Arthur Tudor had only lived a little way into the sixteenth century. He had too brief a glimpse to get a sense of the new world that waited on the horizon. His humanist education had turned him from the French romances and Burgundian high culture of the Yorkists towards the scholarship of ancient Greece and Rome. Walking the splendid courtyards and corridors at Richmond Palace, he would have sensed the stirrings of the Renaissance, in the Italian carpets and tapestries, and the conversations of the scholars under the patronage of his grandmother. It was during the highlight of his young life, the wedding pageants of November 1501, that these influences came together, full of promise for the new century and his future reign. Yet that bud of cultural promise, which Arthur never lived to see bloom, was to come to life under the reign of his brother, in an unparalleled extravagance of riches and culture. On the jousting field, in court masques, at the Field of Cloth of Gold, and in his personal and religious iconoclasm, it was Henry VIII who stole the limelight that Arthur had vacated, who shaped a new identity for England, who was responsible for both meeting, and creating, the challenges of the sixteenth century. Primarily for Henry, this was about perpetuating his dynasty.
After fifteen years of marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry had to accept that his wife would never bear him the legitimate son he so desperately desired. Despite six pregnancies, stretching over nine years, the couple had produced only one surviving daughter, Princess Mary, born in 1516. What had begun as a devoted pairing, with strong physical attraction and compatibility, had been eroded by the pressure of miscarriage and infant death, so that the previously insignificant six-year age gap between the couple had become divisive. In 1525, the year that Catherine turned 40 and went through the menopause, Henry was still an energetic 34, fond of dancing, hunting and jousting, and able to father more heirs. As he investigated chapters of the Bible which suggested that marriage to a dead brother’s wife would prove childless, Henry became ever more convinced that he had displeased God. Catherine had not given him a boy, so, he concluded, his marriage to her must be invalid. After all, Henry had already proved himself capable of fathering sons elsewhere. In 1525, he began to consider handing over his inheritance to his 6-year-old son, Henry Fitzroy, elevating him to an unprecedented position of influence in the Tudor court. The only problem, of course, was that Fitzroy was illegitimate.
Fitzroy was the result of a liaison Henry had with one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies in waiting. Elizabeth, or Bessie, Blount had been born around 1500 at Kinlet, in Shropshire, into a family that had affiliations with the household of Prince Arthur at Ludlow. It is highly likely that the Blounts visited the Prince and Princess of Wales there during their brief marriage, or that Arthur and Catherine paid them a visit when they were staying nearby at Tickenhill. It was common practice for young men and women of high rank to be placed in an aristocratic household, and Bessie’s relatives drew on their connections to place her in the most lucrative of positions, under the protection of the queen herself. She was not the only young woman there, as a Mrs Stoner had been designated the ‘mother of the maids’ to oversee their conduct and training. In May 1513, she received her first year’s wages, 100s, suggesting that she had formally entered court life at the age of 12.1 Bessie was reputed to be very beautiful. In contemporary terms, her looks matched the Renaissance ideal of fair skin, blue eyes and golden hair. She was young, noble, accomplished and attractive. Henry’s court was a heady place in the early years, the most exciting place for any young woman with social ambitions. It is not clear exactly when her relationship with Henry began, or how long it lasted. Writing a century later, Lord Herbert of Cherbury described the ‘chains of love’ that bound Henry to Bessie, ‘which damsel in singing, dancing and in all goodly pastimes, exceeded all other, by the which goodly pastimes, she won the King’s heart’. He went on to state that she bore him a son ‘at last’, which suggests the affair comprised of more than a single encounter. However, this owes much to romantic myth. All that can be stated as fact is that the pair slept together around October 1518, when their child was conceived.
Bessie disappeared from sight in the autumn of 1518. There was of course a stigma attached to unmarried mothers, and church records show that women who conceived outside of wedlock were required to ask for forgiveness in public and sometimes whipped in the marketplace for fornication. Private letters dating from the period also highlight the cases of pregnant wives whose morality was suspected, when they and their child were repudiated by the husband, although these are rare. In Bessie’s case, though, there was no stigma attached to bearing the king’s son. Henry’s status gave her protection from the censure of society and the Church; in fact, the Church actively colluded to facilitate her lying-in. It seems that she was sent away from court less due to disapproval than discretion, as Queen Catherine had recently lost her sixth and final child.
Henry entrusted all the arrangements for his son’s birth to his chief minister, the capable Thomas Wolsey. This was to establish a pattern of patronage that would last for the remainder of Wolsey’s life, suggesting that he was a patron, sponsor, friend, even perhaps a godfather to Fitzroy. Bessie was taken to Essex, to the Augustinian Priory of St Laurence, at Blackmore, near Chelmsford. The prior, Thomas Goodwin, who had held his position since 1513, was someone Wolsey felt could be trusted to lodge the expectant mother in his own medieval moated house known as Jericho, close to the church. The priory was dissolved in 1524 but the nave still exists as part of the church, while the house was rebuilt or redeveloped into the private property that stands beside it today. Bessie gave birth to a healthy boy in the summer of 1519, in June or July. It was probably no coincidence that Henry stayed in Essex that summer, just 10 miles to the south-west at Havering atte Bowe, then at Beaulieu, 12 miles to the east, both of which were close enough to enable a discreet visit to his newborn son.
Henry Fitzroy’s early years passed quietly. He may have been raised by his mother, who was married off to Gilbert Tailboys, whom she bore two other children in the 1520s. It is plausible that during these years, Fitzroy was part of their nursery at Kyme, in Lincolnshire, but there is also a chance that he was raised in the household of his half-sister, Princess Mary. In 1519, the 3-year-old Mary’s household was rearranged and her old governess, Margaret Bryan, was replaced. Seventeen years later, in 1536, Margaret wrote in a letter that she had ‘been a mother to the children his grace have had since’. At that point, Henry VIII had fathered only one other legitimate child – Elizabeth, by Anne Boleyn – but Margaret’s use of the plural ‘children’ suggests the presence of at least one other. This can only have been Henry Fitzroy. Perhaps both options are correct, and he resided in Lincolnshire part of the time, while his royal blood facilitated regular visits to London, where he was under Margaret’s care, and also a guest at Durham Place, the residence of his mentor, Thomas Wolsey. He received some formal education, as his later tutor would complain about the way he had been taught to speak Latin.
It was not until he reached his sixth birthday that little Henry received much official attention, and then he burst upon the Tudor scene with a glut of honours and titles. The timing was significant, for he had reached the age of transition, when young boys generally left their female-oriented nursery in favour of a male-run establishment, and had survived the dangerous, often fatal early years of childhood. Analyses of Tudor mortality indicate that if a child survived birth, the first year had the highest incidence of premature death, followed by a different set of threats encountered between the ages of 1 and 5. If children reached 5, they had a fairly good chance of making it into their teens, which were the next area of greatest peril.2 It was also in this critical year, 1525, that Henry’s father was coming to the realisation that he would have no more children by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She had not fallen pregnant since before Fitzroy’s birth and, as her fortieth birthday approached, it appears that this was the year that she experienced her menopause.
By May that year, Henry was already planning to raise his son’s profile. A note written to the king by Wolsey indicates that heraldic arms had been devised for the boy, featuring the white lion of Richmond and the silver yale of Somerset, flanking a central escutcheon that featured a castle and the heads of two bucks, representing Nottingham. The boy’s status was revealed by the silver line scoring through the arms of England and France, denoting illegitimacy. This combination, along with the motto ‘duty binds me’, virtually interchangeable with that of former royals, indicates exactly what the king’s intentions were. Soon, they would be revealed to the world.
The most important day in the young boy’s life so far was 18 June 1525. It was quite plausibly his sixth birthday. It began early in the morning at Wolsey’s Durham House, where Fitzroy and a company of other gentlemen took to barges for the trip to newly completed Bridewell Palace. There, he was conducted along a gallery that flanked the privy garden to the king’s apartments on the second floor of the inner courtyard. Senior members of the court had gathered to witness the process by which Henry was to be ennobled; Wolsey was present, along with the other two dukes in the realm, Norfolk and Suffolk, the earls of Worcester, Northumberland and Shrewsbury, Sir Thomas Boleyn and representatives of the Church. Fitzroy was dressed in the robes of an earl and accompanied by the earls of Oxford and Arundel as he knelt before his father. Henry placed a girdle around his neck and Thomas More read aloud the patent that conferred the earldom of Nottingham upon the boy, with an annuity of £20.3 After this, Fitzroy retired from the chamber and returned in the robes of a duke, with a procession of nobles carrying his train, sword, cap of estate and rod of gold. The same process was repeated, only this time Fitzroy was granted the dukedoms of Richmond and Somerset.4 From that point forward, he would be referred to in official documentation as the ‘right high and noble prince Henry, Duke of Richmond and Somerset’. A double dukedom in such circumstances was unprecedented.
This ennoblement of an illegitimate son had undeniable dynastic significance. The most recent precedent was the elevation of Henry II’s son William Longsword to an earldom, way back at the end of the twelfth century. The conferring of such favour upon Fitzroy seems to suggest that, until the king fathered a surviving male child within a marriage, he was considering Fitzroy his heir. In certain circumstances, legitimacy could be conferred retrospectively, although this was unusual. It is interesting, therefore, that Henry VIII chose to give his son the Duchy of Somerset, traditionally held by the Beaufort family. This established a connection between the boy and his great-great-great-great-grandfather, John of Gaunt, whose four children had been legitimised despite being born before their parents’ marriage. Nor had they initially been barred from inheriting the throne, as that all-important clause was added later, and might equally have been revoked by an Act of Parliament. But this was not all. In addition to his earldom and double dukedom, Fitzroy was made Captain of the Town and Castle of Berwick upon Tweed, Keeper of the City and Castle of Carlisle, Warden General of the Scottish Marshes, High Steward of the Bishopric of Durham, High Steward of the Liberties of the Archbishop of York and Lord High Admiral of England.
