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Hi all, got a question concerning the Third Act of Succession of Henry VIII of England.

Now the original act set out who would succeed Henry and his son Edward in the event of their deaths, and in case Edward should die without heir.
Alongside those included in the act there were a few other possibilities, specified in the following very insightful excerpt/thread:D:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...could-be-selected-to-succeed-elzabeth.213026/

Sep 26, 2011
#4

Maniakes Well-Known Member
Joined:
Oct 10, 2008
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.

Right, so now for my scenario and question:

Ignoring the Yorkists, Lancastrians and the unacknowledged bastards of Henry VIII, none of whom he would have considered anyway, what if Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond and Somerset had lived and fathered children, and what if Edmund Tudor, Duke of Bedford had had children as well?

Would the descendants of these two men be included at all in the act and if so where would they fit?

Now Fitzroy is a bastard, but he was legitimized, which theoretically makes his children eligible, so do they fall after Edward, or only after Mary and Elizabeth who are technically still bastards as well at this point!
And while Bedford's descendants wouldn't be royalty, they are still relatives and have the Tudor name. So perhaps they are more useful as potential consorts to a Grey or Stanley, or perhaps even Elizabeth?

The purpose of my question isn't how either one would or could gain the throne, only how the existence of any number of surviving children of either gender, from both men in 1543 would fit (if at all) within the succession act.

Thanks and really looking forward to your insight;)

EDIT:
By the way, when Henry Fitzroy was legitimized did he become a Tudor, or would he and his descendants have remained Fitzroy's forever? I've always wondered about that and don't know enough about English customs concerning royal bastards.

Oh and Happy New Year and may 2019 be a prosperous year for you all:extremelyhappy:
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