THE YEAR 1486 began with a momentous event. On 18 January, the citizens of London lined the streets in hopes of catching a glimpse of their new king, Henry VII, who had been crowned just eleven weeks before. As he made his way to Westminster Abbey once more, it was to take as his bride Elizabeth of York. Their union would mark the end of more than thirty years of bitter civil strife, in which two rival branches of the Plantagenet dynasty had battled for supremacy. Thereafter, the red rose of Lancaster would be intertwined with the white rose of York to represent a single, united dynasty: the House of Tudor.
But the marriage promised more to Henry than the end of civil war. Elizabeth of York’s blood was unquestionably royal. She was the eldest daughter of Edward IV and, with both of her younger brothers presumed dead after their disappearance in the Tower during the brief, bloody reign of her uncle Richard III, she was the most senior representative of the House of York. Although her new husband was the chief Lancastrian claimant, he could hardly boast the same pedigree. Henry’s great-grandfather had been the son of John of Gaunt (the third son of Edward III) and his long-standing mistress Katherine Swynford. The new king was thus descended from an illegitimate branch of the royal family. His father Edmund Tudor, meanwhile, had been the child of Henry V’s queen, Catherine of Valois, by her Welsh page. With such a dubious bloodline, Henry desperately needed to strengthen his right to the throne by marrying well. And the sooner he could beget an heir on his new wife, the better.
According to the humanist scholar, priest and diplomat, Polydore Vergil, who penned a history of England during his many years there, Elizabeth had been appalled by the idea of marrying the man who had usurped the York throne. ‘I will not thus be married,’ she declared, ‘but, unhappy creature that I am, will rather suffer all the torments which St Catherine is said to have endured for the love of Christ than be united with a man who is the enemy of my family.’1 If his account is true, then she soon suppressed her ‘singular aversion’. The lure of the throne must have offered a strong enticement, and Elizabeth might have reflected that it was better to marry the king than to be palmed off on one of his followers. It was not an age when women were at liberty to choose for themselves.
Besides, if his pedigree was questionable, the first Tudor king at least presented an impressive sight to his subjects. His contemporary biographer Vergil described him as ‘extremely attractive in appearance’, with a ‘slim, but well-built and strong’ figure, above the average height, and a ‘cheerful’ face, which became animated when he spoke. Francis Bacon agreed that he was of a ‘comely personage, a little above just stature, well and straight limbed, but slender’, and added that his face was ‘a little like a churchman’. He was also ‘wise and prudent’, shrewd in business and ‘not devoid of scholarship’.2 Having spent much of his adult life in exile in Brittany, Henry had honed his military skills in readiness for the day when he would launch an invasion of England and claim the crown that his indomitable mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, had always insisted was his by right. The new king had spent most of these formative years surrounded by men, his uncle Jasper Tudor foremost among them. But even though he enjoyed a reputation for piety, he had not entirely resisted the temptations on offer in Brittany and had sired a bastard son, Roland de Velville.
Although Henry was naturally reserved and introspective, which earned him the reputation of a serious and sober-minded monarch, in the company of close family and friends he was much more relaxed and convivial. Vergil describes him as ‘gracious and kind and … as attentive to his visitors as he was easy of access. His hospitality was splendidly generous.’3 The new king’s privy chamber accounts include payments to jesters, minstrels, pipers and singers. He liked to gamble and, despite his reputation as a miser, he thought nothing of waging substantial amounts on card games. He was also very fond of sport and employed two professional tennis players to help improve his game. He always took care to dress in magnificent style, anxious to project an image of majesty that might disguise his questionable claim to the throne.
Henry’s bride was no less magnificent. Aged nineteen at the time of her marriage, Elizabeth of York was nine years younger than Henry and in the full bloom of youth. She was tall like her father Edward IV and, with her lustrous blonde hair and rosebud mouth, had inherited the famed good looks of both of her parents. Elizabeth was also intelligent and a shrewd political operator, having lived her life at court. The Venetian envoy described her as ‘a very handsome woman, and of great ability’.4
Expectations were high for this union of the warring houses of York and Lancaster. ‘Everyone considers [the marriage] advantageous to the kingdom,’ observed one foreign ambassador, adding that ‘all things appear disposed towards peace’.5 But Henry looked for more from his bride than the resolution of conflict. She had to fill the royal nursery with children and thus secure the future of his fledgling Tudor dynasty.
The new queen did not disappoint. Just eight months after the wedding, she gave birth to a son, Arthur. The name was significant: Henry had displayed King Arthur’s red dragon on his banner at Bosworth, and Elizabeth’s own father had claimed descent from the legendary hero. At a stroke, Arthur’s birth rendered his father significantly more secure on his throne. Now he could boast a male heir, as well as a wife of unquestionable royal blood. His Yorkist rivals had been dealt a crushing blow.
The precious infant was soon moved to Farnham in Surrey, along with a sizeable and costly household.6 Security was of paramount importance, and the king made sure that only men of proven fidelity were chosen to care for this tiny scion of the House of Tudor. The personnel included Arthur’s wet nurse, dry nurse, yeomen, grooms and, at the head of the nursery, lady governess. The most senior official was the king’s cousin, Sir Reginald Pole, who was appointed chamberlain of the prince’s household.
The same attention to detail was applied to Arthur’s education. The respected scholar John Rede, formerly head of Winchester College, was appointed tutor and devised a classical curriculum for the infant prince. Almost from the moment that he took his first, tottering steps, Arthur also began the physical training that formed an important part of a royal heir’s education. He must be a prince in the Renaissance model, as skilled in riding and combat as he was in languages and rhetoric.
Although Elizabeth had been quick to conceive her first child, it would be more than two years before she fell pregnant again.7 In late October 1489, the queen entered her confinement at the palace of Westminster, where she herself had been born, and on 28 November she gave birth to a daughter. The arrival of a girl tended to be something of a disappointment in royal and noble families, and the London Grey Friars chronicler did not even trouble to record the infant princess’s arrival. She was christened Margaret two days later in honour of her paternal grandmother. Henry’s reaction to the birth of his daughter is not recorded. Although he must have hoped for a son to strengthen his dynasty, Margaret would still prove useful in forging an international alliance through marriage.
The queen soon assumed responsibility for the upbringing of her new daughter. This was entirely in keeping with royal tradition, whereby the male heir was groomed for kingship by specially appointed tutors and attendants, leaving the other royal children to the care of their mother. Elizabeth had been raised by her mother, Edward IV’s scandalous queen Elizabeth Woodville, so she knew what was expected of her.
