King Charles III is Not the King of England!

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King Charles III, King George III, King Henry VIII, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Kingdom of Ireland, Kingdom of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Principality of Wales, Queen Anne, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

From the Emperor’s Desk: This is an updated and expanded article I wrote in 2012 at the start of my blog when Elizabeth II was Queen.

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

I am a bit of a stickler for correct and proper 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 Charles III, King of England. That bothers me because “King of England” is not his correct title! His correct title, simplified here, is King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. England has not been a separate sovereign state since 1707.

Wales

The country of Wales was once an independent Principality. The conquest of Wales by Edward I of England was completed by 1283, though Owain Glyndŵr rebelled against English rule in the early 15th century and briefly re-established an independent Welsh principality. The whole of Wales was annexed by England and incorporated within the English legal system under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542.

Ireland

In 1166, Mac Murrough King of Leinster, had fled to Anjou, France, following a war involving Tighearnán Ua Ruairc, of Breifne, and sought the assistance of the Angevin King Henry II of England, in recapturing his kingdom.

In 1171, Henry arrived in Ireland in order to review the general progress of the expedition. He wanted to re-exert royal authority over the invasion which was expanding beyond his control. Henry successfully re-imposed his authority over Strongbow and the Cambro-Norman warlords and persuaded many of the Irish kings to accept him as their overlord, an arrangement confirmed in the 1175 Treaty of Windsor.

The invasion was legitimised by reference to provisions of the alleged Papal Bull Laudabiliter, issued by an Englishman, Pope Adrian IV, in 1155. The document apparently encouraged Henry to take control in Ireland in order to oversee the financial and administrative reorganisation of the Irish Church and its integration into the Roman Church system.

In 1172, Pope Alexander III further encouraged Henry to advance the integration of the Irish Church with Rome. Henry was authorised to impose a tithe of one penny per hearth as an annual contribution. This church levy called Peter’s Pence, is extant in Ireland as a voluntary donation. In turn, Henry II assumed the title of Lord of Ireland which Henry conferred on his younger son, John Lackland, in 1185.

This defined the Anglo-Norman administration in Ireland as the Lordship of Ireland. When Henry’s successor, King Richard I of England, died unexpectedly in 1199, King John inherited the crown of England and retained the Lordship of Ireland. The Kings of England remained Lord of Ireland until the Crown of Ireland Act 1542.

Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland

When King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn his legal claim to the lordship of Ireland was tenuous because that title had been granted by the Pope and was connected to the Roman Catholic Church. The solution to this quandary was to elevate Henry’s title from Lord to King.

By the terms of the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, the Parliament of Ireland created Henry VIII of England as “King of Ireland”. Although the Kings of England, and later the Kings of England and Scotland, we’re also Kings of Ireland, Ireland was not politically joined to England and Scotland and remained a separate independent Kingdom and was ruled in a personal union by the king or queen.

With Wales having been incorporated within the Kingdom of England, and Ireland as a separate Kingdom ruled by the English monarch, let us now focus on how the kingdoms of England and Scotland were united.

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 as England constantly tried to keep Scotland subdued. Edward I of England (1272-1307) is not known as the Hammer of the Scots for nothing!

The Kingdoms of England and Scotland ruled by separate monarchs until 1603. Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland died without issue and her closest relative that had a claim to the throne was her cousin King James VI of Scotland (1567-1625).

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

James VI of Scotland was deemed the rightful heir though there is debate as to whether or not Queen Elizabeth I actually named the Scottish King as her successor; he was accepted as King and became King James I of England and Ireland. There were other candidates for the English Throne besides the Scottish King, but that’s a subject for another blog entry.

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. In England and Ireland he is reckoned as James I and in Scotland he is reckoned as James VI.

Although James I-VI liked to consider himself as the first King of Great Britain this title was self appointed and was not approved of by Parliament and the title had no legal barring.

Therefore, 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. The uniting of England and Scotland has a complex history which I have written about before on this blog, and will do a deeper dive into it at some future point.

Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland 1702-1707, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland 1707-1714

Suffice it to say, at this point 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 and remained in personal union with the monarch.

The title of the monarch changed accordingly at this time and the titles of King or Queen of England and King or Queen of Scotland passed into history. Anne was Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland when the Act of Union of 1707 was passed and her title was changed to Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg

The title remained King or Queen of Great Britain and Ireland for 93 years until the nation expanded once more. The Act of Union of 1801 joined the Parliament of Ireland with the Parliament of Great Britain. Ireland was now included in the political union with Great Britain and the new state became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

King George III (1760-1820) was the monarch at the time and his title changed accordingly. He was now King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was at this point the pretence to the title King of France was finally dropped.

George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg 1760-1801, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg

From 1714 to 1837 the British monarch was also Elector of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg 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.

Charles III, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Outside the Irish state, “Great Britain, Ireland” was not officially omitted from the royal title until 1953 when Elizabeth II began her reign.

Today, the official title of the King is: Charles III, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of his other realms and territories, King, 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.

The Kingdom of Ireland: Part IV

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Constitution, Constitutional Monarchy, Irish Free State, King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, King George VI of the United Kingdom, Kingdom of Ireland, President of Ireland, Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Under the constitution of the Irish Free State The King of the United Kingdom was the their Head of State as that constitution established the Irish Free State as a constitutional monarchy. However, with the new constitution of 1936 until April 1949 it was unclear whether the Irish state was a republic or a form of constitutional monarchy and (from 1937) whether its head of state was the President of Ireland or King George VI.

