With the death of Elizabeth ‘the Great Queen’, the monarchy reverted to its masculine mode and so remained until 1689. The queens of James I, Charles I, Charles II and James II were all consorts in the traditional sense. With the possible exception of Henrietta Maria, the consort of Charles I, their political role was negligible. Anne, the Queen of James I, was the daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and had married him in 1589 when he was still James VI of Scotland. The alliance between Scotland and Denmark was a traditional one. By the time that he succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 she had already borne him five children, of whom three were living, and was to bear him two more daughters who died in infancy. Apart from doing her duty as a mother, Anne’s most significant act was her conversion to Catholicism, a move that triggered a modest fashion for Catholicism at court but had no noticeable impact on the King’s public policy. She died in 1619, by which time only two of their children, Charles and Elizabeth, were surviving: he the heir and she married to the Elector Frederick of the Palatinate - a marriage later to be of considerable dynastic significance. James had wanted to use the marriage of his heir to heal the religious split in Europe that resulted in the Thirty Years’ War and had already (in 1619) turned his son-in-law into a fugitive. The idea was to negotiate Frederick’s restoration in return for a marriage between Charles and the Infanta of Spain. However, an ‘incognito’ visit by Charles to Spain in 1623 soon disillusioned him of that possibility. When James died in March 1625, his heir was still unmarried.
On 1 May, however, he wed Henrietta Maria, the 16-year-old sister of Louis XIII of France. Politically this was intended to keep France out of the Catholic Habsburg embrace, which appeared to the squeezing the life out of Protestant Germany. France did indeed remain hostile to the Habsburgs but not for that reason. Unlike her mother-in-law, Henrietta Maria was an enthusiastic proselytizer for the Catholic Church and that was to cause the King a great deal of difficulty and embarrassment, made worse by the fact that he loved her deeply. She bore him six children, three sons and three daughters and, when the civil war broke out in 1643, went to her home country to mobilize support for him. In that she failed, but she remained in France when Charles was defeated and received her children as fugitives from the Commonwealth regime. She did not return to England when her son regained his throne in 1660 but died in France in 1666. Her daughter, Elizabeth, and son Henry were both dead by 1660, and daughter Mary was married to William II, Prince of Orange. Charles returned as King, and his brother James as Duke of York. Her remaining daughter, who shared her name, was married to Philip, Duke of Orleans in 1661. Once he was established on his throne, Charles II followed the precedent of his father and grandfather and contracted a diplomatic marriage - to the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of John IV. Although she was a Catholic and a member of an ancient house, her impact on England was virtually confined to the fact that she remained childless, which resulted in the Exclusion Crisis over the rights of the King’s Catholic brother, James, to succeed him.
James II, who became king on 6 February 1685, married twice. As Duke of York, and still nominally at least a Protestant, he wed Anne Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, in September 1660. That union produced eight children, but only two, Mary and Anne, survived beyond infancy. His first wife died in March 1671, and in September 1673 (by which time he had revealed himself to be a Catholic) he married for a second time, his bride on this occasion being Mary of Modena, the daughter of an Italian Duke. James’s catholicizing policies made him deeply unpopular but at first he succeeded in crushing rebellions both in England and Scotland. However, the birth of the couple’s first son, James, on 10 June 1688 focused minds against him. In November the husband of James’s daughter by his first wife, William III of Orange, was invited to replace the Catholic monarch - who now had a Catholic heir. James fled, taking his wife and infant son with him. In 12 years of exile, before his death in 1701, Mary bore him seven more children, but only one, a daughter, survived infancy. While her husband had been king, Mary had kept the style of a queen but her only importance in the political life of the country was due to the belated arrival of her first son.
