Royals & The Law a Quick History

You may have wondered how unusual it is for a member of the British royal family to end up behind bars in the slammer doing porridge. Royal status has always granted great privilege and it can be tempting to think that the rules don't apply to them. One of the key provisions of Magna Carta though was that no one, not even the monarch, is above the law. But how easy is it to enforce that idea? And how badly do things have to go for a royal to actually end up behind bars? Today we're going to take a look at some historic examples and you can let us know whether it's more or less common than you thought it was. The first post-Norman conquest example is that of a brother imprisoned by the king 40 years and just one generation after William the Conqueror took the crown of England in 1066. William had three sons when he died. He gave the oldest, Robert, the Duchy of Normandy. The second, William II, became King of England and the youngest, Henry, got five thousand pounds in cash and a pat on the head. The relationship between the three brothers is perhaps best explained by a prank that William and Henry played on Robert. They tipped a full chamber pot over their big brother's head. When Robert ran off to tell Daddy, the Conqueror laughed it off and Robert sulked off into open rebellion. William II and Robert fought frequently as king and duke, each wanting what the other had. Henry allied himself with whichever brother could offer him the most. By the time William II died in a hunting accident, insert air quotes if you wish, in 1099, he and Robert had reached peace and they recognised each other as their heir if they died without a which William just had. The issue for Robert was that he was busy on the First Crusade at the time and he got home to find that little Henry had got himself crowned King Henry I of England. Unsurprisingly, a fight broke out. It culminated in Henry invading Normandy in 1106 and fighting Robert at the Battle of Tinchbray on the 28th of September. Henry captured his big brother Robert and seized control of Normandy, reuniting the duchy in England under one ruler. Robert was about 55 years old when he became his brother's prisoner. After being held at Devizes Castle for about 20 years, Robert was moved to Cardiff for the final eight years of his life. It's reported that during his time at Cardiff, Robert learned to speak Welsh and wrote poetry. He died without ever being free again in 1134, 28 years after his capture and at the ripe old age of 83. He was buried at Gloucester Cathedral, though the bog oak effigy above a mortuary chest that can be seen there today isn't believed to mark the spot on which he's actually buried. Both were added more than a hundred years later. Our next imprisoned royal is actually Henry's successor. Despite fathering around 24 illegitimate children, Henry had only one legitimate son and one legitimate daughter who could actually succeed him. When his son drowned in the white ship disaster of 1120, Henry ordered his nobility to recognise his daughter, Empress Matilda, as his heir. When Henry died in 1135 though, Matilda wasn't crowned. Instead, her cousin, Henry's favourite nephew, Stephen of Bois, shot across the channel and was welcomed, crowned and soon after recognised in Normandy too. Not the most flattering portrait is it? Matilda was thrilled. If by thrilled you mean that Matilda invaded England and started a 19-year war to regain what she believed was rightfully hers. The period known as the Anarchy, when the Anglo-Saxon chronicle mourned that Christ and his saints were asleep, was actually largely a cold war. The only real battle of the whole conflict came on the 2nd of February 1141 at Lincoln. Stephen faced a much larger army loyal to Matilda, led by her illegitimate half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester. Encouraged by his nobles to flee, Stephen refused. Accounts of the battle describe him fighting like a lion until he was surrounded and knocked to the ground. He was initially taken into custody and treated with great respect by Robert. When they reached Empress Matilda at Bristol though, that all changed. She ordered him clapped in chains and thrown into a cell, which is where contemporary chroniclers envisaged he'd spend the rest of his life. Matilda made preparations to move into London and be crowned Lady of the English. On the eve of the planned ceremony, Matilda was about to tuck into a lavish feast when an army, sent by Stephen's less than pleased wife, arrived in the city. Matilda's forces were taken by surprise and fled so quickly that the attackers sat down and ate the still warm feast the Empress had been forced to leave. Matilda was chased to Winchester and then forced to leave there too. As her half-brother Robert protected her escape, he was captured. A prisoner exchange was negotiated and on the 1st of November, King Stephen was released in return for Robert's return. The King of England had been in prison for almost nine months but he hadn't been dislodged. If anything, the incident served to