A few other children of royal blood were elevated at the same time as Fitzroy that summer, perhaps with the intention to create ties of affinity, a future support network, as was frequently done when legitimate heirs went through a rite of passage. There was Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, then in his twenties, a grandson of Edward IV through his daughter Katherine, who was given the title Marquis of Exeter. Henry Brandon, son of Henry’s sister Mary and Charles, Duke of Suffolk, became Earl of Lincoln, taking John de la Pole’s old title, despite the fact that he was only 2. The slightly older Sir Thomas Manners, Lord Roos, the great nephew of Edward IV, took the former title of Edmund, Earl of Rutland, while the rising diplomatic star of the court, Thomas Boleyn, became Viscount Rochford.5
Fitzroy’s elevation in status demanded a household worthy of a duke. His ordinances and expenses were drawn up on 24 July, giving a glimpse into the fabric of the boy’s daily life, his food and meals, his pastimes and expectations. Over the course of forty-two days in June and July, Henry’s establishment cost a total of just over £523. Almost £12 was claimed by the bakehouse and pastry, £36 for the buttery, £53 for the slaughterhouse, £52 for the poultry, £15 for the grocer and £118 for the chandlery and saucer. He also had to shoulder some of the cost of his own ennoblement, paying out £33 for his installation and £35 for board and wages for his servants at Windsor and Hampton Court. The writing and sealing of his patents of creation was undertaken by a Master Pexsall, for which he received £13 6s 8d. Henry also received a new pair of virginals at 40s.6
It was important that the boy looked the part, and the same went for his home and those in his household. Just over £12 was spent on a ‘vestment’ of purple velvet and cloth of gold, with a cross of crimson tissue, which must have featured in the ceremonies of 18 June. Henry’s footmen were kitted out in blue and yellow doublets at a cost of £32, while the liveries for his councillors, gentlemen and servants ran to £513. The horses in Henry’s stable were decked out in black velvet with gilt reins, copper buckles and gold and silk buttons. Wolsey had given him a litter to travel in, which was garnished in cloth of silver. For his chapel, two new altar cloths were delivered, made of blue bawdkyn, lined with green buckram and fringed with silk. Fitzroy’s wardrobe expenses of £1,193 did not fall far behind those of Princess Mary, who required £1,600 for the same period.7
The king also set out what and when his important son should be eating. The menu for dinner and supper might include green geese, roast capons or veal, swan or partridge, half a lamb or kid, pigeons and wildfowl, with custard, tart or fruit. The first main meal of the day was taken around mid- to late morning, and cost around 20s, and a more substantial supper (35s) following around four or five in the afternoon. Different recommendations were made for different times of the year, first divided between Michaelmas, at the end of September, to Shrovetide in February, as well as a specific fast diet for Lent, Fridays and Saturdays. This included salt and fresh salmon, cod, turbot, shrimps and ling, as might be expected, but also baked meats and butter, at a cost of 45s a day. Spices for a day cost 20d and wax and white lights 8d. Specific requirements were set down for Fitzroy’s staff, each of whom was allotted a number of dishes according to rank. His chancellor, chamberlain and others of similar standing might dine on two courses of roast veal or goose, venison and wine at 6s per day, while his yeomen had one serving of beef, baked meats and ale; the grooms were not even permitted baked meats. Senior members of his court were provided with three and a half yards of cloth, costing 8d a yard, for their clothing; grooms and pages received three yards of lower-quality material, which cost only 3s 4d.8 The accounts tell us that the boy had two cloths of estate, that one of his four chairs was decorated with a cloth of gold, that he had four large and twenty small carpets, and a scarlet counterpoint and eight pillows on his bed.9
Fitzroy’s household were dressed in blue, yellow and white, emblazoned with his badge of a half-lion bursting out of a Tudor rose, edged in gold. Living away from both his parents, those who served, advised and taught him on a daily basis were the closest thing the boy had to a family. In many ways, this presents a convincing parallel to the experience of a Prince of Wales in peacetime, with Henry being raised in a separate establishment, apart from any half-siblings or close relatives, in preparation for his future role, just as Edward V and Prince Arthur had been. Many of those appointed to his household were already Wolsey’s men, and it was he who would oversee the establishment, from a distance. In the boy’s closest circle were Brian Higdon, Dean of York from 1516 to 1539, head of his council; Thomas Magnus, Archdeacon of East Riding, Canon of Windsor from 1520, surveyor and General Receiver; Sir William Bulmore, Lieutenant of the East March, steward of his household; Sir Godfrey Fulgeham or Foljambe, esquire of the king’s body in 1513, his treasurer; Sir Thomas Tempest, a serjeant at law who was the household controller; William Parr was the Chamberlain and Richard Page his Vice Chamberlain. Henry’s first formal tutor was John Palsgrave, who had also taught the king’s sister, Mary, while he received lessons in music and dancing from William Saunders. Sir Thomas Fairfax was his serjeant at law, George Lawson was cofferer, Sir William Eure and William Frankeleyn, Archdeacon of Durham were among his councillors, Walter Luke was general attorney, Dr Tate his almoner, Richard Cotton the clerk comptroller and his Master of the Horse was Edward Seymour. He had a nurse, Anne Partridge, who received 50s a quarter for her wages and was permitted a maid of her own.10 With these appointments, everything was in place for the boy to begin his life as a great magnate.
With these important decisions made, Fitzroy said goodbye to his father at Hampton Court and began the long journey to his new home. He was not sent to Ludlow, where the education of a Prince of Wales traditionally took place. That was reserved for Henry’s only legitimate child to date, Princess Mary, who set off for the Welsh Borders around the same time as Fitzroy went north, to the castle of Sheriff Hutton. The journey is documented in detail, as the king was anxious to see how his son would be received outside London circles. Their first stop was at the home of Sir William Jekyll at Stoke Newington in Middlesex, which they left on 26 July for the residence of Lady Maud Parr in Northampton, 70 miles away. There he was ‘marvellously well intreated and had good cheer’, and was gifted a ‘grey, ambling nag’.11 At Northampton, Fitzroy’s household bade farewell to their main escort, which returned to London, then they travelled east through Buntingford and Shengay before they reached Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. There, a Dr Hall was waiting to greet them outside the town and ‘the honest men of the town presented unto his grace, four great pikes and four tenches.’12 While staying at Huntingdon, perhaps in the castle, Fitzroy received the gifts of ‘swans, cranes and other wild fowl’ from the nearby Abbot of Ramsey. After resting at Huntingdon, the party headed north, staying at the home of a George Kirkham on 31 July, before reaching Collyweston Place, the former home of Fitzroy’s great-grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, to whom he was now connected through the Duchy of Somerset.
Part of a letter written by members of Fitzroy’s council to Wolsey from Collyweston on 2 August relates that ‘on the way he killed a buck himself in Clyff Park, where David Cecil made him good cheer’. The boy preferred not to ride in the litter that had been provided for him by Wolsey: he ‘rode nott in his horse litter, but only … a three or four myles … but ever sythens his grace hathe ryden upon his hobye [pony] and hathe been very well at ease’.13 Henry was also enjoying good health, being ‘in better case and more lusty of his boddy than his grace was at first taking of his journey’. To be sure that this would continue, the boy’s council requested that Wolsey remembered to ‘send a phisician unto my lords grace, for the preservation of his person’.14 Collyweston was now Henry’s own property, and while he stayed there for a week, he received more presents of wildfowl for his table, from the abbots of Peterborough and Crowland. They were back on the road again on 7 August, passing through Grantham and Marton Abbey, before they arrived in the city of York, just over 100 miles north of the Beaufort property. At York they were joined by John Uvedale, a clerk in the signet office, whom Wolsey had appointed as the boy’s secretary. Fitzroy stayed in the city for eleven days before embarking on the final 10 miles of his journey, accompanied by a delegate of local dignitaries, reaching the castle of Sheriff Hutton on 29 August.15
What Fitzroy saw when he approached his new home was a large castle set in an impressive park which had reverted to the crown upon the death of the Duke of Norfolk in 1524. It was described by the antiquarian John Leland in the 1540s as being ‘well maintained’ and comprising a base court containing the offices of the establishment, before the castle entrance, which did not have a ditch or moat, but stood on high ground. The front face of the building had three great towers, the central one being the gatehouse. Within, in the second ‘area’ of the castle, Leland counted five or six towers, with impressive stairs leading up to the great hall. The hall itself, and the rest of the building, were so splendid that he considered there to be ‘no house in the North so like princely lodgings’.16 Presumably it had changed little, or only for the better, since Richard III had lodged Edward, Earl of Warwick and Elizabeth of York there in the 1480s, or since the poet John Skelton had praised its beautiful grounds while staying as a guest of the Duke of Norfolk.
Over the next few months, details emerged about Fitzroy’s residency at the castle. Primarily, his main concern was to continue with his formal education, under the guidance of John Palsgrave, who claimed that he had never had a pupil equal to the duke, ‘no man, rich or poor, had ever better wit’.17 The draft of a letter the tutor wrote to the king promises that ‘according to my saying to you in the gallery at Hampton Court, I do my uttermost best to cause him to love learning and to be merry at it, in so much that without any manner of fear or compulsion he hath already a great furtherance in the principles grammatical both Greek and Latin.’ He also reported the boy’s tendency to lisp, which he put this down to his age: ‘I trust now at the changing of his teeth to amend that default, but much might have been done thereunto at the beginning.’18 Palsgrave was also in contact with Sir Thomas More, discussing with him his decisions regarding the boy’s syllabus. A draft letter recounts Henry’s progress:
Has already, however, taught him the principles of grammar, both in Greek and Latin, and made him read the First Eclogue of Virgil, ‘and two of the first scenes of Adelphorum, which he can pronounce right prettily; but I find Quintilian and Erasmus true, for the barbarous tongue of him that taught him his matins is and hath been a great hindrance to me.
Councillor William Frankeleyn reported to Wolsey that:
my lord of Richmond is a chylde of excellent wisdom and towardness; and, for his good and quyk capacity, retentive memorie, vertuous inclinasion to all honour, humanity and goodness, I think hard it wolbe to fynde any creature lyving of twise his age able of worthy to be compared to him. How his grace used himself in dispeaching mr almoner and with what gravitie and good maner he desyred to be reccommendid unto the Kingis highness, the quene and your grace, I doubt not but the said mr almoner will advertyse your grace at his coming.19
Frankeleyn added that he was to attend a local court of Oyer and Terminer the following day in Pontefract before beginning a survey of the boy’s lands at Sheriff Hutton.20 With the business of local government out of the way, the survey revealed some necessary repairs to the place, prompting £234 to be paid to a Robert Forest for carrying out improvements to the walls, towers and roof, sweeping the chimneys and replacing the gates.21 Local dignitaries visited the castle to pay their respects: ‘all the noble men and other worshipful men of all these north counties daily resorted to his lordship in great number’, and Henry was ‘as highly esteemed in honour as ever was any young prince in these parts’. Wolsey could hardly overlook the parallel that Henry’s council was drawing with the Yorkist princes.
As was the practice among the households of noblemen, a number of other boys were included in Fitzroy’s entourage and shared his lessons. There was his chamberlain’s 12-year-old nephew, William Parr, whose sister would become Henry VIII’s last wife, along with Bessie Blount’s young brothers, George and Henry. Palsgrave’s letters highlight the downside of this arrangement, as some members of the household were actively anti-intellectual, believing that ‘learning is a great hindrance to a nobleman’ and ‘call[ing] upon [Henry] to bring his mind from learning, some to hear cry at a hare, some to kill a buck with his bow, sometime with greyhounds and sometime with buckhounds … some to see a flight with a hawk, some to ride a horse’.22 Palsgrave’s was a thankless task and his annual salary of £13 6s 8d was insufficient for his needs.
Palsgrave’s correspondence reveals that Fitzroy’s mother was also involved in the boy’s education. One surviving letter establishes that Bessie Blount, now married to Gilbert Tailboys, was taking more of an active interest in his life than historians have previously suspected. The tutor thanked her for her ‘favourable letter’ and feared he would not ‘abide’ longer, or continue in his position ‘if her Ladyship were not good to him’. His frank response is a mixture of report and plea, complaint and praise, illustrating the difficulties of his position:
Has suffered greatly since coming to Yorkshire, both from poverty and calumny. Six sundry articles have been contrived against him, in some of which her Ladyship was as guilty as he. It is but a sorry promotion, having foregone, in less than a twelvemonth, half what he has had in all his life, and got more trouble to defend his poor honesty than ever honest man had. Is determined, however, not ‘to be a knowyn thereof to no creature’ but her Ladyship, but to persevere. Would not have mentioned it even to her, but that she might ‘substantially provide that the especial gifts of grace which God hath given unto my lord of Richmond’s grace, far above that which you yourself could think, be not by malicious and evil-disposed persons corrupted.’ ‘But, Madam, to be plain with you, on my conscience my lord of Richmond is of as good a nature, as much inclined to all manner virtuous and honorable inclinations, as any babes living. Now is my room undoubted great about him; for the King’s grace said unto me, in the presence of Master Parre and Master Page, ‘I deliver,’ quod he, “unto you three, my worldly jewel; you twain to have the guiding of his body, and thou, Palsgrave, to bring him up in virtue and learning.’’’ If, therefore, there be not faith and honesty in him, the King is much deceived in him, and the child’s morals are in danger; but if others contrive matters against him in his presence, as though he were guilty, ‘the babes shall begin to despise me or ever he know me.’ Begs her to come hither, and inquire the truth for herself. All these despites arise from his poverty. Need not remind her how many bishops would be glad to grant her advowsons. Has fallen into a sore tertian fever.23
Henry’s description of his son as ‘my worldly jewel’ is a telling metaphor which underlines the boy’s personal and dynastic potential in the 1520s. As for the boy’s mother, Bessie does not appear to have been at court during this time, and if she was resident on her husband’s estates at South Kyme, Lincolnshire, she would have been 100 miles south of Sheriff Hutton and just 80 miles from Pontefract. Both were within visiting distance, but no record survives to suggest whether she made the journey.
The household was preparing for Fitzroy’s first Christmas season in his new home. William Amyas had been dispatched to London to order New Year’s gifts for the boy to give to the king and queen, his sister Mary, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and the marquises of Exeter and Dorset. Gifts were dispatched from court in return, including a gilt ewer with a star and the royal arms upon the cover from the king and a garter of crown gold from Wolsey.24 On Christmas day, the Council at Sheriff Hutton wrote to Wolsey that ‘your honourable young and tender godsonne my lord of Richemounde is at this present time … in good and prosperous helthe and as towardly a yong prince as has even been seen in our tyme.’25 The boy had humbly asked, while the letter was being composed, for his godfather’s daily blessing and ‘the contynuance of your gracious favour towards him’.26 Expense accounts of that year include payments for players and minstrels who, no doubt, were busy at Sheriff Hutton that Christmas.
