Bastard Prince (36 page)

Construction of the tomb was again interrupted by Norfolk's death. Unfortunately, the work was still in progress in 1554 when Norfolk directed his executors to bury him ‘in such place and order as shall be thought most convenient'. The burden of completing the work would then have fallen to Norfolk's executors. However, funds were limited and Richmond's tomb was, doubtless, not a priority. Only Mary had a vested interest in seeing the tomb completed. The date 1555, engraved on the side of the tomb in a contemporary hand suggests some further investment was made on it before she followed Richmond to the grave.
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At each corner of the tomb there is still a small figure bearing a trophy of the passion. It is clear that there were originally twelve of these, one to top each of the columns carved into the marble. However, there is no evidence that there was ever any gilt, colour or images of the duke and his duchess to complete the work.

In common with her husband, although Mary's rank as Duchess of Richmond and Somerset entitled her to a lavish and ornate funeral, there is no record that she received any such honours.
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In view of her religious beliefs, with her death coming at a time when Mary's government was increasingly concerned that the spontaneous reversion to Catholicism they had expected had not materialised, it was probably not such a public spectacle. Although Surrey's youngest son Henry, Earl of Northampton, later arranged for his father's remains to be removed from All Hallows church in London to lie beside his wife, Frances de Vere, in the splendid tomb at Framlingham, he evidently considered the resting place of his former guardian and her husband to be serviceable enough.

The Act of Succession of 1536 raised the possibility that Richmond could have ascended the throne. The bastard status which, for so much of his life, had been a legal obstacle to his accession, was removed. Writing in 1655, Thomas Fuller explored the possibility that neither Mary nor Elizabeth would have sat on the throne of England if Richmond had survived:

Any consideration of what might have been is always a matter of conjecture. However, it can safely be argued that if Richmond had lived on after his father, the history of England would have been very different.

In 1537 the birth of Prince Edward seemed to settle the question of the succession. However, neither the king, nor his subjects, gave up hope of further issue. When Henry decided that Anne of Cleves was not to his liking, there were worries that the king would ‘never have any more children for the comfort of the realm'. Equally, the queen's ladies rather boldly pointed out to her that her idea of marital relations – a kiss good morning and a kiss goodnight – was not sufficient to ensure the security of the kingdom. Lady Rutland was blunt ‘there must be more than this, or it will be long ere we have a duke of York, which all this realm most desireth'. However, reassuring as it might have been to have more than one ‘heir', both Henry VII and Henry VIII had come to the throne as the sole surviving male issue. In theory, there was no pressing reason to assume that Edward could not live to marry and produce children of his own to continue the dynasty.

Contrary to popular belief, Edward was not a particularly sickly child. In 1541 the French ambassador judged him to be ‘remarkably tall for his age'. A bout of illness, described as a ‘quartan fever' when he was four years old, naturally caused some concern, but generally Edward thrived. Although history often remembers him as a bookish, rather priggish child, he had a lively interest in martial sports. Hunting was a passion, which he pursued with an enthusiasm to equal his father's. He could draw a bow and at fourteen was ‘running at the ring', a moderately safer form of jousting where the opponent was a wooden target rather than a flesh and blood challenger. Recounting Edward's exploits in feats of arms, archery, tennis and hunting the Imperial ambassador described him as ‘indefatigable'.
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There was every reason to expect that he would live to emulate his father.

However, amid the relief and jubilation at Edward's birth, many must have wondered if Henry could survive to see Edward grow to adulthood. Those fortunate enough to escape the hazards of plague, warfare, poverty or politics could and did survive to a ripe old age. Elizabeth Blount's second husband, Edward, Lord Clinton, was seventy-three when he died in 1585. If Henry could only survive until he was sixty-three in 1554, Edward would be seventeen years old and England would escape the dangers of a minority. It was always a dubious prospect. However, when Henry VIII died in the early hours of 28 January 1547, Edward was only nine. In theory, Edward was the legitimate heir, the surest route to a peaceful and uncontested accession. In practice, the certain prospect of a minority government brought its own dangers and Henry VIII's personal legacy ensured that the whole question was even more complex.

When government was vested in the personal authority of the king a minority was always a difficult issue. Once it became clear that Henry was going to die, his subjects nervously rehearsed the biblical text ‘Woe to thee O land where the King is a child'. Despite the best efforts of his government to bolster his public image as Josiah, the eight-year-old New Testament king who battled against idolatry, and Edward's own assertions of his regal power ‘be we of less authority for our age? Be we not your King now as we shall be?', Edward's lack of mature years was a matter of serious concern.

Only those who might hope to profit by the manipulation of the king really stood to gain. Even then, the struggle to control such a prize inevitably led to disorder. Men only had to look at how the Scottish nobility had fought over Henry's nephew, King James V, to realise the dangers. Also, government was invariably weakened when the monarch did not exercise it in person. When Charles V had rebuked Henry for his conduct towards the ‘Princess Mary', the king of England had been direct: ‘we think it is not meet that any person should proscribe unto us how we should order our own daughter'. Those men who now ruled in Edward's name could not take such liberties with the emperor. While it was argued that a king's authority, exercised through his council, was valid even if ‘he were in his cradle,' it was also recognised that ‘there is a difference in the judgment of the people'.

