Who else besides James VI could be selected to succeed Elzabeth

Ak-84

Banned
OTL James VI got the throne because of a "who else" attitude from the English Privy Council. Now if they follow Margaret Tudor's marriage treaty fully and exclude James VI; who would they give it too.
 
The Grey's. They should've because of Henry VIII's will but Elizabeth refused to acknowledge the Grey's (or Edward Seymour, as he was the son of the Grey who would've been next in line).

So Edward Seymour...
 
There's several theories of succession rules, presented roughly in declining order of plausibility:

Male-Preference Primogeniture

Under this theory, once the legitimate (*) issue of Henry VIII is extinct, the throne passes to the next surviving line of legitimate descendants of Henry VII, in this case the descendants of the older sister of Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor. The senior successor in this line was James VI of Scotland, who was technically ineligible due to not being English (this was worked around OTL by the legal fiction of invoking England's dubious historical claim to the overlordship of Scotland). After James would come:

  1. Children of James VI: if your POD is James gets hit by a meteor in 1603, his titles and claims would pass first to his sons Henry and Charles, then to his daughter Elizabeth.
  2. Lady Arabella Stuart, who was descended from Margaret Tudor by her second husband. She also has a claim to the Scottish throne after James, along with the Stuart surname, through a cadet branch of the Scottish Royal Family (the Earls of Lennox). She also had the advantage of having been born and raised in England.
  3. Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox, Arabella's second cousin. Since Arabella was seen as too English (and too female) to succeed to her father's Scottish titles, they passed to the next branch of the family. Ludovic's next in line for the Stuart claim to the English throne after Arabella. IOTL, he was a court favorite of James VI, who elevated him from Earl to Duke, made him Lord High Admiral of Scotland, and frequently used him as an ambassador. [Edit: my mistake, he's not actually descended from Margaret Tudor. He's the heir (or rival) to Arabella's claim to the Scottish throne after James VI, but has no claim to the English throne as far as I know]
(*) Technically, Edward VI was the only legitimate issue of Henry VIII: his marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn were annulled, retroactively making Mary and Elizabeth bastards, although both were later re-inserted into the line of succession by Act of Parliament (the Third Succession Act, see below).

Third Succession Act and the Will of Henry VII

As marital politics shifted, Henry VIII frequently went to Parliament to clarify the line of succession. The First Succession Act (passed when Anne Boleyn became pregnant with Elizabeth) declared Mary a bastard and confirmed Elizabeth as his heir. The Second Succession Act (passed when Anne Boleyn was divorced and beheaded) declared Elizabeth to also be a bastard. The Third Succession Act (passed when Edward was born) confirmed Edward as the heir, restored Mary and Elizabeth's eligibility to succeed to the throne after Edward (as acknowledged bastards made eligible to inherit through special dispensation, not by re-legitimizing them), and gave the King the power to write a will declaring the rules of succession in default of the three explicitly listed heirs.

His will confirmed the Third Succession Act's order of Edward, then hypothetical future legitimate issue, then Mary, then Elizabeth. In default of all of them, Henry declared that the throne should pass next to the heirs of his younger sister Mary Tudor (dowager Queen of France (first marriage), and Duchess of Suffolk (second marriage)), then to the remaining Heirs General of Henry VII (i.e. Margaret Tudor's descendants).

As of 1603, the heir of Mary Duchess of Suffolk is disputed. Her only son died in his teens, and she had two daughters. The older daughter, Frances Branden, had three children: Jane Grey, Catherine Grey, and Mary Grey. Jane Grey was executed after being placed on the throne when Edward VI died (Edward also wrote a will, which explicitly excluded Mary and Elizabeth on the grounds that they were bastards, and implicitly skipped over Frances Branden by naming Jane as the heir), and Mary Grey never married and predeceased Elizabeth.

Catherine Grey also died long before 1603, but had surviving children. However, her marriage was illegal and highly irregular: there was no documentation, the priest could never be located, the ceremony was done in secret and the only witness (Catherine's sister-in-law) died of illness before she could testify, and Catherine's status in the line of succession made it illegal for her to marry without the Queen's consent. Parliament adjudicated the issue and declared the marriage invalid and Catherine's children illegitimate. In 1608, King James reversed the decision and allowed Edward Seymour (Catherine's son) to succeed to his father's titles, but in 1603 they were considered bastards.

