King James VI's Stolen Crown (with Tracy Borman)

On her deathbed, the unmarried "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I declared that her successor would be King James VI of Scotland. Or at least, that's the story that we've been told. In her new book THE STOLEN CROWN, historian Tracy Borman, Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, discusses the bombshell new discoveries that reveal that the Stuart Dynasty was built on a lie. (For more, here's Tracy for History Extra's Life Lessons from History) Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestory' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory' See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

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• 1:32Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised.

• 1:42Dana Schwartz?

  I'm so thrilled, truly over the moon excited to be talking with Tracy Borman today. Chief Historian of Historic Royal Palaces, Chief Executive of Heritage Education Trust, Chancellor and Professor at Lincoln Bishop University, author of the incredible new book, The Stolen Crown, truly one of my favorite books that I've read this year so far. A new book that contains, I would say, a bombshell discovery about Elizabeth I's deathbed confirmation that the crown should go to her cousin, King James VI of Scotland. The bombshell revelation that that deathbed declaration was, let's just say, less straightforward than previously believed.

• 2:22Dana Schwartz?

  We'll get into that in this conversation, but before we do, just welcome Tracy Borman. Thank you so much for being here.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  Oh, thank you so much for having me back. It's always lovely chatting with you and I'm very excited to be delving into the dark world of the Elizabethan succession.

• 2:43Dana Schwartz?

  So before we talk about that famous deathbed confession, let's talk a little bit more broadly about the context. Queen Elizabeth I had decided to be the Virgin Queen, obviously a strategic decision, but one that left her with no heirs. So what did that look like throughout her life? What were the pros and cons of that decision?

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Yes, it was a very controversial decision and it's one that, as you say, she made from the very beginning of her reign, declaring to her first parliament that she would live and die a virgin. And I think really, although people reacted with shock, they didn't completely believe her. They thought perhaps she's just increasing her value on the marriage market, you know, playing hard to get, if you will. But then it became obvious she really did mean it. And as she declared, and this is my favorite of all Elizabeth quotes, she said, "I will have but one mistress here and no master." And she meant it. And I actually personally think that in terms of Elizabeth's own reign, it was the right call because it would have been very hard to choose a husband that wouldn't be divisive.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  So her sister Mary had proved how dangerous it was to marry somebody from overseas. Her marriage to Philip of Spain had been deeply unpopular, sparking revolt and rebellion. And if she'd married an English subject, that would have been no less divisive, really. And there was no simple choice. And also, I think Elizabeth's been put off marriage by the example of her mother, Amberlin, and, you know, one of her stepmothers and her early sort of life. So I can't blame her. I think it was the right decision, but of course, the kind of payoff was the succession. Because if she didn't marry, then who on earth was going to come to the throne after her? She was the last of Henry VIII's children and the last of the Tudors. There was nobody else.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  So it kind of raised the stakes early on for what on earth was going to follow.

• 4:40Dana Schwartz?

  And one thing that Elizabeth did very cleverly, I would say, is sort of dangle the prospect first of marriage that she probably had no intention of ever following through on, but also who would be next in line. By not naming an heir explicitly, she was able to use that promise strategically and diplomatically. So who were the options that she was playing with for who would succeed her?

• 5:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, and she was always wonderfully ambiguous about this. I think she once said, "When I am dead, they will succeed that have most right." So she didn't even commit to agenda in saying that, you know, and she was very deliberately ambiguous. Of course, there were various people with a very strong claim to her throne. If we're talking blood alone, a blood tie to the Tudor throne, then Elizabeth's early reign, then the strongest claimant was her great rival, Mary, Queen of Scots. She was descended from Henry VII's eldest daughter, Margaret. Margaret had married into the Scottish royal family, but it's really important to point out, given this is all about a stolen crown, that Henry

• 5:49Speaker 04

  had actually banned the Stuarts from ever inheriting the Crown of England. And this was glossed over when later on, James VI of Scotland came to Elizabeth's throne. But he passed several different acts banning the Scots and also named different heirs in his last will and testament, the Sisters of Lady Jane Grey. And in fact, they were also foremost rivals for Elizabeth's throne. So we're talking about Catherine and Mary Grey. Poor Lady Jane, of course, had been executed by Elizabeth's sister Mary. And they were descended from Henry VII's younger daughter, Mary. Now, age usually counted in the succession, so Margaret, she had the advantage, but the fact that Henry VIII

• 6:32Speaker 04

  had disinherited her descendants meant that that younger daughter, Mary, had the advantage. And among her descendants were the Sisters of Lady Jane Grey, Catherine and Mary.

