Chapter 28 - Sarah Betts
What's in a name?
Dynasty, Succession and England's Queens Regnant (1553-2016)
‘The Plantagenets’, ‘The Tudors’, ‘The Stuarts’, ‘The Hanoverians’; the dynastic names that have traditionally delineated periods of English History. Monarchs of these families each incorporated, to a greater or lesser extent, an affiliation to the reputation and image of their dynasty into their own personal public personas. The accession of the six Queens Regnant - Mary I (1553), Elizabeth I (1558), Mary II (1688), Anne (1702), Victoria (1836) and Elizabeth II (1952) – each complicated the identity of the ruling house, partly due to the nature of female succession and identity in a patriarchal society, and partly because of the peculiar circumstances by which each came to the throne.
This chapter will consider the conundrum faced by female rulers over the question of personal and dynastic identity, and will explore the complexities of dynastic succession between women in a society where monarchy has been understood in terms of male-preference primogeniture. It will explore the place of dynasty in the contemporary and retrospective images and personas of the six Queens Regnant of England, and use their examples to throw into relief changing perspectives on the use of dynastic continuity and/or change within the mechanics of sovereignty particularly at moments of succession.
By Sarah Betts
Sarah Betts
Sarah Betts is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of York, UK where she is working on a thesis examining the cultural representations and afterlife of Civil War royalists and royalisms in England from the 1640s to the present day. She has broader interests in the history of monarchy, cultural memory and public history. She has published on Stuart matriarchy and queenship, civil war memorials and memorial practice in England and representations of seventeenth century history and monarchy in popular culture and television drama. In terms of Royal and Monarchy studies, she is particularly interested in taking a long durée look at perceptions of both individual monarchs and the institution/s of monarchy as a whole in Britain from the seventeenth century onwards.
Bibliography
Banerjee, Milinda, Charlotte Backerra, and Cathleen Sarti, eds. Transnational Histories of the “Royal Nation.” London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Barron, Kathryn. “‘For Stuart blood is in my veins’ (Queen Victoria) the British monarchy’s collection of imagery and objects associated with the exiled Stuarts from the reign of George III to the present day.” In The Stuart Court in Rome: The Legacy of Exile, edited by Edward Corp, 149-164. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.
Beem, Charles. “Princess of Wales? Mary Tudor and the History of English Heirs to the Throne.” In The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, edited by Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, 13-30. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Beem, Charles. “Why George of Denmark did not become a King of England.” In The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History, edited by Charles Beem and Miles Taylor, 81-91. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Beem, Charles, and Miles Taylor, eds. The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Beem, Charles. The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Bell, Duncan. “The Idea of a Patriot Queen? The Monarchy, the Constitution, and the iconographic order of Greater Britain.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 34, no. 1 (2006): 3-22.
Betts, Sarah. “Matriarchs of the Royal House of Stuart: Negotiating Personal and Dynastic Ambition, Motherhood and Adversity (1613-1662).” In Royal Mothers and Their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era, edited by Elena Woodacre and Carey Fleiner, 53-80. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Bolitho, Hector. The Prince Consort and his Brother: Two Hundred New Letters. London: Cobden, 1933.
Bowen, Marjorie. The Third Mary Stuart. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1929.
Bradford, Sarah. Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain’s Queen. Revised edition. New York: Riverhead Books, 1997.
Brandreth, Giles. Philip and Elizabeth: The Portrait of a Marriage. London: Century, 2004.
Broomhall, Susan and Jacqueline Van Gent. Dynastic Colonialism: Gender, materiality and the early modern house of Orange-Nassau. London: Routledge, 2016.
Broomhall, Susan and Jacqueline Van Gent. Gender, Power and Identity in the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau. London: Routledge, 2016.
Bundesen, Karen. “Lousy with Cousins: Elizabeth I’s Family at Court.” In The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern, edited by Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise J. Wilkinson, 74-89. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009.
Cannadine, David. “The Context, Performance, and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition,’ c.1820-1977.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, 101-164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 20th Edition, 2012.
Cannadine, David. “The Last Hanoverian Sovereign?: The Victorian Monarchy in Historical Perspective, 1688-1988.” In The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, edited by A.L. Beier, David Cannadine, and James M. Rosenheim, 127-166. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Cannadine, David. History in Our Time. London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Carlton, Charles. “Tudors to Windsor: an Early Modern Monarchy in a Post-Modern Britain.” In State, Sovereigns and Society in Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of A.J. Slavin, edited by Charles Carlton, Robert Woods, Mary L. Robinson, and Joseph S. Black, 137-150. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998.
