Plantagenet Monarchs 1154 - 1485 By Robert Bartlett.
Between 1154 and 1485, a period of 331 years, England was ruled by one family. Every king during that time was a descendant in the male line of a French count, Geoffrey of Anjou, whose badge, the broom plant – planta genista in Latin – is the origin of their name: the Plantagenets.
The Plantagenet dynasty had its origin in the Loire valley, and the first two Plantagenet kings of England, Henry II and Richard the Lionheart, spent much more time in France than in England. This French connection continued throughout the Middle Ages. The body of Henry III lies in Westminster Abbey, but he commanded that after his death his heart should be interred in the Plantagenet family mausoleum of Fontevrault in the Loire valley. Richard II was sometimes called ‘Richard of Bordeaux’ from the place of his birth, while Edward IV was born in Rouen.
Despite these ties with France, the Plantagenets are England’s longest-reigning dynasty. It was their births, marriages and deaths that shaped the political history of England and much of France. They provide a perfect example of what dynastic rule meant.
Most Plantagenets, like most people in the Middle Ages, died before their 10th birthday. Those who survived – who are the ones we know something about – might live a fair bit longer. The average age at death of the Plantagenet kings was 45. The unlucky ones, like Edward V, one of the ‘princes in the Tower’, did not make it to their 13th birthday. The longest survivor, Edward I, died at the age of 68.
Sudden and unexpected deaths, either through violence, like that of Richard I, or from disease, like that of Henry V, could transform the political world overnight. From both these deaths the eventual outcome was the expulsion of the Plantagenets from most of their French possessions.
But long-lived kings presented problems too. Heirs might get impatient and fractious, while the so-called dotage of Edward III (when the king was in his 60s, a relatively youthful age) created serious problems, which affected English politics and undermined the Plantagenet war effort in France. Kings were meant to have sons, but not too many. Given the high rate of infant mortality, it was best if they produced numerous children. Edward III and his queen, Philippa, had at least 12 children; nine of these survived infancy, and five of the nine were boys. This ensured that the dynasty would continue in the male line, but it also stored up trouble for the future, with many royal descendants ready to make claims if given a chance.
But kings without sons were vulnerable – get rid of them, and there would be no heirs to fight back and pursue revenge. When Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne from Richard II, he faced opposition, criticism and, sometimes, rebellion, but Richard had no son to fan the flames. In contrast, when Henry VI was removed by Edward IV in 1461, there was a son, and Edward’s regime was not truly secure until the killing of that son 10 years later. A son or two was the safe formula for a medieval king.
These sons became active early. Henry II, the first Plantagenet king, started as the son of a French count, but by the time he was 20, he had fought and married his way to become one of the most powerful rulers in Europe. This early start was not unusual. This was a world in which teenagers could rule. Henry’s son Richard became Duke of Aquitaine, ruling a third of France, aged 14. Edward III took control of the government, killing his mother’s lover and sending her into permanent house arrest, when he was 18. His son, the Black Prince, won his spurs at the battle of Crécy, aged 16. Richard II confronted and won-over a crowd of armed rebels when he was 14.
But, if youthful kings and princes could certainly exercise powers of command effectively, the accession of an infant was a dangerous moment. At this juncture, learned men would quote the line from Ecclesiastes 10, 16: “Woe to the land where a child is king!” Unlike earlier periods, when an adult male was the preferred successor, the rules of succession that applied in the Plantagenet centuries took no account of the age of the heir. Henry III came to the throne aged nine, Richard II aged 10, poor Edward V at the age of 12. This meant regencies, rival factions, decisions about (and by) queen-mothers, and, of course, endless negotiations about future brides.
For a dynasty to survive, it had to reproduce. And by the 11th century, in most parts of western Europe, this meant marriage as defined by the (Catholic) church. Earlier, more casual arrangements had been replaced or marginalised. William the Conqueror’s alternative nickname was William the Bastard, but during the Plantagenet centuries illegitimacy was taken seriously as a bar to succession. None of the numerous illegitimate children of the Plantagenets raised a claim. When Richard III decided to take the throne from his nephews, he thought it necessary to undertake an elaborate process to declare them illegitimate. Even if no one believed his arguments, he felt it was a case he had to make: if the princes were not of legitimate birth, they could not be kings.
An unusual example of illegitimate children rising high is provided by the offspring of John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford, though they needed the backing of both pope and king to be declared legitimate. Katherine was the daughter of one of the knights of Hainault who had come to England with Philippa of Hainault, queen of Edward III. Katherine had married an English knight but had also been recognised as Gaunt’s mistress.
