Royal Bastards

by Roger Powell

  Amelia died in 1858 aged fifty-one, leaving an only son, Lucius, who himself was to die without issue. However as a small boy he captured the heart of the new Queen Victoria who described him variously as ‘a dear boy’, ‘a beautiful child’, ‘a remarkably nice boy, so natural and not at all shy’. Lord Falkland, who was much in demand as a family trustee and executor, then went on to marry Elizabeth, widow of the 9th Duke of St Albans (see page 75).

  SECTION IV

  ROYAL LOOSE

  ENDS

  Chapter XII

  Tudor Loose Ends

  King Edward IV (1442–83): Elizabeth, Lady Lumley

  In Sections 1, 2 and 3 we have only included those who have been officially recognised as royal bastards, or those about whom there is no doubt. All others are included in this Section 4, Royal Loose Ends.

  For instance, in this section we have included a number of Royal fables, which although believed firmly by many people at the time, have since been disproved. These include the Mylius Affair (see page 240) and George Rex (see page 209). With regard to King Edward VII (see page 219), there seems to be much gossip and very little substance and the same applies to his grandson, the Duke of Windsor (see page 242).

  Edward IV’s licentiousness was a byword in contemporary chronicles. He is alleged to have had five illegitimate children, but the only one about whom there is no doubt is Arthur (Plantagenet), created Viscount Lisle, whose biography is included in Section 1 (see page 18). There is, however, much less information available about the other contenders.

  In 1483, the year of Edward’s death, Mancini, the Italian chronicler recorded that the king was notorious in his pursuit of the fair sex but ‘as soon as he grew weary of dalliance, gave up the ladies much against their will to other courtiers’. Polydore Vergil also recorded that he ‘loved them inordinately’ and even Sir Thomas More, forty years later, recorded that at one time he had three concubines whom he described as ‘the merriest, wiliest and holiest in his realm’. Indeed it was said by More that one of these, Elizabeth Lucy ‘a proud high-minded woman’ had pre-contracted to marry the king and was the mother of a child by him. When an investigating tribunal interviewed her, however, she admitted that this was not the case and no promise to marry had been made.

  More’s statements, however, make it quite clear that she bore Edward a child before his marriage in 1464. The sex of this child is not given in More’s manuscript but the surviving evidence suggests strongly that it was most probably a daughter. Near contemporary sources, ie the Lumley Monument at Chester-le-Street, Durham, the Neville pedigree of circa 1505 and Tonge’s 1530 Visitation of the Northern Counties name her as Elizabeth, the wife of Sir Thomas Lumley.

  Historian Michael Hicks, however, suggests in his book Edward V ‘The Prince in the Tower’ that she was named Margaret and not Elizabeth. He bases this on a document in the National Archives where it is recorded that ‘our most excellent and dread prince and lord King EdwardIV’ requested Bishop Dudley to grant Thomas &s Margaret a licence. (reference PRO DURH 3/54/22 m.8). Hicks does not state what the licence was for, but it could have been for permission to marry or to have a mobile altar. This document, however, could equally refer to Sir Thomas’s grandparents who bore the same names. Alternatively Sir Thomas may have married twice, firstly to Elizabeth who died pre 1480, possibly in childbirth and then to Margaret.

  Sir Thomas’s marriage to Elizabeth is alleged to have taken place pre 1478, as Richard Lumley, his son and heir, was aged thirty and more when he succeeded his grandfather George, Lord Lumley in 1508; Sir Thomas had died the previous year. As Sir Thomas is alleged to have been born in 1462, he would have been just sixteen years old in 1478 and his wife was probably about the same age.

  When Richard, Sir Thomas’s eldest son, was granted a dispensation to marry Anne Conyers in 1489, because they were related in the fourth degree, one modern source claimed that this was proof that the degree of kinship was via Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, the great-grandfather of Edward IV’s bastard daughter and Anne Conyers. It is equally possible, however, that the degree of kinship was calculated via Ralph’s father, John Nevill, Lord Nevill, the great-great-great-grandfather of Richard Lumley and great-grandfather of Anne Conyers. When the dispensation was issued in 1489, Richard was only eleven or twelve years old whereas his wife Anne, was considerably older, probably twenty or more (her father died in 1469). Their eldest known child, John, was born in 1493, thus making Richard about fifteen or sixteen at his birth and his wife Anne not less than twenty four!

