gboleyn
Registered: 07/28/06
Posts: 291
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Reply with quote | #481 |
NOVEMBER 17th
1231 - In Marburg Castle, Thuringia, in modern-day Germany, Elisabeth of Hungary, widow of Ludwig IV, Landgrave of Thuringia, and daughter of the late King Andrew II of Hungary and his murdered queen, Gertrude of Merania (see the entry for September 24th), dies at the age of twenty-four. Beautiful and exceptionally pious, Elisabeth's health had been savagely undermined since her late husband's death on the Crusade by the brutal, sadomasochistic penance and regime drawn-up for her by dictatorial, ascetic confessor, Konrad von Marburg, who was so controlling and obsessively religious that his treatment of her, in no small way, contributed to her physical decline and premature death. In an astonishingly swift series of canonical maneuvers, the late princess was canonised by Pope Gregory IX within four years of her tragic death. A generous patroness of the poor and a very gracious lady in happier times, Elisabeth was made the patroness of hospitals, hospitals, nurses, bakers, brides, countesses, dying children, exiles, homeless people, lacemakers, lay tertiaries to the Holy orders and widows. Her major cult shrine, still in use today, is the Elisabeth Church in Marburg, where she so tragically died.
1511 - Thanks in no small part to the influence of the queen-consort, Katherine of Aragon, England enters into an offensive and defensive alliance with Spain against France. Ultimately, this alliance will prove to England's considerable detriment, but at the time it is heralded as a sign that the political reasons for the marriage between Henry VIII and Queen Katherine were good ones and that the Queen's position as her father's unofficial ambassador had paid dividend.
1558 - (Above.) In Saint James's Palace, London, at the age of forty-two and after a reign of just over five years, Mary Tudor, Queen of England and Ireland, and also queen-consort of Spain, dies after losing her battle to ovarian cancer. She is succeeded by her much younger half-sister, Elizabeth. On the same day, her cousin, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Cardinal Reginald Pole, a Plantagenet descendant and one of the great architects of the English Counter-Reformation, also dies, smoothing the way for the new Queen to install her late mother's former favourite, Father Matthew Parker, as the new Archbishop. Modern British historian, Alison Weir, narrates of this momentous day: - "The Queen spent many of her waking hours in tears, impervious to the attempts of her ladies to comfort her. Some visiting councillors asked the Queen why she was so sad, thinking 'that she took some thought for the King's Majesty, her husband, which was gone from her'. 'Indeed, that may be one cause,' she answered, 'but that is not the greatest wound that pierceth mine oppressed mind.' Despite their entreaties, she would not tell them what so grieved her, but later, when just [Susan] Clarencieux and an attendant called Mrs. Rise were with her, she returned to the subject. 'Is it for King Philip's departing from you?' asked Mrs. Rise. 'Not only that,' said the Queen, sighing, 'but when I am dead, you will find Calais lying in my heart.' Years later, Mrs. Rise reported the Queen's words to the chronicler Raphael Holinshed, who recorded them for posterity. One of the Queen's last conscious acts was to send a message to Elizabeth, exhorting her to preserve the Roman Catholic faith. [Cardinal] Pole sent a similar message, and his secretary expressed himself satisfied with Elizabeth's answer. The princess had secretly arranged with Sir Nicholas Throckmorton that he would inform her immediately of the Queen's death, bringing with him as proof Mary's betrothal ring that never left her finger. [Sir William] Cecil, meanwhile, was drafting proclamations announcing Elizabeth's accession. By now, the road from London to Hatfield was busy with courtiers hastening to transfer their allegiance to their future queen. Although she was gratified, the princess was also shocked at the alacrity with which they had deserted their lawful sovereign, and when, forty-five years later, her own turn came to die, she took care not to name her successor until the last possible moment. On 16 November, the Lord Chancellor and privy councillors presented themselves in the Queen's bedchamber to read out her will as was customary. But Mary did not hear them, being too far lapsed into unconsciousness. Before dawn on the following morning, the Queen woke and, realizing that her end was near, summoned her ladies. 