If Edward Seymour is considered a bastard, then the legitimate line of Mary Duchess of Suffolk, and thus the heirs to the throne under the Third Succession Act and Henry VIII's will, are the descendants of Mary of Suffolk's younger daughter Eleanor:

  1. Lady Anne Stanley, great-granddaughter of Eleanor Branden, eldest daughter of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby.
  2. Lady Catherine Stanley, second daughter of Ferdinando Stanley
  3. Lady Elizabeth Stanely, third daughter of Ferdnando, who was married to Henry Hastings, who would in 1604 become Earl of Huntingdon (more on him later).
  4. William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, Ferdinando's brother.
I think at this point, the legitimate line of Mary of Suffolk would be extinct after those four, and the throne would then go back to Henry VII's heirs general.

However, if Edward Seymour is considered legitimate, he stands ahead of those four, as does his children (Edward, William, Frances, Honora, Anne, and Mary).

York Restoration

There's three surviving branches of the House of York:

  • The de la Poles (descendants of Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV and Richard III), who were nominated as the York Heirs by the will of Richard III. Almost all of them were wiped out or became priests or nuns during the reign of Henry VII (although one or two made a good show of trying to claim the throne: Richard de la Pole in particular managed to scare up an army of about 12,000 men in Brittany, but came up a bit short on the Navy front), but there's one daughter (Margarete de la Pole) who married into a minor French noble family. I think her descendants are rather out of the running for the English throne by this point.
  • The descendants of George Duke of Clarence (younger brother of Edward IV and older brother of Richard III) through his granddaughter Ursula Pole (who had nothing to do with the de la Poles -- the name is just a misleading coincidence). This line is still well-established in English nobility, and was briefly in the running to succeed Elizabeth had she died of illness early in her reign. The senior branch of it is the Earls of Huntingdon:
    1. George Hastings, 4th Earl of Huntingdon, who OTL died in 1604.
    2. Henry Hastings, grandson of George Hastings and husband of the aforementioned Elizabeth Stanley. He's very young at this point (17) and has yet to make a name for himself, but OTL he was a very prominent Puritan and one of the major leaders of loyal opposition to Stuart policies.
    3. Henry's siblings, Sir George Hastings, Captain Edward Hastings, Catherine Hastings, and Theodosia Hastings.
    4. Henry's plethora of cousins.
  • Edward IV had a whole bunch of daughters, several of who had surviving issue. I'm not sure which (if any) of their descendants (apart from the descendants of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, who are treated above as heirs of Henry VII) had any significant political clout.
House of Buckingham

The Dukes of Buckingham were descended from Edward III along three lines: they're the heirs of the youngest son of Edward III (making them junior to both the House of York and the House of Lancaster), and they're descended from the House of Lancaster through the Beauforts along two different lines (the same basis as the Tudor claim to the throne, although the Buckinghams are junior to the Tudors for the Beaufort claim).

Henry VIII more-or-less ended Buckingham pretensions to the throne by executing the Third Duke of Buckingham for treason and attainting his heirs. One of his descendants, Thomas Stafford, tried to renew the Buckingham claim and raise a rebellion against Mary, but failed laughably and was executed. As of 1603, I think the Buckingham heirs are:

  1. Edward, 3rd Baron Stafford (died October 1603)
  2. His son, also named Edward, followed by his daughters Ursula and Dorothy.
Lancaster Heirs

John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, had all sorts of issue. Most of his English descendants died in the War of the Roses, but he also had two daughters who married into European royal families. The only descendants to make claims OTL were Philip II of Spain (who raised a claim in his own right to augment his claim by Jure Uxoris as Queen Mary's husband) and his daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia (who would probably have been installed on the English throne had the Spanish Armada succeeded). Infanta Isabella was also named in the will of Mary Queen of Scots as the heir to her claim to the English throne.

There was at least one surviving legitimate line of English descendants of John of Gaunt as of the end of the War of the Roses (the House of Exeter), but I can't find word of any of their line surviving past the early 1500s.

Tudor Bastards

Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, was born to Mary Boleyn at around the time Henry VIII was having an affair with her, was named after King Henry, was shown considerable favor by King Henry, and was said to look quite a bit like King Henry. He was never acknowledged as a son of the King, and even if he were, a bastard needs special dispensation to inherit.

Still, his heirs are probably surviving descendants of Henry VIII, when the eligible legitimate heirs are rather distant, so they might have an outside chance of making a claim. As of 1603:

  1. George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, and Lord Chamberlain: He's the "Lord Chamberlain" in the "Lord Chamberlain's Men" (Shakespeare's playing company). Died September 1603.
  2. John Carey, 3rd Baron Hunsdon, George's brother.
  3. Henry Carey, John's son.
  4. Sir Edmund Carey, younger brother of George and John.
  5. Several sisters, nephews, and neices of George, John, and Edmund.
 
