Marie de Guise, Queen and Regent of Scotland

Marie de Guise, queen and regent of Scotland (born 22 November 1515)

As I have noted many times in the years since I began writing this blog, its title--"The Monstrous Regiment of Women"--is drawn from the virulent political pamphlet published by the Scottish religious reformer John Knox. 

Knox published his blistering assessment of female rule, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in 1558. His bitter, almost pornographic, indictment of "gynecocracy" was quickly followed in print by a series of pamphlets that echoed, expanded, disputed, and countered his argument that female rule was unnatural, unlawful, and contrary to scripture.

From Knox's point of view, the political situation could hardly seem worse. Not only had Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne of England, but Mary Stuart, wife of the dauphin of France, had become queen of Scotland, while her mother, Marie de Guise, was acting as regent in Scotland on Mary's behalf.*

Marie of Guise, c. 1537
portrait attributed to Corneille de Lyon

The daughter of Claude of Lorraine, duke of Guise (after 1528), and Antoinette Bourbon, Marie was the couple's firstborn and only child for the first four years of her life.

But after the birth of a son and heir in 1519, her father sent his daughter to the convent Clarisse to Pont-à-Mousson. There Marie joined her paternal grandmother, Philippa of Guelders. After an active career in Lorraine, where she had served as regent for her son, the duke of Lorraine (Claude's elder brother), the dowager duchess had retired there. (As only one more indication of Margaret of Austria's powerful influence for a generation of early-modern women, a young Philippa of Guelders spent time in her court.)

Marie remained in the convent with her grandmother until she was about fourteen years old. After visiting his mother in the convent, the duke of Lorraine must have seen the potential in his niece--he arranged for Marie to leave the convent and to prepare for a life in the French court. She made her first appearance there in 1531. A politically advantageous alliance was soon arranged. 

On 4 August 1534, when she was eighteen years old, Marie of Lorraine was married to Louis II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville and comte de Dunois. Her first child, a boy named François, after the French king, was born just over a year later. But Marie's husband died in 1537, just three years after their marriage. A posthumous son, Louis, was born two months after his father's death--and four months later, the baby was also dead.

Within months, it was clear that a second marriage would be arranged for the young widow. James V of Scotland, whose wife had recently died, was looking for a new queen, as was Henry VIII of England, whose offer was rejected by Marie in December 1537--the English king is said to have told the French ambassador that he was a big man, in need of a similarly sized wife (Marie was quite tall). Marie is said to have replied that, though she was a big woman, she had a very little neck (referring to Henry's execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn).

Happily for Marie, the French king decided to reject Henry's offer and to accept that of James of Scotland. Less happily, marriage negotiations were immediately underway--she was not eager for a second marriage. Despite her wish to delay, by January of 1538, just seven months after her first husband's death, the marriage contract with Scotland was complete.

The couple were married by proxy in France on 9 May 1538. On 10 June, Marie, now queen of Scotland, left France for her new home. As was customary, she left behind her three-year-old son.

After her arrival in Scotland, the new queen worked to reconcile her husband and his mother, Margaret Tudor, whose second marriage, subsequent divorce, and remarriage, had strained relations with the Scottish king. 

 

Marie gave birth to her son James in May 1539 and quickly became pregnant again. The second child was also a boy, but disaster struck in April 1541 when the two young princes died within a week of one another. Margaret, who knew only too well the pain of losing her children, comforted her son and his wife. Margaret Tudor herself died as the year ended, on 18 October 1541.

Double portrait of James V of Scotland and Marie of Guise,
artist unknown

Marie of Guise gave birth to a third child, a girl to be named Mary, on 8 December 1542. But the king of Scotland died just six days later, on 14 December. At her father's death, Mary Stuart became queen of Scotland. 

During the regency of James Hamilton, earl of Arran, Henry VIII made every effort to secure the marriage of Mary, queen of Scots, to his son, the infant Edward, moving from promises and inducements to war, when negotiations failed. Instead, Mary Stuart was betrothed to the French dauphin, another François, and in 1548 the little girl was sent to France to be reared alongside her future husband. 

Marie of Guise, the dowager queen, meanwhile, remained in Scotland. Only after the war with England ended and a treaty had been signed did she travel to France to see her young daughter. In September 1550 she left Scotland for the continent. She landed in Normandy and was able to travel to Longueville to reunite with the fifteen-year-old son from whom she had been separated a dozen years earlier. 

