Unfit to Wear A Crown: A History of Royal Abdications and Depositions—Part 1

The images of the Dutch abdication and swearing in ceremonies last week, where new King Willem-Alexander took over from Queen Beatrix, were truly memorable, even inspiring. An old beloved monarch was thanked for her service and gave way to a pumped-up new sovereign who committed himself to the nation, surrounded by all the glorious panoply of royalty. Why can’t we have something similar here in England, some people are saying?


The answer is, we can’t because abdication has a very different history and meaning in England. Abdication in the Netherlands has becomes an acceptable means of power transfer, even a pat on the back of the previous monarch for a job well done (the first speech delivered by Willem-Alexander was in part a valedictorian to Beatrix.). By contrast, relinquishing the throne in England has mostly been considered a mark of failure, the result of a breach of contract between the sovereign and the governed. There are no instances in English history of a monarch voluntarily abdicating the throne after a job well done. Instead, there is a history of monarchs being forced to abdicate their thrones, or just plainly being deposed, by people dissatisfied by their performance. 

In fact, strictly speaking, there has never been a real voluntary abdication in English history. In some cases—including that most famous instance—abdication has been merely the constitutional instrument by which monarchs have been cast off the throne. All others have been deposed and ex-monarchs have often not met peaceful retirement after their uncrowning but violent deaths. As the list below shows, the transfer of power from a living monarch to another in England has never been a sleek and joyous occasion like in the Netherlands but instead it has always been an act accompanied by tragedy or calamity.

1327-Edward II

Royal deposition first reared its ugly head in English history during the reign of Edward II (r.1307-1327), and it came about because of a marriage that had gone sour. True, Edward II was not a very competent monarch, in fact he was a mere shadow of his warrior father Edward I who had conquered Wales and subdued the Scots. Edward II presided instead over the catastrophic English defeat by the Scots at Bannockburn, and instead of fighters he kept surrounding himself with fashionable and hated court favourites on whom he showered unpopular grants. But what truly tipped the scales was the degeneration of Edward’s marriage to his Queen, Isabella of France. 


Their pairing was of course mostly political but there was a certain degree of marital respect that a king was expected to pay to his royal consort and Edward, to be frank, just crapped on it. The King preferred the company of men and Isabella found herself playing second fiddle to Edward’s male court favourites. At their wedding celebration, Edward had actually chosen to sit by his first favourite, Piers Gaveston, instead of his wife. Later on, he developed another relationship (most likely sexual) with Hugh le Despenser who himself often humiliated the Queen at court by words and deeds.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. In this near contemporary 14^th century illustration Queen Isabella is shown dressed in armour and gathering her troops near the town of Hereford.

In the end the marriage snapped. Isabella travelled back to France, officially to visit her brother King Philippe IV, and began to plan revenge with the help of a new lover, nobleman Roger Mortimer. In 1326 she came back to England at the head of an army and picked up discontents along the way. Edward’s support ebbed more and more among nobles until he was arrested, and his last lover, Hugh le Despenser, was executed after being publicly castrated. Parliament convened and declared the King deposed, and replaced him with his teenage son who was crowned Edward III. 

 
The situation was tenuous however because there was no precedent for a rightful King being stripped of his crown. The problem was solved in medieval style when Edward mysteriously died at Berkeley Castle 9 months after his deposition, making the rule of his son legally binding. A legend grew that he had been dispatched with a red-hot poker in his bottom as a punishment for his sodomy but he was most probably suffocated or starved instead. It is not known if it was Isabella or Roger Mortimer who gave the deadly orders, but whoever did it set down a dangerous precedent for royal depositions that was followed until Tudor times.

     

1399-Richard II

History repeated itself in the reign of Edward II’s great-grandson, Richard II (r.1377-1399). Just like his forefather, Richard was more interested in court entertainments and the lavish life than going into battle (he agreed a truce with France during the Hundred Years War). He also lavished lands and wealth on male favourites at the expense of many disgruntled barons. But what truly did him in was in essence the fact that he became king when he was merely 10 years old: his understanding of royal prerogative never went beyond the beliefs of a royally spoiled teenager. By the time he assumed personal power as an adult he had developed an incredibly haughty streak that went so far as to demand that people bowed down whenever he rested his eyes on them. He was the first king to require the title of Your Majesty, the first one to believe in his own semi-divinity, and the first to completely believe that the power of a king was absolute (always a dangerous chimera in English history). 

