Bastard Prince (14 page)

By the middle of April 1527 it seemed all too possible that England would lose all prospect of either a French or an Imperial alliance. Wolsey's stipulation that Mary, who everyone agreed was rather small for eleven, could not go to France for another ten months, gave the French an excuse to stall. The emperor's unwillingness to match Richmond with Mary of Portugal and the English unwillingness to consider anyone else brought the Imperial talks to a standstill. The fleeting suggestion that Richmond should marry a French princess was clearly a fallback position. The French ambassador had already suggested to Francis I that a match with the Duke of Richmond might be a means to salvage negotiations with England. Yet, given that all the unmarried Hapsburgs were female and the French king had three sons, Richmond would have been wasted on a French match. When the English and French finally came to an agreement on 30 April, Mary looked destined for the lesser prize of the duc d'Orléans. Richmond did not feature in the arrangements.

In fact, negotiations for his marriage now came to a grinding halt. Even though Charles V's proposal for one of the daughters of the Queen of Denmark was still on the table, it now looked as if the young duke would not be marrying after all. On 18 May, Mendoza sourly reported that Wolsey seemed to have lost all interest in the marriage of ‘the bastard of England'. The ambassador believed this had all been a ruse to free the dauphin to marry Mary and it is hard to see any other explanation. A union with either of the Danish princesses would have been a more than respectable match for the young duke. These were the nieces of an emperor and the daughters of a king and unlike Richmond they were legitimate. If a grand European alliance was a consideration in Richmond's elevation in 1525, this was a lost opportunity. It can only be justified if the purpose of these negotiations was not so much to find Richmond a wife, but to secure the best marriage for his half-sister.

Any idea that Wolsey hoped to see Princess Mary safely married and dispatched to France in order to clear the way for his godson to ascend the throne in England is at odds with his terms for the French match.
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Also, any such policy would have endangered the French alliance which Wolsey had taken such pains to forge. The French might accept the possibility that Henry could still have a legitimate prince as a calculated risk. They are not likely to have viewed the accession of his illegitimate son with the same equanimity. Nor would it explain why the Imperial match was simply brushed aside. Whatever Richmond's destiny, such a marriage would have enhanced his status. If he had any hopes of the throne this union would have gone a long way to ensure Charles V's natural concerns for his cousin's inheritance were replaced with healthy self-interest in the fortunes of his niece, especially if his gain was at the expense of the French.

Certainly, Charles V was not as disinterested as he had pretended. As England and France moved towards the Treaty of Amiens, he viewed the prospect of their closer alliance with concern. Suddenly, on 17 July, the English ambassador in Spain wrote that the longed-for daughter of Portugal might be bestowed on the Duke of Richmond after all. It was proposed that Richmond might have the eldest daughter, with a dowry of 400,000 ducats and, since there was a danger the Duchy of Milan might fall into the hands of Francis I, it might be better to give that to the duke as well.
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The emperor had gained possession of the Duchy of Milan through the defeat and surrender of Sforza, the present duke. Although he was preoccupied with battles with the Turks, Charles V was loath to give up the land. France, fearing encirclement, was equally reluctant to see it remain in Hapsburg hands. To be fair, the possible benefits of this plan were not simply to the advantage of the English. It had all the makings of a grand European alliance with Charles V, Henry VIII and Francis I all bound together in a single accord that ‘should be indissoluble'. This was exactly what Wolsey had hoped for. A marriage between Francis and Eleanor might bind France and Spain, but the union of Richmond with Mary of Portugal would allow Mary to marry the dauphin, and all of this would ensure that England's future interests were central to the politics of Europe.

