The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-20


ment. were tinged with gloom by the knowl-
edge that with her death must end the
house of Tudor. The great Queen chung to
life with all the more tenacity because she
realized that the son OF her lifelong rival,
Mary Stuart, would succeed to her throne.
She could never be brought TO discuss the
succession even with her most trusted coun-
selors. Only from mute signs after she
was speeches. was it inferred that she
consented to the succession of James.
HENRY WITS SCHEME
Just hundred years after Henry VII
sent his daughter to be Queen of Scotland,
in 1893, her great grandson, James VI of
Scotland. returned to be James I of Eng
land, thus realizing one of Henry's schemes
in negotiating the marriage by uniting the
crowns of the two kingdoms, which four
hundred years of war had failed to do.
James was doubly descended from the Tu-
doris, for his father, Lord Darnley, was a
grandson of Queen Margaret by a second
marriage with Archibald Douglas Earl of
Angus. James / remains still something
of an enigma to historians. Conceited, I'M
calmly, the prey of favorites and the jest
of courtiers, he had enough Of what he
called "kingcraft" to hold his new throne
more securely than any successor of his I'M
lucky house. Yet from him was inherited
that fatal incapacity to understand the En-
glish people that cost Charles I his head
and James II his crown. To the same
cause may be ascribed the commonwealth,
the only interregnum in English history,
and the convention of 1858, the only Parlia-
ment ever convened without royal author
ity and assuming the right to alter the
succession. By it's decree James II was
deposed, his son by a Catholic mother was
forever excluded, and his Protestant daugh-
ter Mary, and her husband, William III,
declared jointly King and Queen. Even
this change was not so radical as it seems,
for it was made under the influence of a
preposterous claim that the real heir was
a supposititious son. BY this contention
the Princess of Orange was the next heir
and the Prince was the next but one, being
a grandson of Charles L. When the boy
Duke of Gloucester, the last surviving child
of Queen Anne, died in 170S, Parliament fol-
lowed the precedent set by the convention
excluding Catholics, and settled the success
sion upon Sophia, electress of Hanover, and
her heirs, being Protestants" Except for
this religious test, the right to rule over
the empire upon which the sun never sets"
remains still a divine right, long after every
Englishmah has discarded the theory. OF
five reigns, including and preceding that of
Queen Anne, not a single legitimate sur
vivor remained except the unfortunate son
of James II, known as the Pretender. So
phia was the head of the only Protestant
family of the house of Stuart. Her mother,
Elizabeth, was the eldest daughter of
James l. Educated a strict Protestant she
married at sixteen to Frederick, Elec-
tor Palatine, afterwards chosen King of
Bohemia Elizabeth was the mother of
thirteen children, who brought her as little
comfort as her short-lived reign as Queen
Not often has a Kings daughter and a
Queen Dowager passed through such re-
verses of fortune as attended her long
widowhood and when at last she returned
to England, after the restoration of her
nephew, Charles H. she was received with
scant courtesy. She died less than a year
after, a practical pensioner upon her life
long friend, Lord Craven, little dreaming
of the illustrious fortune in store for her
descendants. Yet none of the house of Stu
art appears to have been as deserving. She
may have inherited from her grandmother
Mary, Queen of Scots, a vivacity that no
reverseS could subdue, and that rarest pre-
rogative of royalty which wins and retains
devoted adherents in spite of misfortunes.
Besides being hardly less a heroine than
Mary, Elizabeth was a devoted wife and
mother. She became the ancestress of two
royal lines. Louis Philippe, of France, was
her lineal descendant through her son.
Charles Louis, whose heirs were excluded
on account of religion from the English
succession. The Electress Sophia died only
three months before Queen Anne and her
son, George /, reigned in her stead.
PROMISE OF THE FUTURE.
In the three hundred and fifty years from
the death of Edward III to the accession
of George 1 the royal line of descent had
passed through twelve generations yet had
occupied the throne but three times, name
ly in the reigns of Edward ", Henry VII
and James I. Beginning with George, the
line of succession followed the throne as
in the days of the Plantagenets, through
George II, his son Frederick and his grand
son, George III. Though George III favored
his loyal subjects with a patriarchal fam
lily of twelve children, an achievement only
equaled in royal annals by the family of
Edward III, the succession was already in
doubt before his own death, owing mainly
to the restrictions imposed by the royal
marriage act. Within seventeen years be-
fore the old Kings death his three eldest
sons died without surviving issue, and the
succession passed to Victoria, who was the
daughter of his fourth son, Edward. Duke
Of Kent There is now every probability
that the heirs of the blood of old William
the Conqueror will in another generation
rule the three greatest empires the world
has ever known-the British, the German
and the Russian. 1t seems in strange con-
fict with the growth of democratic ideas
to find half the globe about to be ruled by
lineal descendants of one man, who died
eight hundred years ago, the petty despot
of half an island which he had stolen. Per-
haps it is stranger still to find. how many
strains of royaA blood have united with his,
making lineage which is, in very truth
'the blood of hundred kings" From the
marriages of William and his SON, Henry
l. as already mentioned, came the blood of
King Alfred and of Edward the Confessor.
From the marriage of Edward / with
Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand V of Cas-
tile, came the bluest royal blood of Spain.
From the marriage of Edward II with Isa-
bella daughter of Philip the Fair, came the
blood of French kings who traced their
lineage to the Carlovingian dynasty. An
other reinforcement of French royalty came
from the marriage of Catharine, widow of
Henry v and daughter of Charles vi of
France, with a handsome Welsh gentle
*