In 1526, Dr Richard Croke replaced Palsgrave as Fitzroy’s tutor and tensions began to arise between him and members of the Council. Croke had studied with Erasmus in Paris, and taught Greek at the universities of Leipzig and Cambridge, becoming a doctor of divinity at the latter. He also complained that Fitzroy was being encouraged to neglect his work in favour of outdoor pursuits, and that the boys were being influenced against him (Croke), insulting him and openly calling him rogue, fool and bastard.27 When Croke threatened to discipline Fitzroy, the pupil replied that if he was beaten, he would beat Croke in return. The new tutor wrote to Henry VIII on 1 February 1527, complaining about ‘misreports against himself’ and stating that the clerk comptroller Sir George Cotton was committing fraud, incurring additional expenses by ‘entertaining friends and servants above their allowance. In fact, Wolsey’s carefully planned regime was being ignored while Fitzroy spent more time with Cotton than with Croke, being entertained by fools singing bawdy songs instead of studying.28 He added that William Parr, Fitzroy’s chamberlain, had been absent for sixty-six weeks ‘and when present has seldom given attendance, but spent his time in hawking and hunting’.29
Croke begged Wolsey to send direction to the Council regarding the amount of time the boy should spend at his lessons and that he should not be interrupted, and also that he should not be required by Cotton to write letters after dinner ‘to the dulling of his wits, spirits and memory, and no little hurt of his head, stomach and body’.30 One letter Fitzroy did write that March was to his father, ‘too show him his progress in writing and to ask the King’s blessing and pardon for having so long forborne to write’. Perhaps in response to the disharmony around his tutor, the duke told his father he would ‘endeavour to obtain learning and virtue correspondent to his advancement’.31 He also found time to correspond with Wolsey, insisting that ‘no creature living is more bound to his favour than he’.32
The following Christmas, Fitzroy’s household was at Pontefract. The Council informed Wolsey that he had ‘kept a right honourable Christmas’ and that ‘numbers of worshipful persons have come to visit him.’ By 14 January, he had resumed his studies, and William Saunders was proving to be ‘very diligent in teaching [him] singing and playing on the virginals’.33 On the same day, Henry wrote to thank his father for his New Year’s gift. That February, an examination into the duke’s household, perhaps in response to Richard Croke’s criticisms, prompted a downscaling, the Council deciding that the ‘best means to lessen the charge of … Richmond’s household’ was ‘to discharge a number of his servants and diminish the wages of others’. Eighteen members of the household were given their leave, ‘some for offences and others as superfluous’ in the hope that the duke ‘may be able to live on the lands and revenues assigned him by the King, amounting to upwards of £4,000’.34 They had now completed ‘good and formal books of [the] household’ and all was ‘in marvellous good order’.
Early in 1527, Fitzroy took the step of making contact with King James V of Scotland. The boys were cousins, as James was the son of Henry VIII’s elder sister Margaret, born in 1512, making him 14 to Fitzroy’s 8. James had inherited the throne at the age of seventeen months, after the death of his father at Flodden Field. Their exchange highlights not only their close blood relation but also the possibility for their futures, as two powerful rulers. Even if Fitzroy’s chances of being named England’s heir were slim, he could still expect to play a significant political role during the reign of his sister Mary, probably in the north and along the borders. Establishing friendly relations with James was thus a wise diplomatic move. Perhaps at some future point, Henry might even require James’s support. On 11 February 1527, Fitzroy wrote to James from Pontefract Castle, having understood that the young Scottish king desired ‘three or four couple of hounds for hunting the fox’ and was sending him ‘ten couple that he has tried’, along with Nicholas Eton, his yeoman of the hunt, who was to remain in Scotland a month ‘to show the mode of hunting’.35 James thanked his cousin for ‘his honest present’ and sent him in return ‘two brace of hounds for deer and smaller beasts’, along with the promise of ‘some of the best red hawks in the realm’ if Fitzroy took pleasure in hawking.36 James also wrote to thank Thomas Magnus, the Receiver General at Sheriff Hutton, for making ‘the acquentence … betuix us and our tender cousin the duk of Richemonde’.37 In turn, Magnus recounted the friendship to Wolsey and hoped that ‘peace would be promoted among the Lords by him, and by the Queen [Margaret] being with her son’.38
The question of Fitzroy’s marriage arose the same year. Henry was considering marrying his daughter Mary to the Emperor Charles V. The emperor was already married, to Isabella of Portugal, but her health was frail and he was already looking at the options available to him should be become a widower: his ‘wife expects to be confined in June, but she is so weak that the doctors fear she will die, and if so, he wishes to marry the princess Mary, as his people urged him to marry his present wife and not the Princess, as the latter was so young’. While he was thinking about matches, Charles offered the daughter of his sister Eleanor of Austria ‘to the Duke of Richmond, with a dowry of 300,000 or 400,000 ducats’. This was the wealthy Infanta Maria, born in 1521, her father’s only heir to the Kingdom of Portugal. According to ambassadors Lee and Ghinucci, there was good reason to believe that Fitzroy’s future prospects would be impressive:
he proposed to give the Duke of Richmond ‘who is near of his blood and of excellent qualities, and is already furnished to keep the state of a great prince, and yet may be easily by the King’s means exalted to higher things,’ to some noble princess of near blood to the Emperor, to strengthen the bond between them.
The emperor also hinted that he might bestow the Duchy of Milan upon Fitzroy, a scheme which pleased Wolsey greatly. Writing to the English ambassadors in Spain in September 1527, he added a postscript in code, asking them to ‘call upon the matter of the Duke of Richmont’s marriage to the dowghter of Portingale and the gyfte of the duchy of Mylayn in contemplacion of the same marriage, setting forth in suche wise and such matter as the French ambassadors take no jealousy or suspicion thereby’.39 But the Milanese duchy from the emperor never materialised and nor was Charles in a position to remarry. Isabel of Portugal bore him a son, Philip, that May, and went on to have five more pregnancies.
Another attractive candidate on the marriage market was Catherine de Medici, known as the ‘Pope’s niece’, who had been born in April 1519, making her just months older than Fitzroy. A rich heiress after the death of her parents, Catherine’s hand was sought by the Scottish and French, raising her value in the eyes of Henry VIII, as well as offering some Italian Renaissance glamour. This potential match emerges from a letter written to Wolsey by John Russell in Rome, who had been urging the pope that if he ‘would marry her to have good alliance, we knew where he should bestow her better than any that is yet rehearsed, upon a duchy in England that might spend as much as two as the best of them’.40 It was around this time that a rumour emerged that the king was considering making Fitzroy King of Ireland, raising his status sufficiently to overshadow the taint of illegitimacy that might mar the chances of such an important match. It may be that his intention was to influence the pope, to whom Henry just sent a substantial gift of 30,000 crowns,41 but the Irish plan was never taken to fruition.
Life in Fitzroy’s household continued as before. In December 1527, the Earl of Northumberland wrote to Wolsey after visiting the boy at Pontefract, where he was ‘so well received that his dulled wit cannot disclose how much he was gratified with the Duke’s good qualities’.42 A month later, Fitzroy wrote to his father that he was giving ‘his whole mind to such sciences and feats of learning as he is informed stand with Henry’s pleasure’, and requested a harness for his exercise in arms ‘according to his learning in Julius Caesar, in which he hoped to prosper as well as he had done in other learnings’.43 He also felt able to make a request of the king regarding one of his servants, in April 1528, asking for the referral of his old chaplain Sir William Swallow to the living of Fremyngton in Devonshire, which was in Richmond’s gift, but required the king’s favour to conclude.44
In May, Fitzroy and his household were staying at Pontefract Castle when outbreaks of the sweating sickness were recorded in the town. William Parr wrote to Wolsey that, thankfully, the young duke was in good health, but that ‘there bee six persones lately disseassed within the lordship of Pountefrete … and that many young childrene bee sicke of the pokkes nere thereabouts’. The Council had agreed to remove their charge to ‘Ledestone’, a house belonging to the prior of Pontefract, 3 miles away from the castle. This was Ledston Hall, or the manor that stood on the present site of the later hall. The oldest part of the building dates to the eleventh century with a thirteenth-century chapel dedicated to St Thomas. It was here that Fitzroy retreated from an illness that understandably terrified the king, after it had claimed the life of his elder brother. Parr went on to describe the symptoms of the dead, saying they were ‘takene with a great cold, and after that strikene into a fervent heat and sweting, whereupon their righte myendes were takne from theym and soo died’. The chamberlain pleaded for a doctor to be sent to them, asking the king to consider ‘what great daunger it is for my said lorde in this tyme of such straunge infirmyties to bee distitute of a phisicion’.45 Initially, Henry’s own doctor, Sir William Butts, had been assigned to the boy, and he would attend him later in life, but he was clearly not present at Ledston. Thomas Magnus reported to the king that the boy was attended by only five people, in great comfort, free of sickness.46 Henry himself had retired from court and was living in the countryside at Wolsey’s manor of Tittenhanger, in Hertfordshire, following the death of one of his closest friends at court, Sir William Compton.
Fitzroy’s precautionary move to Ledston was a sensible one. That July, he wrote to thank his father for letters and the ‘goodly apparel’ he had sent and promised to ‘apply [him]self to learning and proceed in virtue’.47 Among these gifts were a golden unicorn horn (a narwhal tooth) set with pearls and turquoise and a gold collar with seven white enamel roses.48 By October, the household had returned to Sheriff Hutton, where Magnus informed Wolsey that ‘my Lord of Richmond is in good health and merry.’ The boy also wrote to his father that he had ‘paste this last sommere withoute any perelle or daunger off the ragious swete that hath reigned in these partis … and myche the better I truste with the help off suche preservatives as your highnes did sende unto me’.49 He had recently paid a visit for one night to the Duke of Northumberland, ‘who pressed him to come and see his house at Topcliff, and [Henry] conducted himself more like a man than a child of his tender age’.50 Soon afterwards, the Earl and Countess of Westmorland visited Sheriff Hutton. The Fourth Earl, Ralph Neville, was a relation of Fitzroy’s great-grandmother, Cecily Neville of Raby, and this connection underpinned the couple’s decision to leave their young son Henry, aged 3, to reside at Sheriff Hutton. The accounts for March 1529 indicate that a chain and garter of crown gold were made for Fitzroy, weighing twenty ounces and costing £3, along with three gold links for which the goldsmith was paid £8. This may have been a sign that his life was about to change.
In 1529, Henry Fitzroy was recalled from the north to his father’s court. He left on 16 June, a date which is likely to have been around his tenth birthday. His return was scarcely remarked upon because of the immense upheaval that overshadowed it, the news concerning what had been his father’s two closest relationships. Firstly, the king had reached the decision that his marriage to Catherine of Aragon was no longer viable since, after six pregnancies, she had only produced a single daughter and had now passed the age of childbearing. Henry had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the daughter of the ambassador to France and the Low Countries, Viscount Rochford, Sir Thomas Boleyn. For the last two years, while Fitzroy had been in the north, Henry had been attempting to dissolve his marriage through papal intervention and the judgement of the European universities. At the end of May 1529, a long-awaited court was opened at Blackfriars, presided over by cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey, which the king hoped would pronounce the union invalid. One result of this would be the potential birth of a legitimate male heir to Henry and Anne, which would considerably affect Fitzroy’s status and future.
