Bastard Prince (30 page)

Richmond retorted that the manor was his because of the king's grant by letters patent. Margaret responded to this by claiming that it had only passed to the crown because of the minority of Edward, the late Earl of Warwick which meant that she, rather than the king, was the true heir and Henry had no right to grant her manor to his son.

Margaret obviously believed that she had the better claim to Canford. She did not dispute Richmond's ownership of Deeping in Lincolnshire, which was also granted to her in 1513 and subsequently repossessed by the crown. However, Margaret's argument did not take account of the fact that both Henry VII and Margaret Beaufort had held Canford in their right as Beaufort heirs, before Edward's attainder. While the true heir was St Cross Hospital, the king's title to the manor was better than Margaret's and as such he could give it to whomsoever he wished.

In spite of this the dispute continued. In September 1531, Cromwell approached Margaret's eldest son, Lord Montague, to try and bring the matter to an end. However, in 1533 his desk was still littered with various legal papers relating to ownership of Canford. Richmond's residence at Canford in the summer of 1534 may either have been a final salvo in the attack to emphasise his ownership or a signal of the conclusion of the dispute. Either way the arguments seem to have run their course. After nine years Richmond was finally able to enjoy Canford's parks and amenities in peace.

When a different sort of conflict broke out in Richmond's lands in Kendal, it was again not in itself a reaction to having a child as their lord. Rather it reflected a deeper resentment already brewing within the locality over the issue of control. Richmond had held part of the barony of Kendal since 1525. The first indication that things were getting out of hand came in April 1532. William Parr, nephew to Richmond's chamberlain, complained to Thomas Cromwell that Robert Tarne ‘a very insolent and light person' had repeatedly broken into his park at Kendal to kill and steal his game and deer. There had been trouble on previous occasions when Tarne had verbally abused his keeper, William Redman. This time Redman responded with a few choice words of his own. A fight broke out and Tarne was injured. According to Parr, the villain now intended to turn the situation to his own advantage by suing not only Redman, but Parr's cousin, Sir Jason Laybourne, who served as Richmond's steward in the area. Tellingly, Tarne had acquired some powerful supporters, such as Sir Thomas Clifford and the Earl of Cumberland, who served as sheriff there, and Parr had no doubt that the true motive behind the case was their resentment of Parr's and Richmond's authority.

According to Parr it was customary for disputes within the barony of Kendal to be settled locally by the steward. However, he claimed Laybourne's efforts to do so were being hampered by men like Cumberland and Clifford, ‘intending for ill will and malice that they bear unto my said lord of Richmond and me, to infringe the said laudable custom' by using the king's courts. Parr was being inundated with complaints from poor men who were being forced to make costly trips to London to try to seek justice. He begged Cromwell that any such cases should be referred straight back to the barony of Kendal. In an Act of Parliament passed in 1532 Richmond acquired further interest in the barony after an exchange of lands with John, Lord Lumley. The arrangement seems to have been in Richmond's favour, and and the unfortunate Lumley was asked to relinquish a parcel of five manors in return for an annuity of £50. In the circumstances it was obviously intended to increase Richmond's profile and authority as lord of the barony. It also had the added advantage of discreetly bringing the area more firmly under royal control.

The effectiveness of the new arrangements was almost immediately put to the test. In blatant disregard of Richmond's authority, Sir John Lowther, the under-sheriff to the Earl of Cumberland, and other men, including Sir Thomas Clifford, decided to hold the sheriff's court in Kendal. When challenged in the name of the king and Richmond not to hold any such assembly within the duke's liberties, they openly questioned Richmond's title. As Parr reported with some indignation:

Since everyone was well aware that Sir Thomas Clifford had been present when Richmond was publicly proclaimed, this was obviously a lie. It did not bode well for their respect for Richmond's authority, but it did set the tone for the disputes and disagreements that followed.

Although it might seem that Richmond's youth was a licence to flout his authority, the duke's interests were vigorously protected and continuously asserted by his steward and other officers. Then Henry himself wrote to the Earl of Cumberland, commanding him to cease his interference in the Duke of Richmond's liberties. No one could deny the might and power of the king, yet even his letters had little effect and Cumberland's men continued to harass Richmond's tenants. In fact, for a time things got worse. Jason Laybourne sent up a list which set out all the ways in which Cumberland was using his position as sheriff to the detriment of Richmond's legal rights as lord of the barony, including his efforts to indict Richmond's officers simply for attempting to perform their designated duties.