Until his wife, Anne of Bohemia, was alive Richard’s many flaws were kept in check, but after her death Richard went wild with favouritism and abuses. The tide turned against him after he began to confiscate the lands of nobles he considered enemies, including those of his royal cousin Henry Bolingbroke who was exiled to France. Just like Isabella, Henry crossed the Channel back to England in 1399 with an army, gathered support from disgruntled nobles and a discontented populace, and forced Richard to abdicate his crown to him. Shakespeare captured the intense, dark poetic drama of the event 200 years later in his Richard II play: 

Bolingbroke:      Are you content to resign the crown?

Richard:            Ay, no; no, ay……all pomp and majesty 
                         I do forswear
                        My manors, rents, revenues, I forgo

                        My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny.

Just like Edward, Richard met his end in mysterious circumstances while imprisoned in a castle, at Pontefract, and his forced abdication also had dark consequences. Unlike Edward, Richard did not have direct descendants to take up his crown and Bolingbroke, who replaced him as Henry IV, was not next in line to the throne. The legality of Richard’s replacement by Henry became one of the causes that drove Lancaster and York to destroy each other in the 15^th century.

1461-Henry VI

Monarchs don’t need to be despots to be deposed, being incompetent is just as criminal for a king. In that respect, there has never been a more criminally incompetent monarch than Henry VI (r.1422-1461), the most inept king England has ever seen. His failures are all the more remarkable since his father, Henry V, had been one of the most successful kings of medieval England, conquering France at the height of the Hundred Years War before dying prematurely and leaving the thrones of both England and France to his baby son, who became king at the age of 9 months. Until Henry was a minor England and her conquered lands were safe, but when he gained the reins of power as an adult chaos ensued. Unlike his father, Henry abhorred war and preferred to concentrate on prayer. He was also weak, indecisive and easily manipulated by factions at court.

People said that Henry was more the child of his mother, Queen Catherine of France, the daughter of French King Charles the Mad. To prove the point Henry began to slowly descend into madness in his 30s like his maternal grandfather once had, leaving the ship of state floundering among political factions which soon led to the Wars of the Roses. Henry was of course too far gone to lead his Lancastrian faction and it fell to his wife, Margaret of Anjou, to defend his cause against the Yorkists, , who had a legitimate right to the throne through the man who should have been crowned after Richard II’s deposition. After much blood spilt among the English nobility, Henry lost the throne after the Battle of Towton and was smuggled into Scotland. He was deposed in absentia, and Edward of York, by now leader of the Yorkists, was crowned in his place in 1461 as Edward IV. Two years later, Henry was captured and taken prisoner to the Tower where he spent a twilight existence between madness and precocious senility. 
 

This contemporary 15^th century illustration shows a powerless Henry VI being captured at the Battle of Northampton, before his final fall.

That should have been the end of the story, but then something miraculous happened. The war between the two roses flared up again, the Lancastrians gained the upper hand and Edward IV fled to the continent. Henry was restored and brought out of the dark Tower, literally squinting into the light of London, looking very forlorn and lost to all who saw him. It was the first and only time in English history that a deposed king was reinstated on the throne, and it did not last long. Edward IV came back into the country and destroyed the Lancastrians for good at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. Edward IV had been clement towards Henry up to that point, but now he decided to follow the example of his predecessors on how to deal with a deposed king: back in the Tower, Henry was disposed for good, by way of murder.

Edward V and Lady Jane Grey: 
Deposed Monarchs?

We need to open a parenthesis here on two monarchs who technically could be called deposed but who have very little to do with the other monarchs mentioned here. The cases of Edward V and Lady Jane Grey are unique in English history, and they do not support the idea that royal depositions always occur when monarchs break the royal contract between the sovereign and the governed. Both of them lost their crowns not because of poor performances but because of intrigue beyond their control. Their cases however still prove that relinquishing a crown in England is always a tragic event. 


Edward was a child-king who inherited the crown after his father, Edward IV, died suddenly at the age of 40 in 1483. England had still not recovered fully from the Wars of the Roses and, whatever the reasons, Edward’s uncle, soon-to-be Richard III, had Edward deposed and the crown transferred to himself. Perhaps Richard did it to provide better leadership to the country—the last child king, Henry VI, had grown up to be a disaster—perhaps he did it out of pure cupidity. Whatever the case, poor Edward was only a pawn in a game of thrones that was beyond his control. (Richard III, by the way, could also be said to have been deposed by force of arms on the battlefield, except that technically he did die with the crown on his head, so to speak).

Lady Jane Grey suffered the fate of those who reach for the crown and lose it. In this 19^th century painting by Paul Delaroche she is showing groping blindly for the executioner’s block.