The exact constitutional status of the state during this period has been a matter of scholarly and political dispute. The Oireachtas removed all references to the monarch from the revised constitution in 1936, but under statute law the British monarch continued to play a role in foreign relations, though always on the advice of the Irish government. The state did not officially describe itself as the Republic of Ireland until 1949, when it passed legislation giving itself that description.

Background

The state known today as Ireland is the successor-state to the Irish Free State which was established in December 1922. The Irish Free State was governed, until at least 1936, under a form of constitutional monarchy. Under the Free State’s constitution the King had a number of nominal duties, including exercising the executive authority of the state, appointing the cabinet and promulgating the law. However, all of these were delegated to the Governor-General of the Irish Free State, and in 1927 the King’s title within Great Britain and Northern Ireland was changed by proclamation under the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act passed by the Westminster Parliament to “George V, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India”.

King’s title in the Irish state

The King’s title in the Irish Free State (1922–1937) and in Ireland (1937–1949) was the same as it was elsewhere in the Commonwealth, being:
* 1922–1927: By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India
* 1927–1948: By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India
* 1948–1949: By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith.

Edward VIII and the abdication crisis

Edward VIII, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India

In January 1936, George V died and was succeeded by his eldest son, who became Edward VIII. The new King’s reign lasted only eleven months, and he abdicated in December of that year and was succeeded by his brother Prince Albert, Duke of York, who took the name George VI. The parliaments of independent members of the British Commonwealth were required to ratify this change in monarch, and the pro-republican government of the Irish Free State decided to use this opportunity to drastically change the constitution.

Immediate post-abdication reforms (1936–37)

The day after the abdication was announced on December 12, 1936, the Free State constitution was amended to remove all mention of the King and abolish the office of governor-general. The following day, a separate statute permitted the King to sign international treaties and to accredit diplomatic representatives, where authorised by the Irish government.

In 1937 a new Constitution was adopted establishing the monarch’s diminished role, transferring many of the functions performed by the King until 1936 to a new office of President of Ireland, who was declared to “take precedence over all other persons in the State”. However, the 1937 constitution did not explicitly declare that the state was a republic, nor that the President was head of state, and it allowed for the King to have a role in the state’s external affairs. The state’s ambiguous status ended in 1949, when the Republic of Ireland Act ended the King’s remaining role in external affairs and declared that the state was a republic.

The status of the Head of the Irish State from 1936 to 1949 was largely a matter of symbolism and had little practical significance. This was because the roles of both the King and the President of Ireland were merely ceremonial, being exercisable only “on the advice” of the government (Cabinet). However, one practical implication of explicitly declaring the state to be a republic in 1949 was that it automatically led to the state’s termination of membership of the then British Commonwealth, in accordance with the rules in operation at the time.

Constitution of 1937

The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, filled the gap left by the abolition of the governor-general by creating the post of a directly elected president. The President of Ireland was henceforth responsible for the ceremonial functions of dissolving the legislature, appointing the government, and promulgating the law. Unlike most heads of state in parliamentary systems, the President was not even the nominal chief executive. Instead, the role of exercising executive authority was explicitly granted to the government—in practice, to the Taoiseach. The constitution also, like the 1922 constitution that preceded it, contained many provisions typical of those found in republican constitutions, stating, for example, that sovereignty resided in the people and prohibiting the granting of titles of nobility.

George VI, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India

Nonetheless the government of Éamon de Valera, despite its long-term goal of republicanising the Irish state, consciously chose not to declare a republic and decided to name the state simply Éire (or Ireland), rather than the “Republic of Ireland” or the “Irish Republic”. Thus the new constitution did not explicitly declare that the President would be head of state, providing merely that he would “take precedence over all other persons in the State”. Nor did the new document mention the word republic. Most crucially, Article 29 of the new constitution mirrored Article 51 of its predecessor, by permitting the state to allow its external relations to be exercised by the King.

Nonetheless from 1936 until 1949 the role of the King in the Irish state was invisible to most Irish people. The monarch never visited the state during that period and, due to the abolition of the office of governor-general, had no official representative there. The President, on the other hand, played a key role in important public ceremonies.
Asked to explain the country’s status in 1945, de Valera insisted that it was a republic.

Republic of Ireland Act

The Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which came into force on April 18, 1949, the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the Easter Rising, was remarkable in that it purported to reform the state into a republic without making any change to the constitution, the ambiguous provisions of which remained unaltered. The Republic of Ireland Act contained three major provisions; it declared that: the External Relations Act was repealed, the state was a republic, and the external relations of the state would henceforth be exercised by the President. The act also had the effect of automatically terminating the state’s membership of the Commonwealth.

Soon after President Seán T. O’Kelly signed the act into law, he commemorated his new status as the clear and unambiguous Irish head of state with state visits to the Holy See and France. A visit to meet George VI at Buckingham Palace was also provisionally planned, but timetabling problems with the President’s schedule prevented the meeting.

Outside the Irish state, “Great Britain, Ireland” was not officially omitted in the royal title until 1953 in the reign of Elizabeth II. Then, each Commonwealth realm adopted a unique title for the monarch. No mention of Ireland was made in any except in the title within the United Kingdom and its dependent territories: it was changed from “of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Queen” to “of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories, Queen”.

In 1962 the Republic of Ireland officially repealed Crown of Ireland Act of 1542.

Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories.

The Kingdom of Ireland: Part III

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British Dominion, Government of Ireland Act, Irish Free State, King George V of the United Kingdom, Kingdom of Ireland, Lord Lieutenant, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Home-rule movement

From the Act of Union on January 1, 1801, until December 6, 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island’s population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States.

