CHAPTER III.ROYAL WOMEN.
“The country prospers when a woman rules.”
“The country prospers when a woman rules.”
“The country prospers when a woman rules.”
Inorder to simplify and classify the mass of material at hand, it is advisable to take by their degree the ranks of women among the Anglo-Normans. Among the Queens, only because they precede in order of time and of number, we may take first
Queens Consort.—In Doomsday Book, Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror, is entered as holding of the King, many lands forfeited by the Saxons. “She was made the feudal possessor of the lands of Beortric, Earl of Gloucester, hence the practice of settling the Lordship of Bristol on the Queen generally, prevailed for centuries. On her death in 1083, her lands went back to the King by feudal tenure. The Conqueror kept them in his own hands, meaning them for his and her youngest son Henry, who afterwards succeeded.” (Seyer’s “Memoirs of Bristol,” chap. iv., p. 318). Later queens had separate establishments, officers and privy purse. “The Aurum Reginæ, or Queen’s Gold, is distinguished from all otherdebts and duties belonging to the Queen of this Realme. All other revenues proceed to her from the grace of the King, this by the common law ... which groweth upon all fines paid to the King, licenses, charters, pardons, of which she receives one-tenth part. After her death the King recovers his right to hold this tenth. This duty hath been enjoyed by the Queens from Eleanor, wife of Henry II. to Anne, second wife of Henry VIII.” (Hakewell’s speech in Parliament on Aurum Reginæ. Addit. MSS., Brit. Mus. 25, 255.)
Even to our own days Queens Consort have had the privilege of acting asfemes soles. But in early times they exercised considerably more power in the State than we realise to-day. They sat in the Councils, even in the presence of the Kings, and gave their consent to measures along with Kings and Nobles. “The Queen-wife of England also superscribed her nameovertheir warrants or letters of public direction or command, although in the time of Henry VIII. the fashion was that the queens wrote their names over the left side of the first line of such warrants, and notoverthem asthe Kings do” (Selden’s “Titles of Honour”). But as many of the Queens Consort, though thus entitled to be ranked among “Freewomen,” were not of native extraction; we do not dwell upon all their privileges, preferring to hasten on to those that indubitably were British Freewomen.
Queens Regnant.—The first critical moment in the History of Queens Regnant occurs at the death of Henry I., who had, as he considered, arranged satisfactorilyfor the succession of his daughter Matilda. His attempt proved that the French Salic Law had not been made law in England. A quaint account of his proceeding occurs in the “Lives of the Berkeleys,” published by the Gloucester Archæological Society, 1835, p. 2. “King Harri the first, third sonne of King William the Conqueror, had issue remaining one daughter named Maude ... the sayd King Harri send for his foresayd daughter Maude the Emparice into England, and in open Parliament declared and ordeyned her to bee his eire. To whom then and there were sworen all the lordes of England, and made unto her sewte, admittinge her for his eire. Amongs whom principally and first was sworen Stephen Earle of Boleyn, nevowe of the sayd King Harri the first.” But as Selden says, “I do very well know, that our perjured barons, when they resolved to exclude Queen Maud from the English throne, made this shameful pretence, ‘that it would be a shame for so many nobles to be subject to one woman.’ And yet you shall not read, that the Iceni, our Essex men got any shame by that Boadicea, whom Gildas terms a lioness” (Janus Anglorum). The same author, in noting the laws made by various kings, enters the reign of Stephen as that of an unrighteous king who had no time to make laws for the protection of the kingdom, because he had to fight in defence of his own unjust claim. “In 1136 Henry of England died, and Stephen Earl of Boulogne succeeded. At Mass on the Day of his Coronation, by some mistake,the peace of God was forgotten to be pronounced on the people” (“Antiquitates,” Camden). Prynne calls him “the perjured usurping King Stephen.” The general uncertainty of the succession is betokened in the struggle. Very probably had there not been a Stephen to stir up the nobles, the country might have rested peaceably under the rule of Matilda.
It seems strange that the oldest Charters of the express Creation of the title of Comes (Count or Earl) are those of Queen Maud, who first created the Earldom of Essex and the Earldom of Hereford. To Aubrey de Vere also she granted the Earldom of Cambridge, or another title if he preferred it, and he chose the Earldom of Oxford. A struggle like the Wars of the Roses was closed by the death of Stephen and the peaceable succession of Matilda’s son, Henry II.
Another lady of the family was supplanted by the proverbially “cruel uncle.” King John in 1202 made prisoners of his nephew, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and the Princess Eleanor, his sister, called “The Beauty of Brittany.” Arthur is supposed to have been murdered by his uncle, and Eleanor was confined for forty years in Bristol Castle. A true daughter of Constance, she is said to have possessed a high and invincible spirit, and to have constantly insisted on her right to the throne, which was probably the reason that she spent her life in captivity. (Seethe close Rolls of the Tower of London, and the Introduction xxxv.)