• 6:44Dana Schwartz?

  And there was, of course, poor Arabella as well.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Poor Arbella Stuart, again, descendant of that Princess Margaret, Henry VII's daughter, but she had the advantage over Mary Queen of Scots and her son James because she was born in England. And that really mattered. Like today, we talk about the United Kingdom, England and Scotland are part of the same kingdom, but they weren't at this time. And there'd been this longstanding hostility for centuries between England and Scotland. They saw each other as foreigners. You know, the people in England called Scots people aliens. You know, they didn't want a Scot on the throne. So Arbella, yes, she was of Scottish descent, but she was born in England. So actually, she gave Mary Queen of Scots

• 7:31Speaker 04

  and her son James a real run for their money when it came to this race for Elizabeth's crown. And I probably shouldn't have favourites, but among the claimants to Elizabeth's throne, I think Arbella has to be mine because it's such a tragic story. Hers really shows that when it came to claimants to the throne, royal blood was far more of a curse than a blessing. And ultimately, she ends up dying a prisoner in the Tower. And quite a few of the other claimants meet fairly awful ends as well, because, you know, Elizabeth keeps them close. She doesn't flinch from imprisoning them, putting them to death in some cases. So it's actually quite dangerous to have a right to the throne.

• 8:16Dana Schwartz?

  I think one thing you capture in your book so well is the relationship between England and Scotland at this time. I think now many readers might not quite understand. Of course, as you said, it's the United Kingdom. What difference would it make if a Scot married an Englishwoman, or an Englishwoman married a Scottish man, or vice versa? But you capture quite well the sense that if a Scottish man were to marry an English princess or an English queen, there might be the sense that it was Scotland absorbing England and not the other way around. Can you speak to that tension a little bit?

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, there was definitely a tension because a number of marriage alliances had been proposed over the years between England and Scotland, notably between Henry VIII's son Edward and the future Mary, Queen of Scots. Now, Henry VIII was quite in favour of that alliance, but the Scottish people weren't because whoever had the son, the assumption was, you know, they would be the dominant one. And then that was switched around when, of course, Henry VII's daughter Margaret married the King of Scots, James IV. And Henry VII had a lot of opposition from his government, saying, look, what's going to happen? Are they going to be King and Queen of England? And that means that the King of Scotland really is going to be running the show.

• 9:29Dana Schwartz?

  A hundred years later, how right would they be?

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. This marriage is pivotal in the history of not just the Elizabethan succession, but the British monarchy as a whole. So Margaret of England married James of Scotland in the year 1503. She was just 13 years old. James was 30, and it would be a few years before she had a child, but she gave birth to that crucial son, James V, and it was his daughter that was Mary, Queen of Scots. So you can see how close Mary, Queen of Scots, was rather, to the Tudor throne, and she had a very, very good pedigree. But, as I say, you know, Henry VIII didn't think so much of the Stuarts, and neither did Elizabeth's subjects, really. So it was definitely not straightforward. There is

• 10:15Speaker 04

  nothing straightforward about the race for Elizabeth's throne. And I think that's a really crucial point as well, in that for four centuries, we've been kind of sold this narrative of a smooth transition, Tudors to Stuarts. It's all very natural and predetermined. And now, of course, with this new discovery, we know it was neither of those things.

• 10:37Dana Schwartz?

  So throughout Elizabeth's life, was it sort of assumed that James was the frontrunner? Or is that sort of retroactive history?

• 10:47Speaker 04

  I think it's definitely a retroactive history. He was certainly one of the lead contenders. And to be fair, Elizabeth showed him an advantage that she showed none of the other claimants at all.

