Mary of Guelders, queen and regent of Scotland: "nubilus et formosa"

Mary of Guelders, queen and regent of Scotland (born 17 January 1433)

The woman who would become queen of Scotland on 3 July 1449, Marie de Gueldres, or, in English, Mary of Guelders, was the daughter of Arnold, duke of Guelders, and Catherine of Cleves. Through her mother, Mary of Guelders had close ties to the Burgundian court--Catherine of Cleves was the daughter of Marie of Burgundy (who became duchess of Cleves through her marriage to Adolph I, duke of Cleves). 

Through her maternal line, then, Mary of Guelders was connected to Burgundy. The duchy of Burgundy was a wealthy and powerful state, one of the most culturally advanced in western Europe. Marie of Burgundy, Mary of Guelders’s grandmother, was the daughter of Philip the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, and the elder sister of Philip the Good, who succeeded his father of duke of Burgundy--thus Philip, duke of Burgundy was Mary of Guelders's maternal great uncle. 

(The Cleves connection is also interesting, in particular to those who love Tudor history, because of one of her descendants--Mary of Guelders's mother, Catherine of Cleves, was the great aunt of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's third wife--the one he divorced.)

Although Guelders was a vassal state of the Holy Roman Empire during this period, it also had critical ties with Burgundy, and Philip of Burgundy offered the duke of Guelders not only his support but a bride, his great niece Mary. Despite these marital ties, Arnold of Guelders would have an uneasy relationship with Burgundy, and Duke Philip eventually turned against him. 

In 1442, during this period of conflict, the nine-year-old Mary of Guelders left her father's court and was sent to Burgundy, where she was placed in the care of Isabel of Portugal, Philip of Burgundy's third wife. There, under the supervision of the remarkable duchess, Mary of Guelders received not only an excellent education, but she could also witness and learn from the political acumen and administrative experience of Isabel of Portugal. 

A possible marriage for Mary of Guelders with Charles, count of Maine, was suggested when she was about twelve years old. A member of the cadet branch of the ruling Valois family, Charles was the son of Yolande of Aragon, daughter of the king of Aragon and duchess of Anjou--the alliance was most likely proposed by the younger Charles's cousin, Charles VII of France. But after Arnold of Guelders informed the duke and duchess of Burgundy that he could not provide the dowry required for his daughter, that match failed to be made. 

But in in 1446, the possibility of a marriage to the king of Scots, James II, arose. While this suggested alliance has been ascribed to the king of France, Charles VII, historian Rosalind K. Marshall notes that "it seems much more likely that the original idea and the initial delicate negotiations were achieved through a network of female connections." 

A sixteenth-century depiction
of the marriage of 
Mary of Guelders and
James II of Scotland
(Lambeth Palace MS 316);
in the manuscript, Mary
is misidentified as "Margaret,"
though she is correctly said to 
be the daughter of the
"Duke of Gelders"

The king of Scotland's mother, Joan Beaufort, was related to Isabel of Portugal (I can't work out the exact relationship--Isabel of Portugal's mother, Philippa of Lancaster, was John of Gaunt's daughter by his first wife, Blanche of Portugal, while Joan Beaufort was the daughter of John of Gaunt's son, John Beaufort, by his third wife, Katherine Swynford.) 

Joan Beaufort, queen of Scotland, died in 1445, however, though it was "not long after" her death that "soundings were being taken" about the potential of an alliance between Scotland and Burgundy. 

By June of 1446, Scottish ambassadors were in Guelders, when Mary of Guelders may have been visiting her father. The next year, Arnold of Guelders was known to be discussing the possibility of the marriage. 

In 1448, James II of Scotland wrote to Charles VII of France, asking the king for advice about a bride--and the king of France suggested Mary of Guelders. But, as Marshall claims, "[n]o doubt" the king of Scotland already knew that Mary was "the chosen bride." 

I have examined the political connections among royal and aristocratic women in the late-medieval and early-modern periods myself, and although I love the idea that the marriage between Mary of Guelders and the Scottish king is the result of the "delicate negotiations" between women, there really is no evidence. One of Isabel of Portugal's great interests as duchess of Burgundy was arranging influential marital alliances, but Marshall notes only that the queen of Scotland and the duchess of Burgundy "were almost certainly in touch with each other." While the potential of a marriage might have been raised by the two women, the death of Joan Beaufort in 1445 would seem to make her role in bringing the alliance to fruition unlikely. 

Meanwhile, as Scottish historian Callum Watson notes, the French king was "a kind of international marriage broker for the Scots during the 1440s":  

It was thanks to King Charles that James II's other sisters were married off to such luminaries as the Duke of Brittany, the Archduke of Austria, the Lord of Veere, and the Count of Geneva. When the time came, Charles also encouraged Philip to apply pressure to Mary's father to accept a match between his eldest daughter and the Scottish king. The union was hugely appealing to the Scots as it provided the royal administration with connections to the courts of Burgundy (through her uncle), Gueldres (through her father), and Cleves (through her mother).

Whoever was responsible for the marriage, the treaty for the marriage was was agreed upon by Philip of Burgundy and James II on 1 April 1449. (And Philip of Burgundy paid the dowry for Mary of Guelders.) In the treaty, Mary of Guelders is described as "young and beautiful" (or, in the Latin of the document, nubilus et formosa). Suitable preparations for Mary of Guelders's wedding to James II of Scotland were soon made. She left for Scotland on 9 June 1449, arriving in Leith, just north of Edinburgh, on 18 June. Her marriage to the nineteen-year-old king took place on 3 July 1449.

Not much is known about Mary of Guelders for more than a decade after her marriage. As the Scottish antiquarian David Laing wrote in the nineteenth century, "During the eleven years that intervened between the . . . marriage of Mary of Gueldres in Scotland with James II in July 1449, and her husband's death, her name is not so much as once mentioned in connexion with any public event."

During this period, as James II's queen, Mary of Guelders received gifts and grants. She made charitable donations. As queens were expected to do, she appeared in parliament to intercede with her husband for those seeking his favor and forgiveness. She gave birth to a short-lived son in 1451, then to another son and heir, who would become James III, in 1451. Two daughters and three more sons followed. So, between her marriage and her husband's death in 1460, Mary of Guelders gave birth to seven children. 

The ruins of Roxburgh Castle
(photograph from 1936)

Mary of Guelders may have been present when her husband besieged and took Blackness Castle in 1453 (the siege and recapture of the castle occurred during the king's conflict with the Douglas clan). 

But the queen was not present in 1460, when James II attempted to retake Roxburgh Castle, held by the English. Nor was he so lucky. He was injured by a piece of shrapnel, but it wasn't from a weapon belonging to the English forces--he was standing too close to one of his own cannons, which backfired. He died on 3 August as a result of his injury.

Nevertheless, the siege of the castle continued. On learning of her husband's death, Mary of Guelders, traveled with her nine-year-old son from Edinburgh to Kelso, near Roxburgh, making sure that the Scots "finished her late husband's work." The castle fell on 8 August, and  James III was crowned at Kelso Abbey on 10 August. Mary of Guelders had Roxburgh Castle razed.

