TWELVE
‘A PRINCE WHO PROMISES VERY MUCH’
In March 1606, courtiers barged into St James’s Palace. The assassins had struck again, this time killed the king as he hunted near Royston, twenty-five miles north of London. Getting a grip on ‘his excessive sorrow and grief’, Henry ‘called for the Duke his brother in great haste, that he might once see him in safety with himself’. Typical older brother, Henry parented his younger sibling in an emergency. Guards barred the gates of St James’s against a death squad. The boys waited, listening as soldiers and servants searched the palace.
‘The news spread to the city and the uproar was amazing,’ the Venetian ambassador said. Molino peeped from his window. ‘Everyone flew to arms, the shops were shut.’ Bubbling fear flipped over to anger. It must have an outlet. ‘Cries began to be heard against Papists, foreigners and Spaniards.’
In a heartbeat, rage turned to triumph – the king lived! Jonson composed a poem for James’s salvation. Fireworks exploded for joy over London. A tumult of bells rang out.
Yet, nothing had happened. Londoners leapt at the mere threat and the relieving of it. How tightly wound up their emotions were, keyed to catastrophe. The royal children learned to live with this tension, to show resilience in the face of the insecurity that coexisted with their ritual-bound, protected lives. It surely nuanced their interpretation of gifts and sweet compliments – maybe a good lesson for someone in Henry’s position. Flattery not only weakened a prince’s virtue, it might lay him open to attack.
News from Europe confirmed the heightened anti-papist sentiment being felt in London. The Republic of Venice, one of the stati liberi (Catholic, but free of Spanish-dominated, papal control) was in dispute with the papacy. The Venetians had just imprisoned two Catholic clergymen for impropriety. Next, judging it was no longer in the interests of the Republic to have foreigners acquire ownership of Venetian assets, they outlawed the practice. The Vatican owned extensive property in Venice. The pope reacted by placing Venice under a papal interdict and excommunicating the whole state, damning them all to eternal hell.
The Venetians answered by expelling the Society of Jesus. The Venetian monk and brilliant theologian, Friar Paolo Sarpi, laid out the Republic’s case in a series of pamphlets, among them the Apologia, Considerazioni sulle censure and the Trattato dell’ interdetto. A liberal Catholic, he communicated freely with Catholic and Protestant princes throughout Christendom. Sarpi blamed current levels of unrest in Christendom on Catholic and Protestant extremists alike.
Henry’s household received a copy of Sarpi’s analysis. ‘The State and the Church are two powers,’ Sarpi said, ‘one for heavenly matters, the other for earthly ones; each with its own sovereignty.’ It could have been a manifesto for the Church of England. The new pope, Paul V, head of ‘heavenly matters’, was interfering in the ‘earthly’ bricks and mortar of the Venetian state. Sarpi said the acquisition of properties and worldly goods had, and still, corrupted the Mother Church. A papacy so invested in foreign assets threatened international security. It interfered in the foreign states in which it held these assets, to look after its possessions.
In Sarpi’s analysis, the pope, Spain and the Jesuits were now in league to destroy the liberty of Europe. Their goal was a mighty papal-backed Spain. In exchange, Spain would support the church’s reclamation of all lands across Europe lost to it since the Protestant Reformation. Logically, that must include church lands lost in Britain, as well as Venetian property. Sarpi believed this was a serious sin and a real crisis for Christendom.
Henry’s household welcomed Sarpi’s report, and Adam Newton translated some of the friar’s works into English. Robert Cecil (now Earl of Salisbury) and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere also praised Sarpi’s analyses. The prince’s circle did not see the Venetian crisis as an intra-Catholic fight. For them, it was the struggle of a free Catholic republic against international popery – by which they meant a militant Catholicism with expansionist and absolutist ambitions. Venice deserved their support as much as a Protestant state facing the same threat. Henry’s Calvinist monarchical household offered its support to Catholic republican Venice against the papal–Spanish alliance threatening it. They asked themselves if the Powder Treason and the Venetian interdict were part of a wider popish plan now coming to light across Europe.