William of Orange, who was accepted as King on 13 February 1689, had a claim in his own right, derived from his mother, Mary, the sister of Charles and James, while his wife (also Mary) was, as we have seen, the daughter of James by his first, and Protestant, marriage. They had married in 1677 and because of the unique circumstances, were proclaimed jointly King and Queen. Mary II thus became England’s third sovereign lady. However, the circumstances were quite different from those of 1558. Although William and Mary were granted the sovereignty for their joint and several lives, it was William who possessed the sole and full exercise of the royal power. When he was in Ireland, or the United Provinces, she acted on his behalf, but in virtue of the statute of 2 William and Mary c.6, rather than in her own right. In fact it is somewhat misleading to describe her as a ruling Queen. No doubt that would have happened if she had outlived her husband but in the event she died childless in 1694 and William ruled on his own (in theory as well as in fact) until his death in March 1702. Anne, Mary’s sister, had withheld her claim on Mary’s death, allowing the statutory settlement to prevail until William died when she succeeded in her own right, and thus became England’s fourth sovereign lady. She had been married since 1683 to George, the son of Frederick III of Denmark but he was not accorded the Crown Matrimonial, remaining simply as consort until his death in 1708. She famously became pregnant no fewer than 18 times but bore only one son who survived beyond infancy and he had died aged 11 in 1700, two years before she became Queen. Anne exercised very considerable political influence but was not a personal ruler in the same sense that Elizabeth had been. By this time the monarchy was constitutional in the sense that executive decisions were made by her council and ministers rather than by the Queen. The ‘party’ system in Parliament was still undeveloped, but it was necessary that her chief ministers should be able to command a majority for all those numerous issues that required a parliamentary decision. It was a period of military success and great commercial expansion, but little of this was due to the Queen’s personal initiative. With the passage of the Act of Union with Scotland in March 1707, she became the first sovereign of a united Great Britain. This was a period of constitutional development, which might have proved more difficult with a man on the throne, particularly one concerned to defend his position. Anne’s passivity was gently satirised at the time by Alexander Pope who wrote:
Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Doth sometimes council take - and sometimes tea.
When Anne died in 1714, her Francophile cousin James being a strong Catholic, the political arbitrators delved into the past and remembered that George, the Elector of Hanover, was the grandson of that Elizabeth who had married the Elector Palatine in 1617. Although his accession was not undisputed, he became king in succession to Anne in August 1714, and the constitutional procedure for determining the succession was vindicated. The ‘Old Pretender’ as James came to be known, was defeated in the following year.
George had married in November 1682, without reference to his English prospects, which did not exist at that time. His wife was Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of the Duke of Luneburg-Celle but, apart from producing a son and a daughter within the space of five years, the marriage was a failure. Both partners embarked on affairs and in 1694 Sophia’s lover was murdered. George then divorced and imprisoned her in Germany, so by the time he came to Britain he was effectively unmarried (although not unaccompanied). In fact the Act of Settlement of 1701 had named his mother, the Electress Sophia as next heir after Anne, but she had died in 1713, devolving her claim upon her son. Thus England had narrowly avoided having another ruling queen but was left without a first lady until George died in 1727. He had succeeded his father as Elector of Hanover in 1698 and held both titles thereafter, paying altogether seven visits to his German lands during his time as King, on the last of which he died. The first George never learned to speak English, his son (also George) acting as his interpreter, but it did not matter greatly as executive decisions were by that time firmly in the hands of the office that would shortly be known as that of the Prime Minister. The second George had married in 1705, naturally among the German princely families, his wife being Caroline, the daughter of John Frederick, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. By the time that he succeeded, at the age of 43, George and Caroline had had nine children, of whom seven survived infancy. He chose to be crowned jointly with his Queen and the ceremony took place at Westminster on 11 October 1727.
George II reigned until 1760, dying at the age of 77 and outliving both his wife and his eldest son, Frederick, who died in March 1751. His reign saw several wars, important colonial expansion, particularly in India, and the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. The latter, which briefly looked dangerous, was the last attempt to replace the exiled and Catholic Stuarts on the British throne. Its leader, the grandson of James II, known as ‘bonny Prince Charlie’, died an alcoholic wreck in Italy in 1788. For a number of years George was notoriously at odds with his eldest son, whose ‘Leicester House set’ contributed significantly to the development of party politics. By this time the King’s political power was reduced to influence and he was no more effective as a personal ruler than Anne had been. As became the wife of a constitutional monarch, Caroline confined herself very largely to social and domestic duties. When George II died he was succeeded by his grandson, George III, who at the time of his accession was 22 and unmarried. This latter deficiency was remedied within a matter of weeks, when he took to wife yet another German princess, this time Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz. At first George intervened a good deal in politics, attempting to manipulate Parliament in a way to which neither his grandfather nor his great grandfather had aspired. His immensely long reign (he lived until 1820) saw the loss of the American colonies, the consolidation of the second British Empire in India, and the wars against the French Revolution and Napoleon. Charlotte proved to be an exemplary Queen, having no political ambitions (except on her husband’s behalf) and falling pregnant about every 18 months from 1760 to 1783. The couple had altogether 15 children, of whom only two died young, and this unprecedented success rate entitles Charlotte to a special place in the chronicles of the English Queens. George, unfortunately, outlived his own wits and had become incapacitated by 1811, when his eldest son became Prince Regent, until his own succession as George IV in 1820.
