Showing posts with label Anne Boleyn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anne Boleyn. Show all posts

Monday 13 March 2017

Accession : Did Tudor Succession Law Permit Royal Bastards to Inherit the Crown? - Thomas Regnier




Did Tudor Succession Law Permit
Royal Bastards to Inherit the Crown?
Thomas Regnier

Some advocates of the theory that Queen Elizabeth the First had a secret illegitimate child argue that Parliamentary legislation paved the way for such a child to succeed to the throne. To support this theory, they cite a 1571 statute1 that refers to the Queen’s “natural issue” as possible heirs to the throne. The phrase “natural issue” could refer to an illegitimate child, whereas “lawful issue” would designate only persons born in wedlock. Dr. Paul Altrocchi argues that the 1571 statute no longer required that a successor to the throne be “lawfully” begotten:

The . . . Act of Succession had specified that a legal royal heir must be “issue of her body lawfully to be begotten.” In 1571, “lawfully to be begotten” was struck by Parliament, permitting royal bastards to be legal heirs to the Crown.2
Paul Streitz also maintains the possibility of an illegitimate child becoming the monarch, saying that the 1571 Act “specifically reversed the previous Act of Succession” and “opens up the possibility for an heir to the throne from Queen Elizabeth, even an illegitimate one.”3 Charles Beauclerk, while not asserting that the Act expressly allowed bastards on the throne, echoes this theme:
By means of this extraordinary clause [in the 1571 Act], Elizabeth was opening the door to the possibility that even if she refrained from naming an illegitimate child as her successor, others might in time take the opportunity to do so.4

Regnier - Tudor Succession 40
These writers are not the first to interpret the 1571 Act as clearing a path for bastard kings. Indeed, as William Camden wrote, the wording of the statute became the subject of general mirth around the time it was enacted:
But incredible it is what jests lewd catchers of words made amongst themselves by occasion of that Clause, Except the same be the Natural issue of her body; forasmuch as the Lawyers term those Children natural, which are gotten out of Wed-lock . . . .5
Additionally, in 1584, the anonymous Leicester’s Commonwealth6 accused the Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s longtime “favorite,” of scheming to get the words “natural issue” placed in “the statute of succession” so that, after the Queen’s death, Leicester could have one of his bastard children made king by pawning him off as his and Elizabeth’s illegitimate child. But did the 1571 statute actually allow for this?
In this article, I examine the theory that the 1571 statute allowed royal bastards on the throne and find that it does not stand up to scrutiny. In doing so, I first explore, as background, English common law and ecclesiastical law regarding bastardy, especially as this subject relates to the royal succession. This article discusses the role of Parliament in determining the succession and explains how statutes are interpreted and how they are revised and repealed.
The article also analyzes the changes made in the succession law by the three Acts of Succession of Henry VIII. Finally, the article examines the 1571 Act cited above, which is actually a treason statute, and demonstrates that it does not alter the requirement laid down in the Third Act of Succession that for any children of Elizabeth to inherit the crown, they would have to be her lawful issue.

Caution: Bastards
It is difficult to imagine an illegitimate person ascending the throne when, under the common law, a bastard was filius nullius, or “child of no one.” Bastards could not inherit real property,7 let alone kingdoms.8 Otherwise, bastards had the same rights as other free persons.
The common law of bastardy and the ecclesiastical, or church, law were often in conflict. Church courts decided disputes about the validity of a marriage; but the common law, or secular, courts decided disputes about the inheritance of real property, which were often intertwined with decisions about the validity of marriages.
Under church law, children of adulterous relationships were bastards. The common law, however, had a strong presumption that a child born to a married woman was legitimate, even if the child was the result of an adulterous affair. For example, a legal standard often used to determine legitimacy was the “Four Seas” test:

as long as the husband was not impotent and he was in the kingdom
at any time at all during the pregnancy then the child was legitimate.


Shakespeare’s Richard III, in fact, refers to the “Four Seas” test when Richard, then still Duke of Gloucester, argues his claim to the throne based on the theory that his late brother, King Edward IV, had actually been a bastard:

Tell them, when that my mother went with child
Of that insatiate Edward, noble York,
My princely father, then had wars in France.10


It is significant that Richard points to the time when his mother “went with child,” which covers the whole pregnancy, not merely when she was got with child, which would refer only to Edward’s conception. In order for Edward to be a bastard under the “Four Seas” test, his father would have had to be out of the kingdom for the entire pregnancy, not just the time of conception—biological facts be damned. Richard methodically establishes the other significant fact necessary to make his brother illegitimate by saying that their father “had wars in France” during the pregnancy: in other words, he was outside the kingdom.

A 1406 Year Book, an early collection of law reports, memorably summarized the ramifications of the “Four Seas” test as “Whosoever bulleth my cow, the calf is mine.”11 The test was abandoned in 1732, however, “on account of its absolute nonsense.”12 Paradoxically, the church law, which so strongly disfavored the legitimacy of children of adulterous unions, allowed for “special bastardy,” which was the legitimizing of a bastard child after the fact, if his parents should later marry. The common law, however, still held such a child illegitimate and incapable of inheriting real property.

But the common law did not consider a child illegitimate if the parents had married in good faith and the marriage later had to be annulled because of the discovery of consanguinity (a blood relationship) or affinity (a familial relationship through marriage) between the parents.13

A possible basis for bastardy under the common law was that the parents’ marriage turned out to be invalid due to a “precontract,” such as those found in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. One kind of “precontract” was an oral agreement between a couple that they would marry at some time in the future. This agreement was binding on both parties and neither one could marry someone else without first obtaining the agreement of the original betrothed to dissolve the contract.14 Measure for Measure contains two examples of precontracts: one between Claudio and Juliet, who are engaged and living together while awaiting their dowry; and another between Angelo and Mariana, which Angelo had managed to dissolve through a legal loophole, namely, Mariana’s alleged lack of chastity.

The principle that a valid precontract nullifies a later marriage was yet another legal tool that became useful to Richard III on his way to the throne. Richard 
argued that when Edward IV married his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Edward was already precontracted to another woman. This would make the children of the marriage illegitimate. In the Titulus Regius (Title of the King), an act passed by Parliament in 1484, Richard received after-the-fact legislative blessing on his kingship based on Edward’s invalid marriage and the consequent bastardy of Edward’s sons:

[A]t the time of the contract of the same pretensed marriage [to Elizabeth Woodville] . . . King Edward was and stood married and troth plight to one Dame Eleanor Butler . . . with whom the said King Edward had made a precontract of matrimony . . . . Which premises being true, as in very truth they been true, it appears and follows evidently, that the said King Edward during his life, and the said Elizabeth, lived together sinfully and damnably in adultery, against the law of God and his Church . . . . Also it appears evidently and follows that all the issue and children of the said King, been bastards, and unable to inherit or to claim anything by inheritance, by the law and custom of England.15

This proclamation is grounded in the longstanding common law principle that illegitimate children could not inherit real property, including, of course, the kingdom.16

Parliament and the Succession

The Titulus Regius, in which Parliament endorsed Richard III’s claim to the throne, was not the first instance of Parliament involving itself in the succession. Even before King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, English kings were not absolute rulers.17 The king’s Great Council, which had the power to prevent the king from raising taxes, eventually evolved into what we now call “Parliament” and officially assumed that name in the 1230s. While the monarch was, as Sir Thomas Smith said, “the life, the head, and the authority of all things that be done in the realm of England,”18 Parliament was always looking over the monarch’s shoulder and gradually growing in power.

When it came to the succession to the crown, there was no set formula for determining the next monarch: heredity played a large role, but considerations such as popular support, military strength, and administrative ability also mattered.19 Succession was “determined by politics more than law when the choice of a successor was complicated by the absence of a direct and competent heir.”20 Parliamentary approval might then become the decisive factor, although in some cases Parliament did little more than meekly ratify the results achieved on the battlefield.21

Even before the Titulus Regius, Parliament had often taken an important role in determining the succession. For example, in 1327, Parliamentary pressure was a factor in the forced abdication of Edward II.22 In 1377, when Richard II succeeded his grandfather, Edward III—skipping over Edward’s still-living son, John of Gaunt—
Richard’s right to the throne had already been validated by his having been made Prince of Wales, at Parliament’s request, the previous year.23 By 1399, Richard II had come full circle, as Parliament accepted his coerced resignation and allowed Henry IV to become king, despite an arguably stronger claim by Henry’s cousin, Edmund Mortimer.24 In 1460, during the Wars of the Roses, when Richard, Duke of York, claimed a superior right to the throne to that of Henry VI, he presented his case to Parliament, which decided that York’s claim was stronger, but voted that Henry VI should remain as king. Parliament then passed the Act of Accord, a compromise that kept Henry as king but recognized York as his successor and disinherited Henry’s son.25

The Wars of the Roses placed a premium on Parliamentary approval as a way to inject a sense of legitimacy into one’s occupying the throne. Sure enough, when Henry Tudor, the Second Earl of Richmond, ended the Wars by overthrowing Richard III in 1485 to become Henry VII and begin the Tudor dynasty, a preamble to the new statutes enacted in his reign proclaimed him the true king, even though it gave no explanation as to how or why he was entitled to that position.26 Succession statutes would become a feature of the Tudor era, with Henry VIII promulgating three different succession acts that changed the course of history.

