WHEN NEWS OF Prince Arthur’s death was brought to the king at Greenwich, he was utterly devastated. He went at once to find the queen, who ‘with full great and constant comfortable words’ tried to console him. With remarkable self-control, Elizabeth set aside her own grief and reminded her husband that they still had ‘a fair prince, two fair princesses’ and were ‘both young enough’ to have more children. Only when she had returned to the privacy of her chamber did she give vent to her sorrow, weeping so uncontrollably that her attendants sent for the king to comfort her. He came at once ‘and showed her how wise counsel she had given him before, and he for his part would thank God for his son, and would she should do in like wise’.1
The ‘fair prince’ who was now the sole comfort and hope of his parents – and of the kingdom – might have received the news of his brother’s death with rather more mixed feelings. Shock was no doubt among them, but this stridently self-confident young prince must also have felt excitement and elation that the all-too-fleeting attention he had enjoyed at Arthur’s wedding celebrations had returned tenfold – and forever.
It is interesting to speculate what might have happened between the two brothers if Arthur had not died young. Henry’s personality was hardly suited to playing second fiddle for long, and he might well have played out the history of his maternal great-uncles, George, Duke of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester, whose lust for power incited them to try and overthrow the natural order of succession.
In life, his elder brother had exerted little influence over Henry, but his untimely death would have the most profound impact possible. Henry was immediately propelled to the hallowed status of ‘my lord prince’, heir to the throne of England. This was quick to take effect. Negotiations for a marriage between the king’s younger son and Margaret of Angoulême, kinswoman to the King of France, had been well underway by the time of Arthur’s death. But these were now put on hold, and talks were opened with Ferdinand of Aragon to transfer his daughter Catherine to the surviving Tudor prince. Both he and his English counterpart were anxious to uphold their connection, and by September an initial treaty had been drawn up. It was signed the following June, and specified that a betrothal should take place within two months. Perhaps out of consideration for what had happened with Arthur, whom some thought had died from having sex too young, the treaty also specified that Prince Henry must have reached his fifteenth birthday.
Nicholas Fox, a lawyer at court, was present when the king summoned his son Henry to discuss the matter of his marriage. He recorded the conversation that followed. ‘Son Henry,’ the king began, ‘I have agreed with the King of Aragon that you should marry Catherine, your brother’s widow, in order that the peace between us might be continued.’ When he asked his son if he assented to the match, the prince dutifully replied that he would do as his father wished.
Henry’s compliance may have been due to more than simple obedience. As a ten-year-old boy, he had been dazzled by the beautiful Spanish princess, and the idea that she was now a helpless maiden who needed rescuing would have appealed to his chivalric ideals. For her part, Catherine was enthusiastic about the prospect of marrying the handsome young Tudor prince who had escorted her to the ceremony for her first marriage.
But for the young prince to marry his late brother’s wife was no straightforward matter. The Church set down strict laws about consanguinity, and Henry and Catherine were related in the first degree of affinity. Even though Catherine, supported by her chief gentlewoman Doña Elvira, insisted that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, a papal dispensation would still have to be sought. No sooner had the betrothal been agreed, than it was threatened by the appointment of a new pope in November 1503. Julius II was a belligerent and forthright character, and insisted that he needed to ‘consider the case more maturely’.2
Prince Henry himself seemed to have little or no involvement in these diplomatic wranglings. A more immediate impact of his brother’s death was the change in circumstances that he experienced in the household at Eltham. The king was no longer content for his son to be attended by women: the heir to the throne must be raised in a predominantly male household. Even Henry’s lady mistress, Elizabeth Denton, was transferred to the household of his grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and replaced by several new male attendants. Most of these were young, in their late teens or early twenties, and were drawn from the households of Henry’s father and late brother.
Among them was William Thomas, a devout Welshman who had served Prince Arthur at Ludlow. Ralph Pudsey, formerly a groom of the king’s privy chamber, was appointed the prince’s sewer and keeper of his jewellery.3 Another of the new men was the nineteen-year-old William Compton, son of a Warwickshire landowner, who had been made a ward of Henry VII upon the death of his father in 1493, and raised among the menial servants of the royal household. Meanwhile, Sir Henry Marney, a hard-bitten and ambitious royal councillor, was put in overall charge of the household. He soon enjoyed unparalleled access to the prince, and even had a pallet bed in his young master’s own chamber.
The arrival of this new contingent of accomplished young men at Eltham could not have come at a more propitious time for Henry. The boisterous young prince, now just shy of his eleventh birthday, had outgrown the attentions of his mother and lady mistress and was eager for the company of like-minded, energetic men. Along with his uncle Arthur Plantagenet and his mentor Lord Mountjoy, they could act as role models, inspiring Henry with their sporting prowess, courtly manners and political guile.
Now that her husband had taken over their surviving son’s upbringing, the queen seldom visited Eltham – appreciating, perhaps, that she had no place in this male-dominated household. She was in any case preoccupied by the expectation of adding to the royal nursery, for, true to her promise to the king, she had fallen pregnant soon after Arthur’s death. Payments in the household accounts to apothecaries and nurses suggest that all was not well, however, and on 2 February 1503 she was delivered ‘suddenly’ of a girl. Something must have gone wrong with the birth because a physician was sent for urgently. Nine days later, both mother and daughter were dead.
For all that he revelled in the company of his new male companions, Henry was devastated by the loss of his mother. The blow had hardly been softened by the fact that his father had dispatched two attendants, Sir Charles Somerset and Sir Richard Guildford, father of the prince’s companion, to convey the news, rather than doing so in person. Apparently not thinking to comfort his son, the king had promptly retreated to his privy chamber and refused to see anyone except his own mother.
