Bastard Prince (6 page)

The first record of Elizabeth as a married woman does not appear until 18 June 1522, when the king granted her and her husband the valuable manor and town of Rugby in Warwickshire.
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The date strongly suggests that Henry's generosity had its roots in his gratitude that his infant son had lived to see his third birthday. There seems no reason to doubt that Henry VIII took an active interest in the welfare of his boy throughout his infancy. He was a loving father to all his children, unless circumstances dictated otherwise. While the importance allowed to Fitzroy by the king might ebb and flow with the political tide, Henry's affection towards his son never seems to have wavered. A degree of paternal pride in a child who grew to so acutely resemble his father is perhaps understandable. In the climate of 1519 here was tangible evidence, perhaps even a sign from God, that he could sire a living, healthy, male child.

Ironically, it was this very success that ensured Fitzroy's birth was not immediately greeted as a solution to the problem of the succession. The hope engendered by Mary's birth in 1516 seems to have been revived once again. Henry's thoughts immediately turned to the prospect of a legitimate male heir. In August 1519 he assured Pope Leo X:

If our longed-for heir should have been granted before the expedition sets out to do battle with the Infidel, we will lead our force in person.
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Henry's reasoning is clear. If God would grant him a son, not just out of wedlock, but in adultery, how could such a blessing be withheld in lawful marriage? Wolsey's attitude was probably more realistic and he was probably already considering ways to exploit the usefulness of this valuable new asset. Wolsey was to be a prominent influence on Fitzroy's early childhood. Shortly after his elevation, the child's Council would acknowledge Wolsey's ‘gracious favour towards him, in like manner as evermore your grace (without any his desert) hath always been in times past'. As his godfather he honoured the tradition of New Year gifts, even before Fitzroy entered public life. In January 1525, for example, he presented him with a gold collar with a hanging pearl worth £6 18
s
8
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A king's son, even an illegitimate one, was potentially a valuable, political tool.

That so few details of Henry Fitzroy's infancy survive is not in itself surprising. A king's bastard son was not supposed to be an unusual occurrence. In these early years he was referred to as ‘Lord Henry Fitzroy', an acknowledgement that his blood relationship to the king conferred a certain innate rank. He was, we are assured, ‘well brought up, like a Prince's child'. While it is possible the boy was initially raised alongside his half-sister, Elizabeth Tailbois, and his brothers George (born in 1523) and Robert (born in 1524) in their nursery in Lincolnshire, this was some distance from the court and his doting father. A note in the arrangements for his elevation hints at a more suitable solution. At that time he was based at Wolsey's mansion of Durham Place ‘where at he kept his household'.

Given the peripatetic nature of noble Tudor households, which were continually on the move so that the residences might be cleansed and refreshed, this cannot have been his sole residence for the first six years of his life. However, the Cardinal could easily have arranged for suitable alternatives. The establishment of a natural son need not have been particularly large or notable. In the ordinances of 1493 a single nurse and four rockers were considered sufficient to attend a royal newborn in the nursery. Fitzroy could easily have been housed at any one of the numerous royal manors around London. Certainly, Henry VIII's other children, Mary, Elizabeth and Edward, all had their own households at one time or another and were found at a variety of royal palaces in a corresponding orbit to the court.

The reorganisation of Princess Mary's household in 1519 certainly suggests that Henry made some provision for his son. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, now replaced Margaret Bryan as Lady Mistress of Mary's household. At the same time at least two of Mary's rockers appear to have left her service. In a letter written in 1536, Margaret Bryan seems to confirm that she was responsible for all of Henry's children during their infancy:

When my Lady Mary was born it pleased the king's grace [to make] me Lady Mistress, and made me a baroness, and so I have been a m[other to the] children his grace have [sic] had since.
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Unless her grammar is at fault this indicates another child between Mary and Elizabeth who was her charge in 1536. Since Edward was not yet born, that child must have been Henry Fitzroy. In addition, the correspondence of the child's first known tutor makes it clear that Fitzroy also received some rudimentary education, prior to his elevation to the peerage in 1525. John Palsgrave grumbled loudly that the child had been taught to recite his prayers in a ‘barbarous' Latin accent and dismissed the man who had instructed him as ‘no clerk'.
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How far Elizabeth was allowed to participate in her child's upbringing is less clear. John Palsgrave's eagerness to associate her with his difficulties in teaching the child ‘whereof yourself was as guilty in any of them as I was' certainly seems to suggest that she had some input.
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More flatteringly, he also believed that her intervention would carry some weight and invited her to come and see things for herself. She certainly had contact with her son. Two of her brothers, George and Henry Blount would find places in their nephew's household. An inventory of the child's goods taken in 1531 records her gift to him of ‘a doublet of white satin' and ‘two horses, colour bay, one ambling and the other trotting'. Her younger son, George Tailbois, would later receive a good deal of his half-brother's cast-off wardrobe.
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What is certain is that Elizabeth was no Alice Perrers
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to interfere with the political policy of her king, nor did she enjoy the pseudo-wife status of Charles II's long-term mistress Barbara Villiers. Decisions about Fitzroy's future would not be hers to make. Her influence in matters of patronage was limited. The occasional grants that she received appear to have been sporadic gestures on Henry's part rather than an orchestrated policy of preferment. Prior to her marriage there is no record of any grants at all. She may have received personal gifts of jewels or money, but there were none of the marked instances of favour towards her family which charted Henry's relationship with Mary Boleyn, culminating in Sir Thomas Boleyn's creation as Viscount Rochford in 1525.
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The Blounts of Kinlet do not seem to have accrued any particular benefit from their daughter's intimate association with the king. That her grandfather Sir Thomas Blount was Sheriff of Shropshire in 1518 was perhaps not coincidence, but nor was it unusual. Her father John Blount fared little better. The grants in February 1519 of the keepership of Cleobury Park and joint stewardship (with Sir Thomas) of Bewdley and Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, would not have been seen as remarkable. Far from securing entry to the peerage, he was not even knighted until 1529 and this probably had more to do with the politics of the Reformation Parliament than any gratitude on Henry's part. Yet Henry could not have rewarded Mary Boleyn, who was already married, as he had Elizabeth, by providing an excellent match. Since Mary seems to have accrued little personal benefit from her liaison, Elizabeth had good reason to feel she had struck the better deal.

Gilbert Tailbois could be forgiven for thinking that his father's indisposition was his good fortune. When parliament opened in June 1529 Gilbert was called to take his place as Baron Tailbois of Kyme, even though his enfeebled father was still alive. However, the question of his landed inheritance was rather more complex. A popular theme in Henry VIII's courtship of Elizabeth Blount is the king's audacity in proclaiming his gratitude to his mistress by means of lands and rewards bestowed openly in an Act of Parliament. In fact the statute is couched diplomatically as the petition of Sir George and Gilbert, regarding their ‘great love and affection' towards Elizabeth. Only careful reading and knowledge of the truth reveals the king's hand in the matter:

by which marriage aswell the said Sir George Tailbois Knight, as the said Gilbert Tailbois have received not only great sums of money, but also many benefits to their right much comfort.
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The act allowed Elizabeth to hold Tailbois lands in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Somerset for the term of her life. The package included lands to the value of £200 and a further annuity of £40. In fact, she may have done even better. In June 1528 Gilbert's mother protested at being required to pay over another £100 in lands and rents and an annuity of £40, pointing out that the lands worth over £342 that Gilbert and Elizabeth already enjoyed were more than she and her husband were left with to provide for all their children.

It has to be said that Henry was not required to dig deep into his own pockets. These lands were part of those possessions which Gilbert stood to inherit as his patrimony. Nonetheless, in terms of reward, marriage to a baron was an auspicious match for Elizabeth. When her brother George married Constance Talbot, the daughter of Sir John Talbot of Grafton and his wife Margaret, the indenture dated 30 March 1533 allowed Constance a jointure of £40 out of lands in Staffordshire. The wedding was to be held at Kinlet and ‘the cost and expense thereof as in meat and drink' to be borne by the Blounts. In return Sir John Talbot paid 525 marks for the marriage. The couple stood to inherit the entire parcel of Blount/Peshall lands in Shropshire, Staffordshire and elsewhere, save only lands to the yearly value of £20 each which were earmarked for George's younger brothers, William and Henry.
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As the son and heir, George would normally be expected to have made the best marriage his family could afford. Since Talbot was a cousin of the Earl of Shrewsbury it was no mean match, but it did not equate with the wealth and status Elizabeth now enjoyed.