strengthen the institution of the crown, which it turned out couldn't be brought down by mere chains and bars. It's hard to talk about medieval history and not mention Eleanor of Aquitaine. She's pretty cool and during her 80 years there's not much that she didn't do and she'd make almost any list, I think. Did she spend time as a prisoner while she was Queen of England? Well, history generally says yes. I say maybe. Eleanor was married to Henry II, who succeeded King Stephen. They were parents to four not-so-very-well-behaved children. In 1173, their three oldest sons launched a rebellion against their father. The youngest, John, only didn't take part because he was too young to demonstrate what a bad egg he really was. Anyway, the boys grossly underestimated their father and failed dismally. Eleanor was recorded as having joined the revolt, even instigating it, and was the only person not immediately forgiven, spending the rest of her husband's life, the next 16 years, as his prisoner in England. I say this is a maybe because I don't think Eleanor would have benefited from joining that rebellion. This is the same woman chroniclers say had an affair with her uncle, her father-in-law, and planned to run away with the 10-year-old Sultan Saladin. Chroniclers wrote utter rubbish about women, usually to excuse the failures and atrocious decisions of men, and few women exemplify this better than Eleanor of Aquitaine. I think she may have conspired with her husband to take a portion of the blame for what their sons did, so the boys could be swiftly forgiven to prevent a further rift in the family. Eleanor had been governing Aquitaine and it hadn't been going very well. This gave her an excuse to retire quietly to England without admitting failure. Records demonstrate that Eleanor lived at her favourite castle in England at Old Sarum, that she was given huge amounts of money to live off, that she was frequently at court and family events, and that when Henry died in 1189, William Marshall rode from France to tell Eleanor the news and to free her on the orders of her son, the new King Richard. On his arrival, Marshall found Eleanor already at liberty, preparing to help Richard, and she told him she was perfectly well aware of what was going on, thank you very much. Was she ever really a prisoner? Or did she use the prejudices of the patriarchy to help her family? Next up, the Lionheart. Now he could be a divisive figure, but we're not here to argue about his whole career. He travelled to the Holy Land to take part in the Third Crusade and on his way home in December 1192, he was shipwrecked in the territories of an enemy that he'd made there. He was taken captive and passed on to the Holy Roman Emperor, who demanded a ransom of a hundred thousand pounds of silver, which was over twice the annual income of the English crown at the time. Richard's mom, the indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine, worked furiously to raise the money and free her son. She personally delivered the ransom and Richard was released on the 4th of February 1194, after over a year as a prisoner. Famously, King Philip II of France, who had tried to pay the Holy Roman Emperor to keep Richard imprisoned longer, sent a letter to Richard's brother John, who'd also been trying to make sure that his brother remained a captive, warning, look to yourself, the devil is loose. Richard was coming for them and they knew it. Arthur of Brittany and his sister Eleanor were a nephew and niece to both Richard the Lionheart and King John. Their father was Geoffrey, the brother in between Richard and John in age. Eleanor was born in 1184 and Arthur in 1187, after their father's death. While Richard the Lionheart was king, he had no son. There was a question over who might succeed him. The two prime candidates were John and Arthur. Richard frequently positioned Arthur as his heir. He called Arthur his heir when he tried to arrange a marriage alliance with the King of Sicily and even left behind a sword that was supposed to be Excalibur, recovered from the grave of King Arthur. When Richard died in 1199, John became king, but Arthur, encouraged by the King of France, tried to press his claim. In 1202, Arthur was captured by John and imprisoned. There's plenty of suspicion that John had Arthur killed, perhaps in 1203. One source even says John got drunk one night, went to Arthur's tower cell himself, cut his stomach open, filled him with rocks and threw him into the river below. John later starved one of his nobleman's wives, Maude de Brugues, to death for complaining that John hadn't taken good enough care of his nephew. One thing that is certain is that Arthur's sister, Eleanor, also became a prisoner around the same time as her brother. She lived the rest of her life imprisoned, mostly at Corfe Castle in Dorset. When King John died, she remained a prisoner of John's son, Henry III, because of fears she might be considered to have a better claim than her cousin. Although treated well, she died in 1241 at the age of 57, having spent almost 40 years as a prisoner. Our