Sunday 29 January 2006
England's Young Queens
On July 21, 1981, a young Lady Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales in
a spectacular wedding watched by millions across the world. Diana was widely
admired as a young English rose, the centre of a real-life twentieth century
fairy tale. However, there were murmurings of concern that, at 20, she was
too young to marry (especially an older man) and submit herself to the
pressures of public royal life before she had found her own place in life,
her own confidence as an adult. Concerned voices hoped that she would, at
least, delay starting a family until she was more mature and had established
herself in the royal family. It was not to be. Diana was pregnant within
months, a mother within the year, and not coping well with the pressures of
her new roles, the media and a mismatched marriage which showed signs of
strain even before the vows were taken. She was destined to become an icon
and a source of crown-rocking controversy, but never to become queen.
And yet, young as she was, Diana was, by no means, Britain's youngest royal
bride. Before her, several young girls found themselves being Queen Consorts
much earlier than Diana became Princess of Wales. In the Middle Ages, there
was no minimum age of marriage, and young girls and women were pawns in the
game of dynastic politics to a much greater extent than Diana was. Of these
young royal brides since the Norman Conquest, at least eleven were Queens
consort of England before the age of 18.
None of the early consorts after the conquest were below the age of what we
now regard as adult when they became queens. King Stephen's wife, Matilda,
was only 14 in 1119 when she married, but didn't become Queen until she was
about 30. King John's first wife, Isabella of Gloucester, may have been
below 18 (her birth date is not known) at the time of her marriage, but had
undoubtedly entered her twenties by the time her husband became king. John
married her with the full knowledge that she was within the forbidden
degrees of consanguinity, and yet later he used this as grounds for an
annulment, in 1200. The annulment allowed him to marry the first of a series
of child-queens of England.
John's choice of second wife was Isabella of Angoul�me, who was only about
13 when she married him in 1200, and about twenty years her husband's
junior. Their age difference and temperaments did not produce a particularly
happy marriage, but they did produce five children, the first being born
when Isabella was about 20. After King John's death, when she was not yet
30, she returned to France, re-married and went on to be allegedly embroiled
in plots against the French king.
Isabella's eldest son, Henry III, succeeded to the throne at the age of
nine, but waited almost 20 years before marrying. His bride, Eleanor of
Provence, was only 13, and had never met her 28-year old husband before the
day of the wedding. She gave birth to her first son within three years, when
still only 16, and had two more children before she was 20 (and another two
afterwards). She was devoted to her husband, which caused with his enemies
problems during turbulent years of the reign, and to her children and
grandchildren. Unlike her predecessor, she remained in England after the
king's death, entering a convent in her later years. Eleanor died in 1291 at
the age of about 68, having spent 55 years as Queen and Queen Dowager of
England.
As part of the settlement of a dispute of the territory of Gascony, Henry
III and Alfonso X of Castile arranged the marriage of Henry's son, Edward,
to Alfonso's sister, Eleanor. The marriage took place in 1254, when he was
15 and she 13, but it would be another 18 years before they became King and
Queen of England. Eleanor died in 1290, and three years later, Edward set
his heart on the young Blanche of France, who was famed for her beauty. In
order to win her, the king even agreed to surrender Gascony to France, only
to discover later that he had been duped and she was already betrothed to a
German truce. King Philippe IV of France offered the English king Blanche's
younger sister, Marguerite, instead, but a furious Edward entered upon a
five-year war against the French. When peace was signed, marriage to
Marguerite was part of the agreement. Edward I was 60, Marguerite was 17
when they married in Canterbury Cathedral in 1299. Despite the huge age
difference, the marriage was a blissfully happy one. She bore him three
children, he indulged her, and when he died in 1307, she determined never to
marry again, although she was only 25. She died ten years later.
The contrast with the marriage of the next king, Edward II, couldn't have
been greater. He, too, married a young French princess, Isabella, who was 12
at the time of their marriage (compared to Edward's 24). The King neglected
his wife, preferring the company of favourites such as Hugh Despencer and
Piers Gaveston, with whom he probably had homosexual relationships. As
conflicts and intrigues developed within the court as well as with her
native France, Isabella sided against her husband, and eventually took a
lover, Roger Mortimer. In 1327, the queen and Mortimer succeeded in
overthrowing Edward. She and Mortimer governed England in the name of her
son, Edward III, until he came of age four years later. Edward II was
brutally murdered in Berkeley Castle, but the Queen's triumph did not long
survive the assumption of power of her son, who rewarded her and Mortimer's
treachery against his father by having them both taken prisoner, executing
Mortimer and banishing his mother to Norfolk (although she was allowed to
visit court).
Edward III also married a young bride, Philippa of Hainault, but, at 15, he
was close to her age. Their marriage was a successful one, lasting over 40
years (until her death in 1369) and producing 14 children, the first (Edward
the Black Prince) born when she was about 16. She was a popular and
compassionate Queen of England.
The Black Prince predeceased his father and on Edward's death the throne
passed to his grandson, Richard II. Richard was only 15 when he married his
first wife, Anne of Bohemia, who was a few months older than him. The
marriage was close, although childless, and he was devastated when she died
of the plague 12 years later. Two years after Anne's death, Richard married
the youngest queen in English history, Isabella de Valois, daughter of King
Charles VI of France, who was only 8. She was still only 12 when her husband
was deposed and subsequently murdered and, after refusing to marry the new
king's son, she was allowed to return to France, where she married again,
but died in childbirth at the age of 23. Her sister, Catherine, eventually
married the son whom Isabella had refused, and who had by that time
succeeded to the English throne as Henry V (she was 18 and he 32).
Three, possibly four, further women were to become queen below the age of
18, but none as young as the 8 to 13-year olds of the 13th and 14th
centuries. Margaret of Anjou was 16 when she married Henry VI who was about
six years her senior. She became a dominant force in his life, and a major
protagonist in the Wars of the Roses.
Catherine Howard's age when she married Henry VIII in 1540 is uncertain, but
she is believed to have been between 15 and 20, while Henry was 50. The
marriage served the purposes of her family and others. She found her husband
repulsive, and was under pressure to produce a son, and so she entered into
at least one affair, which brought about her tragic end. She was charged
with treason and beheaded.
The final two teenagers to marry English kings were Henrietta Maria of
France, who married Charles I in 1625 at the age of 16, and Charlotte of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who married George III in 1761 when she was 17. Both
marriages were loving ones, although both ended in sadness or tragedy.
Henrietta Maria endured the Civil War which ended in with her husband's
execution and her own exile to her French homeland, and Charlotte was faced
with the king's apparent madness and loss of power in the later years of his
life, when it was transferred to their son, the Prince Regent.. She
predeceased her husband by two years.
Since Charlotte, no consort to a British monarch has married or become queen
below the age of 18. With the modern tendency to marry later, and in the
light of Diana's experience, it seems unlikely that we shall see a teenage
Queen Consort, or Princess of Wales, in the foreseeable future.
- Paul James
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