Their actions were more an attack on the authority that Richmond represented than an affront to the personal power and authority of the duke himself. If Cumberland and his friends could ignore the directives of the king, any magnate would surely have encountered similar problems. As such, Cumberland and Clifford's activities were a direct challenge to the security of the realm and therefore the crown, one that Henry could not allow to stand. With the combined power of the king, the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Cromwell and his own officers ranged behind him, it seems the balance of control finally tipped in Richmond's favour, although the duke's problems within the barony did not entirely cease. In March 1534 a band of marauders broke into Richmond's lands at New Hutton to despoil his corn and wine and the duke took his complaint to the King's Court of Star Chamber. However, there were no further reports of difficulties on any scale regarding Richmond's authority as lord of the barony.

As the Duke of Richmond grew older his own involvement in such matters began to increase. However, even in June 1534, when the fifteen-year-old duke might reasonably look for some leeway to make and execute his own decisions, the king's wrath might suddenly descend. After Richmond had returned south in 1529, his cofferer, Sir George Lawson, was one of those officers who remained in the north, but he still expected to receive his usual fee as a member of Richmond's household. Richmond decided to discharge him from his post as cofferer, presumably to appoint someone who would actually reside in his household. As soon as he heard the news Henry wrote in astonishment that the duke had discharged an officer who had given such good service ‘whereof we cannot a little marvel'. Although he stopped just short of overriding the duke's authority entirely by requiring him to reinstate Lawson, Richmond was told in no uncertain terms to continue paying his fee.
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Richmond was obviously keen to exercise the authority that his father had given him and he was happy to presume on their relationship when this was to his advantage. Matthew Boynton was only one of several of Richmond's servants who carried a testimonial from the duke when seeking some preferment at court. Sometimes Richmond's requests capitalised on other personal relationships. In February 1534 he persuaded Arthur, Viscount Lisle, to take on a certain James Bellingham ‘and for my sake to further and prefer him into such room of retinue as should then next immediately happen'. Sometimes the arrangement was more businesslike: the monks of Bindon in Dorset offered to take care of Richmond's deer park, if he got them a licence to elect their own abbot. However, on at least one occasion, Richmond was to let his enthusiasm for a cause carry him forward, when prudence and mature judgment might have stayed his hand.

In June 1534, John Cooke, the registrar to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, took advantage of Gardiner's absence from court to unburden himself of numerous resentments against his employer, including the non-payment of his stipend. Since Cooke was also commissary of the Admiralty in Hampshire, one of those he chose to approach was the fifteen-year-old Duke of Richmond.
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The duke was sufficiently convinced of the justice of his case to write to Gardiner in Cooke's favour, requiring him to redress these wrongs. Gardiner flatly denied all the charges and added a veiled rebuke that Richmond should leap to such conclusions and that ‘I should, following your Grace's request made upon such a ground, give courage to Master Cooke in the exercise of his untrue reports'.

Casting his bread as wide as possible upon the water, Cooke had also complained to Thomas Audley the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell and the king. No doubt to Cooke's dismay, Cromwell's response was far less impetuous than the highhanded tone adopted by Richmond. Gardiner was to be given the opportunity to clear his name. With the matter thus referred to the authority of the crown, Richmond's own involvement came to an end. Gardiner's meticulous response to Richmond's intervention was in a way an acknowledgement of the duke as a political force. However, Gardiner was also at pains to point out to the young and as yet inexperienced duke just how far he was deceived in his assessment of Cooke's character, not only in this matter, but also ‘in the use of his office of the Admiralty under your Grace, wherein they talk of his demeanour otherwise here than I think your Grace hath heard there'.

Richmond's judgment was also called into question the following year when the sixteen-year-old was implicated in worrying disorder in the Welsh Marches. Although the king's preoccupation with Anne Boleyn might seem reason and excuse for Henry to curb Richmond's fortunes, instead, in 1531, the twelve-year-old duke's extensive holdings had been increased even further with the acquisition of a number of lordships in the Marches of Wales. In October 1531 his officers took possession of the lordships of Bromfield and Yale, Ruthin, Clirk and Holt and these holdings were augmented in 1532 when he acquired the former Dudley lordship of Arwystli and Cyfeiliog.

