Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (14 page)

M
ary, Queen of Scots led a colourful life. She was tall with long blond hair, sophisticated, intelligent and though not considered beautiful, it all created a striking image. She had a wild lust for life too. Having inherited the Scottish throne just six days after her birth, the infant Queen was sent to the French court at the age of five, where she was brought up in the grand European manner and learned several languages.

Like most nobles of the time, Mary thrilled at the chase, enjoying deer hunting when back in Scotland. She played cards and was fond of gambling. Most of all she loved music and would go out dancing in Edinburgh. She even learned to play golf, being one of the first women ever to do so.

This might all seem today to be the natural activities of an exuberant member of the royal family. But in 16th century Scotland it was deeply frowned on. The nation was in the grip of a Calvinist revolution espousing stern principles that did not suffer lightly such frivolities.

In 1560 the Scots outlawed Catholicism, and before long its Catholic queen was fleeing for her life. Rowed across the Solway Firth in just the clothes she was wearing, Mary sought refuge from her cousin, Elizabeth I of England.

Mary’s arrival was treated with caution. As daughter of James V of Scotland and the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, she sat next in line to the English throne, and as such posed a threat to Elizabeth and her Protestant rule. While her counsellors debated what should be done, the two cousins were each curious to know what the other was like.

Elizabeth had long heard tales of her wayward cousin’s adventures and in truth was a little jealous of her accomplishments. Already she had got through two husbands and probably a lover. And when it was decided that Mary should be held prisoner indefinitely, the English virgin queen was forever asking questions about her. Whose hair was finer? Which of the two was the more attractive?

Relations slowly soured, however. When the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth in 1580 and called on all Catholics to strive to overthrow the Protestant heretic, Elizabeth became paranoid that Mary was the focus of every conspiracy. Eventually she decided the Scot was too dangerous to live and had her executed. So ended the relationship of the two royal cousins – who never did meet. Until, perhaps, in death when they were buried beside each other in Westminster Abbey.

A
queen with less foreign blood than any previous monarch embodied the patriotic spirit of a nation. The amazing 45 year reign of Elizabeth I transformed a squabbling medieval state on the periphery of Europe into a unified, proud nation capable of defeating the mighty Spanish Armada and exploring the world.

This queen at the helm has gone down in English history as perhaps the most remarkable leader the country has ever known. Yet the glittering success of poet Edmund Spenser’s ‘Gloriana’ belies the dreadful early years of her life – or perhaps they were the making of her life.

Elizabeth came from a broken home. Her father, Henry VIII, had not only divorced her mother, Anne Boleyn, he had her executed and declared Elizabeth to be illegitimate. Unloved, unwanted, her childhood was dominated by tragedy, her fate varying with every alteration in her father’s politics.

Her unhappiness continued into adolescence. Under the reign of her brother Edward VI, she came under suspicion after flirting with Thomas Seymour who was executed for treason. Her life took a serious downturn on the succession of her elder sister Mary who became convinced that Elizabeth lay at the heart of a Protestant rebellion.

Elizabeth I was depicted as ‘The Faerie Queen’ by poet Edmund Spenser

When taken captive to the Tower of London, she saw en route all the sorry evidence of a failed revolt – heads of executed traitors, for instance, displayed on pikes in the streets. For more than a year she was held in prison, fearing the executioner’s visit at any time.

But as she languished there, hope sprang forth. Londoners everywhere secretly sided with Elizabeth. Treasonous notices were scattered in the streets pledging support for her against Mary. A dead cat dressed in a Catholic priest’s vestments was strung up on a gallows in Cheapside.

Such signs declared that London was ready to embrace a regime change. A wave of revulsion had spread against its queen, her Spanish husband and their religion. The day Mary I died in 1558 turned Elizabeth’s fortunes for good.

Suddenly the new queen could leave behind the baggage of a disturbed childhood and look forward to a time of peace and harmony. But above all, this lonely heart yearned for affection. She soon learned she had a gift for captivating her subjects, including William Shakespeare towards the end of her reign.

Elizabeth made a point of travelling round the country every year to meet her people and lapped up their blessings. Once in Coventry the mayor presented her with a chalice filled with gold. Elizabeth was pleased: ‘I have but few such gifts.’ The mayor ventured to add, ‘If it please your Grace there is a great deal more in it – the hearts of your loving subjects.’ ‘We thank you’, she replied, ‘It is a great deal more indeed.’

Here was a monarch with an exceptional personality: one of strength, wisdom, courage, yet one that knew its emotional weakness. The wounds of her youth ran deep. Perhaps it is no surprise that Elizabeth courted affection from subjects and suitors alike, that she was inordinately vain and accepted flattery with relish. Yet she would never allow anyone too close. ‘It shall be sufficient for me,’ she remarked, ‘that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.’

