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The Quest for a King: Gender, Marriage, and Succession in Elizabethan England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2013

Anne McLaren
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Some translation and joining of realms may turn to much good, and the wealth and tranquillity of many. As if we had a King for your Queen, or you [Scotland] a King for ours, it had been a goodly translation: to have united both realms in dominion, regiment and law, as they be in nature, language, and manners…. If you and we had joined together: it had made no great matter, on which side the King had been, so he had been religious…. It is religion and likeness of manners, that join men together … Where there is one faith, one baptism, and one Christ: there is narrower fraternity then, if they came out of one womb. (John Aylmer, An Harborowe for Faithful and Trew Subjectes, 1559)

Me-thinketh it were to be wished of all wise men and her Majesty's good subjects, that the one of those two Queens of the isle of Britain were transformed into the shape of a man, to make so happy a marriage, as thereby there might be an unity of the whole isle. (Henry Killigrew to Robert Dudley, 31 December 1560)

In 1559, John Aylmer responded to John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women in order to win support for Elizabeth I's accession to the English throne. According to Aylmer, Knox identified as the “greatest inconvenience” of female rule the fact that the realm would be transferred to “strangers” when the queen married, ceding to her husband, as her superior, the power that had been invested in her.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 3: New Directions in Political History , July 2002 , pp. 259 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2002

References

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3 Aylmer, Harborowe, fols. L.4v–Mv. See, also, the minute of the letter from the English Privy Council to the Lords of the Congregation in Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Scotland, 1509–1603, and the State Papers Relating to Mary, Queen of Scots during Her Detention in England, 1568–87 (hereafter cited as CSP Scottish), 1:114Google Scholar: “Trust that their famous isles may be conjoined in heart as it is in continent, in one uniformity of language, manners, and condition.”

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5 John Knox's History, 2:7Google Scholar. The dismay experienced by English councillors at Mary's impending return is clearly conveyed by the proposal, seriously debated at the highest levels, that Mary should either not be allowed to leave France or be intercepted and diverted to a destination sufficiently inhospitable to make her arrival on Scottish soil unlikely. Ireland was mentioned as a possibility, as was the west of Scotland, home of the next in line to the Scottish throne, the Hamiltons. See Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, 1558–89 (hereafter cited as CSP Foreign), 4:203–5Google Scholar; and Hannay, R. K., “The Earl of Arran and Queen Mary,” Scottish Historical Review 18 (1921): 267Google Scholar.

6 He may have hoped that one of the two queens—presumably Elizabeth—would, with God's grace, prove to be sufficiently virtuous to become a man. Contemporary Galenic theory held mat women could turn into men if they began to generate sufficient heat to expel their genitals from their bodies, thereby overcoming the imperfection visited upon them in utero that relegated them to female identity. See Schiebinger, Londa, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 161–64Google Scholar.

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12 One need look no further than Scotland (where the brethren deposed two queens in ten years) and state formation in France during these years. For which, see Hanley, Sarah, “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Politics, Ideology, and the Law in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of J. H. M. Salmon, ed. Bakos, Adrianna (Rochester, N.Y., 1994), pp. 107–20Google Scholar. Donald R. Kelley comments on the “intensely masculine” character of the reformation movement in his The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 75–76Google Scholar.

13 Henry VIII famously argued that Catherine of Aragon's failure to produce a male heir attested not only to the illegitimacy of their marriage but also to the illegitimacy of papal claims to spiritual supremacy. See, e.g., Glasse of the Truthe (London, 1530)Google Scholar, sig. A3v. The supremacy legislation of 1534 was dominated by the linked issues of marriage and succession—as well as Henry's newly imperial status.

14 Collinson, Patrick, “Puritans, Men of Business, and Elizabethan Parliaments,“ Parliamentary History 7, pt. 2 (1988): 187–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 190.

15 For English willingness to accept the queen's consort as king in his own right, see Redworth, Glyn, “‘Matters Impertinent to Women’: Male and Female Monarchy under Philip and Mary,” English Historical Review 112, no. 447 (1997): p597–613Google Scholar.

16 For a persuasive analysis of the fraternal bond and its significance in political thought, see Pateman, Carol, “The Fraternal Social Contract,” in her The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 33–57Google Scholar.

