British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 6: Edward VI, Bloody Mary, and the Virgin Queen

As we learned in Part 5, Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome and disposed of his first two wives (divorced, beheaded) in his quest to father a male heir to the English throne. His third wife, Jane Seymour, delivered the goods, and promptly died, leaving a vacancy for wife number four. 

The "goods" was the future Edward VI, who became king in 1547, on Henry's death. He did not prove to be the strong monarch Henry had hoped for. He was only nine years old, and sickly. This left him under the influence of the powerful men around him. 

[Image: Edward VI, aged 13]

They favored moving the new Church of England in a more Protestant direction and penalising Catholics. Under their influence, Edward became a little bigot. His brief reign was marked by riot, rebellion, and war with Scotland. 

Edward VI died at age 15, probably of tuberculosis. According to Henry's will, his eldest daughter Mary was next in line. Unlike Edward, Mary was raised a devout Catholic. 

The Protestant nobles who had dominated the country under Edward knew that Mary would remove them, or worse. They ignored Henry VIII's final will and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as Queen. She was a teenager they believed they could manipulate. [Image: Lady Jane Grey, Streatham Portrait]

Lady Jane was descended from Henry VII, and thus of royal lineage, but many influential people believed Mary was the rightful heir. Within little over a week, Lady Jane's support evaporated, and Mary's forces prevailed. 

Lady Jane was never crowned, so one can debate whether she was ever monarch. But neither was Edward V, who is counted as a king. A tough call. It was a tough end for Jane as well. The "Nine Days Queen" was beheaded at the Tower of London, along with her husband and father-in-law.

Mary Tudor has gone down in history as "Bloody Mary." That's awful, but how many monarchs have a popular cocktail named after them? Even "Ivan the Terrible" has only got a vodka. 

[Image: Mary I]

Mary earned her nasty epithet because of her violent campaign to restore Catholicism in England. During her brief reign (1553-1558) her government executed hundreds of Protestants, mostly by burning at the stake. [Image: Protestants being burned at Smithfield Market in London, from an 18th century edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs]

The persecutions did not achieve their result, perhaps because Mary died too soon. Their main result was to make her and her Church infamous in England for centuries. 

Something else hurt her popularity. She married a foreign monarch, the most powerful in Europe at the time, Philip II of Spain. We all know the English love to hate foreigners. He came to England, married Mary, gamely tried to impregnate her, and left for home soon after. I think he knew the game was up. He later sent the Spanish Armada in revenge.

Mary believed she had gotten pregnant. It turned out to be a false pregnancy. She died in 1558 with her two great tasks unfinished. Catholicism was not firmly restored, and there was no Catholic heir. 

With Mary gone, one child of Henry VIII remained: Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth I lasted 45 years and brought some needed stability. [Image: Elizabeth I, the Armada Portrait]

The "Virgin Queen" was the last of her line. Whether she really died a virgin or not, the fact that Elizabeth never married meant the end of the Tudor dynasty. 

Her options for marriage were certainly unappealing: an English nobleman or a foreign prince, most likely a Catholic. Neither was likely to be a popular choice, and any man she chose, she knew, would try to rule her and the country. 

Elizabeth was an effective monarch for her time but it wasn't an especially pleasant time. Many historians have proclaimed the "Elizabethan Age" as a Golden Age for England. That may have been true for some people, but it was a tough world for most of them. Savage laws against beggars and vagrants were the main means of dealing with the rising numbers of poor.  

England famously defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was a critical victory, but the Spanish plan had serious flaws from the start. It is hard to see how it could have succeeded. 

Under Elizabeth, England became safe for Protestantism of a sort. Her religious settlement, her Church of England, compromised between Catholic and Protestant doctrine. But crucially, it remained independent of Rome with the monarch as its titular head. 

Radical Protestants disliked the Elizabeth's Anglican Church as too "Romish" and pushed to "purify" it. Devout Catholics tried to destroy it. Yet enough people supported it to ensure its survival to this day. 

Elizabeth is usually compared favorably to her sister Mary and portrayed as more tolerant and moderate. Up to a point, the distinction is valid, but only up to a point. Elizabeth did not send hundreds to the stake, but she did have many a Catholic priest hanged.

Historians have praised Elizabeth for creating a church that sought compromise between Catholic and Protestant doctrines and her distaste for religious persecution. "I would not make windows into men's souls," she is alleged to have said when becoming Queen. 

By this, she meant that as long as people conformed to her version of the church outwardly, she did not care what they thought. The truth is, she had to care. Thought, when sincere, can lead to action. 

Violence and rebellion connected to religious causes was never far below the surface in Elizabethan England. The pope declared Elizabeth a heretic who could be deposed or killed and Catholic plots against her were common. 

One of those famously involved was her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. In 1567, Protestant nobles deposed Catholic Mary from the Scottish throne. She fled to England and put herself under Elizabeth's protection. [Image: Mary, Queen of Scots]

Mary was the granddaughter of a sister of Henry VIII. As such, she was Elizabeth's closest heir. She became a focus of Catholic plots to replace Elizabeth with her after the pope declared Elizabeth a heretic. 

