This date in History: Coronation of King Edward VI of England & Ireland.

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Duke of Sommerset, Earl of Warwick, Edward Seymour, Edward VI, Edward VI of England, Jane Seymour, King Henry VII Chapel, King Henry VIII of England, Kings and Queens of England, Kings of Ireland

Edward VI (October 12, 1537 – July 6, 1553) was King of England and Ireland from January 28, 1547 until his death. He was crowned on February 20 at the age of nine. Edward VI was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, and England’s first monarch to be raised as a Protestant. During his reign, the realm was governed by a Regency Council because he never reached his majority. The Council was first led by his uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (1547–1549), and then by John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, from 1551 Duke of Northumberland.

Henry VIII died, aged 55 at the Palace of Whitehall on January 28, 1547 after a reign of ~ 37 years, 281 days. The Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley, announced Henry’s death to parliament on January 31 and general proclamations of Edward’s succession were ordered. The new king was taken to the Tower of London, where he was welcomed with “great shot of ordnance in all places there about, as well out of the Tower as out of the ships.” The following day, the nobles of the realm made their obeisance to Edward at the Tower, and Seymour was announced as Protector. Henry VIII was buried at Windsor on February 16, in the same tomb as Jane Seymour, as he had wished. Edward VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey four days later on Sunday February 20.

The ceremonies were shortened, because of the “tedious length of the same which should weary and be hurtsome peradventure to the King’s majesty, being yet of tender age”, and also because the Reformation had rendered some of them inappropriate.

On the eve of the coronation, Edward progressed on horseback from the Tower to the Palace of Westminster through thronging crowds and pageants, many based on the pageants for a previous boy king, Henry VI.

The young king He laughed at a Spanish tightrope walker who “tumbled and played many pretty toys” outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

At the coronation service, Cranmer affirmed the royal supremacy and called Edward a second Josiah, urging him to continue the reformation of the Church of England, “the tyranny of the Bishops of Rome banished from your subjects, and images removed”. After the service, Edward presided at a banquet in Westminster Hall, where, he recalled in his Chronicle, he dined with his crown on his head.

Edward VI’s reign would be short. After five years on the throne Edward VI died at the age of 15 at Greenwich Palace at 8pm on July 6, 1553. According to John Foxe’s legendary account of his death, his last words were: “I am faint; Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit”. He was buried in the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey on August 8, 1553, with reformed rites performed by Thomas Cranmer. The cause of Edward VI’s death is not certain. As with many royal deaths in the 16th century, rumours of poisoning abounded, but no evidence has been found to support these.

Birth of Queen Mary I of England and Ireland, February 18, 1516.

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Bloody Mary, Catherine of Aragon, Edward VI, Felipe II of Spain, Ferdinand & Isabella, Henry VIII, King Henry VIII of England, Kings and Queens of England, Mary Tudor, Philip II of Spain, Protestant Reformation, Queen Mary I, Queen Mary I of England

On this date in History. February 18, 1516, birth of Queen Mary I of England and Ireland.

Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558) was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. She is best known for her aggressive attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. The executions that marked her pursuit of the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and Ireland led to her denunciation as “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents.

Mary was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother Edward VI (son of Henry and Jane Seymour) succeeded their father in 1547 at the age of nine. When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because he supposed (accurately) that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had begun during his reign. On his death, leading politicians tried to proclaim Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England.

When Mary ascended the throne after the death of her brother Edward VI, she was proclaimed under the same official style as Henry VIII and Edward VI: “Mary, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and of Ireland on Earth Supreme Head”. The title Supreme Head of the Church was repugnant to Mary’s Catholicism, and she omitted it by Christmas 1553.

In 1554, Mary married the future King Felipe II of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556. Both Mary and Felipe were descended from legitimate children of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, by his first two wives, a relationship which was used to portray Felipe as an English king. Mary descended from the Duke of Lancaster by all three of his wives, Blanche of Lancaster, Constance of Castile, and Katherine Swynford. On her mother’s side Felipe and Mary were first cousins once removed.