Grief-stricken, Prince Henry went to court with his sisters. An illuminated manuscript in the National Library of Wales shows the three siblings in their late mother’s bedchamber. Margaret and Mary are sitting on the floor. They have a dignified bearing, but the fact they are in mourning for their mother is indicated by their black headdresses. By contrast, their brother Henry has given himself over to his grief. With his head in his hands, he is weeping onto the sheets of his mother’s empty bed.
With his father a distant and, it seems, rather cold figure, Henry sought comfort from another of the men in his life. He had evidently remained in contact with Thomas More since his visit to Eltham four years before. Eager to help the grieving prince – and, perhaps, lay the groundwork for his own advancement – More composed a eulogy for the late queen’s tomb. The ‘Rueful Lamentation’ was written as a farewell address from Elizabeth to her grieving family. Referring to their ‘loving son’, she urges the king:
Erst were you father, and now must you supply
The mother’s part also, for lo now here I lie.4
But the king did not seem to heed this advice. For six long weeks, he remained shut away in his privy chamber at Richmond Palace, with only his mother and a small number of trusted servants for company. There, weakened by grief at his wife’s death, Henry fell prey to a tubercular condition that had afflicted him during previous winters. He also developed an acute, pustular tonsillitis. As the infection spread through his lungs, his breathing became laboured and he was unable to swallow or even open his mouth. He lay like this for several days, and it seemed that he was edging ever closer towards death.
Greatly alarmed, the king’s attendants resolved to keep their master’s perilous condition a secret in case his enemies should seize the advantage and overthrow his regime. They would probably have concealed the king’s illness from his son and heir, too, were it not for the arrival of Arthur Plantagenet. The king may have agreed to admit him out of respect for his late wife, given that he was her kin. It is not clear why he had left Eltham to attend the king, but it is possible that he had been dispatched by Prince Henry, who was anxious for news of his father. He must have wondered if yet another death in his family was about to hasten his accession to the throne.
As the weeks dragged on, the king’s sickness seemed only to grow worse, and as a fever took hold, he slipped in and out of delirium. His son’s body of attendants may have been preparing the prince for the prospect that he might come into his inheritance sooner than expected. Although Prince Henry was a fine young man with all the makings of a great king, the accession of a minor threatened disaster for this fledgling Tudor dynasty. Other blood claimants were still endlessly plotting the king’s overthrow. How much more easily might that be achieved if they had only an eleven-year-old boy to contend with. ‘A number of great personages discussed among themselves the shape of things that might come should his grace depart this life … [who] should have rule in England,’ reported one contemporary. ‘Some of them spoke of my lord of Buckingham, saying that he was a noble man and would be a royal ruler. Others spoke of Edmund de la Pole. But none of them spoke of the Prince of Wales.’5
At last, however, towards the end of March 1504, the king began to show signs of recovery. Soon, he was well enough to present himself to the public court and prove that all was well. There would be no minority: his son Henry would have to wait a while longer for his inheritance. But the weeks of sickness had aged the forty-seven-year-old king considerably. His hair had turned white and his face was marked with the lines of grief. Sir Hugh Conway, treasurer of Calais, whispered that the king was ‘a weak man and a sickly, not likely to be a long-lived man’.6
The king’s manner had changed as much as his appearance. He had always been naturally introverted, but had made an effort to overcome that in the interests of projecting an image of majesty. Now, even though he had re-emerged into society, he seemed to have somehow shut himself off from the world. The death of his wife and eldest son in the space of less than a year had left him feeling dangerously destabilised. The contemporary Venetian historian Sanuto spoke out Henry’s fears when he observed: ‘England will make a stir, and affairs there be in commotion.’7 With just one son left to secure the future of his dynasty, he was now consumed by paranoia and suspicion.
Grief for the woman they had both adored could have united Prince Henry and his father. Instead, it was now all too clear that the prince could seek no more solace from the king than he had been able to in the immediate aftermath of his mother’s death. Their relationship from this time forward suggests that his father’s apparent coldness and insensitivity may have fostered a growing resentment in his young son.
If Henry VII proved unwilling to play an active role in the upbringing of his sole surviving male heir after Elizabeth’s death, then the same could not be said of the boy’s domineering grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. She was quick to fill the void left by Henry’s mother, and her influence was most immediately felt in the strict religious observances that she inflicted upon her grandson’s household. Lady Margaret also introduced her grandson to John Fisher, who was appointed Bishop of Rochester in 1504.
More than twenty years Henry’s senior, Fisher had gained renown as a scholar and humanist. Like his contemporaries More and Colet, he was strongly committed to educational reform, and in the same year that he was made bishop he was appointed Chancellor of Cambridge University. Erasmus frequently praised Fisher as a model of his calling, and Vergil described him as ‘a man of great learning and the highest honour and piety’.8 In religious matters, though, the young bishop was strictly conservative and determined to uphold the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. This chimed with Lady Margaret’s own views, and he was soon high in her favour. Although he did not have a formal role in her grandson’s household, he would have been a regular presence, and there is some suggestion that he acted as Henry’s tutor for a time. Quite what the prince thought of this austere young cleric is not recorded, but if Fisher won his respect as a man of piety and intellect, it is unlikely that Henry sought his company as he did that of his more pleasure-loving companions.
In the same year that Prince Henry met Fisher, another of his father’s churchmen had risen to the highest ecclesiastical position in the kingdom. William Warham was of relatively obscure birth, but had benefited from an excellent education and had risen steadily through the ecclesiastical ranks during Henry VII’s reign. He had proved his loyalty to the Tudor regime in 1493 when he had joined an embassy to persuade Margaret of Burgundy to withdraw her support from the pretender, Perkin Warbeck. Warham had so distinguished himself on this mission that Henry VII had subsequently entrusted him to negotiate with the Spanish ambassador over the details of the marriage between Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon. But only now, in 1504, did the fifty-four-year-old Warham finally enjoy the fruits of his long career in diplomacy and the Church. In January, he was appointed Lord Chancellor, and three months later he was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury. There is no record of what, if anything, Prince Henry thought of this new appointee, but Warham would go on to play a significant part in the young man’s life.