Carlton, Charles, Robert Woods, Mary L. Robinson, and Joseph S. Black, eds. State, Sovereigns and Society in Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of A.J. Slavin. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998.
“Civil List.” House of Commons Sitting of Wednesday 17 December 1947. Hansard. Fifth Series. Volume 445. Accessed Online at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/
Cole, Mary Hill. “The Half-Blood Princes: Mary I, Elizabeth I, and Their Strategies of Legitimation.” In The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, edited by Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, 77-88. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Second edition. Yale: Yale University Press, 2005.
Conway, Katherine and Elizabeth Hageman. Resurrecting Elizabeth in Seventeenth Century England. Cranbury: Fairleigh Dickson University Press, 2007.
Cook, E. Thornton. Royal Elizabeths: The Romance of Five Princesses 1464-1840. London: John Murray, Cheap Edition, 1930.
Cruickshanks, Evelyn. “Religion and Royal Succession: The Rage of Party.” In Britain in the First Age of Party, 1680-1750: essays presented to Geoffrey Holmes, edited by Clyve Jones, 19-43. London: Continuum, 1986.
Cruz, Anne J. and Mihoko Susuki. The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Davies, C.S.L. “Tudor: What’s in a Name?” History 97, no. 325 (2012): 24-42.
Deploige, Jeroen and Gita Deneckere. Mystifying the Monarch: Studies on Discourse, Power and History. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2006.
Devendra, Anyusha. “Act for the Marriage of Queen Mary to Philip of Spain; 1554.” Accessed 11 April 2017.http://rbsche.people.wm.edu/H111_doc_marriageofqueenmary.html.
Doda, Hilary. “Lady Mary to Queen of England: Transformation, Ritual, and the Wardrobe of the Robes.” In The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, edited by Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, 49-68. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Doran, Susan. Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I. London: Routledge, 1996.
“Ducal Cornwall.” The Times, Tuesday July 11, 1950.
“The Duchess of Kent’s Annuity Bill.” Journals of the House of Commons. 10th August 1831, 86.
Duffy, Eamon. Fires of Faith, England Under Mary Tudor. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010.
Duindam, Jeroen. Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Duncan, Sarah and Valerie Schutte, eds. The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Duncan, Sarah. Mary I: Gender, Power, and Ceremony in the Reign of England’s First Queen. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
From Our Own Correspondent. “Princess Elizabeth in Wales.” The Times, Wednesday August 7 1946.
Frye, Susan. “Elizabeth when a Princess: Early Self-representations in a Portrait and a Letter.” In The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World 1500-2000, edited by Regina Schulte, 43-60. Oxford: Berghahn, 2006.
“Full Text of Churchill’s Tribute to King George VI.” The Sydney Morning Herald, February 9 1952.
Geevers, Liesbeth and Mirella Marini, eds. Dynastic Identity in Early Modern Europe: Rulers, Aristocrats and the Formation of Identities. London: Ashgate, 2015.
Gestrich, Andreas and Michael Schaich. The Hanoverian Succession: Dynastic Politics and Monarchical Culture. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
Gregg, Edward. Queen Anne. New edition. Yale: Yale University Press, 2001.
Guy, John. The Children of Henry VIII. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Hall, Philip. Royal Fortune: Tax, Money and the Monarchy. London, Bloomsbury, 1992.
Hearn, Karen. Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England. London: Tate Publishing, 1995.
Heffernen, Troy. “Protecting England and its Church: Lady Anne and the Death of Charles Stuart.” The Seventeenth Century 31, no. 1 (2016): 57-70.
“The Heiress Presumptive.” The Times, February 12, 1944.
Her Majesty the Queen. “A speech by the Queen on her coronation day, 1953.” Accessed 21 June 2017. https://www.royal.uk/coronation-day-speech-2-june-1953
Her Majesty the Queen. “Elizabeth II Christmas broadcast speech, 1953.” Accessed 19 June 2017. https://www.royal.uk/christmas-broadcast-1953
Hicks, Michael. English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century. London: Routledge, 2002.
Homans, Margaret. Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1999.