Under the English common law doctrine of jure uxoris, the property and titles belonging to a woman became her husband’s upon marriage, and it was feared that any man she married would thereby become King of England in fact and in name. While Mary’s grandparents, Fernando II-V and Isabella I of Castile and Aragon (Spain’s) had retained sovereignty of their own realms during their marriage, there was no precedent to follow in England. Under the terms of Queen Mary’s Marriage Act, Felipe was to be styled “King of England”, all official documents (including Acts of Parliament) were to be dated with both their names, and Parliament was to be called under the joint authority of the couple, for Mary’s lifetime only.

England would not be obliged to provide military support to Felipe father in any war, and Felipe could not act without his wife’s consent or appoint foreigners to office in England.Felipe was unhappy at the conditions imposed, but he was ready to agree for the sake of securing the marriage. He had no amorous feelings toward Mary and sought the marriage for its political and strategic gains; Philip’s aide Ruy Gómez de Silva wrote to a correspondent in Brussels, “the marriage was concluded for no fleshly consideration, but in order to remedy the disorders of this kingdom and to preserve the Low Countries.”

Under Mary’s marriage treaty with Felipe, the official joint style reflected not only Mary’s but also Felipe’s dominions and claims: “Philip and Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol”. This style, which had been in use since 1554, was replaced when Philip inherited the Spanish Crown in 1556 with “Philip and Mary, by the Grace of God King and Queen of England, Spain, France, both the Sicilies, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Archdukes of Austria, Dukes of Burgundy, Milan and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol”.

During her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions. After Mary’s death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, at the beginning of the 45-year Elizabethan Era.

Ancestry

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1st Duke of Northumberland., Edward VI, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, James IV King of Scots, John Dudley, Kings and Queens of England, Lady Jane Grey, Lady Mary Tudor, Queen of England

On this day in history: February 12, 1554. Execution of Lady Jane Grey, pretender to the throne of England.

Lady Jane Grey (c. 1537-February 12, 1554), known also as Lady Jane Dudley (after her marriage) and as “the Nine Days’ Queen”, was an English noblewoman and de facto Queen of England and Ireland from 10 July until 19 July 1553.

The great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter, Mary Tudor, Jane was a first cousin, once removed, of Edward VI, King of England and Ireland from 1547. In May 1553, she was married to Lord Guildford Dudley, a younger son of Edward’s chief minister, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

The Third Succession Act of 1544 restored Henry VIII’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, to the line of succession, although they were still regarded as illegitimate. Furthermore, this Act authorised Henry VIII to alter the succession by his will. Henry’s will reinforced the succession of his three children, and then declared that, should none of them leave descendants, the throne would pass to heirs of his younger sister, Mary, which included Jane. For unknown reasons, Henry excluded Jane’s mother, Frances Grey, from the succession, and also bypassed the claims of the descendants of his elder sister, Margaret, who had married James IV of Scotland, Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus and Henry Stewart, 1st Lord Methven.

When the 15-year-old Edward VI lay dying in the early summer of 1553, his Catholic half-sister Mary was still his heir presumptive. However, Edward, in a draft will (“My devise for the Succession”) composed earlier in 1553, had first restricted the succession to (non-existent) male descendants of Frances Brandon and her daughters, before he named his Protestant cousin “Lady Jane and her heirs male” as his successors, probably in June 1553; the intent was to ensure his Protestant legacy, thereby bypassing Mary who was a Roman Catholic. Edward’s decision to name Jane Grey herself was possibly instigated by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland.

Edward VI personally supervised the copying of his will which was finally issued as letters patent on 21 June and signed by 102 notables, among them the whole Privy Council, peers, bishops, judges, and London aldermen. Edward also announced to have his “declaration” passed in parliament in September, and the necessary writs were prepared. However, this act the will of the king, never received Parliamentary approval for the young king died before his Will altering the succession could be voted on.

