ROYAL WOMEN.
“The country prospers when a woman rules.”
IN order to simplify and classify the mass of material at hand, it is
advisable to take by their degree the ranks of women among the
Anglo-Normans. Among the Queens, only because they precede in order of
time and of number, we may take first
=Queens Consort.=—In Doomsday Book, Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror,
is entered as holding of the King, many lands forfeited by the Saxons.
“She was made the feudal possessor of the lands of Beortric, Earl of
Gloucester, hence the practice of settling the Lordship of Bristol on
the Queen generally, prevailed for centuries. On her death in 1083, her
lands went back to the King by feudal tenure. The Conqueror kept them in
his own hands, meaning them for his and her youngest son Henry, who
afterwards succeeded.” (Seyer’s “Memoirs of Bristol,” chap. iv., p.
318). Later queens had separate establishments, officers and privy
purse. “The Aurum Reginæ, or Queen’s Gold, is distinguished from all
other debts and duties belonging to the Queen of this Realme. All other
revenues proceed to her from the grace of the King, this by the common
law ... which groweth upon all fines paid to the King, licenses,
charters, pardons, of which she receives one-tenth part. After her death
the King recovers his right to hold this tenth. This duty hath been
enjoyed by the Queens from Eleanor, wife of Henry II. to Anne, second
wife of Henry VIII.” (Hakewell’s speech in Parliament on Aurum Reginæ.
Addit. MSS., Brit. Mus. 25, 255.)
Even to our own days Queens Consort have had the privilege of acting as
_femes soles_. But in early times they exercised considerably more power
in the State than we realise to-day. They sat in the Councils, even in
the presence of the Kings, and gave their consent to measures along with
Kings and Nobles. “The Queen-wife of England also superscribed her name
_over_ their warrants or letters of public direction or command,
although in the time of Henry VIII. the fashion was that the queens
wrote their names over the left side of the first line of such warrants,
and not _over_ them as _the Kings do_” (Selden’s “Titles of Honour”).
But as many of the Queens Consort, though thus entitled to be ranked
among “Freewomen,” were not of native extraction; we do not dwell upon
all their privileges, preferring to hasten on to those that indubitably
were British Freewomen.
=Queens Regnant.=—The first critical moment in the History of Queens
Regnant occurs at the death of Henry I., who had, as he considered,
arranged satisfactorily for the succession of his daughter Matilda. His
attempt proved that the French Salic Law had not been made law in
England. A quaint account of his proceeding occurs in the “Lives of the
Berkeleys,” published by the Gloucester Archæological Society, 1835, p.
2. “King Harri the first, third sonne of King William the Conqueror, had
issue remaining one daughter named Maude ... the sayd King Harri send
for his foresayd daughter Maude the Emparice into England, and in open
Parliament declared and ordeyned her to bee his eire. To whom then and
there were sworen all the lordes of England, and made unto her sewte,
admittinge her for his eire. Amongs whom principally and first was
sworen Stephen Earle of Boleyn, nevowe of the sayd King Harri the
first.” But as Selden says, “I do very well know, that our perjured
barons, when they resolved to exclude Queen Maud from the English
throne, made this shameful pretence, ‘that it would be a shame for so
many nobles to be subject to one woman.’ And yet you shall not read,
that the Iceni, our Essex men got any shame by that Boadicea, whom
Gildas terms a lioness” (Janus Anglorum). The same author, in noting the
laws made by various kings, enters the reign of Stephen as that of an
unrighteous king who had no time to make laws for the protection of the
kingdom, because he had to fight in defence of his own unjust claim. “In
1136 Henry of England died, and Stephen Earl of Boulogne succeeded. At
Mass on the Day of his Coronation, by some mistake, the peace of God was
forgotten to be pronounced on the people” (“Antiquitates,” Camden).
Prynne calls him “the perjured usurping King Stephen.” The general
uncertainty of the succession is betokened in the struggle. Very
probably had there not been a Stephen to stir up the nobles, the country
might have rested peaceably under the rule of Matilda.
It seems strange that the oldest Charters of the express Creation of the
title of Comes (Count or Earl) are those of Queen Maud, who first
created the Earldom of Essex and the Earldom of Hereford. To Aubrey de
Vere also she granted the Earldom of Cambridge, or another title if he
preferred it, and he chose the Earldom of Oxford. A struggle like the
Wars of the Roses was closed by the death of Stephen and the peaceable
succession of Matilda’s son, Henry II.
Another lady of the family was supplanted by the proverbially “cruel
uncle.” King John in 1202 made prisoners of his nephew, Arthur, Duke of
Brittany, and the Princess Eleanor, his sister, called “The Beauty of
Brittany.” Arthur is supposed to have been murdered by his uncle, and
Eleanor was confined for forty years in Bristol Castle. A true daughter
of Constance, she is said to have possessed a high and invincible
spirit, and to have constantly insisted on her right to the throne,
which was probably the reason that she spent her life in captivity.
(_See_ the close Rolls of the Tower of London, and the Introduction
xxxv.)
But the second real crisis was that which closed the Wars of the Roses.
Another Stephen appeared in Henry VII., who, fortunately for the people,
simplified matters by marrying Elizabeth of York, the rightful heir.
