March 24, 1603: Death of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland

Tags

Anne Boleyn, Elizabethan Era, Henry VIII of England and Ireland, House of Tudor, James VI of Scotland, Mary I of Scotland, Pope Pius V, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Regnans in Excelsis, Robert Cecil

Elizabeth I (September 7, 1533 – March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes referred to as the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was 2 and a half years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother Edward VI ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statute law to the contrary.

Edward’s will was set aside mostly because it never had Parliamentary approval and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Upon her half-sister’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, whom much later she created 1st Baron Burghley.

One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England.

It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did. She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland; this laid the foundation for the Kingdom of Great Britain. She had earlier been reluctantly responsible for the imprisonment and execution of James’s mother, Mary I, Queen of Scots.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was “video et taceo” (“I see and keep silent”). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution.

By means of the papal bull of 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I of England for heresy and persecution of English Catholics during her reign. The Pope also released her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers’ secret service, run by Francis Walsingham.

Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth’s reign became known as the Elizabethan era.

The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the prowess of English maritime adventurers such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh.

Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler who enjoyed more than her fair share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity.

However, Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity.

Death

Elizabeth’s senior adviser, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, died on August 4, 1598. His political mantle passed to his son, Robert Cecil, who soon became the leader of the government. One task he addressed was to prepare the way for a smooth succession. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret.

Robert Cecil therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim. Cecil coached the impatient James to humour Elizabeth and “secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations or over much curiosity in her own actions”.

The advice worked. James’s tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: “So trust I that you will not doubt but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them to you in grateful sort”. In historian J. E. Neale’s view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with “unmistakable if veiled phrases”.

The Queen’s health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow.

In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a “settled and unremovable melancholy”, and sat motionless on a cushion for hours on end. When Robert Cecil told her that she must go to bed, she snapped: “Must is not a word to use to princes, little man.”

She died on March 24, 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James VI of Scotland as the new King of England and Ireland.

One interesting fact is that Queen Elizabeth I actually never lived to see the year 1603.

While it has become normative to record the death of the Queen as occurring in 1603, following English calendar reform in the 1750s, at the time England observed New Year’s Day on March 25, commonly known as Lady Day.

Thus Elizabeth died on the last day of the year 1602 in the old calendar. The modern convention is to use the old calendar for the date and month while using the new for the year.

November 17, 1558: Death of Queen Mary I of England and Ireland

Tags

Bloody Mary, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Henry VIII of England and Ireland, Mary I of England and Ireland, Mary Tudor, Philip II of Spain, Philip of Spain, Queen Mary’s Marriage Act, Roman Catholic Church

Mary I (February 18, 1516 – November 17, 1558), also known as Mary Tudor, and as “Bloody Mary” by her Protestant opponents, was Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death in 1558. She is best known for her vigorous attempt to reverse the English Reformation, which had begun during the reign of her father, Henry VIII. Her attempt to restore to the Church the property confiscated in the previous two reigns was largely thwarted by Parliament, but during her five-year reign, Mary had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions.

Mary was born on February 18, 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, England. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive infancy. Her mother had suffered many miscarriages. Before Mary’s birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or stillborn sons, including Henry, Duke of Cornwall.

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, 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, correctly, that she would reverse the Protestant reforms that had taken place during his reign. Upon his death, leading politicians proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as queen.

Mary was—excluding the brief, disputed reigns of the Empress Matilda and Lady Jane Grey—England’s first Queen Regnant. Further, 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 name.

While Mary’s grandparents Fernando II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile had retained sovereignty of their respective 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’s father in any war, and Felipe could not act without his wife’s consent or appoint foreigners to office in England. Feilpe was unhappy with these conditions but ready to agree for the sake of securing the marriage. He had no amorous feelings for Mary and sought the marriage for its political and strategic gains; his 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.”

To elevate his son to Mary’s rank, Emperor Charles V ceded to Felipe the crown of Naples as well as his claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Mary thus became Queen of Naples and titular Queen of Jerusalem upon marriage. Their wedding at Winchester Cathedral on 25 July 1554 took place just two days after their first meeting. Felipe could not speak English, and so they spoke a mixture of Spanish, French, and Latin.

After Felipe’s visit in 1557, Mary again thought she was pregnant, with a baby due in March 1558. She decreed in her will that her husband would be the regent during the minority of their child. But no child was born, and Mary was forced to accept that her half-sister Elizabeth would be her lawful successor.

Mary was weak and ill from May 1558. In pain, possibly from ovarian cysts or uterine cancer, she died on November 17, 1558, aged 42, at St James’s Palace, during an influenza epidemic that also claimed Pole’s life later that day. She was succeeded by Elizabeth. Philip, who was in Brussels, wrote to his sister Joan: “I felt a reasonable regret for her death.”

Although Mary’s will stated that she wished to be buried next to her mother, she was interred in Westminster Abbey on December 14, in a tomb she eventually shared with Elizabeth. The inscription on their tomb, affixed there by James I when he succeeded Elizabeth, is Regno consortes et urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis (“Consorts in realm and tomb, we sisters Elizabeth and Mary here lie down to sleep in hope of the resurrection”).

