrying the obituaries concerning the recent death of a member of the Ascendancy by marriage, Her Grace The Duchess of Wellington, who passed away at the family home on November 1st, at the age of eighty-nine. The Duke, now a widower at the age of ninety-five, has expressed his grief at his wife's death only a few months before their sixty-seventh wedding anniversary, but a friend has remarked to The Times that "He is grateful that they had so many happy years together."

Born Diana Ruth McConnel in 1921, the late Duchess was the daughter of the Scottish Major-General Douglas Fitzgerald McConnel and his wife, Ruth (née Garnett-Botfield.) She was married to Arthur Wellesley, the heir to the duchy of Wellington, in 1944, when the future Duke (then Marquess Douro) was on active service for the British war effort. In 1972, following the death of his father, Gerald, Arthur inherited the family's main titles, becoming the eighth member of the Wellesley family to hold the title of Duke of Wellington, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, Duke of The Victory, Prince of Waterloo, Marquis of Torres Vedras and Earl of Morington. 

The main title of Duke of Wellington had first been awarded to the duke's ancestor, also called Arthur, a member of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy. It was given to him by King George III, in recognition for his military services to Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, in which Arthur was instrumental in securing Britain's eventual triumph and the liberation of the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain from Bonapartist occupation. He later served as British Prime Minister from 1828 to 1830 and again from 1834.

As a result of the duke's heroism on the battlefield which led to the destruction of the Bonaparte regime and the restoration of the French monarchy, the Wellesley family today are amongst a very rare group of aristocrats who hold titles in more than one kingdom - William I, the first King of the Netherlands, gave the family the hereditary title of "Prince of Waterloo," in honour of the great battle of 1815, against Napoleon. Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, gave him the title of "Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo" and Maria I, Queen of Portugal, awarded the family the rather magnificent title of "Duke of the Victory" and "Marquis of Torres Vedras." In addition to this, the dukes of Wellington also remain true to their Ascendancy heritage by holding a title in the Irish nobility - they are the hereditary earls of Morington, a title now usually used by the second in line to inherit the Wellington duchy. So, as well as holding titles in both strands of the British peerage (Great Britain and Ireland's), the dukes of Wellingtons are also Grandees of Spain, nobles of Portugal and jonkheers of the Netherlands. The family's subsidiary title, reserved for the heir-apparent, is Marquess Douro. Thus, the late Diana was the Marchioness of Douro between 1944 and 1972. The family's Spanish title - the duchy of Ciudad Rodrigo was abdicated by the current Duke of Wellington in March of this year and given to his eldest son, Lord Douro. The appointment of Lord Douro to the duchy was confirmed by the Spanish Royal Household and King Juan Carlos in the spring.

Lady Diana is survived by her husband, Arthur, Duke of Wellington and by their five children - Arthur, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo and Marquess Douro (65) and his wife, Her Royal Highness Princess Antonia of Prussia (great-granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm II); Lord Richard Wellesley (61); film producer and author, Lady Jane Wellesley (59); Lord John Henry Wellesley (56) and his wife, Corinne (née Vaes); and Lord James Wellesley (46) and his wife, Emma. Duchess Diana is also survived by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Daily Telegraph, which still carries aristocratic obituaries as a matter of course, reported that announcements concerning Lady Diana's funeral will be made shortly.

Diana Wellesley, The Most Noble Duchess of Wellington, Member of the British Empire for services to the Community of Hampshire, Princess van Waterloo and Duchess of The Victory, who passed away at the family home on 1st November, 2010.

October 18th, 1541: Death of Margaret Tudor, Queen Mother of Scotland

Claire Ridgway over at The Anne Boleyn Files marks the anniversary of the death of Henry VIII's eldest sister, Margaret Tudor, Queen Mother of Scotland. The widow of the late King James IV, who had predeceased her by twenty-eight years, it was through their granddaughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, that James and Margaret have become the ancestors of every monarch to sit on the British throne since 1603.