This was, in part, a reflection of a broader pattern to bring the Marches of Wales under closer crown control. Wales had technically been part of the realm since the Statute of Rhuddlan in the thirteenth century. However, there were a number of administrative anomalies, not least its division into a number of independent lordships which were ruled by powerful individuals like Rhys ap Griffith. This was not Thomas Cromwell's idea of a well-ordered kingdom. In the light of Henry's ongoing changes in religion, it was important to assert the authority of the king. A concerted programme of reforms, which culminated in the Act of Union in 1536, was already well in hand. In 1534, the appointment of Roland Lee, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, as President of the Council of Wales signalled a new determination to reduce the Welsh Marches to order.

Even as Cromwell organised a series of legislation and a goodwill visit by the king, Lee began an enthusiastic policy of change. He travelled tirelessly around the Marches, encouraging the law-abiding and striking terror into the hearts of villains, boasting that he had executed ‘four of the best blood in Shropshire' as he left a trail of death and imprisonment in his wake. In 1534 Richmond's tenants in Arwystli and Cyfeiliog, objected to the arrest of Sir Richard Herbert for the murder of Hugh ap David Vaughan. Protesting his innocence they declared they ‘would not keep court, nor pay the duke of Richmond money, as long as he was in ward'. By 1536, Lee was commending the same tenants for the taking of two outlaws, although he was convinced they were motivated more by fear and hope of gain than any love of justice. However, despite their best efforts Lee and Cromwell found that their labours were being hampered by the powers of the remaining marcher lords and chief among these, according to an estimation taken before December 1531, was Richmond himself.

In October 1535, Lee became concerned that ‘letters directed from my lord of Richmond's grace' were being used to ensure that certain murderers held at Holt Castle were being ‘respited or delayed of their trial and not put to execution'. The Duke of Norfolk flatly denied it. To his knowledge Richmond had not had a hand in any such letters. Lee knew differently, advising Cromwell ‘yet of truth it is otherwise as the said letters directed to the Steward there do testify by their subscriptions'. In the same letter he worried that Richmond should not be encouraged to support such causes, adding ‘it is not for his honour to see his badge and livery, as is by the parties alleged, worn upon strong thieves' backs'. Lee was almost certainly thinking of the influence of William Brereton. The duke's servant wielded no small measure of power in the marcher area as Richmond's steward of Holt, Chirk and Bromfield and Yale and his conduct positively invited suspicion.

In 1534, Brereton had been part of an investigation into alleged irregularities under Abbot Robert Salisbury at the Abbey of Valle Crucis within the lordship of Bromfield and Yale. Far from being an impartial observer, Brereton seems to have been in the thick of things. The abbot of Cymer Abbey in Gwynedd offered him £40 if he could secure his transfer to Valle Crucis, which would necessitate Salisbury's removal. It is entirely possible that the whole investigation was Brereton's idea in order to achieve this end.
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In 1536 Brereton's acquisition of certain tithes also looks suspiciously like a bribe. Such activities, especially when coupled with Brereton's numerous offices, were inevitably going to attract Cromwell's unwelcome attention.

Richmond's relations with Thomas Cromwell were generally good. When there was a problem with a grant to one of his gentleman waiters, John Travers, in respect of fishing in the River Bann in Ireland, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland wrote to Cromwell to ask that he be allowed to enjoy it. When Henry VIII decided to grant Collyweston to Anne Boleyn, Richmond turned to Cromwell to ensure that the grant he had made to his gentleman usher, Anthony Drillard, to be bailiff and keeper there, would be honoured, advising the secretary ‘I being very loath he should be excluded'. When the exchange was effected (in the statute 27 Henry VIII c.21), a proviso was duly included to protect Drillard's interests. He was still serving as bailiff there, earning 7
d
a day, when Richmond died in 1536. Although if this was an example of Richmond's influence with Cromwell, it is also illustrative of Cromwell's relationship with the duke. Some years earlier Drillard had secured his place in Richmond's household by letters of recommendation from his patron Thomas Cromwell.