But the second real crisis was that which closed theWars of the Roses. Another Stephen appeared in Henry VII., who, fortunately for the people, simplified matters by marrying Elizabeth of York, the rightful heir. Jealous in the extreme of his wife’s prerogative, he used his high hand as the conqueror of Richard and the Kingdom, delayed her coronation as long as he dared, ignored her in his councils, and magnified his relation as husband, to the extinction of her glory as Queen.
Henry VIII. enjoyed to the full the advantage of an undisputed succession. He restricted the rights of Queens Consort, as his father had ignored the rights of Queens Regnant. A strange Nemesis followed, foretold in the so-called prophecies of Merlin. That these really were talked of, before the events occurred, can be proved by MSS. among the uncalendared papers temp. Henry VIII. Public Record Office. There is in full “the Examination of John Ryan of St. Botolphs, Fruiterer, concerning discourses which he heard at the Bell on Tower Hill, Prophecies of Merlin, that there never again would be King crowned of England after the King’s son Prince Edward, 22nd August, 1538.” James V. of Scotland had sadly said on his death-bed, “The Kingdom came with a lass, and it will go with a lass.” So was it to be in England. The pale sickly youth who succeeded, third of the Tudors, died without wife or child, and on the steps of the throne stood four royal women, whose lives form the most interesting period of national history. Each of them had a special claim. Mary, pronounced illegitimate by the Protestantparty, and by statute of Parliament, inherited through her father’swillalone; Elizabeth, pronounced illegitimate by the Catholic party, and by a similar statute, stood second in that will; Mary, Queen of Scotland and of France, showed flawless descent from Margaret, the elder sister of Henry VIII.; and Lady Jane Grey proved like flawless descent from Mary, Henry’s younger sister.
Henry, a despot even “by his dead hand,” had, failing Edward, left the crown to Mary, then to Elizabeth, then to Lady Jane Grey. Edward VI., not a minor by the laws of England that allowed Government to commence at fourteen years, considered both his sisters illegitimate under his father’s statutes, preferring of the two Elizabeth’s claim. But for the peace of the kingdom he left bywillthe crown to Lady Jane Grey, ignoring, as his father had done, the prior claims of Mary, Queen of Scotland and of France. The results of the complication are too well known to be here rehearsed.
The first act of Mary was to establish her own legitimacy, the honour of her mother, and the power of the Pope; her second was to establish the office of Queen Regnant “by Statute to be so clear that none but the malitious and ignorant could be induced and persuaded unto this Error and Folly to think that her Highness coulde ne should have enjoye and use such like Royal Authoritie ... nor doo ne execute and use all things concerning the Statute (in which only the name of the King was expressed) as the Kinges of this Realme, hermost noble Progenitours have heretofore doon, used and exercised” (1 Mar., c. iii.)
Both she and her sister, at their coronations, were girt with the sword of State, and invested with the spurs of knighthood, to show that they were military as well as civil rulers. Fortunately for her country, and for herself, Elizabeth lived and died a maiden Queen. The bitter consequences of her sister’s Spanish alliance taught her the importance of independence as a ruler. Whatever we may individually think of her character, all must allow her reign to have been in every way the most brilliant in the history of our country, only equalled in our own times by that of a Matron Queen, who has held the reins of Government in her own hand and whose husband came to the land but as Prince Consort. Queen Anne’s reign is also worthy of note, and can bear comparison with that of most Kings, for its military successes, and its literary activities.
Queens Regent.—Selden argues against Bodin of Anjou, who upheld the Salic Law, “are not discretion and strength, courage, and the arts of Government more to be desired and required in those who have the tuition of kings in their minority, than in the kings themselves till they are come of age?” He considers the French use of Queens as Regents to be destructive of their own theories.
Queens as Regent-Tutors of young kings have not held the same position in England as they did in France or in Scotland. But as governing Regents and Viceroys theyhave often done good service. William of Normandy more than once left the country in charge of his Queen. Richard I., by commission, appointed his mother, Eleanor, to be Regent of the Kingdom in his absence, and wrote to her to find the money for his ransom when imprisoned abroad. She sat as Judge in the Curia Regis, taking her seat on the King’s Bench by right of her office. She granted concessions to the inhabitants of Oléron (to women as to men) even down to the reign of John (1 John;see“Rymer’s Fœdera”). Edward III. found his Queen Philippa a Queen Regent worthy of himself. Henry V. appointed his mother as Regent in his absence, and even Henry VIII., when he went abroad on his last French War, left his Queen, Catherine Parr, Governor of the Kingdom. I have gone through their correspondence in the Public Record Office, and it bears ample testimony to her capability and his trust in her judgment. In “OliveversusIngram,” 1739, it is noted, “Queen Caroline was once appointed Regentor of the Kingdom.”
It was with little less than Vice Regal splendour and power that Joan, Dowager Countess of Pembroke, ruled the Palatinate for nine years in the reign of Edward I.; or Isabel de Burgo in that of Edward II., or Agnes de Hastings in that of Edward III.; ruling in the stead of their sons until the youths attained majority at the age of twenty-one.