This date in History. October 1, 1553: Coronation of Queen Mary I of England and Ireland.

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Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, 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 and return England to Roman Catholicism. 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.

Accession

On July 6, 1553, at the age of 15, King Edward VI died from a lung infection, possibly tuberculosis. He did not want the crown to go to his sister Mary, because he feared she would restore Catholicism and undo his reforms as well as those of his father Henry VIII, and therefore he planned to exclude her from the line of succession. His advisers, however, told him that he could not disinherit only one of his half-sisters: he would have to disinherit Elizabeth as well, even though she was a Protestant. Guided by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, and perhaps others, Edward excluded both from the line of succession in his will.

Contradicting the Third Succession Act, which was enacted by Henry VIII and passed by the Parliament of England in July 1543; the Act restored Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession, Edward named Dudley’s daughter-in-law Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s younger sister, Mary, as his successor. Lady Jane’s mother was Frances Brandon, Mary’s cousin and goddaughter. Just before Edward VI’s death, Mary was summoned to London to visit her dying brother. She was warned, however, that the summons was a pretext on which to capture her and thereby facilitate Lady Jane’s accession to the throne. Therefore, instead of heading to London from her residence at Hunsdon, Mary fled into East Anglia, where she owned extensive estates and Dudley had ruthlessly put down Kett’s Rebellion. Many adherents to the Catholic faith, opponents of Dudley’s, lived there. On July 9, from Kenninghall, Norfolk, she wrote to the privy council with orders for her proclamation as Edward’s successor.

On July 10, 1553, Lady Jane was proclaimed queen by Dudley and his supporters, and on the same day Mary’s letter to the council arrived in London. Despite Edward’s desire to exclude Mary from the throne it was never approved by Parliament which mean that the Third Succession Act was still the extant law of the land which meant Mary was still her brother’s legal heir and successor.

By July 12, Mary and her supporters had assembled a military force at Framlingham Castle, Suffolk, Dudley’s support collapsed, and Jane’s attempt at usurpation was halted on July 19. Although truth be told Jane and her husband were mere pawns of Dudley’s schemes. Jane and Lord Guilford Dudley were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Mary rode triumphantly into London on August 3, 1553, on a wave of popular support. She was accompanied by her half-sister Elizabeth and a procession of over 800 nobles and gentlemen.

One of Mary’s first actions as queen was to order the release of the Roman Catholic Duke of Norfolk and Stephen Gardiner from imprisonment in the Tower of London, as well as her kinsman Edward Courtney. Mary understood that the young Lady Jane was essentially a pawn in Dudley’s scheme, and Dudley was the only conspirator of rank executed for high treason in the immediate aftermath of the coup. Lady Jane and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, though found guilty, were kept under guard in the Tower rather than immediately executed, while Lady Jane’s father, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, was released. Mary was left in a difficult position, as almost all the Privy Counsellors had been implicated in the plot to put Lady Jane on the throne. She appointed Gardiner to the council and made him both Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor, offices he held until his death in November 1555. Susan Clarencieux became Mistress of the Robes. On October 1, 1553, Gardiner crowned Mary at Westminster Abbey.

On this date in History, February 8, 1587. The execution of Mary I, Queen of Scots.

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On this date in History, February 8, 1587. The execution of Mary I, Queen of Scots.

In November 1558, Henry VIII’s elder daughter, Queen Mary I of England, was succeeded by her only surviving sibling, who became Queen Elizabeth I. Under the Third Succession Act, passed in 1543 by the English Parliament, Elizabeth was recognized as her sister’s heir, and Henry VIII’s last will and testament, excluded the Stuarts from succeeding to the English throne. Yet, in the eyes of many Catholics, Elizabeth was illegitimate because they did not view Henry VIII’s divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, as legal and binding. Therefore, to many Catholics, Mary Stuart, (Queen Mary I of Scotland) was recognized as the legitimate senior descendant of Henry VIII’s elder sister, and was the rightful queen of England. When Elizabeth I succeeded to the English throne King Henri II of France proclaimed his eldest son and daughter-in-law king and queen of England, and in France the royal arms of England were quartered with those of Franḉois and Mary. Mary’s claim to the English throne was a perennial sticking point between her and Elizabeth I.