The high-born ladies of the royal dynasty were not amused when John of Gaunt and Katherine subsequently got married. “We will not go anywhere she is,” they said. “It would be a disgrace if this duchess, who is low born and was his mistress for a long time when he was married, should have precedence over us. Our hearts would break with grief, and with good reason.” But the ladies were ignored. The children of Gaunt and Katherine were given the aristocratic-sounding surname Beaufort; they and their descendants were to be one of the most important political families in England for the next century. And Margaret Beaufort, Katherine’s great-granddaughter, was the mother of the first of the Tudors, Henry VII.
However, most ruling families used formal marriages as an essential part of their strategy and hence they became a never-ending subject of debate, discussion and disagreement. Marriage was indeed one of the preoccupations of this dynastic world. There were always marriage negotiations going on, many leading nowhere. Sometimes this even involved babies being committed to future brides or bridegrooms. Henry ‘the Young King’, son of Henry II, was married at the age of five to the even younger daughter of the king of France. Contemporaries noted with some disapproval this marriage of “little children still wailing in the cradle”, but it brought Henry II the important border territory of the Vexin as the baby princess’s dowry.
Marriages at this social level were about power and property, especially the forging of links with other ruling dynasties. For the first three centuries of Plantagenet rule, the queens of England were all foreign, the majority of them French, indicating the central place of France in the Plantagenet world. Indeed, between 1066 and 1464, no English king married an English woman.
One of the jobs of queens was to produce children, especially sons. Because men are capable of fathering children longer than women are capable of bearing them, it was not uncommon for kings to remarry after the death of a queen. Edward I produced 16 children with his first wife, Eleanor of Castile. He then had three more when he was in his 60s with his young bride, Margaret of France.
Queens were also meant to be mediators, softening the harsh masculine power of their husbands. A famous example is Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward III, pleading for the life of the burghers of Calais, six men from the French town whom Edward had ordered to be hanged. A less well-known example of the same queen’s intercession occurred early in Edward’s reign, when the wooden stands set up for Philippa and her ladies to watch a tournament collapsed. No one was badly hurt, but the carpenters would have suffered if she had not pleaded for mercy with her husband.
And queens were often fierce champions of the rights of their sons. The Plantagenet dynasty owed its crown to the determined and persistent efforts of Matilda, daughter of Henry I, who never gave up the fight until her son, the future Henry II, was recognised as heir to the English throne. She was never queen, but she kept the title ‘empress’ from her first marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor, and she lived for 13 years after Henry’s accession with her status as the king’s mother.
In the last decades of Plantagenet rule, it was Margaret of Anjou, queen of the disabled Henry VI, who led the struggle for the rights of their son, Edward, Prince of Wales. She was described as “a great and strong laboured woman”. At the low point of their cause, Margaret lobbied persistently for French support, and even agreed to an alliance with the Earl of Warwick, a former chief enemy who had fallen out with the Yorkist side. But the apparent triumph of 1470, when Warwick put Henry VI back on the throne, was followed by the crushing defeat of 1471, the deaths of Warwick, Edward Prince of Wales and Henry VI. Margaret was a prisoner but, with the death of her son, no longer had a cause for which to fight.
For the sons who did not succeed to the throne, some kind of provision had to be made. And it could be spectacular. In several cases, the younger sons of the Plantagenet dynasty aimed at crowns for themselves: John, son of Henry II, was meant to be king of Ireland and was sent a peacock crown – although he had to settle for ‘Lord of Ireland’ instead, a title the kings of England bore down to the time of the Tudors, when it was upgraded to ‘King of Ireland’.
Edmund, son of Henry III, was, famously, proposed as king of Sicily, although the only result of this scheme was an explosion of resentment among the English baronage and the civil war of 1264–65. John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, claimed and fought for the crown of Castile. The only one actually to establish himself on a distant throne, however, was Richard of Cornwall, the younger brother of Henry III, who became ‘King of the Romans’ – which meant Holy Roman Emperor elect – and was crowned in Charlemagne’s old capital of Aachen.
Dynasticism was characterised by ambitions that extended far beyond the boundaries of states. Dynasties looked out for their family interests, not for those of a nation or people (insofar as these can be said to have ‘interests’). And the horizons of the Plantagenet dynasty extended well beyond England and France. Richard the Lionheart conquered Cyprus, establishing what was to be the most long-lived of the Crusader states, and Edward I was knighted not in Westminster or Windsor, but in Burgos, on the occasion of his marriage to Eleanor of Castile.
