Bastard Prince (7 page)

The rooms were decorated with rich hangings of gold and silk. At the end of the far chamber a canopy of estate ‘of rich cloth of gold of tissue' was set over a matching chair, whose gold pommels glittered in the morning light. Trumpeters were waiting to take up their position in the bay window at the far end. The chamber would have been filling up with those who had come to witness this grand event. For the moment, Fitzroy was led through the chambers to an ante-room, where he could rest and be made ready for his part in the proceedings. Outside, the king and his nobility prepared to take their place under the cloth of estate.

The occasion was well attended by the court. At the right hand of the king stood Richmond's godfather, Thomas Wolsey. Beside him were numerous bishops, abbots and prelates. On Henry's left were the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Suffolk and standing behind them numerous earls, lords, knights and esquires. By now, the crowd of onlookers packed the chamber. Before the ceremonies could begin the gentlemen ushers were forced to clear a path so ‘that three men might go armin-arm'. At last, everything was ready. At a signal from the king, there was a fanfare of trumpets and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, entered the chamber, carrying a sword before him. He was followed by the eight heralds of the College of Arms, with the Garter herald bearing a patent and the Somerset herald wearing a newly designed coat-of-arms. Finally, flanked by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford and Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, Henry Fitzroy entered, dressed in the robes of an earl.
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The feelings of the assembled nobles can only be wondered at, as the diminutive lord came to kneel before his father. As Henry VIII raised his son to his feet, the voice of Thomas More echoed about the chamber, as he read the patent, which created the Lord Henry Fitzroy, Earl of Nottingham:

and when it came to the words ‘Gladdii Cuituram' then the young Lord kneeled down and the kings grace put the girdle about the neck of the young Lord the sword hanging bendwise over the breast of him when the patent was read the king took it to the said Earl and this Earl of Nottingham accompanied as before entered into the said Gallery.
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Not since the twelfth century, when Henry II had made William Longsword Earl of Salisbury, had a King of England raised his illegitimate son to the peerage.
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Even now, the ceremony was far from complete. Before the assembled nobles and onlookers could catch their breath, the newly created Earl of Nottingham re-entered the chamber.

This time his attire and the badges of office borne before him, were those of a duke. The Earl of Northumberland carried the robes. Behind him came Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, carrying the sword, the Earl of Arundel, carrying the cap of estate with a circlet and the Earl of Oxford with a rod of gold. The only two existing dukes in England, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk walked on either side of the child. Once again he came to kneel before his father. As the patent was read he was invested with the trappings of a duke. This time, when he rose to his feet, he was Duke of Richmond and Somerset.

To be a duke was a significant honour. It was it the highest rank of the peerage and the office, originally devised by King Edward III for his son, Edward the Black Prince to be Duke of Cornwall, had retained its royal aura. The former Lord Henry Fitzroy was subsequently referred to in all formal correspondence as the ‘right high and noble prince Henry . . . Duke of Richmond and Somerset'. As if to compound this sense of Royal dignity and endow the child with as much respectability as possible, Henry VIII had granted his son the unprecedented honour of a double dukedom. While he is commonly referred to as Richmond, some pains were taken to see that he bore both titles with equal weight. The bulk of his lands came from possessions which had formerly been held by Margaret Beaufort, the king's grandmother, as Countess of Richmond. These included estates which had been the rightful inheritance of King Henry VII when he was Earl of Richmond, and lands which had belonged to Margaret's father, John Beaufort, when he held the title Duke of Somerset.

Indeed, for all of those who strained to catch a glimpse of the new duke in the chamber at Bridewell, Henry's use of the Somerset title would have struck a particular chord. It was widely known that John Beaufort, created Earl of Somerset in 1397, had been a royal bastard, who was subsequently legitimated. John Beaufort and his siblings were the children of Edward III's son John of Gaunt and his mistress Katherine Swynford. The affair took place during his second marriage. After Katherine had borne him four children, Gaunt's wife died and they were free to marry. However, due to the complexities of the affair, not least that the children had been conceived in adultery, they were not automatically legitimated. Instead, Gaunt and Katherine applied to the Pope for a special dispensation, which being granted was confirmed in England by Act of Parliament by Richard II. The Beauforts were henceforth to be considered legitimate ‘as fully, freely and lawfully as if [they] were born in lawful wedlock'.
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The church at Corfe Castle, a long-time Beaufort residence and now part of Richmond's holdings, proclaimed for all the world to see this significant change in the family's status:

The coats-of-arms at the side of the north doorway reflected through heraldry the importance of the family's legitimization. On the left the shield lay on its side, indicating a bastard line, whilst on the right it was placed upright.
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Few of those present can have been ignorant of this particular piece of English history. Seeing Henry's evident pride and affection in his sturdy little son, many of those who witnessed Richmond's elevation must have wondered if this was what the king had in mind.

Although some might remember that the Beauforts had been excluded from the line of succession, others might remind them that this had not originally been the case. Richard II had made no such stipulation when he had confirmed his cousin's legitimacy. Only when John of Gaunt's eldest son (by his first wife Blanche), Henry Bolingbroke, seized the throne as King Henry IV, did he look nervously to his half-brothers and sister. The Beauforts had done well for themselves and his own claim to the throne was not above reproach. Henry IV confirmed their legitimate status, but with the significant proviso that it was ‘excepting the royal dignity'. Henry IV had good reason for his actions. Despite the legal fiction of their legitimacy, the stigma of illegitimacy was not erased from people's minds. Most importantly, Henry had four perfectly good sons of his own and had no need to complicate matters further.

Henry VIII was not so fortunate. In June 1525 Henry VIII's only legitimate child was his nine-year-old daughter, Mary. Katherine was now almost forty years old and her last pregnancy had been in 1518. With determined optimism, Henry had continued to sleep with her for several years without any sign of conception, before reluctantly conceding she was past the age of child bearing. Gradually, the whole country came to agree with the Venetian ambassador that Katherine was ‘past that age in which women most commonly were wont to be fruitful'. Only once Henry ceased having sexual relations with her, and estimates for this begin in 1524, was he forced to acknowledge that she would never give him a male heir. After sixteen years of marriage and at least six pregnancies, the hopes for the Tudor dynasty rested solely on the shoulders of one small girl.

In the spring of 1524, Henry VIII had organised one of the lavish tournaments that were almost a weekly occurrence at court. On this occasion he intended to show off his new suit of armour ‘made of his own device and fashion'. Obviously the new design caused quite a stir. Henry was able to set off against his opponent, Charles Brandon, before he, or any of his attendants, realised he had not closed the visor on his helmet. The horrified crowd called out the danger, but it was too late. Brandon's spear shattered in the king's unprotected face. As the king fell to the ground the fate of England hung in the balance, yet Henry had a miraculous escape. Shaking off the splinters of wood, he assured his panic-stricken subjects that he was indeed alive, first by walking about and then by remounting his horse and competing six more times ‘by which all men might perceive he had no hurt'. It was a very public reminder that the king, whatever he might wish to believe, was not immortal. Given Henry's love of dangerous sports, the next time England might not be so fortunate.

Unlike France where the law prevented the accession of a daughter, there was no reason why Mary could not reign as Queen of England, except that prevailing opinion was firmly against it. The motto of Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour – ‘bound to obey and serve' – neatly summed up the perceived role of Tudor women. They were the weaker sex, physically less able, mentally inferior and morally suspect. They were subject to the authority of their husbands and fathers. They were not designed to rule. The admirable example of women like Margaret of Savoy, who acted as regent for the Emperor Charles V in the Netherlands, or the formidable career of Mary's own grandmother, Isabella, who ruled as Queen of Castile in Spain, did nothing to reassure. Even more worrying was the complex issue of female inheritance. After she married, a woman's lands and possessions belonged to her husband and no one could agree exactly how this would work if part of that inheritance were a kingdom. The English looked nervously to the example of other small countries, like Burgundy, whose independence had been lost when they had been left in the hands of a woman.