Before delving into these statutes, let me offer a few words of advice about reading these, or any other statutes:

(1) Read a statute very carefully.27 English statutes from this period tend to use excessive verbiage and often repeat the same idea several times using slightly different words, just to be sure all bases are covered. This results in extremely long sentences, in which one needs to carefully identify subjects, verbs, objects, and supporting clauses in order to understand the legal effect of the statute. In this article, I have made liberal use of ellipses when quoting statutes in order to focus on the significant, operative words of a statute. I have also modernized the spelling and typography.

(2) Start with the text itself.28 If the meaning of the statute is clear from the plain language of the statute, one need not look any further.

(3) If any doubt remains about the effect of the statute, consider whether your interpretation of it harmonizes with other laws, such as the common law, ecclesiastical law, or other statutes.29

(4) If one is still uncertain, only then does one look at the legislative history for clues to a statute’s meaning. This method of interpretation is only a last resort because what a few legislators may have stated at the time of a statute’s enactment may not represent the understanding of all the legislators.30 A well-written statute should be clear from the text itself, without resorting to other interpretive methods.31

First Act of Succession, 1533–34

With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at the First Act of Succession under Henry VIII, enacted by Parliament and the King in 1533–34.32 Although it is entitled, “An Act for the establishment of the King’s succession,” it touches on many subjects, including treason law 33 and laws regarding marriages between people who were already related.34

In creating these statutes, the monarch and Parliament were not merely creating new laws; they were creating propaganda. They provided not only rules to be followed, but also justifications to explain why these rules were for the good of the kingdom. Little, if any, emphasis was placed on the possibility that these laws might also be good for the monarch personally, although that was likely to be the case. The First Act of Succession begins with a preamble that purports to explain the reason for the statute:

calling to our remembrance the great divisions which in times past hath been in this Realm by reason of several titles pretended to the imperial Crown . . . .35

This evokes memories of the civil wars that had racked England since Richard II was deposed in 1399 and had continued through the Wars of the Roses, which ended in 1485—the very subjects of Shakespeare’s two great tetralogies of English history.36 This provided a plausible public relations reason for the statute: 

preventing further internal strife by clearly laying out the path of succession. The preamble does not mention another motive for the statute: Henry’s recent marriage to Anne Boleyn and his desire to obliterate any trace of legitimacy in his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. As the Act explained:

The marriage heretofore solemnised between your Highness [Henry VIII] and the Lady Katherine, being before lawful wife to prince Arthur, your elder brother, which by him was carnally known, shall be definitively, clearly, and absolutely declared, deemed, and adjudged to be against the laws of Almighty God, and also accepted, reputed, and taken of no value nor effect, but utterly void and [annulled].37

This passage leaves no doubt as to its meaning. This is an example of the principle that, when the plain text of a statute is clear, one need not look further to understand it. The Act went on to validate the already-consummated marriage between Henry and Anne Boleyn:

The lawful matrimony had and solemnized between your Highness and your most dear and entirely beloved wife Queen Anne shall be established, and taken for undoubtful, true, sincere, and perfect ever hereafter.38

Brief Chronicles IV (2012-13) 45

In this case, “ever hereafter” turned out to be only a few years. The Act soon went on to do its main business of defining the succession to the crown:

First the said imperial Crown . . . shall be to . . . the first son of your body between your Highness and your said lawful wife Queen Anne begotten, and to the heirs of the body of the same first son lawfully begotten . . . And for default of such sons of your body begotten . . . that then the said imperial Crown . . . shall be to the issue female between your Majesty and . . . Queen Anne begotten . . . That is [to] say: first to the eldest issue female, which is the Lady Elizabeth, now princess, and to the heirs of her body lawfully begotten . . . .39

Note that the phrase “lawfully begotten” appears frequently. The message is clear: bastards need not apply. It was not necessary, however, for the statute to repeat “lawfully begotten” at every opportunity. For example, when the Act says, “then the said imperial Crown . . . shall be to the issue female between your Majesty and . . . Queen Anne begotten,” it was not necessary to place “lawfully” before “begotten” because the Act had already established that Anne was Henry’s lawful wife; therefore, any children of that marriage would necessarily be legitimate.

Revising and Repealing Statutes
The First Act of Succession was as short-lived, alas, as the marriage of Henry and Anne and was replaced by the Second Act of Succession in 1536. But before looking at the Second Act, let us consider the methods by which a statute may be revised or repealed. This will be helpful later on, when we consider whether acts of Parliament allowed the illegitimate children of a monarch to inherit the crown.

In order to illustrate the basic principles, I will use the traditional law school method of presenting hypothetical statutes from a mythical U.S. state, in this case, the state of “Calizona.” There are three methods of changing a statute: (1) revision, (2) repeal, and (3) conflict (repeal by implication). Following are examples of, and variations on, each method:
Revision. Suppose the Calizona legislature enacts the following statute:
Section 310.17, Laws of Calizona (1978): Everyone must wear green on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1978).
This seems clear. After July 1, 1978, everyone in Calizona must wear something green on Wednesdays. They don’t have to wear all green, just something green. (For our purposes, we will ignore whether this statute would be constitutional.) Suppose, however, that the legislature passes the following statute fourteen years later:
Section 310.17, Laws of Calizona (1992): Everyone must wear red on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1992).

Notice that both statutes have the same number, 310.17. That means that the later one is a revised version of the first and completely replaces the old version. The upshot for people in Calizona is that they must now wear something red on Wednesdays, but they don’t have to wear green on Wednesdays anymore.
No revision. Let’s consider a different scenario. We’ll start again with the older version of the statute:

Section 310.17, Laws of Calizona (1978): Everyone must wear green on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1978).

And let’s say that the legislature passes another statute that reads as follows:

Section 312.145, Laws of Calizona (1992): Everyone must wear red on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1992).

Notice that the second statute has a different section number than the first statute. It therefore is not claiming to be a revision of the first statute. Rather, it is a separate statute that stands on its own. It has no effect on the first statute, even though they address the same subject (what color people must wear on Wednesdays). This means both statutes are in effect, and people in Calizona must wear something red as well as something green on Wednesdays. (Now we’re ignoring fashion considerations as well as the Constitution!)
Repeal. To illustrate repeal, let’s begin again with our original 1978 statute about wearing green on Wednesdays:

Section 310.17, Laws of Calizona (1978): Everyone must wear green on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1978).

Fourteen years later, the legislature passes a different statute expressly repealing the first:
Section 621.03, Laws of Calizona (1992): Section 310.17, Laws of Calizona, is hereby repealed (effective July 1, 1992).

This means that the rule about wearing green on Wednesdays is now, as Henry VIII’s Parliament would have said, “accepted, reputed, and taken of no value nor effect, but utterly void and annulled.” In other words, Calizonans don’t have to wear green on Wednesdays anymore.

Conflict (Repeal by Implication). To illustrate conflict, we’ll begin again with our 1978 statute about wearing green on Wednesdays:
Section 310.17, Laws of Calizona (1978): Everyone must wear green on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1978).


Later, the legislature enacts the following statute:
Section 312.145, Laws of Calizona (1992): Everyone must wear only red on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1992).
Note that the second statute has a different number than the first, so it doesn’t purport to be a revision of the first. It would seem, at first glance, that citizens of Calizona would be required to follow both statutes.

There’s only one problem: it is physically impossible to follow both statutes at the same time. If one follows the second statute and wears only red on Wednesdays, it is impossible to wear anything green. Here we have a true “conflict.” While the second statute doesn’t say that it is repealing the first, the two are irreconcilable (a key word when considering conflict).

Whenever a direct conflict exists, so that two statutes cannot both be followed at the same time, the later statute prevails over the earlier one.40 Thus, even though the legislature never said it was revising or repealing the rule about wearing green on Wednesdays, a court interpreting the two statutes would hold that the later rule effectively repeals the earlier rule by implication.

Partial Conflict. Courts do not favor repeal by implication and will find a way to reconcile two statutes if it is at all possible. Conflict is narrowly interpreted, and a court will find that a statute is repealed by implication only to the extent of the conflict and no further. Let’s illustrate this by starting with a slightly different version of the 1978 statute:

Section 310.17: On Wednesdays, everyone must wear green and must whistle “Dixie” (effective July 1, 1978).

This law requires everyone to do two things on Wednesdays: wear something green and whistle “Dixie.” (It doesn’t say you have to whistle “Dixie” all day, so once would be enough. For our purposes, we’ll ignore difficulties with enforcement.)

