Hi
Why was Queen Elizabeth I considered ‘technically’ illegitimate as queen, despite the Third Succession Act restoring her to the line of succession to the throne?
I look forward to your feedback.
Not an expert on the subject, but I think the Wiki article gives a clue:
Bolding mine.
As girls, Mary and Elizabeth would be behind Edward in any case. But Henry would probably have preferred, if it happened that Catherine gave birth to another girl and then Edward died, that any such girl would have precedence over the children of his discarded wives. No doubt Catherine - who was after all Queen at the time - would prefer that too.
Furthermore, if he wanted to have both princesses back in the line of succession … well, they can’t BOTH be legitimate at the same time. If having a child be both ‘illegitimate’ and also ‘in the succession’ is an option … why make yourself choose between them?
I don’t know how the state of Catholic vs Protestant politics was at the time (were Catholics being suppressed?). But this could be another factor - legitimizing just Elizabeth is an anti-Catholic move, and would put the wind up any of his Catholic or Catholic-sympathising subjects. And puts Elizabeth in front of Mary again, which he probably didn’t want to do
Thanks Aspidistra.
- My first response is: was Elizabeth then deliberately kept in that ‘limbo’ of illegitimate yet acceptable enough to succeed to the throne, should it come to that?
- And the second point I want to clear up is: Were there conditions attached to her succession, namely : not to marry or bear any children? I thought I read something to that effect but I don’t know how accurate that information was.
Well, remember Mary was in ‘limbo’ too for exactly the same reason - and then Edward tried to cut her out and parachute a Protestant in over her (Lady Jane Grey). So it’s really a question of who would have had the motivation to legitimise Elizabeth, and when. Apparently not her brother - someone more knowledgeable may wander in and explain why - but once he was dead, certainly Mary wouldn’t - that would be tantamount to declaring herself a bastard.
It is interesting that Edward didn’t just legitimise Elizabeth and reverse the succession order, though, if he wanted a Protestant heir. Makes you think that the theory of Jane Grey’s father-in-law nudging the scales behind the scenes is probably correct…
Edward didn’t do anything. He was a minor when he died; the country was ruled by a regency council, dominated by the Earl of Northumberland at the time of his death.
I have a question about the legitimacy of Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. I realize that the usual objection is bigamy — Henry couldn’t marry Anne if was still married to Catherine — but I’m asking about another issue.
Recall that Catherine’s marriage to Henry was declared void on the grounds that she had previously married Henry’s brother and had allegedly consummated that marriage. But wasn’t Anne ineligible to marry Henry on similar grounds? Henry had taken Anne’s sister Mary as a “wife” and had certainly consummated that “marriage.”
What was the actual text of the Catholic law at that time on this matter? Had marriages ever been forbidden because of non-marital liaisons with a sibling?
Well, the two major points are that by the time of the thing yu are mentioning, Henry had already broke with the Catholic church and (I am not making this up) had pretensions to being an Emperor, equal in status to the Emperor of Rome. And he was pretty much making up theology to suit himself. And he was always a massive, flaming hypocrite whose conscience was only ever pricked when politically convenient.
In the first place, Henry and Catherine of Aragon would have been legitimate, and, as far as the Church cares, always was perfectly fine. According totestimony of the people involved, she had never consumated her marriage to Henry’s older brother Arthur, but even so they requested and received dispensation. Under Catholic doctrine, an unconsumated marriage can be annulled and is, in really simple terms, incomplete. It’s not automatically void or broken, but it’s sort of like a contract: until both parties sit down to sign the paper, either party can back out. In this case, because the issue was dealing with two national monarchies, they went all the way to Rome both the additional blessing in order to make sure everything was in the clear. In most cases, this kind of thing wouldn’t be a huge problem for people and would not attract opposition within the Church regardless of the station of the people involved.
I also want to point out that nobody without a political axe to grind cared about Henry’s marriage to Catherine. It was purely an argument of convenience, and the people involved would turn right around and argue whatever the King liked later on - which is why Henry went through six wives.
In the case of Anne Boleyn, there was no doctrinal issue because there was not formal relationship between Henry and Mary Boleyn. It was a huge, and shameful sin on Henry’s part, not that he ever cared about that, but not specifically a Church issue. It’s the difference between the letter and spirit of the law.
As I understand it, in the end, parliament and the nobility thought it a good idea not to mess with the succession rules. They’d had several acts monkeying with the definitions of legitimacy and succession, but remember that Henry VIII’s father (VII) took over at the end of the War of the Roses, which was a decades long comedy of errors which tore apart the country - and was essentially an argument over who was legitimate heir. Henry VIII was still paranoid about possible rival claimants, since his father got the throne on the flimsiest of pretexts. Lady Jane was an object lesson later in what happens when you try to alter the lines of succession.
Declaring any of the King’s offspring illegitimate would of course raise questions about the legitimacy of any other marriage. Thus, despite the machinations of several succession acts, in the end tradition won out. After all, Edward was the youngest child - if his sisters’ mothers’ marriages were not valid, why would not his? The acts were more about the protestant fanatics - who waxed stronger under Edward - trying everything they could to avoid a Catholic monarch. In the end, common sense prevailed.