It is hard to imagine the full impact of the geopolitical nightmare that stalked the hinterland of these Protestant minds. In their worst dreams, the papacy went to war to reconquer Protestant lands and convert people back to Catholicism. The Habsburgs might then recombine the thrones of the Holy Roman Emperor and the empire of Spain under one ruler, as they had been until 1556, to create a Habsburg hard-line Catholic superstate. In 1556, Charles V of Spain had abdicated and divided his bloated legacy. Philip II inherited Spain and her South American empire, and headed the Spanish Habsburg line. Ferdinand inherited the mantle of the Holy Roman Emperor. In theory an elected title, in effect the position of emperor was now hereditary in the Austrian house of Habsburg.
The Holy Roman Empire was a vast, loose community of independent European countries and principalities (centred on modern-day Germany, Austria, and Hungary). It worked communally to address common issues, such as law and order, defence and trade. But the economies across its regions varied hugely, causing resentment between richer and poorer states when it came to issues such as defence. Moreover, the imperial territories were religiously at odds with one another. Once Roman Catholic from end to end, the Reformation had left the empire and other European territories divided between loyal Catholic states and reforming Protestant states. In 1555, to try to end the religious wars, the empire’s member states signed up to the Peace of Augsburg, which gave a measure of toleration to Protestants. The imperial governing institutions accepted Lutheran Protestantism, to a point, but refused to recognise Calvinism, despite several important imperial territories being Calvinist. Despite the treaty’s limitations, five decades on the peace still held.
By 1606 the Holy Roman Emperor and most of the administrative hierarchy of his empire remained Catholic, though the Protestant states found they could work within the empire’s administrative and governmental structures for their common benefit. Around the empire ranged independent nations and principalities – Spain, France, England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, the Dutch Republic, and free Italian states (such as Venice and Savoy, among others) – professing a variety of faiths.
Henry had a blood and faith bond with many Protestant rulers. With Elizabeth’s thrones, his father had inherited the presumption that English foreign policy was in part conducted to defend the international community of Protestants throughout Christendom. If ‘the fundamental function of monarchy was the making of war: this was the bottom line’. Pro-European Protestants and military men attending Henry were initiating the prince in this aspect of his kingship.
By mid-summer, Spain was preparing to invade Venice and return her forcibly to obedience to Rome. Catholic but pro-Protestant and violently anti-Habsburg, Henri IV of France replied by mustering troops to help the Venetians defend themselves. Writing to the English ambassador in Venice, Sir Henry Wotton, twelve-year-old Henry declared, if ‘he were of age he would come in person to serve the Republic’, to fight for the liberties of those threatened by Spain and the pope.
Wotton read Henry’s letter to the Senate. It was what they wanted to hear from England. Wotton hung Prince Henry’s portrait in his palazzo. Even the sight of him, looking down as they passed, should give the senators confidence in their ally.
Senior diplomats such as Wotton recognised that the Protestants could not stem the Habsburg and Catholic militant resurgence in Europe, as they saw it, alone; they must ally with certain Catholic states and independent princes, such as France, and maybe some of the Swiss cantons and German principalities. Mainstream domestic political reaction aligned with Henry and his household on this matter: England should prepare to intervene in the Venetian crisis, alongside Henri IV of France.
One of the most important and influential ‘independent princes’ chose this moment to visit London. Henry’s uncle, Christian IV of Denmark, landed at Tilbury on 17 July 1606. James, Henry and a train of nobles rode to meet him. The King of Denmark greeted his brother-in-law, then made for Henry, embracing him ‘most lovingly in his arms, expressing a most tender and royal affection’. All the way to Greenwich Palace, Christian, ‘with many loving favours, showed his heart’s joy in … Henry’. If he was looking he might well have seen something of himself in his nephew.
The Stuarts and Danes plunged into a month of hunting, feasting, plays, displays and political discussion. Christian congratulated his sister and his brother-in-law on their enlarged monarchy; they exchanged intelligence and discussed the implications of the Powder Treason and Venetian interdict. Some Protestant German princes had ‘proposed to’ James ‘to declare himself head of the reformed religion … and to pledge himself to an alliance offensive and defensive’, against Spain or the Vatican. But James had refused – ‘a thing that a prince of greater spirit would probably not have done’, Ambassador Molino thought. While disagreeing with the resort to arms, James did think though it was essential to maintain ‘the Sovereign rights of independent Princes against the violence of those who, under the cloak of religion, sought to overthrow them’.
