ELIZABETH II OUR SIXTH ‘QUEEN REGNANT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 6 (Supplement)

ELIZABETH II OUR SIXTH ‘QUEEN REGNANT

[By

CYRIL F. J. HANKINSON,

Editor of "Debrett"]

Of our 40 Sovereigns since the Conquest, the present Queen is our sixth Queen Regnant. Queen Anne is the only one of her five Queen predecessors who was married when she succeeded to the Throne, and Queen Victoria is the only one who left surviving children. Four of the five Queens married—all of them to husbands to whom they were related. Queen Mary II and Queen Victoria married first cousins, Queen Mary I her first cousin once removed, and Queen Anne her second cousin once removed.

Only one of our Queens —Mary I—can be said to have left the country in a worse state that at the time of her accession and the reigns of three of the remaining four coincided with some of the most glorious periods in our history. Anne, of course, ruled but a short while, and she was not a woman of marked ability, but great names and great victories are writ in the records of her time. As to Elizabeth I and Victoria, it would need some hard thinking to enable one to suggest a King who added more lustre to our history than they. In the early days of our history, the descent of the Crown was not fixed by law, and although there was no precedent for it passing to a woman there was no

rule implying that a woman could not succeed to the Throne. Consequently, when Henry I, having no son, wished his daughter, Matilda, to follow him, he called his barons together and persuaded them to taken an oath of allegiance to her. On Henry’s death, only 69 years after the Conquest, therefore, England should have had her first Queen. Her cousin, Stephen, however, forestalled Matilda by racing back to England from Normandy, where Henry had died, with the story that the King had changed his mind on his death bed and chosen him as his successor. Matilda, however, landed in England later and actually defeated Stephen in a great battle; but her triumph was brief. Finding it impossible to gain sufficient support to govern effectively, she returned to Normandy.

The next occasion when we might have had a Queen was after the murder of the young King Edward V in the Tower in 1483. His eldest sister, Elizabeth, should then have succeeded to the Throne, which was seized instead by her uncle, Richard in. Elizabeth, however, did later become a Queen (though not a Queen Regnant), for she married Henry VII in 1486, and became grandmother of Queen Mary I. Queen Mary I Queen Mary I succeeded her halfbrother, Edward VI, in 1553. At the time of Edward’s death Mary was living in Hertfordshire, and in her absence from London her Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, was proclaimed Queen. Mary, however, hurried to the capital, and within ten days of her brother’s death was, herself, proclaimed amidst the enthusiasm of the populace. She was 37 years of age and a devout and bigoted Roman Catholic, and above all else wished to win the country back to the Church of Rome.

Throughout her reign she never had good health, and as time passed she aged rapidly. She was an obstinate woman and the enthusiasm which her subjects showed at the outset of her reign soon waned.

In spite of the strong desire of the nation that she should wed an Englishman, Mary chose to marry Philip of Spain, son of the Emperor Charles V. However, the objections to this union were in some degree met by the fact that although Philip was to have the title of King of England, he was not to be allowed to exercise any ruling powers and was to be King only for so long as Mary lived.

Mary, of course, hoped for a child, especially as her half-sister, Elizabeth, who would otherwise succeed her, was a Protestant. As time went on she knew that her hopes were never likely to be realised, for what had been at first mistaken for signs that she was to become a mother proved to be dropsy, which disease grew steadily worse. In the last year of Mary’s brief reign the English lost Calais, their sole remaining foothold in France, in a war in which Philip had embroiled them in defence of the Netherlands. This was a terrible blow to Mary who is reported to have said, “When I am dead and opened you shall find Calais lying in my heart.’’ Less than a year later she died.

Mary was prepared to go to any lengths to suppress the Protestant religion. She has gone down in history with the adjective “bloody” as a prefix to her name because of this religious persecution for which she was primarily responsible, and which resulted in the deaths of nearly 300 of her subjects—mostly by burning at the stake. Accession of Elizabeth I With the death of Mary in 1558 and the accession of Elizabeth I, England entered upon one of the most illustrious reigns in its history. Like our present Queen, Elizabeth I was 25 years of age when she succeeded to the Throne. She was our only Queen not to marry, and indeed, with the exception of the boy Kings Edward V and Edward VI, only one other of all our Sovereigns since the Conquest has died unmarried—William 11. Elizabeth could have married soon after her accession, for she received a proposal from Philip of Spain, which she very wisely chose to ignore. Elizabeth in her young days was possessed of good looks of a rather masculine order. She had something of her mother’s coquetry and vanity, and of her father’s keen intellect and haughty self-will. Unlike her sister she was no religious fanatL and was unwilling to persecute people for their beliefs.

So many distinguished statesmen, sailors and adventurers, and men of literary genius lived in the Elizabethan era that it is difficult to assess the amount of credit due for the greatness of the age

as between the Queen and her subjects, but to her famous meh she was an undoubted inspiration.

Many consider the execution of Mary Queen of Scots an unforgivable crime on the part of Elizabeth; but the value of human life was held somewhat cheaply in those days and it was only after the Scottish Queen had been in custody for 20 years that Elizabeth could be prevailed upon to sign her death warrant. This she did only because as a result of all the Catholic intrigue promoted by Spain she became convinced that it was in the interests of the nation.