Elizabeth kept Mary in comfortable captivity for 19 years before bowing to the demands of her male advisors and ordering her cousin's execution. (Contrary to certain "historical" films, the pair never met face to face). 

Catholic priests in England, especially Jesuits, sometimes met a similar fate. They were declared agents of foreign powers aiming at Elizabeth's assassination, and therefore guilty of treason. Catholics in Ireland also suffered for their faith and opposition to English rule. The subjugation of the Emerald Isle was completed toward the end of her reign. 

Elizabeth died soon after, in 1603. She never publicly named her successor. Her chief minister, Robert Cecil, arranged the business. The son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England, Wales, and Ireland, the first monarch to rule all of the British Isles. 

England was wealthier and more populous than Scotland and the weather was a little better. James viewed England as the Land of Milk and Honey. He and his dynasty, the Stuart monarchs, would discover another reality.

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British Monarchs who Ended Badly: Part 5, The Early Tudors

The Tudor Dynasty, which ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1603, is the most written about of any royal house in British history.  The Tudors might well be one of the most important job creators of the past few centuries. Tudor and Co. have inspired innumerable biographies, novels, plays, and films, not all of them bad. 

I cannot possibly provide enough detail here to satisfy all the curious. Therefore, I will keep it fairly brief and barebones. I regret that means leaving out many of the salacious bits.

The Tudor Period was ushered in by Henry Tudor, who defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The half-Welsh Henry VII ruled until his death in 1509, probably of tuberculosis. 

He was a rather boring king, but that was probably not a bad thing after decades of disorder. He was a shrewd and apparently an amiable fellow. His great achievement was to bring relative stability and increase the power of the monarchy after the chaos of the Wars of the Roses. [Image: Henry VII, 1505]

Henry VII was a notorious tightwad. After the Italian navigator John Cabot returned from a voyage of discovery to North America in 1497, the king presented him a reward of £10. 

To be sure, £10 was worth a lot more than now, especially since Liz Truss became Prime Minister. Henry could be generous with his family, but no one would accuse him of being extravagant. He was, however, adept at extracting money from his subjects. In his portrait above, you can see he has his eyes on your moneybags. 

Perhaps Henry VII can be forgiven for his miserliness. The government had become cash poor during the previous period of anarchy. Henry VII managed to restore its finances. Just in time. His son Henry VIII was a lavish spender. One of his first acts was to execute his father's hated chief tax collectors, Empson and Dudley.

 [Image: Henry VIII in the 1530s]

Henry VIII became king by accident. His older brother Arthur was heir. As part of a treaty with Spain, his father had married Arthur at 14 off to a Spanish princess, Catharine of Aragon, in 1501. But Arthur died the next year, probably of the mysterious "sweating sickness" that was epidemic at the time. [Image: Catherine of Aragon]

Hoping to keep the marriage alliance going, Henry VII proposed marrying Catherine to his second son, the future Henry VIII. Because the Bible contained conflicting passages on whether a man could marry his brother's widow, Henry VII applied for and got a papal dispensation allowing the match. 

Other complications delayed the match, one of which was young Henry's opposition. But after he became king in 1509, he married Catherine. He seems to have been happy enough with her at first. But he grew less happy as the years passed, and she did not produce a male heir. They had only one child, Mary. 

Henry believed that only a male would be able to preserve his new dynasty. In the late 1520s, he decided God was punishing him for marrying Catherine -- that the marriage was not valid according to the Bible. Implied in this was the idea that the pope had made a mistake in granting a dispensation and the marriage should be annulled. 

This was not a popular idea in Rome, nor with Catherine's powerful nephew, the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, who pushed the pope to deny Henry's appeal. The presence of his armies in Italy gave his views considerable force.

Henry was not a Protestant nor was he anti-Catholic in doctrine. A few years before, he had written a pamphlet denouncing Martin Luther's attacks on the Roman Church. For this work, the pope of the time awarded Henry the title of "Defender of the Faith," which British monarchs still flaunt. 

But Henry was desperate to rid himself of Catherine. She was now in her 40s and he believed she could never give him the male heir he so desired. He had also begun a relationship with the woman he thought could do the job: Anne Boleyn. Her ambitious family threw her at him. Lust and political need did the rest. The pair met and wooed at Carew Manor in Beddington, Surrey, just a short walk from my current residence. 

[Image: Anne Boleyn]

Things got messy. Anne got pregnant. The pope refused to grant the annulment. Henry responded by declaring that the pope had no authority in England. 

In effect, the Church in England became the Church of England, the Anglican Church. The King replaced the pope as its Supreme Head. All of this was done through legal means, by Acts of Parliament. 

Desperate for cash by now, Henry followed the break from Rome by seizing a money pit. He dissolved the monasteries and confiscated their land and wealth, much of which he sold to eager buyers. The idea probably came from Thomas Cromwell, who had become Henry's right-hand man. Cromwell superintended the dissolution. [Image: Thomas Cromwell]

Some of the clergy, and some among the laity opposed Henry VIII's break with Rome. Many of them paid with their lives, notably Sir Thomas More, who had been Lord Chancellor for a season. 

