Bastard Prince (17 page)

As the case of the Beauforts had illustrated, children conceived in adultery were not automatically legitimated by their parents' marriage. If, as Henry so vehemently claimed, his union with Katherine was not lawful, then he had been a bachelor when he wooed Elizabeth. In such a scenario a child born out of wedlock was widely accepted as being legitimated if the parents subsequently married.

This solution had numerous benefits. Henry would have been guaranteed his son and heir. An heir who had already shown himself to boast numerous good qualities and whose burgeoning athletic prowess boded well for the future. Also he would have acquired a wife who was already the mother of three fine sons and a daughter and at thirty was no older than Anne Boleyn and still young enough to provide Henry with more children.

Elizabeth and Henry had remained on good terms. Although Elizabeth was at pains to assure her mother-in-law that ‘she did never make any request to the King's Highness, or to my Lord's grace', moves were afoot in April 1529 to give the couple an even greater share of the Tailbois estates than they had previously enjoyed. Henry had continued to remember his former mistress with a New Year gift and it was not a simple pro forma obligation. In 1532 Elizabeth's present, a gilt goblet with a cover, was one of the heaviest and therefore most expensive. While she did not come to attend the festivities in person, her servant received 13
s
4
d
in reward for bringing her gift to the king.

In June 1532 Loys de Heylwigen, a member of Charles V's household, was convinced Henry's repudiation of Katherine was ‘to legitimate by subsequent marriage a bastard son of his' and provide the kingdom with an heir. He was startled to discover Henry would consider marrying anyone else, assuming ‘that the King's love for another than the Queen' had to be the mother of his son. Attempts to persuade him that Anne was ‘eloquent, gracious, reasonably good looking, and of a good house' fell flat. De Heylwigen dryly suggested that perhaps the king had been charmed by potions. Certainly the advantages of the match were not sufficient to turn the affection Henry evidently still felt for Elizabeth into the type of ardour he now felt for Anne Boleyn. In that at least De Heylwigen was correct. Henry had fallen under her spell and could not conceive of marrying another.

The King of England was unusual among monarchs in choosing his queens for love. During his one attempt at true matrimonial diplomacy with Anne of Cleves in 1539, Henry might grumble that in matters of matrimony ‘princes take as is brought to them by others, and poor men be commonly at their own choice and liberty', yet in five out of his six marriages he had no one to blame but himself.

If Henry had any thoughts of legitimating Richmond by subsequent marriage, there is no sign of it. When Henry's cousin, Lord Leonard Grey, courted Elizabeth in May 1532, he stressed that he would not have pursued her if the king had objected, ‘as I am well assured he doth not'. Perhaps Henry was so convinced that Anne would be his saviour that he did not see any need to pursue the option. Perhaps he also harboured concerns that Richmond's title (and legitimacy) would not be fully secured by such means. The best case scenario was an annulment of his marriage from Katherine, leaving him free to make an unimpeachable second match, which would give him an heir whose title was beyond reproach. In default of that, Richmond was an insurance policy, one perhaps whom Henry had begun to take for granted.

In the end, this particular opportunity was lost. At some point between July and September 1532, Elizabeth chose Edward Fiennes, Lord Clinton, the son of Thomas Fiennes, Lord Clinton and his wife Jane, the illegitimate daughter of Sir Edward Poynings, as her second husband. Born in 1512, Clinton was rather younger than Elizabeth. He would marry twice more and the most glittering aspects of his career, as Lord Admiral and Earl of Lincoln, would occur after her death. Nonetheless, Elizabeth made a very respectable marriage. The family hailed from Amington in Staffordshire and had had established interests in Warwickshire since the early fourteenth century. Edward's father, Thomas, Lord Clinton, had succeeded to the title in 1514 and had begun a successful career as a courtier, attending the marriage of Mary Tudor to the French king and serving at Tournai, before his sudden death from the sweating sickness in 1517.