However, the court failed to deliver and a scapegoat for the king’s frustrations was found in Thomas Wolsey. Having alienated Anne Boleyn, the cardinal was accused of deliberately prolonging the proceedings and serving the needs of the pope over those of the king. He was removed from office and surrendered much of the wealth and properties he had accrued through years of service, before fleeing to York, where he retained the position of archdeacon. This was a fundamental change for Fitzroy, whose entire life until that point had fallen under his godfather’s remit, from practical arrangements and patronage to fatherly guidance and protection. Henry probably decided that this was a good time for the boy to leave his childhood arrangements behind and take a more active role in politics. On 22 June, he had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, governing at a distance over a body of three men drawn from the Irish Privy Council. It was a title that the king himself had held at the age of 3, another indicator that Henry intended his son to follow his path unless he had a legitimate heir. Then, on 9 August, the young duke was summoned to his father’s fifth Parliament, which came to be known as the Reformation Parliament, scheduled to sit that autumn. Another important reason for the king to disband of Fitzroy’s household and bring him to court at such a volatile time, must have been to remove the boy from Wolsey’s control. It may also have been designed to demonstrate the king’s ability to bear healthy male sons while God had denied them to Catherine. Thus, Fitzroy was an argument Henry hoped to deploy to prove the invalidity of a match made with the wife of his dead brother, Arthur.
On 3 November, the Reformation Parliament met at Blackfriars, removing to Westminster the following day on account of the plague in the city. Richmond’s name is not included in the roll of initial attendees, although his former treasurer William Parr and his stepfather Gilbert Tailboys attended. Exactly what role the boy played in the proceedings, or if he attended at all, is unclear. His proximity to his father, and the death of Wolsey, means that the supply of letters dries up and few insights into his life survive from this period. Instead, he is included in the rolls on official occasions, such as the Order of the Garter celebrations at Windsor the following April. That month the royal accounts record 20s paid to Guillaum, the king’s fletcher, ‘for arrows for my lord of Richmond’, and 40s paid to his nurse.51 The Venetian ambassador commented that the duke was ‘a youth of great promise so much does he resemble his father’. French ambassador Jaoquim de Vaux went further and provided a description of Fitzroy at his father’s court:
The Duke of Richmond is here, a most handsome, urbane, and learned young gentleman, very dear to the King on account of his figure, discretion, and good manners. He has been summoned by the King from York, where he has been living nearly five years. He is certainly a wonderful lad for his age. He commends himself most humbly to your Majesty, saying he wishes to be a good Frenchman, and to make himself the servant of the Dauphin.52
Fitzroy may well have been a guest at Greenwich over the Christmas period of 1529, or at New Year, when his father gifted him a two-handled cup with a cover, engraved with flowers and serpents, two little gilt pots and a great, flat standing cup.53 He also received gifts from others after his arrival in London, especially of horses, which were shrewd gestures of loyalty to a young man likely to play a significant part in England’s future.
Briefly, another path was considered for Fitzroy. Wolsey privately admitted to Cardinal Campeggio that the king was considering a marriage between the boy and his half-sister Mary. The medieval Church would not have considered this as scandalous as it appears today. Sex between half-siblings, even full siblings for purposes of procreation only, was considered preferable to fornication between two unrelated individuals. Dispensations could be obtained, although these could not protect against possible health problems inherited by their children. Pope Clement was even prepared to issue the necessary paperwork, if it would secure the Tudor succession and prevent England from breaking with Rome. But such a match was not an ideal solution and perhaps speaks more of Henry’s despair at the lack of progress towards an annulment, than any real intention. The scheme was quickly dropped; it may have been a suggestion of Wolsey’s as it appears to have died with his career.
A further point in the struggle between Catholic beliefs about the afterlife and the reformed faith was marked in 1529 by the publication of Thomas More’s Supplication of the Souls. Written in response to Simon Fish’s Supplication of the Beggars, it purports to speak with the voices of souls in purgatory, who argue against Fish’s rejection of its existence and pleads for prayers and pity for the dead. In emotive terms, it opens with a vivid description of the torments of limbo and a reminder of those who had been lost, who now felt abandoned:
In most piteous wise continually calleth and crieth upon your devout charity and most tender pity for help, comfort and relief, your late acquaintance, kindred, spouses, companions, play-fellows and friends and no your humble and unacquainted and half-forgotten suppliants poor prisoners of God, the sely (helpless) souls in purgatory, here abiding and enduring the grievous pains and hot cleansing fire that fretteth and burneth out the rusty and filthy spots of our sin, till the mercy of Almighty God, the rather by your good and charitable means vouchsafe to deliver us hence.
Until now, declared the souls, they had been remembered by kind people, ‘recommended unto God and ease, helped and relieved’ through private prayers, daily masses and ‘other ghostly suffrages’. But since there had lately ‘sprungen up certain seditious people’ who laboured to destroy them and deprive them of their comfort, the souls pleaded with the living to read More’s tract ‘as an wholesome treacle at your heart against the deadly poison of their pestilent persuasion that would bring you in that error to ween there were no purgatory’. Those who rejected the notion, stated More, had been deceived by the Devil. In the coming years, the scholar would clash with Henry VIII over his break with Rome and eventually lose his head for refusing to swear the 1534 Act of Supremacy placing Henry at the head of the new Church of England.
Fitzroy’s stepfather Gilbert Tailboys died on 15 April 1530, becoming one of those ‘helpless souls’ requiring the prayers of the living. He left no known will, which suggests that his end was unexpected and he ran out of time. It may well have been that, at the age of 32 or 33, he suffered an accident, poisoning or the sudden onset of illness. Tailboys was buried near the pulpit of Kyme Church, in Lincolnshire, but no tomb survives and he is now remembered by a stone slab erected in 1905. It was a unique time to die, on the cusp of a new era in which centuries of beliefs were about to swept away in favour of new approaches. Those drawing up their last testaments and considering how to bestow their worldly goods faced critical questions about the destinations of their souls in the light of the debate highlighted in texts like those of Fish and More. Wills written during the 1520s and early years of the 1530s capture something of this transitional mood. William Cousyn asked his brother in 1522 to ‘bury me as he shall thinke best’, with twenty poor men carrying torches and £10 to be distributed as alms, although he wanted ‘no month’s mind’ except one memorial within fifteen days. Thomas Rydowte was still leaving sums of money to local churches in the Bath area in 1524, to be dedicated to certain saints, while four years later, priest Richard Wollman left detailed instructions for poor children and prisoners to say a dirge and priests to sing for seven years at the grave of his mother. The will of John Hakehad, Canon of Wells Cathedral, drawn up in 1530, gave quite matter-of-fact directions for his pall-bearers to be paid and that the residents of his tenements were to ‘provide for my soul’. Others thought more to benefit the living than to persuade them to recall them in prayer: in 1538, Thomas Starkey entrusted his body to be buried ‘at the discretion of the curate’, leaving his father £40 ‘in part of recompense of his great cost and charges upon my bringing up in good learning’, and his books to the children of a Dr Wootton, ‘as he thinks profitable to their learning’, the rest going to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Through the 1530s, some wills still left payments for the celebration of ‘month’s minds’ and for prayers for a period of five or seven years, indicating that this religious transition was not uniform, but depended upon personal belief and social standing.54
A report of a London funeral from 1523 survives, in the accounts of the Society of Drapers. Sir William Roche, an alderman of the city, was buried on 15 September and the description of his burial and the feast afterwards are so detailed as to allow a thorough glimpse into the nature of grief and memorial at this point in time:
The right worshipfull sir William Roche knight and alderman, decessyd betwene ix. and x. of the clock before none. On whose soule Jh’u have mercye. Amen. He was buryed the XVth daye of this instant moneth of September at afternone, in this wise. First, ij. branchys of whyte wax were borne before the priests and clerks in surplesys singyng. Then a standard of his crest, which was the red roobuck’s hedd, with gylt hornes, havyng also ij. winges, the one of gold, the other verde. Thereafter certayne mourners; then a pynion of his arms, and his cote armour, borne by the herald, which arys was a cheker of warren of sylver and azure, a bull passaunt goules, with hornes of sylver, and iij. roches, also sylver, being all sett in a felde of gold. Then the corps borne next after the cote armure, by certayne clerks, and iiij. of the assystans of the Drapers, viz. Mr. Warner, Mr. Blower, Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Tull, who went in their livery and hoods about the said corps. Ther followyd the corse Mr. John Roche his sone, as chief mourner, alone; and after hym ij. couples of mourners more. Then the sword-bearer and my lord maire in black. Then the aldermen and sheriffs after them, and the whole livory of this felowshippe, in order. Then the ladys and gentylwomen, as the aldermen’s wyfes and others, which, after dirige, cam home to his house and dranke, where they had spice-brede and comfetts, wyne, ale, and beere.
On the morrow, the mourners went again in order to the church, where they had a collacion made by sir Stephen. After which collacion the herald appointed the chief mourners, in order, to offer up the target, sword, and helmet, to the priest; and after they offered in order, and also my lord mayor, the aldermen, the livery, and others, which offering went to the poor. Then the whole communion was ministered. After which done, the herald again going before, there followed him the banner-bearers, and offered the banners also; and then, in order, again the mourners, my lord mayor, and others, returned to the house of the said Mr. Roche, where they dined all, save the livery of this fellowship, which dined in the Drapers’ Hall, by reason he had given them towards the same vjl. xiijs. iiijd. which was bestowed by John Quarles and William Berwyck, stewards for the same, the xvj. day of September, in eight mess of meat, as follows: First, brawn and mustard, boiled capon, swan roast, capon and custard. The second course, pidgeons and tarts, bread, wine, ale, and beer. And my lady Roche, of her gentylnes, sent moreover four gallons of French wine, and also a box of wafers and a bottell of hippocras.55
Gilbert Tailboys’s death brought Bessie Blount back to court, where she would have had regular contact with her son. Perhaps she observed a period of mourning, but was definitely re-established by the New Year of 1532, when she was included on the list of the king’s gifts as the recipient of a gilt goblet with a cover. It is very interesting that Henry did not consider marriage to Bessie at this point. Now that she was free, and he was intending to remarry regardless of papal disapproval, a marriage between them could have been the first step to legitimising Henry Fitzroy. This would have followed the precedent of the Beaufort family, whose Somerset dukedom Fitzroy now bore, and could have allowed the king to accept the boy as his heir. Legally, it could have been achieved with an Act of Parliament, modelled on that of 1390, and all Henry’s concerns about the succession would have been resolved. A member of the emperor’s household, Loys de Heylwigen, was convinced that this was Henry’s intention, stating with confidence that the king was repudiating Catherine in order to ‘legitimate by subsequent marriage a bastard son of his’.56 Yet he was wrong. Henry did not choose this option. He was in love with Anne Boleyn and convinced that she would give him a son once they were married. Perhaps he thought he had already done enough for Fitzroy, and that there was no way Anne could fail in her maternal duty. Perhaps he did not want to even consider that possibility. Either way, Fitzroy’s opportunity passed.
Fitzroy lost another father figure in 1530. After he had disappointed the king in his marital plans, Cardinal Wolsey’s fall was rapid. Stripped of his offices, he was summoned to trial in London from his sanctuary in the north. It must have been a harsh lesson for the 11-year-old boy to see the decline of the man who had been his confidant and patron, who had arranged all the details of his life and household, who represented power, faith and authority; yet there was never really a choice about his feelings. He may have regretted the loss of Wolsey but it was the will of his father and, as such, could only be the boy’s will too. By bringing his son close at the time of the cardinal’s banishment, Henry was ensuring that the ties of family and loyalty to the throne overrode any emotional ties. Fitzroy would not see Wolsey again, as he never made it to London, dying at Leicester on 29 November 1530, and thus avoiding the trial and executioner’s block awaiting him at his journey’s end. It may be that the trauma of his final days exacerbated an existing illness. The suggestions by Elizabethan chronicler Edward Hall that Wolsey took his own life would have been unthinkable to the cardinal. Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn celebrated his death by watching a masque depicting Wolsey being dragged down into the mouth of hell. The role of Henry Fitzroy’s mentor and godfather would soon be taken by another of the key figures of his father’s court.
