Dangerous to Be an Heir: Margaret Stanley, RIP

Margaret Stanley, Countess of Derby, who died on September 28, 1596, is another example of an heir to Elizabeth I who found out how dangerous that position was. Like the Grey sisters, Catherine and Mary (and Jane before them), she was an heir because her grandmother (on her mother's side) was Mary Tudor, former Queen of France, wife of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Henry VIII's younger sister. Her father was Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland and her mother Lady Eleanor Brandon, the Brandon's second daughter.

Because she was a possible successor, whom she would marry was an important decision. John Dudley, the 1st Duke of Northumberland suggested in 1552 that she should marry his son Guildford, but Edward VI was opposed to that alliance (thus Dudley had that son available to marry Lady Jane Grey); then Dudley's brother Andrew was mentioned. Finally, when Mary I came to the throne, Margaret Clifford married Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby. As this blog explains her situation:

She was the great granddaughter of Henry VII and according to Henry VIII’s will if anything happened to Elizabeth she would become queen of England. She therefore became Elizabeth’s heir presumptive. It was not a good place to be.

Before then she’d managed to avoid becoming a pawn in the game of crowns through her father’s forethought and then through her own lack of popularity. In 1553 the Duke of Northumberland had proposed to marry her to either his son, Guildford, or his brother, Sir Andrew Dudley, but Cumberland refused the match on his daughter’s behalf and took no part in the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen (sensible man).

Instead, Margaret was married with Queen Mary’s blessing in Westminster Abbey in February 1555 to Henry Stanley, Lord Strange. He was descended from the Woodvilles, Howards, Nevilles and a certain Thomas Stanley who happened to be married to Margaret Beaufort and who sat around on hillsides during key battles of the Wars of the Roses waiting to see how it would all pan out – landing the title Earl of Derby for his pains.

By 1557 Margaret was recorded as saying that Lady Jane Grey’s treason had excluded her sisters, Catherine and Mary Grey, from the succession, thus making Margaret, Queen Mary’s heiress presumptive…yes I know there was Elizabeth to take into consideration but Mary’s relationship with her sister was fraught by 1557. Mary was fond of stating that Elizabeth had the look of lute player Mark Smeaton. There was also the fact that Elizabeth was notably not Catholic whereas Margaret was. . . .

But Mary I was more obedient to the wishes of her father and the decisions of Parliament to interfere with the line of succession. Her great hope was to have a son to displace Elizabeth, not contravene the settled succession. Nevertheless, Margaret's troubles continued apace as she speculated on her opportunity to succeed Elizabeth I during her reign:

Lady Strange developed a dangerous interest in alchemy, to which she had been introduced by her father. An interest in the occult, although widespread among Elizabethans, could be a dangerous hobby; an interest in fortune-telling especially so for one in Margaret's position on the periphery of the succession dispute. From 1572, Margaret was countess of Derby. She consulted with wizards "with a vain credulity, and out of I know not what ambitious hope”, according to William Camden, and lost the Queen’s favor. In 1578 she was accused of employing a "magician", actually a well-known physician named Dr. Randall, to cast spells to discover how long Queen Elizabeth would live. According to one source, Randall was hanged and Margaret was banished from court and spent the rest of her life, eighteen years, in the custody of her kinsman, Thomas Seckford (d.1587), Master of Requests, to whom she was related through his mother, Margaret (d. 1557), the daughter of Sir John Wingfield (d. 1509) of Letheringham, and aunt of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Later she had a series of keepers, although she was allowed to live in her own house at Isleworth.

According to a book on the Stanley family, her debts continued to mount. In 1579, the Privy Council ordered the Lord Mayor of London to pressure her creditors to stop hounding her. In May 1580, Margaret's husband petitioned to be allowed to sell lands to pay debts. In Jun 1581, the Privy Council appointed a commission to find ways to reduce the Derbys' debts. In Dec 1581, the Privy Council was after the Earl to pay Margaret her pension. In 1582, Queen Elizabeth finally approved the sale of Derby lands. Margaret proceeded to sell off land in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Staffordshire valued at £88 8s.4d/year. With a twenty year purchase, that meant she probably received £1,768 6s.10d. In 1584-93, her husband and sons borrowed at least £8,732 13s.4d. against Derby holdings and sold other land for £3800. Not only had Margaret's debts mounted, but the Earl had incurred other debts in the course of undertaking diplomatic missions for the Crown. Before their separation, Margaret gave Lord Strange four sons, Edward and Francis, who died young, Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby, and William, 6th Earl of Derby.