As everybody knows, Henry had his new church grant his annulment. He married Anne. She gave him a child, but alas it was a girl, Elizabeth. She had several miscarriages. The royal couple's relationship soured. 

Henry, looking ahead to wife number three, accused Anne of treason, incest, and adultery. The court meekly complied and she was beheaded a few days later. The ever magnanimous king paid for an expert French executioner to perform the job with a sword. No ordinary axeman for an English queen. 

Henry had already selected wife number three, Jane Seymour. Jane gave Henry his desired male heir, Prince Edward. He took precedence over Mary and Elizabeth. Jane's tenure as Mrs. Henry Tudor was tragically short. She died shortly after the birth of an infection. But at least she wasn't beheaded. [Image: Jane Seymour]

To celebrate the birth of his long-desired son, Henry began to build a new magnificent palace, Nonsuch, near Cheam in Surrey. It was completed in 1538. [Image: A model of Nonsuch. The palace was demolished in the 1680s]

Henry was now in the market for wife number four. Thomas Cromwell, who had become the king's chief minister had an idea. He arranged a marriage alliance with the daughter of a German prince, Anne of Cleves. 

Henry liked her portrait, but not the real Anne. The pair did not hit it off, and he quickly arranged to have the marriage annulled. Probably because she (wisely) did not oppose him, Henry treated Anne generously and she lived in England until her death in 1557, arguably the happiest of Henry's six wives. [Image: Anne of Cleves]

Thomas Cromwell did not fare so well. Henry had him beheaded for treason and corruption. The real reasons for his fall are unclear, but may have been related to the Cleves match and alliance. Being close to an increasingly paranoid Henry was a lot like being close to Joseph Stalin. A whiff of suspicion could be enough to prove one's undoing. 

With his exquisite sense of timing, Henry married his next wife, Catherine Howard the day Cromwell was beheaded. Wife number five did not last long either. She ended up like Anne Boleyn, with her head on the block, after Henry accused her of adultery. Two of her accused lovers enjoyed the same fate. [Image: Portrait of a Young Lady believed to be Catherine Howard]

Wife number six, Catherine Parr, was more fortunate, if you believe that being married to a volatile, fat old man with ulcerous, boil covered legs is a pleasant fate. She was somehow able to keep the aging Henry content. She avoided an annulment and kept her head, which is quite a feat considering the fate of his other wives. 

Henry VIII died in 1547, aged 55. In his final years his waistline ballooned to 54 inches (140 cm). He had "mobility issues" and had to be moved about with the use of mechanical contraptions. Most historians reject the old theory that he died of syphilis. The cause of his demise is still debated. 

Paradoxically, the reign of Henry VIII was probably a fairly good one for many of his ordinary subjects. He generally kept the country out of war and maintained internal peace. He was intelligent, talented, handsome, and well educated. From the 1530s on, however, he was sometimes mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

On his death, the throne passed to his ten-year-old son, Edward VI, beginning another period of turmoil.  

If you have trouble remembering the fate of Henry's wives, this little mnemonic device helps: 

"Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."

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British Monarchs who Ended Badly, Part 4: The Wars of the Roses

Poor Henry VI. He was not cut out for his job. As you will recall from Part 3, he became King of England in 1422 as an infant, the third Lancastrian king and the youngest person ever to inherit the Crown. [Image: Henry VI]

He was also proclaimed King of France and crowned in 1431, but never ruled that country. One could argue he never really ruled England either. Henry VI had the dubious distinction of being King of England twice, sandwiched around Edward IV, who also held the job twice. It is not even certain he knew he was king.

While Henry was growing up in age, a regency council ruled in his name. In 1437, he assumed control of the government. He had become older. He had not grown up. He may have made a good monk, but not a good monarch for a country overrun by noble thugs. 

During the wars with France, the great lords had become recruiters for the army. They hired "retainers" to fight for pay. The retainers became private armies of the powerful nobles. Historians labeled the system "bastard feudalism."

By 1453, the Hundred Years War ended in English defeat. War abroad soon gave way to war at home, as two families descended from Edward III competed for the throne, the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The struggle would last more than thirty years. 

Historians labeled the conflict The Wars of the Roses. We can thank Shakespeare for that. In Henry VI, Part I, Shakespeare created a fictional scene in which supporters of the rival factions pick either red or white roses as their symbol: the red rose of Lancaster, and the white rose of York. 

[Image: Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens, print of fresco in the Palace of Westminster, by Henry Payne, 1910]

Nobody at the time thought they were fighting about roses. The white rose was indeed the symbol of the House of York. The red rose only became associated with the House of Lancaster after the wars.   

"Wars" is also something of a misnomer. Actual fighting was sporadic and punctuated by years of uneasy peace. Most of the battles were small scale affairs, though bloody. They were fought mainly by private armies of retainers in the pay of wealthy nobles, a bit like Mafia gangs.

Teaching the Wars of the Roses was always a struggle for me. To try and explain the complex relationships among the participants and the coming and going of kings is daunting. Everyone seems to be named Henry, Edward, or Richard. They are all descended from Edward III, who had too many children. 

