The Reformation and the English Succession

Pardon me if this question seems either pretty straight forward, or it has been covered before.

The scenario I'm positing isn't OTL, but for the sake of clarity/simplicity, we'll use OTL characters.
Prince Arthur of Wales survives to father progeny and becomes King Arthur. Henry, Duke of York is kept out of the church, and married to some good girl, and has at least one son.
Arthur's eldest son (Artie) marries and has two kids, a boy and a girl. Also, no Great Matter means that England remains officially Catholic. However, the duke of York takes an interest in Protestantism (à la Marguerite d'Angoulême), not actually converting but thinking that maybe this chap Luther has some valid arguments. How King Arthur and Queen Katherine feel about this is irrelevant, since by the time of the succession problem, they're both dead.

Artie's two kids are both raised as Catholics. Then Artie dies. His son succeeds. But, said boy is TTL-analogue of Edward VI and dies young. England's never had a queen regnant before (and no one thought of planning for that eventuality), so who is heir depends entirely on your point of view. To the country's Catholics, it should be Artie's sister (Kitty). However, to the Protestants (and those in favour of kings being a boys only club) they really feel that Henry, Earl of Cambridge(son of the duke of York, and an open Protestant) should be king. Kitty is still unwed, and Cambridge is already married, while Cambridge's son is too young to wed Kitty.

My question is, in the absence of a will or succession act, who would be the legal heir? Kitty or Cambridge? I imagine some peers with sons around Kitty's age would back her similarly to how Dudley backed Lady Jane Grey - i.e. in the hope of taking the crown for their family. Cambridge's mother and wife are both Englishwomen, so no hope of him garnering support from the continent.

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Well - if Catholics dominate the council they will push for a Catholic Queen Regnant in opposition to a 'heretic' male heir. Then it becomes who has the strongest support in the country and can exercise their will and power to take and hold the crown. Some will automatically favour a male heir irrespective of religion and some won't.

In your scenario Parliament will be slightly weaker (the English Reformation and the reliance of Henry VIII and his heirs on using Parliament to enact their will significantly strengthened the power of Parliament).

Much will depend on who reacts, when and how.

To be honest it is a toss up who wins - unless one sides moves quickly to neutralise the other it is likely to be civil war. Of course that's assuming one of the claimants doesn't indicate they bow to the other.
 
I can't see it being anyone but Kitty, to be honest. Female she may be, but without a Great Matter clouding her legitimacy, she is the rightful heir. England never had Salic law and many a King inherited through his mother, so it's hers, unless Cambridge can drum up enough support using the fears of a return to the Wars of the Roses and the horror stories of the Empress Matilda to stage some sort of coup...
 
I can't see it being anyone but Kitty, to be honest. Female she may be, but without a Great Matter clouding her legitimacy, she is the rightful heir. England never had Salic law and many a King inherited through his mother, so it's hers, unless Cambridge can drum up enough support using the fears of a return to the Wars of the Roses and the horror stories of the Empress Matilda to stage some sort of coup...
Might also potentially use the entail thay edward iii used in the 1370s to make the Lancastrians his heirs after Richard ii
 
I don't think that ever made it through Parliament before Edward III died, so Cambridge would be on very shaky ground if I'm right, though I could of course be wrong...
 
I believe it would go to Kitty, at least legally. There are no laws specifically forbidding female royal succession (as far as I know anyway) so the crown would pass to her over Artie's cousin (Cambridge). Now people might not accept this, especially the Protestants, but if the case of Jane and Mary IOTL is anything to go by, the people will support the 'legitimate' Queen. The only way this isn't happening is if Kitty is, for some reason, unpopular with the people, in which case Cambridge will have more support as a credible alternative.
 