The case of Lady Jane Grey is a grey area indeed because she can only be classified as a deposed monarch if you thought she was a monarch at all. Jane, who also was just a pawn, was proclaimed queen in 1553 by a small government crick in London who had altered the lawful act of succession for their own benefit. The majority of the English people never recognized her as Queen from the start and instead lined up behind the rightful Queen, Mary I, who was acclaimed by a much larger crowd nine days after Jane’s false reign began. Being deposed from the throne implies that someone has a right to that throne to begin with, otherwise the right word to use is ‘claimant’. It has always been my strong belief that Jane was nothing more than a claimant who was rejected by the kingdom, just like Perkin Warbeck, Bonnie Prince Charlie and other sundries (some of whom had actually a stronger claim to the throne than she did).

All this legal mumbo-jumbo however matters little with regards to the fate of both Edward and Jane. As we have seen so far, the practice in medieval England had always been to dispatch ex-monarchs, real or imaginary, out of this world. Both of them suffered the same fate of Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI: Jane lost her head, Edward was perhaps suffocated. Although unique, their cases still confirm that, to rephrase the Bard, ‘uneasy lies the head that’s lost a crown’.

Part 2 will be published shortly.

Learn more at Wikipedia about Edward II, Richard II, 

Henry VI, Edward V and Lady Jane Grey.

A classic case of forced abdication: this late 15^th century illustration shows Richard II handing over his crown and sceptre to his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke.
(Pic from Look and Learn)

Royal Paintbox: The Artwork of the Royal Family

Royal Paintbox, the recent ITV documentary on the artists in the Royal Family, could well have been titled Pandora’s Box. Out of the depths of the royal archives came artworks of people you never knew had artistic inclinations: George III, Prince Rupert—even our own Queen made prints of horses as a youngster!

The documentary was very well made, with good production values and an increasingly adept TV host in the Prince of Wales. With him at the helm the documentary was as much about art itself as it was about royal artists, and we learned much about painting techniques, moods, as well as the Prince’s own view of what art should be: a ‘part of oneself that you leave behind.’ Charles also talked about when his interest in art was kindled, about the age of 14 when he began to notice all the artworks hung in the royal residences.

The programme was particularly good in exploring how art reflected the psychological state of royal artists, in particular Queen Victoria. A very good painter, it was interesting to hear that Victoria delighted in painting children all throughout her marriage but that after Albert’s death she retreated instead into empty landscapes, even signing her works with phrases like ‘done in the 3^rd Year of my desolation.’ The children were also affected. Princess Louise, the most artistically gifted of Victoria’s children, painted as a teenager a touching picture of herself asleep in bed, dreaming of her parents getting reuniting in heaven. 

The documentary was designed to serve as a prelude to an exhibition that will open at Windsor Castle this summer called Royal Paintbox: Royal Artists Past and Present which will bring together much of the artwork seen in the programme. But in the larger sense, it also served as an introduction to the artistic talents in the history of the Royal Family, and with that in mind I have assembled a sample of works that have been produced by royal hands over the last 350 years. Some works were featured in the documentary while others were surprising little gems I found rummaging around cyberspace, particularly on the Royal Collection website.

Prince Rupert

As Royal Paintbox indicated, Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619-1682), nephew of Charles I, was one of the earliest members of the Royal Family to show artistic talents. As a true Cavalier he was skilled both in battle (he was a successful commander in the Civil War) and in the arts. He is actually credited with perfecting mezzotint, a printmaking technique that became very popular during the Restoration and was even taken up by Peter Lely. Rupert’s most famous mezzotint work, the Great Executioner (1658) has a sad tinge to it. The subject of the print, copied from an original painting by Spanish artist Jusepe De Ribera, is the execution of John the Baptist—but if you look closely to the head of the saint you will notice a resemblance to Rupert’s uncle, Charles I, who had been beheaded by another ‘great executioner’, Oliver Cromwell, nine years earlier.

King George III

Although it is thought that he had considerable help from a professional draughtsman, drawings like the one below did spring from the mind of George III (1738-1820). George was particularly fond of architectural drawing, done for its own artistic sake, and he also produced architectural vistas a la Piranesi, a style popular at the time. It is very intriguing that a man who would later suffer from madness was drawn to the ordered, proportioned art of architecture, particularly the classical kind. And it is also revealing that after his first bout of madness in 1788 he almost abandoned this pursuit. This drawing, from around 1760, is a design for a domed Corinthian building that shows George’s predilection for cupolas.

From the Royal Collection.

