Lady Margaret Douglas, Poet and "Progenitor of Princes"

Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (christened 8 October 1515)

Margaret Douglas was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's older sister--the Tudor princess's first marriage had been to James IV of Scotland. After the king's death, the queen dowager had married Archibald Douglas, the earl of Angus. Margaret Douglas was the only child of Margaret Tudor's second marriage.

Margaret Douglas,
c. 1560-65

As a widowed queen, Margaret Tudor struggled to maintain her role as regent for her young son, who at seventeen months old succeeded his father as James V of Scotland in 1513, after the king's death at the battle of Flodden.

But when the queen dowager married her second husband secretly in 1514, she lost her regency and her guardianship of her two royal sons, the child-king, and his younger brother, Alexander, born in 1514, after his father's death.

In 1515, heavily pregnant with Angus's child and deeply embroiled in the violent political struggles of the Scottish lords, the former queen left the country, undertaking a desperate escape to England.

She took refuge in Harbottle Castle (Northumberland), where her daughter, Margaret Douglas, was born on 8 October 1515. The elder Margaret, too ill after childbirth to travel south to join her brother's court, remained in the castle with her daughter until she recovered enough to make the journey.

In late April of 1516, mother and daughter were finally able to move on to the safety of Henry's court, where they were greeted by Henry's queen, Katherine of Aragon, who had just given birth to a daughter of her own, Mary Tudor, in February. 

But after a year in England, with her husband Angus refusing to join his wife and daughter, Margaret Tudor returned to Scotland and her husband, taking Margaret Douglas with her. The turbulent marriage of Margaret and Angus, despite their brief reconciliation, was not to last.

Back in Scotland, Margaret was allowed to have some contact with her son, James V, but her difficult marriage disintegrated, and by the time the younger Margaret was three, her parents were engaged in a long and bitter struggle. 

Though the two would continue in their attempts at reconciliation, primarily at the urging of Henry VIII, by 1527 the marriage was irretrievably broken, and it was at last annulled by Clement VII--while declaring Margaret Tudor's second marriage invalid, the pope nevertheless declared Margaret Douglas legitimate. (Margaret Tudor would go on to marry a third time, to Henry Stewart, first lord Methven--but that's another story.)

At some point between 1525 and 1528, Angus removed his daughter from her mother's guardianship--although some historians have referred to this as a kidnapping or even an abduction, Angus had every legal right to take possession of his child. Now in her father's custody, Margaret, began to identify not as English but Scottish.

Angus continued to involve himself in the struggle to control the Scottish throne and the person of the young king. By 1528, Angus was not only back in Scotland but once again regent--though he quickly lost power. By the end of the year, the young king escaped from Angus's control and joined his mother. 

Attainted and finding his lands confiscated, Angus managed a truce and fled to England, taking his daughter with him, recognizing her value as a significant political pawn. While Margaret Tudor's son, James V, might be considered an heir to the English king, he was at least technically debarred by reason of his Scottish birth. Margaret's daughter, on the other hand, faced no such bar. She was English--born in Northumberland. 

But once in England, Margaret Douglas was removed from her father's custody and joined the household of her godfather, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, her residence established in Berwick Castle. She remained there until the spring of 1530; after Wolsey's death, she was summoned to her uncle's court.

Her proximity to the throne would shape her turbulent life. In 1530, she was made a lady-in-waiting to her cousin, Mary, whose residence was at the royal palace at Beaulieu. The two would remain lifelong confidantes. 

But in 1533, with the English king's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Margaret Douglas was transferred to the new queen's court, once again appointed as lady-in-waiting. After Elizabeth Tudor's birth, Margaret was a lady of honor to the princess. 

While at the court of Henry and Anne, she met and fell in love with Lord Thomas Howard, the queen's uncle. The two seem to have entered into a contract for marriage. When King Henry discovered the relationship between the two, he regarded it as a dangerous attempt by Howard to gain control of the throne. On 8 June 1534, Henry had the pair arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Howard was attainted for treason, his position becoming increasingly dire after Anne Boleyn's fall and execution in 1536, but he was not tried and executed--he eventually fell ill as a result of the harsh conditions he suffered while imprisoned in the Tower.

For her part, Margaret also fell ill, but she was transferred from the Tower into the custody of the abbess of Syon Abbey.  She was finally released on 29 October 1537, but she would not be reunited with her lover--he died in the Tower just two days later.

The poems that Howard and Margaret Douglas exchanged during their calamitous affair are now part of the collection known as the Devonshire Manuscript--an anthology of courtly lyric poetry composed and compiled by members of the royal court, many of them women. In addition to its significance as a repository of sixteenth-century poetry, the manuscript collection "also provides a unique insight into the precarious position of Renaissance women in, or close to, power."

A leaf from the Devonshire Manuscript

As a result of his niece's actions, the king altered the Act of Succession to make any attempt to "espouse, marry or deflower being unmarried" a female claimant to the throne an act of treason.

Margaret Douglas was released from her confinement in Syon in order to attend the funeral of Jane Seymour, Henry's third queen. Fearing that his long-desired son's legitimacy might be questioned by the Catholic church, given his complicated marital history, Henry VIII had his niece Margaret declared illegitimate--on he grounds that her mother's marriage to Angus had been entered into clandestinely, 

Although legally debarred from the throne, Margaret was welcomed back to court. In 1539, she was appointed as a member of the household of Anne of Cleves, serving as one of the English women who would greet the future queen on her arrival in England. The Cleves married was annulled in 1540.

By that time, Margaret had involved herself in yet another disastrous romantic entanglement, this time with Sir Charles Howard, the brother of Henry's fifth queen, Catherine Howard. (Charles Howard was also the nephew of Margaret's earlier love, Thomas Howard.)

Margaret once again found herself in disgrace, though on this occasion she avoided the Tower and went immediately back to Syon. (For his part, Charles Howard escaped to the continent.) But she was quickly released after Catherine Howard's fall and execution, once more back at court and appointed to the household of Henry's last queen, Katherine Parr.

In 1544, Margaret Douglas at last found a marital prospect of whom the English king approved, and she married the Scottish exile Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox. Although they remained in England, the couple had many interests (and intrigues) in Scotland. (Still fearful of Margaret's claims to the English throne, Henry VIII excluded her from the succession in his will.)

Now the countess of Lennox, Margaret Douglas quickly gave birth to eight children, but only two survived, two sons, Henry Stuart, lord Darnley, in 1545, and Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, in 1555. Meanwhile, during the brief reign of Edward VI, the staunchly Catholic Margaret and her more religiously opportunistic husband largely stayed away from court.

