Bastard Prince Read online

  England’s one experiment with a ruling queen was not an experience anyone was eager to repeat. At his death in 1135 King Henry I’s only legitimate issue was his daughter, Matilda.7 During his lifetime Henry I had made his barons swear to accept her as the heir to his kingdom, but his authority could not reach beyond the grave. After his death the barons chose her cousin, Stephen, Count of Boulogne, as a more acceptable male alternative. This, ultimately, plunged England into nine years of civil war, which decimated the land. When Stephen was imprisoned for seven months in 1141, Matilda briefly occupied the throne. It was not exactly a precedent. Stephen remained the anointed king and Matilda’s ‘extremely arrogant demeanor, instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex’ helped ensure she was not crowned queen. Matilda eventually secured a victory of sorts when Stephen recognised her son Henry as his heir, but she never ruled as queen of England as her father had intended.

  All things being equal, Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, had had the better claim to the crown in 1485. However, such things were not equal. A king needed to be able to defend his crown, if need be, on the field of battle. It was quite possible that England might prefer to see a member of the peerage take the throne, rather than accept Mary as their queen. In 1519 the Venetian ambassador had seen nothing wrong in speculating on the chances of the Dukes of Suffolk, Norfolk or Buckingham, ruling the kingdom if Henry died without a legitimate son to succeed him. Shortly afterwards Henry himself wrote in great secrecy to Wolsey, requiring him to ‘make good watch’ on a number of the nobility. If this letter is rather too ‘cloak and dagger’ to be absolutely sure that Henry’s concerns centred on the succession, the fate of one of those named, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, certainly seems to indicate that the king was increasingly anxious about the future of his dynasty.

  At this time there were only three dukes in England. Two of them had been Henry’s own creations. Charles Brandon was created Duke of Suffolk in 1514 for his part in the French War. He had begun his career as a mere esquire, owing everything he was now to Henry VIII, ‘my sovereign lord and master who has brought me up out of nothing’. Since men had been amazed at his elevation to the peerage, they would perhaps have been reluctant to accept him as their king. His marriage to Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, in 1515, had brought him closer to the throne, but it could not overcome the disability of his birth. Mary continued to be known as ‘The French Queen’ by right of her first husband King Louis XII of France. As the contemporary inscription on their portrait openly acknowledged ‘cloth of gold’ (Mary) outranked ‘cloth of frieze’ (Brandon). Given his relatively humble origins the duke was perhaps fortunate he was not cast as canvas.

  As part of the same ceremony in 1514, Thomas Howard, with rather more justice, had become Duke of Norfolk, in recognition for his victory at the Battle of Flodden. He had spent much of his adult life trying to recover the dukedom that had been bestowed on his father by Richard III in 1483. Unfortunately, the family had enjoyed the title for just two years before it was forfeited for fighting on the losing side at Bosworth in 1485. Thomas Howard had struggled to restore his family to their former glory for twenty-nine years. Despite the apparent splendour with which his son, also Thomas Howard, would bear the title, when he succeeded to the dukedom on his father’s death in 1524, the house of Howard was built on fairly fragile foundations.

  However, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham was a rather different proposition. His family had been Dukes of Buckingham for four generations. His father had been executed by Richard III, for a rebellion that may have more to do with his own ambition than his support for the Tudors.8 As the nephew of King Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and a direct descendant of King Edward III, Buckingham could boast an impressive royal pedigree. He was also a major landowner in his own right, with an impressive array of magnificent castles and an army of retainers. Perhaps most worryingly, he was the epitome of an over-mighty subject, with sufficient pride and ambition to give any monarch pause for thought.

  Certainly, Buckingham was killed as much for what he might do as for what he had actually done. The charges levied against him in May 1521 were treasonous. Chief among them was the allegation that he had spoken of how he would kill the king. It was also alleged that he had proclaimed the death of Henry’s infant son to be God’s vengeance, that he had dabbled in prophecies that Henry would never have a male heir and that, instead, he himself would become king.9 If he had said and done what he is claimed to have said and done, then Buckingham deserved to die. If his downfall was a plot, perhaps led by Wolsey to remove a powerful rival, then Buckingham’s actions must have been sufficient to give colour to the charges. In the political climate of the time such behaviour was more than foolish, it was fatal.

