THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND.
THE
HISTORY OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND
BY
FREDERIC G. BAGSHAWE,
BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
IN TWO VOLUMES— VOLUME 1.
LONDON, EDINBURGH & GLASGOW
SANDS & COMPANY
ST. LOUIS, MO.
B. HERDER, 17 SOUTH BROADWAY 1912
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
To MY FRIEND W. H.VV. K.
TO WHOM I AM UNDER GREAT OBLIGATIONS IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS BOOK.
F. G. B
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE.
The Saxons.— Edgar the Atheling.— St. Margaret, . 1-15
CHAPTER II.
The Normans. — William the Conquerer.— The Conqueror's
Marriage. — Gundreda Countess of Surrey, . . 16-31
CHAPTER III.
Matilda of Flanders. — The Conqueror's Daughters. — Robert II., Duke of Normandy. —William Clito.— William Rufus. — Henry I. — Henry's Wives, .... 32-46
CHAPTER IV.
The Empress Matilda. — Stephen and his Wife. — Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester. — Matilda's Younger Sons. — Stephen's Sons. — Mary Countess of Boulogne, . . 47-62
CHAPTER V. Henry II.— Eleanor of Aquitaine. — Henry's Daughters, . . 63-78,
CHAPTER VI.
Henry and Geoffrey, Sons of Henry II. — Constance and Prince Arthur. — Richard I. — John. — Eleanor of Aquitaine. — Berengariaof Navarre. — John's Wives. — John's Daughters Joanna and Isabella, ..... 79~94
CHAPTER VII.
King Henry III.— His Wife.— Richard Earl of Cornwall, titular King of the Romans.---His Wives and Sons. — Simon de Montford, Earl of Leicester. — Eleanor his Wife, Sister of Henry III.— The de Montfords.— The Daughters of Henry III. ...... 95-110
VI
Contents.
CHAPTER VIII.
Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster. — Thomas and Henry his Sons, second and third Earls of Lancaster. — Henry First Duke of Lancaster. — Edward I. — His Wives. — His Daughters Eleanor and Joanna,
CHAPTER IX.
Edward I.'s younger Daughters. — Thomas Earl of Norfolk. — The Mowbrays. — Edmund Earl of Kent. — Edward II. — Isabella of France.— John of Eltham. — Edward I I.'s Daughters,
CHAPTER X.
Edward III.— Queen Philippa.— The Black Prince.— Joanna of Kent— Richard II.— His Wives.— The Hollands,
CHAPTER XI.
Edward III.'s Daughters.— Thomas Duke of Gloucester —The Staffords. — Lionel Duke of Clarence. — The Mortimers, .
CHAPTER XII.
Edmund Duke of York.— His Sons, Edward Duke of York and Richard Earl of Cambridge.— John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. — John of Gaunt's Daughters. — The Nevilles. —The Beauforts,
CHAPTER XIII.
Henry IV. — Joanna of Navarre. — Henry IV.'s Daughters. — Thomas Duke of Clarence. — John Duke of Bedford. — Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. — Henry V.
CHAPTER XIV.
Henry VI. — Margaret of Anjou. — Richard Duke of York. — Edward IV.'s Sisters.— The de la Poles, .
CHAPTER XV.
Edmund Earl of Rutland. — George Duke of Clarence. — Clarence's Son and Daughter, Edward Earl of Warwick and Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. — The Poles.— Edward IV.— His Wife.— The Woodvilles and Greys.— Richard III.— His Wife, . .
PAGE.
III-I29
130-148
149-167
168-188
189-209
210-229
230-245
246-264
Contents. vii
CHAPTER XVI.
PAGE.
Katherine of France and the Tudors. — Margaret Countess of Richmond.— Henry VII.— Edward IV.'s Daughters. The Courtenays, .... . 265-281
CHAPTER XVII. Henry VIII.— Katharine of Aragon, .... 282-297
CHAPTER XVIII. Anne Boleyn. — Jane Seymour. — Anne of Cleves, . . 298-311
CHAPTER XIX. Katharine Howard. — Katharine Parr, . . . 312-323
CHAPTER XX. The Howards. — Edward VI. — Edward Seymour, Duke of
Somerset. — The Dudleys. — The Percys, . . . 324-332
CHAPTER XXI. The Claimants to the Throne on the Death of Edward VI.—
Mary I. . 333~35i
CHAPTER XXII.
Queen Elizabeth. — Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk. — Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, — Henry and Frances Grey, Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, . 352-366
CHAPTER XXIII.
Jane Grey. — Katharine Grey, Countess of Hertford. — The
Seymours, . . . . . . 366-374
History of the Royal Family of England.
CHAPTER I.
THE SAXONS. — EDGAR THE ATHELING. — ST. MARGARET.
TO write anything like a complete history of the English Royal Family would be to write an extremely compre- hensive History of England, as there have been few events in which England has been concerned in which her reigning family have not taken an active part.
I have no such ambitious or far-reaching intention. What I propose to do is to give a short account of what I may call the private, as opposed to the public, history of the several Kings and Queens, of their children, and of such of their immediate descendants or relatives as have played any part in English History, or have lived in England ; and in doing this I wish to avoid, as far as possible, reference to those great political events which are in the province of regular historians, and are more or less known to all readers.
Many of those of whom it will be necessary to speak are persons whose lives are bound up in the history of their country, whose minutest actions, so far as they are known, are recorded in many histories and biographies, and over whose characters and motives there have been prolonged, and often acrimonious, discussions. Of such persons I have nothing new to say, and I will say no more than is necessary A
2 History of the Royal Family of England.
to make the narrative intelligible. There are, however, many English Princes and Princesses, and other persons nearly related to or connected with the Sovereigns, whose names are barely mentioned in general histories, and, if mentioned at all, are mentioned only in connection with some leading event in their lives. Nevertheless, these persons, though the majority of readers know little about them, influenced, more or less, or at all events may reasonably be supposed to have influenced, general history, and they are well worth knowing something about.
Many readers, taking their ideas from abbreviated histories, are often in a state of hopeless confusion as to who some of the persons who are named precisely were, how they came to be in the position in which they are found, or what became of them. Who, for instance, is not more or less bewildered among the various Dukes of York, Dukes of Gloucester, Dukes of Exeter, Dukes of Somerset, &c., who figure in the Plantagenet and Tudor periods, and how many persons going to see the plays " Richard III. " or " Henry VIII. " have any very definite idea as to the exact historical position of a third of the persons represented ? Nevertheless nearly all of those persons were in fact connected by blood or marriage with the Kings, and did play more or less important parts in the times in which they lived.
I myself was so much irritated by this state of confusion, that I took some pains to disentangle the puzzle for my own amusement and instruction : and it has since occurred to me that there may be others who would be interested by reading the result of my labours.
I am, however, modest, and I disclaim once and for all any pretence to originality or antiquarian research ; and nothing will be found in these pages which any reader of ordinary industry might not find out for himself by consulting well-known and tolerably accessible works, which indeed are the only works I have myself referred to. I believe, however, that there are a substantial number of persons who, with a taste for history, are unable to read many books, and I shall
The Saxon Kings.
be fully content if I can be of use to some of these by dove- tailing the narratives of other and far more learned writers. Of course, in writing of well-known and interesting persons it would be impossible to conceal, and I have not attempted to conceal, my own views as to their characters, but no doubt my views are largely coloured by my personal prejudices, religious and political, and I ask no one to adopt them, with- out reading what has been said of the persons in question by those authors who have made them their more particular study. I have, however, endeavoured to be impartial, and I apologise beforehand for anything I have said which may — I am sure without intention on my part — wound the suscepti- bilities of any of my readers.
I have selected the Norman Conquest as my starting point, the personal history of the earlier Kings and their families being for the most part too vague and too much overlaid with legend to be relied on, but in order to make the history of William the Conqueror and his family intelligible, it is necessary to give some short account of the later Saxon Kings and also of the immediate ancestors of the Conqueror himself.
It is generally accepted that Egbert was the first Sovereign who could with any semblance of truth be styled King of England, though his pretensions to such title are somewhat doubtful. He was descended from Cerdic, a Saxon invader who landed in England about 495, and established the King- dom of the West Saxons or Wessex. Egbert died in 839, and from that date to the year 1066 (with the exception of a period of twenty-five years during which the country was in the hands of the Danes) England was, nominally at any rate, governed by Princes, all of whom were descended in the direct male line from Cerdic and from Egbert.
It must not, however, be supposed that the system of primo- geniture, as now understood, was in any way recognised or followed by the Anglo-Saxons. When a king died, the most eligible Prince of his family was chosen to be king, and though no doubt when a king left a son of age and capacity
4 History of the Royal Family of England.
to reign, that son was usually chosen, yet when the Witan (which may be described as a sort of rudimentary Parliament) thought fit, it did not upon occasion hesitate to set aside the sons in favour of a brother, or other male relative of the deceased monarch.
No better illustration of this can be given than the case of St. Edward the Confessor, who is the last of the ancient line of Kings.
It is certain that no English King was ever chosen with greater unanimity, and that no English King ever occupied the throne with a more assured seat, or inspired his own or succeeding generations with greater personal reverence and respect than Edward the Confessor. Nevertheless, accord- ing to modern ideas, he was as much an usurper as, say Henry IV. or Richard III., for, at the date of his election, there was living, though in a distant country, his nephew, Edward, who was the son of his elder brother Edmund Ironside, and who if he had lived some centuries later would have been universally regarded as the lawful King.
It is customary in nearly all histories to speak of the younger Edward and his son Edgar as the heirs of the Confessor ; but this is a mistake, for they, in fact, represented the elder line, and he the younger line, of their common ancestor Ethelred II., known as Ethelred the Unready. (See Table I.) This King died in 1016 after a long, but for many years a merely nominal, reign of thirty-seven years, leaving his kingdom virtually in the hands of the Danish King, Canute.
For some years before, and some months after the death of Ethelred, his eldest son Edmund Ironside carried on a gallant struggle against the Danes, but at the Battle of Assandune he was compelled to divide the kingdom with Canute, and very shortly afterwards, in November 1016, he died, or, as some say, was treacherously murdered. There- upon Canute became and remained till his death in 1035 practically undisputed King of England.
Canute was succeeded by his sons Harold I. and Hardi-
The Saxou Kings.
Canute, who died, the one in 1040 and the other in 1042, and with the death of Hardicanute in 1042 the Danish dynasty, having lasted for about twenty-five years, ceased, and no serious attempt to re-establish it was ever made.
In 1042 Edward the Confessor, the eldest surviving son of Ethelred II., was duly elected King, and he reigned till his death in January 1066. The crown was then claimed, under a bequest, real or supposed, from St. Edward, by the famous Earl Harold, the brother of Edward's wife, Edith, who caused himself to be elected and crowned in the same month. Harold was defeated and killed at the Battle of Hastings in October 1066 by the Norman Duke William II., who was afterwards crowned, and is known in English History as William the Conqueror.
Ethelred II. was twice married, first to a Saxon lady whose name is uncertain, but who was the daughter of one Toreth, and secondly to Emma of Normandy, the daughter of Richard I., and sister of Richard II., Dukes of Normandy. By each wife he had two sons — by the first Edmund, sur- named Ironside and Edwy ; by the second Alfred and Edward the Confessor.
Edmund Ironside, who was born in the year 981, married in 1015 Algiva, the widow of Sigefride, Earl of the Northumbrians. What became of this lady is not known, but she had by Edmund two sons, Edmund and Edward, who were sent by Canute to his half-brother Olaf, King of Sweden, with, as it is said, instructions to have them put to death. Olaf, however, sent them on to the Court of St. Stephen, King of Hungary, who took compassion on them and received them kindly, and there Edmund, the elder of the two, died, as a child, a natural death, and his brother Edward was brought up.
Edwy, the second son of Ethelred II., was banished by Canute, and having secretly returned to England, was murdered in the year 1017. He never married.
Edward the Confessor, the youngest son, had no child, and his elder brother Alfred, who during the reign of Harold
6 History of the Royal Family of England.
I. was put to depth under circumstances of exceptional cruelty, was unmarried. So far as is known at the time of his death, Ethelred II. and his sons were the last descendants in the male line of Cerdic or Egbert, and it will therefore be seen that on the accession of Edward the Confessor he and his nephew Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, were the sole representatives in the male line of the ancient Royal House.
It is not within the scope of the present work, and it is not my intention, to criticise the action of the Saxon Kings, and least of all St. Edward the Confessor, who is a Canonised Saint, and whose personal virtues are beyond all question. It must, however, be admitted that to ordinary minds many of the actions of this illustrious King seem to require some explanation, though no doubt, if we were better informed than we are as to his actual position and surroundings, such explanation would be forthcoming and satisfactory. No man ever had a more bitter experience of the woes of civil war, and of the evils of a disputed succession. When he ascended the throne he was a man of forty and unmarried, and he must have known that, if at his death there was not a Prince of his house who could, according to the customs of the Anglo-Saxons, be elected King, and who would be tolerably certain of being so elected with some unanimity, there was a certainty of civil war. In fact it is clear from the accounts of his death-bed that he did foresee that there would be such a war, as it is needless to say there was.
Under these circumstances I should have supposed that it was highly desirable for Edward to have provided a Prince to succeed him. This he might have done, either by taking the obvious course of marrying in the ordinary way and begetting children of his own, or, if he felt it his duty to remain unmarried, by bringing his nephew to England and presenting him to the people as a suitable heir.
The younger Edward was at this time a man under thirty, and though he had been educated abroad, he had been born in England, and as the son of a crowned King,
King St. Edward the Confessor.
and that King the heroic Edmund Ironside, it is probable that he would have been favourably looked upon by most of the English people.
King Edward did indeed marry, and he did send for his nephew. He married Edith, the daughter of Earl Godwin and sister to Harold, but it was upon a previous agreement that they should live together, not on the ordinary conjugal terms, but as " brother and sister " ; and he did not send for Prince Edward till many years after his accession and till his nephew was already a middle-aged man, and probably quite unable to adapt himself to the manners of a strange country.
In about the year 1054 or 1055, at least twelve years after his accession, the King sent an embassy to invite his nephew to England, and as the result the younger Edward arrived in England in the year 1057, accompanied by his wife and his three children.
He came, however, only to die, which he did a few days after his arrival, never having as far as appears seen the King ; and, though it is certain that his widow and children continued to live in England till the King's death in 1066, there is no reason to suppose that he in any way noticed or put them forward.
Of the previous career of Prince Edward little is now known. As has already been related, on the death of his father he was sent to Sweden and thence to Hungary, where he was honourably received and brought up at the Court of St. Stephen, King of that country.
Ordericus Vitalis asserts that he married the daughter of St. Stephen, and himself became King of Hungary, but in this, as in many other cases, the chronicler is altogether wrong. It is certain that Edward did not marry the daughter of St. Stephen, and that he never was King anywhere. The name of his wife was Agatha, and according to the late Professor Freeman she was the niece of the Emperor Henry II. and of his sister Gisela, who was the wife of St. Stephen.
Edward had three children : Edgar, known in history as
8 History of the Royal Family of England.
Edgar the Atheling or Prince ; Margaret, known as St. Margaret and afterwards Queen of Scotland ; and Christina, afterwards Abbess of Romsey in England.
The character of Edgar the Atheling has always been of some interest to me, possibly because considering his very important position so little is known about him positively, and so much is left to the imagination.
In all histories he is mentioned, and he is usually mentioned with great disparagement and contempt ; but as a rule no attempt is made- to give any consecutive narrative of the events of his life, and I propose to do this, very shortly, now.
The date of his birth is quite uncertain, and in estimating his character it is, of course, very important to know whether he was a child, a youth, or a full-grown man at the great crisis of his career — namely, the Norman^ Invasion.
He was certainly living in 1057 when his father died, and must therefore have been at least nine years old at the death of King Edward, but as Edgar's father was about forty-two when he died, and as men married very early in those days, Edgar might easily have been a full-grown man in 1066. He is, however, usually spoken of by the contemporary writers as being at the time of the Conquest still a boy " puer," — and therefore, though I imagine he was no longer a mere child, it is probable that he was a youth of about thirteen or fourteen.
When King Edward died, the crown, as has been stated, was seized by his wife's brother, Earl Harold, and the claims of the young Edgar were not seriously put forward by any one, but when Harold had been killed at the Battle of Hastings, Edgar was formally elected King at a Witan held in London, and presided over by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York ; and though he was never crowned, he so far exercised the rights of Sovereignty as to confirm the Abbot of Peterborough in his office. This was immediately after the Battle of Hastings, but in the course of a few weeks Edgar seems to have been advised that it was useless to contest the victorious progress of the Conqueror, for in December 1066
Edgar the Atheling.
he, accompanied by the Archbishops, met William at Berkhampstead and did homage.
Whatever may be thought of William's character, it is to his credit that he received his young rival rwith kindness. According to the amiable customs of those times it might have been expected that he would either have put Edgar to death, or at the least put out his eyes and shut him up in a monastery. William did in fact keep Edgar as an honourable captive at his Court, taking him to Normandy in 1067, and bringing him back to England in 1068. In the latter year Edgar, accompanied by his two sisters, and probably by his mother, escaped from England and landed in Scotland, though it is supposed that they intended to return to Hungary, and were driven on the Scotch coast by stress of weather. There they were most hospitably received by Malcolm III, or Malcolm Canmore (the Malcolm of " Macbeth "), King of Scots, who, according to some writers, then, but more probably some years later, married Edgar's sister, Margaret.
In the following year the Danes and the Northumbrian Earls, Edwin and Morcar, invaded England, and in this expedition they were joined by Edgar.
The expedition was abortive except that the city of York and some other places were ravaged, and great cruelties were committed ; and after it was over the invaders returned home — the Danes to Denmark, the Northumbrians to their own country, and Edgar to Scotland ; and it was probably then (1070) that King Malcolm and Margaret, Edgar's sister, were married. Edgar remained in Scotland till 1072, when William the Conqueror invaded that country at the head of a large force. No battle, however, took place, for Malcolm met William at Abernethy, and there made submission, and it was probably one of the terms of the treaty of peace then made that Edgar should leave Scotland, for we next hear of him in Flanders. In 1074, however, he was again in Scotland, and in that year received an invitation from King Philip I. of France (who was then at war with William) to take up his abode at the Castle of Montreuil, on the borders between
T o History of the Royal Family of England.
Flanders and Normandy, where it was supposed his presence would be an embarrassment to King William. Edgar, accord- ingly, set out with this purpose, but, being driven back by a storm, both he and Malcolm are said to have taken this as an indication by Divine Providence that Edgar was no longer to oppose the existing order of things in England. There- upon, Edgar sent an embassy to William in Normandy, and this being favourably received, he himself proceeded to Nor- mandy, again did homage, and was again taken into favour by the King. It is to be observed that, though he had broken the oath taken in 1066, when he was still very young, this second oath, taken as a man, was always kept with perfect loyalty.
Edgar lived quietly in Normandy from 1074 until 1086, and it was probably during that time that the strong friend- ship between him and the sons of the Conqueror, a friendship which lasted through their lives, and which is testified to by many writers, was established.
In 1086 Edgar, at the head of a body of two hundred knights, set out for Italy, where a Norman band of soldiers were engaged in establishing the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, an exploit of great interest and importance in European history, but which I cannot further refer to here. Edgar, whose proceedings in Italy do not seem to have been remarkable, returned to Normandy either shortly before or immediately after the death of William the Conqueror in 1087, and he was resident at the Court of William's eldest son, Duke Robert of Normandy, when that Prince's dominions were invaded by his brother William Rufus in 1091.
Professor Freeman suggests that it was part of the Treaty of Peace between the two brothers signed in that year that Edgar should leave Normandy, but, for this suggestion, the only apparent ground is that shortly afterwards Edgar was again in Scotland, and the suggestion seems improbable, as there is every reason to believe that Edgar was treated with as much confidence by Rufus as he, undoubtedly, was by Robert.
In 1091 Robert and William Rufus, who were for the time friends, marched together into Scotland to invade King
Edgar the Atheling. 1 1
Malcolm, but, as on the occasion of the last English invasion, Malcolm did not show fight, but again met the English King and made submission.
It is expressly stated that this peaceable termination was brought about by the joint mediation of Robert and Edgar, and Edgar certainly returned with Robert to Normandy in 1092.
In the following year Edgar was again in England, and was present at a meeting between William Rufus and Malcolm which took place in England, but later in the same year Malcolm, having for the fifth time invaded England was killed in an ambush, and his children by Margaret were driven into England by Malcolm's brother, Donald Bane. They were received by Edgar, who placed his nieces, Edith and Mary, under the charge of his sister, their aunt Christina, who at that time had become Abbess of Romsey, and other- wise provided for his nephews. He then seems to have gone immediately to the Holy Land, to join Duke Robert of Normandy in the first Crusade, and they probably returned together some time before 1097.
In 1097 William Rufus organised an expedition to Scotland to establish on the throne Edgar, the eldest surviving son of Malcolm III. and Margaret, and the com- mand of this expedition was given to Edgar the Atheling, who was the maternal uncle of the young Prince Edgar.
The expedition was successful, the younger Edgar being firmly established on the throne of Scotland ; and his uncle on this occasion seems to have behaved as an able and prudent commander. At the date of the death of William Rufus (noo), Edgar the Atheling was once more in Normandy, and he probably accompanied Duke Robert in his abortive invasion of England in the year noi, and returned with him to Normandy. He was present at the decisive Battle of Tinchebrai in 1105, when Henry I., having returned the invasion, finally defeated Robert, and took him and most of his followers, including Edgar, prisoners.
1 2 History of the Royal Family of England.
It is remarkable, that though Robert, Henry's brother, was doomed to a life-long imprisonment, and William, the Earl of Cornwall, who was Henry's first cousin of the half- blood (see post), was put to a cruel death, Edgar was at once pardoned and restored to the King's favour. He probably owed this, however, to the influence of his niece, Edith, who was already married to King Henry.
From this date we hear of Edgar no more, and the time and place of his death, as of his birth, are uncertain. He never married, and with him the ancient line of Saxon Kings and Princes came to an end.
It has been the custom of all historians, almost without exception, to speak of Edgar with great contempt, but this seems to me unjust. It is indeed true that he probably felt in himself no great capacity for ruling ; but, on the other hand, it may be that he saw the impossibility of establishing himself as King without the cost of enormous bloodshed and misery to his country, and he may as well be credited with patriotism, as with cowardice, in having abstained in his mature years from attempting to do so.
There is every reason to believe, as might well be expected from a man who was so nearly related on both sides of his house to great Saints, that his personal life was in all respects above reproach. That he succeeded in winning the strong personal affection of all who came across him, as well of the semi-barbarous Malcolm of Scotland, as of the fierce sons of the Conqueror — that he could and did fight bravely when compelled to fight — that in his expedition to Scotland he displayed the qualities of a skilful general and diplomatist, and that, at all events, after the year 1074 he loyally kept the oath of allegiance which he had taken to the Conqueror, no one has ever as far as I am aware attempted to dispute.
I would gladly linger over the history of his great sister Margaret, but it is too well known to justify me in doing so. She was, as has been already said, married to Malcolm III. King of Scots, and all writers of every denomination, and of
St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland. 13
every age, agree in praising her. She was not only a great Saint who has been Canonised by the Catholic Church, but also a woman of the most singularly sweet and tender character a most loving wife and mother, and by universal testimony she did very much to civilise and ameliorate the physical condition of her husband's subjects.
I cannot do better than refer such of my readers as desire to know more about her to Mrs. Oliphant's charming book, " Royal Edinburgh," in the first chapter of which an eloquent and picturesque account is given of Margaret's life and death. She had long been ailing at the time of her husband's last expedition, and although it is almost impossible to say at this distance of time how far the wars between England and Scotland were morally justifiable, and who was to blame, still it is satisfactory to know that Margaret strongly opposed this expedition, which ended fatally for Malcolm, and for her, inas- much as the news of his death was the immediate cause of hers.
Mrs. Oliphant is in error in saying that the marriage between Malcolm and Margaret certainly took place immedi- ately after Margaret's first landing in Scotland in 1068. It is clear that there was in the first instance considerable opposition to the marriage on her part, and on the part of 'her relatives, and it is far more probable that it did not take place till after the unsuccessful expedition against England in 1069.
Mrs. Oliphant is also in error in speaking of Malcolm as a bachelor when he married Margaret, for it is almost certain that he was, in fact, a widower. He had certainly an acknowledged son, Duncan, whose .mother was named Ingebiorg ; and it is both more creditable to all parties, and more probable, to suppose that this lady had been his wife.
In 1072, when William the Conqueror invaded Scotland, Malcolm gave up this son to William as a hostage for his observance of the peace then agreed upon, and it is not likely that William would have considered the boy of sufficient importance if he had been admittedly a bastard. Moreover, some years later William Rufus seems to have recognised this
14 History of the Royal Family of England.
Duncan as having a good title to the Scotch Throne, notwith- standing the existence of Malcolm's sons by Margaret.
Duncan remained a captive in England till the death of William the Conqueror, when he was set at liberty, and in 1094, shortly after the death of Malcolm, William Rufus sent Duncan on an expedition against Donald Bane, Malcolm's brother, who had seized the Throne and was for a short time King of Scotland.
The expedition was temporarily successful, and Duncan was recognised as King, but Donald Bane soon afterwards re-established himself, and thereupon Duncan disappears from history, having probably been killed.
Malcolm and Margaret had eight children, a son whose name is not certain but is sometimes given as Edward, Ethelred, Edmund, Edgar, Alexander, David, Edith and Mary. The eldest son perished with his father, and Ethelred the second also was with his father when Malcolm was killed. He lived long enough, however, to bring back the sad news to St. Margaret, his mother, but shortly afterwards he either died or was put to death by his uncle Donald Bane.
The third son Edmund became a monk, and his three younger brothers and their sisters escaped to England.
It has already been told how in 1097 William Rufus sent a second expedition into Scotland, this time under the com- mand of Edgar the Atheling, with the result that Edgar, the fourth son of Malcolm, became King of Scotland. He reigned from 1097 till 1107, and dying without legitimate issue, was succeeded by his next brother, Alexander I., who also dying without issue was succeeded in 1124 by the youngest son, afterwards the celebrated David I. From David I., the Kings of Scotland were descended in the direct male line till the death of Alexander III. in 1275 (temp : Edward I.), and in the female line till James VI., who became James I. of Great Britain.
The two daughters of Malcolm and Margaret were placed in the Abbey of Romsey, under their aunt Christina, and of them we shall hear again.
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CHAPTER II.
THE NORMANS.— WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.— THE CON- QUEROR'S MARRIAGE. — GUNDREDA COUNTESS OF SURREY.
IN the year 911 the Northmen, who had for so long ravaged the Coasts of England and France, effected a permanent footing in that part of France which for them came to be known as Normandy. Their leader was the famous Rollo, who having, at any rate nominally, become a Christian, was recognised as the first Duke of Normandy.
Rollo died in 931, and was succeeded as Duke by his son William I., known as William Longsword, who was murdered by the Flemings in 942. William Longsword left an only son, then a mere child, who afterwards came to be known as Richard I., or the Fearless.
Novel readers may remember a very pretty story by Miss Charlotte Yonge called " The Little Duke," of which Richard the Fearless is the hero, but though substantially the main facts are historically true, it may be doubted whether Richard or his father were the almost perfect characters the book suggests. Richard I. was the father of a son, Richard II., or the Good, who reigned from 996 till 1026, and of a daughter Emma, who married, first Ethelred II., King of England, and secondly, King Canute, the Danish Conqueror, who succeeded him. By Ethelred, Emma was the mother of St. Edward the Confessor, and by Canute she was the mother of Hardicanute ; and she was thus the wife of two Kings, and the mother of two Kings of England.
Emma's marriage to Ethelred was, in its way, a great
event in English History. It was she who first introduced
16
Dukes of Normandy. 1 7
into England many of the foreign customs and manners which paved the way to the Norman Conquest ; and more- over, after her marriage with Canute, her sons by Ethelred, Edward and Alfred, took refuge at the Court of their uncle, Duke Richard II., and it was there that St. Edward acquired that strong predilection for foreigners which he evinced throughout his life, and which greatly influenced the course of public events.
This marriage also, no doubt, in some degree suggested the conquest of England to the enterprising Duke William, who was already about sixteen years old when his cousin Edward left Normandy to become King of England. Emma's history is remarkable, if only on account of the marked divergence of views as to her character and conduct, which is displayed by the contemporary and later chroniclers, and it would be interesting though it is not possible in this book to follow it in detail. Richard II. of Normandy died in 1026, leaving two sons, Richard and Robert. Richard, who became Richard III. of Normandy, was almost im- mediately assassinated by his brother Robert, who became Duke Robert I. and won for himself the unenviable title of " Robert the Devil." He is the hero of Meyerbeer's opera " Robert le Diable," according to the story of which he was not the son of Richard the Good, but of the Devil in propria persona ; and no doubt he was in fact a remarkably wicked man. Nevertheless, he did much in the course of a short reign to extend the power and dominion of the Norman Dukes, and having, as it is said, repented of his crimes, he set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in the course of which he died — as some say, by poison, in the year 1035. He left to succeed him a son William, who having been born in 1027 was only eight years old when his father died, and who became William II., Duke of Normandy, and afterwards the famous William I., or the Conqueror, King of England. (See Table II.)
The late Professor Freeman says that " Of all Princely lines the Ducal House of Normandy was that which paid B
1 8 History of the Royal Family of England.
least regard to the Canonical laws of marriage, or to the special claims of legitimate birth," and it would certainly be difficult to trace, or defend, the matrimonial, or quasi- matrimonial, arrangements of the Norman Dukes. This much, however, is certain that William the Conqueror was unquestionably a bastard. He himself admitted it, and no one has ever attempted to deny it. His mother, whose name is variously spelt as Arlotta or Herleva, was the daughter of a tanner of Falaise, though it was afterwards said, but apparently with little foundation, that on her mother's side she was descended from noble and even Royal English stock. After Robert's death, or as some say before Arlotta married Count Herlwin of Conteville, by whom she had two sons, Robert and Odo (the latter of whom will be remembered by the most cursory reader of history), and a daughter, Adelaide, all of whom were more or less connected with the Norman Conquest.
The two half brothers of William, Robert and Odo, accompanied him in the invasion of England, and were present at the Battle of Hastings, and they both enjoyed in a marked degree his confidence and favour.
Robert, the elder, was created Earl of Cornwall, and was killed in suppressing one of the Northern Insurrections in 1087, and he was succeeded in the Earldom of Cornwall by his son William, who, on the death of William Rufus, fled to Normandy, and there espoused the claims to succession of that King's eldest brother Robert. William of Cornwall was present at the Battle of Tinchebrai, in 1105, and was there, as has been already mentioned, taken prisoner by Henry I., who notwithstanding that he was his first cousin of the half-blood, secluded him in a Monastery, and, as it is said, put out his eyes. He died soon afterwards and unmarried.
William's second brother, Odo, became a priest, and was at a very early age thrust into the Bishopric of Bayeux. He was, however, by nature more a warrior than a Churchman, having been present in a combative capacity at the Battle of Hastings, and taken part in nearly all the military operations
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2o History of the Royal Family of England.
of his brother's reign. During William's frequent absences in Normandy, Odo was usually appointed one of the joint Regents of England, and to him there is no doubt that some of the worst acts of cruelty which disfigured his brother's reign are to be attributed. He was created Earl of Kent, and in his later years formed the ambitious scheme of getting himself elected Pope, and he was about to set forth at the head of an armed force with this object, when he was met in the Isle of Wight by his brother William, who threw him into prison, and kept him there till 1087.
When William died in that year, Odo was released and returned to Normandy, where he was in high favour with his nephew, Duke Robert II., for some time. He died in 1097 at Palermo, on his way to the Holy Land.
Odo was no doubt an extremely bad man, cruel, ambitious, licentious, and grasping, but he had his good points, and, according to. Norman chroniclers, he ruled his diocese of Bayeux, no doubt by proxy, in a praiseworthy manner.
William's half-sister Adelaide married one Odo of Champagne, who became first Earl of Albemarle or Aumerle. The title of Aumerle, or as it is now called Albemarle, is one of the oldest in the Kingdom. Odo who married the Conqueror's half-sister came with him to England — obtained large grants of land there, and ranked as an English Earl, but his title was derived from lands in Normandy, and this is still so, in the case of the existing Earl of Albemarle, though in fact the lands from which he derives his title passed out of the possession of his pre- decessors in title in the reign of King John, when Normandy was taken by the French. Stephen arid William, Earls of Albemarle, who were somewhat prominent persons in the twelfth century, were the son and grandson of Odo and Adelaide, but on the death of the latter in 1179, their descendants in the male line became extinct, and the Earldom passed to the family of de Fortibus by the marriage of Hawyse, heiress of Earl William, with William de Fortibus. To this family I must refer again.
Relatives of William the Conqueror. 2 1
Adelaide, half-sister of the Conqueror, had also a daughter Judith, who was given in marriage by her uncle to the illustrious Saxon Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, North- ampton and Huntingdon, whose judicial murder by William is one of the darkest stains on the personal character of that King. It is generally asserted that it was to a large extent through the treachery of his wife Judith that Waltheof met his death, and she is said thenceforth to have been regarded with horror by the people, and with disgust even by her uncle himself.
Waltheof and Judith had a daughter Matilda, who married David I. of Scotland, and carried with her the title of Earl of Huntingdon, which was held or claimed by the Scottish Kings, to the time of Richard I. of England, when it was borne by David, brother of William the Lion of Scotland, to whom I shall refer hereafter.
It would be presumptuous and outside the intention of this work to enter into any detailed account of the life and reign of William the Conqueror.
Every historian has written of them at length, and Pro- fessor Freeman in his " History of the Norman Conquest," has made the subject his own, discussing in a minute and exhaustive manner every incident that is known, and many incidents that are merely conjectured, of William's life.
In spite of his youth, the admitted stain on his birth, foreign enmity, and domestic dissensions, William succeeded before he had well attained to early manhood in establishing himself as the most powerful Duke of his line that had ever lived, and thereupon he undertook the task of almost super- human difficulty of subduing England, a task which he accomplished with truly marvellous rapidity and solidity. He was aged thirty-nine at the date of the Invasion of England.
Of right to the English Throne he had none at all. He was indeed nearly related to St. Edward the Confessor, in that his grandfather, Duke Richard II., and Edward's mother, Emma of Normandy, were brother and sister (see Table II.),
22 History of the Royal Family of England.
but this gave him no more title to the Throne of England than have the relatives of every other lady who has married an English King.
William himself alleged that St. Edward had promised the succession to him, and that Harold, who on Edward's death seized the Throne, had sworn to promote his succession, and it is probable, indeed, almost certain, that Edward had, at some time, given some such promise, and that Harold had, though under coercion, taken some such oath. It is, however, clear that Edward had no right to make such a promise, and that Harold had no right to take such an oath, and it seems also clear that at the date of Edward's death neither Edward nor Harold regarded the promise or the oath as binding.
On the other hand it is fair to say that William undertook the Conquest of England with the express sanction and under the formal blessing of the Pope, Alexander II., and with the hearty concurrence, not only of his own Barons, but of the Norman Bishops and Clergy, headed by the illustrious and saintly Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury ; and it would really appear that both he and they regarded the expedition as a kind of religious Crusade.
That William was guilty of great crimes of oppression, tyranny and cruelty no one can deny, but on the other hand in his day, rights, both public and private, were ill -defined, and wars and conquests were engaged in and undertaken by even good men on what now seem the most frivolous and unjust grounds. It must also be said that almost all men, even the best, were according to modern ideas more or less cruel.
William was a man of extraordinary courage, energy and ability, both regal and military. If he sometimes oppressed the Church he was also a great benefactor to the Church, and did much to reform the abuses within her ; and he was certainly a man of strong religious instincts, and deeply impressed with the truths of Religion. Some of the worst cruelties of his reign were perpetrated in his absence, and he himself could, and did, upon occasion, act with clemency and
William the Conqueror. 23
magnanimity, as witness his behaviour to Edgar the Atheling already spoken of.
Lastly, it is generally asserted, and apparently with good grounds, that in his private life he gave an example of the virtues of Temperance and Continence, which was ex- tremely remarkable in a Sovereign of that time.
William died in 1087 aged sixty, and was buried in Normandy.
William the Conqueror married Matilda, the daughter of Baldwin V., Count of Flanders (who was a grandson of a daughter of Alfred the Great, King of England), and of Adelais, the daughter of Robert and the sister of Henry I., Kings of France.
Matilda was therefore of very illustrious descent, and as her father was not only one of the best, but also one of the most influential Princes of his time, the match was, in a political point of view, a very good one for the bastard Duke of Normandy. It is, however, remarkable, considering the rank and position of the parties, that the details of the marriage should be involved in a very great degree of mystery. There were, undoubtedly, great difficulties in bringing it about. Miss Strickland, the author of the " Lives of the Queens of England," to whom I am under great obligations, tells a story, that the lady having objected to William, on the score of his birth, he proceeded to the town of Lille where she was, and having forced his way into the Palace, knocked her down, beat her, and otherwise ill-used her ; and the author suggests that this extraordinary form of wooing found favour in the lady's eyes, and that, though her father resented it, she did not.
The above story is to be found in several of the chroniclers, but they do not agree as to time, place or details, and inas- much as the ancient chroniclers bear a remarkable family likeness to modern society journalists, I doubt if it proves more than that before the marriage William had a per- sonal interview with Matilda, possibly of a stormy character, in the course of which he found means to remove her
24 History of the Royal Family of England.
objections to him as a husband. The date of the marriage is variously given by different writers at dates between 1050 and 1056.
Professor Freeman, however, fixes it with what he regards as certainty in the year 1053. Miss Strickland, who places it in 1052, after mentioning a certain threatened war between Henry I. of France and William, which was averted by the former's death, goes on, " Scarcely, however, was he (William) preparing himself to enjoy the happiness of wedded life when a fresh cause of annoyance arose. Mauger, the Archbishop of Rouen, an illegitimate uncle of the young Duke, who had taken great pains to prevent his marriage with Matilda, finding all the obstacles which he had raised against it were unavailing, proceeded to pronounce sentence of excommunica- tion against the newly-wedded pair under the plea of its being a marriage within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity. William indignantly appealed to the Pope against this sentence, who, on the parties submitting to the usual fines, nullified the Archbishop's Ecclesiastical censures, and granted the dispensation for the marriage on the condition of the young Duke and Duchess each building and endowing an Abbey at Caen, and an hospital for the blind. Lanfranc, afterwards the celebrated Archbishop of Canterbury, but at that time an obscure individual to whom William had ex- tended his protection and patronage, was entrusted with this negotiation, which he conducted with such ability as to secure to himself the favour and confidence both of William and Matilda."
This passage is altogether misleading as to the real facts of the case. The negotiations for the marriage were un- doubtedly commenced in 1049, and in the following year assembled the Council of Rheims, which if not called ex- pressly for the purpose, was mainly occupied in regulating the laws of marriage and censuring those persons who had offended against them, and the decrees of which were formally approved by Pope St. Leo IX. By a decree of this Council, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was expressly forbidden to give
William the Conqueror s Marriage. 25
his daughter in marriage to " William the Norman," who was forbidden to receive her. This prohibition certainly delayed the marriage for several years, and when it actually took place, Pope Leo was not in a position to denounce it, seeing that he was himself at the time a prisoner.
It can, therefore, not have been an unexpected circum- stance that the parties who had thus disregarded a decree of the highest Ecclesiastical authority should have been excom- municated by the chief Bishop of Normandy. Mauger, however, was a man of bad personal character, whose words carried comparatively little weight, and the excommunication might have been disregarded if Lan franc, who was by no means " an obscure individual," but who was then Abbot of the famous Monastery of Bee, and had already acquired a wide reputation for learning and sanctity, had not taken the matter up and denounced the marriage in strong terms. William was, indeed, " very indignant," but his indignation took the form, not of an appeal to Rome, but of deposing Mauger, ravaging and burning the lands and property of the monks at Bee, and banishing Lanfranc.
Nevertheless, Lanfranc contrived to see the Duke before he left Normandy, and it was then arranged that he should go to Rome, and endeavour by his personal influence to get the prohibition removed.
Professor Freeman seems to think that there was some inconsistency in Lanfranc's conduct, but I fail to see why Lanfranc should not have said, as he probably did, " As a Priest I am bound to denounce a marriage which has been forbidden by a decree of a Council of the Church, but if I can get that decree reversed I will do so." Lanfranc did proceed to Rome, but had apparently great difficulty in obtaining the required dispensation ; for he did not, in fact, obtain it till 1060, during the Pontificate of Nicholas II., there having been two intermediate Popes since the death of Leo IX.
Neither the original prohibition nor the dispensation states the grounds of objection to the marriage, but it must
26 History of the Royal Family of England.
be admitted that under the circumstances above detailed they must have been of a very grave nature. Nearly all writers, including Freeman and Miss Strickland, allege con- sanguinity as the obstacle, but Mrs. Everett Green, to whom I am even more indebted than to Miss Strickland, denies the consanguinity, and boldly asserts in her "Lives of the Princesses of England," that the objections to the marriage were of a purely political character.
This suggestion is, however, clearly inadmissible, for though, no doubt, political considerations might, and did, influence the Popes in some cases, in granting or withholding dispensations, no Pope ever attempted to forbid a marriage without having some show of Canonical Law on his side, and any such attempt would have been so monstrous an inter- ference with purely secular rights, that it could not have passed unchallenged in any age.
Miss Strickland says that Matilda's grandfather, Baldwin IV. of Flanders, married a sister of William's father, Robert the Devil, and if this lady had been Matilda's grandmother, as the writer suggests, William and Matilda would have been first cousins once removed, and therefore clearly within the prohibited degrees of kindred. Freeman, however, shows conclusively that, though Baldwin IV. did marry a sister of Robert the Devil, he married her as his second wife, and when his son, Matilda's father, was a grown man. This marriage, therefore, only established some affinity between William and Matilda, and that not in a degree which could have been alleged, even in the eleventh century, as a serious obstacle to the marriage, even if, which I doubt, some formal dispensation was thereby made requisite.
Freeman, though he rejects the theories of both the ladies above quoted, falls back on the plea of consanguinity, but he admits that he is unable to say where the consanguinity came in.
I submit that when two writers of such learning and research as Freeman and Mrs. Green are unable to discover any degree of relationship between two persons of such
William the Conquerors Marriage. 27
position as the Duke of Normandy and a daughter of the Count of Flanders, no such relationship existed.
I believe that Matilda, before her marriage with William, had been married to one Gerbod, who was hereditary advocate of the Abbey of St. Bertin in Flanders, that Gerbod was living when Matilda married William, and that what Lanfranc did, was to procure a declaration that the marriage between Gerbod and Matilda was invalid, possibly on the ground, which is suggested by his office, that Gerbod was a Cleric.
It is well known that in the eleventh century the validity of the marriages of Clerics (who at that time did sometimes marry) was what would now be called a burning question.
It may be taken as tolerably certain that Matilda had a daughter, Gundreda, afterwards Countess of Surrey, and as probable that she had a son, Gerbod, afterwards Earl of Chester, who were born before her marriage to William, and of whom William was not the father. Freeman considers it proved that the advocate of St. Bertin, Gerbod, was the father of these two children, and he assumes, and I think rightly, that, if so, Gerbod and Matilda had been married. He also assumes that Gerbod had died before 1049, on the ground that we cannot suppose William would have offered marriage to a woman who had another husband living.
• If, however, Gerbod was dead in 1049, the difficulties in the way of the marriage remain unexplained, whereas if he was alive, and if William and Matilda thought, as they very possibly did, that the marriage between him and Matilda was invalid, his existence would not I think have been regarded as an insuperable obstacle in those days, and in the eyes of a Norman Duke, to a marriage which was very desirable both from a political and personal point of view. If Gerbod were alive at the date of Matilda's marriage to William, abundant explanation is furnished for the subsequent action of the Ecclesiastical authorities and the difficulties in obtaining the dispensation.
I must apologise for devoting so much space to this
28 History of the Royal Family of England.
question, but it seems to me to be of some interest as affect- ing the character of the first Queen of England, for the wives of the Saxon Kings were not styled Queen but " the Lady."
It may be convenient here, and before returning to the family of William and Matilda, to say a few words of Gundreda and Gerbod, the supposed children of Queen Matilda. That Gundreda was Matilda's daughter I think it impossible to doubt. The evidence on the point is over- whelming, and except Mrs. Green, no writer has in fact ever doubted it. On the contrary, most writers, including Miss Strickland, assuming that because she was certainly Matilda's daughter, she must have been also William's, speak of Gundreda as one of William's daughters, and she is treated as such in nearly all genealogies.
Mrs. Green, feeling herself unable to contend that Gundreda was William's daughter, and unwilling to admit that Matilda could have been guilty of any indiscretion, sug- gests that she was a relative or god-child, whom the Queen had adopted and treated as a daughter.
For this suggestion she offers no kind of proof, and it appears to be inconsistent alike with the positive evidence, and with the manners of the eleventh century. The positive evidence that Gundreda was the daughter of William rests upon one solitary document — a charter given by William the Conqueror to the Monastery of St. Pancras, near Lewes, in which the monks are directed in consideration of a grant of land " to pray for the souls of my lord and predecessor, King Edward, and for the soul of my father, Count Robert, and for my own soul and the souls of my wife, Queen Matilda, and our children and successors, and for the soul of William de Warrenne and his wife Gundreda, my daughter, and their heirs."
If this document were authentic as it stands, it would not be conclusive, as if Gundreda had been William's step- daughter he might still, not improperly, have styled her " his daughter " but Mrs. Green says positively that the words " my daughter " (the original is in Latin) are interpolated at a later period, and in a different handwriting.
Gundreda, Countess of Surrey. 29
The negative evidence is very strong : —
(i) Ordericus Vitalis, the special historian of William and his family, gives in two places lists of William's daughters, and gives special accounts of each of the daughters, whom he names, and he does not include Gundreda in these lists ; but (2) he was aware of her existence and twice names her, once as the sister of " Gerbod the Fleming," and again in enumerating the honours conferred by William on his followers after the battle of Hastings, he says, " King William conferred the Earldom of Northampton on Waltheof, the son of Earl Siward, the most powerful of the English nobility, and in order to cement a firm alliance with him gave him in marriage his niece Judith, who bore him two beautiful daughters. The Earldom of Buckingham was given to Walter Giffard, and of Surrey to William de Warrenne, who married Gundreda, Gerbod's sister."
The historian who thought it necessary to mention that Judith was William's niece would surely have stated that Gun- dreda was William's daughter if such had been the case, but if Gundreda was the daughter of Matilda by an obscure Fleming, the Royal Family were probably not proud of the fact, and the historian may well have thought it prudent to ignore it altogether.
(3.) Gundreda's husband, William, Earl of Surrey, in a charter to the Priory of Lewes, given after that of William, makes his grants of lands conditional on prayers " for the repose of my soul, and the soul of Gundreda, my wife, and for the soul of my Lord William who brought me into England, and by whose licence I brought over the monks, and who confirmed my first donation, and for the soul of my Lady Matilda, the Queen, the mother of my wife, and for the soul of William the King, her son, after whose coming into England I made this grant, and who made me Earl of Surrey." With regard to this charter it may be observed that Ordericus Vitalis distinctly says de Warrenne was created Earl of Surrey by the Conqueror, but he was probably confirmed in the title by William Rufus. De Warrenne was one of the
3O History of the Royal Family of England.
most faithful friends of the Conqueror, and it appears to me that if he had been the King's son-in-law, he would have said so, and not used such very ambiguous language as he does.
(4.) Gundreda's husband, son and grandson were suc- cessively Earls of Surrey, the son having died in 1138, three years after the death of Henry I., and the grandson having died in 1 148, late in the reign of Stephen. It is difficult to suppose that if the son and grandson had been the direct descendants of the Conqueror, the fact would not have been insisted on during the Wars of Succession which followed the death of Henry I., when the claims of everyone who had any connection with the late King were more or less canvassed. As a matter of fact no one ever mentions them as having any connection with the Royal Family, which is easily to be accounted for if the connection, which it seems certain did exist, were of the nature above indicated.
Gundreda married de Warrenne about the year 1078, and she died in 1085, having had four children. She is buried in the church at Isfield in Sussex.
It may be mentioned that the title of Earl of Surrey has been held almost exclusively and consecutively from the time of the Conquest to the present day by four great families, the de Warrenne's, the Fitz Alans, the Mowbray's and the Howard's, the title having passed into each of the three last named families on the marriage of its representative with a daughter and heiress of the preceding family. Thus, whoever Gundreda was she is undoubtedly the ancestress of " All the Howards," the present Duke of Norfolk being also Earl of Surrey, which is one of the titles given by courtesy to his eldest son.
In modification, however, of the above statement it should be said that there was, so to speak, a break in the family of de Warrenne. Isabel de Warrenne, the great grand-daughter and heiress of Gundreda, married first, William de Blois, a son of King Stephen, by whom she had no child, and secondly, Hamelin Plantagenet, a natural son of the father of Henry
Earls of Surrey. 31
II., who on assuming on his marriage the title of Earl of Surrey, thought proper to assume also the name of his wife, and through whom the family of de Warrenne, which would otherwise have been extinct, was continued.
I should say also that in 1397, after the attainder of Richard Fitz Alan, second Earl of Surrey of his family, the title of Duke of Surrey was conferred by Richard II. on Thomas Holland, his nephew on his mother's side, and was held by Holland till he was beheaded three years later, when the Earldom went back to the Fitz Alans.
Gundreda's brother, Gerbod, was certainly present at the Battle of Hastings and afterwards was created Earl of Chester, but on the death of Balden V. of Flanders (who was, as I suggest, his grandfather) he obtained leave to go to Flanders, where he disappears from English history.
He has never been said by anyone to have been the son of William, and the evidence that he was the son of Matilda rests chiefly upon the fact that he is stated to have been Gundreda's brother. For the grounds on which it is believed that Gerbod the advocate of St. Bertin was the father of Gundreda and Gerbod, I must refer my readers to Freeman's " History of the Norman Conquest," where the question is discussed with far more learning and research than I can pretend to.
CHAPTER III.
MATILDA OF FLANDERS. — THE CONQUEROR'S DAUGHTERS. — ROBERT II. DUKE OF NORMANDY. — WILLIAM CLITO. — WILLIAM RUFUS. — HENRY I. — HENRY'S WIVES.
MATILDA of Flanders was, according to Miss Strick- land, born in 1031, and if so, she was twenty-two when she married William of Normandy, thirty-five at the date of the Norman Conquest, and fifty -two when she died in 1083, four years before her husband.
She has found many panegyrists, ancient and modern, and at all events after her marriage with William she seems to have been an excellent woman. During her husband's frequent absences from Normandy she was appointed Regent of the Duchy, with, however, probably more nominal than real power, and in 1068 she paid a brief visit to England, where she was crowned Queen at Winchester, and where she gave birth to her youngest son Henry, afterwards Henry I. She was a great benefactor to the Church, but she will chiefly be remembered as the reputed originator, and probably one of the workers of the famous Bayeux tapestry, in which the history of the Norman Conquest of England is given in needlework, and which is one of the most valuable — I was about to say documents, but at any rate historical records now extant. A facsimile of it is to be seen in the South Kensington Museum.
Three matters are alleged to Matilda's discredit. It is said that before her marriage she was in love with one Brihtric Meau, a Saxon, who rejected her love, and that after the conquest she incited her husband to put Brihtric to death,
32
Queen Matilda of Flanders. 33
and to grant his lands to herself. There certainly was such a person as Brihtric Meau, he was put to death, and Matilda did get his lands, but Professor Freeman rejects the story of love and vengeance as apocryphal, and it is certainly improbable.
It is said that William had a mistress whom Matilda put to death with great cruelty, but this story may also be safely rejected, for to the conjugal fidelity of the King there is a considerable amount of weighty testimony.
Lastly it is said, with truth, that in the quarrels between the Conqueror and his eldest son, Robert, Matilda, in spite of the direct prohibition of her husband, assisted her son- with money and otherwise ; but as Robert was treated by his father with, if not injustice, certainly with great harshness, this does not appear to be altogether to her discredit. She certainly obtained and retained to the last the very warm affection of her husband, of which, whatever may have been his faults, she had good reason to be proud.
William and Matilda had four sons, Robert, afterwards Robert II., Duke of Normandy, who was born in 1054 ; Richard, and William (afterwards William II. of England), the dates of whose births are uncertain, and Henry, afterwards Henry I. of England, who was born in 1070. Robert was certainly their eldest and Henry their youngest child. They had also three daughters, Cicely, afterwards Abbess of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity founded by her mother at Caen ; Constance, afterwards Duchess of Brittany ; and Adela, afterwards Countess of Blois, whose histories are well ascertained and authenticated. Also, leaving out Gundreda, whose parentage and history have already been, I fear, more than sufficiently discussed, they had certainly one, probably two, and possibly three other daughters ; but of these ladies nothing certain, not even their names, can be told, except that no one of them married.
It is certain that when Harold visited Normandy and took his much discussed oath of allegiance to Duke William, one of William's daughters was promised to him in marriage, C
34 History of the Royal Family of England.
though having- regard to the somewhat complicated matri- monial or semi-matrimonial arrangements of the great Earl, how the lady was to be fitted in is not very apparent.
It is also certain that after William had landed in England he offered one of his daughters to the Earl Edwin of Northumberland, who, with his brother Morcar, played so prominent a part in resisting the Norman Invasion, and there is no doubt that one of the Conqueror's daughters was engaged to marry Alfonso, King of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, and that she died on her journey to Spain. It is also suggested that besides Cicely, William had another daughter who became a nun. It is clear that neither Cicely nor Adela, nor is it probable that Constance, was the daughter offered to Harold or to Edwin, but possibly one and the same daughter, not being one of these three, was offered to both Harold and Edwin, and ultimately died on the Spanish journey.
It is, however, more probable that the lady proposed for Harold either died young or became a nun, and that the lady who was intended for Edwin became engaged afterwards to Alfonso. Ordericus Vitalis tells a rather pretty story of a daughter of William's, whose name, he says, was Agatha, who, having been engaged to Harold, was so much in love with him, that on being forced by her father to become the affianced wife of Alfonso, she prayed for death as a deliver- ance from another bridegroom, and died accordingly. Un- fortunately, however, Harold was some years older than the Conqueror, and as Harold's visit to Normandy cannot have been later than 1064, the lady cannot at that time have been more than eight years old, for Robert, born in 1054, was undoubtedly King William's eldest child, and Cicely was undoubtedly his eldest daughter.
No doubt Norman and Plantagenet Princesses were precocious, and were frequently married at an age when young ladies of the present day are still in the nursery, but I find it impossible to believe that even in the eleventh •century a lady should have died for love of a man whom she
William the Conqueror's Daughters. 35
had only seen for a short time when she was eight years old, and who was older than her own father.
Mrs. Green, though she is unable to maintain that Harold's fiancee was the Princess in question, cannot bring herself to abandon so romantic a story, and therefore maintains that Ordericus mistook Harold for Edwin, and that the lady who died for love was Edwin's promised bride. She however gives her name as Matilda.
Cicely was certainly the eldest daughter of William the Conqueror, and she was born in the year 1055. In 1067 she was solemnly dedicated to religion as an expiation for the irregularity of her parent's marriage, and in 1074 sne became a professed nun in the Abbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen, of which she afterwards became second Abbess.
She died at the age of seventy in the year 1126 (temp: Henry I.), and to judge from what may be called the obituary notice issued by the nuns, she was an extremely good woman.
The date of the birth of Constance is uncertain but is given by Mrs. Green as 1057. For some reason which has not been explained she remained unmarried till she was no longer very young, and it was not until 1086, some years after her mother's death (when, if Mrs. Green's figures are correct, she would have been twenty-nine), that Constance married Alan Fergeant, Duke of Brittany. It would at first sight seem probable that the delay in her marriage was occasioned by the fact that she was the subject of one or other of the proposed alliances before referred to, but she is not mentioned in connection with either, and both had become impossible by the death of the proposed husbands many years before her marriage. Alan Fergeant had before his marriage been one of the most formidable opponents of her father, having refused to do that homage for his Duchy which William as Duke of Normandy demanded, and, no doubt, the marriage was part of the terms of a reconciliation between the two sovereigns. The Duchess Constance died in the year 1090, four years after her marriage, without having had any
36 History of the Royal Family of England.
child, and it is illustrative of the difficulties of historians, that whereas Ordericus Vitalis presents her as a model of all Christian virtues, William of Malmesbury, who wrote in the time of Henry I., says that she was poisoned by her husband's subjects on account of the harshness of conduct to which she incited him.
Adela, who was the youngest of the Conqueror's daughters, was born in the year 1062, and in 1080, after she had been the subject of various matrimonal schemes which failed, she married Stephen, Count of Blois and Chartres, who was one of the minor French Princes, his dominions corresponding pretty nearly with the modern County of Orleans. Adela's husband, who appears to have been a man of somewhat impulsive and irresolute character, in 1096 joined the first Crusade, where he did not distinguish himself. In point of fact he ran away from the Battle of Alexandretta and came back to Blois. Afterwards, however, he returned to the Holy Land, at the strong instance of his wife, who would appear to have made herself, no doubt with reason, very disagreeable on the occasion, and in noi he was killed at the Battle of Ramula.
Adela, during the absences of her husband and the minority of her second son, Theobald, who succeeded him, governed her husband's dominions with much intelligence and tact, but, after Theobald was of age to act for himself she became a nun in the Abbey of Marcigny in the diocese of Autun, where she died in the year 1137 in the second year of her son Stephen's reign in England. There can be no doubt that Adela was a woman of the most excellent character. Throughout her life she kept up what was, for the time, an active correspondence with England, and she was an intimate friend of St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canter- bury, whose cause she ardently espoused in his contests with her brothers, William II. and Henry I., and whom she twice entertained on his journeys to Rome.
Adela had a very large family. Two of her younger sons, Stephen, afterwards King of England, and Henry, after-
Adela Countess of Blois. 37
wards Bishop of Winchester, she sent to England, and of them I shall treat later.
Her eldest son, William, is usually described as an "imbecile," but as Ordericus speaks of him as "the son-in- law and heir of Gillon de Sully," and " as a worthy quiet man whose family and wealth make him powerful," I imagine that he was rather an unambitious and " quiet " person than defective in intellect. The second son, Theobald, succeeded to his father's titles, and became a somewhat noted man on the Continent, but as he is not very directly connected with English History it is unnecessary to refer to him further in this work.
One of the daughters of Countess Adela married Richard Earl of Chester, and with her husband, and her cousin Prince William, the only son of Henry I., was drowned in the "White Ship" in 1119. Richard Earl of Chester, this lady's husband, was the son of Hugh D'Avranches, who was created Earl of Chester in 1070, in which year Gerbod the Fleming is said to have been deprived of the Earldom. (See Doyle's " Official Baronage of England.")
Of Adela's other children little or nothing is known. Richard, the second of the four sons of the Conqueror, was accidentally killed in the New Forest while he was still a youth in the year 1081. The fact that three of the descend- ants of William were thus killed, that is to say, his two sons Richard and William Rufus, and a grandson, Richard, who was a natural son of his son Robert, was generally regarded as a sign of Divine vengeance for the cruelties he committed in enclosing that forest.
Robert, William's eldest son, who, from some peculiarity in his nether garments, is called Robert Courthose, was an unfortunate person, unfortunate in character and temperament, unfortunate in his education, family and surroundings, and unfortunate in nearly everything that he undertook.
He was born in the year 1054, and was therefore thirty- three when his father died. He appears to have been unpre-
38 History of the Royal Family of England.
possessing in person and uncouth in manners, and he was markedly inferior in abilities to his father and brothers, and it would seem that, as he grew up, he became the object of an almost personal dislike to the King, who uniformly treated him with harshness and unkindness. When he became a man he was naturally anxious to be placed in a position of independence, and this was the more reasonable, as it had always been the custom for the Sovereign Princes in France, from Pepin downwards, either to associate their sons with them in their own Gevernment, or to grant to them large "appanages," which they held nominally as vassals, but practically independently of the King or other Sovereign from whom they received them. No doubt this system had worked badly and had led to many inconveniences, but if anyone had a right to be placed in an independent position it was Robert, who, as a boy, had been associated with his mother in the Government of Normandy, who had been repeatedly declared heir to the Duchy, and received homage in that capacity, and who, on the conquest of Maine by William, had been put forward to do homage to the French King for that Province, not as representing his father, but as if he had been the actual Lord of his father's conquest. Nevertheless, when Robert claimed some independence, he was put off with the saying of his father, which has become proverbial, that " he would not put off his clothes till he went to bed." Consequently, William's eldest son was allowed to spend his youth and early manhood as a hanger on at his father's Court, without position or means, unable to marry, or to provide for his friends aud followers, and exposed to the cold severity of the King and the brutal jests of the young Princes, his brothers, who were, in every way, preferred to himself.
It is not surprising under these circumstances that Robert should have left his father's camp in 1077, irritated it is said by a practical joke played upon him by the Princes, and, after an unsuccessful attempt to seize Rouen, should have thrown himself into the arms of his father's enemy, Philip I. of
Robert II. Duke of Normandy. 39
France, who was his own first cousin, being the nephew of Queen Matilda.
From this time until the death of William, Robert and his father were, with but short intervals, continually at war. The story is well known how at the Battle of Archembrai, Robert, without knowing his father, was brought into personal conflict with him, and how, as the son was on the point of getting the better, he threw down his arms when he discovered who his opponent was, and begged his father's forgiveness.
This incident did not, as might have been expected, bring about greater personal good-feeling, and Robert was still at enmity with King William when the latter died in 1087.
It is generally said that William left Normandy to Robert, and England to William Rufus, but it would be more accurate to say that, oppressed in conscience at the last, he left things to take their course, assuming that Robert would succeed to his patrimonial dominions, and rather wishing, than directing, that Rufus should become King of England. As a matter of fact, Robert was received by the Normans as Duke, and Rufus did become the English King. This, however, was not wholly without opposition from his elder brother, for Robert, after a delay, long enough to enable Rufus to secure his position, sent an expedition against England, which he did not lead himself, and which was totally and ingloriously defeated. As might have been expected, William lost no time in returning the invasion, and with more success, for he speedily became master of nearly half his brother's dominions. A peace was then concluded by which each brother was to retain the possessions he actually held, and each was to be the heir of the other, if he should die without issue.
William and Robert thus combined against their younger brother Henry, who was to be excluded from all share in his father's dominions, and whom they united in besieging in the Castle of Domfront. During this siege, Henry being reduced to the last stage of distress from want of water, Robert, who
40 History of the Royal Family of England.
on many occasions showed kindness and good nature, allowed Henry, to the great indignation of William, to obtain supplies. Robert thus practically broke up the siege, and saved Henry from falling into William's hands, from which, I think, he would hardly have escaped with his life.
After this, Robert and William joined in the expedition against Scotland, which has been already mentioned, and in 1096 Robert joined the first Crusade, where he seems to have behaved with gallantry. It was on his return from the Holy Land that he married an Italian lady, Sibyl of Conversana, of whom little or nothing is known, except that she died soon after, leaving an only child, William, known in history as William Clito— Clito being the Norman equivalent for Atheling or Prince.
Robert was in Normandy when William Rufus died in noo, and after the accession of Henry I. he again made an attempt to recover England, this time leading the expedition in person. It was during this expedition that he again gave an instance of good nature, for, as he was marching upon Winchester, having heard that his sister-in-law, Henry's wife, was in childbed in the city, he diverted his course, probably to the detriment of his ultimate chances of success.
This expedition resulted in a peace between Robert and Henry, Robert renouncing his claims upon England, and accepting a pension, which, however, he was soon after in- duced or compelled to give up.
But Henry was not the man to allow a possible competi- tion for his Throne to remain in permanent peace, and in 1105 he made an excuse to invade Normandy, where, at the famous Battle of Tinchebrai, he took his brother prisoner.
From that time till his death, a period of twenty-eight years, Robert was kept a close captive in England. It has been said by the Norman chroniclers that he was blinded, but this is denied by English writers, and to the credit of human nature, I am happy to say that it is more probable, upon the evidence, that he was treated with as much consideration as his strict captivity allowed.
William Clito. 41
He died at Cardiff Castle in 1 1 34, a year before Henry, at the age of eighty.
At the date of the Battle of Tinchebrai, William Clito, Robert's only legitimate child, was a mere boy, and was under the charge of his brother-in-law, Helias, Count of St. Saen, who had married a natural daughter of his father. Helias proved a good friend, and urged the young William's cause in every quarter, and it was in fact taken up successively by every Prince who happened to be at war with Henry, and dropped with facility, as, and when, these Princes found it to their own advantage to make peace with the powerful English King. It would be tedious and difficult to follow Clito's adventures, but in 1127 he married Adelais, daughter of Reignier, Count of Montserrat, whose half-sister was married to Louis the Fat of France (Louis VI.), and through that King's influence Clito became Count of Flanders on the assassination of Charles the Good in the same year. Ever since the death of Baldwin V. in 1073, Flanders had been a prey to civil wars of succession, the details of which do not fall within the scope of this work, but I may say that Charles the Good was a son of St. Canute, King of Denmark, by Alice, daughter of Robert the Frisian, son of Baldwin V., and that Clito's claims to Flanders, such as they were, were traced through his grandmother, Matilda of Flanders. Clito, how- ever, did not long enjoy his new position, for he died, or as it is alleged, was killed the same year (1127), without issue, seven years before his father, who is said to have been made aware of his death in a dream. If he had lived, William Clito might probably have become King of England on the death of his uncle, Henry I.
William and Henry, the third and fourth sons of the Conqueror, successively reigned as Kings of England, the one from 1087 to noo, and the other from noo to 1135.
Both were in my opinion bad men, though in a different degree, and I venture to say that, in a sense, both were good Kings.
Both were undoubtedly men of exceptional energy and
42 History of the Royal Family of England.
ability, both added greatly to the power and prosperity of the kingdom, and, on the principle that it is better for a nation to be ruled over by a strong, even if a bad, Prince, than by one who, however good, is not strong enough to maintain law and order, they probably contributed more to the happiness of their subjects than would have done their brother Robert, or than did their nephew and successor, Stephen. Neverthe- less both Robert and Stephen were personally far more amiable men.
William II. was probably the worst man who ever sat on the English Throne, hardly excepting John or Henry VIII. Hideous and terrible in appearance, cruel, savage, and absolutely heartless in all his personal dealings, possessed with a positive hatred of religion and all holy things, and abnormally vicious in his private life, no one has been found to say a good word for him ; whereas John has had his advocates, and Henry VIII. has found an even enthusiastic admirer in that accurate and profound historian the late Professor Froude.
William never married, and was accidentally killed in the New Forest whilst hunting, and I cannot forbear quoting the eloquent passage in which Professor Freeman in the " Norman Conquest " concludes his notice of his reign ; " The Red King was at the height of his power and his pride, he was Lord from Scotland to Maine, he had nothing to disturb the safe enjoyment of his own will, there was no enemy to dread, no troublesome monster to rebuke or warn, but nevertheless warnings as men deemed were not wanting. Strange sights and sounds showed themselves to men's eyes and ears, strange warnings came to the doomed King himself, and, if Anselm was gone, less renowned prophets of evil arose to play the part of Micah. All warnings were vain. As all the world has heard, the Red King died, by what hand no man knew, in the spot which his father's cruelty had made a wilderness, glutting his own cruelty to the last moment of his life by the savage sports which seek for pleasure in the infliction of wanton suffering. Cut off without shrift, without
King Henry I. 43
repentance, he found a tomb within the old Minster at Winchester ; but the voice of Clergy and people, like the voice of one man, pronounced, by a common impulse, the sentence of excommunication which Rome feared to utter. As Waltheof and Simon and Thomas of Lancaster received the honours of a popular canonisation, so Rufus received the more unique brand of a popular excommunication. No bell was tolled, no prayer was said, no alms were given for the soul of the one baptized and anointed Ruler whose eternal damnation was taken for granted by all men as a thing about which there could be no doubt."
Henry I. was a very different kind of man. He was for his age a man of extraordinary culture, and though he was an oppressor of the Church, at times atrociously cruel and vindictive, in his youth extremely licentious, and apparently at no time actuated by any other principle than that of securing his own aggrandisement and power, he was habitually gentle and gracious in manner, he maintained the decencies of religious observance, and after his marriage he was, as far as appears, regular in his life, and certainly a kind and affectionate husband and father.
Henry I.'s first step, after his accession in 1 100, was one that was very popular with his English subjects. He married Edith, eldest daughter of Malcolm III. of Scotland and St. Margaret, niece of Edgar the Atheling, and great grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside (See Table I.). It will be remembered that on the death of Malcolm and Margaret in the year 1093 their infant children, including their daughters Edith and Mary, fled to England, where the Princesses found refuge in the Abbey of Romsey, of which their mother's sister, Christina, was Abbess. Considerable opposition to the marriage between Henry and Edith was raised by the Abbess Christina, who, to put it mildly, seems to have been an extremely unpleasant person. Christina firmly asserted that Edith was a nun, and was not at liberty to marry, and it is perhaps not unfair to suggest that the good lady was actuated in this pretention as much by opposi-
44 History of the Royal Family of England.
tion to the Norman Invaders as by religious scruples. She was met, however, with equal firmness, by her niece, who maintained that she was not a nun, and at length St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, was called in to adjudicate, and having assembled a Provincial Synod, and taken the evidence of the parties (which is given with much detail, and some unconscious humour by Eadmar, his secretary), he finally decided that Edith had taken no vows, and was therefore free to marry. The persistence of the young lady in declining to be a nun, gave rise to an impression that Edith and Henry had already met and formed an attachment, though how a girl brought up in a convent under the eyes of the Abbess Christina could possibly have met any man it is difficult to imagine.
Henry and Edith (whose name on her marriage was, in deference to Norman prejudice, changed to Matilda) were married at Westminster in the year noo, and Edith or Matilda, as she now was, was crowned at the same time.
At the date of the marriage King Henry's age was thirty- two, but Matilda's age is quite uncertain. Judging, however, from her conduct, and from the fact that before her marriage with Henry, negotiations for her marriage with several other persons had been started, and had been rendered abortive by her aunt, it is probable that she was not under twenty.
Though Matilda had so decidedly no vocation for a conventual life, she proved to be one of the best of the Queens of England. She was noted for her extreme piety and her large-minded and wide-spread charity. She obtained the marked respect and affection of her husband, and she was long known amongst his subjects as the " good Queen Maud." She died in 1 1 1 8, and is buried at the feet of St. Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
Henry and Matilda had only two children ; William, born in noi, and Matilda (known in history as the "Empress Matilda"), born in 1102, though some writers place the date of her birth some years later. William was looked upon by the English with much interest, as the son of a King born and
King Henry I. 45
crowned in England, and of a lady descended from their ancient Kings. Accounts differ as to his character, but on the whole he would appear to have been a youth of promise.
In 1119 he was married to a young daughter of Fulk, Count of Anjou, who had been one of the most formidable enemies of his father. The marriage took place at Lisieux in Burgundy ; but the lady was too young to return to England with her husband.
The story is well known how the young Prince on his journey home, flushed, it is said, with wine, insisted in spite of the warnings of his sailors in sailing for England, how the "White Ship" went down with all on board, how the Prince might have escaped in a boat, but put back to rescue one of his illegitimate sisters and was drowned, and how all perished but one man, who lived to tell the news to the unhappy father. The event created a profound impression in Europe, and well it might, in England at any rate, for it was the immediate cause of the awful wars of succession which followed the death of Henry I.
It is said that Henry I. " never smiled again," but, be that as it may, he lost no time in marrying again. His second wife (whom he married in 1120) was Adelais, daughter of Godfrey the Great, Duke of Brabant and Lower Lorraine. She is said to have been exceptionally beautiful and was of very illustrious descent, her father claiming to be the re- presentative of the elder line of Charlemagne. At the date of the marriage Henry was fifty, but the age of Adelais is uncertain. She must, however, have been very young, for she was Henry's wife for fifteen years, and by her second husband, whom she did not marry till three years after Henry's death, she had four children. Adelais was crowned in 1 12 1, her husband taking the opportunity to be crowned with her, to cure some defects, it is said, in his previous Coronation.
