Young Henry: The Rise of Henry VIII

by Robert Hutchinson

  What redoubled the king’s frustration and disappointment was his success in siring a bastard son with Elizabeth (or Bessie) Blount, the eighteen-year-old blonde daughter of Sir John Blount, a member of his Spears bodyguard. She came to court as one of Katherine’s maids of honour16 (a misnomer if ever there was one) probably through the influence of her cousin and Henry’s childhood mentor William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, appointed Chamberlain to the queen in 1512, or the family’s earlier links with Prince Arthur’s court at Ludlow. Elizabeth’s vivacity and her talents for dancing and singing caught Henry’s eye, as well as her singular beauty. She was also well educated and is known to have possessed a copy of the poet John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (‘The Lover’s Confession’) written in c.1386 – 93 at the request of Richard II.17 Suffolk, away in France on secret diplomatic duties in October 1514, knowingly asked Henry to pass on his best wishes to ‘Mistress Blount’,18 who probably became the king’s mistress about this time.19 One can envisage the leer on Suffolk’s face as he penned the words.

  In Rome, there was scurrilous talk of the king being merely ‘a youngling, [who] cares for nothing but girls and hunting and wastes his father’s patrimony’.20 Later, Thomas Howard, Third Duke of Norfolk, praised the queen’s ‘great modesty and patience’ over the king ‘being continually inclined to amours’.21 Henry was often promiscuous during the last stages of Katherine’s pregnancies (when vigorous, energetic intercourse could endanger the foetus) and her last in 1518 was no exception. Elizabeth Blount’s condition dictated that her last appearance at court came on 3 October 1518. Her child was born on 15 June, far away from prying, pruient eyes, at the Augustinian priory of St Lawrence at Blackmore, near Ingatestone, Essex, in a residence alongside the churchyard named ‘Jericho’ – an epithet for a ‘house of pleasure’ reputedly utilised by the king.22 The child, named Henry Fitzroy, was taken into regal care and later provided with his own household. Bessie was safely married off to Gilbert Talboys in 1522 and provided with a generous dowry of lands and property in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire by a Parliamentary Act approved compliantly by both houses.23 She continued to receive tokens of royal favour between June 1522 and January 1539 and in 1531 a New Year’s gift from Henry consisted of a silver-gilt cup weighing thirty-five ounces (992 g).

  Years later, a critic of Wolsey’s ministry commented sarcastically:

  We have begun to encourage the young gentlewomen of the realm to be our concubines by the well marrying of Bessie Blount whom we would yet by sleight have married much better than she is and for that purpose changed her name.24

  But Henry was not the great libertine with an insatiable debauched appetite that some fiction writers would have us believe. Most of his adventures were mere flirtatious dalliances rather than serious affairs; more romantic courtly love than heavy-breathing lust.

  In the European royal lechery stakes, he runs out a poor finisher behind his brother monarchs. Francis I of France maintained a string of constantly changing ‘sweethearts’ as well as two official mistresses at his court. The dark-haired Franoise de Foix, Comtesse de Chateaubriand, held the king’s affections from 1519 but was supplanted seven years later by the blonde Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Duchess d’Estampes, who wielded formidable political power in Renaissance France. Francis had also sampled the delights of Mary Boleyn soon after she arrived in Paris in the bridal entourage of Mary Tudor in 1514, brutally labelling her in March 1536 as per una grandissima ribalda et infame sopre tutte, ‘a singular great whore and more notorious than all the others’ – and this in a court infamous across Europe for its wantonness and immorality.25 The Emperor Charles V also maintained a stable of mistresses, including Johanna Maria van der Gheynst, who bore him a daughter, and Barbara Blomberg, who had his son. Thus La chéri du Roi, ‘the darling of the king’, had a recognised and not entirely dishonourable position in sixteenth-century royal courts.

  Henry now at least knew he was physically capable of producing a male heir and he must often have pondered over what seemed like a curse on his marriage with Katherine.

