(no subject)

[naath]

Died on this day in 1554 aged 18 Queen Jane of England(my toy,wikipedia).

Jane was the grand-daughter of the sister of Henry VIII. When Edward VI died with no children you might think his sister (Mary) was the obvious heir - but both Mary and Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate when their mothers' marriages to Henry had been annulled, although they had also been restored to the succession by Act of Parliament. The other options were the children of Henry's sisters Margaret and Mary (who were both dead) , Margaret is the ancestor of James who was eventually King of England - I don't know why she (well, her children) were excluded from the English succession, probably because they were Catholic and Edward wanted England to remain Protestant (also possibly because "union with Scotland" seemed bad). Mary's daughter Frances was also left out (I don't know why, she was Protestant, and in England, married to an English noble); Jane being married to Guildford Dudley the son of the Duke of Northumberland might have been part of it. Jane was only 17 when Edward died and she was told he had made her his successor. She (famously) got to be Queen for only 9 days before Mary showed up with an army and a lot of public support. Jane was arrested for treason, and held in the tower; allegedly it was at the urging of Philip (who was to marry Mary) that she was eventually executed. Jane was highly educated, and a convinced protestant to the end.

Born on this day in 1074 to Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and Bertha of Savoy, King Conrad II of Italy(my toy,wikipedia). Conrad's brother was married to Matilda (or Maud) who fought (and lost to) Stephen. From skimming the wikipedia article I see two other women called Matilda who were important in his life. Apparently every other woman in the 11th century was called Matilda. This is very confusing.

Comments

[liv]

Wow, we did Tudors quite a lot in school but I'd managed to miss that Mary had a daughter at all, let alone that she was a Protestant adult and a reasonable heir.

[naath.livejournal.com]

That would be Mary, daughter of Henry VII, wife of a)the King of France and then b)Charles Brandon (who she picked, which was sort of Naughty when you were a Princess of England even if you were also a widow) of course not Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, wife of Philip of Spain, childless.

[er, just in case there was some confusion there; I don't think we covered Henry VIII's sisters AT ALL in school]

[liv]

Oh, right. Thank you. Sorry, I think your description was in fact perfectly clear, I just got confused by the referents. Thanks for clarifying!

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The medieval European elite appear to have no imagination whatsoever about naming their children. Although I'm not sure "all women are called Mary this century" is better or worse than giving up and numbering them (Quintus etc)...

[naath.livejournal.com]

Bit of a "everyone at this time is called Mary" thing going on there I'm afraid.

It always seems to be more confusing in history books than it is in real life though - I'm sure I know 4 or 5 people with the same name as you for instance but I'm quite able to keep them separate in my head. So I'm sure it wasn't actually confusing for people who *knew* these people, but it is for us reading about them.

[pling.livejournal.com]

If I remember my watching/reading correctly (even if I've forgotten the source) I think Edward drew up a definitive list of heirs at some point before he died. As he was quite the zealot he was very keen to avoid having a Catholic monarch after himself - hence the skipping over of Margaret's Scottish offspring (Mary Queen of Scots), it wasn't till James VI's birth that there was a Protestant on the Scottish throne and that's in Elizabeth I's reign. I don't think it was just his religious principles tho. As I said I can't remember the source of my info, but I'm pretty sure it was a TV programme and I think it showed us the actual document that Edward produced - it stated that Jane's male heirs (or her sister's) were to inherit. I think along with the religious requirements he didn't want a woman on the throne either, it's just that when he died that they had to find someone and there just weren't any men available. So they went for as close as possible to the wishes of Edward (also to the wishes of Jane's father-in-law who was on the council making the decision iirc).

[naath.livejournal.com]

Edward clearly wanted to avoid the Catholic Mary, and could use her illegitimacy as the reason but could not reasonably claim Mary was illegitimate (and thus barred from the succession) but Elizabeth was not.

The Descendants of Margaret Tudor were Catholic and Scottish, but neither of those things would be good official reasons to pass them over; I don't know what the legal reasoning was to justify this although "our army is bigger than the Scottish army" might have been sufficient reason. Henry Lord Darnley even had the advantage of being male. Eventually James, son of Mary and Henry became King anyway.

Frances and Eleonore (daughters of Mary Tudor; Eleonore was deceased) and their daughters all had the advantage of being Protestant and English, Frances was the older sister; perhaps the decision to choose Jane over Frances was because Jane might be more likely to have sons (although Frances had another daughter in 1555 so clearly wasn't incapable of having a son she might have been thought to old).