Henry VIIIs Will Was Ignored?!?
If the will of Henry VIII had been followed, there would probably never would have been a Great Britain!
Even if you are familiar with Henry VIII, you may not know that most of his mad actions were driven by his desire to have a legitimate son to leave the crown to. After divorcing his first wife, and beheading his second, he did manage to have a legitimate son with his third wife Jane Seymour, although she would die from childbed fever just days after giving birth to their son Edward. During his later years, there was still a lot of discussion about the succession and who would inherit the throne should Edward not have children, which he didn’t. Many people were in support of Mary Tudor, Henry VIIIs oldest living chilling from his first wife Catherine of Aragon. Mary was a staunch Catholic however which meant that many also opposed her. Then there was Elizabeth Tudor, who was Henry VIIIs second surviving daughter from his beheaded wife Anne Boleyn. She was a Protestant, which made her more appealing to some, but she also always battled the people who supported Catherine of Aragon and held to the belief that Henry VIII was not actually divorced from Catherine, thus making Elizabeth a bastard.
But regardless, as Henry did not have any living grandchildren and his only living son was very young when he died, he had to lay out the line of succession as he saw fit. And it was Henry VIIIs desire that should all of his children die childless, the next in line to the throne should come through his sister Mary, and not from his sister Margaret, who was older than Mary, but was the Queen of Scotland. This is very interesting because it ignores the system of primogeniture which was used for the British crown at the time, (all the way until 2013!) where if there were no more males to inherit, then the succession would fall through the oldest daughter and her descendants before actually going through the lines of any subsequent daughters.
Mary Tudor, who was briefly Queen of France, ended up marrying Henry’s friend Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. They had a daughter named Francis who became Francis Grey, Duchess of Suffolk. She was the mother of three daughters, the eldest being Lady Jane Grey. This is why, for a mere nine days, Lady Jane Grey was actually placed on the throne….She was in Henry VIII’s and his son Edward VI’s line of succession, and she was a protestant unlike her cousin Mary who went on to take the throne back and have her beheaded. After this drama, and after the death of Mary’s younger sister, the famous Elizabeth I, there were still heirs according to Henry VIII’s will. Lady Jane Grey’s sister married Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hereford, who came through the line of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, the oldest brother of Queen Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII. So, when Elizabeth died….really her distant cousin Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, should have become King Edward VII…
And interestingly, it was actually not Elizabeth I who decided her successor against her Father’s will. Evidently, she never actually dismissed her Father’s will. But it was the English Parliament who was greatly in favor of going through the line of the elder sister Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland. And because of this, Scotland and England were joined under one ruler, James VI and I and the Stuart Dynasty began to rule in England.
This makes me wonder, what the motive of the English parliament was…did they want Scotland under their control? Did Henry VIII make is his will as he did because he saw value in having England and Scotland separate? What do you think, did parliament make the right choice?
Until Next Time,
McKenzie