In 1567 Mary I, Queen of Scots was deposed and replaced on the Scottish throne with her son, who became James VI, King of Scots (1567-1625). Mary sought refuge in England. Elizabeth I, never trusting her cousin, eventually had Mary in custody in England. On August 11, 1586, after being implicated in the Babington Plot, Mary was arrested while out riding and taken to Tixall. The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary I, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, on the English throne.

From letters written by Mary that were smuggled out of Chartley it was clear that Mary had sanctioned the attempted assassination of Elizabeth. To keep a better eye on her activities Elizabeth had Mary moved to Fotheringhay Castle on September 20, 1586. In October Mary was put on trial for treason under the Act for the Queen’s Safety before a court of 36 noblemen, including Cecil, Shrewsbury, and Walsingham. Mary denied the charges. She told her triers, “Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England”. She protested that she had been denied the opportunity to review the evidence, that her papers had been removed from her, that she was denied access to legal counsel and that as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an English subject and thus could not be convicted of treason.

Mary was convicted of Treason on October 25 and sentenced to death with only one commissioner, Lord Zouche, expressing any form of dissent. Nevertheless, despite the conviction, Elizabeth hesitated to order her execution. Elizabeth faced great pressure from the English Parliament to carry out the sentence. However, Elizabeth had many concerns in executing a fellow anointed sovereign who was also her cousin. She was concerned that the killing of a queen set a discreditable precedent and was fearful of the consequences, especially if, in retaliation, Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland, formed an alliance with the Catholic powers, such as France, whom Mary was a former queen consort of France via her marriage to King Franḉois II of France (1559-1560) would invade England.

Elizabeth asked Paulet, Mary’s final custodian, if he would contrive a clandestine way to “shorten the life” of Mary, which he refused to do on the grounds that he would not make “a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot on my poor posterity”. On February 1, 1587, Elizabeth reluctantly signed the death warrant, and entrusted it to William Davison, a privy councillor. On February 3, ten members of the Privy Council of England, having been summoned by Cecil without Elizabeth’s knowledge, decided to carry out the sentence at once.

Execution

At Fotheringhay on the evening of February 7,1587, Mary was told that she was to be executed the next morning. She spent the last hours of her life in prayer, distributing her belongings to her household, and writing her will and a letter to the King Henri III of France. The scaffold that was erected in the Great Hall was two feet high and draped in black. It was reached by two or three steps and furnished with the block, a cushion for her to kneel on and three stools, for her and the earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, who were there to witness the execution. The executioners (one named Bull and his assistant) knelt before her and asked forgiveness, as it was typical for the executioner to ask the pardon of the one being put to death. She replied, “I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.” Her servants, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curle, and the executioners helped Mary to remove her outer garments, revealing a velvet petticoat and a pair of sleeves in crimson brown, the liturgical colour of martyrdom in the Catholic Church, with a black satin bodice and black trimmings. As she disrobed she smiled and said that she “never had such grooms before … nor ever put off her clothes before such a company”. She was blindfolded by Kennedy with a white veil embroidered in gold, knelt down on the cushion in front of the block, on which she positioned her head, and stretched out her arms. Her last words were, In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum (“Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit”).

Mary was not beheaded with a single strike. The first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head. The second blow severed the neck, except for a small bit of sinew, which the executioner cut through using the axe. Afterward, he held her head aloft and declared, “God save the Queen.” At that moment, the auburn tresses in his hand turned out to be a wig and the head fell to the ground, revealing that Mary had very short, grey hair. A small dog owned by the queen, a Skye Terrier, is said to have been hiding among her skirts, unseen by the spectators. Following the beheading, it was covered in her blood and refused to be parted from its owner’s body until it was forcibly taken away and washed. Items supposedly worn or carried by Mary at her execution are of doubtful provenance; contemporary accounts state that all her clothing, the block, and everything touched by her blood was burnt in the fireplace of the Great Hall to obstruct relic-hunters.

When the news of the execution reached Elizabeth, she became indignant and asserted that Davison had disobeyed her instructions not to part with the warrant and that the Privy Council had acted without her authority. Elizabeth’s vacillation and deliberately vague instructions gave her plausible deniability to attempt to avoid the direct stain of Mary’s blood. Davison was arrested, thrown into the Tower of London, and found guilty of misprision. He was released nineteen months later after Cecil and Walsingham interceded on his behalf.

