Bastard Prince Read online

  How far Elizabeth was allowed to participate in her child’s upbringing is less clear. John Palsgrave’s eagerness to associate her with his difficulties in teaching the child ‘whereof yourself was as guilty in any of them as I was’ certainly seems to suggest that she had some input.36 More flatteringly, he also believed that her intervention would carry some weight and invited her to come and see things for herself. She certainly had contact with her son. Two of her brothers, George and Henry Blount would find places in their nephew’s household. An inventory of the child’s goods taken in 1531 records her gift to him of ‘a doublet of white satin’ and ‘two horses, colour bay, one ambling and the other trotting’. Her younger son, George Tailbois, would later receive a good deal of his half-brother’s cast-off wardrobe.37

  What is certain is that Elizabeth was no Alice Perrers38 to interfere with the political policy of her king, nor did she enjoy the pseudo-wife status of Charles II’s long-term mistress Barbara Villiers. Decisions about Fitzroy’s future would not be hers to make. Her influence in matters of patronage was limited. The occasional grants that she received appear to have been sporadic gestures on Henry’s part rather than an orchestrated policy of preferment. Prior to her marriage there is no record of any grants at all. She may have received personal gifts of jewels or money, but there were none of the marked instances of favour towards her family which charted Henry’s relationship with Mary Boleyn, culminating in Sir Thomas Boleyn’s creation as Viscount Rochford in 1525.39

  The Blounts of Kinlet do not seem to have accrued any particular benefit from their daughter’s intimate association with the king. That her grandfather Sir Thomas Blount was Sheriff of Shropshire in 1518 was perhaps not coincidence, but nor was it unusual. Her father John Blount fared little better. The grants in February 1519 of the keepership of Cleobury Park and joint stewardship (with Sir Thomas) of Bewdley and Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, would not have been seen as remarkable. Far from securing entry to the peerage, he was not even knighted until 1529 and this probably had more to do with the politics of the Reformation Parliament than any gratitude on Henry’s part. Yet Henry could not have rewarded Mary Boleyn, who was already married, as he had Elizabeth, by providing an excellent match. Since Mary seems to have accrued little personal benefit from her liaison, Elizabeth had good reason to feel she had struck the better deal.

  Gilbert Tailbois could be forgiven for thinking that his father’s indisposition was his good fortune. When parliament opened in June 1529 Gilbert was called to take his place as Baron Tailbois of Kyme, even though his enfeebled father was still alive. However, the question of his landed inheritance was rather more complex. A popular theme in Henry VIII’s courtship of Elizabeth Blount is the king’s audacity in proclaiming his gratitude to his mistress by means of lands and rewards bestowed openly in an Act of Parliament. In fact the statute is couched diplomatically as the petition of Sir George and Gilbert, regarding their ‘great love and affection’ towards Elizabeth. Only careful reading and knowledge of the truth reveals the king’s hand in the matter:

  by which marriage aswell the said Sir George Tailbois Knight, as the said Gilbert Tailbois have received not only great sums of money, but also many benefits to their right much comfort.40

  The act allowed Elizabeth to hold Tailbois lands in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Somerset for the term of her life. The package included lands to the value of £200 and a further annuity of £40. In fact, she may have done even better. In June 1528 Gilbert’s mother protested at being required to pay over another £100 in lands and rents and an annuity of £40, pointing out that the lands worth over £342 that Gilbert and Elizabeth already enjoyed were more than she and her husband were left with to provide for all their children.

  It has to be said that Henry was not required to dig deep into his own pockets. These lands were part of those possessions which Gilbert stood to inherit as his patrimony. Nonetheless, in terms of reward, marriage to a baron was an auspicious match for Elizabeth. When her brother George married Constance Talbot, the daughter of Sir John Talbot of Grafton and his wife Margaret, the indenture dated 30 March 1533 allowed Constance a jointure of £40 out of lands in Staffordshire. The wedding was to be held at Kinlet and ‘the cost and expense thereof as in meat and drink’ to be borne by the Blounts. In return Sir John Talbot paid 525 marks for the marriage. The couple stood to inherit the entire parcel of Blount/Peshall lands in Shropshire, Staffordshire and elsewhere, save only lands to the yearly value of £20 each which were earmarked for George’s younger brothers, William and Henry.41 As the son and heir, George would normally be expected to have made the best marriage his family could afford. Since Talbot was a cousin of the Earl of Shrewsbury it was no mean match, but it did not equate with the wealth and status Elizabeth now enjoyed.