Meanwhile, Henry’s attitude towards his father could hardly have been improved by news of a shocking development at court. Although the king had been utterly grief-stricken at the loss of his queen, almost as soon as he had returned from his self-imposed seclusion, he announced his intention to find a new wife. The truly shocking part, though, was that the lady he had chosen was his widowed daughter-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, who was already betrothed to his son. But the papal dispensation had proved slow in coming, and there had also been wranglings between Henry and Ferdinand over Catherine’s dowry. The latter remained a bone of contention between the two monarchs for a long time to come.
When Catherine heard that she was now being considered as a wife for her father-in-law, rather than his son, she was horrified. Although she had lived in uncertainty after Arthur’s death, not knowing whether she should remain in England or return to her native Spain, she found the idea of marrying Henry VII, who was almost thirty years her senior, utterly abhorrent. In panic, she appealed to her parents to intervene. Her mother wrote at once to the English king, upbraiding him for suggesting ‘a very evil thing’, and demanding that he send her daughter home.
Henry demurred. His real interest in Catherine lay not so much in her youthful charms, but in the sizeable dowry that had been agreed for her marriage to Arthur, which had not yet been paid in full. He therefore intended to keep her in England as a bargaining tool. If he could marry her, better still: after all, he was maintaining her in some considerable style in a separate household. Eventually, the king agreed to drop the idea, but he continued to apply pressure on Catherine’s parents to pay what was left of the dowry. Realising that they were unlikely to do so without an incentive, he revived the scheme to marry her to his son. There is no evidence that he consulted Henry on the matter.
On 23 February 1504, Henry was formally created Prince of Wales. He had not immediately inherited the title after his elder brother’s death because his father had to be sure that Arthur’s widow Catherine was not pregnant. If she had been carrying a son, he would have taken precedence in the succession. But it was now almost two years since Arthur’s death, so the time was ripe for his brother to be invested. The previous October, Henry had inherited the dukedom of Cornwall, a title that could only be held by the monarch’s eldest son. Now, at last, he was made Prince of Wales, together with the associated title of Earl of Chester. In sharp contrast to his creation as Duke of York, there were no ostentatious ceremonies or celebrations. Rather, it was a strictly political event, as the Act of Recognition that was passed by parliament shortly afterwards made clear. This confirmed the young Henry ‘to be now the King’s heir apparent, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and earl of Chester’.9 It also annulled his creation as Duke of York and diverted the associated revenues to the crown.
This was proving to be a significant year for Prince Henry because on 24 June, four days before his thirteenth birthday, he left Eltham to join the royal household at Richmond. The timing was deliberate: the Tudors viewed thirteen as the age at which boys became adults. Henry had certainly grown into an impressive young man, full of learning and accomplishments. He was also strikingly handsome, with an athletic physique that had been honed by the many hours he spent hunting and at the tiltyard with his male companions at Eltham.
As such, Henry had grown into the living embodiment of his maternal grandfather, Edward IV. Some of the attributes they shared were purely genetic: the auburn hair, fair complexion, long nose and small, rosebud mouth. Henry also had the same tall, broad-shouldered physique, and was described by one contemporary as being ‘most comely of his personage’. The Venetian ambassador enthused that he had ‘an excellently formed head and a very well proportioned body of tall stature [which] gave him an air of royal majesty, such as has not been witnessed in any other Sovereign for many years’.10
Henry’s character was also strikingly similar to that of his grandfather. Both men were strong-minded and ruthless, but also affable, seductive and charismatic. Like his grandfather, Henry could dominate any gathering – a skill that his father notably lacked. His restless energy and athleticism found expression in the tournament arena, where he evoked memories of his warlike grandfather with displays of military prowess. As king, he would also emulate Edward’s magnificence of dress and display – like him, appreciating its political worth.
By stark contrast, this exuberant young prince seemed to share little in common, physically or otherwise, with his father. Although he was no doubt impatient to begin his training as king in earnest, the prospect of living with a man whom he hardly knew, but whom he had grown to resent, was as unappealing as it was daunting. Moreover, Henry had held sway in his own private domain at Eltham; now he would have to cede authority to his father.
This was made clear as soon as Henry arrived at Richmond, when both his staff and council were immediately absorbed into the king’s own. The latter evidently intended to keep a close eye upon his son and heir, for he appointed a number of his own trusted servants to attend him. They included Sir Richard Empson, a talented but unpopular young lawyer, who was appointed a member of the prince’s council. The ordinances that he had drawn up for Arthur’s upbringing now equally applied to his younger son, notably that ‘all the talk in his presence was of virtue, honour, cunning, wisdom and deeds of worship, of nothing that shall move him to vice’.11
It was with some relief that the prince learned that he was permitted to retain his beloved uncle, Arthur Plantagenet, along with a more recent appointee, Sir Henry Marney. Henry’s esteem for the latter is evident from the New Year gifts of a pointed diamond and a gold tablet that he presented to him. It is not clear whether the prince’s other young companions accompanied him, but the fact that Guildford, Compton and the rest are seldom mentioned during his years at Richmond suggests that they had been left behind, which can only have been a source of frustration and grief to Henry.
