A number of web sites make statements to the effect that a good case can be made that Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots) was the legitmate successor to the throne upon Mary’s (“Blood Mary”) death. For example Wiki says the following:
What is being referred to by “the ordinary laws of succession”?
I am having trouble understanding these and similar statements. Exactly how did Mary have a legitimate claim to the English throne? To my knowledge, she wasn’t at all closely related to Henry VIII whose reign, (if one ignores the intervening six year reign of child-king Edward) preceded her rival Elizabeth’s. Likewise, AFAIK, the closest thing she has which might possibly put her somewhere in line for the throne was that her paternal great-grandfather was Henry VII. Can that be the reason? Her (distant) relation to Henry VII?
The normal rules of succession are primogeniture, with preference to the male. That means that the throne goes to the male children, starting from oldest to youngest. Failing a male line, it then goes to the female children, again oldest to youngest.
Henry VIII had three children:
Mary - born 1516
Elizabeth - born 1533
Edward - born 1537
However, when Elizabeth was born, Henry’s first wife, Katherine of Aragon was still alive, not dying until 1536. Since the Catholic church did not recognize Henry’s divorce/annullment from Katherine, that meant that by Catholic doctrine, Elizabeth was a bastard, and therefore not eligible to inherit the throne.
Since Edward’s mother, Jane Seymour, married Henry after Katherine’s death, Edward was not considered a bastard under Catholic doctrine.
These two points together mean that in Catholic eyes, Edward lawfully succeeded Henry, as the legitimate male heir. On Edward’s death without issue, the throne went to Mary, as the legitimate female heir. But on Mary’s death, the Catholic church’s view was that there were no further legitimate heirs to Henry VIII. You therefore had to go back to Henry VII’s descendants. Henry’s VII had two daughters, Margaret and Mary. Margaret married James IV of Scotland. Their granddaughter was Mary, Queen of Scots, who was therefore in line for the English throne. If Elizabeth were not legitimate, there was an argument that Mary should have inherited upon the death of Mary Tudor.
Just adding that Margaret was of course the elder daughter.
Her sister Mary was the grandmother of Lady Jane Grey, who of course was briefly set on the throne herself. Henry VIII himself, after earlier setting aside Elizabeth ( after chopping off her mother’s head ), had reinstated her in the line of succession in his will. He also specifically ruled out the succession of Margaret’s line and placed his younger sister Mary’s after his own offspring.
If I may piggyback on this one, why was Lady Jane Grey declared queen when her mother, Frances Brandon Grey, was actually Henry VIII’s niece and the closer relative and by all accounts a major wolf-bitch of a woman who would have taken the crown and run with it? (Frances was an abusive mother and a horror of a person and it’s odd she’d willingly step down to give a hand up for a daughter she didn’t like and didn’t trust. (She eventually lost her fortune through confiscation and ended her days helping her husband tend bar [her 2nd husband had a position at court but lost it due to the marriage and opened the tavern] so there is some justice.)
About Mary Q of Scots- her father (Henry VIII’s nephew) and her grandfather (H8’s brother-in-law) both died as the results of battles with Henry’s armies. When she was a baby (her father died the month she was born) her great-uncle Henry tried to have her kidnapped and raised in England as a wife for his son. The French ultimately won the baby through her French mother, and Mary ALWAYS considered herself far more French than Scot (and in fact hated Scotland- she only spent a very few years of her life there).
Henry VIII and her grandmother, his sister Margaret, absolutely despised each other. Much of it having to do with a dispute over their grandmother and mother’s jewels. Margaret is one of the few members of that family not to have yet come into her own by way of novels and filmplays, but she was a strong and unconventional Tudor woman herself, even having her own bastards (well, it’s an argument- her second marriage [to an illegitimate relative of her first husband] was declared invalid by some, but not by Margaret’s priest) and her grandson by that marriage became her granddaughter Mary’s own ill-fated second husband, Henry Stewart, Laird Darnley. (The second marriage wasn’t happy either and at one point she petitioned for divorce claiming her first husband hadn’t been killed in battle after all- people just thought he had.)
More trivia I find interesting: M QofS’s grandfather, James IV, was as mentioned killed in battle by Henry VIII’s army at Flodden, but Henry VIII was not in command of said army. Catherine of Aragon was while Henry was fighting on the continent. Her extreme popularity after this victory and killing of England’s most hated enemy made Henry VIII both proud and resentful of her.
Was it actually legal for him to do this? I’m not up on the laws of the time, but it seems kind of dicey for someone, even a king, to arbitrarily change the order of succession. Had anyone done this kind of thing before? Other than recognizing or not recognizing bastards, that is.
The references that I’ve seen suggest that the Duchess of Suffolk did willingly renounce her rights in favour of her eldest daughter Jane. The Wikipedia site echoes that view. Frances probably contented herself with the thought that she would be the “power behind the throne”.
I think Parliament passed a law giving Henry VIII the power to alter the succession in his will. Both Mary and Elizabeth were declared bastards, legitimated, etc several times by acts of parliament.
Politics. The most powerful man in England in Edward VI’s waning days was the duke of Northumberland. It was he who persuaded the dieing Edward to alter his will to make Jane Grey his successor and he then married one of his sons to her. Lady Frances was sidestepped, but probably with her consent. Afterall it would elevate her to queen-mother and without Northumberland she likely would have had no shot at all.
Yes – Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland REALLY wanted to get his son, Guilford, on the throne. He had Edward sign papers allowing this (with the part about Lady Jane crammed in atop the regular writing – Edward was dying too fast) and bullied the Council into accepting it. Al the paperwork was signed, and Lady Jane was officially the Queen. And had that been the end of it, history would be completely different.
Only it wasn’t. When Lady Jane’s coronation party came down the Thames, everyone was asking who the hell it was. They were expecting Mary Tudor, and that clearly wasn’t her. Dudley may have had legality (however twisted) behind him, but the populace wasn’t going to accept an unknown queen. Within a short time, the citizens were in revolt, and a powerful faction supported Mary, and within days put her on the throne.
I don’t recall now (I knew all this stuff at one time), but it seems likely. You get the impression that Guilford was something of a git and that Jane didn’t like him all that much – very unlike Cary Elwes in the movie they made about them.
The extra bit that Dudley crammed into Edward’s will was , IIRC, “and her heirs” after Lady Jane’s name – it didn’t name Guilford, who had no claim himself to the throne and could only aspire to it through Jane.