The events of January 1536 set the tone for the months to follow. Henry’s panic-stricken concerns about his second marriage were nurtured and fuelled. The tempting prospect of Jane Seymour was set before him as a viable, nubile and altogether more compliant alternative. With Katherine now dead his next union would be free of any impediment or doubt. Surely then there would be no reason for sons not to follow. By March 1536, Jane’s elder brother, Sir Edward Seymour, was a member of the King’s privy chamber, a sure sign that Henry’s interest had been stirred. Since a new marriage would also allow Mary to be acknowledged as having been born in good faith, her supporters threw in their lot with the Seymours. However, Richmond’s position was rather less clear cut.
His personal relationship with Anne may on occasion have been rather strained, with Anne making efforts to observe propriety through gritted teeth, but he had little to gain by her removal. With the king’s freedom to marry again came the prospect of further issue. Although Edward Seymour had been Richmond’s Master of the Horse at Sheriff Hutton, that appointment had come from the crown. Equally, when Richmond had appointed Seymour as steward of his Manor of Canford in Dorset, in 1528, it was at the king’s command. Richmond may even have felt resentful, since he had intended to give the stewardship of all his lands in Dorset to his chamberlain, Sir William Parr. Since Richmond’s interests were far more intimately associated with the Duke of Norfolk, who had little love for the ambitious Seymours, neither of them were likely to view this new development with any particular pleasure.
Unlike Norfolk, Richmond could at least rest assured that he was safe from any repercussions, should the Seymours succeed in securing Anne’s downfall. Despite his links to the Howards, and thus by implication the Boleyns, he was no ordinary magnate. He remained close to his father and in March 1536, his particular usefulness to the king was demonstrated once again. During negotiations for a meeting between Henry VIII and James V at York, it was proposed that ‘the Duke of Richmond and the eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk and of the Marquis [probably Exeter] shall be made hostages for the security of the King of Scots’.12 While Mary and Elizabeth’s supporters nailed their colours to the mast, Richmond’s activities give little clue to his feelings. At a chapter of the Order of the Garter held in April 1536, he voted both for Anne’s brother, Lord Rochford and for Sir Nicholas Carew, who was no supporter of the Boleyns. His actions probably reflected the mood of much of the court as they waited to see which way the die would fall.
Yet Richmond’s own interests were too extensive for him to be completely unaffected by the events that now raged around him. As the net closed around Anne Boleyn, one of those arrested under suspicion of being her lover was William Brereton, who was Richmond’s steward in the Marches of Wales. Since the self-confessed architect of Anne Boleyn’s downfall was Thomas Cromwell, the selection of Brereton is unlikely to have been made at random. Brereton’s activities in Wales had made him something of a thorn in Cromwell’s side as he attempted to reform local government, so the downfall of Anne Boleyn provided a tailor-made opportunity to pluck him out.13 If the young duke was in any way concerned at these moves against one of his servants, he was cautious enough to keep his own counsel. Whatever his own feelings, Brereton’s death presented no danger to him and he was wise enough not to intercede for his servant against the wishes of the king.
Richmond was not among the twenty-six peers who were summoned to give judgment at Anne Boleyn’s trial. It was perhaps considered a little indelicate to allow a young man, who had not yet consummated his own marriage, to sit in judgment on his stepmother’s sexual crimes. However, he would not have been ignorant of the proceedings. Norfolk, who had no intention of being dragged down by his niece, presided over the court as Lord High Steward and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, deputised for his father as Earl Marshal. However, Richmond was present at her execution. It was said that ‘a malign smile seemed to pass over the features of the young Duke of Richmond’, but this report was not contemporary. Richmond’s attendance was almost certainly the will of the king and intended, as at Tyburn in 1535, to make a political point. Richmond’s personal feelings were not at issue.