As well as playing an active role in her daughter’s upbringing, Elizabeth also resumed her wifely duties shortly after the birth. Less than a year later, she was pregnant again. The child who would grow up to be England’s most famous king may have been conceived at Ewelme in Oxfordshire: Henry VII and his queen had stayed there in October 1490.8 Today, it is a picturesque village in the heart of the Chilterns, but in the late fifteenth century it was a place of some status, with strong links to the powerful de la Pole family, who were close blood relatives of the queen.
The queen’s pregnancy proceeded without incident, and she chose Greenwich as the place for her third confinement. Originally built in 1453 as ‘Bella Court’ by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, regent to the young King Henry VI, the palace had been taken over by the king’s formidable wife, Margaret of Anjou, who renamed it ‘Placentia’ and carried out a series of substantial improvements. Soon after coming to the throne, Henry VII had enlarged the palace further, refacing the entire building with red brick and changing its name to Greenwich. Even so, the palace was considerably smaller than the other royal residences in London. But it was the queen’s favourite house. She may also have wished to retreat to the relative quiet and privacy of this, the easternmost royal palace in the capital, for her first summer birth.
There is no surviving record of when Elizabeth arrived at Greenwich, but it is likely to have been in late May or early June, when her pregnancy had entered its ninth month. Her husband was preoccupied with the threat posed by Perkin Warbeck, a young man claiming to be Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the ‘Princes in the Tower’. This second ‘pretender’ constituted a significant risk to Henry’s throne because he had secured a powerful patron in the form of Margaret of Burgundy, sister of the Yorkist king Edward IV and therefore aunt to Henry’s queen. Many in England were willing to give him credence, and the old antipathies between York and Lancaster that had torn the country apart for so many years looked set to be revived. ‘The rumour of Richard, the resuscitated duke of York, had divided nearly all England into factions, filling the minds of men with hope or fear,’ recounted Polydore Vergil.9 Deeply insecure about his right to the throne and increasingly paranoid about any rival claimants, the king was plunged into the greatest crisis of his reign so far.
What Henry needed to secure his dynasty and send a powerful message to his enemies was another son. The four-year-old Prince Arthur was thriving under the care of his tutors and household, but in this age of high infant mortality one male heir was not enough. It was therefore to his great satisfaction when news arrived that his wife had been safely delivered of a boy on 28 June. Interestingly, though, his indomitable mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, seemed to pay less attention to the birth of her new grandson than to his elder siblings. She had recorded the precise time of Arthur and Margaret’s births in her Book of Hours, but merely noted the date of this latest prince’s arrival – and even then had to correct it.10
The second Tudor prince was named after his father and baptised in the church of the Observant Franciscans, close to the palace at Greenwich. This would have pleased the king, whom Vergil noted was ‘especially attached to those Franciscan friars, known as Observants, for whom he founded many convents so that with his help this brotherhood should flourish for ever in his kingdom’.11 Even though Prince Henry was just the ‘spare heir’, his father did not stint upon the arrangements. The church was lavishly decorated with cloth of gold and damask, rich tapestries and cypress linen. A temporary wooden stage was erected, on which stood a silver font brought over from Canterbury Cathedral. The tiny prince was conveyed there, wrapped in a mantle of cloth of gold trimmed with ermine.12 Richard Fox, Bishop of Exeter and a close adviser to the king, presided over the ceremony.
If royal protocol was observed, Henry would have remained at court until he was three months old. It was at this tender age that royal babies were then established in their own household, separate from their parents. As only the second-born son, however, Prince Henry was not afforded such a privilege, and instead joined his sister Margaret at the Palace of Sheen. Their mother loved this beautiful and tranquil residence, which lay eight miles west of London. She had spent many of her own childhood years here, and it had strong associations with her own mother, to whom it had been bequeathed by Edward IV. The royal nursery was a predominantly female environment, supervised by the queen. Elizabeth’s gentle and affectionate nature formed a welcome contrast to the prince’s seemingly cold and distant father, and his domineering paternal grandmother. She doted on her younger son, and he returned her love in equal measure. It is likely that young Henry learned to read and write from his mother, and there are similarities in their handwriting.13
When Henry was three years old, his mother appointed Elizabeth Denton, one of her own gentlewomen, as head of the royal nursery. However, ‘Lady Mistress’ Denton continued to draw a salary from the queen’s household, which suggests that the latter continued to spend a great deal of her time at Sheen. There was one significant male influence present almost from the moment of his birth, however, because another member of his mother’s household to whom he was introduced was her cupbearer (and illegitimate brother), Arthur Plantagenet.
With his auburn hair, athletic build and easy manner, Arthur was every inch a Yorkist. One friend described him as ‘the pleasantest man in the world’.14 He certainly enjoyed all of the pleasures on offer at court, and was particularly fond of jousting and fine wine. The same would be said of Henry in later years. Elizabeth was as keen to shape the character as she was the intellect of her younger son, and judged her half-brother to be an ideal role model. Henry soon established a close bond with his uncle, and later reflected that Arthur had been ‘the gentlest heart living’.15 Such warmth contrasts sharply with his more restrained, respectful references to his father. Their closeness would endure, with only one notable interruption, for many years to come, and Arthur would serve his nephew faithfully until the end of his days.
The queen had fallen pregnant very soon after Henry’s birth, and in June 1492 she began her fourth confinement at Sheen. This resulted in the birth of another daughter, Elizabeth, on 2 July. The event was tinged with sadness because the queen’s mother had died a few weeks before, on 8 June. The royal nursery subsequently transferred to Eltham Palace, south-east of London. Eltham had been an important royal residence for almost 200 years, and the favourite home of the queen’s father, Edward IV, who had built the magnificent great hall, which still survives today. Prince Henry would have been presented with a reminder of his maternal grandfather every time he visited the great hall because Edward’s rose en soleil emblem was carved above the entrance. Already, the one-year-old prince was beginning to physically resemble this popular Yorkist king.
Although the contemporary records include only a handful of references to Prince Henry’s early years at Eltham, they suggest that he enjoyed a very comfortable, even indulgent, upbringing. There were numerous servants to attend to his needs and those of his siblings, and for his entertainment, there was a troupe of minstrels and a fool named John Goose. It is likely that the young prince, along with his sisters, was present at the great court gatherings, which were dictated by the most important dates in the religious calendar, such as Christmas and Easter.