From 1874, and particularly under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy.

In April 1916, Irish republicans launched the Easter Rising against British rule and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Although it was crushed after a week of fighting, the Easter Rising and the British response led to greater popular support for Irish independence. In the December 1918 election, the republican party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in Ireland. On January 21, 1919 they formed a breakaway government (Dáil Éireann) and declared Irish independence.

In May 1921, Ireland was partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act, which created Northern Ireland. Both sides agreed to a ceasefire (or ‘truce’) on July 11, 1921. The post-ceasefire talks led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921. This ended British rule in most of Ireland and, after a ten-month transitional period overseen by a provisional government, the Irish Free State was created as a self-governing Dominion on December 6, 1922.

In accordance with the treaty, on December 6 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self-governing Dominion called the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free State and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new Dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on December 8, 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting, “that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland.” Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom.

Representative of the Crown

The office of Governor-General of the Irish Free State replaced the previous Lord Lieutenant, who had headed English and British administrations in Ireland since the Middle Ages. Governors-General were appointed by the King initially on the advice of the British Government, but with the consent of the Irish Government. From 1927 the Irish Government alone had the power to advise the King whom to appoint.

George V, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India.

The Irish Oath of Allegiance was fundamentally different. It had two elements; the first, an oath to the Free State, as by law established, the second part a promise of fidelity, to His Majesty, King George V, his heirs and successors. That second fidelity element, however, was qualified in two ways. It was to the King in Ireland, not specifically to the King of the United Kingdom. Secondly, it was to the King explicitly in his role as part of the Treaty settlement, not in terms of pre-1922 British rule.

The sudden abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936 was quickly used to redefine the Royal connection. Nevertheless, the Fianna Fáil government still desired to replace the constitutional document they saw as having been imposed by the British government in 1922.

The King was the same individual who held the position of King of the United Kingdom. Until 1927 he reigned in the Irish Free State as “King in Ireland”. However, from 1927 onwards he technically reigned in Free State on a separate throne as “King of Ireland”. The Oireachtas was dissolved by the King acting on the ‘advice’ of the Executive Council. Members of either house had to take an oath of fidelity to the King known as the “Oath of Allegiance” before taking their seats. The King was the third component and constitute part of the Oireachtas in the same manner as in the Parliament of the United Kingdom

The process of Royal Assent was abolished by the Constitution (Amendment No. 27) Act 1936. The Act was the last to receive Royal Assent. The new Act instead required that the Ceann Comhairle sign bills into law. Under the new 1937 Constitution of Ireland, which came into force almost exactly one year later, the role of signing bills into law was given to the President of Ireland. This in particular is one of the reasons why there is some confusion in who was the Irish head of state from 1936 to 1949.

Part IV will address the confusion of who was the Head of State in Ireland during 1936 to 1949.

Kingdom of Ireland: Part II.

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Catherine of Aragon, Church of England, Crown of Ireland Act 1542, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, James VI-I of England, King Henry VIII of England, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Ireland, Pope Clement VII, Pope Paul III, Roman Catholic Church

Part II

Ireland in 1500 had been shaped by the Norman conquest, initiated by Anglo-Norman barons in the 12th century. Ireland was not formally a realm, but rather a lordship; the title was assumed by the English monarch upon coronation. Many of the native Gaelic Irish had been expelled from various parts of the country (mainly the east and southeast) and replaced with English peasants and labourers. The Gaelic Irish were, for the most part, outside English jurisdiction, maintaining their own language, social system, customs and laws. The English referred to them as “His Majesty’s Irish enemies”. In legal terms, they had never been admitted as subjects of the Crown.

The rise of Gaelic influence resulted in the passing in 1366 of the Statutes of Kilkenny, which outlawed many social practices that had been developing apace (e.g. intermarriage, use of the Irish language and Irish dress). By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in Ireland had all but disappeared, and a renewed Irish culture and language, albeit with Norman influences, was dominant again. English Crown control remained relatively unshaken in an amorphous foothold around Dublin known as The Pale, and under the provisions of Poynings’ Law of 1494, the Irish Parliamentary legislation was subject to the approval of the English Privy Council.

When Pope Clement VII excommunicated the King Henry VIII of England in 1533, the constitutional position of the Lordship in Ireland became uncertain since the title originated with the authority of the Papacy. Henry VIII had broken away from the Holy See and declared himself the head of the Church in England. He had petitioned Rome to procure an annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine. Pope Clement VII, a puppet of Emperor Charles V the nephew of Queen Catherine, refused Henry’s request. Henry VII subsequently also refused to recognise the Roman Catholic Church’s vestigial sovereignty over Ireland, and was excommunicated again in late 1538 by Pope Paul III. The Treason Act (Ireland) 1537 was passed to counteract this.

Henry VIII, King of England and Ireland

Henry VIII was proclaimed King of Ireland by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, an Act of the Irish Parliament. The new kingdom was not recognised by the Catholic monarchies in Europe. After the death of King Edward VI, Henry’s son, the papal bull of 1555 recognised the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I as Queen of Ireland. The link of “personal union” of the Crown of Ireland to the Crown of England became enshrined in Catholic canon law. In this fashion, the Kingdom of Ireland was ruled by the reigning monarch of England. This placed the new Kingdom of Ireland in personal union with the Kingdom of England. Then in 1558 the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne, survived the 1570 bull Regnans in Excelsis, and all but one of the following monarchs were Anglican. Contrary to the official plan, the substantial majority of the population remained strongly Roman Catholic, despite the political and economic advantages of membership in the state church.