17 Modern historians have gone badly wrong in assuming that the contemporaries understood or accepted the dichotomy between the two queens that we take for granted. Sir John Harington speaks to the insecurities that their inability to effectively differentiate caused, noting that right up until Mary's execution in 1587, “if one prayed for the Queen, even at his last breath, when there was no dissembling with God nor with the world, yet even then some would ask him, which Queen?” See A Tract on the Succession to the Crown (1602), ed. Markham, Clements P. (London, 1880), p. 103Google Scholar. For the use of anti-Catholicism as a tool to categorically distinguish between the two queens, see my forthcoming article, “Gender, Religion and Early Modern Nationalism: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and the Genesis of English Anti-Catholicism,” American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002)Google Scholar.

18 Thomas Randolph and the earl of Bedford to Elizabeth, recounting a conversation with Mary Queen of Scots, 23 November 1564, BL, Cotton MS, Caligula BX, fols. 281–82.

19 “Two queens in one isle” is the French duc de Guise's phrase (CSP Foreign, 4: 357Google Scholar), aptly chosen by Alison Plowden as the title of her book Two Queens in One Isle: The Deadly Relationship of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots (Brighton, Sussex, 1984)Google Scholar. Quentin Skinner provides a magisterial account of the genesis of modern conception of the state in “The State,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Ball, Terence, Farr, James, and Hanson, Russell L. (1989; reprint, Cambridge, 1995), pp. 90–131Google Scholar—without, however, attending to this gender dynamic.

20 Doran, Susan, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1996), pp. 1, 4, 6–7, 217Google Scholar, and “Why Did Elizabeth Not Marry?” in Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, ed. Walker, Julia M. (Durham, N.C, 1998), pp. 30–59, 41–43Google Scholar.

21 In fact his interpretation suggests that Elizabeth was little more than a cipher. Unity of the two realms was to be “achieved through treaty, underwritten by the imperial power of the English Queen as a British monarch, bound together by Protestantism, and linked to a strong council and parliament in Scotland”—a solution propounded at meetings that, according to Alford, Elizabeth did not attend. See Alford, Stephen, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 69, 96Google Scholar.

22 MacCaffrey, Wallace, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (Princeton, N.J., 1969), pp. 72, 310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 McLaren, A. N., Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–1585 (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chap. 1.

24 Bushnell, Rebecca, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990)Google Scholar.

25 See “Henry VIII's Second Succession Act (1536),” in Tudor Dynastic Problems, 1460–1571, ed. Levine, Mortimer (New York, 1973), p. 155Google Scholar. In a roundabout way, of course, this is exactly what did happen with the succession of Mary's Protestant son James VI to the English throne as James I in 1603.

26 Nichols, John Gough, ed., Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, Camden Society, Camden Society old series, vol. 77 (London, 1859), p. 289Google Scholar. The precedent confirmed for other branches of the nobility in Henry VIII's reign is referred to in a letter from Robert Bertie to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, of 1580, given in Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and other various occurrences in the Church of England, during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1824), vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 589Google Scholar. Arguably, Henry VII acted in accordance with this custom when, at the death of Elizabeth of York, he continued in his role as England's king rather than ceding that role to his son.

27 See, e.g., Sir Francis Walsingham's letter to Elizabeth on the occasion of the Anjou marriage negotiations, which he vehemently opposed: “If you mean it, remember that by the delay your Highness useth therein, you lose the benefit of time which (if years considered) is not the least thing to be weighed. If you mean it not, then assure yourself, it is one of the worst remedies you can use, howsoever your majesty may conceive that it serveth your turn” (The Letters of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Harrison, G. B. [London, 1935], p. 149Google Scholar); see also MacCaffrey, Wallace, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–1588 (Princeton, N.J., 1981), pp. 446–67Google Scholar.

28 Strype, , Annals, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 652–58Google Scholar, quotation on p. 657.

29 Quoted in Levine, Mortimer, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, 1558–1568 (Stanford, Calif., 1966)Google Scholar.

30 Harington, , Tract on the Succession, p. 39Google Scholar.

31 Quoted in Levine, , Early Elizabethan Succession Question, p. 82Google Scholar.

32 Leicester's Commonwealth: The Copy of a Letter Written by a Master of Art of Cambridge (1584), ed. Peck, D. C. (Athens, Ohio, 1985), pp. 105–6Google Scholar.