But Henry’s presence at such occasions was always overshadowed by that of his brother Arthur. Five years Henry’s senior and heir to their father’s throne, it was natural that the eldest prince should claim all of the attention. From a young age, it was obvious that Arthur was growing into a serious-minded young man who closely resembled his father. He excelled at his studies and was also acquiring the military prowess expected of a future monarch. The king must have been gratified to see the shaping of his son into a ruler who would emulate his own style of kingship.
Henry’s feelings towards his elder brother are not recorded. They were raised separately, and there is no evidence that they ever exchanged letters or gifts. If the younger prince harboured any resentment at being forever cast into the shadows, then he left no trace of it. Francis Bacon later recorded that, although Henry was not ‘unadorned with learning … therein he came short of his brother Arthur’.16 Such comparisons must have been irksome, but it is also possible that Henry grew to enjoy his status as the second in line, with its comparative lack of responsibility.
Bacon also paints a picture of Henry VII as a loving father: ‘Towards his children he was full of paternal affection, careful of their education, aspiring to their high advancement, regular to see that they should not want of any due honour and respect: but not greatly willing to cast any popular lustre upon them.’17 This is wide of the mark. There is little evidence that the king paid much heed to his younger son’s upbringing (or indeed that of Henry’s sisters), but he was certainly not blind to the advantages of adding to his ‘lustre’ in public. On 5 April 1493, for example, Henry granted his ‘second born son’ the office of Constable of Dover Castle and the wardenship of the Cinque Ports.18 This ceremonial post had been in existence since at least the twelfth century and carried responsibility for five strategically important coastal towns in Kent and Sussex.
An even more prestigious appointment was to follow on 20 September 1494, when the king made his younger son Duke of York and a Knight of the Bath. The choice of title was doubly significant. Since 1362, it had been customary for the younger son of a ruling king to be made Duke of Clarence. Edward IV had gone against this tradition when he had made his second son Richard Duke of York. By choosing the same title, Henry VII was emphasising the unification of the houses of York and Lancaster, and demonstrating the king’s goodwill towards his wife’s family. More importantly, though, it signified that the previous holder of the title was dead, and that the ‘pretender’ Perkin Warbeck, who was now a potent threat to Henry VII’s throne, was nothing but a fraud. This was further emphasised when the king made his son lieutenant of Ireland, which had traditionally harboured the enemies of the English crown.
A detailed account of the ceremony survives among the manuscripts of the British Library and makes it clear just how seriously the king took it. Henry VII, we are told, ‘being at his manor of Woodstock determined at Allhallowtide then following to hold and keep royally and solemnly that feast in his palace of Westminster, and at that feast to dub his second son knight of the Bath and after to create him duke of York’.19 The king and queen, together with Lady Margaret Beaufort, travelled from Richmond to Westminster for the ceremony, arriving on 28 October. The following day, the king sent for his son to be brought from Eltham ‘with great honour, triumph and of great estates’ and paraded through the streets of London, where he was received by the mayor, aldermen and by all the crafts in their liveries.20
On 30 October, the king dined in state, with his son Henry holding the towel for his ablutions. As night approached, the prince, together with the thirty young noblemen who were to be dubbed with him, was led into the parliament chamber, where baths and beds had been prepared for them. Henry’s father signed him with the cross and his mother gave him her blessing, then the young prince and his fellow knights-in-waiting proceeded to bathe. Afterwards, they were ceremonially dried and went to their beds for some rest before attending chapel. Tradition dictated that they must keep vigil there, but this was too much to expect of the three-year-old prince, so he was given ‘spices and confectionary’ and allowed to sleep.
The following morning, after mass, the prince and his entourage were mounted on horses and rode through the palace to the Star Chamber, where the ceremony of knighting was to take place. Henry, an extrovert child, revelled in being the centre of attention. The dukes of Buckingham and Dorset placed a spur upon each of his heels, and the king then girded his son with his sword and dubbed him knight. Up until now, there is no indication in the detailed account of the day’s proceedings that any concessions were made for Prince Henry’s age. Only when he and his fellow knights returned to the chapel and offered their swords on the altar was the prince given some help to haul his sword into place. He then left the company and ‘dined in his own chamber’, rather than partaking of the rich fare that had been prepared for the public feast.21
The festivities continued the following day, 1 November, when the king, wearing ‘his robes of estate royal and crowned’, progressed to the parliament chamber, where he was greeted by all the nobles and prelates of his realm. His young son was led in by the Marquis of Dorset and Earl of Arundel, clad in a miniature version of the ‘robes of estate’ that his escorts wore. The king read out the form of words for conferring his son’s dukedom, then ‘created him duke of York with the gift of a thousand pounds per year’.22 Afterwards, they progressed to chapel to give thanks in a solemn mass, and then on to yet another sumptuous banquet. This time, though, the prince was allowed to enjoy the feast with all the rest. If he gorged too much, then at least the main ceremonies were over so he would have time to recover from any ill effects.
A lavish tournament was held on 9 November, during which four ‘gentlemen of the king’ challenged all comers to run at the joust and compete for prizes of gold rings set with diamonds and rubies. This proved so popular that a second tournament was staged three days later. The king and queen attended both. Still the nobles’ thirst for display was not quenched, however, for a third tournament was held on 13 November.
Although the young prince had relished his moment in the sun, it was over all too soon. When the last of the tournaments was concluded, he was escorted back to Eltham and his elder brother Arthur once more took his place at their father’s side. But having tasted the delights that the royal court could offer, from that day forward Henry always hankered after more. Arthur’s wedding had inspired a passion for tournaments and revelry that would grow into an all-consuming obsession by the time that Henry reached maturity. Frustration at having these delights so suddenly withdrawn may have been what prompted Henry to indulge in them to excess as soon as he was able.
To Henry’s delight, events would soon prompt his father to bring his younger son to prominence once more. In the summer of 1495, the threat posed by Perkin Warbeck reached a crisis point. On 3 July the pretender landed at Deal in Kent with the support of Margaret of Burgundy. Although his small army was soon routed, Warbeck escaped to Ireland, where he found favour with Maurice FitzGerald, ninth Earl of Desmond. But he soon encountered resistance and fled to Scotland. Ever eager to seize an opportunity to annoy his southern neighbour, James IV promised Warbeck his protection and support. As well as posing a threat to his crown, Henry feared that Warbeck would disrupt the delicate negotiations that he was conducting with the powerful Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, for a marriage between their daughter Catherine and his son Arthur.