In 1603 James VI King of Scots became James I of England and Ireland, uniting the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in a personal union. The political order of the kingdom was interrupted by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms starting in 1639. During the subsequent interregnum period of Cromwell’s Commonwealth, England, Scotland and Ireland were ruled as a republic until 1660. This period saw the rise of the loyalist Irish Catholic Confederation within the kingdom and, from 1653, the creation of the republican Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The kingdom’s order was restored 1660 with the restoration of Charles II, without any public dissent. Charles II’s reign was backdated to his father’s execution in 1649.

Although Ireland had legislative independence, executive administration remained under the control of the executive of the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1788–89 a Regency crisis arose when King George III became ill. Henry Grattan, principal Irish leader of the period, wanted to appoint the Prince of Wales, later George IV, as Regent of Ireland. The king recovered before this could be enacted.

The road to political union with Great Britain was paved with the Irish Rebellion of 1798 which was an uprising against British rule in Ireland. The United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions, were the main organising force behind the rebellion, led by Presbyterians angry at being shut out of power by the Anglican establishment and joined by Catholics, who made up the majority of the population. A French army which landed in County Mayo in support of the rebels was overwhelmed by British and loyalist forces. The uprising was suppressed by British Crown forces with a death toll of between 10,000 and 30,000.

The Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the rebels’ alliance with Great Britain’s longtime enemy the French, led to a push to bring Ireland formally into the British Union. By the Acts of Union 1800, voted for by both Irish and British Parliaments, the Kingdom of Ireland merged on 1 January 1801 with the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish Parliament ceased to exist, though the executive, presided over by the Lord Lieutenant, remained in place until 1922. The union was later the subject of much controversy.

The Kingdom of Ireland: Part I.

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2nd Earl of Pembroke, Empress Matilda, High King of Ireland, King Henry II of England, King John of England, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Ireland, Pope Adrian IV, Pope Lucius III, Richard de Clare, Strongbow, William FitzAldem

From the Emperor’s Desk: I’m Irish and in honour of St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow I’m going to do a several part series on the Kingdom of Ireland, starting with the Lordship of Ireland in Part I.

A monarchical system of government existed in Ireland from ancient times until—for what became the Republic of Ireland—the early twentieth century. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, remains under a monarchical system of government. The Gaelic kingdoms of Ireland ended with the Norman invasion of Ireland, when the kingdom became a fief of the Holy See under the Lordship of the King of England.

Royal Standard of Ireland (1542–1801)

Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (of the first creation), Lord of Leinster, Justiciar of Ireland (1130 – 1176) was an Anglo-Norman nobleman notable for his leading role in the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Like his father, Richard fitz Gilbert has since become commonly known by his nickname Strongbow. As the son of the first ‘earl’, he succeeded to his father’s estates in 1148, but was deprived of the title by King Henry II of England in 1154 for siding with King Stephen of England against Henry’s mother, the Empress Matilda.

In 1155, three years after the Synod of Kells, the Papal Bull Laudabiliter was issued by Pope Adrian IV, (the only Englishman to have served in that office) which was addressed to the Angevin King Henry II of England. It urged Henry to invade Ireland to bring its church under the Roman system and to conduct a general reform of governance and society throughout the island. The existence of the bull has been disputed by scholars over the centuries; no copy is extant but scholars cite the many references to it as early as the 13th century to support the validity of its existence.

In the 1160s the King of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, was deposed by the High King of Ireland, Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair. Diarmait turned to Henry for assistance in 1167, and the English King agreed to allow Diarmait to recruit mercenaries within his empire. Henry II of England invaded Ireland to control Strongbow, who he feared was becoming a threat to the stability of his own kingdom on its western fringes.

Henry undertook a wave of castle-building during his visit in 1171 to protect his new territories—the Anglo-Normans had superior military technologies to the Irish, and castles gave them a significant advantage. Henry hoped for a longer-term political solution, similar to his approach in Wales and Scotland, and in 1175 he agreed to the Treaty of Windsor, under which Rory O’Connor would be recognised as the High King of Ireland, giving homage to Henry and maintaining stability on the ground on his behalf.

This policy proved unsuccessful, as O’Connor was unable to exert sufficient influence and force in areas such as Munster: Henry instead intervened more directly, establishing a system of local fiefs of his own through a conference held in Oxford in 1177.

John, King of England and Lord of Ireland

At the Oxford parliament in May 1177, Henry replaced William FitzAldelm and granted his youngest son, John Lackland, his Irish lands, so becoming the Lord of Ireland (Dominus Hiberniae) in when he was 10 years old, with the territory being known in English as the Lordship of Ireland. Henry had wanted John to be crowned King of Ireland on his first visit in 1185, but Pope Lucius III specifically refused permission, citing the dubious nature of a claim supposedly provided by Pope Adrian IV years earlier.

Following the deaths of John’s older brothers (Henry the Young King, King Richard the Lionheart, Geoffrey of Brittany) he became King of England in 1199, and so the Lordship of Ireland, instead of being a separate country ruled by a junior Norman prince, came under the direct rule of the Angevin crown. In the legal terminology of John’s successors, the “lordship of Ireland” referred to the sovereignty vested in the Crown of England; the corresponding territory was referred to as the “land of Ireland”.

The kings of England claimed lordship over the whole island, but in reality the king’s rule only ever extended to parts of the island. The rest of the island—known as Gaelic Ireland—remained under the control of various Gaelic Irish kingdoms or chiefdoms, who were often at war with the Anglo-Normans.