In spite of chronic rheumatism and toothache, her husband's infidelities and their acrimonious financial disputes, the Countess of Derby lived on into the mid-1590s. The historian William Camden said of her that "through an idle mixture of curiosity and ambition, supported by sanguine hopes and a credulous fancy, she much used the conversations of necromancers and figure flingers". She seems to have been rather a frivolous and silly woman.

Her husband preceded her in death by three years and three days, dying on September 25, 1593.

It can't have helped her relationship with Elizabeth I that her father, Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland, had some involvement in the Howard-Dacre plots against Elizabeth and may have sheltered Catholic priests:

After his retirement in 1547 he is said to have visited the court only thrice: at Queen Mary's coronation, on his daughter's marriage, and again soon after Queen Elizabeth's accession (Whitaker, 338). In July 1561 he and Lord Dacre, his father-in-law [through Clifford's second marriage to Anne Dacre], were accused of protecting the popish priests in the north. A similar charge was advanced in February 1562. He was in 1569 strongly opposed to the contemplated marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk, and readily promised support to the great rebellion of that year. In May 1569 he was in London. As the year wore on he gave in his adherence to the scheme for proclaiming Mary queen of England; but when the critical moment arrived he did not act with vigour, but as a 'crazed man, leaving his tenants to the leadership of Leonard Dacres' (Froude, vii. 469, ix. 412, 446, 449, 511). According to Dugdale, he even assisted Lord Scrope in fortifying Carlisle against the rebels (i. 345). 

As to Margaret Clifford's dangerous interest in the occult (which I agree is dangerous), we should recall that science in that era was mixed with alchemy and astrology. Dr. Randall may have suffered for the spells or charts he cast, but Elizabeth I's favorite scientist and astronomer, Dr. John Dee, survived casting charts to predict Mary I and Philip of Spain's fates, held in house arrest by Bishop Bonner during Mary I's reign. Evidently Elizabeth I consulted Dr. Dee for both magic and scientific insights.

Image credit: Portrait by Hans Eworth thought to be either Lady Margaret or her mother, Lady Eleanor Brandon.

Edward I's Succession Decision

From The Literary Review, this review of a book coming out later this month, Daughters of Chivalry: The Forgotten Children of Edward I. Catherine Hanley likes the book (mostly):

Edward I and his first queen, Eleanor of Castile, were at the sharp end of medieval infant mortality statistics. Eleanor gave birth to at least fourteen children, only to see five of her daughters die in their first year and – perhaps even more agonisingly – three of her sons reach the ages of five, six and ten before they, too, perished.

The question of how parents dealt with such staggering loss has been the subject of much enquiry; of equal interest but less well researched is how the remaining children dealt with the loss of siblings, and how this affected their relationships with the other survivors. The career of Edward and Eleanor’s only surviving son, the future Edward II, is familiar, but, unsurprisingly, less is known of the five sisters who lived to adulthood: Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth. Daughters of Chivalry is thus a welcome addition to the shelves of medieval history.

Hanley notices one gap in the comprehensive survey of the lives of these five women:

One conspicuous omission is an examination of the question of female succession. It is mentioned in passing that Eleanora was second in line to the throne, but more consideration could have been given to just how significant this was, particularly since the author is keen to stress throughout the book that medieval royal women had political duties as well as childbearing ones.

After the death of ten-year-old Alphonso in 1284, the sole surviving son was a four-month-old baby. Given the high rate of mortality among his children, Edward I was in danger of becoming the first English king for 150 years to die without a male heir (in the twelfth century the death of Henry I without a legitimate son had led to two decades of civil war). This left him with a critical decision to make, and in 1290 he decreed that if this eventuality came to pass, the crown would pass not to his brother, Edmund, but to his eldest daughter and her heirs. This enshrined the precedent of succession via the female line, which would have significant consequences for the English crown in years to come.

I don't think I've ever read about that precedent in any discussion of Henry VIII's decisions about the succession. Usually, the medieval precedent cited is Queen Matilda in the twelfth century (the crisis and civil war cited above after Henry I's death). 

