As the Mail reported earlier this week, it is considering amending the 1701 Act of Settlement so that a first-born girl can succeed the throne. Which means that if Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first child is a daughter, that baby would be our future queen.
Constitutional conservatives are up in arms — yet throughout our long royal history, the female of the species has generally proved far more competent than the male.
Royal heir: If Kate Middleton's first child with Prince William is a daughter, under the proposed change the baby would be our future queen
A glance at the names of some of England’s past queens — Matilda, Bloody Mary, Elizabeth I, Victoria — is enough to make even brave male observers blanch. And few of us doubt that our current Queen is made of pretty stern stuff.
And while Prince Charles’s fondness for talking to plants would horrify some of his medieval predecessors, the warrior kings of old would surely warm to his sister Anne, whose steely demeanour leaves little doubt that she would make a fine heir to William the Conqueror and Richard the Lionheart.
Indeed, given the record of female rulers in England’s history, the only curious thing is that the law has not been amended earlier.
Take, for starters, the formidable Matilda, daughter of Henry I, who ought to have succeeded to the throne in 1135. Blinded by prejudice, the old king’s nobles found it impossible to imagine a woman becoming monarch of England. Breaking their oath, they plumped for her cousin Stephen instead.
But Stephen proved a singularly weak and indecisive king. He was a ‘softe and gode’ man, one chronicler wrote, ‘who no justice did’.
By contrast, Matilda was a fighter. Refusing to accept her fate, she raised an army and conducted a 19-year campaign to regain her crown.
When Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, she turned out to be one of the greatest rulers in our history
At one point, Stephen had her cornered in Oxford. The city was snow-bound and surrounded by his army, yet Matilda wrapped herself in a white cloak and pulled off one of the greatest escapes in English history — stealing out of the castle by a side gate and dashing across the snow to freedom.
Sad to say, she never forced Stephen to give in, although she did secure the succession for her son, the future Henry II. For sheer guts and spirit, however, Matilda had set a high standard, and one which future queens did their best to match.
Henry VIII’s daughter Mary, for example, is rightly reviled today after trying to reverse the Reformation and burning almost 300 Protestant churchmen at the stake. Even so, as the first ruling English queen, she impressed contemporaries with her courage and decisiveness.
‘She was a King’s daughter; she was a King’s sister; she was a King’s wife,’ the Bishop of Winchester said admiringly at her funeral service. ‘She was a Queen, and by the same title a King also.’
Fortunately for England, Mary’s reign lasted only five years. In 1558 she was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, who reversed her Catholic policies and presided over a golden age of arts and learning.
Elizabeth’s story is the perfect illustration of the challenges facing a female ruler. After the execution of her mother Anne Boleyn, she had been declared illegitimate. Later, during her sister Mary’s reign, she was locked in the Tower of London and threatened with trial for treason.
Plenty of men would have buckled under the pressure: it is hard to imagine such infamous weaklings as John, Edward II, Henry VI or George IV bearing up as well as Elizabeth.
And when Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, she turned out to be one of the greatest rulers in our history. Cleverly, she refused to marry, recognising that subordination to a husband would undermine her political power.
Fortunately for England, Mary’s reign lasted only five years. In 1558 she was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, who reversed her Catholic policies and presided over a golden age of arts and learning.
Elizabeth’s story is the perfect illustration of the challenges facing a female ruler. After the execution of her mother Anne Boleyn, she had been declared illegitimate. Later, during her sister Mary’s reign, she was locked in the Tower of London and threatened with trial for treason.
Plenty of men would have buckled under the pressure: it is hard to imagine such infamous weaklings as John, Edward II, Henry VI or George IV bearing up as well as Elizabeth.
And when Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, she turned out to be one of the greatest rulers in our history. Cleverly, she refused to marry, recognising that subordination to a husband would undermine her political power.
And although, as a woman, the Virgin Queen could not fight herself, she became the embodiment of national resistance to the Spanish Armada in 1588.
‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman,’ she famously told her troops at Tilbury, ‘but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.’
At that moment, Elizabeth seemed the incarnation of Britannia herself. Once and for all she banished the notion that a woman could not rule a male-dominated kingdom.
Queen Anne, who ruled from 1702 to 1714, is best remembered for having a staggering 18 pregnancies but no surviving children. Yet despite her poor health, Anne proved a highly successful monarch, presiding over the union of England and Scotland, the glorious triumph over the French at Blenheim, and the first stirrings of Britain’s commercial empire.
Fittingly, that empire reached its peak under another woman, the formidable Victoria, who was only 18 when she became Queen in 1837. Short, dumpy and (contrary to myth) often amused, she nevertheless cut an imposingly matriarchal figure on the world stage.
By the dawn of the 20th century, she was not merely Empress of India but the ‘grandmother of Europe’ — a sturdy and reliable figure of whom Matilda and Elizabeth would have been proud.
As for our own times, nobody could deny that the Queen has shown extraordinary reserves of resilience and skill since her accession in 1952. To have ruled for so long is a miracle of stamina; to have done so with such grace and charm is almost superhuman.
Meanwhile, the record of our female politicians tells its own story, from Labour’s trailblazing Barbara Castle, whose caustic tongue terrified some of her colleagues, to the indomitable Margaret Thatcher, our first woman Prime Minister and the victor of the Falklands. ‘She has the eyes of Caligula,’ President Mitterand said admiringly, ‘and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.’
Perhaps our women rulers proved so redoubtable because, surrounded by men, they had to work so much harder to win respect. Or perhaps the old adage is true, and the female of the species really is deadlier than the male.
In any case, since we have generally been better off under the leadership of a strong woman, the proposed reform is nothing to be frightened of. Indeed, given the record of history, surely it does not go far enough.
If we really want to recapture Britain’s lost glory, then we should simply amend the law to ensure that the crown always goes to a woman. ( dailymail.co.uk )
No comments:
Post a Comment