• 10:59Dana Schwartz?

  Being a man, I imagine that gave him an advantage as well.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  This is so depressing but so true. It really counted. You know, this was not an age where women were supposed to rule. They weren't even supposed to rule their own lives, let alone a kingdom. And yet, England had had three queens in succession. Lady Jane Grey, Mary, Elizabeth. And one of Elizabeth's government actually said, the people of England are wishing no more queens. So, great though Elizabeth was, there was a sense that, yeah, we need a king next. So that did give James an edge. And also Elizabeth gave him an edge because, fun fact, they established a correspondence that lasted longer than any two sovereigns in the early modern period.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  So they wrote more letters over a longer period of time than any other two sovereigns. Thirty years their correspondence endured. James was just six when he wrote his first letter to Elizabeth. And the letters are all really on a theme. I mean, there are lots of niceties and expressions of friendship. But Elizabeth is very definitely trying to help James. She's advising him how to be a good king of England, effectively. You can't help think she's kind of grooming him for the role sometimes. Although she never quite commits, she'll then kind of backtrack and just casually mention Arbella or one of the other claimants, kind of leave James wondering if she really does want him as the next king.

• 12:29Dana Schwartz?

  And of course, there was the slight damper of the fact that she had to execute his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the elephant in the room, isn't it? The fact that she orders his mother's beheading. And that definitely challenges this friendly relationship that, you know, had endured for many years up until this point, until 1587, when Mary was executed. And it was really fascinating, actually, reading. Their correspondence at this point because first of all, Elizabeth tries to avoid the blame for this. Saying anything from, oh, I didn't realise it was the warrant I was signing, the execution warrant. And then saying, yeah, but I didn't mean it to be issued and I'd never gave the order for that. Actually, she was on sure ground with that. She never did give the order for the execution warrant to be issued. But by then, you know, her exasperated counsellors are like,

• 13:21Speaker 04

  just send the thing to Fotheringate and let it be done because they'd waited so long for Elizabeth to act against Mary. So she apologises to James, but she also tries to free herself of blame. James, now you might think he's going to be furious with Elizabeth and his subjects certainly are. In fact, you know, half of Scotland is calling on James to go to war against England to avenge his mother's execution. But James doesn't really want to because he grew up not knowing his mother. He was just months old when she fled to England and he took over the crown of Scotland. And he was raised by men very hostile to Mary.

• 14:01Dana Schwartz?

  Protestant men.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  And that's really important to point out, thank you, because of course, Mary is a great Catholic figurehead. One of the reasons she's so dangerous to Elizabeth for so many years is Elizabeth Protestant. So any English Catholics look to Mary and they plot against Elizabeth to put Mary on the throne. But now there's this difficult situation because James, you know, personally speaking, doesn't have a strong connection to his now dead mother. And yet his subjects are calling on him to go to war. But he also doesn't really want to rock the boat because he desperately wants Elizabeth to name him her heir. So there's this kind of little dance that takes place in letter form between Elizabeth,

• 14:44Speaker 04

  who's kind of going down on bended knees, begging his forgiveness, and James, who has to kind of appear a little bit cross that she's accidentally chopped his mother's head off. But then remarkably quickly forgives her rather for the whole thing. And they both sort of agree. Water under the bridge, it's all in the past, we won't talk about it and and let's just go back to our friendly letters. And that's exactly what they did. Neither of them referred to it ever again.

• 15:11Dana Schwartz?

  Well, let's let bygones be bygones.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  What's a little execution between friends?

• 15:19Dana Schwartz?