Significantly, Elizabeth's marriage would be one of the charges levied against Wolsey's governance in 1528. It was claimed that providing her with such a good match was a means to ‘encourage the young gentlewomen of the realm to be our concubines'. The article was just one of a number of broad-ranging and potentially damaging accusations against Wolsey intended to secure his downfall.
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Whatever the wider political import of the charges, it seems clear that Elizabeth made a far better match than she had a right to expect. Of her four sisters, only one, Albora, was still unmarried by 1540. Her older sister, Anne, married Richard Lacon, the heir of Sir Thomas Lacon of Shropshire; their family's interests remained purely provincial. Richard Lacon was John Blount's petty captain in the French campaign of 1513 and served as sheriff of the county in 1539. In comparison, Elizabeth had moved far from the geographical and social spheres into which she was born.

If Gilbert felt he was marrying beneath him, the union had other benefits. He wed Elizabeth secure in the knowledge that she was capable of bearing him sons and the legal fiction of the Act of Parliament enabled him to enjoy much of his inheritance during his father's lifetime. Since the crown need not have surrendered control of his estates until Sir George died in September 1538, Gilbert stood to benefit from the arrangement at least as much as his new bride.

In the climate of 1519 Elizabeth Blount had reason to feel satisfied with her lot. The idea that she might have seduced the king into repudiating his wife and making her Queen of England, particularly before she took him to her bed, would have been seen as preposterous. The possibility that the queen could be put aside in order to legitimate Henry Fitzroy by their subsequent marriage, only slightly less so. It is true that the five-year age gap which had seemed so inconsequential in 1509 had now started to show. Henry pursued his revels with his customary enthusiasm, but the queen withdrew early. The king was still considered ‘extremely handsome', however, Katherine was, at best, considered ‘rather ugly than otherwise'. In 1518 her sixth pregnancy had ended in yet another failure and who knew how many more chances there would be? Yet few would have seen Elizabeth as a suitable replacement. However, Henry had reacted to Fitzroy's arrival with renewed hope that he and his queen would have a legitimate son. As long as that hope or expectation remained, Katherine's position was unassailable.

In the meantime, Henry's lack of male issue endowed his bastard son with a level of importance that he might otherwise have lacked. Henry Fitzroy could claim a unique importance in the history of English royal bastards. Unlike King Henry I, his father did not have twenty other illegitimate sons to provide for. Even more significantly, neither was there a brood of legitimate offspring to overshadow him. After ten years of marriage Henry VIII could boast only a single daughter. Equally significantly, as the only surviving son of an only son, he was not overendowed with other male relatives who might be called upon to share the burden of government in the king's name. The exact status allowed to the child would depend on what honours his father chose to bestow, although necessity as much as policy demanded that Fitzroy should have a more prominent part in affairs of state than was usual with bastard issue. Henry would need to produce a whole brood of sons before that importance was seriously affected. In contrast, it would take a single legitimate prince to secure the succession. Yet, as time passed and Fitzroy remained the king's only living son, it was perhaps inevitable that the ready-made heir increasingly attracted the attention of onlookers.

On the morning of 18 June 1525, six-year-old Lord Henry Fitzroy travelled by barge from Wolsey's mansion of Durham Place, near Charing Cross, down the River Thames, to the royal palace of Bridewell. In his company were a host of knights, squires and other gentlemen. At 9 a.m. his barge pulled up to the watergate and his party made their way through the palace to the king's lodgings, on the south side of the second floor. The royal apartments, which Henry had newly refurbished just two years earlier, included two great vaulted chambers running the length of the building. More like a church nave than a domestic residence, they stood two floors high with large windows set in either side.
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As Fitzroy entered the royal apartments, preparations for the day's events were already well in hand.