Mary of Guelders, queen of Scotland, would die just three years after her husband, but during this brief time, she was regent for her son, now James III, with the advice of a regency council. Although these men seemed to believe there was "little good" in handing over the "keeping of the kingdom  a woman," the new regent acted ably. 

Later historians would conclude that she was feeble-minded and/or promiscuous--these are assessments of female rule that have appeared consistently throughout my entries on female rulers in this blog. But the reality is (see here and here, for example) that she acted competently in her role as regent, despite disruptive factions in Scotland and pressures from the contending parties in the Wars of the Roses in England. 

Notably, Mary received Margaret of Anjou, in 1460, after Henry VI's queen was forced to flee England. The two women may have considered a marriage between the Lancastrian heir, Edward, and Mary, the eldest daughter of Mary of Guelders. Mary of Guelders again offered shelter to Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI after their defeat at the battle of Towton in 1461, and the Lancastrian pair stayed in Scotland for a year before the political situation in England made the situation too difficult for the dowager queen. 

At this point, Mary of Guelders arranged for the deposed English king and queen to leave Scotland--she paid them to go. At the same time, she seems to have entertained the possibility of a marriage with Edward IV, the Yorkist king who had replaced Henry VI. But nothing came of that, and when Margaret of Anjou returned to Scotland once more, in 1463, the Scottish queen assisted her again before Margaret left in July of that year, seeking assistance in Burgundy.

Mary of Guelders, queen of Scotland, died soon after Margaret of Anjou's departure--according to Bishop Leslie, the queen died on 16 November of 1463--she is known to have become ill in the fall--but the date is recorded by the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland as 1 December 1464, with the year clearly an error. (Her funeral was not held until June 1464.) The December date is conventionally given for her death.

In addition to her political roles, as regent, Mary of Guelders undertook a "programme of building works" that would "articulate and define her power and status." As part of this her architectural program, she founded a hospital on Castle Hill in Stirling and founded the Trinity College Church and hospital in Edinburgh: 

Queen Mary dedicated her foundation to the praise and honour of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, St Ninian—to whom she appears to have had an especial dedication—and all saints. . . . The buildings included a perpetual college, or collegiate church, which was designed to secure masses for the souls of the queen, her deceased husband, and their families in perpetuity. Mary chose the church as her preferred burial location. 

Her intention was to be buried at her foundation rather than with her husband at Holyroodhouse. As Rachel Delman and Jill Harrison note, this decision "demonstrated that she had ample wealth to afford an impressive burial site indicative of her queenly status": 

It was also a tangible expression of a woman’s personal choice and agency over where and how she and her family were to be remembered at a time when female agency was limited due to the patriarchal power structures of medieval society. The foundation demonstrated Mary’s charity on a grand, public scale through its sophisticated architectural design and its prominent original location on a busy thoroughfare frequented by pilgrims and visitors travelling to and from the continent.

Unfortunately, Mary of Guelders's collegiate church was dismantled in 1954 in order to make way for a railway--the "buildings’ royal significance and the feelings of their nineteenth century supporters appear to have been ignored," and the "powerful narrative" of Mary of Guelders "was forgotten."

For a bit of a happier note, see Rachel M. Delman and Jill Harrison, "Reviving the Trinity: Making Mary of Guelders’ Fifteenth-Century Built Legacy Relevant in Twenty-First Century Scotland," Royal Studies Journal 12, no. 1 (2025), here. I've linked to quotations from this article, above. If you have access, I also recommend Rachel M. Delman's "Mary of Guelders and the Architecture of Queenship in Fifteenth-Century Scotland," Scottish Historical Review 102, no. 2 (2023),  https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.2023.0611. 

I've also linked here to Rosalind Marshall's Scottish Queens, 1034–1714, published in 2003. For what seems to be a revised version of this book, click here.

Fiona Downie's 2006 She is But a Woman Queenship in Scotland 1424–1463 is also forthcoming in a new edition.

Isabelle, Duchess of Lorraine and Regent of Anjou

Isabelle, duchess of Lorraine and regent of Anjou (died 28 February 1453)

A seventeenth-century
imagined portrait of Isabella
by Ambito Fiorentino
(Uffizi)

Born about the year 1410,* Isabelle of Lorraine would inherit the duchy of Lorraine after the death of her father, Charles II ("the Bold). From 25 January 1431 until her death more than twenty years later, she was duchess of Lorraine in her own right (suo jure).

Isabelle's mother, Margaret of the Palatinate, was known for her piety, her confessor noting that she lived an "austere life," devoting herself to fasting and "wearing sack cloth." 

But Margaret didn't spend her entire life in prayer--she also appeared at the head of her husband's army, her support of the duke and her unexpected appearance credited with having scared her husband's enemies into running away. As Marion Chaigne-Legouy observes, the young Isabelle received "an extraordinary political education" (La princesse reçut vraisemblablement une éducation politique) from her mother.

In 1418, a marriage was proposed for Isabelle with René of Anjou. Negotiations for the alliance between Charles II of Lorraine and René's father, Louis II of Naples, were begun under the auspices of the cardinal of Bar (René's great uncle, on his mother's side, brother of the formidable Violant of Bar, queen of Aragon). Important, too, in the "matrimonial strategy" behind the alliance was Yolande of Aragon, duchess of Anjou, René's politically adept mother.

A treaty of marriage was signed in 1418 and ratified in 1419 after the cardinal designated René as heir to the duchy of Bar. It was hoped that the alliance would end conflicts between Bar and Lorraine. The young bride and groom were married in 1420 and began living in Lorraine, under the guardianship of Isabelle's father. 

Isabelle gave birth to her first child, a son, in 1424. He was quickly followed by a second son, in 1427, twins (a boy and a girl) in 1428, and a daughter, Margaret (who would marry Henry VI of England) in 1430. After Margaret, Isabelle of Lorraine would have five further children.

But in 1431, Isabelle's life took a slightly different turn. In addition to performing the role which she was expected to fulfill, producing an heir, she also gained a more public role. After the death of her father in 1431, she inherited the duchy of Lorraine. But her cousin, Antoine de Vaudémont (son of Duke Charles II's younger brother), disputed her inheritance and, allied with the duke of Burgundy, went to war. 

Fighting for Lorraine, Isabelle's husband René was captured at the battle of Bulgnéville and imprisoned, eventually transferred into the custody of the duke of Burgundy. Defending her rights and inheritance, Isabelle raised an army to free her husband and negotiated a cease fire. (Not to downplay René's imprisonment, but it doesn't seem to have been too tough--he received visitors, enjoyed "furloughs," and studied, painted, and pursued other activities of interest.)

Various concessions were made to free René, including one that indicated his two sons would be held as hostage for his good behavior. He was released from his imprisonment in 1432, though he had to remain in the Burgundian city of Dijon. 

After Isabelle's rights in Lorraine were recognized by the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund I, in 1434, René's parole was revoked, and he returned to his imprisonment. He would be held by the duke of Burgundy for two more years and released only after he paid a "punishing" ransom.

