24th July, 2025 in History, Society & Culture

The most overrated and underrated British kings and queens?

In Measuring Monarchy, Tim Hames proposes a new way to rank our Royals, and makes a case for applying the following five metrics – with entertaining results.

1. professional reputation
2. standing with the public
3. impact on the public purse
4. conduct of foreign policy
5. preparations for succession

Starting from 1066 with William the Conqueror (overrated), through to a postscript for Elizabeth II (good), he hurls a revisionist Molotov Cocktail into our historical thinking.

How Can You Measure Monarchy?

Measuring Monarchy is not … an endeavour which aspires to construct some sort of league table in which every monarch who fits in the frame of England to 1603 and England and Scotland from that date is listed. The aim instead is to establish some general but enduring rules for deciding on relative merit, then to offer a series of case studies of who appear to be underrated and overrated respectively, and then to draw some threads together in concluding what it is that the underrated have in common.

The task is not as taxing as it might seem to be anyway. Comparing William I (the Conqueror) (1066–87) with Stephen (1135–54) is not an impossible aim as Norman England (once the invaders had become a fully occupying force) did not change that dramatically between the dates concerned. Henry II (1154–89) was succeeded by Richard I or Lionheart (1189–99). It is not that hard to draw a comparison between Edward III (1327–77) and Henry V (1413–22), where there is not a chasm in their timespans. The monarchs Henry VII (1485–1509), Henry VIII (1509–47) and Elizabeth I (1558–1603) are Tudor family. William III (1689–1702) is followed by Anne (1702–14). William IV (1830–37), Victoria (1837–1901) and Edward VII (1901–10) come after one another. These fourteen kings and queens comprise those who are to be awarded either an ‘underrated’ or an ‘overrated’ designation.

The Ratings

The use of terms like ‘underrated’ and ‘overrated’ only makes sense if there is some degree of consensus about those who are either ‘accurately rated’ or ‘fairly rated’. To a perhaps rather surprising extent, this writer believes that most historical observers would not have that much difficulty determining who should be rated ‘good’, ‘average’, ‘poor’, ‘terrible’ or ‘not rateable’.

The Good

The ‘good’ (excluding, as will be the case uniformly here, the fourteen monarchs scheduled for a closer inspection) include Henry I, Edward I, Henry IV (a slightly edgy choice, some would assert) and (on balance) Edward IV. As will be outlined at the end of this book, Elizabeth II may well fit here too.

The Average

The ‘average’ (in chronological order) would include William II, James I (possibly at the top of this division), Charles II, George II (perhaps close to the relegation zone), George V and George VI.

The Poor

The ‘poor’ (in order of their reign) contains John, Henry III, Mary Tudor, George I (although it is a judgement call between the first two Hanoverians as to who is the less appealing), George III (it was not his fault that he was consumed by insanity, but a device should have been found for abdication in these conditions) and George IV. They tainted the monarchy to a degree but were not overthrown.

The Terrible

The ‘terrible’ were actually thrown out. They number Edward II (removed by his wife, her lover and his own heir), Richard II (deposed by Henry IV), Henry VI (ejected by Edward IV), Richard III (although he has his defenders, who would not be pleased to see him placed in this company), Charles I (not a smart king even if the royalists were ‘wrong but romantic’) and his son James II (forced to flee).

The Remainder

There is then a small set of kings and queens who for diverse reasons are hard to categorise at all. Edward V disappeared from the Tower of London, assumed murdered as a child. Edward VI was a boy king under the control of first the Duke of Somerset, then the Duke of Northumberland. Mary II, in theory the joint monarch with her husband William III, was plainly the inferior party in that contract and died after just over five years on the throne. Edward VIII abdicated within a year so that he could marry Wallis Simpson (although there is a plausible lobby that would mark him down as ‘terrible’ for that decision and his liaisons with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis). Charles III is too new to judge.

The Evaluation Here

The central premise of this book is that a series of monarchs whom many would automatically list as ‘good’, even ‘great’, should not have that status and that a series of other figures (some of whom are well known but have been burdened by an unfair assessment) should be elevated from an ‘average’ ranking, which most of them would conventionally have, and now be evaluated as ‘good’ rulers.

There is, nonetheless, one final constraint that should be conceded at the outset of the operation. It is surely unavoidable even if strenuous efforts are made to minimise it. It cannot be obliterated.

It is subjectivity. Even if there were to be a universal consensus that the five measures which are about to be outlined are indeed the ideal means by which monarchs should be evaluated (and it would be a miracle on the scale of the loaves and the fishes if that were to come to pass), then that still leaves an immense amount to disagree about in how those measures should be utilised. At the extremes, there are occasions where it is absolutely clear whether a monarch did or did not leave the public finances in a better or worse state than they inherited, or engaged in wars which either did or did not make England, or England and Scotland, a bigger player on the European (later global) stage and whether the succession which would follow their deaths would be smooth or contested.

There are other instances, though, when it is not as clear-cut how to validate a verdict. There may be a case that the strength or weakness of the coffers was not a direct reflection on the monarch of the day, or that their options in the exercise of foreign policy were either wider or narrower, or that the succession question arose in circumstances which it was unreasonable for them to have expected.

There will doubtless be observers of certain figures, whom I believe can be dispassionately assigned as ‘underrated’ or ‘overrated’, who will examine the same acts or events in history and come to an entirely different conclusion as to how they should be interpreted. Subjectivity is destined never to be removed from historical deliberation altogether. In truth, it is the blood flowing in its veins.

Without an element of structure, and one which is not too open-ended or ambiguous, the aspiration to measure monarchy is lost before it has even started in earnest. We need some rules, or we have little chance of reaching findings, even if they will still prompt dissent thereafter. What are set out now are the five measures by which, it will be asserted here, we can examine the record of monarchs not only in terms of what their contemporaries might have thought, but more widely.

Extracted from Measuring Monarchy by Tim Hames