Moment in Royal History - January 27

1606 - Trials begin for Guy Fawkes and others who were conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot

 

Guy Fawkes being captured.

      The Gunpowder Plot was a scheme that had been plotted by a group of English Catholics to assassinate James VI & I following their disappointment in failing to secure greater religious toleration under the Protestant King's administration.

     Led my Robert Catesby, the Plot involved blowing up the Palace of Westminster on November 5th while the King was in attendance at the State Opening of Parliament, following which, there would a revolt resulting in the placement of James's daughter Elizabeth Stuart as a Catholic monarch.

     Fortunately for King James, someone sent a tip-off letter, and on the night before the State Opening, the cellars under the House of Lords were searched. At around midnight, Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder, and was arrested. Had explosives gone off, much of British royal family and the English political elite would have been wiped out. As it was, the plan was thwarted, and the conspirators were put on trial.

A personal event with a slight royal connection

The Main Library at the University of Georgia

     Also on this day, there was an event of personal importance for myself that has a bit of royal connection. My alma mater, the University of Georgia was founded in 1785 by the Georgia General Assembly in Savannah, Georgia as the first publicly-chartered institution for higher learning the United States. Located in Athens, GA, it ranks among the top public universities in the country. The University is named for the State of Georgia, which in turn was named in honor of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland.


Photo Credit: Chuck via Flickr cc

Royal Birthday Profile: Mary, Queen of Scots

Queen Mary I of Scotland

     On this day in 1542, Mary Stewart was born to King James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. She was James’s only surviving legitimate child, and became Queen of Scots upon his death six days later, making her the youngest monarch in British history. She was also one of the most consequential, for without her, the monarchy and Britain as we know it today, may not have come into existence.

     Throughout the annals of history, Mary, Queen of Scots has been portrayed in a negative yet captivating light – as an adulteress, seductress, possible accomplice to murder, and figurehead of a conspiracy against her cousin, Elizabeth I of England and Ireland.

     Whereas Elizabeth became Queen in her 20's, Mary succeeded to the Scottish throne when her father was killed in battle. She was eventually sent to live in France because she was married as a child to the heir to the French throne. Mary was briefly Queen consort of France upon her husband's accession as Francis II in July 1559. On his death the following year, she returned to Scotland, where she eventually married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, with whom she had a son named James. Their marriage became estranged, in part due to Darnley's unreliability, vanity, and violent streak aggravated by a drinking problem. When Darnley was assassinated, there was suspicion that Mary might have been an accomplice - especially after she married (for the third time) the man who was suspected of plotting the murder. Mary was forced to abdicate the throne and fled to England to seek sanctuary. There, she was held prisoner and a trial was held on the issue of Darnley's death, which resulted in no definitive ending. Mary was kept in England for the remainder of her life, which was hardly a comforting prospect for Elizabeth I.

     Queen Elizabeth had feared her royal cousin, for Queen Mary 

Elizabeth feared that her Scottish cousin would
become the figurehead of Catholic opposition to her.

had a legitimate claim to the English and Irish thrones through her grandmother – Margaret Tudor – who was the eldest daughter of Henry VII of England and sister to Henry VIII, who had Elizabeth through his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Mary was also a Catholic, and became a focal point around the opposition toward the established Protestant church, of which Elizabeth was Supreme Governor. Elizabeth’s fear was that Mary would lead a Catholic uprising against her, with the ultimate goal of attaining the throne for herself. When Mary was implicated in the Babington plot to depose Elizabeth, she was put on trial, convicted of treason, and beheaded in 1587. 

     In contrast to Mary, Elizabeth is viewed as a just, stable, and moral leader who put her country before her personal life. She was the Virgin Queen who commanded the respect of people throughout Europe (including the pope who had excommunicated her) and inspired men to fight in her name. And yet, Queen Mary succeeded in one area where Queen Elizabeth did not: producing an heir.

James VI & I

     Her only child, James Stuart, became King of Scots in 1567 at barely over one year old following his mother’s forced abdication. In 1603, Elizabeth I died and James VI of Scotland, as her closest Protestant relation (first cousin, twice removed), became James I of England and Ireland – thereby uniting the crowns of the British Isles under a single monarch for the first time. This eventually resulted in the political mergers of England (including Wales), Scotland, and Ireland into a single country – the United Kingdom. 