Mary’s request to be buried in France was refused by Elizabeth. Her body was embalmed and left in a secure lead coffin until her burial, in a Protestant service, at Peterborough Cathedral in late July 1587. Her entrails, removed as part of the embalming process, were buried secretly within Fotheringhay Castle. Her body was exhumed in 1612, when her son, King James VI and I, ordered that she be reinterred in Westminster Abbey in a chapel opposite the tomb of Elizabeth I. In 1867, her tomb was opened in an attempt to ascertain the resting place of James I-VI of England and Scotland; he was ultimately found with Henry VII, but many of her other descendants, including Elizabeth of Bohemia, Prince Rupert of the Rhine and the children of Anne, Queen of Great Britain, were interred in her vault.

Elizabeth II is not the Queen of England!!!

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Elizabeth I, England Scotland Devolution. Parliament, George III, George V, Queen Elizabeth II

 I am a bit of a stickler for correct usage of styles and titles. So it is a bit of a pet peeve of mine when these are used improperly. The main one that bugs me is calling Elizabeth II, Queen of England. That bothers me because “Queen of England” is not her correct title! Her correct title, simplified here, is Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. England has not been a separate sovereign state since 1707.

Here is a little historical background on the issue. For centuries England and Scotland were separate sovereign kingdoms each with their own monarch. There was not always peace between the two states and England constantly tried to keep Scotland subdued. Edward I (1272-1307) is not known as the Hammer of the Scots for nothing! The Kingdoms of England and Scotland remained separate until 1603. Queen Elizabeth I of England died without issue and her closest relative that had a claim to the throne was her cousin King James VI of Scotland (1567-1625), who also became King James I of England and Ireland.

The accession of the Scottish king on the English throne did not politically unite the two nations. Both kingdoms were ruled by James but remained individual sovereign states that retained their own parliaments and laws.

Although James liked to consider himself as the King of Great Britain this self appointed title was not approved by Parliament and had no legal barring. From 1603 until 1707 (excluding the Commonwealth period when the monarchy was abolished) the title of the monarch was King/Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland (they also called themselves the Kings of France but that is another story).

In 1707 came the Act of Union uniting the Parliaments of England and Scotland creating the new nation of Great Britain. England and Scotland ceased to be independent sovereign states and were then, and now, considered separate states within the union. Ireland remained separate from Great Britain.

The title of the monarch changed accordingly and the titles of King or Queen of England and King or Queen of Scotland passed into history. Anne was Queen of England and Scotland when the act was passed and her title was changed to Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

The title remained King or Queen of Great Britain and Ireland for 93 years until the nation expanded once more. Ireland was now included in the political union with Great Britain and the new state became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. George III (1760-1820) was the monarch at the time and his title changed accordingly.

From 1714 to 1837 the British monarch was also Elector of Hanover within the German Holy Roman Empire until 1806 when the Empire was abolished. In 1814 Hanover was created a Kingdom by the Congress of Vienna in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. Although the British monarchs listed their Hanoverian titles among their British titles, Britain and Hanover were ruled separately and were not politically unified.

In 1920 in the reign of King George V (1910-1936) a large portion of Ireland was given its independence and only the northern counties remained united with Britain. However, this part of Ireland continued to be a constitutional monarchy with the King of the United Kingdom as to their Head of State. The Free State of Ireland was separate from Northern Ireland which was still a part of the United Kingdom.

The Free State of Ireland came to an end with The Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which came into force on April 18, 1949, the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Easter Rising. This act created The Republic of Ireland.

Outside the Irish state, “Great Britain, Ireland” was not officially omitted from the royal title until 1953 when Elizabeth II began her reign. Her official title is:  Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

Now having said my rant and given the historical background on the evolution of the title of the British monarch I must be honest and say that I do miss the traditional titles of King or Queen of England and King or Queen of Scotland. Those are in the past unless devolution comes to the UK and England and Scotland becomes independent once again. If that does happen I think we would see a return to how things were prior to 1707 when both England and Scotland shared the same monarch.