It may have been this that incited the king to propose a marriage alliance between his three-year-old daughter Elizabeth and the French prince, Francis (later Francis I). But he and the queen were devastated when, shortly afterwards, their daughter died at Eltham. This was the first experience of a family death for Elizabeth’s elder brother Henry, and it must have dealt him and his other sister Margaret a cruel blow. The princess’s body was conveyed from Eltham to Westminster Abbey, where it was buried in great state.
The king’s growing unease was signalled by the fact that along with the usual dignitaries and ecclesiastics, he summoned both of his sons, as well as his uncle Jasper, to parliament in October 1495.23 This was the only recorded occasion upon which the four-year-old Henry met his great-uncle, who was sixty years his senior. The hard-bitten warrior had largely retreated from public life during the previous two years, preferring the tranquillity of his estates in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire. His health was rapidly declining, and he had drawn up a will the previous year. It gratified him, though, to see his precious nephew, on whose behalf he had battled so hard, wielding power over his parliament, with two sons in tow. For the younger of those, this was his first experience of royal government and, given his emerging character, he is likely to have grasped it with enthusiasm. For his great-uncle Jasper, though, it would be his last. He died just two months later. The king and queen attended his funeral at Keynsham Abbey, near Bristol. Having fathered no children, Jasper left all of his property and wealth to his nephew the king.
Prince Henry’s name appears in a number of royal documents the following year, which suggests that his father was minded to make more of him as he grew older. Thus, on 16 March 1496, he cited ‘Henry duke of York’ in an indenture granting the lordship, manor and castle of Cardiff, the county of Glamorgan and the lordship of Morgannok in south Wales to Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester and a cousin of the king. The latter was to help keep order for the king in these lands, and if he defaulted on the terms of the indenture, they would be forfeit to Prince Henry.24
Two days later, Henry’s mother gave birth to another girl, Mary, who joined her siblings at Eltham. In November, Prince Henry was summoned to attend parliament again.25 By then, the young prince had risen to sufficient prominence to be mentioned in the diary of Marino Sanuto, a renowned Venetian historian. He noted that the King of England ‘has two sons, Arthur, Prince of Wales … and the other is Duke of York’.26
It was probably also in 1496 that Prince Henry was assigned a new tutor at Eltham. John Skelton was a brilliant scholar who had studied at both Cambridge and Oxford, and had come to the notice of the king when he visited the latter university in 1488. Henry VII had been so impressed that he had later conferred upon him a laureateship in classical Latin rhetoric, making Skelton the first English poet laureate. In 1493, Skelton was awarded another laureateship by Cambridge, which brought him to the attention of its benefactress, the king’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. It may have been she who recommended the scholar as a tutor for her younger grandson.
Little is known of Skelton’s earlier history. His date of birth has been estimated at being around 1460, and it is possible that he was from Yorkshire.27 He had connections with the Percy family and also spent time at Sheriff Hutton as a guest of Elizabeth Countess of Surrey, wife of the powerful courtier Thomas Howard. It is possible that he entered royal service as early as 1488, although in what capacity it is not certain. Two years later, the celebrated writer and printer William Caxton praised Skelton for his classical learning, his skill in translation, and his ‘polished and ornate terms’.28
It is possible that Skelton had harboured an ambition for the post of royal tutor for some time. He had certainly worked hard to flatter the king’s sons. He penned a now lost verse entitled ‘Prince Arturis Creacyon’ to celebrate Arthur’s creation as Prince of Wales in 1489. Five years later, he wrote a similarly flattering panegyric when Prince Henry became Duke of York. His efforts were rewarded shortly afterwards when he was offered the post of tutor.
Despite his impressive credentials, Skelton was something of a controversial choice. Stridently self-confident, he was opinionated, outspoken and bursting with ideas, humour, languages and verse. As such, he presented a stark contrast to the more sober tutors usually favoured by the royal family. But the queen approved of her mother-in-law’s choice, shrewdly judging that Skelton was an ideal match for her irrepressible younger son, who would have quickly tired of a more conventional tutor. His appointment also won praise from some of the greatest intellectuals of the age.
Two years after being employed as tutor to Prince Henry, Skelton also became his chaplain. He entered holy orders in 1498 and was ordained a priest on 9 June that year. He was attached to the abbey of St Mary of Graces, close to the Tower of London, and celebrated mass there on 11 November 1498 in the presence of Henry VII, who made him an offering of twenty shillings. Being both chaplain and tutor to the young prince meant that Skelton was responsible for shaping Henry’s spiritual as well as intellectual upbringing.
The scholar was quick to realise the potential of his position, and proceeded to teach Henry not just the classical curriculum of grammar, Latin and religious studies, but manners, courtesy and government. He later boasted of his influence on the young prince:
The honour of England I learned to spell
I gave him drink of the sugared well,
Of Helicon’s waters crystalline,
Acquainting him with the muses nine …29
The young Henry revelled in the company of this irreverent and outspoken man, who provided a welcome contrast to his serious and restrained father. Skelton, too, enjoyed his time at Eltham and found it an inspiring environment. While in the service of the prince, he wrote or translated a number of pedagogical and morality texts, as well as works on royalty and government, reflecting the fact that he had opinions on practically any matter. That he was now in the privileged position of royal tutor did not make him any less inclined to express them. His works were neatly described as ‘pithy, pleasant and profitable’ in a compilation published in 1568.30
Away from the closeted world of the royal schoolroom at Eltham, tensions were again mounting. In September 1497, after several failed invasion attempts, the pretender Perkin Warbeck landed off the coast of Cornwall. To the king’s great ‘sorrow and anxiety’, he soon amassed considerable support in the county, which had long proved a rebellious one for the crown.31 After being declared Richard IV on Bodmin Moor, Warbeck marched to Exeter with his 6,000-strong army and succeeded in taking the city. Greatly alarmed, the king sent a force to attack the rebel troops. The pretender lost his nerve and fled when he heard that Henry’s scouts were at Glastonbury. He was soon apprehended by the king’s men at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire.
To everyone’s surprise, the king chose clemency over brutality. After forcing Warbeck to publicly deny his claims to the throne, he welcomed him to court and treated him as an honoured guest. But the affair had clearly shaken Henry, who was growing increasingly paranoid about the security of his regime. He therefore decided to stage a series of very public displays of kingship. Having invested enormous sums in a collection of magnificent new robes, he embarked upon numerous crown-wearings and ceremonies to touch for the ‘king’s evil’ (scrofula), which it was believed would be miraculously cured as soon as the king laid his hands upon the sufferer.
