royal consorts | The History Jar

Last week I set the first History Jar Challenge which was to name as many English royal consorts as you could since 1066. There are, I think, 38 of them. Not all royal spouses became kings or queens alongside the monarch in question. How did you do? There will be another challenge on Saturday!

The Normans

William the Conqueror = (1) Matilda of Flanders. Following the conquest she was crowned as William’s consort in 1068.

William Rufus = unmarried.

Henry I =

(2) Edith of Scotland who became Matilda of Scotland upon her marriage to Henry. Henry I’s mother Matilda of Flanders was Edith’s godmother and it is said that at her christening she pulled at Matilda’s head dress signifying that one day she would rise to her godmother’s rank. She died on 1st May 1118 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
(3) Adeliza (there are alternative spellings and pronunciations) of Louvain.

Stephen = (4) Matilda of Boulogne who was the niece of Edith/Matilda of Scotland.

The Empress Matilda was never crowned queen of England. And you will be delighted to hear that there aren’t any more Matildas!

The Plantagenets

Henry II = (5) Eleanor of Aquitaine

Richard the Lionheart = (6) Berengaria of Navarre

John =

Isabella of Gloucester but she was never queen of England due to an annulment on the grounds of consanguinity.
(7) Isabella of Angoulême. She was crowned in Westminster in 1200 when she was 12.

Henry III = (8) Eleanor of Province

Edward I =

(9) Eleanor of Castile (after who the Eleanor crosses are named.)
(10) Margaret of France

Edward II = (11) Isabella of France – one of English history’s she-wolves.

Edward III = (12) Philippa of Hainhault. They married in 1328 in York Minster during a snow storm – which was unfortunate as the minster was without a roof at the time.

Richard II =

(13) Anne of Bohemia. She died of plague in 1394 at Sheen Palace. Richard was so devastated that he ordered that the palace be demolished.
(14) Isabella of France who was a child at the time of her marriage. Following Richard II’s usurpation by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke she returned to France.

Henry IV =

Mary de Bohun who died before Henry became king.
(15) Joan of Navarre became queen upon her marriage to Henry in 1402 but she wasn’t crowned until the following year.

Henry V = (16) Katherine of Valois who would marry Owain Tudor following Henry’s death.

Henry VI = (17) Margaret of Anjou (another she-wolf)

Edward IV = (18) Elizabeth Woodville (and this is not the time to discuss whether or not Edward was a bigamist)

Richard III = (19) Anne Neville

The Tudors

Henry VII = (20) Elizabeth of York

Henry VIII = famously married six times. He believed that he had only ever been legitimately married to Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr – one because she produced a son and the other because he died before she could be toppled from the rather tenuous position as Henry’s spouse.

(21) Catherine of Aragon
(22) Anne Boleyn
(23) Jane Seymour
Anne of Cleves – not crowned because Henry took against her.
(24) Katherine Howard
(25) Katherine Parr

Edward VI = unmarried

Lady Jane Grey was never crowned although she was proclaimed queen.

Mary Tudor and Philip II of Spain part of the Woburn Abbey Collection

Mary I = (26) Philip II of Spain. The Spanish Match as it was known was deeply unpopular. Although Philip became king he had very little power.

Elizabeth I = unmarried

The Stuarts

James I = (27) Anne of Denmark

Charles I = (28) Henrietta Maria

Charles II = (29) Katherine of Braganza

James II =

Anne Hyde who died before James became king.
(30) Mary of Modena

William III and Mary II who were married to one another.

Anne = George of Denmark – was raised to the English peerage prior to Anne becoming queen but was never crowned as prince consort.

The Hanoverians

George I = Sophia Dorothea who never became queen of England because George divorced her for adultery before he became king of England. She spent the remainder of her life locked up in Ahlden Castle in Germany.

George II = (31) Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach

George III = (32) Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. There is a possibility that he married bigamously.