33 William Cecil's response to the collapse of the negotiations for marriage to the king of Sweden was characteristically ambivalent. On the one hand, Elizabeth's rejection of the suit meant there was still hope for the Scottish marriage; on the other hand, it confirmed his suspicions that Elizabeth was “not disposed seriously to marry” at all. See CSP Scottish, 1:161Google Scholar; Yorke, Philip, earl of Hardwicke, Miscellaneous State Papers. From 1501 to 1726, ed. Yorke, Philip, 2 vols. (London, 1778), 1:174Google Scholar.

34 The pamphleteer John Stubbs (ca. 1543–91) makes the linkage explicit in The Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf Whereinto England Is Like to Be Swallowed by an Other French Manage, If the Lord Forbid Not the Banes, ed. Berry, Lloyd (Charlottesville, Va., 1968), pp. 31–32, 37–38, 51, and 68–69Google Scholar.

35 For a perceptive account of how the English reformation boxed the English into endogamous relations at the level of the crown and their cultural implications, see Boehrer, Bruce Thomas, Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England: Literature, Culture, Kinship, and Kingship (Philadelphia, 1992)Google Scholar. John Knox influentially promoted the language of tribal identification in his explication of Old Testament history in The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), in The Political Writings of John Knox, ed. Breslow, Marvin A. (Washington, D.C., 1985), pp. 37–80Google Scholar. From Knox's point of view, of course, the Scots and the English were members of the same tribe if they were Protestant men.

36 Collinson, Patrick, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 69, no. 2 (1986–1987): 394–424CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a gendered reading, see McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I.

37 For Norfolk's status, see Memoirs of His Own Life by Sir James Melville of Halhill, 1549–1593, ed. Thompson, Thomas (Edinburgh, 1827), p. 214Google Scholar. An abortive conspiracy of 1570 sought to make Norfolk king of England and Scotland. Lord Burghley's 1572 “Discourse of the State” highlighted the peril to Elizabeth's person posed by “such as esteem more of the Duke's [person] than of hers” (Haynes, Samuel and Murdin, William, eds., A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, From the Years 1571 to 1596 [London, 1759], p. 212Google Scholar). In 1569, William Cecil was still consulting Norfolk over means of combating “popish combinations.” See Lodge, Edmund, Illustrations of British History, 3 vols. (London, 1791), 3:46–48Google Scholar; Hammer, Strype, Annals, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 309–10Google Scholar. For Norfolk's own statement of his Protestant commitment, see “The Arraignment of Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk,” in The Harleian Miscellany: Or, A Collection of Scarce, Curious and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts, Found in the Earl of Oxford's Library, 12 vols. (London, 1808–1811), 9:130Google Scholar. For Essex, see Paul, E. J., The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 389–404Google Scholar.

38 Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols. (London, 1957), 2:276Google Scholar. See, also, D. C. Peck's introduction to his edition of Leicester's Commonwealth.

39 Also, to confirm the allegiance in those days of high infant mortality, he had attempted to pair the princess Elizabeth with the Lord James Hamilton, next in line to the Scottish throne (CSP Scottish, 1:43, 60Google Scholar).

40 CSP Scottish, 1:61, 64, 66, 80, 81, 91Google Scholar.

41 John Knox's History, 1:117–18Google Scholar. I am using Knox's account as evidence of the mind-set of Elizabeth's chief councillors, as well as Scottish conviction Protestants, because of the English government's demonstrable involvement in its production. See, e.g., Thomas Randolph to Cecil, 23 September 1560, quoted in Dickinson's introduction to John Knox's History, p. lxxx. See, also, CSP Scottish, 1:485Google Scholar.

42 Dickinson's introduction to John Knox's History, p. xxxiGoogle Scholar; Lee, Maurice Jr., James Stewart, Earl of Moray: A Political Study of the Reformation in Scotland (New York, 1953), p. 50Google Scholar.