The area under English rule and law grew and shrank over time, and reached its greatest extent in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The lordship then went into decline, brought on by its invasion by Scotland in 1315–18, the Great Famine of 1315–17, and the Black Death of the 1340s. The fluid political situation and English feudal system allowed a great deal of autonomy for the Anglo-Norman lords in Ireland, who carved out earldoms for themselves and had almost as much authority as some of the native Gaelic kings. Some Anglo-Normans became Gaelicised and rebelled against the English administration.

English monarchs continued to use the title “Lord of Ireland” to refer to their position of conquered lands on the island of Ireland. The title was changed by the Crown of Ireland Act passed by the Irish Parliament in 1542 which we’ll discuss in part II tomorrow.

On this date in History: February 13, 1542 Execution of Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII of England and Ireland.

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Anne of Cleves, Beheaded, Catherine Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard, King Henry VIII of England, Kingdom of Ireland, Lady Rochford, Royal Assent, Six Wives of Henry VIII, Thomas Culpeper, Tower of London

On this date in History: February 13, 1542 Execution of Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII of England and Ireland.

Catherine Howard (c. 1523 – February 13, 1542) was Queen of England from 1540 until 1541, as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. She (then 16 or 17) married him (then 49) on July 28, 1540, at Oatlands Palace, in Surrey, almost immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was arranged.

Catherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, found her a place at Court in the household of the King’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. As a young and attractive lady-in-waiting, Catherine quickly caught Henry’s eye. The King had displayed little interest in Anne from the beginning, but on Cromwell’s failure to find a new match for Henry, Norfolk saw an opportunity. The Howards may have sought to recreate the influence gained during Queen Anne’s reign. According to Nicholas Sander, the religiously conservative Howard family may have seen Catherine as a figurehead for their fight by expressed determination to restore Roman Catholicism to England. Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner entertained the couple at Winchester Palace with “feastings”.

As the King’s interest in Catherine grew, so did the house of Norfolk’s influence. Her youth, prettiness and vivacity were captivating for the middle-aged sovereign, who claimed he had never known “the like to any woman”. Within months of her arrival at court, Henry bestowed gifts of land and expensive cloth upon Catherine. Henry called her his ‘rose without a thorn’ and the ‘very jewel of womanhood’. The French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, thought her “delightful”. Holbein’s portrait showed a young auburn-haired girl with a characteristically hooked Howard nose; Catherine was said to have a “gentle, earnest face.”

King Henry VIII and Catherine were married by Bishop Bonner of London at Oatlands Palace on 28 July 1540, the same day Cromwell was executed. The marriage was made public on August 8, and prayers were said in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace. Henry “indulged her every whim” thanks to her “caprice”. Catherine was young, joyous and carefree; Mannox had taught her to play the virginals. She was too young to take part in administrative matters of State. Nevertheless, every night Sir Thomas Heneage, Groom of the Stool, came to her chamber to report on the King’s well-being.

Downfall

It was alleged that, in spring 1541, Catherine had already embarked upon a romance with Henry’s favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who “had succeeded [him] in the Queen’s affections”, according to Dereham’s later testimony. Culpeper called Catherine “my little, sweet fool” in a love letter; she considered marrying him during her time as a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves. The couple’s meetings were arranged by one of Catherine’s older ladies-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (Lady Rochford), the widow of Catherine’s executed cousin, George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s brother.

During the autumn Northern Progress, a crisis began to loom over Catherine’s conduct. People who had witnessed her earlier indiscretions while still a ward at Lambeth, contacted her for favours in return for their silence, and many of them were appointed to her royal household. The brother of Mary Lascelles, John Lascelles, tried to convince his sister to find a place within the Queen’s royal chamber, however, Mary refused stating she had witnessed the “light” ways of Queen Catherine while living together at Lambeth. After hearing this John Lascelles reported such news to Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who then interrogated Lascelles’ sister and upon doing so became informed of Catherine’s previous illicit sexual relations while under the Duchess’ care.

Cranmer immediately took up the case to be made to topple his rivals—the Roman Catholic Norfolk family. Lady Rochford was interrogated, and from fear of being tortured, agreed to tell all. She told how she had watched for Catherine backstairs as Culpeper had made his escapes from the Queen’s room. During the investigation, a love letter written in the Queen’s distinctive handwriting was found in Culpeper’s chambers. This is the only letter of hers that still survives (other than her later confession).

On All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1541, the King was to be found in the Chapel Royal, praying as usual for this “jewel of womanhood”. He received there a warrant of the queen’s arrest that described her crimes. On November 7, 1541, Archbishop Cranmer led a delegation of councillors to Winchester Palace, Southwark, to question her. Even the staunch Cranmer found Catherine’s frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, “I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man’s heart to have looked upon her.” He ordered the guards to remove any objects that she might use to commit suicide.

Imprisonment and death

Establishing the existence of a precontract between Catherine and Dereham would have had the effect of terminating Catherine’s royal union, but it also would have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish her from Court, in poverty and disgrace, without having to execute her. Yet still she steadfastly denied any precontract, maintaining that Dereham had raped her.

Catherine was stripped of her title as queen on November 23, 1541, and imprisoned in the new Syon Abbey, Middlesex, formerly a convent, where she remained throughout the winter of 1541. She was forced by a Privy Councillor to return Anne of Cleves’ ring that the King had given her; it was a symbol of her regal and lawful rights. The King would be at Hampton Court, but she would not see him again. Despite these actions taken against her, her marriage to Henry was never formally annulled.