Later, the legislature enacts the following statute:
Section 312.145, Laws of Calizona (1992): Everyone must wear only red on Wednesdays (effective July 1, 1992).
As we’ve discussed, the part about wearing only red is irreconcilable with wearing anything green. So the later statute trumps the earlier one, and the rule is that everyone has to wear only red on Wednesdays.
But do you still have to whistle “Dixie”? The answer is yes, because there is no conflict between wearing all red and whistling “Dixie”: one can easily do both things at the same time (assuming one can whistle at all). Therefore, the conflict between the two statutes is partial, and only the part of the first statute that is in conflict with the second is repealed by implication.
Regnier - Tudor Succession 48
Second Act of Succession, 1536
Now, with an understanding of how statutes are revised and repealed, let’s look at how Parliament changed the First Act of Succession, which had designated Henry’s lawful issue by Anne Boleyn as heirs to the throne. The Second Act of Succession, passed in 1536, was entitled, “An Act for the establishment of the succession of the Imperial Crown of this Realm.”41 It expressly repealed the entire First Act of Succession:

By authority of this present Parliament [the First Act of Succession]42 . . . from the first day of this present parliament shall be repealed, annulled, and made frustrate and of none effect.43

The Second Act of Succession soon got to its primary purpose of invalidating the King’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, who had been executed for treason,44 and the bastardizing of her only child, Elizabeth:

The said Marriage between your Grace and the said Lady Anne was never good, nor consonant to the laws but utterly void and of none effect. . . . And that all the . . . children, born . . . under the same marriage . . . shall be taken . . . [to] be illegitimate....and barred to claim . . . any inheritance as lawful . . . heirs to your Highness by lineal descent.45

Again, the “no bastards” message is clear. The Second Act also reaffirmed the invalidity of Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon. Interestingly, the First Act had not expressly stated that Lady Mary, the daughter of Katherine and Henry, was illegitimate, but the Second Act remedied this oversight by specifically bastardizing Mary along with Elizabeth. The Second Act also provided, as the First Act had done, that it was treason for anyone to contradict the Act as to who was the lawful successor to the throne.46

Additionally, the Second Act of Succession made Henry’s lawful issue by his new wife, Jane Seymour (or any lawful wife he should have in the future), heirs to the throne. It also gave Henry the remarkable power to name anyone he chose as successor to the crown in the event that his family line should fail.47 He could designate such successors through his will or through letters patent, a kind of executive order.48

The Second Act ended with an odd provision stating that the Act had to be interpreted exactly as written and that it could not be repealed. I call this provision “odd” because, as a practical matter, one parliament may not prevent a later parliament from revising or repealing an act made by the earlier parliament.49 This practical reality is demonstrated by the Third Act of Succession, which came along to punch some holes in the Second Act.

Third Act of Succession, 1543–44

The Third Act of Succession, enacted in 1543–44 and entitled, “An Act concerning the establishment of the King’s Majesty’s Succession in the Imperial Crown of the Realm,”50 perhaps gave some deference to the idea that the Second Act of Succession could not be repealed by declining to nullify the Second Act in its entirety. Therefore, anything in the Second Act that was not in direct conflict with the Third Act remained valid law. In fact, the Third Act made only a few changes in the law, although the ones it made had enormous impact.

The Third Act proclaimed that Henry’s son Edward (later Edward VI) would succeed him as king. This is what the law calls a “declaratory act.” That is, it was not making new law, but simply restating or clarifying what had long been the default rule under the common law and was reaffirmed by the Second Act of Succession: the eldest legitimate son gets the crown on his father’s death.

But the Third Act had some provisions that were in direct conflict with the Second Act and therefore overrode the earlier provisions. Henry was by this time married to his sixth wife, Katherine Parr, who had persuaded him to reconcile with his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. The Third Act therefore declared that if both Henry and Edward should die without other lawful heirs, the crown would default to Lady Mary “and to the heirs of the body of the same Lady Mary lawfully begotten.” Furthermore, if Mary should die without heirs, the crown would default to Lady Elizabeth “and to the heirs of the body of the said Lady Elizabeth lawfully begotten . . . .”51

If Edward VI had lived to adulthood and produced offspring, as most people probably hoped and expected that he would, the provisions placing his two half-sisters in the line of succession would have made an interesting historical footnote. But since Edward died childless at age 15, these provisions had major consequences. Mary and Elizabeth were the first two women to be sole rulers of England, and Elizabeth’s reign was one of the most remarkable in all of English history.

Although the Third Act of Succession put Mary and Elizabeth in line for the crown, it didn’t expressly say that the two daughters were Henry’s legitimate children. Furthermore, it said nothing about the validity of Henry’s marriages to their mothers, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. One may look at this in either of two ways: 

(1) since the Second Act expressly invalidated both marriages and the Third Act didn’t contradict that, the marriages were still invalid and the daughters still bastards; or 

(2) making Mary and Elizabeth legitimate successors to the crown was irreconcilable, under most views of English law, with their being the bastard fruits of invalid marriages.52

The second interpretation is probably the better one because statutes that deviate from the common law must be construed narrowly.53 The first interpretation would have implicitly turned the common law upside down by allowing the bastard child of an unlawful marriage to become the monarch. Since the Third Act of Succession didn’t explicitly say that it intended to make such a drastic change in the common law, rules of statutory interpretation suggest that we shouldn’t read that meaning into it. Most likely, Henry could not bear to officially proclaim his first two marriages valid and did not want to dredge up the unpleasant fact that he had bastardized his two daughters, so he and Parliament simply ignored the anomaly.

The Lady Mary, however, could not abide the anomaly, and when she became Queen in 1553 on the death of Edward VI, one of the first acts of Parliament declared Mary legitimate and reinstated Katherine of Aragon’s marriage to Henry VIII, describing it as lawful, perfect, and blessed by God.54 The statute also declared the First Act of Succession void (a complete waste of ink, as the Second Act of Succession, which was still largely in force, had already done this) and declared void those parts of the Second Act that had bastardized Mary.

When Elizabeth became Queen in 1558, a so-called “Act of Recognition” stated that “Your Majesty . . . is and . . . ought to be . . . our most rightful and lawful Sovereign liege Lady and Queen.”55 This part of the Act was, again, a “declaratory” act, which didn’t say anything new but simply reaffirmed and restated the law of succession that was already in place. As mentioned earlier, this was a part of the function of English statutes, to create good public relations, along with legislation that benefited the monarch.

The statute did go on to say something new, however, when it declared that “your Highness is rightly, lineally, and lawfully descended and come of the Blood royal of this Realm of England . . . .”56 Use of the phrase “lawfully descended” cured an omission in the Third Act by expressly un-bastardizing Elizabeth. But Anne Boleyn’s marriage to Henry VIII, unlike Katherine of Aragon’s, was not posthumously recognized as valid.57


The Treason Act of 1571
We now arrive at the 1571 Treason Act,58 which some have claimed allowed for, or at least set the stage for, the ascension of a royal bastard to the throne. In those days, it was not uncommon for succession and treason to be discussed in the same statute because the two were often intertwined. Tudor succession law was so problematic that Tudor monarchs liked to add in provisions making it treason (the most serious and severely punished crime) for anyone to question the laws of succession that they established. Nevertheless, the fact that the statute was labeled a treason act suggests that it cannot be viewed as a mere revision of one of the previous acts of succession.

Neither can the 1571 Treason Act be an express repeal of a previous succession act because it contains no language stating that it is repealing any previous law, either of succession or treason or any other type of law. Thus, it added to the law but did not overtly subtract anything from it. Therefore, the only possible way that the 1571 Treason Act could alter the law of succession would be if some provision in it were in direct conflict with a succession provision in the Third Act of Succession.

Queen Elizabeth and her advisors were so wary of plots to overthrow her that Parliament passed a variety of treason statutes during her reign—ten of them by the year 1581.59 The 1571 Act declared, among other things, that anyone who pretended to the crown was a traitor. Furthermore, anyone who denied the right of the Queen and Parliament, jointly, to name her successor would be held a traitor. This was perhaps a subtle hint that the Queen and Parliament did not feel bound to follow Henry VIII’s will, which had already laid out a course of succession in the event that Elizabeth should die childless.60 It also declared anyone a traitor who should state that any person was the Queen’s rightful successor, unless Parliament and the Queen had so decreed. But this last provision contained a peculiar exception:

Whosoever shall hereafter . . . declare . . . at any time before the same be by Act of Parliament of this Realm, established and affirmed, that any one particular person . . . is or ought to be the right Heir & Successor to . . . the Queen’s Majesty . . . except the same be the natural issue of her Majesty’s Body . . . shall for the first Offence suffer imprisonment . . . .61

The peculiar exception is the phrase “natural issue of her Majesty’s Body.” The “natural” issue of the Queen’s body, as opposed to the “lawful” issue, could include an illegitimate child. This is the phrase that leads to assertions that the succession law was changed in 1571 to allow royal bastards on the throne.

But, as stated earlier, the treason statute did not purport to be a revision of any succession act, nor did it expressly repeal any succession act. Therefore, the Treason Act could only affect the laws of succession if it were irreconcilable with some succession provision— that is, if the two provisions simply could not coexist simultaneously. Therefore, let us take a look at the relevant provision from the Third Act of Succession, which was still operative during Elizabeth’s reign, and compare it to the provision in the 1571 Treason Act that is said to allow royal bastards to inherit the crown:

Third Act of Succession, 1544
For default of [Mary’s] issue the . . . Crown . . . shall be to the Lady Elizabeth . . . and to the heirs of the body of the said Lady Elizabeth lawfully begotten.

