by Roger Powell
To summarise the position as objectively as we can, we do know or can reasonably assume, that there was this young boy, Roland de Velville, of unknown parentage, who, aged eleven, accompanied King Henry VII to England from Brittany in 1485. He was less than half Henry’s age (Henry being twenty-eight in 1485) and the boy was therefore not of ‘military age’ or a mercenary and he was far too young to be Henry’s ‘friend’. The earliest reference to him appears to be a grant to ‘Roland de Vielle’ in Michaelmas term 1488 (ref: Materials for the Reign of Henry VII (Rolls Series, 1873–77), vol. II, p. 394, edited by W. Campbell). Nevertheless, for the next twenty-five years, the boy lived at Court, but unusually and perhaps uniquely, he was not given any official position or office. However, clearly he was a favourite of the king, participating in numerous jousts and accompanying the king out hunting. He became a courtier and a member of the Royal Household but not a ‘servant’, and he mixed on equal terms with the highest members of the aristocracy, including the Duke of Buckingham.
De Velville served in Sir John Cheyne’s retinue in the expedition to Brittany in 1489, commanded by Sir Robert Willoughby, and is probably to be identified with the ‘Roland de Bella Vill’ who served as an esquire in the army which Henry VII took to France in the autumn of 1492. After the Battle of Blackheath, he was knighted on 17 June 1497 and was one of a small group of knights individually rewarded by the king in the course of the military operations in the West Country which led to the capture of Perkin Warbeck in September. As Sir Roland, he was summoned to attend upon the king during the prolonged reception of the Archduke Philip in 1500.
There are also a number of references recording de Velville’s participation in tournaments in 1494; in April and in November 1501 (to welcome Katherine of Aragon); in January 1502 (to mark the proxy marriage of Princess Margaret to James IV of Scotland); in February 1506 (in honour of Archduke Philip); and in May and June 1507 (in honour of the Queen of May). Participation in royal tournaments was carefully restricted to noblemen and gentlemen entitled to bear coats of arms and tended to be expensive. Somehow de Velville maintained his life-style by living in the royal household, receiving occasional gifts from the king and drawing an income from the royal revenues. In 1493 the king granted him an annuity of £20 and in 1496 a further annuity of forty marks (£26 13s. 4d.) for life.
In view of the favour in which Henry VII held him, it was wholly appropriate that de Velville was one of the knights of the Royal Household appointed to attend the king’s funeral in May 1509. He also participated in the jousts celebrating Henry VIII’s coronation on 24 June 1509 and all this might have suggested that his life at Court was to continue unaffected by the young king’s accession. However, a fundamental change in his life was imminent, for only days after the king’s death, he was appointed Constable of Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey, the ancient seat of the Tudor family, where he is said to have been the last resident constable.
There is nothing to indicate that de Velville had had any previous connection with Anglesey. Until 4 December 1512, when he received a grant of denization, he could not as a Breton own any lands in England or Wales. Having lived at Court throughout his years in England, it is difficult to imagine why he should decide to abandon his privileged way of life to take up residence in a small and distant Welsh provincial town. This prompts further speculation about Henry VIII’s motives in authorizing the appointment and the question of de Velville’s paternity. If rumours about his reputed royal parentage were current in Court circles in Henry VII’s reign, Henry VIII, or his new queen and her advisers, may have had a strong motive for wishing to remove him from constant attendance at Court, as his presence there might encourage speculation that in the event of the new king’s death without issue, de Velville could have some contingent claim to be regarded as Henry VII’s heir. On this basis, his Tudor paternity remains a possibility.
The royal letters patent dated 3 July 1509 were issued by the chancery of the principality of North Wales at Caernarfon and recorded the grant to de Velville of the offices of Constable of Beaumaris Castle and Captain of Beaumaris Castle and town, with all fees, rewards and profits. Full payment of all sums due was ensured by a warrant issued at Greenwich on 29 October 1509 instructing the chamberlain of North Wales to pay de Velville the first half-yearly instalment due at Michaelmas 1509 of his annual fee of £40 as constable, his wages of 8d. per day as captain, and the wages of twenty-four soldiers at 4d. a day. On 6 December 1509, a further warrant was issued at Greenwich ordering the chamberlain to pay de Velville wages for himself and his soldiers and a priest totalling £350 5s. 0d. per year. Royal letters patent under the great seal were issued on 1 August 1509 making de Velville a fresh grant of the annuity of £20 first granted in 1493, while the life annuity of forty marks (£26 13s. 4d.) granted in 1496 continued to be paid.