As for Elizabeth, she saw the machinations and dangers of politics and learned to keep her head down. When she became queen, she realized if she married any man, that man would expect to be the one calling the shots - and after all she’d been through, she was determined nobody would be telling her what to do once she was queen - even if it meant throwing the country into some chaos of a succession fight when she died. (And if she wanted to know what happens to a queen who got involved with men, she had only look at the troubles of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots).
As I understand it the “illegitimate” label was a consequence of the king trying to justify his extreme number of wives by claiming most were not real marriages. Nobody was fooled.
>>After all, Edward was the youngest child - if his sisters’ mothers’ marriages were not valid, why would not his? <<
Catharine and Anne were safely dead, so Henry was an undisputed widower, and there was no hint of premarital shenanigans in Jane Seymour’s past, so no basis for even a trumped-up argument about the validity of that marriage or Edward’s legitimacy.
Acts of Parliament meant very little compared to the religious issues.
[ul]
[li]The Catholic point of view was that Henry’s marriage to Catherine was valid, and the divorce was invalid. Therefore Mary was legitimate and Elizabeth was illegitimate.[/li]
[li]The hardline Protestant point of view was that Henry’s marriage to Catherine was never valid in the first place, because it was only allowed by a special dispensation of the Pope. So Mary was illegitimate and Elizabeth was legitimate.[/li]
[li]The moderate Protestant point of view was that both were legitimate, and that was Henry’s view, established in the Third Succession act.[/li]
[li]Edward VI’s “Devise for the Succession” declared both of them illegitimate, and named Lady Jane Grey as the legitimate successor.[/li][/ul]
So take your pick! 
It was all about religion and power struggles.
Catholics never believed that Elizabeth was legitimate, so Mary Queen of Scots was later regarded as the legitimate queen until her execution.
Henry hadn’t “taken Anne’s sister Mary as a wife”; he slept with her, that’s all. He couldn’t take her as a wife, since he was married to Katherine of Aragon at the time, and she to William Carey. Even if you later take the view that Henry’s marriage to Katherine was null, Mary’s marriage to William was not in question.
There was a bit of tut-tutting and a general feeling that to go on and marry Anne was a bit sleazy, and when Henry petitioned Rome for an annulment of his marriage to Katherine he also confessed his adultery with Mary and sought a dispensation to marry her sister. But this was out of an abundance of caution, and an attempt to claim a veneer of respectability; there was no real question that his prior liaison with Mary was an impediment to marrying Anne.
Again, as I understand, the problem is - if you start changing the rules of succession to exclude anyone that would traditionally be in line, then those with a rival claim just have a better claim. The whole history of Europe is rife with people who said they had a better claim to be ruler (or are propped up as a figurehead by some faction). The War of the Roses was particularly an example of that. So in the end, simplicity was - the next in line by inheritance is next in line. The lesson of Jane Grey is particularly sad but instructive. Once the claim was made and failed, she was arrested and stuck in the Tower. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop some factions from pushing the idea that the decree that made her Queen was legitimate, and even with her in the Tower they started more trouble - which led to her being executed, the only way to de-legitimize a claimant. (Tossing out James in 1688 reverberated to civil strife all the way to 1745, for example)
Declaring Elizabeth (or Mary) illegitimate wouldn’t stop some faction or other from arguing that since the marriage had been considered legitimate at the time of their births, then subsequent “de-legitimizing” of any marriage or offspring was the incorrect rule and therefore that person was the rightful ruler. The only exit to that conundrum was to kill the claimant (think about the two princes in the Tower) and that required a fabrication of charges of treason. England was sufficiently civilized that actually killing a prominent person required a pretext.
The simplest, least disruptive course of action was to recognize claimants base on the precedence of their claims, even if it meant letting a Catholic take over. Or a Protestant.
Until eventually that no longer seemed the least disruptive route, hence the Act of Settlement still in force.
But granted, at the time in question, it was a toss-up whether a claim (however tenuous) by right of inheritance gave legitimacy to the force of arms (later symbolised in a majority in Parliament), or vice versa.
The best explanation I’ve heard for the catholic-protestant divide in England, is to equate it to the antipathy toward communism in the 20th century. The alleged reason why the pope did not give Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon was that the pope was the “guest” of daddy of Aragon. The King of Spain was not happy with the idea that his daughter, her decade of marriage and her child would be dismissed as “never happened”. He was in a position to tell the pope what to do. The popes had variously been under the thumb of England’s two biggest enemies, France and Spain. So Catholicism was considered as being beholden to the dictates of enemies of England, much as 20th century local western communists were considered (with some justification) the puppets of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. - the enemies of the west. While doctrine plays a role, so does the perception of who calls the shots.
Also, the church was reckoned to control about 10% of the land in England and a substantial wealth… Henry bought the cooperation of his nobles by dividing up the loot of the church to all, and many feared a return to Catholicism would mean having to hand much of it back.
Not her father - her nephew, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, the dominant power on the continent.