In the mean time, René of Anjou's elder brother died in 1435, and René inherited the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine. He also inherited what historian Helen Castor has called "grandly empty titles," in particular "his ambitious grandfather's accumulations of paper claims to far-flung crowns," the kingdoms of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem. Still imprisoned, the new "king" of Naples sent his wife into Italy, where she was to act as regent on his behalf.

Woodcut illustration of Isabelle of Lorraine,

detail from Philippus Bergomensis, 

De Claris Mulieribus, 1497

(Harvard Art Museum, M5249)

Although Isabelle had supporters for her role in Naples, there were also opponents, including Alphonso of Aragon. Isabelle maintained under "difficult conditions" (condicions difficiles) her husband's claim to the crown of Naples until he was released from his imprisonment in 1437. The marriage of the duke of Burgundy's niece to John, Isabelle and René's eldest son, helped to effect René's release. (Unfortunately, Louis, the younger of the two boys held as hostages, died while being held as a hostage for his father.)

Once her husband was released from captivity and arrived in Naples in 1438, Isabelle of Lorraine left Italy and returned to her duchy of Lorraine. Back in Lorraine, the duchess focused her attention on consolidating her power. To that end, she was finally victorious over Antoine de Vaudémont, who agreed to give up his claim to Lorraine in 1441. Isabelle's eldest daughter, Yolande, became a "pledge of piece"--she was married to Antoine de Vaudémont's son.**

By 1442, having definitively lost Naples to Alphonso of Aragon, René of Anjou returned to France. His mother, Yolande of Aragon, who had governed Anjou in his absence, died in November of that year, after her son's return. While he remained in Anjou, Isabelle stayed in her duchy of Lorraine. 

In 1444, Isabelle's daughter, Margaret of Anjou, was betrothed to Henry VI of England. In 1445, Isabelle appointed her son, John, to act on her behalf in Lorraine. She would travel to Angers, to join her husband, in 1453. She died there, on 28 February, at the age of fifty-three, while René was preparing another expedition into Italy.

Information about Isabelle of Lorraine is found primarily in biographies of her husband, René of Anjou, and of her daughter, Margaret of Anjou. Mary Ann Hookham's The Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England and France, which I have linked to, above, has particularly detailed information about René, but it also has one of the most extended discussions of Isabelle that I have been able to find. 

The political role of Isabelle of Lorraine is the focus of Marion Chaigne-Legouy's "Reine «ordinaire», reine «extraordinaire» : la place de Jeanne de Laval et d’Isabelle de Lorraine dans le gouvernement de René d’Anjou," in Noël-Yves Tonnerre and Jean-Michel Matz's René d’Anjou (1409-1480): Pouvoirs et gouvernement.

*There is some uncertainty about the year of Isabelle's birth. A variety of online sources in Englsh offer the date of 1400 for Isabelle's birth, but standard reference sources like the Encyclopédie Larousse and the Nouvelle Biographie Générale indicate her date of birth as 1410. Scholarly biographies of René of Anjou, like Margaret L. Kekewich's recent The Good King: René of Anjou and Fifteenth-Century Europe, note that when René married Isabelle on 24 October 1420, he was eleven and she was ten. 

**Yolande of Anjou, born in 1428, would eventually inherit the duchy of Lorraine after the death of her nephew, Nicholas I (her elder brother John's son) in 1473. Yolande turned over the rule of Lorraine to her son, René II. When Yolande's father, René of Anjou, died in 1480, she inherited from him the duchy of Bar, and once again ceded power to her son.

Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford, and Joan of Arc

Anne of Burgundy, duchess of Bedford (born 30 September 1404) 

Anne of Burgundy, kneeling
praying to St. Anne,
from the Bedford Hours
(British Library MS Add 18850,
fol. 257v)

Born in Arras on 30 September 1404, Anne of Burgundy was the daughter of John II, duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Bavaria--to be more specific, Anne was the sixth of seven daughters born to the couple. 

Although she died when she was still quite young--she was just twenty-eight at the time of her death--Anne of Burgundy was nevertheless one of several notable women in her family who played key roles during the Hundred Years' War. 

Anne's mother was regent of Burgundy twice, first on behalf of her husband and then on behalf of her son, Philip III, duke of Burgundy. 

Anne's elder sister, Margaret, was betrothed to Charles, the dauphin of France (son of Charles VI), in 1394, when she was three years old, but Charles died in 1401. Two years later, in 1403, she married, Louis, who had become dauphin after the death of his brother. (Louis died in 1415, leaving her, at age sixteen, a widow for the second time.)

Anne's sister-in-law was the politically adept infanta Isabel of Portugal, who married Anne's brother, Philip III (Isabel was his third wife) in 1430. (Isabel's son, Charles the Bold, was the father of Mary of Burgundy, the mother of Margaret of Austria; he married--as his third wife--Margaret of York.) 

And here's a connection to recent posts on this blog about the Breton War of Succession: Anne's younger sister, Isabelle, married Olivier, count of Penthièvre, the grandson of Jeanne de Penthièvre, duchess of Brittany. She was only six when she married in 1406, and she died in 1412. 

(There are probably many other connections I'm missing, but these are the ones that spring immediately to mind.)

So, back to Anne of Burgundy herself. Details about her childhood are scanty. After her birth in Arras, Anne spent much of her childhood in the ducal palace in Dijon. In 1412, when she was about seven years old, Anne traveled with her mother and two sisters to Paris. In 1418, when she was about thirteen, she left her mother and Dijon and lived with her younger sister, Agnes, the two spending at least some time at the château Montbard, another ducal residence. Anne and Agnes were at Montbard when they learned of their father's assassination on 10 September 1419. She attended a ceremony in his honor in October, though with an empty coffin--his body was not returned to Dijon until 1420.

The finances of Burgundy were under severe stress at this point--Anne's brother, the new duke, finding that money was scarce and the expenses of his mother and sisters were great. And thus, by 1420, he was eager to arrange a marriage for Anne.  

As early as 1412, Anne's father had sought to marry Anne to Henry IV's eldest son, Henry, but after the prince succeeded his father in 1413, becoming Henry V, that alliance no longer made sense for the new English king. After the signing of the 1420 treaty of Troyes, in which Charles VI of France disinherited his son in favor of Henry V, Henry V married Katherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI and his queen, Isabeau of Bavaria.

Still, Burgundy sought to position itself advantageously during the contest between England and France, so an English alliance remained desireable. Philip III, duke of Burgundy, arranged a marriage to strengthen the ties between Burgundy and England. His sister, Anne of Burgundy, was married to the English king's younger brother, John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford. At the same time, Anne's twice-widowed sister, Margaret, was married to Arthur, count of Richmond.)

John of Lancaster was the third son of Henry IV of England. John was born on 20 June 1389, just two days after the signing of a truce between the English and the French, though disputes between the two countries continued. In 1399, after Richard II was deposed, John of Lancaster's father had become the king of England. As Henry IV consolidated power in England, France was involved in civil wars, but after Henry IV's death in 1413, his successor, Henry V, turned once more to war in France. 