     So in an ironic twist of fate, though Mary, Queen of Scots had failed to gain the English throne, her son did so, and in so doing had helped to forge a new, unified, and modern Britain with a single royal line. To this day, the current royal family is directly descended from Queen Mary I of Scotland – with Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom being Mary’s 10^th great-granddaughter. 

Ironincally, Elizabeth II's direct ancestor - Mary, Queen
of Scots - was executed on the orders of Elizabeth I.

     Simply put, without Mary, Queen of Scots, the British monarchy and the British nation as we know them today may never have come into existence. For all of her personal faults, she did produce an heir to the Scottish throne, who eventually went on to succeed to the other thrones of Britain, and in doing so, changed the course of British history.

Royal Surnames and House Names: Part I

     In a my posting about why the Duchess of Cambridge is not "Princess Catherine", I stated that Prince Philip’s surname is Mountbatten, which he adopted from his maternal relatives in the United Kingdom. This raises the issue of the royal family’s surname. The royal house is called Windsor but Prince Philip’s surname is Mountbatten. What’s going here? Why isn’t there a surname for William, Kate, and George on the birth certificate? Has royalty ever used surnames?

     Well, to explain this requires some background information on surnames in general. Up until the 12^th and 13^th centuries, surnames were generally rare and given (first) names were used. But people also became known by their profession (Miller, Smith, etc.), location or place (Stirling, Farmworth, O’Brien, etc.), nickname based on appearance, temperament, and personality (Gutman, Daft, etc.), or in relation to somebody else (McDonald, Fitzgerald, Johnson, etc.). Eventually, these became the surnames used to differentiate people with the same given name from one another, so that John the Miller, Thomas of Stirling, and Henry, John’s son became John Miller, Thomas Stirling, and Henry Johnson.

Kenneth MacAlpin, the man whose family would usher in a more united Scotland.

     With regard to the history of the monarchy, royal house names (which may or may not be used as a personal family surname) followed in much the same way, with locations, place names, nicknames, achievements, and relations being used to name royal families.  The first royal house in my British monarch’s timeline, the Scottish House of Alpin was named from Kenneth I’s father, Alpin. Kenneth is known today as Kenneth MacAlpin, which means “Kenneth, son of Alpin.” 

William II was known as William Rufus.
Rufus means "red", and William
had a red-faced appearance.

     In England, its first royal family was the House of Wessex,  named from the Kingdom of Wessex, whose kings came to dominate the other English kingdoms and established a unified English state. Similarly, the Normans were known from their ancestral land, Normandy. Yet these were not surnames, and individual members of the early royal houses were known by personal epithets, nicknames, and territorial designations (Edmund Ironsides, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, William Rufus, Stephen of Blois, John Lackland, etc). But the members of 

Richard Plantagenet, the founder
of the House of York.

the House of Plantagenet became the first royal family in England to be known by a surname in their own time. It was a nickname given to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou – the father of Henry II of England – because his emblem was a planta genista (or Scotch broom shrub). He is retroactively referred to as Geoffrey Plantagenet, but it was not until the 15th Century when the name was used by Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, as a personal surname. During his time, the Plantagenet dynasty was divided between two rival braches – Richard’s House of York and Henry VI’s House of Lancaster, but members from both factions continued to use the Plantagenet name as a means of emphasizing  their status and claims to the throne.

     Meanwhile in Scotland, the Stewart family ascended to the throne in 1371. The Stewart name was derived from the family’s hereditary office of High Steward of Scotland. A steward was a 

Robert II, seen here with his
second wife Euphemia, was the first
Stewart monarch of Scotland.

position like that of a modern-day governor or deputy, who was appointed by the monarch to represent them in certain situations and act in their stead, if necessary. The first man to hold the title was Walter Fitz-Alan, whose surname meant “son of Alan.”  He was succeeded by his son, Alan Fitz-Walter (“son of Walter”), who was in turn succeeded by his own son, Walter, who decided to adopt the name of his title as his personal surname, which became Steward and eventually, Stewart (Stiùbhairt in Gaelic). It was Walter Stewart, 6th High Steward of Scotland who married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert I of Scotland, and had a son through her named Robert. Robert Stewart, Earl of Strathearn – a title now held by Prince William – eventually became the heir to the Scottish throne after his uncle, David II, and succeeded him as Robert II, the first monarch of the House of Stewart (which probably became the first royal house in Britain to derive its name from a personal family surname).

     Back in England, the Wars of the Roses ended with the defeat of the Yorkist king, Richard III by the Lancastrian claimant, Henry 

Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII
of England, founded the House of Tudor.