next example is both a two-for-one and the first time royals will be imprisoned by a non-royal. And they weren't just any royals either, they were the reigning king and his heir. Henry III came to the throne in 1216, aged nine, on the death of his father, King John. He would have the longest reign of any medieval king, a record only beaten in 1816 by George III. By the 1260s, Henry was finding himself in a rocky relationship with Simon de Montfort. The two had initially been friends and Simon had married Henry's sister, Eleanor, but they soon began to fall out. One chronicler recorded that Henry was being rowed along the Thames one day when a thunderstorm erupted. The barge put in and took shelter at the Bishop of Durham's Palace, which happened to be where Simon was staying at the time. When Simon asked Henry why he was still so frightened when the storm subsided, the king replied, I fear thunder and lightning greatly, but by God's head I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world. By 1264, there was open rebellion against Henry, led by Simon. At the Battle of Lewes on the 14th of May, Simon defeated the royal army and captured Henry, his oldest son, who would later become King Edward I, and Henry's brother and nephew. Simon sought to run the government in Henry's name, keeping the king a prisoner. Edward was held captive at a castle on the Welsh borders but managed to escape. Because he was a prince, he was well treated and was allowed to take exercise, including riding horses. One day, his guards took him out and they galloped their horses into exhaustion until there was only one fresh horse left. Edward promptly jumped into the saddle, thanked his guards for their stupidity and rode off. He mustered an army and confronted Simon at the Battle of Evesham on the 4th of August 1265. Simon was killed and Henry was found dressed in armour amongst the other soldiers. They only worked out it was him because when anyone hit him, he begged them not to because he was the king and he was too old for all of that. After just over a year as a prisoner, Henry III was free again, thanks to his son. Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster, was born around 1278 and was first cousin to King Edward II. Thomas made a permanent enemy of Edward when he and other nobles oversaw the execution of Edward's favourite, Piers Gaveston. As Edward II proved himself unsuited for kingship, Thomas was put at the head of government. It turned out that Thomas wasn't really much better. When the Dispenser family became Edward's new favourites and hatred for them grew, Thomas became a figurehead for rebellion. On the 16th of March 1322, Thomas was defeated and captured at the Battle of Burrabridge. He didn't remain a prisoner for long. He was tried and convicted of treason and beheaded on the 22nd of March, just six days after he was taken. So Edward II wasn't great as a king. He got some revenge but made powerful enemies, not least his wife, Isabella of France. She'd gone to her brother's court in France, where she'd become allied with Roger Mortimer. He'd been part of a revolt against Edward that had led to Thomas, Earl of Lancaster's execution, but had surrendered himself to the king. As a result, he was sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death. But he escaped from the Tower of London by getting his guard drunk and climbing over the walls with a rope ladder. Together, Isabella and Roger invaded England. They deposed Edward on the 21st of January 1327, the outgoing king reportedly reflecting, I greatly lament that I have so utterly failed my people, but I could not be other than I am. Edward was replaced by his son who became Edward III. The old king, now referred to as Sir Edward of Carnarvon after his birthplace, was imprisoned. He was initially held at Barclay Castle and the traditional date given for his death is the 21st of September 1327. The story that he was killed by having a red-hot poker inserted into his backside, by the way, however salacious it is, just isn't true. It was made up later. However, there has been lots of speculation at the time and ever since that Edward II didn't die in custody. His half-brother was executed three years later for trying to free Edward. Clearly, he believed his brother was still, at least possibly, alive. Lord Barclay, in whose castle Edward supposedly died, reported to Parliament several years later that he'd never been aware of the former king's death. And a man claiming to be Edward III's father visited him when he was overseas. One letter written to Edward III also explains that his father was living very happily in a monastery in Italy. So Edward II was definitely a royal prisoner, but precisely what happened to him is much less certain. The next king to be deposed was Edward II's great grandson, Richard II. Like his grandfather, he had a fractious relationship with his nobility. Richard became king in 1377 on the death of his grandfather, Edward III. Richard was just 10 years old and his father, Edward the Black Prince, had died the year before. Richard's