  Against the theory of two wives for Sir Thomas, is the fact that the Lumley Monument mentions only one, Elizabeth. In addition she appears to have been granted the Royal Arms: 1. France and England, 2. a plain cross of Ulster, 3. as 2, 4. barry of siz, on a chief three pallets, between two esquires bastions, dexter and sinister, an inescutcheon Argent, Mortimer, over all a bar sinister, which are also displayed on the monument. The monument was erected during the lifetime of John Lumley, fist & last Lord Lumley of the 1547 creation, who was born about 1530 and died in 1609. John was the grandson of John, 5th Lord Lumley, born 1493, who in turn was the grandson of Sir Thomas Lumley, mentioned above. If there was a second wife surely she would have been mentioned on the monument?

  There is no reference to Elizabeth or her Lumley descendants in the correspondence of her brother Arthur, Lord Lisle. The earliest extant letter in the Lisle collection is dated 1523, any earlier correspondence having been lost. Sir Thomas is credited with seven children: four sons, Richard, John, George and Roger plus three daughters Sybil, Elizabeth and Ann. Determining their ages is problematic, especially for the sons, but it is possible to calculate an approximate date of birth for two of the daughters Sybil and Ann. Sybil appears to have been born 1484–88 and Ann 1490–94. The naming of a daughter Elizabeth suggests that she might have been a full sister of Richard but this is mere speculation and unproven. As Sir Thomas and his wife Elizabeth(?) were related within the fourth degree, a dispensation from the Pope would have been required in order for them to marry. However no such document appears to have survived, thus contemporary confirmation that the marriage did take place is sadly lacking.

  The mid and late 1470s was a troubled time for Edward and his kingdom but set against this was his successful invasion of France with an army of eleven thousand men in 1475. The result was a pension from the French king Louis of £50,000 per annum for the next nine years and the promise of a marriage alliance between the dauphin and Edward’s eldest daughter the Princess Elizabeth. This was followed by his return to England to quell the disturbances in Yorkshire in early 1476 and it might have been on this occasion that he arranged the marriage of his bastard daughter to the grandson of one of the more prominent Yorkshire noble families, the Lumleys. Such an alliance would undoubtedly have helped to restore calm and peace to the area and seems perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. This was followed by the removal of the remains of Richard, Duke of York and his son Edmund, Earl of Rutland, Edward’s father and elder brother, from their temporary resting place to be re-interred at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire.

  The Lumleys were a Yorkist family and Thomas, 1st Lord Lumley (1408–85) was created a peer by King Edward IV in his first parliament in 1461 and he was present at the coronation of King Richard III in 1483, dying two years later. His son, George, 2nd Lord Lumley took part in the Scottish expedition of Richard Duke of Gloucester in 1482 which intended to establish the Duke of Albany upon the Scottish throne. When he died in 1507, he was succeeded by his grandson, Richard, indicating that his only son and heir, Thomas, had pre-deceased him.

  Sir Thomas appears to have been a good Yorkist but it is not known what if any support he gave to the young Edward V when he succeeded his father in 1483. He was after all a kinsman of Edward IV but this did not prevent him and his father from immediately submitting to Henry Tudor after the Battle of Bosworth. His foresight was duly rewarded by the retention of his lands. The only rem
inder of his previous Yorkist sympathies was the fact that he named his eldest son Richard, perhaps in honour of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III. It has to be said, however, that the name was extremely popular in the north of England.

  When Elizabeth died is unknown but if she was the mother of all of Sir Thomas’s children, then she was still alive 1490–1494. The 1490s was a decade of particular concern for Henry Tudor’s government; in early 1492 we see the appearance of the youth known to history as ‘Perkin Warbeck’, who claimed to be the younger son of Edward IV. The threat was only removed in 1499 when he was executed, along with the Earl of Warwick. Durng these difficult years Sir Thomas was appointed a Commissioner of Array in County Durham, Constable of Scarborough Castle and MP for Northumberland, despite having no land there. Despite the fact that he was a son-in-law of Edward IV and brother-in-law of Henry Tudor, he was not singled out for preferment. Indeed that would have been very unwise on the part of Henry Tudor. After all there were plenty of the Queen’s kinsmen to plague Henry without creating other possibilities.