The king also gathered his family close once more. In October 1497, the six-year-old Prince Henry received a summons to Woodstock, where his father was due to receive two Italian ambassadors: Raimondo da Soncino, the secretary of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and a special envoy from Venice. The king had spared no expense in having the palace lavishly decorated with ‘very handsome’ tapestries, cloth of gold and gilt chairs. The young prince must have been dazzled by the sight of the richly adorned chamber, as well as by his father’s apparel, which comprised ‘a violet-coloured gown, lined with cloth of gold, and a collar of many jewels, and on his cap was a large diamond and a most beautiful pearl’. This may have inspired his own love of magnificence, both of furnishings and dress, which found full expression when he became king.
After being granted a private audience with the king, the ambassadors were introduced to his family. Prince Henry stood next to his mother, who was also dressed in cloth of gold. On the other side of her was Henry’s paternal grandmother. To the untrained eye, it was an impressive demonstration of the might and majesty of the Tudor regime. But beneath this tableau of family strength and harmony, the ambassadors sensed an atmosphere of tension and fear. The strain of being forever on the lookout for threats to his crown showed in Henry’s bearing and build. The splendour of his dress could not disguise his spare physique and prominent cheekbones, and his hair was flecked with grey at the temples. Soncino reported that the English king was ‘suspicious of everything … [and] has no one he can trust, except his paid men at arms’. Francis Bacon concurred that Henry was ‘full of apprehensions and suspicions’.32
On 29 November 1498, a little under three years after the death of Jasper Tudor, Prince Henry was granted all of his great-uncle’s estates. This had been agreed by Act of Parliament on 14 December 1497 and amounted to a considerable inheritance. As well as the various castles, manors, liberties and other property and lands, Henry was to be paid £40 per year (equivalent to around £20,000 today). Further annual payments linked to Jasper’s estates followed: £20 from London and Middlesex and £42 from Hereford.33 Henry would retain Jasper’s income and estates for life, and they would then pass to his heirs.
The date of the Act may have been significant. Henry was then six years old, an age that was viewed as a milestone by the Tudors, who believed that it marked the beginning of the transition from childhood to adulthood. From that day forward, the child would be ‘breeched’ – that is, dressed in adult-style attire. With two older siblings, and having been given a number of tantalising glimpses of royal power and ceremony, Henry was eager to prove that he was ready for manhood.
The prince’s status changed again – less positively – on 21 February 1599, when his mother gave birth to a son. Henry’s new brother was christened Edmund three days later at Greenwich and titled Duke of Somerset. Although Henry was thriving at Eltham, the birth of his younger brother Edmund was less welcome to him than it was to his parents. Prince Henry might have still been second in line to the throne, but he was no longer the only ‘spare heir’. As Bacon observed, though a brother was ‘a comfort … to have, yet it draweth the subjects’ eyes a little aside’.34 Neither was Henry any longer the only boy in the royal nursery at Eltham, for Edmund soon joined him and his two sisters there.
From his father’s perspective, however, the timing of Edmund’s birth could not have been more fortunate. Perkin Warbeck had attempted to escape Henry’s clutches during the king’s summer progress in 1498 and was now a prisoner in the Tower of London. Even in captivity, though, he remained a figurehead for opposition to the Tudor regime. Likewise, Edward IV’s nephew Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who also languished in the fortress, had a great deal of support from the Yorkists. The birth of a third son was exactly what Henry VII needed to secure his dynasty. But it gave him only temporary respite from the fears that constantly nagged at him, and in November he decided to have both Warbeck and Warwick executed on trumped-up charges of conspiracy.
The episode served as a salutary lesson for his son Henry about the necessary brutality of kingship, and one that the young boy would never forget. But his father was far from being the tyrant that Henry himself would later become. He only used violence when he had exhausted every other course, and he flinched from harming those closest to him, as Francis Bacon observed: ‘Though he were a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious; and his times full of secret conspiracies and troubles; yet in 24 years of reign, he never put down or discomposed counsellor or near servant; save only [Sir William] Stanley the Lord Chamberlain.’
Not long after Edmund’s arrival at Eltham, the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus paid a visit there. Born in around 1466, Erasmus had proved an excellent scholar from his earliest years, but poverty had forced him into the religious orders. As a canon regular at Stein in southern Holland, he had fallen in love with Servatius Rogerus, a fellow canon, whom he referred to as ‘half my soul’.35 Later, after moving to Paris, he was suddenly dismissed from his post as tutor to a young man called Thomas Grey. It has been assumed that he had been conducting an illicit affair with his pupil, although there is no firm evidence for this. Erasmus was not denounced for his sexuality during his lifetime, and he took pains to condemn sodomy in his works. But he always displayed a weakness for attractive young men.
It was thanks to one such man that Erasmus had chosen to visit Prince Henry and his siblings. William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, had recently been appointed by the queen to be a mentor or ‘study companion’ to her second son. Her choice was very deliberate: Mountjoy was just the sort of man who could shape her son into a prince in the mould of her late father and brothers. He had been introduced to Elizabeth by her chamberlain, the Earl of Ormond, who was his stepfather. The fact that his grandfather had been a close attendant of Edward IV and the Woodville family must also have recommended him to the queen. Mountjoy had also proved his loyalty to the king by helping to suppress a rebellion. His father had once cautioned him not ‘to desire to be great about princes, for it is dangerous’.36 Mountjoy evidently decided to ignore this advice.
Alongside his loyalty and military prowess, Prince Henry’s new companion was exceptionally well educated and cultured. He had recently returned from Paris, where he had immersed himself in classical studies and had become acquainted with Erasmus. The Dutch scholar had been so impressed with Mountjoy that he declared himself willing to follow him even to the ‘lower world’ itself. He later claimed that ‘the sun never shone on a truer friend of scholars’.37 It is likely that he was as attracted by the young man’s handsome looks as by his intellectual abilities.
The esteem in which Erasmus held his young English acquaintance was mutual. When Mountjoy returned to England in 1499, he invited the scholar to accompany him. Having been dismissed from his position as tutor in Paris, Erasmus was no doubt eager to try for advancement in England. He was certainly curious to meet Prince Henry, with whom he had already begun a correspondence. He was also a great admirer of Skelton, and writing to Henry that year he referred to his tutor as ‘a light and glory of English letters’.38
Erasmus and Mountjoy were joined by another companion. Described as ‘a man of singular and rare learning’, the twenty-one-year-old Thomas More was a rising star in intellectual and humanist circles.39 He hailed from moneyed rather than noble stock, and his family had a history of service to the crown and city guilds. His father, Sir John More, had studied law and was progressing rapidly through the ranks of this profession.40 Prince Henry’s maternal grandfather, Edward IV, had given Sir John permission to bear a coat of arms, and he had subsequently developed close relationships with members of Edward’s and later Henry VII’s councils. Particularly strong was his connection to John Morton, who had served Henry VII as Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury since the early years of his reign.