In 1414, the new king had awarded his brother, John, the title duke of Bedford. By 1415, when Henry V left England for France, Bedford was experienced not only in military campaigns but in government. During his brother's absence, Bedford governed on his behalf, serving three separate times as lieutenant of the kingdom. After Henry V's death in 1422, Bedford had become regent of France for the new king, Henry VI, then just a few months old. He was also made Lord Protector of England, although he would continue to manage affairs in France. 

In the castle of Montbard, Anne was married by proxy to Bedford in April 1423. The formal marriage ceremony of the eighteen-year-old Anne of Burgundy to the thirty-three-year-old John, duke of Bedford took place in Troyes on 13 May 1423 as a result of the negotiations of the treaty of Amiens, the so-called Triple Alliance. (The treaty negotiated an alliance between England, Burgundy, and Brittany.) 

While the military, diplomatic, and political activities of John, duke of Bedford, figure in a great number of historical sources, much less is available for Anne of Burgundy. Interestingly, one of the most detailed sources of information about Anne's life is an article on the duke of Bedford's will. Another focuses not so much on Anne's life but on her death--or, rather, on the tomb effigy commissioned by her brother, Philip III. 

For many of the brief glimpses of her life, we need to look at histories of the Hundred Years War or at the biographies of her brother and her husband (although, to be fair, while there are many articles about her husband, there seems to be only one full-length biography of John, duke of Bedford). One of the most accessible of these sources is William Hunt's entry for Bedford, in the old (nineteenth-century) edition of the Dictionary of National Biography.

Hunt notes that by 1419, several marriage alliances had been proposed for John: to Jacqueline of Bavaria, the widow of Jean, the fourth son of Charles VI and Isabeau of Bavaria (he was also the fourth dauphin of France); to the daughter  of Frederic IV, burgrave of Nuremberg; to Isabella, the daughter of Charles II, duke of Lorraine (she later married René of Anjou); and, in Hunt's words, "to some kinswoman of Sigismund," the Holy Roman Emperor.

For various reasons, none of these marriages had worked out for him, so John was available when the alliance with Burgundy offered itself. In his biography of Anne's brother, Philip III ("the Good"), Richard Vaughan notes that the "bait" for Bedford was "financial and territorial" rather than personal, for Anne and her sisters were described by a contemporary as being "plain as owls." Despite Burgundy's financial problems, the agreed-upon dowry was generous: "it was agreed that the girl's dowry should be 150,000 gold crowns, and that, in case Philip [of Rurgundy] died without a male heir, [Anne] should succeed to the county of Artois, or, if Philip left an heir, she should receive 100,000 gold crowns." The very beautiful book of hours, now known as the Bedford Hours, was given to Anne as a wedding gift. 

A sixteenth-century drawing of the

Hôtel des Tournelles

After they were married "with great magnificence" at Troyes, the couple lived in Paris at the palace of Tournelles. There, the duchess became her husband's "zealous collaborator." Just a year after their marriage, in August 1424, she interceded for a group of soldiers who  had been sent to Paris for execution--in response to Anne's intercession, Bedford freed the men. 

In January 1425, Anne was with her husband when he returned to England. A year later, they were back in Paris in April and then, in 1427, they were on to Flanders. In 1428, Bedford reluctantly agreed to the English siege of Orléans--a siege that failed with the arrival of Joan of Arc. 

In 1429, Anne's brother, Philip of Burgundy, was in Paris and, in Hunt's words, "renewed his alliance, being influenced, it is said, by his sister, the Duchess of Bedford." Historian B.-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé also stresses Anne's role in maintaining the alliance between England and Burgundy: "It is indisputable [il est incontestabile] that the duchess Anne intervened with all her power [toutes ses forces] to maintain an alliance between her husband and her brother"--an alliance that she saw as necessary for both of them. 

In June of this year, 1429, while marching to Orléans, Bedford made his will, designating his wife as his principal executor and describing her as his "very dear and beloved" wife--she was not only the primary executor, she was also his primary beneficiary.

While her husband continued his military campaign, Anne traveled to Flanders with her brother, but she returned to Paris. Later, Bedford established himself in Rouen, and Anne joined him there. It was in Rouen, in 1431, that Joan of Arc was brought after her capture by Burgundian troops in 1430. 

At this point, Anne steps briefly out of the background, although she makes her appearance only in the words of others, not in words she spoke herself. After Joan had been brought to Rouen, she seems to have undergone a test of her virginity, an examination that Anne, the duchess of Bedford, may have overseen. (I say "seems" and "may have" because no mention of this examination is found in the ample trial records that survive--the testimony to this examination is from the 1455-56 Trial of Rehabilitation.)

According to one of the men who had been at Joan's Trial of Condemnation, Joan herself wished to prove her virginity by means of such an examination, "provided it be done by decent women, as is the custom." Another witness contributed a bit of hearsay: "I heard it said by one, whom I no longer remember, that Joan was examined by some matrons and that she was found to be a virgin and that this examination had been made by order of the Duchess of Bedford." (This same witness adds a bit of creepiness to his testimony, saying that he'd also heard the duke of Bedford hid himself so he could watch Joan being examined . . . ) 

A third claimed firsthand knowledge. According to this witness, "I know well that she was examined to discover if she was a virgin or not by some matrons and midwives, and that on the orders of the Duchess of Bedford and notably by Anna Bavon and another matron whose name I do not remember." He went on to say that he had heard directly from Bavon that Joan "was a virgin intact" and, for this reason, the duchess of Bedford, "had the warders and others forbidden to offer her [Joan] any violence."

In the same year, we catch another glimpse of Anne of Burgundy in Rouen, when the duchess presented the Bedford Hours as a Christmas present to the nine-year-old Henry VI, just before his coronation, a gift recorded by the king's tutor in a note in the manuscript (fol. 256r) just preceding the two portrait miniatures of the duke and the duchess (see the first image in this post, above right).

Anne of Burgundy, duchess of Bedford,
marble effigy,
formerly in the Church of the Celestines
(now in the Louvre Museum, Paris)

But just two years later, on 13 November 1432, Anne, duchess of Bedford, died in Paris. As a contemporary, known as the "bourgeois of Paris," noted in his journal, she died in a time of "great death" in the city. He gives fulsome praise to the woman he describes as the duchess of Bedford, wife of the regent of France, and sister of the duke of Burgundy:

the most pleasant of all women who were then in France, because she was good and beautiful, and of good age, for she was only twenty-eight years old when she died; and certainly, she was well loved by the people of Paris. And it is true that she died in the Hôtel de Bourgon, near the Louvre, on the twelfth day of November, two hours after midnight between Thursday and Friday, about which those [men and women] of Paris spoke a great deal of their hope, but also of their pain.

Anne of Burgundy, duchess of Bedford, was buried in Paris in the convent church of the Celestines in the Marais. Because many members of royal families were buried in the church, it was desecrated during the French Revolution and eventually the remains were demolished in the nineteenth century.

In his 1934 analysis of the duke of Bedford's will, B.-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé claims that the duke's decision to designate his wife as his primary executor and beneficiary represents a testament that Anne was a a "tenderly loved wife." In his biography of Anne's brother, Richard Vaughan notes that Anne and her husband "apparently became fond of each other."