Edward must have felt confident that his daughter would be acceptable as a Queen Regnant--and he and his father Henry III had faced great rebellion among the barons and nobles of England (Simon de Montfort et al). Edward's beloved Queen Eleanor of Castile died in 1290--thus this decision about the succession--and he did not remarry until 1299. His second wife, Margaret of France, bore him two more sons (Thomas and Edmund), so the succession seemed more secure. Nevertheless, Edward I had made the decision in 1290 that if his only son Edward of Carnarvon died before he died, his daughter Eleanora would reign. Of course, Edward II did survive his father and that's another story.

Coincidentally: Three Births on October 14

On October 14, 1630, Sophia of Hanover,  the twelfth child of Frederick V, the Elector Palatinate and Elizabeth, the Queen of Bohemia (and James I/VI's daughter) was born.

On October 14, 1633, James, the Duke of York, and future King James II, second son of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria,  was born.

On October 14, 1644, William Penn, son of Sir William Penn and his wife Margaret, was born.

All very coincidental at the time when each of these three were born, but portentous for the future, especially in matters of the English succession and religious toleration.

Sophia of Hanover replaced the direct descendants of James II in the line of succession after his daughter Mary and son-in-law William invaded England and he was declared deposed. She is pictured on the right (wikipedia source) in an Indian costume, painted by her older sister Louise. Sophia of Hanover was chosen by Parliament in 1701 because she was the closest Stuart heir who was NOT Catholic--even her elder brother Edward's children could not succeed to the throne because they were Catholic (he had married a Catholic princess and converted). This Act of Succession was necessary because William and Mary had no children (and Mary was dead by 1701 and William would not remarry), and Princess Anne Stuart's only child to survive infancy, William, Duke of Gloucester, died in 1700. James II's son, James Francis Edward, considered by his supporters to be the Prince of Wales and by his detractors, the Old Pretender, were completely shut out, of course, because what had the Glorious Revolution of 1688 been for, after all! (BTW, Sophia's elder sister Louise, the artist, had also become Catholic and a Cistercian nun and abbess!)

James II converted to Catholicism in about 1668; he succeeded his brother Charles II because Charles had no legitimate heirs. The English Parliament was opposed to his succession from the start and his son's birth and fears of another Catholic Stuart succeeding led to the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688. His connection with William Penn comes because they were allies in King James' efforts to promote the Declaration of Indulgence and religious toleration in England for dissenters from the Church of England.  As this book explored the issue:

This is a critical study of the astonishing friendship between William Penn and James II—"two cardinal personalities of the modern era, authoritative men who deflected the political current of their time and left lasting influences that still can be felt on both sides of the Atlantic." Their friendship is no mere sidelight to seventeenth-century English history; indeed, it is not so much the friendship of a Quaker and a Catholic that intrigues us but, rather, the closeness of a Quaker leader and a Catholic monarch, standing together at the center of power in England for three decisive years.

Vincent Buranelli introduces his problem thus: "Nothing else in the life of William Penn has puzzled the biographers and historians so much as his persistent loyalty to James II. The antithesis between Catholic monarch and Quaker subject would seem to make any real understanding between the two men improbable; their presumed inability to speak to one another is compounded by the customary interpretation of James as a would-be tyrant and of Penn as an apostle of religious liberty; and yet Penn was not only a courtier throughout his reign but also a friend, possibly the best friend, of the King. . . . James II is one of the most reviled figures of modern history. William Penn is one of the most revered. How is their steadfast friendship to be explained?"

"Penn was loyal to James II, and he was right," argues Buranelli. His book texts (sic) this hypothesis and, in doing so, makes sense of a hitherto baffling side of William Penn.

Day One of Nine: Queen Jane

Here's History Today's take on Lady Jane Grey Dudley becoming the Queen of England on July 10, 1553:

Edward died on July 6th. Mary, on her way to Greenwich, was warned of the trap and rode pell mell for Norfolk. Elizabeth stayed in bed. The King’s death was kept quiet and on July 9th Jane was taken to Northumberland’s mansion outside London, Syon House at Isleworth, where the Duke, her husband and her parents were waiting with members of the council, who to her surprise treated her with immense deference. Northumberland announced that she was queen and she fainted before, with the utmost reluctance, accepting the throne ‘if what has been given to me is lawfully mine’. The following day she was proclaimed by heralds with flourishes of trumpets at various places in London, to the stony disapproval of the citizens. One man who incautiously said the Lady Mary had the better right had his ears cut off.

In the afternoon Jane arrived by barge at the Tower, tried on the royal crown, which made her feel faint again, and had a blazing row with her husband and his mother when she said she would not make him king. The banquet that evening was spoiled by the arrival of a letter from Mary to the council firmly asserting her right to the throne and demanding immediate support.

