We didn’t cover much of Dark Age England in my high school history classes. What happened in 1135?
It’s a bit complicated.
William the Conqueror had no hereditary claim from the Anglo-Saxon kings. He was king by right of conquest alone.
He was succeeded by his son, William II, who died of a hunting accident without issue.
William II was succeeded by his brother, Henry I, who just happened to be in the area when brother William died of a bow shot. As a dynastic move, Henry married Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of Saint Margaret, queen of Scots by marriage. Margaret was descended from the Anglo-Saxon kings.
Their son and Henry’s heir, William Ætheling, therefore would have been a descendant from the Anglo-Saxon kings, but he died in a shipwreck returning from Normandy to England.
Henry I didn’t have any other legitimate sons, but he did have a daughter, named Matilda, after her Scottish mother. She was known as the Lady of the English and also the Empress, as she was a widow of the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry got all his nobles to swear they would accept her as Queen after his death, but it didn’t work out. When Henry I died, there was a disputed succession. Stephen of Blois, who was a grandson of William the Conquerer, managed to grab the throne, triggering about 20 years of civil war in England.
Matilda re-married. Her new husband was Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. It was a tumultuous marriage, but produced a son, Henry Plantagenet. When he came of age, he continued the battles against Stephen.
Finally, Stephen agreed that Henry would be his heir. That settlement was aided by the death of Stephen’s son, so he didn’t have an heir of his body.
Stephen died in 1135 and Henry Plantagenet became Henry II. He was the first monarch since the death of Edward the Confessor to be descended from the Anglo-Saxon kings.
All subsequent monarchs trace their descent from Henry II, and thus from the Anglo-Saxon kings, including Alfred the Great.
(Again, subject to any irregularities in those thousand year long bloodlines.)
For those interested in the royal lineage, (and general history) I thoroughly recommend this book, “1066 and all that” by Sellar, Reatman and Muir.
It is not, however, a documentary.
That’s Yeatman.
I don’t think Frank Muir had anything to do with it; for some reason his name
appears to be associated with it (if only by google) … Maybe he wrote a foreword
for some edition or something.
Thanks. Was on my phone, skipping between tabs.
I have an equally reliable source, an old (ca. 1860) schoolbook of my great-grandmother’s, Mangnall’s Questions, which leaves you in no doubt as to what to think about - just about everything.
The Brother Cadfael mystery series is set during Stephen’s reign. He appears as a character in one of them, and is referred to regularly.
CGB Grey’s History of the Royal Family (starting in 1066)
My favorite phrases:
“very messy time”
and
“bigger-army diplomacy”
Brian
sarah duchess of york has just been diagnosed with malignant melanoma she was diagnosed with breast cancer in june of 2023.
of course she is a distant cousin to c3. and descended from c2.
Are there many documentaries in the form of books?
I moved to a small Minnesota town when I was 12, and the first thing we were told by neighbors is “don’t gossip, you are probably talking to someone’s cousin.” Indeed, all the “old families” had married each other since the French settled the area - and it wasn’t uncommon to marry your second cousin.
My sister moved to a small town in North Dakota - if you don’t get out of the community, and you want to marry, you are likely to marry someone you are related to. There just aren’t that many people who move in to the community.
The genetic issues from intermarriage exist within the Amish community and its a problem in isolated mountain towns - especially in Appalachia. Once you hit the Midwest, you only have a few generations, and don’t see large scale issues.
The Fundamental Latter Day Saints (FLDS) who split from the main church over polygyny and set up shop just outside Utah in Colorado City, Arizona are severely inbred and are coming up with a number of genetic diseases.
Chief among them is fumerase deficiency, a disorder so rare only 13 cases were known in the world before eight instantly presented themselves from the community with more being found later.
I’m related for sure to a signer of the Declaration of Independence and, by marriage, to Adm. William “Bull” Halsey. My family thinks we’re related to French nobility but have never been able to confirm it. As I heard someone joke once, “I’m the first of a distinguished line.”
And for those hostile to or skeptical of monarchies: https://www.amazon.com/God-Save-Queen-Persistence-Monarchies/dp/1950354989
Eldest son - Eustace. Eustace was preliminarily disinherited as Prince of England before he died and he was very much not pleased. However he died suddenly shortly thereafter as you note.
However Stephen’s younger son William, Earl of Surrey by marriage, did survive into the next realm and received an enormous settlement. All of his father’s original inheritance (including the county of Mortain in Normandy long since conquered by the Plantaganets, and the honours of Eye and Lancaster in England), his mother’s (county of Boulogne in France and the large honour of Boulogne in England), the supplemental lands granted to his brother (honour of Pevensey), plus Norwich and comital rights in Norfolk, plus his wife’s wealthy earldom of Surrey, which included further estates in Normandy.
Henry II seemed to have initially kept William carefully politically isolated and on probation after he became king in 1154 and in 1157 he “renegotiated” the settlement in a way highly favorable to himself (as he was frequently wont to do), by snaking back Pevensey, Norwich, the rights in Norfolk and custody of all of his castles (likely some of those would have been returned in the long run).
But William retained the great bulk of his and his wife’s estates and was still easily the wealthiest noble in the realm when he died childless. Which he did obediently campaigning with Henry against the count of Toulouse in southern France in 1159. It would have been interesting indeed to see how things would have unfolded from a dynastic POV if he had left heirs. Probably nowhere in particular, but you never know.
Ah the what-ifs of the heirs apparent that didn’t make it - the Arthur King John disposed of, Henry VIII’s older brother Arthur, Charles I’s older brother Henry, Queen Anne’s William, George IV’s daughter Charlotte and her baby…
And suppose Edward VI had lived long enough to marry and father a child…
And speaking of Edwards, Wallis Simpson was only forty when she married Edward Duke of Windsor, who had been Edward VIII. What if she had borne a child?
Oddly enough, I read that a French marshal said something like that to French nobility: when the noble boasted of his lineage, the marshal said “well, it is better the be an ancestor than to have them.”
You mean, after the abdication? Edward would no longer be in the line of succession at that point, so, presumably, his heirs wouldn’t be, either. The line of succession is not “etched in stone,” but is whatever Parliament wants it to be, so if it would have been a problem, Parliament would have removed any of Edward’s heirs from the line. Even if it wasn’t Parliament’s call, I doubt that King George VI would have allowed it either.
I agree with you, but in the past, as with “bigger army diplomacy” Things can get strange. And as with the story of King Stephen and his sister in law Maud, sometimes a child of the one who lost gets in and became king.
Now of course this is kind of silly, but did you see King Ralph? I noticed in the credits that Ralph’s son is listed as Ralph II. Perhaps his predecessor, played by Peter O’Toole, didn’t get married and have an heir. Sure he was in his sixties but it’s happened before. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherland’s parents were 63 and 18 when they were married.
Yes- it is little known that Henry VIII did have a son who sat the throne, but died fairly early-
He named Lady Jane Grey his successor.