The antipathy between Protestant and Catholic was an issue that arose around the same time, as a matter of theological dispute and protest against perceived moral institutional failings and corruptions within the Church and its hierarchy. Similar protests earlier had been suppressed as violently as was usual at the time, but Luther’s protest movement gained support through different German principalities. Henry was initially as opposed as Charles, partly on theological grounds and partly because the idea of individuals, rather than divinely-ordained higher authority, deciding such matters for themselves was naturally anathema.
The question of his marriage was a separate issue. It suited him to set aside papal authority to get his annulment, and to dissolve the monasteries to unlock capital; but the wider growth of Protestantism was a much bigger social upheaval, made more powerful by the violence by which each side sought to repress the other, across the continent.
It was only later, in Elizabeth’s reign, in reaction to Mary’s attempt at Counter-Reformation and her marriage to Charles’s son Philip II of Spain, and later the papal fatwa against Elizabeth’s life and Philip’s attempted invasion, that Protestantism and the idea of national (as opposed to kingly) independence became so closely and powerfully intertwined.
Yes, it was similar, but even more intense.
It wasn’t all about power politics, and it wasn’t all about Henry VIII. Nowhere near. There was huge wave of Protestant reformation across the whole of northern Europe, not only England. We shouldn’t underestimate how strongly ordinary people felt about religion. There was intense and violent conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Scotland, in France, in Holland, in Germany, in Scandinavia.
In Scotland, Protestants seized power and overthrew Mary, Queen of Scots. This had nothing to do with the Tudors. There would have been a Protestant Reformation in England regardless of Henry, and Henry couldn’t have succeeded if a large proportion of the English population hadn’t supported his break with Rome.
In Elizabeth’s reign there were Catholic uprisings in England and serious attempts to overthrow or assassinate her. There was the Spanish Armada, and Irish Catholic uprisings.
Protestants wanted a Protestant monarch and a Protestant country, and Catholics wanted a Catholic monarch and a Catholic country - that was the whole essence of it. Both sides could always find plenty of reasons and justifications why their candidate was legitimate, and the other side’s wasn’t.
However, as I understand it, Henry didn’t much care for the ‘core’ Protestant movements in Europe lead by people like Calvin and Luther. HIS sort of Protestantism was pretty much like being Catholic, except with him as boss, not the Pope. Which is why not much later on there was trouble between Scots Presbyterian Covenanters and the Anglican Church - the Covenanters considered Anglicanism full of ‘Popery’, and pretty much next door to just being a Catholic, whereas Anglicans thought Presbyterians were dangerous religious extremists. Henry didn’t want any of the anti-authoritarianism implicit in early Protestant thought - not while he was the authority!
Thinking about Henry’s succession has just brought home to me the irony implicit in the whole situation. Henry set the whole destabilising Reformation ball rolling in England in large part because he was dead set against a female heir - which considering what happened with the Empress Matilda is actually not surprising. But in the end, Mary herself won handily the only power struggle for the throne she had to face (with Jane Grey) … a power struggle that wouldn’t even have existed if Henry hadn’t gone wife shopping in the first place.
If Henry had sat tight and worked with the heir he had, he could still have married Jane Seymour after Catherine’s death, and probably the resulting successions would have ended up in the same place too - with Margaret’s line taking over both England and Scotland (possibly by way of James V, since he wouldn’t need to have a war with Henry over religion if they were both still Catholic, so he’d quite likely still be alive by Mary’s death). Henry’s machinations really only ensured the death of his own line (well, and gave us Elizabeth, but that would have been cold comfort for Henry under the circumstances)
Indeed, but of course he couldn’t have known whether or when Catherine would die and a Jane or some other suitable wife become available - and he was besotted with Anne. And the various mishaps and ailments that did for Anne’s potential son, for Jane in her post-pregnancy and Edward’s lungs would still have happened - as would the pressure for Reformation.
As for what would have happened if no Anne Boleyn, and therefore no Elizabeth and probably no Darnley to marry Mary Queen of Scots…
Especially since the act declared any discussion to amend or alter it was high treason.
Well of course. Seriously debating who should be king, or changing that option, was hardly something any autocratic ruler wants to be part of public discussion. it’s tantamount to questioning the right to rule of anyone who rules by force. Plus, as I mentioned, Henry VII and Henry VIII and their inner circle (and hence the regents after him) were still well aware that the Tudor claim was tenuous at best.
I have a book, Lord Lisle’s Letters, a summary of letters written by one of the last of the Plantagenets. As such, he was heavily monitored by VIII’s spies as a potential focal point for those who might want to depose Henry. At one point, arrested for suspected treason but eventually let go. the summary is from a collection of all his letters, seized when he was arrested and found in the British archives. Even during the smooth sailing - supposedly - of Henry VIII’s forceful rule there was no end of intrigue and plotting to undermine his rule by assorted factions. Any person with some real or imagined connection to the royal lineage could be put forward as a more plausible candidate for ruler (as was Lady Jane through her mother). It was certainly a time when the “ride the tiger” metaphor was appropriate. Even just allowing suggestion that one candidate for heir was better suited than the designate would be seen as treasonous.