House of Commons Sitting of Thursday 28 January 1937. Hansard. Fifth Series. Volume 319. Accessed Online at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/
Hunt, Alice and Anna Whitelock, eds. Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Johnson, Jacqueline. “Elizabeth of York: mother of the Tudor dynasty.” In The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern, edited by Liz Oakley-Brown and Louise J. Wilkinson, 47-58. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009.
Kampmann, Christopher. “Blessing or Burden for the Personal Union? On the Inherent Contradictions of the ‘Act of Settlement.’” In Hannover, Coburg-Gotha, Windsor: Problems and Perspectives of a comparative German-British dynastic history from the 18th to the 20th century, edited by Frank-Lothar Kroll and Martin Munke, 58-79. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2015.
Kantorowicz, Ernst, H. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. 7th Paperback Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Kay, Richard and Geoffrey Levy. “Princes at War: How Charles’ plans for a slimmed-down monarchy have ‘driven a dagger through Andrew’s heart’ – and sparked a Palace power struggle.” Daily Mail Online, 27 July 2012. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2180012/Princes-war-How-Charles-plans-slimmed-monarchy-driven-dagger-Andrews-heart--sparked-Palace-power-struggle.html
Knoppers, Laura Lunger. Politicizing Domesticity from Henrietta Maria to Milton’s Eve. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Kroll, Frank-Lothar, and Martin Munke, eds. Hannover, Coburg-Gotha, Windsor: Problems and Perspectives of a comparative German-British dynastic history from the 18th to the 20th century. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2015.
Levin, Carole. “Elizabeth’s Ghost: The afterlife of the Queen in Stuart England.” Royal Studies Journal 1 (2014): 1-16.
Luders, A. et al, eds. The Statutes of Realm. London, 1810-1828.
McLaren, Anne. “Memorialising Mary and Elizabeth.” In Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, edited by Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock, 11-27. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Mearns, Anne. “Unnatural, Unlawful, Ungodly and Monstrous: Manipulating the Queenly Identities of Mary I and Mary II.” In The Birth of a Queen: Essays on the Quincentenary of Mary I, edited by Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, 197-214. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Mitchell, Alan. “A royal relaunch for the family firm.” The Times, October 26 1994.
Montague-Smith, Patrick W. “Royal Surnames.” The Times, December 4 1973.
Montrose, Louis. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender and Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Müller, Frank and Heidi Mehrkens, eds. Royal Heirs and the Uses of Soft Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Murray, Catriona. Imaging Stuart Family Politics: Dynastic Crisis and Continuity. London: Routledge, 2017.
The National Archives, CO 323/745/46. Proclamation declaring that the name of Windsor is to be borne by [the King’s] royal house and family and relinquishing the use of all German titles and dignities. 17th July 1917.
The National Archives, London, LCO 2/8111. Surname of the Royal Family: declaration by the Queen that she and her children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor.
Neale, Erskine. The Life of Field-Marshal His Royal Highness, Edward, Duke of Kent. London: Richard Bentley, 1850.
Nenner, Howard. The Right to be King: The Succession to the Crown of England 1603-1714. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995.
Oakley-Brown, Liz and Louise J. Wilkinson, eds. The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009.
“Obituary: Mr Edward Iwi.” The Times, June 9 1966.
Owens, Edward. “Love, Duty and Diplomacy: The Mixed Response to the 1947 Engagement of Princess Elizabeth.” In Royal Heirs and the Uses of Soft Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Frank Müller and Heidi Mehrkens, 223-240. London: Palgrave, 2016.
Plowden, Alison. The Young Victoria. iNew edition. London: The History Press, 2007.
Plunkett, John. “Civic Publicness: the creation of Queen Victoria’s royal role 1837-61.” In Encounters in the Victorian Press: editors, authors, readers, edited by Laurel Brake and Julie F. Codell, 11-28. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005.
Plunkett, John. Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“Princess Elizabeth’s and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Annuities Bill.” House of Commons Sitting of Tuesday 20 January 1948. Hansard. Fifth Series. Volume 446. Accessed Online at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/
“Provision for the Duchess of Kent.” Journals of the House of Commons. 9 August 1831, 86.
Accessed Online at: https://hansard.parliament.uk/
Queen Victoria. The Letters of Queen Victoria. Volume I 1837-1843. London: John Murray, 1908.
“Regency Act to be Amended.” The Times, July 23, 1953.