By contrast, she remained at the English court throughout the reign of Queen Mary (1553-58). The first English queen reportedly told Simon Renard, Habsburg ambassador to the English court, that her cousin was "best suited" to succeed her on the English throne.

But after Mary's death, Margaret retired to Yorkshire. Her northern household was a center for Catholic intrigue and numerous political plots. 

Margaret involved herself in many of them--notably angling for the marriage of her son, Darnley, to the widowed Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland. In the midst of her scheming, she was again arrested and imprisoned--unlike her husband, who was sent to the Tower, Margaret was moved south but placed under house arrest at Sheen (the former Carthusian monastery, not far from the palace of Westminster).

The two were held for a year, but by 1563, Margaret Douglas was accepted back at court, perhaps because she could be kept under Elizabeth's watchful eye. But after Darnley's marriage to the Scottish queen, Margaret Douglas found herself once more in the Tower, where she remained until Darnley's murder in 1567.  

Released by Elizabeth, Margaret Douglas witnessed the fulfillment of many of her aspirations when she saw her grandson, Darnley's child, become James VI after his mother, Mary Stuart, was forced to abdicate on 24 June 1567. Margaret's husband, the earl of Lennox, was at last able to return to Scotland, serving as regent for his grandson--at least until his murder on 4 September 1571.

Still the indomitable countess was not to be stopped. With the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, she conspired to marry her second son, Charles, to Bess's daughter, Elizabeth--this couple would give birth to the unfortunate Arbella Stuart. (As noted at the British Library website, "Douglas's disastrous love affair [with Thomas Howard] in turn foreshadowed her granddaughter Arbella Stuart’s experiences almost 75 years later.") In 1574, after the marriage was accomplished, a furious Queen Elizabeth ordered Margaret to the Tower once more.

Having achieved this last marriage, Margaret Douglas "retired" from her political intrigues and matchmaking, dying just a few years later on 9 March 1578. Although she died in poverty, she was given an extravagant tomb in Westminster Abbey, funded by her cousin and adversary, Queen Elizabeth.

The tomb of Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox,
Westminster Abbey

Margaret Douglas did not live to witness her ultimate dynastic triumph, when her grandson James VI of Scotland would ascend to the English throne in 1603, after the death of Elizabeth, becoming James I of England. 

For an excellent essay, I recommend "King Henry's Niece," by Leanda De Lisle. (In her essay she calls Margaret the "progenitor of princes," which I have quoted in the title of this post.)

Women and Political Power--Or, Some Things Never Change

Hillary Clinton, Matilda of England, and the Crap Women Have to Put Up With

When it comes to women seeking political power, things don't seem to change much.

Critics have pointed out the persistence of the sexist rhetoric swirling around Hillary Clinton and her campaign for the presidency--and of the media's complete disregard of their responsibility for it and their failure to address their complicity in this persistence. Check out "The Media Have a Hillary Story and They're Sticking to It" (Neil Gabler, 8 April 2016, Moyers & Company) and "Morning Joe Panel Admits Discussing Clinton’s Tone is 'a Gender Thing'--Continues to Do It Anyway" (Scott Eric Kaufman, 12 April 2016, Salon).

In fact, reading stories like these and listening to "reasoned" political commentary on CNN and NPR for the last few weeks, I've been thinking more and more about the Empress Matilda--the twelfth-century woman who was determined to become queen of England. And if the men who had sworn solemn oaths to her father, Henry I, to support Matilda's succession had actually fulfilled those oaths, she would have been the first queen regnant of England. 

A fifteenth-century imagined portrait
of Matilda of England,
the woman who would be queen

I've written about Matilda of England before (to read that post, click here). Born in 1102, Matilda fought to become queen from the time of her father's death, in 1135, until 1154, when her cousin Stephen of Blois, who had seized the English throne in her stead, finally named Matilda's son, Henry, as his heir. Matilda never became queen, but her son became King Henry II of England. Matilda died in 1167.

But going over Matilda's struggle once again isn't my purpose here. Rather, it's the gendered rhetoric surrounding Matilda's pursuit of political power that's interesting to me today.

In the twelfth century, political power--and the pursuit of power--were of course viewed as male. There was no precedent for Matilda in England, but neither was there anything to prevent her from becoming a queen regnant. She was, after all, the only legal heir of her father, and Henry's men had sworn to support her. And her life, first as queen of the Germans and Holy Roman empress, then in a second diplomatic marriage to the count of Anjou, had provided her with ample training in and experience of power politics. So nothing stood in her way--no law, no lack of education and skill. Except, of course, pervasive views about women. 

For a time Matilda was victorious--and in 1141, when she defeated Stephen of Blois and his supporters at the battle of Lincoln, taking him captive, it looked like she might achieve her goal. But that's really when the trouble began. 

Immediately after her victory, the author of the Gesta Stephani (the Deeds of Stephen) said that Matilda refused the request of Stephen's wife (another Matilda, Matilda of Boulogne) to release Stephen by responding with "harsh and insulting language." Even worse, she had promised to reward her supporters with lands that had been Stephen's.

And she didn't always listen to her male advisers--she made up her own mind about what to do. So another charge against her was not "paying attention" to men and "failing" to keep their "good will." Instead, "she did not rise respectfully, as she should have, when [the chief men of the whole kingdom] bowed before her . . . or agree to what they asked, but repeatedly sent them away with contumely, rebuffing them by an arrogant answer and refusing to hearken to their words; and by this time she no longer relied on their advice, as she should have, and had promised them, but arranged everything as she herself thought fit and according to her own arbitrary will."

As the author of the Gesta Stephanie summarized her "failings," "She at once put on an extremely arrogant demeanour instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex." The chronicler Henry of Huntingdon agreed:  “she was lifted up into an insufferable arrogance . . . and alienated the hearts of almost everyone.”

When Londoners objected to paying taxes Matilda imposed on them (they had supported Stephen), "She, with a grim look, her forehead wrinkled into a frown, every trace of a woman's gentleness removed from her face, blazed into unbearable fury." They'd supported her enemies--she wasn't going to "spare them" from the money she thought they should pay. Those very Londoners drove her from Westminster before she could be crowned.

I wonder if Matilda of England's disdainful face
looked anything like this?

It's hard to imagine her formidable father, Henry I, or her first husband, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, or such English kings as Richard the Lionheart or Henry VIII, weren't equally arrogant and didn't "blaze" into "unbearable fury" once or twice.

But Matilda's behavior didn't conform to ideas about what a woman's behavior should be: she wasn't soft-spoken, gentle, self-effacing, humble, or deferential. 

Arrogant and insufferable or not, Matilda was pragmatic--she ultimately gave up her quest for the throne and passed her claim to her son.