She also reunited with her daughter, the queen of Scotland, and she was able to visit with her recently widowed mother, Antoinette of Bourbon. (Marie's father, Claude of Bourbon, had died in April 1550). But before Marie of Guise returned to Scotland, she suffered one more blow--her son, François, died, still not sixteen years old.

Although the regency of Scotland had been in the hands of James Hamilton, earl of Arran, since James V's death, he was replaced as regent in April 1554. Marie of Guise's position as queen regent was "ratified by the Estates of Scotland." She served as regent until her death in 1560 and seems to have taken to heart the advice of her brother, the duke of Guise, to "deal in Scotland in a spirit of conciliation, introducing much gentleness and moderation into the administration of justice." 

She attempted to steer a judicious middle course for herself, acting in Antonia Fraser's words, "gently and slowly by the use of Parliament," introducing more equitable administration of the law into a country "where administration was either non-existent or archaic in the extreme," aiming for stability in economic matters, and proceeding with "balance and political acumen" in her dealings with the Scots lords, whom she judged to be "jealous and suspicious." She knew the difficulty of her task: "whenever it is a question of meeting out justice or punishment," Marie wrote, the lords "find these things insupportable, thinking always that one wants to give them new laws and change theirs, which in fact have much need of amendment."

Her family predicted that her "tender" methods would result in her failure. Her enemies condemned her as full of "craft and subtleties"; she had a "queenly mind," but "the heart of a man of war." John Knox, her most virulent critic, described her regency in an oft-quoted passage: "a crown [was] put upon her head, as seemly a sight . . . as to put a saddle upon the back of an unruly cow." But her supporters described her differently. The Catholic bishop John Lesley judged her to be a "princess most prudent and very well instructed in sweetness, comely and honest manners and integrity of life":  

Through use and experience, she knew much of our affairs and was very expert, in so far that none was of the nobility and of the common people except very few obscure persons whose engine, mind and manners she knew not perfectly and very well. . . . [S]he did justice with all diligence all her days. . . . [S]he likewise in virtues and many offices of humanity far overcame many other women. . . . [T]herefore she won the hearts of all . . . with wit and wisdom.

Lesley's view was surely as partisan Knox's, but, as Rosalind Marshall writes, "it is interesting to note" that the English chronicler Holinshed's estimation of the regent is much closer to Lesley's than to Knox's: In his view Mary of Guise was "wise and very prudent." During her regency "she kept good justice and was well obeyed in all parts of the realm." 

Marie of Guise, regent of Scotland, died in the sixth year of her regency, on 11 June 1560. She was forty-four years old.

In her extraordinary nineteenth-century history, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses Connected with the Royal Succession of Great Britain, Alice Strickland provides an extended narrative of Marie of Guise (whom she refers to as Mary of Lorraine). The biography spans volume 1 and volume 2. 

In her 1969 biography of Mary, queen of Scots, Antonia Fraser (quoted here) writes about Mary's mother, Marie of Guise.

Rosalind Marshall's Mary of Guise (2001) is also quoted here. 

For a more recent biography, see Melanie Clegg's The Scourge of Henry VIII: The Life of Marie de Guise (2016). 

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

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. 

Mary Sidney Wroth: Pamphilia, Poetry, and Prose

Mary Sidney, lady Wroth (born 18 October 1587)

The namesake of another Mary Sidney (about whom I'll be posting later this month), today's Mary Sidney is the daughter of Robert Sidney (whose mother, Mary Dudley Sidney, was the sister of Guildford Dudley, who married Jane Grey, and of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favorite, "Robin"--got all that?). Mary was the daughter of Sidney and first wife, Barbara Gammage, a wealthy heiress (and cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh).

A 1607 portrait thought to be of
Mary Sidney Wroth

Robert Sidney was both a patron of poets and a poet himself. At Penshurst, he welcomed writers and musicians. Ben Jonson would memorialize the artistic coterie promoted by Sidney in his poem "To Penshurst" (long regarded as the first country-house poem, though Aemilia Lanyer's "To Cooke-ham" probably preceded it). 

In the late 1960s, Robert Sidney's own compositions came to light when a manuscript of his poetry was discovered. Dating to the 1590s, the collection includes a variety of lyric forms, most notably that most popular of Renaissance English forms, the sonnet. (If you're interested, you can read about Robert Sidney, the discovery of his manuscript, and the poems themselves by clicking here.)