You may recall that in 1399 Henry IV had deposed his cousin Richard II and claimed the throne. His claim was never fully accepted by some nobles. They thought Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, was the rightful heir. 

Henry IV crushed uprisings in Mortimer's favor. Mortimer, a child at the time, never pursued his claim himself, and Henry treated him well. In fact, Mortimer became a trusted counsellor to the Lancastrian kings before his death in 1425. 

Things changed when the French war ended in defeat and domestic chaos. In the 1450s Richard Duke of York revived the Mortimer claim. Mortimer had no children, but York was his nephew and heir. 

Richard was emboldened by Henry VI's lack of kingly skills. In contrast to his father Henry V, he was not a bold warrior. He was timid, shy, and pious. He disliked war and violence. He was also prone to periodic mental breakdown. 

By the early 1450s, England was descending into anarchy. Bands of armed retainers, returned from plundering France, began to terrorize England. Richard of York presented himself as the man who could restore order. He sought to gain control over the government, which meant Henry VI. Henry's French queen, Margaret of Anjou, who wore the trousers, opposed Richard's plan. In 1455, civil war broke out. 

A victorious Richard captured Henry. He got Parliament to name him Lord Protector and Henry's successor. Margaret refused to accept the deal, which disinherited her son. She raised a Lancastrian army, which defeated and killed Richard in battle. 

The victory did not eliminate the Yorkist threat. Richard's eldest son Edward took up his claim. In 1461 he won a decisive victory over Lancastrian forces at the Battle of Towton. It was a truly big battle. More than 50,000 soldiers were engaged, and it was fought in a blinding snowstorm. Henry VI fled the field and the country. [Image; Edward IV]

Edward seized the vacant throne. As Edward IV, he ruled mostly in peace for nine years. But in 1469 his most powerful ally, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, turned against Edward. Warwick had provided key support to Edward and before that, to Edward's father. 

"The Kingmaker," as Warwick became known, allied with Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. They assembled an army in France and invaded England in 1471. Edward, caught by surprise, fled to France. Warwick made the feeble Henry VI king once again. But not for long. 

Edward raised an army in France and returned. Two Yorkist victories left Warwick and Henry VI's only son dead. Edward imprisoned Henry, who died soon after, possibly murdered. 

In 1478, Edward accused his brother George, Duke of Clarence, of treason, with good reason. He banished Clarence to the Tower of London, where he was privately executed. A rumor spread that he was drowned at his own choice in a butt of malmsey wine, a rich and sweet madeira. True or not, at least it helped me learn what malmsey is.

Edward ruled England for another twelve years in relative peace, which the country sorely needed. When he died in 1483, it seemed that the wars were finally over, and a peaceful succession would follow. 

His thirteen-year-old son was named king as Edward V. At first, the transference of power seemed likely to go smoothly. That changed when Edward's other brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, raised an objection. 

Richard had been staunchly loyal to his older brother, and Edward named him as Lord Protector of his children in the event of his death. Richard swiftly seized control of the young king and his younger brother from their mother's family. He had them both placed in the Tower of London. 

Richard followed with astonishing news. He claimed that the sons of Edward IV were bastards; that his brother's marriage to their mother, Elizabeth Woodville, was invalid. I'll skip the technicalities. Parliament, perhaps overawed by Richard's power, declared the young princes illegitimate and Richard rightful king. [Image: Richard III, earliest surviving portrait, 1520]

In the months following Richard III's seizure of power, the princes were seen less and less, and finally not at all. Did Richard have them murdered? Or did someone else arrange the deed to smear Richard? 

Some defenders of Richard argue that one of Richard's allies, the Duke of Buckingham, turned against him and arranged the murders to blacken his character. Others claim that the man who replaced Richard as king, Henry Tudor, was the true culprit.  

The evidence is inconclusive. In some people's eyes Richard III is the wickedest king in English history. To others, he is an innocent victim framed by Tudor historians, who influenced Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard in Richard III. The contrast in views could hardly be greater. 

Shakespeare's Richard is a monster, a hunchback who thrives on killing those blocking his path to power. The playwright even accuses two-year-old Richard of murder, and of ruthlessly killing someone at a battle at which he wasn't even present. 

Shakespeare can't be entirely faulted. He was relying on chroniclers favorable to the Tudors. They created the monster, as part of a propaganda campaign designed to strengthen the claim of the Tudors to the throne. "Look what we saved you from" was the message.

Richard's defenders have rejected the Tudor portrait, and in doing so, have unduly whitewashed him. He could be as ruthless as his enemies and rivals. Whether or not he had the princes killed, he certainly was responsible for eliminating members of the Woodville family and some of their supporters. Mafioso would understand.     

In 1485, Henry Tudor, half Welsh and a supporter of the Lancastrians, raised an army and challenged Richard. They met on Bosworth Field, near Leicester. One of Richard's allies changed sides in the middle of the battle, throwing victory to Henry. 

According to Shakespeare, Richard was killed after being unhorsed, crying, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" Well, by now you should have learned to take Shakespeare's history with a grain of salt. 