Nearly eight centuries later, the rhetoric about women and political power doesn't seem to have changed all that much. 

AND . . . 

Just as I was finishing this post, health-care activist and Bernie Sanders supporter Paul Song let loose with his own misogynist rhetoric--an attack on Hillary Clinton (thinly veiled? Nah, I don't think so) by referring to "corporate Democratic whores." You might--or might not--enjoy the Twitter shitstorm.*

Just a reminder here that queens regnant like Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, and Mary Stuart were also regularly insulted as whores. It was one of the most frequent attacks made on them. Sigh.

Of course, as I've also noted in this blog, politically powerful women were regularly accused of incest. Can that be far behind? (Here are links to just a few: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabeau of Bavaria, Margaret Beaufort, Louise of Savoy, Marguerite de Navarre. I won't even begin to note all the Borgias and Medici women similarly discredited.)

*Speaking of assholes, Elon Musk and his shift of the platform from Twitter to X have made this no longer available to me (I’m checking links on 4 January 2025). Sorry if that’s the case for you as well… I’ve left the link in, just in case. 

Arbella Stuart--She Might Have Been Queen?

Lady Arbella Stuart (died 25 September 1615)

The unfortunate Arbella Stuart was born to great potential, but her life ended in great tragedy. She might have become queen of England. Instead, she died in the Tower of London.

Lady Arbella Stuart,
c. 1589 
Hardwick Hall Collection

Arbella was the great granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's elder sister: queen of Scotland, mother of James V of Scotland and, by her second marriage, mother of Margaret Douglas.*

Lady Margaret Douglas married Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox, who was himself a descendant of James II of Scotland; when her son Henry, lord Darnley married Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, uniting and reinforcing these claims, Lady Margaret Douglas was imprisoned. 

Undauted, in 1574 Margaret Douglas arranged for her younger son, Charles, earl of Lennox, to marry Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of Elizabeth Hardwick, then countess of Shrewsbury; Queen Elizabeth sent Lady Margaret to the Tower once more. She was released by November of the next year, however, when she wrote to her niece Mary Stuart, the queen of Scotland, to announce the birth of a granddaughter, Arbella.

Little is known about the early period of Arbella Stuart's life. Her father died in April of 1576, when she was about six months old; in 1582, when her mother died, she was sent to live with her grandmother Elizabeth Hardwick.

Arbella Stuart aged twenty-three months,
1577, 
Hardwick Hall Collection

Elizabeth Hardwick's fourth husband, George Talbot, had been Mary Stuart's "guardian" while she was imprisoned in England, but there is no surviving evidence about any relationship between Arbella and her aunt, the exiled queen. Even so, Sara Jayne Steen, who has written extensively about her, concludes that Arbella's subsequent "letters and actions suggest that she was influenced by [the queen of Scotland's] trial and execution." Arbella was eleven years old when Mary Stuart was executed in 1587.

Throughout her childhood, Arbella Stuart was "useful" to Queen Elizabeth as a "marrigeable property": "As a claimant who could bring the dowry of a crown, she was a commodity, one of high worth on the matrimonial market," Steen writes, but her status as a claimant "fluctuated with English and European politics and the rise and fall of Elizabeth's favor." 

Margaret Tudor's descendants had been cut out of the succession by Henry VIII and his son, Edward VI, but Queen Elizabeth had also acted to bar the descendants of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's younger sister, from the throne. In such a complicated situation, James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart's son, seemed to have the best claim to the English throne: he was the oldest unquestionably legitimate male descendant of Henry VII and Henry VIII. But he was also unquestionably a foreigner, and foreign birth was generally regarded as a bar to the English succession. 

After James VI, Margaret Tudor's daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas, might be considered "next in line" for the English crown. She had been born in England and had spent much of her life at the English court, but as Steen notes, she was older than Elizabeth Tudor and "unlikely to outlive" her. Lady Margaret's oldest son, Darnley, had married Mary Stuart, but he died in 1567; her younger son, Charles, was thus next in line for the throne, after James VI. After Charles's death in 1575, his daughter Arbella would inherit his claim. 

When Arbella was still a child, her grandmother had promised her to the four-year-old son of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, who, perhaps fortunately for Bess of Hardwick, died; the queen had been angered by the proposal and took upon herself the task of arranging Arbella's future.

As queen, Elizabeth used Arbella as a "bargaining chip in foreign policy, tantalizing continental nobility with the prospect of marriage accompanied by the declaration of succession." At various times those prospective alliances included Esmé Stuart, who had inherited Arbella's Lennox title and lands after her father's death; the king of Scotland himself, James VI; Rainutio Farnese, the son of the duke of Parma; Henry IV, king of France; the prince of Condé; and the duke of Nevers. Various alliances with members of the English nobility were also proposed, including Robert Cecil.

But none of these marriages ever took place. Arbella came briefly to court in 1587 and again in 1588, but she was sent away in disgrace for some offense. At the time it was rumored, on the one hand, that her presumption had resulted in her dismissal, on the other that a romance with the earl of Essex had precipitated her removal from court. Arbella herself, writing about the incident later, indicated that at first she had enjoyed the queen's approval. Queen Elizabeth had examined the young woman for herself when she arrived at court and "by trial did pronounce me an eaglet of her own kind . . . worthy . . . even yet to carry her thunderbolt." 

It wasn't until 1591 that Arbella was recalled to court, during the period when her marriage to the son of the duke of Farnese was being discussed. She remained with the court into the summer of 1592, but when the duke died and marriage negotiations failed, she was once again dismissed. She was with her grandmother later in that year when a plot to abduct her came to light. A Catholic priest revealed a plan to kidnap Arbella and then marry her to a foreign Catholic noble, who would invade England and claim the throne on the young woman's behalf. Arbella was not implicated in the plot, but neither was she recalled to court by the queen. 

Despite the dazzling array of marriages proposed for Arbella, the queen was no more interested in finding a husband for Arbella than she was in finding one for herself. Instead, she left the young woman in the care of her grandmother. Arbella was well educated, but she was completely isolated, and she came to regard her seclusion as an imprisonment rather than a retirement. 

Life at Hardwick Hall grew intolerable. A twenty-seven-year-old woman, Arbella still slept in her grandmother's bedroom and had her nose "tweaked" for punishment. After a decade of being cut off from court and court contacts, in 1602 Arbella sought permission from Bess of Hardwick to "present" herself to the queen, but even that "small and ordinary liberty" was denied to her, at which she "despaired."