These assertions about the state pf the couple's relationship persist. In his 1984 article on Anne of Burgundy's tomb, Jeffrey Chipps Smith wrote that, although the couple had been "childless," they had been "happily married." This view is repeated elsewhere--it appears in Janet Backhouse's 1985 Books of Hours ("one of the happiest love matches of the period") and in online blog posts and the Wikipedia entry for Anne of Burgundy. 

I wish I knew the source of the claim. None of the sources I've mentioned here supports this conclusion with a reference to documentary evidence. Still, I'd like to think it was so . . . 

Anne of Burgundy, duchess of Bedford
(Louvre Museum);
Jeffrey Chipps Smith writes that her hair is
"tightly trussed in a pearl ornamented hairnet" that
culminates in a bicorne, or two horned, headdress 
around which a richly jewelled crown is placed"

The most complete biographical information about Anne of Burgundy is B.-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé, “Anne de Bourgogne et le Testament de Bedford (1429)” Bibliothèque de l’École Des Chartes 95 (1934): 284–326. Also extremely useful is Jeffrey Chipps Smith, "The Tomb of Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford, in the Musée du Louvre" Gesta 23, no. 1 (1984): 39-50. 

Alice Chaucer, Politician and Patron (and Granddaughter of the Poet)

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk (died 20 May 1475)

As an academic, I was trained as a medievalist, and for decades, I taught not only medieval but early-modern literature courses at a liberal-arts university. I continued to teach Beowulf, Chaucer, Malory, Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, among many other canonical writers and texts, long after my own research and writing interests had transitioned to women's history and women writers. This site, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, is a post-retirement project that allows me to continue to read and write about women, women's history, and women writers. 

Tomb effigy of Alice Chaucer,

duchess of Suffolk

(parish church of St Mary,

Ewelme, Oxfordshire)

Now here's an admission. I taught an upper-division course in Chaucer for decades, as well as teaching selections from The Canterbury Tales in lower-division literature survey courses. I knew Chaucer had married Philippa de Roet, whose sister, Katherine, later known as Katherine Swynford (her first husband was Sir Hugh Swynford), would become the mistress, then wife, of John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III. Many students over the years found this personal connection--one between the poet and the royal patron whom he served--to be an intriguing one. 

But beyond knowing that Geoffrey Chaucer had married Philippa de Roet, I never thought much about Chaucer's wife, much less his children, except for the claim that his Treatise on the Astrolabe may have been written for his son, Thomas--despite the fact that the piece is addressed to "Lyte Lowys my sone." This reference has resulted in a great deal of speculation. Some critics have argued that "Louis" really means "Thomas," others that the poem may have been addressed to a godson or another child to whom Chaucer was close, while still others have concluded that Chaucer had a second son, named Louis. It's best just to say that the treatise "may or may not" refer to Chaucer's own son.

In fact, it isn't clear exactly how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, though it's generally said that they had four (or three). Certainly they had a son named Thomas, who made an advantageous marriage and had a notable political career. Chaucer and Philippa may have had two daughters, and if they did, these daughters may be Elizabeth (a woman named Elizabeth Chaucy became a nun at Barking Abbey, and Agnes (a woman named Agnes Chaucer played a role in the coronation of Henry IV).

So, as I said, how many children Chaucer and his wife had is not clear--but what is clear is that Alice Chaucer is Geoffrey Chaucer's granddaughter, the child of Thomas Chaucer. About her, historian John Kirby Edges wrote, "Few women ever had a more gradual and successful rise in the world than Alice Chaucer. Born the daughter of a gentleman of no illustrious descent, she became in name a lady by her contract of marriage with a knight; next a countess by her first marriage, and during her [subsequent] marriage she reached the higher dignities of marchioness and duchess." 

Brass rubbing of
Matilda Burghersh,
mother of Alice Chaucer
(Victoria and Albert Museum)

Born about the year 1404, just a few years after her grandfather's death (Geoffrey Chaucer died on 25 October 1400), Alice was the daughter of Thomas Chaucer and Matilda Burghersh, an heiress to a significant estate. Ewelme Manor (Oxfordshire), where Alice Chaucer would spend a great deal of her life, came into the Chaucer family's possession at the death of Sir John Berghersh, Matilda'a father. 

Alice Chaucer's now-famous grandfather, Geoffrey, was the son of a wine merchant who became a courtier, diplomat, and bureacrat, in addition to becoming one of the great poets of the English language. He began his astonishing rise as a page in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, married to Lionel of Antwerp (like John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III). 

Alice’s father, Thomas Chaucer, was able to have a distinguished political career--he served in various capacities under Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, and was was elected to parliament fifteen times, serving as Speaker of the House of Commons five times. 

While such careers were not possible for a woman, Alice Chaucer nevertheless found advancement through marriage, a career option that was available to women.

When she was about eleven (by October 1414), Alice was married to Sir John Phelip, a man about twenty-five years older than she was. Although his Suffolk family was "of no very great local importance," they had experienced a "spectacular rise" while serving John of Gaunt and Henry IV. Sir John died on 2 October 1415, about a year after his marriage to Alice. As his widow, Alice Chaucer gained control of significant property, including Donnington Castle, which had been acquired by her father and was part of her dowry.

Alice's second marriage was a much more prestigious one--by 30 November 1424, when she is known to be attending a marriage in France with her husband, Alice had become the wife of Thomas Montagu, fourth earl of Salisbury. Salisbury was one of the great English commanders during the Hundred Years War. On the occasion of a celebration of marriage, the duke of Burgundy seems to have been captivated by Alice Chaucer and went so far as to try to seduce her--despite the fact that the wedding being celebrated was his own. Alice did not succumb, though her second marriage was not to last long. Salisbury was wounded at the siege of Orléans, and he died on 3 November 1428.

Two years later, in 1430, the twice-widowed Alice married William de la Pole. Like Thomas Montagu, he was an important English commander--he had also been at the siege of Orléans--and he served Henry VI in several capacities. (He also helped to negotiate the marriage between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou.) John de la Pole was made earl, then marquess, and, in 1448, duke of Suffolk. As for Alice Chaucer, she became one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting. 

In May 1432, Alice Chaucer was granted the "distinguished privilege" at the feast of St. George of "wear[ing] the Order of the Garter." Like the knights of the Order, the "Ladies had not only the habit of the Order, but they, like the Knights, had also the ensign of the Garter delivered to them. . . . These Garters might be worn by Ladies about their left arm."

But Suffolk's career would end disastrously. His years in service to Henry VI earned him many enemies. In 1450, he was accused of treason, imprisoned in the Tower, and then sent into exile. Before he got too far on his voyage from England--just off the coast of Dover, in fact--his ship was overtaken, and he was beheaded. 

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, had given birth to only one child during her three marriages. John de la Pole was born on 27 September 1442. By the terms of her husband's will, Alice was named the sole executrix of his estates: "above all the earth my singular trust is most in her." During the years immediately following Suffolk's death, Alice too was the focus of a great deal of anger. Much of it was the result of her husband's disastrous actions.