Mary Sidney's uncle, Sir Philip Sidney, has long been recognized as one of the great poets of early-modern England, but for her aunt and namesake, the third Sidney sibling, that took a bit longer. The elder Mary Sidney is now also recognized as a superlative patron, editor and publisher (of her brother Sir Philip's work) and, more importantly, writer. (As I noted above, I'll be posting on Mary Sidney Herbert later this month.)

Given these literary antecedents and models, that the younger Mary Sidney should choose to become a writer makes perfect sense--though it has taken centuries for her to gain (or, rather, to regain) recognition as a writer. 

In 1604 the younger Mary Sidney was married--unhappily--to Sir Robert Wroth, which has given her the name--Lady Mary Wroth--by which she is now most widely known, if for no other reason, I suspect, than to reduce confusion with her aunt, Mary Sidney (and even her grandmother, Mary [Dudley] Sidney). 

The accomplished Lady Mary
Sidney Wroth, with a lute

As Lady Mary Wroth, she was a member of the court of James I and his wife, Anne of Denmark--the queen was herself a great patron of the arts who was particularly interested in the staging of court masques.

I first encountered Lady Mary Wroth, in fact, not as a writer but as a performer, noted for her participation in the 1605 production of Ben Jonson's The Masque of Blackness and its 1608 sequel, The Masque of Beauty. (Jonson would dedicate The Alchemist to Wroth.)

But Mary Sidney Wroth was more than a performer of work written and produced by others or the recipient of literary compliments, however graceful and flattering.

A reference to her as early as 1613 comments on her poetry and says that "her uncle's noble vein renews" in her. Ben Jonson also refers to Wroth copying out ("inscribing") her poems for private distribution among readers, a typical form of "publication" for early-modern writers.

Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania (1621) was the first prose romance published by an English woman writer. This pastoral narrative was modeled on Sir Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, a pastoral romance composed at Penshurst and, he says, written to entertain his sister, Mary Sidney, countess of Pembroke. Wroth's Urania was dedicated to her dear friend--and literary patron--Susan de Vere, countess of Montgomery (the daughter of the Elizabethan poet and courtier Edward de Vere).

Attached to the Urania was Wroth's sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, modeled on Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella. In its published version, Wroth's sequence included eighty-three sonnets and twenty songs. Among all the sonnet sequences published in England during the Renaissance, Wroth's is unique, written from the perspective of a female lover, Pamphilia, to a male beloved, Amphilanthus.* But this published version of the sequence is a revision of an earlier version of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus--a manuscript version, copied in Wroth's own hand, contains 110 sonnets and songs.

Wroth's sonnet sequence not only follows and subverts the model of sequences like Astrophil and Stella, but within the sequence is the "crown"--a series of fourteen linked sonnets. The series begins with Wroth's most well-known poem, "In this strange labyrinth, how shall I turn?" The fourteenth (and last) line of each sonnet in this "crown" becomes the first line of the next until the last sonnet in the series: its final line, "In this strange labyrinth, how shall I turn?" takes us back to the beginning, thus bringing the crown full circle.

(The corona, like the sonnet itself, is an Italian poetic form. Sir Philip Sidney had included a corona in Arcadia, linking ten ten-line lyrics and describing this form as "that kind of verse which is called the Crown." Wroth's father, Robert Sidney, also experimented with a crown, notably a crown of sonnets, but he completes only four sonnets and the beginning of a fifth, noting the failure of his effort with "the rest . . . doth want.")

In addition to her prose narrative and her sonnet sequence, with its embedded "Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love," Wroth also composed an original pastoral drama, probably about 1620, Love's Victory. In this she may also have followed Sir Philip Sidney's model--his one-act masque, The Lady of May, was written and performed for Queen Elizabeth in 1578 or 1579, its text preserved in a manuscript copy of Arcadia.

Wroth's life was not without its personal difficulties and complications--not least of which was the scandal that resulted from her daring to publish Urania. I'll leave that to you, if you're interested--you will find an excellent biographical essay here, and it includes a discussion of the "storm of criticism" that followed the publication of Urania.

You will find a complete online edition of her Pamphilia to Amphilanthus here. For Urania, I recommend the edition (abridged) by Mary Ellen Lamb, Mary Wroth: The Countess of Montgomery's Urania. The text of Wroth's pastoral play Love's Victory is in S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne Davies's Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents.