Princess Elizabeth

Princess Elizabeth (1770-1840) was the most vivacious and artistic of George III’s 6 daughters. Her accomplishments included decorating entire rooms at Frogmore House, one of the royal residences in Windsor Park. She was particularly fond of floral themes, as shown by the painting below, Flower Piece with Bird’s Nest (1792). Although Royal Paintbox implied that it was the original work of Elizabeth it was in fact a copy of a painting done by Margaret Meen, a botanical artist who worked for Queen Charlotte at Kew. That however does not take anything from the remarkable, limpid quality of Elizabeth’s work, especially its bold use of blue.



From the Royal Collection.



Prince Albert

Prince Albert (1819-1861) remains perhaps the most talented man in the history of the Royal Family. He wrote, composed music, dabbled in natural history, science and engineering, and had a keen understanding of politics. And of course he also painted, though his subject matters tended to be predictably German and stern. This painting below, The Death of Count Mansfield (1839) recalls an episode from the Thirty Years’ War when the Protestant commander chose to die heroically on his feet with a sword in his hand. Surprisingly, Albert sent it as a gift to Victoria during their engagement period and the lovestruck Queen thought it ‘so well painted and shows such talent.’



From the Royal Collection.



Luckily there was more to Albert’s artistry than stern dead soldiers. This tiny drawing depicts Victoria around the time the two were married in 1840. It shows Albert’s excellent drawing skills and attention to detail, especially in depicting Victoria’s hairdo and tiny jewelry.   



From the Royal Collection.



Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) might not have had as many talents as her husband but she certainly could match his artistic skills. She had been taught how to draw as a child and she became particularly good in capturing people (at least before her widowhood). This pencil sketch below was drawn from life in October 1836 by the still uncrowned 17-year-old Princess Victoria. It shows the daughter of the former Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, Lady Catherine Jenkinson, who was one of Victoria’s ladies in waiting at the time. I particularly like Victoria’s attention to hairstyle and dress which looked very Dickensians in the 1830s. 



From the Royal Collection.



  

Victoria was particularly good at drawing children and this watercolour below from 1847 is, I think, one of the most touching things she painted. It depicts Anne Fleming, the young daughter of a shepherd in Osborne, near Victoria’s residence on the Isle of Wight. The sketch fully shows Victoria’s skills with paint and shadows.



From the Royal Collection.



Another adorable child portrait by Victoria, this time of her youngest daughter Beatrice, aged 3 years. The Queen was an accomplished amateur watercolourist and she kept sketchbooks for over 60 years. Interestingly she always drew from life and very rarely produced pictures of pure imagination as her husband did above. (read more about Victoria the artist here: http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/info/QueenVictoriasSketchbook.do )



From the Royal Collection.



Princess Louise

Princess Louise (1848-1939) inherited both her parents’ artistic talents and was skilled in both painting and sculpture. Her most famous work is the statue of her mother in coronation robes which still stands before Kensington Palace in London, but she also sculpted other members of her family. This bust below represents her 16-year-old brother Leopold and it is particularly faithful to his features.



From the Royal Collection.



Queen Alexandra

As shown in Royal Paintbox the future Edward VII was taught how to copy paintings and drawings but he was notoriously too impatient to take it up as a real hobby. His wife however, Princess Alexandra of Denmark (1844-1925), possessed artistic talents of her own and managed to fit very well into the artistic royal family. Like Victoria, Alexandra also kept a sketchbook where she copied works and painted watercolours. I particularly like this simple monk she drew with a serene, benighted face—perhaps a result from the open tankard in his arms. Alexandra signed the work in the right corner with her nickname, Alix.



From the Royal Collection.



Queen Mary

Most of the artwork shown in this post comes from the Royal Collection, the department of the Royal Household that manages all the artwork owned by the British monarchy. The person most responsible for bringing the collection together was Queen Mary (1867-1953), the consort of King George V. Despite her famously austere public face Mary had a passionate love of art, something she is said to have picked up during an extended stay in Florence, Italy, when she was a teenager. Her own artistic talents were no match to the art she collected but she was still capable of producing enjoyable pieces. This watercolour of hers was painted during her extended Florentine stay in 1884, and depicts a view of the city and river from a corner of the Ponte Vecchio.

From the Royal Collection.

Prince Philip

The tradition of royal consorts taking up the family hobby has continued with Prince Philip who has been painting, mostly watercolours, since the 1950s. His most famous painting by now, The Queen at Breakfast, had remained hidden from view in his private collection until it was made public in 2010. An impressionistic work, it was painted in 1965 at Windsor Castle and captures the monarch in a private everyday moment that only a spouse could capture. I particularly like that he included the precious George Stubbs’ paintings on the wall behind the Queen, together with ordinary touches like a knife sticking out of a jar and a clunky radio sitting on the breakfast table.