The second child and eldest daughter of King Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York, Margaret was born at the Palace of Westminster in London during the final weekend of November 1489 and christened in honour of her paternal grandmother, the Countess of Derby. At the age of thirteen, she was placed into an arranged marriage with James IV, the thirty year-old King of Scots. Although she lacked the beauty of either her mother or her younger sister, the Queen of France, Margaret was still considered attractive and vivacious. As later events would show, she certainly had a taste for chosing her own mates - apparently something of a family trait in Henry VII's children.

The marriage between the Scottish king and the English princess lasted for ten years, in which time Margaret was pregnant six times - although thanks to 16th-century infant mortality, only one of those children, the future King James V, survived into adulthood.

Years later, Margaret was to be the only one of Henry VIII's surviving family to publicly approve of her brother's separation from Katherine of Aragon and his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. Margaret and her new sister-in-law even exchanged apparently chatty letters and gifts with one another and Margaret showed where her sympathies lay by swiftly removing her daughter (also named Margaret) from the company of her cousin, Princess Mary, and placing her into the household of the new Queen Anne. Relations between Margaret and her former sister-in-law, Katherine, had not always been warm, which perhaps explains Margaret's enthusiasm for the Boleyn marriage. Margaret had been left a pregnant widow when her husband, James, invaded England in 1513 and was defeated and killed by the English armies at the Battle of Flodden. Exultant at the victory, Queen Katherine had wanted to send the entirety of the dead King's body as a present to her husband, King Henry, who was then off fighting a rather pointless war in France; it was only when the Earl of Surrey begged the Queen to consider how such a gesture would be viewed by the rest of Christendom that Queen Katherine relented and instead dispatched King James's blood-stained coat. Neither was a proper Christian burial was not arranged for the dead King of Scots, in contravention of the proper etiquette of medieval chivalry; some said his body was buried at Sheen Abbey, others at Hume Castle. A rather more lurid (and probably ridiculous) story is that Queen Katherine had him posthumously decapitated and the head buried at the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Wood Street, London. Whatever happened - and it's possible that after stripping him on the Queen's orders, the English soldiers had simply hurled him into a communal grave - the exact whereabouts of Margaret's first husband are still a mystery.

Alone and friendless, forced to grapple with the thankless task of being Regent since her son James V was only a toddler when he came to the throne, Margaret - whose affection for Scotland can probably generously be described as "lukewarm" - soon fell in love and married for a second time to a Scottish lord. His name was Lord Archibald Douglas, the 6th Earl of Angus, and by him Margaret produced another child - a daughter, Margaret, who would make her career at the court of her English uncle, as has already been discussed. Like her mother, younger Margaret also seemed determined to chose her own men, rather than have other people chose them for her. And, like so many of the Tudors, she seemed to find members of the Howard clan absolutely irresistible. She was to earn her fearsome uncle's wrath after being romantically involved with Anne Boleyn's uncle, Lord Howard, and later with Catherine Howard's brother, Charles.

In any case, regardless of their daughter's romantic shennanigans, the marriage between Margaret Tudor and Archibald Douglas was apparently not an altogether happy one and in 1527, Margaret secured a divorce from him, on the flimmiest of theological grounds - something which, quite ironically, earned her a strict lecture from her brother in London. (Secretly, however, it's my hunch that the ease with which Margaret secured a divorce from the Vatican on the most tenuous and, indeed patently false, grounds, led Henry to believe that acquiring his divorce from Katherine of Aragon would be equally easy. He failed to realise that it wasn't theology that was at play here, but politics. Katherine mattered; Archibald didn't.) Not long after ridding herself of the irksome Archibald, Margaret married her lover, Lord Methven, to whom she was still married at the time of her death in 1541.

As Claire records, death came for the former Queen at her husband's castle in Perthshire, in the form of a massive stroke. She was fifty-two years old at the time and her body was conducted to the nearby Carthusian Abbey of Saint John, where it was buried with due ceremony.

She was survived by her son, King James V, and her daughter, Margaret, the future Countess of Lennox, whose affair with Charles Howard Margaret had been (perhaps hypocritically) infuriated to discover, via an angry letter from King Henry, shortly before her death. Younger Margaret was lucky, however; a more serious punishment was spared her when Queen Catherine's own adultery diverted the English King's attention from his niece's altogether more trivial romantic misdemeanour.