At last she took matters into her own hands. Arbella proposed a marriage with Edward Seymour, Lady Catherine Grey's grandson and thus, himself, a claimant to the English throne--despite the fact that Elizabeth I had declared Catherine Grey's marriage invalid and the children of that marriage illegitimate. On Christmas Day Arbella sent a message to Seymour's grandfather, the earl of Hertford, indicating that she would be interested in an alliance with his grandson. If the earl approved, he should send his grandson to her in disguise so that they could meet one another and, after having met, "see how they could like."

But Arbella's plot failed. The earl of Hertford forwarded her message to Sir Robert Cecil, and within days Henry Brounker was sent to Hardwick Hall to investigate. By January he had cleared things up to his own satisfaction and the queen's. Arbella apologized in a letter to the queen, expressing her sorrow for having given "the least cause of offense"; "I humbly prostrate myself at Your Majesty's feet," she wrote, "craving pardon" and hoping that, out of "princely clemency," the queen would "signify" her "gracious remission" to Arbella's grandmother, whose "discomfort" she, Arbella, would be until then. 

Arbella was "forgiven," but her restrictions were "redoubled." "Educated for command," as Steen notes, Arbella "seemed powerless, politically and personally enclosed: chaste, with no opportunity to be otherwise; silenced, forbidden unmonitored conversations or letters; and obedient, under the very real threat of the Tower or death." Although she acknowledged herself as a "poor silly infant and wretch," Arbella insisted that she had taken as "great care" to preserve the queen's "royal lineage from any blot as any whosoever"; she would, she wrote, have judged herself "unworthy of life" if she had "degenerated from the most reknowned stock whereof it is my greatest honor to be a branch."

Despite her apologies, Arbella's efforts to escape her confinement continued. She fabricated another marriage plot, used her poor health to effect a move to another residence, and ultimately attempted to escape. The escape failed, however, and early in March Arbella was once more at Hardwick Hall, under investigation. This time her apologies were less abject: 

When it shall please Her Majesty to afford me those ordinary rights which other subjects cannot be debarred of justly, I shall endeavor to receive them as thankfully now as if they had been in due time offered.

She would bear her yoke, she wrote, "as long as I think good to convince them that impose it of hardness of heart," and then "shake it off when I think good to take my Christian liberty." If it were "denied" her, the "whole world" would be "made judge upon what cause, or color, or how justly given or taken and by whom." If she could be left to be her "own woman," then everyone's "trouble" would cease.

I thought this was a portrait of
Arbella Stuart . . . but maybe not?
(see comments, below)

Queen Elizabeth died on 24 March 1603, just days after Arbella's letter was written. Arbella acknowledged the authority of the queen's successor, James VI of Scotland, now James I of England, and she was once more welcomed at court.

Again rumors about a prospective marriage for her circulated, but in July two plots against the new king were discovered, one of which included a plan to place Arbella on the English throne. She was cleared of suspicion, and while in the years that followed she was able to exert a certain amount of influence and patronage, she remained both unmarried and without adequate financial support. 

By the end of 1609 she was again under guard; "rumors abounded" about her political plans, her religious preferences, and her marriage prospects. She was investigated once more, cleared of suspicion once more, and restored to favor once more. By 1610 she had taken her destiny into her own hands, secretly arranging to marry. 

Arbella Stuart married William Seymour, Edward Seymour's younger brother, on 22 June. By early July, both were imprisoned and under investigation, Seymour in the Tower and Arbella in a private residence in Lambeth. In a letter to her husband written shortly after their arrest, Arbella wrote that she had heard he was not well, suggesting his illness represented the "sympathy" between them since she herself had been sick at the same time. She looked forward to a return of the king's favor, however, and wanted to make sure that Seymour's "grief of mind" did not "work" upon his body. If they were not "able to live to" the return of the king's favor, she wrote, "I for my part shall think myself a pattern of misfortune in enjoying so great a blessing as you so little a while." 

Arbella's belief that James would restore the pair to favor derived at least in part from her conviction that the king had given her permission to marry a husband of her own choice. In a letter to the king she wrote that his "neglect" of her and her lack of money "drove" her to her "contract" with Seymour before she informed the king of her intentions; nevertheless, she wrote, 

I humbly beseech Your Majesty to consider how impossible it was for me to imagine it could be offensive unto Your Majesty, having few days before given me your royal consent to bestow myself on any subject of Your Majesty's (which . . . likewise Your Majesty had done long since), besides never having been either prohibited any or spoken to for any in this land by your Majesty these seven years that I have lived in Your Majesty's house I could not conceive that Your Majesty regarded my marriage at all.

Despite Arbella's hopes, in January 1611 William Seymour was condemned to life imprisonment, and she was exiled to the north of England, where she was to live out her life guarded by the bishop of Durham. She attempted to fight the decision, at first by law, but when the courts failed her, she again fell ill. As Steen notes, she "became--whether by policy, from illness, or some combination of the two--too weak to travel."

She was sent on her way north on 21 March, but she traveled only six miles before stopping. There she remained until 1 April, when King James had her examined by a physician, who determined that she was, as she claimed, too weak to travel. By the end of April James was insisting that Arbella be forced to leave for Durham, but again she appealed, using her continued illness. She was granted an extension until 5 June, but on 3 June she escaped from custody, dressed in men's clothing

Her husband had escaped from the Tower, and the pair planned to be reunited in France. Arbella reached Calais on 5 June, but she was caught immediately and returned to England, this time to imprisonment in the Tower. Seymour, meanwhile, remained in France. He returned to England five months after Arbella died, restored to the king's favor. 

It is generally claimed that while she was imprisoned in the Tower, Arbella became insane. "The primary source for the idea that Stuart became deranged," Steen writes, "was court observer and letter-writer John Chamberlain, who in 1613 and 1614 repeatedly commented on Stuart's distraction; in April 1613, for example, he wrote that she was said to be 'cracked in her brain.'" The Lieutenant of the Tower, too, described Arbella's "fits of distemper and convulsions." 

Most later historians have accepted the diagnosis that Arbella Stuart "lost her sanity," but Steen effectively disputes the notion that she spent the last years of her life "as a lunatic prisoner." The evidence does "suggest that Stuart indeed was distressed, perhaps even intermittently delusional," suffering from illnesses that were "physiological, strategic, or a combination of the two," but also that Arbella "remained active on her own behalf." 

Definitely a portrait of
Arbella Stuart, c. 1605
National Galleries Scotland

Throughout the period of her supposed madness, Arbella Stuart continued to manage her financial affairs. Her relatives and friends continued to work for her release, and various political supporters continued to focus on her as a replacement for King James. At least one rescue attempt was made, and at least one plot to place her on the throne dates from this period, unlikely efforts if she were "irrecoverably deranged": 

The phrase "went insane" conveniently labels Stuart a female hysteric, a woman exhibiting the mental instability and melancholia often attributed to learned women, thus allowing observers such as John Chamberlain to dismiss her transgressions of the code of appropriate female behavior as "madness," without calling the system into question. Those who were acquainted with and attended Stuart consistently characterized her illnesses either as intentionally deceitful and obstinate or as psychosomatic in origin . . . , as arising from her grief of her unquiet mind.