However, it seemed too good to be true and so it proved. On 21 July Lee might have believed that, with careful handling, it could come to pass. Wolsey remained realistic, informing Henry VIII of the progress of the negotiations on 31 July when he wrote of:

Unfortunately for Wolsey, Henry was keen to see his son married to a Hapsburg princess, with his own independent kingdom, especially if it came at no cost to himself. Wolsey persevered ‘by all ways and means' to ascertain Charles V's good faith and what conditions might apply to this ‘gift'. On 5 September he broke the bad news to the king. The Emperor ‘mindeth nothing on earth less' than to bestow the Duchy of Milan on Richmond, it was simply a ploy to prevent the English from coming to terms with the French. Henry was not convinced. On 8 September the cardinal was still instructing the English ambassadors to pursue the possibility, although since Wolsey had no wish to upset the primary goal of the French negotiations, they had to be careful ‘setting forth in such wise and matter as the French ambassador take no jealously or suspicion thereby'.

Wolsey was convinced that once Charles V knew the treaty between England and France was fully concluded, the proposal would be discreetly dropped. For the Imperials it was a defensive, rather than a proactive policy. The prize of the Duchy of Milan and the hand of the sought-after infanta would only be delivered at the cost of fracturing the French alliance. Accordingly, the next time the English ambassadors put forward Richmond's name they were politely rebuffed on the grounds that the duchy was too small for him. In the end Sforza was restored to Milan in 1529 once he had been safely married to Christina, the second daughter of the Queen of Denmark, who had been offered as a possible bride for Richmond in October 1527.

The Imperial delegation at the court of Henry VIII was obviously feeling the affects of Wolsey's preference for a French alliance. When Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands, enquired about sending over an embassy to discuss friendship, commerce and a marriage between the Duke of Richmond and one of the daughters of the Queen of Denmark, she was advised that she might be wasting her time. The ambassador thought it was probably best if he first discovered whether Wolsey would actually deign to entertain the proposals. It was entirely possible that her envoys would have had a wasted journey, as the cardinal was so busy with his French friends it might be some time before the Imperial ambassador could even arrange an interview with the minister.

In fact, Wolsey had a rather more important marriage to broker – a new wife for his king. In 1527 rumours began to circulate that Henry was thinking of putting Katherine aside. No one can have been entirely surprised. While Henry was still young enough to produce a legitimate son, it was political suicide to remain married to a queen who was so obviously past the age of child bearing. Of course, the idea was broached rather more diplomatically. At first it was claimed that Henry's concerns over the validity of his marriage had been sparked when doubts were raised by the French about Mary's legitimacy during negotiations for her marriage to the duc d'Orléans. In 1528 this was amended to the idea that the English ambassadors in France had stirred up the doubts. As matters progressed even this account was discreetly dropped. In truth the impetus came from the king.

Henry now turned his full attention to a matter which (so he claimed) had been concerning him for some time. Against all good sense he latched on to the prohibition in the Old Testament book of Leviticus (20:21), that ‘if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing . . . and they shall be childless'. However, a contrary text in the book of Deuteronomy (25:5–7) positively encouraged a man to take on his brother's widow, but Henry persuaded himself that this was Judaic custom rather than God's law. Even though Katherine and Henry had a perfectly healthy daughter, the king was obligingly advised that the original Hebrew had said they would be without sons. Henry's desire for an annulment was not in itself unusual. When marriage was as much a business merger as a domestic arrangement, sometimes the partnership had to be dissolved. Unfortunately, Henry's belief in Leviticus would set him on a collision course with the pope. The King of England believed his marriage was so sinful that the papacy had no authority to allow it. However, the pope would not accept an argument that diminished the power of his office.

Perhaps hoping to ensure a quick and speedy resolution, Henry did not begin by seeking to repudiate Katherine. Contrary to modern opinion, bigamy was generally regarded as less heinous than divorce, even when the separation was disguised as an annulment, due to some hitherto unknown impediment. Erasmus agreed, ‘far be it from me to mix in the affairs of Jupiter and Juno' he wrote, ‘but I should prefer that he should take two Junos than put away one'. Henry's initial applications to Clement VII concerned permission not to put away Katherine, but to take another wife. In the difficult years to come, as Henry was taken to task by Katherine for not spending enough time with her, only to be rebuked by his mistress for paying too much heed to the queen, he must have felt rather like a man with two wives. As a domestic arrangement, it was clearly unworkable. As a political solution, the issue of a bigamous marriage might well invite more problems than it solved.