Treason Act, 1571
Whosoever shall hereafter . . . declare . . . at any time before the same be by Act of Parliament of this Realm, established and affirmed, that any one particular person . . . is or ought to be the right Heir & Successor to . . . the Queen’s Majesty . . . except the same be the natural issue of her Majesty’s Body . . . shall for the first Offence suffer imprisonment.
Are the two provisions in direct conflict?

The 1544 provision states that if Mary should die without children, the crown would then go to Elizabeth and to the heirs of her body lawfully begotten. According to this passage, children of Elizabeth could inherit the throne only if they were born in wedlock.

The 1571 provision states that anyone commits treason who says that any person is the successor to the Queen, unless that person has been designated the successor by the Queen and Parliament. It contains an exception: namely, that it is all right to say that a person is the successor to the Queen if that person is the Queen’s natural child. Therefore, the 1571 Act, at most, allowed a person to say that a natural child of the Queen (which could include a bastard) should be her successor without the speaker being punished for saying so.

The 1544 Act controlled who could ascend the throne. The 1571 Act defined what one could say about the succession, which was very little indeed. But the 1571 Act has no language that expressly provides that an illegitimate child has a place in the line of succession. It contains nothing that directly conflicts with the 1544 Act, so it is possible for the two acts to coexist. One could require that any of the Queen’s children be born in wedlock before they would be eligible for the crown without having to punish someone who said that any natural child of the Queen should be in the line of succession.

To use an analogy from modern law, the United States Constitution provides that, if one is to be President, he or she must be at least thirty-five years old.62 But suppose you knew someone who you thought should be President despite his or her being only thirty. Could you state your opinion on this subject without being punished? Yes, because American law generally allows free expression of political opinions. But would your freedom to state your opinion change the rule that the President has to be thirty-five ? No.

Likewise, it was the 1544 Act that defined who could inherit the crown: the Queen’s lawful issue. The 1571 Act allowed a person to express an opinion that a royal bastard could inherit the crown, but it didn’t go beyond that to provide that a royal bastard actually could inherit the crown. The two provisions are not irreconcilable. Those who argue that the 1571 Treason Act allowed a royal bastard to ascend the throne have simply misread the law.
Besides, as the foregoing historical and legal analysis has shown, Parliament and the monarch could simply declare a person a bastard or not. Parliament had bastardized and un-bastardized both Mary and Elizabeth. Parliament had declared that Elizabeth was “lawfully descended and come of the Blood royal” without ever explaining how that could be when her mother’s marriage to the King was invalid. Indeed, Elizabeth’s grandfather, Henry VII, the first Tudor king, would have had no plausible claim to royal blood had it not been for Parliamentary declarations of legitimacy on both sides of his family tree.63

