France: the regents

Catherine de' Medici
widowed Queen of France
workshop of François Clouet
Public domain.

France’s Salic Law barred females and any man who claimed through a woman from inheriting the throne. However, the country had a tradition of women exercising power as regents on behalf of absent husbands or under-age sons. In the thirteenth century Blanche of Castile acted as regent for her son Louis IX. Anne de Beaujeu was regent for her brother, Charles VIII.

The French regents often exercised power under difficult circumstances. However, competent their government, a period of royal minority was always a time of instability; and the regents were usually foreigners and inclined to be unpopular because they were not perceived to have the interests of France at heart. 

Catherine de’ Medici (1519-89)

Catherine was the daughter of Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino, who died a few weeks after her birth. Her French mother, Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne had already died of puerperal fever. She was raised by her formidable aunt, Clarice Strozzi. In May 1527 when Florence turned against the Medici and declared itself a republic, she was left behind as a hostage for her fleeing family. She faced a truly traumatic experience in 1529 when, following the Ladies’ Peace, imperial troops besieged Florence with the aim of restoring the Medici. While the siege was going on, the 10-year-old Catherine was taken prisoner. She feared she would be raped or killed though this did not happen. 

Marriage

When the Medici were restored, her relative, Pope Clement VII, moved her to Rome and secured her betrothal to Henri, the second son of François I. This was a great match for her and the Medici family. The  two fourteen-year-olds were married in Marseille in October 1533. 

The marriage of Henri and Catherine
October 1530.
Public domain.

The marriage quickly went wrong. Clement VII died in 1534 and his successor, Paul III, was hostile to France and refused to pay Catherine’s dowry. King François came to regret the marriage, saying, ‘the girl has come to me stark naked’. Even more seriously, the marriage initially failed in its prime purpose to produce children. The pressure on her increased after 1536 when Henry’s older brother, François, died suddenly, leaving Henri as dauphin, the heir to the French throne. There was talk of divorcing Catherine and in desperation she turned to the recommended fertility remedies of mule’s urine, ground stag’s antlers and cow dung.  Her situation was even more painful because Henri was in love with Diane de Poitiers, who had been his mistress since he was 15 and she was 38. There is more about Diane here.

Elizabeth I (2: 1568-1603)

Elizabeth and the three goddesses
by Hans Ewerth, c. 1569
Public domain.

Ten years into the reign

By 1568 Elizabeth had been on the throne for ten years. She had established the Church of England, and was commemorated in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563) as the new Constantine. She had put off either marrying or naming her successor. She had survived the scandal over the death of Robert Dudley’s wife in 1560, and her attack of smallpox in 1562.  However, the regime was fragile. Her advisors sensed a lack of direction and found themselves unable to pursue a concerted policy. The international scene was becoming more dangerous. France was rent by religious wars and the Netherlands were on the brink of revolt against Spanish rule. Above all, the question of the succession had not been settled.

The arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots

When Mary landed in England in 1568 and threw herself on Elizabeth’s mercy, Elizabeth’s position became more precarious as, to many Catholics, she was the rightful queen. She would have preferred to restore her to Scotland, but she needed the new Regent, the Earl of Moray, as an ally. Not knowing what else to do, she detained her and set up an enquiry into the Darnley murder. The enquiry reached no conclusion and Elizabeth was left with the problem of what to do about Mary.

Revolt and excommunication

In 1569 two Catholic northern earls revolted and in November they took over Durham cathedral. 

In February 1570 Pius V published his bull Regnans in Excelsis,  pronouncing the sentence of excommunication against her. In 1571 a Florentine merchant, Roberto di Ridolfi orchestrated a plot by which Philip would bring an army over from the Netherlands. The Duke of Norfolk would depose Elizabeth and marry Mary. Norfolk was executed in 1572 but Elizabeth was reluctant to move against Mary. 

In 1574 the first Catholic missionaries arrived in England, sent by William Allen, the head of the English College in Douai. In 1577 Cuthbert Mayne,  the first Catholic martyr, was executed. By 1580 there were a hundred seminarians working clandestinely in England.  The most famous of these, the Jesuit, Edmund Campion, was executed in 1581.

Mary Queen of Scots

The wrong sex and the wrong time

Mary Queen of Scots was born at Linlithgow Palace on 8 December 1542, the only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland. Just two weeks before, on 24 November, the king’s forces had been routed by the English at the battle of Solway Moss. When he heard the news of the birth of a daughter, he is reputed to have said, ‘It [the Stewart dynasty] came with a lass and it will pass with a lass’. He died at midnight on 14 December. At the age of six days, Mary was Queen of Scots.