At court, the king’s great affair rumbled on. Young Henry was living the life of a Tudor prince, based largely at Windsor Castle, but he also took over Wolsey’s Durham Place and later had the use of Baynard’s Castle and Coldharbour House, two other impressive royal residences on the Thames. He would also have been a guest at his father’s palaces and spent time at his country retreat of Tonge, near Sittingbourne, where he is likely to have occupied the castle. Of the latter, only part of the moat survives, but it had once been owned by his great-great-grandmother Cecily, Duchess of York. Fitzroy’s residency is further suggested by the grant of the adjoining almshouses to William Butts, the duke’s physician. In May 1531, a man by the name of Arthur was paid 20s for a lute for Fitzroy and the boy received the usual golden and gilt trinkets and goblets from his father at New Year.57 Early in 1532, he was suffering from some undiagnosed illness which required the services of a physician, who was compensated 40s for his trouble. His education continued, although it is possible that Richard Croke had by now been replaced by George Folbury, a Cambridge preacher, at least until March 1531, when he was granted a position in North Yorkshire, perhaps as a reward for his services.58 Fitzroy’s wardrobe was also updated, to include cloth of gold and silver, velvet and silk, cut into hats, gowns, cloaks and doublets trimmed with fur and sewn with gold buttons in the shape of flowers, triangles and sundials.59
By 1532, King Henry and Queen Catherine were living apart and the king was determined to marry Anne Boleyn. Richmond accompanied them on their journey to France that autumn, as part of a concord with Francis I, which would give Anne a degree of international recognition as a potential queen of England. The young duke, then aged 13, was allotted an entourage of forty men, as befitted his status.60 The only other men in the kingdom who shared his stature were Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and Fitzroy’s uncle by marriage, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. It was at this time that Norfolk stepped into the position that Wolsey had vacated, becoming a friend and mentor to the young man, and encouraging his friendship with Norfolk’s son Henry, Earl of Surrey, who was two or three years the boy’s senior. Howard was then almost 60 and an ambitious, prominent figure at court, uncle to Henry’s new love, Anne Boleyn. He had risen to be Lord Treasurer, Earl Marshal and the king’s chief minister after the fall of Wolsey. He also had another intention in mind, observing to the imperial ambassador back in 1529 that ‘the King wishes the Duke to marry one of my daughters’. Arrangements for the match were finalised in 1531, when the pair were formally engaged and after this point, Norfolk considered Fitzroy to be his son-in-law.
Fitzroy set sail for France with his father on 11 October 1532. It was his first experience of a sea crossing and of the world beyond English shores, although their base for the visit, Calais, was still in English hands. Yet it is not clear whether he was included in the initial party when Henry rode to meet Francis alone at Boulogne, leaving Anne behind. The account of the ambassador Carlo Capello, in the Venetian papers, has Richmond among the list of lords to greet the French king on 21 October:
According to the advices received their Majesties met on the 21st, at the distance of a league and a half from Calais. The most Christian King was accompanied by the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Lord Steward Montmorency, Monsr. di St. Pol, Monsr. de Guise, Monsr. de Pontier, and other lords and gentlemen, some 1,800 in number, who came processionally, all most richly clad, the meanest wearing black velvet. The King of England was with the Dukes of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Richmond, the Bishops, and others numbering 800 horse, all in embroidered coats, some of velvet and others of cloth.61
It is impossible to know now whether this was certain, or an assumption, as other sources deny the duke’s presence on that occasion. He was definitely there to mark his father’s return from Calais, riding out to meet the two kings ‘with a great company of noble men … and saluting the French King, embraced him in a most honourable and courteous manner’.62 An eyewitness recorded that ‘the King’s son is very handsome and accomplished’63 and, briefly, it was almost as if the illegitimacy did not matter. The duke took part in the festivities that followed, including a special event for the Order of the Garter, during which he was seated at Francis’s side, and enjoyed the entertainments and feasts that ran over the following weeks. On one day alone:
the most Christian King sent to the English King an entire suit of white velvet, very costly, with embroidery; and the most Christian King clad himself in a similar suit; and dressed thus alike they heard mass. The other greetings such as banquets and entertainments, were very exquisite, and replete with every demonstration of honour.64
During that time, a scheme was hatched between the two kings whereby Fitzroy would remain behind after the English departed and spend some time at the French court, for the purposes of his education but also ‘for the greater security of the matters between’ the two countries, as a kind of noble hostage, a guarantee of good relations. Another way of looking at it might be to consider Fitzroy in a diplomatic role or, as the Venetian ambassador Zuam Venier added, Henry ‘gave, as servant to the most Christian King, his natural son’.65 It was reported elsewhere that ‘the King of England yesterday gave unto the King his bastard son, who is a young child of fifteen or sixteen years, and the same day he made him a present of six horses.’66 Fitzroy was 13 at the time, and this move might have been considered valuable for a brief period to provide him with the sort of social and cultural polish that Anne Boleyn had acquired during her time at the French court. It would also conveniently sideline him in time for the anticipated male heir Anne had promised to deliver. She and Henry consummated their relationship at this time, either in France or at Dover upon their return; it is likely that they went through a secret marriage service after landing in England, on 14 November.
Francis had three sons of his own, similar in age to the duke, whose education and company the boy might be expected to share. The Dauphin Francis was then 14, but had spent years as a hostage in his father’s place after the French defeat at Pavia, which left the boy sombre and serious, a budding scholar with a preference for dressing in black. His next brother Henri, just three or four months older than Fitzroy, had shared that captivity, but seemed a more robust character. Negotiations were taking place for him to marry Catherine de Medici, the Pope’s niece, who had previously been considered as a wife for Fitzroy. The youngest of the three was Charles, who was then only 10. It was even suggested that this might be some sort of exchange; Capello related that ‘the Duke of Orléans, the second son of the most Christian King, will come to England with King Henry, whose son, the Duke of Richmond, will remain with King Francis’.67 As it transpired, though, Henri of Valois did not go to England.
Francis took his leave of Henry on 29 October and the English king set sail for England soon after. Around the same time, Fitzroy left Calais accompanied by the Earl of Surrey and a sizeable entourage. He was welcomed at the French court, finding the country congenial, and received gifts along the way and settled in well with the Valois princes, although Surrey was enjoying himself less, as the duke’s almoner Richard Tate wrote from Paris on 11 December:
My lords of Richmond and Surrey have been well welcomed in their journey toward the French court, with presents of wine and other gentle offers. My lord of Richmond has been in good health, and finds the country ‘very natural unto him.’ Surrey has suffered from an ague which he had before he left Calais, but it is hoped the worst is past. On arriving at the Court, which was at Chantely, the Great Master’s house, the King embraced my lord, and made him great cheer, ‘saying that he thought himself now to have four sons, and exty[med] him no less.’ After the Daulphin [sic] and his brethren and all the noblemen had embraced him, he was taken into the King’s privy chamber, where the King told him he should always be as one of his chamber. In Paris he has lodging in the Dauphin’s own lodging, and sups with him and his brethren.68
It seems that France suited Fitzroy. In January 1533, the Dauphin hosted a tournament in which Henry took part and the Dauphin’s governor commented that he was ‘being nurtured with the King’s children’.69 Perhaps in response to the English king’s Order of the Garter ceremony the previous autumn, Francis I planned to celebrate St George’s day 1533 at Fontainbleau. The day before, the Venetian Marin Guistinian recorded that ‘an English herald, bearing the habits of the Order which the King of England conferred on the Lord Steward and the Admiral at Boulogne when the conference was held, arrived at this Court.’ Francis had planned elaborate entertainments for the occasion and, said Guistinian, it would be ‘attended by the Duke of Richmond, the English King’s natural son, who has the same order’.70 Perhaps this was an indication that Fitzroy had won the French king’s favour, as he accompanied Francis south on progress that summer. While the Dauphin and his brothers travelled with the queen, the duke and Surrey stayed with the king as they passed through Lyons, Toulouse and Montpellier, greeted by pageants and gifts along the route. While they were away, Anne Boleyn was crowned Queen of England and prepared to enter her confinement to deliver the son that would replace Fitzroy.
That July, Fitzroy’s ‘father-in-law’, the Duke of Norfolk, arrived in France, to ask Francis to support Henry VIII against the pope. He was accompanied by his nephew, George Boleyn, brother of the new queen. The French royal family were waiting in Riom, in the Auvergne, from where Richmond and Surrey rode out over a mile to meet Norfolk. From there, the court moved on to Mountfarran, from where Anthony Browne wrote to Thomas Cromwell, giving details about the preparations for the town but, disappointingly, did not mention Fitzroy. However, the duke would have witnessed the magnificent reception of the king by:
citizens on horseback, and 300 footmen with artillery, clothed in jerkins of cloth of gold, or orange velvet or satin. The religious met him in the town, with the sacrament and a procession. The streets were gravelled, and the sides hung with verdure, and covered with linen, with the arms of the King, Queen, and Dauphin. In divers places there were fair pageants, and the streets were furnished with torches and trumpets blown.71
Yet while they were enjoying the diversions, news arrived that the pope had pronounced in favour of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine, ruling that Anne Boleyn’s imminent child would be illegitimate. Henry recalled George Boleyn and urged Norfolk to persuade Francis to oppose the pope, but the French king refused, so Henry recalled Norfolk, Richmond and Surrey. The official excuse was that Fitzroy had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday, and so was required to return to England in order to be married to Norfolk’s daughter Mary. Their departure was confirmed by the Chronicle of Calais, which related that ‘the Duke of Richmond, bastard sonne to King Henry VIII, and the erle of Surrey, came to Caleys out of France, where they had bene almost xii months.’ This took place on 25 September, meaning that the news had probably already arrived in France that Anne’s promised son had turned out to be a girl. Though the new queen had proven herself capable of bearing a live child, and hoped to deliver more, it was still a blow to Henry. There was no guarantee of any future pregnancy or child of either gender. After everything that Henry had done in the last seven years to secure himself a legitimate male heir, Fitzroy was still his only son. And yet, he still seemed to be the king’s best hope for the succession. To cement his future even further, on 26 November, Henry Fitzroy and Mary Howard were married at Hampton Court.
The duke’s new wife was the same age as him, having also been born in 1519. She was reputed to be very beautiful, but a sketch of her by Holbein is disappointingly unfinished, giving her merely the ghost of features, lightly drawn in a pale face. The eyes are cast down, the mouth small and expression demure, the forehead is wide and the chin somewhat pointed. Beneath the black hat with its matching feather, a little of her red-gold hair is visible and the collar of her chemise covers her throat and neck. There is little to denote any personality beyond the conventions of the time. She was also intelligent, as her involvement with the Devonshire manuscript reveals. Playing a role in Anne Boleyn’s court, Mary was one of three women who collected poetry in the manuscript, including extracts of famous works, translations and new compositions. For a king’s son, few details survive about the wedding or any subsequent festivities that were held to mark the occasion. Ambassador Chapuys only remarks on the fact that it was taking place. Nor does it seem that the pair consummated their match, according to the debate that arose upon Fitzroy’s death, after which she was denied the dower lands to which she would otherwise have been entitled.
The young couple were both aged 14 and it may be that King Henry was concerned that early sexual activity might weaken his son’s health. He may have been thinking of Arthur, and genuinely believed that his brother had slept with Catherine and suffered as a result. Ironically, it was the Duke of Norfolk who, upon Henry’s investigation into the royal marriage, had volunteered the information that he had ‘known’ his wife at the age of 15. It may also have been that Henry was keeping his options open when it came to the boy’s marriage. England’s current situation was difficult, poised on the verge of irrevocable change, he having made an implacable enemy out of Catherine of Aragon’s nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor. Anne Boleyn was strongly in favour of the Howard marriage. Mary was, in fact, her cousin, so it was a convenience that reflected the times. If it remained unconsummated, there was always the option of undoing it later, leaving Fitzroy free to marry a European princess when the situation had calmed down. For the time being, the duke remained at Windsor with his brother-in-law Surrey. The latter’s later poems capture a romantic idyll of young men growing to maturity together amid the beautiful surroundings of the castle:
… proude Windsore, where I in lust and joy
With a Kynges sonne my childish yeres did passe
In greater feasts than Priam’s sonnes of Troy …
The stately seats, the ladies bright of hewe
The daunces short, long tales of great delight …
On foaming horse with swords and friendly hearts
With chere as though one should another whelm
Where we have fought and chased oft with darts …
In active games of nimbleness and strength
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth
Our tender limbs that yet shot up in length …
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green
The reins availed and swift y-breathed horse
With cry of hounds and merry blast between
When we did chase the fearful hart of foree …
The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust
The wanton talke, the divers change of play
The friendship swore, eche promise kept so just
Wherewith we passed the winter nights away.72
The possibility also arose of sending Fitzroy out to Ireland, to rule the country in person as its Lieutenant, but the situation there was becoming volatile. In 1534, the country erupted in full-scale rebellion and Henry’s minister Thomas Cromwell blamed the chaos on the fact that the duke had not been sent there sooner, writing that ‘had he allowed him to go to Ireland eight months ago, as he was told to do, nothing of what has since happened would have taken place.’73 Ultimately, though, it was too dangerous to risk sending the king’s only son and Sir William Skeffington was sent instead that October to deal with the rebels.