James and his examiners may well have used "madness" as a way of explaining Arbella's gender "transgressions," but such a determination was an effective political tool. If Arbella Stuart were "cracked in her brain," her continued "imprisonment" in the Tower could be justified, and she could more effectively be eliminated as a rival or as a threat. 

Arbella's story parallels those of other women whose claims to the throne for themselves or their children resulted in their containment as nuns, lunatics, exiles, or prisoners. In Spain, for example, Juana la Beltraneja was discredited as illegitimate and compelled to become a nun, while Juana of Castile was declared insane and secluded (or imprisoned) at Tordesillas. 

In England, Margaret of Anjou had fought to maintain the crown for her son; having lost her son, she was defeated, discredited, and exiled. Lady Jane Grey was imprisoned in the Tower after her brief rule, but no further action was taken against her; it was only after an unsuccessful rebellion against Queen Mary that her imprisonment was not enough, and she was executed. Her sisters Catherine and Mary were both imprisoned in the Tower as well. 

The potential threats offered by such women could be controlled in other ways, however, if they were willing to accept more traditional and subordinate female roles. Elizabeth of York offered no challenge to the new Tudor king because he married her. She became a queen consort rather than a queen regnant, her own claims to the succession united with her husband's in their children. And having worked to secure her son's succession throughout her lifetime, Margaret Beaufort was certainly no challenge to his kingship; she was, as we have seen, able to exert considerable influence in her "natural" role as his mother. 

But Arbella Stuart was either incapable of or unwilling to accept a subordinate role. She died in the Tower of London on 25 September 1615, her death almost certainly complicated by her refusal to eat.  

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

I have quoted here from Sara Jayne Steen's The Letters of Lady Arbella Stuart, a volume in the Oxford Women Writers in English, 1350-1850 series.

Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier: If She Had Behaved Herself, She Might Have Been a Queen

Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier (born 29 May 1627)

Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de Montpensier, known to her contemporaries as la grande mademoiselle, was a princess of the royal blood, the daughter of Gaston d’Orléans and Marie of Bourbon (m. 1626), who was the heiress of Henri de Bourbon, duke of Montpensier.*

La Grande mademoiselle,
painted c. 1650-75

As her recent editor, Joan DeJean, explains, Montpensier was “the richest woman in France, wealthier than almost any French prince,” and “probably the wealthiest woman in all Europe.”

In addition to this great wealth, she was “the most noble of any contemporary French princess,” the granddaughter of Henry IV of France and the niece of Louis XIII, his son. From the moment of her birth, on 29 May 1627, the choice of her husband was “the foremost question on her contemporaries’ minds.”

Among the many possibilities for a “suitable” husband were Philip IV of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, and Charles Stuart, who would eventually become Charles II of England, but perhaps the most frequently discussed candidate was Montpensier’s first cousin, who in 1638 would succeed his father, becoming Louis XIV.

And yet, despite her royal blood and her enormous wealth, Montpensier did not marry one of these glittering prospects--in fact, she did not marry at all. Instead of the politics of marriage, she involved herself in the politics of the nation.

In 1648, when she was just twenty-one years old, she engaged herself in the series of French civil wars known collectively as the Fronde. During the second phase of the civil wars, the so-called Fronde of Princes, Montpensier took command of one of the armies on the rebels’ side. Like Joan of Arc before her, she took the city of Orléans. In July of 1652 she was in Paris during the battle of the Faubourg Saint Antoine; commanding the Bastille and its adjoining walls, she opened the gates of Paris to Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, and his army, then saved the rebel leader and his troops by turning the guns of the Bastille against royal forces. 

From a spot just outside the walls of Paris, Louis XIV and his Italian advisor, Cardinal Mazarin, watched la grande mademoiselle; Mazarin is reported to have remarked that when she “redirected the cannon, she ‘killed’ her husband”—that is, any chance that might have remained for that much-discussed marriage with Louis XIV. As armed hostilities drew to an end, Montpensier acted as a mediator between the king and the rebel parties, but in 1652, along with “all the rebel leaders,” her father among them, she was exiled from court, allowed to return only in 1657. 

By the time Montpensier rejoined the court, she was thirty years old. Three years later, in 1660, she began a brief exchange of letters with Françoise Bertaut de Motteville, an attendant at the court of the dowager queen of France, Anne of Austria. Motteville’s mother had been born in Spain, like the Habsburg Anne, and had accompanied her to France at the time of her marriage to Louis XIII.

In her first letter to Motteville, Montpensier envisions establishing a "rural Republic" where she would reign as queen--she writes that the idea of utopian retreat first began to take shape in her imagination after she overheard Motteville’s conversation with a friend.

“Finding myself next to you the other day at the queen’s [Anne of Austria's] when you were speaking with one of your friends about the joys of the secluded life,” Montpensier writes, “I thought that your conversation had never been more charming and agreeable.” Since that time, she has “spent many hours thinking about it,” and she writes to Motteville to offer a few “principles” that will make such a life “both entertaining and beneficial.” Thus begins the correspondence that takes place over the course of year, from May of 1660 to August of 1661. 

This 1660 painting, with a tiny shield,
may represent the duchess
as an Amazonian warrior?

But theirs is to be no city of ladies, in which Christine de Pizan had envisioned the gathering of a community of women of all social classes.

Montpensier’s imagined republic is to be peopled by those “of the highest rank of both sexes.” While thus admitting both men and women to her retreat, she does propose one condition: “I would rather there were no married people and that everyone would either be widowed or have renounced this sacrament, for it is said to be an unfortunate undertaking.”

In her response to Montpensier’s first letter, Motteville warms to the prospect of a secluded retreat, but she chides Montpensier—gently, to be sure—about her assumption that she will rule over it. “I see clearly how it is,” she writes, 

you were born to rule and to wear a crown, and it is so logical for things to be this way that I am not surprised that, without even giving it a second thought, you have established yourself as our sovereign. This power, noble Princess, is rightly your due; other honors await you, and you could choose to rule any of the peoples of Europe, but if your philosophy induces you to choose our forest rather than an empire, I am sure that the bliss of your isolated subjects will be so great that all the kings in the world will have reason to envy them.

For her part, Montpensier only hopes that she is “worthy of being governed by the greatest princess in the world.”  