 

From the Royal Collection

Prince Charles

After the Royal Paintbox documentary aired the Prince of Wales published an online gallery of his watercolours which has drawn mixed reviews. Even the staunchly monarchist Daily Telegraph called his creations ‘torpor-inducing conventional’ (see here). I must confess, I had to scout long and wide on the internet to find one of his works that didn’t look…well…ok, let’s just say it, *Booorrriing*!! The issue is that while Queen Victoria delighted in capturing people, Prince Charles seems emotionally straight-jacketed to painting empty landscapes—something Victoria only did to convey her loneliness after Albert died. Is Charles existentially lonely? In any case, technically speaking the Prince of Wales is a skilled artist—even the Daily Telegraph admitted that—and I did manage to find this lovely, fairytale view of Balmoral he painted in 1991, interestingly at the same time his fairytale wedding was crumbling apart. It is apparently worth about $10,000 on the art market.

Sarah Armstrong-Jones

The last artist on this list—as in Royal Paintbox—is someone who has finally capitalized on centuries on royal artistic tradition to become a true professional artist. Sarah Armstrong-Jones, the Queen’s niece, seems to have inherited both Princess Margaret’s passion for art and her father’s wild artistic streak, and she developed her talents at the Royal Academy School where she later won a prize in the 1998 Summer Exhibition. Her work is currently exhibited at the Redfern Gallery in London and includes still lives and landscapes, both figurative and abstract. This colorful and convoluted work is entitled ‘Still Life, 2010’.



From the Redfern Gallery.



As Sarah’s art shows the vein of artistic talent in the British Royal Family is still pulsing strong after 300 years, and who knows which other artists will arise in the future, especially close to the throne. The future is promising for royal artistry: it is worth remembering that despite being known currently more for her clothes and present bump the Duchess of Cambridge, our future Queen, graduated with a top class History of Art degree, and she chose the National Portrait Gallery in London as one of her first patronages. Perhaps one of the first toys her new baby might get when they’re old enough to play might just be an Etch a Sketch…  

Watch Royal Paintbox online (for a limited time)

or buy the DVD.

Learn more about the upcoming Royal Paintbox exhibition

at Windsor Castle.

See more royal artworks at the Royal Collection website

(use the advanced search facility).

See more of Queen Victoria’s artwork online

at Queen Victoria’s Sketchbook.

See more of Prince Charles’ paintings

at his online collection.

Queen Victoria continued drawing and painting in her old age. This watercolour of her personal servant Abdul Karim was copied in 1889 from an original by Rudolph Swoboda. 

‘A Royal Passion’: The Love History of Queen Henrietta Maria and Charles I

‘Tis the seasons for royal talks here in London and I have booked tickets for a whole bunch of events on the history of the monarchy over the next few months. The most prolific royal events organizer is Historic Royal Palaces, the organization that looks after Hampton Court, the Tower of London and other former royal residences in London. I attended the first talk I booked with them last week at the Banqueting Hall, the 17^th century building in Whitehall outside which Charles I was beheaded. The subject suitably was the passionate, romantic relationship between Charles and his queen, Henrietta Maria of France.

The talk was given by an expert on the matter, Katie Whitaker, author of A Royal Passion: The Turbulent Marriage of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. It was a straight talk, unfortunately marred occasionally by the bad acoustics of the undercroft, the space beneath the Hall where the event was being held (incidentally this undercroft was originally built as a drinking den for King James I.) Katie’s talk was pre-written but she also took off-the-cuff questions from the audience afterwards, including yours truly. Guests were also allowed to wander up the Hall upstairs before the event and I took some nice pictures:



The Banqueting Hall, once the site of Charles and Henrietta’s lavish celebrations.



When Katie began talking about Charles I and Henrietta Maria sharing ‘one of the great love stories of royal history’ I must confess I furrowed my brows deeply. Love is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about those two, particularly with regards to Henrietta Maria who I usually refer to as ‘The Ruin of England’—that’s for pushing Charles onto the brink of Civil War and for injecting Catholicism into the Stuart line. Katie however was very good in showing that when you delve into the many private letters between the two a very different picture emerges of them as human beings, and the one who benefits the most from this second look is Henrietta Maria.