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I think the "who else" attitude came from James being the best candidate to take the throne without dispute. He's got Scotland as a firmly-established power base, he's well-known and widely liked among the English aristocracy, and his claim to the throne doesn't brook much opportunity for dispute within that particular theory of descent (his children are clearly junior to him, as is Ludovic, and although Arabella has a plausible claim to the senior to him she's a fairly weak candidate in terms of independent power base).

For the other major theory of succession, the split between the Stanleys and the Seymours is a major potential point of contention: each branch probably has enough clout to dispute the other's claim, neither has enough clout to be the clear favorite in a civil war, and the legal issue is confused. Plus the claimant with the better legal claim (Anne Stanley) is a young, unmarried woman; despite Elizabeth's reign, there's still quite a bit of suspicion of the ability of women to rule in their own right, and there's a fairly serious fear of a repeat of Bloody Mary's reign if a reigning Queen marries someone unsuitable.

Then there's also the issue that even if Anne Stanley or Edward Seymour were crowned without contest from the other, King James could still invade England to press his own claim, and would pick up enough English support that he might win (or at least cause a long, bloody war before he loses). Whereas if James crowns himself with the explicit support of the upper echelons of the English aristocracy and Scottish armies at his back, neither Anne nor Edward (nor any of the lesser potential claimants) has enough support to effectively raise a rebellion against him -- and indeed, neither tried.

And if you pass over all of the Stuarts, Seymours, and Stanleys, a York restoration would be a distant enough claim as to 1) invite all three of the groups with better claims to contest it, and 2) open the door for all sorts of weaker claims, such as the Buckinghams and the Careys.

And Infanta Isabella is right out: as bad as a multi-cornered civil war would be (and fear of that scenario, based in part of the shadow of the War of the Roses, was a major driving factor for settling on James), the real nightmare scenario for the English aristocracy would be if England were to wind up so divided that they'd be unable to resist a Spanish invasion to install Isabella on the throne. My sense is that England would crown a pumpkin before they'd crown Isabella.
 
  1. Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox, Arabella's second cousin. Since Arabella was seen as too English (and too female) to succeed to her father's Scottish titles, they passed to the next branch of the family. Ludovic's next in line for the Stuart claim to the English throne after Arabella. IOTL, he was a court favorite of James VI, who elevated him from Earl to Duke, made him Lord High Admiral of Scotland, and frequently used him as an ambassador.

Are you sure that Ludovic is a descendent from Margaret Tudor? I can't find their connection.
 
Are you sure that Ludovic is a descendent from Margaret Tudor? I can't find their connection.

You're right, that was a brain cramp on my part. He's the heir (or rival) to Arabella's claim to the Scottish throne after James (also rivaled by James Hamilton, Earl of Arran and his heirs), but he doesn't share her claim to the English throne.
 
Does the treaty in question exclude only James personally, or all his line? If it's only personal, then 9-year-old Henry Stuart is crowned Henry IX and some sort of Regency council is established.

As said above, James probably won't accept any candidate but himself, although he MIGHT accept being skipped in favor of his son. So there's a war coming.

Arabella Stuart is an old, unmarried and childless woman; her claim may be the best, but championing her is punting - the problem will be addressed again in 10 or even 5 years. So I doubt she gets any backers.

Anne Stanley has the next legal claim, and a 23-year-old unmarried woman is probably the best possibility for anyone but the Seymours. So I think you're looking at King James vs. Queen Anne. I wonder who would be held up as an appropriate husband for her?
 
Arabella was only 28 when Queen Elizabeth died, which may be older than typical marrying age for noblewomen of that time period, but hardly too old to marry and have children. Anne Stanley, being five years younger, has an advantage in this department, but not an insurmountable one.

IOTL, Arabella married William Seymour, but William was 1) only 14 in 1603, and 2) had a surviving older brother at the time, so the marriage wouldn't be guaranteed to merge the Seymour claim to Arabella's. William's older brother Edward might be a suitable match, though.

The House of Vasa was very interested in an English match during this time period: Sigismund III (deposed King of Sweden and then-current King of Poland) proposed a marriage of Arabella in 1604, and his rival Charles IX tried in 1610 to marry his son Gustavus Adolphus to Princess Elizabeth Stuart. Both are problematic as matches for either Anne or Arabella: Sigismund is Catholic and a Hapsburg ally, and he's a reigning monarch; and Gustavus Adolphus, while he's Protestant and from a friendly country, is the Heir Apparent to a foreign throne.
 

