Well, here we go. Episode 4. Week 2 of Podcastles. And the first theme episode that we’ve had.
What did you think?
We thought Kingmaking would be pretty on-brand for Warwickshire, what with Warwick the Kingmaker and Robert Dudley’s supposed attempts to court Elizabeth I during the attempts to arrange a marriage for her.
In this episode, we looked at a number of different moments in English history where the nobility either manipulated a king’s rule, disputed the way they ruled, or, well, just disputed that they should be ruling in the first place.
We sort of link it to castles. Kind of. Well, the nobles lived in castles, right?
Close enough.
To start with, we looked at the beginning of the Civil War (1642), when the Earl of Essex declared war on Charles I’s bad advisors rather than the king himself, shortly after Chalres rejected the Nineteen Propositions. In the Propositions, Parliament had attempted to bring back titled positions that, if given the full power they imagined, would have had enough power to counter Charles.
Later on in the same century (1688, to be precise), we saw a much more bloodless kind of kingmaking as William of Orange and his wife Mary invaded Great Britain with the backing of the Immortal Seven. The Glorious Revolution overthrew the unpopular Catholic King James II, who's reign was threatening the start of a new Catholic dynasty.
The Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), on the other hand, was more of a battle to put the “rightful heir” on the throne - the right person depended on whether you were in the House of York or the House of Lancaster. You might remember these guys from our Warwick Castle episode.
If you don’t, then you should go and check it out.
Some of the nobles became incredibly powerful in 15th Century England - we’re looking at you, Richard III, and the mysterious disappearance on your nephews. So the Wars of the Roses were a great opportunity to look at the way nobles could amass land and therefore the wealth, resources, and influence to pose a threat to the line of succession.
Of course, we couldn’t discuss the Wars of the Roses without the final showdown at Bosworth between Richard III and Henry Tudor who, spoiler, became Henry VII. The Stanley’s - two brothers - would even position themselves on either side so that they could hedge their bets. Thomas Stanley, the Earl of Derby, stayed out of the battle until the last moment, before finally picking a side to fight for.
Incidentally, Thomas Stanley was Henry Tudor’s step-father. Guess who he fought for in the end?
Henry VII was having none of the remaining nobles threatening him (can’t bame him really, after everything). During his reign he imposed significant rules on the remaining nobility to curb their power, replenish the Crown’s funds, and just generally keep his position safe.
To see how Queen Consorts could be used to manipulate the king, we need look no further than Henry VIII. The Catholic King who broke with Rome and changed a country’s religion to be with Anne Boleyn, who became head of his own church, and later more Catholic again with his wife, Catherine Howard. And while the families of the queens enjoyed additional power and influence as their daughters and nieces risked their lives sat on the throne, the influence a noble family could have only grew with the Henry’s death and the start of Edward VI’s Regency Council.
The queen-making at the end of Edward’s reign was decidedly unsuccessful, and proved what could happen to nobles who failed to put the person they wanted on the throne. You might remember Lady Jane from the last episode…
Of course, any kingmaking that happened during the Elizabeth I’s rule had to be relatively under the radar - she wasn’t having any of it, not even from Dudley, her favourite. But who can blame her really, given the way her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, was deposed.
But what do you think? Was there anything we missed?
We’d love to hear from you! You can reach us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, or you can email us at podcastlespodcast@gmail.com.
See you next week!
Sources:
English Civil War:
J.S.A Adamson, ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War: The Alexander Prize Essay’ in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 40, (1990), pp93-120
J.S.A Adamson, ‘Politics and the Nobility in Civil-War England’, in The Historical Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1991), pp231-255
James E. Farnell, ‘The Aristocracy and Leadership in Parliament in the English Civil Wars’, in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 44, No. 1, (1972), pp79-86
For an overview of the other catalysts of the English Civil War:
Wars of the Roses
Michael Hicks, Richard III, The History Press, 2013
Trevor Royale, The Wars of the Roses: England’s First Civil War, Abacus, 2009
The Tudors
John Lotherington et al. The Tudor Years, 2nd Ed. Gray Publishing, 2003
Christine Carpenter, ‘Review of Henry VII’s New Men and the Making of Tudor England’, Review no. 2117
The Anarchy
Catherine Hanley, Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior, Yale University Press, 2020
Helen Castor, She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, Faber & Faber, 2010, pp39-131
Robert B. Patterson, ‘Anarchy in England, 1135-54: The Theory of the Constitution’, in Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1974), pp189-200
Glorious Revolution
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