The inheritance

Mary was the queen of a small, poor country with a population of about 850,000, dwarfed in wealth and size by its southern neighbour, England, with a population of 3.5 million. She was the inheritor of centuries of hostility between the two countries as, in seeking to maintain its independence from England, the Scots had formed the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France. However, the Scottish nobility was notoriously quarrelsome and factional, and both the English and French rulers sought to play off one set of nobles against another.

From her great-grandfather Henry VII, Mary inherited a claim to the English throne, though she was excluded from the Succession Act of 1543 and from Henry's will.

Through her mother, Mary of Guise, she was related to one of the most powerful noble families in France and she was a pawn in the family’s quest to control the French monarchy.

The ‘rough wooing’

On 9 September 1543 Mary was crowned at Stirling Castle, making her an anointed queen. Henry VIII was desperate to secure control of Mary so that he could marry her to his son Prince Edward, thus bringing about the union of the two kingdoms. In 1544 and again in 1547, after Henry VIII’s death, English troops invaded Scotland in what is known as 'the rough wooing' in order to force the Scots to agree to the marriage.

France

In August 1548 the 5-year-old Mary, her guardians and her attendants – the ‘four Maries’ – sailed for France. Mary was to remain in France for the next thirteen years. She rapidly became fluent in French and her striking looks and charisma made her extremely popular. 

Mary Queen of Scots by
François Clouet
c. 1558-60
Public domain.

On 24 April 1558 she and the Dauphin François were married in Notre Dame. The official marriage contract stated that Scotland would remain a distinct kingdom, but a secret document, signed by Mary, gave Scotland to France should Mary die without heirs.
When Queen Mary Tudor died Mary controversially asserted her claim to the throne against Elizabeth by quartering the arms of England on her shield, a gesture that was interpreted by the English as extremely provocative. William Cecil, Elizabeth’s Secretary became her life-long enemy.

On 10 July 1559 Henri II died in a jousting accident and François became King. Mary was now Queen of Scotland and France and at the same time asserting a claim to the English throne.

Mary I. England's first reigning queen (1)

Mary Tudor, by Antonis Mor
Prado National Museum
Public domain

This post is indebted to Anna Whitelock’s Mary Tudor. England’s First Queen (Bloomsbury 2010), Eric Ives' Lady Jane Grey. A Tudor Mystery (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and the revisionist article on Mary I in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by Ann Weikel ©Oxford University Press 2018.

‘Judged as a private person, Mary was probably the most attractive of the Tudor family.’ Eric Ives, Jane Grey, p. 78

Mary was England’s first crowned Queen regnant. Her predecessor, Matilda, had never been able to substantiate her claim. She was never crowned and only granted the title ‘Lady of the English’.  Lady Margaret Beaufort passed on her claim to her son, Henry VII. Jane Grey was proclaimed queen but the coup that launched her was short-lived. 

She was born at Greenwich Palace on 18 February 1516.  She was a healthy child, and though her sex was a disappointment, her parents, Henry and Catherine hoped that a healthy son would follow. She was pretty and clever and her parents were proud of her. No expense was spared on her household. 

Greenwich Palace, Mary's birthplace
Public domain

Betrothals: on and off!

Though she was not the desired male heir, she was useful diplomatically, and at the age of two, in a grand ceremony at Greenwich, she was betrothed to François, the heir of François I. But the alliance with France came unstuck and in 1521 she was betrothed to her cousin, Charles V, who was sixteen years her senior. She met the emperor when he came to England in 1522. 

Mary at the time of her betrothal
to Charles V
by Lucas Horenbout.
NPG. Public domain

However, the the betrothal was broken off when in 1525 Charles announced that he would marry Isabella, the daughter of the King of Portugal. Mary saw this as a painful rejection, but she still remained attached to Charles and was later to see him as a vital ally and political mentor.

Henry then resumed the idea of a French marriage, either to François I or to his second son, Henri duc d’Orléans. But as she was still only 11, he refused to allow her to leave England, and the French envoys thought she was so thin and small that she would not be physically ready for marriage for another three years.

Education

Queen Catherine took a keen interest in her daughter’s education. She may have instructed her in Latin and educationalists produced treatises in grammar and French for her.  In 1523 Catherine invited the celebrated Spanish scholar Juan Luis Vives to England and she commissioned him to write a treatise on the education of women and to draw up an outline of studies for Mary. When she was 15, the Venetian ambassador wrote a complimentary account of her accomplishments, noting that she was fluent in Spanish, French and Latin and played several instruments.


The Dutch humanist, Erasmus, wrote: ‘We have in the Queen of England a woman distinguished by her learning, whose daughter Mary composes fine Latin epistles’.

Heiress?

It was a blow to Catherine, and potentially to Mary, when in 1518, Henry’s mistress, Elizabeth Blount, gave birth to a son, named Henry Fitzroy. In 1525 Henry gave him his father’s old title of Duke of Richmond. But the king was sending out mixed signals. In August Mary was sent to govern Wales, the traditional role of the heir to the throne, and she remained at Ludlow for nineteen months. She returned to England in 1527 to find her world turned upside down.