The loss of Anne was probably no great blow to Richmond. If nothing else she was a rival for his father’s time and affection. When the king decided he wanted Anne to have Margaret Beaufort’s former Manor of Collyweston in Northamptonshire, which Richmond had enjoyed since 1525, the duke had written to Cromwell with perhaps a hint of disgruntled petulance ‘the which manor as I understand the king’s Highness’ pleasure is that the queen’s grace shall have’. Indeed, the Imperial ambassador eagerly seized upon a rumour that Anne had intended to murder Richmond. With a certain gory enjoyment he recounted how on the evening of Anne’s arrest, Richmond had gone to ask his father’s blessing, before retiring for the night. At the sight of his son the king had been moved to tears and said:
that he and his sister, owed God a great debt for having escaped from the hands of that cursed and poisoning whore who had planned to poison them.14
Others, including the chronicler Charles Wriothesley, also picked up on this allegation. In fact, it seems to have been nothing but a ploy of the Seymour faction to manipulate Henry’s ability to feel hard done by and play on his affection for his children to insure against any sudden changes of heart.
While Anne’s anger and frustration against Mary sometimes spilled over into wild threats, there is nothing to suggest that Richmond was a particular target, although Anne may well have been fearful of the strength of Henry’s feelings for his only son. Any satisfaction Richmond might have taken in Anne’s demise would have been tempered by the knowledge that Henry and Jane Seymour were immediately betrothed. On 30 May they were married and once more there was the possibility of a legitimate heir to the English throne.
However, there were further repercussions of Anne’s downfall; a move that could only be to Richmond’s benefit. On 17 May 1536, Thomas Cranmer, in his capacity as Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn to be unlawful. In an echo of Henry’s separation from Katherine, the grounds were confidently declared to be ‘entirely just, true, and lawful impediments’, which had been unknown at the time of their marriage. The small detail that if Anne had never been Henry’s lawful wife, she could hardly have committed adultery, was conveniently overlooked. This measure was directed at Elizabeth. With her parent’s marriage decreed unlawful, she, like Mary before her, was now reduced from the state of Princess of England and heir apparent, to the Lady Elizabeth and the king’s natural daughter.
A man who believed his wife had committed adultery would naturally have reason to be suspicious regarding the paternity of his children. Sir Thomas Burgh had secured an Act of Parliament to bastardise his offspring when he divorced his wife for this offence.15 However, as Henry never gave any indication that he doubted Elizabeth’s paternity he must have had another reason to take such a drastic step. Whatever Anne had done or not done, the good faith of only one of the parents was sufficient to salvage the legitimacy of a child. Henry had obviously married Anne in good faith, yet now he was left with three illegitimate children and no legitimate issue at all.16
If this was simply intended to tie up loose ends and prepare the ground for the host of children that Jane was to produce, it was an extremely high-risk policy. On the other hand, the repercussions were not entirely negative. All other things being equal, as the king’s only male child Richmond automatically took precedence over his sisters. Eleven years after his elevation to the peerage, the prospects of Henry VIII’s bastard son once more became the focus of gossip and speculation.
With hindsight, the greatest obstacle to his succession was Edward, the son Henry would have from his marriage to Jane Seymour. However, in the summer of 1536 this prospect may not have seemed so certain. One of the accusations levied at Anne was that she had gossiped about Henry’s virility, or rather lack of it. If questions about the king’s potency could be raised
in such an official forum, who could blame his subjects if they harboured similar doubts? Unlike Anne, Jane was not pregnant when Henry married her, and although Henry quickly began to boast that a prince could be expected ‘in due season’, there was in fact no guarantee that his new queen was capable of bearing a child. Conversely, recent events had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that one accident, one illness or a single stroke of misfortune, could take the king at any time. In this atmosphere, Richmond’s friends had reason to believe that the situation could be turned to their advantage.