Soon after his appointment as Constable, de Velville moved to Beaumaris and began to live openly with Agnes Griffith, whom he was eventually to marry. Agnes was a widow; her first husband was Robert Dowdyng, a burgess of Beaumaris, who appears with her as a joint grantor in a deed of 1508 but was dead by 1516 when she was described both as a widow as well as living with de Velville in Beaumaris Castle. He may have died before de Velville look up residence in Beaumaris, because complaints were made against de Velville by members of the Bulkeley family (one of whom he had supplanted as Constable) early in Henry VIII’s reign, referring to Agnes as his concubine or paramour. They probably did not marry until after 18 June 1521, when Agnes granted de Velville a close of land, which would have had no effect if they had been married. The earliest reference to Agnes as de Velville’s wife is in deeds of 6 July 1528, and although the pedigrees do not cast doubt on the legitimacy of their children, Grace and Jane, it seems clear that they were born well before this date.
So it was between 1521–28 that de Velville married Agnes, the daughter of William (Gwilym) Griffith Fychan (d. 1483) of Penrhyn, (the father of Sir William Griffith (d. 1505) and grandfather of Sir William Griffith (d. 1531), both of whom held office as Chamberlain of North Wales). She must therefore have been at least in her late twenties at the time of Henry VIII’s accession, and their two daughters were born probably in the early years of his reign. The Griffiths were one of the most powerful families in North Wales at the time, being a branch of the Tudor family descended from Ednyfed Fychan and the royal and princely houses of Wales and a distant cousin of the king. Thereafter de Velville was both granted and acquired land in the ancient estates of the Tudor family at Penmynydd. Six acquisitions by him are recorded in documents surviving in the Lleweni papers, and four of these are grants by Owen ap John ap Owen ap Tudor Fychan, a member of the senior branch of the Tudor family. But there is little evidence to indicate what effect de Velville’s association with, and later marriage to, a member of the most powerful family in Gwynedd may have had on his relations with the local gentry.
No references have been found to de Velville having married before the 1520s when he would have been in his mid forties, and it is uncertain whether he had remained unmarried, or whether as a young man he had married a wife who had predeceased him. At that time it was unusual for a man to have reached middle age without marrying, although it is possible that de Velville’s lack of any assured income before 1509, might have prevented him from marrying someone suitable.
Rumours concerning de Velville’s royal parentage were certainly circulating in North Wales during his own lifetime, and many appeared to believe that he was indeed Henry VII’s son. This extended to his own family and immediate circle, as well as to his descendants and during the last four hundred and fifty years, no evidence has come to light suggesting any other parentage. Certainly his favoured position and lifestyle would be expained perfectly if he was to have been a natural son of King Henry VII as most people have always believed, but the fraught political situation and the tussle for the Throne, would have called for much discretion at the time.
If then we accept that de Velvi
lle was an illegitimate child, as would seem likely, then whose child was he? If not Henry VII’s, then his treatment by the King can only mean that he was the child of someone very close to the king or of someone to whom he owed a considerable debt of gratitude, but there is no mention of this. The answer seems clear, in spite of the recent doubts that have surfaced, that Roland de Velville was indeed Henry’s illegitimate son and the very secrecy surrounding him supports this conclusion.