Very little is practically known about Queen Adelais, but she must have been a person of much tact, for notwithstanding her beauty, and the fact that she had no child by Henry
46 History of the Royal Family of England.
(which was a great disappointment), she seems to have avoided scandal, and been much loved by her husband. What is still more remarkable is that Adelais lived in peace and amity with her singularly disagreeable step-daughter, the Empress Matilda, a feat which, at any rate at that period of the Empress' life, few persons if any had achieved. As part of her dowry Queen Adelais received the Castle of Arundel, which is still in existence, and is the principal seat of the present Duke of Norfolk.
In 1138, three years after Henry's death, Adelais married William de Albini, a gentleman of ancient descent, and presumably of great attractions, seeing that another Queen Adelais, the widow of Louis VI. of France, not only proposed to marry him, but on his refusing, on the ground that he was engaged to the Dowager Queen of England, is said to have shut him up in a cave with a live lion, from which position, however, he happily escaped.
Albini in right of his wife assumed, or was granted, the title of Earl of Arundel, a title which has since remained almost continuously, and quite exclusively, in three families, passing from one to the other by the marriage of the heiress of the former with the representative of the latter. These families were the De Albini's till 1243 (temp: Henry III.), the Fitz Alans from that date till 15 80 (temp: Elizabeth), and since then the Howards, whose chief, the Duke of Norfolk, is now Earl of Arundel, and is descended in the female line from Queen Adelais and William de Albini.
Adelais died in 1 1 50.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EMPRESS MATILDA.— STEPHEN AND HIS WIFE. — HENRY DE BLOIS, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.— MATILDA'S YOUNGER SONS.— STEPHEN'S SONS. — MARY COUNTESS OF BOULOGNE.
ON the death of Henry I. in 1135, not only did no man know who actually would succeed to the Throne, but no man ventured to say with any assurance who if any one had a right to succeed, a state of things which, except on the death of St. Edward, had never happened before, and except on the death of Edward VI. never happened again. The Norman Conquest had not nominally at any rate altered the Constitution. On the contrary, William I. had studiously assumed that he was in some way, how was best known to himself, the lawful successor of St. Edward, and that there had been a complete continuity of laws between the Saxon and Norman periods, and this assumption was taken up and carried on by his two sons.
It must be remembered that by the Saxon Laws, or rather Customs, the Monarchy was elective ; the right of being elected being limited to Princes who were descended in the male line from the Royal House, and down to this period, at all events during the Saxon dynasty, no woman, and no man claiming through a woman, had ever sat on an English Throne, or as far as we know, had ever been suggested as a person capable of doing so.
No doubt Harold II., the successor of St. Edward, was no Royal Prince, but his reign had been short and unfortunate, and it had been the policy of the Normans to treat it as non- 47
48 History of the Royal Family of England.
existent, and if he had lived he must have been regarded as the founder of a new dynasty.
Moreover, though when there had been a Prince, as to whom the public mind had been certain that he would be elected King, he had been to some extent, treated as the heir, no Saxon Monarch had ever assumed to nominate his successor.
It is true that Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror had on their death -beds each expressed a wish, the one, that Harold, and the other, that Rufus, should respectively succeed them ; but the Conqueror had disre- garded Edward's wishes, as his sons Robert and Henry after- wards refused to be bound by his own ; and it was not until the reign of William Rufus that any King took upon himself to appoint his successor. Rufus did this in the treaty with his brother Robert, in which it was agreed that if he died without issue Robert was to succeed him, but Henry I. treated this provision as inoperative, and it was wholly opposed to all the traditions of the country.
This being the state of the law, there was no one who could claim to be, according to law, a fit candidate for election. The ancient Saxon House was extinct, and though David I. of Scotland was, according to modern ideas, the lineal heir of Edmund Ironside (see Table I.), his right was derived through his mother St. Margaret, and would not have been recognised by the Saxons.
Moreover, public opinion was by no means ripe for an union between England and Scotland, and that Englishman would have been a bold man who had proposed the Scotch King as even a possible candidate for the English Throne.
The only lawful grand-children of the Conqueror were the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I., who was not only a woman, but a most unpopular woman, and (assuming that Gundreda, Countess of Surrey, was not William's daughter), the children of Adela Countess of Blois.
There was indeed a descendant of William who in all personal qualities was most fit to reign. This was Robert
Robert Earl of Gloucester. 49
Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I. He was a man in the prime of life, by his marriage with a great heiress,. Mabell Fitz-Haman, a man of immense wealth and posses- sions, and he had already given promise of that which he was destined to prove, namely, that he was not only a great military commander, and a person of exceptional abilities, but also a man of great integrity, honour, and straight- forwardness. A century before he would probably have been elected King, notwithstanding the stain on his birth, but since the days of the Conqueror public morality had so far made progress that it would have been impossible to propose that a bastard should be made King of England, and certainly no such proposition was in fact ever made or suggested by Robert himself, or on his behalf.
Of the Princes of the House of Blois, the eldest had been held mentally incompetent to succeed even to his father's comparatively petty dominions, and the second, Theobald, though he did at first make claim to the Duchy of Normandy, and would probably have been accepted by the Normans, appears to have withdrawn his claims in favour of his brother Stephen, on Stephen's election to the Throne of England.
Practically, therefore, the contest was between Stephen, third son of Adela, and his cousin the Empress, and of their previous lives it is necessary to say a few words.
Matilda, the only daughter of Henry I., was born in 1 102, and at the age of seven, in 1109, she was married at Mayence to the Emperor Henry V. of Germany, and she was then and there crowned Empress, being held up in the arms of the Archbishop of Treves for the purpose.
Her husband is a person who played a great part in European politics, but of whose career it would be impossible to treat in this work. At the date of the marriage he was a full-grown man, and it was necessarily not until some years later that Matilda assumed the duties of wife and Empress. Accounts differ as to how the Imperial pair got on, but judging from the character of the Emperor and the subsequent D
50 History of the Royal Family of England.
conduct of the lady, I myself much doubt whether their relations were very amicable. They had no child, and the Emperor died, or disappeared, in 1125. I say "or dis- appeared," because there was for a long time a strong and persistent rumour that he was not dead, but had retired into, or been shut up in, a monastery.
There is no doubt that Matilda, who was then twenty- three, and who as Empress Dowager had an immense dowry, and it is said many suitors, would willingly have remained in Germany. Her only brother, however, was dead, and her father, who had been five years married to his second wife, and had, and was likely to have, no more children, was naturally anxious that his daughter should return to England. This she reluctantly did in 1126, and Henry thereupon took the unprecedented course of presenting her to his subjects as his successor, and requiring them to take an oath of allegiance to her in that capacity. The first to take the oath in respect of his English possessions was her maternal uncle, King David of Scotland. Then there arose a contest for precedence between her half-brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and her cousin, Stephen, which was decided in favour of the latter, and after them came all the greater Barons and Prelates of the kingdom.
It is said, and there may be some shadow of truth in the story, that there was at this time an attachment, at all events on the lady's side, between Matilda and Stephen. This rumour is confirmed by the indisputable fact that, in later years, her second son, Geoffrey Plantagenet, claimed his father's patrimonial dominions (the County of Anjou) on the ground that his father on his death-bed had declared Matilda's eldest son, afterwards Henry II., not to be his son, but the offspring of Stephen by Matilda. Princes of the twelfth century were not remarkable for delicacy of feeling, but, even in that age, a man would not have made such a charge against his own mother without some shadow of probability ; and many of the Angevin nobles confirmed the fact that Matilda's husband did make such a declaration.
The Empress Matilda. 51
A marriage between Stephen and Matilda would have been a most beneficial measure, but unfortunately Stephen had already a wife, whom he either could not, or would not, put aside. I say " would not J> because in those days the Canonical restraints on marriage, chiefly on the ground of consanguinity, were so numerous that there were few marriages, at all events among what I may call the " Royal Caste," in which a hole might not be picked, on the ground that some objection had been overlooked, and not properly removed by ecclesiastical dispensation. It would indeed almost appear that such obstacles were sometimes over- looked with, so to say, intention, and with a view to future contingencies.
Inasmuch, however, as Stephen was not attainable, and the lady was getting on, Henry in 1127 arranged a marriage for his daughter, which was not only (why is not very clear) intensely unpopular with all classes of his subjects, but ex- tremely distasteful to the parties. The selected husband was Geoffrey Plantagenet, son and heir to Fulk, Count of Anjou, whose sister had been for a few days the wife of Matilda's unfortunate brother, William.
Matilda was, by universal admission, a woman of very haughty disposition and ungovernable temper, and she never for a moment forgot that she was the daughter and acknow- ledged heiress of a great King and the widow of an Emperor, and that she was as much superior to her second husband in rank as unfortunately she was in age, while Geoffrey, who was a high-spirited, and not too steady, lad of sixteen, was, from the first, unwilling to submit to the claims of superiority which were put forward by his wife, a woman nine years older than himself, and whom he had never even professed to love.
After the marriage Geoffrey and Matilda proceeded to Anjou, where they very speedily quarrelled, and in the following year Matilda came back to England alone, and in a pretty considerable temper. Henry took this opportunity of getting the oath of allegiance, which had been taken to his daughter before her marriage, renewed, and he spent most of
52 History of the Royal Family of England.
his time during the last few years of his life in endeavouring to make and keep peace between her and her very ill-chosen husband. He so far succeeded that they did, from time to time, live together, and at the date of his death Matilda had two sons, the younger of whom was born only a few weeks before that event. This is the lady who was presented to the English as their first female Sovereign, and it is not to be wondered at that, notwithstanding all the oaths which had been taken, the prospect was not agreeable.
Stephen, who was born in 1103, and was thirty-two at the death of Henry I., was the third son of the Countess Adela of Blois, that King's sister. At a very early age he had been sent to England, where he had been brought up at his uncle's Court, and it is certain that he enjoyed a large measure of the King's confidence and affection.
All agree that he was a man of remarkable personal beauty, and of most gracious manners, and though events proved that he had no great force of character, he had for years set himself to win the regard of the English people, and in particular of the citizens of London, who, even then, had a great voice in public affairs. Stephen had been created by his uncle Count of Mortein, in Normandy, and some years before the King's death he had contracted a marriage, which was both brilliant and popular.
His wife was Matilda, only child and heiress of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, a province, small indeed, but which, from its command of the English coast, had long been a source of continual dread to the inhabitants of the South Eastern Counties.
The celebrated Godfrey and Tancred of Boulogne, whose deeds in ^the Holy Land had made all Europe ring with their fame, were her father's brothers, and her mother was Mary of Scotland, second daughter of Malcolm III. and St. Margaret, and sister of the "good Queen Maud," first wife of Henry I., so that Stephen's wife, like her cousin on her mother's side, the Empress Matilda, was descended from Edmund Ironside. (See Table I.)
King Stephen. 53
Moreover, Matilda of Boulogne was not only a great heiress, but she was as far as appears an amiable and good woman, and certainly a woman of infinite pluck, energy and resource. She appears to have been very popular in England, and her support was of the greatest possible value to her husband.
On the death of Henry L, Stephen hastened to England, where he was at once elected King, and crowned at West- minster, his wife being crowned in the following year, 1136. For a time it seemed as if he would have it all his own way ; for the Empress Matilda did not arrive in England till 1140, and even her brother, Earl Robert of Gloucester, in the first instance, made submission to Stephen, with, however, so it is alleged, reservation of the rights of the Empress if, and when, they should be put forward.
It is generally said that Stephen was an usurper. In the unsettled state of the law, and seeing that he was certainly elected King, I fail to see this, but it must be admitted that he was guilty of a somewhat mean and treacherous act in breaking two oaths which he had solemnly taken to his uncle and benefactor to protect the interests of his cousin.
Such oaths/ however, were so often taken and so lightly broken in the Middle Ages, that Stephen's conduct seems hardly to have attracted notice or reprobation at the time.
To trace the incidents of the civil war which followed would be outside my intention. Matilda's husband did not come to England, but he did her, and himself, great service, for he succeeded, apparently without much difficulty, in getting himself recognised as Duke in her right of Normandy ; and he held the Duchy in tolerable peace until within a few years of his death, when he and Matilda renounced their rights in the Duchy in favour of Matilda's eldest son Henry, then a youth of nineteen. It must be admitted that this proceeding tends to negative the suggestion that Count Geoffrey doubted the legitimacy of Henry.
In England the contest was carried on between Matilda in person, supported by her half-brother, who, in spite of
54 History of the Royal Family of England.
constant discouragements and affronts from the truculent Empress, was from the time of her landing in England constantly loyal to her cause; and Stephen, aided by his wife, who, assisting him at all times, during two periods when he was ill and once when he was in captivity, took upon herself the whole burden of the war, and proved herself able to compete even with the great Earl Robert himself.
Moving between the two sides was the somewhat sinister figure of Henry de Blois, Stephen's youngest brother. Of this celebrated person Ordericus Vitalis says, "the fourth son " (of Stephen Count of Blois and Adela) " Henry was devoted from infancy to the service of the Church at the Abbey of Cluny, and under the monastic rule was fully instructed in sacred learning. Should he persist in this religious life, he will be an heir to the Kingdom of Heaven, and present a memorable example of contempt for the world to earthly Princes."
The note of distrust which I find in this passage was justified. Henry de Blois did not long remain a monk, or, at all events, secluded from the world. The date of his birth is uncertain, but he was younger than Stephen, who was born in 1103. In 1129 (when, assuming him to have been born in 1104, he would have been twenty-five), Henry was consecrated Bishop of Winchester, and during many years of Stephen's reign his brother exercised the high functions of Papal Legate to England.
It cannot be denied that Bishop Henry was a man of great ability, or that he exercised an influence great in proportion even to his high rank and position ; but though at this distance of time it is difficult to judge how far he was justified in the course he took, I cannot say that as a Prelate he appears to have been altogether a credit to the Church. At all events, it certainly seems to me that con- sidering the changes which took place in his own views and conduct, he made more use of his strictly Ecclesiastical powers against his opponents for the time being than was justifiable.
The Civil War. 55
It is not known if he actually took the oath of allegiance to his cousin Matilda, the oath having originally been administered in 1126, and repeated in 1128, whereas Henry did not become Bishop till 1129; but it is at all events not improbable that he did, and he certainly in the first instance espoused the cause of the Empress as against his own brother. Then having quarrelled with Matilda, he became one of her most active and formidable opponents, taking a personal part in the siege of Winchester and other military operations against her.
When Matilda landed in England in 1140, she does not seem to have been received with enthusiasm, and her first step was to take refuge in Arundel Castle, the residence of her step-mother, Queen Adelais. Here she was besieged by Stephen, who, however, with much courtesy, and as, I think, with some folly, at the request of Adelais eventually allowed Matilda to depart unmolested. After this Adelais and her second husband remained neutral in the contest, which thenceforward raged merrily. At one time Matilda seemed to have the ball at her feet. Stephen was a prisoner in her hands (and it is characteristic that she treated him, if not with actual cruelty, with much personal indignity), and she herself was mistress of London, the stronghold of the enemy, and was on the eve of being crowned Queen, a point to which the English at that time'attached much importance. She seized this opportunity, however, for one of those bursts of rage and ill-temper, which embittered her enemies and discouraged her friends. The citizens rose, and Stephen's wife, Queen Matilda, arriving opportunely at the gates, the Empress had much difficulty in effecting her escape. Shortly afterwards the Empress' brother, the Earl of Gloucester, fell a prisoner to the Queen (who, be it observed, notwithstanding the indignities with which her own husband had been treated, refused to make reprisals), and the ladies unable to get on, the one without her husband, the other without her brother, agreed to change prisoners.
Other incidents (though they are well authenticated)
56 History of the Royal Family of England.
sound like the inventions of a romancer. Matilda, the Empress, escaping from Winchester where she was besieged, and pursued through an unfriendly country, assumed the habiliments of a corpse, and was carried for miles on a bier, as if to burial ; and again, the same lady, besieged at Oxford, in the depths of winter, was let down from the walls of the Castle in a snowstorm, and dressed in white, passed as a snow drift through the besieger's camp. One can only suppose that the absolute impossibility of erecting Matilda into a heroine has hitherto prevented any historical romancer from utilising such golden material !
At length in 1153 all parties were fairly worn out, and perhaps it was felt that the country could bear no more of a war, during which every petty Baron, in the absence of all control, had become a tyrant.
Stephen had lost his wife, who died in 1151, and his eldest son, who died in 1153, and he was himself the victim of disease, and Matilda had lost her husband, who died in 1151, and, a far greater loss, her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, who died in 1147, and she herself, worn out with fatigue, and approaching old age, had in 1 1 50 renounced all her rights in favour of her son Henry, and retired to Nor- mandy. Consequently, when the opposing forces under Stephen and the young Henry met at Wallingford in 1153, it was arranged on the mediation of the Bishop of Winchester, to his credit be it said (i), that Stephen should reign for life ; (2) that he should be succeeded by Henry, but (3) that Stephen's surviving son, William (then a mere youth), should be secured in the possessions to which, if his father had never been King, he would have been entitled in right of his father Stephen, and of his mother Queen Matilda.
Stephen did not long survive the treaty of Wallingford, for he died in the following year (1154) aged fifty-one, when the treaty was carried out, and Matilda's son, Henry, already Duke of Normandy, succeeded to the English throne without opposition, possibly because there was practically no one left to oppose him.
Henry de Blois} Bishop of Winchester. 57
Stephen's brother, the Bishop of Winchester, survived till 1171, and he took a considerable part in the great struggle between Henry II. and the Archbishop St. Thomas A'Beckett of Canterbury, which convulsed England during the succeed- ing reign. On the whole he seems to have supported the Archbishop, though it was he who, at the Council held at Northampton in 1 164, was deputed to pronounce the sentence of fine against Thomas, which Henry had frightened the Bishops and Barons into adjudging, and he was one of the most urgent of those who counselled the Primate to resign his See.
When Bishop Henry lay dying at Winchester in 1171, his relative King Henry II. went to see him, and then, at any rate, the dying prelate spoke out with such bitter re- proaches, and prophetic warnings of coming evil, that Henry is said to have been reduced to one of those fits of almost insane remorse and terror with which he occasionally varied his ordinary course of rampant wickedness.
Matilda, as we have seen, had long since retired to Normandy, where she survived until the year 1167, having attained the age of sixty-five. She appears to have been treated by her son Henry with courtesy and consideration, and to have taken a large share in the administration of the Duchy of Normandy. According to a writer of the time (cited by Mrs. J. R. Green in her life of Henry II.), Matilda counselled her son " That he should delay all the business of all men, that whatsoever fell into his hands he should retain a long while, and enjoy the fruit of it, and keep suspended in hope all who aspired to it," adding this illustration, " Glut a hawk with his quarry, and he will hunt no more. Show it him, and then draw it back, and you will ever keep him tractable and obedient." Whether it is true that she actually gave such advice I do not know, but there certainly seems to have been a marked similarity in the characters of mother and son.
In the differences which arose between King Henry and Thomas A'Beckett, Matilda was appealed to on both sides,
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and skilfully avoided committing herself to either. Shortly before her death she took the veil at Fontevraud in Nor- mandy, but this appears to have been merely a form; for she did not live in the convent or die there. She is buried in the Abbey of Bee.
The Empress Matilda had three children by her second husband, Henry, Geoffrey, and William. Their father on his death -bed exacted from Henry an oath that, on his accession to the English Throne he would make over his continental dominions derived from his father to his brother Geoffrey, an oath which, it is needless to say, Henry did not keep. On the contrary, he deprived his brother even of those dominions which had been directly given to him by his father in his father's life.
Neither Geoffrey nor William, the younger sons of Matilda, married. They both died comparatively young, and so far as appears took no part in English affairs.
In Burke's Peerage it is stated that Matilda had a daughter named Emma. This is a mistake. The Emma mentioned was one of the bastard children of Matilda's husband, of whom he had almost as many as his father-in- law, King Henry I., himself, and she was given in marriage by her half-brother, Henry II., to one of the Welsh Princes.
Before entering on the reign of Henry II. it is necessary to say a few words as to the children of King Stephen and Matilda of Boulogne. They had five, Baldwin and Matilda, who were born and died as infants, before Stephen's accession to the Throne, and three, Eustace, William and Mary, who were born after that event in 1 135. Of these Eustace appears to have been a youth of violent temper and some ability. He died, or, as some say, was murdered, early in the year 1153, and no doubt his death greatly conduced to the peace of Wallingford. His wife, to whom he was married when he was of the mature age of four, was Constance, a sister of Louis VII. of France, the match having been brought about with infinite pains by Eustace's mother, but as Eustace was
King Stephens Children. 59
barely eighteen, and his wife younger, when he died, and as they had no child, these pains were thrown away.
Stephen's second son, who cannot have been more than eighteen at his father's death, would seem to have acquiesced in the new state of things with tolerable equanimity. By the treaty of Wallingford, he became on his father's death Count of Boulogne, in right of his mother, a title which, when he died, passed to his sister Mary, thereby bringing on an innocent head a series of misfortunes scarcely paralleled in the annals of female royalty.
William married, as has been already said, Isabel, the great heiress of the De Warrennes, Earls of Surrey, but had no child. He died in 1160, six years after his father, and it is fair to the memory of Henry II. to say that he seems to have treated his cousin William with some good nature.
There is a practice which obtains in some Eastern countries of putting to death the younger brothers and sisters of the Sovereign on the latter's accession to the Throne, and it has often occurred to the present writer that this practice, though no doubt, immoral, would have had its advantages, if it had obtained in Europe in the Middle Ages, or even later. It would certainly have been a great advantage to genealogists.
Mediaeval Sovereigns, however, did not think so, and indeed they seem to have attached an extraordinary import- ance to marrying their daughters, and to have retained in spite of many shocks an almost child-like faith in the advan- tages to be derived from doing so. This view on the part of their fathers and brothers gave to marriageable Princesses an extreme, and I should suppose, at times, a very unpleasant, importance in the eyes of the world.
It is of course to be presumed that political marriages did sometimes tend to promote peace, but as a rule their only apparent effects were to impoverish the native lands of the brides, which had to provide them with dowries, to embitter family disputes, and to give rise to all sorts of claims, real or imaginary, on the part of the husbands, sons, and grandsons
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of the ladies, against the dominions of the male relatives, who had been so anxious to give them in marriage.
Considering, however, the eagerness of the early Kings to marry their daughters, it is somewhat remarkable that Stephen, having only one daughter, and being certainly as much in need of extraneous assistance as any Sovereign who ever lived, should not have married her to some one of importance at the earliest possible moment. Nevertheless, it appears to have been agreed to on all hands, almost as soon as the young lady was born, that she should become a nun.
This might have been accounted for if she had been physically or mentally incapable of marriage, or had had time to evince any very strong predisposition to a con- ventual life ; but subsequent circumstances showed that she was by no means a fool, and that she could, and did, have children ; and though, no doubt, she may have been, and pro- bably was, a respectable woman, she does not appear to have been remarkably religious. Mary was entered at a very early age (the date is uncertain) in a Convent in Stratford, whence she was transferred to a Convent at Lillechureh in Kent, and finally to the famous Convent at Romsey, in which so many English ladies of rank had taken the veil. The reason of the transfer to Lillechureh was that certain French nuns, who, so to speak, formed her suite, objected strongly to the discipline at Stratford, which they found too strict.
Mary was Prioress both at Lillechureh and Romsey, and though, of course, her election to that office at Lillechureh, when she was almost a child, may be regarded as a compli- ment to her rank, this cannot be said of her election at Romsey. This election was not made till some years after her father's death, and it took place when her brother William was still living, and likely to have children, and when the chances of Mary's attaining to any political importance, or becoming in any sense a great heiress, were remote. It may therefore be assumed that Mary's election at Romsey was due in some degree to her own merits, or at all events that
Mary Countess of Boulogne. 61
she was not conspicuously unfit to fill the position of Abbess.
In 1 1 60, when her brother died, Mary, who was at least twenty-three years old, had been a nun for many years, and being, as a nun, " civilly dead," she could not lawfully succeed to her brother's dominions, which ought by law to have passed to one of the French Princes.
Henry II., however, was not the man to let such a place as Boulogne slip through his hands, and he conceived the project of carrying off the lady and marrying her to a friend of his own, Matthew, who was a son of Thierry, the then reigning Count of Flanders. This project was carried out. In the dead of night Mary was carried off from her convent and forcibly married, by whom it is not known, to Matthew of Flanders, and then immediately taken to Boulogne to take possession of her mother's dominions. There is no sort of ground for supposing that Mary was a willing party to her marriage, or that she was in any way consulted in the matter.
So great an outrage on the religious and even civil feelings of the time could not pass unnoticed, for, be it observed, convents in those days were the refuge of all women who for any reason desired to retire from active life, and any violation of their sanctity was justly regarded by all men, apart from religious feeling, as a violation of the homes provided for those women of their families who could not, or did not, wish to marry.
Accordingly, the Pope Alexander III. immediately ex- communicated the enterprising husband, and laid the County of Boulogne under an interdict (which was repeatedly renewed), and the feeling of all Christendom (including that of Matthew's own father) was so roused, that for several years the County of Boulogne was in a constant state of actual or threatened invasion, and its state must have been truly deplorable.
Few persons now realise the horrors of an interdict when it was enforced. The churches were closed, the public administration of the Sacraments was forbidden, the dead were
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buried without funeral rites, and there was a complete stoppage of those innocent gaities which in the Middle Ages were the chief solace of the people, and which were insepar- ably connected with the celebration of Church Festivals. When to these miseries were added those of constant foreign invasions, or threatened invasions, and of internal dissensions, it can hardly be doubted that the name of Mary, the cause, however innocent, of these afflictions, must have been loathed by the Boulognese, as indeed it would appear to have been.
At length, after nine years, matters became unbearable and were compromised. In 1169 Mary was allowed to go back to a Convent, not indeed as Abbess and to a Convent in her native land, but as a simple nun to a Convent in Montreuil, where she lived for fourteen years, and where she died in 1183.
The marriage between Matthew and Mary was dissolved, but their two daughters (they had no son), Ida and Matilda, were somewhat inconsistently declared legitimate, and Matthew of Flanders, who was the chief culprit, was allowed to retain possession of Boulogne. He afterwards married again, but his subsequent career does not appear to have been either prosperous or distinguished.
Mary's daughters were both married, and were more or less notable figures in European History, but their careers did not affect England, or the history of the English Royal Family, and therefore it is unnecessary to pursue them further.
CHAPTER V.
HENRY II.— ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE.— HENRY'S DAUGHTERS.
WITH the reign of Heny II. we enter upon a new era of English History.
As much a foreigner to England as the Conqueror, and far more of a foreigner than the Conqueror's sons or Stephen, it has been calculated that in a reign of thirty-five years, Henry was not in England for any period exceeding two years at a stretch, and there can be little doubt that his vast continental dominions occupied his attention far more than the Island which, though it gave to the Norman Dukes the title of King, was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries regarded rather as a fruitful and useful colony for the Normans than as in itself any great centre of power.
Nevertheless, it is certain that in Henry's reign took place the practical amalgamation of the two hostile races, Normans and Saxons, and that in his reign were laid the seeds of that great system of government and jurisprudence which have since developed into the " British Constitution," of which all Englishmen, however much they may decry it in detail, are as a whole justly proud.
Many volumes have been written about Henry II. — of his reign and of his character, and of his influence on great questions of universal interest. He was, in my opinion, a man of extreme wickedness, but he was also certainly a man of extreme ability — possessing in an eminent degree all those qualities which enable a man to dominate and rule his fellow- •creatures, and gifted with a physical energy and strength which were truly extraordinary. His most enthusiastic
63
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admirers admit that he was liable to fits of almost demoniacal rage and fury, which, from time to time, overpowered his judgment, and that he was at all times tyrannical, covetous, licentious and cruel, no one has denied or can deny.
He himself laid claim to, and he is usually credited with, the virtue of paternal love, but it is certain that his sons hated him, and I must confess that the misery they caused him seems to me to have been rather produced by baffled ambition than by true affection on his part. A great man, Heracleus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, is reported, speaking to him of his sons, to have once said, " From the devil they came and to the devil they will go," and they certainly were what would be called now a " bad lot " ; but if any human being can be held responsible for the crimes of another, then, I think, Henry was responsible for the crimes of his sons.
As I do not wish to rely on my own personal views as to this King's character, I will only say that if any preacher wishes to point a moral on the end of human greatness, built on wickedness, he might well select for a subject the closing scenes of Henry's life, and choose for his text the latest biography of Henry, written for the series " of Twelve Eminent Statesmen," by Mrs. J. R. Green, a writer who cannot be accused of undervaluing any good qualities Henry possessed, and who, indeed, appears to be his ardent admirer.
Born in 1132, Henry was not twenty-two when he was called upon to rule over a greater European territory than any of his predecessors or any of his successors on the English Throne.
Edward III. and Henry V. perhaps were in name rulers over even a greater dominion, but their rule was to a great extent nominal, and it was certainly evanescent ; whereas Henry during his reign was in fact not only King of England, with more or less sovereignty over Ireland and Wales, but also actual and effective Prince over at least half of France. From his father and his mother he inherited Anjou and Normandy, and in right of his wife he became Duke of
King Henry II 's Marriage. 65
Aquitaine or Guienne which included the greater part of Southern France.
It has been said that, but for two obstacles, Henry might have become de facto, that which so many of his successors claimed to be dejure, King of France.
These obstacles were his persistent and bitter contests with the Church, and the unnatural strife which arose between him and his sons. Of the former subject it would be unsuitable to treat in this work, but to the latter some reference must be made later, and I will only say now, that of the four sons who reached maturity, two, Henry and Geoffrey, died in open enmity with their father, and the other two, Richard and Johnr were in open rebellion against him when he died. His last interview with his son Richard, who succeeded him, is thus recorded by Mrs. J. R. Green, the author above mentioned. " Then for the last time he spoke with his faithless son Richard. As the formal kiss of peace was given, the Count caught his father's fierce whisper, ( May God not let me die until I have worthily avenged myself on thee.' The terrible words were to Richard only a merry tale with which, on his return, he stirred the French Court to great laughter." Henry's last conscious act of intelligence before he died was to grasp the fact that John, his youngest son, had joined his enemies.
In the year 1152 Henry married Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, he at the date of the marriage being in his twenty- first year, and Eleanor it is supposed twelve years older. Eleanor was the grand-daughter and heiress of William IV.y Duke of Aquitaine, a Prince whose territories abutted on the south of Henry's patrimonial County of Anjou, and covered a large portion of France.
In 1137, fifteen years before her marriage with Henry, Eleanor had been married with extraordinary pomp and solemnity at Bordeaux to Louis, eldest son of Louis VI., and himself shortly afterwards Louis VII. of France.
Within a few days after this marriage Louis and Eleanor became King and Queen of France and Duke and Duchess E
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of Aquitaine, by the death of King Louis VI. and the abdica- tion of Duke William IV., who took the opportunity of his grand-daughter's marriage to retire into a monastery.
The marriage had been brought about by the diplomacy of SugeV, the celebrated minister of Louis VI. and Louis VII., and was justly regarded as a great triumph for France, as, if Louis and Eleanor had had a son, that son would have inherited dominions extending over two-thirds of what is now France, and obtained a great preponderance of power in Europe. They had, however, no son who survived infancy, and the marriage was signally unhappy. Louis was no doubt a good and religious man, but of somewhat narrow under- standing, and of austere and, if I may venture to say so, some- what priggish manners. Eleanor was a lively young woman, with a strong love of pleasure, no principle, and little respect for her husband, with whom she stood on terms of unusual equality, in that she was an independent Sovereign with at least as much power as he. As the result, the quarrels between the French King and Queen, and the levity, not to say licence, of the Queen became notorious throughout Europe. Among the numerous lovers, real or supposed, with whom Eleanor is credited were, I regret to say, Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, the father of her second husband, and Raymond of Poitou, Count of Toulouse, who was her own paternal uncle. To these there may be added a Saracen Emir named Saladin, whose acquaintance she made during the second Crusade in the Holy Land. To this Crusade she went in the character of a crusader, and the dress of an amazon, and I may add that her going to the Crusade and her proceedings during it were a source of infinite annoyance to her husband, King Louis, and of great discredit if not actual disaster to the Christian forces.
At the end of 1151, Henry II., then Duke of Normandy, went to Paris to do homage for his duchy to the French King, and became, there can be no doubt, the Queen's lover. Matters were brought to a crisis by the discovery that Eleanor, who had two daughters by Louis, was pregnant
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. 67
with a child, of which Henry and not Louis was the father.
In this emergency, Eleanor boldly appealed to a council of Bishops assembled at Beaugenci, and claimed the dissolution of her marriage with Louis, on the ground that she was his fourth cousin. This was granted with extraordinary rapidity on the 1 8th of March 1152 ; six weeks later, on the 1st of May, Eleanor was married to Henry, and on the I7th August she gave birth to a son named William. Happily this son died as a young child, seeing that he stood in the unique position of having been begotten when his mother was the wife of the King of France, and born when she was the wife of the Duke of Normandy, who afterwards became King of England.
Louis seems to have been a willing party to the dissolution of the marriage, probably regarding the loss of his wife as a fair compensation for the loss of her dominions. It may be here mentioned that he had two subsequent wives, by one of whom he had two daughters, Margaret and Alice, of whom we shall hear again, and by the other a son, afterwards Philip II., or Philip Augustus, King of France.
The Catholic Church has at no time recognised the possibility of divorcing two persons once lawfully married, but it must be admitted that in the Middle Ages, when a marriage between two persons of sufficient rank was found to be inconvenient, it was remarkably easy to obtain a declaration that the parties had never been lawfully married ; and thus, practically, to obtain all the advantages of a divorce. In those days, two persons who were related in blood, either law- fully or unlawfully, in the remote degree of fourth cousins, that is to say, two persons who had had a great great-grand- father or grandmother in common, were according to Ecclesiastical Law within the prohibited degrees of kindred, and forbidden to marry without Ecclesiastical dispensation. As a matter of fact nearly all those who may be called of the " Royal Caste " were related one to another within the pro- hibited degree, and it seems to have been no one's business to
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see that when two persons, however illustrious, were married proper inquiries as to their relationship were made, or proper dispensations granted. Consequently, when two married persons of rank disagreed, all they had to do was to discover or invent some common ancestor in the course of the last century or two in order to separate and marry again. In the particular instance of the marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor, I assume that Louis and Eleanor were, in fact, fourth cousins, though I am not a sufficiently good genealogist to say precisely how. The difficulty, however, is to see how it came about that, if so, no dispensation was granted, or if granted, how the marriage came to be dissolved. It is idle to suppose that in an age when the greatest store was set upon noble birth and* descent, the fact that two persons of such rank and position as the King of France and the Duchess of Aquitaine were related, if they were related, should not have been known to many persons, including the Bishops and Canonists, who took part in a marriage solemnized with unusual publicity and splendour ; and it is almost inconceivable that if there was any known impediment to a marriage, on which so momentous an issue as the union between two great States was expected to turn, such impediment, if it existed, should not have been removed.
With these remarks, which, though in perhaps a less pointed degree, apply to the dissolution of other marriages to which I shall have to refer, I leave this question, which is a somewhat delicate matter, for a layman to treat of, but which has certainly been a cause of great scandal and per- plexity to a great many readers of history, both Catholics and Protestants.
As might have been expected, the married life of Henry and Eleanor was in no way happy, but it is fair to Eleanor to say that we hear no more of lovers, probably because Henry was a far more formidable kind of man than Louis, and Eleanor was clever enough to realize the difference.
The earlier years of her married life were chiefly occupied in bearing children, and after the birth of her youngest child,
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. 69
John, in 1166, she went for some time to reside at Bordeaux, the capital of her own Duchy of Aquitaine, where, however, she was allowed no particular authority, and seems to have been closely watched. She remained at Bordeaux till 1173, when the rebellion of her elder sons having broken out (a rebellion she seems to have encouraged in every way), she attempted to escape — it is said in the clothes of a man — to join them in Paris, at the Court of her former husband, Louis VII. She was, however, taken prisoner, and shortly afterwards, Henry arriving in Bordeaux, carried her and his daughter-in-law Margaret, the wife of his eldest son, Henry, back to England, as prisoners, in his train. Thenceforward until Henry II.'s death in 1189, a period of sixteen years, Eleanor's life was, with but short intervals, passed more or less in captivity. This circumstance added much to the difficulties which beset Henry in his later years, in that it was equally resented by Eleanor's sons and her own subjects in Aquitaine.
Henry was fifty-seven when he died in 1 189, and therefore Eleanor must have been then about sixty-nine, but she survived him for thirteen years, and played a conspicuous part in the reigns of her sons Richard and John, and we shall hear of her again in speaking of those Princes.
There is no story more thoroughly accepted by the English people, or which is the subject of more poems and ballads, than the tale of " Fair Rosamond Clifford and the wicked Queen Eleanor " ; according to which Queen Eleanor tracked Rosamond to her bower at Woodstock, and there forced her to take poison.
As a matter of fact, Rosamond Clifford was the mistress of King Henry, and bore him two sons, but it has been, I think, clearly proved that the connection between Henry and Rosamond ceased very shortly after, if not before, Henry's marriage ; Rosamond then entered a convent at God stow, where she remained till she died a natural death about the year 1173, having, it is said, lived for many years a life of great penitence and virtue.
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Henry's sons by Rosamond Clifford were the famous William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, who played a pro- minent part in the reigns of Kings John and Henry III., and who figures in Shakespeare's play of " King John " ; and Geoffrey, who, having entered the Church, was at a very early age made Bishop of Lincoln and afterwards Archbishop of York. William Longsword left a son who succeeded him, but was deprived of his rank and estates by Henry III., and died in 1226, leaving a son who died without male issue in 1256. This son left a daughter Margaret (great-grand- daughter of the original " Longsword "), who is sometimes referred to as Countess of Salisbury, and who married the famous Henry de Laci, Earl of Lincoln, whose only daughter and heiress, Alice de Laci, married Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster, nephew of Edward I., to whom I must refer later.
Geoffrey, the younger son of Rosamond Clifford by Henry, was with his father when the King died, and from him Henry II. appears to have derived such comfort as was allowed to him from family affection. After Henry's death Geoffrey spent the rest of his life in constant and bitter disputes with his half-brothers Richard I. and John, and ultimately died in exile.
There is a darker story than that of Rosamond Clifford connected with the private life of Henry II., the facts of which are tolerably well authenticated, though, I observe, that the panegyrists of Henry are very shy in alluding to them, and generally ignore them altogether. In 1 160 a marriage, which on account of the connection between the parties is certainly somewhat repugnant to modern ideas, was arranged between Henry, the eldest surviving son of Henry and Eleanor (then a boy of five years old), and Margaret, the eldest daughter of Louis VII., Eleanor's former husband, by his second wife ; and two years later Richard, the young Henry's next brother, was betrothed to Alice, Margaret's younger sister. Unhappily for her, Alice, then little more than an infant, was sent to England to be there educated, and there is strong reason to suppose
Alice of France. 71
that King- Henry, in defiance of all laws of hospitality and decency, afterwards seduced this young girl, entrusted to his hands as the affianced wife of his own son. It is even said that Alice of France bore him a child, and that Henry at one time contemplated repudiating his wife in order to marry Alice. It is certain that Alice of France remained in England (the place and circumstances of her residence being more or less a mystery) from 1162 till 1189 — a peroid of twenty-seven years — that in spite of the constant remonstrances of Prince Richard and the lady's father and brother, Louis VII. and Philip Augustus of France, Henry never could, or would allow the marriage between Richard and Alice to take place, and that finally, after his father's death, Richard, then King, positively refused to marry Alice on the ground that she had been his father's mistress.
It was not till long after Henry's death, till indeed nearly the end of Richard's reign, that Alice was allowed to return to France ; and she seems to have passed the intermediate years as a captive of Queen Eleanor, a position which, under the circumstances and considering the Queen's character, can- not have been agreeable. What ultimately became of her I do not know.
In estimating the merits of the quarrels between Henry and his sons we cannot leave this story out of consideration. Alice was the sister of the younger Henry's wife, and the affianced bride of Richard, and though it may well be that Richard, under the circumstances, did not exactly desire to complete his marriage with Alice, he was in fact kept through- out his youth and early manhood in a kind of half-married condition which cannot have been pleasant, and which greatly exasperated his not too amiable temper.
Henry II. and Eleanor had eight children: (i) the son William, whose birth and early death have been mentioned ; (2) Henry, born in 1155 ; (3) Matilda, afterwards Duchess of Saxony, born in 1156 ; (4) Richard, afterwards Richard I. of England, born in 1 1 57 ; (5) Geoffrey, born in 1 1 59 ; (6) Eleanor, afterwards Queen of Castile, born in 1162 ; (7) Joanna, some-
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time Queen of Sicily, and then Countess of Toulouse, born in 1165 ; and (8) John, afterwards King, born in 1166.
I propose, for the sake of convenience, to speak first of the three daughters of Henry II., and then to revert to his sons, through John, the youngest of whom the Royal line is continued. In dealing with Henry II.'s daughters, and the other Plantagenet Princesses, I must again express my acknow- ledgment to Mrs. Everett Green's "Lives of the Princesses of England, " a work in six volumes, in which much valuable and curious information is contained. Such information, however, is combined with many suggestions, as to the probable or possible beauty, virtue and excellent sentiments of the ladies, which seem to me to emanate rather from the amiable conjec- tures of the writer than to be based on ascertained facts, and which are couched in language rather too flowery to be accept- able to the ordinary male reader.
Matilda, Henry's eldest daughter, was engaged in 1165 and actually married in 1168 to Henry "the Lion," Duke of Bavaria, Saxony, Brunswick and Luneburgh, of whom Dr. Lingard says " that he was at one time the most powerful, afterwards the most unfortunate, Prince in Europe."
Henry was the head of the great house of Guelph of which the present Duke of Cumberland is the existing repre- sentative, he having descended in the direct male line from Henry the Lion and Matilda. The Duke of Saxony, unfor- tunately for himself, came into collision with the Emperor Frederic I. (Barbarossa), and was in 1182 driven into exile, and took refuge with his wife and family in England at the Court of his father-in-law Henry II. In 1185 he returned to his dominions, but was again exiled for a short time, and during this second exile his wife died.
He himself died in 1195, having for several years before his death become, it is said, a most exemplary character.
At the date of her marriage with Henry, Matilda was twelve years old and Henry thirty-six. He had been pre- viously married to Clementina of Thuringia, with whom, he lived seventeen years, and by whom he had a daughter
King Henry II.'s Daughters. 73
Gertrude, but at the end of the seventeen years his wife having brought him no son, it was discovered that Henry and his wife were within the prohibited degrees of kindred, and the marriage was dissolved. This daughter was however declared to be legitimate.
Of Matilda, his second wife, little is practically known, but there is every reason to suppose that she was a very respectable woman. She died in the year 1189, eight days before her father, being thirty-three years old.
Henry the Lion and Matilda had six children, four sons and two daughters. Their second son was afterwards the Emperor Otho IV., and their youngest son William, who was born in England, had a son Otho, who became on the partition of his grandfather's dominions Duke of Brunswick. This Otho is the direct ancestor of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, who was the father of George I., King of England, from whom his present Majesty is descended through his grandmother the late Queen Victoria, but who, as I have said, is represented in the male line by the Duke of Cumberland.
I wish I could dwell at greater length than it is possible to do on the history of Eleanor, second daughter of Henry II., and her husband the King of Castile, to which it is refreshing to turn in dealing with the family of the first Plantagenet King. . Alphonso was, I think, the ninth King of Castile of that name, but I may remark that the numeration of the Spanish Kings is extremely difficult to follow. Spain was originally divided into a number of small kingdoms which, as time went on, amalgamated. The choice of names for the Spanish Kings was apparently very limited, and it not infrequently happens that the same Alphonso being King of two origin- ally distinct kingdoms, is referred to by one number when one kingdom is under notice, and by another number in reference to the other. Therefore, whenever I hazard a number in regard to any early King Alphonso, I always pause to be corrected by anyone who knows anything about Spanish history.
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This particular Alphonso, however, became King almost at his birth, and appears to have been a really good man, a great King, and a distinguished soldier. He was even merciful to the Jews, which in a mediaeval Spanish Monarch was a sign of liberality quite beyond his age, and his wife seems to have been quite worthy of him, and the history of their reign and of Alphonso's campaigns against the Moors is both exciting and interesting reading. Alphonso and Eleanor were married in the year 1168 when Alphonso was fifteen and she was eight, and after a long life spent together in the greatest domestic happiness, they died in the year 1214, within twenty-five days of each other. The Queen was struck down on hearing of her husband's death with an illness from which she never recovered.
Alphonso and Eleanor had eleven children, of whom only seven, two sons and five daughters, survived infancy. The elder of the two sons, Ferdinand, who seems to have been a most promising youth, died in 1209, immediately after his return from his first campaign against the Moors, in which he had distinguished himself greatly. The second son succeeded his father as Henry I., King of Castile, but having reigned for only three years he was accidentally killed, or, as some writers suggest, murdered while still a youth. This was perhaps a good thing for Spain, as it resulted in the union of the Spanish kingdoms of Leon and Castile, for by Henry's death his eldest sister, Berengaria, who had married the King of Leon, became by right Queen of Castile, and she, having resigned her rights to her eldest son, he became in time King of both provinces, and is known as Saint Ferdinand III. of Castile and Leon.
Of Eleanor's four other daughters, one became a nun, and two were respectively Queens of Aragon and Portugal. The fourth was the celebrated Blanche of Castile, who, as is well known, was married at the instance of her maternal uncle, King John of England, to Louis VIII. of France, by whom she was the mother of St. Louis IX. She was a most prudent and wise guardian to her son during his minority,
King Henry I Us Daughters. 75
and to his kingdom during his absences at the Crusades, and she was also, no doubt, a truly religious woman. I think however that her domestic virtues must, from their very intensity, have been uncomfortable to her less pious relatives, and must, at all events, have given cause for the exercise of great virtue on the parts of her son St. Louis and his wife, into whose private affairs she entered with a minuteness of observation and interference which in the nineteenth century would have been found extremely trying even by the most devoted of sons and daughters-in-law.
Queen Eleanor through her daughters is ancestress to nearly every Royal Family in Europe. In particular, as will be seen later, through her daughters Berengaria and Blanche, Queen Eleanor is the ancestress of the Royal Family of England.
Joanna, the third daughter of Henry II., was the first of a long series of Princesses of that name who flourished in the reigns of the Plantagenets. She married in 1176 Robert II. (known as the Good), King of Sicily, a descendant of the celebrated Norman Robert Guiscard, who a century before had founded that kingdom.
At the date of the marriage Robert was twenty-three and Joanna eleven. Robert seems, to have been a very good man, and though Joanna had by him only one child, who died as an infant (which was a great disappointment), he and his wife lived together on very friendly terms till his death in 1189, in which year Joanna's father, Henry II., also died.
On Robert's death ensued a contest for succession between his recognised heiress, his Aunt Constance, who had married Henry, the eldest son of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and Tancred, a bastard son of Robert's father's eldest brother — a contest which caused considerable commotion in Europe for very many years. It is supposed that Joanna took the part of Constance, and at any rate Tancred, who was in possession, immediately shut her up in prison, where she remained till the following year, when her brother, Richard I. of England, on his way to the Holy Land
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descended like a deus ex machind on the Coast of Sicily and set her at liberty. Joanna revenged herself by demanding in addition to her dowry, which was sufficiently large, a great quantity of valuable portable property, which she alleged, perhaps truly, had been left to her by her husband. These articles or their money value she ultimately succeeded in getting, being backed up by Richard and Philip Augustus of France, who had arrived on the scene, but she had never- theless to pay a very large commission on their value to her Royal deliverers.
Joanna then went to Messina, where she met her mother, Queen Eleanor, and Berengaria of Navarre, the betrothed bride of her brother, Richard I. ; and subsequently she went with Richard and Berengaria to the Island of Cyprus, where the King and Berengaria were married, and thence they all proceeded to the Holy Land. On this journey, however, they met with many adventures, perils by sea, from a storm during which they were in great danger and exceedingly sea sick, and perils by land from the machinations of Isaac the " Emperor," as he styled himself, of Cyprus, who ill-used some of their followers and nearly captured Berengaria (not yet married) and Joanna. Isaac was amply punished for these proceedings by Richard, who ravaged his territories, sacked his capital, and carried off as a prisoner his only daughter, a lady with the very odd name of Bourgigne. Richard, his wife and Joanna, with the captive Bourgigne, arrived at Acres in May 1191, and the two Queens returned to Europe in August 1192, having had it would seem by no means a " bad time " during their Crusading adventures.
In 1196 or 1197 Joanna married as her second husband Raimond VI., Count of Toulouse, of whom Mrs. Everett Green observes that his name " will be for ever immortalized by his association with the persecuted sect of the Albigenses," and of whom she seems very proud as a sort of Protestant hero.
Joanna died in 1 199 in giving birth to her second child by Raimond, which died at its birth, and she is buried at
Raimond VI r., Count of Toulouse. 77
Fontevraud with her father and her brother Richard I. Her only child who survived infancy became Raimond VII., Count of Toulouse, whose only daughter and heiress married Alphonso (brother of St. Louis IX. of France), in consequence of which marriage the County of Toulouse was ultimately annexed to France.
I do not for a moment propose to offer any observations as to the religious tenets of the Albigenses, which, however, strike me personally as a little peculiar ; but, viewed in the light of a saint and hero, Raimond VI. of Toulouse is rather difficult to manage. In the first place, when he was caught by the "persecutors" he promptly recanted — did public pen- ance, and offered personally to join in the " persecution," and although when he got off, he again adopted the cause of the Albigenses, it is said that when he was caught a second time he again changed his views ; though, as to this last charge, Mrs. Green says it is a libel.
In the next place, his matrimonial arrangements were, to say the least, complicated. His first wife was Ermensinda de Pelet, who died in 1176. His second was Beatrice de Beziers, who, in obedience to a somewhat strong hint from her husband, though not without protest, became a nun. How he was thereupon entitled to marry again I cannot conjecture, but he did, in fact, marry as his third wife the Lady Bourgigne of Cyprus already alluded to, whom he repudiated almost immediately. On what grounds I do not know. His fourth wife was Joanna, and at the date of his marriage with her Beatrice and Bourgigne were both alive. Even Henry VIII. drew the line at two wives living at the same time, but the great Raimond had three. After Joanna's death his subsequent career, till he died in 1208, was suffi- ciently stormy, but it may be added that after her death he married yet again, his fifth wife having been Eleanor of Aragon.
So many persons draw their ideas of history so entirely from plays, ballads, operas and novels that, though I rejoice when general attention is in any way directed to historical
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questions, it is matter for regret when a popular novel is grossly wrong in its history.
King Richard I. in particular, notable person as he certainly was in reality, is chiefly realised by most people through Sir Walter Scott's novels of "Ivanhoe" and "The Talisman." I do not quarrel with the aspect under which the King is represented in these novels, which, though it does not disclose the darker side of his character, is probably that in which he did appear to many ; but it is a little hard on Queen Berengaria, who was in fact an extremely demure and excellent person, that she should be represented as having been such a very skittish dame as the Queen appears to be in " The Talisman." I do, however, complain that with such excellent and true materials for a romance as the great writer had, in the presence, in the Holy Land, at the same time, of Richard's sister Joanna and her future husband Raimond of Toulouse (to say nothing of the Lady Bourgigne), he should have insisted on inventing as his heroine an imaginary — not to say impossible — "cousin" to King Richard in "Edith Plantagenet," and that, having invented her, he should have married her to — of all persons in the world — the " Sir Kenneth " of the novel, who turns out to be David, Earl of Huntingdon, " Prince Royal of Scotland." The David, Earl of Huntingdon, in question, was a brother of William " the Lion " of Scotland, and must have been known personally to King Richard, as he had carried the Sword of State at Richard's own coronation, at which date he was probably himself already a married man. At anyrate the lady he did marry was Maud, daughter of Hugh de Meschines, Earl of Chester ; and inasmuch as it was from this marriage that the rival claimants to the Scottish Throne in the reign of Edward I., that is to say, Baliol, Bruce and Hastings, all derived their title, the identity of David's wife may, I think, be considered too well known to admit of any mystery or romance about it. The only other possible " Prince Royal of Scotland " was Alexander, son of William the Lion, who, if born, was a baby at the time of Richard's crusade.
CHAPTER VI.
HENRY AND GEOFFREY, SONS OF HENRY II. — CONSTANCE AND PRINCE ARTHUR.— RICHARD I.— JOHN.— ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE. — BERENGARIA OF NAVARRE. — JOHN'S WIVES. — JOHN'S DAUGHTERS, JOANNA AND ISABELLA.
HAVING in the previous chapter disposed of the, daughters of Henry II., I must revert to his sons, who are a less pleasing subject.
There was a tradition in the house of Anjou that one of their ancestresses had been a witch, and that there was a curse on the family ; and it is related of Geoffrey, Henry's third son, that when a messenger of peace came to him from the King, he said, " Dost thou not know that it is our proper nature, planted in us by inheritance from an ancestress, that none of us should love the other, but that every brother should strive against brother, and son against father? I would not that thou shouldst rob us of our nature." I do not suppose Geoffrey really uttered these words, but it is certain that the Princes of Henry's family did not love one another ; and when the sons were not combining against their father they lost no opportunity of fighting among themselves. I have no sympathy for Henry, but it is impossible to feel sympathy for sons, who, whatever were their grievances (and they were many and great), treated their father with the brutal and persistent enmity with which Henry's sons treated him.
Henry, the eldest, and, as far as I can judge, the most amiable of the four, who reached maturity, was born in 1155 and died in 1183, being twenty-eight at his death. He was married, as has been said, while still a young child to Margaret, daughter of Louis VII. of France by that King's
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second wife, but he had no issue. As children, Henry and Margaret were placed under the charge of St. Thomas A'Beckett, and, like all who came into personal contact with that great man, they fell much under his influence ; and there is reason to suppose that, among other causes of difference between Henry II. and his son, the younger Henry and his wife espoused the cause of the Archbishop against their father, which must certainly have been very irritating to the King.
King Henry, who seems to have had an idea of forming an Angevin, on the model of the Roman Empire, of which Empire he was to be the Emperor, and his sons kings and princes under him, caused his son Henry to be crowned King of England in 1170. In this Coronation Margaret, the younger Henry's wife, did not share, and her father greatly resented the supposed slight ; but, in fact, Henry would gladly have associated his daughter-in-law with his son. The lady, however, declined to be crowned by anyone but the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was then in banishment, on the ground that it was the privilege of the Archbishop to crown the sovereigns, and that the Pope had forbidden (as he, in fact, had) the other Bishops to take part in the Coronation.
King Henry and his eldest son took vastly different views of the effect of the latter's Coronation, the one regarding it as a form tending to his own aggrandisement, while the other regarded it as a fact, giving him equal authority with his father ; and, as a consequence of this difference of views, their relations became extremely strained.
We are told that when the young Henry was with his father the two Kings " eat daily at the same table and slept in the same bed," but so very uncomfortable a state of things seems to me to argue more of distrust than affection on the part of the father, and, I think, residence at his father's Court meant in fact the son's imprisonment, and that the constant charges of ingratitude levelled against the younger Henry are hardly well founded. At all events he took an early
King Henry ff.'s Sons. 81
opportunity (1173) of escaping to the Court of his father- in-law, Louis VII. of France, and from that time, till his death in 1183, he was constantly at enmity with Henry II., though before his death some messages of reconciliation were exchanged.
The younger Henry had no child, and on his death his brother Richard became heir to the Throne, and to Richard I must return later.
The next brother, Geoffrey, was born in 1159, and as a baby was betrothed, or rather married, to Constance, Duchess of Brittany in her own right. This lady was descended from Alan Fergeant (who had married another Constance, daughter of William the Conqueror) by Alan's second wife. Her mother, Margaret of Scotland, was a grand-daughter of David I., and sister of William the Lion, Kings of Scotland, so that she was distantly related to her husband, David I., having been as will be remembered a brother of Matilda wife of Henry I. (See Table I.)
The guardianship of the two children, Geoffrey and Constance, and of the Duchy of Brittany was committed to or assumed by King Henry, and Geoffrey's main grievance in later life against his father was the latter's delay in giving up to him his wife and her dominions, both of which, how- ever, he did recover before his death. He was accidentally killed at a tournament in Paris in 1187, aged twenty-eight, and is buried in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. He was in open enmity with the King at the time of his death.
Geoffrey left a widow, Constance, and two children, Eleanor and Arthur, the latter of whom was a posthumous child. The genius of Shakespeare has made the names of Constance and the " little Prince " Arthur almost household words in every English home. Nearly every child has learnt by heart the exquisite poetry in which Prince Arthur in the play of " King John " pleads for life to Hubert de Burgh, and Constance in the same play is the very embodiment and expression of intense maternal love.
As a matter of fact Arthur, who was born in 1187, died F
#2 History of the Royal Family of England.
in 1 202, when he was fifteen, an age at which Plantagenet Princes considered themselves quite grown up. In that year Queen Eleanor, Arthur's grandmother, was besieged in the Castle of Mirabel in Poitou by Hugh de Lusignan (of whom we shall hear again) ; and Prince Arthur was taking an active part in the siege, when the usually sluggish and cowardly King John, alarmed at his mother's danger, appeared in arms before the Castle, defeated the besiegers, and took both Hugh and Arthur prisoners. Arthur was imprisoned at Rouen, and there unquestionably murdered by, or at the instance of, King John. At no previous period was he in the hands of John, and the precise manner of his death is quite uncertain, but in justice to Hubert de Burgh, who was a very distin- guished man, I must say that there is no ground whatever for supposing that he had any concern in the murder.
As to the Duchess Constance, I fear that she was in fact a somewhat disreputable person, who by no means took the misfortunes of her son to heart, and who, in fact, died some months before him. In the year after Geoffrey's death (i 188) she was given in marriage by Henry II. to Ranulph de Meschines, Earl of Chester, who assumed the title of Duke of Brittany in her right ; but early in the reign of John the marriage was dissolved, on what grounds I do not know. According to one distinguished writer, Carte, " Great scandal arose after the death of Geoffrey regarding the Duchess Constance and her brother-in-law John till his marriage with Isabella of Angouleme. He was constantly haunting her, and on this account it is supposed Henry II. after the birth of her posthumous son, Arthur, forced the Duchess to marry the Earl of Chester, as Prince John's attentions to his sister- in-law caused considerable comment." Another great writer, Dugdale, says that Chester repudiated Constance " by reason that the King haunted her company."
I can hardly suppose that Constance was forced to marry Lord Chester in consequence of John's attentions, and was repudiated by Chester many years later on the same ground ; and Carte is clearly in some error, for Constance married
Constance Diichess of Brittany. 83
Chester in 1188, and John did not marry Isabella of Angou- l£me, who was his second wife, till 1200. He did, however, marry his first wife, Hawise of Gloucester, in 1189, though not till after his father's death. The date of Constance's separa- tion from Lord Chester is not certain, but it was probably not long before John's marriage to Isabella of Angoul£me, for Constance afterwards married Sir Guy de Thouars and died in 1201, after giving birth to a daughter, Agnes, who eventually succeeded to the Duchy of Brittany. In any view of the case, however, the Duchess Constance can hardly be regarded as an exemplary or admirable person.
The fate of Eleanor, the daughter of Geoffrey and Constance, is not accurately known, but it is certain that she never married, and that for some time she was kept in prison by her uncle John. It is supposed that she eventually entered a Convent.
Richard and John, the remaining sons of Henry II., successively became Kings of England, the one reigning from 1 1 89 till 1199, and the other from 1199 till 1216. Richard was born in 1157 and was thirty-two when he became King, and forty-two when he died. John was born in 1166 and was twenty-three when Richard became King, thirty-three when he himself ascended the Throne, and fifty when he died.
Richard I., or, as he is frequently called, Richard " Cceur de Lion," is a hero of romance, whose reputation is dear to every Englishman. His extraordinary physical strength — his extraordinary feats of valour in the Holy Land — his long captivity in Austria — the romantic circumstances which really did attend that captivity and his release ; the still more romantic circumstances, with which a series of plays, ballads, and operas have overlaid those events, and last, but not least, the genius of Sir Walter Scott in the two novels before referred to, " Ivanhoe " and " The Talisman," have invested him with a poetic glamour which it would be a pity to destroy. At the same time I do not think that any one reading any history of his reign can acquit him of great acts of cruelty and extreme rapacity. Apart from personal bravery, there
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is no reason to suppose that he was in any sense a military genius, and though his marriage was genuinely a "love match/' he proved neither a kind nor a faithful husband.
Scott and most other writers speak of him as a sort of typical " Englishman," but, in fact, he was less English than any King who, between the reigns of William the Conqueror and George I., ever sat on the English Throne. His youth and early manhood were spent in Aquitaine, of which, by concession from his mother, he was, from an early age, nominally, and for a considerable period more or less really, Duke. It is doubtful whether, between the periods of his birth and his accession to the Throne, he was ever in England, or at all events for more than a very short time, and after- wards during a reign of ten years he was in England only twice, each time for much less than a year.
John was the youngest child of two very bad parents, from whom he inherited all their vices without, as far as one can see, one redeeming quality. His father and brothers were at least men and truly virile even in their vices ; but John was a coward, mean, shabby, and as it would probably be said now " dirty " in all his dealings with mankind. To his father, — who to him, at any rate, seems to have been a kind father, he was a bad son. Once and once only when his old mother was besieged and in great distress, he showed some spirit, but it is said, and on good authority, that the atrocious cruelties with which he celebrated this unwonted triumph broke her heart. To his brother Richard he was a traitor, — he murdered his nephew Arthur, the son of his brother Geoffrey, and he grossly ill-treated both his wives. When he ascended the Throne he was a great Continental Potentate, but at his death he had not only lost a great part of his Continental possessions, but he left England, for the first and last time since the Norman Conquest, in the hands of foreign invaders. Having oppressed his people to an almost unprecedented degree, when, at length, the Barons rose against him, he ceded everything they asked with the timidity of a whipped cur. And with the same sincerity, for having hitherto oppressed
King John. 85
and insulted the Church, he instantly appealed to the Church to assist him against the rebellious Barons with a servility and duplicity which, whatever may be the religious views of my readers, cannot but be regarded as disgusting and unmanly. Finally, having led a life which was an outrage on every principle of morality, I should think it is difficult for any one reading the account of his deathbed to attribute his repentance to any feeling of true sorrow, or to anything but a terrified spasm of remorse. However, of course, notwithstanding the sentiment of a contemporary writer, that " Hell felt itself defiled by the presence of John," he may have been sincere, and I certainly hope he was.
It is generally said that John was an usurper. He certainly was the murderer of the young nephew who might be supposed to stand between him and the Throne, but I think that in his day the hereditary principle was not sufficiently established to make it possible to say of anyone who was accepted and crowned as King, as John certainly was, that he was an usurper. It is clear that, though in the first instance Richard wished that failing his own issue his nephew Arthur should succeed him, yet when Arthur's mother, Constance, refused to give her son up into his custody which she did, the King thenceforth regarded John, and allowed John to regard himself, as his possible successor ; and there is no reason to suppose that the English people were seriously disturbed by John's succession, notwithstanding the existence of his nephew.
When Richard I. ascended the Throne, his mother Queen Eleanor, was still in prison. Richard at once set her at liberty, and during the remaining years of her life, her career was in all ways respectable. During a great part of Richard's reign she was Regent over his dominions, and she seems to have conducted herself with wisdom, prudence and dignity. During her son's captivity, she exerted herself with spirit and ultimate success to procure his release, and though when he returned she interposed between his just wrath and his brother John, she certainly was in no way a party to the
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latter's treachery to Richard. Finally, notwithstanding Shakespeare, she did her utmost to save the life of her un- happy grandson, Arthur Duke of Brittany.
Eleanor must certainly have been a woman of extra- ordinary physical strength, for considering the fatigues and dangers of foreign travel in those days, the frequency and extent of her journeys are truly remarkable. In 1191 we find her at Messina, whither she had gone to escort her future daughter-in-law, Berengaria of Navarre, to meet King Richard, and nine years later she was at Bourgos in Spain negotiating the marriage of her grand-daughter, Blanche of Castile, with Louis VIII. of France. The last public act of her life was her defence of the Castle of Mirabel in 1202, when she must have been considerably over eighty years old, and which she conducted with courage and capacity which would have been remarkable in a young woman. Almost immediately after this, broken down, it is said, by the murder of her grand- son Arthur, and the cruelties and iniquities perpetrated by John, she became a nun at Fontevraud, where she died in 1204.
King Richard I. married Berengaria of Navarre, a princess whom he had met and fallen in love with some years before, and to whom he proposed immediately after he had released himself from his engagement to Alice of France.
Of this lady there is little to be said, except that she appears to have been an extremely good woman, that she had no child, and that, excepting the unhappy Sophia, wife of George I., she was the only English Queen who never set foot in England. She was the daughter of Sancho, called the Wise, King of Navarre, her mother having been a Spanish Princess. In 1192 she met King Richard at Messina, and thence proceeded with him and his sister Joanna, Queen of Sicily, to the Island of Cyprus, where she was married. She then went to the Holy Land with her husband, but in 1192 she returned to Europe. King Richard was, at no time, a faithful husband, and though he returned from his captivity in 1194, it was not till Christmas 1195 that he saw his wife, notwithstanding various remonstrances addressed to
King Johns Marriages. 87
him on the subject. During the last three years of Richard's life, however, the King and Queen lived together, and Berengaria was with him when he died. She afterwards took up her residence at Mans in Maine, where she built a monastery and where, having previously become a nun, she died. It is characteristic of John that he endeavoured to deprive her of her dowry, but she appealed to the Pope, and one of the minor causes of the famous Interdict by Innocent III. was the King's behaviour to his sister-in-law, and one of its results was the restoration of Berengaria's property. The dates of Berengaria's birth and of her death are extremely uncertain, but she died between 1230 and 1240.
In 1189, on the occasion of Richard's Coronation, his brother John, whose chances of succeeding to the Throne were, at that time, remote, married one of the three co-heir- esses of William Earl of Gloucester.
My readers will remember the great Robert Earl of Gloucester, who was a natural son of King Henry I. He died in 1 147 (temp. Stephen) and was succeeded by his eldest son William, who died without male issue in 1183 (temp. Henry II.) leaving three daughters ; and from that time till 1226 (temp. Henry III.) the Earldom of Gloucester was bandied about in a manner which is somewhat confusing to readers of history. Earl William's daughters were (i) Mabell, who married Almeric de Montfort, Count of Evreux,in Normandy ; (2) Isabel, who married Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, and (3) a lady whose name is variously spelt as Hawise, Amicia and Avisa, who married (i) John, afterwards King ; (2) on the dissolution of her first marriage, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, and (3) the well known Hubert de Burgh, but who had no child by any of her husbands. The title of Earl of Gloucester was successively borne by John, the husband of the third sister from 1 189, till he became King in 1199, and by Geoffrey de Mandeville, who succeeded him as the lady's husband, from 1213 till 1216. From 1216 till 1226 it was borne by Almeric, the eldest son of Mabell, Earl William's eldest daughter, and on his death without issue it
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passed to his cousin Gilbert de Clare, the eldest son of Isabel, the second daughter of Earl William, in whose family it con- tinued till 1313 (temp. Edward II.), and of whose grandson we shall hear again in treating of the daughters of Edward I.
John and Hawise were both great-grandchildren of Henry I. (his grandmother and her grandfather having been half brother and sister), and consequently John and Hawise were second cousins of the half-blood, and within the prohibited degrees of kindred. This fact must have been well known, but no difficulty seems to have been raised by the English Bishops who were present at the marriage, which was cele- brated at the time of Richard I.'s Coronation. The Pope, however, on hearing of it declared the marriage invalid, and forbade the parties to live together. In this order John seems to have acquiesced to the extent of not troubling Hawise with much of his personal society, but he retained the name of her husband and her property until he became King. Then, as he wished to marry another lady, he allowed his first marriage to be dissolved.
In 1199 King John, at the wish of his mother, went to visit Hugh de Lusignan, Count de la Marche, a Prince whose territories abutted on the Duchy of Aquitaine, and whose friendship was of much importance to the Sovereigns of that Duchy. This Prince's eldest son — also Hugh de Lusignan, who was at the time absent, was engaged to and on the point of marrying Isabella, only child and heiress of Aymer Count of Angouleme — a young lady of fifteen. She was by all accounts of great beauty, and in accordance with the custom of those times, had been brought up, and was then resident, at the Court of her future father-in-law. John fell in love with Isabella, and with the connivance of her parents carried her off to Bordeaux, where he married her in the year 1 200. There is no doubt that this marriage produced very grave political consequences. The younger de Lusignan greatly resented the carrying off of his promised bride, and though probably he himself could have done little to avenge his wrongs, he found a ready ally in Philip Augustus of
Queen Isabella of Angoutime. 89
France, who made them one of the pretexts for breaking off the treaty he had just signed with John, and that treaty being broken, the war began which cost John the greater part of his continental dominions. De Lusignan himself fell a prisoner to John at the siege of the Castle of Mirabel above referred to, and was kept in prison for several years, being treated the while with much indignity. Having, however, at length obtained his freedom and returned to his dominions (to which on the death of his father he had succeeded)," he again became formidable, and in 1214 King John thought it expedient to make his peace with him, and one of the terms of this peace was that de Lusignan should marry Joanna, the eldest daughter and child of John and Isabella. The young lady was too young for actual marriage, but her future husband insisted that she should be placed in his charge and brought up in his Court, and this was agreed to. Joanna was accord- ingly sent abroad, where she remained for several years. In 1216, however, John died, and shortly afterwards his widow Isabella returned to her native land, and there she met and, notwithstanding the claims of her young daughter, married her old lover, who it is to be presumed set off her rank and dowry as Queen Dowager of England against the fact that she was a widow over thirty, and mother of five children. John is said to have been in the first instance much in love with Isabella of Angouleme, and to have been regarded with much contempt by his courtiers on account of his extremely uxorious habits. Nevertheless he seems to have speedily got tired of her and to have treated her very badly; but this did not prevent him from being very jealous. Whether this jealousy was well founded is an unsettled question. Dr. Lingard says it was, but Miss Strickland, with her usual amiability, thinks it was not. It is, however, certain that for sometime Isabella was kept in confinement by her husband, and that on one occasion John, as an obliging surprise, hung the bodies of three men, whom he had put to death, over her bed. It is alleged that one was her supposed lover, and the other two his followers.
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Isabella's subsequent career was sufficiently stirring. Her second husband was, mainly owing to her, engaged in constant difficulties with St. Louis IX., King of France, and that King's brother Alphonso, in which difficulties Isabella contrived to involve her son by King John, Henry III. of England, with very disastrous results to him, as well as to her husband and herself. In 1244 Hugh de Lusignan, who had in the meantime been deprived of his dominions, was accused of an attempt to poison King Louis, and though Isabella was not directly charged with the crime, the general impres- sion that she was its originator was very strong ; and she herself deemed it expedient to retire to the Abbey of Fontevraud, where she died two years later. On her death her husband was at once reconciled to King Louis.
Hugh and Isabella had five sons and several daughters, and they were kind enough to send their four younger sons and a daughter to England to pursue their fortunes at their half-brother's Court. This proceeding greatly exasperated the English, who were already highly indignant at the favours shown to the foreign relatives of King Henry's own wife.
Alice, the daughter of Isabella by de Lusignan, married John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who was a strong adherent of her half-brother, King Henry, and by whom she became an ancestress of the great Howard family.