Jane continued going through the motions as queen in the Tower, but Northumberland had miscalculated badly. The Lady Mary was well liked (she had not burned anyone yet) and he was not. Mary’s support grew and she gathered a sizeable army, while Northumberland’s men deserted. So did the council in London. By July 18th only three of them – including Jane’s father – remained loyal to Northumberland. The others left the Tower on the improbable excuse of urgently needing to talk to the French ambassador and had the lord mayor of London proclaim Mary next day. Her father told Jane she was no longer queen and she said she was delighted to hear it and could she go home, please?

Please read the rest there.

Image credit: The Crown Offered to Lady Jane Grey, as imagined in the 1820s: Guildford and Jane are in the centre

Peter Wentworth, RIP in the Tower

Peter Wentworth, MP for Northampton, argued often on matters of Church and State in Elizabethan Parliaments. He also ended up in prison for those arguments because they displeased Queen Elizabeth I. According to the History of Parliament website, he displeased her one more time, by reminding her that she should make it clear who would succeed her when she died:

In 1587, after the death of Mary Queen of Scots, he had drafted A Pithie Exhortation of her Majestie for establishing her successor to the crowne, a tract published by a friend after his death. Its language was forthright, his admonitions to the Queen at times needlessly and shockingly frank. In a letter to Burghley he later defended the sharpness of his language by quoting 'the spirit of God in Solomon': 'The wounds of a lover are faithful, and kisses of an enemy are deceitful'.

Wentworth intended to present his tract in the Parliament of 1589 and launch a campaign for settling the succession; but he evidently found the time unpropitious. He tried to persuade Burghley to approach the Queen on the subject, and again in 1590 came to London to renew this quixotic plan. Next year he turned to the Earl of Essex, hoping that he would present his tract to the Queen. But copies of the tract were leaked to the Privy Council, and in August 1591 they committed him prisoner, this time to the Gatehouse. He was incorrigible. Instead of seeking pardon, he tried once more to get Burghley to approach the Queen, convinced that this statesman believed as he did: which may, indeed, have been true. Wentworth was released from the Gatehouse in November, confined for a time in a private house, and finally set at liberty in February 1592. . . .

Wentworth was imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained till his death four-and-a-half years later. It is clear from several surviving petitions and letters that he could have secured his freedom within a reasonable time if he had been prepared to acknowledge his fault and give pledge of future silence, without which he remained a potential focus of unrest and disturber if the Queen's delicately poised policy for the peaceful transition of the crown at her death. Instead of repentance, in every petition he reiterated the argument of his "Pithie Exhortation": to do otherwise, he declared, would be to 'give her Highness a most detestable Judas-kiss'. In 1594, when Doleman's "Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England" was published—a disturbing Catholic tract—he was reckless enough, at the instance of some friends, to write an answer, entitled "A Discourse containing the Author's opinion of the true and lawful successor to her Majesty". It was published after his death along with his "Pithie Exhortation" and, fortunately for Wentworth, seems to have been kept secret from the authorities. Wentworth pronounced in favour of James VI's title to the succession—a judgement he would have strongly opposed earlier, thus, incidentally, vindicating the Queen in her policy of letting time simplify the problem. Doleman had been led to exalt the rights of Parliament. Thus, ironically enough, Wentworth found himself expounding the limitations of those rights.

To keep Wentworth where he could do no harm to the state was the main concern of Queen and Council. As he put it himself: 'The causes if my long imprisonment ... a truth plainly delivered. His second wife was permitted to live with him in the Tower, and there she died, July 1596, 'my chiefest comfort in this life, even the best wife that ever poor gentleman enjoyed' There was a proposal to release him on the pledges of sureties in July 1597, when he asked not to be sent home to Lillingstone Lovell, where memories of his wife would be too much for him. On 10 Nov. that year he died. An inquisition post mortem taken at Oxford in 1599 was concerned with his manor of Lillingstone Lovell and house, woods, etc. in the parish and in Lillingstone Dayrell. Wentworth's children married into puritan families, and one of his sons, Thomas, emulated his father in Parliament in James I's reign.

Elizabeth I did not want to name a successor! Since she had not married she had no children, but there was a line of succession either in England (the Grey sisters), or in Scotland (James VI). Leanda de Lisle has written two books about the choices Elizabeth I faced. It's ironic, isn't it, that her father's greatest concern was a stable and orderly succession--that her half-brother changed their father's will about the succession--that Mary I acknowledged that Elizabeth would succeed her, but Elizabeth would not name her successor until she was on her deathbed, and then only with a nod.