43 Wormald, Jenny, Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure (London, 1988), p. 22Google Scholar.

44 CSP Foreign, 1:518–19Google Scholar. The blood issue is interesting, suggesting as it does that these men did not regard Mary as “Scottish in blood.” There are two possible explanations for this peculiar formulation, neither of which would advantage her claims to either throne. They either regarded her as the product of her mother's French blood—because her nurture was exclusively French, because her father died in her infancy?—or as illegitimate. Certainly Knox did not hesitate to asperse Mary of Guise's chastity (and, hence, Mary Stewart's legitimacy). See John Knox's History, 1:322Google Scholar.

45 Public Record Office, SP 52 State Papers, Scotland, series I, Elizabeth I, 5/49 (1560).

46 Croft to Cecil, 3 August 1559, CSP Scottish, 1:115Google Scholar; Randolph, Thomas to Sadler, and Croft, , The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, ed. Clifford, Arthur, 2 vols. (London, 1809), 1:536–37Google Scholar.

47 Lord James Stewart's own pioneering—but, as this discussion shows, not wholly eccentric—views on the succession are given by William Camden. See Camden, William, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth Late Queen of England (London, 1615), ed. MacCaffrey, Wallace T. (Chicago, 1970), p. 62Google Scholar. Here Camden obviously follows the hostile account from Elizabeth's reign, The Copie of a Letter Written out of Scotland (Antwerp, 1572)Google Scholar, of which John Leslie, bishop of Ross and Mary's leading controversialist, was the presumed author (STC 17566, fol. 31v).

48 Cecil to Throckmorton, , CSP Scottish, 1:427Google Scholar; Cecil to Elizabeth, , CSP Scottish, 1:154Google Scholar.

49 See, e.g., the astrological prophecy cast by Sir Thomas Smith in the early 1560s and heavily annotated by Cecil. This identifies a successful outcome as contingent on Elizabeth's prospective foreign husband dying first—although, of course, not without first having produced issue. Strype, , Annals, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 123Google Scholar.

50 For Hastings, see Cross, Claire, The Puritan Earl: The Life of Henry Hastings, Third Earl of Huntingdon, 1536–1595 (London, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs of the Reign of Elizabeth possessed in, or originally belonging to, the Archives of Simancas (hereafter cited as CLSP), 1:176Google Scholar.

52 Henry, earl of Huntingdon, to the earl of Leicester, April 1563, Miscellaneous State Papers, 1:187–88Google Scholar.

53 CLSP, 1:321; my emphasis.

54 CLSP, 1:271–72, 173.

55 Hertford and his two sons were arrested in 1595 after Robert Doleman's inflammatory A Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England (London, 1594)Google Scholar spectacularly reopened the succession question. Hertford was only released from the Tower at the beginning of January 1596 (BL, Harleian MS 6997, fols.156r, 158r). For the depiction of these claims in courtly language, see Breight, Curt, “Realpolitik and Elizabethan Ceremony: The Earl of Hertford's Entertainment of Elizabeth at Elvetham, 1591,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 1 (1992): 20–48Google Scholar.

56 Strype, , Annals, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 208–9Google Scholar; my emphasis.

57 Hoak, Dale, “Rehabilitating the Duke of Northumberland: Politics and Political Control, 1549–1553,” in The Mid-Tudor Polity, c. 1540–1560, ed. Loach, Jennifer and Tittler, Robert (London, 1980), pp. 47–49Google Scholar. Hoak emphasizes Northumberland's determination to secure a male Protestant successor in order to preserve the Edwardian reformation.

58 Haigh, Christopher, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), p. 203Google Scholar.

59 For Henry VIII's dynastic arrangements, see Levine, , Tudor Dynastic Problems, pp. 151–53, 155–56, 161–64Google Scholar.

60 See “Edward's Letters Patent for the Limitation of the Crown,” in Levine, Mortimer, Tudor Dynastic Problems, pp. 167–68Google Scholar. Notably, the letters stress that both Elizabeth and Mary “be unto us but of the half blood” and therefore could not inherit, even if they had been legitimate (which he claimed they were not).

61 See “The Proclamation of Lady Jane Gray's Title to the Crown,” in Burnet, Gilbert, The History of the Reformation of the Church of England, 3 vols. (London, 1679), 2:241Google Scholar. I deliberately leave Matilda out of account, as her example proved too disputable during the sixteenth century to serve as a reliable historical precedent for female rule.

