PART III
12
In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne from his cousin Richard II, ushering in a century of intermittent conflict as different branches of the royal family vied for the throne. This conflict is known as the Wars of the Roses and it impacted directly not just on the lives of the kings concerned but also on the lives of the queens and the nature of their office. The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century queens were, in general, markedly less powerful than their earlier post-conquest predecessors as queenship to some extent reverted to its pre-conquest antecedents. With a few notable exceptions, the fifteenth-century kings were almost entirely focussed on England and, by the mid-fifteenth century, all but Calais of the once vast continental empire had been lost. This meant that kings had no option but to focus on England, which led to a diminished scope for queenly political power. At a time when kings could be made and deposed by noblemen, queens, whose power was dependent on these kings, were in as vulnerable a position as they had been before the Norman conquest. This vulnerability continued into the sixteenth century and the Tudor period.
In spite of the great changes to society, queenship in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries remained superficially similar to what had gone before. As in earlier periods, queens were, first and foremost, expected to be fertile and produce an heir. This was always the primary function of a queen in medieval England and it was no exception for late medieval queens. Margaret of Anjou, who was the queen of Henry VI, was in a very difficult position until she finally bore a son after seven years of marriage and she must have been relieved to prove to her critics that she was not sterile. Anne Neville, the wife of Richard III, also found herself in danger following the death of her only child in 1484 when her husband’s attitude abruptly changed towards her. Rumours quickly emerged that Richard meant to divorce his sickly wife to marry a more fertile woman and, by Christmas 1484, it was whispered around that Richard was even trying to hasten his wife’s death.1 Richard may have spread the rumour that his wife was already dead in the hope that the shock would kill her. Hall’s Chronicle describes its version of the event:
When the quene heard tell that so horrible a rumour of her death was sprong emongest the comminallie she sore suspected and judged the world to be almost at an ende with her, and in that sorofull agony, she with lamentable countenaunce of sorofull chere, repaired to the presence of the kyng her husband, demaundynge of hym, what it should meane that he had judged her worthy to die. The kyng aunswered her with fake woordes, and with dissimulynge blandimentes and flattering lesynges comforted her, biddynge her to be of good comforte, for to his knowledge she should have none other cause.2
Anne lost her husband’s love and respect with the death of her only child and, in early 1485, she died unlamented by Richard. A good queen was one who produced healthy sons in the late medieval period, just as had always been the case in England. The most extreme example of this was the six wives of Henry VIII and his willingness to dispose of wives who could not bear sons. As a number of later medieval queens found to their cost, to be a good queen was to be a fertile one.
The expectation of conspicuious piety in good queens also continued into the later medieval period. This position did, however, become more complex in the Tudor period. With the Reformation, it became possible to be pious in the wrong religion. Catherine of Aragon and her successor, Anne Boleyn, for example, are good examples of this. Anne Boleyn is known to have had Protestant sympathies and, as a heretic, she was chastised by Catholics. However, to the Protestants of her daughter’s reign she was seen almost as a saint, challenging the superstitions of Catholicism. Catherine of Aragon is also today remembered for her piety but, to Protestants in the sixteenth century, she was seen as both superstitious, ignorant and certainly not someone to admire. Catherine’s daughter, Mary I, was also very pious and to some she was a great queen. However, to the majority of her Protestant subjects, she was seen as a dangerous fanatic in her attempts to restore Catholicism, just as her predecessor, Lady Jane Grey, might have been seen by her Catholic subjects had she lived longer. To be a good queen in the late medieval period was still to be a pious one. However, the Reformation added another layer to this and it was also necessary to be religious in the accepted way. Henry VIII’s last queen, Catherine Parr, is a particularly good example of this and, in 1546, was nearly arrested for heresy due to her radical Protestantism.3 Only Catherine’s intelligence saved her and she claimed to the king that she had only been outspoken in her religion in order to engage him in conversation so that she could learn from him.4 Clearly, therefore, it was possible for a queen to be too religious in the Tudor period and Mary I’s notoriety, for example, is linked to her religious faith.
Changes to religion were not the only changes to occur in England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and, on the whole, the country was a much more insular nation than it had previously been. Although Henry VI very nearly conquered France in the early fifteenth century, by the middle of his son’s reign all that remained of England’s continental possessions was Calais. The loss of the continental territories meant that, unlike their earlier post-conquest predecessors, fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury kings had less reason to leave England and so there was also less scope for their wives to be called upon to become regents. Henry IV and Henry VI, for example, remained in England throughout their reigns and Edward IV, Henry VI’s successor, only left England once voluntarily, for a brief campaign in France. On this campaign he did indeed leave his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, as regent, but this proved to be only a brief period of authority bearing little resemblance to the long regencies of her predecessors such as Matilda of Scotland and Eleanor of Provence. Richard III and Henry VII did not leave England during their reigns although Edward IV’s grandson, Henry VIII, also left England on two brief campaigns in France, leaving his wives, Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Parr, as regents in turn.5 A queen was still considered to be a suitable regent in late medieval England but the lack of opportunities for regencies meant that, in reality, any political power that they might have would be limited. Moreover a regency was by no means certain and, when Henry VI came to the throne when he was less than a year old, it was never even suggested that his mother, Catherine of Valois should rule for him – instead she was kept firmly in the background.
