January 28, 1547: Death of Henry VIII of England and Ireland and laws of succession.

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House of Tudor, King Edward VI of England, King Henry VIII of England, King of Ireland, Lady Jane Grey, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Queen Mary I of England, The House of Stuart

Henry VIII (June 28, 1491 – January 28, 1547) was King of England from 1509 until his death in 1547. He was the second Tudor monarch, succeeding his father Henry VII. Henry VIII is best known for his six marriages, in particular his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disagreement with the Pope on the question of such an annulment led Henry to initiate the English Reformation, separating the Church of England from papal authority and the Roman Catholic Church. He appointed himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England and dissolved convents and monasteries, for which he was excommunicated.

Illness and Death

Late in life, Henry became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout. His obesity and other medical problems can be traced to the jousting accident in 1536 in which he suffered a leg wound. The accident re-opened and aggravated a previous injury he had sustained years earlier, to the extent that his doctors found it difficult to treat.

The chronic wound festered for the remainder of his life and became ulcerated, thus preventing him from maintaining the level of physical activity he had previously enjoyed. The jousting accident is also believed to have caused Henry’s mood swings, which may have had a dramatic effect on his personality and temperament.

The theory that Henry suffered from syphilis has been dismissed by most historians. Historian Susan Maclean Kybett ascribes his demise to scurvy, which is caused by a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Alternatively, his wives’ pattern of pregnancies and his mental deterioration have led some to suggest that the king may have been Kell positive and suffered from McLeod syndrome. According to another study, Henry VIII’s history and body morphology may have been the result of traumatic brain injury after his 1536 jousting accident, which in turn led to a neuroendocrine cause of his obesity. This analysis identifies growth hormone deficiency (GHD) as the source for his increased adiposity but also significant behavioural changes noted in his later years, including his multiple marriages.

Henry’s obesity hastened his death at the age of 55, which occurred on 28 January 1547 in the Palace of Whitehall, on what would have been his father’s 90th birthday. The tomb he had planned (with components taken from the tomb intended for Cardinal Wolsey) was only partly constructed and would never be completed. (The sarcophagus and its base were later removed and used for Lord Nelson’s tomb in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral.) Henry was interred in a vault at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, next to Jane Seymour. Over a hundred years later, King Charles I (1625–1649) was buried in the same vault.

Succession

Upon Henry’s death, he was succeeded by his son Edward VI. Since Edward was then only nine years old, he could not rule directly. Instead, Henry’s will designated 16 executors to serve on a council of regency until Edward reached the age of 18. The executors chose Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, Jane Seymour’s elder brother, to be Lord Protector of the Realm.

If Edward died childless, the throne was to pass to Mary, Henry VIII’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, and her heirs. If Mary’s issue failed, the crown was to go to Elizabeth, Henry’s daughter by Anne Boleyn, and her heirs. Finally, if Elizabeth’s line became extinct, the crown was to be inherited by the descendants of Henry VIII’s deceased younger sister, Mary, the Greys. The descendants of Henry’s sister Margaret – the Stuarts, rulers of Scotland – were thereby excluded from the succession. This final provision failed when James VI of Scotland became King of England in 1603.

Accession of Queen Anne of England, Scotland & Ireland.

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Act of Settlement 1701, Charles II, Duke of Gloucester, George of Denmark, House of Hanover, King James II-VII of England and Scotland, Kings and Queens of England, Kings and Queens of Great Britain, kings and queens of Scotland, Prince William, Queen Anne, The House of Stuart, William III of England and Scotland

On this date in History. Death of King William III-II of England, Scotland and Ireland, Stadholder of the Netherlands and Prince of Orange and the accession of his sister-in-Law/cousin Anne.

Anne (February 6, 1665 – August 1, 1714) was the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland between March 8, 1702 and May 1, 1707. On May 1, 1707, under the Acts of Union, two of her realms, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. She continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death. Anne remained Queen of Ireland in the form of a personal union with the British Crown and wouldn’t be politically united with Great Britain until 1801.

