Abstract
So roared Mary I of England, in the midst of a formidable rebellion against her authority as monarch. Even John Foxe, the Protestant martyrologist who created the enduring image of “Bloody Mary,” marveled, for one brief historical moment, at the exercise of kingly authority emanating from this diminutive, thirty-nine-year-old unmarried woman.2 As England’s first ruling queen, Mary forcefully reminded her subjects that she was their legitimate monarch, capable of mastering her own and England’s destiny. Unlike her male predecessors, the kings of England, Mary I was compelled to justify to her subjects why a woman should be holding an estate and wielding an office that formerly had been occupied only by men. Simultaneously proclaiming herself her kingdom’s wife and demanding the obedience of her kingdom’s subjects, Mary I demonstrated a response to the opponents of her rule that was contradictory in its premises yet remarkable in its attempt to project a gendered representation of womanhood upon the historical template of English kingship.
Now, loving subjects, what I am, ye right well know. I am your queen, to whom at my coronation, when I was wedded to the realm and the laws of the same, you promised your allegiance and obedience unto me.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, vol., 6, ed. George Townsend and Stephen Cattley (New York: AMS Press, 1965, orig. pub. 1559) p. 414
Ibid.
Studies of European kingship in general do not include analysis of women as kings; for a fairly recent example see Henry A. Myers, Medieval Kingship (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982), also Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne Duggan (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1993). Only recently have scholars begun to interpose the role of women upon the evolution of kingship, see Paul Kleber Monod, The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999). While Monod includes discussions of female rulers in his study, they remain “exceptional, each case has to be examined separately,” p. 7.
See John W. Houghton, “No Bishop, No Queen: Queens Regnant and the Ordination of Women,” Anglican and Episcopal History, 67, 1 (1998), pp. 2–25.
Arthur Taylor, The Glory of Regality: An Historical Treatise of the Anointing and Crowning of the Kings and Queens of England (London: Payne and Foss, 1820), p. 3.
Ibid.
Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 15.
See Joan Hoff, “Gender as a Postmodern Category of Paralysis,” Women’s History Review, 3, 2 (1994), pp. 80–99.
This theoretical starting point is nicely fleshed out in Bonnie Smith, The Gender of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
For a survey of the origins of patriarchy in Western culture, see Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). The ambivalence of historians to utilize the word patriarchy as a descriptive term appears in a number of theoretical works: see Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Oxford: Polity Press, 1988), and Judith Bennett, “Feminism and History,” Gender and History 1 (1989), pp. 259–263.
For a recent study of the exercise of delegated queenly sovereignty in late-medieval Spain, see Theresa Earenfight, “Maria of Castile, Ruler or Figurehead?” Mediterranean Studies, 4 (1994), pp. 45–61.
This fundamental problem is identified in Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowalski, “Introduction,” Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1988), pp. 1–4.
See Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), pp. 5–7.
For a recent example, see Peter Brimacombe, All the Queen’s Men: The World of Elizabeth I (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Brimacombe identified Mary I’s previously unidentified accomplishment, noting that, “Mary’s reign, unsatisfactory though it may have been, had at least been advantageous in a accustoming the English kingdom of a female monarch, an institution which was becoming increasingly prevalent in Europe.” A backhanded compliment, but a new perspective all the same, p. 40.
See J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 5.
For a survey of biblical and classical injunctions against women, see Diana Coole, Women in Political Theory: From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism (New York: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1993), pp. 1–37. Scholars who have demonstrated the limits of culturally hegemonic male dominance include Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (New York: Routledge, 1993), Merry Wiesner, “Women’s Defense of Their Public Role,” Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 1–22, and Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1992).
Some of the works that identify a dual system of accommodation and resistance to forms of male dominance include Judith Bennett, Medieval Women in Modern Perspective (Washington DC: American Historical Association, 2000), also Merry Wiesner, “Women’s Defense,” pp. 1–22.
For further discussion of the social and legal status of medieval and early-modern Englishwomen, see Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England, 450–1500 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995), also Pearl Hogrefe, Tudor Women (Ames, Iowa: Iowa University Press, 1975). For studies of women in the larger context of medieval Europe, see Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Studies in Church History, Subsidia I, 1978), Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. J.T. Rosenthal (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1990), S. Shahar, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages (London: Metheun, 1983).
See Michael K. Jones, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For a feminist viewpoint of Beaufort, see Karen Lindsey, Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1995), pp. 3–11.