Certainly Norfolk’s conduct towards Mary Tudor was not the most prudent line to take if he truly believed she would be ever be queen. Mary was not alone in imagining that Anne’s downfall would be sufficient to restore her to her father’s favour. Instead, Norfolk was dispatched to know if she was now prepared to renounce the authority of the Pope and acknowledge that her parents’ marriage had been unlawful. Shocked and disbelieving, Mary vehemently refused. In the drama which followed Norfolk reportedly railed at her that:
since she was such an unnatural daughter as to disobey completely the King’s injunctions, he could hardly believe . . . that she was the King’s own bastard daughter. Were she his, or any other man’s daughter, he would beat her to death, or strike her head against the wall, until it was as soft as a boiled apple.17
At first Mary continued to refuse, but quickly found herself under greater pressure than she had ever experienced while her mother was alive. The judges agreed that her action was treasonous and the punishment for that was death. Whatever Henry’s true intentions, since Mary was still his daughter, not to mention a useful political tool, she was led to believe that if she insisted on being a martyr to her cause then the king would oblige her. Even the Imperial ambassador now advised her that she would achieve more by her submission. On 22 June 1536, Mary capitulated and put her signature to a document that acceded to all the king’s demands.
That Henry chose this point in time to insist upon her obedience is evidence of the insecurity over the succession. Should he and Jane have no issue, or worse still yet another girl, Mary’s exact status would be crucial. Alone among Henry’s children, she had been accepted by the world as his legitimate child for most of her life and this belief could not be allowed to fester. The Imperial ambassador had no doubt that Henry was trying to clear the way to nominate Richmond as his heir, ‘that being no doubt the King’s chief reason for insisting so much on the Princess [Mary] subscribing to the statute which declared her to be a bastard.’ The timing cannot be coincidence. After all, Mary had maintained her obstinacy over the last three years and Henry had been positively lenient to her in the face of what was a very dangerous example to others. Perhaps he had expected that the arrival of his legitimate prince would silence all dispute, only to be persuaded, in the light of recent events, that it was sensible to have a contingency plan. Given Norfolk’s close association with Richmond it is interesting that he was sent to require Mary’s obedience.
Despite Henry’s affection for his daughter, it would not have been difficult to persuade him of the folly of allowing her to continue in her disobedience. As long as Mary was allowed to flout her father’s laws and dispute his arguments, she was an encouragement to all those who believed that the English Reformation was only a temporary inconvenience. As a father, Henry was angry and embarrassed at his daughter’s conduct. As a king, to allow her to continue to question his laws was a licence for others to do likewise. Those of Mary’s friends who dared speculate on her prospects of accession were arrested and interrogated and Norfolk’s reports of Mary’s wilful obstinacy were hardly likely to soften Henry’s attitude towards his daughter. One way or another, the threat Mary represented had to be negated.
The idea that Norfolk encouraged Henry’s ire cannot be discounted. In 1533, Mary had told Henry, ‘I doubt not that your grace does take me for your lawful daughter, born in true matrimony’. And after so many years even the most obedient subjects, Norfolk included, occasionally slipped back into old habits when dealing with ‘the Princess’. The Imperial ambassador caught wind of some gossip or proposal which suggested naming Mary as the heir-apparent (without restoring her title of princess), with the proviso that if Jane and Henry had a child their claim would take precedence. If Richmond were to take precedence over her, there could be no doubt that she was only the king’s natural daughter.
On 6 June 1536, the Imperial ambassador reported an interesting exchange at court:
Already no less a person than the Earl of Sussex, stated the other day in the Privy Council, in the King’s presence, that considering that the Princess was a bastard, as well as the Duke of Richmond, it was advisable to prefer the male to the female, for the succession to the Crown. This opinion of the Earl not having been contradicted by the King, might hereafter gain ground and have adherents.18
This is unlikely to have been a sudden notion. The possibility had been in the back of everyone’s mind since 1525. Until now it had been mere speculation, the kind of subject which might be spoken of in asides, but was dangerous to voice openly and even more risky to commit to paper. To actually broach the subject to the king’s face and get away with it was a significant development. The Earl of Sussex, Robert Radcliffe, was a long-term friend and supporter of the Duke of Norfolk. Even so, he was unlikely to have taken such a risk unless someone, probably Norfolk, had already sounded out the king. His comment was perhaps intended to test the waters. If Jane did not produce a son, would the country be prepared to accept the king’s bastard son as the heir apparent?