Anne was born at 11:39 p.m. on February 6, 1665 at St James’s Palace, London, the fourth child and second daughter of the Duke of York (afterwards James II and VII), and his first wife, Anne Hyde. Her father was the younger brother of King Charles II, and her mother was the daughter of Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. At her Anglican baptism in the Chapel Royal at St James’s, her older sister, Mary, was one of her godparents, along with the Duchess of Monmouth and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon. The Duke and Duchess of York had eight children, but Anne and Mary were the only ones to survive into adulthood.

Since Anne’s uncle Charles II, had no legitimate children, her father, James, Duke of York was thus heir presumptive to the throne. His suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in England, and on Charles’s instructions Anne and her elder sister, Mary, were raised as Anglicans. Three years after he succeeded Charles, James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Anne’s sister and Dutch Protestant brother-in-law and cousin William III of Orange became joint monarchs. Although the sisters had been close, disagreements over Anne’s finances, status and choice of acquaintances arose shortly after Mary’s accession and they became estranged. William III-II and Mary II had no children. After Mary II’s death in 1694, William III-II reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him.

Marriage

Anne’s second cousin George of Hanover (her eventual successor) visited London for three months from December 1680, sparking rumours of a potential marriage between them. Historian Edward Gregg dismissed the rumours as ungrounded, as her father was essentially exiled from court, and the Hanoverians planned to marry George to his first cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle as part of a scheme to unite the Hanoverian inheritance. Other rumours claimed she was courted by Lord Mulgrave (later made Duke of Buckingham), although he denied it. Nevertheless, as a result of the gossip, he was temporarily dismissed from court.

With George of Hanover out of contention as a potential suitor for Anne, King Charles II looked elsewhere for an eligible prince who would be welcomed as a groom by his Protestant subjects but also acceptable to his Catholic ally, Louis XIV of France and Navarre. The Danes were Protestant allies of the French, and Louis XIV was keen on an Anglo-Danish alliance to contain the power of the Dutch. A marriage treaty between Anne and Prince George of Denmark, younger brother of King Christian V, (sons of King Frederik III of Denmark and Norway and Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg) Anne’s second cousin once removed, was negotiated by Anne’s uncle Laurence Hyde, who had been made Earl of Rochester, and the English Secretary of State for the Northern Department, Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland. Anne’s father consented to the marriage eagerly because it diminished the influence of his other son-in-law, William of Orange, who was naturally unhappy at the match.

Bishop Compton officiated at the wedding of Anne and George of Denmark on July 28, 1683 in the Chapel Royal. Though it was an arranged marriage, they were faithful and devoted partners. They were given a set of buildings, known as the Cockpit, in the Palace of Whitehall as their London residence, and Sarah Churchill was appointed one of Anne’s ladies of the bedchamber.. Within months of the marriage, Anne was pregnant, but the baby was stillborn in May. Anne recovered at the spa town of Tunbridge Wells, and over the next two years, gave birth to two daughters in quick succession: Mary and Anne Sophia.

Anne’s seventh pregnancy resulted in the birth of a son at 5 a.m. on July 24, 1689 in Hampton Court Palace. As it was usual for the births of potential heirs to the throne to be attended by several witnesses, the King and Queen and “most of the persons of quality about the court” were present. Three days later, the newborn baby was baptised Prince William Henry after his uncle King William III by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. The King, who was one of the godparents along with the Marchioness of Halifax and the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Dorset, declared him Duke of Gloucester, although the peerage was never formally created.

Prince William, Duke of Gloucester was viewed by contemporaries as a Protestant champion because his birth seemed to cement the Protestant succession established in the “Glorious Revolution” that had deposed his Catholic grandfather James II-VII the previous year. Prince William died close to 1 a.m. on July 30, 1700, with his parents beside him. In the end, the physicians decided the cause of death was “a malignant fever”. An autopsy revealed severe swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck and an abnormal amount of fluid in the ventricles of his brain: four and a half ounces of a limpid humour were taken out.” A modern diagnosis is that Gloucester died of acute bacterial pharyngitis, with associated pneumonia. Had he lived, though, it is almost certain the prince would have succumbed to complications of his hydrocephalus.

Although Anne had ten other pregnancies after the birth of Gloucester, none of them resulted in a child who survived more than briefly after birth. The English parliament did not want the throne to revert to a Catholic, so it passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which settled the throne of England on a cousin of King James, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant heirs.

