It is one of the great ironies of history that Henry VIII’s desperate quest for a son led both Crown and Parliament to recognise the right of women to succeed to the English throne. In the past fifty years historians including Mortimer Levine and Eric Ives have investigated what they called Tudor “dynastic problems”: the complications of English law and custom that led to the fifteenth-century Wars of the Roses, and were later exacerbated by Henry VIII’s efforts to confirm the monarch’s ecclesiastical supremacy and to delineate a clear line of succession.1 One of these key “dynastic problems” was the possibility that the crown might devolve upon a woman. For over four centuries the English throne had been an exclusively male preserve, with the exception of the contested lordship of Matilda in the twelfth century. There were nevertheless several moments in English history when Crown and Parliament addressed the ability of a woman to transmit a dynastic claim to her children or even succeed to the throne in her own right.
Sharon Jansen, in her study of female rulers in early modern Europe, recognised the need for scholars to redraw the lines of power in this period. Part of this proposed “counter-narrative” included restoring women to dynastic trees from which they had often been excluded.2 This chapter outlines the rules governing female succession to the English throne between the twelfth and early seventeenth centuries. Much like their male relatives, the claims of royal women were addressed through a series of precedents and ad hoc solutions which were invoked, adapted, or even ignored when it was deemed politically expedient. Although this topic has started to receive attention from historians of female kingship, this chapter seeks to expand on this area of enquiry and detail a number of key moments when the dynastic potential of women was recognised by the wider political community of England.3 More specifically, it will trace the historical and legal significance of a series of precedents, crown entails, and parliamentary statutes that anticipated, enabled, and even undermined the advent of female rule in the sixteenth century.
The twelfth-century example of Matilda
Ruling queens were already a feature of the political landscape of Western Europe before the sixteenth century. Women had succeeded to the throne after the failure of the male line in a number of medieval kingdoms, including León-Castile, Aragon, Sicily, Navarre, Scotland, Naples, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, and Poland. Royal heiresses also challenged rivals for the throne, without success, in kingdoms such as Portugal, Mallorca, and Bohemia before the early modern period.4 The mechanisms of royal succession varied immensely between medieval kingdoms. In Castile, royal succession was governed by Las Siete Partidas or “The Seven Divisions”, a set of laws that acknowledged the right of women to succeed to the throne upon the failure of the direct male line.5 This was not the case in France, where royal succession was limited to men by the Salic Law, an archaic legal code revived in the fourteenth century and used to justify the exclusion of women from the French throne. Although this law was based upon a fabrication, the end result was that male primogeniture was upheld and women could neither inherit nor transmit a dynastic claim in France.6 There was no such codified law of succession in medieval England. Instead the right of a woman to claim the throne was addressed only when male primogeniture was threatened, a situation which occurred a number of times before the sixteenth century.
The problem of female succession in England was first addressed in the twelfth century through the career of Matilda.7 Although the mechanism of royal succession varied widely in Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England, the candidate for kingship was always male and no woman before Matilda laid formal claim to regal office in her own right.8 It was the third Norman king, Henry I, who addressed female succession for the first time. Shortly after claiming the throne, Henry had married Edith-Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland. Together they had two children, Matilda and William. Two years after his wife’s death in May 1118, the King suffered another loss when his son was drowned in the disaster of the White Ship. Henry’s second marriage also remained childless. The King therefore designated his daughter Matilda as heir to the kingdom in early 1127. In making this choice Henry passed over his bastard son Robert, earl of Gloucester, as well as his nephews Theobald and Stephen, the sons of his sister, Adela of Blois, and thwarted the ambitions of his dynastic rival William Clito, son of his elder brother, Robert Curthose.9 The King evidently came to this decision “after deliberating long and deeply”.10 By choosing Matilda as his successor, Henry believed that a legitimate daughter should inherit the throne upon the failure of the direct male line, a decision which reflected changing attitudes towards bastardy in the Anglo-Norman ruling house.11
There were no fixed rules governing succession to the English throne in the twelfth century. In order to settle the kingdom upon his daughter, Henry compelled the clergy and nobility to swear oaths of fealty “to defend her right to the crown of England”.12 Similar oaths had also been sworn to his late son in separate ceremonies at the English and Norman courts, but for his daughter Henry summoned one great court at Windsor, which adjourned to Westminster in January 1127 for the oath-taking.13 This oath of fealty was taken by the clergy and the laity, including Matilda’s cousin, Stephen, and her half-brother, Gloucester.14 The chronicler William of Malmesbury was one of several writers favourable to Matilda’s cause. His account of this oath-taking included a lengthy declaration by Henry outlining his daughter’s descent from Norman kings through her father and Anglo-Saxon kings through her mother. It was therefore Matilda “in whom alone lay the legitimate succession”.15 Matilda’s position as heir was nevertheless dependent on the King having no further legitimate sons to displace her, demonstrating that female inheritance of the throne was subject to certain conditions.
The importance of the oaths that settled the crown upon Matilda should not be underestimated, for they constituted a legal position from which Matilda challenged her cousin, Stephen, who usurped the English throne after her father’s death in December 1135. Matilda’s supporters argued that by seizing the crown and disregarding these oaths, Stephen was guilty of perjury and was consequently unfit to rule.16 The anonymous author of the Gesta Stephani, who was hostile to Matilda’s cause, tells us that Stephen’s supporters disregarded their oaths because they had been made under duress and even claimed that the late king had released the barons from their oaths on his deathbed.17 According to William of Malmesbury, the bishop of Salisbury maintained that he and others had “sworn only on condition that the king should not give his daughter in marriage to anyone outside the kingdom” without consulting his chief men.18 Malmesbury nevertheless reports that those who swore fealty to Matilda were required to do so on two separate occasions: in 1127, at her father’s court at Westminster, and in 1131, after her marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou.19
Matilda’s right to inherit the throne was fiercely debated by those on either side of this dynastic conflict. In early 1139 Matilda appealed to the papal curia. Her case was presented by Ulger, bishop of Angers, who argued that the throne rightfully belonged to Matilda by hereditary right and the oaths sworn to her by the leading men of the realm. Arnulf of Lisieux, replying on behalf of Stephen, resorted to the charge that the marriage of Matilda’s parents was invalid and that she was therefore illegitimate.20 Although Innocent II did not withdraw his support from Stephen, this appeal established the disputed nature of the English succession. Others who were loyal to Matilda, such as Brian fitz Count, emphasised the righteousness of her cause. In a letter to the bishop of Winchester, Brian revealed his high regard for the oaths of fealty he had taken to Matilda.21 Brian also wrote a manifesto in support of Matilda’s claim which he sent to Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester. Foliot agreed with Brian’s conclusions and detailed aspects of divine, natural, and human law supporting a woman’s right to receive her lawful inheritance, including the biblical example of the daughters of Zelophehad, who were recognised as their father’s heirs in the absence of a son.22 Altogether this series of letters and appeals represents the earliest debate c...
