Richmond also had reason to be worried. Ironically, he had more to fear from another daughter than the longed-for prince. Henry’s first-born son could expect to retain his lands, offices and a unique place in his father’s affections, even if there was an heir. Another daughter was more dangerous. Anne Boleyn’s overtures of friendship towards Mary were more political than personal. If she could be persuaded to recognise Anne as queen, Elizabeth’s position as heir apparent was assured.4 With Richmond there was no such incentive for good relations. If Anne were to bear yet another girl her desire to protect the claims of her children, especially in the face of any moves from the king’s only male issue, might become ever more desperate.
In the event, it was Anne’s fortunes, rather than Richmond’s, that faltered. At about eight months she miscarried, and hindsight suggests that the baby was a son. The whole matter was quickly swept aside. Henry and Anne set off on the court’s summer progress as if the pregnancy had never happened. In normal circumstances a miscarriage, especially after Anne had had a successful pregnancy, would not be serious cause for concern. But these were not normal circumstances.
For Henry’s subjects the question of the succession had become a thinly spun thread ‘upon which dependeth all our joy and wealth’. Anne’s confidence was shaken and when she objected to her husband amusing himself with the ladies of the court, as he had always been accustomed to do before she became his sole interest, Henry was bitter in his disappointment and rebuked her that ‘she should remember where she came from’. Henry’s own confidence was also rocked by this echo of Katherine of Aragon’s misfortunes. As with the shock of his infant son’s death in 1511, this latest crisis seems to have affected his virility. His romantic dalliances might serve to convince the world he was indeed, ‘a man like other men’. Yet, while Henry could play the gallant lover, it would be more than a year before he could actually make his wife pregnant again.
The events of recent years had done nothing to settle the uncertainty of the succession. Even Henry’s policy of ennobling his relations had rebounded upon him. The king’s cousin Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, seems to have enjoyed a good relationship with Richmond. When the duke was eleven he gave him ‘a bay ambling gelding for his own saddle’. Yet Exeter found himself in prison when his servants were caught claiming that if anything happened to Henry VIII ‘My Lord Marquis would be King, and they lords’. The death of Henry’s nephew, Henry Brandon, who had been honoured as Earl of Lincoln at Richmond’s elevation, can only have added to the general mood of uncertainty. Despite years of much upheaval the king was still no closer to securing his legitimate male heir.
When Henry returned from his summer progress, Richmond was recalled to court. In November 1534, he played host at a St Andrew’s Day feast in honour of the visiting French Admiral, Philippe de Chabot. In January 1535, he was also at court for the New Year celebrations. Henry gave him the now traditional silver gilt, weighing in at 55 ounces. Anne also gave him a piece of silver gilt, a cruse with a cover, which in a rather back-handed compliment, the duke sent to his sister Mary for her New Year’s gift. Known for her good eye for clothes Anne did rather better with ‘a bonnet, finished with buttons and a little brooch’, which Richmond added to his wardrobe. In the New Year he was still with the king at Westminster, adding his vote (in accordance with the King’s wishes), for James V’s election to the Order of the Garter.
Now aged fifteen, he began to assume duties for his father on a more regular basis, although sometimes it was his very youth and inexperience that made him useful. When Chapuys paid a visit in February 1535, to find ‘all the Lords were in Council’, he was not insulted because ‘the Duke of Richmond . . . remained to entertain me’. However, Richmond’s usefulness could also have a political edge. His presence at Tyburn in May 1535 at the execution of three Carthusian monks was a clear signal of Henry VIII’s tacit approval of their punishment for flouting the king’s new laws on religion. The Imperial ambassador wrote with shocked disbelief that Richmond and ‘several other lords, and gentlemen courtiers, were present at the execution, openly and quite close to the victims’. Chapuys believed that the king himself had wanted to be present ‘to witness the butchery’. Instead, his son’s attendance was perhaps the next best thing and a public indication of the king’s mind.
