Tea at Trianon: How Elizabeth of York Paved the Way

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, August 4, 2022

How Elizabeth of York Paved the Way

From Alison Weir at History Extra:

After Richard III fell at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, no one supported Elizabeth’s claim to the throne because she was a woman – her value was purely matrimonial. Parliament had already declared that Henry VII was king. (It was not until the 1530s that their son, Henry VIII, acknowledged that his title had come primarily from his mother.)
But back in 1485, Elizabeth, however, had had other ideas. If we believe a contemporary rhyming chronicle, The Song of Lady Bessy, she declared: “Queen of England I must be.”
On Henry VII’s accession, the courtesy and honour accorded to her must have given her cause to hope that she would soon be queen in her own right and rule jointly with Henry, as Ferdinand and Isabella did in Spain. She may have been disconcerted to learn that, despite Henry having pledged, in 1483, to marry Elizabeth to give legitimacy to his title, he had assumed the style of king in his own name on the battlefield at Bosworth, without any mention of her at all...
Yet Elizabeth was the undisputed heiress of Edward IV. A political poem of 1487 acknowledged that Edward IV's title had “fallen to our sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth, his eldest daughter; to her is come all the whole monarchy. The crown therefore and sceptre imperial she must have without division.”
Undoubtedly, she had a better claim to the throne than Henry did, yet there is no record of her resenting Henry’s relegation of her to the role of queen consort. Although the Pope himself called her the undoubted heir of Edward IV, and there were those who thought that Henry and Elizabeth should reign as joint sovereigns, no one seriously considered that a woman could rule alone as queen regnant. On the contrary, her throne was the inheritance she brought to her husband. Traditionally, women could transmit the crown – the royal houses of Plantagenet, York and Tudor derived their claim through the female line – but not wield sovereign power.
There was no Salic law in England that barred women from the throne, as there was in France, so there was nothing to prevent a woman from ruling – but memories of female misrule were long. People remembered how, in the 12th century, the haughty, overbearing Empress Matilda’s attempt to pursue her lawful claim to the throne had resulted in a civil war so bloody that it had been said that “God and His saints slept”. That experience had left the English with an enduring prejudice against female rulers.
The notion of a woman wielding dominion over men was seen as unnatural and against the laws of God and Nature. As the Duke of Buckingham bluntly put it: “It was not women’s place to govern the kingdom, but men’s.” Women were regarded as weak, irrational creatures, unfit to lead armies in battle and interfere in affairs of state. In law, they were regarded as infants. Their primary purpose was to be wives and mothers, subordinate to their menfolk, in whose interests their marriages were arranged. Thus no one spoke out in favour of Elizabeth of York ascending the throne in her own right as England’s lawful queen. It would be left to the granddaughter who was named for her, Elizabeth I, to prove that a woman could rule successfully.
Even so, there were those who felt strongly that Henry VII ruled only in right of his wife, and he remained unpopular “for the wrong he did his Queen, that he did not rule in her right”. (Read more.)