Anything Edward III had used for excluding Philippa would have simply put her after her uncles as grandaughter by a son who had predeceased him so would not be applied to our Kitty...
Likely Cambridge will be able to take the Crown and Kitty will be either married to his son or sent to a convent... Age difference do not matter, specially if Cambridge has already another son
 
Anything Edward III had used for excluding Philippa would have simply put her after her uncles as grandaughter by a son who had predeceased him so would not be applied to our Kitty...
Likely Cambridge will be able to take the Crown and Kitty will be either married to his son or sent to a convent... Age difference do not matter, specially if Cambridge has already another son
Wouldn’t kitty get precedence through proximity as well though?
 
The supposed perils of having a female monarch are overrated, IMHO, and probably owe more to Henry VIII's rationalisations for why he needed to get into Anne Boleyn's corset than to anything else. IOTL, it had been obvious for several years before Henry got rid of Catherine that the queen's childbearing days were over, and there doesn't seem to have been much worry or discontent about this -- indeed, Catherine remained popular with the people at large until her death, and Anne was widely disliked as a harlot who'd driven out the legitimate queen. Then Mary and Elizabeth came along, and neither seems to have suffered much from being a woman: Mary had to deal with a plot to prevent her becoming queen, but that was because of her religion, and the proposed alternative candidate, Lady Jane Grey, was herself a woman; and, whilst people like John Knox loudly complained during Mary's reign that women shouldn't be allowed near political power, they changed their views pretty quickly once the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne, so again I think it's clear that their opposition was motivated by religion, not gender.

So I don't think that Kitty would need to be worried on account of being a woman. As for the Protestants, the English Reformation IOTL was very much a top-down affair driven by Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth: it led to several major rebellions, and it wasn't until several decades into Elizabeth's reign (basically, when a whole new generation had grown up knowing nothing but Protestant rule) that the country became majority-Protestant. Of course, it's your TL, and if you want to engineer a groundswell of support for Protestantism, that would be doable, but unless you have some specific change from OTL which leads to this, I doubt that Protestants would be a big enough constituency to get one of their number on the throne.
 
The supposed perils of having a female monarch are overrated, IMHO, and probably owe more to Henry VIII's rationalisations for why he needed to get into Anne Boleyn's corset than to anything else. IOTL, it had been obvious for several years before Henry got rid of Catherine that the queen's childbearing days were over, and there doesn't seem to have been much worry or discontent about this -- indeed, Catherine remained popular with the people at large until her death, and Anne was widely disliked as a harlot who'd driven out the legitimate queen. Then Mary and Elizabeth came along, and neither seems to have suffered much from being a woman: Mary had to deal with a plot to prevent her becoming queen, but that was because of her religion, and the proposed alternative candidate, Lady Jane Grey, was herself a woman; and, whilst people like John Knox loudly complained during Mary's reign that women shouldn't be allowed near political power, they changed their views pretty quickly once the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne, so again I think it's clear that their opposition was motivated by religion, not gender.

So I don't think that Kitty would need to be worried on account of being a woman. As for the Protestants, the English Reformation IOTL was very much a top-down affair driven by Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth: it led to several major rebellions, and it wasn't until several decades into Elizabeth's reign (basically, when a whole new generation had grown up knowing nothing but Protestant rule) that the country became majority-Protestant. Of course, it's your TL, and if you want to engineer a groundswell of support for Protestantism, that would be doable, but unless you have some specific change from OTL which leads to this, I doubt that Protestants would be a big enough constituency to get one of their number on the throne.
Henry VIII was already thinking to divorce from Katherine before Anne Boleyn was on the scene because he needed a son. Plus no woman was ever able to keep the English crown before Mary (and likely only because her main rivals were all women), England was involved in a bloody civil war until shortly before and the Tudors were not yet a stable dynasty so Henry’s fear were not without base.
 
Probably war unless one side is obviously stronger.
There were a couple of entails barring female royal inheritance then restoring them but nothing permanent and the Wars of the Roses ultimately rested on female lines.
I suspect any solution that forbids queens regnant allows their sons leading to a lot of marriages requiring royal assent and marrying daughters back in to the main male line.
 