See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger, Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, Ma.: M.I.T. Press, 1989, orig. pub. 1962). Although Habermas categorically states that a recognizable public sphere only emerged in England following the Glorious Revolution (1688), he does say that “private” referred to the exclusion from the sphere of the state apparatus, p. 11. In this sense, female kings transcended the private sphere of womanhood upon their accessions.
For an influential description of the relationship between female agency and public and private power, see Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women Through the Family in Medieval Europe, 500–1100,” Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women, ed. Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner (New York: Harper Colophon, 1974), pp. 103–118.
For further discussion of the evolution of feudal inheritance practices, see John Hudson, Land, Law, Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) and S.F.C. Milsom, “Inheritance by Women in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries,” On the Laws and Customs of England, ed. Morris S. Arnold, Thomas A. Green, Sally A. Scully, and Stephen D. White (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), pp. 60–89.
For a basic model of female inheritance rights, see Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968, orig. pub. 1898), pp. 420–428. For a survey of early-modern refinements, see Erickson, Women and Property.
See Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex,” Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), pp. 157–210.
For an analysis of the origins of this plan, see E. Searle, “Women and the Legitimization of Succession of the Norman Conquest,” Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 3, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980), pp. 159–170.
See William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897) II, p. 552.
This particular problem was first tackled by William Huse Dunham Jr., in his article “Regal Power and the Rule of Law: A Tudor Paradox,” Journal of British Studies, 3, 2 (May 1964), pp. 34–37.
For a recent discussion of Elizabeth’s continuing historical popularity, see Susan Doran, “Elizabeth I: Gender, Power, and Politics,” History Today, 53, 5 (2003), pp. 29–35.
David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship (London: Chatto and Windus, 2000), p. x.
Among my more recent favorites are: Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (New York: Coward-McKann, 1959), Carolly Erickson, The First Elizabeth (New York: Summit Books, 1983), and Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991).
For a recent, edited version of this work, see William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious princess Elizabeth Late Queen of England, ed. with intro. by Wallace McCaffery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
For recent analyses of gender perceptions in Tudor society, see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), also Susan Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
John Aylmer, later Bishop of London, wrote his work, An Harborowe For Faithful and Trewe Subjects (London: 1559) as a rebuttal to John Knox’s scathing critique of female rule, First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (Geneva: 1558). Aylmer’s emphasis on the mixed nature of the English constitution was also incorporated into Sir Thomas Smith’s political critique, De Republica Anglorum, ed. L. Alston (New York: Harper and Row, 1973, orig. pub. 1584).
For a number of analyses on nineteenth-century gender formations, see Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), and John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).
See Rohan Amanda Maitzen, Gender, Genre, and Victorian Historical Writing (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
James Anthony Froude, The Reign of Elizabeth, 5 vols. (London: J.M. Dent, 1911).
Mandell Creighton, Queen Elizabeth (New York: Thom Y Crowell, 1966, orig. pub. 1899), p. 29.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 27–28, 51, 176.
A.L. Rowse, in his Expansion of Elizabethan England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1955), appropriated Creighton’s views on the impact of Elizabeth’s gender, p. 266.
G.R. Elton, England Under the Tudors (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), p. 262.
Ibid. Elton is not the only one to use the highly gendered analogy of a housewife to describe Elizabeth; J.P. Kenyon, in his post-Whig critique of Neale, quoted a mid-seventeenth-century description of Elizabeth, “a sluttish housewife, who swept the house but left the dust behind the door.” J.P Kenyon, Stuart England, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1978), p. 19.
Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (New York: Longman, 1988), p. 171.
Ibid., 172.
David Loades has published two major works on Mary I. The first, The Reign of Mary Tudor, 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, 1991, orig. pub. 1978) does not contain any specific references to Mary’s gendered problems. The second work, Mary Tudor: A Life (London: Basil Blackwell, 1989), contains passing references to the impact of Mary’s gender on her rule, but no sustained investigation, pp. 1–3, 218.
See Alison Heisch, “Queen Elizabeth I and the Persistence of Patriarchy,” Feminist Review, 4 (1980), pp. 45–75.
See Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
The recognition that Elizabeth was king and queen at the same has filtered down to popular historical surveys. For a recent example, see Simon Schama, A History of Britain: At the Edge of the World, 3000 b.c.–a.d. 1603 (New York: Hyerion, 2000), p. 387.
The formidable difficulties Elizabeth encountered in the various marriage negotiations during the first twenty years of her reign are skillfully discussed in Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
Copyright information
© 2008 Charles Beem
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Beem, C. (2008). The Lioness Roared: Introduction. In: The Lioness Roared. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09722-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09722-4_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-60634-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-09722-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)