Edward named one of his sons Alfonso, and this child was for many years his heir apparent. If Alfonso had not died at the age of 10, Edward I might have been succeeded by Alfonso I and English naming patterns could have been different to this day, with Alfonso as normal a name as Edward.
In a dynastic world, everything hung on the thread of a vulnerable human life. This life might be wiped away by illness at any time. Or it could be unbalanced, as in the case of Henry VI, whose mental illness came upon him in the summer of 1453. It is sometimes thought that Henry’s madness can be traced to his maternal grandfather, Charles VI of France, but they had very different forms of illness. Charles had remarkable fantasies, such as the belief that he was made of glass and so might break, but Henry simply slumped into a stupor, failing to register even the birth of his only son.
Sudden sickness and madness were part of the uncertainty about the succession – a recurrent anxiety in the dynastic world. Naturally, people sought out methods to diminish that uncertainty and to have guidance for the future. Some of these methods were dangerous, as Eleanor Cobham found out. Eleanor had married Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V, in 1428. She had been his mistress for some years, and once he had his first marriage annulled, she was able to become his wife. After the death of his older brother, Humphrey was next in line for the throne. If Henry VI died, Humphrey would be king and Eleanor queen.
Eleanor was perhaps unwise. She consulted two astrologers to see whether the young king would live and obtained potions from a wise woman to help her conceive – she could be the mother of kings. The astrologers – both of them respectable and learned men – told the duchess that Henry VI would suffer a life-threatening illness in the summer of 1441.
The events of that summer were in fact very different. Duke Humphrey had his enemies, as well as his ambitions, and they saw their chance when they heard that his wife had been dabbling in magic and getting predictions of the king’s illness or death. In July 1441 Eleanor was arrested and tried on charges of necromancy. She admitted that, in order to help her become pregnant, she had obtained potions from ‘a wise woman’ – a phrase that her accusers would interpret without a doubt as ‘a witch’. She was forced to repent her errors. One of Eleanor’s astrologers died in the Tower of London, the other was hanged, drawn and quartered. The ‘wise woman’ she had consulted was burned alive. Eleanor herself had to do penance, walking barefoot to the church, was divorced from Duke Humphrey and spent the remaining 11 years of her life a prisoner in remote and windy castles. She was never the mother of kings.
But another permanent threat was simple physical violence in this complex, brutal world. In the medieval period there were 58 male descendants of Count Geoffrey of Anjou (excluding those who died as babies). Of these, 23 died through violence – 16 of them (almost three-quarters) in the 15th century, the last century of Plantagenet rule.
This century clearly belongs to what the great medievalist Maitland called “the centuries of blood”, after an earlier period when the upper classes had been relatively less bloodthirsty in their feuds. And this bloodletting marked the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, as Henry Tudor picked up the bloody crown at Bosworth field. But it was certainly not the end of dynastic politics.
TUDOR MONARCHS 1485-1649
Henry VII. 1485 - 1509.
Henry VIII. 1509 - 1547.
Edward VI. 1547 - 07/10/1553.
Lady Jane Grey. 07/10/1553 - 07/19/1553.
Mary I. 07/19/1553 - 1558.
Elizabeth I. 1558 - 1603.
James I. 1603 - 1625.
Charles I. 1625 - 1649.
The Tudors were a Welsh-English family that ruled England and Wales from 1485 to 1649, starting with the first monarch King Henry VII (1457–1509). The Tudors ruled for 118 years and Tudor England saw two of the strongest monarchs ever to sit on the English throne: King Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth I. The Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1649 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I 1558 until 1603. This is of the most interest to our story since our progenitor left England in the early 1630’s and it all had to do with religion.
Tim Lambert, in “A Brief History of English Society” gives a quick glimpse of what life was like in 16th century England.
In 16th century England most of the population lived in small villages and made their living from farming. However, towns grew larger and more important. During the 16th century trade and industry grew rapidly and England became a more and more commercial country. Mining of coal, tin, and lead flourished. So did the iron industry. During this period England became richer and richer.
As England grew more and more prosperous, life for the well off became more and more comfortable. Upper class and middle class people benefited from the growing wealth of the country. However, for the poor in Tudor England life did not improve. For them, life was hard and rough.