Therefore, if Parliament and the Queen had wanted to put a particular illegitimate person in the line of succession, the first thing to do would have been to proclaim that person legitimate.64 This would have been much more politically practical than declaring that bastards generally, even royal ones, could inherit the crown—a concept that went against some of the most deeply ingrained biases in
Brief Chronicles IV (2012-13) 53
English law and custom.
Queen Elizabeth and her advisors did not propose the section of the treason statute that spoke of the Queen’s natural issue. Thomas Norton, a Puritan member of Parliament, proposed this language.65 The Queen had at first disliked the treason bill and thought it unnecessary because she already felt herself protected under the law as it existed.66 When the bill was discussed in Parliament, the most hotly debated issue was whether the treason provisions should be enforced retroactively; eventually, Parliament determined that they shouldn’t.67 None of this suggests that the Queen and her closest advisors had an ulterior purpose for the bill of paving the way for royal bastards to be kings.
But was there any significance to Parliament’s referring to the Queen’s “natural issue” in the treason statute, rather than her “lawful issue”? Probably not. The drafters of the statutory language were still probably imagining a scenario in which the Queen would marry and produce children. They may have thought it presumptuous to suggest that any natural child of Her Majesty would be anything other than a lawful child.
Besides, since the operative language dealt only with which topics of written and spoken speech were treasonous, not with who could inherit the throne, it made little difference in that context whether one said “natural” or “lawful.” Theoretically, the statute allowed one to say that if the Queen had an illegitimate child (hypothetically, of course), that child could become king or queen.
If one were to assert, however, that a certain person was the Queen’s illegitimate child and therefore had a right to the throne, that might be going too far. Although accusing the Queen of actually having borne an illegitimate child might not violate the 1571 statute, it might make one guilty of sedition under the common law. Sedition laws, which were among the vaguest criminal laws ever devised, were used to punish people who defamed a member of the royal family or the government.68 These would serve quite well to justify punishing anyone who was foolish enough to declare that the Virgin Queen had borne a bastard child.69
Conclusion
The choice of the phrase “natural issue” over “lawful issue” in the 1571 Treason Act had almost no practical effect. It didn’t allow for bastards to inherit the crown; all it did was to leave a little wiggle room about what one could say about the succession. Most of those who have found great significance in the wording, both then and now, have done so because they have read much more into the statute than it actually says.
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Endnotes
1 13 Eliz., c. 1. [Citation of a statute consists of (1) year of the monarch’s reign during which the statute was enacted, followed by (2) name of the monarch, followed by (3) chapter number of the particular statute. Thus, 13 Eliz., c. 1 would be the first statute passed in the 13th year of Elizabeth’s reign. Statutes cited in this article are found in Statutes of the Realm, an authoritative collection of acts of Parliament from its earliest days (c. 1235) up to 1714. It was published, at the behest of George III, between 1810 and 1825, as a series of nine volumes. Spelling and typography have been modernized for purposes of this article.]
2 Paul H. Altrocchi, MD, “A Royal Shame: The origins and history of the Prince Tudor theory,” Shakespeare Matters 4, no. 4 (Summer 2005): 13.
3 Paul Streitz, Oxford, Son of Queen Elizabeth I (Darien, CT: Oxford Institute Press, 2001), 100–01.
4 Charles Beauclerk, Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom (New York: Grove Press, 2010), 40.
5 William Camden, The Historie Of The Most Renowned And Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, Late Queene Of England (1630), quoted in Christopher Paul, “The ‘Prince Tudor’ Dilemma: Hip Thesis, Hypothesis, or Old Wives’ Tale?,” The Oxfordian, 5 (2002): 57 (spelling modernized).
6 Originally entitled, The copy of a letter written by a Master of Art of Cambridge to his friend in London (1584). First published as Leicester’s Commonwealth in 1641.
7 I.e., property consisting of land or buildings.
8 See B.J. Sokol & Mary Sokol, Shakespeare’s Legal Language (London: Athlone Press, 2000) 23–31, for a discussion of the laws of bastardy and their use in Shakespeare’s works.
9 Sokol, 25 (emphasis added).
10 William Shakespeare, Richard III (3.5.86–88), Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974), 735. Nearly every Shakespeare play has some reference to bastardy, even if it is no more than a reference to some character as “bastard,” “half blooded,” “misbegotten,” or “whoreson.” Sokol, 26.
11 Sokol, 25.
Brief Chronicles IV (2012-13) 55
12 Sokol, 25.
13 Sokol, 25.
14 See Sokol, 289–307, for a discussion of precontracts in Shakespeare’s works.
15 Quoted in Tracy Bryce, “Titulus Regius: The Title of the King,” http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/Titulus Regius.htm, May 2008 (emphasis added). The Titulus Regius does not appear in the statute books because Henry VII, on supplanting Richard III as king, ordered it suppressed and all copies of it destroyed.
16 William I, or William the Conqueror (ruled 1066–1087), had been born illegitimate, but he gained the English throne through conquest (hence, the name) rather than inheritance.
17 The Charter of Liberties, promulgated in 1100 by Henry I, attempted to bind the king to certain laws regarding the treatment of church officials and nobles, although monarchs tended to ignore the charter.
18 Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum (1583), ed. L. Alston (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1906), 63.
19 Edna Zwick Boris, Shakespeare’s English Kings, the People, and the Law: A Study in the Relationship Between the Tudor Constitution and the English History Plays (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1978), 36.
20 Boris, 38.
21 Boris, 38.
22 The first statute Parliament passed after Edward II’s son, Edward III, became king, detailed the evil influence that Edward II’s favorites, Hugh Despenser (Spenser), the Elder and the Younger, had had upon the former king. 1 Edw. III, St. 1, c. 1–3 (1326–27).
23 Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 17. Richard’s father, Edward of Woodstock (known posthumously as the “Black Prince”—possibly because of his black shield), was Edward III’s eldest son. Before the Black Prince died in 1376, he wrung from his father a promise that Richard would be the next king. Thus, the crown bypassed Edward III’s still-living sons and went straight to his grandson.
24 Saul, 418–22. As historian G.R. Elton has said of the kingship, as of 1399 and after, “usurpation by force of arms had taken the place of legitimacy.” G.R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559–1581 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), 357.
25 John A. Wagner, Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001), 1.
26 1 Henry VII, preamble (“[Be it] ordained . . . by authority of this Present parliament that the inheritance of the Crowns of the Realms of England and of France . . . be, rest, remain, and abide in the most Royal person of our now Sovereign Lord King Henry the VII and in the heirs of his body lawfully coming . . . .”).
27 See Richard K. Neumann, Jr. & Sheila Simon, Legal Writing (New York: Aspen Publishers, 2008), 21–24, on analyzing statutes. Note that these rules for
Regnier - Tudor Succession 56
interpreting statutes are still valid today.
28 See American Jurisprudence 73, 2nd ed. (2012), Statutes §§ 124, 126; Neumann & Simon, 60 (“Writing about a statutory question focuses on the words of the statute because a legislature signals its intent primarily through the words it enacts”).
29 Neumann & Simon, 60 (“Statutes on the same subject . . . are to be construed together”).
30 Neumann & Simon, 60 (“Because of the chaotic nature of legislative work, legislative history can be incomplete and internally contradictory”).
31 See William S. Jordan, “Legislative History and Statutory Interpretation: The Relevance of English Practice,” University of San Francisco Law Review, 29 (1994), 2 (noting the English practice of refusing to consider legislative history in interpreting statutes).
32 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22.
33 The statute declared anyone a traitor who impugned Henry VIII’s marriage to Queen Anne or asserted that Henry’s children by Anne could not inherit the crown.
34 The statute prohibited marriage between people who were already related, either by blood or by marriage, as laid down in the Bible’s Book of Leviticus. This was clearly a retrospective attempt to justify the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon, the widow of Henry’s elder brother, Arthur.
35 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22.
36 One tetralogy consists of the plays Richard II; Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2; and Henry V; the other tetralogy consists of the plays Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3; and Richard III.
37 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22.
38 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22.
39 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22 (emphasis added).
40 Neumann & Simon, 43 (“If the two [statutes] cannot be reconciled, dates matter. A later statute prevails over the earlier one”).
41 28 Hen. VIII, c. 7.
42 The Act also repealed 26 Hen. VIII, c. 2, which had ratified the form of the oath that the King’s subjects were required to take in vowing to obey the First Act of Succession.
43 28 Hen. VIII, c. 7. Since the entire First Act had been repealed in its entirety, the Second Act contained new provisions on such subjects as treason and the rules of consanguinity and affinity, somewhat modified from their forms in the First Act to apply to the new circumstances.
44 Anne Boleyn’s treason was based on alleged adulterous acts.
45 28 Hen. VIII, c. 7. The marriage to Anne Boleyn was considered “never good” because Henry had previously had sexual relations with Anne’s sister, Mary Boleyn, making the marriage to Anne incestuous from the start. This was a new, and rather tortured, interpretation of the laws of affinity, which had before deemed a marriage incestuous only when the couple were already
Brief Chronicles IV (2012-13) 57
related due to a previous marriage (not previous non-marital intercourse). See Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977), 2, 22.
46 “If any person or persons . . . by words . . . or act . . . do . . . any thing . . . for the interruption, repeal or [annulling] of this Act . . . or to the peril, slander, or [disinheritance] of any of the issues and heirs of your Highness, as being limited by this Act to inherit and to be inheritable to the Crown . . . then every such person or persons . . . shall be adjudged high traitors . . . .” 28 Hen. VIII, c. 7.
47 It has been suggested that Henry VIII might have used this power to make his acknowledged bastard son, Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond (1519–1536), heir to the throne. But the possibility became moot when the young man died, probably of tuberculosis, at age 17, around the time the Second Act of Succession became law. See Lehmberg, 20.
48 Henry VIII provided in his will that if his children, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, should all die without issue, the next in line for the crown would be the descendants of his younger sister Mary, who had been Queen of France. This went against the common law, which would have placed the descendants of his older sister Margaret, who had been Queen of Scotland, ahead of the younger sister’s line. Ironically, however, the older sister’s line prevailed when Margaret’s great-grandson, James VI of Scotland, succeeded Queen Elizabeth and became James I of England. This result was probably due more to political realities than to faithful adherence to the common law. Of course, Parliament immediately enacted a statute proclaiming James “our only lawful and rightful liege Lord and Sovereign . . . .” 1 Jac. I, c. 1 (1603–04).
49 This clause “was of very doubtful constitutional validity . . . .” Lehmberg, 24.
50 35 Hen. VIII, c. 1.
51 35 Hen. VIII, c. 1 (emphasis added).
52 Lehmberg interprets the statute as “tacitly” recognizing the legitimacy of both Mary and Elizabeth. Lehmberg, 194. Mary had a possible legal loophole that Elizabeth didn’t have, namely, that if the parents married in good faith and the marriage was later annulled because of consanguinity or affinity, the child was still legitimate under church law. Since Henry and Katherine’s marriage was annulled because of affinity (Katherine was the widow of Henry’s elder brother), it could be argued that Mary remained legitimate. See Lehmberg, 20; Sokol, 25.
53 See Neumann & Simon, 60 (“Statutes in derogation of the common law are to be narrowly construed”).
54 1 Mary, St. 2, c. 1.
55 1 Eliz., c. 3.
56 1 Eliz., c. 3.
57 A very short statute of the 1558–59 Parliament (1 Eliz., c. 23) restored Elizabeth “in blood” to her mother, Anne Boleyn, and thereby allowed Elizabeth to inherit from her mother. This was necessary because Anne Boleyn had
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been convicted of treason, and children of traitors suffered “corruption of blood” and could not inherit from their traitorous parents. See Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th ed. (St. Paul: West Publ., 2009), 397. But the statute did not nullify Anne Boleyn’s treason.
58 “An Act whereby certain Offences be made Treason,” 13 Eliz., c. 1.
59 See John Bellamy, The Tudor Law of Treason: An Introduction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 69.
60 Henry VIII’s will would have placed the descendants of Henry’s sister Mary on the throne. See note 48, above.
61 13 Eliz., c. 1.
62 U.S. Const., art. II, § 1.
63 Henry VII’s claim to the throne came from his mother’s side of the family. Lady Margaret Beaufort, his mother, was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (third son of Edward III) and his third wife Katherine Swynford. Katherine had been Gaunt’s mistress for about 25 years. When they married in 1396, they already had four children, including Margaret Beaufort’s grandfather, John Beaufort. Gaunt’s children by Katherine Swynford were legitimized by Richard II’s letters patent, an Act of Parliament, and a papal decree. Henry IV declared that the Beaufort line, while legitimate, could not inherit the throne. But by 1485, when Henry VII ascended the throne, John of Gaunt’s other legitimate descendants had died out. Henry VII’s father, Edmund Tudor, was the child of a secret marriage (some say an illicit union) between Owen Tudor and Henry V’s widow, Catherine of Valois. Edmund Tudor was created Earl of Richmond in 1452 by Henry VI, his half-brother, and formally declared legitimate by Parliament. See Neville Williams, The Life and Times of Henry VII (London: Book Club Associates, 1973), 17–18.
64 Even then, it would have taken a specific act of Parliament to place such a person in the line of succession.
65 Bellamy, 64.
66 Elton, 182.
67 Bellamy, 64.
68 See Black’s Law Dictionary, 1479.
69 John Stubbs was convicted of sedition for publishing, in 1578, his opinions that the Queen should not marry a Catholic foreigner and that she was too old to marry. The Queen was dissuaded from imposing the death penalty; instead, she punished Stubbs by having his right hand cut off.

Sunday 4 December 2016

Thy Mother was a Witch




William Shake-Spear, The Tempest (1611):

  [Pros.]  This misshapen knave –
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control The Moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power.
These three have robb'd me, and this demi-devil
(For he's a bastard one) had plotted with them
To take my life. Two of these fellows you
Must know and own, this thing of darkness I
Acknowledge mine. 
(5.1.268-76)



“So, where does the whole witchcraft charge come from if it was not mentioned in 1536? Well, I think we can put some of the blame on the Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander, who wrote “Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism” in 1585, while in exile during the reign of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn’s daughter. In his book, Sander describes Anne Boleyn as having “a projecting tooth”, six fingers on her right hand and “a large wen under her chin” – very witch-like!” 


Anne Boleyn and the Charge of Witchcraft: A Guest Post by Claire Ridgway

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I’m delighted to welcome Claire Ridgway to my blog! Claire’s new nonfiction book, The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown is a concise day-by-day look at the events leading up to the execution of Henry VIII’s most famous queen.

Claire is also offering a surprise to one lucky person who comments here before before midnight on May 30, US  Eastern Standard time: an Anne Boleyn wine stopper! And as a bonus, I’ll throw in a copy of Her Highness, the Traitor (in which Anne Boleyn makes a cameo appearance to give some helpful advice to one of the heroines).

So without further ado, here’s Ms. Ridgway to point out that sometimes, a hare is just a hare.