Fitzroy’s life continued much as it had been into the New Year, when he gave his father a great spoon of gold weighing more than four ounces, and received silver gilt pots in return, as well as a silver salt cellar and a ring from his new stepmother. On 15 January, he attended Parliament at Westminster and, five days later, voted in a chapter of the garter. In fact, he made regular appearances that spring, and was among those listed as present when the session was prorogued on 30 March.74 That May, Fitzroy was back at Windsor for the Order of the Garter ceremonies, although this time he took the role usually played by the king, even though his father was present: ‘
A chapter of the Order of the Garter was held at Greenwich on St. George’s day 26 Hen. VIII., the King and divers nobles being present. It was decided to hold the feast at Windsor on 17 May, the Sovereign’s place being supplied by the Duke of Richmond assisted by the Duke of Norfolk.75
The Black Book of the Garter contains an illustration of a St George’s Day procession dating to around 1534. Fitzroy is glimpsed on the extreme right, ahead of the king, as if just about to march from view. Dressed in the red and blue garter robes, he appears in profile, with red-gold hair like his father. The only other surviving image of the duke was painted around the same time by the same artist, the Fleming Lucas Horenbout, who was based at the Tudor court from the mid-1520s. It is a traditionally circular miniature on a bright blue background, showing a youth with heavy-lidded eyes, long nose and pursed red mouth. Fitzroy is in a state of undress, his shirt collar open and his hair concealed by a decorative cap, a curiously personal and intimate depiction of the king’s son in déshabillé.
By the spring of 1534, Anne Boleyn had conceived again and, with her ‘goodly belly’ visible to all, the king was anticipating the delivery of a son. Again, this would mean a change in Fitzroy’s status, as his strength lay in being his father’s only male child. But then, with the arrival of summer, the pregnancy seems to have gone away, without mention at court, suggesting that that queen was either mistaken or had miscarried. Fitzroy did not go with them on their summer progress, preferring instead to pass those months at his manor of Canford in Dorset. Part of the inheritance of the Duchy of Lancaster, the manor had been developed under John of Gaunt in the fourteenth century, to include an impressive kitchen range and chapel. Standing in a beautiful park beside the River Stour, it also encompassed the Norman church of St Augustine, where the duke would have worshipped. Fitzroy may also have visited other estates in his possession before being recalled to court that November. His status, and his knowledge of France, may have contributed towards the king’s choice to have Fitzroy host a feast on St Andrew’s Day for the visiting French admiral Philippe de Chabot. The event was sandwiched between two other entertainments given by Norfolk and Henry VIII himself, establishing the duke as very much a significant player in the royal family and in this powerful aristocratic triumvirate.76
The year 1535 saw Richmond continuing to play the host at court. At Westminster in January, he voted to elect James V of Scotland as a Knight of the Garter77 and, the following month, he was given the responsibility of looking after the imperial ambassador Chapuys, who relates that ‘all the lords were in Council, and dined at Cromwell’s house, except the Duke of Richmond who remained to entertain me. My men were also retained to dine, and great cheer shown them. All which was done merely to increase the jealousy of the French.’78 That May, the young duke undertook a more sinister duty, attending the executions of Carthusian monks who refused to accept the religious changes Henry was beginning to institute in England. Fitzroy was at Tyburn with Norfolk, Thomas and George Boleyn and other lords, ‘quite near the sufferers’, which must have been a grisly spectacle but also, perhaps, an important rite of passage for a young man who might be involved in the future dispensation of justice.79
Throughout that summer, the question of the king’s heir remained unanswered. After miscarrying her second child, Anne had not yet fallen pregnant again and, according to rumour, her uncle the Duke of Norfolk was hoping the situation would allow him to ‘get the rule into his own hands’, by his status as Fitzroy’s father-in-law, and by marrying another of his sons to the Princess Elizabeth:
The Duke of Norfolk, according to the Admiral, affirms that he would sooner die than see any change as regards the King or the new Queen; which is not unlike what the writer has heard in other ways of Norfolk, viz., that this breaking off might reasonably have been expected, matters depending very much on his dexterity, and the affairs of England being commonly managed more than barbarously. For he, being one of the greatest men in the kingdom, and having sons, and the Duke of Richmond f or his son-in-law, might hope one day to have that daughter for one of his sons, or, if disorders ensued, to get the rule into his own hands.80
Fitzroy may or may not have been aware of his father-in-law’s schemes but he is very unlikely to have backed any action against his father, to whom he owed everything. Yet it was one thing to seek to exploit disorder during Henry VIII’s lifetime and quite another if Norfolk attempted it after the king’s death. In that scenario, if the inheritance was to become a battlefield between Fitzroy, Mary and Elizabeth, the question of the youth’s kingship would take on a very different aspect. He presented the most attractive solution to the inheritance dilemma, which always favoured a male over a female, and had taken a role in politics and local government, as well as being intelligent, athletic and ‘a goodly young lord, and a toward, in many qualities and feats’. He was also of age, reaching his fourteenth birthday in the summer of 1533, the age when his cousin James V of Scotland had been declared capable of rule. In short, Fitzroy was the ideal son for Henry VIII, save for the circumstances of his birth. He was shaping up well as a potential king and this was recognised by leading members of the court. For the meantime, though, life continued as normal. Fitzroy was in Sheffield in July, from where he wrote to Cromwell that he lacked ‘park [and] game’ for his friends and requested that the king intervene to offer him the use of more royal grounds.81 When he returned to court that autumn, Anne Boleyn was again pregnant.
In October 1535, Fitzroy’s household moved to his estate at Tonge, near Sittingbourne, in Kent. Through the summer and into autumn, it had been based in Lewes, probably in the priory’s manor house, known as the ‘Lord’s Place’, which Henry VIII would later give to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. From there, they had gone north to Sheffield, before pausing in Godstone in Surrey, and then on to Kent. Tonge was originally a small village, now vanished, centred around the manor house and church of St Giles, with a poor hospital called St James, Puckeshall and almshouses. The manor had belonged to Cecily Neville, having come into the York family through the Mortimer line and being subsumed into the Crown’s wealth upon the kingship of Henry’s great-grandfather, Edward IV. Apart from Fitzroy’s kitchen records, another surviving detail that links him to the place is the gift of the almshouses to the king’s physician Sir William Butts, who had been appointed to care for the duke’s health. There is no evidence at all to place Richmond at Tonge at any particular time but, as his household had moved there, it seems likely that he anticipated visiting in the summer of 1536. As it transpired, though, the king would visit Kent alone.
Events early in the new year brought the question of Fitzroy’s potential kingship to the fore in a dramatic and pressing way. January saw the usual celebrations at court, and the king presented his son with a silver gilt bowl with a star at the bottom, engraved with the boy’s arms, a standing bowl with the figure of a small boy holding spear and shield bearing a French inscription and a jug with handles like serpents featuring the initials H and A topped with a crown. In the second week of the year, news arrived from Kimbolton Castle. Henry’s first wife and queen, Catherine of Aragon, had died at the age of 50, meaning that there was no longer any legal impediment to Henry’s union with Anne Boleyn. It also meant that the pope could no longer insist that the king return to Catherine. Henry was relieved, stating, ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war’ and reputedly dressed in yellow with a feather in his cap. This may have been an act of deference, as yellow was a traditional Spanish colour of mourning, but it was also symbolic of his freedom, in the removal of a burden that had long troubled his conscience. Anne celebrated too, declaring that now she was finally queen. Ironically, though, this moment may have been bittersweet for her, as she was intelligent enough to realise that the death of her rival would make her own position more fragile. Catherine was given the funeral of a widowed Princess of Wales, rather than that of a Queen of England. At Peterborough Cathedral, she was laid to rest amid solemn Catholic rites, her way lit by torches, her body borne under a canopy with ladies riding behind on palfreys draped in black and others in chariots, to a tomb that her friend the imperial ambassador considered to be too far from the altar. In retrospect, this seems to be the first in a series of events that year which would force the king to confront his own mortality.
On 24 January, Henry had an accident while jousting in the tilt yard at Greenwich. Unseated by his opponent’s lance, dressed in full armour, he fell heavily and was pinned under his horse, so that onlookers ‘thought it a miracle he was not killed’. He lay unconscious for two hours, during which the members of his council urgently debated who would succeed him – the 2-year-old Elizabeth, the 19-year-old Mary, who had been declared illegitimate, or the 16-year-old Fitzroy. Under duress in some cases, councillors had sworn an oath to uphold the first Act of Succession, passed in 1534. Failure to do so bore the penalty of death in the cases of Cardinal John Fisher and Sir Thomas More. By that oath, England would have bypassed Mary and Henry for the sake of a 2-year-old girl whose mother was relatively unpopular with the people. Then again, in the event of the king’s death, such allegiances and oaths would become invalid. Norfolk at least was poised to exploit the ensuing disorder. Henry recovered but, five days later, Anne Boleyn miscarried her child, after around three and a half months’ gestation, which had the appearance of a male. Once again, the precious legitimate prince had eluded the king. Once again, this worked to Richmond’s advantage.
On 2 May 1536 Anne was arrested on charges of adultery, incest and for conspiring the king’s death. Henry Fitzroy was not one of the peers summoned to sit in judgement at the trial of his stepmother on 15 May. He did attend her execution at the Tower of London on 19 May, perhaps by choice, perhaps as the king’s representative; perhaps he was there with his father-in-law, Norfolk, who had been quick to distance himself from his errant relations. Richmond’s position regarding his stepmother was a delicate one. Having learned the lesson of Wolsey’s fall, he is likely to have reacted pragmatically to the scandalous revelations and loss of a queen who had bestowed him with thoughtful gifts at New Year. Yet no indication survives of any warmth between them, any personal relationship, and Henry’s existence may have been felt as an unintentional rebuke to Anne each time she miscarried. As part of Norfolk’s family, the young duke was equally part of the Boleyn faction but also removed from it by his greater loyalty to his father. Just as Norfolk shrewdly and swiftly embraced the king’s cause, Fitzroy also washed his hands of Anne. It would not have been difficult. His father’s actions made it easy. She was simply removed, tried and executed within a matter of weeks. Her stepson’s life would have been untouched by this turn of events, save for the reminder of his father’s ultimate justice and the sense of a danger narrowly avoided. He likely went to her execution with little sentiment, more as an essential part of his legal training.