  Another thing that you make very clear in your book is that the throne of England really was a prize, especially compared to the throne of Scotland. I think people hear, "Well, if you're a king, you're a king." But as you mentioned in the book, I think I have in front of me that it was the income of the English monarchy was 19 times the income of the Scottish king. England was far more cosmopolitan, many more cities. It was a real prize that King James was fighting for.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  He really wanted England, like he really wanted England. It was the superior kingdom. I'm not saying that from an Anglocentric point of view. Obviously, I live in England, but it was superior in wealth, in its position in Europe, you know, in being the envy of Europe in terms of this kind of glittering court that Elizabeth had established. So it was a real player on the world stage in a way that Scotland wasn't. And it had riches, as you say, 19 times the income of the Scottish crown. So no wonder James was rather keen to get his hands on that English crown. And, you know, he wasn't terribly subtle about it. You know, he was constantly in these letters that passed between London and Edinburgh,

• 16:33Speaker 04

  pleading with Elizabeth, "Look, just name me your heir. Let's just settle this once and for all." And Elizabeth was brilliant at what her contemporaries called "answers answerless." So, you know, she sent back this reply that was kind of an answer, but actually didn't really give him what he wanted. And she would always use the prospect that she might name him heir as like a carrot that she would dangle in front of him to to sort of make him behave, to make him a good ally to England. So he was always very, very conscious that he couldn't really upset that delicate balance with Elizabeth.

• 17:12Dana Schwartz?

  And of course, he wouldn't want any physical harm to come to her because, you know, once he was named heir, then, you know, heaven forbid if anything should happen to her, it would be his for the taking right then.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  That's funny you should say that because in 1598, so Elizabeth was well into her 60s by now, there's a sense that she's living on borrowed time. But to James, it seems like the Queen of England is just going on forever. She's never going to die. And still, she hasn't named him her successor. And there is a little hint, more than a hint, that actually in 1598, James lost patience. Because in that year, a man with the wonderful and almost false name of Valentine Thomas, I'm pretty sure it's a false name, he was arrested on the Scottish border. And he was arrested for stealing horses. But when the

• 18:08Speaker 04

  English authorities questioned him, they got more than they bargained for. Because Valentine Thomas attested that he'd had several meetings with the King of Scots in Edinburgh, during which he had agreed to James's request that he ride south to England and he murder Elizabeth, and he would be paid very handsomely for it. Well, Elizabeth was told of Valentine Thomas's confession, and she chose not to believe it. And whether or not she actually did, but she chose not to. But as a courtesy, she wrote to James, just to kind of inform him of the whole thing. But she said, look, I'm going to cover it all up. Don't worry. Valentine Thomas is in prison. Nothing's going to come of this. And this is one of

• 18:52Speaker 04

  many occasions when James really should have listened to Elizabeth's advice, because he never did. And I should have made that clear. All of those letters really were in vain. James just thought, what does she know? She's just a woman. So he kind of besieged Elizabeth with letter after letter, outraged that he'd been named in this plot, and protesting too blummy much that he had had nothing to do with it. And saying, no, no, wasn't me, and never met the man. And he did it so many times. Times that Elizabeth got really suspicious of him and thought, ah, why is he doing this? And then James went even further and he insisted that Elizabeth publish a proclamation

• 19:35Speaker 04

  to the people of England, clearing his name of the Valentine Thomas assassination plot. But of course, all this did was to make the people of England aware of the plot and to make them suspect that James really had been involved.

• 19:49Dana Schwartz?

  It's a Tudor example of the Barbra Streisand effect. Don't draw people's attention to this.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Exactly. If you don't want them to know about it, really don't protest about it. It's exactly the Barbra Streisand effect. I thought of that very thing when I was writing the book. It's like, come on, James. Ah, just listen to Elizabeth. And it really did damage his standing in England and with Elizabeth. And I think Elizabeth was just, whether or not she was really suspicious of him, she was exasperated with him. She's like, just come on, this needs to just go away. But James wouldn't let it go away. And it was to his cost.

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• 24:11Dana Schwartz?

