Anyanka said:



One of  Mary's first acts as queen was to have passed the The Legitimacy of the Queen Act which declared the marriage of Henry and Katherine valid and Mary legitimate.
 

When Elizabeth ascended to the throne, she looked at having herself legitimatised. She didn't in the end.

 

Why not? Was she convinced she was legitimate? Or did she feel The Third Succession Act and Henry's will gave her the legal right to the throne regardless of her legitimacy.

 

cross posted into The Elizabeth Files Forum.
 

http://www.elizabethfiles.com/…..z1GrvvYx34

 

eta make it pretty.

Elizabeth inherited a Catholic realm. Though Protestantism had become entrenched in certain quarters, Catholicism remained prevalent and Mary I’s decision to return England back under the jurisdiction of the Church in Rome was not unpopular with the majority. Elizabeth had no intention of maintaining her sister’s laws. She believed passionately in the Royal Supremacy and efforts to break the realm away from Rome were instigated straight away when she became queen. It was a controversial albeit in the end successful, decision. Many fought it furiously, and the bill confirming Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical title was only narrowly passed by parliament. To have added on top of her campaign a move to have Anne declared Henry’s legitimate wife would have upset matters further. Elizabeth understood that her father had provided her with the right to inherit the throne in her illegitimate state. Though this had been used against her by Edward VI and his supporters in 1553, their efforts had ultimately come to nothing when Mary I’s campaign for the throne, synonymous with Elizabeth’s right to succeed, proved too strong to combat.

Mary was in a different situation to Elizabeth. She had a church on her side – the Catholic Church – who insisted that she was Henry VIII’s only legitimate offspring (they did not recognise the Seymour marriage for Henry married Jane outside the Church). When Mary confirmed herself as legitimate and her mother as Henry’s ‘true’ wife she was, in many people’s eyes, confirming something long seen as ‘fact’. Elizabeth lacked such support. The Church of England headed by Henry naturally accommodated this monarch’s needs. And in May 1536 the archbishop of Canterbury readily annulled Anne Boleyn’s marriage; the summer of the same year Elizabeth was declared illegitimate in an Act of Parliament. Anne Boleyn never received the backing that Katherine of Aragon had. Even after Mary was declared illegitimate you still have individuals, of various religious persuasions, arguing that Mary’s illegitimacy was hardly straight forward and that it was right that she be reinstated as heir. Amazingly it was a principal demand by the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Elizabeth was exceptionally smart and I imagine knew very well that the subject of her illegitimacy was not viewed in the same manner as her sister’s. Even leading reformist churchmen had been unsupportive of this issue. Anne was a controversial figure who some reformers wished to ignore as best as possible. Some certainly presented her as a Protestant heroine and tried to improve her reputation, but the majority remained quiet about her. The situation is best seen in John Foxe’s momentous Book of Martyrs; clearly he viewed Anne as an awkward figure despite her links to the break from Rome, an event celebrated by Foxe. If Elizabeth’s own allies were not that passionate about the issue, save a handful of clergymen who had once been aided by Anne and felt some gratitude to her (and some of them had perished during Mary’s reign), then what chance had she in reinstating her mother as Henry’s ‘true’ wife and having the masses accept this wholeheartedly. In short, I think some reformers viewed Anne as almost an embarrassment to their cause and wanted to mention her as little as possible. Elizabeth would have understood this.

We do know that Elizabeth asked her archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, to investigate her parents’ marriage, asking for evidence to support it. She specifically asked for a papal bull that allegedly allowed Henry to marry Anne (by this, I imagine she referred to the bull of 1527 secured by Henry VIII’s agent William Knight that allowed Henry to marry a woman he had already slept with and whose sister he had also slept with. However this bull was conditional on whether the Aragon married was declared invalid, something confirmed by church court in England and not by the Catholic Church). The fact that she asked for this is very interesting. Did she intend to the information to be enforced through legislation? I don’t think so. I think it likely that she was wishing to confirm something she already believed in – the legitimacy of her parents’ marriage. As early as Mary’s reign Elizabeth had voiced his approval of her parents’ marriage and as queen she referred to her mother as her father’s wife. Now she had the paperwork that supposedly proved it (for Parker found the necessary papers).

Elizabeth clearly regarded herself as the legitimate sovereign and the rightful head of the Church of England. The vast majority in her realm also recognised this. I’m not an expert on Elizabeth and her reign but I always gain the impressive that Elizabeth wanted to talk as little as possible about the circumstances of her birth and the earlier legislation concerning this. Obviously things like her father’s will were highly valuable as they verified her right to succeed, but she did not rest on this alone. Elizabeth was in no way a ‘self made woman’ – she inherited the throne based on blood – but she was instrumental in cultivating a mythical status for herself that portrayed her as much more than a queen. She became England personified – I would go further – she became a sort of English Virgin Mary, attempting to provide Protestants with a figure lost to them during the Reformation. All these things – the emphasis on her ‘marriage’ to her kingdom, of her ‘motherhood’ of the nation – prompted devotion to her and strengthen her legitimacy in the eyes of her subjects. So did she even need to have Anne declared the rightful queen and she Henry VIII’s legitimate offspring?

I've always felt that Elizabeth's pragmatism came into play here. She had Matthew Parker look into her parent's marriage and its legality for personal reasons, but publically she let sleeping dog lies. I am sure Elizabeth wanted to know her parents married in good faith and that eased her concious. But Anne was still unpopular and raising the marriage issue did nothing to help Elizabeth's claim to the throne. She had her father's Act of Supremacy. She was still illegitimate, but recongized by Henry as one of her heirs.

I agree with Nasim that Mary's situation was different. People's memory of KOA, the Catholic Church, Mary's supporters, etc. were her support system. Mary's legitimcy, according to the Catholic Church, was never under question. There were many people in England, even in 1553 who believed that Mary was Henry's only heir, his legitimate child, and the rightful ruler of the realm.

Nasim, thanks for your wonderful explaination. It explained it nicley and succintly.

DuchessofBrittany said:

I agree with Nasim that Mary's situation was different. People's memory of KOA, the Catholic Church, Mary's supporters, etc. were her support system. Mary's legitimcy, according to the Catholic Church, was never under question. There were many people in England, even in 1553 who believed that Mary was Henry's only heir, his legitimate child, and the rightful ruler of the realm.

What makes the case of Mary particularly interesting is the amount of support she gets from those who backed the Royal Supremacy and were inclined to reform. Certainly religious traditionalists, including those who participated in the Pilgrimage of Grace, supported her, but their opponents also thought Mary deserved a higher status than that she received post 1533. We know that there were those who pressed for the argument that Mary had been born in ‘bona fide’, that is in ‘good faith’, the argument that because Henry and Katherine did not know they were unlawfully married when Mary was conceived, the girl should be considered legitimate. Even Henry was interested in this argument in the early days of the annulment case. Some of the King’s staunch allies thought this was a fair argument, including several courtiers who got in a lot of trouble for talking about this amongst themselves in the summer of 1536. Elizabeth’s support base was never that diverse.

Nasim, thanks for your wonderful explaination. It explained it nicley and succintly.

Thank you!