Father Robert Parsons, SJ, was likely the author of "Doleman's Conference". More about it here from the British Library.

Book Review: Many Kinds of Silence

Second book of 2015! This historical novel imagines what William Shakespeare might have been up to during those lost years in the 1580's. Suspenseful tension makes this a real page turner, or screen turner in my case, since I read it on my Kindle. Ashworth creates a world filled with such intrigue and deception that it leads William Shakespeare to lose his faith in God and Ferdinando Stanley to lose his life.

The book begins with Shakespeare leaving Stratford to study and travel with Father Edmund Campion, with the eventual goal of leaving England to study for the priesthood. Ashworth also introduces a second main character, Ferdinando Stanley Lord Strange, son and heir of Henry Stanley, the 4th Earl of Derby, who also has a claim to royal succession through his mother. Ferdinand's father and mother are estranged: she is under house arrest by Elizabeth I and is a faithful Catholic--and the Earl of Derby does not strictly enforce the recusancy laws in Lancashire (he has a mistress and several children by her).

The arrest and execution of Father Campion makes Shakespeare question his vocation because of the hatred he bears the authorities. He was always torn as he accompanied Father Campion, because what he really loved was not God and religion, but reading and writing, playacting and singing. On a visit home, he and Anne Hathaway consummate their relationship without benefit of marriage and then he marries her when she becomes pregnant. He continues to live away from home, however, to pursue his employment as a player and playwright, eventually serving Lord Strange and writing Richard III to remind Elizabeth that the Stanley family played a crucial role in bringing the Tudor dynasty to the throne, as Henry VII was crowned by Thomas Stanley, the 1st Earl of Derby (Henry's stepfather) with the coronet fallen off Richard's head at Bosworth Field.

Lord Strange is also most interested in becoming the King of England and in studying the natural sciences, creating or believing there is a conflict between religious faith and scientific knowledge. He loves his wife and is loyal to both of his estranged parents, but he thinks that by betraying a man he can gain Elizabeth I's favor and acknowledgement. He also hopes to keep his brother William from inheriting the title and the family name, but -- I won't spoil that plot line.

Both men become more and more entangled with the plots and schemes of the Court and of the Catholics who hope to bring a Catholic monarch to the throne, especially after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. I believed the situations these two men found themselves in as they pursue their goals and find the web of deception tightening around them and face greater and greater danger, moral and mortal.

I did find some of the historical inaccuracies about St. Edmund Campion's martyrdom irritating, however. His disputation with the Anglican divines in the Tower of London are not even mentioned, and his companions, St. Ralph Sherwin and St. Alexander Briant, also go unmentioned, while Blessed Thomas Cottam is reported to have died with him. The latter was tried with him but not executed for several months--Campion, Sherwin, and Bryant suffered on December 1, 1581 and Cottam not until May 30, 1582, with three other priests. Perhaps the author just wanted to tie up loose ends and not delay the resolution of the case. Ashworth also places Lord Strange at Campion's execution and drops of the martyr's blood fall on him as they did on St. Henry Walpole, but without the same effect. There were a few typos and one time when two similar names were confused (Hesketh and Hoghton), but those are small matters.

Each numbered chapter begins with a quotation from Shakespeare about silence. Many Kinds of Silence is an effective and imaginative story about the atmosphere of spying and watching in Elizabeth I's reign.

Filling the Shakespearean Gaps: Many Kinds of Silence

Ernst Anselm Joachim (EAJ) Honigmann died in 2011; one of his most influential works was Shakespeare: The Lost Years. According to The Telegraph's obituary:

His thesis in The Lost Years followed EK Chambers’s suggestion that the young Shakespeare might have been “William Shakeshaft”, a player known to have been active in Lancashire in the 1580s. Honigmann published this as an “interim report” on the possibility that Shakespeare/Shakeshaft worked as a schoolmaster for a noble Roman Catholic family in Lancashire (and may himself have been a Catholic at this date). 