Much depends on how widely Protestantism has infiltrated English society, especially the lords- if Cambridge is an outlier in this regard, it might be difficult to swing enough support for him to get the throne, as @Fabius Maximus says.

There's also the influence of intangible stuff like personalities and personal relationships (Does Cambridge want the throne? Does Cambridge have powerful in-laws/maternal family amongst the English nobility willing to support him? Could Cambridge content himself making a play for the regency? Is Kitty's mother around/is she regent/if she's regent is she competent/is she well-liked/where is she from/can she call on continental support? Etc.).

How tense the religious situation is in England could also depend on how things are going on the continent, and whether there's any continental dabbling in English affairs.

Assuming Arthur is less... execution happy than Henry there might also still be major lords floating around with Plantagenet ancestry (e.g. Courtenays, Staffords that still have their Dukedom, Poles, butterflies could result in Anne of York's Howard kids surviving) who could factor into the succession issue in some way or other- either making a play for the throne themselves, trying to set up a marriage with Kitty to tie the bloodlines together, or maybe they're Cambridge's in-laws/maternal family.
 
I think there’d be a war. Though would there really be no succession act if art junior is ill?

If it's a sudden illness, or he is expected to recover quickly (but then doesn't), I could see it happening. After all, Edward VI's "devise" was just that - a scribble on a piece of paper of the teenage monarch's will, not an actual act of parliament


Well - if Catholics dominate the council they will push for a Catholic Queen Regnant in opposition to a 'heretic' male heir. Then it becomes who has the strongest support in the country and can exercise their will and power to take and hold the crown. Some will automatically favour a male heir irrespective of religion and some won't.

In your scenario Parliament will be slightly weaker (the English Reformation and the reliance of Henry VIII and his heirs on using Parliament to enact their will significantly strengthened the power of Parliament).

Much will depend on who reacts, when and how.

To be honest it is a toss up who wins - unless one sides moves quickly to neutralise the other it is likely to be civil war. Of course that's assuming one of the claimants doesn't indicate they bow to the other.

I was thinking of stopping short of the civil war. Those are messy and bad for any country (IMO). But I was also wondering if said Protestant cousin would be allowed to stay at liberty (like Jane Grey and Elizabeth during Mary's reign; Mary, QoS during Liz's (well, Katherine and Mary Grey too, but they were also Protestant).

I can't see it being anyone but Kitty, to be honest. Female she may be, but without a Great Matter clouding her legitimacy, she is the rightful heir. England never had Salic law and many a King inherited through his mother, so it's hers, unless Cambridge can drum up enough support using the fears of a return to the Wars of the Roses and the horror stories of the Empress Matilda to stage some sort of coup...

Fair point. And almost an equal number of times when the female "heir" was ignored (Eleanor, Maid of Brittany; Philippa of Clarence; even Elizabeth of York - she was never queen regnant, her husband made very sure that he was seen as king in his own right, not simply jure uxoris).

I believe it would go to Kitty, at least legally. There are no laws specifically forbidding female royal succession (as far as I know anyway) so the crown would pass to her over Artie's cousin (Cambridge). Now people might not accept this, especially the Protestants, but if the case of Jane and Mary IOTL is anything to go by, the people will support the 'legitimate' Queen. The only way this isn't happening is if Kitty is, for some reason, unpopular with the people, in which case Cambridge will have more support as a credible alternative.

I wonder if Cambridge wouldn't play on English xenophobia that "oh Kitty's unwed. She'll marry a king from abroad. I'm married to a good solid Englishwoman. With a strong all-English son."