At a time when occupations tended to follow family lines, Sir John was clearly paving the way for his son’s entry into law, and had also arranged marriages for his two daughters to men of the same profession. Sir John paid for Thomas to study Latin at St Anthony’s School, Threadneedle Street, the finest grammar school in London. He left there in 1489 and entered the household of Archbishop John Morton. Thomas thrived in the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of Lambeth Palace, which was such a centre of culture and learning that it rivalled the court itself. The chaplain there was Henry Medwall, a talented playwright, who encouraged More’s love of drama. The young man often took part in the Christmas revels that Medwall devised and gave impromptu performances. His wit and intelligence soon won the favour of Morton, who appointed More his personal attendant and was said to have boasted to his noble guests, ‘This child here waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man.’41
As More reached his teenage years, the dichotomy of his character became apparent. His love of drama, wit and culture was countered by an extraordinarily strict discipline and self-control. The battle between the flesh and the spirit was already raging within him, and when, aged sixteen, he fell in love with a young woman, he was proud to record that he had held his passion in check. By the age of eighteen, it had become his custom to wear a hair shirt next to his skin. His unflinching piety would soon deepen into fanaticism; his passion into bigotry. But all the while he retained his humour, intellect and bonhomie, giving him the ability to converse easily with ecclesiastics, scholars, lawyers and courtiers alike. Erasmus famously described him as a man omnium horarum, or ‘man for all seasons’, and claimed that he was ‘always friendly and cheerful, with something of the air of one who smiles easily, and (to speak frankly) disposed to be merry rather than serious or solemn’.42 Only those closest to More knew the strength of the convictions that were masked by this pleasant exterior.
Archbishop Morton realised More’s potential, and in 1492 he secured him a place at Canterbury College, Oxford. More studied there for two years and followed the ordinary curriculum of the liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric and logic. He returned to London shortly afterwards and, urged on by his father, entered an Inn of Chancery to study law. There, he ‘very well prospered’ and on 12 February 1496 he was formally admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, where he remained until he was called to the bar five or six years later.43 More’s sojourn at Lincoln’s Inn equipped him with a great deal more than legal expertise. It was a time of intense intellectual, spiritual and cultural development that shaped his outlook and beliefs. He cultivated a number of leading intellectuals, such as John Colet, the future Dean of St Paul’s, the scholar and cleric William Grocyn, and Thomas Linacre, who had taught him Greek.
One of the most significant friendships that More forged during these years was with Erasmus. The two men met thanks to Mountjoy, with whom Erasmus was staying in Greenwich when he visited England in the summer of 1499. Mountjoy held More in some esteem, and invited him to pay a visit to Greenwich after Erasmus’s arrival. It was a meeting of minds between More and Erasmus, who were united by their humanist principles and intellectual brilliance. Nature had never fashioned anything ‘gentler, sweeter and happier than the character of Thomas More’, Erasmus subsequently enthused in a letter to a friend.44 They established a warm friendship that would last for the remainder of More’s life.
It was probably Mountjoy who suggested that he and his three companions should visit the royal nursery at nearby Eltham. More and Erasmus, who were both hungry for advancement, agreed to the plan. They arrived to find all four royal children assembled in the great hall to greet them. The scions of the House of Tudor presented an appealing sight in their fine attire. Ten-year-old Margaret was the eldest; her sister Mary was just three and Edmund was still a baby. But Erasmus later recalled that it was the eight-year-old Henry who had made the greatest impression. Writing with the benefit of hindsight, he claimed that the young prince looked ‘somehow like a natural king, displaying a noble spirit combined with peculiar courtesy’.45 Although Erasmus’s description may have been coloured by his knowledge that Henry was destined for the throne, there is little doubt that the young man was already a force to be reckoned with.
The prince had proved a precocious student, and by the time he met Erasmus and his friends he was widely versed in the classics, rhetoric and languages. Among his possessions at Eltham was De Officiis by Cicero, which Henry proudly inscribed ‘Thys boke is myne’.46 He no doubt anticipated the visit of these renowned scholars with great excitement. His love of learning was known to Thomas More, who arrived with a gift of writing to present to Henry. This put his companion Erasmus at a disadvantage, and he was mortified that he had arrived empty-handed. Henry evidently noted this, and when they all dined together afterwards, he could not resist challenging Erasmus to write him something. Seizing his chance to make amends, the Dutch scholar immediately rushed back to Greenwich and composed a flattering ode to England and its royal family. Entitled Prosopopoeia Britanniae Maioris, it ran to ten pages – an impressive feat, given the haste with which he had written it. If he thus redeemed himself for the lack of a gift, however, he failed to secure the hoped-for position at court. Erasmus left England a few months later, disillusioned with ‘those wretched courtiers’.47 But Henry would never forget their meeting, and they struck up a correspondence that would stimulate and shape the prince’s intellect and ideals for many years to come.
If Henry lamented Erasmus’s departure, he was far from lacking in intellectual stimulation, thanks to the continuing efforts of his tutor, John Skelton. He also delighted in the company of Lord Mountjoy, which sparked Skelton’s jealousy. Desperate to claw back supremacy over the prince, his tutor penned the Speculum Principis, or ‘mirror for princes’, a guide to behaviour that he presented to Henry in 1501. In a deliberate side-swipe at his rival, he urged his young charge to ‘love poets’ because ‘athletes are two a penny but patrons of the art are rare’.48
But by now it was clear that Skelton was losing the battle for influence over the prince. He was also growing increasingly frustrated with the strictures of a court position. These two factors combined to send Skelton on a self-destructive course. He vented his frustration in a series of controversial satirical texts mocking the social and sexual competitiveness at court. His most notorious work was The Bowge of Court, in which he cast himself as ‘Drede’, a man of learning and ‘virtue’, who finds himself on a ship steered by Fortune and filled with people hoping to make their way to court.49 He is surrounded by thieves, gamblers, pimps and potential murderers, all of whom flatter and scheme against each other relentlessly and try to involve Drede in their plots.