Meanwhile in the 15th century the population of England may have been around
2 and a half million. It rose steadily during the 16th century. By 1525 it had risen to around 3 million and by 1600 it was about 4 million.
Tudor society was divided into four broad groups. At the top were the nobility who owned huge amounts of land. Below them were the gentry and rich merchants. Gentlemen owned large amounts of land and they were usually educated and had a family coat of arms. Most important gentlemen never did any manual work. Below the gentry were yeomen and craftsmen. Yeomen owned their own land. They could be as wealthy as gentlemen but they worked alongside their men. Yeomen and craftsmen were often able to read and write. Below the yeomen were the tenant farmers who leased their land from the rich. There were also wage laborers. They were often illiterate and very poor.
In the 16th century about 50% of the population lived at subsistence level. In other words, they had just enough food, clothes and shelter to survive. For them, life was very hard. Or it would seem hard to us, of course, people in the 16th century would have different attitudes. They would be content with a much lower standard of living. However, it was possible to move from one class to another. With hard work and luck, a husbandman could become a yeoman. A yeoman could buy a coat of arms and become gentlemen. It was possible for an ambitious young man to rise in the world.
In Tudor Times the parish became the basis of local government. The most important person was an appointed magistrate called the Justice of the Peace. Meanwhile, in Tudor times kings and queens grew stronger. During the Middle Ages the barons held castles, which were difficult to capture so it was easy for them to rebel. Cannons changed all that.
THE POOR IN TUDOR ENGLAND
In the 16th century jobs were not always easy to find. In Tudor Times there were thousands of people without jobs wandering around looking for work. There were also disabled beggars. There were also people who pretended to be mad or disabled in order to beg. Tudor governments tolerated disabled beggars. However, they did not tolerate able-bodied people without jobs wandering from place to place. They thought such 'sturdy vagabonds' without a fixed place in society were a threat to law and order.
Since the 14th century there had been laws against vagabonds but in 1530 a new law was passed. The old and disabled poor were to be given licenses to beg. However, anyone roaming without a job was tied to a cart in the nearest market town and whipped till they were bloody. They were then forced to return to the parish where they had been born or where they had lived for the last 3 years.
A law of 1547 said vagabonds could be made slaves for 2 years. This terrible law was abolished in 1550. Once again flogging was made the punishment for vagrancy.
PUNISHMENTS IN THE 16TH CENTURY
In Tudor Times prison was seldom used as a punishment. Instead, people were held in prison until trial then the prisoner was given a physical punishment. Tudor punishments were simple but harsh like flogging. Minor crimes were also punished by the pillory or the stocks. The pillory was a wooden frame on a pole with holes through which a person's head and hands were placed. The frame was then locked. The stocks was a wooden frame with holes through which a person's feet. More serious crimes were punished by death. Beheading was reserved for the wealthy. Ordinary people were usually hanged.
HOUSES IN TUDOR ENGLAND
In the Middle Ages rich people's houses were designed for defense rather than comfort. In the 16th century, life was safer so houses no longer had to be easy to defend. Rich Tudor people built grand houses e.g. Cardinal Wolsey built Hampton Court Palace. Later the Countess of Shrewsbury built Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire.
Middle class Tudors built sturdy 'half-timbered' houses. They were made with a timber frame filled in with wattle and daub (wickerwork and plaster). In the late 16th century some people built or rebuilt their houses with a wooden frame filled in with bricks. Roofs were usually thatched though some well off people had tiles. (In London all houses had tiles because of the fear of fire).
In Tudor Times furniture was more plentiful than in the Middle Ages but it was still basic. In a wealthy home, it was usually made of oak and was heavy and massive. Tudor furniture was expected to last for generations. You expected to pass it on to your children and even your grandchildren. Comfortable beds became more and more common in the 16th century. In a middle class Tudor home, a mattress was often stuffed with flock (a kind of rough wool).
Chairs were more common than in the Middle Ages but they were still expensive. Even in an upper class home children and servants sat on stools. The poor had to make do with stools and benches.
In the 15th century only a small minority of people could afford glass windows. In the 16th century, they became much more common. However, they were still expensive. If you moved house you took your glass windows with you! Windows were made of small pieces of glass held together by strips of lead. They were called lattice windows. However the poor still had to make do with strips of linen soaked in linseed oil.
Chimneys were also a luxury in Tudor Times, although they became more common. Furthermore, in the Middle Ages, a rich person's house was dominated by the great hall. It extended all the way up to the roof of the building. In the 16th century, many people installed another story in their house over the great hall. So well off Tudor people's houses became divided into more rooms.