The supposed perils of having a female monarch are overrated, IMHO, and probably owe more to Henry VIII's rationalisations for why he needed to get into Anne Boleyn's corset than to anything else. IOTL, it had been obvious for several years before Henry got rid of Catherine that the queen's childbearing days were over, and there doesn't seem to have been much worry or discontent about this -- indeed, Catherine remained popular with the people at large until her death, and Anne was widely disliked as a harlot who'd driven out the legitimate queen. Then Mary and Elizabeth came along, and neither seems to have suffered much from being a woman: Mary had to deal with a plot to prevent her becoming queen, but that was because of her religion, and the proposed alternative candidate, Lady Jane Grey, was herself a woman; and, whilst people like John Knox loudly complained during Mary's reign that women shouldn't be allowed near political power, they changed their views pretty quickly once the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne, so again I think it's clear that their opposition was motivated by religion, not gender.

So I don't think that Kitty would need to be worried on account of being a woman. As for the Protestants, the English Reformation IOTL was very much a top-down affair driven by Henry, Edward, and Elizabeth: it led to several major rebellions, and it wasn't until several decades into Elizabeth's reign (basically, when a whole new generation had grown up knowing nothing but Protestant rule) that the country became majority-Protestant. Of course, it's your TL, and if you want to engineer a groundswell of support for Protestantism, that would be doable, but unless you have some specific change from OTL which leads to this, I doubt that Protestants would be a big enough constituency to get one of their number on the throne.

Makes sense (about Protestantism not being too powerful. Maybe a peer or few (if there's a Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries type event - and AFAIK that was on the cards well before the official break with Rome - I could see them not being too particularly religiously scrupulous about really wanting that land), and of course York/Cambridge, but no Great Matter means no Catholics (like Wolsey, Fisher, More, Rotherham etc) dying at convenient times and being replaced by Protestant(-leaning) counterparts. I think we might still see Protestants climb the rungs of the hierarchy, but the upper echelons might still be predominantly Catholic.

Henry VIII was already thinking to divorce from Katherine before Anne Boleyn was on the scene because he needed a son. Plus no woman was ever able to keep the English crown before Mary (and likely only because her main rivals were all women), England was involved in a bloody civil war until shortly before and the Tudors were not yet a stable dynasty so Henry’s fear were not without base.

Valid point. Would having three kings (Henry VII, Arthur, Artie Jnr) be enough for a dynasty to be considered "stable"?

Probably war unless one side is obviously stronger.
There were a couple of entails barring female royal inheritance then restoring them but nothing permanent and the Wars of the Roses ultimately rested on female lines.
I suspect any solution that forbids queens regnant allows their sons leading to a lot of marriages requiring royal assent and marrying daughters back in to the main male line.

Sounds like it could potentially lead to Habsburg levels of inbreeding.


Much depends on how widely Protestantism has infiltrated English society, especially the lords- if Cambridge is an outlier in this regard, it might be difficult to swing enough support for him to get the throne, as @Fabius Maximus says.

There's also the influence of intangible stuff like personalities and personal relationships (Does Cambridge want the throne? Does Cambridge have powerful in-laws/maternal family amongst the English nobility willing to support him? Could Cambridge content himself making a play for the regency? Is Kitty's mother around/is she regent/if she's regent is she competent/is she well-liked/where is she from/can she call on continental support? Etc.).

How tense the religious situation is in England could also depend on how things are going on the continent, and whether there's any continental dabbling in English affairs.

Assuming Arthur is less... execution happy than Henry there might also still be major lords floating around with Plantagenet ancestry (e.g. Courtenays, Staffords that still have their Dukedom, Poles, butterflies could result in Anne of York's Howard kids surviving) who could factor into the succession issue in some way or other- either making a play for the throne themselves, trying to set up a marriage with Kitty to tie the bloodlines together, or maybe they're Cambridge's in-laws/maternal family.

TBH I haven't given much thoughts to personalities, but was simply wondering if it came to brass tacks level, who would the country consider as the rightful heir: a woman of their religion or a man who isn't.
 
Few points
There was a strong anti-women in leadership roles in early protestant dogma - John Knox was following tradition in his blast (which was aimed against Marie of Guise and Mary Tudor and became a bit of an embarrassment when Elizabeth became Queen) - female rule over men was contrary to "God's law" in their view - Catholics weren't anymore keen on the idea to be fair.