Strangely, as Robinson points out, there is one piece of contemporary documentary evidence relating to de Velville’s paternity, in the form of an elegy composed before 25 June 1535, the time of de Velville’s death, by the bard Daffyd Alaw. For de Velville’s Breton origins seem to have made an impression upon some of his contemporaries, in that an elegy (in Welsh) was composed to ‘Sr rolant brytaen’, but with the telling reference to him being ‘a man of kingly line’ and ‘of earl’s blood’ (no doubt a reference to Henry VII’s father, Edmund Tudor (d. 1456), Earl of Richmond). These Welsh bards were the recognised Welsh genealogical authorities of the time and the elegy therefore amounted to a statement by an authoritative contemporary source that de Velville was of royal blood. Whilst elegies may often have exaggerated the good and glossed over the bad, they tended not to make up important assertions of fact. The elegy allows us, therefore, to conclude with reasonable certainty that de Velville was believed to be an illegitimate son of Henry VII in his own lifetime, at least by his immediate circle. This circle included many members of the extended Tudor family, into which de Velville had married, the very people who would have been least likely to accept such a statement as true had it actually been false.
Of course, any form of recognition or legitimization of a bastard son was the very last thing that Henry VII would have done in the circumstances. Not only was Henry an intensely secretive and cautious man, but his claim to the throne was tenuous and his power base was to remain doubtful for some time. However, we know that his marriage to Elizabeth of York was critical in gaining the loyalty of the Yorkist cause and that he was therefore unlikely to take any steps that might be seen as threatening the claim to the throne of any children of that marriage. We know, above all, that the country had just emerged from a ruinous and bloody civil war that had been caused largely by the legitimization of the bastard children of John of Gaunt. Henry was hardly likely to risk his throne and to create a potential future threat to his own legitimate children by recognising an illegitmate child.De Velville’s treatment was therefore precisely what we would have expected it to be if he had been Henry’s illegitimate child.
However, these doubts have given rise to a number of interesting questions about de Velville. Why, for instance, was de Velville attributed with a quartered coat of arms, which might have indicated that both his father and mother were known? Can his arms be traced in French sources and what link is there, if any, between de Velville and the de Vieilleville family, Counts of Durtal? (Durtal is near Angers in France.) Might de Velville’s mother have been a daughter of this family? Again, might Henry have actually married de Velville’s mother (who may perhaps have died shortly after the marriage or in childbirth)? After all, Henry VII was twenty-eight in 1485 and it was very unusual then for a man of that age to remain unmarried. Moreover, prior to 1483, Henry had little prospect of succeeding to the throne of England, since there were several legitimate heirs living at that time, and even very little prospect of ever returning to that country – at least alive. Thus he had no incentive to remain unmarried and could have considered himself, as a penniless and untitled exile (he was plain ‘Henry Tudor’ at that stage) with a price on his head, quite lucky to marry into a good French family. The possibility should not be excluded.
Dr. M. P. Siddons, Wales Herald Extraordinary, author of ‘The Development of Welsh Heraldry’, has confirmed that he was ‘unable to find De Velville or his arms in Breton sources’. Although there was a family of ‘de Vieilleville’ (Counts of Durtal, near Angers) living in Maine (not Brittany) at that time, no link to Sir Roland had been forged although it is just possible that de Velville’s mother might have been a daughter of this family.
De Velville was attributed with two different coats of arms. The first, Argent, a Lion rampant Gules charged on the shoulder with a bezant may have been the coat of arms granted to de Velville upon his being knighted in 1497, although it seems odd that he should be granted new arms when he already had a coat of arms. In the British Library (MS Add. 46354, fo.21, 104v) there is a quarterly coat with these arms on an inescutcheon. The crest is a lion’s head issuing from a coronet, but the supporters are bizarre. The second coat, Argent (sometimes shown or), a boar passant (sometimes shown statant) sable’, possibly ‘armed or, langued gules may represent his ‘proper’ coat of arms, being those he inherited at birth i.e. his father’s unquartered arms.
It is, of course, intriguing that de Velville should have been attributed these arms for it would seem to imply that the identity of both his father and mother was known. According to Dr. Siddons, John Writhe, Garter King of Arms (d. 1505), would have actually known de Velville. On the other hand, Simwnt Fychan refers to a manuscript prepared for Katherine of Berain, de Velville’s grand-daughter, who married John Salusbury (d. 1566). Kathryn was the daughter of Jane de Velville and her husband Robert Thomas ap Robert of Berain. Cecil Humphery-Smith believes that the arms are suspect like so many Welsh coats (including some even composed by Writhe himself). Certainly, there is no sign of such arms in French sources.