In the lead-up to the anniversary of Anne Boleyn’s execution on the 19thMay, I noticed lots of Tweets and Facebook comments referring to Anne Boleyn being charged with witchcraft, in addition to treason, adultery and incest. I bit my tongue and sat on my hands, resisting the urge to point out the glaring error in these posts. Then, as I was sitting there itching to reply, I saw Hilary Mantel’s article in The Guardian newspaper. Its title: “Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist” – face palm!

Now, Mantel was not actually suggesting that Anne was a witch or that she had been charged with witchcraft. In fact, Mantel writes, “Anne was not charged with witchcraft, as some people believe. She was charged with treasonable conspiracy to procure the king’s death, a charge supported by details of adultery”, and she is correct, Anne was not charged with witchcraft. But, Anne Boleyn’s name is too often linked with witchcraft and many people, even Tudor history buffs, assume that she was charged with it. It’s no wonder that people make that assumption when Anne’s portrait is on the wall at Hogwarts (not to be taken seriously though), the 2009 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show had a Witch’s Garden to represent Anne Boleyn and The Other Boleyn Girl depicted Anne Boleyn dabbling in witchcraft, taking a potion to bring on the miscarriage of a baby (which turns out to be monstrously deformed) and having a “witch taker” help to bring her down. You only have to google “Anne Boleyn witchcraft” to find sites claiming that Anne was charged with witchcraft and executed for witchcraft, or mentions of her having an extra finger and moles all over her body, which could have been seen as “witch’s teats” and the marks of a witch. Even an article on the BBC site refers to her being accused of being “a disciple of witchcraft”.

Some non-fiction authors and historians give credence to the witchcraft theory. In her biography of Anne Boleyn, Norah Lofts writes of Anne bearing a mole known as the ‘Devil’s Pawmark” and making a “typical witch’s threat” when she was in the Tower, claiming that there would be no rain in England for seven years. Lofts explains that seven was the magic number and that witch’s were thought to control the weather. What’s more, Anne had a dog named Urian, one of Satan’s names, and she managed to cast a spell on Henry which eventually ran out in 1536, hence his violent reaction, “the passing from adoration to hatred”. Lofts goes even further when she writes about the story of Anne haunting Salle Church in Norfolk, where, according to legend, Anne’s body was really buried. Loft writes of meeting the sexton of the church who told her of how he kept vigil one year on 19th May to see if Anne’s ghost appeared. He didn’t see a ghost, but he did see a huge hare “which seemed to come from nowhere”. It jumped around the church before vanishing into thin air. According to Lofts “a hare was one of the shapes that a witch was supposed to be able to take at will” and she pondered if it was indeed Anne Boleyn.

That all sounds rather far-fetched, but reputable historian Retha Warnicke also mentions witchcraft in her book on Anne, writing that sodomy and incest were associated with witchcraft. Warnicke believes that the men executed for adultery with Anne were “libertines” who practised buggery and, of course, Anne and George were charged with incest. Warnicke also thinks that the rather lurid mentions in the indictments of Anne procuring the men and inciting them to have sexual relations with her was “consistent with the need to prove that she was a witch”. She continues, saying that “the licentious charges against the queen, even if the rumours of her attempted poisonings and of her causing her husband’s impotence were never introduced into any of the trials, indicate that Henry believed that she was a witch.” Now, Henry VIII may well have said “ that he had been seduced and forced into this second marriage by means of sortileges and charms”, but I don’t for one second believe that Henry was convinced that Anne was a witch. If he had believed it, then surely Cromwell would have used it to get Henry’s marriage to Anne annulled. If Anne was a witch then it could be said that Henry had been bewitched and tricked into the marriage, that the marriage was, therefore, invalid. Anne Boleyn was charged with adultery, plotting the King’s death and committing incest with her brother, George Boleyn, Lord Rochford. There was no mention or suggestion of witchcraft or sorcery in the Middlesex or Kent indictments and at her trial, Anne was found guilty of committing treason against the King – again, no mention of witchcraft. Although witchcraft was not a felony or a crime punishable by death until the act of 1542, a suggestion of witchcraft could still have helped the Crown’s case and served as propaganda. I believe that the details of the indictments were simply there for shock value, rather than to prove that Anne was a witch.

So, where does the whole witchcraft charge come from if it was not mentioned in 1536? Well, I think we can put some of the blame on the Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander, who wrote “Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism” in 1585, while in exile during the reign of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn’s daughter. In his book, Sander describes Anne Boleyn as having “a projecting tooth”, six fingers on her right hand and “a large wen under her chin” – very witch-like! He also writes that Anne miscarried “a shapeless mass of flesh” in January 1536. This “shapeless mass” was turned into “a monster”, “a baby horridly malformed, with a spine flayed open and a huge head, twice as large as the spindly little body”, by historical fiction writer Philippa Gregory and was used to back up the idea that Anne had committed incest and dabbled in witchcraft. However, Sander’s words have to be judged as Catholic propaganda, as an attempt to denigrate Elizabeth I by blackening the name of her mother. Sander was only about six years of age when Anne died, so he could hardly have known her, and he was a priest, not a courtier, so would not have heard court gossip about Anne. None of Anne’s contemporaries mention an extra finger, projecting tooth or wen, and even Anne’s enemy, Eustace Chapuys, describes her miscarriage as the loss of “a male child which she had not borne 3½ months”. He would surely have mentioned it being deformed, if it was, and I’m sure that Chapuys would also have mentioned any physical deformities that Anne possessed. He nicknamed her “the concubine” and “the putain”, or whore, so he wasn’t afraid of saying what he thought!

While I cannot prove that Anne Boleyn was a witch, I can cast doubt on this belief. Norah Lofts’ claims can easily be refuted. Anne’s mole was simply a mole, her dog was named after Urian Brereton (brother of William Brereton, who gave the dog to Anne), Anne’s mention of the weather in the Tower was simply the ramblings of a terrified and hysterical woman, and the hare was simply a hare! As for Retha Warnicke’s views, I have found no evidence to prove that the men executed in May 1536 were homosexual and the only evidence for the deformed foetus is Nicholas Sander. Also Henry’s words concerning “sortileges and charm” were more likely to have been bluster, rather than a serious accusation. He also said that Anne had had over 100 lovers and that she had tried to poison his son, Fitzroy, and his daughter, Mary. The bluster of an angry and defensive man, I believe, and not something to take seriously.

In conclusion, witchcraft was not something that was linked to Anne Boleyn in the sixteenth century, so I feel that it is about time that people stopped talking about Anne and witchcraft in the same breath. Let’s get the facts straight.

Sources:

Richard Bevan, Anne Boleyn and the Downfall of her Family, BBC History website – http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/anne_boleyn_01.shtml

Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 5, Part 2: 1536-1538, note 59

Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl, Harper, 2007

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10: January-June 1536, note 284

Norah Lofts, Anne Boleyn, Orbis Publishing, 1979

Hilary Mantel,  Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist, The Guardian, 11 May 2012

Nicholas Sander,  Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, 1585

Retha Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, Cambridge University Press, 1989



Anne Boleyn’s wen, projecting tooth and witchcraft charges

Recently I’ve been reading a lot about “witch-craze” that swept through Europe during the Early Modern period (from about 1480 to 1750) so expect to see more witchcraft-related posts here. How about a “witchcraft week”? Sounds good to me!

As you recall, Anne Boleyn’s name is often linked to witchcraft. Some historians, like Retha M. Warnicke, believe that accusations of witchcraft were attached to Anne Boleyn’s name; some, like Eric Ives believe that there is no link between Anne’s fall and accusations of witchcraft whatsoever. Many books, Nora Lofts’s for instance, state that Anne’s witchcraft is an undisputed fact. Where does it all stem from?

Sander's "De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani"

Sander’s “De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani”

In my previous article from this series I have written that although some contemporaries mentioned witchcraft in relation to Anne Boleyn, we cannot be sure that she stood accused of it during her trial in May 1536 because the whole trial documentation is not available to us today. Consequently, we cannot be sure that Anne Boleyn was not accused of witchcraft.

One thing that is really interesting to me personally is that so many misconceptions about “Anne the Witch” stem from misinterpretation of Nicolas Sander’s The Rise and Growth of Anglican Schism. But some historians and researchers got carried away in their assertions that Sander was trying to portray Anne Boleyn as a witch. In her article Anne Boleyn and the Charge of WitchcraftClaire Ridgway writes:

“So, where does the whole witchcraft charge come from if it was not mentioned in 1536? Well, I think we can put some of the blame on the Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander, who wrote “Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism” in 1585, while in exile during the reign of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn’s daughter. In his book, Sander describes Anne Boleyn as having “a projecting tooth”, six fingers on her right hand and “a large wen under her chin” – very witch-like!” 