  Buckingham’s conviction sealed his fate and his execution sent a chilling message through the ranks of the peerage. Significantly, from June 1525 the most senior noble in England was not Norfolk or Suffolk. The highest-ranking member of the peerage was Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset whose elevation to the peerage had been such a spectacular affair. The heralds’ reports all testify to the splendour and gravity of the occasion. The ceremonies were followed by ‘great feasts and disguisings’ as Henry VIII celebrated his son’s honours with customary extravagance. While we cannot be sure whether Elizabeth, now Lady Tailbois, returned to the court to witness the event, her husband was almost certainly able to give her an eyewitness account.10

  As arrangements for Richmond’s new dignity had taken shape, Elizabeth and Gilbert had been honoured with a spate of further grants. In April 1525 Gilbert was made bailiff and keeper of Tattershall in Lincolnshire, now part of Richmond’s lands. His elevation to a knighthood also seems to be associated with his step-son’s new rank, as he now appeared as Sir Gilbert Tailbois for the first time. However, the exact significance behind all this display was more elusive. Both contemporary and subsequent observers have been forced to speculate on Henry’s motives for raising his bastard son to such unprecedented heights.

  Henry may have been prompted into action by a piece of good fortune. On 14 February 1525, Charles V had inflicted a shattering defeat on Francis I at Pavia. The French forces were decimated and many of their foremost military leaders were killed. To Henry’s great joy, one of the dead was the English exile, Richard de la Pole, which effectively extinguished any threat that family still represented to the security of the Tudor dynasty. While Richard was still at large and far from reconciled to the Tudors’ occupation of the throne, the policy of advancing his illegitimate son to almost regal honours might have seemed too dangerous a gauntlet to throw in the face of a disgruntled, rival claimant. At the very least, Henry could now be reassured that that particular danger was laid to rest.

  It has also been argued that Richmond’s elevation was born more out of pique than policy.11 During the battle at Pavia Francis I had been taken prisoner and his realm was now vulnerable to invasion. Henry was overjoyed. ‘Now is the time for the Emperor and myself to devise the means of getting full satisfaction from France’, he declared. His dream of regaining England’s ancient rights across the Channel, and more besides, at last seemed within his grasp. England prepared to reap the spoils of war. Forces were to be mustered, armaments to be made ready and money to be raised for the enterprise, from the so-called Amicable Grant. Whatever the political realities of the situation, and Henry was objective enough to arm his ambassadors with a sliding scale of demands, he clearly believed that the French throne could be his for the taking.

  Almost at once the King of England was being warned that Charles intended ‘little or nothing to your commodity, profit, or benefit’ and so it proved. More concerned with his own problems elsewhere, than indulging Henry’s dreams of European expansion, Charles V agreed terms for peace in the Treaty of Madrid. Whatever Henry had expected, it was not that.

  Not for the first time the King of England’s ambitions were thwarted by Ka
therine’s family. Like Ferdinand of Aragon before him, her nephew Charles V refused to co-operate in Henry’s grandiose designs. The king was bitterly disappointed and Richmond’s elevation has been seen as a deliberate snub to the queen and the Spanish alliance that she represented. Certainly, the ceremony did nothing to spare Katherine’s feelings. To make some honourable provision for a natural son was normal and expected. To parade him around the court, almost as if he was a legitimate prince, would have been a trial to the most patient of wives. For Katherine, who knew she had failed in her most basic duty, the implicit rebuke must have been keenly felt.