For nearly 20 years Elizabeth realised that war with Spain must come, but she played with time so that when at last in 1588 the great Armada set out to invade these shores Britain was prepared to meet it. Elizabeth’s words to the troops at Tilbury on the approach of the Spanish Fleet show her indomitable spirit—“l know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should {lare to invade the borders of my realm.” Elizabeth lived to be 69 in an age when few reached the allotted span, and she refused to die in bed. Up to the end she sat in her chair in the audience chamber fully dressed until death came to her. Joint Sovereigns In 1689, after the flight of her father, James JI, to France, Mary Stuart was called to the Throne with her husband, William of Orange, thus providing the only instance in our history of joint Sovereigns. Mary 11, like Mary I, was very devoted to her husband; but William treated her with the same neglect and slight as Philip had shown towards his Tudor Queen. Another point in common between the two Marys was their disappointment at not having a child, for in both cases the heir to the Throne was a sister with whom they were not on good terms. There, however, the similarity ends, for Mary Stuart was popular both in Holland and in England, and had a bright and gracious manner. Owing to the frequent absence of her husband on the Continent, Mary was called upon for long periods to rule on her own, which she did with considerable capability.

Queen Anne

Anne, who succeeded Mary, is one concerning whom many people’s knowledge does not extend beyond the fact that she is dead. Nevertheless, as in the case of most our Queens Regnant, her reign covered a great period in British history not only because of Marlborough’s victories at Blenheim, Malplaquet and other places, but also because of the literary genius of men like Defoe, Addison, Swift and others. Anne, herself, was plain and unattractive and totally lacking in charm. Unlike many of the Stuarts she was virtuous, and she was a good wife to her very dull husband, Prince George of Denmark. Her strong craving for the affection which no-one had bestowed upon her as a child led Anne into having a number of women favourites. Greatest amongst these, of course, was Sarah, wife of the great Duke of Marlborough, with whom she engaged in the famous correspondence under the name of Mrs Morley whilst Sarah took that of Mrs Freeman. Sarah, although a much cleverer woman than Anne, was of such an overbearing disposition that in the end she went too far in her efforts to dominate the Queen. Although Anne had five children, who all died before she succeeded to the Throne, only one, the Duke of Gloucester, survived for more than a few months. He died at the age of eleven, and although it must have been a great blow to her she bore his death with great resignation. Anne, herself, died in 1714 at the age of 49, after having reigned for twelve years. Victoria’s Reign

Now we come to a Queen who reigned for longer than any other Sovereign in our history and lived to a greater age—

Victoria, great-great-grandmother to our present Queen.

When I was born, Victoria had still five years to live and scarcely a soul who sang “God Save the Queen” had ever sung “God Save the King.” Child though I was, I can still vividly recall a dark winter’s evening in January, 1901, when I heard the mournful tones of a church bell tolling across the valley, the sound of which was to many the first intimation that a little old lady who had seemed immortal had passed away. Shortly afterwards my father put his head round the door as my nurse was preparing me for bed and solemnly announced, “The Queen is dead.”

One of the most remarkable features about Queen Victoria is the manner in which she displayed her queenliness from the moment of her accession, though she was but a few weeks past her eighteenth birthday when she succeeded to the Throne. At her Accession Council, all were overcome with, astonishment at the perfection of her queenly manner, and at the close of the meeting, in the words of Mr Strachey “they saw a small figure rise and with the same consummate grace, the same amazing dignity, pass out from among them, as she had come in, alone.” The word “alone” has considerable significance as up to the very day she became Queen Victoria was never allowed by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to do anything “alone”—not even to sleep alone for she had to share her mother’s bedroom.

Like Elizabeth I, Victoria was fortunate in ‘the great men and women who lived in her time, and more fortunate still In having a husband of the sterling qualities of Albert, the Prince Consort. That he did much to guide her and to mould her character according to his own high ideals none can deny; but she survived his. death by 40 years, and seemed to hold complete ascendancy over everyone with whom she was brought into contact—except that extraordinary character, John Brown, her privileged Highland attendant. Even Bismarck met his match in the Queen and knew it.

On one occasion when the Iron Chancellor had had an interview with the Queen in Berlin he was discovered mopping his brow. “That was a woman,” he exclaimed. “One could do business with her.”

As time went on Queen Victoria became possessed of unrivalled knowledge of Affairs of State, and Lord Salisbury, the last of her Prime Ministers, said of her; “No Minister ever disregarded her advice, or pressed her to disregard it, without afterwards feeling that he had incurred a dangerous responsiblity.” One of Queen Victoria’s characteristics was her complete lack of self-conscious-ness. An example of this was provided one day when after she had granted an audience to some distinguished man a member of her entourage ventured to express an opinion as to what the gentleman might have thought of Her Majesty, “Dear me," said the Queen, “I did not give a thought to that. It is so beside the question. What really signifies is what I think of him.”

With the great expansion of the British Empire during the Queen’s reign and the grant of self-government to several of the Colonies, Victoria became the first of our Sovereigns to be regarded as the head of our Commonwealth of Nations and she was revered by millions of her subjects, both white and coloured, who never saw her.