Royal tradition dictated that an heir should be raised apart from his parents in order to encourage independence and initiative. This had certainly been Henry’s experience to date, at least with regard to his father, but the increasingly paranoid and insecure king was now determined to superintend every aspect of life at the royal court. ‘Nothing escapes his attention,’ remarked one observer.12 His fears were far from groundless: every day seemed to bring news of some ‘dark treason’. ‘At that time men began to bend their minds to revolution, so that not only did many nobles make secret plans to overthrow the king, but also persons of the lowest birth everywhere maligned the king himself with scandalous writings and rhymes composed in the vernacular,’ recalled Polydore Vergil. ‘Indeed, these evil utterances returned to choke some, for those who were caught were executed.’13
As well as wreaking his vengeance upon the perpetrators, the king ensured that the tightest possible security was in place for himself and his son. He chose apartments for Henry at Richmond that could only be reached by way of his own, and made the same arrangements in every other residence. In stark contrast to the freedom of his life at Eltham, the prince was no longer able to go anywhere unless he was accompanied by the tightly knit body of attendants selected by his father. If ever he wished to leave the palace to hunt or joust, he was escorted out of a side door into a private park.
But the suffocating environment of his father’s household could not protect Henry from all dangers. Late one evening, when he and the king were walking together through the newly built private galleries at Richmond, the floor suddenly caved in just inches from where they had come to a halt. His father, ever alert to assassins, feared that they were under attack. In the event, it soon became clear that faulty workmanship was to blame. But the incident was an uncomfortable reminder to Henry that no matter how much he tried to protect his precious son and heir, he could never completely guarantee his safety.
The king’s apparently cold yet restrictive treatment of his son might well have been simple protectiveness. The loss of Prince Arthur had affected him deeply, and it is perhaps understandable that he was anxious to ensure the well-being of his sole surviving son. The Tudors were, after all, a fledgling dynasty – and, with Yorkist claimants still causing trouble abroad, a fragile one too. A secret letter from the late queen’s cousin, Edmund de la Pole, reveals that he and his supporters were well aware of the fact. He wrote that if the king’s ‘second son Henry’ were to die, then the throne would be his.14
It is also possible, though, that Henry’s increasing paranoia about plots and conspiracies extended even to his son. One contemporary claimed that the king was ‘beset by fear that his son might during his lifetime obtain too much power by his connexion with the house of Spain’.15 Certainly, father and son clashed on a number of occasions, most notably in 1508 when the king quarrelled so violently with Henry that it seemed ‘as if he sought to kill him’.16
But these accounts were written by men hostile to the king, and it seems more likely that his overbearing behaviour towards Prince Henry resulted more from a desire to protect him from the plots that were forever swarming about his crown. Moreover, rather than seeking to deprive him of power, the king was quick to realise that his charismatic and popular heir could bolster the stability of the Tudor regime. The contemporary accounts record a number of instructions from the king and ‘my lord the prince of Wales’, which suggests that Henry was beginning to share his kingly duties with his son.17
If the king privately envied his heir’s natural gift for public relations, this did not stop him from capitalising upon it. Shortly after the prince’s arrival at Richmond, his father took him on progress. In contrast to the summer progresses of recent years, which had stayed close to London, this was much more ambitious, extending deep into the rebellious county of Kent and other parts of the South East. The royal party was to stay at the houses of all the leading men of that region so that the king might gauge their loyalty – and show off his handsome and charismatic successor.
They were still on progress when a missive arrived from Pope Julius concerning the proposed marriage of Prince Henry to his widowed sister-in-law Catherine. It was not the hoped-for dispensation, but an assurance to the English king that he was still giving the matter his careful attention. After long months of waiting, the king was deeply frustrated, and it must have soured his enjoyment of the progress. But his son was still relishing this opportunity to explore his future kingdom. After years in the shadows, he was now being fêted as the heir to the throne. It was a role to which he seemed to have been born.
All too soon, the progress came to an end and the prince returned to Richmond with his father. Once there, the king set in place the careful plans that he had made for his son’s continuing education. The prince’s tutor, John Holt, had died in the same month that his pupil had joined the household at Richmond, and he had been replaced by another sober grammar master, William Hone. Meanwhile, in preparation for his son’s arrival, Henry had expanded the staff at the royal library, appointing William Faques, a renowned printer, scribe and importer of books. He joined another Frenchman, Quentin Poulet, who had spent the previous decade transcribing and illuminating books for the king, adding exquisitely drawn red-and-white roses to the title pages and margins, which conveniently obscured the badges of his Yorkist predecessors.
Another scholar who joined the library staff was Giles Duwes, who had served the prince and his siblings as librarian and French teacher since the 1490s. Duwes had also taught Prince Henry to sing, play the lute, recorder and virginals, and to compose songs and ballads. The heir to the throne excelled in all of these musical accomplishments, and the king was so impressed with the tutor that he added him to his own payroll with a generous salary. The young prince also proved adept at languages, and could speak French, Italian and Latin. The Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustinian would later enthuse that Henry was ‘so gifted and adorned with mental accomplishments of every sort that we believe him to have few equals in the world’.18
As well as ensuring that his son was well versed in the intellectual and cultural elements of his education, the king also paid careful attention to the prince’s military training and ‘all such convenient sports and exercises as behoveth his estate to have experience in’.19 The traditional sporting curriculum for a royal heir included running, swimming, weightlifting, hunting and hawking. The chivalric arts of swordplay, fighting with axes and jousting were also prominent in Henry’s training. The latter held most appeal for the prince, who enthusiastically embraced the cult of chivalry that pervaded his father’s court.
The king was determined that the prince would look the part, too. A few months after the latter’s arrival at Richmond, he ordered a set of jousting clothes for his son. They included an arming doublet of black satin with fashionable detachable sleeves, a matching arming partlet, spurs and shoes, and two dozen silk points or laces. He also commissioned a matching saddle and harness in black velvet, with gilt buckles and pendants. This striking outfit and accessories formed a stark contrast to the king’s own sober attire, but it seems that he was content for his glamorous young son and heir to claim the spotlight.