After the battle, Richard was hastily buried in a monastic church in nearby Leicester. For centuries, he remained there, while debate raged over whether or not Shakespeare was correct to describe him as a hunchbacked monster. 

The church and its cloisters were demolished during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. In the 20th century, the former monastic site became a car park. ("Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone." Not to say it was paradise.

In 2012, archeologists who had pinpointed the location of the demolished monastery, found the remains of a body in the car park. They announced that they believed it was that of Richard III. 

The skeleton displayed numerous wounds. It also showed signs of scoliosis, a spinal deformity which may have given rise to stories that Richard was hunchbacked. Perhaps Shakespeare had been sort of right about that, after all. DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were Richard's.

The victor of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor, wasted no time after the battle. He went straight to London and claimed the throne. He was descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, through his mother. Others had a better hereditary claim than Henry. But that didn't stop him. He would take care of that problem later. 

[Image; Henry VII, first Tudor monarch] 

To strengthen his position, Henry arranged a hasty marriage to Edward IV's eldest daughter, symbolically uniting the houses of Lancaster and York. He also had a new rose commissioned, the red and white Tudor Rose, a symbolic uniting. In the portrait above, he is holding the rose in his right hand.

Henry VII had to fight one more battle, in 1487, against the army of an imposter claiming to be Edward V. After eliminating that threat, Henry secured his dynasty. His children and grandchildren would rule England until 1603. To judge by the number of books and films about the Tudors, one might be pardoned for thinking they were the only monarchs in English history, before Elizabeth II or this new guy.       

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British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 3: Edward III to Henry V

With the reign of Edward III, we reach the golden age of chivalry. Edward created one of the most famous of chivalric orders: The Order of the Garter, around 1348. His methods of warfare were hardly chivalric, however.  

[Image: Edward III with roll of the Order of the Garter, 15th century drawing, Bruges Garter Book]

The Knights of the Garter were the creme de la creme of the nobility and gentry. Naturally, they loved to plunder, kill, and rape peasants, who were not covered by chivalric rules. A lot like the rules of war today, really. 

Edward III provided his knights with a golden opportunity. He went to war with France. French wars had been a common feature of English life since the Norman Conquest, but Edward's war was different. Earlier kings since 1066 had fought in France to protect or sometimes extend their lands in that country. Edward III wanted more: the French throne. Or so he said. 

Now, if you are a diehard English monarchist, you might say he should have had it -- without a fight. To explain why, we must go back to the previous reign. Edward II married a French princess, Isabella, who gave birth to the future Edward III in 1312. * 

When her brother Charles IV died in 1328 without an heir, his closest male relative was Edward III. But the French bypassed Edward and selected Philip of Valois as King. Why? Because Isabella was not a man. 

French hereditary law held that the throne could not be passed to the descendant of a woman, in this case, Edward. He disputed the decision, to no avail. 

In 1337, he began what historians later called the Hundred Years War. It lasted from 1337 to 1453, which, as you will notice, is 116 years. But the Hundred- and Sixteen-Years War is clumsy and hard to remember.  

The Hundred Years War was actually several wars punctuated by years of peace. During the long reign of Edward III, the English won some great victories, like Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), largely due to the skill of their longbowmen, who were hardly chivalric.

In the later years of Edward III's reign the war went badly for the English. Nature made things worse for everybody. Floods, cold weather, famine, disease added to war. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode again. 

The worst disaster was the plague, or Black Death, which struck Europe in 1347-49 and returned in 1361. About 30 percent of the population died in Western Europe, perhaps more. The plague came back periodically for another 300 years.

In 1376, Edward III's heir, Edward the Black Prince, died after years of chronic illness, possibly malaria or some other infection. He had been the victor at Poitiers and other battles, and was considered the greatest soldier of his time. He was only 45. [Image: Effigy and Tomb of Edward the Black Prince, Canterbury Cathedral]

Edward III, whose health and mind had been failing for some time, died the following year. He had been monarch for 50 years, the second longest reign of the medieval period. 

The throne passed to the ten-year-old son of the Black Prince, Richard II. For several years, Richard was guided by his uncles. Their guidance was not especially helpful. The war in France went badly. The royal finances were mismanaged. In 1381, England was engulfed by the largest Peasant Revolt in its history. 

Peasants, artisans, and laborers rebelled against a regressive poll tax designed to pay for the French war. They were already reeling from the effects of the war, plague, bad weather and government attempts to keep wages down.

The rebels captured London and terrorized the city for several days. They killed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer. They burned the Savoy Palace, the magnificent London home of John of Gaunt, Richard's uncle. 

Young King Richard, now 14, met with their representatives and promised to grant their demands. Alas, it was a ploy. At another meeting, the Mayor of London treacherously killed the peasant leader, Wat Tyler. in the confusion that followed, Richard rode up to the rebels and urged them to follow him away from the scene. They did. The rebellion soon collapsed.

