Bastard Prince (25 page)

If this was simply intended to tie up loose ends and prepare the ground for the host of children that Jane was to produce, it was an extremely high-risk policy. On the other hand, the repercussions were not entirely negative. All other things being equal, as the king's only male child Richmond automatically took precedence over his sisters. Eleven years after his elevation to the peerage, the prospects of Henry VIII's bastard son once more became the focus of gossip and speculation.

With hindsight, the greatest obstacle to his succession was Edward, the son Henry would have from his marriage to Jane Seymour. However, in the summer of 1536 this prospect may not have seemed so certain. One of the accusations levied at Anne was that she had gossiped about Henry's virility, or rather lack of it. If questions about the king's potency could be raised in such an official forum, who could blame his subjects if they harboured similar doubts? Unlike Anne, Jane was not pregnant when Henry married her, and although Henry quickly began to boast that a prince could be expected ‘in due season', there was in fact no guarantee that his new queen was capable of bearing a child. Conversely, recent events had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that one accident, one illness or a single stroke of misfortune, could take the king at any time. In this atmosphere, Richmond's friends had reason to believe that the situation could be turned to their advantage.

Certainly Norfolk's conduct towards Mary Tudor was not the most prudent line to take if he truly believed she would be ever be queen. Mary was not alone in imagining that Anne's downfall would be sufficient to restore her to her father's favour. Instead, Norfolk was dispatched to know if she was now prepared to renounce the authority of the Pope and acknowledge that her parents' marriage had been unlawful. Shocked and disbelieving, Mary vehemently refused. In the drama which followed Norfolk reportedly railed at her that:

At first Mary continued to refuse, but quickly found herself under greater pressure than she had ever experienced while her mother was alive. The judges agreed that her action was treasonous and the punishment for that was death. Whatever Henry's true intentions, since Mary was still his daughter, not to mention a useful political tool, she was led to believe that if she insisted on being a martyr to her cause then the king would oblige her. Even the Imperial ambassador now advised her that she would achieve more by her submission. On 22 June 1536, Mary capitulated and put her signature to a document that acceded to all the king's demands.

That Henry chose this point in time to insist upon her obedience is evidence of the insecurity over the succession. Should he and Jane have no issue, or worse still yet another girl, Mary's exact status would be crucial. Alone among Henry's children, she had been accepted by the world as his legitimate child for most of her life and this belief could not be allowed to fester. The Imperial ambassador had no doubt that Henry was trying to clear the way to nominate Richmond as his heir, ‘that being no doubt the King's chief reason for insisting so much on the Princess [Mary] subscribing to the statute which declared her to be a bastard.' The timing cannot be coincidence. After all, Mary had maintained her obstinacy over the last three years and Henry had been positively lenient to her in the face of what was a very dangerous example to others. Perhaps he had expected that the arrival of his legitimate prince would silence all dispute, only to be persuaded, in the light of recent events, that it was sensible to have a contingency plan. Given Norfolk's close association with Richmond it is interesting that he was sent to require Mary's obedience.

Despite Henry's affection for his daughter, it would not have been difficult to persuade him of the folly of allowing her to continue in her disobedience. As long as Mary was allowed to flout her father's laws and dispute his arguments, she was an encouragement to all those who believed that the English Reformation was only a temporary inconvenience. As a father, Henry was angry and embarrassed at his daughter's conduct. As a king, to allow her to continue to question his laws was a licence for others to do likewise. Those of Mary's friends who dared speculate on her prospects of accession were arrested and interrogated and Norfolk's reports of Mary's wilful obstinacy were hardly likely to soften Henry's attitude towards his daughter. One way or another, the threat Mary represented had to be negated.