Culpeper and Dereham were arraigned at Guildhall on December 1, 1541 for high treason. They were executed at Tyburn on December 10, 1541, Culpeper being beheaded and Dereham being hanged, drawn and quartered. According to custom, their heads were placed on spikes atop of London Bridge. Many of Catherine’s relatives were also detained in the Tower with the exception of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who had sufficiently distanced himself from the scandal by retreating to Kenninghall to write a grovelling letter of apology to the King.

Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk

The Duke Norfolk’s son, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the poet, remained a favourite of the King. The duke knew his family had fallen from grace, wrote an apology on December 14 to the King, excusing himself and laying all the blame on his niece and stepmother. All of the Howard prisoners were tried, found guilty of concealing treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. In time, they were released with their goods restored. The King sank into depression and indulged his appetite for food.

Catherine herself remained in limbo until Parliament introduced a bill of attainder on January 29, 1542, which was passed on February 7, 1542. The Royal Assent by Commission Act 1541 made it treason, and punishable by death, for a queen consort to fail to disclose her sexual history to the king within twenty days of their marriage, or to incite someone to commit adultery with her. This solved the matter of Catherine’s supposed precontract and made her unequivocally guilty.

When the Lords of the Council came for her, she panicked and screamed aloud, as they manhandled her into the waiting barge that would escort her to the Tower on Friday February 10, 1542, her flotilla passing under London Bridge where the heads of Culpeper and Dereham were impaled (and remained until 1546). Entering through the Traitors’ Gate she was led to her prison cell. The next day, the bill of attainder received Royal Assent, and Catherine’s execution was scheduled for 7:00 am on Monday, February 13, 1542. Arrangements for the execution were supervised by Sir John Gage in his role as Constable of the Tower.

The night before her execution, Catherine is believed to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block, which had been brought to her at her request. She died with relative composure, but looked pale and terrified; she required assistance to climb the scaffold. She made a speech describing her punishment as “worthy and just” and asked for mercy for her family and prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her final words were, “I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper,” however no eyewitness accounts support this. Instead, reporting that she stuck to traditional final words, asking for forgiveness for her sins and acknowledging that she deserved to die ‘a thousand deaths’ for betraying the king; who had always treated her so graciously. Catherine was beheaded with a single stroke of the executioner’s axe. She was about 18 or 19 years old.

Lady Rochford was executed immediately thereafter on Tower Green. Both their bodies were buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where the bodies of Catherine’s cousins Anne and George Boleyn also lay. Other cousins were also in the crowd, including the Earl of Surrey. King Henry VIII did not attend. Catherine’s body was not one of those identified during restorations of the chapel during Queen Victoria’s reign. She is commemorated on a plaque on the west wall dedicated to all those who died in the Tower. Upon hearing news of Catherine’s execution, Francis I of France wrote a letter to Henry, regretting the “lewd and naughty [evil] behaviour of the Queen” and advising him that “the lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men”.

This date in History: July 22, 1706: Treaty of Union is signed.

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Act of Union, Articles of Union, East India Company, House of Hanover, king James I-VI of England and Scotland, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Great Britain, Kingdom of Ireland, Kingdom of Scotland, Parliament, Queen Anne of England, Queen Anne of Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Treaty of Union

The Treaty of Union is the name usually now given to the agreement which led to the creation of the new state of Great Britain, stating that England (which already included Wales) and Scotland were to be “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”, At the time it was more often referred to as the Articles of Union.

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

Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, died without issue on March 24, 1603, and the throne fell at once (and uncontroversially) to her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, a member of House of Stuart and the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots. By the Union of the Crowns in 1603 he assumed the throne of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland as King James I. This personal union lessened the constant English fears of Scottish cooperation with France in a feared French invasion of England.

After this personal union, the new monarch, James I and VI, sought to unite the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England into a state which he referred to as “Great Britain”. Nevertheless, Acts of Parliament attempting to unite the two countries failed in 1606, in 1667, and in 1689.

By 1698 the main impetus for uniting the two realms was economics. While remaining separate kingdoms the two nations were often in trade wars with one another as both states vied for supremacy in trading with other foreign states. This competition created friction between the two states. England was also under pressure from the London-based East India Company, which was anxious to maintain its monopoly over English foreign trade. The East India Company threatened legal action towards the Scots on the grounds that the Scots had no authority from the king to raise funds outside the king’s realm.

Deeper political integration had been a key policy of Queen Anne ever since she had acceded to the thrones of the three kingdoms in 1702. Under the aegis of the Queen and her ministers in both kingdoms, in 1705 the parliaments of England and Scotland agreed to participate in fresh negotiations for a treaty of union.

Treaty negotiations

It was agreed that England and Scotland would each appoint thirty-one commissioners to conduct the negotiations. The Scottish Parliament then began to arrange an election of the commissioners to negotiate on behalf of Scotland, but in September 1705, the leader of the Country Party, the Duke of Hamilton, who had previously attempted to obstruct the negotiation of a treaty, proposed that the Scottish commissioners should be nominated by the Queen, and this was agreed. In practice, the Scottish commissioners were nominated on the advice of the Duke of Queensberry and the Duke of Argyll.

Negotiations between the English and Scottish commissioners began on 16 April 1706 at the Cockpit-in-Court in London. The sessions opened with speeches from William Cowper, the English Lord Keeper, and from Lord Seafield, the Scottish Lord Chancellor, each describing the significance of the task. The commissioners did not carry out their negotiations face to face, but in separate rooms. They communicated their proposals and counter-proposals to each other in writing, and there was a blackout on news from the negotiations. Each side had its own particular concerns. Within a few days, England gained a guarantee that the Hanoverian dynasty would succeed Queen Anne to the Scottish crown, and Scotland received a guarantee of access to colonial markets, in the hope that they would be placed on an equal footing in terms of trade.

Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland (1702-1707), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. (1707-1714)

After the negotiations ended on July 22, 1706, acts of parliament were drafted by both Parliaments to implement the agreed Articles of Union. The Scottish proponents of union believed that failure to agree to the Articles would result in the imposition of a union under less favourable terms, and English troops were stationed just south of the Scottish border and also in northern Ireland as an “encouragement”. Months of fierce debate in both capital cities and throughout both kingdoms followed. In Scotland, the debate on occasion dissolved into civil disorder, most notably by the notorious ‘Edinburgh Mob’. The prospect of a union of the kingdoms was deeply unpopular among the Scottish population at large, and talk of an uprising was widespread. However, the Treaty was signed and the documents were rushed south with a large military escort.

The Kingdom of Great Britain was born on May 1, 1707, shortly after the parliaments of Scotland and England had ratified the Treaty of Union by each approving Acts of Union combining the two parliaments and the powers of the two crowns. Scotland’s crown, sceptre, and sword of state remained at Edinburgh Castle. Queen Anne (already Queen of both England and Scotland) formally became the first occupant of the unified throne of Great Britain, with Scotland sending forty-five Members to the new House of Commons of Great Britain, as well as representative peers to the House of Lords.

Although there were 25 articles to the Treaty, I will post the first two which are relevant to the Crown and the Succession.

Article 1 states “That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain.”

Article 2 provided for the succession of the House of Hanover, and for Protestant succession as set out in the English Act of Settlement of 1701.

Death of Queen Elizabeth I of England & Ireland. March 24, 1603.

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Christopher Marlowe, Elizabeathen Era, Elizabeth I of England, Francis Drake, James I of England, James VI of Scotland, king James I-VI of England and Scotland, Kingdom of Ireland, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of Scotland, Lord Burghley, Richmond Palace, Robert Cecil, William Shakespeare

On this date in History: March 24, 1603, Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland died at Richmond Palace aged 69 after a reign of 44 years. She was the last member of the House of Tudor and also its longest reigning member. Her 44-year reign was a prosperous time, the arts flourished and it became known as a Golden Age.

Elizabeth’s reign is 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. Such was the case with Elizabeth’s rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and had executed in 1587. After the short reigns of Elizabeth’s half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.

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. He therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim.

Cecil coached the impatient James VI 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. Elizabeth had moved to Richmond Palace in January 1603 and surrounded herself with friends and ladies in waiting with whom she was familiar. Her health had deteriorated badly and she was very frail, yet at first she refused to retire to bed.

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 24 March 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, the new King of England.

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 of the Quuen’s death England observed New Year’s Day on 25 March, 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.

On this date in History: February 13, 1542 Execution of Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII of England and Ireland.

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Archbishop of Canterbury, Catherine Howard, Duke of Suffolk, King Henry VIII of England, Kingdom of Ireland, Kings and Queens of England, Thomas Cranmer

On this date in History: February 13, 1542 Execution of Catherine Howard, 5th wife of King Henry VIII of England and Ireland.

Catherine Howard (c. 1523 – February 13, 1542) was Queen of England from 1540 until 1541, as the fifth wife of Henry VIII. She (then 16 or 17) married him (then 49) on July 28, 1540, at Oatlands Palace, in Surrey, almost immediately after the annulment of his marriage to Anne of Cleves was arranged.

Catherine’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, found her a place at Court in the household of the King’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. As a young and attractive lady-in-waiting, Catherine quickly caught Henry’s eye. The King had displayed little interest in Anne from the beginning, but on Cromwell’s failure to find a new match for Henry, Norfolk saw an opportunity. The Howards may have sought to recreate the influence gained during Queen Anne’s reign. According to Nicholas Sander, the religiously conservative Howard family may have seen Catherine as a figurehead for their fight by expressed determination to restore Roman Catholicism to England. Catholic Bishop Stephen Gardiner entertained the couple at Winchester Palace with “feastings”.

As the King’s interest in Catherine grew, so did the house of Norfolk’s influence. Her youth, prettiness and vivacity were captivating for the middle-aged sovereign, who claimed he had never known “the like to any woman”. Within months of her arrival at court, Henry bestowed gifts of land and expensive cloth upon Catherine. Henry called her his ‘rose without a thorn’ and the ‘very jewel of womanhood’. The French ambassador, Charles de Marillac, thought her “delightful”. Holbein’s portrait showed a young auburn-haired girl with a characteristically hooked Howard nose; Catherine was said to have a “gentle, earnest face.”

King Henry and Catherine were married by Bishop Bonner of London at Oatlands Palace on 28 July 1540, the same day Cromwell was executed. The marriage was made public on 8 August, and prayers were said in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace. Henry “indulged her every whim” thanks to her “caprice”. Catherine was young, joyous and carefree; Mannox had taught her to play the virginals. She was too young to take part in administrative matters of State. Nevertheless, every night Sir Thomas Heneage, Groom of the Stool, came to her chamber to report on the King’s well-being.

Downfall

It was alleged that, in spring 1541, Catherine had already embarked upon a romance with Henry’s favourite male courtier, Thomas Culpeper, a young man who “had succeeded [him] in the Queen’s affections”, according to Dereham’s later testimony. Culpeper called Catherine “my little, sweet fool” in a love letter; she considered marrying him during her time as a maid-of-honour to Anne of Cleves. The couple’s meetings were arranged by one of Catherine’s older ladies-in-waiting, Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (Lady Rochford), the widow of Catherine’s executed cousin, George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s brother.

