AROUND the time when the remains of Richard III were discovered in a Leicester car park you published a letter of mine stating that Elizabeth of York, sister of the murdered princes in the Tower (one of whom was the uncrowned Edward V) was next in line to the throne of England (Letters, February 27, 2013). Her husband, Henry Tudor, strengthened his own tenuous claim to the throne through their marriage and he became Henry VII.
Due to gender prejudice her right to be recognised as England’s first Elizabeth was ignored and she accepted the role of his consort. In fact, he was hers.
Had her title been honoured she would have been designated Elizabeth I and in the following century Elizabeth Tudor would have become Elizabeth II. Our present Queen would have been named Elizabeth III, or as your correspondent George H Cullen (Letters, September 12) rightly observes, Elizabeth I of the United Kingdom.
Moira Cherrie,
36 Crawfurd Road, Rutherglen, Glasgow.
DESPITE painstaking historical reference to regnality and the rights of monarchs to choose whatever numeral after their sovereign name as suits them, for example King Fred the 18th, or Queen Jemima the Twelfth, there is a disregard for convention that the scholarly dissertation from Russell Vallance (Letters, September 15) appears to underestimate.
There is an air emanating from such scholarly research reminiscent of archaic laws that have not been removed from the statute book but which nobody takes any notice of because they are incompatible with contemporary mores and social practices.
That the present UK monarch is Elizabeth I or II according to your “take” on the numerical sequence applicability as relates to England and to Scotland is an option rather than a rigid attestation.
Mr Vallance seems to have gone to great lengths to attest that II is the unchallengeable numeral.
However, in so doing he discounts the history of the monarchy in Scotland, and in England, and much less exhaustive research, including into contemporary history, will show that in keeping with conventional numbering, the present monarch is the first Elizabeth to be Queen of Scotland, and that she is also the first Elizabeth to be Queen of the United Kingdom. Putting II after her title might be an even number but is at odds with convention.
Ian Johnstone,
84 Forman Drive, Peterhead.
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