  Skipping forward just a little bit to Elizabeth's deathbed. The story, as it's been popularly understood, largely from an account by a man named William Camden, is that on Elizabeth's deathbed, she pretty explicitly named James as her heir. But as you reveal in this book, that might not have exactly been the case.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  That's exactly so. Now, there's fascinating new research by a student called Helena Rytowska, working with the British Library. And she was studying the original manuscript of William Camden's Annals of Elizabeth, his history of Elizabeth, which runs into several volumes, by the way. The manuscript itself hadn't been really looked at that much by historians because, and I count myself in this, we've all relied on the published version, which arrived a few years after Elizabeth's death. But looking at the original manuscript, it became obvious how much it had been altered. There were lots of crossings out. But also, what the researchers noticed was that many pages had been pasted in

• 25:17Speaker 04

  covering Camden's original text, 200 pages, actually. And then they found that in 1608, so when James had been king for five years, he actually got in touch with Camden and he ordered him to rewrite his manuscript. Because Camden had written his complete history of Elizabeth, up to and including her death. But he hadn't intended to publish it. He didn't want to because it's a bit tricky, publishing an account of a queen who's now dead and then there's somebody else on the throne, a new dynasty. So he kind of buried it. But James heard about it and he ordered Camden to take up his quill and to rewrite certain sections of his history of Elizabeth in his

• 26:01Speaker 04

  favour. And we know this from Camden's correspondence because Camden, you know, he sometimes gets a bad press, but actually, he was a meticulous historian. And he was very careful about his sources. He really did strive to produce a faithful account, faithful to truth. In fact, he included an ode to truth in this book. And what it was clear that he was being made to do was to alter it, amend it, rewrite it on James's orders. And he actually complained to a friend, King James must need revise it himself. And many things were altered and many things were

• 26:42Speaker 04

  crossed out. And so he's getting these installments that he sends to James back, like covered in the equivalent of kind of red ink, you know, and James is saying, no, no, you need to alter that. And some bits were so sensitive, then rather than just cross them out, Camden's pasted over his original text. And they include the Valentine Thomas controversy, interestingly, which Camden had told in full in his original part. But now, on James's orders, rather than James having been suspected of wanting to assassinate Elizabeth, that was changed to James just felt some ill affection towards Elizabeth. So the whole thing was sanitised. Mary, Queen of Scots,

• 27:26Speaker 04

  was totally rewritten. She'd been presented as a traitor in the first draft. Now, of course, she's mother of the king. So she's much more positively written. But the most crucial bit, and the discovery that inspired my whole book, was what happened on Elizabeth's deathbed. And what the research has found was that in William Camden's original draft of this deathbed scene,

• 27:50Speaker 04

  He, like the couple of other eyewitnesses we have records of, said that Elizabeth just died, without naming anybody, her heir. And then he's been made to go back on James's orders and rewrite it so that now he says that, almost with her last breath, Elizabeth speaks the words, "I will have none but the King of Scots to succeed me." And that was history rewritten in favour of the one who was now in power. It's so cynical. It's so shocking. And it completely changes everything we thought we knew about the succession. And, and as I said, this kind of smooth, natural transition from Elizabeth

• 28:35Speaker 04

  to the absolute odds-on cert frontrunner, who was James VI of Scotland.

• 28:43Dana Schwartz?

  And was it a smooth transition, in fact?

• 28:47Speaker 04

  It's a great question, because, again, if you believe James's PR, absolutely. By lawful and undoubted succession, the proclamation of his reign had been drafted by James's ally on Elizabeth's council, Robert Cecil, many weeks before. And really, I think we should be calling Robert Cecil a kingmaker. Because that's why James was able to take the throne in 6203. He'd made this alliance, this deal with Robert Cecil, Elizabeth's chief minister, that, you know, "If you smoothed my path to the throne, you'll benefit when I'm king."

• 29:26Speaker 04

  And Cecil certainly did. He was made Lord Salisbury and, and given huge power in James's government. But really, without Cecil, I'm not sure James would have been able to claim the throne at all. And was it actually as smooth as we'd been told? Well, we're told a lot about the rejoicing of the English people. We're told less about some evidence that I uncovered when researching the stolen crown, which is that there were actually riots in a number of English cities against the coming in of the Scottish king, as they put it. They still saw him as a- Foreigner, you know, they didn't want a Stuart on the English throne. So people did object to it. Some mayors, you know, the kind of very high up dignitary refused to declare James King,

• 30:11Speaker 04

  even though they were ordered to do so. So that it wasn't quite as smooth as we've been led to believe. And I think it wouldn't have happened at all, as I say, if it hadn't been for that very intensive groundwork that Robert Cecil had been preparing for a number of years before Elizabeth's death.