The idea that Norfolk encouraged Henry's ire cannot be discounted. In 1533, Mary had told Henry, ‘I doubt not that your grace does take me for your lawful daughter, born in true matrimony'. And after so many years even the most obedient subjects, Norfolk included, occasionally slipped back into old habits when dealing with ‘the Princess'. The Imperial ambassador caught wind of some gossip or proposal which suggested naming Mary as the heir-apparent (without restoring her title of princess), with the proviso that if Jane and Henry had a child their claim would take precedence. If Richmond were to take precedence over her, there could be no doubt that she was only the king's natural daughter.

On 6 June 1536, the Imperial ambassador reported an interesting exchange at court:

This is unlikely to have been a sudden notion. The possibility had been in the back of everyone's mind since 1525. Until now it had been mere speculation, the kind of subject which might be spoken of in asides, but was dangerous to voice openly and even more risky to commit to paper. To actually broach the subject to the king's face and get away with it was a significant development. The Earl of Sussex, Robert Radcliffe, was a long-term friend and supporter of the Duke of Norfolk. Even so, he was unlikely to have taken such a risk unless someone, probably Norfolk, had already sounded out the king. His comment was perhaps intended to test the waters. If Jane did not produce a son, would the country be prepared to accept the king's bastard son as the heir apparent?

In the wake of Anne Boleyn's downfall, Norfolk can have taken little comfort in the king's marriage to Jane Seymour. Her brother Edward had already looked set for a promising court career, now the world was at his feet. Norfolk's best hope of maintaining power and influence was through Richmond, his daughter and, hopefully, their children. Now was the time for the association which he had been nurturing for the last seven years to come into its own. If Jane did produce an heir, then the Howards close links to the king's illegitimate son would be their insurance against isolation on the fringes of political affairs. If she did not give birth to a prince then Richmond was developing into a most promising candidate for king.

Since all of the king's children were now (one way or another) declared to be illegitimate, none of them were eligible to inherit the throne, which meant that the heir-apparent was Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Henry VIII's elder sister Margaret, by her second husband Archibald Douglas. Widely reputed to be one of the most beautiful women of her generation, she had been living at the English court since 1530 and Henry treated her almost as if she was his own daughter. While her claim was not as strong as Mary's, Norfolk would need to be sure that any threat she represented to Richmond's position was also safely neutralised. Norfolk may simply have hoped to see her safely married off or he may have had some inkling that she was up to no good. Since Henry had demonstrated himself to be positively prudish about Mary's morals and manners it would not have taken a very grave indiscretion to convince the king that Margaret's conduct was unbecoming to a royal heiress. However, nothing can have prepared him for what now emerged.

It was discovered that Margaret Douglas had been secretly married to the duke's half-brother, Lord Thomas Howard, since Easter 1536. Worse, Norfolk's own daughter Mary, Duchess of Richmond, was suspected of having known about the match and it emerged that ‘divers times' she had been their only chaperone. If the poems inscribed by Margaret and Thomas in the anthology known as the
Devonshire Manuscript
, which belonged to the Duchess of Richmond, are any indication, this was a love match, albeit a very risky one. For any member of the nobility to contract a marriage without the king's permission was courting danger. In the present circumstances, to secretly marry one of the possible claimants to the throne was sheer madness.

Henry reacted with predictable anger. On 8 June 1536 both Margaret and Thomas were sent to the Tower. Chapuys reported that Henry VIII was ‘very much annoyed by his niece's marriage'. By seeking to ally himself with one of royal blood Thomas was accused of ‘maliciously and traitorously minding and imagining to put division in the realm': a clear reference to Henry's anxiety over the prospect of a disputed succession. It is entirely probable that Norfolk was self-serving enough to betray his half-brother to the king. Not only would Margaret's arrest and imprisonment make Richmond's position stronger, but also it was the only way to ensure that neither Norfolk, nor indeed his daughter, were implicated in the couple's guilt. The Duchess of Richmond in particular was fortunate that her role was not more strictly examined. Both Thomas and Margaret maintained that she had not been told of their marriage, but she was clearly a close friend and confidante. It was probably only her father's fancy footwork and her marriage to Richmond which saved her from more stringent enquiries.

