Royal Regencies in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, 1400–1700

“Regent” is a convenient general term to describe persons temporarily replacing the official sovereign of a major state who was either too young to govern, physically absent for a lengthy period, or undeniably insane. Such surrogate rulers might serve anywhere from a few months to more than twenty years, and their powers varied with the circumstances for appointing them; adult princes living abroad tried to retain as much personal authority as possible. In Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, such representatives were generally close relatives of the sovereign, uncles or mothers being the most common choices. Male regents might make themselves sovereigns, usually through violence; this occurred four times between 1483 and 1683 in states as different as England and Russia (a fifth regent married his employer’s daughter). Or they might suffer violence themselves; three of Scotland’s four regents were either murdered or beheaded between 1570 and 1581. Entrusting regencies to women prevented both usurpation and violence, and Renaissance Europe saw an increasing acceptance of women as suitable regents, particularly in France—Europe’s only major kingdom that completely prohibited female succession. While both traditional types of female regents—mothers of underage boys and wives of absent kings—continued to serve in this capacity, one also finds aunts, sisters, daughters, and even a grandmother governing major states in western Europe by the time John Knox published his notorious First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. However, there were limits to accepting women as regents. No wife or female kin ever became the official substitute for a mentally incapacitated ruler, and female regents seem rare throughout northern and eastern Europe; Knox’s Scotland had many extremely long royal minorities, but no female regents before 1513 or after 1560.