George III had been a model of probity, both sexual and financial, so his son, almost inevitably, was the reverse. His debts created a scandal as early as 1783 and by the time that he became Prince Regent they amounted to the staggering sum of over ?500,000. In 1785 he secretly married Maria Fitzherbert, but his nuptials were not recognized, and ten years later, much against his will, he was forced into marriage with his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. Although she bore him a daughter, they quickly separated and lived in bitter estrangement for over 20 years. When he was crowned on 19 July 1821, Caroline attempted to gatecrash the ceremony on the grounds that she was George’s lawful wife - which was true. She was ejected and died about three weeks later. By then, however, she had won one important victory, because George had publicly charged her with adultery, a charge that he was forced to abandon in the House of Lords, along with the bill of Pains and Penalties, which he had aimed against her. For the ten years of his reign there was consequently no Queen, and the monarchy as an institution was in serious discredit.
From this it was to some extent rescued by the succession of his younger brother, George III’s third son, who took the title of William IV. William had embarked upon a career in the navy but in 1787, when he was 24, he was created Duke of Clarence and decided to take his seat in the House of Lords. Like his brother he had a taste for unsuitable women but he was at least faithful to his mistress. For about 20 years he co-habited with an actress named Dorothy Jordan and they produced ten children. When eventually, at the age of 53, he decided that he must marry, it meant perforce choosing a woman of his own rank, and in 1818 he wedded Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, yet another German princess, who was 25. In spite of the difference in their ages (to say nothing of nationalities), their marriage was a happy one but all their three children died young. William had never thought of himself as a potential king but even before his marriage, the death of George’s only legitimate child, Charlotte, left him second in line, behind his older brother, Frederick Duke of York, and when Frederick died in 1827, William became the heir. Succeeding on 26 June 1830, he was crowned jointly with Adelaide in September 1831. He reigned for only seven years, but they were momentous in terms of British constitutional development, witnessing the passage of the first (and most crucial) Reform Bill. Adelaide was a faithful shadow, performing her social duties gracefully and with aplomb but making no impact outside the palace circle. When William died on 20 June 1837, she was destined for a long and placid retirement. William was succeeded by his niece, the 18-year-old Victoria, the daughter of George III’s fourth son, Edward Duke of Kent, who had died in 1820, just a year after her birth. Victoria was England’s fifth, and Great Britain’s second, ruling queen. She presided over most of the Industrial Revolution and the zenith of the British Empire and restored the tarnished prestige of the monarchy, less by what she did than by virtue of who she was. She also enjoyed the longest reign of any English or British monarch to date, dying 63 years later at the age of 81.
Victoria’s political position was entirely defined by those statutes and customs that were collectively known as the British Constitution. Her power was confined to relationships with her ruling ministries, which by this time were returned to Parliament by means of general elections, and particularly with successive Prime Ministers. In theory the Privy Council was by this time purely advisory and mainly a means of keeping the monarch informed about decisions that were being made elsewhere. In practice, as time went on, the Queen had more political experience than any of her ministers and her guidance was often sought, but her main role was that of a figurehead and symbol. This was particularly demonstrated in 1876 when she assumed the title ‘Empress of India’ but it was also true nearer to home. In February 1840, Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg Gotha, and it was a genuine love match. Albert quickly established himself in favour with the British people and they produced ten children over 17 years, although it was 1857 before he was accorded the title by which he is best known - that of Prince Consort. Albert did not attempt to interfere in politics but busied himself with good works and public charities, earning a deserved reputation for acumen and good sense. When he died in 1861 the Queen was devastated, and became a virtual recluse for a number of years, until her ministers eventually succeeded in recalling her to a sense of duty. All Victoria’s children lived to become adults and most married, as a result of which she became known as the ‘Grandmother of Europe’. Victoria was not called upon to govern in the way that the first Elizabeth had done but her gender made her an equally potent symbol - in her case of motherhood rather than virginity. In effect she reinvented the monarchy after its years of discredit under her uncle George IV, and effectively frustrated the republican movements that were strong in England at the beginning of her reign.