After Mary’s death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I.

Mysterious Disappearance of Mary Seymour

Tags

1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Catherine Parr, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, Edward Seymour, Edward VI of England and Ireland, Henry VIII of England and Ireland, Mary Seymour, Thomas Seymour

Mary Seymour (August 30, 1548 – unknown), was the only daughter of Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and Catherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII of England and Ireland. Mary was born at her father’s country seat, Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire.

Parents

Catherine Parr was the eldest child of Sir Thomas Parr, lord of the manor of Kendal in Westmorland, (now Cumbria), and Maud Green, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Thomas Green, lord of Greens Norton, Northamptonshire, and Joan Fogge. Sir Thomas Parr was a descendant of King Edward III, and the Parrs were a substantial northern family which included many knights.

Catherine was Queen of England and Ireland as the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII from their marriage on July 12, 1543 until Henry’s death on January 28, 1547.

About six months after Henry VIII’s death, she married her fourth and final husband, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley. The marriage was short-lived, as she died on Wednesday, September 5, 1548 at the age of 36, due to complications of childbirth. Although Catherine was married four times, Mary Seymour was her only child. Parr’s funeral was held on September 7, 1548. Parr’s funeral was the first Protestant funeral in England, Scotland or Ireland to be held in English.

Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, KG PC (c.1508 – March 20, 1549) was the son of Sir John Seymour and Margaret Wentworth. He was the younger brother of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England (1500–1552).

Despite his great wealth and high position, Thomas Seymour could not come to terms with his brother’s appointment as protector; and in his struggle with Somerset, he tried to ingratiate himself with the king, and vied for control of his nephew, the young King Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) who was just a little boy. In 1547 Seymour became the fourth husband of Catherine Parr. During his marriage to Catherine Parr, Seymour became involved with, the future Queen Elizabeth I (then 14 years old), who resided in his household, in flirtatious and possibly sexual behaviour.

In summer 1547, Edward Seymour, 1st duke of Somerset and the Protector of England, invaded Scotland. During his absence from the court, his brother, Thomas Seymour, fomented opposition to his authority, voicing open disapproval of his brother’s administrative skills. Because his activities seemed suspicious, several members of the nobility advised him to be content with his position, but he would not listen.

I will go into more detail on Thomas Seymour in an up coming post. So I’ll just mention that on February 20, the regency council officially accused him of thirty-three charges of treason. He was convicted of treason, condemned to death and executed on March 20, 1549.

Later in 1549, the Parliament of England passed an Act (3 & 4 Edw. 6 C A P. XIV) removing the attainder placed on her father from Mary, but his lands remained property of the Crown.

As her mother’s wealth was left entirely to her father and later confiscated by the Crown, Mary was left a destitute orphan in the care of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who appears to have resented this imposition. After 1550 Mary disappears from historical record completely, and no claim was ever made on her father’s meager estate, leading to the conclusion that she did not live past the age of two.

Survival speculations

Victorian author Agnes Strickland claimed, in her biography of Catherine Parr, that Mary Seymour did survive to adulthood, and in fact married Sir Edward Bushel, a member of the household of Anne of Denmark, wife of King James I-VI of England, Scotland and Ireland. Strickland’s theory suggested that the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, after her marriage to Richard Bertie in 1553, and before she fled England during the Marian Persecutions in or after 1555, arranged Mary’s marriage to Bushel. The problem with this theory is that Mary would have been only aged six at the time.

Another theory states that Mary was removed to Wexford, Ireland, and raised under the care of a Protestant family there, the Harts, who had been engaged in piracy off the Irish coast under the protection of a profit sharing arrangement with Thomas Seymour.

A lozenge-shaped ring inscribed “What I have I hold” was reputed to have been an early gift to Thomas by his brother Edward Seymour, and was passed down through generations of the Seymour-Harts until at least 1927.

There was reference to “Mary” found in old Elizabethan texts of ‘The Late Queen’s heir.’ However, this could be various other women. Historian S. Joy states that “Mary definitely lived past the age of 10, but after that little is known.”

September 7, 1533: Birth of Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland.

Tags

Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, Henry VIII of England and Ireland, James VI of Scotland, Mary I of England, Mary I of Scotland, Papal Bull, Pope Pius V, Virgin Queen

Elizabeth I (September 7, 1533 – March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was 2 1/2 years old. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother Edward VI ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statute law to the contrary.

Edward’s will was set aside which did not have the consent of Parliament. Mary became queen, thwarting the attempted usurping of the crown by John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland KG (1504 – 1553) who unsuccessfully tried to install Lady Jane Grey on the throne.

• 

Elizabeth I of England and Ireland

During Mary’s reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Upon her half-sister’s death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England.

It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did. She was eventually succeeded by her first-cousin twice-removed, King James VI of Scotland, laying the foundation for the future Kingdom of Great Britain. She had earlier been responsible for the imprisonment and execution of James’s mother, Queen Mary I of Scotland.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her mottoes was “video et taceo” (“I see and keep silent”). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After Pope Pius V declared her excommunicated  in 1570 and released her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers’ secret service.

Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth’s reign became known as the Elizabethan era.

The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Francis Drake. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her share of luck.

Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.