Ak-84

Banned
So, outside of James VI, who is the most realistic person that they can offer it? Arabella Stuart or Anne Stanely bring all of Elizabeth's problems with them.
 
Who's "they"? The core problem would seem to be that there's no Englishman who can assemble an army that will beat James (because the English are badly divided at the moment). They can give him the crown or he can take it by force.
 

Ak-84

Banned
By they I mean the English Privy Council. The last centiry had shown that the Scots were militarily unable to defeat England, so an invasion without massive English support was a non starter.

In OTL, it had been clear for the last decade of Elizabeth I life that it would be James VI. Before that it was not so clear. Who else could have been groomed and prepared to succeed Elizabeth
 
Oh, if Elizabeth is actively involved in the process and starting a decade before her death, then she'll probably choose Anne Stanley. She disliked Seymour and didn't seem to think highly of Arabella Stuart. She may demand Stanley marry someone early, of course, which brings us back to earlier questions :)
 
Edward Seymour's eldest son, also Edward, was born in 1586. (He died in 1618.)

Anne Stanley was born in 1580. (She didn't get married till 1607.)

With Queen Elizabeth's permission, could those two have gotten married to solidify and join their two families separate claims to the throne? In 1602, he would have turned 16 and she would have turned 22.

Or are they too closely related? Are they 1st cousins once removed? or did I miscalculate that?

Would their merged claim have been enough to hold off James VI? or does he have to many aces up his sleeve as previous posters have stated (Scottish military, good relations with upper level English nobility, etc.)?
 

Ak-84

Banned
Would their merged claim have been enough to hold off James VI? or does he have to many aces up his sleeve as previous posters have stated (Scottish military, good relations with upper level English nobility, etc.)?

Married. Had an heir and a spare. Scotland would no longer be the backdoor to England?
 
Tyr said:
Good post maniakes, I learned some things there.

Thank you. I'm in the process of writing an RPG scenario based on the Gunpowder Plot succeeding, so I've been doing quite a bit of research on politics and succession around this time period.

Or are they too closely related? Are they 1st cousins once removed? or did I miscalculate that?

Edward Seymour III (the 16-year-old) -> ES II (the heir) -> Catherine Grey -> Frances Branden -> Mary Tudor + Charles Branden (4 steps to the common ancestors, 3 steps to the siblings)

Anne Stanley -> Ferdinando Stanley -> Margaret Clifford -> Eleanor Branden -> Mary Tudor + Charles Branden (3 steps to the commons ancestors, 2 steps to the siblings)

This makes them second cousins once removed, plenty far enough apart to marry without special dispensation (apart from the royal permission already needed to marry someone that high in a potential line of succession).

The problems, though are:

  1. As AK-84 said, James already has an heir and a spare with the possibility of more on the way, while Anne+Edward aren't even proven fertile, plus there's the allure of personal union with Scotland.
  2. James is expected to fight if someone other than him is crowned. He'll lose unless he gets substantial English support, but it'll be expensive and bloody, and in the eyes of most of the privy council and high aristocracy, there's nothing wrong with James that makes him worth a war to keep off the throne. Plus he might win the war, in which case the top supporters of his rivals would have an appointment with a headsman.
  3. Crowning James is nearly a risk-free plan for the Privy Council: with their support, he can secure the throne before anyone can organize a move against him, and the unified support of Scotland plus the by-default support of most of England's armies and aristocrats would make him prohibitively difficult to overthrow.
  4. Anne Stanley is particular has several known or suspected Catholic relatives and is under a cloud of suspicion of being a closet Catholic herself. Unless she can satisfy everyone who matters that she's Protestant, there's rather a lot of people who would consider it worth a war to keep the throne from her, even if she had the better claim and the better political position.
But supposing Elizabeth lives a few more years, a lot of this could change. Scottish politics might pull James towards a more pro-Catholic position, making him less palatable to the English aristocracy. Or James could wind up being associated with a plot to overthrow Elizabeth (perhaps the surviving supporters of the Earl of Essex rebellion decide to try another coup attempt, this time with the aim of replacing Elizabeth with James rather than replacing the Privy Council with Essex's inner circle), earning him considerable English emnity. In either case, Anne and Edward (or Arabella and Edward) could marry with Elizabeth's blessing as an alternative to James, and they might have a kid on the way by the time Elizabeth dies.