The sons, some of whom were called de Lusignan, after their father, and some de Valence, after the place of their birth (a circumstance which gives rise to some confusion), were all strong supporters of King Henry. One of them, Guy de Lusignan, was killed at the Battle of Lewes, and another, Aymer de Valence, was Bishop of Winchester from 1250 till 1260. A third, William de Valence, was more celebrated. He was created Earl of Pembroke shortly before the Battle of Lewes in 1264 (that title having become vacant by the extinction of the great family of Marshall), and he was a very turbulent and influential person throughout the reign of Henry III. He died in 1296 (temp. Edward I.) and was succeeded by his son, Aymer de Valence, who in the
King Johns Children. 91
reign of Edward II. took a prominent part in the civil wars, having in the first place assisted the Earl of Lancaster, the King's cousin, to put the King's favourite, Gaveston, to death, and then presided over the execution of the Earl of Lancaster himself. For this act (described at the time as " a mercenary and time serving act of infamy ") his own violent death in France a few years later was supposed to be a judgment. He died without issue, whereupon his title became extinct, but from his sister, who like himself was a grandchild of Queen Isabella by Guy de Lusignan, many noble families, and in particular the present Earl of Shrews- bury, claim descent.
Notwithstanding the disciples of the School of Heredity, it appears to me to be plain that Nature abhors extremes, and that whereas men of ordinary goodness or badness, or possessing in an ordinary degree any other quality, some- times produce children possessing the parent's characteristics in a greater degree ; the children of a man who is extra- ordinarily good or bad, able or the reverse, either react to the qualities which are the direct reverse of those possessed by their parent, or turn out to be very commonplace persons.
One would have supposed that the children of John and Isabella would have been little short of monsters, but in fact they were persons, not indeed of any great force of character or ability of any kind, but on the whole respectable and good- natured, with strong religious and domestic instincts, and who in a later age and under different circumstances would have made admirable citizens.
John and Isabella had five children : (i) Joanna, afterwards Queen of Scotland, born in 1203; (2) Henry, afterwards King Henry III., born in 1207 ; (3) Richard, afterwards Earl of Cornwall, and generally known in history as the King of the Romans, born in 1208; (4) Isabella, afterwards Empress of Germany, born in 1214; and (5) Eleanor, sometime Countess of Pembroke, and afterwards Countess of Leicester, born in 1215. The histories of Henry, Richard, and Eleanor are so closely connected that before referring to them I
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shall say shortly what is known of their sisters Joanna and Isabella.
The date of Joanna's birth is uncertain. Miss Strickland places it at 1209, but the more accurate Mrs. Everett Green gives it at 1 203 ; and this is certainly more probable, as she married King Alexander of Scotland in 1221, and she was then regarded as being for an unmarried Princess of fully mature age, which she would hardly have been if she had been only twelve.
It has already been told how Joanna as a child was engaged to be married to Hugh de Lusignan, Count de la Marche, and how her mother subsequently cut her out with her affianced husband. Marriageable Princesses, however were then a very valuable commodity, and it was not without great difficulty, involving many negotiations, an appeal to the Pope, a threatened war, and a delay of five years, that her stepfather and her mother could be induced to give her up to her brother in 1221. She was thereupon promptly married to Alexander II. of Scotland, who, after the custom of the Scottish Kings, had been occupying his leisure moments in invading England and generally making himself disagreeable to the English ; but who, it was hoped, would be soothed in his feelings by an English wife with a large dowry.
Alexander was twenty-four when he married, and appears to have been a fairly respectable person, but the marriage was not a success. Joanna, who ultimately died of consumption, was always sickly, and the sudden removal from the south of France, where she had been for so many years, to the bleak climate of Scotland, which can hardly be regarded as having been an entirely civilized country in the thirteenth century, cannot have conduced to her health or comfort.
The Scotch hated England and the English, and the new Queen was not popular. She brought her husband no child, and as time went on, and he became involved in further dissensions with her brother, her sympathies seem to have been rather with her native country than with Scotland. She died in 1238 (at the age of thirty-five) in England, whither
Isabella, German Empress. 93
she had gone on a long visit, and she was buried in a Convent at Tarente, in Derbyshire. King Alexander subsequently married Marie de Coucy of the illustrious French house of that name, by whom he had an only child, afterwards Alexander III.
John's daughter Isabella is by some writers said to have been his youngest daughter, but Mrs. Green shews that she was the second, and was born in 1214, her sister Eleanor having been born a year later.
It has been suggested that Isabella was not what would now be called " very bright, " and this is given countenance to by the fact that as a girl she lived a good deal apart from her family, and according to Matthew Paris in " Vigilant Custody. " Moreover, after her marriage with the Emperor Frederic II., she lived in the most absolute retirement and privacy, but this latter circumstance may be accounted for by the fact that the domestic manners, as well as the religious views, of that eminent person were to a large extent modelled on those of the " Grand Turk. "
Before her actual marriage, which did not take place till 1235, when she was twenty-one, Isabella was the subject of numerous matrimonial treaties, having been at one time spoken of as a wife for St. Louis of France.
In 1235 Frederick II., being a widower for the second time, did her the honour to propose marriage, a proposal which was accepted on her behalf, and she was married in that year, with a large dowry, and a most extravagant trousseau, including among other things, a set of chessmen, which I think must have been of use to her in her subsequent seclusion.
It would be outside my purpose to make any reference to the career of that very remarkable person, the Emperor Frederick II., for in his life Isabella played no appreciable part. She was at once shut up, in what may safely be called his harem, and there she remained, taking no part in public cere- monials, and rarely seen by anyone ; so that even her brother Richard, King of the Romans, when in Germany could only succeed with difficulty in seeing her once, and that without
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privacy, and for a very short time. She died in 1241, aged twenty-seven.
Isabella had several children, of whom only two survived infancy — a son Henry, who survived his father, and was styled *' King of Jerusalem," and who was assassinated at an early age, at the instance, as it is supposed, of one of his numerous bastard brothers ; and a daughter Margaret, who married Albert Marquis of Thuringia. This lady after a most unhappy life was driven into a Convent and there died, but through her the Empress Isabella was the direct ancestress of the Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, who was the grandfather both of the late Queen Victoria and of her husband the Prince Consort, as well as of many German Princes.
Only three English Princesses have ever sat upon the Imperial Throne of Germany. Matilda, daughter of Henry I., Isabella, daughter of John, and Victoria, eldest daughter of the late Queen Victoria.
CHAPTER VII.
KING HENRY III.— His WIFE.— RICHARD EARL OF CORN- WALL, TITULAR KING OF THE ROMANS.— HlS WIVES
AND SONS. — SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER. — ELEANOR, HIS WIFE, SISTER OF HENRY III. — THE DE MONTFORTS. — THE DAUGHTERS OF HENRY III.
KING HENRY III. was born in 1207, and he was exactly nine years old when he became King in 1216, at a time of almost unexampled difficulty for England, which was virtually in the hands of the French, and when, but for the prudence and courage of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke (first Earl of his name), it is probable that the Angevin Dynasty would have come to a speedy end. Henry reigned for fifty-six years, and died in the year 1272 aged sixty-five, when he was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a man of no particular ability or energy of mind or body, and peculiarly unsuited to the position of King of a disturbed country in the Middle Ages. All the same he was a man of good personal character — a devoted husband — a kind and affectionate father — in the main well-meaning and good natured, and with a distinct and graceful taste for literature and the arts, a taste which contributed much to make Eng- land pleasant and beautiful. It is to King Henry III. we owe Westminster Abbey, which he rebuilt, and which, beautiful as it is now, must have been indeed a " thing of beauty " before the monumental atrocities of the last few centuries were erected, and it is to him also that we owe that revival of the " Cult " for the old Saxon Saints and heroes which, putting aside the religious question, brought Norman England
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once more into full touch with her Saxon ancestors. On the other hand Henry III. was weak and indolent in his disposi- tion and habits, and he easily and at once fell under the influ- ence of any strong character ; he was pettish and irritable in temper,and consequently often said and did very foolish things; he was deficient in knowledge of character, and his strong taste for display of all kinds, and his excessive liberality to all who came across him, made him extragavant in money to an extent which had grave consequences. If he had lived in more peaceful times, and in a private station of life, he would probably have been an excellent man, but living when he did, and as a King, it is impossible to feel much respect for him, and as a fact he was much looked down upon in his own times.
His reign was one long series of wars — wars with France — wars with Scotland — with the Welsh Princes, and above all civil wars. In none of these contests did Henry personally distinguish himself, and I do not think that his foreign wars, either in their progress or in their result, can be regarded by Englishmen with any particular satisfaction. As to the civil wars, there are two very distinct views to be taken, but personally I think that both parties were both right and wrong, and that the Barons were right in the first instance, but being in power, immediately put themselves in the wrong. These, however, are matters of general history and of much controversy, and I will merely remind my readers that at the Battle of Lewes in 1264 King Henry, with his eldest son Edward, his brother Richard, King of the Romans, and Richard's son Henry, all became prisoners to the leader of the Barons, the famous Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had married King Henry's sister Eleanor ; and that Prince Edward having escaped, he in the following year (1265) defeated and killed de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham, and restored King Henry. Thenceforth the Government to a great extent fell into the hands of Edward, afterwards Edward I., who I venture to say was the greatest King and one of the best men who ever sat on the English Throne.
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The rebellion of Simon de Montfort no doubt estranged King Henry III. from his sister the Countess of Gloucester (of whom in her youth he seems to have been very proud), but with that exception, the harmony and affection which sub- sisted in the latter part of King Henry's reign between all the members of the Royal Family would appear to have been sincere and great. The King and Queen, their children, the King's only brother Richard, King of the Romans, and his wife (who was the Queen's sister) and their sons, all seem to have been genuinely fond of one another, and to have lived together in almost unbroken amity and confidence. The King and his brother, who were nearly of an age, and remark- ably alike in character, tastes, and, it is said, appearance, lived during the greater part of their lives in unusually close intimacy — the friendship between the fathers was continued in their eldest sons, Prince Edward and Prince Henry, while they both lived, and it would be difficult to find a parallel to the perfect confidence on the one side, and the respectful deference and solicitude on the other, which existed between the King and his heir. This was the more remarkable as the ineptitude, weakness and folly of the old King must have been extremely trying to his relations, and in particular to Prince Edward, who from the first showed himself to-be a man of unusual ability, resolution and force of character.
For some reason, which is not very apparent, King Henry did not marry till he was considerably past the age at which European Princes were accustomed to undertake the responsi- bilities of wedlock, and it was not till 1236, when Henry III. was twenty-nine years old, that he was married at Canterbury to Eleanor, second of the four daughters of Berenger, Count of Provence. This Berenger was one of the minor French Princes, but he was not a person of much power or influence, and he is chiefly known as having been regarded, in his own times, as a distinguished poet.
There was either at that time a dearth of marriageable Princesses in Europe, or the Provencal Princesses were exceptionally attractive, for they all married kings. Margaret, G
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the eldest, was the wife of St. Louis of France ; Eleanor, the second, of King Henry of England ; and Sanchia, the third, of Henry's brother Richard, titular King of the Romans ; Beatrice, the youngest, married Louis IX.'s somewhat un- worthy brother Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, and as Berenger had no son, ultimately succeeded to her father's dominions.
Queen Eleanor was about fifteen when she married, and she speedily became, and she remained all her life extremely unpopular with the English, so much so that on one occasion the Londoners pelted her barge with stones when she was on the Thames. Nevertheless she seems to have been free from any very violent faults, and to have been on the whole a good kind of woman.
King Henry was at all times in great difficulties about money, and was frequently very extravagant. His wife, who quickly obtained almost unbounded influence over him, shared to the full his love of splendour and display ; and it was supposed, and probably with truth, that it was mainly at her, instance and to gratify her that the King's constant and importunate demands upon his subjects for money were made.
Moreover, when Eleanor came to England, she was followed by an immense train of foreigners of all ranks, who, contrary to well established practice, were not sent back to their own country but remained in England, carried off all places in the gift of the King and Queen, and generally preyed on the land of their adoption. Prominent among these were the Queen's maternal uncles Peter and Boniface of Savoy. Of these the latter, by Eleanor's direct intervention, was made Archbishop of Canterbury, to the great annoyance of the English clergy and people, while the former found means to amass enormous and undue wealth, which, however, he to some extent applied well, for he built the Palace of the •" Savoy," of which the beautiful Savoy Chapel still exists.
Eleanor's influence with the King was to some extent opposed in the first instance by that of the King's brother
Richard King of the Romans. 99
Richard, but in 1242 Richard married her sister Sanchia, and as Sanchia seems to have obtained as much influence over Richard as Eleanor had over Henry, and as the two sisters pulled together, the Queen, in at all events all private matters, was henceforth mistress of the situation. There is not much more to be said about Queen Eleanor. During the extremity of the troubles with the Barons she was in France, and from there she made some not very effectual efforts to relieve her husband. She survived him nineteen years, and in 1280 she took up her residence at the Convent of Ambresbury in Wiltshire, where four years later she made her profession as a nun. With her were professed two of her grand -daughters, Mary, daughter of Edward I., and Beatrice of Brittany, who is mentioned later. Queen Eleanor died in 1292, and in her later years seems to have been extremely religious, and though not liked by her subjects, it is fair to say that her husband, children and relatives generally all seem to have had a very sincere regard for her.
Richard, King Henry's only brother, was born in 1209, and he died in 1272, a few months before the King. As has been already said, the brothers were physically and mentally much alike, and were united by an unusually strong affection, but on the whole Richard would appear to have been the stronger and better man of the two. In 1226, when he was eighteen, he was created Earl of Cornwall, and put into possession of estates which, for a time, made him one of the wealthiest of the subject Princes in Europe. In 1241 he went to the Holy Land, travelling with extraordinary splendour and magnificence. Two years later there was a contest as to who should be Emperor of Germany, the candidates being Richard and King Alphonso of Castile. Richard by enormous bribes obtained the suffrages of three of the seven '* Electors " by whom the Emperor was chosen, the other four votes being given to Alphonso, and Richard, though in a minority, immediately assumed the title of " King of the Romans," which was the title borne by the German Emperors between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, prior to their
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coronation at Rome. He retained that title till his death, there having been in fact no effective German Emperor from the death of Conrad IV. in 1243 till the election of Rudolf I. in 1273. It was however an empty title, and it cost him dearly, exhausting in bribes and subsidies the greater part of his immense wealth, but probably in his own opinion not too dearly, as he and his brother and their respective wives appear to have derived from it a very large measure of satisfaction. Richard's political relations in England were on the whole just and patriotic. In the first instance he espoused the cause of the Barons, but not to such an extent as to estrange him from the King ; and latterly, when the Barons assumed too much, he took the part of the King, with whom he was taken prisoner at Lewes.
Richard was three times married. He married first, probably in 1230, when he would have been about twenty-two, Isabel Marshall, daughter of that great Lord Pembroke who during the early part of Henry's reign had been virtually Pro- tector of the Kingdom. This lady must have been consider- ably older than Richard, for when some years before, in 1221, her elder brother, William Marshall, married Richard's younger sister, Eleanor, there was a disparity of over thirty years between the ages of William and Eleanor. Moreover, at the date of her marriage with Richard Isabel was already a widow (having previously married Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester) with several children. Nevertheless she had five children by her second husband. She died in 1240, and in 1242 Richard married as his second wife Sanchia, sister of his brother's wife Queen Eleanor. Sanchia died in 1261, and in 1268 Richard married a third time, his third wife being a young" German lady, Beatrice de Falquemort or Falquestein, the daughter of a small German Baron and niece of the Archbishop of Cologne. This lady survived him and returned to Germany, and I believe nothing is known of her subsequent career.
Richard had by his first wife five children, a son Henry, and three sons and a daughter, who died as infants in his
Sons of Richard King of the Romans. 10 r
life. By his second wife he had an only child named Edmund. His third wife brought him no child.
Henry, the elder of the two sons of Richard who reached maturity, was born in 1235, and is usually called Henry of Almain or Henry of Germany, from his father's pretensions to the Imperial Throne. He was four years older than his cousin Prince Edward, with whom he lived on terms of great friendship and intimacy, and whom he proposed to accompany on the last Crusade in 1272. On his way to the Holy Land, however, Henry was summoned back to England by news of his father's illness, and on the return journey, while he was assisting at Mass, almost at the moment of the Elevation of the Host, he was cruelly murdered by his cousins Simon and Guy de Montfort in revenge, it is supposed, for the death of their father at the battle of Evesham.
Henry of Almain's death in 1272, when he was thirty-seven, was immediately followed by the deaths of his father and his uncle King Henry. It is remarkable that notwithstand- ing the great interest which the King of the Romans seems to have taken in the building of Westminster Abbey, he and his son were not buried there but at the Abbey of Hales founded by the former.
Henry of Almain died without issue, and I believe un- married, and his father was succeeded in the Earldom of Cornwall by his younger son Edmund, who, both on his father's and mother's side, was first cousin to King Edward I. Edmund was about nineteen in 1272 when his cousin became King, and during the greater part of Edward I.'s reign he was more or less engaged in the King's wars, and became a distinguished soldier. He died in 1300, seven years before Edward, having married Margaret de Clare, daughter of Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, by whom he had no issue ; and on his death the Earldom of Cornwall and the descen- dants of Richard, King of the Romans, became extinct.
Eleanor, the youngest daughter of King John, was born in 1215, and was only one year old when her father died.
In 1219 William Marshall, the great Earl of Pembroke, died,
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and was succeeded by his eldest son, also William, who, though he inherited his father's great power, did not so it would appear altogether inherit his father's loyalty or ability. It was, however, thought necessary to conciliate this great person by giving him the King's sister in marriage, and accordingly the marriage took place in 1221, when the husband was over forty and the wife barely seven.
Lord Pembroke died in 1231 without issue, and after his death his widow (it is said owing to her great grief) took with some solemnity a vow to become a nun. She did not, however, carry out her intention, and in 1238, seven years later, when the lady was twenty-four, notwithstanding her vow, she privately married the celebrated Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.
The marriage was kept secret for some months, and when it was published it created a considerable sensation, and so much reprobation on the part of the Clergy on account of the vow before mentioned, that it became necessary for Leicester to go to Rome in order to obtain a dispensation for the marriage.
Simon de Montfort is one of the greatest and most inter- esting figures in English history, and there are few persons whose character and conduct have been the subject of more controversy. On the one side many persons in his own day, and at later periods, have regarded him as a hero and a martyr, and on the other side he was and is regarded as little better than a demagogue. I take it that he was a man of excellent personal conduct, great ability, and extraordinary personal influence over most of those whom he came across, but I think that his patriotism was greatly leavened by private ambition, and I decline to accept him at the estimate of his more enthusiastic admirers.
Like everything else about him, the origin of his family is in dispute, but, according to the more probable view, he was descended from Almeric de Montfort, a natural son of Robert, King of France. His father was the Simon de Montfort, known in history as the friend of St. Dominic and
Simon de Mont fort. 103
the " persecutor " of the Albigenses, who, by many Catholics, is regarded as a Saint and by most Protestants as one remove from a Devil. This Simon married Amicia, daughter and heiress of Robert de Beaumont, surnamed Fitz Parnel, fourth Earl of Leicester of his family, and Amicia carried the Earldom of Leicester into the de Montfort family. Simon, the husband of Eleanor, was the second son of his parents, but he obtained a renunciation of the Earldom from his elder brother, and was recognised as Earl of Leicester from, at all events, the year 1236.
From his first coming into England he obtained an extraordinary ascendancy over his fellow Barons and over the King, who appears to have regarded him with a some- what ludicrous mixture of affection, admiration and terror. Henry was certainly present at Simon's private marriage with Eleanor, but when the marriage became public and was strongly resented by a large section of the community, he turned round and loaded both husband and wife with reproaches, even suggesting that Leicester had seduced hisr Henry's sister, before marriage. This was probably the first cause of the complete estrangement which ultimately ensued between the King and his brother-in-law.
Some time after his marriage Simon went to the Holy Land, and afterwards he was for some years in Gascony or Aquitaine, of which province Henry III. was Duke, and of which de Montfort, was the Governor, but on the breaking out of the disputes between the King and the Barons he came to England and became the recognised leader of the latter.
At the famous Battle of Lewes the King and his son became his prisoners, and for about a year Simon was virtually Ruler of England, but the fortunes of war then changed, and Simon was killed at the Battle of Evesham, All these circumstances, however, are matters of general history with which my readers are probably familiar.
Of Eleanor's career during her husband's life little can be known, but her biographer, Mrs Everett Green, gives many
IO4 History of the Royal Family of England.
interesting extracts from her household books, which give us a great idea of the splendour and almost regal magni- ficence in which the greater Barons lived in the thirteenth century.
Lord Leicester's chief seat was the Castle of Kenilworth, which has been the scene of so many interesting events, and the ruins of which still exist.
The Countess Eleanor was at Dover when her husband died. She found a kind friend in her nephew, Prince Edward, but ultimately retired to France, where she died in the year 1275, aged about sixty.
Simon and Eleanor had six children, Henry, Simon, Guy, Richard, Amalric and Eleanor.
Whatever may be thought of the great Simon as a ruler of men, he was certainly not successful as a ruler in his own family, for his sons were men of notoriously savage and vindictive character, who used their father's great position entirely for their own private and usually bad purposes. The fate of Henry and Richard, the eldest and the fourth sons, is uncertain, but they are supposed to have been killed at the Battle of Evesham. Miss Yonge has made them the heroes of a very graceful tale, " The Prince and the Page," a book which is, in its way, a model for all historical romancers, in that it is nowhere inconsistent with known facts, and suggests nothing that might not have happened.
Simon and Guy de Montfort, the second and third sons of the Earl and Countess of Leicester, were the murderers of their cousin Henry of Almain. The former, according to Trivet's annals, " Cursed of God like Cain, became a wanderer and vagabond upon the earth," and died soon afterwards. Guy spent nearly ten years in prison in Italy, but having obtained his liberty he married into a noble Tuscan family, and ultimately became the founder of an Italian family of de Montfort which flourished for many generations. Amalric, the youngest son, died unmarried, and either was or intended to become a Priest.
Eleanor, the only daughter, after the death of her father,
Eleanor de Montfort. 105
accompanied her mother to France. While .there a matri- monial treaty was concluded between her and Llewelyn, the last of the independent Welsh Princes ; and in 1275, just before the death of her mother, the marriage between Llewelyn and Eleanor was solemnized by proxy. In the following year the Princess and her brother Amalric set out for Wales to join her husband, but on the way there they were taken prisoners by their cousin Edward I., and for two years they were kept in more or less strict imprisonment. In 1278, however, Edward and Llewelyn having concluded a short lived peace, the latter was personally married to Eleanor de Montfort at Worcester with great magnificence. The marriage was of short duration, for a fresh war broke out between the King and the Prince of Wales, in the course of which the latter was killed, and, his body being decapitated, his head was placed on the battlements of the Tower. Happily for her, his wife died shortly before this event in the year 1282, leaving an only daughter who became a nun.
No one of the sons of the great Earl Simon succeeded him in his titles, nor after his death does the de Montfort, family appear in English history.
King Henry III. and his wife had nine children, and I hasten to add that of these five died as infants. Their children were (i) Edward, named after St. Edward the Con- fessor, and afterwards Edward I., born 1239 ; (2) Margaret afterwards Queen of Scotland, born 1240; (3) Beatrice, afterwards what would now be called hereditary Princess of Brittany, born 1242 ; (4) Edmund, afterwards first Earl of Lancaster, born 1243, and five younger children, named respectively Katharine, Richard, John, William and Henry, who all died as infants. Following the course I have hitherto taken, I will speak first of King Henry's daughters.
In 1249 King Alexander II. of Scotland died suddenly leaving an only child (then a boy of eight), who succeeded him as Alexander III., and two years later, when the bride- groom was ten and the bride was eleven, Alexander III. and Margaret, Henry's eldest daughter, were married with great
io6 History of the Royal Family of England.
pomp and solemnity at York. I regret to say that on this occasion King Henry sought to take advantage of the youth of his son-in-law to exact from him the much disputed homage for the Kingdom of Scotland, but the young King, who acted with great spirit and discretion, positively refused to commit himself in any way.
Taking him altogether, Alexander III., who reigned from 1249 till 1285, was one of the best of the Scottish Kings. He was a man of great mental and physical activity — he appears to have acted throughout his reign with prudence and firm- ness, and he was a faithful and kind husband, which can be said of but few of his successors. For some years after their marriage the King and Queen of Scotland were virtually prisoners in the hands of the various factions which from time to time became dominant, and during this period Margaret, who seems to have kept up a secret and close correspondence with England, sent urgent appeals to her father for assistance. As the result, in the year 1254, King Henry sent Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, to Scotland, and he and his followers having by a stratagem obtained access to Edinburgh Castle where the King and Queen were confined, succeeded in carrying them off in triumph to Roxburgh. Thenceforth the independent reign of Alexander, though he was still a mere boy, may be said to have commenced. Of Margaret person- ally we know very little, except that throughout her life the relations between the Scotch and English Courts were most intimate and friendly, and that she and her husband came to England as visitors every two or three years, and that they were present at the Coronation of Edward I. Margaret died in the year 1275 at tne age of thirty-four. Her husband, who survived her for eleven years, married in 1285 Yolande de Dreux, and he would seem to have been much attached to this lady, for in the following year, having been present at certain festivities in Edinburgh, he in spite of the remonstrances of his followers insisted upon returning to her at Kinghorne that same night, and in the midst of a terrible storm. In the course of his ride home he was thrown from his horse and
Claimants to the Scottish Crown. 107
killed on the spot. Alexander had three children only — all by his first wife, Alexander, David and Margaret.
Alexander died in the year 1283 at the age of twenty, leaving no issue, though he had been married to a Flemish Princess. David died as a boy in 1281, and Margaret, who had married Eric, King of Norway, died in the year 1283 leaving an only child, known in history as the " Maid of Norway." This poor little girl who, on the death of her grandfather became Queen ot Scotland, died on the journey from Norway to her own kingdom, as I cannot help thinking happily for her, and thereupon began the disastrous wars of succession which convulsed Scotland for the next fifty years.
William the Lion, King of Scotland, left an only child, Alexander II., and Alexander II. left an only child, Alexander III. ; and therefore on the extinction of the issue of Alexander III. it became necessary to revert to the descend- ants of David Earl of Huntingdon, next and only younger brother to William the Lion. This Prince had three sons who died unmarried, and four daughters, Margaret, Isabella, Maud and Ada, and of these Maud also died unmarried. Margaret, the eldest sister, married the Lord of Galloway, by whom she had two daughters, one of whom died without issue, and the other, Devorgoil, married John Baliol, and her third son, John Baliol (whose elder brothers had died without issue), was in 1291 declared King of Scotland by Edward I. in his character of Over- Lord of the Scottish Kingdom, but was afterwards deposed. Isabel, second daughter of David, married Robert Bruce, and was the mother of the Robert Bruce who claimed the Scotch Crown in 1291. This Robert Bruce was the grandfather of the great Robert Bruce who was crowned King of Scotland in 1306, and is known in history as Robert I. of Scotland. Ada, the youngest daughter married Henry Hastings, and her great grandson John Hastings was one of the claimants of the Scottish Throne in 1291, or more accurately to one-third of Scotland, his con- tention being that the Kingdom should be divided between the descendants of Margaret, Isabella and Ada. The husband
io8 History of the Royal Family of England.
of Ada, daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, and his descendants were Englishmen of rank and distinction, and from John Hastings, the competitor for the Scotch Crown, a great number of the English nobility at the present time claim descent. (See Table III.)
There have been only two English Princesses named Beatrice — Beatrice, second daughter of Henry III., who was named after her maternal grandmother Beatrice of Savoy, and Beatrice, the youngest daughter of the late Queen Victoria.
The matrimonial connections between England and the Duchy of Brittany are sufficiently numerous. As my readers will remember Constance, daughter of William the Conqueror, married Alan Fergant, Duke of Brittany, but died without issue. Alan's great granddaughter (by his second wife), Constance, Duchess of Brittany in her own right, married Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Henry II. , but her issue by this marriage having become extinct, she was succeeded by her daughter by her third husband, Sir Guy de Thouars, who was named Agnes. The Duchess Agnes married one Pierre Manclerk, and was succeeded by her son John, who was Duke John I. of Brittany, in the year 1260, and it was to the eldest son of this Duke, also John, that Henry III.'s second daughter Beatrice was married in that year. At the date of the marriage she was eighteen years old.
The relations between the young John of Brittany and his wife's parents, the King and Queen of England, were extremely intimate, and there is reason to suppose that the young people spent more of their time in England than was agreeable to the Duke of Brittany, or possibly to the English people, whose complaints as to the residence in England of the King's foreign relations were constant and emphatic. The Prince and Princess of Brittany accompanied Prince Edward to the Holy Land on the last Crusade, and on their return they were present at the Coronation of Edward. Beatrice died in Brittany in the year 1275 at tne age of thirty-two, and by her own request her body was sent to
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England, and buried in Christ's Church, Newgate. Her husband, who survived her for thirty years, and shortly after her death became Duke John II. of Brittany, never married again, which is almost unique in the annals of Royal widowers. John and Beatrice had a large family. Their eldest son Arthur succeeded his father as Duke of Brittany, and of his descendants we shall hear again in treating of the daughters of Edward III. Their second son John lived altogether in England, and on the death of his brother Arthur was created Earl of Richmond. This John enjoyed the greatest possible favour from his uncle, King Edward I., and was largely employed in the Scotch and French wars. He was taken prisoner at the Battle of Bannockburn, and was afterwards exchanged for Eleanor, Queen of Scotland, the wife of Robert Bruce, who was at that time a captive in England. John of Brittany never married, and died in the year 1334.
Of the other children of Beatrice it is unnecessary to speak, as they had nothing to do with English history, but several of them made good marriages in France, and as I have already mentioned one of her daughters, named Beatrice, was professed as a nun in the Convent at Ambresbury at the same time as her maternal grandmother, Queen Eleanor.
CHAPTER VIII.
EDMUND CROUCHBACK, EARL OF LANCASTER. — THOMAS AND HENRY, HIS SONS, SECOND AND THIRD EARLS OF LANCASTER. — HENRY, FIRST DUKE OF LANCASTER. — EDWARD L, His WIVES.— His DAUGHTERS ELEANOR AND JOANNA.
EDMUND, second son of Henry III., was slightly deformed, and in accordance with the amiable customs of those times, was commonly called Edmund Crouchback in reference to the fact. He was born in the year 1245, and was therefore twenty-seven when his father died, and his brother Edward became King of England, and he died in the year 1296, twelve years before his brother, at the age of fifty. He appears to have been a person of no great ability or distinc- tion, but he enjoyed great wealth, and bore many titles, and his relations with his brother were uniformly friendly. In Doyles " Official Peerage of England," he is styled Earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby. He was created Earl of Leicester in 1265 and Earl of Lancaster in 1267, and in 1266 he was "invested with the honours of Derby," whereby I presume he became Earl of Derby. When he was eight years old, the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, which was, or was supposed to be, in the gift of the pope, was, so to speak, going a begging, as it had been offered to and been refused by several Princes, including Edmund's uncle Richard, afterwards King of the Romans. Henry III., dazzled by the title of King, accepted it for his young son Edmund, and made an abortive expedition to the Continent with a view to obtaining the Kingdom. This proceeding, however, was exceedingly
unpopular, for the English people were, naturally, unable to
in
1 1 2 History of the Royal Family of England.
see what possible benefit they could derive from Edmund's becoming King of so distant a Kingdom as Sicily, or why English blood and treasure should be expended in the attempt to obtain that Kingdom for him. In genealogies and histories Edmund is sometimes styled " King of Sicily," but it was practically a mere empty title, which he himself does not appear to have assumed in his later years. • In the year 1293, King Edward I. was involved in a contest with Philip IV. of France, which took its origin in a quarrel between English and French soldiers. As a result of this dispute, Philip summoned Edward as Duke of Aquitaine to appear before him, and the King's brother Edmund was sent as an ambassador to arrange matters. Philip, who was a far abler man, completely overreached Edmund, who was induced to sign a treaty, by which the legal, and in some cases actual, possession of parts of the Duchy was given up to the French with results that were somewhat disastrous to England. Edmund himself was subsequently sent at the head of a small expedition against France to retrieve, if possible, the false step he had taken, but the expedition was abortive, and he is said to have died from an illness brought on by extreme mortifica- tion at his political and military failures. The details, how- ever, of the disputes between the Kings Edward and Philip are matters of general history, and are hardly a subject for this work. In 1269, when he was twenty-three, Edmund married Avelina de Fortibus, daughter and heiress of William de Fortibus, Earl of Albemarle, who, as has been already said, was descended from Adelaide, half-sister to William the Conqueror. This lady, however, died without issue in the following year (1270), and in 1276, when Edmund was thirty- one, he married Blanche, widow of King Henry of Navarre. This lady was the daughter of Robert Count of Artois, third son of Louis VIII. and brother of St. Louis IX., Kings of France. On the death of her first husband, Blanche, with her daughter Joanna or Jeanne, who then came to be Queen of Navarre in her own right, had been driven out of Navarre and taken refuge at the Court of her cousin Philip III. of
Thomas, Second Earl of Lancaster. 113
France, and when she married again she left her daughter, the young Queen Joanna, in France. This Joanna afterwards married Philip IV. (called le Bel) of France, by whom she became the mother of three Kings of France, Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., and of a daughter Isabella, the infamous " she-wolf of France," wife of Edward II. of England. Blanche of Navarre survived her second husband, and died in 1302.
Edmund and Blanche had three children, Thomas and Henry, successively second and third Earls of Lancaster, and John, who died an infant.
Thomas, second Earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, and in right of his wife Earl of Lincoln and Salisbury, is one of those persons of whom the late Professor Freeman says that they were " canonized by popular acclamation," but the saying " Vox Populi Vox Dei " is somewhat delusive, and I am myself unable to see any grounds upon which this Prince can be regarded as a Saint. His parents were married in 1276 and he was probably born in 1277 and he was therefore about thirty when his uncle Edward I. died, and his cousin Edward II. came to the Throne, and about forty-four when he himself was beheaded in 1322. He was not only the first cousin of King Edward II., but uncle of the half-blood (through his half-sister Queen Joanna of France and Navarre) to Queen Isabella, Edward's wife (see Table IV.), and from the first he appears to have espoused with great energy the cause of the Queen against her husband. This is said to have been in part the result of the dying admonitions of his father-in-law, Henry de Lacy, last Earl of Lincoln and Salisbury of his family, who on his death-bed in 1312 is reported as having addressed the Earl of Lancaster thus* : " See'st thou the Church of England, here- tofore honourable and free, enslaved by Romish oppressions and the King's unjust exactions ? See'st thou the common people impoverished by tributes and taxes, and from the condition of free men, reduced to servitude ? See'st thou the nobility formerly venerable throughout Christendom vilified by aliens in their own native country ? I therefore charge thee in the name of Christ to stand up like a man, for H
1 1 4 History of the Royal Family of England.
the honour of God and his Church, and the redemption of thy country, associating thyself to that valiant, noble and prudent person Guy Earl of Warwick, when it shall be most proper to discourse of the public affairs of the Kingdom, who is so judicious in counsel and so mature in judgment Fear not thy opposers who shall contest against thee in the truth. And if thou pursuest, this my advice, thou shalt gain Eternal Heaven."
This speech of Lord Lincoln, if made, was, it seems to me, very " tall talk," for there is really no reason to suppose that either the Church or the common people or the nobility were in a worse position under Edward II. than they had been in a great many of the previous reigns. There was, however, a legiti- mate grievance in the extraordinary and excessive influence obtained over the King by Piers Gaveston, a Gascon gentle- man who had been brought up with him, and whom he had created Earl of Cornwall, and married to the King's own cousin Margaret de Clare ( set post). The Barons, under the joint leadership of Thomas Earl of Lancaster and Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, besieged Gaveston in the year 1312 in Scarborough Castle, and he, destitute of provisions, surrendered, after an express promise from them that he should be conducted to and allowed free communication with the King before he stood his trial by the Parliament. Not- withstanding this promise, Gaveston was hurriedly conveyed to Warwick Castle, and there, after what seems to have been a mock trial by his enemies, he was beheaded. There is no doubt that on this account Earl Thomas was afterwards regarded by King Edward II. with much disfavour, and some years later, when he had taken up the cause of the Queen against Hugh le Despencer, who had succeeded Gaveston as Edward's favourite, Earl Thomas was himself taken prisoner and put to death at Pontefract, with as short shrift as he him- self had allowed to Gaveston, and under circumstances of great personal ignominy. It is to be observed, however, that amongst those who sentenced him to death were three of his cousins, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who was the
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grandson of Isabella of Angouleme (mother of Henry III.) by her second husband (see ante), Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent, half brother to Edward II. and John of Brittany, son of Henry III.'s daughter Beatrice. These persons, what- ever may have been their faults, must have known all the facts, and there is no reason to suppose that they were wholly without any sense of justice, or unreasonably prejudiced either in favour of the King or against the Earl of Lancaster.
Dugdale, who gives the account of Thomas' death, says, "Touching his merits there happened afterwards very great disputes, some thinking it fit that he should be accounted a Saint, because he was so charitable, and so much an honour to the religious ; as also that he died in a just cause, but chiefly because his persecutors came within a short period to untimely ends. On the other hand, many there were who taxed him for adultery in keeping of sundry women notwithstanding he had a wife. Aspersing him like- wise for cruelty in putting to death some persons for small offences, and protecting some from punishmentwho were trans- gressors of the laws ; alleging also that he was chiefly swayed by one of his secretaries, and that he did not fight strictly for justice, but fled, and was taken unarmed. Nevertheless many miracles were reported to have been afterwards wrought in the place where his corpse was buried, much confluence of people coming thereto in honour thereof, till the King, through the intervention of the Spencers, set guards to restrain them. Whereupon they flocked to the place where he suffered death, and so much the more eagerly as endeavours had been used to restrain them, until a Church was erected in the place where he suffered."
Earl Thomas married Alice de Lacy, only child and heiress of the Lord Lincoln before mentioned, but had no issue. On his death he was attainted as a traitor, when his various honours became forfeited.
Henry, third Earl of Lancaster, was born about the year 1281, and therefore when his brother was beheaded in 1232 he was about forty years old. He, like his brother, was uncle
Henry, Third Earl of Lancaster. 117
of the half-blood to Isabella, Edward II.'s Queen (see Table IV.), and like his brother, he was her strong adherent. After his brother's death he was one of the chief leaders of the party who were opposed to the Despencers, and who deposed Edward II., though there is no reason to suppose that he was a party to the murder of that Prince. He was, however, appointed Captain General of the forces in Scotland, and President of the Council of Regency, which was constituted to govern the Kingdom during the minority of the young King Edward III., but, like everyone else, he speedily became disgusted with the conduct of Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, and in 1328 he took up arms against them. A civil war was for the time prevented by the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the result that the Queen shortly afterwards took an opportunity to arrest and put to death the Earl of Kent (Edward II.'s brother), who like Lancaster had taken up arms against her. There is little doubt that the same fate would have overtaken the Earl of Lancaster if King Edward III. had not immediately after the execution of the Earl of Kent succeeded in throwing over the dominion of his mother and Mortimer, whereupon he personally assumed the reins of government. Earl Henry is styled in Doyle's " Official Peerage of England " Earl of Lancaster, Leicester and Derby, and even in his brother's life- time is sometimes styled Earl of Leicester, though he was only summoned to Parliament as a Baron (under what title does not appear) in 1299. In 1324, however, two years after his brother's death, he was created Earl of Lancaster and Leicester, but how he became Earl of Derby I do not know. Earl Henry died in the year 1345, about nineteen years after the accession of Edward III., and he is buried at Leicester. He married Maud, daughter of Sir Patrick Chaworth, a Knight who though not of noble was of good descent, and the Countess Maud seems to have been regarded as a lady of considerable personal importance. By her Earl Henry had issue one son, Henry, who succeeded him, and six daughters. One of these ladies became a nun, and the other five married
1 1 8 History of the Royal Family of England.
into distinguished English families, and from them a great number of persons, distinguished or otherwise, who at the present date claim Royal descent, are descended. The eldest, Maud, was married twice, first to William de Burgh, third Earl of Ulster of his family, and secondly to Sir Ralph de Ufford. She had two daughters, one by each marriage, namely, Elizabeth de Burgh and Maud de Ufford. Elizabeth de Burgh married Lionel, Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., and it is through this marriage, which will be referred to again, that Edward IV. claimed the throne. (See/0.tf.)
Maud de Ufford married Thomas de Vere, eighth Earl of Oxford of his family, and became the mother of the well known Thomas de Vere, ninth Earl of Oxford, and Duke of Ireland, who was the most distinguished of the favourites of Richard II., and to whom also I must refer later.
Eleanor, another daughter of Earl Henry of Lancaster, married Thomas, last Lord Wake, whose sister was the wife of Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent. The other three daughters married into the illustrious families of Mowbray, Fitz Alan, and Percy.
The date of the birth of Henry, only son of the last mentioned Earl, and himself fourth Earl of Lancaster, is not certain, but it was probably about 1299, so that he was about thirteen years older than Edward III., with whom through- out his life he was united in the most intimate and strict friendship, and to whom he was doubly related in that their respective paternal grandfathers, Edward I. and Edmund, first Earl of Lancaster, were brothers, and that Duke Henry's father and the King's maternal grandmother, Joanna Queen of France and Navarre, were half brother and sister. (See Table IV.)
This Duke Henry is styled in Doyle's " Official Baronage of England," Duke and Earl of Lancaster, Earl Palatine of Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Leicester and Lincoln, Baron of Hinckley, Lord of Monmouth, Kedwelly and Carwathlan, Earl of Moray in Scotland, and Lord of Bergerac and Beaufort in France. He was summoned to Parliament as
Henry, First Duke of Lancaster. 119
Henry of Lancaster in 1335, and in 1337 in his father's life was created Earl of Derby. He succeeded his father as Earl of Lancaster and Leicester in 1345, and was subsequently in 1347 created Lord of Bergerac and Beaufort In 1349 he was created Earl of Lincoln, and in 1359 (by David II. of Scotland) Earl of Moray. He was one of the original Knights of the Garter, and in 1352 was created first Duke of Lancaster. Some years previously an Act of Parliament had been passed by which Edward Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Edward III., had been created Duke of Cornwall, and by virtue of which the eldest son of every Sovereign, on his birth or the accession to the Throne of his parent, becomes de facto Duke of Cornwall, but with this exception, Duke Henry of Lancaster is the first British subject who bore the great title of Duke. Duke Henry was a most distinguished soldier, and was one of the greatest of the leaders in the French wars of Edward III., wars which, if they were disastrous, were certainly glorious to the English nation, and many pages of the Chronicles of Froissart are devoted to the Duke's exploits. He died in 1361, having married Isabella Beaumont, daughter of the first Lord Beaumont, by whom he had two children only, both daughters, — that is to say, Maud, who, though she was twice married, the second time to the Duke of Zealand and Bavaria, died young and without issue, and Blanche, who married the celebrated John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., who in her right became Earl of Lancaster, and by whom she was the mother of the Prince who afterwards became Henry IV. of England. (See Tables IV. and V.) To this marriage I shall have to refer again.
I must now return after this digression to King Edward I. himself. He was born in 1239, ascended the Throne, in 1272, when he was thirty-three years old, and died in 1307, after a reign of thirty-five years, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. I have already said that in my estimation Edward was one of the greatest Kings, and one of the best men, that ever sat on the English Throne. The public events of his life— the great legislative enactments of his reign, and the history of his wars
1 20 History of the Royal Family of England.
in Wales, of which he maybe said to have become the conqueror, in France, and above all in Scotland, is well known. It is of course a matter of controversy how far these wars were morally justifiable, but it seems to me that there is very much to be said in each case in favour of the course taken by the King ; and at all events, it may be said with confidence, that they were just wars in comparison with those undertaken by his descendants, Edward III. and Henry V., of which Englishmen are accustomed to speak with so much pride.
In his private life Edward I. was entirely above reproach. His father was a weak and somewhat silly man, and Edward was undeniably a strong and able man, but they had this much in common, that they were both, notwithstanding many questionable actions on the part of the former, sincerely religious — that both were faithful and loving husbands, and kind and affectionate fathers, and that if we except their relations with the de Montfort family, from whom they received the greatest provocations, both lived on the most kindly and affectionate terms with their numerous relations.
Edward's affection for his father and mother, and his father's brother, the King of the Romans, and that Prince's sons, has already been referred to, and the pages of history abound with small but significant instances shewing the strong family affection which subsisted between Edward and his brother and sisters and their children.
In 1254 Edward, then a boy of fifteen years, was married to Eleanor of Castile, the date of whose birth is uncertain, but who was some years younger. This Princess was third in descent from Eleanor Plantagenet, sister of King John. Her grandmother was Berengaria, eldest daughter of that Princess, and her father was St. Ferdinand III. of Castile, Berengaria's son. (See Table V.) Her mother was Joanna, Countess of Ponthieu. Eleanor of Castile died in the year 1290, eighteen years after her husband's accession to the Throne, and is buried in Westminster Abbey. She was one of the most admirable of the Queens Consort of England, but her virtues were eminently domestic, and the public
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122 History of the Royal Family of England.
events of her life are very few. She accompanied her husband to Palestine on the last Crusade, and the story is well known how that, when they were there and Edward was wounded by a poisoned lance, Eleanor sucked the poison from the wound and thus saved his life. This story has been disputed, but it seems to me to be reasonably well authenti- cated. There can be no doubt that Edward and Eleanor were united by the most close and tender affection, and his deep regret for her is testified by a series of crosses which he erected on the several places where her body rested on its funeral progress from Grantham, where she died, to West- minster. Of these crosses the most celebrated was that erected on the place now known as Charing Cross, Charing being a corruption of the French words, " Chere Reine."
In 1299, nine years after the death of Queen Eleanor, Edward married Margaret, youngest daughter of Philip III. of France by his second wife, Mary of Louvaine, and there- fore granddaughter of St. Louis IX. She, like her predecessor, was descended through her great grandmother, Blanche of Castile, from Eleanor, sister of King John. (See Table V.) She was, however, still more nearly related to King Edward, in that her grandmother, Margaret of Provence, wife of St. Louis, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, were sisters.
At the date of this marriage King Edward was sixty and Margaret was probably very young, inasmuch as her parents were not married till 1272, and she was the youngest by several years of their three children. King Edward seems to have been very kind to her, and, as far as can be judged, she was an excellent person, but there is very little known about her. She survived her husband ten years, living chiefly at Marlborough Castle, where she died in 1318, and she was buried in the Church of Grey Friars at Newgate.
Edward I. had fifteen children, twelve by his first and three by his second wife, but my readers will be relieved by hearing that of these seven died as infants or young children. They were (i) Eleanor, afterwards Duchess of Bar, in France, who was born in 1264 ; (2, 3 and 4), John, Henry and Joanna,
Edward I.'s Daughters. 123
who were born respectively in 1266, 1268 and 1269, and who died, the two former in the year 1272, as children of six and four, and Joanna immediately after her birth; (5) Joanna, afterwards Countess of Gloucester, born in 1272 ; (6) Alphonso born in 1273, and who died as a boy of eleven in 1284, a few months after the birth of his next brother Edward ; (7) Margaret, afterwards Duchess of Brabant, born in 1275 ; (8) Berengaria, born in 1276, who died an infant; (9) Mary, born in 1278, afterwards a nun ; (10) An unnamed daughter, who was born and died in 1279; (n) Elizabeth, sometime Countess of Holland, and afterwards Countess of Hereford, born in 1282 ; (12) Edward, first English Prince of Wales, and afterwards Edward II., born in 1284 — (these were his children by his first marriage); (13) Thomas, afterwards Earl of Norfolk, born in 1301 ; (14) Edmund, afterwards Earl of Kent, born in 1303, and (15) Eleanor, born in 1304, who died in 1311.
It will be seen that Edward I. therefore had only five daughters who reached maturity, and who, though they were in reality his eldest, third, fourth, sixth and eighth daughters, will be, for convenience, referred to hereafter as his eldest, second, third, fourth and fifth daughters.
Eleanor, the eldest daughter, was born in 1264, and, in 1272, wrhen her father became King, she was heiress to the Throne, her brothers John and Henry being dead and her brother Alphonso not yet born ; and for many years during the life of Alphonso and before the birth of his brother Edward, Alphonso's health was so delicate and his early death so probable, that Eleanor, though not exactly her father's heiress, was practically so regarded. It is probably owing to this circumstance that she was kept in England till 1293, at which time she had attained the age of twenty-nine. In 1276, however, when she was only ten years old, she was solemnly promised in marriage to Alphonso, afterwards Alphonso III., King of Aragon, and six years later, in 1282, she was married by proxy to that Prince, one, John de Vescy, acting as her representative. The disputes between Pedro
124 History of the Royal Family of England.
III., the father of the young Alphonso, and Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis of France, for the Kingdom of Sicily are matters of European history, and, though Edward I. of England did not take an active part in these disputes, his sympathies were with the Frenchman, who was his own second cousin (Blanche of Castile, Charles' mother, having been first cousin to King Henry III. (see Table V.)), and whose wife, Beatrice of Provence, was the sister of Margaret and Eleanor respectively, wives of St. Louis of France and Henry III. of England. (See ante.)
Frequent and strong representations were made on behalf of the Spanish King to King Edward as to the propriety of sending Eleanor to her husband's Court, but whether by reason of the importance of Eleanor herself in regard to the succession to the English Throne, or the opposition of the King to the pretensions of Pedro and his son to the Crown of Sicily, it is certain that Edward persistently refused to allow his daughter, to whom he seems to have been warmly attached, to leave him. Alphonso died in 1291 without ever having seen his wife, who, however, is frequently spoken of in genealogies as Queen of Aragon, and did in fact for a time assume that title. In 1293 Eleanor was married to Henry, Duke of Bar-le-Duc, in France, a personage of no very great distinction or importance, and who, within two or three years after his marriage, became involved in a dispute with Philip IV. of France and his wife Joanna, Queen of Navarre, in the course of which he was taken prisoner, and he remained in captivity till 1301, when he with difficulty obtained his release. He died in the following year in defending the Island of Cyprus against the Sultan of Egypt. Eleanor did not long survive her marriage, for she died while her husband was still in prison in 1 298, nine years before her father. She left two children, a son John, who succeeded to his father's dominions, and who died of the plague at Famagosta in Cyprus, and, as I believe, unmarried, and a daughter, Joanna, who was sent to England, and married in the year 1306 John de Warrenne, last Earl of Surrey of that family. This lady's
Joanna Countess of Gloucester. 125
life, however, was very unhappy, for her husband publicly neglected her and ultimately divorced her. on the ground that before his marriage he had already contracted to marry another lady. He ultimately died without issue, whereupon the Earldom of Surrey passed to his sister Alice, wife of Richard Fitz Alan, eighth Earl of Arundel.
Joanna, second daughter of King Edward I., was born in the Holy Land in 1272, whence she is called Joanna of Acres. While she was still little more than an infant she was sent to the Court of her maternal grandparents, the King and Queen of Castile, where she remained till 1278, and during this period she was the subject of a matrimonial treaty between the Emperor Rudolph I. and her father, by virtue of which she was to marry the Emperor's eldest son. This, however, came to nothing, owing to the death of the young Prince, and Joanna's ultimate fate was less splendid.
During the reign of Henry III. one of the greatest of the English Barons was Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, whose greatgrandmother was Amicia, second daughter of William, second Earl of Gloucester, and grand- daughter of Robert Earl of Gloucester, who was the half brother of the Empress Matilda (see ante}. Gilbert was the contemporary and personal friend of King Edward I., with whom he had fought at the Battle of Evesham, and whom he had accompanied in the last Crusade, and he was a man of immense wealth and influence. He had married a French Princess, Alice of Angouleme, who was descended from Isabella, wife of King John, by her second marriage, but having had no child, he succeeded in getting rid of this lady, though it does not appear on what grounds. In the year 1290 King Edward thought proper to bestow on Earl Gilbert, as his second wife, his own daughter Joanna, then a girl of nineteen years old.
The disparity in age was very great, but what would now be called the marriage settlements were highly favourable to the Princess, seeing that on failure of issue of Gilbert and Joanna, the Earl's great English estates were settled upon
126 History of the Royal Family of England.
Joanna and her descendants by any subsequent marriage to the exclusion of Gilbert's own relations. The principal residence of the Earl and Countess of Gloucester was, of all places in the world, at Clerkenwell, a district which is thus described by Fitz Stephen, a chronicler of the twelfth century : " In the north suburbs of London are choice springs of water, sweet, wholesome and clean, and streaming forth from among glittering pebbles, one of which is called Fons Clericorum or Clerkenwell, because in the evenings the youth and students of the City are wont to stroll out thither to take the air and taste the fountain." There was in the neighbourhood a Priory of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and a Convent of nuns which stood on the banks of the river " Holeborne " (which I believe is now represented by High Holborn), and these banks are said to have been " clothed with vines," and to have " abounded in romantic steeps and secluded dells."
Joanna appears to have lived with extraordinary magnificence, and to have travelled about, when she did travel, with an enormous retinue and a somewhat appalling amount of luggage. Her husband spent much of his time in Wales and Ireland, where he had great estates, and it would seem that Joanna accompanied him on these journeys. He died in the year 1295 when Joanna was twenty-four, and after his death his widow retired to Wales. There, about fourteen months later, she married privately a certain Ralph de Monthermer, a person of whose origin nothing is known, but who had been one of the Squires of her household, and on whom, shortly before she married him, she had induced her unsuspecting father to confer the honour of Knighthood.
A couple of centuries later under the gentle rule of the Tudors this marriage would have led to the lifelong imprisonment of the lovers, but it would appear that after a short period of anger, King Edward not only forgave them but took Monthermer into high favour, and during the life of his wife Monthermer bore the title of Earl of Gloucester. After Joanna's death he was created Baron Monthermer, and
The Countess of Gloucester's Children. 1 2 7
he subsequently married Isabella de Valence, a daughter of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who was the first cousin of the half-blood to Edward I., being descended from that King's grandmother Isabella of Angouleme. Joanna died in 1307, shortly before her father, her second husband surviving her till 1325.
The Countess Joanna had by her first husband four children, Gilbert, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth, and by her second husband she had three children, Thomas, Edward and Mary. The children of Joanna by her second marriage may be somewhat briefly dismissed. Thomas, the elder son, who succeeded to his father's title of Baron Monthermer, died in 1340, leaving an only daughter Margaret, who married Sir John de Montacute, second son of William de Montacute, first Earl of Salisbury of that family. This lady's eldest son became third Earl of Salisbury and with him the Barony of Monthermer passed to the Earls of Salisbury. It is now said to be in abeyance among several noble families, of which that of the Marquis of Hastings is one. Edward, the second son, seems to have been summoned to Parliament in the reign of Edward III., but nothing else is known about him. Mary, the daughter, is believed to have died young and unmarried.
Gilbert, the only son of Joanna by her first husband Gilbert de Clare, succeeded his father as Earl of Gloucester, and married Maud, daughter of Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, but he was killed at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1313 and died without issue, whereupon the great family of de Clare became extinct.
Eleanor, the eldest daughter of Joanna, was married when a young girl (in 1306) to Hugh le Despencer, who afterwards became the notorious favourite of her cousin Edward II. The Despencers were of an ancient and distinguished Baronial family, which had flourished in England from the time of the Conquest, and the elder of the two Despencers, who afterwards gained such evil influence over Edward II., had enjoyed great favour from that Prince's illustrious father Edward I., and it was in the year before Edward I.'s death
1 28 History of the Royal Family of England.
that the younger Despencer married King Edward's grand- daughter, Eleanor de Clare. After the fall of Piers Gaveston, the Despencers, father and son, rose rapidly in King Edward II.'s favour. The elder was created Earl of Winchester, and when the young Gilbert Earl of Gloucester fell at Bannockburn, the Earldom of Gloucester, which had fallen into abeyance among his sisters, was called out of abeyance in favour of Eleanor, the wife of the younger Despencer, who thereupon assumed the title of Earl of Gloucester. The awful fate of the two Despencers in 1326 is matter of general history, and after the death of her husband, Margaret and her children were for some months confined in the Tower but were then released by Edward III., and the lady subsequently married one William la Zouch of Mortimer and died in 1337. By her first husband she had a large family, and notwithstanding the fact that the two Despencers had been attainted before their deaths, the children of Hugh by Margaret de Clare enjoyed much favour and advancement from Edward III., and the daughters were married into noble families, and their descendants are very numerous at the present time. Hugh Despencer, the eldest son of the Earl and Countess of Gloucester, died without issue, after a very distinguished career, in 1349. He before his death had been created Baron Despencer, but on his death the Barony expired. It was however afterwards con- ferred by a fresh grant on his nephew (the son of his next brother) Edward Despencer, who fought at Poitiers under the Black Prince, and like his uncle was a very great soldier. His son Thomas Despencer married Constance Plantagenet, daughter of Edmund Duke of York, and . granddaughter of •Edward III., and having succeeded in inducing that lady's cousin King Richard II. to reverse the sentence of banish- ment passed on his ancestor Hugh Despencer, he was advanced by that King to the rank and title of Earl of Gloucester. To this distinguished person I must refer again later.
Margaret, the second daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, by Joanna, daughter of King Edward L, was
The Countess of Gloucester s Daughters. 129
after the accession of her cousin Edward II., married at his instance to his favourite Piers de Gaveston, whom he had created Earl of Cornwall — a marriage which with reason gave great offence both to the nobility and to the country at large. After the execution of Gaveston in 1314, the details of which I need not here refer to, his widow married one Hugh de Audley, who in 1337 was created by Edward III. Earl of Gloucester, but died without issue ten years later. Margaret de Clare had only one child (who was by her first husband), a daughter who died young.
Elizabeth, the youngest of the three daughters of Joanna Countess of Gloucester, married John de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, by whom she was the grandmother of the Elizabeth de Burgh who, as will appear later, married Lionel Plantage- net, Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III.
Though little or nothing is known of these three sisters, Eleanor, Margaret and Elizabeth de Clare, personally, they were, through their mother Joanna Countess of Gloucester, the granddaughters, nieces and first cousins of the Kings Edward I. and Edward II. and Edward III. respectively — their marriages had at the time considerable influence on public events — the immediate descendants of the eldest and youngest were by reason of their royal descent and connec- tions persons of some note, and the ladies themselves were important links in the chain which in the time of the later Plantagenets connected nearly every family of importance with the Sovereigns in more or less close relationship, and which in my opinion greatly tended to diminish the power and authority of the Plantagenet dynasty. For these reasons the identity of these ladies is worth fixing in one's mind.
CHAPTER IX.
EDWARD I.'s YOUNGER DAUGHTERS. — THOMAS EARL OF NORFOLK. — THE MOWBRAYS. — EDMUND EARL OF KENT. — EDWARD II. — ISABELLA OF FRANCE. — JOHN OF ELTHAM. — EDWARD I I.'s DAUGHTERS.
MARGARET, the third daughter of Edward I., was born in 1275 ; in 1284 she was betrothed, and in 1290, when she was fifteen, and her husband twenty, she was actually married to John II., afterwards called the Pacific, Duke of Brabant. He was the eldest son of John I., " the Victorious," and the father by Margaret of John III., "the Triumphant" Duke of Brabant. In the year 1284 John, Margaret's husband, then a boy of fourteen, was sent to England to be educated at the Court of King Edward. He was married to Margaret in 1290, and he remained in England until the death of his own father in 1296. His wife did not then accompany him to Brabant, and it was not till 1297 that she arrived at Brussels, which was the capital of her husband's dominions.
Amongst the Court records of King Edward's daughters, which Mrs. Everett Green has collected from the household Rolls, is one which was made a short time after Margaret's marriage, and which may amuse my readers. " Sunday the 9th day before the translation of the Virgin paid to Henry the Almoner for feeding 300 poor men at the King's com- mand, because the Lady Margaret, the King's daughter, and John of Brabant, did not hear Mass, 365. 6d." This is equal to £27 now.
The marriage between John and Margaret was not a happy one, the Duke having been notoriously a very faithless
130
Edward I. 's Younger Daughters. 1 3 1
husband, and Margaret seems to have lived a somewhat lonely and uncared for life after she left England. She was, however, present with her husband at the marriage of her brother Edward II. at Boulogne, and they afterwards went to England to be present at the King's Coronation. Her husband died in 1312, and she survived him for six years, and died in 1318. She is buried in the Church of St. Gudule at Brussels.
Margaret had only one child, namely, John the Triumph- ant before mentioned, whose career, however, it is unnecessary to speak of, as it did not affect the history of the English Royal Family.
Mary, the fourth daughter of Edward I., was born in 1178, and in her earliest childhood it was settled that she should become a nun. In fact she appears to have been professed at Ambresbury, together with her paternal grand- mother, Queen Eleanor, in 1284, when she was only six years old.
She outlived all her brothers and sisters and died in the year 1332, aged fifty-four.
Her life as a nun by no means corresponds with modern ideas of conventual seclusion. Though she never attained to the rank of Prioress, she was a great person in the Convent, drawing a large income granted to her by her father, and confirmed by her brother and her nephew, Edward II. and Edward III. She was a constant visitor at the Courts of her father and brother, and at the houses of her sisters, the Countesses of Gloucester and Hereford ; she received many distinguished visitors herself, and she appears to have spent a considerable portion of her time in making pilgrimages ; in the making of which, as we learn from Chaucer, the pilgrims combined a large measure of secular entertainment with their pious exercises. On these occasions Mary seems to have been attended by a Princely retinue, and to have spent a good deal of money.
Elizabeth, the fifth and youngest daughter of Edward I., was, according to a certain Bartholomew of Norwich, a con-
1 32 History of the Royal Family of England.
temporary writer quoted by Mrs. Green, not called Elizabeth but Walkiniana, and I must confess that I tremble to think what would have been the fate of the English nation if such a name had been handed down among the female " Royalties." She was born in 1282, and in 1284 was betrothed to John, eldest son and heir of Florence V., Earl of Holland, who was at that time certainly under seven. In 1285 this young Prince, like his brother-in-law John of Brabant, was sent over to England to be educated, and there he remained till his marriage in 1297. His position, however, cannot have been very pleasant, for the relations between his father and King Edward were by no means amicable, and King Edward did not hesitate to remind both father and son that the position of the latter was, or might easily be converted into, that of a hostage.
In 1296 John's father, Florence, was murdered, and urgent messages were sent over to John to invite his return to his native land. He did not, however, choose to go, or possibly was prevented from 'doing so, till after his marriage in 1297, which was celebrated with much magnificence at Ipswich.
According to Mrs. Everett Green, King Edward wished Elizabeth to go with her husband, but she refused, and an altercation ensued between her and her father which resulted in something like personal violence on the part of the King. The author's authorities are, however, somewhat vague, and the story sounds improbable ; but it is certain that Elizabeth did not in fact go to Holland till some months later, and that she was escorted thither by her father in person.
Her residence in Holland was brief and stormy. The Province was rent by internal dissensions, and her husband (who was a feeble creature) was practically always a captive in the hands of the person who was for the time being at the head of the faction in power ; while Elizabeth lived a somewhat neglected life at the " Manor of the Hague."
John of Holland died of dysentery in 1299, and in 1300 his widow, who had had no child, returned to England, where
Elizabeth Countess of Hereford. 133
she seems to have been received with much affection by her father.
In 1302 she married Humphrey de Bohun, fourth Earl of Hereford of his very illustrious family. He was at the date of the marriage twenty-one (Elizabeth being twenty), and he was a man of great wealth, power and influence.
After her second marriage Elizabeth's time was chiefly occupied in bearing children, of whom she had ten — eight sons (one of whom bore the classic name of ^Eneas) and two daughters, and she died in childbirth in 1315, at the age of thirty- five, eight years after the accession to the Throne of her brother, King Edward II.
Her husband survived her, and having opposed the King Edward II. in his disputes with the Barons, was ultimately killed at the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1321, at which battle Thomas, second Earl of Lancaster, was taken prisoner, and may be said to have died, for he was executed immediately afterwards.
Of Elizabeth's eight sons, only one left a son, and this son, Elizabeth's grandson, was named Humphrey. Of the other sons of Elizabeth, two, John and Humphrey, were successively Earls of Hereford, and died without issue, and on the death of the younger in 1363 (temp. Edward III.) the Earldom passed to his nephew Humphrey above mentioned. On this Humphrey's death in 1372 (temp. Edward III.) without a son, the family of Bohun became extinct. The last Earl Humphrey, however, left two daughters and co-heiresses, Eleanor and Mary, who were married respectively, Eleanor to Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward III., and Mary to Thomas's nephew, Henry of Lancaster, afterwards King Henry IV., by whom she became the mother of Henry V. To these marriages I must refer later.
Elizabeth's two daughters Eleanor and Margaret were married, Eleanor to James Butler, first Earl of Ormonde, and Margaret to Hugh Courtenay, second Earl of Devon, and from these marriages the present Marquis of Ormonde and
1 34 History of the Royal Family of England.
the present Earl of Devon are directly descended in the male line, and a considerable number of other noble families also claim Royal descent.
Of the six sons of Edward I. it has been shewn that the three elder died as children. The fourth was Edward II., to whom I shall return. The fifth was Thomas, usually called Thomas de Brotherton, from Brotherton in Yorkshire, where he was born. This event took place in 1301, and he was consequently six years old when his father died, and his half- brother Edward II. came to the Throne; twenty-six on the death of Edward II. and the accession of Edward III., who was his nephew, and thirty-seven when he himself died in the year 1338 (temp. Edward III.). He was the elder of the two sons of Edward I. by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Philip III. of France, and consequently was of as illustrious descent on his mother's as on his father's side. Inasmuch as Edward II. married Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. of France, who was the brother of Thomas's mother, Thomas was doubly related to King Edward III. through that King's mother as well as through his father (see Table VI.), a circumstance which possibly accounted for the great preferment in later years of Prince Thomas's descendants.
In 1312, five years after the accession of Edward II., Prince Thomas, who was then eleven, was created Earl of Norfolk, a title which had become vacant in 1307 on the extinction of the family of the Bigods (who had been Earls of Norfolk from the time of King Stephen), and at the same time Thomas was made Marshal of England, an office which had been previously held by the illustrious family who took their name from it, which family also had become extinct.
Froissart describes Prince Thomas as "of a wild and dis- agreeable temper," and though he was to some extent employed in military matters during the reigns of his brother and nephew, he does not seem to have distinguished himself in any way. In the disputes between King Edward II. and his wife the Earl of Norfolk took the latter's part.
Thomas was twice married, first to Alice, daughter of Sir
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136 History of the Royal Family of England.
Roger Halys, and secondly to Mary, daughter of William, Lord Roos, and widow of William Braose, and he had three children, Margaret and Alice by his first wife, and John by his second. Of the son John all that is known is that he became a monk, and thereby becoming " civilly dead " did not, if he survived his father, which is not known, inherit his father's titles. The younger daughter, Alice, married William de Montacute, and left a daughter, Joanna, who married William de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, and died without issue.
It is uncertain when Margaret, eldest daughter and eventually heiress of Thomas de Brotherton, was born, but the date is commonly fixed about 1320, in which case she would have been seven years old at the accession of Edward III., fifty-seven at the accession of Richard II., and seventy- nine in 1399, in which year that King was murdered and she herself died.
On her father's death she succeeded him as Countess of Norfolk in her own right, and at the Coronation of Richard II. she claimed to execute, by deputy, the office of Marshal of England, which had been conferred upon her father, but this claim was disallowed. Two years before her death, how- ever, King Richard created her Duchess of Norfolk, for her life only, and at the same time he created her grandson, Thomas Mowbray, sixth Baron Mowbray, hereditary Duke of Norfolk, and conferred upon him the hereditary office of Earl Marshal of England, an office which has been claimed ever since by the Dukes of Norfolk, and is filled by the present Duke.
The Duchess of Norfolk was twice married, first to John, third Lord Segrave, and secondly to Sir Walter Manny, who was one of the most distinguished of Edward III.'s generals. She had three children, Anne, Elizabeth, and another Anne, the first two by Lord Segrave, and the youngest by Sir Walter Manny. The elder of the two Annes became a nun, and the younger married John Hastings, second Earl of Pembroke of his family, by whom she became the mother of
The Mowbrays. 137
an only son, on whose death without issue in his seventeenth year that branch of the Hastings family became extinct. Elizabeth Segrave, Margaret's second daughter, married John Mowbray, fourth Baron Mowbray, whose mother was Joanna Plantagenet, one of the daughters of Henry, third Earl of Lancaster. The eldest son and heir of this marriage suc- ceeded his father as fifth Baron Mowbray, but died unmarried and under age, and was succeeded by his next brother, Thomas Mowbray, as sixth Baron. This nobleman was created Earl of Nottingham on his brother's death in 1383, and two years later, in 1385, he was made Earl Marshal of England ; and, as has been already stated, when his grand- mother, Margaret, daughter of Thomas of Brotherton, was created Duchess of Norfolk for her life, he was created hereditary Duke of Norfolk.
There were four, and by rights there ought to have been five, Dukes of Norfolk of the Mowbray family. The first, above mentioned, who was Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Nottingham is he whose memorable contest with Henry of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., is commemorated in the opening scene of Shakespeare's play, "Richard II." He was banished as in the play appears, and died in the year 1400. His eldest son did not succeed him in the title of Duke of Norfolk, but did assume the title of Earl Marshal, and is the " Lord Mowbray " of the second part of the play of " King Henry IV." He was executed in 1405 as having taken part in a conspiracy against King Henry IV. and died without issue.
His next brother thereupon became second Duke of Norfolk of the Mowbrays, and was duly succeeded one after the other by his son and grandson as third and fourth Dukes.
The fourth Duke, who died in the time of Edward IV., left an only daughter and heiress, Anne Mowbray, who, as a very young child, was married by that King to his own younger son, Richard, Duke of York, afterwards one of the Princes murdered in the Tower, and who during his short life was styled Duke of Norfolk as well as Duke of York.
138 History of the Royal Family of England.
His little wife, who was younger than himself, died before him, and with her expired the great family of the Mowbrays ; but their honours and titles were afterwards in the reign of Richard III. divided between the representatives of Isabella and Margaret Mowbray, daughters of the first Duke. Isabella married James, fifth Lord Berkeley, and her son received the Earldom of Nottingham ; and Margaret, her sister, married Sir Robert Howard, and her son became first Duke of Norfolk of the Howards.
To the illustrious family of the Howards I shall have to return later on in this work.
I may, however, say here that the ancient Barony of Mowbray was held by the Howards, Dukes of Norfolk, until the year 1777, when, being a Peerage which passed in the female line, it fell into abeyance between the Stourton and Petre families, and so remained until 1887, when it was revived in favour of Lord Stourton, who thereupon became Lord Mowbray and Stourton.
I now revert to Edmund, the youngest son of Edward I. He was born in 1302, and was therefore only five years old when his father died, and twenty-seven when he himself was put to death in 1329, two years after the accession to the Throne of his nephew, King Edward III.
In 1320, when he was eighteen, he was created Earl of Kent, a title which had been previously borne by only three persons, each of whom died without male issue. They were Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother to the Conqueror, William de Ypres, one of King Stephen's generals, and the celebrated Hubert de Burgh, of the reigns of John and Henry III.
From this date (1320) Edmund was constantly involved in the quarrels between the King and Queen, which disgraced and desolated England, during the later years of Edward II.
Edmund fought on the King's side in 1321 at the Battle of Boroughbridge, at which his brother-in-law Humphry de Bohun, the widower of his half-sister Eleanor, was killed on the other side ; and he was afterwards one of the presiding judges at the trial, if trial it can be called, of his cousin
Edmund Earl of Kent. 1 39
Thomas of Lancaster. His own untimely end was, as we have seen, afterwards said to have been a judgment upon him for his share in Thomas' execution.
After this date Edmund seems to have been won over to the cause of the Queen Isabella, who it may be remembered was his own cousin through his mother, Margaret of France. (See Table VI.)