There is nothing to suggest that Henry had a hand in arranging this marriage. Elizabeth's interest in the Tailbois lands made her a wealthy widow who could expect to make free choice of her own husband. Although Clinton became a ward of the crown after his father's death, by June 1518 his wardship and marriage had been purchased by his maternal grandfather Sir Edward Poynings at a cost of £135. In his will in July 1521 Sir Edward had also allowed that his grandson might:

Edward, no doubt, took full advantage of his grandfather's benevolence to pick Elizabeth as his bride. Although, since the couple may have been brought together by their respective landed interests in Warwickshire, which Elizabeth owed to the king's bounty, perhaps Henry was the unwitting agent of their union after all.

However, if Clinton hoped to reap the continuing rewards of Elizabeth's royal liaison, he was to be very disappointed. In February 1535 ‘Lady Tailbois, now the wife of Lord Clinton' was granted three tuns or barrels of Gascon wine, but Clinton himself was not specifically included in the grant. In 1536, when he lobbied for some lands in Kent, his suit was blocked by Thomas Cromwell. A grant of the office of bailiff and keeper of the park at Tattershall in Lincolnshire in February 1537 went jointly to Elizabeth with her second son, George, Lord Tailbois, rather than with her husband. Not until April 1538 would Clinton earn the first of a series of grants given to him in his own right.

In another respect also, this marriage would not bring Clinton all the benefits he might have hoped for. Even as he enthusiastically supported the king's moves against the English Church and all the former monastic lands it brought him, Clinton must have been equally anxious to secure his own dynasty. Instead, Elizabeth provided him with three daughters, Bridget, Katherine and Margaret, and he had to wait for his second wife, Ursula, the daughter of William, Lord Stourton, to provide him with his male heir.

Richmond would weather the next few uncertain years of the king's divorce far better than his half-sister Mary. Openly acknowledged by all as illegitimate, yet comfortably arrayed in rank and wealth, he enjoyed a degree of security that Mary would not. The possibility of a legitimate prince may have cast a small cloud over the hopes and aspirations of some of those who had attached their star to his, as with each legitimate son Richmond's political importance would correspondingly decline. Yet such a prospect was by no means certain. William Tyndale cannot have been alone in questioning the king's certainty. ‘Who hath promised him a Prince?' he demanded. Even if the king produced a boy there was little immediate cause for concern, as the death of an infant was all too possible and if the king should die before the child reached its majority, Richmond, being at least ten years older, might still seem the better candidate for the throne. As it was, Henry would need to produce a whole host of sons before Richmond's usefulness as a land and office holder was seriously impaired. For the moment a male blood relative was far too valuable to be seriously affected by the mere anticipation of an heir.

In fact, the duke's return heralded a new development in his fortunes. On 22 June 1529, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. More than a face-saving manoeuvre, this appointment was probably a major factor in his recall. The governance of Ireland had posed at least as many problems to the Tudors as the turbulent north. They were loath to trust the Irish nobility and equally unwilling to bear the cost and charge of an English deputy, especially since neither method had ever proved really successful. An arrangement made by Henry VII with Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, that the earl would serve as Lord Deputy in return for confiscated lands had worked well enough to be confirmed by their respective heirs. Yet by 1515 Kildare was being called before Henry VIII's council to answer a number of complaints.

By 1520 Henry VIII had decided to place his trust in the English nobility, sending Thomas Howard, then Earl of Surrey, over to Ireland to serve as Lord Lieutenant. This was also not an ideal solution. The posting was not exactly popular among the English lords and (more importantly) it was very expensive to the crown. Furthermore, Howard grumbled that Ireland would not easily be brought to order, declaring that the country would be more difficult to quell than Wales.

For a time, Kildare's rival, Sir Piers Butler, later Earl of Ossory, was substituted as a return to a cheaper option, even though Thomas Howard had expressed the opinion that Butler was not up to the task. Eventually, in May 1524 things came full circle when Kildare was restored as deputy, with Ossory acting as treasurer. Henry VIII may have been hoping for the best of both worlds, especially since Kildare had more power in the north of the country while Ossory's influence was mainly in the south, but he was disappointed. The rivalry between the two created more problems than it solved and, partly in response to Ossory's urgent pleas for English assistance, Henry was again forced to look to the state of Ireland.