Instead, moves were afoot to set Richmond up with his own residence on the banks of the River Thames. With Coldharbour Mansion still unavailable, Richmond had hitherto been forced to find other lodgings when he was in the capital. In October 1534 he had been using the London home of the Bishop of Norwich. Now such arrangements were no longer thought to be suitable and the king decided ‘for certain causes moving his Highness, of his most noble and abundant grace' to give Baynards Castle over to his son. The king's grant (in the Statute 28 Henry VIII c34) of the London town house that had formerly belonged to Richard III's mother, Cecily, Duchess of York, was perhaps the final sign of Richmond's emergence into full adult life and an indication that a decision had been made, as Richmond approached his seventeenth birthday, to allow him to co-habit with his bride of three years, Mary Howard.
¹⁹

Baynards Castle was the house where Henry VII had spent the first few weeks of his reign in 1485 and Henry VIII had used it as an offical residence for his queens: Katherine, Anne and later Anne of Cleves. Despite its two impressive towers, topped by French-style turrets, it was more a gracious residence than an actual castle. In 1501 it had been described as ‘beautiful and commodious for the entertainment of any Prince or great Estate'.
²⁰
When Richmond and his wife took up residence in their new home, a tangible signal would be sent to all that he had left his childhood behind him. Once Richmond was living with his wife there would also be the reassuring prospect that sons would shortly follow.

It all looked fairly promising. For the good of the realm and the survival of the Tudor dynasty, even Mary's supporters might well be persuaded that Margaret Beaufort's prudence in 1485 had created a precedent. Just as she had allowed her claim to be overlooked in favour of her son, they could perhaps be convinced to throw in their lot with the male heir, especially since they could take comfort in the fact that Norfolk's religious beliefs placed him firmly among the ranks of the conservatives. Of the new learning he was once famously heard to remark:

Even Mary herself might not be that difficult to convince that she should allow her brother to take precedence over her.

From her earliest childhood Mary had understood that the throne was the birthright of the male heir. Her insistence on her rightful title as princess should not be taken as evidence of political ambition. The rumours that now circulated that Mary was to be created Duchess of York, or otherwise similarly recognised, were perhaps part of a larger scheme to ensure Richmond's place in the succession, which may have been enough to satisfy her. Katherine of Aragon had raised her daughter to believe that certain aspects of government were outside a woman's competence. Having just endured a salutary lesson in obedience to her father's will, if Henry had chosen to name Richmond as heir-apparent, there is every likelihood that Mary would have accepted his decision.

From among the ranks of the nobility Norfolk was, without doubt, Richmond's greatest ally. Richmond's stepfather Edward, Lord Clinton, was only seven years older than Richmond himself and still at the very beginning of his promising career. His attempts to prove his loyalty during the Pilgrimage of Grace (the rebellion in the north) when he raised a company of five hundred men only to watch them desert to the rebel side, leaving him to flee with a single servant, aptly demonstrate how fragile his power base presently was. Still some distance from the Elizabethan Earl of Lincoln he would become, he simply did not have the resources to make a significant contribution to any plot. In the first part of the 1536 subsidy he paid just £5.

While the king's relationship with Elizabeth Blount remained good, she was no Margaret Beaufort to rally support for her son. Richmond's relations with his maternal kin were warm and affectionate. He had provided a glowing testimony for William Gresley, of Drakelow in Derbyshire, the husband of his mother's younger sister Rose. When Richmond went to Shrewsbury in 1535 his uncle, George Blount, neglected other business to come and pay his respects. His other uncle, William Blount, was a servant in Richmond's household at the time of his death in 1536. However, the Blounts had not made any real political capital out of their relationship with Richmond and never rose above their customary gentry status. Indeed, sometimes their relationship to the duke was a positive disadvantage. When George Blount wanted to purchase a former abbey, Henry, Lord Stafford objected that he was already well provided for, being ‘my lord of Richmond's servant and hath a fair house of his own to dwell in or two'. Instead, the property went to Stafford for his large brood of children.