He accompanied Isabella when she withdrew to France in 1325, and was with her in her wanderings over the Conti- nent in that year, and in 1326, and for a short time after her return, he seems to have been one of her most energetic supporters. Speedily, however, he became disgusted at the excesses and revolting cruelties perpetrated by Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, and especially at the murder of King Edward II., and in 1328 he and his brother Thomas of Brotherton and his cousin Henry of Lancaster, withdrew from Court and threatened open war. A peace was for a time patched up, but in the following year Isabella caused Edmund to be suddenly seized at Winchester, and after a mock trial he was executed next day. This judicial murder was the culminating point of Queen Isabella's wickedness. It aroused public indignation to the highest pitch, and incited the young King Edward III., then little over seven- teen, to take those vigorous measures for the relief of himself and his kingdom which are related in all histories, and which were so completely successful.
Edmund, Earl of Kent, married Margaret Wake, daughter of John, first Lord Wake, and had issue four children, Edmund, John, Margaret and Joanna. Both his sons suc- ceeded him as Earls of Kent, but the elder died as a child, and the younger, who survived till 1352, and who married Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Juliers in the Netherlands, had no child.
Of the daughters, Margaret died young, and Joanna, to whom I must again refer at some length, and who is known in history as the " Fair Maid of Kent," ultimately married Edward the Black Prince.
1 40 History of the Royal Family of England.
King Edward II. was born in 1284, and was twenty-three when he became King in 1307, and forty-three when he died. The story is familiar to everyone, how his father, the Conqueror of Wales, presented him as an infant to the Welsh as their Prince ; and since then, with one exception, the eldest son of every English Sovereign has been created Prince of Wales, either at his birth or the accession of his father to the Throne. Of late some historians have credited Edward 1 1. with considerable abilities, and as having at any rate enter- tained pronounced political plans. His abilities may, I think, be doubted, but there can hardly be any doubt that morally he was a contemptible and vicious person, but the extremity of his misfortunes begets compassion, and it is impossible to read the history of his reign without feeling how strongly the unfortunate circumstances of his position fought against him.
Edward, morally weak, and it is said of a bad physical constitution, was interpolated between two Princes, his father and his son, who were in every possible respect strong con- trasts to himself, and he seems to have reverted to the type of his grandfather, Henry III., whom he greatly resembled, and of whose career his own, under happier circumstances, might easily have been a reproduction.
Edward I. and Edward III. were both men of herculean strength and courage, and of extraordinary physical energy. They were both great military leaders, they were both, though in different degrees, of very considerable intellectual power, and of both it may be said that their defects as well as their virtues were eminently those of strong and rather stern men. Henry III. and Edward II. were alike irresolute, indolent and timid ; their abilities were, so it seems to me, inferior, they were without a spark of military genius, and their faults as well at their good qualities were those rather ot women than of men.
Henry III., however, had great advantages over his grand- son. He succeeded a King upon whom almost anyone must have been an improvement, and the circumstances of his position were well calculated to develop such good qualities
Edward II. 141
as he possessed. His domestic surroundings were exception- ally happy, and he enjoyed, as far as appears, uniformly good health. Edward II. spent his boyhood and youth under the eye of a father who, though no doubt substantially just and good, was admittedly, at all events in his later years, stern and severe in his manners, and with whose great capacities his son's inferiority in mind and body was in constant and painful contrast. One can easily understand how the defects of the son on whom he looked to succeed him and carry on his plans, defects with which he could have had no sympathy, were a constant source of mortification to the father, but on the other hand, one can well imagine that the son was thoroughly cowed during his father's life, and probably much of his misconduct in after times was a result of a reaction from the undue restraint of his youth. Moreover Edward II., the eleventh child of his parents, was of a thoroughly sickly constitution. His three brothers and several of his sisters had died as children, and for years, it would appear that few people expected that he himself could be reared.
Edward's marriage completed his misfortunes. If he had married a good and kind woman, such as had been his mother, and such as proved to be his daughter-in-law, Philippa of Hainault, or even a woman of his own calibre of mind, who could have shared and entered into his tastes, his life might probably have been very different. It was, how- ever, his fate to marry a woman of great ability and ambition, and who was as vicious and cruel as she was clever. That Isabella despised and hated her husband from the first is clear, that she lost no opportunity of publishing and dilating on her husband's faults (which it was necessary that she should magnify in order to conceal her own) is also clear ; and, without wishing to defend Edward or palliate his vices, I think it only fair to remember that much we hear of him comes from Isabella and her partizans, and, to say the least, lost nothing in the telling.
Edward certainly had some good qualities. The inter- esting letters published by Mrs. Everett Green in her lives of
1 42 History of the Royal Family of England.
the English Princesses bear ample evidence, under all their formality, of a strong affection between him and his sisters ; and the almost passionate constancy with which he supported his favourites, unworthy as they were, contrasts favourably with the callous levity with which some great sovereigns have allowed their friends to be sacrificed on the slightest emergency.
Isabella, the wife of Edward II., was the only daughter who reached maturity of Philip IV. (called le Bel) of France, and was the sister of three French Kings, Louis X., Philip V. and Charles IV. Her mother was Joanna, Queen of Navarre, and her maternal grandmother, Blanche of Artois, took for her second husband, as has been shown, Edmund Crouchback, first Earl of Lancaster, by whom she became the mother of Thomas and Henry, second and third Earls of Lancaster. (See Table IV.) Consequently Isabella was the niece of the half-blood to those Princes, and she was also first cousin to her husband's half-brothers, the Earls of Norfolk and Kent, inasmuch as their mother, Margaret of France, was her father's sister. (See Table VI.) It is necessary to bear these relationships in mind in estimating the attitude of the Princes of the Royal Blood in the quarrels between Edward and Isabella, because their having taken the latter's part is sometimes relied on, more than I think is just, as telling against Edward and in Isabella's favour.
Isabella was born in 1295, and she was only four years old when she was betrothed to Edward, at the same time that Edward's father married Isabella's aunt, Margaret of France. The actual marriage between Edward II. and Isabella was solemnised in Boulogne in January 1308, when Edward was twenty-four and Isabella barely thirteen ; and it may well be said that the somewhat cavalier treatment which the young Queen received from her husband on her arrival in England, and of which she made such bitter complaints to all the world, was a not unnatural result of this disparity of age, and the extreme youth of the Queen. In the present day, at any rate, a young man of twenty-four would hardly be expected
Isabella of France. 1 4 3
to take very seriously or to treat with much deference a girl of thirteen.
The domestic, or rather the ««domestic, relations between the King and Queen so gravely affected the history of England, and are so well known, that it is unnecessary to dwell upon them further, neither is it necessary, and it would not be pleasant, to dwell on the tragic circumstances of Edward's death and Isabella's brief period of dominion over England.
After the young King Edward III. had succeeded in throwing off the control of his mother in 1329, she was placed in confinement in Castle Rising in Yorkshire, where she remained till her death in 1358 at the age of sixty-three, having become, it is said, insane in her later years.
She was treated with much consideration by her son Edward III., but whatever may have been the faults of King Edward 1 1. the memory of his wife has always been abhorrent to the English people, by whom even in her own life she was called the " she wolf of France," a name which has ever since stuck to her.
Edward and Isabella had four children : (i) Edward, after- wards Edward III., born in 1312; John, afterwards Earl of Cornwall, born in 1313; (3) Eleanor, afterwards Duchess of Guelderland, born in 1318, and (4) Joanna, afterwards Queen of Scotland, born in 1321.
John, the second son, who is always called John of Eltham, from the place of his birth, died unmarried in the year 1336 at the age of twenty-three, and he was created Earl of Cornwall in 1326, which was the year of his father's murder. He appears to have been a youth of some promise, and to have been regarded with much affection by his brother Edward III., by whom he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
The Earldom of Cornwall had always been associated with the Royal Family. The title was borne, as has been shewn, by Robert, the natural brother of the Conqueror, and by Robert's son William. It was granted by Henry I. to Reginald, one of his own natural sons, who was succeeded by
1 44 History of the Royal Family of England.
Richard, who was the natural son of the above-mentioned Reginald. John, before he became King, was for a short time Earl of Cornwall, and after the accession of Henry III. the Earldom was granted to that King's brother Richard, afterwards King of the Romans, who was succeeded as Earl of Cornwall by his son Edmund. Lastly, Edward II. granted the Earldom to Piers Gaveston, who, it may be remembered, was the first husband of the King's cousin, Margaret de Clare.
John, son of Edward II., was the last Earl of Cornwall, but after his death Edward III., in 1337, created his own eldest son Duke of Cornwall with a special limitation, under and by virtue of which the eldest son of every Sovereign becomes on his birth, or the accession of his parent, Duke of Cornwall.
The daughters of Edward II. appear to have been much neglected in their childhood by their mother, and during the absence of the Queen in France and in the Low Countries in 1325 and 1326, they and their brother John were placed by their father under the charge of the elder Despencer, the father of the King's notorious favourite, Hugh Despencer. They were actually with the King and the Despencers at Bristol when the King and his friends fell into Isabella's hands, and Froissart, who either felt or thought it expedient to affect considerable admiration for that Princess, specially records the joy she felt at reunion with her children. I do not know if the joy was mutual, but the shocking and dis- gusting scenes of cruelty which followed that event, and which in the case of the elder Despencer must have been perpetrated almost under the eyes of the children themselves, would probably have driven two modern little girls silly. In fact both Eleanor and Joanna, so far as details of their lives are known, appear to have been melancholy and despondent, though very gentle and good women.
Eleanor, after having been the subject of more or less brilliant matrimonial plans formed by her father and brother, was ultimately married in 1331, four years after her father's
Eleanor Countess of Guelder land. 145
death, and when she was fifteen, to Raynold II. (called the Swarthy), Count of Guelderland. I do not know the age of Raynold, but he was a widower with four daughters, and was therefore considerably his wife's senior. He does not appear to have been a particularly affectionate husband, for at one time he sent his wife away from him and announced his intention of getting a divorce on the ground that she was a leper, though all the evidence on the point shows that this was a mere pretence. In fact Eleanor acted with some spirit, and took very effectual and what under less trying circumstances might have been considered somewhat in- delicate means of showing to her husband and his courtiers that she was not a victim to any skin disease. Thereupon she was, at any rate, nominally reinstated in her position as Count Raynold's wife.
Raynold, however, if not a good husband, was a very vigorous and useful ally to his brother-in-law Edward III., whom he very materially aided both in his Scotch and in his French wars, but his services were not entirely disinterested, for the King paid him for them several very large sums of money, and used his influence with the Emperor to get the county of Guelderland erected into a Duchy, which was done.
Raynold died in 1343, leaving Eleanor, who was then twenty-five, his widow, and two sons named Raynold and Edward, of whom she was the mother. For some years after his death Eleanor acted as Regent of the newly erected Duchy, and appears to have shewn considerable ability and prudence in that capacity, but when her sons grew up they quarrelled violently with one another and with their mother, whom they reduced to extreme poverty and obscurity. The younger, who was the more enterprising of the two, took his brother prisoner, and kept him in prison for ten years, and by way of delicate satire on his brother's corpulence, which was great, he put no door or bars to his prison chamber, but constructed the entrances of such narrow dimensions that the prisoner could by no means squeeze or be squeezed through them.
K
146 History of the Royal Family of England.
Neither of the sons of Eleanor left issue, and on the death of Raynold, the elder, who was the survivor, his father's line became extinct.
Eleanor herself passed the later years of her life in a Convent at Deventer, where she died in 1355, aged thirty- seven, and where she is buried ; her tombstone is inscribed with one word only, " Eleanora."
Joanna, the second daughter of Edward II., was married in 1328, the year after her father's death, to David Bruce, only son of Robert I. (the famous Robert Bruce), King of Scotland. At the date of the marriage David was eight and Joanna seven.
As the illustrious Edward I. had in Edward II. a most unworthy son, so the heroic Bruce, who was certainly the greatest of the Scottish Kings, had an only son David, who was probably the worst.
The marriage between David and Joanna, was brought about by Queen Isabella, and formed part of the treaty of Northampton, which was justly regarded by the English as very humiliating, and was so distasteful to the young King Edward III. that he positively refused to be present at his sister's marriage. Robert I. died in the following year, whereupon David became at the age of nine King David II. of Scotland.
In 1333 Edward III., who had emancipated himself from the tutelage of his mother, thought proper to take up the cause of Edward Baliol, son of the " mock King," John Baliol, whom Edward I. had so strenuously endeavoured to place upon the Scottish Throne. He accordingly invaded Scotland, where, at the age of twenty-one, he won his first great battle, that of Halidon Hill.
The Scotch, afraid lest their young King should fall into Edward's hands, had previously sent David and Joanna to the Court of Philip VI. of France, and by him they were kindly received. They remained in France, chiefly in Normandy, till 1341, when they returned to Scotland, David having previously bound himself to the French King to oppose Edward in every way.
Joanna, Queen of Scotland. 147
Whatever the Scotch King may have learnt in France, or whatever may have been the advantages of his sojourn there, it is certain that he returned to Scotland a most accomplished libertine, and he paraded his debauchery after so shameless and reckless a fashion that the Scotch, although they were not in those days what may be called prudish, were greatly incensed.
In 1347, Edward being in France, and engaged in his foreign wars, David fulfilled his promise to King Philip of France by invading England, having previously announced his intention to " scatter the nation of the English till their name be no longer remembered." He was met by a small body of Englishmen at Neville's Cross under the command of Lord Percy, and encouraged by the personal presence of Edward's wife, Queen Philippa. There David sustained a complete and inglorious defeat, and was taken prisoner and carried to London, where he was kept in more or less strict captivity for the next ten years.
During a great part of this time Joanna was also in England, but probably by her own wish, she was not with her husband, who, notwithstanding his imprisonment, seems to have found means to solace himself with much and varied female society. It is beyond my province to enter into the details of the humiliating terms upon which David recovered his liberty, but he returned to Scotland in 1357, his wife being with him. Shortly afterwards David sent to England for a woman named Mortimer, who had been his mistress, and she notoriously obtained such extreme and evil influence over him that she was ultimately assassinated while riding by his side. Before this event, however, Joanna, who had had no child, determined to leave Scotland, where her position had become intolerable, and accordingly in 1358, with the concurrence of her brother Edward III., she repaired to England, where she lived in extreme privacy at Hertfort till her death in 1362, when she was forty-one years old. She was buried in the Church of the Grey Friars at Newgate.
1 48 History of the Royal Family of England.
King David survived till 1370, and after Joanna's death he married a woman of inferior position, whom he speedily divorced. He left no issue.
David was succeeded by Robert Stuart (Robert II.), the son of Walter, the Lord High Steward of Scotland, by Marjory, eldest daughter of King Robert I. and sister of David II., and it is from Robert II. that the illustrious line of the Stuarts who reigned over Scotland and afterwards over Great Britain for so many centuries are decended. (See Table 1 1 1.)
CHAPTER X.
EDWARD III.— QUEEN PHILIPPA. — THE BLACK PRINCE.— JOANNA OF KENT. — RICHARD II.— His WIVES.— THE HOLLANDS.
EDWARD III. was born in 1312, and was about fifteen when his father (the exact date of whose death is not known) was murdered. He was seventeen when he threw over the Regency of his mother, and sixty-five when he died in 1377.
It is an illustration of the increased longevity of the present times that in the fourteenth century King Edward, dying at the age of sixty-five, when nowadays a man would hardly be thought to have passed middle life, was looked upon and spoken of as a man in the extremity of old age, who had and might reasonably be expected to have fallen into his second childhood.
It is usual to compare Edward III. with his grandfather Edward I., and in the glamour of his extraordinary military achievements to compare them in a manner favourable to the later King, but in fact the more the histories of the two Sovereigns are looked into, the more it will be seen, that with many points of resemblance, Edward III. was inferior in nearly every possible respect, except perhaps in military genius, to his grandfather.
It is of course open to question whether the Scotch wars of Edward I. were justifiable, but it is at least arguable that they were. Edward and all his predecessors had claimed to be the Over Lords of Scotland, and this claim had been admitted by some, at any rate, of the Scotch Kings. It was the
acknowledged right of the " Over Lord " to settle questions of
149
1 50 History of the Royal Family of England.
disputed succession — the succession to the Scotch Throne was bond fide in dispute, and the intervention of the King of England had been asked for by at least one of the claimants to the Throne.
Matters, however, were in a very different position on the , accession of Edward III. Robert Bruce had been King of Scotland, accepted by the people, and reigning practically without dispute for over twenty years. His title had been expressly recognized by the English at the treaty of North- ampton, a treaty solemnly cemented by the marriage of Edward's sister with Robert's son ; and under these circum- stances I cannot myself see how Edward III.'s attempt to force Edward Baliol on to the Scotch Throne can possibly be justified by anyone. The severity, even cruelty, of Edward I. has been justly commented on, but it was equalled if not exceeded by that of his grandson in that terrible invasion known as " Burnt Candlemas."
Edward III.'s claims on France were even more unjusti- fiable. Indeed it is impossible to state them without their absurdity becoming apparent. He alleged, as I think most untruly, that the Salique Law had not become the Law of France, and was not binding upon him, and he therefore claimed, in right of his mother, to be King of France. It is however quite immateral whether the Salique Law was or was not in force, for Isabella had had three brothers, each of whom had left a daughter or daughters, and by every possible law of succession the right of these ladies to succeed in pre- ference to their aunt, Edward's mother, must have prevailed.
After the Battle of Poictiers, Edward, with the aid of his heroic son the Black Prince, seemed to have touched the summit of human greatness, but from that time the power and reputation of both father and son speedily declined.
England, strained of her wealth and manhood by the constant Foreign wars, was profoundly discontented, and the ill-judged, if chivalrous, attempt of the Black Prince to force the infamous Pedro the Cruel on to the Throne of Castile alienated his father's French subjects, so that one by one the French
Edward III. 151
provinces were lost to the English Throne. It is a melancholy picture to see the father and son, who, whatever were their faults, were great men, sinking side by side into the grave, the one from premature old age, the other from wasting sickness, and both from the effects of constant and repeated mortifica- tions and misfortunes.
King Edward was singularly fortunate in his wife, Queen Philippa. She was not of very exalted rank, being the younger daughter of the Count of Hainault, a compara- tively petty Flemish Prince, but the King had seen her in his journey to the Low Countries with his mother in the year 1325 and had fallen in love with her, and the marriage was one of genuine affection. When they were married in the year 1327 they were both about fifteen, and though Edward was not as irreproachable a husband as his grandfather had been, he retained a constant regard for his wife, and was tolerably respectable in his private life till she died in the year 1369, eight years before her husdand, at the age of fifty- seven.
Philippa, both as Queen and woman, may favourably com- pare with any of her predecessors or successors on the English Throne. At a time of great peril to the English Kingdom when in the absence of her husband the Scotch King invaded England, she, by her courage and presence of mind, turned, or at all events aided materially in turning, what might have been a signal disaster into the brillant victory of Neville's Cross. Her intercession for the citizens of Calais, which has been so often celebrated in picture and story, saved her husband from an act of cruelty which would have irreparably stained his reputation ; and her establishment of the Flemish weavers at Norwich gave an important impetus to British trade and commerce. Her conduct as wife and mother, and in all the domestic relations of life, is beyond the shadow of reproach, and the story of her death as told by Miss Strickland is truly touching.
After her death her husband, already, as we may believe, falling into his dotage, fell under the evil dominion of a woman
152 History of the Royal Family of England.
named Alice Ferrers, whose influence clouded and disgraced the later years of his life, and it is said, though I believe not wholly with truth, that this great King died in his old age absolutely alone, and deserted by all the world.
I confess that when I come to deal with the children and descendants of Edward III. my heart fails me. That King had twelve children, of whom nine lived to maturity, or at least to a marriageable age, and six left issue. Consequently in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries the number of Edward's descendants was very large, and they all or nearly all lived in England, married Englishmen or Englishwomen, and played more or less conspicuous parts in the history of their country.
Moreover the inter-marriages between different branches of the Royal Family were frequent — the more distinguished persons constantly changed sides in the civil wars which dis- tracted England, the authentic records of their proceedings are extremely scanty, and they nearly all came to a violent end. Under these circumstances it must be admitted that to give a tolerably clear account of " who was who " during the period in question is not an easy task, and I must ask the indulgence of my readers before I undertake it.
King Edward III. had twelve children — (i) Edward the Black Prince, born 1330 ; (2) Isabella, afterwards Countess de Coucy and of Bedford, born 1332 ; (3) Joanna, born 1333; (4 and 5) two sons, both named William, and who both died as infants ; (6) Lionel, afterwards Duke of Clarence, born 1338 ;
(7) John, called John of Gaunt, from the town of Ghent where he was born, and afterwards Duke of Lancaster, born 1340 ;
(8) Edmund, afterwards Duke of York, born 1341 ; (9) Mary afterwards Duchess of Brittany, born 1344; (10) Margaret, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, born I346;(ii) Thomas, who died an infant; and (12) Thomas of Woodstock, after- wards Duke of Gloucester, born 1354.
I propose to deal first with Edward the Black Prince and his wife Joanna of Kent ; secondly, with their son Richard II. ; thirdly, with the Holland family, descended from Joanna of
Edward the Black Prince. 153
Kent by an earlier marriage (which family, by reason of their own Royal descent, of their near connection with King Richard II., of their frequent inter-marriages with other branches of the Royal family, and of the great position to which some of them attained, must necessarily be spoken of in some detail) ; fourthly, with the daughters of Edward III. ; fifthly, with his youngest son the Duke of Gloucester, whose descendants can be kept more or less distinct, and played a less conspicuous part in the wars of succession than those of his elder brothers ; sixthly, with the Dukes of Clarence and York, whose united families were the leaders of the great " York " party in the Wars of the Roses ; and lastly, with John of Gaunt and his descendants, the Kings Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI., and the Beaufort family, from which sprung Henry VII., whose marriage with Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV., united the factions of York and Lancaster, arid from whose reign we must take a new departure.
Edward the Black Prince was born in 1330, at which date his father was only eighteen, and he died in 1376 at the age of forty-six, one year before his father. He was a very great and on the whole I think a good man, to whom a large, if not the larger, part of the lustre which is shed on the early years of his father's reign is due ; and who, if he had retained his health and become King, would probably have been one of the greatest English Sovereigns. After the Battle of Poictiers, he was virtually the independent Sovereign of Aquitaine or Guienne, as it had come to be called, and in that capacity he unfortunately took up the cause of Pedro the cruel of Castile, who had been driven from his dominions by his natural brother Henry of Transtamare, and whom Edward succeeded in re-establishing after the Battle of Navarette in 1367. This enterprise, though temporarily successful, and in a manner glorious, was ill-judged, and produced no good effect to anyone. Pedro was such a hateful wretch that no nation could be expected to bear with him, and he was speedily again overthrown and killed by
154 History of the Royal Family of England.
his brother. Thereupon followed the war of succession in Castile between Henry of Transtamare and the Black Prince's brothers, the Dukes of Lancaster and York, who had married Pedro's daughters, and in whose right they claimed the Castilian Throne. To this war I must again refer later.
Edward the Black Prince in undertaking to re-establish Pedro had involved himself in tremendous expenses, to raise which it was necessary to tax his subjects to the utmost,, and they, resenting this, invited the intervention of the French King. Consequently a fresh war with France ensued, in which the English were as unsuccessful as they had been successful in their previous undertakings ; and as the result the English lost nearly the whole of their dominions in France.
This result would probably not have followed if the Black Prince himself had not been, slowly but surely, sinking under a fatal disease ; and to the irritability produced by a life of constant sickness and pain, may fairly be attributed those stains, such as the massacre at Limoges, which have tarnished the military reputation of this Prince in his later years. Previously he appears to have been one of the most chivalrous and merciful, as well as one of the bravest of the mediaeval soldiers.
The Prince returned to England in 1374 and died in 1376, and he is buried at Canterbury. (See " The Black Prince," by Dunn Pattison.)
It is said that Prince Edward from a very early age entertained a strong affection for his cousin Joanna of Kent (known as the " Fair Maid of Kent "), and remained single on her account, and it is certain that he did not marry till 1 36 1, when the lady had become a widow and was able to become his wife. At this date he was thirty, and the Princess, who was already the mother of five children, was thirty-five. She was the daughter, and on the early death without issue of her two brothers and her sister, the sole heiress of Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent, the youngest son of King Edward I. by his second wife, Margaret of
Joanna of Kent. 155
France. Consequently Joanna was very nearly related to Edward III., both through his father and his mother. (See Tables IV. and VI.) She was a great heiress, and by common consent a great beauty, but she seems to have been of a somewhat flighty and frivolous character, and her reputation as a woman was by no means unquestioned, though much that has been said against her may, as emanating from political opponents, be received with reserve. It is certain that the Prince's relations were strongly opposed to the marriage, and ultimately consented to it with great reluctance.
Joanna had been twice previously married, her first husband having been William de Montacute, second Earl of Salisbury of his family, from whom she was divorced. The grounds for this divorce are stated to have been a pre-con- tract of marriage on the lady's part, and it may here be said that this Lord Salisbury married again, and that his second wife, Elizabeth de Mohun, was the Countess of Salisbury whom Edward III. so greatly admired, and in whose honour he is said to have instituted the famous Order of the Garter.
Joanna married secondly Sir Thomas Holland, the second son of John, first Lord Holland, who is said to have been of ancient family.
Sir Thomas Holland was a great soldier, who had fought at the Battle of Crecy and otherwise distinguished himself in the French wars, and had obtained many honours from the King in consequence. In the year 1360 he assumed in right of his wife the title of Earl of Kent, and he died a few months later, whereupon, after a very short interval, his widow married the Black Prince, with whom there is every reason to believe she lived till his death on terms of great affection. Joanna survived Prince Edward and died in the year 1384, seven years after the accession of her son King Richard II. The circumstances of her death are somewhat melancholy. Sir John Holland, afterwards Duke of Exeter, who was her son by her second marriage, and half-brother to the King, killed in a quarrel the eldest son of Lord Stafford. Richard, who was deeply incensed, sentenced him to death, and the
156 History of the Royal Family of England.
Princess of Wales, who had vainly interceded for his pardon, thereupon became sick with grief, and died after an illness of four days. Richard, who appears to have been warmly attached to his mother, was greatly shocked by the event, and after her death granted the pardon which she had vainly asked for in her life. The sentence of death was commuted into one of perpetual banishment, but after a very short interval Sir John Holland was allowed to return to England and restored to favour, and subsequently created Duke of Exeter.
Joanna was, or is said to have been, a strong partizan and patroness of Wickliffe, who was the founder of the sect known as the Lollards, and on that account is not in favour with Catholic Historians.
The Black Prince and Joanna had two children, Edward, who died in his father's lifetime, aged seven, and Richard, who, on the death of his grandfather Edward III., became King of England.
Richard II. was born in 1366 and was only eleven in 1377 when he became King, and thirty-three when he was deposed and murdered in 1399. He is said to have been remarkably handsome, and, as far as can be judged, was naturally of a very amiable disposition, but his conduct both as a King and as a man has always been the subject of much discussion and difference of opinion.
In 1382, on the insurrection of Wat Tyler, he displayed courage, presence of mind and magnanimity far beyond his years, and which contrasted favourably with the behaviour of the nobles about him, most, if not all, of whom seem to have lost their heads ; but the promise thus early shewn was not borne out in his later life, though there has always been a tradition that at the time of his murder he shewed remark- able courage.
It must be remembered, however, that Richard was placed in a position of extraordinary difficulty. Except during her life, his first wife, and possibly his mother, he does not appear to have had a single relative or friend upon whose loyalty or
Richard II. 157
whose disinterested support he could for a moment rely. In his reign nearly every noble family was related to or con- nected by blood or marriage with the King, and he was surrounded by relations — half-brothers, uncles, and cousins, all of whom, almost without exception, were turbulent and unprincipled persons, who, during the years of Edward III.'s senile weakness and Richard's minority, had risen to a degree of power and influence scarcely consistent with their position as subjects. Of these nobles there does not appear to have been one who would have hesitated to have sacrificed the King or the Kingdom to his own ambition if he had seen his way to do so. Richard consequently lived in an atmo- sphere of constant strife and contention, there was no one whom he could trust, or did trust, and probably the only way in which he could maintain his position at all was by playing off the greater Barons one against the other. If, under these circumstances, he was sometimes guilty of treachery and injustice, it is hardly to be wondered at.
It must also be remembered that Richard was succeeded by a King who had dethroned him and put him to death, and who could only justify his own conduct by blackening the memory of his predecessor, and therefore much that has been said by writers, who wrote under the auspices of Henry IV. and the Lancastrian Princes, must be accepted with great caution.
On the whole I think that, though Richard was not a particularly able or good man, he was neither foolish nor more vicious than his neighbours, and taken altogether, he does not contrast unfavourably with the other Princes of his time.
In 1382, when Richard was sixteen, he married Anne of Bohemia, who was born in 1367, and was therefore a year younger than himself. Anne was of a very illustrious family. Her paternal grandfather was the blind King of Bohemia^ whose death and exploits at Crecy have been celebrated by all the historians of that Battle, and from whom the Black Prince took the plumes and motto which have ever since
158 History of the Royal Family of England.
been part of the arms of the Princes of Wales. Her father (Charles IV. of Luxembourg) and her brother (Sigismund of Luxembourg) were successively elected to the Imperial Throne of Germany, and the latter subsequently became the well known ally of Henry V. of England. Anne herself appears to have been a remarkably amiable and good woman, and there seems to me to be no reasonable doubt that the conjugal relations between Richard and Anne were uniformly of the most affectionate description.
She arrived in England immediately after the suppression of the insurrection of Wat Tyler, and when the nobles, enraged at the presumption of the common people and possibly at the somewhat sorry figure they themselves had cut, were engaged in making the most bloody and vindictive reprisals. Anne, probably at the suggestion of King Richard, took the opportunity of her Coronation to ask for and obtain the pardon of a great number of persons who were then under sentence of death, and she thus won for herself the title of " good Queen Anne," and she retained her popularity, notwithstanding that she had no child (which was of course a great disappointment to the nation), until her death in 1394) at the age of twenty-four.
She, like her mother-in-law, is said to have been a patroness of Wickliffe, and Miss Strickland describes her and four other ladies, namely, Anne Boleyn, Katharine Parr, Lady Jane Grey, and Queen Elizabeth, as "the five nursing mothers " of the Reformation. Whether Anne, if she could have foreseen it, would have accepted the association with any pleasure is to my mind extremely doubtful.
After her death King Richard was urged, very reasonably, to marry again, and he certainly shewed some perversity, in spite of many remonstrances, in insisting on selecting as his second wife a little girl of nine years old. In 1396 he married Isabella, eldest daughter of Charles VI. of France, who was born in the year 1387. There is ample evidence that Richard and his young Queen were very fond of one another, but their relations were necessarily those which would naturally
Isabella of France. 159
subsist between a good-natured man of thirty and a young child who was still in the school-room. Therefore the re- proaches which Shakespeare in "Richard II." puts in the mouth of Bolingbroke as addressed to, the King's friends, Bushey and Green —
" You have in manner with your sinful hours Made a divorce between his Queen and him, Broke the possession of a Royal bed, And stain'd the beauty of a fair Queen's cheeks With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs " —
are simply absurd. Shakespeare, however, either by mistake or with a view to dramatic effect, has advanced the Queen's age by many years, and represents her throughout the play as a grown up woman, whereas she was in fact only twelve when her husband died.
After Richard's death Isabella returned to France, and some years later married Charles, second Duke of Orleans. This Prince's father, Louis Duke of Orleans, a younger son of King Charles V. of France, had been assassinated by his cousin the Duke of Burgundy. Duke Charles (after the death of Isabella, who died without issue in 1400, aged 22) was taken prisoner by King Henry V. of England at the Battle of Agincourt, and was kept in England for over 20 years. After his return to France he married the Princess Marie of Cleves, by whom he was the father of Louis Duke of Orleans, who succeeded Charles VIII. and became King Louis XII. of France.
Henry IV., with much indecency, considering that he was the supplanter, and, as can hardly be doubted, the murderer of King Richard, hardly waited until his victim was cold in his grave before he proposed a marriage between his own son, afterwards Henry V., and Richard's widow Isabella.
To the credit of the French Court this proposal was positively rejected, though it was renewed at intervals with more or less persistence for several years, and until Isabella had actually married again. King Richard had no child by either wife.
1 60 History of the Royal Family of England.
His mother, Joanna of Kent, by her second husband, Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent (in right of his wife), had five children, Thomas, Edmund, John, Maud and Joanna, who were the half-brothers and sisters of the King Richard II.
Of Edmund, the second son, there is, so far as I am aware, no record. He probably died early, and at all events played no part in English history.
Maud, the elder daughter, married first the grandson and heir of Hugh Courtenay, second Earl of Devon, and he having died in the life of his grandfather, she married secondly the Count de Saint Pol, a French Prince of con- siderable distinction, but she had no child by either marriage.
Joanna, the second daughter, became the second wife of John de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, who will be afterwards referred to, but she also died childless.
Thomas and John, the eldest and third sons of the Princess Joanna, played a considerable part in English history, and of them and their descendants I must say a few words.
Joanna was thirty-five when she married the Black Prince in 1361, and Richard was not born till five years later, and consequently her eldest son, Thomas Holland, who was born in 1350, was sixteen years older than King Richard. He was regarded with much favour by his step-father the Black Prince, and while still a boy, was engaged in the Spanish wars, and on the accession of his half-brother he received considerable preferment, though he did not assume the title of Earl of Kent till after the death of his mother in 1384. He himself died in 1397, two years before King Richard, having for a considerable portion of that King's reign exercised the high office of Marshal of England. He married Margaret Fitz-Alan, second daughter of Richard Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, a lady who like himself was of Royal descent, her mother having been Elizabeth Plantagenet, one of the daughters of Henry, third Earl of Lancaster (see ante].
Earl Thomas of Kent had eight children. Thomas and
The Hollands. \ 6 1
Edmund, who successively became Earls of Kent, Alianora, Margaret, Joanna, Eleanor, Elizabeth and Bridget. Alianora Holland married Roger Mortimer, fourth Earl of March of his family, and to this marriage I must refer again.
Margaret Holland, the second daughter, married first, John Beaufort, first Earl of Somerset of his family, who was the eldest son of John of Gaunt by Katharine Swynford, and by this marriage Margaret Holland became the direct ancestress of King Henry VII. After the death of Lord Somerset she married Thomas Duke of Clarence, second son of King Henry IV. and brother of King Henry V., by whom she had no child.
Joanna Holland, the third daughter, became the second wife of Edmund Duke of York, son of King Edward III., and uncle to the Kings Richard II. and Henry IV. She had subsequently three husbands, but had no child by any of the four. The date of this lady's marriage to the Duke of York is not certain, but his first wife, Isabella of Castile, did not die till 1394, three years before the death of King Richard. There must have been therefore great disparity in age between the Duke and his second wife.
Shakespeare in the play of " Richard II." makes the Castilian Duchess of York a prominent and interesting character, and represents her as having been alive after the deposition of that King, but in point of fact she was dead, and the " old Duke of York," the King's uncle, had married the King's young niece before the principal events in the play occurred.
Eleanor Holland, the fourth daughter, married Thomas de Montacute, fourth Earl of Salisbury. He was the son of the " Salisbury" who appears in " Richard II." and was the last Earl of his family. By Eleanor Holland, Salisbury became the father of an only child, Alice de Montacute, who married Sir Richard Neville, who in her right became Earl of Salisbury, and who was the great Lord Salisbury of the Wars of the Roses. He was the father by Alice de Montacute of Richard Neville, the " King maker," Earl of Warwick L
1 62 History of the Royal Family of England.
and Salisbury, whose name and fame are familiar to everyone.
Elizabeth Holland, the fifth daughter, married Sir John Neville, eldest son of the first Earl of Westmoreland of the Neville family, and half-brother of the Sir Richard Neville who married Alice de Montacute. From Elizabeth Holland the Earls of Westmoreland down to the time of Queen Elizabeth were descended, as is also at the present day the Marquis of Abergavenny now living. (See Table VII. The Hollands.)
Bridget Holland, the youngest daughter of Earl Thomas, became a nun.
I have referred to the marriages of these ladies of the Holland family, to most of which I must refer later, because they shew the extraordinary complexity of relationship which existed between the leading families of England in the fifteenth century, and even between the leaders of the two great factions during the Wars of the Roses, and I cannot help thinking that to these relationships some of the rapid changes of front on the part of the leaders which are so perplexing to ordinary readers may fairly be attributed.
Thomas Holland, second Earl of Kent, the father of the ladies above mentioned, died in the year 1397, aged forty- seven, and was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas, who became third Earl of his family, and during the short residue of the reign of his uncle Richard II. was greatly distinguished by that King.
One of the most painful tragedies in the reign of Richard was the death of Richard Fitz-Alan, ninth Earl of Arundel. This distinguished person had during the earlier years of Richard rendered great military services to the State, both on sea and land, and had acquired great popularity. He was, however, strongly opposed to the influence which had been obtained over the King by Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Duke of Ireland, and he was one of the nobles who assembled at Haringhay Park, now Hornsey, to obtain and
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1 64 History of the Royal Family of England.
who did obtain that person's banishment. King Richard never seems to have forgiven any of the enemies of de Vere, and in the year 1397 he caused Lord Arundel to be arrested and executed after a mere pretence of trial. The Earl was beheaded at Cheapside in the presence of the King himself, and was led to the scaffold by his son-in-law, Thomas Mowbray, first Duke of Norfolk (who is even said to have acted personally as executioner), and by his nephew (the son of his sister) Thomas Holland, second Earl of Kent. It is said that after rebuking these persons for being present on such an occasion, the Earl of Arundel added, " For the time will come when as many shall wonder at your misfortunes as they now do at mine."
This prophecy, if made, was fulfilled. Almost imme- diately afterwards the Duke of Norfolk was banished, and died it is said of a broken heart in the year 1400 ; and the Earl of Kent, who on the death of his uncle Arundel was created Duke of Surrey, was after the deposition of King Richard taken prisoner by Henry IV. and beheaded at Cirencester. He married Joanna Stafford, daughter of the second Earl of Stafford, and leaving no issue, was succeeded after an interval as third Earl of Kent of his family by his brother Edmund. This person seems to have enjoyed some degree of favour from King Henry IV., but he also died with- out issue in the year 1407 (temp. Henry IV.), whereupon the elder branch of the Holland family became extinct. (See Table VII. The Hollands.)
John Holland, third son of Joanna of Kent by her second husband, has been already referred to as having assassinated the young Lord Stafford in the year 1382, and as having been banished in consequence. His banishment, however, did not last long. He was a person of very violent character, and was a strong personal adherent of John of Gaunt, whose daughter he married, and whom he accompanied on his expedition against Spain. In the year 1388 he was made Earl of Huntingdon, and in 1397 he was created Duke of Exeter.
The Hollands. 165
In the last two years of Richard's life, the Duke of Exeter took the part of the King against his own brother-in-law, Henry of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., and was accord- ingly deprived by Henry on his accession to the Throne of his rank of Duke of Exeter. Shortly afterwards, having engaged in one of the numerous conspiracies against King Henry, he was beheaded at Chelmsford in the year 1400.
John, Duke of Exeter, married Elizabeth Plantagenet, second daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and by her he had three children, Richard, who died unmarried in his father's lifetime ; John, whom I shall mention presently, and Constance. Constance of Exeter became the wife of Thomas Mowbray, eldest son of the first Duke of Norfolk of that name, who, as already mentioned, never assumed his father's title and left no issue, and afterwards she married Sir John de Grey, eldest son of the third Lord Grey of Ruthyn. Her eldest son by this marriage, Edmund de Grey, was created Earl of Kent by Edward IV., and the Earldom of Kent remained in the de Grey family till 1740, when it became extinct. The last Earl before his death was created Duke of Kent. The Barony of Grey de Ruthyn, which passed in the female line, is still extant.
John Holland, the only surviving son of the first Duke of Exeter, did not immediately succeed to his father's honours, and in point of fact, in the year 1416, King Henry V. created his own uncle, Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter. Never- theless John Holland was " restored in blood " shortly after the accession of King Henry V, and enjoyed considerable favour from him and his son Henry VI., who in the year 1442, after the death without issue of Thomas Beaufort, created him Duke of Exeter. John Holland, second Duke of Exeter of the Holland family, died in the year 1446, having been twice married, and leaving a son Henry who succeeded him, and a daughter Anne who married John Neville, brother to the second Earl of Westmoreland, by whom she became the mother of Ralph Neville, third Earl.
1 66 History of the Royal Family of England.
The career of Henry Holland, last Duke of Exeter, is exceedingly melancholy. He was one of the strongest adherents of the Lancastrian party, having taken part in most of the great battles during the Wars of the Roses, and at one time, after the Battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham, he was reduced to such distress that, according to Philip de Commines, he was seen running on foot and with bare legs after the train of the Duke of Burgundy and begging for bread. He was, however, present at the Battle of Barnet, which destroyed the Lancastrian party, and he escaped the massacre which ensued. He died, it is said, by drowning shortly afterwards, and at all events his body was found in the sea between Dover and Calais. The circumstances and dates of his later years are, however, involved in great obscurity. Though so strong a Lancastrian, he married Anne Plantagenet, one of the sisters of Edward IV., a lady to whom I must again refer, and who somehow contrived to divorce him, though on what grounds is not very clear. By her the last Duke of Exeter had a daughter Anne, and there is considerable confusion, or at all events considerable differ- ence of opinion, among genealogists about the history of this lady. According to one account she was betrothed to one of the nephews of Richard Neville, the King maker, Earl of Warwick, and Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV., bribed the Duchess of Exeter (Anne's mother) to break off the marriage with Neville and marry the young lady to Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, who was Elizabeth's son by her first marriage. It is said by Mr. Oman in his life of Warwick that this breach of faith induced by Edward's Queen was one of the causes which led to the final rupture between Warwick and King Edward. It does not, however, appear to be certain that Anne Holland ever actually married Lord Dorset, and at all events she was certainly not the mother of his children. This Lord Dorset, to whom I must refer later, was by a subsequent marriage the ancestor of Lady Jane Grey.
The " Duke of Exeter," who appears in the first part of Shakespeare's " King Henry VI." is Thomas Beaufort, and
The Hollands. 167
the " Duke of Exeter " who appears in the third part of the same play is Henry Holland. With the death of Henry Holland, last Duke of Exeter, the family of Holland became extinct (see Table VII. The Hollands), but a very large number of noble and distinguished families at the present day claim Royal descent in the female line from them.
CHAPTER XI.
EDWARD III.'s DAUGHTERS.— THOMAS, DUKE OF GLOU- CESTER. — THE STAFFORDS. — LIONEL, DUKE OF CLARENCE.— THE MORTIMERS.
I MUST now revert to the daughters of King Edward III. Isabella, the eldest, was born in 1332 and was not married till 1365, when she was thirty- three years old. She was, however, before her actual marriage the subject of several matrimonial treaties. As early as 1340 it was pro- posed that Isabella should marry Louis, the son and heir of the Count of Flanders, but this proposal fell through at the time, owing to the celebrated insurrection of the Flemish Burghers under James van Arteveld (the father of Philip van Arteveld). This insurrection was instigated and aided by King Edward, and in consequence of it the Count of Flanders fled to France, where he was ultimately killed at the Battle of Crecy. After the battle his son Louis, who had succeeded his father as Count, was strongly urged both by King Edward and his own subjects to marry Isabella. For some time he refused on the ground that he regarded King Edward as the murderer of his father, but at length, being in fact placed under restraint by the Flemings until he should consent, he pretended to do so, and all preparations were made for the marriage, which it was intended to solemnize with great magnificence. Almost on the eve of the marriage day, however, Count Louis found means to escape to France, leaving the English Princess in the lurch, an evasion which, it is said, caused the greatest mortification to her and her father.
In 1349 a treaty was commenced for the marriage of
1 68
Isabella Countess de Coucy. 169
Isabella to Charles of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia and German Emperor (Charles IV.), but this also came to nothing, and two years later, with her father's consent, she accepted the proposals of a certain Count d'Albret. This marriage like that with the Count of Flanders was broken off almost at the last moment and when all preparations had been made. The reason is unknown, but the proposed hnsband subse- quently became a monk.
At the Battle of Poictiers in 1356 King John of France was taken prisoner and brought to England, and he remained a prisoner till his death in 1364 ; but in 1360, after the treaty of Bretigny, he was allowed to return to France for a short time to arrange terms for his own ransom, which he failed to do. During his absence a number of distinguished French- men were left in England as hostages for his return, and amongst these was Ingelram de Coucy, Sieur de Coucy, la Fere, and Oisi ; and it is to be presumed that Ingelram and Isabella fell in love, for they were married at Windsor Castle with much splendour in 1364.
De Coucy came of a very illustrious French family which had given a Queen to Scotland (Marie de Coucy, second wife of Alexander II.), and had otherwise formed alliances with several of the reigning families in Europe. He himself was, through his mother, the great grandson of the Emperor Albert I., and was a great personage in France, but neverthe- less he can hardly be considered to have been of sufficient rank to marry the eldest daughter of so powerful a King as Edward III.
At the date of the marriage de Coucy was twenty-seven, and Isabella was thirty-three. They immediately proceeded to France, where Isabella gave birth to two daughters, Mary and Philippa.
De Coucy is described by all writers as having been a very handsome man, and, so to speak, a model knight, brave, chivalrous and honourable, and all the circumstances of his life bear out this account, but nevertheless the marriage does not appear to have been a very happy one.
1 70 History of the Royal Family of England.
It was celebrated in a time of truce, which was expected to become a lasting peace, and when hostilities again broke out between France and England de Coucy's position became intolerable, in that he could not, or would not, fight either against his own lawful King or his wife's father. Conse- quently for some years he seems to have wandered about Europe as a kind of Knight Errant, while his wife and children took refuge in England. Ultimately, in the year 1377, shortly before the death of Isabella's father, a kind of amicable separation was arranged, by which de Coucy and his eldest daughter were to remain in France, and Isabella and the younger daughter were to continue in England.
It should have been mentioned before that shortly after his marriage with Isabella, de Coucy had been created Earl of Bedford, a title which had been previously borne by only one person, namely, Hugh de Bellomont, in the time of King Stephen.
The Countess of Bedford survived her father two years, and died in the year 1379, aged forty-seven. She was buried at Christ Church, Aldgate.
After her death her husband married again, and his second wife subsequently came to England as " Gouvernante " to Isabella, second wife of Richard II., and in that capacity she gave cause for many complaints by reason of the extrava- gance of her habits and the arrogance of her demeanour.
Isabella's eldest daughter, Mary, married in France, and left an only son who died without issue.
Philippa, the younger, was betrothed (it does not appear that she was actually married) to Robert de Vere, ninth Earl of Oxford, in the year 1371, when de Vere was ten years old and Philippa was five. De Vere was a man of ancient race, and, like all the English nobles of his time, was connected with the Royal Family, his mother, Maud de Ufford, hav- ing been the daughter, by her second marriage, of Maud Plantagenet, daughter of Henry, third Earl of Lancaster. (See Table VIII.)
From a very early age de Vere appears to have been
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172 History of the Royal Family of England.
brought up with King Richard, over whose mind he gained great ascendency, and who in 1386, nine years after his accession, and when de Vere was only twenty-five, conferred upon him the extravagantly great title of Duke of Ireland. Like all favourites, de Vere incurred the enmity of the nobles and much unpopularity with the people, but I am inclined to think that he was not so bad as he is usually painted. As is well known, in 1386 he was banished in consequence of an armed demonstration on the part of the King's uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and the other nobles, at Haringhay Park (now Hornsey), and though he afterwards returned to England, he, on that occasion, narrowly escaped falling into the hands of Gloucester, and with difficulty made his way to the Continent, where he died in the year 1392, aged about thirty.
One charge which is commonly made against de Vere and King Richard, and which was the ostensible ground for the hostile assemblage at Haringhay Park before referred to, appears to me to be unfounded, or at all events to admit of much palliation. It is certain that when de Vere grew up he fell in love with one of the German ladies in the suite of Richard's wife, Ann of Bohemia, and that he proposed to divorce, or rather, as it is not certain that he was actually married, to put an end to his engagement with the King's cousin, Philippa de Coucy, and it is said that the King favoured this proposal.
Considering that, at the date of their marriage or engage- ment, whatever it was, de Vere and Philippa were young children, it does not appear to me so very unreasonable that when he arrived at years of discretion he should have desired to get rid of an alliance for which, even if it amounted to a legal marriage, he was not in its origin responsible. Nor, considering how very numerous were the King's relations, does it strike me as so very monstrous that Richard should have been willing to acquiesce in the putting away of his cousin, if he thought, as he probably did, that her marriage with de Vere would not couduce to the happiness of anyone.
Edward III. 's Daug hters. 173
It was said at the time, however, and is always suggested, that King Richard in allowing the proposal to be made tamely submitted, out of love for his friend, to a gross out- rage on his dignity, and that of all the other members of the Royal family. If so, I can only say that a good many other Kings have submitted to even greater indignities without, so far as appears, exciting any great degree of reprobation.
The Countess of Oxford, as Philippa was always styled, died without issue somewhere about the year 1401.
Joanna, second daughter of Edward III., was born in 1333, and in 1347 she was engaged to Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, as his second or third wife (his matrimonial arrangements were so complicated it is not easy to say which), and in the following year, on her way to be married, she died of the plague known as the Black Death. Con- sidering the character of her proposed husband, her death may be regarded in the light of a happy release.
It has been already stated in an earlier chapter of this book that Beatrice, second daughter of Henry III. of England, married John, eldest son of John I., Duke of Brittany. She died in the life of her husband's father, but her husband succeeded to the Duchy and became John II., and on his death in 1305 he was succeeded by his eldest son by Beatrice named Arthur, who, in his turn, was succeeded by his eldest son John (John III.), who died in 1341, fourteen years after the accession of Edward III. of England.
On the death of John III. a contest as to the rights of succession to the Duchy of Brittany arose, the circumstances of which are matters of general history, inasmuch as they are largely mixed up with the English and French wars. John III. died childless, and the rival claimants were his niece, Jeanne de Penthievre, daughter of his next brother, Guy, and the wife of a French Prince (Charles de Blois) on the one side, and the lady's uncle, John de Montfort, who was a younger brother of John III., and of the father of Jeanne de Penthievre on the other. The French strongly espoused the cause of the wife of Charles de Blois, and the English that
1 74 History of the Royal Family of England.
of John de Montfort ; John de Montfort himself was taken prisoner at an early stage of the war, and remained a prisoner till 1345, when he escaped, but he died a few months after- wards. The contest, however, was carried on by his wife (who was a woman of extraordinary courage and ability), on behalf of her infant son John (afterwards John IV. of Brittany), and, as a measure of precaution, she brought the boy to England in 1343, and left him there to be brought up at the Court of Edward III. In 1344 Mary, third daughter of Edward III., was born, and she was almost immediately betrothed to the young heir of Brittany. In 1361 the Prince (whose prospects at the time were not very brilliant) was actually married to the Princess Mary, but within seven months of the date of the marriage she died without issue. Her husband ultimately became John IV. of Brittany and lived for many years. He subsequently married (i) Joanna Holland, half sister of Richard II. (see ante), and (2) Joanna of Navarre, to whom, as she was afterwards the second wife of Henry IV. of England, I must refer later.
Margaret, the fourth daughter of Edward 1 1 1., was born in 1346, and in 1359, when she was thirteen, she was married to John Hastings, second Earl of Pembroke of his family. Lord Pembroke had been brought up as the ward of King Edward III. at his Court, and had there contracted a very strong friendship for the King's son, Edmund, afterwards Duke of York. They were sworn " brothers in arms," and Froissart relates their military exploits with much spirit.
Owing to the youth of the parties, the young Earl and Countess of Pembroke did not live together, and the Earl with Prince Edmund set off immediately after his marriage on his first campaign in the French wars. Before his return his wife died in the year 1361, almost at the same time as her sister Mary, and the two Princesses were buried together at Abingdon.
Lord Pembroke survived till 1375, and his subsequent career was extremely adventurous and romantic. His second wife was Anne Manny, daughter of the celebrated general of
Thomas Duke of Gloucester. 1 75
Edward, III. Sir Walter Manny, by Margaret Plantagenet, Duchess of Norfolk, the daughter of Edward I.'s son Thomas de Brotherton, who has been before mentioned. By this lady Lord Pembroke had an only child, a son who succeeded him, and died as a boy unmarried.
As has been already said, Edward III. had eight sons, Edward the Black Prince, of whom mention has been already made, three who died as infants, and four others, Lionel, John, Edmund and Thomas ; and for the sake of convenience I propose to refer to these four sons, who were in reality the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth sons, as the second, third, fourth and fifth sons of Edward III.
In accordance with the plan already indicated, I shall begin with Thomas and his descendants, before attempting to enter upon the complicated genealogy of the rival claimants to the Throne who, during the Wars of the Roses, claimed from one or other of his elder brothers.
Thomas, the fifth son of Edward III. was born in 1354, and was only twenty-three when his father died, and his nephew Richard became King, and he was forty-three when he was put to death in the year 1397. He was thirteen years younger than Edmund, the youngest of his four elder brothers, and was only twelve years older than his two nephews, Richard II. and Henry IV., who were born in the same year ; and he may therefore be considered as having belonged rather to their generation than to that of his own brothers. Shakespeare makes John of Gaunt describe his brother Thomas as a " plain well meaning soul," but it would be difficult to find more inappropriate words to describe a person, who seems to have been eminently scheming, turbulent and ambitious ; and who it seems to me, if King Richard had not put him to death, would probably have anticipated Henry of Bolingbroke in deposing Richard him- self. In saying this, however, I do not mean that I am prepared to defend the fact, still less the manner, of Gloucester's execution.
At the date of Richard's Coronation Prince Thomas was
1 76 History of the Royal Family of England.
created Earl of Buckingham, and from that date until 1385 he was largely engaged in the foreign wars. He then returned to England and was advanced to the dignity of the Duke of Gloucester. His brother Lionel was dead, and his brothers John and Edmund were mainly occupied with their expedition against Castile, which will be referred to later. Thus for some years Gloucester became, next to the King, the principal person in the Kingdom, his chief opponent being Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, already mentioned. It was in order to get rid of this rival in power and influence, that Gloucester put himself at the head of the Barons, in what can only be considered as an open rebellion against the King. This was for a time successful and resulted in the banishment of de Vere, but the King never forgot the part which his uncle had taken, and seized the first opportunity of avenging himself. Froissart, Dugdale and other writers give slightly different accounts of the Duke's death, into the circumstances of which it would be too long to enter upon here, but there can be little doubt that he was put to death illegally and without any form of trial. It may however be argued that Gloucester had in fact committed high treason, and deserved his fate, and certainly there is not one of Richard's successors of the Plantagenets or Tudors who would under the like circumstances have spared his life. The place of his death was Calais, but his body was afterwards brought to Westminster Abbey and was there buried.
In speaking of this eminent person, who played a great part in the history of his time, as of other Princes, who were not only Princes but statesmen or warriors or both, I must again repeat what I said at the beginning of this work, that I do not profess to speak in detail of those events of their lives, which are to be found in all general histories, and therefore I do not apologise for what I am aware is a very inadequate notice of the life of a man, who was a person of great weight and importance in his time-
The Duke of Gloucester married Eleanor de Bohun, daughter and co -heiress of Humphrey, last Earl of Hereford
The Staff or ds. 177
of his family, and great granddaughter of Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Edward I. (see ante). This lady is the Duchess of Gloucester in " Richard II." She survived her husband and died a year or two afterwards. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester had four children, Humphrey (a name which had been borne by nearly all the de Bohuns, Earls of Hereford), Anne, Joanna, and Isabella. Humphrey, after the death of his father, was imprisoned in Ireland until after the accession of Henry IV., when he returned to England, but he died at Chester immediately after his landing. He was unmarried, and was never allowed to assume the title of Duke of Gloucester.
Joanna died young and unmarried, and Isabella became a nun. Anne, who became her father's heiress, married Thomas de Stafford, third Earl of Stafford, who came of a very illustrious family ; but this nobleman died without issue, and was succeeded as Earl, one after the other, by his two brothers William and Edmund, the latter of whom married his widow, Anne Plantagenet. With regard to this lady's second marriage, however, it is to be remarked that her father was married in 1374, when he was twenty. She was married to her first husband in 1392, and it is said she was very young at the date of the marriage. Her husband died the same year, and before, as it is said, the marriage was completed ; and she was afterwards allowed by the Ecclesiastical authorities to marry his younger brother as her second husband, expressly on the ground that the first marriage had not been completed.
By her second husband, Anne Countess of Stafford had three children Humphrey, Philippa and Anne. Philippa died young, and Anne married first, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, to whom I shall refer presently, and secondly, John Holland, who was created Duke of Exeter in the reign of Henry V. (see ante\ by whom she became the mother of the last Duke of Exeter, whose misfortunes and death, after the Battle of Barnet, have been already mentioned. Humphrey the son was created Duke of Buckingham, and was the first M
1 78 History of the Royal Family of England.
of a long series of Dukes of Buckingham of different families, nearly all of whom were distinguished men. He married Anne, Neville, a daughter of Ralph, first Earl of West- moreland.
The first Duke of Buckingham and his eldest son, the Earl of Stafford, were strong partisans of the Lancastrian cause and were both killed in battle, the son at the Battle of St. Albans in 1455, and the father at the Battle of Northampton in 1460.
The Earl of Stafford married Margaret Beaufort, one of the daughters of the second Duke of Somerset, of whom some account will be given later. He had a son, Henry Stafford, who became second Duke of Buckingham, and who was beheaded in the reign of Richard III. in the year 1483, and under circumstances sufficiently well known. The second Duke of Buckingham married Katharine Woodville, whose sister Elizabeth was the wife of King Edward IV., and he left a son, Edward Stafford, who was the third Duke of Bucking- ham, and who in 1521, in the reign of Henry VIII., was also beheaded, also under well known circumstances. The son of this Duke (by a lady of the great house of Percy) was not allowed to inherit his father's dignities, but in the reign of Edward VI. he was created Baron Stafford, and he married Ursula Pole, sister of Cardinal Pole, and this marriage also will have to be spoken of in a later chapter.
It will be seen that the three Staffords who were Dukes of Buckingham all came to tragical ends, and the fate of each was more or less connected with the Royal descent which they claimed through Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester ; and this must be my apology for speaking of them at so much length.
These three Dukes all appear as prominent characters in Shakespeare's plays, the first in the second part of " Henry VI.," the second in " Richard III.," and the third in " Henry VIII.," where, however, Shakespeare makes him speak of him- self as " poor Edward Bohun." His name was Stafford, and he had no further connection with the name of Bohun than
Lionel Duke of Clarence. 1 79
that his remote ancestress (the wife of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester) was one of the co-heiresses of that family. It may be added that the Duke of Buckingham, beheaded by Henry VIII., was not only descended from Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, but was also more nearly related to the King, as Elizabeth Woodville, wife of King Edward IV., and Katharine Woodville, wife of the second Duke, were sisters. Consequently Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. consort of Henry VII., and mother of Henry VIII., was first cousin to the third Duke.
Many younger sons of the house of Stafford were killed in the wars of the Roses, and most of the daughters made great marriages ; and from the daughters a large number of the English nobility of the present day are descended. (See Table IX. The Staffords.)
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III., was born in 1338, and in 1362, when he was twenty-four, he was created Duke of Clarence, a title which does not appear before in English History and which was derived from the "Honour" of Clare. He died in the year 1368, aged thirty, and nine years before his father. He is said to have been of gigantic size, having attained to the height of seven feet, but I collect that, notwithstanding his size, or possibly on account of it, he was a less able man than any of his brothers, and his only interest in history is derived from the extraordinary influence which indirectly, and as far as appears not from any desire of their own, his descendants exercised over the course of events in the fifteenth century. It is hardly necessary to remind my readers that Edward the Black Prince having left an only child, Richard II., and Richard II. having died child- less, the heirs of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III., became by law, heirs to the Throne — a fact which, though ignored as far as possible during the reigns of Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI., was never entirely forgotten by any one.
In the year 1361, when he was twenty-three, Lionel was married to Elizabeth de Burgh, who was one of the greatest
1 80 History of the Royal Family of England.
heiresses in England, and who brought him his second title of Earl of Ulster. She was the daughter and sole heiress of William de Burgh, third and last Earl of Ulster of his family, and she was doubly connected with the Royal family in that her mother was Maud Plantagenet, a daughter of Henry, third Earl of Lancaster, and her father's mother was Elizabeth de Clare, whose mother was Joanna, second daughter of Edward I. (see ante.} In the year 1366 the Duchess of Clarence, who was probably very young at the date of the marriage, died in giving birth to an only child, Philippa Plantagenet, who was the innocent cause of so many mis- fortunes to her country. Two years later Lionel married a second time Violante, daughter of Duke Galeazzo of Milan. By this lady he had no child, and in fact he died a few months after the marriage, his death having been, it is said, the result of the festivities, or rather orgies, which were held to cele- brate his marriage.
Philippa Plantagenet was married in the year 1370, she being then only four years old, to Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March of his family, who at that date was aged eighteen, and it may be well here to say a few words of his ancestors.
The Mortimers had come over to England with the Conqueror, and were remotely connected in blood with him, inasmuch as they were descended from a relative of his great grandmother Gunnora, wife of Richard I., Duke of Normandy. Ralph Mortimer, who came over with the Conqueror, was entrusted with the defence of the " Marches " of Wales, that is the boundaries between Wales and England, and in conse- quence the family settled in Wales. The title of Earl of March which they ultimately held, and which is derived from no county or city, took its origin from the military charge so conferred upon their ancestor, and which was more or less continued to his descendants. The first Earl of March was the Roger Mortimer whose history is so unhappily connected with that of Isabella, wife of Edward II. He had been a somewhat distinguished soldier in the reign of Edward I., but having taken up arms against Edward II., he was in the year
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1 8 2 History of the Royal Family of England.
1322 taken prisoner and confined in the Tower, where the Queen was then living, and it was there that the acquaintance between them commenced which led to so much crime and bloodshed. His subsequent career is well known, and I need not remind my readers that in 1330 the young King Edward III., having emancipated himself from the Queen's rule caused Mortimer to be impeached and put to death under circum- stances of much ignominy and some cruelty. Mortimer was made Earl of March in 1328, and he had previously married a French lady, by whom he had a large family of legitimate children. It may be mentioned as a somewhat odd circum- stance that of his four brothers, three became priests, and of his three sisters, two were nuns.
Mortimer's children, though they were not allowed immediately to succeed to his rank, because all his honours were forfeited, nevertheless seem to have been treated with much kindness by Edward III., and several of them made brilliant marriages. Ultimately, in the year 1353, his grand- son Roger Mortimer (the eldest son of his eldest son), was " restored in blood," and became second Earl of March. This Roger Mortimer married a lady of the Montacute family, and was the father of the Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March, who married Philippa Plantagenet.
The date of Philippa's death is not known, but her husband, who is believed to have survived her, died in the year 1381, four years after the accession of Richard II., leaving by his wife a family of five children, of whom the eldest son, Roger (who became fourth Earl of March), was then only seven years old. These children were Roger, Edmund, John, Elizabeth, and Philippa.
Elizabeth Mortimer, the eldest daughter, married the famous Henry Percy (Hotspur), eldest son of the then Earl of Northumberland, and from her the great house of Percy, from which the present Duke of Northumberland derives, is descended. It was in consequence of this alliance that the Percy family were induced to take part in the rebellion against Henry IV., which had no doubt for its object the elevation to
The Mortimers. 183
the Throne of one of the Mortimers, and ended so tragically for the insurgents. This insurrection is the subject of Shakespeare's two plays of " Henry IV." It may be added that this lady, Elizabeth Mortimer, married again after Hotspur's death, notwithstanding the passionate lamentations which Shakespeare puts into her mouth ; and that her second husband was the first Lord Camoys, and I believe from her second marriage the present Lord Camoys is descended.
Philippa Mortimer, Elizabeth's younger sister, is said to have been three times married.
Her first husband was John Hastings, last Earl of Pembroke of his family, who died as a boy, but there seems to be considerable uncertainty as to her subsequent career, and I cannot find that she had any child.
Edmund Mortimer, the second son of Philippa Plantage- net, married a daughter of Owen Glendower, the celebrated Welsh Chieftain whose rebellion against Henry IV., before referred to, was so important an event in that King's reign, and Edmund Mortimer himself took part in that rebellion. What became of him is not certain, nor is it certain whether he left any child, but in Burke's " Extinct Peerage " it is stated " that his descendants are said to have settled in Scotland." " Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March," is a character in Shake- speare's " Henry IV." part I., but it is clear Shakespeare confused the Edmund Mortimer who married Owen Glen- dower's daughter (who is also introduced into the play) with his elder brother Roger, who was declared heir to the Throne in the reign of Richard II. (see /<?.?/), and who had been Earl of March. This Roger was dead at the time of the insurrection (he died in the life of Richard II.), and had been succeeded in his title by his young son Edmund, who at the time in question was a little boy, and a captive in the hands of King Henry IV. It is, however, possible that, as the younger Edmund Mortimer was not available, there was some idea of establishing his uncle Edmund as King, but the precise objects of Glendower's rebellion are not very clear.
The third son of Philippa Plantagenet is the Sir John
184 History of the Royal Family of England.
Mortimer who appears in the third part of " Henry VI.," and is described as " uncle to the Duke of York." He was con- demned to death in the time of Henry VI., but was not executed. The Sir Hugh Mortimer, " brother to Sir John," mentioned in the same play cannot be identified. Sir John was the uncle, or rather great uncle, to the Duke of York, in that his niece Anne Mortimer, daughter of his elder brother Roger, was the Duke's mother.
It may relieve the minds of my readers if I say at once that except as above suggested, no claim to the Throne was ever made on behalf of any one of the two younger sons or the two daughters of Philippa, or on behalf of any person claiming through them ; and that they were not in any way remarkable people, and that, with the exception of Lady Percy, their lives are involved in very great obscurity.
Roger Mortimer, fourth Earl of March, and Philippa's eldest son was born in 1374, three years before the accession of Richard II., and in 1387 he, being described as "a hopeful youth and every way accomplished," was declared in Parlia- ment, by reason of his descent from Lionel Duke of Clarence, to be heir presumptive to the Throne, failing King Richard's issue. Shortly afterwards he was made Lieutenant of Ireland, but as he was only about twelve years old at this time, I presume that his authority was nominal. He went to Ireland and remained there till his death in 1398, shortly before the deposition of King Richard. He was killed in a battle against the Irish insurgents.
Earl Roger married Alianora Holland, eldest daughter of Thomas Holland, second Earl of Kent of his family, and niece^of the half blood of King Richard (see Table VII.), and by her he had four children, Edmund, Roger, Anne, and Eleanora.
Roger died young without issue, and Alianora, though she was married to Sir Edward Courtenay, eldest son of the Earl of Devon, also died without issue.
Edmund Mortimer, the eldest son, who became fifth and last Earl of March of his family, was born in 1392, and was
Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. 185
therefore only seven years old when King Richard died and Henry IV. seized the Throne, so that he may fairly be excused for not having then asserted his own claims. At that time he was placed by King Henry IV. under the guardianship of his own son, Henry Prince of Wales, after- wards Henry V., who, whatever may have been his merits or demerits, had the faculty of attaching those who were about him to himself; and there is reason to believe that, notwith- standing the difficulties of their relative positions, Henry V. and Edmund Mortimer felt and maintained a strong friend- ship for one another throughout their joint lives.
The Earl of March took a distinguished part in Henry V.'s French campaigns ; and after the King's death, such confidence was reposed in him that he was appointed by King Henry VI.'s guardians Lieutenant of Ireland. He died two years later in the year 1425 without issue, having married a lady of the house of Stafford. On the death of Earl Edmund the elder line of the Mortimer family became extinct, but their rights to the Throne unhappily became vested in Edmund's only surviving sister, Anne Mortimer, whose name and identity I will ask my readers to bear in mind. She was married to Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cambridge, and was the grandmother of Edward IV. ; but with this marriage I shall deal in speaking of the descendants of Edmund Duke of York, fourth son of Edward III. (See Table X.)
It has been the custom of historians to compare the Princes, for so, having regard to their relations to the Throne, they may fairly be called, of the house of Mortimer, with Edgar the Atheling, and to speak of them as feeble and contemptible persons, who sacrificed their just rights to a love of ease and possibly to cowardice.
Nothing in my opinion can be more unjust. There were only two male Mortimers, Roger and Edmund, the fourth and fifth Earls of March in the line of succession, failing King Richard's heirs. Roger died in Richard's life, while Richard was a young man, who might, and probably would, have
i'86 History of the Royal Family of England.
children. His own claims to the succession, which, having regard to probable events, were sufficiently remote, had been fully acknowledged, and any attempt on his part to press them further, or to set them up against King Richard, would have been an act of open rebellion against a King whose title was admittedly good, and who, as far as I can see, had done nothing to forfeit his right to reign.
Edmund was a little boy when Henry IV. became King, and by the time he had arrived at man's estate, Henry V. was well established on the Throne, and was the most powerful Prince in Europe, and it would, I think, have been the act of a madman to have sought to depose him. Edmund might, indeed, when King Henry died, and left an infant of less than a year old to succeed him, have taken advantage of the new King's infancy and weakness to establish his own claim, but to have done so would in my opinion have been exceedingly ungrateful and extremely foolish.
There is no doubt that if Edmund was deprived of the Throne, he was at the same time treated with great personal consideration and kindness by the Kings Henry IV. and Henry V. ; in contrast to which, he may well have remem- bered; the fate of other childish and more assured heirs, left in the hands of powerful relatives who had usurped their rights.
Moreover, though Edmund Mortimer was, no doubt, by the laws and customs of descent which had gradually obtained in England, lawful heir to the Thone, his case was by no means that of a Prince born and brought up in the purple, and who had been educated to look forward to Royal authority. His father's position was simply that of a noble — one, and by no means the most powerful or influential, of a large body of nobles, all more or less related to the reigning Sovereign, and his father had probably up to the moment of his death no real expectation of ever becoming King, having indeed nothing to reckon upon beyond, in legal phraseology, a somewhat remote contingent reversionary interest.
Edmund himself by a sort of accident — by the marriage
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1 88 History of the Royal Family of England.
of his grandfather to a lady who at the date of the marriage was probably not regarded as a person of any political importance — and by a series of unforeseen and improbable events, had come to be de jure heir to the Throne in priority to a number of Princes of far greater rank and influence than his own, and all of whom would have opposed his claims to the utmost extent of their great power.
Many years later the Duke of York, Edmund's nephew through his sister — a man who, on his own father's side, was a far nearer actual connection to the Kings than Edmund — who bore the Royal name of Plantagenet, and who was himself, by reason of his great wealth and position, the greatest subject in the realm, did lay claim to the Throne ; and this same Duke after deluging England with blood — almost exterminating half the noble families in the Kingdom — and sacrificing his own life and the lives of a multitude of his kindred, and aided by the known mental weakness of King Henry VI., did get the Throne — but only for his son.
Under these circumstances is there any man of sense who would say that Edmund Mortimer, knowing, as he must have done, all the difficulties in his way, did not act wisely and well in accepting the "goods the gods provided," and acquiescing in a state of things which had existed for at any rate twenty years, or that he would not have acted wickedly if he had tried to anticipate the course taken by his nephew !
Personally I consider him almost the only sensible historical personage of his time.
CHAPTER XII.
EDMUND DUKE OF YORK. — His SONS, EDWARD DUKE OF YORK AND RICHARD EARL OF CAMBRIDGE.— JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER. — JOHN OF GAUNT'S DAUGHTERS. — THE NEVILLES. — THE BEAUFORTS.
EDMUND, who is called Edmund of Langley, the fourth son of Edward III., was born in 1341, and was therefore thirty-six years old when his father died. He was fifty -eight at the death of his nephew King Richard II., and sixty-one when he himself died in the year 1402. He is described as having been of a somewhat easy and indolent temper, and he certainly enjoyed more of his nephew's favour than either of his more energetic brothers, John of Gaunt and the Duke of Gloucester. Nevertheless, when, before his dethronement, Richard started on his ill-fated expedition to Ireland, leaving Edmund Regent of England, the latter practically betrayed him.