The King died on July 6, 1553, but his death was not announced until four days later. On July 9, Jane was informed that she was now queen, and according to her own later claims, accepted the crown only with reluctance. On July 10, she was officially proclaimed Queen of England, France and Ireland after she had taken up secure residence in the Tower of London, where English monarchs customarily resided from the time of accession until coronation. Jane refused to name her husband Dudley as king, because that would require an Act of Parliament. She would agree only to make him Duke of Clarence.

Northumberland faced a number of key tasks to consolidate his power after Edward’s death. Most importantly, he had to isolate and, ideally, capture Lady Mary to prevent her from gathering support. As soon as Mary was sure of King Edward’s demise, she left her residence at Hunsdon and set out to East Anglia, where she began to rally her supporters. Northumberland set out from London with troops on July 14, to capture Mary. After his departure, recognizing the overwhelming support of the population for Mary, the Privy Council switched their allegiance and proclaimed Lady Mary, Queen of England, London on July 19. Jane had only been de facto queen since the moment of Edward’s death on July 6, 1553 according to several prominent historians, so in fact, she had not been a Nine-Day Queen.

On July 16, 1553, Jane was imprisoned in the Tower’s Gentleman Gaoler’s apartments, her husband in the Beauchamp Tower. The Duke of Northumberland was executed on August 22, 1553. In September, Parliament declared Mary the rightful successor and denounced and revoked Jane’s proclamation as that of a usurper.

Trial and execution

Referred to by the court as Jane Dudley, wife of Guildford, Jane was charged with high treason, as were her husband, two of his brothers, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. Their trial, by a special commission, took place on November 13, 1553, at Guildhall in the City of London. The commission was chaired by Sir Thomas White, Lord Mayor of London, and Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. Other members included Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby and John Bourchier, 2nd Earl of Bath. As was to be expected, all defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death. Jane’s guilt, of having treacherously assumed the title and the power of the monarch, was evidenced by a number of documents she had signed as “Jane the Quene”. Her sentence was to “be burned alive on Tower Hill or beheaded as the Queen pleases” (burning was the traditional English punishment for treason committed by women). The imperial ambassador reported to Karl V, Holy Roman Emperor, that her life was to be spared.

The rebellion of Thomas Wyatt the Younger in January 1554 against Queen Mary’s marriage plans with Felipe of Spain sealed Jane’s fate. Her father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and his two brothers joined the rebellion, and so the government decided to go through with the verdict against Jane and Guildford. Their execution was first scheduled for February 9, 1554, but was then postponed for three days so that Jane should get a chance to be converted to the Catholic faith. Mary sent her chaplain John Feckenham to Jane, who was initially not pleased about this. Though she would not give in to his efforts “to save her soul”, she became friends with him and allowed him to accompany her to the scaffold.

On the morning of 12 February 1554, the authorities took Guildford from his rooms at the Tower of London to the public execution place at Tower Hill, where he was beheaded. A horse and cart brought his remains back to the Tower, past the rooms where Jane was staying. Seeing her husband’s corpse return, Jane is reported to have exclaimed: “Oh, Guildford, Guildford.” She was then taken out to Tower Green, inside the Tower, to be beheaded.

According to the account of her execution given in the anonymous Chronicle of Queen Jane and of Two Years of Queen Mary, written in 1850, which formed the basis for Raphael Holinshed’s depiction, Jane gave a speech upon ascending the scaffold:

Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen’s highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day.

While admitting to action considered unlawful, she declared that “I do wash my hands thereof in innocence”. Jane then recited Psalm 51 (Have mercy upon me, O God) in English, and handed her gloves and handkerchief to her maid. The executioner asked her forgiveness, which she granted him, pleading: “I pray you dispatch me quickly.” Referring to her head, she asked, “Will you take it off before I lay me down?”, and the axeman answered: “No, madam.” She then blindfolded herself. Jane then failed to find the block with her hands, and cried, “What shall I do? Where is it?” Probably Sir Thomas Brydges, the Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, helped her find her way. With her head on the block, Jane spoke the last words of Jesus as recounted by Luke: “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit!”