George IV =

Maria Fitzherbert – who was Catholic and therefore the marriage was against the 1701 Act of Settlement and the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. This marriage was deemed to be invalid.
Caroline of Brunswick. It wasn’t a happy marriage. She was forcibly barred from attending George’s coronation so was never crowned.

William IV = (33) Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen

Victoria = (34) Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Edward VII =(35) Alexandra of Denmark

The Windsors

George V = (36) Mary of Teck

Edward VIII was proclaimed king but never crowned, preferring to abdicate in order to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson.

George VI = (37) Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

Elizabeth II = (38) Philip of Greece

isabella of france I did consider titling this post “three foul french fowl”but decided it was an alliteration too far.

Richard I, a.k.a. the Lionheart, should have married Alys of France – the dispensation for that marriage would have been interesting given that Richard’s mother Eleanor of Aquitaine and Alys’ father, Louis VII of France had once been married. Alys arrived in England aged eight as Henry II’s ward following a treaty agreed in 1169. However, the marriage never progressed which didn’t help Richard’s relationship with fellow monarch Philip II of France who was Alys’ brother.

In 1175 Henry II began to seek an annulment from his marriage to Eleanor. It has been suggested that rather than marrying Alys to his son Richard, that he intended to marry her himself. Certainly it is thought that he began an affair with her after the death of Fair Rosamund in 1177. All things considered it is relatively easy to see why Alys didn’t become one of England’s French hens.

On the other hand, Alys’ sister Margaret should be on the list of French hens because she married Henry II’s oldest son also named Henry in 1162. Technically she became a royal consort when the Young King as he became known was crowned in 1172. Henry II and his son being the only occasion when there have been two official monarchs on the English throne (excluding the Wars of the Roses and the joys of the Anarchy when Stephen and Matilda both claimed the Crown – and Matilda never had a coronation.)

I am not including women who would be defined as French by today’s geography but were daughters of independent or semi-independent realms in their own times: Matilda of Boulogne who was King Stephen’s wife or even Eleanor of Aquitaine who was Henry II’s wife come under this category of consort.

Which brings us to our first indisputable French hen – Margaret of France who was the second wife of Edward I. She was swiftly followed by Isabella of France who is better known as a “she-wolf” on the grounds that she and her lover Roger Mortimer deposed Isabella’s husband Edward II and according to official histories arranged for his dispatch – purportedly with a red hot poker.

French consort number three was Isabella of Valois who was married to Richard II after his first wife Anne of Bohemia died. She was married to Richard at the age of seven in 1396. Four years later Richard was deposed by his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke. Richard was fond of his young wife and she returned the feeling. She refused to marry Henry IV’s son and went into mourning. She died aged nineteen in childbirth following her return to France and second marriage to Charles of Orleans.

Henry V ultimately married Catherine of Valois in 1420 following his victory at Agincourt. After Henry’s death Catherine went on to be associated with Edmund Beaufort but when the laws changed specifying that if the dowager queen married without her son’s consent that the new husband would loose his lands, Beaufort swiftly lost interest. Catherine went on to make an unequal marriage with Owen Tudor.

In 1445 Catherine’s son, Henry VI, married Margaret of Anjou as part of a policy to bring the Hundred Years War to an end. Margaret had no dowry and was plunged into a difficult political situation which resulted in her ultimate vilification by the winning Yorkists. Her hopes for the Lancaster Crown ended on 4 May 1471 when her son, Prince Edward, was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Henry VI was killed in the Tower shortly afterwards. She eventually returned to France.

Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou are the two consorts that popular history remembers most clearly. The third of English history’s three foul French fowl arrived in 1625. Henrietta Maria married Charles I shortly after he became king. Initially she had to contend with Charles’ reliance upon the Duke of Buckingham. Her Catholicism made her an unpopular choice in England despite Charles’ insistence that she be known as Queen Mary, as did her ability to buy armaments and mercenary forces on her husband’s behalf during the English Civil War. She also decided on a new title for herself – Her She-Majesty, Generalissima.