The day before their guests left England, the Stuarts accompanied the Danish king back downriver to his flotilla anchored at Chatham. Christian feasted them. The light shimmered on the water, reflecting off the walls in roomy cabins hung with ‘cloth of gold’, scented ‘with sweet and pleasant perfume’, to cover less sweet odours.
King of a major seagoing power, Christian had asked to inspect the navy, after dinner. ‘They had sight of all the ships; which were rich in ancients, pendants, flags and streamers.’ Shipwright Phineas Pett had smartened up the fleet as best he could, bringing two of the better ships, the Ark Royal and the Victory, into dry dock for refurbishment. Pett stood close to Henry as they made their tour. James had just given the Victory to the prince. An important ship, having seen service against the Spanish during the Armada, she was a lady of a certain age, and it showed.
If magnificence was a tool of power, this tool was clearly rusty and rotten. Through his uncle Christian’s eyes, the prince saw a depressing vision of a future royal navy made up of run-down ships, slack discipline and corruption in the naval dockyards. Henry had inherited his Danish family’s affinity with the sea, loving it in a way his father never did, yet this fleet would be clearly incapable of defence or attack. At the very least, it needed the boost of a new warship and a properly thought-out programme of refit and repair.
On 11 August the royal families said their farewells on board the Danish flagship, the Admiral. Christian’s parting gift to Henry was his best fighting vessel, the Vice-Admiral, with all her modern weaponry and equipment. Henry began to research and plan how to renovate the whole royal navy up to the same standard as his new ship.
James waited to see his brother-in-law set sail, then left to hunt and make another progress, beyond the capital.
Unable to ‘follow the King because he made so little stay in any place’, the French ambassador, Monsieur de la Boderie, found himself ‘a frequent attendant’ in Prince Henry’s household. Henri IV hoped to enlist English support for French diplomacy in the Venetian crisis. The ambassador had been told to encourage Prince Henry’s friendship ‘by all possible means’. It would ‘be a great fault to neglect’ the youth. ‘He is a Prince who promises very much.’
De la Boderie invited Henry to dine at his London residence. Henry’s entourage hinted to the ambassador that the prince ‘would soon show he had power’ to act on behalf of his future countries, whatever that might mean. He was only thirteen. De la Boderie reported that some of Prince Henry’s people were offering to supply information about the prince to France, and to air French policy in the conversation at his tables. If de la Boderie could offer ‘something to sharpen their tools, they would do better’, he said. He could approach Monsieur de St Antoine, the riding master the French king had sent for Henry, or some of the Huguenot refugees attending on the prince. Or pehaps Chaloner, who fought under a Huguenot Henri IV in the early 1590s.
‘I think it highly proper to cultivate’ Prince Henry’s friendship ‘and to manage it early by all means suitable to his age and condition’, de la Boderie advised. The management obviously included spying on him, as the ambassador sketched out his impressions of Henry for his royal master. ‘None of his pleasures … savour the least of a child.’ Yet, typical teenage boy, blessed with boundless youthful energy ‘he is never idle’. He loves all sports, including tennis and golf, ships and the navy, exploration, anything to do with the military and manège (the art of horsemanship, fundamental to cavalry training).
Henri IV wanted his son, the dauphin, to send Henry a present, and asked for ideas. Easy – send ‘a suit of armour, well gilt and enamelled’, said de la Boderie, ‘together with pistols and a sword of the same kind: and if he add to these a couple of horses, one of which goes well, and the other a barb [an Arab], it will be a singular favour done to the Prince’. These were suitable gifts for a king-in-waiting ‘whose friendship’, the envoy continued, ‘cannot but one day be of advantage’ to France.
Henry wrote to the French king. ‘Sire and Treasured Uncle’, he addressed him, and thanked him repeatedly for ‘showing me your truly paternal affections’. The prince would often describe himself as Henri IV’s ‘child’. He welcomed paternal advices from him, as much as he did from his actual father.