17^th Century Wooing

Charles and Henrietta were first paired together for reasons that had nothing to do with love. As all 17^th century royal marriages, their pairing was first and foremost political. The original plan had been for Charles to marry a Spanish princess to ally Britain with the powerful Hapsburgs, but when that fell through a typical diplomatically inverted plan was hatched to instead seek an alliance with France, the Hapsburgs’ main foe. As it happens, there was only one available princess left in the French Royal Family, Henrietta Maria, the 14-year old youngest daughter of King Henri IV Bourbon.

On paper the two seemed completely mismatched. Charles was stiff, ceremonial, shy, and scarred by a traumatic childhood when he had been bullied by his older brother Henry. Henrietta was instead passionate, vivacious, fun-loving, and had grown up in a large, close-knit family. On top of that, Charles was deeply committed to the Anglican faith (it would be the main cause of his undoing) while Henrietta was passionately and obstinately Catholic, and remained so all her life.



Charles and Henrietta by Daniel Mytens. It took a while before
 the two overcame their differences.

 

Things got even more complicated because their courtship was carried out by ambassadors who tried selling the two young people to each other. Henrietta was told that by marrying Charles she would become queen of three kingdoms (England, Scotland and Ireland), while Charles heard praises about her singing. The wedding was actually conducted by proxy in Paris in May 1625 with a distant French relative standing in for Charles, and the result was that Henrietta found herself at the age of 15 married to a man she had never met, about to move to a country she did not know, where they spoke a language she did not understand.  

Royal Newlyweds Kept Apart

Katie described in great detail an incident that took place at the time of Charles and Henrietta’s first meeting in Canterbury in June 1625, a meeting which set the tone for their entire first year of marriage. As Charles and Henrietta got into a coach to drive away there was a quarrel about the fact that one of Henrietta’s ladies in waiting, a close friend she had brought from France, was not allowed to board the coach with her. Many accounts say that it was Henrietta that threw a strop, setting a prickly pattern that continued throughout their first years of marriage. During that time the couple experienced disastrous quarrels and disagreements, resulting in very little intimacy between them demonstrated by a lack of pregnancies. This was the time that Henrietta acquired her reputation as a spoiled, temperamental foreign Queen.

However Katie told us that her research revealed a different picture of Henrietta from the one we have become accustomed to, starting from that faithful incident at Canterbury in the beginning. Slaving away at the British Library and the National Archives, Katie found evidence that it was not Henrietta who had thrown a tantrum about the lady in waiting and coach business, but instead the French and English ambassadors. Previously unexplored letters show that Henrietta on that first occasion had actually shown herself completely submissive to Charles’ will. So what had happened?

Katie revealed that the familiar picture of a spoiled Henrietta Maria causing her marriage to almost collapse  was doctored, and that the people truly responsible for Charles and Henrietta’s newlywed troubles were their respective courts. Henrietta had arrived in England with a huge coterie of French courtiers who pressured her to remain loyal to them and to France—she even refused to learn English—while Charles was being manipulated by his favorite George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, who had previously manipulated his father, King James I. In very simple terms, there were too many people involved in this relationship, almost all of them determined to drive a wedge between the young married couple, who were in fact struggling very hard to reach out to one another.

George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham,
the annoying third wheel in the royal marriage.

 

Things began to improve in 1626 when an exasperated Charles dismissed Henrietta’s French courtiers back to France—some who refused to leave had to be physically ejected by guards—but what really saved the marriage was the sudden murder of the manipulator-in-chief, the Duke in Buckingham, in 1628. His death was a tragic loss to Charles, Katie said, who was a very needy person and had relied very heavily on Buckingham for emotional closeness. With him gone Henrietta stepped into the void, almost immediately in fact by rushing to Charles to console him about his grief. The two bonded and the emotional seal they forged during that occasion transformed their marriage from a farce into a love story, or as Katie called it, contemporary Europe’s most famous marital bliss. Their first child was born soon after their rapprochement.

War and Death

Their bond increased during the Civil War when Henrietta Maria exerted a huge psychological influence on Charles’ course of action. Katie reminded the audience that Henrietta, even after she left England for the safety of France, wrote to Charles emphatically to ‘continue in your resolution’ and not give in to compromise (Charles was naturally inclined to waffling and wavering). But it was interesting to hear that in some respects Henrietta was far more practical than Charles on what the end result of their struggle should be. After Charles allied himself with the Scots he was faced with the dilemma of having to convert to Presbyterianism in order to retain Scottish support against Parliament. Henrietta saw no dilemma at all: “Do you want to be a Presbyterian king or no king at all?” she wrote to him. In her Catholic mind there was no difference between one silly Protestant sect or another, and she believed that Charles should do anything necessary to regain unfettered control of his throne—absolutism seemed in fact to have been her true religion in life.