nobles controlled his government while he was young and he came to resent them, particularly as they tried to retain control. They seemed to think he couldn't cope, but he disagreed. It was a recipe for an unhappy realm and by the 1390s Richard had positioned himself to strike back against the noblemen he blamed for mistreating him. He brought down the main three, imprisoning one, executing another and having his own uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, murdered in prison in Calais. Oh, and he's another royal prisoner behind bars too. A couple of years later he found an excuse to go after the remaining two and exiled them both. In 1399 one of them, Henry Bolingbroke, the son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, invaded and deposed his cousin on the 29th of September 1399, becoming King Henry IV. Richard was imprisoned at Pontefract Castle and was reported to have died on the 14th of February 1400, less than five months after his deposition. The cause of his death wasn't reported anywhere. There was speculation he'd been starved to death, though whether that was on the orders of Henry IV or the result of a hunger strike by a man deprived of all the majesty that he'd reveled in for his entire life is unclear. There were, as with Edward II, lingering though less convincing stories that Richard hadn't in fact died. But it seems his time as a royal behind bars was probably short. Our next example is the story of Edmund and Roger Mortimer. These two boys might be the least well-known members of this list and as such we don't even have any images of them. Edmund and Roger were the sons of Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March. Roger was a great-grandson of Edward III via Edward's second son. This became important in 1399 when Henry Bolingbroke deposed his cousin, Richard II. So Richard was descended from Edward III's oldest son. Henry was descended from Edward III's third son. So the Mortimer line from Edward III's second son had arguably a better claim to the throne than Henry IV. This meant the boys represented a threat. They were initially kept in protective custody at Windsor Castle but were abducted. Once they were recovered their custody became more strict. The boys were seven and five in 1399 so too young to press their own claims. Henry kept them, shall we say, prisoners. Is protective custody still imprisonment? I'll let you decide. But Henry kept them securely for all of his reign, 14 years. When Henry V became king he released them both. Roger died soon afterwards but Edmund, 5th Earl of March, served the Lancastrian regime of Henry V and Henry VI until his own death in 1425. In 1447, King Henry VI ordered the arrest and imprisonment of his last remaining paternal uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Humphrey was 56 years old, childless, and had been forced to divorce his wife, Eleanor Cobham, several years earlier. The youngest brother of Henry V, Humphrey had been injured fighting at Agincourt in 1415. He led the faction at Henry VI's court that wanted to pursue the war with France and was opposed by those around the king who sought peace. In 1441, Henry VI's government accused Humphrey's wife, Eleanor Cobham, of witchcraft. She was found guilty of trying to predict the death of the king so that her husband could become the next monarch. Eleanor was forced to do penance through the streets of London, required to agree to a divorce from Humphrey, and imprisoned for the rest of her life until 1452. Humphrey appeared to take the hint and went quiet. Well, went quieter, but not quiet enough. He still complained about his nephew's policies. In 1447, he arrived in Bury St Edmunds for a session of parliament, only to be told he was to A couple of days later, he was placed under arrest, accused of plotting to have his nephew murdered. Henry VI still had no children at this point, so his uncle was his heir. The day after his arrest, Humphrey appears to have had a stroke, been seriously ill for two or three days more, and then died as his nephew's prisoner on the 23rd of February, 1447. There's no evidence that Humphrey was planning to murder his nephew and take the crown. His death meant he was never put on trial, and there was immediate speculation that he'd been poisoned. Whether his death was murder or caused by natural causes, his arrest and brief imprisonment before his death were almost certainly the result of the threat his political opinions about his nephew's foreign policy represented, rather than any real physical threat. Henry VI succeeded his father Henry V in 1422, when he was a nine-month-old baby, and became the third king of England since the Norman conquest to be deposed in 1461. He was unable to control factionalism at his court, and suffered from mental and physical health issues from at least 1453. Opposition to his government was led by the House of York, and in 1461 the head of that house took the throne as King Edward IV, deposing the House of Lancaster after three generations. Henry initially fled to Scotland, but was forced