  His elder sister Margaret had married that ‘young witless fool’ Archibald Douglas, Sixth Earl of Angus, after her first husband James IV of Scotland was killed at Flodden. In 1519 she decided to desert Angus after being parted from him for six months26 and Henry was priggishly aghast at her dissolute behaviour. He sent Margaret a stern letter remonstrating about the separation and her ‘suspicious living’ and sent an Observant Friar, Henry Chadworth, to correct and amend her morals.27 In 1526 when she began divorce proceedings in a Papal Court so she could marry the dashing young courtier Henry Stewart, the king lectured her on her ‘inevitable damnation’. He warned Margaret that her very soul was endangered unless ‘as in conscience you are bound under peril of God’s everlasting indignation’ she relinquished ‘the adulterous company with him that is not nor may not be of right your husband’.28

  Henry was therefore a king with a complex, almost schizophrenic character, obsessed about the future of his dynasty. Aside from his tantrums and his later descent into ruthless, despotic cruelty, the most singular aberration in his personality was breathtaking hypocrisy. He was happy to behave promiscuously when Katherine was in the advanced stages of pregnancy, but conversely, he was prudishly censorious of any immorality amongst those close to him, like his friend William Compton, cited in an ecclesiastical court in 1527 for living in open adultery with a married woman – no less than Henry’s former paramour, Anne Hastings.29 In 1536 he clapped his twenty-one-year-old niece Lady Margaret Douglas30 in the Tower after she secretly married Lord Thomas Howard, youngest half-brother to the Third Duke of Norfolk. Her would-be groom followed her into the fortress where he died the following year. Lady Margaret was later pardoned – ‘considering that copulation had not taken place’, but was dispatched to the spartan discipline of the Bridgettine nunnery at Syon Abbey in Isleworth, Middlesex, to improve her spiritual health.31

  Mary Boleyn had returned to England from France in April 1515 and secured a place in Katherine of Aragon’s household, probably through the influence of her diplomat father Sir Thomas Boleyn. (Katherine was evidently a poor judge of morality in her ladies.) She married William Carey, an Esquire of the Body in Henry’s Privy Chamber,32 on Saturday 4 February 1520, when she was in her early twenties. Henry was the guest of honour and gave the couple a less than generous wedding present of 6s 8d. A series of grants to Carey from early in 1522 to 1526 (some of the properties formerly owned by Buckingham) suggests that Henry had taken his wife to his bed and her cuckolded husband was being amply rewarded for both his silence and his discretion. One of the last royal gifts was Carey’s appointment as Keeper of the manor, garden and tower of Greenwich Palace.33 One account reveals that Henry ‘in his barge [went] from Westminster to Greenwich to visit a fair lady whom the king loved who was lodged in the tower in the park’ – probably Mary Boleyn.34 Not that the king was always so discreet: a ship was brazenly named after his mistress in September 1523.

  Mary had two children, a daughter called Catherine born in about 1524 and a son significantly named Henry, born on 4 March 1526. On the premise that Henry’s psyche demanded chastity from his sexual partners35 it has been suggested that both children were his.36 Years later in April 1535, when Mary’s sister Anne was queen, John Hale, the elderly, ailing vicar of Isleworth, recalled having ‘young Master Carey’ pointed out to him as ‘our sovereign lord, the king’s son by … the queen’s sister, whom the queen may not suffer to be in court’.37 John Leek, a priest at nearby Syon Abbey, also claimed that Henry had ‘meddled’ with Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, Mary and Anne’s mother.38 This must have been commonplace gossip, as in 1533, in one of those little dramatic tableaux so redolent of Henry’s reign, Sir George Throgmorton was unwise enough to tell the king: ‘“I fear if you did marry … Anne you [would] have meddled both with the mother and sister.” And his grace said: “Never with the mother!” And [Thomas Cromwell] standing by, said: “Nor with the sister either �
�� and therefore put that out of your head.”’39

  Carey died of the sweating sickness on 23 June 1528 and the king granted Anne Boleyn the wardship of Mary’s son Henry immediately afterwards, warning her that her sister was in ‘extreme necessity’ and it was her father’s duty to support her.40 If this sounds callous, it was – but Henry was now wooing Anne and felt it was high time to tidy up his relationships with the Boleyn family.41