  Not only was there anxiety about the possible implications for her beloved daughter, Mary, but also Katherine’s own pride and honour were at stake. In a private letter, one of the Venetian observers wrote:

  It seems that the Queen resents the Earldom and Dukedom conferred on the king’s natural son and remains dissatisfied, at the instigation it is said of three of her Spanish ladies her chief counsellors, so the king has dismissed them the court, a strong measure, but the Queen was obliged to submit and have patience.12

  Henry may have been angry enough not to care whether he upset and embarrassed his wife and through her therefore exact some small revenge on the real target of his wrath, Charles V. However, the significant financial outlay involved in Richmond’s elevation, at over £4,000 per annum, is evidence the king also had a far more serious purpose in mind than this transient satisfaction.

  It might also appear that Henry was pushed into honouring his son by Charles V’s decision, on 7 June 1525, to break off his engagement to Princess Mary. The couple had been betrothed since 1522 and their marriage could have offset many of the dangers of a female ruler. If Mary could marry and produce a son before Henry died, England’s future would be far more secure. Even without this obvious benefit, Charles V was a proven soldier and leader who could support her peaceful succession and help her to rule. If the king had to be a foreigner, a Hapsburg was perhaps rather more acceptable to the English people than either a Valois or a Stuart. If Mary’s marriage was a compromise from the ideal solution of a legitimate prince, then at least Henry could console himself with the thought that his grandson would one day rule over an immense empire.

  Now Charles V demanded that the nine-year-old Mary should leave England at once to be brought up among her future subjects. Also her dowry should follow within four months. The terms were unreasonable and intended to be rejected. Charles was already well advanced with his own plans to marry Isabella, Infanta of Portugal and needed Henry to release him from his obligation to Mary. Yet the claim that Richmond’s elevation was set in hand ‘immediately after the news reached England that Charles meant to break his engagement’,13 rests on two assumptions. Firstly that Henry had not intended to raise Richmond to such high honour prior to the breaking of this news and secondly, that the king had come to rely on the union between Charles V and Mary as being the best means of securing her, and England’s, future.

  In fact, whatever Katherine might have hoped, there is nothing to suggest that Henry viewed this match as anything other than another diplomatic alliance. In 1518, the two-year-old princess had already been engaged to the infant Dauphin of France and no one was surprised when that betrothal did not endure until the children were adults. In the treaty it had been acknowledged that this betrothal would ‘not prevent the Emperor from marrying any woman of lawful age before our daughter comes to mature years’. It had always been unlikely that Charles V, who was already twenty-five and eager for an heir of his own, would wait for Mary to grow up.14

  Also, Charles’s conduct towards his mother, as Queen of Castile, ought to have given Henry pause for thought. Juana had succeeded as Queen as Castile after her mother’s death in 1504. When Charles V assumed the title of King of Castile from 1516, he did so in complete disregard of his mother’s prior claim. Even if she was eventually deserving of the epitaph ‘Juana the mad’, and her virtual solitary confinement at Tordesillas Castle can only have contributed to her decline, legally Charles should have continued to rule as regent in her name. Such conduct did not speak well of his attitude towards the rights of ruling queens.

  Certainly, Mary’s betrothal had not stopped Henry negotiating for her possible marriage to James V of Scotland in 1524. Nor did it prevent him from considering the offer of a French match in March 1525. The manner in which Charles repudiated the betrothal was hardly designed to mollify the king, but his action cannot have been entirely unexpected.

  In any case, the plans for Richmond’s elevation seem to have begun well in advance of this particular disappointment. The first indication of Fitzroy’s impending honours is generally taken from an undated note of Wolsey’s to the king, usually assigned to May 1525:

  Your grace shall also receive by this present bearer, such arms as your highness hath devised . . . for your entirely beloved son, the Lord Henry Fitzroy.15

  These included two heraldic beasts: a white lion representing the dukedom of Richmond and a silver yale symbolising the dukedom of Somerset. An escutcheon in the centre completed the honours with its chief design a castle and two bucks’ heads for the earldom of Nottingham. Significantly, the arms of France and England, as borne by the king, were crossed with a ‘baton sinister argent’ a silver band which proclaimed his illegitimacy to the world. His motto ‘Duty binds me’ stressed his obligation to Henry VIII – his king and father.