The king’s new interest in Henry was viewed in a positive light by some observers. ‘It is quite wonderful how much the king likes the prince of Wales,’ remarked the Spanish ambassador in August 1504. ‘Certainly, there could be no better school in the world than the society of such a father as Henry VII.’20 The prince did not share his enthusiasm. He had enough wisdom – and restraint – to defer to his father in public, but in private he soon grew resentful of his suffocating influence.
Prince Henry was now physically superior to his father. The king had been praised for his height, but his son, whom the Spanish ambassador described as ‘gigantic’, had overtaken him. In contrast to his frail, emaciated father, Henry’s physical power was already formidable. Richard, Earl of Kent, was left with a broken arm after ‘fighting with the prince’ during a training session. Polydore Vergil enthused about his ‘handsome bearing, his comely and manly features (in which one could discern as much authority as good will), his outstanding physical strength, aptness at all the arts of both war and peace … skill at arms and on horseback’.21 Little wonder that the Spanish ambassador concluded there was ‘no finer youth in the world’.22
Perhaps realising that his son needed a physical outlet, the king was content to allow him to indulge his love of tournaments and other vigorous sports. There was no shortage of opponents for the prince, who despite the restrictions of his new lifestyle succeeded in gathering about him another group of boisterous young men. They included William Hussey, Giles Capel, Thomas Knyvet and Charles Brandon. All of them were associated with the royal court, and some had served the king, so it is possible that they may have already been acquainted with Prince Henry. Certainly it would soon become obvious how much the latter esteemed them.
Charles Brandon in particular rapidly became a great favourite with the prince. He was seven years older than Henry, but resembled him so closely that some people referred to him as the prince’s ‘bastard brother’.23 Brandon came from a family of proven loyalty to the crown. His father had been killed at Bosworth bearing Henry VII’s standard, and Charles had subsequently grown up in the royal household. He was described by a contemporary as ‘an extremely handsome man, very brave, and one of the best jousters in the kingdom’.24 At the age of seventeen, he had shown off his sporting prowess by jousting at a tournament held to celebrate the wedding of Arthur and Catherine. Francis Bacon later noted, however, that as a result of ‘having been too gay at Prince Arthur’s marriage’, he had ‘sunk himself deep in debt’.25 As well as becoming a close companion of Prince Henry, Brandon also served the king. By 1503, he was waiting on Henry VII at table, and four years later he was an esquire of the body. From around 1505/6, he joined the company of the king’s ‘spears’ – a group of young men who regularly excelled in jousts and courtly display.
But the king would hardly have approved of Brandon’s character, if he had known of it. He was a notorious womaniser who had got one of the late queen’s ladies pregnant and promptly abandoned her in favour of her wealthy aunt, who was more than twenty years his senior. He had subsequently sold off her property to pay the debts arising from his profligate lifestyle at court, and had the marriage annulled so that he could marry her niece, who had miscarried their child out of distress.
Far from being shocked by his scandalous new companion, Henry seems to have idolised him. Brandon’s recklessness appealed to a prince who was desperate for an outlet for his wilder tendencies. Before long, he was staying up late with Brandon and the other rowdy men of his household, drinking and dancing ‘in his shirt and without shoes’.26
It was not long before the king heard of his son’s wayward behaviour. Although he had been prepared to tolerate his sporting pursuits, given that they were part of a prince’s training, the fact that his heir was showing such a flagrant disregard for his safety – not to mention his reputation – could not be borne. He and his ministers therefore decreed that the prince’s activities with his coterie of male favourites should be ‘repressed’. Henry complied with his father’s wishes, but the affair served to intensify his resentment.
The curtailing of the prince’s entourage meant that it now more closely reflected that of his father. The many years that Henry VII had spent in exile before becoming king, during which there had been constant threats to his security, as well as setbacks to his ambitions for the throne, had chiselled him into a distrustful and suspicious man, and those traits deepened in the later years of his reign. As a result, although he was careful to keep a magnificent court, Henry’s own personal entourage diminished significantly. It included only those men who had proven their loyalty to him before he seized the crown at Bosworth. Richard Fox and Reginald Bray were prominent among them, as were the wily lawyers, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley.
The king was therefore isolated by his own will, and few others were admitted to the tight-knit group with which he was surrounded. The fact that Henry VII chose the same companions for his more pleasurable pursuits made it more exclusive still. In contrast to his son, the king only indulged in pastimes such as hunting, shooting and cards in private. ‘For his pleasures, there is no news of them,’ wrote Bacon. While the jousts and revels that he staged for the public entertainments of the court were undeniably spectacular, such as when scores of rabbits and doves were released into the hall in November 1501, Henry himself was only ever ‘a princely and gentle spectator’.27 Clearly he now expected his son and heir to follow suit.
But, surrounded – and increasingly influenced – by his intimate companions, Prince Henry was impatient to throw off the shackles of his father’s overweening authority. Resentful of the fact that, thanks to the king’s suffocating protectiveness, he was obliged to be no more than a spectator in the public jousts that his friends took part in, he was becoming ever more restless to break free.
Irksome though it was to the prince, the king’s concern for his son’s well-being and reputation was understandable at a time when the negotiations for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon had reached a particularly delicate stage. It is an indication of how desperate the king was to bring it to a successful conclusion that in the closing months of 1504, he sent a ‘gift’ of £4,000 to Rome. Not long afterwards, Julius issued a dispatch to Queen Isabella in Spain, granting his permission for her daughter to marry Prince Henry. There was a sting in the tail, though: the wording of the dispensation clearly stated that Catherine’s marriage to Arthur had been consummated. When Isabella stoutly protested that her daughter was still a virgin, Julius relented enough to have the word ‘forsan’ (‘perhaps’) added to the relevant sentence.28 Although this gave both Isabella and the English king what they needed to proceed with the marriage, the ambiguity of the wording would have far-reaching consequences in the years to come.