Ridley, Jane. “‘Europe’s Grandmother:’ Queen Victoria and her German Relations.” In Hannover, Coburg-Gotha, Windsor: Problems and Perspectives of a comparative German-British dynastic history from the 18th to the 20th century, edited by Frank-Lothar Kroll and Martin Munke, 244-259. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2015.
Ridley, Jane. Victoria: Queen, Matriarch, Empress. London: Penguin 2015.
Roberts, Andrew. “A name that must not taint the Windsors.” Daily Mail, October 24 1994.
Rogers, Pat. Pope and the Destiny of the Stuarts: History, Politics and Mythology in the Age of Queen Anne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
“Royal Affairs.” The Times, July 24, 1953.
Royal Archives, RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W), Queen Victoria’s Journals.
“Royal House of Windsor.” The Times, July 18, 1917.
“The Royal Investiture.” The Illustrated London News, 5 July 1969.
Schama, Simon. “The Domestication of Majesty: Royal Family Portraiture, 1500-1850.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 1 (1986): 155-183.
Schönpflug, Daniel. “One European Family? A Quantitative Approach to Royal Marriage Circles 1700-1918.” In Royal Kinship: Anglo-German Family Networks 1815-1918, edited by Karina Urbach, 25-34. Munich: Saur, 2008.
Schulte, Regina, ed. The Body of the Queen: Gender and Rule in the Courtly World 1500-2000. Oxford: Berghahn, 2006.
Sharpe, Kevin. Rebranding Rule: Images of Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660-1714. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013.
Sharpe, Kevin. Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth-Century England. London: Yale University Press, 2009.
Shawcross, William. Counting One’s Blessings: The Collected Letters of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. London: Pan, 2013.
Smith, Hannah “‘Last of all the Heavenly Birth:’ Queen Anne and Sacral Queenship.” Parliamentary History 28, no. 1 (2009): 137-49.
“A Son Born to Princess Elizabeth.” The Times, November 15, 1948.
Stevenson, Katie. “Chivalry, British sovereignty and dynastic politics: undercurrents of antagonism in Tudor-Stewart relations, c.1490-c.1513.” Historical Research 86, no. 234 (2013): 601-618.
Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. London: Pimlico, 1999.
Szechi, Daniel. “Jacobite Politics in the Age of Anne.” Parliamentary History 28, no. 1 (2009): 41-58.
Taylor, Anthony. “Down With the Crown”: British Anti-Monarchism and Debates about Royalty Since 1790. London: Reaktion Books, 2013.
Te Velde, Henk. “Cannadine, Twenty Years on. Monarchy and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Netherlands.” In Mystifying the Monarch: Studies on Discourse, Power and History, edited by Jeroen Deploige and Gita Deneckere, 193-204. Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 2006.
“Things to do: Windsor Castle.” Accessed 27 July 2017. http://www.windsor.gov.uk/things-to-do/windsor-castle-p43983.
Urbach, Karina, ed. Royal Kinship: Anglo-German Family Networks 1815-1918. Munich: Saur, 2008.
Urbach, Karina. “Prince Albert: The Creative Consort.” In The Man Behind the Queen: Male Consorts in History, edited by Charles Beem and Miles Taylor, 145-155. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Walker, Julia M. The Elizabeth Icon, 1603-2003. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Waller, Maureen. Sovereign Ladies: The Six Reigning Queens of England. London: John Murray, 2007.
Ward, Yvonne M. “The womanly garb of Queen Victoria”s early motherhood, 1840-42.” Women”s History Review 8, no. 2 (1999): 227-294.
Watkins, John. Representing Elizabeth in Stuart England: Literature, History, Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Whitelock, Anna. Mary Tudor: England”s First Queen. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.
Wonnacott, John. “35 years of portraits of the Queen from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.” The Telegraph Online http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/the_queens_diamond_jubilee/9208836/35-years-of-portraits-of-the-Queen-from-the-Royal-Society-of-Portrait-Painters.html?image=9
Zook, Melinda. “The Shocking Death of Mary II: Gender & Political Crisis in Late Stuart England.” British Scholar 1, no. 1(2008): 21-36.
Related Chapters
Estelle Paranque: Royal Representation through the Father and Warrior Figures in Early Modern Europe (See Chapter 19)
Catriona Murray: Raising Royal Bodies: Stuart Authority and the Monumental Image (See Chapter 21)
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones: Harem Politics: Royal Women and Succession Crises in the Ancient Near East (c. 1400-300 BCE) (See Chapter 31)