By the autumn of 1527 moves were afoot for the king's ‘great matter'. The timing could not have been worse. Henry had good reason to hope for a favourable hearing from the pope. Monarchs even more than ordinary men needed sons to succeed them; the peace of Christendom could be said to depend on it.
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However, Charles V's sack of Rome in 1527 meant that Pope Clement VII was virtually his prisoner. The emperor was unlikely to co-operate in any approaches from the English king to put aside his aunt, one of many factors which would make Henry's case rather more complicated than it might have been.

If Richmond realised the significance of Richard Croke's departure, to help provide evidence to support Henry's case that his marriage was unlawful, there seemed no immediate cause for concern. Henry could easily provide for a Prince of Wales and a Duke of York, without affecting Richmond. Nor did it automatically mean Mary's position would change. There were ways and means for Henry to put aside his wife without prejudicing his daughter's rights. If Katherine could be persuaded to retire into a nunnery, it could be argued that Henry was free to marry again, without any need to address the legitimacy, or otherwise, of their daughter. Even if their marriage was annulled on some technicality, it could be claimed that her parents, who had been accepted as man and wife in the eyes of the world for the past two decades, had been unaware of any impediment at the time of her birth. Such issue, born in good faith, was not automatically bastardised, even if their parents' union was subsequently discovered to be unlawful.

Since Henry so desperately needed legitimate issue, the idea that he would deliberately set out to debase any child of his, when there was a viable alternative, seems absurd. For the moment at least, the marriage negotiations of 1527 indicate that Mary was still the heir apparent. Yet the failure to secure her marriage to the dauphin perhaps strengthened Henry's resolve that his daughter was not the best means to secure England's future. His concern for his dynasty is demonstrated in his abrupt rejection of a French alliance. Even as Wolsey was in France to enquire about a marriage between the king and Renée of Anjou, Henry spoke to the Hungarian envoy, who had just rejected Renée as a suitable bride for his master on the grounds that she might not ‘bring forth fruit as it apperith by the linacion of her body' due to a hereditary deformity. The king eventually found his own replacement rather closer to home, in the shape of Anne Boleyn.

The question has often been asked whether Henry pursued Anne as a man who believed he would soon be free to marry or whether it was her refusal to yield that spurred him on. The answer must be both. To be fair to Henry, he had always believed, albeit with increasingly impressive optimism, that God would eventually grant him a legitimate male heir. Once it was clear that Katherine would bear no more children, the shrewd political move would have been to take immediate action to put her aside and try again. Instead Henry seems to have concentrated on finding a suitable marriage for his daughter. If Mary had been betrothed to Francis I or the dauphin, Henry might have been satisfied, or maybe not. His attraction to Anne Boleyn was a significant and unpredictable factor that she was well placed to exploit.

When Henry's pursuit of Anne became apparent in the spring of 1526, there was no reason to suspect that this would be anything more than a conventional affair. Far from being a ready alternative to Katherine, very little about Anne Boleyn suggested that she would be a suitable queen. The daughter of a mere knight, Sir Thomas Boleyn of Blickling in Norfolk, being the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, on her mother's side, was scant compensation. Anne was no European princess whose marriage would secure a diplomatic alliance or a substantial dowry.

Unlike Henry VII's union with Elizabeth of York, which had been designed to promote accord, it was all too possible that this pairing would encourage discord. Few of the nobility would enjoy seeing the House of Howard accrue further power and influence, especially since many saw Anne as their social inferior. At twenty-six Anne was also much older than most Tudor women when they first married, significantly reducing her time in which to produce the desired heir. Also, her volatile temperament made it clear that she was unlikely to conform to the ideal picture of the pious and devoted consort. Devoted Anne Boleyn might well be, but it was to be strictly on her own terms.