Anne had been readying herself for death since the early hours of the morning, trying to calm herself sufficiently and accept her fate, in the interests of her soul. Before dawn, she had summoned the Constable of the Tower, Sir William Kingston, to hear mass with her and to be her witness as she swore on the Holy Sacraments that she had never betrayed the king. Kingston wrote to Cromwell the same day:
she wylle declare herself to be a good woman for alle men, bot for the Kynge, at the our of her death, for this mornynge she sent for me that I myght be with her at such time as she received the good Lord, to the intent I shuld here her speak as towchyng her innocence always to be clere; and in the writing of this she sent for me. And at my comynge she sayd, ‘Mr. Kyngston, I hear say I shall not die before noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dede by this time, and past my payne.’ I told her it shuld be no payne, it was so subtle. And then she said, ‘I heard say the executor was very good, and I have a little neck,’ and put her hand about it, laughing heartily. I have sene many men and also women executed, and all thay have bene in great sorrow, and to my knowledge this lady has much joy and pleasure in dethe. Sir, her almoner is continually with her, and has bene since ii. of the clock after midnight.83
An account of the scaffold speeches of George and Anne Boleyn has survived in the Viennese archives, giving an illustration of the way the condemned used their final platform as another way to smooth their path through death and approach it willingly. The fact of their innocence in this case, upon which most modern historians now agree, was irrelevant by this point. What mattered now was the way they conducted themselves in the final days and hours as they passed though the Valley of Shadows with the Devil close at hand, hoping to gain their soul if they showed unchristian behaviour. George’s speech was composed, dignified and conventional: the scaffold was not the place for recriminations or emotions. He took the opportunity to seize this last chance and present himself as an example by which others may learn:
He made a very catholic address to the people, saying he had not come thither to preach, but to serve as a mirror and example, acknowledging his sins against God and the King, and declaring he need not recite the causes why he was condemned, as it could give no pleasure to hear them. He first desired mercy and pardon of God, and afterwards of the King and all others whom he might have offended, and hoped that men would not follow the vanities of the world and the flatteries of the Court, which had brought him to that shameful end. He said if he had followed the teachings of the Gospel, which he had often read, he would not have fallen into this danger, for a good doer was far better than a good reader. In the end, he pardoned those who had condemned him to death, and asked the people to pray for his soul.84
In contrast, if Chapuys’s account is to be believed, Anne made an effort to reconcile herself to her fate but she was still in shock and emotional at the end:
The said Queen (unjustly called) finally was beheaded upon a scaffold within the Tower with open gates. She was brought by the captain upon the said scaffold, and four young ladies followed her. She looked frequently behind her, and when she got upon the scaffold was very much exhausted and amazed. She begged leave to speak to the people, promising to say nothing but what was good. The captain gave her leave, and she began to raise her eyes to Heaven, and cry mercy to God and to the King for the offence she had done, desiring the people always to pray to God for the King, for he was a good, gentle, gracious, and amiable prince. She was then stripped of her short mantle furred with ermines, and afterwards took off her hood, which was of English make, herself. A young lady presented her with a linen cap, with which she covered her hair, and she knelt down, fastening her clothes about her feet, and one of the said ladies bandaged her eyes.85
There would be no magnificent tomb for Anne Boleyn. She did not even fare as well as Catherine of Aragon, who had been stripped of her queenship to be buried with the rites due to a widowed Princess of Wales in Peterborough Cathedral. Anne’s severed head and body were wrapped in a white cloth and placed in a plain elm coffin. She was buried under the stone slabs of the chancel in an unmarked grave.
The charge against Anne that she had ‘conspired the death of the King and another prince’,86 could have only have been referring to Fitzroy. Henry clearly believed that she had intended harm to his son, and to Princess Elizabeth, which gave rise to a scene recorded by Chapuys for the Emperor Charles V. The ambassador wrote that upon the same evening Anne was arrested, when:
the Duke of Richmond went to say Good night to his father, and ask his blessing after the English custom, the King began to weep, saying that he and his sister, meaning the Princess, were greatly bound to God for having escaped the hands of that accursed whore, who had determined to poison them; from which it is clear that the King knew something about it.87
This emotional outburst demonstrates that Henry’s fear was real, whether or not it was unfounded, but also highlights aspects of the father-son relationship. The formality of Fitzroy’s goodnight request for a blessing also has the hallmarks of intimacy and privilege, and sounds like it was a regular occurrence, a custom between them when staying in the same building. Henry’s tears were safe within this private space, alone with his son, although privacy at the Tudor court was always relative and, as the existence of Chapuys’s letter proves, even the most private moments had witnesses. Whether or not Fitzroy believed the charges against his stepmother cannot be ascertained given the lack of surviving evidence. However, if his father the king believed it, then to all intents and purposes, it became the truth. All accounts suggest that Richmond was a dutiful, obedient and grateful son: his father’s enemy was his enemy.
Once again, the events of May 1536 manoeuvred Fitzroy into a strong position to inherit the English throne. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who had unmade the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, now declared Henry’s marriage to Anne invalid, meaning that Princess Elizabeth was illegitimate. There were even rumours that she was not Henry’s child at all, but the product of Anne’s illicit affair with the courtier Sir Henry Norris. This gave rise to the unusual situation in which all three of Henry VIII’s children were considered illegitimate, levelling the playing field, which could only be to the advantage of a male who had come of age. In the early summer of 1536, Fitzroy looked like the leading candidate. On 6 June, ambassador Chapuys reported a statement made before the king by the Earl of Sussex, Robert Radcliffe in the Privy Council, to the effect that ‘considering that the Princess was a bastard, as well as the Duke of Richmond, it was advisable to prefer the male to the female, to the succession to the crown.’88 Chapuys reported that the king did not contradict him. Perhaps it was a sign of his increasing proximity to the throne that Fitzroy was now set up in his own establishment at the royal property of Baynard’s Castle, instead of the home of the Bishop of Norwich, which he had been using as a London base since 1534. It also meant that the youth was approaching the age when he might live independently with his wife and father a family of his own.
Henry had not given up hope of fathering a son within a legitimate marriage and he did not waste any time in this respect. On the day of Anne’s execution, Cranmer issued a dispensation allowing Henry and Jane Seymour to marry, without banns, despite the fact that they were related in the third degree of affinity. The following day they were engaged. The wedding took place on 30 May. As Chapuys has it, the king intended to set aside his existing children in favour of any born to him of his new marriage. When ‘speaking with Mistress Jane Semel [sic] of their future marriage, the latter suggested that the Princess should be replaced in her former position; and the King told her she was a fool, and ought to solicit the advancement of the children they would have between them, and not any others.’89 But at that point, any sons borne by Jane Seymour were purely theoretical. The following month, Henry celebrated his forty-fifth birthday and, while he was still not as overweight as he would become in the next few years, he frequently experienced poor health. He had now been trying to father sons for twenty-seven years and his record was not good.
It was with this dilemma in mind that Henry passed the second Act of Succession that June. With no legitimate children, the Act gave the king permission to nominate his own successor in his own time. The implications for Fitzroy were obvious, but this was not a statement of intent, merely representing his inclusion in the running. Nevertheless, this was the closest the boy had ever come to inheriting the English throne. Of course, any children the king fathered by Jane, or subsequent wives, would take precedence, but the chances of this appeared slim. For a few brief weeks in June 1536, the possibility of Fitzroy becoming King Henry IX was very real. Then, before the end of the next month, the youth’s health began to fail and, suddenly and unexpectedly, his life was cut short.
The young duke’s fatal illness appears to have come on suddenly. In mid-May, he was included on a list compiled by Thomas Wriothesley for new appointments, receiving the position of Chamberlain of Chester and North Wales, and petitioning for another post for his servant. It seems unlikely that he would have been granted such a role if he had been seriously ill at the time. Three weeks later, on 8 June, Fitzroy was well enough to appear at the state opening of Henry VIII’s sixth Parliament, walking just ahead of his father, whose cap he ceremoniously carried, as the lords processed from York Place to Westminster. The first mention of his poor health arises in a letter dated 8 July, and this condition already appeared serious: ambassador Chapuys wrote to Emperor Charles V of the likelihood of Princess Mary being named as her father’s heir, ‘especially failing the Duke of Richmond, who, in the judgment of physicians is consumptive and incurable’.90 Ten days later, John Hussee reported to Lord Lisle that ‘my Lord of Richmond is very sick’91 and in his letter of 23 July, Chapuys recorded that the king was ‘mortified … because he has no hope that the Duke of Richmond can live long, whom he certainly intended to make his successor and, but for his illness, would have got him declared so by parliament’.92
No details survive about Fitzroy’s symptoms or condition, but by mid-July it was apparent to those around him that his illness would swiftly prove fatal. Later, councillors of Richmond’s half-brother Edward VI recalled the duke’s death when the young king lay on his death bed, and at least once commented that Edward’s illness was ‘the same as that which killed the late … Richmond’.93 Only fifteen days separated the first report of Fitzroy’s illness and his death. This suggests that, even if he had underlying symptoms, they had not been considered life-threatening until this last brief period, when they became acute, or else were exacerbated by an additional complication. If, as Chapuys believed, the duke was suffering from tuberculosis, a lung infection might have sped his demise in an era without antibiotics. This might have developed in a matter of days, as the king’s absence from court suggests that his son’s death was unexpected or sudden. In fact, Henry was at the royal manor of Milton Regis, near Sittingbourne, just 3 miles down the road from Richmond’s manor at Tonge. It may have been that they intended to travel into Kent together, or that Fitzroy had intended to depart later and meet up with his father, but in the end he was too ill to make the journey. He remained at St James’s Palace, which the king was in the process of completing.
It was Chapuys again who recorded, on 23 July, that ‘I have just this moment heard that the Duke of Richmond died this morning; not a bad thing for the interests of the Princess’.94 A Dr Ortiz reported to the empress that the king ‘had determined to name his bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, but he died on 22 July’,95 although he was not in England, so may not have got the date right. It seems reasonable to assume that Fitzroy died on the night of 22–23 July, perhaps in the small hours. Henry was still in Kent when the news reached him, as is clear from a letter written later by Norfolk, which states, ‘I was never at Dover with his highness since my lord of Richmond died, but at that time, of whose death word came to Sittingbourne.’96 The king’s reaction to the news went unrecorded but this in itself may be of significance. The king maintained such a complete and profound silence that Norfolk was forced to step in and make arrangements for Fitzroy’s burial. Henry’s state of mind is best suggested by the fact that he apparently failed to clarify his intentions on this matter to Norfolk, and criticised his choices bitterly after the fact.
Richmond was laid to rest in the traditional location of the Howard dynasty, Thetford Abbey, in Norfolk. The duke later stated that the king had insisted that the youth’s body be ‘conveyed secretly in a closed cart’, so he had given instructions for this to be carried out. There were only two mourners, Fitzroy’s governor George Cotton and his brother Richard Cotton, the comptroller of the duke’s household, who were responsible for accompanying the coffin to the abbey. Chapuys relates that on 3 August, ‘after being dead eight days, [Fitzroy] has been secretly carried in a wagon [charette], covered with straw, without any company except two persons clothed in green, who followed at a distance, into Norfolk, where the Duke his father-in-law will have him buried.’97 This puts his removal from London on 31 July and, with time allowed for the proper rites and travelling, the funeral would have taken place a few days later. Norfolk’s concern about the king’s anger is apparent from his letter of 5 August to Thomas Cromwell:
This night at 8 o’clock came letters from my friends and servants about London, all agreeing in one tale, that the King was displeased with me because my lord of Richmond was not buried honorably. The King wished the body conveyed secretly in a closed cart to Thedford, ‘and at my suit thither,’ and so buried; accordingly I ordered both the Cottons to have the body wrapped in lead and a close cart provided, but it was not done, nor was the body conveyed very secretly. I trust the King will not blame me undeservedly.98
Writing from ‘Kenynghale Lodge’, at ten o’clock at night, Norfolk was clearly affected by the loss, and the news of the king’s displeasure, admitting to Cromwell that the letter was composed ‘with the hand of him that is full, full, full of choler and agony’.99
Richmond was not to rest in peace for very long. Thetford Abbey was one of the last religious institutions to be dissolved during Henry VIII’s scheme to close the monasteries. It was forced to submit in 1540, just four years after Richmond’s death, so his remains were moved almost 40 miles to the church of St Michael the Archangel at Framlingham in Suffolk. The monument now standing in the church may be the original, brought from the abbey, or else was commissioned at the time of the removal, in which case it might have been produced to the king’s specifications. It stands 9ft long, 5ft wide and 5ft high, with friezes depicting scenes, prophets and people from the Old Testament. Four images stand at the corners, each supporting a ‘trophy of the passion’ and Richmond’s arms feature with a garter and impaled with those of his wife. Large and imposing, the tomb in Framlingham may not be exactly what Norfolk planned, but comes close to showing the monumental carving and scale desirable for a potential king of England. Most incongruous is its location in a small parish church, where it seems oversized. Built on a scale for prominence in a major abbey, Fitzroy’s surviving memorial must be imagined within its intended context.
The life of Henry VIII’s son ended unexpectedly in his eighteenth year. As his father’s potential heir, the impact of this was dynastic and political, but exactly what effect his absence would have remained unseen for another two decades. For the time being, Fitzroy’s death was an intense personal loss for the king, a wonderful opportunity lost, just as he was starting to appreciate its potential. On an immediate, practical level, the duke left behind a household to be disbanded and it is ironic that only in death do we get a really detailed insight into what it was like to live as the king’s son. Only two days later, an inventory was made of Fitzroy’s goods by a John Gostwick, probably after the news arrived at Tonge.