Most significantly, she was implicated in her husband's decision to marry their son, John de la Pole, to Margaret Beaufort. Fears that Suffolk intended to secure the throne of England for his own son by means of this marriage ("presuming and pretending" Margaret Beaufort "to be next inheritable to the crown") had led to the charges of treason brought against Suffolk. Alice found herself charged with treason in 1453, but she was acquitted.

In the same year, her son's marriage to Margaret Beaufort was annulled. In 1458, after years of a close relationship to Henry VI, Alice Chaucer decided to ally herself with Richard, duke of York. A marriage was arranged between John de la Pole and Elizabeth of York, the sixth child and third daughter of the duke and his wife, Cecily Neville. Through this marriage, Alice would become grandmother to eleven grandchildren. 

Throughout the years that followed her husband's death, Alice Chaucer remained a potent force. In her work on women in medieval England, Mavis E. Mate notes, "she continued to dominate politics in East Anglia," where the de la Pole family resided. Beyond her continued political maneuvering, Alice Chaucer was an important patron of the arts and literature. She commissioned tapestries, and she may have commissioned a poem by John Lydgate. Mate acknowledges that Lydgate "ostensibly produced works" for her husbands, but suggests that "in each case the real motivating force behind the commission may have been Alice Chaucer herself." Whether or not she herself commissioned any of Lydgate's work, she was a lover of books and amassed a large library. Notably, she is known to have owned a copy of Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies.

She was also known for her acts of piety. She made donations of books and money to Oxford University, she made contributions to various religious institutions, and she gave alms to the poor. In this last role, she supported God's House at Ewelme, an almshouse that she had founded with her husband, a charity that survives today.

In 1472, not long before her own death, Alice Chaucer was once more in contact with Margaret of Anjou, when the widow of Henry VI was transferred to her "care." After the death of Henry VI and Margaret's defeat at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, the former queen was taken captive by William Stanley and imprisoned in Wallingford Castle and then the Tower of London. She was transferred into the custody of Alice Chaucer and presumably remained with her until the duchess of Suffolk died. (Margaret of Anjou was finally ransomed by Louis XI of France in 1475.)

Alice Chaucer's strenuous efforts to protect--and expand--her son's inheritance helped insurance his future, even while they did nothing for her own reputation. Historian Lauren Johnson claims that Alice Chaucer and her husband were "well matched": "both ambitious, cunning and charming, but willing to be ruthless if necessary." 

And what a future it was--I've already noted John de la Pole's large family. Three of his sons made claims to the throne of England: the eldest, John de la Pole, first earl of Lincoln, was made heir to the crown by his uncle, Richard III, but he died in 1487, at the battle of Stoke, two years after Henry VII claimed the throne; Edmund de la Pole also claimed the English throne and was executed by Henry VIII in 1513; Richard de la Pole, the seventh and youngest, continued the claim but lived on the continent until his death in 1425 at the battle of Pavia. Another son, William, made no claim to the throne but was imprisoned in the Tower for allegedly plotting with his brothers--he remained there for thirty-seven years, dying in 1539.

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk,
tomb, St. Mary's Church, Ewelme,
showing Order of the Garter

Fortunately for Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, she did not live to see her grandsons' deaths. She died on 20 May 1475 and is buried in St. Mary's Church, Ewelme (Oxfordshire). Her tomb effigy shows her wearing the Order of the Garter on her wrist. 

Information about the remarkable Alice Chaucer is often found by scrounging in the biographies of men--Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry VI, her own husbands. Until now, there has been no biography of her, but one will soon be available: Michèle Schindler's What Is Better Than A Good Woman: Alice Chaucer, Commoner and Yorkist Matriarch will be published in July of this year.

I've linked to Marjorie Anderson's 1945 article, "Alice Chaucer and Her Husbands," above. 

There are also two excellent (but difficult to access) articles about Alice Chaucer as a book collector: Karen Jamback's “The Library of Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk: A Fifteenth-Century Owner of a ‘Boke of le Citee de Dames’,” The Profane Arts of the Middle Ages 7, no. 2 (1998): 106-35; and Carol M. Meale, “Reading Women’s Culture in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Alice Chaucer,” in Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 1996), 81-101. 

You may also want to check out Rachel M. Delman's "Gendered Viewing, Childbirth and Female Authority in the Residence of Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme, Oxfordshire" (click here). This essay not only provides an unusual account of Alice Chaucer's preparations for the birth of a grandchild, it also includes a great deal of information about the books she owned. (And since it's online, it's more accessible than the two articles I've noted above.)

As for me, I came upon the name of Alice Chaucer in Lauren Johnson's The Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI, from which I have quoted, above. 

 

Redrawing the Lines of Power--Women's Family Trees

 Redrawing the Lines of Power--Women's Family Trees

I have just finished hanging a framed poster that was a recent gift from my son: "Matrilineal Dynasties of Europe." It was a perfect present. As it is described at the UseFul Charts website, "This unique chart views European history in a totally new way by focusing on the female-only lines within royal genealogy. Over 100 queens and empresses shown!"

My really crappy photo of
Useful Charts's beautiful
"Matrilineal Dynasties of Europe"
(published with permission)

It was exactly the kind of family tree I wish I'd had many years ago, when I was researching and writing a book that would eventually be published as The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (2002). 

In the introduction, titled "Redrawing the Lines of Power," I wrote about my frustration with finding so few women on royal family trees. As I now look happily on the new poster hanging on my wall, I thought I might post an early version of my introduction--it was necessarily edited for the book, but I can print here what I originally wrote years ago . . .* 

And so, an earlier version of "Redrawing the Lines of Power," written in 1998, is published for the first time:

Let us now sing the praises of famous men, the heroes of our nation's history, through whom the Lord established his renown, and revealed his majesty in each succeeding age. Some held sway over kingdoms and made themselves a name by their exploits. . . . Some led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the nation's laws. . . . Some there are who have left a name behind them to be commemorated in story. There are others who are unremembered; they are dead, and it is as though they had never existed, as though they had never been born or left children to succeed them.

                                                            --Ecclesiasticus 44:1-3, 4, 8-9

Abraham, the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob. Moses and his brother Aaron. David, the father of Solomon, and Solomon of Rehoboam. Like the "praises" of these "famous men" sung by the author of Ecclesiasticus, the historical narrative of western Europe has focused on generations of men. Political histories, biographies, and genealogies trace lines of power from fathers to sons and grandsons, brothers and nephews. 

During the period of English history with which I am most familiar, for example, Edward III is followed on the throne by his grandson Richard II; Henry IV is followed by his son Henry V, who is followed, in turn, by his son Henry VI; Edward IV was to have been followed by his son, who would have been the fifth English Edward, but instead is succeeded by his brother, Richard III; Henry VII is followed by his son Henry VIII, who is followed by his son Edward VI. Then something strange disrupts this narrative. At his death in 1553, Edward VI is succeeded by his sister, Mary I.

The succession of a woman to the throne of England horrified many, including the Protestant reformer John Knox, who concluded that any woman who presumed to "sit in the seat of God, that is, to teach, to judge, or to reign above a man" was "a monster in nature." Women were incapable of effective rule, for "nature . . . doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment."