Tudor. The Tudor surname was of Welsh origin (and a variant of "Theodore"), and Henry was a matrilineal descendant of Rhys ap Tewdwr, an 11^th Century Welsh king. It was Owen Tudor (Owain ap Tewdwr), Henry’s grandfather, who had a relationship with Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois, which produced Edmund Tudor, who was therefore a half-brother of Henry VI. Edmund married Lady Margaret Beaufort, a great-great-granddaughter and Lancastrian descendant of Edward III. This union produced Henry Tudor, who escaped into exile in France after what seemed to be the final defeat of the Lancastrians by their Yorkist cousins, who know controlled the throne of England. But in 1485, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, mounted an invasion which would eventually oust Richard and result in him being proclaimed Henry VII of England and establishing the House of Tudor, which would rule in England until 1603. 

James VI & I brought the Stuart's to new heights by
uniting the crowns of Britain...

     In that year, Queen Elizabeth I, Henry’s granddaughter by his son and successor Henry VIII, died without an heir to the English and Irish thrones. She was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, a great-great-grandson of Henry VII through his eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor who had married James IV of Scotland. Now, James VI of Scotland became James I of England and Ireland, thereby bringing the British Isles under the personal rule of a single monarch for the first time. The Stewarts of Scotland had by this time changed the spelling of their name to the French form – Stuart, to symbolize the Auld Alliance with France. James’ first son was Henry Fredrick Stuart, who was Prince of Wales, Duke of Rothesay, and heir to James’ thrones. But he predeceased his father, so his younger brother Charles Stuart 

...but his son Charles I lost it all (including his head).

became their father’s heir, and he was proclaimed as Charles I in 1625. Charles of course, is infamous for being the only British monarch to be tried and executed by his subjects. In his death warrant, signed by the leading English parliamentarians (including Oliver Cromwell), he was referred as Charles Steuart, King of England, having stood and been convicted of high treason. The Stuarts lost their thrones, first in England, then in Ireland and Scotland as the parliamentarians and their army took over the British Isles and abolished the monarchy in favor of a republic. For 11 years, they were in exile in continental Europe before being restored to their British kingdoms in 1660 under another Charles Stuart, Charles II. 

     The Stuart family held on to the thrones of Great Britain (England and Scotland merged in 1707) and Ireland until 1714, 

George I, the first British monarch of the House of Hanover,
which would reign in Britain for nearly 200 years.

when Queen Anne died without an heir. She was succeeded by her German cousin and great-grandson of James VI & I, Georg Ludwig, who became King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Even though George was 52nd in line to the throne upon his accession, he was the first Protestant in the line of succession. In Germany, George was Prince-Elector of Hanover, and his dynasty in Britain became known as the House of Hanover (or the Hanoverians). Yet Hanover was not their surname, and it’s doubtful that they ever had one. Contemporary historians have applied the name Guelph as the Hanoverian surname, because it is the name of their 

Queen Victoria, the last British Hanoverian monarch,
whose surname through Prince Albert was likely Wettin.

ancestral house, the House of Welf (with Guelph being the English translation of the German Welf). Queen Victoria was the last monarch of this house, and she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, resulting in their children being members of Albert’s house, which was named for his territorial designation and ancestral homeland. But once again, this was not a personal surname, which the College of Heralds determined to be Wettin (or von Wettin), the name of the royal house from which the Saxe-Coburg’s descended. Victoria never used it, and neither did her son, Edward VII, who reigned as the first monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha when he acceeded to the throne in 1901.

     In short, personal surnames were used by some, but not all, royal families in Britain, and surnames were inconsistently, if ever, used. Everyone belonged to a royal house, but the name of the royal house was not necessarily the personal family surname (i.e., members of the Houses of York and Lancaster referring to themselves as Plantagenet), if indeed a surname existed at all. Certainly the Hanoverians – who brought in a formal system of titling members of their house as prince or princess by birth from their native Germany – eschewed surnames altogether since it was believed that persons with such a dignity did not need to have one anyway. It was also assumed that royalty married each other, and that once again, surnames were not required as birthright princely titles were handed down from generation to generation. In other words, members of a royal house were to be individually referred to by their titles, and collectively by the name of the royal house to which they belonged. But beginning with George V during the slaughter of the World War I, this would change.

I discuss this change and more in Part II, which concerns the reigning House of Windsor.

Photo Credit: Tastepaper123 Wikimedia Commons cc