Richmond also continued to spend some of his time away from court. In general he does not seem to have followed the king on his summer progresses, instead preferring to use the time to visit his own estates. On one occasion he travelled as far as his Sheffield manor, although he did not find the area very much to his liking. Unlike Canford, which boasted two parks, he complained rather petulantly to Thomas Cromwell that Sheffield offered little to amuse him as ‘here in this country [county] where I lie I have no park nor game to show sport nor pleasure to my friends’. Obviously hoping that Cromwell would help him out, he enclosed a list of the nearby parks belonging to the king and others, which he had had his eye on.
As the months passed and Anne still failed to conceive, speculation grew that some other solution to the succession crisis would be necessary. For the first time since his elevation in 1525, Richmond featured in the gossip. However, it was not the dutiful son himself who had attracted attention, but the ambition of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, who was described as:
being one of the greatest men in the kingdom, and having sons and the Duke of Richmond for his son-in-law, might . . . if disorders ensued to get the rule into his own hands.5
Having a niece as Queen of England had not brought Norfolk all the benefits he felt were his due. Richmond’s marriage was intended at least as much for Anne’s benefit as his own. Now it appeared that she could not ensure that a son with Howard blood would sit upon the throne. Relations between him and Anne became increasingly tense and his loyalty to her grew correspondingly thin. When Anne lost her temper and ‘heaped more injuries on the Duke of Norfolk than on a dog’, he stormed out and vented his spleen on the first person he met, calling his queen and sovereign lady every possible name under the sun.
In the circumstances the idea of his own daughter as a more dutiful and benevolent queen, with the ultimate prize of his grandchild as a future king, must have seemed a more tempting prospect. Although Chapuys might believe that Anne ‘now rules over and governs the nation’ so that even Henry dared not contradict her, Norfolk was astute enough to realise that her long-term security depended on the safe delivery of a prince. Richmond was a route to continued power and influence that did not rely on the fortunes of his niece.6 Outwardly, Richmond was every inch the king’s loyal and obedient son. Yet backed by the power and ambition of the Duke of Norfolk, Anne would be foolish not to see him as a threat. Matters did not immediately come to a head, but Norfolk increasingly had little reason to support Anne and her offspring, and every reason to promote the fortunes of his royal son-in-law.
Richmond’s links to Norfolk and his interests went beyond his marriage to Mary or his friendship with Surrey. Norfolk had replaced Lisle as Vice-Admiral to the Duke of Richmond. He had replaced Wolsey as the chief custodian of the lands and person of the lunatic George, Lord Tailbois. He held the wardship of Richmond’s uncle, George Blount, and he also assumed an increasingly active role in Richmond’s own affairs, over and above his concerns that the duke should maintain an appropriately splendid household. This was facilitated by the fact that a number of Richmond’s servants, notably John Uvedale and William Brereton, already had established links with the Howard family.7 By March 1535, John Husse, who acted for Lisle, knew that any business with Richmond’s household would be decided, not by the duke’s governor, George Cotton, but ‘the conclusion of the same shall depend much upon my lord of Norfolk’s goodwill and pleasure’.
In some respects Norfolk’s involvement reflected Wolsey’s earlier role, in directing and overseeing daily business. While the duke was still in fact a child it was only sensible to have someone keeping an eye on his officers and lands. Yet as
Richmond grew older, rather than simply directing matters, Norfolk actively sought to work with his son-in-law. When problems arose in Richmond’s landholdings in the Welsh Marches in 1535, Norfolk accompanied Richmond on a stately progress to Holt to address the problem.8 The idea was plain. Rather than imposing his will, so that Richmond grew to resent his interference, Norfolk was keen to ensure that the young duke came to reflect his own sympathies and prejudices.