Her son, who took the title Edward VII (although he was usually known as ‘Bertie’) had waited 60 years for his chance to rule. He had married in 1863, his bride being Alexandra, the daughter of Christian IX of Denmark. It was a happy union, despite his well-publicized affairs, and she bore him six children between 1864 and 1871, but devoted herself largely to her children and to charity work, playing no part in her husband’s public life. This continued after his accession, when the Queen presided over state entertainments, but otherwise kept in the background, continuing to be mainly a patron of good causes. When Edward died in May 1910, Alexandra survived him, and he was succeeded by his eldest remaining son, who took the title George V. George had married in 1893 with Princess Mary of Teck, and was 45 when he succeeded his father. During the First World War he changed his family name from Saxe Coburg Gotha to Windsor for obvious patriotic reasons and is sometimes therefore misleadingly described as being the first ruler of a new dynasty. Mary later acquired the reputation of being something of a dragon but that was purely in a domestic context. Just as her husband was a constitutional king so she was a self-effacing queen. Her only political action came after her husband’s death in 1936, when she intervened decisively against her son’s plans to marry the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. Edward VIII had won golden opinions as Prince of Wales but he came to the throne unmarried at the age of 42. A constitutional crisis followed when it became clear what his matrimonial plans were. Both his government and his family were bitterly opposed to the move on the grounds that a woman with Mrs Simpson’s background and antecedents could not possibly know how to behave as Queen. The democratization of the monarchy, which had been noticeable since the death of Victoria, had only gone a certain distance. Morganatic marriage was unacceptable and it was unthinkable that so uniquely placed a lady should have been through the divorce courts. After less than a year on the throne, and without having undergone a coronation, Edward abdicated in favour of his younger brother, who took the title of George VI.
George and his wife Elizabeth, of the Scottish family of Bowes Lyon helped to steer Britain through the traumas of the Second World War and again reinvented the monarchy in a domestic mode. This was largely the work of the Queen who developed a talent for high profile family life, which set an agenda for two whole generations of Britons. George died in 1952, but his widow survived him for more than 50 years, becoming eventually the best loved as well as the most durable member of the royal family. George was succeeded by his elder daughter Elizabeth II, who thus became England’s sixth and Great Britain’s third ruling Queen. At the time of her accession she was already married to her remote kinsman, Philip Mountbatten. Philip was never accorded the title of Prince Consort (let alone King) but was created Duke of Edinburgh, which title he retains. The couple have four children, of whom the oldest, Charles, has been Prince of Wales since 1958. Despite the ‘New Elizabethan’ rhetoric of the 1950s, there is no comparison between the position of the present monarch and that of her predecessor and namesake. The first Elizabeth was the head of government as well as the head of state. As such, although she was constrained by certain laws and customs, she was answerable only to God and not in any sense to her people. The present Elizabeth is not the head of any government and her political power is largely confined to an influence based on vast experience and a shrewd understanding of the world. The profile of the monarchy is high, but it is so largely for formal and ceremonial reasons. It no longer makes much difference whether the incumbent is male or female, because the symbolism is that of the office rather than the person - which was not so even as late as the reign of Victoria. The image of the Royal family as a cosy domestic unit, so assiduously cultivated by the late Queen Mother, has now largely disappeared, as first the Queen’s sister Margaret, and then three of her four children, were divorced from their partners. Paradoxically, this has brought the Queen closer to her people, for whom such experiences have become routine. The monarchy no longer has a mystique but it does have a practical utility. The Queen is still the head of the Commonwealth, that international club that evolved out of the British Empire and an hereditary succession still seems the most sensible way to fill a position which is largely symbolic. By comparison, the idea of regular presidential elections and of an executive power divided between an elected President and an elected assembly has little appeal. What the first Elizabeth might have thought of her successor’s reduced circumstances does not bear thinking about. The position of Queen Consort has been untested for over half a century, during which there have been dramatic social and conceptual changes. Whether the present Duchess of Cornwall will ever become Queen Consort is a matter of uncertainty and if she does what the responsibilities of that position might entail has still to be tested. The monarchy is still evolving, but it is reasonably certain that the role of the Queen as the defender of her husband’s honour has been consigned to history.
World History