There is no contemporaneous evidence that this occurred, however, and there was no reference to this description of her execution prior to 1850. Eyewitness accounts indicate that the scaffold for Jane’s execution was built against the wall of the central White Tower, at its northwest corner (the corner closest to the Chapel of St Peter-ad-Vincula). Jane was accompanied to the scaffold by two gentlewomen, identified by the Tower chronicler as Mistress Elizabeth Tylney and “Mistress Eleyn,” and by John de Feckenham.

Jane and Guildford are buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula on the north side of Tower Green. No memorial stone was erected at their grave. Jane’s father, Duke of Suffolk, was executed 11 days after Jane, on February 23, 1554. Her mother, the Duchess of Suffolk, married her Master of the Horse and chamberlain, Adrian Stokes, in March 1555 (not, as often said, three weeks after the execution of the Duke of Suffolk). She was fully pardoned by Mary and allowed to live at Court with her two surviving daughters. She died in 1559.

Was Jane Queen of England, thus making her the first Queen Regnant of England? Sadly, though she was an innocent pawn of those around her she was, by definition, a usurper. Edward VI’s failure to have his letters altering the succession passed by an Act of Parliament still mean that not only was the Third Act of Succession still the law of the land, so was the 1547 Act of Treason. The Treason Act made it high treason to change the line of succession to the throne that had been established by Third Act of Succession. Of course as king, Edward VI could have had both the Third Act of Succession and the Treason Act replaced with new laws, but since he died prior to accomplishing that requirement that his sister Mary was the legal Queen per the terms of the Third Succession.

Why the Queen cannot give the throne to the Duke of Cambridge

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Act of Settlement 1701, Edward VI, Elizabeth II, Henry IV, Kingdom of England, Louis XIV of France, Parliament, Prince Charles, Prince William of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge

St. Edward’s Crown

Elizabeth II, Queen of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Frequently on social media I will see posts by people that think the Queen should give the throne to the Duke of Cambridge, bypassing the Prince of Wales. These people generally are not fans of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. The truth is the Queen has absolutely no power to give the crown to anyone.

She cannot legally bypass the Prince of Wales and give the crown to the Duke of Cambridge. The succession to the throne is regulated by Parliament through its laws and statutes and this authority to control the succession has been in the hands of Parliament for centuries. Therefore, it would take an Act of Parliament to remove the Prince of Wales from his rightful place in the order of the succession. There are no plans to do so, nor is there any reason or need to alter the succession.

Here is a brief history of the power to control the succession.

Even during the reigns of the Anglo-Saxon kings the power to regulate or name your successor was not in the hands of the monarch. That power was in the hands of the Witenagemot (Witan) a council of elders. At the time the English kingship was elective and semi-hereditary. The Witenagemot had the power to name and elect the king and they limited their choices to princes within the House of Wessex. The Witenagemot didn’t follow succession based on male primogeniture, they would often select a brother of the pervious King especially if the king left children too young to reign.

In 1066 when William I “the Conqueror” became king he abolished the Witenagemot and  became the first English king to hold the power and right to name his successor. Although at this time the king did hold this power, the will of the king was not always followed. Case in point was Henry I of England (1100-1134) who named his only surviving child, his daughter, the Empress Matilda, as his successor. Empress Matilda was the widow of Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich V. However, despite the Barons swearing an oath to uphold the succession of the Empress Matilda, this oath was ignored upon King Henry’s death allowing the King’s nephew, Count Stephen of Blois, to usurp the throne, plunging England into many years of civil war.

Eventually the crown evolved into the male preferred primogeniture that remained the law of the Kingdom up until recently. Also, concurrent with the settling into the tradition of male preferred primogeniture, came the rise of Parliament which also tried to influence the crown in matters of succession. When Henry IV (1399-1412) usurped the crown from Richard II (1377-1399) he had his kingship sanctioned by Parliament to give his reign legal status.