In rich people's houses the walls of rooms were lined with oak paneling to keep out drafts. People slept in four-poster beds hung with curtains to reduce drafts. Wealthy people hung tapestries or painted cloths on their walls.
In Tudor England carpets were a luxury only the rich could afford. They were usually too expensive to put on the floor! Instead, they were often hung on the wall or over tables. People covered their floors with rushes or reeds, which they strewed with sweet-smelling herbs.
In the 16th century wealthy people lit their homes with beeswax candles. However, they were expensive. Other people made used candles made from tallow (animal fat) which gave off an unpleasant smell and the poor made do with rushlights (rushes dipped in animal fat).
Rich Tudors had clocks in their homes. Most people relied on pocket sundials to tell the time. Rich people were also fond of gardens. Many had mazes, fountains, and topiary (hedges cut into shapes). Less well off people used their gardens to grow vegetables and herbs.
However, poor people lived in simple huts with one or two rooms (occasionally three). Floors were of hard earth and furniture was very basic such as benches, stools, a table, and wooden chests. The poor slept on mattresses stuffed with straw or thistledown. The mattresses lay on ropes strung across a wooden frame.
In the 16th century toilets were basic. In 1596 Sir John Harrington invented a flushing lavatory with a cistern. However, the idea failed to catch on. People continued to use chamber pots or cesspits, which were cleaned by men called gong farmers. (In Tudor Times a toilet was called a jakes). For toilet paper, rich people used rags while poor people sometimes used a plant called woolly mullein.
RELIGION IN TUDOR ENGLAND
During the year there were 40 feast and Saints’ days. It was law that everyone attend church on Sundays and Holy days unless they obtained a special dispensation. It was forbidden to eat meat, butter or cheese on Fridays, Saturdays, during Lent, during Advent or on the eve of Holy days. People were able to obtain a dispensation to exempt them from a holy law but a fee had to be paid to the king and it was usually necessary to bribe the priest or clerk granting the dispensation. Many priests were corrupt and lived openly with concubines and had fathered children despite it being law that they remained celibate.
Most English people attended mass daily and truly believed the priest had the power to make the body of Christ. The tomb of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of our Lady at Walsingham were focal points for pilgrimages. These shrines had become very wealthy because of the large numbers of jewels and stones that had been left by pilgrims.
A very small number of people did not believe that the Catholic religion was the true religion. The Lollard Movement believed that every man should have the opportunity to read the Bible and interpret it as he saw fit. However, the authorities stated that these beliefs were heretical. Heretics were given the opportunity to recant their beliefs but if they refused they were burned at the stake.
THE FIGHT OVER RELIGION
At the time of Henry VIII, no woman had been or could be head of England. He had married his brother’s widow Katherine of Aragon in 1509 who was unable to provide him with a male heir to carry on the Tudor line. She had several male and female children who had died as infants and one daughter, Mary, who lived. Henry VIII (as was most of England’s subjects) was a Catholic which was a major power in all of Europe and he was subject to the church laws. He wanted to Catholic Church to annul his marriage so he could marry another to produce a male heir. The church refused him.
At this time the protestant reformation was in full swing in Europe. Henry VIII, head of the English Church, broke with the Catholic Church and had the Church of England decree the annulment. He had already taken vows with his second wife, Anne Bolelyn. Their marriage, and her execution for treason and other charges by beheading, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation. There were several years, where the monarchs went back and forth between Catholisim and Protestantism with the Protestants eventually winning out but not completely. There were still remnants of Catholic practice within the Church of England.
By the reign of King James I the Church of England was Protestant but a large portion of the population was still Catholic. King James granted them an official translation of the Bible, known as the King James Bible. Actually King James himself did not translate the bible. The King James Version is called that because he ordered the translation to be done.There were 47 scholars who got together to translate it from the original Hebrew and Greek into English. It was published in 1611. He also extended penalties against witches with the Witchcraft Act which also provoked the Catholics' anger. Although he was fair to Catholics, his protestant subjects made sure that Catholics were not granted equal rights.
Among the protestants at this time who were members of the Church of England, there existed a group that did not think that the Church of England had not gone far enough to purge all of the Catholic practices. These Puritans sought to rid the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and needed to be rid of these Caholic practices. This also led to the Pilgrims who wanted not to reform the Church of England but to break from it completely. As you will read as our story continues that our progenitors were part of the Puritan movement.