The result was a complete re-organisation of government with the Duke of Richmond at its head. Richmond would hold his office as Lord Lieutenant directly from the crown. Instead of a deputy, there was to be a three-man executive board made up of members of the Irish Privy Council. John Allen, recently made Archbishop of Durham, was chancellor, with Patrick Bermingham as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and John Rawson as treasurer.

Known as ‘the secret Council' these three men were instructed to rule in Richmond's name.
⁵
The duke's attestation ‘Tested by our beloved cousin Henry, Duke of Richmond our Lieutenant of Ireland of our blood at Dublin' was attached to all writs and warrants. The arrangement was clearly reminiscent of the Council of the North and the appointment of John Allen, a former servant of Wolsey's, strongly suggests that the cardinal had a hand in devising the policy. Once again Richmond's tender age was a positive advantage, allowing the use of his innate authority as the king's son, while relatively minor officials conducted the daily business. This solution allowed Henry VIII to forgo the expense of sending over an English deputy, yet still ensure the authority of the crown was upheld. It may even have been hoped that this executive board, made up of men with a more personal interest in Irish affairs, would prove more successful as a means of control.

Significantly, these concerns of government were not in the forefront of everyone's mind. This desire to stress Richmond's personal authority so strongly instantly made many men's thoughts return to the rumours of 1527. Perhaps Henry did intend to endow Richmond with an independent kingdom after all. For the first time Charles V expressed his concern over Richmond's possible future prospects. Henry was:

Royal offspring had been used as caretakers for Ireland before. Most famously Henry II had sent his son Prince John to rule in regal splendour in 1185. As a child Prince Henry's own role as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, from September 1494 when he was three years old, was more of a titular position. Exactly which role Henry intended for his own son is not clear. At this stage he may not have been sure himself. Certainly, the door was now open for Richmond to assume a greater role in Ireland, as and when the king should desire it. As far as the plan to make him King of Ireland was concerned, while Henry did nothing to confirm the speculation, neither did he deny it.

Richmond's appointment certainly seemed to indicate a new policy towards Ireland. Regrettably, this era of executive government was short-lived. This was almost certainly largely due to Wolsey's fall from power in the autumn of 1529. When the pope ordered that any further hearings concerning the King of England's marriage would be held in the courts at Rome, Henry's hopes for an annulment before the summer was out were immediately shattered. A bitterly disappointed king needed a scapegoat and Wolsey was the obvious choice. Others at court, including the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who had resented the cardinal's monopoly of Henry's attention, were more than willing to encourage the king's wrath towards his beloved servant. Even Anne Boleyn, who had once echoed Richmond's sentiment that she was ‘most bound of all creatures, next [to] the king's grace, to love and serve your grace', now shared and perhaps encouraged Henry's anger and frustration. Without Henry's support, Wolsey's position was no longer tenable.

Thomas Wolsey's career would come to its ignoble end in November 1530, when he died before formal charges could be brought against him. In the interim his fortunes faltered and were revived by hopes of reconciliation and recovery, only to falter again. Isolated in the north, Wolsey would now play no further part in orchestrating his godson's life. Richmond's reaction to the loss of one of the guiding forces of his formative years is not known. Any feelings of loss may well have been cushioned by the king's grant of Wolsey's former manor and park of Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, valued at £20 40
s
per annum. Less cynically, Henry's grant was a stark reminder to his son where the real power lay. Henry was lavish in his affections and generous in his bounty to anyone who was riding high in his favour, but he was equally ruthless to anyone who fell from his grace. The uncertainty of Richmond's birth apparently taught him an early lesson, which Henry's legitimate daughter Mary would only learn by bitter experience. Obedience to the king's will was the only sure route.