The lack of opportunities for regencies also meant that queens were no longer expected to have a political role. Consequently a development can be seen in the ideas of what made a good queen and what made a bad queen. Elizabeth of York, for example, is remembered very favourably and this is largely due to her apparent lack of personal ambition, modestly accepting the crown matrimonial rather than asserting her own right to the crown as heiress of England.6 Elizabeth of York is always compared favourably to Margaret of Anjou, for example, and Margaret’s bad reputation is based largely on her political activity. However, even the mild Elizabeth of York was viewed as a potential political threat by her husband and, according to Francis Bacon, ‘it lay plain before his eyes, that if he relied upon that title [claiming the throne through Elizabeth], he could be but a king at courtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power; the right remaining in his queen, upon whose decease, either with issue, or without issue, he was to give place and be removed’.7 Mary I was also extremely popular until she was forced to become a fully political figure. Immediately she appeared unwomanly to her people and is remembered as a corrupt queen, just as her predecessor as queen regnant, the Empress Matilda, had been. In late medieval England, therefore, good queens were expected to be domestic and pious, something that most of the notorious queens of the period were decidedly not.
The change to a more insular style of kingship also had another effect on the power of the queen and reflects a partial return to the Anglo-Saxon style of queenship. Anglo-Saxon kings generally selected their wives from the nobility and this reflected the fact that their interests primarily lay in England. This changed dramatically in the postconquest period and, between the late eleventh century and the fourteenth century, royal wives were mostly selected from continental families in an attempt to safeguard foreign possessions. By the late fifteenth century, however, there were no English possessions on the continent and kings appear to have looked increasingly to gaining English wives. Edward IV, for example, selected the English Elizabeth Woodville for his bride. Whilst this marriage caused scandal, the fact that it happened at all does highlight a change in ideas of both kingship and queenship. Edward’s brother, Richard III, followed his brother’s example in marrying the English Anne Neville. Anne had previously been married to Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, which highlights her perceived suitability to be a queen of England. Edward IV’s grandson, Henry VIII also followed this idea enthusiastically, marrying four Englishwomen and doing more than any other king to demonstrate the potential for an Englishwoman who attracted the king. This policy did have a down side, as many English queens discovered. An English queen did not, by definition, have a powerful foreign family to protect her in times of trouble and this can be seen clearly, once again, in a comparison of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Catherine of Aragon, as the aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor, was merely divorced by Henry. Anne, as the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, was executed. As with their Anglo-Saxon predecessors, English-born queens in the later medieval period must have quickly come to realise that their position also made them uniquely vulnerable to the whims of their husbands and enemies.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were therefore dangerous times for queens. The fate and reputation of many queens were tied up with the Wars of the Roses. When Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne in 1399, becoming Henry IV, he set in motion a conflict that would last for a century. Henry IV was the son of Edward III’s third son and took the throne from the only descendant of the first son. However, the second son, Lionel of Antwerp, had produced a daughter and by the reign of Henry VI, who was Henry IV’s grandson, that daughter’s claim was represented by her descendant, Richard, Duke of York. York was able to exploit Henry VI’s ineptitude to highlight his own superior claim to the throne and, after years of conflict, his son, Edward IV, was able to snatch the throne from his cousin. In 1483, on Edward’s own death, the throne passed to his young son, Edward V, but the throne was again usurped, this time by the boy’s uncle, Richard III. Finally, in 1485, the last remaining Lancastrian claimant, Henry VII, took the crown, marrying Elizabeth of York and uniting the two warring houses. The descendants of the couple never felt entirely safe on their thrones. Henry VIII and his children persecuted their relatives to ensure the stability of their own position.
The Wars of the Roses characterised the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, causing violence and confusion in the fifteenth century and then fuelling Tudor paranoia in the sixteenth. The conflict also had a major effect on the reputations of the queens of the period, with some such as Margaret of Anjou sometimes forced to take an active and unpopular course. However the conflict also had another, less foreseeable outcome: by the mid-sixteenth century there were very few people alive who possessed a credible claim to the throne. When Edward VI cast around for someone to succeed him in 1553, all the plausible candidates proved to be female, making it inevitable that England would finally have its first effective queen regnant.
Queenship during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was often insecure and the office itself was changeable. It was still based firmly on its Anglo-Saxon and post-conquest foundations but in the turbulent times of the fifteenth century, queens often had to adapt to fulfil a more varied role. By the mid-sixteenth century, England was moving away from the medieval period into the early modern period. However, queens such as Mary Tudor still consciously looked back at the medieval past for a model of queenship, proving that, even in adverse and unprecedented circumstances, English queenship remained a recognisable office with guidelines on how to be a good queen and avoid notoriety. Joan of Navarre, Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I are all remembered as notorious and they all, at least according to their contemporaries, failed to live up to the ideal of a good queen. As with the earlier queens, however, there was often a motive behind the attacks on the women, usually tied up in the politics of the day. Due to the difficulties of the period in which they lived, all of these women found themselves in dangerous situations and, as their own party diminished in power they were actively attacked, leading to the destruction of their reputations. Once again, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, women proved particularly vulnerable to attack and the mostly English queens of this period proved as vulnerable as any, to their considerable cost.