Bastard Prince (8 page)

Buckingham's conviction sealed his fate and his execution sent a chilling message through the ranks of the peerage. Significantly, from June 1525 the most senior noble in England was not Norfolk or Suffolk. The highest-ranking member of the peerage was Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond and Somerset whose elevation to the peerage had been such a spectacular affair. The heralds' reports all testify to the splendour and gravity of the occasion. The ceremonies were followed by ‘great feasts and disguisings' as Henry VIII celebrated his son's honours with customary extravagance. While we cannot be sure whether Elizabeth, now Lady Tailbois, returned to the court to witness the event, her husband was almost certainly able to give her an eyewitness account.
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As arrangements for Richmond's new dignity had taken shape, Elizabeth and Gilbert had been honoured with a spate of further grants. In April 1525 Gilbert was made bailiff and keeper of Tattershall in Lincolnshire, now part of Richmond's lands. His elevation to a knighthood also seems to be associated with his step-son's new rank, as he now appeared as Sir Gilbert Tailbois for the first time. However, the exact significance behind all this display was more elusive. Both contemporary and subsequent observers have been forced to speculate on Henry's motives for raising his bastard son to such unprecedented heights.

Henry may have been prompted into action by a piece of good fortune. On 14 February 1525, Charles V had inflicted a shattering defeat on Francis I at Pavia. The French forces were decimated and many of their foremost military leaders were killed. To Henry's great joy, one of the dead was the English exile, Richard de la Pole, which effectively extinguished any threat that family still represented to the security of the Tudor dynasty. While Richard was still at large and far from reconciled to the Tudors' occupation of the throne, the policy of advancing his illegitimate son to almost regal honours might have seemed too dangerous a gauntlet to throw in the face of a disgruntled, rival claimant. At the very least, Henry could now be reassured that that particular danger was laid to rest.

It has also been argued that Richmond's elevation was born more out of pique than policy.
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During the battle at Pavia Francis I had been taken prisoner and his realm was now vulnerable to invasion. Henry was overjoyed. ‘Now is the time for the Emperor and myself to devise the means of getting full satisfaction from France', he declared. His dream of regaining England's ancient rights across the Channel, and more besides, at last seemed within his grasp. England prepared to reap the spoils of war. Forces were to be mustered, armaments to be made ready and money to be raised for the enterprise, from the so-called Amicable Grant. Whatever the political realities of the situation, and Henry was objective enough to arm his ambassadors with a sliding scale of demands, he clearly believed that the French throne could be his for the taking.

Almost at once the King of England was being warned that Charles intended ‘little or nothing to your commodity, profit, or benefit' and so it proved. More concerned with his own problems elsewhere, than indulging Henry's dreams of European expansion, Charles V agreed terms for peace in the Treaty of Madrid. Whatever Henry had expected, it was not that.

Not for the first time the King of England's ambitions were thwarted by Katherine's family. Like Ferdinand of Aragon before him, her nephew Charles V refused to co-operate in Henry's grandiose designs. The king was bitterly disappointed and Richmond's elevation has been seen as a deliberate snub to the queen and the Spanish alliance that she represented. Certainly, the ceremony did nothing to spare Katherine's feelings. To make some honourable provision for a natural son was normal and expected. To parade him around the court, almost as if he was a legitimate prince, would have been a trial to the most patient of wives. For Katherine, who knew she had failed in her most basic duty, the implicit rebuke must have been keenly felt.

Not only was there anxiety about the possible implications for her beloved daughter, Mary, but also Katherine's own pride and honour were at stake. In a private letter, one of the Venetian observers wrote:

It seems that the Queen resents the Earldom and Dukedom conferred on the king's natural son and remains dissatisfied, at the instigation it is said of three of her Spanish ladies her chief counsellors, so the king has dismissed them the court, a strong measure, but the Queen was obliged to submit and have patience.
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Henry may have been angry enough not to care whether he upset and embarrassed his wife and through her therefore exact some small revenge on the real target of his wrath, Charles V. However, the significant financial outlay involved in Richmond's elevation, at over £4,000 per annum, is evidence the king also had a far more serious purpose in mind than this transient satisfaction.