  Significantly, Elizabeth’s marriage would be one of the charges levied against Wolsey’s governance in 1528. It was claimed that providing her with such a good match was a means to ‘encourage the young gentlewomen of the realm to be our concubines’. The article was just one of a number of broad-ranging and potentially damaging accusations against Wolsey intended to secure his downfall.42 Whatever the wider political import of the charges, it seems clear that Elizabeth made a far better match than she had a right to expect. Of her four sisters, only one, Albora, was still unmarried by 1540. Her older sister, Anne, married Richard Lacon, the heir of Sir Thomas Lacon of Shropshire; their family’s interests remained purely provincial. Richard Lacon was John Blount’s petty captain in the French campaign of 1513 and served as sheriff of the county in 1539. In comparison, Elizabeth had moved far from the geographical and social spheres into which she was born.

  If Gilbert felt he was marrying beneath him, the union had other benefits. He wed Elizabeth secure in the knowledge that she was capable of bearing him sons and the legal fiction of the Act of Parliament enabled him to enjoy much of his inheritance during his father’s lifetime. Since the crown need not have surrendered control of his estates until Sir George died in September 1538, Gilbert stood to benefit from the arrangement at least as much as his new bride.

  In the climate of 1519 Elizabeth Blount had reason to feel satisfied with her lot. The idea that she might have seduced the king into repudiating his wife and making her Queen of England, particularly before she took him to her bed, would have been seen as preposterous. The possibility that the queen could be put aside in order to legitimate Henry Fitzroy by their subsequent marriage, only slightly less so. It is true that the five-year age gap which had seemed so inconsequential in 1509 had now started to show. Henry pursued his revels with his customary enthusiasm, but the queen withdrew early. The king was still considered ‘extremely handsome’, however, Katherine was, at best, considered ‘rather ugly than otherwise’. In 1518 her sixth pregnancy had ended in yet another failure and who knew how many more chances there would be? Yet few would have seen Elizabeth as a suitable replacement. However, Henry had reacted to Fitzroy’s arrival with renewed hope that he and his queen would have a legitimate son. As long as that hope or expectation remained, Katherine’s position was unassailable.

  In the meantime, Henry’s lack of male issue endowed his bastard son with a level of importance that he might otherwise have lacked. Henry Fitzroy could claim a unique importance in the history of English royal bastards. Unlike King Henry I, his father did not have twenty other illegitimate sons to provide for. Even more significantly, neither was there a brood of legitimate offspring to overshadow him. After ten years of marriage Henry VIII could boast only a single daughter. Equally significantly, as the only surviving son of an only son, he was not overendowed with other male relatives who might be called upon to share the burden of government in the king’s name. The exact status allowed to the child would depend on what honours his father chose to bestow, although necessity as much as policy demanded that Fitzroy should have a more prominent part in affairs of state than was usual with bastard issue. Henry would need to produce a whole brood of
sons before that importance was seriously affected. In contrast, it would take a single legitimate prince to secure the succession. Yet, as time passed and Fitzroy remained the king’s only living son, it was perhaps inevitable that the ready-made heir increasingly attracted the attention of onlookers.

  2

  Heir Apparent

  On the morning of 18 June 1525, six-year-old Lord Henry Fitzroy travelled by barge from Wolsey’s mansion of Durham Place, near Charing Cross, down the River Thames, to the royal palace of Bridewell. In his company were a host of knights, squires and other gentlemen. At 9 a.m. his barge pulled up to the watergate and his party made their way through the palace to the king’s lodgings, on the south side of the second floor. The royal apartments, which Henry had newly refurbished just two years earlier, included two great vaulted chambers running the length of the building. More like a church nave than a domestic residence, they stood two floors high with large windows set in either side.1 As Fitzroy entered the royal apartments, preparations for the day’s events were already well in hand.