  Grace Plantagenet, Dame Isabel Mylbery or Audley and Mary Harman

  There are even fewer references to Elizabeth’s sister Grace, than there were to her. Evidence that she was a child of King Edward IV is based solely on a manuscript in a herald’s account of the funeral of Elizabeth Woodville in 1492 (Arundel MS 26, f, 29v Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, Royal Burials at Windsor II) where she appears as one of the chief mourners. There she is mentioned as ‘Maistres Grace, a bastard dowghter of Kyng Edwarde, and upon (among) an other gentilwomen’. It seems that only two other mourners were present, the queen’s chaplain and her cousin Edmund Haute, one of her executors. Thus it seems as if Mistress Grace was indeed regarded as of some importance, being a daughter of King Edward IV, and probably having been brought up in the household of the Queen, and presumably recognised by Edward. This is the sole reference to Grace and nothing is known about her dates of birth or death, nor the name of her mother, nor whether she was ever married. As there are no subsequent references to her in contemporary records, she may have ended her days in a nunnery

  The next sister is Dame Isabel Mylbery, whose name occurs in another heraldic manuscript of about 1510 where her arms are illustrated. This is an interesting coat of arms, possibly granted by Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms. They are shown painted on a lozenge (for a woman), being ‘per bend Purpure (or murrey) and azure, in fess a rose between two demi lions passant guardant facing sinister, all argent’. The colours are the livery colours of the house of York; the white rose being the badge of York; and the two demi lions, which unusually are facing to the left, are reminiscent of the lions of England. The inscription above the arms describes Dame Isabel as ‘educata ut fert(ur) per Regem E(dwardum) iiij’, brought up, it is said, by King Edward IV.

  Whilst this could mean simply what it says, when taken in conjunction with the arms granted to her, and there being no reference to any family of Mylbery (which could have been her mother’s name), it does seem quite possible that she is a child of Edward IV, and possibly recognised as such by him. Next to Isabel’s lozenge is a shield with her arms impaled (ie side by side) with the arms of her husband who was of the Audley family, but differenced by a crescent (which usually refers to a second son). Above her part of this shield is the inscription ‘Dame Isabelle uxor eius’ meaning Lady Isabel his wife and above the other half of the shield was the inscription ‘Johannes Awdeley, frater Jacobi domini de Awdeley’ meaning John Audley, brother of James Lord Audley.

  John seems to have been rather an obscure member of the Audley family which had supported the Yorkists and came from Heleigh. He was mentioned in the will of his mother, Anne Lady Audley; he took part in the Cornish rising of 1497 with his brother James (who was beheaded and forfeited his title), and he was indicted for a part in the Warbeck Conspiracy in 1499, eventually being pardoned in 1504. Their father, John Lord Audley, was present at the coronation of King Richard III in 1483 and was made Lord Treasurer the following year. So they were indeed just the sort of family into which an illegitimate daughter of the King might marry, although nothing more is known about them or any family they may have had.

  The fifth and final claimant to be a child of King Edward IV was mentioned in the Kent Visitation of 1574 in the pedigree of Harman. This states that Henry Harman was married to a daughter of King Edward IV, although again, the daughter is not named. It also stated that his crest, but not arms, had been given to him by King Henry VII ‘after he had married with E:4 daughter’. This crest was described as ‘out of a ducal coronet an arm erect azure, the hand proper grasping two roses gules and argent, stalked and leaved vert’. As with Dame Isabel, this again sounds like a grant that could have been made to a scion of royalty, with the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster and the purple (or murrey) of the chevron in the arms might also be part of the grant. The arms of Harman are described in the Visitation as ‘a chevron purple between three periwigs sable’ which presumably reflects Harman’s appointments as Clerk of the Crown in the court of the King’s bench (‘coroner and attorney in the bench before the king’ – as one of his patents described him) from 1480-1502 when he died. His will shows that his widow’s name was Mary and that they had eleven children, but their names gave no clue to any royal ancestry.