As he approached his sixteenth birthday the Duke of Richmond was developing into a most promising candidate for the throne. Not only was he still the king’s only son, but the praises heaped upon his mental and martial abilities were entirely reminiscent of the adulation showered upon his father at his accession in 1509. He was ‘a goodly young lord, and a toward, in many qualities and feats’. On the very verge of manhood, the danger of a minority could be argued to be past. For political reasons, Henry’s nephew, James V of Scotland, had been declared of age when he was fourteen. If anything untoward happened to Henry, a similar policy could easily be adopted towards Richmond.
There were still a number of factors stacked against him, not least that according to the law, Elizabeth was the heir apparent. Moreover, under the terms of the 1534 Act of Succession, the stigma of his illegitimacy was still an effective block to any consideration of his accession. Even if Richmond mounted a claim against Elizabeth he would still have to contend with the popularity enjoyed by Mary. Support for ‘the Princess’, as she continued to be called by the Imperial ambassador, endured. The feeling was not sufficiently strong to convince Charles V to back his support for his cousin with action, although John Snappe cannot have been the only Englishman willing to give his life and all he had ‘upon my Lady Mary’s title against the issue that should come of the Queen’.9 The strength of feeling for Richmond was unlikely to be tested while the king or his subjects held out any hope of a prince, and by October 1535 Anne Boleyn finally fell pregnant again.
At the New Year in 1536, things seemed, on the surface at least, to be much as they had been two years earlier. Having successfully given birth to a thriving baby daughter, Anne was now expected to produce her brother. The court enjoyed its customary revels and Henry produced his usual parcel of silver gilt for his son. This year the present was particularly impressive. A bowl with a star in the bottom was engraved with Richmond’s arms. A jug, with its handles made to look like two serpents, was decorated with the initials ‘H’ and ‘A’ beneath a crown, and another ‘standing bowl’ was capped with the figure of a small boy bearing a shield and spear with an engraved inscription in French. Some evidence, perhaps, that Richmond, at least, had accrued some benefit from his time in France.
Yet things were not the same. The optimism engendered by Elizabeth’s birth had been sorely damaged by Anne’s subsequent miscarriage. Anne was dismayed and her enemies were encouraged to find that she was no longer the sole object of her ardent lover’s attentions. As was his custom when his wife was pregnant, Henry had developed a roving eye and this time the subject of his affections was a young woman named Jane Seymour.
It is easy, with hindsight, to read too much into the many storms and tempests of Anne and Henry’s marital relationship. Yet Anne was all too aware that she had created a dangerous precedent. Her concerns about the propriety of her ladies demonstrates her concern that she should be seen to act as befitted a Queen of England, presiding over a well-ordered household as her predecessor had done. Her insistence that their necklines should be demurely filled with ‘chests’ – material inserts which covered any cleavage – was perhaps less a question of fashion than a natural jealousy that a rival might rise from their ranks. Many of those qualities which had made her an enticing mistress ensured she was unsuited to the role of the patient wife, not least because she loved Henry with a passion and could not ‘shut her eyes and endure, just like others who were worthier than she’, when Henry as much as looked elsewhere.
For the moment this was all it was. Indeed, Anne was getting off lightly. Henry’s relationship with Jane was chaste, in the true tradition of courtly love, something that cannot be said of many of Henry’s liaisons during Katherine of Aragon’s numerous pregnancies. It was Anne’s fear that what she had done others might now emulate, and the circling of her enemies made this something more than a romantic diversion.
Anne was notoriously unpopular. Neither her shirts nor her smocks for the poor, nor her traditional gifts of Maundy money, (even though she increased the amount to considerably more than Katherine had been accustomed to bestow) was enough to redress her reputation. In the eyes of many she was a ‘goggleeyed whore’, a she-devil who had stolen the king from his true and rightful wife. She was the architect of all Mary’s misfortunes and she bore the brunt of public criticism regarding many of the most unpopular measures of the Reformation, not just the changes in religion, but the accompanying draconian measures against treason in word or deed. As good men like Sir Thomas More and John Fisher went to the scaffold and the country endured the perils of famine and the threat of hostilities with the emperor, it begged the question whether the new regime was actually the will of God after all. When Henry VIII’s own fool, Will Somers, was bold enough to gauge the mood of the country and call Anne a ‘ribald’ and her daughter a bastard, the queen’s only real security was Henry’s affection, the child she carried and the king’s first wife.