During the autumn Northern Progress, a crisis began to loom over Catherine’s conduct. People who had witnessed her earlier indiscretions while still a ward at Lambeth contacted her for favours in return for their silence, and many of them were appointed to her royal household. The brother of Mary Lascelles, John Lascelles, tried to convince his sister to find a place within the Queen’s royal chamber, however, Mary refused stating she had witnessed the “light” ways of Queen Catherine while living together at Lambeth. After hearing this John Lascelles reported such news to Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who then interrogated Lascelles’ sister and upon doing so became informed of Catherine’s previous illicit sexual relations while under the Duchess’ care.

Cranmer immediately took up the case to be made to topple his rivals—the Roman Catholic Norfolk family. Lady Rochford was interrogated, and from fear of being tortured, agreed to tell all. She told how she had watched for Catherine backstairs as Culpeper had made his escapes from the Queen’s room. During the investigation, a love letter written in the Queen’s distinctive handwriting was found in Culpeper’s chambers. This is the only letter of hers that still survives (other than her later confession).

On All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1541, the King was to be found in the Chapel Royal, praying as usual for this “jewel of womanhood”. He received there a warrant of the queen’s arrest that described her crimes. On November 7, 1541, Archbishop Cranmer led a delegation of councillors to Winchester Palace, Southwark, to question her. Even the staunch Cranmer found Catherine’s frantic, incoherent state pitiable, saying, “I found her in such lamentation and heaviness as I never saw no creature, so that it would have pitied any man’s heart to have looked upon her.” He ordered the guards to remove any objects that she might use to commit suicide.

Imprisonment and death

Establishing the existence of a precontract between Catherine and Dereham would have had the effect of terminating Catherine’s royal union, but it also would have allowed Henry to annul their marriage and banish her from Court, in poverty and disgrace, without having to execute her. Yet still she steadfastly denied any precontract, maintaining that Dereham had raped her.

Catherine was stripped of her title as queen on November 23, 1541, and imprisoned in the new Syon Abbey, Middlesex, formerly a convent, where she remained throughout the winter of 1541. She was forced by a Privy Councillor to return Anne of Cleves’ ring that the King had given her; it was a symbol of her regal and lawful rights. The King would be at Hampton Court, but she would not see him again. Despite these actions taken against her, her marriage to Henry was never formally annulled.

Culpeper and Dereham were arraigned at Guildhall on December 1, 1541 for high treason. They were executed at Tyburn on 10 December 1541, Culpeper being beheaded and Dereham being hanged, drawn and quartered. According to custom, their heads were placed on spikes atop of London Bridge. Many of Catherine’s relatives were also detained in the Tower with the exception of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who had sufficiently distanced himself from the scandal by retreating to Kenninghall to write a grovelling letter of apology.

His son Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the poet, remained a favourite of the King. The duke knew his family had fallen from grace, wrote an apology on December 14 to the King, excusing himself and laying all the blame on his niece and stepmother. All of the Howard prisoners were tried, found guilty of concealing treason, and sentenced to life imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. In time, they were released with their goods restored. The King sank into morbidity and indulged his appetite for food.

Catherine herself remained in limbo until Parliament introduced a bill of attainder on January 29, 1542, which was passed on February 7, 1542. The Royal Assent by Commission Act 1541 made it treason, and punishable by death, for a queen consort to fail to disclose her sexual history to the king within twenty days of their marriage, or to incite someone to commit adultery with her. This solved the matter of Catherine’s supposed precontract and made her unequivocally guilty.

When the Lords of the Council came for her, she panicked and screamed aloud, as they manhandled her into the waiting barge that would escort her to the Tower on Friday February 10, 1542, her flotilla passing under London Bridge where the heads of Culpeper and Dereham were impaled (and remained until 1546). Entering through the Traitors’ Gate she was led to her prison cell. The next day, the bill of attainder received Royal Assent, and Catherine’s execution was scheduled for 7:00 am on Monday, February 13, 1542. Arrangements for the execution were supervised by Sir John Gage in his role as Constable of the Tower.

The night before her execution, Catherine is believed to have spent many hours practising how to lay her head upon the block, which had been brought to her at her request. She died with relative composure, but looked pale and terrified; she required assistance to climb the scaffold. She made a speech describing her punishment as “worthy and just” and asked for mercy for her family and prayers for her soul. According to popular folklore, her final words were, “I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper”, however no eyewitness accounts support this. Instead, reporting that she stuck to traditional final words, asking for forgiveness for her sins and acknowledging that she deserved to die ‘a thousand deaths’ for betraying the king; who had always treated her so graciously. Catherine was beheaded with a single stroke of the executioner’s axe. She was about 18 or 19 years old.

Lady Rochford was executed immediately thereafter on Tower Green. Both their bodies were buried in an unmarked grave in the nearby chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where the bodies of Catherine’s cousins Anne and George Boleyn also lay. Other cousins were also in the crowd, including the Earl of Surrey. King Henry did not attend. Catherine’s body was not one of those identified during restorations of the chapel during Queen Victoria’s reign. She is commemorated on a plaque on the west wall dedicated to all those who died in the Tower. Upon hearing news of Catherine’s execution, Francis I of France wrote a letter to Henry, regretting the “lewd and naughty [evil] behaviour of the Queen” and advising him that “the lightness of women cannot bend the honour of men”.