However graceful and flattering Motteville’s compliment, when she and Motteville began their correspondence, Montpensier was thirty-three years old. She was still la grande mademoiselle. And like the legendary Amazons, to whom she and her fellow frondeuses had been compared, Montpensier had armed herself and gone to war; like the Amazons, too, she would establish her own kingdom, at least in her imagination. But there the similarities end. 

Totally free to dream any kind of republic she wanted, she envisions not an Amazonian kingdom of warrior women but a pastoral idyll, where she occupies herself by painting, drawing, reading, listening to music, and herding sheep. She gives up the breastplate and lance she had worn during the Fronde for, in her own words, “shepherds’ staffs and wide-brimmed hats.”

The only question of substance she and Motteville debate is whether or not marriage should be allowed in their republic—Montpensier says no, while Motteville suggests that the duchess will, in the end, have to allow it. “I think that in the end you will be forced to allow the time-honored and legitimate custom called marriage,” she writes, since so few of the shepherds and shepherdesses would be able to achieve celibacy, even given the model of Montpensier’s “perfection.”

For her part, the duchess is certainly aware of the absolutist politics of her cousin Louis XIV, and she isn’t averse to a little absolutism of her own in her “rural Republic.” Surprised at Motteville’s defense, however weak, of marriage, Montpensier responds that “in this matter” she will “put to use the authority given to me by the blood of all the kings” from which she descends: “I will maintain with confidence that I think everyone should defer to my conviction, that my opinion should prevail. Lastly, as my fathers used to say, such is my pleasure and too bad for those who do not find it to be theirs.” “Nonetheless,” she adds, “to show that I do not act so absolutely, I will try to prove to you that it is not unprecedented to see people adapt their inclination to the taste and humor of those on whom they depend.” 

Their focus on marriage is not frivolous, for both women recognized that marriage was an institution that destroyed women’s freedom and opportunity. It is a destiny that Montpensier herself had sedulously avoided, and as she draws this letter, the third in the series, to a close, she lifts the curtain on her imaginary world just a bit, allowing a brief glimpse at the real world of the seventeenth-century woman. Montpensier describes marriage as “this dependence to which custom subjects us, often against our will and because of family obligations of which we have been the victim.”

Marriage “is what has caused us to be named the weaker sex”: “Let us at last deliver ourselves from this slavery; let there be a corner of the world in which it can be said that women are their own mistresses and do not have all the faults that are attributed to them; and let us celebrate ourselves for the centuries to come through a way of life that will immortalize us.” 

In her response to this letter, Motteville, hitherto the defender of marriage, pleads to be allowed “to be one of the soldiers” in Montpensier’s army; she wants to face the “ranks” of their “enemies” so that she too can “inflict a small blow” against the tyranny of marriage. But even as she builds this fanciful image, Motteville, who as a teenager had been married off to a ninety-year-old man, reveals the harsh reality behind the metaphor: 

I know that the laws that subject us to [men’s] power are hard and unbearable; I know that men have made them unfair for us and too advantageous for themselves. They take away from us dominion over the sea and the earth, the sciences, merit, power—that of judging and being the master of human lives—and dignity in all situations, and with the exception of the distaff, I know of nothing under the sun that they have not appropriated; even though their tyranny has no just basis.

To illustrate her sense of loss, Motteville embeds a brief history of women in her letter, focusing in part on great female rulers. “The history books are full of women who have governed empires with singular wisdom, who have gained glory by commanding armies, and whose abilities have given rise to great admiration,” she tells Montpensier, naming Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth Tudor, Margaret of Parma, and Catherine de’ Medici.

It seems significant, however, that when Motteville summons up the names of female rulers, she fails to include Anne of Austria, who had been regent for son, Louis XIV, and who had controlled the government of France for more than eight years. The dowager queen regent was still alive when Motteville and Montpensier were dreaming their dreams of a utopian retreat, and both women were on intimate terms with her: she was Montpensier’s aunt, and Motteville was her attendant at court and had served her for more than twenty years.

But, in the end, even the debate about marriage is moot. The two women give up their dream of a “famous Republic.” In her last letter to Motteville, dated 1 August 1661, Montpensier writes that she is living quietly and in seclusion. “I do almost exactly what I would do if we were already in our retreat,” she tells Motteville, adding, “I read and I work at my needlework.” Her “most agreeable hours,” she writes, “are spent dreaming” about their plan.

Four letters exchanged between the two correspondents were published by Motteville as Recueil de quelques pieces nouvelles et galantes, tant en prose qu’en vers (Cologne, 1667). Now, these four letters, as well as four additional letters, have been published under Montpensier’s name in Jean DeJean's Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, Against Marriage: The Correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle, from which I have quoted here. Montpensier's memoirs, which cover her life until 1688, are available at Google Books by clicking here. Peter Yarrow's new affordable translation for the Modern Humanities Research Association is available in print.

Motteville’s five-volume memoir of her life at court was published in the nineteenth century as Mémoires pour server à l’histoire d’Anne d’Autriche, épouse de Louis XIII, roi de France; you can find this at Google Books by clicking here. An abridged translation of Motteville’s memoirs was published by Katherine Wormeley as Memoirs of Madame de Motteville on Anne of Austria and Her Court; print-on-demand copies of this translation are available at Amazon.

*This post has been adapted from Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Christina of Holstein-Gottorp, Regent of Sweden

Christina of Holstein-Gottorp, queen consort and regent of Sweden (born 13 April 1573)

Although she is not well known in the United States, Queen Christina, the consort of Charles IX of Sweden, was a younger contemporary of Elizabeth Tudor of England. She was not yet born when John Knox denounced the "monstrous regiment of women," but she might well be added to his list of those female "monsters" who wielded political power when so clearly it was against nature and God for them to do so--such, at any rate, was Knox's opinion.

Christina of Holstein-Gottorp was the daughter of Adolf, the first duke of Holstein-Gottorp and his wife, Christine of Hesse. For those of you, like me, who might not know what (or where) Holstein-Gottorp is, the hyphenated name refers to parts of two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein; the combined territories, comprising Holstein-Gottorp, were ceded to Adolf, the third son of the king of Frederick I of Denmark, after Frederick's death. The remaining territories within these duchies were ruled by the king of Denmark.

Christina of Holstein-Gottorp,
c. 1610

While her husband went to war in 1605, Christina acted on his behalf as regent of Sweden. After Charles IX's death in October of 1611--and following his 1604 decree about who should control Sweden in case of his death--Christina once again was regent, this time for the new king, her son, still a minor.

Her tenure as regent was not long, however, because the boy-king, Gustavus Adolphus, was sixteen, and the age of majority was seventeen--his birthday was two months later, in December. 