to leave that kingdom in 1463. He moved around northern England, sheltered by supporters, until he was finally captured in 1465 and put into the Tower of London. He might have been killed then, but he had a young son who was in France, and Edward IV almost certainly worried that killing Henry would place his son at the head of the Lancastrian cause and risk it being revitalised. Henry had proven himself a terrible king, and so while he lived the Lancastrian cause remained less attractive. In 1470 Edward IV fell out spectacularly with his brother George, Duke of Clarence, and their first cousin Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who would later become known as the Kingmaker. The previous year Warwick had held Edward in prison for several months, until it became clear that he couldn't rule without the king. The two were reconciled, but I reckon there were some gritted teeth and an intensely awkward, sweaty handshake. Any peace wasn't going to last long, and in 1470 Warwick decided to replace Edward with George. Their rising failed and they were forced to flee to France, where Warwick found Henry VI's wife and son. Sidelining George, he returned to England to reinstate the captive Henry VI. Edward was caught unawares and fled into exile in Burgundy for six months, during which time Henry became king again. This was called the re-adaption of Henry VI. No one knew what to call it when a deposed king was restored, so they just made up a special word. Edward landed back in England in the spring of 1471 and defeated Warwick at the Battle of Barnet, then Henry VI's son at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Both were killed. The same day that Edward returned to London, it was reported that Henry VI had died in the night of what was described as pure displeasure and melancholy. That was the official wording, but it's long been assumed that he was murdered after 39 years as king, five years as a royal prisoner, and just six months restored to his throne. Our next example is the last time a king arrested his brother and ordered his execution. It involves George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV, who tried to depose him along with their cousin Warwick the Kingmaker. George was reconciled with Edward once Warwick changed his plans and sought to restore Henry VI instead of making George king. It seems likely though that trust between Edward and George was gone after 1471. Events finally came to a head in 1477. On the 22nd of December 1476, George's wife died shortly after giving birth to a son who also passed away. In April 1477, George suddenly arrested, tried and oversaw the execution of one of his late wife's ladies-in-waiting. He accused her of poisoning his wife. When one of George's servants was arrested and executed for treason, George stormed into a royal council meeting and berated the king's injustice. Edward appears to have decided that enough was enough. George was arrested and thrown into the Tower of London. He was tried in Parliament where Edward prosecuted the case for treason himself and George was denied the ability to speak in his own defence. George was then found guilty, unsurprisingly, and attainted, which means an Act of Parliament was passed stripping him of all of his lands and titles and removing him from the line of succession. George, Duke of Clarence, the King of England's brother, was executed in private on the 18th of February 1478. A story soon sprang up that George had elected to be drowned in a vat of Malmsey wine, one of Edward's favourite tipples. Contemporary records state only that he was executed in private, as befitted his status as the king's brother. There is a portrait, believed to be of his daughter, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, in which she wears a barrel charm on her wrist. It's been suggested that this was a nod to her father's execution, but that remains little more than speculation and a good story. Time to court some controversy and mention the Princes in the Tower. These are the two sons of Edward IV, remembered as Edward V and Richard Duke of York. You may believe they were murdered by their wicked uncle Richard III in 1483 and you're entitled to be as wrong as you like. My opinion on the story of the Princes in the Tower is no secret. I don't think their uncle Richard murdered them. I think they survived beyond his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Fortunately for all of you, this isn't the point we're discussing today. Their situation is very similar to that of the Mortimer brothers we met earlier. To some they had a better and preferable claim to the throne than their uncle Richard III or his killer, whoops, I mean his successor, who definitely killed him, Henry VII. Even if Richard didn't kill them, it's clear that they would have been in, at best, protective custody. Which, as I argued earlier, is still custody. They weren't free to pop to the shops or go to a friend's house. That's why I've included them here. They were two sons of a deceased monarch who were held in some form of custody