Shakespeare in "Richard II." makes him meet Boling- broke, and after some parade of indignation, say :
" It may be, I will go with you ; but yet I'll pause For I am loath to break our country's laws, Nor friends, nor foes to me, welcome you are ; Things past regret, are now, with me, past care."
This speech states, accurately enough, the attitude which Edmund took up ; but it is needless to point out that a man who holds the office of Regent for a King, and then tells an armed invader of that King's territories, that he is neither his,
the invader's, " friend nor foe," can hardly be said to have
189
1 90 History of the Royal Family of England.
discharged his office loyally, and in fact when Bolingbroke got the upper hand the Duke of York espoused his cause with some warmth, and enjoyed his confidence during the short residue of his own life.
In his youth and during his father's life Edmund was a distinguished soldier, and in 1362, when he was twenty-one, he was created Earl of Cambridge, the title by which he is known till 1385, eight years after the accession of Richard II., when he was advanced to the dignity of Duke of York.
In the reign of Stephen, William de Albemarle is said to have been Earl of York, and in the reign of Richard I. that King's nephew, Otho, afterwards the Emperor Otho IV., who was the second son of Richard's sister Matilda Duchess of Saxony, claimed, though without success, the Earldoms of Albemarle and York, under some supposed grant from the English King. With these exceptions, Edmund of Langley is the first person in English history who bore the title of York.
The Duke of York married in 1372, five years before the death of his father, Isabella, second daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of Castile, whose elder sister Constance was married to Edmund's elder brother, John of Gaunt ; and as is well known, John of Gaunt and his brother Edmund claimed the Castilian Throne in right of their respective wives, and thereby England became involved in a long and disastrous Spanish war.
The attitude of Edmund in respect of this war is not very clear, for though it is usually stated by historians, and in particular by Dr. Lingard, that both the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl of Cambridge (which was then Edmund's title) made pretensions to the Castilian Throne, practically the claim seems to have been made on behalf of Lancaster's wife, and Lancaster alone reaped such advantages as accrued td the English arms from the war.
The Duchess Isabel died in 1394 five years before King Richard, and, as has been already stated, Edmund married,
Edmund Duke of York. 191
secondly, Joanna Holland, who was King Richard's niece. Therefore the famous scene in "Richard II." in which the Duchess of York pleads to Henry IV. for the life of her son Albemarle is unhistorical, for Albemarle's mother had, at that time, been dead some years.
The Duke of York had three children, Edward, Richard and Constance, all by his first wife.
Constance married Thomas Despencer, last Earl of Gloucester of his family, and the last person who bore the title Earl of Gloucester. (See ante.) Despencer had three children by Constance Plantagenet, a son who survived him but died without issue, and without having been allowed to assume his father's title, a daughter who became a nun, and another daughter, Isabel, from whom many distinguished families are descended. The history of this lady's marriages and descendants, however, is extremely complicated and is of no particular interest.
Edward, eldest son of the first Duke of York by Isabel of Castile, was probably born about the year 1373, and was about six years younger than his cousins Richard II. and Henry IV. He was therefore about four years old when Richard became King, and about twenty-six when that King died, and forty-two when he himself was killed at the Battle of Agincourt. King Richard seems to have felt for him some affection, which he appears to have returned, and he was, at all events, a strong supporter of that King. After Richard's death, having engaged in a conspiracy against Henry IV., Edward was banished, but in 1406 he was restored to his rank. He commanded the right wing at the Battle of Agincourt, and was one of the few people of note killed on the English side in that battle.
Edward Plantagenet was created Earl of Rutland in 1390, and Duke of Albemarle in 1397, at the same time that his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, was made Duke of Hereford, and in 1406 he was allowed to assume his father's title of Duke of York. He was contracted in marriage while he was still a child to a Portuguese Princess, but
1 92 History of the Royal Family of England.
the treaty was broken by the Portuguese King. He subse- quently married Philippa de Mohun, a daughter of the second Lord Mohun, a lady who had been twice previously married and who survived him. He had no child.
Edmund of Langley's second son, Richard, was probably born about 1374, and is a somewhat mysterious person. In 1414, when he was about forty, he was created by King Henry V. Earl of Cambridge, the title which had been previously borne by his father, and had been forfeited by his elder brother, but in the following year he was charged with being engaged in a conspiracy against the King and summarily beheaded. He was married twice, his first wife being Anne Mortimer above mentioned, whose grandmother Philippa Plantagenet was the only child and heiress of Edward Ill's, second son Lionel, Duke of Clarence ; and it may be mentioned that Philippa, though grandmother to Cambridge's wife, was first cousin to Cambridge himself. (See Table X.)
The date of the marriage between Cambridge and Anne Mortimer is not given, but their only son was born in 1412. The Earl of Cambridge had no child by his second marriage. The object of the conspiracy which caused Cambridge's death is involved in some mystery, for he cannot have expected to procure the Throne for himself, either in right of his wife or in his own right, during the lives of his wife's brother Edmund Mortimer, and his own elder brother Edward, both of whom were living ; and it is tolerably certain that neither of those persons was either a party to or in any way approved of his designs. It has indeed been said that Edmund Mortimer was informed of his plans, and betrayed them to the King, but for this suggestion there is no evidence. I may add here that the long scene in the second act of the first part of " Henry VI." in which Edmund Mortimer dies, and in which Cambridge's son Richard, Duke of York, plays a prominent part, has no foundation in history. Mortimer was born, as has been shewn, in 1392, and died in 1424, and therefore was not more than thirty-two when he died.
Richard Earl of Cambridge. 1 93
whereas he is represented as in the extremity of old age. He says :
" Even like a man new ha'led from the wreck So fare my limbs from long imprisonment."
And again, speaking of his claims to the throne, he says :
" That cause, fair nephew, that imprison'd And hath detain'd me, all my flow'ring youth Within a loathsome dungeon."
In point of fact, as I have already said, his youth and boy- hood were spent under the care of Henry V., then Prince of Wales, to whom perhaps he was nominally a captive, but for whom he formed and maintained a strong affection. He was one of the leaders in Henry's French wars, and after Henry's death, was appointed lieutenant of Ireland ; nor does it appear that he was, at any time, either imprisoned or sus- pected by the Government of Henry VI. In fact he died two years after the accession of that King ; and when his nephew Richard Plantagenet, afterwards Duke of York, who in the play appears as a full grown man, could not have been more than twelve.
The Earl of Cambridge had two children only, Richard and Isabel, both by his first wife, Anne Mortimer. Isabel married Henry Bourchier, a person who, although he received much favour from King Henry VI., espoused the cause of the Yorkist party, and was created Earl of Essex by Edward IV. The Earl and Countess of Essex had a large family, of whom all that it is necessary to say here, is that their only son died in his father's lifetime, leaving an only child Henry, who succeeded his grandfather and died without male issue in the reign of Henry VIII. Thereupon the Earldom of Essex passed into the Devereux family by the marriage of Cicely Bourchier, granddaughter of the first Earl, to Sir William Devereux ; and it was through this lady that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's well- known favourite, claimed Royal descent and remote kinship to the Queen. N
,194 History of the Royal Family of England.
Richard Plantagenet, only son of the Earl and Countess of Cambridge, ultimately became, as heir to his uncle Edward, third Duke of York, and he was the father of King Edward IV. He was, as has been shewn, through his father, grand- son of Edmund Duke of York, fourth son of Edward III., and through his mother, Anne Mortimer, and her grand- mother Philippa Plantagenet, heir and representative of Lionel Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III.
Through his mother he claimed the Throne from Henry VI., who derived from John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III.; and it was this claim that gave rise to the disastrous Wars of the Roses.
To this very remarkable man I must return again, when I have spoken of John of Gaunt and his descendants.
John of Gaunt, so called from Ghent, where he was born, and which, probably, then as now, was pronounced by the British tongue " Gaunt," was born in 1 340, and was therefore thirty-seven when his father Edward III. died, and fifty-nine when he himself died, a few months before the deposition of his nephew Richard II. and the accession to the Throne of his own son Henry IV. in the year 1399. In "Richard II." he is addressed by the king as " Old John of Gaunt, time honoured Lancaster," but I doubt if in the present day any gentleman of fifty-nine would much relish being saluted as '" time honoured " !
He was, as has been already said, the third son of his father, and was a great political personage during the latter part of Edward III.'s reign and the whole of Richard II.'s. In his father's declining years, he was practically adminis- trator of the Kingdom, and so wielded his power as to become peculiarly hated by the people. So much was this the case that in the Parliament known as the " good Parlia- ment," held in 1376, Lancaster's chief adherents were im- peached by the Commons and imprisoned, and he himself would probably have met the same fate if the death of his elder brother, the Black Prince (who had espoused the popular side), had not, for a time, discouraged his opponents. After
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. 195
the accession of Richard, that King regarded his eldest living uncle with profound, and as far as can be judged well- founded, suspicion ; and the conduct of the latter, having been again called in question by the Commons, John deemed it prudent to retire to Scotland, and afterwards he shut himself up in, virtually, a state of siege in Pontefract Castle. An apparent reconciliation was brought about by the King's mother, whose son, John Holland, by her earlier marriage, and who was afterwards Duke of Exeter, was the Duke of Lancaster's son-in-law and strong partizan. Shortly after this an event happened which, for a time, removed Lancaster from England. John of Gaunt had married, as his second wife, Constance, the eldest daughter of Peter the Cruel of Castile, who had no son. It will be remembered that Peter the Cruel had been dethroned and put to death by his bastard brother Henry of Trastamare, who became King of Castile as Henry II. Henry II. died in 1379, and was suc- ceeded by his son John I.
A somewhat similar state of things subsequently arose in Portugal, where Ferdinand the Handsome was dethroned (he died shortly afterwards) by his bastard brother, who became John I. of Portugal; and in 1386, this King John I. of Portugal proposed an alliance with John of Gaunt against John I. of Castile, with the view of deposing the latter, and establishing Lancaster as King of Castile in right of his wife Constance. This alliance was accepted, and in the same year, 1386, John of Gaunt, accompanied by his wife Constance and two of his daughters, Philippa and Katharine, set out for Spain, with the strong encouragement of King Richard, who, there is every reason to suppose, devoutly hoped he would never return. A long and somewhat disastrous campaign ensued, which was ultimately settled on the terms that the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster, who received large pecuniary compensation, should renounce their claims to the Castilian Throne, and that Philippa, the Duke's daughter by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, should marry John I. of Portugal, and Katharine, his only child by Constance, should marry
1 96 History of the Royal Family of England.
Henry, eldest son of John I. of Castile. These marriages were accomplished, and John of Gaunt returned to England, where, however, he did not regain his former power or in- fluence. He died as has been said in 1399. (See for an exhaustive account of his life "John of Gaunt," by S. Armistead Smith.)
John of Gaunt was, for a time at all events, a vigorous supporter of the well known Wickliffe, and if, as is commonly said, Wickliffe was the " precursor " of the English Reformers of the sixteenth century, it is a painful coincidence that his patron, like theirs, was a man of remarkably immoral life, for John's matrimonial arrangements were a cause of great scandal in his time.
He was married three times. In 1359, when he was nine- teen, he married Blanche Plantagenet, second daughter, and on the death of her sister sole heiress of the great Henry Plantagenet, fourth Earl and first Duke of Lancaster, who was the grandson of Edmund Crouchbank, second son of Henry III. and first Earl of Lancaster. (See Table IV.) It was as this lady's husband, or rather as the result of this marriage, that John was created in 1362 Duke of Lancaster. He had previously been created in 1351 Earl of Richmond, and was Earl of Lancaster in right of his wife; and in 1390 he was created Duke of Aquitaine. The Duchess Blanche died in 1369, and in 1372, when he was thirty-two, John married Constance of Castile. After the deposition of Peter the Cruel, his two daughters, Constance and Isabel, were left under the charge of the Black Prince, and they were ultimately sent to England, where they were married, the one to the Duke of Lancaster, and the other, as has been related, to his brother the Duke of York. The Duchess Constance died in 1394, and in 1396, twojyears before his death, the Duke saw proper to marry as*his third wife a widow named Katharine Swynford, whose maiden name was Roet. This woman had been his mistress, as is specially stated, before, during and after his marriage with Constance, and had brought him four natural children, who, born before their parent's marriage, had
John of Gaunfs Children. 197
assumed the name of Beaufort, a name taken from the Castle of Beaufort in France, which formed part of the dowry of Blanche of Navarre, wife of Edmund Crouchbank, and which still formed part of the Lancaster estates. John of Gaunt's marriage with Swynford was greatly resented by the Royal family, and by the world at large, and a small commotion was raised among the ladies of Royal birth by the claims of the new Duchess to be present, and as wife of the King's eldest .uncle to take precedence, at the reception of King Richard's second wife, Isabella of France. The Duchess Katharine survived her husband, and died in 1402.
King Richard, to gratify his uncle, caused an Act of Parlia- ment to be passed legitimatising this Beaufort progeny. It was afterwards pretended that this Act, which was passed in 1397, contained a reservation precluding them from succeed- ing to the Throne ; but it has been now well established that this reservation was interpolated into the Copy of the Act on the Patent Rolls at a later date, and that in the original Act there is no such reservation, and I shall therefore treat the Beauforts as legitimate. For, though it is not within the competence of Parliament to make a bastard lawfully begotten, it cannot at the present day be denied that it is within the competence of Parliament by an Act duly passed to place a bastard in ^& position of one lawfully begotten.
John of Gaunt had altogether, including the Beauforts, eight children.
By his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, three — (i) Philippa, afterwards Queen of Portugal ; (2) Henry, afterwards Henry IV. of England, and (3) Elizabeth, afterwards Duchess of Exeter. By his second wife, Constance of Castile, one — Katharine, afterwards Queen of Castile ; and by Katharine Swynford, four, who were all born before marriage — (i) John Beaufort, afterwards Earl of Somerset; (2) Henry Beaufort, afterwards Cardinal Bishop of Winchester ; (3) Thomas Beaufort, afterwards Duke of Exeter, and (4) Joanna Beaufort, afterwards Countess of Westmoreland.
I will speak first of the four daughters of John of Gaunt,
1 98 History of the Royal Family of England.
then of the two younger Beauforts, Henry and Thomas, neither of whom left issue, then of John Earl of Somerset and his descendants, and lastly of Henry IV. and his descendants.
During the reign of Richard II. there was a scarcity of marriageable English Princesses. He had no daughter and no sister on his father's side. His half-sisters through his mother, and his cousin Philippa, daughter of his eldest uncle, Lionel Duke of Clarence, were married before he became King (see as to these ladies preceding chapters), and conse- quently his cousin Philippa, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt, stood first in point of rank amongst the unmarried women of England. It was proposed by her father that she should marry the King, but both Richard and the nobility in general were opposed to this suggestion, nominally on the ground of the near relationship between the parties, but probably in reality from a dread of the overwhelming ambition of the Duke of Lancaster. Nevertheless, it is probable that such a marriage might have removed many difficulties.
Ultimately, and after various intermediate proposals for her marriage, Philippa did, as has been said before, marry John I., King of Portugal She was older than her brother Henry IV., and must have been over twenty at the date of her marriage. Her lot was fortunate, for John I. was probably the greatest of the Portuguese kings, and in his reign there was a great literary, scientific and artistic movement, which there is reason to believe Queen Philippa did her best to foster, and which, coupled with the King's military achieve- ments, placed Portugal for a time in a position of great importance among European nations.
John I. and Philippa had a large family, nearly all of whom distinguished themselves, and one of their younger sons was the celebrated " Henry the Navigator," who may be counted as the first of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers, to whom the world owes so much. For a further account of Queen Philippa and her children I must refer my readers to a very interesting book by Mr. Morse Stephens, " Portugal," one of the series of " Stories of the Nations."
John of Gaunfs Daughters. 199
Katharine, third daughter of John of Gaunt, was, as I have already said, married at the same time as her sister Philippa to Henry III., King of Castile, by whom she became the grandmother of the great Queen Isabella of Castile, whose marriage with King Ferdinand of Aragon consolidated Spain into one great, and for a time, immensely powerful Kingdom.
From these two Lancastrian Princesses, Philippa and Katharine, were descended two Queens Consort of England, both of whom, though in a different degree, were very unhappy in their lives.
Katharine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, first wife of Henry VIII., was the great grand- daughter of Katharine of Lancaster, and Katharine of Portugal, wife of Charles II. was descended from Queen Philippa of Portugal. I may add that the present King of Spain and the ex-King Manuel of Portugal, as well as many other Royal and noble families, claim descent from one or other or both of these two daughters of John of Gaunt.
Elizabeth, second daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, was married, as I have already mentioned, to that very trouble- some person John Holland, Duke of Exeter, who was the half-brother of King Richard II. The date of the marriage is uncertain, but it was probably in 1387. The Duke of Exeter was a strong supporter of his father-in-law, and on one occasion did him great service. In 1387 a Carmelite Friar having placed in the hands of Richard II. papers supposed to implicate the Duke in a conspiracy against his nephew, the Friar was committed to the custody of Sir John Holland (as he then was), who thought the best means of exculpating his friend was to kill the Friar, which he did by strangling him with his own hands. John Holland afterwards murdered Lord Stafford and was banished, but he returned to England and ultimately became a strong partizan of King Richard, and notwithstanding his near connnection with Henry IV. was beheaded by that king in 1400.
Of the descendants of the first Duke of Exeter by Elizabeth Plantagenet, two of whom subsequently became
200 History of the Royal Family of England.
Dukes of Exeter, I have already given some account in a previous chapter. (See Table VII.) The date of the death of the Duchess Elizabeth is not known.
Joanna Beaufort, half-sister of Henry IV., was twice married, first to Sir Robert Ferrers, who was created first Baron Ferrers of Wenne, by whom she had an only son Robert, who succeeded his father and left two daughters and co-heiresses, from whom various families of the present time claim descent, but Joanna's descendants by her first marriage did not take any prominent part in English History.
Joanna married secondly, about the year 1397, Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland.
For an account of this very distinguished man and his family I will refer my readers to Mr. Oman's " Life of Warwick the Kingmaker " in the " English Men of Action " series. He was descended from the Nevilles of Raby, and was probably the most powerful and influential, and as far as I can see, one of the most respectable of the Barons of his time. His influence was largely based on the inter-marriages between his family and nearly every other family of distinc- tion in the Kingdom, but to give anything like a clear account of the Nevilles, or even of the descendants of Earl Ralph him- self, it would be necessary to write a by no means small volume on the subject.
He was twice married, first to a lady of the great Stafford family, and secondly to Joanna Beaufort, and when I say that by his first wife he had nine, and by his second wife he had thirteen children, and that nearly all these children married and had families, I think I may be excused from giving any detailed account of them. I will therefore confine myself to two, Cecily, his fifth and youngest daughter by Joanna Beaufort, and Richard, his eldest son by the same lady, though by no means his eldest son, taking his first family into account.
Cecily Neville married Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, by whom she became the mother of the Kings Edward IV. and Richard III., and of her I shall speak again when I
The Kingmaker, Earl of Wat wick. 20 1
revert to the history of her husband. Sir Richard Neville, her brother, was born in the year 1400 and married Alice Montacute, daughter and sole heiress of the last Earl of Salisbury of that family, in whose right he himself became Earl of Salisbury. He played a great part, only over- shadowed by that of his still more distinguished son, in the Wars of the Roses, and was ultimately beheaded after the Battle of Wakefield while righting on behalf of the Yorkists in the year 1460. By Alice Montacute he had a large family, of whom it is only necessary to speak of his eldest son, Richard Neville, who was born in 1428, and is known in history as the " Kingmaker," or from Lord Lytton's novel as the " Last of the Barons."
The Kingmaker married Anne Beauchamp, heiress of the family of Beauchamp, Earls of Warwick, and in right of this lady he became Earl of Warwick, and on his father's death he became Earl of Salisbury. He was ultimately killed while fighting with the Lancastrians at the Battle of Barnet in the year 1471, aged forty-three.
The Earl of Warwick left two daughters and co-heiresses, Isabel, married to George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV., and Anne, married first to Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., and afterwards to Richard III., and to these ladies I must return later.
In estimating the character of the great Earl of Warwick, and the somewhat remarkable changes of front which he executed during the civil wars, it is fair to consider the some- what complicated state of his family connections. It has been said, and with good authority, that his grandmother, the Countess Joanna of Westmoreland, was a very clever woman, who set immense store by her connection with Henry IV., and it is certain that the Neville family were, at all events until the breaking out of the civil wars, firm friends of the Lancastrian Kings. Therefore Warwick, both by family connection and tradition, and from the intimacy which sub- sisted between himself and his father with the Lancastrian Princes, may well have had from the first some lurking
2O2 History of the Royal Family of England.
inclination to take their side. On the other hand, through his aunt Cecily, he was first cousin to her sons by the Duke of York, who afterwards became Edward IV. and Richard III., Kings of England ; and finally, as I have already said, he had a daughter married to a Prince on each side, though the marriage of his daughter Anne to the Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., did not take place till after his first breach with Edward IV. As is well known, Warwick was in the first instance a strong Yorkist, but afterwards, from causes, which have been the subject of much discussion, he became Lancastrian, and he died fighting on that side. (See Oman's " Life of Warwick " before quoted.)
The Countess Joanna of Westmoreland died in the year 1440, eighteen years after the accession of Henry VI., and thirty one years before his death.
Henry Beaufort, third son of John of Gaunt, was born about the year 1376. He was consecrated Bishop of Lincoln in 1398, when he was about twenty-two, and translated to the See of Winchester in 1404. He was made a Cardinal and Papal Legate in 1427, and he died in 1447. He was therefore twenty-three years old when his half-brother Henry IV. became King, having been raised to the Episcopal dignity a year earlier. He was thirty-six on the accession of Henry V., forty-six on the accession of Henry VI. and seventy-one when he died, twenty-four years before his great nephew, the last named King.
The history of this great man is in a large measure the history of England during his life, for, at all events after the accession of Henry VI., he was almost, if not quite, the most prominent person in the realm, and was intimately concerned with all public events. The story of his constant quarrels, in which it seems to me that he was always, or nearly always, in the right, with the King's uncle and his own nephew, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, is known to many people through the medium of Shakespeare's play of " Henry VIII." which, grossly inaccurate as it is in many particulars, states fairly enough the position of these two eminent men. Person-
The Beauforts. 203
ally, I do not much admire political prelates, and there are many things in the conduct of Cardinal Beaufort which are open to much comment ; but on the whole I think that he contrasts favourably with most of the statesmen of his age. There does not appear to me to be any evidence that his private life, at all events after his early youth, was otherwise than regular, and his public conduct was, as a rule, just and patriotic. (See the Life of Cardinal Beaufort by L. Rudford in the series called, " Makers of English History.")
His younger brother, Thomas Beaufort, was born a year later than the Cardinal, in 1377, and died in 1427 at the age of fifty, five years after the accession of Henry V. He was eminently and exclusively a soldier, having throughout his life been almost always engaged in military matters, and in the wars of Henry V. he distinguished himself greatly. In the year 1416, shortly after the accession of Henry V., he was created Duke of Exeter, a title which had been rendered vacant by the execution of John Holland, brother of Richard II. Thomas Beaufort married a lady of the Neville family, but died without issue.
There is in history a most irritating confusion between the several Dukes of Exeter, and at the risk of some repeti- tion, I will say again that there were four : (i.) John Holland, who was Duke of Exeter from 1397 to 1399, that is for the last two years of the reign of Richard II., and who was beheaded in 1400 by Henry IV. He was half-brother on his mother's side to Richard II., and through his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John of Gaunt, he was brother-in-law to Henry IV. (2.) Thomas Beaufort, who was Duke of Exeter from 1416 to 1427, that is during the reign of Henry V., and the first five years of Henry VI. He was half-brother to Henry IV., and consequently uncle of the half blood to Henry V. (3.) John Holland, son of the first Duke of Exeter, and who was himself Duke of Exeter from 1443 to 1447 in the reign of Henry VI. ; and (4.) Henry Holland, son of the last Duke, who was Duke of Exeter from 1447 till his death after the Battle of Barnet in 1473. He was a somewhat distant cousin
204 History of the Royal Family of England.
to Henry VI., and married and was divorced from the sister of Edward IV. (See Tables VII. and XL)
John Beaufort, eldest son of John of Gaunt by Katharine Swynford (through whom Henry VII. derived his title, such as it was), was born in 1375 and died in 1410, aged thirty-five. He was therefore twenty-four when his half-brother Henry IV. became King, and thirty-three when that King died. The Act by which he and his brothers and sister were declared legitimate was passed in 1 397, two years before the death of Richard II.
John Beaufort was a soldier of some distinction, but was not a very prominent man. There is some confusion in his titles. In the same year, 1397, he was created successively Earl of Somerset, Marquis of Dorset, and Marquis of Somerset. In 1399 he was deprived by Henry IV. of his Marquisates on the ground that he had been a party to the execution of the King's and his own uncle, Thomas Duke of Gloucester. In 1404 he was again made Marquis of Dorset, but he does not seem to have used that title, and at all events his eldest son succeeded him only as Earl of Somerset, and therefore I shall refer to him only as the first Earl of Somerset
He married Margaret Holland, daughter of Thomas Holland, second Earl of Kent of his family, and niece of the half blood of Richard II. (see Table VII.), and consequently he was nearly connected with that King, whose part he seems on the whole to have taken. The first Earl of Somerset had a family of five children, Henry, John and Edmund (who were successively either Earls or Dukes of Somerset), Joanna and Margaret.
Joanna Beaufort, his eldest daughter, married James I., King of Scotland. The story of that King's long captivity in England, of his ultimate release and tragic end, is well known. While in England he formed a passionate affection for Joanna which he celebrated in verse, his poems being almost the earliest Scotch poetry now extant. Queen Joanna survived James I., and became painfully well known in
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206 History of the Royal Family of England.
history from the awful cruelties she inflicted on her husband's murderers after his death. Her great grandson, James IV. of Scotland, married Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., and great granddaughter of Joanna's brother John, and through this last-mentioned marriage the Crown of England passed to the Royal house of Stuart. (See as to her descendants, post.)
Margaret Beaufort, Earl John's second daughter, married Thomas Courtenay, fifth Earl of Devon of his family, and had a number of children. Her husband and her three sons and one of her sons-in-law were killed fighting on the Lancastrian side. Her issue in the male line became extinct in the reign of Henry VII.
Henry, the eldest son of John, first Earl of Somerset, succeeded his father as second Earl, but died in his minority, and was succeeded by his next brother, John, who was born about 1404. He was therefore six years old when his father died in 1410, fourteen when he succeeded, on the death of his brother, as third Earl of Somerset, and forty when he died in 1444. Although this Lord Somerset died nearly ten years before the actual breaking out of the civil war, he was distinguished throughout his life for his strong enmity to the Duke of York, which seems to have amounted to personal hatred. It was he who first adopted the " red rose " as his badge, in opposition to the " white rose," assumed by York as the emblem of the Yorkist party.
My readers will be familiar with the famous scene laid in the Temple Gardens in the first part of " Henry VI.," in which the quarrel between York and Somerset is represented, and they adopt the rival roses as their respective emblems, and also with the later scene in the same play in which King Henry himself assumes the "red rose" as his own badge.
Somerset was a distinguished soldier in France, but the English arms were much hampered by the continual bicker- ings between him and York. He died in the year 1444, having been the year previously advanced to the rank of Duke of Somerset.
The Beauforts. 207
He married a lady of the Beauchamp family and left an only daughter, Margaret Beaufort, to whom I must return, and to whom I direct my readers' special attention, as by her first husband, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, she became the mother of the Prince who was afterwards King Henry VII. (See Table XL)
John Beaufort, third Earl and first Duke of Somerset, was succeeded as fourth Earl (his Dukedom expired at his death), by his next brother, Edmund, who was a year or two younger than himself, and was therefore at this time about thirty-eight.
This Edmund was the most notable — I can hardly say famous — of the Somersets. He succeeded his brother as Earl, but in 1448 he also was created Duke of Somerset.
After the deaths of his uncle Cardinal Beaufort and of Michael de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, to whom 1 must refer again, he acquired complete ascendancy in the Councils of the King Henry VI. and his Queen ; and it was during his administration in France that the series of disasters took place which finally deprived the English of Henry V.'s conquests. On this and other accounts he was extremely, and I think justly, hated by the people, and repeated demands were made for his exclusion from the Royal Councils. Ultimately he was for some time imprisoned in the Tower at the instance of the Duke of York, who was for the moment in power, but he was liberated in 1455, and was killed in the same year at the Battle of St. Albans, which battle may be counted as the opening of the civil war, though it was followed by some years of comparative peace. Earl Edmund also married one of the Beauchamps and had a family of eight children, — three sons, Henry, Edmund, and John, and five daughters.
His daughters l all married, but excepting two, their marriages do not call for any special notice. Alianora, the eldest, married James Butler, a son of the fourth Earl of Ormond, who was created Earl of Wiltshire, and who after the death of his father-in-law became one of the most
208 History of the Royal Family of England.
prominent and detested adherents of Queen Margaret of Anjou. Lord Wiltshire was ultimately beheaded in 1461, and had no children.
Margaret, the fifth daughter of Earl Edmund of Somerset, married Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford, eldest son of the first Duke of Buckingham of that family. (See Table VII.) Her husband like her father was killed at the Battle of St. Albans, but he left by her a son Henry, who on his grand- father's death became second Duke of Buckingham of his family. Of him I have already spoken, but I may here repeat that he was beheaded by Richard III.
Edmund, second Duke of Somerset, was succeeded as fifth Earl and third Duke by his eldest son, Henry, then a youth of under twenty. He also acquired great weight with the Queen Margaret, and was a prominent leader among the Lancastrians. He took refuge with Queen Margaret in Scotland, where, however, he greatly damaged her cause, having it is said incurred the enmity of the Queen Dowager of Scotland, Mary of Gueldres, by boasting, either truly or falsely, that he had been her lover. Having thus made Scot- land too hot to hold him, he made peace with the Earl of Warwick, then the leader of the Yorkist party, and received Edward IV.'s pardon in 1462. In the following year at the Battle of Bamborough he fought against his former friends, thereby, it is said, " proving manfully that he was a true liegeman to King Edward." He was taken into high favour by Edward, from whom he received many honours, having according to one account " supped at the King's board, slept in the King's chamber, served as Captain of the King's guard and jousted with the King's favour on his helm."
Nevertheless, in the midwinter of the years 1463-64, with- out the slightest provocation or warning, Duke Henry of Somerset left the Court, and once more took up arms on behalf of the Lancastrians, thereby beginning anew the civil war, which at that time had almost been extinguished. In the same year he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Hexham and beheaded next day. He was then about twenty-seven.
The Beauforts. 209
Duke Henry was never married, and he was succeeded, at all events in the estimation of the Lancastrians, by his next brother Edmund, who in their view became sixth Earl and fourth Duke of Somerset. He was about twenty-five at his brother's death, and for some years afterwards Edmund and his younger brother, John, were in exile, and in great poverty. During the temporary restoration of Henry VI. in 1470-71 they came to England, and they were both present at the Battle of Tewkesbury, where John was killed, and Edmund taken prisoner and immediately afterwards beheaded.
With them the male line of the Beauforts, all of whom had played so great a part in the history of the fifteenth century > became extinct, but as has been already said, such rights as they possessed to the Throne passed to Margaret, daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, whose son, as claiming through her, was afterwards recognised as King Henry VII. of England. It should, however, be said that Henry, the third Duke, left a natural son, who assumed the name of Somerset, and from him the present Duke of Beaufort is descended. Thus the present Duke of Beaufort, whose family name is Somerset, is descended from a Duke of Somerset whose family name was Beaufort. (See Table XI.)
CHAPTER XIII.
HENRY IV. — JOANNA OF NAVARRE. — HENRY IV.'s DAUGHTERS. — THOMAS DUKE OF CLARENCE. — JOHN DUKE OF BEDFORD.— HUMPHREY DUKE OF GLOU- CESTER.— HENRY V.
HENRY of Bolingbroke, eldest son of John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster, and afterwards Henry IV., was like his cousin Richard II. born in 1366, and was therefore thirty-three when in 1399 he dethroned that King, and himself assumed the Crown. In his early manhood he was a great traveller, having made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and having been employed on several diplomatic services on the Continent ; and he does not appear to have given any special signs of excessive ambition. He was made Earl of Derby, a title previously held by his father in 1388, when he was twenty-two, and in 1 397 he was advanced to the rank of Duke of Hereford. In that same year, however, there arose the quarrel between him and Thomas Mowbray, first Duke of Norfolk, which has been rendered famous by Shakes- peare's play of "Richard II.," and which led to the banish- ment of both Dukes. In the beginning of 1399 John of Gaunt died, and Richard took advantage of his death, and of Henry's absence, to seize the great estates and property of the late Duke, whereupon Henry, in defiance of the decree of banishment which had been made against him returned to England. Whether he had at the first any idea of making himself King, or whether he merely intended, as he himself said, to recover the estates of which he had been unjustly deprived, is an historical problem which it would be difficult to solve. I myself believe that he was a man naturally just
210
Henry IV. 21 1
and conscientious, and that, on his first landing, he had no designs against the King personally ; but I think that finding Richard in Ireland, and the Kingdom undefended, and being possibly more or less deceived by the rumours of the King's death, he yielded to a sudden temptation to seize the Throne for himself.
Certainly no sin was ever punished more terribly than Henry's. He knew, and never forgot, that he had no title to the Throne, and that even if, which he could hardly have believed, Richard by his crimes had disentitled himself to reign, there remained the Mortimers, who by the laws of suc- cession, then fully established, were and had been fully recognised by the King in Parliament as being Richard's heirs. Henry knew that his action in deposing a lawful Sovereign was viewed with alarm and consternation by every Prince in Europe, and he knew that the great nobles, even his own nearest relatives (like the Duke of Exeter, who had married his sister), regarded his proceedings with jealousy and mistrust. The great Barons were all, or nearly all, his own relatives, men of almost as distinguished birth as his own, and many of them possessed of immense wealth and influence. They could with difficulty brook the authority of a King whose title they recognised as valid, and it was not to be expected that they should accept the authority of a King whose title they did not recognise, and who a year or two before had been no more than one of themselves. Conse- quently there was hardly a single man on whom Henry could rely, and from the hour of his accession to the hour of his death there was hardly a moment in which he was not tormented with suspicion and distrust of all about him, even, it is said, at times of his own son ; or in which he was not either struggling with, or threatened by, open or smouldering rebellion.
He was not as it seems to me like some of his successors, a man, bloodthirsty, cruel and callous to all human feeling, and yet the fatal step once taken he was hurried on from crime to crime. It cannot be doubted that Richard II. was
2 1 2 History of the Royal Family of England.
murdered, or that Henry was the instigator of the crime ; and though a man, believing himself to be justly King, in putting to death rebels against his authority may feel himself well justified in doing so, it is difficult, indeed almost impossible, to suppose that Henry himself regarded the executions which followed his accession as other than murders.
Henry IV.'s reign was, compared to the reigns of his pre- decessors, of comparatively little interest, and at all events it is not my place to refer to it in detail; I must, however, mention one circumstance which, in its singular disregard to justice and international law, has, I think, scarcely met with the reprobation it deserves, and which throws an evil light on the King's character.
Henry in the time of his own banishment and trouble had met with much kindness and hospitality in many European Courts, and his father, in his time of trouble, had found refuge and safety in Scotland. In 1405 Robert III. of Scot- land (great grandson of the great Robert Bruce) sent his young heir James afterwards James I. of Scotland to France. It was a time of truce between the two kingdoms, but never- theless the young Prince was intercepted and brought to the English Court, where he remained a prisoner until after the accession of Henry's grandson, Henry VI. I do not see how any one could, and I do not believe that anyone has justified this act.
Henry IV. died in 1412 at the age of forty-six, though Shakespeare, who for romantic purposes chooses to represent everyone not in the prime of youth as bowed down by age, represents him at his death as an old man. The great dramatist had, however, in this instance the excuse that Henry was prematurely old, and was the victim of disease, so much so that in the opinion of many his abdication had become necessary. He died distrusting all men to the end, keenly conscious of the crimes by which he had attained to power, and yet evilly counselling his son how he was to retain that power. Whether it is true, as suggested by Shakespeare, that he actually advised the French war, I think there is little
Henry IV. 213
doubt that Henry V., like many other Sovereigns of doubtful title, undertook that war in the hope that by foreign con- quest his subjects might be dazzled, and their attention dis- tracted from domestic affairs, and that his policy was to a great extent based on the precepts of his father. For a time Henry V. succeeded, deluging France with the best blood of England, but the glory and power which he gained for Eng- land were lost almost as speedily as they had been obtained, and when once public attention did return to the internal affairs of the Kingdom, there followed a civil war which in ferocity is almost unequalled in European annals, and which, directly or indirectly, led to the destruction of all his father's descendants and half the noble families with which he was connected.
On Henry IV. 's accession to the Throne, the Duchy of Lancaster merged in the usual way in the Crown, but in the reign of Edward IV. that King passed an Act of Parliament by which this Duchy was, so to say, re-established and was settled with its great estates as a sort of permanent provision for the Sovereigns. A similar and confirmatory Act was passed in the reign of Henry VII., and by virtue of these Acts of Parliament his present Majesty on his accession became not only King of England but Duke of Lancaster, and receives the rentals derived from the ancient Duchy.
Henry IV. was twice married. In 1384, when he was eighteen, he married Mary de Bohun, second daughter and co- heiress of the last Earl of Hereford of the Bohun family. He probably owed his subsequent title of Duke of Hereford to this marriage. This lady's elder sister Eleanor had married Henry's uncle Thomas, Duke of Gloucester ; and the Duke of Gloucester, having married one of the co-heiresses of Here- ford, seems to have thought it would be a good arrangement if the other became a nun, and at all events he pointed out the advantages of a conventual life to his sister-in-law with much energy. He had, however, to do with a person even more astute than himself, namely his elder brother, John of Gaunt, who, taking advantage of Gloucester's temporary
2 1 4 History of the Royal Family of England.
absence, and with the assistance of some of the lady's female relations, contrived that Mary de Bohun should pay him a short visit at Fleshy Castle. There Lancaster introduced the young lady to his own son, Henry of Bolingbroke, who was then remarkably handsome, with the result that the young couple were promptly married.
- It is said that the Duke of Gloucester on hearing of the event " became melancholy, and never loved the Duke of Lancaster as he had done before."
At the date of the marriage Henry was, as I have said, eighteen and the young lady was fourteen. Mary de Bohun died while her husband was still Earl of Derby in the year 1394, aged twenty-four.
In 1403 Henry IV., then aged thirty-seven, married Joanna, second daughter of Charles the Bad, King of Navarre. It will be remembered that Edmund Crouchback, first Earl of Lancaster and second son of Henry III., married Blanche of Artois, Queen Dowager of Navarre. This Princess by her first husband had an only daughter Joanna, who eventually became Queen of Navarre in her own right, and who married Philip IV. of France, whereby the Crowns of France and Navarre were for a time united. Philip and Joanna had three sons, Louis, Philip and Charles, who were successively Kings of France as Louis X., Philip V. and Charles IV., and a daughter Isabella, who married Edward II. of England. The three Kings before mentioned died without male issue, but each of them left a daughter or daughters. It was held that the Salique Law, which excluded females from succession to the Throne, was the law of France, and accordingly the daughters of the three Kings in question were excluded from the succession to the Crown of France ; and on the death of Charles IV. that Crown passed to his cousin Philip VI., who was the grandson of Philip III. It could not be contended, however, that the Salique Law applied to the Kingdom of Navarre, and accordingly on the death of Louis X. his only daughter Joanna became Queen of Navarre in her own right, and this Princess was the mother of Charles the Bad.
Charles the Bad, King of Navarre. 2 1 5
As is well known, Edward III. of England denied that the Salique Law was the law of France, and having by some process of reasoning best known to himself ignored the claims of the daughters of his mother's three brothers, Louis X., Philip V. and Charles IV., he claimed the Throne for him- self in right of his mother, Isabella, wife of Edward II. of England, whence ensued the first of the two great French wars. In this war Charles the Bad of Navarre played a prominent part, and being probably exasperated by the fact that both parties had concurred in ignoring his own claims to the French Crown through his mother, daughter of Louis X., he seems to have done his best to injure both English and French with a fine impartiality.
It is not my province to enter into the details of his conduct, but in the fourteenth century he obtained a reputa- tion for extraordinary and abnormal wickedness. This, as the vices of cruelty, rapacity, and adultery were too common to call for much attention, was mainly due to the fact that he was commonly believed, and possibly believed himself, to be an adept in the black art of magic, and his evil reputa- tion was brought to a culminating point by the circumstances of his death.
Being ill, he caused himself to be sewn up in a sheet steeped in spirits of wine, which he probably thought would have a stimulating effect upon his constitution. The sheet somehow caught fire and he was burnt alive ; and it is needless to say that he was generally believed to have been carried off by the devil. The bad reputation of her father attached itself to his daughter Joanna of Navarre, who, notwithstanding that, throughout a long life, and in positions of great difficulty, she behaved with, as far as appears, a most exemplary patience, prudence and temperance, was constantly pursued with vague charges of being addicted to magical arts. On this account she became extremely unpopular and suffered many misfortunes, and indeed her misfortunes in a sense pursued her after death, for to a comparatively recent period, in the character of a
2 1 6 History of the Royal Family of England.
" Witch Queen," she was supposed to haunt her palace at Havering.
The date of her birth is uncertain, but at an early age she became the third wife of John IV., Duke of Brittany, a Prince who, as has been already mentioned, had been previously married, first to Mary, third daughter of Edward III., and then to Joanna Holland, daughter of Joanna Princess of Wales, and half sister of Richard II. Neither of these ladies had brought him a child, but Joanna of Navarre made up for this, as by John IV. she was the mother of nine children.
It would appear that Henry of Bolingbroke, when he was in banishment, visited the Court of Brittany, and there saw the Duchess and admired her, and at all events four years later, when she had been a widow for two years, and he was King of England, he married her. It is probable that she was well over thirty at the time.
Joanna's career as Queen of England seems to have been absolutely irreproachable, and the only tangible suggestion made against her is that, being extremely rich, she was too fond of her property. As, however, this suggestion came from persons who wanted, without having any particular right to, the property in question, I do not think it need be taken very seriously.
After Henry IV.'s death Joanna's stepson, Henry V., got up the old story of witchcraft and shut her up in prison, where she remained till on his deathbed, being ashamed of himself, he ordered her release. It is possible that Henry really believed the charge, for in those days the fear of witchcraft amounted to a kind of mania, which attacked persons of all ranks and of great intelligence. But as Henry not only shut her up in prison, but seized her property, and gave the same to his own wife, his motives cannot be said to have been purely religious, or in any sense disinterested and his most ardent admirers do not attempt to defend his conduct in this matter. Even Miss Yonge in her novel of The Caged Lion, in which Henry V. is represented as a Saint (indeed someone after his death has a vision of him
Joanna of Navarre. 2 1 7
in Paradise), he is allowed to be a little uncomfortable on his deathbed in regard to his behavour to his " stepdame."
Joanna survived Henry V. fifteen years and died in the year 1347, having passed the remainder of her life in pro- found retirement and comparative poverty. She is buried in Canterbury Cathedral. She had no child by Henry IV., and it is not necessary for me to speak of her children by her first marriage, except perhaps of one, her second son Arthur.
William the Conqueror created Alan Duke of Brittany, who had married his daughter Constance, Earl of Richmond in Yorkshire. From that time down to the time of Henry V. there was a constant claim on the parts of the Dukes of Brittany to the Earldom of Richmond, a claim which was sometimes allowed, and sometimes resisted by the English Kings, and which gave rise to an immense amount of wrang- ling. John IV., or, as he is sometimes called, John the Valiant, the husband of Joanna, was on the occasion of his first marriage with Mary, daughter of Edward III., un- doubtedly confirmed in the Earldom. He was afterwards declared to have forfeited it on account of the part he took in the first French war, and he is usually accounted the last foreign Earl of Richmond. In point of fact, however, his second son, Arthur, was allowed to assume the title, and did homage to the English King as Earl of Richmond. In the second French war Arthur took the part of the French, and was taken prisoner by Henry V., who subjected him to a long and an unusually strict imprisonment. This was on the ground that as Earl of Richmond Arthur was an English subject, and consequently not merely a rebel against Henry in the sense in which Henry chose to consider that all Frenchmen, who defended their country, where rebels against him as King of France, but also a rebel against Henry as an English subject fighting against the English King. This Arthur afterwards became famous in French History as a great soldier, and he is known as the " Comte de Richemonte," Constable of France.
2 1 8 History of the Royal Family of England.
Henry IV. had six children, all by his first wife Mary de Bohun; (i) Henry, afterwards Henry V., born in 1386; (2) Thomas, afterwards Duke of Clarence, born in 1387 ; (3) John, afterwards Duke of Bedford, born in 1389; (4) Humphrey, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, born in 1391 ; (5) Blanche, afterwards Princess of Bavaria, born in 1392, and (6) Philippa, afterwards Queen of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, born in J393- Of these six children only two left issue — Henry, an only son, afterwards the unfortunate Henry VI., and Blanche, an only son, who died as a boy.
Henry IV.'s children were not born in the purple, for when he became King, an event which, until it actually happened, can hardly have been expected by anyone, his eldest son was thirteen, while Philippa his youngest child was six.
After his accession the King was desperately anxious to contract Foreign alliances for his children, and he seems to have hawked the hands of his sons and daughters over Europe in a manner that was both undignified and ridiculous. He found it, however, very difficult to find suitable partners, and after several snubs, was glad to accept proposals to marry his eldest daughter Blanche to Louis, eldest son of Rupert, Duke of Bavaria, Elector Palatine and German Emperor. These titles sound sufficiently splendid, but in point of fact Rupert was never crowned, and was only partially acknowledged as Emperor, and even his title to the Duchy and Electorate was in dispute.
The marriage was celebrated at Cologne in 1402, the Princess Blanche being then ten years old, and among the other nobles who attended her to Cologne was her father's half-brother, John Beaufort, first Earl of Somerset. Blanche died five years later in 1407, at the age of fifteen, in giving birth to her only son, a boy who survived her and died un- married at the age of nineteen. Her husband survived her, and afterwards on the death of his father became Duke of Bavaria and Elector Palatine.
Philippa, Henry's second daughter, was married in the
Children of Henry IV. 219
year 1406, when she was thirteen, to Eric VI., who united the Crowns of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The marriage was celebrated at Lund in Sweden, the Princess being escorted there by her father's cousin Richard Plantangenet, Earl of Cambridge. Eric was a wretched creature, cowardly, cruel and debauched, and his wife had a bad time of it. In 1430, when Queen Philippa was thirty-seven and had been married twenty-four years, she became pregnant for the first time, and died shortly afterwards in a premature confinement, brought on by the personal ill-usage of her husband. Eric was after- wards dethroned and his three kingdoms divided.
Both the daughters of Henry IV. appear to have been very amiable women, and Philippa shewed some capacity, for her husband having at one time set out for the Holy Land on an expedition of combined devotion and diversion, he left her Regent of his Kingdoms, and during his absence she repelled a very formidable invasion by the people of Schleswick-Holstein with much energy and spirit.
Thomas, second son of Henry IV, was born in 1387, and was therefore twelve when his father became King, and twenty-five at his father's death and the accession of his brother Henry V. in 1412. His whole life appears to have been spent in military employment, and he took little or no part in political affairs. In 1412, on the accession of his brother, he was created Duke of Clarence, and in 1421, a year before his brother's death, he was killed at the Battle of Beaugy, aged thirty-four. Thomas Duke of Clarence married Margaret Holland, daughter of Thomas Holland, second Earl of Kent of his family, and niece of King Richard II. This lady had been previously married to his father's half-brother John Beaufort, first Earl of Somerset. The marriage, of which there was no issue, took place in 141 1, a year after the death of the Earl of Somerset, and when Thomas himself was twenty-four.
John, third son of Henry IV., was born in 1389, and was therefore ten when his father became King, twenty-three on the accession of Henry V. and thirty-three at that King's death. From his earliest youth he shewed great military
220 History of the Royal Family of England.
capacity, and when Henry V. died he was, in accordance with that King's directions, appointed Regent of France, a position in which, by common consent, he displayed military and civil ability of a high order. The position, however, was untenable. It is one thing to overrun and, for the moment, conquer a great country — it is another to maintain an alien dominion over a Foreign country of which every inhabitant hates its rulers, and is watching for the first opportunity to take advantage of any weakness on their part. It is difficult to conceive how, in the fifteenth century, any sane Englishman could seriously have supposed that the English could retain permanent rule over a nation so brave, so enterprising, and so intensely patriotic as the French ; and moreover John was in a very different position from that of his elder brother. Henry V. was a man of extraordinary genius ; he was for all practical purposes an absolute King, and during his short reign he had concentrated upon himself a sort of personal enthusiasm on the part of his subjects which, for a time, made nothing impossible. The Duke of Bedford was only one of a group of nobles in whose hands the Government was reposed, and he was constantly thwarted and hindered by their jealousies and disputes, and in particular by the feud between his brother Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and his uncle Cardinal Beaufort. The Cardinal with unusual foresight avowedly wished for peace, almost on any terms, and Gloucester, though the professed advocate of the war party, was too much absorbed in his own schemes and selfish ambition to render effectual aid to his brother in France.
The extraordinary rise of Joan of Arc, and the apparently miraculous success which at first attended her arms, was the beginning of the long series of disasters which resulted in the final expulsion of the English from France. Bedford lived to see the defeat and capture of the Maid of Orleans, and his memory, otherwise among the men of his day in high repute, is stained by the cruelties inflicted upon her. He died shortly afterwards in 1435 at Rouen, where he is buried.
John Duke of Bedford. 221
In the slightly ridiculous scene in the first part of " Henry VI.," in which Bedford is carried in on a chair, and stuck down outside the walls of Rouen, apparently in the midst of a battle, and in which he dies, Lord Talbot says with some sense : —
" Come my Lord
We will bestow you in some better place Better for sickness and for crazy age."
Bedford is thus represented as an old man, but he was in point of fact only forty-six when he died.
He is buried in Rouen Cathedral, and one of the few magnanimous acts recorded of Louis XL of France is that, when he was asked to deface Bedford's tomb, he refused, saying, " Wherefore I say, first God save his soul, and let his body rest in quiet, which when he was living, would have disquieted the proudest of us all ; and as for his tomb, which I assure you is not so worthy as his acts deserve, I count it an honour to have him remain in my dominions."
John was created Duke of Bedford in 1414, and he was twice married. In 1423 he married Anne, sister of Philip II. (called the Good) Duke of Burgundy, then the great ally of the English. This lady died in 1432, and within six months of her death the Duke married Jacquetta of Luxembourg, daughter of the Count de St. Pol, a lady of very distinguished family. The Duke of Burgundy was, or pretended to be, extremely annoyed at the haste with which his brother-in-law married again, and this was one of the causes assigned for his defection from the English, which was completed at the Congress of Arras in 1435, shortly after Bedford's death. This defection practically put an end to the English dominion in France.
Bedford had no child, but his second wife who survived him, was an important person in English History, in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV After Bedford's death his widow married Richard Woodville, a person of very inferior position. This marriage gave great offence on account of the disparity of rank between the parties, and Woodville
222 History of the Royal Family of England.
was for a time imprisoned as having married a " tenant of the .Crown" without the Royal licence, but he was afterwards liberated and created first Baron and then Earl Rivers. Lord Rivers and the Duchess of Bedford had a large family, of whom we shall hear later, seeing that Elizabeth Woodville, one of their daughters, married King Edward IV.
Humphrey, fourth son of Henry IV., who probably received the name of Humphrey in memory of his maternal ancestors, the Earls of Hereford, several of whom had borne that name, was born in 1391, and was therefore eight years old when his father became King, and twenty when his brother Henry V. ascended the Throne. In 1414, two years after his brother's accession, he was created Duke of Glou- cester, and at the accession of Henry VI. he was thirty. He was fifty -four when he was killed in 1446.
On his brother's death he was appointed Lord Protector of the Kingdom, and from that time till his death the internal History of England is the history of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, or rather of his endless disputes with his uncle, Cardinal Beaufort, in which disputes, I have already said, I think Gloucester was almost always in the wrong.
For some reason which I do not understand he is frequently spoken of as " the Good Duke Humphrey," but I cannot see anything in his public or private life to justify his being so described. On the contrary, I should have thought the "Bad Duke Humphrey" would have been nearer the mark.
His matrimonial arrangements were, in a high degree, complicated, and were sources of extreme embarrassment and scandal to England both at home and abroad. Shortly before the death of Henry V. there arrived at the English Court Jacqueline Countess of Holland, Zealand and Hainault. She was one of the greatest heiresses in Europe, and the heir to her dominions, failing her own issue, was the Duke Philip of Burgundy, the great ally of Henry V. in his French campaigns. Jacqueline had been married to John, one of the sons of Charles VI. of France, who was for a short time
Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. 223
Dauphin of France, and who died as a child, and she had subsequently married the Duke of Brabant, who at the date of the marriage was a boy of sixteen. The Duke and Duchess of Brabant had quarrelled violently, and Jacqueline came to England to obtain the protection of Henry V. After her arrival Duke Humphrey fell in love with her, or possibly with her great fortune, and notwithstanding the Duke of Brabant, wanted to marry her. This King Henry, who naturally set great store by the friendship of the Duke of Burgundy (who was a strong partizan of the Duke of Brabant), positively forbade. Shortly after King Henry's death, however, and notwithstanding, it is said, a personal appeal made to him by the King on his deathbed, and the remonstrances of the Duke of Bedford and the whole Council of Regency, Humphrey went through a form of marriage with Jacqueline in the year 1421, and they promptly set out at the head of an armed force to take possession of the lady's dominions. They alleged that Jacqueline's marriage with the Duke of Brabant was invalid on the ground of consanguinity, and, of course, the Duke of Brabant and Jacqueline were within the degrees of kindred which prior to the Council of Trent were by the laws of the Catholic Church prohibited. Everyone who was, so to speak, anyone was almost necess- arily within such degrees of kindred to everyone else who was anyone ; and in the fifteenth century a Papal dispensa- tion had come to be almost as necessary a preliminary to marriage among the " classes " as a marriage licence is to marriages in England at the present day ; and it is certain that such a dispensation had been obtained for the marriage of Brabant and Jacqueline. The proceedings of Duke Humphrey set all Europe in a turmoil. The Pope threatened excommunication, the Duke of Brabant claimed his wife, or rather her dominions, and the Duke of Burgundy sent an army to assist him, and thence ensued a war which lasted for many years which greatly hampered the English arms in France, and which contributed largely to the alienation of Burgundy from England. In this war Humphrey did not
224 History of the Royal Family of England.
take much personal part, for at an early stage of proceedings he left Jacqueline in Holland and returned to England, and he never saw her again. Jacqueline was shortly afterwards taken prisoner at Mans, but being a woman of some spirit, she and some of her women contrived to escape in the dress of men, and she carried on the war with slight and inter- mittent assistance from Humphrey for several years. The connection between Humphrey and Jacqueline which had caused so much trouble and bloodshed came to a somewhat ludicrous termination. In 1431, after the death of the Duke of Brabant, and when there would have been no particular difficulty in Humphrey's contracting a lawful marriage with Jacqueline, he, ignoring his previous connection with her, declared himself to be married to a woman named Eleanor Cobham.
Jacqueline afterwards married a certain "Frank of Bursellen," who got into considerable trouble on her account, and she died without issue in 1428.
The Eleanor Cobham above mentioned was a lady who, in the words of that severe historian Dr. Lingard, had before her marriage " contributed to the pleasures of several noble- men," and, amongst others, to the pleasures of Duke Humphrey himself, whom she had accompanied on his ex- pedition to Hainault, even while he was supposed to be the husband of Jacqueline. As may be imagined, this marriage gave great public scandal, all the more as the ci-devant Eleanor Cobham thereby became the first lady in England, for the King was not yet married, and the Duchess of Bedford as the wife of the Regent of France was permanently resident abroad.
Eleanor appears to have obtained great ascendancy over Duke Humphrey, and in a general way to have misbehaved herself greatly, and in particular she is said to have adopted the practice of what were supposed to be magical arts. It is probable that these practices would have done no great harm to anyone but herself, but in 1441, no doubt as a political move against her husband, she was solemnly charged
Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. 225
with compassing the King's death by magic. She pleaded guilty, was condemned to walk for three days barefoot through the streets, carrying a lighted candle (which she did), and afterwards to perpetual imprisonment and loss of rank. His wife survived Duke Humphrey for many years but her subsequent career was extremely obscure and was passed in confinement.
Five years later, in 1446, Duke Humphrey, whose influence had been steadily on the wane, was summoned to meet the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds, and was there arrested, and a few days afterwards he was found dead in his bed, and there is no doubt that he was murdered. He, like his brothers Clarence and Bedford, left no issue.
Shakespeare, from whom so many persons take their views as to the personages of the Plantagenet period, was possessed with an extraordinary prejudice against Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., and Cardinal Beaufort, whose characters he omits no opportunity of blackening, and whose enemies, by implication at all events, he always places in a favourable light. Accordingly his view was distinctly favourable to Humphrey, and, though he represents Eleanor in the act of having a conversation with an evil spirit, he, nevertheless, appears to regard her as a somewhat ill-used person. At all events he represents that Eleanor fell into a trap deliberately set for her by the Queen and the Cardinal, and that the Queen and the Cardinal were the murderers of Gloucester, and he gives a horrid scene of the Cardinal's despairing and impenitent deathbed. As a matter of fact Margaret did not come to England till 1445, four years after the condemnation of Duchess Eleanor ; she must therefore be acquitted of any ill behaviour to the Duchess of Gloucester and as to the Duke, even if there were any evidence to implicate her in Glou- cester's murder in 1446, which there is not, it is to the last degree improbable that a girl of seventeen, as she then was, would have taken part or been trusted in so grave a matter.
Cardinal Beaufort was born in 1377 and died in 1447, and therefore was even in 1441, the date of the accusation of the p
226 History of the Royal Family of England.
Duchess of Gloucester, a man of sixty-four, which in the fifteenth century was considered a great age. It is clear that even before that date his influence with the King had been to a large extent superseded by that of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and that in that same year, 1441, the Cardinal finally retired to his diocese, and gave up further interference in public affairs. It is possible that he may have been concerned in the charge against Eleanor, but as that lady pleaded guilty, and her husband did not attempt to defend her, that is not a very grave charge. When Gloucester was murdered, Beaufort was himself a dying man, and dying in what was then con- sidered the extremity of old age, and it is next door to impossible that he should have been concerned in his former rival's death. As to his deathbed, all the evidence that exists goes to shew that the last years of the Cardinal's life were passed in the exercise of constant acts of piety and charity, and the story of his death as told by Shakespeare may be regarded as a fiction without the slightest historic foundation. [See " Cardinal Beaufort," by L. Rudford in the series of " Makers of English History," and " Humphrey Duke of Gloucester," by K. H. Vickers.] The person who in all probability was answerable for Gloucester's death was the Duke of Suffolk.
Henry V. was born in 1386, and was therefore thirteen at his father's accession, twenty-six when he himself became King, and thirty-six when he died. Siqce the Norman Conquest there have been few Sovereigns so completely English as this King. His mother, Mary de Bohun, and his paternal grandmother, Blanche Plantagenet, had been English- women, whose fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers, had all. been English men and women born and bred ; and in Henry's own blood, the latest foreign strain was that of his father's paternal grandmother, Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III.
There is no English King whose personality is so distinct to Englishmen as Henry V., but I think that the Henry of our imagination is a very different person from the Henry
Henry V. 227
of reality. Everyone has read Shakespeare's " Henry IV.," and everyone recalls the " Madcap Prince " — the gay, witty, careless youth whose jokes and pranks are so amusing, whose graver moments are so delicately and touchingly rendered, whose character is so lovable, and whose development into the hero of Agincourt is so brilliant and satisfactory. Un- fortunately, however, every succeeding historian has been obliged more and more to take from the illusion, and Henry's latest biographer, the Rev. A. Church in the series of " Men of Action," has destroyed it altogether, though he leaves in its place the picture of a perhaps finer character.
In the play Henry IV. compares the military exploits of Hotspur with the frivolity of his son, and wishes that the former had been given to him for a son instead of his own Henry ; but in fact, Hotspur was nine years older than Henry V., and Henry V. himself had obtained high military distinc- tion before he was fifteen, which surely must have satisfied the most warlike and exacting of fathers.
Throughout the whole of Henry IV.'s reign his eldest son was constantly and almost uninterruptedly charged with important military and civil employments — employments which he discharged on the whole to the eminent satisfaction of his father and his father's Council, and which could have left him little time or opportunity for the amusements of life, even if he had been inclined for them. His friend Sir John Falstaff was not the graceless old knight of fiction, but a man of strong and severe religious principle, and it is certain that Henry himself, at all events from the date of his accession to the throne, led a life of strict and even ascetic morality, and there is not a shadow of evidence that in his youth his life was otherwise. And lastly, alas ! the story of the upright Judge Gascoigne, who sent the Prince to prison for striking him, and of the Prince who submitted, and commended the Judge's conduct in such noble terms, when it comes to be examined falls to the ground. Shakespeare had not a particle of historic foundation for the story, against which there is strong negative evidence, and it is certain that Gascoigne
228 History of the Royal Family of England.
ceased to be Chief Justice when Henry IV. died. This fact however implies no blame to him, or to the new King, for at that date Gascoigne had reached an age when he may well have considered himself and been considered too old for active employment.
Henry V. seems to have been a man of a cold and stern character ; by nature deeply religious, conscientious and even ascetic. His father had been an usurper, but it may well be the case that Henry V., after his father had reigned for thirteen years, considered that his father's title had been accepted by the English people, and that he himself was entitled to succeed to the English Crown. His claim to the French Crown however, in prosecuting which he sacrificed and shed such oceans of blood, seems to us in these days, or to me, at any rate, absolutely unjust, and even absurd ; and it is difficult to conceive on what grounds he justified it to himself) I believe however that he did persuade himself that it was just, and certainly amongst all those who surrounded him, of the clergy, as well as the laity, nay, even amongst the French clergy, there was not found one to protest. On the contrary, as far as can be judged, they all in their hearts regarded the French invasion as the legitimate exercise of the natural love of conquest in a young and energetic King.
Henry appears to me, though I am no great judge of such matters, to have been almost the greatest general that England has ever produced, and to have made an immense stride in military science. He was, for instance, the first commander who employed physicians as a regular part of his army. In the prosecution of the French wars he committed acts of cruelty, the recital of which makes one feel sick, but cruelty was regarded as a necessary part of war, and such incidents as the massacre of prisoners, and the deliberate starvation of non-combatants, old people, women and children, seem to have excited neither horror nor surprise, nor even reprobation. It is said and truly, that Henry loyally observed the " rules of war," as they were generally understood, — that he faithfully kept his word, and that he enforced discipline
Henry V. 229
among his troops with a firm and impartial hand ; and finally, Henry had the power of attaching to himself almost everyone, enemies as well as friends, whom he personally came across. James I. of Scotland was detained, and I think it must be admitted, unjustly detained, as a captive by Henry throughout the latter's reign, and Edmund Mortimer had a better title to the Throne than Henry and was excluded by him ; and yet is is certain that both James and Edmund were united to Henry by the ties of a strong personal attachment.
In 1420 Henry married Katharine, youngest daughter of the mad King of France Charles VI., whom he himself had virtually dethroned. She was the younger sister of Isabella, who was the second wife of Richard II. Queen Katharine in December 1421 gave birth to Henry's only child, afterwards Henry VI., and in August 1422 Henry died.
Katharine appears to have been a somewhat shallow flippant woman, and it is said that she did not respond to her husband's affection as she might have done, but to my mind it is wonderful that any French woman could have brought herself to marry Henry under any circumstances, let alone being fond of him.
The marriage of Henry and Katharine was ill-fated, for through Katharine, Henry VI., her son, derived from his maternal grandfather that mental and physical weakness which was the cause of so many disasters in the next half century ; and it was through Katharine's second marriage with Owen Tudor, to which I must refer in a later chapter, that we derive the Tudor Sovereigns, whom personally I consider to have been sent as a series of most sharply cutting scourges to the English nation.
CHAPTER XIV.
HENRY VI. —MARGARET OF ANJOU.— RICHARD DUKE OF YORK.— EDWARD IV.'s SISTERS.— THE DE LA POLES.
HENRY VI. was nine months old when he became King in 1422, and forty-nine when he was murdered in 1471. He is one of the most piteous figures in history. From his mother's father he inherited the taint of madness, during several pdriods of his reign he was actually mad, and when he was not distinctly mad he appears, at all events when regarded as a King, to have been almost imbecile. His physical health and strength were extremely feeble,, and he appears to have had absolutely no judgment or discrimina- tion in any political matter. On the other hand, he was as gentle and amiable a creature as ever lived, and in his personal life he was profoundly pious, so much so that in his own time he was, and he is even now, by some people, regarded as a saint. He had an intense horror of bloodshed, and he seems to have had a power of attaching himself by personal affection to everyone he came across, which, considering the characters of the men and women by whom he was surrounded, was truly remarkable. His uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester — his great uncle, Cardinal Beaufort — the Duke of Suffolk — his two cousins, Edmund and Henry Beaufort, Dukes of Somerset — his rival, Richard Duke of York, and above all, his wife Margaret of Anjou, each when brought into contact with him seems to have had the power not only of influencing him completely, but of inspiring him for the time at any rate with implicit confidence and strong affection. Consequently,
230
Henry VI. 231
though I do not believe that Henry would have done any- thing that he himself thought wrong, more crimes were committed in his name, and with his nominal sanction, than have been committed by many of the greatest tyrants in the world.
It is quite outside my purpose to give even the smallest outline of the events of his reign, or of the Civil Wars of the Roses, and it is sufficient to say here that in 1461 Henry was dethroned by Edward IV., who was crowned King — that after wandering about Scotland and the north of England in an aimless manner for some years, he was taken prisoner and shut up in the Tower in 1465. In 1470, during the temporary ascendancy of Warwick, the " Kingmaker " (who had then joined the Lancastrians), Henry was liberated and again became nominally King, and it is during this period that he is described as having " sat on his throne limp and helpless as a sack of wool." In the following year he was again de- throned by Edward, and shortly afterwards he was murdered in the Tower, probably with Edward's connivance, and I think I may say certainly by or under the direction of Edward's brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard III.
In 1344 Henry VI. married Margaret, daughter of Rene, titular King of the two Sicilies, and of Jerusalem, and titular Duke of Anjou and Maine. Rene was descended from Louis Duke of Anjou, and King of the two Sicilies, the second son of John King of France ; and his sister, Marie of Anjou (daughter of Louis II. Duke of Anjou by Yolande of Aragon), had married Charles VII. of France, by whom she was the mother of Louis XL Consequently King Louis XI. and Margaret of Anjou were first cousins. Ren£ himself how- ever was a very foolish and insignificant person, who is well enough described in Sir Walter Scott's novel "Anne of Geierstein." His kingship was merely nominal — his duchies were, and had long been in the hands of the English, and he was for all practical purposes a political nonentity, and for his rank a very poor man, so that it is extremely difficult to understand why his daughter should have been selected as the
232 History of the Royal Family of England.
wife of the English King. The marriage was negotiated by William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. This person, after the retirement of Cardinal Beaufort, had acquired the greatest influence over Henry VI, and from the date of the marriage until he was put to death in 1450 he was the chief counsellor of the Queen, who very soon after her marriage became to all intents and purposes Queen Regnant of England. The marriage was extremely unpopular, as well it might be, for not only did the Queen bring no dowry, not even clothes adequate to her position ; but it was part of the marriage treaty that the provinces of Maine and Anjou should be ceded to her father. This measure, though, as tending to put an end to the French war, it probably worked well in the end, could not at the time have been otherwise than intensely mortifying to the English nation.
There is a doubt as to the date of Margaret's birth, but Miss Strickland gives it, on apparently good authority, as 1429, and therefore at the date of the marriage she was sixteen, King Henry being twenty-three.
It is very difficult to speak of Margaret's character, because, except on one or two points, no two writers agree. Everyone says that she was a woman of truly masculine vigour, courage and tenacity, and her warmest admirers admit that she was vindictive and, upon occasions, cruel. It is said that she was extremely beautiful, and it is said that she was plain, and if she was like the portrait of her which Miss Strickland gives, and others I have seen, she was certainly not beautiful. It is said that she was a model of conjugal affection and devotion, and it is said that she was almost openly and avowedly an adulteress, and in short there is no virtue, except clemency, and no vice which has not been attributed to her.
Shakespeare is the writer who has done most to blacken her character. He attributes to her crimes which, as I have already pointed out, it is impossible that she should have com- mitted. He represents her as carrying on an intrigue both before and after her marriage with the Duke of Suffolk, who was born in 1396, and was therefore thirty-three years her
Margaret of Anjou. 233
senior, and for the existence of which intrigue there does not appear to me to be any reliable evidence or any reasonable probability ; and lastly, which seems to me to be very unfair, Shakespeare represents her as continually going about cursing and insulting her enemies, and generally behaving like a mad woman. Making, however, an enormous discount for ex- aggeration, I myself believe that Shakespeare's view of Margaret's character is, in the main, correct. I think she was a violent termagant, with an inordinate love of personal power, to which she was prepared to sacrifice, and did sacri- fice, every other consideration. In my opinion, for what it is worth, the Civil War was to a great extent brought about by Margaret's arrogance and intense desire to concentrate in her own hands the supreme power. I do not think it can be denied that, for her own objects, she did in fact betray the country of her adoption to that country's enemies, and that, shocking as were the cruelties perpetrated on both sides, those on the part of the Lancastrians were far worse than those on the part of the Yorkists ; and this there is good reason to suppose was to a large extent due to Margaret's personal influence. I believe that Margaret despised and neglected her husband, and without saying that it is proved that she broke her marriage vow, — I think her conduct, not with Suffolk, but with Butler Earl of Wiltshire (who for a short time succeeded him in power, and who as I have said was married to a lady of the Beaufort family, see Table V.), was such as to lay her open to reasonable suspicion in regard to her personal virtue. I am, however, aware that these remarks will give considerable offence to many persons, who are accustomed to regard Margaret of Anjou as a great heroine, and I am bound to confess that I am unable to justify them without entering into a somewhat minute history of her reign, which in this work is impossible.
Margaret survived her husband ten years. After the Battle of Tewkesbury, 1471, at which her only son was killed, she was taken prisoner, and kept a prisoner in the Tower until 1475, when she was ransomed by her father, who to raise the
234 History of the Royal Family of England.
necessary money mortgaged his inheritance (such as remained to him) to Louis XI. of France. She thereupon retired to the town of Angers, where her father had a castle, and where she lived till her death, which happened a few months after that of her father in 1381. She was fifty years old when she died.
It is needless to say that the scenes in " Richard III." (they are seldom acted) in which Queen Margaret is repre- sented as wandering about the streets of London cursing all and sundry, have no foundation in history. If she had gone about talking like that, Richard would have had good reason for shutting her up, and would assuredly have done so, but in fact she never returned to England after 1375, and died in 1381, two years before Richard became King.
Henry VI. and Margaret had one child Edward, who was born in 1353, nine years after their marriage, and who was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1371, aged eighteen. Whether he was killed in battle, or survived the fight and was basely murdered by Edward IV. and his brothers, as Shakespeare says, is a matter in dispute ; but I am inclined to accept the former view. The long delay between the marriage of Henry VI. and Margaret, and the birth of their only child, gave rise to rumours that he was not the King's son, and certainly greatly complicated the political situation.
Edward had been shortly before his death married to Anne Neville, second daughter of the great Earl of Warwick ; his marriage being one of the terms of the alliance between Warwick and Margaret, which led to such fatal results. Prince Edward is said to have been a youth of great promise. He was eighteen when he was killed and left no issue.
Anne Neville afterwards married Richard III., and to her I shall return later.