  King Richard III (1452–85): Richard Plantagenet (1469-1550)

  Anne Smith of the Richard III Society published the following account of Richard Plantagenet, or Richard of Eastwell, in Kent, whom many believe could well have been Richard III’s illegitimate son, but the evidence is circumstantial.

  On the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, King Richard III is said to have acknowledged a third bastard. The other two, about whom there was little doubt, were Katherine Plantagenet (see page 26) and John of Gloucester (see page 24). This story was documented in a letter by a Dr. Brett to the 5th Earl of Winchelsea dated 1733 and reprinted in Desiderata Curiosa, Vol. 2, by Francis Peck in 1735.

  The death of a Richard Plantagenet was certainly registered in the Eastwell Church registry in 1550. He was eighty-one and was therefore born around 1469. Although his name is inscribed on one of the tombs, the grave is considered by some to be more likely that of Sir Walter Moyle, who died in 1480.

  Arthur Mee, a noted travel writer in the first half of the twentieth century, wrote about ‘The Very Strange Story of Richard Plantagenet’ under Kent (published 1936), which was part of The King’s England, County by County, Covering 10,000 Towns, Villages and Hamlets of the English Counties. His account is similar to the story published in the Eastwell Manor visitor’s guide today.

  This relates that Sir Thomas Moyle, building his great house at Easton, was much struck by a white-bearded man his mates called Richard. There was a mystery about him. In the rest hour, whilst the other workmen talked and threw dice, this old man would sit apart and read a book. This was unusual because there were very few working men who could read in 1545. On this particular morning Sir Thomas could not rest until he had won the confidence of the man

  It is said the book that Richard was reading was in Latin, which was, of course, a language reserved for the highborn. The mason told Sir Thomas that he was brought up by a schoolmaster. ‘From time to time, a gentleman came who paid for his food and school, and asked many questions to discover if he were well cared for,’ wrote Mee. Richard went on to describe having been taken to Bosworth Field and meeting his father there for the first time. The king said: ‘I am your father, and if I prevail in tomorrow’s battle, I will provide for you as befits your blood. But it may be that I shall be defeated, killed, and that I shall not see you again … Tell no one who you are unless I am victorious.’ The battle was lost, and Richard Plantagenet then chose a simple trade in which to lose his identity and had thus come to work at Eastwell Manor. According to Mee: ‘Sir Thomas Moyle, listening to this wonderful story, determined that the last Plantagenet should not want in his old age. He had a little house bu
ilt for him in the Park (which is still standing) and instructed his steward to provide for it every day.’

  King Henry VII (1457–1509): Sir Roland de Velville (1474–1535)

  For the last four hundred years or more, no one has doubted that Sir Roland de Velville (also spelt Vielleville, Veleville or Vieilleville), Constable of Beaumaris Castle from 1509–35 was a natural son of Henry VII and he would therefore have been included in Section 1 of this book. Allegedly he was born in 1474 to an unknown Breton woman, while Henry was in exile in Brittany between 1471–85. All those historians who have mentioned de Velville, seem either to have accepted him as such, or have referred to him as a ‘reputed natural son’ of Henry VII, and even today, he is included as such in Alison Weir’s book ‘Britain’s Royal Families’ (1996). Indeed, such an authoritative source as the Dictionary of Welsh Biography refers to de Velville as ‘a natural son of Henry VII’ (under the entry for Katheryn of Berain – de Velville’s grand-daughter).

  However, in 1967, the late Professor S B Chrimes of Cardiff University, author of the major biography ‘Henry VII’, (1972), published a short paper in Welsh Historical Review in which he put forward the opinion that de Velville was not a natural son of Henry VII after all. This was echoed in 1985 by Professor R A Griffiths of University College, Swansea, in his book ‘The Making of the Tudor Dynasty’ and in 1991 a further, much longer paper on the subject, by W R B. Robinson, was published in Welsh Historical Review. Whilst Robinson identified a number of significant errors and omissions in Chrimes’ earlier paper, he stated that ‘the review of available evidence tends to support Professor Chrimes scepticism about Velville’s supposed Tudor origins’. This statement meant, of course, that although Robinson agreed that the available evidence was insufficient to establish de Velville’s paternity beyond doubt, he was not suggesting that the evidence established beyond doubt that de Velville was not a son of Henry VII, – which it does not do.