And for an excellent analysis of "why women in the English Renaissance wrote so few sonnet sequences in comparison with Continental women writers and English male writers," I recommend Rosalind Smith's Sonnets and the English Woman Writer, 1560-1621: The Politics of Absence.

And, by the way--while it was originally thought that Wroth's is the first sonnet sequence written by an English woman, it now seems that is not the case. Anne Vaughan Locke (1530-c. 1590) was the first woman to compose a sonnet sequence-- Locke’s A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner was published in 1560, a sequence of 26 sonnets based on Psalm 51. (Actually she was not only the first Englishwoman to write a sonnet sequence, but the first English writer to do so.) Wroth's is certainly the first Petrarchan sequence, with its focus on secular love--though Mary, queen of Scots also wrote sonnets based on Petrarchan models. You can sample by clicking here.

*There were sonnet sequences written from the perspective of female lovers on the Continent--Gaspara Stampa and Louise Labé both wrote Petrarchan sonnets from the point-of-view of a female speaker, as we've seen in earlier posts.

Mary Tudor, Queen of England

Mary Tudor (crowned 1 October 1553)

Mary Tudor was crowned queen of England on 1 October 1553.

Queen Mary of England, 1554,
portrait by Hans Eworth

The succession of a woman to the throne of England horrified many, including the Protestant reformer John Knox, who denounced “gynecocracy,” or rule by women, and whose astonishing First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, published in 1558, has provided the title for this blog.* According to Knox,

To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to His revealed will and approved ordinance, and finally it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice. 

This uncompromising assessment of a woman’s right to govern serves as both thesis and refrain in Knox's condemnation of female sovereignty--and in 1558, both Scotland and England were ruled by women. 

In Scotland, the infant Mary Stuart had become queen regnant in 1542, when her father, King James V, died just a few days after she was born. James Hamilton, earl of Arran, was the first governor of Scotland during the queen’s minority, but in 1554 he had been replaced by Mary’s mother, Marie of Guise, who was confirmed as queen regent. 

In England, meanwhile, yet another Mary had also become queen; in 1553, following the death of her half-brother Edward VI, Mary Tudor, the eldest of Henry VIII’s three children, succeeded to the throne, becoming the first queen regnant in England.

Although there is no equivocation in the title of his work, Knox opens his “blast” with strategic indirection. Rather than attack female rulers at the outset, his preface opens with an expression of astonishment. “Wonder it is,” he begins, 

that amongst so many pregnant wits as the isle of Great Britain hath produced, so many godly and zealous preachers as England did sometime nourish, and amongst so many learned men and men of grave judgment as this day by Jezebel are exiled, none is found so stout of courage, so faithful to God, nor loving to their native country that they dare admonish the inhabitants of that isle how abominable before God is the empire or rule of a wicked woman, yea, of a traitoress and a bastard. . . . 

Of course Queen Mary is the “Jezebel,” the “wicked woman” whose birth and reign are both illegitimate, but, at least at the outset, Knox’s focus is on the failures of the “esteemed watchmen” of the nation rather than on the “cruel woman” who rules it. 

And without being explicit about it, he includes himself in his bitter indictment of the “universal negligence” and the “universal and ungodly silence” that have allowed her rule: “We see our country set forth [as] a prey to foreign nations,” we see the “blood of our brethren” shed “most cruelly,” we all know the “monstrous” rule of a woman to be “the only occasion of all those miseries,” and yet “with silence we pass the time, as though the matter did nothing appertain to us.” 

But Knox, having considered the “contrary examples of the ancient prophets”—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel—has suddenly been awakened. In “this our miserable age,” he writes, we are “bound to admonish the world”; it is “our duty” to reveal the truth to the “ignorant and blind world” whether that ignorant and blind world wants to hear it or not. To “hide the talent committed to our charge” is to ignore duty and to incur condemnation. 

Inching carefully forward, Knox writes, “I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman shall reign and have empire above man. And yet with us all there is such silence as if God there with were nothing offended.” But the “empire of women” is an “impiety” and “abomination” of such importance that a man should stand ready to “hazard his life.” 