'Always remain steadfast to the true faith,' she told them. She then asked her priests to celebrate mass, and, according to [Jane] Dormer, made the responses clearly, 'with so good attention and devotion', praying 'that the weakness of my flesh be not overcome by the fear of death. Grant me, merciful Father, that when death has shut up the eyes of my body, yet that the eyes of my soul may still behold and look upon Thee.' At the moment when the Host was elevated, she shuddered with emotion and bent her head forward. When her ladies looked at her again, they thought she had fallen asleep, but Jane Dormer alone realised that the Queen had 'made her passage'. The last thing she had seen was the image of 'her Saviour and Redeemer, no doubt to behold Him presently hereafter in His glorious body, in Heaven'. ... Nicholas Throckmorton had not waited to hear the new Queen proclaimed, but, bearing Mary Tudor's ring, had set out early that morning for Hatfield. The road was familiar to him, for he had travelled along it several times during the past weeks, but he was at some point overtaken by the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, come officially on behalf of the Council to deliver news of her accession to Queen Elizabeth and kiss her hand. It was they who arrived first at Hatfield, a little before noon, and as they traversed the park they came across their new sovereign, impervious to the cold, seated under an oak tree (the remains of which are still preserved today at Hatfield House) reading the New Testament in Greek. As she saw the lord approaching, she stood up, realising that they brought her news of great import. Then they knelt before her and saluted her as queen of England. Elizabeth was overcome with emotion and for some moments was unable to speak. At last, 'after a good time of respiration', she fell to her knees on the grass and quoted the Latin verse of the 118th Psalm: 'A Domine factum est illud et est mirabile in oculis nostris! This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes!'"
1562 - After having suffered a severe wound at the Siege of Rouen, Antoine de Bourbon, jure uxoris King of Navarre, dies at the age of forty-four. The father of the future King Henri IV of France and husband of Jeanne, Queen-Regnant of Navarre, Antoine's politically-motivated conversion to Catholicism prefigured his son's twenty-seven years later, but at the time it drove a wedge between him and his devoutly Huguenot wife that was never healed.
1592 - In Stockholm Castle, at the age of fifty-four and after a reign of twenty-four years, John III, King of Sweden and Grand Prince of Finland, dies, to be succeeded by his son from his first marriage, to Queen Catherine Jagellonica, twenty-six year-old son, Sigismund III, who is already, at that time, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
1603 - The celebrated explorer and career courtier, Sir Walter Raleigh, is placed on trial for treason against King James I, allegedly having conspired in a plot to replace the new King with his cousin, Lady Arabella Stuart. Sir Walter acquits himself with considerable courage and skill during the trial; therefore, although found guilty, the King remits the death sentence to perpetual imprisonment. He will be released in 1616, under parole, and after a raid on a Spanish settlement, a furious Spanish ambassador insists the parole be revoked. The King grants this request and Sir Walter is beheaded in 1618.
1729 - At the Palace of San Telmo in Seville, Philip V, King of Spain, and his second wife, Elisabeth Farnese of Parma, celebrate the 37 year-old queen's safe delivery of her sixth surviving child, a third daughter, Maria-Antonietta, the future queen-consort of Sardinia, through her marriage to King Vittore-Amadeo III at the age of twenty. Amongst the future Queen Maria-Antonietta's children are three future Kings of Sardinia and two future Princesses of the Blood - Marie-Josephine, queen of Louis XVIII in exile, and Maria-Teresa, comtesse d'Artois, wife of the future King Charles X.
1755 - In the Palace of Versailles, Louis, Dauphin of France, and his wife, Maria-Josefa of Saxony, celebrate the 24 year-old Dauphine's safe delivery of a son, Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, latterly the comte de Provence, who will reign as King Louis XVIII of France de jure from 1795 until 1824 and de facto in 1814 and again from 1815 until 1824.
1818 - In Kew Palace, London, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover, consort of King George III and mother of the Prince Regent, dies at the age of seventy-four. She was the longest serving royal consort in British history and for the last seven years of her life had been legal guardian of her husband and sovereign during his tragic final battle with porphyria. She is survived by twelve of her children, including the future Kings George IV and William IV of the United Kingdom, the future King Ernst Augustus of Hanover, the Queen Dowager of Württemberg, the Duke of Kent (father of the future Queen-Regnant, Victoria), the Langravine of Hesse-Homburg, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Cambridge and the Duchess of Gloucester. Her husband is probably unaware of Queen Charlotte's passing and of her subsequent funeral in Saint George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on December 2nd of the same year.