Margaret Tudor was the penultimate of the children of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York to die - her younger brother, King Henry VIII, outlived her by just over five years.

For Claire's full account of Margaret's political significance, read here.

October 9th, 1514: The Marriage of Princess Mary Tudor to Louis XII, King of France

On her wonderful website The Anne Boleyn Files, Claire Ridgeway marks the anniversary of the marriage of Henry VIII's youngest sister, the teenage Princess Mary, to the middle-aged widower King Louis XII of France. Commenting on the young princess's arrival, His Grace the Bishop of Asti, then the Ambassador of the Republic of Venice to France, commented: -

"I promise you that she is very handsome, and of sufficiently tall stature (de statura honestamente granda). She appears to me rather pale, though this [I] believe proceeds from the tossing of the sea and from her fright. She does not seem a whit more than 16 years old, and looks very well in the French costume. She is extremely courteous and well mannered, and has come in very sumptuous array…"

Amongst the new Queen of France's retinue was one of the daughters of England's most accomplished diplomat, Sir Thomas Boleyn, the heir-apparent to the Earl of Ormonde. Claire, who is currently writing a series on Anne Boleyn's early life, reasonably hypothesises that the "Mademoiselle Boleyn" mentioned in the household accounts was Sir Thomas's youngest daughter, Anne, although other historians have suggested that it was in fact Anne's elder sister, Mary, and that Anne joined the French Royal Household slightly later. As with everything pertaining to Anne Boleyn's childhood, the sources are less complete than we would like.

The marriage of Louis XII and Mary Tudor lasted less than three months, with the King dying (allegedly of exhaustion) on New Year's Day, 1515. Mary seduced and then eloped her brother's best friend, Charles, Duke of Suffolk and the two returned to England, to try and face down the scandal. Mary was back in London for the birth and christening of her niece, the much more famous of the two Mary Tudors. Mary and Charles's daughter, Frances, was to become the mother of Lady Jane Grey, another iconic and tragic member of the English Royal Family.

To read more on the brief marriage of Louis and Mary, click here to see Claire's account.

Trailer for "The King's Speech" released

And it certainly doesn't disappoint!

"I intend to be a very good queen - to a very great king."


The new movie The King's Speech has had its trailer released online - and you can watch it, here.

The movie follows the political career of the Queen's father, the late King George VI (Colin Firth), as he struggles to overcome his crippling speech impediment with the help of his wife, the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (Helena Bonham Carter) and an Australian speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush), in the wake of his unexpected succession to the throne and the British Empire's coming struggle with Nazi Germany. Timothy Spall co-stars as Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Michael Gambon appears as King George V.

George VI was one of this country's most underrated sovereigns and the courage, honesty and fundamental decency with which he lived his life is, I think, admirable and heroic in a way which so many people overlook. It's the dignity of the quiet struggle to better himself and live up to his duty, which I think is truly inspiring. Sympathetic and moving, The King's Speech is already generating an Oscar buzz for all three of its leads and I can't wait to see it.

"Elvis, Chatsworth, JFK and Me:" An Interview with Deborah Mitford

In light of the release of her memoirs, Wait for Me!, The Daily Telegraph writes a wonderful and very entertaining profile of Deborah Mitford, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. There are certain quotes in the article, which remind me why I find the Mitfords' style so inimitably delicious and hilarious. There are also moments of great triumph in diversity, downplayed in a very old "stiff upper lip" kind of way - the quarter of a century it took her and her husband to pay of the Death Tax levied upon them, the deaths of three of her children and the Duke's battle with alcoholism.

***

Debo, as everyone calls her, was 90 this year. Having greeted me in her pretty garden, shaking my hand and looking me directly in the eye, she leads me into the apple-green-walled and flagstone-floored hall – 'Do put your bags down, no burglars here' – and shows me into her sitting-room, which has an extraordinarily nice atmosphere, and we take to the floral sofa, where she positively lounges, looking at me brightly, waiting to be amused.

There have been countless books about the Mitfords, both biographical and autobiographical, and now her own memoirs, Wait for Me!, are about to be published. (She has written several books, mostly about Chatsworth, her former home.)