It might also appear that Henry was pushed into honouring his son by Charles V's decision, on 7 June 1525, to break off his engagement to Princess Mary. The couple had been betrothed since 1522 and their marriage could have offset many of the dangers of a female ruler. If Mary could marry and produce a son before Henry died, England's future would be far more secure. Even without this obvious benefit, Charles V was a proven soldier and leader who could support her peaceful succession and help her to rule. If the king had to be a foreigner, a Hapsburg was perhaps rather more acceptable to the English people than either a Valois or a Stuart. If Mary's marriage was a compromise from the ideal solution of a legitimate prince, then at least Henry could console himself with the thought that his grandson would one day rule over an immense empire.

Now Charles V demanded that the nine-year-old Mary should leave England at once to be brought up among her future subjects. Also her dowry should follow within four months. The terms were unreasonable and intended to be rejected. Charles was already well advanced with his own plans to marry Isabella, Infanta of Portugal and needed Henry to release him from his obligation to Mary. Yet the claim that Richmond's elevation was set in hand ‘immediately after the news reached England that Charles meant to break his engagement',
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rests on two assumptions. Firstly that Henry had not intended to raise Richmond to such high honour prior to the breaking of this news and secondly, that the king had come to rely on the union between Charles V and Mary as being the best means of securing her, and England's, future.

In fact, whatever Katherine might have hoped, there is nothing to suggest that Henry viewed this match as anything other than another diplomatic alliance. In 1518, the two-year-old princess had already been engaged to the infant Dauphin of France and no one was surprised when that betrothal did not endure until the children were adults. In the treaty it had been acknowledged that this betrothal would ‘not prevent the Emperor from marrying any woman of lawful age before our daughter comes to mature years'. It had always been unlikely that Charles V, who was already twenty-five and eager for an heir of his own, would wait for Mary to grow up.
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Also, Charles's conduct towards his mother, as Queen of Castile, ought to have given Henry pause for thought. Juana had succeeded as Queen as Castile after her mother's death in 1504. When Charles V assumed the title of King of Castile from 1516, he did so in complete disregard of his mother's prior claim. Even if she was eventually deserving of the epitaph ‘Juana the mad', and her virtual solitary confinement at Tordesillas Castle can only have contributed to her decline, legally Charles should have continued to rule as regent in her name. Such conduct did not speak well of his attitude towards the rights of ruling queens.

Certainly, Mary's betrothal had not stopped Henry negotiating for her possible marriage to James V of Scotland in 1524. Nor did it prevent him from considering the offer of a French match in March 1525. The manner in which Charles repudiated the betrothal was hardly designed to mollify the king, but his action cannot have been entirely unexpected.

In any case, the plans for Richmond's elevation seem to have begun well in advance of this particular disappointment. The first indication of Fitzroy's impending honours is generally taken from an undated note of Wolsey's to the king, usually assigned to May 1525:

Your grace shall also receive by this present bearer, such arms as your highness hath devised . . . for your entirely beloved son, the Lord Henry Fitzroy.
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These included two heraldic beasts: a white lion representing the dukedom of Richmond and a silver yale symbolising the dukedom of Somerset. An escutcheon in the centre completed the honours with its chief design a castle and two bucks' heads for the earldom of Nottingham. Significantly, the arms of France and England, as borne by the king, were crossed with a ‘baton sinister argent' a silver band which proclaimed his illegitimacy to the world. His motto ‘Duty binds me' stressed his obligation to Henry VIII – his king and father.

A list of the ‘wardrobe stuff appointed for my Lord Henry' gives some indication of the scale of these plans. There were hangings for six chambers, a closet, a chapel and a hall. The various furnishings included twenty-five different carpets and twenty-one assorted beds, each with their own pillows, sheets and counterpanes. Richmond's bed, with its canopy and a scarlet counterpane, was decidedly grand.
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When the necessities for his household were finally assembled it would require a chariot and seven horse-draughts to transport them. Although the young duke's financial accounts do not begin until 12 June 1525 (just prior to the ceremony at Bridewell), all these goods and the two hundred and forty-five people thought necessary to attend upon a six-year-old duke could not have been brought together in a few short weeks.