Knox published this blistering assessment of female rule, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in 1558; his bitter indictment of "gynecocracy" was quickly followed in print by a series of pamphlets that echoed and expanded 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, Mary of Guise, was acting as regent in Scotland on Mary's behalf.

Unfortunately for Knox, though, the political situation could get worse, and did, almost immediately. When Mary Tudor died only a few months after the Blast appeared, her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her as queen of England. In France, following the death of her husband Henry II, Catherine de' Medici attempted to become regent of France for her son, Francis II. Outmaneuvered in 1559, she succeeded a year later when Francis died and the dowager queen assumed the regency for her second son, Charles IX. Thus, by 1560, England, Scotland, and France were under the direct "regiment" of women.

I began thinking about this exceptional historical moment after I had the experience of reading, one after another, the arguments against female rule penned by Knox, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, Jean Bodin, Robert Filmer, and Bishop Jacques Bossuet, among many others, and then, in turn, the defenses of female rule published to counter their extreme, sometimes violent, positions. Much has been written about the political, religious, and cultural factors that shaped this debate, but I was interested in analyzing these texts in a different context. In order to relate theory and practice, I planned to write a series of biographical portraits of the remarkable women whose "regiment" had inspired the debate, exploring the way each of these women achieved, maintained, and manipulated her position even as her right and her ability to do so were contested.

As I considered my project, I was at first uncertain about how to proceed. Aside from Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart and her mother, and Catherine de' Medici, I knew of only two other women to include in my project: Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and Jeanne d'Albret, the Protestant queen of Navarre, whose son had become Henry IV, hing of France. Would it be possible, I wondered, to find enough female rulers to make a "series" of such profiles possible?

But the more I thought about my project, the more I came to see what had been there all along. These women weren't the first powerful women in early modern Europe. Any analysis of female rulers in the early modern period should really begin by focusing on the lives of four formidable women who died early in the sixteenth century: Isabella of Spain (d. 1504), who inherited the throne of Castile; Lady Margaret Beaufort (d. 1509), who chose not to press her own claims to the English throne in order to promote the cause of her son, Henry Tudor; Caterina Sforza (d. 1509), who seized power in Imola and Forlì to preserve it for her son, Ottaviano; and Anne of France (d. 1522), who acted as a shrewd and politically adept regent for her brother, Charles VIII. The careers of these powerful and successful women seemed to me to provide models for the women who were to follow in the next generation. 

Still, as notable as they were, these weren't the only women to whom Mary Tudor or Catherine de' Medici could look for example. As I searched the indexes of political histories and biographies, I began to find the names of female rulers about whom I knew little or nothing. Despite arguments like Knox's against female rule, and despite the ordinary descent of political power from one man to another, it became clear to me that a whole range of "dynastic accidents" in early modern Europe had resulted in a surprising number of women ruling as queens or functioning as regents. It became equally clear that the lives and political careers of these sixteenth-century queens were hardly without precedent. 

Yet I could find little more than the names of these women at first. How many Blancas of Navarre were there? How many Isabellas of Aragon? Of Castile? Of Portugal? Were Charlotte of Savoy and Bona of Savoy related? If so, how? How did Louise of Savoy fit in? Were Anne of France and Anne of Beaujeu the same woman? What about Mary of Guise and Mary of Lorraine? And why was all this so difficult for me to sort out? I knew that the relationships and connections linking these women couldn't be more complicated than those of the eight Henrys, six Edwards and three Richards I knew so well; the English line of succession from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries has always been easier for me to recite than the names and dates of American presidents. 

But it was hard to find out much about these Isabellas, Annes, and Marys in traditional political history. Like the "unremembered" others in Ecclesiasticus, it was almost as if they "had never existed, as though they had never been born or left children to succeed them." But clearly they had been born, and equally clearly they had left children to succeed them. And despite the familiar narrative of conventional history, they had also had some degree of real "sway" over various kingdoms and principalities. And so, trying to figure out who these women were and whether and how they were related, I began to focus on the family trees in the books I had in front of me. And that's when I began to notice what (or who) was missing.

Like the generations of "famous men" in Ecclesiasticus-- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David, Solomon, Rehoboam--one Henry or Charles followed another in succession, father and son, springing forth as if by spontaneous generation. I searched, sometimes in vain, for women; wives and mothers were simply absent from many of the genealogies appended to the histories and biographies I was reading. I think my favorite is a Valois "family tree" that charts four branches of the family over the course of nearly four hundred years. It looks as if the line of Valois kings (from 1328 through 1547, anyway)--Philip VI, John II, Charles V, Charles VI, Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francis I--managed to do without any wives or mothers at all. Then again, maybe I like best the Habsburg genealogy that begins in the tenth century and continues through the seventeenth century. There are a few wives among nine generations of Habsburg descendants, but, at least according to this family tree, there were no Habsburg daughters born between 950 and the mid-sixteenth century, when Eleanor and Mary show up on one branch.

Meanwhile, in England, the five daughters of Edward III (r. 1327-77) are all too often lumped together at the end of the genealogical line as "daughters," but that at least is an improvement over the tables that chart the descendants of his sons without noting that he had any "daughters" at all. I imagine that "issue," as it often appears on such family trees, could include insignificant males as well as females, but I am suspicious that "other issue" refers exclusively to daughters. I am almost afraid to think of what the disclaimer on one "short genealogical tree" might mean: "The irrelevant branches have been pruned."

Of course not all the family trees I looked at omitted women. The "Kings and Queens of England" poster that is hanging right next to me as I type indicates the wives of Edwards I through III, Henry IV and V, Henry VII and Henry VIII (all six). But why isn't the wife of Henry VI included, especially since she was the strong and powerful Margaret of Anjou (Shakespeare's "tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide")? Edward IV and Richard III are also missing their wives, as are James V of Scotland and his grandson James VI, who becomes James I of England. Then again, to be absolutely fair, while Mary Tudor's husband (Philip II of Spain) is listed, Mary Stuart's husbands, all three of them (Francis, Darnley, Bothwell), are eliminated. Still, this version of the poster is a marked improvement over the previous edition, which left out the wives of Edwards I through III, Henry IV and V as well as Henry VI, and limited Henry VIII to only three of his six wives. If there are rules to determine when women are included and when they are omitted in such genealogies, I haven't been able to figure out what they are.

I must admit I took unexpected pleasure in some of the inconsistencies I found. The Oxford History of England's volume of The Earlier Tudors eliminates all of six of Henry VIII's wives, and while I am, in general, frustrated that so many women have disappeared from royal family trees, I was delighted to see that Henry's entire matrimonial career had been wiped out. Interestingly, his elder brother, Arthur, wasn't given his wife (Catherine of Aragon) either, but his sisters Margaret and Mary are accompanied by their husbands, or at least some of them, at any rate; Margaret has her first two, James IV of Scotland and Archibald, earl of Angus, while Mary has only her second, Charles, duke of Brandon--I don't know why she didn't get to keep her king, Louis XII of France. Henry, for whatever reason, hasn't been allowed to keep a single wife. He looks almost lonely.

