Now let us consider the case put by Henry VIII. This was far from consistent. He argued that Catherine’s marriage to his elder brother (whether consummated or not) created a diriment impediment to his own marriage to Catherine. The question then was: did Pope Julius II have the authority to set aside this impediment? Henry VII, Catherine’s family and the papacy in Rome all believed that the pope did have this authority – and Henry VIII had himself accepted this viewpoint for more than twenty years. Only from 1527 or thereabouts did he begin to question it.
However, Henry VIII was by no means clear in his attitude to the papacy since, while requesting an annulment of his marriage to Catherine by the current pope, Clement VII, on the grounds that Pope Julius II had exceeded his authority, Henry was also asking Pope Clement to grant a dispensation to permit him to marry Anne Boleyn (whose sister had previously been Henry’s mistress – thereby causing an identical diriment impediment to the one which had stood in the way of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon). Henry’s position was therefore completely nonsensical. Either the pope did have the authority to grant dispensations in such circumstances or he did not!
In the final analysis, of course, Henry simply cut through the Gordian knot by discarding Catherine and marrying Anne. Even then, however, his conduct of affairs was exceedingly inept. He failed to have his marriage to Catherine annulled in England until after he had married Anne. Thus, by any standard his marriage to Anne must have been bigamous and hence invalid. Moreover, his reason for discarding Catherine was that he and she were related within the prohibited degrees at the first and highest level, and that no power on earth could set this impediment aside. It should therefore have been obvious, even to Henry, that, since an identical impediment existed in his relationship with Anne Boleyn, no legal marriage between Anne and himself would ever be possible. By his own argument no power existed on earth which could set the impediment aside! Logically, whatever held good in the case of his marriage with Catherine also applied to his marriage with Anne. In the end, Henry himself did accept this logic, and declare that he had not been legally married either to Catherine or to Anne – but this was only after both ladies were dead.
Finally, there is an alternative point of view to consider: namely that the pope did (does) have authority to set aside the diriment impediment. Since Julius II did precisely this in the case of Catherine of Aragon, arguably that made her marriage to Henry legal. On the other hand, no one set aside the impediment in the case of Anne. Based on this point of view, Henry’s marriage to Catherine was valid but his marriage to Anne was not.
To sum up, there are two possible ways in which to assess the legal position as it stood at the time.37 One (Henry VIII’s own final viewpoint) is that he was not legally married either to Catherine of Aragon or to Anne Boleyn. The other is that he was legally married to Catherine but not to Anne. There is no way in which it can be argued, on the basis of the law as it stood at the time, either that Henry VIII was legally married to both Catherine and Anne, or that he was legally married to Anne, but not to Catherine.
11
REVIEW OF SECRET
AND BIGAMOUS MEDIEVAL
ROYAL MARRIAGES
Despite the fact that the so-called Tudor period is usually classified by historians as ‘early modern’, the Henry VIII case has been included here in our medieval section, because the medieval marriage laws, which pertained in the earlier cases we have considered, still applied to Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Not until 1538, two years after Anne Boleyn’s execution, did State registration of marriages become a legal requirement in England. All the alleged secret royal marriages which we have so far examined took place under a common legal framework. Throughout the period we have been looking at there were no marriage certificates. Marriages were not contracts in civil law. Instead, they were subject to the religious (canon) law of the Catholic Church (since the period we explored in this section was before the English Church broke away from the authority of the pope in Rome, and began to evolve its own rules).
In addition to their common underlying legal framework, the four key cases we have examined also have certain other features in common. These key cases are the marriage of the Black Prince, the alleged second marriage of Queen Catherine, the alleged marriages of Edward IV, and the alleged marriages of Henry VIII. We shall try to highlight these interesting key features as we review the four cases, and assess their potential significance.
Our first case of a secret royal marriage was that of the heir to the throne, the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III. In 1360 it is alleged that the Black Prince secretly married Joan of Kent. Of course there is no documentary evidence of such a secret marriage, but the allegation is credible because in the following year (1361) the prince and his bride contracted an official union, approved by the king and the pope. It is interesting to note that the alleged secret marriage was followed by a public royal ceremony which conferred official royal status on the partnership, because in various different forms this is a feature which we can trace in all four of the cases under review.
The couple subsequently went on to live together publicly for a number of years (until the Black Prince died), and to produce children. The birth of children (creation of a family) is another significant feature of the partnership. The circumstantial evidence for the marriage is therefore so strong as to warrant no doubt about the matter. The marriage of the Black Prince was also important because it set a precedent for a key member of the royal family to contract a domestic marriage with a subject on the basis of affection and personal inclination, rather than contracting an arranged marriage with a foreign bride, selected for reasons of policy.
Several other secret marriages in the royal family in the next century reinforced this precedent. In the cases of John of Gaunt and Catherine de Roët, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Eleanor Cobham, and Jacquette, Duchess of Bedford and Richard Woodville there was again no official marriage document, because such documentation did not exist at this period. However, in two cases out of the three we have the evidence of recognised children, and in all three cases there is evidence of the couple openly living together as husband and wife for a number of years.