Skelton’s non-conformism might have been what initially recommended him as a tutor to the precocious young prince, but he had overstepped the mark. Henry’s father had enough rebellious subjects to deal with; he could not tolerate one within his son’s household. The timing and circumstances of Skelton’s departure are not clear. He was still in post on 29 April 1502, when ‘the Duke of York’s schoolmaster’ received a gift of 40 shillings from the king.50 But it is possible that this was a pay-off, because Skelton disappears from the court records thereafter. By April 1504, he had moved to Diss in Norfolk and was rector of the parish church of St Mary’s, a post that he held until his death. This new position brought him wealth but little satisfaction. The force of nature that had dominated Prince Henry’s household was hardly suited to the quiet life of a country clergyman. He certainly had plenty of time to reflect upon his impetuous and ill-advised actions, and he evidently soon resolved to claw his way back to royal favour.
By the time that Skelton left Eltham Palace, Henry had resumed his position as the only male child in the royal nursery. His younger brother Edmund died at Hatfield in June 1500, aged just fifteen months. The cause of his death is not recorded. On 22 June, his tiny coffin was ‘conveyed honourably’ through the streets of London with ‘many noble personages’ in attendance.51 The infant prince was buried next to his sister Elizabeth at Westminster Abbey with what must have been considerable ceremony because the chief mourner was Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, one of the foremost noblemen of the realm.
Born in 1478, Buckingham had royal blood in his veins. His mother, Katherine Woodville, was the sister of Edward IV’s queen, and therefore the aunt of the current queen. Like the Tudors, he could also trace his descent from Edward III’s son John of Gaunt, through the Beaufort family. Buckingham and his brother Henry had been made wards of Lady Margaret Beaufort upon her son’s accession in 1485. A year after taking part in Prince Henry’s creation as Duke of York, he had been made a Knight of the Order of the Garter. Fiercely ambitious and stridently self-confident, Buckingham was always conspicuous at the great gatherings of court. He also had a keen sense of the superiority of his birth and always took care to dress lavishly – and expensively. On one occasion, he was said to have worn a gown worth £1,500 (equivalent to more than £700,000).
There is no record of Henry’s reaction to the death of his younger brother, but having now lost two infant siblings in the space of five years, he had learned a salutary lesson about how tragically short life could be. He had a diversion, however, in the form of John Holt, who arrived at Eltham shortly after Skelton’s departure in order to take up the post that he had vacated. Holt was a far more conventional choice as tutor. A fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1496 he had been appointed grammar master in the household of Archbishop Morton at Lambeth Palace. It was no doubt Morton who brought him to the attention of the king, and in 1502 Henry selected him for the post of tutor to his second son.
There is little evidence of the impact that Holt had upon his new pupil, who was eleven by the time of Holt’s appointment. Besides, Henry was more diverted by a new companion who had joined the household at Eltham. Henry Guildford was two years older than the prince, and his family was of proven loyalty to the crown. His father, Sir Richard, had joined Henry VII in exile in Brittany and had helped to plan his campaign to seize power from Richard III. As king, Henry had rewarded him with a rapid succession of promotions, including Master of the Horse, knight of the king’s body and councillor. Guildford also assumed special responsibility for the security of his royal master, a sign of the trust that this increasingly paranoid king invested in him. He had been present when Prince Henry had been made Duke of York in 1494, and had also been tasked with negotiating the marriage between his brother Arthur and Catherine, daughter of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.
Another indication of the king’s favour towards Sir Richard Guildford was that he had attended his wedding to Joan Vaux, his second wife, who fell pregnant soon afterwards and gave birth to a son, Henry, in 1489. Joan was subsequently appointed to the household of the queen. Despite the favour that the couple enjoyed, they were forever in debt, thanks in no small part to Guildford’s mismanagement of their finances and estates. He had been forced to surrender his exchequer post in 1487 when some irregularities were discovered in his financial affairs, and he was later arrested for debt. The Guildfords’ precarious finances may have prompted them to secure a position at court for their son Henry, who was appointed cupbearer to the king’s younger son at Eltham.
Prince Henry and his new companion were like two peas in a pod. Physically, they resembled each other, both being well-built, athletic boys. Like the prince, Guildford had an irrepressible energy and loved jousting and sport. He also delighted in the entertainments on offer at court. These may have inspired the role that he would fulfil later in his career in royal service.
While his son was forging what would be a lifelong friendship with the younger Tudor prince, Sir Richard and his fellow commissioners had at last reached an agreement for the marriage of the elder prince. The negotiations had dragged on for nine long years, becoming embroiled in the shifting allegiances of foreign affairs, as well as the question of the Spanish princess’s dowry. This was eventually set at 200,000 crowns (equivalent to around £2.5 million today) and a proxy betrothal sealed the bargain at Woodstock in 1497. But it would be a further two years before the proxy marriage took place, followed by another ceremony in 1500.
On 2 October 1501, Catherine finally arrived in England. Just shy of her sixteenth birthday, she was exquisitely pretty with strawberry-blonde hair, a smooth, pale complexion and large dark eyes – more an English rose than a typical Spanish beauty. An exceptionally devout young woman, she had benefited from an excellent education and was praised for her skill in Latin, as well as her knowledge of classical and vernacular literature. The Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives greatly admired her abilities, and Erasmus regarded her as a model of Christian womanhood.
Catherine’s parents had insisted that she must not meet her betrothed until the day of the wedding. The English king was not pleased with this arrangement, and after a diplomatic impasse, he rode to intercept her as she made her way in a ceremonious procession to London, insisting that he would see her ‘even if she were in her bed’.52 Catherine received him courteously, but it was an awkward meeting, thanks to neither being able to speak the other’s language. Even so, Henry left satisfied that the Spanish princess was a fitting bride for his son and heir.
Prince Arthur himself arrived shortly afterwards. Now aged fifteen, he had grown into a tall young man with a slight frame and the pinched features that were typical of the Lancastrian line. By contrast, the younger Tudor son was all Yorkist: tall, athletic, and bursting with energy and joie de vivre. Passionate and imperious, Henry was far from being a naturally subservient ‘spare heir’. Although the surviving portraits show a passing resemblance between the two brothers, there was a delicacy about Arthur that formed a sharp contrast to Henry’s robustness. Intellectually, Henry was the equal of his brother, although in recent years Arthur had gained an advantage from being taught by the renowned humanist scholars Bernard André and Thomas Linacre, and he knew the works of Homer, Cicero and Ovid by heart. Most useful was his fluency in Latin, which meant that he and Catherine were able to converse far more freely than she had with his father.