O
f his 59 year life, James was king for 58 of them. And he was King of Scotland for 36 years before even beginning his reign over England, the dual reign lasting another 22 years to 1625.

When James VI of Scotland crossed the border in 1603, it was a momentous occasion. The last time a Scottish monarch had stepped on English soil was almost a century ago. For many Scots the accession to the English throne – by virtue of being great grandson to Henry VIII’s sister Margaret – was a conquest in itself. Others were less sure, thinking it may result in the Scots ceding control of their own affairs.

With great excitement, and to much jubilation, James galloped south at tremendous speed, riding in one stretch 40 miles in under four hours, his entourage desperately trying to keep up.

On arriving in London, though the people there also welcomed their new king and new Stuart dynasty, James would find much cause for anxiety.

Unlike his healthy lifestyle north of the border, famine and destitution beset the capital. A massive outbreak of the bubonic plague had struck London in the year of his accession, killing 30,000 inhabitants, one-in-four of its population. On top of that, within a year he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt as the Gunpowder Plot aimed to blow him up at the state opening of Parliament. But perhaps his greatest challenge was fixing a Church riven by dissent.

A growing movement of Puritans petitioned the king to make radical reforms to the Church of England in line with their simpler Calvinist worship. They wanted to rid it of elements that smacked of Catholicism: music to be restricted, no bowing, an end to clerical vestments, and many other changes to ritual, which though might seem inconsequential, in sum would radically alter the nature of the Church of England.

Never shy of intellectual debate, James convened a council at Hampton Court to try to settle the matter. He thought the best course to be compromise. But in making concessions to the Puritans, he upset his bishops. In an effort to reassure both camps, James authorized a new translation of the Bible that would be the fruit of both Puritans and Anglican bishops, and therefore bring unity to the Church. Writing in the language of everyday use, 54 scholars laboured for seven years to produce the version that has come down to us as
The King James Bible,
or
Authorized Version
. Unfortunately, despite its enduring value, the ‘Good Book’ probably caused more disagreement than harmony. Society was set on the road to civil war.

Throwing up his arms in despair, the King came to consider the whole Puritan venture to be ‘unlawful, and to savour of tumult, sedition and violence’. His fear that it might cause widespread unrest soon prompted him to take a hard line on Puritan dissent. Unless they conformed, James pronounced, he would ‘harry them out of the land’. The King’s threats were heeded, and in 1608 persecution forced many pilgrims to flee to Holland in the hope of finding a freer life there.

When this did not materialise, they returned briefly to prepare for what would be the famous migration aboard the
Mayflower
. In 1620 the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ set sail across the Atlantic to become the founders of the New World. For two months the ship was home to 101 passengers. Of these, 35 were Puritan ‘saints’ and another 66 were ordinary folk driven by hardship to seek a better life. What these émigrés did not know, of course, was that within a generation a puritanical Commonwealth, led by Oliver Cromwell, would be constituted in the old country.

T
he young Charles I, unlike his father James I, was sober, dignified, handsome and courteous. It was said that he never violated a woman, nor struck a man, nor even spoke an evil word. He lacked his father’s intellect but appealed to a generation who valued his integrity.

Charles was a small man; in some paintings he almost disappears into his riding boots. But he had a deep-rooted sense of his own dignity and importance. Set in a delicate frame with a feminine face, his melancholy air almost seemed to mark him out for tragedy.

When Charles unexpectedly became heir after his elder brother Henry died, his awkwardness and shyness made him rely heavily on trusted advisors. But one of them, the Duke of Buckingham, led Charles disastrously to quarrel with Parliament. In truth, Buckingham probably brought out the King’s natural distaste for those beneath him endowed with power.

He decried parliamentarians as having ‘the nature of cats’, which ‘ever grow cursed with age.’ Their demands for reform, he believed, would only result in war. So in 1629 he had done with them and abandoned parliamentary government altogether. Charles believed that kings had divine authority to rule. For the next eleven years he pursued a policy known as ‘Thorough’, a rule with select ministers for the mutual benefit of all his subjects, in effect a ‘benevolent dictatorship’.

This policy worked for a time, but Charles was really only as good as his advisors. Some of them aroused enmity in the country. Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, was nicknamed ‘Black Tom the Tyrant’ for his brutality in Ireland. When William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, persuaded Charles to lead an army into Scotland in pursuance of his policy imposing the English Prayer Book on its people, the King came unstuck.

Crowds gather outside Banqueting House to witness the first ever public execution of an English king

In 1640, he was forced to recall Parliament. The King and his people were now at loggerheads. This time it was civil war. Charles fought for seven years for his throne before his forces suffered a decisive defeat at Naseby in 1645.

Four years later Charles was convicted of treason in Oliver Cromwell’s parliament and beheaded outside Banqueting House in Whitehall. To the end Charels I was a man of principle, one who would not sacrifice his beliefs to save his crown.