During her reign, Anne favoured moderate Tory politicians, who were more likely to share her Anglican religious views than their opponents, the Whigs. The Whigs grew more powerful during the course of the War of the Spanish Succession, until 1710 when Anne dismissed many of them from office. Her close friendship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, turned sour as the result of political differences. The Duchess took revenge in an unflattering description of the Queen in her memoirs, which was widely accepted by historians until Anne was re-assessed in the late 20th century.

Anne was plagued by ill health throughout her life, and from her thirties, she grew increasingly lame and obese. Despite seventeen pregnancies by her husband, Prince George of Denmark, she died without surviving issue and was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. Under the Act of Settlement 1701, which excluded all Catholics, she was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover, whose maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, was a daughter of James VI and I.

Royal Conspiracy Theories

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Conspiracy Theories, House of Hanover, James Francis Stuart, King George I of Great Britain, King James II of England, Kings and Queens of England, Marie-Beatrice of Modena, Scotland, The House of Stuart

Conspiracy theories. There are so many out there and the vast overwhelming  majority of them are pretty laughable. In the US we have people that deny that men landed on the moon and they think it was all fake. Many of the same folk think that Curiosity, the rover currently scouring the planet Mars, is also a fake. They believe hat the real rover is in Are 51 and through special effects these images are being broadcast around the world. There are people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the US Government. There even is a faction of 9/11 conspiracy theorists who think that there were not any planes that crashed into buildings on 9/11 and that the planes were added to film footage via special effects. Then we have the Birthers who think President Barrak Obama was born in Kenya and not the US. I also cannot forget the small minority of people who still think the Earth is flat and any picture that shows the Earth is round is being duped by NASA and the US Government. Google the Flat Earth Society. Crazy stuff! 

James II-VII of England and Scotland

I have come to learn through the years there have also been conspiracy theories in royal circles. Currently I am reading The Last of the Stuarts by James Lees-Milne. The book was published in 1983 and as I am reading it I discover that there are some conspiracy theories surrounding the last few heirs to the Stuart Dynasty. One of the more well known conspiracy theories is the theory of the “changeling,” that the Prince of Wales, Prince James Francis Stuart, son of King James II-VII of England and Scotland and his second wife Prince Marie-Beatrice of Modena, was smuggled into the palace in place of a still-born son. For centuries after this theory sprung forth an official minister from the government had to be present at the birth of all princes and princess in line for the throne.

England and Scotland were in difficult political times. The king was not popular and his Catholicism almost cost him his throne when he was the heir to his brother, Charles II. It was only the fact that his two surviving Protestant daughters would succeed him which lead to the king being tolerated. When his wife produced a healthy male heir who would undoubtedly be raised Catholic this sent in motion a crisis which lead to James II-VII being deposed. The interesting speculation at the time which added to the conspiracy theory was the thought that the Queen was never pregnant. One of the claims was that the King, who had fathered many children both legitimate and illegitimate, was incapable of fathering another child at the “ripe old age” of 55. Now to the modern ear 55 is not too old. However, in 1688 with health care not being what it is today and life expectancy at a much lower rate, there may have been some truth to this. Another aspect of the theory are the reports that Queen Marie-Beatrice, who had had several miscarriages and had been in poor health in the previous months prior to her becoming pregnant, was too ill and too old herself to conceive. The queen was only 30 at the time but it does raise the question of fertility and childbearing difficulties as women aged in the 17th century. In 1688 was it difficult for a woman in her 30s to conceive?

Queen Marie-Beatrice 

I really do not believe these theories but they are interesting to think about. One of the things punching a whole in this conspiracy theory is the fact that there are many original sources from those at court and ambassadors at other courts who had seen the queen did report that she was indeed pregnant. Also, the claims that the young Prince of Wales was a changeling sounds more like political propaganda espoused by those who were against the king than having any basis in reality.

Even the young Prince of Wales, claiming the throne of England and Scotland as James III-VIII,  had his own conspiracy theory. He was sure that he was the target of assassination by those close to and loyal to King George I of Great Britain.

James Frances, the Old Pretender

I see that conspiracy theories are part of the human condition and even royalty cannot escape this strange and odd phenomenon.