Even when monarchs such as Henry VIII (1509-1547) and his son Edward VI (1547-1553) tried to alter the succession they were unable to assert their will without Parliamentary approval. Henry VIII did succeed in making his daughters Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate and removing them from their place in the succession. However, Henry VIII’s last queen, Catherine Parr helped reconcile Henry with his daughters. In 1543, an Act of Parliament put them back in the line of succession after Edward. The same act allowed Henry to determine further succession to the throne in his will.

One of Henry’s desires was to exclude the descendants of the union of his sister Margaret and King James IV of Scotland. Henry VIII’s successor, Edward VI, tried to bypass his sisters Mary and Elizabeth and give the throne to his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, desiring to maintain the Protestant faith which Mary would certainly (and did) return the English Church to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Elizabeth I, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Parliament did not sanction altering the succession that Edward VI attempted. This was another reason Lady Jane is considered a usurper. However, had the attempted usurpation by Lady Jane Grey, lead by her Father-in-Law John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, been successful and thereby solidifying Lady Jane’s position as the first Queen Regnant of England, it is very plausible Parliament would have sanctioned her reign by passing it’s own statute or legalizing the Will of King Edward VI.

James I-VI, King of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was the last monarch who had power to name her successor given the fact that she left no issue. This was a power she refused to use as she did not name her successor, although historians debate whether or not she did name her distant cousin, King James VI of Scotland, as her successor. However, during the reign of Elizabeth I concerns were once again raised about who would succeed the childless queen. Although Margaret’s (Henry VIII’s sister) line had been excluded from the English succession, in the last decade of her reign it was clear to all that James VI of Scotland, great-grandson of James IV and Margaret, was the only generally acceptable heir. In the end Henry VIII’s will was bipassed.

Another succession crisis, called the Exclusion Crisis, which ran from 1679 through 1681 in the reign of King Charles II when three Exclusion Bills sought to exclude the King’s brother and heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland because he was Roman Catholic. None became law. Two new parties, Tories and Whigs, formed as a result. The Tories were opposed to this exclusion while the “Country Party”, who were soon to be called the Whigs, supported it. The matter of James’s exclusion was not decided in Parliament during Charles’s reign, representing the last time a monarch asserted his power of controlling the succession.

After two failed attempts to pass the Bill, Charles succeeded in labelling the Whigs as subversives. Louis XIV of France offered financial support to Charles, allowing him to dissolve the 1681 Oxford Parliament. It was not called again during his reign, depriving the Whigs of their main goal. This crisis between Crown and Parliament almost caused another English Civil War.

James II-VII, King of England, Scotland and Ireland

The Duke of York became King James II-VII of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1685 and the tension between Crown and Parliament reached a head when he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It was the abandonment of the throne by James II-VII in 1688 which lead to the Convention Parliament calling William III of Orange and Princess Mary, daughter of the deposed king, to rule jointly as king and queen.

This act was legalized when William III called for the election of a new Parliament which passed the Crown and Parliament Recognition Act of 1689. Also, With the Passing of the Act of Settlement in 1701, which regulated the throne to the Protestant descendants of the Electress Sophia of Hanover. With this Act Parliament then held held the complete power to regulate the succession to the crown and it’s a power they’veThe most held ever since.

William II-III, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and Stadholder of the Netherlands.

Although France isn’t England, even the great powerful Louis XIV of France and Navarre (1643-1715), an absolute monarch, was unable to alter the succession to the French throne when he wanted to give succession rights to his legitimized children after the Princes of the Blood. This demonstrates how difficult it is for a monarch to alter the succession to the crown.

The most recent example of Parliament altering the succession was when Male preferred primogeniture ended when Parliament (and all members of the Commonwealth) passed the Crown Act of 2013 which left the succession to the Crown to the eldest child of the Sovereign regardless of gender.

I hope this short history lesson demonstrates why the Queen cannot alter the succession to the crown by giving the throne to the Duke of Cambridge bypassing the Prince of Wales.