[Image: Richard II, Westminster Abbey]

When Richard came of age, he dismissed his uncles and began to rule as well as reign. In the later 1380s, he started to act arbitrarily, leading to charges of tyranny. In retrospect, his biggest mistake was to exile his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke in 1398.   

Bolingbroke was the eldest son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. When Gaunt died in early 1399, Richard confiscated his vast estates for the Crown, disinheriting Bolingbroke. The estates remain a major part of the monarchy's portfolio. There is even a cabinet minister in charge of it, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. 

In June 1399, with French help, Bolingbroke returned with an army, to claim his inheritance. He defeated and captured Richard in Wales and called a parliament, which declared Richard deposed. Because Richard had no heir, the parliament declared Bolingbroke king as Henry IV. It was the first time the English Parliament chose a monarch, but not the last.

[Image: Henry IV, Bolingbroke, funeral effigy, with his wife Joan of Navarre, Canterbury Cathedral]

Henry IV was the first of three Lancastrian kings. He had promised the deposed Richard that he could live, but a plot to restore the former king changed that. Richard died in Pontefract Castle in 1400. He was likely murdered, possibly starved to death.

Henry IV's problems, and England's, were hardly over. He spent much of his reign fighting off rebellions, some challenging his claim to the throne, a challenge that was to cause problems for several decades. 

His later years were marked by a series of severe illnesses. He suffered from a disfiguring skin disease, possibly leprosy. Henry IV died unhappily in 1413, perhaps of heart disease, aged 46. He left behind a badly divided England.  

His son and heir Henry V (Shakespeare's Prince Hal) sought to unite the English by restarting the Hundred Years War. In 1415 he invaded France. A meticulous planner and a skilled general, Henry inflicted a decisive defeat on a large French army at Agincourt, and  captured key towns and fortresses. Along the way, he made a few great speeches, if we are to believe Shakespeare, play Henry V. 

The French agreed to a compromise peace in 1421. Henry was named heir to the throne and regent. He married a daughter of the French king to seal the deal. Alas, he died the following year. The stated cause of death, "camp fever," could mean several things. He was only 36, but his body was probably worn out by seven years of ceaseless campaigning. 

[Image: Henry V, painted in late 16th or early 17th century. Gotta love the hairdo!]

Henry V left a nine-month-old son as king of England and presumptive heir to the French throne. As the youngest king of England ever, Henry VI could hardly defend his French claim. English nobles who ruled in his name tried, but they lacked Henry V's charisma and skills. 

Slowly, the English began to lose territory to French soldiers inspired by Joan of Arc. By 1453, the only English territory left in France was the port of Calais, which it held until the 1550s. 

With the war in France over, the English reverted to fighting among themselves. During the previous century, powerful noblemen had created private armies of retainers, mercenaries. Instead of fighting for land, they fought for money. Their employers were fighting for the Crown. 

The Game of Thrones was about to heat up.   

*Mel Gibson Fake History Alert. In Braveheart, we are led to believe that Isabella had a one-night stand with William Wallace and that the future Edward III was the son of Braveheart. Edward III was born seven years after Wallace's execution. It must have been a long pregnancy.   

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British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part 2: Henry II to Edward II

Henry II, the first Plantagenet monarch, was not only King of England, but lord of much of France as well. He inherited some regions and gained others through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, as feisty a queen as ever lived. 

Historians generally rank Henry II highly for his legal and administrative reforms, but his reign was hardly trouble free. He conducted a long battle with the Church over the legal status of the clergy. The dispute led to the murder of his defiant Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in 1172, possibly at Henry's instigation. 

Henry did penance for that and survived the uproar. His biggest long-term problem was his family. His sons and wife mounted several rebellions against him, and he died of a stomach ulcer while still at war with them in 1189. More trouble awaited the two sons who succeeded him. 

First came Richard I, the Lion-Hearted. He is notable as the only king to have a statue erected outside Parliament. Today, one has to wonder why. Romantic Victorians idolized him as a gallant knight. But he was a wretched monarch. He spent only six months of his ten-year reign in England and treated the country as a cash cow. The rest of the time he was crusading in the Holy Land or fighting to defend his lands in France. And he was cruel. After the capture of Acre in modern day Israel, he ordered the massacre of 2700 Muslim prisoners. 

Returning from the Crusade, Richard was imprisoned in Germany for about a year, and held for a huge ransom that the English people paid. During a campaign in France a crossbow bolt struck his shoulder. Gangrene set in, and that was his end. He treated his wife badly and had no children. His brother John succeeded him.  

John was the only King John of England, because he was the Evil King John. Before that, he was the Evil Prince John of the Robin Hood stories. That was mostly, if not entirely, mythical, although it rested in part on John's bad reputation. John did plot against his brother Richard to gain power and wealth. Once John was king, he continued to behave badly. He alienated his barons by taxing them without their consent and seducing their wives. I'm not sure which angered them more. It all ended in 1215 at Runneymede Meadow in Surrey. Rebellious barons cornered John and forced him to sign Magna Carta, The Great Charter. 

The Great Charter demanded that the king respect the liberties of his subjects. That mainly meant the nobles. But the Charter did throw in some clauses designed to protect the Church and the "freemen" of the realm. 