Sander, however, never wrote that Anne Boleyn had “a large wen” under her chin; he remarked that she had “something swollen under her chin but what, I do not know” (“sub mento etiam succrescebat turgidum nescio quid”). Word “large” manifestly does not appear in original Latin account, it was added by translator. Word “turgidum” used in the Latin original may suggest “swelling” and not a “wen”. But even if Sander was writing about “large wen”, it would not indicate that Anne was a witch. Joanna Denny suggested that the large wen from Sander’s account was “thought to be a witch’s teat on which an incubus or demonic male spirit could suck” [1] but this is an erroneous statement. The witch’s teat was not a swelling or tumour, but a permanent mark or scar, hidden from view somewhere on the woman’s body [2]. Because the witch’s teat was hidden, during the height of witch-hunts women were often stripped off their clothes and their intimate parts were examined, since it was a common belief that the witch’s teat was hidden somewhere on genital area, anus or breasts.[3] Therefore, Sander’s description of some kind of swelling under Anne’s chin is not an implication that Anne was a witch.

What about a “projecting tooth”? Translation makes it sound as if it was a visible defect, but in the original Latin version Sander remarks only that the tooth under Anne Boleyn’s upper gum was “a little prominent” (“cui dens unus in superiore gingivo paululum prominebat”). Translator – again – did not faithfully translate the original. And in any case, “a little prominent” tooth was not a mark of a witch.[4]

Anne Boleyn, National Portrait Gallery

Of course, there’s also Anne’s infamous sixth finger. Here, the original Latin account clearly states that Anne had a “sixth finger on her right hand”. Historians usually depend on corroboration and Anne’s sixth finger does not appear in primary sources , so there’s a good chance that Sander was misinformed. George Wyatt, although not contemporary, mentioned that Anne had “a little show of a nail” on one of her fingers; a far cry from Sander’s sixth finger! So we can safely conclude that Anne Boleyn did not have six fingers on her right hand.

Anne Boleyn from Nicolas Sander’s description is definitely not a witch; Sander was probably well aware of what a “witch” looked like since “witch-craze” was already rife at the time when he was writing The Rise and Growth of Anglican Schism. Apart from “witch’s teat”, physical characteristics such as red hair or bent posture were usually associated with witchcraft; Sander wrote that Anne Boleyn had “black hair” and black hair was not an indication of witchcraft at all.

[1] Joanna Denny, Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen, p. 16.

[2] Michael C. Thomsett, The Inquisition: A History, p. 107.

[3]  Ibid.

[4]  Nicolas Sander, De origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani, p. 15.

[5] George Cavendish, The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, p. 430.

Monday 31 October 2016

Rufus

King John Plantagenet



Red Hair is associated with True Royalty.

It is associated with the bloodline of the last of the Neanderthal Augments.

Human-Neanderthal Hybrids.

Earth-Gods created via genetic, psychosurgical and vivisectional augmentation by Space Gods.

Men like Arthur, Conan, Richmond or Aurakles.



Rufus 
" The nature of God and the Virgin Birth--these are leaps of Faith. 
But to believe a married couple never got down
That's just plain gullibility! "

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, 
in the Tower of London in 1603, 
attributed to John de Critz. 

A small painting of the Tower of London is shown in the top-right background, above the Latin words: In vinculis invictus (“in chains unconquered”) Februa 8 1600; 601; 602; 603 Apri. 

The arms of Wriothesley (Azure, a cross or between four hawks close argent) are shown on the cover of a book lying on the windowsill before the cat

A woman's face with nature's own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion:
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Phenomelanin (as opposed to Eumelanin), associated with blonde hair, blue eyes, green eyes, fair skin and Red Hair is "a Mutation" of the Melanin producing human gene.

Redheads are Mutants.

"For me, personally, it's brunettes.

But redheads are the wildcard...."

David Lynch

No, it's an extremely thoughtful and insightful question, and Lynch's answer is extreme important and informative.

You notice, when he asks the "silly" question, there is some patchy laughter from one or two members of the audience (who think its stupid), but not from Lynch, (who knows that it is not). It only SOUNDS stupid.


He acknowledges the premise of the question, and then gives a serious answer, so the question itself is anything but stupid. And this of course is well known.


The fact that he uses women of different hair colour as avatars for various archtypes and aspects of the human psyche and the collective unconscious as expounded by Jung, most notably The Angel and the Dark Lady (often known as Liliith, the heavenly pariah FIRST wife of Adam before God created Eve from Adam's own flesh).


When Ben Horne first arrives at One Eyed Jacks, he greets Blackie by quoting (in full) Shakes-Spear's Sonnet 18, which is the first in the series of Dark Lady sonnets, which form an extended communication with the author's own Dark Heart, an acceptance and indeed love letter to his own potential for mischief, destruction and malice.


So when he asks him "Blondes or Brunettes?", the actual meaning behind the question and what he is answering is "Which do you find more enriching to your life? Virgins or Harlots? Do you seek purity or richness?".


People get into a lot of trouble, both psychically and psychologically, when they seek to deny that they have at least the potential for darkness within themselves and seek to distance themselves from immoral, even evil things that they have done, rather than accepting it as a part of themselves that they must comes to terms with.


This is the basis for all trauma (or Garambozia) - Leland Palmer cannot come to terms with the fact BOB used him to rape and murder his own daughter (and cannot live with himself), whereas Laura Palmer can admit to her shrink that her rough, incestuous sex with BOB was the best she had ever had, even after she realises who he is, and ultimately she is able to forgive him and allow BOB to murder her, which also saves Ronnette's life, allowing MIKE the opportunity to pull her clear from the old train-car. 


Which is why she get to go to Heaven, whilst Cooper is still stuck in the Lodge, unable to accept or get to grips properly with his own Dark Side - who is out there in The World, having hijacked his body, doing who-knows what with it, whilst he remains trapped in denial. When he first sees his Other Self, the corruption in his own soul inside The Lodge, his first response and reaction is first to avoid it, then to run away from it.


Meaning, of course, that it catches up with him (as always it must), overpowers him and consequently assumes complete control over his life and his entire existence. Not realising that when there is nowhere to run to, and no chance to escape or get away, running away is to admit defeat. 

Because he faced the Dweller on the Threshold of Life and Death with imperfect courage.

Only through acceptance can there be hope of victory - or, as Prince said, 

" I got 2 sides, and they're both friends."


Now, here's the thing about his answer, and why it's important and will affect your life as well as mine : almost every significant female character in Twin Peaks, other than Laura and Maddie has red hair - and as anyone who has ever dated one or been close to one will tell you, the old folk wisdom about their possessing a  firey nature is more than just an Old Wives' Tale - something about their personalities and their behaviour strongly suggests that they are somehow connected to something wild, mysterious and exotic.


Now, if you go onto the Smithsonian Website and look through the section on Human Origins, they will now tell you that red hair is recessive gene that is not found in early hominids or pre-humans, but is found in Neanderthal DNA, as a mutation which occurred after the species divergence occurred between pre-modern Cromagnon  proto-humans and Neanderthals - thus, in areas where there was cohabitation occurred, interbreeding and hybridisation occurred between pre-modern humans and Neanderthals, and red hair is the proof that that took place.


For that reason, and sue to the fact that the gene itself is recessive, red hair (amongst white people) has traditionally always been associated with high nobility and royalty right up until the present time - it seems to have been something that began around the time of the Norman Invasion,  several of the Plantagenet kings were noted for their red hair and ferocity, as well as Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell.


Prince Harry to is second in line to the throne after his brother and Prince Charles, and he is a redhead - which is exceptionally interesting due to the fact that none of the Windsors are, and his mother certainly wasn't. 


She was a pure natural blonde. 


He's also known for his temper, or used to be, he seems to have calmed down a great deal in recent years.


Why is this important? 


If you read Graham Hancock's book Magicians of the Gods, he provides an excellent summary and overview of the wealth of geological evidence that exists and is now available for the global cataclysm and devastation which we now know appears to have occurred aound 12,600 years ago at the end of the last great Ice Age, at the end of the Younger Dryas Period. 


What APPEARS to have happened is that during a period when the permafrost of the polar ice cap extended down over much of North America and nearly all of Europe, the Earth was struck by a comet or comet fragment which exploded on impact or superheated the atmosphere, flash-thawing the oversized ice-cap and flooding everything, nearly everywhere, permanently raising the sea level and leaving countless previously inhabited regions of the planet submerged until this day.


One of the last places affected, and when surviors and refugees  of the disaster and were able to settle and regroup was the Pacific Northwest, and North America generally. This is whythis area is so strongly associated with the Moundbuilder Civilisation and it's remains and earthworks, the remains and skeletons of a race of Giants (such as Paul Bunyan, referenced by the Cohens in Fargo), and Native America creation mythology, with their oral tradtion, going back tens of thousands of years, of a far older race of giant men who came from afar, a wise and  noble race that became extinct, but taught them many things.


After getting shot, Agent Cooper is visited by the Lodge Spirit in the form of a Giant, who offers him information and declares his firm altruistic desire to prove him with help and give him the assisstance he requires in order to resolve the mysteries of Laura Palmer and succeed in solving the case.