It has been seen that of the six children of Henry IV., four, the Dukes of Clarence, Bedford, and Gloucester, and the Queen of Denmark, died childless. The only child of the Princess of Bavaria died as a youth, and Henry VI., the only child of Henry V., had an only child who died without issue
Richard Duke of York. 235
in his life ; and thus with Henry VI. the issue of his grand- father, Henry IV., became extinct. As Edward IV. was King, with a tolerably firm seat, when Henry VI. died, one would have expected to hear no more of the Lancastrian party, but it was not to be so. The Civil War was destined to be revived by the crimes of Richard III., a Prince who, claiming descent alike from Lancaster and York (he was the grandson of Joanna Beaufort, half-sister of Henry IV., see Table XL), seems as the last of the Plantagenet Kings who have combined in his own person all the wickedness of both parties, and to have been the fitting product of one of the most horrid and unnatural wars that ever disgraced Christendom.
I must now return to Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. At the risk of wearying my readers, I must repeat that he was the only son and heir of Richard Earl of Cambridge (be- headed by Henry V.), who was the second son of Edmund, first Duke of York, who was the fourth son of Edward III. Richard's mother was Anne Mortimer, who was the daughter, and, on the death of her brother Edmund, sole heiress of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, who was declared heir pre- sumptive to the Throne by Richard II.; and this Roger Mortimer was the eldest son and heir of Philippa Plantagenet, who was the only child and heiress of Lionel Duke of Clarence, second son of Edward III. (see Table X.). Richard's claim to the Throne in priority to Henry VI. was based on the fact that he was heir of Lionel, second son, whereas Henry was descended from John, the third son of Edward III. ; and his title to be Duke of York and his name of Plantagenet were derived from his father's father, Edmund Plantagenet, Duke of York, fourth son of Edward III.
Richard was born in 1412, and he was therefore an infant at the accession of Henry V., and only ten when Henry VI., who was nine years his junior, became King. His father was beheaded in 1415, just before the commencement of the great French War, and a few months later his uncle was killed in battle, whereupon he, notwithstanding that his father had been
2 36 History of the Royal Family of England.
attainted as a traitor, was allowed to inherit from his uncle the title of Duke of York, and the immense estates attached to the Duchy.
In 1437, when he was twenty-three, two years after the death of the Duke of Bedford, he was appointed " Lieutenant and Governor-General of France and Normandy," an office in which he displayed great ability, and gave promise of achieving great success, had he not been constantly hindered by John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, who was profoundly jealous of him, and seems, as I have said before, to have been actuated by something like personal hatred. York was ultimately superseded in his command in favour of Somerset, and in 1447, when he was thirty-three, he was sent to Ireland as Lieutenant, which he seems to have regarded probably with justice as a kind of honourable banishment. In Ireland, however, he obtained great popularity, so much, indeed, that half a century later, when insurrections were raised on behalf of the impostors Lambert Simnel and Perkyn Warbeck, who respectively claimed to be his male descendants, it was thought advisable to begin those insurrections in Ireland, and appeals were made with success to the Irish by both impostors in memory of their supposed ancestor, Richard Duke of York.
In 1453 King Henry became for a time admittedly mad. At that date the King had no child, and his uncles had all died without issue, so that Richard was then in right of descent from Edmund, fourth son of Edward III., and putting aside his descent from Lionel, second son of that King, first Prince of the Blood, and heir presumptive to the throne ; for though the Beaufort Princes were descended from John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III, and had been declared legitimate, their descent from John of Gaunt was known to have been in fact illegitimate, and I doubt if at that time they were seriously considered as being in the line of succession at all. Accordingly, Richard came to London, imprisoned his enemy Somerset, and assumed the management of affairs, which it would seem he conducted with wisdom and temper- ance until the King came to his senses in 1454. Then under
Richard Duke of York. 237
his wife's influence, Henry liberated Somerset and dismissed York and his friends from their offices. Thereupon York took up arms, and in 1455 the first battle of St. Albans was fought, at which Somerset was killed, and the King placed entirely at the mercy of York, who accordingly again became what would now be called Prime Minister. He was, how- ever, constantly subjected to the intrigues of the Queen and of Edmund Beaufort, who, on the death of his brother, had become Duke of Somerset ; and ultimately, in 1459, York formally claimed the Throne and the Civil War broke out. Into the course of this war I do not propose to enter, but it is well known that at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 Richard was killed, and his head placed on the Battlements of York crowned with paper in derision of his claims to the Throne. He was forty-eight at the date of his death.
In estimating the character of this distinguished man the great question is, when did he first aspire to the Throne? I confess that if I thought that, whatever were his legal claims, he had deliberately and without necessity plunged England into civil war after the Lancastrian Princes had peacefully reigned for near upon half a century of years, I should regard him as an infamous person, but I think it was otherwise, and that if in the beginning, as he himself said, his position and rights as Duke of York had been acknowledged and accepted, he would have been content. He was, however, in a manner forced into claiming the Throne by the knowledge that if he did not become King he would cease to be Duke of York and would probably lose his life. I think this view is borne out by the Duke's conduct in 1453, and again after the Battle of St. Albans in 1455, at either of which periods he might, as it seems to me, have seized the Crown, not only with comparative impunity, but with some measure of popular applause, for the Queen and her friends, and in particular the Beau forts, were extremely unpopular. The question, however, is one rather for regular historians than for myself.
In speaking of the Beauforts, I have already said that Richard Duke of York married Cicely Neville, daughter
238 History of the Royal Family of England.
of Ralph, first Earl of Westmoreland, by Joanna Beaufort, half sister to Henry IV. By this marriage he was brother- in-law to Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and he was uncle by marriage to that Earl's son, the " Kingmaker " (see Table X.). I may mention, though perhaps it may seem a trivial matter, that Shakespeare, who is extremely confusing in his use of the words "brother," "uncle," and "cousin," makes the Duke of York speak in the third part of " Henry VI." of the Marquis of Montagu in several places as his " brother." The Montagu in question was brother to the Earl of Warwick and nephew to the Duchess of York, and was therefore first cousin to York's sons, but was not related to the Duke himself.
The Duchess of York was, by all accounts, a woman of exceptionally haughty temper. She survived her husband and died in 1495, ten years after the accession of Henry VII., so that she lived to see her granddaughter Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., Queen Consort of England. As she was married in 1438 she must have lived to what was in those days counted a very great age.
She is one of the company of disconsolate females who, in the play of" Richard III.," go about "railing" and lament- ing and considering the fate which overtook nearly all her relatives and descendants. I think that, on the whole, the Duchess had as good reason to complain as any of them ; I doubt, however, if, at all events when her son Richard was King, she allowed herself to express her feelings as plainly as Shakespeare makes her do.
The Duke and Duchess of York had twelve children, of whom five (four sons and daughter) died as infants. They were ,(i) Anne, afterwards Duchess of Exeter, born 1439 ; (2) Henry, died as an infant; (3) Edward, afterwards King Edward IV., born 1442 ; (4) Edmund, afterwards Earl of Rutland, born 1443 ; (5) Elizabeth, afterwards Duchess of Suffolk, born 1444 : (6) Margaret, afterwards Duchess of Burgundy, born 1446 ; (7 and 8) William and John, who died as infants ; ,(9) George, afterwards Duke of Clarence, born
Edward IV! s Sisters. 239
1449; (10) Thomas, died an infant ; (n) Richard, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, and then King Richard III., born 1450; (12) Ursula, who died an infant.
I propose to deal first with the sisters of Edward IV., whose history is somewhat obscure, then with his brothers Edmund and George and the descendants of the latter, then with King Edward IV. himself and his brother Richard III., and lastly, with the descendants of Edward IV., which brings us to the Tudor period of history.
It has already been said more than once that Anne, the eldest sister of Edward IV., married John Holland, last Duke of Exeter of his name (see Table VII.), and in previous chapters I have spoken of the unhappy fate of this Prince, who, an ardent Lancastrian thrbughout his life, was found dead in the sea in the year 1473, after the final defeat of the Lancastrian arms. It seems strange that so strong a Lan- castrian as Henry Holland should have married a daughter of the Duke of York, but in fact the marriage took place in 1447 when Henry was seventeen, and Anne cannot have been more than eight, and it was celebrated twenty-four years before the death of Henry VI., and eight years before the first open breach between that King and the Duke of York was made.
I have stated that there was one daughter of the marriage, Anne Holland, who is said to have been the first wife of Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, the son of Sir John Grey by Elizabeth Woodville, afterwards the wife of Edward IV., and consequently the stepson of that King. This marriage has been already mentioned, and as I have already said it produced no issue.
In 1472 the Duchess of Exeter succeeded in getting a divorce from her husband, on what grounds does not appear, and she subsequently, though not I think until after Exeter's death in 1473, married Sir Thomas St. Leger. By her second marriage she had one child, a daughter, Anne St. Leger, who was the first cousin of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII. and mother of Henry VIII., and who married Sir George
240 History of the Royal Family of England.
Manners, afterwards Lord Roos. The eldest son of this marriage was created by Henry VIII., Earl of Kutland, and from him the present Duke of Rutland is directly descended. I do not know the date of the death of the Duchess of Exeter, but such notices as appear of her seem to suggest that she, like her youngest sister Margaret., was a strong, and not very scrupulous, partizan on her brother's side, and was much given to political intrigue.
Elizabeth, second sister of Edward IV., was married to John de la Pole, second Duke of Suffolk of his family. I must ask my readers to distinguish between the two families of de la Pole and Pole, both of which became intimately connected with the Royal family of England but which are quite distinct.
The de la Poles were of very ancient descent, and in the reign of Richard II., Michael de la Pole was created E',arl of Suffolk, a title which had been previously held by only two persons, that is to say, by Robert de Ufford from 1337 till 1369, and by his son, William de Ufford, from 1369 till 1381. William de la Pole, grandson of Michael, succeeded his brother, also Michael, who was killed at the Battle of Agin- court in the year 1415, and this William became the notorious minister of Henry VI. It was he who brought about the marriage between Henry and Margaret of Anjou, and it was under his administration that the French conquests of Henry V. were -lost. The story of his tragic death, when he was beheaded at sea in the year 1450, is a matter of general history. This William de la Pole was created first Duke of Suffolk, and he married Alice Chaucer, a descendant of the great poet. It was not a little singular that John, the only son and heir of this detested adherent of Queen Margaret, should have married the sister of Edward IV., but so it was.
John de la Pole was born in 1442, and was only eight years old when his father was executed, and barely eighteen when he married the Princess Elizabeth in 1460, very shortly before Edward IV. was proclaimed King. Almost immed- iately after that event he was "restored in blood," and
The de la Poles. 241
confirmed in his father's title of Duke of Suffolk. His subsequent career was not very distinguished, but he seems to have retained the favour not only of his brothers-in-law, Edward IV. and Richard III., but of Henry VII., who married his wife's niece, Elizabeth of York. The Duke of Suffolk died in 1491, six years after the accession of Henry VII., having I believe survived his wife, though the date of her death is not certain.
The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk had a large family, five sons and four daughters. Of the sons two became priests, and of the daughters one became a nun and one died unmarried. The other two daughters married into the noble families of Stourton and Lovel, and from them several well- known families now claim descent, but neither they nor their descendants played any prominent part in history.
The remaining three sons, John, Edmund and Richard, require more detailed notice. John was born in 1464, and was therefore nineteen when his maternal uncle Richard III. came to the throne, and he seems to have been regarded by that King with much favour. In 1467 he had been created by his uncle, Edward IV., Earl of Lincoln, and after the death of King Richard's only child Edward, Lincoln was declared by that monarch to be heir to the throne, failing future issue of his own. It is needless to say that this declaration was quite illegal, seeing that there were then living the daughters of Edward IV., and the son and daughter of the Duke of Clarence ; but as Richard had postponed their claims to his own, he was no doubt logically justified in postponing their claims to those of his sister's son.
Lincolnwas twenty-one at the date of the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and in the first instance he submitted to the new King Henry VII., but on the breaking out of the insurrection by Lambert Simnel (who pretended to be the young Earl of Warwick, son to the Duke of Clarence), Lincoln espoused his cause, though he must have known him to be an imposter Lord Lincoln was killed at the subsequent Battle of Stoke in Q
242 History of the Royal Family of England.
the year 1487, aged twenty-three. He was twice married, but left no issue.
His rebellion does not appear to have affected the favour of his father with King Henry, for whereas Lincoln was killed in the month of June, his father carried the sceptre at the Coronation of Henry's Queen in the following November ; but it probably did affect the position of his younger brothers Edmund and Richard, who were always regarded with more or less suspicion by King Henry.
Edmund, the elder of the two, was born in 1465, and was therefore twenty -six when his father died in 1491, and for some unexplained reason he was not allowed to succeed to his father's full dignities, but is stated to have " surrendered," the Duchy of Suffolk to the King, and to have been confirmed only in the title of Earl of that county. He remained, how- ever, in England for some years as Earl of Suffolk, until having killed a man in a quarrel he was arraigned for murder before the Court of King's Bench. Thereupon he fled to the Court of his maternal Aunt Margaret, Duchess Dowager of Burgundy, where he remained (with one short interval of partial reconciliation with King Henry VII.) until the year 1 502, taking part in all the various conspiracies against that King.
In 1502 Henry VII. committed an act of treachery which had fatal consequences to Edmund de la Pole.
The great Ferdinand and Isabella, King of Aragon and Queen of Castile, had reigned over Spain for many years, but on the death of Isabella the kingdom of Castile passed to their eldest daughter, Juana, who was married to the Archduke Philip, son of the Emperor Maximilian, and who became the mother of a Prince, afterwards the celebrated Emperor Charles V. The Archduke and Archduchess being on their way to Spain landed under some stress of weather in England at a time of peace, and with every reason to suppose that they would be treated as honoured guests. They were indeed received with honour, but they speedily found themselves to be in fact captives ; and they were not allowed to depart
The de la Poles. 243
until they had signed, and in part performed the terms of a treaty dictated by King Henry. Into the general terms of this treaty I am not concerned to enter, but one of its minor terms was that Edmund de la Pole should be delivered over to King Henry. The Archduke protested that he was bound in honour to Edmund to afford him safe asylum, but he ultimately agreed to give him up, on an understanding with the King that Edmund's life should be spared. Henry kept his word to the letter, and when Edmund was brought to England he was committed to the Tower, and there kept as a close prisoner till Henry's death in 1 509. It is said, however, that the conscientious King enjoined his son and successor to put the captive Prince (who, be it observed, was through his mother first cousin to Elizabeth of York, the wife of Henry VII., and the mother of Henry VIII.), to death at the earliest possible moment. At all events Henry VIII. caused his cousin to be beheaded in 1513, four years after his accession to the Throne, without trial or, as far as appears, without further offence. Edmund de la Pole was forty-eight when he was executed, and though he had been married to Margaret, a daughter of Lord Scrope, he left no issue.
On Edmund's death his next brother, Richard, who had accompanied him on his original flight to Flanders, assumed the title of Duke of Suffolk, and was regarded with great jealousy and uneasiness by Henry VIII., who is reported to have been much gratified on hearing of his death at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, where he was killed fighting on the French side.
Richard de la Pole never married, and with him the male line of the de la Poles became extinct. (See Table XII.)
Margaret, the youngest sister of Edward IV., was married in 1568 as second wife to the celebrated Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who was one of the most distinguished and formidable personages of his time, and who will be remembered by novel readers as a prominent character in two of Scott's novels, " Quentin Durward" and "Anne of Geierstein." This marriage was destined to have a great
244 History of the Royal Family of England.
effect on political events in England, inasmuch as it is generally supposed to have been the immediate cause of the final rupture between Edward IV. and his cousin the " Kingmaker," Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. The sympathies of Charles the Bold had been strongly on the Lancastrian side, and he was in fact related to the Lancastrian Kings in that his mother's mother, Philippa, Queen of Portugal, was, as has been already shewn, a daughter of John of Gaunt aud sister of Henry IV. King Edward thought to gain the alliance of this powerful Duke by giving him his sister in marriage, but Warwick was strongly in favour of a treaty between Edward and Charles' great enemy, Louis XI. of France ; and it is said that Warwick greatly resented the King's refusal to comply with his advice. The details of the quarrels between Edward and Warwick are matter of general history, but a good idea of the position of the times, and of the leading persons of Edward's reign, may be got from Lord Lytton's novel " The Last of the Barons."
Charles the Bold was killed at the siege of Nanci in 1477, and he was succeeded by Mary of Burgundy, his only child by his first wife, his second wife the Duchess Margaret having brought him no child. After the accession of Henry VII., the Court of Charles' widow, the Dowager Duchess, in Flanders became the centre of constant political conspiracy against and danger to that King. It was there that all rebels and malcontents found refuge, and it was from there that the two impostors Lambert Simnel and Perkyn Warbeck, who, absurd as their claims seem now, were at the time very formidable enemies to the King, derived their chief countenance and support. King Henry made repeated and for the most part fruitless efforts to induce his continental allies to put pressure on the Duchess, but during the greater part of his reign she remained a most active and effective enemy to the Tudor Dynasty. She survived the execution of Perkyn Warbeck in 1498, but after that event is not much heard of in history. She died in 1503, six years before King Henry VII.
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CHAPTER XV.
EDMUND EARL OF RUTLAND. — GEORGE DUKE OF CLARENCE.— CLARENCE'S SON AND DAUGHTER, EDWARD EARL OF WARWICK AND MARGARET POLE, COUNTESS OF SALISBURY. — THE POLES. — EDWARD IV.— His WIFE.— THE WOODVILLES AND GREYS.— RICHARD III.— His WIFE.
FOLLOWING the plan indicated in the last Chapter, I now return to Edmund and George, the intermediate brothers of the Kings Edward IV. and Richard III.
Edmund was born in 1443 and two years later was created Earl of Rutland, which had been the second title of his ancestors the Dukes of York, and he was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in the year 1460, aged seventeen, and without having been married. It would have been unnecessary to say anything further about this Prince if, in the third part of " Henry VI." Shakespeare, who in this particular is followed by other writers, had not seen proper to represent him as a young child at the date of his death, and thereby to bring an unjust charge of cruelty against the Lancastrians. He is represented as accompanied by a " tutor " who speaks of him as an " Innocent Babe," and his brother, Richard of Glou- cester, who was seven years his junior, and was in fact only ten years old at the date of the Battle of Wakefield, is made to speak of him, immediately after his death, as his " tender brother."
In point of fact, in the fifteenth century, lads of seventeen were regarded as quite grown up, and habitually took part in the military expeditions of the day. Henry V. had dis-
246
George Duke of Clarence. 247
tinguished himself as a leader before he was sixteen, and by the time he 'was seventeen, Rutland's own brother Richard was recognised as one of the most able and daring captains in the Civil War, and there is reason to suppose that Rutland himself (who was described at the time as the "best disposed young gentlemen in England ") was a youth of considerable promise. As far as appears he was killed in the battle as a combatant, and there was no treachery or cruelty in the manner of his death.
George, Duke of Clarence, is the first Prince of the Roya) Family who was named George, and the name does not occur again in the Royal nomenclature of England until the accession of the Elector of Hanover as George I. in 1714. The name was, however, common in the Neville family, to which through his mother the Duke was nearly related ; and it was in particular the name of the " Kingmaker's" well known brother, George Neville, Archbishop of York.
Prince George was born in 1449, and was therefore eleven years old when his father was killed, and twelve when his brother, Edward I., became King in 1461. He was created Duke of Clarence, a title which had been previously borne by two persons only, namely by Lionel, second son of Edward III., and Thomas, second son of Henry IV., both of whom died without male issue. At the date of his murder in the year 1478, George was only twenty-nine years old. He is described by Shakespeare as the " false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," and it would be difficult to find words more suitable to describe his character and conduct. It would be outside my purpose to describe in detail his treacherous and frequent changes of side between his brother and Warwick ; and though, no doubt, he met his death by illegal violence, it is impossible to regard him with pity. In 1469, when he was twenty, Clarence married Isabel Neville, eldest daughter and co-heiress of the great Earl of Warwick, and this lady is said to have inherited much of* her father's ability and ambition ; and Lord Lytton in his novel of " The Last of the Barons " has some historical grounds for attributing to her influence,
248 History of the Royal Family of England.
some, at any rate, of the tergiversations of her husband. She died, however, about the year 1476, and in the short residue of his life, her husband was much occupied in ambitious projects for a second marriage. With the assistance of his sister, the Duchess Dowager of Burgundy, he was one of the candidates for the hand of the great heiress, Mary of Burgundy, who was that lady's step-daughter. This scheme was greatly objected to by King Edward, and it is said to have been the immediate cause of Clarence's imprisonment, which was so quickly followed by his murder. The details of that murder are quite uncertain, and it is doubtful how far it was committed with King Edward's sanction, though there is little doubt that Richard of Gloucester had a hand in it. The Duke and Duchess of Clarence had two children, Edward, known as the Earl of Warwick, and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury. The son Edward inherited the title of Earl of Warwick from his grandmother, Anne Beauchamp, who was Countess of Warwick in her own right. Her husband, the " Kingmaker," was only Earl of Warwick jure uxoris, and though his own titles were forfeited at his death, his wife's Earldom passed through her daughter Isabella, Duchess of Clarence, to her grandson, Edward Plantagenet.
Edward, Clarence's son, was born in 1474, and was there- fore four years old when his father died, nine at the death of his uncle Edward, and the accession of his uncle Richard, and eleven when Henry VII. came to the Throne, as from which date (1485) until his own execution in 1499 he was continually a prisoner in the Tower. He was never allowed to assume his father's title of Duke of Clarence, and was an object of constant terror and anxiety to the Kings, Richard III. and Henry VII. Richard had sought to degrade the children of his brother Edward by declaring them to be bastards, but it was difficult with any plausibility to make any such charge against the children of Clarence and Isabella Neville ; or to invent any pretext why the son of his own elder brother Clarence should not be King ; and therefore it is probable that if Richard had lived much longer, the young
Edward Earl of Warwick. 249
Warwick would have followed his unhappy cousins, Edward V. and Richard of York, to the grave.
Henry VII., though he had married the eldest daughter of Edward IV., who according to modern ideas was the lawful heiress to the Throne, was aware that, at that time, there were many who resented the idea of a female Sovereign (and in the opinion of many, Henry reigned in right only of his wife)i and who would have preferred the title of a Prince who bore the great name of Plantagenet; and was descended in the direct male line from the famous Kings, Edward I. and Edward III., to that of the comparatively low born husband of a Princess, even though that Princess was of an elder line.
It is not a little remarkable that Lambert Simnel, the first of the two impostors whose pretentions embarrassed the reign of Henry VII., should have chosen to personate the Earl of Warwick, who was not only alive and produceable at any moment, but whose identity could have been proved by a great number of persons. It has, however, been said, that to the pretentions of Simnel, and to the necessity for being able to produce the real Warwick in any emergency, the Earl owed his life in the early part of Henry's reign. Afterwards, and after a captivity of at least fourteen years, Warwick was charged with conspiring against the King with Perkyn Warbeck, then like himself a prisoner in the Tower, and after, as far as Warwick was concerned, the merest pretence of a trial, they, Warwick and Warbeck, were condemned to death, and Warwick was executed in the year 1499 at the age of twenty-five.
He was unmarried, and with him, as the last Prince of his house, came to an end the great line of the Plantagenet's, who had reigned from 1154 till 1485, a period of over three centuries, during which, whatever may have been their faults, their country had risen to a great eminence of power and prosperity.
In the long list of judicial murders committed by the later Plantagenets and the Tudor Sovereigns, there is hardly one which strikes one as so cold-blooded and inhuman as the
250 History of the Royal Family of England.
murder of Warwick, which must always remain the blackest among the many black stains on the memory of Henry VII.
Margaret, the only sister of the Earl of Warwick, was born before 1474, and she was therefore about eleven when Henry VII. became King in 1485, and thirty-five when that King was succeeded by his son Henry VIII. She was executed in 1541, aged about sixty-seven, though she may have been a year or two older, as the exact date of her birth is uncertain. She was not regarded with the same jealousy as her brother had been, for though it might have been said, and was in fact thought by many, that Warwick as a man was entitled to succeed in priority to the daughters of his father's elder brother, no such pretentions could possibly have been raised in regard of Margaret. Consequently Margaret, not being an object of suspicion, and being a woman, not only of very high birth, but of acknowledged virtue and prudence, was treated in the early years of Henry VIII. with much respect, and was appointed to the high office of governess to the Princess Mary, that King's eldest daughter ; and in 1513 she was created Countess of Salisbury in her own right. As will be remembered, her grandfather the "King Maker," Earl of Warwick, had derived the title of Earl of Salisbury from his mother, Alice Montacute. In 1494, five years before the exe- cution of her brother, she had married Sir Richard Pole, a gentleman of a good Buckinghamshire family, who had been largely employed by Henry VII. in his household, and who was nearly related to that King. King Henry's maternal grandmother, Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of Sir John Beauchamp of Bletso, a cadet of the great Beauchamp family, was three times married, first to Sir Geoffrey Pole, by whom she was the mother of Sir Richard Pole, then to John Beau- fort, Duke of Somerset, by whom she was the mother of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. (see Table XL), and thirdly, to Lord Welles, by whom she was the mother of the Viscount Welles, whose marriage to Cicely Plantagenet, daughter of King Edward IV., is hereafter referred to. Consequently, Sir Richard Pole was uncle of the half blood
Cardinal Pole 2 5 1
to King Henry VII. (whose mother was his half-sister), and his illustrious son, Cardinal Pole, was not only related to Henry VIII. and his children through his mother (see Table XII), but through his father also.
Sir Richard Pole died in 1505, having had five children by Margaret, namely, Henry, Arthur, Reginald, Geoffrey, and Ursula. Margaret's subsequent history is so closely connected with that of her youngest son Reginald, afterwards the cele- brated Cardinal Pole, that I will say what I have to say of him before adverting to the circumstances of her death, but since the publication of " The Life of Cardinal Pole " by Martin Haile, in which every detail of the Cardinal's life is given, and which every student of the history of the sixteenth century should study, that need not be much.
Cardinal Pole was a man of so much virtue and learning, and of such unimpeachable integrity and straightforwardness, that even the Reformers themselves were compelled to speak of him with some admiration ; and I believe that all modern writers of every denomination concur in treating him with at least respect. He was born in 1 500, and having early evinced a strong predilection for the Church, he had received several ecclesiastical preferments before he was nineteen, and at that age he went to Italy to pursue his studies and remained there for seven years. He then came to England and remained at Shene in Surrey, where he lived for two years in great retire- ment, and thence proceeded to Paris, being then about twenty-eight. At that time all England, and indeed all Europe, was in conflict on the great question as to the law- fulness of the proposed divorce between Henry VIII. and Katharine of Aragon, and Henry sent a message to Pole commanding him to use his influence with the French Universities to pronounce in the King's favour. This Pole refused to do, but he saw proper to return to England, where he was offered and refused large bribes — first the See of Winchester, and then the Archiepiscopal See of York, to espouse the King's side. Ultimately, having been summoned to an interview with the King, he spoke out with so much
252 History of the Royal Family of England.
vigour and dignity as to the wickedness of the proposed divorce, that the Tyrant would appear for the moment to have been somewhat overawed, and, at all events, Pole was allowed or contrived to leave, not only the King's presence, but the kingdom, without molestation. After his interview with the King, Pole wrote to Henry a letter about which Cranmer, writing to the father of Anne Boleyn, says, " As concerning the Kyng, his cause, Mayster Raynold Pole, hathe wrytten a booke, moche contrary to the King, hys purpose ; wythe such wytte, that it apperith that he myght be, for hys wysedome, of the Counsell to the Kynge, his grace, and of such eloquence that if it were set forthe and knowne to the Comen people, I suppose yt were not possible to persuade them to the contrary." On leaving England Pole went to Avignon, and he subsequently wrote his great work " Pro Ecclesiasticae Unitatis Defensione," a copy of which he sent to King Henry, and the account of the strenuous efforts made by the King to prevent its publication, and its ultimate publication by the Pope Paul III. will be found in Mr Haile's book before referred to. On receipt of a copy of this book the King declared him a traitor, deprived him of his benefices, and proceeded to wreak his vengeance on the Cardinal's family who were in England, as will be shewn later on.
Reginald Pole was created a Cardinal by Pope Paul III., and during the remainder of the reign of Henry VIII. and the reign of Edward VI. he remained abroad, being employed by the Papal Court on various diplomatic and religious missions of the highest European importance, and, in particular, he was one of the three Cardinals appointed to represent the Pope on the opening of the Council of Trent.
After the accession of Queen Mary, Pole was sent to England as Papal Legate, and in 1556 he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, of which See he was the last Catholic occupant. He survived the Queen only sixteen hours, happily for himself, as he was saved by death from certain indignity and probable ill-usage at the hands of her gentle successor. He died in 1558, aged fifty-seven.
Margaret Co^intess of Salisbury. 253
In 1539, after the receipt of the Cardinal's great work, his brother Geoffrey was induced to trump up a charge of con- spiracy against his mother and elder brother Henry and other persons, a charge which is hard to suppose anyone seriously believed in. It was, however, found absolutely impossible to implicate the Countess of Salisbury in any act of treason, and thereupon Henry, determined to put to death the aged lady, who was his mother's first cousin, put to the judges the question whether Parliament could attaint a person accused of treason without previous trial or confession. They replied, deprecating such a course, but added that that the attainder would be good in law. This was enough for the King's purpose. The Countess was attainted, and after a captivity of two years, was beheaded in 1541. On the scaffold she refused to lay her head on the block, on the ground that she was no traitor, and thereupon the executioner proceeded to hack at her neck while she was still standing, and a scene followed which revolted even the scanty sense of decency retained by Henry's Court. The Countess of Salis- bury has recently been beatified by the Catholic Church as a Martyr in the cause of religion.
Margaret's eldest son, Henry Pole, was summoned to Parliament in the year 1533 as Baron Montagu. He was beheaded in 1539 on a charge of treason brought by his brother Geoffrey. He left a son and two daughters, Katharine and Winifred, by his wife, who was a lady of the great family of Neville. The son, though only a boy of about fifteen, was attainted as a traitor, and sent to the Tower, where it is supposed he died, for nothing further is known of him.
Katharine Pole, the eldest daughter of Lord Montagu, married Francis Hastings, second Earl of Huntingdon of his family, and her sister Winifred married first a brother of Lord Huntingdon, and then Sir Thomas Barrington ; and through these ladies several distinguished families claim Royal descent, and, in particular, the present Lord Huntingdon is directly descended in the male line from Katharine Pole.
The unhappy Geoffrey, fourth son of the Countess of
254 History of the Royal Family of England.
Salisbury, seems to have repented of his treachery. He escaped to the Continent, where for some time he was main- tained by his brother the Cardinal, and he died a few days before his brother having, it is said, " made a very pious and Catholic end, assisted by Father Soto." He had married a daughter of Lord Packenham, and, according to a pedigree in Mr Haile's book, left a very large family, but what became of his children I don't know.
Arthur Pole, the Countess of Salisbury's second son, was sentenced to death in the reign of Elizabeth, as being a party to one of the conspiracies for the release of the Queen of Scots, but was not executed. He does not appear to have married, and after his death the family of Pole became for practical purposes extinct, at least nothing further is known of it. The Cardinal's sister, Ursula Pole, married some time before 1520 Henry Stafford, Lord Stafford. He was the son of the last Duke of Buckingham of the Stafford family, of whom some account has been given in a previous chapter, and who was beheaded by Henry VIII. As his father was attainted he did not succeed to his honours, but in 1531, by a new creation, he was made Baron Stafford. (See Table IX.) In 1640 (temp. Charles I.) Mary Stafford, the descendant and heiress of this nobleman, and of Ursula Pole, married Sir William Howard (of the family of the Dukes of Norfolk), and he was created Viscount Stafford, and will be remembered as one of the most illustrious victims of Titus Gates' plot, having been beheaded at a great age in 1640. From this peer and his wife Mary Stafford, the present Lord Stafford is descended, though, so to speak, very much in the female line.
I now revert to King Edward IV., who was born in 1441. He was therefore nineteen at the death of his father, Richard, Duke of York, at the Battle of Wakefield, and twenty when he became King. He died in 1483, aged forty-two. The events of this King's reign and the general outlines of his character are well known. It has long been conceded that he was not only a great military captain, but a man of great civil ability, but, unfortunately for himself and the Kingdom,
Edward IV. 255
though there were intervals in which he displayed wonderful power and activity of mind and body, there were also intervals, and longer intervals, during which he allowed himself to sink into almost complete inactivity, and during which he plunged into great excesses of debauchery and licence.
Not very long after he was seated on the Throne, that is to say in the year 1464, he announced, to the consternation of his friends, that he had been for some months privately married to Elizabeth Grey, widow of Sir John Grey, whose maiden name had been Woodville. This lady was already the mother of two children by her first husband, and as she had been born in 1431, she was ten years older than the King. Her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, was a Princess of a very illustrious family on the Continent, and had married as her first husband the famous John Duke of Bedford, son of Henry IV. and brother of Henry V. After the Duke's death, however, the Duchess returning to England contracted a second marriage with Richard Woodville, who would appear to have been a person of no family or position. This marriage gave great offence, both to the Duchess's own relatives and to the relatives of her first husband, and Woodville was for a time thrown into prison. His wife, however, was a woman of great ability, and she succeeded not only in obtaining his release, but in getting him created first Baron and then Earl Rivers ; and, moreover, throughout her life and until she died in 1472, eleven years before Edward IV., she continued to exercise great influence over political events, and to maintain her position as the widow of a Prince of the Blood Royal, notwithstanding her second marriage. It was no doubt through the diplomacy of this lady that her eldest daughter by Woodville succeeded in securing the hand of the young King, whose amorous proclivities were at all times extremely marked. Elizabeth was by all accounts very beautiful, and she possessed her full share of feminine wiles. She was a great contrast in character to her immediate predecessor, Margaret of Anjou, being as timid and essentially feminine in her character as Margaret was courageous and masculine.
256 History of the Royal Family of England.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth was an able woman ; and, notwith- standing the notorious infidelities of her husband, she acquired and retained great influence over the King, and it may be doubted whether, in the long run, she was not almost as great a factor in public events as the previous Queen. Her influence, however, was greatly strengthened by her mother and her numerous relatives, all of whom obtained great promotion and played considerable parts in the history of King Edward's reign. It has been said, and probably with reason, that in advancing his wife's relatives, Edward was actuated less by affection for her than by jealousy of the great Neville family coalition, and the desire to establish a counter-balancing power in the State. Be that as it may, it is certain that the promotion of the Woodville and Grey families was extra- ordinary, and it was regarded with great jealousy, not merely by the older noble families, but by the common people, among whom there was a general and widespread impression that the old Duchess of Bedford was a sorceress, who had used magic arts to get control over the King's affections. Consequently, the Duchess and her children were always extremely unpopular, and it is probable that this unpopularity was of enormous assistance to Richard III. in seizing the Throne after the death of his brother.
As has been already said, Elizabeth Woodville was born in 1431, and in 1452 she married Sir John Grey, eldest son and heir of Lord Ferrers. Her husband and his father were strong Lancastrians, as indeed was Elizabeth herself in the first instance, she having spent much of her youth in the household and service of Queen Margaret. Lord Ferrers died in 1457, and his son was for some unexplained reason never summoned to the Hou^e of Lords, and never assumed his father's title. Sir John Grey was killed at the second Battle of St. Albans in 1461, leaving Elizabeth a widow of thirty, with two young children, Thomas and Richard. It is said that Elizabeth was advised, probably by her mother, to make a personal appeal to King Edward on behalf of her children, and that the King in the first instance vainly sought
Elizabeth Woodville. 257
to make her his mistress, and was ultimately induced to make her his wife, as the only means of enjoying her society.
Elizabeth was fifty-two when King Edward died, and thereupon her two young sons by him, Edward and Richard, were torn, the latter almost literally, from her arms by their uncle Richard, who, as is well known, caused them to be murdered in the Tower.
During the two years of Richard Ill's reign Elizabeth must have been in constant terror of her own life and the fate of her daughters, for the tyrant allowed nothing and nobody to stand in the way of his ambition, and would probably have made a hetatomb of his female relatives if he had thought it all expedient to do so. What he did propose to do, however, was himself to marry his niece Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville, and he paved the way to this marriage by, so it is commonly believed, murdering his own wife. At all events his wife most opportunely died.
Elizabeth Woodville undoubtedly gave her consent to this most revolting plan, but the consent was in fact a mere blind, for it is certain that Elizabeth was in constant communication with the young Earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., the Lancastrian candidate for the Throne, who offered to marry her daughter if he became King, and who, as is well known, did, in fact, afterwards marry the young Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Woodville survived the accession of Henry VII. for seven years, and except for one period during which she was, for some unexplained cause, in disgrace at Court, she was treated with all the respect due to her position as mother of the Queen Consort and herself Queen Dowager of England.
Her last years must, however, have been somewhat un- settled by the matrimonial projects of King Henry, who, attaching enormous importance to foreign alliances, and having different views for his other female relatives, seriously contemplated cementing a treaty with King James III. of Scotland, then a widower, by bestowing in marriage upon that King his, Henry's, own mother-in-law. Considering that the R
258 History of the Royal Family of England.
lady was sixty, was in very bad health, had been already twice married, had a large family of children and grand- children, and had undergone misfortunes sufficient to have broken down the strongest constitution, such a proposal shows to my mind extraordinary indelicacy on the part of the King. This interesting plan, however, was cut short by the death of Queen Elizabeth, who died in 1492, aged sixty-one. She and her husband, Edward IV., are buried in St. George's Chapel at Windsor.
It will be convenient that I should say a few words here as to the Woodville family, and the two sons of Elizabeth Woodville by her first marriage.
Richard Woodville, afterwards Earl Rivers, and Jacquetta of Luxembourg had five sons and seven daughters, of which daughters Elizabeth, afterwards Queen, was the eldest.
Lord Rivers himself and his second son, Sir John Woodville, were beheaded in the year 1466 by order of George, Duke of Clarence, and the great Earl of Warwick during the temporary success of the Lancastrian arms in that year. These judicial murders, for they can hardly be seen in any other light, are justly regarded as a great stain on Warwick's character.
Anthony Woodville, the eldest son of Lord Rivers, married the heiress of Lord Scales, in whose right he was summoned to Parliament as Baron Scales, and on the death of his father he became second Earl Rivers. He was a person of many accomplishments, both mental and physical, and he seems to have been a man of considerable ability and a brave soldier. On the death of Edward IV. he, with his nephew, Sir John Grey, younger son of Elizabeth Woodville by her first husband, were sent to escort the young King Edward V. from Ludlow, in Shropshire, to London, but they were met on the way by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, having treacherously allayed their suspicions, caused Rivers and Grey to be beheaded before Pontefract Castle on the following day. These incidents are given in the play of "Richard III." Sir John Grey was unmarried, and the second Lord Rivers had
The Woodvilles. 259
no child. He was succeeded by his youngest brother, the fifth of his father's sons, as third Earl Rivers, but this noble- man, who was not a very notable person, died unmarried in 1491 (temp. Henry VII.), whereupon the title of Rivers became extinct.
Edward and Lionel, the third and fourth sons of Earl Rivers, took more or less prominent parts in the reign of their brother-in-law, Edward IV., the latter having entered the Church and occupied the See of Salisbury from 1482 till 1484, when he died. Edward had no child, and died before his elder brother.
The six sisters of Queen Elizabeth all made brilliant marriages, into the details of which it is hardly necessary that I should enter, but I may say that Katharine, the youngest but one, married first Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, the second Duke of his family (see Table IX.), who was the great supporter and assistant of Richard III. in seizing the Throne, and who was afterwards beheaded by that King. By him she was the mother of the Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, who was put to death by Henry VIII., and who was not only of Royal descent on his father's side as has been already shewn (see Table IX.), but was first cousin to the King's mother. The Duchess of Buckingham after- wards married Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII., of whom it will be necessary to speak later.
Thomas Grey, the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville, was created Marquis of Dorset in 1475. He married, as has been already mentioned, Anne Holland, daughter of the last Duke of Exeter of that family by Anne, eldest sister of Edward IV., by whom he had no child (see Table VII.); and secondly, Cecily Bonville, who in her own right was Baroness Bonville, and by whom he had a large family. This Lord Dorset fought at the Battle of Bosworth on the side of Henry VII., who afterwards married his half-sister, Elizabeth of York, and though Dorset did not escape being sent to the Tower at one period of his career, he seems on the whole to have enjoyed King Henry's favour until his death in 1501. His eldest son
260 History of the Royal Family of England.
having died without issue he was succeeded by his second son Thomas, who was first cousin of the half blood to Henry VIII. Having been born in 1477, he was thirty-two when that King came to the Throne, and until he himself died in 1530, he was one of the most compliant of the creatures of his distinguished relative. He married a widow, Mrs. Medley, who was a daughter of Sir Thomas Wotton, and his eldest son by this lady, Henry Grey, succeeded him as third Marquis of Dorset. To this person I must return later as he married Frances Brandon, niece of Henry VII L, by whom he was the father of the famous Jane Grey (see subsequent Tables).
Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville had eight children, namely (i) Elizabeth, afterwards Queen Consort of England, born in 1465 (Miss Strickland gives her birth as in 1466, but this seems to be an error). (2) Mary, born in 1466.
(3) Cecily, afterwards Viscountess Welles, born in 1469.
(4) Edward, afterwards King Edward V., born in 1470. (5) Richard, afterwards Duke of York, born in 1472. (6) Anne, afterwards Anne Howard, born in 1475. (7) Katharine, afterwards Countess of Devon, born in 1479, and (8) Bridget, born in 1480.
I think it would be convenient if I postponed the histories of the daughters of Edward IV. till I come to treat of the reign of Henry VII.
Edward V. was thirteen and his brother Richard was eleven when their father died. The young King was at Ludlow at the time, and as has been said, his maternal uncle, Earl Rivers, and his half-brother, Sir John Grey, were sent to fetch him to London : but they were met at Northampton by his father's brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who took possession of the King, and, as has been said put Rivers and Grey to death. In the meantime, the Queen Dowager with her daughters and the young Richard, her second son, had taken sanctuary at Westminster, and as possession of the person of the King would have been of little avail to Gloucester if the King's brother had been allowed to escape, Gloucester employed the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal
Edward V. and Richard III. 261
Bourchier, to withdraw him from the sanctuary. It has been said that the Archbishop acted in good faith, and prevailed by persuasion only, but personally 1 am convinced that the Queen would not have yielded except under necessity, and a knowledge that if persuasion had failed, force would have been immediately employed. The two Princes were sent to the Tower, there to await the Coronation of the elder. Shortly afterwards their uncle, Richard, seized the Throne, and then almost immediately caused them to be murdered. The exact circumstances of the murder are not known ; but that it was a murder, and that it was perpetrated at the direct instance of Richard of Gloucester is, I think, beyond question.
The younger of the two Princes had been created Duke of York when he was two years old, and when he was five had been married to the still younger Anne Mowbray, heiress of the last Duke of Norfolk of that family. The little Duchess died before her husband, and it has been already told how, on her death, her great property was divided, and the Duchy of Norfolk passed to the Howard family.
It was afterwards pretended that the Duke of York had escaped, and in the reign of Henry VII. he was impersonated by the well known impostor, Perkyn Warbeck.
Richard III. who, just before the death of his nephew, caused himself to be proclaimed King, is one of the most monstrous persons in English history, though of late years attempts have been made to whitewash his character. See, in particular, " Richard III." by Sir Clemency Markham, a work in which enormous pains have been taken to vindicate the King's character and to reverse the popular verdict upon it. He was born in 1450, and was therefore only eleven when his elder brother, Edward IV., became King, and he was thirty- three when he himself ascended the Throne, and thirty-five when he was killed at the Battle of Bosworth.
Richard was undoubtedly deformed, but his deformity was no obstacle to great activity and energy, and notwith- standing the traditions that he was hideous in appearance, I
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believe there are good historical grounds for supposing, as Lord Lytton does in the " Last of the Barons," that his face was handsome and his manners pleasing and gentle. Though, of course, it is impossible that he should have been one of the leaders at the Battle of Wakefield when he was only ten years old, as Shakespeare represents him to have been, he had certainly distinguished himself as a soldier at an extra- ordinarily early age, and, like most of the Plantagenets, he was a man of great ability and considerable culture for his time. It is possible, and indeed probable, that if he had come to the Throne in a legitimate manner, he would have been a great King ; but he appears to have been the absolute slave to ambition, and placed as he was in a position subordinate to that of men whom he regarded as his inferiors, he seems to have made up his mind from the beginning to let no obstacles stand between him and the supreme authority.
As the result, putting aside the public or judicial murders which disgraced his power, there can be little doubt that he was concerned either as perpetrator or direct instigator in the hidden murders of King Henry VI., of his own brother, the Duke of Clarence, of his nephews, Edward V., and his brother Richard, and though as to this there is more doubt, of his own wife, Anne of Warwick.
Richard was married in 1473, ten years before the death of Edward IV., to Anne Neville, second daughter and co- heiress of the great Earl of Warwick, a lady whose elder sister Isabella had previously married Richard's brother Clarence.
Anne was born in 1454, and was therefore four years junior to Richard. In 1470, when she was sixteen, her father having changed sides, and espoused the Lancastrian cause, she was married to Edward, Prince of Wales, only son of Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou. A year later this Prince was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury, and Anne, who was with her mother-in-law in the vicinity of the battlefield, was taken prisoner and attainted as a traitor. It has been said, and Shakespeare represents that the young Prince was stabbed by the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, but there is no
Anne Neville. 263
historic proof of this, and the evidence, such as it is, seems to suggest that Gloucester at any rate took no part in the murder, if indeed the Prince was not killed in battle and not murdered at all. In 1473 Richard and Anne were married, and in 1485, shortly before the Battle of Bosworth, she died at the age of thirty-one. She is buried at Westminster. Richard and Anne had one child, a son named Edward, who was born in 1474, and died shortly before his mother in 1485, aged eleven. There is a famous scene in Shakespeare's " Richard III." in which Gloucester meets the " Lady Anne " acting as chief mourner at the funeral of her father-in-law, Henry VI. She reproaches him in language of sufficient force, and he answers her in terms of fulsome flattery, with the result that she leaves the funeral and speedily accepts him as her husband. This scene is sometimes cited as an instance of the knowledge possessed by the great dramatist of the female heart, and the power thereover of flattery, but I confess that it seems to me equally unhistorical and, having regard to the lady's general character as shewn in the play itself, unnatural. Anne's father, Warwick, was first cousin to Richard III., Warwick's father, Richard, Earl of Salisbury, and King Richard's mother, Cicely, Duchess of York, having been brother and sister (see Table XL), and there is abundant evidence to shew that as children, Richard and Anne, who were nearly of an age, had been much together. Moreover, it is probable that down to the date of her first marriage, Anne's sympathies had been with the Yorkists, with whose cause, her father had been, down to that time, identified ; and therefore, though there is no particular evidence either way, I think it by no means impossible that Anne contracted her first marriage reluctantly ; and if, as is certainly very possible, she did not believe the stories to Richard's discredit, I should not have thought it unnatural or shocking if she had welcomed a second marriage with Richard in the very unfortunate and unprotected position in which she found herself. As a matter of fact, however, nothing can be clearer than that Anne was not a willing party to her second marriage, and that she took
264 History of the Royal Family of England.
extraordinary means to avert it by hiding herself in the disguise of a servant She was found in that disguise, and being so found, was probably quite unable effectually to resist Richard, backed up as he was by the influence of his brother, King Edward. There is, however, some reason to suppose that even to the last, she did make some resistance, for in an Act of Parliament passed in 1474, shortly before the birth of her son, provisions are made for the case of her divorcing her husband, an event that was clearly regarded as possible. It has been suggested with some force that this Act was passed in consequence of threats by Anne to claim a divorce on the ground of coercion. The last few months of Anne's life must have been embittered by the knowledge which was forced upon her in a somewhat painful fashion, that Richard III. was anxious to get rid of her, and was already contemplating a second marriage with his own niece ; and by that time Anne had probably realized the fact that when Richard wished a person to die that person generally did die. The general belief at the time and since that she came to a violent end was, and always has been, strong, and is based on some circumstantial evidence.
CHAPTER XVI.
KATHERINE OF FRANCE AND THE TUDORS. — MARGARET COUNTESS OF RICHMOND. — HENRY VII. — EDWARD IV.'s DAUGHTERS. — THE COURTENAYS.
WITH the accession of Henry VII. we begin a new epoch in English History. The invention of the art of printing, and the consequent impetus given to literature and the diffusion of knowledge ; and the great religious revolution, and the changes thereby produced in men's ideas on many vital subjects, to a large extent account for this, but there were conducing political causes which are easily to be understood. Many of the great families had been altogether extinguished in the Civil Wars ; and those which remained had been so much crippled, as to be the mere shadows of themselves in point of power and influence. The Tudor Monarchs set themselves from the first still further to destroy or reduce such power as remained to the ruling families, and the places of the ancient nobility were gradually taken by men who would now be called " Self made ; " and who, often gifted with great abilities, were largely infected with the vices commonly attributed to " parvenus," as indeed was the Tudor family itself.
Theses vices involved an extraordinary degree of sub- serviency to superiors, and of arrogance to inferiors, and accordingly under the Tudors we find the greatest and best of the governing classes addressing the Sovereigns with a cringing sycophancy, which is at once appalling and disgusting.
Under the later Plantagenets the clergy had become, partly from the Civil War and partly from the effects of the plague know as the " Black Death " which had fallen upon them with extraordinary severity, greatly demoralized ; and
265
2 66 History of the Royal Family of England.
they were soon to be deprived, for a time at any rate, of nearly all claim to respect or consideration. I say this with some hesitation, and there were, of course, some notable exceptions, but I do not think the most ardently religious person, whether Catholic or Protestant, can impartially read the lives of the Prelates who flourished under the Tudor Dynasty without seeing that they were, for the most part, time serving creatures, so largely actuated by mean and base motives as to be unworthy of any great feeling of respect. Lastly, the common people were so worn out and exhausted by the exactions of the Civil Wars as to have become, for the time, incapable of making their power felt.
The result of these causes was to throw almost absolute power into the hands of the Monarchs. The Plantagenets had, indeed, been powerful — their power largely depending, however, on the personal characters of the Kings, but the greatest among them was among his nobles little more than " primus inter pares," and was largely controlled in his actions, not only by the nobility and Clergy, but also by the voice of the common people. It is impossible to read the histories of the great nobles in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries say — of the de Clares, Earls of Gloucester, in the reign of Edward I., of the King's cousin Henry, Duke of Lancaster, in the reign of Edward 1 1 1., and of the Beauchamps, Montagues, and, above all, the Nevilles in the reigns of the Lancastrian Henrys, without feeling that the greater Barons were to all intents and purposes Sovereign Princes, over whom the Kings reigned indeed, but reigned only as " over lords," and over whom they had little more practical authority than the Kings of France had over the great vassal Princes of that country.
The Tudor Monarchs, however, were absolute Sovereigns, before whom their subjects from the highest to the lowest trembled ; and who could, and did, bring the greatest subject in the land to the block, and confiscate his property, with no more scruple or difficulty than does an Eastern Potentate at the present time. Not only the laity but the clergy for the
The T^ldor Sovereigns. 267
most part changed their religious views with apparently little difficulty, and at the mere bidding of the Sovereign for the time being ; and the Parliaments stood ready, with obsequious homage, to register the decrees of their masters, however monstrous and unjust those decrees might be. Indeed the early Tudor Parliaments seem hardly to have dared to admit, even to themselves, that they had any other function than to do so. No doubt as has been said of a modern country, it was a despotism tempered by assassination, and the Tudor Princes, with all their power, lived in constant dread, not perhaps of actual assassination, but of secret plots and con- spiracies, a dread which became fatal to such of their subjects as attained to the least real power or influence, and specially fatal to the relatives of the Sovereigns themselves.
Henry VII. did not hestitate to send to the block his wife's young cousin Warwick, little more than a boy, for no crime but from mere jealousy ; and if Henry did not rise to the heights of cruelty attained to by his descendants, he, at all events, persecuted and imprisoned many of his relatives. Henry VIII. beheaded two young women, each of whom he had called his wife and acknowledged as his Queen, he butchered his cousin, the aged Countess of Salisbury, and shed the blood of almost uncountable persons of distinction, a great number of whom were related to or nearly connected with him. Edward VI. allowed his mother's brothers to go to the block apparently without a pang. Mary sacrificed her young cousin, Jane Grey, and Elizabeth beheaded her guest and relative, Mary Queen of Scots, and, as will be shewn later, kept half her female relatives, for the most part young and unoffending women, to wear out their lives in miserable and insulted captivity. Consequently tragic as is the history of the Royal Family under the Plantagenets, under the Tudors it becomes one long tale of crime and bloodshed.
Before entering on the reign of Henry VII. I must, at the risk of some repetition, say something of the family of that King, and of the grounds on which he based his claim to the Throne.
268 History of the Royal Family of England.
It will be remembered that in 1420 King Henry V. of England married Katharine, the daughter of the insane King, Charles VI. of France, and of his extremely vicious wife, Isabeau of Bavaria. In 1421 Katharine gave birth to a son, afterwards Henry VI., and in 1422 Henry V. died, leaving Katharine a widow of twenty-one. The Queen Mother, who was regarded with dislike and jealousy by the King's family, was allowed no share in the education of her son, and her later life was passed in profound retirement. It subsequently transpired that shortly after the death of Henry V. Katharine had privately married a Welshman named Owen Tudor. As this Tudor was, so to speak, the founder of the Tudor race, various attempts have been made to prove that he was of noble family, but the fact seems to be now established that he was of humble origin and would, even in the present day, when distinctions of rank are little observed, have hardly been accounted a gentleman. He had certainly served as a common soldier in the French wars, and had then held a very subordinate position as, in point of fact, a servant in the household of King Henry and afterwards of his widow.
The marriage was not actually discovered, though it was probably more or less guessed at, before 1436, about six months before the Queen's death. In that year Tudor was thrown into prison, and Katharine sent, under some restraint, to a convent at Bermondsey, where she died in January 1437, aged about thirty-five. She was buried at Westminster, but her grandson, Henry VII., with a view, to providing a more splendid tomb, caused her body to be exhumed, and to the great discredit of all her descendants, the tomb never having been erected, the body was allowed to remain above ground and exhibited as a kind of mummy, for a small charge, to sightseers in London till the middle of the eighteenth century. It was then privately buried in Westminster Abbey, but, where, precisely, is not known.
Tudor appears to have passed through a somewhat stormy time for some years, in the course of which he behaved himself with considerable spirit and straightforwardness, and he was
Owen J^udor and his Sons. 269
ultimately taken into some kind of favour by his stepson, the amiable Henry VI., who, though he never acknowledged him as a relative, or conferred upon him any title of nobility, made him an annual allowance, and otherwise treated him with consideration. During the Wars of the Roses Owen Tudor served with some distinction as a soldier on the Lancastrian side, and under the leadership of his own son, Jasper Tudor ; and he was ultimately taken prisoner at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, and beheaded after that battle in the year 1461.
It is said that there were four children of the marriage between Owen Tudor and Queen Katharine ; Edmund, Jasper, Owen, and a daughter. The daughter, however, died almost immediately after birth, and Owen's existence is a little doubtful, at all events little or nothing is known about him. It is supposed that he was born in London during some period when the presence of the Queen Mother in the metropolis was necessary ; and that he was taken immediately after his birth to the Abbey of Westminster, where he was brought up under the supervision of the monks ; and that he ultimately became a monk itself.
Edmund and Jasper were placed under the charge of the nuns at Barking at their mother's death, but some years later, about the year 1440, they were brought to Court, where King Henry acknowledged them as his half-brothers, and treated them with much affection.
In 1453 Jasper, the younger, who, it is supposed, was then about twenty-two, was summoned to Parliament as Earl of Pembroke, a title which had been previously borne by the historic families of Marshall, de Valence, and Hastings ; and thenceforth until the accession of his nephew, Henry VI L. he was one of the most active and able generals on the Lancastrian side. Happily for him he was never taken prisoner, and he succeeded in making his escape to the Continent, both on the accession of Edward IV. in 1461, and again after the Battle of Tewkesbury, when the Lancastrian cause appeared to be finally extinguished. On the latter
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occasion he was accompanied in his flight by his nephew (his brother's son), Henry, Earl of Richmond. He returned with that Prince to England in 1485, and was present at the Battle of Bosworth ; and in the same year, on the Coronation of his nephew, Henry VII., he was created Duke of Bedford.
Jasper was subsequently employed by his nephew in sup- pressing the insurrection of Lambert Simnel, and in other military employments, and he died in 1495, being over sixty years old and without issue.
Some time in the year 1485 he married Katharine Wood- ville, sister of the Queen Dowager, widow of Edward IV., and herself widow of the second Duke of Buckingham of the Stafford family. (See Table IX.) Half a century before Europe had been scandalized by the marriages of two great ladies, Katharine of France and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the widows of the illustrious brothers, Henry V. and John, Duke of Bedford, with two squires of very low degree, and it was an odd turn of the wheel of fate that Jasper Tudor and Katharine Woodville, the offspring of these marriages at the time considered so disgraceful, should have been united in marriage when the former was the uncle of the reigning King of England, and was himself a Duke, and when the latter was the aunt of the lady who was immediately about to become Queen Consort of England, and was herself the widow of a Duke nearly connected with the Royal family.
The career of Jasper's elder brother Edmund was a short one. He is supposed to have been born about 1430, and he was summoned to Parliament at the same time as his brother Jasper with the title of Earl of Richmond, a title which, as has been shewn, had been borne or claimed by many illustrious persons. In the following year, 1454, he married Margaret Beaufort, the great heiress of the Dukes of Somerset of that family, and in 1456 he died, leaving an only child, Henry, who succeeded him as Earl of Richmond, and ulti- mately became King Henry VII.
It is obvious that though, through his father, Henry VI I. was nephew of the half blood to Henry VI., and was descended
Henry VII's Title to the Crown. 271
from the reigning family of France, and was thus brought into intimate relations with many of the great families of Europe, he had not, and he did not in fact, pretend to have through his father any title to the English Throne.
His title, such as it was, was based on his mother's descent from John of Gaunt. It will be remembered that John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III., was three times married. By his first wife he had a son, afterwards Henry IV., and two daughters ; by his second wife he had an only daughter, and by his third wife, a woman of inferior birth, named Katharine Swynford, he had three sons (of whom the eldest was John, afterwards Earl of Somerset) and a daughter. John of Gaunt's children by Katharine Swynford were admittedly and beyond question born before their parent's marriage, and were therefore illegitimate ; and they assumed the name of Beaufort, not being allowed to take the Royal name of Plantagenet. In the reign of Richard II., however, an Act of Parliament was passed by which the Beauforts were declared to be legitimate, and though, as I have said in a previous chapter, it was beyond the competence of Parliament to turn base born children into those lawfully begotten, it was con- tended that it was competent for Parliament to declare that base born children should have the same rights of succession or otherwise as if they had been lawfully begotten. Upon this contention John, Earl of Somerset, second son of John of Gaunt was, failing the issue of his brother Henry IV., the lawful heir of his father, John of Gaunt.
Henry VI. at his death was the last surviving descendant of Henry IV., and Margaret Beaufort was the only child of John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, who was the second, and on the death without issue of his elder brother, became the eldest son and heir of John, Earl of Somerset. (See Table XL) It was therefore contended that on the death of Henry VI., Margaret Beaufort, through her father and grandfather, became heiress of John of Gaunt, and consequently to the Throne of England, and that she, having waived her rights in favour of her only son Henry, Earl of Richmond, Henry was lawful King.
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To make good this contention it was necessary first to ignore the rights of the Princes of the house of York, who were undoubtedly the heirs, though through two women, Philippa Plantagenet and Anne Mortimer of Lionel, second son of Edward III. (see Table X.), and secondly to persuade the English people and Foreign Courts, even with the aid of the Act of Richard's reign, to regard the Beaufort family as a lawful branch of the Royal stem.
Henry VII., though he constantly, and on every possible occasion, asserted his own right to be King on the grounds before stated, was too astute a person to trust exclusively or even mainly to such rights. Therefore, before he landed in England in 1485, he had promised to marry and he did subse- quently marry Elizabeth Plantagenet, who was the eldest daughter, and on the death without issue of her two brothers, the heiress of King Edward VI. From the Yorkist point of view this lady's title to the Throne, at all events after the death of her cousin, the Earl of Warwick, could hardly be disputed. Down to the time of the Tudors there were indeed persons who maintained that a King must be descended in the male line from the Royal stock, or at all events, that a Prince so descended had a better title than a Prince whose title was traced through a woman, even though that woman was of an elder branch of the Royal family ; but Warwick when he was executed was the only person who could claim to be descended in the direct male line from Edward III. ; and therefore, if there was to be a Sovereign at all of the Royal stock, it was clear that that Sovereign must be either a woman, or must trace his descent through a woman. This principle being admitted, there was clearly no person with a better title to be that Sovereign than Elizabeth Plantagenet.
In the next century after the death of Edward VI., the English people were practically placed in the alternative of accepting a female Sovereign or none at all, that is to say, of the ancient Royal stock, but on the death of Richard III. the idea of a female Ruler was. repugnant to the majority of the nation, and consequently the adherents of the house of York
Margaret Countess of Richmond. 273
were content to see the heiress of that line occupying the position of Queen Consort, with the assurance that her son would ultimately reign. Henry VIII., who was her son, did in fact unite in himself the title of the rival claimants of the great York and Lancastrian factions, and consequently his title to the Throne was accepted with practical unanimity, and, as I think with justice, as unimpeachable.
Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VI L, was one of the most admirable and remarkable women of her time. She was the daughter of John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, by a lady of the Beauchamp family (who after the Duke's death married John, fifth Lord Welles, who will be afterwards referred to), and she was born in 1441. She was therefore only thirteen at the date of her first marriage with Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, in 1454, and fourteen when her son, after- wards King, was born. Her first husband died in 1456, and she was twice subsequently married, but she never had any other child. Her second husband was a junior member of the great Stafford family, who died not long after the marriage, and her third husband was Sir Thomas Stanley, afterwards first Earl of Derby of that family, and from whom by a previous marriage the present Earl of Derby is directly descended. This nobleman died in 1504, and his marriage with Margaret was purely formal and contracted only for the purpose of giving her that legal protection of which ladies, and particularly ladies with property, stood so much in need in the fifteenth century. Prior to the marriage she had, with her future husband's consent, taken a vow of perpetual continence.
She was forty-four when her son became King, and had attained to what was in those days considered the great age of sixty-eight, when she died in 1509 after the accession of her grandson, Henry VIII. ; and as he was not when he came to the Throne quite of age, hi« grandmother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond, was nominally Regent of the Kingdom for some months.
The greater part of Margaret's life was spent in retirement, S
274 History of the Royal Family of England.
and in the exercise of works of charity and religion ; and in her own times she was, and in later times she has been, generally regarded by Catholics as a Saint. During her life her reputation for piety and goodness stood so high that, notwithstanding the somewhat prominent political position in which she was placed, she was allowed to remain practically unmolested during the Civil Wars and the reign of Edward IV., and even during the greater part of the reign of Richard III. ; but in the later months of that King's reign she was attainted and confined as a prisoner to her house, and if Richard's life had been prolonged, she might probably have lost hers. After the accession of her son she was uniformily treated by him with the utmost affection and respect, and on the rare occa- sions when it was necessary for her to appear at Court, she did so with great stateliness and splendour. She lived on terms of the greatest intimacy with the saintly John Fisher, who at her instance was made Bishop of Rochester in 1 5045 and who, as is well known, was afterwards put to death by Henry VIII. Fisher has recently been beatified by the Catholic Church as a Martyr ; and it was under his advice, and with his co-operation, that Margaret rendered those great services to the cause of religion and learning with which her name is chiefly identified. The most prominent among these were the foundation and endowment of St John's College and Christ's College at Cambridge, and to all Cambridge men the name of " the Lady Margaret " is familiar. She is buried in Westminster Abbey, and her tomb in King Henry ^VII.'s Chapel is extremely sumptuous and beautiful.
Henry VII. was born in 1455, and the first fifteen years of his life were spent in England. During the temporary restoration of Henry VI. in 1470, Henry was introduced by his uncle Jasper to that King, who is reported to have said " This is he who shall quietly possess that which we and our adversaries now contend for." After Henry VI.'s death his reputation for sanctity became very great, and the remark quoted was regarded as prophetic, and was of substantial assistance to his nephew. After the Battle of Tewkesbury,
Henry VI J. 275
the young Henry escaped with his uncle Jasper to the Continent, where he remained under the protection of the Duke of Provence during the remainder of the reign of Edward IV., and where he was a source of constant uneasiness to that King. The circumstances which led to his claiming the Throne from Richard III., and which attended his brief and successful campaign, are matters of general history. Henry was thirty when he became King and fifty-four when he died.
The character of Henry VII. is extremely complex. He was in belief and religious observance a most fervent Catholic, and the accounts of his devotional exercises, if one might judge him by those alone, would place him almost on a level with the most saintly Kings of the Middle Ages ; and in his private life all writers agree that he was temperate and moral. It is said indeed that he was not kind to his wife or her sisters, but for this statement there is little or no evidence, and there is much that points the other way. No doubt he was a man extremely tenacious of power, and of his own supremacy, and if the Queen and her sisters had shewn any disposition to interfere in political affairs, or had attempted to assume any rank or position other than that which they had derived from him, as Queen Consort and sisters-in-law of the reigning Sovereign, Henry would have deeply resented, and would have put down with a high hand any such disposi- tion or attempt on their part.
The daughters of Edward IV., however, were amiable and somewhat colourless women, who, after the stormy events of their youth, appear to have accepted with thankfulness the comparatively safe position they occupied at Henry's Court, and, as far as I can judge, the King treated them, on the whole, with kindness and good nature. Henry, though extremely cold and reserved in manner, was not altogether insensible to beauty for, after the death of his wife in 1 502, he was largely occupied during the last seven years of his life in seeking another wife, and, though no doubt power and wealth were the great desiderata in the various alliances he
276 History of the Royal Family of England.
proposed, his enquiries from his Ambassadors into the most minute personal qualifications of the ladies he proposed to honour, show that he had his full share of the native Tudor coarseness of mind and expression. (See Mr James Gairdner's "Life of Henry VIII." in the series "Twelve English Statesmen.")
The vice with which he is chiefly charged — that of avarice, a vice which led him into so many crimes of injustice and oppression — probably took its origin in a laudable spirit of economy, which was, in a manner, forced upon him by the almost bankrupt state of his exchequer when he became King. This vice, however, was consistent in Henry with generous and even lavish expenditure upon suitable occasions. Thus his private charities and charitable endowments were numerous and well considered (the beautiful Chapel called after him at Westminster Abbey remains a monument of his munificence and taste) ; and there is ample evidence that when occasion required splendour and display, he could, and did, assume stateliness and magnificence in his Court which has seldom been rivalled.
That he was an extremely able man, no one has ever denied, and indeed as time has gone on, succeeding historians have become more and more impressed with his great wisdom and diplomatic powers.
Henry's wife, Elizabeth of York, was born in 1465, and was therefore twenty-one when she married in 1486, and about thirty-seven when she died in 1503.^ She was, as I have said, an amiable woman, whose time during her married life was chiefly occupied in bearing children, and who, probably with intention, effaced herself from public matters as far as was possible. Consequently there is nothing more about her which requires to be said.
Of Elizabeth's five sisters, Mary, the eldest, was born in 1466, and died unmarried in 1482 at the age of sixteen, and Bridget, the youngest, was born in 1480, and died unmarried in 1517, aged thirty-seven, having become a nun in the Priory at Dartford in 1486 while she was still a child.
Daughters of Edward IV. 277
With regard to the other three sisters, Cecily, Anne, and Katharine, Henry VII. seems to have been divided between a desire to extend his family connection by obtaining for them splendid marriages, and a fear that by doing so he might give them too much political importance, and in this conflict of feeling, the fear prevailed.
Cecily, who in her youth had been engaged to be married to the Prince Royal of Scotland, afterwards James IV., was in fact married in 1487 to Thomas, Viscount Welles. This nobleman, who was greatly her senior in age, was of dis- tinguished descent, and through his mother a near relative of King Henry. He was a younger son of the fifth Baron Welles, and his father and his only elder brother (the latter of whom was without issue) were killed fighting on the Lancastrian side at the Battle of Towton. Thomas himself was afterwards attainted, but on the accession of Henry VII. he was "restored in blood," and created in 1486 Viscount Welles, possibly with a view to his subsequent marriage with the Princess Cecily. His mother, who was his father's third wife, was Margaret Beaucharnp who, as has been already said, was three times married, first to Sir Geoffrey Pole, by whom she was the mother of Sir Richard Pole (see ante\ secondly to John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, by whom she was the mother of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII., and thirdly to Lord Welles. Consequently the husband of Cecily Plantagenet was a half brother of King Henry VII.'s mother, and uncle of the half blood to that monarch himself. Lord Welles died in 1499, having had two children by Cecily, both daughters, and both of whom died young. What became of his widow is not very certainly known, but it is supposed that Cecily afterwards married a person named Kymbe, who was of very inferior birth, and she certainly fell into complete neglect and obscurity, so that it is quite un- certain when she died or whether she had any children by her second husband, or, if so, what became of them.
Anne, third of the five sisters of Queen Elizabeth, was the wife of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk of his family,
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who was a very distinguished person in the reign of Henry VIII., and who was only saved from the block by the oppor- tune death of that Monarch. At the date of his marriage with Anne Plantagenet, however, and until some years after her death, which took place about the year 1511, Howard's father was still living, and his own political career had hardly commenced. Consequently Anne's position was not one of great dignity, and she did not take any part in public events. She was born in 1475, and married at the age of twenty in 1495, and she was therefore about thirty-five when she died. She had several children, but they all died young.
The career of Katharine, the fourth sister, was more chequered, and though she herself escaped with comparative impunity from the fate which hung over all members of the Royal family in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, it fell with double weight upon her descendants. She was born in 1479, and in 1495, when she was sixteen, she was married to Sir William Courtenay, eldest son and heir of the Earl of Devon. The Courtenays, of whom the Earl of Devon now living is the representative in the direct main line, are probably one of the most ancient families, if not the most ancient family in the kingdom. Early in the fourteenth century Hugh Courtenay, the second Earl of Devon of his family, married Margaret de Bohun, daughter of Elizabeth Countess of Hereford, fifth daughter of Edward I. Thomas Courtenay, the sixth Earl, was taken prisoner at the Battle of Towton and beheaded, leaving no issue, and there was an interval of some years during which the title was in dispute; but on the accession of Henry VII. he, by a new creation, made Edward Courtenay, a cousin and heir to the sixth Earl, Earl of Devon, and it was to the son of this Edward Courtenay that Katharine was married. On the occasion of this marriage, however, Henry indulged in one of those pieces of sharp practice for which he was distinguished, for he insisted that by the marriage settlements the Courtenay estates should, failing issue of the newly married pair, pass to his younger son Henry, afterwards Henry VIII. All went well for some
The Court enays. 279
years, but in 1502 Sir William Courtenay became involved, or was suspected of being involved in the conspiracies or alleged conspiracies of Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, who, it will be remembered, was imprisoned by Henry VII. and beheaded by Henry VIII. Thereupon Sir William Courtenay, without trial of any kind, and notwithstanding that he was the King's brother-in-law, was thrown into the Tower and kept there for seven years till the King died in 1509.
The continuer of Hardyng's Chronicle, as quoted by Mrs. Everett Green says, " For the King was so vigilant and circumspect in all his matters that he did know them, namely that either bare him evil will, or worked any in their mind, whom he caused to be attached and cast in hold. And among them the Earl of Devonshire's son, which married Lady Catherine, daughter of King Edward, was taken, and another William, brother to Edmund, Earl of Suffolk, James Tyrrel, and John Windham. But these two Williams were taken rather of suspection than for any offence of guiltiness."