Our first case of a crowned royal personage and an alleged secret marriage is that of Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V. This case is very interesting. Again, of course, there is no documentary evidence of a marriage. We would not expect any. There is evidence of children, although the precise number of children is very much open to question. Two children (Edmund and Jasper Tudor) seem certain, but various authorities have stated that there were three, four, or even five children born to the couple. Conversely, other authorities have raised questions about the paternity of at least one of the children. Indeed, in this present study I have extended the question mark about Queen Catherine’s offspring by arguing that the armorial evidence shows that at least two of her children were fathered not by Owen Tudor, but by Edmund Beaufort.
We may have evidence of an association of some kind between Catherine and Owen Tudor lasting several years. However, there was no contemporary general opinion that they were married. The situation is complicated by Catherine’s acknowledged predilection for Edmund Beaufort. All in all, the picture in this case is far from clear, and there are really no grounds for stating as a fact that Catherine was married to Owen Tudor. Nevertheless, curiously, the current articles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on Catherine and on Owen do both state their marriage as a fact!1 This is an excellent example of how history tends to impose a definitive interpretation on the events of the past, sometimes in defiance of logic, and in spite of what the contemporary evidence actually shows.
However, the existence of children (a family) once again proves the existence of a partnership of some kind for Queen Catherine – either with Edmund Beaufort or with Owen Tudor – or possibly with both of them. Moreover, as in the case of the Black Prince, an alleged secret marriage was followed by a public
feature which conferred official royal status. In this case, however, it was not a public ceremony of any kind, but rather the public and open granting of titles, together with a version of the royal arms, to the two eldest sons of Queen Catherine’s new partnership. The grant of royal arms was an extraordinary feature, with no possible intrinsic justification if the father of the children was indeed Owen Tudor. Nevertheless, at one level this feature can be interpreted as conferring some kind of official status of Queen Catherine’s partnership, whoever her partner was, and whether or not she was ever married to him.
Next we have the case of Edward IV. Here again, writers of history have sought to impose an interpretation, and in this case the general view hitherto has been that Edward IV was not married to Eleanor Talbot, but that the allegation of the marriage was merely fabricated later, to serve the interests of Richard III in his aspiration to be king.
Again, in the case of Edward and Eleanor, we have no marriage certificate, but we now know better than to expect one. In this case we also have no children, and there is no evidence of the couple living together for an extended period. On the other hand there certainly is evidence of a relationship between Edward and Eleanor – including new evidence, recently uncovered by the present writer. This indicates that the relationship between the couple was a fact. That fact must then be coupled with other evidence, showing that Eleanor would have been unlikely for several reasons to have accepted an illicit relationship. There is also evidence that Elizabeth Woodville was later worried about the validity of her own marriage to Edward IV, and took rather desperate measures to defend herself and her children.
Finally, we have the fact that ultimately, and on the basis of further evidence which was subsequently destroyed, the marriage of Edward and Eleanor was formally recognised in an Act of Parliament. This act was later repealed and deliberately suppressed by Henry VII, who had good reasons for wanting to defend the notion that Edward IV was married to Elizabeth Woodville. Overall, I would argue therefore that the alleged marriage between Edward and Eleanor deserves to be taken more seriously than the alleged marriage between Queen Catherine and Owen Tudor, and that only a rather blinkered and partisan attitude on the part of many historians could explain why these two alleged marriages have been treated so differently in the past.
As for the marriage of Edward with Elizabeth Woodville, probably it was bigamous. Like the marriage of the Black Prince and the alleged second marriage of Catherine of France it was also secret initially, but subsequently it was given official royal status – this time by a public coronation of Elizabeth Woodville as queen. This partnership also had something else which the partnership with Eleanor Talbot lacked, namely the creation of a family. Indeed, the Woodville marriage raises an important point which we shall confront again later, namely the fact that even if a marriage was not strictly speaking legal, it may nevertheless need to be accepted as a kind of fact.
Finally we considered the case of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn This case is in some ways very similar to that of Edward IV, in that Henry’s alleged second marriage (to Anne Boleyn) was secret and arguably bigamous, like that of Edward IV with Elizabeth Woodville. However Anne’s secret and private marriage was followed by a public royal ceremony identical to that which occurred in the case of Elizabeth Woodville – a coronation. In the case of Anne Boleyn this was certainly a deliberate attempt to confer official status and recognition on a dubious marriage – which raises the interesting question of whether a similar significance should be seen as underlying Elizabeth Woodville’s grand coronation. And like Elizabeth Woodville’s marriage, that of Anne Boleyn – while it may have been strictly speaking illegal according to the code of the day – may nevertheless have to be accepted on some level as a fact.