  The rooms were decorated with rich hangings of gold and silk. At the end of the far chamber a canopy of estate ‘of rich cloth of gold of tissue’ was set over a matching chair, whose gold pommels glittered in the morning light. Trumpeters were waiting to take up their position in the bay window at the far end. The chamber would have been filling up with those who had come to witness this grand event. For the moment, Fitzroy was led through the chambers to an ante-room, where he could rest and be made ready for his part in the proceedings. Outside, the king and his nobility prepared to take their place under the cloth of estate.

  The occasion was well attended by the court. At the right hand of the king stood Richmond’s godfather, Thomas Wolsey. Beside him were numerous bishops, abbots and prelates. On Henry’s left were the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Suffolk and standing behind them numerous earls, lords, knights and esquires. By now, the crowd of onlookers packed the chamber. Before the ceremonies could begin the gentlemen ushers were forced to clear a path so ‘that three men might go armin-arm’. At last, everything was ready. At a signal from the king, there was a fanfare of trumpets and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, entered the chamber, carrying a sword before him. He was followed by the eight heralds of the College of Arms, with the Garter herald bearing a patent and the Somerset herald wearing a newly designed coat-of-arms. Finally, flanked by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, Henry Fitzroy entered, dressed in the robes of an earl.2

  The feelings of the assembled nobles can only be wondered at, as the diminutive lord came to kneel before his father. As Henry VIII raised his son to his feet, the voice of Thomas More echoed about the chamber, as he read the patent, which created the Lord Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Nottingham:

  and when it came to the words ‘Gladdii Cuituram’ then the young Lord kneeled down and the kings grace put the girdle about the neck of the young Lord the sword hanging bendwise over the breast of him when the patent was read the king took it to the said Earl and this Earl of Nottingham accompanied as before entered into the said Gallery.3

  Not since the twelfth century, when Henry II had made William Longsword Earl of Salisbury, had a King of England raised his illegitimate son to the peerage.4 Even now, the ceremony was far from complete. Before the assembled nobles and onlookers could catch their breath, the newly created Earl of Nottingham re-entered the chamber.

  This time his attire and the badges of office borne before him, were those of a duke. The Earl of Northumberland carried the robes. Behind him came Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, carrying the sword, the Earl of Arundel, carrying the cap of estate with a circlet and the Earl of Oxford with a rod of gold. The only two existing dukes in England, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk walked on either side of the child. Once again he came to kneel before his father. As the patent was read he was invested with the trappings of a duke. This time, when he rose to his feet, he was Duke of Richmond and Somerset.

  To be a duke was a significant honour. It was it the highest rank of the peerage and the office, originally devised by King Edward III for his son, Edward the Black Prince to be Duke of Cornwall, had retained its royal aura. The former Lord Henry Fitzroy was subsequently referred to in all formal correspondence as the ‘right high and noble prince Henry . . . Duke of Richmond and Somerset’. As if to compound this sense of Royal dignity and endow the child with as much respectability as possible, Henry VIII had granted his son the unprecedented honour of a double dukedom. While he is commonly referred to as Richmond, some pains were taken to see that he bore both titles with equal weight. The bulk of his lands came from possessions which had formerly been held by Margaret Beaufort, the king’s grandmother, as Countess of Richmond. These included estates which had been the rightful inheritance of King Henry VII when he was Earl of Richmond, and lands which had belonged to Margaret’s father, John Beaufort, when he held the title Duke of Somerset.