1997 - Outside the great mortuary temple of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut, Islamic militants butcher sixty-two innocent tourists and visitors, before being gunned down by the police themselves.
Extract taken from: Children of England: The Heirs of King Henry VIII by Alison Weir
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gboleyn
Registered: 07/28/06
Posts: 291
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Reply with quote | #482 |
NOVEMBER 22nd
1515 - In the eastern French town of Bar-le-Duc, Claude, duc de Guise, and his wife, Antoinette de Bourbon-La Marche, celebrate the 23 year-old duchess's safe delivery of the first of the couple's twelve children - a daughter who is christened in honour of the Virgin. Marie de Guise will subsequently become Queen-consort, and then Queen-Regent, of the Scots, through her marriage in 1538 to King James V and motherhood of her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1542. Accomplished and determined, Marie had rebuffed a proposal of marriage from Henry VIII, King of England, prior to this, by playing on the infamous boast of Anne Boleyn about her "little neck" hours before her execution. "I may be a big woman," Marie said, in reference to her height, "but I have a little neck." Through her daughter, Marie has been the ancestress of every sovereign to reign in the British Isles since 1603.
1564 - William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, a keen supporter of the Reformation in England and former enthusiast for the Wyatt Rebellion against the rule of the late Queen Mary Tudor, and his wife, Frances, celebrate the baroness's safe delivery of a son, Henry, who will one day succeed his father as Baron Cobham, aged thirty-three in 1597. Despite his father's devotion to Protestantism, to the extent that he had actually been considered a radical during the tenure of the Somerset regency, Henry, 11th Baron Cobham, opposed the accession of James I to the throne following Queen Elizabeth's death, allegedly for pro-Catholic reasons (although anti-Scottish sentiment could also have played a part.) His activities against the new King and his links to recusant priests and the Spanish Embassy were uncovered in the so-called "Main Plot," complicity with which his younger brother George was executed. Lord Cobham was tried, condemned, imprisoned in the Tower of London and, after a stay of thirteen years, executed.
1602 - At the Palace of Fontainebleau, Henri IV, King of France and Navarre, and his wife, Maria de Medici, celebrate the 27 year-old Queen's safe delivery of the royal couple's second child and first daughter, Elisabeth, who will subsequently become Queen-consort of Spain and Portugal through her marriage in 1621 to King Philip IV. Beautiful, gracious, sophisticated and pragmatic, Queen Elisabeth was the mother of the future Queen-consort of France, Maria-Teresa, first wife of King Louis XIV. She briefly served as Regent during the political convulsions surrounding the Catalan Revolt and the declaration of Portuguese independence. She is an ancestress of the current King of Spain, Juan Carlos (see below.)
1878 - At the Anichkov Palace in Saint Petersburg, Alexander, Tsesarevich of Russia and his wife, Maria Fyodorovna of Denmark, celebrate the 33 year-old Grand Duchess's safe delivery of a third surviving son, the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. The Grand Duke's murder in the company of his British secretary by the Bolsheviks in Perm in the summer of 1918 marked the beginning of the attempt to exterminate all members of the Imperial House left on Russian soil. The Grand Duke was thirty-nine at the time of his death and he was survived by his morganatic wife, Natalia, Countess Brasova, and their eight year-old son, George, named in honour of the Grand Duke's late brother. George, Count Brasov, was educated at Harrow, a prestigious private school in England, but tragically died in a car crash in 1931, being the last direct male descendant of Emperor Alexander III at the time of his death. Grand Duke Mikhail's remains have never been recovered.
1975 - (Above) Following the death of the dictator and premier of Spain, General Franco, victor in the Civil War four decades previously, two days earlier, the Spanish monarchy is restored with King Juan Carlos coming to the throne, in line with the late dictator's wishes and the support of the majority of his subjects. The new King had played a clever game in the final years of fascist rule, by meeting with both the Generalissimo and liberal opponents in exile. He had also adopted the second name of "Carlos" to advertise his inheritance of the Carlist legacy, which was one the late premier had favoured and a legacy which was disputed between the new King and his cousin, the Duc d'Anjou, who was also the incumbent of the Legitimist claim to the Throne of France. Both men were grandsons of the last ruling king of Spain, Alfonso XIII, who had been deposed in 1931. Thirty-four years later, King Juan Carlos remains one of the most respected heads of state in the western world and one of the most popular leaders in Ibero-American politics.
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