Lynsey Wood

My PhD research is concerned with female succession during the Tudor period and the methods by which female heirs presented themselves or were presented by others as viable candidates for the throne rather than as ruling queens. Over the course of my research I hope to trace the development of changing attitudes to female dynastic succession during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as the extent to which female heirs were able to exercise their own prerogative when defining and negotiating an image for themselves. As well as studying court rolls, parliamentary papers, royal proclamations, chronicles, correspondence, popular ballads and legal tracts in both Latin and English, I shall also be investigating contemporary portraiture of these female heirs and where possible reconstructing their provenance from the sixteenth century up until the present day.