In 1512 Henry VIII granted Letters of Denization for de Velville and the heir of his body. These conferred on him, as ‘a native of Brittany’, all the rights and privileges of an Englishman - in effect, naturalization, which importantly also entitled him to acquire lands, although none of the surviving grants in his favour is dated earlier than 1519. Two deeds of 1526 show de Velville to have taken steps to improve his two shops in the High Street in Beaumaris, which he had only recently built.
Much of the evidence for his activities as constable of Beaumaris is provided by legal records concerning his disputes with the Bulkeley family, which have been described by Mr. D C Jones and by Dr. Steven Gunn. However, de Velville’s duties at Beaumaris did not preclude him from frequenting London and Westminster. In February 1511 he took part in the Westminster tournament to celebrate the birth of the infant Prince Henry, and later that month he attended the prince’s interment. On 2 January 1512 he was one of the mourners at the funeral in London of the French ambassador, Anthoine de Pierrepont dit d’Arizoles. He took part in the French campaign of 1513 and in November conducted his retinue of three demi-lances, a mounted archer and seven foot-soldiers from Dover to Anglesey. His involvement in legal proceedings also involved his attendance at Westminster. In January 1517 he appeared before the king’s council, where he was bound under heavy penalties to keep the peace, ordered to attend on the king and not depart without licence and to give Beaumaris Castle to a deputy appointed by the king. He evidently spent much time in 1517 in and around London, as in July he was sent to the Fleet for slandering the Council and in October a recognizance was drawn up, presumably on the Council’s orders, for his good behaviour towards the king’s tenants of Beaumaris. In a letter of 26 June 1535, Sir Richard Bulkeley stated that de Velville had murdered a man in the Lord Cardinal’s (i.e. Wolsey’s) time and had forfeited all his goods, but no indication of the date of the alleged murder is cited.
Despite his unruly behaviour at this time, he was one of the knights included in the great retinue summoned to attend the king and queen at Canterbury in May 1520 and to accompany the royal party to Calais for the meeting with Francis I at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. During the same year, he was summoned to attend on the king during his meeting with Charles V at Gravelines. In the 1520s, de Velville continued to spend much time at Westminster. On 10 July 1522 he attended requiem masses in St Margaret’s, Westminster, and in the Abbey, following the burial of Lady Anne Hungerford, the wife of Sir Hugh Vaughan, an
d a pardon granted to him in 1527 or 1528 described him as ‘of Westminster’ as well as ‘of Beaumaris’. The offences for which he was pardoned may have included those making false allegations against the Bulkeleys, for which he had again been imprisoned in the Fleet in 1522. In a long list of the king’s sworn servants compiled between 1522–26, he was included under Middlesex, and not among the knights of north Wales. Presumably during these years he divided his time between Westminster and Beaumaris. It is perhaps not surprising that he did not participate in the French campaign of 1523, as he was by then middle aged, although his diligence in performing his military duties in Anglesey was later authoritatively commended.
However, after Easter 1515 many of the fees and allowances due to him were suddenly disallowed as a result of the Act of Resumption passed early in April 1515. This was designed to reduce royal expenditure by annulling certain categories of grants and fees made since the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign, including all constableships in north Wales. In the event, de Velville apparently was to have received the sum of £175 2s. 6d. due to him for the half-year ending at Michaelmas 1515, but the sum was held ‘in respite’ in the chamberlain’s account, and it was only resolved when new letters patent, dated 6 March 1516, were issued by the chancery at Caernarfon including reduced rates of pay. The letters patent went on to authorize the payment to de Velville of the sum held ‘in respite’. This was the last payment to de Velville for soldiers’ wages, but the substantial loss of income which that represented was offset by a further provision in the letters patent of 6 March 1516 granting de Velville a life annuity of £173 6s. 8d. This certainly confirms the exceptionally favourable terms he had been able to negotiate. Thereafter de Velville received no further royal grants, but given the generous provision made for him then, he could hardly have claimed any further support from the Crown, particularly in view of his unruly behaviour which had led to his imprisonment in the Fleet in 1517 and 1522.