In the wake of Anne Boleyn’s downfall, Norfolk can have taken little comfort in the king’s marriage to Jane Seymour. Her brother Edward had already looked set for a promising court career, now the world was at his feet. Norfolk’s best hope of maintaining power and influence was through Richmond, his daughter and, hopefully, their children. Now was the time for the association which he had been nurturing for the last seven years to come into its own. If Jane did produce an heir, then the Howards close links to the king’s illegitimate son would be their insurance against isolation on the fringes of political affairs. If she did not give birth to a prince then Richmond was developing into a most promising candidate for king.
Since all of the king’s children were now (one way or another) declared to be illegitimate, none of them were eligible to inherit the throne, which meant that the heir-apparent was Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister Margaret, by her second husband Archibald Douglas. Widely reputed to be one of the most beautiful women of her generation, she had been living at the English court since 1530 and Henry treated her almost as if she was his own daughter. While her claim was not as strong as Mary’s, Norfolk would need to be sure that any threat she represented to Richmond’s position was also safely neutralised. Norfolk may simply have hoped to see her safely married off or he may have had some inkling that she was up to no good. Since Henry had demonstrated himself to be positively prudish about Mary’s morals and manners it would not have taken a very grave indiscretion to convince the king that Margaret’s conduct was unbecoming to a royal heiress. However, nothing can have prepared him for what now emerged.
It was discovered that Margaret Douglas had been secretly married to the duke’s half-brother, Lord Thomas Howard, since Easter 1536. Worse, Norfolk’s own daughter Mary, Duchess of Richmond, was suspected of having known about the match and it emerged that ‘divers times’ she had been their only chaperone. If the poems inscribed by Margaret and Thomas in the anthology known as the Devonshire Manuscript, which belonged to the Duchess of Richmond, are any indication, this was a love match, albeit a very risky one. For any member of the nobility to contract a marriage without the king’s permission was courting danger. In the present circumstances, to secretly marry one of the possible claimants to the throne was sheer madness.
Henry reacted with predictable anger. On 8 June 1536 both Margaret and Thomas were sent to the Tower. Chapuys reported that
Henry VIII was ‘very much annoyed by his niece’s marriage’. By seeking to ally himself with one of royal blood Thomas was accused of ‘maliciously and traitorously minding and imagining to put division in the realm’: a clear reference to Henry’s anxiety over the prospect of a disputed succession. It is entirely probable that Norfolk was self-serving enough to betray his half-brother to the king. Not only would Margaret’s arrest and imprisonment make Richmond’s position stronger, but also it was the only way to ensure that neither Norfolk, nor indeed his daughter, were implicated in the couple’s guilt. The Duchess of Richmond in particular was fortunate that her role was not more strictly examined. Both Thomas and Margaret maintained that she had not been told of their marriage, but she was clearly a close friend and confidante. It was probably only her father’s fancy footwork and her marriage to Richmond which saved her from more stringent enquiries.
Instead, moves were afoot to set Richmond up with his own residence on the banks of the River Thames. With Coldharbour Mansion still unavailable, Richmond had hitherto been forced to find other lodgings when he was in the capital. In October 1534 he had been using the London home of the Bishop of Norwich. Now such arrangements were no longer thought to be suitable and the king decided ‘for certain causes moving his Highness, of his most noble and abundant grace’ to give Baynards Castle over to his son. The king’s grant (in the Statute 28 Henry VIII c34) of the London town house that had formerly belonged to Richard III’s mother, Cecily, Duchess of York, was perhaps the final sign of Richmond’s emergence into full adult life and an indication that a decision had been made, as Richmond approached his seventeenth birthday, to allow him to co-habit with his bride of three years, Mary Howard.19
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