In the last half of 16thC England there were to be found two ladies of immense wealth. Both had auburn hair they styled in similar ways, both had a long aquiline nose, both had a lower lip a little stronger than her upper, both had a passion for pearls, and both were called Elizabeth. Put all their portraits together and it is hard to tell one from the other.
A collection of portraits of Elizabeth I and Elizabeth of Hardwick
A collection of portraits of Elizabeth I and Elizabeth of Hardwick
One lady needs no introduction – she was the Virgin Queen. The other was Bess of Hardwicke, born around 1527, and raised by a family of minor gentry in Derbyshire. Her early history is undocumented, and what is known of her family’s history before she was born dates solely to evidence provided by her brother in 1569, when he was providing reasons for his right to bear arms.
What is known is that she married four times: the first, undocumented, was to the 13 year old heir to a neighbouring estate. She married him most likely in 1543, but he died the following year. Then on 20 August, 1547, nine months after the death of King Henry VIII, she was married – remarkably well above her station – to the illustrious Sir William Cavendish, Treasurer of the King’s Chamber, who had made a fortune as an official of the Court during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Sir William Cavindish, possibly by John Bettes, 1544
Sir William Cavendish, possibly by John Bettes, 1544
In 1553, with the death of Edward VI, Cavendish’s means of acquiring his wealth came under scrutiny, and having been closely associated with the Seymours, and with Lady Jane Grey (who got her head chopped off for claiming the throne after Edward VI’s death), he lost his position at court, and was accused of embezzlement. He had tried to stay the right side of Edward’s staunchly Catholic successor, Mary I, but given such unfortunate associations, he was no longer in favour. He and Bess had eight children together, though, before he died on October 25th 1557, just one month after the startling birth of Robert Tudor.
On Mary’s death in 1558, the new Queen Elizabeth restored Bess Hardwick to Court, and again – rather remarkably – made her a key Lady of her Bedchamber. Soon after, Bess fell in love with Sir William St Loe, a good friend of the new Queen who had aided her when her life had been in danger, and who she had made Captain of the Guard, and Butler to the Royal Household – key positions ensuring her personal security.
Sir William St Loe
Sir William St Loe
The two were married in 1559, but in 1561, a serious problem emerged. Bess was the friend of Frances Brandon, the mother of Lady Jane Grey who had been executed by Mary for claiming the throne in 1553. According to the will of Henry VIII, on Lady Jane Grey’s death, her sister Catherine had become second in line to the throne, next after Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth wanted her to remain a spinster, thereby reducing any threat to her rule, but in total defiance of the Queen’s wishes Catherine secretly married into the powerful Seymour family. Bess distanced herself from the marriage, but hid the news from the Queen, who, when she found out, flew into a rage, and sent her to the Tower.
Lady Catherine Grey
Lady Catherine Grey
After seven months Elizabeth relented, and let her go home, but Bess and Sir William had no children together, and soon after, in 1565, he died under very suspicious circumstances. Bess thus became one of the wealthiest women in the country, with an annual income equivalent to around £14 million in present day terms. The Queen forgave her at this point, and she returned to court once more, only to find that the tutor to her sons had been spreading slanderous rumours about her. The nature of the slander was suppressed, and the Queen was so upset by what he had been saying that she ordered him to suffer public corporal punishment, a most vindictive punishment for someone of his rank. His slander must have been serious indeed.
In 1567 Bess again married, and again inexplicably far above herself, to the Earl of Shrewsbury, the richest nobleman in England.
Rowland Lockey 'The Earl of Shrewsbury' 1580
Rowland Lockey ‘The Earl of Shrewsbury’ 1580
On the 2 May, 1568, Mary Queen of Scots fled from Scotland and sought refuge in England, to the consternation of the Queen. Mary had a claim not only to Scotland, but to the English throne as well, and could not easily be disposed of, being a Queen in her own right. Elizabeth summoned the Shrewsburies to court, and entrusted them with one of the most important roles she delegated to anyone in her entire reign: that of keeping Mary Queen of Scots prisoner, and preventing her from conspiring against her. This the Shrewsburies loyally did for the next sixteen years, until 1584, moving home to another of their estates each time a plot to rescue Mary was discovered.
Rowland Lockey 'Mary, Queen of Scots' 158
Rowland Lockey ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’ 1585
In 1574/5 a serious situation developed involving Bess’s daughter, Elizabeth. The girl met, fell in love with, got pregnant by, and then married Charles Stuart, the brother of Mary Queen of Scots’ former husband, Lord Darnley. Like Darnley, Charles was the son of the Countess of Lennox, who herself was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland – and daughter of King Henry VII of England. Bess had married her daughter into the Royal families of both England and Scotland without the knowledge or permission of the Queen, and she and the Countess of Lennox were both promptly consigned to the care of the Tower of London.
Lady ARabella STuart, c.1590
Lady Arabella Stuart, c.1590
By January 1575 she was back home, though. Her daughter Elizabeth and Charles Stuart were expecting their first and only child, Arabella, and under the terms of succession, Bess felt Arabella had a good chance to succeed Elizabeth on her death. To that purpose, she began casting about for a suitable husband, and after a while came up with the infant Lord Denbigh, the son of the Earl of Leicester and the widowed Countess of Essex… She could hardly have contrived to upset the Queen more: the Earl of Leicester, after all, was the Queen’s former love, Robert Dudley… and so summoned to London by the Queen, Bess was likely invited to consider a third stay in the Tower. Judiciously, she assured the Queen of her loyalty, and took no further part in trying to arrange a marriage for Arabella, whose future the Queen took under her own wing, and the infant Lord Denbigh promptly died, pruning any future growth to that disconcerting branch of the family tree.
Bess turned instead to the construction of a home worthy of a future Queen of England… Hardwicke Hall… and thus came to be known as Bess of Hardwicke. In the meantime, though, another problem had emerged: Bess became concerned at the amount of time Mary Queen of Scots and her husband were spending together, and tried to resolve the matter by becoming Mary’s constant companion, spending months on end together with her, engaging in talk and much needlepoint.
After a while, though, Bess became aware that her husband was being unfaithful with one of her serving wenches, indeed, catching him in flagrante delecto. Rumours began circulating that the serving maid was not the only object of Shrewsbury’s attention, and that Mary Queen of Scots had not only taken his eye, but that she had already secretly borne two children by him.
The Queen was horrified, and Bess was summoned to Court, and swore on her knees that the news of Mary’s inappropriate children was totally untrue, and signed a declaration to that effect. Elizabeth seemingly accepted this, but the Earl of Shrewsbury blamed Bess, and the two separated, never to be reconciled. Mary, Queen of Scots was removed from Shrewsbury’s protection, and executed after the Babington Plot in February 1587, and Shrewsbury died in 1590, making Bess – most improbably, considering her apparently humble origins – the richest woman in England after the Queen. And still, even by 1590 she remained the double of the Queen, with the same red hair, the same nose, the same lips, and the same love for pearls… as this portrait dated 1583 tells:
The Countess of Shrewsbury
The Countess of Shrewsbury, Bess of Hardwicke, c.1580
But there is far more here than readily meets the eye. If we progressively darken her face and increase the tonal contrast, we find a bombshell written in the faintest of brushstrokes. In just one sentence, the painter explains all the many inexplicabilities of Bess of Hardwicke’s life.
Detail of Bess's face, from the 1580 portrait of her
Detail of Bess’s face, from the 1580 portrait of her
‘Sesso 25’ he says across her forehead, then on her temple ‘nata 26’: …sex in 1525, born in 1526. And from her other temple beneath her eye, the traditional declaration that she was the ‘Figlia de’… The artist is writing in Italian, and about to tell us who her parents were.
Detail of Bass's face, showing her true family origins
Detail of Bess’s face, showing her true family origins: click on the picture to enlarge it.
‘Sesso 25, nata 26, figlia de’, he continues… ‘Henry VIII’ and ‘Anne Boleyn’. 
Bess of Hardwicke was the first daughter of Henry VIII and Anne, back in the early days when she first joined the court as lady in waiting to Catherine of Aragon. 
Bess of Hardwicke, named after Henry’s mother, was the elder sister of Queen Elizabeth I.
That is why she could come from obscurity to the court of Edward VI, and how she came to marry the Treasurer of the King’s Chamber, Sir William Cavendish. That is why she fell from grace under the reign of Mary I in 1553, and why in 1558 Elizabeth chose her as a key Lady in Waiting. Bess could be trusted. This was how it was she could marry the Captain of Elizabeth’s guard, Sir William St Loe, and how it was she could meddle in the dynastic politics of Elizabeth’s court and not only survive but be forgiven and then return to court. It was how she could marry the richest nobleman in the Realm, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and how he could be trusted to keep Mary Queen of Scots safely captive for 16 years. It explains, too, how she could then again meddle  with the line of succession by marrying her daughter into the English and Scottish royal families – and once again survive and be forgiven. It explains too why she was the spitting image of the rather the illustrious Virgin Queen.
But how could a mere artist know all this? Well, he signed that portrait of Bess Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury. 
He signed it on her ruff, using the name Robert Tudor’. 
The artist was Elizabeth’s son, and the Countess of Shrewsbury’s nephew. He would have known, for sure, what his mum and aunty were up to.
But our story is not yet done… This was not the only portrait of Robert’s aunt that art history considers significant: there is another painting we must look at, too, one holding yet another surprise…
(to be continued)