And so, recalling the faith, courage, and constancy not only of the Old Testament prophets but also of the New Testament apostles and identifying himself as one of “God’s messengers,” Knox takes up the heavy burden: 

. . . therefore I say that of necessity it is that this monstriferous empire of women—which amongst all enormities that this day do abound upon the face of the whole earth is most detestable and damnable—be openly revealed and plainly declared to the world to the end that some may repent and be saved. 

We have been misled by princes, Knox reminds his readers, but even “more than princes,” we have been misled by the “great multitude” of men who, mistaken or misguided, have helped “to establish women in their kingdoms and empires, not understanding how abominable, odious, and detestable is all such usurped authority in the presence of God.”

Although Knox admits that he cannot understand why God Himself has not removed such a female tyrant from her “unjust authority,” he predicts her end will come--and soon. "I fear not," he says, 

that the day of vengeance which shall apprehend that horrible monster, Jezebel of England, and such as maintain her monstrous cruelty is already appointed in the council of the eternal, and I verily believe that it is so nigh that she shall not reign so long in tyranny as hitherto she hath done, when God shall declare Himself to be her enemy, when He shall pour forth contempt upon her according to her cruelty and shall kindle the hearts of such as sometimes did favor her with deadly hatred against her that they may execute His judgments.

Knox’s prediction that Mary would not reign long was proven correct. Mary Tudor’s death was near at the very moment Knox proclaimed that “the trumpet hath once blown”: the English queen died on 17 November 1558, a matter of a few months after The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women was published.

If Knox felt any triumph at the death of the woman who had presumed to rule England, it could not have lasted for long, for she was succeeded on the throne by another female ruler, her half-sister Elizabeth. And, shortly thereafter, yet another queen joined the ranks of “monstrous” women when Catherine de’ Medici became regent in France.

And as I hope this blog has illustrated over the last few months, despite Knox's outrage at the "monstrous" regiment of women, women had been governing--and governing well--for centuries. And would continue to do so, no matter how "monstriferous" he (and many men) thought it was . . .

*This post has been adapted from Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe, where I give an extended analysis of Knox's arguments, of the debate about female sovereignty that was ignited by The First Blast of the Trumpet, and about women writer's responses to the question of women's political abilities.

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.

Sophia Dorothea of Celle, A Forced Marriage, Then an Imprisonment

Sophia Dorothea of Celle, princess of Hanover (born 15 September 1666) 

Sophia Dorothea of Celle's life is a tragic one--and her story is like that of many other inconvenient royal and aristocratic women who were judged to be "immoral," "crazy," "barren," or otherwise "dangerous" to the powerful men (and, to be fair, women) in their lives.

Sophia Dorothea was married at age sixteen much against her will. The marriage was arranged between her father, George William, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Celle, and his sister-in-law, Sophia of the Palatinate, electress of Hanover and, under the settlement act of 1701, heir presumptive to the English throne (she was a daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, who herself was the daughter of King James I of England)--for the English succession, German Hanoverian Protestants who had never lived in England were preferred to any English Stuart heirs suspected of being Catholic or of having Catholic sympathies.

Sophia Dorothea of Celle,
c. 1686

For Sophia of Hanover, the motivations for her son's marriage were financial--according to Sophia Dorothea's biographer, the young woman was "the richest heiress in Germany."

But, even as she maneuvered to arrange the marriage of her son, George Louis, to Sophia Dorothea, the princess palatinate despised her brother-in-law George William, his wife (Eleonore d'Esmier d'Olbreuse, an exiled French Protestant aristocrat, who had been George William's mistress before she became his wife, ten years after Sophia Dorothea's birth), and her son's bride-to-be, Sophia Dorothea.

As for Sophia Dorothea herself, on hearing the announcement of the planned match, she "shouted, sobbed, stormed, smashed to smithereens the portrait of George Louis, set in in diamonds, that her future mother-in-law had brought for her," and insisted that she would not marry him, professing that she would never leave her mother and would prefer dying at Celle than marrying her father's choice. When first introduced to Sophia of Hanover, Sophia Dorothea is reported to have fainted. 

For his part, George Louis was impressed by what his mother called "a tidy sum to pocket," if not the bride herself. By the terms of the marriage contract, Sophia Dorothea's wealth became his. (All of this offering one more great example of traditional marriage.)

The two were married on 21 November 1682. Sophia Dorothea produced the requisite children--a son, George Augustus (who would become King George II of England), and a daughter, Sophia Dorothea (the younger Sophia Dorothea became queen of Prussia, but her marriage to Frederick William, king of Prussia, was also very unhappy).