Along similar lines, two potential matches that might prove interesting:

Suppose Henry Hastings (the future 5th Earl of Huntingdon) marries Anne instead of her younger sister Elizabeth Stanley. Suppose also Queen Elizabeth lives long enough for Henry to inherit his title and become a notable political figure in his own right. His weak claim bolsters Anne's strong claim, they have a kid on the way by the time Queen Elizabeth dies (IOTL, HH and ES marry in 1601 and have their first kid in 1605 or 1606) Henry's high-profile puritanism mitigates the suspicion of Catholicism in Anne, and Henry's family's titles and strong political position gives him and Anne a stronger power base than Anne on her own or Anne+Edward Seymour would have had.

Alternatively, suppose Arabella weds her second cousin Ludovic Stuart, as her grandmother tried to arrange when they were both children. Combined, Arabella and Ludovic have a fairly strong claim on the Scottish throne after James (and a plausible claim to rival James, owing to the vagueness of Scottish succession law at the time: Salic Law was seen as applying until the main line of the house of Stuart went extinct in male line and the throne passed to Mary Queen of Scots; had Salic Law been applied then as well, the heirs would have been the House of Lennox, of which Ludovic is the senior member in male line in 1603) and Ludovic has considerable political support in Scotland. This opens the door for the possibility that if James were to Arabella for the English throne, Ludovic would challenge James for the Scottish throne. 2/3 of England + 1/3 of Scotland for Arabella and Ludovic vs 1/3 of England and 2/3 of Scotland for James very likely ends up with Arabella and Ludovic holding both thrones.
 
Wasn't Ludovic Stewart already married at this stage to Jean Campbell? Obviously he could get a divorce but he may not wish to alienate the Campbells; furthermore I imagine any marriage to Arabella would require James VI's support which may well not be forthcoming.

With regards to the Scottish succession under Salic Law, you're right in that Ludovic Stewart would be head of the House of Stewart, but he doesn't have any royal blood flowing through his veins since that branch of the Stewart family descends in the male line from Alexander Stewart, who was the grandfather of Walter Stewart, who married Marjory, Robert Bruce's daughter. In fact there would actually be no legitimate male heirs of the Royal House of Stewart left, since the descendants of Robert II's other legitimate sons (the son of Marjory) were killed off during the reigns of James I and II. The only other option would be to overturn the 1516 act which nullified the marriage of Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany (James III's brother) and Catherine Stewart and made their issue illegitimate, since I believe this marriage left male heirs - however they have vanished into obscurity, and probably had no political clout. I suppose you could also legitimise some of James V's bastards. This is all rather technical anyway though as by the succession of Mary Scotland changed from Salic to semi-Salic.

Anyway, as fascinating as that was I'll stop diverging.
 
Wasn't Ludovic Stewart already married at this stage to Jean Campbell? Obviously he could get a divorce but he may not wish to alienate the Campbells; furthermore I imagine any marriage to Arabella would require James VI's support which may well not be forthcoming.

By 1603, yes. The OTL marriage negotiations were much earlier, in 1588, when Arabela was 8 and Ludovic was 9.

With regards to the Scottish succession under Salic Law, you're right in that Ludovic Stewart would be head of the House of Stewart, but he doesn't have any royal blood flowing through his veins since that branch of the Stewart family descends in the male line from Alexander Stewart, who was the grandfather of Walter Stewart, who married Marjory, Robert Bruce's daughter. In fact there would actually be no legitimate male heirs of the Royal House of Stewart left, since the descendants of Robert II's other legitimate sons (the son of Marjory) were killed off during the reigns of James I and II. The only other option would be to overturn the 1516 act which nullified the marriage of Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany (James III's brother) and Catherine Stewart and made their issue illegitimate, since I believe this marriage left male heirs - however they have vanished into obscurity, and probably had no political clout. I suppose you could also legitimise some of James V's bastards. This is all rather technical anyway though as by the succession of Mary Scotland changed from Salic to semi-Salic.

Yup, that's the big handycap of the Lennoxes for the Scottish succession. The alternatives were: waive the bar on female inheritence and let Mary take the throne, pass the throne to the closest male relative through a female line (the Earl of Arran), legitimize James V's bastards, or back up the tree to before the Royal House of Stuart to the Lennox branch. At the time, they settled on Mary with (at first) and Arran regent, but the Lennoxes wound up dominating the regency of James VI after Mary Queen of Scots was overthrown.
 

Ak-84

Banned
Is there any plausible senario that would see James VI refuse the English crown, and rather hope to take a behind the scenes approach.
 
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