Yeah ... Tunisia ... I'm not making this up ...
English Catholics regarded 'Mary Queen of Scots' as their lawful Queen; at least plausibly so, since she was at the head of the female line of the House of Tudor. They naturally wondered who in Europe was fittest to be her King Consort. Often they thought of Don John of Austria. They made clear to the King of Spain at the end of 1573 that, if John were to marry their lawful Sovereign Mary 'Queen of Scots', he would indeed be acceptable as their King. At the same time, the Pope, through his Nuncio in Madrid, was suggesting that Don John should receive the title of King of Tunisia ... in order, it has been suggested, to make him a fitter candidate for Queen Mary's hand in marriage. Don John, who had won reknown for robustly upholding Spanish territorial claims in North Africa (hence 'Tunisia') was the brother, although illegitimate, of King Philip II of Spain; and ...
Wozzat you say? The people of England would never accept a bastard as their King Consort ...? Really? Elizabeth Tudor held the English throne de facto for nearly half a century although she had been declared a bastard by her father Henry VIII ... the thing about bastards is, how you package them ...
Don John of Austria was, on October 7 1571, the heroic Victor at the Battle of Lepanto ... surely, one of the great decisive battles in world history. Yes ... the same Don John of Austria who is glorified in Chesterton's poem; the same Battle of Lepanto that secured for centuries the safety of the Mediterranean, its coasts and its islands, from Islamic incursion; the Battle still commemorated by the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary. The Battle which enabled the capture of those Turkish Battle Standards which were kept safe in Rome until ... er ...
... we'd better not go into that.
I wonder if English schoolboys are ever taught about Lepanto. (Or do they still have the twaddle about Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh rammed down their throats, together with British Values ... do they still learn about King Alfred Burning the Cakes rather than about the Carolingian Renaissance ...)
Don John died young, on 1 October 1578, sustained by the Holy See in his matrimonial hopes until his death: he was urged not to lose the chance of castigating quella rea femina, and at the same time acquiring so fine a realm for himself ... the Nuncio trusts finally to see the crown of England upon his highness's head, through his marriage with the Queen of Scots. In 1914, Martin Haile, writing a biography of Cardinal Allen, enumerated the charms and virtues of both Mary and John and concluded:
"Imagination may please itself to picture what the union of two such beings, each in their way incomparable, might have portended to the age and society in which they lived: and, at the same time how great was the overthrow of hopes built high upon the possibilities of that union."
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