Historical fiction author Elizabeth Ashworth writes in her 2014 novel about that lost period, imagining that Shakespeare was involved not only as a player and a schoolmaster, but as a companion to Father Edmund Campion:

When William Shakespeare leaves his home in Stratford in the company of a Catholic priest he knows that he is walking into danger, but the vast libraries held in the name of God are enough to tempt him to risk his life in the pursuit of knowledge. However, the capture and death of his mentor, Edmund Campion, and his return to Stratford set William on an altogether different path. Marriage to Anne Hathaway means he must turn his back on the priesthood, but there are other ways for a clever and charming young man to be of use to the faith.

Many Kinds of Silence traces the story of a young William Shakespeare and his patron, Ferdinando Stanley, and reveals how religion, science and choosing in whom to place your trust meant the difference between life and death in Elizabethan England.

I've started reading the novel on my Kindle--it's available now at a very attractive price! One of the historical characters in the novel is the Fifth Earl of Derby, Ferdinando Stanley, whose claim to the throne came through the Brandon side of the Tudor succession, His great-grandmother was Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, the Dowager Queen of France, who married Charles Brandon, Henry's great friend. Thanks to Leanda de Lisle's triple biography of the Grey sisters, I've known about Mary's heirs through her daughter Frances, but this other line of succession is new to me. Ferdinando's grandmother was Mary Brandon's youngest daughter, Eleanor who married Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland. Eleanor's daughter Margaret, also an heir to the throne, married Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth Ashworth describes some of the family vicissitudes and Ferdinando's fate on her website:

Mary Tudor was first married to King Louis of France, but on his death she secretly married the man she was in love with – Charles Brandon. Mary and Charles had three surviving children – Henry, Frances and Eleanor. Henry died young, which left the two daughters to carry the line of succession. Frances was the mother of Lady Jane Grey, the nine days’ queen. Eleanor married Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland and their only surviving child, a daughter, Margaret, married Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby. Margaret was seen by some as the rightful heir to Elizabeth I, however, in 1597 she was placed under house arrest after being accused of using sorcery to predict when the queen would die. (Those of you familiar with the story of the Duke of Clarence in the reign of Edward IV may see some parallels here.) It was also known that she kept the Catholic faith and if there was one thing that Elizabeth and her advisors wanted to avoid, it was a succession that would result in the country’s return to Catholicism.

However, her eldest surviving son, Ferdinando Stanley, had been brought up at court and seems to have been groomed as the natural successor to the queen even though he was never officially named as heir. The only problem was that many of the queen’s advisors were concerned that he might also be a secret Catholic – and it seems that Catholics abroad harboured the same suspicions because they sent Richard Hesketh to offer support and an army to Ferdinando should he wish to take the throne by force. After listening carefully to the offer and riding with Hesketh to London, it seems that Ferdinando eventually rejected the opportunity and handed Hesketh over to Elizabeth’s ministers. He must have thought that this act would confirm his loyalty to the queen, but matters did not work out as he had hoped. Questions were raised about how long it had taken him to reject the offer, suspicion fell on him and he found himself out of favour and denied several roles, such as the Lord Chamberlain of Chester, that he thought were his by right. He is quoted as saying that he was ‘crossed in court and crossed in his country’. It was not long after this that he died in mysterious circumstances.

Ferdinando was succeeded as Earl of Derby by his brother William--who is one of the candidates for non-Stratford Shakepearean authorship.

Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen

Four days after young King Edward VI died on July 6, 1553, Lady Jane Dudley began her reign as Queen of England. (I call her by her married name because her in-law relationship to the Duke of Northumberland, John Dudley, was essential to her succession to the throne in the eyes of Edward VI). The delay in the accession came about because her father-in-law Dudley waited to announce the king's death while preparing for a smooth transition. Because of her Protestantism, because she was executed by "Bloody" Mary, because John Foxe promoted her cause, she became known as a martyr and victim of Catholic oppression in England--part of the Black Legend of Catholic cruelty. She has also been thought a victim of family abuse and manipulation, an unwilling pawn of Northumberland.

 

Two studies recently have questioned this view: Eric Ives' Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery and Leanda de Lisle's The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: Mary, Katherine, and Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Tragedy. Both books are all about the issue of the succession in the Tudor Dynasty, either from Edward VI to Jane or Mary, or from Elizabeth I to Mary, Queen of Scots, or the surviving Grey sisters, Mary and Catherine--so in neither book is Jane the main subject, really. I reviewed de Lisle's book, but have not read Ives' book, but as this reviewer notes, Ives' study is a "provocative and revisionist account" that takes nothing for granted:

Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery is not a biography. Rather, it is a book about a dynastic and political crisis. The ‘Tudor Mystery’ that Eric Ives has set out to solve is how the ‘legitimate’ Queen Jane, who commanded considerable political support, was overthrown in favour of the illegitimate Mary Tudor in ‘a wholly unexpected political coup’ (1). Viewing Jane’s rule from this angle produces a provocative and revisionist account of the summer of 1553. This alone would make Ives’ book an important piece of scholarship; that he wields an extensive array of archival evidence and provides the most detailed account to date of the succession crisis of 1553 makes this a book that no Tudor historian can ignore. . . .