for some amount of time. Richard definitely didn't do it. Right, hold on to your heads because it's Tudor time. Tudor England made the execution of royal women both acceptable and a regular occurrence. Henry VIII, a misogynistic psychopath, who I definitely don't look anything like, and the first person to say in the comments that I do, off with their heads. But anyway, he somehow believed he'd made himself look more manly by telling the whole kingdom and anyone who would listen that most of his wives were cheats and liars. Anne Boleyn, once she'd failed to produce a son, was suddenly discovered to have been cheating with several men, including committing incest with her brother. Anne was arrested on the 2nd of May 1536 and placed into the Tower of London. The Queen of England was a prisoner. On the 12th of May, four men were tried for treason for committing adultery with the Queen. On the 15th of May, Anne and her brother George were also put on trial and found guilty. On the 17th of May, George and the four other men were all executed and the Archbishop of Canterbury declared Henry and Anne's marriage null and void. On the 19th of May, Anne was beheaded. Henry would repeat this way of ridding himself of another unwanted wife six years later. In the meantime, he'd been married to two other women. Amid speculation that he was no longer able to perform his marital duties, the 51-year-old King insisted that instead it was his 18-year-old fifth wife, Catherine Howard, who was the real problem. According to him, it turned out she'd been in intimate relationships before their marriage, might have been contracted to marry someone else, and was probably having an affair too. Henry really threw the kitchen sink at this one. On the 23rd of November, 1541, Catherine was arrested, stripped of her title as Queen, and imprisoned at Scion Abbey. Henry passed a law that made what Catherine had done treason and then tried her under that new law. I mean, wow, some people think Richard III is a bad guy. Catherine was attainted in Parliament on the 7th of February, 1542, and just six days later, on the 13th of February, she was executed by beheading. The second of Henry VIII's queens to be imprisoned and executed. Henry VIII died in 1547. He was succeeded by his much-longed-for son, the 10-year-old King Edward VI. But after only six years of rule, when Edward became increasingly ill in 1553, he sought to exclude his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, from the succession. Edward was staunchly Protestant. Mary was a Catholic, and Elizabeth had much less conviction than Edward. Instead, whether on his own initiative or encouraged by John Dudley, he wrote a will that appointed his first cousin, once removed, the Protestant Lady Jane Grey as his heir. Jane was about 16 years old when Edward died on the 6th of July, 1553. She was proclaimed Queen on the 10th of July, despite her own initial reluctance to accept the crown. Mary raised support in East Anglia and arrived in London, taking the throne for herself on the 19th of July. Lady Jane Grey is often referred to as the Nine Days Queen, though she might be considered to have technically succeeded on Edward's death, which would make her the 13 Days Queen. She's never referred to as Queen Jane I though, or considered the first Queen Regnant of England. Why do you think history would allow a woman to be treated that way, but still give Edward V the regnal number? I wonder what the key difference might be? Jane was imprisoned at the Tower of London on the 19th of July, 1553, when she was deposed. Jane, along with her husband and others, was tried for treason on the 13th of November, 1553. Although found guilty and sentenced to death, as others were executed, Jane and her husband's lives were spared. In early 1554, Wyatt's Rebellion, a Protestant plot, was foiled. But it seems to have driven home to Mary the danger of a Protestant rival claimant to her crown. On the 12th of February, 1554, still aged around 16 years old, Lady Jane Grey, or Queen Jane I, was executed, as was her husband. Anne Boleyn's daughter, with Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, would have the last laugh on her dad by refusing to marry and dying without any children, ending her father's bloodline in a way that would have driven him into a fit of pique. For that reason alone, she's all right by me. But she's also a pretty impressive monarch. Her life was a series of jarring ups and downs that revolved around her father's marriages and moods. She was declared illegitimate, then put back into the line of succession, often ignored and sometimes in danger. But rarely was her position so precarious as when she was imprisoned by her older sister, Queen Mary I. Mary returned England to the Catholic faith of her mother, undoing the work of both her brother and her father. In January and February, the Protestant plot known as Wyatt's Rebellion was in motion but failed. Elizabeth was summoned to her sister's court and interrogated to determine whether she was involved in the plot. On the 18th of March, 