Even the most complete family trees, one tracing the Medici family from Giovanni "di Bicci" (1360-1428) and his wife Piccarda Bueri through Giovanni Gastone (1671-1737) and his wife Anne of Saxe-Lauenburg, for example, work patrilineally, tracing descent through the male line. In so many family trees, men's names are set in capital letters or boldfaced or highlighted, their wives' names, when included, are smaller, underneath the names, dates, and titles of the men to whom they are connected, or off to the side, after "m" or "=" to indicate their status as wives. When women marry into a family, their names suddenly appear--but where did they come from? Who were their grandmothers, their mothers, their sisters? And when women marry out of the family, where do they go? Their names are left dangling on the trees of their families, dead ends on the lines of descent. Are they and their descendants the "irrelevant branches" that have to be pruned?

And so, out of frustration, trying to identify the "unremembered" others whose names I had stumbled across, and trying to sort out the connections between them, I set out to draw my own family trees, linking women, generations of mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces. I searched--not always successfully--for the dates of their birth, the dates of their death, the children who succeeded them. As I drew and then redrew my new genealogical tables, I came to see not a series of individual, isolated women who came from nowhere to be swallowed up in the Tudor, Valois, Habsburg, or Medici families, but networks of related women and patterns of connections between them.

Once I had started to redraw the lines, I began to see something else of significance. Mary Tudor can no longer be portrayed as a "monster in nature" who suddenly, and without precedent, dared to assume political power. Mary Tudor's mother, Catherine of Aragon, was not only Henry VIII's first wife, but a queen who had served as regent of England; Catherine, in her turn, was the daughter of Isabella, queen regnant of Castile, who herself was the niece of Maria of Castile, governor of Aragon, and granddaughter of Catherine of Lancaster, regent of Castile. Isabella's elder daughter, Juana (Catherine of Aragon's sister), inherited the crowns of both Castile and Aragon; Isabella's granddaughters included Isabel of Portugal, regent of Spain; Mary of Austria, regent of the Netherlands; and Catherine, regent of Portugal. Among Isabella's great-granddaughters were Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands, and Joanna of Spain, regent of Spain.

I also began to see significant connections and relationships I couldn't always indicate on my redrawn family trees: there were "genealogical" links that went beyond blood ties. Margaret of Austria, who functioned as regent of the Netherlands from 1519 until her death in 1530, had been betrothed at age three to Charles, the dauphin of France; in 1483 she had been sent to the French court where, for ten years, her care and education were directed by the extraordinary Anne, who acted as regent of France for her brother. The betrothal didn't result in marriage; instead, in 1497, Margaret was sent to the court of Queen Isabella of Castile, marrying John, heir to his mother's Castile and his father Ferdinand's Aragon. What was the influence of two such politically adept women on Margaret, who would function so successfully as regent for so many years?

If all this seems confusing, you can see why I needed to redraw family trees. Instead of genealogies that focused on kings and their sons, making clear their relationships and connections, I wanted to draw links that moved backward and forward, tracing queens and their grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, nieces, granddaughters, and grandnieces. I have to admit that I enjoyed the process of constructing these new family trees. I made the names of the four women I identified as models big--really big, with bold boxes around them. Isabella of Castile overpowers her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. She also overshadows him--wherever I could, I put my women on top. I also eliminated every son I could, including Henry VIII's long-desired Edward, as "issue" with which I was not concerned, an "irrelevant branch" I could prune. I kept only those men through whom lines of power descended to a woman. The names of the men who remain on my redrawn genealogies are so tiny I can hardly read them without my glasses. It's somehow very satisfying to see Henry VIII looking so small. Instead of Francis I and Charles V looming so large on the scene, I could see women--generations and generations of women of power.

One of the family trees I drew for The Monstrous Regiment of Women

I could also see the shifting political alliances of early modern Europe from a very different (and revealing) perspective. As I drew my new family trees, I realized that the narrative of early modern European political history looked very different if I focused women instead of men. Men like John Knox might argue against women's right and fitness to rule, but women had and could and did rule--and rule well--even as they were were being told they could not and should not.

I began my research, as I said, afraid that I might not find enough female rulers to make the project worthwhile. Instead, as I worked, I found more and more women whose stories should be included in my project, too many women, in fact, to make the project, as originally conceived, practicable. But my redrawn family trees had also suggested a way of redefining the "biographical" essays I had originally planned. Instead of perpetuating the tendency to identify a single, extraordinary woman and to focus on her individual life and "unique" accomplishments, I decided to explore the relationships among women whose lives occupy a place in and perpetuate a continuing, though largely unrecognized, tradition of political rule. Their careers, like their lives, are intertwined.

The women who assumed political power in succeeding generations in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, and city-states of Italy were far more numerous--and more successful--than I had imagined, but even more surprising than their numbers and their successes is how completely their names and stories have disappeared from the history of early modern Europe. Aside from Queen Isabella, who funded the voyage of Columbus, "Bloody Mary" and good Queen Bess in England, and the romantic Mary, Queen of Scots, I had learned almost nothing about any of these "monstrous" women in a classroom, through a textbook, or from the pages of the histories and biographies I had read on my own throughout the years.

The "story" of early modern European political history has been defined by the lists of "famous men" we have constructed, lists that have "revealed . . . majesty in each succeeding age," lists that have told us who "held sway over kingdoms." There are, indeed, some "who have left a name behind them to be commemorated in story," just as there are "others"--primarily women--who have been forgotten. As far as "history" has been concerned, they are dead--it is "as though they had never existed, . . . never been born, or left children to succeed them."

I have tried here to read the past in a different way and to narrate the story from an alternative perspective. I hope, in fact, to have presented a counter-narrative here--by focusing on the lives and relationships of women, those "others" who did exist, those others who--like theirs fathers, husbands, and sons--did "hold sway" over kingdoms and make themselves names "by their exploits," who did leave children to succeed them, and who, though dead, should not be "unremembered."

My efforts here are not intended to be, and could never be claimed to be, definitive and comprehensive. I have crossed too many chronological, geographical, institutional, and theoretical boundaries to speak authoritatively. Instead, I hope they will be regarded as exploratory and suggestive-- summarizing, contextualizing, and drawing together what is known about female rule and rulers in early modern Europe, perhaps best read as an outline for or a rought draft of a counter-narrative that remains to be written.

By the way, after thinking about it for some time, I decided as I redrew my family trees to let Henry VIII keep two of his six wives--Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, strong and determined mothers whose daughters became queens.

. . . 

If you've read this far, I hope you can see that I've continued the work I began more than twenty-five years ago. In 1998, I wrote, ". . . as I worked, I found more and more women whose stories should be included in my project, too many women, in fact, to make the project, as originally conceived, practicable."

Now, at this site, also named The Monstrous Regiment of Women, I've been able to write about many of the women whose stories I couldn't tell then.

*For the sake of readability, I haven't linked all the names here to corresponding essays on this site--if you use the search function, you will be able to find posts for all of the women named here.

Update, 19 April 2026: It’s now hard to fine this chart at the website, and I am not sure whether it can still be purchased. (To find it, you have to use the search bar, but if you click “buy,” you get a “not found” message. It seems as though you can still download it, and the accompanying “video explanation” is still on YouTube. Why can’t we have nice things?