At least one member of Richmond's household seems to have had more notice than this of his new appointment. If the experience of the duke's tutor, John Palsgrave, is in any way representative, then plans for the household were already in the pipeline by April 1525. Palsgrave apparently owed his selection to the influence of Sir Richard Wingfield, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. On this basis the arrangements must have been made before 18 April 1525, because on that date Wingfield sailed from England to Spain, where he died in July 1525 without returning to England.
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It is unlikely that he would have been able to ensure that Palsgrave was chosen to bring the king's son up ‘in virtue and learning' as the tutor would claim, if the composition of Richmond's household was not already well in hand before his departure, especially as Wolsey seems to have had his own candidate waiting in the wings, in the shape of Dr Richard Croke.

In fact, the timing of Richmond's elevation was probably not a knee-jerk reaction to the events of spring 1525. The simplest reason for the date chosen is almost invariably overlooked. All the accounts, with the exception of the Venetian Lorenzo Orio's wildly inaccurate report, agree that Richmond was six years old on 18 June 1525. A child's sixth birthday was an important milestone, marking the end of infancy and the beginning of adult life. Writing in his journal in 1547, King Edward VI would recall when he made the transition out of the nursery, being

brought up [un]till he came to six years old among the women. At the sixth year of his age he was brought up in learning by Dr [Richard] Cox . . . and John Clerke . . . Master of Arts.
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At six, the dangers of death in infancy were past and the child was of an age when a father needed to address the care and education of his son. While Fitzroy had struggled through the perils of the first few years of life, Henry had had reason to be cautious: there might not be any future prospects. Since the date of the ceremony coincides so exactly with the most likely date for Elizabeth Blount's delivery, it does seem reasonable to assume that 18 June 1525 was in fact Richmond's sixth birthday. Now the child was old enough to take his place in the wider world Henry had an obligation to ensure his son was adequately cared for.

Admittedly, obligation could easily have been satisfied with significantly less than the honours and income that Henry heaped upon his son. However, perhaps Henry's honour could not. Putting aside for a moment the political implications of Richmond's elevation, this was Henry's ‘worldly jewel', whom he ‘loved like his own soul' and these feelings alone were surely sufficient to ensure that his son would be equal to no mere subject.

His elevation to the peerage was not the first honour Henry VIII had bestowed on his son. The child had already been elected into the Order of the Garter. Membership of this prestigious and ancient order of knighthood was a marked note of favour. Numbers were strictly limited to the king and twenty-five members and vacancies only occurred through death or dishonour. Despite the polite fiction of elections, the king's wishes dominated the choice of candidates.

According to one account, Richmond's election into the Order may have taken place as early as 23 April 1525.
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Although according to the register of the Order it occurred on 7 June 1525, when all the knights present, not surprisingly, nominated the Lord Henry Fitzroy. At some point, the child must also have been knighted, since the discovery that Lord Roos had not been knighted had caused no small problem when he was elected into the Order. Fitzroy was duly nominated to the place formerly occupied by the Duke of Norfolk, who was moved down to make room for him. This placed him second only to actual royalty (namely, the king, Charles V and Francis I).

Henry's instructions for the installation of ‘our dearest son' were drawn up on 18 June 1525 when he was at Bridewell. The ceremony duly took place on 25 June, in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, where his coat-of-arms can still be seen. Although the proceedings were not quite as lavish, nor as prominent as his elevation to the peerage, the chapel was decked out with his banners, helm and crest. Robes of the garter, including a mantle of purple velvet decorated with ‘a great cross of St George', tassels of purple silk and buttons shaped like sundials, were laid out for the duke. This time, instead of trumpeters there were choristers to accompany the service and a host of clerics and ‘officers of the King' to ensure that everything ran smoothly. Richmond arrivedin a gown of black satin, furred with sable, with gold buttons and gold laces, which he gave away in reward to the Garter Herald after the ceremony. As a knight of the Garter Richmond enjoyed an honour not bestowed on Henry's legitimate son, Prince Edward, during his father's lifetime. Even so, it is unlikely Henry would have considered this alone was sufficient provision for his son.