• 30:29Dana Schwartz?

  Is there anything that James did specifically to sort of renounce his Scottishness to sort of bolster up his English bona fide as it was?

• 30:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's interesting because very early on in his reign, almost within days, commissioned a family tree that really bigged up his relationship to the Tudors. It's almost like the Scottish side was kind of left out. And it's like, this is my English heritage right here. And he kind of repeated that in his speeches, always calling to attention his close links to the Tudors and how he had Tudor blood in his veins. And so, yes, he sort of went out of his way to make himself seem more English. But then in his actions, he did the exact opposite because it was a very, very brief honeymoon for James in England.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  The rejoicing was short-lived and actually James quickly lost patience with the people of England. He didn't really like the way Elizabeth's court had been run with all of its show and its glamour and its ceremony. One of her many pieces of advice to James had been to play the king, you know, put on a good show. The people of England like that in their monarch. James thought, I'm not going to do that. It's pointless and time consuming. So instead he locks himself away with just a handful of male favourites. And of course, that causes some consternation as well. It's a very brief love affair between James and the people of England. And very soon

• 32:01Speaker 04

  there is opposition to James. There's a plot just within weeks of his accession, followed by another plot. And then, of course, two years later, we have Most famous terraport in history, certainly in British royal history, and that is the gunpowder plot. Led by a group of disaffected Catholics who wanted to quote, blow the Scottish king to the heavens. So James is losing control within a really short space of time of unlawfully inheriting Elizabeth's throne.

• 32:35Dana Schwartz?

  So despite the fact that he is unfortunately, in this case, Scottish, he was a male heir. At this point, I believe he had two surviving sons, which also makes someone appealing as an heir. It makes a dynasty seem, seem like it has longevity. In your opinion, do you think there was another heir that was more appealing?

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Well, you're absolutely right to point out that James came with a ready-made dynasty. Um, so he had two sons, Henry and Charles. In fact, Henry would die young and wouldn't make it, but we would have a King Charles the first. And he had a daughter, Elizabeth. Uh, so that actually did improve James's standing before Elizabeth died. You know, the people of England were like, okay, well, he might be Scottish, but there isn't going to be a succession crisis if he comes to the throne. However, there were others. And if we're purely talking about the law, who would have been the next lawful successor to Elizabeth? It would have been the eldest son of Lady Catherine Gray. That was according to the succession acts of Henry the eighth and his last will and testament,

• 33:41Speaker 04

  both of which still stood in sixteen oh three when Elizabeth died. We would have had a King Edward the seventh in sixteen oh three, rather than in nineteen oh one, when Queen Victoria died. So, yeah, Edward Seymour, the, as I say, the eldest son of Lady Catherine Gray. He was the next legal successor after.

• 34:02Dana Schwartz?

  And he was a descendant of Henry VIII's younger sister.

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Exactly so. His younger sister, Mary, whom Henry VIII had actively favoured when it came to the succession, but Elizabeth not so much. Elizabeth hated the sisters of Lady Jane Grey. She persecuted them. She imprisoned both of them, made their lives a misery. And it was said, although again, this is Camden, that when she was on her deathbed and Edward Seymour's name was mentioned, she ranted that she would have no rascal on her throne. And everybody understood that by rascal, she meant Edward Seymour. But again, that's in Camden's rewrite. So maybe it says more about how threatened James felt about his close rival.

• 34:47Dana Schwartz?

  It seems a little bit, reading your book, that King Henry VIII opened something of a can of worms by passing laws that allowed him personally as king to determine what the line of succession would be.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Oh, what a can of worms that was. Absolutely, it did. Because until then, it had been pretty straightforward in the English succession. The crown passed to the eldest legitimate male heir in the absence of them. And if they really couldn't find anybody else, it would go to the female heirs. But Henry, mostly thanks to the fact he married so many times, he kept changing the succession in favour of his latest wife and their child. Of course, he only ever had one child by any of his wives, three children in total from six marriages. So one son and two daughters he had. But it did introduce this element of uncertainty, the fact that

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Henry used a bit of personal choice in the succession. And that went further still when his son Edward inherited his throne in 1547, when Henry died, because Edward only reigned for six years. He was on his deathbed, aged 15. And he was persuaded by his powerful advisers to change the succession again.