Henry VIII’s unions with Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn both produced children, and in this respect they differed from the case of Edward IV, who had no children by Eleanor Talbot. However, Henry’s children by both partners were subsequently bastardised and excluded from the throne – like the children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Moreover, the cases of both Edward and Henry were subject to subsequent parliamentary rulings: namely the section of the titulus regius of 1484 which declared the marriage of Edward IV and Eleanor Talbot valid, and set aside the marriage of Edward and Elizabeth Woodville, and the Act of Succession of 1536 (together, of course, with its predecessor in 1534 and its successor at the end of Henry’s reign, not to mention the subsequent succession legislation of Edward VI) which attempted to establish which of Henry VIII’s children could succeed to the throne, and in what order, together with their legitimate or illegitimate status.
Another feature in which the cases of Edward IV and Henry VIII seem to be similar is in the ultimate fate of the alleged royal brides. Eleanor Talbot retired into private and semi-religious seclusion and died in slightly mysterious circumstances. Catherine of Aragon was forced into retirement, concentrated her attention largely on her religion, and her death was thought by contemporaries to have been suspicious. Neither Eleanor nor Catherine was buried as a queen.
As for Elizabeth Woodville, she was demoted from royal rank. Although her queenship was later briefly reasserted by her son-in-law, in the end she lost everything she owned, and her funeral was a curious mixture between a royal burial and that of a poor person. Anne Boleyn was likewise deprived of her queenly status. She was executed of course, having lost everything she owned, and she was buried as a criminal. Not even her daughter (when she finally ascended the throne) ever made any attempt to reinstate Anne’s reputation or give her a royal reburial.
Three
Reformation, Registration, Cohabitation
12
THE VIRGIN QUEEN
* * *
Master Tyrwhit and others have told me that there goeth rumours abroad which be greatly against my honour and honesty (which above all other things I esteem), which be these; that I am in the Tower; and with child by my Lord Admiral [Thomas Seymour]. My lord, these are shameful slanders.
Elizabeth [I] to the Duke of Somerset (Lord Protector), 1549
* * *
The Queen is in love with Robert [Dudley].
Philip II of Spain
* * *
Ther was a privie staires where the Quene and my Lord of Leicestre did mete, and if they had not used sorcery there should have bene young traitors ere now begotten.
The Earl of Southampton, 1572
* * *
The introduction of the registration of marriages by Thomas Cromwell in 1538 began to change the situation in respect of marriages in England. However, direct government involvement was still at one remove, since registration was by the Church rather than directly by the State. From this date onwards, records were kept of all marriages in churches and diocese – at least in theory. In addition, while marriage remained principally a religious matter, the Elizabethan 39 Articles of Religion (1562) did not recognise marriage as a sacrament, so its official status in England was changed somewhat from what it had been prior to the Reformation. However, it was not until 1837 that State registration of marriage at a national level came into force in Britain, bringing in its wake the formal and automatic issue of marriage certificates and allowing the civil law to take full command in the matter of marriage.
In theory, after 1538 a written record of each and every marriage was meant to be preserved. In fact, however, historical and genealogical research shows that this is not invariably the case. This is firstly because not all early sixteenth-century church records of marriages have survived. Secondly, ongoing disputes regarding the choice of religion meant that some marriages took place other than in the newly Anglicanised parish churches. Moreover, the age-old tradition of the secret marriage was by no means quick to go away. As a result we can certainly find some instances in both the sixteenth and the seventeenth century of alleged secret royal marriage of which no written record exists.
As we shall see in the next chapter,
at least one such royal marriage – that of James [II] with Anne Hyde – is generally credited, despite the lack of documentation to authenticate it. The widespread belief in that particular royal marriage is founded largely upon the subsequent history of the couple (who, despite James’ infidelity, lived together until Anne’s death, producing a number of children, two of whom survived to adulthood) and upon the public recognition which was accorded to the partnership. In the case of the other alleged secret royal marriages of Elizabeth I and the Stuart dynasty the allegations have been generally (if not universally) disbelieved. Nevertheless, despite Cromwell’s legislation of 1538, the lack of a written record in these cases seems far from being the key issue in deciding whether or not the allegations should be believed.
The first case we shall examine concerns Henry VIII’s daughter, Elizabeth, the so-called ‘Virgin Queen’. The questions surrounding Elizabeth’s dubious personal legitimacy and the doubts about the validity of her succession to the throne – doubts which were widespread in Europe at the time – depend upon the complex and difficult issue of the legality of her mother’s marriage to her father (see above), and upon the subsequent succession legislation enacted by Henry VIII and Edward VI. Her father declared Elizabeth a bastard in 1536, and he never subsequently changed her status, although he did eventually restore her to the line of succession as though she were legitimate. Later her half-brother, Edward VI, once again removed Elizabeth’s rights to claim the Crown. Thus, in the end, it was only thanks to the coup of her half-sister, Mary (followed by the latter’s childless death) that Elizabeth actually came to the throne. The succession would otherwise have passed to her cousin, Jane Grey. (For the relevant documentary evidence, see Appendix 3.)
Royal Marriage Secrets Page 16