Magna Carta effectively declared the principle that the king is not above the law. It also laid the basis for the later development of Parliament by demanding the king consult "the community of the realm" before levying new taxes. 

John soon repudiated the Charter and resumed war with the barons. He died on campaign in 1216. Rumors circulated that he had been poisoned or had died of a "surfeit of peaches," which is better than a surfeit of lampreys. Dysentery, or the Bloody Flux, is another possibility.

John's successor was his nine-year old son. Henry III had the longest reign of any medieval monarch, 58 years. He spent huge sums on building projects and other schemes. He irritated the barons a lot and they mounted several revolts against him. At the Battle of Lewes in 1264, a baronial army led by he Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort, captured and imprisoned him for some months. His son Edward was captured as well, but he escaped, defeated the baronial army, killed de Montfort, and released his father. Edward was a man of action. 

Edward I, who succeeded Henry III in 1272, was a tall fellow. One of his nicknames was Longshanks. Edward initiated important legal and administrative reforms. English historians of the Victorian era idolized him as a great monarch, perhaps the greatest, of the medieval period. The Welsh and Scots had and have a different opinion. 

Edward completed the English conquest of Wales and built some amazing castles there, which did have the virtue of being a modern tourist attraction. He also tried to conquer Scotland. His Scottish campaigns earned Edward another nickname, the Hammer of Scots. It also led to the Scottish Wars of Independence and the meteoric rise of William Wallace, "Braveheart." Wallace's army won a stunning victory over an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.* Things went badly for Wallace after that, however. 

Scottish enemies betrayed him to the English. Edward had him executed for "treason" in 1305. Contrary to the film Braveheart, Edward I did not die while Wallace was being disembowelled, but two years later. 

Some historians have called his son and heir Edward II the worst king in English history. Perhaps, but there was lots of competition for that title. The fact that he was likely gay did not help his reputation, especially with the Victorian historians. Unlike his hyperactive father, he was considered lazy and incompetent. He lost a decisive battle to the Scots and Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314, which led to Scottish independence. 

His wife Isabella, a French princess, turned against him and took a noble lover. Along with barons disgruntled by Edward's behavior, they mounted a rebellion against him in 1327. They captured him and imprisoned him in Berkeley Castle. Not long after, they announced that he had died. 

Was Edward II murdered? Probably, but we will never know for sure. One highly unlikely tale claims he escaped, fled to the Continent, and became a hermit. A grislier story, more likely but hardly proved, is that his captors killed him by ramming a red-hot poker into his anus. In any case, he was no longer king.

The throne passed to his teenage son Edward III. He is best known for initiating a long series of wars with France, which historians obsessed with neatness labelled The Hundred Years War. 

*Mel Gibson Fake History Alert: Stirling Bridge was pivotal to the strategy and outcome of the Battle of Stirling Bridge. This seems pretty obvious from the name of the battle. In fact, no bridge, very likely, no Scots victory. In Braveheart, the bridge is missing in action, along with Mel's brain. 

British Monarchs Who Ended Badly, Part I: Harold to Stephen and Matilda

Whether you are a fan of royalty or not, we can agree that the late Queen Elizabeth lived a very long life, had a very long reign, and died peacefully in her bed. That's about as true and bland a statement as I can make. The rest of this post will prove more interesting, I hope. 

I want to look at British (English and Scottish) monarchs whose lives and reigns were much shorter and less placid than that of Elizabeth II. There were quite a few as it turns out, in this Game of Thrones. 

Let's begin with Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. His predecessor, Edward the Confessor, died without heir in January 1066. An assembly of great men chose Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, as King. He lacked royal blood, but he had been Edward's right-hand man. He was the most powerful man in the land and claimed that Edward had appointed him as his heir. [Image: Edward the Confessor, Bayeaux Tapestry]

Unfortunately for Harold, several others also claimed the throne. Two claimants mounted invasions to fight for the job. One was the King of Norway, Harald Hardrada, who was supported by Harold's brother Tostig. The other was William, Duke of Normandy.

Harald and Tostig landed their army first, in Yorkshire, in northeast England. King Harold's army was then in the south, waiting for the expected Norman invasion. But Duke William's ships were held up across the Channel by adverse winds. 

Harold led his army 220 miles north and defeated the invaders at Stamford Bridge on September 25. Tostig and Harald were both killed. 

Three days later favorable winds allowed Duke William to cross the Channel. He landed his army on the south coast, at Pevensey, in Sussex. Harold turned his victorious but surely tired army around and marched back south to meet the second threat. He stopped in London for a week before moving on to Sussex. 

The two armies met 11 miles north of Hastings on October 14. After a long day of battle, victory went to Duke William. Harold was killed after only a few months as king. The traditional story of his death is that an arrow pierced his eye. Dramatic, yes, but true? It's impossible to be sure. 

[Image from Bayeaux Tapestry. This scene shows a man thought to be Harold, holding an arrow that has struck him in the eye. But the other guy being skewered by the Norman on horseback may be Harold.]

