Book review: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor

What shocked the nation most was not just the premature passing of Henry VIII’s precious only son but the certainty that for the first time in the kingdom’s history, a woman would soon sit upon the throne.

Every branch of the Tudor tree now ended in a woman, a disastrous situation in an age when females were considered mentally and physically incapable of holding any great office, let alone a role as monarch.

In fact, John Knox, the 16th century Protestant reformer, would denounce the whole idea of female rule as ‘monstrous’ and ‘abominable before God’.

Helen Castor’s vivid, lively and elegantly written history charts England’s ‘She-Wolf’ queens, the daughters, dowagers and consorts who ruled the country in all but name between the 12th and 15th centuries.

The main focus of this scholarly and yet thoroughly readable account is not specifically the three reigning Tudor queens, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I and Elizabeth I, but four earlier wives and mothers who fought tooth and claw for their male ‘cubs’.

The stories of Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Margaret of Anjou and the greatest She-Wolf of them all, Isabella of France, open a door onto some of the most dramatic personal crusades and examples of political power play in British history.

These ambitious and fearless women were not afraid to become embroiled in wars, feuds, murder and treachery to beat some of Europe’s most influential men at their own game and see their sons become king.

Astute and pragmatic, some endured imprisonment, exile and even ignominious death, and all have been sullied by contemporary male accusations that they were ‘unstable, ‘unnatural’ sexual predators driven by instinct rather than reason.

Earliest of the royal rebels was the amazing Matilda whose throne was seized on the death of her father Henry I by her cousin Stephen de Blois. For 20 years, they fought a bitter civil war known as ‘The Anarchy’ which ended when Stephen agreed that Matilda’s son, Henry II, would succeed him.

Matilda’s daughter-in-law was the scheming and ruthless Eleanor of Aquitaine who helped her sons to rebel against their father and later virtually ruled England while her son, Richard the Lionheart, went to the Crusades.

Next to come under Castor’s gaze is Isabella, wife of the incompetent and effete Edward II in the early 14th century.

Isabella soon tired of her homosexual husband and embarked on an affair with the unscrupulous Roger Mortimer. Together they overthrew and, some claim, murdered the king allowing Isabella to rule England on behalf of her son, Edward III.

Last of the defiant queens is Margaret of Anjou, wife of the simpleton King Henry VI, who famously held together the House of Lancaster while her husband suffered a complete breakdown.

Using sometimes scant evidence, Castor manages to present compelling and very human portraits of these feisty queens as well as lacing her narrative with rich and authentic detail.

An accomplished storyteller as well as historian, she uses her wit and her knowledge to bring to life the intimate details of the women’s lives and at the same time paints an impressive backdrop to their machinations and manoeuvrings.

Absorbing, intelligent and entertaining...

(Faber, hardback, £20)