Sir William Courtenay was attainted, and the Courtenay property declared forfeit to the Crown, though Henry graciously allowed Sir William's father, the Earl of Devon, to retain his life-interest in a portion thereof. As the result of these proceedings Katharine and her children, during her husband's imprisonment, were reduced to great straits of poverty.
On the accession of Henry VIII., that King in the first flush of his new honours released his uncle, whose father had recently died, and, though not without a large pecuniary consideration, restored him to his rank and honours. The restored Earl of Devon, however, died in 1511 of an illness, probably contracted in the Tower, and was succeeded by his only surviving son Henry. After the death of her husband, Katharine, now Countess of Devon, lived in some splendour, and was well treated by her nephew, the King, till her death in 1527, aged forty-eight.
Katharine had three children, two sons and a daughter, of
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whom one son and the daughter died -young and unmarried. Her eldest son, Henry Courtenay, was born in 1498, and was therefore twenty-nine when his mother died. For many years he was one of the most favoured and intimate companions of his first cousin, King Henry VIII.; and in 1515 he was created Marquis of Exeter, but in 1539 he was not found to be sufficiently energetic on the King's side in the matter of the divorce. Accordingly he was accused by Geoffrey Pole of being in correspondence with Geoffrey's brother, the famous Reginald Cardinal Pole ; and on this charge, which was apparently quite unsupported by evidence, he was arrested, thrown into the Tower, attainted and beheaded with the smallest possible delay. He suffered in 1539.
Henry Courtenay was twice married. His second wife, Gertrude Blount, a daughter of Lord Mountjoy, was also attainted and condemned to death, but she was not executed. He left an only child (who was by his second v\ife), Edward Courtenay, who was twelve years old at the date of his father's execution, and who notwithstanding his extreme youth, was committed to the Tower, and there kept a prisoner from 1539 till the death of Edward VI. in 1553, a period of fourteen years.
On the accession of Queen Mary she set Courtenay at liberty, and even, it is said, thought of raising him to the Crown Matrimonial, but the story goes that the young Earl, then twenty-six, rejected the Queen's overtures (she was thirty-eight), and even shewed signs of preferring her younger sister, Elizabeth. At all events Courtenay was subsequently involved or supposed to be involved in plots against the Queen, and was re-arrested and sent to the Tower, and thence to Fotheringhay Castle, but he was again set at liberty in the Spring of 1555 ; and considering that Queen Mary was a Tudor, and that Courtenay was not only of the Royal blood, but was reasonably suspected of conspiring against her, I think he may be regarded as being fortunate in having saved his life. Courtenay immediately went abroad and died at Padua in the following year, 1556 — some say by poison, and
Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon. 281
others, far more probably, as the result of dissipation indulged in after his release — and indeed, before, for notwithstanding his captivity, he is said to have found" means to live very freely in the Tower, and to have been already a " mauvais sujet " when he was released from captivity.
All accounts and his portrait by Sir Antonio More, agree that Edward Courtenay was very handsome. He was the last descendant of his branch of the Courtenay family, the present Earl of Devon claiming descent through a collateral branch,, and not through Katharine Plantagenet. (See Table XII.)
CHAPTER XVII. HENRY VIII. — KATHARINE OF ARAGON.
HENRY VII. and Elizabeth of York had seven children (i) Arthur, Prince of Wales, born September 1486.
(2) Margaret, afterwards Queen of Scotland, born 1489.
(3) Henry, afterwards Henry VIII., born 1491. (4) Elizabeth, born 1492. (5) Mary, afterwards sometime Queen of France and then Duchess of Suffolk, born 1496. (6) Edmund, born 1499, and (7) Katharine (at whose birth her mother died), born 1503. Of these children, three, Elizabeth, Edmund, and Katharine died as infants, and the career of Arthur was but short, so that practically I have to do with but three, Margaret, Henry, and Mary.
I propose first to deal with Henry and his children, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth ; then with his younger sister Mary and her descendants, and then with his elder sister Margaret and her descendants, which will bring us to James I., with whose reign begins a new dynasty and a new epoch in English history.
I have said that Henry VIII.'s title to the Throne was unimpeachable, and I have also said that the Tudor Monarchs possessed many of the qualities usually attributed to parvenus. The two statements appear at first sight somewhat incon- sistent, but they are nevertheless, I think, true. By a series of accidents Henry VIII., the great grandson of an obscure Welshman from whom he derived his surname, had become lawfully King of England, but nevertheless he and his children knew, and they knew that everyone else, whether on the Continent or in England, also knew that the Tudor
282
The Tudor Family. 283
Sovereigns were, in point of immediate family and connection, inferior not only to the great reigning families of Europe, but to a large number of the greater among the English nobility ; and I believe that this knowledge largely contributed to that restless self-assertion so constantly displayed by Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth. They were as it seems to me for ever posing and comparing themselves with other European Princes, and not wholly satisfied with the result, they were for ever endeavouring to extract from the Foreign Ambassadors and their own courtiers the assurauce that they compared favourably.
It is true that Henry's grandfather, Edward IV., the father of his mother, had been King of England, and that through two of his great grandmothers, Katharine of France, the mother of his father's father, and Jacquetta of Luxem- bourg, the mother of his mother's mother, Henry claimed descent from two of the greatest of the European Princely houses ; and it is also true that his father Henry VII. was recognized as, and claimed to be, the representative of the great Lancastrian line which had given three Kings to England. But Edward IV., though a 'King, bearing the Royal name of Plantagenet, was by no means born in the purple. His great grandfather, his grandfather, and his father had been great nobles indeed, more or less nearly related to the reigning Sovereigns, but they had been merely nobles, and had occupied no greater position than many others of the nobility ; and it was not till within a few years before Edward's own accession that his father had been seriously thought of as a candidate for the Throne. Katharine and Jacquetta had been universally considered, on the Continent at any rate, to have irretrievably disgraced themselves by their second marriages, and it was impossible to claim descent from them without claiming descent also from the distinctly ignoble families of Tudor and Woodvllle ; and Henry VII.'s claim to be of English Royal descent was based on the fact that he was the great grandson of a man who, though he was legitimatized by Act of Parliament, was the admittedly
284 History of the Royal Family of England.
bastard son of John of Gaunt by a woman of low birth and infamous character.
Moreover, down to the time of Edward IV. all the English Kings had married Princesses of illustrious lineage and dis- tinguished connections, and with few exceptions their daughters had been given in marriage to Kings and Princes ; and even those Princesses who had married English subjects had married nobles of the highest rank and importance.
But Edward IV. had set the example of marrying a woman whose father was a man of obscure rank ; and for the credit of his wife it had become necessary to confer patents of nobility on her comparatively low born relatives ; and thus it came to pass that through his mother's mother, Henry VIII. was related in blood with many persons who were looked down upon, not only by the ancient families, but, which was of more importance, by the common people as mere upstarts.
Henry VII., in his jealous fear lest his wife's female relatives should be brought too prominently before the public, had encouraged them to marry men beneath them in station, and thus aggravated this state of things'; and Henry VIII. himself brought things to a climax by connecting himself in marriage with four women wholly unsuited in point of rank or connection to be Queens of England.
As a consequence Edward VI. and Elizabeth had but few relatives of Princely rank. They had many acknowledged relatives whose sole claim to position was based on their con- nection with the Sovereigns ; and it may well be suspected, indeed it is certain, that they had other relatives with no claim at all to position — and whose relationship, though studiously ignored, was tolerably well known to many persons. Edward VI. was for most of his reign completely dominated by his mother's brothers, men whose father was no more than a country gentleman, and Elizabeth, though she did her best to ignore her connection with the Boleyn family, was acutely sensitive to the fact of which she was often painfully reminded, that she was regarded in most of the European Courts, and in
Henry VIII. 285
their hearts by a large proportion of her own subjects, as the bastard daughter of a woman of very inferior origin.
I cannot help thinking that these circumstances greatly contributed to those displays, of what I can only call vulgarity, which are so often to be found in the Tudor reigns.
As regards King Henry VIII. personally, and in the light of admitted facts, I should have thought it impossible to hold any opinion but one upon his character, namely, that he was the meanest, most hypocritical, vicious, bloodthirsty, licentious and, if my readers will excuse, a bathos, ungentlemanlike wretch that ever sat upon the Throne of any civilised country ; nor do I see that he had any redeeming virtue or charm, except that he is generally said to have been " bluff," which, I presume, means that he possessed a certain rough but extremely deceptive geniality of manner. As to his military and civil capacity I find much ability in his advisers, but I do not see much in the King himself, and this opinion is certainly that of many historians of weight.
In my estimate of King Henry, however, I am perhaps mistaken, for some years ago there arose amongst us a historian whose profoundity of observation is only equalled by the accuracy with which he states his facts and authorities. This distinguished writer finds in King Henry the most noble and engaging qualities of heart and mind, and suggests that the trifling errors into which, even he admits, that the King fell, were the result of adverse circumstances, and in par- ticular, of the perverse and narrow-minded conduct of two ladies. One of these, having shared the King's Throne and bed for twenty years as his acknowledged Queen and wife, and having borne him several children, actually refused to allow herself to be branded as a woman who, during all those years, had never been married, in order that the King might marry another woman and beget a son ; while the other had the audacity to decline to acknowledge herself to be a bastard, even though the King, her father, wished, and it was considered desirable for reasons of State policy that she should do so.
As the writer in question held one of the highest distinc-
286 History of the Royal Family of England.
tions to which any historian can aspire, I presume that he has many followers and admirers ; and that my own inability to accept his facts or to follow his reasoning may be due to some obliquity of mental vision on my part.
Henry VIII is chiefly known to the world in general as having been the husband of six wives, two of whom he divorced and two of whom he beheaded, and as having been the Sovereign in whose reign and under whose auspices that great political and religious event which is called the " Reformation " commenced.
As to the religious events of his reign, it is clearly not within the scope of this work to discuss them, though I must slightly refer to them ; but as to his matrimonial engagements, notwithstanding that they have been discussed in all their minutest details by scores of writers, it is my duty to say a few words in order to make my narrative intelligible.
Arthur, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII., was born in September 1486, and before he was eleven years old, his father anxious to obtain for him the advantages of a great marriage, caused him to be betrothed to the Infanta Katharine, youngest of the four daughters of the two greatest Sovereigns in Europe, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille. Queen Isabella, it may be remembered, was the great grand- daughter of Katharine of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt by his second wife, Constance of Castille. (See ante.)
Katharine landed in England in the year 1501, and was married to Prince Arthur with all imaginable splendour in November of that year. At the date of the marriage Prince Arthur was aged fifteen years and two months, and the Princess, who was born in December 1485, was within a month of completing her sixteenth year. On the 2nd day of April in the following year (1502), not five months after the marriage, Prince Arthur died. It is said that the marriage was never completed ; and there is no doubt much to be said, both in support of and against that assertion. Katharine herself asserted that the marriage was not completed, and, as I see no ground for doubting her veracity, her testimony to
Katharine of Aragon. 287
my mind carries the greatest possible weight. As to the improbability of her assertion which is so much insisted on by some writers, I would remark that the bridegroom was a boy of fifteen, who had been born prematurely, and who was in admittedly bad health when he married. Five months later he died of a decline, the premonitory symptoms of which must have declared themselves to his physicians and those about him long before ; and under these circumstances, I cannot bring myself to think the Queen's statement so very absurd as it is sometimes represented. It is, however, im- possible to enter into the question further.
On Prince Arthur's death, Henry VII. was placed in a dilemma. If he returned the widowed Princess to Spain, he must also restore that portion of her dowry which had been already paid, an idea which was extremely painful to him as, at that time, avarice was his leading characteristic. If he kept her in England he must provide for her by another suit- able marriage, which was difficult to do. He elected to take the latter course, and proposed that she should marry his own younger son Henry, now become Prince of Wales, and that she should wait in England till that Prince, who in April 1 502 had not completed his eleventh year, was of an age to marry. This suggestion caused much commotion. It was said then as it is said now, that for a woman to marry her deceased husband's brother was contrary to the law of nature. I humbly confess that I cannot see why. No doubt texts of Scripture were quoted against the proposed marriage, but then texts of Scripture were quoted in support of it, and, in point of fact, with the utmost respect and reverence for the Holy Scriptures, it is impossible not to see that there is hardly any proposition in support of which some isolated text may not be quoted with apparent appositeness.
Unquestionably such a marriage was contrary to Ecclesi- astical Law, but then so were marriages between first and, even at that time, fourth cousins ; and it is notorious that the Ecclesiastical authorities who, in the fifteenth and in the opening years of the sixteenth centuries were recognised by
288 History of the Royal Family of England.
all Christendom, had always claimed, and had habitually exercised the right to dispense from those Ecclesiastical Laws which they had themselves imposed. If the Pope could grant a dispensation for a marriage between first cousins, or even between uncle and niece (and dispensations for such marriages had certainly been granted and are granted now), why should he not grant a dispensation for a marriage between a man and his brother's widow ?
The question was argued backwards and forwards between the English and Spanish Sovereigns for years, and, mean- while, Katharine remained in England in a position which, to judge from her letters set out by Miss Strickland in her life, was in a high degree invidious and uncomfortable.
At length, in April 1509, Henry VII. died, and his only surviving son, Henry, came to the Throne. At the date of his accession, Henry VIII. wanted ?. few months of the age of eighteen, at which age, by the law of England, he would attain his majority — Sovereigns being supposed to arrive at maturity three years earlier than their subjects.
It is certain that Henry might have repudiated the sort of engagement which -had subsisted between him and Katharine, had he been so minded, but he was not so minded, the fact being, as there is ample evidence to show, that at that time he had become extremely fond of the Spanish Princess. Accordingly, after the King had attained his majority, Henry and Katharine were married at Greenwich on the nth of June 1509, and crowned together, with much solemnity, on the 2 1st of the same month.
There has been much discussion as to the authenticity and the extent of the dispensation granted or alleged to have been granted by the Pope for this marriage.
I shall not enter into the details of this, and will merely refer my readers to well known books of history, and, in particular, to the " Life of Anne Boleyn " by Paul Friedmann, a Protestant Historian who, more particularly in a note (C) in the appendix, discusses the question exhaustively, Prima facie, however, and without going into details, it seems absurd
Marriage with Katharine of Ar agon. 289
to suppose that the King of England would have been allowed, at all events without strong censure and reprobation, to marry his brother's widow with the full knowledge of her father, Ferdinand of Aragon (one of the most astute and powerful of European Sovereigns), of the Pope, and of all the European Courts, unless everyone concerned, including the members of his own council and the Bishops of England, had been well satisfied that a proper dispensation had been obtained, and that the marriage from which it was hoped that the future Kings of England would descend was valid both legally and morally. It is clear that at a subsequent date when, I think, it may be taken as certain that the Roman authorities would have been glad if it had been possible to find any flaw in the marriage, they could not, or at all events did not, do so.
At the date of their marriage Henry was just eighteen, and Katharine between twenty-three and twenty-four. It is the fashion at present, even among those writers who re- cognize the rectitude of her conduct, to represent Katharine as a gloomy and narrow-minded bigot, whose religion was a nuisance, and with whom no lively young man could have been expected to live happily ; and, further, to speak of her as a plain if not an ugly woman I am at a loss to conceive on what grounds these suggestions are made. No doubt she was gloomy enough in her later years, as indeed she had reason to be, and that her enemies regarded her as narrow-minded, is of course. Everyone is narrow-minded who refuses on conscientious grounds to do what he or she is wished to do ! That she was profoundly and fervently religious her admirers have never wished to deny, but I cannot see how any impartial person reading any contemporary account of her life, of her person, or of her relations with the King in the earlier years of her married life, can fail to see that she was not only a good, but a pleasing and gracious woman, with great affection for her husband, and who, if she was not an acknowledged beauty, as were some of Henry's later wives, at least possessed the full average of personal advantages.
It is said that she had no " tact," and by way of contrast, T
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the last of King Henry's Queens, Katharine Parr, is specially commended for her possession of that quality. The instances given, however, of Katharine Parr's "tact" seem to me to show no more than that she habitually indulged the King with gross and fulsome flattery. If this was the kind of "tact" which was required in Henry VIII.'s wives, Katharine of Aragon had it not ; but of cheerful obedience in all things lawful, and of kindly sympathy in all innocent pleasures and in all troubles, I, for one, can see no lack in any account I have ever read of Katharine's conduct as a wife.
From the date of Katharine's marriage to Henry VIII. (1509) until the year 1527, a period of eighteen years, not- withstanding some lapses on the part of the King from conjugal fidelity, all seemed to go well between the Royal pair ; and during the earlier part of this time at any rate Katharine retained a large measure of her husband's regard ; and, strange to say, she appears always to have felt for him a sincere personal affection. The Queen presided over the Court with dignity, and a larger amount of decorum than was probably desired by the King or the courtiers, who were at that time sufficiently dissolute. Nevertheless, there is evi- dence to show that she could, and did, upon occasions take her part with spirit and good humour in the sports and " frolics" in which the King indulged, and which at the present time strike some of us, and which not impossibly even then, struck the Spanish Queen, as rather childish and a little vulgar.
In 1512 King Henry was on the Continent engaged in his not very brilliant or successful invasion of France ; and while he was away Katharine was Regent of the Kingdom, a position in which, I believe, by general consent, she is allowed to have behaved at least creditably. It was during this period that the Scotch took advantage of the unprotected condition of England to invade that country. This led to the great Battle of Flodden Field which was won by the English, and at which James IV. of Scotland, King Henry's brother- in-law, was killed. One of the instances of Katharine's want
Katharine of A r agon. 291
of "tact," which is gravely alleged against her, is that King Henry, having won the Battle of the Spurs, an exploit of which, even supposing that his personal share in it was as great as he himself suggested (which was in fact not generally supposed), he boasted somewhat inordinately. After this Battle he sent the Duke of Longueville as a prisoner to England, and by way of answer Katharine sent back to him three of the Scotch prisoners, with a message " that it was no great thing for a man to take another man prisoner, but that here were three men taken prisoners by a woman." As Katharine was not present at the Battle of Flodden, and could not, and did not, pretend that she had any personal hand in taking the prisoners in question, I should have thought it obvious that this was a piece of sufficiently innocent conjugal " chaff," which any man with an ounce of good humour in his composition would have laughed at. King Henry, however, did not like chaff.
During the eighteen years in question, Katharine became the mother of, some say three and some say five children. In 1511 she had a son named Henry, who lived for six weeks, and in i$i6 she gave birth to a daughter, Mary, who after- wards became Queen of England. The discrepancies of statement as to her other children arise from the fact that it is uncertain whether they, or at least two of them, were born alive or died immediately after their birth. Such of them as were born alive certainly died immediately.
King Henry had a passionate, and, it must be admitted, a not unreasonable desire to have a son; and in 1527, when Katharine was forty -two, all prospects of a son by her had become impossible. At this date King Henry suddenly became a victim to religious scruples as to the lawfulness of living with a woman who had been his brother's wife ; and, by a strange coincidence about the same time, he became the victim of a tender passion for Anne Boleyn, a lady of his wife's Court.
His scruples and his passion increased together, and he •conceived the idea of divorce from Katharine, to which it was
292 History of the Royal Family of England.
supposed the Queen might probably consent She was a very religious woman, and it was thought she might like to go into a convent, as had done Joanna of France, the first wife of Louis XII., King of France, not many years before under somewhat similar circumstances. Failing this, Professor Froude suggests that she might reasonably have found it an agreeable and pleasant change to return to Spain, her native country, carrying with her the blessings and gratitude of the English nation.
I have already said that the Catholic Church has always denied the possibility of dissolving a marriage once legally contracted ; but I have also said that in the Middle Ages and down to the time of the Tudors it was remarkably easy, owing to the number and vagueness of the canonical bars to marriage, to get it declared that any marriage between two persons of sufficient rank and influence had not been validly contracted. This, however, pre-supposed that both parties to the marriage to be dissolved wished it to be dissolved ; or, at all events, that one of them so wished, and that the other was unwilling or unable to defend himself or herself in the Ecclesiastical Courts. Therefore, I have little doubt that if Katharine had consented to the divorce on the ground of some canonical obstacle admitted by the parties, and into the details of which no one would have looked too carefully, the divorce or, more strictly speaking, a declaration that the marriage had been invalid, might have been obtained. More- over, I am bound to add that, as far as I can see, all the Ecclesiastical Authorities from the Pope downwards would have been very glad if the Queen had consented, and had, so to speak, allowed the divorce to go sub silentio. They probably foresaw, with tolerable accuracy, the consequences of her refusal, and would gladly have winked at any evasion of the law which would have averted such consequences. I am not prepared to blame or defend their conduct in this particular ; and I can only point out that no Catholic has ever suggested that any Pope, still less any minor Ecclesiastic, is impeccable, and that in claiming infallibility for the Popes
The Divorce. 293
such claim is confined to their public declarations of principle made Ex Cathedra and to the whole Church, and does not extend to the private and personal opinions and conduct of the Popes. Nor does it extend even to their conduct as Judges in the Catholic Church in particular cases, so long as their judgments turn upon the particular facts before them (as to which they are liable to be mistaken), and do not amount to such public declarations of principle as aforesaid.
Katharine, however, was unreasonable enough to refuse her consent to any divorce, and powerful enough to make her voice heard throughout Europe. She said, in effect, and continued to say on every possible occasion, that she was the lawful wife of the King of England, and that her daughter was lawfully begotten ; and that she would do and submit to nothing which would affect her own or her daughter's position. She appealed to the Pope, and the Pope was forced to hear her appeal. There was not in fact, or at all events the Catholic Ecclesiastical lawyers could not find, any defect in the marriage, and, therefore, the question to be decided be- came one, not of fact but of principle — could or could not a lawful marriage be dissolved ? Placed in that position the Pope Clement XII. had no alternative but to declare that it could not. He did so declare. Henry at once denied the Supremacy of the Pope, and declared himself head of the Church in England, and thus began the Reformation destined so greatly to affect the fortunes of England and of all English- men through succeeding generations.
To those who may object that Katharine's conduct was selfish, it may be answered that soon after this, and to some extent in consequence of this question, the whole of the marriage laws were revised and many of the Ecclesiastical bars to matrimony were abolished, and it was so provided that if in some cases it is more difficult to get married, it is, in Catholic countries, almost, if not quite, impossible once married to get unmarried. Henceforward in Catholic countries we hear no more of the " divorces " as sanctioned by the Catholic Church which had previously been so great a
294 History of the Royal Family of England.
scandal ; and thus Katharine was the instrument of establish- ing, or at all events of manifesting, a principle, namely that of the indissolubility of marriage which, whether my readers approve it or not, is a principle of great importance, and to that principle she may fairly be said to have been a martyr.
In the contest Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's celebrated minister, fell from power under circumstances too well known to require repetition ; and in inaugurating the new departure in religion Henry acted mainly under the advice of those two great lights of the Reformation, Cranmer, afterwards Arch- bishop of Canterbury, and Cromwell, afterwards Earl of Essex. The one suggested that if the Pope would not dissolve the marriage with Katharine, which had now become hateful, the King might, if he rejected the Supremacy of the Pope, find Prelates more complaisant who would ; the other that if Henry became, so to speak, head of his own Church, he might plunder the monasteries to his heart's content. These promises were too alluring to be resisted, and Henry in yielding to temptation gained at any rate the promised rewards. Cranmer became Archbishop, and married and divorced the King just as he was bid, and Cromwell plundered the monasteries with an energy and zeal that could not be exceeded. The subsequent fate of these two persons is pretty generally known.
Henry VIII., though he rejected the Supremacy of the Pope, by no means rejected the rest of the Catholic doctrines. On the contrary he was, or considered himself to be, some- thing of a Theologian. He had at an earlier period written, or probably had caused to be written for him, a book in defence of the Pope, which had gained him some credit, and for which the Pope had complimented him with the title of " Defender of the Faith " — a title in which he took no little pride, and which, somewhat absurdly, seeing how it was derived, his successors have ever since borne. After he had become " Head of the Church " he proceeded to '- defend the Faith " after his own peculiar fashion ; and thus while, on the one hand, he was beheading those who affirmed the
The Divorce. 295
Supremacy of the Pope, on the other he was burning those who denied the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The total number of persons of both sexes, of all ages, and of all ranks whom on one pretence or another he did put to death, probably no one knows, but it was certainly appalling.
To trace the events between the first proposal for the divorce in 1527 and the death of Katharine on the 6th January 1536 would be very tedious. It is sufficient to say (i) that in December 1527 the Pope, at Henry's request, granted a commission to the Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey to "try the case for divorce in England ; (2) that Campeggio arrived in England in October 1528, and that after many delays, in the course of which every possible pressure to submit was brought to bear upon the Queen, the Cardinals opened their Court in June 1529; (3) that Katharine appeared before them, denied their jurisdiction, and formally appealed to Rome; (4) that in July 1529 the Pope revoked the commission, and Campeggio broke up the Court ; (5) that in the October of that year, 1529, Campeggio left England and Wolsey was disgraced ; (6) that in March 1530 the Pope formally forbade the King to marry again until the cause was tried in Rome ; (7) that in August 1531 the Queen was dis- missed from the Court; (8) that early in 1533, and probably on the 25th January in that year, Henry privately married Anne Boleyn ; (9) that in March 1533 Cranmer was conse- crated Archbishop of Canterbury under Bulls from the Pope ; (10) that in the following May (1533) Cranmer took upon himself to declare that the marriage with Katharine was null, and that the marriage with Anne had been valid; (u)that in July 1533 the Pope annulled the proceedings of Cranmer, and in August formally censured Henry, Anne, and Cranmer ; (12) that in November 1533 the Pope rejected an appeal by Henry in which he had asked that a general Council might be summoned to consider the question; (13) that in March 1534 the Acts of Parliament were passed declaring the marriage between Henry and Katharine invalid, and their daughter illegitimate ; (14) that in November of that year,
296 History of the Royal Family of England.
1534, Henry was declared in Parliament Head of the Church ; and (15) that in 1535 Henry was excommunicated by Pope Paul III.
I have said that Katharine was not dismissed from the Court till August 1531, but her position there as Queen, between the years 1527 and 1531, was one of misery and constant indignity ; and it may be remarked that Professor Froude makes it a distinct grievance against her that she bore her husband's neglect and insults with apparent calmness and impassibility !
From August 1531 till the 7th January 1536 when she died, her life was one of practical imprisonment, she being deprived of the society of her daughter, and of, to a large extent, intercouse with her friends. She was surrounded by spies, and occasionally insulted by the visits of her enemies, and her places of residence were chosen for her, and chosen, so it has been said, with an express view to their unhealthiness.
After Cranmer's sentence of divorce Katherine was no longer styled Queen, but " Princess Dowager of Wales," and an income was assigned to her in the latter capacity, but this income was irregularly paid and, in part, withheld altogether, so that she and her household were often reduced to extreme straits of poverty.
Friedmann in his life of Anne Boleyn, before referred to, says that she was poisoned at the instigation of Anne Boleyn, and the same suggestion is made by other writers, but for the grounds for this assertion, which I must admit seems to me very probable, I must refer my readers to Friedmann's own book. Katharine died at Kimbolton Castle, and is buried in the Abbey Church in Peterborough. She was turned fifty when she died.
It has been said that there was only one person whom Henry VIII. thoroughly respected, and of whom he was in a measure afraid, and that this person was his first wife, Katharine of Aragon. I think this is probably true, and, at all events, it is clear that in her own times, in England and
Katharine of A r agon. 297
on the Continent, by her enemies and even by the Reformers themselves, she was regarded and spoken of with uniform respect. Shakespeare who wrote in the reign of James I. with all the desire he shows to compliment that King's predecessor, Queen Elizabeth (as witness the fifth Act of " Henry VIII."), in the same play represents Queen Katharine in such a manner that I doubt if in all the range of his female characters there is to be found one more noble, more touching, or more beautiful. I am aware that some com- mentators deny that Shakespeare was the author of this play, but I think that in the character of Katharine it bears conclusive internal evidence that it was, in part at any rate, from the " Master's " hands.
It has remained for modern writers, in their zeal for their hero, Henry VIII., to attack and revile an unhappy Queen, whose character had hitherto been respected even by those Protestant writers in the intervening centuries of keen religious controversy who most disliked the religion and principles which she so consistently professed. (See as to the proceedings relative to the Divorce " Trials of Five Queens " by B. Storey Deane.)
CHAPTER XVIII.
ANNE BOLEYN. — JANE SEYMOUR. — ANNE OF CLEVES.
HENRY V I II. 's second Queen was Anne Boleyn, a lady around whose name the keenest discussion has always raged. Her great-grandfather, Geoffrey Boleyn, was a merchant in the City of London, who had held the office of Lord Mayor in 1457, and had amassed considerable wealth. Her grandfather, Sir William Boleyn, had bought land, and become a country gentleman ; and her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire (a younger son of Sir William), had come to Court, and had there, by the influence of his wife's relations, and by considerable adroitness and pliability on his own part, risen to a position of some influence, even before his daughter, Anne, had come to the front. Sir Thomas Boleyn married Lady Elizabeth Howard, second daughter of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk of his family. Therefore Anne was, though it must be admitted in a very remote degree, descended from Thomas, Earl of Norfolk, son of King Edward I, (see Tables III. and XIII.)
Sir William and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn had three children, Anne, George, Viscount Rochford (his father's second title), and Mary, afterwards Lady Carey.
The date of Anne's birth is disputed. Camden fixes it in 1507. Miss Strickland in 1501 or 1502, and Friedmann in 1503, and, having regard to the known events of her life, I do not see how it could possibly have been later than the last mentioned date. Assuming her to have been born in 1503, she must have been over twenty-nine at the date of her marriage with Henry (January 25th 1533), and thirty-three when she was executed, May ipth, 1536.
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3OO History of the Royal Family of England.
In 1514, when in any case she must have been very young (and, if born in 1 507, she would have been only seven), Anne went to France in the character of Maid of Honour to Queen Mary, sister of Henry VIII., and third wife of Louis XII. of France. On the death of King Louis a few months later Mary returned to England, but Anne stayed on in France in the service, first of Queen Claude, wife of Francis I., and afterwards of that Prince's sister, Margaret, afterwards Queen of Navarre. She continued in France till about the year 1521, when she returned to England. In 1523, however, she was again in France in the service of one of the French Princesses, but she finally came back to England in 1527, being then about twenty-four.
Three things have been said as to the relations between King Henry and the Boleyn family, (i) That Lady Eliza- beth Boleyn, Anne's mother, had been the mistress of Henry VIII.; (2) that Anne was herself the daughter of Henry VIII.; and (3) that her sister, Mary, was for some years that King's mistress. For the first statement I can see little reliable evidence, and it is very improbable — the second statement seems to me impossible — for even in 1507, Henry would have been only sixteen ; but the third statement is as well proved as any fact in -history. The question is discussed in detail in one of the notes to Friedmann's book, and by Doctor Lingard, and to those writers I refer my readers. It is, however, certain that the connection with Mary Boleyn was practically over before that with Anne commenced.
It is certain that Anne attracted Henry's notice in, or soon after, 1521, but at that time there is no doubt that she dis- couraged the King's attentions, and it is said that she returned to France to avoid them. For this various reasons have been assigned, one being that she had formed a legiti- mate attachment to Henry Percy, eldest son of the fifth Earl of Northumberland of that name, who afterwards became himself sixth Earl. It is certain that Henry VIII. was very jealous of this young man, and employed Cardinal Wolsey to interfere to break off what was, at any rate, a strong flirta-
Anne Boleyn. 301
tion between him and Anne, and that in 1523, in consequence of the Cardinal's interference, and in compliance with the wishes of his father, Percy married a lady of the Talbot family. It is also certain that the most ostensible ground upon which the King afterwards had his marriage with Anne declared void, was that she had been pre-contracted to Percy ; but no actual evidence of any such pre-contract as would have invali- dated Anne's subsequent marriage with anyone, exists.
I think, however, that without any undue compliment to Anne it may well be supposed that, apart altogether from Percy, she had no particular desire to become the King's mistress. King Henry was not famous for liberality in his passing love affairs. Anne was in too good a position to allow herself to be made a mere plaything, and it is improbable that the idea of her supplanting Queen Katharine as the King's wife had ever occurred to anyone till she returned to England in 1527.
When this idea did occur to her, however, and until she actually married the King in January 1533, she pursued it with avidity, and during the intervening years she occupied a position which was to the last degree anomalous and invidious. She was a constant resident at Court, the com- panion of the King at all times and seasons, and the recipient from him of violent love letters ; and she accepted from the King a large maintenance, was created Marchioness of Pembroke, and generally occupied a position which, to the outside world at any rate, differed little from that of an avowed mistress. It is, however, said by her admirers that during all those years she preserved her virtue ; and as she was a very clever woman in her way, I think it probable that she did, until, at any rate, she felt certain that she would ultimately gain her end by becoming Queen.
The date of the King's private marriage to Anne is uncertain, but it is fixed by Friedmann and Miss Strickland as the 25th January 1533, on the authority of a letter from Cranmer himself, who, if anyone, may be supposed to have known all about the marriage. Cranmer in a letter to
3O2 History of the Royal Family of England.
Hawkins says that it took place " about St. Paul's day," which was the 25th of January. There is, moreover, a strong body of contemporary evidence, including the testimony of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was examined at Anne's subsequent trial, giving the 25th of January 1533 as the actual date ; and as far as I am aware, there is no reliable evidence for any other date. The place of the marriage is said to have been Brickling Hall in Norfolk.
Cranmer was not yet Archbishop, and as the Supremacy of Rome was still acknowledged, he could not be consecrated till the receipt of Bulls from the Pope confirming his appoint- ment. These were not received till March 26th, and Cranmer was consecrated four days later. Anne appeared publicly at Court as Henry's wife on the I2th of April, and on the 23rd of May Cranmer granted the divorce from Katharine. On the ist of June Anne was crowned Queen with great magnifi- cence, and on the 7th of September, about seventh months and a half after the marriage, Anne gave birth to her daughter afterwards Queen Elizabeth.
It is, of course, possible to suppose that Elizabeth was born prematurely, but I conjecture that Henry and Anne would have been glad to defer their marriage till after Cranmer's sentence had been pronounced, and that the marriage took place when it did because Anne was already pregnant, and in order that the forthcoming child might not too obviously, appear to the world as having been begotten before marriage.
Katharine died on the 7th January 1536, and all writers agree that on that occasion Anne indulged in an exhibition of triumph which was universally considered to be indecent. Her triumph, however, was shortlived, for on the 3Oth of the same month, January, she was prematurely delivered of a still- born son, a misfortune which is said to have arisen from the agitation produced by her having surprised King Henry engaged in a, to say the least, very pronounced flirtation with Jane Seymour. The King was deeply disappointed, and relieved his feelings by bouncing into her room and abusing her in very strong language. From that moment her fate
•X
Anne Bo Ley n. 303
was sealed. On the 2nd May following (1536) Anne was arrested and sent to the Tower, and accused of committing adultery with five persons, her own brother, George, Viscount Rochford, three gentlemen of her household named respec- tively, Norris, Weston, and Brereton, and a musician of inferior position named Smeaton. Lord Rochford was accused on the evidence of his own wife, an infamous and malignant woman, who was afterwards executed with Katharine Howard, and who before her death confessed that the charge was unfounded. Smeaton confessed, but he did so under horrid tortures, and therefore, in my opinion, not the slightest weight is to be attached to his words. The others all strenuously asserted their innocence, and I believe the whole charge was trumped up and based on no shadow of real proof, beyond the fact that Anne appears to have lived with her household (most of whom she had probably known in the days when she was herself entirely in their own position in life) on terms of somewhat unusual, and under the circum- stances, indiscreet familiarity. (See as to Anne Boleyn's Trial, " Trials of Five Queens," by B. Storey Deane.)
The accused were all condemned to death after what can only by courtesy be called a trial. Smeaton was hanged, Rochford and the three gentlemen were beheaded, and Anne herself was beheaded on the ipth May (seventeen days after the original charge had been made) on Tower Hill. She was buried in the Tower, but it is supposed that her body was afterwards removed by her friends, and where it rests now is not certain.
One would have supposed that Henry would have been satisfied with sending Anne to death, and would have left to Elizabeth, his child by her, such claims to legitimacy as she might possess. It was, however, not so. Cranmer was ordered to declare the marriage void from the beginning, and Elizabeth a bastard. He obediently did so on the day before Anne's execution, and his decrees were subsequently con- firmed by Act of Parliament. The grounds for Cranmer's decision are uncertain. It is alleged that it was based on the
304 History of the Royal Family of England.
pre-contract between Anne and Percy above referred to ; and it seems certain that such pre-contract was one of the grounds, but in the opinion of Dr. Lingard and other writers this pretext was too utterly flimsy to be relied on by any one, and the real ground on which Cranmer proceeded was the con- nection which had existed between Henry and Mary Boleyn ; and which, if it existed, would have been unquestionably a canonical bar to a marriage between Henry and Mary's sister. It is significant that the King, in applying to the Pope for the divorce from Katharine, also applied for a dispensation to marry Anne, which was to be couched in terms sufficiently wide to cover this canonical obstacle.
Anne Boleyn has found many enthusiastic admirers. Miss Strickland in her " Life of Anne of Bohemia " speaks of Anne Boleyn as one of the " nursing mothers of the Reforma- tion," but except indirectly and as having, for personal reasons, brought about the divorce of Katharine, and thus the Reformation, it does not appear that she took any very great interest in that event. Miss Strickland, moreover, in the opening sentence of Anne Boleyn's own life, speaks of the " peculiar nobility " of Anne's character ; but as in the next sentence she compares her with the Empress Poppaea, and as her " Life " is crowded with references of Anne's " indelicacy," "vanity," and "love of gossip," and as the writer wholly condemns her conduct in regard to Katharine of Aragon, the gifted authoress appears to me to be not a little inconsistent.
The truth appears to me to have been that Anne was a pretty, lively young woman, with, as every one says, an exquisite taste in dress, and unusual charm of manner, and with a talent, peculiarly valuable in a woman having to do with Henry VIII., of keeping her company amused and cheerful. I do not suppose that she was naturally bad hearted, but that she was vain, frivolous, and fond of admira- tion is sufficiently apparent. She was brought up in the worst possible school — the Court of France, under Francis I. — she was surrounded by men of dissolute manners and no principles, and once embarked in the course of intrigue with
Anne Boleyn. 305
Henry VIII., there was probably no possibility of turning back with safety ; and thus she was forced on in her down- ward course, with an impetus which no one, not heroic, could have withstood.
Her mother had died when she was a child. Her father, who was created Viscount Rochford in 1525 and Earl of Wiltshire in 1529, was one of the most pliant and contempt- ible of Henry's creatures, and is even said to have been present at his daughter's trial, though this is not certain. He at all events succeeded in retaining the King's favour, and died a natural death in 1539. Anne's only brother was executed with her, and left no issue. Her sister Mary married William Carey, and left a son named Henry who, being first cousin to Queen Elizabeth, was created Baron Hunsdon by that Queen. He seems to have been a respectable man, and was certainly a distinguished soldier, and as throughout his life he chiefly confined himself to his military duties, the Queen, though she avoided as far as possible recognising the connection, nevertheless regarded him with considerable favour. His family and title became extinct in 1765.
Katharine and Anne were dead, and King Henry, who had not quite completed his forty-fifth year, was again a widower, but he did not long enjoy his liberty. Anne perished on the I9th May 1536, and within twenty-four hours, on the 20th May, Henry married Jane Seymour, so that, as Miss Strickland remarks, the preparations for Jane's wedding and for Anne's execution were going on together. Henry and Jane were married privately at Wolf Hall in Wiltshire, and within a few days came to London, where Jane was introduced as Queen, but, though preparations for her Coronation were being made at the date of her death, she was never actually crowned.
Very little is known about Jane Seymour. Her father was Sir John Seymour, who came of a respectable Wiltshire family. Her mother, whose name was Wentworth, was said to have been remotely descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and on this account King Henry, whose conscience u
306 History of the Royal Family of England.
was almost supernaturally sensitive on certain points, caused Cranmer to grant a dispensation for himself and Jane removing any impediment there might be by reason of consanguinity. Miss Strickland suggests that, by way of make weight to her deceased Royal ancestors, Jane had certain living relatives who were not very desirable kindred for a Queen, but her only relatives who became at all prominent were her brothers, Edward and Thomas, to whom I shall have occasion to refer in a later chapter.
Jane's parents had a large family of eight, or as some say ten children, of whom it is generally said that Jane was the eldest. I can, however, hardly believe this, for in " Doyle's Official Baronage " her brother Edward is stated to have been born about 1 500 ; and he could hardly have been born much later, as he was knighted in 1523 ; but if Jane was older than this gentleman, this would make her at least thirty-six at the date of her marriage, an age which, though King Henry's taste was certainly for somewhat mature beauty, seems rather advanced for his new lady love.
Of Jane's previous career we know little, but it is supposed that like Anne Boleyn she was at one time in France ; and she certainly held the position of " Maid of Honour " to Queen Anne prior to her own promotion.
On the 1 2th of October 1537 Jane gave birth to a son, afterwards Edward VI., and she died about a fortnight after- wards. It is said that her death was indirectly caused by the fatigue and excitement of the ceremonial attending the Prince's baptism, in some of which she took part. She is buried at Windsor.
It is to be presumed that Queen Jane was of some personal attractions, but her portraits are not lovely. That she was not a person of very prudish manners, at all events before her marriage, is to be deduced from the fact of her having been found sitting on the King's knee in Anne's lifetime ; and that she was not of a very sensitive nature may be inferred from her having consented to marry the King before the mangled corpse of her predecessor could well have
Anne of Cleves. 307
been buried. These are the only two incidents in her life, affecting her personal character, which have been handed down to us.
Henry VIII. is said to have been very fond of Jane Seymour, but in a letter to Francis I. announcing her death he is careful to explain that his joy for the birth of a son greatly exceeds his grief for the death of the Queen ; and certainly within a month he was actively on the lookout for her successor. Francis had civilly told him " that there was not a damsel of any degree in his dominions who should not be at his (Henry's) disposal." Henry took this literally, and promptly demanded that an assortment of the French ladies should be sent to Calais for his inspection, a proposal which, it is needless to say, was politely but firmly refused. There- upon commenced a series of negotiations for the hands of various ladies of rank, the details of which are sufficiently amusing, but which I cannot now go into. It was, however, either then or after the execution of Katharine Howard that one lady, whom Henry proposed to honour, is said to have answered that she would be happy to marry him if she had two necks ! The story, if not true, is at least " ben trovato."
At length, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, found a lady who he thought would be a suitable bride. This was Anne, daughter of John III., Duke of Cleves, who was a minor German Prince. Cleves is a small town in Germany, but the capital of Duke John's dominions was in fact Dusseldorf. John himself was an ardent Reformer, and his daughter had been educated on strict Lutheran principles, and Cromwell probably thought the English had had enough of their native " Maids of Honour," and that a Princess of rank and correct Protestant principles would be an agreeable change. At all events he and a certain Dr. Barnes, one of the Reforming Clergy, were very zealous in bringing about a marriage with this Princess.
The King was very particular about the charms of his future bride, and as photography had not been invented, it was necessary to send a portrait taken by hand. The painter
308 History of the Royal Family of England.
employed was Holbein, and the portrait sent, which exists, represents a very pleasing woman. Unfortunately, however, Court painters are apt to be flatterers, and Holbein did not think it necessary to show, and no one thought it necessary to mention, that the lady was deeply pitted with marks of the smallpox. Henry was delighted with the picture and the accounts given by his agents, and the treaty was signed after some delay, owing to the death of the Duke John and the acces- sion to the Duchy of his son William, who was Anne's brother.
On the 27th of December 1539 Anne, who was then twenty-three, having been born in 1516, landed in England with a large retinue of German nobles. A few days later Henry met her at Rochester, and found a plain, rather dull, and extremely frightened woman awaiting him. He had not the manners to conceal his disappointment, and he left her immediately, and having summoned his Council and abused them all round, he desired them to find means to break the contract. This, however, was not easy to do. It was indeed suggested by Henry himself that the lady had been, or might have been, pre-contracted to the Duke of Lorraine, but the German Ambassadors offered to adduce proofs to the contrary, and to await the arrival of such proofs in prison ; and as there was in fact no doubt that such proofs did exist, nothing practical could be made of this suggestion. Finally, the King being reminded that not only the lady's brother but the other Protestant Princes on the Continent might resent it if he sent her back, he sullenly consented to let the marriage go on. It may, however, be mentioned that he took the earliest possible opportunity of punishing the promoters of the marriage, and that within a very few months Cromwell was executed, and Barnes burnt as a heretic.
Owing to the force of circumstances, Henry's last two marriages had been private, but on this occasion he com- pensated himself for the plainness of the bride by causing his marriage to be celebrated by Cranmer with the utmost magnificence. The date of the marriage was the 3rd of January 1540.
Anne of Cleves. 309
In the following June the new Queen, shewing no signs of becoming a mother, and Henry having seen another lady, Anne was sent to Richmond, and on the 6th of July 1540 certain obedient Peers, headed by Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, presented a petition to the King to the effect that "they had doubts as to the validity of his marriage," and asking leave that the question might be investigated by Convocation. The King graciously consented. . The matter was " investigated." Convocation promptly and unanimously declared the marriage null and void, an Act was rushed through Parliament to the same effect, Cranmer pronounced a somewhat superfluous sentence of divorce, and the whole matter was settled before the middle of July.
The grounds on which the marriage was invalidated were (i) that Anne was pre-contracted to the Prince of Lorraine, and (2) " that the King having espoused her against his will had not given an inward consent to his marriage which he had never completed, and that the whole nation had an interest in the King's having more issue, which they saw he could never have by this Queen."
The farce of the whole proceedings is proved by the fact that Anne was not summoned to, and did not in fact appear either personally or by agent, throughout the proceedings of which, as far as appears, she heard for the first time after sentence of divorce was pronounced. This, however, is hardly to be wondered at, as the " Right Reverend Fathers in God in Convocation, assembled " must have had a difficulty in keeping their countenances while the question was dis- cussed, and the slightest touch of argument by the feeblest advocate would have crumbled the whole case to pieces.
Everyone knew that not only was there not the smallest evidence of any such pre-contract as suggested, but that there was evidence that it did not exist, which the Duke of Cleves would, on the smallest opening, have been extremely pleased to produce; and everyone knew that the King had been notoriously living with Anne for several months, and had been much annoyed at her showing no sign of becoming a mother.
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On the point of non-completion, certain witnesses were indeed examined, but they had, it would appear, been insufficiently instructed, for their evidence could have left no doubt on the mind of any reasonable man, if any such doubt ever existed, that the King and Queen had lived, for a time at any rate, on conjugal terms. The suggestion that Henry VIII. had been forced into marrying against his will was absurd on the face of it ; and, in fact, it was well known that he had deliberately though, no doubt, somewhat unwillingly, contracted the marriage. I should think that no one but Henry VIII. would have ventured to put forward such a plea as that a marriage could be invalidated on the ground that the husband having given his external, had witheld his internal consent, and that no judicial body in the world but one composed of Henry's creatures would have allowed such a plea to be even opened before them.
Personally, I am quite unable to understand how any sane person could or can doubt that Anne of Cleves was the lawful wife of Henry VIII., or that she remained his wife until his death.
It may be noted that Anne of Cleves was the third woman upon whom Cranmer had pronounced sentence of divorce from the King in the course of five years.
As soon as this little matter of the divorce had been ar- ranged to Henry's satisfaction, he thought proper to inform the Queen of what he had done, and, accordingly, his brother- in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, and others were sent to her to communicate the interesting information. The poor lady was in a great state of fright, and appears to have expected nothing less than an order for her immediate execu- tion ; but when she was, with difficulty, made to understand that she was only divorced, and that she was henceforward to be styled " His Majesty's sister," and to receive £3,000 a year, she showed such unmistakable relief and such remark- able willingness to sign and do anything that might invalidate her marriage, that the great Henry, when he heard of it, was not a little affronted. He naturally thought that any woman
Anne of Cleves. 3 1 1
must or, at all events, ought to be greatly distressed at the withdrawal of his favours.
Anne's friends were for the time somewhat alarmed lest her " want of tact " should bring about disastrous consequences ; but she seems to have been a thoroughly good-humoured and amiable person, and as a matter of fact she was allowed to remain unmolested till her death. She was not, however, allowed to leave England, as it was thought that unless she remained in the King's hands as a kind of hostage, her brother and other relatives might take measures to show their resentment at the way in which she had been treated. She accordingly passed the greater part of the remainder of her life at Richmond in Surrey (see " Domestic Memorials of the Royal Family," by Folkestone Williams, F.G.S.). She was on very friendly terms with her step-daughter Mary, and was present at Mary's Coronation, and she died at the age of forty- one on the 1 5th of July 1557, ten years after her husband's death. She is buried in Westminster Abbey.
It is certain that before her death Anne of Cleves had become a Catholic, though, when she did so, is not known.
CHAPTER XIX.
KATHARINE HOWARD.— KATHARINE PARR.
I have said that during the short period during which Anne of Cleves was acknowledged Queen of England, King Henry had seen another lady whom he liked. This was Katharine Howard, a daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, who was a son of the second Duke of Norfolk of that family. Katharine Howard was first cousin to Ann Boleyn, Lord Edmund Howard and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (Anne's mother) having been brother and sister. (See Table XIII.)
The acquaintances between Henry and Katharine is said to have commenced at the house, and under the auspices of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and they were privately married, some say before and some immediately after the divorce from Anne of Cleves, in July 1540; and, at all events, Katharine was acknowledged as Queen in August of that year. The date of her birth is uncertain, but at the date of the marriage she cannot possibly have been more than nineteen, and was probably less, and she is described as having been very pretty, though extremely small in person. For fourteen months, that is to say from August 1540 till October 1541, Katharine enjoyed the King's favour, but she had many enemies, political rather than personal, who were anxious for her downfall. The country at that time was divided into two great camps, Catholic and Protestant, between whom Henry appeared to waver (for, though he had rejected the Supremacy of the Pope, he still maintained, as has been mentioned, other Catholic doctrines), and each party hoped to influence him in its favour.
The Protestants had been greatly delighted with his
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Katharine Howard. 313
marriage with the Lutheran Princess Anne, and though no one dared to say much, they had been a good deal shocked at the King's high and mighty method of putting her aside. His new wife was a Catholic, and the Catholic party had some expectation of relief through the influence, which all parties seem to have thought, as I believe, erroneously, the young lady was acquiring. Consequently, there were many persons who conceived it to be to their interest to disgrace Katharine in her husband's eyes ; and, unhappily there was ample material for so doing.
Katharine's mother had died when she was a child, and her father had been much engaged in foreign employments, and had died before her acquaintance with King Henry. Under these circumstances Katharine had been placed at a very early age in charge of Agnes Tylney, Duchess Dowager of Norfolk, who was her father's stepmother. This person appears to have been a somewhat truculent and selfish woman, who regarded her young relative as an unwelcome dependant, and the girl's education was altogether neglected, so much so that it is said that she did not even know how1 to write. She was left almost entirely in the charge of the Duchess's servants, who would seem to have been as dissolute a lot as were ever the retainers in a great and ill-managed household.
It is said by Miss Strickland and other writers that in her earliest youth Katharine was seduced by a servant named Manox, and that she subsequently became, though, of course, not openly, the mistress of a man in a somewhat better posi- tion, named Derham ; and with regard to this last connection there is strong evidence that there was between Derham and Katharine such a contract of marriage as was sufficient in those days to invalidate any subsequent marriage by either party.
The allegations as to Katharine's actual misconduct have been disputed, but it seems to me clear that, though no doubt she was excusable on account of her youth and evil surround- ings, she was at least guilty of much levity and indecorum of conduct before her marriage. At all events her proceedings
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at the Duchess of Norfolk's house were known to certain persons who, when she was suddenly raised from the position of a dependent and very junior member of a noble family to that of Queen, laid their account to profit by her advancement, and thus she became the victim of something like a regular system of blackmail. Manox, Derham, and others of her former companions, both male and female, were received by her, probably under some sort of coercion, into her household, and she was forced to enter into communications, personally and otherwise, with people with whom, in her new position, she ought not to have maintained acquaintance.
In these matters she required a confidant, and this she found in the infamous Lady Rochford, widow of Anne Boleyn's brother, who was one of her principal ladies.
It was not long before whatever there was to be known, was known to the Queen's enemies, who lost no time in telling the story, probably much exaggerated to the King. Henry was, of course, greatly infuriated, and he at once caused Katharine to be imprisoned at Hampton Court, and there to be bullied and interrogated by his Council. He also caused some of her relatives, including the old Duchess of Norfolk, and many of her servants to be arrested, questioned, and threatened, and some of the latter at any rate to be severely tortured.
Evidence so taken must be regarded with suspicion, but the result of the King's investigations as appearing in the State papers seems to be this. Much levity before and some imprudence after marriage was proved, and indeed admitted ; but there was no sort of evidence of actual misconduct after marriage, and not only the Queen but all the persons impli- cated (the latter under torture), positively and strenuously maintained her conjugal fidelity.
King Henry and his Council were placed in a difficulty ; for even if Katharine had gone wrong in her youth, which, though probable, was not actually proved, it was no crime known to the law for a woman, even though she afterwards became Queen of England, to have been unchaste before
Katharine Howard. 315
marriage ; and no irregularity after marriage could in any way be established.
Derham and Culpepper (a cousin of the Queen's whom she appears to have treated with confidence, which, considering the youth and position of the persons, was certainly ill-advised) were the men fixed on as the most likely to have been her lovers, but they could by no means be induced to say anything against her conduct as a Queen, and she herself, though she was not only threatened with death if she did not confess, but led to believe that she would be pardoned if she did, constantly maintained her innocence. If under these circumstances Henry had had the smallest particle of mercy in his composition, he, who had been so sensitive to the mere suspicion of a pre- contract in the case of Anne of Cleves only a few months before, would have availed himself of what really does appear to have been a pre-contract in the case of Katharine Howard, to put the poor girl away without taking her life. For did not Cranmer stand ready to pronounce a divorce at any moment and on any possible ground ? This, however, would not have suited Professor Froude's magnanimous hero. Katharine was to die, and accordingly by an order in Council dated the nth of October 1541, and addressed to Cranmer and others, they were directed " by no means to mention the pre-contract lest it should serve her for an excuse to save her life." Katharine was condemned to die. She was allowed no trial and no opportunity of defending herself, and she was executed on the I5th of February 1542 on Tower Hill, and is buried in the Tower. At first she was frightened and made passionate entreaties for pity, but at the last she behaved with much dignity, and died, as far as appears, sincerely penitent for any errors she had committed, and humbly forgiving her enemies.
Derham and Culpepper had preceded her to the grave, having conducted themselves throughout their tortures like truthful and honourable gentlemen. With Katharine was beheaded Lady Rochford, and even she took the opportunity to retract the wicked accusations she had formerly made
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against her husband and Anne Boleyn, and she fully exonerated Katharine herself.
The old Duchess of Norfolk and others of Katherine's relations were condemned to death, but the King was forced to content himself with despoiling them of their goods, which he did with infinite gusto. There is reason to suppose that he was by no means satisfied with the small number of executions which followed Katherine's disgrace, and he appears to have been especially vindictive against the Duchess. Within a few months, however, the English people had seen the aged and universally respected Countess of Salisbury hacked to death, and the young girl, almost a child, upon whom Henry had lavished so many caresses in the presence of his admiring subjects, executed on the same scaffold ; and there were not wanting signs that the people, accustomed as they were to the sight of blood, had had almost enough of it. Consequently, Henry was persuaded to deprive himself of the pleasure of sending another old woman to the block, all the more as he was already contemplating a sixth marriage, and there was no saying how soon the block would be wanted for another Queen.
King Henry remained perforce a widower from the i5th of February 1541 until the I2th of July 1543, a period of something over two years.
After the death of Katharine Howard and with a view to future contingencies, he had caused an Act of Parliament to be passed making it high treason for any woman about to marry the King who had been unchaste, or any other person knowing of such want of chastity not to disclose the fact ; and there was something so appalling in the possibilities opened up by this enactment that not only the ladies of Henry's Court, however complaisant they might be, but their relatives and friends became as much alarmed at the King's attentions as they had formerly been anxious to receive them. Consequently it was a very difficult matter to find any English woman willing, upon any terms, to allow herself to be called the King's wife ; and after the episode of Anne of Cleves a foreign lady was, of course, out of the question. In 1 543,
Katharine Parr. 317
however, King Henry at length found an obliging widow who was willing to take her chance. This was Katharine, widow of John Neville, third Lord Latimer of his family, and who is better known by her maiden name of Katharine Parr.
For some reason which I cannot explain this person is uniformly treated with much indulgence by all writers, and with something like enthusiasm by many, and Miss Strickland in particular, not content with calling her "the nursing mother of the Reformation," can never mention her without calling her either the " learned," the " pious," the " amiable," the " devoted," or the " fair." Personally I must confess that she appears to me to have been one of the most odious and contemptible women of her time, though I must admit, that is saying a good deal.
My readers will probably have their own ideas as to the lawfulness or expediency of divorces, but I cannot understand how anyone, be he Catholic or Protestant, Pagan or Infidel, who believes in marriage as a recognised institution either Divine or civil, can doubt that Henry VIII. was really married to Anne of Cleves, or that his divorce from that lady was other than a mere farce, unjustified by any possible law ; and to speak plainly I do not myself regard either Katharine Howard or Katharine Parr, though for convenience sake I have referred to them as Henry's "wives," as having been in fact his wives, or as having occupied any better moral position than did the Duchesses of Cleveland and Portsmouth in the reign of Charles II.
Katharine Howard was a very young girl, ill-educated, ill- brought up, poor, dependent on ill-natured relatives, and surrounded by evil counsellors ; and she could hardly have refused the King without an effort, almost heroic, which? under the circumstances, could not be expected.
But Katharine Parr is by way of being a kind of heroine ; at least she is so regarded by her many admirers. She was a woman of thirty, who had already been left a widow twice, and who had had considerable experience in life. She was undoubtedly clever and highly educated, and she must have
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fully understood her own and Henry's position. Moreover, she is supposed to have been eminently " pious " (which poor Katharine Howard did not profess to be), and she was the friend of the better among the Reformers, and they, it is tolerably plain, disapproved the divorce from Anne of Cleves, and would willingly have seen that lady reinstated in her position as Henry's wife. When, therefore, we see Katharine Parr consenting, as far as appears under no sort of coercion, and with very little pressure, to become the sixth wife of a man like Henry, who, whatever may have been his personal advantages in his youth, had, as it is admitted, by that time become gross, hideous, and diseased, and whose moral character was what it was known to be, is it reasonable to ask anyone to suppose that she acted from any decent motive, or to regard her religion or her virtue as being worthy of serious respect? Nor do I see anything in her subsequent career reasonably calculated to remove the impression of disgust created by her first appearance as Henry's wife.
The date of Katharine's birth is uncertain, but it would appear to have been about 1513, and, therefore, she was about thirty when she married Henry VIII., at which date the King was fifty-two. Katharine's father, Sir Thomas Parr, who died in 1517, was a gentleman of an ancient and distinguished Cumberland family ; and all her relatives would appear to have been persons of some rank and position, so that in accepting Henry she had not the excuse of being like two of her predecessors, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, a mere hanger-on at the Court ; or like Katharine Howard, of being in a wholly dependent position. She had been twice married, first when she was very young to Edward, second Lord Borrough or de Burgh, who died in 1528, and secondly to the Lord Latimer above mentioned. Both her husbands were widowers and comparatively elderly men, and she had no child by either. She was, of course, educated as a Catholic, and her second husband, Lord Latimer, was a somewhat energetic Catholic, inasmuch as he was one of the leaders of the original "pilgrimage of grace" in 1536. He did not,
Katharine Parr. 319
however, appear in the subsequent insurrection in the follow- ing year, which Miss Strickland attributes to his wife's influence, but nevertheless he was, until his death, an object of suspicion to the Government. The date of his death is not certain, but it was between September 1542 (the date of his will) and March I543> when that will was proved, so that as Katharine was married to Henry VIII. in July 1543, the period of her second widowhood was not prolonged. It was, however, during this period that, according to the same writer, she changed her religious views, and from being a Catholic became an ardent Protestant.
There is nothing to show how or when the King became acquainted with her, and there is no evidence of any prolonged or ardent courtship, still less of any opposition on her part. The marriage was solemnized publicly, though not with any parade or splendour.
Katharine was the wife of Henry VIII. from July 1543 till he died in January 1547, a period of three years and six months, and it must certainly have been a period of martyr- dom. During a great part of that time Henry was a hopeless and helpless invalid, known to be dying. Though he was only fifty-six when he did die, he had grown so fat that he was unable to walk or stand, and had to be carried about in a chair, and his body and legs were covered with ulcers and other hideous sores. Under such circumstances any man would have been irritable. It is needless to say that King Henry was very irritable ; and, judging from his proceedings during the time in question, I should imagine that a sick tiger would have been, on the whole, safer and more agreeable company. Katharine, however, was a woman of patience and observation. She had presumably been accustomed to deal with elderly and sick men, and she was, as even her admirers admit, an adept in the art of administering adroit though very fulsome flattery, and thus, as a rule, she kept the King fairly well pleased with her.
It must not, however, be supposed that she escaped scot free. In 1546 Henry ordered her to be charged with heresy
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(she was too Protestant to suit his views), and he signed an order for her arrest and removal to the Tower. Had she been so arrested and removed her execution would probably have followed as a matter of course ; but Katharine heard of the proceedings and began to scream, and she screamed so long and so loudly that the King heard her, and being, as Dr Lingard suggests, "incommoded by the noise," admitted her to an interview. The original cause of difference was that she had argued with him on religious subjects, but she is reported to have said that she " had always held it preposterous for a woman to instruct her lord, and that if she had ever presumed to differ with him on religion, it was partly to obtain information for her own comfort regarding certain nice points on which she stood in doubt, and partly because she perceived that in talking he was better able to pass away the pain and weariness of his present infirmity."
King Henry was mollified and took her into favour, but it is supposed that when he died she was again in disgrace, for she was not present at his death, and she is not mentioned in his will.
Katharine, however, was left a rich woman. The King seems to have thought, and no doubt with reason, that he was likely to survive any woman he might marry ; and by the Act of Parliament passed on his marriage with Katharine Parr he had been careful to provide for his future issue by any " other Queens." Consequently, he could afford to be liberal in the matter of settlements and he had certainly been so.
Henry died in January 1547, and in the following May Katharine married Edward VI.'s uncle, Thomas Seymour, who at that King's Coronation had been created Lord Seymour of Sudeley. Miss Strickland suggests that Katharine was in love with Seymour before her marriage with Henry, and though I fail to see, as the writer seems to think, that this is a redeeming point in the Queen's character, it seems probable, for short as was the interval between the death of her third husband and her fourth marriage, she contrived to get her character somewhat compromised and herself a good deal
Katharine Parr. 321
talked about, by reason of nocturnal and other private inter- views with Lord Seymour.
It is well known that after the accession of Edward VI. there was a period of acute struggle between his maternal uncles, Edward and Thomas Seymour. The former had possessed himself of the supreme authority, and had been created Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of the Kingdom, but the latter, though in a comparatively unimportant position, was a man of great ability and address who had ingratiated himself into the favour of the young King, then in his ninth year, and was unsparing in his efforts to supersede Somerset in the position to which he had attained.
The brothers were greatly assisted in their schemes by their respective wives, and, in particular, Queen Katharine, who, during the life of her late husband had seen much of her young step-son, was supposed to have greatly won upon his affections. The ladies, moreover, were incited to further bitterness by an animated struggle for precedence, the Duchess of Somerset claiming as wife of the Lord Protector to take rank before Katharine, who, as Queen Dowager, thought she was entitled to the higher position.
So far as Katharine is concerned, these quarrels came to a speedy end, for she died in August 1 548 in giving birth to her first and only child, a daughter. Her last matrimonial venture can hardly have been a happy one, for Seymour was a man of immense ambition, and it is tolerably certain that he was by no means content with having secured the hand of the wealthy Queen Dowager, and was looking forward to a second and more illustrious match to be brought about by a divorce (divorces having become painfully familiar to the English mind), or as some say by murder.
He had two strings to his bow, the first being Jane Grey, who was regarded by the Protestant party as heiress to the Throne ; but, failing her, he looked to the Princess Elizabeth, the King's sister, who, then aged fourteen, had been, placed under the charge of her step-mother, Queen Katharine. There are writers of weight who do not hesitate to assert that x
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Seymour, unable to marry Elizabeth, deliberately set himself to compromise her character in such a manner as that she should be forced to marry him at a later date if he wished. At all events, Seymour and Elizabeth indulged in an intimacy and familiarities of, to say the least, a very indecorous kind, the particulars of which, as given on the subsequent examina- tion of Seymour before the Privy Council in remarkably plain and coarse language, do not give an exalted idea of the decency of manners, 1 will not say of the virtue, of the young Princess who was ultimately to become the " Maiden Queen'' of England. (See "The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth" by Frank Mumby.)
Seymour's ambition, however, was soon cut short, for in January 1549 his brother committed him to the Tower, and two months later, without public trial, but after prolonged examination by the Privy Council, he was beheaded, having survived his wife nine months.
It is to be presumed that Katharine Parr was a good- looking woman, or King Henry would not have married her ; but the portraits of her differ so radically that it is impossible to say what she was like.
Like most of the ladies of her time she had received a learned education, and after she became Queen she wrote a book called " The Lamentations of a Sinner," which is chiefly taken up with the errors of Popery. Miss Strickland admits that the book contains passages of " gross flattery " to King Henry, and some of the passages which she quotes seem to me •a little blasphemous ; but Miss Strickland says that these passages are redeemed by the "pure morality and Christian holiness " of the whole work, and I can say nothing to the contrary, as I have not read it. I confess that I do not know, though I am perhaps no very good judge, what were the " ser- vices to the Reformation " which earned for Katharine Parr the title of its " nursing mother," but no doubt she was a decided Protestant. She is said to have been kind to her step-children, and probably was so ; but in regard to Prince Edward, this was so obviously to her own interest that it can hardly be said
Katharine Parr, 323
to be a merit. Even in regard to the Princesses, I take it that Henry was a man who, though he was ready enough to browbeat and bully his own daughters, would not have taken it kindly if his childless wife had attempted to follow suit ; and that Katharine was clever enough to know that her only chance lay in being as civil as possible to every one who had, or might have, the slightest influence.
It is not known what became of Katharine Parr's only child, but she is supposed to have died young.
CHAPTER XX.
THE HOWARDS. — EDWARD VI. — EDWARD SEYMOUR, DUKE OF SOMERSET. — THE DUDLEYS. — THE PERCYS.
KING HENRY VIII. had four acknowledged children who survived infancy, Mary, by Katharine of Aragon, Elizabeth, by Anne Boleyn, Edward, by Jane Seymour, and a natural son named Henry, who received the surname of Fitzroy. This Henry was the child of Elizabeth, widow of Gilbert, Lord Talboys of Kyne, and was born in the year 15 19, about ten years after the marriage of King Henry and Katharine of Aragon, and many years before the question of the divorce was mooted. He was regarded with much affec- tion by his father who in 1525, when the boy was six years old, created him Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and a Knight of the Garter. The Duke of Richmond died in the year 1536, aged seventeen, having married Mary Howard, a daughter of the third Duke of Norfolk of that family, a marriage which was never completed owing to the youth of the parties. It would be convenient that I should here say a few words of the great Howard family, which by reason of its Royal descent, its intimate relations with the Royal family, and its great power and influence cannot be altogether passed over in this work. It will be remembered that in the reign of Richard II. Thomas Mowbray, 6th Baron Mowbray, was created Duke of Norfolk, and that he was the grandson of Margaret Plantagenet, Duchess of Norfolk, who was the daughter and heiress of Thomas de Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, and eldest son of Edward I. by his second wife, Margaret of France (see Table VI.). The title of Duke of Norfolk remained in the Mowbray family till that family became extinct in the
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The Howards. 325
reign of Edward IV. as has been already told, and in 1483, on the accession of Richard III., Sir John Howard, whose mother Lady Margaret Mowbray, was a sister of the first Duke of Norfolk of the Mowbray family, was created Duke of Norfolk. At the same time, Sir John Howard's eldest son was created Earl of Surrey.
The family of Howard was itself very ancient, their ancestor having been a distinguished judge in the reign of Edward I., but their special claim to distinction arose from the marriage of Sir Robert Howard (the father of Sir John) with Lady Margaret Mowbray before mentioned, a lady who, when her husband was created Duke of Norfolk, was recog- nised as the heiress of the Mowbray family. John Howard, first Duke of Norfolk of the Howards, was the eldest son of his parents, and it was through his mother that he claimed Royal descent. He was a supporter of Richard III., and was killed fighting on his side at the Battle of Bosworth. His son, the Earl of Surrey, was attainted as a traitor, but was afterwards received into favour by Henry VII., who re-created him Earl of Surrey in 1489, and he was subsequently advanced to his father's rank of Duke of Norfolk, by Henry VIII. in 1514. He had a large family, and through his daughter, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, and his son, Lord Edmund Howard, was the grandfather of the two Queens, Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard, and consequently greatgrandfather to Anne Boleyn's daughter, Queen Elizabeth. He had two wives who were cousins, both named Tylney, and his second wife, Agnes Tylney, was the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, whose connection with Katharine Howard has been before referred to. This Duke died in 1524, and was succeeded as third Duke by his eldest son, Thomas Howard, a person who, in the reign of Henry VIII., attained to great power and influence. In his father's lifetime, while he bore his father's second title of Earl of Surrey, he won the famous Battle of Flodden, and he was afterwards more or less concerned in all the subsequent transactions of that reign, and is the Duke of Norfolk in the play "Henry VIII." In his youth he
326 History of the Royal Family of England.
married Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV., and aunt of Henry VIII., but his children by this lady all died, young, and on her death he married Lady Elizabeth Stafford, eldest daughter of Edward Stafford, last Duke of Buckingham of his family, and who, as has been already mentioned, was one of the earlier victims to King Henry's cruelty. From what has been said in previous chapters it will be seen that the third Duke of Norfolk of the Howard's and his second wife were alike of Royal descent (see Tables IX. and XIII.), and that the lady through her father's mother, Katharine Woodville, was also nearly related to the King through the King's grandmother, Elizabeth Woodville. The eldest son of Thomas, third Duke of Norfolk, by Elizabeth Stafford, who bore the title of Earl of Surrey in his father's life, was one of the most brilliant and accomplished persons of his time, being equally distinguished as a man of letters and a soldier, and he is known as the author of some of the earliest poetry in the English language.
In his later days King Henry became profoundly jealous of the Duke of Norfolk and his son, who had hitherto been regarded as his most faithful and, on the whole, respectable adherents ; and in his last illness the King caused them both to be arrested and accused of high treason on grounds which are now, I believe, generally admitted to have been to the last degree frivolous and absurd. Six days later the Earl of Surrey was beheaded, but the execution of his father, who was then seventy-three, was postponed, and he ultimately escaped, for though on the day before his death Henry sent an urgent order for the immediate execution of his old friend and servant, the King himself had gone to his account before that order could be executed. The Duke remained as a State prisoner throughout the reign of Edward VI., and was one of the unhappy group of prisoners who were found kneeling at the gates of the Tower when Queen Mary made her State entrance prior to her Coronation. As is well known she immediately liberated them all, and the old Duke was instantly restored to his rank and position and a large portion
The Howards. 327
of his property ; and during the short remainder of his life he enjoyed the confidence and the friendship of the Queen. He died in 1554, and was succeeded by his grandson, Thomas Howard, eldest son of the distinguished Earl of Surrey before mentioned, by a lady of the great de Vere family.
This, Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of his family, was born in 1536, and was therefore twenty-two when Elizabeth ascended the Throne. As he was that Queen's second cousin, his grandfather, the third Duke, and her grandmother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, having been brother and sister, he was by many degrees her most respectable connection on her mother's side ; and he was for a time treated with much distinction. It is, however, a matter of general history that he afterwards aspired to become the husband of the captive Queen of Scots, and having become, as was alleged, implicated in one of the conspiracies for the release of that lady, he was attainted as a traitor, and beheaded in the year 1572, and for a time his honours as Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey became extinct. He had been married three times, and his first wife, Mary Fitz Alan, the heiress of that great family, brought the Earldom of Arundel into the Howard family. It will be remembered that the Earldom of Arundel was first conferred on William de Albini, second husband of Adelais of Louvaine, widow of Henry I., and it remained with the Albini's till they became extinct in 1289 (temp. Edward I.). It then passed to Richard Fitz Alan, who had married one of the Albini co- heiresses, and it remained with the Fitz Alan's till they became extinct in 1580 (temp. Elizabeth), when it passed to the Duke of Norfolk's son by this marriage.
Philip Howard, the eldest son of the third Duke (who was called Philip after Philip II. of Spain), succeeded only to the title of Earl of Arundel in right of his mother. He was born in 1557, and was only fifteen at the date of his father's execu- tion, notwithstanding which execution he enjoyed for a time some favour from the Queen ; but, being a Catholic, he was ultimately committed to the Tower, where he was kept a prisoner for the rest of his life, and where he died in 1595.
328 History of the Royal Family of England.
He is regarded by Catholics as having been practically a martyr to his religion. (See the " Lives of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, and Anne Dacres, his wife." Edited by the Duke of Norfolk. Hurst and Blackett.) The Earl married Anne Dacres of the great family of the " Dacres of the North," a lady who seems to have been fully his equal in virtue, but it would be out of place to enter into the details of their very saintly and edifying lives.
In 1664 Thomas Howard, the great-grandson of this Philip, was restored to his rank as Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey — being already Earl of Arundel — and ever since then the Dukedom of Norfolk and the Earldoms of Arundel and Surrey have been handed down in the direct male line of the Howards ; and from junior branches of that line many Peers and distinguished families, who at the present time bear the name of Howard, are also descended.
Between the reigns of Edward III. and Henry VII. the title of Duke was comparatively common, but the Tudor Monarchs, and in particular the sister Queens, Mary and Elizabeth, were exceedingly chary of bestowing it, and as a matter of fact after the execution of the Dukes of Northumber- land and Suffolk, on the accession of Mary, the old Duke of Norfolk was not only the Premier but the only Duke left in England. As neither Mary nor Elizabeth created any Duke, he and his grandson, who was beheaded in 1572, were the only persons who enjoyed that rank during those reigns, and in the last thirty years of Elizabeth's life the title of Duke seemed to have become extinct in England.
Edward VI. was born on the I2th of October 1537, and was therefore aged nine years and three months when he ascended the Throne in January 1547, and he had not com- pleted his sixteenth year when he died on the 6th of July l$$3- Oddly enough he is the only eldest son of any English Sovereign since Edward I. who was not created Prince of Wales. He reigned six years and six months.
There is no English Prince upon whom more enthusiastic praises have been lavished than this King, and it is impossible
Edward VL 329
to take up any work, either of history or fiction in which he is mentioned, in which his precocious learning and piety, and the amiability of his disposition are not extolled to the skies. I have no wish to detract from his virtues, but I hardly see how the various authors find the material for their extreme praise. He died at an age when a man's faculties for good or bad have scarcely been developed, and when it is impossible to foretell the future ; and during the whole of his short life — during a great part of which he was very sickly — he was under the minute and careful guidance of ambitious and powerful men ; so that it is impossible to suppose that he ever had any real power, or even personal liberty, or that he was really responsible for either the good or the bad actions committed in his name. If he had been responsible I should have thought better of his amiability if, notwithstanding their crimes, he had interposed to save the lives of his maternal uncles, who, bad men as they were, were men with whom he had lived on terms of intimacy, and for whom he had certainly professed great affection all his life. He kept a diary which is often quoted, and which certainly appears to show that he had plenty of brains, but which, if it is the genuine and spontaneous expression of his own feelings (which is very doubtful), would also show that he was somewhat cold-hearted. He was highly and probably over-educated ; and he had imbibed, as far as one can see, in all sincerity, the religious views of the most extreme Reformers. His religion, however, seems to me to have been of that narrow-minded and rather uncharitable kind which is so often to be found in religious young persons who have had no practical experience of life, If he had turned out well it would have been the result rather of his own merits than of his bringing up, for, though he had little or no real power, he was treated with a slavish adulation, suitable rather to an Eastern Potentate than to an English King, and which would have greatly surprised even the greatest of his Plantagenet ancestors. His relatives and courtiers knelt when they spoke to him ; when he dined with his sisters he sat on a Throne under a canopy, and they on a
330 History of the Royal Family of England.
narrow bench at a distance ; and it is related that before she ventured to take her seat before dinner, his sister Elizabeth was on one occasion seen to go on her knees five separate times. In the ordinary course of things such a training must have turned his head, and led him to think that he was a demi-god ; and a youth who starts in life with absolute power and that belief in himself is, to say the least, apt to go wrong.
Before his death Edward was induced to make a will bequeathing the Crown over the heads of his sisters to his cousin, Jane Grey, but apart from the fact that he was a minor, such will was clearly illegal, as, except possibly in the case of Henry VIII., whose will was made under powers expressly conferred upon him by Act of Parliament, no English Sovereign has the right to change the line of succession.
The persons in authority during Edward's reign were successively Edward Seymour and John Dudley.
Seymour was the eldest brother of the King's mother, Jane Seymour, and in the reign of Henry VIII. he had attained to considerable power and been created in 1537 Earl of Hertford. He was one of the eighteen executors appointed by King Henry to govern the Kingdom during Edward's minority, but on Henry's death Seymour, in defiance of some, and with the connivance of others of his co-executors, seized the supreme authority and caused himself to be created Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of the Realm. As has been already related, he was at once involved in disputes with his brother, Thomas Lord Seymour of Sudeley, whom he beheaded early in 1549, and in the course of a few months he was him- self deprived of power by Dudley. He was for a short time confined in the Tower, and was then pardoned ; but having again become an object of suspicion he was arrested in October 1551, and beheaded in the following January.
Seymour was a strong Reformer, but he is admitted by all writers to have been a man of extraordinary rapacity and arrogance, and in the crisis of his fate he appears to have shewn neither dignity, firmness, nor courage. I must return to his descendants later on.
The Dudleys. 331
In writing of Henry VII. I omitted to mention two of his ministers with whom, nevertheless, his memory is intimately connected. These were Empson and Dudley, two Barons of the Exchequer, whom the King employed in those nefarious and illegal measures, he was accustomed to employ to grind money out of his subjects. These persons incurred the utmost obloquy and general hatred, and immediately after his accession Henry VIII. put them to death under sentences — the legality of which has been questioned, but the substantial justice of which is generally admitted. This Dudley was father of the John Dudley above mentioned, who, notwith- standing his parentage, found some favour with Henry VIII. and was raised to the Peerage as Viscount de L'Isle in 1542.
He was a strong supporter of Somerset who advanced him to the great title of Earl of Warwick on Edward's accession in 1547, but from that time Dudley used every effort to supersede his patron, and ultimately did so in 1549. Then he himself became, in fact though not in name, Protector, and was created or practically created himself Duke of Northumberland.
Both Seymour and Dudley had the idea of raising their own families to the Throne. Seymour wished to marry his daughter, Lady Jane Seymour, to the young King, and Dudley did succeed in marrying his fourth son, Guildford, to Lady Jane Grey, whom, under the wills of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., he hoped to place on the Throne. Of Dudley's subsequent fate I must speak later on. He married a lady named Guild- ford by whom he had a large family. His two elder sons died without issue ; Ambrose, the third, was created Earl of Warwick and he also died without issue. Guildford, the fourth, had no child and was beheaded by Queen Mary, and Robert, the fifth, was afterwards the notorious Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's well known favourite. He also left no acknowledged legitimate issue, though he had a son who claimed to be, and probably was, his lawful heir ; and whose widow was afterwards created by Charles I., Duchess of Dudley, for her life.
332 History of the Royal Family of England.
It may be here mentioned that the Earldom of Northumber- land was held with some intervals by the great house of Percy from 1377 (temp. Richard II.) till 1537, at which date, the lawful heir being under attainder from Henry VIII., the title became extinct. Dudley was interpolated in the reign of Edward VI., but the Percys were restored by Queen Mary and remained Earls of Northumberland till 1716 (temp. George I.), when the male line of the family became extinct. In 1766 (temp. George III.) Sir Hugh Smithson, who had married the heiress of the Percys, was created Duke of Northumberland, and assumed the name of Percy instead of Smithson, and from him the present Duke is descended.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CLAIMANTS TO THE THRONE ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD VI. — MARY I.
IN one of the early chapters of this work I said that on the death of Edward VI. no one knew who could, or would, or ought to succeed to the Throne, and in a later place I have said that the English people had at that time no practical alternative but to accept a female Sovereign, and I think both of these propositions are substantially true.
Edward IV. was the legal representative of the great house of York, and Henry VII., who married Edward IV.'s daughter and heiress, may be taken as representing the rival house of Lancaster.
Now there were at the death of Edward VI. eleven persons living, ten of whom were descended from Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York, while the eleventh was descended from Katharine Countess of Devon, youngest daughter of Edward IV. ; and nearly everyone of these eleven persons had some partizans who regarded her or him as a possible and eligible claimant to the Throne, and many enemies who believed or professed to believe that her or his title was distinctly bad.
Failing these eleven persons it would have been necessary to go to the Pole family, who were the children of Margaret Countess of Salisbury, only daughter and heiress of Edward IV.'s next brother, George Duke of Clarence (see Table XIV.), but even then the Pole family offered no very eligible candidate. Of the four sons of the Countess Margaret, Henry, the eldest, had as I have said been beheaded by Henry VIII., and except a son who died before King Edward's death, he had left only daughters, of whom Katharine Pole, the eldest,
333
TABLE XIV,
RICHARD PLANTAGENET
Beheaded
(i) KING EDWARD IV.
d. 1483-
(i) ELIZABETH PLANTAGENET.
d. 1503. = KING HENRY VII., 1509.
|
(i) KING HENRYVHI. JAMES IV. = (2) MARGARET TUDOR = d. 1547. King of Scot- d. 1541. I land. Killed in battle 1513* |
= ARCHIBALD Louis XII DOUGLASS, K»>g of F™nC( Earl of Angus. ^ 'S'S ^ithoi d. 1556 lssue by MarJ |
|
RGARET JLASS. 1578. ,w STUART Lennox, ited 1571. |
|
|
MESV. (2) MA Scotland. DOU( = MATTHI Earl of Assassin. |
|
|
1 (i) KING EDWARD VI. (2) QUEEN (3) QUEEN (i) JA & 1553 s>t- MARY I. ELIZABETH. King of d. 1558 s.p. d. 1603 s.p. * = KING PHILIP II. of Spain. |
|
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTLAND = (i) HENRY STUART,
Beheaded 1581.
Lord Darnley. Assassinated 1567.
KING JAMES I.
d. 1625.
(2) CHARLES STUART
d. 1587.
ARABELLA STUART.
f. 1615 s.p.
- WILLIAM SEYMOUR, Earl < Hertford, afterwards Duke < Somerset.
Duke of York.
1460.
(2) GEORGE PLANTAGENET,
Duke of Clarence, d. 1477.
(3) KING RICHARD III
Killed in battle 1485 s.p.
(2) KATHARINE PLANTAGENET. (I)EDWARD PLANTAGENET, (2) MARGARET PLANTAGENET,
d. 1527. Earl of Warwick. Countess of Salisbury.
= EDWARD COURTENAY, Earl of Beheaded 1499 s.p. Beheaded 1541.
Devon. ^.1511. = Sir RICHARD POLE. d. 1505.
= (3) MARY TUDOR = CHARLES
1533-
BRANDON,
Duke of Suffolk. d. 1545.
(i) HENRY (i) HENRY POLE, (2) REGINALD POLE,
COURTENAY Baron Montagu, Cardinal Archbishop of
Earl of Devon, beheaded 1539.
beheaded 1539.
Canterbury, d 1558 s.p.
(i) FRANCES BRANDON.
d. 1559.
= HENRY GREY, Duke of Suffolk. Beheaded 1554-
(2) ELEANOR BRANDON.
d. 1545.
= HENRY CLIFFORD, Earl of Cumberland. d. 1570.
(i) EDWARD COURTENAY.
Earl of Devon. d. 1556 s.p.
(i) KATHARINE POLE.
= FRANCIS HASTINGS, Earl of Huntingdon, by whom she left issue.
(i) JANE GREY. (2) KATHARINE GREY. (3) MARY GREY.
Beheaded 1554 s p. d 1568. d. 1578 s.p.
= GOILDFORD DUDLEY. = EDWARD SEYMOUR, Earl of = THOMAS KEYES. Beheaded 1554. Hertford, by whom she left
issue.
MARGARET CLIFFORD.
d. 1596.
= HENRY STANLEY, Earl of Derby, by whom she left
336 History of the Royal Family of England.
was in 1553 married to Francis Hastings, second Earl of Huntingdon of his family ; but though Lord Huntingdon was a person of great family and distinction his wife's claims to the Throne were never as far as I am aware seriously con- sidered. Of Henry Pole's three younger brothers the only one who ever attained to any personal or political importance was the Cardinal, who though not then a priest was an ecclesiastic. There was, however, a strong party who hoped he might marry the Princess Mary. His sister Ursula Pole was the wife of Lord Stafford (see Table IX.), but the Staffords had fallen from their high estate and would have been regarded with favour by no one. Failing the Poles, though there were of course many families more or less remotely descended from Plantagenet stock, their relation- ship to the recent Sovereigns was distant, and they were not any of them of very great influence. Nevertheless the general confusion and perplexity was such that even the Pole family, and indeed every one who was at all connected with the Crown, was regarded with more or less suspicion by the rival claimants, and was in consequence to some extent in a dangerous position.
The eleven persons above mentioned, into whose more immediate history I shall have to go more fully hereafter, were (i) Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., then an unmarried woman in her thirty-ninth year ; (2) Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII., then an unmarried woman of nearly twenty; (3) Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, granddaughter and heiress of Henry VII I.'s elder sister Margaret, then resident in France, and betrothed to the eldest son of the French King Henry II., and who was then a child in her eleventh year ; (4) her aunt, Margaret Douglas, wife of Matthew Stuart, the Scotch Earl of Lennox, then in her thirty-ninth year ; (5) Margaret's son Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, then in his eighth year (his younger brother Charles Stuart was not yet born) ; (6) Frances Brandon, wife of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, eldest daughter of Henry VII I.'s younger sister Mary, then aged thirty-six ; (7) her eldest daughter Jane Grey, then
Claimants to the Throne. 337
the wife of Lord Guild ford Dudley, and in her sixteenth year ; (8 and 9) Jane's younger sisters, Katharine and Mary; (10) their cousin Margaret Clifford (the daughter of their mother's sister, Eleanor Brandon, Countess of Westmoreland), then aged thirteen (these were descended from Henry VII. and Elizabeth of York); and (n) Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, then aged twenty-six.
Of these eleven persons the first thing to be remarked is that nine of them were women, and one was a little boy, and the second that with two exceptions, Mary Queen of Scots and Edward Courtenay, the legitimacy of every one of them was in dispute.
Each of the daughters of Henry VIII. had been declared by Parliament to be illegitimate. Henry VIII.'s sister Mar- garet had divorced her second husband, the father of Margaret Douglas, on the ground that when he married her he was already "pre-contracted"; and if her marriage with him was invalid, then Margaret Douglas was illegitimate, and her claims and those of her young son were void ; and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, when he married Henry's younger sister Mary, had, so it would appear, a wife living ; and it was said that Mary's daughters by him were illegitimate, and consequently that the claims of Frances Brandon and her daughters, and of Margaret Clifford, the daughter of Frances's sister Eleanor Brandon, were also void. A distinc- tion, however, was raised between the case of Margaret Clifford and that of her cousins the Greys, in that Charles Brandon's first wife had died between the births of his daughters Frances and Eleanor ; and it was suggested that a legal marriage between Brandon and Mary might be pre- sumed before the birth of their daughter Eleanor, who was Margaret Clifford's mother.
The Princess Mary's claim was certainly the best. She had undoubtedly been declared by Act of Parliament to be illegitimate, and that statute had never been repealed, but then probably no human being believed that in reality she was illegitimate, and by a later statute, notwithstanding the Y
338 History of the Royal Family of England.
former, she had been formally restored to her place in the succession failing Edward VI. Her position as next heiress to Edward had been distinctly recognised by the will of Henry VIII., which, assuming it to have been duly executed (a fact which is disputed), was executed under powers given to him by Parliament to determine the succession. Moreover Mary was backed by the powerful influence of her cousin the Emperor Charles V. (who was the son of her mother's sister), and I think there can be little doubt that at this time she was very popular with the mass of the people. On the other hand the obstacles in her way were very grave. The country was rent with religious dissensions, and Mary was known to be a strong Catholic. As a Catholic, I may be permitted to believe that at this time, the bulk of the commonality, including most of the country gentlemen, would have viewed with satisfaction the restoration of the ancient religion, but certainly most of the nobility and nearly all the established Clergy regarded such possible restoration with the utmost consternation. Many of the nobles had been gratified with large grants of Church lands, which they feared, though, as it proved, erroneously, they would be made to disgorge ; and many of them, and most of the Clergy had so fully committed themselves to the Protestant cause as to be in mortal fear of reprisals affecting their position and wealth, if not their persons, from a Catholic Sovereign. On their behalf it was argued, plausibly enough, that Parliament had acted incon- sistently in restoring Mary to her place in the succession, while it continued to stigmatize her as a bastard ; and that to repeal the Act by which she had been so solemnly declared illegitimate would be undignified, and would involve great practical difficulties, as affecting many proceedings in the late reigns which were based upon it.
The real difficulty in Mary's way, however, was that she was an unmarried woman turned thirty-eight, known to be in bad health, and extremely unlikely even if she married to bear children, and therefore it was universally felt that her elevation to the Throne, while likely to be a source of dis-
Claimants to the Throne. 339
turbance in the immediate present, offered no prospect of any permanent settlement.
Elizabeth had youth on her side, but at that time no other special advantage. She also had been declared to be illegitimate, and she had also been restored to her position in the succession by Act of Parliament and by her father's will, but in her case there was the disadvantage that many persons both in England and abroad did really think she was illegiti- mate. Moreover there was no person of influence who had any special reason for desiring her advancement, and in religious matters she was, if I may be allowed the expression, a " dark horse," neither the Catholics nor the Protestants feeling any great assurance as to which side she would ulti- mately take.
Mary Queen of Scots was out of the question as being then a child wholly in the hands of the French.
Her aunt, Margaret Douglas, apart from the question affecting her birth, was as strong a Catholic as Mary herself, and was moreover a Scotch woman both by birth and marriage; and at the crucial time she was resident far from the scene of action, and an invalid.
The Duchess of Suffolk had ceded her claims to her eldest daughter Jane Grey, and it was upon this lady that the Protestants for a time based their hopes. She was young, married, likely to have children, a strong Protestant, and with some Parliamentary title to the Throne, as by King Henry's will the Crown had been settled, failing issue of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, on her mother the Duchess of Suffolk and her heirs. Moreover Jane was backed by Dudley Duke of Northumberland, then the most powerful man in the kingdom, to whose son Guildford she was married. There was, however, as has been said, a doubt about the legitimacy of Jane's mother, the Duchess of Suffolk, some persons regarding the young Margaret Clifford as the only lawful descendant of Henry's sister Mary.
Behind Jane Grey and Margaret Clifford stood Edward Courtenay, who possessed great advantages. He was a man
340 History of the Royal Family of England.
in the prime of youth and vigour, of the Royal blood, of ancient and unblemished family, and of undoubted legitimacy ; and it is certain that there were many persons who at all events, strongly desired that he should be married to one or other of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and as her husband virtually reign as King. At Edward's death, how- ever, Courtenay was still a prisoner ; he was personally known to very few people, and he proved in fact to be a feeble and dissolute person, who speedily disappeared from practical politics.
The actual course of events is tolerably well known. King Edward died on the 6th July 1553. The Council kept his death a secret for twenty-four hours, and sent Jane Grey to the Tower, where the Sovereigns were accustomed to await their Coronation. On the following day Jane was visited by her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, his father and mother (the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland), her own parents (the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk), and many other influential persons, who, kneeling before her, offered her the Crown. It was accepted, though it would appear with the most genuine reluctance, and three days later Jane was hurriedly crowned at Westminster and proclaimed Queen. Of her subsequent fate I shall speak later.
In the meantime, Mary having successfully evaded an attempt to decoy her to London, where she was to have been imprisoned, acted with the most astonishing energy, courage and firmness. She started on what may be called a march through England, attended in the first instance by little more than her ordinary personal retinue, but she was everywhere received with increasing enthusiasm, and at each place crowds flocked to join her standards ; so that what had begun as a small body of personal friends speedily became a large army.
Northumberland, who was sent to oppose her progress, almost immediately threw up the sponge, and himself pro- claimed her Queen, and thenceforth her march to London was converted into a magnificent and triumphant progress. In London she was received with the same enthusiasm, being
Queen Mary. 341
met in the outskirts by Elizabeth, who, while matters seemed doubtful, had been opportunely sick, and, accompanied by the Princess, Mary proceeded to the Tower to await her Corona- tion, which was performed with great magnificence on the ist of August. At the gates of the Tower she found kneeling the state prisoners of her father's and brother's reigns, the old Duke of Norfolk and the young Courtenay, the Duchess of Somerset, widow of the great Protector, Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and many others ; and it is well known how, with- out a single exception, she at once restored them to liberty, rank and fortune — an instance of magnanimity of which it would be impossible to find a counterpart in the annals of any other of the Tudors.
When I come to give an account of the Tudor Queens who were known in my youth as " Bloody Mary " and " Good Queen Bess," I confess that my heart fails me, so fierce has been the controversy that has raged round these two ladies. I shall, however, speak of them as briefly as I can, and I will endeavour to speak impartially ; though I must frankly con- fess that with all her faults I have a great respect for Queen Mary, and while fully admitting her great abilities I have a most cordial detestation for Queen Elizabeth. I am, however, relieved to know that within the last fifty years the verdict of succeeding historians has been slowly but steadily reversing that of Burnet, Hume and earlier writers ; and that at the present day there are few persons who do not, though perhaps grudgingly, allow good intentions and some solid virtues to the elder Queen, or who would be prepared altogether to defend the personal character of her sister.
Mary Tudor was born on the 8th of February 1515. She was therefore turned twelve when the question of her parents' divorce was first mooted in 1527, and not quite twenty-one when her mother died in January 1536. She was not yet thirty-one, when her father died in January 1547, and was in her thirty-ninth year on her own accession, in July 1553,10 the Throne. She died on the I7th of November 1558, having reigned five years and four months, and being in her forty-
342 History of the Royal Family of England.
fourth year. She is generally spoken of as having been a plain, gloomy looking woman, and this is borne out by her portraits taken when she was Queen. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence to show that as a girl she was regarded as pleasing, and all agree that she had. remarkably fine eyes, and that her manners were at all times dignified and com- manding. She had a strong taste for and proficiency in music, and if she was not as learned as some of the other ladies of her time, she was at all events highly educated.
Henry VIII. as a young man was very fond of children, and appears to have been proud of and attached to his eldest daughter, who was idolized by her mother, and who in all but name held in her childhood and early youth the position of heiress apparent to the Throne. Strange to say, this posi- tion was not materially affected in the earlier years of her parents' quarrels, and thus, until Mary was a full grown woman, she was treated with a deference and respect never before received by any daughter of any English King. This perhaps accounts for the fact that even in the lowest ebb of her fortunes her father's ministers seem never to have been able to treat her otherwise than as a lady of the highest rank and claim to consideration.
When the divorce was pronounced Mary was called upon to admit its validity, and consequently her own illegitimacy, and to lay aside the title of Princess. To these demands she during her mother's life gave a firm denial, thereby incurring considerable persecution and some danger ; but after Queen Katherine's death Mary allowed herself, with in my opinion some weakness, to sign the required admissions, and after this she enjoyed on the whole, though with some intervals, con- siderable favour at Court. The King never seems to have entirely lost his affection for her. Pie invited her to become god-mother to the son of whom he was so proud, and he seems to have set some store by her recognition of the various ladies he was pleased to style his wives. As has been already said, though she remained a bastard by Act of Parliament, Mary
Queen Mary. 343
was by a subsequent Act restored to her place of succession after Edward, and the fact that she was universally recognized as the lawful daughter of the King is proved by the splendid alliances proposed for her almost as frequently after, as before, her parents' divorce.
Among her suitors may be included at different times the Emperor Charles V., whose son she eventually married, Francis I. of France, and his eldest son, afterwards Henry II. and James V. of Scotland.
After the accession of Edward VI., Mary assumed great and increasing state, and though she was regarded with jeal- ousy by the King's ministers, who made many petty attempts to interfere with her in the exercise of her religion, they un- doubtedly regarded her as a formidable person, and she held her own with a spirit which in that age of subserviency it is delightful to read of. Except in the one particular above mentioned, namely her admission made after her mother's death as to the validity of the divorce, her career as Princess appears to me to have been absolutely without reproach.
As Queen she committed two capital errors, her marriage with Philip of Spain, and her persecution of the Protestants, to which may possibly be added a third, the execution of Jane Grey ; but for each of these errors there is much to be pleaded in excuse.
Her mother's eldest sister, Juana, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and heiress to the united Thrones of Aragon and Castile, had married the Archduke Philip, eldest son of the Emperor Maximilian, and by the Archduke, Juana became the mother of Charles, afterwards the Emperor Charles V., who was, in his time, the most powerful of European Princes. This celebrated person had been the most steadfast friend both to his aunt Katharine of Aragon, and to his cousin Mary, who, during many vicissitudes in the reigns of her father and brother, had owed her liberty, and possibly her life, to his interference. It was therefore natural that she should turn to him for advice when she became Queen, and not unnatural that she should yield to his
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urgent solicitations to marry his eldest son and heir Philip, afterwards Philip II. of Spain.
It is not, however, difficult to see why this marriage was intensely unpopular with all classes of her subjects. The English, always jealous of foreign interference, were peculiarly sensitive to such interference on the part of the husband of their first female sovereign. It was easy to foresee that, which actually happened, namely that Philip himself, a great continental power, would seek to use his position as husband to the Queen of England for his own purposes ; and would sooner or later involve England in a continental war, as he actually did, with notoriously disastrous results to the English arms. Moreover Spain was a most aggressively Catholic country ; and the Spaniards had the reputation, perhaps exaggerated, but c< rtainly well founded, of persecuting their religious opponents with extreme cruelty. Therefore one can easily sympathise with the terror of the Protestants, at hear- ing that the future King of that country was about to become titular King of England, and indeed their terror was well founded, for I think it cannot be doubted that the subsequent persecutions were largely due to Philip's influence. These, however, are matters of general history into which I cannot go further, but I cannot acquit Mary of some perversity, in insisting on a marriage to which all her subjects, as far as appears, Catholic as well as Protestant, were strongly opposed. She was, however, abundantly punished, for all the mis- fortunes and errors of her reign, beginning with the insur- rection of Sir Thomas Wyatt, may be directly traced to this marriage.
Philip arrived on the 2Oth of July 1554, and was married to Mary five days later at Winchester. Their conjugal inter- course was not pr< longed, for he left England on the 29th of August in the following year (1555), and only returned for a short interval between the 2Oth of March and the 4th of July 1557. Into the general character and future history of King Philip it is not my intention to enter. It has been the custom to represent the conjugal relations of Philip and Mary as
Queen Mary. 345
having been extremely unhappy — the temptation to Mary's enemies to represent her in the ridiculous position of an elderly and jealous wife being irresistible. For this pretention, however, I can find no historical grounds. There were abundant reasons in the failing of his father's health, and the troubles in his future dominions, for Philip's not remaining longer in England than he did, — and indeed his remaining so long must have caused him considerable inconvenience ; and though it is of course probable that a young man of twenty- six felt no very lover like affection for a sickly and faded woman, thirteen years his senior, I can see no grounds for saying that Philip failed in kindness or courtesy to his wife while they were together, or that Mary behaved herself under the circumstances otherwise than with dignity and good humour.
As to the Marian persecutions,in myopinion there are cases in which some degree of religious persecution can be justified, but such cases are very rare, and in the overwhelming majority of recorded persecutions, such persecutions have been unjustifiably cruel in practice, and extremely futile, it being the well known tendency of persecution, to defeat its own ends. Mary's persecutions were no exception to the rule, and I freely admit that they constitute a stain upon her character ; but all the same I think that the blame rests more heavily upon the time in which she lived, and upon her advisers, than upon herself. At that time everyone, every ruler, every nation, and every sect, persecuted with more or less ferocity religious opponents as and when he or they got the chance. Mary herself had been brought up in an atmosphere of persecution. She had seen a man, now admitted to have been one of the greatest and best Englishmen of any time — Sir Thomas More, put to death on account of his religious opinions, and she had seen any number of the most saintly and exemplary Priests of her own Church, many of them her personal friends, executed for the same cause. She had her- self suffered much annoyance and trouble on account of her religion, and she was well aware that she owed her com-
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parative immunity, not to any goodwill on the part of her enemies, but to the protection of her cousin, the Emperor Charles V. Moreover, if the Reformers were her religious opponents, they were also her personal enemies ; and she had been assailed by many of them — by, for instance, Ridley, Bishop of London, with a virulence of abuse which in those days might well have justified their execution altogether apart from religious questions. Making full allowance for the shortness of her reign, I do not think that Mary's persecutions compare unfavourably, either as to the number of persons executed, or the cruelty of their sufferings, with the persecu- tions of the four succeeding reigns ; and I believe that Mary has been selected for special reprobation on account of her religious intolerance, solely because for several centuries after her death every writer whose voice could be heard in England professed the religion which she had persecuted, and detested the religion which she had professed.
It is now generally admitted that Mary entered on her course of persecution, not from any natural cruelty, but with extreme reluctance, and under great pressure from her ad- visers ; and that the later years of her life were clouded and embittered by the horror she felt for the sufferings she had allowed to be inflicted.
The third blot on Mary's character is the execution of her cousin Jane Grey, and one must admit that one hears with a thrill of horror of the execution of a girl not yet seventeen, who can be regarded as little more than a child. Here again, however, the fault was mainly the fault of the age.
Mary had been brought up, so to speak, on the banks of a river of blood, and to say nothing of other persons she had been well accustomed to see her nearest relatives led to execution without distinction of age or sex. Two Queens, one a girl, almost as young as Jane Grey, the old Margaret of Salisbury, who had been Mary's governess and dearest friend in her childhood, and the representatives of the almost Princely houses of de la Pole, Stafford, Pole, Courtenay and Howard, all her own kinsmen had been put to death in her
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father's reign. The advisers of her brother had not hesitated to execute, almost without even the decent forms of justice, that King's uncles, men whom Mary had been accustomed to see admitted into the innermost circles of Royalty and for both of whom it would appear she had entertained some feelings of friendship ; and her own life had been frequently threatened, and she had every reason to suppose would have been sacrificed if the adherents of Jane Grey had attained to power. Therefore it is not to be wondered at that to Mary herself, and to those who surrounded her, the death of Jane Grey did not present itself in the horrible light in which it presents itself to us in the twentieth century, when a large portion of the community is accustomed to go into hysterics each time a murderer is hanged, and when deliberate cruelty even to the meanest animal would be sufficient to put a man out of the social pale.
It may be remembered that when Mary ascended the Throne she was met with an open and armed resistance, but only four persons were executed, the Duke of Northumber- land and three of his immediate partizans : and for these persons no one then professed to feel, and it is impossible to feel even now, any particular pity. Jane Grey and her husband were indeed sentenced to death, but Jane Grey's father, the Duke of Suffolk, though taken in open rebellion, received a free pardon ; and nothing is more clearly proved than that the sentence of Jane Grey and her husband was in the first instance purely formal — that there was no intention of carry- ing it out — that though imprisoned they were treated with the utmost indulgence, and that had matters remained quiet they would have been set at liberty, probably in the course of a few weeks. This, however, was rendered impossible by Jane's own adherents. A new rebellion, which for a short time threatened Mary's Throne and even her life, broke out. Suffolk, who had been not merely pardoned, but received into distinguished favour, joined the rebels, and again proclaimed his daughter ; and it became obvious to everyone that if Mary was to reign in peace strong measures must be taken. Even
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then, however, the number of executions which followed was, as compared to the executions which followed every other rising in the century, extraordinarily small. For Suffolk himself no one could feel compassion; nor is it possible for anyone who reads the account of the proceedings of Guildford Dudley during the short period of his public life to feel much for him ; but that it should have been thought necessary to take the life of Jane herself is, and must always be, a source of deep regret. It was, however, strongly urged upon the Queen that the existence of a person who had allowed herself to be crowned was a constant menace to Mary, and Mary signed the warrant with, it is admitted, extreme reluctance, and, as is also admitted, she afterwards felt great regret, which continued throughout her life.
It is common to compare the executions of Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots, but to my mind they will admit of no fair comparison. Jane was an English subject, and she had committed the greatest act of treason which could be com- mitted by any subject. She had claimed the Throne, and allowed herself to be crowned — she had been taken, if I may say so, in open rebellion, and there is no doubt that then, as it would be now, her offence was an offence which by the law of England was punishable with death. It is true that she was very young, and over persuaded by her relatives, but those writers who dwell so much upon her extraordinary intelligence and virtue, fail to see that the more intelligent she was, and the more she was conscious of what was right and wrong, the greater her offence became, and the less was she entitled to claim indulgence on the score of youth and weakness.
Mary Stuart was not an English subject, but the Queen of a foreign country. She was in no way amenable to English laws or under the jurisdiction of Elizabeth ; and so far from falling into Elizabeth's hands as a rebel or an enemy she came to England as an invited guest and with every assurance that her liberty and position as an independent Queen would be recognised and respected.
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I have dwelt at length on the personal charges that have been made against Queen Mary, and I will now say a few words in her praise.
Apart from the three great errors, which it appears to me she committed, I think it is now generally admitted that her rule was in intention, at any rate, just and beneficent. No doubt she restored the Catholic religion, and the Supremacy of the Pope, but she could hardly have been expected to do otherwise, and what she did was sanctioned by law, apparently approved by the bulk of her subjects, and carried out with ex- treme caution and prudence.
I can hardly call to mind any female Sovereign who has shown greater personal courage or more remarkable prompti- tude and energy in moments of emergency.
Though she has been accused of bigotry no one has ever doubted the sincerity of her religion, and her personal char- acter as a woman was never questioned by the most bitter of her opponents, either in her own life or in subsequent ages.
Lastly, in that which concerns us most in a history of the Royal Family, Mary's relations with her kindred, other than Jane Grey, were always of the most kindly description.
If ever one woman had cause to hate another Mary had cause to hate Elizabeth, whose mother had supplanted, in- sulted, and as some said murdered her own. Nevertheless, after the fall of Anne Boleyn, when Elizabeth as a little child, singularly forlorn and neglected, was sent to be brought up in the house where the Princess Mary was living, there is evidence to show that Mary consistently treated the young girl whose life she might easily have embittered with kind- ness and even affection. In the crisis of Mary's life after Edward VI.'s death Elizabeth was conveniently ill and remained ill till Mary having surmounted her difficulties was entering London in triumph ; but when Elizabeth at length came out to meet the Queen, Mary received her with the utmost cordiality, and it is specially mentioned that through- out the State ceremonials that followed, she kept Elizabeth
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constantly at her side, " leading her by the hand " and treating her in all respects as first Princess of the Blood.
In Wyatt's subsequent rebellion, if there was not positive proof, as I think there was, of Elizabeth's implication (see "The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth," by Frank Mumby), there were at least the strongest possible grounds for suspect- ing her loyalty, and there were not wanting those who urged the Queen to let Elizabeth share the fate of their cousin Jane Grey. As a matter of fact Elizabeth had to suffer a short period of imprisonment and was then released, and thence- forward, though she was known to be the person to whom, either voluntarily or involuntarily on her part, all the malcontents in the Kingdom looked for support, and around whom all the plots and conspiracies against the Queen were centred, she was uniformly treated with the utmost courtesy and respect, and her title as next heiress to the Throne was recognised in every possible way. No doubt there were political reasons for this. Philip of Spain greatly dreaded the accession of the Scottish Queen which would have brought about the preponderance of French influence in English affairs, and he therefore favoured and wished his wife to favour the cause of Elizabeth in opposition to that of Mary Stuart. I much doubt, however, whether Elizabeth herself under any circumstances or by any influence could have been induced to tolerate a younger sister, related to herself as she was to Mary.
Edward Courtenay who was of the Blood Royal had been kept in prison for fourteen years by Mary's father and brother, Mary liberated him, and he at once joined, covertly, at any rate, her enemies, but after a short period of imprisonment Mary let him go to the Continent a free man in the full possession of his honours and with ample means. Would Elizabeth have let him go ?
Mary had no cause to love the Greys, who were equally opposed to her claims as Queen and to her religious views. She did indeed execute Jane Grey under circumstances already mentioned, and she beheaded Jane's father with a
Queen Mary. 351
justice which no one has denied, but to Jane's mother (whom as I shall show later she had ample cause to cast off with contempt), and to Jane's young sisters, she behaved with unbounded kindness, and the latter, at any rate, had bitter cause to lament her death on the accession of the Virgin Queen.
CHAPTER XXII.
QUEEN ELIZABETH. — MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF FRANCE AND DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK.— CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK. — HENRY AND FRANCES GREY, DUKE AND DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK.
QUEEN Mary died on the i;th of November 1558, and Elizabeth thereupon came to the Throne without opposition and indeed with general acclamation. There was in fact no one to oppose her claims. Mary's persecutions had, as might have been expected, produced a reaction in favour of the Protestants, and Mary's marriage had produced universal disgust for continental alliances, so that few would have cared at that date to advocate the claims of Mary Stuart, then the wife of the Dauphin of France. Of the other living descendants of Edward IV. there was no one in a position to oppose Elizabeth's claims.
Elizabeth was born on the 7th of September 1533, and she was therefore turned thirteen when her father died in January 1 547. Henry, who seems prior to her fall to have conceived a hatred of Anne Boleyn, which remained an abiding passion, never liked her child, who was formally declared to be a bastard before she was four years old, and was much neglected during the remainder of the reign. Nevertheless before Henry died Elizabeth was by Act of Parliament declared heiress to the Throne failing issue of her brother and sister, and her title under that Act remained good at Queen Mary's death.
During Edward's reign Elizabeth appears to have been regarded with no great favour by any one, though it is said that her young brother was personally fond of her, and in
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Queen Elizabeth. , 35 3
consequence of her apparent simplicity of life called her his "sweet sister Temperance." She was regarded by the Catholics as a bastard and a heretic, and the Protestant faction had determined to espouse the rival claims of her cousin Jane Grey. Consequently, as the King had little practical power, his favour probably did more to create jealousy against her on the part of the adherents both of Mary and Jane, than to advance her interests.
When Mary came to the Throne Elizabeth was still under twenty, and she appears to have been a fair complexioned, well grown, and stately, but by no means beautiful, young woman. She displayed, however, considerable powers of diplomacy, and under Mary, Elizabeth's position and con- sequence, partly by favour of the Queen, partly by her own very skilful tactics, rapidly increased ; and as I have said, on Mary's death she was peacefully acknowledged as Queen. She reigned for forty-four years, and died in the year 1603 in her seventieth year.
Elizabeth's reign is one of which as a whole, and from various causes, Englishmen have a right to feel, and most Englishmen do in fact, feel proud, and Elizabeth herself was, no one can deny, a woman of great and rare ability. How far she owed the great reputation which she enjoyed, in her own times, and which has ever since been accorded to her, to her own qualities, and how far to adventitious circumstances, is one of the problems of history as to which no two writers agree.
For myself I think she possessed in an eminent degree three qualities, each valuable in a ruler, though by no means amiable in a woman, and that she owed her success in life mainly to those three qualities.
These three qualities were caution, hardness of heart, and an instinctive and rather cynical knowledge of char- acter.
Her caution, amounting to duplicity, as a young woman saved her from many dangers and probably preserved her life, and as a Queen, if it sometimes led her to make grave z
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mistakes, it probably, indeed certainly, saved her from far greater ones.
Her hardness of heart, which existed notwithstanding many love affairs, enabled her to pursue her political course with a certain ruthlessness and impassibility, which if they led her to commit great crimes, certainly contributed to her prosperity ; and her knowledge of character enabled her almost with unerring judgment to select those ministers upon whom she could and did rely, and who contributed enormously both to her personal reputation for political wisdom, and to the safety and power of her Throne and Kingdom.
I know of few incidents more striking than the manner in which Elizabeth, then a young woman of uncertain prospects and most insecure position, and her most celebrated Minister Cecil, then a man of comparatively inferior rank, and whom no one could have expected to rise to any considerable power, so to speak, " took to " each other from the first. Each seemed to recognise at a glance the capacities of the other, and the way in which ever afterwards they worked together to their joint advantage, without break or jar of any kind, has few parallels in history.
Elizabeth however, whatever may have been her abilities, certainly owed much to more or less accidental circum- stances.
It was under Elizabeth that Philip II. of Spain projected that great invasion commonly spoken of as the "Spanish Armada," an invasion which aroused in Englishmen of all •classes and all creeds such a burst of patriotic zeal as has probably never been equalled, and the memory of which has never died out, and even now thrills us. Elizabeth herself behaved with the utmost spirit and energy, but the feeling in the nation was spontaneous, and it can hardly be said that it was Elizabeth who aroused it. It was under Elizabeth that there arose that great revival, one may almost say be- ginning of English literature, which produced the greatest poet of any age or any country, and a host of other writers whose fame is only dwarfed by their great contemporary.
Queen Elizabeth. 355
Elizabeth no doubt encouraged the movement but she did not inspire or produce it, and yet it is to this more than to anything else that she owes her greatest celebrity.
Lastly, it was under Elizabeth that the Church of England as now established became what it is. Henry VIII. intro- duced the Reformation, but Elizabeth practically established the Church of England on its present basis ; and consequently all admirers of that institution (and until lately they included the enormous majority of the nation) have ever felt bound to praise the Queen to whom it owed so much. Nevertheless it may well be doubted if Elizabeth's very fervent sympathies were ever given to her great creation.
What may be called Queen Elizabeth's private character is well known. She was highly educated, and was a woman of great culture with a great appreciation of literature and music, though with a very singular taste in painting. In her portraits she refused to allow any shadows on the face to be introduced, and thus her pictures uniformly present a certain likeness to Chinese faces on a tea tray.
Her personal vanity was abnormal, and the exhibitions she made of it caused her to be the laughing stock of all Europe, as may be seen by anyone who takes the pains to read the despatches of any of the foreign Ambassadors of her Court. She never married, but was for ever, and even after she had become an old woman, talking oi getting married, and the history of her various matrimonial treaties has in fact filled a very entertaining volume. (See " Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," by Martin Hume.) There is indeed nothing to be found in the annals of female Royalty more funny than the descriptions of her elaborate affectations of maidenly bashfulness and her solemn diplomatic flirtations conducted with her Royal suitors through the medium of their Am- bassadors, who, it may be remarked, were usually themselves good looking and attractive men.
Elizabeth's religion, if she had any, was an unknown quality. Under Edward VI. she posed as a puritan, and when Mary as Queen proposed that she should become a
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Catholic she asked for books and instructions, and after taking the decent interval of a week to consider the question, she gracefully allowed herself to be converted to the ancient faith. As Queen she became a great Protestant heroine, and in the matter of religious persecution fairly rivalled her father let alone her sister Mary. Nevertheless she retained what would now be called High Church tendencies, and compen- sated herself for any violence she had done to her religious feelings in the past by vigorously snubbing her Bishops and insulting their wives, of whose existence indeed she strongly disapproved. In this particular however the Bishop's wives had little more to complain of than the other married ladies of the Court, for the Queen seems to have disliked women in general, and married ladies in particular, a dislike which in the case of any woman married to a man whom Elizabeth choose to consider might be a possible admirer of her own was apt to become virulent. As a consequence the younger, and the more prudent, courtiers ignored their wives whenever it was possible, and no good-looking lady could appear at Court without the risk at any rate of severe browbeating.
Dudley Earl of Leicester, who was for many years so to speak her predominant favourite, had three wives successively ,. all of whom were studiously kept in the background. One of them, the first, he is supposed to have actually murdered^ and he is at all events charged with attempting the murder of the second.
I believe there are persons who believe in Elizabeth's " virtue," and if they have read with any attention the history of her relations with Leicester, to say nothing of other gentle- men too numerous to mention, and still retain that belief, I congratulate them sincerely on their guileless innocence and singular purity of imagination.
Of Elizabeth's relations with her kindred on the Royal side I shall have to speak later.
She died on the 24th of March 1603, and the accounts given of her deathbed are rather shocking.
In accordance with the plan before mentioned, I must
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. 357
now revert to Mary Tudor, younger sister of Henry VI II., but I think it will be convenient if, before speaking of her personally, I say a few words of Charles Brandon, who was her second husband, and the father of her children. This person is said to have been of a good Suffolk family, and his father was killed fighting on the Lancastrian side, and so it is reported, by the hand of Richard III. himself at the Battle of Bos worth. Charles Brandon, who was born about 1484, was an infant at the time of his father's death, and Henry VII., in acknowledgment of his father's services, interested him- self in the child, and brought him up with his own sons, the Princes Arthur and Henry as a kind of companion, and over the latter Brandon, who was the elder by seven years, ob- tained and retained throughout his life great influence. Dugdale says, "which Charles being a person of comely stature, high of courage and conformity of disposition to King Henry VIII., became so acceptable to him, especially in all his youthful exercises and pastimes, as that he soon attained great advancement both in titles of honour and otherwise."
Brandon's matrimonial engagements were almost as com- plicated as those of his illustrious master himself, and a good deal more obscure. It would however appear that he married first Margaret Neville, daughter of the Marquis of Montague and widow of Sir John Mortimer, and that he was divorced from this lady on the ground of a pre-contract on his part with Anne Browne, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne. After the divorce he married this Anne Browne, and by her became the father of two daughters, both of whom subse- quently made good marriages, and whose legitimacy is not disputed, having been expressly acknowledged both by Brandon himself and by his third wife Mary Tudor. What became of this Anne Browne is not known, but both Mary Tudor's biographers, Miss Strickland (see her " Tudor Princesses "), and Mrs Everett Green, concur in thinking that she was not only alive at the date of the marriage between Brandon and Mary, but that she lived
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till some date between the dates of the births of their two daughters Frances and Eleanor; and further, both these writers think that Anne Browne did not acquiesce in Brandon's subsequent marriage, and that she said or did something which caused considerable uneasiness in Mary and her friends as to the validity of her marriage and the legitimacy of her children. At all events it is certain that before her death Mary obtained from the Pope a Bull declaring her marriage with Brandon valid, and both her children legitimate. Mary would hardly have taken so unusual a step as to appeal to Rome without grave cause ; but the validity of the decree depends much on whether Anne Browne was heard before the Ecclesiastical Courts, which does not appear. I have said that I make no pretence to antiquarian research, and there- fore I leave this question as to the validity of Mary Tudor's marriage, which though it might have been of vital conse- quence, was not in fact, and as events turned out, of any great practical importance.
Brandon is said to have been a remarkably handsome man, and apart from his marriages seems to have found great favour in the eyes of ladies. As early as 1513 Brandon, who was then about twenty-nine, accompanied the King to the Continent, and was there presented to the celebrated Arch Duchess Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands, daughter to the Emperor Maximilian, widow of the Duke of Savoy, and aunt to Charles afterwards the Emperor Charles V. Either in reality, or in the imaginations of Brandon and King Henry, this great lady fell much in love with Brandon, and at all events it is certain that Brandon wished, and to some extent expected, to marry her, and that Henry favoured his aspira- tions. It was with this view that in 1514 the King raised Brandon to the great rank of Duke of Suffolk, and granted him the estates formerly held by the Dukes of Suffolk of the de la Pole family. Two years before Brandon had been created Viscount Lisle ; but nevertheless such great and rapid advancement in rank conferred upon a person not of the Royal or even noble blood or connection, was in those days
Mary Tudor > Duchess of Sitffolk. 359
unprecedented, and created some excitement and consterna- tion on the part of the older nobility.
Returning to Mary Tudor, the date of her birth is some- what uncertain, and it is stated by Mrs. Green to have been in 1496, and by Miss Strickland to have been in 1498. I think the earlier date more probable, and assuming it to be correct she would have been thirteen when her brother became King. She was, of course, the subject of numerous matrimonial treaties, but was ultimately married as his third wife to Louis XII. of France. This Prince, who is the Duke of Orleans so graphically described in Sir Walter Scott's novel of " Quentin Durward," married first Joanna, daughter of Louis XL, from whom he was divorced on the ground that the marriage had been entered into under moral, if not physical, coercion by Louis XI., a coercion which certainly seems to have been to some extent exercised. Joanna after- wards became a nun, and is reputed as a Saint. Louis married secondly the celebrated Anne, Duchess of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII. of France, by whom he had a daughter Claude, whom he gave in marriage to his cousin and heir presumptive who afterwards succeeded him as Francis I. He married thirdly Mary Tudor. Louis and Mary were married with extraordinary magnificence and splendour in France on the 9th of October 1514, Louis being at the date of the marriage fifty-two and Mary eighteen. It may be noted, however, that the French King was known at the time to be in bad health and was not expected to live long, and that Mary, who appears to have been a young woman of spirit, in consenting to the marriage expressly stipulated with her brother that in the event of her being left a widow she should be at liberty to choose a second husband for herself. This there is some reason to suppose she did, with a view to Brandon, whom she had very frequently met at her brother's Court. The marriage between Louis XII. and Mary did not last long, for Louis died not quite three months after its celebration on the ist of January 1515, his death having been it is said accelerated by certain changes in his habits which he thought necessary to
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make in honour of his new wife. For instance, he altered his dining hour from ten in the morning till some hours later, and ceased to observe his previous rule of going to bed at six p.m. sharp.
Mary, according to the custom of French Queens Dowager, retired to the Hotel Cluny, there to keep her period of mourning in profound retirement ; and there on the 3rd of March 1515 she was privately married in the presence of the French King, Francis I., to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Brandon had been in Paris as a special Ambassador from Henry at the time of Mary's Coronation, and had distinguished himself greatly in certain tournaments held in honour of that event, but he had then returned to England. He was sent again by Henry to bring the young Queen Dowager back to England, which under the circumstances would seem to have been an imprudent arrangement.
There was a considerable contest raging at the time between Francis and Henry as to which should have the right of disposing of the Queen Dowager Mary in second marriage ; for marriages still were a great feature in all European treaties, and consequently the possession of a young and marriageable Princess to bestow on a favoured ally was regarded as valu- able. Moreover, Mary, as Queen Dowager of France, was very rich, and each Sovereign desired to have the handling of her money. It would, however, appear that Francis speedily came to the conclusion that Mary would neither remain in France nor allow him to interfere in her future matrimonial plans; and this being so, he probably thought his best course was to sanction her marriage with Brandon and thereby prevent King Henry from using her as a means to alliance with any more powerful or distinguished person. I think myself, however, that Henry, who was as fond of both Mary and Brandon as he was of anyone, knew of their attach- ment and did not wholly disapprove it, and that they were secretly aware of this, as otherwise I can hardly suppose that they would have run the great risk they did. Anyway Henry, after some semblance of anger (an anger which was really
Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. 36 1
felt by many of his courtiers), allowed them to return to England, and received them with great distinction and affec- tion. He did not, however, allow them to escape scot free, for he not only retained the dowry he had paid for Mary, and which Francis had returned, but he insisted that Mary should pay him by annual instalments, out of her French revenues, what was, in those days, the enormous sum of £24,000 ; and, further, that she should give him " as a present " all the jewels given her by King Louis. These jewels are said to have been exceptionally valuable, and included an almost historic gem, known as the " Miroir de Naples." Therefore, on the whole, King Henry did not make a bad thing out of his sister's second marriage, although it is fair to say that his benefac- tions to Suffolk and his wife, exclusively made out of other people's goods, were numerous and liberal.
Mary's subsequent career was uneventful, and she died in the early years of Henry's reign, and before the greater atro- cities had commenced. Brandon, who throughout his life invariably allowed himself to be used as the instrument of the very dirtiest of King Henry's very dirty work, was always and continuously in high favour, and Mary, who would appear to have been not only a good looking and agreeable woman but really amiable and good natured, seems to have been regarded by her brother with genuine affection. She lived sometimes at Court, and sometimes in Suffolk, always with a good deal of splendour, and always in considerable embarrass- ment for money, and she died in Suffolk on the 25th of June 1533, aged about thirty-seven. She was buried in Bury Abbey. There is reason to suppose, however, that Mary's later years were clouded by ill health and anxiety, and that she was sincerely distressed at the proceedings Henry was taking for the divorce of Katharine of Aragon, a distress probably made the more acute by doubts concerning her own position as a wife. Her husband survived her for twelve years and died in 1545, about eighteen months before the King. It is perhaps needless to say that he is the Duke of Suffolk in Shakespeare's " Henry VIII." After Mary's death,
362 History of the Royal Family of England.
the Duke married a fourth wife, Katharine Lady Willoughby d'Eresby, who was a Peeress in her own right, and from whom, by a subsequent marriage on her part, the present Earl of Ancaster is descended.
Charles Brandon had seven children, two daughters by Anne Brown, with whom I am not concerned, three children by Mary Tudor, Henry, Frances and Eleanor, and two sons by Lady Willoughby d'Eresby, Henry and Charles. Henry, his son by Mary Tudor, died at the age of nine, having been previously created Earl of Lincoln. Henry, his eldest son by Lady Willoughby, succeeded him as Duke of Suffolk, but he and his younger brother Charles both died of the sweating sickness on the same day in July 1551, two years before the death of Edward VI., the elder being in his fourteenth year. On their death the great de la Pole estates which had been granted to Charles Brandon passed under a settlement made by him to his eldest daughter by Mary, Frances Brandon, whose husband, Henry Grey, third Marquis of Dorset of his family, was in the following October created Duke of Suffolk.
Frances Brandon, the eldest daughter of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor, was born in 1517, and was married in 1533 at the age of sixteen. Her husband, though not of Royal birth, was nearly related to the Royal family. His grandfather, Thomas Grey first Marquis, was the son of Elizabeth Wood- ville by her first marriage, and therefore the stepson of King Edward IV., and the half-brother of that King's daughter Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII. Consequently his son, who died in 1530, and his grandson, the husband of Frances Brandon, who were the second and third Marquises, were of the half-blood first cousin and first cousin once removed to Henry VIII. and his sister Mary, Frances' mother (see Table XV.). At the date of the marriage Lord Dorset was about twenty-three, and his career and that of his wife present no details of interest till towards the close of the reign of Edward VI. They were, however, strong adherents to the extreme Protestant party.
It is well known that King Henry VIII. had, under an
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Act of Parliament, power to regulate by will, failing issue of his three children Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, the suc- cession to the Throne. He had made a will whereby, failing such issue, he settled the Crown upon his niece Frances Brandon, eldest daughter of his younger sister Mary, and whereby he passed over the claims of the descendants of his eldest sister Margaret. It has always been a question whether this will was duly executed, and at all events its provisions were ignored after the death of Elizabeth ; but for many years these provisions were regarded by many people as being in force, and consequently much and disastrous attention was given to the Grey family.
Neither Henry Grey nor his wife were of any ability, nor were they regarded with much respect by their con- temporaries. Indeed the latter seems to have been treated with contempt, for though in the view of the Protestant party she and not her daughter was heiress to the Throne, no one, not even her husband seems to have regarded her as a possible Queen, and at Jane Grey's coronation Frances was content to carry her daughter's train.
I collect that the Duchess Frances was an illtempered, silly woman, with no sort of influence and very little char- acter. Her husband, in the last few years of Edward VI., was very busy in all sorts of intrigues for the aggrandisement of his family, but he was in the hands of a far more able man than himself— Dudley Duke of Northumberland ; and there can be little doubt that if their plans had succeeded and Jane Grey had become Queen, her father would have been relegated to obscurity at the earliest possible moment.
As I have already said prior to the death of Edward VI. Guildford Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland, and Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, had been married. After the King's death Jane was proclaimed Queen. Northumberland and Suffolk took up arms and Northumberland was taken prisoner and beheaded. Suffolk was pardoned at the instance of his wife, but sub- sequently he took up arms again, and he also was ultimately
Henry & Frances Grey, Duke & Duchess of Suffolk. 365
executed on the 23rd of February 1554. His daughter Jane preceded him to the block.
One might have imagined that the Duchess of Suffolk under these circumstances would have been crushed to the earth by grief, but such was by no means the case. On the contrary she was very agreeably employed, for on the Qth of March 1554 she married a young man named Adrian Stokes, described as her " equerry," and who at any rate had something to do with her stables. He was at that time twenty-one, the Duchess being thirty-seven. On the 2Oth of November following, that is to say within nine months of the execution of her first husband, and within eight months and a half of her second marriage, Frances gave birth to a daughter, who happily died in infancy.
It has been remarked that if Frances had visited her husband in prison (which she did not do) there might have been doubts as to the paternity of this child. I may also add (first) that if the child had been a boy and had lived, it would under King Henry's will have been at Queen Eliza- beth's death heir to the Throne, so that it was within the bounds of possibility that the Tudor dynasty might have been succeeded by that of Stokes, and (secondly) that if Jane Grey had really become Queen there would have been a grave com- plication, if, as events proved was possible, her mother had subsequently had a son.
Notwithstanding the excuse offered by the Duchess' some- what discreditable second marriage, Queen Mary continued to treat her with kindness, and she survived till November 1559, when she died aged fifty-two. She is buried in West- minster Abbey.
Mr Stokes became possessed of the bulk of her property, which was considerable, to the exclusion of her younger daughters Katharine and Mary, who were always deplorably poor, and he survived in great material comfort till 1581. It is, however, to his credit that he appears to have shown some kindness to his unfortunate step-daughter Mary Grey. (See Miss Strickland's " Tudor Princesses.")
CHAPTER XXIII.
JANE GREY.— KATHARINE GREY, COUNTESS OF HERT- FORD.— THE SEYMOURS.
JANE GREY, the eldest daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk, was born in 1537, in the same month (October) as her cousin Edward VI. She spent her childhood at the Court of her great uncle, Henry VIII., and some time after his death was sent to live with his widow Katharine Parr, and that lady's fourth husband Lord Seymour. This, however, was not till after the Princess Elizabeth had left them, and considering the scandals which had arisen about Seymour's relations with Elizabeth, it is remarkable that Jane's parents should have sent her to such a house, or indeed that Queen Katharine should have con- sented to receive another ward. Jane, however, not only went there, but remained there after Katharine's death (under the protection of Lord Seymour's mother), till Lord Seymour was taken to the Tower prior to his execution. She then went home, where she seems to have had a very bad time of it, judging from her often quoted speech to her tutor Roger Ascham, " When I am in the presence of either father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such measure and number even as perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened ; yea presented sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them), so without measure disordered that I think myself
366
Lady Jane Grey. 367
in Hell till the time comes when I must go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth me so gently, &c."
. There were numerous complicated plans for Jane's mar- riage, but ultimately on Whitsunday 1553 she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, fourth son of the Duke of Northum- berland. We have her own authority for saying that she was in a measure forced by her parents into this marriage, and it is clear that she disliked her husband, and greatly disliked his parents, and that her short married life was extremely unhappy. She accepted the Crown with great and avowed reluctance, and indeed under threats of violence from Guild- ford and his mother ; and during the few days in which she was called Queen, her other troubles were added to by contests with her husband, who pleased to call himself " King Guildford," and otherwise to assume the manners of a King, which Jane very properly resented. Indeed, though probably Jane might have proved a good Queen, she would have been terribly handicapped by Guildford Dudley, who as far as one can judge from his proceedings during the short time he was before the public, appears to have been as silly and objectionable a young person as can easily be imagined.
Jane wss executed on the I2th February 1554, under circumstances already mentioned, and in her seventeenth year.
She shares in history with Edward VI. the adjective " incomparable," and there is hardly a term of praise known in the English language which has not been applied to her. In her case as in Edward's the praises seem to me premature. How in the world can anyone tell what a girl of sixteen, who had passed her life under a system of " pinches, nips, and bobs," would have turned out when invested with almost absolute power over her fellow creatures ?
Jane seems to have been very religious, and to have accepted with sincerity the opinions of the extreme Re- formers ; but I must confess there is a tartness and asperity about some of her recorded remarks upon religious contro- versies which appears to me unbecoming in so young a
368 History of the Royal Family of England.
person. She was educated to the full pitch of learning any girl of her age could possibly acquire, and had certainly obtained a remarkable mastery over the Greek and Latin languages. Nevertheless I cannot divest myself of a suspicion that some of her more learned compositions were a little assisted and touched up by her numerous preceptors. I have, however, no wish to run her down, and I think no one can doubt that she was a girl of rare intelligence and promise, or that she carried herself both at the time of her execution and immediately before with singular dignity and sweetness. Her letters written at that time are really beautiful.
If Jane Grey's fate was tragic, that of her sisters Katharine and Mary was not less so, though the tragedy of their lives is less striking to the imagination. They were born in 1539 and 1545, and when Jane was married to Guildford Dudley, Katharine was married or betrothed to Lord Herbert, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke, and Mary was betrothed to Lord Grey of Wilton. After the accession of Queen Mary, and the consequent fall in fortune of the young ladies, Katharine's marriage, which had not been completed, and Mary's betrothal were broken off. Queen Mary accepted her young cousins as maids of honour, and they continued to act in that capacity after the accession of Elizabeth.
Before that event, however, Katharine had formed an attachment to Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, of whose position I must speak later, and this was known to several persons, including Katharine's mother, Frances Duchess of Suffolk. In October 1560, when Elizabeth had been Queen for two years, Katharine was privately married to Lord Hertford, at his house in Canon Row. There was no possible reason why this marriage should not have been sanctioned. Hertford was a young man of great rank and considerable wealth, and nearly connected with the Royal family through his aunt, Queen Jane Seymour, and he was a perfectly suitable match for Katharine, even though under the will of Henry VIII. she stood, failing Elizabeth's own
Katharine Grey, Countess of Hertford. 369
heirs, next in succession to Queen Elizabeth (who was then only twenty-seven). Nevertheless the marriage was kept a profound secret and was known to only four persons, the bride and bridegroom, the bridegroom's sister, Lady Jane Seymour, who died almost immediately afterwards, and the clergyman who performed the ceremony, whose identity Hertford and Katharine professed to be unable to and certainly did not disclose. If found he would assuredly have been put to death !
Early in 1561 Elizabeth sent Hertford on a political mission to France, and shortly afterwards Katharine discovered her- self to be pregnant. Communication with her husband was impossible, and in her emergency Katharine took an extra- ordinary means of disclosing her situation. She went in the middle of the night to the bedroom of the Queen's Master of the Horse and prime favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards Earl of Leicester, and then a young man under twenty, and kneeling by his bedside told him the whole story. It is possible that, as, according to the singular etiquette which prevailed at the Court of the virtuous Elizabeth, the Master of the Horse always occupied a bed-chamber immediately adjoining that of his Royal Mistress, Katharine thought that by this means her story might be overheard by the Queen without the necessity of her telling it face to face. The manoeuvre brought no good results. Dudley told the Queen, and early next morning Katharine was taken to the Tower, and Hertford was immediately sent for, and on his arrival in England he also was sent to the Tower. Thenceforward for some months the young couple, though it may be re- marked that Katharine was full twenty-one, were subjected to a minute and insulting interrogation as to the circum- stances of their marriage, the validity of which both strongly affirmed. I cannot conceive that any one reading the accounts of the examinations in the State papers could possibly now, or that any one did then, feel the smallest doubt that it was a perfectly good marriage. A commission however was issued by the Queen to Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, and others
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to " examine, enquire and judge of the infamous conversation and pretended marriage betwixt the Lady Katharine Grey and the Earl of Hertford." So commissioned, it is needless to say that Queen Elizabeth's commissioners had no alternative but to find " that there had been no marriage," which they accordingly did on the I2th of May 1562. In the meantime, however, in the previous September, Katharine after great sufferings had given birth to a son.
In those days prisoners in the Towerwere largelydependent for their practical comfort on the Lieutenant and other officials, and as these persons were well paid by Lord Hertford, and as, moreover, their sympathies, like those of the great bulk of the people, were much in favour of the young couple, Hertford and Katharine were allowed to see one another constantly, with the result that they had another son born in February 1 563. This brought forth a fresh explosion of wrath. Sir Edward Warren, the Lieutenant, was dismissed from his office, and escaped with that punishment only through the influence of Cecil, who was his personal friend. A fresh series of interrogations, &c. followed. Hertford was fined enormous sums, which were raised out of his estates, for his presumption in having ventured to have another child, and he and Katharine were finally separated and never met again.
Shortly afterwards however the Plague broke out in the City with such violence that it was practically impossible, with any pretence to decency, to keep any one in the Tower, and strong representations being made to the Queen, Hertford and his eldest son were placed in the charge of his mother, the Duchess of Somerset, and Katharine commenced a series of very dismal peregrinations.
It was one of the forms of aggravation which Elizabeth was accustomed to inflict upon her subjects to place her State prisoners in the custody of some unfortunate gentleman or lady selected for the purpose. The selected hosts were by no means consulted ; on the contrary they were often so selected by way of mild punishment, and it was carefully explained to them that they were answerable in life and property for the
Katharine Grey, Countess of Hertford. 3 7 1
safe custody and good behaviour of their involuntary guests. Moreover, if their expenses were paid at all, which was very doubtful, they were paid on an extremely shabby scale ; and as every person in those days of the smallest pretention to rank had what would now be considered an extravagantly large retinue of servants, the unwilling gaolers were often seriously inconvenienced, both as to the accommodation, which they had to find, and the solid outlay of money they had to make. Consequently the letters of the time contain any number of piteous appeals to persons in authority that such or such a person may be taken away, from such or such a place, and there were any number of unseemly wrangles about small items of expenditure, made, or which ought to be made, on behalf of the unhappyprisoners. The ladies Katharine and Mary Grey were specially unacceptable guests, as they were regarded with peculiar jealousy by the Queen, and unusual care had to be taken to prevent their escape, or their being made centres of political discontent. They were also extremely poor, having indeed nothing whatever of their own ; and though Lord Hertford was made to pay the Queen at a very exorbitant rate for everything supplied to Katharine, it is extremely doubtful whether the monies he did pay or any considerable portion thereof found their way into the supplier's pockets. Poor Mary was wholly dependent on the Queen, amongst whose many virtues an extreme, not to say parsi- monious, economy in all matters not relating to her personal comfort was conspicuous. Indeed I may say that her economy did extend to her personal comforts, for there was always a crowd of loyal and loving subjects only too eager to supply her little wants out of their own pockets ! As a conse- quence of this state of affairs I should imagine that there never were two ladies in the world the state of whose ward- robes and furniture was more minutely or exhaustively discussed than Katharine and Mary Grey ; and their needs for new bedding, chairs, hangings, caps, gowns, petticoats, and under linen, and the condition of their old articles of that description became the subject of as much correspondence as
372 History of the Royal Family of England.
the equipment of a new regiment would require in the present day. It is needless to point out how bitter were the humiliations to which these unfortunate ladies were thus exposed, or which they suffered under the circumstances above stated !
In the interval between 1563 when she left the Tower till 1568 when she died, Katharine Grey was the unwilling and unwelcome guest of four persons, her paternal uncle, Thomas Grey, Lord Petre, John Wentworth, and Sir Owen Hopton. She died on the 2Oth of January 1 568 of atrophy at Sir Owen Hoptori's house, Cockfield Hall, in Suffolk, and she is buried at Yexford in the same county. The account of her death is extremely pathetic, and there is every reason to suppose that she was a very amiable, sincerely religious, and perfectly unoffending woman. To judge from her portraits she must have been very lovely. (See Miss Stricklands "Tudor Princesses.") She was aged about twenty-nine when she died, and of her short life, passed fully seven years in prison — an imprisonment aggravated by every form of insult, and which was justified by no law, human or divine.
In the reign of Henry VIII. that King, in consequence of the proposed marriage of his niece Margaret Douglas, passed a statute making it high treason for any person " to marry any of the King's children (being lawfully born or otherwise, or commonly reputed to be his children) or any of the King's sisters or aunts, on the part of his father, or any of the lawful children of the King's brothers or sisters (not being married), without consent of the King under the Great Seal, or to seduce any not being married." It is commonly said that the imprisonment of Katharine and Mary Grey was justified under this statute, but they were fat grandchildren, and not the children of the King's sister, and could have only been included in the statute by interpreting children to mean descendants, which even to King Henry must have appeared slightly absurd. It was however probably quite immaterial to Elizabeth whether the proceedings were legal or illegal.
The practical founder of the Seymour family, of which
I
The Seymours. 373
Katharine's husband was the representative, was Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Lord Protector in the reign of Edward VI., who was the brother of Queen Jane Seymour, mother of that King.
Somerset married twice ; first a lady named Fillol, by whom he had an only son named Edward, and secondly the well- known Anne Stanhope, who, as Duchess and Duchess Dowager of Somerset kept herself pretty prominently before the public throughout the reigns of Edward and Mary, and the greater part of the reign of Elizabeth. By this lady Somerset had a large family, of whom the Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, Katharine's husband, was the eldest son. Somerset through his second wife's influence caused his title and estates to be so settled as to postpone the claims of his son by his first marriage to those of his sons by his second wife, though the son of the first marriage was to come in, failing issue of his younger brothers. Somerset was attainted before he was executed, and consequently his honours did not pass at his death, but in 1559, when Edward Seymour, his eldest son by Anne Stanhope, was about twenty-one, Queen Elizabeth created this son Earl of Hertford, and restored to him the bulk of his father's property. As has been said he married Katharine Grey, and for that offence was kept a prisoner till 1571, when he was set at liberty, and he survived till 1621, nineteen years after the accession of James I. In his later life he enjoyed some share of favour both from Elizabeth and James.
By Katharine he had the two children above mentioned, Edward and Thomas, but though he was twice subsequently married he left no other issue. In Burke's Peerage it is stated that by Katharine he had two children born after the two sons I have mentioned, but this seems to rne to be clearly a mistake.
After the death of Elizabeth, Lord Hertford, who had steadily maintained the validity of his first marriage, which indeed no one ever really doubted, took proceedings at common law to establish the validity of that marriage, and
374 History of the Royal Family of England.
with success, for he obtained the verdict of a jury declaring it to have been legal.
Of his two sons by Katharine, Thomas the younger died young and without issue, and Edward also died in his father's lifetime leaving a son William, who in 1621 succeeded his grandfather as Earl of Hertford, and was ultimately promoted to the rank of Duke of Somerset.
History repeats itself, and it was this gentleman who, under James I., got himself into serious trouble for an offence similar to that of his grandfather, namely, for marrying the King's cousin, Arabella Stuart, a marriage of which I shall have to speak later on.
The title of Duke of Somerset continued in the descendants in the male line of Hertford and Katharine till 1750 (temp. George II.), when that branch of the Seymour family became extinct, and by a singular turn of fate the dukedom then passed to Sir Edward Seymour, who was descended from the eldest and disinherited son of the Protector Somerset by his first wife. From this Duke Edward of Somerset the present Duke of Somerset and also the present Marquis of Hertford are directly descended, but these Peers do not claim royal descent from Katharine Grey. Nevertheless there are many persons now living who do descend from Katharine Grey in the female line, including the present Duke of Northumberland.
I may here say that after Katharine's death her descen- dants practically ceased to be regarded as in the Royal line, and that no claim was ever suggested on behalf of any of them to the Throne. (See Table XIV.)
END OF VOLUME I.
BAGSHAflE, FREDERIC
DA
AUTHOR
The History of the Royal Family of England Volume I
TITLE
BORROWER'S NAME
BAGSHAWE, FREDERIC G
The History of the Royal Family of England
Volume I
DA
28.1* .S3