James II's wedding suit

Via Tea at Trianon comes an account of the sumptuous wedding suit worn by the future King James II when he married his second bride, the lovely Italian princess, Maria-Beatrice of Modena, in 1673. The suit, shown above, is still preserved and on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

James's time as King in Britain was short, lasting only from 1685 until he was deposed in 1688. He and Maria-Beatrice were to spend the rest of their lives in exile, as guests of the French Royal Family, with Maria becoming an important figure in Court life at the recently-completed palace of Versailles, where she was much admired.

James, then Duke of York, had been married before, to the late Lady Anne Hyde, who had lost her battle to cancer two years earlier. With Anne, James had fathered eight children, although only two survived - the future queens, Mary II and Anne. With the beautiful Maria (or, to give her her full name, Maria-Beatrice-Eleanora-Anna-Margareta-Isabella d'Este of Modena), James was to have a further seven children - Catherine-Laura (died at the age of ten months), Isabella (died aged five), Charles, Duke of Cambridge (died as a baby during the smallpox epidemic of 1677), Elizabeth (died a few weeks after her christening), Charlotte-Maria (died of a possible allergy at the age of three months), James Francis Edward, regarded as "King James III" by his father's supporters and "the Old Pretender" by those who supported James II's exile (1688 - 1766) and Princess Louisa-Maria (1692 - 1712), who was born during the royal couple's exile in France.

The couple and their surviving children lived out most of their exile in the magnificent château of St. Germain-en-Laye (below), a gift to them from King James's cousin, Louis XIV. James II died there in the autumn of 1701 and he was originally buried in the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines on the Rue St Jacques in Paris. James was followed to the grave eleven years later by his daughter, the unmarried Princess Louisa-Maria, who died at St.-Germain at the age of nineteen in the spring of 1712, to her mother's great distress. The princess's body was taken to the Church of the English Benedictines, to rest alongside her late father's. Queen Maria-Beatrice died six years later in the early summer of 1718, after an agonising battle with cancer. She was buried in the Abbey of the Visitation of Saint Mary at Chaillot. The bodies of King James, Queen Maria-Beatrice and Princess Louisa-Maria were all destroyed during the French Revolution.

After a failed attempt to retake the British thrones in 1715, James-Francis re-settled in Rome, where he married Princess Maria-Casimira of Poland and fathered two sons - including the future "Bonnie Prince Charlie" of legend. James-Francis or, "James III and VIII" as his most loyal adherents had known him, passed away as a guest of the Papacy on New Year's Day 1766 and he was granted the honour of being buried in Saint Peter's Basilica.


Today, James II and Maria-Beatrice of Modena have no mutual living descendants. All of their children, bar James-Francis, died before they could reproduce and of James-Francis's two children - "Bonnie" Charles-Edward's marriage to Princess Louisa-Maximiliana von Stolberg-Gedern was barren and his younger brother, Henry-Benedict, entered the Roman Catholic Church and became Cardinal of Santa Maria.

September 5th, 1548: The Death of Katharine Parr

"She was not a pretty woman, or a beauty, but rather comely with red-gold hair and hazel eyes ... Katherine's looks, however, were not her chief attraction. People were drawn more to her warm and amiable personality and her intellectual qualities; she exuded goodwill... Katherine was also to prove popular with most people, mainly because she had a pleasant manner with both nobility and servants alike. Her chaplain, John Parkhurst, who later became Bishop of Norwich, remembered in his latter years that she was 'a most gentle mistress'. Perhaps the most outstanding thing about her was her formidable intellect, which had been cultivated to an unusual extent by her mother and by the people with whom she associated herself in later life. She was perceptive, articulate, thirsty for knowledge, both general and religious, and industrious. Her virtue, a female quality always suspect in an age that believed that teaching women to write would encourage them to pen love-letters, was beyond question."
- The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir (1991)

On this day in 1548, Katharine Parr, Queen Dowager of England and Ireland, died an agonising death at the age of thirty-six. She had outlived her third, and most notorious, husband by just over eighteen months and had died as a result of trying to give her fourth husband, Lord Thomas Seymour, a son and heir. Instead, the former Queen had given birth to a sickly daughter and she herself was now "lying on my death-bed, sick of body but of good mind and perfect memory".