The end of Charles I, a shock for the nation and for Henrietta Maria.



Katie said their love story continued until the end, which came in January 1649 when Charles was beheaded right outside the walls of the Banqueting House where the talk was taking place. Their correspondence had ceased long before during Charles’ Parliamentary captivity but Henrietta had hoped against hope that her husband could be rescued. When the news of his death was given to her while in exile in Paris she rose from her chair in shock, unable to speak or to move. She remained that way, ‘deaf and insensible’ for over an hour while priests and ladies tried to rouse her, and looked far more traumatized by the loss of Charles the man rather than Charles the king. The man who had brought the dreadful news to Henrietta had been Sir Henry Jermyn, one of her favourite courtiers, and Katie did take the time during the Q&A session to dispel some rumours that Henrietta had secretly married Jermyn afterwards.

The Real Henrietta Maria

My question to Katie during Q&As was about Henrietta’s most basic aspect and also one of the most elusive: what did she look like? Van Dyke’s portraits of her are all infamously hairbrushed to make her look more beautiful than she was. Katie admitted that her true appearance is still a mystery but by all accounts she was far less flattering than her portraits show. She certainly had protruding teeth—some of which had even been pulled out!—and narrow features, all of which became more pronounced after the stress of going through nine pregnancies and experiencing the hardships of war and exile. Henrietta herself once said poignantly that no woman could look good after her 20s.

Katie said however that it was not looks that attracted people to Henrietta Maria, but her personality. Henrietta was charming, vivacious, and had an unparalleled ability to make people fall in love with her. Katie told the story of how a teenage Sophia of Hanover, Charles’ niece (and mother of the future George I), was shocked when she first met her because Henrietta looked nothing like her portraits and her teeth were “coming out of her mouth like tusks.” Once she got to know her however she was charmed and became absolutely devoted to her.



One of Anthony Van Dyck’s portraits of Henrietta Maria, c.1636-1638:
A masterpiece of illusion.



I had a further chance to speak to Katie at the end of the talk and asked her what she thought of Henrietta Maria after learning so much about her. She confessed that at first she was reluctant to write her book given Henrietta’s reputation but after learning about her directly through her letters she had become fascinated by the portrait that came out, even quietly linking her. “They were like chalk and cheese”, she said of the royal couple, and in a way perfectly suited for each other since each had what the other lacked. Once they were finally left alone without interferences their differences meshed into a life of marital bliss. We also agreed that, though Henrietta was a definite contributing factor to the Civil War, given Charles’ personality and beliefs (and Parliament’s make-up) war would have come even without her in the mix.

Henrietta Maria of France caused trouble to the English monarchy, both during the Civil War and through the obstinate Catholicism she passed to her children. Katie Whitaker however seems to have done a good job in her book of humanizing the woman behind the myth, the lover behind the demonized English Queen. Henrietta was passionate, charming, captivating, and completely committed to her husband and to the Crown—perhaps too much committed to the latter which turned out to be her undoing. There is certainly a lot more to discover about her, and Katie’s book about her marriage is a good starting point. In any case, it was a great talk by Historic Royal Palaces to start my royal talks season this year. Who knows what else I’ll find out in the coming weeks…

Get Katie Whitaker’s book at Amazon,

and read a review of it in the Daily Telegraph.

  

Read more about Henrietta Maria at Wikipedia.

Discover more events at London’s Historic Royal Palaces

 this Spring and Summer.

   



Charles and Henrietta with their first two children,
the future Charles II and James II, by Van Dyck, 1633.
The family closeness depicted here was not an illusion.



A True Iron Lady: Elizabeth I’s Speech at Tilbury, 1588.

Margaret Thatcher’s passing this week reminded me how lucky England has been to have had a good share of courageous women, many of them women rulers. Maggie was just the last in a long line of iron ladies stretching back 2,000 years, all the way to Boudicca. And of course, the best and bravest of them all was the woman Margaret Thatcher is being compared to by some at the moment, but who in fact has no comparison in our history: Elizabeth I.

Elizabeth faced many moments in her life where she had to master all her courage, from the time in her youth when she was imprisoned in the Tower, to the attempted rebellion of her favourite, the Earl of Essex, in the twilight of her reign. But the biggest danger of all was the attempted invasion of the realm by the Spanish Armada in August 1588. This was the occasion of the most famous speech of her reign, the Tilbury Speech.

