Moments in Royal History - February 3rd

1014 - Death of Sweyn Forkbeard

King Sweyn

     Sweyn was the King of Denmark and Norway, and became King of England after decades of raids, attempted conquest and the overthrow of Æthelred the Unready. However, while in the process of reorganizing England, King Sweyn died just weeks after attaining his prize, and the English King Æthelred was restored to his throne. Sweyn's son Cnut would retake the English Crown following Æthelred's death in 1016, and Danish kings would rule England for next quarter-century before the throne reverted again to the House of Wessex.

     One of his descendants, Margaret of Denmark, married James III of Scotland, introducing Sweyn's bloodline into the Scottish royal line. After James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I in 1603, the Danish king's ancestry was introduced into the English royal bloodline as well. So in a twist of fate (and via peaceful means), the united British throne has gone to Sweyn's descendants after all.

1399 - Death of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster

John of Gaunt, founder of the House of Lancaster

     John was the third surviving son of Edward III of England, and has been referred to as "Gaunt" because he was born in Ghent (in modern-day Belgium), which is Anglicized as Gaunt.

     Upon the death of his elder brother, Edward (the Black Prince), as well as his father, John's nephew - the Black Prince's son - acceded to the throne as Richard II of England. Richard was a minor, and so John exercised an enormous amount of influence on the Crown until the King was of age.

     As the son of a king, he was granted several lands which made him a very wealthy man during his time and allowed him to be so influential. Upon his death, his lands and titles were seized by King Richard, who kept them from John's son Henry Bolingbroke, who was serving a ten-year sentence of exile in France as a resolution to a dispute between him and another nobleman. Richard extended his cousin's sentence to life, but Henry eventually returned to depose Richard and had himself crowned King of England as Henry IV, inaugurating the House of Lancaster, a branch of the main Plantagenet dynasty.

     John of Gaunt's other legacy are his descendants. Through his legitimate and illegitimate offspring (who were retroactively legitimized), as well as several rounds of royal intermarriage amongst cousins, he was the ancestor of kings and queens of England from the houses of Lancaster, York, and Tudor, as well as (after 1437) kings and queens of Scotland. Since the accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, all sovereigns of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland, and the United Kingdom have been descended from Gaunt.

     Gaunt is also the sixteenth richest person of all time, with estimated (inflation-adjusted) fortune of $110 billion.

1537 - Execution of Thomas FitzGerald, 10th Earl of Kildcare

Lord Kildcare's attack on Dublin Castle

     From 1534 to 1535, Lord Kildare led a rebellion against Henry VIII as the Lord of Ireland because of rumors that his father Gerald - the Lord Deputy of Ireland - had been executed at the Tower of London and that the same fate was awaiting  him and his uncles. In fact, Gerald FitzGerald had been summoned to London in February 1534 on some charges and was being held in the Tower, but he was still alive. Nonetheless, Thomas traveled to St. Mary's Abbey in Dublin to publicly renounce his allegiance to Henry. He hoped that he would gain a following from Irish Catholics who were opposed to Henry's break with Rome, but such following failed to materialize in part because Henry had not yet been officially excommunicated. 

     By July 1535, he was holed up in his stronghold at Maynooth, County Kildcare and his supporters peeled away, asking for a pardon for his offenses. FitzGerald himself surrendered after being guaranteed his personal safety and personally submitting to the King's mercy. He was placed in the Tower in October 1535, but despite assurances to the contrary, he and his uncles were executed at Tyburn.

     The insurrection caused by Thomas FitzGerald caused Henry VIII to pay more attention to Irish affairs, and was a factor in making Ireland - which had been a papal grant - into a kingdom in which Henry was King of Ireland, with a stronger and more direct authority from the Crown.

1826 - Birth of Walter Bagehot

Walter Bagehot

     Bagehot was a man of many roles: business, journalist, and writer. He co-founded the National Review with Richard Holt Hutton and was for 17 years, editor-in-chief of The Economist, which had been founded by his father-in-law.

     However, his arguably most noted for his writings on the Constitution of the United Kingdom, which explores the nature and functions of British government institutions, particularly the parliament and the monarchy. In his book, The English Constitution, divided the constitution into two components: the dignified part (which is symbolic) and the efficient part (which is practical and actually does the work of the nation).

     In reference to the monarchy (the dignified part), Bagehot defined three rights and roles of the British monarch: the right to be consulted by ministers, as well as to encourage, and to warn them on issues of the day.

     The observations on the monarchy are now seen as central to the understanding of the principles of the constitutional monarchy in the United Kingdom, and as a result, generations of British monarchs and heirs (including the reigning Queen) have studied Bagehot's analysis as part of their preparation for being king or queen.

     As an American, I should also add that Bagehot was not a fan of our political system. In particular, he criticized it for its lack of flexibility in relation to the Westminster parliamentary system, and remarked that the presidential system corrupted the public, whilst the parliamentary system educated it. He also took aim at the election process, declaring that: 

Under a presidential constitution the preliminary caucuses that choose the president need not care as to the ultimate fitness of the man they choose. They are solely concerned with his attractiveness as a candidate.

     Given how image-driven politics is these days, his observations here are eerily prescient. However, he did praise the American people for having a "genius" for politics, which explained why we have succeeded as a free country.

1954 - Queen Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit Australia

Queen Elizabeth addressing a crowd in Australia

     This was part of a six-month tour of the Empire and Commonwealth following her coronation in 1953, but it was also a continuation of the tour she (as Princess Elizabeth) and the Duke of Edinburgh were taking in February 1952 before it was cancelled upon the death of her father George VI.

     In Australia, the crowds that turned out were immense, and three-quarters of the Australian population were estimated to have seen her. The tour was huge success, and became the first leg of journey that would see the Queen become the most-traveled head of state in history.