Catherine was so delighted with their first meeting that she threw an impromptu party that evening. She and her ladies danced to the music that her minstrels played. Prince Arthur joined in ‘right pleasant and honourably’, but he respected the strictures laid down by his future parents-in-law and refused to dance with his bride, choosing Joan Guildford (mother of his brother’s companion) as his partner instead.53
The next morning, Catherine and her entourage embarked on the final stage of the journey to London. At Kingston-upon-Thames, ten miles south-west of the city, she was greeted by the Duke of Buckingham, who rode at the head of an impressive retinue of three to four hundred horsemen all clad in red-and-black livery. He escorted Catherine to her lodgings in Lambeth, where she was to await the beginning of two weeks of elaborate pageantry and entertainments to mark her marriage, including the wedding ceremony itself.
On 12 November, Catherine made her formal entry into London, her cavalcade slowly making its way through the city streets, which were lined with thousands of people craning to catch a glimpse of the Spanish princess. Among them was Prince Henry’s acquaintance, Thomas More. Although he was full of praise for the ‘charming young girl’ who ‘thrilled the hearts of everyone’, he was scathing of her ladies, who all wore black so as not to outshine their mistress. ‘Except for three, or at the most four, of them, they were just too much to look at,’ he wrote to a friend. ‘Hunchbacked, undersized, barefoot pygmies from Ethiopia. If you had been there you would have thought they were refugees from hell.’54
Meanwhile, at Eltham, Prince Henry was being groomed for a starring role in the proceedings. Although the king had paraded his younger son in public on a number of previous occasions, this was to be by far the highest profile event. Henry had been accorded the honour of escorting his future sister-in-law from her lodgings in the Bishop’s Palace at Lambeth to St Paul’s Cathedral, where her marriage to Arthur would at last be solemnised. The ten-year-old prince may already have heard favourable reports of the beautiful Spanish princess from More, Guildford and others. He certainly seemed to be half in love with the idea of her already.
The wedding was scheduled for 14 November, and on that day thousands of Londoners turned out to see one of the most dazzling processions in royal history. The city was also crowded with dignitaries from across the kingdom, including a number of high-ranking young gentlemen from Prince Henry’s entourage. Principal among them was Lord Mountjoy, who was rapidly rising in favour with the king himself and would later be appointed to the council.
Both Prince Arthur, who arrived first at St Paul’s, and his bride were dressed in white, which was unusual for the time. It may have been to ensure that they were clearly visible to the crowds that thronged the streets, or as a symbol of their purity and youth. Even so, their outfits were far from plain. Catherine was described by one admiring observer as being dressed from head to toe in ‘costly apparel both of goldsmith’s work and embroidery, rich jewels [and] massy chains’ as she rode on a horse ‘bedecked with glittering gold bells and spangles’.55
But it was Prince Henry who stole the show at the wedding. Although there is no record of how he was dressed, his regal bearing and charisma won the admiration of the crowds. Here was a prince in the mould of his Yorkist forebears: tall, auburn-haired and full of energy and charm. Even though he was the younger of the two Tudor princes, he looked far more robust than Arthur, who appeared gaunt and ill. Catherine’s physician, Dr Alcaraz, was shocked by her groom’s frailty and claimed that he had ‘never seen a man whose legs and other bits of his body were so thin’.56
According to the same source, Arthur was in such an enfeebled state that he was unable to consummate the marriage. Alcaraz later recalled that: ‘The Prince had been denied the strength necessary to know a woman, as if he was a cold piece of stone, because he was in the final stages of phthisis [consumption].’ This is contradicted by other accounts, such as Edward Hall’s Chronicle, which asserts: ‘This lusty prince and his beautiful bride were brought and joined together in one bed naked and there did that act, which to the performance and full consummation of matrimony was most requisite and expedient.’57 Arthur himself, having emerged from the bedchamber the following morning with a ‘good and sanguine complexion’, was quick to boast of his sexual prowess. He loudly demanded a cup of ale, ‘for I have this night been in the midst of Spain’.58
Prince Henry did not know it, but whether or not his brother’s marriage to Catherine had been consummated would have profound implications for his own life. He saw Arthur shortly afterwards when, accompanied by their father and a 500-strong entourage, they processed in great state to St Paul’s for a thanksgiving ceremony. If Henry noticed that there was anything amiss with his elder brother’s health or demeanour, then it was not recorded. To the crowds who had re-emerged from their houses to watch the king and his two sons lead the procession, everything appeared as it should be.
This impression was reinforced by the week of festivities that was staged in Westminster to celebrate the marriage. If the seemingly endless round of tournaments, pageants and dancing tired Prince Arthur, they were a source of constant delight to his younger brother. One of the evening entertainments took place at Westminster Hall, which was splendidly bedecked with arrases and displays of the royal plate. Catherine and her ladies, ‘in apparel after the Spanish guise’, danced two ‘bass dances’ – a stately dance in which the feet do not leave the floor. But her new brother-in-law had no patience for such formal displays, and when he took to the floor with his sister Margaret, ‘perceiving himself to be encumbered with his clothes, [he] suddenly cast off his gown, and danced in his jacket’. The assembled dignitaries were delighted at this display of youthful exuberance, and even Henry’s father, who was always anxious to ensure that royal dignity was maintained, showed ‘right great and singular pleasure’.59
Once the festivities had been concluded at Westminster, the royal party travelled ten miles west to the magnificent palace of Richmond, which the king had ordered to be swiftly completed in time for the final stage of the wedding celebrations. Although he is not mentioned, it is likely that Prince Henry was among the guests, given his position in the royal family and the fact that he had proved such a resounding success in the proceedings so far. All too soon, it was time to bid goodbye to his elder brother and pretty sister-in-law, aware that with the conclusion of the festivities, he would return to the relative seclusion of Eltham.
Arthur’s wedding had temporarily propelled his younger brother into the spotlight. But it was to have a far more lasting impact upon Henry than that. Not long afterwards, when Arthur and Catherine had taken up residence at Ludlow Castle, the prince fell dangerously ill. The cause of his malady has been debated ever since. There were rumours of a ‘great sickness’ in the area, which may have been the sweating sickness, plague or influenza. But Arthur’s health had been fragile for some time, and it is likely that he had been suffering from tuberculosis. Either this alone proved fatal, or it weakened his immune system so that he fell prey to the local contagion. A contemporary record claimed that ‘a pitiful disease and sickness’ of ‘deadly corruption did utterly vanquish and overcome the blood’.60
On 2 April 1502, after just twenty weeks of marriage, Arthur died. At a stroke, his younger brother’s status and expectations were transformed. Henry was now not merely the spare, but the heir to the throne.