WI the Gunpowder Plot had worked?

Hnau

Banned
I wrote a timeline on this, I did. A short one, but a TL nonetheless. Let the Bells Ring.

Anti-Catholic riots throughout England. King Charles is raised to hate Catholics that killed his family, he takes the country on the road of other northern european absolutist protestant kingdoms. This means Cromwellian depopulation in Ireland and no doubt a more committed intervention in the Thirty Years' War. Also, much of the same investors that supported Jamestown were members of Parliament, so that's not going to happen any time soon. The first English colonists in America will likely be Pilgrims and Puritans even too radical to be satisfied with the more extreme Protestantism in England, that is, if they don't head to Dutch colonies in South America first.

Some more interesting butterflies here and there. I had the Dutch claiming Hudson Bay and colonizing it for the fur trade and the Spanish expanding into Georgia and the Carolinas before the English began their own attempts.

The problem with this timeline is I have no idea who would become the regent for the five-year-old King Charles. The selection of the regent could impact the TL in a huge way and yet I don't have the faintest idea who it'd be.
 
For Charles's regency, my money is on a council headed by the Duke of Lennox, Ludovic Stuart. He's hasn't yet been created to English noble titles, so he's got a good chance of not getting caught in the bombing, but he's a member of the English Privy Council at this point, a court favorite of King James, and the highest noble in Scotland outside the immediate royal family. He's also arguably the next adult in line for the Scottish throne (the other candidate (James Hamilton, Earl of Arran) is a confined lunatic), which makes him the natural candidate for the Scottish regency, and there'd probably be considerable sentiment for not risking the personal union by having seperate regencies in Scotland and England.

Another likely candidate for the regency council would be Robert Carey, Prince Charles's governor, son of Queen Elizabeth's late chancellor (Henry Carey, 1st Lord Hunsdon), and OTL would later be created Earl of Monmouth.

There are several alternative candidates for Elizabeth's succession who wouldn't have been killed in the bombing: Edward Seymour (Catherine Grey's son, of questionable legitimacy), Lady Anne Stanley (heir to Elizabeth by Henry VIII's will if Seymour is considered illegitimate; also the stepdaughter of the (late) Lord Chancellor and neice of the (late) Earl of Derby), and Lady Arabella Stuart (dynastically junior to King James but raised in England rather than Scotland). I could see any or all of them either being invited into the regency council to add some dynastic weight to it, or instead the regents might keep them as marginalized as possible for fear they'd become a focus for a coup against the council (to replace them as regents, or even to replace Charles altogether).
 
Dear god the butterflies...

I have my suspicions that in the long term the deaths of those involved would be less significant than the fact that we've established a couple centuries or so early just how damaging terrorist style bombings can be. I have a LARGE suspicion that if it worked we would see a lot more of this kind of thing over the next centuries.
 

Hnau

Banned
I had given the thought of having the Huguenots orchestrate a similar attack during the French Civil War. You're right, any group serious about decapitating their government is going to love to try and copy the Gunpowder Plot in their own country. Good luck to this world!

@Maniakes
Wow, good research. Those are some interesting names you threw out there. I would think a regency council of three would be quite stable... perhaps consisting of the three men you named? It is also possible that the Parliament will use the weakness of the throne to push forward their agendas at taking more power in the central government. Certainly when King Charles comes to his majority he'll want to reverse that but he'll be easily manipulated at this age. I can't find anything in the biographies of any of the men you mentioned as possible regents that would suggest radical departure of what might have been expected, they weren't very politically motivated to one cause or another. Now, Edward Seymour might desire the throne for himself and separate the personal union between Scotland and England... could he launch a coup of some kind? I doubt he would have the pull for it but the possibility might prevent him from being put onto the regency council. Very interesting.
 
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Hnau

Banned
Oh, yeah, forgot that this takes place before the Acts of Union. I would guess both the English and the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament would start its Covenanting regime thirty years earlier and the English Parliament would follow it in taking more and more power that had beforehand reserved to the throne. That's going to piss off Charles when he gains his majority. Could we still see a civil war if the religious angle was completely avoided and it was just a conflict between Parliament and the Monarchy? I somewhat doubt it. They'll be too unified in their purging of Ireland and their involvement in the Thirty Years' War.
 
Surely we'd have Henry IX on the throne, not King Charles I? Otherwise, I agree with what people say- what'll be interesting is how King Henry, who is unimpeachably Calvinist but probably as much of a control-freak as his younger brother, deals with Presbytery. Probably rather more successfully, I suppose.

Hm. Intervention in the Thirty Years War ahoy, as people said- and the Hguenots will love him. Maybe an earlier Act of Union, or at least an attempt at one?
 