England's one experiment with a ruling queen was not an experience anyone was eager to repeat. At his death in 1135 King Henry I's only legitimate issue was his daughter, Matilda.
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During his lifetime Henry I had made his barons swear to accept her as the heir to his kingdom, but his authority could not reach beyond the grave. After his death the barons chose her cousin, Stephen, Count of Boulogne, as a more acceptable male alternative. This, ultimately, plunged England into nine years of civil war, which decimated the land. When Stephen was imprisoned for seven months in 1141, Matilda briefly occupied the throne. It was not exactly a precedent. Stephen remained the anointed king and Matilda's ‘extremely arrogant demeanor, instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex' helped ensure she was not crowned queen. Matilda eventually secured a victory of sorts when Stephen recognised her son Henry as his heir, but she never ruled as queen of England as her father had intended.

All things being equal, Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, had had the better claim to the crown in 1485. However, such things were not equal. A king needed to be able to defend his crown, if need be, on the field of battle. It was quite possible that England might prefer to see a member of the peerage take the throne, rather than accept Mary as their queen. In 1519 the Venetian ambassador had seen nothing wrong in speculating on the chances of the Dukes of Suffolk, Norfolk or Buckingham, ruling the kingdom if Henry died without a legitimate son to succeed him. Shortly afterwards Henry himself wrote in great secrecy to Wolsey, requiring him to ‘make good watch' on a number of the nobility. If this letter is rather too ‘cloak and dagger' to be absolutely sure that Henry's concerns centred on the succession, the fate of one of those named, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, certainly seems to indicate that the king was increasingly anxious about the future of his dynasty.

At this time there were only three dukes in England. Two of them had been Henry's own creations. Charles Brandon was created Duke of Suffolk in 1514 for his part in the French War. He had begun his career as a mere esquire, owing everything he was now to Henry VIII, ‘my sovereign lord and master who has brought me up out of nothing'. Since men had been amazed at his elevation to the peerage, they would perhaps have been reluctant to accept him as their king. His marriage to Henry's sister, Mary Tudor, in 1515, had brought him closer to the throne, but it could not overcome the disability of his birth. Mary continued to be known as ‘The French Queen' by right of her first husband King Louis XII of France. As the contemporary inscription on their portrait openly acknowledged ‘cloth of gold' (Mary) outranked ‘cloth of frieze' (Brandon). Given his relatively humble origins the duke was perhaps fortunate he was not cast as canvas.

As part of the same ceremony in 1514, Thomas Howard, with rather more justice, had become Duke of Norfolk, in recognition for his victory at the Battle of Flodden. He had spent much of his adult life trying to recover the dukedom that had been bestowed on his father by Richard III in 1483. Unfortunately, the family had enjoyed the title for just two years before it was forfeited for fighting on the losing side at Bosworth in 1485. Thomas Howard had struggled to restore his family to their former glory for twenty-nine years. Despite the apparent splendour with which his son, also Thomas Howard, would bear the title, when he succeeded to the dukedom on his father's death in 1524, the house of Howard was built on fairly fragile foundations.

However, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham was a rather different proposition. His family had been Dukes of Buckingham for four generations. His father had been executed by Richard III, for a rebellion that may have more to do with his own ambition than his support for the Tudors.
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As the nephew of King Edward IV's queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and a direct descendant of King Edward III, Buckingham could boast an impressive royal pedigree. He was also a major landowner in his own right, with an impressive array of magnificent castles and an army of retainers. Perhaps most worryingly, he was the epitome of an over-mighty subject, with sufficient pride and ambition to give any monarch pause for thought.

Certainly, Buckingham was killed as much for what he might do as for what he had actually done. The charges levied against him in May 1521 were treasonous. Chief among them was the allegation that he had spoken of how he would kill the king. It was also alleged that he had proclaimed the death of Henry's infant son to be God's vengeance, that he had dabbled in prophecies that Henry would never have a male heir and that, instead, he himself would become king.
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If he had said and done what he is claimed to have said and done, then Buckingham deserved to die. If his downfall was a plot, perhaps led by Wolsey to remove a powerful rival, then Buckingham's actions must have been sufficient to give colour to the charges. In the political climate of the time such behaviour was more than foolish, it was fatal.