Henry had been in possession of a wardrobe fit for a future king, the fabrics and colours leaving no one in any doubt about his status and suggestive of his possible role to come. The full inventory of his clothing, which survives in the Harleian MS 1419, includes a crimson damask gown embroidered all over with gold, with seven buttons of gold; a gown of black velvet embroidered with a border of Venice gold lined with black velvet and Bruges satin; a gown of purple velvet edged with Venice gold and lined with yellow satin; a gown of purple satin tinsel and a gown of incarnate (red) damask trimmed with a small fringe. Richmond also possessed the ceremonial gowns of his office. In his wardrobe was his garter gown of purple velvet, the garter itself made of Venice gold, along with a kirtle of crimson velvet with a hood and a scarlet robe, with matching kirtle and hood. When he went riding, the duke had a coat of green satin with a silver fringe and a selection of coats made of green and black taffeta, of white, black and red velvet, and black and yellow satin. His doublets were of red or black velvet, and red, yellow or blue satin, edged with velvet, or Venice silver or gold. He had hose in matching colours and he owned furs of sable and black lamb.100
Some of Richmond’s possessions were exquisite. At table, he might cut his meat with a rich dagger, trimmed and garnished with silver and gilt, while wearing a black velvet bonnet set with a gold brooch that featured a face, four rubies and twenty-six gold buttons. Spread out before him might have been silver dishes and spoons, a gold basin to hold salt decorated with a dragon and pearls, gilt cups decorated with eagles and roses, gold spoons with roses and pomegranates left over from the reign of Catherine of Aragon and another salt cellar reputedly made from a unicorn’s horn. When he dressed for state occasions, Fitzroy had a selection of gold jewellery to adorn himself with. He owned a number of garters and collars set with rubies and diamonds, bracelets and rings set with gems, a gold necklet featuring seven white enamelled roses and a small chain of Paris work, enamelled black. When he prayed, he might have used some of the many gilt and gold chalices and censers, being sprinkled with holy water from a gilt pot engraved with roses and the Beaufort portcullis. He owned crosses featuring the images of the Virgin Mary and a whole host of saints, huge gilt altar candlesticks, communion cups decorated with flowers, serpents and feathers. While out hunting, the duke might have used his gilt wood knife with its shiny buckle and scabbard of green velvet, or worn one of five pairs of boots or three pairs of spurs. When he slept, it was under a tester, or canopy, of cloth of old, green tinsel and crimson velvet, with curtains of twenty panels made from red and yellow sarcanet, and cushions of cloth of gold, quilted and tasselled.101
Richmond was not given one of the elaborate transi, or memento mori, tombs showing his carved remains underneath, the skin taut across his ribs and his mouth gaping in agony. By the time he died, these were passing out of fashion in favour of more simple monuments. Size still mattered, though: the Howard family monoliths were as solid and dense as former tombs had been. Wrapped in elaborate tracery and they displayed biblical, heraldic and dynastic imagery more than personal commemoration. Memento mori memorials were also very much the choice at this time of an individual of mature years, contemplating their final days and their passage to heaven, and designing their own tombs. Frequently they had the wealth and leisure to dedicate to them. While such carvings were intended as harsh reminders about the reality and inevitability of death, it is rare to see them depicting the cadavers of young people or children. Premature death needed no such illustration. When the young were depicted on Tudor tombs, they tended to be plump, in the prime of life, as if they had merely fallen asleep. For all the proximity of death, the association of decay and youth still went against human instinct, which felt that its proper sphere should be old age. Yet Richmond’s wardrobe accounts can be set beside his square white tomb, almost as a memorial to his life, an alternative cadaver speaking of lost grandeur and opportunity. His velvets and cloths of gold, no longer required, are more poignant as a memento mori for the sudden, unexpected juxtaposition of life and death.
On the same day as the inventory of Richmond’s possessions was compiled, another document raised questions about the futures of the staff in his household. Appearing to originate from Tonge, and perhaps also authored by John Gostwick, the document asked how long the staff would remain in post and if some might be taken into the king’s guard. Others wanted to know what liveries of black cloth they were to receive for mourning and whether their fees and entitlements would be continued or matched. The duke’s governor, George Cotton, was in receipt of an annual salary of £20 while his brother Richard, as steward, received £16 13s 4d.102 There were twenty-one gentleman yeomen and grooms, of whom eleven were married, and the yeomen of the chamber followed a similar pattern. Then there were other servants, stable workers, kitchen staff, laundry workers, estate keepers, clerks, secretaries and all the other offices that comprised the household of a king’s son. Just as with Arthur Tudor and, to a different extent, Edward of Westminster, the royal heir’s household was a symbol of hope. It attracted the service and loyalty of men who saw it as a potential lifelong connection, an investment in an individual whose fortunes were expected to rise, carrying their servants with them. It was a household in waiting, established solely around the existence of an individual prince. When that prince died, the household was broken up almost at once, and sometimes the servants found a place with other family members or patrons, or sometimes with other rising stars at court. In some cases it must have been a struggle. The Cotton brothers were fortunate enough to find favour with the king, George being knighted on 19 October and receiving the grant of Combermere in Shropshire, while Richard found a new role under Cromwell, supplying the royal troops who had been sent north to deal with the rebel uprising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. After the birth of Prince Edward, a new opportunity arose for which the Cottons’ experience with Richmond proved excellent preparation. Richard became cofferer and comptroller in the new prince’s household in 1538, while George was his vice chamberlain.103
In a strange twist of fate, the tragedy that had befallen the English king was mirrored, just weeks later, in France. As Henry VIII had lost a potential heir, so the King of France suffered a similar bereavement in the August of 1536, only this heir was his eldest legitimate son. During Fitzroy and Surrey’s 1532–33 sojourn in France, the English king’s son had lived closely with the Valois royal family, including the Dauphin, Francis. The young man, reputedly very beautiful, was around sixteen months older than Fitzroy and the decorations for his christening had been designed by Leonardo da Vinci. He had briefly been engaged to Henry’s daughter Mary, and great things were expected of him, before events on the international stage had changed his character. Sombre and serious after his period of incarceration by the emperor, his health had never really recovered from the years spent in the damp, dark cell in Madrid. Just three years after Fitzroy left France, the Dauphin died on 10 August 1536, at the age of 18. It was not even three weeks after Fitzroy’s passing and, likely, of the same cause. His contemporaries blamed poison, as he had been taken ill after requesting a glass of water following a tennis game. His secretary, Montecuccoli, who had brought him the drink, was an Italian promoted by Francis’s sister-in-law, Catherine de Medici, and thus an easy target. He confessed to poisoning under torture and, although he later retracted, suffered a traitor’s death. Other contemporary evidence suggested his poor health since his imprisonment led him to develop tuberculosis.
The deaths of Henry Fitzroy and the Dauphin Francis, as well as those of Arthur Tudor and, in 1553, Henry VIII’s second son, Edward VI, help define the nature, spread, symptoms and diagnosis of tuberculosis in the first half of the sixteenth century. Then referred to as phthisis, and later as consumption, the illness has become something of a default option, the usual explanation given by historians for the unexplained deaths of young people whose symptoms might broadly fit. In many cases, there is good reason for this, as contemporary doctors sometimes identified the illness, such as with Arthur at Ludlow in 1502, and Chapuys’s reported diagnosis of Richmond. Yet diagnosis and fact do not always correlate when it comes to historical medicine, so the question must remain open, qualified by lack of evidence. Of all these young men claimed by disease, it seems most likely that Edward VI died of tuberculosis, or an infection complicating it, or arising from it, given the reports of him coughing up black and yellow sputum. However, the Tudor family in particular were to suffer more than their fair share of similar deaths, especially among youths of a certain age. Arthur and Edward VI were both 15 and Richmond 17. Despite this apparent family connection, tuberculosis is not a hereditary illness. It is transmitted by infection, the bacillus mycobacterium tuberculosis passed from one individual to another through speaking, coughing or sneezing. Yet heredity may have played a part. There may have been certain inherited defects or weaknesses in the family that made the young Tudor men more susceptible to infection, such as poor immune systems or weak lungs. Something in Henry VII’s genes may have contributed to the vulnerability of his eldest son and grandsons in the face of an untreatable disease.
Tuberculosis can be difficult to diagnose, especially if it never develops from the latent to the acute phase. Frequent or close contact with other sufferers creates a higher risk of infection and someone with untreated acute tuberculosis can infect an estimated ten, fifteen or more people a year through physical proximity.104 At the end of his life, it was clear that Henry VII was suffering from the illness, with his repeated lung trouble and infections. Earlier bouts of ill health suggest that he might have been struggling with it for years. When it came to treating the sick, Tudor notions of medicine might also have contributed to the spread of the disease, given doctors’ tendency to seal off invalids in hot, dark rooms when the effectiveness of ventilation is a factor for the survival of the bacillus. Tuberculosis usually affects the lungs and often shows no symptoms, lying latent, with only around 10 per cent of cases becoming acute and proving fatal. Symptoms include coughing and chest pains, also weight loss, fever and fatigue, which might be mistaken for other causes. In 15 to 20 per cent of cases, particularly among the young, the illness can sometimes spread from the lungs to other organs. Only those in the acute phase can spread the illness and, without treatment, the death rate for active cases is 66 per cent.105
Some indication of just how virulent the disease could be, prior to the discovery of a treatment, is found in data collated by the Office of National Statistics, which record deaths in Britain from the condition throughout the twentieth century. In 1918, 46,200 people died from the illness, falling to 29,800 in 1928 and 21,900 in 1938. After a cure was discovered in the mid-1940s, the death rate dropped off even more dramatically, claiming 15,600 lives in 1948 and just 2,950 in 1958. By 2008, the condition claimed only 339 deaths, a drop of more than 100 per cent.106 In this context, it is easy to see how the chances of surviving tuberculosis in the medieval and Tudor period were very slim, if the immune system was already weakened and given potentially prolonged exposure to acutely infected individuals. As Richmond’s half-brother was to illustrate, repeated illness could wreak havoc on a susceptible young body, once again snatching away the chance of a potentially glorious life and reign.
What sort of king might Henry Fitzroy have made? From all contemporary descriptions, he seems to have been a young man very much in his father’s model; handsome and red-haired, intelligent and well-read but preferring sport, fond of chivalry and romance, if Surrey’s poetry is to be believed. The correspondence regarding his childhood establishment at Sheriff Hutton also gives glimpses of a boy who could be assertive, possibly even strong-willed, although he might be too easily distracted. This all sounds very much like a young Henry VIII, happy to leave the boring details of business to Wolsey while he hunted and danced. There would have been no difficult minority under Fitzroy, had he succeeded in 1547, and the smooth transition of power would have been effected by his established ties of loyalty with some of the most powerful figures at court, as well as his friendships with the kings of Scotland and France. Furthermore, he might even have been better prepared to rule than his father, whose teenage years under Henry VII had been sheltered, with little effort made to prepare the young man for kingship. Although Fitzroy had not been raised for kingship, just like his father during the life of Prince Arthur, he had been raised as the king’s only son. He had experience in the process of ruling in the north, witnessing justice and interceding on behalf of his allies. He had been frequently at court, taking part in rituals like the garter ceremonies but also taking a regular seat in Parliament. More recently, he had understood the changing nature of religion in the country, sitting in the reformation council, representing Henry at the executions of Carthusian monks who refused the submit to the royal will, and he had been a witness to the removal of a queen. All this had taught him valuable lessons in the absolute authority of the Crown and the methods for ensuring its continuity. Yet his was likely to have been a peaceful rule. Where his father had gone to war with France and Spain, Fitzroy’s existing friendships would have allowed for greater harmony with Francis I and the new Dauphin, Henri, who was just three months his elder, and with his cousin James V. Having been raised in the 1520s, in the era before the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the break with Rome, it is impossible to know whether Richmond would have leaned more towards his early experiences of religion, or allowed his father’s settlements of the 1530s to stand, or even whether he would have pushed for greater reform. He would certainly have been of an age to resist pressure from councillors who hoped to take the country further down the route of Protestantism, had he not wished to do so. Richmond’s fertility was untried, but he had a young wife who was apparently healthy and would outlive him by two decades. It is not implausible that Mary might have borne at least one son while the pair were in their prime. Even the stigma of illegitimacy might have been overcome, as Henry ruled in the second Act of Succession. Fitzroy might have become a great king, like his father, but perhaps even better. Everything seemed to be moving in that direction in the early summer of 1536. As events transpired, though, the pendulum of fate was to swing the other way.