Now, Edward Seymour might desire the throne for himself and separate the personal union between Scotland and England... could he launch a coup of some kind? I doubt he would have the pull for it but the possibility might prevent him from being put onto the regency council. Very interesting.

I think he'd have a decent shot at it. Assuming our posited three-man regency council (Lennox, Carey, and Seymour): Lennox has a pretty firm power base on Scotland, but England would likely be somewhat suspicious of him as a foreigner, and not one they've had a decade or so of warning to get used to the idea of as with King James. Carey's English, and from a notable and influential family, but he was fairly unpopular among the English aristocracy at the time (he was viewed as having been rather an over-the-top suckup), and his OTL power and influence came mainly from the favor of King James (dead ITTL) and King Charles (as a five-year-old, his preferences really won't matter politically for quite a while).

Seymour's family had been very powerful in the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign, and though the family was disgraced and stripped of its titles following Seymour's father's illegal marriage to Catherine Grey, they retained powerful connections. I'm not sure how many of their connections would have survived the explosion, but the name at least would be well-known. Seymour's grandfather (Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset) was Lord Protector for Edward VI.

Come to think of it, I think the Careys may have been one of the families that were close to the Seymours. Seymour's father's (suspended) title was Earl of Hertford, and the Carey family seat (Hunsdon House) is in Hertfordshire. If so, Seymour may be able to recruit Carey's support against Lennox. This would obviate the need for a coup, since Carey and Seymour could simply outvote Lennox.

Another way for Seymour to shore up his position, were he of a mind to attempt a coup, would be to marry his son to Lady Arabella Stuart. She'd almost married him a couple years previously, but Queen Elizabeth had found out and put a stop to the marriage. OTL Arabella later did marry Seymour's second son William after the eldest had died young. If Arabella married Seymour's heir, it'd merge two of the alternative claims to the English throne, and with Arabella's claim to the Scottish throne (fairly strong geneologically, but very weak politically), it'd provide an avenue for a Seymour coup to maintain personal union.

The advantages to sell a Seymour coup over a Lennox-lead regency for Prince Charles:
  1. Nationalism and connections: Seymour's English and has established English connections, while Charles and Lennox are Scottish and are relatively new fixtures in the English political landscape.
  2. Dynastic stability: the main line of the House of Stuart consists of a five-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl (assuming Princess Elizabeth isn't killed by the plotters ITTL), whereas Seymour is an adult and he has an adult heir and multiple spares (Edward, age 18; William, age 16; Francis, age 14; plus three daughters).
The disadvantages, which sell backing Lennox:
  1. Political stability in a crisis: the coup would likely lead to war with Scotland if it succeeds, especially if Lennox isn't killed in the opening blow. Not an appealing prospect, especially considerining the disruption and panic following the Westminster Massacre.
  2. Personal union: Lennox is in a much, much better position than Arabella to keep Scotland in union with England.
I suspect the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages quite a bit in most people's minds, but given the inherent chaos of the situation, I'm very hesitent to say that Seymour couldn't make a respectable attempt at a coup if he were so inclined.
 

Hnau

Banned
Fantastic breakdown Maniakes, I compliment your knowledge of English and Scottish nobility. I'm inclined to say that Seymour would push for a coup and would only back away if Lennox assembled enough influence in England to prevent him from imagining it's possible. I doubt that. However, I also doubt Seymour's ability to launch a coup. I say that the most probably course of events is that Seymour would marry his son to Lady Arabella and make preparations for a coup, but that he would get caught, and Lennox would somehow attain enough support (in Parliament?) to have him and Carey thrown out of the council, establishing himself as the sole Regent. What do you think?

Charles attains his majority at 18, correct? Or am I mistaken?
 
Thank you. I'm in the process of writing a role-playing game scenario based on the immediate aftermath of a successful Gunpowder Plot, so I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately on the politics and personalities of the era. After the game runs (probably some time next Spring), I might strip out some of the more ASB aspects of the scenario and do a timeline based on it.

Your scenario certainly sounds plausible, especially if the regency council were padded out with relative non-entities who favored Lennox.

I'm not sure exactly what the age of majority for King Charles would be.

In Scotland, King James VI had been crowned as an infant with a series of regents. He nominally took up the Kingship in his own right at age 12, but his privy council (headed by the Earl of Lennox (later 1st Duke of Lennox), Esme Stuart, father of Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox) continued to act as a de facto regency council for some time. I think he was 17 when he became the actual head of government.

In England, it looks like 16 was the age of adulthood, if there was a specific age. Edward VI died at age 15 (still under regency), and Lady Jane Grey (age 16 or 17) didn't have a regent during her brief and disputed reign.
 
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