62 Cecil told Throckmorton that “nobody can appear privy to the marriage, nor to the love, but maids, or women going for maidens,” because the “Queen's Majesty thinketh … that some greater drift was in this” than simply a love match—telling evidence, incidentally, for early modern gender hierarchies. Miscellaneous State Papers, 1:177Google Scholar.

63 Strype, , Annals, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 117, 121Google Scholar.

64 CSP Foreign, 7:384–87, 385, 387Google Scholar.

65 Huntingdon's candidacy was weakened, too, by his own equivocal virility. He and his wife were childless, and his next youngest brother, George, inclined to Catholicism (Cross, , The Puritan Earl, p. 105Google Scholar). Further evidence for the dynamic I am exploring comes from the 1582 conspiracy against Elizabeth that was mounted in Ireland. For the conspiracy, see Strype, , Annals, vol. 3, pt. 1, pp. 203–4Google Scholar.

66 For her continuing attempts to effect this outcome see, e.g., CSP Scottish, 2:844, 867Google Scholar.

67 Neale, J. E., Queen Elizabeth (London, 1934), pp. 117–18Google Scholar.

68 Axton, , The Queen's Two Bodies, pp. 41–48Google Scholar.

69 MacCaffrey, , Shaping, pp. 99Google Scholar.

70 Lodge, Edmund, Illustrations, 3:308Google Scholar.

71 The Dudley family tried to have Guilford Dudley, as Queen Jane's husband, named king and co-ruler of England. See James, Susan, Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen (Aldershot, 1999), p. 378Google Scholar.

72 The good dukes were Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, regent during Henry VI's minority, and Edmund, duke of Somerset, regent during Edward VI's minority. For an illuminating discussion of the politics of the Mirror for Magistrates, see Hadfield, Andrew, Literature, Politics, and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance (Cambridge, 1994), esp. chap. 3, pp. 81–107Google Scholar.

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77 For English affinal terms and their relationship to Christian marriage, see Goody, , The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, pp. 269–70Google Scholar. I would like to thank Keith Mason for drawing my attention to Dudley's relationship to Catherine Grey.

78 CSP Scottish, 1:191–92, 195–96, 200–202Google Scholar; 2: app., p. 825.

79 CSP Scottish, 2:75Google Scholar.

80 Wallace MacCaffrey concludes that Elizabeth forwarded Dudley to prevent Mary from marrying anyone. See MacCaffrey, , Shaping, p. 165Google Scholar.

81 This specter appeared to have materialized with the due d'Anjou's courtship in the late 1570s and helps to explain its enormous political significance. See Worden, Blair, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's “Arcadia” and Elizabethan Politics (New Haven, Conn., 1996)Google Scholar.

82 Revealing of the chain of command in the monarchical republic is Elizabeth's attempt to find a scapegoat. See Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1584–1601 (London, 1957), pp. 137–44Google Scholar, esp. p. 138; Hammer, , The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics, p. 102Google Scholar.

83 Strype, , Annals, 2:ii, xliiiGoogle Scholar.

84 Ibid.

85 For the Netherlands campaign as a holy war, see esp. Adams, Simon, “The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585–1630” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 1972–1973)Google Scholar, chap. 1. The preacher Giles Wigginton revealingly prayed for “all her Majesty's faithful councillors and namely my Lord the Earl of Leicester in his expedition and warfare for the church and the gospel etc;” this is quoted in Collinson, Patrick, “Thomas Wood's Letters,” Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983), p. 70Google Scholar.

86 Letters of Queen Elizabeth I, pp. 170, 175–76.

87 BL, Harleian MS 6353, fol. 35v, quoted in Adams, , “The Protestant Cause,” p. 44Google Scholar.

88 McLaren, Anne, “Reading Sir Thomas Smith's De Republica Anglorum as Protestant Apologetic,” Historical Journal 42, no. 4 (1999): 911–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 See James, M. R., “At a Crossroads of the Political Culture: The Essex Revolt, 1601,” in his Society, Politics, and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 443–45, 456CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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91 This is quoted in Kenyon, J. P., “Queen Elizabeth and the Historians,” in Queen Elizabeth 1: Most Politick Princess, ed. Adams, S. L. (London, 1984), p. 52Google Scholar.