Previous succession rules - there had never been a failure in succession from the accession of the Plantagenets until the usurpation of Richard II. The only clear documents relating to the succession is the entail that Edward III made alongside his will - which made it clear that his male heirs had precedence to his female heirs. So on Richard II's accession his uncle Gaunt and his son Henry would under the entail be regarded as his heirs.
However Edward III's entail was not a parliamentary statute - and could be overturned by a future sovereign's own entail or by statute - Richard II initially seemed to have preferred his Mortimer cousins but there is debate whether he actually named Roger heir presumptive. Later in his reign it is clear that he favoured his York cousin and considered him the heir (given that Bolingbroke was nominally a traitor) in effect sticking with his grandfather's entail favouring the male heir but omitting the future Henry IV due to his treason. Henry IV of course claimed the throne was "vacant" and that he had simply filled it (not just relying on the myth about his Lancastrian descent from Henry III ). Henry IV never claimed he was the legal heir under the 1376 entail which suggests he believed any actions of Richard had overturned or negated it. Of course the accession of Henry IV led to a century of strife over the succession though had Henry VI been a stronger monarch and dealt better with his relatives he might have held his throne and his branch would have held the throne indefinitely. York's claim as senior heir general and the ultimate success of his son Edward again broke the father to son succession rules and again had Edward IV lived a few more years then his heirs might have held their throne. Henry VII effectively negated all prior claims or rules as he claimed the throne by conquest not hereditary right - he had only one son whose efforts to produce an heir male would lead him to turn to Parliament to settle his will and view of who should succeed him and the line to be followed if his progeny failed. In tern those acts were ignored in 1603 when the senior heir general of Henry VII succeeded Elizabeth in preference to the heir under statute (Lady Anne Stanley)
So in terms of your new succession crisis you have again had a Tudor run of father son succession and almost certainly no entail or succession law- Henry VII to Arthur I to Henry VIII (think it more likely his heir would be named for his grandfather), to Arthur II - Arthur dies young without issue and the heir is the King's sister the Princess Katherine.
Much will depend on if Arthur II attempts any succession act or issues letters patent to either name his sister or to exclude her claim during the lifetime of his cousin the 2nd Duke of York (son of Henry Duke of York son of Henry VII).
On religion if York is a Lutheran then legally he is a heretic and if England has remained truly in Rome's embrace then good luck finding a bishop to crown him (Elizabeth in otl had a hard time finding one who would omit some of the most Catholic aspects of the ceremony)
 
Henry VIII was already thinking to divorce from Katherine before Anne Boleyn was on the scene because he needed a son. Plus no woman was ever able to keep the English crown before Mary (and likely only because her main rivals were all women), England was involved in a bloody civil war until shortly before and the Tudors were not yet a stable dynasty so Henry’s fear were not without base.

IIRC there had only been one queen regnant and that was four hundred years earlier, so I don't think you can reasonably use her example to illuminate the sixteenth-century situation. And whatever personal qualms or scruples Henry might have had about his marriage, the people in general don't seem to have expected a female monarch to lead to civil war. Otherwise Henry's quest for a divorce would have enjoyed widespread popular support, which it didn't.

I wonder if Cambridge wouldn't play on English xenophobia that "oh Kitty's unwed. She'll marry a king from abroad. I'm married to a good solid Englishwoman. With a strong all-English son."

If that looked likely to cost Kitty support, I expect she'd just find a suitable English nobleman and marry him.
 
I was thinking that perhaps she'd be betrothed/married (and basically ready to be sent off to her foreign husband) when her brother falls ill and dies. Then the foreign court might expect the betrothal to be honoured, no?

I doubt it. Any court would know that when circumstances changed, so did betrothals. They might grumble, they might need paying off, but I doubt they'd expect the betrothal to be honoured - unless of course Kitty and her husband have already been married by proxy. That would be a different kettle of fish, because it counted as a legal marriage. But even that could be undone for non-consummation if the English were desperate...
 
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