1554, Elizabeth was imprisoned at the Tower on her sister's orders. Some close to Mary wanted to see Elizabeth put on trial, which would almost certainly have led to her execution. Others, more sympathetic to Elizabeth, urged mercy in the face of a lack of hard evidence against her. On the 22nd of May, 1554, Elizabeth was moved to Woodstock Palace, where she remained in custody for almost a year. On the 17th of May, 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court by Mary, who believed she was near the end of a pregnancy that turned out not to be real. It became increasingly clear that Mary was unlikely to have a child and that Elizabeth would succeed her when she died. When Mary did pass away in 1558, Elizabeth I came to the throne of England as the last and arguably the greatest Tudor monarch. Time to bring an end to the chop happy Tudors. We've been focusing on English royalty but there are plenty of other examples of kingdoms imprisoning royalty and of royalty being held prisoner by rival rulers in other kingdoms. If you've got a good story, drop it into the comments. Amongst them, one name probably stands out as the most famous. Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was born in 1542, the daughter of James V of Scotland, and she became queen on her father's death when she was just six days old. Scotland was ruled by regents in the name of the baby and in 1548 she was betrothed to Francis, the heir to the throne of France, and was sent to live in France to be raised. Ten years later, in 1558, the pair were married. The following year, Francis became king and Mary became Queen of France as well as Queen of Scotland. But Francis died just another year later in 1560 and Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 for the first time in 13 years. In 1565, Mary married her half-cousin Henry Stuart and had a son, James. As their relationship soured, Henry had one of his apartments exploded and Henry was found murdered in a garden nearby. A few months later, Mary married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Henry. Three months after their marriage, Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James. Mary fled south and sought shelter with her first cousin once removed, Elizabeth I of Scotland. Elizabeth was a granddaughter of Henry VII and Mary was his great-granddaughter. While Elizabeth had no children, Mary had been considered a viable heir and had previously staked a claim to Elizabeth's crown as a Catholic alternative to her Protestant cousin. Elizabeth didn't see Mary as a relative in need of help. She saw her as a threat. Mary was imprisoned in several castles over the following 18 years. But eventually, in 1586, Mary was tried and found guilty of trying to have Elizabeth assassinated while imprisoned at Fotheringhay Castle. She was executed on the 8th of February, 1587. The deposed monarch of Scotland held captive in England for 18 years. King Charles I was born in 1600 and became King of England and Scotland in 1625. Charles married a Catholic and favoured high Anglican practices which made him appear a threat to those who followed the reformed religions in both England and Scotland. Charles looked a little bit too Catholic. Alongside that, his relationship with the Parliament that was growing in strength became increasingly rocky as he sought to rule without consulting it. All of that culminated in the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. By 1645, Charles and the In January 1647, Charles was sold by the Scots to the Parliamentary Forces and imprisoned initially in Northampton. The New Model Army then took custody of the King and he was moved to Newmarket in June. By the end of the autumn, Charles was being held at Hampton Court, from where he escaped on the 11th of November. He fled south to the coast and across to the Isle of Wight, where he seemed to believe that he would find some sympathy. The Governor there though, imprisoned the King in Carisbrook Castle and sent word to Parliament that he had Charles in custody again. In May 1648, those still loyal to Charles rose in an attempt to put him back on the throne but they failed and were quickly put down. Charles entered negotiations with Parliament at Newport on the Isle of Wight but Cromwell and the Army opposed the talks, driving anyone who supported them out of Parliament in what was effectively a military coup d'etat. By the end of 1648, Charles had been moved to Hearst Castle in Hampshire before being transferred to Windsor Castle. On the 20th of January 1649, a trial of the King of England on a charge of treason began at Westminster Hall. It was a pretty shocking moment and a constitutionally tricky one. Treason was committed against the monarch, so how could Charles have committed treason against himself? This marked the emergence of the idea of a state separate from the Sovereign, against which it was deemed Charles had indeed committed treason. Charles refused to recognise the authority of the court trying him and his arguments were compelling, but Cromwell and his allies pressed on. They'd