  The king had abandoned any hope of having further children by Katherine by the early 1520s, despite the efforts of physicians brought specially from Spain. Although he continued to treat her with the respect appropriate to her station as queen consort, he probably stopped sleeping regularly with her in 1524, after fifteen years of marriage. His ambassadors at the Imperial court referred obliquely to this realisation when they wrote to him in July 1525 that the nine-year-old Princess Mary was

  your only child at this time in whom your highness puts the hope of propagation of any posterity of your body, seeing the queen’s grace has been long without child.

  Albeit God may send her more children, yet she is past that age in which women most commonly are wont to be fruitful and have children.42

  This impression was publicly (some might say shamelessly) confirmed on Sunday 18 June 1525 when Henry’s six-year-old bastard was created Duke of Richmond (Henry VII was Earl of Richmond before he seized the throne) at a grotesque ceremony at the newly built Bridewell Palace on the western edge of London.43 Henry, surrounded by Wolsey, Norfolk, Suffolk and other nobles of the realm, stood beneath a canopy of estate in the presence chamber as the little boy was ushered into the room by his ladies. The king tenderly wrapped the ducal robes around the child and looped the sword belt over his shoulder.44 Other titles were showered by a doting father upon his innocent, tousled head: Earl of Nottingham, Duke of Somerset and, perhaps in conscious mimicry of the king’s own childhood, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Vice-Regent of the North. Properties yielding an annual income of £4,845 were also bestowed on Fitzroy. Subsequently Wolsey dutifully enquired about the health of the ‘entirely beloved son, the Lord Henry Fitzroy’.45 On the same day Sir Thomas Boleyn was created Viscount Rochford.

  Henry’s illegitimate son had his own extensive household at Durham House – Katherine’s lonely home in those bitter years between Arthur’s death and her marriage to the king – and later moved to a Yorkshire castle, Sheriff Hutton, in his purely nominal roles as Lord President of the Council of the North and Warden of the Scottish Marches. His young life was minutely organised with set menus carefully drawn up and his wardrobe inventoried. For example, from Easter to Michaelmas each year, the menu for dinner included, as a first course: beef and mutton, geese, roast capons and roast veal. For the second, there were half a lamb or kid, roast chickens, pigeons, wildfowl and a ‘tart or baked [mince] meat’. For drink, there were four gallons of ale and two pitchers of wine. Cost: not to exceed 17s 1d.46

  The renowned Greek scholar Richard Croke47 and John Palsgrave, author of the first French grammar in English, were appointed tutors to Henry Fitzroy. A letter from the boy to Wolsey dated 4 March ?1526, was probably one of his writing exercises. The easily read note, written under dictation in the fashionable Italianate italics, pledges laboriously:

  I shall, God willing, endeavour myself and apply my time for that learning … whereby I maybe more able to do unto the king’s highness such service hereafter which shall be consis[tent] with his most gracious pleasure.48

  In 1528, the nine year old wrote to Henry asking for his own armour ‘for exercise in arms, according to my learning in Julius Caesar in which I hope to prosper’ and sought Wolsey’s support for his request.49

  It is gratifying that the boy’s mother received reports on his scholastic progress, even when one, from Palsgrave, also bemoaned the tutor’s poverty and misfortune. He informed Elizabeth Talboys in July 1529 that ‘my lord of Richmond is of as good a nature, as much inclined to all manner virtuous and honourable … as any babe living’. The king had told him on his appointment: ‘I deliver unto you my worldly jewel. You … Palsgrave [must] bring him up in virtue and learning.’50 His mother sent gifts to her son: an inventory of his possessions in 1531 recorded a doublet and two horses given by Elizabeth.

  All this fuss and public hoopla about the king’s bastard was naturally bitter gall to Katherine of Aragon. The Venetian ambassador commented:

  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 [from] the court – a strong measure but the queen was obliged to submit and to have patience.51

  She truly had great need of the quality of fortitude.