  A list of the ‘wardrobe stuff appointed for my Lord Henry’ gives some indication of the scale of these plans. There were hangings for six chambers, a closet, a chapel and a hall. The various furnishings included twenty-five different carpets and twenty-one assorted beds, each with their own pillows, sheets and counterpanes. Richmond’s bed, with its canopy and a scarlet counterpane, was decidedly grand.16 When the necessities for his household were finally assembled it would require a chariot and seven horse-draughts to transport them. Although the young duke’s financial accounts do not begin until 12 June 1525 (just prior to the ceremony at Bridewell), all these goods and the two hundred and forty-five people thought necessary to attend upon a six-year-old duke could not have been brought together in a few short weeks.

  At least one member of Richmond’s household seems to have had more notice than this of his new appointment. If the experience of the duke’s tutor, John Palsgrave, is in any way representative, then plans for the household were already in the pipeline by April 1525. Palsgrave apparently owed his selection to the influence of Sir Richard Wingfield, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. On this basis the arrangements must have been made before 18 April 1525, because on that date Wingfield sailed from England to Spain, where he died in July 1525 without returning to England.17 It is unlikely that he would have been able to ensure that Palsgrave was chosen to bring the king’s son up ‘in virtue and learning’ as the tutor would claim, if the composition of Richmond’s household was not already well in hand before his departure, especially as Wolsey seems to have had his own candidate waiting in the wings, in the shape of Dr Richard Croke.

  In fact, the timing of Richmond’s elevation was probably not a knee-jerk reaction to the events of spring 1525. The simplest reason for the date chosen is almost invariably overlooked. All the accounts, with the exception of the Venetian Lorenzo Orio’s wildly inaccurate report, agree that Richmond was six years old on 18 June 1525. A child’s sixth birthday was an important milestone, marking the end of infancy and the beginning of adult life. Writing in his journal in 1547, King Edward VI would recall when he made the transition out of the nursery, being

  brought up [un]till he came to six years old among the women. At the sixth year of his age he was brought up in learning by Dr [Richard] Cox . . . and John Clerke . . . Master of Arts.18

  At six, the dangers of death in infancy were past and the child was of an age when a father needed to address the care and education of his son. While Fitzroy had struggled through the perils of the first few years of life, Henry had had reason to be ca
utious: there might not be any future prospects. Since the date of the ceremony coincides so exactly with the most likely date for Elizabeth Blount’s delivery, it does seem reasonable to assume that 18 June 1525 was in fact Richmond’s sixth birthday. Now the child was old enough to take his place in the wider world Henry had an obligation to ensure his son was adequately cared for.

  Admittedly, obligation could easily have been satisfied with significantly less than the honours and income that Henry heaped upon his son. However, perhaps Henry’s honour could not. Putting aside for a moment the political implications of Richmond’s elevation, this was Henry’s ‘worldly jewel’, whom he ‘loved like his own soul’ and these feelings alone were surely sufficient to ensure that his son would be equal to no mere subject.

  His elevation to the peerage was not the first honour Henry VIII had bestowed on his son. The child had already been elected into the Order of the Garter. Membership of this prestigious and ancient order of knighthood was a marked note of favour. Numbers were strictly limited to the king and twenty-five members and vacancies only occurred through death or dishonour. Despite the polite fiction of elections, the king’s wishes dominated the choice of candidates.

  According to one account, Richmond’s election into the Order may have taken place as early as 23 April 1525.19 Although according to the register of the Order it occurred on 7 June 1525, when all the knights present, not surprisingly, nominated the Lord Henry Fitzroy. At some point, the child must also have been knighted, since the discovery that Lord Roos had not been knighted had caused no small problem when he was elected into the Order. Fitzroy was duly nominated to the place formerly occupied by the Duke of Norfolk, who was moved down to make room for him. This placed him second only to actual royalty (namely, the king, Charles V and Francis I).