In early summer 1607, Henry received more approaches from the French. The Prince de Joinville visited Henry, in order ‘to cultivate that young plant … since it promised, to produce fruits much more favourable to France, than that stock from which it was raised’. Joinville stressed the paternal aspect of the relationship, assuring Henry that the French king spoke ‘[ever] with great show of passionate affection towards [him] …; and at this time he accounted of him as of his own son’.
James’s treaty with Spain ending the Armada war had changed the balance of power in Europe. Henri IV wanted to rebuild France as a great European power under his new dynasty, the Bourbons, and the Habsburgs posed the most serious threat to his ambitions. It was vital that Spain did not now ally with England by using marital diplomacy. The French proposed a marriage between Henry or Princess Elizabeth and one of the French royal children. Henry’s parents accepted that a French match was prestigious enough, however James still meant Henry to wed the Spanish infanta. The queen too ‘endeavoured to prejudice’ her son ‘in favour of Spain, and against France’, which, she added unhelpfully, ‘she hoped he would one day conquer, like Henry V’.
Henry asked Joinville if he might send an envoy to his ‘Treasured Uncle’, so that they could communicate without having their letters filtered through Whitehall first. Both knew James and the Earl of Salisbury would not welcome the minor court casting a speculative, independent line in foreign policy.
Joinville accepted, and immediately regretted it. The French caught Prince Henry’s envoy spying. He was making drawings, ‘examining all the fortifications’ of Calais. The man confessed ‘he was employed by Prince Henry, who had long waited for such an opportunity’. Spied on by informers in his own household, some of them in the pay of his ‘Treasured Uncle’ Henri, Prince Henry obviously felt old enough to set off by himself down the murkier byways of international relations – only to be caught stealing military secrets at the first attempt.
Henri IV hesitated. Had it been James, France would have delivered a stinging rebuke. But the spymaster here was only thirteen years old. The French brushed it off, dismissing Henry as ‘not of an age nor in a condition to think of such things; nor was England in a situation to undertake any design of that kind’.
Correct about England’s defences, they were self-evidently wrong about Henry. Joinville sent the young prince Henri’s gift of horses and a suit of armour. Henry thanked him: ‘I perceive, my cousin, that, during your stay in England, you discovered my humour; since you have sent me a present of the two things which I most delight in, arms and horses.’
From the time of his birth, people and countries had created ‘their’ Henry. ‘The eye of the world is on [you]’ one songster told him. ‘Brave Britain’s beauty and fair England’s joy/… Whole Europe’s comet and Saint Georges Knight’.
Lord Fyvie, now the Earl of Dunfermline and Scottish chancellor, wrote to Henry from north of the border to say Scotland had ‘sunk and almost expired under the want of the presence’ of king and prince since 1603. If only Henry had come back home as planned, after the Powder Plot – ‘You would have seen there not long ago, how great their joy, how sincere their regard and veneration of you was … Go on most serene Prince, as you have begun … By this means you will procure and establish an everlasting fame and glory to yourself, and perpetual peace and tranquillity to your people.’ ‘Peace’ through strength was the watchword at Henry’s household: ‘tranquillity’ was the reward for glorious deeds that won ‘everlasting fame’.
You flatter me, Henry replied. Yet, ‘the commendations of persons, who, like yourself, preside in Senates and Courts of Justice, are to be considered as exhortations, to excite us to attempt everything great and excellent. That I may some time or other do this … I shall sincerely pray the all-merciful God.’ Henry cherished the young man’s dream for a heroic, extraordinary life.
He was eighteen months from turning fifteen, the age when he must officially be acknowledged as an adult. The French noticed James, ‘often shrewd … was not pleased to see [him] … advance so fast’. Perhaps the king was right.
The very first line of King Lear has the Earl of Kent saying: ‘I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall’. Prince Charles was Duke of York and Albany. The title Duke of Cornwall always belonged to the eldest son, the Prince of Wales. How could Henry not be precocious and assertive? He was highly stimulated and intensively educated all day every day of his life. ‘His discourse … now raised to all the most important subjects, and he grew inquisitive about the state of foreign countries as well as his own.’