CHAPTER III.
ROYAL WOMEN.
“The country prospers when a woman rules.”
In order to simplify and classify the mass of material at hand, it is advisable to take by their degree the ranks of women among the Anglo-Normans. Among the Queens, only because they precede in order of time and of number, we may take first
Queens Consort.—In Doomsday Book, Matilda, the wife of the Conqueror, is entered as holding of the King, many lands forfeited by the Saxons. “She was made the feudal possessor of the lands of Beortric, Earl of Gloucester, hence the practice of settling the Lordship of Bristol on the Queen generally, prevailed for centuries. On her death in 1083, her lands went back to the King by feudal tenure. The Conqueror kept them in his own hands, meaning them for his and her youngest son Henry, who afterwards succeeded.” (Seyer’s “Memoirs of Bristol,” chap. iv., p. 318). Later queens had separate establishments, officers and privy purse. “The Aurum Reginæ, or Queen’s Gold, is distinguished from all other debts and duties belonging to the Queen of this Realme. All other revenues proceed to her from the grace of the King, this by the common law ... which groweth upon all fines paid to the King, licenses, charters, pardons, of which she receives one-tenth part. After her death the King recovers his right to hold this tenth. This duty hath been enjoyed by the Queens from Eleanor, wife of Henry II. to Anne, second wife of Henry VIII.” (Hakewell’s speech in Parliament on Aurum Reginæ. Addit. MSS., Brit. Mus. 25, 255.)
Even to our own days Queens Consort have had the privilege of acting as femes soles. But in early times they exercised considerably more power in the State than we realise to-day. They sat in the Councils, even in the presence of the Kings, and gave their consent to measures along with Kings and Nobles. “The Queen-wife of England also superscribed her name over their warrants or letters of public direction or command, although in the time of Henry VIII. the fashion was that the queens wrote their names over the left side of the first line of such warrants, and not over them as the Kings do” (Selden’s “Titles of Honour”). But as many of the Queens Consort, though thus entitled to be ranked among “Freewomen,” were not of native extraction; we do not dwell upon all their privileges, preferring to hasten on to those that indubitably were British Freewomen.
Queens Regnant.—The first critical moment in the History of Queens Regnant occurs at the death of Henry I., who had, as he considered, arranged satisfactorily for the succession of his daughter Matilda. His attempt proved that the French Salic Law had not been made law in England. A quaint account of his proceeding occurs in the “Lives of the Berkeleys,” published by the Gloucester Archæological Society, 1835, p. 2. “King Harri the first, third sonne of King William the Conqueror, had issue remaining one daughter named Maude ... the sayd King Harri send for his foresayd daughter Maude the Emparice into England, and in open Parliament declared and ordeyned her to bee his eire. To whom then and there were sworen all the lordes of England, and made unto her sewte, admittinge her for his eire. Amongs whom principally and first was sworen Stephen Earle of Boleyn, nevowe of the sayd King Harri the first.” But as Selden says, “I do very well know, that our perjured barons, when they resolved to exclude Queen Maud from the English throne, made this shameful pretence, ‘that it would be a shame for so many nobles to be subject to one woman.’ And yet you shall not read, that the Iceni, our Essex men got any shame by that Boadicea, whom Gildas terms a lioness” (Janus Anglorum). The same author, in noting the laws made by various kings, enters the reign of Stephen as that of an unrighteous king who had no time to make laws for the protection of the kingdom, because he had to fight in defence of his own unjust claim. “In 1136 Henry of England died, and Stephen Earl of Boulogne succeeded. At Mass on the Day of his Coronation, by some mistake, the peace of God was forgotten to be pronounced on the people” (“Antiquitates,” Camden). Prynne calls him “the perjured usurping King Stephen.” The general uncertainty of the succession is betokened in the struggle. Very probably had there not been a Stephen to stir up the nobles, the country might have rested peaceably under the rule of Matilda.
It seems strange that the oldest Charters of the express Creation of the title of Comes (Count or Earl) are those of Queen Maud, who first created the Earldom of Essex and the Earldom of Hereford. To Aubrey de Vere also she granted the Earldom of Cambridge, or another title if he preferred it, and he chose the Earldom of Oxford. A struggle like the Wars of the Roses was closed by the death of Stephen and the peaceable succession of Matilda’s son, Henry II.
Another lady of the family was supplanted by the proverbially “cruel uncle.” King John in 1202 made prisoners of his nephew, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and the Princess Eleanor, his sister, called “The Beauty of Brittany.” Arthur is supposed to have been murdered by his uncle, and Eleanor was confined for forty years in Bristol Castle. A true daughter of Constance, she is said to have possessed a high and invincible spirit, and to have constantly insisted on her right to the throne, which was probably the reason that she spent her life in captivity. (See the close Rolls of the Tower of London, and the Introduction xxxv.)
But the second real crisis was that which closed the Wars of the Roses. Another Stephen appeared in Henry VII., who, fortunately for the people, simplified matters by marrying Elizabeth of York, the rightful heir. Jealous in the extreme of his wife’s prerogative, he used his high hand as the conqueror of Richard and the Kingdom, delayed her coronation as long as he dared, ignored her in his councils, and magnified his relation as husband, to the extinction of her glory as Queen.