  Katherine bore bravely the public stigmata of failure – it was the queen’s first duty, after all, to produce male heirs – and she knew full well that her barrenness was the talk of the European courts. After enjoying the glamour of those heady glory days early in her husband’s reign, she had been returned to a forlorn existence, isolated from public affairs, bereft of her husband’s affections and parted from him for long periods of the court’s year. If she possessed the sin of pride, events had cruelly conspired to irrevocably and grievously injure her self-esteem and belief.

  Katherine was prematurely old, her short stature accentuating her new dumpiness, and she fell sick frequently. The queen had a soft, sweet voice which retained a strong Spanish accent. She had developed considerable resilience, tenacity and above all displayed a serene dignity, derived from generations of her pride of caste.52 She still spent her time making (or mending) Henry’s shirts, carefully embroidering the collars with fine black needlework. Much of her considerable reservoir of love was poured out on her sole surviving progeny, Princess Mary, a fair child with red-gold ringlets, who suffered frequent headaches, probably because of a sinus condition. The queen had taught her Latin and the little girl was also fluent in French, Italian and Spanish.

  But even the daily delight of seeing her daughter was now denied Katherine. Mother and child had to be separated by the imperatives of state. Henry summarily sent Mary, as Princess of Wales, to Ludlow Castle to preside over her principality and the border country, as had Katherine’s first husband Arthur. Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, was appointed governess in her small embryo court. In October 1525, the queen wrote to Mary of her distress at their separation: ‘The long absence of the king and you troubles me. My health is meetly [moderately] good.’ She urged her daughter to continue her Latin studies and requested samples of her work to be sent: ‘It shall be a great comfort to me to see you keep your Latin and [your] fair writing … your loving mother.’53

  Juan Luis Vives, the Spanish humanist scholar who enjoyed the queen’s patronage, wrote a book, De institutione feminæ Christianæ (‘The Education of a Christian Woman’), especially for Mary, containing more than two hundred maxims to protect a child’s mind from dangerous worldly distractions and to preserve her ‘more securely and safely than any spearman or bowman’.54

  Katherine’s isolation was not even palliated by contact with her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. In November 1526 she wrote to reproach him for ignoring her:

  Most High and Powerful Lord – I cannot imagine what may be the cause of your Highness having been so angry, and having so forgotten me, that for upwards of two years I have had no letters [from Spain].

  I am sure I deserve not this treatment, for such are my affection and readiness for your Highness’ service that I deserved a better reward.

  I cannot help doing what I consider my duty – writing whenever an opportunity offers itself, and by all those who go to Spain from these parts, begging to know … what is the state of your precious health?55

  Although he still had only a male heir born out of wedlock, Henry tried hard to put his qualms about his dynasty behind him. He embarked on the furious pursuit of pur
e pleasure in the early 1520s, hunting his way across southern England and leaving politics, diplomacy and the boring daily grind of running England to Wolsey and his Council. It was as if he had completely withdrawn from public life. As one of his courtiers reported: ‘I received a packet of letters addressed to the king, which I took to his majesty immediately, but as he was going to have a shot at a stag, he asked me to keep them until the evening.’56 Outbreaks of the plague also kept Henry on the move from house to house as he had a morbid fear of the disease. Lorenzo Orio, the new Venetian ambassador, reported in January 1526:

  On account of the plague the king is moving about the island with a few of his attendants, as two of them died of the plague in his dwelling.

  He leaves everything in charge of Cardinal Wolsey, who keeps a great court, and has comedies and tragedies performed.57

  Those close to the king remained his old friends and cronies – William Compton, the one-eyed Francis Bryan, Nicholas Carew and Henry Norris. In July 1525 Henry promoted Sir Thomas More to the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster on the death of Sir Richard Wingfield. The king admired More’s wit, conversation, learning and modesty.

  And for the pleasure he took in his company, would his grace suddenly … come to [More’s] house at Chelsea to be merry with him.

  Whither on a time, unlooked for, he came to dinner [with him] and after dinner, in a fair garden of his, walked with him by the space of an hour, holding his arm about his neck.