come too far to turn back now. Found guilty, Charles was beheaded at Whitehall on the 30th of January 1649, after two years in the custody of Parliament. Now you're gonna have to correct me if I'm wrong because I'm just a humble medievalist, but I think the last time a close member of the royal family was arrested before 2026 was in 1685. James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was an illegitimate son of King Charles II. He was involved in fighting on the continent, but in 1685 led a revolt against his uncle, King James II of England and VII of Scotland, known as the Monmouth Rebellion. The plan was to put Monmouth, a Protestant, on the throne in place of his Catholic uncle. Following his defeat at the Battle of Sedgmore on the 6th of July 1685, Monmouth was pursued through the countryside. He reportedly swapped clothes with the shepherd, but dogs were set on his scent and he was tracked down and arrested in the middle of a pea field. Taken into custody at Holt Lodge in Wimborne, the local magistrate asked Monmouth what he'd do if he was set free. Monmouth's reported, in cautious reply, was that if his horse and arms were but restored to him at the same time, he needed only to ride through the army and he defied them to take him again. Not a good answer, I'm afraid. He was sent to London. Monmouth was attainted by Parliament and despite several pleas for mercy from within the family, James ordered his nephew's execution. Monmouth was beheaded on the 15th of July 1685 on Tower Hill. And now into recent times. Well, recent compared to the Stuarts. There is a precedent for the removal of royal titles and the removing of individuals from the line of succession to the British crown. The advent of World War I, which saw Britain pitted against Germany, led to a serious issue for the British royal family, who still used the surname Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and still had strong connections with German royalty. Parliament became increasingly exercised by the issue of English nobility, who also held rank in Germany. Ernest Augustus, for example, was both Crown Prince of Hanover and the third Duke of Cumberland and Tivietdale. Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was also a British prince. On the 13th of May 1915, King George V removed seven German and Austrian royals from the order of the Gotha, but he had no power to remove their royal ranks and titles. Only Parliament could do that. In 1917, as King George renounced any German titles that he held and renamed the royal family as Windsor, Parliament passed the Titles Deprivation Act to provide a mechanism to remove rank and title from royals. A committee was established to investigate who ought to be removed. It reported on the 1st of August 1918, and its recommendations were enacted on the 28th of March 1919, despite the war being over by nearly a year. Only four people were affected at the time, those who had effectively chosen to be German rather than British. They were Charles Edward, who lost the titles Duke of Albany, Earl of Clarence and Baron Arklow. Ernest Augustus, who had been the Duke of Cumberland and Tivietdale and Earl of Armagh. His son and heir, also named Ernest Augustus, and Henry by Count Taffer and Baron of Ballymote. They were also stripped of the right to use the title His Royal Highness where it had been held, and the use of those styles was restricted by statute. The most recent change to the line of succession was brought about by the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936. He reigned for just 326 days, from the 20th of January to the 11th of December, and gave up the throne so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee whom the British establishment deemed an unsuitable wife for a king. Edward was no longer king, but he was made Duke of Windsor. He initially lived in France, but during the Second World War, amid concern that he may have been a Nazi sympathiser, he was moved to become Governor of the Bahamas. After the war, he returned to France where he lived with Wallis until his death in 1972. He wasn't a prisoner, but was effectively an exile from the kingdom that he'd given up for love. So, a member of the royal family, the brother of the reigning monarch, was arrested in February 2026. This might feel like a unique moment, but it isn't. When commentators talk about it being unprecedented, it just isn't. Monarchs across English and British history have arrested brothers, nephews, cousins, wives, and kings have even been held prisoners by their subjects. The reasons for taking this drastic action have included an overt rebellion, a perceived threat, or a simple desire to do away with a troublesome relative. So the recent arrest of a royal is far from unprecedented. The real question is what will happen next. Thank you very much for watching this video from History Hit. You can find more of the greatest content in history across History Hit's YouTube channel, where you can also find other explainers from me about who owns Greenland and why does Donald Trump want it.