The matter appeared to be settled, but in June 1505, just before his fourteenth birthday, Prince Henry suddenly performed an about-turn and rejected the idea of marrying his dead brother’s wife. He asserted that as the betrothal had taken place during his minority, he had not been able to object, but now that he was ‘near the age of puberty’, he could better judge the matter for himself. This was unlikely to have been Henry’s idea, but a wily ploy on the part of his father in response to a shift in the diplomatic situation. The death of Catherine’s mother Isabella in November 1504 had prompted a crisis in Spain. Even though she had named her husband Ferdinand as her successor, the natural heir to Castile was their daughter Juana (known as ‘the mad’ because of her mental instability) and her husband Philip, ruler of the Low Countries. Anxious to see which way the tide would turn, the English king no longer wished to ally himself too closely to Ferdinand.
At the same time as breaking off his son’s marriage negotiations, the king ordered that Catherine’s household be dismantled, dismissed a number of her attendants (including her beloved duenna Doña Elvira), and incorporated Catherine and her remaining staff into his own. The Spanish princess had long complained about her living conditions in England, which were rather less luxurious than she expected. Being part of the royal household evidently did little to improve her lifestyle, because a few months later she claimed that her attendants were ‘ready to ask alms and herself all but naked’. She pleaded with her father-in-law to arrange for her to be attended by a Spanish confessor because she had ‘been for six months near death’.29 The English king appeared unmoved, however, and her letter went unanswered.
In January 1506, Henry VII was provided with the perfect opportunity to cultivate Ferdinand’s rival when Philip and his wife Juana were blown off course on their way from the Low Countries to Castile, and forced to land in England. They embarked off the coast of Dorset and were met by Sir Thomas Trenchard, one of the local gentry. Trenchard had ties with another Dorset noble family, the Russells, and according to tradition he enlisted the help of the twenty-year-old John Russell to act as interpreter. The young man evidently proved adept at the task because he subsequently escorted Philip to the royal court at Windsor, where John came to the attention of Henry VII and was appointed a gentleman of the chamber the following year. He would go on to become a favourite of Henry’s son.
Philip’s visit was brief, but it was to have a profound effect upon the English king’s son and heir. Henry VII showed his guests every courtesy and provided lavish entertainments in their honour. They included a series of jousts, which his younger son would have been desperate to take part in, being already accomplished at ‘riding at the ring’.30 The king conveyed the Order of the Garter upon Philip, who in return gave the Order of the Fleece to his son Henry.31 The prince was entranced upon meeting this charming and cultured young potentate, who was described by a contemporary as ‘handsome of face, and heavily built … talented, generous and gentlemanly’.32 He already knew of him because five years before, Philip’s daughter Eleanor (then aged two) had been proposed as a bride for Prince Henry. The idea was still alive in 1505, when it was reported that Henry VII was ‘treating very secretly … to marry his son the prince of Wales to the daughter of king Philip’.33
Henry spent some time with Philip at Richmond. The visitor presented a model of leadership to which the king-in-waiting seemed to aspire. For the first time, he had encountered a monarch whom he was inspired to emulate. Even before Philip had left England’s shores, Henry wrote to him, begging that he would send him letters in return.34 The notion that he might be allied to this man through marriage, with either Eleanor or Catherine as his bride, held great appeal for the young prince. It may have been at least partly due to their meeting that Henry decided to take matters into his own hands and reaffirm his commitment to Juana’s sister Catherine. By April 1506, their betrothal was once more being spoken of as a certainty, and in the same letter to Philip, Henry referred to her as ‘ma chère et très aimée compaigne, la princess ma femme’ (‘my most dear and well-beloved consort, the princess my wife’).35
The extent to which Henry had idolised Philip was clear when, just eight months after he and Juana had set sail for Castile, the prince received news of his death from his old friend Erasmus. Henry was devastated. ‘Never, since the death of my dearest mother, hath there come to me more hateful intelligence,’ he confided to the scholar. He went on to upbraid Erasmus for telling him the sorrowful tidings, ‘because it seemed to tear open again the wound to which time had brought insensibility’.36
The strength of Henry’s emotions towards a man with whom he had only spent a few days contrasted sharply with his resentment towards his father. The lack of affection was apparently mutual. Reginald Pole, a cousin of Prince Henry, later asserted that Henry VII despised his son, ‘having no affection or fancy unto him’.37 Admittedly, Pole was only a child at the time and was closeted away at Sheen Priory, so it is unlikely that he was speaking from first-hand experience of the relationship. Nevertheless, it is true that Henry’s father had focused most of his energies, and his hopes, on his elder son and heir, Arthur, who from his earliest years had performed a number of public duties. Prince Henry might have reflected bitterly upon the fact that at the same age as he was now, Arthur had been married and dispatched to Ludlow to command the Council in the Marches as Prince of Wales, whereas Henry had neither wife nor independence.