  Indeed, for all of those who strained to catch a glimpse of the new duke in the chamber at Bridewell, Henry’s use of the Somerset title would have struck a particular chord. It was widely known that John Beaufort, created Earl of Somerset in 1397, had been a royal bastard, who was subsequently legitimated. John Beaufort and his siblings were the children of Edward III’s son John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford. The affair took place during his second marriage. After Katherine had borne him four children, Gaunt’s wife died and they were free to marry. However, due to the complexities of the affair, not least that the children had been conceived in adultery, they were not automatically legitimated. Instead, Gaunt and Katherine applied to the Pope for a special dispensation, which being granted was confirmed in England by Act of Parliament by Richard II. The Beauforts were henceforth to be considered legitimate ‘as fully, freely and lawfully as if [they] were born in lawful wedlock’.5

  The church at Corfe Castle, a long-time Beaufort residence and now part of Richmond’s holdings, proclaimed for all the world to see this significant change in the family’s status:

  The coats-of-arms at the side of the north doorway reflected through heraldry the importance of the family’s legitimization. On the left the shield lay on its side, indicating a bastard line, whilst on the right it was placed upright.6

  Few of those present can have been ignorant of this particular piece of English history. Seeing Henry’s evident pride and affection in his sturdy little son, many of those who witnessed Richmond’s elevation must have wondered if this was what the king had in mind.

  Although some might remember that the Beauforts had been excluded from the line of succession, others might remind them that this had not originally been the case. Richard II had made no such stipulation when he had confirmed his cousin’s legitimacy. Only when John of Gaunt’s eldest son (by his first wife Blanche), Henry Bolingbroke, seized the throne as King Henry IV, did he look nervously to his half-brothers and sister. The Beauforts had done well for themselves and his own claim to the throne was not above reproach. Henry IV confirmed their legitimate status, but with the significant proviso that it was ‘excepting the royal dignity’. Henry IV had good reason for his actions. Despite the legal fiction of their legitimacy, the stigma of illegitimacy was not erased from people’s minds. Most importantly, Henry had four perfectly good sons of his own and had no need to complicate matters further.

  Henry VIII was not so fortunate. In June 1525 Henry VIII’s only legitimate child was his nine-year-old daughter, Mary. Katherine was now almost forty years old and her last pregnancy had been in 1518. With determined optimism, Henry had continued to sleep with her for several years without any sign of conception, before reluctantly conceding she was past the age of child bearing. Gradually, the whole country came to agree with the Venetian ambassador that Katherine was ‘past that age in which women most commonly were wont to be fruitful’. Only once Henry ceased having sexual relations with her, and estimates for this begin in 1524, w
as he forced to acknowledge that she would never give him a male heir. After sixteen years of marriage and at least six pregnancies, the hopes for the Tudor dynasty rested solely on the shoulders of one small girl.

  In the spring of 1524, Henry VIII had organised one of the lavish tournaments that were almost a weekly occurrence at court. On this occasion he intended to show off his new suit of armour ‘made of his own device and fashion’. Obviously the new design caused quite a stir. Henry was able to set off against his opponent, Charles Brandon, before he, or any of his attendants, realised he had not closed the visor on his helmet. The horrified crowd called out the danger, but it was too late. Brandon’s spear shattered in the king’s unprotected face. As the king fell to the ground the fate of England hung in the balance, yet Henry had a miraculous escape. Shaking off the splinters of wood, he assured his panic-stricken subjects that he was indeed alive, first by walking about and then by remounting his horse and competing six more times ‘by which all men might perceive he had no hurt’. It was a very public reminder that the king, whatever he might wish to believe, was not immortal. Given Henry’s love of dangerous sports, the next time England might not be so fortunate.

  Unlike France where the law prevented the accession of a daughter, there was no reason why Mary could not reign as Queen of England, except that prevailing opinion was firmly against it. The motto of Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour – ‘bound to obey and serve’ – neatly summed up the perceived role of Tudor women. They were the weaker sex, physically less able, mentally inferior and morally suspect. They were subject to the authority of their husbands and fathers. They were not designed to rule. The admirable example of women like Margaret of Savoy, who acted as regent for the Emperor Charles V in the Netherlands, or the formidable career of Mary’s own grandmother, Isabella, who ruled as Queen of Castile in Spain, did nothing to reassure. Even more worrying was the complex issue of female inheritance. After she married, a woman’s lands and possessions belonged to her husband and no one could agree exactly how this would work if part of that inheritance were a kingdom. The English looked nervously to the example of other small countries, like Burgundy, whose independence had been lost when they had been left in the hands of a woman.