Despite the title, Jane Grey is not the focus of Ives’s book, though Ives does discuss Jane’s education, family and religion at some length. His Jane is not the tragic figure who appealed to so many Victorians, but a ‘bluestocking’ and committed evangelical used as a political pawn by her indifferent parents. Jane married Guidlford Dudley reluctantly and was initially disinclined to take the throne: indeed, she was apparently surprised to discover that she was queen. Yet once on the throne she wielded power with a firmer hand than her earlier reluctance might suggest, adamantly blocking plans to invest her husband as king. Jane and her supporters had the advantage. They controlled the court, the state administration and the Tower, and Northumberland oversaw orders to the lord lieutenants in the counties to uphold Jane’s rule, whereas Mary possessed significantly inferior resources and was mistaken in her belief that her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V would come to her aid. Immediately after Edward’s death, few would have bet on Mary. Yet within thirteen days she had amassed considerable support, had been proclaimed Queen in London with the backing of the Privy Council, and Northumberland, who had led an army out of London in order to suppress Mary’s uprising, had surrendered. All of these developments need to be examined anew if Jane, not Mary, was rightfully queen.


Some "RC" News from England: Marriages, Royal or Not

The Marriage Act of 1753, proposed by Lord Hardwicke, required that for a marriage to be valid, the wedding must take place in the Church of England in a ceremony conducted by a minister of the Church of England. Of course, that caused a great problem for Catholics and Protestant dissenters, although Jews and Quakers were exempted from the Act. The law was passed to prevent clandestine marriages and also required banns be published. This restriction was eventually removed by Parliament in the Marriage Act of 1836 which allowed non-conformists and Catholics to be married in their own places of worship.

According to The Telegraph, recent Parliamentary actions may be undoing the 1836 law:

Prof Christopher McCrudden said that there are serious questions over whether the 120-year-old legal basis on which 8,500 Catholic weddings a year are performed can even “survive” the passage of the bill currently before Parliament.

He told MPs and peers that, unless urgent changes are made, Catholic bishops may have to reconsider whether priests can carry on performing weddings, in effect, on behalf of the state.

The barrister said his advice to senior bishops is that proposed protections for churches against legal challenges under human rights or equalities laws for refusing to marry gay couples completely overlook the position of Catholics and other denominations.

It means that the entire legal basis for Catholic weddings, operating since the late 19th century, could be “unpicked” with “very uncertain consequences”, he warned.

One possible outcome could even be a complete separation of church and civil weddings, such as happens in France where coupes are married in the town hall with a separate service in churches, he said.

On the other hand, the changes in the rules of succession to the throne in England, specifically to allow an heir to the throne to marry a Catholic, have created some concerns:

The Church expects Catholic spouses to do all they can to raise their children as Catholics but does not censure them if they are unable to do so, a Government spokesman has told the House of Lords as it debated changes to the system of Royal succession.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness, speaking on behalf of the Government, said he had been advised on the matter by Mgr Marcus Stock, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

“I have the specific consent of Mgr Stock to say that he was speaking on behalf of Archbishop Nichols as president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and can inform the House that the view taken by the Catholic Church in England and Wales is that, in the instance of mixed marriages, the approach of the Catholic Church is pastoral,” he said.

“It will always look to provide guidance that supports and strengthens the unity and indissolubility of the marriage. In this context the Catholic Church expects Catholic spouses to sincerely undertake to do all that they can to raise children in the Catholic Church. Where it has not been possible for the child of a mixed marriage to be brought up as a Catholic, the Catholic parent does not fall subject to the censure of canon law,” Lord Wallace continued.

The remarks were made during the third reading debate of the Succession to the Crown Bill in the House of Lords on Monday.

One Henry Born; Another Henry Dies

Henry VII was born on January 28, 1457 while Henry VIII died on January 28, 1547.