But Henry’s relationship with his father was rather less one-dimensional than many of the contemporary sources suggest. Only later commentators, writing with the wisdom of hindsight, noticed that despite their contrasting characters, there were some notable similarities between the two Henrys. Francis Bacon’s description of the father could just as easily have applied to the son: ‘He was of a high mind and loved his own will, and his own way: as one that revered himself, and would reign indeed.’38 Both he and other commentators also drew attention to the exceptional memory that the younger Henry had inherited from his father. And while they were physically very different, both men were noted as being unable to look people straight in the eye.39
Henry VII might have become grasping and suspicious in his later years, but for much of his reign he had been an open-handed and genial monarch who always kept a splendid court. Polydore Vergil described him as ‘gracious and kind, and as attractive to visitors as he was easy of access. His hospitality was splendidly generous: he liked having foreign visitors, and freely conferred favours on them … He well knew how to maintain his royal dignity, and everything belonging to his kingship, at all times and places.’40 This would be echoed by his son Henry, who as king was much better known for his splendour and generosity than his apparently dull, avaricious old father. The younger Henry was also noted for his ‘self-control’, which goes against many of the stereotypes of this indulged spare heir and owes much to the example of his father.41
Both men were praised for their bravery and athleticism, but when wronged would prove ‘hard and harsh’. For all his youthful exuberance and precociousness, Prince Henry shared his father’s intense piety. He carried around with him a ‘bede roll’, or portable aid to prayer, like a talisman, believing that it would ward off evil. This roll of parchment was only five inches wide but eleven feet long and beautifully illuminated with the Tudor rose and other royal emblems, as well as a host of religious images. The younger Henry may also have inherited his impressive intellect from his father, whom Vergil refers to as being ‘not devoid of scholarship’ and possessed of ‘a most tenacious memory’.42
But if there was more common ground between Henry and his father than has often been portrayed, the latter did not provide a model of kingship that his son wished to emulate. Bacon described the king as ‘sad, serious, full of thoughts, and secret observations: and full of notes and memorials of his own hand … keeping (as it were) a journal of his thoughts’. He claimed that this made Henry the subject of whispered mockery at court, and recalled a ‘merry tale’ that ‘his monkey (set on as it was thought by one of his chamber) tore his principal notebook all to pieces … whereat the court (which liked not those pensive accounts) was almost tickled with sport’.43
On the rare occasions that Henry delegated business, it was only to his most trusted servants, and even then he would keep a close eye on everything they did. A shrewd description is provided by Pedro de Ayala, a Spanish envoy who visited Henry’s court. ‘He [the king] likes to be much spoken of, and to be highly appreciated by the whole world. He fails in this because he is not a great man. He spends the time he is not in public or in his council, in writing the accounts of his expenses with his own hand … He is much influenced by his mother.’ De Ayala concluded that the king was ‘disliked’ by most of his subjects.44 In short, for the most part Henry had provided his son with an example of how not to rule.
There is little doubt that during the closing years of the reign, the prince was becoming increasingly impatient for power. In ever greater numbers, the king’s subjects were also looking to his son as the hope of the kingdom. At sixteen, Henry presented a majestic and appealing alternative to his dour old father and his grasping advisers. Among the latter, the king’s councillor Richard Empson was particularly unpopular, as was his colleague Edmund Dudley. Both men were astute lawyers, and Polydore Vergil claims that they had been promoted by the king ‘not so much to administer justice as to strip the population of its wealth, without respite and by every means fair or foul [they] vied with each other in extorting money’. Before long, ‘they devised many fresh ways of satisfying the king’s avarice while they were eagerly serving as the ministers of their own private fortunes’.45 The people could only hope that they would not have to suffer their regime for much longer.
Even though Prince Henry had confirmed his betrothal to Catherine, his father was still hedging his bets. The death of his son-in-law Philip in September 1506 had enabled Ferdinand to wrest back power in Castile, but the English king was slow to revive their alliance and made a show of casting about for another foreign bride for his son Henry. He was also careful to keep the latter apart from Catherine, even though they were both now living at Richmond. This could have been to prevent Henry from indulging in the premature sexual experience that it was believed had hastened his brother Arthur’s death. But it is also possible that it was a tactic to make the Spanish princess even more desperate to marry his son and end her rather lonely existence. If so, it worked. In 1507, Catherine complained bitterly that she had not seen the prince for four months and admitted that she would ‘rather die in England’ than give up the idea of marrying him.46 Absence also made Prince Henry’s heart grow fonder. He confessed to his father that he thought her ‘a beautiful creature’. On New Year’s Day 1508, one of the rare occasions when the couple were allowed to meet, he presented his betrothed with a ‘fair rose of rubies set in a rose of white and green’.47
In February that year, Catherine’s father dispatched his ambassador, Don Gutierre Gómez de Fuensalida, to England in order to get the protracted marriage negotiations back on track. Ferdinand rightly judged that the only way to bring them to a successful conclusion was to show the English king evidence of his daughter’s considerable dowry. His ambassador was therefore accompanied by a representative of the Aragonese branch of the Grimaldi bank, who carried with him bills of exchange.
By the time of Fuensalida’s arrival in March, the English king was gravely ill. Worn down by the cares of state, Henry looked much older than his fifty-one years. His body was emaciated from the tuberculosis that had plagued him for the past five years, he had lost most of his teeth and those that remained were ‘black-stained’.48 The previous month, another bout of ill health had forced him to retreat to Richmond with just a few trusted servants in attendance. He had been unable to stomach any food, and his breathing had become laboured. Indeed, such was his enfeebled state that he had been unable to make his habitual pilgrimage to Westminster on the anniversary of his wife’s death.
Although the king’s condition had hardly improved by March 1508, he was determined to greet the Spanish ambassador in person and prove that all was well. He therefore mustered enough strength to make his way by barge to Greenwich, swathed in blankets to keep out the chill. But it was as obvious to Fuensalida as it was to the crowds who had gathered for his arrival that he could not live for much longer.
After holding private discussions with the ambassador, the king watched the jousts that were held in his honour. By his side was Prince Henry, who was no doubt itching to take part himself. Shortly afterwards, his father was obliged to retreat to his private chambers once more and leave his son to preside over the entertainments. The prince was evidently delighted at the opportunity to hold court, free from the shackles of his father’s overbearing influence. One onlooker observed that he sat ‘in place of the king’ at the feasts, pageants and other festivities that were held at Greenwich.49 Henry played his part to perfection. All those present admired his congeniality, easy grace and regal presence, which contrasted sharply with the shadow of a king who lay sick in his privy chamber.
