Rating Monarchs

This is the start of a series of blog posts which – as you may have guessed – will be devoted to rating the effectiveness of some monarchs. Specifically, English Stuart and Tudor monarchs.

I will be doing this for a few reasons.

Firstly, I think it is good fun. Maybe its just my influence on conversations, but whenever I meet historians and we end up talking about the 16th and 17th Century, I tend to end up in a discussion about whether that monarch was a good one. I think it’s a thing that people tend to like to do – it enables sophisticated, structured yet fundamentally confrontational debate about the objectives and success of an individual. That sort of thing appeals to me.

Secondly, I think that it does allow us to take a step back – something good for historians, as it can be very tempting to get bogged down in specifics. Getting a sense of what a monarch set out to do, and whether they actually achieved, and more importantly if there is some general reason why that monarch did or did not achieve their goals gives several good lessons. It teaches us what political strategies tend to work, what sort of challenges political leaders face when exercising power and the similarities and differences between political structures over a given period of time – just to name a few.

Finally, it is a good introduction into some vitally important individuals in our national history. The actions of the monarchs from Henry VII to James II were decisive in forming the national community that we live in today. Protestantism, the relationship with Scotland and Ireland, the beginnings of the empire, the creation of the modern state and the formation of something a bit like democracy all were forged in this period – many by bumbling accident. It is therefore a public good me introducing people to these monarchs – giving you a sense of who they were and what they stood for, and why they are important.

I will be covering the period from 1485 to 1688. I will not cover Edward VIII and Mary because both monarchs were unable to have time to implement their agendas. That being said I will cover the reigns of Oliver Cromwell and James II – who had similarly short reigns. This is purely because both individuals did very consequential things in their short reigns.

The Act of Rating Monarchs

Before I go on to rate some monarchs, I want to tell you how I am going to do it.

I think that at a basic level it must relate to how successfully they achieved their objectives. This seems sensible – basically because it allows us to judge monarchs that existed in different contexts and who faced different challenges. It is unfair to say that James I and Henry VII should be judged on their results – Henry VII faced a mammoth task in securing stability in England, whereas James I had very little in the way of existential difficulties at the start of his reign. It also allows us to establish if they were successful political operators. To give an example, Henry VII, Henry VIII and Charles II all had problems relating to the succession – therefore a huge amount of political energy was expended to overcome this problem. The way in which all three were able to expend political energy to achieve their objectives tells us a lot about how effective they were – and if they were a good king.

However, I’m not sure it is that simple either. There are two additional elements we need to consider. The first is the role of luck. Elizabeth I was an extraordinarily effective political operator. However, she was also an extraordinarily lucky one. Commonly celebrated by later generations was her role in defeating Phillip II of Spain’s Armada. However, this victory itself represented an extraordinarily lucky moment – one that must be seen in context. Being at war with Spain was some sort of political defeat for Elizabeth who could have quite easily been toppled if the wind was blowing in a slightly different direction. In fact, the wind was noted to have Protestant sympathies in this period – frequently known as the ‘Protestant Wind’. Britain could be a very different place if the wind had allowed Phillip II’s fleet across the channel in 1588 or prevented William III’s fleet from crossing 100 years later. How do we reconcile this with reality? Dealing with luck is tricky. I think the best way to think of it, however, is leaving the analysis of the relationship between luck and the monarch to be decided on a case-by-case basis. It should be noted that there are some guidelines when thinking about luck, but these are not cast-iron. Better monarchs tended the most robust political and constitutional systems – able to best counter unlikely one-offs. As we will see, monarchs like Henry VII, Charles II and Oliver Cromwell, who created systems that acted to reduce the possibility that an unlucky event would undo their progress, tend to score higher on my ranking.

The second thing we need to take account of is how sensible a monarch’s objectives actually were. A classic case is James I. James I liked to spend a lot of money on useless things – especially handing out lots and lots of money and jobs to young, handsome male favorites (he was probably bisexual). This begs the question - if a monarch set poor political objectives for themselves, are we to intergrate this into our understanding our ranking of them? If a King regards piety, commitment to family or commitment to a favourite as their political objective what should we do?

I think there are two possible arguments about what to do here. The first is that we should decide what was in James’ best interests and judge him based on that. The second is that we should allow James to form his own goals – after all he is King, and so should be allowed to do what he wants with his prerogative. This argument goes something like: James faced difficulties in other quarters because of his own desire to surround himself with handsome men should be of no concern for us – because he is King, and he sets his own goals.

In my opinion, I think we need to recognize the validity of both these arguments – and use some combination to provide our ratings. For James, for example, it is clear that he was weak-willed and probably recognised the conflict between his personal and monarchical objectives. It would be fair to judge him for this – because he recognized it was not in his interests as a monarch to do so.

However, where it may be less fair would be with his grandson – James II. James II was a Catholic when Catholicism was almost universally seen as practically evil. For James II to have the objective of converting Britain to Catholicism seems fair – he was the monarch, and we are not judging him for his sincerely held beliefs. As a result, I think it makes sense to think about rating monarchs as an exercise that relates only to a combination of imagined and probable objectives.

Before I start, I want to set out how I am going to go about this.

I am going to give each monarch a rating from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest, 10 being the best. Good monarchs range from 7-10, decent monarchs range from 4-6 and bad monarchs range from 1-3.

I will then explain my rating in about 2000 words