While George Louis had a long-time mistress, Ehrengard von der Schulenburg, one of his mother's ladies-in-waiting (this relationship produced two daughters), the mere rumor in 1692 that Sophia Dorothea had a lover (the Swedish count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck) resulted in her banishment and imprisonment. (Königsmarck disappeared in 1694, his death probably arranged by George Louis.) George Louis divorced his wife as well--or, rather, he had his marriage "dissolved" on the basis that his wife had abandoned him.

From 1694 until her death on 13 November 1726, thirty-three years later, Sophia Dorothea was held captive, imprisoned in Ahlden House, on the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Although George Louis became king of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 August 1714, his British subjects did not know his wife was alive. Ehrengard von der Schulenburg moved to England with George Louis, now George I. There she was heaped with titles: on 18 July 1716 she was created duchess of Munster, marchioness of Dungannon, countess of Dungannon, and baroness Dundalk (Irish titles). On 19 March 1719 she was created duchess of Kendal, countess of Feversham, and baroness Glastonbury (English titles). In 1723, the Holy Roman Emperor created her princess of Eberstein, which some historians have regarded as evidence that she and King George had married in secret. (His relationship with Ehrengard did not keep George I from having other mistresses, however.)

I began this post by referring to other royal or aristocratic women who became "inconvenient" and were simply removed from the scene. Here are just a few: 

• Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of England (c. 1122-1203): imprisoned by King Henry II of England between 1173 and 1189, though, unlike most of the women on this list, she made it out alive; 
• Joan of England, queen of Sicily (1165-1195): Eleanor of Aquitaine's daughter, she was imprisoned after her husband's death in 1189 by his successor, Tancred, but ultimately freed by her brother, King Richard, who took time off during his trip to the Holy Land to secure her release in 1190;
• Isabel, countess of Gloucester (c. 1173-1217): discarded after ten years' of marriage by her husband John shortly after he became king of England, she was deprived of title and possessions and closely held in Winchester and then Sherborn for fourteen years until 1213, when John, needing money, sold her off to a new "husband" for what historian Dan Jones calls an "astronomical" sum;
• Eleanor of Brittany (c. 1184-10 August 1241): the granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the sole heir of her brother Arthur (the son of Geoffrey, the fourth son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine), Eleanor had a potential claim to the English throne (as well as to Brittany and vast holdings throughout England, Anjou, and Aquitaine) that threatened her uncle, King John of England (the fifth son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine); John had Eleanor imprisoned in 1202, and she remained a prisoner after John's death, when his son, Henry III, succeeded him; she died, still a caprive, on 10 August 1241;
• Elizabeth de Burgh, queen of Scotland (c. 1284-1327): the second wife of Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland, she was imprisoned after her husband's defeat at the battle of Methven in 1306, sent to Edward II, king of England, and imprisoned in a variety of locations from October 1306 until 1314, when she was finally returned to Scotland;
• Christina Bruce (c. 1278-1357): Robert the Bruce's sister, she was sent to the convent of Sixhills after her brother's defeat at the battle of Methven, but released, marrying in 1326;
• Mary Bruce (c. 1282-1323): Robert the Bruce's sister, she was betrayed after her brother's 1306 defeat, imprisoned in a stone and iron cage, and then hung out of doors for public display at Roxborough Castle; her imprisonment in these harsh outdoor cages lasted from 1306 until 1310 when she was moved to a different confinement, her release coming after the battle of Bannockburn in 1314;
• Isabella MacDuff, countess of Buchan (d. c. 1313?): supporter of Robert the Bruce, she was imprisoned in a stone and iron cage and then hung out of doors for public display at Berwick Castle from 1306 until 1310, then transferred to a different confinement, and transferred again in 1313, after which her fate is unknown; 
• Marjorie Bruce (c. 1296-1316): Robert the Bruce's daughter, she was transferred to Watton Priory after her father's defeat at the battle of Methven in 1306 and held in solitary confinement until 1314, after the battle of Bannockburn--King Edward I had originally planned to build a cage for Marjorie, like the ones in which he imprisoned her aunts, and display her at the Tower of London, but he ultimately decided on the convent instead
  (Note: for all of these women, their imprisonments outlasted Edward I, who died in 1307, and were continued by his son, Edward II);
• Margaret of Burgundy (1290-1315) and her sister-in-law Blanche of Burgundy (c. 1296-c. 1326) definitely proved themselves "inconvenient" when they were accused of having committed adultery with two brothers, who admitted having sexual relationships with the women (though it is likely that the accusations were true, both men were hideously tortured in order to extract their testimony); both women were tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment, underground, at Château Gaillard in Normandy (Margaret of Burgundy became nominal queen of France when her husband became Louis X, but she died a short time after his accession, perhaps murdered so he could remarry; Blanche was also nominally queen of France when her husband became Charles IV in 1322, after which he had their marriage annulled);
• Maria of Portugal (c. 1310-1350s): abandoned and imprisoned by her husband Alfonso XI of Castile;
• Blanche of Bourbon (1338-1361): repudiated by Pedro of Castile in 1352, the day after their marriage, and imprisoned until her death; 
• Leanor Teles (c. 1350s-1386): wife of Ferdinand I of Portugal, regent for her daughter, Beatrice, but overthrown, exiled to Castile, and imprisoned; 
• Beatrice of Castile (1353-1368): the eldest daughter of Pedro I of Castile, forced out of her claim to the throne of Castile and into a convent; 
• Blanche of Navarre (1424-64): repudiated by her husband, Enrique of Castile after thirteen years of marriage and send back to Navarre, where she was imprisoned and deprived of her claim to the throne; 
• Jeanne d'Harcourt (c. 1451-1488): repudiated by her husband René II of Anjou after fourteen years of marriage because of her "sterility," returned to her father's chateau at Tancarville where she lived under guard; 
• Enrique of Castile's daughter Juana of Castile (1462-1530), la Beltraneja: her legitimacy disputed, her title of queen of Castile lost (she lost it to Isabella of Castile), and consigned to a convent from 1480 until her death; 
• Juana I of Castile and Aragon, Isabella of Castile's daughter, la Loca: who inherited the titles of her mother and father, but whose husband, father, and son decided she was crazy and who was imprisoned for nearly fifty years, from 1507 until her death in 1555;
• Jeanne of France (1464-1505): the younger sister of Anne of France, repudiated by her husband, Louis XI after twenty-two years of marriage on the grounds, he claimed, of non-consummation, but really so he could marry Anne of Brittany (Jeanne entered into a convent and ultimately became a saint);
• Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536): repudiated by Henry VIII after more than twenty years of marriage, and banished after 1531; 
• Margaret Douglas (1515-78): the daughter of Henry VIII's older sister, Margaret Tudor, she was imprisoned in the Tower from 1536 until 1537 by Henry VIII for having engaged herself secretly to Thomas Howard and branded as "illegitimate," then imprisoned again by Henry in 1540 and by Queen Elizabeth in 1566 and again in 1576; 
• Mary, queen of Scots (1542-1587): imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth of England from 1568 until she was executed in 1587; 
• Catherine Grey (1540-68): imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth from 1561 until 1563 after a clandestine marriage, her marriage annulled, her children declared illegitimate, and forcibly removed to a series of confinements, dying in Suffolk at the age of twenty-seven;
• Mary Grey (c. 1545-1578): imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth from 1565 until 1572, after a clandestine marriage, and while ultimately released and "rehabilitated," she died in 1578 at the age of thirty-three;
• Arbella Stuart (1575-1615): to all intents and purposes imprisoned by her grandmother, Bess of Hardwick, to keep her safe and prepare her to inherit the English throne after Queen Elizabeth's death, then imprisoned by King James I from 1610 to 1615 after a clandestine marriage and labelled as insane, dying in the Tower while imprisoned, probably from refusing to eat; 
• Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel (1627-1686): divorced unilaterally by her husband, Charles Louis of the Palatinate, who bigamously married his mistress but maintained control of his "ex" wife in his palace; after nine years, she was allowed to return to her home in Hesse-Kassel; 
• Caroline Matilda of Great Britain (1751-75): arrested in 1772 by her husband, King Christian II of Denmark and Norway, interrogated and pressured to admit an affair, her marriage dissolved and then deported to Celle, where she was imprisoned and died at the age of twenty-three.

And these are just the names that come immediately to mind . . .

Paul Morand's Sophia Dorothea of Celle: The Captive Princess is the only biography I know of--it's a very bad English translation of Morand's French original, but used copies are usually available. 

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.