William the Conqueror became King William I. He went on to subdue continuing Anglo-Saxon resistance with ferocity and destruction. He died of an illness in France in 1087, but his interment was undignified to say the least. His body was too large for the prepared tomb. When the attendants tried to force him into it his body burst open, spreading a foul odor all over the church. 

[Image: William I, the Conqueror, from the Bayeaux Tapestry, lifting his helmet to show he is still alive]

William's son, William II (Rufus), ended up somewhat like Harold. He died in a hunting accident in the New Forest in 1100. An errant arrow from a member of his party hit him in the chest, piercing his lung and killing him.*  But was it an accident? [Image: William II Rufus, by Matthew Paris, c. 1253]

Some historians do think Rufus was assassinated. The man who fired the arrow, Walter Tirel, fled the scene right away. The king's younger brother, Henry, was in the party, and immediately left for Winchester. He seized the treasury and had himself proclaimed King Henry I. [Image: Henry I by Matthew Paris, c. 1253]

The circumstances of Rufus' death were suspicious. Henry was the main beneficiary, and his brother had made many enemies. Accident or murder? We will probably never know for certain.

Historians generally regard Henry I as a successful monarch, and he and lived until 1135. Legend holds that he died from eating "a surfeit of lampreys." A unique way to go, but he was already ill, and something else may have caused his death. 

Henry's death created a major crisis. His only male heir had drowned in a sea accident in 1120. He declared his daughter Matilda his heir, but many barons opposed a woman monarch. A powerful noble, Stephen of Blois, got himself chosen as king. 

Matilda refused to give up her claim to the throne without a fight. Civil war followed. The Anarchy, as it is aptly known, lasted from 1135 until 1153. It ended in a compromise treaty. Stephen would remain king until his death, but Matilda's son Henry of Anjou, would succeed him. 

It worked. Stephen died in 1154 and Henry became king, the first of the Plantagenet kings, who would rule England, much of France, eventually Wales, and Scotland for a while, until the 15th century.  

Herein ends Part the First. 

*NB: A thorough investigation has determined that Dick Cheney was not among the hunting party on that day. 

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God Save the King! (Or Queen)

Since the accession of Charles III, we have often heard the phrase "God Save the King!" It seems strange after 70 years of hearing "God Save the Queen!" uttered for Elizabeth II. 

"God Save the King" is the original, of course. It is not known how old the phrase "God Save the King" is. It appears in 16th century translations of the Bible. "God Save the King" is used in reference to King Saul, the first king of Israel. 

As early as 1444, navy seamen were instructed to say "God Save King Henry" as a watchword aboard ship. That was Henry VI, a pious monarch who needed all the saving he could get. He was king when the Wars of the Roses started. The sailors used the phrase as a watchword on board ship. 

"God Save the King" had become a popular rallying cry by the mid-18th century. How much it was used before then is obscure. The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which threatened to topple the Hanoverian King George II, gave the cry a boost, and a song of the same name as well.  

The Gentleman's Magazine published a version of the song in 1745. It specifically names King George as the object God should be saving. [Image: George II by Thomas Hudson, 1740s]

It opens: "God save great George our king, long live our noble king." God apparently responded: the Jacobites led by "Bonnie Prince Charlie" met their final defeat at Culloden in 1746. The Catholic Stuarts ceased to be a royal threat. [Image: Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, by Alan Ramsay, 1745]

Somewhere around that time, the song "God Save the King" had appeared. Historians disagree about who composed it and when. They have suggested dates between the 1680s and 1740s and Henry Purcell, Thomas Arne, Charles Burney as the composer. They all had a hand in it, it seems.

The phrase "God save the King" is used purely by custom and tradition. It has no basis in law. Similarly, the song of that name is not the official national anthem, although it is often treated as if it were.  

It is unlikely that the UK will ever have an official national anthem, even if it doesn't break up. Few of the English like "God Save the King/Queen," and even fewer Scots or Welsh. Most people sing it with all the enthusiasm of the dead. In Northern Ireland, Loyalists or Unionists like the song. Republicans detest it. 

Many in England have suggested for an anthem "Jerusalem," William Blake's evocative poem, rendered to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. "Jerusalem" is often played as an anthem at English rugby and cricket matches. But it is about England, not the UK, so has little following in the so-called "Celtic Fringe." It is often sung as a hymn in churches. 

The same is true of another tune some people have proposed as a national anthem: "Land of Hope and Glory" from the tune by Edward Elgar, with lyrics by A.C. Benson (1901-02). It has imperialistic overtones that offend many people nowadays.

The Scots usually play "Flower of Scotland" as their anthem at sporting events. That isn't going to catch on in England or Wales. 

One rousing song that was highly popular during the imperialist age is "Rule Britannia," music by Thomas Arne, lyrics by James Thomson (1740). It celebrates Britain, not just England. Alas, it is too warlike and racially insensitive to be considered as a national anthem. 

The lines "Rule Britannia! Rule the Waves, Britons never will be slaves" make the song's unfitness for the current world obvious. When it was written Britain was the greatest slave trading nation in the world. And Britannia certainly doesn't rule the waves anymore. Waives the rules, maybe. 

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