Mary 1. England's first reigning queen (2)

Mary I, by Hans Eworth
Society of Antiquaries
Public domain.

Queen regnant

Mary’s accession has been described as the only successful rebellion in Tudor England. Some historians even believe that she mounted a coup against Jane Grey, the rightful queen. Her claim rested on the fact that she was Henry VIII’s elder surviving child, named as his heir in the Succession Act, and that she had support from the mass of Londoners, and most leading nobles and gentry. As there was no significant male claimant, she was accepted in spite of her gender and the fact that she was still legally a bastard.

But how was a woman to rule when there were no role models for her? Three days before her coronation, Mary appealed on her knees to her councillors for help. The imperial ambassador reported that 

no-one knew how to answer, amazed as they all were by this humble and lowly discourse, so unlike anything ever heard before in England, and by the queen’s great goodness and integrity’. From Helen Castor, She Wolves. 

This could be seen as pleasing feminine modesty, but also lack of self-confidence. 

A few days into her reign, her cousin, Charles V, the son and grandson of reigning queens, had written to offer advice: 

Let her be in all things what she ought to be: a good Englishwoman, and avoid giving the impression that she desires to act on her own authority, letting it be seen that she wishes to have the assistance and consent of the foremost men of the land.… You will also point out to her that it will be necessary in order to be supported in matters that are not of ladies’ capacity, that she soon contract matrimony with the person who shall appear to her most fit from the above point of view.

As ever, Mary, having little confidence in her own judgement, was very ready to take the emperor's advice. On 28 July she told the imperial ambassadors that ‘after God, she desired to obey none but’ her cousin Charles, ‘whom she regarded as a father’. These instructions were communicated through the Spanish ambassador, Simon Renard. He took to visiting her in disguise in her privy apartments. It was on Renard’s advice that, against her own judgement, she allowed her brother, Edward VI, to be buried with Protestant rites.

Elizabeth I: (1: 1533-68)

Elizabeth, aged 13
William Scrots
Public domain

There have been numerous books on Elizabeth but this post is especially indebted to a couple of the more recent: Helen Castor's Elizabeth I. A Study in Insecurity (Penguin 2018) and Anna Whitelock's Elizabeth's Bedfellows. An Intimate History of the Queen's Court (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Reversal of fortune

Before Elizabeth was three, her life had seen an astonishing reversal of fortune. In spite of the disappointment at her birth in September 1533, she was named Princess of Wales and the heir to the throne. Then in May 1536 her mother was executed. This in itself was a shocking event – the putting to death of an anointed queen. Although Anne had been executed for alleged adultery, the marriage to Henry was declared invalid, leaving Elizabeth illegitimate like her half-sister, Mary. But her status remained ambiguous. The Act of Succession of 1543 named Mary and Elizabeth as heirs to their half-brother, Edward at the same time as they remained illegitimate.

She is unlikely to have felt personal grief for her mother, though it may be significant that when she became queen, she promoted her Boleyn relatives. In her later years she owned a mother-of-pearl locked ring which opened to reveal portraits of her mother and herself.  

At her mother’s death she experienced a series of stepmothers – Jane Seymour who died, Catherine Howard who was executed, and Katherine Parr, who proved a kind and loving stepmother. But even she could not protect her. 

The Thomas Seymour affair

When Henry VIII died Elizabeth went with her governess, Kate Ashley, to live with the widowed Katherine. But six months after her husband’s death Katherine married Thomas Seymour, uncle of the young king and brother of the new Lord Protector, the king's uncle, the Duke of Somerset. But Seymour had his eyes on Elizabeth and he and Catherine indulged in boisterous horseplay with her. In May 1548 she and her servants left to stay with Kate’s sister. On 5 September Catherine died following complications after childbirth. 

The tomb of Katherine Parr at
Sudeley, Gloucestershire
My photograph

In January 1549 Seymour was arrested and a few days later Kate Ashley and Elizabeth’s financial administrator, Thomas Parry found themselves in the Tower. When they were interrogated the story emerged of Seymour’s conduct. At the age of 15, Elizabeth was in danger. She had not repulsed Seymour’s attentions – so had she been preparing to marry him? 

She was interrogated by Sir Robert Tirwhit who wrote to Protector Somerset, ‘I do see in her face she is guilty’. But could he prove anything against her? On the following day he wrote, ‘I do assure your grace she has a very good wit, and nothing is gotten off her but by great policy’. She defended herself in a letter to the Protector: ‘My Lord, these are shameful slanders’. On 20 March 1549 Seymour was executed. In 1552, Somerset himself was executed.

Elizabeth had learned the dangers of proximity to the throne. She was now careful to cultivate the image of a demure and learned young lady, committed to her brother’s Protestant policies.