Still, Christina seems also to have continued to act unofficially as an important adviser for Gustavus Adolphus, and she was, as well, regent for her younger son, Charles-Phillip, duke of Södermanland, from 1611 until his death in 1622. 

But she still wasn't done with minding young members of her family--after Charles-Phillip's death, the dowager queen became the guardian of his daughter--her granddaughter, Elizabeth Carlsdotter, born posthumously after the death of Charles-Phillip. Though Charles-Phillip had been married secretly--so maybe Christina wasn't as effective as regent as she might have been . . . 

Christina of Holstein-Gottorp died in 1625.

There's not much info about this Queen Christina out there, at least in English--for this post, I had to use Google translate in order to read the entry in Swedish Biographical Dictionary, supplemented by Wikipedia!!!! Sorry, readers!

Elizabeth of York: She Might Have Been Queen

Elizabeth of York (born 11 February 1466 and died 11 February 1503)

The daughter of Edward IV, the Yorkist king of England, and the niece of Edward's younger brother, King Richard III, Elizabeth of York became the wife of another English king, Henry Tudor, the first Tudor monarch.

Elizabeth of York, c. 1500, 
National Portrait Gallery, London

There is a great deal of popular historical fiction about the Wars of the Roses, and there are more than a few television dramas about the Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Tudors, so I don't need to say much about the rise of the Tudor monarchy here. But what is often unsaid--or unnoticed--is the place of Elizabeth of York in all of this.

After the defeat of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth--and given the disappearance and probable murder of Edward IV's two sons, the "Princes in the Tower"--there was still a viable Yorkist claimant to the throne in 1485, even after Richard's defeat: Elizabeth, the eldest surviving daughter of Edward IV.

But Elizabeth of York did not inherit the throne both her father and uncle had occupied (and that one of her brothers might have occupied, if one of them had lived). Instead, she was married to the victor of Bosworth, the man who became king of England.

Although her own mother, Elizabeth Woodville, and Henry's mother, the formidable Margaret Beaufort, were important political manipulators and power brokers, Elizabeth of York played no real role other than the one crucial for a queen consort--she produced male heirs to the throne, Arthur and Henry (who would become Henry VIII), as well as two daughters who grew to adulthood, Margaret and Mary.

Her daughter Margaret became queen of Scotland, and her daughter Mary, briefly, was queen of France. As queen, Margaret Tudor was also regent of Scotland for her husband, James IV, though she was unable to retain that role for her son, after James's death.

In the next generation, Elizabeth of York's two granddaughters, the daughters of Henry VIII, became queens of England, not as consorts but ruling in their own right: Mary I and Elizabeth I. Elizabeth of York was the great-grandmother to two other queens regnant, Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland (the descendant of Elizabeth's elder daughter Margaret) and Jane Grey, who "ruled" England for nine days (the descendant of Elizabeth of York's younger daughter, Mary).

Still grieving the death of her older son, Arthur, in 1502, Elizabeth of York gave birth to a baby girl, named Katherine, her seventh and last child, on 2 February 1503. The baby died on 10 February, and Elizabeth the next day, her thirty-seventh birthday.

There are several good biographies available, but I recommend Arlene Naylor Okerlund's Elizabeth of York. If you'd prefer a shorter read, there's a chapter on Elizabeth of York in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens.

Mary Stuart: Queen of Scotland, Would-Be Queen of England, Catholic Martyr

Mary Stuart, queen of Scots (executed 8 February 1587)

Mary Stuart, c. 1578

On this day in 1587, Mary Stuart was executed by Elizabeth Tudor. Forced to abdicate as queen of Scotland on 24 July 1567, Mary had fled to England in 1568, apparently hoping Elizabeth would help her regain her throne--despite having for years claimed Elizabeth's throne as her own. 

Instead, Mary was imprisoned. After nearly twenty years of captivity--and suspected involvement with numerous plots aimed at overthrowing Queen Elizabeth and placing herself on the English throne--Mary Stuart was charged with treason, tried, convicted, and executed.

After Elizabeth of England died in 1603, Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, became King James I of England. He had his mother's body moved to Westminster Abbey, not far from Elizabeth's.

For a post on Mary Stuart's mother, Marie de Guise, who was regent of Scotland for many years, click here.

Elizabeth Tudor, Queen at Last

Elizabeth Tudor, queen of England (crowned 15 January 1559)

There isn't much that needs saying about Elizabeth I of England--but today is the anniversary of her 1559 coronation. Here she is, painted in her coronation robes: 

Elizabeth Tudor, in her coronation robes

Jeanne d'Albret, a Queen in the Age of Queens

Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre (born 7 January 1528)

Jeanne d'Albret, future queen of Navarre, was born in November of 1528, the daughter of Marguerite d'Angoulême, the granddaughter of Louise of Savoy, two women whom we will meet in this blog later in the year.*

Little is certain about the early life and education of the future queen of Navarre but as the granddaughter of a woman whose motto was libris et liberis, "for books and for children," and as the daughter of a woman who was an important patron for humanist scholars and who was herself a writer, Jeanne seems likely to have received the best of educations.

Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre,
about 1570

In 1537 the young princess of Navarre became the source of conflict between her father, Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre, and her uncle, Francis I of France, over potential marriage alliances for Jeanne. Her father hoped to to marry his daughter to Philip of Spain, while Francis negotiated for her marriage to William de la Marck, duke of Cleves. 

Ultimately, the French king prevailed, signing a contract for the marriage of his niece and duke William on 16 July 1540 and announcing his plans to the girl and her mother at Fountainebleu. 

The marriage went forward a year later, despite the fact that Jeanne did not walk to the altar--she had to be carried. After the ceremony, the duke and the new duchess performed a ritual consummation of their match, and the groom returned to Cleves. 

Jeanne, however, remained at the French court; by 1545, the Cleves marriage was no longer so politically desirable for the French king, and it was formally annulled.

Jeanne was once again an available pawn to be played by the king of Navarre and the king of France. But by 1547, when her marriage was again a source of conflict between kings, Francis I had been succeeded by his son Henry II. The new French king arranged a marriage for his cousin with Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme, while her father continued to try to arrange an imperial alliance for her. The king of France prevailed once more, this time with the complete agreement of Jeanne. Her marriage with the duke of Vendôme was celebrated on 20 October 1548. In September of 1551 Jeanne of Navarre gave birth to a son whom she named Henry, after her father. 

The young prince died in August of 1553, not quite two years old. By early June Jeanne was pregnant again; a second Henry, the future king of Navarre and of France, was born on 14 December. When her father died in May 1555, Jeanne d'Albret became queen regnant of Navarre, sovereign of Béarn, Soule, and Basse Navarre. She also held a score of French fiefdoms; to those inherited from her mother she added Foix and Albret, among others, from her father.  