Henry Tudor, founder of the Tudor Dynasty, was the son of Edmund Tudor the First Earl of Richmond and Margaret Beaufort. His Lancastrian claim to the throne of England was through his mother who was the great granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. It was a rather tenuous claim, however, since it was maternal and based on a lineage of ancesters who had legitimized by Parliamentary act, since John's children by Kathryn Swynford were born before they were married. Through his father's ancestry, there was the link to Catherine of Valois through her marriage to Owen Tudor. His reputation, based on the joyous young reign of his second son, has been of a dour skinflint who just saved lots of money for that son to waste (per Hoskins). Henry VIII of course began that interpretation by executing his father's unpopular ministers, Empson and Dudley. Nevertheless Henry VII ended the Wars of the Roses, established the new dynasty, developed England's foreign policy; in doing so, he had to destroy any rivals to the throne through fair means or foul, curtail the power of the nobility, and institute unpopular taxes--except that England was ready for a stable central government and thus he succeeded in most of his efforts.

There is a new biography of Henry VII coming out soon: Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England by Thomas Penn, published by Simon and Schuster:

It was 1501. England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and countercoups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, had clambered to the top of the heap—a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England’s throne. For many he remained a usurper, a false king.

But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Queen Elizabeth was a member of the House of York. Henry himself was from the House of Lancaster, so between them they united the warring parties that had fought the bloody century-long Wars of the Roses. Now their older son, Arthur, was about to marry a Spanish princess. On a cold November day sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrived in London for a wedding that would mark a triumphal moment in Henry’s reign.

In this remarkable book, Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic Henry VII—a controlling, paranoid, avaricious monarch who was entering the most perilous years of his long reign.

Rich with drama and insight, Winter King is an astonishing story of pageantry, treachery, intrigue and incident—and the fraught, dangerous birth of Tudor England.

Here is an analysis of Henry VIII's legacy and last will and testament from a very popular Tudor blog. The reputation of Henry VIII as a ruler is so bound up in popular imagination with our desire to see people in the past and present be happy (that is, do whatever they want to do) that we sometimes forget Henry VIII's vocation and purpose in life was to be a good king, husband, and father. His sexual and marital life, a la The Tudors, perhaps prevents us from judging his actions in those three roles more objectively. From my point of view, for instance, citing the establishment of the Church of England as an accomplishment of his reign deserves a great deal of qualification. It was not based upon a theological reforming inspiration; it involved horrible destruction and loss of life; it required the establishment of an empire and a tyranny, and Henry VIII died wanting all the consolations of a traditional Catholic death: Masses and prayers, forgiveness and Heaven. By dividing England from the universal Catholic Church and the spiritual and moral authority of the Pope in Rome, Henry ensured that his bequests for spiritual assistance in the afterlife would never be fulfilled. Along the way, in addition to becoming a tyrant to his people, he proved himself a poor model of a husband (treating Katherine of Aragon cruelly and inhumanely and sentencing Anne Boleyn to a unjust death) and of a father (humiliating and threatening Mary; neglecting Elizabeth). As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury said a few years ago, if Henry VIII gained Heaven it was only through the prayers of one of the holy men he condemned to hideous death--because they opposed his break away from the universal Catholic Church and his claim on ecclesiastical supremacy in establishing the Ecclesiae Anglicanae. [And the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury would even say such a thing, indicating a belief in salvation through works or even purgation after death, demonstrates again the confused legacy of Henry VIII's Church of England!]

It is also interesting to remember the words of Henry Peto, Observant Franciscan, who warned Henry VIII that dogs would lick his blood after his death, just like the bad King Ahab in the Old Testament: When Henry's body was being brought to Windsor Castle for burial, it rested overnight at the former Syon Abbey:

Syon Abbey had become renowned for its spiritual learning, public preaching and library. It was favoured and visited by King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon but it got embroiled in the religious turmoil of the King’s divorce and his subsequent action of making himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. The Father Confessor, of the nuns, Richard Reynolds, could not accept the King’s supremacy and was brutally executed in 1535, his body placed on the abbey gateway. He was later canonised as a martyr.

In 1547, King Henry VIII's coffin was brought to Syon on its way to Windsor for burial. It burst open during the night and in the morning dogs were found licking up the remains! This was regarded as a divine judgement for the King's desecration of Syon Abbey.

And the fulfillment of Henry Peto's warning to Henry/Ahab about Anne/Jezebel! I'm sorry, I just don't agree that Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England was an accomplishment worthy of unmitigated or unreserved praise.