Nowhere was this more apparent than over the question of England's religion. In 1547 Edward was heir not merely to the throne, but to the full consequences of his father's reformation. With Edward as Head of the Church in England the concept of authority in a minority government touched not just men's lives, but their souls. It created a wealth of uncertainties. Would England return to the papal fold? Would each change of monarch see a change in religion? The evolution of Royal Supremacy was only recent history and its ‘diverse sundry old authentic histories and chronicles' did not provide a sound foundation for the exercise of such ecclesiastical authority by a nine-year-old boy.

The development of Royal Supremacy had relied heavily on Henry VIII's magnificent personality, stressing his high learning and paternalistic guidance. In 1545 Henry had rebuked parliament for taking too much upon themselves in matters of religion ‘for in such high causes you may lightly err'. The image of Royal Supremacy was inextricably entwined with the idea that the king's judgment could not err. It was not a role Edward was entirely suited to fill. In 1552 Henry Brabon was indicted by the Privy Council for calling Edward ‘a poor child', hardly the proper attitude of respect to the Supreme Head of the Church. Whatever guises Edward's council came up with – and they even resorted to using the practice of king's evil, where the touch of the king would restore the ailing, a ceremony which had far more in common with the Catholic Church they were destroying than the Protestant one they were trying to build – the fact remained that both physically and intellectually, Edward was very young to take on that particular role.

Certainly, his sister Mary chose to take the position that Edward should not make innovations in religion until he was of full age. As religious doctrine in England moved increasingly towards a more Protestant ethos, she openly disputed his government's authority to diverge from religion as Henry had left it. When Edward's council rebuked her for her dangerous example in not observing the law of the land she countered:

It was a moral rather than a legal standpoint, but she was not alone. Stephen Gardiner also raised the concern that they might be thought to ‘fashion God's word after our own fancy'. Until Edward was adult, it was an argument his council would find very difficult to refute.

At his accession Edward VI had had little opportunity to win the respect and admiration of his subjects. He had not been created Prince of Wales, or even knighted, when he inherited the crown. His public appearances only served to emphasis how young he was. In contrast, Richmond would now have been twenty-seven years old. At this point it is easy to envisage him as an established magnate, whose martial feats and many talents had earned the admiration of all. As he held court at Baynards Castle, perhaps with several fine sons to his credit, men might well have considered that as the senior noble in England, Richmond was a more worthy successor to his father.

At his death Henry VIII had named his nine-year-old son as his heir. His decision to place Mary and Elizabeth next in the line of succession must be seen in light of his hope and expectation that Edward would live to adulthood. Given the stark choice between seeing one of his daughters on the throne and naming a more distant male relative or some suitable nobleman, this was perhaps the lesser of two evils. Safe in the knowledge that it was only an insurance policy against Edward's premature demise, Henry could easily have convinced himself that the measure would not be needed. Since the Act of Succession of 1536 had ensured that their illegitimacy or otherwise was no longer an issue, he did not choose to restore either of them to the rank of princess. In which case, if he had lived, Richmond would still have outranked them. If Henry had chosen to place his bastard son in the line of succession, the correct legal position would have been as heir apparent to the legitimate prince, Edward.

Everything about Henry's policy towards the succession indicates that his first instinct would have been to favour Edward, as his legitimate heir, before Richmond. Despite Richmond's good qualities, to be reduced to assigning his ‘Crown Imperial' to a son known by the whole of Europe to be born out of wedlock would sit ill with Henry's tender conscience. Writing in 1958, Charles Ferguson recognised this moral dilemma:

Such a principled view was all well and good while the king had the leisure to wait for his son to be born and then to grow to maturity. Once the king's health began to fail and Henry was faced with the certain prospect of England under a long minority, could he have been persuaded that Edward's legitimacy was less important than the security of the realm?

If Henry had preferred to recognise what would have been the twenty-seven-year-old Duke of Richmond as his heir, there was a convenient loophole to Edward's prior claim. After the deaths of both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the King of England had been a free man when he married Jane Seymour. Whether he was supposed to be a bachelor (as he believed) or a widower (as both Katherine and Anne's supporters would prefer) there was no doubt that he was at liberty to take a bride. However, the Catholic Church had never recognised Henry and Jane's union, because it had been solemnised after the pope excommunicated Henry. This excommunication meant that he was not permitted to receive the sacrament of marriage. Mary of Hungary expressed the general mood of caution when she said ‘We make no mention at present of the young Prince as we are ignorant as yet whether or not he will be recognized as King.' In the eyes of Catholic Europe, Edward was as illegitimate as the Duke of Richmond had been. As news of Henry's death spread, foreign observers watched with interest to see how things would develop.

In reality, Edward's legitimacy (or otherwise) was never seriously challenged in England. The feared prospect of an invasion did not come to pass. Concern about the possible reaction abroad might well have helped to dampen dissent at home. Certainly, the expected uprising in the name of the Princess Mary – expected by the Imperial ambassador at any rate – did not materialise. Once it became clear that Edward was accepted in England, political expediency ensured that even Charles V claimed ‘that he had always had a good opinion of [Henry's] last marriage'. In the end only the papal see refused to recognise Edward as King of England.

Unless Henry had chosen to place Richmond in the succession above Edward, it is unlikely that any of these factors would have been sufficient to oust the prince from his throne. Unlike Mary, Edward or Elizabeth, who could all lay claims to have been born within some semblance of matrimony, no one could pretend that the king's eldest son was anything other than a bastard. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Church had intensified its attitude towards children born out of wedlock. This had resulted in widespread concern regarding the concept of illegitimacy and succession, which was reflected in a rise in the use of bastardy as a political smear. Even if Richmond's illegitimacy had not been a block to his accession, the circumstances of his birth would still have been a liability.