• 36:10Dana Schwartz?

  Well, if his dad could do it, he could do it too.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's glad to do it. He doesn't want his sister Mary on the throne because Edward is Protestant. And of course, Mary the first, as we now know, her bloody Mary is Catholic. And also, his advisers persuade him that he really should disinherit Elizabeth as well because she's illegitimate. And so Edward changes the succession in favour of his cousin, very much a Protestant Lady Jane Grey. But again, that's destabilising because if it doesn't just go on blood alone, then there's all sorts of choice. There are all sorts of candidates and who knows who's going to win the race for the throne.

• 36:51Dana Schwartz?

  So I'm asking you to speculate a bit here. In your opinion, if Elizabeth had not made this deathbed declaration in favour of James, and if Camden had not written it and the people hadn't understood that that was the case, what do you think might have happened?

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Well, I think this lie that began the Stuart dynasty would have devastating consequences despite Camden. I should say that Camden, you know, good historian that he was, he kind of had the last laugh because although James had made him falsify history, he took his time over it. So you see the correspondence and James is like breathing down his neck saying, come on, finish this book. And Camden's like, well, no, I just need to do a few more tweaks. He delays publication until 1615.

• 37:42Dana Schwartz?

  Oh, so James has already been king for a good long while.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  And that's only the first installment that only goes up to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. The second installment that includes the succession is only published in 1625, by which time both Camden and James are dead. So actually, this rewrite doesn't help James in his lifetime, but it has helped him in the centuries afterwards to be seen as the rightful king. And it did help his son Charles, who came to the throne, you know, uncontested because by then people believed that Elizabeth had named his father her successor. So that got Charles's reign off to a good start, but of course it didn't continue.

• 38:25Dana Schwartz?

  The end of Charles's reign wouldn't be a good ending.

• 38:29Speaker 04

  No, not at all. So I think the truth will out and there had been this clash between the Stuarts and the Tudor way of doing things because if only James had listened to Elizabeth's advice, I think things would have turned out very differently. I think that is the intriguing what if, if he had taken on board advice such as play the king, such as work in partnership with Parliament, not against it, don't just use it to impose your royal will. And of course, Charles I did exactly the latter and he just dissolved Parliament whenever it disagreed with him until Parliament rose up against him and plunged England into a bitter series of civil

• 39:09Speaker 04

  wars that resulted in the execution of the king, the end of the monarchy. It's so intriguing to trace it all back to, as I say, that lie that started the Stuart dynasty in England.

• 39:23Dana Schwartz?

  The moral of the story is we should have listened to Elizabeth I.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  It's always the moral of my story. I actually wrote a piece for Britain BBC History Magazine and maybe your listeners would like to look it up because it's basically life hacks from history. And I wrote the life hack for Elizabeth I and the kind of advice that I tend to follow, among many other pieces of advice that, you know, Elizabeth left behind, in that she was the mistress of procrastination, you know, just delaying things until the right thing became clear. And so she was always, you know, putting off things like marriage and the succession. And she just used this very skillfully, saying, you know, I'm just a woman. I can't make decisions. You're going to have to go away and give me a moment. And she used this very deliberate

• 40:11Speaker 04

  delaying tactic time and time again. And things had a way of working out. So always we should listen to Elizabeth. That's my number one takeaway from her life hacks.

• 40:22Dana Schwartz?

  If you're going to procrastinate, do it right.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  Just procrastinate. It's great.

• 40:27Dana Schwartz?

  Thank you so much for speaking with us today. Tracy Borman, author of the phenomenal new book, The Stolen Crown, just so readable. If you're a listener of this podcast, I think you'll absolutely love it. Thank you again so, so much.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  Oh, it's been such a pleasure talking to you again. Thank you for having me.

• 40:53Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Giulia Malani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer, Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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• 42:43Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.