Fuensalida spied his chance. Having got little further in his negotiations with the English king, despite the visible lure of Catherine’s dowry, he now focused his attentions upon the prince, rightly judging that he was keen to marry Catherine. But if he thought to secure his agreement in the king’s absence, he was mistaken. The latter may have retreated from public view, but he still controlled everything that happened there through his eagle-eyed councillors. As a result, although it concerned him closely, the king’s heir had little say in the matter of his marriage. The ambassador scornfully recorded that the young prince was kept under a close supervision more suited to a girl, and ‘so subjected that he does not speak a word except in response to what the King asks him’.50 He therefore abandoned this means of bringing the marriage negotiations to a successful conclusion.
Prince Henry’s supremacy at court, such as it was, proved all too brief. By April, his father had begun to show signs of recovery and was able to resume some of his duties. Increasingly, though, he took refuge in the minutiae of his account books, earning himself the reputation of a miser. Polydore Vergil claimed that all the king’s ‘virtues’ were ‘obscured latterly by avarice, from which he suffered. This avarice is surely a bad enough vice in a private individual, whom it forever torments; in a monarch indeed it may be considered the worst vice since it is harmful to everyone, and distorts those qualities of trustfulness, justice and integrity by which the State must be governed.’51
Francis Bacon later observed that Henry’s subjects speculated about the cause of his increasingly reclusive and parsimonious habits: ‘Some thought the continual rebellions wherewith he had been vexed, had made him grow to hate his people; some thought it was done to pull down their stomachs and keep them low; some, for that he would leave his son a golden fleece.’ He concluded, though, that it was simply the result of Henry’s ‘nature, age, peace, and a mind fixed upon no other ambition, or pursuit’.52 While Henry’s public image deteriorated, those closest to him realised that he was depressed and suffered ‘much displeasure and sorrow’ from this ‘wretched world’.53
That summer, the sweating sickness returned to London. This was one of the most feared diseases of the age, and for good reason. It could kill within a matter of hours and would claim thousands of lives with each new epidemic. Even though the king was on progress when the disease first broke out, its tendrils soon reached beyond the capital. Three of the king’s closest privy chamber servants fell prey to the infection. But as their lives hung in the balance, their master heard the news that he had been dreading. The sickness had penetrated his son’s household, killing three of his chamber servants. All of his fears seemed about to be realised. He knew that his own health was fading rapidly, and now it seemed that his only surviving son was to be taken from him. The future of his dynasty suddenly seemed desperately precarious.
Against all the odds, the disease abated as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the king and his son unharmed. But by the time that they returned to the court in London, it was obvious to everyone that the king was dying. By January 1509, he was so ‘sore vexed’ by the symptoms of tuberculosis that he sought refuge away from the capital and moved to the manor of Hanworth in Middlesex. His mother accompanied him, as she had so many times before, but this time she summoned his three children – an indication that she knew there would be little time.
At the end of February, Henry moved to Richmond. Keen to put his son’s affairs in order, he summoned Catherine of Aragon to him. By this time, few of Catherine’s household believed that she would ever marry the prince and were busy making plans for her return to Spain. Catherine herself refused to give up hope, however, and she used this opportunity to urge the dying king once more to confirm the marriage. But her earnest petition prompted a furious tirade from her father-in-law, who upbraided her for speaking out in this manner. She was so shocked that she wrote at once to her father, complaining that the English king had uttered ‘things which are not fit to be written to your highness’.54 She returned to her lodgings in Windsor shortly afterwards. Henry soon regretted his outburst and sent for Catherine once more. But her confessor, Friar Diego, whom the king despised, prevented her from going. The fact that he was unable to settle his son’s marital affairs left Henry ‘very much vexed’. Catherine, meanwhile, seems to have finally relinquished all hope of the match and began asking to return to Spain so that she might commit herself to the religious life.
The king lingered for almost two more months, but breathed his last at around eleven o’clock on the night of 21 April, surrounded by his most trusted attendants. His death was kept secret for two full days so that his advisers could set matters in place for a smooth succession. Despite their efforts, however, rumours of the king’s death were already circulating in the city on 22 April. Fearing unrest, those who were privy to the secret began to quietly stock the royal armoury. They need not have worried. Henry VIII would be the first monarch since the year 1421 to accede to the throne peacefully as a crowned king, rather than by usurpation or conquest.
On the morning of 23 April, St George’s Day, Thomas Wriothesley, who was presiding over the ceremonials as Garter King of Arms and was probably in on the secret, ordered the heralds to proclaim Henry VII’s largesse to the crowded presence chamber.55 The pretence was maintained after dinner, when a door leading to the privy apartments was opened by Richard Weston, one of the king’s body servants, who entered the room with a ‘smiling countenance’. Aware that all eyes were upon him, he walked calmly over to Archbishop Warham and ‘certain other lords’ and told them that the king wished to see them. These men duly performed the charade of visiting the privy chamber for ‘a good pause’, and then re-emerged into the throng ‘with good countenance … as though the king had not been dead, showing no great manner of mourning that men might perceive’.56
Shortly afterwards, Prince Henry progressed to the Chapel Royal for evensong. As was customary for the king and his family, he heard mass in the holyday closet, rather than the main body of the chapel. The privacy of the closet enabled its occupants to discuss confidential matters undisturbed while the service proceeded. It may have been here that the prince was finally told of his father’s death.
As soon as the service was over, Henry and his entourage returned to the presence chamber for the Garter supper, throughout which ‘he was served and named as prince and not as king’.57 Only when the last dish had been taken away was his father’s death finally announced. Contemporary accounts suggest that it was something of an anti-climax. There was no joyful proclamation of the new king, but rather a series of whispered conversations between his advisers. For Henry himself, though, the knowledge that he had come into his inheritance and was free at last from his controlling father filled him with joyful anticipation.