When Katherine of Aragon died on 7 January 1536 Henry’s immediate reaction was joy and deliverance, declaring ‘God be praised that we are free from all suspicion of war’. All now seemed set fair for the birth of his prince, whose mother would be indisputably the only queen in England. The prospect of invasion was converted into the possibility of reconciliation with Charles V. Ever willing to believe that God espoused all his causes, Henry no doubt took this timely blessing as a sign that all would, at last, be well. Anne’s public reaction was equally joyous. ‘Now I am indeed a Queen’ she declared. But even as she and Henry went to mass in great state and Elizabeth was shown off to the court by her proud father, she must have realised that she might be the victim of her own success. Now no one could require Henry to return to Katherine. If he ever chose to put her aside, he would be free to marry again and it would be much easier a second time.
On 24 January 1536, there was a further crisis. Henry was jousting in the tiltyard at Greenwich when he fell from his horse. Unlike the incident in 1524, this accident was gravely serious. The king did not recover consciousness for over two hours. It was an anxious time. Were Henry to die, the question of the succession, so long pondered, considered, but avoided, would be drawn dramatically into focus. If Anne’s unborn child were the long desired male heir, England would have its king, only to be plunged into a long minority which would endanger the realm. If the pregnancy failed or the child was a girl, Elizabeth would be queen. However, even Anne’s most ardent supporters cannot have viewed the accession of a two-year-old girl with any real enthusiasm.
Henry’s other daughter was now a woman of nineteen. Her supposed illegitimacy was the least of her problems. It had not yet been enshrined in law and it would be a simple thing to argue that she had been born in good faith. She was popular with the English people and would be accepted across Europe as Henry’s rightful successor. Except that all the dangers of a ruling queen, which had concerned men in 1525, still stood between her and the throne.
Richmond might seem to hold all the cards. The king’s only son could ascend the throne without any danger of a minority and rule in succession to the father whom he so closely resembled, apart from the fact that he had no legal title to the throne. The law of the land still clearly stated that that the king’s bastard issue had no rights in regard to the succession. Even if Henry revived sufficiently to murmur his consent, the problem of Richmond’s illegitimacy would remain. With no clear candidate from among Henry’s own children and a host of cousins and other nobles, such as Henry VIII’s nephew James V, who might decide to try their luck, there was the all too real pr
ospect of war and perhaps years of disorder. Luckily, Henry survived – this time. However, the incident was a worrying reminder, if any were needed, that Henry was not immortal. If the question of his successor could not be decisively settled, then England’s future would be very bleak.
However, only days later, on 29 January 1536, Anne Boleyn miscarried for the second time. To make matters worse, the child would have been a son.10 Already badly scared by his recent brush with death, this time Henry’s reaction bordered on hysterical. The king feared that his second marriage was no more blessed than his first. His anxiety swept him onwards:
he had been seduced and forced into this second marriage by means of sortileges and charms . . . owing to that he held it as nul. God . . . had well shown his displeasure at it by denying him male children.11
Tellingly, Anne is said to have blamed Norfolk for her misfortune, claiming that he had broken the news of the king’s accident too abruptly. With more passion than prudence, she also blamed the king, allegedly upbraiding him for his part in this tragedy by casting in his face how his attentions to Jane Seymour had distressed her. Emotions were clearly running high. Whether this episode would have been enough to seal Anne’s fate, had the king been left to his own devices, is impossible to say. Her enemies regarded the high drama with glee. They had all the ammunition they needed and battle was joined.
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