Tilbury, in south Essex, was the site of an encampment of 5,000 soldiers assembled by Elizabeth’s favorite, the capable Earl of Leicester, who was acting as Captain General of the Queen’s armies in spite of a deteriorating long-term sickness. The soldiers were to be London’s first line of defense at the mouth of the Thames if the Spaniards were to make landfall. In fact, by the time this force was being readied the worst of the danger had passed. The naval Armada had first been weakened by English ships off the coast of Flanders, and then it had been scattered by the famous ‘Protestant Wind’ up the North Sea. But the Spanish still had 16,000 land troops assembled across the Channel in Flanders, commanded by the Duke of Parma, and it was feared that a more Catholic wind might carry them ashore in England after all. An invasion was still expected at any moment, and it was against this danger that Elizabeth mastered her courage and decided to go to Tilbury herself, to rouse everyone else’s courage.

Elizabeth arrives at Tilbury on a white steed,
while the Spanish Armada burns off Flanders in the distance.

On August 8, 1588 (O.S.), Elizabeth boarded her state barge in London and was rowed down the Thames to Tilbury, accompanied by Yeomen of the Guard. When she arrived at the camp, she rode among her troops upon a white gelding, held by the bridles by Leicester himself, while the Earl of Ormond carried the sword of state before her, and drummers sounded their drums. As she passed, pikes and pennants were lowered in respect, and with tears in her eyes she kept calling out ‘God bless you all!” and many soldiers responded by falling to their knees and calling out ‘God save the Queen!’ However she did not speak at length that day. After a brief prayer service she retired to a nearby house, suitably prepared for the royal visit by Leicester, and spent the night there.

It was the day later that the famous speech took place, ‘the real event of 1588’ as Simon Schama once famously said. On the morning of August 9 she returned to camp, greeted by such loud cheers and applauses that ‘the earth and air did sound like thunder.’ There was some military entertainment prepared by the troops, then a parade—and then, ‘most bravely mounted on a stately steed’, dressed in a silver breastplate on a white velvet dress, holding a gold and silver leader’s truncheon in her hand (it all must have looked transfixing in the open air), Elizabeth, virgin queen married to her people, delivered this oration:

My loving people

We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery. But I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good-will of my subjects.

And therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live and die amongst you all, to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust.

I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too! And think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm. To which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.

I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns. And we do assure you on a word of a prince, they shall be duly paid. In the meantime, my lieutenant general (i.e. Leicester) shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject.

Not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people!

‘All at once a mighty shout or cry’ came up from the soldiers when she had finished. The speech had been short but it contained all that the soldiers, and England, needed to hear: I have trust in you, and you and I will defend this country to the death. It was the first recorded speech given by a Queen on a field of battle and carried echoes down the centuries, all the way to Churchill’s speeches on the eve of another threatened invasion of the realm. Leicester wrote that  her words ‘had so inflamed the hearts of her good subjects, as I think the weakest among them is able to match the proudest Spaniard that dares land in England.’ One of the Queen’s chaplains, Dr Lionel Sharp, had been charged with taking down her words, and the day later the speech was re-read to all the troops that had been too far from the Queen to understand it clearly (this is the text that has come down to us).



The Earl of Leicester, the great organizer of Elizabeth’s performances, including her appearance at Tilbury.

 

The feared battle, in the end, never came. The Duke of Parma decided it was futile to venture his land troops across the Channel without strong naval support. The danger passed and the Queen came back to London. Once it was clear that the Spanish had been defeated there was much rejoicing and celebrations, and a solemn procession to a service of thanksgiving in Old St Paul’s in November 1588. Sadly, the man who had stage-managed the glorious appearance at Tilbury, the Earl of Leicester, did not live to see the festivities. Too sick to recover, he died of cancer four weeks after the day of the speech, leaving a bitter tinge to the Queen’s own experience of the celebrations.

Elizabeth, wrote the impartial Venetian ambassador, ‘had not lost her presence of mind for a single moment, nor neglected aught that was necessary for the occasion. Her acuteness in resolving the action, her courage in carrying it out, showed her high-spirited desire for glory and her resolve to save her country and herself.’ Dressed in her metal breastplate, she had shown herself to be a true Iron Lady.   

Read more on the Tilbury Speech at Being Bess, Ashlie Jensen’s blog completely dedicated to Elizabeth I.

Read more on Wikipedia on alternative versions of the Tilbury speech, and about the Spanish Armada.



Rejoice! George Gower’s Armada Portrait, c.1588.

A gloriously attired Bess presides over the victorious English ships (top left)

and the Protestant wind scattering Spanish ships (top right).

Her hand on the globe rests on North America (Spain laid claim to South America).