Jealous in the extreme of his wife’s prerogative, he used his high hand
as the conqueror of Richard and the Kingdom, delayed her coronation as
long as he dared, ignored her in his councils, and magnified his
relation as husband, to the extinction of her glory as Queen.
Henry VIII. enjoyed to the full the advantage of an undisputed
succession. He restricted the rights of Queens Consort, as his father
had ignored the rights of Queens Regnant. A strange Nemesis followed,
foretold in the so-called prophecies of Merlin. That these really were
talked of, before the events occurred, can be proved by MSS. among the
uncalendared papers temp. Henry VIII. Public Record Office. There is in
full “the Examination of John Ryan of St. Botolphs, Fruiterer,
concerning discourses which he heard at the Bell on Tower Hill,
Prophecies of Merlin, that there never again would be King crowned of
England after the King’s son Prince Edward, 22nd August, 1538.” James V.
of Scotland had sadly said on his death-bed, “The Kingdom came with a
lass, and it will go with a lass.” So was it to be in England. The pale
sickly youth who succeeded, third of the Tudors, died without wife or
child, and on the steps of the throne stood four royal women, whose
lives form the most interesting period of national history. Each of them
had a special claim. Mary, pronounced illegitimate by the Protestant
party, and by statute of Parliament, inherited through her father’s
_will_ alone; Elizabeth, pronounced illegitimate by the Catholic party,
and by a similar statute, stood second in that will; Mary, Queen of
Scotland and of France, showed flawless descent from Margaret, the elder
sister of Henry VIII.; and Lady Jane Grey proved like flawless descent
from Mary, Henry’s younger sister.
Henry, a despot even “by his dead hand,” had, failing Edward, left the
crown to Mary, then to Elizabeth, then to Lady Jane Grey. Edward VI.,
not a minor by the laws of England that allowed Government to commence
at fourteen years, considered both his sisters illegitimate under his
father’s statutes, preferring of the two Elizabeth’s claim. But for the
peace of the kingdom he left by _will_ the crown to Lady Jane Grey,
ignoring, as his father had done, the prior claims of Mary, Queen of
Scotland and of France. The results of the complication are too well
known to be here rehearsed.
The first act of Mary was to establish her own legitimacy, the honour of
her mother, and the power of the Pope; her second was to establish the
office of Queen Regnant “by Statute to be so clear that none but the
malitious and ignorant could be induced and persuaded unto this Error
and Folly to think that her Highness coulde ne should have enjoye and
use such like Royal Authoritie ... nor doo ne execute and use all things
concerning the Statute (in which only the name of the King was
expressed) as the Kinges of this Realme, her most noble Progenitours
have heretofore doon, used and exercised” (1 Mar., c. iii.)
Both she and her sister, at their coronations, were girt with the sword
of State, and invested with the spurs of knighthood, to show that they
were military as well as civil rulers. Fortunately for her country, and
for herself, Elizabeth lived and died a maiden Queen. The bitter
consequences of her sister’s Spanish alliance taught her the importance
of independence as a ruler. Whatever we may individually think of her
character, all must allow her reign to have been in every way the most
brilliant in the history of our country, only equalled in our own times
by that of a Matron Queen, who has held the reins of Government in her
own hand and whose husband came to the land but as Prince Consort. Queen
Anne’s reign is also worthy of note, and can bear comparison with that
of most Kings, for its military successes, and its literary activities.
=Queens Regent.=—Selden argues against Bodin of Anjou, who upheld the
Salic Law, “are not discretion and strength, courage, and the arts of
Government more to be desired and required in those who have the tuition
of kings in their minority, than in the kings themselves till they are
come of age?” He considers the French use of Queens as Regents to be
destructive of their own theories.
Queens as Regent-Tutors of young kings have not held the same position
in England as they did in France or in Scotland. But as governing
Regents and Viceroys they have often done good service. William of
Normandy more than once left the country in charge of his Queen. Richard
I., by commission, appointed his mother, Eleanor, to be Regent of the
Kingdom in his absence, and wrote to her to find the money for his
ransom when imprisoned abroad. She sat as Judge in the Curia Regis,
taking her seat on the King’s Bench by right of her office. She granted
concessions to the inhabitants of Oléron (to women as to men) even down
to the reign of John (1 John; _see_ “Rymer’s Fœdera”). Edward III. found
his Queen Philippa a Queen Regent worthy of himself. Henry V. appointed
his mother as Regent in his absence, and even Henry VIII., when he went
abroad on his last French War, left his Queen, Catherine Parr, Governor
of the Kingdom. I have gone through their correspondence in the Public
Record Office, and it bears ample testimony to her capability and his
trust in her judgment. In “Olive _versus_ Ingram,” 1739, it is noted,
“Queen Caroline was once appointed Regentor of the Kingdom.”
It was with little less than Vice Regal splendour and power that Joan,
Dowager Countess of Pembroke, ruled the Palatinate for nine years in the
reign of Edward I.; or Isabel de Burgo in that of Edward II., or Agnes
de Hastings in that of Edward III.; ruling in the stead of their sons
until the youths attained majority at the age of twenty-one.
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