After her father's death, Jeanne and her husband continued her father's efforts to regain lost Navarrese territories. In 1559, she gave birth to a daughter, Catherine of Bourbon. In 1560, while in Paris for the marriage of Mary Stuart and the dauphin Francis, son of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici, Jeanne attended a Calvinist service. It was a life-changing experience: Jeanne underwent a conversion on Christmas Day 1560. In the memoirs she later commanded to be written for her, the so-called Memoirs of Jeanne d'Albret (Mémoires de Jeanne d'Albret), her conversion and her subsequent "differences" with her husband are described in a first-person account: 

Since 1560 everyone knows that it pleased God by His grace to rescue me from idolatry, to which I had been too long given, and to receive me in His church. Since then, by the same grace, He has allowed me to persevere. . . . Even during the lifetime of my husband, the late King (who, withdrawing from his first zeal, put a thorn not in my foot but in my heart . . . ) neither favor nor hardship turned me to the right or to the left. . . . I have always followed the straight path.

She spent the twelve years of her life between her conversion in 1560 and her death in 1572 defending herself, her faith, her kingdom, and her son. Throughout these years, she would be singled out as an enemy by the most powerful movement in Europe, the Counter Reformation. The Papacy, Philip of Spain, and the powerful Guise family challenged her title and threatened her domains and at times her person; the French crown exploited her difficulties. 

A series of civil wars engulfed France, one after the other, between 1562 and 1589; Jeanne was to witness three of them. The first commenced in April 1562, and during this conflict, she focused on her own possessions, strengthening her control of them, and furthering her religious reforms. 

In the four years of that followed the first civil war, Jeanne dedicated herself to ensuring the autonomy of her kingdom of Navarre and her son's future. A papal attack on the Protestant queen of Navarre was launched by Pius IV in 1563. In response to a letter of "friendly advice" that threatened condemnation and suggested she was ruining her son, she wrote, "As to the reformation . . . in religion, which I have begun . . . , I am earnestly resolved, by the grace of God, to continue . . . throughout my land of Béarn." 

As for her son, "instead of lessening" his "heritage," she insisted that she would "increase it by the means appropriate to a true Christian." Her reply did not convince the pope, who on 28 September condemned her for heresy and summoned her to Rome to appear before the Inquisition. If she failed, she faced excommunication. 

Catherine de' Medici came to Jeanne's defense on this occasion, though in December of 1563 Pius IV carried through on his threat to excommunicate Jeanne. Faced with rebellion in Navarre, an imperial plot against her, and Catherine's pressure on her, Jeanne was forced to leave Béarn to join the French court, then on a tour of the kingdom. She met up with the traveling court in June of 1564. From the moment of her arrival she sought permission to return to her own territories with her son; instead, she was ordered to take up residence in Vendôme, a fief of France rather than an independent principality, where she was a duchess, not a queen regnant. Her son remained behind. 

When the French court finally returned to Paris in May 1566 after its two-year progress throughout the country, Jeanne traveled to court once more. She spent the next eight months there until, arguing that her thirteen-year-old son needed to be introduced to his subjects and his future domain, she secured permission for him to accompany her back to Navarre. 

She left Paris in January 1567, but her return to Navarre was not not an easy one. Against the backdrop of the second and third religious wars in France, the queen of Navarre faced three organized rebellions in quick succession, between the spring of 1567 and the summer of 1569, all of them sparked by resistance to her "religious program." Despite resistance, she remained dedicated to religious reform. She was, as well, determined to assure the independence of her kingdom, defending it against both France and Spain in order to preserve it for her son. 

By the fall of 1569, efforts were underway in France to end the third religious war; peace was concluded in August of 1570. To secure the fragile peace between Protestants and Catholics, Catherine de' Medici proposed a marriage between her daughter, the Catholic Marguerite of Valois, and Jeanne of Navarre's son, the Protestant Henry of Navarre. Jeanne delayed, first by putting off a decision, then by putting off Catherine's summons to court. But when the Queen Mother produced the "ultimate weapon"--a charge that Jeanne's first marriage to William of Cleves invalidated her later marriage to Antoine of Bourbon, and that her son Henry was thus illegitimate--Jeanne prepared once more to travel to the French court. 

However unwilling, the queen of Navarre ultimately agreed to the marriage proposed by Catherine de' Medici. The two queens met first in February 1572. After weeks of negotiating, the marriage contract was finally agreed to and signed on 11 April. On 4 June, waiting for her son to join her in Paris, Jeanne of Navarre fell ill. She did not live to see her son renounce her faith, convert to Catholicism, and become king of France. She died five days later, on 9 June. 

Like so many other powerful women, the queen of Navarre was widely criticized by her contemporaries. Vilified by Catholics and excommunicated by the pope, she was described by the Florentine ambassador as having a "temper" that was "very eccentric" (molto fantastico). It required "both skill and patience to reach her and to pin her down." "She changes often and eludes you every minute," he complained, continuing, "In the end, she hopes to manage everything her own way." 

In her defense, the Huguenot historian Agrippa d'Aubigny provided a more positive judgment of the queen, but even in his defense we see how Jeanne challenged conventional notions of female behavior. While praising her, d'Aubugny wrote that she had "of woman, only the sex, with a soul given to things that rather became men"--that is, "an intelligence at home in great affairs, and a courage invincible in adversity."

Jeanne seems not only to have faced squarely the difficulties of a woman in her position but to have dismissed them as difficulties. In the memoirs of her life she had written for her, "she" addressed the supposed "imbecility" of women in general and herself in particular: "I will not stoop to refute [the argument that women are imbeciles]," she was presented as having said, "but if I wished to undertake the defense of my sex, I could find plenty of examples." The passage in the Memoirs concluded, "[T]hese people [who say so] deserve only pity . . . for their ignorance."

Jeanne ruled Navarre as queen regent from 1555 until her death in 1572, a unique moment in history, for--much to John Knox's dismay--a great deal of western Europe was in one way or another under the "monstrous regiment" of women. Among Jeanne's contemporaries were Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland and her mother Marie of Guise, regent of Scotland. England was ruled by two queen regnants in succession, Mary and then Elizabeth Tudor. In Spain Juana of Castile died in the very year of Jeanne's accession, but Juana's niece Margaret of Parma followed Juana's daughter Mary of Austria as regent of the Netherlands. And in France, Jeanne's great adversary and advocate Catherine de' Medici was regent of France.

The one modern, full-length biography of Jeanne d'Albret in English is Nancy Roelker's Queen of Navarre: Jeanne d'Albret, 1528-1572, published in 1968. You can usually find a used copy, if you're interested--it's an excellent book.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).